by Guy Haley
‘Throne! There’s nothing left of it,’ said Caias. ‘I don’t see a functioning gun. That can’t have been the storm alone.’
‘That’s definitely battle scarring, not warp damage,’ said Lethicus.
‘Give me a full auspex sweep,’ said Gellius.
‘Aye, shipmaster,’ said Juliana Vratus, the ship’s auspex and vox-officer. Three servitors groaned their compliance in unison as she tasked them with the order.
‘Helm, take us over the top,’ said Gellius. He snapped off a number of crisp commands and his metal-tipped fingers danced in the air, accessing a light-spun interface that only Gellius’ augmetic eyes could see.
The Probity turned neatly and passed over the top of the intruder. Broken dorsal towers slid beneath her keel.
Servitors burbled and ground their teeth behind metal masks. The auspex station shone with fresh streams of incoming data. ‘No traces of power or life signs,’ said Vratus. ‘The ship has suffered catastrophic damage. There are residual plasma leaks on the port side.’ She glanced up at the oculus. ‘They should be visible now. There.’
Orange targeting reticles zeroed in on spouts of gas emanating from the craft’s reactor block, these glowing with the false colour of great heat.
‘Those are driving the ship’s revolution. Magnitude of pressure suggests reactor death and breaching some time within the last week.’
‘Any idea of which Legion she was from?’ asked Caias.
‘No identification cypher is being broadcast. Electromagnetically speaking, it is dead. I can run a silhouette identification routine through the cogitators, but that will take some time.’
Lethicus shook his head. ‘It’s a plain ship. I don’t see any adornment or Legion iconography.’
‘It’s hard to tell the colour of the livery,’ said Caias. ‘Could be dark blue, or black. There’s a start.’
‘Raven Guard, Night Lords, Iron Hands, Dark Angels, take your pick.’ Lethicus’ armoured hands gripped hard as he scanned the derelict’s every night-coloured surface. ‘Can you get me a look at the bow plate, Gellius?’
‘As you wish, sergeant,’ said the shipmaster. He pinched invisible directives with his haptic finger implants.
Servitors and logic engines responded. Watched carefully by the ship’s helmsmen, they redirected the Probity along the tumbling wreck toward the prow.
‘Give me a theoretical, Caias,’ said Lethicus.
‘Warp outfall. Victim of Geller field failure brought on by engagement damage. The vessel has certainly seen some heavy action. It could be one of the ships from the Word Bearers or World Eaters fleets, a casualty of their attack on Ultramar. The colours are wrong, but that means little now. Or…’
Lethicus drummed his fingers on the rail. He narrowed his eyes. ‘Or…’
‘It’s a trap,’ said Caias.
‘What then?’
‘We should leave,’ said Caias. ‘There is a sensible practical for you.’
Lethicus snorted. ‘If only we could. The craft is drifting but it is possessed of significant momentum. Furthermore, it is on a direct intercept course for Sotha. At this speed it will arrive within five days.’
‘What is the chance of impact upon the planetary surface?’ asked Caias.
Vratus’ fingers danced over a number of buttons. Her station’s cogitators spat out their answers in a string of flaring numbers on the screen. ‘Seventy per cent. It is on a direct heading, once gravity forcing is taken into account.’
‘Chances of detection?’ asked Lethicus.
‘If it gets in close, they’ll never see it. The Pharos has practically blinded the orbital.’
‘Always the Pharos,’ said Lethicus.
Vratus nodded. ‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Xenos tech,’ said Caias softly. ‘I don’t trust it, lighting up the capital for all to see while leaving us blind and itself vulnerable. Makes me feel like a glow worm in a cave full of bats.’
‘We have to call it in,’ said Lethicus.
‘We will not be able to warn the Aegida from here, my lords. Vox at this range is unreliable and astrotelepathy is unworkable in the face of the storm.’ Vratus became discomfited. ‘Astropath Secondary Kivar is still not well after his last attempt. Shall I ask Mistress Tibanian herself to attempt a communication?’
Lethicus shook his head. ‘I’ll not risk her mind on a message that won’t get through.’
‘Kivar then?’ said Caias. ‘You could ask nicely.’
‘We have lost too many astropaths. Kivar is barely sane as it is. We will make all speed for a relay station, and send a boosted vox-message in-system.’
‘We could follow the ship in,’ said Caias. ‘We could go ahead of it, and warn them in person.’
Lethicus stood up and pinched at his chin. ‘If this is a deliberate act, whoever set us this little dilemma is clever. They chose this spot, where we are spread thinnest. Theoretical – if we escort this wreck all the way, we will be leaving a big hole in the patrol net. They might be waiting for us to do exactly that, to follow us all the way home themselves.’
‘Or they might be hoping we let it slip by while we go and make the call,’ said Caias thoughtfully. ‘All theoreticals leads to poor practicals. If we board it, we risk attack. If we leave it, we risk allowing infiltration forces in-system.’
‘We are carrying a full payload of torpedoes,’ said Lethicus.
‘Gunnery,’ said Caias. ‘Can we destroy the vessel?’
‘Yes, my lord, but to do so would require the expenditure of the larger part of our ordnance.’
‘Then we would be virtually defenceless,’ said Caias. ‘The Probity’s guns are not up to much.’
‘We’d still have our speed,’ said Gellius. He was justifiably proud of his nimble ship. ‘If we are attacked we can outrun almost anything.’
‘Speed is as fine a weapon as a gladius, in the right–’ began Caias.
‘Apologies, my lord, I have identified the vessel,’ interrupted Vratus. ‘It is the Nycton, Eighth Legion. Last confirmed sighting was at the battle of… “Tsagualsa”, in the Thramas Sector. Reported crippled by the First Legion sometime after that, unconfirmed.’ She rapidly examined a number of data-feeds. ‘All saviour pods and lifeboats appear to have been launched. Nothing but residual power signatures from secondary and tertiary sources. It’s dead, my lord.’
‘That battle was more than a year ago, and it still bleeds plasma. That is recent damage, or a ploy. I will bet my last bolt shell that there is life in it yet.’ Lethicus slammed his hand into the rail with sudden anger. ‘Night Lords! I don’t like it. There is something wrong with this entire situation. If the Nycton had come in on a random tide it should have been picked up by the Mandeville sentry vessels. Gellius, pull us back. Gunnery, formulate a firing solution, minimum ammunition expenditure. Vratus, keep watch. Broad sweep auspex in a full sphere.’
Vratus frowned. ‘Sensorium range is restricted to ten thousand kilometres.’
‘Execute that order, auspex command. Divert energy from the engines for full signal boost, give Vratus what she needs,’ said Gellius. He swallowed specifically, activating the vox-bead embedded in his throat. ‘Tech-Adept Mu-Xi 936, prepare the sensorium and auspex suites for full power engagement. Engines dead stop, vector thrusters full. Come about, prow over one-eighty degrees. Half thrust forward, heading three-four-nine by twenty-six. Take us clear of the Nycton.’
Bells rang. The engines powered down and the throbbing of the deck plates changed. The Probity shook as braking thrusters fired, their discharge misting the oculus with freezing gases. The Ultramarines ship pulled away from the Nycton, leaving it to continue its unsteady course towards Sotha.
The Probity’s prow swung in a wide arc as she turned amidships. Reactive forces tugged at the crew, at odds with the pull of the grav-plating. Lethicus expe
rienced a brief sensation of falling in two directions at once – then the ship braked and the main engines burned hard again, taking it away from the derelict with a steady acceleration, and the odd sensation disappeared.
They proceeded so for five minutes, the distance between the two vessels growing rapidly.
‘Auspex sounding indicates no sign of other vessels,’ said Vratus.
‘Are you certain?’ asked Caias.
‘As certain as I can be, my lord, with the interference of the storm.’
‘Good enough,’ said Caias.
‘It will have to be,’ said Lethicus. ‘Shipmaster, destroy the vessel, then make all haste to the seventh beacon. We will send a report in from there. It is the only way to be sure Sotha will receive our vox-transmission. If we’re being watched, we’re in imminent danger.’
‘As you order, my lord. I advise you that the diversion will take us away from our scheduled patrol route. Vox-communication from the beacon will not reach Sotha for several hours, and it is two days’ sailing to the seventh beacon,’ said Vratus. ‘They will not receive our report for fifty-four hours.
‘Better they receive warning late than never,’ said Lethicus.
‘My lord.’
‘Make all speed. Bring us to battle readiness.’
‘Aye, my lord,’ said Gellius. ‘All hands, prepare for battle. Combat protocols will come into force in forty-five seconds. All hands to stations.’
‘Vratus, send out a message now through the ship’s long-range vox-caster. There is a chance it will get through,’ said Lethicus.
‘Understood.’ Vratus returned to her station.
‘Gellius, I shall leave you to your command without further interference. I thank you for your forbearance.’
‘My lord Lethicus,’ said Gellius. He dipped his head, but did not take his attention from his instruments or his crew.
At a distance of six thousand kilometres from the dead Nycton, the Probity banked round hard and launched a full spread of torpedoes after the Night Lords wreck. In two groups of three they slid from their tubes, puffs of frozen atmosphere following them out. They spread in a fan. Bright thruster jets burned cleanly against the dirty redness of the Ruinstorm, altering the munitions’ course sharply. Their hugeness gave them an illusion of lumbering elegance, when in truth they could run at a significant proportion of the speed of light.
The second volley of torpedoes was already launching when the first impacted. An overlapping cluster of brilliant spheres burst into existence, winking out almost as quickly. Glowing coronas of debris blasted off from the dead ship. They cooled rapidly, becoming dark shapes that fell away, propelled in every direction by the explosions. The second round of hits followed shortly afterwards, a further blossoming of nuclear fire glaring through the ship’s oculus.
But it wasn’t until the third volley, coming on the heels of the second, that the derelict strike cruiser burst apart into a ball of glowing metal fragments and gases.
The destroyer remained still for a moment, as if it were assessing its own handiwork. Then its single main engine ignited and manoeuvring thrusters jetted hard on the port side. Describing a long parabola, the Probity put the Sothan star to its stern and skimmed along the plane of the ecliptic toward the system’s anonymous gas giant, and the vox-relay station situated there.
FOUR
Dark brotherhood
Relay
Ambush
In a dim chamber, thirty-two Night Lords waited. Lost in their own dark thoughts, they sat apart from one another. After fourteen days locked in their armour they had become sullen. They had ceased baiting one another, and their jibes and duels had stopped. An air of boredom hung over the room. The muted lightning patterns of their arco-projectors added an annoying flicker to the dimness. Helm lenses glowed a menacing red, casting the death’s heads painted on their faceplates in menacing shadows.
The room had a radius of thirty metres, giving each brother plenty of space to sit alone and cultivate his hatred of his fellows. Several of the Space Marines were nearly catatonic, lost to the quasi-consciousness of catalepsean node sleep. One of them jabbed endlessly at the floor with a serrated knife, scraping a random pattern of violence into the metal.
Gendor Skraivok, claw master of the 45th Company, admired the stoicism of his warriors while it still lasted. He understood their poor humour. They had been promised freedom from a lying Emperor, and instead found themselves prisoners of their own ambitions, locked into ceramite cells aboard a dormant installation at the back end of nowhere. His own suit stank of unwashed skin, recycled air and chemical purifiers. His stomach growled at its emptiness. As it was for him, so it would be for his men.
His was not a happy company. After months aboard their nearly derelict ship the Umber Prince at the fringes of the Sothan System, asking them to do this was risky. He needed a success soon.
For what felt like the millionth time the claw master examined the room they were within. He had given up days ago on finding anything new, but it killed the time. The central chamber of the relay station was a tall cylinder bounded by a hollow framework of utilitarian metal girders. The various components of the room were stamped with the Cog Mechanicum with monotonous frequency. A tall, hollow column occupied the centre of the room. Both walls and column were festooned with endless bundles of wires and optics bunched together with metal clasps, each twisted seal also stamped with the mark of the Mechanicum. Lights winked at random, like the eyes of mechanical vermin skulking in an undergrowth of cables.
The organised chaos of the mechanisms managed to be both fussily neat and bewildering messy.
Catwalks circled the second and third levels, one walkway around the outer walls and a second embracing the machine column. Ladders in tubular cages linked the levels together. Four work stations were set around the column on each level. These were virtually unusable, being studded with data-tether ports, optical transmitters and other means of transference suited only to those physically adapted to make use of them. There were display screens, but they were crude. This was a facility serviced by tech-adepts and idiot-machines. They were in the domain of the Machine-God, and there was no consideration for those who were not his disciples. Even atmosphere was a temporary concession to life, sucked away into bottles when the station was empty. Five slaved servitors ran the place, their limbless torsos housed in condensation-streaked life-support coffins tucked away deep in the forest of wires.
There was no air, no gravity, and little light. When they had arrived, Skraivok had ordered his men to leave the station as it was, wary that cycling up its limited life-support capabilities would trip some hidden alarm and alert the station’s masters to their presence.
Sound tactical reasoning, if not a popular move. The resentment of his warriors was building up as surely as the reek in his battleplate.
This was not how it was supposed to be, convincing men who would have once followed him without question to do his bidding. They were supposed to be free. His mind drifted. He imagined himself in a galaxy without Imperial command, where he might use his legionary’s gifts for his own ends and not thanklessly fighting until he perished to fulfil the ambition of the distant Emperor. He imagined himself a king, worshipped by a fearful populace. It was a fine thought, and he struggled to fight off a hundred counter-images that showed him cast down by his slaves, or killed in Horus’ war, or knifed by an underling before he could leave this forsaken place.
Always, the negativity of the Legion polluted his thoughts.
A vox-click interrupted his ruminations, and he was glad of it.
‘Claw master, the Thirteenth Legion are coming.’
‘Finally!’ said Skraivok with unguarded relief. The others came to slow and surly life.
‘I was beginning to think they hadn’t taken the bait.’
‘You doubted my plan, Kellendvar?’
&
nbsp; Skraivok’s headsman shrugged, his auto-reactive shoulder plates whining softly as they accommodated the movement. ‘You have been wrong before.’
‘Not often, headsman.’
To Skraivok’s chagrin, Kellendvar’s unstable brother chose to join their conversation.
‘After our stranding, I would have thought you were tired of waiting hopelessly in the dark, Skraivok. Ambush is the province of the cowardly hunter,’ said Kellenkir. ‘We should attack directly, and bring our wrath upon Ultramar in open war. Let us strike terror into the heart of Guilliman’s petty kingdom!’
Skraivok made a sound of annoyance and turned pointedly away from Kellenkir to address Kellendvar. ‘Kellendvar, do not let my fondness for you blind you to my concern for Kellenkir’s attitude. I will not tolerate insolence, especially not in the face of certain victory. Keep control of your brother. I will not lay out our plan again for him.’
‘Two weeks in total vacuum has put him in a foul mood,’ said Kellendvar. ‘I’m not particularly energised by the experience either.’
‘Perhaps you should remind him that the only way we are leaving this station is by taking that ship.’
Kellenkir grunted dismissively. ‘Certain victory? Such faith Lord Krukesh has in you. Such faith you have in yourself.’
‘We will attack openly, Kellenkir,’ said Skraivok, ‘and bring upon Guilliman’s pocket empire a reign of terror that will make us princes of every world we survey, but we will do it in a manner that does not end with our immediate annihilation! We must take their beacon from them. And to do that, we must seize the Sothan orbital platform. The first step on the road to victory is the taking of that ship. And we will seize that vessel, do you understand? You are a warrior worthy of the most dreadful epithets, Kellenkir, and my hatred of you is outweighed twice over by my appreciation of your talents. But you lack subtlety. Do not question me again.’
Skraivok pointedly strode towards the column in the centre of the room. Situated at the heart of the station was a magnificent communications array that the Ultramarines were using to boost their vox-signals to levels that could be heard over the roar of the storm. His communications officer Gallivar was something of a perfectionist, and he had stood stoically in position for the whole deployment by one of the stations, the bulky comms unit of his modified armour attached to the communications core by a snaking cable. In front of him was a green-glowing phosphor screen. A streaky dot moved across the flickering image towards the steadier blob of the station indicator at the centre. Both were marked with identifying datascreed.