by Paul Kearney
‘He has travelled far out,’ Haldane grunted. ‘He has exceeded the parameters of his orders.’
‘Warius lives to fly that ship, Borr, you know that. There’s not a better pilot in the squadron.’
Haldane scratched his unshaven chin, grimacing. ‘He is insubordinate, but I admit what you say is true.’
They stood listening, waiting. Gorekian found himself staring at the ident beacon of Warius’ ship on the control slate. It was not moving, but at least it was still there.
Haldane cleared his throat. ‘Lieutenant Gorekian, I intend to clear Arnaeus two for lift-off, just in case. Do you concur?’
‘Affirmative.’ If something had happened aboard Warius’ ship there might be survivors in need of rescuing. In any case, vox had been down for too long. The void around Iax was as close to tamed as space became, swept clear of debris, asteroids and anything which might impede the coming and going of the grain convoys.
They waited. Gorekian felt the vibration from the launch pads through the soles of his boots as Arnaeus two warmed up her engines below the command tower.
‘Primarion Optis, Arnaeus two ready for take-off.’
Haldane and Gorekian shared a look and the younger man nodded.
‘Arnaeus two,’ Haldane rumbled, ‘you are cleared for take-off. Make for geosynchronous orbit and await further orders.’
‘Acknowledged.’
A dull roar outside, and a brightening of the morning as the Faustus took off, streaking up into the blue above.
The mechanical grate of a servitor spoke up over the noise. ‘Vox transmission incoming, grid three-seven-two-six, non-Imperial frequency… Transmission ends.’
‘Play it back,’ Gorekian snapped.
They heard a garbled flash of static, nothing more. Haldane swore under his breath. ‘Non-Imperial? Binary two, do we have any ships showing in that grid?’
‘Affirmative,’ the servitor intoned. ‘Call sign Arnaeus three is in that grid.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Negative.’
‘Try and sweep from here.’
‘Negative. That location is beyond planetary augur range.’
‘Play back the transmission, and clean it up,’ Gorekian said.
It came again, still soaked in static, but now there was definitely a voice there, words drowned out by interference. Something about the transmission set the hairs rising on Gorekian’s neck.
‘That’s no vox shadow,’ Haldane said, bending over the shoulder of a servitor to look at the screen. ‘It’s an old frequency – I’ve never seen it used before.’
‘Analyse,’ Gorekian said harshly.
The servitor answered with implacable calm. ‘Transmission is non-mechanical, non-xenoid. Transmission is human.’
‘Throne,’ Haldane swore. ‘Put it on a loop and see if you can reconstruct it.’
The two men went to one knee, the better to look down into the servitor well and watch the creature at work, though the servitor’s digits moved too fast to follow.
‘I have partial reconstruction,’ the servitor said.
The two straightened. ‘Let’s hear it,’ Gorekian said.
The transmission came over the chapel speakers again. This time as they listened, Gorekian and Haldane looked at one another and the same bleak astonishment was in both their faces. It was not a language they knew, but it was human speech – speech from a voice that set their skin crawling. A short, truncated phrase, repeated over and over again, until it seemed like a chant to fill the air, loathsome and alien, and yet hauntingly familiar.
‘Insanista in tenebris,’ the voice said, garbled and static-haunted but recognisable now.
Insanista in tenebris.
Gorekian’s eyes were wide. He tried to shake off the sense of clammy terror the words engendered.
‘Shut it off,’ he croaked. ‘Turn the damn thing off.’
The command centre went quiet again but for the binharic murmuring of the servitors and the hum of the boards.
‘Sigma three,’ he said at last, ‘patch me through to the Rex Aeterna. Get me Captain Galenus of the Ultramarines.’
Two
Two miles long, the massive spacecraft nosed its way through the void like a lean-nosed reptilian of old earth. It had skirted the ruined system of Prandium not three days before, and was powering through the empty space beyond at cruising speed when the message came through. Decoded by the ship’s vox-servitor, flagged as urgent, it was at once relayed to the bridge of the starship, and the shipmaster himself brought it to the attention of the Adeptus Astartes standing there, Veteran Sergeant Lars Greynius of Fifth Company.
The Ultramarine held the plasreel tape in his gauntleted fists, and his face did not change as he read the decoded strip.
Brother Sergeant Greynius was old in service, a veteran of Fifth who had survived the battles against Hive Fleet Behemoth. The scars that raked his face were testimony to the things he had seen and done during that campaign. He wore them as proudly as any decoration. The blue of his power armour gleamed in the instrumentation lights that winked up and down the nave of the starship’s bridge. He was the only Ultramarine standing in that great, vaulted space, with its banks of servitors and data-slates and cogitator screens, and the human fleet personnel made their way around him with the careful reverence one might show to a religious icon.
There were over twenty thousand crew members aboard the Rex Aeterna, and some six score of them were Adeptus Astartes; the bulk of Fifth Company, plus some detachments from Ninth and First. The strike cruiser was Ultramar’s first line of defence and reaction out here in the Eastern Fringe, and its commander, Caito Galenus, was Lord of the Marches as well as Captain of Fifth. The borders of Ultramar were his especial responsibility, and he took that responsibility with all the seriousness of his rank and kind.
‘This is all there was?’ Greynius asked the shipmaster.
The human officer bowed slightly. He was in his fifties, Terran-standard, trim and erect, with a greying beard that only partially covered a livid ripple of burn tissue down the side of his cheek and neck.
‘It was marked Immediate Attention. I have not yet tried to reach Iax for confirmation – I thought you should see it at once.’
Greynius looked over the plasreel vox tape a second time, to make sure he had it word perfect, and then bent over his personal console, which reared up like a pulpit in one corner of the nave.
‘Priority vox Brother Captain Galenus to the bridge, code Epsilon three five alpha.’
He turned to the shipmaster. ‘Shipmaster Remion, on my authority I believe you may make the ship ready for a course-change, to be implemented without delay.’
Remion raised one eyebrow, but said nothing, only bowed slightly once more, and then rejoined his fellow fleet officers at the crux of the nave. A series of orders was issued, without fuss or comment, and the banked servitors seemed to pick up the tempo of their work before their slates and cogitator screens. The thrumming of the drives under Greynius’ feet seemed to die back a little as the orders went down to the engine compartments, those vast, hellish chambers that housed the drives in the stern of the Rex Aeterna. The ship was slowing down, readying for the anticipated manoeuvre.
Galenus’ personal quarters were up here in the superstructure of the ship, close by, and it was only a few minutes before he joined Greynius on the bridge. He made the sign of the aquila to the Emperor’s Shrine at the base of the nave, ignoring that of the Cult Mechanicus which stood beside it, and then strode down the plasteel decking towards his sergeant.
‘I thought it had been too quiet,’ he said tersely, taking the vox-tape from his brother Ultramarine. ‘You’ve brought down our speed.’
‘I judged it prudent,’ Greynius said.
Galenus took in the information on the tape as quickly as Greynius
had, and his seamed face tightened.
Clad in the full, gold-ornamented battleplate of his rank, he was shorter than the armoured form of his veteran sergeant, but their faces were oddly akin. The same massive, shaved skull, seemingly welded together with bone and muscle close under the pale skin. The same cold eyes deep-set in cavernous sockets, glinting with ocular augmentation. But where Greynius’ were blue, blue as glacial ice, Galenus’ were as green as a sunlit sea.
The two Ultramarines towered over the ordinary human crewmembers who populated the bridge of the Rex Aeterna, at well over seven feet tall, and twice as broad as any man had a right to be. Human they might be, but they were much more than that. They had been created by the God-Emperor, the genes of their kind spliced together with strands of his own preternatural body chemistry back in the unimaginable past. On primitive planets, the Adeptus Astartes had been worshipped as gods when first they had appeared out of the skies, so far beyond the normal run of humanity had they seemed.
But they were, at heart, still men. Great Guilliman himself had emphasised that, and his successors had stayed true to their forefather’s philosophy. They were an integral part of the Imperium of Man – more than that; they were its servants, albeit the mightiest that had ever been known.
‘Shipmaster,’ Galenus said in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried the length of the nave.
The pepper-bearded man in the blue coverall of the Ultramarines fleet made his way back towards them from a cluster of his fellow officers. He saluted, fist on heart. ‘Captain.’
Galenus nodded. ‘Remion, I want you to set course for a grid on the far side of Iax. Three-seven-two-six. Our flight time should be no longer than sixteen hours at current speed, by my reckoning. You will dock any scout vessels we currently have abroad, and bring us to full combat readiness. I want all our Thunderhawks prepped in the launch bays, with two set aside for close support and one for insertion. All clear?’
‘Aye, captain.’
Galenus turned to his sergeant. ‘Sound battle-prep. I want the entire company assembled in the launch bays within the hour.’
Greynius frowned. ‘As you wish, brother captain.’ He hesitated a moment, and then said, ‘It is a single missing patrol ship, brother.’
Galenus held up the vox-tape. ‘Let us hope that is all it is. But something about this does not feel right, Greynius. You were right to call me – you felt it yourself.’
The Ultramarines sergeant nodded. ‘The words...’
‘They belong to an ancient Earth tongue, that is all I know – one dating to before the Great Heresy. That fact alone makes this incident worthy of our attention. And I must send word to Macragge also. Have our best astropath relay all this to Lord Calgar, or if he is unavailable, to Tigurius in the Librarium. It goes through no one else – is that clear?’
‘Yes, brother captain.’
Galenus looked over his two comrades, the hulking Ultramarine and the bearded shipmaster, both scarred in service of the Chapter. Both seemed troubled by his reaction to the message.
‘I want a scrambled link established with these officers on Iax,’ Galenus added. ‘Everything they know, every mote of intelligence on this missing patrol vessel, must be analysed in the hours before we reach that location. When they are on vox, patch it through to my quarters.’
Then he turned and left, the hem of his scarlet cloak whispering on the plates of the deck.
Brother Tersius was polishing and oiling down bolter ammunition when the Assembly Klaxon sounded in the crew compartments. He preferred to handle and inspect each and every round of ammunition personally. For him, as for his brethren, it was a form of prayer, and his lips moved soundlessly as he wiped down the gleaming blunt-nosed cylinders and clicked them one by one onto the table in front of him. They stood arrayed there like soldiers on parade, ready to be loaded into his magazines, which lay to one side. He was a senior member of the squad, and his brothers knew his routine well. Many of them had become accustomed to it over decades of service.
The bare cell in which he sat held few creature comforts. It was a place for contemplation, for solitary prayer. A single lumen glowed in the ceiling, and the furnishings were sturdy and unadorned. A shelf held a few data-slates, and the floor was flagged with plascrete tiles.
Brother Tersius was clad in the heavy chiton that the Ultramarines sometimes wore shipboard when they were fasting, doing penance, or absorbed in prayer. It was rare for them to shed their power armour when travelling through the void, and few ordinary men had ever seen one of them without it, but now and then they would set it aside so that it might undergo repair, and receive the holy seals of the tech-priests attached to the company.
The rows of cells that lined the dormitory were each inhabited by other Ultramarines. Most of Fifth Company was stood down after a long day’s training and maintenance and the Adeptus Astartes typically used these few quiet hours outside their punishing schedule to carry out small personal tasks. Some were reading data-slates on tactics and history, others were comparing fighting styles (those arguments and discussions were unending, part of the meat and drink of the Chapter), while yet more sat in quiet contemplation, utilising these off-hours to pray to the Emperor for guidance, as all fighting men have prayed between battles since the dawn of human history.
Also adjoining the dormitory was the armorium, wherein the power-armour of the Ultramarines underwent maintenance and blessing and anointing, each suit of battleplate with its own attendant servitor to assist the owner in donning it. It was in the armorium that the company Techmarine, Brother Salvator, had his cubicle, along with a backup crew of specialised servitors. He oversaw not only the arms and armour of the company, but the vehicles also. An aloof, but immensely experienced Ultramarine, Brother Salvator’s armour bore the Machina Opus of Mars, chased with rust-red, and sprouting a servo arm and other mechadendrite limbs like the tentacles of some marvellous beast. It was rare he was not within the armorium – rarer still for him not to be found praying over some overtaxed piece of Ultramarines equipment, sounding out the troubles of the machine-spirit and setting it to rights.
Last in the line of compartments that led down to the launch bays was the Ultima Sanctorum, that blessed space which housed the Imperial shrines. One was to the Emperor Resurgent, and depicted the Saviour of Mankind in all his martial glory. The other was the Founder Chapel, dedicated to Roboute Guilliman, founding primarch of the XIII Legion – that ancient host from whence the Ultramarines themselves had been engendered. There was also a small side-chapel to the Omnissiah, which was neither as richly decorated nor as frequented as the other two. It was visited chiefly by Brother Salvator, and those Adeptus Astartes who crewed the vehicles and voidcraft of the Chapter.
All three shrines were passed by every time the Ultramarines marched down to the launch bays, and all three were passed again as they returned from battle to their quarters. In such small ways the traditions and continuity of the Chapter were maintained and reinforced. Fifth Company had been on the Rex Aeterna for four months now, and would remain stationed on the ship for eight more before they were relieved – unless some conflict erupted in the meantime to call them forth from the great craft, bearing the wrath and judgement of the Emperor to their foes.
When the klaxon started, the Ultramarines in the dormitory cells reacted with calm efficiency. Most were fully armoured save for their helms, and they had but to march to the armorium to retrieve their ancient weaponry from the racks there, many of the bolters they took down older than themselves, relics of the Chapter, and already streaming with prayer scrolls, shining with holy lubricating unguents.
Those few who, like Brother Tersius, were not already clad in battleplate stood in front of their armour as the servitors assigned to each sprang to life and began settling it on their anatomy, piece by piece, while the blue chitons lay puddled on the deck at their feet. As the larger sections of the power armou
r were laid on their torso, so the plates themselves seemed to come to life. Cables and tubing snaked out of the breastplates and embedded themselves in the chests of the standing Ultramarines with clicks and hisses. They meshed with the implanted carapace that lay under the skin of every Adeptus Astartes, and man and metal became one.
The Space Marines wore their armour as though it were a second skin, for all that it weighed hundreds of pounds, and the fibre-bundles in the armoured limbs linked directly into their nervous system, augmenting their already immense bodily strength. Then the power pack was settled into the back-plate, and there was a faint thrum in the air as the armours took on the energy load, and locked in. Lastly, the helms were settled into place above the collar-locks, again with a hiss of atmospherics.
The tech-priests went by, murmuring in binharic, bestowing traditional blessings, anointing the standing giants, and after them the sergeants checked the members of their squads one by one while the blue-clad figures stood perfectly still in two lines snaking down the huge compartment. The squad leaders tugged at joint seals, tapped helms, examined bolters, making sure that all was as it should be. That, too, was tradition.
Finally Brother Salvator arrived, his rust-red armour sprouting the big servo arm as he walked the length of the files, as though he had a scorpion’s sting affixed to his back. He too examined the waiting Ultramarines, while a tracked servitor clattered alongside him, relaying information in bursts of binharic. There were eight squads present of Fifth Company, all at full strength. The Devastators of Ninth and Chapter veterans of First were quartered elsewhere, closer to their bulkier weapons, and the silent Reclusiam in which were stored those holiest of battle relics, the tactical Dreadnought armour.
The lines of Ultramarines trooped down towards the launch bays and the Thunderhawks and drop pods that awaited. As they passed the shrines many of the battle-brothers touched the aquila on their chests, or tapped a gauntleted fist against their helms. There was not a word spoken. They had done this many times, in drills and before battle.