by Various
But remember, lads, there ain’t no words
For every void-born thing.
– Shipmen’s labour-chant, Gothic Sector, Segmentum Obscurus
Nathan ran down the stinking alley, panting and sweating. He could hear shouts and a scuffle behind him as they pounced on Kendrikson. His mind raced faster than his feet across the cracked slabs. Poor old Kendrikson. Still – better him than me. He leapt over a prostrate body almost invisible in the darkness as the irony of the situation struck home. At least that’s the last time he’ll try to get me killed.
At the corner he risked a glance back. A lone streetlume cast a pool of yellow light over a scene that looked suspiciously like one from some Ministorum morality play. Four burly, shaven headed men in dun-coloured coveralls were hauling Kendrikson to his feet. He seemed unduly surprised, nay stunned, to be cast in the starring role of the eponymous incautious reveller laid low by local ruffians, cultists or worse – surely a punishment from the God-Emperor for his carelessness and self-indulgence.
The image was shattered when the officer stepped out from the shadows to congratulate the men on their catch. Nathan had never seen an Imperial Naval officer before but he had no doubt that he was looking at one now. Tall, poised, immaculately dressed in a tailored uniform coat and a pair of glossy black boots which had probably never trodden the dust of a planet for more than a few hours. He would surely be a junior officer to be in charge of a gang like that, trawling through the back alleys of Juniptown to fill out some labour team aboard his ship. Junior or not, he radiated the absolute assuredness that only generations of breeding and a lifetime of training engenders.
Nathan started to back away as his mind raced on. There were rumours that Imperial ships would come from Port Maw to Lethe, but everyone said that sort of thing when there was a war among the stars. Half the people hoped the fleet would come and save them from Sanctus-knows-what, while the other half were afraid that the fleet would bring the war to their doorstep. Nobody had ever thought that the Navy would come to steal a tithe of men and take them away on ships. Men who, if only half the stories were true, would never be seen again.
Kendrikson was off for a cruise and there was nothing Nathan could do about it. He certainly didn’t intend take on a pressgang single-handed.
‘Well, well,’ said a finely cultured voice from behind him. ‘It looks like young Rae missed one – get him lads!’
A blow struck his head, bright stars flashed before his eyes and he fell into waiting arms which bore him off even as his consciousness slipped away.
Nathan woke to the sound of a voice speaking. It sounded deep, resonant and faintly amused. He was amongst a crowd, being propped up by a stranger. The voice rolled on through his confused awakening like martial music: proud and insistent.
‘…I could take this ship twice around the galaxy and wander the void for a hundred years if the Emperor wished it. One thing would bring me back to the hallowed worlds of humanity before we’d been out for more than a year! Crew! You lucky fellows have won the chance to serve aboard one of the sector’s finest ships, the Retribution. Remember that name with pride and affection and all else should come naturally.’
Nathan must have looked confused because the stranger, a thin, dark man with tired eyes, whispered to him: ‘It’s the captain. ’Ere to welcome us aboard – sez it’ll likely be the first and last time we see’s ’im.’
Nathan blinked and gazed about him.
A vast, curving wall disappeared out of sight above them. It was pierced by arches showing a night sky speckled with stars. Halfway up it a buttressed gallery swelled outwards and it was from there that the captain spoke. His voice must have been amplified somehow, because a normal man’s voice would have been drowned by a distant rumble which seemed to radiate from the worn stone floor they stood upon. A jolt of panic shot through Nathan as he realised they must be aboard some ship. No, an Imperial warship, he corrected himself. Even as he watched the stars in the windows were sliding across it almost imperceptibly. They were already underway.
Nathan was inducted into a gun crew: number six gun of the port deck, known to its crew as Balthasar. Him, Kendrikson, the tired-eyed man – who introduced himself as Fetchin – and five others were beaten, stripped, shaved, deloused, tattooed with their serial numbers and issued with dun-coloured coveralls, apparently tailored so that their one size would fit no one. The gun officer for Balthasar, a Lieutenant Gabriel, seemed decent enough and didn’t revel in their humiliation. He and his enforcers, his armsmen, simply crushed their individuality and made it clear that they were to obey orders and cause no trouble. He was even good enough to explain to them that men were a commodity on a warship, like food or fuel or ammunition. When the ship ran out, it came to a world to resupply. Simple as that. Even before the lieutenant had finished his little speech, Nathan had hardened his resolve to escape at the first opportunity.
They were set to work in a gunroom, a cavernous, hangar-like space which reeked of grease and ozone. It was part-filled by cranes and gantries but dominated by the breech of Balthasar, apparently some sort of gigantic cannon as big as a house and nested at the centre of an insane web of power coils, chains, coolant pipes, wiring, hydraulic rams and less easily identified attachments. By the unspoken rule which applies to all new recruits, the old hands set them to work on the most mundane, laborious and unwelcome tasks in the gunroom. In this case that meant long, hard work-shifts scraping off corrosion – which an old hand named Kron helpfully pointed out bloomed like a weed in the moist, oxygen-rich air inside the ship – or chipping away frozen coolant from the branches of piping. They ate on the gundeck too, their food arriving on square metal trays through an aperture in the wall.
Food breaks were accompanied by the arrival of the crewmen the old hands referred to as armsmen. They came through one of the two heavy pressure doors that led into the gunroom, from the direction which Nathan had nominated as ‘south’. The armsmen wore leather harnesses over their coveralls and carried long clubs and stubby pistols or shotguns. They kept a respectful distance while the guncrew ate, but their attitude spoke of a readiness to do harm if necessary. Once the food was consumed and the trays returned to their slot, the armsmen left through the north door, presumably to perform the same, apparently pointless function in the next gunroom.
Again, it was Kron who explained the purpose of the armsmen’s vigil to the new recruits. ‘They’re here to make sure everyone gets their own share, lads.’ Kron told them. ‘An’ that nobody takes what isn’t theirs.’
Fetchin seemed shocked. ‘So yer can’t even keep a crumb for later? Or swap some wi’ yer mate.’
Kron’s answering grin was an ugly sight, particularly because he, like many of the old hands, had been patched with steel over old injuries. In Kron’s case the tech-priests had left him with a half-skull of polished metal and set with a red-glowing eye. ‘Not unless you want a few extra lumps to nurse, no,’ he chortled.
Seeing disbelief still written on their faces he added more quietly: ‘Was a time, years ago, when we had a… bad captain. He didn’t keep a watch, boys. Was alright at first, the bully boys didn’t take too much and no one starved. But then we were caught in a storm ’tween Esperance and the K-star for months, the ether was torn apart by cross-chasers and remnants so much that it was all the Navigators could do to keep us from being lost. Pretty soon men’s hunger made ’em desperate, an’ desperate men’ll do terrible things.’
Kron closed his real eye, blocking out bad memories.
Nathan had seen plenty of desperate men around Juniptown in wet season, when work was scarce or non-existent.
‘I’ve seen floors swimming with blood after fights over a husk of bread. The captain’s right to keep a watch,’ he said.
Kron looked at him curiously for a moment and then nodded. ‘That’s right, lad. Better to be harsh now than deadly later.’
Food was palmed and traded and fought over anyway, but in a quiet, cautious fashion which Nathan
suspected the armsmen chose to overlook. Several times he tried to speak with Kendrikson but each time his old rival ignored him or, if Nathan pressed him harder, fled away from him. The old hands brooked no fighting so Nathan took it no further. He judged that the old hands were right: punishments for fighting were liable to be swift and brutal.
At the end of each workshift the crew slept in a low bunkroom beneath the gundeck. armsmen arrived to drive them below, although they needed little persuasion to drop their tools and find their way down into the gloomy, red-lit chamber. There were no exits from the bunkroom saving the hatch which led back up to the gunroom. cleansing and purging was undertaken in ridiculously small metal cubicles off the bunkroom. Nathan watched and waited but opportunities for escape never presented themselves. Soon work-shifts and sleep-shifts rolled relentlessly past until all sense of time was lost, until there was only toil and rest from toil, and then toil renewed.
It was only after the ship had left the Lethe system and passed into warp space that Nathan began to understand why men were a commodity. The warp made everything different somehow. Even the cavernous gundeck felt claustrophobic and oppressive, as if immense pressures existed just beyond the hull. Then the dreams had started, nightmares which left the mind dark and full of half-formed images upon waking. Some men screamed and wept in their sleep without knowing why, and others just grew more and more introverted and silent. Fetchin was one of these and Nathan had seen a weird light coming into his eyes long before it happened.
It was the end of the work-shift. The crew was straggling down the hatch to the bunkroom, more reluctant now that the dreams had come. Fetchin was last of all, listlessly scouring at a corrosion spot long after the others had moved away. The armsmen stepped forward with hard faces and Fetchin backed away with a stooped, almost scuttling gait. Almost at the top of the ladder, Nathan stopped and turned, his mind fumbling for some encouraging words which might persuade Fetchin to go below.
Before he could speak Fetchin backed into another of the guncrew. The man cursed and roughly thrust Fetchin away. From there it seemed as if Fetchin was possessed by devils. He pounced on the man with a snarl and bore him down. A horribly throttled gurgle escaped the thrashing pair and Fetchin rolled away, his lips and chin bloody with the ruin of the man’s throat. Two men tried to pin the devil-Fetchin’s arms but he slipped through their grasp like an eel, raking clawed fingers across their eyes with a hysterical, wordless scream.
The armsmen came pelting up and the first to reach the scene swung at Fetchin’s shoulder with his long club, probably aiming to break his collarbone. The blow never connected. Fetchin grasped the downrushing arm with preternatural speed and swung the armsman away with a horrible cracking, popping sound which spoke of dislocated joints and snapping bones. The madman turned suddenly and bounded towards the bunkroom hatch. Men scattered as his last manic leap sent him hurtling straight at Nathan.
Nathan saw the animal fire in Fetchin’s eyes in the age-long instant as he leapt and felt his guts turn icy. There was not a scrap, not a hint of the mild, world-weary colleague he had come to know. All reason was lost in that glare, and Nathan was frozen in it.
Suddenly Kron was between them, so quick that Nathan didn’t even see him step in the way. Kron swept the flailing arms aside and punched two stiffened fingers into Fetchin’s windpipe before his feet had touched the ground. Fetchin was knocked sprawling by the impact and let out a low growl as he skidded across the deckplates. Nathan felt shocked; Kron’s deadly accurate blow should have left Fetchin dead or unconscious, he felt sure.
Click-clack BOOM.
The sound of the shot echoed around the gunroom. A frozen tableau was left in its wake. An armsman stood with shotgun levelled, smoke curling from the muzzle. Fetchin slid down the bulkhead leaving a bloody smear, a fist-sized wedge of raw flesh and entrails blasted from his midriff. Nathan, splattered with still-warm blood, not able to understand how Kron had moved so fast.
The armsmen drove them below with kicks and blows before another word was said. Kron was surprisingly kind and turfed out the old hand who bunked below him so that Nathan did not have to sleep beneath Fetchin’s empty berth. When they were brought up for the next work-shift a scoured spot on the bulkhead was all that was left of Fetchin.
Nathan woke to the sound of screaming. He lurched up with a half-strangled yelp, almost braining himself on the bottom of Kron’s bunk. He stared wildly about him, gulping for breath. The oppressive red light of the bunkroom still surrounded him, the cloying odour of sour sweat and grease still fought the sharp tang of coolant in the air down here. The room was quiet save for the drip of the condensers and the assurance of night noises made by forty sleeping men.
Nathan wiped a shaky hand across his eyes and peered over towards Kendrikson. If anyone had screamed it would have been Kendrikson; he had nightmares nearly every sleep-shift. They all did, but Kendrikson just couldn’t take it. Perhaps he had a guilty conscience, or perhaps he was just some dumb thief who was completely terrified by being shut up in one of the Emperor’s warships. But Kendrikson’s bunk was empty; he must have gone to relieve himself.
The scream came again, but it was tinny and distant, carried along by the conduits from another bunkroom. Pity the poor devils in there, thought Nathan, every one of them wide awake and praying the screamer didn’t go berserk and start clawing and biting at them. That he didn’t turn into a wild beast like Fetchin had.
Nathan lay back in the narrow bunk and tried to recapture sleep. He tried to imagine all the other shipmen doing the same. Start with this gundeck. Kron had told him there were forty guns with forty crews each, that’s sixteen hundred, another gundeck on the other side for three thousand two hundred. Then there were the lance turrets, port and starboard, nobody seemed to know just how big the crews for those beasts were, call it another sixteen hundred a piece. This was working well, his eyelids were drooping. That was six and a half thousand souls (give or take). The torps probably had a crew much bigger than a single gun but less than a whole deck – maybe a thousand. That made seven and a half… engines must be at least two or three thousand more…
A rasping cough snapped him back to full wakefulness. A bittersweet cloud of smoke was drifting down from the bunk above. Nathan sighed. Kron, it was always Kron. ‘Ain’t sleeping too good?’
‘Nah. Bad dreams,’ Nathan replied. Kron was the oldest hand on the gundeck. Even Lieutenant Gabriel listened to him, sometimes, so it often paid to listen too.
‘Really? Not like Fetchin, I hope,’ Kron wheezed. It was a statement – or a cruel joke – not a question.
Nathan decided to take it as a joke and chuckled quietly. ‘No, not like Fetchin,’ he said. ‘Just more dreams of the ship.’
Kron harrumphed quietly and another cloud of smoke wafted downwards, the feeble breath of the recyclers apparently insufficient to even pull it up and away. ‘It’s lucky to dream of the ship,’ Kron said, his voice sounded a little wistful to Nathan, as though Kron were talking to himself. ‘I used to dream of it a lot when I was young.’
Nathan wouldn’t like to have to guess Kron’s years. Apparent age varied so much from one world to another that it was a long shot at best. Take into account all the warp-time Kron must have had and Nathan would be naming a figure somewhere between sixty and three hundred. In the time it took him to think that, a slithering sound came from above and suddenly Kron was there, pipe in hand, right beside Nathan’s bunk. The red light turned his polished skull, with its sharp nose and glowing eye into a gargoyle’s head. His living eye twinkled.
‘Come walk with me, young Nathan. Let’s go up on deck.’
Nathan sat up and warily eased himself out of the bunk. ‘What about the armsmen?’ Nathan asked. Kron just snorted and started to pick his way, soft as a cat, to the hatch.
The gunroom was dark, its spars and columns rearing up with cathedral-like splendour into a gloom broken only by the jewel-like gleam of ready-lights and power indicators. They
edged around to the far side of Balthasar over snaking cables, Kron sure-footed and Nathan trailing behind. As they rounded one of the pillars Nathan froze as he heard a squeak of oiled leather. Kron stepped on and virtually walked into an armsman.
The armsman brought up a torch and snapped it on, a little too quickly and awkwardly to have been lying in wait for them. Nathan slipped back round the pillar and out of sight so he didn’t hear what was said, but after a few muttered words the armsmen swung away, whistling a little ditty and heading for the far end of the gunroom.
‘Yeh can come out, lad,’ Kron called. ‘Ole Leopold won’t bother us.’
Nathan came forward. ‘I’d thought they would never stoop to fraternising with gunners, the armsmen I mean,’ he said.
‘Not while others’re about, but come sleepshift they’ll talk and trade like anyone else – they’re crew just like us, just trusted enough to bear arms all th’ time.’ Kron seated himself on a stanchion and gestured expansively to another. Nathan took a last glance round before warily sitting also.
Kron gazed at him steadily while he got out his pipe again. ‘So what’s your story, young Nathan?’ he asked.
‘I don’t have a story,’ Nathan replied carefully. ‘If this is about Kendrikson, my business is with him alone and I’ll thank you not to intrude.’ That earned an arched eyebrow and Nathan suddenly felt he was mistaken, Kron hadn’t brought him up here to find out what was going on between him and Kendrikson.
‘No,’ Kron said, ‘I mean, tell a story. That’s how it’s done among shipmen. When we want to really talk we tells a story, that way we can tell our secrets without saying them right out so others might hear.’
When Kron said that, he looked meaningfully at the outer hull plates, which Nathan could see from here were covered with writings, layered one over the other, marching lines of faded Gothic script which continued up and out of sight towards the ceiling.
A sudden chill crept down Nathan’s spine. He was sure he heard a vague creak of metal up at the north end of the gunroom. ‘What do you mean? What “others”?’ he hissed.