‘Why bother with that?’ Alkenex asked, peering at him. ‘What does the date matter?’
‘Timelessness might suit your overburdened senses, Flavius, but I find myself comforted by imposing some sense of forward progression to my existence.’ Fabius glanced at him. ‘Change is the only constant. Even stagnant empires evolve, if slowly.’
‘What?’
‘I want to know how much time has passed, so that I might postulate upon potential advances in our milk-blooded descendants, and plan accordingly.’ He had accumulated reams of similar data upon every voyage outside the protective shroud of Eyespace. Regular comparison showed incremental change, within certain sectors and systems. Old technologies for the most part, newly rediscovered, or worse, entirely new ones, developed in the interim. Such data was added to the whole, there to be refined into a series of ever-evolving general threat assessments.
Seeing Alkenex’s incomprehension, he gestured about them. ‘This ship, for all of its power, is ancient. Was ancient, even before I claimed it. There are now possibly greater vessels by far prowling around. Such as that one there, now lumbering in pursuit.’ He looked at Alkenex. ‘As I said, change is the only constant.’
Alkenex laughed. ‘You’re worried – about that? What have such as we to fear in this universe, save each other?’
‘That is my point exactly, Flavius. Though I hesitate to call such callow creatures “brother”, our kin still stalk these stars, as you can see. Debased and superstitious as they are, their numbers only grow, as ours can only dwindle.’ He pointed to the vessel on the screen. ‘There may well be triple our current numbers on that ship.’
‘Each of us – even you – is worth a hundred of them. We have fought the Long War for time out of mind, veterans of a conflict that is beyond their conception.’
‘Yes. We are worth a hundred. Even so, they outnumber us. So, you will pardon me if I seek to weight the odds ever so slightly in our favour. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.’ Fabius smiled. ‘A favourite saying of the Phoenician’s, I recall.’ Klaxons sounded, as the Vesalius coaxed extra speed out of its engines. The vox crackled with the ship’s displeasure at running from a fight.
‘He would be flattered to know that you remember that, Spider.’ Alkenex bent towards him, a smile playing about his scarred lips. ‘They say that, among those who dwell in his garden of delights, your name is considered the foulest of curses. How does that feel, Spider? How does it feel to know that our gene-father hates you so? I am curious.’
Fabius snorted. ‘It is a weight I bear easily.’ He met Alkenex’s gaze steadily. ‘I still remember a time before we ever heard his name. Good days, those, despite our woes. We knew ourselves then. We held firm to our purpose. And now – well – look at you… a preening catamite, clad in tarnished gilt.’
Alkenex’s hand twitched towards the hilt of his blade. But rather than drawing it, he merely tapped the pommel. He smiled. ‘Same old Spider. Always antagonising your betters.’
Fabius looked away. ‘I have no betters.’
‘Intercept course detected,’ Wolver interjected. ‘Closing…’ The strategium overseer rattled off a string of coordinates. Fabius frowned and turned his attentions back to the screen. The cruiser had gained speed. It was faster than he’d anticipated.
‘Take all necessary steps to evade. We did not come here for a fight.’
‘How like you, Spider,’ Alkenex said. He watched the approaching ship on the display screen with something like eagerness. ‘Has there even been a fight you didn’t run from?’
Fabius, without taking his eyes from the screen, gestured dismissively. ‘Unless you’ve forgotten, we have more important matters to attend to. Ones that require our forces to be intact. I will not risk my ship, or our Legion’s future, just to assuage your bloodlust. But feel free to climb back aboard your gunship and fling yourself at them, by all means.’
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
Fabius glanced at him. ‘Was that not obvious? If you have nothing new to add, please be silent. I am trying to concentrate.’ Number strings cycled through the data-feed, as the servitor-crew plotted evasive manoeuvres. When he saw a likely one, he seized on it. ‘Wolver – evasive pattern Omegon-Xerxes. Launch chaff spread at six-mark.’
‘Acknowledged,’ Wolver said. ‘Launching in three… two… one…’
‘Incoming,’ Hormaz said.
‘Countermeasures,’ Kasra said. ‘They’re running. I don’t recognise the evasion pattern.’ He leaned forward. Real-time tactical holo-feeds blurred into visibility around his throne, as the crew worked to anticipate the enemy.
‘I do. It’s an older one. Then, that ship is ancient. We’ve improved some, since then.’ Hormaz smoothed his beard. ‘We’re faster, but they’ve got the distance. They’ll outpace us, if we don’t catch up quick.’
Kasra gave the order to increase speed. The Shahmsihr shook as power was diverted from the overlapping void shields and weapons systems to the engines. The cruiser was not as fast as the smaller vessel, but it didn’t need to be. Not for what he had in mind.
‘Pirates,’ he murmured.
‘Worse than that, I think,’ Hormaz said.
Kasra frowned. It had been centuries since the last incursion from the hells beyond the Maelstrom. Still only an aspirant then, he’d missed that one. It had been decades since he’d crossed blades with any opponent more skilled than an ork or a hull ghast. He’d never faced one of the Lost Ones before. Only their chattel. The thought of matching his skills against one of those ancient monsters set his hearts to pounding. ‘Good,’ he said.
Hormaz glanced at him. ‘It will make a fine stanza, at least.’
Kasra nodded, barely listening. His attention was locked onto the fleeing vessel, as it grew larger on the screens. It bore no markings, ruinous or otherwise. There was no telling who it had originally belonged to, or the identity of who now crewed it. No matter. If it could not be safely salvaged, it would be scuttled.
He flexed his hands, eager now. Ready to set himself against this new enemy. Excitement thrummed through him. The hunt-song was loud in his head. It was good when the enemy tried to flee. It meant they were already half-beaten. An easy victory was overdue. Orks fought too hard, and too long, too often. War became work, and ever a battle, a labour. But this might prove to be more interesting.
Proximity klaxons sounded. They were within range. ‘We’re close enough. Prepare to launch the boarding javelins,’ Kasra roared, half out of his throne. The boarding javelins were a variant of the ancient and much-maligned Ursus Claw contact-system – high-tension lines, connected to immense harpoons, fired into the hull of enemy vessels in order to bring them into range for boarding actions. The variant system had been pioneered by his own Chapter, and was a more efficient use of the ploy, on the whole.
Rather than simply dragging enemy vessels off course, the javelin-lines were a form of electromagnetic rail, along which specially designed boarding torpedoes would run. The harpoons were, in some measure, hollow, creating a stable ‘corridor’ for boarding parties to swarm through. In theory, it allowed for a more precise application of boarding tactics. In practice, there was still an element of risk that Kasra found intoxicating. He glanced at Hormaz. ‘I will lead the assault. You will stay here and make sure my foolishness does not cost us a ship, if foolishness it proves to be.’
Hormaz nodded graciously. ‘I accept my lot without complaint, my king.’ He smiled. ‘Besides, I am too old for boarding actions.’
Kasra laughed as he surrendered his throne to his subordinate. As he left the command deck, the muster bells were sounding through the ship’s corridors, calling his brothers to battle.
The strike cruiser paced towards the Vesalius across the black, a crimson leviathan surging in the wake of its prey. The frigate’s void shields shuddered as the enemy vessel’s weapons batterie
s opened up, in an attempt to slow the smaller ship. They hammered at the Vesalius’ shields, causing the power field to ripple like gelatine, and creating a kaleidoscope of colours. With every impact, the Vesalius roared in fury.
Fabius flung out a hand to steady himself against the hololithic projector as the deck pitched beneath his feet. ‘Wolver – divert power to the engines,’ he snarled. ‘We must outpace them and soon, or they’ll blow us to pieces.’
‘No, we must get in close, limit their options,’ Alkenex barked. ‘Turn and face them. Get inside their range, and we can cut their throat.’
‘Are you mad?’ Fabius glared at him. ‘They’ll crush us, whatever the range. Our only hope is to put as much distance between us and them as possible.’
Alkenex struck the projector with a fist. ‘We can’t escape – we must – eh?’
On the screens, the behemoth was slowing and turning about. Lightning rippled across its flank. ‘Missile batteries,’ Alkenex said.
‘No,’ Fabius said. ‘Something else.’
The lightning reached out, across the gulf between the two ships.
‘Impact in five… four… three…’
Fabius tuned Wolver’s monotone out. Through the electrical discharge of their launch, the missiles revealed themselves to be a dozen silvery javelins, each roughly the size of a gunship. All were connected to immense strands of reinforced cable, which seemed to unreel at impossible speed from the launch bays aboard the vessel. There was no time to take any evasive action. The Vesalius’ void shields flickered like a ragged shroud, and the javelins passed through the streamers of colour without pause.
The Vesalius screamed as the javelins slammed home across the length of its hull. Baroque crenellations, which had weathered the dangers of the warp for centuries, crumbled as the lengths of steel punched through them and into the body of the ship. Alarms wailed, and the warning lumens cast a crimson glow across the command deck.
The frigate’s engines groaned thunderously as its forward momentum was abruptly slowed. The ship’s substructure whined in protest as the prow was wrenched off course by several degrees. Alerts flooded the vox-frequency, as reports of damage came in from all over the vessel. Fabius tuned them out. Wolver would handle them. He turned to the tacticum display, his fingers racing across the control panel. ‘They’ve cut our speed by twenty per cent. They’re anchoring us.’
‘What’s happened?’ Alkenex stared at the display in bewilderment. ‘What are those things? What have they done to us?’
‘I believe those are Ursus Claws,’ Fabius said, bemused.
‘Ursus – are they insane?’ Alkenex said, in shock.
Fabius looked at him, eyebrow raised. ‘I don’t know. It looks as if we shall have the chance to ask them, soon enough.’ He drew his needler and checked it. He suspected he would need it, before this affair was over. ‘They seem determined to get aboard, whether we like it or not.’
‘Excellent. I was getting tired of trading barbs with you.’ Alkenex drew his sword and ran a thumb along its edge. He glanced at his subordinate. Gyr seemed as eager as his master, if the way he clutched the haft of his friction axe was any indication.
‘Palos – gather the others. We’re going hunting.’
Chapter seventeen
The Red Scimitars
Fabius cursed as the corridor shook. Hull plates buckled, vomiting sparking power conduits and torn power cables. Pressure hoses burst, filling the corridor with streams of stinging coolant vapour. The renegade Space Marines plunged through the billowing cloud without pause, followed more slowly by the mutants and New Men loping in their wake.
It felt as if the Vesalius were coming apart at the seams, though he knew the frigate was far more durable than that. It had survived worse in its time. But it only took one mistake – one moment of inattention – to lose a duel such as this. Void war was a tricky thing, even for those experienced in its subtleties, which Fabius was not. He’d left it to Wolver, trusting in the creature’s skill, and the Vesalius’ savagery, to see them through. But the enemy weren’t content to merely fling death across the void. No, they wanted to deliver it by hand, eye-to-eye and blade-to-blade.
Reports of hull-breaches echoed through the vox frequency as he hurried through the corridors. ‘Ursus Claws,’ he muttered. ‘Only a lunatic would use those things. Is that what our descendants have been reduced to – barbarous fools, impervious to common sense?’ He glared about him, seeking agreement. ‘There is a reason Angron was the only one to mount those things on his ships.’
‘Nonetheless, they have their uses, Chief Apothecary,’ Arrian said, from his elbow. The World Eater was but a step behind him, moving swiftly.
Fabius laughed. ‘So they do. But they have never had to contend with a ship like this – or with a mind like mine. I have prepared for an eventuality such as this, Arrian.’
‘Is that why we’re going to the wraithbone grove, rather than seeking to repel boarders?’ Arrian asked. There was a faint undercurrent of disappointment in the World Eater’s voice. It had been some time since Arrian had been allowed to indulge his baser instincts. Violence was the release valve that allowed the Apothecary to maintain his otherwise impressive equilibrium.
‘Yes. We have no time to waste, shedding the blood of these pale shadows of past glories. Better to rid ourselves of them now, and deal with the survivors at our leisure.’ Fabius glanced at the other Apothecary. ‘You’ll enjoy that, I trust.’
‘Most assuredly, Chief Apothecary.’
Ramos and his Kakophoni were on full alert when Fabius arrived. Noise Marines prowled the access corridors, weapons whining like eager hounds. Ramos nodded in greeting and said, ‘It is agitated.’
‘Good,’ Fabius said. ‘Then it is more likely to do as I ask.’ He pushed past the Noise Marine and plunged into the garden. The wraithbone seemed to draw back from him, as if it knew his purpose. Here, the sounds of the battle were muffled. He fancied that even if the ship were destroyed, this chamber would survive, intact and unharmed.
Key, as ever, awaited him at the garden’s heart. The eldar was twitching and moaning softly, as if it could feel every impact on the ship’s hull. Perhaps it could. Key was one with the wraithbone, in ways even he did not fully understand. And the wraithbone had permeated the ship, becoming one with it.
He knelt before the eldar. ‘There is no time for niceties. You can feel them, can’t you – digging into the ship’s metal flesh? Barbs of iron, venting invasive vermin into the hollow places.’ Fabius gripped Key’s narrow skull gently, forcing the eldar to face him. ‘You will expel them, Key. Set the wraithbone to its purpose. Eject the barbs that slow us, and repair the breaches. Do as you were made to do. Protect the Vesalius.’
Key gave a low, animal moan. Fabius’ grip tightened. ‘Do it,’ he murmured. His battleplate chimed a warning as it registered a spike in several all but undetectable frequencies. Key’s mouth opened, as if it were about to sing, or scream. But no sound emerged. The wraithbone set in its eye sockets trembled with internal reverberations, and the simian slaves of the Noise Marines began to screech and yowl amid the tangled branches above. A signal was being sent.
Satisfied, he made to release the creature. But it grabbed his wrist. ‘F-Father,’ Key whispered. Fabius froze. He knew that voice as surely as he knew his own. Key gripped his wrist tightly, with more strength than it had ever possessed.
‘Melusine?’
Key opened its mouth wide, wider than it should have been able. In the hollow of its throat, something squirmed. Fabius tried to jerk his wrist free, but the eldar held on. It reached up, catching hold of the back of his head with its other hand. He staggered back, and Key came with him, mouth still stretching wider and wider as something pushed itself out from within. Wraithbone, he realised – dozens of impossibly fluid tendrils of wraithbone.
A moment later, Fabius how
led as the tendrils pierced the flesh of his face and then he was somewhere else, lost in the past, watching old failures happen again.
The mice kept dying. Again and again. No matter how hard he worked to perfect them, they died. And he could not understand why. Why did they die? Some flaw in his methodology? Some weakness in them? What was the answer?
The old man was no help. ‘They die because all things die, boy. You play a good game, but games always end – and someone must lose.’
‘I can perfect them, I know I can,’ he said, looking up at the tall, stooped figure. They were… somewhere. Was it home? Or somewhere else? He could not say. He heard voices, murmuring as if at a great distance, but could not see their owners. He looked down at his hands – human hands, unsullied by the touch of Europan gene-smiths.
‘Can you? Or is that what you tell yourself, because you do not want the game to end?’ The old man leaned forward, cybernetic fingers clicking as he prodded one of the twitching mice, where it was pinned to Fabius’ dissection board. His face was wrong, somehow. Like a mask that was about to slip, revealing the true face beneath. ‘There is no shame in being a gamesman, boy. In playing the odds. But one day the odds will not be in your favour and what then?’
‘Then I will start again.’
The old man laughed, and something behind his face twitched, as if there were a second, secret smile there, behind the first. ‘And how many times will you start over?’ His words were echoed, as if by a chorus. Shapes drew close, watching, whispering among themselves. He tried to discern their identity, but they slipped away from the limits of his vision with taunting ease.
‘Until I get it right. Until my work is done.’ But the words sounded like a lie, even as he spoke them. They were bitter on his tongue, like ashes. How many times had he spoken those words? How many times had he sought to bury his own failures in a grave of new beginnings? ‘Why do they keep dying?’
‘Because you keep changing them. You keep teasing the beast flesh, boy – cutting away at this bit, adding to that bit, like a painter at his easel. You are trying to capture an image which does not – cannot – exist, save in your head.’ The old man reached up, as if to adjust his face. For a moment, Fabius glimpsed what was beneath the mask.
Fabius Bile: Clonelord Page 26