by Dan Abnett
They reach the command deck. There’s a pall of smoke in the air. Technicians are struggling to free injured moderati from broken amniotic pods. Servitors hang limply from their plug sheafs. The screens are fizzling with blizzard noise.
Hesst is crumpled on the platform.
‘Out of my way!’ Tawren cries, shoving through the hesitant servitors and sensori clustered around him.
There’s a pool of dark fluid beside his head. She can smell the toxic hormones and excess chemicals that have seared through his bloodstream and ruptured his vessels.
‘We must disconnect him,’ she says.
Arook nods.
A technograde servitor blurts something.
‘In voice, damn you!’ Tawren snaps. ‘The noosphere’s gone.’
‘Disengaging the server could result in extreme cerebral trauma,’ the technograde clacks. ‘We need a cybersurgical team to properly detach him from the MIU.’
‘He’s dying,’ says Arook, looking down at the server. Arook has seen death many times, so he knows what he is looking at.
‘He is severely injured,’ the technograde clicks. ‘Expert disengagement may save him, but–’
‘We understand,’ says Tawren. She looks at Arook.
‘We need the specialists,’ she says. ‘If there’s any chance of saving him, we have to take it.’
‘Of course.’
She kneels beside Hesst, getting blood on her robes.
‘I’m here, server,’ she says, leaning in. ‘I’m here. It’s Meer Tawren. You must hold on. I’m ready to relieve you, but we need a surgical crew. Just hold on.’
Hesst stirs, a flicker of life.
He murmurs something.
‘Just hold on. I’m here,’ she says.
‘Unplug me,’ Hesst gurgles, flecking his chin with blood.
‘We need a surgical crew first, server. There has been a major incident.’
‘Never mind me. The grid is off. It’s off, Tawren. Unplug me and take over. You have to see if you can get it restarted.’
‘Wait,’ she soothes. ‘The surgeons are coming. Wait.’
‘Now!’
‘You’ll die, server.’
His eyelids flutter.
‘I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. The orbital bioengines have gone, Meer.’
Her eyes go wide. She glances at Arook.
‘They’ve gone,’ Hesst repeats, his voice a sigh. ‘You have to plug in, Meer. You have to take my place, plug in, and see what can be salvaged. See what control can be re-established.’
‘Server–’
‘You have to reconstruct the noosphere. Without the grid, Calth is defenceless.’
Tawren looks at the heavy cable-trunking of Hesst’s permanent MIU link, coiled on the floor under him like a dead constrictor snake. She can’t detach that without killing him, surely? Especially not with him in such a fragile state–
One of the sensori cries out.
They look up.
Debris is falling from the clouds from the orbital explosions. The first scraps of metal are raining down across the river valley, trailing fire like meteorites. She sees them strike the river in columns of steam, or scratch across the rooftops of Kalkas Fortalice. Some heavier chunks strike like rockets, exploding buildings. Something smacks against the command deck’s windows, crazing the armourglas.
The hail of debris is just the beginning. Larger objects are falling. Parts of ships. Parts of orbitals. Parts of docking yards.
Tawren sees it before the sensori do. The grand cruiser Antrodamicus, twelve kilometres from bow to stern, falling backwards into the atmosphere from its ruptured drydock in a cloud of micro-debris, falling slowly and majestically, like a mountainside collapsing.
Falling, stern first, towards them and Kalkas Fortalice.
[mark: -0.16.11]
‘I don’t care what there isn’t, show me what there is!’ Marius Gage roars.
Zedoff, master of the Macragge’s Honour, starts to argue again.
‘Show him,’ a voice booms.
Guilliman is on the bridge.
‘Better still, show me,’ he growls.
‘Assessments! Everything you’ve got!’ Zedoff yells at his crew.
Impact was less than two minutes ago. The flagship’s screens are blind. There’s no data, no noospheric link, no contact with the grid. What comms traffic exists is a stew of screaming voices.
‘We’re blind,’ the Master of the First Chapter tells his primarch.
‘Some impact in orbit?’ Guilliman says. He casts a look at Magos Pelot, who is seizing on the deck. Most of the other Mechanicum personnel are faring no better.
Crewmen start handing the primarch data-slates. He scans fragments of the record. Gage knows that Guilliman is putting them together in his mind. A line of data from here, the last snatch recorded from there, a pict, the most recent auspex scan…
‘Something hit the yards, we think,’ says Gage. ‘Scanners are down, screens are dead.’
‘Use your damned brain, Marius,’ Guilliman says. He turns to the bridge crew.
‘Open the shutters! All of them. All the window ports!’
Servo systems begin to raise the blast shutters that have sealed the bridge’s vast crystalflex panels. Some of the wall protective shutters have to be hand-wound back to reset. Deck stewards rush to find the crank handles.
The main shutter crawls up. An alarming quality of light, unsteady and flickering, spills in through the opening gap.
‘In the name of Terra,’ Gage murmurs.
‘Shipmaster,’ Guilliman says, turning to Zedoff. ‘Your priorities are as follows. Power up. Shields up. Restore our sensory ability. Restore the vox. Inform me as any of these are achieved, and if any of them are going to take more than five minutes, I want an accurate time estimate.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Once we have vox, I want links to the following: each ship of the line commander, the server at the Watchtower, the ground commanders, the orbital station masters, not to mention my dear brother. Then–’
He stops as he hears Gage curse.
The shutters are raised high enough for them to see out. The bridge is bathed in firelight. They are looking out across the planet, across the vast and explosive destruction of Calth’s primary yards. Ships are on fire everywhere they look. Some are shaking and exploding, like live rounds left too close to ignition.
It’s an image Roboute Guilliman will never forget. It is more terrible than anything he could have imagined when the shockwave rattled him in his compartment and sent him running for the bridge.
It’s about to get worse.
‘That’s ship fire,’ he says, pointing at a blink of light.
‘That’s definitely ship fire,’ Zedoff agrees, a break in his voice.
‘Who the hell is firing?’ Guilliman asks. ‘What the hell are they shooting at?’
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He strides to the main detection console and pushes the bewildered staffers out of his way. They are so transfixed by the scene beyond the open shutters, they stumble aside like sleepwalkers.
‘Any auspex? Any at all?’ Guilliman asks.
One of the detection officers remembers where he is.
‘The pulse,’ he says. He coughs. ‘The electromagnetic pulse, my lord. It has rendered us insensible for a moment. Automatic restoration programs will–’
‘Take time,’ Guilliman finishes.
‘We could…’ the man stammers. ‘That is, I could authorise a restart of the detection array. But it might blow the links.’
‘And we’d lose everything and need a month in the yards to have the array refitted?’
‘Yes, my primarch,’ the man says.
‘Do it anyway,’ says Guilliman.
The man hesitates.
‘For your own good, hurry,’ Gage whispers to him. The officer jumps to work.
‘If this is a fight and you blow the array, we’re no use for anything,’
Gage says quietly.
‘We’re no use for anything already,’ Guilliman responds. He is staring at the view, absorbing every detail he can. He’s already mentally logged the names of several ships that have been crippled or destroyed.
‘The ship fire,’ he ponders. ‘It’s coming from… from the southern dayside. Close in, too. That’s not coming in from interplanetary space. That’s in amongst the anchorage.’
Gage says nothing. He’s not quite sure how the primarch is determining this from an eyes-only view of distance, space, burning gas, energy flares and backscattered light.
‘I think so,’ says Zedoff, who is more used to the view from a bridge window. ‘I think you’re correct, sir.’
‘Someone could be trigger happy,’ Guilliman says. ‘Firing because they think it’s an attack.’
‘It may be an attack,’ Gage says.
Guilliman nods. He’s still staring at the scene.
His calm is almost terrifying. Gage is transhuman: both bred and trained to know no fear. The acceleration of his own hearts and adrenal levels are simply a response to the situation, a readiness to act faster and more efficiently.
But Guilliman is at another level entirely. He is watching a critical disaster unfold on one of his most beloved planets: the miserable loss of a vital shipyard facility, the collateral damage, the destruction of ships, a portion of the fleet crippled, surface locations caught in the debris rain…
Even if it’s an accident, it’s a dire turn of events. And on this day of days, when so much prestige and statecraft was to be achieved.
It’s not an accident. Gage knows in his gut it’s not. And he knows the primarch knows it too.
But the primarch is considering things as though he’s contemplating the next move in a game of regicide.
‘Hurry with that auspex!’ Gage yells.
‘Put the vox on speaker,’ Guilliman tells the shipmaster.
‘It’s a jumble, sir–’
‘On speaker.’
A cacophony screeches across the massive bridge. Static, pulse-noise, code squeals, voices. There’s overlap, interrupt, distortion, bad signal. It’s as if the whole universe is screaming at them. The only voices Gage can hear with any clarity are the ones screaming for help, for answers, for permission to leave orbit or open fire.
Gage watches Guilliman listening.
‘They’re not speaking,’ Guilliman says.
‘What, sir?’ asks Gage.
Guilliman is listening intently. He’s teasing out every piece of detail from the uproar.
‘They’re not speaking,’ he repeats.
‘Who are not speaking?’ Gage asks.
‘The Word Bearers. The traffic, it’s all us.’
‘How do you know?’
Guilliman shrugs lightly, still listening. He’s recognising ship names, voices, keel numbers, transmission codes. Would that the Mechanicum could design a bioengine half as efficient as Guilliman’s mind.
‘We’re the ones requesting help, requesting clarification,’ he says. ‘We’re the ones asking for instructions, for permission to fire back. We’re the ones dying.’
He looks at Gage.
‘The Word Bearers are shooting at us,’ he says.
‘No. No, they simply would not–’
Guilliman silences him.
‘Whatever this is, whatever has happened, they think it’s an attack, and they think we’re part of it. Everything they believe about us has just appeared to come true, Marius, and they’re shooting at us.’
He turns to Zedoff.
‘Forget the auspex. Activate the lithocast and show me Lorgar. Nothing has greater priority.’
[mark: -0.16.05]
The first object hits. It’s a piece of debris. Oll Persson doesn’t know what it is exactly. He scarcely cares. A lump of ship. A piece of orbital.
It’s the size of a habitat; it comes down out of the burning sky at a forty-five degree angle. It’s blazing superhot like a meteor. It punches home like a rocket strike.
It hits the scrub land on the far side of the estuary. The impact shock throws them all over onto the ground. The swartgrass in the field around them is shredded up like chaff. Heat and air smack them, tumbling Oll and the workers, and then dust, and a storm of particulate debris. Then it rains. The rain is scalding hot. It’s river water from the estuary thrown up to steam and back by the hit.
A second later, another few million gallons of river hit them. The impact has thumped the river out of its bed, and driven a two-metre-high tidal bore up across Oll Persson’s land.
‘Get up!’ Oll yells to his paid-by-the-day workers. ‘Get up and run!’
The wave swallows him, sweeping him under.
He hits a fence post, grabs on, choking, dragged around by the ferocious surge, and then back as the water recedes in a sucking rush.
More objects are hitting. Two more big pieces strike on the far shore, like missiles. Vast plumes of fire spit into the sky. Smaller pieces of debris are hitting all around, like shells, like shots from light field guns. They blow holes in the ground like grenade blasts: shell bursts of mud and water and matted vegetation. Whizz and whistle, crump, ground-shake, backspatter of mud. It’s as if he’s back on Chrysophar, on that last tour from hell. He feels the old fear return, and prays to his god. His lungs are full of water. He’s covered in mud, black mud, that good, black alluvial soil.
The thunder is like the guns of Krasentine Ridge. A boom like sheets flapping in the wind. The shudder inside your ribs as the pressure hits you, quivering your diaphragm.
Dear god, dear god, let me live, let me live, I am your servant…
Not shells. Not shells from field guns in flak-sacked redoubts. Not shells. No stink of fycelene. But just as bad.
It’s raining on them now, raining burning debris. Pelting. Each hit is like a bomb.
‘Find cover!’ Oll yells.
Stupid. How stupid. Where is cover going to be in this? The sky is falling in.
Some of his workers are already dead. He sees a man clutching the squirting stump of an arm, writhing in the black mire, screaming. He sees parts of a woman he quite liked protruding from the steaming lip of an impact crater. He sees one boy dead, crushed, and another dragging himself along, his legs blown off.
Like Krasentine, just like Krasentine. The ridge. He came to Calth to leave that life behind, and it’s found him again.
Something burning like a falling star hits one of the fusion plants at Neride, and the ground leaps.
This time the tidal wave is four metres high and feels like a rockcrete wall.
[mark: -0.16.03]
Seneschal Arbute comes to. She looks at Ventanus as if he has attacked her. There’s a graze on the side of her face and she’s clutching her torso with both arms. Broken ribs.
‘Wh-what did you do?’ she asks.
She still has no idea.
‘Listen to me,’ Ventanus says. He kneels in front of her, towering over her even so. ‘Seneschal, listen. We’re going to find you a medicae and–’
‘Why did you hurt me? You hurt me!’
‘Seneschal, you must listen to me. There’s been–’
What has there been, Captain Ventanus? What should he say to her?
He has carried her into the shelter of an underpass walkway. The tiles are cool, but they can feel the heat of the fires at ground level. The sidelong light falling into the underpass is twitching orange.
‘What has happened?’ she asks. She’s starting to realise the extent of the situation.
Selaton approaches, herding some of her staff and a few dock workers. They’re bloody and dazed. One of them is hurt quite badly.
‘I can’t reach the company or the Chapter,’ Selaton tells Ventanus. ‘Vox is scorched out.’
Ventanus nods. Information is what they need right now. Information is victory. To get that, they’ll need a high-gain transmitter, a primary caster, something robust enough to have survived the electromagnetic shock.
He hears a noise. It vibrates the rockcrete beneath him. He strides to the mouth of the underpass.
The sky is a firestorm, ruddy and bright. Spikes and fronds of searing yellow and orange spit across it. There’s lightning too, massive electrical discharge. Burning debris is hurtling down. It’s as though they’re caught in a meteorite shower.
The starport is in chaos. Parts of it, especially the masts and higher gantries, have been damaged by the air-blast or the rain of debris. Heat-sear and overpressure have blown down cranes, rigs, loaders and illumination towers. Thick plumes of black smoke are rising from promethium tanks and sundered refineries.
Many loading vehicles, including two heavy lifters, have been brought down by the shock, and their crash sites are ablaze. Personnel are running in every direction. Ventanus sees bewildered crash teams and fire fighters. He sees bodies on the ground.
The noise is coming from a bulk transport. Trailing smoke and flames, it is passing low overhead, so low he feels the urge to duck. Fragments of debris are tumbling off it. It’s struggling to rise, but it’s never going to get enough lift. Two missiles of debris streaking down from high altitude spear into its back, exploding, causing it to lurch.
It ploughs on, engines howling, ground shaking, and crawls out of sight behind the towering hive habs and the outer docks.
There’s a blink of light. He feels it hit. How far away? Six kilometres? Seven? It feels like an earthquake. The air turns gritty and the vibration is so intense his vision blurs for a second.
Behind him, Arbute screams. The scream is so sudden, it makes Ventanus jump slightly. She’s limped up to join him at the mouth of the underpass, and she’s just seen everything else.
‘What is this? What’s happening?’
‘Stay calm. Please,’ Selaton says, reaching them.
‘Is this an attack?’ she asks.
The heat is intense. The smell of burning is dry and caustic. She has to shield her eyes from the glare. They do not.
‘No,’ says Selaton. ‘An accident. It has to be.’
Ventanus doesn’t know what to say.
‘Sir!’
An Ultramarine has appeared. He’s spotted them. He’s got a kill team with him. It’s Amant, a squad leader from 7th Company.
‘Do you know what this is?’ Ventanus asks.