Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

The ship quaked, and was still.

  ‘Rejoice, brethren! Geller fields deactivated. Safe translation to real space accomplished,’ the ship-wide vox said.

  ‘We have arrived then, and in good time. Shall I accompany you to the bridge?’ said Odon.

  ‘Yes, Brother-Chaplain.’ Galt stood and pulled on his habit, covering his coloured flesh. As their fortress home was never finished, so the flesh art was never done, not until a brother fell in battle and the record of his achievements was buried with him. Galt called out his signifex code, engaging a vox in the ears of a nearby statue of an angel. ‘Captain Galt orders Captains Mastrik and Aresti, Epistolary Ranial, and Master of the Forge Clastrin to the bridge.’

  Odon smiled, his second skull spreading wider its own awful grin. ‘I do not know why you call Forgemaster Clastrin, brother. Where else would he be today, when there is treasure in the stars?’

  Galt smiled and gave a quiet grunt of affirmation. ‘You are right. Let us go. I don’t want Mastrik getting impatient and ordering the ship forward before I get there.’

  The chorus of Reclusiam serfs around the couch, gold-masked and dressed in bone-and-blue, dipped their heads as Galt stood. Their circle parted to let the captain and the Chaplain through. As they left the sanctuary and entered the main body of Novum in Honourum ’s Grand Chapel, Galt’s serf aides Artermin and Holstak stood up from the pews where they had been praying and fell in behind him, their ship’s uniforms emblazoned with the Chapter heraldry. They were not weaklings, these lesser men, but vigorous starfarers. Nevertheless, Galt and Odon towered over them. Six black-clad servitor-worshippers detached themselves from alcoves in the walls, and fell in behind.

  ‘We have arrived,’ Galt said to the men, ‘and I would look upon our foe.’

  On the way out of the chapel, the party turned and bowed as one to the statue of Lucretius Corvo, founder of their Chapter, which stood five times life-size by the soaring doors.

  Odon led them in a request for guidance. Not as an ecclesiarch would beseech the Emperor, but as a respectful officer asking advice of a much-loved leader. They were all brothers after all, even if long millennia separated their births.

  They left the chapel to its serfs. Their songs continued, gentle as the breeze that blew unceasingly over Honourum’s stony plains.

  Chapter 2

  Brothers in Arms

  ‘First Captain on the bridge!’

  Galt stepped onto the bridge of the battle-barge. Chapter serfs and full brothers alike snapped to attention. Servitors, oblivious to his rank, went about their ponderous business. A fragment of flesh half-hidden in a web of cybernetic command and life-support cables turned to the door – the remains of a brother. The entirety of the machine he occupied rotated with him.

  ‘Brother-Captain Galt, we have arrived in-system.’

  ‘Brother-Captain Persimmon, how goes it?’

  ‘A smooth translation, Novum in Honourum serves us faithfully as always.’

  Persimmon was a wreck of a man, crippled in battle by a vicious xenos species never encountered before or since. Neurotoxins had destroyed his limbs and much of his musculature. Only chance had brought him to the Novum in Honourum ’s infirmary and not delivered the bolt of the Emperor’s Grace. The Apothecaries had been ready to send his soul to the Shadow Novum, where he would await the final call to battle from the Emperor. Yet he had lived, clawing his way back from the dead with his single, bloodied hand. Somehow, his body had healed itself enough to remain viable, and so he had also escaped the sarcophagus of a Dreadnought.

  Unfit for combat duty, Persimmon had been invested as the Chapter’s Master of the Fleet and installed directly into the bridge of the Novum in Honourum . Technically Novum was Galt’s command, but Persimmon was the true captain of the ship, body and soul. Already noted for his great acumen in naval engagements, his skill had only grown after his injury and subsequent bonding with the vessel. In many respects he was Novum in Honourum .

  Persimmon’s cradle occupied the space where the command throne of the battle-barge had once been. A Shiplord’s Seat had been installed to one side of the cybernetic captain; this was Galt’s place, but he walked past it to stand on the walkway over the operations pits and their many-tiered rows of servitor drones, wired in as Persimmon was directly to the ship, before the broad windows of the bridge.

  Others of the officer clade of the Chapter were there. Clastrin, Master of the Forge, worked busily, surrounded by human serfs and servitors, and aided by two Techmarines. He, unlike the other Space Marines present, wore his power armour. It was as red as rust, only his right shoulder pad bearing the bone-and-blue colours and badge of the Chapter. Tentacles of metal darted out from the harness upon his back, working controls. Chitters from his augmitter of rapid binaric, the tech-speak of the priesthood of Mars, compelled both his own cyborgs and the bridge servitors to greater efforts. His helmet was off, and his face, marked by strange tattoos that owed more to the Omnissiah than the traditions of Honourum, was tense with anticipation.

  Captain Lutil Mastrik and Epistolary Ranial stood side by side on the walkway in front of the windows; Mastrik animated as always, Ranial distracted. Odon and Galt’s retinue dispersed, and the captain and Chaplain joined the Librarian and Mastrik.

  Galt looked to the main window, its armourglass covered by external and internal blast shielding.

  ‘You waited for me, brother?’ he said.

  ‘I was sorely tempted not to,’ said Mastrik.

  ‘Brother-Captain Aresti?’ said Galt.

  ‘En route from Corvo’s Hammer , brother-captain,’ said Mastrik. ‘He is late as usual.’

  ‘Our brother has problems that require his attention,’ said Clastrin. His words were doubled, his organic voice overlaid by a melodious second projected by a vox-emitter. The two spoke with simultaneous disapproval.

  ‘Shall I engage the chartdesk, brother-captain?’ asked Persimmon. ‘We have good pict captures of the hulk already.’ Persimmon indicated the black glass bed of the chartdesk, eight by eight metres, situated in front of his throne. ‘Forgemaster Clastrin has excelled himself today.’

  Galt shook his head. ‘Open the blast shields, I wish to see the hulk with my own eyes first. Let us get a feeling for our battleground, before we lose ourselves in the detail of it.’

  A chorus of grinding servitor voices spoke as one. ‘Compliance.’

  ‘You paraphrase Guilliman, brother’ said Mastrik. ‘The wisdom of the Codex is never far from your lips.’

  ‘As it should not be far from your own, brother,’ said Galt mildly.

  Motors whirred, pulling up the shutters on both sides of the window. Immediately the bridge was flooded with harsh, blue light. Galt shielded his eyes.

  ‘Dim windows, ninety-eight per cent,’ shouted Clastrin.

  ‘Compliance.’

  At the servitors’ unspoken commands, the machine-spirits of the bridge exerted their influence on the glass, darkening it. Galt dropped his hand to his side.

  The shutters clanged into their housings, revealing a window that ran the entire width of the bridge. Ten metres tall, and many times wider than that, the window filled the whole of the forward section’s wall. The armourglass was framed by heavy mullions, each tall support cast in the likeness of a Chapter hero. The edges of the window were stained, tiny panes set in a labyrinth of metal incised with the names of the glorious dead, displaying in a long, colourful ribbon of pictures the story of the Chapter’s founding nearly eight thousand years ago.

  A bright blue sun occupied most of the view. The ship was close enough that the men aboard could see flares ejected from its churning surface, the top and bottom of the star cut off by the window. The light was raw, dangerous despite the windows’ protective dimming, bleaching out the subtle colours of the stained glass. There were no planets around Jorso, it was too violent a star for fatherhood. Its searing light had blasted the dusty stuff of its offspring into interstellar space before they had had a chance
to coalesce.

  Against the sun, the other ships in Galt’s fleet were silhouettes both small and insignificant. He recognised them all from their shapes, they were as familiar to him as children are to their fathers. Two strike cruisers and four escorts. One caused Galt concern. Corvo’s Hammer sparkled with vented plasma, the price of victory in their last engagement.

  A curling plume of blue flame burst from the sun. Far more than a ball of gas it seemed, but a great, ravening animal. How could something that writhed so not live?

  ‘The hulk will pass between our orbit and the star soon brother-captain,’ said Persimmon.

  ‘In five, four,’ began one of the serfs, ‘three, two, one…’

  ‘I see it.’ Galt breathed the words.

  A vast black shape slid across the boiling blue surface of Jorso.

  ‘Bring detail views up on the main chartdesk. Compensate for stellar luminosity,’ said Persimmon.

  ‘Yes, lord captain,’ said a serf officer. Commands were issued to the relevant servitors and by them relayed to the machine-spirits which inhabited the ship’s systems. The bridge filled with machine noise as affirmations of compliance ground out from uncaring throats.

  The chartdesk shimmered. Bands of light resolved themselves into a holographic image of the space hulk in front of Persimmon’s throne-cradle.

  ‘Corvo’s oath,’ murmured Galt. His hand went to the Chapter pendant that hung about his neck.

  ‘First Captain,’ said Persimmon. ‘I present the space hulk Death of Integrity , our target.’

  Even against the immensity of the growling sun, the hulk designated Death of Integrity appeared huge, an agglomeration of vessels and cosmic flotsam tossed together by the shifting tides of the empyrean. Novum in Honourum was a battle-barge, one of the greatest vessels the Imperium could command, but she was a toy in comparison. The hulk presented itself as a broken ornament the size of a small moon, its surface a bewildering mosaic of protrusions. Ship prows, engine units, nacelles, crumpled cargo barges, the smooth lines of xenos craft, pocked half-mountains of asteroids and the ice spires of comets projected chaotically from its surface. Many of the elements that made up the hulk were forged by thinking creatures, men or otherwise, but its shipwright was the warp, and that had little respect for the physics of real space.

  Servitors growled and chirruped in binaric, half-formed words in standard Gothic slipping drool-slicked from their mouths. Not for the first time, Galt wondered if any awareness remained in their wiped minds.

  One of the serf-officers overseeing the augur arrays spoke. ‘Mass, thirty-seven point nine trillion tonnes, albedo point eight-seven, gravitic displacement…’

  He went on, describing the physical qualities of the hulk. Portions of the holograph representing the vessel winked bright green as another officer identified component parts, a gridded funnel came into being around it, depicting its weak gravity field, other icons and graphical demonstrations of mass and potentially active power sources blinked up one after another, cluttering the air of the bridge with informatics.

  The serf overseeing the augur array had a face half of metal, a slatted round covering one eye. When he spoke, it was with the emotionless burr of a vox-grille.

  ‘Estimated composition, three hundred and seventy vessels, of which fifty-three per cent class gamma or lower, twenty-four per cent class beta, eighteen per cent class alpha. Remainder unknown. All best estimates. Certainty impossible.’

  ‘That,’ Galt pointed at a part of the hologram. ‘That is an Imperial warship, heavy cruiser, Avenger-class?’

  ‘Indeed, brother-captain. One of several.’ Clastrin said in his twin voices, his ordinary reserve swept aside by excitement at the hulk. ‘All ages, many patterns.’

  ‘A rich prize then, when we are victorious,’ said Mastrik, a broad grin across his face. ‘We had best send a message to your friends on Mars, Forgemaster, so they may pick the carcass clean.’

  ‘Archeotech is valuable to all who live under the Emperor’s protection, brother. I urge you to curb your flippancy. Respect is the appropriate response to this gift from the Omnissiah.’

  Galt turned slightly, his gaze moving from the windows to the chartdesk holo.

  ‘The core? What lies at its centre?’

  ‘Unknown,’ replied the serf.

  ‘There is a great deal of stellar interference, First Captain,’ said Clastrin. ‘Our augurs do not function well in this close proximity to a star of Jorso’s class. We have detected several large, unstable sources of radioactivity within the hulk also, and these further cloud the eyes of Novum in Honourum . Deep augur scans are impossible.’

  ‘Any indication of the xenos threat? Where do they lair?’

  ‘None, First Captain, not by machine means, at least. It is impossible to say at this time.’

  ‘Epistolary Ranial? What does the Librarium say?’

  ‘It is as the request maintained, First Captain. Psychic activity is indicative of genestealer infestation.’

  ‘That is a very large hulk, Brother-Epistolary,’ said Galt.

  ‘And there are a great many genestealers aboard it, brother-captain,’ said Ranial drily.

  ‘We shall have to see then, what our cousins say,’ said Galt. ‘Any news on their fleet?’

  ‘None, lord captain,’ spoke the chief augur-serf. ‘We cannot pinpoint them against this background of interference, but I expect contact soon.’

  The clanging of power armour boots on deck-plating rang out as Captain Aresti hurried onto the bridge. He wore his armour, the bone-and-blue quartered heraldry of the Novamarines still scarred from their last battle. His tattooed face was bare, his helmet tucked under his arm.

  ‘My apologies, brothers.’

  ‘You are experiencing difficulty, I take it?’ said Galt. ‘Corvo’s Hammer bleeds. I thought the main drive repaired.’

  Aresti shook his head. ‘We are down to only one containment unit, brother-captain. Two destroyed and one damaged. The one the Forgemaster repaired ruptured as we exited the empyrean. We were fortunate that it held so long.’

  ‘The damage is great, First Captain,’ said Clastrin. ‘My Techmarines labour through all the watches. I myself will attend and personally implore the machine-spirits within to hold fast to life, but I fear Corvo’s Hammer will not survive another voyage through the immaterium. The vessel requires full dry dock facilities if it is to recover.’

  ‘And they are in short supply here,’ said Ranial.

  Mastrik gave a gentle laugh. ‘That they are, brother.’

  ‘The potential loss of a strike cruiser is no matter for levity, brothers!’ protested Clastrin. His artful electronic voice strained with annoyance.

  ‘My apologies,’ said Mastrik. ‘“All is but dust in motion”,’ he added, quoting the script of Corvo. ‘And yet I think you will no doubt find a way to keep the dust of Corvo’s Hammer together a little while longer. Perhaps our new friends will aid you?’

  ‘Where are they?’ asked Aresti. ‘Our deep augurs are beyond use. Corvo’s Hammer is as good as blind.’

  Galt shook his head, and lifted his pendant to his lips. He kissed the jet icon absent-mindedly, and let it fall.

  ‘If they were working, you’d still be as blind as the rest of us are, brother,’ said Mastrik.

  ‘I have them, lord captains,’ a serf spoke. ‘Tightbeam transmission coming in now.’

  The chartdesk flickered, bands of colour rippled, and the light-model of the Death of Integrity vanished like a broken reflection. In its place appeared the shoulders and head of another adept, a genetically altered Space Marine like the brothers of the Novamarines, but subtly different. His face was impossibly beautiful, his black hair shoulder length and scraped back from his forehead. He wore ornate plate of red and gold, as if ready to march into battle. The image crackled violently, the sound buzzed.

  ‘Stabilise the image, compensate for stellar wind,’ ordered Clastrin.

  The image shook and became a littl
e clearer, although it shivered and popped constantly.

  ‘I extend the greeting of brotherhood to the Novamarines,’ intoned the figure.

  ‘It is gladly accepted, and returned twofold.’ Galt stepped closer to the projection. ‘We have heard and accepted your call for aid, as detailed in the Covenants of Trust. Brother hears the call of brother and responds. I am Captain Mantillio Galt of the Novamarines First Company, Master of the Watch and commander of Battlefleet Trident. How may we be of assistance?’

  ‘I, Chapter Master Caedis, Lord of San Guisiga and of the Blood Drinkers Chapter, thank you for your response. Might I suggest we meet face to face and discuss the matter at hand?’

  Galt dipped his head. ‘Naturally. As you have done us the honour of inviting us to battle, I extend the hospitality of Novum in Honourum to you and yours in return.’

  Caedis bowed his own head. ‘The Blood Drinkers thank you brothers. We shall attend you shortly. In five hours time?’

  ‘We shall bring our fleets together, cousin Blood Drinker, and thence parlay.’

  ‘That is agreeable. Wings of Sanguinius shield you.’

  The holo winked out.

  ‘Brother-Captain Persimmon,’ Galt called, ‘rendezvous with the Blood Drinkers fleet. Brother-Captain Artermin, rouse Major-domo Polanczek. I will not have our brethren think us misers. They are honoured brothers, and should be entertained as such.’ He looked to the other captains. ‘And now, brothers, how do we greet these sons of Sanguinius? As brothers of peace, or prepared for war?’

  ‘In plate, brother-captain. It sends a certain message,’ said Ranial. ‘We wish for them to think us ready. Warriors, not aesthetics, although we are both, we should show our steel to our allies, as their master has shown us his.’

  The others nodded their assent.

  In the furious glare of Jorso, two fleets drifted. Their colours were distorted by the harsh cyan light of the star, making one set of vessels black as old blood, the other two clashing shades of blue. Spotlights and landing beacons illuminated portions of the crafts’ hulls with cleaner light, and here one could see that one fleet was a bright and threatening red, the other ivory, with portions of the vessels picked out in sombre blue. The two largest craft hung side by side in the vacuum, thrusters occasionally flaring as they fired to maintain the ship’s positions; battle-barges, both immense. Towards the stern they rose in stepped decks, as massive as mountains. Long, narrow hulls studded with hangars and drop pod launch bays thrust forward like proud necks, growing wide at their heavily shielded bows. At the prow armour was held out either side on stanchions, emblazoned with the marks of their respective Chapters. A stylised chalice below a suspended blood drop upon one, a skull surrounded by a starburst on the other. Upon the bridge of the bone-and-blue vessel the name Novum in Honourum was inscribed. The bow plating of the red vessel bore the legend Lux Rubrum .