This time, with the shield bubble popped, the lances ate directly into the Maiden’s hull. Predatory incisions were made in the steel flesh of the prey vessel, and the lances tracked and turned, beams of cutting laser fire neatly slicing through the lesser vessel’s armour. The Maiden had barely responded, yet it was already listing, losing stability, and shaking apart from half a dozen detonations across its length. The Covenant had picked the paths of its lances with due care, targeting explosive sections of the ship: the engine core, the plasma batteries, the fuel chambers.
The strike cruiser broke off, its engines roaring into the silence of space to put distance between itself and its crippled prey.
On the Maiden’s bridge, as his ship rattled and shook with myriad explosions, Kartan Syne glared into the occulus screen as the graceful warship speared away. For a sickening moment, he recalled when he’d hunted grey lynxes on Falodar, and the time he had seen one of the great cats kill one of the equine beasts that served as its preferred prey. The lynx had struck in a blur of movement, ripping great wounds in the horse’s throat and belly, then retreated to watch the creature bleed out and die. He’d never forgotten that. At the time, he’d suspected the planet was tainted somehow, to breed such behaviour in the fauna.
‘You remember Falodar?’ he asked Torc.
There was no response. The bridge was a maelstrom of shouts and alarms, as the crew and servitors fought hopelessly to hold the ship together. The noise annoyed Syne. It wasn’t like their struggles could actually achieve anything now.
Syne was still watching the occulus when the final lance strike came. He saw it reaching out towards him, a beam of migraine-bright white that hurt his eyes, seeming to stretch an impossible distance across the stars.
It arrived in a flash of burning light that blessedly silenced the panic around him once and for all.
Eurydice Mervallion saw the Maiden destroyed in orbit. She stood staring in horrified awe as it exploded under the lance strikes of another vessel, but even peering into space through her magnoculars, the enemy ship was too distant to identify with any clarity. Whatever it was, it outgunned the Maiden by a vast degree. That meant she was probably dead, too.
As deaths were concerned, this was hardly how she’d imagined she would go out. Perhaps it was her mutational gift that led her to such assumptions, but she’d always assumed her end would come when Kartan Syne ordered her to find a way through some horrendously difficult warp storm, and the Maiden was another ‘lost with all hands within the Sea of Souls’ footnote in some minor chronicle. She certainly never assumed she’d live to be interred in the undervaults of House Mervallion, but that suited her fine, anyway. House Mervallion, as Navigator Houses went, wasn’t worth much in her eyes.
And truthfully, not in anyone’s eyes.
Mervallion was one of the lesser-known families within the myriad cluster of minor Houses: small, lacking influence, providing relatively mediocre Navigators, and largely devoid of wealth – all of which added up to why the Navis Nobilite had seen her assigned to a semi-respectable (at best) junker like the Maiden of the Stars, under the command of a weasel like Kartan Syne.
Still, despite the weakness of her bloodline and pedigree, she figured she deserved a better death than this.
The camp, such as it was, was unfinished. A bulk lander sat in the heart of the base, surrounded by teams of servitors still unloading the mining vehicles and drill columns. In an ungainly, cheap and uncomfortable atmosphere suit topped by a glass sphere for a helmet, Eurydice watched the black sky, ignoring the servitors around her. They shambled around in their modified protective suits, machine parts spinning, tensing, locking and unlocking as they wheeled equipment into position and constructed what should have been a fully-functional mining operation.
She couldn’t help feeling annoyed. What a stupid, pointless way to die. Even if the unknown enemy up there didn’t land, she was still marooned. Her lander wasn’t capable of warp flight, so her ability to find the Astronomican didn’t matter a damn, and she had no supplies for any serious travelling even if she did somehow have the capacity to leave this barren rock behind.
What she did have was an indefinite air supply within the lander, about three weeks’ worth of food, and about one hundred servitors that were still getting ready to mine adamantium from a mineral-rich asteroid. The mindwiped slaves lacked the intelligence to realise their mother ship was now nothing more than debris in space.
Not for the first time, she regretted taking the job with Syne. Not that she’d had any choice, of course.
Three years earlier, she’d been dressed in the black toga traditionally worn by her family while on Terra, kneeling before the Celestarch of House Mervallion in his throne room.
‘Father,’ she had said, head cast down.
‘Eurydice,’ he replied, his voice flat and toneless as it bleated in a metallic drone through the bulky voxsponder unit replacing the lower half of his face. ‘The House calls upon you.’
Those words sang through her body like a chill in her blood. Nothing would be the same again. At twenty-five standard years of age, duty had finally called her into service. Still, she couldn’t meet his face. Eurydice knew her father was lucky to have survived the destruction of his speeder six months before. The juvenat surgeries to repair his body had been both extensive and costly, but he was far from the man she remembered from her youth. House Mervallion, even as part of the Navis Nobilite, could hardly afford to flush a fortune into the regeneration treatments the Celestarch would need to restore himself to wholeness. She hated to see him so ruined.
But it was his burden to bear. He had chosen to ignite the rivalry with House Jezzarae. He had signed the contract that brought about the death of Jezzarae’s heir. As far as she was concerned, Eurydice figured her father deserved his speeder being sabotaged. She had no time for the petty feuds and revenge debts that linked the Navigator Houses more completely than any bonds of blood.
‘Who has purchased the talents of our House, father?’
It would be wrong to say she’d dreamed of this day. At least, not with any real excitement. Between House Mervallion’s station and the fact she was the eighth of her father’s daughters, laughably distant from even scenting an inheritance, she’d known as long as she could remember that she was destined for life on some mass-conveyance scow. No glory, no honour, no excitement. Just a pittance bleeding back to the family coffers.
But she couldn’t help it. Now the moment had come, she dared to imagine what lay ahead. The thrill of hope prickled her skin, and she felt herself smiling. Perhaps she would be chosen to guide one of the Imperial war vessels through the Sea of Souls, part of the Imperium’s unending crusades. Perhaps even the Astartes…
‘The rogue trader,’ her father said, ‘Kartan Syne.’
The words meant nothing to her. Nothing, except to kill her hope like a candle guttered by sudden wind. No rogue trader dynasty of any worth would stoop to purchasing a daughter of House Mervallion.
It had been a satisfactory three years, though. Of course, fending off Syne’s smirking advances had been no treat, but she’d seen a wealth of the segmentum in her tenure as the Maiden’s Navigator. She came to know the ship as well as she knew the crew. Awake or asleep, she would hear the old girl’s voice in the creaks of the hull and the grumbling engines. She was a placid thing, the Maiden, and her complaints were gentle. Eurydice had liked her.
But it had been unfulfilling. Of course it had. Especially when one considered the money hadn’t even been all that great. True, she’d raked in more than she would have expected, permitted a small allowance to her personal finances as well as the tithe to House Mervallion, but she was hardly living comfortably. Syne was always spending massive sums of Imperial crowns on upgrading his precious fat matron of a ship, and wasn’t that just so very hilarious in light of recent events. Good job, Captain Syne. All those guns certainly helped when it really counted.
Very calmly, with another glance ar
ound the camp and its busy servitors, she spoke a stream of curses that would have made any within her family utter a prayer for her apparent degeneracy. Several of the words in this barrage of invective were made up, but remained obscenely biological.
All of her worries quickly became moot, however. Unarmed, stranded on an asteroid, not as rich as she’d like to be (and doomed to die within the month anyway) Eurydice watched a fireball streaking down from the starry sky.
‘Tomasz?’ she spoke into her vox-mic, hailing the mining operations chief. She wasn’t entirely alone down here, but a dozen technicians and the pack of armsmen with her hardly mattered if the enemy was capable of ending the Maiden’s journeys in the blink of an eye.
‘Yes, my lady?’ came the response from the other side of the camp.
‘Uh. Problems.’
‘I know, my lady. I know, we see them coming, too. You must get to safety.’
‘Really? Where’s safe?’
He didn’t respond. She looked over her shoulder at the four armsmen; they never left her side when she was out of her trance chambers. They were staring as well, over to the horizon, at something inbound.
‘Lady Mervallion,’ the leader, Renwar, voxed. ‘We need to leave the site. Come with us.’
‘Sounds fun, but I’ll die here, thank you.’
‘Lady…’
‘You can run if you like. I think with Syne dead, you’re excused from needing to guard me with your lives.’
‘Lady, the secondary landing site–’
‘Is over two weeks’ march from here,’ she laughed. ‘You think we can outrun their landing vessel?’
‘Lady, please. We have to go.’
‘I don’t have to do anything. We don’t have time to fire up the lander, and we’d likely be shot down if we tried. And while the four of you look awfully proud with your shotguns, I doubt they will do much against whatever is coming our way.’
The soldiers shared worried glances. ‘Lady,’ Renwar said, not meeting her eyes, ‘can’t you… use your powers?’
‘My what?’
‘Your eye, my lady. With all due respect. Can’t you kill them?’
Her forehead itched. Covered with a black bandana, her third eye, the gift of her Navigator heritage, pulsed softly beneath the material. She wanted to scratch, which was impossible in her glass helmet.
What could she say? Her powers were weak? Her eye didn’t work that way? She’d never even tried to employ it in such a manner?
‘Just go,’ she sighed. ‘Syne is dead. We have no way off this rock, and I’m not coming with you to the second camp.’
The men moved away in silence, and she felt their relief all too clearly. Guarding her had been a pleasure for none of them. Fear came with the duty. She was too different. She saw into the warp, and no sane soul wanted anything to do with those who stared into the empyrean.
The thought never depressed her. From birth, it had always been this way. The unease of other humans was so ingrained within her perceptions that she barely noticed it happening.
‘Tomasz?’
‘Yes, my lady?’
‘Are you taking the servitors?’
‘We planned to leave them as a distraction, my lady.’ She chuckled at that. Bloody cowards. Eurydice waited as the technicians and armsmen started their low-gravity loping run to the south.
Soon she was alone but for the continued unpacking and unloading of the hundred servitors all around. The fire in the sky grew, drawing closer. Whoever or whatever had killed Syne and the rest of the crew – she wouldn’t exactly call them her friends, but Torc hadn’t been so bad – was evidently on its way to kill her.
‘Well,’ she said, using a word that had featured heavily in her last tirade, ‘shit.’
The landing party consisted of four demigods and one mortal. Septimus, in an old atmosphere suit, trailed behind the lords Cyrion, Uzas, Xarl and his own master. Their boots made the gunship’s gang ramp shake as they stalked down to the asteroid’s silver-grey surface.
The human slave allowed himself a moment of smiling reflection as he glanced skyward. It wasn’t much of a sky – just stars, like always, no clouds or sunlight – but it was enough of a change to keep him smiling as he followed the demigods.
Septimus’s master led the small group, clad in his battle armour, breathing the chemical-tasting recycled air within his helm. His visor display, tinted crimson through ruby eye lenses, flickered from servitor to servitor as the squad moved through the small camp. In his dark fists was an ancient bolter, loaded and primed, though he doubted he’d have cause to fire it.
‘Servitors,’ he said, for the benefit of those back aboard the Covenant. ‘Technical servitors, outfitted for mining. I count a hundred and seven.’
‘Perfection,’ drawled a voice over the vox. It was a wet, burbling growl, like a wolf with a throat full of tumours. Septimus’s own vox-link allowed him to listen to the demigods speaking. He shivered at the voice of the Exalted.
The squad moved in patient precision around the camp, utterly ignored by the labouring servitors. The bionic slaves paid them no heed at all, mono-tasked as they were to perform their current operations.
‘Final count is one hundred and seven,’ Septimus’s master repeated. ‘Most of these could be easily refitted for our use.’
‘Who cares?’ another voice snarled. Septimus watched as Xarl stopped in his patrol ahead. Skulls, some alien and some human, were mounted on Xarl’s war-plate. Several dangled on chains from his belt, forming layered faulds that covered his thighs. ‘We did not come here for mindless slaves.’
‘Yes,’ one of the others growled, most likely Uzas. ‘We must not delay here. The Warmaster calls us to Crythe.’
‘Septimus,’ the master said, turning back to his servant. ‘Confirm the asteroid is what we seek.’
Septimus nodded, already scanning a gloved handful of dust and small rocks. His handheld auspex display showed a series of green bars in perfect alignment with a previously imprinted pattern.
‘Confirmed, master.’
The bulk lander from the Maiden towered above them all. Its armament was pathetic, but with the most irritating timing imaginable, the single laser turret mounted upon its hull opened fire on the demigods below. Inside the grounded ship, Eurydice Mervallion sat at the helm console, directing the turret’s aim through a distorted pict-link, scowling at the blurry screen and not hitting a damn thing.
Outside, the squad remained unharmed, taking cover behind six-wheeled ore loader trucks and drilling tractors. They watched the lone turret unleashing its minor rage, the red beams pulsing into the dusty ground, nowhere near any of them.
‘Under fire,’ Cyrion voxed to the Covenant. He sounded amused.
‘Barely,’ Septimus’s master amended.
‘I’ve got this one,’ Xarl said, rising out of cover, his bolter in his fist. It shuddered once, the echo of its fire transmitting over the vox but not in the airless atmosphere. On the side of the lander, the single weapon detonated under the kiss of the explosive bolt shell.
‘Another glorious victory,’ Cyrion chuckled in the silence that fell afterwards. Septimus couldn’t help but smile as well.
‘Do we truly have time for this idiocy?’ Xarl grunted.
‘Someone is alive in there,’ Septimus’s master said quietly. The squad looked up at the cargo lander, its blocky sides and the gaping maw of its landing bay, lit from within by dim yellow light. ‘We must face them.’
‘This is insignificant prey,’ Xarl argued.
Uzas grunted an agreement. ‘The Warmaster calls. Battle awaits us in Crythe.’
‘Yes,’ Xarl voxed back, ‘let this weakling prey rot.’
Cyrion spoke up, cutting them off. ‘This prey is someone capable of managing a hundred servitors. They almost certainly possess technical skill. Such skill will be of use to us.’
‘No,’ Septimus’s master breathed. ‘The prey is much more than that.’
Xarl, dra
ped in skulls, and Uzas, his dark armour sporting a cloak of light brownish leather that had once been the skin of a hive-world’s royal family, both nodded their reluctant assent.
‘A prisoner, then,’ Xarl said.
‘Night Lords,’ came the wet growl of the Exalted, ‘move in.’
They divided up once they were inside. The lander was large enough that even separated it would take them up to fifteen minutes to sweep the entire hulk. Uzas took the storage decks and the cargo hold. Xarl made for the bridge and the crew deck. Cyrion remained outside, watching over the servitors. Septimus and his master moved towards the engineering deck.
Septimus drew his own weapons as he followed the reassuring bulk of his master. Two laspistols, Imperial Guard standard issue, were gripped in his fists.
‘Put those away,’ his master said without turning around. ‘If you shoot her, I will kill you.’
Septimus holstered the pistols. The two figures moved down a row of silent generators, each one twice as tall as a man. Their boots clanked on the metal gantry of the floor. Beyond the threat, which was hardly out of character for any of the demigods, something in his master’s answer caught his interest.
‘Her?’ he asked over a direct vox-link to his master.
‘Yes.’ His master advanced, his weapons undrawn but his gauntleted hands tensed into claws. ‘Even had I not seen her in my vision, I can smell her skin, her hair, her blood. Our prey is female.’
Septimus nodded, shielding his eyes again from the glaring illumination of the strip lighting above. It ran the length of the chamber, just as it had in the previous three chambers.
‘It’s bright in here,’ he said.
‘No, it’s not. The ship is on low power. You are just used to the Covenant. Be ready, Septimus. Do not, under any circumstances, look at her face. The sight will kill you.’
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