‘You’re probably not wrong.’
‘What kind of a friend are you?’
‘The kind who will listen to you talk for far too long about how the God-Emperor, and the great and wondrous mechanism of His Imperium, has not seen fit to assign newly blessed-with-rank Third Lieutenant Miletus Cern to the most glorious and honour-laden post available in the battlefleet.’
‘Fair point… Accept my apologies?’
‘No need – you’ve already got a long tour in a void-wreck as penance.’
‘Thanks.’
‘My pleasure. What did you say it was called again? The ship, I mean?’
‘The Highness Ser Armaduke.’
‘Stand by,’ the servitor voice crackled from a speaker-grille as the shuttle lurched. Miletus Cern’s eyes opened to grainy amber light. The tone of vibration in the shuttle’s hull had changed. Thrusters were firing, coasting its moment down as it lined up on its docking arc. He blinked. A loader was grinning at him from across the compartment. The man’s teeth were crimson spikes of metal. He nodded. The man grinned wider. The whole frame was rattling now. Ties holding supply crates to the deck creaked. Sunlight came through a slot viewport next to him as the shuttle turned. He craned his neck to look out. Verghast looked back at him through the armaglass, its sun a burning circle above its terminator. He could see other craft, glimmer flecks catching the sun. Gordiol Station was still visible, its rough wheel shape a silhouette against the world beneath.
The station had been busier than he’d expected, but then he had nothing to measure that expectation against. In his head, he had thought that after victory and with the war front already moving, it would be quiet, maybe even deserted, a ghost port send-off for a dead-end posting. He had arrived on a supply transport and got a hop to the orbital station with a lighter carrying an Administratum delegation. Pandemonium, that had been his first impression of Gordiol Station. Ships and people and crates, and the reek of air recycled in different hulls mingling. The lighter had put down next to a macro-lifter stencilled with medicae marks. A column of wounded, some walking, some wheeled on stretchers under tangles of tubes, was slowly feeding into the open doors in the hull. There were soldiers, hundreds of soldiers, all in different uniforms, talking and shouting to each other. Servitors clanked past under heavy loads. Dull-faced Munitorum scribes bent over data-slates and spools of parchment.
He had had to force his way against currents of people, and hunt down a transport destined for the Highness Ser Armaduke. He had almost missed it. None of the docking officers or scribes had known anything about the ship, and only when Miletus had shown them his order docket had they noted the alphanumeric code punched into the edge of the parchment and sent him running down to where an old supply transport was getting ready to cast off. He had made it, just.
The sun and stars moved beyond the viewport armaglass. Miletus twisted, looking; the ship had to be coming into view soon…
A cliff of metal eclipsed the sun, and the world.
The Highness Ser Armaduke was a Tempest-class frigate, a little under one and a half kilometres from prow to stern. She was not a graceful ship. The shipwrights who laid down her bones had made her to fight according to doctrines that framed war in the void as vicious brawls won by those who could out-punch and out-weather their enemies. The Tempest-class embodied that creed. Smaller than a ship of the line, it packed twice the gun yield of other craft of a similar size. Skinned in reinforced armour, it was a short-range mauler that battered its opponents into ruin. Brutal, pugnacious, the Highness Ser Armaduke and her sisters were now a monument to the shifting nature of Naval doctrine, relics that endured by stubbornness rather than favour.
Crenellated slabs of armour and tiered macro-batteries layered the Highness Ser Armaduke’s flanks. Towers, aerials and turrets rose from her back in a jagged mountain range that peaked with the command bastion set two-thirds back on her spine. He could see the mouths of gun batteries grow in his eyes as the shuttle banked closer, each fifteen metres across, at best guess. Porthole lights gleamed here and there, and guide beacons blinked on the tips of sensor arrays.
The shuttle came level. The ship’s flank grew in the viewport until it was all Miletus could see. The slot opening of a hangar bay briefly flicked past, and then the shuttle was turning in, engines growling and whining. The frame juddered as it settled onto the deck. The cargo compartment lights sputtered from amber to green. The loaders were already on their feet, releasing straps holding the crates. Miletus released his own harness, slung his kit sack and dragged his kit chest down the ramp as it opened.
‘You are late,’ came a clipped voice. ‘Get the load clear in five.’ He looked up as he reached the deck. A woman in the uniform of the Commissariat was walking across the deck towards them.
‘Gonna take longer than that,’ said one of the loaders, who had not seen who was talking. He stiffened as he looked around.
‘Five minutes and decrementing,’ said the commissar. Her blue gaze was like the aim of a gun barrel. ‘This deck will be clear.’
The loaders nodded and began to hurry, snapping straps and cargo nets free, dragging crates down the ramp with mag hooks. Miletus glanced around, aware of the quiet in the hangar bay. It was empty apart from the shuttle and a scattering of armsmen and tech-priests.
‘Your assignment docket.’
The words snapped his head around. The commissar was right next to him. Her gloved hand held out. He fumbled a salute before putting his kitbag and chest down.
‘Here, commissar,’ he said, holding out his commission and assignment paperwork. She unfolded it, eyes scanning the words and seals while tapping on a data-slate. She had grey tabs on the shoulders of her uniform that he did not recognise.
He swallowed with a dry mouth. The Commissariat had a presence in all Naval and Astra Militarum units. Hard, often brutal, they were not to be treated with anything other than complete respect and a lot of caution. But why was this commissar the only officer in the almost deserted hangar?
‘Did you have any interaction with anyone on Gordiol Station?’ she asked, looking up from the paperwork.
‘No… I mean, yes, commissar. I had to find a shuttle.’
‘Is that why you are late to report?’
‘I was not given a transit schedule, commissar.’
‘Did you show your docket or mention the name of your assigned ship to anyone?’
‘Yes, to the dock officers and scribe – I couldn’t find the shuttle.’
‘Time and location of these interactions?’
He gave them to her, hearing himself hesitate as he tried to remember if he had looked at a chron. She waited, tapping details into her data-slate as he gave them.
‘Anyone else?’
‘No, commissar.’
‘Did you notice if you were observed or followed?’
‘No, commissar, not that I was aware of,’ he replied, wondering what these questions meant.
The last of the crates were clear of the deck. The loaders were hurrying up the ramp and the shuttle’s engines were cycling up.
‘You are not part of the ship’s complement until you have submitted to the shipmaster. This hangar is a secure area, so you will have to remain for now. My name is Commissar Kader. You will follow my commands until you get to the shipmaster, understand?’
‘Yes, commissar,’ he said.
‘Good, now get out of the way. You move, speak or do anything without my order, and I will sanction you.’
He saluted, suddenly very aware of the bolt pistol holstered at her hip. The shuttle was boosting out of the hangar bay as he fell in behind her; she strode across the hangar deck to where the armsmen and Mechanicus priests waited. Miletus felt his mind folding over and over. What was going on? One of the armsmen gave him a desultory salute, which Miletus returned. They all wore metal pressure armour and were carrying stockless shot cannons.
‘You’ll need this, son,’ said an armsman with the flash marks of
a sergeant-at-arms, holding out a breath mask. Miletus pulled it over his head, fumbling with straps and flow valves. He remembered the first decompression exercise in training, the sudden thump as the compartment vented and the panic as he tried to breathe in and found that he was drowning in vacuum.
The sergeant-at-arms glanced at a wrist-mounted data-console.
‘Shuttle will be out of the exclusion zone in four minutes, twelve seconds and counting, commissar.’
‘Full alert,’ said Kader, pulling on a compact mask and goggles. ‘The cargo will be coming in as soon as the zone is clear.’
Safeties clicked off guns. Behind them, the tech-priests clicked and buzzed at each other. Miletus felt his already rising disquiet reaching up his spine. What in the Throne’s name was going on?
The deck began to vibrate. The outer hull doors pulled wider, opening the whole width of the hangar bay. The glittering tension of a void field blurred the stars and blackness beyond. He could see a sliver of Verghast at the edge of the view. Ship lights and trans-atmospheric engines blinked close to it. One began to grow brighter, the dot swelling to a disc. For a moment, Miletus thought it was a single craft closing with them. Then the light separated, and he saw that it was not one but five. They accelerated, two sets of engine lights curving wide as three pushed forwards.
A close escort formation, he thought. The two craft peeling away would be interceptors that would watch over the remaining three as they pushed through the void shield envelope and into the hangar. His ears popped as the pressure in the hangar shifted. The temperature dropped.
The lead craft was a bulk lifter, the kind used to shift tank squadrons or heavy engine units from orbit to surface: a hog with a big gut and bigger lift. Green-and-tan camo covered its hull. Fresh blocks of spray blanked its unit markings.
Twin Vulture gunships followed it in, their doors opening. Figures in grey puzzle-pattern fatigues and breath masks dropped to the deck as the gunships held steady, thrusters screaming. The troopers spread out. Miletus had seen Naval security forces and Imperial Guard as a cadet, and he could read the hard professionalism in the way the troopers moved. They ringed the bulk lifter as it settled to the deck, guns ready. The noise of the engines rolled from the walls and deck. Miletus could feel it vibrating through his skin into his bones.
‘Stand by,’ said Kader, and Miletus blinked at the sound of the vox inside his breath mask.
The lifter’s engines were still whining at full power and the gunships still hovering as one of the troopers jogged over to Kader. The commissar drew and levelled her bolt pistol. Miletus felt his mouth open in shock. The trooper stopped, aiming a bullpup fitted carbine back at the commissar.
‘Authenticate,’ said Kader.
‘Code alpha-one-niner-two-gimel,’ said the trooper. ‘Reciprocate.’
‘Code phi-gamma-seven-two-one,’ said Kader.
The trooper lowered his carbine.
‘Major Hexil,’ he said.
‘Commissar Kader – special secondment,’ the commissar replied with a nod. ‘What is the status of the cargo, major?’
‘Secure, stable. We have one squad inside with Mechanicus minders. All report and corroborate that the objects are secure and inert.’
‘Alright, let’s not hang around – offload.’
Hexil nodded, turned and raised a hand. The doors on the belly of the bulk lifter opened. Gas vented into the frigid air. Miletus was staring, eyes fixed on the space beyond the unfolding tongue of the shuttle’s cargo ramp. More troopers in puzzle-greys backed out, guns pointed into the hold space. The gun mounts on the hovering gunships twitched.
A shape came into view on the cargo ramp. Tracked battle servitors flanked it, and tech-priests in deep red walked behind it, incense smoke puffing from censers. At first, Miletus was not sure what he was looking at – it looked to be a litter of black iron on heavy tracks. He could see tangles of pipes and humming mechanisms clinging to its sides. The blue-white dome of a stasis field cloaked its upper surface. The air hummed and swam where it met the field. There was something inside, something beneath the shimmering surface of stopped time. He could see pieces of chromed metal, shapes that looked like great bladed wheels, segmented lengths of brass and carbon-black substances. There were marks on some of the objects. It was like a pile of metallic flotsam thrown up on the shore of some strange, oil-dark sea.
Something in his mind did not like the shapes. His eyes could make no sense of what they were supposed to be. He could see soot and dust and ash clinging to some pieces. Were those bones amongst the metal: vertebrae fused into cogwork, femurs wrapped in steel? He blinked. His eyes were stinging. His mouth was dry. He could taste acid. Somewhere at the back of his head he could hear something… echo sounds… like a metallic lock clicking…
A hand on his shoulder brought his head around. The sergeant-at-arms was looking at him.
‘Orders are not to look directly at ’em, sir.’
Miletus blinked again and then nodded. He was breathing harder than he’d thought. He kept his eyes down, aware that the first litter was rolling across the hangar, and that another was coming down the shuttle’s ramp, the shadow of a third behind it.
‘What are they?’ he asked out loud.
‘Be silent!’ snapped Kader. He looked at her, noticed the lines of tension in her face above her breath mask.
Miletus kept his gaze down as the procession moved across the hangar. He could hear the tech-priests humming a low dirge and taste the sharp electrostatic tang of the stasis fields. A tech-priest hurried between each of the litters, checking pieces of machinery, before turning towards Kader and Major Hexil and making the sign of the cog.
‘Cargo unloaded,’ said Kader into the vox. ‘Proceed to lockdown.’
The shuttle ramp closed, and the vessel rose back into the air, pivoted and pushed back into the void.
The tech-priests who had been waiting in the hangar hurried forwards. Servitors dragged great blocks of machinery next to the three litters. Thick cables were connected to sockets. A fresh pulse of active charge rose to blend with the hum of the stasis fields. The hull doors were grinding shut. The gunships settled to the deck, engines spooling down. The hull doors sealed with a dull boom. Hexil and his troopers were moving, unloading heavy weapons and tripod mounts from backpacks. Heavy mag-locks clamped the litters to the deck with dull thumps. The tech-priests’ drone rose to a chorus, the incense thickening as displays lit on the blocky machines. One of the priests glided towards Kader. Spines of charge coils projected from its hunched back and multiple limbs of articulated brass hung inside the sleeves of its robe. Its face was a mosaic of crystal lenses inside a deep hood.
‘The specimens are sanctified by field and system,’ it said, its voice a flat buzz. The charge coils on its back sparked in time with its words. ‘Primary and auxiliary power connection and interface have been made. Sensory oversight has been ordained. The rites are complete.’
Kader nodded, pulling the breath mask from her face and putting the peaked cap of her office back on.
‘Major?’ she called to Hexil.
‘We are secured, commissar.’
‘Good, then I had better go and talk to the shipmaster.’
She turned and began to walk towards where more armsmen waited beside an exit hatch. Hexil fell in beside her, two of his troopers with him. The sergeant-at-arms and a cluster of the armsmen followed. The sergeant tapped Miletus on the arm as he passed.
‘You too, sir,’ he said. ‘The shipmaster will want you to report soon as your feet are on deck.’
Miletus shook himself, picked up his sack and chest, and followed. He paused once as he stepped through the hatch out of the hangar and glanced back to the three blurred shapes under their shrouds of flickering blue.
What in the light of Terra are they?
‘I appreciate your authority, commissar, but now is the time for those answers you have been promising.’
Shipmaster Spika sat in the worn
leather of his command chair, gaze levelled at Kader. His features were hard, but old, like wood baked by sun and dried by salt. To be near his stare felt like being in a gun’s sight line. Miletus – watching from the side of the command platform, just behind Kader and Hexil – felt as though one flick of Spika’s eyes and he would be lost to a shell blast.
‘This ship is–’ began Kader.
‘My ship,’ said Spika, his voice level. ‘The Highness Ser Armaduke is the God-Emperor’s, and I am the one ordained and ranked to look after her on His behalf. I have orders to report and take on board a cargo of damaged Mechanicus materiel and transport it to an unspecified location. Since arriving, you have found me, showed me the letter from fleet and crusade command ordering my full cooperation, and I have given you that. Now I have just taken on a cargo with a vermillion-level security docket and you are telling me that my shift orders are no longer true. You are going to have to fill in a lot of the blanks before this ship moves.’
‘Shipmaster, this mission is–’ began Major Hexil, but Spika cut through him.
‘I did not address you, major. You will be silent until I do so.’
The major closed his mouth. The Imperial Guard officer had identified himself and his unit as part of the Urdeshi Fourth Light, seconded to Commissariat auxiliary duty. Hexil oozed the kind of lean hardness that demanded caution and respect. The hardening in his eyes as he looked at Spika made Miletus want to shrink even further back from the exchange. If Spika noticed, he gave no sign of caring. He raised his eyebrows, his gaze still fixed on Kader.
‘Commissar?’
Kader’s mouth thinned, then she nodded. ‘Neither of us have the luxury of spending time on drawing out lines of authority.’
‘Neither of us have the luxury of being less than frank with one another,’ said Spika, eyes glittering.
Miletus had read everything he could find on record about the shipmaster. A strong man, cited for participation in several bold and decisive actions in the early stages of the crusade, decorated for personal action and for maintenance of command under fire and extreme difficulty. There were other sections of the record too, but they were inaccessible to an officer as junior as Miletus. There were just the details of his postings, promotions and noted actions – the whole reading like the charted journey of a man climbing a mountain only to drop down a chasm. Promotion and service had seen him move up, steadily. He had served on some of the most hallowed ships of the fleet beside some of its most feted officers. He had been first lieutenant under Vice Admiral Tralgo, no less. Ship command had followed, as had a number of favourable citations, then the cliff and the fall into marginal duties.
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