‘Old dogs,’ growled Spika. ‘It’s been a long time since either of them have been on the line.’
‘Most likely they are saying the same of us,’ said Dalbract, half under his breath. Spika looked around, clearly having heard.
‘Most likely,’ said Spika. ‘Old ships that are easy to ignore, and easy to forget if lost. Let’s just hope that they still have their teeth.’
‘Translation process synchronised,’ called the helm officer. ‘Warp navigational bearings matched. Geller field synchronisation established.’
‘Reading sensor locks from both vessels,’ said the Master of Artifice.
‘Reciprocate,’ said Spika. ‘Start the beacon.’
A low chime came from the vox-speakers across the bridge, followed seconds later by two fainter chimes – a call and response, like lights flashed between ships at night in times when voyages were across the depths of seas rather than between the stars.
‘Beacons locked and cycling,’ said a signals officer. ‘Signals from the Cold Steel and Lights Excelling confirm. They wait on your word, shipmaster.’
‘Very good,’ said Spika, and paused.
The Highness Ser Armaduke was the initiating ship for warp translation. It would punch the first hole into the sea of souls and then the Cold Steel and Lights Excelling would widen it and follow the Armaduke through the breach. Once through, they would stay locked to each other, their Navigators following the same course. Typically, ships in the warp could not communicate easily. The anti-reality of the warp broke the laws of nature by which vox worked. The ships in this convoy would share a single, synchronised Geller field envelope, but even in that bubble the pressure of the warp played merry hell with signals and instruments. The best that could be managed was via an ancient tech-rite that, through Geller field and signal synchronisation, allowed single blurts of signal to pass between ships. In this case, the beacon signal would circulate between each vessel at intervals, a pulse indicating cohesion and safety. Modulations could communicate a basic set of messages: emergency translation, route deviation. A break of more than two pings would indicate that the ship had been compromised. The order protocols handed to Spika by Kader made it very clear what happened at that point – immediate sanction.
Spika pivoted his chair around to where Commissar Kader stood at the side of the command platform. She had been there when Miletus had arrived, but had said nothing in that time, just watched.
‘We are ready, commissar,’ he said.
‘Proceed, shipmaster,’ she replied.
Spika pivoted away from her, his chair rising into the sensorium dome above.
‘Initiate,’ he said.
Officers turned to their stations. Sub-orders were called. Hands keyed consoles. Miletus felt his eyes vibrate and then water. A static-laden hum rose from the tech-adepts walking between the control stations. Clouds of incense puffed from censers. Blast shutters lowered over viewports, like lids pressing shut over eyes. Out in the void, a hole would be opening in reality, edges rippling back like torn sail caught in a gale. Beyond the opening, the warp would be churning, tendrils of dream substance reaching into being and dissolving into nothing.
Miletus had heard that on some ships there were whole sections of crew that did not know what they travelled through when their vessel passed between stars. His mouth dry, a pre-migraine ache opening behind his eyes, he almost envied such ignorance.
‘Translation point open, and stable,’ said the first officer.
‘Take us in,’ said Spika.
THE WARP
The sea of souls flowed past the three ships. It had no substance. Everything here was a dream, an ephemeral echo of a thought or desire of a mortal mind. If no one dreamed, or thought, or looked into the dark and saw teeth smiling under silver eyes, then the warp would be nothing – a true void beyond reality where there was no time or distance. But life had long poisoned the deeps, feeding surges into the great ocean that shivered with the desires and fears of billions alive and dead and yet to live. Some called the warp malign, and perhaps it was, but others more accurately thought it toxic – corrosive, and corrupting to life, and in the end lethal. It was hungry, too.
In the skin of the Highness Ser Armaduke, the crew felt the sea of souls press in on the skin of their reality. The hull creaked. Voices slid along the seams of bulkheads. The temperature in cabins and hold spaces dropped to freezing and then rose to foetid heat in the time it took a heart to beat once.
Shipmaster Spika watched as the night fell across the bridge. He had always thought of warp passages that way – as going into the night beyond. Coming back to reality was like returning to the day, like waking up. A strange thought, given that the void of space was considered darkness, but to him it was and always had been bright. Stars near and far put lie to the idea of the void as dark. Their constellations had guided old ships on Terra when the universe was smaller. Those beasts and heroes made of starlight had changed, had become grander, and so had the monsters that waited over the horizon. But the promise of safety that they represented had not changed.
Here in the night of the warp there was no light nor promise, only the slow run of dreams.
Spika tried not to sleep when his ship was upon the sea of souls. On a long voyage, he would have to give way to the demands of his body, but for this passage he had no intention of letting his eyes close. There was a good chance they would not see the end of this, he knew. He had understood why the Commissariat had chosen the Highness Ser Armaduke from the moment the details of the mission began to emerge.
The first reason was secrecy: if the Archenemy had agents in the crusade – and they surely did – they would not be interested in the movements of a ship like the Armaduke. The chances of traitors or infiltrators in his undermanned crew were minimal. It would have to be a very unlucky chance.
Then there was the need for firepower. If the convoy was attacked, it needed to be able to bite back. More importantly, each of the convoy ships needed to be able to kill any of the others in short order. It took time to set well-functioning reactors to overload, but point-blank broadsides from warships of the same yield could kill an unshielded ship fast.
Last there was resource. Simply put, he and his crew and his ship were expendable, the impact of their loss on the main crusade effort, minimal. Forgettable, vicious, and worthless – a trifactor of qualities that had led him and his Highness Ser Armaduke to this long night. Part of him – a lot of him, if he was honest – wanted it to not be quiet; for there to be a fight to win. The ship wanted that, too, he was sure. She was made to brawl, to slam broadsides at range close enough that the shells struck as the recoil was still vibrating through the decks; to have fire roll across her armour; to take damage and to give it and to come out the victor, bloody but grinning.
Or maybe not… maybe just an end to a fight that neither of them could win – a fight with time and change.
He blinked, aware that he was more tired than he cared to admit. Tired and old. From across the deck, he heard the metallic chime of the beacon signal come from the signal speakers.
‘Link to convoy clear and all is well,’ called a duty officer. Spika nodded as around him the ship creaked and shivered, and the night passed by.
Miletus, off watch for four hours, found that the last thing he wanted to do was to sleep. His cabin should have been shared with another three junior officers. The fact that he had it to himself told him how much the Highness Ser Armaduke was under-crewed. The dust on the bare cots told him it had been that way for a while, too.
A big brass-cased chrono sat on the wall, ticking through the minutes. He had tried to sleep. Every time he had closed his eyes, the sounds of the Armaduke had risen up to wrap around him. The vibrating pulse of the engines seemed to grow louder. The creaking metal sounded like something chuckling right beside his ear. The chrono ticked and ticked. He thought of what Dalbract had told him about the shadows, then wished he had not.
It had been aft
er the first watch change post-translation, when the units on the bridge had rotated. Miletus had noticed that the armsmen who took the watch did not have the serpent crest on their helms. He had asked Dalbract why.
‘Simple,’ the sergeant-at-arms had said. ‘They’re from a section that did not survive the shadows.’ Miletus had been going to ask what in Terra’s light that meant, when Dalbract carried on. ‘The arms units here are chopped, and bound numbered, just like they are on any ship in the God-Emperor’s glorious Navy. First unit, Aleph platoon, and on down–’
‘I have read the ship’s complement chart,’ Miletus had said.
‘Good for you, sir,’ said Dalbract, with the smallest edge in the words that said he did not like to be interrupted once he was going. ‘The numbers and unit codes are the same as other ships, but the names are more important. We are the Wyrmyr, we are watched over by the Emperor’s serpents. Those others are not.’
The lights in the companionway they had been moving down had stuttered for a second. Miletus had felt a sharp ping behind his eyes, a tiny flash of white light.
‘Geller pulse,’ Dalbract had muttered, and Miletus noticed him touch the snake crest on his helmet. ‘Steady, your highness,’ he said to the air as the light brightened again. ‘Steady.’
After a second, Dalbract had started moving again.
‘Long time ago,’ he continued, ‘after she slipped from the dock of her birth, the Armaduke was in a war, a long way from here. Those that still know them call them the Khulan Wars. It was a long fight, long and bloody, longer even than the crusade, and the enemy terrible and spiteful, and when they started losing, they turned to the shadows and asked them to help them. The shadows said “yes”, because they were hungry and all they needed was an invitation.
‘The Armaduke and her cousins were cutting and burning across the deeps when the shadows came. Slid out of the edges of starlight and candlelight. Right here inside the ship. They are fast, you see, because they are always behind you, always beside you. You turn and they turn just as fast. You stand still and they are all around, in your breath, at your back. And they are sharp. When you see them flicker in the light, they move like water and smoke, but touch you and that darkness is a razor. There was blood on these decks right here, thick and sloshing, and the shadows dancing through our Highness faster than the blink of eyes. Red and wet all the way down to the bilge decks, red and screaming. Last few that held together pulled up to the bridge, just people and guns and prayers, but there was no sanctuary. We carry the shadows with us, behind us, on the other side of the light.
‘Then the Emperor, who protects all who have faith, sent the serpents – right here on these decks, snakes made from His light and iron and silver, starlight and sun fury, so bright that the shadows could not dance. The serpents coiled around the crew that lived, and there was no corner for the shadows to slip into. They ran back to the deeps then, to the places between the night bells where they hunger and wait. They are still there, though, and so, just like we carry shadows with us, we have the snakes to watch them.’
He had touched the serpent head on the back of his pressure helm, and grinned.
‘Red and sloshing…’
Grinning, and the grin was a snake grin, fangs wide and a throat of shadow.
‘We carry the shadows with us…’
And Miletus could not get away and the grin was cracking wide, and all he could hear were the shadows laughing at him…
He came awake to the sound of the ready alarm blaring in the dark of the cabin, then a fist hammering on the door. He was sweating, shivering.
‘Up and armoured, sir,’ called Dalbract’s voice from the other side of the hatch. Miletus hit the lumen switch, and began to pull on his pressure armour. The hatch opened, and he could see Dalbract and a cluster of armsmen behind him.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Ready alert, sir,’ said Dalbract. ‘Need to be on the bridge, now.’
Miletus swore, and made for the door, his eye catching the watchful serpent on the crest of his helm for a second before he pulled it on. For an instant, he heard the echo of laughter from his dreams follow him.
‘Vox-link to the Mechanicus priests in the hangar?’ asked Kader.
‘No response either, commissar,’ replied the signals officer.
‘Direct pict-feed?’
‘Negative. Warp passage plays merry hell with comms.’
‘Warp passage be damned,’ snapped Kader. ‘We need oversight of the cargo and confirmation of security now.’
The light of the instrument consoles poured shadows into the recesses of Kader’s face as she turned to look up at Spika. The shipmaster was rotating between data-displays in the dome above the command deck. The articulated limb holding his chair hissed as it shifted his position. The air smelled of static, sweat and incense. Lumens were dimmed and set to the frosty blue for warp passage.
‘Major,’ called Spika without looking away from a bulbous display of engine output rhythms. ‘Are your units responding on their own vox-network?’
‘Negative,’ said Hexil. ‘Their vox-sets wouldn’t make it this far through the ship’s hull.’
Spika’s face twitched, lips pulling back from his teeth for a second. ‘Then we are going to have to do this the basic way.’
His chair swung around to face where the armsmen stood at attention. Miletus had not realised the shipmaster had even seen them enter.
‘Vox-link to the lower decks is down. We have negative connection on all sensor systems below deck thirty-one. Mister Cern, you will take your units down to the secure hangar deck, establish the status of our cargo and set up a runner relay as communication. Major Hexil will be coming with you to make sure you link up correctly with his security elements and no one starts shooting because the vox has decided to go dark.’ Spika looked at Hexil. ‘Confirmed, major?’
The Urdeshi officer looked at Kader.
‘How long until we get confirmation that the cargo is secure?’ she asked.
Spika looked around at the armsmen contingent. Miletus felt panic uncoil in his guts as the shipmaster’s gaze found him.
‘Twenty minutes to reach the deck,’ said Dalbract. ‘Depending on situation, five minutes to confirm security, ten to get word back, without allowance for anything being wrong.’
‘If there is anything wrong then it doesn’t matter,’ said Kader.
‘Commissar,’ began Spika.
‘The protocols are there for a reason,’ snapped Kader. ‘If we can’t confirm the cargo is secure then we cut the beacon.’
Quiet followed her words. The eyes of the deck officers turned. Miletus felt himself swallow in a dry throat. If the beacon cut out, the Cold Steel and Lights Excelling would open fire. Unshielded, in a shared Geller field envelope, the Highness Ser Armaduke would become fire and wreckage in moments. Whatever was left would tumble into the sea of souls to be unmade by the dreaming depths.
Spika held his gaze steady on Kader. Around them, alert lights pulsed in the blue-stained gloom.
‘You have your orders, Mister Cern, see them done.’
‘Hatch opening,’ called the man at the doorway, and he pulled it wide. The one behind him in the stack held still, blast gun levelled at the space beyond.
‘In,’ the armsman said, and moved through, gun unwavering. The stack of three others followed, hands on the backs of the one in front, slow and steady as they spread into the passage beyond. A hand signal from the armsman just the other side of the hatch, and Dalbract was moving forwards, Miletus at his back.
Major Hexil followed him. The Urdeshi had dropped into the armsmen’s way of working down through the decks as though he had been working with them for years. He had a bullpup blitzgun tucked into his chest. He seemed to barely be breathing. Miletus was trying to hide his panting after they had dropped down only five decks. Sweat was running down his face inside his pressure helm.
‘Vox-check,’ he remembered to call. Confirmations came
back from the unit, chopping with static. He switched channel. ‘Bridge, this is Wyrmyr,’ he called, as they began to move.
A rolling growl of distortion answered.
‘Bridge, we are approaching access to hangar bay.’
Still no answer.
Ahead of him the first group of armsmen were closing on a heavy hatch into the hangar bay. Scuffed yellow and black chevrons crossed the metal. The glow-globes in the ceiling were still alight, just as they had been in every passage and compartment on the way down. The creak and whisper of the ship had faded, too, quietening so that you could almost forget that the ship was sliding through the sea of souls. It was peaceful.
‘Any luck with your troops, major?’ asked Dalbract without looking around.
‘Nothing,’ said Hexil. The major’s voice was clipped, no easing of the tension from him.
‘Sir, if I might suggest that the major goes through first? His units have been out of comms. Given their orders, they might decide to fire on someone they don’t recognise.’
‘Yes,’ said Miletus, but the Urdeshi major was already moving past them and slotting in beside the armsmen next to the door.
‘Sir?’ said Dalbract.
Miletus blinked. The armsmen were ready at the hatch onto the hangar. One had inserted the override key into the lock controls and had his hand on the release lever. The others were stacked one behind another, guns pointing forwards. He noticed the eyes of the snake on the back of their helms staring at him. He shook himself.
‘Go,’ he said.
The armsman pulled the release lever. Bolts released with a snap. The armsmen pushed the hatch wide, and Hexil went through.
‘Friendlies!’ he heard the major shout, and then the armsmen were up and through the hatch, and Miletus was with them, gun up as they spread out into the hangar. Nothing moved. No shots rang out, no shouts, just the sound of their heavy boots hitting the deck.
SABBAT WAR Page 30