n. pl. in·cu·nab·u·la (-l)1. A book printed before 1501; an incunable.
2. An artifact of an early period.
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792.M41 MPV Anteus and the privateer Sword of Anticlus, mechanically adhered, adrift off a Greater Cloud in the deeps of Argo-Navis Keir ran into the smoke-filled docking corridor, covering his mouth with one hand and holding his new bolt-pistol in the other. The smoke was quickly clearing, however, in the breeze that had sprung up between the two leaking vessels. Stopping as he came to the edge of the Anteus’ grav-bubble, Keir peered though the rushing smoke. The cutting-ring at the end – still stowing itself away – glowed white-hot, but the space beyond – the interior of the Sword – was clear as far as he could tell. No signs of life. Something looked odd, until Keir reminded himself that it was not a wall of the Sword he was looking at straight ahead, but the decking. “Arbites! Clear our point of entry,” ordered Keir. The Arbites had stopped beside him, launchers at the ready. Keir covered his eyes with his arm as the photon flash grenades were expertly bounced off the corridor and into the so-far deserted space at the end, and he heard the sharp crack-crack-crack of their detonation and felt the pressure-waves thudding into him like drum-beats. “With me! Advance and clear!” Keir launched himself off, sailed through zero-g and then twisted backwards as he started to fall forward towards the decking of the Sword directly ahead. He landed squarely on his feet, crouching with his bolt-pistol raised and whipping one way and then the next hunting for a target. The ship swayed and rocked around him. The room was a small thruster maintenance antechamber, and it was deserted. The collision with Anteus, the cutting arm and the sealing foam had wrecked it almost beyond recognition, and thick smoke swirled in the conflicting breezes. It was, however, secure and reasonably sound. A single, buckled hatch was recessed into one wall – leading onto a maintenance corridor if Sword’s builders had followed the standard template, thought Keir. The Arbites squads were already arriving from overhead, landing upright with crashing thuds and then rushing aside into positions of cover. Keir craned his head back, looking up the docking corridor. “Watch out for the grav-transition. I don't want any of the new crew breaking their necks!” He heard Anath shout back something about rigging a few descenders, and left him to it. The whole room shook as Anteus’ guns fired again, and broken control rods fell from the ceiling. He flicked his vox link. “Cease firing guns nine to twelve. Advance boarding crews have now entered the Sword.” The other guns fore and aft would keep firing, try and kill as many Sword crew as possible, and Keir or the other officers would order them to cease fire as and when they approached. Well, thought Keir, that was the theory anyway. Actual combat seemed to pay scant regard to pure theory. The room shook again, but this time it was explosions deep within Sword herself, the jolts coming from a noticeably different direction. Maybe hit a small-arms munition store, Keir wondered, with a wicked grin. All the Arbites squads were down and busy deploying. One squad already had the hatch jimmied open and were covering the maintenance corridor outside. The Sword had been given plenty of warning that Anteus was coming in this way; Keir didn't expect any local resistance. They'd find somewhere more defendable, make their stand. Brenner strode over to Keir, accompanied by Squad Leaders Otto, Culzean and Serval. “How do we deploy, Captain?” “One squad to the engine rooms, shut them down. We can control her from there if we have to. Two remaining squads with you and me. We spearhead straight for the quarterdeck, kill everyone we meet on the way, assuming the collision and our own guns have left a clear path. If we get pinned down, we split up, try and make it to the quarterdeck by separate routes. The crew squads follow us. I’m going to have the Bosun hold this position with his crews – the man doesn’t know how to retreat, so he should protect the Anteus alright.” Keir said with a wry smile. “Captain.” It was Squad Leader Otto. “The commander of this vessel…” Keir nodded. “DeVere’s death will be avenged, Squad Leader, him and his Arbitrators. I’m not taking Scrima prisoner, if that’s what you’re getting at. If it comes to it, you can finish him yourself. Now, let’s get a move on.” “We don’t have much time, sir,” said Otto. Keir shot him a look, as did Brenner. “I believe I just said that, Squad Leader,” he said, and turned away, frowning. The vox-speaker in the Arbite’s gorget made all speech sound artificial, but there had been something odd about that, thought Keir. Never mind – there were more pressing matters to deal with. # Commander Scrima pushed the barrel of his heavy laspistol into the crewman’s open mouth. Some teeth went with it, and the man squealed like a sick auroch. “Again,” said Scrima quietly to his Senior Machinist, his eyes never leaving the man kneeling before him. “I caught him trying to overload the coolant systems in the engine room – all of them at once, even the backups. Beg to report the engines would’ve gone nova in seconds, commander. If I hadn’t a’ stopped him,” the Machinist added. Scrima tilted his head to one side, his lank, black hair falling across his face, still looking into the crewman’s terrified eyes. There was something about those eyes, Scrima thought. Something wonderful and dark and very far-off and – he pulled the trigger and threw the gun across the quarterdeck with a hoarse cry. He realised he was shaking, and sweating. In the man’s eyes – he had seen – something. It had been hungry, and it had been looking back at him. He stood for a moment, eyes screwed shut, and clenched his fists, driving the long nails into his palms in an effort to dispel the images that still slithered in his peripheral vision. He opened his eyes again, blood dripping from his hands. His cadaverous face was blanched and drawn, making his ritual scars almost disappear. “Make to the void,” he said through gritted, jewel-encrusted teeth, indicating the headless corpse. “Gather us to Emergency Boarding Plan Gammal-delta. The men all, as there are. Such armour and guns to be freed. Invaders be and, it being so, we be to meet them.” Scrima wondered if Plan Gammal-delta wasn’t a bit too ambitious, having lost so many of his best close-quarters fighters already. No, he thought, ambition was what won the day. Ambition and surprise. He would kill the men from Anteus, and take their ship into the bargain. He took a key from a loop in his sash, and plugged it into a socket on the bulkhead at the back of the fire-ravaged quarterdeck. For a brief moment he froze, thinking the collision and the enemy shells had damaged even this, but then the hidden hatch slid aside. He looked through the rippled, clear ceramite at the Scrima clan's finest and oldest heirloom, gleaming despite its age under the strong spot-lux of the stasis unit. A full suit of power armour crafted when the Imperium was young, its entire mustard yellow surface covered in holy texts densely written in the finest spider-ink chirography the artisan-worlds of Herenere had to offer. The lightning claws alone, thought Scrima, were probably worth more than the cursed Anteus. He switched off the stasis field, started the powering-up sequence, and began to undress. # The ambush, when it came, was clinical and deadly. Having been delayed by the numerous bulkheads erected into place, the squads of crewmen with Keir were bunched up and beginning to lose focus at the lack of resistance to their penetration of the Sword. As the last of the thermic paste sizzled out and the latest thick bulkhead clanged to the decking under the hammering from lasrifle butts, the relatively open space ahead seemed like a blessing from the gods. It was a large vertical utility room, longer than it was wide, where large gaps between the decks allowed the upper transverse Keir and his men were on to look down on the mid-level transverse running in the same direction five floors beneath them. Numerous cross-corridors, all apparently closed-off, led into the multi-level space, which was used for moving large pieces of spares and equipment between floors on the ship. Cranes, winches and lifting gear crowded the ceiling, and long lengths of cable swung heavily in mid-air. Walkways, ramps and open stairways ringed the central well. It was, Keir knew, an excellent place for an ambush, even without the distractions of the constant rocking of the vessel as the Sword still struggled to free itself, the smoke that pervaded everything, the damage to the structure from the collision and the hissing and draughts from the myriad hull-breaches. “Hold!” Keir shouted as several squads charged through the ragged hole in the bulkhead. “I said hold!” he bellowed, striding out after them, as behind him more men spilled onto the broad gallery. As the men ahead came to a halt he grabbed some of them by the collars and bodily hauled them back. He cuffed another two men on the side of the head with his gloved fist. “I will have discipline or I will have corpses. Make your minds up, crewmen. Stay alert.” Keir was already moving to the railing at the edge of the broad walkway, scanning around for signs of defenders. There was no movement, and no sounds of activity, but he could hear little over the groans of the superstructure, the thrum of the ramping engines and the hiss of the escaping air. With waved commands Keir spread his men around the rectangular gallery, looking for a way forward. It was clear that their immediate path to the fore of the vessel was blocked by another bulkhead. “Salem, Suilvan. Take your squads down these ramps – here – and the stairs over there, check out the lower levels. Find me a way forward, eh?” Still more armoured bodies came through behind Keir, including the Arbites. When he thought about it later, Keir realised they were waiting for the Arbites. As the last of the two squads of carapace-armoured giants clumped across the thin decking, the stab-lights on their combat shotguns making faint, sweeping cones in the smoke as their owners hunted for targets, the deep well was plunged in blackness as the Sword's lux units went out. Moments later Keir felt his stomach lurch as the grav suddenly vanished and his feet floated inches clear of the floor. The now almost solid beams of the stab-lights were almost the only thing visible as the Arbites drifted out of control. Their boots' mag-soles had found nothing to adhere to on the thin plas-weave decking. The swinging lights picked out frozen moments as dozens of crewmen flailed around frantically trying to grab for railings or fixtures or each other as their fractional momentums lifted them helplessly into thin air. Before the Anteans' zero-g training could kick in, the defenders of the Sword opened the hatches on the various levels and began to fire. The air was suddenly thick with las-bolts, so many that they lit the darkness almost on their own. Their rapid snap-whines echoed off every wall, but over the din Keir could hear the almost instantaneous double-crack of wire-rifles discharging. Already screams of pain were filling his ears and the vox channels as cries rang around the bulkheads. Keir keyed his vox as he drifted. “Forward spearhead ambushed at the fore-well. Enemy in force, heavy fire incoming.” Keir saw numerous stab-lights come on around the room as his crewmen reacted to the darkness, but even as he saw the Arbites doing the exact opposite he was keying his vox. “No lights! No lights! Turn off your stab-lights! They'll only attract fire dammit!” He tried to cover his face as he felt the patter of razor-wire across his flak jacket, but some pieces got through, and he could feel them embedded in the skin of his neck like hot needles. They must have ricocheted, he thought, otherwise he would have been cut to the bone. “Hold your fire! Remember your training. Find a secure position and return fire. Grenade those hatches, Arbites!” He couldn't fire his pistol in zero-g, he knew, and neither could anyone else from the Anteus. If they did the kickback would send them spinning uncontrollably. He had to find something to hold onto if he wanted to return fire, and he had to get grav back on or his men would be cut to pieces. Only the Arbites could safely advance under the cover of their suppression shields. Keir kicked out again, and this time his steel toe-cap found purchase. Instinct took over and Keir propelled himself upwards and sideways, twisting in mid-air. Before his feet hit anything he felt a heavy length of chain brush his back and he grabbed for it as he passed. He must be near the lifting gear, he thought. If the grav were to come back on now he would have a long way to fall. Las rounds rent the air, and spanked off the machinery, railings and bulkheads, sending out showers of glowing metal slag. The dark well was alive with flashes and sparks, and the disorientation was surely telling in favour of the ambushers. Some of their fire was very accurate – too accurate. They must have some heat-sense units, he thought. He caught brief glimpses of crewmen – only a few, thankfully – trying to return fire but simply being sent spinning backwards, completely out of control. Loud explosions hammered through the air as frag-grenades went off. The outpouring of fire from the hatches diminished noticeably in their wake. He managed to find a solid part of a crane to grip with his legs, as the heavy chain he had disturbed started to gather in coils beside and around him. He could no longer see the Arbites in the dark, but he could now hear the distinctive buzzing sound of the executioner shells, and knew that at least some of them were returning fire from secure positions. The ambushers weren’t the only ones with heat-sense. He opened the Arbites' vox channel. “Arbites, draw their fire and rush the nearest hatchways. Find me a way out of this damned well. I’m going to get the grav back on.” Culzean's voice came back. “On our way, Captain.” “The Arbites comply, Captain,” said Squad Leader Otto. Keir keyed his vox again. “Brenner–” He was cut-off by a roar over the open vox as he saw the seething, blue light of Brenner's shock maul flare at the far side of the well. The Proctor was in the thick of it, swinging into an open hatch from the railing above and crushing the shadowy figures around him with savage sweeps of the weapon. Las-rounds whicked off his armour uselessly and Keir caught a booming chorus of vox-hail. “–of Judgement is the Eternal Alpha and Omega; Exult! For the Book of Judgement is open; Exult–!” Crew squads lit only by the pulsing glow from the maul were already making for the open hatch as Brenner cleared the way. It looked as if grav was operational outside the well, but almost all the men from Anteus were still trapped inside it, and coming under murderous cross-fire. A flare of blue, sparkling light from somewhere below – or above – dazzled him briefly. “Juridicae Eternae!” came the hammering vox-cry, as the two squads of Arbites launched themselves through the pitch blackness towards two separate hatchways, the incoming fire just flaring harmlessly off their glowing shields. Across the well from Keir a spray of fire blasted out, centred on yet another hatchway. Keir took rough aim at the numerous muzzle-flashes. He emptied his full clip on auto, and then immediately kicked off for the floor far below, twisting around to brace his feet. He had not gone more than a few metres before the crane support he had just left exploded in a welter of fire and zinging and hissing wire-shards. Some of the deflected pieces found him and fresh cuts opened across his face. # When the lights went out Roke had been following Suilvan's men down the open stairwell. He had paused, men running into the back of him. When the grav went Roke's stomach had very nearly emptied itself in protest, and Roke found himself drifting in total disarray, bouncing off unseen walls, flailing at the merest suggestion of a hand-hold. Within seconds he had no idea where he was or which way was up, but part of his mind took the time to sardonically congratulate him on at least keeping hold of his weapons and his lunch. Meaningless gibberish poured out of his vox-bead. His foot came into contact with something solid and he kicked instinctively. Immediately he began tumbling through space, the lights of the storm of las-rounds cartwheeling about him chaotically. His mind rebelled and his stomach followed, just before his head and shoulders crashed heavily into something cold and metallic. His pistol was knocked from his grasp. Las-rounds skipped past him as he rebounded, dazed. Somewhere, blue lights flared and explosions boomed. Suddenly what felt like another body crashed into his legs, sending him back into a mad spin. He yelled, panic mounting. His arm caught in a railing as more las-fire punched ragged holes in the decking nearby. Jamming his stick-sword into the bars of the railing he struggled to stop his legs from continuing on up over his head, not that 'up' had any meaning any longer. Roke frantically hunted around in the las-streaked darkness for anyone or anything he could recognise, an enemy to attack, a way out, anything, but there was only more noise and strobing flashes of light. Something crashed into his back – not something but someone, he realised. Shots flashed past his head, half-blinding him. He yelled, struggling to free his stick-sword, got it loose and plunged it into the person who was shooting at him. # Keir flew through the air heading, he hoped, for the bottom of the well and the grav controls. He heard the scream of tormented metal from behind him, and the booming noise of an explosion nearby. Suddenly something crashed into his side and he grabbed for it, even as he span out of control. It was a body, he could see in the bursts of light from the raging firefight, a dead body, but he could not tell who it was. The crewman had been hit – and stripped – by a wire-round, and the white bones of his face stood out clearly in the darkness. Keir twisted and pushed the body away in the direction of the top of the well, hoping that the counter-force would push him back in the direction of the bottom. Instead he slammed into some railings, and another body. There was a yelp of surprise and rage from the other person as las-rounds from the hatch across the well sizzled past them. Then something sharp dug forcefully into the front of Keir's flak jacket, knocking the air out of him. As he gasped, and brought his bolt-pistol up, he realised he had recognised the yelp. “–oke?” he spluttered, as the blade was again driven with surprising strength into his armoured belly. “Doctor – for pity's sake – it’s me!” The whole room shuddered from some nearby detonation, and a blaze of las-fire lit up the two men’s features just enough for the doctor to realise his mistake. “I – I took you for an enemy, Captain, you – you were shooting at me.” His voice sounded shaky. More las-rounds whipped past, one exploding on the railing near Keir’s hand. “The enemy are inside the hatches for now, Doctor, where the grav is. Please remember that, eh? We have to move.” Keir turned, braced against the railing and sprayed another full clip in the direction of the incoming fire, which diminished briefly. He lobbed one of his few grenades after the bolt rounds, and then grabbed Roke under the arms. “Let go of the railing! And don’t move.” Keir braced his legs and kicked off, heading again for the bottom of the well only two decks away now as return fire blasted back at them. Keir felt icy needles slicing deep into the flesh of his legs through the toughened fabric of his uniform and gasped in pain, just as he heard Roke stifle a cry also. Another explosion nearly deafened them both as the grenade went off. “–eck!” Keir swore. “We’re looking for the grav controls – they’ll be defended, just stab anyone who isn’t me.” Working quickly, by feel, Keir slipped a single lumen round into the empty chamber of his bolt pistol, and then rammed a fresh clip of ordinary ammo home. Keir then twisted himself around, using Roke as a lever. He had to avoid the pair of them bouncing when they hit the decking, and he had kicked off a bit harder than he should have. With any luck the decking was the same plasweave as above. He slipped his boot knife out. He felt, rather than saw, the decking looming as they approached and as his knees bent with the impact he stabbed out with the knife. The thin blade caught in the perforations. “Hold on Doctor!” Keir hissed. Roke’s shoulders and back crashed into the floor beside Keir and immediately recoiled. Keir tightened his grip and dug in with the knife. The blade held. Keir looked around, but could see nothing. No shots were coming their way, so at least no-one could see them, he thought. He took aim into the inky blackness for where the centre of the well ought to be and fired. What looked like a white las-bolt zipped through the blackness and then suddenly stopped with a resounding clang, sizzling and hissing. Blue light grew in intensity, showing the sticky phosphor round had slammed into the arm of a lifting cradle. Seconds later las-fire began punching holes in the thin plating of the cradle. The two men were not yet on the lowest deck of the well, Keir realised, they were on a gallery and the lasfire was coming from directly underneath them. In the faint light Keir could see an opening for a ladder just a metre or two away. He pulled himself and Roke over to it and looked in. He saw three faint shadows viewed from above, just barely lit by their own muzzle flashes and the glow of the icons from a control panel recessed into the decking directly below them. There seemed to be an open hatch behind them. The three men were still firing at the phosphor round, the light from which was flaring and spitting in the breeze. “Quiet, Doctor!” he hissed. “I didn’t say–” “Down there. Three of them. Heat-sense. Not looking up, though.” The men stopped firing at a hand signal from one of them, but the noise of the carnage above covered Keir’s words easily. He eased a frag-grenade from a pouch in his flak-jacket, peeled off the strip and threw it carefully into the open hatch. Even over the sounds of the fire-fight raging five decks above the clang as it bounced off an unseen bulkhead and rattled away out of sight made the three shadows turn sharply. Keir braced himself in the opening and took aim with his pistol. The grenade went off with an echoing bang, and from the hoarse cry of one of the men it looked as if some shrapnel had made it out the hatch. One shot from Keir’s pistol took one of the other crewmen in the top of the head. The third man turned this way and that, as quickly as he could without sending himself tumbling off the decking, and began firing his las-rifle blindly into the darkness on full auto. Keir fired two quick shots into the crewman’s torso tearing gaping wounds, and the force of the impacts slammed the man into the floor and bounced him up violently, spinning and spraying marbles of blood in the darkness. A final shot put the gasping and bubbling third man out of his misery. “Roke!” hissed Keir. “Take a gun! Through the hatch – make sure there’s no more.” He keyed his vox as he pushed off towards the glowing control panel below. “This is the Captain. Grav is returning in ten seconds. No slow-start so get yourselves secured.” He turned his head. “Doctor, watch out for the–” Roke soared prone through the hatch and then tumbled heavily to the floor as he left zero-g. With a hiss of pain and an oath he got back to his feet. Keir commenced the grav-init cycle, fast-start. He planted his feet as firmly on the decking as he could, wincing at the pain from the razor-wire still embedded in them, as the capacitors re-charged noisily. He realised he had the light controls in front of him as well, and thumbed them back on. The whole well lit up immediately in the stark, halogen glare of the numerous lux-strips. Keir felt the decking begin to push back up at him with surprising force. He staggered once, and then stood upright. A heartbeat later numerous bodies hammered into the floor of the well with sickening crunches, and a few screams, quickly cut off. A deluge of blood splashed down, turning the lower decks into a scene from a charnel-house. There was another shudder as the whole well shook with the shriek of metal under incredible pressure, a metallic choir that sent shivers down Keir’s spine. It came from above, he realised. The return of grav had weakened this entire part of the ship even more. Keir keyed his vox. “Assault those hatches and clear this well. It might be about to collapse. Brenner, report.” “Four hatches are cleared, Captain, but the way forward was blocked in each case. We have maybe twenty or thirty dead. There are defenders at another six hatches still, but they’re pulling back. Make that five.” Brenner voice faded slightly. “Squad leader – up there!” There was the simultaneous barks of a half-dozen combat shotguns and then Brenner’s voice came back. “The crews are rushing the remaining defenders now.” “Good, I might have a way out down here,” said Keir, as Roke returned through the open hatch, shaking his head. “Maybe not. Damn. We’re coming up.” He started to speak to Roke when the tortured groan of stressed plasteel and ceramite turned into a ear-splitting roar of rending metal, and the entire well began to shake violently. Keir was turning to look when he felt Roke grab his arm. “It’s coming down!” shouted Roke, almost inaudible over the foundry of noise, and he hauled Keir through the hatch and out of the well. Most of the ceiling, the heavy lifting gear and substantial parts of the massive superstructure hit the decking like an artillery shell. The walkway directly above the hatch was bent like paper and flattened against the open hatchway. Keir leapt to his feet and pushed his shoulder against the blockage, liquids spraying from the ruptured pipes. He might as well have been trying to push the Anteus for all it budged. “Give me a hand here, Roke,” said Keir as he keyed his vox. “Brenner, Suilvan – report. You alive up there?” Brenner’s voice came back first. “Confirmed Captain, most of the upper galleries survived the collapse, we only lost a few men. The Sword’s defenders have pulled back behind bulkheads. Do you need a rescue?” Keir and Roke heaved together, but there was no give at all. Keir stepped back. “Probably, but I doubt you’ll be able to get past the wreckage. Must be six feet deep out there. Leave us. We’ve got them on the run. Make your way forward. Suilvan, you’re in command, but listen to the Proctor, understood? Take this ship, mister. We’ll make our own way forward, meet up with you, eh?” “Acknowledged. We’ll come back, pick you up when we’re done, sir,” said Suilvan. Keir flicked off the link and swore an oath. “Cheeky little bastard! He’ll pick me up? I’ll pick him up by the–” he saw Roke’s wry expression. “Never bloody mind. K’eto? K’eto, report.” The reply from the First Lieutenant was badly obscured by static. “–vy fightin- in the eng--- bays, maki-- --eady pr-gr-ss. –en are fi---ing well.” “Good, good. Bosun? Bosun? Freyderick, wake up dammit!” “Bosun here, sir. No sign o’ the enemy, sir. Patching up some o’ these hull breaches. Passes the time, like. Needing any help, sir?” Keir grunted. The Bosun was no doubt very annoyed at being left to babysit their retreat, but sitting this one out would do him some good. He had taken rather too many risks in the last engagement. “Captain out.” Keir closed the channel. “You alright, Doctor?” Roke was sitting down, grimacing as he gingerly pulled lengths of serrated wire out of his shins and calves. “Do I look alright? They were using me as a bloody pin-cushion. I am not cut out for nonsense like that. I need gravity, Captain. Lights are optional but bloody gravity should be a given.” “Oh, pull yourself together, man,” said Keir with a grin. “A glancing blow. You’d know all about it if they’d actually hit you with it dead on, eh? You’re not afraid of needles, are you Doctor?” Keir laughed heartily at his own joke. ”Come on. Let’s have a look around. I doubt they have any surprises left.” # Scrima tested the power modules for the lightning claws as he stamped down the smoke-filled transverse, the armed crew squads hurrying along behind him. He stretched his arms out as he walked and scored twin sets of deep gashes in the plasteel bulkheads on either side of his huge, armoured form. Spitting arcs of molten metal flew from each claw-tip as he increased the power. Satisfactory, he thought. The claws should last long enough, even though they were not capable of operating long in Argo-Navis before the holy circuitry needed repair. The ambush should have slowed the advance. He would end it. # The orange-white glow from the burning thermic paste lit the narrow maintenance corridor in fitful flashes of light. The choking smoke had filled the upper part of the corridor, and Roke and Keir were sitting down against the walls, picking the remaining steel filaments from their legs. They had long since stopped chastising each other for craven weakness, and were now just freely swearing oaths and curses through clenched teeth as each barbed and bloodied sliver tore free. The decking lurched under them again as the engines whined and ramped up for another futile effort at freeing the Sword from the clutches of the Anteus. Roke glanced up as he realised that this was the first the vessel had lurched in some time. “Has the firing stopped?” Keir paused. “Yes, Suilvan’s found a way forward. He’s ordered the last of the guns on Anteus to cease fire.” He frowned, looking at Roke. “Turn your vox back on.” Roke shook his head as he struggled with a filament only a tiny portion of which he could see. “How you can understand the babble of voices is utterly beyond me. Like being inside a schizophrenic.” Keir reached over and flicked the switch on the doctor’s collar. “Nevertheless. Officer.” The two men returned to pulling out wire-rifle ammunition, as the paste burned a quarter of the way round the hatch ahead of them. Random phrases and shouted orders occasionally broached the surface of the noise hissing in Roke’s ear, but mostly it was an incomprehensible din. “–there’s no way round, Squad–” “You were telling me something, back on the Anteus, if I remember. Something that no-one knew, I think you put it,” said Roke, without looking up. “Do you really think this is the right time, Doctor?” said Keir incredulously. Roke looked up at the burning paste for a moment, and then at Keir. “Yes. Yes, I think it is. We have a few minutes, and as of now I see you are all out of wire to pull out of your flesh. The bits you can see, at least. I shall continue my more methodical extraction, and you can talk.” Keir gave a resigned laugh. “I suppose so. Nothing else to do, eh?” Roke heard him make a grunting noise as he paused. “–two squads
and see if you can–” “Okay, the potted version then,” Keir said. Keir quickly told Roke about the encounter with the Lamahd III over two years ago, the discoveries he had made on board, the failed attempt by Commodore Artride to find the cursed vessel and Keir’s subsequent demotion, humiliation and ridicule. Roke listened silently to the tale, only interrupting with a muttered oath here and there until Keir had finished. “I had heard some of this, obviously – there’s no point denying it – but the rumours on Primor lacked certain details, and embellished other parts shamelessly.” “Well, they would. My report was classified immediately, but it said everything I just told you.” Yes, I know, Roke wanted to say. I have a crypto-sealed copy in my cabin. “–does anyone
know where–?” Keir stood up, flexing his legs. Roke could see his trousers were heavy with blood. “I’ve never repeated what I’ve just said to another soul. I was warned very clearly, very bloody painfully and very expertly what would happen to me – to my son – if I did. I hope to feck I can trust you, Evan. I might not be the best judge of character around, I admit that, but I think – I pray – I can trust you.” “I am honoured more than I can say that you should think that, Captain,” said Roke, forced by expediency or morality – he could not decide which just then – to choose his words carefully. Keir seemed satisfied. “I couldn’t understand it. I had made my report, Proctor Brenner had made his – I never saw it, of course, but Brenner is a sound man and, by the Throne, he’s an Arbites! Of course his report tallied with mine! So what in the name of Holy Terra happened? Heretics, in Argo-Navis! Fecking never happened once in four thousand years, not once! There must be an outcry, there must be an investigation, the Imperium should descend in all its terrible might. Bring in the mining fleet, bring in the PDF, empty Secundor and Primor – purge them of the taint wherever it was found. Burn the bloody traitors with holy fire! Bring in–” Keir lowered his voice briefly, sounding awed, “–the Inquisition. It was the only possible course of action.” “–three grenades and then we’ll–” How could the man live in this system his entire life and not know the first things about it, wondered Roke? He seemed remarkably naïve about the workings of anything other than his ship. “But it didn’t happen,” was all he said. “Of course it bloody didn’t happen. Nothing happened. I was left wondering if I had imagined it all. Was I crazy? Feck, no, of course not! Were they going to kill me? Obviously not – then people might have thought I was right. Easier to make me a laughing stock. Then it came to me – like divine inspiration. Don’t laugh. What if that hadn’t been the first time, eh? The heretics. What if they had been there before? Once I started looking, once I knew roughly what I was looking for – Throne, you’d be surprised how quickly I found evidence.” “Evidence? Of what?” Roke sat forward, the wire-shards momentarily forgotten. “Hang on.” Keir held up a hand as he keyed his vox. “First – report.” Roke sat back with a curse of pure frustration. He could not hear K’eto’s voice in his own bead – he must be on the wrong channel. He stared at Keir as he conversed with his First Lieutenant briefly. “–the Arbites’re taking–” “Keir out. K’eto’s got himself bogged down in the engine bays – booby traps everywhere, and hit and run raids from all sides. We’re winning – I think, but it’s slow going and we’re taking plenty of casualties.” Keir suddenly turned and kicked the fizzing hatch, and then kicked it again savagely. “Bollocks!” he exclaimed. “Trapped in a fecking maintenance corridor when I should be–” he sighed. “Patience, Keir, patience. Patience.” Keir started checking the clip in his bolt pistol and fiddling with the targeting mechanism. “You were saying, Doctor?” “Yes. Evidence, you said.” “–Throne! What the hell–?” “Right. Nothing heretical, just odd things. Going back as long as anyone could remember. Equipment being brought in and vanishing onto the black market – beyond the black market. Ships going missing, eh? I know what you’ll say, ships go missing all the time here, hundreds of them, and that’s true, it’s a fact of life, but – there are patterns. They’re there if you look.” Keir banged on the hatch with the butt of his bolt pistol, but the paste still had about a metre to go, and the hatch did not budge. Roke heard bursts of static coming over the babbling vox link, and resisted the urge to turn the thing off so he could focus on Keir. “–fecking
power armour–?” Keir froze for a moment,
one hand to his ear. “Report. What's that about power armour?” Roke puffed out his cheeks and shrugged, and Keir tapped the bead again, wincing at the static. “Sounded like...anyway, then I got lucky. I was on the Rendition of Alms a few months ago. We came across three black marketeers, hell of a fight – I should tell you about it sometime.” “–keep away from the–” “Anyway, we boarded, usual melee, everybody fighting, no-one knowing what the feck was going on. Bit like this, really. I found the Captain of one of the ships, just me and him.” “ –they're dead, all dead–!” “Took his gun off him. Applied a bit of pressure. Asked a few questions. The worm spilled his guts – not literally, Evan, please! – I just broke some bones is all. Turns out he was taking some sealed cargo in-system, to meet up with another vessel. He’d been doing it for decades. Nothing unusual, perhaps, but it was what else he said.” “–not that way, he’s–” Keir knelt down beside Roke, and lowered his voice. “He was scared, Evan, scared of that other ship. Bloody scared so much he thanked me for capturing his ship. Can you imagine that? No, probably not, you’re not a military man. Things were changing, he said.” Keir stood back up, flicking his vox bead on and off. “You getting anything?” Roke realised the overlapping vox-chatter had disappeared, and there was just static now. He shook his head. “Something wrong?” “Yes, but – might be the mag-storm, but we’d feel that hitting us if it was. I wonder if–” Keir fell silent, as he fiddled with the link. “So what was the cargo?” Roke asked. “No idea, it was all crypt-sealed, and when Rendition’s boarding rams punctured the cargo bay something exploded. Everything was lost. Not unusual in a boarding action!” Keir grinned. “So what about this other vessel? The one he was supposed to meet.” “He didn’t know what it was called, just had a location and a – time.” From the slight pause Roke got the impression there was more, but said nothing. “That’s the other thing that got me. The meeting – long time ago, now – was in the same place as I had found the Lamahd III – roughly speaking. The same place a lot of ships have gone missing over – Throne – centuries.” “I’m guessing. Somewhere near here?” asked Roke, with a brief smile. “Exactly, Doctor, exactly. And the Master’s Mate on the Iohantch confirmed it. The Emperor’s hand is at work here, I know it. We have no choice but to follow the path he sets for us. My orders to escort the convoy and then haunt in this area couldn’t have come at a better time.” “Those two illegal
miners we ran into, or between, I should say – what about them?” “So how does the Sword fit in?” “I don’t think it does, actually, killing her’s just proper PDF business, but since it’s been operating in this area the officers might know something. Like Iohantch.” Keir slammed his vox bead off the sizzling hatch, rattled it and put it back in his ear. He shook his head and sighed. “Damned things. This area seems to be the key. If you could see more than five hundred kloms on the auspex it would be a different matter, but as it is you could hide a small planet down here and no-one would find it unless they knew where it was.” “So what now? How do you proceed?” “Find one of these meetings in the deeps. Find one, drop in and find out what the bloody hell is going on. From what that Captain said, we may not have much time…” Keir’s voice trailed away. “What is it?” “Oh? Yes. I’ve been hearing that phrase recently. Kind of playing in my head, you know, like a bit of a hymn you keep hearing.” Keir grunted. “I think I know where it’s coming from. So, do you think I’m crazy?” “Hah! Only as crazy as I am,” said Roke, standing up and stretching his bloodied legs. He kept his head well clear of the acrid smoke coiling around the ceiling. “I happen to think you are possibly the only clear-headed person in the system. Those in authority have failed to act, and you have taken it upon yourself to prove them wrong. I wish there were more people like you, I really do. I wish I had your courage, for one.” “Well, not quite. I’m just a Captain in the PDF – it’s not for me to go proving anyone in authority wrong. That would be – treason!” Roke was slightly astonished to see that Keir was not being sarcastic, he actually meant it. “They have failed to act, like you say, and I’m sure they have good reason, but maybe I can – I don’t know – fix it, before it gets out of hand, you see? It’s just doing my duty, really, even if I have to be careful about it.” “You really don’t know why the authorities have done nothing, Nas? Seriously?” Exasperation showed in Roke’s face as well as in his tone of voice. “You really are wearing blinkers, aren’t you? It’s all about money. It’s always all about money. Money and power. And once you have them, you’ll do anything to avoid losing them. Open your eyes, Captain, open your eyes. Money is floating around out here, and everyone has their price.” A light flared in Keir’s eyes. “You didn’t know the old Lord Governor, Doctor. I served him for eighty years – I even met him once. Bet you didn’t know that! The man was a saint, Emperor rest him. He would never suffer a single heretic to live, not one. His son is–” Keir paused for a moment, “–not yet the man his father was, perhaps – but the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Sweyn knows nothing of this, I guarantee it. Matachyn was the same.” Roke just shook his head. There was no arguing with some people. They would just have to learn on their own. He nodded past Keir. “I think we’re through.” Keir turned and kicked the hatch with the sole of his boot as the paste fizzled out. A jagged oval fell away, and hit the decking with a splash. Keir peered out, and past him Roke could see a machinists' fabrica. He stood up, gingerly, and stood beside the captain. There was no movement. The emergency lux units were on, and the floor of the fabrica was a few inches deep in filthy, oily water. Dozens of streams drizzled from the pipes in the ceiling, and the sound of it filled the warm, damp, smoky air. The walls were scorched and blackened, and fire-damaged equipment was strewn everywhere. Covering the dim room with his pistol, Keir flicked his vox bead and grinned at Roke as he got a signal over the general channel. “Suilvan! We’re out, heading forward. What’s the situation? Report.” There was a pause, filled with forceful static that the eventual reply struggled to overcome. “Captain! It’s the Captain! We’ve split up, sir.” The sound of weapons fire rang over the vox link, nearly drowning the Lieutenant’s words. “The – shit! – the bulkheads are–” the signal broke up “–just past the well, but we’re – damn, through there Mulligan – we’re getting hit-and-run attacks from all si–” There was a long burst of static that co-incided with a tremor running through the ship. “–fenders are – are pretty broken up – that’s it, quickly man. Sorry, sir. The fighting’s all over the place, basically, sir, but we’re mopping them up as we go. Brenner and a squad of Arbites were–” the link went dead, and then came back. “–links seem to be –” The vox link burst into a spasm of noise that nearly made Roke tear it out his ear. Keir swore. “Suilvan. Suilvan! Dammit. Brenner. Brenner.” A waterfall of static. “Arbites. Squad Leaders. K'eto. Can you hear me? Suilvan. DeGreer. Anteus. Any–?” There was a loud burst of static, with some words that Roke couldn’t decipher, and then the vox link went dead on its own. Creaking and pinking sounds reverberated throughout the superstructure. A shudder ran through the ship. Keir started splashing away through the filthy water. Roke, already soaked through from the innumerable cascades, waded after him. A body floated face down in the scummy water, and Roke stepped carefully over it. “Come on, Doctor. We’ve got to help K’eto get control of those engines. The Sword's put us both in the bloody Cloud – that’s why our vox is down. The mag-storm'll tear the arse out of both of us when it hits, and we can't be here when that happens. Do you know, I think he did it deliberately. Got to admire that. We don't have long.” Roke hurried along after him, his stick-sword stuck through his belt and carrying a las-rifle. “Are we pulling out?” “We're the PDF, Doctor. We're too stupid to pull out.” # Scrima swept through the men from Anteus like a whirlwind of steel. They had followed a squad of his crewmen into the messhalls, where he had been waiting for them, He delighted in the ease with which he could twist, leap and turn his massive form as he eviscerated man after man. Were this even a fraction of the power the Astartes felt, then they must be snatching at the gods themselves. His power claws cut through the men as if they simply weren't there, as a blade through water. Their shots – the few they managed to fire before he lacerated them – drummed on the hull of his suit, and simply added a martial rhythm to the slaughter. He was silent as he killed, however. He liked the emptiness it created, an emptiness that those he killed could fill with their own dread, fear and screams before they died. How much harder it was for them to be brave when the thing that was killing them did not seem to care. He stopped, realising that all the enemy squads were dead, the blackened walls of the mess-hall running wet with their blood. This was all very good, thought Scrima, but he wanted the Arbites – the possibility of a real challenge, perhaps, if he found enough of them at the one time. And he would have to keep an eye out for the Captain of that PDF rustball. He wanted to express his admiration at his tenacity and verve. Before he cut him in half. # “No, it’s no good, see?” said Keir. “Void on other side.” “How can you tell?” asked Roke as Keir carried on towards the next closed hatch without stopping. They had so far been unable to find a way out of the interconnecting suite of fabrica halls, each of which had been gutted by a fire-storm. “The blister. In the middle,” called Keir as he checked the next hatch and huffed loudly, moving on again. “If you can see the red ring, means the blister’s been pulled away from you. Means there’s no pressure on the other side of the hatch.” Roke walked on to the next hatch, and tapped the blister on that one. There was no ring, but the blister itself was red. “And if the blister turns–” “Fire.” “Oh. Right. Are we in any danger?” “No, we're perfectly safe, Evan. We're isolated on an enemy ship, it's leaking atmosphere and it's inside a Cloud with a mag-storm coming. And it's on fire. Am I leaving anything – ah!” Keir exclaimed. He cranked the handles at the side of yet another hatch and it started to grind open. A breeze sprang up immediately, driving smoke and warm air out of the opening hatch. Roke hefted his las-rifle. He suddenly missed his old hunting lance; that was a weapon with poise and balance. It was a rapier to the lasrifle’s clumsy machete. He moved to the side of the now open hatchway, splashing as little as possible. Keir wiped the water from his eyes and popped his head out the hatch, bolt pistol at the ready. “It’s clear. And dry. Trans C3, and I don’t see any bulkheads in place. Come on.” The two men stepped out into the broad corridor, dimly lit by the emergency lux strips. There was no-one in sight, although thick smoke hid the ceiling and hazed the air. A rosy glow played over the bulkheads of the dogleg at the forward end of the passageway. There was distant crackle, like fields of seedheads popping in summer heat. Keir gave a sour glance in its direction and then pointed the other way, towards the rear of the vessel. “Just watch your targets, Doctor. From what Suilvan said, could be Sword or Anteus we meet. Fighting’s broken up into sheer chaos, as it usually does, and Sword probably has working vox. We don’t. Be careful. Check your targets.” Roke had to almost jog to follow Keir’s pace as the Captain strode down the transverse, keeping close to the side bulkheads. # Further on the sounds of the fire faded, although the smoke deepened. A breeze seemed to be blowing it aft. The decking here was buckled and oddly canted, and Roke stumbled several times until he realised local grav was tilted off true. Warning glyphs winked and flashed redly all along the walls, staining the grey smoke wine-dark. They’d passed another dogleg and were part-way towards the next when a group of armed men walked into the transverse ahead of them. Roke frowned as he tried to work out if he knew them, and struggled to remember what colours Anteus were wearing. As the men raised their weapons comprehension dawned, and Roke was beginning to shout a warning when he was hauled sideways to crash painfully into a recessed hatchway. Lasrounds whined through the air where he had been standing and the walls of the dogleg behind him hissed as wire-rounds embedded in its surface. As Keir’s arm forced him flat against the hatch Roke heard the shouts ringing up the corridor, the thump of booted feet as the men charged and the sizzle of lasrounds ricocheting scant feet from the paltry cover he found himself him. The fear he had felt in the midnight chaos of the well rose up in him again, but this time the dislocating terror swirled almost immediately into a storm-surge of anger. These were the men who had attacked him in that well. These were the men who were going to pay dearly for it. With a hoarse cry he shrugged Keir’s arm away, stood up and fired at the men running down the transverse towards him. He gritted his teeth and poured fire at them, full auto, filling the air with lethal energy and emptying his clip in seconds. His finger tugged on the trigger again and again, the rage draining from him as he realised he hadn’t hit a single man. Then he was on his back in the recessed hatchway, Keir’s large hand clamped on his chest, his face close, and very, very angry. “What in the hell’s the matter with you? Pick your fecking targets, man! Reload, now!” Keir turned away, his pistol coming up as he leaned out. Three shots cracked but he wasn’t aiming at the charging men. The explosive rounds impacted on the decking just ahead of the nearest, sending volcanoes of razor-sharp shrapnel up, lacerating the fighters from the Sword. Those who didn’t fall in bloody, screaming heaps checked their charge and dashed for cover in the sides of the hazy transverse. “I said, reload. Do it now.” Keir didn’t turn around, and fired twice again, picking off a couple of men who’d left themselves exposed. Heart hammering in his chest, Roke did as he was told, then scrambled into a crouched position. “Keep their heads down while I get this hatch open.” Roke snapped off a couple of shots, tight and focused now, his wasteful fury an embarrassing memory. One lasround spanked off a pipe cowling, sending jets of steam into the smoke. The other seemed to clip a man as he ducked back into cover. “Bloody Mechanicus,” muttered Keir. He snatched up his bolt pistol, fired a couple of shots blindly down the corridor and went back to wrenching around inside an exposed glyph panel. A scuffling sound from the dog-leg behind them made Roke turn. A man stood, staring at him, startled eyes wide. Not a man, realised Roke, a boy, his baggy uniform hanging from his skinny frame. For a frozen moment the two stared at each other, and then the sounds of others coming around the dogleg broke the spell. The boy was quicker than Roke, but Roke had the better aim. His shot took the boy in the chest and slammed him backwards into the bulkhead, his eyes still staring, but sightlessly now, as he slid to the decking. The other members of the boy’s squad were just coming round the corner, shadows looming in the smoke, and Roke put a few shots their way, scorching the walls and making the men duck back out of sight. Lasrounds hissed past him from the other direction and he heard the men shouting to each other in some combat-code he couldn’t follow. “Captain! We’re being–” The hatch clanked open behind him, an arm wrapped around Roke’s chest and he was launched backwards as lasfire started to pour on from both directions. The hatch slammed shut again and Keir leapt to his feet, leaving a dazed Roke looking on from the cold floor as the captain spun the locking cramps. “Surrounded. I noticed.” Keir glanced down at Roke, and pointed with his gun. “You’re hit.” Roke realised that some of the pain of his rapid propulsion through the hatch and heavy landing under Keir’s considerable weight wasn’t going away. He touched a hand to his side. It came away dark with blood. He looked down, seeing the white of rib-bone through the torn cloth. That boy’s aim hadn’t been so bad after all, although it had probably ricocheted. A direct hit would have broken those ribs, flensed the skin, crisped flesh. It would also have hurt a whole lot more. A furious hammering sound came through the closed hatch, and Keir grunted dismissively. “You’ll live, Doctor. Up you get.” Roke winced as Keir hauled him to his feet, but had to agree with the diagnosis. He looked around, long steel benches glimmering faintly in the half-light. A galley, undamaged by fire or decompression, but devoid of all power bar emergency lighting. It was also devoid of doors other than the one they had just come in. Above his head cooking implements jangled and clashed with the never-ending shuddering of the Sword. An enormous array of ovens, like some culinary morgue, occupied one end of the long room – the end that Keir was striding towards purposefully. He grabbed something from a table as he walked past. “Keep that for later.” Keir raised his voice without turning. “Got to keep your energy levels up, eh?” He stopped in front of the wall of ovens and began opening doors, his voice echoing as he poked his head in one after the other. “What happened to the unflappable Doctor that had my back on Primor? Did I leave him there?” Roke took one more look at the locked hatch and hurried after Keir. He grabbed a set of striped overalls from a hook as he passed and started tearing strips for bandages. “My apologies, Captain. It won’t happen again.” Roke wasn’t about to confess that when he and Keir had been attacked on Primor station he had just taken his meds, and would happily have attacked an Arbites with a toothpick. He was no coward, but he was no warrior either, and his experience in the zero-grav well had unsettled him more than he wanted to say. “Nearly lost – ah, good – nearly lost your bloody head. Don’t let it happen again, eh? This one’ll do.” “Do for what?” Roke waited while Keir chewed on whatever he had picked up. It looked like some smoked auroch meat. “I think we’re trapped.” “No bulkheads, see? Two galleys, back to back. Same on the Anteus. No bulkhead between them, just these ovens.” Keir held up a frag-grenade. “Only got two of these left.” He tore off the det-strip and tossed it into one of the larger ovens with a pleased-looking grin. He grabbed Roke by the elbow and dragged him down into the corner. The blast blew doors off the ovens all along the wall. They hurtled off in all directions, smashing benches, tearing gouges in the decking and spraying utensils across the far end of the galley. Keir hurried off into the smoke and dust. “Come on! Before they work out what we're up to.” “Yes, but what are we up to?” Keir's legs were disappearing into the mangled wreckage of an oven, and Roke clambered after him. Picking his way carefully over jagged and torn edges, he saw Keir vanish through the dust where the back of the oven should have been. Coughing, he scrambled through the gaping hole, out of one oven and into another. A hand came out of the swirling dust and he grasped it, letting Keir haul him out and onto his feet. “Quickly now,” Keir hissed, and then he was off, pelting along the dimly lit galley, identical to the one they had just left. A hatch was recessed into the far wall, and Keir had it open before Roke arrived, the doctor’s breathing ragged now as the pain from his wound spread. “We’re past the dogleg, it’s clear. Come on, we’ve got the rad-wind at our backs.” “Come again, Captain?” “We can take them by surprise, man! Do try to keep up, eh?” The two men stole through the flowing smoke around the dogleg in the transverse. Crouching low, where the smoke was less dense, they could see upwards of ten men, Sword fighters and crew, gathered at the far end of the transverse. They appeared to be talking, disagreeing perhaps. Voices were strained, but low. Several men with rifles of one description or another were covering the locked hatch that Keir and Roke had retreated through. “Captain?” Keir grunted a query. “That one. What’s he holding? Is that a–” “–det-block? Damned if it isn’t. I think they’re waiting on–” Roke had raised his lasrifle to his shoulder, twisting his neck to ease a crick. “I can hit it.” There was a pause. “If you miss, just go full auto on the group–” “I won’t miss, Nas. You have my word.” All I have to do, thought Roke, is imagine it has feathers and spines, and I’m astride my tarpan in the scent-woods of Geremantheus Orcinal. It is hopping from branch to branch, he told himself as the man holding it waved it in the air to accentuate whatever point he was making. Branch to branch. He felt his old tarpan moving under him. “Sometime this week, doc–” He took the shot. Although he knew it was impossible, he fancied that he watched the lasround all the way until it actually hit the det-block square on. The force of the blast caught him in the chest like a punch, knocking the wind from him momentarily and making him gag. There was no fireball, no flash of light, just the deafening appearance of a large cloud of dirty, oily smoke where a group of men had been standing and a terrible ringing noise in his ears. Keir shot past him, one hand tugging on his shoulder to bring him to his feet, and then Keir was off into the ruined transverse, stepping over bodies and bits of bodies, his bolt pistol hunting this way and that for a living target. Somewhere in the smoke Roke heard a sound like thick water being sucked down a gasping drain, the blood-drowned lungs of a dying man, followed a moment later by the car-crash bang of the pistol. Roke stood, propping up the dogleg and trying to shake the ringing from his ears, until eventually Keir came striding back out of the smoke. His jaw was set, but when he saw Roke a grin lit his features again. “Damned fine shot, doctor. Damned fine. Now, let’s go before whoever they expected to meet them meets us instead.” Roke turned and followed Keir as the captain headed aft once again, tapping the bead at his collar and calling for anyone from the Anteus to answer. To Roke’s considerable surprise his own vox bead spasmed into life, briefly, but there were certainly words being shouted, although he couldn’t make them out. Keir evidently could. “The tertiary hold. Come on. Sounds like Brenner’s in trouble.” # Brenner didn’t know what the sound meant, but it sounded like he was in trouble. Something was running towards them through the smoke, the footfalls impossibly heavy, the bulkheads ringing with each crashing impact. It sounded like a machine of war, and he and his squads were equipped to deal with men, not machines. “Form up!” he said over the squad’s vox link. Even with line-of-sight to his men the interference was still punishing. “Charge your shields and ready yourselves. The Emperor stands with us.” It was getting closer. The sound was almost deafening now, even through the dampers in Brenner’s helm. It sounded like forge-world hammers. Several corridors, all wide to allow transportation of equipment around the ship, led off from this tertiary hold and the sound could be coming from any of them. With the swirling smoke he had no way of seeing it coming. Before the Sword’s engines had pushed them all into the Cloud and silenced the channels, the vox chatter had been alive with word of an Astartes on board, although that was clearly the low-oxygen nonsense one expected from PDF troopers at times like this. Enough men had mentioned it, however, to give him pause. Something had been killing the Anteus’ men by the dozen, that was for certain. Hopefully, the Emperor was now giving him a chance to put a stop to that. Then the sound changed, stopped echoing, suddenly focusing to reveal its source. It was out of the corridor now and in the hold, close and closing wickedly fast. His head snapped round to his left as his bolt pistol came up. “There!” It was upon them almost too quickly to react. A flash of dark yellow within the smoke and then the hammering stopped. The huge figure sailed in silence over the heads of the two squads, twisting in mid-air to land solidly behind them; crouched and head-on. The claws on each blood-stained, armoured fist were buried several inches into the buckled adamantium weave of the decking. It seemed to pause, as if in anticipation. He was no Astartes, Brenner
knew. They would never have heard him coming if he had been, and half
of his men would be dead by now, but the vox-chatter had not been panic-filled
nonsense. Good. The Emperor tested, and His Arbitrators would not be
found wanting. Brenner ran forward and leapt at the attacker, landing on its back. It barely reacted to his considerable weight, and instead swept viciously at Trooper Izo, cutting great gouges in his carapace armour. Brenner jammed his bolt pistol in the neck joint and fired. The concussive blast knocked the gun from his gauntleted hand and him flat on his back. His gun-arm seemed numb and lifeless. He righted his helm and looked up to see the armoured figure standing over him, apparently unharmed, the blood of his Arbitrators running thickly down the ornate chirography that adorned the mustard coloured ceramite. It’s head twisted to look away. “Juridicae Eternae!” Otto’s squad crashed into the side of the behemoth. Their glowing suppression shields flared blindingly white, throwing the hold into monochrome across Brenner’s cracked visor, and discharged with a sound like timber beams snapping. Their power-armoured attacker was blasted off its feet, hurtling side-on into canvas-wrapped pallets of machine parts nearly twenty feet away. Even before it fell to the ground the Arbitrators were firing; continuous, steady, remorseless, peppering their target with withering, accurate fire. Brenner felt the clinical pride of flawless execution of duty even as he knew the futility of their weapons against such a foe. It stood, contemptuous, the rain of ordnance no more than a spring shower to a bull. Brenner hunted for his weapon. There was no sign of it. As he drew his shock maul with his good hand, the attacker charged again. It crouched and leapt in the blink of an eye, shooting forward like a lasbolt, slamming into the line of Otto’s squad with arms spread wide – a human torpedo of bladed destruction. The line crumpled in a mist of blood and amplified screams. Brenner spoke a warning into the dead vox channel, praying that someone from Anteus would hear it, screamed the fury of the Emperor’s Will and launched himself back into the fray. # Keir very nearly shot Proctor Brenner in the head. It was probably what saved both their lives. The captain and the doctor had been running along the smoke-filled transverse leading to the tertiary hold, the overlapping cries and orders and weapons’ fire crackling over the vox-circuit. As he approached the hold, Keir could hear the corridor around him sing with the din of furious battle ahead, screams and crunches and metallic hammer-blows resounding and echoing in the semi-darkness. And then the smoke had partially cleared in a random gust of fresh air and Keir had skidded to a halt as a body came hurtling at him out of nowhere. Ducking to one side, Keir snapped a shot at the armoured form as it shot past him, his bolter adding to the ear-splitting clamour of the unseen fight. The bolt-round had missed, flashing off to detonate against a smoke-hidden bulkhead. The body crashed to the ground near the hatchway Keir and Roke had just come through, and it was only then Keir realised it was Brenner, his dull-orange armour slick with dark blood. Something had thrown him bodily through the air. “Proctor!” Keir shouted as he rushed over, kneeling beside the Arbites Master-At-Arms. Brenner was unconscious – either that or he was dead. Something large and powerful had shredded his carapace armour like it was pasteboard. “Captain!” It was Roke’s tone that made Keir turn. He had never heard the doctor’s voice sound so choked before. The gust of fresh air had become a stiff breeze, and the tableaux of destruction Keir witnessed rivalled what he had seen on the cursed Lamahd III two years ago. Two full squads of his Arbites lay lifeless on the decking of the hold, their rent and shattered armour like gore-stained rust. The finest soldiers Keir had ever seen, dismembered and slaughtered like aurochs in an abattoir. And in the middle of them, smoke curling away from its mustard armour, stood the butcher; crouched low, expressionless helmet tilted their way, talons hissing black smoke where they pierced the body of a murdered Arbitrator; a techno-daemon in sulphurous adamantium. The first shots to hit the thing were, Keir was surprised to note, Roke’s lasrounds, in a flurry of well-placed hits. His own bolt-pistol spoke a fraction of a second later, but the killer was already moving and the round glanced off a shoulder pauldron and cartwheeled away spitting propellant as it disintegrated. The attacker charged. Keir fired again, just missing. It was appallingly fast, each step covering several metres. Then Roke fired, one shot. Keir saw it strike the decking just ahead of the rushing figure, where a few scattered suppression shields and shock-mauls lay. A flash so white it left blue rings in his vision for seconds afterwards turned the grey smoke into a frozen blizzard and he felt the decking shudder beneath his feet as the attacker was knocked backwards. Wasting no time, Keir grabbed Brenner’s gorget and hauled him bodily backwards through the large, open hatchway. Roke hooked one hand under the Proctor’s breastplate and added his meagre strength. Ahead of them, the power-armoured attacker flipped back onto its feet in one flawless movement and rushed at them again, lightning claws crackling. There was no time to find the proper hammer. Using the handle of his bolt pistol, Keir reached straight up and slammed it into an iron pin jutting out above the opening. It popped free with a bang, and was still falling as Keir leapt for its partner at the other side of the broad hatch. He hit it dead on – and froze in horror as it failed to pop out the other side. The armoured attacker was nearly on them, the walls shaking with the weight of its charge. “Help me, son,” Keir muttered and, putting his bolt pistol to the narrow hole in which the securing pin was jammed, he pulled the trigger. It felt like someone had impaled his hand with one of the Arbites’ shock-mauls. The point-blank explosion from the bolt-round tore the pistol from his grasp and sent it spinning away down the corridor. Keir fell to the decking, clutching his hand and biting off a cry of pain, as the solid bulkhead dropped inches from his head. The thunderclap of the bulkhead socketing into the hatch frame was echoed a fraction of a second later as the massive body of the attacker slammed into it. The bulkhead simply settled deeper into the titanium groove. Keir staggered to his feet, gritting his teeth, the bones of his hand and fore-arm feeling as if they’d been dipped in lava. Roke was kneeling by Proctor Brenner. “Is he alive, doctor?” “For now.” “Good shot – you hit that shock-maul dead-on.” “I was aiming for the power-core on the suppression shield. I got-” Keir stared in shock as twin blades each nearly as long as his arm sliced through the adamantium bulkhead beside him, spitting glowing slag. Electric arcs of neon-blue leaped and cracked between the claws and the scorched metal. He jumped back as the blades whicked past where he had been standing. “Till and then, Captain!” The amplified voice was dulled by the bulkhead, but still powerful. “Then being now.” The blades withdrew and two more claws parted the metal with a hellfire sizzle. “A death honourable and such quick.” “Holy Throne!” gasped Roke. “Is that Commander Scrima?” “It seems he has a better weapons-locker than we do. Quickly, now.” Keir slapped a panel and a narrow hatch hissed open revealing an unlit cable-storage vestibule. He strode over, grabbed the Proctor with his good hand and hauled him once again across the rough decking. “Help me stick him in here. We’ll never be able to carry him. Hurry, man!” Roke took Brenner’s feet. “What happened to ‘never leave a man behind’?” Keir didn’t look up. “Wrong service, doctor. We leave our mothers behind if it gets the job done.” He dropped Brenner unceremoniously and slapped the hatch closed again. The bulkhead was in glowing tatters; Scrima was nearly through. “Come on, doctor.” Keir started running back down the corridor, his right hand tucked under his left arm, Roke keeping pace with him. “If you’re actually an Imperial Assassin and that sword of yours is a xenos power-blade of some description, now would be the time to tell me.” “Sorry to disappoint,” Roke panted. “What are we going to do? He slaughtered those Arbites!” The booming sounds behind them told them Scrima was through the bulkhead and racing after them. “I was actually holding out hope that you were an Assassin, doctor. Seriously. I’m all out of ideas.” Keir gave a snort of surprise and stooped to grab his gleaming bolt pistol without breaking stride. “Feel better with steel in my hand, though, even if it’s the wrong bloody hand.” He slid to a halt, grasping at a ladder in the middle of the corridor, a faint light coming through the opening below. “Down here. He’ll be on us in seconds.” Keir pushed Roke onto the ladder and then slid down after him, using his elbow instead of his agony-wracked right hand to guide his descent. The ladder tube was too narrow for Scrima to follow in his bulky armour, but the commander knew the Sword far better than they did – Keir didn’t think for a moment that they had lost him. The narrow corridor led through a med-ward into another broad companionway, the walls scorched from flames and lasfire, and dripping moisture. Keir vaulted over several dead bodies, both Sword and Anteus, then whirled, his gun coming up. A loose group of men were advancing in point-to-point formation a short distance away. They turned at the sudden noise, and Keir lowered his pistol. “Captain!” Gunner’s Mate Tjuge shouted, surprise evident even under his thick, unruly beard. He was a four-square, hairy man, wrapped in the hastily re-painted body armour taken at Uttapar. He stood and walked a little way down the hall. “Captain! We heard as you was dead.” “Not today, eh, Tjuge? Looks like the Emperor will have to wait!” Keir shouted back. Seeing the men from the Anteus had given him an idea. “Look, man, take your squad and get back to the boarding point, on the double. Wake up the Bosun. Get him to break out the grapples, Round up as many squads as you can muster on the way – those as aren’t helping K’eto in the engine bays. Wait for us one deck below the boarding point, got it? And tell Machinist Anath to stand ready – me and the doctor’ll be coming in hot. No second chances.” “Aye, Captain. Grapples it is. One deck below.” “The Second took the bridge, Captain! But we can’t find her commander,” shouted Crewman T’savi, one eye swollen and matted with blood. “He’ll be along presently. Get moving, lad.” Keir grabbed Roke’s arm and started to run again. Behind him Tjuge rounded up his crew. As Keir ran he hunted left and right. The emergency bulkheads on the Sword were entirely manual – as they were on the Anteus – ensuring there was no holy circuitry for a rad-storm to fry and prevent their deployment. Once down they had to be laboriously and manually chain-winched back up again. If he was to delay Scrima’s pursuit any further he would need a pin-release hammer to drop them fast. The pounding of Scrima’s adamantium-shod boots returned – directly above them. Despite its size, the Sword seemed to be based on a standard, Argo-Navis pattern, which meant that there would be a stairwell or a ramp very close by. Scrima would be making for it. Keir saw the pin-release hammer, a long-handled tool made of bare metal with a narrow cross-piece at one end, secured to a recess in the transverse wall by two loops of webbing. He tore it free and handed it to Roke as they ran past abandoned gunnery positions on the flank of the Sword. The Sword quaked violently, the trembling rising up from the shuddering decking and through Keir’s bones with every step, threatening to trip him up or turn his ankle. The quake got stronger and the skeleton of the massive ship shrieked and groaned like a Titan in agony. The decking bucked, nearly knocking Keir flying, and rivets popped and sheared all along the transverse. The Sword was in the Cloud, and the mag-storm was building. They had minutes before it tore both ships apart. “What the hell was that?” gasped Roke, stumbling as he ran. Keir keyed his vox for his First Lieutenant. “K’eto! K’eto! Fire those damned engines up. Get us out of the Cloud!” His vox-unit blared static back at him. He had no idea if K’eto had managed to capture the engine bays, let alone hear him. He tried again. A faint crackle came back, a possible voice lost behind a blizzard of noise. “K’eto – damn the casualties and get those engines going!” # The men from the Sword were in deep around the pressure valves and plasma condensers high up on the wall. K’eto reckoned there were about ten of them. He wiped the sweat and blood away from his eyes with one scorched sleeve to try and get a better look. They had a commanding position overlooking the whole cavernous engine bay, with ready access to the web-work of cat-walks over their heads and – if that wasn’t bad enough, thought K’eto – another dozen or so were in solid cover behind the impeller cowlings and massive plasma chambers at the opposite end. Between the two of them they had the central logic cores in a murderous crossfire. This was the last engine bay to resist the men from Anteus, and if K’eto could get to the heavily-shielded logic cores he could re-route command functions and take total control of the Sword. The bloodied bodies of ten of his crewmen who had tried to do just that lay around the upright ceramite petals surrounding the fragile cores. The Captain’s Steward, Gerrid, dashed through the hatchway behind K’eto and slid into cover beside him with a breathless grunt. He was clutching the heavy stubber taken from Uttapar. K’eto slapped him on the shoulder. “Set it up.” He raised his voice, addressing the dozens of crew surrounding him. “Suppression fire, now! Lay it on!” As Gerrid set the stubber up, the gloomy engine bay strobed in red-white flashes as the men from Anteus opened a barrage of fire on the Sword positions. The noise was deafening, and the Sword crews ducked back as the pipes, vents and cowlings around them erupted in slag and spitting sparks. A hail of lasfire chewed deep gouges in the metal and plas-steel, and return fire was sporadic and wasted. “Ready!” shouted Gerrid, as he took the twin handles. Another crewman began to feed the ammunition. The entire engine bay groaned and rocked, knocking men off balance and forcing K’eto to grab onto a work-station for support. More tremors shook the decking and fresh warning glyphs flared into life in myriad locations. His vox-piece spasmed static, but he could hear the whole ship screaming as the stresses built. Mag-storm – from inside a Cloud. Every crewman’s worst nightmare. Their time was up. He had to get to those logic cores. He slapped Gerrid on the shoulder again. The heavy stubber opened up right beside him in a crescendo of fury, but he didn’t flinch. The solid rounds sprayed over the cooling vents in a fresh hell of noise, dust, smoke and ricochets. Vent covers tore loose and crashed heavily to the decking below amidst fresh screams. K’eto ran crouched to the edge of his cover, tapping four of his best men as he passed. They formed up behind him as the rest of the crewmen opened fire again, trying to keep the men from the Sword pinned. Instinctively, his hand went up to adjust his thin-rimmed spectacles, but he’d lost them an hour ago, during the fire-fight for the first engine bay. He turned to look his squad in the eyes. Nothing there but resolute determination and the courage of the damned. No need for rousing words – they knew the stakes. And the odds. There was a sudden lull in the din of battle. “For the Emperor – and the Captain,” he said, then he was up and charging, firing at the impeller cowlings. As he and his men raced across the open decking of the engine bay, the crossfire of the Sword defenders stitched a lethal blizzard in the air. # |
