Heaven's Altar - Chapter Two

Argo-Navis is one of the most dangerous and one of the most valuable star-systems in the Imperium. Captain Keir, a lowly but loyal commander of a Planetary Defence Force cruiser, makes a discovery that threatens to not only throw the system into chaos, but Keir's personal beliefs as well. In a galaxy of god-like men and unthinkable power, can one man make a difference, or will he be broken on Heaven's Altar? Getting into the slightly better writing now, plus our heroes are off Primor and onto a ship, where Keir can be his old self again. The Anteus heads in-system and Roke learns what life is like on board a PDF cruiser. 13,400 words Download as Word file

Excerpt from “Listen and Do as Your Emperor Commands”, pre-scholam mandated text for parents and infants:-

Here is a heretic.
He is praying to his false god.
His god cannot help him.
This man must know the mercy of the Emperor.
Righteous fire cleanses the impure.
Can you think of some ways to help him?

***END EXCERPT***

792.M41
MPV Anteus at high anchor above Primor station

Keir grinned like a maniac across the packed gun-bay at Roke. Seeing the doctor’s horrified expression and his pale hands clamped to his ear-shields only made his grin wider, as the plasma cannon thundered off another triple-barrage, the sound from the salvo hitting the men in the room three times in rapid succession like an industrial jack-hammer, leaving bones tingling, nerves jangling and blood singing in the ears. Keir simply couldn’t be any happier.

The coolant coils hissed furiously as they coped with the backwash and the superstructure rang around them well into the extreme low frequencies as the Arbites gun-crew worked the pumps to ready the pressure chambers for another test of the weapon. Already Keir could feel the weight building in his ears as the overflow valve started to increase the atmo-pressure in the sealed gun-bay. There was precious little room in the bubble under the dorsal sponson but Keir was pleased to see that already the gun-crew were starting to work smoother than they had been the first two firings. Still, the Arbites gun-crews were one thing; the remainder of the crew was something else entirely.

Roke was waving his hands around trying to draw Keir’s attention, his mouth working silently but futilely as he tried to shout something. Keir flashed another grin, and nodded his head in the direction of the atmo-lock hatch. The two men passed through and cycled the hatch behind them. Roke pulled his ear-shields off with a look of obvious relief as Keir did likewise.

“By the Immortal Emperor that’s a cracking find, eh doctor? What did I tell you?” exclaimed Keir, clapping his frail-looking friend on the shoulder. “Couldn’t hit a gas giant with it at thirty kloms right now, but give those men a few weeks practice and I bet we could take an engine nacelle out on a Rapilles-class privateer in one hit.” Keir shrugged, still grinning. “Maybe two.”

Roke was trying to smooth out his coarse black hair with one hand, while using the other to lean against the now-cycling exit hatch. “Most impressive, captain. I particularly liked the part where you destroyed my hearing.”

Keir laughed, and as the exit hatch opened the two men stepped out into the narrow gangway and Roke followed Keir as he headed off rapidly down the corridor, the closely-spaced vertical bracings making the bare metal passage look uncomfortably like a throat. Roke had no idea where Keir was going or in which direction, but infinitely preferred following him blindly as opposed to getting lost should he try finding his own way around again, at least until he had the layout memorised. Getting lost on a vessel with this many convicts aboard was not something Roke wanted to repeat.

“I have to say, Nas –“

Keir turned briefly without stopping. “’Captain’, please, doctor, while we are on board. Discipline, you know.” He turned back, ducking just in time under a horizontal bracing.

“Of course. I have to say I was rather under the impression that firing of the great guns – that is what you call them, yes? – would be done, well, remotely, by automation.”

“Not here. Not in Argo-Navis, doctor. We have some very rough automation on board, yes, but it’s Age of Strife stuff. Anything else gets fried.” He stopped abruptly by a ladder and started to climb, his voice now echoing in the tightly confined space. “You want a decent aim and good tracking with a good firing pattern, you leave it up to a well-drilled crew of men. And speaking of fried – you have been taking your counter-rads? Not trying to teach you your job, but you’re not on Primor now you know, you need to take ‘em every day. Without fail.”

Keir emphasised the last two words, and Roke could hear the timbre of a man used to having his commands obeyed without question, a tone of voice from Keir he had been getting used to over the last two days as the man fired orders around him like a minor meteor shower. He had yet, however, to give Roke a direct order and that was perhaps the closest he had come. Roke followed Keir off the ladder into another identical, cramped corridor.

A muted but still colossal triple-roar quaked through the deck plating, rattling it under their feet, and dislodging dust from the ceiling cabling as the plasma cannon was fired again. Keir tapped his vox bead.

“Salem, that’ll do for now. Check the pre-impellers and the mag-locks for scoring and have Freyser and his crew clean out any residue.”

Roke only just heard a short buzz like an insect, which must have been Salem’s acknowledgement coming over Keir’s bead.

“Actually, belay that Freyser order. Leave the residue for now.” Keir glanced back at Roke, with a mischievous grin on his face.

Keir had been swinging quite freely between extremes of mood, reflected Roke, ever since the doctor had stepped, if that was the right word, on board. Part of the man was evidently – and almost childishly – delighted to be back in command of a vessel again, infectiously so, and his old stomping ground the Anteus at that. The other part of him seemed to be bilious with fury at the crew situation and the demands of the convoy captains. From what little Roke had gleaned from their few meetings so far – Captain Keir’s time being taken up almost exclusively with the interminable problems of getting this mining convoy under way – a senior clerk at ANDU had sent two heavy shuttle-loads of convicts from the Arbites cells as replacements for the crew former Anteus Captain Macara had made off with, co-opted, released or otherwise frittered away in one fashion or another. It seemed convicts were part and parcel of most crews at some time or another, but Keir seemed to be taking it personally. “I’ll boil that fat prick in his own piss and grease!” had been one of the more repeatable comments he had heard hurled around. And then there were the convoy captains.

Keir seemed to have a respect for them as navigators and risk-takers, but he could evidently not stand their disdain for the PDF, their snide insinuations that he would be lucky not to crash the Anteus into Primor the first chance he got and their sneering assumption that the civilian Commodore appointed by the Hunt Amalgam was in effective command of the convoy. Keir had assured Roke he would lay that misconception to rest shortly, although that was paraphrasing his actual words. Quite a bit.

Passing briefly into a larger corridor through a hatch Roke was surprised to see the ship’s quarterdeck open out ahead of them. Usually fairly quick to grasp the layout of places, he was clearly going to have to work a bit harder to resolve this warren of gangways and ladders and sudden large rooms in his head.

He sat down on webbing-wrapped crates of ammunition that had been piled haphazardly and – hopefully - temporarily just inside the main entrance to the quarterdeck, and felt the distant throb in his hips ease. He leaned forward resting his cane on his chin and took in the seemingly random shouting and swearing and cajoling and running and more shouting that swirled around the large but crowded half-egg shaped room. Keir’s entrance attracted calm, signs of obeisance and salutes in roughly that order, and Roke left Keir to sort out his numerous pressing issues.

The quarterdeck was, for a small cruiser like Anteus, a large space, broadly oval in shape with a domed ceiling, longer than it was wide, and broken up with cross-bracings and strut-girders lurching diagonally from wall to floor to ceiling. Several large hatches opened off the quarterdeck in various directions, connecting the command centre with some of the major transverses running almost the whole way from the bow of the vessel to the engine rooms near the stern. The horseshoe-shaped walkway at the rear of the room, raised about two and a half metres above the decking below had its own hatches off, although these were smaller and generally led to the officers’ quarters and mess. Around the edges were the ubiquitous pict consoles, data cogitators and read-out slates mounted into the unpainted, plated walls, armoured cabling snaking from these to conduits that lead throughout the ship. The open centre of the room was unfurnished apart from a chart table with its own data cogitator and tech-slate positions. Unusually for an Imperium vessel there were no seats, not even for the captain. Roke understood this to be one of those local traditions that so infuriated the carefully regimented minds at the Administratum.

Roke’s gaze was drawn to the tall portals arrayed around the entire front half of the quarterdeck, offering a clear view forward along the dorsal spine of the Anteus between the quarterdeck blister and the squat bow of the vessel, currently illuminated only by its own running lights creating glassy pools in the inky blackness, and beyond that a view that Roke had wondered if he would ever see again and one that he could never tire of – Primor station from the outside, the aurora flaring now in the gathering but invisible storm. Ahead of the Anteus he could make out the numerous mining vessels of the convoy gathered at the embarkation point, dark shadows only fleetingly visible against the ambience of the nebula despite their immense size, their pinpricks of blinking running lights only serving to confuse their shapes at this distance. Roke knew their fellow PDF cruiser Riptide was somewhere among them, but could not make her out. His attention was brought back to the men gathered on the quarterdeck by the quiet voice of First Lieutenant K’eto, advising Keir that Commodore DeLesham reported the convoy was finally squared away, and that nothing should now prevent their immediate departure as they were two days behind schedule.

“Yes,” said Keir. “His damned miners caused the delay, but I bet you any odds you like his log will show it was us held him up.” He moved over to stand in front of the chart table, hands clasped behind his back, looking out through the arching portals ahead. “Get us under way, First. Signal Primor that the Hunt Amalgam convoy is moving out, and signal the convoy that we are moving to take up advance position, and that they should form up behind us. Riptide at the rear.” He began to pace around the front half of the quarterdeck, an area that was traditionally reserved for the Captain only, if he was on deck.

“Signal from the Voievodat, sir,” said Midshipman Freyser from the balcony. “The Commodore, er, appoints Riptide to take advance position, sir.”

Keir paused briefly, and then continued pacing. “Does he now?” he asked, with a surprisingly calm expression and the barest hint of a smile. “Very well, Freyser, signal that we shall take a quick visual inspection of the convoy as it gets underway, to make sure all ships are rad-storm ready. And,” he paused again and turned to face K’eto. “Bring us five points onto the lat and drop three point three on the long, diverg seventy five by two.”

K’eto bent to his tech slate on the chart table. “Pass in front of the Voievodat, sir?”

“Will we indeed?” Keir resumed his pacing.

The Anteus moved off, the engine hum modulating slightly and the ancient superstructure only faintly creaking under acceleration. The cruiser slowly described a gentle arc through the void, turning back towards the convoy which was slowly sorting itself out into something resembling an orderly queue. The Anteus began to pass in front of the huge Voievodat, the Commodore’s pennant-ship.

“Freyser,” said Keir. “I think it is about time you vented the residue from the new plasma cannon. Don’t want it jamming on us at an inopportune moment. No time like the present.”

Freyser looked at K’eto for assistance, who said, “The Voievodat has not yet shipped her rad-baffling, sir. The residue will foul it – she won’t be able to get underway until she clears it -”

“Now, I think, Mister Freyser,” said Keir firmly. The midshipman barked an order over the vox to the crew working under the dorsal sponson, as Keir continued to pace.

Then he stopped, and looked up at the chronodisplay. “About now I would think.” He turned and headed off out of the quarterdeck as the ship-to-ship vox signal began to flash insistently, calling as he went. “I will be in my quarters, First. Give the Commodore my sincere apologies, advise him that we obviously cannot wait a moment longer to get underway, and that he will have to push his engines quite, quite hard if he is catch the rest of the convoy up before we reach the depths. Oh, and take us to the advance position, First, when you’re ready.”

As Keir left the command deck a grinning K’eto switched the ship’s vox to loudhailer so the other officers could enjoy the Commodore’s incandescent fury and fairly imaginative oaths.

#

Roke fastened the studs on the tight gorget with some difficulty. The dark blue dress uniform was new, or so the bearded man with the lisp behind the desk back at Primor had informed him. It certainly felt new; Roke could hardly move it was so stiff. It was incredibly uncomfortable, thought Roke, as he wriggled the high gorget around trying to stop it digging into his neck. Were all military officers masochists, or had the bearded man simply been having a joke at his expense? This thing almost qualified as body armour.

He packed his personal meds away, already feeling the warm glow of the counter-algesics spreading through his bones, then left his small cabin for the officer’s mess down the narrow corridor, ducking under the bulkheads as he went.

The officer’s mess, also known as the Wardroom on rare formal occasions, was a fairly large space, especially for a vessel as cramped as the Anteus. It was about half the size of the quarterdeck, and roughly lozenge shaped. Arching iron braces leapt out from the walls, making the ceiling seem even closer, but any sense of claustrophobia was, however, completely dispelled by the two viewports. The first of these was a circular viewport set into the ceiling amid a maze of trusses. Even if it hadn’t been for the awe-inspiring view of the nebula the simple fact of its existence would have made Roke breathe easier.

An oriel viewport lengthened the room, and provided a good view of the vast, black Lesser Clouds beginning to come into view up ahead as a growing stain blotting out the nebulous glimmer, the angry, red backlight of the Greater Clouds just visible behind them. Midshipman Ramifer was in the process of priming the hydraulic rams that extended the viewport out from its armoured cupola. Once extended, the oriel would frame a clear view of the polar streams jetting out from Argo Navis, where enormous quantities of lighter material were spat out from the star as fast as matter could go outside of warp space, trailing off into inverted, glowing cones several light-years in length that punched twin ragged holes in the nebula. Roke already had numerous parchment sketches of these, done with his usual eye for detail.

Roke entered the mess, and took his seat at the long metal table next to Midshipman Salem, who was holding a drink in front of him like an Arbites would a suppression shield, and sitting so rigid and still that Roke wondered if he was having some kind of episode.

“Mister Salem. I haven’t actually seen you in here before. Thought you midshipmen had your own mess.”

“Birthday, sir.” Salem’s mouth hardly moved as he spoke, and the surface of his drink remained mirror smooth.

Roke estimated it would take much more than the meagre contents of Salem’s glass to loosen him up to the point where actual conversation would occur, and turned back to the other men seated at the table. Master Brant was sitting on Roke’s left. He was an aging man, portly, with fine gray hair and numerous benign rad-tumours spotting his lined face. His eyes were thin, hooded slits from which he peered out suspiciously at the Doctor. He picked up a bottle of umber-coloured Resac.

“Doctor. Here.” The Master poured Roke and then himself a large measure, and then lowered his voice, the smell of Resac strong on his breath. “Some of this lot’ll give you half a glass without blinking.” Brant downed his through tight lips, and grunted.

Roke took a sip. Not the worst. He felt the need to say something, but had not actually had a chance to speak to the Master. He settled for something innocuous. “The Anteus seems a fine ship, Master Brant, from what little I know. I had expected – well, I’m not sure what I had expected, actually, but with so many people aboard in such a small space it seems a miracle of efficiency.”

Brant grunted again. “When we get the collars whipped into shape. Then you’ll see efficient. The First’s of my way of thinking about that. Solid officer stock. Knows how to work the men. Knows how to find his way in the deeps.” Most of this was punctuated by grunts of one kind or another.

Roke hoped the mention of whipping was just figurative, but having seen the Disciplinarii – the collective name for the Bosun’s Mates although the crewmen had other, more direct, names – he was not so sure.

First Lieutenant K’eto, sporting a pair of thin rimmed glasses that only enlarged his watery eyes, looked over from the far side of the table. “The Master is right, Doctor. Only way to run a ship like this with so many convicts aboard is rigid discipline. Spare not the rod, Doctor. Inspire the men with righteous fear and respect for authority. Hope you won’t put up with any malingering in your Cheirurgia?”

Roke simply nodded. He hadn’t heard it called that for a long time, but then he had also heard the crewmen talk of him as a carnifex. Roke was initially very surprised they had heard of such beasts, and puzzled they would compare him to one, but it seemed the word was used for a ship's surgeon in this part of the Imperium. Once they had learned he was a real doctor he no longer heard them use the term. Odd little details he was going to have to get used to. Like the empty chair at the end of the table, reserved for the Captain, who apparently almost always ate alone. Little traditions like that that no amount of librio-slates could divulge.

The talk at the table turned quickly to battles and the minutiae of ship-to-ship engagements, and Roke sat quietly, watching his companions as the Resac flowed. Purser Oblensk he had already met. A hunched man with rounded shoulders, a barrel chest and a face like a badly-shaven ape. He had tried to inventory Roke's equipment in the medicae ward under some impression that it was his responsibility as master of ship's stores. Roke had told him what would happen to anyone who meddled with his apothecarium, and the Purser seemed to avoid Roke for a few days after that. Now he acted as if nothing had happened, but also never turned up in the medicae ward with a data-slate again.

Pastor Ossirak was an old, quiet, rake-thin man with a thick black beard and a liver-spotted bald head, who generally kept to his sacrarum, although he could be seen around the ship from time to time maintaining the various shrines Keir had been setting up. Roke had barely spoken with him, but even so the conversation had taken quite a long time, as the old Pastor spoke very slowly and very deliberately and had a habit of continuing his sentences long before the point they should have ended, making Roke glad he had so far avoided the on-board services.

Second Lieutenant DeGreer and Third Lieutenant Suilvan were unrelated, but otherwise seemed to have been constructed from the same template at some yard for turning out PDF officers. Youngish, loud, full of swagger and brio, they were perhaps what Keir might have been like decades ago, thought Roke. As it was, he avoided them as much as possible.

Roke looked up as the talk turned to the new Lord Governer Matachyn.

“- was talking about ceasefire. Ceasefire! On Gammal! Sod that! He should be hammering those secessionaries, or whatever they call themselves – lot of bloody traitors – just like his father did,” said Lieutenant Suilvan loudly as he poured himself another glass, oblivious to the glances from the other men at the table towards Catafex Jubraille. The Catafex, a political officer in all but name, was a youngish-seeming man who was older than he looked, with connections and ambitions in equal measure.

Suilvan eventually seemed to realise what he had just said, and stared at Jubraille openly, as if challenging him to say something. Roke knew that Jubraille was far too smart to allow a confrontation, and Suilvan far too drunk and stupid to be able to start one with a man like the Catafex.

Jubraille smiled with an air of humility that was quite convincing. “You are all aware what I have said, that what is said here among friends stays here. We are all, myself excepted of course, officers, and gentlemen like us should be free to say what is on our minds. This is nothing,” Jubraille said, dismissing the earlier glances with a wave of his hand. “In fact, I happen to think you have made an interesting point.”

Suilvan looked as if he thought he had actually accomplished something, and was about to bite the lure when K'eto interrupted.

“You know the Captain was always fiercely loyal to Lord Governor Sweyn, of course, but did you know he had met him, doctor? You should get him to tell you about it. Of course, he is also as loyal as every man here to Sweyn's son, may the Immortal Emperor grant him a long reign and his enemies a painful death,” said K'eto, looking up and down the table, not lingering too long on Suilvan, who finally took the hint and went back to eating.

Jubraille looked over at Roke. “Of course, not all of us are from Evidion. I have been trying to place your accent, Doctor, but it is a curious mix. Numenial? Valsedere?”

“I was born on Val's'dere, on one of the garden islands – Geremantheus Orcinal, you may have heard of it – but have spent a long time on other worlds since. Freygondal's World. Uberkinther Prime. Never Numenial, although I see why you would say that,” said Roke, with a brief smile.

“One of the garden islands? Really. A member of the aristocracy, perhaps? Or one of their servants?” Jubraille asked the question lightly, but there was a sharpness in his eyes. The table hushed slightly. Roke sipped his Resac.

“I was trying to place your accent, Catafex, from what little I know of Evidion. Too little, of course, but a member of one of the Great Houses, if I am not mistaken. A most noble lineage, I am sure, you must be proud of your heritage. But for the life of me I can't tell if it is House Aypt or House Grondh – there seems to be some liquidity from minute to minute, which is odd, of course, as the Houses are on different worlds. Of course, I am an outsider and must certainly be confused.”

Jubraille just smiled, and changed tack. “You must excuse me, Doctor. We get to meet so few visitors from other parts of the Imperium as distinguished as yourself, certainly in the Mining Protection Service. Curiousity must have got the better of me. You will not, as a recent visitor then, know about our Captain's misadventures a couple of years ago?”

K'eto put his glass down. “The Captain is not a subject of discussion in the Wardroom.”

“You know what he's talking about, First,” said DeGreer. “The ghost-ship Lamahd III. We can talk about that if we can't talk about the Captain. The doctor deserves to know about that, if he doesn't already. Do you know about it, doctor? About the mining ship with the 'heretics' on board that wasn't there?” DeGreer laughed. “About the 'rituals', the 'bodies' -”

“Enough, Lieutenant,” said K'eto, quietly.

“About the warp coming to take us all, about crazy signs -” DeGreer was still laughing.

“I said, enough, Lieutenant. You will not disgrace the Wardroom with – rumours, and half-truths. Whatever happened out there was fully investigated, and the subject of an official, published report. We all know what it said. I suggest we leave it at that. More Resac, doctor?”

“Well, there is one person here who has been on the Lamahd III. Two if you count the birthday boy,” said Suilvan, getting his second wind and nodding over at an ashen-faced Salem.

“I, ah, we-...ah, I was on it, ah, yes, but I never left the main, ah, crew hatch. You know, you know that, Lieutenant,” stammered Salem, his eyes never leaving his glass.

All eyes at the table turned to the silent Proctor, except Jubraille who was watching Roke, and except Roke who was picking at his dinner.

Brenner finished chewing his food and then, without looking up, said “For a moment there it sounded like someone wanted to know the contents of an official Arbites report.” He looked up, face expressionless. “Was that what I heard? I was chewing very loudly, so I must have misheard. Excuse me.” He returned to his food.

The rest of the dinner passed in silence.

#

The two week journey to the edges of the plasma clouds allowed Keir plenty of time to evaluate the officers and crew, have the engines, baffles and thrusters tuned to his liking and improve the manning and firing of the great guns. The old ship had quaked for watch after watch after watch as the ratings donned their vac-suits and ran through the endless drills Keir had drawn up for them, port and starboard broadsides competing to hit the drifting target drones, the Midshipmen and Lieutenants ensuring the men were driven to near exhaustion in Keir’s pursuit of perfect gunnery.

The existing crew were clearly better than the completely green convicts from Evidion, but by the end of the second week there was nothing to tell between them, and Keir’s prize for the best gunnery crew each ship-day – a bottle of Resac – had gone to convict gun-crews for the last three days. Some of the original crew were none to happy about that, but Keir saw with a grim satisfaction that this only resulted in them re-doubling their efforts.

The convicts were generally a sorry bunch, in Keir’s view, petty gangers and thieves and criminals from the hives on the refinery world of Evidion Dalath, the furthest out of four habitable worlds in the Evidion system and the centre of Ad Mech power there. Sentenced to various means of brutal punishment and/ or permanent incarceration, the traditional option of a life-time (such as was left) in the Evidion PDF in Argo-Navis was a welcome rescue in most cases, and in Keir’s experience they usually made excellent crew after a few years training. The shock collars would never, of course, come off except in those very rare cases where they achieved promotion to warrant officer, but a very small and distant carrot was infinitely preferable to none at all.

It was just a shame, thought Keir as he strode onto the quarterdeck and looked out at the darkly looming cloud-cliffs that now dominated the view in almost every direction, that they were little better than neophytes at this stage, and that he had to accept so many of them for a cruise he had such high and specific hopes for. Never mind. They could work the guns – everything else would have to wait.

Keir quickly scanned the report from the officer of the watch, and then had him raise the captain of the Voievodat, who had recently caught up with them, the Commodore having elected to take a back seat in PDF/ convoy discussions since his humiliation outside Primor.

“Anteus, Captain Ninakar speaking.” The crackle and hiss were growing steadily worse.

“Projections show that the emergent should be just through the lesser cloud layer up ahead. Hmmm, records show the lesser cloud as being worked by thirty eight ships from House Hapt and the Mineralia Combine. We’ll swing north above the eliptical – should get a good view of your emergent, assuming it’s still there,” said Keir.

“The Hunt Amalgam is confident of its projections, Captain Keir. We will follow your course.”

It would be quicker to plough through the dark cloud directly ahead, a fine example of a lesser cloud some forty thousand kloms high at this point and easily a million kloms in length, and the chances of the convoy actually hitting any of the miners in that volume were vanishingly small, but it was always better to avoid passing through even the lesser clouds if possible since they carried the lodestar’s mag field far better than simple void did. A mag-quake felt quite different inside a cloud than it did outside. If you survived long enough to feel it at all.

The helmsman adjusted the cruiser’s course and the dark cloud-cliff began to slowly drop away ahead of them.

By the evening the Anteus had cleared the top of the lesser cloud and could see the greater clouds glowing sombrely directly ahead, almost the only source of light left. In this close to the lodestar, with all available hard-shielding in place and doses of counterrads at their highest sustainable levels, even the light of the nebula was drowned out by the deluge of celestial interference. The only other source of illumination in the pitch-black void this close in were the symmetrical jets from Argo-Navis itself.

This deep, several ship’s system were running at very poor efficiencies, and some had gone off-line entirely.

Keir asked for word to be passed for the ship’s doctor to join him on the quarterdeck.

“I thought you would appreciate this. Your first view of the greater clouds, Doctor, the real depths,” Keir said to the doctor as he joined him to stand before the tall portals, now even thicker than at Primor with an extra four feet of clear ceramite raised in place.

“And one of these, or a part of these, are going to exit the immediate surrounds of the lodestar itself and pass into a place where our friends the miners can safely work them?” asked Roke, his pleasure at having acquired even a fraction of the knowledge that the PDF crew possessed evident in his voice.

“Exactly, doctor, exactly, although the 'safely' part is debatable. Excuse me.” Keir, slightly crest-fallen at having his prepared speech pre-empted, turned away to speak to his officers, leaving Roke to stare at the fuzzy, roiling mass of superheated plasma that coiled and turned almost imperceptibly in the invisible, charged winds ahead of them, enveloping the magnetar at its heart in a flattened, disc-shaped cloud almost twenty million kloms across.

#

Sunlight poked briefly through the light clouds over the city and bathed the small kitchen of the high-rise hab in bright yellows and ochres, the colour of morning on Evidion Beht. Keir looked up from his breakfast as Xafal came in holding his toy Navy cruiser. It was not the new toy PDF cruiser he had bought Xafal for his birthday, Keir noticed, with a sense of disappointment that he was surprised to see was directed at himself and not the child.

Keir nodded to him with a smile, his mouth full of hot recaff. He didn’t think anything of it at the time; he never did. He wanted to swallow the recaff, but it was too hot, or there was too much of it, and Xafal had left the room again in response to his mother’s call before Keir had a chance to speak.

Keir stood up and followed his son out of the kitchen into the med-bay on Primor and sat down on the worn couch, shifting his son’s copy of “Listen and Do” out of the way, the shafts of sunlight still spearing the windows, but fading now as the clouds moved back in. He looked up at Xafal in the holy machine as he took another sip of recaff.

“We don’t have much time, sir,” said Xafal.

Keir just smiled. Time was all his son had.

“Sir. We really don’t have much time. Lieutenant K’eto says the miners are about to deploy into the emergent, sir, before the other lot do.”

Keir looked around the med-bay, the fading light blurring the features of the place, and then he woke up fully, lying back on his cot, with a very apologetic steward Gerrid standing at the open hatch to his quarters. Keir waved the man away, and sat up. He usually woke up quickly when on board ship, no matter how little sleep he had actually had, but his head felt groggy and his body tired.

Dreams like that always left him slightly disoriented. He had asked around, quietly of course, and it did not seem to be at all unusual for someone who had lost a loved one to dream about them as if they were still alive, without any recollection of their loss while in the dream, but it still troubled him. If he had dreams like that, which he had been having on and off for fifteen years, did that mean he really had lost his son, that he really was dead? The thought bothered him more than he could say.

At least it hadn't been the other dream. The one where they got hurt.

He quickly got dressed and went to formally observe the vessels of the Hunt Amalgam staking claim to the finest bandings in the new emergent before the convoy from Secundor, allied to the House Imperial itself by the look of it, sneaked in ahead of them.

#

“Some of the crew are telling me – ah, thank you, Captain – mmm, you seem to get much better recaff than we have in the officers’ mess, a sorry brew. Where was I?” Roke sipped his steaming recaff again, as Gerrid closed the hatch behind him. “Mmm, yes, some of the crew are telling me we are leaving the convoy here and going – haunting? Hunting?”

The two men were seated in Keir’s cramped cabin, the captain’s cot folded up out of the way, Keir sitting on his steel lock-box and Roke sitting on two empty boxes of recon mash the steward had brought, his back to the cold bulkhead. The lux units were on since the light coming in through the small portal set high in the bulkhead was virtually non-existent. Cramped it may be, but it was one of the only places on the Anteus where there was ever any privacy.

Keir stretched his legs as he sipped his own scalding-hot recaff. “Haunting, Evan, and you don’t need to call me Captain while we are in here.” He half-turned and scrabbled around the data-slates piled in heaps on the ledge that passed for a desk, chose one and passed it to Roke.

“Those are the secondary orders I got from Port Captain Franks,” said Keir. “Usually a convoy order is a convoy order and a haunting order is a haunting order, but this is a strange mix of the two. Bit peculiar, really. Escort the convoy, leave Riptide to cruise off the emergent and provide support for the miners while Anteus goes haunting. And as you can see, we are given considerable latitude to chose where we go – ‘subject to the guidance of the Emperor and the exigencies of the service’, of course. ‘Exigencies’! Franks and his bloody dictionary.”

“But what is haunting?”

“What every PDF captain wants to be doing instead of escorting blasted convoys, heh!” grinned Keir, then seeing that a bit more was required, elaborated further. “We basically hang right up against the greater clouds, or the lesser clouds sometimes, and watch for unlicensed miners, privateers, black marketers – anyone really. Hell, even xenos in theory, not that you ever see any.” Keir leaned forward and put his recaff down on the shelf so he could gesture with both hands for the aid of the politely baffled doctor.

“We cruise right against the cloud, right, like this. Here’s the cloud. Now if another ship is approaching from out-system, they are looking right into the rad-wind – their auspex will be nearly useless this close in and pointing in that direction, see – they might as well rely on vis to see us. Our auspex, on the other hand, is pointing away from the lodestar and at them, so it is not nearly as badly affected by the rad-wind. You see? We see them before they see us, and sometimes we’re right on them before they do! Broadside, broadside, board and back for recaff and medals.”

Roke sipped his drink with some amusement, as he watched Keir getting caught up in his own little demonstration.

“Now,” Keir went on, his hands shifting position once again. “If we are hanging outside the cloud and the other ship is inside the cloud, see – here, they can’t see a damn thing anyway. They will probably be turtling with all ports closed, and the thing about the plasma clouds is that you don’t know you coming out of one until you, well, come out of one. The pressure and temperature gradients are very steep, you see. It’s to do with charged fields – you know about that, anyway.”

Roke nodded.

“Right. So they pop out – like this – and it takes them a minute to realise they are out and stop turtling. We have about thirty seconds to see them before they see us, so unless the auspex officer is asleep – not unknown, by the way – we’ve got the jump on them! Bang!” Keir grinned, pleased with his explanation.

“So, we’ll be haunting the edge of the plasma clouds?”

“Exactly, Evan, exactly.”

The two men drank some more of their cooling recaff.

“I thought your quarters would be a bit bigger than this, actually. They’re only slightly larger than mine, and I barely have enough room for my texts and journals,” said Roke.

“Requirements of the service, doctor. Less room for us – no matter how big we are, heh – more room for guns and armour.” Keir’s eyebrows shot up. “Actually, I wonder if –“

He put his recaff back down with a jolt, stood up with his usual alacrity and began fumbling with one of the bulkheads behind him. There was a loud and meaty clunk and the bulkhead swung inwards. “Hah!” Keir exclaimed, and then ducked and disappeared into the darkness beyond. There was a flickering and a humming and lights came on, only just illuminating a very narrow passageway that looked more like an inspection channel between bulkheads than an actual corridor.

“Doctor. This way!”

Roke followed Keir, squeezed past the trunking, cabling and insulation on either side, which went on for longer than he had expected, and emerged into another small, almost perfectly round, space. He was surprised to see that fully half of the sphere was a clear portal, and realised he was standing in an observation blister almost at the very bow of the Anteus.

Keir was standing in front of the clear blister, hands behind his back, staring out at the dull, angry glow of the depths ahead, and he turned as Roke entered.

“I can’t believe I almost forgot about this. Had so much else on my mind. Frankly, I had half supposed that Macara would have turned this into an auspex blister or a small weapons battery, or just moved his cot in here, but look!” He indicated the few items in the bubble, a great coat on a hook, a detail pack and three empty bottles of Resac on the floor.

Keir grinned again at Roke. “I don’t think he knew it was here. Wonder why Gerrid didn’t tell him.”

Roke sat down against the curving rear bulkhead of the blister, moving the bottles out of the way with his foot as he did so.

“Didn’t know you drank it by the bottle, Nas.”

Keir sat down too. “That was a couple of years ago now. Saw some, things. Then didn’t see anything for a while.” He kicked the bottles absentmindedly. “Bad mistake. Took me a while to – well. Anyway, not any more and never again, that’s for sure. I’ll have Gerrid get rid of them.”

Keir finished his recaff. “You remember telling me that the Navy never came into Argo-Navis?”

“Yes. Well, they can come in as far as the termination shock, maybe fifty million kloms further with full shielding, but any more than that and they get fried. Nowhere near even the black clouds in the outer reaches. Why?”

“When we were leaving Primor station –“ Throne, that sounded good to say, thought Roke, “- I was looking at the aurora you told me about and I could have sworn I saw a Naval cruiser – smashed to bits, but still, a cruiser crashed on the starward surface of the planetoid.”

“Oh, yes. The Emperor’s Reach – been there for centuries. K’eto’s got that book by Melminar, you should ask to borrow it, I hear it’s pretty good if you like books. Has the history of Evidion, of course, and also a bit about the only ever xeno incursion into Argo-Navis. The only one, in four millennia, eh?”

“So what is The Emperor’s Reach doing there?” asked Roke.

“Well, as I heard it, some greenskin warboss decided he could use the plasma ore for his armies, you know what their kind are like with stuff that burns. Turned up, completely out of the void, with a whole armada of the worst vessels you ever saw. Apparently the greenies are virtually immune to the rad-storms – it’s not having one brain between them that does it, probably. Huge armada, kicked our arses up and down the system, slagged half the mining fleet and then turned up at Primor. All of them. The Navy went ballistic and ordered every one of their refinery fleet to head in-system at maximum speed.”

Keir paused for a moment. “Bloody brave of them, really. They knew it was certain death, whether they reached the greenies or not. Many of them didn’t. But enough did to make a difference, make the difference really. The Flenser came in at a cracking rate firing every battery that worked, every lance that would take a charge, devastated the green-fleet, but it had lost all engine control and it kept on going. Plunged into the lodestar, I heard, every man lost.”

Keir paused again, wishing he had a glass in his hand to toast their memory. “And The Emperor’s Reach made it too, showed those greenies how the Imperium of Man does things, but finally the lodestar got it and it plunged into the back of Primor. All hands. The Navy lost about a hundred thousand men that day and fifteen vessels, but it was worth it, to keep a hold of Argo-Navis.”

Roke said nothing.

“The PDF got ragged pretty badly too. They did alright, with what they had. Not many memorials for them in Evidion, though.” Keir gave a resigned grunt, and then drew in a deep breath. “Anyway doctor, I think it’s about time for some food. I’ll give Gerrid a shout, see what he can rustle up.”

“So,” said Roke, standing up. “Do you know where we are going to go haunting?”

Keir smiled, but there was no mirth in it. “Oh, yes.”

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