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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Excerpt from the Liber Exotica Imperialis, Magos Junevail Edition, XIVth Impression, published 766.M41:- **WARNING**WARNING**WARNING**WARNING**WARNING**WARNING**WARNING** “Argo–Navis: Local name for Magnetar MG5665-11 a phasic-period, multi-rotational, irregular collapsed star in the Homunculus Nebula. Formed by the collapse of a young super-giant star approx. 4000 years ago. Nearest inhabited Imperial world is Evidion Alep (217 LY dist.), lying within the Segmentum Tempestus. Evidion system has a large Adeptus Mechanicus presence. Argo–Navis is notable for many reasons, only some of which concern the Adeptus Mechanicus. Magos Physik Naral (255.M37 to 647.M37) was the first to make detailed observations of the remarkable magnetic properties of the star-core. He was also the first Magos to succumb to the effects of being in the Argo-Navis system for any period of time, as the effects of the intense lode-projections and mag-storms on augmented subjects were unknown at the time. Magos Physic Al-Barak (298.M37 to 647.M37) commenced a detailed study of the ejecta and effluvia of the magnetar, tunneled into the usual polar streams, and was the first to document the previously unknown formation of super-heavy elements out of this ejecta by the gravitic and mag fields surrounding the star-core and the condensation of these elements under pressure into charged plasma clouds surrounding the core. He is also believed to have died due to either implant or ship failure, although his ship was never recovered. Magos Alchemys Channeranderjee (300.M37 to 647.M37) charted the plasma clouds surrounding Argo-Navis and was the first to measure their alchemycal composition as containing condensed ores suitable for production of fyceline, promethium and other useful minerals in unprecedented quantities. He is believed to have perished with Magos Al-Barak. Following these discoveries, which were shared with the Adeptus Administratus following the failure of the Adeptus Mechanicus to establish a presence in the Argo-Navis system (see Implant Deterioration below), various attempts were made to set up plasma mining operations within the magnetar system. Failure in each case was due to the unprecedented particle- and lode-storms and their effect on Imperial technology (see Automation Deterioration below). Ultimately the local Imperial authorities on Evidion took over the efforts and, through the retrofitting of antiquated iron-clad transports, created a mining fleet of which Archimandrite Magos Suilvan was reported to have said “–even the Orks would have disregarded as being too primitive”. Nevertheless, these vessels, their descendants and the armed and armoured variants used by the Evidion Planetary Defence Force (see PDF below) remain the only ships capable of operating within the Argo-Navis system for any useful period of time. The output of the refinery stations lying in the nebula outwith the Argo-Navis system is credited with keeping the forces of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade supplied almost single-handed, and is considered one of the key Imperial resources in the Segmentum. The output has also made Evidion Alep and its feudal lords among the wealthiest in the Segmentum, although unlicensed and illegal mining activities continue to plague the system and stretch the capabilities of the PDF.” ***END EXCERPT*** # 790.M41 The unmistakable tang of
fear and sweat pierced the hot, damp air in the dim confines of the
hatchway antechamber. The troopers and crew stood in the half-light,
murmered oaths and prayers occasionally becoming audible as the sound
of the venting gasses and clanking hatchway gears ebbed momentarily.
The dull orange carapace armour of the Arbites boarding squads took
on the colour of dried blood under the emergency lux strips lining the
corners of the iron-clad room, their opaque visors reflecting the glowing
red icons over the closed hatchway at the far end. There was a click
over the vox channel. The crew, waiting and sweating in the humid air and their ill-fitting overalls, stood behind the Arbites and hefted their own small arms, shifting nervously. No such betrayal of emotion from the elite squads ahead of them, Captain Keir noticed approvingly as he paced from one side of the small room to the other. Brenner was a sound man. Without stopping he raised a hand to his ear and keyed his own vox unit into send. “Any signs of movement?” There was a pause, then a burst of static and the voice of Durand crackled, “Nothing yet, Captain. The ports are –” Static. Sounded like “closed”, thought Keir, “–engines are still ticking over though.” “Time to acquisition?” Keir asked. “The main hatch is –oming around now, sir. Vectors are nearly matched. Twen–econds.” A brief shudder pulsed through the room from the hatchway as the irising outer doors reached position and locked. The red icons winked out, and an orange one began to glow. Violent but brief geysers of steam punched up the humidity of the air in the confined room even further, and some of the crew flinched at the sudden noise and movement. As he continued to pace Keir looked around the room at the crewmen gathered into squads. They had been a long time without contact with any other vessels, and now this mining ship had hove into view out of the edges of one of the lesser clouds, engines still running at idle but spinning slowly along her axis, drifting with all running lights out and no answer to hails. The Anteus wouldn’t have even noticed her if it hadn’t been for the transponder, and even then the storm had meant the transponder’s range was miniscule. Luck, then, had played a large part. No signs of damage though, or combat. Many of the crew were naturally superstitious, and nothing fed superstition like isolation in a hostile environment and a dead ship appearing suddenly, and at close quarters. On the other hand, if abandoned it held the tantalising promise of considerable personal wealth, which appeared to be the subject of most of the prayers the captain could hear. Captain Keir flicked the safety on his bolt pistol to off as he walked then flicked it on and off again. For luck, he told himself. Then he checked the rounds in the clip, while one of the few parts of his racing mind that were not trying to keep tabs on the relative positions of the Anteus, her boat and the strangely quiescent mining vessel observed dryly that this was not the first time he had done that, either. He continued, as there was no breaking the habits of years in the service, to pace back and forth, his hands once again clasped behind his back. “Mister Arlane, I trust you are in position?” The mechanical chronodisplay ticking loudly on the wall and his knowledge of the First Lieutenant’s methods meant he did not really have to ask, but being quiet at a time like this was not one of Captain Keir’s strong points. “Squad Alep are sta–ry two met–s off the anter–entral hatch, sir. The mechs are – sync and we –ait the word”. Comms were getting worse, but he could fill in the gaps easily enough as the report was thoroughly by the book, thought Keir. Very good. Very Arlane, and if the mechs had sync’d – well, that was practically an invitation to board in the circumstances. Keir could imagine just how cramped the boat would feel right now with a full complement of bulky Arbites packed shoulder to shoulder, running with all lights off and on minimal power, hovering almost invisibly just off the front of the drifting hulk slowly rotating alongside them. He would like to be going in first, but that was Arlane’s duty, to make a noise and draw, well, whomever or whatever might be alive in there, towards him and away from the main boarding force arranged in front of Keir. The Arbites on the boat were Brenner’s best, and Arlane should be able to hold a position inside the mining vessel until Keir’s squads reached him. Keir stopped his constant to and fro to punch up the vector view on the antique vacuum tube tac display, and saw with some satisfaction that his mental calculations were perfectly in tune with the constantly shifting positions of the three ships. Switching to external visual – and wincing at the degradation in the signal caused by the storm – he could still just about see the pitch black mining ship silhouetted against the faint glow of the cloud. He could not make out the boat. Switching again he reviewed once more the earlier visual logs. These had been cleaned up a little by Durand’s men. The hull of the Lamadh III was as scored and pitted as a stone that had fallen into a threshing machine, but that was all part of the fun of mining in the Argo-Navis system – the hull of the Anteus looked exactly the same - and he could see that full shielding was in place, all ports and hatches were closed, no venting or hull breaches evidenced and all comms and sensory apparatus were fully withdrawn. Standard active mining configuration. Turtling, the miners called it. Even if there was anyone left alive aboard, they would probably not know the Anteus was here. Despite the collosal fury of the lode-star at the heart of the system, it produced no visible light, and without the faintest of glows from the plasma clouds nearby and the corpse-light ambience of the surrounding nebula the view from any ship would be as black as the pits of hell. Not to mention the merry havoc the storms played with what rudimentary sensors worked down here. You could see further and better at the bottom of a pelagic trench with a handlight than you could in this system during one of the interminable storms. Durand’s voice came over the vox again, interrupting the Captain’s thought, and hissing with static, “Vectors are –atched, sir, –echs are sync’d. Re– at your ord–” Bloody storm was messing with the vox something awful, but it was hardly unexpected at this depth, thought Keir, even with the cloud blocking the worst of it. “Can’t hardly bloody hear you, Durand, see if you can clear some of that static.” Don’t want to lose comms in there, Keir thought. If the ship was not as dead as it appeared, Durand and the other quarterdeck crew might be the first to notice it. Everyone was in position. No more waiting. Time to get moving. He couldn’t stop a broad grin creasing his face. “Anteus,” he roared into the voxset, “in the name of the Emperor, prepare to board!” and slightly quieter, “Mister Arlane, you may proceed.” “Acknowledged, Anteus” and then a click as the channel went dead. There was, of course, no chance of hearing anything more from the boat since the hulls of the ships were not in contact, but Keir could almost see the hammering deployment of the boat’s harpoons, fastening like barbed claws into the thick steel of the miner’s hull and dragging the two hatches together with a lurch and a deafening crash. The mechs were sync’d so there was no need for the cutter to grind off the miner’s tertiary hatch door, and even now the two doors would be sycthing open together, exposing the interior of the vessel. Arlane would be leading his Arbites in by squads, covering positions taken up, and any moment now– “Anteus. Squads Alap One and Two are in. No contact. Holding position.” Click. No static either. Keir silently thanked Durand. “Acknowledged Lieutenant.
Durand, Brenner – commence boarding”. Keir flicked the safety
again, and started tapping the bolt pistol against his thigh. Tap, tap,
tap. Part of his mind was full of possibilities, outcomes, orders he
might give, racing ahead to imagine ambushes, mistakes and surprises,
but he was also alive in the moment, the familiar rush of the unknown
like ice down his spine. Tap, tap, tap. Brenner turned his head briefly to his men, “Ready on my signal” and stabbed the flashing white pict under his thumb. The orange icon changed immediately to green and the inner doors of both vessels started to sigh open. There was only darkness beyond. “Stablights”. The darkness through the irising hatch was scattered by the beams from the lights slung under the combat shotguns of the boarding troopers. Dirty, rusted metal surfaces, cabling and dripping pipework reflected some of the light back, but there was no movement. “Flash grenades” Two Arbites fired their stubby launchers and the grenades sailed with well-honed precision through the opening and could be heard thumping and clanging off the walls of the causeway into the unseen antechamber of the mining ship. Everyone on the Anteus shielded their eyes and moments later the grenades went off with a bang that reverberated in the confined spaces and a blinding light that shattered the uneasy peace. “Arbites, “ cried Brenner before the echoes had begun to die away, “advance by squads and take up positions. Arclights on”. With a hum and a click the powerful floodlights at the waists of the Arbites came on, illuminating the coiling smoke from the grenades that was wending its way back up the umbilical, and as the troopers ran forward the beams danced jaggedly around across the harsh metal surfaces, tracing brilliant arcs against the black and casting even deeper shadows down the causeway. Keir watched as Brenner led his men though the inner hatch, kicking off expertly as they transitioned to zero-g in the umbilical, and smoothly back into normal-g as they reached the belly of the mining vessel, two armoured squads in standard covering formation. No sounds of contact or weapons fire amid the clatter of boots on metal and the rasping of body armour. The crew followed, las pistols at the ready, led by Midshipmen DeVere and Salem. Keir came behind them, walking at a steady pace, hands still clasped behind his back, his bolt pistol in one of them. More armed crewmen trailed him. He heard Brenner’s voice echoing up towards him and, a fraction of a second later, the same voice, harshly compressed, came over the vox. “Squads Beht One and Two in place. No contact, no signs of life. Throne, this place stinks. Holding position.” Keir kicked off at the edge of the hatch, his stomach protesting as gravity vanished suddenly, and sailed the short distance through the connecting corridor, landing with practised ease as he passed the gravity threshold on the far side. Keir got his first view of the interior of the Lamadh III, lit fiercely by the blinding arclights of the Arbites. It was as dirty and dank and confined as he had expected, and exactly like every other Emperor-forsaken Argo-Navis mining vessel he had ever seen. The narrowness of the antechamber and the corridor leading off seemed at odds with the sheer bulk of the vessel, but then the comfort of the miners was not the point of these ships. And Brenner was right, the air smelt foul, far worse than was normal. Not a good sign probably. But where were the miners? Dead? It seemed more and more likely. As the Captain circled the small room, taking in the details, Brenner was directing Arbites into the gear, decontamination and locker rooms lying off the antechamber, and had others covering the corridor. Silent and efficient. Midshipman Salem was already plugging chunky cables into the lifeless pict display off to one side, and Keir moved swiftly over to stand behind his shoulder. He was a heavy man, but he moved like someone half his weight, and at times like these had an fervent energy about his actions that, on occasion, made it seem like he was capable of being in more than one place at a time. The display blinked into life and began churning out blurry status symbols. Salem glanced over his shoulder at his Captain, “Ah, have this sorted in a moment, sir. Looks like the, Ah, usual Combine crypto.” and looked back to the display and the heavily-shielded portable unit he was holding. It began to copy the symbols flashing across the display on the wall. Keir moved over to Brenner, standing at the open doorway. He wasn’t carrying a schematic, but Keir knew he had the layout of the ship memorised. The lights from the Arbites showed that the corridor beyond led to a junction with one of the main transverse thoroughfares. The bulkheads were still stowed away; the way was clear. “Command decks and officers’ quarters forward,” Brenner’s gauntleted hand indicated right. “Crew quarters, holds and engineering aft.” His hand jerked left. Keir nodded and flicked his vox. “Squad Alep One. Arlane, anything to report.” “Nothing to report, Captain. Position is secure.” “Arlane, leave one squad to secure your retreat to the boat and head for the quarterbridge with the other. I’ll have one squad of Arbites head up from here through the officer’s quarters and meet you there. Brenner will take the other squad and the crew and search the rear of the ship”. Despite its size, there really was very little living space on the Lamadh III. It would not take long to search. “Salem, get the main lights on. You have our rear. Lead on Brenner”. Once out of the short corridor Brenner separated his squads and ordered them off in separate directions along the broader transverse that ran the whole length of the habitable part of the Lamadh III. There were still no signs of life, or power other than basic life support. The air was foul and getting worse. Keir followed Brenner and his squad, Beht One, heading for the rear of the vessel, and Midshipman DeVere and his squads of armed crewmen brought up the rear. The lights of the Arbites swept the corridor ahead of them, showing nothing but oily, dirty walls with broad patches of weeping rust and dripping conduits, and slick flooring covered with oily soot and light debris. Maintenance panels hung open on broken hinges, and thick cable loops departed from their runners hung from the ceiling in great clumps, forcing the men to duck low under them. Discarded tools and miscellaneous parts clattered underfoot. None of this was unusual for a mining vessel, Keir noted disapprovingly. Other than the throb of the engines, there were however none of the usual ship-board sounds or vibrations. It felt unnaturally quiet after months onboard the Anteus. They passed various doorways and hatches leading to other levels. Each got a cursory inspection, but there was nothing obviously interesting to be seen in any of them, unless stores, lockers, oil, damp and rust could be considered interesting. They could secure these later, for now they simply activated the mechanical deadbolts, jammed the locking gears in place and moved on. They had not gone more than thirty paces when the emergency lux tubes along the floor strobed into life, closely followed by those along the ceiling, casting a blue glow over the men from the Anteus. The Arbites turned off their arclamps. “Ah, Captain?” It was Salem. “That, ah, wasn’t me, sir.” Keir stopped moving and Brenner gave the halt signal, the Arbites crouching into what little cover there was. “Explain,” said Keir quietly into his microbead, glancing up and down the corridor. Nothing moved. Squad Beht Two, heading in the opposite direction, were now out of sight behind the various dog-legs, pipework extrusions and cablefalls they had passed. “Ah, I think you might have, well someone might have, tripped an automated system. Perhaps activated by movement, ah, I’m not sure, I just know I didn’t do it. Not deliberately, anyway.” The words spilled out in a rush. “Find out who did, Midshipman. Or what.” “Yessir.” Keir flicked the vox link again. “Squad Beht Two. Report in.” “Squad Beht Two here. Moving up the main transverse towards the bridge, sir. No movement. No crew. Nothing to report.” “Captain,” it was Arlane, “we have lights on here too, and we have bodies up ahead, looks like miners, sir. No signs of life.” Inwardly Keir sighed, his worst fears confirmed. But if a privateer or a rogue had attacked, where were the signs of forced entry, where was the damage? There were no signs of a firefight at either of the hatches the Anteus’ men had come in, and knowing what violent bastards your average miners were, Keir would have bet good money on them making a decent account of themselves, even in a surprise assault. This was looking odd, to say the least. And then there was that smell, and he still couldn’t place it. Arlane’s voice crackled over the vox bead again, “Quite a lot of bodies here, sir, about twenty I would say. No command insignia I can see. Wounds from small caliber hard rounds, some las burns and knife wounds and, “ a pause, with static hiss, “some, ah, mutilation of the corpses, Captain.” The sounds of other voices came over the open vox link, muttered oaths and curses and some exclamations. A muffled “Pipe down!” from Arlane, probably with his hand over the vox bead, and then, clearer but still hushed “This is pretty strong stuff, Captain. Doesn’t look like anything miners would do, but doesn’t look like your typical privateer, either. Some of these, ah, activities have a, well, ritual look about them, sir.” Keir frowned as he heard this no doubt well-understated assessment from his tightly-buttoned First Lieutenant, knowing the reality was grim indeed to cause such hesitation. He was simultaneously glad Arlane was broadcasting on the command frequency, and that the crew had not just heard that report. He resisted the urge to make the sign of the Aquila, for the sake of the men watching him. “Ok, Lieutenant, if there are no survivors then carry on to the bridge. “ Keir paused a moment, considering how this information changed things. Clearly something had gone very wrong here, and with signs of activity near the command sections then that was where he should be. “Change of plans, First. I’ll catch up to Beht Two and meet you there.” He did not have to add an admonition to be careful. This boarding action had started out dangerous but was threatening to turn into some else entirely. He turned to Brenner who, with a grim look on his face, silently mouthed a query to him, “Cultists?” Keir frowned again, this time at Brenner, shaking his head to silence the question on the man’s lips. He did not want speculation getting the men’s nerves on edge. He gave Brenner his orders to continue on with DeVere and his men and set off back up the transverse with a four-man squad of crewmen with him. They were silent, but they hadn’t heard his exchange with Arlane, and they looked confident and alert. According to the schematics it should only take a few minutes to reach the command section and the quarterdeck, passing through command quarters and the officer’s mess on the way, but there were numerous hatchways along the way, however, and each of them had to opened, checked and secured before they could move on. After wedging the gears of yet another connecting hatchway closed, Keir loosened his great coat at the neck, and thought about his armoured jacket, lying in a trunk in his cramped cabin. Arlane had tried to insist he wear it in that fussy way of his – he had even started citing regulations, which Keir had just laughed off - but since the crew did not as a rule have any armour, Keir occasionally entertained noble thoughts about inspiring them by distaining armour of his own. He was starting to have more practical thoughts on the subject. As the squad continued cautiously up the dimly lit transverse there came ghosting over the rumbling engine noise the unmistakeable but distant sound of a combat shotgun discharging a scatter round followed by another and then another, heavily muted by the thick walls of the ship. The comms sizzled into chaotic life. Keir brought his squad to a halt as shouts and cries came over the vox mixed and tumbling over and into each other. “–feck, feck, feck–” “–above you, DeRille–” “–get down, GET DOWN–” The rapid and overlapping bark of the shotguns, the crack of a bolt pistol and strangled cries of pain formed a hissing backdrop. Keir swore an oath at the lack of comms discipline. “Drop the damned chatter. First, report.” There was a brief pause punctuated by repeated sounds of echoing scatter rounds and more reverberating screams and then Arlane’s voice came steady and clear, “Contact, sir. Two men in the cabling overhead, got the drop on us.” The background sounds of combat had ceased. Only two men? thought Keir. “A couple of the men have minor wounds, but the attackers have been subdued”, Arlane continued, looking around at the chunks of flesh and gore that patterned the walls of the corridor, and at the lifeless and sundered bodies of their assailants. Scatter rounds made short work of unarmoured bone and tissue, especially in such close quarters. The Arbites squad were by comparison completely unscathed, two of them along with Arlane himself having been knocked to the ground by the sudden weight of the men dropping from above and the heavy wrenches they had swung like clubs. Other than knocking them about a bit, though, and a couple of head wounds, the cold-forged tools had been ineffectual against the carapace armour and helms the men wore. The Arbites reloaded rapidly from positions of cover while Arlane finished his report. “They look like miners, sir. At least so far as I can tell from the remains.”, he said, pausing. “Please accept my apologies for the breach of comms discipline, sir. It was an unforgivable lapse. All I can say is that for a moment there, it seemed like there was a whole lot more of them. A whole lot more. I can’t explain it better than that, sir.” Arlane said, which was putting it mildly. He would have swore under pain of death that his squad was being overrun, and the sense of panic he had felt was utterly out of character, and yet only two bodies lay at his feet. And that smell was getting stronger all the time. This worthless piece of junk mining ship was not worth the trouble, of that he was certain. One of the miner’s forearms had been blown off in the fight, and it lay nearby, flints of bone studding the wetly glistening end where it had been severed. He wasn’t sure, but in the dim blue light from the few emergency lux panels to survive the recent deluge of shrapnel there were what seemed to be symbols carved in the pallid flesh. He knelt for a better look and then quickly stood back up. Holy Terra, that wasn’t right. He keyed his vox for a private link to the Captain, and made sure the Arbites couldn’t hear him. “Captain, this has the taint of ruin about it. There are–symbols–on the bodies.” “Holy Throne,“ muttered Keir, this time unable to resist making the sign of the Aquila. Here? In Argo Navis? That was unheard of. And what would heretics possibly want with a mining ship? He briefly considered pulling his men out and blasting the Emperor-forsaken vessel into its constituent parts. The thought of being aboard a vessel tainted with corruption made his blood run cold. He would have to explain and justify every minute spent on this ship to the authorities, and the authorities liked to look at such things very closely indeed. But that was not an option. He had to find out what had happened here and, if possible, why, and for that he would need the ship’s logs and, maybe, a survivor. He regretted the thought almost immediately, but could not help noting that with even a hint of heretical activity onboard he would never be able to claim this vessel as a prize. With the taint of heresy he was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to, anyway. He would report it, though. He knew his duty; always had. The ship would be torn apart by the best investigators the Lord Governor could muster. Maybe even the Inquisition. The very thought chilled Keir. There were no heretics in Argo Navis, never had been, and this discovery was going to change everything. Damn his luck! Was there even any bloody cargo on board? Would he get salvage for that? Could simple plasma be tainted by heresy? The Lamahd III had been in the lesser clouds for months, they would have amassed millions of tonnes of plasma in the vast pressure tanks at the rear of the vessel, and that had a serious monetary value of its own. There might still be a way to make his fortune out of this. If there was even one surviving loyal member of the crew, however, then there was no prize and no salvage – those were the rules – but right now he desperately wanted to know what had happened here, and that was more important than any reward. He keyed the general comms channel, “There are hostiles aboard, looks like there may have been a mutiny or some kind of insurrection on this rust-trap.” A necessary lie. “I want any survivors alive. Let me make that very clear. Alive.” The thought of capturing a heretic and bringing it aboard the Anteus ran a chill down his spine, but his duty was clear. “The Emperor protects.” “Durand,” he continued, “get some more men armed and down to the main hatch on the double. They are to reinforce Salem’s squad there. Salem. What is this ship’s mining status?” “Ah. Status sir?” queried Salem. “Yes, status. Her cargo, for the love of the Emperor. Can’t you tell from that damn tech slate of yours?” snapped Keir. “Cargo, ah, yessir.” A pause. “Ah. Vented sir.” Keir fired off an expletive. Salem continued, “Ah, by the Captain. About two days ago. Emergency vent, sir. I would, ah, need to see the log to know why.” Feck it, thought Keir, well that answered that question. He would very much like to see the log, himself. He had noted the tone in Salem’s voice – bitter disappointment. Any midshipman worth his position was well aware of the rules regarding prizes and salvage, and young Salem knew his share of the cargo had just evaporated into the vacuum as well. If he knew there was going to be no prize share either on account of possible heretical activity, the young lad would probably be in tears right now. This ship had looked like a very lucky find just a few short hours ago, and everyone on board had been debating and arguing her worth ever since it became clear she was drifting. Keir could have bloody retired on his share, he thought grimly. And settled some other, more pressing, matters at the same time. Keir’s mercenary thoughts were broken violently as the bronze pipework not twelve inches from his head burst open spraying dark liquid and hot steam across the transverse. Keir had caught the briefest flicker of a lasround just before it had ruptured the pipe, and he threw himself backwards behind a stack of stripped-out insulation piled at the side of the corridor. The Arbites flung themselves down or behind whatever cover they could find, as more rounds came hissing towards them from up ahead, bursting and spanking off wall panels and erupting loose coils of cable hanging from the ceiling, sending thick strands snapping widely as they burst loose. Two shots hit one of the crewmen who were still standing at the rear, and had not dived for cover with the same instincts as the trained Arbites. One charged round hit him square in the shoulder and spun him completely around, while the other hit him in the belly and went clean through him, showering the men around him with blood. A cry went up from the direction of the firing, but it was gutteral and harsh and made Keir sick to his stomach. The smell of burnt guts, flesh and rubber filled the corridor as smoke from the impacts began to coil upwards. The three remaining crewmen finally recalled their training and dropped behind thick water mains that ran down either side of the transverse, the ironwork slick with rust, and now blood. A shot thumped into the insulation in front of Keir, quickly followed by another, sending up a flurry of charred fibres. He risked a glance up the corridor and saw it opening up into the officer’s mess ahead, through an open hatchway. There was a table or some kind of barricade lying across the mess and the firing was coming from behind it. More shots, this time accompanied by hard rounds, tore down the corridor and forced Keir to duck back down. “Contact, contact, “ Keir keyed his vox. “Multiple hostiles in the officer’s mess, in cover.” He barely heard the replies from Arlane and Salem advising they were moving to assist. This would be over one way or the other before anyone else got here. His cover – hardly deserving of the name - was not going to last, thought Keir, and there was nothing better within safe distance. Already the Arbites were returning fire, but their scatter rounds did not have the power to punch through the metal table surface at this range. They were, however, drawing the enemies’ fire away from him, and he leaned out and took a couple of shots with his bolt pistol. He saw the heavy impacts rock the table, and a couple of heads ducked down out of sight. He fired again, but missed the head he was aiming for. “Grenades and executioner rounds, now,” he shouted to his squad, before ducking back behind the insulation coils as more shots hammered in his direction, punching choking clouds of burnt rubber matting up and out. One of the shots made it through the dense fibres and glanced off the wall beside him, nearly spent, and into the lux unit just below. It exploded in a burst of sparks and sharp shards that peppered the side of his face. His time was running out. Lasrounds were now flashing back up the corridor, as the Anteus’ crewmen had finally started to return fire with their laspistols. This was keeping the enemy from tearing fire down on them at will, and it gave the Arbites the chance they needed. Officer Izo chambered a flash round in his grenade launcher, while two of his companions readied the adamantium-tipped executioner rounds in their shotguns. The fourth Arbites, Commo, kept up the scatter fire, but now he was firing at the ceiling of the officer’s mess, and the fragments of exploding shell were raining down on the enemy position and seemed to be having some effect in quelling their rate of fire. Keir, seeing the Arbites were almost ready, slid out of position and, lying prone, added his bolt rounds to the lasfire that was turning the tabletop into a charred and pitted moonscape. Izo leaned out and took aim for the far end of the officer’s mess. “Fire in the hole,” he cried, his voice amplified by the vox speaker in his helmet, and with a thump the grenade arced out, tracing a graceful helix in its wake through the thick smoke collecting at the top of the corridor, over the smouldering table top and landing behind it. There was an immediate crack and flash, most of which was blocked by the long tabletop, followed by a momentary lull in the chaos as ears rang and vision danced with ghosts. Arbitrators Stenhouse and Iverson leaned out of cover and fired two shots apiece. The table may as well have been made of paper. The hard rounds steered unerringly for the warm targets crouching behind it and sliced through with less than a whisper. Louder were the bubbling cries and screams that followed, and were quickly silenced. Four dark wisps of smoke rose gently into the sudden calm from the four red-hot, star-shaped holes in the tabletop. “Move up,” shouted Keir as he sprang to his feet and raced up the corridor, hearing the heavy boots of the Arbites at his back. He saw no movement in the mess, now dark in the low light and the gathering smoke and, reaching the open doorway, he threw himself to the side along the cold, metal wall and ducked down behind an overturned tool locker, tracing the gloom with the muzzle of his pistol. There was no-one moving, but there was a body lying face-down just next to Keir. He glanced down and nudged it with his knee and then, keeping his pistol raised in his right hand and his eyes on the room, drew his combat knife with his left hand and felt for a pulse at the neck. The skin was clammy and cold, and he could feel dried blood. This one was long dead, something that his nose was rapidly affirming. The Arbites had now cleared the doorway and split up, two on each side, crouched behind cover like Keir. He could hear the three crewmen had moved up to just outside the doorway, and he hoped they had the sense to cover their rear and the far end of the room. Silently Keir signalled the Arbites forward, and they moved up again towards the ends of the long dining table that was stretched across the mess, now ruined from the numerous hits it had taken. There was still no sign of movement or of life, and simultaneously Keir and the troopers rounded the ends of the table. The executioner slugs had done their job. Three bodies lay sprawled on the mess floor. One of them had been hit by two rounds and nearly cut in half. Of the other two one’s head had been pulped and was just a greasy bag of skin, while the other had taken a hit that had opened up his chest. All three were clad in filthy clothing with miner’s insignia and tool webbing, although they had no tools. Keir took one look at the images scrawled on the men’s clothing and exposed skin before tipping the table back over on top of them, spitting an oath. He could feel the images crawling on the backs of his eyeballs before they faded from sight. The Arbites looked at him in shock, but he did not acknowledge their silent questions, and turned to the far end of the room. “Secure this place, and the weapons. And don’t let anyone look under that table,” said Keir to the troopers, before flicking his vox. “The mutineers here are all dead. I still want one alive. Stay alert everyone. Arlane, we’re continuing on, and will meet you in the command section.” “Acknowledged, sir, we’re nearly there. Any casualties?” asked Arlane. Keir put his hand to his left cheek, and felt the slivers embedded in his skin. Warm blood coated one side of his face. He glanced at the two crewman framed in the doorway and, behind them, at the ruin of the corridor and the third crewman bending over the body of the fourth. He could hear him calling for medics over the vox. “Machinist’s Mate Arreck is down. Other than that we’re ok. Out.” A tremor shook the plating under Keir’s feet, and he and the troopers stumbled as they adjusted their footing, before another tremor shivered through the ship. There was a faint squeal of protesting metal from all around. “Report, Durand”, said Keir, signalling the Arbites to move forward and secure the remainder of the mess. “A mag-spike, Captain, riding on the storm. Just a transient one. Should be a couple more along in a few minutes. Nothing major, the umbilical should be fine,” replied Durand. Keir looked around the gloom and chaos of the mess hall. Many of the lux strips had been shattered in the firefight, but he could make out trails of dried blood on the floor, leading away in the direction of the command decks. People had died here, and the scum under the dining table had been dragging them away for some reason. From what little he knew of those who fell under the sway of the archenemy, he seemed to recall that they had a habit of desecrating themselves, and their environs, with symbols both hateful and repulsive to Imperial citizens. There was sickening evidence of one, so far, but not the other. If the captain of the Lamadh III had emptied the plasma tanks two days ago, it was highly likely that this action, so abhorrent would it have been to any miner, was his last in command of the vessel. So that gave the heretics two days between then and now, two days in which they had had the ship to themselves, but had not daubed their insane marks on every semi-flat surface. What had they been doing? It was not healthy for a man to consider the motives of the corrupted, reflected Keir, as he gathered his squads together again and made his way towards the bow of the ship. The sight that awaited him on the broad expanse of the quaterdeck was one that would flash before his waking eyes like an ad on the vidcasts for weeks to come, and that would see his purser coming perilously close to running out of spirits from the Captain’s personal store-room on the long journey back. Keir and the squad of Arbites had entered the horseshoe balcony overlooking the circular quarterdeck from where the vessel’s command crew had operated. As elsewhere the lights were low and cast a bluish glow from the corners of the room. In the centre of the floor were what appeared to be most of the crew, and an assemblage of cabling, trunks and conduits snaking from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. Keir’s shocked mind at first could only comment that this, certainly, would have taken a handful of heretics a full two days to set up, before the horror of what he was looking at loosened its grip and he began to understand what he was seeing. The crew had been largely dismembered and their major bodyparts and organs threaded and skewered onto the cabling that draped the half-dome-shaped space like a giant’s cats’ cradle. Just two feet from Keir’s face a power conduit secured to a stanchion on the wall behind him entered the gaping mouth of a severed head and emerged from the tattered throat to pass into the bowels of a torso slung just behind it, before continuing on in that vein until it disappeared into the nest of similarly decorated cables in the middle of the room. For a final, insane, touch, the bodies had evidently been flayed, and the skin of the crewmen hung like greasy drapes from cable to cable. There was something stacked at the centre. A pillar-like shape could almost be made out through the hanging monstrosities. Kier didn’t even want to think about what it might be. He and his men had clearly interrupted the heretics at their work. Unmutilated bodies lay sprawled in a pile below and to the right, surrounded by coils of cables as yet unused. Pulleys and ropes hung from the ceiling. The stench was simply overpowering, and from the heat and humidity it seemed that the life support settings had been long overridden. Keir put his hands on the balcony rail to steady himself, and quickly pulled them away. The dim blue light reflected off something slick and sticky on his hands. He wanted to curse, but held his mouth tightly shut for fear of losing control should he start to speak. This was beyond what any man should have to see in his lifetime, he thought. There was a rattling sound from below the balcony, off to the left, and then the shriek of unlubricated metal sliding against metal, and a bulkhead opened by a couple of feet. Lights stabbed through and played from side to side. Keir heard gasps and oaths, as a figure stepped through the narrow opening. It was First Lieutenant Arlane. Keir’s vox bead clicked. “Captain Keir?” Arlane saw the lights from Keir’s squad and swung his bolt pistol up, motioning to his squad to stay back. Not bothering with his vox bead Keir made an effort to swallow his lunch for the second time that day, and called out, “Mister Arlane.” It wouldn’t do to appear shaken in front of his second in command, and Keir hastily pulled himself together. ”It seems we beat you! Stop for a cup of recaff?” Arlane lowered his sidearm and ordered his squad onto the quarterdeck. “We ran into several bulkheads the crew must have managed to put in place during the, ah, mutiny, sir. Took us a while to find…a way…around…” As he said this he played his stablight across the hellish scene in front of him. “Dear God Emperor. Oh, for feck’s sake.” He checked himself and looked up at Keir. “Pardon me, sir.” “Never mind that, Arlane.” Keir nodded his head at the morass of flesh and wires. “What do you make of it? Can you see what that is in the middle from where you are?” “That column there? I can’t really make it out, but I would wager it’s more of the same. I really don’t care to know what it all is, sir.” Arlane swallowed. “I am fairly sure we can’t leave these men like this,” he said. “Agreed, they should get the proper rites, but if we touch this it’s not just us who’ll get it in the neck. This is too big, it’s way out of our class. You-know-who will be all over this, and if we mess about with it before they get here, well, you-know-who don’t settle for shooting lowly captains and lieutenants, Arlane. I know that much. They’ll take the Lord Governor’s head if we muck this up, and I won’t be responsible for that happening.” Keir’s regard for the venerable Lord Governor was a matter of little debate aboard the Anteus. “We can’t just leave them like this, Captain” protested Arlane, moving towards the metal ladder against the wall underneath the balcony and starting to climb up. Keir could hear the airpumps starting to buzz in the background, and the whisper of the fans. Good, perhaps if was going to get a bit more bearable in here. “I don’t like it any more than you do, Lieutenant, but I am not about to start messing around with bloody archenemy rituals –“ he waved a hand at the centre of the room in case there was any doubt as to his subject, “– in the middle of nowhere, even if they didn’t get to finish it, which I bloody well hope they didn’t,” said Keir sharply, moving over to the top of the ladder as Arlane reached the top. The buzzing was getting louder, and the sussuration of the fans too. For a second Keir fancied he could hear voices in the soft, rythmic murmer. “We get the logs, we sweep the ship clean of heretics, we round up any survivors –“ he saw the protest leaping to Arlane’s lips, “– any survivors, Lieutenant, you heard me, we disable the engines and vent the ship to hard vacuum, just to be sure there’s no bugger left alive, and we take back our report and let the Imperials handle it. I might be just a PDF captain with nothing in his head but vacuum and hard radiation, but I’m not stupid enough to mess with this,“ gesturing again at the room behind him. “This ship’s not going anywhere, certainly not after we take the coolant impellers apart. Two months from now, even if this storm keeps up, it will be within 100 kloms of this exact location. Easily capable of being found again with a couple of ships and a good captain who knows what he’s doing.” The buzzing and whispering continued, although the room was, if anything, getting hotter. Arlane reached the top of the ladder and stepped out onto the webbed decking. Keir could see he was furious and struggling to keep himself under control, but was too much of a career officer not to realise when he had been given an order. Arlane settled for drawing himself to attention, snapping a salute with a curt, “Yes, sir”, before turning away to order the Arbites to start gathering the log files from the data-columns around the quarterdeck. There was no central data-cogitator on these mining vessels, as there was none on the Anteus, again all part of the dubious pleasures of working in the corrosive Argo-Navis system. As if to underscore the point the mag-tremors predicted by Durand rolled the ship again, three coming in quick succession accompanied by shrieks and groans from the vessel’s superstructure. The motion made the cables and trunks creak and sway sickeningly, and sent some congealed gobbets of ichor splattered to the floor. Keir looked away in disgust, his head turning towards the hatchway he had come in by, expecting to see the two remaining men of the crew squad standing there. Instead he saw them lying crumpled in the open hatch, and standing over them two overall-clad figures beginning to heft a sizeable piece of machinery between them in the direction of Keir and his men. Behind them the corridor was full of shadowy figures that seemed to be receiving no light from the lux strips just above them, and Keir could sense others moving on the edge of his vision. They were trapped, and almost certainly outnumbered, and Keir could feel a sense of panic beginning to overwhelm him. The buzzing sound was now very loud, and sounded more like a swarm-hive than a cooling system, and there were distinct voices whispering just below the threshold of hearing. Keir brought his gun up and yelled a desperate warning, but before he could get a shot off one of the men had activated the trigger-lever. With a clunk like two massive ferro-magnets slamming together the front of the mechanism burst immediately into light, so intense it seemed that a small sun had exploded into being there in the balcony, and Keir felt himself hurled backwards, slamming the small of his back into the railing and flipping over. Ignoring the screaming pain in his eyes and burning sensation he flailed around with his free hand as he spilled over the edge. He felt his hand close around taut rubber cabling that gave slightly under his sudden weight, and as he checked his fall his lower body snapped around and set him dancing spastically like a puppet with all but one of its strings cut. He heard the thunderous clunk-crack again, and then again, accompanied each time by an explosive concussion and wash of heat that set him swinging violently but, alarmingly, no flash of light. In fact, he couldn’t see anything any more. He had been blinded by what he realised was an plas-welder, never intended for onboard use but for main hull plating repair in hard vacuum. What the hell had they been planning to do with that? Designed to cleave four-foot thick ceramite plates on contact, only a madman would try and operate one in a confined space and in an atmosphere. Or a heretic. Phantom lights tore across his vision, whole galaxies of miniscule stars swelled and went nova in seconds, and blacker-than-black shapes coiled and curled, all with a red background of searing pain at the back of his eyes. He prayed to the Emperor that his eyes had not been crisped in their sockets. Keir could smell smoke, acrid fumes filling his nostrils and his lungs, charred flesh and ozone choking him, and he could hear screams of pain, amplified in most cases by vox-speakers. The Arbites were burning, he realised, and there was nothing in the way of return fire. Clunk-crack went the transformer in the plas-welder and Keir heard what sounded like deck plating being ripped apart and heavy objects striking distant walls and floors. The unrestrained plasbeam would be arcing and cracking like a whip, tearing deep gouges in whatever it touched, however briefly. There was a rush of heat, and again he was sent spinning and jerking. He still held his bolt-pistol in one hand, but was slowly losing his grip with the other. The cable was coated in dried blood and gore, but it was only dry on the surface, and his grip had broken through the crust to the still-slick remains underneath. His pendulum-like motion had also loosened some of the body parts threaded higher up, and he grimaced as what felt like teeth grated across his knuckles and dug into his fingers. As he tried to hook a knee over the cable he realised that the two heretics had not been wearing protective visors when they fired the weapon. He knew they did not have augmetics, since those would have ceased working long ago in the Argo-Navis system, so they must now be as blind as he was. He finally succeeded in getting one knee over the cable and hung there, an unknown distance from the floor below. The sounds of violence had diminshed in the past few seconds. He heard a low, bubbling moan from below him and off to his left, and a second later felt the rush of heat and the sub-sonic thump of air as the plas-welder discharged again, and then again, presumably in the direction of the noise. Silence slowly returned, until Keir could only hear the racing thump of his heart and his laboured breathing, the crackle of small fires, the hiss of super-heated metal cooling rapidly and the dull throb of the engines. The buzzing and whispering seemed to have ceased, and Keir’s sense of utter panic had evaporated along with it. Keir struggled to bring his ragged breath under control – he was out of condition, but if those crazed heretics had been blinded the instant they fired that plas-welder like Keir and his men had been, then they were hunting for survivors by sound alone. And two could play at that game. Keir held his breath as he dangled almost upside down, straining his hearing for the slightest clue as to the whereabouts of the two cultists. He was certain the shadowy figures he had seen were as real as the attackers Arlane had imagined seeing earlier. It was just him and the two miners with the plas-welder. He slowly let out his breath as his head started to pound from lack of oxygen and drew in another, wincing with the pain in his eyes that felt like needles being dragged across his retinas. He screwed his eyes shut. He could hear Brenner and others shouting questions in his vox piece, and carefully turned it off. There was a momentary sound like a scuffing boot, a few metres away, and off to his right. He brought up his bolt pistol, but there was no more sound, nothing to aim at. Well, maybe he could make them make a sound, he thought. Jamming the handle of the bolt pistol in his mouth, he reached into his great coat and eased out his ID tags. Judging the angle as best he could he flung them away in the direction he fancied the far end of the quarterdeck lay, and snatched the gun back out of his mouth. A second after the tags rattled and bounded off a data console he heard the crashing clunk-crack of the plas-welder go off once and then twice. He was about to fire, more in hope than expectation, when he realised that the two clunk-cracks had co-incided with brief flashes in his ruined vision. His eyes had been closed, but he had definitely seen the plas-welder go off. That meant his vision was not completely gone, the blindness was only temporary, and if he could avoid looking into the business end of the plas-welder his vision might return enough for him to see the cultists, at least enough to hit them. Or their vision might return enough for them to see him, he reflected. He would have to wait them out. There followed the most agonising few minutes of his life that he cared to remember, as he dangled silently from the gore-slick cable, the shattered teeth of a dead miner digging into his hand, his forearm burning now with the effort of maintaining his grip, and all the while trying to hold his breath for as long as possible, waiting for either his vision to return or for the lance of the plas-welder to scorch the flesh from his bones. The heretics were still there, he could feel them, and hear the micro-sounds of their presence, but he could not pin down their location enough to be sure of taking a shot. The litanies of protection ran through his mind as he silently recited them over and over again. After what seemed like an eternity he realised that the small glowing orbs in the swirling rainbow and darkness of his vision were the small fires the plasbeam had ignited around the room. Another patch of lighter shadow was the doorway to the transverse corridor through which he had entered. Streaks and streams that had seemed to waver as if in a heathaze resolved into the beams of stablights left where the Arbites had dropped them. And then a shadow moved slowly across one of those beams. He brought up his bolt pistol aiming for the shadow and as he pulled the trigger his grip finally, and suddenly, gave out. He cursed the gods as his shot went wide and he fell heavily face down, the pile of miners’ bodies the heretics had been stacking breaking his fall. At the same time the cultists fired again and again, but they were firing at where he had been, not where he lay, face down in a pile of dead bodies. Burning chunks of flesh and bone rained down on him. Gritting his teeth and screwing his eyes shut he waited for the cultists to stop firing, the awful light of the plasbeam now clearly visible even through the corpses underneath him. When a few seconds had passed since the last superheated shot rent the air, Keir raised his head, opened his eyes and swung his bolt pistol round to face the blurry shapes standing only a few metres away from him and unloaded his entire clip into them on full auto. They twisted and jerked as the hard rounds slammed into them at close range. They dropped the plas-welder with a heavy crash as both were knocked backwards off their feet under the hail of fire. Keir reloaded where he lay, but could not see any movement from the rapidly sharpening blurs now sprawled across the quarterdeck. He staggered to his feet, slipping on the shifting pile of corpses, keeping his sidearm trained on the bodies of the two cultists as he walked over to them, and put a round each through what he was certain was their heads. Only then did he key his vox unit back into life, and attend to the babble of voices. When Brenner and his squads arrived, Keir’s vision had returned to something like normal, although it was clear retinal damage had been done. Only time would tell how much, and if it would heal. The cultists’ blind but crazed firing had killed many of the eight Arbites on the torn and buckled quarterdeck, but three men were alive, albeit unconscious and badly injured. Keir noted, with some regret, that Arlane was not one of the three. He gathered Arlane’s ID tags. He would send them to his wife – widow – personally. The rat’s nest of cables had also been damaged in the firefight, with several cables severed and some on fire. Keir considered letting the room burn, but knew he had to leave something for the proper authorities to look at. This incursion of corruption was, as far as he knew, unprecedented in Argo-Navis, and some very powerful people would want to get to the bottom of it. The fires were put out, and otherwise the room was left as it was, although Keir did have the bulkheads sealed in place at all entrances, and the unmutilated bodies removed for proper burial. He also permitted Anteus’ pastor, an old man who had been a miner for many years himself, to carry out as many rites of purification and purgation in that cursed ship as he had time and strength to perform, and to bless the defiled remains of his brethren with incense and holy water. He finally headed back to the Anteus, brushing aside the midshipmen who offered to lend him a hand, feeling sick to his stomach. As he sat in the medicae ward, his eyes being bound with palliatory dressings smeared with salves and unguents, he listened to the reports of his acting First Lieutenant Durand. The Lamadh III had been swept clean, and no survivors had been found. The ship’s motion had been halted, her engines had been disabled and her hatches blown, exposing the interior to the hard vacuum of space. She was now utterly lifeless and derelict. Her position noted in Keir’s log and her transponder hard-wired to a very large array of batteries, the Anteus made ready to get under way for the three week journey back to Primor base. Lying in his hammock in his cramped cabin, head wrapped in sweet-smelling bandages, dictating his reports to his steward and suddenly feeling like a very large drink, Captain Keir wondered how his stock of spirits was, and made a mental note to have a word with the purser at the first opportunity. # “It took three weeks to get back to Primor and submit my reports to the Port Captain. Franks passed it to ANDU and they sent two ships straight away, but of course they didn’t send a good captain. Commodore [REDACTED], chinless wonder that he is, spent four months looking but everyone knows he couldn’t find his [REDACTED] with both hands and a [REDACTED] flashlight. Someone had to take the blame for his failure to find the Lamadh III, and I have found my subsequent work escorting resupply vessels in and out of the system thoroughly rewarding…”
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