The Chrome warrior-form had come out of a side aperture in the nest tunnel and attacked the leading carts in the magos biologis’ convoy. One cart was already mangled, and the curving tunnel walls were spattered with blood and lubricant fluid from three servitors that had been dismembered in the first strike.
‘Warrior-form’ was the word the Imperial Fists were using. It was a perfectly apt term, simple and technically appropriate. The creature was combat adapted. It was built for fighting. It was not, like the regular Chromes, a worker or drone obliged to defend the nest.
Gun servitors in Laurentis’ retinue had already opened fire, but their lasweapons were not sufficiently powerful to wound the armoured hulk. It came forwards, wrenching a second cart into the air, spilling its occupants, tipping it.
The confines of the tunnel were so tight. There was nowhere to run, to move to, no air to breathe. The light was poor and gunfire was causing intense visual disturbance. Everyone was shouting. Las-shots howled. Laurentis could hear the voice of the comm-servitor as it tried to reconnect his link with the Chapter Master.
He was caught up in it. It was exactly where he didn’t want to be, exactly where he’d spent his career trying not to be. He was caught in the untameable insanity of combat.
‘Save yourself, magos,’ the pilot servitor beside him said in a flat and oddly sad tone. Hardwired and bone-bonded into the cart’s driving position, the servitor itself could hardly escape. Even so, Laurentis wanted to snarl in outrage. Save himself? How? Where could he run to? Up the tunnel, away from the survey convoy? Into the nest, alone?
There was a sharp bang. The warrior-form had ploughed into one of the gun servitors, its claws ripping open the plated bio-organic torso like chisels. Power cables shredded and the servitor’s power plant exploded, showering sparks and sizzling fragments and releasing a stink of ozone.
Brain-dead, transfixed by the claws, the gun servitor went into a death-shock spasm, its autonomic systems reacting mindlessly, ungoverned by any programmed control protocols.
The double lasguns mounted onto each of its twitching wrists began to fire, the blue barrels pumping to and fro in their pneumatic sleeves as they spat out bolt after bolt of lethal, shaped light.
The first flurry ripped through three servitors and a biologis assistant standing on the stern of the nearest cart, killing them and making them tumble like skittles. Another wild burst blew out the port-side motivators of the same cart, and then killed two servitors on the ground beside it.
Laurentis flinched as another stray shot whined past, blowing out the head of his cart’s pilot servitor. The servitor didn’t even slump. The braced and bonded figure remained rigid in its driving socket, smoke streaming from the burned-out bowl of its skull.
Laurentis leapt over the side of the cart, and started to run up the narrow space between the cart and the tunnel wall. He could hear his comm-servitor, wired to its dedicated function, single-mindedly trying to reconnect his link with the Chapter Master in orbit.
Laurentis found his robes tangled in his feet. He was aware of a hot prickling in his lungs and chest, in his throat. Terror. Panic. He was going to die. He was going to die. Fleeing was the only possible option, but it was pointless. He was going to die.
Behind him, the warrior-form shook the dead gun servitor off its claws and sent the servitor’s corpse crashing away, bouncing off the tunnel roof and then the fairing of another cart.
Laurentis ran. He realised he wasn’t very good at it. The tunnel floor underneath his feet was spongy and thick with slime or mucus, and his boots weren’t in any way the right sort of footgear for these conditions. He banged his elbow on the vector cowling of the cart, and it really hurt. He could feel sweat streaming down his spine. He was hyperventilating. He was about to throw up.
A body flew over his head, hit the tunnel wall with a twig-snap of fracturing bones, went limp and fell at his feet. It was Overseer Finks, the convoy manager. Laurentis recoiled and felt the hot acid of reflux in his throat. He wanted to stop and help his colleague, though the overseer was clearly past helping. He didn’t need a Laudex Honorium in Advanced Biologis to know that any human missing quite that much torso probably wasn’t alive any more.
It felt squalid, however, squalid and shameful to just step over the man’s body. It felt improper to pass by and keep running. But the alternatives, stopping or turning back, seemed even more unfortunate.
Laurentis realised, with a scientist’s detached precision, that he had frozen. Fright had conquered flight. He was shutting down.
The cart he had dismounted from, the cart he had been in the process of running past, suddenly overturned and slammed into the side of the tunnel. It deformed and buckled, metal plating and machine components shredding and scattering. It had been half-sheltering him, but now he was alone, a man standing beside a corpse with a curved, slimy wall behind him.
The cart compressed further as the advancing warrior-form pounded it and mashed its structure into the wall. The heavy throb of clack-clack-clack welled out of the dark beast’s oesophagus. Blood and oil drooled off its claws.
‘Golden Throne preserve me,’ Laurentis muttered, his voice as quiet as a sub-vox echo.
Eight
Ardamantua – orbital
Captain Sauber, known as Severance, commander of Lotus Gate Company, cocked his head to one side.
‘This isn’t the noise bursts?’ he asked.
‘No, sir,’ replied the adept. ‘Though they are recurring.’
‘We have compiled a list of timings and durations, sir,’ added another adept. ‘Would you like to review it?’
‘No,’ said Severance. He kept staring at the cogitator screen, processing the data. ‘You’re saying this isn’t the noise bursts?’
‘No, sir, a separate phenomenon,’ replied the first adept.
‘Gravitational?’ asked Severance.
‘Yes,’ said the adept.
‘It reminds me of the mass-gravity curve of a Mandeville point,’ said Severance.
At his side, Shipmistress Aquilinia clucked her tongue, impressed.
‘What?’ asked Severance, turning to look at her.
‘You recognised a Mandeville curve from a schematic profile,’ said the shipmistress, looking up at him. ‘I thought you were just a soldier. That’s impressive.’
‘The mass-gravity curve is similar to a Mandeville point,’ said the adept, ‘though of far, far less magnitude–’
‘Which makes it all the more impressive that the captain recognised it,’ Aquilinia snapped at him.
‘Yes, mistress.’
‘Can we get to the point?’ asked Severance. ‘Are we detecting gravitational instabilities in the Ardamantua orbital zone?’
‘Slight ones, yes, sir,’ said the adept.
‘The whole zone was surveyed as we approached,’ said Severance.
‘These are new,’ said the adept.
‘Like the noise bursts?’ asked Severance.
The adept nodded. ‘We noticed the first approximately two minutes after the initial noise burst occurrence. And only then because of a slight drift in our orbital anchor point. Analysis showed that a tiny gravitic anomaly had occurred eighty-eight point seven two units off the portside drive assembly, causing the anchor-slide. We corrected. Then we scanned, and saw that sixteen other anomalies of similar profile had occurred during the period.’
Severance turned and crossed the long, narrow bridge of the strike cruiser Amkulon. It was like the nave of an ancient cathedral, with various function-specific crew departments working in lit galleries stacked on either side above him. Aquilinia hurried after the massive armoured warrior.
‘Open a channel to the flagship!’ she cried. ‘The captain wants voice to voice with the Chapter Master!’
‘You read my mind,’ said Severance.
‘I grasp the s
ignificance,’ she replied. ‘If there’s genuine, previously undetected gravitational instability in the orbital zone, we will have to back the fleet out. That would seriously compromise the ground assault.’
Severance nodded. He felt cheated. His wall wasn’t even deployed yet. His men were prepped and ready in the drop holds of the Amkulon.
‘Did you see them?’ he growled at Aquilinia. ‘The gravity blips, popping up like blisters, and then closing again. Have you seen that before?’
She shook her head.
‘I’ve seen gravity fraying close to major mass giants,’ she said. ‘And you get that kind of peppering, blistering effect on the fringes during translation in and out of the empyrean.’
‘Hence the similarity to a Mandeville profile?’
‘Exactly. Throne’s sake, captain, I’ve seen plenty of non-Euclidian gravity effects on the rip-curve of the translation interface. Daemon space does not behave itself, as my mentors used to say.’
‘But you think this is natural?’
She shrugged. A brass-framed optic slid down from her crested headdress, spearing data-light into her left eye so she could review the adept’s findings again.
‘I believe so. Yes, yes. It has to be. There’s no patterning. We have to accept we’ve entered a gravitationally unstable zone.’
‘I’ll inform the Chapter Master,’ said Severance.
He took the proffered speaker horn in his huge left hand and waited a moment for the vox-servitor to cue him that connection was established.
‘Speak,’ said Mirhen’s voice over the link.
‘Severance, Lotus Gate, Amkulon,’ said Severance. ‘We’re plotting increasing gravitational instability in the upper and outer orbital zone, sir. Routing all data to your bridge.’
He looked at Aquilinia, who nodded and began issuing orders to her data-adepts.
‘You should be receiving data now, sir,’ Severance began.
The deck shuddered. There was a dull, heavy sound of something vast and leaden colliding with something of equal mass. Hot, acrid smoke gusted across the bridge.
Alarms started to sound.
‘What was that?’ Severance asked.
The shipmistress was already yelling commands and requesting clarification. Bridge personnel dashed to their stations.
‘Amkulon? Severance, report.’ Mirhen’s voice scratched out of the vox-speakers.
‘Stand by,’ Severance replied. He looked at the shipmistress.
‘A gravity pocket spontaneously opened in our starboard reactor core,’ she said. ‘We’re ruptured and venting. I don’t know if we can contain the damage and maintain our position.’
‘There must be–’ Severance began.
‘Captain, please get your company and all auxiliaries off this ship now,’ said Aquilinia, ‘before we suffer catastrophic anchor-point failure and nosedive into that planet.’
Nine
Terra – the Imperial Palace
The Senatorum session had lasted for almost seven hours. Tedium had been etched on some faces by the time it drew to a close, and few had been able to disguise their dissatisfaction when Ekharth had announced that they would resume after a three-hour interval as there were still eighty-seven items remaining on the agenda.
Vangorich withdrew to his private suite to rest his mind. The problem as he saw it, and he believed he saw it very clearly, was that the instrument of governance was not as sharp as it had once been. The Old Twelve had met regularly, and had dealt specifically with high-order matters. Everything else had been delegated to the lower tiers of government and the Administratum. Any review of the parliamentary records showed how economically and concisely the Senatorum had dealt with state affairs in previous, greater ages. Greater ages, populated by greater men.
Now the Senatorum was bloated and fat, over-stuffed with hangers-on and minor officials, and it met on a whim, whenever Udo or any of the other core members felt that it should. Business piled up, most of it far too trivial to bother the dignity of a proper Senatorum. And as for the actual process! These people weren’t politicians. Procedure trudged along. No one knew how to debate properly. The most mindless committee vote took forever. At every touch and turn, the in-fighting and rivalries between the High Twelve spewed out and gnawed like acid into the gears of government, slowing everything down.
The decision taken on isotope shipments, for example. Utterly ridiculous. They had actually voted through a policy that would actively harm the Imperium by retarding the efficiency of shipbuilding in the Uranic shipyards. Did anyone dare see it that way? Of course not! Mesring had wanted the vote swayed to protect his family’s huge commercial interests in the Tang Sector, and he had called in favours from those in his power bloc. House Mesring had benefited. The Imperium had not.
Vangorich’s suite was quiet. His signet ring deactivated the pain door and rested the alarm systems. He went inside. The outer room was panelled in dark oak, and lined with couches dressed in gleaming black leather upholstery. On a lit display stand ancient fragments of pottery, pre-dating the Golden Age of Technology, hung in suspension fields.
Vangorich put down his data-slate and a sheaf of documents, and walked to the sideboard to pour an amasec. The drinks, a modest collection of fine marks, were kept in special, tamper-proof bottles. He sniffed the empty glass for residue before he poured. Old habits.
Before he took his first sip, he used his thumb ring to deactivate a secret drawer in the top of the sideboard cabinet, slid it open, and took out the elegant, long-barrelled plasma pistol cushioned inside.
Without looking around, he said, ‘The left-hand armoire, beside the De Mauving landscape.’
Then he turned and aimed the weapon at the item of furniture he had just described.
A small but powerfully built man in a black bodyglove stepped out from behind the armoire and nodded sheepishly to Vangorich.
‘Nice try,’ said Vangorich, and lowered the weapon.
‘Every time, sir,’ said the man. ‘What was it on this occasion?’
‘Body-heat sensors,’ said Vangorich, taking a sip of his drink.
‘I deactivated them.’
Vangorich nodded.
‘And, therefore,’ he said, ‘I got no body-heat notifications from the security overwatch when I entered the suite, not even my own.’
‘Ah,’ said the man, slightly ashamed.
‘Also, you managed to throw a slight side-shadow under the foot of the armoire. You didn’t take into account the glow-globes to your left.’
The man nodded, chastened.
‘Where is she?’ asked Vangorich.
‘The atrium, sir,’ said the man.
Vangorich poured a second amasec and carried both drinks through to the small inner courtyard. Wienand was sitting on the bench beside the thermal pool, watching the luminous fish dart in the steaming shallows.
‘All done humiliating my bodyguard?’ she asked, not getting up.
‘A visit from you wouldn’t be the same without an opportunity to humiliate your man,’ he replied, handing her one of the glasses.
‘Kalthro is very good,’ she said, ‘the best we have. You’re the only person who ever catches him out.’
‘I consider it to be part of his education, a gift from the Officio Assassinorum to the Inquisition.’
He sat down next to her and crossed one knee over the other, rocking his glass.
‘Your visits are less frequent these days, Wienand,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to think you didn’t like me. To what do I owe this pleasure?’
‘Agenda item 346,’ she said.
‘346?’ He paused and thought for a second, running through the day’s fearsome data-load in his eidetic memory. ‘The Imperial Fists’ undertaking to Ardamantua?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘It was the quicke
st item of the day. It was raised and covered in about two minutes. Pending, awaiting reports from the Chapter Master.’
Wienand nodded. Her cheekbones were as sharp as glacial cliffs. Her hair was silver in the light.
‘What of it, Wienand?’
She pursed her lips.
‘A threat is developing,’ she said.
‘A threat?’
‘In the opinion of the Inquisition, yes.’
‘A xenos threat?’
She nodded.
‘They’re called… Chromes, aren’t they?’ asked Vangorich. ‘I did see the briefing paper.’
‘The Imperial Fists have undertaken the mission to Ardamantua to suppress a xenoform outbreak. The xenoforms are known as Chromes.’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘What am I missing?’ he asked.
‘You tell me.’
Vangorich shrugged. ‘I don’t know. As I understand it, these Chromes are like vermin. Nothing out of the ordinary. They have to be dealt with. I gather their numbers are greater than usual. The Fists have mobilised in prodigious numbers, almost full force. I understood that was a political gesture, to show them being useful in peacetime.’
He hesitated.
‘Wienand, if it’s a threat that seriously jeopardises an almost full-strength Chapter, you’re starting to worry me.’
She cleared her throat.
‘No, the politics should worry you,’ she said.
‘Go on.’
‘Mirhen’s taken pretty much his entire Chapter to Ardamantua to deal with the xenos threat. He’s the only one taking it seriously.’
‘And why is he taking it seriously? Who alerted him to it?’
‘We did,’ she said.
‘Of course you did.’
‘The Fists are more than capable of dealing with the Chrome problem,’ Wienand said. ‘The point is, they shouldn’t have to. The Imperium should be meeting the challenge. Ardamantua should have been a joint undertaking between the Astra Militarum and the Navy, with a backbone of Fists as its cutting edge. Deploying the whole Chapter was ungainly and clumsy.’