[Ravenor 01] Ravenor - Dan Abnett

  "Holy crap," mumbled Kara, getting to her feet. The terrible psychic-force had ebbed away. Duboe's ghastly, formless corpse slid down the hold wall like soaked wallpaper.

  "Are you all right?" she asked Ravenor.

  "No," he said. His voice was strangely distorted. Duboe's attack had damaged his voxponder. "There's no time, Kara. I'm needed elsewhere."

  "But-"

  "No buts. We're all dead if I don't act. Guard me here."

  "Absolutely," she said. There was no response. She knew he was already gone, his mind running free.

  She collected her pistols and went to the hold doorway. Outside, the firefight was thicker than before.

  "Harlon!"

  "I hear you!" he shouted from the hold doorway opposite. He was cracking bolt rounds down the hall. A heavy return of fire was coming their way.

  "I've got the boss in here!" she yelled over the gunshots. "What's our current?"

  "Frigging awful!" he bellowed. "There's at least four of the bastards down there now, with good cover. We're not going that way."

  Kara swung out of her doorway and let rip with bursts from both pistols.

  "I've got to guard Ravenor here!" she cried as she dropped back. "I think you should double back and see if you can reach the bridge!"

  "And leave you here?" he questioned.

  "That was the plan, remember? Let's stick to it."

  "But-"

  "Just move your arse! I can deal!"

  He looked across at her. "You sure?"

  "Frig, yeah. It's me, remember."

  He smiled. She'd always liked that smile. "Get to the bridge. Kill 'em all," she said.

  Nayl nodded, changing clips. "See you later, Kara Swole."

  "You know it."

  "Cover me," he said, rising. Kara leant out of the doorway and rained caseless rounds down the hallway with both guns. Behind her, Nayl started to run back down the way they'd come in. The storm of pistol fire made the hunters down the hall duck for cover. Then they started to fire back again with renewed vigour.

  "Here we go," Kara said to herself.

  "Shouldn't we do something?" Medicae Zarjaran asked. Thonius wanted to shrug, but he knew it would hurt his arm. Outside the doorway of the hold where the crew were imprisoned, their guards were engaged in a blistering exchange of fire with someone. Two or three more of their kind had come to join them. Smoke from the intense weaponsfire was fogging the deck.

  Was this salvation, Thonius wondered? Was this death? Should he get up and try to do something? That was what Zarjaran had meant. Not "we"... "him". Carl.

  He could try and attack the guards from behind while they were occupied with the firefight. Sure he could. Give him a damned Leman Russ tank and a squad of Astartes, and he'd be right on the job.

  "We should just keep our heads down," he said.

  "Really?" Zarjaran asked. He had a look on his face. "But I thought-"

  "Thought what?" Thonius asked.

  "Nothing," said the doctor.

  Thought I was a hero? A hard-bitten Throne agent? Think again.

  Mathuin was getting really edgy. "For Terra's sake, mistress... sort it out!"

  "I can't!" she said. "Whoever did this has been very canny. We're blocked. They can't get into the ship's master controls any more than I can."

  She looked up from the cogitation stack suddenly. "What was that?"

  Mathuin looked up too. He hadn't seen any movement. Was that hunter catching up with them at last... ?

  "Like a wind," Preest said. "Like a monsoon wind. A rushing noise. I..."

  Her voice trailed off. She looked down in horror at the surface of the stack console. Frost coated it. Coated her fingers, her gaudy rings, her velvet sleeves.

  "Oh dear God-Emperor preserve me..." she stuttered.

  +He's not listening.+ Kinsky's voice boomed in her head. She looked up into the lofty spaces of the vast enginarium. There was nothing there.

  Kinsky, moving like a missile down from the roof, looking into her terrified, blinking eyes. He made his rushing mind-form thorny, the better to gouge through her flimsy mind walls.

  Something hard and furious struck Kinsky's mind from side on, and sent it sparking away across the enginarium vault. In pain, bleeding psi-force, Kinsky recovered, forming into a thought-armoured ball, tendons of razor-string lashing out around it.

  +Kinsky.+

  His assailant appeared. It took the form of a marine predator, a great saw-toothed fish, shimmering with inner light. It swam down around the material stanchions of the nearest drive chamber, topaz energy shining from its deathless eyes.

  +Ravenor.+

  With a beat of its tail, the twenty-metre fish swam through the air towards the twitching armoured ball. Kinsky shimmered, re-composing his non-corporeal guise into a giant mantis, shining in a pearlescent light the colour of his psychotic eyes, its massive claws snapping.

  +You wanted to go, Kinsky, Let's go.+

  Ravenor's tail slammed round and he surged at the psi-form, eyes rolling back as his great jaws gaped to bite.

  "What the hell is that?" Preest stammered. Mathuin looked at what she was pointing at. The air was shimmering, unfocused, above the main space of the enginarium bay. As they watched, a dent appeared in the decking, then another, another two, in the plated wall. Something invisible tore through one of the metal walkways along the flank of the second drive chamber and it disintegrated, shearing apart, cascading sparks as it tumbled the nine metres to the main deck. Gigantic toothmarks hammered into view on one of the side ductings. It tore loose, venting columns of steam, and flew into the air. High up, it seemed to strike something and bounced back onto the floor with a dreadful clang. Stripes of ice tracked across the deck and vanished as quickly as they had been made. Corposant flames erupted along the railings of an upper walkway.

  "I... I don't know," Mathuin said. Something was messing with his inner ear and his kinaesthetic sense, and from the look on Preest's face, she felt it too. Suddenly, he could smell flowers.

  "Lavender!" she cried.

  Then salt. Then charcoal. Then stagnant water. Then blood.

  "Throne!" Preest said, covering her nose and coughing. A huge raking split appeared across the length of the deck plating, showering metal shards in all directions.

  "Preest... mistress..." Mathuin said. "You have to concentrate. Shut all this out. Get the system working again."

  She looked at him. "But-"

  "Do it!"

  She bent down and began working the keyboard. A grazing dent the size of a demipach cratered the far wall of the vault.

  "Ignore all this! Do it!" Mathuin cried.

  Then a las-round missed Mathuin's head by a few centimetres. More followed.

  The hunters had found them.

  FOUR

  "Skoh! Report your damn status now! My Navigator reads your ship as lousy with psi-force!"

  Skoh pressed the "live" stud on the vox console. "Stand by, Thekla. We have a few problems, but we're dealing."

  "I want that ship burning, Skoh!" Thekla's voxed voice crackled. "Burning and gone, with all its crew! That was the whole point of this protracted exercise!"

  "Tell him to shut up," Madsen said.

  Skoh breathed deeply. "We're getting there, Thekla. A few unforeseen set-backs. Please, stand by."

  He cut the channel.

  "Well? This is your plan, Mamzel Madsen. Impress me."

  Madsen was with Ahenobarb, bent over Kinsky's body. The psyker was jerking and thrashing in his stupor.

  "Gods!" Ahenobarb said. Ugly red weals like a bite mark had just appeared on Kinsky's throat. Bright arterial blood began to leak out of the psyker's lips. His jaw clenched.

  "Rav... en... or..." he gurgled.

  "Damnation," said Madsen.

  "Mamzel," Skoh said, "it appears this oh-so-perfectly wrought trap of yours is coming apart at the seams."

  "I-" Madsen began.

  "Shhh!" Skoh interrupted. He raised a hand and listen
ed to the voices of his men coming over his microbead earplug. Then he turned and looked at her. "I think you should sort things."

  "What? Kinsky is-"

  Skoh slid his long-las out of the leather boot on his back and armed it. He didn't aim it at her, but the threat was very clear. "I'm taking charge, Madsen. You've ballsed it up this far. My men report they have the shipmistress and one other cornered at the far stern. Get down there. That's clearly the location of her back-up. Get down there and make things good so we can resume control, dump this hulk into the star and be gone."

  Madsen drew her autosnub and glanced at Ahenobarb. "Eight," she said. "You're with me, Ahenobarb."

  "I think that's best." Skoh replied.

  Madsen and the giant hurried away out of the bridge hatch.

  Las-bolts and solid slugs were impacting all around them. Preest and Mathuin had to stay low behind the console, parts of which were shattering off under the gunfire. There were at least five of them out there, Mathuin reckoned. Three on the deck, two on the gantries. They had them pinned. He couldn't raise his head enough to squeeze off a shot, let alone allow Preest to complete her work. They were just waiting to die.

  Kara switched neatly out of the doorway and rattled fire from both guns. This time she aced. One of the hunters, approaching over-confident, went over.

  But she was down to her last two clips. She looked across at Ravenor's chair. Battered, holed, it was silent, as if it was empty.

  I became a cyclone, sweeping away the shoals of his mind-darts like leaves. Kinsky dropped low beneath my storm-force bow-wave and lunged upwards with a mental lance. I changed into a glittering avalanche that fell on him and snapped the lance, but Kinsky slid away like oil and drove the broken-off spearhead into my side. Psi-energy drizzled out, spattering like blood. I shook off the pain, turned and exhaled a gout of pyrokinetic flames that ignited Kinsky like an oily slick.

  Flames roared up, pink-hot, sour, fierce. I heard him scream. For a second, I believed I had beaten him.

  But then he rose up out of the flames. He wore his human form for a second, laughing at me, arms wide, his hateful eyes becoming little secondary mouths that laughed along. The fire slid off him harmlessly.

  So be it. The fight was not over. We threw mind-traps at each other, traps of increasing complexity and ingenuity; bright, intricate things that snapped open, bit shut, became spiked, became corrosive. He and I brushed them aside, and the blizzards of thought daggers we launched once the traps had failed. Then we closed again, our non-corporeal forms shifting and changing rapidly as we tried to out-think one another and prepare for the other's next ploy. Undecided, our ectoplasmic shapes bent and twisted and malformed, rupturing like the skin on boiling milk, puffing out like cysts, spurting like soft lava.

  Kinsky suddenly became a bruised, squid-like form that lashed at me with twenty metre-long tentacles. I had already raised overlapping shields of mind-plating, but they buckled under the blows, so I slid the plates apart and then closed them like a vice on the tentacles when they whipped in again. Several snapped. Dark clouds of inky pain and anger squirted from the severed ends. While he was still reeling, I rolled my non-corporeal form into a porcupine ball and launched a shower of quill-shots at Kinsky, pinning the Ministry agent's mind against the sliding fabric of space-time.

  Howling, Kinsky tore free. Reality was so badly damaged where I had pinned him, the noxious, infernal light of the warp shone through the punctures.

  Kinsky pulsed, reforming. For a moment, he was humanoid shape again, then that split apart as something vast grew up out of it. A thing of smoke and darkness, beaked, eyeless, a primordial ravager from ancient myth.

  Nothing seemed to stop him. He was a monstrously powerful psyker. I had the edge in terms of training and practice, and this gave me real finesse. But I was nothing like as powerful as Kinsky's crude, unstructured mind. I would not lose to him. I refused to be bested by such a feral mind.

  But steadily, he drove me back across the enginarium.

  The Hinterlight shuddered violently. On the bridge, Skoh saw hazard alerts begin to light up all the station displays.

  He looked at the nearest one as another thump shook the deck. What was that? Were they being fired on?

  The scope said yes. Two hits, amidships. Starboard hangar voided, hull damage. Fire in the real-space drive chambers. Locked open doors had slammed automatically as the emergency safety systems had cut in.

  Astounded, Skoh activated the main-beam vox. "Thekla? What the hell are you doing?"

  "Firing on you, of course," the vox gurgled. "I'm tired of waiting, and I'm worried that inquisitor bastard has got loose."

  "Thekla!" Skoh snarled. "Cease fire!"

  The Hinterlight bucked again. "Can't do that, Feaver. Sorry. I have to make sure that ship and its crew are dead, and if you won't be a sport and dive it into the star for me, what can I do? Nothing personal."

  Another brutal shudder. Klaxons sounded. Skoh could smell smoke now.

  "You bastard, Thekla," he said.

  "Whatever. I recommend you get off that death trap, Feaver, my old friend. I'll be waiting to pick you up. But hurry... I intend to make short work of that ship."

  The vox went dead. As if to prove the shipmaster's point, the Hinterlight shook again. Skoh picked up his long-las and headed for the exit. There was an escape module compartment close by, at the end of the midships companionway. He was halfway down it, when Harlon Nayl came through the end hatch.

  They saw each other at once. Both started to fire and move simultaneously. Firing his long-las from the hip, Skoh hurled himself to his right towards the cover of a bulkhead. Nayl's bolt pistol came up blasting. He threw himself into an almost full-length dive towards a side hatchway.

  The two powerful weapons blazed at each other up and down the companionway, raising a veil of smoke and riddling the wall-plating with dents and holes. Neither man had much in the way of cover. Nayl's bolts chipped and whined against the thick bulkhead concealing Skoh. The hunter's las-shots fireballed and deflected off the hatch-housing where Nayl was tucked in.

  Stalemate... at least until one of them ran out of ammunition. Skoh didn't believe they had that long anyway. Thekla's batteries would have the Hinterlight dead in just another few minutes.

  He had a better idea. Ignoring the bolt rounds slamming against the bulkhead, he popped the powerclip out of his rifle, and replaced it with another from his belt. Special load, hot-shot, useful for when big game got really big.

  Under these circumstances, at this range, the round would go right through the hatch-housing. And the idiot standing behind it.

  Against the dazzling backdrop of the Firetide storm, the Oktober Country closed in, its weapon turrets flashing every few seconds. Neither ship was a military class vessel, and neither possessed the sort of Fleet-grade weaponry that could annihilate a rival instantly. But like most rogue traders, the Oktober Country had enough firepower to take care of itself. Its sustained bombardment would eventually blow Preest's ship apart.

  Drifting, helpless, shieldless, the Hinterlight soaked the damage up. Sections of plating blew out like foil. Scabbed patches of hull crackled with shorting power sources or glowed red-hot.

  Inside, significant chunks of the ship were obliterated, holed to space. Others were auto-sealed, ablaze.

  Madsen was still heading for the stern.

  "We should just... just take that bulk lifter and go." Ahenobarb ventured.

  "Go where?" Madsen replied. "That's hardly an option. God-Emperor, I can't believe Thekla could be this insane!"

  "What do we do, then?" urged Ahenobarb.

  "Carry on. We deal with Preest, shut down her tinkering, then we've got control back. I can raise the shields. Stop that madman from blowing us apart."

  Ahenobarb looked doubtful, but he was used to following her orders.

  The deck shuddered under another impact. "Come on!" Madsen said.

  She had been intending to short-cut down thro
ugh the real-space drive chambers, cutting a good five minutes off the journey, but the doors to the drive room were sealed.

  "That chamber is blown out!" Ahenobarb moaned, and started to look for an alternate route.

  Madsen looked at the doorpanel display. "No, there's still pressure. But there is fire. It's worth it."

  She took a multikey out of her hip-pocket, pressed it to the hatch control and overrode the lock. The hatch swung open. Heat and scorching smoke swept out. Fires were blazing through the long, double-storey drive rooms, and alarms were singing all over the place. Coughing, Madsen led the way out along the main gantry walk, ignoring the heat from below.

  Kys and Zael had felt the first brutal impact of Thekla's attack, and quickly found themselves driven back through the drive chambers by the inferno kicked off by a damaged power-capacitor. Attempting to exit, they'd discovered the section hatches had locked automatically.

  They retraced their steps, desperate to find a hatch that would open to them. It was getting hard to see, to breathe. They clambered their way up the hot metal of one of the gantry ladders to escape a new wall of flames that had sprung up, but now fires were licking into the upper levels of the chamber too.

  "Back! Back!" Kys screamed at Zael. "We have to go back and-"

  "Behind you!" Zael yelled suddenly.

  Ahenobarb appeared from nowhere, out of the smoke. He swung at her. Kys tried to draw her pistol, but his fist hit too hard, too soon. She went down on the gantry mesh, her gun falling away down into the flames.

  Ahenobarb bent down to pick her up. She only had her boline left. She drew it and stabbed it into Ahenobarb's calf.

  He bleated with pain. Tearing out of his hands, Kys punched the blade in under his nose.

  Ahenobarb fell backwards, over the rail, into the boiling fire beneath them.

  A bullet hit Kys in the left shoulder and spun her back down onto the gantry decking again. Starkly lit by the flamelight, Madsen advanced towards her, gun raised. A section of the gantry behind Madsen folded and toppled away into the inferno.