Epsin plunged through the thick smoke pluming down the air-gate’s entry deck. The walls were marred with shot damage, and several bodies lay on the deck. Rough, dirty men in drab red armour, their faces covered in black iron masks.
More than simple heretics, Epsin thought.
He waved his men up. Along the side hallway that led to the other gate entries, he heard sporadic gunfire.
And the buzzing again, that damn buzzing. Like an insect in a jar.
Epsin saw a figure in front of him, through the smoke. A tall figure…
No, three figures. One tall man, cloaked in pilgrim green and hooded, clutching two smaller figures to his sides with thick, powerful arms that were laced with tattoos. The smaller figures were dressed in rags, shivering and dinging to the man in green like frightened children. They turned their faces towards him, and Epsin gasped as he beheld their twisted, runtish, eyeless visages.
In unison, they opened their mouths, and the buzzing grew much louder, as if the lid had come off the jar and freed the insect. Epsin coughed and staggered, shaking his head frantically to get rid of the buzz.
He knew what this was. He tried to adjust his headset to send a warning to the captain.
The armsman beside him, a stalwart ship-trooper who had been in Epsin’s team for nine years, turned slowly. His mouth was slack, and blood ran copiously from his nose and tear-ducts.
He brought his shotcannon up and blew Epsin’s head off.
“Concordance now in two minutes,” the vox-link rasped.
“Thank you, Berengaria,” responded Shumlen, tilting slightly in the tight embrace of his grav-seat as he brought the Lightning round in a tight turn. “Flight leader to screen elements, form on me for a second pass. More traffic inbound.”
The pilots of the squadron chattered back in confirmation and the Lightning flight like a flock of racing birds, turned as one and made course towards the calculated real-space entry point about seven hundred and fifty kilometres ahead.
There was nothing to see The starfield at this speed was a striated blur, and the warp perturbation that preceded a reentry was visible only on instruments.
Shumlen checked his scope, and saw the swirling dimple of colour on the low-res screen swell and flutter. “Arm weapons,” he said.
His pulse was barely idling.
For the second time in less than an hour, space tore open. The reality fissure leapt and crackled like a luminous cephalopod, lashing tendrils of warp energy into real space that twisted out, fizzled and faded. Non-baryonic light flared brilliantly through the tear, backlighting the arriving ships. Monumental silhouettes, they were shot forward into real space.
They did not slow down. They were moving at cruise speed. Attack speed.
Shumlen blinked. The arriving ships were just dots against the glare-spot ahead of his squadron, but his pattern recognition systems began to hoot and warble.
“Hostiles, hostiles, hostiles,” he said, matter-of-factly. “We have hostile vessels in system and advancing. Flight leader to screen elements… accelerate to attack velocity.”
“Hostiles reported!” the ensign sang out, a tremor in his voice.
“Battle stations,” said Sodak. The sirens began to wail. “Shields up. Arm batteries. Power to main lances.”
“Shields aye!”
“Fighters are engaging,” said the flight controller.
Sodak gazed at the flickering images on the actuality sphere. “Increase magnification. Get me a clearer picture.” At the current resolution, the holographic display was overlaying tag cursors and disposition icons. Code numbers were jumping and blinking.
“Tenfold mag aye!” said the ensign.
The tactical image enlarged rapidly. It looked like three enemy ships, possibly four, but the overlay icon of the fighter screen was making it hard to read the details.
“Take out the fighter icon,” snapped Sodak, and an aide cancelled the overlay image of the Berengaria’s attack squadron.
Four ships. One of them very large. And they were moving. Point seven five light at least, cutting straight towards Herodor.
“Enginarium,” said Sodak. “Flank speed, please. Reactor output to ninety per cent. Last ready call for weapons.”
“Weapons aye. All green.”
“Firing solutions, all batteries and lances. Target the big one.”
“Aye sir.”
“Hostiles, sir,” said Velosade “Four marks. We believe three cruisers and a capital ship.”
“Hold position.”
“Berengaria is engaging.”
“Hold position,” Esquine repeated.
“Signal from the Glory of Cadia, sir,” Valdeemer called out. “Requesting permission to come about in support of the Berengaria.”
“Denied. I want them here, in line with us. Get that order confirmed.”
“Yes, fleet captain.”
“Status?” Esquine asked.
“Solstice is standing by. Laudate Divinitus is standing by. They both report battle readiness.”
“The Navarre?”
“Still locked in the boarding fight, sir.”
Esquine fell silent. Around him, above the machine-code chatter of the strategium, he could hear the ship’s priesthood chanting their blessings to secure victory in combat. The Imperial creed was being broadcast over the intercom system.
“Battle stations,” said Esquine softly. Bright red lamps began to cycle and flash and a moaning alarm siren started to sound. Esquine felt a shiver run through him as the neuro-plugs linking him to the ship’s systems delivered the multiple responses of an Imperial battleship rising to full combat mode. Esquine’s heart pounded as the reactors came to full power, his fingers twitched as the weapon batteries made ready to fire, his flesh tingled as the shields rose. He closed his eyes and experienced a rushing sense of expanded vision as power was diverted from non-essential systems to boost the main sensor cone. He looked, and saw the enemy bearing down.
The void was incandescent with rippling fireballs and traceries of light. Shumlen gunned in under the rake of the enemy’s forward anti-ship batteries and headed under the belly of the main vessel.
It was huge, easily the size of the Omnia Vincit, a Chaos battleship, its black hull so covered with turret clusters and shield pods it looked diseased and blistered. Three Chaos cruisers ran with it, fearsomely lithe warships with serrated hulls. Two were decked in red and gold, the third black with its ribbed superstructure painted white.
The Berengaria’s fighter screen had met the ships head on, so as to minimise the angles of fire available to the enemy gunners, but even so Shumlen had already lost about thirty ships to the massive anti-fighter barrage. Every pilot knew the drill. Once they were on the enemy, it was individual action. There was no hope of formation tactics in a fight zone this confused.
Shumlen hugged the enemy hull as close as he dared. He loosed one underwing missile, but was already well past by the time it detonated and he was unable to tell what surface damage he might have inflicted.
A Lightning tumbled past in front of him, causing him to veer as his collision warning system blared briefly. The Lightning was coming apart, shredding as it fell like a comet towards the hulking surface of the battleship’s hull.
Pulse lasers chased Shumlen, stitching the darkness with phosphorescent bolts. He banked hard left, saw a raised missile turret ahead, and fired his second missile. The blast dazzled him and his whole ship shook violently as he flew out of the blastwash.
A Lightning slid close to him, almost in formation, and then exploded as pulse fire from the hull found it. Another two shot over the top of him and began strafing runs along the underhull. Shumlen lost sight of them in the vivid firestorm.
Shumlen half-heard a transmission on the vox.
“Repeat, repeat,” he said. His pulse was just beginning to lift.
“Bats, bats, bats!” one of his wingmen repeated.
The enemy had got its fighter screen launched.
/> Flickering with twinkling flashes of light from the small-ship fight racing around their hulls, the Chaos vessels bore on.
“Archive sweep results, captain,” said Persson, Sodak’s tactical officer.
Sodak looked over the data. Two of the enemy cruisers were positively identified: the Cicatrice, with its white-ribbed superstructure, and the Revenant, its red hull laced with gold. The third cruiser was either the Harm’s Way or the Suture. The identity of the main battleship was vague, for such giants were much more seldom seen, but Persson’s pattern recognition program suggested the monster was the Incarnadine, an ancient, infamous craft.
“Master of ordnance? Have we firing solutions?”
“Solutions and range, captain,” replied Adept Yarden.
“Fire!” snarled Sodak.
The deck rocked beneath him slightly. Streaks of light from the lances and main batteries spat into the darkness.
“Main batteries have fired. Lances have fired. Torpedoes are running.”
On the augur-scope, blips of light crackled around the dark bulk of the approaching Incarnadine.
“Damage?”
“Their shields have held, captain,” said the master of ordnance.
“Second cycle, fire!”
Berengaria trembled again.
“Third cycle, fire!”
“Torpedoes have reached target, captain.”
“Damage… give me something, Yarden!”
The master of ordnance glanced over at the captain from his position at the fire control station.
“I’m sorry, sir. Nothing.”
“The Revenant is breaking formation, captain!”
Sodak turned his attention to the actuality sphere. One of the enemy cruisers was accelerating away from the battle group and advancing ahead of it.
“Engaging us?” asked an ensign.
“No,” said Sodak. “They’re going for the convoy.” The Revenant’s course was vectoring it in after the slow moving Munitorum ships that had come out of the warp.
“Maintain course. All forward batteries and lances to sustain firing cycles at the primary target Torpedoes too, if you please. As the Revenant passes us and presents, I want sustained fire on it from the flank batteries.”
“Aye, captain,” replied Yarden, swiftly moving to task his gunnery officers and their servitor crews.
The Revenant, swooping in like an interstellar predator, seemed to fine-tune its path as it passed the Berengaria as if to taunt Sodak. Its main weapons blasting forward, the Berengaria lit up its port side with fierce fire from its flank batteries. The Revenant made a desultory return of fire from its own side armaments as it thundered past.
“We hit them sir. Minor hull damage. Not enough to slow them.”
“Us?”
“Shields held.”
“Signal the fleet captain and verify his instructions. Does he want us to maintain assault?”
The bridge suddenly lurched hard, and damage klaxons beeped wildly.
“The Incarnadine has begun firing on us, sir. Minor shield damage.”
The ensign had barely finished when the ship shook again. Several crewmen were thrown off their feet, and the wail of the klaxons got louder. Sodak could see from the main console that they’d been hit hard on the upper hull. Moderate damage, hull punctures, interdeck fires…
“Auxiliary power to the shields!” he cried.
The Berengaria yawed as it was struck again. And again.
At the high anchor point above Herodor, the Glory of Cadia rumbled in well ahead of the reinforcement convoy it had been escorting. As per Esquine’s firm orders, it came about in a wide arc and took up station in battle formation with the massive Omnia Vincit and its smaller sisters the Solstice and the heavy cruiser Laudate Divinitus. Behind and below them, the mass of pilgrim ships formed a wide scatter of small, vulnerable targets, huddled close to the upper atmospheric reaches of the cold planet. Despite Esquine’s command edicts, some of this motley host had begun to break orbit and flee, a few directly out into interplanetary space, chasing off towards Herodor’s star and the further reaches of the system. Others were moving to geo-sync orbits behind Herodor, hoping to keep the planet between them and the terrifying attackers.
At a twitch of Esquine’s fingers, an aft lance battery on the mighty Omnia Vincit fired, and crippled the merchantman Somnambulist as it attempted to break anchor.
That was all the time and firepower the fleet captain intended to waste. “Signal the civilian fleet again, Velosade. We will punish any further infringement of the edict in a similar fashion. I will not have non-military vessels confusing the issue with unauthorised movement. Tell them any such action will force us to suspect they harbour heretic agents and that we will fire on them accordingly.”
“Sir!”
“The Berengaria’s in trouble, sir,” whispered Valdeemer.
“I see that plainly, ensign. We will hold position. If we move to assist them, we will lose our formation initiative. Sodak knows when to fight and when to break and run.”
Valdeemer frowned. He knew Sodak’s orders had been an unequivocal instruction to engage. There had been no discretionary option for flight.
“Should I inform him of such, sir?” asked Valdeemer.
“No,” said the fleet captain.
He had fire on nine decks, a reactor crippled and shields close to failure. There was no longer enough power for the lances. “Torpedoes!” Sodak ordered.
“Torpedoes aye!” cried Yarden.
“Cancel some of these damn alarms,” Sodak added. The air was ringing with overlapping klaxons. He could smell acrid smoke. Smoke gathering in the circulator system, too thick and dense to be expunged by the air scrubbers.
The massive enemy warship was right on them now, so close Sodak could actually see it as a dot through the glasteel windows of the bridge.
“Keep us true! Keep us face on!” he shouted at the helm officers. The frigate’s strongest hull armour was concentrated around the prow. He didn’t want to expose the flanks. Moreover, he wanted to maintain as small a target as possible.
“Aye, sir!”
“We’re yawing, helm!”
“Attitude control is damaged, captain. We’re trying to compensate…”
The Incarnadine fired on them again. Sodak didn’t have time to even register the salvo on the augur scope.
The Berengaria pitched wildly. Parts of the upper hull splintered away in a spray of micro-fragments. Power failed for a few seconds on the bridge as an explosion tore across the forward helm position, incinerating three helm officers, five servitors and Tactical Officer Persson.
Yarden was still at his post, blood gushing from a shrapnel wound in his chest. Blood bubbled at his lips as he tried to call out a situation report, his dripping hands fumbling with the fire control console.
Sodak knew the situation, even though Yarden couldn’t report, even though the actuality sphere had failed and the augur-scopes were dead. They were mortally wounded and helm-less, drifting now under the momentum of impact to present their starboard side to the archenemy monsters.
“Signal the Omnia Vincit,” Sodak cried. “Signal begins… The Emperor protects—”
A salvo of torpedoes from the Harm’s Way hit the Berengaria amidships, followed a scant moment later by a lance strike from the Incarnadine. The Berengaria seemed to blink and twitch for a second as plasma fire coiled and rippled like lava along its broken flank.
And then it vaporised in a Shockwave of expanding white light.
In the Omnia Vincit’s strategium, Valdeemer almost didn’t notice the death flare of the Berengaria. He was staring at the actuality sphere with horrid fascination as the enemy frigate the Revenant powered in after the desperate relief convoy. The indicator icons of two mass transports flickered and died. The others tried to break and evade, but the archenemy killer was directly astern.
“Commence formation advance,” Esquine called. “Battle engagement pattern. Signal Wy
smark and tell him to stop wasting time. We need the Navarre now.”
In a wide, firm line, the four Imperial warships prowled forward from high anchor, shields raised, to meet and deny the enemy assault.
SEVEN
PLANET FALL
“Nine are coming.”
—message written in Soric’s hand
Gaunt had arrived half asleep at the hastily called meeting just before dawn. After the night’s curious events, he’d tried to nap for a few hours, only to be woken by Beltayn in the middle of the afternoon.
“The lord general wants to see you, sir,” Beltayn said.
Lugo and his house staff had occupied a mansion on the ninety-seventh level of Old Hive. It was a place of faded grandeur. The walls and high ceilings were cased in shiny black ebonite inlaid with matt detailing in arthrocite, and the floor was paved with pink, earth-fired tiles throughout. On every fourth wall panel in the entry hall, an electrolamp was set in a brass wall sconce, and long webs of glinting steel-lace hung as drapes at each arched doorway.
It wasn’t made clear to Gaunt whose palace-home this was, or where they had gone to make way for Lugo.
To be honest, he wasn’t thinking much of that. He was bleary headed as the postern sentries let him in and showed him the way down two long hallways and up a flight of brick steps to the room where Lugo was waiting.
Gaunt had been expecting some kind of formal staff summit, and was surprised to find Lugo alone except for Kaldenbach.
The room was cold — the whole mansion was cold — as if the ancient heating pipes and hypercausts of the crumbling Old Hive were weak and inefficient at this high level. Lugo sat in a suspensor chair, dressed in a thick houserobe over his uniform shirt and breeches. His jacket and cap lay on a tall wooden dressing stand beside him.
He was sipping caffeine from a porcelain cup. A portable thermal heater was standing on the floor, warming his booted feet.
The room had tall, lancet windows of touched, coloured glass in two walls, and a set of ornate glass doors in the third that appeared, through the veil of a steel-lace drape, to give access out onto some kind of balcony or roof terrace. Kaldenbach stood beside these doors, arms folded, looking either stubborn or threatening. Gaunt wasn’t quite sure what the man was shooting for. Threatening, he guessed.