Salvation's Reach

  ‘Take the shot,’ said Sar Af, handing him the rifle.

  Merrt glared back at him, hoping his toxic stare might communicate what his voice could not.

  ‘Take the shot,’ Sar Af repeated.

  Merrt took a deep breath. He pulled back the bolt, took a round from his pocket, slipped it into the breach, locked the bolt back into place, then turned and lined up on the row of pots. A standing stance, unbraced apart from his own posture. No rest, no sand-sock, no tripod, no back brace: neither a recommended nor reliable position. He didn’t care.

  ‘Go on,’ said Sar Af. ‘Take the shot.’

  Merrt settled his shoulders. He felt spittle on his lip, the dull throb of numbness under his ear. He took aim along the iron sights.

  He breathed out.

  He fired.

  EIGHT

  Conjunction

  Dead space. The visible universe was a weathered brown blackness, as if the void was somehow filled with a fog of dirty starlight. Nebulous beige streamers of some exotic matter streaked the depths. More than anything else, there was distance, the unfathomable distance of gazing out from the bounds of a harsh and inhospitable solar system, a few lonely rocks tumbling around a dull, grinding, electromagnetic light source into the humiliating immensity of the interstellar gulf.

  Then lightning struck.

  The lightning was a spear one thousand kilometres long. At the heart of its blinding shock-light was a twisting vein of toxic yellow, like scorched ceramic. At its origin point, an interspatial bubble of rupturing subatomics, the root of the lightning was brighter than any star, and shot through with threads of sour green and galvanic blue.

  The lightning flashed and died, then another spear flashed, and then a third that was twice as long as the first two. It scored a line of light across the dark firmament, and left a fading afterimage like a jagged fault line.

  A fourth flash followed, this one finally puncturing realspace and eating a hole through it, like a hungry flame burning through a sheet of paper. Suffixed by a halo of aftershock lighting, the Highness Ser Armaduke translated through the puncture, leaving the warp behind and coasting slowly out into the materium. Aetheric energies coursed off its flanks like thawing ice, shredding away in its wake and disintegrating.

  The translation point behind it popped and crackled as it healed and faded, puffing and cracking like a membrane under pulses of thumping pressure. The Armaduke stabilised and adjusted its realspace passage. Its auspex and detector grids began to pattern-search and composite the visible starfields to verify the navigation plot. Vox systems were enabled.

  Six minutes after achieving translation, a deck officer brought a data-slate to Shipmaster Spika.

  Spika adjusted his silver-plated voice-horn on its stalk.

  ‘Translation complete,’ he announced, his voice ringing through the ship. ‘Tavis Sun. Tavis Sun. Approach now factoring for fleet conjunction.’

  He turned off the speaker and looked at his deck officer.

  ‘Have we detected the elements?’

  ‘Not yet, sir,’ said the officer. ‘If they have made the schedule, we expect to track them in the next twenty minutes.’

  ‘Has engineering come back on that consultation I requested?’ Spika asked. Since that first anomalous tremble hours before, he had been attempting to trace the aberration.

  ‘I understand a full field-and-rate diagnostic is on its way up,’ said the officer.

  ‘Hurry them, please,’ said Spika.

  A klaxon sounded.

  ‘Battlefleet elements detected,’ another officer called out. ‘Holding position around the local star. Close, and preparing for vox-hail.’

  They were back in realspace. Cohran could feel it. He had attempted to slip up-deck towards the main voxcaster assembly, but it was proving too difficult. There was too much activity, too many people who would see him and question his business in a crew section. He wouldn’t be able to stay in the vox room long enough to achieve his goals.

  Instead, ever pragmatic, he headed back down towards the old munitions magazine that was serving as a cell. From his observations, the guard detail would be approaching a shift change. The men would be tired.

  And there were only two of them at the hatch.

  A full interdiction flotilla was waiting for the Armaduke. It was a patrol group from Battlefleet Khulan: four frigates and two cruisers supported the Aggressor Libertus, an Exorcist-class grand cruiser, and the Sepiterna, an Oberon-class battleship. In their train was a family of bulk transports and fleet tenders. As soon as they identified the Armaduke making its long curve approach in from the system rim along the invariable plane a barrage of vox-hails went up. Several squadrons of fighters were launched from the flight decks of the capital ships, and one of the escort frigates, the Benedicamus Domino, impelled forwards, void shields up, to meet the approaching vessel while its identity was confirmed.

  Tavis Sun glowered behind the fleet spread, a malevolent red coal. The immense ships were just blowfly dots against its hot, dark mass. It was an old star, rheumy and frail, bloated and throbbing with wheezing electromagnetic gasps, like a feast-day fire dying in its grate at the end of the night. Its rasping, radiostatic voice blurred and chopped the vox transmissions, sandpapering the communication links. The star was bleeding cold gas and hot radiation into its lifeless system as it used up the last few millennia of its fuel mass. Dark spots like tumours appeared in its flushed coronasphere. Occasional septic pulses of energy and flame flared out into its stellar shadow. The planetary bodies that orbited it were scorched dead rocks or rings of debris, the residue of the ferocious burn the star had suffered a million years earlier at the start of its terminal decline.

  The Highness Ser Armaduke gunned in, riding the gravitic slope, twenty million kilometres out and closing. Its flight decks and excursion bays began to prepare for open cycle. Tender boats and suppliers scooted forwards from the fleet line and fell in behind the Benedicamus Domino.

  At the master station, Spika took the report from his deck officer.

  ‘Incoming hail from Cragoe, Master of the Fleet,’ said a vox herald.

  ‘One moment,’ said Spika, reading, speeding his way through the data-slate.

  ‘What is it, sir?’ asked the deck officer.

  ‘Fleetmaster Cragoe is hailing again,’ called the herald.

  ‘Look, look at this,’ said Spika. The deck officer peered at the hololithic displays Spika was consulting. They were field effect summaries from the immaterium leg. The deck officer had seen similar profile reports a thousand times.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ he asked.

  ‘Fleetmaster Cragoe is hailing again!’ called the herald.

  ‘Wait,’ Spika growled. ‘Look, here. You see?’

  ‘I see a Geller field profile,’ said the deck officer.

  ‘Nothing untoward,’ Spika agreed, ‘until you see how it compares to the one at the previous interval and the one at the interval that followed.’

  ‘I still don’t see, sir.’

  ‘The Geller field was altering during transit. Its configuration was changing.’

  ‘Within tolerances,’ said the deck officer. ‘Isn’t that normal fluctuation?’

  ‘It repeats,’ said Spika, his voice tight and unhappy. ‘It repeats, you see? There is a pattern to it, but you only see it when you run the sampled profiles one after another. That’s not normal field variance. That’s an artificial repetition.’

  ‘Artificial, sir?’ asked the deck officer.

  Along the deck frame of the launch platform, hazard lamps were cycling and the chamber was shuddering with the din of airgate alarms. A massive overhead clamp had just positioned the elegant blue and white Aquila lander on the blast deck, and servitor teams were detaching the cradle lines and feeders with power tools.

  Gaunt walked with Lord Militant Cybon towards the boarding ramp. Over their heads, a series of hard metal thumps accompanied the retracting hoist, and the thick delivery hatch
that led up into the Armaduke’s starboard small ship hangar rumbled shut.

  Staff aides hurried past them, carrying the lord militant’s luggage. A duty officer approached, and saluted.

  ‘Transfer standing by, sir,’ he said. Cybon acknowledged him with a slight nod.

  ‘The Sepiterna awaits,’ said Gaunt.

  ‘As does the Warmaster,’ replied Cybon. ‘I should be with him in eighteen weeks, in time enough to communicate the essence of this plan in person. And in time to consider its success.’

  ‘Or otherwise,’ said Gaunt.

  Cybon studied him. The lord militant’s eyes seemed very old, as though they had seen too much. Gaunt’s, by comparison, were very new for precisely the same reason.

  ‘I never took you to be a pessimist, Gaunt,’ rumbled Cybon.

  ‘I’m not, sir,’ Gaunt replied. ‘Just a pragmatist.’

  ‘The Emperor protects,’ said Cybon.

  ‘That’s just what I tell the men,’ said Gaunt.

  ‘And if he doesn’t protect you, you don’t need protecting,’ Cybon added.

  ‘I’m not sure if that’s entirely reassuring,’ said Gaunt.

  ‘It’s not supposed to be,’ said Cybon. ‘Do I look like a sentimental old bastard to you? I’m simply passing on what experience has shown me.’

  He turned to board the lander. Gaunt could feel the air pressure in the bay begin to change as the airgate began to cycle to release.

  ‘Safe voyage,’ said Gaunt. He regretted it instantly. Sentiment didn’t sit well with either of them. Cybon snorted derisively.

  Halfway up the ramp, he turned to look back at Gaunt.

  He made the sign of the aquila, nodded, and disappeared into the shuttle.

  ‘Clear the deck space,’ shouted the launch officer. ‘Clear the deck space!’

  The Armaduke continued to decelerate towards the ships sent out to greet it. They were entering the close approach phase, with the Battlefleet’s fighter screen spreading out wide around the newcomer. A small speck, bright and fast moving, left the starboard flank of the coasting Armaduke like a launched flare and began to accelerate away towards the main fleet grouping.

  From an observation bay, Gaunt watched the Aquila on its way. He turned, descended the steps and pushed through the busy deck crews and launch personnel to reach the nearest access hallway.

  He met Hark and Kolea coming the other way. They didn’t have to say anything for him to know they were looking for him and the news was going to be bad.

  ‘Edur’s dead,’ said Hark.

  ‘How?’ Gaunt asked, immediately imagining some shipboard accident.

  ‘A maintenance crew found his body at the bottom of an inspection hatch fifteen minutes ago,’ said Kolea. ‘Injuries consistent with a fall.’

  ‘A fall?’ asked Gaunt.

  ‘The sort of fall you might have if you’d already been beaten to death,’ said Kolea.

  ‘Throne,’ Gaunt murmured. ‘Viktor, mobilise the regiment. We’re going to find the killer immediately. I’ll go directly to the shipmaster and inform him of the situation. We’re going to need the cooperation of him and his crew if we’re going to section the ship.’

  He looked at Kolea.

  ‘Gol, get to Rawne. Fast as you can. Tell him security has been compromised.’

  Rawne approached the armoured hatchway of the magazine-turned-cell. Cant and Mktally were waiting for him.

  ‘Open it,’ Rawne said.

  ‘You’re not due for another two hours–’ Cant began.

  ‘There’s a problem. Open it.’

  Cant turned to bang on the outer hatch. Mktally hoisted his lasrifle and covered the approach hall.

  Coming in right behind Cant, Rawne already had his straight silver drawn in his right hand, the blade up his sleeve. His left hand deftly slipped the loop out of his hip pocket.

  ‘Where’s your badge, sir?’ asked Mktally.

  ‘What?’ asked Rawne.

  ‘Your badge? You said we should all wear them.’

  Without hesitation, Rawne threw the knife. He delivered the straight silver with a vicious and expert underhand throw, and the blade buried itself in Mktally’s heart.

  He fell back against the corridor wall, and slid down, instantly dead. Before he’d even begun to topple, Rawne had hooked the loop over Cant’s head from behind.

  It was a steel string from a colours band lyre. Cant had barely time to notice it was there when Rawne twisted the loop to tighten it. The string cut into his neck like a cheese wire. Cant toppled backwards into Rawne, blood pouring from an almost three hundred and sixty degree throat wound, his mouth wide open, unable to breathe or cry out.

  Rawne let Cant go. The trooper’s legs were still twitching. There was a considerable pool of blood. Rawne drew his laspistol. He took one last look at Cant’s beached fish expression, and rearranged his own features. There was a hideous and painful scrunch of bone and muscle, and a second Cant faced the entrance. He banged on the door, then opened the outer hatch.

  ‘Coming in, one visitor,’ he said over his microbead.

  ‘Read that.’

  The peephole slot in the inner door opened, and Cant stood where the guard inside could clearly see the face he had made for the occasion.

  The inner hatch began to unbolt.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Cant?’ asked Kabry, looking out at him. ‘You’re supposed to stay outside.’

  Cant shot him in the face and kicked the hatch wide open.

  ‘Fleetmaster Cragoe demands that you issue a full response, sir!’ the vox herald pleaded.

  ‘Shut that man up,’ Spika snapped to his number one. ‘I’m trying to think.’

  There was a commotion behind him. He glanced around to see the Guard commander, Gaunt, pushing his way onto the master station platform, ignoring the attempts of the deck officers to head him off.

  ‘Shipmaster Spika has no time to deal with you now!’ one of the officers was repeating in a whining tone.

  Gaunt punched him in the mouth and laid him out on the deck.

  ‘Sorry,’ he told the man in what seemed like a genuine tone of remorse. He reached Spika’s side.

  ‘We’ve got a serious problem.’

  ‘How do you know about the Geller field?’ asked the shipmaster.

  ‘I–’ Gaunt began. ‘What about the Geller field? I’m talking about a security breach. A killing.’

  Spika blinked slowly.

  ‘It’s so they know we’re here,’ he said quietly.

  ‘It’s what? ‘ asked Gaunt. ‘What is?’

  ‘It’s so they know we’re here. It’s a trail they can track…’ Spika’s pitch was rising. ‘Oh, Holy Throne of Terra.’

  He wrenched his silver-plated voice-horn up close to his mouth.

  ‘Alert! Alert stations. Shields up. Shields up. Shields up!

  The bridge personnel turned from their positions and stared at him. They were young. Painfully inexperienced. A few of them clearly thought it was a surprise drill.

  ‘Don’t gawp at me, you mindless idiots! Do it now!’ Spika yelled.

  Multiple alarms and bells began to sound. The bridge crew went into a kind of overdrive, dashing in all directions. Light levels dipped as the shields woke up. Squealing and clattering, ceramite shutters began to close like eyelids across the realspace ports.

  ‘Are we under attack?’ asked Gaunt.

  ‘I think the prospects are very likely,’ replied Spika.

  ‘Lord Militant Cybon is out there in a small unescorted ship,’ said Gaunt.

  Spika ran his tongue around the inside of his lips as he thought about this.

  ‘Damn him,’ he said. He looked at the Officer of Detection, whose seat was surrounded by dead-eyed auxiliary servitors spinally hardwired into the deck.

  ‘Full sensory sweep,’ Spika said. ‘Locate the lord militant’s ship, track it, and prepare to put us between it and any attack if necessary.’

  A different series of al
arms sounded.

  ‘Contact! Contact!’ the officer of detection announced. ‘Translation signature three AU to port.’

  ‘A ship? Identify!’ yelled Spika.

  ‘Tracking one signature. Tracking a second signature. Tracking a third.’

  ‘Three?’ asked Spika.

  ‘Tracking a fourth!’

  Lightning struck.

  The lightning was a spear one thousand kilometres long. This time it was red, like the most malignant hatred, and shot through with snakes of yellow and coral-pink.

  The lightning flashed, puncturing realspace and eating a hole through it, like acid eating through a plate of steel. Surrounded by a crown of thorns of aftershock lightning, four starships translated through the corroded wound, ploughing out into the materium like missiles fired from a launcher.

  The first two were Destroyer-class escorts. The third, close behind them, was a much larger cruiser.

  The fourth, trailing slower and more ponderously still, was a monster, a vast battleship.

  All four vessels were blackened as if they had spent too long scorching in the heart of a sun’s furnace. A volcanic red light lit them from within, glaring from their window ports and coiling across their surfaces like veins filled with magma. They had once been Imperial ships, all of them of the most ancient patterns and design. But that identity, and those lives led in Imperial service, were distant memories. Gross corruption had stolen them from the Imperial fold aeons before and transformed their adamantine carcasses to the whim of the Ruinous Powers.

  The ships began to scream. Hellish noises and foetid transmissions blasted out through their vox networks as though each one possessed a voice, part animal howl, part augmetic rasp. On the Imperial ships, vox heralds collapsed at their consoles, their brains bursting as the amplified shrieks burned through their systems and shorted them out.

  Each Archenemy ship howled out its name as it gunned in; gut-howls that came from their inner cores, from the smoking hearts of their reactors. It was like the bellowing of mindless, stampeding cattle, or the idiot shouting of lobotomised bulk servitors that knew nothing but their own names.