“To Lars,” Sven said suddenly, raising his goblet to the light. “Wherever he bloody well is.”
“To Lars,” they all echoed, then fell silent once more.
“Where have you two been?” Sven asked, glancing over at Nils and Strybjorn.
“We’ve been on the bridge, talking to the crew,” Nils said between mouthfuls. “It seems we’re welcome there, at least, ever since we brought their precious inquisitors back. Gul wasn’t happy but then he never is.”
“Why wasn’t he happy?” Ragnar asked.
“I don’t think he likes us,” Nils said.
“Nobody likes you,” said Sven. “I would have thought you’d bloody well noticed that by now.”
“It’s funny. They always tell me what a great lad I am. It’s just my idiot friend Sven with the bulldog face they don’t like.”
“Come on, don’t mess around,” said Ragnar. “What’s really going on?”
“Well, we found out where we’re going,” Strybjorn spoke up. His voice was deep and gloomy, and his manner of speaking was slow and considered. Ragnar could smell his current puzzlement. “And?”
“And, it’s very odd. That’s all I can say.”
“Why?”
“Because we seem to be heading out into the middle of nowhere.”
“We’re in space. Remember your training. There’s a lot of nowhere out here.”
“But we’re going particularly far out. To a place where there are no inhabited worlds. To a dead sun called Korealis.”
“What’s there? I thought we were looking for the third part of the talisman.”
“We are. That’s where the witch told the Navigators to go when she came out of her trance. They are obeying her.”
“Well, I guess we will find out what’s going on soon enough,” Ragnar said.
“I did hear one other thing, just as we were leaving the bridge,” Nils offered. Strybjorn looked over at him with a sour expression. Obviously he had missed something.
“What was that?” Ragnar asked.
“Two words.”
“I’ll give you two bloody words if you don’t tell us quickly,” Sven said eagerly.
“Space hulk,” Nils said with a nasty smile. Silence fell on the chamber. Ragnar reached for more meat and stuffed it into his mouth while he considered his battle-brother’s words. They were enough to place a chill in his heart.
In training they had run through simulations of boarding space hulks. It was one of the things a Space Marine could be expected to be called on to do in a long career of serving the Emperor. Assuming he survived the experience, of course. Space hulks were among the most deadly environments known to mankind. Ragnar let his thoughts drift back to what the tutelary engines had taught him about the things. It was not reassuring.
Space hulks were gigantic structures, agglomerations of many craft, of rabble and debris, which accumulated in the warp. No one quite knew how or why this happened, but everyone knew that it did. And there was something about the hulks that no one quite understood. They drifted in and out of warp space, seemingly at random, with neither rhyme nor reason to their movements. Sometimes they would disappear for centuries, only to reappear again somewhere far from the last place where they had been sighted.
Most were harmless enough, mere junk in fact; sometimes a threat to navigation, sometimes containing secrets that had been lost in the dark depths of time. But sometimes they were the home to other things: to orks, and genestealers and far worse creatures. Indeed sometimes they were taken over by such creatures and used to drift from world to world. Come to think of it, hadn’t Gurg’s horde arrived in the Gait system aboard one? Was there some sinister pattern here that he could not quite see? Hulks were the common denominator in this sorry saga so far. He mentioned this to the others, but they did not seem impressed.
“Orks use anything they can get their filthy claws on. You saw what they were like on Gait,” said Nils. “They cannibalise hulks the way they cannibalise everything else. There’s nothing more sinister about it.”
“So you say,” said Ragnar. “But I’m inclined to suspect the sanity of any man who can tell me there is nothing sinister about a ghost ship that drifts for centuries between the stars.”
“They’re not all like that,” said Sven.
“Enough are.”
“You may have a point,” said Sven. “But I’ll be damned if I can see it.”
“The same goes for me,” said Nils.
“Look, I don’t know. It may just be coincidence. It may be something else.”
“How will we be able to tell?” Strybjorn asked grumpily.
“You’ll all be able to tell soon enough, because you’re all going aboard,” Sergeant Hakon said from the doorway. Ragnar was amazed that for all their razor keen senses, the sergeant constantly managed to sneak up and take them unawares. Then again he had had several centuries of practice, Ragnar thought. If anyone ought to be able to do it, it was he.
“When, sergeant?” Ragnar asked.
“Within the next six hours. I want your gear checked and all of you ready to go.”
“Does that include me, sergeant?” Ragnar asked, not sure which answer he wanted to hear.
“Well, you’re up and about aren’t you? And you can hold a gun, can’t you?” the sergeant snapped.
Ragnar nodded, feeling the urge to challenge the veteran take a hold of him once more.
“Then I don’t see what the problem is,” Hakon said, striding towards the door. “Do you?”
“No, sergeant,” Ragnar said, abashed.
“And since your fellow Space Wolves have been good enough to repair your armour for you, while you slept, I see no good reason for you to parade around here without it do you, Blood Claw?”
“No, sergeant.”
Hakon turned at the door. “And Ragnar…”
“Yes, sergeant?”
“You did well back on Gait. Welcome back.”
“Thank you, sergeant.” Ragnar felt a little uplifted by Hakon’s words. Even so little praise from the taciturn old Wolf was praise indeed. His words of thanks fell on empty air. Hakon had already turned and left.
“So Ragnar is the sergeant’s favourite now, as well as the inquisitor girl’s,” Nils mocked. “What a crawler.”
“Well somebody has to be a hero around here,” Ragnar said. “But don’t worry, when the skalds get round to chanting the sagas I’m sure they’ll mention the fact that I had three trusty comrades who polished and mended for me.”
“I can see it now,” said Nils. “Ragnar’s Saga! A stirring tale of a warrior who died when his neck broke under the strain of carrying his huge head.”
“Whose constant boasting so annoyed his trusty comrades that they murdered him in his sleep, more like,” Strybjorn said nastily.
“Who spent so much of his time lying around and snoring while his companions did all the bloody work, that they eventually booted him off their ship,” added Sven.
“It’s nice to know I’m appreciated,” said Ragnar. “Now if you don’t mind, Sven, how about passing me some more of that ale.”
“Yes, my liege.” Sven smirked, handing it to him in such a way that most of it went over Ragnar.
“And how about some more food,” added Nils, tossing a hunk of cheese at him. Within seconds food and ale were flying everywhere, amidst gales of raucous laughter.
Ragnar stood on the bridge of the starship and gazed around in awe. The place was huge, the size of a chamber in the Fang. The ceiling was vaulted like that of an Imperial chapel, and a huge stained glass dome in the roof depicted scenes of inquisitors plying their trade, fighting monsters and heretics, scourging the unrighteous, breaking unbelievers on the autorack.
All around robed and cowled Initiates of the inquisitor’s retinue performed their tasks. At long benches, numerists of the Machine God fed endless streams of data into their consoles. At a high central lectern the astrogators checked their calculations and made minute al
terations to the ship’s course. Figures more machine than man, communed directly with the ship’s central data-core. The air smelled of the purification incense liberally distributed by censer-swinging initiates. Such things were done differently on the ships of the Space Wolves and by the uniformed officers of the Imperial Fleet, but this was an Inquisition ship, and it was ran in the Inquisition manner.
It occurred to him, for the first time, just how vast and variegated the Imperium was. Each of the great departments of the Ecclesiarchy was a world unto itself, with its own rules, codes, and functions. They stood apart from each other as well as the mass of humanity they ruled in the Emperor’s name. It was only the core of shared faith that bound them, and the million worlds of the faithful.
On a massive central holo-screen a three dimensional replica of the system they had entered had just appeared. It flickered into being in response to the chants of the initiates and the technical prayers they offered up, seeming to float in the air above all of their heads.
Ragnar could see half a dozen worlds each the size of a fist circling round a small, dark star. They moved at differing speeds in their orbits. A tiny pulse of blue light in the shape of an Imperial eagle indicated the position of the Light of Truth. A red skull showed their eventual destination.
“That is Korealis,” Inquisitor Sternberg said, his resonant voice filling the chamber and echoing away into the gloom beneath the vaults. “It is a dead sun, burned out, but not collapsed. Its surface is a cold shell of dust. Somewhere in its depths, fires still flicker but not enough to give light and heat.
“It was mapped by the Great Surveys of the 30th millennium when they passed this way, and it was mostly forgotten. According to our records, there is some evidence of heretical pre-Imperial civilisation on the planetary surface of the fourth world, but the place was deemed too remote to merit cleansing, and no threat to the Imperium itself. Now and again there have been reports of prospectors passing this way, and at one time it harboured a colony of pirates. The pirate station was destroyed in a combined action between the Inquisition and the Blood Angels, in the 39th millennium. There is little else to tell about the place of any interest.”
“What is it exactly we are looking for, inquisitor?” Sven asked. “I take it we didn’t come here just so you could give us a history lesson.”
Sternberg laughed. “No. Indeed not, Master Blood Claw. Indeed not. Perhaps Inquisitor Isaan would be good enough to answer your question.”
Karah moved to her fellow inquisitor’s side and looked down on them from the lectern. “I have performed the Ritual of Divination once more, using the two pieces of the talisman we have so far acquired. It told me that this was the place to come but little else. I saw a space hulk in my vision, a thing vast and old that has drifted in the warp for many centuries — but that is all I have seen. There is something about the influence of this star, or perhaps about the hulk itself which clouds the seeing. In any case, I know that what we seek is on the hulk and all that remains is for us to go and get it.”
“Will there be any fighting,” Strybjorn said flatly.
“Who knows?” she replied with a shrug. “Hulks are notorious for harbouring malefic denizens. Once we are in range of it, we will ran all the standard sensor divinations for life forms, which will give us a clearer idea of any threats that may be lurking within the craft.”
“Who will be going in?” asked Ragnar.
“As if you don’t already know the answer,” Sven muttered from his side.
“The Space Wolves will spearhead the assault, accompanied by Inquisitors Sternberg, Isaan, and their bodyguards, led by myself,” said Gul.
“Within visual contact distance,” one of the initiates interrupted loudly. “Summoning image to view.”
The plainsong of the technical acolytes changed tone and a new picture shimmered into being. Ragnar shivered at the very sight of it. If it was possible for any space going vessel to look haunted and accursed, it was this one.
At first sight it did not even look like a ship, more like a graveyard of ships. It was a vast agglomeration of debris, united by some strange force around a central core. It looked like a vessel built of scraps of dead ships by some insane artisan. Ragnar could see now why orks were so attracted to hulks. There was something about the jury-rigged nature of these vessels that would appeal to their crazed technologies.
But, in the name of Russ, the thing was vast. As he watched it swell into view, Ragnar saw that each of the individual ships that made up one small component of the structure was as large as the Light of Truth. The hulk was bigger than most islands of the Worldsea on Fenris. There must be more miles of corridor in there than in the Fang. Finding the third part of the talisman was going to be quite a task.
“Coming into range of sensor divination, my lord inquisitor,” said the Chief Initiate.
“Begin the ritual invocations,” Sternberg replied calmly.
Ragnar could smell the man’s tenseness even over the mildly hallucinogenic aroma of the incense. The chants changed tone once more and the chamber dimmed. Beneath the image of the space hulk odd technical runes began to appear. They shimmered and danced, and Ragnar was aware that they contained a goldmine of information for those who could read them; unfortunately he could not.
“Interesting,” he heard Sternberg murmur. “Continue with the divination.”
As Ragnar watched, a shimmering glow settled on the image of the hulk. Small red and green dots drifted over its surface. Then without warning the whole image became distorted, shimmered and winked out of existence. A stillness descended on the bridge of the Light of Truth. Ragnar was not at all sure what had happened, but he could tell from the scents of those around him that it was not good.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Those lights we saw just before the image was nullified tell us that there are living creatures aboard the hulk,” Karah said quietly.
“And the fact that our sensor sweep was interfered with tells us that they don’t like prying eyes,” Sternberg finished for her. “Chief Initiate Vosper, what happened?”
The Chief Initiate studied the monitor on the bench before him. “It appears our sweep triggered some sort of automatic shielding device, my lord inquisitor. It will take several hours to work out exactly what type. I suspect from the auguries that it was not a product of any human technological ritual, but rather something alien.”
“Could it be that we have triggered some sort of automatic system on the hulk that has nothing to do with those life-forms aboard?” Karah asked.
The initiate bowed his shaven head and steepled his fingers. “Yes, Inquisitor Isaan. That is within the realms of possibility. Although it’s probably wisest to assume some form of hostile intent for the moment.”
“My thoughts precisely,” Sternberg said.
Privately Ragnar agreed with him. All of the knowledge placed in his memory by the tutelary engines led him to believe that if a creature was alien, it was undoubtedly hostile. So far nothing he had encountered had caused him to doubt the wisdom of those teachings.
“Ready your weapons,” Inquisitor Sternberg said grimly, turning to regard them all. “It looks like we’ll be going in armed.”
There was a strange sense of acceleration as the shuttle fell away from the Light of Truth. Ragnar studied his companions. This time it was not just him and the other Space Wolves. There were over thirty armed men of the inquisitors’ bodyguard. They were garbed like Imperial Guard but were wearing full face helmets and oxygen tanks to protect them against any decompression, lack of air or poison gas in the hulk.
It was chilly inside the shuttle and the air smelled of peculiar chemicals. The confined space within the small chamber made him feel just a little claustrophobic. Ragnar glanced over at his comrades. They all looked more relaxed than he felt, but he could smell the tension in the air. They checked their weapons with the concentration of men who knew their lives would soon depend on them. He himself felt
oddly reluctant. He wondered why?
His hearts were beating faster and he was controlling the urge to sweat only with a massive effort of will. Something inside his stomach felt loose He realised that he was actually afraid, and afraid in a way he had never been before. He actually feared for his life.
What was going on, he wondered, gazing over Sven’s shoulder and out the porthole? The stars winked coldly back at him. This was not like him. He had been nervous before a battle before, but he had never felt this sense of near paralysis.
He tried to work out where it had come from, and the answer was blindingly obvious. It came from being so severely wounded and from witnessing the death of Lars on Gait. Ever since he had been resurrected by the sorcerer-scientists of the Fang he had possessed a sense of his own immortality that had amounted to a feeling of near-invincibility. He had been hurt before now, but never so badly. He realised that he had not believed that he could actually die. He had known it intellectually. That had been drummed into his head often enough during his training back on Fenris, but he had not actually believed it.
He was, after all, one of the Chosen. His fallen body had been lifted from among the dead by the Wolf Priests and they had brought him back to life. He had been one of the lucky ones, a favourite of the gods, and so had his comrades.
Yes, he had seen people die before, even Space Wolves, during the battle with Chaos Marines at the Temple of the Thousand Sons. But they had not been people he had known that well. He had shared a history with Lars; they had come through the time of choosing together, and trained and fought alongside each other. They were almost the same age.