by Rob Sanders
‘Perhaps,’ the strike master said, ‘but entertain this thought, for a moment. Such a force exists and is amassing in an undisclosed location in the Crozier Worlds as we speak. I have sent my Low Servant and his cultists to meet each pilgrim transport as it arrives from different parts of the Crozier Worlds and begin the process of infiltration. Naturally, my operatives intend to recruit the most promising of the frater militia for the Alpha Legion’s ranks. The rest, lord apostle, can be yours. A devout army of the faithful, corrupted to the will of your Daemon Council before frater ships ever set sail for the Maelstrom. A billion souls, delivered straight to the Shrine of Iron. Enough even to satisfy the wrath of your Daemon Council.
‘Think on it, Word Bearer. But don’t take too long. I did not break you out of that ice hole for nothing – but if it is nothing that you offer me then I’ll be damned before I let you see your daemon or your daemon world again.’
Occam nodded, bringing Vilnius Malik forward. The plasma gun hummed to priming as the legionnaire aimed it at Goura Shengk. It bathed Word Bearer and legionnaire both in its blue brilliance.
‘Damnation or oblivion,’ Occam said. ‘You choose. But choose now.’
After a proud delay that made Sergeant Hasdrubal smirk, the Dark Apostle answered.
‘I cannot in dark conscience,’ Goura Shengk said, ‘deal doubly with the Daemon Council. I have taken oaths before the Ruinous Powers. My hearts are enslaved to their dread will. It is not in my power to betray them or their interests in the name of saving my miserable life.’
Occam heard Malik’s plate creak as the legionnaire leaned in with his plasma gun.
‘However,’ the Dark Apostle said. ‘There will be ceremony and ritual to observe upon our arrival at Ghalmek. This distraction might offer a resourceful individual time to lift an ancient artefact from our catacomb-archives unnoticed, if he were pointed in the right direction.’
Lord Occam placed his gauntlet on the barrel of Malik’s plasma gun and lowered it slowly towards the floor.
‘Good enough.’
PART IV
THE THIN VEIL
ν
Sea Serpents
Occam paced the tiny command deck of the Iota-Æternus.
The strike master could feel it on the bridge, in the hangars and along the freighter’s winding passageways. There was a tension – not just in the faces and voices of the Seventh Sons but also in the vessel superstructure. While the High Serpent’s cultists were nervous about entering riftspace, the Q-ship itself was making its displeasure known. Occam’s superhuman hearing picked up the high-pitched ring of unnatural vibrations through metal struts, girders and decking. Like a tuning fork, the Iota-Æternus was singing, and the tune wasn’t pleasant.
The Q-ship had held her immaterial course for days, ploughing on through the storm-wracked ether and the warped reality beyond. While Arkan Reznor had made many upgrades and customisations to the vessel, incorporating xenos technologies into the sub-light drives and weapons systems, the warp engines and Geller field generator were thoroughly Imperial. Reliably old, the field generator and warp drive had never failed Naga-Khan and the Alpha Legion. Reznor and the shipmaster’s own enginseer both considered them dependable. The warp engines and integrated field generator had never been under so much stress before, however.
Striking out from the Crozier Worlds, the Iota-Æternus made for the aberrance of the Maelstrom. At Goura Shengk’s instruction, the Q-ship entered the raging storm at the Sinistral Gate. This was an area of calm favoured by pirates and renegades striking out from the Maelstrom. Shengk insisted that his personal daemon ship, the Dissolutio Perpetua, used the Sinistral Gate for slipping out of the warp storm and running down on the Crozier Worlds and the fabricator moons of the Koronado Cradle.
From there Quoda’s choir of astropaths begged permission to retire to their quarters, insisting they were suffering mind-splitting headaches and the fact that the sorcerer couldn’t rely on their abilities in the storm. Quoda and Navigator Ghesh, meanwhile, took on a haunted look as the freighter traversed the vicious tempest. It didn’t need a psyker to feel the rancid effect of the Maelstrom on the vessel. A wave of lingering nausea swept through the cultist crew, like an extreme form of motion sickness, and even Occam felt something horrible in the pit of his stomachs.
Skimming through the tumultuous mayhem of the Maelstrom, the freighter made short warp jumps interspaced with storm-running cruises at sub-light speed. Naga-Khan and Ghesh wouldn’t risk engaging the warp-drive for too long within the storm for fear of plunging into its monstrous heart. Naga-Khan warned the strike master that they could end up getting hopelessly lost, emerge on the other side of the galaxy, become trapped in some kind of temporal distortion or be torn apart upon emerging into a region of the Maelstrom where reality was storm-shredded – fused with the strange weather of the immaterium.
The Geller field was operating constantly, with Arkan Reznor stationed in the enginarium to deal immediately with any problems – such problems having the potential to present the defenceless vessel to the innumerable immaterial entities and predatory daemons like bloody bait to a swarm of sharks. Every time the warp-drive disengaged and the sub-light engines found purchase in the strange and varied realities the Iota-Æternus found itself in, the Geller field generator struggled, causing the field to momentarily flutter. In those heart-stopping seconds, the cultist crew and members of the Redacted would stop what they were doing and look around warily at the brief dimming of the deck lights.
For Ghesh the Navigator skimming through the storm in this way was like flashing a lamp on occasionally in the darkness and describing to their Word Bearers guest what he saw. Naga-Khan would then course correct based upon the Dark Apostle’s recognition of the different streams, eddies and tempest phenomena he expected to encounter.
Unlike Occam’s legionnaires, operatives and cultist crew, Goura Shengk seemed perfectly at ease. Looking like a small mountain wrapped in robes, the Dark Apostle stared out through the lancet screens into the havoc beyond, his eyes and teeth white in his blackened face. While the Word Bearer had consented to assist the strike master in his proud and limited way, Occam still had Vilnius Malik ghost him, watching over the former prisoner from a distance, his long-shot plasma gun at the ready. As an extra precaution, Autolicon Phex stood guard by the elevator door with his heavy plasma gun. Ephron Hasdrubal was present also, never far away from the Dark Apostle, even though Occam hadn’t issued the sergeant with such a duty.
For the most part, Occam stood to one side. He was in command but the responsibility of getting the Iota-Æternus through the dangers of the Maelstrom largely belonged to the shipmaster, Navigator Ghesh, the warpsmith and Goura Shengk. While Reznor kept in contact from the enginarium and Naga-Khan oversaw matters on the tense bridge, the Dark Apostle interpreted the monstrous phenomena outside the ship. Goura Shengk had names for features described by the ashen-faced Ghesh, both occurring in the warp and the confused realities of the storm traversed by the Q-ship – the Ghostmare, the Storm of Maws, the Vassago Stream, Perdition’s Gate, the Phorneus Rapidity…
Beyond the Maelstrom and the storm’s nightmarish environs, Occam could see the spectral impression of predatory warp entities and monstrous daemons in the sizzling Geller field. They were a constant presence, testing the integrity of the field and pressing their mind-scalding forms up against the bubble of reality that enveloped the Iota-Æternus.
‘Identify,’ Occam ordered. His eyes fixed upon a horrific cyclone churning up the immateriality about it. Like Jupiter’s great red spot it was a blood-red storm raging within the havoc of other tempests, warpstreams and currents. A crimson haze spewed continuously from its abominate mouth, casting everything around it in obscurity. As it washed up against the lancet screens, the strike master saw that the haze was made up of tiny globules of rich, red liquid that looked very much like blood.
‘The Mawtex,’ Goura Shengk said. Even the Word Bearer looked concerned
at the appearance. ‘A storm within the storm that appears and disappears at whim.’
‘Ghesh?’ Occam said.
‘It’s deep,’ the Navigator said, entranced. ‘Bottomless. Its currents are strong but the structure volatile.’
‘Even we don’t risk our vessels in the Mawtex,’ the Word Bearer said. ‘There are pirates and renegades who do, however, using it to traverse the Maelstrom.’
‘Your orders?’ Naga-Khan said. Occam looked to Goura Shengk.
‘There are safer routes,’ the Dark Apostle said.
The strike master grunted at his use of the word safer.
‘Skirt it.’
As the Q-ship pushed on through the haze, the vessel became submerged in a backwash of cloudy blood, the twisted wreckage of storm-smashed vessels thunked against the hull.
‘I can’t see anything,’ Naga-Khan complained, moving between cultist-manned runebanks. ‘Augurs.’
‘Not functional,’ one of the Seventh Sons reported.
Occam stared into the red mist. Within the Maelstrom the scanners returned warped readings, phantasmic traces and evidence of the impossible. Here they didn’t even return that.
‘It’s the Mawtex,’ the Dark Apostle said. ‘Your instrumentation’s readings are being drowned out.’
‘By what?’ the strike master asked.
‘Open a short-wave vox-channel,’ Goura Shengk said.
‘What channel?’ the shipmaster asked.
‘Any channel,’ the Word Bearer said.
As Naga-Khan put the channel on loudhailers, the command deck was filled with an unearthly roar. The crew’s faces creased in a nerve-shredded wince. A Seventh Son screamed out while several others vomited onto the deck. To Occam it was an annoyance but a loud and insistent one. He didn’t know whether or not it was some colossal daemon entity of the unnatural flux of the storm that created the sound but he knew that he didn’t want to listen to any more of its furious madness.
‘Enough,’ he commanded, prompting a deck officer to kill the loudhailer. He looked from the red lancet screens to Sergeant Hasdrubal and the shipmaster. ‘Blind and deaf. We’re not even able to feel our way through this muck. Status?’
‘We’re running with shields raised,’ Naga-Khan told him, trying to assure the strike master that precautions had been taken, ‘and batteries primed.’
Occam wasn’t convinced. This was the Maelstrom: anything could happen.
‘All stop,’ he commanded.
‘All stop,’ the shipmaster repeated to the command deck crew.
‘Roll aside the compartment doors,’ the strike master said, ‘and present cannons.’
‘Sir,’ Naga-Khan protested, ‘aren’t we giving away–’
‘Do it,’ Occam said.
Without question, the shipmaster carried out the order. As the Q-ship slowed, the cloud of red globules settled about the lancet screens. A metallic boom reverberated down the length of the armed freighter as plating rolled aside to reveal the hidden batteries in the converted cargo sections.
‘Cycle pict-streams,’ Naga-Khan ordered. Occam nodded his agreement. As the lancet screens crackled from forward to aft, port to starboard views, the same red obscurity fogged up every angle.
Occam came forward, peering through the red murk. As the views cycled, the strike master looked for something but found nothing. Occam turned around to find Goura Shengk doing the same. Meanwhile, the command deck crew waited patiently.
‘Sir?’ Sergeant Hasdrubal said.
‘It appears I have made an error,’ Occam said finally.
‘It doesn’t happen often, my lord,’ Naga-Khan said.
‘Shipmaster,’ Occam said, ‘stand down the batteries and prepare to make way…’
Occam’s voice trailed off as the port-side pict-feed revealed a disturbance in the bloody globules and then the ghostly silhouette of a vessel. The strike master could make out the reinforced prow of a Chaos raider. The ship was dirty red and black, bearing colossal sigils splattered unceremoniously across its armour plating. The vessel had clearly seen recent action, its hull pock-marked with blast craters and the ragged damage of cannon fire.
‘Enemy vessel,’ Naga-Khan called out, ‘approaching port-side aft at ramming speed.’
‘As you were,’ Occam said.
‘Port-side batteries, fire as you bear,’ Naga-Khan commanded, stabbing at the buttons on a runebank and opening a channel with the gun decks.
Occam watched as cannon beams lit up the red obscurity of the blood haze. The encounter was too close to rely upon void shielding, and thick streams of energy tore into the attacking vessel’s prow at almost point-blank range. With a flash, they punched through the reinforced armour plating and blazed along the length of the raider.
‘Stand by for impact!’ the shipmaster announced.
Occam grabbed for the pulpit with a gauntlet and engaged the magnetic soles on his armoured boots. The Q-ship had ripped through the Chaos raider, turning its decks into a blizzard of light and destruction before blasting the vessel’s engineering section out through its aft.
The raider attempted a last moment evasive manoeuvre, only to smash into the side of the Iota-Æternus. As the cultist deck crew were knocked from their feet and cradles, Occam kept his balance, his boots locked to the deck.
Within moments, the fat muzzle of Malik’s plasma gun was pressed between Goura Shengk’s shoulder blades. Sergeant Hasdrubal’s multi-blade was clear of its sheath and against the Word Bearer’s throat.
‘Leading us into an ambush, brother?’ Hasdrubal put to the Dark Apostle.
‘They’re not Word Bearers,’ Goura Shengk said.
‘Cycle pict-streams,’ the strike master ordered.
As the lancet screens left the scene of destruction and crackled to starboard, the bridge was greeted with evidence of another attack. The reinforced prow of another raider, its hull smeared red and black and covered with spidery sigils and blasphemous decoration. There was no time for a response from the batteries. The Chaos raider slammed into the starboard flank of the Iota-Æternus.
Runebanks sparked. The lancet screens crackled. Deck lamps flickered. Occam looked back at the feed. The raider had hit them amidships, ramming into their side. Bulldozing the armed freighter with inertial certainty through the blood cloud, the Chaos raider ploughed on at maximum sub-light speed.
‘Is the hull breached?’ Occam called through the emergency lighting and klaxons. Righting himself, Naga-Khan repeated the question through the vox-system to engineering.
‘Not according to any of my feeds down here,’ Arkan Reznor called back. ‘Integrity and environmentals are maintained.’
‘Thank the God-Emperor,’ the shipmaster said.
‘We have damage to the starboard batteries, however,’ Reznor informed the strike commander.
‘Power?’ Naga-Khan said, eager to fire upon the ramming vessel.
‘I would not advise priming weaponry on such decks,’ Reznor said. ‘With damaged weaponry, we are more likely to visit further damage on ourselves.’
‘Geller field?’ Occam called.
‘Holding.’
‘They are pushing us into the Mawtex,’ the strike master observed. ‘Engines?’
‘Won’t be enough,’ Naga-Khan told him honestly.
Occam understood. The Mawtex was huge. Even with forward movement, the ramming vessel would still drive them into the gaping maw of the blood storm.
Occam moved towards the elevator doors. ‘Sergeant, Malik, with me. Phex, take care of our guest. Shipmaster, ready the Iota-Æternus to repel boarders.’
While Reznor made his damage report and Naga-Khan sent word across all sections for the Seventh Sons to repair to the gun decks ready to resist a boarding action, Autolicon Phex grabbed Shengk’s shoulder from behind with a gauntlet. Supporting his heavy plasma gun with the other, he aimed it at the Word Bearer’s back.
Snatching melta bombs from the legionnaire’s belt, Occam marched towards th
e elevator doors, flanked by Malik and his sergeant.
‘What’s the plan?’ the sorcerer Quoda called out from strategium.
‘We are going to introduce ourselves to the enemy captain,’ the strike master told him.
Occam’s boots hammered along the passageway. Followed by Sergeant Hasdrubal and Malik, he made his way to the freighter’s thorax section. A sea of Seventh Sons parted for them as they ran to their stations, bathed in emergency light. While Malik already had his plasma gun, two cultists waited by the thorax section bulkhead with the sergeant and strike master’s weapons. With their shaved, tattooed heads down and plasma guns offered, the Seventh Sons stood to one side, allowing the legionnaires to snatch the weapons out of their hands as they ran by.
‘Thorax airlock,’ Occam called across his suit’s vox-channel, ‘starboard-central.’
‘Standing by,’ Carcinus Quoda returned from where he was stationed on the command deck.
As Occam and his legionnaires reached the airlock, they threw themselves through several antechambers, a receiving chamber and an open bulkhead. Inside the lock, Hasdrubal went to work securing the pressure bulkhead and sealing the compartment from the rest of the ship. The last thing the Iota-Æternus needed in the middle of an attack was an accidental depressurisation.
‘Ready,’ Occam put to Malik and his sergeant. The pair hugged their weapons in close and fell in behind their strike commander. Occam positioned himself in front of the airlock door. ‘Purge.’
As Quoda popped the lock from the bridge, the air explosively evacuated the chamber, blasting the three members of the Alpha Legion out into the dreadspace of the Maelstrom. Everything became a kaleidoscopic nightmare as Occam and his renegades tumbled through the haze of blood globules and afflicted void. As they shot across the distance between the two vessels, Occam could see the damage that the ramming action had done to the Iota-Æternus’ starboard flank and weaponry. Through the bloody murk, the strike master saw the blaze of the attacking vessel’s sub-light engines. With its armoured prow still resting against the smashed section of hull, the raider intended on driving the armed freighter into the Mawtex.
