by Andy Hoare
Approaching a fatigue-clad figure leaning against a bulkhead, the crew chief raised himself to his full height. Eye to eye with the other man, the petty officer spoke so quietly that Korvane could barely hear him, though he followed close behind.
‘When I says “master on deck”’, the chief growled, ‘I actually means, “bow down before he who on this ship is second only to the Emperor, praise be his name, you worthless Guard scum.” Does I make myself clear?’
Silence descended. The Imperial Guard trooper, for it was obvious the strange figures were from one of Gauge’s regiments being transported on the Rosetta, straightened, meeting the chief eye to eye.
Korvane felt the threat of imminent physical violence. He fingered his holster, reassuring himself that his las-pistol was close at hand. If the Guardsmen would not be cowed, he knew he would have to defend himself, and though he was well tutored in such matters, it was for the non-commissioned ranks, not for him, to impose discipline upon the crew. He knew that his father would have waded in and distributed summary justice the instant someone spoke out of line, but Korvane, to his own estimation at least, had been raised better than that. He knew his place, and considered it only correct that others should too.
The stand-off continued, the chief evidently allowing the trooper a moment or two to consider his predicament. The man’s eyes darted from side to side, judging, Korvane guessed, the odds of his small group of warriors prevailing against the chief and the crowd of press-ganged scum that edged in upon the scene. A bead of sweat ran from the man’s brow, yet the chief did not even blink. The trooper’s eyes darted around once more, before meeting Korvane’s. He held the trooper’s gaze, before the man looked back to the chief.
‘I didn’t…’ the trooper began to utter, before the chief unloaded a piston of a right-handed upper cut to his chin. The trooper was slammed back against the metal bulkhead, knocked unconscious by the impact. The man’s form slid to the floor as a number of dislodged teeth clattered across the deck. The chief did not even look his victim, his gaze locked upon the trooper’s compatriots.
‘I will deal with this, my lord,’ the chief said to Korvane, not turning around. ‘A little bit of discipline needs dishing out.’
‘Very well,’ Korvane replied, looking upon the mess the chief’s punch had made of the trooper’s face, ‘carry on.’
Korvane passed from this area into one far more crowded, yet thankfully far less unsavoury. The vast, central cargo areas of the Rosetta had been turned over to a number of Imperial Guard units, amounting, so General Gauge had informed him, to something in the region of five thousand combatants and a similar number of support personnel. A wide companionway ran the length of the vessel’s spine, passing the vast bays in which the troopers were housed. The huge interlocking blast doors had been raised and the entire area was a hive of unfamiliar activity. Korvane saw one cargo bay given over entirely to rows of sleeping mats, so many that they stretched off into the distance along the entire length of the vast space. He had passed another bay in which the troopers practiced unarmed combat, several thousand warriors paired up, sparring with one another, all with blood-streaked faces and swollen lips. Assorted hangers-on, the regimental train as Gauge had called it, were to be found at every turn. Every regiment of the Imperial Guard relied on them as much as they did upon the Officio Munitorum. Lay armourers offered to service faulty weapons or patch up worn armour, cooks and peddlers plied their unsavoury wares, and sultry women offered other, vital services to the trooper keen to divest himself of what little funds he held.
Korvane was at once intrigued and repulsed by the spectacle of the Imperial Guard having taken over several decks of his vessel. Intrigued, for they had brought with them an almost entirely self-sustaining economy, complete with its unique cultural and societal mores. Repulsed, for he saw that outside of the disinterested and detached officer cadre, thugs and hoodlums ran this micro-society, with no regard for birth or rank. Korvane himself had been raised in the most rarefied of atmospheres, at the Court of Nankirk, where he had studied under the most refined of tutors. To him, these men and women inspired revulsion, and he would not be able to rest until they were off his ship.
Feeling his gorge rise, Korvane closed his fist over the small package he carried in his coat pocket. Pain shot the length of his arm, the lingering effects of the injuries he had sustained in battle against the tau at Arrikis Epsilon. He need only bear it a little longer, he told himself, striding on through the crowded decks as crewmen halted to stand to attention in his wake.
‘My lord,’ an officer called out as Korvane stepped on to the bridge. ‘My lord, I must bring to your attention a number of troubling reports.’
Korvane regarded the man with weary indifference. He was about to reply when the officer continued.
‘It’s the Guard sir. We’ve been receiving some disturbing reports of ill-discipline and petty crime.’ The man proffered him a data-slate, but Korvane pushed past.
‘I don’t have time,’ he sighed, weary of the endless disruptions to his vessel’s normally smooth running, weary, he realised, of the voyage across the Damocles Gulf.
‘But sir,’ the officer insisted, ‘these really are rather urgent. They say it’s the warp, sir, and they say it’s getting worse. The armsmen fear things might get out of hand if something is not…’
‘I said,’ Korvane snapped as he rounded on the officer, ‘I don’t have time.’ He felt an unfamiliar anger rise within him, one he knew his father would have had to fight hard against to suppress. His stepsister would not even have tried. Drawing on all the courtly etiquette with which he had been raised, Korvane steadied himself. The officer waited patiently, his face a mask of professional detachment.
‘I shall review your reports presently,’ Korvane replied. ‘Dismissed.’
With a click of polished boot heels, the officer departed, leaving Korvane to pass across his bridge to the day room at its rear. As he crossed the deck, he could not help but be reminded of the terrible conflagration that had engulfed it during the battle against the tau at Arrikis Epsilon. Large sections of bulkhead had been replaced, often for the first time since the vessel’s construction, the gleaming metal stark against the patina of a thousand years. Here and there, the metal had been melted by the intense heat of the battle, to blister and run like mercury across the deck. In places, these run-offs remained, set hard upon the bulkhead like solidified lava. The heat had inflicted a similar fate upon Korvane’s body, though thankfully his father’s chirurgeon had worked masterfully upon his scars, rendering all but the very worst invisible. He still felt his wounds though, deep inside, and he raged against the misfortune that had come so close to crippling him.
Passing in to his day room, Korvane sat heavily upon a padded and studded leather recliner, the peerless work, he dimly recalled, of the long extinct Dreyfuss artisan clan of New Valaxa. He slumped upon the recliner, vaguely aware that he should comport himself in a far more appropriate manner whilst sitting upon such a priceless artefact. Yet, he could not bring himself to care about the Dreyfuss, only about what was in the pocket of his jacket.
He withdraw his hand from his pocket, and opened it slowly. A small vial of clear liquid lay in his heavily scarred palm. The man in the enginarium had claimed that it was a potent analgesic, one that could reverse pain and transform it into something approaching pleasure.
Korvane sighed as he recalled the endless treatments he had subjected himself to in the aftermath of Arrikis Epsilon. Though each had lessened his outward scarring, they had in turn heaped upon him a concomitant pain deep within. At first he had taken standard pain killing drugs, then he had progressed to more potent metaopioids. Though he refused to fully acknowledge the fact, even to himself, he had developed a taste for the drugs, a taste far in excess of their medical efficacy.
As master of his vessel, not one of the medicae staff had dared refuse him access to
the metaopioids. Yet, in time and with prolonged and ever-increasing use, the drugs’ effects had reduced and the pain had slowly returned, this time far worse then ever before. He had been driven into the depths of his vessel, to the company of the lowest of the low amongst the press-ganged murderers and rapists, to seek out a source of pain killing drugs. He had found one, discovering to his great distaste that the vast majority of the engine crew were addicted to the stuff. They needed, he had been told, to stave off the crippling pain inflicted by their continuous exposure to the unstable fields that flooded the plasma containment decks. He cared very little for the fate of the scum who worked those decks, yet he ensured that his contact was moved to a safer station in the enginarium, lest he succumb to the effects of the fields.
The new substance, referred to by the crew who used it as ‘d-sense’, had given back to Korvane some of the life he had enjoyed before. The pain went away each time he took the substance, and it did not even begin to return for days at a stretch. He hated it, yet, he knew, he needed the d-sense to function, for now at least.
He closed his fist around the vial, considering whether to take its contents now, or to wait a while longer until the pain increased to the point where he would have no choice but to do so. He looked up sharply as he caught a faint, unfamiliar sound at the very edge of his hearing. The Imperial Guard passengers were no doubt playing havoc with the orderly running of his ship. He opened his palm once more, hearing even as he did so the same faint tone. He felt distracted and annoyed, partly at the very fact of the intrusion, but equally because he simply could not place the sound. It was an eerie reverberation, an undulating tone that promised bewitchment if only he could pinpoint its source.
With a substantial effort of will, Korvane shook off the distraction and focused upon the vial. He would take it now, he resolved, if for no other reason than to throw off the weird fugue no doubt inflicted by the vessel’s continued passage through the warp. With sudden conviction, he pulled the stopper from the glass vial and in a swift motion poured the liquid into his open mouth. The d-sense had no discernible taste, but the effect was almost instantaneous. Pain he had not even registered swept from him as if he were cleansed by the very purest of mountain springs. His spirit soared as he sank into the recliner’s soft leather padding.
Even as he felt the last of the pain wash from him, he heard the weird sound once more. Perhaps, he thought, it had not been a product of the warp working upon his strained and overstretched mind. Perhaps, he felt with growing conviction, it was something he really should investigate.
Lifting his head from the comfort of the recliner’s tall back, Korvane sought to identify the direction from which the sound emanated. He turned his head slowly, concentrating. As hard as he tried, he could not place a direction upon the sound. His pain quite forgotten, Korvane stood, straining all the while to keep the haunting tone at the very forefront of his attention.
Treading softly so as to avoid his footsteps drowning out the song, he crossed his ready room and, cautiously and deliberately, hauled open the heavy bulkhead door. All was as it should be upon the bridge, the Rosetta’s command crew busily engaged upon their myriad everyday tasks. The officer who had waylaid Korvane with the report turned, and upon seeing Korvane back on the bridge made to reach for his data-slate. Korvane flashed the man a look that left the officer in no doubt that his master was not to be disturbed, and crossed the bridge and went out of the main portal, on to the wide companionway beyond.
Once in the passage, Korvane halted once more, listening for the distant sound. He picked it up straight away, and could discern variations in its pitch and cadence; it was forming into a voice, giving song to the most heavenly sound imaginable.
He looked around, attempting to discern whether or not any crew nearby had noted the song. A number of junior officers and senior ratings passed by him, each saluting respectfully to their master. A couple appeared distracted, Korvane felt, but none appeared to be intently focused upon the sound. Perhaps, he mused, they too had put the phenomenon down to the tricks of the warp. Korvane knew, somehow, that the song was no trick. It was real, and he would find its source.
As Korvane had passed along the Rosetta’s companionways, the song had grown clearer and yet more entrancing. After a while, it became clear to him that others of his crew had heard it too, and it appeared that several hundred officers and ratings had found a reason to walk, slowly and deliberately, in the same direction. Korvane had resolutely ignored them. He determined that the song was none of their concern, though he did not go so far as to order them to return to their duties.
As Korvane had passed the central decks, those adjacent to the vast transportation bays, he had noted that the area was almost entirely empty of the thousands of Imperial Guardsmen who had crowded the place when last he had passed through. The cavernous holds were eerily devoid of life, though the warriors’ equipment and personal effects were strewn all over the decks, as if cast away and forgotten in an instant.
Only now, as Korvane approached the Rosetta’s main flight deck did he come across a warrior of the Imperial Guard; and not just one warrior, but every last one of them. The entire regiment, it appeared, was filing onto the flight deck, clearly following the celestial song emanating from somewhere up ahead.
That song now filled Korvane’s consciousness so completely that he scarcely cared about the sheer outlandishness of the events unfolding around him. The song was all that mattered to him, for it was so loud as to drown out all other background noise. Even the ever-present drone of the Rosetta’s plasma core was inaudible.
The wide passage leading to the flight deck was completely crowded with Guard troopers. All were moving towards the open portal that led to the vast space from which the Rosetta’s shuttles, pinnaces and lighters plied near-space when in orbit around a planet. Korvane joined the tide of bodies, passing along with them, his attention focused only on the song as it grew louder and clearer. As he passed through the portal onto the flight deck, the song grew clearer still, and he could easily discern a single voice amidst the beatific chorus, a voice that he was quite sure sang to him and to him alone.
The flight deck was several hundred metres wide, its hard pan surface pitted and scarred by the passage of many small vessels over the centuries. One entire wall was a mighty blast door, beyond which lay a small bubble of real space, and beyond that, held at bay by the Rosetta’s gellar field, the raging ocean of souls that was warp space. As the crowds spilled out onto the flight deck, each individual, whether officer, rating or Imperial Guardsmen, dispersed, each seeking the enchantment of the heavenly song.
Korvane slowed as he crossed the centre of the deck, noting distractedly the markings and guidance lights at his feet. He halted, his eyes upon the mighty armoured blast door as the song swept in all around him. It swirled in the very air, the ghostly voice whispering to him as if the singer pressed her lips to his ears and breathed her celestial promises straight into his soul. As Korvane watched, the mighty pistons above the blast door ground to life, a deep rumbling filling the deck as a line of impossibly bright, violet light appeared at its base.
Distant panic welled up at the edge of Korvane’s psyche, to be soothed and born away in an instant, by flurries of ghostly voices. Korvane watched the blast door opening, but he knew the shielding that protected it even when the doors were opened to space would contain the atmosphere within the flight deck.
As the door rose, the violet light flooded the deck, casting long, diffuse shadows behind each individual. Korvane’s heart leapt as his vision was engulfed, the others all around receding from his mind until he appeared to stand alone in the vast space, the light shining only on him. The song grew to a soaring crescendo, yet a single voice amidst the chorus sang for him and him alone. It was a voice of such sweetness and perfection that he felt he had known it all his life. Or perhaps he had simply sought it all his life, without knowing, unaware
that such beauty could exist, yet still waiting for its promise to be fulfilled.
Korvane knew that he would now meet the creature whose voice had drawn him here.
A silhouette resolved itself from the blazing glory that flooded through the raised door to the Rosetta’s flight deck. Korvane stared into that light, knowing that here was the source of the song that he now heard not with his ears, but in his very soul. The shape became a figure, curvaceous and lithe, swimming through the air as if through water, darting lightly towards him in a series of rapid, stop-start movements. With each halt the figure made, its limbs waved as if caressed by a gentle ocean current, before moving onwards once more.
Korvane squinted, his breath catching in his throat. With a final, sudden movement, the figure glided, languid and sensuous, towards him, the song intensifying all the while. Her shape became clearer as she appeared from the light, the outline of her flawless body etched against the violet behind. He saw rounded hips and a supple back arched in motion. Gentle shoulders and delicate arms lifted as she settled directly before him, as if stepping from an ocean current onto a soft, sea floor.
Korvane knew that he was entirely bewitched. Yet he cared not, for damnation, if this was it, appeared to be a sweet eternity. Even as he watched, the figure resolved before him and he looked upon a kind of beauty never meant to be witnessed by mere mortals.
She stood before him, her beauty so complete it seared his soul. He looked upon a figure of such perfection that he could drink in the sight of but the smallest portion of her body and know complete satiation. She appeared human, yet Korvane somehow knew that such a term could never describe her; that she was so much more than such a word could encompass. He was humbled for a moment, almost shamed in her presence, an intense feeling of unworthiness causing him to cast his glance down to the floor lest his gaze somehow sully her. Then, as the celestial chorus softened, levelling out into a single, gently modulating note, he knew that he was meant to look upon her, that it was his destiny to do so, that he was always meant to do so.
