by Andy Hoare
Giving the matter no more thought, Lucian hauled open the heavy cabin door. Stepping through, he hurried down the corridor that led to his bridge, his mind rapidly filling with a thousand concerns as to what might await him when he reached Chirurgeon Estaban’s medicae bay.
He was so distracted by such thoughts, that he was entirely unprepared for the scene that awaited him on his bridge. He came to an abrupt halt as the bridge door swung open, all thoughts of the astropath having fled his mind entirely.
The bridge resembled a slaughterhouse. Bodies and parts of bodies were cast across the deck, and blood dripped from every surface. The metallic taint of blood was in the air, as was the foul stink of stomach contents. It took Lucian a moment to take all this in, before he raised his head to meet the gaze of the one figure still living on the bridge.
It was his helmsman, Mister Raldi.
‘My lord,’ whispered the helmsman, his voice sounding distant, as if muffled by dense rolling fog. The man’s body was drenched in blood, and he stood as if supported by a puppeteer’s strings. His neck, it seemed to Lucian, was not supporting the man’s head, for it lolled to one side, drool slowly pouring from his slack mouth.
‘What in the Emperor’s name…’ Lucian started, before he saw Raldi’s eyes. There was no point finishing the question.
‘Daemon!’ Lucian spat, knowing as he looked into his helmsman’s eyes that the man he had known was far, far away. Whatever stood before him, clothed in the flesh of his officer, was not human, but some fiend from the depths of the warp.
‘Please, my lord,’ the whisper continued, sounding yet more distant, ‘don’t let it…’
The helmsman’s body lurched forward, its movements grotesquely jerky as if the entity that controlled it had yet to master control of the unfamiliar form. Lucian was shocked into action, reaching instinctively for his holster.
‘Damn it!’ he spat, cursing himself for a fool for his decision to leave his weapons in his cabin. Knowing that he had no choice but to face the creature down, before it got loose on his vessel, he hauled on the bridge door and ran back down the corridor towards his cabin.
Once there, he retrieved his weapon’s belt, and immediately unholstered the heavy, plasma pistol. Depressing the activation stud, he was profoundly grateful to hear the whine of the pistol’s war spirit as it awoke. Pausing only to take a deep breath, Lucian returned to the passageway, steeling himself for the confrontation ahead. Checking one last time that his weapon was primed, he hauled open the bridge door and stepped into the opening, pistol raised.
The bridge was empty.
‘Bastard!’ Lucian cursed, seeing that the opposite door, the door leading to the Oceanid’s central thoroughfare, was ajar. Knowing that the entity was loose on his ship, Lucian saw no alternative but to hunt it down. He cursed the fate that had brought such a cruel turn of events upon him. Lucian knew that once a creature from the warp had control of a body within a vessel crossing the empyrean, that ship might be damned for all eternity. If he did not isolate the creature now, it would turn his ship into a charnel house.
Lucian crossed his bridge, cautiously, for entrails and unidentifiable organs were scattered across it, and all was drenched in steaming blood. Reaching the far door, he peered out warily, seeing that the companionway beyond was empty. Leaning back against the bulkhead, he slammed his fist into the intercom console, activating the ship wide address system.
‘All hands,’ Lucian said into the horn, feedback howling as his voice boomed from a thousand speaker grills. ‘This is your captain. Adopt protocol extremis. I repeat, extremis.’
He leaned back against the bulkhead, scarcely believing that he had issued an order that none of his line had been forced to give in over three millennia. He knew that incursions by the things that dwelled in the warp could occur, it was his duty to know and to prepare for it, but he had never actually been faced with such an occurrence, and had prayed he never would be. He turned his face towards the console by the door, and punched the alert control. Instantly, the lighting of ship’s day flickered and was gone, plunging the bridge into darkness, punctuated only by flickering pict-slate and flashing consoles. Seconds later, the red light of ship’s night flickered on, indicating that the Oceanid was at general quarters.
Even as the bridge was bathed in light the colour of the blood that covered its every surface, a distant siren began to wail. The sound was taken up by another, this time closer. Within moments, Lucian could hear the apocalyptic wail start up all over his ship. At the last, the speaker grill over the bridge door came to life, almost deafening Lucian as it did so.
Focus, Lucian told himself; do what old Abad would have done. Not that Abad had ever faced down a fiend of the warp on his own ship, Lucian thought. Checking once more that his pistol was at full charge, he took a deep breath and stepped out into the corridor.
The flash of alert lights accompanied the wail of general quarters, and over it, Lucian heard the distant sounds of the crew rushing to their stations. But this was not ship-to-ship combat. This was something that every spacefarer dreaded far more than the clean death afforded when one’s body was spat into the cold void or incinerated by plasma bolts as powerful as suns. This intruder should not exist, having infiltrated a weak soul and become real aboard his ship. The order he had issued, ‘protocol extremis’ was a desperate reaction to a situation few expected to survive. Those who could would close on his location. Those who could not, would lock themselves away in the darkest, deepest corner they could find and not come out until the alert was ended.
Lucian reached a junction, the flashing alert light directly over his head. He looked left, and saw nothing. He spun around, pistol raised, as if an enemy lurked in the shadows at his back. None was there, but as he lowered his pistol he saw a crumpled form sprawled across the companionway, one half of its head several metres from the other, and the body, further away still.
Stepping over the bloody mess, Lucian pushed on down the corridor until he reached another intercom console. ‘To me!’ he almost screamed. ‘Command deck forward, passage delta one-one-one!’
Where were they? Lucian thought, feeling utterly alone despite the comforting weight of the heavy plasma pistol he held before him. A scream answered his question. They were in the service tunnel leading to the torpedo decks. He started running forwards along the corridor once more, his boots clanging on the metal deck plates all the way. Reaching another junction, he found the source of the scream.
A group of armsmen, the bully boys employed primarily to keep the press-ganged crewmen in line, stood in a wide utility area. Each carried a heavy gauge shotgun, but by Lucian’s estimation, only a couple had found the time to don the crimson and gold armour they were issued. Before them, his back to Lucian as he entered the area, was the helmsman, or what used to be the helmsman, Lucian thought.
Lucian came to a halt as he took in the scene. He saw the creature spread its arms wide as in some mockery of benediction, its head lolling to one side. The uniform that Helmsman Raldi had worn was ragged and singed, as if contact with the skin the creature wore was toxic in itself.
A scream issued from the beast’s mouth. Lucian bent double and dropped his pistol as he covered both his ears with his hands. Despite his best efforts, the terrible sound leaked in, forcing him to fight for consciousness lest it overcome him entirely. Raising his head, he forced himself to focus on the scene ahead, gritting his teeth against the infernal cacophony that filled the air.
The creature stood frozen before him, its arms raised above its head. In front of it, the armsmen had been caught in the full onslaught of its hellish assault. All had collapsed to the deck. One was coughing up his guts, almost literally, in a fountain of blood and bile. One bled from every orifice, his ears, eyes, nose, mouth and groin streaming red. Those armsmen marginally further back scrambled across the steel deck, made slick with the blood and vomit of their compatriots.
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Drawing on reserves of strength he had no idea he possessed, Lucian raised himself to his knees as he reached out to grab his plasma pistol. He missed, sending the weapon clattering across the deck to land nearer the creature. The screaming died, and Lucian realised with stark horror that the creature was slowly turning to face him.
‘My lord…’ The creature’s head lolled as it spoke. Its eyes rolled in their sockets, each facing in a different direction, before focusing on him. ‘Please my lord, don’t let this happen.’
The voice brought a choke of despair to Lucian’s throat, for he knew it belonged to Helmsman Raldi. He guessed that the creature was yet to establish total control over Raldi’s body, but knew that surely, it must soon do so.
‘I promise,’ Lucian said as his groping hands found the plasma pistol, his voice riven with anguish, ‘I won’t…’
Even as Lucian raised the pistol, the creature reacted. Its movements, though jerky as before, were impossibly fast.
The creature was in front of Lucian in the blink of an eye. He found himself on his knees before the wrecked form of his erstwhile helmsman, fighting to raise his pistol before the beast from the warp rent his body asunder.
‘He’s gone now,’ said a new voice, little more than a whisper, but laden with all the pain and suffering of the abyss. ‘Gone.’
‘Get, off, my, ship,’ Lucian spat, raising the pistol in both hands as its war spirit sang its high-pitched tone. He pulled the trigger, turning his head, squeezing shut his eyes and gritting his teeth. The weapon spat its payload of incandescent plasma straight into the creature’s head, at point blank range.
The creature’s head disintegrated as the plasma bolt passed through it to strike a conduit mounted overhead. As gas flooded the utility space, the body crashed to its knees, and tumbled to one side. An instant later an armsman was standing behind it, proffering his hand to Lucian.
‘Sir? Are you…?’
The hair on the back of Lucian’s neck stood on end as he saw the dead creature’s arm shoot out, the distended claw taking hold of the armsman’s wrist.
‘Get back!’ Lucian bellowed as he staggered to his feet, but he knew he was too late.
The armsman threw back his head and screamed, sickly light shining up from his throat as the daemon from the warp took over his body.
Despair threatening to overcome him, Lucian raised his pistol once again. But he never had the chance to pull the trigger, for the armsman, his body under the sway of the warp beast, flung out his arm and sent the pistol flying across the space.
It was gone a moment later, disappearing through the gases venting from the conduit overhead. Lucian looked up at the discharging pipeline as if only just becoming aware of it. He coughed, and looked around for his pistol. He could not see it. He risked losing the beast if he wasted time looking for the weapon. Throwing an arm over his face to shield his lungs from the gas, he plunged through the billowing clouds, after the beast that was slaughtering his crew.
All was darkness for an instant as Lucian passed through the cloud of gas, followed by nauseous disorientation as he emerged, to find himself in a narrow passageway that led from the utility area to the forward torpedo decks. He had no difficulty discerning the creature’s path, for another two bodies lay up ahead; at least it looked as if the constituent body parts amounted to two people.
As the shock of the confrontation with the beast wore off, Lucian felt a primal rage well up within him. No Arcadius, to his knowledge at least, had ever lost a vessel to a warp beast, and he was damned if he would be the first to suffer such a fate. His anger grew as he considered that he had been forced to destroy the body of a man he thought of, if not as a friend then as a companion and a valued crew member. Even if he died in the event, which he thought entirely probable, Lucian determined that he would take this bastard of a creature with him. If he were to be dragged to hell by this beast, he raged, he’d make sure the beast went with him.
Passing the bodies, Lucian came to another junction, and was greeted immediately by the boom of a shotgun being discharged very nearby.
‘Hold!’ he called, rounding the corner cautiously.
He stepped towards a wide chamber, machinery clustered upon its every surface. A single armsman stood at the centre, and nearby a cringing group of ratings. The body last possessed by the creature lay before the armsman, its chest blown through by the force of a shotgun blast.
But Lucian dared not believe it had been defeated so easily.
The armsman with the shotgun turned towards him, his head tipping to one side as he did so. The mouth fell open and bloodstained drool pooled forth. Lucian met the armsman’s eyes, experiencing a stab of despair as he saw that those eyes were filled not with the lucid gaze of the creature from the warp, but with sheer, unadulterated terror. Those eyes were the eyes of a man being dragged beneath the surface of the ocean by a voracious predator, knowing all the while that a quick, clean death would be denied him.
‘Not again!’ Lucian spat, casting around for something, anything he might use as a weapon. He did not care what; a pipe would do, if it would allow him to bludgeon the creature to death, to stave in its skull so that it could possess no more of his crew.
Before he could find a weapon, however, fate took a hand in events. One of the cowering ratings took the opportunity to flee, crossing the chamber and running behind the creature as he did so. The creature spun around to rake the man with its hands, its fingers split apart and the bones protruding to form wicked claws. It turned back towards Lucian, as if deciding which prey to pursue. Lucian judged that the beast was trapped, if only he could force it back to the next chamber. Summoning all his courage, he stepped forward, just as a group of armsmen arrived behind him. The beast stood motionless for an instant, before it evidently saw that it was outnumbered. The fleeing man dived for the access portal behind the beast, and the creature made its decision. It dived after him, through the small opening.
Lucian reacted in an instant. He knew that there was no exit from the chamber into which the creature had passed. As the creature overtook its prey, a terrible scream spilling forth to be cut off an instant later by the sound of rending flesh and bone, Lucian surged forward and hauled the portal shut. He spun the heavy wheel that engaged the locking mechanism, and sank to his knees with exhaustion.
As the chamber filled with armsmen and ratings responding to the emergency, Lucian raised his head, and laughed the laugh of one who has come far too close to the abyss. He saw his crewmen recoil in horror, and realised that he must appear a madman.
‘Someone,’ he said, forcing his voice to its normal tone, ‘get me Karaldi.’
‘It’s in there, my lord?’ asked Master Karaldi. Lucian was unsure whether the astropath asked a question or made a statement of fact. The man was impossible to read, the wild madness he had displayed on their last meeting now entirely gone. He nodded nonetheless.
‘It’s sealed, and there’re no other exits,’ Lucian replied, finding his eye drawn, as he spoke, to the small armoured porthole in the heavy bulkhead door. He could see nothing beyond, which made him even more uneasy.
‘Apart from the tubes, my lord,’ Karaldi said.
Aye, Lucian thought, the torpedo tubes. The creature was trapped on the loading deck for the forward torpedo tubes. There were no torpedoes in the area however, for the fortunes of the Arcadius clan had been so dire this last century as to preclude their replenishment. Lucian knew that the astropath referred to the possibility of voiding the chamber, in the hope of blasting the creature through the tubes and into the warp.
‘No,’ Lucian replied, ‘that’s not an option. The internal bulkheads aren’t up to it.’
‘Then what?’ Karaldi asked, his blind gaze fixed on the small porthole.
‘That’s why I called you here,’ Lucian replied, knowing he had no choice but to trust the mad old astropath.
‘I have an idea, but I need your advice.’
‘Please, my lord, go on. I am your servant.’
Lucian looked into the man’s time-worn face, haloed as it was by his wispy grey hair. Lucian fancied he detected a change in the man, as if the astropath was prepared to face up to his duty in a way he had appeared reluctant to on prior occasions. Lucian had considered Karaldi burned out or washed up, of late, and had seriously intended to petition the Guild for a replacement. Something now gave him pause. Something in Karaldi might have changed, Lucian thought.
‘Good,’ Lucian began, ‘I have a question for you, and I want you to be sure of your answer.’
‘Of course, my lord.’
‘I intend to destroy the body the creature inhabits, totally: to incinerate it to atoms.’
‘Go on, my lord.’
‘What then of the creature, with no new victim to claim?’
‘Oh,’ Karaldi replied, his hand reaching up to grip his chin, ‘I see…’
‘What then, without the body?’ Lucian pressed.
The astropath hesitated, visibly considering his words before continuing. ‘With no Rite of Warding, which would take many hours, I could not say, not for sure. It has certainly feasted upon enough souls to sustain it for some time, even in incorporeal form. But I know we do not have the luxury of time, so I say please do it, master. For the sake of us all, please do it.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Quite sure, my lord,’ the astropath replied, his hands fumbling with the beads around his neck, an old and tarnished Imperial aquila hanging upon them.
Lucian turned and nodded to a tech-priest manning a console near the bulkhead door. The hooded figure bowed, and turned to the large array of levers, dials and meters before him. Lucian turned to the porthole once more, feeling the tension grow.
The tech-priest worked a series of levers, lowering each in succession and mumbling prayers to the Machine God all the while. The effect was immediate. The air in the chamber charged, the hairs on Lucian’s body standing up, accompanied by a distinctly unpleasant sensation of something crawling over his body. The air pressure rose dramatically for a moment, before a bank of equalisation pumps mounted overhead started to life and quickly returned it to normal.
