Rogue Trader

by Andy Hoare

  The first part of Baru’s report, concerning the Gulf, made for unsettling reading. If Lucian’s experience had been traumatic, his Navigator’s had been truly horrific. For long weeks, the Master Navigator had guided the Oceanid through the raging torrents of the warp, assailed all the while by forces the like of which none of his kind had ever encountered. The more Lucian read the report, the more respect he had for the man. Baru said that the Gulf was quite unlike any other place in the galaxy. It was as if the Gulf was some barrier or boundary placed, entirely deliberately, to keep intruders from penetrating the region in which the Tau Empire lay. Beyond it, amongst the blue nebulae, lay something even more incredible.

  The blue clouds of the region were, according to Baru, not entirely natural in their origins. Even to the naked eye they churned with stellar forces, yet to Baru’s third eye, that organ the Navigators uncovered only when traversing the tides of the warp, they boiled with forces both physical and spiritual, both natural and positively unnatural. Such were the terms the Navigator used to describe the phenomenon to Lucian, and Lucian was well aware of the shortcomings of language when a Navigator attempts to explain such concepts to a normal man. It was akin to Lucian attempting to describe conventional space flight to a native of one of the Imperium’s many feral worlds. In this case, it was Lucian who spoke only in grunts, and whose horizons defined the extent of his world.

  It was the last portion of the report that gave Lucian pause. Baru’s description of the region they had entered hinged on one word. It was, according to the veteran navigator, a ‘young’ region, as if time was turned back or the fabric of space cleansed of the passing of aeons. It was as if the region was a place out of time, still existing in the pristine state that would once have applied to the entire galaxy. It was charged with potential, as if the void just waited upon some wondrous event, as if it in fact existed purely to facilitate that event.

  Lucian felt it too, as he raised his eyes from the parchment to look out upon those lambent nebulae once more. He knew, as only a rogue trader could, that the drifting clouds must be seething with life. He almost envied the tau their place in the galaxy... almost.

  ‘Channel. Signus. Signus. Delta. Open.’ The servitor’s voice cut into Lucian’s reverie. He tore his attentions from the viewing port.

  ‘All stations stand by.’

  The bridge became a hive of activity as the officers and servitors manning each console, from communications to astrographics, prepared for action. Lucian paced the length of the central walkway and sat in the warm leather seat of his command throne. An array of flat data-slates, clusters of fat cables trailing from each, closed in around him as he pulled on a lever. Each lit up with green static, before bursts of data began scrolling across the screens.

  ‘Open long range channel.’

  The comms channel shrieked into life, a wailing feedback bursting from the speaker grills before settling down into a gentle, modulated burbling. It was the quietest Lucian had heard the comms system, despite the odd background field. Makes a change, he thought to himself.

  ‘This is Rogue Trader Oceanid, calling crusade fleet,’ Lucian announced. ‘Repeat, this is Lucian Gerrit of the Oceanid.’

  ‘Receiving you,’ said a female voice, the channel clear apart from the sweeping background tones. ‘This is Natalia of the Duchess Mc­Intyre. Glad you could make it, Lucian.’

  Lucian grinned. He liked Natalia. ‘How was your voyage?’

  A moment of silence was followed by Natalia’s reply. ‘It was… eventful, Lucian. I suggest we hold a masters’ conference.’

  Understanding her tone, Lucian answered in the affirmative, and ordered the channel closed. Within three hours, the Oceanid had closed to medium range with Natalia’s vessel, and Lucian had activated the three dimensional holographic display. A green, static laced globe was projected from the unit’s base, filling the air before the command throne. The Oceanid sat at its centre and nearby a group of icons clustered together, representing the other vessels of the fleet that had, thus far arrived.

  Aside from the Duchess McIntyre, the Honour of Damlass, the Regent Lakshimbal and Admiral Jellaqua’s own flagship, the mighty Retribution class battleship the Blade of Woe were present. So too were three escort squadrons, which patrolled the fleet’s outer perimeter lest any unexpected enemy appear. The Rosetta was not present, but Lucian had faith in his son’s Navigator; he would arrive, soon. As Lucian had read off the label next to each icon, one name had halted him in his tracks.

  One of the icons identified the Ajax. Less than thirteen thousand kilometres from the Oceanid’s current position lay at anchor a vessel that Lucian had last seen deserted, drifting in the cold interstellar space of the Damocles Gulf. She had been a ghost ship, yet here she was, safely across the Gulf, and station keeping with the rest of the fleet. Lucian felt cold dread grip his heart as he had looked upon the Ajax, all the superstition and fear bred into his spacer’s soul threatening to overwhelm him.

  As the Oceanid had approached the other vessels, Natalia had called her conference, each captain appearing in one of the pict-slates arrayed around Lucian’s command throne. All had appeared to Lucian to be visibly relieved to be across the gulf, but it was Commodore Ebrahim of the Ajax who held his attention. Ebrahim had reported that his Navigator, who had suffered some form of seizure at the very outset, had recovered. Yet, Ebrahim had reported, the man had been afflicted by terrifying nightmares, and had been assaulted time after time in the waking trance in which he guided the vessel. The navigators of the other vessels had attempted, upon their arrival in this region, to convince Ebrahim’s Navigator to relinquish his duties to a lower ranked individual. Yet he had refused, locking himself away in his Navigation blister and refusing to accept any visitors. The commodore had been visibly shaken, his face, even reproduced on the grainy, flickering screen appearing ashen. His eyes had been rimmed with dark circles, and Lucian had scarcely been able to bring himself to look into them, for it was akin to looking upon a ghost, or a man, who should, by all rights, be dead. Part of him knew that Ebrahim was already dead, despite what Lucian saw on the pict screen before him.

  Then, as the masters had conversed, a message of the highest priority had been received. Its sending had immediately interrupted the masters’ conference, a fact for which Lucian had, at first, been grateful. The message was from the remaining portion of the crusade fleet, which was, even as the conference broke up, closing. Lucian had scanned the sensor returns for any sign of the Rosetta, yet before he could locate his son’s vessel, Cardinal Gurney had come on the channel. He had called an immediate council of war. His experiences crossing the gulf were such that he was convinced the entire region was populated by devils that must be wiped out in short order for the good of mankind. If the cardinal were not insane before, Lucian sighed, surely his experience crossing the Gulf had pushed him over the edge.

  Lucian had stood from his command throne, and stalked off towards his cabin, without a word to his bridge crew. It was only as he made to close the bulkhead door behind him that word of the Rosetta came over the comms channel. It was Korvane, and he was safe.

  ‘This is getting us nowhere,’ Lucian spat. He turned in his council seat to regard his son. Korvane, however, appeared to have his mind on other things. His eyes were raised to the incense clouded vaults of the richly appointed conference chamber aboard the Admiral Jellaqua’s Blade of Woe.

  ‘Korvane!’ Lucian hissed through clenched teeth. ‘What’s the matter with you, boy?’

  Lucian remained twisted in his seat. He watched with mounting impatience as Korvane continued to ignore him, his head turned upwards, but his mind evidently light years away. Just as Lucian was about to turn his attentions back towards the council, Korvane’s attention returned, his eyes coming into focus as they locked with Lucian’s.

  ‘Father?’ Korvane asked.

  What the hell was wrong with him
? Their reunion had been stilted and awkward, and in the brief few minutes they had talked, Korvane had appeared distant and preoccupied. He clearly had no wish to attend his father at the council meeting, yet would not talk of whatever bothered him.

  ‘Nothing. If you don’t want to be here then lose yourself,’ Lucian hissed, turning his back on his son. Seething, he turned his attention back to the council. Gurney appeared to be reaching the conclusion of his thirty-minute rant.

  ‘…drown the tau in oceans of their own blood! We have the Emperor’s will as our weapon. What have they?’

  Though it was clearly a rhetorical question, Lucian took the opportunity to intercede. ‘What have they indeed?’ he rejoined. ‘We have just words, extracted under torture, to go on. Do we commit on those words alone?’

  As the cardinal turned on Lucian, Inquisitor Grand leaned forward: Inquisitor Grand, whom Lucian’s daughter had assaulted, wounded almost fatally, who even now moved as one afflicted by terrible pain: Inquisitor Grand, who was the primary ally of Lucian’s greatest opponent on the council. Despite mourning his daughter’s unknown fate, Lucian cursed her actions, for she had made him an enemy powerful beyond reckoning. It just remained to be seen whether Grand would choose to exercise his full powers.

  ‘Might I remind the council,’ the inquisitor said, his voice the characteristic dry whisper, ‘that the information extracted from the tau prisoners hardly took the form of a signed and witnessed confession.’ Grand’s words were laced with spite, his gaze sweeping the assembled councillors before settling on Lucian. ‘The information we have was extracted directly from the prisoners’ minds, and was thus quite free of deception.’

  Lucian scowled, knowing full well the manner of the prisoners’ interrogation. He knew that the inquisitor had used some vile form of torture on the tau captured at Sy’l’Kell. He had his suspicions that the inquisitor or one of his retinue had been utilising the psyker’s arts to tear the information from the tau’s brains, foregoing the need to study their language or risk them lying.

  ‘And so,’ Cardinal Gurney continued, casting a smug glance Lucian’s way, ‘we must devise our plan of conquest.’

  ‘We know precious little of this region.’ Admiral Jellaqua spoke up. ‘We have entered an area of space of a quite singular nature, and have little idea where our foe lies within it.’

  ‘Then he must come to us!’ Gurney replied, leaning forward across the table as he spoke. ‘We must compel these xenos filth to commit their entire force against us.’

  Lucian sighed in outright disgust. What had started out as an opportunity to lead a glorious conquest was rapidly turning into a chance to commit suicide following a megalomaniac on a vainglorious xenocide. Prior to Brielle’s attack on the inquisitor, he had been gathering council members to his cause, garnering support for his own approach to the crusade. But now…

  ‘And how do you propose to draw them out?’ Lucian asked. He made no attempt to disguise his contempt for Gurney’s plan.

  ‘We find the nearest population centre and descend upon it. We visit upon them the full extent of the Emperor’s wrath. Leave no stone standing upon another.’

  ‘You hope,’ Lucian replied, ‘to draw the tau into launching an all-out counter-attack.’

  ‘I do, Lucian,’ the Cardinal replied. ‘Surely, you can see how this must work?’

  ‘We do not yet comprehend,’ Admiral Jellaqua interjected, ‘the full extent of the tau’s holdings. They may be limited to a single star system, though I doubt that, or they might occupy every system out there.’

  The council fell silent for a moment, as each member appeared to mull over the admiral’s words. Then, a voice spoke up. Lucian turned, though he knew from the voice’s mechanical tones that it was Captain Rumann who spoke.

  ‘Though I accept the view that the region is an unknown,’ the captain said, nodding first to Jellaqua and then to Lucian, ‘I do believe that a sudden strike with all available force is a doctrinally sound course of action. It is consistent with the mission of the Adeptus Astartes on this crusade, and may win a war before it has truly begun.’

  ‘I agree.’ It was Sarik of the White Scars, his eyes alight with feral glee as he spoke. ‘My men and I have been cooped up for too long. We need the ground beneath our feet, a bolter in hand and an enemy to the fore.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ replied Lucian, ‘we must perform a proper reconnoitre first.’

  ‘I agree!’ said Admiral Jellaqua. ‘I will not order my command into harm’s way on the word of a captive. There is simply too much at stake.’

  Gurney rounded on Jellaqua, leaning forward over the polished wooden table. ‘Admiral, might I remind you that I am granted ­titular authority–’

  ‘And might I remind you,’ the stout admiral bellowed as he struggled to his feet, ‘that I command the Imperial Navy. If any wish to continue without the support of my vessels, then they are welcome to do so!’

  The admiral stood, red faced with rage, locked in confrontation with the cardinal. The council went silent, many around the table simply looking elsewhere for fear of setting either man off again. Lucian saw his chance.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said as he stood and walked around the table to stand between them. ‘Clearly, this will get us nowhere. Such division plays into our enemy’s hands, and we can scarcely afford to squander any edge we might have.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Jellaqua replied, nodding his thanks to Lucian.

  The cardinal, however, was less magnanimous. ‘To withdraw now would be treason,’ he growled, his voice dangerously low where Lucian was more used to it being shrill. Jellaqua stiffened.

  ‘No one is accusing anyone of treason,’ Lucian interjected.

  ‘Who among us,’ the cardinal replied, ‘is more fit to judge such a matter?’ Gurney turned to his compatriot seated next to him. Inquisitor Grand nodded, his face barely visible beneath his dark hood.

  ‘Indeed,’ Grand rasped, ‘treason is a word so easily applied, and yet one so difficult to take back.’

  Lucian felt the inquisitor’s gaze boring into him from beneath the hood, a queasy sensation rising in his stomach. A vision flashed across his mind’s eye, a vivid image of his daughter, in pain and in desperate need. He knew stark dread for a moment, and knew then that he had made a terrible enemy in Inquisitor Grand. He recognised the touch of the psyker, and knew that Grand had placed the vision within his mind. The inquisitor, he had no doubt, was a psyker of some ability.

  From where Lucian stood, interposed between the cardinal and the admiral, he noticed that Korvane was staring right at Inquisitor Grand. Had his son shared the vision? Had the bastard inquisitor shown to all of the council that he might truly crush any power that remained within Lucian’s grasp? He looked around the various faces, but saw nothing unusual. It was just him and his son, then.

  ‘How shall we settle this matter?’ Admiral Jellaqua asked, sitting once more with evident frustration.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said a voice from across the chamber. Lucian’s heart sank. It was Korvane who had spoken up.

  ‘What?’ asked Jellaqua, seeking to locate the speaker.

  Lucian saw his son rise and approach the council table.

  ‘Korvane, please sit,’ Lucian started.

  ‘No,’ interjected Inquisitor Grand, his relish all too evident. ‘Let him speak.’

  Korvane nodded his thanks to the inquisitor. Lucian felt a bitter stab of resentment. ‘I propose,’ Korvane continued, ‘that I lead a scouting mission to locate a suitable target.’

  ‘And why would you do such a thing?’ Inquisitor Grand rasped.

  ‘Because I believe such a course of action is in the best interests of the crusade,’ Korvane replied.

  ‘The Rosetta is no scouting vessel,’ Lucian said, hating that circumstance had set him against his own son in such a manner, yet knowing he must interven
e. ‘She’s not fast enough and she’ll be detected within hours of breaking warp.’

  ‘I know that, father,’ Korvane replied, an unfamiliar edge in his voice. ‘I’ll lead a Navy deep space recon patrol. If there’s a decent target within range, I’ll find it.’ He turned to the council at large. ‘You have my word.’

  ‘Can this be done?’ Gurney asked no one in particular.

  ‘Aye,’ Jellaqua replied, ‘it can be done, if it is agreed.’ Here the admiral looked to Lucian. Lucian caught the hint of sympathy in the other man’s eye, and appreciated it for the gesture it was no doubt intended to be. Though he seethed inside, Lucian knew that now was the time to show unity, to shore up what influence he still had within the council. To oppose his son’s proposal would spell the end of any such influence, of that he was quite sure. Just what his son hoped to achieve by absenting himself from the crusade fleet at such a vital juncture, he had no clue.

  ‘I propose,’ Korvane went on, ‘to proceed rimward thirty-eight by one-one-seven.’ As he spoke, Korvane touched a polished brass control console mounted in the great wooden table. The vaulted ceiling space was filled with light all of a sudden, which gradually resolved itself into a representation of the surrounding space. The blue nebulae glowed serenely, casting their luminescence over the councillors as each craned his neck to look up. Lucian sighed inwardly, realising that his son’s proposal had not been as spontaneous as it had at first appeared. No, Lucian mused bitterly, his son had planned this, and kept it from him.

  The heading Korvane had prepared was scribed across the projection as the council watched, warp time differentials labelled at each waypoint. He’s wasted no time, Lucian thought, seeing that the course led towards a system that Lucian would have chosen were he proposing the course of action, and not his son.

  ‘This system,’ Korvane announced, ‘is, I believe, a viable target.’

  ‘Not according to my data.’ All eyes turned from the swirling blue eddies above, to Magos Explorator Jaakho, who had spoken. ‘That cluster was subject to a delta seven survey when last my order passed through this region. I do not believe the tau would settle there, for it holds no worlds capable of supporting life.’