by John French
The killing began to slow. The Retribution Fleet was no more; only the crippled and dead remained. The Iron Warriors ships had stopped firing on their victims, as if the overwhelming firepower of the earlier battle had left them spent. Surrounded Imperial Fists remnants fired all they had into the face of their enemies. Some managed to strip the void shields off an Iron Warriors ship; some even put wounds into their hulls. But the Iron Warriors came on, shrugging off damage like a bull grox trampling a dog into the dirt. They swarmed their remaining enemies, their boarding pods clustering on golden hulls like ticks feeding on cattle. Their boarding parties struck plasma reactors, shutting them down and letting the ships choke to death without power. Life support systems, artificial gravity, and weapon systems went silent. Then the Iron Warriors left and the cold of the void reached into the lightless hulls to do its slow and silent work.
A few Imperial Fists ships remained, fighting to the last, a shrinking cluster of resistance that became smaller by the second. They fought to the death, firing on enemies with undimmed fury, covering limping comrades even as the Iron Warriors brought them down. When the Tribune exploded amongst the last Imperial Fists ships few of the Iron Warriors took note. Golg and the Contrador had their kill, and the primarch had the head of the Imperial Fist who had dared to stand against him. That the Contrador lingered at the site of its victory drew no suspicion.
In the navigation cupola of the Contrador, Navigator Primus Basus shifted against the unfamiliar hardness of the bare metal chair. The Imperial Fists had locked the previous Navigator of the Contrador in the deep holds of the battle-barge, but he could still feel her presence on the unadorned and functional equipment. Behind him his two secondaries fidgeted in their seats. The journey from the Tribune had done nothing to settle their nerves, and they knew what awaited them once they were in the warp. A storm navigation was a terrifying thing. Even if the clear passage was still visible they would have to rotate through shifts to avoid gaze fatigue, or worse. Basus flicked a switch on the console and spoke to the air.
‘Sergeant Raln?’ There was a pause, a clicking whir of white noise.
‘Yes, Navigator.’ The sergeant’s voice held none of its usual dry humour.
‘We are ready.’ He paused, sucked air through his teeth. ‘Our destination is still the same?’
‘Yes. Captain Polux’s orders still stand.’
Basus nodded to himself, closed his human eyes and ran his hand over the aperture on his forehead.
‘Very well, sergeant.’ He cut the vox, and turned to his secondaries. Their green-flecked amber eyes were a mirror of his own. ‘We make course for Terra,’ he said.
The Contrador’s engines fired to full life and it moved away from the debris of its battle with the Tribune. It bled as it moved, its wounds trailing gas and ribbons of burning plasma. Damaged inside and out, half its crew dead, and its command seized by its enemies, it was a crippled warrior picking itself up from the battlefield. But it could still run.
By the time the rest of the Iron Warriors fleet realised something was wrong the Contrador was already beyond their range. Its engines breathed comet trails as it made for the edge of the Phall system, deaf to the signals that followed its flight. The Iron Warriors pursued until the Contrador ripped a glowing hole in the starfield and dived into the storms beyond.
Perturabo watched the calculations of slaughter play across the screen. His gaze held no sign of pleasure or satisfaction. Nothing else moved in the throne room or the long chamber beyond the doors. The blood had already clotted to a sticky dark film on his armour. The broken bodies of Imperial Fists lay on the floor around him, their yellow armour so crushed and distorted that they looked like chewed lumps of metal and offal.
The Imperial Fists fleet was gone. Some had managed to flee and jump to the warp, but most now drifted in the void, shattered and blackened. The force that had boarded the Iron Blood was dead to a man. There was no enemy left to fight. The battle data scrolling past Perturabo’s eyes told of a sudden and total victory. It also spoke of the likely outcome before the Imperial Fists’ suicidal withdrawal. Perturabo let the truth cycle past his eyes once more.
The hammer blow reduced the screens to sparking wreckage, and the Lord of Iron stalked from the chamber in silence.
In a corner, Navarra’s mangled body lay in a fold of shadow. His armour had mashed into his flesh, and his legs were gone below the knee joint. Inside the ruin of his helmet, Navarra’s eyelids trembled and snapped open.
Epilogue
[time/location unclear]
We have been falling for an eternity, falling into icy darkness, blood and the shouts of despair following us into oblivion. Perhaps it has only been hours, perhaps years. I cannot tell.
The storm cradles us, its frustrated fury raging at the hull of the Contrador. Some of the human crew have died. There has been violence. Some of the crew still hold loyalty to their Iron Warriors masters. It is to be expected. Others seem to have died of hunger, their bodies withering away to nothing. Perhaps it has been years. Perhaps we will fall through the storm forever.
‘Captain Polux?’ It is Basus. The Navigator looks even more thin and pale than normal. Sweat beads his grey skin and red sores rim his true eyes. I look little better. The wounds are healing, but they still weep pus. Tubes attach me to a mass of machines and fluid-filled vials that follow me on suspensors. I wear a red robe darkened in places by blooms of dried blood. They had to cut me from my armour.
‘Yes, Navigator?’ My voice is cracked and dry. A thick tube sucks yellow liquid from my chest as I breathe.
‘I have seen it.’ His voice shakes as he speaks. ‘It is there, just visible, faint but steady.’ I think that I know what he means, but I will not hope. I flex the fingers of my left hand as I listen, then I realise that my hand is gone and that I am clasping a phantom memory.
‘What have you seen?’ I say.
‘The light of Terra,’ he says. ‘The Astronomican. The storms are still strong but we can steer a course.’ I hear the hope in his voice alongside the fatigue. He and his secondaries have been steering us through the storm currents for as long as we have been here within the warp. Hope, though, is a fragile skin over the truth of pain and sacrifice.
‘Do it. Take us home.’
I stay awake until we complete the course. A command throne of dark metal dominates the Contrador’s bridge. It remains empty; I stand as I did on the bridge of the Tribune.
The crew move around me. Time passes, perhaps hours, perhaps months, perhaps years. My lost hand glows with ghost pain. The Apothecaries tell me they can modify the doses of nerve suppressors to remove the pain until I heal. I told them not to. The pain is reassuring, a rock to cling to as we fall.
At last the journey is over. Raln stands with me as we prepare to see the lights of Terra again. I nod slowly, and Raln gives the order. Our stolen ship shivers as the curtain of the warp parts before it and we slide out into the light of a bright sun.
The screens suspended across the bridge flicker to life, showing us the world that has waited for our return.
I frown. Beside me Raln makes a sound like a snarl.
The planets turn under the light of their sun, half wrapped in darkness, half in stark light. Weapon platforms and void stations ring them in heavy chains. Ships move through the void. Some turn towards us even as we look at them. I feel shock and awe. The forces gathered here are the greatest I have ever seen. It is a star system made into a fortress, a seat of power and unbending might. It is a place I have seen before, long ago. Now it is changed. It has become something more, something that I do not understand.
I look away from the screen.
‘This is not Terra,’ I say.
Somewhere within me I see Helias fall again from my hand into the night, and hear my scream lost on the ice wind.
About The Author
John Fren
ch is a writer and freelance games designer from Nottingham. His work can be seen in the Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch roleplay games and scattered through a number of other books including the award-nominated Disciples of the Dark Gods. When he is not thinking of ways that dark and corrupting beings can destroy reality and space, John enjoys talking about why it would be a good idea, and making it so with his own Traitor Legions on the gaming table… that and drinking good wine.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Neil Roberts
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