[Battlefleet Gothic 02] - Shadow Point

by Gordon Rennie - (ebook by Undead)

  Sejarra’s jaws worked feebly, and Maxim realised he was trying to say something beneath the strip of plasti-seal fixed over his mouth and bonded to the flesh of his face. Maxim congratulated himself at his skill in mixing together the ingredients of the cocktail. He had wanted Sejarra subdued—it would have been awkward if the “corpse” had started struggling or making noises during the journey here—but he didn’t want the sneaky bastard so doped up that he wouldn’t be able to appreciate what Maxim had planned for him, especially when Maxim had gone to so much effort to get everything organised. So now the drug was wearing off, which, as far as Maxim was concerned, was pretty much perfect timing.

  He looked in silence at Sejarra for a few moments, allowing the knowledge of where he was and what was about to happen to him sink into the engineer’s drug-dulled consciousness. Sejarra looked around him and started to thrash about in terror, squirming bound and helpless on top of the bloody heap of corpses. Maxim grinned, and looked him straight in the eye.

  “Winner takes all, Sejarra. But no hard feelings, right? After all, it’s just business. Nothing personal.”

  Maxim pulled the lever his hand had been resting on. The airlock hatch slid shut with an echoing metallic dang. Inside the airlock, Sejarra tried to scream, but the sound, already muffled by the gag across his mouth, was swept away in the louder scream of the sudden rushing of air as the outer hatch swung open.

  “And the roks?”

  “We’re estimating sixteen destroyed or crippled, captain,” answered Ulanti. “The remainder have retreated deeper into the safety of the asteroid field, where accurate surveyor scans are problematic, to say the least. We can send attack craft reconnaissance patrols in there to find them, but it’s the greenies’ territory, and they’ll be waiting for us. It’ll be a damn easy way for us to lose some good pilots.”

  Semper sighed, and sat back behind his desk, thoughtfully drumming his fingers on the large ork’s skull he kept there as a ceremonial trophy of his first ever boarding action and taste of close-quarters combat. As ever, victory was no assurance of the end to one’s problems. The battle was won, but the full cleansing of the Mather system would take many months yet. As much as over a year, perhaps, if his officers’ informed judgement that there might be as many as twenty other roks lurking undetected elsewhere in the system was accurate. They would all have to be found and destroyed, every one of them, if Battlefleet Gothic was ever to declare the Mather system finally purged of ork infestation.

  Ulanti politely cleared his throat, and Semper realised that he had been pondering too long. The senior cadre of his ship’s officers stood assembled in his captain’s study, and they were waiting for their captain to give them their next orders. Ulanti, Nyder, Maeler and Khoir Sabattier, the ship’s master of arms stood to attention before him. Beside them stood Senior Adept Volterman, one of Castaboras’s tech-priest lieutenants. Castaboras himself was inspecting the damage to some of the Macharius’s more esoteric but vital control systems, and, in acknowledgement of the magos’s recent actions in saving the ship from tractor beam destruction, Semper had diplomatically granted his request to send an emissary in his stead to the meeting called in the captain’s study.

  The tall, regal figure of Ship’s Navigator Solon Cassander and the dark-robed figure of Ship’s Chief Astropath, Adept Rapavna, stood towards the rear of the dark, low-ceilinged room, voluntarily removing themselves from the others in discreet understanding of the discomfort many navy officers felt in the presence of psykers. The tall, imposing figure of Commissar Koba Kyogen lounged against a wall decorated with crystal-framed images of ancient starcharts and tattered scrolls of battle honours won centuries ago by previous incumbents of the captain’s chair which Semper was now sitting in.

  Kyogen’s position and casual stance was deliberate and meaningful. He did not stand to attention like the other navy officers, because a captain’s otherwise unchallengeable authority did not apply in the case of a ship’s commissar. He stood apart from the others because he was here voluntarily, and not at Semper’s orders. So far, he had said nothing. His task was to observe, to watch and remember everything said and done by the Macharius’s most senior command cadre. His bolstered bolt pistol lay across the front of his immaculate, black serge uniformed coat. It was the only sidearm permitted into a captain’s chambers, and it was a clear, unspoken reminder of the power of life and death which a ship’s commissar held over everyone in the room.

  Each officer present had made his after-battle report. Now they awaited their captain’s orders on what they and his vessel would do next.

  “We leave the hulks where they are,” Semper told them. “They don’t have warp drive capability, so they aren’t going anywhere from here. We’ve accomplished what we came here to do with the destruction of Sabretooth and Wolverine and their escorts, and we’ve driven the remaining ork presence in the Mather system back into retreat. This system will be cleansed of any remaining greenskin presence, but it will be the task of others to finish what we have begun here. Lord Admiral Ravensburg and Battlefleet Command, in their glorious wisdom, have decided that there are other duties elsewhere which demand our immediate attention.”

  The sense of barely-retrained relief from his officers was almost palpable. While none of them balked at the prospect of battle with the Emperor’s enemies, neither did they much relish the idea of the long and tedious work involved in rooting out the remnants of the ork infestation of Mather, especially as it would keep them away from the crux of the real war in the Gothic sector.

  Typically, it was Ulanti who was first to ask what everyone else was thinking. “Then you’ve been in touch with Port Maw, sir?”

  “I have,” answered Semper, indicating towards the figure of the astropath. “Adept Rapavna has conveyed my battle report to Battlefleet Command, and we have received word back from them in return. A battle-squadron comprising of the Ark Imperial, two more squadrons of Cobras and a force of troop transports and warp-towed defence monitors is already in transit to the Mather system. They will arrive in several days and set up in orbit around the system’s third innermost planet, which will become the home base for a rigorous scouring of any remaining greenskin presence in the system.”

  Ulanti nodded. It was a good plan. The Ark Imperial was one of the old super-carriers of the now defunct Majestic-class of battleship. Its worn-out warp engines were almost past the point of final repair, and the journey through the warp to the Mather system might be its last, but it would make a fine centre of operations for the purposes of this mission. The ork roks had proven highly vulnerable to attack craft assault, and the Ark Imperial’s specialist reconnaissance craft and massed wings of bombers would be ideal for seeking out and destroying the things.

  “Then what are our orders, captain?” ventured Castaboras’s stand-in. “The ship’s sacred machine spirit is in pain. Urgent repairs are needed and sacred rites of re-consecration, and all these things can only be done in an orbital dry-dock.”

  Semper held up his open hand, cutting off the tech-priest. “Our orders, effective immediately, are to make way at once to the Ramilies star fort Stygian, in the Elysium system. Drachenfels and Graf Orlok are to accompany us. We’ll apparently have several days there to make good any battle damage and re-crew and re-equip before the commencement of our next mission.”

  Semper saw the look of dismay on the tech-priest’s face. “Have faith in the spirit of the Macharius, brother adept. She’s been injured before, and no doubt she’ll be injured again, but she’s a strong, stout-hearted old maid, and I haven’t seen anything in these damage reports to suggest she won’t be able to make it through whatever’s ahead of us.”

  “Then Battlefleet Command haven’t told you what that mission is, captain?”

  The enquiry came from Ulanti. Semper hesitated a moment before answering. “All I’ve been told is that we are to wait at Stygian until the arrival of the Bernardo Gui. It will apparently dock with Stygian, and a group of passeng
ers will disembark from her and transfer over to us. What our mission and next destination will be, and exactly who these passengers are, Battlefleet Command have not yet seen fit to tell us.”

  There was a pause while the others in the room digested this information. Nyder, shifting uncomfortably, was the first to break the silence.

  “The Bernardo Gui, you say, sir? That’s the vessel we are to rendezvous with?”

  Semper gave a tight smile, knowing what his Master of Ordnance was really asking. “Yes, Mister Nyder, you heard me correctly, and you know just as well as I do which branch of the Imperial service that particular vessel belongs to.”

  His smile grew tighter, as he looked his officers in the eye. “We’d better tidy the place up and have the Macharius looking its best for the arrival of our distinguished passengers, since it would appear, gentlemen, that we’ll soon be playing host to the representatives of His Divine Majesty’s most sacred and noble Inquisition.”

  Minutes later, and Semper had dismissed the other men and sent them to oversee the necessary preparations for the ship’s departure from the Mather system. All of them except Solon Cassander, whom Semper had requested to stay behind, ostensibly to consult with him on the safest and quickest course through the immaterium to their new destination. The Macharius captain had been afraid that Kyogen would stay to observe, and had been secretly relieved when the stern and silent ship’s commissar had left with the others. Kyogen, a native Stranivarite, was investigating reports of some minor but troubling incident of typical below-decks mayhem and was keen to begin. Semper had not paid much attention to the details—something about a gunfight in the enginarium section, and possibly another one elsewhere too, and the disappearance of several engineering crew—and had been only too glad to see the back of the man.

  Semper sat at his desk again, with Cassander seated on the other side, facing him. Semper did not consider himself to be superstitious—in many respects, he was the epitome of the hardnosed and practical-minded Schola Progenium-trained naval man—and would not wish his crew to know that, from time to time, when he felt it necessary, it was his secret custom to consult the psychic visions of the Macharius’s Navigator. The mutant warp-sight of many Navigators could see into the future as well as into the immaterium. Solon Cassander was one so gifted, and, now, as Semper watched, the Navigator reached up to remove the gold-woven headband which he wore across his forehead. Semper tried not to stare at the unnatural eye now revealed there, larger than any normal human eye and set into the centre of the man’s forehead.

  The eye, the trademark of the Imperium-sanctioned and almost priceless mutation of the Navigator strain of genetically-modified humanity which allowed the mighty ships of the Imperium of Mankind to traverse the galaxy, stared back at him, eerie and unblinking. Semper knew that its mystic gaze was fixed not on him but on those images which it saw reflected across the flickering surface of the sub-empyrean, a realm which to Navigators was real and all around them, but the reality and shape of which eluded the understanding and sight of mere normal human consciousness and vision.

  “Tell me what lies ahead of us, Master Cassander. Tell me what you see out there in the immaterium.”

  Cassander closed his two normal eyed, frowned in concentration, and cast his gaze out into the void at his captain’s command. The frown grew deeper as he focussed his concentration. Semper fancied that he saw something—brief, indistinct images of something—flicker across the milky surface of the Navigator’s third eye, although it may only have been a trick of the low light in the room.

  Finally, Cassander heaved a sigh, and opened his two normal eyes again, his third eye closing indistinctively at the same time. He secured the bindings back into place on his forehead, and leaned forward to take the glass of wine which Semper proffered to him, flavoured with silver flecks of the psycho-active substance commonly known as spook. All Navigators, even those seconded to lifetime service within the armed forces of the Imperium, belonged to the Navis Nobilite, the great aristocratic houses and merchant guilds which so dominated the Senatorum Imperialis and even commanded a place amongst the High Council of Terra itself, and Semper had not met one of their kind yet who did not enjoy a few expensive and aristocratic creature comforts. Semper waited patiently while his Navigator drank fully half the glass and composed his thoughts.

  “What do you see, Master Cassander?” asked Semper, when he was sure the man was ready to speak.

  The Navigator’s voice was low and atonal, carrying no trace of an accent or homeworld origin. He was a typical member of his class, reared in seclusion from the rest of inferior humanity, and owing his loyalty solely to Emperor and his Navigator clan rather than any one world or region. “As you know, captain, the gift of future-sight is never precise or fully controllable. Sometimes the warp shuns its face to those with the sight, and the vision-path to the future is blocked. Then we see nothing, and have no more knowledge of what lies ahead than any other human.”

  Semper felt a surge of disappointment. “Then you saw nothing?”

  “Yes, and no, if that can be possible,” answered the Navigator. “The path was open, but I still do not understand what it was I saw. I saw the future, Leoten, but I did not recognise its shape. It was…” He broke off, nervously draining the rest of the wine, setting the empty glass down and looking across at Semper, his normal expression of calm expectancy replaced with one of troubled nervousness. When he spoke again, it was in a voice barely more than a troubled whisper.

  “Shadows, Leoten. I looked into the future, and all I found there were shadows.”

  The harlequin troupe had been on the move for days now, travelling by some of the webway’s most secret and hidden routes, the full extent of which were known only to the oldest and most venerable of their kind. They stopped only when truly necessary, eating on the move, and even sleeping too, taking it in turns to use the lia’dhethi discipline of mastery of mind and body, the mind resting while the body continued its crude automaton functions. They left the web-way only when necessary too, entering the real universe at several different points over the last few days, transferring between one hidden portal and another when there was no other choice, moving swiftly and silently across the surface of worlds which were many light years apart in real universe terms but only a day or two’s webway travel from each other.

  They did not speak unless necessary, and when they did, they never used another’s name aloud. The walls of the web-way were thin, and there were things swimming hungrily in the psychic ether beyond those walls, things which prowled eagerly for any due of power or knowledge over the living, mortal inhabitants of the real universe. Even silence could be used as a weapon against the things which waited for them in the realm of the Immaterium.

  The troupe was cautious and alert on every step of their journey. Many of their race thought the webway safe from the dangers which threatened them in the real universe, but those who followed the path of the Laughing God knew better. They knew that the darkest and most secret routes of the webway often hid terrible things, and that, even if many of their race could never admit it, there were those other than the scattered eldar of the craftworlds and the Exodite worlds who knew how to find and access the secret routes into the main webway.

  The athair leader of the troupe suddenly froze in alert, as the silent mind-speech warning from the margorach scout ahead of them echoed through his consciousness. The rest of the troupe reacted instantly to the mutually-shared warning, dancing into position, nimble hands unhesitatingly finding and drawing forth scabbarded wraithbone swords and bolstered shuriken pistols. The shifting, mystic stuff of the walls of the webway tunnel flickered and pulsed with the reflected rainbow dazzle of activated dathedi holo-suits.

  The troupe tensed, ready for whatever threat the Death Jester scout had sensed ahead of them. The athair flashed an urgent mind-speech query to the black-armoured scout, demanding more information. There was a worrying pause, before he received back a confused mé
lange of the scout’s surface thoughts. He sensed doubt and fear in the Death Jester’s mind, and a growing feeling of awe and disbelief.

  A matching ripple of fear passed through the thoughts of the rest of the troupe. What, they wondered, could bring fear into the mind of one such as a margorach Harlequin, who bodily assumed the role of Death itself in the troupe’s mime-pantheon?

  In a flash of mind-speech, the troupe saw all that the scout saw, and instantly they knew and understood the reasons for his fear. As one, before even the athair could issue the mind-speech command, they dropped to the ground, sheathing their weapons, bowing their heads and kneeling in respectful abeyance to the entity now coming along the webway passage towards them.

  They felt the heat of its passing, heard the heavy tread of its feet, recoiled in mental shock as they brushed minds with it and met the furnace fire of its thoughts.

  They remained thus as the entity moved unseen amongst them, only daring to raise their heads once it had safely passed them by. It did not acknowledge their salute. It did not even acknowledge that it had ever been aware of their existence as it moved amongst them, its burning gaze fixed only on some remote and unknown destination.

  The athair was the first to raise his head, not daring to look behind him but still seeing the evidence of the entity’s passing. A trail of fiery footmarks, too large to belong to any mortal creature, burned into the supposedly immutable stuff of the webway tunnel’s floor.