ASHES OF PROSPERO

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘Where is the breach, Stormcaller?’ asked the pack leader.

  ‘Somewhere on the starboard side, about three-quarters of the way towards the flight deck.’

  ‘Then why are we leaving from here?’ said Jorn the Tall. ‘Why not from the flight deck?’

  ‘So that I can see the breach before we come directly upon it,’ growled Njal, making no attempt to hide his irritation. The Rune Priest turned towards them and though he wore his helm his tone carried his glare as easily as his eyes. ‘Does anyone else want to interrogate the Lord of Runes?’

  Their cowed silence was answer enough.

  ‘Seal the gate,’ Arjac signalled the command deck.

  With a siren blare, the inner doors wheezed shut, leaving the gateway bathed in ruby light. The crash of lock anchors falling into place shook the chamber. Another warning sounded, two short blasts. Alert sigils in Arjac’s armour warned of dropping pressure as air was siphoned from the void hall. It took two minutes for the chamber to cycle to full vacuum, to avoid explosive decompression when the outer doors were opened.

  ‘Releasing outer gate on your command,’ came the controller’s voice.

  ‘The Geller field will act as a layer between us and the naked warp, but close to the breach there may be psychic and physical disturbance. Do not – do not – look directly at the breach, even with your autosenses. I can shield your thoughts from intrusion but I can’t stop you turning into gibbering maniacs if you look into the depths of the Othersea.’

  ‘Understood, Stormcaller,’ said Arjac. He looked at his companions. ‘Yes?’

  They voiced their affirmatives, their spirit cowed a little by the Rune Priest’s warning.

  ‘Open it,’ Arjac told the portal controller.

  The lumen strips turned off, leaving only the thermal spectrum of their autosenses, almost black in the absence of conductive air. Suit lamps responded an instant later, cutting the gloom with circles of pale yellow. Three rings of the alert siren announced the parting of the main gates, revealing not a starfield but a swirling curtain of reds and greens about thirty metres from the opening.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Njal, setting off along the open bay. ‘Wait here, Majula,’ he reminded the Navigator, who stopped a few metres short of the outer doors.

  They were still within the artificial gravity field of the vessel as they stepped out into the void, but it was much reduced as though on a satellite or moon. With a purposeful, rolling gait, they turned along the flank of the hull, heading after the Rune Priest.

  Looking around, Arjac could see only the phantasmagorial boundary of the Geller field shifting like oil on water, a thousand colours and none as warp space and reality clashed. He had fought in the void many times but this was his first time doing so whilst in warp space. The thought was unsettling. Despite his training, experience and Terminator armour, if a mishap sent him crashing through the Geller field, he would be lost. Damned to uncertain death or worse within the grip of the Othersea.

  Berda Ironbreak moved forward on the left, his assault cannon levelled to provide instant heavy fire. Red Ulfar and Jorn the Tall tracked their storm bolters to the right, guarding the opposite flank.

  ‘Stay alert,’ Arjac told the others, scanning with slow sweeps of his head, wargear held at the guard as he advanced with his brothers. On his left, Alrik Doomseeker’s wolf claws left an actinic trail. Sven Halfhelm walked alongside with thunder hammer and storm shield – mighty weapons that seemed a child’s imitations of Arjac’s own. In a sub-display, Rockfist saw empty space – the feed from Ingvarr watching the rear.

  Movement above drew the eye of everyone, a scant second before a flash of bright yellow seared towards them. A fanged maw formed out of the ball lightning. Behind it shimmered and flitted other shapes, shark-like predators that grew barbed wings and serrated tails, drawing physical form from the pocket of reality.

  No command was needed. The Wolf Guard opened fire as one, a torrent of bolts and assault cannon shells spewing up to meet the materialising daemons. Arjac moved closer to Njal, Sven and Alrik staying close.

  The fire of the Terminators turned the daemonic beasts to tattered ruin. Globules of daemonblood and hunks of broken wyrdflesh scattered through the void. Arjac did his best not to look directly at their point of origin, remembering the warning of Njal. Instead, he kept his gaze slightly askance, using the periphery of his autosenses to detect the incoming manifestations.

  He saw – or thought he saw – leering faces, formed of stardust and swirling motes. Flame-fingered hands clawed at the edges of the rift as the daemons forced their essence through. A miasma of energy coalesced in front of the advancing Wolf Guard, hinting at oddly blooming fungi with beaked visages.

  Faced with the firepower of the Terminators and flares of lightning from the Stormcaller, the daemons changed tactics, spilling sideways rather than rushing directly onwards. Like flames creeping across a ceiling, the diaphanous power of the entities spread outwards, malignancy seeping into Arjac’s thoughts like a stench.

  Individual daemons formed out of the leaking warpstuff – creatures with stunted bodies and bandy legs. Their spark-pupilled eyes swirled like nebulae as they floated down towards the Longclaw amid the flicker of bolts and snap of psychic blasts. More and more dropped from the burgeoning psychic thunderhead, falling in ever greater numbers, their mouths open in silent shrieks. Hollow fingers trailed blue fire and barbed tails whipped to and fro.

  ‘Split your fire. Force them to the centre,’ commanded Arjac. He dared not throw his hammer, unsure whether the technology of its teleporter warp core would work in the confines of a Geller field. He stared impotently at the swelling effulgence of Chaos energy, Sven and Alrik equally powerless to intervene against their distant foes.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Njal, lifting his staff. Its tip burned with a scythe-like blade of white, a leap powering him away from the hull of the ship. Bunching real and fibre muscles, Arjac propelled himself after the Rune Priest with crackling thunder hammer, Alrik and Sven close behind. Like ascending stars, the Stormcaller and his companions lifted towards the mass of daemonic matter boiling through the Geller field.

  ‘We need your aid, Navigator,’ Njal voxed. ‘I cannot hold them back whilst I seal the breach.’

  Drifting into the oncoming daemontide, Arjac swung his hammer, its lightning-wreathed head shattering daemonflesh as warpfire sprayed from his upraised shield. At his shoulder Sven’s hammer took a similar toll, snapping newly forged bones, splintering faux-bodies with each strike. Alrik moved past, his wolf claws carving ruin through his assailants.

  The daemons melded and reformed, not quite individuals, splitting and coagulating as their presence manifested within the reality bubble. Tendrils with dozens of grasping hands and snaring claws flailed out from the mass, formed of many intelligences but guided by shared intent. The warp tentacles lashed about Arjac and the two Wolf Guard at his side, sparks cascading from raised weapons and shields.

  A writhing pseudopod slashed a warphook into the chestplate of Alrik. He raked his claws across it, back and forth, shredding ribbons of soulstuff into gobbets of materialising flesh, but the tendril continued to reform around his blows, dragging him up, towards the breach.

  ‘No!’ Arjac activated the exhaust outlets of his armour, enough to send him after the stricken Wolf Guard. Just a few metres away, Alrik continued to fight as more and more barbed appendages hacked into him, piercing pauldron and gorget, greave and vambrace, turning him about like a fly caught in the silk-spin of a gigantic, loathsome spider.

  More tentacles erupted from the maw of the breach, uncoiling shadows that boiled down towards the hearthegn.

  Arjac drew his hammer back, ready to boost himself forward again to confront the descending mass. He stopped suddenly, something caught on his ankle. His trajectory reversed and his armour signalled something around his foot. Turning, he thought to sweep himself free with his hammer, but checked the blow just in time as he saw that he
was in the grasp of the Runelord.

  ‘You’ll be lost too,’ Njal snapped, the eyes of his helm blazing with golden energy as fronds of warp-wrath flailed and writhed against his armour, the runes set into the ceramite burning like bright embers. ‘I need you to guard me or we all die.’

  Arjac bit back a retort and looked up. In an endlessly churning cloud of yellow and blue sparks, he saw glimpses of Alrik as though sinking into a mire. His claws flashed again, a last desperate attempt to cut free, and then he was gone, drawn into the damnable abyss of the Othersea.

  Roaring their defiance, the Wolf Guard renewed their attacks, their fire converging around Njal and Arjac.

  ‘Seal the rift, Stormcaller!’ called out Berda, the barrels of his assault cannon aglow from the heat build-up, the thrum of its fire dimly heard across the vox-link. A ripple of missiles streaked past from Red Ulfar’s cyclone launcher, their detonations turned to coruscating blossoms of white arcs and scything sparks by the presence of so much warp power.

  Arjac saw ahead that the combined fusillade had ripped a gash through the warpstuff flooding the breach.

  ‘I’m with you, Lord of Runes,’ he told Njal. ‘Do it now.’

  As the fire from the Wolf Guard blazed around him, Njal pushed towards the breach. At the heart of a swirling storm of energy discharges and flaring power, he extended the shield of his mind to form a corona of scintillating blue that thrust into the daemons pouring into the reality pocket.

  +Must you attempt everything with brute force? You wield your power like an axe to hew down a tree, when you should be creating a work of art with delicate chisel strokes.+

  Njal ignored the sorcerer’s criticism and swept his scythe-staff in a brilliant arc that bisected flame-tongued horrors and slashed through skysharks that salivated burning sparks.

  But for each entity thrashed into banishment by his blows, another swarmed the gap. The flare of bolts cut harmless rivulets through their insubstantial bodies, becoming bursts of lightning as they passed beyond the Geller field.

  The daemons pressed in, their presence widening the breach, allowing more and more of their kind entry to the dwindling pocket of reality. Surrounded by the burning aura of his psychic shield, the Stormcaller drifted to a halt, all progress slowed to a stop by the thickening warpstuff that coagulated against the barrier of his thoughts.

  +Think of a sword, not a hammer! Cut your way through, you dolt.+

  The daemon aura stifled all thought and reason, cramming into senses both natural and psychic. To attempt to draw on more warp power was to be a drowning man taking in lungfuls of the suffocating sea, quickening his demise even as he attempted to avoid it.

  Njal was on the verge of ordering a withdrawal into the ship. He was but a breath from voxing Valgarthr with the command to bring the warp engines to full readiness in preparation for an emergency drop the moment the Space Wolves were back aboard.

  He bit back the words. Failure at so early a stage in their expedition was unthinkable. This was the least of the obstacles to overcome and a fierce pride would not let him give the order.

  ‘We are Stormriders!’ he roared. ‘This is our legend!’

  A blinding shaft of white fire erupted past, slashing the daemons like a lascannon through flesh. Njal did not need to turn to know that Majula had arrived. With the beam came a harmonious chorus of energy that surged along his psychic senses, the power of the Astronomican redirected.

  The fire of her third eye scoured in all directions, turning daemons to tatters of dispersing emotion. Drifting past in her voidsuit, the young Navigator seemed serene but for the pulses of warp energy searing from her gaze.

  Njal activated the attitude outlets of his armour even as he felt Izzakar’s urging in the heart of his thoughts.

  +Now! Bind the edges of the breach!+

  The task was far from simple, even with Majula at Njal’s side ripping apart any daemon that appeared at the edge of the Geller field. The tear in reality was frayed, flapping away from the questing fingers of his mind as he sought to snare it.

  +Focus, runewielder.+

  Njal pushed aside the sorcerer’s interruption and pictured himself upon the heaving deck of the jarlship, the sail splitting in a hurricane wind. With impossibly vast hands he pulled the canvas together, stitching the ripped material with thick cord conjured by his thoughts.

  The visualisation worked. He latched onto the wayward barrier and gained some measure of control. With deft thought he manipulated the pulsing psychic energy, acting in lieu of the faulty projectors to redirect the shield and bring it together.

  ‘Stop on my command, Navigator,’ he told Majula. ‘We cannot bind the breach while your third eye passes the veil.’

  ‘On your command,’ she promised.

  Njal tightened his thoughts as though bunching muscles. The interface between warp and reality was softening, threatening to become a fog that would slip through his fingers.

  ‘Now!’ he snapped.

  The beam of fire cut out, leaving blinding darkness in its place for a moment. Njal did not need to see to act. He slammed the edges of the Geller field together like the doors of a gatehouse, his thoughts like an arc welder sealing the broken pieces together.

  ‘It is done,’ he announced, teeth gritted with the strain of holding the bubble in place.

  ‘Good, let’s get out of this hell,’ declared Arjac.

  ‘Not yet,’ Njal told him. ‘Aldacrel, can you hear me?’

  ‘I can, Stormcaller. We have found a broken transmission coil. The tech-priests are bringing up a replacement.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Thirty minutes.’

  ‘We should not remain here, Lord of Runes,’ insisted Arjac.

  ‘I cannot leave,’ Njal replied slowly. ‘I must hold the breach shut until Aldacrel is finished.’

  Silence greeted the declaration as the others realised the meaning of this, hearing the strain already evident.

  ‘Very well, we shall remain at your side,’ said Rockfist.

  ‘I… I must guide the ship,’ Majula said weakly, her face hidden within the reflective plate of her helm. After her insistence on coming, her reasoning sounded like an excuse, but that did not make it any less true.

  ‘Do not waste this time. If my strength falters, if I fail, crash-jump back to real space immediately. Do not wait for me.’

  ‘I will not,’ the Navigator assured him.

  She floated past and out of sight. Njal fixed his gaze on the imaginary seam held together by his thoughts. Beyond the unseen veil, the Chaos energy started to coalesce. Though the Wolf Guard waited at his back, the Stormcaller felt alone as he stared into the formless energy.

  +See? With my guidance you can achieve anything.+

  Not quite alone, unfortunately.

  CHAPTER 8

  TO PROSPERO

  Time passed. In the temporally mutable currents of the Othersea, it was impossible to know how much. To Njal and the others aboard the Longclaw cause and effect continued. Day followed day, rigorously catalogued by cogitators and chronothages, each quarter, half and full hour signalled through the ship by artificially modulated horn-blasts. The Stormcaller knew it to be an artifice. The warp had no such constraints and they might emerge into the greater timestream a hundred Long Years after they had departed. It was also possible, though thankfully not likely, they could come to Prospero before they had even left Fenris. Njal tried to avoid thinking about that too much, even his warp-gifted mind unable to encompass such matters in any sane manner.

  The daemonswarm followed them, sometimes gathered about the Geller field, other times lost in the wake of unreality when Majula guided the vessel into the swifter streams of raw emotive energy.

  They got caught in eddies, thrown back against their own course, redirected against the dominant currents by counter-flows and becalmed by motionless pools. Yet they made progress, inevitably and interminably headed towards Prospero.

  Njal spent as much tim
e as he could among his followers. With no Wolf Priests among his expedition to bolster their humour and sing the sagas that lifted their spirits, the task fell to him, Arjac and Valgarthr to maintain morale.

  When he could spare himself from these tasks, he visited Majula in her dome, sometimes bringing her food – the gesture was more important than the fact the rations were nearly the same as those the servitors provided in her isolated kitchen.

  Izzakar’s mood was suppressed also. A dozen watches or more might pass without comment from the sorcerer, but he was always there, sometimes making remarks or asking questions at the most awkward times. He particularly fixated on making his presence known during Njal’s forays into the Navigator quarters, knowing that Majula could also sense his presence there.

  On his latest visit to the Navis dome, the sorcerer shared Njal’s eyes as the Stormcaller looked out into the warp and saw a change in the ceaselessly roiling flows. In the depths – if such a thing could be imagined in a realm without physical dimension – a greater storm loomed, a darkness that impressed upon the mind like the yellowing of the sky before an almighty tempest.

  +What is that?+

  ‘The Great Rift,’ replied Njal, striding closer to the clear wall. He gazed up at the immeasurably vast tear through reality.

  ‘I’ve not seen it before, not this close,’ admitted Majula. She was busy at her controls as usual, making small adjustments to keep them central to the swift energy flow that currently carried them along. She cleared her throat with discomfort. ‘You were not addressing me, were you, Lord of Runes?’

  ‘No,’ the Stormcaller confessed. He studied the undulating wave front that pulsed and swelled on the edge of detection, striated with strange hints of the real universe. ‘Magnus was, in part, responsible for this. And his traitor brothers also. Blood rituals and mass sacrifices tore open the realm of the Abyss for their hateful masters.’