Damage is minimal. The Exhortation comes around, and the scanning begins. The other ship appears to be drifting. It is without power, and the augurs find no trace any sort of radiation. ‘From the Mordian fleet?’ asks Stolas. ‘Perhaps the crew succumbed to the rage plague as the ship tried to leave,’ he continues.
‘No,’ I say. I am unsatisfied. The coincidence of our near-collision nags at me. It is simply too improbable. In the vastness of the void, for two specks of dust to encounter one another, something more than chance must be at work, and this ship cannot be just another tomb of Guardsmen.
The configuration of the ship, beyond its great size, is difficult to make out at first. This is not just because of its darkness. Though it is solid enough, there is a profound vagueness to the form.
‘That is a battle-barge,’ Ipos calls out, startled.
He is correct. He is also wrong. The shape is, it is true, based on that of an Adeptus Astartes battle-barge. But there are insufficient details, and much that is there seems wrong. The silhouette is distorted. The hull is too long, the bridge superstructure too squat, the prow so pointed and long it is a caricature. No matter how much illumination we pour onto the ship, it defies the eye. It will not come into proper focus. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It is not a battle-barge. It is the memory of one.’ I mean what I say, even if I am not sure how such a thing has come to be. I am not speaking metaphorically. What drifts through space before us is a ship as it would be imperfectly remembered.
Then a detail that is not blurred comes into view. The ship’s name: Eclipse of Hope.
‘It’s a ghost,’ Dantalion says.
I frown at the terminology, not least because it seems to be accurate. The Eclipse of Hope is known to me. It is known to all of us. The battle-barge disappeared during the fifth Black Crusade. Five thousand years ago. Worse: the ship was a Blood Angels vessel. I dislike its existence more and more. Its presence here cannot be a coincidence. The power necessary to orchestrate this ‘chance’ encounter is immense.
‘Is it really the–’ Gamigin begins.
‘No.’ I cut him off. ‘That ship is destroyed.’ It must be, after five millennia in the empyrean. The thing that bears the name now is a changeling, though at a certain, dark level, it is intimately linked with the original. Somehow, the collective memories of the Eclipse of Hope, or the memory of a single being of terrible power, achieved such potency that an embodiment has occurred. Its manifest solidity is extraordinary. I have never known a warp ghost to have so much material presence. It must represent a concentration of psychic power such as has never been imagined. It...
I turn to Ipos. ‘Can we plot the trajectory of this ship’s passage through the system?’
‘A moment, Chief Librarian.’ Ipos appears to slump in his throne. I can see his consciousness slip down the mechadendrites that link his skull to the machine-spirit and cogitators of the Crimson Exhortation. On the bridge, navigation servitors begin chanting numbers in answer to unheard questions. After a few moments, Ipos returns to an awareness of the rest of us. The results of his efforts appear on a tacticarium screen. If the Eclipse of Hope has maintained a steady course, she passed near Supplicium Secundus, and through the centre of the Mordian fleet.
‘Captain,’ I say to Castigon, ‘that is the carrier of the rage plague. Destroy it, and perhaps there will be something to save of Supplicium Tertius.’
The phantom remains dark as the Crimson Exhortation manoeuvres into position for the execution. The immense shadow does not change direction. Its engines do not flare. No shields or guns flash to life. It coasts, slow leviathan, serene juggernaut, messenger of mindless destruction.
No. No, I am wrong. I am guilty of underestimating the enemy. There is nothing mindless here. The spectre of a Blood Angels battle-barge unleashes a plague whose symptoms might as well be those of the Red Thirst. There is a hand behind this. There is mockery. There is provocation that warrants a retaliation most final. But how to find the hand behind this horror?
That question must wait. The Eclipse of Hope is the paramount concern. It has almost destroyed an entire system through its mere presence. If its journey is not stopped, untold Imperial worlds could fall to its madness. The Eclipse of Hope must die a second time. Today. Now.
How? I wonder.
The Crimson Exhortation is in position. On Castigon’s orders, Ipos has taken us some distance from the phantom. The strike cruiser is great dagger aimed at the flank of the battle-barge. Beyond the Eclipse of Hope, there is nothing but the void. Supplicium Tertius is still some distance away, but Ipos has placed it safely at our starboard. It is important that there be nothing for a great distance in front of us except our target. Castigon has ordered the use of the nova cannon.
‘Conventional weapons will do no harm to a warp ghost,’ I tell him.
‘It is solid enough to have hit us,’ Castigon replies. ‘It broke iron and stone. It can be broken in turn.’ He turns to Ipos. ‘Helmsmaster, are we ready?’
‘In a moment, captain.’ We have never had the luxury of so passive an opponent on which to use the gun. Ipos takes the opportunity to triple-check all of his calculations and run through his instrument adjustments one more time. When he finds no errors, he signals Castigon.
I can feel the build-up in the ship’s machine-spirit. It is excited to be using this weapon again. The nova cannon is a creation of absolute power, because it destroys with absolute efficiency. We are merely its acolytes, awakening it from its slumber whenever we have need of its divine wind.
‘Fire,’ Castigon orders.
The deck trembles. The entire ship vibrates from the forces unleashed in the firing of the nova cannon. The weapon is almost as long as the hull. The recoil jolts the frame of the Exhortation. The cannon is not a weapon of precision, but the shot is as close to point-blank range as is possible with the cannon without destroying ourselves in the process. The projectile flashes across the void, injuring space itself. It hits the Eclipse of Hope in the centre of its mass. There is a flare of blinding purity. It is at this moment that the cannon warrants its name. The explosion reaches out for the Crimson Exhortation, but falls short. Even so, there is another tremor as the shockwave hits us. We have hurled one of the most powerful weapons in human history at the Eclipse of Hope.
It doesn’t notice.
The dark serenity is undisturbed. The ghost ship continues its steady drift towards Supplicium Tertius, bringing its plague of final wrath. The bridge and the strategium of the Crimson Exhortation are silent as we stare into a future haunted by the Eclipse of Hope. Within hours, one ship will have extinguished all human life in a system. It will have done so with no weapons, no struggle, no strategy. Its mere passage will have been enough. And if the phantom should reach other, more crowded systems? Or cross paths with a fleet in transit? Vectors of contagion, visions of hell: my mind is filled by the plague spreading its corroding ifluence over the entire galaxy.
The Eclipse of Hope must be stopped. If nothing in the Crimson Exhortation’s arsenal will avail, then one alternative remains.
‘I will lead a boarding party,’ I announce. ‘The vessel must be killed from within.’
‘Can you walk in a ghost?’ Castigon asks.
‘It is solid enough to have hit us,’ I echo.
‘If that is the source of the plague,’ Dantalion muses, ‘then entering it will be fraught with great moral peril.’
‘Most especially for a Blood Angel,’ I add. The Flaw will be sorely felt in this situation.
The Chaplain nods. ‘The threat does seem rather precisely targeted.’
‘That is no coincidence,’ I say. ‘It is also a risk we must run.’
Castigon nods, but his expression is doubtful. ‘How do you plan to kill a ghost?’ he asks.
‘I will discover that in due course.’ I turn to go. ‘But shouldn’t one revenant be able to destroy another?’
We do not use boarding torpedoes. We cannot be sure that they would be capable of
drilling through the spectre’s hull. Instead, the Bloodthorn transports my squad to the Eclipse of Hope. This is to be an exorcism. On board with me, then, are Epistolary Stolas, Sanguinary Priest Albinus, Chaplain Dantalion and Techmarine Phenex. Sergeant Gamigin is present, too. He was insistent upon coming, even though it seems that this mission requires a different set of skills. He has faith enough, however, and having been touched by the dread ship’s influence, he is hungry for redemption.
I sit in the cockpit with pilot Orias as the Bloodthorn approaches the landing bay door of the battle-barge. The door does not open. This is not a surprise. What is striking is the way in which the details of the hull resolve themselves. They become clearer not because we draw nearer, but because we are looking at them. The sealed bay door has a material presence it did not a few minutes ago. I am aware, in my peripheral vision, that the surrounding hull is still blurry.
Orias has noticed the same phenomenon. ‘How is this possible?’ he wonders.
‘It is feeding on our memories,’ I answer. ‘We know what a battle-barge looks like. It is supplementing itself with our own knowledge.’
I can see the anger in the set of Orias’s shoulder plates. His resentment is righteous. We are witnessing a monstrous blasphemy. Still, we have also learned something. We know more about how our foe works.
Then the unexpected does occur. The door rises. The bay is a rectangular cave, dark within the dark. It awaits us. It welcomes us. We must have something it needs, then. This, too, is valuable to know. If it has needs, it has a weakness.
‘This forsaken vessel mocks us,’ Orias snarls.
‘It is arrogant,’ I reply. ‘And arrogance is always a mistake.’ Show me your weaknesses, I think. Show me your desire, that I might tear you in half. ‘Take us in,’ I tell Orias. ‘Drop us and depart.’
The next few minutes have a terrible familiarity. The gunship enters the landing bay of a battle-barge. I pull back the bulkhead door. We wait a few moments, guns at the ready. Nothing materialises. We are simply staring at an empty bay.
‘I do not appreciate being made a fool of,’ Gamigin grumbles. His bolter tracks back and forth, aiming at air.
‘Guard your temper, brother-sergeant,’ I tell him. ‘See with how little effort the vessel encourages us to anger.’
We disembark. The banality of our surroundings makes our every move cautious, deliberate. We trust nothing. I am first on the deck, and the fact that it does not reveal itself to be an illusion without substance is almost a surprise. The rest of the squad follows me. We step away from the gunship and form a circle, all approaches covered. The emptiness is full of silent laughter. We ignore it. Our enhanced vision pierces the darkness, and all we see is ordinary deck and walls. The known and the familiar are the danger here. Each element that is not alien is a temptation to a lowered guard. Then, as Orias pulls the Bloodthorn out of the bay and away from the Eclipse, the darkness recedes. Light blooms. It is the colour of decay.
The light does not come from biolumes, though I see their strips along the ceiling. It is not a true light. It is a phantom of light, as false as anything else about this ship, a memory plucked from our minds and layered into this construct of daemonic paradox. As we move across the bay towards its interior door, the space acquires greater solidity. The ring of our bootsteps on the decking grows louder, less muffled, more confident. Did I see rivets in the metal at first? I do now.
By the time we reach the door, the constructed memory of a battle-barge loading bay is complete. I am no longer noticing new, convincing details. So now I can see the weaknesses of the creation. The ghost has its limitations. The bay seems real, but it is also empty. There are no banks of equipment, no gunships in dock. There is only the space and its emptiness. The Eclipse of Hope could not make use of our full store of memories. ‘I shall have your measure,’ I whisper to the ship. Does it, I wonder, know what it has allowed inside. Does it feel me? Is it capable of regret? Can it know fear?
I shall ensure that it does.
As we step into the main passageway off the bay, the attack begins. It is not a physical one. There are no enemies visible. There is nothing but the empty corridor and the low, sickly grey light. But the ship embraces us now, and does more than feed off our memories. It tries to feed us, too. It feeds us poison. It feeds us our damnation. Walking down the passageway is walking into rage itself. We move against a gale-force psychic wind. It slows our progress as surely as any physical obstacle. It is like pushing against the palm of a giant hand, a hand that wraps massive, constrictor fingers around us. It squeezes. It would force self-control and sanity out. It would force uncontrollable anger in, and in, and in, until we burst, releasing the anger once more in the form of berserker violence.
I feel the anger stir in my chest, an uncoiling serpent. The bone-cold part of myself, that which I cannot in conscience call a soul, holds the serpent down. It also takes further measure of the ship. There are still limits to the precision of the attack. That is not the Black Rage that I am suppressing. It is too mundane an anger. It is potent. It is summoned by a force powerful enough to give substance to the memory of a battle-barge. But it is not yet fully aligned with the precise nature of our great Flaw. That will come, I have no doubt. But we have the discipline to defeat anger of this sort.
I glance at my brothers. Though there is tension and effort in their steps, their will is unbowed.
Stolas says, ‘The light is becoming brighter.’
‘It is,’ I agree. Despite our resistance, the ship is growing stronger. Our mere presence is giving it life. The light, as corrupt as it was in the bay, has assumed a greater lividity. We can see more and more of the passageway. The ship cements its details with more and more confidence. The greater visibility should make our advance easier. It does not.
The phantom’s mimicry is uncanny. With every incremental increase of illumination comes a further revelation of perfect recall. This is the true ghost of the Eclipse of Hope. We are travelling one of the main arteries, and the phantom has a complex memory to reconstruct: stone-clad walls and floor, gothic arches, vaulted bulkheads. They are all here. Even so, as accurate as the recreation is, it remains a ghost. There is something missing.
Phenex’s machinic insight gives him the answer first. He raps a fist against the starboard wall. The sound of ceramite against marble is what I would expect. Yet it makes me frown.
Albinus has noticed something, too. ‘That isn’t right,’ he says.
‘There’s a delay,’ the Techmarine explains. ‘Very slight. The sound is coming a fraction of a second later than it should.’
‘The response is a conscious one,’ I say. ‘It is a form of illusion. That wall is not real. Your gauntlet is banging against the void, brother.’
I spot Gamigin staring at his feet, as if expecting the surface on which he walks to disintegrate without warning. If we are successful here, he may not be far wrong.
From behind his skull helm, Dantalion casts anathema on the ship. His voice vibrates with hatred.
‘Save your breath,’ I tell him. ‘Wait until there is something to exorcise.’
‘There already is,’ he retorts. ‘This entire ship.’
‘Have you the strength to spread your will over such a large target?’ I ask him. ‘If so, you have my envy.’
Dantalion will not appreciate my tone. That is not my concern. What is my concern is that my team be as alert and focussed as possible. The ship inspires anger, and I do not think it cares in what direction that anger is expressed. Dantalion’s hatred of the Eclipse of Hope is normal, praiseworthy, and proper. It is also feeding the vessel. Unless we find a target that we can overwhelm somehow, the Chaplain’s broad, sweeping anger will do us more harm than good.
We are making our way toward the bridge. This is not the result of considered deliberation. We exchanged looks at the exit from the landing bay, and of one accord set off in this direction. There is nothing to say that we will find what we seek there, or an
ywhere else, for that matter, on this ship. But the bridge is the nerve centre of any vessel. We seek a mind. The bridge is the logical place to begin.
It troubles me that we are taking action based on nothing stronger than a supposition. I cannot detect any direction to the warp energies that make up the Eclipse of Hope. There does not seem to be any flow at all. I understand the nature of the immaterium. I know it better, perhaps, than anyone in the Imperium, save our God-Emperor. Yet the substance of the Eclipse defies me. It appears inert. This cannot be true, not with the intensifying light, the consolidation of the illusion, and the gnawing and scratching at our minds. There is something at work here. Perhaps I can find no current, no flow, no core because these things do not exist yet. The effects of the ship are those of a field, one that may extend the entire length and breadth of the vessel. ‘It isn’t strong enough yet,’ I mutter.
‘Chief Librarian?’ Albinus asks.
‘The ship is still feeding,’ I say. ‘We cannot be sure of its full nature until it has gorged. Perhaps then it will act.’
‘Then we can kill it?’ Gamigin asks.
I nod. ‘Then we can kill it.’
Down the length of the battle-barge we march. We ignore the side passageways that open on either side. We stick to the direct route, always pushing against the ethereal but implacable rage. Our tempers are fraying, the effort needed to suppress flare-ups of anger becoming stronger by the hour. And there is more. There is something worse. The more I strain, the more I find traces of an intelligence. It does not drive the ship. It is the ship itself. It is as if this were truly a revenant. The knowledge is frustration, hovering at the edge of tactical usefulness, a buzzing hornet in my consciousness. If the ship is sentient, then I must cut out its mind. To do that, I must locate it. But the Eclipse of Hope is still too quiescent. It is a beast revelling in its dreams of rage, not yet prepared to wake. It torments us. It does not fight us.
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