by Ian Watson
How many participants could comprehend the full picture, or even a fraction of the facts?
Thousands of men immured in engine halls or galleys or repair shops or arsenals might have had little idea that any engagement was even taking place – until, perhaps, death deeply breached part of the hull in their vicinity.
The cacophony of machinery, the shriek of steam gushing from ruptures, the crackle of electric discharge from generators: these were like the very air one breathed – until an alien missile might impact and plasma would gush, and air would rush away. Then at last convulsing victims might momentarily know the silence within which the true events were occurring.
Of course, most of the crew would have heard combat klaxons – or a devout address by a chaplain broadcast from a gargoyle-speaker high up a sculpted internal tower. Nevertheless, many hundreds of technicians in the bowels of the battleships had long since been rendered stone-deaf by the perennial din. These communicated entirely by hand signals. Would they even hear the roar of a power-shaft when laser cannons fired from the decks? At least they would feel the shuddering vibrations...
THOSE ABOARD TORMENTUM Malorum scrutinized screens for hours. Fennix eavesdropped on the astropaths aboard the battleships. Meh’lindi scanned through the vox traffic. This was sometimes hectic, sometimes mute. Periodically Jaq stared through a magnilens at remote flashes of light. Then he would swing the oculus towards the distant thin sickle of Stalinvast. From this celestial angle, the pus-yellow sun scarcely lit one-tenth of the planet. “Huh!” was Grimm’s frequent gloss on the developing situation.
FROM THE DECK of a Gothic-class battleship Cobra destroyers had flown to engage several eldar wraithships. Though the Cobras could boost quickly and turn tightly, this squadron seemed disinclined to push to the utmost – whilst wraithships could tack with such bird-like elegance, flexing the solar sails on their towering bone-masts.
A Cobra’s vortex torpedo ran beyond one wraithship before exploding. The explosion disrupted the very fabric of space. The wraithship yawed. Yet it wasn’t drawn into the disruption. Laser pulses raced from a second wraithship at the Cobra. Screens absorbed the energy. A third wraithship fired plasma cannons. The Cobra’s screen flared in apparent overload before dying. Those shields should have accepted much more load. Had the generators not been properly blessed? Had the captain lowered the shields prematurely to bleed off the excess?
A final laser fusillade caught the stern of the Cobra. Its engines exploded, blasting the broad bows forward even faster amidst a meteoric shower of wreckage, unsteerable ever again. Already the wraithships and other Cobras were diverging vastly, leaving behind fading plasma and a shuddering wrinkle in the void.
A GREAT IMPERIAL ironclad powered implacably towards a cluster of wraithships, shedding its flotilla of support vessels like chaff. Ordinarily these minnows would ransack neighbouring worlds and planetoids for ore or fuel. If they remained upon the ironclad’s decks, many were certain to be destroyed.
The ironclad was an armoured mountain range of peaks and plateaux, as pitted and scarred by previous battles as a moon by meteor strikes. This ancient battleship possessed no screens. Giant plates of adamantium, tens of metres thick, were its protection – if not to those who manned its laser turrets and plasma cannons.
An Eldar Shadowhunter jinked nearby. It pulsed laser bolts at the ironclad. It raked the adamantium with blooms of energy. Craters were punched, fleabites on a cudbear except to the crew in the immediate neighbourhood of impact.
That Shadowhunter was here. It was there. It was a dancing cloud of fragmentary kaleidoscopic glimpses. When it accelerated, its presence was a mere shimmer, a nausea amidst the stars.
Its holoscreen was no energy shield, however. The ironclad loosed a massive broadside at the Shadowhunter. The eldar vessel’s masts and sail disintegrated, though not the great shark of the hull.
Wraithships dispersed as this armoured bull of planetoid size charged towards them, spewing superheated plasma from its rear. The Imperial forces were closing in upon Stalinvast – yet so circuitously. Cobras and support vessels were all over space. Many seemed to present themselves as deliberate targets to challenge the eldar vessels.
‘THERE’S NO SENSE to it,’ said Grimm. ‘That ironclad alone – if it is an ironclad – could probably ram its way inward and burst the orbital hub wide open. I know it ain’t a Tyrant ship with an energy ram on the prow, or a Dominator with an inferno cannon. But it could, I’m sure it could.’
Grimm was so proud of his tech-knowledge of ships.
Mile’ionahd, their supposed eldar captor, said to him curtly, ‘Obviously this is all a diversion to confuse my people while a surgical intrusion occurs. I believe our wraithships can cope with a frontal assault, though.’
‘Huh to that.’
TORMENTUM MALORUM WAS in stealth mode. Aboard the ship, for hours, it had been whisper time. The gravity generator was switched off. Jaq had conjured an aura of protection, injecting his psychic power into the energy shields, willing invisibility. May their vessel be a blank to all observers and all instruments.
‘In nomine Imperatoris: silentium atque obscuritas,’ he prayed profoundly.
More of the ravaged planet was discernible now. The bleached skull was blessedly veiled in poisonous cyclones. The eldar habitat was also visible via magni-lens.
Behold a tiny intaglio upon the invisible ring which was its orbit. A scalloped disc was studded with spires and with nodules which would be great domes. Even as Jaq watched, a wraithship swooped past the habitat, seeming to shimmer in and out of existence, and sailed onward to join the battle.
DECOYS SPIRALLED THROUGH the emptiness, piloted by devout men of noble families and ancient tradition who had no idea what their orders signified in any wider scheme yet who would carry out those orders for the sake of their admiral and their heritage and out of utter commitment to His Divine Terribilitas on Terra and His representative, agent of His Inquisition.
Despite the flimsiness of the Emperor’s hold upon so-called human space, despite the hundreds of thousands of worlds where His writ was merely nominal, the Imperium could still muster vastly many more machines and fighting men than the remnants of eldar civilization. Despite all ravages of war, humanity still bred faster than it died. The Imperium could afford to spend its currency of people.
Looming into sight on a trajectory which would bring it quite close to Stalinvast, came the greatest of decoys. A Gothic-class battleship was firing salvoes at the high-finned sharks of wraithships.
Co-ordinated laser and plasma fire from the eldar vessels seethed at the base of one of the battleship’s spires. Metal boiled. Gas plumed sternward, a comet’s brilliant tail. A shield amidships must have failed. Had the shield been lowered momentarily to spill energy? In this perilous moment were its operators taken unawares by death, and a generator destroyed?
The kilometre-high spire of the combat-cathedral was fretted with gables and pinnacles, with lancets and cusps and balustrades, with buttresses and trefoil tracery and crocketed turrets.
The spire snapped.
Like some vast ornate javelin it swung away from the course of the battleship. That javelin was heading towards a wraithship. No doubt the eldar crew were mesmerised by the magnitude of what was occurring.
The adamantium tip of the spire, and two hundred metres more of it, impaled the wraithship. Wraithbone ribs opened like those of a cooked fowl speared by a skewer. Sheer momentum carried the eldar vessel aside.
Small cannon fire continued to pour from armoured men on balustrades of the spire. The fire spat down into the pierced belly of the wraithship, aggravating the terrible wound in the wraithbone.
Then the wraithship exploded internally – even while the amputated spire still pushed the wrecked vessel on its way. From fractures in the spire spilled a dust of men-mites.
Another wraithship was pouring fusion-glare into that bubbling cavity in the battleship, such a terrible convulsion of energies!
If the eldar continues to press their advantage, the battleship might split in half. Its deck would soar onward forlornly or perhaps dive into Stalinvast. Its rump might attempt to manoeuvre away.
Such a wonderful distraction was this agony of the battleship.
TORMENTUM MALORUM DOCKED unobserved on magnetic grapples in a great vacant hangar at the base of the habitat. The hangar had possessed no doors – either to open, or to close so as to flood the dock with air.
Almost as soon as Petrov had extinguished the screens and Jaq had allowed the aura of stealth to evaporate, an eldar voice clamoured on the vox. It must have seemed as though the sleek vessel had appeared out of nowhere.
Who were they?
What were they?
HOW RELIEVED JAQ was to relax his psychic exertion. This had endured for so very long.
In view of the lack of air in the hangar they might be obliged to wear power armour to leave the ship. Four suits were aboard. One of these was even Grimm’s smaller version from so many years ago. Four suits, but not five. By this reckoning Fennix would have had to stay behind.
Jaq was determined that everyone must go inside the habitat. He couldn’t risk abandoning the astropath. Fennix was a resource whom Jaq had decided he might dearly need – should a renegade inquisitor such as he feel obliged to contact Imperial forces. Jaq mistrusted that he might ever see trusty Tormentum Malorum again.
Did supposed prisoners wear power armour? Ach, none of them could wear any armour! Meh’lindi especially – or rather, Mile’ionahd – must be visibly identified as an eldar. This was hardly possible if she was encased in black metal of Imperial manufacture.
Who were they?
What were they?
Mile’ionahd was talking swiftly in the eldar tongue over the radio. Lying fluently.
PRESENTLY A SEGMENTED tube, big enough to allow the passage of a modest vehicle, flexed out from the wall of the dock to lock against Tormentum’s hatch. As they quit the protection of their ship, to step along that enclosed glowing passage, Jaq’s plan seemed almost suicidal.
A radiant path, indeed! Lenses would be scanning them. Eldar eyes would be watching them, derisive at the paltry pretence. Maybe the guardians of the dock would be more curious than alarmed, too puzzled to kill prematurely.
Was it for this – to infiltrate a robed man and a whey-faced Navigator and a blind runt and a vulgar abhuman – that the Imperium had sent three battleships laden with Cobra fighters? Impossible!
Demurely, as if cowed, four persons preceded the eldar woman. Although Fennix possessed nearsense, Petrov guided the astropath by the arm, exhibiting a strange protectiveness which Fennix appeared to appreciate.
Mile’ionahd brought up the rear, a haughty and elegant spring to her step. She pointed a shuriken pistol at the backs of her prisoners. With this pistol she had supposedly seized an Imperial ship – after stowing away – and had disarmed its occupants. Sight of Fennix and Petrov and the slouching abhuman lent some credence to the possibility. Jaq let his shoulders slump as if he were in despair.
Their captor wore Sirian silk over her dingtight bodysuit, her scarlet assassin’s sash a graceful adornment to the silk. Her torso was hung with an armoury fit for a squad of warriors. All those confiscated weapons... Emperor’s Mercy and Emperor’s Peace; needle gun and force rod; two laspistols and a clip of grenades.
THE PASSAGE DEBOUCHED into a long soaring hall of achingly beautiful proportions, tiled in pale pastels. Corridors led away. Several transit tubes housed what appeared to be monorails. Perched on one rail was a streamlined car decorated with enamelled runes and images of multicoloured wings. Another on a further rail was embellished with heads of dragons from whose mouths gushed zigzag fire.
Cloaked in brindled fur, over light pearly armour with bold runes upon the breastplate, several guardians were waiting by the dragon-car. Alertly they cradled long-barrelled lasguns.
Five guardians for five uninvited visitors.
Should Mile’ionahd move aside from her prisoners now? Should she fire the shuriken pistol, and snatch the needle gun from its holster to pump toxic slivers at the eldar?
These weren’t men. They could be faster than her. She was Callidus. Had she transformed herself so dazzlingly and undergone radical surgery simply to gain a minor advantage and squander it forthwith? Supposing that other guardians were keeping watch on what transpired in this hall! Maybe none were.
The population of eldar wasn’t large compared with the human race. Tiny, really.
In many human environments, such a hall as this would have been crowded. Whole families would have lived in it. There would have been tech workshops and dens. Vent gargoyles would have forever sucked in the odour of bodies and exhaled recycled air. The eldar might build extravagantly, yet there wouldn’t be a festering rabble of them aboard this habitat. Most of those who were aboard must be vitally engaged elsewhere.
Grimm was mumbling to himself, ‘Bloody eldar. Still, I don’t want to mess with them.’
Quite against the grain, for an impulsive squat! Of course Grimm had been suborned by the Harlequin man and had acquired a new perspective upon the eldar.
Illuminati. Emperor’s Sons.
The tallest of tall tales? Or the most crucial secret in the segmentum? And one in which the eldar meddled! Mile’ionahd called out, Jaq knew not what.
A guardian responded – but then broke off. Glittering motes were falling upon the guardians. Mites seemed to scuttle over their pearly armour.
The eldar were cocking their heads in a way which suggested to Jaq that they were harking to some telepathic cue.
A guardian came darting along the hall, calling out. She was a female, with a pluming top-knot of hair. She leapt lithely into the dragon-car. Ignoring Mile’ionahd and her prisoners, four of the other guardians joined her in a trice. The car was already accelerating away. A lone guardian remained to cope with the abhuman and the runt and the three other intruders.
Oh, the arrogance of the eldar. That one of them should be the equal of four humans and an abhuman.
Before the car quite vanished from sight Meh’lindi – no longer Mile’ionahd – had already fired her shuriken pistol at the guardian. The hand which had held a lasgun disintegrated bloodily. Promptly the guardian damped the stump with his other hand, squeezing tight. Blood leaked between his strong graceful fingers. Meh’lindi shouted at him. He made no further move at all, merely eyeing her with deadly enquiry.
Jaq had seized Emperor’s Mercy and Grimm was clutching the bolt-gun’s twin. The squat rummaged a laspistol loose and thrust it into Petrov’s hand. ‘Damn well take it!’
Meh’lindi reported: ‘The female guardian said “Come quickly” and “Disable their clumsy legs”.’
So that Jaq and his companions would have remained in this hall for later questioning, no doubt.
Elsewhere in the massive habitat, some dire distraction had occurred. One could make certain guesses as to its nature.
Shuriken pistol pointing, Meh’lindi strode towards the bloody-handed guardian. She kicked the fallen lasgun aside then picked it up. Her shuriken disc hadn’t damaged it; flesh and bone had served as a cushion.
The mimic and authentic eldar exchanged words. ‘Grimm and Azul: unclothe him,’ said Meh’lindi. ‘I want his armour and his cloak.’
Blood had spattered both items. The eldar shut his eyes. He must be concentrating upon staunching the flow of blood by willpower.
More blood was lost as the abhuman and the Navigator manoeuvred the injured eldar out of his guardian’s armour. Now Jaq was pointing his boltgun at the alien’s head.
Meh’lindi shed her silk and assumed pearly armour and cloak. She said quickly, ‘Let’s leave him as he is. I told him, “Mercy to the eldar”. I am an eldar myself, aren’t I?’
‘Huh, mercy. And now he has one hand—’ Grimm licked blood off his own hairy hand. ‘Yuck.’
‘He said to me, “Now I am nearer to God the Bloody-Handed”.’
> ‘That’s their war god.’
Meh’lindi was soon dressed as a guardian – one who had been involved in some sanguinary action.
The eldar began singing to himself, and swaying.
‘We’ll leave him alive,’ agreed Jaq. ‘There’s no reason for us to alienate the eldar unnecessarily.’
‘They’re already alien enough,’ said Grimm with a gruff flippancy which disavowed anxiety.
‘He’ll get inside our ship,’ protested Petrov. ‘He’ll drip all over it.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Jaq, ‘that we’ll ever see Tormentum again. I have a feeling—’
At that moment a psychic itch assailed Jaq. He realized that his Tarot was vibrating inside a pocket of his robe in a quite extraordinary way – demanding to be consulted.
Scarcely time to do so. To linger could be fatal as well as futile. They must leave this hall behind as soon as they could.
Jaq, Meh’lindi and Grimm hastened to the remaining car and climbed in. Grimm was muttering over a joystick as if resorting to prayer. Petrov hauled the blind astropath towards the winged car. Was Fennix going to prove an impediment? Needing to be abandoned? Needing to be euthanased by boltgun on account of what he might reveal? The car was throbbing, straining to move. The Navigator heaved the astropath aboard the car, and leapt in himself – then the vehicle was accelerating.
‘Hey, I didn’t do a thing,’ yelled Grimm.
The car sped along a tunnel through arcs of rainbow light. It tilted to left, to right. It changed track of its own accord where the rail branched. The slim rail was of a seemless creamy bony substance evidently of great strength, with supports of even slimmer bone. Jaq’s cards, in their wrapping of mutant skin, were still throbbing. He sensed that the car was riding along part of a great intricate skeleton which reached everywhere in and around the habitat. Wraithbone. Psycho-responsive. The energy to propel the car came from the wraithbone itself. If he were an eldar he would be choosing the car’s route. Since he wasn’t an eldar, the bone rail was determining a psychically significant destination – abetted by his own cards? If he could pull out his significator card and focus upon it, he might be in control.
