And that creature, shed of its mortal shell, stood in the centre of the torpedo bay. It was mighty, standing ten feet tall, its form an ever-shifting mass of dancing energy. It was, Lucian could only assume, made of the very stuff of the warp; souls coalesced in damnation, their eternal anguish giving form and energy to the being that stood before Lucian.
Even as Lucian watched from the portal, barely able to stand so cacophonous was the sound that roared from the creature’s body, he saw Master Karaldi step before it. The astropath’s steps were at first shaky and uncertain, yet with each, his stance became surer, and he stood more erect. Lucian looked back to the creature, and saw that it was looking around the chamber, as if acquainting itself with a new and entirely foreign environment. Yet, Lucian was astonished to note, it paid no heed to the man that walked straight towards it.
The creature turned its attention towards specific features in the torpedo chamber. It looked to the array of tubes, the massive hatch over each locked tight against the void. It’s gaze swept upwards and across the ceiling, and then down and across the deck. Lucian realised then that it was not actually looking at the features in the chamber, but through them, sensing, he suspected, the souls of those in the decks above and below.
Then, the glowing, undulating apparition looked towards the portal in which Lucian stood. Lucian could not help but look back, his gaze drawn with shock and disgust to tiny, wailing faces swimming across the surface of the creature’s insubstantial body. Each soul wailed its pain and anguish, adding its sundered voice to the thunderous cacophony flooding the chamber.
Raising its arms high to its sides, the creature started towards him. Yet, Master Karaldi stood in its path, his head held high.
“Karaldi!” Lucian bellowed. He was barely able to hear his own voice above the din, and had no clue if the astropath would hear him. “Karaldi, beware!”
If Karaldi heard Lucian’s warning, he made no reaction, other than perhaps a slight tilt of the head. The creature glided on, as if held aloft by the wailing souls of the infernal regions of the warp, its gaze entirely focused upon Lucian.
Then, Lucian saw Master Karaldi hold up his right hand, as if to bar the creature’s way. Despair welled up within Lucian, for he knew that the astropath must surely be blasted to ashes at the creature’s touch. Yet, the warp beast continued, apparently uncaring of the astropath’s gesture, intent, it appeared on Lucian.
As it bore down upon Master Karaldi, Lucian turned his head. He would not look upon the astropath’s death. He made to haul the armoured door closed, knowing all the while that there was no point in doing so. This thing would devour every soul upon his vessel, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Even as he made to slam the door, Lucian became aware of a change in the tone of the creature’s wailing din. He looked back through the half closed portal, to see that the creature towered over the astropath. He watched as Karaldi’s hand came into contact with the thing’s ghostly body, and as it did so, the wailing cut off entirely.
The chamber was flooded with sudden, and complete silence.
Lucian dared not breathe. He strained his ears and became aware of a low mumbling. It was Master Karaldi, mouthing the words of the prayer every spacefarer knew, even if he knew no other.
“We pray for those lost in the warp,” the astropath said aloud, and a new sound rose from the silence. It was the sound of the creature, thrashing in a wild frenzy, its ghostly appendages distorting and stretching, its body arching as the souls trapped within fled from it, one by one. Each was a tiny, guttering spark that sped from the prison of the creature’s form, across the bay to plunge into, and somehow through, the outer hull.
As the creature’s form dissipated, its thrashing grew more violent, yet still Karaldi maintained his posture, arm held high as if to block the beast’s progress and hold it in place. Though it screamed its unholy death scream, the astropath kept up his recitation of the prayer, his lips working as he mouthed the sanctified words. The creature shook, casting its ethereal limbs about it. Lucian saw that it was seeking, desperately, if it could possibly know despair, to escape the astropath’s touch. At the last, it did, breaking free in an explosion of etheric lightning.
In the silence that followed the creature’s departure, Lucian was blinded, so dazzling was the sight of its death. Yet he heard a sound any spacefarer knew, and dreaded above all others.
“Hull breach!” Lucian bellowed. His vision still slow to return, he stumbled through the portal in which he was standing, onto the metal deck of the torpedo bay. As his vision returned, he saw that one of the torpedo tubes had been ruptured, its loading hatch hanging from it, bent and twisted. He all but stumbled over the crumpled form of the astropath, and fell to his knees at Karaldi’s side.
Bending over the man’s body, Lucian took him by the shoulders and shook him violently. Even as he felt the air pressure drop, and heard sirens beyond the bulkhead door, he gasped in relief to see that the astropath lived yet.
“Up, damn you, Karaldi,” Lucian cursed, heaving at the astropath’s limp form. “You don’t go and,” he struggled for breath as the air rapidly fled the chamber, “do something like that,” he gasped, “and then… die on me.”
As Lucian felt consciousness slip away, he felt hands grab at his own shoulders, lifting him up as the cold of the void flooded the chamber. “Karaldi,” he mumbled, barely able to form the words as the vacuum stole the last of the air from his lungs.
“He is with us, my lord.” Lucian heard the voice, barely registering the flat tones of the tech-priest. “He is safe.”
“Good.” Lucian managed as he felt himself dragged through the portal and heard the door slam shut behind him. “I think I’ll keep him around.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lucian stood at the wide viewing port, his arms folded before him. An area of space entirely new to him was arrayed beyond the centimetres-thick armoured glass. And not just new to him, for this was virgin space. To his knowledge, no human had travelled its depths and returned to tell the tale of what lay within.
“Range to fleet?” Lucian asked, stifling a wince as he spoke. His lungs had yet to fully recover from the vacuum effects suffered on the torpedo deck, but he had no time for extended treatment now.
“Three. Three. Two.” Intoned the servitor at the Navigation station. Regret stabbed at Lucian’s heart, for Mister Raldi, the Oceanid’s long-serving helmsman should have answered him instead of the servitor at station one. Lucian could still scarcely believe what had occurred during the warp beast’s attack. The effects were still being felt across the vessel. His bridge crew, for starters, would need rebuilding from the ground up, for all bar Mister Batista, the veteran ordnance chief, were slaughtered. The bridge still reeked of blood, despite the attentions of the maintenance servitors. Lucian knew that no amount of antiseptic decontamination would cover that smell. It would linger on his bridge, just as the sight of Raldi transformed into a slavering beast would linger in his memory.
With an effort, Lucian shoved such thoughts to the back of his mind. He had the here and the now to worry about. He turned his attention once more to the sight beyond the viewing port.
The region was dominated by vast gaseous nebulae, clouds of stellar matter dozens of light years across. The entire region was cast in the hazy blue light that emanated from deep within the formations. Even though they were many light years distant, Lucian could discern churning energies deep at the heart of each cloud. It was as if the very act of creation were being played out within the nebulae. Lucian felt something he had not experienced for many years, something akin to wonder.
Lucian also knew that he was not the only one to have reacted thus. He lifted the parchment he held in his hand, scanning its words for the third time since he had received it. Adept Baru, the Oceanid’s Navigator, had submitted his initial report of the voyage across the Damocles Gulf, and his first impressions of the region they had arrived in.
The firs
t part of Barn’s report, concerning the Gulf, made for unsettling reading. If Lucian’s experience had been traumatic, his Navigator’s had been truly horrific. For long weeks, the Master Navigator had guided the Oceanid through the raging torrents of the warp, assailed all the while by forces the like of which none of his kind had ever encountered. The more Lucian read the report, the more respect he had for the man. Brau said that the Gulf was quite unlike any other place in the galaxy. It was as if the Gulf was some barrier or boundary placed, entirely deliberately, to keep intruders from penetrating the region in which the Tau Empire lay. Beyond it, amongst the blue nebulae, lay something even more incredible.
The blue clouds of the region were, according to Brau, not entirely natural in their origins. Even to the naked eye they churned with stellar forces, yet to Baru’s third eye, that organ the Navigators uncovered only when traversing the tides of the warp, they boiled with forces both physical and spiritual, both natural and positively unnatural. Such were the terms the Navigator used to describe the phenomenon to Lucian, and Lucian was well aware of the shortcomings of language when a Navigator attempts to explain such concepts to a normal man. It was akin to Lucian attempting to describe conventional space flight to a native of one of the Imperium’s many feral worlds. In this case, it was Lucian who spoke only in grants, and whose horizons defined the extent of his world.
It was the last portion of the report that gave Lucian pause. Baru’s description of the region they had entered hinged on one word. It was, according to the veteran navigator, a “young” region, as if time was turned back or the fabric of space cleansed of the passing of aeons. It was as if the region was a place out of time, still existing in the pristine state that would once have applied to the entire galaxy. It was charged with potential, as if the void just waited upon some wondrous event, as if it in fact existed purely to facilitate that event.
Lucian felt it too, as he raised his eyes from the parchment to look out upon those lambent nebulae once more. He knew, as only a rogue trader could, that the drifting clouds must be seething with life. He almost envied the tau their place in the galaxy… almost.
“Channel. Signus. Signus. Delta. Open.” The servitor’s voice cut into Lucian’s reverie. He tore his attentions from the viewing port.
“All stations stand by.”
The bridge became a hive of activity as the officers and servitors manning each console, from communications to astrographics, prepared for action. Lucian paced the length of the central walkway and sat in the warm leather seat of his command throne. An array of flat data-slates, clusters of fat cables trailing from each, closed in around him as he pulled on a lever. Each lit up with green static, before bursts of data began scrolling across the screens.
“Open long range channel.”
The comms channel shrieked into life, a wailing feedback bursting from the speaker grilles before settling down into a gentle, modulated burbling. It was the quietest Lucian had heard the comms system, despite the odd background field. Makes a change, he thought.
“This is Rogue Trader Oceanid, calling crusade fleet,” Lucian announced. “Repeat, this is Lucian Gerrit of the Oceanid.”
“Receiving you,” said a female voice, the channel clear apart from the sweeping background tones. “This Natalia of the Duchess Mclntyre. Glad you could make it, Lucian.”
Lucian grinned. He liked Natalia. “How was your voyage?”
A moment of silence was followed by Natalia’s reply. “It was… eventful, Lucian. I suggest we hold a masters’ conference.”
Understanding her tone, Lucian answered in the affirmative, and ordered the channel closed. Within three hours, the Oceanid had closed to medium range with Natalia’s vessel, and Lucian had activated the three dimensional holographic display. A green, static laced globe was projected from the unit’s base, filling the air before the command throne. The Oceanid sat at its centre and nearby a group of icons clustered together, representing the other vessels of the fleet that had, thus far arrived.
Aside from the Duchess Mclntyre, the Honour of Damlass, the Regent Lakshimbal and Admiral Jellaqua’s own flagship, the mighty Retribution-class battleship the Blade of Woe were present. So too were three escort squadrons, which patrolled the fleet’s outer perimeter lest any unexpected enemy appear. The Rosetta was not present, but Lucian had faith in his son’s Navigator; he would arrive, soon. As Lucian had read off the label next to each icon, one name had halted him in his tracks.
One of the icons identified the Ajax. Less than thirteen thousand kilometres from the Oceanid’s current position lay at anchor a vessel that Lucian had last seen deserted, drifting in the cold interstellar space of the Damocles Gulf. She had been a ghost ship, yet here she was, safely across the Gulf, and station keeping with the rest of the fleet. Lucian felt cold dread grip his heart as he had looked upon the Ajax, all the superstition and fear bred into his spacer’s soul threatening to overwhelm him.
As the Oceanid had approached the other vessels, Natalia had called her conference, each captain appearing in one of the pict-slates arrayed around Lucian’s command throne. All had appeared to Lucian to be visibly relieved to be across the Gulf, but it was Commodore Ebrahim of the Ajax who held his attention. Ebrahim had reported that his Navigator, who had suffered some form of seizure at the very outset, had recovered. Yet, Ebrahim had reported, the man had been afflicted by terrifying nightmares, and had been assaulted time after time in the waking trance in which he guided the vessel. The navigators of the other vessels had attempted, upon their arrival in this region, to convince Ebrahim’s Navigator to relinquish his duties to a lower ranked individual. Yet he had refused, locking himself away in his Navigation blister and refusing to accept any visitors. The commodore had been visibly shaken, his face, even reproduced on the grainy, flickering screen appearing ashen. His eyes had been rimmed with dark circles, and Lucian had scarcely been able to bring himself to look into them, for it was akin to looking upon a ghost, or a man, who should, by all rights, be dead. Part of him knew that Ebrahim was already dead, despite what Lucian saw on the pict screen before him.
Then, as the masters had conversed, a message of the highest priority had been received. Its sending had immediately interrupted the masters’ conference, a fact for which Lucian had, at first, been grateful. The message was from the remaining portion of the crusade fleet, which was, even as the conference broke up, closing. Lucian had scanned the sensor returns for any sign of the Rosetta, yet before he could locate his son’s vessel, Cardinal Gurney had come on the channel. He had called an immediate council of war. His experiences crossing the Gulf were such that he was convinced the entire region was populated by devils that must be wiped out in short order for the good of mankind. If the cardinal were not insane before, Lucian sighed, surely his experience crossing the Gulf had pushed him over the edge.
Lucian had stood from his command throne, and stalked off towards his cabin, without a word to his bridge crew. It was only as he made to close the bulkhead door behind him that word of the Rosetta came over the comms channel. It was Korvane, and he was safe.
“This is getting us nowhere,” Lucian spat. He turned in his council seat to regard his son. Korvane, however, appeared to have his mind on other things. His eyes were raised to the incense clouded vaults of the richly appointed conference chamber aboard the Admiral Jellaqua’s Blade of Woe.
“Korvane!” Lucian hissed through clenched teeth. “What’s the matter with you, boy?”
Lucian remained twisted in his seat. He watched with mounting impatience as Korvane continued to ignore him, his head turned upwards, but his mind evidently light years away. Just as Lucian was about to turn his attentions back towards the council, Korvane’s attention returned, his eyes coming into focus as they locked with Lucian’s.
“Father?” Korvane asked.
What the hell was wrong with him? Their reunion had been stilted and awkward, and in the brief few minutes they had talked, Korvane had appeared di
stant and preoccupied. He clearly had no wish to attend his father at the council meeting, yet would not talk of whatever bothered him.
“Nothing. If you don’t want to be here then lose yourself,” Lucian hissed, turning his back on his son. Seething, he turned his attention back to the council. Gurney appeared to be reaching the conclusion of his thirty-minute rant.
“…drown the tau in oceans of their own blood! We have the Emperor’s will as our weapon. What have they?”
Though it was clearly a rhetorical question, Lucian took the opportunity to intercede. “What have they indeed?” he rejoined. “We have just words, extracted under torture, to go on. Do we commit on those words alone?”
As the cardinal turned on Lucian, Inquisitor Grand leaned forward: Inquisitor Grand, whom Lucian’s daughter had assaulted, wounded almost fatally, who even now moved as one afflicted by terrible pain: Inquisitor Grand, who was the primary ally of Lucian’s greatest opponent on the council. Despite mourning his daughter’s unknown fate, Lucian cursed her actions, for she had made him an enemy powerful beyond reckoning. It just remained to be seen whether Grand would choose to exercise his full powers.
“Might I remind the council,” the inquisitor said, his voice the characteristic dry whisper, “that the information extracted from the tau prisoners hardly took the form of a signed and witnessed confession.” Grand’s words were laced with spite, his gaze sweeping the assembled councillors before settling on Lucian. “The information we have was extracted directly from the prisoners’ minds, and was thus quite free of deception.”
Lucian scowled, knowing full well the manner of the prisoners’ interrogation. He knew that the inquisitor had used some vile form of torture on the tau captured at Sy’l’Kell. He had his suspicions that the inquisitor or one of his retinue had been utilising the psyker’s arts to tear the information from the tau’s brains, foregoing the need to study their language or risk them lying.
[Rogue Trader 02] - Star of Damocles Page 17
