The World Engine

by Ben Counter

  The disposition of the Varv Deliverance Fleet appeared in glowing shapes of light. The gravitational threshold of the nearest planet, Safehold, glowered darkly some distance across the chamber. The World Engine was a scarcely less imposing presence, a moon-sized aberration picked out in bright silver and surrounded by a halo of information noise illustrating how little intelligence the fleet’s sensors had divined.

  With the loss of the Perilous the fleet had scattered out of its previous formation. It was anchored around the three remaining capital ships – the Tempestus herself, the Oberon-class Fall of Horst, and the ancient grand cruiser Vengeant Aeternam. Almost fifty smaller ships – escorts, frigates, transports and sensor-ship outrunners – made up the rest of the fleet. As a battlefleet it was depleted and ragged. Before it had begun the first engagements with the World Engine it had been more than twice as large. Almost its entire fighter fleet had been destroyed by early attempts to bombard the equatorial weapons port from which the World Engine’s ship-killer had fired. Since then the fleet had kept a wide formation in a crescent around what they presumed to be the World Engine’s stern, out of the weapon’s scope, but as had been illustrated with the death of the Perilous there was nowhere any ship could truly be safe.

  ‘We must break formation,’ said Sheherz. ‘The rest of the fleet will fall back. We will approach. Full engine burn, all speed ahead. Bow-first into the enemy, Tempestus. That is our course.’

  The holomat’s projection shifted. The rest of the fleet broke apart and reformed thousands of kilometres away while the Tempestus flew in high over the World Engine’s northern pole. The World Engine spun on its axis in response, bringing the Tempestus closer to its kill-arc.

  ‘Can we make it?’ asked Sheherz.

  The Tempestus met the outline of the World Engine, and vanished in a burst of information static.

  ‘Master of the Fleet,’ came a voice from the chamber entrance. Sheherz dismissed the hologram and turned to see Librarian Hyalhi walking between the datamedium stalactites. ‘I was told you would be here, ministering to our ship.’

  ‘I go to the source,’ said Sheherz. ‘I command my ship from the helm, but on this occasion I decided to ask her opinion in person.’

  ‘And what does she say?’

  ‘We should reach the World Engine,’ said Sheherz. ‘We have the speed. But there is no simulation that can say what will happen when we get there.’

  The glimmers of light from the datamedium caught the edges of Hyalhi’s blue armour. The colours of the Astral Knights were silver-white and blue, but Hyalhi’s was the deep blue of a Librarian to mark him out as a psychic weapon on the battlefield. One shoulder pad bore the horned skull of the Chapter Librarium, and several books locked with gilded clasps hung from his waist. He wore the demi-cloak of an Astral Knights officer, and his face was half-hidden in the psychic protection circuits of his armour’s aegis hood. What could be seen of Hyalhi’s face was dark and old, the eyes pale grey.

  ‘I have never seen this place,’ said Hyalhi.

  ‘I rarely suffer another to enter,’ replied Sheherz.

  ‘Then forgive my trespass.’

  ‘I take it you do not come here on a whim,’ said Sheherz. ‘Librarian Hyalhi is not one given to conversation. I have not shared more than a hundred words with you in all my service, though we are both officers of the same Chapter.’

  ‘I keep my own counsel,’ said Hyalhi, ‘and offer it only when it is asked. The Chapter Master suggested I offer you that counsel now.’

  Sheherz straightened up, immediately defensive. ‘The course of the Tempestus has been set,’ he said, ‘and she is at full battle orders. The ship is ready, and so are her crew.’

  ‘Yet,’ said Hyalhi, ‘you have misgivings.’

  When it came to his ship, Sheherz was proud. He knew that. He had earned it, for his mastery of the fleet and kinship with the Tempestus was a powerful war asset for the Chapter. His first instinct was to brush off any suggestion of doubt, and send Hyalhi back to the mustering deck with a new appreciation for the Master of the Fleet’s authority on board. But there was no point, he told himself, in lying.

  ‘We were created to know no fear,’ said Sheherz, ‘but that does not mean we cannot feel sorrow, or even doubt. I have long been ready for my own death, Brother Hyalhi. That has never held any apprehension for me. I would welcome it if it was in the Emperor’s service. But now I know I have never been ready for the death of my Chapter. If we reach the surface of the World Engine, how many of us will leave it alive? We have no understanding of what lies down there save that it has the power and the will to destroy worlds. Will we face an army? An unsurvivable world that kills us as soon as we set foot on it? And into this complete unknown will fall my entire Chapter. We will be blind and beset by Throne knows what enemies. We left barely thirty battle-brothers on Obsidia. Not nearly enough to refound the Chapter. If we are swallowed up by the World Engine the Astral Knights will be gone. Our history will end. That is what causes me to doubt.’

  ‘It is a rare honesty that causes an Astral Knight to admit to doubt,’ said Hyalhi.

  ‘You are a psyker,’ replied Sheherz. ‘There isn’t much point in trying to hide it.’

  ‘It is more than our Chapter that is at stake,’ said Hyalhi. ‘You know where we are, captain. Varvenkast lies in the World Engine’s path.’

  ‘And our duty is to save its citizens,’ said Sheherz. ‘But at the cost of all of us? With no guarantee there will even be a battle to fight, let alone victory? If Varvenkast is lost it will be a tragedy, but if we are lost, all those who might be saved in the future will be lost with us. I will obey my Chapter Master, as is my duty, but I fear he is being short-sighted in condemning all our futures to save a single world.’

  Hyalhi examined the intricate machinery of the machine-spirit core as if it was a strange sculpture to be appreciated. ‘If you were to boil down the essence of our Chapter,’ he said, ‘what would you be left with?’

  ‘Valour,’ said Sheherz. ‘Strength. Glory.’

  ‘And without those?’ asked Hyalhi. ‘If we were left without strength, and stripped of our courage. If all our glory were erased. What would we have left, Captain Sheherz?’

  Sheherz thought for a moment. It was impossible to imagine the Astral Knights weak and afraid. Such a thing was obscene. If it were not for Hyalhi’s rank, his words would be insubordinate. But a single concept caught in his mind, something that could never be taken away. ‘Our honour,’ he said.

  ‘Honour,’ repeated Hyalhi. ‘We might be broken down and rendered helpless, but we will always have our honour. When all else is lost that honour is our proof against defeat, for there can never be complete catastrophe if honour is satisfied. The Astral Knights keep our word. We stand beside our brethren.’ He stopped examining the core and looked right at Sheherz, and his grey eyes seemed to strip away the layers of Sheherz’s mind. ‘And we make right our failings.’

  ‘The failure to destroy the World Engine is not ours alone,’ said Sheherz. ‘And it is far from certain we will make it right.’

  ‘I am not speaking of the World Engine,’ said Hyalhi. ‘It is evident to me that Lord Amhrad has not told you of the matter of honour we face. But given your doubts, I believe you need to know. If you will hear it, Sheherz. It is not something that can be unheard.’

  ‘If it gives me a cause to take my brothers and this ship to their deaths,’ said Sheherz, ‘then yes, I must hear it.’

  The Varv Deliverance Fleet followed the formation orders sent out from the bridge of the Tempestus. They fell back to leave the Tempestus as the tip of the fleet’s spear, its flanks unprotected by the escort squadrons and sensor-ships.

  The Tempestus adopted a high polar attitude to the World Engine, on the opposite side from the projected location of its primary weapon. The fleet’s few remaining fighter squadrons accompanied the battl
e-barge to the edge of the World Engine’s gravity well, then peeled off into a wide picket as sensor blips flickered across their tac-readouts. Hundreds of fragments of information billowed from the World Engine’s equator like a swarm of insects from a hive.

  In the earliest engagements with the World Engine, this scene had been repeated many times. Approaching ships were accosted by flights of fighter craft launched from somewhere beneath the sensor-proof shielding of the World Engine, and terrible tolls had been reaped among the crews of the Varv Deliverance Fleet. But while the fleet could rarely replace lost fighters and crews, the World Engine’s swarms seemed to vanish beneath its shielding and emerge with their numbers replenished. The battles had been abandoned as pointless, and it was only now that the Imperial fighter crews flew in anger again.

  The Tempestus’s sensor-broadcasts became intermittent as junk information filled the void. As communications threatened to cease completely, the fleet’s other ships all sent their message to the Tempestus, knowing it might be the last message they ever sent to their sister battleship.

  Emperor’s speed, Tempestus.

  Shed their blood, Tempestus.

  Return to us in victory, sister.

  Whatever you find, kill them all.

  ‘Hard to port ventral!’ ordered Sheherz and in response the ship lurched under him, the grav-units on the Tempestus not quite enough to compensate for the sudden change.

  On the viewscreen, its image enhanced with constant sensor updates, the silvery flocks of enemy fighters drew a wide crescent above the Tempestus. Friendly craft edged in green rose up to meet them, hurtling past the nose of the battle-barge as they moved to engage.

  ‘Tactical counts five hundred enemy in the void,’ came the voice of one bridge crewman. The information pouring in formed rows of figures and symbols on secondary viewscreens. Sheherz preferred to keep most such information in his head, picturing the unfolding engagement as if it were projected into his mind by the machine-spirit’s holomat.

  The friendly fighters numbered rather less than two hundred. Half of them were from the escort carrier squadron Sabre, the Vengeant Aeternam, and the carrier platform Merciless. The rest were orphan squadrons, fighters whose parent carriers had been destroyed.

  ‘Power to dorsal batteries,’ said Sheherz. ‘Bring our nose up, we’ll hit them bow-on. Damage control parties to forward stations.’

  Most of his orders were being followed before he gave them, the inevitabilities of void combat compelling the crew to prepare the ship for bloodshed.

  Most of the crew did not know the true nature of their destination. The bridge crew did by necessity, for they had created the charts and vectors that put the Tempestus on an intercept course with the World Engine. If any of them had voiced horror at the prospect, it had not reached Sheherz’s ears. These were crew bonded to the Astral Knights Chapter, and were expected to face death in the void if the Chapter demanded it. Shipmistress Gereltus would not permit anyone on her bridge who would show dismay at the prospect of this suicide mission, but that did not mean none of them felt it now.

  The crew would die. Sheherz knew that. It had been a thought flickering at the back of his mind the moment Amhrad voiced his plan to use the Tempestus as a weapon. A Space Marine, especially the Master of the Fleet, could not let that thought get in the way of the choices he had to make. It was not something he was proud of. It was just the way he had to be.

  ‘Lord captain,’ said the crewman at the ship’s security helm, a leathery old stalwart who usually kept silent when the Tempestus was in combat. ‘Are we prepared for boarding?’

  The World Engine had never sent out boarders before – if it had, the Astral Knights would have some idea about just who or what commanded it. That did not mean, of course, that it had not been saving that trick for just such an occasion as this.

  ‘Keep the security details back to assist damage control,’ said Sheherz. ‘If a Chapter of Space Marines cannot deal with boarders, then nothing can.’

  In the muster decks of the Tempestus the whole Chapter was gathered. There had barely been room for the hundreds of battle-brothers, almost three times the complement a battle-barge typically carried. The Chapter had the barest minimum of vehicles and other heavy equipment, because no one could say how useful they would be down on the surface.

  One bridge screen showed composite pict-grabs of the alien fighters. They were crescent-shaped with the points of their curved wings set forward. They had twin engines and cannon, and no obvious cockpit or entry hatches. Their metal had a strange shifting quality, squared spirals rippling across the surface. They had no livery or markings on the bare metal.

  ‘Brace!’ came the warning from the sensorium helm. The crewmen on the bridge dropped onto the deck or held on to the architectural carvings on the walls. The viewscreen showed the images from the sensors on the prow of the Tempestus as the shoal of enemy fighters split into three squadrons and spiralled towards the ship, livid green blasts of energy already streaking across the void.

  The deck shuddered as the fighters peeled off and hurtled down the flanks of the Tempestus. Las-fire hammered against the hull plating. The image shuddered and broke apart into static as the prow sensors were shattered by the fire rattling against the ship’s nose. Damage warnings were already blaring somewhere in the ship nearby.

  Sheherz recognised the vibrations of the plasma batteries and las-broadsides firing in response, punctuated by the thin roar of missile turrets disgorging their payloads. The turrets covered the sides of the Tempestus, and firing in their close defence configuration created a distinctive thump through the structure of the ship. It felt like the anger of the machine-spirit, a distant roar of rage.

  Sparks flew from one of the many bridge cogitators as a power surge burned out its circuits. One of the bridge crew sprayed an extinguisher over the fire. The lights on the bridge, already kept dim, flickered low as the power fluctuated again.

  ‘Report!’ ordered the shipmistress.

  ‘Port turrets down to seventy per cent,’ came the reply from one of the damage control helms.

  ‘Starboard at sixty-five.’

  ‘Tactical helm!’ demanded Sheherz. ‘Where are the enemy?’

  ‘Astern,’ replied the crewman at the tactical helm. He had been scorched by the short-lived fire but remained at his post. ‘They’re staying in our wake.’

  Then the enemy knew what it was doing. The wake of the ship, directly behind the engine, made for hazardous flying but hampered the laser turrets’ targeting. ‘They’re going to hit us again,’ said Sheherz. ‘They’ll come in before our damage control teams get into position.’

  ‘They’ve done for enough Imperial ships to know their weaknesses,’ said the shipmistress.

  ‘Astral Knights do not have weaknesses,’ said Sheherz. ‘Order the fighters to engage. All of them. All stop, reverse thrusters engage. Turn us hard to port.’

  It was a bizarre order, but the crew of the Tempestus obeyed without pause. Even if he had not been the Master of the Fleet, he was the only man the machine-spirit trusted. That on its own would have been enough.

  The ship yawed violently. Anything not stowed was thrown around the bridge. Helm crew too slow to brace were thrown off their feet. The engine pitch, that ever-present thrum that became inaudible after months on board, shifted to the high whine of the prow thrusters. The ship decelerated and again it lurched.

  In the intricate game of voidbound combat, the rules of physics were there to be bent. The Tempestus had the agility of a far smaller ship, enough for it to slow suddenly and turn to present one side of its hull to bear. The firepower of the battle-barge was in its broadsides, its long-range lance batteries and arrays of laser turrets. The enemy fighters had first aimed to hit the upper hull, and Sheherz had given them the prow. Now they wanted to strike the engines and plasma reactors near the stern, but Sheherz had
no intention of becoming such a target. Instead he would give them the full power of a battle-barge’s bombardment. If the hostile fighters wanted another swing at the Tempestus, they were going to have to earn it through a gauntlet of fire.

  The static on the viewscreen cleared. In place of the pict-grabs from the prow the machine-spirit now presented images taken from the Imperial fighters engaging the host of enemy craft. The Imperial fighters were outnumbered and Sheherz saw they were dying already, bursting in silent explosions of silver to the longer-ranged enemy fire.

  ‘Man the broadside!’ ordered Sheherz. ‘Everything we have!’

  The port flank of the Tempestus slewed round to face the fighter battle. More Imperial ships were knocked from the void, imploding into showers of wreckage like bursting fireworks.

  ‘Tactical, give me targets!’ said Sheherz.

  ‘Twenty per cent of the enemy in barrage range,’ was the reply.

  The lances were not accurate enough to pick off a fighter craft, but in enough numbers the weight of their fire would shred a significant percentage of fighters in close range.

  ‘Have the fighters break towards us,’ said Sheherz. ‘Draw them in.’

  Already almost a quarter of the Imperial fighters were gone. A face-to-face engagement could only ever result in the destruction of the fighter force, but it was necessary.

  Sheherz’s mind turned to the men and women of the fighter crews. A handful would live through the battle, if that. But he quickly recalled what Librarian Hyalhi had told him, the enormity of it. The sacrifice was grave, but there was never any question of its worth.

  ‘Forty per cent!’ called out the tactical crewman.

  ‘Fires on decks nineteen through forty-one,’ reported the damage control helm.

  ‘Despatch damage control,’ said Sheherz. The shipmistress immediately began reeling off a series of orders for containing the fires. They were close to the ship’s plasma reactors. In any other situation they would be Sheherz’s priority. Not now.