The old warrior’s brows knitted. ‘Do you have anything constructive to add?’
Sendek nodded. ‘In the interests of posterity, I have commenced mapping this sector of space. Perhaps if this vessel is recovered at some future date, the data may be of use to those who find it.’
Qruze made a spitting noise. ‘Are all you Death Guard this pessimistic? We’re not corpses yet.’
‘I prefer to think of myself as a realist,’ Sendek bristled.
Both men turned as the bridge hatch irised open to admit the Apothecary Voyen. Sendek was still finding it hard to forgive Voyen’s association with the lodges and he looked away. The Astartes was aware that Qruze saw the moment between the two battle-brothers, remarking silently upon it with a quizzical look.
‘Where is the battle-captain?’ asked Voyen.
‘Below decks,’ replied Qruze. ‘I have the conn. You may address yourself to me, son.’
‘As you wish, third captain. I have completed a survey of the ship’s stores and consumable supplies. If we instigate rationing at subsistence levels, it is my projection that Eisenstein’s crew have just over five and one-third months of available resources.’
Carya came forward and ventured a suggestion. ‘Could we not put some of the non-essential crew into suspension?’
Voyen nodded. ‘That is a possibility, but with the facilities aboard this ship that would only lengthen the duration by another month, perhaps two. I have also examined the option of other emergency measures, such as a cull, but the outcomes are little different.’
The shipmaster grimaced. ‘We’re not picking any of my men for voluntary execution, if that’s what you’re thinking!’
‘Seven months at sublight in the middle of the void,’ said Sendek as the bridge hatch opened once more, ‘and Horus out there all the while with Terra unaware of it.’
Garro entered, his stride firm and purposeful. ‘Not on my watch. We have come too far to sit back and wait for death to claim us. We have to act.’ He nodded to Carya. ‘Shipmaster, signal the enginarium crews to charge the warp motors to full power.’
‘Captain, unless that saint singing her hymns down below has grown a third eye and plans to guide us home, we cannot hope to travel any interstellar distance!’ Voyen’s manner became acid and terse. ‘We have no Navigator, sir! If we enter the warp, we will be lost forever and those things that attacked us last time will have eternity to pick us apart!’
‘I never said we were returning to the warp,’ Garro replied coolly. ‘Carya, how long until the drive blocks are at maximum potency?’
The officer studied his console. ‘A few moments, lord.’ He hesitated. ‘Sir, your Apothecary is correct. I fail to see the reason for bringing the drives back on line.’
Garro didn’t answer the implied question. ‘I want sublight thrusters ready for a burn at full military power on my command. Call the ship to general quarters and prepare void shields for activation.’
Voyen gestured around the bridge as the alert siren sounded. ‘Thrusters and shields now? Is this some sort of drill, Nathaniel? Some kind of make-work to distract the crew, or did the prophet girl tell you that an attack is coming?’
‘Watch your tone,’ said Garro. ‘My lenience only extends so far.’
‘Thrusters at your command,’ reported Carya. ‘Shields ready to be deployed.’
‘Hold,’ ordered the battle-captain.
From across the bridge, Qruze rubbed his chin. ‘Are we going to learn the point of all this activity, lad? I confess I’m as blind to it as the sawbones there.’
Carya looked up. ‘Warp drives registering full energy capacity. Battery arrays are brimming, lord. What do you want me to do with them?’
‘Clear the drive block compartments, and arm the release mechanisms on the warp motors. When I give the order, you will deactivate the engine governance controls and jettison the drive block, then raise shields and fire the sublight thrusters,’
Qruze chuckled coldly. ‘You’re as bold as you are mad!’
‘Eject the warp engines?’ Sendek gaped. ‘With all that energy in them, they’ll detonate like a supernova!’
Garro nodded solemnly. ‘A warp flare. The blast will echo in the immaterium as well as real space. It will act as a beacon for any ships within a hundred parsecs.’
‘No!’ Voyen’s shout cut across the bridge. ‘For Terra’s sake, no! This is a step too far, captain! It’s a death sentence!’
Garro shot him a hard stare. ‘Open your eyes, Meric! Everything we have done since we defied the Warmaster has been a death sentence, and yet we still survive! I will not give up now, not after all this flight has cost us!’ He reached out and put a hand on the Apothecary’s shoulder. ‘Trust me, brother. We will be delivered from this.’
‘No,’ Voyen repeated, and in a swift blur of movement the Death Guard veteran drew his bolt pistol, bringing it to bear between Garro’s eyes. ‘I will not let you do this. You’ll kill us all, and everything that we have sacrificed will have been for nothing!’ Dread filled his voice. ‘Tell Carya to rescind those orders or I will shoot you where you stand!’
Sendek and Qruze went for their weapons, but Garro barked out a command. ‘Stay your hands! This is between Meric and I, and we alone will decide it.’ He met the Apothecary’s gaze. ‘Shipmaster Carya,’ said the battle-captain, ‘you will execute my commands in sixty seconds. Mark.’
‘Y-yes, sir,’ the officer stuttered. Like everyone on the bridge, he was fully aware of the danger of what Garro had set in motion. The veteran was right. It could mean the destruction of the ship if the Eisenstein’s thrusters couldn’t push the frigate far enough from the blast radius of the warp flare.
Voyen thumbed back the hammer on the pistol. ‘Captain, please don’t test me! I will follow any orders you give, but not this one! You’ve let that woman cloud your thoughts.’
The dark maw of the gun never wavered before Garro’s face. At so close a range, a single shell from the weapon would turn the Death Guard’s unprotected head into a red mist. ‘Meric, it does not matter if you kill me. It will still happen and the ship will still be rescued, and our warning will still be carried to the Emperor. I won’t see it, but I’ll die content knowing that it will come to pass. I have faith, brother. What do you have?’
‘Thirty seconds,’ reported Qruze. ‘Release bolts are armed. The governance circuits are off-line. The overload is building.’
‘You’ve driven me to this,’ cried Voyen. ‘Death and death, and more death, brothers ranged against brothers… how can you be certain we will not be corrupted as Grulgor and his men were? We’ll become like them! Abominations!’
Garro held out his hand. ‘We will not. There is no doubt in my mind.’
‘How can you know?’ shouted the Astartes, the pistol faltering.
Garro carefully reached out and took the gun from him. ‘The Emperor protects,’ he said simply.
‘Zero,’ announced the Luna Wolf.
THIRTEEN
Silent Watch
Fearless
Found
HUNDREDS OF EXPLOSIVE charges around the rear ventral hull of the frigate went off in the silence of space, throwing sheets of hull plating away into the void. On rails, the thick cylinders of the starship’s interstellar drive motors rolled out and fell into the darkness, conduits snapping and trailing jets of coolant liquid, cables arcing with glints of electricity. Crackling orbs of gathered energy spun and cried inside the discarded warp engines. Power that normally would have been channelled into ripping a doorway to the immaterium had no point of release, and now it churned about itself, faster and faster, spiralling towards critical mass.
The Eisenstein leapt away on rods of glittering fusion fire, leaving behind the parts of itself that she had cut loose. As the flexing gravitational output of the warp drives drew the drifting modules together, they sent out whips of brilliant blue-white lightning that lashed blindly, snapping at the frigate’s heels. Her void shields gl
owed but held firm. The true test of them would come in a few seconds.
The engine cores began to melt and deform, the power inside them grown to such capacity that it was a self-fulfilling reaction, drawing potency from the differential states between the dimensions of the warp and the common vacuum of real space. Circular sheets of exotic radiation, visible through the entire spectrum, radiated out of the lumpen cluster of matter and energy. Too soon the warp motors had ripped into the madness of the immaterium, and the rush of force that flooded out was too much, too fast.
The reaction collapsed inward, the jettisoned hull panels, the slagged metals, dust and specks of free-floating hydrogen molecules, the very space around it folding in a final desperate trawl to fuel itself.
If there was an eye that could have seen something so abnormal or glimpsed into a range so far from that of normal sight, an observer might have glimpsed a screaming, clawing beast peering out of the core of the implosion, but then came the detonation.
Across barriers of dimension, the catastrophic destruction of the warp motors produced a sphere of radiation that lit space like a dying sun. In the empyrean, it became a towering shriek, a flash of dead blue, a surge of raw panic and a million other things. In real space it was a wave of crackling discharge that slammed into the fleeing Eisenstein and threw her bow over stern with murderous, lethal force.
IN THE DEEP shades of the empyrean, the ragged edge of a shockwave broke upon the preternatural senses of an enhanced mind. The wash of raw input blotted out all other thought-sights in an instant of punishing, agonising overload. It struck the storms of insanity that clung to the mind and tore them away, blasting them apart. The mind was tossed and thrown in the impact, flailing for unending seconds in the turbulent undertow of its passing. Then the flare was gone, fading, leaving only the echo of its creation. Where there had been storms and fog, now there was clarity and lucidity.
The mind turned and peered across the wilderness of the immaterium and found the point of origin. As a flash of night-borne lightning might illuminate a darkened landscape, the shockwave made the molten terrain of the warp visible, gave it solidity when all other means of understanding had failed. Suddenly, paths that had been concealed were clear and discernible. The way was abruptly opened, and across the incredible distance, the epicentre of the effect’s creation still burned.
With care, the mind began to compute a route to take it there, curiosity brimming from every contemplation.
GARRO PUT DOWN the electroquill and ran his gaze down the text rendered on the flat, glassy face of the data-slate. He released a deep breath and a cloud of white vapour emerged, fading into the cold, thin air of the observatorium. Everything in the chamber was covered in a thin patina of hoarfrost, the steel stanchions and the wide sweeps of the windows painted with patches of white. In the shockwave of the warp flare, several power mechanisms already stressed by the headlong escape from the Isstvan system failed entirely, and whole decks of the frigate were without life-support. Carya had closed the flying bridge and moved the command crew to a secondary control pulpit, leaving the upper deck to go dead and dark. Moment by moment, the Eisenstein was becoming a frozen tomb.
‘Captain,’ Qruze said coming into view, lit by the dull glow of the starlight through the frosted armour-glass, ‘you summoned me?’
Garro showed him the data-slate. ‘I want you to witness this.’ Nathaniel removed his gauntlet and pressed the commander’s signet on his left forefinger to a sensor plate on the slate’s case. The device chimed, recognising the unique pattern of the ring and the gene-code of the wearer. He passed it to the Luna Wolf and the old warrior paused for a moment, reading what was written there.
‘A chronicle?’
‘Perhaps it would be more accurate to think of it as a last will and testament. I have recorded here all the events of note that preceded our escape from the fleet, and all matters since. There should be a testimony for our kinsmen to find, even if we do not live to deliver it ourselves.’
Qruze snorted and mirrored Garro’s actions, sealing the contents of the slate with a touch from his signet. ‘Planning for the worst. First that boy Sendek and now you? Death Guard by name, dour by nature, is it?’
Garro took the slate back and secured it in an armoured case. ‘I only wish to cover every eventuality. This container will survive explosion and vacuum, even the destruction of the ship.’
‘So those words on the bridge, then? Your declaration to the Apothecary, all that was just an act, captain? You tell us you know we will survive, but secretly you prepare in case we do not?’
‘I did not lie, if that is what you are implying,’ snarled Garro. ‘Yes, I believe we will see Terra, but there is no harm in being thorough. That is the Death Guard way.’
‘Yet you do this thing out of sight of the men, with only a Luna Wolf in attendance? Is that perhaps because you would rather not undermine the faith you have kindled in the others?’
Garro looked away. ‘Age has not dulled your insight, Iacton. You are correct.’
‘I understand. In times like this, conviction is all a man can cling to. Before… before Isstvan, we might have looked to our faith in our Legions, our primarchs. Now, we must find it where we can.’
‘The Emperor is still our constant,’ Garro said, looking out at the stars. ‘Of that, I have no doubt.’
Qruze nodded. ‘Aye, I suppose so. You have made believers of us, Nathaniel. Besides, that chronicle of yours is a wasted effort.’
‘How so?’
‘The story there is only half-told.’
Garro’s scarred face turned in a faint smile. ‘Indeed. I wonder how it will end?’ He walked away a few steps, thin rimes of ice crunching under his boots.
‘Has your saint not told you?’ Qruze asked, a note of wry reproof in his words.
‘She is not my saint,’ Garro retorted. ‘Keeler is… she has vision.’
‘That may be so. Certainly, enough of the crew seem to agree. There are many more attending her sermons on the lower decks. I have it on good authority that the iterator Sindermann has moved their makeshift church to a larger compartment among the armoury decks, to better accommodate them.’
Garro considered this. ‘Closer to the inner hull spaces. It will be warmer there, more protected.’
‘There have been Astartes seen in attendance, captain. It appears your conference with the woman has given legitimacy to her claims.’
Garro eyed him. ‘You don’t approve.’
‘Idolatry is not the Imperial way.’
‘I see no idols, Iacton, only someone who has a purpose in the Emperor’s service, just as you and I do.’
‘Purpose,’ echoed the Luna Wolf. ‘That is what this all comes down to, is it not? In the past, we have never had to struggle to find it. Purpose has always been given to us, passed on from Emperor to primarch to Astartes. Now events force us to seek it alone, and we splinter. Horus finds his in sorcery, and we… we seek ours in a divinity.’ He chuckled dryly. ‘I never thought I would live to see the like.’
‘If your wisdom of years allows you to find another path, tell me of it,’ Garro said firmly. ‘This way is the only one that opens to me.’
Qruze bowed his head. ‘I would not dare, battle-captain. I granted you my fealty, and I will follow your commands to the letter.’
‘Even if you disagree with them? I saw the reproach in your eyes on the bridge.’
‘You allowed the Apothecary to go without him being chastised for his actions.’ Qruze shook his head. ‘It was a punishable offence towards a senior officer. He drew a weapon on you, Garro, in anger!’
‘In fear,’ Garro corrected. ‘He allowed his emotions to overtake him for a moment. ‘He is chastened by his actions. I won’t put a man to the whip for that.’
‘Your warriors question it,’ pressed the other Astartes. ‘For now they see it as lenience, but some might think it to be a sign of weakness.’
He looked away. ‘Then let them. Brot
her Voyen is the best Apothecary we have. I need him. Decius needs him.’
‘Ah,’ the Luna Wolf nodded. ‘It becomes clearer to me. You want the youth to survive.’
‘What I want is to lose no more of my brothers to this madness!’ snapped Garro tersely. ‘The rest of my Legion may fall to disloyalty or death, but not these men! Not mine!’ His breath came out in clouds around him. ‘Mark me, Iacton Qruze. I will not have the Death Guard become a watchword for corruption and betrayal!’
There was a note of genuine pain in the old warrior’s words as he looked down at the power armour he wore, still bearing the altered colour scheme of the Sons of Horus. ‘Good luck in that, kinsman,’ he said quietly. ‘For me, I fear that moment has already passed.’
POWER ROUTED TO the valetudinarium from other sections of the Eisenstein ensured that the infirmary was kept at a functional level. Garro was aware that Voyen had initiated a move of all but the most badly injured patients to the deeper levels of the ship, in towards the core of the vessel. The battle-captain did not see the Astartes healer as he crossed the chamber, and felt better for it. Despite his words to Qruze, Garro still smarted at Voyen’s actions on the bridge and he did not want to encounter him again so soon afterwards. It was better that the Apothecary kept his distance for the moment.
Garro stepped around an injured officer whose only inhalations came from a mechanical breather machine, and stopped at the glass pod of the isolation chamber. With care, Garro took his helmet – the repairs upon it were still visible, unfinished spots where paint had yet to be applied – and sealed it to the neck ring of his armour. Then, after checking the seals on every joint and vent, he locked down the battle suit, preventing any possibility of outside contagions entering his wargear. Garro passed through the chamber’s airlock array and entered the sealed room. A medicae servitor tended to Decius with slow, deliberate care. The captain noted that the fleshy components of the machine-helot were already grey with infection. Voyen’s reports noted that two servitors had died already from slow exposure to whatever poison Grulgor had poured into the youth’s wound. It was a testament to the potency of the Astartes biology that Decius was not dead a dozen times over.
The Flight of the Eisenstein Page 25
