by Paul Kearney
‘If he has any brains, he will have guessed as much. My coming here was no secret. But we must hope that all concerned believe I was still on the Fidelis when it was attacked. Do not reveal my presence here, Valerian, but get this ship to us, as soon as you can. There is not a moment to lose.’
He looked out at the dark hooting depths of the rainforest that surrounded them – dripping, dank, full of the stink of rot. But there was a sense of change on the air. A storm was coming.
He would not leave his bones in such a place. If he had to die on this world, then it would be at a place and time of his own choosing, and this was not it.
Eleven
The thunderous rattle and roar of flying a spacefaring craft through the chop of a heavy atmosphere had to be heard to be believed. It was not just heard; it was felt in every bone, and the very fabric of the ship seemed to moan and protest at the buffeting it was getting.
‘Bring her in low and slow, Hester,’ Morcault said, raising his voice to be heard over the din. He was tapping his pitchthorn stick on the steel decking of the Mayfly, and suddenly grew irritated by the nervousness that the tic betrayed.
The entire crew was on the bridge; even owl-eyed Scurrios had left his lab for the moment, and Gortyn had abandoned the drives for the seldom-used engineer’s console on Morcault’s left. He swept his gaze over the dials and readouts of the cogitator at his station now and then, but the hirsute engineer was as gripped as any of them by the drama of the moment, despite his perpetual scowl.
Morcault looked over the augur display, his heart thumping, afraid that at any moment it would crowd with red lights. Under him, the Mayfly danced and lurched as it powered through the thick atmosphere of Zalidar, like a Terran ship making heavy weather of an ancient sea.
‘Jodi?’
The Navigator sat at his station beside Hester, eyes closed. But through the thick fabric of his bandana the glow of his third eye could be made out, blinking every so often. His presence on the bridge was unsettling; usually he only came up here during a warp translation. But now Arnhal was intent on other things.
‘They are at the rendezvous, but they have been pursued. The orks are closing in on all sides.’
Morcault cursed. ‘Hester–’
‘I know what I am doing, old man,’ his first mate shouted at him. ‘Leave me be, unless you want to take the yoke yourself.’
Once, Morcault had been the finest pilot in the sector, a daredevil, a voidsman of singular talent. But his reflexes had slowed with age. He was still a cut above most, but he could not match Hester’s skill now, though he itched to take control of his ship in his own hands.
‘Fifteen miles to landing zone,’ Scurrios called out, pushing his bottle-thick spectacles up his nose. Every time the turbulence shunted the ship, they fell down again.
There was a loud clank from the stern of the Mayfly somewhere, and Gortyn raised his eyes to the deckhead of the bridge and swore as Morcault had done.
‘She’s not built for this, Ghent.’ The airframe screeched around them as if to agree with his words.
‘It won’t be for long, one way or another,’ Morcault told him grimly.
‘Nine miles,’ Scurrios said mechanically. Then the little man looked up from his screen. ‘Augur has caught three contacts closing fast to our rear.’
‘Those damn fighter-bombers again,’ Morcault growled, leaning forward in his chair. ‘Countermeasures.’
The ship leapt under them, twisting, battered by dense cloud. The viewports were a grey blank, streaked with rain and illuminated by the odd lightning flash that lit up the entire bridge.
‘If they can home in on us through this, then they’re better pilots than I am,’ Hester snapped. ‘Gortyn, airbrakes – give me thirty per cent.’
The ship shuddered as though it had been struck. Morcault was lifted momentarily out of his chair and then thrown back into it again. He dropped his stick and clicked his restraint harness in place about his chest.
‘Reducing speed. Countermeasures away,’ Hester said, ‘though much good they’ll do in the middle of all this muck.’
‘Four miles,’ Scurrios told them. There was a shake in his voice. One hand was clamping his glasses to his face.
‘Disengaging hold door locks,’ Gortyn said. ‘I’d better get down there to welcome our guests. Jodi, you’d best be damned sure of yourself. I don’t want to be opening the bay doors for a mob of orks.’
‘They are in place, waiting for us,’ Jodi said in a faint voice, hardly heard over the chaos of the storm. ‘They are fighting now. The orks are in the clearing.’ His hand scrabbled at the arm of his chair as though seeking a glass. He licked his dark lips.
‘Perfect,’ Gortyn snarled. He threw aside his harness and left the bridge, lurching as the ship yawed under him. ‘Be ready for my signal,’ he called out to Hester as he left.
She did not reply. Her good eye gleamed as bright as the mechanical one as she worked the yoke and the throttles, and studied the altimeter and the trim dials. ‘Like flying through soup,’ she muttered.
‘Landing zone in twenty seconds,’ Scurrios said shrilly. ‘Fifteen seconds.’
‘Hold on,’ Hester said, and she slammed on the retros. There was a pummelling roar that echoed throughout the ship and the Mayfly’s nose came up, while it jerked and lurched under them like a running dog coming to the abrupt end of its leash.
The fabric of the vessel groaned and screamed, and a spray of sparks spat out of the drive console. One of the servitors, unhurried and calm, extinguished it with a spray from his bio-mechanical arm, and the other ranged over the cogitator circuits, tapping in adjustments to the power feed, easing the pain of the ship, placating the machine-spirit with an influx of coolant.
‘Red line,’ he creaked in one of the few binaric phrases Morcault still understood. ‘Adjusting.’ Then he went silent. His fellow joined him, and they worked the consoles as though playing some delicate and intricate musical instrument. For all their work, red lights were flashing on all the boards.
‘Taking her down,’ Hester said, her voice a harsh rasp.
The retros thundered, and the ship shook like a rattle in the hand of a child. A child having a tantrum. Morcault unbuckled and retrieved his pitchthorn, grasping for every safety rail he could find.
‘I’m going aft,’ he told Hester.
‘Mind your way,’ she admonished him. ‘Take-off will be even funnier.’
The ship crunched down as Morcault was making his way to the hold, nearly hurling him to his face. Swearing and praying alternately, he tapped his way towards the stern. There was fresher air back here – the bay doors must be open. He made it to the gangway over the cavernous hold and slammed shut the airlock door behind him.
Rain and vapour were streaming into the belly of the hold ten yards below. He could see Gortyn at the loading console, his black beard dripping, and the roar of the downpour beyond the yawning hatch vied with the thunderous bellow of the Mayfly’s atmospheric engines.
And beyond that, the crack of gunfire, single shots and bursts.
Morcault ducked instinctively as a volley of bolter fire arced into the hold out of the rain, tracer rounds careering about too fast for the eye to follow. Then came running men, half a dozen of them in what might once have been Astra Militarum uniforms, but were now little more than muddy rags. They dragged two of their kind with them, trailing ribbons of blood across the plasteel decking. The gunfire grew to a tearing climax outside.
And then came a giant, following them.
In all his travels, Morcault had never seen one before, and he grasped the gangway railing and knelt, staring, everything else forgotten.
Almost eight feet tall, it was a man, or man-like, clad in bulky armour that had been scored and battered and was plastered with muck and wet soil. Once, it might have been blue, and there was still the remn
ant of a white sigil on one immense shoulder-guard. It looked up at him at once, and the muzzle of the bolter followed its gaze – the blank inhuman mask of it – then it looked away again.
‘Hold secured. Proceed,’ it said, the metallic, toneless voice filling the air. It took up a firing position with the rain streaming from it, and loosed off a series of aimed shots out into the storm of rain and wind beyond the ship.
More of them trooped in, dripping titans, firing as they backed up the ramp. Ten, fifteen – their feet resounded on the sturdy metal of the Mayfly. They seemed like things from another world – and they were. One fired a blast of promethium back the way he had come, and, for the first time, Morcault heard the other voices outside the ship, the gargled bellowing of the orks. He heard gunfire clatter off the ship’s hull.
A nightmarish giant in black armour with a skull for a face counted the others in. He carried a huge stave-like weapon with a skull-headed eagle at its crest. Beside him were two more with fragments of glittering gold still clinging to their armour. They carried axes nearly as tall as a man in one fist and fired bolt pistols with the other, aiming with the unhurried care of creatures that did not know the meaning of fear – though Morcault could see the dark ranks of the orks outside now, storming forward, voices raised in the hellish cacophony of their kind. The front ranks were barely two hundred feet from the loading ramp.
Gortyn stood shocked and wide-eyed at the loading console, fist poised over the red locking lever. Tall and burly though he was, he looked tiny compared to the giants that had come aboard out of the downpour.
And last of all, one marched aboard who was greater than all of these.
Bare-headed, a thorned crown of iron rising above his skull, and one eye shining scarlet, a huge shape came striding out of the rain and into the crowded hold of the Mayfly. It turned and let loose a withering, deafening volume of fire from bolters hung beneath its fists, chewing up the advancing orks and toppling them in an avalanche of sundered, smoking meat.
‘You may seal the hatches, shipmaster,’ it said, in a voice that stunned the air. Gortyn, still staring, yanked down on the locking lever, and the loading ramp began to come up while the bay doors slid closed. A clatter of explosive rounds spattered on the heavy plasteel doors as they came together, and then there was a resounding thump, and the green light went on above them.
Gortyn thumbed the ship’s comm. ‘Get us out of here!’ he shouted at Hester on the bridge, and it was a matter of seconds before the Mayfly answered. With a shattering jolt, it leapt up under him, the frame of the ship protesting, keening like some great overworked animal. The G-force flattened Morcault and the Guardsmen down on the deck and sent Gortyn tumbling from the bulwark, but the giants in their midst remained standing, balanced easily on the plasteel plates, rainwater running from their armour in filthy streams. Their leader, the only one whose face was visible, looked around, and finally caught Morcault’s eye as the old man remained pounded by the ship’s ascent, flat on the gangway above. He smiled.
‘That was well timed,’ he said.
‘The ork fighter-bombers have drawn off – they can’t see anything in this and their airkeeping abilities are even worse than ours,’ Hester said. ‘Everyone aboard?’
Morcault sat down in his chair, blinking. His old flesh was aching and bruised, but more to the point his mind was still dealing with the shock of it.
‘Ghent, are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. Stay low, Hester. We don’t have to worry about being pursued, not in this weather. The storm was a blessing.’
‘You look as though you have seen a ghost.’
Morcault shook his head, shaking out of his daze.
He is here – on my ship.
‘Make for Zalathras, and – be careful, Hester. We cannot afford to go down, not now.’
‘I prefer not to crash at any time, Ghent. Who are our passengers? Jodi here won’t tell me a thing. I hope it was worth almost getting us all killed for.’
‘Oh, it was worth it,’ Morcault said, and he felt an absurd urge to laugh, but rubbed his bony hand over his face.
Jodi Arnhal turned in the Navigator’s chair and stared at him. ‘Is it true, Ghent? Is it him – is he aboard?’ The young man’s eyes were painfully bright.
Morcault nodded.
Jodi sank back in his seat. ‘I was not sure if I could believe myself. I sensed it, just as we were landing, but I could not be sure.’
‘You should have told me.’
‘No. Telepathy is overrated, and my version of it is wholly unschooled. I was not certain until now – truly, Ghent.’
‘What are you two babbling about?’ Hester asked irritably, eyes still fixed on the pilot console and the information from the cogitators that rolled across it in streams. Visibility was nil, and she was flying the Mayfly by instrumentation alone. There was sweat on her face and her coveralls were soaked with it.
‘Our passengers are Adeptus Astartes – Ultramarines,’ Morcault said with quiet wonder.
Hester did not reply, but blinked rapidly as she sat guiding the ship through the storm.
‘And their leader is here with them. Their leader, Hester. Marneus Calgar, Lord of Macragge, is aboard our ship.’
He had to stoop to enter the bridge, and twist sideways to make it through the doorway. When he straightened, it seemed that the Mayfly was not big enough to contain him. Like a huge obelisk he stood there, water dripping from his battered ancient armour. His face was long and pale, the bones pronounced and laced with the white lines of old scars. His hair was cropped short; it might have been a golden yellow. His bionic eye shone with the same red that was in Hester’s, but the other was grey as the blade of a knife.
He looked as calm and at ease as though he were on the bridge of a battleship, instead of crammed into the bow of a tramp trader. There were rags of purity seals hanging from his torso, and his armour was scraped and pitted and clodded with the muck of the jungle, but where it was undamaged it shone a lustrous blue, and ran with forged patterns as beautiful as the swirl of oil in water. He said nothing, and no one on the bridge said a word as Marneus Calgar stood among them, staring out at the blank roll of the storm clouds the ship was battering through.
At last, he spoke. ‘What is our position and course, shipmaster?’
Morcault cleared his throat. Gortyn was down in the drives, as though too shocked by events to come out. Scurrios was treating the wounded Guardsmen. Only he, Hester and Jodi Arnhal were on the bridge, along with the two servitors. Jodi stared at the Ultramarine Chapter Master as though he had forgotten how to blink, but Hester kept her gaze fixed rigidly forward at her controls.
‘My lord,’ Morcault said hoarsely, ‘we are currently some two hundred miles south of Zalathras. We will be over the city in some twenty-five minutes.’
‘Very good. When you contact the authorities there for landing permission, do not mention who you have aboard. We do not know who may be listening in.’
‘Of course.’
‘What is the status of Zalathras at present?’
‘It is… it is besieged, sire. The ork host is encamped before the walls, and their aircraft conduct daily bombing runs.’
‘Orbital bombardments?’ Calgar asked sharply.
‘None, my lord. There are rumours that orbital fire has been used further north, but it was crude and ill-aimed and largely ineffective. These particular orks do not seem to have mastered it, thank the Throne.’
‘Indeed?’ Calgar said, raising his eyebrow. His voice had a strange resonance. It was not particularly deep, but it seemed to have an echo of its own that filled the bridge.
Then he looked down at Morcault. It was hard to bear his gaze, but Ghent forced himself to hold it.
‘This is your ship, is it not?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Then you have my gr
atitude, captain, you and all your crew – but especially your Navigator here. Were it not for him we would still be battling hip-deep in orks down below. You have done the Imperium a valuable service. It will not be forgotten, not by me and mine.’
Jodi Arnhal’s pale face flushed. His mouth moved, but no words came out.
‘We would have done it for anyone,’ Morcault found himself saying. ‘No man should be left to the orks, no matter his station in life.’
Calgar nodded. The stone-hard visage softened. ‘I quite agree,’ he said.
It felt wrong to be sitting in his presence, but Morcault kept his seat; it was too small to be offered to him anyway, and the Mayfly was still dancing through turbulence. He felt he should say something more, but he was acutely aware of the two Imperium-coded servitors on the bridge, working away, blind to their guest. Stolen property, even if it were from a long time ago. But such things would be beneath Marneus Calgar’s attention, surely.
‘Your name has cropped up in reports from the Fringe from time to time,’ Calgar said.
‘I hope it was good news,’ Morcault told him, and then gulped at his own presumption.
‘It was certainly interesting. From what I can tell, Morcault, you know Zalidar better than almost anyone. You have made the system your life’s work, as it were. My own geographical data on the planet is largely gleaned from your own explorations.’
‘It has become something of an obsession,’ Morcault admitted.
‘Why? What is so special about Zalidar?’
‘It was a virgin world when first I set down on it,’ Morcault said. ‘But no death world. It had simply been overlooked by man and xenos alike, left to evolve into a rich, balanced ecosystem.’ He hesitated.
‘It was… pure. I was the first man to set foot on so many mountains, to taste the water of unknown rivers, to see sights that no other member of my species had ever known. I became protective, even possessive, of the place. My lord, I think it just got under my skin.’
Calgar’s organic eye narrowed. ‘And now the orks are here, to infest and despoil it. I will need your knowledge of this planet, Morcault. You have shown yourself to be a survivor, and such men are rarer than you think. When we land in Zalathras, you will remain with me as an aide. I hope you find that acceptable.’
