Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  Alanius glanced into the machine room, where Nuministon, Eskerio and Azmael stood by the tech-priest’s device.

  ‘I agree. I will stay my tongue and my hand, but if I have a sense of real treachery, it will go ill for him.’

  Voldo broke the private conversation, and re-engaged his vox and sensorium with the rest of the party.

  ‘Brother Eskerio, tell us what you have learned from the magos.’

  A crisp, fresh map came up on Voldo’s internal helmet display. The map rotated, and zoomed out, providing a clear view of their surroundings. A red line snaked through three vessels to the surface, indicating an escape route.

  ‘With the data provided by Magos Nuministon,’ said Eskerio. ‘Brother Azmael and I have been able to refine our alternative route out of the hulk.’

  ‘This information is worth our minor sacrifices so far, do you not agree?’ said the magos. There was a hint of smugness to his grinding voice.

  ‘The loss of but one battle-brother is a grave one,’ retorted Alanius.

  ‘Your Curzon is not lost, and will be freed. And thanks to this information, the battle against the genestealers will be immeasurably easier,’ said the magos.

  Voldo looked to the Blood Drinkers sergeant, unsure as to how he would respond to this needling.

  ‘You are correct in that,’ Alanius said, and spoke no more.

  Voldo inspected the route. Blinking green areas suggested genestealer concentrations, purple vortices two of the many reactors still burning within the hulk.

  ‘The map is relatively certain, brother-sergeant,’ said Eskerio. ‘Although the disposition of the genestealers, sleeping and active, is little better than guesswork married to what the deep augurs of the Excommentum Incursus spied. This void here, for example–’ A cavern blinked, the crushed hold of a mighty vessel, highlighted in bright yellow, ‘–is prime territory for a nesting ground.’

  ‘We must go through it,’ said Voldo.

  ‘There is no way around. We must also pass close to this reactor.’ A purple whorl pulsed. ‘Radiation levels will be high, but our suits will weather it with little trouble.’

  ‘And cave-ins? This data was taken before the last quake. What are your opinions on the passability of the route?’ said Alanius.

  ‘Good,’ said Eskerio. ‘Brother Azmael and I have selected the most stable path. It should be free of obstruction, in the main. Emperor willing and fortune behind us.’

  Voldo span the map around. The route was sound, Eskerio had plotted his path through as many entire vessels as he could. With luck, the grav plating of the vessels would be active, and they would be on their way swiftly. ‘If it is not, then it is the will of the Emperor also,’ he said.

  There was a distant bang, followed by a scraping from the far side of the collapsed tunnel. Alanius turned around, his suit light glimmering from globules of blood. Under the hulk’s microgravity, the mess in the air was gradually clearing, drawn towards the centre of the agglomeration’s mass, which was confusingly at a slight angle to the lay of the ship’s floor.

  ‘Let us be on our way,’ Alanius said. ‘We can gain nothing by tarrying here.’

  Galt stared out of the bridge windows of Novum in Honourum at the moon-sized space hulk orbiting Jorso, spines and rocks and broken ships’ prows at the edges catching the harsh light of the sun.

  ‘No news, lord captain,’ said a communications serf. ‘We are attempting to lock on to the party’s teleport homers, but we cannot find them. The star is loud in its disapproval of us.’

  ‘Keep trying,’ said Galt. ‘They have been too long.’

  ‘They have,’ said Mastrik. ‘Brother-captain, allow me to go down to the surface, penetrate the hulk and search for them.’

  ‘No,’ said Galt. ‘The hulk is vast, and the enemy many. We must conserve our veterans and Terminator armour for the main assault.’ He tapped at his chin. ‘But there is merit in what you say. Brother-Captain Mastrik, assemble two squads, prepare a Thunderhawk each. Do not have them land, but maintain safe distance outside the debris field. I want them close by the surface and ready to help our brothers the moment word is received.’

  ‘I will call on squads Righteous War and Vermillion, and lead them myself, brother-captain.’ Mastrik turned to go, beckoning to the three Third Company Space Marines who were present on the bridge to follow him.

  ‘Perhaps they were trapped by that quake,’ said Persimmon. He checked his instruments. ‘It was a strong one.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Galt.

  ‘If anyone can find a way out, brother-captain, Voldo can.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Galt addressed the Blood Drinkers Captain Sorael and Veteran Brother Metrion, who were present on the bridge. ‘Cousins, I suggest you advise Lord Caedis of the mission status.’

  Sorael bowed. ‘He will agree with your judgement, lord captain Novamarine, although he will be grateful of our update. I will return to Lux Rubrum and speak with him in person.’

  The Blood Drinker captain drew Metrion to one side, where they conversed quietly.

  ‘Brother-Sergeant Voldo lives, brother-captain,’ said Epistolary Ranial to Galt. ‘I have not sensed his death.’

  Galt glanced at Ranial, and gave a grateful nod.

  Chapter 9

  The way out

  Voldo watched as Gallio tore back the last of the hull plate. Clastrin, behind him in the cramped corridor, tugged the sheet of metal away and cut it in two with his plasma torch. Clastrin stuffed the two pieces into a side room, and their way was open to the next vessel.

  The silence, now the chainfist had ceased, was sudden and total. It was a risk, employing Gallio’s cutting tool. Clastrin’s plasma torches were far quieter, but the chainfist was far faster, and time was of the essence. The group was in single file, the corridor too restrictive to permit them to stand side by side; it was a bad place to be caught in a fight.

  The auspex remained free of contacts.

  They had made good time from the machine room, heading for the side of the vessel. They had come across a section where all seemed intact, a great difference to the remainder of the ship, although all systems remained non-functional. Mapping hulks was so difficult because of the great variety of condition not only between the constituents of an agglomeration, but also within each individual vessel. In parts a ship might be whole, then the next section crushed flat or impaled upon the protrusions of another vessel.

  Gallio manoeuvred himself around, craning his head as best as his bulky shoulders would allow into the hole he had made. Voldo watched his suit feed.

  ‘Brother-sergeant, the vessel is at an awkward angle.’

  Voldo saw the corridor, the end concertinaed where it had been forced up against the unnamed ship they sought to leave. The corridor on the next vessel dropped steeply at a twenty degree angle, heading away until it was lost to perspective and the uncertain illumination of lighting millennia old.

  ‘Proceed, Brother Gallio.’

  ‘The lighting is active,’ said Eskerio. ‘I would be wary of the grav plates, brother.’

  Gallio looked upward. The floor of the new vessel was the ceiling, relative to where they were. ‘Affirmative.’ He said. He eased his bulk through the hole, catching his cowling on the jagged breach. He fished around for a piece of metal, and tossed it far into the corridor. Sure enough, the shard flew true until it passed over into the undamaged section of the corridor, when it suddenly arced and dropped with a clatter to the corridor floor.

  Clastrin placed himself in the newly carved door, servo-harness arms extended into the other ship, covering Gallio as he moved forward.

  When Gallio got to the section of active grav plates, he walked up the wall, his boots clicking as they drew themselves onto the metal. The corridor was even narrower than the one he had left, a rat run, and Gallio had trouble getting himself into a position where he could make the transition from the wall to this new floor. He wavered slightly as his boots disengaged and the gravity tugged h
im upward, but then he was standing on the ceiling, and beckoning to his fellows.

  Clastrin followed, his smaller armour and servo-harness making his transition from one orientation to another easy.

  Eskerio was next, then Voldo. The sergeant reached the section where gravity functioned before radioing to Alanius, who stood in rearguard with Astomar at a crossway that allowed them to stand side by side.

  ‘We are coming,’ said Alanius. ‘I will be glad to leave this place, until the time to reclaim Curzon arrives.’

  ‘Emperor protect him,’ said Voldo.

  The party walked corridors where dust lay thick. The silence was oppressive, infiltrating their spirits, working itself somehow under the constant hum of their suits’ mechanisms and the chattering information of the sensoriums to suffocate them with its presence. It was a permanent, unending silence, a silence that did all it could to remind them that while their noise persisted it might seem suspended, but would return as soon as they had passed. It was the silence of deep space, of the warp: the silence of death.

  Voldo spoke only to give orders, the others to respond. They trudged onward, following the glowing line of Eskerio and Azmael’s map to their salvation. The ship was strangely proportioned, the corridors only just wide enough to accommodate the armour. It was of human build, but like so much of the hulk of unknown age or origin. Clastrin found data portals and briefly interrogated the ship’s spirit, but its databanks were empty, its records stripped away by time or trauma. There were few doors leading from the long corridor they walked, opening onto cramped rooms whose contents were ruined, or which had been crushed altogether.

  For two kilometres they walked this peculiar way. The external temperature rose with every metre, until the air reached twenty degrees.

  ‘The reactor in a nearby ship,’ said Voldo, eyeing a purple vortex on the map some way ahead of them. The ship’s prow projected into a large void, the other side of which the fusion reactor of a much larger vessel burned, locked in a perpetual cycle of matter creation and annihilation.

  They passed over a sharp bend in the corridor, where the ship had been folded upon itself. A hundred metres before them were a set of doors. They approached cautiously, Gallio’s storm bolter ready at the party’s front.

  The doors opened, powered still. They went through into a modest command module: four decks and a bridge, according to their map.

  Clastrin cast his gaze around the bridge. There were but three chairs, for a captain and a first and second pilot. There was no navigator’s throne, and nowhere else in the command module that one might be found. The bridge was weirdly undamaged. Pristine instruments lay under a layer of dust, some of their standby indicators still blinking. The lighting was functional, if dulled by age, and the gravity plates held things in their proper place. By the captain’s chair, a cup sat. The blast shields were down over the two windows.

  Clastrin extended a data probe and plugged into a port, bringing up schematics onto a filthy screen.

  ‘Single system vessel,’ said Clastrin. ‘An interplanetary ore-hauler or container ship.’ The vessel’s image, made at a time when it had been whole, showed a long, thin superstructure with space for thirty containers arrayed around and along its spine.

  ‘No warp engines,’ said Azmael.

  ‘None. But anything that plies space might find itself trapped in an agglomeration should the conditions be right,’ said Clastrin. ‘A warp storm in-system or being caught in the translation of a larger ship could have cast this craft into the empyrean, or it could have fallen into the gravitic embrace of the hulk while it drifted through real space, and been drawn with it back into the warp.’

  ‘Eerie. It is as if they have but stepped out,’ said Azmael. ‘And will return soon.’

  ‘I always find hulks so, brother,’ said Genthis. ‘They are haunted places.’

  ‘That they are,’ said Azmael, and went back to his auspex. Voldo noted that the Blood Drinkers’ battle fervour had abated, and they spoke now with the hush of learned men abroad in quiet spaces.

  ‘The great cavity that Cousin Eskerio spoke of lies outside this vessel, does it not?’ asked Alanius.

  ‘It does,’ said Eskerio. ‘The command module projects into it as an arrow penetrates a board.’

  ‘Forgemaster,’ said Alanius. ‘Can we activate the blast shields, to see our way forward?’

  ‘We can,’ said Clastrin. He did not need to examine the ship’s systems to see it was so. ‘If the ship’s windows are broken, this entire section may become subject to decompression, compromising the atmospheric perturbation and sonar detection aspects of our sensoriums. Brother-Sergeant Voldo, what say you?’

  ‘Brother Eskerio?’

  ‘The auspex indicates some atmosphere in the void, at what precise pressure, I cannot say.’

  Voldo nodded. ‘It is worth the risk. I say open them.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Clastrin.

  The Forgemaster unplugged himself and walked to the first pilot’s console. He brushed away its coating of dust and activated controls that seemed fit for children under his armoured hands. More lights flickered on around the bridge. There came a soft bell, and a request for confirmation in antique Gothic. Clastrin gave it, and the blast shields screeched open, shedding centuries of grime as they slid into their housings.

  ‘Sanguinius protect us!’ hissed Azmael.

  Through the windows, the assembled brothers of the Novamarines and the Blood Drinkers saw a metal cavern, a space captured between the hulls of two ships of overwhelming size – the one opposite them of Imperial origin, the other an alien giant whose smooth skin made up the floor and nearside wall – and into which the command module of their cargo ship protruded. A split twenty metres wide in the hull of the Imperial vessel revealed the roiling energies of an active fusion reactor within. The light it emitted reached into the cave as the rays of an old and feeble sun, illuminating parts of the hulls with stark light, and plunging their crannies into utter blackness.

  Upon the gothic detail of the crushed Imperial ship were genestealers. Scores of them, curled into foetal balls, lying atop or embracing each other with their many limbs. They stirred fitfully as they slept, their fluted bodies moving sinuously against their fellows’ as they dreamed alien dreams, their tubular tongues sliding over black teeth.

  Bathed in the light and warmth of the reactor, the genestealers rested deep in hibernation, until the chance to infect another being with their awful genes came to pass, spreading their contagion deeper into the Imperium.

  ‘Our route takes us close by this roost,’ said Clastrin. ‘It is a risk.’

  ‘There are so many of them,’ said Alanius. ‘To fight them would be a fine way to die.’

  ‘I am in no haste to embrace such glory, cousin,’ said Voldo. ‘Better to live and serve the Emperor further.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’ said Gallio. ‘How soon until these genestealers awaken to our presence and pursue us? We will fare badly against so many.’

  ‘Our route goes from this vessel into the xenos craft beneath us, and passes under the roost space,’ said Azmael. A red line blinked in the Terminators’ sensorium maps. ‘From there, we will be able to access the Imperial vessel, and make our way through it to the surface.’ The map zoomed out, showing the flank of the Imperial vessel heaved up into a low hill on the skin of the hulk.

  ‘Three more kilometres to traverse,’ said Genthis. ‘A way to go, brothers.’

  ‘The reactor will pose a problem,’ said Astomar. ‘We can expect the heat to increase, and radiation will be high. How long has that reactor burned? I doubt its fires are clean.’

  ‘You are correct,’ said Nuministon. He had not spoken for some time, and Voldo was almost surprised he was still there. ‘That is a Helios fusion reactor. I have not seen a functioning model for many years. It is thousands of years old, the knowledge to construct such a compact power source lost. Watch!’ He pointed, and the Space Marines saw a flare not u
nlike that spat out by a star spurt from the white core of the reactor. Rather than uncurling from the source as a stellar flare would, the containment fields stretched it into a fat band around the central mass. ‘That is a malfunction, the machine is compromised.’

  ‘The containment fields are not operating at optimum efficiency,’ said Clastrin.

  ‘What allows energy out, allows matter in. It is likely that the fuel sources have become contaminated with other material, or the reactor would not burn. Such a device operates with near-zero sum inputs, but input is nevertheless required on aeon-scalar periods,’ said the magos.

  ‘And impure fuel begets poison,’ said Clastrin.

  ‘How I would love to minister to it and heal its hurts! The reactor alone is of great value, the Lord Magos Explorator was correct in his assumptions about this hulk.’

  There was something in the way he said this that prompted Alanius to ask him, ‘You doubted him, magos?’

  ‘We have had our differences of opinion in the past,’ said Nuministon. His mechanical voice hid the stiffness Voldo suspected it otherwise would have held.

  ‘None of this will profit anybody if the hulk cannot be cleansed,’ said Voldo.

  ‘I agree. We must take the data I have gathered to our superiors,’ said Alanius.

  ‘Which way then, brothers?’ said Gallio.

  Eskerio pointed with his modified power fist. ‘Downwards.’

  They doubled back to the bend in the ship’s spine. They spent some minutes making sense of the magos’s soundings here, as the data was confused, but eventually it appeared that the cargo vessel’s prow had punched all the way through the alien craft to project into the cavern. The part of the alien ship that had been speared was flat, after the fashion of a broad wing, and it appeared that this had been folded over on itself at some point in the past, leading to a messy geometry in the spaces below them.

  Clastrin cut their way from the cargo craft into the alien ship. There had been no sign of the pursuing genestealers for many hours, and so Voldo allowed Clastrin the time to do his work, fearing the racket from Gallio’s chainfist would awaken the genestealers hibernating in the roost.