The Beast Arises

Zerberyn’s thumb rolled over his bolt pistol’s holster lock. It was Umbra-pattern, lacking the refinement of post-Heresy models, the various augmentations and integrations that had come with subsequent improvements in power armour design, but it was good at what it was made for and always would be. Purity through utility: that was how one proofed oneself against the unknowables of the galaxy.

He made his decision.

Guilliman’s writings spoke often of the importance of recognising the least worst option and seizing it.

‘Take us in.’

Vandis System — Mandeville point

Zerberyn felt a squeeze on his brain as though something were trying to get in. He heard whispers, and ignored them. He saw things — things he could not ignore so easily. He saw Dantalion.

Zerberyn was a relative neophyte, a recruit of the Chapter’s Eidolican era. He had never seen Oriax Dantalion, but he knew with the conviction of his genetics that it was him. Zerberyn did not speak, nor was he spoken to, but just watched as Sigismund, Alexis Polux, Demetrius Katafalque, and then Rogal Dorn himself turned their backs on the first Exemplar one by one. Zerberyn felt anger, but he was helpless to express it to these titanic figures. Without appearing to transition, Dantalion’s armour had ceased to be gold, but it had not become the unvarnished grey of Zerberyn’s own.

It was gunmetal and bronze.

Translation was complete, but this part was the worst. Those few seconds after the warp drives had powered down and the Geller field had collapsed, but the empyreal sheath remained raw and unhealed, thin enough to touch the other side with one’s mind, and for the waking nightmares that dwelled there to, if only for a few seconds, touch back.

The vision faded as the materium resealed, and Zerberyn dwelled on its lies no further.

Klaxons screamed proximity alerts and a dozen different types of weapons lock. Alert runes cycled amber and red. Their warnings went unheeded for a few critical seconds more, the unimproved brain chemistries of Dantalion

’s mortal crew requiring that extra time to recover from the ordeal of translation.

Zerberyn killed an automated low-shield sounder with a gauntlet-mash that deactivated several other warning icons and cracked the terminal.

‘Steady as she goes,’ Marcarian drooled, straight as a cane, stiffened by his augmetic brace and implant while those around were still slumped with harrowed expressions in their chairs. ‘Cycle plasma coils. Navigational shields to full power. Void shield generators to cover all quadrants. Weapon grids online. Full spectrum sweep and re-initialise main viewer. Someone find me the source of that distress beacon.’

A dulled chorus of ‘Aye, sirs’ answered him. A string of light impacts trembled through the massive vessel’s hull as the main viewscreen wiped its purity seal and shivered online. It was a default forward shot: the gothic grey armour of Dantalion’s prow. A squadron of supercharged ork fighter-bombers streaked across it, trailed by a line of explosions.

‘Shields,’ said Zerberyn.

‘Void banks to charge in three… two… one.’

A resonant harmonic thrummed over the systems’ noise and the cherub-serfs’ chorus. The fighter-bomber to the rear of the orks’ chaotic formation was swallowed up by a ball of fire as Dantalion’s port-forward void shield manifested within its fuselage and ripped the craft to pieces. A wave of static washed across the viewscreen. Zerberyn focused. His occulobe organ was designed for low-light conditions and hyperfine details, and it autonomically filtered the visual noise.

The murderous red glow of the stellar giant, Vandis, flooded the shot and robbed the void of stars. In their place, he saw explosions, propellant burns and a glittering shoal of red-lit predators. It was a void fight, and a major one. He counted at least two hundred ork cruisers, possibly more. Pre-translation inertia carried them towards the battle at several hundred kilometres per second.

‘Ship contacts!’ came the shout from the strategium, a second behind. The liaison serf there held an internal vox-horn to his ear.

‘Ours?’ said Marcarian.

‘Too many!’

A flare lit the viewer, something massive-yield thumping the forward shield hard enough to shake the deck plates of the command bridge.

‘Try to raise the rest of the fleet,’ ordered Marcarian. ‘If they haven’t joined us then we don’t stand a chance.’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘They will be here,’ said Zerberyn. ‘If even one ship received our transmission then they would have signalled also and the probability of a third vessel receiving would be doubled, and so on, exponentially. We are in the only place that any brother in receipt of those coordinates could be.’

‘We should at least be prepared to withdraw. Permission to re-actuate warp drives and lock-down for an emergency translation.’

‘Granted. Caution is always the wisest course when others fail to present themselves.’

‘Very good, lord captain.’ Marcarian stumped off to distribute orders.