The Beast Arises

On the main viewer, the wreckage of the Oberon-class slowly dispersed.

‘The beacon?’ said Zerberyn, impatiently.

‘Nothing yet, lord.’

‘Lords!’ The elated cry came from the vox-liaison. She tore off her headphones, and leapt out of her chair. ‘Fists Exemplar ships incoming. Chastened. Angel Astra. Unbroken. It’s the whole fleet.’

‘Bright skies,’ Marcarian murmured, and closed his good eye.

‘Show me,’ said Zerberyn.

The vid-feed in the oculus switched to a view dorsal aft. There were bits of coiled wire, ice-encrusted cosmic dust that had accumulated around the communication vanes, and macro-turrets around the edge of the image. Beyond the fuzz, a dozen iron-grey splinters hung in space, ranging from aegis frigates a few hundred metres long to mighty strike cruisers a kilometre in length and bristling with armament enough to waste a planetary hemisphere. Explosive shells and high-energy plasma spat between them and the loose agglomeration of ork cruisers that had strayed this far from the main battle area.

The most likely theoretical was they were a picketing force set to guard the Mandeville point. To what end, Zerberyn could only speculate, but if he was indulging in theoreticals then he might further suppose that it was to ensure that whomever it was currently engaged by the main ork battlegroup did not escape the system.

More warships translated in all the time, cutting through the empyreal sheath like knives through black silk. Each new arrival brought a burst of vox-chatter that gabbled from the vox-turret hardlines and bled into the general commotion. Void-suited tacticians hurried to update the strategium desk, while vox-personnel spoke on two, or sometimes three, lines at once in an effort to impose the pre-formulated formation protocols on the emerging fleet.

It had been for just a few short decades that the Fists Exemplar had called Eidolica their home, but for seven centuries prior their home range had been the Rubicante Flux. Their fleet was sizeable. With the exclusion of the Black Templars, whose numbers were a secret guarded even amongst brothers, the Fists Exemplar provided over half of the Last Wall’s naval power.

Zerberyn was not of a mind to let them forget it.

A huge shape slid into main view, high on Dantalion’s z-axis.

Serfs from every station rose in unison to clap and cheer it. It was a battle-barge, Dantalion’s sister ship, but even more heavily armed. Kilometre after battle-scarred kilometre of adamantium-grey crenellations bristled with macro-batteries like the armour studs on a chrono-gladiator. Gothic spires rose from its central bulk, counterbalanced by smaller ventral towers. Launch tubes, flak turrets and antennae arrays vied with the asteroid-pitted statues of warrior angels aboard the immense dorsal spine. A volley of torpedo launches from her broadside tore a slow-turning ork crusier to shreds. Dantalion rocked with the energy discharge.

‘Alcazar Remembered

,’ Marcarian confirmed with one half of a smile.

‘Welcome the Chapter Master,’ said Zerberyn in a voice that offered little of the kind. ‘Transmit our tactical data to the flagship.’

The vox-liaison frowned as she retook her seat, refitted her headset, and swivelled back to her console. Zerberyn joined her at her station.

‘A priority transmission,’ she reported. ‘It’s coming through some intense interference, but it’s definitely Last Wall.’

‘Our beacon?’

She shook her head as she worked. ‘The coordinates don’t tally. The beacon was being transmitted from a near-stationary position much closer to the Vandis star. This signal is new, and it’s coming from the system’s edge.’ She stood and shouted at the liaison working auspectoria, then dropped back into her seat as the requested read-outs squirted across to her system. ‘Residual warp backwash from twenty to twenty-five vessels suggests a recent inbound translation. An hour old, maximum. Multiple radiation sources, plasma discharge, particle spread suggestive of hostile tractor locks on ships running full ahead.’ She spun her chair towards Zerberyn and leant back to look up to him. ‘It’s a Black Templars fleet, my lord, inbound on the beacon at ninety degrees to our position. Auto-identifiers name the signalling ship the Interdictor

.’

‘Can I speak to them?’

‘I can’t guarantee you’ll hear every word.’

‘Put it on.’

The woman flicked a switch, and angry static roared from the turret’s augmitters. The sounds of alien voices blizzarded across the channel, bleedthrough from neighbouring frequencies, some breathless prattle that ran and ran and ran.

Gorkamorkagorkamorka.

‘Castellan Kasemund,’ scratched the interference-punished voice of a Space Marine. Zerberyn could pick up only odd words of what followed. ‘Crusade… recall… Phall… retaliation beacon… cruiser, Obsidian Sky… venerable…’