The Beast Arises

The right-side screens had been combined to run a single, near-real-time feed of the second Black Templar crusade group, crudely overlain by a black grid showing the divides between the screens. They were barely moving at all now, held up in a mass of ork warships. Dantalion and her accompanying cruisers were just sliding into field, enveloped in an oil-on-water pattern of void-shield discharge as the three massive ships sailed into the orks’ heaviest ordnance. Arriving from the opposite direction, the ork carrier crunched into the rear of its escort fleet, spitting out a volume of fire equivalent to an entire Navy battlegroup, weird power squirming over its ramshackle sail. Another black cruiser blossomed into fire. From the vid-feed alone, Thane could not be sure that it was not the Interdictor.

‘Zerberyn gets himself into the right place at the right time once again. Can we get a message to him?’

‘No, lord. The carrier’s blanket denial broadcast grows exponentially more severe as you approach.’

‘Do we have any ships unengaged?’

‘Paragon

is more-or-less intact and has drive power restored.’ Kale consulted a display. ‘And Excelsior and her escorts.’

‘Transmit new orders to those ships. Intercept Dantalion with orders to escort Interdictor from the battle and prepare for immediate translation: return to Terra with all speed, it is nearer than Phall, and hope that Magneric carries information of worth. Dispatch Guilliman to accompany them.’

‘Respectfully, lord, she’s the second most powerful ship in the fleet.’

‘I expect a degree of insubordination from my First Captain, shipmaster, I do not expect it from you.’

The old shipmaster clipped his heels. ‘Aye, lord.’

‘Use it gloriously, brother,’ came Magneric’s voice through the distortion. ‘Praise be.’

‘Hold firm, Dreadnought-Marshal. Your brother, Bohemond, saved my Chapter from my stubbornness on Eidolica and you can expect the same today. Whether the Emperor wishes it or no. Magneric? Magneric!’

The projector emitted an angry hiss. A whiff of ozone. Gabbling voices. The detector picked up the orks’ gibberish frequencies and reconstituted the random noise in eerie repeat patterns and oscillating waves.

The link had been severed.

They had lost Magneric.

Seven

Vandis

The lighting on the command deck of Obsidian Sky plinked on and off, on and off. Half-second flashes of artificial light slid across machine-smooth black metal and the stiff, liveried corpses that lay across them. Plastek console frames stuffed with broken glass flashed back, each jagged piece a lens showing a reflected snapshot of a dead ship. Coolant gases spumed into the chamber from a damaged radiator assembly in the ceiling, filling the area with a vaporous, sub-zero froth.

At the aft section there was a raised platform, above which flew a white banner bearing the Sigismund cross and a blood splatter in the lower left corner. It was ringed with displays and terminals, all dead. Castellan Ralstan had taken an exploding oxygen pipe in the face. He lay on his front on the steps down to the main bridge, armour cracked and burned, arm drawn up as if to conceal the ruin of his head. Light and shadow came and passed: on, off. Shipmaster Ericus was fetched up against the aft bulkhead as though someone had shoved him against it and put a bullet through his forehead.

Down a level, into the main deck, the bodies lay more thickly. Some had been crushed under falling panels or buried under shattered glass, and now lay staring up like dead men frozen under thin ice. They had been electrocuted, burned, cut by glass shrapnel and bludgeoned by high-mass debris, most while still strapped into work station chairs. One had been reduced to a carbonaceous smear on the seat leather by a catastrophic overload of his auspex. The console was still sputtering, sparking and fizzing into the nitrogen mist.

‘Boarding torpedoes incoming,’ mumbled the Master Ordinatum, Franzek, as though drawing each word one at a time from his head. Blood matted his hair and ran down the side of his neck. His eyes were glazed. The harsh lighting intermittently exposed his blanched face. On, off. On, off. ‘I’ve never seen so many at once.’

‘Faith is the first victim of thought. Keep firing,’ Magneric answered with a metallic rumble, stepping back from the hissing hololith projector.

Dead too.

‘Firing… aye.’

Targeting grids were dead. Auto-loaders were dead.

The gunnery chief was arming whatever had been already loaded and launching it manually, as fast as his shell-shocked nervous system could still manage. Each shot sent a shudder through the ship, a nail recoil-driven into the hull. Inertial stabilisers were dead too, but the crew, what remained of it, no longer even recognised the shaking. By sheer mass, Magneric stood immovably in the middle of the command dais.

‘We deny the alien this ship, until the Emperor gives us our leave to rest.’

‘Ave Imperator,’ they replied.