Battle for The Abyss (20 page)

‘Speaking,’ he replied, more irritably than he’d intended. The confrontation with Brynngar in the medi-bay waiting room was weighing on his mind, that and whatever Mhotep was hiding from them behind that veneer of indifference.

‘Meet me on the bridge at once.’

Cestus sighed deeply at the admiral’s curt response. He had intended to patrol the lower aft decks with Antiges. In the wake of the officer of the watch’s death, together with all of his most experienced armsmen, the ship was short-handed. The Astartes captain had taken it upon himself to make up the shortfall and ensure that no other unforeseen difficulties arose for whatever time remained of their warp passage.

Given Admiral Kaminska’s tone, the patrol would have to wait, so Cestus and Antiges headed for the bridge.

KAMINSKA KEPT A lean bridge when not in combat. Crewmen at the sensorium, navigation and engineering helms were all that were present. The admiral was standing at a table illuminated by a hololithic star map. She looked ragged as he approached her, with dark rings around her eyes and a greyish pallor to her complexion.

Cestus couldn’t help think how long it had been since she had slept. An Astartes could go for several days without, but Kaminska was merely human. He wondered how long she could keep going.

‘My lord,’ she said, acknowledging the giant Astartes.

‘Admiral. What is it you wish to bring to my attention?’

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Kaminska indicated the star map in front of her. It showed the sector of the galaxy around the dense galactic core. The core was impassable, and so much of the map was taken up with a blank void. Notations and calculations were scrawled in the margins.

Beside the map was a printout from one of the sensorium pict screens. It was a close-up of the
Furious Abyss
’s hull.

‘See this?’ said Kaminska, indicating a white plume issuing from the side of the Word Bearers ship. The grainy resolution made it look like gas was being vented.

‘They have an air leak?’

‘Better than that,’ said Kaminska. ‘It’s damage to the coolant lines. If they push the engines, the plasma reactors will burn up, and, pursued by
this
ship, if they want to stay ahead of us, they’ll have to push the engines.’

Cestus smiled grimly at the sudden turn in fortune. It was small recompense for all they’d lost.

‘So the
Furious Abyss
will have to make dock to effect repairs,’

the Ultramarine guessed.

‘Yes. They’ll also be reloading ordnance and using the time to service their fighters after the battle outside the Tertiary Coreward Transit.’

‘Show me the location, admiral,’ said Cestus, assuming that Kaminska had already planned their strategy in part.

Kaminska laid her finger on the hololithic display in triumph.

‘Outside the Solar System there aren’t many orbital docks that can support a ship that size.’

The Bakka system was already circled on the map.

‘Bakka,’ said Cestus. ‘My Legion mustered there for the Karan-thas Crusade. It’s the Imperial Army’s staging post for half the galactic south.’

‘It has the only docks between the galactic core and Macragge that could handle the
Furious Abyss
,’ Kaminska told him. ‘I’d bet my commission that this is where they’ll head.’

Cestus thought for a moment. A plan was forming.

‘How long before we break warp?’

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‘Several hours yet, but delay or not, we can’t beat the
Furious
Abyss
in a straight fight.’

‘Tell me this, admiral,’ Cestus said, looking into Kaminska’s eyes. ‘When is a ship most vulnerable?’

Kaminska smiled despite her weariness.

‘When she’s at anchor.’

Cestus nodded. Turning away from the admiral, he raised the other Astartes captains on the vox array and told them to meet him in the conference room immediately.

‘WHAT NEWS HAVE you, Brother Zadkiel?’ mouthed the supplicant.

Somehow, the creature’s lolling mouth formed the words in such a way that Kor Phaeron’s short temper and self-confidence were perfectly enunciated.

‘We are on our way, my lord,’ said Zadkiel, bowing.

Kor Phaeron was one of the arch commanders of the Legion, foremost in Lorgar’s reckoning. He was the primarch’s greatest champion and it was he, this ancient warrior of countless battles, that would command the forces to attack Calth where Guilliman mustered and destroy the Ultramarines utterly. It was a singular honour to be in Kor Phaeron’s presence, albeit across the infinity of warp space, and Zadkiel was at once humbled by the experience. It was not an emotion he had great affinity with.

The supplicant chamber of the
Furious Abyss
was bathed in darkness, but the presence of the astropathic choir behind the supplicant was powerful enough to remove the need for light.

The choir consisted of eight astropaths, but the
Furious
’s astral cohort differed from those on any Imperial ship. The fact that there were eight of them suggested their instability. The
Furious
Abyss
’s route through the warp, and the forces brought to bear on it, eroded the mind of an astropath with dismaying speed, and while such creatures were all blind, they did not have the heavy ribbed cables running from each eye socket attaching them to the macabre contraption clamped around the supplicant’s swollen cranium.

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‘How goes your progress?’ asked the mighty champion of the Word Bearers.

‘Half a day longer in the warp, until we reach the fringes of the galactic core. We must make vital repairs at Bakka, before heading onwards to Macragge.’

‘I recall no such deviation in the mission plan, Zadkiel.’ Despite the fact that Kor Phaeron was doubtless aboard the Word Bearers battle-barge the
Infidus Imperator
, in deep communion with its own astropathic choir and speaking through a flesh puppet, his tone and manner were still dangerous.

‘During a brief sortie with a fleet of Imperial ships we sustained minor damage that could not be ignored, my lord,’ Zadkiel explained more hurriedly than he liked.

‘A military action?’ Kor Phaeron’s disdain was clear. ‘Did any survive?’

‘A single cruiser pursues us yet through the warp, liege.’

‘So they do not seek to raise a warning back on Terra,’ mused the arch champion, his considered tone at odds with the slack-jawed, drooling visage of the supplicant. ‘A pity. I suspect Sor Talgron is itching in his traitor’s shackles.’

‘I trust that Brother Talgron would have acquitted himself with distinction, Kor Phaeron.’

In the eyes of Zadkiel, Sor Talgron’s mission was not a desirable one. The lord commander was to remain in the Solar System, his four companies ostensibly guarding Terra, in order to maintain the pretence that Lorgar still sided with the Emperor when in fact, he had been instrumental in the Warmaster’s defection.

‘It matters not, my lord. The prospect of word reaching Terra should not concern us. The warp’s disquiet would prevent any warning getting to Macragge.’

‘I disagree.’ The supplicant sneered in an echo of Kor Phaeron’s idiosyncratic expression. ‘Any deviation from the plan as written holds the potential for disaster. The entire Word could go disobeyed!’

‘We will be a few hours at Bakka at the most, exalted lord,’ said Zadkiel plaintively, wary of his master’s wrath. ‘Then we will be
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on our way. If our pursuer catches up with us, she will be destroyed as her sister ships were. In any case we will not be late; our passage through the warp was swift. But what of you, my lord?’

‘We’ve joined up with the other elements of the Legion and all is proceeding as written.’

‘Calth has no hope.’

‘None, my brother.’

The supplicant lolled back, drooling blood as the connection was broken. The astropathic choir sank into silence, only their ragged breathing suggesting the great effort required to maintain the link across the immaterium.

Zadkiel regarded the dead supplicant with detached interest. It was interesting to him to see how easily their physical forms could be destroyed when their minds were so strong. He considered that he would like to test that theory.

‘All is well, my lord?’ asked Ultis. The novice was standing behind Zadkiel.

‘All is well, novice,’ said Zadkiel. ‘You will join Baelanos at Bakka, Ultis. Take the Scholar Coven. They will know to obey you.’

Ultis saluted. ‘It will be an honour, admiral.’

‘One you have earned, novice. Now, be about your duties.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Ultis turned smartly and headed for the cell deck where the Scholar Coven would be undergoing their scheduled meditation-doctrine training.

Zadkiel watched him go and smiled darkly. Such potential, such relentless ambition; the upstart would soon learn the folly of overreaching.

Soon, Zadkiel told himself, forcing down a thrill of excitement.

Soon, Guilliman will burn and Lorgar will rule the stars.

Zadkiel could feel that time approaching. That age was in its infancy, but it only needed time to come about. Zadkiel knew this as surely as he had ever known anything, because it was written.

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THE
WRATHFUL
BROKE out of the warp, almost gasping in relief as it slid back into real space.

The vessel’s hull was torn and scorched, and chunks of its engine cowlings were ripped out. The winds of the warp had carved strange patterns into its armour plate around the prow and all over the underside. Claws had raked deep gouges all over the upper hull and torn turrets from their mountings.

Sitting in her command throne, Admiral Kaminska looked out of the viewport and saw that the
Wrathful
had not emerged alone.

Leprous and wretched with its pitted, rusting hull and disease-ridden ports, the
Fireblade
limped into existence alongside them.

It was a ship of the damned, the thousands of souls aboard condemned to endless, torturous oblivion.

Such a thing could not be allowed to endure.

Kaminska gave the order to train laser batteries on the decrepit vessel. There was a few seconds’ pause when the
Wrathful
unleashed a blistering salvo of fire. Without operational shields, the
Fireblade
crumpled under the onslaught. A few seconds more and all that remained of the blighted escort ship was a scorched wreck and space debris.

It was a duty that gave Kaminska no pleasure, but necessary all the same, much like the expulsion of their own dead. It was bad luck to keep the deceased on board, not to mention unhygienic.

Bodies were never returned to their home port in the Saturnine Fleet. What the void killed, it kept.

The tiny gleaming sparks that fell away from the
Wrathful
were corpses enclosed in body bags, reflecting the light of the star Bakka that burned in a magnesium spark a few light hours away.

Much closer was Bakka Triumveron, a titanic gas cloud far bigger than the Solar System’s Jupiter, bright yellow streaked with violet and ringed with scores of shimmering bands of ice and rock. Bakka was a mystery, its gaseous form far too stormy and strange to admit any craft, while its rings were death-traps many times more lethal than the rings of Saturn. Bakka’s outlying moons, however, were habitable, each one almost the size of Ter-144

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ra and all of them heavily populated. Rogelin, Sanctuary, Half Hope, Grey Harbour: these hive cities were just fledglings compared to the teeming pinnacles of the Solar System, but they were still home to billions of Imperial citizens. The Bakka system was one of the most populated in the segmentum, certainly the largest concentration of human life this close to the galactic core.

Bakka Triumveron’s fourteenth moon had no cities, but instead was enclosed within a thin black spider web that looked like some planetary disease. It was, in fact, the underlying structure of its orbital docks, held over the moon so that they could benefit from its enormous stores of geothermal energy. The moon was uninhabited, thanks to its relentlessly shifting tectonic plates and accompanying cataclysms, but the dockyards above Triumveron 14 were some of the main reasons why Bakka was populated at all.

THREE ASSAULT-BOATS headed out from the launch bays of the
Wrathful
. They approached the farthest docking spike of Bakka Triumveron 14 and did so with stealth and subterfuge. It was imperative that they not be discovered by the enemy. It also meant that the troops on board would have a long trek to the
Furious Abyss
.

Three assault-boats; three discreet combat formations. Skraal joined his Legion warriors in one. Their mode of approach was a central avenue between overlooking docking towers, decks sprawling out from jutting bartizans, and the World Eaters and their captain were to take the lead. Two flanks branched out from the central avenue and these channels would be taken by the Blood Claws, led by Brynngar in spite of the Space Wolf’s earlier altercation with Cestus, and a second group of World Eaters led by the only Ultramarine in the raiding party.

Antiges sat bolt upright in the flight couch of the gloom-drenched troop hold of an assault-boat as they made their way closer to the gaseous expanse that was Bakka Triumveron and the moon that would support their embarkation. He was the only Ultramarine aboard the assault-boat, accompanied, as he was, by
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two combat-squads of Skraal’s remaining World Eaters. To Antiges’s mind they were brutal warriors, festooned with the trophies of war, crude kill-markings like badges of honour carved into their armour. Each and every one was possessed of a murderous mien, a faint echo of their primarch’s battle rage.

Dimly, as if the infinite expanse of black space that existed between them had smothered it, Antiges recalled his last conversation with his captain.