Battle for The Abyss (5 page)

Saphrax’s face was grim.

‘We have yet to receive word from the
Fist of Macragge
.’ The banner bearer of the honour guard let the words hang there, unwilling to voice what was implied.

‘I will not make any negative conclusions,’ Cestus replied quietly, unwilling to give in to what he feared. ‘We must believe that—’

The three astropaths slaved to the control hub began convulsing as the full force of the psychic scream made its presence felt.

Blood spurted inside the psy-skin covering them and looked hazy and bright viewed from outside it. The wasted limbs of the astropaths pressed against the material, forcing it tight, their muscles held in spasm as they writhed in agony. Cogitators set around the hub above them were spewing reams of data as the astropaths fought to control the visions rushing into their minds.

Smoke clouded the already hazy interior of the psy-skin as it rose from their decrepit bodies. Consoles sparked and exploded as wrathful electricity arced and spat. It earthed into the wizened frames of the astropaths, carried by the wires and cables, now little more than human conductors for its power. As one, they threw their heads back and a backwash of pure psychic force was unleashed in a terrible death scream that resonated throughout the room. The astropaths became a conduit for it, the strength of
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the psychic emission made many times more powerful by the volatile state of the warp.

Walls shuddering against the onslaught, the lights of Vangelis space port went out.

THE BRIDGE OF the
Furious Abyss
was like a sprawling city in miniature. The banks of cogitators were like hive-stacks rising above the streets formed by the exposed industrial ironwork of the deck. The various bridge crews sat in sunken command posts like arenas or deep harbours. Three viewscreens dominated one end of the bridge, while a raised acropolis at its heart was formed by the captain’s post. A strategium table stretched out before it from which he could raise an orrery display, showing the ship and its foes wrought in rotating brass rings.

High above the sprawling bridge was a decked clerestory where the astropathic choir of the mighty warship were slaved.

The vaulted space was shared by the Navigator’s sanctum, concealed in an antechamber so as to be secluded whilst traversing the perils of the warp.

The command throne, raised upon a hard-edged pentagonal dais, was the seat of a god.

Zadkiel was that god, looking down upon a city devoted to him.

‘Listen,’ Zadkiel bade those kneeling before him in supplication. The dulcet roar of the
Furious Abyss
’s plasma engines, even dulled by the thick adamantium plating surrounding the ship’s hull and interior, was like a war cry.

‘Listen and hear the sound of the future...’ Zadkiel was on his feet, sermonising, ‘...the sound of fate!’

Three warriors, true devotees of the Word, heeded Zadkiel’s rhetoric and stood.

‘We pledge our service to you, Lord Zadkiel,’ said the tallest of the three. He had a voice like crushed gravel and one of his eyes was blood-red, surrounded by a snarl of scar tissue. Even without the injury, his granite slab of a face would have made him a figure of fear even among his fellow Word Bearers. This was Bae-31

Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss

lanos, assault-captain and Zadkiel’s private terror weapon. A potent warrior, Baelanos lacked imagination, which made him the perfect follower in Zadkiel’s eyes. He was obedient, deadly and fiercely loyal, all fine qualities in an underling.

‘As do we all,’ Ikthalon interjected blithely. Another Astartes, Ikthalon was a company chaplain, demagogue and expert tortur-er. Unlike Baelanos, he wore his helmet in the presence of his commander, a skull-faced piece of armour with a pair of discreet horns on either side of the temple. Even through it, Ikthalon’s thinly veiled contempt was obvious. ‘Perhaps we should address the matters at hand, brother,’ he counselled, lingering sarcastically on the last word.

Zadkiel sat back down in the command throne. It was sculpted to accept his armoured frame, as if he had been born to take command of this bridge, to be the god of this warship.

‘Then let us tarry no further,’ he said, his viperous gaze lingering on Ikthalon.

‘Sensorium reports that the
Fist of Macragge
was destroyed and all weapon’s systems tested successfully, sire.’ It was Reskiel who spoke. He was a youth compared to the other Astartes on the command dais, gaunt of face with a keening hunger in his black eyes, a strange quirk of his birth. Reskiel was a veteran of many battles, despite his age, and he wore the newly fashioned studded armour of his Legion proudly, keen to baptise it with the scars of war. He was widely regarded as Zadkiel’s second, if not in an official capacity – that honour fell to Baelanos – and made it his business to know all the happenings aboard the
Furious Abyss
and report them to his master. Where Baelanos was the dutiful lap-dog, Reskiel was the eager sycophant.

‘It was as expected.’ Zadkiel’s response was terse.

‘Indeed,’ said Ikthalon, ‘but our astropaths also suggest that the stricken ship, though smitten by our righteous fury, managed to send out a distress call. I would not like to think that all our caution at commissioning the vessel’s construction in the Jovian shipyards has been undone so swiftly and needlessly.’

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Zadkiel allowed a flutter of emotion to cross his features for a moment at the news. He considered drawing his power mace and staving in Ikthalon’s skull for his persistent insubordination, but in truth, he valued the chaplain’s council and his Word.

Though he was a barb in Zadkiel’s side, even since the Great Crusade had been in its infancy, he did not couch expressions with sycophantic frippery as Reskiel was prone too, nor was he so singled-minded that he was unable to convey subtlety and the need for delicacy when required like Baelanos. Zadkiel did not trust him, but he trusted his Word and so he was tolerated.

‘It is possible that a message reached a way station, or some isolated listening spire at the edge of the segmentum, but we are well underway and there is little that any vessel can do to prevent our destiny. So it is written,’ Zadkiel said at last.

‘So it is written,’ the assembled commanders intoned.

‘Reskiel, you will maintain a close watch on the sensorium. If anything should stray into surveyor range, I want to know immediately,’ Zadkiel ordered.

‘It will be done, my lord.’ Reskiel bowed obsequiously and retreated from the dais.

‘Baelanos, Ikthalon, you have your own duties to attend to,’

Zadkiel added, dismissively, not waiting to watch them depart as he turned to regard the viewscreens before him.

‘Engines,’ said Zadkiel, and at once the central viewscreen blinked into life, the bridge lights dimmed and the image on the screen lit the miniature city in hard moonlight. It showed the
Furious Abyss
’s cavernous engine room, the prostrate cylinders of the plasma reactors dwarfing the crewmen who scrabbled around them in their routine duties. The crew wore the deep crimson of the Word Bearers; they were servants of Lorgar just as the Word Bearers were, devoted to the primarch’s Word and grateful for such a certain place in the universe.

They did not know the details of the Word, of course. They were ignorant of the web of allegiances and oaths that Lorgar had created among his brother primarchs, or of the mission that would seal the inevitability of the Word Bearers’ victory. They
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did not need to know. It was enough for them that they laboured under the wishes of their primarch.

Amongst the piteous menials, a tall figure stood out. Looming from the darkness, he was swathed in black robes and bore the cog symbol of the Mechanicum around his neck on a chain of bolts.

‘Magos Gureod, you are to keep us at a steady speed, but be ready to increase our plasma engines to maximum capacity.’

‘It will be done,’ the magos replied, his artificial voice relayed through a series of synthesisers. Gureod’s face was hidden by the massive cowl over his head, but a pair of blinking red diodes was vaguely discernible in the void where his eyes should have been.

Odd protrusions in the sweep of his long robes suggested further augmetics, and his withered hands, crossed over his abdomen, offered the only clue that Magos Gureod was indeed human. At the order, he withdrew into the shadows again, doubtless heading for the sanctum and deep communion with the machine spirit.

Turning to another screen, Zadkiel uttered, ‘Ordnance.’

The crowded munitions deck was displayed there. Weapon Master Malforian was in residence, barking harsh commands to crews of sweating orderlies and gang ratings, toiling in the steam-filled half dark of the cluttered deck. Full racks of torpedoes stood gleaming, fresh from the Martian forges. The ordnance deck stretched across the breadth of the
Furious Abyss
beneath the prow, and like the rest of the ship it was wrought in a bare industrial style that had an elegance of its own.

Realising he was being summoned, Malforian attended to his captain at once.

‘Keep broadsides primed and at ready status, Master Malforian,’ Zadkiel instructed him. ‘The test against the
Fist of Macragge
was to your satisfaction, yes?’

‘Yes, my lord. Your will shall be done.’ The lower portion of the weapon master’s face was supplanted by a metal grille and he spoke in a tinny monotone as a result; most of his jaw and chin had been destroyed during the early years of the Great Crusade
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Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss

while he was aboard the
Galthalamor
, fighting the ork hordes of the Eastern Fringe. The vessel, an ancient Retribution-class battle cruiser, was all but annihilated in the conflict.

Zadkiel dismissed the weapons master and blanked the pict screens. Coding a sequence into his command throne, Zadkiel felt the hydraulic pistons at work in the dais as he was slowly, majestically, raised above the bridge and brought level with the massive viewport overlooking the vessel’s prow. The endless expanse of real space stretched beyond it. Somewhere within that curtain of stars was Macragge, home world of Guilliman’s Legion. It was the stage of his destiny.

‘Navigator Esthemya,’ said Zadkiel, staring into the infinite.

‘My lord,’ a female voice chimed through the vox set into the command throne.

‘Take us to Macragge.’

‘Vectors are locked, captain,’ Esthemya informed him from the secluded cocoon in the clerestory, a hard-edged blister that was surrounded by spines of data medium like the spires of a cathedral.

Zadkiel nodded, turning to face the viewscreen in front of him as the Navigator went to her duties.

The infinite gaped before him, and Zadkiel was acutely aware of the power that lay beyond the veil of real space and the pacts he had made to harness its limitless strength. Before the countenance of his enemies, aboard this mighty vessel, he would be god-like. There was no other ship in existence that could do what the
Furious Abyss
was destined to do. It alone had the power to achieve the mission that Kor Phaeron had charged them with.

Only the
Furious Abyss
could get close enough, could endure the awesome defences of Macragge to unleash its deadly payload.

Icons in his command throne lit up with the acquisition of their new heading, bathing Zadkiel in an aura of his own personal heaven.

‘Like a god,’ he whispered.

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Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss

EVERY EMERGENCY KLAXON had gone off at once in the control hub of Coralis Dock at Vangelis space port. Cestus could barely hear the thoughts in his head. Light flickered sporadically from the warning readouts on every command surface, casting the darkened control hub like some monochromatic animation. The astropathic choir bucked and kicked, and spat blood beneath the psy-skin in a collective seizure.

‘Station captain, report,’ bellowed Cestus.

Falkman was reeling, trying to tear the cables from his skull as they pumped a screaming torrent of information into his mind.

Brynngar went to the side of the human at once, preventing Falkman from ripping out more cables, determined that the station master would do his duty.

‘The hub reactor is overloading,’ the station captain snarled through gritted teeth, trying desperately to hold on. ‘The psychic jolt must have started a chain reaction in our electrical systems.

The reactor must be shut down or it will destabilise.’

Cestus’s face, lit up intermittently in readout flares and the bursts of warning strobes, held a question.

‘The resulting explosion will vapourise the station, this dock and all of us.’

The Ultramarine captain turned to the assembled Astartes in the control hub.

‘Saphrax, stay here and maintain control over the situation,’ he ordered with a meaningful glance at Falkman. ‘Try to salvage whatever you’re able to from the astropathic choir.’

‘But my captain—’

‘Do it!’ Cestus would not be argued with, even with a battle-brother so seldom disposed to querying orders as Saphrax.

‘Whatever was in that message was important; I can feel it in my very marrow. It must be recovered.’

‘What of the rest of us?’ asked Antiges, barley registering the flying embers of sparks spitting across the chamber.

‘We’re going to save the dock.’

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Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss

‘YOU ARE NO Techmarine. How do you plan on shutting down the reactor?’ Brynngar shouted against the din, sparks showering him from cogitator cables above.

Although the Space Wolf’s face was almost next to Cestus’s ear, the Ultramarine could only just hear him. The droning reactor was a thunderous pulse in the subterranean access tunnels. After verbally guiding the Astartes to an antechamber below the control hub and a reinforced access portal that would lead them to the reactor, Falkman had neglected to provide them with the necessary instruction to shut the device down, the fact of his passing out from shock a major contributing factor to the oversight.