Authors: David Annandale
‘I am recalling the reconnaissance squads,’ Castigon says. I nod. He is right to do so. There is nothing more to learn here. I am now given to doubt whether there would, after all, be anything on the planet worth finding.
The question is rendered moot as the last of the gunships is docking with the
Crimson Exhortation
. There is a sudden explosion of vox traffic coming from Supplicium Tertius. The transmissions are bedlam, but the clamour of voices is clear because of the uniformity of the message. Tertius is screaming for help. The
Exhortation
receives pict feeds whose images shake, swerve and break up altogether. They are documents whose very assembly is the expression of desperation. They bear witness to riot, terror, madness. The streets of the cities are turning into massive brawls, the inhabitants swarming over each other like warring ants. Chaos (let me call it by its name) is spreading over the planet like a slick of promethium. The rapidity of the infection is remarkable. When we arrived in-system, we were in contact with the spaceport on Tertius, and there was no hint that anything was awry. Now, a day later, as we race to leave the orbit of Secundus and ride hard for Tertius, I know that we could well be too late. So does every warrior aboard this vessel. We know this, but we shall not allow it to be so. If will alone could move our ship, we would already be at anchor over the planet.
Castigon tries to hail one control node after another. Spaceports, planetary defence force bases, the lord-governor, working his way down to whatever nobles or commanding officers are mentioned in our records of Tertuis. He is forced to give up. Order is rapidly collapsing on Tertius. It occurs to me that the only minds we might save from this disaster will be our own.
The transmissions become more troubling during our journey to Tertius. Between the close orbits of the two planets and their approaching conjunction, our voyage is a short one. It is also far too long. The clamour rises to a shriek, and then the voices plummet into a far louder silence. The pict feeds vanish too. Before they do, they grace us with a mosaic of paroxysm.
As the
Crimson Exhortation
streaks towards a world now covered by an ominous calm, Castigon gathers his officers in the strategium. Stolas and the others create extra space for me around the tacticarium table. I exist, for them as for myself, in a sphere of shadow. I think of it as symbolic, but it appears to have a real force. The living, either pushed or recoiling, are distanced from the unknowable thing in their midst. I am the resurrected and the recently born. The body that was Calistarius walks. The mind that animates it is Mephiston. Calistarius was no more than than a prologue to me.
Stolas asks, ‘If all communication has ceased, are we not already too late?’
Castigon does not hesitate. ‘Collapse will precede extinction,’ he pronounces. ‘It will take some weeks for even the most determined population to kill itself. Crisis has befallen the people of Tertius under our watch, and we shall not fail them.’
He speaks for us all. We come to Tertius not as Angels of Death, but as Salvation.
‘We must destroy the obscenity,’ Sergeant Gamigin says, his voice soft yet edged with righteous anger. It is the anger that will do battle with rage. He has felt the touch of the enemy, and will retaliate with a passion fuelled by justice. He, too, speaks for us all. Whatever foe is attacking Supplicium, be it xenos or daemon, we will find it, and we will exterminate it so utterly, not even its memory shall remain.
And then, in the next second, it finds us first. The collision alert sounds. Helmsman Ipos bellows orders. The ship moves ponderously to evade. We all face forwards. We witness our near destruction.
The
Crimson Exhortation
has come upon a dark ship. It is even more massive than the strike cruiser. Utterly without light, it is a deeper night against the void. It passes over us, and for minutes we are swallowed by a presence that is both shadow and mass. When this happens, when we can no longer see the stars, there is no sense of movement, no sense of the passing of this great vessel. Instead, there is only the great weight of total absence, and it is easy to believe that we have entered an eternal night. The bottom of the stranger’s hull brushes the top of our spires, shearing them off. But then the ships part, ours shuddering as Ipos fights to make her angle down just a little bit faster, the other coasting on with dead serenity.
Damage is minimal. The
Exhortation
comes around, and the scanning begins. The other ship appears to be drifting. It is without power, and the augurs find no trace any sort of radiation. ‘From the Mordian fleet?’ asks Stolas. ‘Perhaps the crew succumbed to the rage plague as the ship tried to leave,’ he continues.
‘No,’ I say. I am unsatisfied. The coincidence of our near-collision nags at me. It is simply too improbable. In the vastness of the void, for two specks of dust to encounter one another, something more than chance must be at work, and this ship cannot be just another tomb of Guardsmen.
The configuration of the ship, beyond its great size, is difficult to make out at first. This is not just because of its darkness. Though it is solid enough, there is a profound vagueness to the form.
‘That is a battle-barge,’ Ipos calls out, startled.
He is correct. He is also wrong. The shape is, it is true, based on that of an Adeptus Astartes battle-barge. But there are insufficient details, and much that is there seems wrong. The silhouette is distorted. The hull is too long, the bridge superstructure too squat, the prow so pointed and long it is a caricature. No matter how much illumination we pour onto the ship, it defies the eye. It will not come into proper focus. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It is not a battle-barge. It is the memory of one.’ I mean what I say, even if I am not sure how such a thing has come to be. I am not speaking metaphorically. What drifts through space before us is a ship as it would be imperfectly remembered.
Then a detail that is not blurred comes into view. The ship’s name:
Eclipse of Hope
.
‘It’s a ghost,’ Dantalion says.
I frown at the terminology, not least because it seems to be accurate. The
Eclipse of Hope
is known to me. It is known to all of us. The battle-barge disappeared during the fifth Black Crusade. Five thousand years ago. Worse: the ship was a Blood Angels vessel. I dislike its existence more and more. Its presence here cannot be a coincidence. The power necessary to orchestrate this ‘chance’ encounter is immense.
‘Is it really the–’ Gamigin begins.
‘No.’ I cut him off. ‘That ship is destroyed.’ It must be, after five millennia in the empyrean. The thing that bears the name now is a changeling, though at a certain, dark level, it is intimately linked with the original. Somehow, the collective memories of the
Eclipse of Hope
, or the memory of a single being of terrible power, achieved such potency that an embodiment has occurred. Its manifest solidity is extraordinary. I have never known a warp ghost to have so much material presence. It must represent a concentration of psychic power such as has never been imagined. It...
I turn to Ipos. ‘Can we plot the trajectory of this ship’s passage through the system?’
‘A moment, Chief Librarian.’ Ipos appears to slump in his throne. I can see his consciousness slip down the mechadendrites that link his skull to the machine-spirit and cogitators of the
Crimson Exhortation
. On the bridge, navigation servitors begin chanting numbers in answer to unheard questions. After a few moments, Ipos returns to an awareness of the rest of us. The results of his efforts appear on a tacticarium screen. If the
Eclipse of Hope
has maintained a steady course, she passed near Supplicium Secundus, and through the centre of the Mordian fleet.
‘Captain,’ I say to Castigon, ‘that is the carrier of the rage plague. Destroy it, and perhaps there will be something to save of Supplicium Tertius.’
The phantom remains dark as the
Crimson Exhortation
manoeuvres into position for the execution. The immense shadow does not change direction. Its engines do not flare. No shields or guns flash to life. It coasts, slow leviathan, serene juggernaut, messenger of mindless destruction.
No. No, I am wrong. I am guilty of underestimating the enemy. There is nothing mindless here. The spectre of a Blood Angels battle-barge unleashes a plague whose symptoms might as well be those of the Red Thirst. There is a hand behind this. There is mockery. There is provocation that warrants a retaliation most final. But how to find the hand behind this horror?
That question must wait. The
Eclipse of Hope
is the paramount concern. It has almost destroyed an entire system through its mere presence. If its journey is not stopped, untold Imperial worlds could fall to its madness. The
Eclipse of Hope
must die a second time. Today. Now.
How? I wonder.
The
Crimson Exhortation
is in position. On Castigon’s orders, Ipos has taken us some distance from the phantom. The strike cruiser is great dagger aimed at the flank of the battle-barge. Beyond the
Eclipse of Hope
, there is nothing but the void. Supplicium Tertius is still some distance away, but Ipos has placed it safely at our starboard. It is important that there be nothing for a great distance in front of us except our target. Castigon has ordered the use of the nova cannon.
‘Conventional weapons will do no harm to a warp ghost,’ I tell him.
‘It is solid enough to have hit us,’ Castigon replies. ‘It broke iron and stone. It can be broken in turn.’ He turns to Ipos. ‘Helmsmaster, are we ready?’
‘In a moment, captain.’ We have never had the luxury of so passive an opponent on which to use the gun. Ipos takes the opportunity to triple-check all of his calculations and run through his instrument adjustments one more time. When he finds no errors, he signals Castigon.
I can feel the build-up in the ship’s machine-spirit. It is excited to be using this weapon again. The nova cannon is a creation of absolute power, because it destroys with absolute efficiency. We are merely its acolytes, awakening it from its slumber whenever we have need of its divine wind.
‘Fire,’ Castigon orders.
The deck trembles. The entire ship vibrates from the forces unleashed in the firing of the nova cannon. The weapon is almost as long as the hull. The recoil jolts the frame of the
Exhortation
. The cannon is not a weapon of precision, but the shot is as close to point-blank range as is possible with the cannon without destroying ourselves in the process. The projectile flashes across the void, injuring space itself. It hits the
Eclipse of Hope
in the centre of its mass. There is a flare of blinding purity. It is at this moment that the cannon warrants its name. The explosion reaches out for the
Crimson Exhortation
, but falls short. Even so, there is another tremor as the shockwave hits us. We have hurled one of the most powerful weapons in human history at the
Eclipse of Hope
.
It doesn’t notice.
The dark serenity is undisturbed. The ghost ship continues its steady drift towards Supplicium Tertius, bringing its plague of final wrath. The bridge and the strategium of the
Crimson Exhortation
are silent as we stare into a future haunted by the
Eclipse of Hope
. Within hours, one ship will have extinguished all human life in a system. It will have done so with no weapons, no struggle, no strategy. Its mere passage will have been enough. And if the phantom should reach other, more crowded systems? Or cross paths with a fleet in transit? Vectors of contagion, visions of hell: my mind is filled by the plague spreading its corroding ifluence over the entire galaxy.
The
Eclipse of Hope
must be stopped. If nothing in the
Crimson Exhortation
’s arsenal will avail, then one alternative remains.
‘I will lead a boarding party,’ I announce. ‘The vessel must be killed from within.’
‘Can you walk in a ghost?’ Castigon asks.
‘It is solid enough to have hit us,’ I echo.
‘If that is the source of the plague,’ Dantalion muses, ‘then entering it will be fraught with great moral peril.’
‘Most especially for a Blood Angel,’ I add. The Flaw will be sorely felt in this situation.
The Chaplain nods. ‘The threat does seem rather precisely targeted.’
‘That is no coincidence,’ I say. ‘It is also a risk we must run.’
Castigon nods, but his expression is doubtful. ‘How do you plan to kill a ghost?’ he asks.
‘I will discover that in due course.’ I turn to go. ‘But shouldn’t one revenant be able to destroy another?’
We do not use boarding torpedoes. We cannot be sure that they would be capable of drilling through the spectre’s hull. Instead, the
Bloodthorn
transports my squad to the
Eclipse of Hope
. This is to be an exorcism. On board with me, then, are Epistolary Stolas, Sanguinary Priest Albinus, Chaplain Dantalion and Techmarine Phenex. Sergeant Gamigin is present, too. He was insistent upon coming, even though it seems that this mission requires a different set of skills. He has faith enough, however, and having been touched by the dread ship’s influence, he is hungry for redemption.
I sit in the cockpit with pilot Orias as the
Bloodthorn
approaches the landing bay door of the battle-barge. The door does not open. This is not a surprise. What is striking is the way in which the details of the hull resolve themselves. They become clearer not because we draw nearer, but because we are looking at them. The sealed bay door has a material presence it did not a few minutes ago. I am aware, in my peripheral vision, that the surrounding hull is still blurry.
Orias has noticed the same phenomenon. ‘How is this possible?’ he wonders.
‘It is feeding on our memories,’ I answer. ‘We know what a battle-barge looks like. It is supplementing itself with our own knowledge.’
I can see the anger in the set of Orias’s shoulder plates. His resentment is righteous. We are witnessing a monstrous blasphemy. Still, we have also learned something. We know more about how our foe works.