The void ahead was full. It was jam-packed, choked up, rammed with movement and fire. Everything was whirling, spiralling, like the aftermath of some colossal explosion. Debris tumbled towards them, some of it clouds of micro-fragments, some pieces as large as hab-blocks.

  ‘Down, down, down!’ ordered Jorundur, sending the Amethyst Suzer­aine into a steep dive, before kicking in a twist that made the ship’s structure lurch back the other way.

  Wreckage hit the void shields with heavy smacks, exploding into smaller pieces as the barriers flexed under stress. Something absolutely massive – the exposed plasma-train of a starship, possibly – rolled overhead, narrowly missing taking the galleon’s topmost spires off. Jorundur pulled off more tight manoeuvres, sliding through the debris clouds, before feeding more power to the burners and sending the Amethyst Suzeraine surging straight ahead.

  ‘It’s not all wreckage,’ Bjargborn announced, diligently filtering through the riot of signals even as the ship plunged and tilted to avoid them. ‘We have incoming intact units, weapons powered, tracking our position.’

  Gunnlaugur said nothing. He could see the same augur-readings, and could process them far faster. More than three hundred ships were threading their way through the confusion, running hard, a whole gamut of types and displacements. Many were system runners little different to the Hlaupnir – short-range craft with the bare minimum warp capa­city. Others were absolute leviathans – mass conveyers, troop carriers, Chartist-registered haulers, even what looked like an ancient colony ship. They were all surging towards the Mandeville gates – the points of safe entry to the warp – but in such concentrations, with so many major gravity wells moving in such relative proximity, it was carnage.

  ‘Away, away,’ muttered Jorundur, hauling the galleon hard-starboard to bring them out of contact with a looming troop carrier. For a heart-stopping few moments they were running alongside the vast craft, barely a few hundred yards off its flanks, skidding across its vertiginous hull so close you could see the regiment sigils on the access portals.

  ‘Weapons discharge detected,’ Suaka called out over the increasing hub­bub on the bridge. ‘Not aimed at us – range six hundred miles, bearing two-forty-five…’

  ‘They’re mauling each other,’ grunted Jorundur, working hard to bring the galleon up into a steep climb before it smashed headlong into another oncoming hauler. The volume of ships was thinning, but slowly. Three system runners shot past, tilting on their axes before haring down narrowing chasms of free space. Jorundur applied more power, nudging them up and out of the worst congestion.

  Just as he did so, on the extreme edge of the sprawling ship-clusters, faster-moving blips appeared on the sensor grids.

  ‘Get me a look at those,’ Gunnlaugur ordered.

  ‘Void-fighters,’ Bjargborn replied. ‘Recognise nineteen Swift-death-pattern, thirty Fury interceptors, various call signs, coming in fast into starboard-ahead quadrant.’

  ‘Registering Imperial Navy attack wing idents from all squadrons,’ Suaka added.

  ‘They’re not Navy,’ said Ingvar, glancing at the incoming data. ‘Whatever they’re telling you.’

  ‘Aye, Archenemy presence confirmed,’ Bjargborn called out. ‘They’re going for the carriers.’

  ‘Moving to intercept,’ said Jorundur.

  ‘Belay that,’ snapped Gunnlaugur. ‘We’re not here for them – remain on course.’

  Everything was moving rapidly, a vast orbital ballet of lumbering void-giants surrounded by darting small fry. From their vantage it all looked random and purposeless, until Jorundur succeeded in threading the ship further out from the Mandeville horizon and patterns began to emerge.

  Almost everything was trying to get away. The carriers were packed with living souls, civilian and military. The biggest of them were ­heavily armed and escorted by gunships and fighter wings, but many more were fending for themselves with doubtful armaments and no support. A piti­ful few Navy craft appeared to be attempting to impose some kind of order, but they were hopelessly overwhelmed. Amid all of that, predators had scented blood and closed in, strafing and lancing into the fringes of the vast conglomerations. Every few moments, a big hauler would break from the pack and go for the Mandeville horizon, calculating its position furiously to avoid proximal mass distortions. Those that got the gamble right would tear into the ether amid snarls of crackling warp energies. Those that got it wrong would blow themselves into scrap, their crews smeared across a half-formed mess of tortured physics.

  The Amethyst Suzeraine was virtually the only ship trying to go in the other direction, to crunch its way through the spiralling shoal of desperate vessels and break clear for the planet itself. Anything else that wasn’t trying to get away was either sensor-blind and drifting, or was commanded by an enemy that grew stronger with each new arrival.

  ‘Additional incoming hostile targets,’ Bjargborn went on. ‘Signals indicate battle cruiser-class vessel on the cusp of materialisation.’

  ‘You heard the pack leader,’ said Jorundur. ‘Full burn, dead ahead.’

  ‘Can you pick up the target squadron in all this?’ Ingvar asked. ‘Any Ecclesiarchy idents?’

  ‘Negative, lord,’ replied Suaka, working hard at her station. ‘If they’ve not been destroyed already, they must be far ahead of us.’

  ‘Then keep running,’ ordered Gunnlaugur darkly. ‘We get to Ojada, then we fight.’

  It felt hollow to leave a combat zone without firing a shot. Getting out of the engagement, once the initial shock of re-entry had been handled by Jorundur, hadn’t proved hard, but watching the embattled ships shrink in the realviewers, knowing that only a fraction of them would make it to their translation points, was unpleasant.

  Olgeir hadn’t said a word during the engagement itself, and said nothing once Jorundur had found a path out of it and cranked up the galleon to its turgid top speed. He’d watched the firefights from a distance, like all the others, suppressing the urge to leap into a gunship and start taking out enemy void-fighters.

  The same thing had happened to him on Kefa Primaris, where he’d been compelled to order an evacuation rather than help the planet defend itself. Every engagement he could remember since then had been a similar exercise in damage limitation – getting out before the enemy could come back at them, making compromises rather than unfurling their claws. This world, at least, promised to deliver a true confrontation, albeit one with an adversary who had remained elusive for too long.

  He hefted his heavy bolter, cradling it two-handed. Just like every piece of equipment the pack used, it was battle-burned, chipped, scratched and worn at the edges. After each encounter, every time, he’d taken it apart, stripped it down, cleaned its sacred components and spoken the words of warding over them, just as the Iron Priests had taught him. The weapon had a spirit of its own, one that Olgeir respected, recognised and nurtured. Just like him, the bolter wanted to sing. It wanted to unlock its throat against an enemy worthy of its prestige.

  Sigrún, it was called. It had been called that for longer than Olgeir had carried it, though it had been in his hands for so long now that he thought of it as his own. Many of those in the Chapter had inherited weapons – Ingvar’s blade was the most ancient that he knew of – and they all understood that, on death, they would be passed on to the next wielder. The Wolves of Fenris tended many threads of history that stretched back to the dawn of the Imperium. Some were sagas, memorised and recited by the skjalds in the firelit halls. Some were Dreadnoughts, including the most revered of them all, buried deep in the vaults of the Mountain in perpetual ice and shadow. And some were blades, bolters and storm shields, each one bathed in the blood of a thousand enemies of mankind, brought out of the armouries time and again, the loss of any of which was felt as keenly as the wielder’s.

  ‘Soon, now,’ he found himself mouthing, to himself as much as the weapon-spirit.

  The run into Ojada itself was not long. The galleon’s sensors detected dozens more vessels streaming away from the system, all heading for the closest Mandeville geometry. Some of them even swept past in magnified visual range – a series of personnel conveyers in drab dark green, what looked like a gun-cutter with Arbites livery. Ranged augurs isolated many more lifeless hulks, powered down and drifting with puncture wounds along their flanks. Debris was everywhere, peppering the planetary approaches in steadily intensifying layers.

  ‘Getting first major signals,’ Suaka reported, just as the sensors locked on to the planetary mass and Jorundur adjusted the inward trajectory. ‘Several thousand in motion – siphoning now.’

  Soon the augurs were locking on to the planet and magnifying it onto the lenses. Olgeir looked up at the images, just as the rest of the pack did.

  It was a red world, an angry world, barred with dark cloud-streaks, looking as if it were on fire itself. The scopes zoomed and refined, picking out clusters of warships in high orbit, tiny black specks against the glowing atmosphere below. Pinprick flashes of light flickered across the globe – lances firing, or ship-cores igniting. Cords of debris spun around the tortured planetscape, coalescing into orbital rings.

  ‘Widespread fires on the surface,’ Bjargborn reported, hunched over the sensor-feed with the furthest reach. ‘Planet is an ocean world, it seems, but promethium pipelines have been severed, and the slicks are growing.’

  Olgeir studied the feeds intently. ‘Those cities – are they… floating?’

  ‘Appear to be, lord,’ Suaka said, analysing more opening vid-feeds. ‘Or maybe rig-mounted.’

  ‘I’ve seen the pattern before,’ Jorundur said, his brow creasing with concentration as he boosted the galleon in closer. ‘Refinery-cities built over water, like on Atreus Aiaxa. If the sea’s on fire, though, that’ll test things.’

  ‘Get me more on what’s in orbit,’ Gunnlaugur ordered.

  The sensor crews delved into the data, pulling sense out of the mass of signals. ‘Heavy damage to defence plates,’ Suaka reported. ‘Several downed, six still in position. Debris makes it hard to pinpoint vessel numbers, but lance-fire extensive. This battle is still very much in progress.’

  ‘Anything with an Ecclesiarchy call sign?’ asked Ingvar.

  ‘Plenty, but nothing matching the designation yet,’ said Bjargborn.

  ‘Could the squadron have been destroyed?’ asked Gunnlaugur.

  ‘No, they’re here,’ said Baldr quietly.

  Olgeir turned sharply to look at his battle-brother, and saw only certainty on his face. For a moment, he wondered if Baldr had somehow got that damned collar off and unleashed his full, strange potential, but there it was, nestled between his breastplate and helm-seal, the iron tips glinting under the bridge lumens.

  Everyone had become so… relaxed about it, as if the potential for harm had just gone away. But they’d all seen it – they’d all seen what he had become. Even now, on the cusp of battle, his doubts remained, nagging at him, just as they had since the first outbreak on Ras Shakeh.

  No time to voice them now, though.

  ‘Bring us in closer,’ ordered Gunnlaugur. ‘If they’re in orbit, we’ll take them there. Concentrate all sensors on that signature – I want it found.’

  ‘Unless we’re very lucky,’ Olgeir said, ‘they’ll have made their landings already.’

  ‘We haven’t been lucky so far,’ said Ingvar.

  ‘Just get it into our sights,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘Hlaupnir’s prepped – we’ll make planetfall if we need to.’

  The Amethyst Suzeraine barrelled onward, smacking into thickening clots of wreckage, zeroing in on the distant point of light, which became a glowing disc, which became the uprushing arc of a world in its death throes.

  Suaka gave a running commentary throughout the approach. The realviewers firmed up images as the distances shrunk, throwing out a picture of planetwide wholesale destruction. By the time they reached true-visual range, three of the beleaguered orbital plates swam into view, their hearts burning, their reactors venting, their pockmarked surfaces blistered and cracked apart. Ships buzzed around them – racing escorts, lumbering battle cruisers, darting tenders, a whole raft of unclassified minor warships with lascannons ablaze. About a third of those bore sigils marking them as Ojada’s defenders, with some arcane Mechanicus arks among them, but the clear majority wore the defaced aspect of traitor vessels – looted Militarum carriers, renegade galleons akin to the Amethyst Suzeraine, commandeered Navy ships hastily daubed with icons of proscribed factions, and – most imposing of all – the spike-ridged profile of true Chaos warcraft, bristling with brass-mouthed gunlines and spitting lurid energy-beams into the atmosphere below.

  That atmosphere was burning. Up close, Olgeir saw the huge swaths of smoke ringing the planet’s hemisphere, swept across its face by superheated winds, spiked with crackles of lightning. Through ragged gaps in the choking mask, the surface could be glimpsed – underlit red from the fires, hissing with steam and smog, the lights of its huge cities still shining – just – amid the roiling darkness.

  ‘We are being targeted, lord,’ Bjargborn warned as they shot in closer. Weapons-lock detectors began to blink across a number of augur-lenses.

  ‘Let the void shields take the chaff,’ Gunnlaugur ordered. ‘Alert me if we get the attention of something serious. Where’s our damned target?’

  ‘Filtering signals, lord,’ replied Suaka. ‘The channels are overloading – working on it.’

  ‘Filter faster,’ growled Jorundur, pushing the galleon into a steeper approach vector. ‘This is going to get difficult quickly.’

  The available paths ahead were silting up. Ojada’s ravaged hemisphere raced towards them, now filling the lower half of the viewers, the curve of its horizon flattening out. As it did so, the warships gnawing over its still-warm corpse spun into visual detail – racing wings of void-fighters, their thrusters flaring blue-white; formations of frigates and destroyers, their sides alight with coordinated las batteries; the lone shadows of major battleships, lit up with the brilliant flash of lances or lost behind the ripple of macrocannon broadsides. The scene was eye-watering in its intensity, the sheer black of the void backdrop sizzling with hard-edged flares and detonations.

  ‘We’ve got someone’s attention,’ Bjargborn confirmed, swinging his throne around to highlight an incoming warship.

  Olgeir glanced at the lens. The pinpointed ship was big, ugly, skeletal, forged from night-dark iron with a raised spine of vivid silver. Its prow might once have been a regular Imperial ploughshare profile, but had been hammered into an immense death’s head, the eye sockets kindled with blue flame that streaked out into void as it turned. Its rangy flanks looked like the ribs of an emaciated canid, draped with heavy lengths of chain and studded with snarling cannon-mouths. Gaping thrusters left ink-blots of spidery pollution in its wake, lit from within by the final sparking of whatever foul discharge its infernal engines had created. Its precise allegiance was impossible to gauge – it carried no insignia, not even a sigil of the ancient Fallen Legions, just a mass of twisted metal tormented into a parody of mortal bone.

  ‘Can we kill that?’ Ingvar asked.

  ‘It looks slow,’ said Jorundur, burning the engines hard to keep the distance between them from shrinking. ‘Working on a targeting lock.’

  ‘There’ll be softer targets for it, if killing’s all it wants,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘Keep moving. Hel’s teeth, where’s our target?’

  ‘I have something now, lord,’ Suaka reported. ‘Nine hundred miles, bearing twenty-four-four–’

  ‘Key it in,’ Gunnlaugur growled. ‘Get us into cannon range.’

  The Amethyst Suzeraine kicked on, tilting steeply to port before boosting hard. Behind them, still a long way off, the death’s-head craft slipped into pursuit. Other ships began to pick up on their position, too, though the sheer volume of firefights all around them meant that few were able to do anything about it.

  ‘Getting true-visual-feeds now, lord,’ announced Bjargborn, his hands busy on the dials.

  The deck rocked as something hit them. Amber alerts flashed on from the void shield read-outs.

  ‘Maintain course,’ Gunnlaugur ordered. ‘Show me what you’ve got.’

  A brace of lenses mounted high above the first tier of sensor pits flickered into life, showing a zoomed-in segment of the orbital battle. Even with the cogitators working hard to improve the images, the depictions were grainy and dim, little more than a collection of blobs swinging and blurring.

  Then they clarified, at least a little.

  ‘That’s it,’ Ingvar said, clenching his fists.

  It had to be an Ecclesiarchy vessel. No other institution decorated their warships with such ludicrous sweeps of gold and crimson. It was a bloated thing, vaned and sparred, a serious battleship equipped with both ship-killing lances and ostentatious close-range batteries. It had waded into the warzone accompanied by a whole suite of escort craft, all of which were busy laying down a furious corona of las-fire. Even as Olgeir watched, the squadron was moving steadily northwards across Ojada’s surface, drawing heavy fire from the dozens of enemy ships within range.

  ‘Call signs confirmed,’ Suaka called out. ‘Description matches that given by the prisoner. Main vessel is the Immaculate Destiny. Supporting escorts Purity of Action, Obsidian Mitre and Merited Judgement identified – other idents incoming.’

  The Amethyst Suzeraine rocked again, smacked in its midriff by what felt like a torpedo scatter. The lattice-prickle of las-fire began to spread across the realviewers, and more incoming sensor-blips clustered on the mid-range augur fields.

 

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