When he had first woken, Zozar had spent a considerable amount of time abducting sentients to analyse their psychic make-up. He had questioned them at length about their feelings, delving beyond systemic biochemical responses to expose the very depths of true emotion. It had been the approach of an engineer, to break apart the problem to understand it, in the hopes that it would contain the solution for its own rebuilding.

  He had come to one madness-inducing conclusion.

  There was no cure for the biotransference. Whatever plans and dreams the likes of Szarekh thought up, Zozar knew that they could no more harness their lost souls than they could grip the vacuum itself.

  There was nothing left to grasp.

  His distraction ceased, drawing his attention to the hall’s two ­occupants. Humans. Average height, breadth and mass. They were clad in robes from head to foot, scalps hidden beneath cowls. A flash of memory brought back a vision of his wedding day, the arbitrator clad in similar garb, though adorned with more care than the dishevelled examples before him.

  The two of them clasped each other, heads turning back and forth as though scanning the room. Magnification exposed the lack of bio­electrical data flowing from their eye sockets.

  They were blind.

  Zozar also registered soundwaves emanating from the two humans. He activated a translator protocol, curious to see what the humans were saying in their last moments. Perhaps their death-confessions would shed some secret on the nature of souls.

  ‘The death-in-metal has arrived. A mind-infection malaise-soul disperses fully among the populace. There will be no more. This is ending. Only the power-astromancy-soul has kept us alive in this justice-building-protective-enclave-sanctuary. No more. It is ending. There is no saviour. A warning. Protect others. A warning. Protect others. Death-in-metal walks among our people. Our praises herald the strength of the lord-of-heavens-ruler-guide-protector-eagle-of-vengeance.’

  Zozar comprehended that this was not just a prayer to their divinity – the Emperor-Being – but also a constructed message. The entire chamber was an astromantic amplifier. A beacon of sorts, perhaps, or a communications device.

  He shut off the audio input and flexed his blades, crossing the hall with a few purposeful strides.

  All sentience had to perish.

  Peace demanded it.

  It was strange to Ah-hotep how much failure could masquerade as victory. From the ruins of the human citadel, she watched the blackstone resonator descending to its resting place close to the outer wall. The ground had been razed to a near-mirror finish, foundations laid by canoptek vassal teams so that the immense structure would slot neatly into place. Even deactivated the blackstone was pulling the edges of the overnull further, separating the reality of existence from the unreality of nightmare, as planned by Szarekh. Another star system subjugated to the great plan. The humans were all but mindless now, yet still the butchery of the skorpekh lord and his Destroyers continued. The overlord seemed unconcerned that his attempts thus far to halt the rampage had been ignored.

  Not far away Simut also observed the proceedings, dressed in full battle panoply and accompanied by his lychguard. Phetos was closer to the contact site, providing the overlord with a secondary experience of the occasion. Other such ephemera of status – cryptothralls and canop­tek activators – attended in lines, and behind them the ranked might of the Szarekh phalanx under Simut’s command. They stood in the rubble of the citadel among the mangled, bloating corpses of the defenders gathering flies and other carrion-scavengers. Overhead crescent-shaped attack craft flew victory flights about the approaching needle of darkness, while higher up in orbit the tomb fleet attended to the moment of the master’s conquest.

  On the surface it was a celebration, but Ah-hotep knew that the reality was different. Casualties had been far higher than necessary, among the regular legion and the Destroyers. Had Simut not interfered in her campaign the citadel would have fallen with the minimum of effort, but the overlord was utterly unaware of his own incompetence. Zozar’s slaughter was an inevitable and entirely pointless consequence of that ineptitude. She wondered if other branches of the expedition were led by similar mediocre talents, and if many more appropriate generals were held back by the Silent King’s need to place trusted confidants in positions of power.

  It was a weakness to be exploited, that much was certain, but Ah-hotep was not yet sure how. Szarekh’s iron control and Simut’s ignorant para­noia made taking any military assets impossible. Forced to do what she could with such scraps of authority and materiel the overlord left to her, Ah-hotep was in a poor position to effect any change to their strategy, nor to rise in prominence within the dynastic hierarchy. The very inadequacies of the master to which she had been assigned was preventing her from fulfilling greater potential for her true lords in the technomandrite ranks.

  With a soundwave that rumbled through the city, the resonator entered the docking port and made planetfall. Sliding down into the prepared structures, it shed its descender harness, the living metal falling to ribbons of shining sapphire before disintegrating completely. At the moment its base made contact with the surface of the world, the blackstone shifted state. Where before it had merely been black, an absolute darkness that reflected no light, now it glowed with an anti-light. It seemed to become a hole in reality, though in truth it was the opposite of a gateway; it had become a barrier. Aligned to the astromantic axis of the planet, the resonator reconfigured itself, facets and plates shifting in complex cosmometric patterns to distort the null-field projected into the star system from other nearby resonators. Like a rudimentary navigation device finding a magnetic pole, the resonator adjusted through multidimensional realities to assume a nodal form, both receiving and broadcasting the overnull signal.

  An emerald aura encapsulated the towering needle, bathing the ruins and lines of metallic warriors in its green hue. Rings of pulsing energy ascended the tapering structure, accelerating as they reached the tip to become a blazing storm that leapt jaggedly into the heavens.

  The resonator seemed to be operating properly on the physical plane. On the psychic front, Ah-hotep had to trust to the expertise of Szarekh’s dimensioneers. Like all of the necrons, her soul had been severed from her physical incarnation during the biotransfer process. She literally felt nothing as the physical world and the neversea were shorn from each other by the intrusion of the overnull. The humans, the few of them remaining, would know it, though. In the last vestiges of their soul they would feel the coldness descending, the spark of animus that gave them sentience drifting away to nothing.

  ‘Another world falls to the glory of the Szarekh dynasty!’ declared Simut, raising up his battleblade as if he had personally conquered the world.

  There was little glory, in truth. Corralling or killing lower beings rendered thoughtless by the overnull barely constituted a war. Not that Ah-hotep cared. Conquerors and kings could define their own achievements, as long as there was a plentiful supply of energy on which to feast afterwards.

  While the legion started translocating back to orbit, ready to move on to the next star system to be folded into the overnull, Ah-hotep drifted towards the heart of the citadel, where her senses told her a thermic reactor was still operational. All other considerations fell away – the politics of the dynasty, the great cosmic plan of the Silent King and her own loyalties and ambitions were as nothing when weighed against the desire of finally being able to feed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The atmosphere in the captain’s chamber was sombre when Praxa­medes passed through the door. Aeschelus was within, alongside Nem­etus and the head of the Navigators aboard the Ithraca’s Vengeance, Antoansal Kosa D’Fidas. The two Space Marines, like Praxa­medes, were dressed in their robes – Ultramarines symbol in silver upon the right breast, gilded cuffs and lapels denoting their ranks.

  Kosa also wore official vestments, of a far flimsier and brighter material – a pale yellow that was matched by the iris of the eye symbol painted onto her metal headband. The headband broadened over her brow, concealing all of her forehead and, most importantly, the third eye that sat within. Her facial extremities – nostrils, ear lobes, lips – were all pierced with small rings of gold, which made her whole visage gleam in the lumen-light of the long, narrow chamber. Rings, bracelets and chains of the same hung on fingers, wrists and hands, a throwback to the ancient days when status was displayed by shows of wealth realised as hard-to-obtain minerals. Even now gold still held its appeal to those that wanted to flaunt their rank, despite – or perhaps because of – its lack of wider utility.

  Though artificially tall, another by-product of her genetically engineered inheritance, Kosa was a stick-thin figure in comparison to the massive bulk of the Primaris Marines. The biceps of the warriors, straining at their sleeves, were almost as broad as her chest. Her neck was long, giving her a slightly birdlike appearance as she shifted her attention from one Space Marine to the next in quick, nervous movements.

  She paced rather than sitting on one of the chairs, which were oversized for the benefit of the Space Marines. The Navigator seemed almost childlike among the larger furniture, no doubt feeling out of place and wishing she was still in the isolated pilaster she shared with the other two Navigators assigned to the cruiser.

  The room was functionally furnished, a circular table at one end, a cot at the other with a bookshelf containing expanded, annotated volumes of the Codex Astartes and other Chapter cult volumes. There was a small gold-leaf icon of the lord pri­march above the metal headboard, its frame burnished bright by recent polishing. Flanking the portrait were several medals, the genuine awards of which facsimiles were painted on the captain’s armour – an iron halo, the laurels of command, the campaign badge of the Indomitus Crusade and a gilt-edged blood drop from when he had been injured at Sethemian Tide. Honours that would have graced nearly any commander’s dorm, Praxa­medes realised. Nothing of particular note.

  ‘We are going too slow,’ announced Aeschelus, glaring at the Navigator. ‘We have confirmed our latest translation point as system Omega-Four-Seven-Hercules.’

  ‘A dead system. Wilderness space.’ Nem­etus leaned forward, fists resting on the chamfered metal of the captain’s table. ‘Nothing to fight.’

  ‘Seven light years short of Clarion-Sigma,’ said Praxa­medes, mentally picturing the sector map. ‘Only barely halfway to our destination after experience-relative seventeen days of travel.’

  ‘And thirty-nine days actual temporal shift,’ added Aeschelus.

  ‘You must understand the scale of the task you ask of us,’ said Kosa. ‘I have told you before that you cannot use travel determinations that were calculated before the coming of the Cicatrix Maledictum. That we have traversed any spatial distance at all is remarkable, given the warp conditions through which we have been travelling.’

  ‘Oh, you want praise instead?’ said Aeschelus. ‘Perhaps you would like me to despatch honours to the lord commander for your efforts?’

  Kosa said nothing but glowered at the captain’s suggestion.

  ‘You gave assurances that as your experience with the conditions improved, so too would our jump distances,’ said Praxa­medes, sitting himself between the captain and Nem­etus. ‘That seems to have been an error.’

  ‘No, I stand by the promise,’ said Kosa. ‘We are getting better, but you need to understand what you have been asking of me and my kin. The whole galaxy is in such turmoil that our charts are almost meaningless. Even the light of the Emperor, the holy Astronomican, is sometimes shrouded from us by the intensity of the storms that engulf the Imperium.’

  ‘We are not alone in this experience, and yet other battle groups, other crusade fleets, make speedier passage than us,’ said Nem­etus.

  ‘You are being too cautious,’ said Aeschelus. ‘We make little progress because you drop us back from the warp after such small jumps.’

  Kosa laughed bitterly, a finger moving to fidget with the rings through the lobe of her left ear. Her yellow eyes regarded each of them for just a moment before settling on a spot somewhere on the wall behind the captain.

  ‘Cautious?’ Scorn dripped from the Navigator’s tone, unlike anything Praxa­medes had heard from her before. ‘We travel across the greatest upheaval to the warp that has occurred since… The chronicles of the Navis Nobilite go back far indeed, to the only other time that the Imperium has been so sundered. A product of the vilest sorcery, it was known as the Ruinstorm and it heralded the near-destruction of the Emperor’s domains. Not for five hundred generations has it been more perilous to cross the othersea. If you think we are cautious, it is an accusation I am happy to bear, Captain Aeschelus.’

  ‘Caution did not win the Heresy War,’ growled the ship’s co­mmander. ‘Caution will not push back the forces that besiege the Imperium now. Caution will see us stranded and isolated while our enemies close their grip on all that they hope to steal from the Emperor.’

  ‘And still I would not plunge us headlong into the fastest course to save a handful of days, and risk the ship arriving at all.’

  ‘If we are not cautious, we do not have to be reckless,’ added Praxa­medes. ‘There is hopefully some middle ground to be found between our needs and your concerns, Navis Majoris.’

  The Navigator took a shuddering breath, hands trembling as she slowly closed them into fists. Her gaze looked to the ceiling for several heartbeats before she could turn her eyes back to the others in the room.

  ‘The longer we remain in the othersea, the less certain we can be of our position and destination. The faster the current we follow, the greater the risk that we will be swept away or miss our translation point. Every manoeuvre is fraught with peril among these roiling ebbs and flows. If we should lose contact with the Beacon of Terra at the wrong juncture it would be disastrous. You ask us to thread a needle in the darkness while tossed and turned by a whirlwind. I cannot warn against it too strongly.’

  ‘But there are faster currents to use?’ said Nem­etus. ‘It is possible to travel further with each jump?’

  Kosa said nothing.

  ‘All of us must strive to give our utmost to the crusade,’ said Aeschelus. ‘None are excused the labour. I am ordering you to make swifter progress, Navigator.’

  ‘An order?’ Kosa smoothed the folds of her robe. ‘What would you command, captain? How can you stand in judgement of our decisions when you are not capable of seeing what we see? Would you debate the nature of plasma drives with your chief enginseer?’

  ‘I would if I thought there was a deficiency in their operation,’ Aeschelus replied calmly. He laid his broad hands on the tabletop, flattening the palms against the metal. ‘Your house gains renown and reward for its part in this endeavour. I imagine a censure from the lord commander would dampen the spirits of your kin. To be removed from position would be a grave matter. Perhaps your reputation would never recover.’

  ‘Threats, captain?’

  ‘Your reluctance forces me to say what is normally unspoken. The bonds between your house and the Chapter go back generations, but they are worthless if they do not provide what I need. I do not doubt your loyalty, Navigator, but your desire to stay safe is too much.’

  ‘It is all of our lives we risk,’ snapped Kosa. ‘Not just those of the Navigators.’

  ‘This is a warship. It exists to push along the boundary between risk and reward. My warriors cannot do our duty unless your Navigators do better. If that cannot be done, I will find a civilian vessel for you at our next dock.’

  Praxa­medes watched the Navigator closely. He had spent enough time among the unaugmented humans of the command deck that he could recognise the to and fro of emotions playing out in the thoughts of Kosa. She looked at the captain and saw no flinch in his gaze. Her eyes then sought momentary alliance from Praxa­medes, but he shared no sign of support for her. The captain was right; progress was too timid for effective action.

  Finally, the Navigator’s gaze dropped to her hands, held together at her waist.

  ‘As you bid, captain,’ she said quietly. ‘On our next jump we shall endeavour to push harder to our destination. We shall seek the faster, more turbulent channels and trust to our powers that we will survive them.’ Kosa looked up then, steel hardening once more. ‘But under protest only. My oaths are to guide this ship safely through the warp, and to offer such prayers to the Master of the Light that will do so. I wish it to be noted in the records that one cannot win a battle if one does not safely reach it.’

  ‘As you wish, Navigator.’ Aeschelus stood up. ‘I am captain and all responsibility falls to me eventually. This is my will and the records shall make that known.’

  The Navigator nodded and departed with quick steps and a sour demeanour.

  Aeschelus let out an explosive breath and it was only then that Praxa­medes saw how much of an effort of patience it had been for his captain to treat reasonably with Kosa. Since the debacle with the Despoiler-class battleship, he had been looking for a fresh challenge. Ninety-two-days-perceived had passed since withdrawing from that disastrous episode. Ninety-two days of jumping from dead system to dead system seeking an enemy that appeared to have vanished.

  ‘I do not understand what is happening,’ said Nem­etus, leaning back. ‘Our astropaths tell us that this sector was awash with the enemy when we broke away from the main fleet, but now it seems like they have all disappeared.’

  ‘The astropaths are as perturbed by the warp storms as the Navigators,’ replied Praxa­medes. ‘Who knows how long ago some of those broadcasts were sent? Many have been echoing through the rifts and peaks of the warp since the renewed invasions began.’

  ‘There is something else here,’ said Aeschelus. ‘A sudden cessation of noise and enemy movements. I cannot believe that they have simply turned back, so we must assume they are hiding something, gathering in force. We have been tasked with locating those threats and locate them we will. The Emperor is not short of foes – we will find one soon enough.’

 

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