Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

TWELVE

Adventu Venantium

The great starship and its consorts moved through the blackness like a vast reptilian predator surrounded by its young. Four kilometres long, a small world in itself, the Ogadai cruised through the Kargad system at manoeuvring speed with the three angular destroyers, the Arbion, the Beynish and the Caracalla, sweeping the emptiness before it for signs of life and death, foe and friend.

The Dark Hunters had arrived at last.

‘Come round to course six three mark nine,’ Tomas Massaron, the shipmaster, said, and his voice echoed in the lofty nave of the Ogadai’s command centre. He stood upon the dais with the instruments of the ship towering on three sides about him like the altar-screen in a cathedral, and beyond them the tall void-shielded viewports were full of stars, and far off, a larger shining sphere of light that was a planetoid or moon.

The ship servitors muttered to themselves in an unending stream of binaric data. Junior officers clad in Hunters blue came and went with the hushed reverence of worshippers at a shrine. Some chose to glance at the giant standing next to Massaron, but most averted their eyes from the bright flint-glare of his unblinking eyes.

‘Arbion reports debris fifteen thousand kilometres on her left flank, sir,’ one of the human officers said.

‘Analyse,’ Massaron told him, his gaze sweeping the dials and monitors like a man scanning a regicide board for openings. ‘Enginseer Miranich, extend augur range to our left flank, towards the moon.’

A metallic click, and the embedded servitor said ‘Acknowledged. Extending range. Range complete. Augur reads no returns.’

‘Very well. Quinn – word from Arbion?’

‘Yes, sir. Debris consistent with small attack craft.’ The young officer raised his head. ‘Not ours, sir. Their composition is inconsistent with anything in our files.’

‘Very well. Signal all escorts, spread out another ten kilometres and extend augur systems to maximum range. I want no surprises, gentlemen.’

The giant at Massaron’s side chose this moment to break his silence at last.

‘How long until we are in high orbit about Ras Hanem?’

‘Approximately seven hours, captain. Do you wish me to sound battle stations?’

Jonah Kerne considered. ‘Negative.’ Battle stations would entail the loading of his warriors into the Thunderhawks and drop pods down on the troop decks. It was too early for that. In a ship-to-ship fight, were it to occur in the next few hours, he needed his brothers to be flexible, not sitting cooped up in their launch-harness. He needed to know what they faced first.

‘As you were, shipmaster. The Ogadai is yours to do with as you will. I am merely here to observe.’

It did not seem that way. The towering Adeptus Astartes in the midnight-damascened power armour dominated the command dais like the statue of a god in a temple. But Massaron nodded, seemingly pleased.

‘My lord, as soon as is practicable, I promise you I will give you and your brethren fair warning of all eventualities.’

He wants me off his bridge, Kerne thought with a small, interior smile. Well, I would be the same. But I want to be here, to see it, not hear about it over the vox on the troop decks.

‘Am I in your way, shipmaster?’

Massaron paled slightly. ‘Not in the least, my lord.’

‘Then proceed.’

There was a smell of machine-incense in the air. Kerne had allowed a blessing of the nave by the tech-priests as they had entered the system the day before. That much was tradition, and was adhered to even by the Dark Hunters.

More than that, the human crews expected such blessings and ceremonies before going into battle. The ships needed them, and it was considered unlucky to forgo the rituals.

Another thing I have grown accustomed to in the last months, Kerne thought. How long has it been? He stretched slightly, widening his shoulders in the armour, the plates moving with his bones.

Far too long. Three and a half months of shooting target servitors and studying maps and battle simulations and listening to Malchai preach. Mortai was heartily sick of shipboard life, not because it was in any way a burden, but because of the tediousness of the routine. Not a bolt fired in anger in over three months.

When one was sharpening a knife, at a certain point one had to stop, because the fine edge was made blunt again by the very act of sharpening.

Mortai was as sharp as Kerne could make it. Now it needed to be used. What was it Fornix always said? The blade grows blunt in the scabbard – that was it. Yes, it was high time Mortai was unsheathed.

There were nineteen Thunderhawks on the troop decks, ready to be launched, and a dozen drop pods for a quick coup de main, should that be needed.

Seventy-eight Adeptus Astartes from Mortai, who had been clad in their armour by the servitors two days ago, and forty gun-servitors bearing heavy metal, ready to support the line company, as well as the two Devastator squads on loan from Ninth Company under Brother-Sergeant Nieman Stahl, and two squads of Scout Marines, the Haradai, under Fell Ambros’s young protégé, Brother-Sergeant Laufey, a warrior who at times rivalled Fornix in his insouciant attitude to discipline.

And what fun Malchai has had, trying to iron out the creases in their faith, Kerne mused. Then he thought also of the regular despatches that the Reclusiarch had been sending back to Mors Angnar, and his face darkened.

Part of him – the deep, savage part which had been wholly human before the Dark Hunters claimed his soul – had a feeling that this would be his last campaign.

If so, he prayed, then Bright Lord of Hosts and Battle, let it be a worthy fight, and let me do my duty by my brothers, and to you and the Imperium before I join your Peace.

Amen.

‘Sir!’ The young ship-lieutenant’s face was suddenly urgent. ‘Comms from Caracalla, priority-code. Unknown vessels twenty thousand kilometres out bearing eight seven mark three.’

‘Composition?’ Massaron snapped. He joined the lieutenant at his console bank, from which a trio of servitors muttered to themselves and extended a dozen mechanical limbs to touch controls and switches as though playing on some absurdly intricate musical instrument.

‘Vox on speaker, sir – it’s Shipmaster Miraneis.’

A woman’s voice rang out hollow across the command dais, crackling slightly.

‘Ogadai, this is Caracalla, we have torpedoes locked on us from four enemy ships, Falchion class at best estimate. Am evading, and launching countermeasures.’

Massaron leaned over the console. ‘Caracalla, break off and lead them back to us. Battle speed. Acknowledge.’

‘Acknowledged, Ogadai. Breaking off – enemy is on our stern, spreading into attack formation. We’ll do our best to lure them in, over.’

Massaron straightened. ‘A picket-line. These are the sentries for the main force.‘

He looked at Jonah Kerne, and the towering Space Marine nodded.

‘Put me shipwide,’ Massaron said to a servitor, and then: ‘All stations, this is the Master of the Ship. Go to battle stations. I repeat, go to battle stations.’

Klaxons began to echo throughout the immense length of the Ogadai, and there was a perceptible vibration in the hull.

‘Voidsunders being run out, sir,’ the flag lieutenant said.

‘Open all gun-doors. All batteries are to wait for my signal to engage.’

He turned to another servitor. ‘Key in the location of the destroyers, and flag up the enemy. I want no friendly fire here today.’

A sizzle, and the servitor’s steel claws clicked and clacked across its keyboards.

‘Arbion, Beynish, this is the flag. Close in to four thousand and prepare to engage broadsides. Stand clear of the lances. Acknowledge.’

The captains of the other two escort destroyers sent static bursts in affirmation.

‘Captain,’ Massaron said, turning to the Adeptus Astartes on the dais. Kerne held up one gauntleted hand.

‘I am going to the troop decks now, shipmaster. Keep me informed.’

Massaron smiled. ‘Thank you, my lord. This is my ship – I know how to fight her.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Good hunting, Massaron.’

Kerne strode from the command dais, lifting his helm and setting it on his head. It clicked into the collar-ring and hissed closed. At once, the readouts sprang up in his vision, and in the corner of his sight was the blinking sigil which was the command-vox, his private channel with Massaron and the workings of the command dais.

You’d better keep me informed, he thought, and strode down the nave of the starship with one hand on the bolt pistol maglocked to his thigh.

And thank the Emperor and His Throne that it has begun at last.

‘Thank the Emperor it has begun at last,’ Fornix said with a fierce grin. ‘I was getting so damnable bored I was about to start shooting holes in the side of this tub just to change the view.’

He met Kerne at the entrance to the troop decks, and behind him were Jord Malchai, Elijah Kass, Passarion the Apothecary and Finn March of Primus Squad. The rest of the battle-group were lining up, a muster of giants in midnight blue, peppered here and there with the slighter figures of the Haradai in their carapaces. Below their feet the flight deck was rumbling and quivering as the Thunderhawks were shunted in their sleds towards the launch doors.

‘I trust all is in hand, first sergeant,’ Kerne said formally.

Fornix reined in his exuberance. ‘Yes, brother-captain. All squads are ready to embark on your word.’

Jord Malchai spoke up. ‘Captain, I take it we have engaged the enemy?’

‘We’re about to,’ Kerne said shortly. ‘Fornix, prep for ship-to-ship action. I want three squads on the Hawks, with three more ready to embark on my order. You and Brother Kass will come with me and Primus. Brother Malchai, you may join us if you wish. Passarion, with me also, and Brother Heinos. The Haradai will remain aboard – they are not outfitted for vacuum work. Any questions?’

‘Enemy strength?’ Malchai asked.

‘Falchion class, at least one squadron. They could prove troublesome to the Ogadai if they get in close and start loosing torpedoes. I intend to launch once they are within a thousand kilometres, and board.’

He looked round at his brothers. They could not see his face, but none of them had helmed up yet and he was able to see the eagerness in their eyes – even dour Malchai.

‘Are we happy?’ he asked lightly.

Fornix actually laughed. ‘Brother, we are very happy.’

‘Good, now let’s get to the Hawks.’

All was well in train on the flight deck. The deck chief, Gerd Dinas, had learned the meaning of efficiency as practised by the Adeptus Astartes during the course of the voyage, and now he and his crews stood to one side as the Space Marines boarded the ugly square-nosed Thunderhawks.

One warrior from each squad plodded forward into the cockpit and plugged himself into the ship systems, where he was joined by a fleet co-pilot and navigator/gunner.

It was an imperfect system, but Kerne did not have the manpower to crew the craft entirely with his warriors. Massaron had given him the best Hawk-jockeys he possessed, and in the last months these had been trained up by their Space Marine pilots to a level of skill they had never suspected they could attain.

Once inside the Thunderhawks, the Space Marines locked themselves into their launch-harnesses and tested comms. Kerne tuned out the familiar vox-checks and blinked on the command channel. For a while, he listened without speaking.

‘Ogadai, this is Caracalla, I am hit on the starboard side and am losing power. Thrusters are at minimum and all countermeasures have been used up.’

Miraneis’s voice was calm, Kerne noted approvingly.

‘Caracalla, we are at best speed and will be able to cover you in thirty-six seconds. Fire everything you’ve got, Miranda. We’re coming for you.’

Massaron. There was emotion in his voice. A little too much perhaps. Kerne was surprised.

‘Sir, the Caracalla has been locked on by six more torpedoes.’

‘Clear the Voidsunders to fire.’

Nothing for a few moments except the binaric muttering of the servitors on the command dais and the clicking of instrumentation.

‘Target acquired.’

‘Fire one.’

There was a tremor, felt even in the Thunderhawk. Two kilometres away, in the bows, one of the great lances of the Ogadai had unleashed a holy holocaust of energy.

‘Target destroyed.’

‘Sir, the Caracalla is dead in the air, out of command. No vox.’

‘Prepare to fire two.’

‘They’re too close, sir – they’re inside minimum range.’

‘Damn them!’

Enough of this. Kerne blinked the vox sigil again. ‘Shipmaster, I want clearance to launch for three Hawks. Send your targeting data to Hawk One. Do you read?’

Massaron’s voice was thick with... grief? Anger?

‘Roger, Hawk One. Data streaming now. We have two enemy destroyers on our port flank, manoeuvring astern. If they hit us in the engines–’ Massaron collected himself. ‘You are go for launch, captain. Priority targets are being uploaded.’

‘Acknowledged.’ He blinked in sequence. There was a series of dull thudding concussions along the outside hull.

‘Clear the deck – open launch doors – Hawks One, Two and Three, we are cleared for launch. You have targeting info. Hawk One will take the closest enemy, Hawk Two the next. Three, you will hold in reserve. Acknowledge.’

The pilots came back with brief squawks of static.

‘Brace for launch,’ their own pilot said. Brother Cayd Simarron, the best flyer in the Chapter.

A shunting crash, and then they were free of the ship’s gravity and floating in their restraints. Kerne keyed in the cockpit monitors to his helm, and instead of the red-lit interior of the Thunderhawk he now saw the spiralling star-spattered vastness of space.

The Thunderhawk wheeled, spinning, and the side of the Ogadai sped under them like the side of a grey-flanked mountain, going past at dizzying speed. Were it not for his cochlear implant, Kerne would probably have thrown up in his helm.

Ahead, the white globes of afterburners. They had sped past the Ogadai now and were astern of the cruiser. The enemy destroyers had found the sweet spot: the angle at which a capital ship can be attacked without being able to bring its guns to bear.

‘These scum know how to fly,’ Simarron murmured. ‘Captain, I will set down on the enemy hull in fifteen seconds.’

‘Acknowledged. Primus squad, make ready for boarding. Fornix, open the belly hatch. Chainswords out, mag-grips engaged.’

The enemy ships were light destroyers which had been upgunned with torpedoes. But even though they were not in the same league as the Ogadai, they were still the better part of two kilometres long, and they would have a crew of thousands. It would be up to Simarron’s skill to set them down somewhere they could do vital, instant damage, otherwise they could spend hours slaughtering their way through the length of the ship without seriously compromising her ability to damage the Dark Hunters cruiser.

‘Going for the bridge, captain. They’ve seen us now. We have las-fire and kinetic ordnance inbound.’

The Thunderhawk was hurled through space like a scrap of paper caught in a gale. Through the open belly-hatch they could see explosions of light and flame, all soundless, all instantly snuffed out by the airless void in which they detonated. Shrapnel rattled against the hull and came showering into the troop compartment in shards of red-hot alloy.

‘It’s raining, brothers,’ Fornix said on the vox. ‘How do you like this weather?’

‘Five seconds,’ Simarron said.

‘Prepare for boarding,’ Kerne told his brothers. ‘Release all harnesses. Ignite blades.’

‘Emperor be with us,’ Elijah Kass said. There was a throb of excitement in his voice.

His first boarding, Kerne thought. I must watch him.

A crash as they came down on the enemy ship’s hull. Grapnels and maglocks fired off and dug into the plating. At once, the Space Marines were out of the hatch, kicking themselves free of the Thunderhawk. Their momentum carried them through airless space until they came down on the hull below. Some of them grunted as they hit hard. The Librarian, Kass, stumbled, one maglocked boot coming free. Brother Passarion seized his arm and yanked him back down before he could fly off into space.

‘Squad in place,’ Kerne voxed. ‘Take her on overwatch, Simarron.’

‘Acknowledged. Good hunting, captain.’

The grapnels were blown out and their cables came snaking free to twirl and drift about the hull. The thrusters of the Hawk jolted them as the ship blew itself clear of the enemy destroyer and took off into the darkness, followed by streams of las-fire.

Fornix and Finn March were already sawing into the plates of the hull under their feet with their heavy chainswords. Sparks flashed, and nuggets of hot metal flew to tick against their armour. The rest of them stood ready, cocking their bolters. Kerne counted them all and was relieved to find everyone present. It was too easy in the moment of contact with an enemy ship for a man to go careering off into the void unnoticed.

Fornix and March were surrounded in clouds of venting gas now; they were through the hull. They paused to throw a few grenades in the slot they had made, and after the explosions they kept going. It took them several minutes to cut out a square of hull some metre and a half wide, and when they were done they levered the thick chunk of plating out of the hole they had sliced and threw it free of the ship. It drifted away trailing snakes of wiring, the conduits sparking with dying energy.

The chainswords were glowing red by the time they were done.

Fornix looked up and his voice came loud and clear over the vox. He sounded as though he had a wide smile on his face.

‘Umbra Sumus.’

Then he grasped the side of the hole and propelled himself into the enemy ship head first, his chainsword whirring and glittering in the glare of his helm-torch.

Finn March followed, pistol-arm extended. Kerne made as if to enter next but a hand on his chest stopped him. It was Passarion, his white armour unmistakable in the wheeling starlit gloom.

‘Forgive me, captain, but it is not your place.’

Kerne glared at the blank helm lenses of the Apothecary, but knew that the man was right. The company commander had to wait until he received the first report from the boarders.

‘Very well.’

He had to stand there in the silence as Primus Squad went in one by one. Last to enter was Brother Heinos, the company’s only Techmarine. The servo-arm on Heinos’s back caught on the side of the hole for a second, raising sparks – then he was inside.

Finally, only Kerne, Passarion, Malchai, and Elijah Kass remained standing on the exterior hull of the enemy ship. Already, Kerne wanted to get on the vox and demand information from those inside, but he knew from experience that in the first deadly minutes of a boarding it would be all his battle-brothers could do to stay alive. He could only listen to their voices on the vox.

Patience. It was a necessary and sickening virtue.

Fornix booted the bulky Chaos Space Marine in the knee and in the momentary waver of attention this won, he stabbed his chainsword into the vulnerable spot just under the chin of the helm. The whirring blade grated on metal and then slid freely inside the armour. From the gouged slit blood leaked and sprayed in black ribbons.

The enemy went to his knees, one hand going for his ruined throat, the other trying to bring up the bolt pistol. Fornix knocked that hand aside, and the pistol skittered away. Then he stabbed the blade downwards into the top of the foe’s helm with all his strength.

The weapon trembled and shuddered in his hands as it fought the ceramite, but finally plunged through the toughened alloys, the cabling and the fibre-bundles, and at last found the bone and brain of the enemy.

The abomination collapsed, and the sword went dead in Fornix’s fist as he pulled it free. He had asked too much of it.

Breughal was right, he thought, snapping his bolt pistol from his thigh, I am far too hard on my wargear.

He fired the pistol at point-blank range into the eye lenses of another Punisher, and used that one’s corpse as cover, holding it against himself as a volley of bolter fire blazed into him. He felt the ricochet of rounds striking his pauldrons, and he was sure one clanged into his powerpack as it careened off the bulkhead. A red light began to wink on his helm display. He ignored it. He had fought on with a whole galaxy of red lights blinking in his sight before now.

The bolter rounds chewed up the corpse he held in front of himself. The corridor was narrow here, and full of smoke. Even infared was little use in the hot staccato flash of gunfire.

But it was all in silence. The corridor was open to vacuum, running fifty metres back to the entry-point where they had cut their way into the enemy ship. There was gravity, and the blood no longer floated in glistening spheres about his head as it had in the first compartment, but there was no atmosphere to conduct the savage sounds of battle and bolter fire. It was oddly disappointing.

The rest of Primus Squad were behind him, Finn March fuming at his back, but there was no room for them to deploy. If Simarron had got his coordinates right, then this was an access corridor which led to the bridge of the enemy ship. Another fifty metres or so and there would be a door, and beyond it, the means to cripple the vessel.

Only one thing to do, Fornix thought. Advance. But I need some space.

‘Finn,’ he said over the vox, ‘are you busy?’

‘Get the hell out of my way and I will be, Fornix.’

‘Toss a grenade over my shoulder, there’s a good fellow. We need to ventilate this place a little.’

‘Mind yourself – it’ll be close.’

‘No good if it’s not.’

The grenade was tossed over Fornix’s right shoulder. It struck the bulkhead and then spun into the ranks of the traitors who were blazing away five metres ahead.

Fornix lowered his helm into the broken metal shell that was his enemy, feeling the rounds thump heavily into the corpse’s armour. He glimpsed a white face in the shattered helm, an eye milk-white, veined and bulging as though about to pop in the airlessness.

Remember me? he thought, staring at that eye in savage triumph. We met a hundred and fifty years ago, and now we meet again.

Then he was staggered by the blast of the grenade, and felt the kiss of the shrapnel. The shock of it forced him to one knee and tore the corpse out of his grasp. His helm display was nothing but buzzing lines for a moment, and he stood up again, blind, and fired a full magazine down the corridor, feeling the bolt pistol kick up in his hand.

His vision steadied. The three Punishers were down, two still moving feebly. He reloaded, strode forward, and put two rounds in each of their skulls. The smoke was thick, but infared was working better now. The way was clear. The corridor was littered with scraps of armour and body parts and weapons. Blood painted the maggot-grey steel of the walls.

‘Brother Heinos,’ he said over the vox. ‘We have an armoured hatch ten metres to my front. I want it open.’

‘Acknowledged.’

The bulky Techmarine came forward, scraping past his brethren in the confined worm-cast of the corridor. His midnight-blue armour was striped with Mars red, and the servo-arm at his back rose up like a scorpion’s tail.

Fornix did not know Heinos as well as he would have liked; as with most Techmarines, he was always a little apart from his brethren in the line companies.

‘Can you do it?’

‘Tougher than the hull,’ Heinos said, scanning the hatch. ‘And booby-trapped. But crudely. Yes, I can do it. It will take me four minutes.’

‘Good, get to it, and don’t blow yourself up.’

The Techmarine knelt before the hatch, and began feeling around the rim of it with a long pointer he had snapped free of the tools he held maglocked to his thighs and shoulderguards. Utterly absorbed, the moment he began his work he seemed to forget that the rest of his brothers existed.

That’s what you get from time on Mars, Fornix thought.

He tapped his own helm. Two red sigils winking at him now. The armour’s powerpack was damaged, and he was overheating. The myriad dents and bulletholes all over the ceramite plates were of no interest to him, though one knee joint felt stiff and slow.

I should let Finn go in first, he thought. That would be the logical tactic.

But he knew he would not. He had a lot of hate to work off, and he had barely begun.

‘Captain, this is Fornix, can you read me?’

‘Barely, brother. The electronics in the hull are interfering with the vox.’ Kerne’s voice was faint and broken, but intelligible.

‘We are at an armoured hatch which should lead to the bridge. Eleven enemy dead thus far – they’re Punishers all right – I remember the livery, or lack of it. Black and yellow, like a wasp of Terra. Entry in approximately four minutes, if Brother Heinos has it right.’

‘Casualties?’

‘None but my chainsword.’

‘Command is coming in, Fornix.’

‘You might want to wait one on that, Jonah – it’s pretty crowded in here.’

A pause. Fornix knew what his captain was thinking. If it were himself, he would be going quietly mad out there, listening to the fight on the vox and not a part of it.

‘Very well. Nureddin and Secundus Squad are already on the bridge of the second destroyer, meeting heavy resistance. If you need the reserve, let me know.’

‘I will, brother.’

There was a bright flare as just in front of him Brother Heinos ignited the fyceline torch in his servo-arm and began cutting into the plasteel lock of the hatch.

‘Ninety seconds, first sergeant,’ he said calmly.

Fornix’s vision was fizzing. He thumped the side of his helm irritably, and the red sigils steadied. It was becoming hotter inside the armour.

Better make this quick, he thought.

Jonah Kerne thumped his fist against the bolt pistol at his thigh. The weapon was still unfired, and his chainsword hung at his waist, switched off.

‘Brother Kass,’ he said suddenly to the young Librarian, ‘can you feel anything from the crew of this ship that might help our boarding parties?’

Kass was wearing a plain Mark VII helm under his psychic hood. He did not answer for a moment but the hood began to glow slightly, bright against the black void behind him.

‘There is intelligence there, and a black storm of hatred. Hatred for each other as well as for us. But something binds them together – a great will – I–’

He staggered forward a step, his boots lifting and then sucked back in place by the maglocks in their soles.

‘It is an ancient malevolence that drives them, empty and hungry as the void itself. But there is a familiarity to it, captain. These things were once like us. I hear echoes of what they once were – Legiones Astartes.’ He clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘It is… unholy. They teem in their thousands, as restless as a swarm of locusts.’

‘The warp spawns them, vomits them forth,’ Brother Malchai said with deep distaste. ‘They are the gangrenous cells in the galaxy’s body. I feel them too. Their souls howl at me from the warp.’

‘They crave oblivion, and wish to take us all with them into the darkness,’ Kass said. His voice shook. ‘I have never looked into such a pit of hate before.’

‘Hate makes you strong,’ Malchai said. ‘Focus, brother.’

‘Yes, Reclusiarch.’

Up on the vox came Fornix again. ‘We are on the bridge, Jonah. Two brothers down. Hot work.’

‘Do you want the reserve?’ Kerne asked instantly.

‘Negative. Wait out.’

The vox clicked off. Fornix was back on the squad net. Jonah listened to it intently, hearing the grunted commands – that was Finn March and his brothers snapping out warnings to each other.

‘They’re breaking left.’

‘Heavy flamer. Gad, take it out.’

‘Beta move right, down the stairs.’

‘Move on, move on. Push them back, brothers.’

‘Grenade!’

‘I’m down – keep going.’

‘Blow that console. Heinos, plug in and open those ports.’

And the rattling crash of bolter fire now, the whistling of atmospherics being sucked out. It was still spuming out of the entry hole in white clouds, and with it came scraps of metal and flesh and smoke, even discarded weapons and wiring, all entangled. A severed head still in its helm, circling as it blew out into space, crowned with horns.

‘It’s a long way off, but I can feel it now,’ Brother Kass was saying. ‘It gives them purpose and direction, else these things would devour each other in their madness. There is a single mind at work here, Brother Malchai, a power in it I have never known before.

‘It is not alien in any way – it is almost recognisable, the way it works.’

‘Careful, brother,’ Malchai warned. ‘If you look into the warp, the warp looks back at you.’

Elijah Kass shuddered as he stood there like a tree in a gale. Malchai clumped towards him and shook the young Librarian.

‘Brother! Look away! Come back to me!’

‘The bridge is clear.’ That was Fornix’s voice, clear and untrammelled by interference. ‘Brother Heinos has accessed the ship systems. We’re killing this thing, Jonah. We have her, by the Emperor’s light – the thing is going down.’

‘Set it to self destruct and get out of there,’ Kerne said. He was watching Kass and Malchai grappling together.

Another voice on the net. Nureddin of Secundus, on the other destroyer.

‘Captain, all enemy resistance on the bridge has ended. We’ve sealed the doors and are setting charges. We’ll cripple her. Request Hawk Two for immediate evacuation.’

‘You have it, Nureddin. Good work. Casualties?’

‘Brother Infinius. We have his gene-seed.’

He didn’t last long, Kerne thought. His first real fight, and he is gone. He said a quiet prayer.

‘Hawks One and Two, move in for pickup, best speed.’

He turned to the Apothecary, whose helm was configured for casualty readout.

‘Passarion?’

‘All told, we have three brothers dead beyond recall, captain, and six more with major trauma, but ambulatory.’

He did not want to know all their names, not yet.

‘A long enough butcher’s bill,’ he said quietly.

‘Augur sweeps indicate that there are at least eight thousand crew on each of these ships, captain,’ Passarion said. He was watching Elijah Kass, who was back on his feet and breathing heavily over the vox.

‘Three brethren for sixteen thousand of the enemy and two destroyers. I call that a good exchange.’