The Warmaster

Eight: Bad Shadow

The screaming was Vaynom Blenner’s first clue that he wasn’t dealing with just another hangover.

He got off his cot and stumbled into the hallway. The deck seemed to be at a slight angle. That wasn’t right; shiftship decks didn’t slope. They had systems, gravitic whatchamacallits, to make sure the horizontal true was maintained. Maybe his head was sloping.

That wasn’t ideal either, but it was a local problem.

‘What’s the feth-name commotion?’ he growled, grabbing Ree Perday as she hurried past.

‘The ship’s foundered, sir!’ she replied. She was scared.

‘Foundered? What does foundered mean?’ he asked.

She shrugged.

‘Swear to the Throne, Perday, I’m not in the mood–’

‘I don’t know what it means!’ Perday snapped, her anxiety getting the better of her discipline in the face of a senior officer. ‘It’s a word. Someone said, just now. Someone said we’d foundered.’

Blenner looked around.

‘The hell is that screaming?’

‘Cargo shifted,’ she said. ‘People are hurt. And upset.’

He pushed past her and entered the practice chamber. The instruments of the Colours band, most of them packed in crates or cases, had broken free of their packing ties and stow-nets and created a pile like a rockslide across the floor. Corpsmen were treating bruises, cuts and the occasional twisted ankle of bandsmen caught in the spill.

‘Throne of Terra!’ Blenner snorted. ‘I thought someone was actually hurt!’

‘Get this mess stowed again!’ he shouted.

‘We were getting it stowed, commissar,’ said the old bandmaster, Yerolemew. ‘For secondary orders, as per instruction. You remember that?’

‘I don’t like your tone, old man,’ Blenner snapped. Yerolemew took a step back, and lowered his gaze. Blenner swallowed. It had slipped his mind. He was foggy, but he remembered the warning. The ship was running poorly. It could fall out of warp. Then they’d be sitting ducks, so the regiment had to come to secondary.

At which point, apparently, he had decided to take a nap.

‘I was just in my cabin, checking inventory,’ he mumbled. ‘How do we stand with secondary?’

Yerolemew gestured towards Jakub Wilder, who was dealing with a bandsman named Kores. Kores was almost hysterical. In fact, most of the screaming seemed to be coming from him.

‘What’s the problem?’ Blenner asked.

Kores started to wail something.

‘Not you,’ Blenner snarled, ‘you.’

‘The shock tore the cargo loose,’ said Wilder sullenly. ‘Heggerlin has broken an arm, and Kores here, his hautserfone got smashed.’

‘His instrument?’

‘It’s an heirloom,’ said Wilder. ‘It probably can’t be repaired. The valves are busted.’

Blenner sighed. His contentment that he had been placed in charge of a bunch of fething idiot bandsmen, who were unlikely ever to see action and thus reward him with an easy, carnage-free life, came with a downside, to wit they were a bunch of fething idiots.

He was considering how much to shout at them when the fog cleared slightly. The slope of the deck, the toppling of the packed cases, Perday’s use of the word ‘foundered’.

‘Oh, feth,’ he murmured. The Armaduke had fallen out of warp. They were in trouble.

‘Get Gaunt,’ he said.

‘Comms are down,’ replied Wilder.

‘Have you sent anyone to get Gaunt?’ Blenner asked.

Wilder half shrugged.

‘You’re a bunch of fething idiots,’ said Blenner.

‘Commissar!’

Blenner turned. Gol Kolea had entered the chamber, flanked by troopers from C Company. They were all armed. They all looked like actual proper soldiers. Rerval, Kolea’s adjutant and vox-man, had a dressing on his head that was soaked in blood, and he was still walking around performing duties. Fething idiot bandsmen.

‘Everyone all right here, sir?’ Kolea asked.

‘Not really, major,’ said Blenner, ‘and in ways you couldn’t possibly want to imagine.’

Kolea frowned.

‘This… with respect, commissar, this doesn’t look much like secondary order to me.’

‘Or me,’ Blenner nodded. ‘I think I’ll shoot the lot of them for being idiots.’

‘I’d rather you got the Colours Company on their feet and held Transit Six,’ said Kolea. ‘What’s the munition situation?’

Probably plentiful, thought Blenner, seeing as my mob hardly ever shoot at anything.

‘I’ll check,’ he said.

He paused.

‘Hold Transit Six?’ he asked.

‘The ship’s been boarded,’ said Kolea. ‘We have hostiles advancing from the aft section, from the engine house.’

Blenner’s guts turned to ice water.

‘Boarded?’

‘That’s as much as I know.’

‘Who’s coordinating? Gaunt?’

‘We’ve got no central coordination because the comms are out and vox is patchy. I’m trying to coordinate with Kolosim and Baskevyl. They’re advancing into Lower Transitionary Eight. Elam and Arcuda have Nine covered. According to Elam, there’s fighting in the engine house, and hostiles reported.’

‘What kind of hostiles?’ asked Blenner.

‘The hostile kind,’ said Kolea. ‘That’s all I know.’

Blenner nodded.

‘Brace yourself, major,’ he said. Kolea looked nonplussed, but nodded.

Blenner turned to the bandsmen. He was a genial man, but he possessed a powerful voice, especially in times of crisis, such as the bar being noisy when he wanted a round, or when a waiter was ignoring him.

‘You’re a disgrace to the fething Emperor, may He bless us all, Throne knows why!’ he bellowed. ‘We are under attack, Colours! Forget farting around with your fething musical instruments and get yourselves formed up! Wilder!’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Munition count! Get everyone stocked and loaded! Anyone shows short, get people to tip out their musettes and even things up!’

‘You’re shouting and I’m right in front of you,’ said Wilder.

‘Damn right I’m shouting! I want Colours in secondary order in two minutes, or I will take a fething hautserfone and start clubbing people to death with it! Find that Fury of Belladon and find it fast!’

The bandsmen started to scramble. Blenner turned back to Kolea.

‘We’ll be secure in five, major,’ he said. ‘I’ll have them advance and hold Transit Six.’

Kolea nodded.

‘Move out!’ Kolea told his company. ‘May the Emperor protect you,’ he said, looking back at Blenner.

Blenner went back to his cabin. At least, he thought, at least with Kolea, Kolosim, Elam and Baskevyl in the field, there would be a buffer between him and the hostiles.

He found the bottle of pills in his campaign chest. He took two, then a third just to be sure. He knocked them down with a swig of amasec.

He could do this. He was a fething fighting man of the Throne. Of course he could.

And if he couldn’t, there were plenty of places to hide.

Dalin Criid was in charge, and he didn’t like it much. There was no sign of Captain Meryn – the last word was that Meryn had gone to the infirmary – so although there were several men senior to him in the company, Dalin, as adjutant, had command.

E Company’s barrack deck was in uproar. He had to yell repeatedly to get some kind of order. The last command received had been to go to secondary order, so that’s what Dalin intended to do until he heard otherwise.

‘Secure the barrack deck!’ he shouted. ‘I want watches and repulse details at every hatch! Let’s scout the halls nearby too! I want to know what shape everyone else is in!’

E Company started to move with some purpose. Support and ancillary personnel looked scared. There were a lot of minor injuries, but Dalin could see that fear was the biggest problem.

‘What do you want us to do, sir?’ asked Jessi Banda. Dalin didn’t rise to the sarcastic emphasis she put on ‘sir’.

‘Help anybody that needs help,’ said Dalin. ‘Try to calm fears. Leyr? Neskon? Take a party to the far hatches and sing out if anyone approaches from aft.’

The men nodded.

Dalin wanted to head to the retinue holds and find Yoncy. He desperately needed to know if his kid sister was all right. But he knew he couldn’t show any kind of favouritism. The situation needed to be controlled, and essential personnel needed to be–

He turned.

‘Get things settled here,’ he told Banda and Wheln.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Banda.

‘I’ll be right back.’

The private and reserved cabins were at the for’ard end of the company deck. He pushed his way through the jostle of bodies and headed that way. Gaunt’s son, Felyx, was billeted in one of those cabins. Dalin knew Gaunt would want the boy secured. The colonel­commissar hated the fact that his offspring was here at all. He’d made a special point of asking Dalin to watch Felyx.

And Dalin wanted to check too. He liked Felyx. He felt they had become friends. He was a little afraid that the bond he had formed was part of a selfish urge to impress and please Gaunt. He liked to dismiss that idea, and tell himself that he had found a friend, and that Felyx needed a comrade he could count on, but the nagging doubt wouldn’t go away.

In all honesty, Dalin Criid wished he could work out what it was that drew him to Felyx Meritous Chass so strongly, and hoped in his heart of hearts that it wasn’t a psychological need to impress his beloved commander.

He found the cabin and banged on the door.

‘Felyx? Felyx, it’s Dalin.’

After a short delay, the hatch opened, and Dalin stepped in.

‘Are you all right?’ he began.

Felyx was sitting on the cot, his jacket pulled around his shoulders. He looked pale and ill. Nahum Ludd had opened the door for Dalin.

‘Sir, what are you doing here?’ Dalin asked.

‘I came to check on Felyx,’ said Ludd. ‘The ship’s under attack.’

‘I know,’ said Dalin.

‘It’s serious, trooper,’ said Ludd. ‘I knew the colonel-commissar would want to make sure Felyx was all right, and comms are fethed.’

Dalin nodded. He felt annoyed. He and Ludd were not far off in age, and like him, Ludd had gone out of his way to bond with Felyx. They had become almost like rivals feuding over a girl. It was stupid, but Dalin felt somehow jealous finding Ludd here. He was sure, damn sure, that Ludd was motivated by the same urge Dalin feared in himself. A desire to cover himself in acclaim and ingratiate himself to Gaunt. It had been remarked before that Ludd and Dalin represented the new generation of Ghosts, that one day Ludd might be senior commissar of the regiment, and Dalin a full company officer. One day, if the fates proved kind, and the regiment lasted that long. They were emblematic of the future, of the campaigns to come, Ghost commanders in the making. And as such, both wanted the approval and notice of Ibram Gaunt, who would make the decisions and recommendations that would shape their careers. Gaunt was a father figure to them both, and here they both were, sucking up by trying to be the man who ‘looked after’ Gaunt’s son.

Ludd had the rank, of course. He was more like the father they were both trying to impress.

‘Are you all right?’ Dalin asked Felyx.

Felyx nodded, but it was clear he was hurt.

‘He was knocked off his feet by the violence of the retranslation,’ said Ludd. ‘I found him unconscious. That locker had fallen on him.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Felyx. ‘Just dazed.’

‘He was out cold,’ said Ludd.

‘We should get him to the infirmary,’ said Dalin, worried. ‘Gaunt would–’

‘The ship’s overrun,’ said Ludd. ‘We have no idea which decks the enemy has seized. Movement without decent force strength would be a bad idea. I decided it was better to look after Felyx here until the emergency passed.’

‘I have E Company on hand–’ Dalin began.

‘Good. Then secure the aft hatches and cover the rear hallways. That’s the direction they’re coming from.’

Dalin hesitated.

‘Come on, trooper,’ said Ludd.

‘Was that an order?’ asked Dalin.

‘Yes,’ said Ludd. ‘Meryn not with you?’

Dalin shook his head.

‘Then it’s your day of glory, trooper – you’re in charge. Get those hallways blocked. Barricades, if you can. The main spinal here runs straight down to the retinue holds, and there are women and children there who need protecting.’

Dalin nodded.

‘If you’re sure you’re all right?’ he said to Felyx.

‘Yes. Go.’

Dalin nodded, and went out.

Ludd closed the door behind him and looked back at Felyx.

‘You’re not going to tell him, are you, Nahum?’ asked Felyx.

‘What?’

‘What you saw when you found me–’

‘I didn’t see anything,’ said Ludd.

‘I’m serious, Nahum. No one can know. No one knows except Maddalena. No one can know–’

‘Calm down,’ said Ludd. ‘I didn’t see anything.’

‘We should check it,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Shouldn’t we? We should check it.’

Shoggy Domor shrugged.

‘I suppose so, Bask,’ he replied.

Baskevyl and Domor had advanced their companies – D and K respectively – into the vast hold and cargo spaces of the Armaduke’s low decks. The ship’s intervox was dead, but patchy back and forth using the company vox-sets had established that they’d been boarded, and that the boarders were coming in through the aft quarters, especially the engine house. A few unreliable sources said that a massive firefight was already under way in the engine house block, and from the smell of smoke on the dry air, Baskevyl tended to give that story some credence. Other sources had suggested the boarding forces were cannibals. Void monsters, hungry for flesh. Bask was happy to dismiss that as scaremongering, though he had been alive long enough to know that the horrors of the galaxy usually exceeded a man’s worst imaginings.

His company had formed up with Domor’s, more by accident than design. The plan, such as it was, was to move aft incrementally until they made contact with the enemy. As far as Bask knew, six companies were making their way aft from the billet decks. He and Domor had decided to take the belly route through the cargo spaces while Kolosim and Elam took theirs along the main transits of the upper decks. ‘Thorough coverage,’ Ferdy Kolosim had called it. It made sense. No point marching to the engine house only to find that the cannibal freaks had taken the bridge by moving through the holds. Elam had advised checking every compartment as they came to it. Boarders might be holding out in ambush squads. Worse still, they might have found other entry points and be swarming in unnoticed.

Bask and Domor, spreading their squads through the massive and labyr­inthine hold area, had checked each chamber and compartment they passed.

They had reached hold ninety.

‘We should check it,’ Bask said, as if to convince himself. He and Domor looked at the security seals that Commissar Fazekiel and the shipmaster’s officers had placed on the hold’s locks. Hold ninety was where they had stored all the material and artefacts recovered from Salvation’s Reach during the raid, inhuman artefacts taken from the sanctum of the Archenemy. Fazekiel had compiled the inventory, and standing instructions were that the material remained sealed and untouched during the return trip, ready for immediate transfer to the highest authorities.

That was before the ship had fallen out of the immaterium and rolled to a dead, hard, helpless stop.

‘Maybe we should just leave it alone,’ said Domor. ‘I mean, that stuff… It’s bad stuff, isn’t it? Fething evil Archenemy stuff.’

‘Yeah,’ Bask nodded, ‘but important enough for us to retrieve it all. Gaunt says it could be vital to the war effort. That’s why we brought it all back with us. If they’ve cut through an inner wall…’

Domor shrugged.

‘Cordon here!’ he called out. ‘Rifles ready!’

Chiria and Ewler brought a fire-team up close, aiming at the hatches.

Domor pulled out his straight silver, and sliced off the first of the seals. Then he took cutters to the locks. Bask took a pry-bar from Wes Maggs. As soon as Domor was done, Baskevyl levered the hatch’s heavy locator bolts free.

They opened the hatch.

‘No power,’ said Domor, looking in.

‘Yeah, but do you see anything?’ Bask asked. Domor’s eyes, a complex set of augmetic mechanicals, whirred and clicked as they searched the darkness.

‘I think some of the boxes have spilled,’ he said. ‘Some of the crates.’

‘Boss?’

Baskevyl turned. Wes Maggs, his company’s lead scout, had found a junction box in a shuttered alcove nearby.

‘We got emergency lights here,’ he said.

‘Throw them,’ Bask nodded.

The interior lights came on with a dull thump. Blue emergency light shone out of the open hatch.

Baskevyl picked up his lasgun.

‘Let’s take a proper look,’ he said, ‘then we seal it up again.’

He and Domor entered hold ninety, followed by Fapes and Chiria. The materials had been packed into plyboard crates and lashed onto metal shelves. Each carton had a small label, an inventory number, and stamped warnings about tampering and removal. Fazekiel had been thorough.

Two shelves had collapsed during retranslation, and their cartons were spilled out on the deck. Bask saw clay tablets, some whole, some broken, among the packing beads, along with data-slates, small statues and beads, and old parchment scraps. Just some of the unholy treasures they had risked their lives liberating from the Reach’s college of heritence.

‘We should clean this up,’ said Domor.

‘I don’t want to touch it,’ Bask replied.

‘Well, we can’t just leave it like this if it’s so valuable,’ said Domor.

‘I think we should. We don’t know what goes where. There’s no one in here, so I say we lock it up tight again. When this mess is over, Gaunt and Hark can come down here with the inventory and sort it out.’

Domor nodded. He looked relieved.

‘Sir?’

Bask turned. His adjutant, Fapes, had moved into the next bay.

‘Some more have come down in here,’ Fapes called. ‘I think you should see this.’

Baskevyl and Domor went to join him. In the second bay, three more cartons had shifted off the shelving and spilled on the deck. More scrolls and old books, and some noxious looking specimen jars. Baskevyl didn’t want to consider what might be in them.

‘What the feth?’ Domor began.

Baskevyl took a step forwards. He could think of no ready explanation. Eight ancient stone tiles had tumbled from one of the cartons. They were arranged in almost perfect lines across the deck: a row of four over a row of three, with a single tile centred beneath.

‘They fell like that,’ said Chiria, as if trying to convince herself.

‘In rows?’ asked Fapes.

The tablets were perfectly aligned, as though someone had pain­stakingly and carefully laid them out that way. Not a single one was out of true.

‘How does…’ Domor murmured. ‘How does that happen? How does that even happen?’

Baskevyl knelt beside the rows. He stared at them. He remembered the frantic recovery efforts in the foul colleges of the Reach. He remembered Gaunt telling him that Mabbon had reckoned these stone tiles to be of particular significance. Xenos artefacts, of impossibly ancient manufacture. Each one was about the size of a standard data-slate, and made from gleaming red stone. They were all ­damaged and worn by time, and one had a significant piece missing. They were covered in inscriptions that Baskevyl couldn’t make sense of.

‘No one’s been in here,’ he said. ‘You saw the seals. No one’s been in here. They must’ve just fallen like this–’

‘That’s a bunch of feth,’ said Domor.

‘You got a better answer?’ Bask asked, looking up at him.

‘Not one I want to say out loud,’ mumbled Domor.

Baskevyl reached a hand towards the tablets.

‘Don’t touch them!’ Chiria yelled. ‘Are you mad?’

‘I wasn’t–’ Baskevyl replied, snatching his hand away. But it was a lie. He had been about to touch them. He’d needed to touch them, even though touching was the last thing he wanted to do.

He got to his feet.

‘They look like an aquila,’ said Fapes.

‘What?’ asked Baskevyl.

Fapes pointed.

‘The way they’re laid out, sir. Like wings, see, then the body? Like an eagle with spread wings. Sir?’

Baskevyl wasn’t listening to his adjutant any more. He stared at the tiles on the floor. They were laid out a little like an eagle symbol.

He swallowed hard. He had a sudden, sick memory. The supply drop… the aborted supply drop on Aigor 991. There’d been a daemon there. Something. Something bad. They’d heard a voice. Well, he hadn’t, but Rerval had. Rerval first, then Gol. Gol had made a full report about it. The voice had claimed to be the voice of Sek.

It had demanded they bring the eagle stones to it.

They’d fought the… the whatever it was off, and aborted the drop. Gol had aborted the drop, and he’d made a full report to Gaunt. No one had been able to offer an explanation, and besides, it was warp-crap anyway. You never paid attention to warp-crap and the ravings of the Archenemy, because that was a sure route to madness.

But this… Those stones on the deck. Stones they had been told by the pheguth were precious, laid out in the shape of an eagle.

‘Throne preserve us,’ he murmured.

‘Sir?’ Fapes asked.

‘Seal it up,’ Bask said. ‘Seal it up. Get a torch on the door bolts to weld them in place. We come back and deal with this when the crisis is over.’

Domor looked at him, then turned and walked out, calling for a trooper with a metal-torch.

Baskevyl looked at Fapes.

‘See if you can get the vox up,’ he said to the adjutant. ‘Raise Gaunt. Tell him what we found down here. Don’t dress it up. Just tell him straight what we found and what it looks like. Then ask him what he wants us to do about it.’

‘Gaunt?’

Gaunt stepped away from the strategium display and went over to Curth. She was still working on Spika’s frail body, massaging his chest.

He crouched at her side.

‘I’ve got a heartbeat,’ she whispered.

‘You have?’ Gaunt replied.

She nodded. ‘I didn’t want to shout it out and give these men false hope. It’s weak. Ridiculously weak. And it may go again in a moment. But I have a heartbeat.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘I want to see if I can sustain it for another five or ten minutes,’ she whispered. ‘If I can, I’ll risk moving him to the infirmary. He needs immediate surgery. A bypass. His brain may already be gone, though.’

‘I’ll ask Criid to get a stretcher party ready.’

‘Good,’ said Curth.

‘If you’ve brought the shipmaster back,’ Gaunt said, ‘you’ve done amazing–’

‘Don’t patronise me,’ she said, without looking up from her work. ‘This is my calling. A life needed saving. I was here.’

Gaunt rose. There was a sudden commotion around the strategium display.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘I’m assessing,’ said Darulin. ‘Something just…’

‘Something what?’

‘Roll it back,’ Darulin said to a tech-adept. ‘Thirty seconds.’

The main display image flickered as it switched from real-time feed to recorded data. Gaunt saw no difference.

‘Look there,’ said Darulin. ‘The enemy flagship, lying seventeen thousand kilometres off us, approximate. A carrier vessel.’

He touched the display, making a small haptic mark beside the dark dot of the enemy cruiser.

‘Advance by frame, one hundredth speed,’ Darulin told the adept.

The data began to play. At the four-second mark, the dark dot was replaced by a point of white light. The light point expanded then vanished. There was no sign of the dot.

‘What did I just see?’ asked Gaunt. ‘An explosion?’

‘Sensor resolution is very poor,’ said Darulin, ‘but yes. The enemy base-ship just went up. Total disintegration.’

‘But it was bigger than us,’ said Criid.

‘It was,’ Darulin agreed.

‘So, what… a drive accident?’ asked Gaunt.

‘What’s that?’ asked Kelvedon, reaching in to point.

Another dark dot, a larger one, had appeared on the scope. It was moving past the point where the other dot had vanished. It was accelerating towards the Armaduke.

‘That’s a ship,’ said Darulin. ‘A very large ship.’

‘Time to us?’ asked Gaunt.

‘It’s on us already,’ said Darulin. He turned to the bridge crew. ‘I want identifiers now! Now!’ he shouted.

‘We have visual,’ Kelvedon called.

Something was coming in at them, something so massive it was eclipsing local starlight. It was casting a vast shadow across the ­crippled, helpless Armaduke. The light on the bridge changed as the shadow slid over them, throwing the external ports into blackness.

‘We’re in its shadow,’ said Darulin quietly. The bridge grew very still and very quiet. There was no sound except the rasp of the air scrubbers, the chatter of automatic systems and the occasional ping of the display system.

Suddenly, the vox went live. A screaming noise shrieked from every speaker. Everyone flinched and covered their ears.

The deafening noise became words. A voice that was not human. A voice that echoed from the pit of space.

‘tormageddon monstrum rex! tormageddon monstrum rex! tormaggeddon monstrum rex!’

‘The daemon ship from Tavis Sun,’ Kelvedon stammered.

‘The enemy battleship,’ Darulin nodded. He looked pale, resigned.

Criid looked at Gaunt, aghast. ‘Sir?’

‘Do we have shields yet, or…’ Gaunt’s voice trailed off. The name was still booming from the speakers, over and over, like a chant. Gaunt could see the look on Acting Shipmaster Darulin’s face.

‘I’m sorry, colonel-commissar,’ said Darulin. ‘Whatever hope we might have had is now gone. We are caught, helpless, in the sights of an enemy warship that dwarfs us and outclasses us in every way measurable. We are dead.’