The Warmaster

Four: Dead In The Water

‘Get up,’ said Brother Sar Af of the Adeptus Astartes White Scars.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Nahum Ludd. ‘Of course. Sorry.’

It was, he knew, entirely inappropriate to lie on the deck when in the presence of three battle-brothers. Entirely inappropriate, especially for an officer of the Officio Prefectus. Officers of the Officio Prefectus did not lie down on the deck during audiences with Space Marines. Also, where was his hat?

He stood up.

‘I… uhm,’ Ludd began. He wasn’t sure what he’d been in the middle of saying. He searched their faces for a clue.

The three Adeptus Astartes battle-brothers in the half-lit hold in front of him gave nothing away. Kater Holofurnace, the giant warrior of the Iron Snakes, very slowly buckled on his war-helm. Sar Af the White Scar seemed poised as though listening to something intently. Brother-Sergeant Eadwine of the Silver Guard seemed lost in deep thought.

‘Have you seen my hat?’ Ludd asked.

None of them replied.

‘Uhm, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt sent me to respectfully inform you that we’re experiencing drive issues,’ said Ludd, suddenly remembering. ‘So… so we’re coming to secondary order in case we get bounced back into real space and experience… uhm… you know, an attack.’

Ludd realised he was blinking with his right eye.

‘You told us this,’ said Sar Af.

‘Did I really?’ said Ludd. ‘When did I do that?’

‘When you walked in here and told it to us,’ said Sar Af.

‘Oh,’ said Ludd.

‘About twenty seconds before the ship was… bounced back into real space,’ said Eadwine, locking his helm in place.

The blinking was beginning to annoy Ludd. Something was getting in his eye. He reached up and found that his fingers were wet. He was bleeding from a scalp wound and the blood was running down his face.

‘Ow,’ he said. He began to remember the world lurching in a spasm, a feeling of… of something he didn’t want to dwell on. He remembered flying through the air. He remembered the deck racing up to meet him.

‘Gather your wits,’ said Sar Af, putting on his own war-helm. ‘This is just the beginning.’

‘It is?’ asked Ludd.

Holofurnace pointed at the roof of the hold with his lance.

‘Listen,’ he said.

Shipmaster Clemensaw Spika flopped back into his seat. He was breathing hard. His head hurt like a bastard. He knew that feeling. The lingering, sickening trauma of a bad translation from the warp. Everyone around him was disorientated and dazed, even the most hard-wired souls.

‘Somebody mute those alarms!’ he yelled. The stations and consoles of the bridge were a mass of flashing amber and red runes. The noise was overwhelming. One of Spika’s aides made adjustments. The immediate row abated, though the ship sirens and warning horns continued to bay.

‘Report, please,’ said Spika, trying to catch his breath.

‘No data, no feed, shipmaster,’ the Master of Artifice replied.

‘No data, no feed,’ echoed the Master of Detection.

‘Guidance is inert,’ reported the chief steersman. ‘The Navigator is unconscious.’

‘Our location?’ asked Spika.

‘Not calculable at this time.’

‘But real space?’ asked Spika. ‘We’re in real space?’

He didn’t have to ask. He could feel they were. The Highness Ser Armaduke had violently retranslated from the immaterium after a drive failure. It was a miracle they hadn’t been annihilated, or torn apart, or void-blown by the extremity of it. An Imperial miracle, bless the divine God-Emperor. Maybe Gaunt had been wrong about their luck.

‘I want a critical status report in five minutes,’ Spika said, getting back on his feet. He was badly bruised from the gravity fall, and his cardiac flutter and irregular breathing were due to the physiological sympathies he felt with his ship’s systems and drives.

‘Five minutes,’ he repeated. ‘Casualties, damage, system status, repair schedules, local position, capacity, ready times, everything.’

‘Shipmaster?’

Spika turned.

The junior vox-officer was holding out a headset to him. The man was pale and shaking. The trauma had left its mark on everyone.

‘What?’ asked Spika.

‘Urgent vox-link from Eadwine of the Silver Guard,’ he said.

‘Routed through shipboard vox?’

‘No, sir, that’s down. This is direct from his suit system to my desk receivers.’

Spika took the headset.

‘This is the shipmaster.’

‘This is Eadwine. Cancel all shipboard sirens.’

‘Noble sir, we have just suffered a traumatic return to–’

‘Cancel them.’

‘Why?’ asked Spika.

‘So we can hear.’

The shipmaster hesitated.

‘Hear what, Brother-Sergeant Eadwine?’

‘Whatever it is that’s trying to get in,’ the voice of the Adeptus Astartes warrior crackled back.

‘The chances of us being boarded mere seconds after a translation are ridiculously low. It is an unfeasible coincidence. An Archenemy ship would have to be in precisely the right location, and ready for operation, and–’

‘Spika, you are confused. Reassess the situation. Prepare yourself. And cancel the damned sirens.’

The link went dead.

Spika had to steady himself. He felt extremely unwell. What the hell had the battle-brother been talking about? How dare he talk to a shipmaster like that when…

He found himself staring at the main console, and specifically at the display of the ship’s principal chronometer.

He swallowed, and felt a chill. It wasn’t possible.

Sometime during the last few, terrible minutes of drive failure and brutal retranslation, they had lost ten years.

‘Cancel the damned sirens!’ he yelled. ‘All of them! Right now!’