‘This war is not over. The Great Enemy retreated from the planet and this system as a deliberate ploy. He was not driven out – he withdrew of his own accord, to suck in the forces of the Imperium and let them believe they had victory in their hands.
‘They are profoundly wrong. It approaches out of the warp, my dearly beloved, like a black star. A vast armada of the night, it is only an eye’s blink away from us, on the other side of the curtain which separates our galaxy from the chaos and evil of the warp. And it will be here soon.
‘The Imperial forces on the planet they name Ras Hanem are doomed. Against that which is coming, even the much-vaunted Adeptus Astartes of their Emperor cannot prevail.’
‘An ambush,’ Ainoc said, and his face twisted with conflicting emotions.
‘Yes.’
‘Then we must move quickly, before it is too late.’
‘It is already too late.’ Te Mirah walked up and down, her cloak catching the light of Steerledge in myriad glitters, as though it were bedecked with stars.
‘We must try another way, more dangerous, requiring more patience – and your forbearance, Ainoc.’
‘I will try anything which redeems the Infinity Circuit from the hands of those animals,’ Ainoc said.
‘Even if it means making an attempt to negotiate with those animals?’
Ainoc was speechless.
‘Farseer, I do not understand,’ Callinall, the ranger, said.
‘We have cooperated with them in the past, when it has suited our purposes. As barbarous as they are, they are not creatures of the warp, and on occasion they can be reasoned with.’
‘They cannot be trusted – they are fanatics who wish to see our kind swept out of the stars,’ Ainoc said hotly.
‘Agreed. But they are not without some intellectual subtlety, when it suits them.’
‘Do you think you can persuade them to simply hand over the Infinity Circuit?’ Ainoc asked.
‘I believe that when they are placed in a dire enough situation, they are more willing to negotiate in the sheer fight for survival. If we can somehow insinuate ourselves into their decision-making process, then we may well have the time and space allowed to reach our goal without fighting a hopeless battle.
‘The hopeless battles, Ainoc, we shall leave to them.’
She smiled. ‘There is one approaching. When they are weak enough, and desperate enough, they will be willing to listen, and our presence will be less of an anathema to them – believe me, I have seen it before. Even the Adeptus Astartes have worked with our people in the past.’
‘They will betray us,’ Ainoc said, shaking his head.
‘Perhaps, but my dearly beloved,’ Te Mirah strode up to Ainoc and took his face in her hands.
‘What other choice do we have?’
SEVENTEEN
Miles Mortuus est
Tomas Massaron stifled a yawn. The fleet-ensign snapped to attention before him with all the enthusiasm of the young and handed him the data-slate. He studied the lists and thumbed each one.
His flag lieutenant stood to one side, scanning the towering monitors and glancing now and then through the viewports at the bright ochre-coloured sphere of the planet turning below. Around them, the servitors of the command dais muttered to themselves in binaric and broken threads of Low Gothic. In one corner, Enginseer Miranich extended a fleshless metal arm and plugged into a console. The senior servitor nodded, grunted, and then withdrew the limb.
‘Transport away, shipmaster,’ he said, his artificial voice box flattening the words.
Massaron nodded at the young ensign, handing back the text-tab.
‘I sometimes wonder if Captain Kerne means to transport the entire Ogadai planetside piece by piece, Rob,’ he said to his lieutenant.
‘He has a world to make secure, sir,’ the lieutenant said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s much down there that survived the war.’
Massaron smiled. ‘Correct answer, Lieutenant Gershon. Still, at least he has the manufactoria down there in some sort of order now. If he had wanted yet more munitions from our own little operation, I believe we might well have had to start cannibalising the ship.’
‘It’s true we are running very low on raw materials, sir. I have had to postpone routine maintenance on sections three-four-six and seven.’
Massaron raised his head, calculating. ‘That’s the starboard hatches where we took out the lasburners to make room to extend the flight-deck. Yes, there was some very old stuff in there.’
‘The maintenance will be delayed some five days, sir – they’re sending up raw materials from the Armaments District next week. Shall I reschedule?’
‘No. Their need is greater than ours at present, Rob. But keep it in mind.’ He slapped the console beside him. ‘This old warrior needs constant watching.’
A flash on the vox display. A servitor tapped thin pointed fingers into the tiny rounded buttons there. ‘Priority receipt. Stand by.’
Massaron took the call, looking at the callsign on the board. It was from Arbion.
‘Diez, this is the flag, send, over.’
‘Shipmaster, we are halfway through our patrol and are getting some strange readings on augur in the vicinity of the Dardrek moon.’
‘Define strange, Diez.’
‘That’s the problem, sir. It seems to be some kind of spatial disturbance. There’s nothing rockcrete on augur, but there is a massive energy bloom in that area. Shall I investigate?’
A chill felt its way about Massaron’s heart.
‘Negative. Stand off from the phenomenon and observe only. Diez, could it be a ship coming out of warp?’
‘That was my first thought, sir, but the disturbance is too vast to be something like that – it’s fully half the size of the moon. My navigator speculates that it may be some kind of anomaly, a warp-boil about to burst.’
‘Stand well clear of it and keep me informed,’ Massaron said.
‘Affirmative. Arbion out.’
Diez was a capable commander who had been shipmaster of Arbion for five years, but his combat experience was limited. More than that, he had not been as long in space as Massaron had.
There were many strange phenomena in the void, few of them documented with any scientific clarity.
The strangest encounters were usually investigated by the Inquisition, who had no interest in the physics of what they saw, only the implications it held for Imperial orthodoxy. As a result, many shipmasters chose not to report some of the odder things they chanced across in their travels.
This might well be one more of those events. But Massaron did not like it, all the same.
He tugged at his lower lip, his gaze ranging across the flickering screens and data-monitors of his beloved ship.
It might be nothing – it probably was nothing. But the Ogadai had not survived this long because its shipmasters were complacent men.
Dardrek was three days away at normal cruising speed, but at full sub-warp velocity it could be reached in as little as eighteen hours. That was a very slim margin for error in Massaron’s book.
His voice changed as he spoke, becoming harder. ‘Cancel the next transport to the surface. Begin ignition sequence on main engines. All gun battery crews to their posts. Voidsunder crews are to end maintenance duties at once and ready weapons for firing.’
He paused. Well, it would be a good practice, even if nothing came of it. To get his ship from hatches-open maintenance-mode to battle readiness in the shortest time. But he knew he had to stagger the orders.
‘All compartments, crew to your stations. I say again, all compartments, crew to your stations.’