I could see Anton’s features reflected translucently in the armour-glass. He sucked his lower lip thoughtfully. The scar flexed on his forehead. He was uneasy. ‘It’s bad enough having to get on these ships,’ he said eventually. ‘Now we don’t even know where we are.’
‘Not much different from usual in your case then, is there?’ said Ivan.
‘You think there might be some sort of curse on the Fist? You think it might be responsible for this happening? Those priests weren’t too happy about us taking it.’
There had been a time when I would have laughed in his face for suggesting such a thing, but I had seen too many strange things since we left Belial. We all had. I watched the drifting crewman. He was tugging himself back in on a line. Maybe he had drifted off deliberately to get a better view of the hull section. In any case I felt relieved.
‘You think some heretic priest’s curse is stronger than the blessings on this ship?’ Ivan asked. ‘It’s as venerable as a Baneblade and served the Emperor just as long as Old Number Ten.’
Anton appeared to consider this. ‘No, probably not.’
‘Good,’ said Ivan. I wondered at the vehemence in his voice and suspected he was just as uneasy as Anton. He just hid it better.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get home in one piece,’ I said and added eventually in a murmur too low for the others to hear.
Chapter Four
‘Lord Ashterioth,’ Sileria says. ‘There is something you should see.’
I look at her, mortally weary of existence, and I say, ‘I am already looking at you.’
She smiles at the flattery but says, ‘A ship has been detected.’
‘Eldar?’ I ask, wondering how my enemies could have found me. What mistake had I made that they picked up the trail so quickly?
‘Human,’ she says. ‘It emerged into real space from the translocation point some hours ago.’
‘A trader?’ I say. It seems the most likely explanation. I know this world is not part of any of the human political blocs in this part of the galaxy.
‘The energy profile fits that of a warship, lord,’ she says.
‘Just one? Not a fleet?’
She nods. ‘It could be a scout. It is not progressing in-system. It is holding a position near the translocation point.’
‘You think it some form of advance guard?’ I begin to play back our invasion of this place in my mind. When we seized this world, no distress signal was sent on any of the channels we monitored, and we could not have missed anything the human’s primitive systems could broadcast. I know they do not have any of the psykers the humans are foolish enough to use, the so-called astropaths.
‘The energy profile is unusual,’ she says and hands me the vision-slab.
I see instantly what she means. ‘Very low emissions for a warship of that displacement. It is damaged, a straggler from a fleet perhaps, or survivor of a warp storm washed up here.’
She nods again, and I smile coldly. ‘Muster the fleet,’ I say. ‘Let us go and take a look at this unexpected prize.’
‘It could have been worse,’ said Drake. He was sitting in one of the massive leather armchairs in Macharius’s state room. Macharius sat across the table from him. There was a regicide board between them. Neither had touched it in hours.
‘By this you mean we could be dead,’ Macharius said. His face was grim, and I thought I understood why. There was nothing he could do here, the repairs of the great warship were out-with his area of competence. He was just as helpless as the rest of us, and he did not like it in the least little bit.
‘I mean things could be worse,’ said Drake. His voice was patient. He seemed a man much more used to being patient than Macharius at that exact moment. I knew this was not entirely the case. Macharius could be as unflappable as a stone idol when waiting on news from a battlefield. Then he was never flustered. This was something different.
‘I must be on Emperor’s Glory soon and with this cargo intact,’ said Macharius.
‘We have suffered very little temporal displacement according to my chronometric readings,’ said Drake. ‘Once the repairs are done we shall be back under way. We will not have lost much time.’
‘If our crew can locate where we are and plot a course home,’ said Macharius. ‘Something went very wrong on our way out.’
And there it was, the thing that was on all of our minds. Something had gone wrong and none of us were sure what it was. If we had been on a battlefield, Macharius would have known and understood any setback. Here we were just sentient cargo.
It never fails to worry me exactly how vulnerable all starships are. In the event of the Navigators going mad, getting killed or being taken out of action, there was no way of a ship getting home. No normal man could look out into the warp and pick the ship’s path through that strange sub-universe. On the back of this fact, the Navigator Houses had turned themselves into one of the great powers of the Imperium. It was possible to argue that without them there would be no Imperium at all. Without starships, how would the great armies move?
The air flickered and a holo appeared in the air above the table. It presented a picture of the ship’s command deck.
One of the watch officers suddenly stood up at the divinatory altar he was supervising, spoke something to the ship’s captain, who gave an order to his subordinate, then spoke to Macharius.
‘Lord High Commander, I must report we have picked up signals from multiple incoming ships. Xenos.’
‘Hostile?’ said Macharius. There was little chance they would be anything else.
‘We must assume so.’
‘I will need access to command echelon sub-nets of the ship’s vox systems,’ said Macharius. ‘And I will need it now.’
The captain nodded. Macharius strode over to an altar and called up internal schematics of the ship. Being who he was, he had most likely memorised all of them earlier, but he wanted access now. He put a comm-bead into his ear and slipped a microphone under his jaw just as the battle-stations warnings echoed through the ship.
Ignoring them he began to speak commands, gravely, precisely and with a certain relish.
Our ships spiral gracefully out-system towards the contact. I sit at the helm and study the vision crystal. All around ancient power sources hum. The crew perform their duties in the long oval chamber, its ruddy light turning them into bloody phantoms. For a moment, I contemplate the beauty of the intricate mechanisms that keep me alive and move me across the face of the void.
The human ship has not moved, and its energy signature has not changed. It appears to be just sitting there waiting, as if daring us to come closer. I ask myself could this be a trap? Is it merely pretending to be crippled to draw us into combat? Certainly the profile of the ship makes it look powerful enough to provide a challenge were it in a proper state of repair. It is a battleship, massive and armed with multiple batteries of primitive but potent weapons.
I measure the strength of my fleet against it. Even if the vessel were at full power they would be sufficient to ensure our victory. I am certain of it. Nonetheless, I am uneasy. Once again the universe presents me with what looks like a gift. Once again I wonder what lies beneath the mask of reality. I push doubt aside. Even if a human fleet were to emerge from the daemon-haunted wastes they are foolish enough to traverse, we would simply retreat.
There is no real threat here. I give the order to assume attack formation.