‘How many xenos?’ Macharius asked. There was no tension in his voice, no sign of any unease. He was doing something he had been born to do. A sense of calm competence flowed out from him as heat flows from a fire. We had relocated to the bridge of the ship. The whole time we had moved Macharius had kept up a stream of communications with the commanders of his bodyguard regiment, deploying them to critical points around the ship, setting them in readiness for any boarding action. He seemed to have no doubts about his knowledge of where the best positions would be. He was almost certainly right in this.
‘A dozen ships, Lord High Commander,’ said the captain. ‘None of them of more than half our displacement, but that means nothing with xenos. They may each have firepower equal to an Imperial ship of the line, and carry a complement of warriors equal to our own combined force.’
A faint frown flickered over Macharius’s brow. ‘Are our weapon systems back in commission?’
‘Void cannons and main batteries are powered up. If we had another few hours we could simply have made the jump out of this system and avoided any conflict. General repairs are almost complete.’
‘How about your Navigator – has he calculated our position and course?’
‘He is working on it.’
‘Perhaps you could suggest to him that he work a little harder.’
‘Of course, Lord High Commander.’
Drake studied the flickering runes hovering over the altars. ‘The xenos vessels are eldar.’
The captain rapped out an order to one of the crewmen. A partially-translucent image hovered in the air above us, showing a long, shark-like vessel, whose sleek lines bore no resemblance to any human craft. The image shimmered and shifted as other eldar ships sprang into being. All of them were subtly different but were obviously the product of the same alien sensibility. There was something strange about the way they flickered, as if they were not quite present in our space. Sometimes they grew indistinct and vanished entirely, leaving only areas of darkness behind them. Our auspex systems were clearly having difficulty pinning down their position.
‘Tell me about them,’ Macharius said. His tone was conversational.
‘They are most decadent and repulsive creatures, given to enslaving and torturing their victims. They exist outside the Emperor’s Light and are our eternal enemies.’
Macharius’s eyes narrowed. ‘Slavers. We can expect a boarding action, then.’
‘They will try and cripple us first,’ said Drake. ‘Destroy our drives, erode our void shields, silence our weapons.’
‘Then they won’t have much work to do,’ said Macharius, not without a certain sardonic humour.
‘That’s true.’ Drake seemed to hesitate for a moment.
‘And?’ Macharius said.
‘And what?’ Drake replied.
‘You look as though you want to say something else.’
‘It would probably be best not to be taken alive,’ said Drake. ‘These creatures have a reputation for tortures of the most heinous sort. They take pleasure in it.’
There was something in his tone that suggested he was understating the extent of their cruelty, and that just made it all the more frightening.
‘If they want to take us alive, they will need to board the ship,’ said Macharius. ‘If they do, we shall teach them the error of their ways.’
He sounded confident, but then he always did. ‘Let us go to the command deck and see if we can encourage our Navy comrades to more speed.’
We are within range of visual pickup. I order ultimate magnification on the vision crystal and the human vessel leaps into view, a mountain of metal against the velvet backdrop of infinite night. It has the crudity of all human work, and I wonder again at the indifference of a universe that can allow such a species not only to exist but, apparently, to thrive.
Of course, it is not indifference. Long ago the cosmos proved itself to be actively malevolent, but still… The fact that it allows such beings to go on existing is proof positive that it has no taste.
Consider the human warship. The least gifted eldar child could create a vessel far more beautiful. This is a slab of metal covered in gargoyles, bristling with weapons. The lines are blunt as a gulbak’s club. It is as if the humans are so afraid of the cosmos that they feel the need to present what they consider a frightening face to it. It is a vessel designed to intimidate children. It shows no understanding that the truly dangerous creature has no need to show how dangerous it is.
It appears damaged. The thick armour looks pitted and damaged as though the claws of some gigantic beast have swept along its length scraping away ribbons of metal. There are flickers of light where primitive chemical flame welding devices are used to patch the incisions.
‘It does not look like a trap,’ I say. Sileria glances up at me.
‘It looks like an idiot’s attempt at sculpture,’ she says. We both laugh.
‘Nonetheless, it is armed,’ I say at last.
‘What is it doing here?’ she asks. ‘It shows the markings of the human Imperium. They are not supposed to be within a hundred light years of this system.’
‘Some new migration, no doubt,’ I say. ‘The barbarians are on the move once more, looking for new worlds to conquer.’
‘Why here, why now?’ Her words echo submerged thoughts floating through the under-consciousness of my own mind. She is wondering if the ship’s presence has anything to do with our own or is mere coincidence. It is a weakness all of the eldar have, this solipsism. We believe the universe rotates around us. The more intelligent of us are aware of it, of course.
‘We shall, no doubt, find out soon enough,’ I say. ‘Once we have taken a few new slaves and feasted on their agony.’
‘I look forward to it,’ she says, looking up at me and licking her lips.
There was a faint vibration as the ship’s engines flared, and once again we were under way. The crew had laboured mightily over the past few hours and it seemed that their efforts had been rewarded.
The astronavigator looked up from his charts, set aside his astrolabe and glanced around as if noticing all of the activity surrounding him for the first time.
‘I believe we can make the jump, captain, now that the ship’s generators are capable of powering us.’
‘How long and how far until the insertion point?’
‘Roughly half an Imperial astronomical unit,’ said the astronavigator. ‘It should not take more than two hours, but it places us on a convergent course with the xenos.’
The captain was obviously making some calculations of his own. ‘The eldar will be upon us before then. We will still have to fight.’
‘Shall I begin pre-jump preparations?’ said the Navigator. The captain did not look at Macharius. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Now all we need do is survive the next couple of hours,’ said Drake. ‘And hope the ship takes no more damage before we can make the jump.’
Macharius looked at the enemy ship on the screen, staring at it as if he were looking on the face of an enemy.
‘Xenos,’ he said. ‘Have we come so far from Imperial space?’
The Navigator looked at him. ‘We are within one hundred light years of the boundaries of the Segmentum Pacificus.’
‘They are very close to the crusade,’ Drake said, obviously following the line of Macharius’s thoughts.
‘Scouts, perhaps, come to observe us,’ Macharius said.
‘Who can tell how xenos think,’ said Drake. ‘They may just be raiding here, or combining their raiding with scouting.’
‘They will need to be dealt with,’ said Macharius.
‘Most assuredly,’ said Drake. Neither of them seemed to have any doubt that they would survive to see that done. For myself I was not so sure. I did not like the sleek, cruel and confident lines of those oncoming alien ships.