Void Stalker Read online

  ‘He is…’ Deltrian trailed off, feeling the vibration through the ship’s bones. They were less than a minute away from entry into the warp.

  ‘He is already dead,’ Lucoryphus reasoned. ‘Get inside.’

  ‘Your Reverence,’ crackled Lacuna Absolutus’s voice over the reconnection. ‘…Astartes…’

  Logic and emotion warred within the ancient adept. He had several auxiliaries and subordinates, but few were as gifted as Lacuna Absolutus. Few also retained the same sense of personality and drive, which were aspects to be admired – at least when they blended with efficiency and ambition in that rare mesh of perfect fusion. More than the inconvenience involved in training a replacement, more than the vastly increased workload it would force him to endure – on a small, subtle and personal level it would also grieve Deltrian to lose his favoured aide.

  The truth was an awkward one. Affection bred a cold, alien discomfort within his core. In an entity with more flesh to feel with, the sensation might be called a chill.

  ‘I will not abandon him.’

  Deltrian turned and made it seven steps before he heard Lucoryphus’s disgusted sigh.

  ‘Get inside.’ The Raptor soared past him, thrusters trailing ghost-fire as he raced over the hull. ‘I will deal with your lost friend.’

  Lucoryphus of the Bleeding Eyes covered the distance in a matter of heartbeats. The hull flashed beneath him in a streaking blur the same colour as his armour, while his target stood out in the stark illumination of external siren lights.

  A single red-armoured warrior guarded the maintenance hatch, clearly in the process of entering when he’d seen the adept’s servitor pack approaching. Filthy Throne-worshippers. It was bad enough having them worming through the ship’s bones, let alone having to endure them crawling over the Echo’s skin as well.

  The hull veered beneath him with a slow, serene urgency. Enough of this. He would not be trapped outside when the Echo entered the warp. That was no way for a leader of the Bleeding Eyes cult to meet his end.

  Lucoryphus turned in the void, angling his dive to bring him down atop the Genesis Space Marine. The warrior reared back, only in time to take both of the Raptor’s clawed feet in the chest. Lucoryphus gripped with his hands, clutching at the Space Marine’s helm while he kicked with his foot-talons, shredding the ceramite breastplate, the subdermal muscle cabling, and the soft flesh beneath. A vicious wrench broke the Space Marine’s neck – Lucoryphus felt the muted, popping snaps of the vertebrae giving way even through the armour that separated him from his prey.

  The Genesis warrior went slack, still standing straight with his boots mag-locked to the hull. Blood left his torn chest in a crystallised cascade.

  Lucoryphus boosted up, twisting in space to land on the hull several metres back with his pistol drawn. A single bolt shell hammered into the Space Marine’s breastplate, knocking the body from its magnetic perch, sending it tumbling into the nothingness.

  Only then did Lucoryphus turn to find Lacuna Absolutus. The adept was cowering behind a ridged rise of hull armour, holding a laspistol. The safety settings were still showing as active along the weapon’s side – not that such an insignificant weapon would enjoy much luck against an Imperial Space Marine even at the best of times.

  ‘Have you never modified yourself for battle?’ Lucoryphus asked, reaching for the adept’s throat and hauling him out of hiding.

  ‘Never.’ The adept dangled in the warrior’s grip. ‘But after the events of this night, I plan to rectify that failing.’

  ‘Just get inside,’ the Raptor growled.

  ‘Tell me that worked,’ Talos said to his crew.

  While Octavia was heaving her guts up after the jump, purging the liquefied contents of her stomach, and while the warband’s claws were at last forming together to isolate and slay the final remnants of the enemy boarding parties, the Echo of Damnation trembled with the pressures of returning to real space. The warship burst back into reality, streaming the migraine-coloured unsmoke of the deep ether from its spinal battlements, after what was assuredly the shortest warp jump in Legion history.

  The engines had flickered live for less than a single second, ripping a rift in the void at the vessel’s prow. Even as the Echo’s entrance rip was sealing, another opened tens of thousands of kilometres away, disgorging the warship back into space.

  No warp transit came without cost, but neither did the laws of logic apply when rushing through the hell behind the veil. A short flight was no guarantee of safety, and the ship’s emergence mere heartbeats after entry still left it juddering, its Geller field made visible by the clinging pollutant mists.

  The shaking bridge had the added rattling melody of chains clashing together as they dangled from the ceiling. The Night Lords occasionally used them to hang bodies – Ruven wasn’t the only decoration.

  ‘Speak to me,’ Talos ordered.

  ‘Systems realigning,’ one of the bridge officers called back. ‘Auspex live. I… It worked, lord. We’re thirteen hundred kil–’

  ‘Come about,’ interrupted the prophet. ‘I want that cruiser dead.’

  ‘Coming about, sire,’ called the Helmsmistress. The gravitic generators whined at the strain as the ship banked hard, and the occulus reactivated with a blast of static, resolving into a view of the distant red warship.

  Talos spared a glance for the hololithic display, still scrambled and showing little of worth. They were too far ahead for any of their weapons to reach yet – still, it was an improvement over lagging so far behind. He had another idea, one that would work now.

  ‘All power to the engines.’

  ‘All power, aye.’ The Master of Propulsion reached for his vox-caster, dialling the code for his subordinates on the enginarium control deck. ‘All power to the engines,’ the veteran officer said into the speech horn. ‘We need every one of the reactors burning like a sun’s core. Don’t spare the slaves.’

  Seven replies overlapped into one mess of agreement. Not all of the voices were human.

  The Echo of Damnation kicked forward, tearing through space in pursuit of its prey.

  Talos knew he wasn’t a void warrior. He lacked the Exalted’s patience, and he was a self-confessed creature of sensation – he waged war with a blade in his hand and blood on his face – the salty reek of an enemy’s fear-sweat in his senses focused him, spurring him on. Void warfare required a measure of tolerance he’d never acquired. He knew it, and didn’t berate himself for the deficiency. One couldn’t be an expert at all things.

  To that end, Talos spared no time after taking the Echo, almost immediately investing a great deal of trust in his mortal crew. Some of them were survivors from the Covenant of Blood, others were veterans of the Red Corsairs’ fleet. When they spoke, he listened. When they advised, he considered their words. When he acted, it was with their counsel.

  But patience had its limit. One brother had already died this day.

  Another look at the resolving hololithic spoke of the shortening distance between the runes denoting both ships.

  ‘We will catch them,’ Talos said.

  ‘They’re running for the system’s jump locus,’ the Master of Auspex called out.

  Talos turned to the hunchbacked former Corsair slave. The eight-bladed star blackened his face in a vicious burn marking.

  ‘I do not believe they are. They are running to hide, not to flee.’ He ordered the occulus to pan across the expanse of space, finally resting its gaze on a distant moon.

  ‘There,’ Talos said. ‘They seek to purchase time, pulling further away from us to hide on the other side of that rock. They need only wait long enough for their boarding parties to take control of the ship, or for confirmation that the assault has failed. Then they can return or flee, whichever they deem necessary.’

  The Master of Auspex was working his multi-jointed fingers along t
he clicking console keys. Each brass button clacked like some ancient typing machine.

  ‘You may be correct, lord. Before the warp jump, such a manoeuvre would have bought them approximately seven hours.’

  Talos felt his gaze drawn to Xarl again. He resisted it, knowing his brother would still be slouched against the wall. Nothing could be gained by staring at his corpse. ‘And now?’ he asked.

  The robed officer scratched at the weeping sores that marked the edge of his lips. ‘We will catch them in perhaps two hours.’

  Better. Not good, but at least it was better. Still, a discomforting thought gnawed at him. Talos mused aloud, ‘What if they realise their assault has failed beyond recovery?’

  The robed man drew in a sticky breath. ‘Then we will not catch them. The warp jump gave us a chance at an honest engagement. No more, lord. No less.’

  Talos watched the ship running for respite, burning its engines hot as it made for the temporary sanctuary offered by the dead-rock planetoid. It didn’t matter. His idea would work.

  ‘Nostramo,’ he whispered. Memory and imagination bred a fire in his dark eyes, though it was lost behind the skullish faceplate and slanted red eye lenses.

  ‘Sire?’

  The prophet took several moments to answer. ‘Let them run. We are close enough now for the Shriek to work. Pursue, but let them reach orbit on the other side of that rock. Let them come close to it, believing they can buy a few more hours.’

  ‘My lord?’

  Talos gestured to the vox-mistress. ‘Find Deltrian, if you please.’

  The officer – heavily augmented, her remaining flesh pitted by acid scars – worked her console, and nodded a moment later. ‘Ready, sire.’

  ‘This is Talos to Deltrian. You have ten minutes to activate the Shriek. It is time we won this fight.’

  When it came, the tech-adept’s reply was overridden by Lucoryphus’s husky drawl. ‘We are in the starboard terminus arc. It will take us ten minutes to even reach the adept’s chambers.’

  ‘Then move swiftly.’ Talos gestured for the Vox-mistress to terminate the link, and released a heavy breath. ‘Master of Arms.’

  The officer looked up from his console, his sleek and elegant uniform faded by time. ‘My lord?’

  ‘Ready cyclonic torpedoes,’ the Night Lord ordered.

  ‘Lord?’ was the stunned reply.

  ‘Ready cyclonic torpedoes,’ he repeated in exactly the same tone.

  ‘Lord, we only have five warheads.’

  Talos swallowed, clenching his teeth and closing his eyes as if he could contain his anger by sealing the portals of his face.

  ‘Ready cyclonic torpedoes.’

  ‘Sire, I believe we should save them for–’

  The human said nothing more. The front of his face came free with a sickly crack, the flesh and jagged bone crunching in the Night Lord’s fist. Talos ignored the body as it toppled, spilling the insides of its halved skull onto the decking.

  No one had even seen him move, such was the prophet’s speed, clearing ten metres and vaulting a console table in the time it took a human heart to beat once.

  ‘I am trying to be reasonable,’ he said to the hundreds of watching crew members. His vox-voice carried across the chamber in a guttural, malign whisper. ‘I am trying to end this battle so that we might all return to our insignificant lives, still wearing our skin around our souls. I am not, by nature, a choleric creature. I allow you to speak, to advise… but do not see my indulgence as weakness. When I order, you will obey. Please do not try my patience this night. You will regret it, as Armsmaster Sujev is so aptly demonstrating.’

  The body at Talos’s feet was still twitching, still leaking. The prophet handed his fistful of bloody facial wreckage to the nearest servitor.

  ‘Dispose of this.’

  The servitor watched him with dead-eyed devotion. ‘How, my lord?’ it asked in a monotone murmur.

  ‘Eat it for all I care.’

  The prophet stalked back to his throne, tracking through the organic filth running from Sujev’s corpse. All the while, he resisted the need to cradle his aching head in his hands. Something inside his mind threatened to break out, shattering his skull with the strain.

  The gene-seed is killing you. Some humans are not meant to survive implantation.

  He looked up, where Ruven’s remains hung on rusting chains.

  ‘I killed you,’ he told the bones.

  ‘Sire?’ asked a nearby officer. Talos looked over at the man. Mutation had ruined him, leaving one side of his body seized and muscle-locked, giving his face the perpetual leer of a stroke victim. He wiped his drooling, stretched lips on the back of his hand, frozen as it was into a half-claw.

  Is this what we have fallen to? the prophet wondered.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Talos. ‘All stations, ready for deployment of cyclonic torpedoes. When the Shriek is live and our torpedoes cannot be intercepted or tracked, destroy the moon.’

  X

  REVENGE

  ‘Xarl is dead,’ Mercutian said to the darkness. ‘I can scarcely believe it. He was unkillable.’

  Cyrion chuckled. ‘Evidently not.’

  The lights around them failed with a crack of overloading circuitry, and the ship groaned strangely beneath their boots. The air itself seemed to cling to them for a moment, pushing and pulling at their limbs.

  ‘What was that sensation?’ Variel asked. His shoulder-mounted lamp pack flared in response to the dimming lights, cutting a beam through the blackness. The slice of light panned across the empty iron tunnel ahead.

  Even though their retinal displays filtered to compensate, the other Night Lords instinctively turned their eyes from the sharp glare.

  ‘Deactivate that,’ Cyrion said softly.

  Variel obeyed, amused without possessing the grace to actually smile. ‘Please answer my question,’ he said. ‘That sound, and the ship’s shiver. What caused it?’

  Cyrion led the remnants of First Claw through the tunnels, moving deeper into the ship. ‘It was the inertial adjustment from releasing cyclonic warheads. Talos is doing something either very clever, or very, very foolish.’

  ‘He is angry,’ Mercutian added. His brothers, still wearing their helms, didn’t pause to look back. They led the way, weapons in their fists. ‘Talos will not take Xarl’s death with any grace,’ he continued. ‘I could see it in the way he moved. He is wounded over this. Mark my words.’

  Uzas breathed through his speaker-grille. ‘Xarl is dead?’

  The others ignored him, all but Mercutian. ‘He died an hour ago, Uzas.’

  ‘Oh. How?’

  ‘You were there,’ Mercutian said quietly.

  ‘Oh.’ The others could almost sense his attention sliding across the surface of the conversation, failing to hold.

  Cyrion led the depleted claw around another corner, descending the spiralling walkway to the next deck. Crew members scattered before them, like roaches fleeing a sudden light. Only a few of them, robed menials and beggars alike, remained to kneel and weep at the boots of their masters, pleading to be told what was happening.

  Cyrion kicked one of them aside. First Claw made its way past the others. ‘This ship is the size of a small city,’ he said to his brethren. ‘If the Genesis wretches go to ground, we may never dig them out. We’ve only just managed to cleanse the worst of the taint left over from the bastard Corsairs.’

  ‘Did you hear what they found on deck thirty?’ Mercutian asked.

  Cyrion shook his head. ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘The Bleeding Eyes reported it in a few nights before we arrived at Tsagualsa. They said the walls are alive down there. The metal has veins, a pulse, and sheds blood when cut.’

  Cyrion turned his head to Variel, his disapproving sneer hidden behind the glaring helm. ‘What did you taint
ed fools do to this ship before we stole it back?’

  The Apothecary stomped on, his augmetic leg pistoning and hissing as its servos mimicked human joint structure as best they could.

  ‘I have seen Night Lord vessels infinitely more corrupt than you seem to imply. I am hardly one of the faithful, Cyrion. I have never once spoken in reverence to the Powers That Be. The warp twists what it touches, I do not deny it. But do you pretend there were no poisoned decks on board your precious Covenant of Blood?’

  ‘There were none.’

  ‘Is that so? Or did you merely linger around the least-populated decks, where the touch of the Hidden Gods was lessened? Did you walk among the thousands of slaves toiling in the ship’s engine-bowels? Was it all as pure and unchanged as you claim, despite all your decades in the Great Eye?’

  Cyrion turned away, shaking his head, but Variel wouldn’t let it lie. ‘I loathe hypocrisy more than all else, Cyrion of Nostramo.’

  ‘Be silent for a minute, and spare me your whining. I will never understand why Talos saved you on Fryga, nor will I understand why he allowed you to come with us when we left Hell’s Iris.’

  Variel said nothing. He was not a soul inclined to long arguments, nor did he feel a burning need to get the last word in a dispute. Such things mattered little.

  As they descended to another deck, it was Mercutian who spoke, his voice accompanying their clanking tread. More slaves scattered before them – ragged and wretched things, all.

  ‘He is with us because he is one of us,’ Mercutian said.

  ‘If you say so,’ Cyrion replied.

  ‘You think he isn’t one of us, simply because sunlight doesn’t hurt his eyes?’

  Cyrion shook his head. ‘I don’t wish to argue, brother.’

  ‘I am sincere when I say this,’ Mercutian insisted. ‘Talos believes it, too. To be Eighth Legion is to have a focus, a… dispassionate focus not shared by any of our kindred. You do not have to be born of the sunless world to be one of us. You merely need to understand fear. To take pleasure in inflicting it. To relish the salt-piss smell of it, emanating from mortal skin. You must think as we do. Variel does that.’ He inclined his head to the Apothecary.