Watchers in Death Page 3

  The war, she saw, had taught them nothing.

  Not all the High Lords spoke. Kubik and Veritus were quiet. The Fabricator General’s servo-motors clicked. His optics whirred as they turned from one member of the Council to another. Most of the time, his attention was on Koorland. Veritus was just as intent on the Space Marine. They were listening and evaluating. They did not support his position, but they did not take a stand against it. They were seeing possibilities, Wienand thought. So was she. The potential for Koorland’s force beyond the immediate need was amorphous.

  ‘Cross-Chapter kill-teams will have no reason to exist beyond the present crisis,’ Koorland was saying now. ‘There will be no need for them, and the circumstance that makes their formation possible will cease to hold sway.’

  ‘You cannot believe that,’ Zeck said. ‘If you go ahead with this madness, you will create a precedent. A pretext will always be found to keep the teams in place. That’s why this can’t happen even once.’

  Correct, Wienand thought. On this point, the High Lords were right to be worried. If the kill-teams were successful, there was no way such a weapon would be put away.

  If they were successful, she thought. Then what?

  The great potential refused to come into focus. The force had to be a reality first. She had to witness what it could do. Then she would know what else it might accomplish, and perhaps how it might be controlled.

  ‘Vote, then,’ Koorland snapped. ‘Vote and be damned.’

  The High Lords voted. Vangorich supported the plan. Kubik and Veritus abstained. The others voted against it.

  Koorland did not hide his disgust. ‘You’re fools,’ he said.

  ‘We would be to fall into your trap,’ Ekharth said, smug in victory.

  Wienand waited for Koorland to punch the little man’s head from his shoulders. The act would have confirmed the High Lords’ worst suspicions, but it would have been warranted. Instead, Koorland strode from the dais.

  ‘What do you plan to do?’ Zeck called.

  Koorland stopped. He faced the Council. His stillness became dangerous. Wienand was acutely conscious of what he could do to the High Lords if he were not holding himself back.

  ‘I will do what must be done,’ Koorland said. And as he turned once more to go, he added, ‘So will you.’

  ‘I understand your frustration,’ Alexis Mandrell said, speaking into the vox-unit on his desk. ‘I share it. But unless and until Admiral Lansung issues new orders, here we are.’ The captain of the cruiser Sybota, commanding the blockade of the attack moon, was in his private quarters. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. Another twenty-four-hour cycle had been completed, and it had been another cycle of routine exercises. The endless broadcast of I AM SLAUGHTER from the moon was unchanging. Mandrell had ordered the transmission blocked from all ships for the sake of morale, instituting an hourly verification that there had been no change in the message.

  There was none.

  ‘The task is dull,’ he said. ‘It’s still necessary.’

  ‘I’m not questioning that,’ replied Captain Makayla Ochoa, of the frigate Cyzicus. ‘It’s the decisions that have made this necessary I don’t understand. Such a large concentration of forces in this vicinity when reinforcements are desperately needed elsewhere…’

  ‘You aren’t the first to notice this, captain.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ Ochoa had two decades more experience in the field than Mandrell, but her family was a far more minor noble house than his. They had served together in the Navy long enough that they acknowledged the political realities of the differences in their advancement with amused cynicism. Ochoa took the liberty of being as insubordinate as she pleased with Mandrell in private. He accepted this liberty as her due.

  ‘I do say,’ he answered.

  ‘You have family connections to Lansung…’ Ochoa began.

  ‘Stop!’ Mandrell held up a hand as if Ochoa could see him. ‘No. No. There’s no point, and I’m not using what capital I might hypothetically have to push for something that will go nowhere at best and result in embarrassment at worst.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘That I could survive. I mean the Lord High Admiral’s. Do you think it’s by his choice that we don’t destroy that xenos hulk? The Mechanicus wants it. If the Lord High Admiral has not ordered us to destroy it, it’s because he can’t. I’m not going to put him in the position of having to admit that. I like my command. If it were possible to send us elsewhere, he would have done so.’

  ‘Really.’ Ochoa did not sound convinced.

  ‘Really.’ Mandrell did his best to be emphatic. In truth, he wasn’t sure. The Imperial Navy’s dispositions had been erring on the side of caution since the start of the war.

  ‘So keeping a massive fleet presence in the vicinity of Terra, where it is unlikely to suffer any losses, has nothing to do with shoring up his position on the Council?’

  ‘No. Captain, you will cease this line of questioning.’ Their vox-communication was encrypted, but Mandrell did not trust it that much.

  Ochoa snorted. ‘My apologies,’ she said. Dryly.

  ‘We’ll see all the combat we could hope for,’ Mandrell said. He was telling the truth, though he suspected Ochoa would interpret his words differently than how he thought of them. He was not displeased to be assigned to a pointless blockade. The Sybota had been on no more than the edges of the engagements with the orks, and that had been enough. He did not think he was a coward. He simply did not see the value in plunging into battles where the only likely outcome was annihilation. Let the Adeptus Astartes take the lead in suicidal missions. That was their strength. Let the Imperial Navy consolidate gains and hold reclaimed systems. There was no dishonour in that service.

  He couldn’t dispute Ochoa’s contention that resources were misallocated, but he had seen enough campaigns to know there was nothing new there. If poor deployment decisions were to continue, he would prefer them to work in his favour.

  ‘So we’re here indefinitely,’ Ochoa said. ‘How are we–’ She stopped. ‘What was that?’

  ‘What did you…’ Mandrell began. Then he heard and felt something that began as a deep, rattling vibration. It ran through the deck and wall of the Sybota. The data-slates on his desk drummed against the surface. The vibration ran up through the frame of his chair and through his spine. It grew stronger. A sweeping vertigo shook him, and he almost slid to the ground. He switched the vox to the bridge channel. ‘What is happening?’ he bellowed.

  He couldn’t hear his own voice. The rattle had built to a piercing metallic scream. The entire ship howled in agony. Blood burst from Mandrell’s nose and ears. The vertigo grew worse. He clutched the desk, disoriented as his sense of up and down spiralled. He forced himself upright and staggered towards the door of his quarters, weaving with every step. As he reached the door, a colossal boom cut through the Sybota’s shriek. The sound was so vast it sucked the air from his lungs. He fell to his knees. The deck heaved. He dragged himself forward, clutched at the doorway and hauled himself up.

  He stumbled into the corridor. The echoes of the boom faded, swallowed by the grinding scream of metal and the thunder of cracking stone. The walls, deck and ceiling of the corridor buckled. Pulverised marble filled the air. Mandrell coughed, inhaling dust and smoke. The lumen orbs flickered off and on. Ruptured conduits spewed steam and flame. He made his way forward, unable to see more than a few metres ahead. He saw the shapes of crew moving through the haze, trying to run. They flailed as the deck rose and fell like an ocean in a storm. The agony of the vessel was deafening. Mandrell could hear no voices or warning klaxons. The silhouettes of his crew were pantomimes of crisis.

  The weight was sudden, terrible, crushing. It came upon Mandrell like the fall of a huge wave. It smashed him to the deck. His ribs cracked. His nose and teeth shattered. He was immovabl
e, held fast to the deck by his own impossible mass. Struggling against the prison of gravity, he raised his head just enough to look ahead. He could do no more, but even this victory was enough. It meant he saw what happened next.

  The scream of the Sybota was transcendent. The cracking was the sound of a world coming apart. Power failed. The lumen orbs flickered out. The corridor went dark, lit only by the flicker of spreading flame. Then, summoned by the cracking and the grinding, a new light burst into brief, monstrous life. Mandrell stared into a blinding flare of fire and energy discharges. And then there was the wind, blowing past him with a hurricane’s roar. And then there was the cold.

  Wind and cold, because the Sybota tore in half.

  Mandrell stared in wonder and horror. He had that much time. His final breath was long enough for him to see the fore section of the cruiser fall away from the aft. He saw all the exposed decks of his vessel. He saw plasma explode along the edges of the wound. He saw thousands of crew and troops float off into the void, tiny figures, insignificant, a tumbling swarm. He saw the dark of the void snuff out the flames, but the light did not die at once. The void shields went first, their end a chain reaction of brilliant ferocity, the ship’s defences exploding outward, failing after the hull itself.

  The Sybota was a broken bone, its two halves slowly turning away from each other. The vision was immense. Mandrell witnessed a death so great, his own end was meaningless. The seconds that remained to him were consumed with bleak wonder.

  Then the wind ceased, and there was only the dark, and the merciless, terminal cold.

  Ochoa reached the command gallery above the bridge in time to see the Sybota break in two. The ork gravity weapon had lashed out from the attack moon, a single whip of unfurled, impossible force. It had seized the cruiser, and its grip was doom. The beam had sideswiped the Cyzicus. The blow had been nothing, the mere wake of the passing force. It had still been enough to disrupt the frigate’s artificial gravity, hurling Ochoa back and forth against corridor walls as she ran for the bridge. Klaxons still wailed, and the screens next to the oculus were filled with the red script of damage reports.

  ‘All batteries,’ Ochoa said. She got no further before there was another bright flash in the upper left quadrant of the oculus. The entire superstructure of the destroyer Iron Castellan vanished in the killing light. The ship began a slow roll out of formation. What looked like a small mountain had materialised in the vessel’s core, its rocky peaks projecting out of the stern and the upper portions of the hull. Ochoa stared for several seconds at the impossible vision. Just before the greater flash came, consuming the vessel entirely, she understood.

  Teleportation, she thought. They teleported a chunk of the attack moon into the Castellan.

  ‘Signal all ships,’ Ochoa shouted to Gliese, the officer of the vox. ‘Open fire on the moon with all batteries, all torpedoes. Destroy it.’

  Gliese turned to look up at her. ‘We have orders to–’

  Damn Lansung and damn the Mechanicus. If those fleshless cultists wanted the greenskin toys, they could put them back together again. ‘You have new orders from me. The responsibility is mine. Now do as I say or I’ll shoot you where you stand.’

  Gliese saluted and opened a channel.

  ‘All vessels, open fire,’ Ochoa said. ‘Full batteries, full torpedo launches. Destroy that moon.’

  ‘By whose authority…’

  That was Huf, squawking from the frigate Steadfast Contrition.

  ‘By mine,’ Ochoa told him. ‘As most senior surviving captain. Open fire, Huf, or do you want the greenskins to crush your ship?’

  Huf clicked off.

  Moments later, Ochoa saw the streams of shells and torpedoes streak from the blockade towards the attack moon. Imperial ordnance cut through the dark of the void. No one else questioned the order. The other captains had probably already been issuing their commands. They knew what was at stake.

  The barrage was immense. It was also too late. Before the first torpedo struck the surface of the moon, its terrible maw began to open once more. The shouting, raging corpse had come back to life. From its interior came a swarm of ork ships. Interceptors, fighters, bombers and torpedo ships raced for the blockade. Dozens were caught by the oncoming artillery. The near space of the attack moon became a fiery nimbus of superheated plasma and disintegrating metal. Hundreds more greenskin vessels shot through the curtain of destruction.

  Ochoa stared at the oculus, at the oncoming storm of predators. Almost unconsciously, her hand moved to the tacticarium table at her side. She tapped the command vox-unit, tuning to the huge band of frequencies broadcasting the roar of the Beast.

  She had no wish to hear it. Yet the need to face the full truth of the moment was too strong. She had never turned from battle. She had always sought the full measure of duty.

  But there was more that directed her actions at that moment. The gaping maw of the ork base transformed the inanimate into a living skull. The face had a monstrous pull. Its power was absolute. Ochoa felt her insignificance before the presence of the active, murderous sublime.

  Behold me, that gaping visage commanded. You bow before a god of stillness. I am a god of speed and violence. I am present. I am ascendant.

  She turned the vox on to hear the actual voice, to blot out the words the sight of the moon tried to insinuate into her soul.

  Ochoa vowed to herself she would fight the reality of the threat, and her spirit was the equal to its false divinity.

  ‘I AM SLAUGHTER!’ boomed through the command gallery. ‘I AM SLAUGHTER!’ It seemed the moon itself was shouting in the bridge. ‘I AM SLAUGHTER!’ And slaughter came from the moon, scything into the blockade fleet. Hundreds of ships descended on the frigates and destroyers. The Imperial cannons shifted from attack to defence. Every ship visible in the oculus flashed bright with straining void shields and the dissipating fireballs of destroyed ork craft. The attackers perished in droves. But more and more and more emerged from the maw, an endless curse from the god of violence.

  ‘I AM SLAUGHTER! I AM SLAUGHTER! I AM SLAUGHTER!’

  The word became truth, and the truth burned the fleet.

  Koorland walked the edge of the dais in the Great Chamber. He would not take his seat. He would not even stand by it. He would not associate himself with the High Lords. He understood that the realities of his position made the division he wished to enact a false one; he was part of the political machine of Terra now, whether he chose to admit it or not.

  It would be close to a lie to say he accepted these facts. It was enough to say he knew them to be true. Today, he had to distance himself as much as he could from the rest of the High Lords. He was too disgusted to count himself of their number. If he sat in that chair, he might even derive the wrong sort of satisfaction from the inevitable turn the debate would take. He detested that temptation. It soiled and corrupted. If Koorland gave into it, he would truly be able to count himself a High Lord.

  The thought was revolting.

  He saw the sharp features and steel-grey hair of Wienand in her tier seat. Once again, she had decided to put some physical distance between herself and the other Lords. Vangorich and Veritus were in their seats. Koorland half-wondered how they tolerated their positions. Whatever else he might say of Veritus, the inquisitor was a faithful servant of the ordos and of the Imperium. Koorland had no doubt he always acted from a foundation of firm belief. Perhaps Veritus’ convictions were his form of armour. His need to pull the levers of power as he saw fit kept him in the political game. And Vangorich was the hunter on the political fields. He was where he needed to be.

  Koorland was not. At least, not yet. If the High Lords would cease their posturing and accept what they all knew they had to accept, he could get on with his real duty – directing the blade that would decapitate the orks.

  But the posturing must happen. Its inevitability was a
s certain as Daylight Wall.

  ‘How can they be back?’ Ekharth was saying. ‘How can the orks be back? The moon was dead!’ He pointed a trembling finger at Koorland. ‘You said it was dead!’

  Of course I did, Koorland might have said. That’s why I demanded a blockade be maintained. He said nothing. Arguing with the little man would be a form of defeat. It would be descending to the level where nonsense was seriously debated.

  ‘Teleportation,’ Kubik said, more to himself than to Ekharth. He nodded his head, in satisfied agreement with his own deduction. ‘Confirmed by reports of the destruction of the Iron Castellan. The Veridi giganticus must have employed their teleportation technology to repopulate their attack base. The infiltration capabilities are impressive. So much more to learn.’ He abandoned all pretence of speaking to the Council and began to dictate into a recording unit built into one of his arms. ‘Effective range remains the question. Based on present knowledge, it appears to be effectively unlimited. Without any indication of the origins of teleported bodies, we are forced to the most extreme hypotheses in the interests of strategic extrapolations.’ His flat, machinic tones managed somehow to sound regretful. He switched into the whistles and screeches of binary.

  ‘Can your teams stop this?’ Lansung asked Koorland. His fleet was bleeding and dying. Already, a third of the vessels surrounding the moon had been destroyed. Lansung sounded desperate.

  ‘They will,’ said Koorland.

  ‘How do you know?’ Ekharth shouted. ‘This has never been done before! You have nothing to go on.’

  Koorland stopped pacing. This time he would speak. He turned slowly to face Ekharth. ‘They are Adeptus Astartes,’ he said. ‘I have that to go on. I need no more.’

  ‘But…’ Ekharth began. He trailed off and looked away from Koorland’s glare.

  Koorland faced Lansung. ‘How long can the blockade hold?’ he asked.

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘I noticed you have pulled the Autocephalax Eternal back to orbit around Terra. And that you are not sending reinforcements.’