Pharos Read online

  ‘The Probity, Venom-class destroyer. A perfect target,’ said Skraivok. ‘I do believe things are going our way. Berenon, what does the future hold?’

  Berenon squatted away from the others, his head bowed. His shoulder pad was marked with the horned skull of the old Librarius. The grisly trophies that adorned the suits of his fellows were absent from his armour. When he lifted his head he did so slowly, as if it weighed a great deal.

  ‘The disturbance of the empyrean is heavy on me. I see moments, nothing more. I can give you no firm answer, my lord.’

  ‘What do you see? Tell me.’

  ‘I see moments of victory, I see aeons of defeat,’ Berenon intoned wearily. ‘Defeat follows victory, always.’

  ‘So all know. Death waits for every being, and will not be denied. But tell me, will we prevail today, brother?’ said Skraivok, striving for patience in the face of Berenon’s dolefulness.

  He had some sympathy. Besides their innate cynicism, many of the Night Lords were troubled by ominous dreams. From the moment of their induction as legionaries, visions of dark futures tormented them all at one time or another. These were not simply a relic of their troubled lives, but a gift of their accursed primarch. Berenon was a true psyker, and so suffered dire precognitions all the more severely. The Edict of Nikaea had been patchily applied across the Night Lords Legion, depending entirely on the whim of each expedition’s legionary commander. Skraivok’s overlord, Regent Jukeresh the Strong, had enacted it fully. But Jukeresh was long dead, and no command of the Emperor had any power over the Legion any more. Berenon had been forced unwillingly back into his role by Skraivok.

  ‘We will prevail today, claw master, although only failure awaits us ultimately if we follow this course of action,’ he said.

  ‘Ha! There is no point to this charade! You should have left me aboard the Nycton, brother,’ scoffed Kellenkir.

  ‘Silence, Kellenkir. One moment you wish immediate action, the next none,’ snapped Skraivok. ‘If we had let you be, murdering the Nycton’s miserable serfs, then you too would be dead.’

  Kellenkir swaggered dangerously over to Skraivok and jabbed a metal-clad finger into his lord’s breastplate. ‘I do not care. Do you understand? I wish to fight, and to kill. Life is misery, death is peace. I would teach this lesson to all before my own end comes. Pain can show them. They all beg for death before I am done. There is nothing else.’ This last he said with such desolation his brother went to his side and placed a hand on his forearm. Kellenkir shrugged it off.

  ‘Have you finished?’ said Skraivok. Kellenkir growled and stepped back. ‘Good. Kellenkir, Kellendvar. Get into position. There will be plenty of opportunity for slaughter should you perform your role properly.’

  Kellenkir pushed his way wordlessly out of the room, six Night Lords following him. Kellendvar made to go, but Skraivok halted him with a private vox-click.

  ‘Your brother risks our lives, Kellendvar. How long will you vouch for him?’

  ‘He is my birth-brother and my battle-brother,’ said Kellendvar. ‘How long do you think?’

  ‘There is no room for sentimentality in what we do, Kellendvar.’

  ‘If there is not room even for the bond of blood and gang, what is there?’ said the headsman bitterly. ‘I will not subscribe to my brother’s nihilism nor to your reactionary whims. To me there is more than death.’

  ‘His lack of control is a threat.’

  ‘And he will come out of it!’ said Kellendvar harshly.

  ‘Do not be sure of that,’ said Skraivok. ‘The galaxy is broken, and will not be fixed. How do you suppose a single man might mend himself when all descends into chaos?’

  ‘Claw master? They are nearly here,’ interrupted Berenon. Kell­endvar took the opportunity to depart after his brother, his great power axe over his shoulder.

  ‘I am done with your gifts, Librarian,’ said Skraivok. He was more forgiving of Berenon than Kellenkir. The Librarian’s manner belied his effectiveness. In combat he fought with immense savagery, driven by his desire to wash his own doom-laden visions away in a tide of blood.

  Skraivok returned his attention to the screens, examining what little other data was available to him beyond the esoteric sightings of Berenon. The craft approached quickly, no preceding messages but a constant stream of data-clasps seeking out a response from the machineries of the station.

  ‘The Thirteenth are as predictable as always. They attempt to link with the station’s main relay. Ready the recording, Gallivar.’

  ‘Yes, claw master.’

  Skraivok opened a wide vox-channel to the members of his company spread throughout the relay station. ‘Attention, my mighty Forty-Fifth. The bookkeepers of Macragge approach. Once the false vox-net is activated, I will have total vox-silence from all units. There will be no mercy for those who disobey. The success of our mission is dependent upon it. Any man breaking this order will answer first to me, then to Kellendvar’s axe.’

  Affirmations came through his helm link, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

  ‘Then stand ready. Vox-break in three minutes. All armour systems to passive.’

  Around the central nexus, Skraivok’s men came to life. They stood slowly, gathering up their boltguns, bolt pistols, swords and chainglaives. Those who had put themselves under their catalepsean nodes shook off the lingering effects of the unsleeping.

  Skraivok watched them carefully, this coterie of murderers. Bones and chains rattled against their power armour. The warriors in the room represented the best Skraivok had, or those he least distrusted, at any rate. Trust was in short supply in their fragmented Legion. For the time being, the command structure of his depleted company held, but the native traits of the Nostramans were reasserting themselves in the absence of their primarch, and a street ganger’s desire for personal dominance made for fractious relations. The arrival of Krukesh the Pale’s fleet at Sotha had saved them from a slow death aboard their crippled ship, but it presented Skraivok with as many problems as it had solved. Krukesh could and frequently did overrule Skraivok – there were several other captains of his eminence under the Kyroptera lord, and Skraivok’s own men measured him against them. On the other hand, Krukesh’s appearance was a reminder of the bonds of the wider Legion and had shored up his strained authority, forestalling the growing mood of rebellion.

  But rejoining the Legion had reminded them that Skraivok could be removed by other means than murder. Krukesh and Skraivok despised each other with mutual intensity. There were half a dozen claw leaders who were eyeing his position. Many of his warriors held him personally responsible for getting them stranded at the Sothan rendezvous point in the first place. All this led Skraivok to believe that the Legion was done, despite Krukesh’s insistence he was out to reunite it. The cracks were already there. The likes of Krukesh were doing their best to reunite the Legion in the wake of the Thramas Crusade, but Skraivok felt that First Captain Sevatar’s ploy of splitting the fleet to save it from the Dark Angels would only hasten the fragmentation of the Night Lords into petty warbands. Krukesh’s own naked ambition was proof of that. They were all living on borrowed time.

  It was only with a great and considered effort of will that Skraivok was able to turn his back on any of his brothers.

  ‘Brother Gallivar, activate vox-thieves.’

  Gallivar sent a command into the station’s machines with a thought.

  From all over the station, hidden voxmitters began to transmit a carefully orchestrated web of recorded vox-chatter, a facsimile of squad traffic. Skraivok had spent a great deal of time and effort staging this deceit. Coded Nostraman battle talk sounded out from three locations. He listened a moment, checking one final time that it sounded like a small, desperate force lacking enough discipline to hide themselves well.

  Satisfied, he brought up his mission chronometer. ‘Commence mission mark on three, two,
one – mark.’

  In each faceplate of his company, red counters blinked into life, flashed twice, turned green, and began ticking upwards.

  Skraivok shut down his company’s vox-channels. His warriors retreated to the shadows, their footsteps muted upon the deck. As commanded, his men deactivated their armour’s systems, their marker beacons, squad links and data-feeds. The legionary signifiers displayed on Skraivok’s visor went out in a flurry of red warning signs, as if his warriors had died together in some cataclysmic storm of fire. Skraivok silenced the resulting alarms.

  They hid themselves well in the station’s cluttered interior. Their arco-lightning flickered out and the dull glow of their helmet lenses faded like dying embers as they powered their armour down to essential functions only.

  All connection to Skraivok’s brothers ceased. He imagined them muttering to themselves about his adherence to old legionary practices such as the mission mark. But without that scrim of discipline, he was nothing.

  Skraivok was left only with his breathing, the hum of his power pack and the quiet whine of his armour’s systems.

  Each one of them was now totally alone, islands of engineered flesh and ceramite in the coldness of space.

  Everything would come down to timing and the initiative of his men. Against xenos warriors and breakaway human civilisations, this plan would have surely worked. Many such actions had. But there was one very large difference today, and it troubled Skraivok’s plans with many unknown variables.

  They were fighting Ultramarines.

  FIVE

  Boarding actions

  Ambush

  Brothers in blood

  The Probity decelerated and approached Relay Station Seven at a cautious speed.

  On hololithic projections the station looked like a spindle. Long antennae protruded upwards and downwards from the domed cap of the central communications housing. Lights blinked at the antennae’s furthest extremities and the grim skull and cog of the Mechanicum glared at them from the smooth station roof. The underside was a ribbed mass of heat exchange vanes and attitude thruster ports. The antennae stretched in excess of the length of the Probity, but the station’s total mass was much less.

  According to schema Vratus had retrieved from the ship’s data stores, the central portion consisted of a hollow shaft through which the antennae passed. Where the station thickened into a disc there were three decks of chambers, crammed with machinery, sleeving the shaft. Four radial corridors gave access to the rooms on each deck. Access between them was granted by ladders at each corridor’s extremity and by a single cargo elevator platform which ran up the outside of the central shaft. A separate docking ring circled the station below the main communications centre, held out on four spokes. Two of the airlocks were large cargo points protruding on extensor corridors at opposite sides. Two smaller docking couplings occupied the other facings.

  With astropathic communication virtually impossible in the face of the storm and vox-traffic disrupted, many of these unmanned posts had been set up in Ultramar, acting as signal gain boosters for ship communications. The messages sent between vessels travelled only at the speed of light, but it was better than nothing.

  ‘I am still unable to connect a data tether with the communications nexus,’ said Vratus. ‘The returns show all signs of a malfunction.’

  ‘The cause is no malfunction,’ said Lethicus. ‘It is sabotage.’

  ‘Wait a moment, my lord.’ She consulted her feeds. ‘I have found something. Very faint.’ Vratus altered the settings on her station. ‘I am picking up vox-traffic from within the station.’

  ‘Route it through the bridge emitters.’

  Vratus did as she was asked. Coded vox-signals blurted onto the command deck.

  ‘Squad traffic,’ said Caias.

  ‘Can you unscramble it?’

  ‘They are not using a standard encryption, my lord.’

  They listened a few moments to the back and forth of voxmissions. They were infrequent and hurried.

  ‘They are trying to be quiet,’ said Caias.

  ‘Not quiet enough,’ said Lethicus. ‘Where are their damn ships?’

  ‘There is nothing on the auspex, my lord,’ said Vratus.

  ‘What is that? There is something docked there,’ said Caias. He pointed at an object attached to the station’s docking ring, made of the same dull grey metal as the relay. ‘Looks like a saviour pod. Theoretical – survivors from the Nycton?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Lethicus.

  ‘Their course would have brought them within distance of this station, my lords,’ said the helmsman.

  ‘I count seven different vox-sources,’ said Caias. ‘Survivors, surely. Allow me to expand my theoretical – survivors from the Thramas Crusade are drawn to the Pharos. Their ship makes the translation, but is virtually non-functional. A handful of legionaries escape, and make their way to the nearest transmission source hoping to signal their fellows for rescue. They discover Relay Station Seven. Imagine how disappointed they must have been. They have probably been trapped there for weeks.’

  ‘Theoretical – the Night Lords are low-born, criminal scum, and they’re playing us for fools,’ said Lethicus.

  ‘I counter your theoretical. I say they are desperate. They want our ship. How else are they going to survive? A saviour pod carries twenty legionaries at best. Their vox-traffic suggests far fewer. They have their backs to the wall.’

  Lethicus shook his bald head. ‘There is too much supposition in your theoretical.’

  ‘It is the obvious reading.’

  ‘That is what worries me, Caias.’

  ‘Either way, brother-sergeant, our practical remains the same – board the station and kill them all. We cannot leave them there.’

  ‘That is so, brother,’ said Lethicus reluctantly. ‘Gellius, bring us in. We shall dock. Caias, take four of our brothers around the back of the station, come in from the rearmost airlock. Let us see them try to catch us unawares when we come at them from two directions.’

  Caias grinned. ‘We float for Macragge.’

  Lethicus scowled at him. Caias’ humour was sometimes unbefitting for a member of the XIII Legion, and his levity grated on Lethicus’ more sober sensibilities. ‘Just get over there, and be ready to attack when I command.’

  ‘Yes, brother-sergeant,’ said Caias.

  There were twenty warriors in Squad Lethicus. Fifteen of them waited in the main cargo lock for the Probity to dock with Relay Station Seven. Lethicus wasn’t taking any chances, and had ordered portable fire shields arrayed at the back of the docking bay to face the wide, toothed doors. Behind these the Ultramarines waited, guns trained on the cargo portal. Five of them, Lethicus included, carried curved breaching shields: tall slabs of plasteel decorated with Legion, squad and company markings. Notches in the sides allowed them to use their weapons without exposing themselves.

  Lethicus checked and rechecked the feeds from his men’s war-plate, then reduced their signifiers to single-point icons to clear his view. The ship made gentle, tiny lurches as manoeuvring jets jiggled it into position. There came a larger movement, an arresting of motion, and a clang that ran through the hull.

  ‘We are docked, my lord,’ said Shipmaster Gellius over the vox. A yellow warning light spun around above the doors, making the hazard striping painted around them flicker.

  ‘Stand ready,’ said Lethicus. The airlock’s extraction fans roared as the Probity matched the vacuum on the other side of the door. The red lights delimiting the airlock’s atmospheric integrity field winked out.

  His men racked their boltguns, and aimed at the doors.

  ‘We do not know what awaits us. Do not trust to your theoreticals of the situation. Be wary of false practicals. We fight our own kind, and the Night Lords do not fight cleanly. Do not forget it.’

  Many in t
he 199th Company had not yet engaged fellow Legiones Astartes in combat. Lethicus was not among them, having fought in three actions during the Shadow Crusade, but over half his warriors were about to face this challenge for the first time.

  The depressurisation wind slackened. Sound became tinny, then died. All aural input came via vox or was transmitted through the metal of his armour.

  ‘Open the doors,’ ordered Lethicus.

  A klaxon honked loudly as the doors drew back from each other. Residual atmosphere flash-froze on the metal teeth.

  ‘Ready,’ said Lethicus. ‘Ready…’

  The doors clunked back into their housing.

  There was nothing on the far side.

  An extensible corridor forty metres long, long enough to keep supply vessels clear of the station, led to a set of inner blast doors. Slit windows down the sides showed the storm on one side, the deep night of intergalactic space on the other. The lumen strips were out, and bars of stormlight provided ruby blocks of illumination.

  ‘Breaching squad, with me,’ said Lethicus. ‘Sub-group two, follow and cover.’

  The breaching sub-squad formed up in front of the fire shields. Lethicus and two others carried boltguns, the remaining pair lascutters. At Lethicus’ order they brought their breaching shields together and advanced out of the Probity in lockstep.

  Lethicus’ boots maglocked to the surface as he stepped over the door housing and into the docking sleeve. There was no gravity active within the station.