The Emperor's Finest

ELEVEN

OUR THIRD ATTEMPT to locate the hulk in the material universe was almost the death of us all; not that we had any premonition of the fact as we prepared to make our latest transition back into the realm of the real. If anything, I suppose, by now we were growing a little complacent, confident that Yaffel's calculations could be relied on, and that the Librarian's abnatural talents would be sufficient to drop us into the materium more or less on top of the space hulk we sought - or, more likely, where it had been at some time in the past.

Accordingly, when Gries invited me to the bridge to observe the transition, my immediate expectation was of a repeat of our previous attempts: merely a wilderness of the void, the details probably a little different from those we'd investigated before, but essentially no more than another dead end to be discounted before moving on. Mira had been invited too, of course, as protocol demanded. But, no doubt to everyone's relief, she'd declined to drag herself out of bed, the summons having arrived in what she and the ship's chronographs insisted was the middle of the night.

I, of course, was enough of a seasoned campaigner to have hauled myself upright, yanked my laspistol out from under the pillow (provoking a tirade of most unladylike language in the process) and clambered into my uniform within moments of the message being delivered by a bleary-eyed Jurgen. Fortified by the mug of tanna he'd waved in my general direction as I made my exit, I arrived on the bridge a mere couple of minutes after the surge of nausea which generally accompanied the transition from the warp to the realm of reality had swept over me.

'Any luck?' I asked, and the crewman manning the sensorium display nodded in my direction.

'The system's teeming with life. If the 'stealers are here, or have been, there's a lot for them to infect.'

'What kind of life?' I asked. It couldn't have been an Imperial system we'd arrived in, or our vox receivers would have been flooded with comms traffic, and challenges from the local SDF, by now. 'Where in the Throne's name are we?'

'Processing the starfield data now,' Yaffel assured me calmly, gazing into the hololith. 'After correcting for parallax errors, our most probable location would be here, give or take approximately eight light-seconds.' One of the stellar systems inside the green funnel, which had been reduced substantially since the first time I'd seen it, flared more brightly, and the translucent cone obligingly shrank a little more.

'Anything on auspex?' I asked, and the operator raised his head to glance at me.

'I've got thousands of contacts,' he reported. 'It'll take a while to narrow them down.'

'Thousands?' I asked, as he returned to work, my palms itching worse than ever.

'Void shields to maximum. All gunnery stations stand to,' the shipmaster said, pretty much confirming what I most feared, before looking across at me as well. 'Many of them appear to be under power and closing on our position.'

'Wonderful,' I said, before realising that sarcasm wasn't quite what was expected of the dauntless warrior everyone here fondly imagined me to be, and plastering a smile on my face which I hoped would seem sufficiently insouciant. 'Always something to be said for a target-rich environment. Any idea whose day we're about to spoil?'

'Still scanning frequencies,' the vox operator reported, his voice almost as calm as Yaffel's mechanical one. 'Getting something...'

'Put it on the speakers,' Gries ordered, and a moment later an overlapping babble of harsh, guttural voices burst into the room.

My stomach knotted, and I took a deep breath, stilling the instinctive surge of panic which swept over me. I recognised that sound all too well, was even able to pick out a word or two I knew. 'Orks,' I said.

'Undoubtedly,' Gries agreed, no doubt familiar with every enemy of the Imperium I'd ever heard of, and a double handful of ones that I hadn't. 'And eager to welcome us in the manner of their kind.' He looked across at the shipmaster. 'Engage them at your leisure.'

'By your command,' the shipmaster responded, with a grave inclination of his head. 'All batteries, fire at will.'

I moved across to the hololith, where Yaffel had thoughtfully brought up a tactical display which enabled me to see just how frakked we were. Innumerable greenskin vessels were swarming in on our position, evoking a curious half-memory of Drumon surrounded by the sparring drones, before the full seriousness of our position elbowed the whimsical image aside.

The Chapter serf gunners were disciplined, I have to give them that, holding their fire until they were sure of a target[59], before unleashing the full fury of their awesome destructive power in a single concentrated salvo which gutted the ramshackle greenskin vessels they'd targeted. For every one they brought down, though, ten surged forwards to fill the gap, and had they been able to concentrate their fire it would all have been over within moments. Fortunately, however, they were as disorganised as ork mobs always are, blazing away in our general direction without seeming to aim, and only a few of their shots struck home. I felt the faint tremor of their impacts through the fabric of the hull with an answering quiver of apprehension, before forcing away the memory of the greenskin attack on the Hand of Vengeance, which had come so close to taking my life.

'Thunderhawks away,' the auspex man reported a moment later, and a cluster of smaller echoes[60] took up station around the blip which marked our position, doing a very nice job of keeping the greenskin fighters and occasional torpedo volley off our backs. 'Still no sign of our primary target.'

'Then it's probably not here,' I said, mainly to Gries, but pitching my voice so that my calm, reasonable tones would carry across most of the bridge. 'And even if it is, it'll take more than one ship to get to it through this much resistance.'

'I concur,' the Space Marine captain rumbled after a moment, much to my well-concealed relief. The overhead luminators flickered, plunging us into momentary darkness, broken only by the eldritch glow of pict screens and lectern lights, before flaring up again.

'Void shields holding,' one of the bridge crew reported. 'Generators two and nine down. Damage control responding.'

Gries turned to Yaffel, ignoring the clear implications which seemed to me like an unwise degree of single-mindedness. 'Your assessment, magos?'

'The probability of finding the Spawn of Damnation still within this system is now approximately seventeen per cent, and falling,' Yaffel said, after conferring with a couple of his junior tech-priests. 'Analysis of the auspex echoes can only go so far, however; the five per cent of anomalies requiring further investigation we found last time would appear to be something of an irreducible minimum.'

'Then we remain until the probability drops to five per cent,' Gries said, 'before proceeding to the next emergence point. If none exists, we will have to return in numbers sufficient to secure this system while we investigate the remaining anomalies.'

Well, good luck with that, I thought, resolving that if we got out of here in one piece I'd kiss a gretchin before allowing myself to be dragged along on so patently suicidal an endeavour. Which reminded me... I tapped the comm-bead in my ear. 'Jurgen,' I said, 'the ship's under attack by greenskins. Don't alarm Miss DuPanya unduly, but if you can persuade her to get dressed, and ready to move in a hurry, it might be wise.'

'Very good, sir,' my aide responded, in his habitual phlegmatic manner. 'Don't want to get caught on the hop again, like we did off Perlia, do we?'

'No, we don't,' I agreed, not envying the task I'd inflicted on him. Mira would probably have just got back to sleep, and wouldn't take at all kindly to being roused again. Better cranky than dead, though, in my view, and if the ork gunners' aim improved in the next few minutes we could all be breathing vacuum if we weren't light on our feet. (Not an experience I'd recommend, or wish to repeat.)

The deck shook under my feet again, and we were plunged into darkness, for nearly two seconds this time. When the luminators rekindled, they had a red tinge to them, which made the bridge look uncomfortably as though someone had sprayed it with blood.

'Starboard shields down,' the man at the enginseer's station reported dispassionately. 'DCT[61] reports reconsecration will take at least ten minutes.'

'That's too long-' I began, just as the auspex man glanced up from his pict screen.

'Mass torpedo barrage incoming,' he said, a blizzard of contact icons erupting into the space between us and the orks.

'Throne on Earth!' I breathed, horrified. There was no way in the galaxy that the Thunderhawks could intercept that many missiles, but they gave it their best shot, managing to whittle them down by about ten per cent before they struck. Which only left enough to tear the guts out of the cruiser instead of vaporising it.

I braced myself for the ripple of impacts, but instead of the explosions I'd expected, I felt no more than the faintest of tremors through the soles of my boots, as the fast-moving projectiles impacted without detonating against the adamantium hull plates. 'They didn't go off!' I said, buoyed up by a sudden surge of relief, which dissipated almost at once as the obvious explanation occurred to me. 'They must be-'

'Prepare to repel boarders,' Gries voxed through the ship's internal speakers, confirming my conclusion before I could voice it. He turned back to Yaffel. 'Magos?'

'The probability of a successful detection is down to eight point five per cent,' the tech-priest informed him, his voice as uninflected as ever. It might have been my imagination, of course, but I was sure he was oscillating more than usual, however.

'Then recall the Thunderhawks,' Gries said, 'and prepare to withdraw as soon as it falls to five per cent.'

The shipmaster nodded, and opened a vox channel of his own.

'Bridge to enginarium,' he said crisply. 'Prepare for entry into the warp.'

For the second time in as many minutes, my sigh of relief was choked off before completion. Instead of the acknowledgement we'd all been expecting from Drumon or one of the serf enginseers under his supervision, the speaker rang with the sounds of combat and the bellowing war cries of orks. The greenskins had breached the enginarium, and until they were evicted, we wouldn't be going anywhere.

I MUST SAY, we all took it remarkably calmly under the circumstances. Or, to be honest, everyone else did, responding to the unexpected reversal with a flurry of sharp, succinct orders, while I kept a panicky eye on the hololith for any further signs of a greenskin assault. They weren't slow in coming either, with several more waves of boarding torpedoes already inbound, although with the Thunderhawks out of the way, our gunners were reaping a rich harvest of them, having switched their aim from the larger warships. Fortunately, the apparent scramble to claim us as a prize meant that any more destructive incoming fire from the surrounding fleet was sporadic at best, and no more accurate than you might expect, so all in all we were still getting off far more lightly than I would have believed possible. It also probably didn't hurt that several of the greenskin vessels were now exchanging fire with one another, the instinctive aggression of their kind finding a more immediate form of expression now that the battle for the Revenant had reached something of a standstill from their point of view.

'Squad Trosque is en route to the enginarium,' Gries informed the shipmaster, and a sudden sense of foreboding seized me in its talons. I was standing in the middle of the prime target for a boarding party, with Emperor alone knew how many orks charging towards it as fast as their malformed legs could carry them.

I tapped my comm-bead again. 'Jurgen,' I said, 'the greenskins have boarded the Revenant. Numbers unknown. Any sign of them where you are?'

'Not yet, commissar,' my aide responded, sounding a trifle disgruntled if I was any judge. Clearly, Mira had proven to be as acrimonious as I'd anticipated. At least he'd be able to take it out on the orks, though, which I'd no doubt he would, with as much relish as any Valhallan finding a greenskin in his sights[62]. 'Would you like me to go hunting?'

'No, better stay where you are,' I told him, 'and keep an eye on the Viridian envoy.' I'd never hear the last of it, I had no doubt, but the idea of Mira on the loose with a shipful of orks to run into hardly bore thinking about. The mood she was in, she'd probably challenge one to a head-butting contest.

'Oh,' Jurgen said, in the tone I knew all too well was the precursor to telling me something I really didn't want to know. 'I'm afraid the young lady isn't here at the moment, sir. She told me she was coming up to the bridge to see you.'

'Did she?' I said, my stomach plunging to somewhere in the region of my boots. There was no point asking him why he hadn't accompanied her. I'd ordered him to wake her up, and that he'd done, as punctiliously as he fulfilled every other order he was given. And, if I'm honest, in his place I'd have been as pleased to see the back of her as he'd undoubtedly been.

'Would you like me to go after her, sir?' Jurgen offered.

'No, stay in the guest quarters,' I told him, after a fractional pause for thought. They were about as far removed from anything strategically important as it was possible to get aboard the strike cruiser, and although orks weren't exactly renowned for sophisticated tactical analysis, their brutish instincts were often a reasonable substitute. It was still possible that a party of them might blunder in there anyway, of course, but on balance it was as close to a safe refuge as we were likely to find. 'Do whatever you can to make them defensible, and wait for me there. I'll go and retrieve Miss DuPanya.'

I could turn this to my advantage, I thought, as I filled Gries in on this development as succinctly as I could. 'I'm about as much use here as a heretic's oath at the moment,' I concluded, almost in the same breath as Yaffel reporting that if the blasted space hulk was anywhere in the system we weren't going to find it now, so we might as well move on as soon as the little ork problem in the enginarium had been dealt with[63], 'and we can hardly leave her wandering around on her own under the circumstances. If you've no objection, I'll go and escort her back to her quarters.' Which ought to leave me well out of the way if the greenskins attacked the bridge, as I still expected them to at any moment.

'Of course,' Gries said, apparently taking my evident eagerness to get out there for a thinly disguised desire to bag a few orks.

'May the Emperor walk with you.' He made the Mechanicus cogwheel gesture again and turned away to discuss the tactical situation with the shipmaster, no doubt relieved to know that Mira wouldn't be blundering in to distract everyone at some crucial point in the battle if I could get to her first.

I left the bridge as quickly as I could and trotted down the main corridor leading away from it, my weapons in my hands. I was pretty sure I knew which route Mira would take from the guest quarters, and was confident of being able to intercept her without too much difficulty. As I reached the first junction of the corridor, I found a contingent of the ship's crew setting up a lascannon on a tripod, while others settled behind a makeshift barricade with lasguns in their hands, and I began to wonder if my decision to leave the bridge had been a trifle hasty, but there was nothing to be done about that now; and at least I had another bolthole to run for if the greenskins turned out to be between me and the relative safety of the guest quarters after all. Feeling mildly reassured by that, I moved on, after exchanging a few words with the petty officer in charge.

They were the last people I saw for some time, however. The corridors seemed eerily silent, the Chapter serfs I was used to seeing passing to and fro on errands of their own absent about more urgent business, and my footfalls echoed on the deck plates more loudly than they normally did, unmuffled by the ambient sounds of other activity. It seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time to find Mira, and I was on the point of giving up and retracing my steps, in the belief that she must have got lost in the labyrinth of interconnecting passageways, when I finally became aware of the sound of footsteps other than my own.

I tensed, taking a firmer grip on the hilt of my chainsword, and flattened myself against the metallic wall of the corridor. I was close to one of the maintenance hatches, which riddled them at intervals. Pointless attempting to seek refuge in one of the utility areas in this case, though, as the hatches were all kept securely locked, and I hadn't yet found a plausible pretext to ask for the access codes. After listening intently for a moment I was able to reassure myself that the footsteps were too light to be those of orks, and, in any case, if the voices in my comm-bead could be relied on, the greenskin boarding parties were all being successfully engaged elsewhere around the ship.

Thus reassured, I stepped out of concealment in the recess containing the utility hatch, just as Mira strode past, her expression grim. She was not, I surmised, pleased to see me.

'I suppose you think this is some kind of joke,' she began, before registering the weapons in my hands and moderating her voice a little.

'What are you carrying those for? You can't just open a window and take a shot at the enemy.'

'I won't have to,' I told her shortly. 'They've boarded us. Where's your gun?'

'Still in my portmanteau, of course.' She scowled pettishly. 'Your rank little imbecile didn't bother to mention that particular detail, just the attacking ships.'

'He didn't know anything about the boarders until I told him a couple of minutes ago,' I said shortly. Her description of Jurgen was undeniably accurate, but it irked me nonetheless. 'Come on.'

'Where to?' Mira, it seemed, wasn't about to let the trivial matter of a horde of greenskins on the loose divert her from the more pressing concern of her irritation with me and my aide for disturbing her rest.

'Shouldn't you be off shooting orks or something?'

'Maybe I should,' I said, on the point of turning away and leaving her to it. After all, I could always tell Gries I hadn't found her in time if the orks caught up with her before we eliminated them all. 'I just had this rather strange notion of making sure you were safe first.'

'Did you?' Her expression softened, and for a moment I remembered why I'd liked her, until her corrosive personality began to leak out around the edges. 'So what did you have in mind?'

'Getting you back to the guest quarters, to start with,' I said, beginning to move off in the direction from which she'd come. It seemed she had enough sense to follow me without urging, for which I was grateful; the last thing I needed under the circumstances was a further round of bickering.

We hurried back through the eerily deserted corridors, our footfalls ringing loudly despite all we could do to muffle them, and Mira glanced at me with a trace of the bravado I remembered from the day we'd first met. 'Remind you of anything?' she asked, and I nodded.

'We do seem to be making a habit of this,' I agreed, just as the shipmaster's voice suddenly burst into my earpiece, effectively dispelling any inclination I might have had to swap further banter.

'Incoming. Brace for impact.'

'Hang on to something,' I said, and it seemed Mira trusted my judgement enough to do so without further argument. She took hold of the handle of another of the ubiquitous utility hatches, and looked at me quizzically. 'Another wave just got past the guns.'

Before she could formulate a reply, the deck trembled a little beneath our feet, a faint vibration barely perceptible through the soles of our boots. Mira let go of the metallic protuberance and took a step towards me, her testiness evidently intensified by the anticlimax and the sense of having been made to look foolish. 'Well, that was hardly-' she began, just as a deafening clangour of brutally maltreated metal assaulted my ears, drowning out whatever else she might have been about to say. The deck rippled beneath my bootsoles, and a section of the ceiling appeared to decide it would be happier as a wall, swinging down to meet the deck plates in a shower of sparks and trailing conduit.

'You were saying?' I asked mildly, as Mira scrambled to her feet and glared at me as though the whole thing was somehow my fault.

'A gentleman would have helped me up,' she told me witheringly.

'Hands full. Sorry,' I replied insincerely. Only an idiot would relinquish either of the weapons I was currently holding under the circumstances. Now don't get me wrong, I've as much time for chivalry as the next man when there's something to be gained by it, or at least nothing to lose, but an impact that big must have meant that a boarding torpedo had hit no more than a deck or two from us, which put the greenskins far too close for comfort so far as I was concerned. I tapped the vox in my ear. 'Cain to bridge, hull breach in Section K, deck fifteen or thereabouts.'

'Acknowledged,' a calm voice replied, conspicuously unaccompanied by any sounds of combat, and I began to regret my impulsive decision to leave there even more strongly. 'Your current position?'

'K fifteen,' I said. 'Escorting the Viridian envoy to safety.' Which sounded a lot better than putting as much distance as I could between me and any greenskins who might have been aboard the projectile. It never occurred to me to question whether they'd survived an impact which would have reduced a human to a small, unpleasant stain[64]. I'd seen more than enough of their ability to shrug off almost as much damage as a power-armoured Space Marine on Perlia to be certain that some at least would be pulling themselves out of the wreckage even as I spoke. I glanced at the tangle of collapsed and twisted metal which effectively barred us from our original objective now, and gestured to Mira with the hand holding my laspistol, back the way we'd come.

'This way,' I told her. 'We'll have to get round it.'

'Right.' She nodded, decisively, the clear and present danger we were in obvious enough to forestall any further frivolous objections, and beginning to display some of the fortitude which had sustained her in the tunnels under Fidelis. 'At least that should be as much of a barrier to the orks as it is to us,' she added, with a final glance at the collapsed ceiling before moving to join me.

Hardly had the words left her mouth, though, than the utility hatch she'd been leaning on just a few moments before suddenly bulged perceptibly, the thin sheet metal from which it was formed twisting under the impact of a blow which reverberated between the corridor walls like the tolling of a cathedral bell. 'Run!' I shouted, as the sound was repeated, but before I could take my own advice the flimsy hatch popped from its hinges, framing a sight I'd hoped never to see again (but which I continued to see more often than I can count over the years): the head and shoulders of a snarling, blood-crazed ork, which bellowed in exultation the second it saw us, and charged.