Sparks From the Edge (40K/BT)
Posted: 2013-02-20 10:49pm
A special thanks to Jon Berry for the assistance he has rendered and no doubt will continue to render, if only to make sure that I don't lose focus.
Chapter One
"Brace for transition back to realspace," Fourth Company Captain Petronius Maximus of the Survivors Chapter said quietly to the significantly shorter man standing to his left.
"I gathered that was what the alarms were for," Inquisitor Lucien Kennard muttered in mild annoyance at being told something he felt was obvious, even as he discreetly placed his hands upon the rail in front of him, a move that proved well planned a moment later when the ship lurched abruptly in a direction that was normally at right angles to reality. Lucien remarked rather dryly, "I had heard that Adeptus Astartes craft were known for the roughness of their transitions, but that was rather much."
"The Navigator is reporting in now that the barrier between the Warp and realspace is distinctly 'choppy', Inquisitor Kennard," Shipmaster Gaius Tiberius, commander of the battle barge Dirge of Heresy, reported with equal dryness to the Inquisitor's remark.
"Choppy? I had thought that at last report the Empyrean was distinctly smooth," Lucien pointed out with a tinge of irritation.
"Guy?" Captain Maximus asked, using the diminutive from their chapter's unique flavour of Low Gothic to express his worry without being obvious to the outsider in their midst.
"I'm translating a bit from psyker-speak Petr, but in essence the Warp has been calm," Shipmaster Tiberius said with something of a shrug of his enormous shoulders.
Inquisitor Kennard's face darkened and he said, "That is indeed troublesome. Keep me appraised of any further changes in psychic activity or Warp phenomenon."
Taking that moment to walk onto the bridge, Codicier Pyrrhus stated, "Our astropathic choir has already begun to intercept transmissions from Oologon IV. Translation should be ready shortly, but I do have the proper ciphers to tell you the salient points, if you so desire."
The Inquisitor Kennard looked askance at the powerful psyker for a moment before he accused, "You did that on purpose."
"Perhaps," the codicier admitted with an inscrutable look on his face.
"Tell me what you know now so I can better sort out the primary messages later. We should be a good eight hours out in any case," Inquisitor Kennard said, somewhat irritated.
"Approximately forty transports under the control of traitors and heretics have arrived in orbit about the planet, with the majority of them parked in high orbit above Hive Iolon. An estimated dozen regiments of Traitor Guard have made landings within the city and have smashed local PDF forces, but have made no attempt to engage forces outside the city. Communication from within the hive is sporadic at best, but enemy forces seem to be engaged in slaughter of the local population," Pyrrhus reported dutifully, his eyes and psychic hood glowing cerulean as he processed the psychic messages.
The command staff on the bridge all looked at each other in wary confusion, each aware in their own ways of the dangers of the various tricks that Chaos could be up to when the lunatics under its sway started acting irrationally. Inquisitor Kennard broke the silence when he asked, "What of the cruiser that took out the local system defence forces that first drew our attention."
Looking contemplative for a second as he sorted through the data, Pyrrhus replied, "The enemy ship, identified via broadcast as the Harvester of Endings, secured orbital supremacy and annihilated groundside aerospace bases capable of running any sort of interdiction over Iolon before it left."
"Sensors confirm a cooling ion trail leading away from the planet indicative of a craft on full military burn no more than three days ago," Shipmaster Tiberius confirmed.
"Would it be remiss of me to suggest that the segments of the enemy force that could be considered 'important' do not want to be anywhere near this system?" Captain Maximus suggested darkly.
"That or a rather convoluted trap. Either way..." The Inquisitor said, falling away into a musing tone. Finally he said, "Forward the messages to my staff, I shall consult with them during our transit."
"We will keep you appraised of any changing conditions or our own insights as we examine the situation," Captain Maximus replied as one of the chapter serfs went through the process of having a data copy of the astropathic messages routed to the Inquisitor's retinue in their quarters elsewhere on the battle barge. Left unsaid but rather obvious was the request for equivalent cooperation.
"Thank you," Inquisitor Kennard said with a curt nod before he stalked off the bridge to return to his own analysts.
Captain Maximus watched the Inquisitor leave before he turned to Pyrrhus and asked, "Was there anything in there meant only for the ears of the Chapter, Rhus?"
"No, but there are certain records within the Library that may be of use in this situation, Petr," Pyrrhus noted.
Glancing at the four hour old images of Oologon, Tiberius groused, "I thought we were done with that cursed place two centuries ago."
"I forgot that you were old enough to have lived through the Exodus, Guy," Maximus noted apologetically.
"I was not yet even an Initiate at the time so I barely remember it, but I know that the day my family left the rubble of Iolon behind was the happiest day of my short life. Compared to that wretched ruin of a hive, the wilds of Yundr were paradise," Tiberius mused in reminiscence of times that were quite literally from a previous life.
"The attention of Chaos in the Hive where our Chapter was born and fought for seven centuries is indeed a troublesome development. I have already tasked my Lexicanum to begin collecting what information we have on the area, both for tactical assessment and to see if we can determine what the enemy could possibly hope to obtain through their actions," Pyrrhus noted gravely.
"I will gather the sergeants and we can discuss the issue. Shall we meet in the council chambers in half an hour?" Maximus inquired.
"That should be sufficient time to access what information we have stored with us," Pyrrhus stated before he bowed slightly to Tiberius and Maximus in turn before he too left the bridge.
Placing his right arm on Tiberius' left pauldron, Maximus said to him, "Keep us safe in transit, Guy."
Nodding, the Shipmaster said, "Aye. I'm wary of that bastard cruiser sneaking up on us. You handle getting ready for the ground campaign, and I will make sure you get there."
Half an hour later and Captain Maximus was seated at his customary position at the round table that served as the centrepiece for the council room. To his left sat Pyrrhus, to his right was Chaplain Fedor Meridius, and forming a quarter ring around the rest of the circle were the ten sergeants attached to Maximus' company. The Dirge of Heresy could carry up to three companies at once and the table reflected that, hence the only partial filling, along with both the places for the Shipmaster and Master of the Enginarium remaining empty due to their activity elsewhere. At the moment, all eyes were directed upward at the holographic schematic of Hive Iolon.
"Looks like a shithole," Veteran Sergeant Rudolfus Terminus commented in his own particular idiom.
"That's because our ancestors spent seven centuries killing orks within it, Rud. Why the Administratum thought it worthwhile to repopulate the place is lost to me. In any case we should receive updated map data and all current tactical and strategic data. In the mean time we shall see if we can figure out why the enemy has chosen to attack this one hive to the exclusion of all others," Maximus explained.
"The wholesale slaughter of the civilian population stinks of foul sorcery," Chaplain Meridius commented in disgust.
"I agree, particularly given the nature of our Chapter's centuries of isolation, but we and the Inquisition scoured Oologon during the Exodus for any clues as to what happened. We are unlikely to see anything that has been missed within two centuries, but perhaps now that we can know that the forces of Chaos have a focus upon it something new may become clear. We have four centuries of coherent battle reports to go through, so keep your eyes open and your wits sharp," Pyrrhus noted as serfs began to hand out data slates to the various sergeants.
After about half an hour of quiet discussion among the sergeants the youngest of the ten, the recently promoted Sergeant Guriy Nihilus said loud enough for everyone to hear, "You know, this city looks like some of the things I normally take a flamer to."
"If you are referring to certain patterns that appear in the networks of roads and service ducting, that is a known phenomenon in cities, particularly in radial hives. The human eye sees patterns. The Administratum and Inquisition check for the presence of blasphemous ones just to be sure though," Pyrrhus explained.
"Oh. Kind of disconcerting all the same," Nihilus noted.
"It is brother, it is, but... huh... that's peculiar," Pyrrhus said, suddenly coming up short.
Snowy white eyebrows twitching, Chaplain Meridius turned to Pyrrhus and said, "Rhus, when a Librarian says that something is 'peculiar' I reach for my crozius."
"Well... there is sort of a pattern with the various cathedrals and main transit lines, but those happen naturally because of the need for associated transit hubs and connecting thoroughfares and the like, but it is not... well..." Pyrrhus noted while looking at the various maps with a sceptical eye.
"What do you see brother?" Maximus asked.
"Well, if you squint, you can almost see what might be a hexagrammic ward in the design," Pyrrhus admitted.
"If after seven centuries of fighting that devastated the hive you think you can see some form of occult symbol in the structure of the city then we need those updated maps right away," Maximus declared, looking at the nearest serf, who just shook his head in a negative gesture. Frowning, he said, "Very well. Now that we have a hint I want everyone but Rhus to focus on examining any reports of cult activity. Our primary enemies during our occupation of Iolon were orks, but reports indicate intermittent cult activity as well. It was assumed that it was just the weak succumbing to stress from the Warp storms, but perhaps not. Look for patterns."
"We should probably inform the Inquisitor," Pyrrhus pointed out.
"We probably should," Maximus agreed with a sigh before he turned to one of the serfs, who nodded and quickly began typing on a data slate to compose the proper message. Satisfied that the task would be dealt with, Maximus returned to his own examination of the old battle reports. These were all familiar to him, having been part of the information hypnotically implanted in his mind during his indoctrination into the ways of the Survivors over a century and a half ago. He had gone over them countless times since, but usually seeking lessons from the past in terms of tactical or strategic insight. Now he looked at them with new eyes, seeking more esoteric patterns.
All Space Marines had extraordinary minds as part of the gifts granted to them by the Emperor and the Primarchs through their gene seed, but sadly far too many battle-brothers chose not to exercise that strength and let the muscles of their minds atrophy. By his own estimation, Maximus ranked the Survivors as being better than most at using their brains, although certainly not the best. As a Captain he was by definition a cut above the rest of his brothers in terms of intelligence and battlefield acumen. Still, as he quickly scanned back and forth through the centuries of reports, he found his intelligence lacking. Roughly five hundred years of back and forth with orks in the ruins of a city that had once housed two billion people while a hungry black void hovered overhead was quite a daunting task to try to understand all at once, let alone to pluck the madness of heretics from the general disorder of such a war.
Then he saw it. In retrospect it was obvious. Looking up at all of his from the data slates, he said, "Brothers, I am amazed no one has noticed this before. Plot all cult activity by location and time and account for the presence of the greenskins and our own enclaves. Does anyone else notice what I am seeing?" As he spoke, Maximus manipulated the holo-lith and imposed the sites where cult activity had been found while also overlaying ork lines and their own.
There was an awkward silence before Chaplain Meridius commented dryly, "That's a rather conspicuously large dead zone of cult activity."
Up on the holographic display there was a large oval that showed no signs of any cult activity at all during the five hundred years of activity within the hive, despite being well away from the strongholds the Survivors had built into the city. While looking at the hole, Senior Sergeant Artminus Marius hummed for a moment and said, "The dead zone gets even bigger when you compare the greenskin lines to the cult activity on the borders. We only ever cleared out cults within a kilometre of that area after pushing the xenos out of the area."
"So there was clearly something in that area that they wanted so badly they couldn't even risk their presence there tipping us off to its existence. The question is, what?" Maximus mused aloud.
"The obvious answer is the crashed hive spire that more or less makes up the boundaries of the dead zone, but from an occult perspective it is completely out of place," Pyrrhus noted.
"Yes, but considering the precision cuts to the primary supports on one side we have long suspected that our ancestors dropped the spire to one side for some reason very early on in the occupation of Iolon, possibly to crush a very large concentration of orks in the collapse. What if the cult objective was what the spire landed on?" Sergeant Rudolfus speculated.
"That's possible... but..." Pyrrhus began to say speculatively while carefully examining the maps and reports before him. He then muttered, "How did we miss this?"
"Because it is not your job to look for these sorts of things," Inquisitor Kennard announced as he marched into the room. There was a slightly smug look on his face and the faintest flicker of warp fire in the eyes of the psyker acolyte at his side. The not amused look on Pyrrhus' face said everything that could not be said aloud between them, and the rest of the Marines in attendance wisely chose not to comment. After allowing for dramatic timing of his arrival to sink in and letting his eyes quickly dart over the holo-lith, Kennard added on, "The sort of high level analysis of cult activity that should have caught this is the domain of the Inquisition, which implies corruption at work. In fact, I would not be surprised if your ancestors noted this strange dead zone and reported it after your exile was over."
There was a slight pause as those assembled considered the implication that Inquisitor Kennard had just made, and then the eyes of Maximus' brothers fell on him as the senior Marine to comment. Maximus licked his lips for a moment as he carefully considered his words before he replied, "While the Survivors are uncertain of our lineage, there is some evidence to suggest that our progenitors were on Oologon IV in the first place due to Inquisitorial request."
"I am aware of this fact. I have already sent an astropathic message towards the Inquisitorial Conclave indicating that a thorough investigation into the matter is required. There is something rotten within that requires cleansing fire to purge. I can only hope it arrives," Kennard noted with the sort of dispassion that indicated that he would be strangling people if only he had their throats available.
Maximus looked at Pyrrhus, who said, "The Warp grows increasingly disquiet. It is difficult to describe to a non-psyker, but the best analogy I can describe is of the interface layer between a liquid and a gas. It is currently vibrating in such a way that there is no mixing between the two fluids, but the energy is there and slowly increasing such that if trends continue..." Pyrrhus let the morbid analogy fade away with a troubled shrug that said enough to his brothers.
"Could the slaughter of the civilians be causing it?" Meridius asked.
"Yes and no. Mass death disturbs the Warp with the echoes of their souls violently cut away from the bodies, but the scale of the disturbance is out of proportion to the scale of reported deaths. This leads increasing credence to the possibility of an arcane structure to the city, but even then such slaughter could only serve to prime the array, not activate it," Pyrrhus explained.
The pale skinned, hunched over and heavily augmented creature that Kennard had brought with him along with his psyker suddenly spoke up with a raspy, excited voice and said, "It is the power conduits! That must be it!"
"Archimentes?" Kennard asked of his servant.
"The main transit lines are the obvious part, but there is only bits and pieces so unless there is a major cult ritual going on you would never think to look, but most major roads have the biggest power conduits in the hive running parallel to the side or underneath them. You do not however have to run such conduits along the same path as roads and you can hide them in the infrastructure of the hive. If you look here and here there are major industrial sectors in sub-optimal locations that could easily have major power conduits transecting them and completing missing pieces of occult circuitry. The area the cults were protecting by avoiding falls into a third such position," the savant explained, gesturing to a pair of production blocks that seemed no different than any of the other blocks.
The battle-brothers remained silent and still at the proclamation, while Pyrrhus, Kennard and the other psyker all looked thoughtful for a moment before Pyrrhus declared, "Okay, it is definitely an occult array of some sort, but there is too much missing information to be able to determine its exact function."
"Immaterial, we..." Kennard began, before Maximus cut him off and said, "...bombard Iolon from orbit until not even the outskirts remain intact and then survey the remaining hives while waiting for back up."
Kennard paused in annoyance before he said, "Acceptable. I had heard your chapter has a reputation for softness, but it seems I was mistaken."
The Space Marines all glared at the Inquisitor in a way that suggested that his Inquisitorial Rosette might find itself little more than a shiny bauble amidst a pile of meat if he said something like that again before Maximus replied coldly, "Our enemies often mistaken long term pragmatism for softness, to their brief but intense discomfort later."
Not appearing in any way intimidated in a manner that suggested he had received the message loud and clear, Kennard said in turn, "Well, I suppose the infrequency of such attitudes amongst the lesser servants of the Emperor could generate such rumours."
Since a roundabout apology without actually apologizing for anything was probably the best that could be extracted from an Inquisitor, Maximus let the initial comment slide and instead said, "In any case, we have no authority to carry Cyclonic Torpedoes or any other Exterminatus grade weaponry, so a surgical excising of the confirmed infection shall have to suffice until further Inquisitorial oversight arrives."
"This is true," Kennard admitted. He looked like he was about to say something else when all froze in horror as wan witch light began to flicker across the eyes of the two psykers present, with the crystals upon Pyrrhus' skull that made up his psychic hood soon glowing ominously. All else in attendance began to slowly edge out of their seats, hands resting upon the hilts and handles of various weapons as they waited to see if intervention would be necessary. Finally though the episode seemed to pass for both psykers, to which the Inquisitor could only exclaim, "By the Holy Light of the Emperor, I demand to know what that was about!"
"Something terrible has just happened master," the psyker whispered hoarsely to the Inquisitor at a level he probably mistakenly thought the Space Marines would not be able to make out.
Pyrrhus' eyes flashed once more before he announced, "We have lost our Astropathic choir; five burnouts and two emergency executions. Our Navigators are currently stable, but one had to be heavily sedated. The Lexicanums are fine."
"What happened, Rhus?" Maximus asked worriedly.
"I... I cannot say precisely. If the boundary between the Warp and realspace was agitated before, it is now like a large rock has been dropped from a great height. I need to consult some things before I can make an accurate assessment of the true extent of what has happened," Pyrrhus stated. He paused for a moment before he said, "At this point I do not think anyone will ever know the story of what happened here unless we tell it to them face to face."
Both Meridius and Kennard looked like they wanted to say something about defeatism before the pained looks on the faces of the psykers informed them that Pyrrhus was being optimistic. Maximus instead said, "Go, see to what you need to see. I think we are done here. Everyone, return to your squads and order a full combat lockdown. We will not be dropping into battle any time soon and I want us prepared for rough weather if need be. I would suggest you have your own people secure themselves as well, Inquisitor."
"Archimentes, Procyon, pass the advice along to the rest of the team. I will accompany the Captain back to the bridge as I wish to be among the first to see what the auspex has to say," Kennard ordered of his acolytes, who nodded in silent confirmation.
Activating his personal vox as he got up, Maximus said, "Guy, I'm not sure what you know so far, but I recommend you prepare the ship for potential moral threats."
"Acknowledged Petr. I suspect Rhus has more information, but the death of the Astropaths has already moved me up to full alert on that front. I've already distributed orders to the section heads, but I held off on a general announcement in case you were in the middle of something," Tiberius remarked.
"The psychic disruption more or less ended the conversation we were having. On that note however, we need to prepare for an orbital bombardment," Maximus stated.
"Precise or prejudiced?" Tiberius inquired.
"Prejudiced. Extremely prejudiced. We will need a complete scouring of Iolon at the minimum," Maximus noted.
"I will inform the masters of the guns of the coming need so that they can prepare," Tiberius responded crisply.
Arriving at the bridge, Maximus found that there was little to do but wait for the requisite hour for light from whatever the event was to reach them, even as the psychic augers showed Warp energy readings that were reaching terrifying levels. What they saw in the EM spectrum would have made lesser men than Space Marines and Inquisitors blanche, and a few of the serfs on the bridge had to be taken away for morale reasons. What they saw was the squadron of forty enemy ships, most of them appearing like defiled pilgrim ships, all attempt to activate their Warp drives in close formation within low orbit of Oologon IV. The results were spectacularly predictable, but the aftermath was not.
Making the sign of the Aquila in warding, Inquisitor Kennard whispered, "Sacred Light of the Emperor protect us! I had thought I had seen the depths of such madness, but this is beyond anything in our records!"
"May the Emperor protect indeed. This certainly explains the reactions of our psykers and the readings from the auspex," Maximus noted grimly as he stared at the bleeding hole of unlight that was connected by strands of viridescent indigo to the world below.
"Such insanity! But... but yes, I can see what the design could do now. It must be some sort of... warp amplifier. It is siphoning off the energy from that Warp tear, but instead of dissipating it, it must be feeding it back into the rift. God Emperor help me, the depths of depraved corruption to have pulled this off..." Kennard stated, nearly muttering to himself towards the end.
"And the Survivors sat on it for seven centuries and noticed nothing," Maximus replied grimly.
"It's not your job to root out this sort of base treachery, it is supposed to be the job of the Inquisition. God Emperor guide my last message safely through the Warp to faithful ears so that the guilty might be punished for this atrocity," Kennard stated numbly.
Seeing something of a horrified yet enthralled look growing over him, Maximus cut the feed and said, "All signals are to be considered a moral threat at this point."
Shaking off whatever fugue was settling over him, Kennard stated, "Thank you Captain, I should have been of stronger will than to stare like that."
"We will all require proper debrief and interrogation for corruption after this, I suspect," Maximus pointed out before he turned to Tiberius and asked, "What are our options Guy?"
Sweeping over a few safe, clinical numbers Tiberius mused on it for a second before he stated, "I suspect the whole city is going to be enveloped in energy from that rift, which I am betting my soul will be like a gigantic Void shield in terms of protection, only I doubt even torpedoes would be able to get through. Cultists are crazy, but they at least know our obvious moves to try to counter them."
"Agreed, wholeheartedly," Kennard said with a quick nod, the weakness gone from his eyes and voice to be replaced with proper Imperial steel.
"We therefore need an unobvious move to have a hope against them. Could we ram the city?" Maximus asked.
"No, we would be torn apart by the rift before we could get there, even if we don't just bounce off the shielding effect," Tiberius replied with a shake of his head.
"The shield did not seem to extend very far outside the city. Could you launch torpedoes at an oblique angle and sneak them in underneath?" Kennard suggested.
"They're not that agile, especially not in a gravity well with atmosphere," Tiberius stated with another shake.
Maximus and Kennard both stared quietly at the clinically dispassionate holo of the doomed world of Oologon IV for a long time, watching the range counter slowly tick down as the Dirge of Heresy approached at a speed that was only slow on the scale of stars. After what seemed an interminable time of quiet but could have been no more than a handful of minutes, Maximus asked, "Your savant, what areas of scholastic lore has he studied?"
"I can think of no Warp lore that could serve us here," Kennard replied honestly.
"Not lore of the occult, but rather lore of the physical world," Maximus clarified without looking at Kennard.
"Oh, he has studied just about everything in that regard, or at least only the up to the semi-banned treatises on the physical sciences," Kennard answered with a shrug.
"I suspected as much. Do you think I could consult with him over a geological problem?" Maximus asked.
Kennard turned to look at Maximus, and as their eyes met the Inquisitor's went wide with comprehension. Turning back to the holographic representation of the world, Kennard noted, "Your chapter is far more unconventional than the rumours suggest."
For the next two hours the Dirge of Heresy made its final approach, watching as the Warp rift grew in size, casting its hideous, sickly light across the damned star system. All across the battle barge shutters remained tightly shut as if in Warp transit, and the mortal passengers found anti-psychotic drugs being distributed to all. The vox casters were filled with the hymns of Meridius and particularly faithful serfs, bolstering the spirits of those aboard the ship.
Slowing down to a final, geostationary orbit on the far side of Oolong IV from Iolon, the great warship rotated on its longitudinal axis so that its starboard side faced the world below. With the Warp rift eclipsed by the bulk of the planet, the shutters opened for the macrocannons along the side facing the walking dead world below. On the dorsal surface the great lance battery turret rotated into position as final firing solutions were plotted out. Tech adepts and integrated servitors fed in the last of the necessary data to the mighty weapons, chanting out in Binary the praises to the world endingly powerful machine spirits that they might vent their apocalyptic wrath true and clean.
Staring at still closed adamantium and ceramite shutters, Shipmaster Gaius Tiberius uttered the only word he need to.
"Fire."
The entire six kilometre long warship hummed as the hab block sized capacitors for the lance battery all emptied in a few seconds, projecting long columns of star hot light down into the coastal mountain range the savants aboard the warship had selected as their targets. The beams struck true and stabbed straight into the magma chamber of the dormant volcano chosen as the first target. Pressure that had been building for centuries suddenly discovered that there was a convenient exit cut and the mountain exploded with the combined force of the lance strike and its own eruption. A second later and the first of the macrocannon shells began to rain down into the other geologically active features.
The guns kept firing, as fast as they could reload and recharge, bombarding the mountain range that had begun to grow tens of millions of years prior when two tectonic plates began to grind against each other. Tensions and pressures on a planetary scale suddenly found the unyielding rock that had held them in check had been abruptly and catastrophically removed. The skies soon darkened as explosions to end the world rapidly ripped back and forth across this seam of the world.
Ten minutes into the bombardment, the Dirge of Heresy began to rotate, bringing its bow about to point down into the burning scar the warship had gouged into the planet below, its guns firing in sequence just as they lost line of sight with a singular target. Just as the last of the macrocannons fired the six now open torpedo tubes launched their building sized payloads. It took but a second for them to leave their tubes and rush down to the planet below, during which time the lance battery fired just above them.
The mighty warship had dug a hole through the crust of the world to the mantle beneath, and the half dozen plasma torpedoes made it through the rapidly collapsing wound to strike and bury into the dense, not quite solid and not quite liquid rock of the interior before they detonated into newborn suns. On the scale of worlds, the bombardment was not enough to do more than scratch the ball of rock and metal, but on the scale of continents the bombardment was more than enough. Multiple tectonic plates cracked and shifted. Mountains fell and oceans rose. If Oologon IV had a future then the devastation would have been a scar that would have been visible in the geological record for billions of years.
But Oologon IV did not have a future. In the charnel house of Iolon where daemons capered and danced over the corpses of Imperial citizens and the cultists that had summoned them, their first warning that this world and the stars for a hundred light years around would not be theirs was the way the ground began to shake and tremble. Nameless, formless blasphemies unused to the structures of realspace exulted in this novel new form, but their more complex brethren had enough understand to know that the ground should not shake.
Iolon was built on geologically stable ground as proof against the shifts of nature in the short millennia since its initial planning, but that was not enough in the face of the quakes that raced across the planet. The ground shifted and trembled and pulled on the great array that had been constructed. The design was robust against damage, but not on the scale inflicted as conduits snapped under the tension and hive spires toppled upon critical lines. The daemonic architects who had played with dozens of generations of mortals to achieve this monument to their brilliance screamed in horror as their design was perverted and altered by pure random chance.
One of the patron gods of the grand project cackled with perverse glee as its minions were devoured by pure, unadulterated chaos that had been set in motion by their own hands, while the other gods turned away from the failures before them. The grand array was no longer functioning properly. It was now drawing the rift into itself rather than the energies spilled forth by the rift. The daemons wailing amongst the wreckage of their design knew that when contact was met between the two, their immortal existences would end permanently.
By the time a serf had cried out, "It's working!" two hours had passed since the launch of the torpedoes, the Dirge of Heresy and her masters needing to wait to see if they would need to repeat their bombardment to finish the job. Tiberius had not even finished giving the order before the main engines started firing to take the mighty warship as far from the dying world as they could as quickly as possible. The ship fired its engines at rates that would quickly burn them out if kept up, but the red robed masters of the reactors saw no need to conserve them if a lack of a single erg would lead to their annihilation.
It wasn't enough.
The rift touched the array four hundred and seventy-six seconds after the battle barge first fired its engines. For a briefly infinite time, everything within about a light year of the planet stopped. Then, a moment later, everything within that sphere of space collapsed inward, driven to superluminal velocities by an enormous buckling of the Warp. The matter of the star and all the planets and moons and comets and asteroids and dust abruptly found themselves all compressed into a single point too small for the universe to acknowledge as having volume, and promptly collapsed into a singularity at the centre of the Warp rift, which then promptly fell into the Warp rift, sealing the fissure in reality by pulling it closed.
Diverting all possible power to the Gellar Field and the engines, the Dirge of Heresy burned like a candle just above the ultimate blackness while surrounded by the hungry darkness of the Warp. Only able to survive the buckling of space-time by the fact that their drives did something similar, they avoided being pulled into the singularity, but not from being snared by its gravity. Downward they travelled, pulled along by physical forces that had no place in the Immaterial Realm and by the vortex currents generated by the impossible motion of the black hole through the Empyrean as it sank towards the Stygian depths.
Psykers skimmed power from the waves and ripples at the surface of the great sea of power that was the Warp. Mighty warships swam through the currents just beneath. Daemons and more horrid things prowled in the lightless depths below that, hunting for the flickering light of mortal souls upon the surface or in the bubbles about their ships to guide them to their next meal. The Dirge went deeper than that, into and beyond realms of pure thought and emotion. It was a stratum of the Warp that no mortal could go, where the weight of non-existence threatened to crush the tiny, insignificant craft. The Gellar Field was pressed in to the hull and even through in some places, causing normally near indestructible armour to flow and melt like ice exposed to a cutting torch, the bonds that held the material together rendered void by the unreal nature of these depths.
The black hole, shielded for a long time by its own impossibility, finally began to lose its grip upon the battle barge, and the two began to wander away from each other. As much as the singularity had been the doom of the warship by dragging it into these depths, it had also been the salvation by keeping the worst of the Warp pressure away by dint of its wake. Tumbling out of control, the Gellar field began its final collapse inward.
Isolated for too long from the normal laws of physics, the black hole surrendered to the Warp. The first physical law, by way of being one of the weakest, was the force of gravity. In the nanosecond between the failure of gravity and the rest of the physical forces giving up, they protested against the compressed state.
In the months and years to come, the Imperium would take note of the loss of the Oolong Star System, a battle barge and company of Space Marines, and the disappearance of an Inquisitor. They would also take note of a rather sharp upward spike in the birth rate of psykers in the sector and an general roughening of Warp currents in the subsector where the star had once been, but the event was not noticeable to rouse the attention of the galactic bureaucracy, nor allow them to properly connect the dots. Entities more ancient than apes would also notice the peculiar event, but not have a proper explanation for what had happened, and in their own ways simply shrug and move on with their own agendas.
The Dirge of Heresy on the other hand was considerably closer to the event that the rest of the galaxy would eventually perceive of as a minor burp in the Warp. Anywhere and anywhen else, either the blast or the Warp pressure would have obliterated them, but instead the shock formed a wave of reality that the ship was carried along on, the forces of the Warp and the explosion just barely cancelling each other out enough for the battle barge to be swept out of the abyss and towards the depths where it was meant to operate.
Twisted and buckled by awesome forces that boggled the mind and its mighty armour pitted and eroded by the corrosive essence of the Warp, the once mighty battle barge was vomited forth back into realspace with such violence that the ship was nearly snapped in half. As it was, on the bridge when motion returned to sensibility and colour stopped having a flavour it was a hellish scramble of broken machinery and shattered bodies, all lit in the bloody crimson of the emergency lighting. Deck plates had crumpled and the artificial gravity was clear malfunctioning as down was not oriented perfectly normal to the deck but had a small but noticeable tilt to it.
Having just barely remained secured to his seat, Maximus managed to recover quickly enough to be able to see Tiberius extracting himself from the partial collapse of the ceiling over his command throne. Undoing his restraints, Maximus moved over to the shipmaster and aided him in pushing a piece of debris off of him. Judging by the way Tiberius' armour had crumpled, if he had not been adorned for battle he would have surely have perished.
"Thank you brother," Tiberius replied while he gingerly removed his right pauldron to free up the range of motion in that arm.
"Any time brother. How can I further assist?" Maximus asked.
Looking around the wreckage, Tiberius replied, "Assist the bridge crew, I need their technical expertise to get the Dirge up and running once more."
In other Chapters, a Company Captain being asked to aid non-Space Marines might have been interpreted as an insult, but the culture of the Survivors placed the pragmatism of the situation above concerns of pride and honour. Service to the Emperor was the greatest pride and honour one could have, and if the Emperor was best served by medically aiding His servants so that they might do their job, then it was Maximus' great joy to do so until he could find a better use of his time. As such Maximus nodded to Tiberius and went to go examine the nearest pile of serfs.
Ceramite gauntlets moved with surprising gentleness to extract the living from the dead and to give the dead some dignity in their repose. Only when he found the living so battered that even in his inexpert opinion that they had no hope for survival did he bring his full strength to bear, quietly delivering the Emperor's Mercy while whispering prayers for the quick and painless departure of their souls. The Adeptus Astartes were the Emperor's Angels of Death, and they could deliver that death both brutally and mercifully, as the case may be.
Then, while working on sorting out a pile of wreckage, both machine and man, Maximus found Inquisitor Kennard, still strapped into his seat. While it was obvious that the Inquisitor was badly injured, it was also obvious from the rise and fall of his chest that he had survived. Using his strength to shift the entire seat, Maximus brought the Inquisitor out into the open and called out to the few mobile serfs, "I need a stretcher team for a VIP."
To their credit the serfs only hesitated for a moment in deciding what to do, for as much as it had to rankle for an outsider to be given preferential treatment while their comrades lay dying in need of the limited amount of transport to the nearest Apothecary, it was still an order from a Captain of the Chapter and the patient was an Inquisitor. Maximus examined the faces of the trudged forward to take the Inquisitor, identifying them as Ensigns Mykyta and Klavdiya. He would talk to them later about how he understood their hesitation and appreciated their obedience in spite of that. It would not do to let morale be depleted by doubts.
"Brother, I require your assistance," Tiberius announced as the serfs took Kennard off to the Apothecary for treatment.
"What is it, Guy?" Maximus asked.
"I need something confirmed, Petr. I can tell from my instruments - Emperor, from my handheld auspex - that we have exited the Warp, but nothing else is working properly and I can't even open the shutters. I need someone to go down to the bridge airlock and more or less look outside. I would normally ask a serf to do it, but I am short of serfs, let alone void capable serfs," Tiberius explained.
Maximus nodded curtly and then asked, "What do you need me to look for?"
"Look for the extent of the exterior damage and any nearby masses that we should be worried about, more or less. You should also set your armour's auto-senses to record so that we can analyze star patterns later if we can't get our sensors back online properly due to damage," Tiberius explained.
Nodding, Maximus went to work without another word, quickly descending into the service corridors surrounding the bridge until he arrived at an airlock normally used by serfs for maintenance of the exterior of the bridge but that was more than large enough to permit egress by powered armour. After double checking that his armour retained a full atmospheric seal, Maximus activated his vox and said, "I am sealing the airlock now. The interior lock is showing a positive seal, but please make sure to be prepared to fire emergency bulkhead seals in the event of unexpected decompression."
"Confirmed. Emperor be with you," Tiberius stated on the other end of the vox.
Making the proper observations to the machine spirit in charge of the air lock, Maximus went through the decompression procedure only for the system to inform him that there it was suffering a General Error 27 and could not complete the procedure. Tapping the vox once more, Maximus relayed the problem on to Tiberius. After a moment, Tiberius said, "Can you open the outer door without completing the depressurization step?"
Glancing at the controls, Maximus stated, "The airlock is currently on an isolated air supply and the manual controls are intact."
"Please make the attempt, Petr," Tiberius requested.
"Very well. Stand by and take note of any anomalies while I open the lock," Maximus stated as he began flipping breakers to cancel out the magnetic clamps and enable the manual override. Once the machine spirit had been properly instructed to stand aside despite its protests, Maximus set himself in front of the outer door to the airlock and engaged the magnetic clamps in his boots, sealing himself to the deck so that he could get extra leverage and avoid any possibility of being knocked out into the void of space by explosive decompression. Grabbing the handles for the door, Maximus then began to turn.
Even with a Space Marine's great strength augmented by power armour and the mechanism in manual mode, the differential in air pressure should have required some effort, and Maximus expected the possibility of requiring even more due to damage. Instead there was a small popping noise almost immediately and then the door slid inward and to the side with practically no effort, much to Maximus' bafflement. What he found on the other side of the door was equally baffling, as rather than hard vacuum and stars there was a solid looking matte black barrier.
"Brother, I have encountered a potential Warp phenomenon. Standby," Maximus announced over the vox.
Disengaging his magnetic clamps, Maximus took several steps back and drew the plasma pistol at his side, thumbing the activating rune as he took it out. Levelling the energy weapon upon the black barrier, Maximus fired a single shot and was rewarded with an actinic flare of light as the bolt of star hot plasma struck the material and flashed away some of it, leaving a glassy piece of matter behind in its wake and a puff of acrid looking smoke hanging in the air. Raising his pistol away, Maximus then reached down his belt and casually drew and threw the combat knife there with a single smooth motion.
The metallic clatter of the knife striking the wall and then bouncing off confirmed that Maximus was dealing with some form of matter. Carefully moving forward, he kicked the knife to the side while he kept his pistol raised and closed the airlock door. Once it was sealed he activated his vox and said, "We appear to be encased in something. I need someone with a psy-spex to investigate for possible Warp contamination. Full environmental sealing required."
"We've made contact with elements from elsewhere on the ship. I am sending down a pair of brothers with the equipment," Tiberius announced, a slightly worried tinge in his voice. Or at least worried for a Space Marine.
Two hours later and Maximus and the surviving complement of marines minus the overworked Apothecaries were assembled within the primary chapel, along with the conscious elements of the Inquisitor's retinue and what serfs could be spared from keeping the ship from collapsing in on itself. The central element at the moment were the prone bodies of the three Marines who had perished and as many of the serfs as had been found and could be conveniently brought in for the initial service.
"Ave Imperator," Meridius spoke in a solemn, booming voice that carried across the chapel.
"Ave Imperator," the assembled congregation spoke back as one.
"We live, because the Emperor has chosen us to live. We die because the Emperor has chosen us to die. Between those two times, we serve the Emperor. That is all there is, and all that needs be said for the dead. They lived and served honourably, and died in service. No greater thing could be asked for. For the living though, to have brothers and sisters cruelly torn away from us, if words are not said, faith might waver. So I say, of the dead, they shall be remembered. They are already known to the Emperor, but they shall be remembered by the living too. Each soul taken from us today, in our duty to the Emperor, shall be remembered. Their sacrifices shall not be forgotten. Their deaths, no matter how random and capricious they may seem, had meaning to the Emperor, and thus they have meaning to us. It is my great honour to have known many of them, to have ministered to their spirits, and it is my great disappointment to have not known far too many. Any true servant of the Emperor is a worthy in my eyes, even if some have more pressing need of my attention to distribute it as evenly as I might like. That they are gone is a loss that we all feel. I shall now read the names of those who have passed on into the Light of the Emperor, so that we might all know them. This list shall grow as more of our brothers and sisters are found in the wreckage, and as the grievously injured pass on from their wounds, but since we must thank the Emperor for His miraculous intervention in our survival, that we gather makes this also the time to speak the names of the dead," Meridius boomed out to the assembled crowds, who listened on with rapt attention.
A clerical serf then handed Meridius a massive scroll, which he unrolled and began to read off for all in attendance, "Alenko, Ann. Azon, Glynkzo. Baalsyn, Gregoire. Baalsyn, Henkel. Baltine, Boris..."
A silent buzz to the three most important officers in the room informed them of important new information, and with curt, apologetic nods to Meridius they left to return to the task of overseeing the ship. Meridius gave a small nod of his own acknowledging that their presence was required elsewhere without even breaking pace as he continued to read out in alphabetical order the names of the dead.
Slipping out of the chapel, Maximus, Tiberius, and Senior Techmarine Timaeus Galen all found a quiet room attached to the main corridor leading to the chapel. Speaking in the mechanical tones so common to the followers of the Machine God, Galen said, "Senior Apothecary Aristides reports that Sergeant Kyrillos will survive his wounds and should regain consciousness soon. Since his squad did not remove the spar that impaled him but instead cut it free with his power sword, the loss of two lungs and a heart did not prove fatal."
"Ave Imperator. I will make sure to quietly pass the blessed news along to Meridius when I return," Maximus stated.
Looking over his data slate, Tiberius said, "I see that your adepts have made sufficient progress with our situation that it comes time to make a command decision."
"Yes. Sustained melta cutting has breached the dense matter that appears to have been shoved aside by our Gellar field - Ave Imperator and Ave Omnissiah for such miracles - and has found sedimentary rock on the other side, consistent with the geology of a world possessing liquid water and an oxygen atmosphere. Sounding with seismic charges indicates that we are in a mountain range of some sort. A fresh shaft is being dug as we speak towards the closest open surface," Galen reported clinically.
"The question thus becomes who is best suited to the task of scouting," Maximus noted.
"Indeed. The Emperor has clearly ensured our survival where it should have been impossible many times over, which means He has a task for us on this world. The question thus becomes what task?" Tiberius added on.
"I have a full complement of servo-skulls ready to scout as soon as we finish mining out the new shaft," Galen stated.
"Good for the immediate area, but of limited use over a wider range. Tell me, how well did our Land Speeders weather the ordeal?" Maximus asked.
"Land Speeder Typhon suffered damage to its missile launcher system, but Land Speeder Xykos is fully intact and operational. I take it you intend to scout long rang with Xykos?" Galen said.
Nodding, Maximus said, "Tenth Squad lost Bracchus and their sergeant is injured. Even if it is only two members, they will have their sense of worth reinforced through action, and they are the best scouts outside of Tenth Company. Can we deploy the Land Speeder?"
"I will instruct my adepts to widen the shaft. It will also take some work to move Xykos through the ship to the necessary egress point," Galen replied.
"Excellent. Who can we assign to the move?" Maximus asked.
"I will send out the serf assignments immediately. I already know from the reports which divisions suffered the least casualties and thus will be able to spare numbers from the funeral. I will of course apologize to both them and Meridius for it," Tiberius stated.
"Duty overrides other considerations, especially in a situation like this. Not knowing what is going on around us could kill us just as easily as a reactor overload. Whatever penance Meridius assigns I shall be sure to bear with you, my brother," Maximus replied while placing a hand on Tiberius' shoulder and looking him in the eye.
Returning the gesture and holding the gaze, Tiberius said, "I know my brother, but it is still hard, especially with the fact that the Dirge is unlikely to sail ever again weighing upon my honour."
"It weighs upon us all, brother, it weighs upon us all," Maximus agreed solemnly. "All we can do is discover the task the Emperor has for us and complete it to the best of our ability."
"Aye. Ave Imperator," Tiberius stated.
"Ave Imperator," Maximus and Galen echoed.
Chapter One
"Brace for transition back to realspace," Fourth Company Captain Petronius Maximus of the Survivors Chapter said quietly to the significantly shorter man standing to his left.
"I gathered that was what the alarms were for," Inquisitor Lucien Kennard muttered in mild annoyance at being told something he felt was obvious, even as he discreetly placed his hands upon the rail in front of him, a move that proved well planned a moment later when the ship lurched abruptly in a direction that was normally at right angles to reality. Lucien remarked rather dryly, "I had heard that Adeptus Astartes craft were known for the roughness of their transitions, but that was rather much."
"The Navigator is reporting in now that the barrier between the Warp and realspace is distinctly 'choppy', Inquisitor Kennard," Shipmaster Gaius Tiberius, commander of the battle barge Dirge of Heresy, reported with equal dryness to the Inquisitor's remark.
"Choppy? I had thought that at last report the Empyrean was distinctly smooth," Lucien pointed out with a tinge of irritation.
"Guy?" Captain Maximus asked, using the diminutive from their chapter's unique flavour of Low Gothic to express his worry without being obvious to the outsider in their midst.
"I'm translating a bit from psyker-speak Petr, but in essence the Warp has been calm," Shipmaster Tiberius said with something of a shrug of his enormous shoulders.
Inquisitor Kennard's face darkened and he said, "That is indeed troublesome. Keep me appraised of any further changes in psychic activity or Warp phenomenon."
Taking that moment to walk onto the bridge, Codicier Pyrrhus stated, "Our astropathic choir has already begun to intercept transmissions from Oologon IV. Translation should be ready shortly, but I do have the proper ciphers to tell you the salient points, if you so desire."
The Inquisitor Kennard looked askance at the powerful psyker for a moment before he accused, "You did that on purpose."
"Perhaps," the codicier admitted with an inscrutable look on his face.
"Tell me what you know now so I can better sort out the primary messages later. We should be a good eight hours out in any case," Inquisitor Kennard said, somewhat irritated.
"Approximately forty transports under the control of traitors and heretics have arrived in orbit about the planet, with the majority of them parked in high orbit above Hive Iolon. An estimated dozen regiments of Traitor Guard have made landings within the city and have smashed local PDF forces, but have made no attempt to engage forces outside the city. Communication from within the hive is sporadic at best, but enemy forces seem to be engaged in slaughter of the local population," Pyrrhus reported dutifully, his eyes and psychic hood glowing cerulean as he processed the psychic messages.
The command staff on the bridge all looked at each other in wary confusion, each aware in their own ways of the dangers of the various tricks that Chaos could be up to when the lunatics under its sway started acting irrationally. Inquisitor Kennard broke the silence when he asked, "What of the cruiser that took out the local system defence forces that first drew our attention."
Looking contemplative for a second as he sorted through the data, Pyrrhus replied, "The enemy ship, identified via broadcast as the Harvester of Endings, secured orbital supremacy and annihilated groundside aerospace bases capable of running any sort of interdiction over Iolon before it left."
"Sensors confirm a cooling ion trail leading away from the planet indicative of a craft on full military burn no more than three days ago," Shipmaster Tiberius confirmed.
"Would it be remiss of me to suggest that the segments of the enemy force that could be considered 'important' do not want to be anywhere near this system?" Captain Maximus suggested darkly.
"That or a rather convoluted trap. Either way..." The Inquisitor said, falling away into a musing tone. Finally he said, "Forward the messages to my staff, I shall consult with them during our transit."
"We will keep you appraised of any changing conditions or our own insights as we examine the situation," Captain Maximus replied as one of the chapter serfs went through the process of having a data copy of the astropathic messages routed to the Inquisitor's retinue in their quarters elsewhere on the battle barge. Left unsaid but rather obvious was the request for equivalent cooperation.
"Thank you," Inquisitor Kennard said with a curt nod before he stalked off the bridge to return to his own analysts.
Captain Maximus watched the Inquisitor leave before he turned to Pyrrhus and asked, "Was there anything in there meant only for the ears of the Chapter, Rhus?"
"No, but there are certain records within the Library that may be of use in this situation, Petr," Pyrrhus noted.
Glancing at the four hour old images of Oologon, Tiberius groused, "I thought we were done with that cursed place two centuries ago."
"I forgot that you were old enough to have lived through the Exodus, Guy," Maximus noted apologetically.
"I was not yet even an Initiate at the time so I barely remember it, but I know that the day my family left the rubble of Iolon behind was the happiest day of my short life. Compared to that wretched ruin of a hive, the wilds of Yundr were paradise," Tiberius mused in reminiscence of times that were quite literally from a previous life.
"The attention of Chaos in the Hive where our Chapter was born and fought for seven centuries is indeed a troublesome development. I have already tasked my Lexicanum to begin collecting what information we have on the area, both for tactical assessment and to see if we can determine what the enemy could possibly hope to obtain through their actions," Pyrrhus noted gravely.
"I will gather the sergeants and we can discuss the issue. Shall we meet in the council chambers in half an hour?" Maximus inquired.
"That should be sufficient time to access what information we have stored with us," Pyrrhus stated before he bowed slightly to Tiberius and Maximus in turn before he too left the bridge.
Placing his right arm on Tiberius' left pauldron, Maximus said to him, "Keep us safe in transit, Guy."
Nodding, the Shipmaster said, "Aye. I'm wary of that bastard cruiser sneaking up on us. You handle getting ready for the ground campaign, and I will make sure you get there."
Half an hour later and Captain Maximus was seated at his customary position at the round table that served as the centrepiece for the council room. To his left sat Pyrrhus, to his right was Chaplain Fedor Meridius, and forming a quarter ring around the rest of the circle were the ten sergeants attached to Maximus' company. The Dirge of Heresy could carry up to three companies at once and the table reflected that, hence the only partial filling, along with both the places for the Shipmaster and Master of the Enginarium remaining empty due to their activity elsewhere. At the moment, all eyes were directed upward at the holographic schematic of Hive Iolon.
"Looks like a shithole," Veteran Sergeant Rudolfus Terminus commented in his own particular idiom.
"That's because our ancestors spent seven centuries killing orks within it, Rud. Why the Administratum thought it worthwhile to repopulate the place is lost to me. In any case we should receive updated map data and all current tactical and strategic data. In the mean time we shall see if we can figure out why the enemy has chosen to attack this one hive to the exclusion of all others," Maximus explained.
"The wholesale slaughter of the civilian population stinks of foul sorcery," Chaplain Meridius commented in disgust.
"I agree, particularly given the nature of our Chapter's centuries of isolation, but we and the Inquisition scoured Oologon during the Exodus for any clues as to what happened. We are unlikely to see anything that has been missed within two centuries, but perhaps now that we can know that the forces of Chaos have a focus upon it something new may become clear. We have four centuries of coherent battle reports to go through, so keep your eyes open and your wits sharp," Pyrrhus noted as serfs began to hand out data slates to the various sergeants.
After about half an hour of quiet discussion among the sergeants the youngest of the ten, the recently promoted Sergeant Guriy Nihilus said loud enough for everyone to hear, "You know, this city looks like some of the things I normally take a flamer to."
"If you are referring to certain patterns that appear in the networks of roads and service ducting, that is a known phenomenon in cities, particularly in radial hives. The human eye sees patterns. The Administratum and Inquisition check for the presence of blasphemous ones just to be sure though," Pyrrhus explained.
"Oh. Kind of disconcerting all the same," Nihilus noted.
"It is brother, it is, but... huh... that's peculiar," Pyrrhus said, suddenly coming up short.
Snowy white eyebrows twitching, Chaplain Meridius turned to Pyrrhus and said, "Rhus, when a Librarian says that something is 'peculiar' I reach for my crozius."
"Well... there is sort of a pattern with the various cathedrals and main transit lines, but those happen naturally because of the need for associated transit hubs and connecting thoroughfares and the like, but it is not... well..." Pyrrhus noted while looking at the various maps with a sceptical eye.
"What do you see brother?" Maximus asked.
"Well, if you squint, you can almost see what might be a hexagrammic ward in the design," Pyrrhus admitted.
"If after seven centuries of fighting that devastated the hive you think you can see some form of occult symbol in the structure of the city then we need those updated maps right away," Maximus declared, looking at the nearest serf, who just shook his head in a negative gesture. Frowning, he said, "Very well. Now that we have a hint I want everyone but Rhus to focus on examining any reports of cult activity. Our primary enemies during our occupation of Iolon were orks, but reports indicate intermittent cult activity as well. It was assumed that it was just the weak succumbing to stress from the Warp storms, but perhaps not. Look for patterns."
"We should probably inform the Inquisitor," Pyrrhus pointed out.
"We probably should," Maximus agreed with a sigh before he turned to one of the serfs, who nodded and quickly began typing on a data slate to compose the proper message. Satisfied that the task would be dealt with, Maximus returned to his own examination of the old battle reports. These were all familiar to him, having been part of the information hypnotically implanted in his mind during his indoctrination into the ways of the Survivors over a century and a half ago. He had gone over them countless times since, but usually seeking lessons from the past in terms of tactical or strategic insight. Now he looked at them with new eyes, seeking more esoteric patterns.
All Space Marines had extraordinary minds as part of the gifts granted to them by the Emperor and the Primarchs through their gene seed, but sadly far too many battle-brothers chose not to exercise that strength and let the muscles of their minds atrophy. By his own estimation, Maximus ranked the Survivors as being better than most at using their brains, although certainly not the best. As a Captain he was by definition a cut above the rest of his brothers in terms of intelligence and battlefield acumen. Still, as he quickly scanned back and forth through the centuries of reports, he found his intelligence lacking. Roughly five hundred years of back and forth with orks in the ruins of a city that had once housed two billion people while a hungry black void hovered overhead was quite a daunting task to try to understand all at once, let alone to pluck the madness of heretics from the general disorder of such a war.
Then he saw it. In retrospect it was obvious. Looking up at all of his from the data slates, he said, "Brothers, I am amazed no one has noticed this before. Plot all cult activity by location and time and account for the presence of the greenskins and our own enclaves. Does anyone else notice what I am seeing?" As he spoke, Maximus manipulated the holo-lith and imposed the sites where cult activity had been found while also overlaying ork lines and their own.
There was an awkward silence before Chaplain Meridius commented dryly, "That's a rather conspicuously large dead zone of cult activity."
Up on the holographic display there was a large oval that showed no signs of any cult activity at all during the five hundred years of activity within the hive, despite being well away from the strongholds the Survivors had built into the city. While looking at the hole, Senior Sergeant Artminus Marius hummed for a moment and said, "The dead zone gets even bigger when you compare the greenskin lines to the cult activity on the borders. We only ever cleared out cults within a kilometre of that area after pushing the xenos out of the area."
"So there was clearly something in that area that they wanted so badly they couldn't even risk their presence there tipping us off to its existence. The question is, what?" Maximus mused aloud.
"The obvious answer is the crashed hive spire that more or less makes up the boundaries of the dead zone, but from an occult perspective it is completely out of place," Pyrrhus noted.
"Yes, but considering the precision cuts to the primary supports on one side we have long suspected that our ancestors dropped the spire to one side for some reason very early on in the occupation of Iolon, possibly to crush a very large concentration of orks in the collapse. What if the cult objective was what the spire landed on?" Sergeant Rudolfus speculated.
"That's possible... but..." Pyrrhus began to say speculatively while carefully examining the maps and reports before him. He then muttered, "How did we miss this?"
"Because it is not your job to look for these sorts of things," Inquisitor Kennard announced as he marched into the room. There was a slightly smug look on his face and the faintest flicker of warp fire in the eyes of the psyker acolyte at his side. The not amused look on Pyrrhus' face said everything that could not be said aloud between them, and the rest of the Marines in attendance wisely chose not to comment. After allowing for dramatic timing of his arrival to sink in and letting his eyes quickly dart over the holo-lith, Kennard added on, "The sort of high level analysis of cult activity that should have caught this is the domain of the Inquisition, which implies corruption at work. In fact, I would not be surprised if your ancestors noted this strange dead zone and reported it after your exile was over."
There was a slight pause as those assembled considered the implication that Inquisitor Kennard had just made, and then the eyes of Maximus' brothers fell on him as the senior Marine to comment. Maximus licked his lips for a moment as he carefully considered his words before he replied, "While the Survivors are uncertain of our lineage, there is some evidence to suggest that our progenitors were on Oologon IV in the first place due to Inquisitorial request."
"I am aware of this fact. I have already sent an astropathic message towards the Inquisitorial Conclave indicating that a thorough investigation into the matter is required. There is something rotten within that requires cleansing fire to purge. I can only hope it arrives," Kennard noted with the sort of dispassion that indicated that he would be strangling people if only he had their throats available.
Maximus looked at Pyrrhus, who said, "The Warp grows increasingly disquiet. It is difficult to describe to a non-psyker, but the best analogy I can describe is of the interface layer between a liquid and a gas. It is currently vibrating in such a way that there is no mixing between the two fluids, but the energy is there and slowly increasing such that if trends continue..." Pyrrhus let the morbid analogy fade away with a troubled shrug that said enough to his brothers.
"Could the slaughter of the civilians be causing it?" Meridius asked.
"Yes and no. Mass death disturbs the Warp with the echoes of their souls violently cut away from the bodies, but the scale of the disturbance is out of proportion to the scale of reported deaths. This leads increasing credence to the possibility of an arcane structure to the city, but even then such slaughter could only serve to prime the array, not activate it," Pyrrhus explained.
The pale skinned, hunched over and heavily augmented creature that Kennard had brought with him along with his psyker suddenly spoke up with a raspy, excited voice and said, "It is the power conduits! That must be it!"
"Archimentes?" Kennard asked of his servant.
"The main transit lines are the obvious part, but there is only bits and pieces so unless there is a major cult ritual going on you would never think to look, but most major roads have the biggest power conduits in the hive running parallel to the side or underneath them. You do not however have to run such conduits along the same path as roads and you can hide them in the infrastructure of the hive. If you look here and here there are major industrial sectors in sub-optimal locations that could easily have major power conduits transecting them and completing missing pieces of occult circuitry. The area the cults were protecting by avoiding falls into a third such position," the savant explained, gesturing to a pair of production blocks that seemed no different than any of the other blocks.
The battle-brothers remained silent and still at the proclamation, while Pyrrhus, Kennard and the other psyker all looked thoughtful for a moment before Pyrrhus declared, "Okay, it is definitely an occult array of some sort, but there is too much missing information to be able to determine its exact function."
"Immaterial, we..." Kennard began, before Maximus cut him off and said, "...bombard Iolon from orbit until not even the outskirts remain intact and then survey the remaining hives while waiting for back up."
Kennard paused in annoyance before he said, "Acceptable. I had heard your chapter has a reputation for softness, but it seems I was mistaken."
The Space Marines all glared at the Inquisitor in a way that suggested that his Inquisitorial Rosette might find itself little more than a shiny bauble amidst a pile of meat if he said something like that again before Maximus replied coldly, "Our enemies often mistaken long term pragmatism for softness, to their brief but intense discomfort later."
Not appearing in any way intimidated in a manner that suggested he had received the message loud and clear, Kennard said in turn, "Well, I suppose the infrequency of such attitudes amongst the lesser servants of the Emperor could generate such rumours."
Since a roundabout apology without actually apologizing for anything was probably the best that could be extracted from an Inquisitor, Maximus let the initial comment slide and instead said, "In any case, we have no authority to carry Cyclonic Torpedoes or any other Exterminatus grade weaponry, so a surgical excising of the confirmed infection shall have to suffice until further Inquisitorial oversight arrives."
"This is true," Kennard admitted. He looked like he was about to say something else when all froze in horror as wan witch light began to flicker across the eyes of the two psykers present, with the crystals upon Pyrrhus' skull that made up his psychic hood soon glowing ominously. All else in attendance began to slowly edge out of their seats, hands resting upon the hilts and handles of various weapons as they waited to see if intervention would be necessary. Finally though the episode seemed to pass for both psykers, to which the Inquisitor could only exclaim, "By the Holy Light of the Emperor, I demand to know what that was about!"
"Something terrible has just happened master," the psyker whispered hoarsely to the Inquisitor at a level he probably mistakenly thought the Space Marines would not be able to make out.
Pyrrhus' eyes flashed once more before he announced, "We have lost our Astropathic choir; five burnouts and two emergency executions. Our Navigators are currently stable, but one had to be heavily sedated. The Lexicanums are fine."
"What happened, Rhus?" Maximus asked worriedly.
"I... I cannot say precisely. If the boundary between the Warp and realspace was agitated before, it is now like a large rock has been dropped from a great height. I need to consult some things before I can make an accurate assessment of the true extent of what has happened," Pyrrhus stated. He paused for a moment before he said, "At this point I do not think anyone will ever know the story of what happened here unless we tell it to them face to face."
Both Meridius and Kennard looked like they wanted to say something about defeatism before the pained looks on the faces of the psykers informed them that Pyrrhus was being optimistic. Maximus instead said, "Go, see to what you need to see. I think we are done here. Everyone, return to your squads and order a full combat lockdown. We will not be dropping into battle any time soon and I want us prepared for rough weather if need be. I would suggest you have your own people secure themselves as well, Inquisitor."
"Archimentes, Procyon, pass the advice along to the rest of the team. I will accompany the Captain back to the bridge as I wish to be among the first to see what the auspex has to say," Kennard ordered of his acolytes, who nodded in silent confirmation.
Activating his personal vox as he got up, Maximus said, "Guy, I'm not sure what you know so far, but I recommend you prepare the ship for potential moral threats."
"Acknowledged Petr. I suspect Rhus has more information, but the death of the Astropaths has already moved me up to full alert on that front. I've already distributed orders to the section heads, but I held off on a general announcement in case you were in the middle of something," Tiberius remarked.
"The psychic disruption more or less ended the conversation we were having. On that note however, we need to prepare for an orbital bombardment," Maximus stated.
"Precise or prejudiced?" Tiberius inquired.
"Prejudiced. Extremely prejudiced. We will need a complete scouring of Iolon at the minimum," Maximus noted.
"I will inform the masters of the guns of the coming need so that they can prepare," Tiberius responded crisply.
Arriving at the bridge, Maximus found that there was little to do but wait for the requisite hour for light from whatever the event was to reach them, even as the psychic augers showed Warp energy readings that were reaching terrifying levels. What they saw in the EM spectrum would have made lesser men than Space Marines and Inquisitors blanche, and a few of the serfs on the bridge had to be taken away for morale reasons. What they saw was the squadron of forty enemy ships, most of them appearing like defiled pilgrim ships, all attempt to activate their Warp drives in close formation within low orbit of Oologon IV. The results were spectacularly predictable, but the aftermath was not.
Making the sign of the Aquila in warding, Inquisitor Kennard whispered, "Sacred Light of the Emperor protect us! I had thought I had seen the depths of such madness, but this is beyond anything in our records!"
"May the Emperor protect indeed. This certainly explains the reactions of our psykers and the readings from the auspex," Maximus noted grimly as he stared at the bleeding hole of unlight that was connected by strands of viridescent indigo to the world below.
"Such insanity! But... but yes, I can see what the design could do now. It must be some sort of... warp amplifier. It is siphoning off the energy from that Warp tear, but instead of dissipating it, it must be feeding it back into the rift. God Emperor help me, the depths of depraved corruption to have pulled this off..." Kennard stated, nearly muttering to himself towards the end.
"And the Survivors sat on it for seven centuries and noticed nothing," Maximus replied grimly.
"It's not your job to root out this sort of base treachery, it is supposed to be the job of the Inquisition. God Emperor guide my last message safely through the Warp to faithful ears so that the guilty might be punished for this atrocity," Kennard stated numbly.
Seeing something of a horrified yet enthralled look growing over him, Maximus cut the feed and said, "All signals are to be considered a moral threat at this point."
Shaking off whatever fugue was settling over him, Kennard stated, "Thank you Captain, I should have been of stronger will than to stare like that."
"We will all require proper debrief and interrogation for corruption after this, I suspect," Maximus pointed out before he turned to Tiberius and asked, "What are our options Guy?"
Sweeping over a few safe, clinical numbers Tiberius mused on it for a second before he stated, "I suspect the whole city is going to be enveloped in energy from that rift, which I am betting my soul will be like a gigantic Void shield in terms of protection, only I doubt even torpedoes would be able to get through. Cultists are crazy, but they at least know our obvious moves to try to counter them."
"Agreed, wholeheartedly," Kennard said with a quick nod, the weakness gone from his eyes and voice to be replaced with proper Imperial steel.
"We therefore need an unobvious move to have a hope against them. Could we ram the city?" Maximus asked.
"No, we would be torn apart by the rift before we could get there, even if we don't just bounce off the shielding effect," Tiberius replied with a shake of his head.
"The shield did not seem to extend very far outside the city. Could you launch torpedoes at an oblique angle and sneak them in underneath?" Kennard suggested.
"They're not that agile, especially not in a gravity well with atmosphere," Tiberius stated with another shake.
Maximus and Kennard both stared quietly at the clinically dispassionate holo of the doomed world of Oologon IV for a long time, watching the range counter slowly tick down as the Dirge of Heresy approached at a speed that was only slow on the scale of stars. After what seemed an interminable time of quiet but could have been no more than a handful of minutes, Maximus asked, "Your savant, what areas of scholastic lore has he studied?"
"I can think of no Warp lore that could serve us here," Kennard replied honestly.
"Not lore of the occult, but rather lore of the physical world," Maximus clarified without looking at Kennard.
"Oh, he has studied just about everything in that regard, or at least only the up to the semi-banned treatises on the physical sciences," Kennard answered with a shrug.
"I suspected as much. Do you think I could consult with him over a geological problem?" Maximus asked.
Kennard turned to look at Maximus, and as their eyes met the Inquisitor's went wide with comprehension. Turning back to the holographic representation of the world, Kennard noted, "Your chapter is far more unconventional than the rumours suggest."
For the next two hours the Dirge of Heresy made its final approach, watching as the Warp rift grew in size, casting its hideous, sickly light across the damned star system. All across the battle barge shutters remained tightly shut as if in Warp transit, and the mortal passengers found anti-psychotic drugs being distributed to all. The vox casters were filled with the hymns of Meridius and particularly faithful serfs, bolstering the spirits of those aboard the ship.
Slowing down to a final, geostationary orbit on the far side of Oolong IV from Iolon, the great warship rotated on its longitudinal axis so that its starboard side faced the world below. With the Warp rift eclipsed by the bulk of the planet, the shutters opened for the macrocannons along the side facing the walking dead world below. On the dorsal surface the great lance battery turret rotated into position as final firing solutions were plotted out. Tech adepts and integrated servitors fed in the last of the necessary data to the mighty weapons, chanting out in Binary the praises to the world endingly powerful machine spirits that they might vent their apocalyptic wrath true and clean.
Staring at still closed adamantium and ceramite shutters, Shipmaster Gaius Tiberius uttered the only word he need to.
"Fire."
The entire six kilometre long warship hummed as the hab block sized capacitors for the lance battery all emptied in a few seconds, projecting long columns of star hot light down into the coastal mountain range the savants aboard the warship had selected as their targets. The beams struck true and stabbed straight into the magma chamber of the dormant volcano chosen as the first target. Pressure that had been building for centuries suddenly discovered that there was a convenient exit cut and the mountain exploded with the combined force of the lance strike and its own eruption. A second later and the first of the macrocannon shells began to rain down into the other geologically active features.
The guns kept firing, as fast as they could reload and recharge, bombarding the mountain range that had begun to grow tens of millions of years prior when two tectonic plates began to grind against each other. Tensions and pressures on a planetary scale suddenly found the unyielding rock that had held them in check had been abruptly and catastrophically removed. The skies soon darkened as explosions to end the world rapidly ripped back and forth across this seam of the world.
Ten minutes into the bombardment, the Dirge of Heresy began to rotate, bringing its bow about to point down into the burning scar the warship had gouged into the planet below, its guns firing in sequence just as they lost line of sight with a singular target. Just as the last of the macrocannons fired the six now open torpedo tubes launched their building sized payloads. It took but a second for them to leave their tubes and rush down to the planet below, during which time the lance battery fired just above them.
The mighty warship had dug a hole through the crust of the world to the mantle beneath, and the half dozen plasma torpedoes made it through the rapidly collapsing wound to strike and bury into the dense, not quite solid and not quite liquid rock of the interior before they detonated into newborn suns. On the scale of worlds, the bombardment was not enough to do more than scratch the ball of rock and metal, but on the scale of continents the bombardment was more than enough. Multiple tectonic plates cracked and shifted. Mountains fell and oceans rose. If Oologon IV had a future then the devastation would have been a scar that would have been visible in the geological record for billions of years.
But Oologon IV did not have a future. In the charnel house of Iolon where daemons capered and danced over the corpses of Imperial citizens and the cultists that had summoned them, their first warning that this world and the stars for a hundred light years around would not be theirs was the way the ground began to shake and tremble. Nameless, formless blasphemies unused to the structures of realspace exulted in this novel new form, but their more complex brethren had enough understand to know that the ground should not shake.
Iolon was built on geologically stable ground as proof against the shifts of nature in the short millennia since its initial planning, but that was not enough in the face of the quakes that raced across the planet. The ground shifted and trembled and pulled on the great array that had been constructed. The design was robust against damage, but not on the scale inflicted as conduits snapped under the tension and hive spires toppled upon critical lines. The daemonic architects who had played with dozens of generations of mortals to achieve this monument to their brilliance screamed in horror as their design was perverted and altered by pure random chance.
One of the patron gods of the grand project cackled with perverse glee as its minions were devoured by pure, unadulterated chaos that had been set in motion by their own hands, while the other gods turned away from the failures before them. The grand array was no longer functioning properly. It was now drawing the rift into itself rather than the energies spilled forth by the rift. The daemons wailing amongst the wreckage of their design knew that when contact was met between the two, their immortal existences would end permanently.
By the time a serf had cried out, "It's working!" two hours had passed since the launch of the torpedoes, the Dirge of Heresy and her masters needing to wait to see if they would need to repeat their bombardment to finish the job. Tiberius had not even finished giving the order before the main engines started firing to take the mighty warship as far from the dying world as they could as quickly as possible. The ship fired its engines at rates that would quickly burn them out if kept up, but the red robed masters of the reactors saw no need to conserve them if a lack of a single erg would lead to their annihilation.
It wasn't enough.
The rift touched the array four hundred and seventy-six seconds after the battle barge first fired its engines. For a briefly infinite time, everything within about a light year of the planet stopped. Then, a moment later, everything within that sphere of space collapsed inward, driven to superluminal velocities by an enormous buckling of the Warp. The matter of the star and all the planets and moons and comets and asteroids and dust abruptly found themselves all compressed into a single point too small for the universe to acknowledge as having volume, and promptly collapsed into a singularity at the centre of the Warp rift, which then promptly fell into the Warp rift, sealing the fissure in reality by pulling it closed.
Diverting all possible power to the Gellar Field and the engines, the Dirge of Heresy burned like a candle just above the ultimate blackness while surrounded by the hungry darkness of the Warp. Only able to survive the buckling of space-time by the fact that their drives did something similar, they avoided being pulled into the singularity, but not from being snared by its gravity. Downward they travelled, pulled along by physical forces that had no place in the Immaterial Realm and by the vortex currents generated by the impossible motion of the black hole through the Empyrean as it sank towards the Stygian depths.
Psykers skimmed power from the waves and ripples at the surface of the great sea of power that was the Warp. Mighty warships swam through the currents just beneath. Daemons and more horrid things prowled in the lightless depths below that, hunting for the flickering light of mortal souls upon the surface or in the bubbles about their ships to guide them to their next meal. The Dirge went deeper than that, into and beyond realms of pure thought and emotion. It was a stratum of the Warp that no mortal could go, where the weight of non-existence threatened to crush the tiny, insignificant craft. The Gellar Field was pressed in to the hull and even through in some places, causing normally near indestructible armour to flow and melt like ice exposed to a cutting torch, the bonds that held the material together rendered void by the unreal nature of these depths.
The black hole, shielded for a long time by its own impossibility, finally began to lose its grip upon the battle barge, and the two began to wander away from each other. As much as the singularity had been the doom of the warship by dragging it into these depths, it had also been the salvation by keeping the worst of the Warp pressure away by dint of its wake. Tumbling out of control, the Gellar field began its final collapse inward.
Isolated for too long from the normal laws of physics, the black hole surrendered to the Warp. The first physical law, by way of being one of the weakest, was the force of gravity. In the nanosecond between the failure of gravity and the rest of the physical forces giving up, they protested against the compressed state.
In the months and years to come, the Imperium would take note of the loss of the Oolong Star System, a battle barge and company of Space Marines, and the disappearance of an Inquisitor. They would also take note of a rather sharp upward spike in the birth rate of psykers in the sector and an general roughening of Warp currents in the subsector where the star had once been, but the event was not noticeable to rouse the attention of the galactic bureaucracy, nor allow them to properly connect the dots. Entities more ancient than apes would also notice the peculiar event, but not have a proper explanation for what had happened, and in their own ways simply shrug and move on with their own agendas.
The Dirge of Heresy on the other hand was considerably closer to the event that the rest of the galaxy would eventually perceive of as a minor burp in the Warp. Anywhere and anywhen else, either the blast or the Warp pressure would have obliterated them, but instead the shock formed a wave of reality that the ship was carried along on, the forces of the Warp and the explosion just barely cancelling each other out enough for the battle barge to be swept out of the abyss and towards the depths where it was meant to operate.
Twisted and buckled by awesome forces that boggled the mind and its mighty armour pitted and eroded by the corrosive essence of the Warp, the once mighty battle barge was vomited forth back into realspace with such violence that the ship was nearly snapped in half. As it was, on the bridge when motion returned to sensibility and colour stopped having a flavour it was a hellish scramble of broken machinery and shattered bodies, all lit in the bloody crimson of the emergency lighting. Deck plates had crumpled and the artificial gravity was clear malfunctioning as down was not oriented perfectly normal to the deck but had a small but noticeable tilt to it.
Having just barely remained secured to his seat, Maximus managed to recover quickly enough to be able to see Tiberius extracting himself from the partial collapse of the ceiling over his command throne. Undoing his restraints, Maximus moved over to the shipmaster and aided him in pushing a piece of debris off of him. Judging by the way Tiberius' armour had crumpled, if he had not been adorned for battle he would have surely have perished.
"Thank you brother," Tiberius replied while he gingerly removed his right pauldron to free up the range of motion in that arm.
"Any time brother. How can I further assist?" Maximus asked.
Looking around the wreckage, Tiberius replied, "Assist the bridge crew, I need their technical expertise to get the Dirge up and running once more."
In other Chapters, a Company Captain being asked to aid non-Space Marines might have been interpreted as an insult, but the culture of the Survivors placed the pragmatism of the situation above concerns of pride and honour. Service to the Emperor was the greatest pride and honour one could have, and if the Emperor was best served by medically aiding His servants so that they might do their job, then it was Maximus' great joy to do so until he could find a better use of his time. As such Maximus nodded to Tiberius and went to go examine the nearest pile of serfs.
Ceramite gauntlets moved with surprising gentleness to extract the living from the dead and to give the dead some dignity in their repose. Only when he found the living so battered that even in his inexpert opinion that they had no hope for survival did he bring his full strength to bear, quietly delivering the Emperor's Mercy while whispering prayers for the quick and painless departure of their souls. The Adeptus Astartes were the Emperor's Angels of Death, and they could deliver that death both brutally and mercifully, as the case may be.
Then, while working on sorting out a pile of wreckage, both machine and man, Maximus found Inquisitor Kennard, still strapped into his seat. While it was obvious that the Inquisitor was badly injured, it was also obvious from the rise and fall of his chest that he had survived. Using his strength to shift the entire seat, Maximus brought the Inquisitor out into the open and called out to the few mobile serfs, "I need a stretcher team for a VIP."
To their credit the serfs only hesitated for a moment in deciding what to do, for as much as it had to rankle for an outsider to be given preferential treatment while their comrades lay dying in need of the limited amount of transport to the nearest Apothecary, it was still an order from a Captain of the Chapter and the patient was an Inquisitor. Maximus examined the faces of the trudged forward to take the Inquisitor, identifying them as Ensigns Mykyta and Klavdiya. He would talk to them later about how he understood their hesitation and appreciated their obedience in spite of that. It would not do to let morale be depleted by doubts.
"Brother, I require your assistance," Tiberius announced as the serfs took Kennard off to the Apothecary for treatment.
"What is it, Guy?" Maximus asked.
"I need something confirmed, Petr. I can tell from my instruments - Emperor, from my handheld auspex - that we have exited the Warp, but nothing else is working properly and I can't even open the shutters. I need someone to go down to the bridge airlock and more or less look outside. I would normally ask a serf to do it, but I am short of serfs, let alone void capable serfs," Tiberius explained.
Maximus nodded curtly and then asked, "What do you need me to look for?"
"Look for the extent of the exterior damage and any nearby masses that we should be worried about, more or less. You should also set your armour's auto-senses to record so that we can analyze star patterns later if we can't get our sensors back online properly due to damage," Tiberius explained.
Nodding, Maximus went to work without another word, quickly descending into the service corridors surrounding the bridge until he arrived at an airlock normally used by serfs for maintenance of the exterior of the bridge but that was more than large enough to permit egress by powered armour. After double checking that his armour retained a full atmospheric seal, Maximus activated his vox and said, "I am sealing the airlock now. The interior lock is showing a positive seal, but please make sure to be prepared to fire emergency bulkhead seals in the event of unexpected decompression."
"Confirmed. Emperor be with you," Tiberius stated on the other end of the vox.
Making the proper observations to the machine spirit in charge of the air lock, Maximus went through the decompression procedure only for the system to inform him that there it was suffering a General Error 27 and could not complete the procedure. Tapping the vox once more, Maximus relayed the problem on to Tiberius. After a moment, Tiberius said, "Can you open the outer door without completing the depressurization step?"
Glancing at the controls, Maximus stated, "The airlock is currently on an isolated air supply and the manual controls are intact."
"Please make the attempt, Petr," Tiberius requested.
"Very well. Stand by and take note of any anomalies while I open the lock," Maximus stated as he began flipping breakers to cancel out the magnetic clamps and enable the manual override. Once the machine spirit had been properly instructed to stand aside despite its protests, Maximus set himself in front of the outer door to the airlock and engaged the magnetic clamps in his boots, sealing himself to the deck so that he could get extra leverage and avoid any possibility of being knocked out into the void of space by explosive decompression. Grabbing the handles for the door, Maximus then began to turn.
Even with a Space Marine's great strength augmented by power armour and the mechanism in manual mode, the differential in air pressure should have required some effort, and Maximus expected the possibility of requiring even more due to damage. Instead there was a small popping noise almost immediately and then the door slid inward and to the side with practically no effort, much to Maximus' bafflement. What he found on the other side of the door was equally baffling, as rather than hard vacuum and stars there was a solid looking matte black barrier.
"Brother, I have encountered a potential Warp phenomenon. Standby," Maximus announced over the vox.
Disengaging his magnetic clamps, Maximus took several steps back and drew the plasma pistol at his side, thumbing the activating rune as he took it out. Levelling the energy weapon upon the black barrier, Maximus fired a single shot and was rewarded with an actinic flare of light as the bolt of star hot plasma struck the material and flashed away some of it, leaving a glassy piece of matter behind in its wake and a puff of acrid looking smoke hanging in the air. Raising his pistol away, Maximus then reached down his belt and casually drew and threw the combat knife there with a single smooth motion.
The metallic clatter of the knife striking the wall and then bouncing off confirmed that Maximus was dealing with some form of matter. Carefully moving forward, he kicked the knife to the side while he kept his pistol raised and closed the airlock door. Once it was sealed he activated his vox and said, "We appear to be encased in something. I need someone with a psy-spex to investigate for possible Warp contamination. Full environmental sealing required."
"We've made contact with elements from elsewhere on the ship. I am sending down a pair of brothers with the equipment," Tiberius announced, a slightly worried tinge in his voice. Or at least worried for a Space Marine.
Two hours later and Maximus and the surviving complement of marines minus the overworked Apothecaries were assembled within the primary chapel, along with the conscious elements of the Inquisitor's retinue and what serfs could be spared from keeping the ship from collapsing in on itself. The central element at the moment were the prone bodies of the three Marines who had perished and as many of the serfs as had been found and could be conveniently brought in for the initial service.
"Ave Imperator," Meridius spoke in a solemn, booming voice that carried across the chapel.
"Ave Imperator," the assembled congregation spoke back as one.
"We live, because the Emperor has chosen us to live. We die because the Emperor has chosen us to die. Between those two times, we serve the Emperor. That is all there is, and all that needs be said for the dead. They lived and served honourably, and died in service. No greater thing could be asked for. For the living though, to have brothers and sisters cruelly torn away from us, if words are not said, faith might waver. So I say, of the dead, they shall be remembered. They are already known to the Emperor, but they shall be remembered by the living too. Each soul taken from us today, in our duty to the Emperor, shall be remembered. Their sacrifices shall not be forgotten. Their deaths, no matter how random and capricious they may seem, had meaning to the Emperor, and thus they have meaning to us. It is my great honour to have known many of them, to have ministered to their spirits, and it is my great disappointment to have not known far too many. Any true servant of the Emperor is a worthy in my eyes, even if some have more pressing need of my attention to distribute it as evenly as I might like. That they are gone is a loss that we all feel. I shall now read the names of those who have passed on into the Light of the Emperor, so that we might all know them. This list shall grow as more of our brothers and sisters are found in the wreckage, and as the grievously injured pass on from their wounds, but since we must thank the Emperor for His miraculous intervention in our survival, that we gather makes this also the time to speak the names of the dead," Meridius boomed out to the assembled crowds, who listened on with rapt attention.
A clerical serf then handed Meridius a massive scroll, which he unrolled and began to read off for all in attendance, "Alenko, Ann. Azon, Glynkzo. Baalsyn, Gregoire. Baalsyn, Henkel. Baltine, Boris..."
A silent buzz to the three most important officers in the room informed them of important new information, and with curt, apologetic nods to Meridius they left to return to the task of overseeing the ship. Meridius gave a small nod of his own acknowledging that their presence was required elsewhere without even breaking pace as he continued to read out in alphabetical order the names of the dead.
Slipping out of the chapel, Maximus, Tiberius, and Senior Techmarine Timaeus Galen all found a quiet room attached to the main corridor leading to the chapel. Speaking in the mechanical tones so common to the followers of the Machine God, Galen said, "Senior Apothecary Aristides reports that Sergeant Kyrillos will survive his wounds and should regain consciousness soon. Since his squad did not remove the spar that impaled him but instead cut it free with his power sword, the loss of two lungs and a heart did not prove fatal."
"Ave Imperator. I will make sure to quietly pass the blessed news along to Meridius when I return," Maximus stated.
Looking over his data slate, Tiberius said, "I see that your adepts have made sufficient progress with our situation that it comes time to make a command decision."
"Yes. Sustained melta cutting has breached the dense matter that appears to have been shoved aside by our Gellar field - Ave Imperator and Ave Omnissiah for such miracles - and has found sedimentary rock on the other side, consistent with the geology of a world possessing liquid water and an oxygen atmosphere. Sounding with seismic charges indicates that we are in a mountain range of some sort. A fresh shaft is being dug as we speak towards the closest open surface," Galen reported clinically.
"The question thus becomes who is best suited to the task of scouting," Maximus noted.
"Indeed. The Emperor has clearly ensured our survival where it should have been impossible many times over, which means He has a task for us on this world. The question thus becomes what task?" Tiberius added on.
"I have a full complement of servo-skulls ready to scout as soon as we finish mining out the new shaft," Galen stated.
"Good for the immediate area, but of limited use over a wider range. Tell me, how well did our Land Speeders weather the ordeal?" Maximus asked.
"Land Speeder Typhon suffered damage to its missile launcher system, but Land Speeder Xykos is fully intact and operational. I take it you intend to scout long rang with Xykos?" Galen said.
Nodding, Maximus said, "Tenth Squad lost Bracchus and their sergeant is injured. Even if it is only two members, they will have their sense of worth reinforced through action, and they are the best scouts outside of Tenth Company. Can we deploy the Land Speeder?"
"I will instruct my adepts to widen the shaft. It will also take some work to move Xykos through the ship to the necessary egress point," Galen replied.
"Excellent. Who can we assign to the move?" Maximus asked.
"I will send out the serf assignments immediately. I already know from the reports which divisions suffered the least casualties and thus will be able to spare numbers from the funeral. I will of course apologize to both them and Meridius for it," Tiberius stated.
"Duty overrides other considerations, especially in a situation like this. Not knowing what is going on around us could kill us just as easily as a reactor overload. Whatever penance Meridius assigns I shall be sure to bear with you, my brother," Maximus replied while placing a hand on Tiberius' shoulder and looking him in the eye.
Returning the gesture and holding the gaze, Tiberius said, "I know my brother, but it is still hard, especially with the fact that the Dirge is unlikely to sail ever again weighing upon my honour."
"It weighs upon us all, brother, it weighs upon us all," Maximus agreed solemnly. "All we can do is discover the task the Emperor has for us and complete it to the best of our ability."
"Aye. Ave Imperator," Tiberius stated.
"Ave Imperator," Maximus and Galen echoed.