Black Tide Read online

  The mirror told the void that nothing was here. It lied by drawing in the wavelengths of visible and invisible energies all about, computed them and gently projected back returns that even the most advanced suites of scrying gear would read as little more than a few stray molecules of free hydrogen.

  At its thickest point it was barely the width of a human hair, and yet it could withstand a lascannon hit if one were set towards it. The mirror was another of Zellik’s great and secret treasures, a device that had enabled him many times to move the Archeohort’s great mass by stealth, right under the noses of his enemies. On the far side of the curved kite, at its midpoint, the Mechanicus construct moved on inertia, thrusters silent and cowled ever since it had entered the Dynikas system. Flanking the Archeohort like pilot fish swimming with a whale, the warships Tycho and Gabriel kept in tight, exacting formation. The flight was straining their commanders to the limit, as all the crew-serfs knew that a single error of motion could send their cruisers outside the protective halo of the mirror—which would mark the end of both their clandestine approach and any chance of the mission’s success.

  Power systems across all three vessels were set as low as they dared; it was the same tactic the Space Marines had used to approach the Archeohort via boarding torpedo, but writ large. It had worked then; it would work now, if the grace of the God-Emperor favoured them.

  The planet had two moons, both bulbous, misshapen asteroids captured by Dynikas V’s gravity well. The far side of the larger was the flotilla’s destination, baked by the sunlight of the hard orange-white sun. The primary moon was big enough to conceal all three vessels from any observers on the planet below. Dropping out of sight behind it, the mirror shroud began to fold away in a complex dance of shifting matter and clever machinery.

  The Archeohort’s actual command deck bore no resemblance to the fake that the ship’s machine-spirit had attempted to trap them in. Ajir had been aboard many naval vessels and seen their bridges—the ornate stages for officers and ranged pits below filled with junior ratings and servitors, the windows that looked out from control towers across the prows of battle-ready warcraft. This was nothing of the like. The command space was a series of square terraces, balconied and cornered rings ranged one atop another, each smaller in dimension than the last. The effect was one of a pyramid turned inside out, the steps of a ziggurat falling down to a dais several levels below. Each terrace was lined with consoles of profuse complexity, and minor enginseers and lexmechanics worked at them, heads buried under hoods or wired in via festoons of wafting mechadendrites. Some of the terraces were fitted with rails that the tech-priests rode on rollered feet, endlessly circling around and around.

  The smell of ozone and electricity was sharp in the air, and a constant rattling rush of whispered machine code assailed the Blood Angel from every side. He stood behind Rafen, along with a few of his battle-brothers—as ever, the penitent Turcio among them—and the Logis Beslian, atop a hexagonal platform balanced between a pair of robot arms. The platform walked down the levels of the command pit by fixing itself with one limb, then swinging the opposite to another anchor point, then repeating the function anew. Beslian seemed to control its movements without any outward sign of direction.

  “This is, to use an organic metaphor, the beating heart of the Archeohort,” said the tech-priest. The saggy flesh elements of his face showed slight disgust at his own terms. “From here we may read data from any of the construct’s systemry.”

  “Your passive auspex sensors have analysed returns from the planet,” Noxx said curtly. “What do they reveal?”

  Beslian rolled his hooded head on his piston neck and the platform arrested its movement, shouldering over to the corner of a nearby terrace. “Observe,” he began, beckoning a pict-screen on one wall to extend out towards them on a gimbal.

  The display buzzed and displayed a flickering rune-prayer before reforming into a grainy real-time image of Dynikas V. Indicator overlays projected on to lenses swung around into position. Hot lines of red appeared, dots of varying size and lividity scattering themselves over the planet’s dayside.

  “Thermal blooms, lords,” explained Beslian. “Trace patterns of waste gases ejected into the air through bio-processes. Feeding, and the decay of corpses, I would warrant.”

  “I thought this planet was dead,” growled Sove, another of Noxx’s Space Marines.

  “It is,” said Mohl. “What we are seeing is evidence of xenos, brother. Tyranids, marooned on this world, living off each other after their hive was destroyed.”

  Rafen was grim. “They must have eaten everything else.”

  “I do not understand,” said Kayne. “Is it not the tyranid way to gut a living world, then build new bio-ships and move on to the next? If Dynikas V is bereft of all native life, then why are these monstrosities still here?”

  Beslian inclined his head, favouring Kayne with a nod. “The Blood Angel is correct. But this behaviour is not uncommon. It has been seen before, when a nest is denied the governance of one of their command organisms.”

  “You speak of a hive tyrant,” said Turcio.

  Ajir’s lips thinned. That much was obvious.

  “Correct,” said Mohl. “I hypothesise that there is no such beast on the planet below. As such, the extant tyranid warrior-organisms resident there revert back to their base natures. Killing and reproducing. Given a dozen generations, if this new ecosystem was not interfered with, it would probably eat itself into extinction.”

  “And we are to believe that Fabius Bile resides among that morass of fangs and claws?” Kayne folded his arms across his chest, shaking his head. “It cannot be.”

  “No?” said Rafen. “Explain that, then.” He pointed at a regular cluster of heat signatures on a crescent-shaped atoll in the southern hemisphere. “That pattern is too coherent for an organic form.”

  “Good eye, my lord,” said Beslian. He flipped another lens over the screen and turned it with his servo-arm. “You are quite correct to suspect this locale. Solar albedo returns correlate with manufactured materials down there. Ferrocrete and metal alloys.”

  “A building,” noted Puluo.

  Noxx leaned in. “Enlarge that image. Show us more.”

  Beslian frowned. “Without use of active sensors, I cannot provide the best resolution…” He worked the lenses irritably, expanding on the blurs of colour and reflection. “Ah…”

  Ajir made out the distinctive shapes of bunkers and revetments, wards around an open landing zone and what could have been a keep. “He has himself a fortress, in the middle of a xenos breeding ground.”

  “How is that possible?” said Turcio. The penitent leaned in. “See, the island around the buildings. Every other scrap of land has evidence of tyranid spoil pools, spore chimneys or killing grounds. But not this one. How is Fabius keeping them at bay?”

  “Sorcery,” muttered Sove darkly.

  Puluo studied the image. “Those look like embedded lance batteries, there and there,” he noted. “Heavy gauge. Capable of reaching low orbit, I’d warrant.”

  “Correct. I have determined that those weapons were among the items my former master traded in this quadrant. They are the secondary line of defence,” continued Beslian. “The primary is closer to hand. Look here, Astartes.” The tech-priest beckoned one of his lexmechanics, and the hooded figure released another mobile screen to them. Still images captured from near-orbital space flicked past like pages from a book.

  Rafen recognised them first. “Gunskulls.”

  There were orbs floating in the dark, kilometres up over the surface of Dynikas V, each of them clustered with engine nozzles and arrow-tipped spines. Even in the indistinct imagery taken in passing by the Archeohort’s watch-scopes, the screaming mouths worked into their surfaces were clearly visible, as were the complex strings of text in forbidden tongues carved into the metal. Some of them dragged lines of chain with them, others were dressed with fans of solar panelling. No two were alike, but every
one of them had a face. Ajir had once heard that the sculpted iron was modelled upon the aspects of certain champions of the Chaos Gods, as some form of veneration. He could see where superheavy laser cannons and the tips of melta torpedoes protruded from gaping, crack-toothed maws and blank eye sockets. Each one of these killer satellites had at its heart the flesh of a crippled madman, wired in and entombed in a sheath of steel, never sleeping, forever awake and desperate to unleash death upon the enemies of the Ruinous Powers. There were hundreds of them, all with their backs to the planet and cannons aimed outward, hundreds of frozen, howling faces and screaming skulls.

  “I’m no shipmaster,” said Noxx, “but I’d say those things bring poor odds.”

  Mohl nodded. “The satellites are intermediate range weapons, but more than capable of matching the guns of two strike cruisers. Anything less than a passing engagement would go in the favour of the defenders.”

  “What about this hulk?” demanded Kayne.

  Beslian took the insult with a sharp chug of air. “The Archeohort is not a warship! It is not built for sustained military actions.” He looked away peevishly.

  Rafen ignored the outburst. “Fabius has dug himself in deep, that cannot be denied. But we’ve not come this far to be dissuaded at the very gates of our foe’s redoubt.”

  “A frontal attack will be a wasteful endeavour,” Beslian said airily. “At best, you might be able to close to heavy weapons range and release an orbital bombardment upon Bile’s facility. And even then, as the gunskulls swarmed your ships, you would not live to tell of it. Not to mention that it is highly likely that the traitor has hardened his base to well beyond—”

  “Your insights are appreciated,” snapped the sergeant, iron in his tone, “but matters of tactics are not yours to decide.”

  Beslian pressed on, clearly concerned for the fate of the Archeohort now it was his. “I would respectfully suggest you call in reinforcements from your Chapter starfleet, brother-sergeant. A massed force of ships could obliterate Dynikas V with a sustained cyclonic torpedo barrage and suffer only a few losses in return.”

  Sove snorted, his scarred face wrinkling. “It could take weeks to gather more ships.”

  “The cousin is right,” Ajir threw the Flesh Tearer a nod. “And even then, even if we had the time to wait, how can we be sure that Bile will not simply spirit himself away as he did when he fled from Baal?”

  For a moment, Rafen was silent, perhaps recalling the memory of a dim corridor beneath the Vitalis Citadel, and the brimstone stink of a spent warp gate. “The kill must be made close at hand. From high orbit, hiding behind guns… That will not suffice. Our honour demands more.”

  “Logic—” Beslian barely got the word out before Noxx was at his side, a finger pressing on his sunken chest.

  “You heard the Blood Angel,” he said. “This is a matter of retribution, not your precious logic.”

  The logis’ optics whined as they blinked. “As you wish…” He backed away, almost to the edge of the mobile platform. “But… but what other means of attack is there?”

  “Thunderhawks and drop-pods will be obliterated before they even cut atmosphere,” said Ceris. “Teleporters won’t work. There are wards in place to prevent their operation.” He tapped his temple. “I see them.”

  Ajir watched Rafen fold his arms. “So all we have are impossibilities. It seems that every step we have taken along this road brings us more of them.” He glared at the image. “I am done. I no longer care to hear what we cannot do, and how we will not succeed.” The sergeant turned around, his ire burning in his eyes, his gaze raking them all. “We were not given this mission in order to fail it! The Emperor’s hand is at our backs, and we will not disappoint Him! We have been entrusted with the honour of our Chapter…” Rafen caught Ajir’s gaze. “The honour of our primarch! So we will find a way!”

  In the silence that followed, Mohl slowly raised his hand. “If it pleases the brother-sergeant,” said the Techmarine, “I have a suggestion.”

  At first glance, it resembled a bomb, but larger than any Rafen had ever seen, greater even than the huge Atlas-class weapons deployed by the Imperial Navy against hardened ground targets. Suspended on chains from a gantry over the heads of the Space Marines, it projected an air of menace, its black iron flanks curving up and away.

  “It’s a ship?” demanded Noxx.

  “Of a sort,” Mohl replied.

  Eigen bent his neck to take the whole thing in. “I’ve never seen the like before.”

  Rafen spotted hatches along the smoothly rounded prow of the object that lay perfectly flush with the hull metal, and at the opposite end, the strange vessel tapered to a teardrop stern. An X of stubby winglets emerged there, and in the light from the flickering welding torches of servitors, he made out the low mound of a turret on the dorsal surface.

  “My lords, allow me to present to you the Neimos. According to the dedication plaque within, it was built during the Great Crusade for the service of the Imperial Army. Zellik’s relic hunters appropriated it for him several years ago, from a space hulk in the Drache Sector.”

  “The streamlining…” began Turcio. “It’s an atmosphere boat.”

  “No,” said Rafen, understanding coming to him. “This craft is built for oceans, not air.”

  Mohl nodded. “Correct, brother-sergeant. The Neimos is a combat submersible, designed for deployment on ocean worlds. I came across a mention of it in the Magos’ inventory.”

  Kayne snorted. “And how does this relic help us get to Bile? What do you propose we do, Flesh Tearer? Drop it on him?”

  “The hull of the Neimos is constructed from a spun sentanium-ceramite mix. It is a solid piece, extremely durable and flexible. In addition, there are extra layers of ablative armour sheathing its length. While the craft was built for a crew of common sailors, I believe it can be quickly refitted to operate with a handful of Astartes and a contingent of servitors.”

  “You’re suggesting we sail this thing under the seas of Dynikas V, right up to the front door of Bile’s fortress?” Noxx gave a chuckle that wasn’t reflected in his cold eyes. “Let us ignore the dangers of such a journey for a moment and concentrate on the boy’s question.” He nodded towards Kayne. “Or did you forget Beslian’s little show? I ask you, what possible value is there for a boat in space?”

  “The Neimos is orbit descent-capable, lord,” Mohl replied. “Shunt-field systems and armour will protect it from the trauma of atmospheric interface. Ballute arrays will slow the fall.”

  “I was right,” Kayne said, in disbelief. “You do want to drop it on him.”

  In spite of himself, Rafen found a sudden bark of dry laughter bubbling up inside him. “I confess, Brother Noxx, I am not certain if your Techmarine has lost his reason or gained genius.”

  “I feel the same way,” said the Flesh Tearer, glaring at his warrior. “Is such a thing really possible?”

  Mohl nodded. “Craft of this class have been deployed in combat many times. The survival rate is not exemplary, however.”

  “I’d ask you a number for that rate,” said Rafen, “but I fear I would regret knowing the answer.”

  “I fail to see the point of this,” said Ajir. “If we could close to such range as to launch this… this curiosity… then why not a storm of drop-pods instead?”

  “With the Neimos, we can deploy the craft into the ocean on the far side of Dynikas V from the target atoll, where the fortress’ emplaced guns are over the horizon and unable to reach us. In addition, the coverage of the defence satellites is thinner in that area. Once we dive beneath the surface, the gunskulls will not be able to track us.” Mohl gestured at the submarine. “We will be free to proceed in stealth.”

  “But how do we get it to launch position?” Kayne insisted.

  “It will require sacrifice,” said the Techmarine, after a moment.

  A slow smile formed on Rafen’s lips as Mohl’s meaning became clear to him. “Yes, I think it will.” He
paused, musing. “How long to ready the Neitnos for the drop?”

  “I have already begun the preparations, lord. A matter of hours.”

  Rafen nodded to himself, voicing his thoughts. “Two squads of men, infiltrated on to the planet, delivered by this vessel to the enemy’s fortress. We go in under cover of fire and stealth, and hit the target.”

  “We’re doing this, then?” Noxx asked. “Well. As plans go, it has audacity…”

  “Will that count for anything if we die of it?” grated Eigen.

  Rafen glanced around. “Gather your wargear. Prepare yourselves for the coming battle.”

  Kayne’s face was sallow. “And may we take the time to pray? I fear we will need all the blessings we can gather to us.”

  The sergeant nodded. “You’re right. But know this—the God-Emperor is always watching, and He favours the bold.”

  Beslian came up to meet them on his mobile platform, the mechanism clanking up the levels of the command pit. Rafen turned from the relay helot conveying his orders to the internal and external vox-channels, giving the Mechanicus priest the briefest of looks.

  “Brother Rafen!” snapped the logis. “What is going on?” He pointed a spindly servo-arm at Mohl. “The Archeohort’s control code protocols have been changed. This battle-brother did so, without consulting me! What is the meaning of this?”

  Rafen ignored him, concentrating on his task at hand. The helot had plugged itself into the construct’s machine-call web, and now the Blood Angel’s words to it were being broadcast simultaneously to the Astartes upon the bridges of the Gabriel and the Tycho. “Shipmasters,” he was saying. “You know your orders. You have five solar days. If we fail in our mission, or if contact is not made using the correct cipher protocols, execute a maximum strike bombardment of the fortress. By the command of our Chapter Masters, you are to do whatever is required to turn that island into slag… To the forfeiture of your vessels and crews, and beyond. Ave Imperator!” The commanders of the two warships echoed his words and cut the channel.