“Aun’el?” he commed. “What’s it—”
The engines exploded.
In one bright moment the scaffold arrays and tiered buttresses arranged around the Enduring Blade’s bulging engine vents plumed and shredded, a snaking chain reaction billowing up from beneath like pus from a wound. It spilled over in a garish torus of effervescent gases and vacuum starved flames, pulverising entire decks and fragmenting the rear sections of the vessel. The engine stacks heaved from their bases upwards as though expelling a final breath, long ribbons of mangled machinery and blocky architecture blasting clear from the wreckage.
“Bloodwind...” Men’he hissed beneath his breath, forgetting himself.
A kor’vre trilled calmly, “Brace for debris.”
The Tel’ham Kenvaal shuddered lightly as shards of fused, atomised detritus bounced from its hull. Gun drones quickly and efficiently atomised any potentially threatening wreckage.
Men’he stared at the devastation and gaped. The immobilised vessel swung around from the force of the detonations, the pathetic remaining thrusters venting impotently to control the gyration.
“O’Men’he?” the comm said, startling him from his astonishment.
“Y-yes? Uh, yes, Aun’el?”
“I rather think that should slow them down. Focus on their juntas-side batteries, please. I want them crippled.”
Librarian Delpheus felt the detonation all around him. Deep in the heart of the Enduring Blade its concussive force shook everything, roaring throughout the cavernous techbay which Ardias and his sergeants had commandeered. For a moment he was sure the walls themselves palpitated, a shuddering vibration running the length and breadth of the craft. He saw a ruby wet gut inside his mind, peristaltic waves of muscle contractions dragging him closer to digestion.
He shook his head, annoyed at the lack of focus. A thousand psychic screams churned across the ether, a final painful legacy of those who had died in the blast.
He sagged into a seat in the small console arena at one end of the tech-bay, watching as dust scurried tiredly from the duct courses around the ceiling, making the coils and loops of cables sway and buckle. A small illuminator on the wall, glowing with the angry red ochre of emergency conditions, spat sparks and clanked to the deck. The entire ship rumbled.
Captain Ardias scowled, clinging to a stanchion nearby. He’d led his command team from the Marines’ reclusium cells into the main sections of the ship, hoping to find a means of monitoring events vessel-wide. Delpheus’s psychic senses had led them unerringly to this techbay, finding within a group of tech-priests that cowered at one end of the chamber, chanting purifying litanies over a bewildering array of machines and metallic constructions.
“What was that?” Ardias growled, shooting an inquisitive glance at Achellus, his squad’s Techmarine. The red-armoured giant scowled and bent over the multifaceted monitors and consoles at the end of the hangar, augmented limbs and armatures fluttering across the controls.
“Stand by,” he grunted, slender metal fingers sliding into socket relays with a cascade of rasps.
“The engines have been destroyed.” Delpheus said, his voice dead. Ardias looked up at him in surprise.
“How do you know?”
He sought for an adequate explanation, unable as ever to find the words to explain. He shrugged helplessly. “I just know.”
Achellus tilted his head and shrugged. “The engines are gone,” he concurred.
“Hera’s blood...” Ardias growled, eyes staring into nothing. Delpheus’s probing mind could feel the anxiety oozing from him, a helplessness entirely alien to one so used to the rigours and certainties of the Codex.
“The Raptors failed...” the captain whispered. “We weren’t there.” He turned his gaze upon the Librarian, an intense glare of accusation and hostility. “We weren’t there, Delpheus, at your suggestion.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Delpheus replied, keeping the quaver from his voice.
“How dare you?” Ardias almost roared. “Countless lives lost and you think ‘it doesn’t matter’?”
The sergeants exchanged glances, uncomfortable with their captain’s palpable fury.
“No, brother-captain,” Delpheus maintained, closing his eyes, it doesn’t. “I told you before: we are needed elsewhere. Something is coming.”
Ardias almost snarled. “Brother Delpheus, my faith in the scrying of psykers — even those that I count among my brothers — extends only so far.” He took a breath, controlling his temper. “Thanks to this episode my faith is waning.”
“But—”
“Codex Article 4256, sub-section 4, third lesson. ‘In the face of an overt and exposed foe, the pursuit of intangible threats is a waste of resource.’”
“I know the text, brother-captain. You need not remi—”
“The Ultramarine is a realist and a pragmatist, Delpheus, who is careful not to divide his attention. I was a fool to accept your counsel.”
“It was not ‘counsel’, brother. It was truth. You will see, yet—”
“My patience is spent. Assemble the company, we go to battl—”
“Please!” Delpheus found himself begging, desperate to vindicate his prophecy. “In the Emperor’s name! I can’t explain what’s coming, but whatever happens, whatever we do, we’re needed here and now. I know it!”
“And where is ‘here’? Some forgotten techbay? Why bring us here?”
“I... I don’t know.”
Ardias turned away, muttering furiously. Delpheus rubbed his temples, wondering vaguely whether the clawing, chittering pain in his mind would ever be gone.
His eyes fell upon the wall. The light fitting that had fallen open sparked lamely, coils of ruptured cabling hanging out. He frowned. There was something...
Oh, Emperor-God no...
He looked up. A series of looped ducts hung overhead, arcing flaccidly with the weight of years. A dribble of water parted from a cracked, rust smeared pipe with a quiet plip.
No no no no no...
He looked back at the light fitting. The filament, exposed metal smoking and fizzing, lay half-concealed behind a tangle of wires. Overloaded and crippled by the force of the engines’ destruction, it blinked spasmodically:
Flash. Flash. Pause. Flash. Pause. Flash-Flash. Pause.
“Brother-captain?” Delpheus said, staring at it. Ardias turned to him with a weary grunt.
“What now?”
“I’m about to die.”
The wall yawned open like a hungry mouth, wet edges slurping and sucking obscenely, malefic light blazing around its edges.
Something came out and stabbed him through the heart.
Kais hurried across arterial bridges.
They sprouted chaotically from high tiered walls, plush tapestries and red velvet walkways branching and intersecting tapering cords of steel and rock. They arched out across abyssal spaces, smoke-fogged and bat-haunted. This high within the vessel’s infrastructure, bulbous viewing galleries and veinlike corridors opened up onto glass-fronted panoramas of the void beyond. The distant flickering of lights and tumbling shadows announced majestically that the fleet battle continued to rage. Every now and then a shuddering, grinding roar — like steel skies being torn open by celestial blades — heralded another tau-fired salvo of munitions gouging into the crippled vessel’s flanks. He lowered his vision and limped onwards, hoping the blood trail was dwindling.
The explosion that had ripped the engines from the gue’la vessel had shaken him. He thought he’d given himself enough time to get clear, setting the charges for five raik’ors then scampering, rat-like, along hallways and gantries; scuttling up ladders and diving into lifts. He’d broadcast several all-frequency alerts to the other shas’las aboard, urging them to get clear of the engine decks as soon as possible. There were no replies.