‘He got us through whatever it was,’ Anton said.
‘We don’t know that yet,’ I said. They looked at me. I mopped blood off my face with a rolled up shirt and wondered what was going on.
Along with Macharius we stormed onto the bridge of the Lux Imperatoris, pushing through corridors that teemed with uniformed crew members performing urgent repairs. Hundreds of officers bustled around, reacting to incoming data, barking orders into speaking tubes, saluting as they took orders in turn from their superiors. Half the holo-screens looked dead. Tech-priests moved around them intoning technical liturgies as they performed the rituals of maintenance and repair on cracked command altars. The air stank of incense, rising above half-melted machinery. It made me nostalgic for the old days, for riding in the belly of a Baneblade.
The ship’s captain was sitting there on his command throne, surveying his officers as they went about their work. His face was darkened on one side by some kind of flash burn. Men limped and nursed injuries. Medical adepts inspected bodies stretched out on the floor between command altars.
‘What happened?’ Macharius asked.
‘We were caught in a warp storm, Lord High Commander,’ the captain said. ‘It came upon us suddenly as we passed through the immaterium. It separated us from the rest of the fleet. We could not remain in it without being destroyed. Our Navigator plotted an escape course that brought us up in this system. It was the only thing he could do, otherwise we would have been destroyed.’
‘And where exactly is this?’ Macharius asked. The captain steepled his fingers and let out a long breath. He looked at one of the officers who wore the uniform of an astronavigator, a grizzled, grey-haired man with his arm in a sling.
The astronavigator said, ‘I will need to take sightings and plot our position on star charts to be entirely certain. My initial observations lead me to believe that we are in the system marked as Procrastes on old charts, but I would like to confirm that. When a warp storm strikes you can be driven a long way from your initial destination. We are lucky our Navigator managed to bring us out at all.’
‘I’m aware of that fact,’ Macharius said.
‘It is a relatively rare occurrence, Lord High Commander,’ said a smooth new voice. We looked around. A member of one of the great Navigator Houses had entered the command deck. He must have come from the sealed chamber from which he guided the ship. He was a mutant, but the third eye which he used to look out into the warp was decently concealed by a thick brocade scarf bearing the emblems of his House and calling. He did not wear Naval uniform. Instead, he was dressed in the sort of formal court clothes that one associated with the great merchant Houses of the Imperium. ‘The main thing is that we have survived. Many do not.’
The captain looked up from the divinatory altar that he was studying. ‘We have suffered some damage to the ship as we exited the warp. It will take us a few hours to perform repairs.’
One of the officers rose and turned to his captain, clicked his heels, saluted and made a report. ‘Sir, we are picking up considerable comm-chatter. It seems that there is a human inhabited world in this system, and it is coming under attack by xenos.’
That got Macharius’s attention. ‘Record those communications and relay them to me. I wish to know what is going on here.’
If the Navy captain was offended by that peremptory instruction he give no sign of it. ‘Of course, sir,’ he said. ‘But there is nothing we will be able to do until we restore the main power cores and get our engines back online again.’
‘I want you to keep me informed of every development,’ Macharius said. ‘I want to know everything that is happening here. If those xenos make a move against us, let me know immediately.’
‘It will be so,’ the captain said. We followed Macharius off the command deck.
We looked out the huge circular viewport at the dark, dark curtain of space beyond. Macharius had returned to his chambers for the moment, leaving us to our own devices. We had chosen to inspect the damage to the ship from the nearest vantage point to our berths.
The armoured shields had been rolled back. I could see the great pockmarks in the ship’s sides and the small human figures moving along them, checking for flaws in the hull. From here I could see exactly how huge the ship was, a self-contained worldlet, larger than a dozen parade grounds, large enough for an army to march across. There was a suggestion of mountainous hills in the way the superstructure rose over the plains of the lower hull.
‘Think they’ll find anything?’ Anton asked.
‘If the hull had breached while we were in the warp we most likely would all be dead now,’ I said.
‘Not if it got holed at the last moment, as we emerged. Something might have broken in then,’ he said.
‘You’ve been listening to too many sailors’ stories,’ I said. ‘Next you’ll be saying that a hundred years might have passed since we left Demetrius.’
‘Well, they might have,’ said Anton.
‘Yes, they might have, but what difference would that make to us? We’re still alive. That’s all that matters.’
‘We might have missed the crusade.’
‘We could not be that unlucky,’ said Ivan.
‘I doubt any more than a couple of weeks has passed,’ I said, not at all liking the direction this discussion was taking. None of the others seemed to have realised that all of the things they secretly feared had already happened to us. None of us would ever be going home. All of us were marooned in time and space. All we had left was each other and the people we knew. The Imperial Guard was our home now. It had been for many years.
‘Any idea where we are?’ Ivan said.
‘Not where we’re supposed to be, that’s for sure,’ I said. ‘This isn’t Emperor’s Glory. The sun’s the wrong colour.’
‘Another hellhole in the back of beyond then,’ said Ivan. ‘Some things never change.’
‘You think we’re lost?’ said Anton. There was a faint note of panic in his voice.
‘We might be,’ I said, just to wind him up. It was Ivan who chose to break the suspense.
‘Even if we are, they’ll soon find a way to get us home.’
‘Did you see that bloody mutant, that Navigator?’ said Anton. I looked around to make sure none of the crew were close enough to overhear him. The crews of ships are strange. They spent a lot of time locked in these durasteel coffins. They are loyal to each other, and they have no love for outsiders. Not that Anton ever paid much attention to such things.
‘He’s a mutant who has the blessing of the Imperium,’ said Ivan. I could tell the words were making him uneasy even as he said them.
‘Gives me the creeps,’ said Anton. ‘They say they have an extra eye in the middle of their foreheads, that’s why they keep them wrapped. They say it looks into other places, let’s them see things that are not there.’
‘You’ve seen things that weren’t there, when you’ve drunk enough,’ I said. I watched a tiny figure clamber over a gargoyle on the hull. He seemed to come unstuck, like a fly taking off from a wall and began to drift off into space. I wondered if I was watching a small, distant tragedy about which I could do nothing. It would not be for the first time in my life.