‘What the feth?’ Domor began.
Baskevyl took a step forwards. He could think of no ready explanation. Eight ancient stone tiles had tumbled from one of the cartons. They were arranged in almost perfect lines across the deck: a row of four over a row of three, with a single tile centred beneath.
‘They fell like that,’ said Chiria, as if trying to convince herself.
‘In rows?’ asked Fapes.
The tablets were perfectly aligned, as though someone had painstakingly and carefully laid them out that way. Not a single one was out of true.
‘How does…’ Domor murmured. ‘How does that happen? How does that even happen?’
Baskevyl knelt beside the rows. He stared at them. He remembered the frantic recovery efforts in the foul colleges of the Reach. He remembered Gaunt telling him that Mabbon had reckoned these stone tiles to be of particular significance. Xenos artefacts, of impossibly ancient manufacture. Each one was about the size of a standard data-slate, and made from gleaming red stone. They were all damaged and worn by time, and one had a significant piece missing. They were covered in inscriptions that Baskevyl couldn’t make sense of.
‘No one’s been in here,’ he said. ‘You saw the seals. No one’s been in here. They must’ve just fallen like this–’
‘That’s a bunch of feth,’ said Domor.
‘You got a better answer?’ Bask asked, looking up at him.
‘Not one I want to say out loud,’ mumbled Domor.
Baskevyl reached a hand towards the tablets.
‘Don’t touch them!’ Chiria yelled. ‘Are you mad?’
‘I wasn’t–’ Baskevyl replied, snatching his hand away. But it was a lie. He had been about to touch them. He’d needed to touch them, even though touching was the last thing he wanted to do.
He got to his feet.
‘They look like an aquila,’ said Fapes.
‘What?’ asked Baskevyl.
Fapes pointed.
‘The way they’re laid out, sir. Like wings, see, then the body? Like an eagle with spread wings. Sir?’
Baskevyl wasn’t listening to his adjutant any more. He stared at the tiles on the floor. They were laid out a little like an eagle symbol.
He swallowed hard. He had a sudden, sick memory. The supply drop… the aborted supply drop on Aigor 991. There’d been a daemon there. Something. Something bad. They’d heard a voice. Well, he hadn’t, but Rerval had. Rerval first, then Gol. Gol had made a full report about it. The voice had claimed to be the voice of Sek.
It had demanded they bring the eagle stones to it.
They’d fought the… the whatever it was off, and aborted the drop. Gol had aborted the drop, and he’d made a full report to Gaunt. No one had been able to offer an explanation, and besides, it was warp-crap anyway. You never paid attention to warp-crap and the ravings of the Archenemy, because that was a sure route to madness.
But this… Those stones on the deck. Stones they had been told by the pheguth were precious, laid out in the shape of an eagle.
‘Throne preserve us,’ he murmured.
‘Sir?’ Fapes asked.
‘Seal it up,’ Bask said. ‘Seal it up. Get a torch on the door bolts to weld them in place. We come back and deal with this when the crisis is over.’
Domor looked at him, then turned and walked out, calling for a trooper with a metal-torch.
Baskevyl looked at Fapes.
‘See if you can get the vox up,’ he said to the adjutant. ‘Raise Gaunt. Tell him what we found down here. Don’t dress it up. Just tell him straight what we found and what it looks like. Then ask him what he wants us to do about it.’
‘Gaunt?’
Gaunt stepped away from the strategium display and went over to Curth. She was still working on Spika’s frail body, massaging his chest.
He crouched at her side.
‘I’ve got a heartbeat,’ she whispered.
‘You have?’ Gaunt replied.
She nodded. ‘I didn’t want to shout it out and give these men false hope. It’s weak. Ridiculously weak. And it may go again in a moment. But I have a heartbeat.’
Gaunt nodded.
‘I want to see if I can sustain it for another five or ten minutes,’ she whispered. ‘If I can, I’ll risk moving him to the infirmary. He needs immediate surgery. A bypass. His brain may already be gone, though.’
‘I’ll ask Criid to get a stretcher party ready.’
‘Good,’ said Curth.
‘If you’ve brought the shipmaster back,’ Gaunt said, ‘you’ve done amazing–’
‘Don’t patronise me,’ she said, without looking up from her work. ‘This is my calling. A life needed saving. I was here.’
Gaunt rose. There was a sudden commotion around the strategium display.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘I’m assessing,’ said Darulin. ‘Something just…’
‘Something what?’
‘Roll it back,’ Darulin said to a tech-adept. ‘Thirty seconds.’
The main display image flickered as it switched from real-time feed to recorded data. Gaunt saw no difference.
‘Look there,’ said Darulin. ‘The enemy flagship, lying seventeen thousand kilometres off us, approximate. A carrier vessel.’
He touched the display, making a small haptic mark beside the dark dot of the enemy cruiser.
‘Advance by frame, one hundredth speed,’ Darulin told the adept.
The data began to play. At the four-second mark, the dark dot was replaced by a point of white light. The light point expanded then vanished. There was no sign of the dot.
‘What did I just see?’ asked Gaunt. ‘An explosion?’
‘Sensor resolution is very poor,’ said Darulin, ‘but yes. The enemy base-ship just went up. Total disintegration.’
‘But it was bigger than us,’ said Criid.
‘It was,’ Darulin agreed.
‘So, what… a drive accident?’ asked Gaunt.
‘What’s that?’ asked Kelvedon, reaching in to point.
Another dark dot, a larger one, had appeared on the scope. It was moving past the point where the other dot had vanished. It was accelerating towards the Armaduke.
‘That’s a ship,’ said Darulin. ‘A very large ship.’
‘Time to us?’ asked Gaunt.
‘It’s on us already,’ said Darulin. He turned to the bridge crew. ‘I want identifiers now! Now!’ he shouted.
‘We have visual,’ Kelvedon called.
Something was coming in at them, something so massive it was eclipsing local starlight. It was casting a vast shadow across the crippled, helpless Armaduke. The light on the bridge changed as the shadow slid over them, throwing the external ports into blackness.
‘We’re in its shadow,’ said Darulin quietly. The bridge grew very still and very quiet. There was no sound except the rasp of the air scrubbers, the chatter of automatic systems and the occasional ping of the display system.
Suddenly, the vox went live. A screaming noise shrieked from every speaker. Everyone flinched and covered their ears.
The deafening noise became words. A voice that was not human. A voice that echoed from the pit of space.
‘tormageddon monstrum rex! tormageddon monstrum rex! tormaggeddon monstrum rex!’
‘The daemon ship from Tavis Sun,’ Kelvedon stammered.
‘The enemy battleship,’ Darulin nodded. He looked pale, resigned.
Criid looked at Gaunt, aghast. ‘Sir?’
‘Do we have shields yet, or…’ Gaunt’s voice trailed off. The name was still booming from the speakers, over and over, like a chant. Gaunt could see the look on Acting Shipmaster Darulin’s face.