The Beast Arises полностью

‘I was alone,’ the Adeptus Astartes said, ‘on a planet the enemy was ripping apart. No one was coming for me. You cannot fight a planet with your sword. You cannot stand against it in your plate. All I had was the teleport homer… And hope.’

‘It worked?’

‘Yes.’

‘When it formerly had not.’

‘Yes.’

‘You were vectored?’

‘To the Amkulon,’ the Space Marine confirmed. ‘But there was a delay — not perceptible in transit. My plate detected the anomaly. Time had passed.’

‘My artisan-primus believes that when the xenos attack-moon cleared the system, the gravitic interference that had impeded guided vectoring was removed. Upon the removal of the affecting body, your transit became complete. It is true that Magos Laurentis alerted us to your life signs. If the attack moon had not interrupted your transit then you would have arrived upon the toxic derelict earlier. You would have succumbed to radiation trauma and there would not have been life signs to find.’

‘What are you saying, magos?’ the Space Marine said, leaving Laurentis and standing before the armourglass viewport set in the laboratorium wall. With the blast screens retracted, the viewport allowed light from the void into the chamber. ‘That I am the victim of good fortune?’

‘If I believed in such a thing as good fortune,’ Urquidex said, ‘and I don’t, then I should say you are very much its beneficiary. You are the last of your kind.’

‘That’s right,’ the Imperial Fist said. ‘I am the last of my kind. What good fortune is there in that?’

The pair turned their attentions to the two destruction-smeared ice worlds below. Despite the smouldering forges and cataclysmic black clouds that besmirched their twin surfaces, their reflected light still managed to dazzle.

‘Yours?’ the Space Marine asked.

‘No longer,’ Magos Urquidex said. ‘But they are forge-worlds, lost to the xenos invader. Incus Maximal and Malleus Mundi: the Hammer and Anvil. We have dropped out of the immaterium to dock with a Mechanicus signum-station and recover personnel and valuable data. Though the great forges were lost, we are told that a flotilla, heavily laden with preserved knowledge and faithful servants of the Machine God, escaped the enemy. Not everywhere has been blessed with survivors, however. Across the rimward sectors there are reports of entire swathes of Imperial worlds silent in their destruction, populations rotting and cities aflame. Most alarming and admirable are the worlds denied to the invader by Imperial hands. There are reports of virus bombs deployed on the hive-world of Undine. A tragedy indeed, but one from which we might learn. Knowledge through sacrifice.’

The Imperial Fist looked back at the cocoons on the surgical slabs, the smashed yellow pauldrons of their plate still visible through the protective membrane.

‘I have had my fill of questions, magos,’ the Space Marine said. ‘If you don’t mind, I should like to be alone now.’

‘Of course,’ Urquidex said. ‘If you would permit me one question more. For our records.’

‘What is it?’

‘What is your name?’

The Space Marine stared back out into the cold emptiness of the void.

‘My name is Koorland, Second Captain,’ the Imperial Fist told him. ‘Wall-name… Slaughter.’

‘Colossus, this is orbital command. I say again, change heading to six-three-eight, ascent forty-one. You are set on collision course with the Noble Voyager.’

‘Ignore her,’ said Captain Rafal Kulik. ‘Continue on course.’

Kulik was a tall, heavy-set man with a face lined by years, though a life spent in warp space made any estimate of his true age impossible. His skin was dark brown, as were his eyes, though his hair was silvery grey, its tight coils straightened and parted formally by the application of much lotion and toil every morning.

He wore his service uniform — epaulettes and cuffs of golden thread on a coat of deep blue, but no medals except for an aquila holding the badge of the Segmentum Solar, indicating Kulik’s rank as a flag-captain and patrol commander. His black boots were brightly polished. A sturdy boarding cutlass was held on a hanger at his waist, with a blocky service laspistol hung at the other hip.

The atmosphere on the bridge was tense and quiet, sparked by the mood of the man who commanded the fate of everybody aboard the battleship. Kulik dominated proceedings with his presence. He stood square in the middle of the main command deck in a serene bubble of importance — genuine authority, not self-importance — while around him junior officers waited in anticipation of his next command and half-human servitors murmured and burbled a litany of reports from the battleship’s systems.