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Apocalypse – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

00:10:50

Odoacer System, spinward edge

There was something screaming out in the dark, beyond the system’s edge.

The sound was raw. Animalistic. It spilled across the frequency bands like blood and flooded the vox-systems of Silvana’s Martyrdom, echoing eerily across the cavernous command deck of the Cardinal-class heavy cruiser. Ancient campaign banners hung from the cathedral arches, and towering observation plinths rustled, as if disturbed by the noise.

Commodore-Captain Aldo Ware listened to the scream, as he had every day for the past year. He strained, despite himself, trying to find some pattern in it, some sense that it might be a human voice, rather than just a sound. Sometimes, vox signals were caught in celestial eddies and twisted out of joint. They ricocheted among the stars until they were at last caught and deciphered, often centuries after they’d been sent.

Ware was an older man, born and bred to the void, with craggy features and thinning hair the colour of ice. His uniform was immaculate, thanks mostly to the constant attentions of his aide, Noels.

‘Your recaff, sir.’

Ware looked up and took the steaming mug from the man. Noels was big, ugly and imposing, built for boarding actions rather than for cleaning boots. He made for a surprisingly efficient aide, despite the unpleasant implications of his scarred features and massive, blunt-fingered hands.

‘Listen to it,’ Noels murmured, staring at the closest vox-station. ‘It never stops. Whatever it is must have died by now… but it doesn’t stop.’

Ware nodded. ‘No.’ The sound had been echoing for weeks. Whenever the ship’s vox-operators cycled through the channels, Ware had them stop on it, just to see if it had changed. But it hadn’t. It was always far away, never drawing any closer, never growing any louder. He knew that if it ever changed, things were about to get worse. Even so, if a man could get used to such an awful thing, he had.

Suddenly tired of listening, he gestured sharply to a vox-operator, and the scream fell silent. He leaned back and sipped the recaff, grimacing in pleasure. It was unsweetened, as he preferred. The taste reminded him of long nights at a duty station, and endless labyrinths of reports. Better days. Before the sound. Before… all of it.

Ware glanced towards the viewscreen that stretched across the far side of the ship’s command bridge. He already knew what he’d see. He’d stared at it long enough that it was etched on his mind’s eye. One could not easily shake the image of a galaxy collapsing in on itself. It was as if the very concept of normalcy had been butchered before him.

Ware still remembered the screams of the ship’s Navigator, as the light of the Astronomican flickered and went out. He could only imagine what sort of effect that moment must have had on her – a Navigator’s whole purpose, their reason for being, was tied to that great light. To see it simply… blink out must have been the worst moment of her life. She still hadn’t recovered. Might never recover.

He closed his eyes, trying not to remember. For an instant that seemed to stretch for an eternity, all of reality had gone as dark and as silent as the grave. And when the light returned, however weakly, it revealed vast shapes, rolling in the cosmic deeps. Monsters. Hungry immensities, feeding on wounded stars, or pawing at the innards of gutted vessels.

There had been so many of them. Things that were full of stars and heat, with teeth like broken comets. And smaller ones as well – things that crept and slunk through the lower decks. Things he’d only seen once before, when a ship he’d served on as a junior officer had suffered a momentary Geller field disruption during warp transit. Things he never wanted to see again. He took another gulp of recaff, trying to drown the memory.

‘Any sign of the Guelphian, sir?’ Noels asked, startling him. It was the same question Noels asked every day. The same question Ware asked himself, when he stirred from his nightmare-tainted sleep at the beginning of each duty cycle. Had they returned?

‘No,’ Ware said. ‘No sign of her.’ He looked down into his cup, trying to read his fortune in the leaves. ‘Perhaps that is for the best.’

Noels nodded, stoic as ever. The Guelphian was among those ships that had gone out – on Ware’s orders – and had not returned. Or worse, had come back… changed. All but unrecognisable. Only the Guelphian was unaccounted for.

He held little hope that they’d see her again. His ship’s astropathic choir had yet to fully recover from the sudden darkness. But what transmissions they had picked up on had been enough to give Ware some idea of conditions outside the system. Everything was in upheaval – strange voices prowled the ether, and ghost signals haunted the fleet’s telemetry. The universe was coming apart at the seams.

Worlds – entire sectors – had vanished into the black, their fates unknown. New celestial bodies formed, reshaping the firmament about themselves, as if they had always been. Worse were the whispers of the return of the Emperor’s holy sons – hope was an enemy. It gnawed at a man’s certainty, and made him contemplate foolishness.

There was no hope. The galaxy was dying around him, and there was little he could do save watch and pray. He was not used to feeling so helpless. Old as she was, Silvana’s Martyrdom was still a ship of the line, and capable of reducing a world to slag if he so desired. But all that power was as nothing compared to the horrors he’d seen in the months since the heavens had been rent asunder, and the distant stars extinguished.

His hands tightened about his mug. It had been nearly a year, but the horror of it all was still fresh. He remembered the flicker of weapon batteries, slicing the dark, punching through vessels commanded by those he’d called friends. All gone now, their wreckage drifting spinward. Whatever nightmares haunted them were left to do so alone.

‘Might I ask what you’re reading, sir?’ Noels asked.

Glad of the distraction, Ware looked down at his book, and traced the gilded spine, seeking comfort in the sign of the aquila. He tapped the book with a finger. ‘Sermons. From some preacher of note, though I fear I’ve never heard of them.’

‘Not your usual reading material, sir,’ Noels said gruffly.

Ware smiled. ‘A gift. From his lordship.’ His lordship was Cardinal-Governor Eamon, spiritual and material authority of the Odoacer System. The system was small, by the standards of the Imperium of Man – mostly agri worlds, with only two major planetary bodies. The world of Almace was the blue-green heart of the system, a cardinal world. Its ruler wasn’t as bad as some, and better than most. Eamon wasn’t the sort to bankrupt his own holdings with harsh tithes, but neither was he particularly spendthrift. No more or less corrupt than most in his position.

Noels grunted. ‘A refit – or better, new ships – would have been nicer.’ It was said without any particular rancour. Silvana’s Martyrdom had been old even before the Great Rift had torn a bleeding hole in the galaxy’s gut. In sensible times, the ship would have already been decommissioned and salvaged for parts, her name bestowed upon another, more advanced, vessel. But these were not sensible times.

Ware chuckled. ‘That it would. Still, we’re not for the scrapper’s yard yet.’ He thumped the armrest of his command throne for emphasis. ‘The old girl has a bit of fight left in her, I think. One more, at least.’

Suddenly tired, he rubbed his face. His palm scraped against stubble. He needed a shave, but it seemed a useless affectation at the moment. Worse, a waste of water. Noels glanced at him, frowning. Ware forced a smile and sat back. ‘Status report?’

Noels straightened. Ordinarily, it would have been a junior officer’s job to deliver a report, but Ware loathed taking them away from their duties, unless absolutely necessary. Noels could summarise well enough, and Ware knew he’d already read the briefings. The big man cleared his throat. ‘The malfunction in the intake system on deck twelve has been corrected by the enginseers. All other systems performing within acceptable parameters.’

‘What about the Geller field fluctuations we detected last cycle?’

‘Negligible risk, according to the enginseer prime.’

Ware nodded. ‘Fine. What does Klemistos say?’

The chief astropath hadn’t been as badly affected by recent events as the Navigator, but not for lack of effort. When the Astronomican was snuffed out, it had been Klemistos who had cast his mind into the dark, and given warning of the horrors surging up in the absence of the God-Emperor’s light.

Noels scratched his chin. ‘A few scattered messages. According to him, there’s something interfering with astropathic transmissions. A sort of… static on the wind.’ He glanced at the viewscreen. ‘Not that there’s any wind out here.’

‘There’s a wind,’ Ware said. He rose from his command throne and stretched. Joints popped and muscles protested. Juvenat treatment aside, he was feeling his age. ‘We can’t feel it, but it’s there. A solar wind, slipping between the stars, and pushing all the heavens along a cosmic tide.’

Noels peered at him. ‘Kaminski?’

‘Hardacre. Ode to a Starbound King.’

Noels grunted. ‘Never read that one.’

‘You should.’ Ware stepped to the edge of the observation deck. Around him, the bridge of the ship hummed with activity. Every station below the command deck was manned, either by a rating or a servitor hardwired into a control throne. The atmospherics pumped a chill coolant across the bridge, lowering the temperature. It reduced the risk of heat fatigue in the ancient cogitators that ran most of the vessel’s low-priority systems.

Everything was performing as it should. On the viewscreen, he could see the rest of the fleet, strung out in a patrol formation. Besides Silvana’s Martyrdom, there were two cruisers – the Crassus, a Gothic-class vessel, and the Drusus, a Lunar-class – and Orlanda’s Wrath, an ageing Exorcist-class grand cruiser. Around them, a dozen Sword-class frigates acted as escorts. The fleet had been larger, once. This was all that remained, and he intended to see that it stayed that way.

The monsters had grown fewer, as the light of the Astronomican returned, if weakly. But other things had been left in their wake. Pirates and raiders haunted the asteroid belts that girdled the system, and in the wake of the dark, they’d come. They always had, but things were worse now. A weakened fleet meant freedom to attack at will. Ware had run himself and his crews ragged trying to be everywhere at once.

‘Something is out there.’

Ware turned. ‘Chief Astropath.’ Klemistos was tall and spare. A gaunt, withered husk of a man, he was clad in worn green robes, and leaned against a staff, topped with a golden aquila. He had no eyes – his sockets were scarred ruins, puckered and blackened. Like everyone else, he looked tired.

‘Did you hear me? Something is out there. Creeping towards us.’ Klemistos tapped an ear. ‘I can hear it.’ He looked around, as if whatever it was were close at hand. Crew members drew back, unsettled by Klemistos’ sightless gaze.

Ware stiffened. ‘Hear what, exactly?’

‘I cannot describe it.’

‘Try,’ Ware said.

‘I cannot.’ Klemistos frowned. ‘The universe is coming undone, commodore-captain. The tides of the empyrean roll savage, and things long sleeping have since begun to stir. One of them is coming.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve been trying to catch it these past weeks, but it keeps just out of my perceptions – as if… as if it knows. But I can hear it now… it’s coming.’ He leaned close. ‘Do you understand?’

Ware could feel the eyes of the nearby crew on him. They were nervous. They were always nervous, these days. But they had reason to be. The galaxy was unravelling around them. So far, the system had been spared the worst of it, but for how much longer?

‘Where?’

Klemistos pointed to the viewscreen. ‘Out there. The spinward edge.’

Ware frowned. Asking for specifics from Klemistos was a waste of time. He looked down at the dregs in the bottom of his cup and gave them an experimental swirl. He was going to need more recaff.

He returned to his command throne. As he stepped onto the platform, holo-displays flickered to life and swarmed about him. They jostled for his attention, and he gestured, sending them fleeing. At his command, a star map flared into view. The spinward edge of the system. Not far. A few hours – a day, at standard power. Ware took another slow sip of recaff. An anomaly could mean anything – a stray astropathic signal, a solar flare. Or something worse.

Decision made, he activated the deck-vox. There were orders to be relayed. The fleet would split. His captains wouldn’t be happy about it, but they would follow orders. That was the most important thing, these days. Discipline was what kept the fleet in one piece. Kept it functioning, despite the relentless pace of the past few months, despite the losses and dwindling resources. And not just the fleet. The system as a whole was a machine on the verge of breakdown.

The cardinal-governor had kept it running on sheer will, or so it seemed to Ware. The system was largely self-sufficient, which meant the lack of trade coming in wasn’t as big a blow as it might otherwise have been. But there were already food shortages on a number of worlds, and it was getting harder to keep the fleet running on continuous cycles. Too, there was growing unrest in the outer worlds, not to mention among the bloody asteroid miners. Then, that wasn’t particularly new.

None of it was, really. But whatever had happened to the galaxy was bringing it all to the surface, all at once. One crisis after another. He could only pray that this – whatever it was – wasn’t another problem for the pile.

Orlanda’s Wrath, the cruisers and half of the frigates would return to Almace. Keel, the captain of Orlanda’s Wrath, had protested, but Ware had ignored him. Keel was capable enough, but unimaginative. Dogged on defence, but lacking in initiative. He’d been passed over for command of the fleet twice, but seemed to bear no grudge. Indeed, when word had come that Ware was to be in command, Keel had been visibly relieved. Ware hoped that if the worst happened, Keel was up to the task of managing the fleet.

As Silvana’s Martyrdom began to move, six frigates fell in on the heavy cruiser’s flanks, their captains reporting in. Their faces flickered about him, as the command throne’s built-in holo-display units whirred to life. They looked young to him. Too young. But they followed orders well enough.

‘Establish vox-link to all ships in formation,’ he said. Beneath the platform, the servitor hardwired into the throne controls gave a squawk of assent. ‘All ships – lay in a new course. Grid one, point four.’ The edge of the map. He paused. He felt Klemistos observing him, and Noels and all the rest of the crew. Waiting. Praying.

It was nothing. He was sure of it. Just one more noise, echoing out of the dark. Klemistos was just rattled – they were all rattled. But they had to be sure. He cleared his throat. ‘All ahead standard. Thibault Excelsis formation.’

He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.

In the Imperial Navy, the ramifications of an error might not be felt for hours, days, weeks. A divergence in headings, a split-second hesitation before correcting course… It reverberated. A ship, even a small one, was not simply a vessel but a nation state of steel, and its captain, a king. Like a king, he had to be certain at all times. Ware had never felt less certain in his life than he had these past weeks.

Hours passed amid a litany of reports. Long-range scanners plied the stars, but found nothing out of the ordinary – the new ordinary, rather. But as they drew closer to the rim, the scanners grew less forthcoming. Something was interfering with the augur-systems.

By the time they reached the grid-point, they were all but flying blind. Ware ordered his small fleet into a defensive formation. Minutes became hours. Hours stretched. Ware barely moved from his throne. He could feel the wind rising. There was a storm brewing, out there between the leering stars.

‘You feel it as well, don’t you?’ Klemistos murmured. He stood behind the command throne, leaning against his staff, head bowed.

‘Yes. What is it?’ Ware asked.

Klemistos shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He shivered. ‘But it is almost here.’

‘Then we’re just in time,’ Ware said. He licked his lips, the fifth cup of recaff churning in his gut. He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. He stared at the viewscreen, willing something – anything – to happen.

He blinked. The blackness had seemed to twitch. He rubbed his eyes. Behind him, Klemistos abruptly clutched his head and grunted, as if in pain. Ware glanced at him in concern. ‘Klemistos…?’

‘It’s here,’ the chief astropath hissed.

‘Incoming warp signature,’ a rating cried suddenly, turning from her duty station.

Ware sat upright. ‘Identify it. Report when you have something!’ A babble of voices filled the deck, as everyone began shouting at once. He stared at the viewscreen. Something was happening, out there in the black. As if space were being folded back in on itself.

‘Maybe it’s someone coming to check on us,’ Noels said. ‘Last time we were docked, there were whispers – they say one of the Emperor’s sons has returned to lead the Imperium back to glory.’ Ware had heard the same whispers. Could that be it, then? Was relief finally on its way for their beleaguered system?

‘No,’ Klemistos rasped. He screamed, his staff falling from his hand. The astropath folded up like a puppet with cut strings, clutching his head, howling in agony. As Noels stooped to see to him, Ware found he couldn’t look away from the viewscreen.

At first, there was only the void. An unsettled ocean of stars. Then – light. Bright and raw, ripping upwards through the fabric of the universe. Stars blurred and stretched, contorting in cosmic agony as the firmament came unglued and spread, as if to allow the passage of something awful into reality.

‘Report,’ Ware said hoarsely. Then, more firmly, ‘Report, damn it. Someone tell me what we’re seeing. What is that?’

A moment later, he got his answer. The void convulsed again, spewing light. The ship that emerged from the unfolded space was larger than it had any right to be. To Ware’s horrified gaze, it seemed as if it had somehow grown, in the centuries since it had first left the orbital dry dock of its commissioning, and become something too massive – too monstrous – to be perceived at a single glance. A thing alive, rather than a construct of mortal hands.

It was a leviathan of the under-realms, clad in barnacles of ritual and faith, but not any faith that Ware recognised, save from dim memories of childhood nightmares. Its slate-grey hull bristled with weaponry and grotesque decoration – undulations of metal which resembled vast, pitiless faces; sweeping gargoyle-laden buttresses and towering statuary that crouched or stretched from precarious positions. Great plates, carved with immense sigils that stung his eyes and leagues of coiling script, covered the curve of the hull. Enormous comm-towers, shaped like titanic, screaming faces, blared unceasing messages of malign devotion across all communication wavelengths.

Ware tried to blot out those voices, to ignore them. He’d heard such things before – only once, and that had been enough. His soul twisted in him, trying to flee the wrongness of the vessel that now filled his viewscreen. It hurt him to look at, and he could hear Klemistos weeping, somewhere behind him. Even Noels – unflappable Noels – seemed shaken.

‘God-Emperor above,’ the aide rasped. He clutched the back of Ware’s throne for support. ‘That’s not a ship, it’s…’

‘An abomination,’ Ware croaked. Hololithic projections of the frigate captains spun about his throne, as his subordinates demanded orders. Servitors squalled binaric death cries in their cradle-stations, bleeding oil and sparks onto the deck. Some of his crew clutched at their ears, as monstrous frequencies overwhelmed the vox-systems. Others spun away from their stations, eyes bleeding, mouths open in silent pleas. They convulsed and whined like beaten animals, or tore at their own flesh, as if trying to dig the sound out.

‘What’s – what’s happening to them?’ Noels whispered.

‘Cut the vox. Cut it now,’ Ware said. ‘Before we lose everyone.’ He fought back the surge of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. He spotted the book the cardinal-governor had given him, lying forgotten on the deck. He retrieved it. His mouth was dry. He felt old and ill, and knew, in his heart, that he’d been right and wrong all at the same time. He licked his lips.

‘All hands to stations. Roll out the guns. The Archenemy is here.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Neil Roberts.

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