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Broken Crusade – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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CHAPTER 1

I will burn in this chamber one day, like my brothers. Like a hundred generations of Black Templar knights before me. The thought sears my consciousness and steals my focus, ripping me from my meditation as I kneel over the corpse of my fallen brother.

Baelar’s body lies on a sheet of unblemished linen, atop a low table of polished, ink-black stone which has been thrice blessed for this purpose by the Chaplains of the crusade and reconsecrated every twenty-four solar hours at the time of dawn upon Holy Terra. My brother’s skin shines bare and bronze against the flickering orange light of ornate braziers burning sacred oils and incense.

Their scent is heady and bitter, but not strong enough to mask the redolence of his death.

Thin fluid pools in the gaping wounds that mar Baelar’s flesh. One deep, ragged puncture pierces his neck, and a matching wound marks the centre of his chest where Brother-Apothecary Alvus’ reductor harvested the gene-seed from his progenoid glands after his body was recovered from the dust and ash of the filthy world we leave in our wake. Countless other jagged lacerations profane the remainder of his corpse where the teeth and claws of accursed, mindless xenos tore at him and bled him dry.

I did not see Baelar die, but I am told it took one hundred wounds to fell my brother.

‘Brother Baelar honours us with the nobility of this death,’ I call.

My voice disturbs the stillness of the crematorium, pulling my brothers from their own prayers, and their eyes fall upon me. The two-score knights of my fighting company have knelt vigil over Baelar for the last seven cycles since the Dauntless Honour departed orbit over Hestus Delta and entered the obscurity of the warp. In that time none of them have left this chamber, nor has any moved from Baelar’s side. Each has knelt over the fallen knight in turn and spoken quiet benedictions and whispered prayers into his unhearing ears.

Now, bold words are expected of me, but I find that I have few. I am no great orator. Not as Baelar was. With his death, one of the crusade’s brightest flames falls extinguished. With his passing, we lose not only his sword, but also a piece of our soul.

Beside me, Brother-Chaplain Dant pauses his invocation. ‘He honours the God-Emperor, Brother-Castellan Emeric.’

I nod. ‘As we who survive also seek to honour Him.’

My brothers kneel in a ring around me, clad in their sacred black power armour but unhelmeted. Blood and dirt still stain their raiment – the remnants of a world that I would sooner forget.

Loss hangs like a shadow upon each of their grim countenances, undiminished despite the fact that we have all taken part in this ceremony more times than we can count. The Second Dorean Crusade has been costly already, and our fleet still travels far from its goal. We press on to the Ecclesiarchy world of Tempest, home to a thousand martyrs and their venerated shrines. There we shall answer the holy world’s cry for aid and deliver the planet from the warbands of the Archenemy which assail it, opening a path to the Dorean System proper and pressing on towards our next, and greater, battles.

I know little of what awaits my fighting company there, but I know that more of my brothers will die.

‘Today, we burn our brother,’ I say. ‘Tomorrow, we ourselves will lie on the pyre. This ritual is for the living, not for the dead. A reminder of the fate that awaits us all, and the truth that we leave nothing behind but our deeds. With his death, Baelar has carved a legacy that will not fade. We remember him and aspire to do the same.’

My voice falls away. Simple words, but true. My brother cares not for the fate of his corpse. My brother sees not what we do to honour him. And yet we do it to honour him.

The plates of Brother-Chaplain Dant’s armour rustle as he rises to his feet beside me. He alone retains his helm for this ceremony, its skull face gleaming in the wavering light. Dozens of reliquaries swing from his armour, bound to the black ceramite plate by sanctified golden cord. Strips of yellowed, scorched parchment flutter with his movements, affixed to his armour with crimson wax. Each bears the words of a litany or a sacred vow, written in Dant’s own hand or that of his most trusted acolytes.

The ancient Chaplain stands over Baelar, reaching into one of the pouches affixed to the belt which binds his white tabard about his waist. He anoints my brother’s corpse with soil as I press my forehead against the departed’s. I am the last of my brothers to speak to the fallen knight.

‘Earth from the world upon which he was born.’ Dant’s voice fills the crematorium like the quiet rumbling of a coming storm. ‘Earth from the world upon which he died. Earth from the surface of Holy Terra itself, where he now rests in the God-Emperor’s light.’

The smell of death assaults me. The empty gaze of Baelar’s stone-grey eyes meets mine. One day, I will lie in this same state before my brothers. One day, they will speak to the husk I leave behind. What words will they utter over my corpse? Memories of glory, or of mediocrity?

‘You surpass me, brother,’ I subvocalise. ‘In death, even as you did in life.’

Slowly, I rise and wrap a thin, black shroud over Baelar. His helm and his bolter shall live on as relics of his service within the Dauntless Honour’s Reclusiam, but all other memories of him will vanish today.

The circle of knights closes around me. Together, we lift our fallen brother and set him within the kiln that envelops the far wall of the crematorium.

At my command, two Neophytes turn the massive valves mounted upon the wall. My eyes wince as the searing heat and light of suns engulfs Baelar, flame from the Dauntless Honour’s ancient plasma drive itself devouring my brother’s remains. Brother-Chaplain Dant will carry Baelar’s ashes upon his armour until such time that his gene-seed is implanted within a new brother, who will then be charged with carrying his gene-sire’s remnants for himself.

At my side, the Chaplain leans towards me, ever the God-Emperor’s voice at my shoulder. He has been my stalwart companion for more than three centuries, from the day I was raised from a fragile mortal to become one of the Emperor’s sons.

He does not need to hear the doubts that plague my mind in order to know their contents.

‘Do not judge yourself too harshly, Brother-Castellan. The God-Emperor demands much of you still.’

Were these words to come from any other mouth they would incite within me both shame and anger, but there is no accusation in the Chaplain’s voice, only reassurance. He stands at my side for just such times as these. To speak truths that I must hear, but could not tolerate from any other tongue.

‘May that be true,’ I subvocalise in reply. A more desperate prayer than any other I have offered today. ‘We charge towards another dark world. Another dark world within a dark subsector. Dorea has repelled the zeal of the crusade once already, and we still have worlds to cleanse before we reach her. Are we stronger this time, Brother-Chaplain? Is our faith?’

Dant watches the flames devour our brother, then for a terrible moment, Baelar’s body shivers. I tense, my gaze darting to Brother-Apothecary Alvus, an obscene fear rising within me that my brother is somehow alive within that fire.

The fear passes as the room shakes, and a new one takes its place. There is an awful groan behind the bulkhead, and the flames within the kiln flicker then die before bursting back into full life.

Forty sets of eyes fall upon me as the Dauntless Honour lurches. I place my helmet upon my head and am assaulted by a stream of flashing runes and written missives. I filter through those of the highest priority levels within heartbeats and disregard the rest.

‘Speak,’ I order Shipmaster Khatri on our private vox-channel.

My mortal helmsman’s reply is delayed, then tense when it arrives. ‘Transient turmoil with the currents of the empyrean, my lord. Lord Navigator Nendaiu’s attendants assure me we will be through the worst of it within moments.’

I feel the uncertainty within his words as the vessel quivers again. The scent of copper strikes me, and the taste of blood covers my tongue. A pit forms in my chest as I recognise the flavour, unique among all the evils in this galaxy.

‘Brother-Chaplain Dant, with me,’ I order. ‘The rest of you, see to the ship.’

I approach the Dauntless Honour’s chancel with my blade already drawn. Brother-Chaplain Dant’s crozius hangs loosely at his side. Penitence hums softly in my grasp, the relic sword a comfortable companion after more than two centuries in my hands. I appreciate its familiarity now.

The Dauntless Honour twists in the warp, the deck beneath my feet shifting suddenly. Maglocks upon my boots hold me in place, but with the movement comes a flickering disquiet. Gooseflesh rises at the base of my neck. Acid coats the back of my throat. The sensation passes within a heartbeat, but even that is far too long.

A warning rune flashes at the edge of my vision. I dismiss it and open a private vox-channel.

‘Brother Barnard?’

The Techmarine knows my question before I ask it. Educated both in the sacred catechisms of my Chapter and the obscure mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus, he is my window into the machine spirit of my ancient vessel.

‘A brief deterioration in the performance of our Geller field generators, Brother-Castellan. Several seconds in length, without a full failure.’

He need not elaborate. If the energy field that shields this void craft from the profane energies of the warp were to fail completely – even for a moment – all aboard would know without being told.

‘A small blessing,’ I reply, closing the channel.

At my side, Brother-Chaplain Dant steps towards the chancel’s entry. His eyes are hidden behind the grim, skull-faced visage crafted into the helm worn by all my brothers who bear his rank, but even so, I know the expression they contain.

‘Is this wise?’ I ask, setting my hand against the small, ornate door. Its ancient plasteel panels are carved with the relief of a single eye, open and wreathed in flame. Even through the ceramite of my gauntlets I feel an unnatural cold behind its barrier.

‘No, Castellan,’ Dant replies. ‘But I agree that it is necessary.’

I require neither the Chaplain’s approval nor his assurance, but his support bolsters me, nonetheless. Together, we step into the abode of the astropaths that belong to my ship before we are swallowed by a darkness too deep for even my occulobe to fully overcome. The vaulted chamber before me appears in blurred layers of muted grey, a single hall partitioned by ornately carved half-walls into a labyrinthine complex of cells and corridors.

That the astropaths of the Dauntless Honour’s choir are blind is no secret. That they require their servants and acolytes to dwell in darkness alongside them is not something I had known until this moment. In more than a decade as the Dauntless Honour’s Castellan, I have never before sullied myself by entering these chambers.

‘Abhor the witch. Destroy the witch,’ I mutter into the shadows. ‘Darkness harbours darkness. It is good we came here first.’

‘They may carry the taint of psyker within them, Brother-Castellan, but they have gazed upon the face of the God-Emperor Himself.’ Despite his words, a dim glow crackles in the darkness as the Chaplain ignites the power field around his crozius arcanum.

‘Still no response to your vox-missives?’ I ask.

Dant shakes his head. ‘And no word at all from the chancel to the command cathedrum since the moment the storm first struck us.’

A growing unease settles into my chest as we venture on. The vessel shivers again, and I taste metal on my tongue. Shipmaster Khatri assures me that this storm will pass, but there are some perils that I cannot tolerate. Even soul-bound to the God-Emperor as they are, the astropaths within this chamber are a conduit to the Ruinous Powers. Beacons within the unclean empyrean to forces that we have sworn to fight.

‘I fear that we have arrived too late.’

Overhead, hoarfrost coats the carved joists that support the chamber’s soaring ceiling. The scent of blood lingers on the damp air. A slight breeze in a chamber that should be utterly still.

‘Adepts,’ I call, tiring of the silence.

My voice fills the hollow, vaulted space. The ship shivers again, and the temperature plummets. Dant’s breath emerges from his helm in thick gouts of fog.

Only silence meets us. I tighten my grip on Penitence’s hilt.

Brother-Chaplain Dant kneels beside a row of dim statues. Grey stone carved in the memory of twisted, gaunt practitioners of the psionic arts.

‘It is blasphemy, brother,’ I subvocalise, ‘to feel the taint of the warp within this holy vessel. This is the price of our tolerance – to allow the sin of the psyker within our midst.’

‘It is good that we came,’ the Chaplain replies. ‘Whatever awaits us.’

Despite his temperance I feel righteous indignation blinding me.

‘We suffer no psykers within our brotherhood for a reason. Other Chapters may consider that a weakness, but we know it to be our strength. Other Chapters are not the God-Emperor’s crusaders. Other Chapters are not the sons of Dorn.’

Rows of frost-laden sculptures stare down at us as we tread towards the centre of the room. Here, the air is almost unbearably cold. Another rune flashes within my helm as the Dauntless Honour’s Geller field shivers again. Whispered voices reach my ears. A trick of my mind, I fear, until I see the two figures kneeling beside the altar at the centre of the room.

‘Adepts,’ I call. Neither figure acknowledges me.

The hooded robes of the choir’s twin astropaths are caked in ice atop their shaved heads. The thin, languishing mortals shiver where they kneel, skeletal hands clasped together beneath whispering lips.

‘The ramblings of madmen. The blasphemy of the possessed.’ My Lyman’s Ear filters out the sound of my footfalls and breath, but even focused, I struggle to make out their speech until I stand only feet from the psykers.

‘Not blasphemy, Brother-Castellan,’ Dant rebukes me. ‘A prayer.’

I pause.

‘Adepts,’ the Chaplain calls to the mortals. He kneels beside them and rests his crozius upon their altar. Finally, both of the psykers look up.

The twins meet my gaze, the resemblance in their features undeniable. ‘My lord,’ they speak in unison, their voices heavy and slow as if woken from a dream. From the corners of their pale, clouded eyes, thin tears of blood drip onto the floor.

My disquiet deepens.

‘Where are your acolytes?’ I demand.

‘Gone. Hiding. We have sent them away.’

A small blessing.

The two psykers cringe as the vessel shakes again. The urge to vomit rises within me. I have been conditioned from youth to defy the obscene forces that assault this room. I carry no gene-weakness for the madness that calls from outside the hull. That the two astropaths have kept their minds despite the flaw they bear is a credit to them both.

And yet, it is clear, their wills cannot hold any longer.

‘You know why we are here. Do you not?’ I ask them.

The astropaths gaze past me, distracted for a moment by something only they can hear.

‘Yes,’ they reply in unison.

There is fear in their voices, but they mask it well. Both mutants turn towards me and lower their hoods.

‘You honour yourselves with your courage,’ Dant tells them. ‘May the God-Emperor’s light watch over your souls.’

Penitence flashes in the darkness.

Their whispering ceases.

The Dauntless Honour shivers in the warp. The Vanguard light cruiser cuts through swirling currents of violet-hued ether, slicing into a churning sea that moves without pattern or order.

For nearly five millennia, the holy void craft has served the Eternal Crusade of the Black Templars, gifted to the endlessly wandering Chapter of Space Marines by the priests of the Machine God from the dry docks of forge world Mars itself. For nearly five millennia, the vessel has ferried the gene-perfected warriors of the Adeptus Astartes across the infinite darkness of the void.

Their fortress. Their refuge. Their home in the formless emptiness between the distant, uncaring stars.

In that time, she has survived countless battles. In that time, she has taken myriad wounds. In that time, she has entered into the empyrean on a thousand voyages and departed those churning currents back into realspace. In that time, she has witnessed wonders and terrors too numerous to recount.

But in all that time, the Dauntless Honour has never before touched the raw horror of the warp.

The cold madness of the immaterium brushes against the void craft’s hull as the Geller field that shields her metallic skin flickers. Her frame groans, over two hundred miles of intricately engineered girders and struts shifting minutely as her plasma drives roar in response. More than ten thousand meticulously maintained dynamometers register the shifting stresses, sending pulsed hexamathic signals to lesser cogitator nodes which compile their signals and route them to the great void loom at the vessel’s core. Cryogenic thermistors and piezoelectric actuators add their voices to the growing hymn, registering sudden changes in temperature and pressure.

Within their shielded armaglass housings, etched with writs of sustention and wards against the sin of malcalculation, the linked cerebral cogitators of the Dauntless Honour’s void loom devour their data in silence. Process lumens flicker dimly in the vast, empty hall, as flesh and machine calculate together, bathed in slowly circulating currents of ablutional fluid.

In five thousand years the Dauntless Honour has journeyed as many times through the wavering currents of the empyrean, but this is the first time she has ever contacted the warp’s substance directly. Initially, the raw data is flagged as corrupted. Supervisory algorithms in peripheral nodes isolate the malfunctioning sensors before the sheer volume of them overwhelms these protocols.

A sensory spire rips from the ship’s dorsum as the warp buffets her like a wave, the hundred augurs and lesser auspexes within it vanishing from her interlaced perceptive network. Airlocks seal around the resulting breach instantly, triggered by the sudden drop in pressure and temperature. Thousands of valves within ancient pipes snap shut on instinct as gouts of promethium and steam erupt from their sheared lumens. Reflexive scripts within sector and subsector node cogitators extinguish a dozen fires by venting compartments to the void and dispatch an army of mindless servitor-menders towards the gaping wounds.

But while these actions limit the physical damage to the vessel, they do nothing to stop the churning madness of the immaterium from streaming in to crash against her walls.

The Dauntless Honour’s secondary turbines flare as her great gyroscopes twist and writhe in the darkness. The subcell of her void loom devoted to warp navigation attempts to algorithmically right her position as the universe shifts.

Klaxons blare from vox-casters across entire decks as the very systems that give her life begin to fail. Beyond the borders of her wavering Geller field, the constant stream of signals from the other vessels of the fleet falls silent, the pulsed electromagnetic bursts of their voices swallowed by the swirling currents that strike the Dauntless Honour again and again.

For a terrible moment, there is only the darkness. Only the darkness and the cold, chaotic warp against her hull. Then, less than a second after it had fallen, her Geller field rises, and the thoughts of her Navigator return once again.

‘Warp storms are hardly uncommon, my lord.’

Shipmaster Khatri meets me at the door as I storm into the command cathedrum. That he expects my anger and seeks in advance to belay it tells me much of what I do not already know.

The human is a competent helmsman, and I trust him enough to leave the routine functions of this vessel to his experienced care under common circumstances. For several decades, he commanded a full battle group of the Imperial Navy before my Chapter acquired his indenture, and the black robes which hang upon the bondsman’s shoulders are adorned with seals of honour from each of his many campaigns since.

But the shipmaster is prideful. And this storm is far from common.

‘I sailed aboard this vessel before you were born,’ I growl back. ‘This is hardly a minor squall.’

The human nods, but he is not chastised. He strides across the elevated platform to the altar at the centre of the vaulted, ornate room. Half a dozen cables snake from the gilded terminal – inlaid with an image of the God-Emperor set amongst the the stars of the void – and insert themselves into the ports at the base of his skull.

He shivers, then blinks, and turns back towards me.

‘We’ve sustained substantial but survivable damage on two out of fifteen underdecks, my lord, and we’ve lost several peripheral spires and various arrays and gun positions–’

‘As well as our astropaths,’ I interrupt.

Shipmaster Khatri blinks once more, before understanding grips him. With the loss of the choir, we have lost our ability to send or receive missives beyond the range of our augurs. Any other damage to our communications arrays is suddenly critical.

‘An unfortunate sacrifice,’ he replies, his eyes drifting to Penitence in its scabbard on my waist. Fine droplets of blood coat the sword’s hilt and the devotional chain that binds the weapon to my gauntlet. ‘But not insurmountable.’

I survey the floor of the command cathedrum from the shipmaster’s dais. The room is beautiful, as is fitting for such a sacred location. Above my head, an intricate, mosaicked portrait of my gene-father Rogal Dorn stares down upon the work of his sons, each tile in the image no larger than the pad of my finger, inlaid in its place five thousand years ago by the hands of the first Castellan who commanded the Dauntless Honour.

Beneath the primarch’s gaze, the walls of the chamber are fashioned from three-foot-thick armaglass, meant to give my eyes a direct view of whatever lies outside my vessel. That vision is obstructed now, thankfully, by a dark blast door which wraps around the chamber, keeping sight of the mindless madness of the warp from this holy space.

In multi-levelled concentric rings around us, set below the dais, hundreds of servitors and serfs labour at dimly lit control altars. Runes and diagrams flash on pict-viewers before their watering, red-rimmed eyes while mortal acolytes of Brother-Chaplain Dant circle the hall in an endless round, bearing braziers streaming smoke and incense and chanting above the quiet buzzing and clicking of the machinery at work within the hall.

Even from this distant vantage I can see that the shipmaster undersells our position. We take new wounds every moment we remain in the warp.

‘I have felt our Geller field falter half a dozen times on my journey to this room alone, shipmaster. That we are not already beset by daemons and madness is a minor miracle of its own. How fares the rest of the fleet?’ I ask.

Khatri shifts. ‘I am not certain, my lord. They have not replied to our missives since the storm began.’

‘You should have summoned me sooner.’

Unrepentant, he meets my gaze. ‘I did.’

The bridge quivers as the Dauntless Honour shakes again, tossed in the currents that rage beyond my vision.

‘And Navigator Nendaiu? How long does she foresee us waiting to exit this mess?’

‘Not long,’ he replies. ‘I have her assurances from the mouth of her most trusted attendants.’

Another shiver on the bridge. Another dozen pict-viewers flash red against the faces of their minders.

The assurances of mortals be damned. I am tired of them. I have let this go on for too long already.

‘Cut power to the warp drive by half, shipmaster.’

‘My lord,’ he begins to protest.

I silence him by raising my hand. On a thousand prior days I have found his courage and his candour admirable, but now his dissent only strengthens my resolve.

‘Now,’ I command.

He nods solemnly, and unspoken instructions flow out through the cables in his skull. The tenor of the ship’s vibrations change.

‘It is done, my lord.’

‘Good. Wait for my order, but prepare to extinguish them completely.’

I leave the human where he stands as I depart.

The Navigator’s sanctum is linked to the command cathedrum by a narrow corridor only a few dozen yards long. Among other Chapters, even within other crusades of the Black Templars, the abhuman mutants who guide void craft through the warp are afforded greater liberty – even reverence – but I have always kept a watchful eye on those few aboard my vessel bearing any hint of the psyker and the mutant’s sins. Even those condoned by the God-Emperor’s Imperium.

I am grateful for my suspicions now.

Along both sides of the corridor, the visages of my vessel’s former Navigators stare down at me as I stride between them. Each of their inhuman figures are carved in regal poses in alternating stone of black basalt and purest white marble. In the carvings, the third eye of each mutant has been left uncovered, gazing forward into the madness of the warp. I knew several of them in life, and their graven likenesses fail to capture the juxtaposition of regality and aberrancy that I felt within their presence.

A menial of the Navis Nobilite steps aside as I storm past him, bowing deeply and mumbling a greeting. I do not knock upon the door to the sanctum. Instead I throw it open.

I am not surprised at what I find within.

Navigator Nendaiu churns inside her cradle, her thin abhuman form writhing with each shiver of the vessel in the warp. Golden cables bind her to the throne on which she sits, dripping trails of crimson blood from where their barbed mouths pierce her dark skin. A black veil hangs over the mortal’s forehead, but even with her third eye covered, I find my gaze avoiding her countenance.

Golden-robed attendants swarm about her, ministering to their master with frenzied, anxious haste. Their voices rise and fall in lilting High Gothic, interspersed with the unrecognisable, private tongue that their cloistered faction has developed after generations aboard this ship.

The room drips with fear.

I push the Navigator’s attendants aside and set my fists upon her throne. The chatter of her acolytes rises, yet none attempt to remove me from their master. I feel shame on the Navigator’s behalf. For me to set my hands upon a lord of the Navis Nobilite borders upon sacrilege, but the time for propriety has long since passed.

‘Navigator,’ I say, my voice a dark, ringing churn. My anger cuts through the chatter of her mortal attendants and the groaning of the vessel beneath my feet.

Navigator Nendaiu shivers slightly and mumbles beneath her breath. I lean forward, my face only inches from hers. Even beneath her veil, I feel the gaze of her warp eye, squeezing like a vice at the back of my mind. The skin on my back prickles as if needled. My gorge rises. My mouth grows dry.

‘Navigator,’ I command.

The mutant opens her eyes.

The Navigator does not reply for a moment, her gaze empty like a man woken from a deep sleep. There is confusion, then indignation, then recognition within her irises of amber.

‘Castellan Emeric,’ she replies. ‘Why are you here?’

The Navigator does not chastise me for rousing her, nor for violating the privacy of her sanctum. The absence of her anger stokes my concern.

‘Shipmaster Khatri assures me we are weathering this storm. I do not believe him.’

Navigator Nendaiu shivers, her mind elsewhere, her golden eyes briefly blank as she gazes into the currents of the warp with her third. I feel the floor buck beneath me as the vessel manoeuvres in response to her subtle urgings.

‘She is afraid,’ the Navigator’s thin voice whispers.

I find myself confused at her choice of words.

That my Navigator would be frightened is dire enough, but she does not refer to herself. I check my senses, but nothing of the warp taint that obscured the astropath’s chancel has entered this room. Navigator Nendaiu may be distracted, but there is no madness in her voice.

‘Who?’ I ask.

‘The ship,’ she replies.

A weight settles upon my shoulders.

‘Can you guide us through it?’ I ask, frustrated by the slowness of this conversation.

‘I am not certain,’ she says eventually. ‘The Astronomican. It flickers. Its light comes and goes as if I am cresting and then plunging into the troughs of great waves.’

‘And our vessel, the Dauntless Honour?’

‘She resists me,’ the Navigator replies. ‘We have slowed.’ It is not a question but an observation. That it has taken her so long to recognise this change concerns me. There is no longer any doubt in my mind.

‘We have,’ I answer. ‘You understand why?’

Uncertainty crosses her face for the briefest moment, then iron. I admire her courage.

‘Yes, Castellan.’ Silence. ‘I shall hold our course true for as long as I am able.’

‘Very well,’ I reply. ‘Make yourself ready.’

As I rise, I join my hands in the aquila before me. I have no better comfort to offer her.

The Dauntless Honour’s warp drive makes no sound as it is extinguished.

For a brief, terrible moment the energies of the empyrean vanish around her and there is nothing. Then the roar of realspace and the tremendous weight of distant gravity return.

The ship’s frame shivers and then cracks as she crashes into realspace at tenfold the velocity her specifications permit. Great slabs of hull plating rip from her like flaps of rent skin, a dozen gun spires sheared cleanly off the vessel’s surface. The cold light and radiation of a thousand stars strike her photonic sensors at once, the impacts of minute space debris tearing into her shields at non-negligible fractions of the speed of light.

A thousand missives of failure reach her void loom at once from a hundred lesser nodes throughout her vast expanse.

Void breaches are present on every deck. Cooling fluids and hydraulic power leak from innumerable lines. Visual and auditory data streams into the void loom’s subcells from myriad pict-viewers and vox-receivers, accompanied by tactile perception from the countless servitors rushing to stymie the damage, heedless of their own safety or function. Dozens burn or freeze the moment they enter compartments full of flame or touch the emptiness of the void.

Cerebral cogitators verify calculations in silence. There are no discrepancies.

The Dauntless Honour is breaking.

More missives from endless compiling nodes. The void loom incorporates their added data in fractions of seconds. Every major system aboard the vessel is damaged, many beyond repair.

Her frame buckles as her plasma drives roar. Her hull groans as stabilising circuits attempt to right the ship’s orientation within realspace. Fuses burst beneath dented bulkheads across a dozen deck levels. The lesser machine spirits of node cogitators flicker, scream, and die.

In the dim glow of blinking lumens, with the clicks and hisses of a million processors, the vessel’s void loom synthesises those inputs that remain.

The Dauntless Honour is broken.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2024.
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the purchaser of a Black Library e-book product (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase a Black Library e-book (“e-book”). The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media.

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.