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The Blood Bound – Extract

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The Blood Bound

Rob Sanders

Valens 160, 780.M41
(the 25th year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade)

I

The Iron Snakes frigate Serpentra glided smoothly into the Valens System, the mean lines of its hull dusted with the frost of immaterial translation. A crowded arrangement of super-hot gas giants and secondary satellite systems, Valens was a quiet corner of the Sabbat Worlds – all but silenced by the thunder of old war. The void seemed to echo with the emptiness of horror long past. The Valens System was a ragged wound that refused to heal.

As the frigate slid in-system with inertial silkiness, the wreckage of monitors, mining vessels and entry waystations was pushed aside. Nudging its way past derelicts and smashed orbitals, the Serpentra’s progress sent wreckage pirouetting off into the void. The Valens star burned like a dying fire, casting the churn of gas giants and clusters of attendant moons in a rusty light. In the glowering silence, the Space Marine frigate drifted towards the hive world of Valens 160.

‘Try voxmissions again,’ Porphyrian commanded. The Iron Snakes Space Marine stood like a statue before the bridge lancet screen, cutting a silhouette into the growing orb of the hive world. ‘Short-range capture.’

The bridge serf complied with Porphyrian’s order.

‘Nothing, my lord,’ the Ithakan reported.

As a member of the Adeptus Astartes, Porphyrian’s hearts knew nothing of the silent dread experienced by the lesser beings on the frigate’s command deck. Even Porphyrian had to admit that what they had found – and more importantly what they had not – in the Valens System was disquieting. He feared that was exactly what it was designed to accomplish: system and interstellar shipping hanging like abandoned ornaments in the blackness of space. Communication channels a deathly crackle. A hive world of billions, silent and still. He turned to Andromedes, the only other battle-brother present on the bridge. Only weeks before, Andromedes had been a petitioner. Now he was a battle-brother of Squad Orpheon. Andromedes gave his sergeant raised eyebrows above a mask of grim anticipation.

‘Take us in,’ Porphyrian commanded.

‘Yes, my lord,’ a helmserf acknowledged.

Under the gentle thrust of sub-light engines, the frigate ploughed its way through the abandoned vessels and wreckage. Silent expectation and the rumble of the Serpentra’s drives took them past the moons of Dralion, Vortigus Minor and Aeonara. Past great abandoned mining transports and bulk ore-freighters. Past the silent reef-stations and loose, broken belt of orbital installations that rotated slowly around the hive world of Valens 160.

‘There,’ the helmserf called out from the side of the command deck. He stepped forward, grasping the pulpit rail and pointing up at the lancet screen. ‘The Excommunicado.’

‘You’re sure?’ Porphyrian asked. He peered at the free-floating vessel to which the helmserf was pointing, but even he couldn’t make out the vessel’s name or designations.

‘Forgive me, my lord,’ the helmserf said. He had spoken before he was certain. ‘From her lines she’s a penitentiary vessel.’

The Commissariat corvette Excommunicado had left the world of Sapienca with its damned cargo – the captured heretic warlord Sholen Skara – bound for the Inquisitorial fortress on Khulan. It boasted a pair of escort vessels and a half-brigade selected from the 123rd Pontifical Strikes. It never reached its destination and neither did its escort of Falchion-class warships. The Ordo Hereticus blamed the loss on insufficient security provisions, while the Departmento Munitorum accused the Inquisition authorities on Khulan of failing to send ships to meet them en route as arranged. Porphyrian had come to view the loss of Sholen Skara as inevitable under such circumstances. It was a long trip from Sapienca in the war-torn Sabbat Worlds to Khulan and the relative safety of Imperial space. A lot could go wrong on such a journey. Especially transporting a dangerous heretic like Sholen Skara. A ruinous mongrel. A mass-murdering butcher of worlds with the blood of millions on his hands. What were a few more Officio Prefectus officers and storm trooper turnkeys?

Now Porphyrian and his Iron Snakes had the duty to find the magister, to ensure he made it to Khulan. When Apothecary Nemertes had asked if Porphyrian agreed with the mission, the sergeant told him that the Adeptus Astartes didn’t have to agree with a mission in order to prosecute it. When the Apothecary pressed him he admitted that he thought that the Militarum Tempestus forces securing Sapienca had made a mistake, that Sholen Skara was too dangerous to be left alive and should have been formally executed. The Commissariat liaison at the mission briefing had confessed to the sergeant that he did not quite know why Skara hadn’t been processed in such a fashion, believing that the decision had been made by a superior – a Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt. Porphyrian had never met Colonel-Commissar Gaunt, but took him for a fool nonetheless.

In truth the whole situation was a mess. In a region strangled by bureaucracy as much as scarred by war, it had taken years for Sholen Skara’s disappearance to be classed as worthy of investigation and forces assigned to such a duty. Astrotelepathic silence from the Valens System and the disappearance of merchant shipping despatched to the hive world had led the Ordo Hereticus to discover the record of an echo, a brief mayday from the Excommunicado’s registered astropath. A miserable call for help cut brutally short.

Porphyrian was honour-bound to answer the request of the Ordo Hereticus, but in reality had wanted little to do with such a duty. Sholen Skara was undoubtedly a monster deserving of death, or the worse fate waiting for him at Khulan, but the Iron Snakes Space Marine didn’t relish the prospect of the sons of Ithaka being employed as either a glorified escort or the firing squad for a wretched heretic. As he told Nemertes, such duties should have been beyond the Adeptus Astartes, but obligations between the Ordo and the Iron Snakes stood. Porphyrian told Squad Orpheon what Brother-Captain Cules had told him – that they all took their orders from somebody.

‘Confirmed,’ Brother Andromedes called, moving between a serf-station and a runebank manned by a Chapter servitor. ‘Designations identify vessel as Commissariat corvette Excommunicado, out of Sapienca.’

Porphyrian nodded and looked back at the tumbling vessel. ‘Anything from the vessel?’

‘Nothing,’ Andromedes said. ‘Dead.’

Porphyrian suspected that was all they would find aboard the corvette, but still the vessel needed to be searched. It was too much to hope that Sholen Skara would be among the bodies.

‘Brother Andromedes,’ Porphyrian said. ‘Squad status?’ Porphyrian knew that Brother Deucalion would have such matters in hand, but the sergeant was putting the former petitioner through his paces.

‘The Apothecary has met Brother Deucalion on the flight deck,’ Brother Andromedes said. ‘Brother Deucalion reports the squad battle-prepped, observances made and awaiting further orders. Brother Salames has assembled a flight crew: the gunship Ithakariad standing by.’

‘Very good, Brother Andromedes,’ Porphyrian said. ‘Summon the ship’s steward, if you please.’

Leodocus, the ship’s steward, presented himself. As the senior Chapter bondsman aboard the Serpentra, and a failed initiate of the Adeptus Astartes, it was rumoured that Leodocus never slept, and that he made use of his cult indoctrination, training and conditioning to make himself available to his Ithakan overlords at all times.

‘Leodocus,’ Porphyrian said. ‘Squad Orpheon is to leave the ship. I want you to enact the usual vicarial protocols. I want the Excommunicado under the frigate’s guns at all times. If Squad Orpheon is out of contact for three sidereal rotations you will take the Serpentra to Captain Cules.’

‘Yes, brother-sergeant.’

‘Ship’s steward, the Serpentra is yours. Remain on station and stand by for further orders.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Do you think this is a good idea?’ Brother Andromedes asked as he left the bridge with his sergeant.

‘No,’ Porphyrian told his battle-brother. ‘This is a very bad idea.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Sabbat Crusade in Great Britain in 2014.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Raymond Swanland.

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