Contents

Cover

The Convocation – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

THE CONVOCATION

Tammy Nicholls

The suffocating blanket of sleep withdrew. Halik could feel his throat loosen as a din penetrated his waking consciousness. He opened his eyes, thankful for an instant to be rid of his awful slumber. Then pain flooded his senses as the full force of the klaxon’s blare and the overhead lumens hit him. Muscles screaming, he lifted into an upright position and felt the noise echo around his head. His neck ached and his brain felt too large for his skull. As bad as it was, it was still better than his recurring nightmares.

‘Come on!’ said Sirius. Halik could hear the thuds as the larger man pulled on his fatigues. It was always easy to hear Sirius if he was in the vicinity.

Suddenly something slapped Halik in the face. It was his trousers. He craned his head up and saw Sirius grinning at him, vest untucked and dog tags askew. For a moment Halik focused on his comrade’s scalp, his hairline deflected on one side by the ugly scars that ran up from his missing ear, the result of a machinery accident in his youth. Urgency then kicked in and Halik began to scramble.

Boots clattered ahead of them on the grating as Halik and Sirius made their way to the command room. ‘Room’ was a generous term – it was more an open-topped box formed by the prefabricated walls which had been hastily thrown up to accommodate the Navis team for their two-month journey.

Hearing voices ahead, the pair entered to find most of the team already assembled and Sergeant-at-Arms Boxer standing, feet slightly apart, glaring at them. Halik gritted his teeth and joined the knot of men and women in front of her. He adjusted his position to try to make eye contact with Cleilia, their void-jammer. She was the smallest of the crew and today she wore the overlarge eyeglasses he had occasionally seen her use while doing close repair work.

Boxer’s massive plasteel cuirass reflected the arc lumens, lighting her face from below and increasing the menace in her expression. Her thick blonde hair was braided, regulation compliant, but she still wore the small curl-lets in front of her ears, which were not. They glistened with styling creme.

‘For Throne’s sake,’ she said, watching the two juniors skid to a standstill. Her coarse Low Gothic corrupted ‘Throne’ into something more filthy sounding. ‘All right, everyone. I’ve not had our regular “all is well” hail from our esteemed captain. I can’t reach the bridge or our master sergeant. We need to sweep this vessel and find out what’s going on. I’m not taking any chances. I want full plate armour and the auspex calibrated. Shotguns and hatchets. I want us ready for anything.’

She turned to point at the large plan of the Gethsemane behind her. The state of the crusty, age-spotted schematic, replete with evidently hand-made revisions, did not immediately give any assurance of precision, but the freighter was old, and it was not uncommon for antique plans to still be accurate.

‘We’ll proceed out of this hold in Felix formation. Up this set of passageways to the bridge. Then if we still can’t raise the captain, we’ll move on down here to the emergency rendezvous with Master Sergeant-at-Arms Patersen.’

The name hung for a moment. The Navis non-commissioned officer was a legend. While all, except maybe Boxer, were too fresh to have actually met him, the man was spoken about with awe in Navis circles. That he was leading the sister team located at the aft of the ship was a source of much pride.

Halik wasn’t certain of Patersen’s accolades. He wondered if Boxer had indeed met with him on this voyage. As far as he could tell, like the rest of them, she had not left this section of the ship since they embarked, as was standard protocol. While they were grateful for the protection the Navis provided against assailants, ships’ captains generally didn’t want the autonomous groups of well-armed troops wandering around their vessels.

‘Questions?’ Boxer asked. Halik’s mind was racing. He began to formulate a question about scanning when Cleilia beat him to it.

Cleilia stood up even straighter, her uniform somehow retaining its parade creases. ‘Ma’am. Do you want the C.A.T.?’

‘No, it’ll slow us down. Take Last Laugh, though.’ Boxer gave a distasteful look at the gheistskull bobbing in the corner with its dull, red, glowing eye roving about. ‘Any more? I want you all ready to go in ten minutes.’

‘Aye, ma’am,’ they all chimed.

As she stalked off, Last Laugh’s glare turned to Halik, and he recalled being told that it was composed of the head of a former Navis void-breacher who was killed in action. He wondered for a moment if this might be the fate that awaited him.

The skull’s necrotic grimace hung for a moment in front of Halik before its gravitic motor coughed and it moved off ahead of him through the bulkhead. He followed it into the corridor. Through his helmet’s pickup he could hear Sirius’ boots behind him, the man’s loping gait quite unmistakable. The interstices were dank and mildewed and slick underfoot. He found himself holding his breath.

The team walked for several minutes before Boxer’s voice crackled over their vox-network from the front of the formation. She said what Halik was thinking: ‘Empty. Any sightings?’ Halik joined all his comrades in sending ‘negative’ pings back to her.

Then they saw it: a head and torso protruding from a wall. An arm hanging listlessly, twitching rhythmically. There was no sign of any legs.

It was a servitor. Halik had, of course, seen them before – occasionally on the agri-plains where he grew up and far more frequently since he’d joined the Navis. They still struck him as ghastly, and this one was particularly so. Its torso ended at the stomach where it was joined to a bracing arm bolted to the wall. Its milky white eyes caught the Navis’ torchlight as they filed past it. Halik couldn’t help but take one last glance at the network of crude plugs and hoses, preserving the almost-corpse in a state of near-death.

Click here to buy The Convocation.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

This eBook edition published in 2023 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by John Michelbach.

The Convocation © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2023. The Convocation, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-80407-713-9

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

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.