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The Dread Sentinels of Dorn

Rob Sanders

Caractus Kontrador stared out into oblivion.

Starlight glinted faintly off the old gold of his plate as the Imperial Fists captain stood on the edge of the ruined deck. The Dread Sentinel star fort was a derelict. It was a mangled wreck, floating through space.

Kontrador’s mag-locked boots anchored him to the ragged edge of the deck in the absence of gravity. He was standing alone in what had been the fort Reclusiam. There was little left of the hallowed chamber. Its altar and minor relics were gone. The stained glass of its lancet windows was smashed, the coloured shards drifting and clinking against Kontrodor’s plate. Its candles burned no more. Now the searing blackness of the void intruded on the sanctity of the place. The deep cold of its darkness felt its way through what remained of the Dread Sentinel star fort.

Kontrador scanned the utter devastation. As he cast his gaze across the twisted superstructure his optics returned an annotated catalogue of destruction.

‘It’s as if…’ he began, but words seemed to fall short of the picture his imagination was painting, ‘…something took a bite out of it.’

‘Certainly looks that way from here, captain,’ Veteran Sergeant Athalric Saggitar voxed back from the command deck of the Praetoriax. The Imperial Fists frigate was docked to what was left of the decimated Dread Sentinel.

Kontrador soaked up the pain of the situation. He felt the crushing responsibility between the thud of his hearts. As captain of the Fifth Company he was also the ‘Master of the Marches’. It was the Fifth Company’s frigates that patrolled the border between the Segmentum Solar and rest of the galaxy. The sentinel star forts situated on that border were Kontrador’s to inspect.

The destruction of even one such relic bastion was a grievous loss to both the company and Chapter. For the Imperial Fists, its absence left an unacceptable opening in the strategic defence of the segmentum and Ancient Terra itself. Traitor crusades and xenos invasions had been launched taking tactical advantage of less.

‘Opinion, sergeant?’ Kontrador asked.

‘Comet strike?’ Saggitar ventured. ‘Vessel collision? Some kind of gravitational phenomenon? Our brothers and their bondsmen couldn’t manoeuvre the star fort out of its way, whatever it was.’

‘All possible,’ Kontrador agreed, ‘but they do not explain the absence of our brothers and the crew.’

‘No power, no air, no gravity, no medicae facilities,’ Sergeant Saggitar crackled over the vox-channel. ‘Perhaps they took any remaining landers and tried for a nearby world.’

‘Would you have done that, sergeant?’ Kontrador pressed.

‘No, sir,’ Saggitar answered. ‘I would not. Nothing would have persuaded me to abandon my post.’

‘That’s what bothers me,’ the captain admitted. ‘I don’t think our brothers would have done so either.’

‘You think them dead, sir?’

‘I don’t think anything less would have driven them from their relic fort or their sacred duties,’ Caractus Kontrador told his sergeant.

The captain changed the vox-channel on his helm.

‘Zoltan,’ Kontrador said, ‘Del Cano, Zyracuse – report in. Anything?’

‘Sweep of the upper decks complete, brother-captain,’ Lessandro Zoltan returned through the static. The company champion of the Fifth sounded defeated, which was something he had never been. ‘No Imperial Fists to be found.’

Kontrador cycled through the channels.

‘Antonin,’ Kontrador continued. ‘Techmarine Novax – report.’

Kontrador had sent Ancient Antonin – the Standard Bearer for his company and the command squad searching the derelict fort – down to the blessed generatorium and engineering decks. Accompanying him was Brother Novax, the Techmarine assigned to the Praetoriax.

No survivors, brother-captain,’ the grizzled Antonin replied. ‘Imperial Fists, fort serfs and servitor crews all gone. Brother Novax has made his diagnostic assessment.

‘Proceed, Techmarine Novax,’ Kontrador urged, desperate for anything that might explain what happened to the Dread Sentinel.

‘An examination of the main plasma reactor reveals a great deal of internal damage, brother-captain,’ Tancrazar Novax told him.

‘Internal damage?’ Kontrador repeated back to the Techmarine. ‘You mean, not consistent with the physical damage sustained by the fort?’

‘No, sir,’ Novax crackled. ‘While the reactor is still operational, the workings between it and the rest of the fort display electromagnetic disruption and damage.’

‘Could this be the result of a natural phenomenon?’ the captain asked. ‘Discharge from a nearby nova or some kind of void quake?’

‘Possibly,’ Tancrazar Novax confirmed. ‘That still wouldn’t explain the physical damage to the superstucture.’

‘What would?’ Kontrador asked. The captain wanted answers and was tiring of questions that led to more questions.

‘Perhaps,’ the Techmarine offered, ‘both types of damage are the result of a field flux – a vessel attempting to translate into the warp within proximity of the fort. That kind of accident could conceivably have caused this damage.’

‘Thank you, Techmarine Novax,’ Kontrador said, before switching to an open channel. ‘All Imperial Fists fall back to the ship. Your sweep is over. Sergeant Saggitar?’

‘Receiving, brother-captain,’ Veteran Sergeant Athalric Saggitar sent back from the serf-crowded bridge of the docked Praetoriax.

‘Meet us at the airlock. We’re returning to the ship.’

Kontrador lifted the magnetic sole of one armoured boot after another, turning slowly around. He had a zero-gravity negotiation of the star fort’s twisted interior ahead of him.

‘Very good, captain.’

‘I want you to monitor cross-system communication over all company and charter channels,’ Kontrador commanded. ‘No matter how faint. If our brothers are stranded on a nearby planetoid, then I want us to hear them.’

‘Yes, captain.’

‘And have Epistolary Tantal reach out for the fort astropath,’ Kontrador said.

‘I did, sir,’ Saggitar told him, his voice suddenly strained. Kontrador knew that there was little brotherly love lost between the sergeant and the psyker. On the segmentum border, however, with light years between patrol ships, sentinel forts and everything else – a Librarius communications officer was essential. ‘Epistolary Tantal has just reported something to me that I think you should hear, captain.’

‘Proceed, Epistolary Tantal,’ Kontrador said.

‘He’s alive,’ the Librarian said, his voice a haunted, cryptic hiss across the vox. Kontrador refined the channel reception.

‘Say again, Praetoriax, say again.’

‘The fort astropath is alive,’ Tantal told him. ‘He’s close. And getting closer.’

Something akin to a chill ran through the captain at the psyker’s words.

‘Position?’

‘Port-side aft and closing.’

‘Saggitar?’ Kontrador said. ‘Returns?’

‘Augur arrays show nothing, captain,’ the sergeant told him.

Turning, Caractus Kontrador took several clunking steps towards the ragged edge of the deck. With his boots mag-locked and the fingers of his gauntlets anchoring him to a mangled column, the captain leaned out to get a better view down the decimated length of the star fort. There were no words for what he saw.

‘Dorn’s thunder…’ he managed.

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