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The End and the Death: Volume III – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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i

Just hold

‘I repeat, we are nine hours out. Deploying now to wide formation assault positions, inbound. Terra Control, do you receive? Can you respond? Repeat, we are nine hours out. Terra Control, we need immediate tracking guidance. Light your beacons. We are extending to wide assault formation. Terra, remain in secure defensive alignment. Hold your positions. That’s all you need to do. Just hold. I repeat, we are nine hours out. Terra Control, acknowledge. Hold your positions and light guidance now. Terra Control, this is Guilliman.’

When Roboute Guilliman finishes speaking, a silence gathers in the flagship’s master-vox chamber. No one dares to speak, thinks Thiel. Or no one has anything to say. Tension has been a permanent state for eight days, as constant as the sigh of the air-scrubbers or the hum of realspace drives throbbing the deck plates.

Guilliman stays in his seat, watching the Master of Vox minutely adjust the dials of the ship’s main transmitter. Satisfied, Master Silactus throws the row of switches that shuts down the vox-caster with a warm thump and ends transmission. He turns, and bows solemnly to the primarch.

‘Message encrypted and sent, my lord,’ he says.

Guilliman detaches the vox-cable from the external port in his armour’s gorget, passes it to a waiting attendant, and rises to his feet.

‘Inform me immediately of anything, Silactus,’ says Guilliman. ‘The slightest variation in background noise. Even if you don’t think it’s a transmission.’

‘I will, my lord.’

‘We go again in fifteen cycles,’ says Guilliman. ‘By voice.’

‘Of course, my lord.’

Guilliman walks towards the chamber hatch. Thiel and the protection detail fall in behind him. They go where he goes.

‘Review, Aeonid,’ the primarch says to him without looking around. Thiel doesn’t question it, or point out that they are conducting a review every ten cycles, or remind his lord that if anything – anything – had changed while Guilliman was making his broadcast, Thiel would have been informed, and would have broken in immediately. This is Guilliman’s mode now. Utter, unwavering focus. To remark upon it is not to risk the primarch’s anger, but rather a cold look of reproach that a man might carry for the rest of his life like a wound.

Likewise the transmissions. Every fifteen cycles. The Master of Vox could easily resend the file of Guilliman’s original message, but the primarch insists on making it in person every time, as though his voice will carry further and more clearly than any recording.

Thiel does not think of his lord as a superstitious man. But there is an obsessive compulsion to Guilliman’s current mode, an attention to every detail, as though Guilliman worries that the slightest operational lapse will court ill fortune.

‘You think me too careful, Aeonid?’ Guilliman asks as they walk.

Reading my mind now, are you, my great lord? Thiel thinks.

‘Given the history of this conflict, lord primarch,’ Thiel replies, ‘it is evident that no one can be too careful.’

‘Good answer,’ Guilliman replies.

They enter the bridge. The command deck of Guilliman’s acting flagship, Courage Above All, is running quietly and diligently despite the hundreds of personnel present. Eikos Lamiad, Tetrarch of Ultramar-Konor, Captain Demet Valita, and Shipmaster Dohel are waiting beside the strategium table on the dais. The table, its huge frame wrought of chased silver and steel, is already lit. Thiel did not have to signal ahead. They knew a review would be required.

Guilliman walks directly to the table and stares at the complex hololith it is projecting from its glass surface. The protection detail holds back, but Thiel stays at the primarch’s side.

‘Begin,’ says Guilliman.

The tetrarch commences his overview. It is more a recitation than a statement. They have done this every ten cycles for the last eight days, and scarcely a word has changed.

‘The fleet has deployed to wide assault positions eighteen light minutes outside the terminator shock boundary of the Solar Realm,’ says Lamiad. ‘The fleet amasses thirty-two hundred vessels…’

Thiel knows it by heart. Thirty-two hundred principal vessels, most of them grand cruiser class or larger, supported by bulk carriers, war-engine mass transports, and a flotilla of tenders. It contains most of Battlefleet Macragge, the Konor Squadron, the Saramanth Squadron, the Lux Ultramaris battle group, the Third Vanguard Flotilla of the Five Hundred Worlds, the Occluda Second Principal Fleet, the Minos Crucis Fast-Attack, and allied warships of the Shattered Legions. Lamiad lists each ship by name, and Guilliman lets him. The fleet translated from the warp eight days earlier via extra-system Mandeville points when it became evident that the Solar Realm was impassable. It has been slowly approaching the hem of the realm ever since on realspace impellers in an assault-ready crescent formation six thousand kilometres wide.

They remain assault-ready. Hosts of Astartes sit in silence, fully plated, in their launch-armed drop pods or aboard Stormbirds on the launch racks of the excursion bays, on every vessel. In hangar decks, pilots wait beside their prepped Furies and Xiphon interceptors, and in the echoing troop bays, Excertus and Auxilia armies in full kit shift restlessly on the loading decks beside their hulking transports.

Some say it is the largest armada assembled since the early days of the Great Crusade. Thiel worries that it is not.

Thiel studies the hololithic display while the tetrarch speaks. It hasn’t changed any more than Lamiad’s words have. In one corner of the table glows a graphic representation of the fleet, called by some the vengeance fleet, and by others the salvation fleet. Guilliman simply calls it ‘the fleet’. It is the first to arrive. There will be others, other fleets currently pushing the tolerances of their warp drives as they race across the galaxy from all points to answer Guilliman’s call.

The vast fleet is just a little crescent on the table, like a pale new moon. The remainder of the wide surface-plate shows a representation of the Solar Realm.

It is a dark blankness, without feature. There are no marker icons for the Throneworld, or Luna, or Mars, or even Sol. A few tags along the edge display spatial condition details obtained by scout drogues sent forward by the Solace of Iax, the grand battleship acting as advance picket at one tip of the armada’s crescent. The data on these tags is already beginning to degrade, but what remains legible speaks only of the impossible. An abominable level of exotic energies and immaterial flux, many types of which have never previously been recorded or observed. A de-constitution of realspace. An absolute collapse of four-dimensional physics. Everything has corrupted, transfigured, or ceased.

There is no longer a causal flow of time in the Solar Realm.

It is a blackness, without feature or form, an imperfect sphere of neverness some four thousand light minutes in diameter. It is being referred to as ‘the negation zone’. It is expanding slowly, beyond the heliopause of the Sol System, and is starting to envelop the Opik-Oort Cloud, and disturb its ice-dust and its nurseries of long-period comets.

Thiel knows that the area is big, inconceivably big, the entire span of a solar system. He also knows that however big he imagines it is, the true scale is beyond his comprehension.

There is no way to determine the position of the sun or Terra in the negation zone, or to know if either still exists. It is not even possible to calculate a projection of Terra’s location based on established astronomical data. The vast area of blackness, that four-thousand-light-minutes span as observed from the interstellar medium outside, is primarily composed of warpstuff, and thus may be vastly bigger inside.

Without a beacon or true signal to lead it in, the fleet cannot reach Terra. They could go in blind, of course, and scour the blackness in the hope of finding something. But such an effort might take them a hundred thousand years, and they would most likely go missing themselves.

The absence of a beacon or response is more than just a block to navigation. It suggests there is no one left to find. It suggests that all is entirely lost.

Lamiad finishes his review. Shipmaster Dohel begins his status report of the fleet’s fitness, which Thiel also knows word for word.

Guilliman raises his hand, cutting Dohel short.

‘No need, old friend,’ he says. ‘We all know.’

He studies the strategium. They all glance at each other. It is the first time in eight days that the primarch has broken his meticulous routine. Is his patience wearing thin? Is his desperate need to come to his father’s aid eroding his good sense and tactical genius?

Is he actually thinking of… going in anyway?

‘I want…’ he begins quietly, ‘proposals.’

‘Proposals, my lord?’ Lamiad asks.

‘Proposals for reasonable measures of approach, Eikos,’ Guilliman replies. ‘I will consider anything. Perhaps a long, advanced column, our ships in a chain, each tied by vox-contact to the one behind, to fathom a route. Or beacon drogues sent ahead to light the way and transmit incremental navigation data–’

‘A chain-advance would leave us entirely vulnerable to hostile ambush, my lord,’ says Lamiad.

‘The drogues are quickly overwhelmed by immaterial conditions, my lord,’ says Dohel, ‘and any data cannot be trusted, or expected to remain fixed–’

‘That’s enough,’ says Thiel. He can see the look on Guilliman’s face. ‘The primarch is not suggesting such things, and is perfectly aware of their impracticalities. They are merely theoreticals to illustrate the type of ideas he is looking for.’

Dohel nods. Captain Valita gives Thiel a cold look, but says nothing. An Astartes sergeant gets to scold a tetrarch when he serves as commander of the Master of Ultramar’s protection detail.

‘Theoreticals, precisely,’ says Guilliman. He gestures towards the ominous blankness of the table’s display. ‘The only enemy I see, my friends, is tension. I would rather we had an actual foe to engage.’

He pauses.

‘The Emperor must live,’ he adds.

And what if He does not? Thiel wonders. What follows? A collapse of the Imperium? An endless war against the usurping Warmaster? The ascension of Ultramar as the new Imperium in the East? Would Guilliman succeed his father? Surely there is no other candidate–

Damn the theoreticals. Thiel looks away.

He does so in time to see the Mistress of Sensoria rise from her seat twenty metres below on the main floor of the bridge.

‘My lord–’ Thiel says at once.

Guilliman has seen her too. They descend to the sensoria station, with Lamiad, Dohel and Valita trailing.

‘Contact,’ the Mistress of Sensoria declares. She steadies her voice. ‘I am painting a contact six AU inside the anomaly limits.’

‘Inside?’ Guilliman asks, joining her.

‘Within the zone of… of disruption, yes, my lord,’ she replies.

‘A signal?’ Guilliman asks. Though he tries to disguise it, there is a note of hope in the primarch’s voice that Thiel finds unbearably painful.

‘No, my lord. A ship.’

The Mistress of Sensoria snaps her fingers, and her officers redouble their efforts at the stations around her, finessing auspex, main augurs, and particle sweeps.

‘Indistinct,’ she says, studying the screen as the results collate. ‘Almost an imaging ghost. But it appears to be a vessel of significant displacement. Any smaller, and it would be invisible in that miasma.’

After days of scrutiny, it’s the first source, signal or object of any kind they have detected inside the negation zone.

‘Identity?’ Guilliman asks, looking for himself. ‘Marker code? Transponder?’

‘None registering,’ replies the Mistress of Sensoria.

‘That’s a large ship…’ comments Lamiad.

‘Can you rotate the image to plan view, enhance, and run a silhouette comparative?’ Dohel asks the Mistress of Sensoria.

‘Already in process, my master,’ she replies. The fuzz of green light on the black screen tilts slightly, but becomes no more distinct. It’s just a blur to Thiel. If he hadn’t been told, he would have mistaken it for a smudged thumbprint on the glass. Which is why he is a Legiones Astartes master-at-arms and the Mistress of Sensoria is the Mistress of Sensoria.

‘Gloriana class,’ she says abruptly. ‘Awaiting cogitator confirmation… Yes, Gloriana class.’

Dohel is about to say something.

‘Scylla pattern,’ says the Mistress of Sensoria. ‘Cogitation confirms Gloriana class, Scylla pattern.’ She looks at Guilliman nervously.

‘Which one?’ he asks.

The Mistress of Sensoria somehow retains her composure.

‘There is not a long list of alternatives, my lord,’ she says. ‘Configuration of the hull and bow do not match any profiles in the registry, and it is significantly larger than any Gloriana class on record. It has clearly undergone refit or rebuild, or perhaps some other form of alteration–’

‘Which one?’ asks Guilliman again.

‘I cannot authenticate definitively, my lord,’ she says. ‘But aspects of the stern assembly and hull plating suggest it is the Vengeful Spirit.’

There is a long silence.

‘Does he…’ Guilliman clears his throat. ‘Does he come for us?’

‘The contact is not moving or under power,’ says the Mistress of Sensoria. ‘No shields, no trace of weapons primed or armed–’

‘Prepare to engage,’ Guilliman says to Dohel quietly. ‘I want that ship dead.’

Dohel nods. ‘I ask you to confirm your instruction, my lord.’

‘So confirmed and ordered,’ Guilliman responds.

Dohel turns.

‘Officer of record,’ he shouts. ‘Start the mark.’

‘Initiating Thirteenth Legion combat record, elapsed time count,’ the Rubricator Martial replies. ‘Count begins. Solar Realm mark zero-zero decimal zero-zero decimal zero-zero.’

‘My lord,’ says the Mistress of Sensoria suddenly. ‘A… a second contact.’

‘Ah,’ says Guilliman, turning back to her. ‘Now his fleet emerges–’

‘It is another Gloriana-class vessel,’ she says.

‘Another?’

‘Six light minutes lateral to the first, not in formation.’

‘Is it the Conqueror?’

She hesitates. She wants to answer him obediently, but she doesn’t know how.

‘Mistress?’ says Guilliman. ‘Will you oblige me with an answer?’

‘We have pattern match,’ she says in a small voice. ‘It is also the Vengeful Spirit.’

‘This is an imaging error,’ Dohel says immediately. ‘Refresh the–’

‘Third contact!’ announces an officer at the station beside them.

‘Fourth contact!’ calls another.

The Mistress of Sensoria starts to project the sensor data on the main display. By the time she has added the first four, another six have been called out, then ten more. The number continues to rise, an officer calling out every few seconds.

The ships, now thirty-odd in number and rising, are scattered across the negation zone ahead. Some are close to the edge, just light seconds away at the fringe of the heliopause limit. Others are deeper inside the zone. They are not in any kind of formation, or fleet cohesion, and many are not aligned to the galactic plane or even pointing in the same direction, relative. None are under power. They are floating, adrift, spread across an area twenty-six light minutes square, which, significantly, is the current scope of the flagship’s sensoria cone.

There are now fifty. Seventy. Two hundred and ten. Four hundred.

They are all Gloriana class. Only twenty such ships were ever made.

They are all the Vengeful Spirit, multiplying, breeding, slowly filling the negation zone like stars coming out, or like a ramifying fractal pattern.

A thousand, three thousand, six…

They are all the same ship, one ship, the Warmaster’s monstrous battleship, and it is everywhere.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2024.
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