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The Greater Evil – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Greater Evil

Peter Fehervari

No matter how often Voyle relives it, the end always begins the same way. A deep clang reverberates through the airlock as the Sable Star’s boarding umbilical latches on to the derelict ship. Voyle checks the air tank strapped to the back of the trooper beside him, then turns so his comrade can return the gesture. The routine is mirrored by every member of the squad with practised swiftness. They have run through it twice already, yet nobody hesitates. Nobody complains. A Void Breacher’s life hangs by the integrity of his tank as much as his weapons.

‘Squad Indigo is bloodtight,’ Voyle reports into his helmet vox when the ritual is complete. ‘Repeat, bloodtight.’

‘Bloodtight confirmed, Indigo,’ Lieutenant Joliffe acknowledges from the bridge, unable to hide the tension in his voice. Captain Bester took his own life fourteen days ago. Nobody knows why, but they all sense Joliffe isn’t ready to lead the company – not on this warp-cursed patrol. Voyle has considered seizing command. No one would stand in his way, least of all Joliffe, but then the burden of choice would be his to carry. No, it is better to live or die with clean hands.

‘Commence breach,’ Joliffe orders. ‘Emperor walk with you, Indigo.’

With a hydraulic hiss the external hatch slides into its recess, revealing the metal tube of the umbilical. Most of the strip lumens running its length have failed and those that still work flicker fitfully. The company’s five-month tour of the Damocles perimeter has taken a heavy toll on both supplies and men, including both its enginseers. The Sable Star was just three days out from Kliest when it found the intruder, silent and powerless, yet perfectly intact. Its markings designate it as the Halvorsen, but though the massive derelict is evidently Imperial in origin, they can find no record of it. That is not unusual, for numberless ships ply the vast tracts of the Imperium and countless more have been lost over the millennia. Factoring in the contortions of the warp, the derelict might be decades or even centuries old. It is a cumbersome hulk devoid of guns or advanced sensor arrays – probably a civilian cargo freighter and certainly no match for a warship like the Sable Star, but that is little reassurance for the men tasked with boarding it. With derelicts it is what lies within that matters, for the void crawls with phantoms seeking the solace of metal or flesh.

Let it rot, Voyle wants to say. Better yet, blast it back into the warp!

But instead he says what he always says: ‘Acknowledged, crossing commences.’ And enters the umbilical. He is a Void Breacher. This is what the Astra Militarum has trained him for.

They lied to us! Voyle yells at his former self, but it is a silent cry, for if the ghosts of the past are without eyes, so those of the future are without voice.

The Void Breachers’ magnetised boots clatter on the corrugated decking as they advance along the narrow tunnel one by one, their helmet lights slicing back and forth. The concertinaed tube creaks and shudders around them as it strains to keep the ships conjoined, the living to the dead. Despite their sealed carapace armour and therma-padding, the cold is gnawing at them within seconds and their movements grow sluggish before they are halfway across. The rasping exhalations from their helmets are like steam in the frigid air, forcing them to wipe their visors clean after each respiration, lest breath becomes blinding frost.

Voyle halts as his light finds the derelict’s access hatch. The metal is dark and pitted, contrasting starkly with the gleaming umbilical clamps that encircle it. One glance tells him the locking mechanism is hopelessly corroded.

‘Cut us a door, Hoenig,’ he orders, moving aside as the squad’s specialist steps forward. He watches as the trooper engraves a glowing oval around the hatch with a las-cutter. The tool’s power pack whines and Voyle wills it to fail, knowing it won’t. It never does. The nightmare won’t allow it.

‘Done, Breach Sergeant,’ Hoenig says, then shoves the hatch. With a screech of harrowed metal it crashes into the darkness beyond. As the reverberations subside, Voyle levels his meltagun and steps through.

His own shriek wrenched him back from the brink.

But I’ve already fallen, Voyle thought wildly as he surged to his feet. There’s no coming back…

The nightmare fractured and fell away in sluggish fragments, revealing a large windowless chamber. Its walls were tessellated with hexagonal panels that glowed softly, washing the space in subdued blue light. Voyle stood at its centre, his bare feet tangled in a silvery blanket. He tore himself free and spun around, trying to make sense of things.

Where–

He froze as he caught sight of something watching him from one of the walls.

Black eyes gleaming with a hunger colder than the void…

The sound that rose in his throat was somewhere between a scream, a snarl and a sigh, born of fear and loathing and… longing? Voyle stifled it as the predator dissolved into a human form. A woman. She was crouched in a recess in the opposite wall where a hexagonal panel had retracted, her eyes glinting in the gloom as she appraised him. Her face was tattooed with concentric rings, the first shearing through her forehead, cheeks and chin, the second encircling her eyes and mouth and the third set directly between her eyes. Voyle knew she bore a fourth and final ring, but its lines were invisible, for it embraced the mind.

‘Unity,’ Voyle breathed, naming the symbol… and remembering. The woman’s tattoos mirrored those on his own face. With that recollection the rest flooded back and he scanned the chamber quickly, but the other serenity cells were still sealed. Only the woman, who always slept with hers open, had been roused by his nightmare and she wouldn’t say anything to the others.

‘Forgive me, sister,’ Voyle said. ‘I was walking old roads.’

Her expression gave nothing away. Sometimes she seemed as inscrutable as their liberators. Though they had been comrades since Voyle’s emancipation from the Imperium almost five ago, they had exchanged few words. Other than her name – Erzul – he knew little about her save her loyalty to the cause and her talents as a pathfinder. But that was fine by Voyle. He wasn’t much inclined to talk about his own past either. Remembering was bad enough. Dreaming even worse…

Why now? he wondered, reluctantly considering the old nightmare. It hadn’t troubled him in years – not since he’d mastered the mantras of self-sublimation during his induction. He’d almost convinced himself it was a false memory, as his instructors had encouraged.

Almost.

Voyle rubbed the old scar under his chin. It was itching furiously, as if inflamed by the sting of the past. He wasn’t going to sleep again this cycle. Maybe the sour-sweet tranquillity wafers the liberators issued their auxiliaries were losing their potency.

I should report it, Voyle brooded, knowing he wouldn’t. He trusted the liberators of course, but his weakness shamed him. Void dammit, he should have taken a cell. At least that way he’d have kept his nightmares to himself. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and a head taller than anyone else in his squad, let alone the liberators, but that wasn’t why he shunned the serenity cells. If his commander had demanded it, he would have squeezed into one of the hexagonal coffins, but the Stormlight had not pressed the issue. That wasn’t his way.

‘It is your shadow to burn,’ the xenos had said, identifying his subordinate’s dread with an acuity that would have confounded the Imperial officers Voyle had served under. ‘You alone can light the fire.’

But the ship was already five days into its voyage and that fire remained unlit. Every sleep cycle Voyle had bedded down at the centre of the chamber, ignoring the questioning looks of his squad as they clambered into their cells.

It doesn’t matter, he thought as he pulled his boots on. His loathing of tight spaces was only a whisper of the shadow that stalked him.

‘I’ll be in the Fire Grounds,’ he told Erzul as he stepped towards a wall. It split open at his approach, revealing a brightly lit corridor. Nothing could hide in that crisp, sane light.

Void black eyes.

Why now? Voyle asked again. A new life and purpose hadn’t dispelled the shadow. It had simply lain dormant. Waiting for him to wake up.

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