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Lost Hope – Extract

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Lost Hope

Justin D Hill

It had been ten minutes since the astropathic message had reached him, and Ursarkar Creed was still cursing. Colour Sergeant Jarran Kell watched as Creed strode towards the drinks table, picked up a bottle of green spirit and read the label.

‘What is this?’ Creed growled.

Kell stepped up. ‘Zub-rod-ka. It’s amasec, or something like it. Fleet Captain Avery sent it, with his regards. I think he finds having you on board easier when you have good drink around you.’

Creed grunted, unscrewed the brass cap, poured a measure of the green liquid into a cut crystal glass and knocked it back. From his expression Kell guessed it wasn’t bad. Creed offered the bottle to Kell.

‘No, thank you,’ he said.

‘Not when on duty, eh?’ said Creed. ‘You’re always such a stickler for those kinds of things.’ The general poured himself another drink, rested both fists on the map table and stared down at the spread of system charts. Scarus, Belis Corona, Chinchare, Agripinaa. In the centre was a chart of the Cadian system. Every region was covered with crosses, each one marking an uprising, a rebellion, a lost contact.

‘Look at it!’ Creed snapped. ‘It’s clear!’

Kell looked. It wasn’t clear to him, and he told Creed so.

‘Look!’ Creed shouted. ‘Here! Here! Here! Supply routes to Cadia. That’s what this all about. It’s not random – it’s war, and it’s about Cadia. About the Imperium itself. And Warmaster Ryse is so far up his own backside that he thinks his little campaign is all that is going on. Damn him! Damn the lot of them!’

The lot of them were the officers of Cadian High Command. They hadn’t taken to Creed any more than he had to them. He was too rough, was how they phrased it as they passed the amasec to the left. Too successful, more like.

Creed slammed an open palm down again. Neither of them spoke. The silence was marked only by the scratch of the seated data-servitor’s blunt metal quill writing out more reports of uprisings and more attacks by Anckorite forces – more mess for them to clean up.

‘And now Ryse tells me we need to end this campaign before I can get back to Cadia and High Command.’

Creed knocked his drink back, sat down and lit his lho-stub. He stared at the glowing data screen on the wall above the servitor’s head, which scrolled with unpunctuated lines of data: names of places, officers, reports, automated reminders, ship-to-ship transmissions. All the petty white noise of Imperial communications. Kell picked up a plan for a mooted defensive trench system on a planet named Atelier-888 and studied it.

Creed had the air about him of a man who was beaten, and Kell didn’t know what to say. Warmaster Ryse’s message had been clear. Defeat Luciver Anckor, with no more reinforcements.

‘What’s that?’ Creed said suddenly.

Kell looked up but the line of data had already scrolled down out of sight. Creed moved over to the dataport. He pressed buttons and cursed. ‘How do you work this thing?’

Kell gingerly turned a brass dial three clicks to the left, but nothing happened.

‘Servitor,’ Creed snapped. ‘There was a report of a ship just arriving in-system. Is it a military craft? Reserves, perhaps?’

Stranger things had happened. Ships got lost, delayed, diverted. Perhaps this was one of those. Cogs whirred in the metal parts of the servitor’s brain as its speech function warmed up.

‘Negative,’ it said.

‘Hostiles?’ Kell asked, his mind beginning to organise boarding parties, strongpoints, layers of defence.

‘Negative,’ the servitor responded. ‘Vessel is the Justicae Eternas. Prison barge. Crew, one thousand three hundred and seven. Indentured population at outset from Scarus Sector, twenty-five thousand, six hundred and eighty-three. Attrition rate estimated at 4.3 per cent per month of travel. Due to dock at Lost Hope–’

‘Impossible,’ Creed muttered, leafing through the pile of maps. He slapped the one he wanted with an air of triumph. ‘Lost Hope. Ice world. Uninhabited!’

Creed impressed Kell at moments like these. The knowledge he had was phenomenal. The cogs behind the screen whirred again as the servitor accessed its data banks. ‘Data incorrect. Penal colony on Lost Hope for one hundred and fifty years–’

‘A penal colony?’

‘Correct, servicing a promethium drilling station at the pole,’ the servitor said. ‘Administrators of House Kasky tithed to the Administratum…’ It droned on, reeling through lists of information that were no longer pertinent. Creed had what he wanted. He clapped his hands and laughed. ‘A penal colony!’

Kell didn’t know what was so amusing.

‘Jarran,’ Creed said, a grin on his face, ‘we’ve got an army!’ Kell’s expression must have spoken volumes. ‘Don’t worry,’ Creed said as he swept up the bottle of zubrodka. He swept Kell up as he thrust the bottle into his greatcoat pocket. ‘Come on, there’s no time to waste. And stop looking at me like that. I won’t put you in charge of training them. We need to see Captain Avery.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Legends of the Dark Millennium: Astra Militarum in Great Britain in 2015.
This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-820-4

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