Contents

Cover

The Pharisene Paradox – Extract

A Black Library Imprint

eBook license

THE PHARISENE PARADOX

R S Wilt

The chrono struck precisely 0500 hours, ship standard, 0739999.M41, as the lift doors opened. I stepped onto the immaculately maintained command deck of watch station Aetateum Aureum, orbiting the diffuse-emission nebula Rho-386-Cummings, just as I had at that time each morning for the past three months. Forty servitors manned their various stations, each maintaining continuous vigil over a nebula known in select circles for the frequent manifestation of temporal anomalies in its vicinity. Unfortunately, we had observed none during my tenure in charge of the station. ‘Frequent’, it seemed, was relative.

‘What excitement do we have today, friends?’ I asked the servitors; as expected, none replied. I sat down in the command throne, slouching back into it with a sigh and drumming somewhat arrhythmically on the throne’s armrests. Articulated brass armatures lowered from the ceiling, surrounding me with multiple screens displaying continuously updating data, mostly about Rho-386-Cummings itself.

I stared at the ceiling and sighed again. Something different today wouldn’t kill me.

As if in response to the thought, an explosion of fulminous energy erupted directly in front of the watch station, the shockwave of its abrupt manifestation reverberating through Aetateum Aureum’s superstructure. Proximity klaxons howled as the blast shorted out multiple systems across the bridge in showers of sparks. Several servitors convulsed as power surges electrocuted them at their stations. Dazzled, I raised my arm to protect my eyes from the sudden flare.

The vessel burst from the empyrean in a nebula of unlight, streamers of aetheric fire trailing from it as it lurched, half tumbling, into realspace. The warp rift collapsed in its wake, leaving the craft, a bulk freighter, at the mercies of physical law once more.

The ship was an ancient wreck, the widespread damage to its hull visible even over long-range visual scans. A cloud of detritus, bits of its disintegrating exterior, slowly orbited the vessel, held in place within its void envelope and its own weak gravity. Its realspace engines stuttered as it pitched forward end over end, plasma flaring and guttering like spectral lights in its bank of six gaping engine nozzles.

Multiple data streams scrolled down the screens around me as aftershocks shivered the watch station. Telemetry identified the derelict as the long-distance freighter the Pharisene. Her plasma drives were operational, but only just. Life support functioned, but only in certain sections of the ship. Whole sections of the hull read as open to the void.

Indifferent to the danger the Pharisene posed, the servitors murmured to themselves in the course of their duties, their calculations, function call-outs and observations intended for no one. They had been the only thing I’d had to listen to in many months. By now, I could recognise their individual voices.

‘…zero-three-six, mark, two-seven-zero, mark…’

‘…Vagabond-class Merchant Fleet freighter…’

‘…plasma drives malfunctioning…’

‘…freighter Pharisene, Calthan origination markings…’

‘…range two hundred and seven point six seven miles and closing…’

‘…departure logged 0880999.M41…’

‘Twenty-six, repeat your last,’ I interrupted.

‘Vessel’s departure logged 0880999.M41 Terran Stand–’

‘Stop. Repeat again.’

‘Vessel’s departure logged 0880999.M41 Terran Standard–’

‘Stop,’ I commanded. ‘Thank you,’ I added unnecessarily.

I read the log report on the green display and compared it to the current date, 0739999.M41. If the ship’s log was correct, that meant the Pharisene set out nearly a month and a half from now.

‘A month and a half,’ I murmured to nobody, like the servitors below. ‘Twenty-six, is this log correct?’

‘Vessel’s departure logged 088099–’

‘Stop. Yes, I got that.’

I considered my master’s final command to me when he placed me in charge of the watch station three months earlier.

‘Keep a weather eye on the nebula until I return, Eleasar,’ he’d insisted, before he departed for somewhere towards the eastern edge of the Ultima Segmentum with the rest of his staff. I’d heard nothing from him since, and had likewise received no response from other members of the ordo I had queried.

Astero Yarvais was an inquisitor, and despite his active standing he was a theoretician and scientist foremost. Astero was fascinated by the unusual chronological manifestations near Rho-386-Cummings, which lay along the border of Segmentums Ultima and Tempestus. To this end, he designed and commissioned the Aetateum Aureum, a small watch station orbiting the nebula, to serve as his base of operations.

Now, his command seemed prophetic.

‘What did you know, Astero?’ I asked him, wherever he was. ‘What’s on that ship?’

‘Life signs indeterminate,’ Servitor Thirteen stated in answer to my question. ‘Cargo unknown.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thank you for that.’

I glanced at a data-slate. The Pharisene’s position relative to Aetateum Aureum was 207.65 miles away and slowly closing – point-blank range, astronomically speaking. She tumbled towards us at a leisurely pace, her plasma drives labouring between catastrophic strain and fatal burnout.

‘Likelihood of impact with watch station?’

‘Eighty-two point seven eight per cent at current bearing,’ Servitor Eight answered.

I licked my lips. ‘Estimated time of impact?’

‘Thirty-nine minutes.’

Waving away the green glass screens, I leapt from the command throne. I needed to get on that ship and try to stabilise its engines. If I could get them working, I could alter the Pharisene’s course and move her out of harm’s way.

Moreover, I was certain that Yarvais was aboard the Pharisene. I felt confident this was another of Astero’s inscrutable experiments, perhaps the reason he’d had Aetateum Aureum constructed.

‘Ready a lighter,’ I spoke into the air, knowing that my command would be relayed to the appropriate servitors below. ‘Plot coordinates to the Pharisene.’

‘Compliance,’ came a servitor’s reply over the bridge’s vox.

I visited the station’s maintenance supply room en route to the hangar, gathering the necessary tools and parts I would need to stabilise the Pharisene’s realspace engines. Stuffing them into a rucksack, I ran to the hangar and up the ramp of the awaiting Arvus lighter. A servitor crew was priming the shuttle for flight, so I busied myself by calibrating the engines; as a youth, I’d been an engineer on Astero’s ship, and I liked to keep my talents sharp. Doubtless, my aptitude for ship maintenance outweighed my rank in Yarvais’ decision to leave me in charge of Aetateum Aureum. My master could always appoint another interrogator, but he only had one of me.

The pilot, being a servitor, wasn’t much for conversation. I sat alone in the passenger hold, fingers nervously drumming the seat, as we slipped through the void to the Pharisene. As we made our approach, we passed through the cloud of fragments orbiting the stricken vessel. The ship was falling apart – it must have shed whole sections of its hull during its last translation from the warp.

The Arvus set down in a docking chamber located amidships at the Pharisene’s port beam. Behind us, the ship’s rust-encumbered void shutters ground shut, ominously vibrating the deck as they sealed us inside. Once closed, pressure and atmosphere gradually returned. I consulted auspex readings over the servitor’s shoulder: gravity near standard; temperature cold but survivable; atmosphere thin but breathable.

The landing bay was utterly dark, devoid of even servitors. Beyond the range of my lighter’s headlamps, the yawning space devoured all illumination.

Twenty-nine minutes to go.

I was on the pitted, rusting steel of the freighter’s hangar deck, stablight in hand, before the lighter’s ramp finished opening. The bitter cold of the thin atmosphere numbed my lips and nose and made my eyes water. By the time I found the exit, I was shivering.

I disengaged the door’s wheel lock but found the door itself frozen shut. Wedging a length of steel bar I found nearby into the seam between the hatch and the bulkhead and struggling with all my strength, I prised the door open, its seal clotted with rusty ice.

I choked on the first breath of air that wafted into the hangar through the doorway, heavy with the odour of rot. Struggling to keep my gorge down, I entered the flat red light of the ship beyond.

Paint sloughed from the rusting bulkheads, the dim red emergency lighting twisting the papery strips into strange shapes, exposing the crumbling structure beneath. Several corpses littered the corridor’s corroded decking, stark and ghastly beneath the infernal light and the shifting haze of thin, foetid atmosphere. I gagged on the fell odour of old death that soured the compartment’s stale air, reaching into my nose and mouth like the fingers of disquiet spirits who yet lingered over their dusty, rotting carcasses.

Behind me, the hatch wheezed shut.

Click here to buy The Pharisene Paradox.

WARHAMMER HORROR

A BLACK LIBRARY IMPRINT

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
This eBook edition published in 2022 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.

The Pharisene Paradox © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2022. The Pharisene Paradox, Warhammer Horror, 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: 978-1-80407-181-6

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 Warhammer Horror on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop and the worlds of Warhammer 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.