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Sea of Souls – Extract

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Chapter One

VEILBREAK
THE ENEMY
NO STONE LEFT UNTURNED

‘I wish to make a change,’ said Iannis Kiastros.

The captain of the Imperial battle cruiser Judgement of the Void sat calmly in his command throne, one hand lightly on the granite finial of his armrest, the other cradling a half-full goblet of wine. Ahead of him, overlooked by lines of tall columns supporting a dome of transparent armaglass, the bridge thrummed with orderly energy. Menials carried data-slates from station to station, while dozens of bridge staff kitted out in the squadron’s dark blue livery worked away in the cogitator pits among the servitors.

Leroa Avati, Kiastros’ second-in-command and Master of Astrogation, looked up at him from her position just below and to the right of the throne. This had not been unexpected – she knew her captain well, and most engagements received some kind of modification before the horizon of determination, as Kiastros insisted on calling it, was crossed. Avati, also first lieutenant and Tactical Master, adjusted her position slightly to ensure she understood his intentions precisely.

‘A change, lord captain?’ she asked.

‘We shall break the veil four void-units well-ward, blind-position and closed, ready for barrels out on my immediate command.’

Avati nodded, committing the order to memory and mentally comparing it to her existing preparations. The Judgement of the Void was currently in the warp, though rapidly winding down towards re-entry into realspace. Within moments, notification was expected from the Navigator, Mamzel Santalina, that the cycle for veilbreak could be begun. Kiastros’ order would not be easy to achieve in the time they had available, but it would be possible. He was never entirely unreasonable, was Kiastros. A pain in the arse, of course, and as rigid as a gunner’s jerkin, but not unreasonable.

‘Aye, lord captain,’ she replied, swivelling back on the throne to make the changes.

Four void-units was a significant shift – twenty-five thousand miles away from their current intended trajectory, angled towards the system’s gravity well. Such a course would bring the Judgement of the Void into realspace at the so-called blind-position relative to their original insertion point – that is, with the system’s star directly behind them, taking advantage of any interference delivered by solar radiation to muddy their position for a few precious seconds. Closed was a pre-combat setting – heat-producing systems reduced to minimal running operation, all shutters down, all venting eliminated. Also useful prior to an action, just to maximise the chances of evading a determinate fix from enemy sensors. Barrels-out, pleasingly enough, was the command given to roll out the broadside guns and ready the lances for firing.

So Kiastros clearly expected trouble. Avati wondered why, but said nothing. She shunted a quick warning to the ship’s Master of Engines, Magda Kuhl, who was toiling hard in the depths of the enginarium.

‘Course correction incoming,’ she voxed on a closed link, her fingers working at the control console to send her the data.

Kuhl’s hearty laughter crackled back across the link. ‘Are we surprised? How much by?’

‘It’s a chunk. Get your stoves primed.’

Kuhl would manage it. Her people were good, and they were probably already lining up to coax some extra juice from the plasma lines. Avati cut the link just in time to see Boroja, the Master of Signals sitting just a few yards away in his own station, direct a quizzical look towards Kiastros.

‘Lord captain, shall I notify the Fortitude in Extremis of the course change?’ he asked.

Kiastros shook his head. ‘You shall not. They may have secure comms in place or they may not, but we will not take that chance. No announcements or signals prior to veilbreak.’

Boroja looked unhappy about that. Avati couldn’t blame him. Comm-silence was rude, even if it proved necessary, and the Imperial Navy, perhaps alone of all the Imperium’s military organisations, took courtesy between officers seriously. Kiastros clearly had his reasons, though – she wondered what they were.

‘Orders now in effect, lord captain,’ she said. ‘All preparations for realspace translation completed.’

Kiastros took a sip of his wine, rolled it around his mouth, swallowed. ‘Very good,’ he said, not being clear whether he was referring to her summary or to the taste. ‘Now for Santalina’s word.’

Avati switched back to her terminal and reviewed the mission briefing. The star system was Jophra XI: single sun, no inhabited worlds, convenient Mandeville zones for drops out of long-haul warp runs. The Judgement of the Void had been tasked by Commodore Hekaon to rendezvous with a small flotilla of five vessels, all of which were light-cruiser class or smaller, for escort back to the gathering muster at Fixed Point U-93. Most of those vessels had recorded idents and designations, including the command ship Fortitude in Extremis, but one didn’t. That wasn’t unusual – it was probably an Astartes or an Inquisition vessel, neither of which would declare their particulars unless necessary. Still, the encounter appeared entirely routine, just part of the long pulling-together of forces that had been going on now for weeks in response to Admiral Jovanjiar’s meticulous preparations for the coming offensive, so Kiastros’ last-minute caution was intriguing.

‘His Beneficent Gaze, lord captain,’ came Santalina’s tremulous voice next, barely audible over the shared bridge comm-link. ‘I sense a change in the pipework – something I need to be aware of?’

‘Not really in your province, honoured Navigator,’ replied Kiastros good-naturedly. ‘Though confirmation of our imminent return to the real would be of great interest to us all.’

‘You may commence your re-entry momentarily, lord captain. The ether is turbulent, and I suspect it does not wish to see us leave.’

‘When is it otherwise, Mergaux?’

‘These days – never. What an age to be alive.’

‘Indeed. Though preferable to the alternative.’

The link closed. Soon afterwards, warning lumens blinked red across the consoles of all the bridge officers. Locks clunked into secondary positions at the base of the warp-shutters, and the deck beneath Avati’s boots began the telltale drum of structural adjustment.

‘All hands to stations for re-entry,’ Kiastros ordered, sitting back in his throne before taking another sip.

The order cascaded down the decks – from lieutenants to division chiefs to deckmasters to ratings, all the way down to the most scabrous and pox-raddled grunts in the shadows of the gun-bilges. Alarms began to sound as the layers of Geller protection were peeled away, and the hundreds of stokers, lubricators and lexmechanics in the enginarium jumped into action.

Just down from Avati’s position, a prayer-servitor started up. Its metallic mandibles puffed out some incense, and then the droning began.

Eternal master of the void and of the spheres, grant now safe passage from the empyrean to the real, for the warding of your servants and the delivery of your justice, that the domain of mankind may be extended and preserved for…

Avati pushed it away, and it limped over towards the sensorium crews.

‘Approaching translation nexus on exact schedule,’ she reported, watching the runes cascade across her station’s lenses. ‘Five minutes to breach.’

‘All hands, brace,’ said Kiastros, draining the last of his glass and placing it on the table beside him. A tiny clasp clicked closed over it, locking it and the decanter down.

The bridge rocked as if hit by something solid, and the shutters rattled. Then more hits, booming up from below. Officers rode out the turbulence, none of them deigning to reach out to steady themselves – a neophyte error – but swaying with the deck as the battle cruiser was tossed upon the tides.

More alarms went off, each a different timbre, each warning of another phase of the veilbreak. Avati adjusted the requested feed to the plasma drives by a touch, knowing from experience that trim and thrust would need to be delicately handled to avoid a damaged crossing. Confirmation of Kuhl’s completed work came with the soft glow of a new rune on her console, which was reassuring.

Then the moment came, which never ceased to make your stomach turn, no matter how many times you did it. The tiny bubble of reality that had cocooned the voidship for the duration of its journey within the other realm blew outward, its meniscus shattered as the structure hurtled back into the embrace of real physics. The howl and skitter of dream-energies were replaced with utter silence from beyond the hull, a brief interlude before the roar of the plasma drives made everything shake again. You felt the change instantly – gravity was the same, the bitter tang of the recycled air was the same, nothing looked different – but you knew, you knew that you had moved from somewhere unnatural and hateful and sickening to somewhere merely dangerous and hostile and unhealthy. The void. The dark. The endless black.

‘Translation complete,’ Avati reported, scanning the hundreds of missive-bursts that crowded her terminal from all quarters of the ship. ‘Underway in realspace, running closed to blind-position.’

‘Imperial flotilla detected, holding seven v-u bearing three-one-one, all ships expected present,’ reported Boroja, his face glowing green from the phosphor of his lens.

‘Hold position ahead,’ Kiastros ordered. ‘Retain shutters, bring to full stop then turn gunward on my mark.’

‘Bring to full stop, aye,’ Avati replied. She could already sense Boroja’s irritation – the flotilla would be hailing by now, having detected the warp breach opening. Had they fixed on to the Judgement of the Void’s position? Maybe.

Avati checked the relative positions on her tactical display. The Judgement of the Void had come in a long way out of the agreed position, far closer to the system’s star than normal and right on the inner edge of the Mandeville zone. Six thousand miles further in and translation would have started to get dangerous. The Imperial flotilla was in a much more conventional location, just on the far side of the ideal Mandeville locus. It was very probable that they couldn’t directly ascertain the Judgement of the Void’s position yet, and that would be making their commanders nervous.

‘Slowing to full stop,’ said Avati.

‘Mark,’ announced Kiastros, reaching for his decanter to refresh his glass. ‘Angle for starboard broadside against flotilla position, barrels-out and prime all lances.’

Avati obeyed instantly, sending the commands that would turn the vast ship on its vertical axis and swing the long rows of macrocannons towards the distant flotilla position. Even as she did so, she heard the Master of Gunnery, Heriof Spleed, initiate the gun roll-out. She knew that he’d be just as flummoxed as her, but no one would say a word, not even hesitate – the captain’s command was as final as death.

‘Fire now, gunnery master,’ Kiastros said, shifting position an inch so he could get a good look at his suspended tactical lenses. ‘Maximum spread, scatter pattern, all tiers in sequence. Light the void.’

‘Now, lord captain?’ came Spleed’s gruff query – a brave request for clarity.

Kiastros seemed to be expecting that. ‘Quite so. Just as I specified, if it please you.’

‘Firing, aye,’ Spleed announced. ‘Solution conveyed and locked.’

The orders shot down the comm-tubes, where they were picked up by the deck commanders, who shunted them to the gunnery-team overseers, who roared them out to the hundreds-strong barrel crews. Chains were yanked tight, covers clanged open, cog-wheels cranked into alignment, shells slammed into open breeches, covers bolted closed with spinning iron bolts that sent sparks skipping off the high-polished steel. The Judgement of the Void’s miles-long starboard batteries opened up, the muzzles of macrocannons shot out on their rails, hot from their inner furnaces. Ghostly targeting lattices sprung into life inside a thousand guidance chapels, a hundred priests began chants of accuracy.

The guns fired. Silent explosions, running in tight series, hurling shells into the dark – up, out, down, across. They fired again – scatter formation, primed to explode in penetrative clouds the moment something solid was hit – then again, then again.

Avati watched it all go, tracking across her tactical lenses. There was nothing to strike. Just the emptiness.

Until that changed.

A Geller field discharging at close proximity was always an arresting sight – an explosion of light amid the gloom, a starburst of violated physical laws followed by a flurry of startled radiation and the smallest, tiniest, nastiest sense that you’d just got a glimpse of the forbidden amid the whirl and collision of supercharged particles.

‘Signals!’ Boroja blurted, his long-fingered hands dancing across his terminal. ‘Two masses emerging, profiles incoming.’ He looked up at the captain. ‘Hulls confirmed. Archenemy allegiance, moving now to full instantiation.’

‘Tactical, take the foremost,’ ordered Kiastros, putting down his glass at last. ‘Signals, hail the flotilla, send my compliments and apologies to the commanding officer and request all assistance in containing the hindmost.’ He shot a satisfied look Avati’s way. ‘Just as anticipated, Astrogation. A dull-witted enemy is the very best kind of enemy, is it not?’

‘Dull-witted, aye,’ Avati replied, shaking her head a little, already activating the tactical station controls and calculating her attack vectors. ‘Emperor be praised, may they all be so.’

Just as she spoke, the spread-pattern of shells hit. Not many – perhaps five per cent of the total with the remainder spiralling harmlessly into the void beyond – but it was catastrophic nonetheless. A ship exiting the warp was vulnerable – systems still heating up, void shields not at full power, plasma drives cold and sluggish. Blindly aimed shells hit just as hard as any other kind, and the explosive charges blasted clean through gossamer-weak shield coverage and deep into hull plating.

How had he known? But that could come later. The action had started now, and Avati worked to fulfil her commission. The Judgement of the Void was already coming around, burning its manoeuvring thrusters to angle the broadside guns more precisely. Spleed’s people would be doing their work too – registering the hits, triangulating them and scrawling calculations for the macrocannons’ machine spirits to respond to. Pistons would already be wheezing, platforms already clunking across the rails.

Avati took a moment to register the tonnage and type of the foremost enemy ships. The long-range visual feed showed them to be capable: cruiser-class, with nasty-looking rows of guns and some torpedo tubes visible on the angled prows. The foremost’s flanks were a dull dark green, glistening faintly and underlit with an eerie pale glow from its ranks of portholes. It was a crabbed, ridged thing, ugly and patina-coated, and like all ships of the Archenemy it didn’t do to look too closely at it even at range – you might glimpse something that would turn your stomach or give you nightmares for a month.

No doubt its captain – or whatever passed for its captain – had expected to come into realspace unannounced, affording the vessel ample time to turn about and level guns at its target before it could be intercepted. Kiastros’ manoeuvre had placed the two cruisers between the Judgement of the Void and the void-anchored Imperial flotilla, putting the newcomers in a poor position, and both ships had already taken damage from the speculative barrage. They would be struggling to correct that now, working hard to buy some time and run their own sensor sweeps in order to calculate return fire, so it was imperative they didn’t get space to move.

‘Break them open, Gunnery,’ Avati breathed, giving Spleed the go-ahead to let fly.

The second barrage was properly aimed, using the explosions created by the first one to gauge distance and make an educated guess as to where the target would try to run to. The prey was still picking up speed, so they’d aimed just under the cruiser’s ridged prow, knowing that Archenemy ships preferred to stay under the battleplane if they could.

Spleed fired, and the Judgement of the Void’s vast structure resounded to the upwelling sound of a full broadside. That was a glorious thing to hear and feel, even insulated by so many interposed decks – the plating shivering, the wellheads ringing and the counter-recoil thrusters booming. Every tactical lens picked up the whistling payload as it streaked off into the void, still spread but now clustered more tightly, zeroing remorselessly in on the slowly turning cruiser.

‘Bring us around now, Engines,’ Avati ordered the enginarium. ‘Maintain distance, turn to sustain broadside face.’

The enemy cruiser would want to come in close, due to its shorter-range weaponry. It would also wish to turn prow-facing, to reduce the flanks it exposed to the larger Imperial ship’s cannon banks. Both of those objectives had to be denied – the Judgement of the Void would pull away, turning all the while, keeping the distance extended and ensuring the largest target for its weaponry. Such a dance could not be extended indefinitely – a cruiser was a nimbler vessel than its larger battle cruiser cousin – but every moment counted when damage had already been dealt.

Just as the core manoeuvring thrusters reached maximum output, sensors indicated the last brace of shells hitting home.

‘Damage report, Gunnery,’ Kiastros said.

Spleed buried his hirsute face into the maw of a cogitator funnel. ‘Strikes across rear-facing hull sections,’ came his muffled voice. ‘Enginarium plates exposed, shields compromised.’ He emerged from the funnel. ‘Shall we disable them?’

Kiastros shook his head. ‘Negative. I wish to make them run. Angle barrage over their bridge levels – let us smash some windows.’

Spleed got to work, just as Avati got to work, just as Boroja got to work. They knew what Kiastros wanted here: not to kill the ship – that might take hours, and ran the risk of them shipping damage – but force it back into the warp. The enemy had clearly come for the flotilla, not expecting to be disturbed by a much larger warship, so they would no doubt be rapidly calculating how long they could live with this level of punishment. As Avati took in the welter of tactical data coming her way, she guessed that the conclusion would be not long.

‘Strike incoming,’ Boroja warned, and all of them unconsciously braced for impact. The deck shook again, this time from the percussive recoils of dozens of enemy shells hitting the void shields. An alarm sounded from some distance away, swiftly shut down. ‘We are being targeted by both enemy ships. Second hull is also in range for countermeasures.’

‘Negative,’ said Kiastros. ‘Our esteemed comrades must handle that one – they will grow bored otherwise. Gunnery, all firepower on the lead ship. Discharge when ready.’

Avati approved. A less experienced captain might have attempted to take both cruisers on at once – the Judgement of the Void had sufficient firepower for it – but that was generally a mistake. Take out the primary target, then worry about what was left. Spleed was already on to it, running final calculations and overriding a few of the more wayward solutions shunted up to him from the decks.

‘Fire,’ he grunted at last, slamming home the authorisation runes.

The bridge shook again, followed swiftly by a course correction ordered by Avati. This would roll them away, fractionally narrowing the face presented to the enemy before momentum brought them back into alignment again. The margins were small – predictions, anticipations, all governed by the stately inertia of colossal masses in motion.

The lead cruiser was hit again, its crown raked by explosions. Something detonated across its ridged spine, a brief flash of red that flared for a moment before gusting out, and the ranged scanners picked up debris blown clear. That must have hurt it, for the ship appeared to turn out of attack line, slewing wildly ahead of its main thrusters firing again.

‘Enemy bridge struck,’ reported Spleed, sounding savagely happy about it. ‘Gas vents detected – that hull’s been cracked.’

‘Maintain barrage, remain at mid-range,’ Kiastros replied, looking rather smug. ‘Any signals from the flotilla?’

‘They are closing, lord captain,’ Boroja reported. ‘Engagement still out of range of their cannons.’

Kiastros tutted. ‘A little slow, do you not think? Never mind – keep on course.’

Just as he spoke, another brace of hits came in from both the enemy cruisers. The impacts scattered down the starboard shields, stressed three of the arrays and blew out two power converters on the enginarium level.

‘Void array quintus ruptured,’ Avati reported calmly, running rapid calculations. ‘Angling now to turn away from danger – broadside still available at your discretion.’

‘Very good,’ said Kiastros. ‘Progress, Spleed?’

‘Firing now, lord captain.’

More shells streaked off into the void. Kiastros was keeping some of his powder dry – no fighters, no lances, not a thought of igniting the nova cannon. All of those were power-hungry, resource-hungry options, and at a time of war a prudent captain husbanded his stocks. He judged he could finish this prey off with conventional gunnery alone, and what happened next proved him correct.

‘Breach-to-warp detected!’ Boroja shouted. More alarms went off, and this time they were left to blare. Avati shunted down priority overrides to the thruster crews to keep well away, though in truth the distance was still perfectly sufficient.

Just as abruptly as it had arrived, the damaged Archenemy cruiser decided to cut its losses, powered up its warp drives, shut down its battered plasma engines and plunged out of existence. The bridge’s viewers flared white-gold for an eye-watering moment, the lenses stuttered with static, and then it was over, the volume of space the vessel had occupied now empty save for a smattering of fizzing ions.

‘Status of the second ship?’ Kiastros demanded, opening lids that had been screwed shut in anticipation of the flash of charged electrons.

‘Ah, a moment…’ muttered Boroja, struggling to recalibrate his flare-blinded augurs. ‘Here it is. Still in realspace, coming up bearing four-five-three, attack speed, forward lances reaching fire positions.’

Kiastros chuckled. ‘Attack speed? Very game of them. Turn to engage on my–’

He never completed the command. A second flash of light bloomed across the augur lenses, less dazzling than the warp transition but still enough to scramble the more sensitive instruments. Avati swivelled on her throne, trying to get a lock on what had happened – the second Archenemy ship was still far off, within augur range but only on the very cusp of non-magnified visual sensors. And it was damaged.

‘That’s a plasma-core breach,’ said Boroja, eyebrows raised. ‘We didn’t do that. Did we?’

‘We did not,’ said Kiastros. ’Our friends have caught up with it, it seems – let us not permit them to engage without some sociable intervention.’

Avati keyed in the trajectory correction, bringing the vast battle cruiser around in a wide curve. The manoeuvre was not simple – she had to keep the damaged section out of potential fire-lines while maximising the angles for another full broadside. As she did this, she stole a glance at the ranged tactical cartoliths on Boroja’s terminals.

The Archenemy ship was listing, drifting down three points away from its initial position and accelerating into a de-powered roll. Beyond it, still at extreme range, all five ships of the Imperial flotilla were closing, streaming at speed with their prow weaponry flickering. For the life of her, Avati couldn’t see how they could have done such damage from their current positions. Could the plasma breach have been an accident? Even on ships as badly maintained as a typical Archenemy cruiser, that seemed unlikely.

‘Coming into strike range now, lord captain,’ she reported, pushing her own plasma thrusters hard to gain the position she wanted. ‘Gunnery, you have your target.’

‘Target acquired, aye,’ responded Spleed, his face now puffy and red. ‘Broadside prepared and ready.’

‘Then deliver it, if you please,’ said Kiastros. ‘Right down their noxious throats.’

The Judgement of the Void’s cannons fired again at the remaining Archenemy cruiser. This time, the barrage was joined by counterpart volleys from the other Imperial ships. The scopes filled up with the tracks of macrocannon shells streaking out into the void, all zeroing in on the single tumbling hull between them.

The impacts blazed out across the augur lenses – a scatter of silver-white as the warheads detonated against the void shields. Avati nudged the Judgement of the Void in closer – the need for precautions had abated now – and ordered another salvo. After that, the spectacle became rather enjoyable, provoking the intense joy she always felt in witnessing an enemy ship being taken apart. She would imagine the hull cracking under the relentless strikes, the systems failing one by one, the whistle of escaping oxygen and the dousing of the internal lumens. She would attempt to picture the faces of those doomed now to die – the hated heretics, the diseased wretches, the faithless dogs, all shrieking to non-existent gods now, all recanting and weeping and tensing up for the scream of atmospheres dissipating into nothing.

‘Fire,’ she ordered, echoing Spleed’s repeated commands. ‘Fire. Fire.’

It couldn’t go on forever. A voidship was designed to take tremendous punishment, but the barrage was now unrelenting. Something on the Archenemy ship suddenly cracked. Something else snapped. Cascades of breaking followed – struts, bulkheads, core structures, fuel lines. Armaglass blew out from reinforced viewports, glittering like gusts of jewel-dust against the void. Radiation emissions spiked, augur readings entered the telltale crescendo of energy discharges, and then the internal explosions began – blooms of angry red, silhouetting the agonised outer plates, glowing up the scale to orange, yellow, white.

‘Not too close, Astrogation,’ Kiastros murmured, watching the display with the same keen interest as her. ‘Though I appreciate it is an arresting spectacle.’

She hadn’t brought them too close, not really, so the gentle rebuke stung her a little. Did he have to be so… uptight?

Avati admonished herself. He was the captain, and she had indeed brought them in just on the right side of the safe distance markers.

‘My thanks, lord captain,’ she replied, adjusting the course instructions. ‘All now to full stop.’

Just as the words left her mouth, the Archenemy cruiser lit up in a starburst of energy, a raging sphere of light and fire that tore through the remains of its structure and blew the fragile shell apart. All Imperial ships held position, ranged like hungry predators around the corpse of their victim, guns still trained and battle stations still active. Wise to do so: you never knew what nasty surprises could lurk amid a cloud of rapidly cooling debris, even in a case of such catastrophic destruction.

So it took a while for Kiastros to announce the engagement’s close.

‘Ship-kill,’ he said at last, reaching once more for his wine. ‘Instruct the scriveners to prepare all particulars for the log – I shall inspect them within the hour.’

‘Ship-kill, aye,’ Avati replied, finally relaxing in her seat. It had been an unexpected encounter – at least for her – but the result was satisfactory: one enemy forced back into the warp, one destroyed. The flotilla they had been commanded to intercept was intact, and already the hails were coming in. ‘May I offer my congratulations, lord captain?’

Kiastros smiled at her – a brief flicker of amusement across pursed lips. ‘You may, lieutenant. Though we still have some mysteries to solve, I think. Such as, what could possibly have breached a plasma core at those ranges. Any ideas?’

‘Not yet,’ she said truthfully. ‘I shall work on it.’

‘See that you do,’ said Kiastros, getting up, glass still in hand, now waiting for his attendants to scuttle up and escort him to his private chambers. ‘No stone left unturned, as I often say. The slightest thing – the slightest thing – left undone is all the enemy requires. I shall prepare now to meet the flotilla’s commander.’

Avati mentally rolled her eyes. Throne, he could be insufferable, especially when he’d done something clever.

‘By your will, lord captain,’ she said neutrally, and began her labour.

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First published in Great Britain in 2023.
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