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The World Engine – Extract

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ONE

Battle-barge Tempestus
Varv Deliverance Mission Command
Outer Solar Orbit, Varv System
Captain Sheherz, Master of the Fleet

‘That was the Perilous,’ said Sheherz. Through the viewscreen mounted on the bridge of the Tempestus, he watched the slow disintegration of the fleet’s flagship. Its long, ridged hull, crowned with a wedge-shaped prow and covered in hundreds of close-defence emplacements, was skewered on a silver lance of power that flashed into existence and fizzled to nothing a moment later. The Perilous simply drifted apart as if some keystone had been removed and the ship had fallen to pieces of its own accord. The prow tumbled away, the sides of the hull peeled off and the entrails of the ship poured out in a waterfall of sparks. In that torrent were the seven thousand souls who crewed the Perilous. One of them was Lord Admiral Corus, the supreme commander of the Varv Deliverance Fleet.

‘How many Stormfronts does that leave?’ asked the shipmistress of the Tempestus, Lady Demi-Admiral Gereltus. Around her the bridge crew continued to work their navigational cogitators and communication helms, trying not to stare mesmerised at the death of the flagship. Their despair was all the more intense for being silent and hidden.

‘She was the last of the Stormfront class,’ replied Sheherz.

He could not show emotion in front of these crew members, not even the shipmistress. He was an Astral Knight, a Space Marine, and not a berserker of the Space Wolves or morbid monk of the Dark Angels. Roboute Guilliman had written in the Codex Astartes of what the ordinary men and women of the Imperium must see when they look on a Space Marine – a creature impassive and unshockable, weathering defeat and victory the same, as relentless and eternal as the human race had to be in this galaxy of war.

He could not show his anger.

The silvered arc of the planet breached the edge of the viewscreen. From the void some worlds looked unholy and terrible, some mottled with disease, others blistered with volcanoes or cracked apart by the anger of their core. This world was shrouded with clouds eternally churning in an electrical storm, criss-crossed with lightning. Every visual probe had been obscured by an information haze, as if the planet knew it was being watched and clouded every eye that looked at it.

But it was not a planet – at least not a sterile and dead world such as ninety per cent of the planets in the galaxy. Somewhere beneath that mantle of cloud was a weapon that could knock a starship, even an Imperial battleship like the Perilous, out of the sky like an arrow through a bird. Sometimes it took the form of the silver lance that had speared the Perilous. Sometimes it had summoned, through some teleporter technology or warp magic, masses of rock within the target, tearing apart the Lycomadean and the Viridian Sun. Smaller ships it had crushed as if by a giant invisible fist, hull plates buckling as plasma vented in ribbons of fire.

Twelve times the Imperial fleet had engaged the World Engine. Eleven times it had been thrown back in disarray, leaving a trail of shattered spacecraft, and the World Engine had not taken a scratch.

Do not show anger. They will see it as impotence and despair. Give them something to follow, because to them you are like gods. Thus had Guilliman written. Sheherz kept his anger inside him, and felt its heat boring into the pit beneath his heart.

One of the crewmen looked up from a communications helm, his pale face lit by the green glow of the pict screen. The face was drawn and grey, the eyes dark. These men and women had not slept for a long time, because the World Engine did not sleep either. ‘Captain Sheherz, Chapter Master Amhrad hails us for your attention.’

‘What does he command?’ asked Sheherz. He knew full well what the message said, but communications protocol had to be followed.

‘The Chapter Master requests your presence,’ said the crewman.

‘Stay alert,’ said Sheherz to the shipmistress, ‘and look to the crew. Despair will poison them, you must stem its flow. I shall return to the bridge soon.’

By the time Sheherz reached the Chapel of Intolerance, the commanders of the Varv Deliverance Fleet were already there, some with their honour guard as if showing the might they brought with them still mattered when the World Engine was ploughing through their fleet at that very moment. Some Space Marine Chapters had sent only a handful of battle-brothers and were represented by a single officer, but most had not come alone. In all, fifteen Chapters were represented there.

Captain Venetius of the Ultramarines took the fore – he and his honour guard wore the characteristic deep blue armour of their Chapter, but so embellished there was more gold than blue. Instinctively, it seemed, the other Chapters had accepted Venetius as a de facto leader. Opposite him stood the Astral Knights delegation, led by Chapter Master Amhrad. Amhrad had brought with him the three veteran squads attached to his command, the most impressive body of men among them.

That was Amhrad’s right. This was an Astral Knights ship.

‘Captain Sheherz,’ said Amhrad as Sheherz entered. ‘It is well that we have the Master of the Fleet in attendance. Matters of war in the void demand your expertise.’

‘My lord,’ said Sheherz.

‘You have seen the latest development, I take it?’ said Venetius. He had the face and manner of a patrician who had gone his whole life getting his own way.

‘We lost the Perilous,’ said Sheherz.

‘And the Magna Pater,’ added Venetius. He folded his arms as if any argument had just been settled. ‘This weapon swats us from the void at will. It is apparent that your formation approach failed.’

The last words were directed at Sheherz. He did not have sole responsibility for the positioning of the fleet, but he had a great deal of it, and with the death of Lord Admiral Corus he was probably the most blameworthy individual left. ‘I did not anticipate the manoeuvrability nor the range of the weapon,’ he said. ‘It has never before shown the capabilities it has this last hour.’

‘And every hour it changes!’ barked Venetius. ‘Each ship we lose in a new way. It learns from us and adapts to every tactic.’

‘Then what,’ said Amhrad levelly, ‘do you suggest we do?’

‘Pull back,’ said Venetius. ‘Regroup the fleet and await reinforcement from the segmentum fleet. Within two months they will be here, and if the Emperor wills it they will bring with them the Adeptus Mechanicus survey teams to tell us what this World Engine is.’

‘Out of the question,’ said Amhrad.

Venetius slammed a fist into his palm. ‘Why?’ he demanded.

‘Captain Sheherz,’ said the Chapter Master.

Amhrad had primed Sheherz on his role in the communication sent to the bridge. Sheherz switched to the bridge vox-link. ‘Shipmistress, route the tactical readout to the chapel hololith,’ he said.

The hololith device was mounted among the incense burners hanging from the ceiling. It lit up and unfolded, and shapes of static-lined light flickered into being in the centre of the room.

The hologram projected between Amhrad and Venetius was of the Varv system. It had eleven planets, with the seventh from the sun being the sparsely settled world of Safehold over which the fleet was formed. The outermost world was a ball of frozen ammonia that had never known life, but until recently the next two had held chemical mines and pioneer settlements. The World Engine had obliterated the life on those worlds without pausing in its path through the system, puncturing fortified towns with blasts of las or creating masses of rock, like planetary tumours, to rip chemical refineries apart from the inside.

‘The fourth world,’ said Amhrad. ‘I take it you have apprised yourself of its significance?’

The hologram zoomed in on the fourth planet from the Varv system’s sun. It was a blistered and blackened orb, crazed with deep artificial canyons, its surface divided into expanses of rockcrete like grey scales.

‘Varvenkast,’ said Venetius.

‘It is more than just a name,’ said Amhrad. ‘It is twenty-one billion souls.’ Amhrad now addressed all the Space Marines who had come here to speak for their Chapters. ‘We have known for weeks it would come to this. The World Engine has already claimed a dozen inhabited worlds. We have lost Imperial citizens beyond counting. But when the World Engine reaches the hives of Varvenkast, the death toll will more than triple. If ever we are to stop it, we must do so now.’

‘The loss of every innocent life pains me as much as it does you, Chapter Master,’ said Venetius. ‘Guilliman taught all his sons the value of those who toil under the Emperor’s gaze. But every attempt we have made to engage the World Engine has failed. Our weapons cannot penetrate whatever form of shields it has. Our own shields are no proof against its weaponry. We cannot even see what lies on its surface. And the fate of the Perilous shows that even trying to keep pace with it is death. As much as these words are bile in my mouth, we must abandon this engagement and regroup with the means to fight this battle on our own terms.’

‘You would leave the billions on Varvenkast to die?’ asked Amhrad.

‘If we stand and fight, we shall all be lost, and Varvenkast will be destroyed anyway. So yes, Chapter Master, I would leave them to die.’

Sheherz looked from one face to the next. When the Varv Deliverance Fleet had been convened to intercept the World Engine, the lords of the fleet had each consecrated their own shrine in the Chapel of Intolerance and the Space Marine delegates stood before their Chapter’s respective shrines. The Ultramarines shrine displayed the standard of Captain Venetius’s Seventh Company, among the spears and shields of warriors from their home world of Macragge. The Red Consuls displayed an image of Roboute Guilliman taken from a desecrated temple liberated by the Chapter, still stained with the blood of the believers who had fallen defending it. The Invaders had created a shrine of bronze shields, assembled in a gleaming pyramid, a trophy of victory from an ancient battlefield. Sheherz could see no doubt on any of their faces – they had all come to the chapel of one mind, probably led by Venetius in the decision to abandon the engagement and await reinforcements.

It was the word of the Codex, after all. If a battle cannot be won, neither throw away your lives fruitlessly nor flee in cowardice. Rather, create a new battle, one fought under your terms. Roboute Guilliman had written it in the Codex Astartes ten thousand years ago, and every good Ultramarine treated their primarch’s words as sacred.

‘Then you shall,’ said Chapter Master Amhrad. ‘Thus your conscience commands you. The Astral Knights shall not stand in your way.’

‘It is decided,’ said Venetius. ‘My brothers! Return to your commands. Make ready to break formation and…’

‘But the Astral Knights shall not,’ said Amhrad.

‘Damnation, Amhrad!’ called out Lord Zethar of the Red Consuls, who had watched the debate wordlessly but clearly in favour of Venetius. ‘This is not a game! You may have brought your entire Chapter to this battle but you cannot play games of politics when this whole mission is at stake.’

‘No politics,’ said Amhrad. ‘The Astral Knights will fight here. You have the fleet, my brothers, and do with it as the Codex demands.’

‘You play our consciences,’ retorted Zethar. ‘By threatening to throw yourselves into a last stand, you demand we die alongside you!’

‘Not a last stand,’ said Amhrad. ‘I speak of victory. While there is a chance for it, we shall pursue it. I have no intention of exposing you to the risks should we fail.’

‘And what victory will you find here?’ asked Venetius. ‘What weapon have we not sent against the World Engine?’

‘The weapon you stand on even now,’ replied Amhrad.

‘The Tempestus?’ asked Venetius.

‘And a Chapter of the Emperor’s Space Marines,’ said Amhrad.

‘Have you forgotten?’ said Captain Morgrom of the Invaders. His face was a wide, battered expanse of leather, contrasting with the polished deep green of his armour. ‘I sent three squads of Terminator-armoured brothers by teleport onto the World Engine. Its shields sent them back twisted and dead.’

‘The Tempestus will not use its teleporters,’ said Amhrad. ‘As you say, they have been tried and have failed, as have lasers, lances and torpedoes. But we have not tried one of the fleet’s ships itself as a delivery mechanism.’

‘You mean,’ said Venetius, not bothering to hide his incredulity, ‘to crash into the World Engine?’

‘The Tempestus will be obliterated!’ scoffed Lord Zethar.

‘Not so,’ said Sheherz.

The other delegates had forgotten Sheherz was there, and they rounded on him as one as if he had spoken a dire insult.

‘The Tempestus was laid down in the dockyards of Ryza,’ continued Sheherz. ‘Four thousand years ago. Only six such battle-barges were ever constructed, and only three still sail. The secrets of their construction have long been lost. But each of the Ryzan class were renowned for the steadfastness of their construction. They were built to run minefields and asteroid blockades. Impacts that would break another ship apart can be suffered by a Ryzan without destruction. That the Tempestus still takes to the void after the battles she has seen is testament to that.’

‘You could fly this ship into a planet?’ asked Venetius.

‘She would not fly off again,’ said Sheherz. ‘And to my knowledge such a thing has never been done, not deliberately. But perhaps, with great damage, she would retain enough integrity to deliver a complement of troops.’

‘Perhaps,’ echoed Venetius. ‘That is all you can give me, Amhrad? Perhaps?’

‘It is better than definitely not,’ said Amhrad. ‘Once on the surface, my Chapter’s aim will be to disable the World Engine’s shielding. If the rest of the fleet remains close by, it can take advantage of that vulnerability to finally blast the World Engine out of the void. I do not ask that it remains engaged, only that it stays within striking distance.’

‘So,’ said Morgrom, ‘one final flourish from the Astral Knights.’

‘No greater an indulgence than your teleporter assault,’ said Amhrad. ‘And I act for the sake of Varvenkast. I care nothing here for glory.’

‘An Astral Knight not moved by glory?’ said Venetius. ‘Of all the Emperor’s finest, none of us could name a Chapter more moved by laurels and acclaim than the Astral Knights.’

‘And what does it matter why?’ said Amhrad. ‘A ram attack will breach the World Engine’s shields as conventional and energy weaponry cannot. A Chapter of Space Marines is as potent a boarding force as exists in this galaxy. There is no greater chance for victory. I would say there is no other chance at all. The Codex demands much of us, but above all it demands victory, and it is to victory I must dedicate every effort unto death. I have not convened us here to ask for your permission, my brothers. I have brought you here that you might know why the Tempestus will shortly break formation, and know how to act according to whatever might follow. I must ask now that you leave my ship, for I would not presume to take you all along to such a destination.’

‘This is no more than a gesture, Amhrad, and you know it,’ snarled Venetius. He took a step dangerously close to the Chapter Master. ‘And I did not risk myself and two companies of my brethren so you could sacrifice yourselves in a grand display of superiority. This strikeforce needs this ship. You have a whole Chapter of Space Marines and it needs them too. This battle will be won, but it will be won by unity. It will be won by all of us.’

‘Do you wish to take command?’ said Amhrad. ‘It is written all over you, Venetius. Isn’t that what the Ultramarines do best?’

‘Better, it seems, than you.’

‘Then take it!’ retorted Amhrad. ‘The Codex is clear on how it is to be done, be it bare hands, or blades, or bolt pistols at fifty paces. Best me and take command of the fleet, and do with it what you will. But that is how you will have to do it, because I will not relinquish the fulfilment of my Chapter’s duty while I still stand. And Captain Venetius Oricalcor of the Ultramarines, take what glory in it you can, because shortly there will be nothing left to command!’

The holo-display shifted to a streaming list of data. It resembled a roll call of the dead from some great battle, but each line did not represent a single soldier. It represented dozens – hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions of lives.

‘The Penitent,’ said Amhrad. ‘The Magna Pater. The Siege of Korv, the Malicious, Sabre Group Omicron. Should I go on? The World Engine will not stop just because you back away and hand it Varvenkast as an offering. And what then? Will you move in to destroy it once it has finished its feasting? Or run again, and watch it devour one world after another? There will be no sudden epiphany that tells you how to defeat it. Your choices will be to yield before it, or stand and fight and be destroyed. I alone have suggested any other choice, and I will take it if I can. But if you wish to preside over this disaster, for that is what it is, then now is the time. We have no lack of weaponry in this room and no shortage of brothers to witness it. Take my command, Venetius, but be sure first that you want it.’

Sheherz did not know Captain Venetius of the Ultramarines. Perhaps he was the sort of man who was willing to cross that threshold, to take up arms against another Space Marine. Perhaps he believed so completely that the fleet would find some way to battle the World Engine without being knocked out of the sky first. If that was the case then the two would fight, because Sheherz knew his Chapter Master would not back down.

Venetius turned away from Amhrad and walked back to join his own honour guard. ‘You’re insane, Amhrad,’ he called across the chapel floor.

‘We all have our reputations,’ Amhrad said.

The moment passed. Sheherz could feel the danger bleeding out of the room. The other delegations could feel it, too, as they released tensed muscles and held breaths. Venetius did not look like a man who had just backed down, but that was what he had done.

The conclave broke up in silence, for there was nothing now left to say. The Astral Knights had chosen their path and none were willing to take the steps required to turn them from it. Venetius led the delegations out, glowering at anyone who looked at him.

‘This is the first battle I will fight today,’ said the Chapter Master at Sheherz’s approach. ‘To these other Chapters it is typical of the Astral Knights to go our own way and expect them to accommodate us. The Red Consuls strip away everything they were before recruitment, they are soldiers and no more. The Invaders have no time for politics at all, they would far rather be up to their elbows in the dead. And the Ultramarines think themselves the model of a Space Marine Chapter and anyone who does not follow the Codex as they do is wayward or worse. We shall have to leave them to their convictions, captain. We do what we must do.’

‘I ran the machine-spirit models of the World Engine’s shielding,’ said Sheherz, ‘and I saw that a low-velocity body might breach it. But I had no idea this was what you had in mind, Chapter Master.’

‘Do you agree with Venetius, that this plan is insane?’

‘Not insane, my lord, but…’

‘But what?’

For a moment, Sheherz could not find the words. ‘The Tempestus will not survive.’

‘Indeed she will not. Even if she retains her hull integrity she will never sail again. If the World Engine is destroyed she will go with it. Is this the basis for an objection to our course of action?’

‘I know it should not stand in the way of our duty. But my lord, the Tempestus is the most ancient of our fleet, and one of the finest ships any Chapter can muster. Her machine-spirit is as old as the forge world where her keel was laid. She has weathered storms greater than perhaps any other ship in the Imperium could survive. Though I shall follow your orders, as every Space Marine must the commands of his Chapter Master, yet I cannot contemplate the death of this ship without feeling as if I am watching the death of a friend.’

‘I understand, captain. The Tempestus has always been as a brother to the Master of the Fleet.’ Amhrad turned to Sheherz – his skin was dark and battered, with a dozen long-service studs in his forehead and a flat, oft-broken nose. His was the face of a pugilist as well as a commander, and it carried as much authority with a glance as Venetius might with a speech. ‘But my orders are my orders. Though they pain me and those who must execute them, they serve a cause beyond ourselves. Place your misgivings at the back of your mind, to be faced when the battle is won. Until then, there is nothing but to serve.’

‘Of course, my lord. If we are to move immediately, I must tend to the machine-spirit. It must be counselled in navigating our approach.’

‘See to it, captain,’ said Amhrad. ‘And it will not go forgotten that few would have the courage to speak of their doubts.’

‘I would not do so before the brothers of my company,’ said Sheherz. ‘But from the master of my Chapter, there can be no secrets.’

The last of the delegates had left the Chapel of Intolerance, hurrying to rejoin their ships before the Tempestus broke formation with the rest of the fleet. Sheherz and Amhrad took different paths, Amhrad towards the command bridge, and Sheherz towards the armoured core deep within the ship.

The magi of Ryza had forged the very first part of the Tempestus around the ancient cogitator that contained its machine-spirit. Even before they had laid the first beams of the battle-barge’s keel, they had constructed a housing for the cogitator that dated back to the pre-Imperial history of Mars itself. Such spirits were rare and irreplaceable, relics of the Dark Age of Technology where other such spirits had, legend had it, became a threat to the very species that had made them. Now only the wisest and most trustworthy had survived the purges of the Age of Strife, and were numbered among the oldest relics of humankind.

Around that spirit had been built the Tempestus, a voidgoing war machine granted by bonds of ancient fealty from the priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to the Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes. The ship became the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the Astral Knights, and a succession of Masters of the Fleet took her as their flagship. While her weaponry was of ancient and powerful marks and her structure made sound with alloys and techniques all but lost to the Mechanicus, it was her spirit that made her the weapon she was. Locked in the stacks of datamedium was battle-wisdom from wars that had vanished from the memory of mankind.

Every move the ship’s crew made was shadowed by the spirit, assisted or even ignored in accordance with that wisdom. The Master of the Fleet had to treat the spirit of the Tempestus as another member of the Chapter or they would find their helm commands ignored as the spirit made its own decisions. When they showed the ship the respect due to such an ancient warrior, they found in the Tempestus an ally as close as any battle-brother.

The cogitator core was kept hot, to maintain the liquidity of the crystalline medium that ran through the cylindrical datastacks. The stacks formed transparent stalagmites and stalactites through which the black datamedium pulsed, so as Sheherz walked between them it seemed he was walking through a set of enormous jaws filled with black fangs. The cogitator’s valve banks rose and fell overhead like floating islands, exuding clouds of steam and scalding droplets.

Sheherz approached the tangle of looped cables and steel spines, the image of an exploding star created by an artist in hot metal and wire. It was the closest thing the Tempestus had to a heart, where the machine-spirit interfaced with the systems of the ship.

‘If you can hear,’ said Sheherz, ‘then I must speak with you. I have never done this before. Perhaps the Masters of the Fleet who went before me have, I do not know. But I would not send a brother into a battle from which I did not expect him to return, without telling him so to his face. And so I must tell you, as well.’

The Tempestus did not reply. The machine-spirit exercised its will in subtle ways, a few degrees of yaw or a per cent higher or lower in reactor output. To respond directly would be beneath the ancient machine.

Sheherz activated a holomat unit on the front of the machine-spirit core. Here was the output for the machine-spirit’s simulations, taking billions of fragments of data and collating them into a prediction of how a fleet engagement would play out. This was the means by which the machine-spirit communicated its wishes and intentions, sometimes constructing wild and improbable simulations, or pointedly demonstrating how a particular course of action would lead to disaster.

The disposition of the Varv Deliverance Fleet appeared in glowing shapes of light. The gravitational threshold of the nearest planet, Safehold, glowered darkly some distance across the chamber. The World Engine was a scarcely less imposing presence, a moon-sized aberration picked out in bright silver and surrounded by a halo of information noise illustrating how little intelligence the fleet’s sensors had divined.

With the loss of the Perilous the fleet had scattered out of its previous formation. It was anchored around the three remaining capital ships – the Tempestus herself, the Oberon-class Fall of Horst, and the ancient grand cruiser Vengeant Aeternam. Almost fifty smaller ships – escorts, frigates, transports and sensor-ship outrunners – made up the rest of the fleet. As a battlefleet it was depleted and ragged. Before it had begun the first engagements with the World Engine it had been more than twice as large. Almost its entire fighter fleet had been destroyed by early attempts to bombard the equatorial weapons port from which the World Engine’s ship-killer had fired. Since then the fleet had kept a wide formation in a crescent around what they presumed to be the World Engine’s stern, out of the weapon’s scope, but as had been illustrated with the death of the Perilous there was nowhere any ship could truly be safe.

‘We must break formation,’ said Sheherz. ‘The rest of the fleet will fall back. We will approach. Full engine burn, all speed ahead. Bow-first into the enemy, Tempestus. That is our course.’

The holomat’s projection shifted. The rest of the fleet broke apart and reformed thousands of kilometres away while the Tempestus flew in high over the World Engine’s northern pole. The World Engine spun on its axis in response, bringing the Tempestus closer to its kill-arc.

‘Can we make it?’ asked Sheherz.

The Tempestus met the outline of the World Engine, and vanished in a burst of information static.

‘Master of the Fleet,’ came a voice from the chamber entrance. Sheherz dismissed the hologram and turned to see Librarian Hyalhi walking between the datamedium stalactites. ‘I was told you would be here, ministering to our ship.’

‘I go to the source,’ said Sheherz. ‘I command my ship from the helm, but on this occasion I decided to ask her opinion in person.’

‘And what does she say?’

‘We should reach the World Engine,’ said Sheherz. ‘We have the speed. But there is no simulation that can say what will happen when we get there.’

The glimmers of light from the datamedium caught the edges of Hyalhi’s blue armour. The colours of the Astral Knights were silver-white and blue, but Hyalhi’s was the deep blue of a Librarian to mark him out as a psychic weapon on the battlefield. One shoulder pad bore the horned skull of the Chapter Librarium, and several books locked with gilded clasps hung from his waist. He wore the demi-cloak of an Astral Knights officer, and his face was half-hidden in the psychic protection circuits of his armour’s aegis hood. What could be seen of Hyalhi’s face was dark and old, the eyes pale grey.

‘I have never seen this place,’ said Hyalhi.

‘I rarely suffer another to enter,’ replied Sheherz.

‘Then forgive my trespass.’

‘I take it you do not come here on a whim,’ said Sheherz. ‘Librarian Hyalhi is not one given to conversation. I have not shared more than a hundred words with you in all my service, though we are both officers of the same Chapter.’

‘I keep my own counsel,’ said Hyalhi, ‘and offer it only when it is asked. The Chapter Master suggested I offer you that counsel now.’

Sheherz straightened up, immediately defensive. ‘The course of the Tempestus has been set,’ he said, ‘and she is at full battle orders. The ship is ready, and so are her crew.’

‘Yet,’ said Hyalhi, ‘you have misgivings.’

When it came to his ship, Sheherz was proud. He knew that. He had earned it, for his mastery of the fleet and kinship with the Tempestus was a powerful war asset for the Chapter. His first instinct was to brush off any suggestion of doubt, and send Hyalhi back to the mustering deck with a new appreciation for the Master of the Fleet’s authority on board. But there was no point, he told himself, in lying.

‘We were created to know no fear,’ said Sheherz, ‘but that does not mean we cannot feel sorrow, or even doubt. I have long been ready for my own death, Brother Hyalhi. That has never held any apprehension for me. I would welcome it if it was in the Emperor’s service. But now I know I have never been ready for the death of my Chapter. If we reach the surface of the World Engine, how many of us will leave it alive? We have no understanding of what lies down there save that it has the power and the will to destroy worlds. Will we face an army? An unsurvivable world that kills us as soon as we set foot on it? And into this complete unknown will fall my entire Chapter. We will be blind and beset by Throne knows what enemies. We left barely thirty battle-brothers on Obsidia. Not nearly enough to refound the Chapter. If we are swallowed up by the World Engine the Astral Knights will be gone. Our history will end. That is what causes me to doubt.’

‘It is a rare honesty that causes an Astral Knight to admit to doubt,’ said Hyalhi.

‘You are a psyker,’ replied Sheherz. ‘There isn’t much point in trying to hide it.’

‘It is more than our Chapter that is at stake,’ said Hyalhi. ‘You know where we are, captain. Varvenkast lies in the World Engine’s path.’

‘And our duty is to save its citizens,’ said Sheherz. ‘But at the cost of all of us? With no guarantee there will even be a battle to fight, let alone victory? If Varvenkast is lost it will be a tragedy, but if we are lost, all those who might be saved in the future will be lost with us. I will obey my Chapter Master, as is my duty, but I fear he is being short-sighted in condemning all our futures to save a single world.’

Hyalhi examined the intricate machinery of the machine-spirit core as if it was a strange sculpture to be appreciated. ‘If you were to boil down the essence of our Chapter,’ he said, ‘what would you be left with?’

‘Valour,’ said Sheherz. ‘Strength. Glory.’

‘And without those?’ asked Hyalhi. ‘If we were left without strength, and stripped of our courage. If all our glory were erased. What would we have left, Captain Sheherz?’

Sheherz thought for a moment. It was impossible to imagine the Astral Knights weak and afraid. Such a thing was obscene. If it were not for Hyalhi’s rank, his words would be insubordinate. But a single concept caught in his mind, something that could never be taken away. ‘Our honour,’ he said.

‘Honour,’ repeated Hyalhi. ‘We might be broken down and rendered helpless, but we will always have our honour. When all else is lost that honour is our proof against defeat, for there can never be complete catastrophe if honour is satisfied. The Astral Knights keep our word. We stand beside our brethren.’ He stopped examining the core and looked right at Sheherz, and his grey eyes seemed to strip away the layers of Sheherz’s mind. ‘And we make right our failings.’

‘The failure to destroy the World Engine is not ours alone,’ said Sheherz. ‘And it is far from certain we will make it right.’

‘I am not speaking of the World Engine,’ said Hyalhi. ‘It is evident to me that Lord Amhrad has not told you of the matter of honour we face. But given your doubts, I believe you need to know. If you will hear it, Sheherz. It is not something that can be unheard.’

‘If it gives me a cause to take my brothers and this ship to their deaths,’ said Sheherz, ‘then yes, I must hear it.’

The Varv Deliverance Fleet followed the formation orders sent out from the bridge of the Tempestus. They fell back to leave the Tempestus as the tip of the fleet’s spear, its flanks unprotected by the escort squadrons and sensor-ships.

The Tempestus adopted a high polar attitude to the World Engine, on the opposite side from the projected location of its primary weapon. The fleet’s few remaining fighter squadrons accompanied the battle-barge to the edge of the World Engine’s gravity well, then peeled off into a wide picket as sensor blips flickered across their tac-readouts. Hundreds of fragments of information billowed from the World Engine’s equator like a swarm of insects from a hive.

In the earliest engagements with the World Engine, this scene had been repeated many times. Approaching ships were accosted by flights of fighter craft launched from somewhere beneath the sensor-proof shielding of the World Engine, and terrible tolls had been reaped among the crews of the Varv Deliverance Fleet. But while the fleet could rarely replace lost fighters and crews, the World Engine’s swarms seemed to vanish beneath its shielding and emerge with their numbers replenished. The battles had been abandoned as pointless, and it was only now that the Imperial fighter crews flew in anger again.

The Tempestus’s sensor-broadcasts became intermittent as junk information filled the void. As communications threatened to cease completely, the fleet’s other ships all sent their message to the Tempestus, knowing it might be the last message they ever sent to their sister battleship.

Emperor’s speed, Tempestus.

Shed their blood, Tempestus.

Return to us in victory, sister.

Whatever you find, kill them all.

‘Hard to port ventral!’ ordered Sheherz and in response the ship lurched under him, the grav-units on the Tempestus not quite enough to compensate for the sudden change.

On the viewscreen, its image enhanced with constant sensor updates, the silvery flocks of enemy fighters drew a wide crescent above the Tempestus. Friendly craft edged in green rose up to meet them, hurtling past the nose of the battle-barge as they moved to engage.

‘Tactical counts five hundred enemy in the void,’ came the voice of one bridge crewman. The information pouring in formed rows of figures and symbols on secondary viewscreens. Sheherz preferred to keep most such information in his head, picturing the unfolding engagement as if it were projected into his mind by the machine-spirit’s holomat.

The friendly fighters numbered rather less than two hundred. Half of them were from the escort carrier squadron Sabre, the Vengeant Aeternam, and the carrier platform Merciless. The rest were orphan squadrons, fighters whose parent carriers had been destroyed.

‘Power to dorsal batteries,’ said Sheherz. ‘Bring our nose up, we’ll hit them bow-on. Damage control parties to forward stations.’

Most of his orders were being followed before he gave them, the inevitabilities of void combat compelling the crew to prepare the ship for bloodshed.

Most of the crew did not know the true nature of their destination. The bridge crew did by necessity, for they had created the charts and vectors that put the Tempestus on an intercept course with the World Engine. If any of them had voiced horror at the prospect, it had not reached Sheherz’s ears. These were crew bonded to the Astral Knights Chapter, and were expected to face death in the void if the Chapter demanded it. Shipmistress Gereltus would not permit anyone on her bridge who would show dismay at the prospect of this suicide mission, but that did not mean none of them felt it now.

The crew would die. Sheherz knew that. It had been a thought flickering at the back of his mind the moment Amhrad voiced his plan to use the Tempestus as a weapon. A Space Marine, especially the Master of the Fleet, could not let that thought get in the way of the choices he had to make. It was not something he was proud of. It was just the way he had to be.

‘Lord captain,’ said the crewman at the ship’s security helm, a leathery old stalwart who usually kept silent when the Tempestus was in combat. ‘Are we prepared for boarding?’

The World Engine had never sent out boarders before – if it had, the Astral Knights would have some idea about just who or what commanded it. That did not mean, of course, that it had not been saving that trick for just such an occasion as this.

‘Keep the security details back to assist damage control,’ said Sheherz. ‘If a Chapter of Space Marines cannot deal with boarders, then nothing can.’

In the muster decks of the Tempestus the whole Chapter was gathered. There had barely been room for the hundreds of battle-brothers, almost three times the complement a battle-barge typically carried. The Chapter had the barest minimum of vehicles and other heavy equipment, because no one could say how useful they would be down on the surface.

One bridge screen showed composite pict-grabs of the alien fighters. They were crescent-shaped with the points of their curved wings set forward. They had twin engines and cannon, and no obvious cockpit or entry hatches. Their metal had a strange shifting quality, squared spirals rippling across the surface. They had no livery or markings on the bare metal.

‘Brace!’ came the warning from the sensorium helm. The crewmen on the bridge dropped onto the deck or held on to the architectural carvings on the walls. The viewscreen showed the images from the sensors on the prow of the Tempestus as the shoal of enemy fighters split into three squadrons and spiralled towards the ship, livid green blasts of energy already streaking across the void.

The deck shuddered as the fighters peeled off and hurtled down the flanks of the Tempestus. Las-fire hammered against the hull plating. The image shuddered and broke apart into static as the prow sensors were shattered by the fire rattling against the ship’s nose. Damage warnings were already blaring somewhere in the ship nearby.

Sheherz recognised the vibrations of the plasma batteries and las-broadsides firing in response, punctuated by the thin roar of missile turrets disgorging their payloads. The turrets covered the sides of the Tempestus, and firing in their close defence configuration created a distinctive thump through the structure of the ship. It felt like the anger of the machine-spirit, a distant roar of rage.

Sparks flew from one of the many bridge cogitators as a power surge burned out its circuits. One of the bridge crew sprayed an extinguisher over the fire. The lights on the bridge, already kept dim, flickered low as the power fluctuated again.

‘Report!’ ordered the shipmistress.

‘Port turrets down to seventy per cent,’ came the reply from one of the damage control helms.

‘Starboard at sixty-five.’

‘Tactical helm!’ demanded Sheherz. ‘Where are the enemy?’

‘Astern,’ replied the crewman at the tactical helm. He had been scorched by the short-lived fire but remained at his post. ‘They’re staying in our wake.’

Then the enemy knew what it was doing. The wake of the ship, directly behind the engine, made for hazardous flying but hampered the laser turrets’ targeting. ‘They’re going to hit us again,’ said Sheherz. ‘They’ll come in before our damage control teams get into position.’

‘They’ve done for enough Imperial ships to know their weaknesses,’ said the shipmistress.

‘Astral Knights do not have weaknesses,’ said Sheherz. ‘Order the fighters to engage. All of them. All stop, reverse thrusters engage. Turn us hard to port.’

It was a bizarre order, but the crew of the Tempestus obeyed without pause. Even if he had not been the Master of the Fleet, he was the only man the machine-spirit trusted. That on its own would have been enough.

The ship yawed violently. Anything not stowed was thrown around the bridge. Helm crew too slow to brace were thrown off their feet. The engine pitch, that ever-present thrum that became inaudible after months on board, shifted to the high whine of the prow thrusters. The ship decelerated and again it lurched.

In the intricate game of voidbound combat, the rules of physics were there to be bent. The Tempestus had the agility of a far smaller ship, enough for it to slow suddenly and turn to present one side of its hull to bear. The firepower of the battle-barge was in its broadsides, its long-range lance batteries and arrays of laser turrets. The enemy fighters had first aimed to hit the upper hull, and Sheherz had given them the prow. Now they wanted to strike the engines and plasma reactors near the stern, but Sheherz had no intention of becoming such a target. Instead he would give them the full power of a battle-barge’s bombardment. If the hostile fighters wanted another swing at the Tempestus, they were going to have to earn it through a gauntlet of fire.

The static on the viewscreen cleared. In place of the pict-grabs from the prow the machine-spirit now presented images taken from the Imperial fighters engaging the host of enemy craft. The Imperial fighters were outnumbered and Sheherz saw they were dying already, bursting in silent explosions of silver to the longer-ranged enemy fire.

‘Man the broadside!’ ordered Sheherz. ‘Everything we have!’

The port flank of the Tempestus slewed round to face the fighter battle. More Imperial ships were knocked from the void, imploding into showers of wreckage like bursting fireworks.

‘Tactical, give me targets!’ said Sheherz.

‘Twenty per cent of the enemy in barrage range,’ was the reply.

The lances were not accurate enough to pick off a fighter craft, but in enough numbers the weight of their fire would shred a significant percentage of fighters in close range.

‘Have the fighters break towards us,’ said Sheherz. ‘Draw them in.’

Already almost a quarter of the Imperial fighters were gone. A face-to-face engagement could only ever result in the destruction of the fighter force, but it was necessary.

Sheherz’s mind turned to the men and women of the fighter crews. A handful would live through the battle, if that. But he quickly recalled what Librarian Hyalhi had told him, the enormity of it. The sacrifice was grave, but there was never any question of its worth.

‘Forty per cent!’ called out the tactical crewman.

‘Fires on decks nineteen through forty-one,’ reported the damage control helm.

‘Despatch damage control,’ said Sheherz. The shipmistress immediately began reeling off a series of orders for containing the fires. They were close to the ship’s plasma reactors. In any other situation they would be Sheherz’s priority. Not now.

‘Sixty per cent!’

Three out of every five enemy fighters were within the kill-box created by the broadside weapons. When the Imperial fighters were gone, the enemy would break formation and loop out of that zone to attack from the stern. If, that was, they were still flying.

‘Broadsides fire!’ ordered Sheherz. ‘Everything! Everything we have!’

The Tempestus rocked under the force of its scores of lasers and turrets erupting at once. The viewscreen filled up with firing angles, illuminating the void with a cross-hatching of light.

‘We’re going to lose reactor nine!’ said damage control.

‘Shut it down and seal it off!’ ordered the shipmistress.

Another volley shuddered through the ship. The enemy fighters were caught in its web and ships were sheared in two or spitted lengthways by blades of las. The survivors broke and fled, weaving through the firestorm, all formation gone.

The Imperial fighters were caught in it, too. They fared better, for they had a few seconds’ warning before the broadside was launched. But many were simply too close to break out of the kill-box. They spiralled to destruction as their hulls were punctured or their fuel cells ripped open.

Sacrifices. They all had to make them, Imperial Navy crewman and Space Marine. The fighter crews had known that the moment they first strapped themselves into a trainer’s cockpit. Sheherz acknowledged the winking of the viewscreen icons from green to black, and put them out of his mind.

‘Bring us back on course,’ he ordered. ‘Full power.’

‘Nine is down,’ said damage control. ‘Fires in the generatorium chamber. Sealed off.’

‘How many inside?’ asked the shipmistress.

‘Twenty-three,’ said damage control.

There were twenty-three men and women locked up in the chamber where reactor nine was burning. The shipmistress should not have asked the question, thought Sheherz. Their sacrifice was no different to that of anyone else on the Tempestus.

The ship’s attitude pitched and its main engines flared again, putting it back on course for the World Engine. The World Engine itself was turning to catch the Tempestus in the arc of its main weapon. Even without making all the calculations, Sheherz could see it was close. Pausing to break up the fighter assault had cost them enough time for the World Engine’s controllers to react.

The enemy fighter force had been cut in half. It was regrouping now, individual fighters wheeling around to adopt formation before making another assault. The assault would hit and this time there wasn’t much the Tempestus could do about it. Sheherz left that question in the hands of the Emperor.

‘My lord,’ said Sheherz into the Astral Knights vox-link. ‘Are we in good order?’

‘It was rough,’ replied Chapter Master Amhrad from the muster decks, where the companies of the Astral Knights were gathered. ‘But we report no losses.’

‘Impact in nine minutes,’ said Sheherz. ‘I wish I were there with my brethren, Chapter Master.’

Sheherz was technically the captain of the Sixth Company, but his duties as Master of the Fleet meant he rarely fought alongside them. Most such titles were ceremonial, and their holders bore arms aside their brethren like any other Space Marine, but the Astral Knights Master of the Fleet had always stood apart. Sheherz had always assumed, through his earning of his power armour and his career in the Sixth Company, that however far he rose he would do it shoulder to shoulder with his fellow Astral Knights. But he understood the Tempestus as few could, and the captaincy of the Sixth Company took him further from his brethren, not closer to them.

Sheherz left command of the Sixth on the ground to First Sergeant Kypsalah. His company was gathered alongside the rest of the Chapter in the cavernous muster decks, waiting for whatever might happen when the Tempestus broke through the veil around the World Engine and crash-landed on its surface. None of them knew what they might find, whether the ship would be annihilated in an instant or whether they would find themselves surrounded by a horde of enemies. A captain should be with them at such a time, preparing their souls for whatever ordeal they were to face. Sheherz told himself he would rush to join them as soon as the ship was down. The battle-brothers of the Sixth would take heart that he had descended from the distant bridge to pound through the mud with them.

‘Your duty is there, captain,’ said Amhrad. ‘The Tempestus needs guidance as much as your brothers. Lead her well.’

‘For glory, my lord.’

‘For glory, Master of the Fleet.’

Reactor nine was shut down but fires were burning right up the spine of the ship. Damage control teams were tied up keeping them from spreading. The Tempestus accelerated towards the World Engine trailing wreckage and burning plasma fuel.

‘We’re within the target’s gravity horizon,’ said the shipmistress. ‘Your orders?’

‘All stop,’ said Sheherz. The ship didn’t need its own power any more – the gravity of the World Engine would propel it fast enough. The engine drone lowered to a whisper and the ship was suddenly abnormally quiet.

Men who were born on a spaceship could be driven mad when they set foot on a planet and were suddenly without the engine noise they had heard their whole lives. They thought they had died. Sometimes their hearts stopped and they really did die.

‘Reactors four and eleven are failing,’ said damage control.

Sheherz ran the calculations in his head.

‘We won’t have enough power for the landing,’ said Shipmistress Gereltus. Sheherz had come to the same conclusion himself a moment earlier.

‘Then it will be rough,’ replied Sheherz. If there was any question of turning back, Gereltus did not voice it. ‘All reverse thrust. Brace for collision.’

Klaxons sounded through the ship. New engine notes rose as the prow thrusters burned again, slowing the ship down. It would not be enough for even a crash landing. The Tempestus was tough, but even she might not be that tough.

‘There is nothing more now that I can do,’ said Sheherz quietly. The shipmistress and her crew could not hear him. ‘Chance alone will decide. I pray I have stacked our odds high enough, but the outcome is out of my hands.’

He paused. Perhaps a reply could come through the engines and the chiming of the bridge cogitators, or formed from the static on the vox-net. He did not hear it.

‘If there is anything you can do, Tempestus,’ he continued, ‘if you can still guide us, then the helm is yours. I cannot claim to be your master now when I have put our survival at the whim of fate. And if either of us should not survive, it has been an honour.’

Perhaps the prow thrusters altered pitch a little. Perhaps the alarms going on every deck hit a higher or lower note for a moment. But Sheherz could not make out any reply from the Tempestus.

He did not even know if the machine-spirit was aware, in the way that a human mind was. Perhaps it was just a set of commands to be fired off when the sensors received the right information. His words probably meant nothing to it. But they had to be said.

‘Atmospheric breach!’ said the crewman at the tactical helm.

‘All brace! All brace!’ ordered Shipmistress Gereltus again.

With insufficient input from the Imperial fighter craft, the viewscreen had switched back to the prow sensors. The image was patchy and stuttering. It was full of the World Engine, its surface cloaked in silvery cloud. The image shook as the Tempestus breached the upper reaches of the World Engine’s atmosphere. The ship decelerated alarmingly, catastrophically, and a hundred warnings blared out as turrets and other extremities were ripped off by the sudden air resistance. The friction flared in orange tongues of fire around the edges of the prow. Hull plates stripped off, torn like paper.

The bridge crew were thrown around. Sheherz kept his footing as the mag-locks on his boots anchored him to the deck.

The prow sensors died. The last image the viewscreen ever showed was of the clouds streaking by, burned away just enough to reveal a jigsaw of soaring steel below, a world-spanning alien city.

‘Thrusters correcting!’ gasped Gereltus. She was clinging to the tactical helm. A loose piece of equipment had struck her and blood ran down her face. ‘We’re… we’re coming down ventral-first…’

The Tempestus had turned herself so she would crash belly-down instead of spearing into the World Engine prow first. It was the best she could do in the circumstances. She had ratcheted the chances of success a few per cent higher.

Chance. That was all it was.

The din was awful. Hull plates were being torn off to expose the decks beneath, and they were being stripped by the shrieking wind and washed with flame. Sheherz heard a plasma reactor going critical, the boom of its vaporising coolant almost lost in the howl.

There was only room in his mind for one thought.

We must all make sacrifices. Every man’s will be different. But they will be made.

Sheherz was willing to die. He had even come to terms with the whole Chapter being lost. But it was hearing the Tempestus dying that was the worst. His body could take pain, he could mourn and avenge brothers he lost… but the ship was an icon, a home, a fellow warrior and a relic of a glorious past. Could he sacrifice that willingly? Or would it have to be torn from his hands by fate?

Doubt struck him. Was there something he was not willing to give up, after all?

The ship crunched through the tallest structures. Sheherz could hear the spires puncturing the lower hull and snapping off.

‘Ventral three is compromised!’ came a vox from one of the crew, screaming to be heard over the roar of tearing metal. ‘Pods deploying! Pods…’

The transmission was cut off. Some of the Astral Knights had been sealed in drop pods, in case the landing was such that it was safer for them to be deployed in the ten-man assault pods than to remain sheltered within the ship. There had been room for barely a company’s worth in the pods, and those Astral Knights were now plummeting from the crashing ship to land wherever fate saw fit to scatter them. The vast majority of the brethren would have to weather the landing on the Tempestus.

The ship’s thrusters were still firing, arresting her descent. She had slowed enough to make a collision potentially survivable. There was a chance. Not great, but it existed.

‘It has been an honour,’ said Sheherz, and he felt the machine-spirit slipping away from him, sinking into darkness. ‘Goodbye.’

The floor blistered up, tearing the helm cogitators from their housings. A great mass of dark grey steel ripped up through it, the point of an immense metal spear, its engraved surface hurtling past into the ceiling of the bridge and up through the decks above. The bridge of the Tempestus was sternward, towards the middle where collision and enemy fire would struggle to reach the command systems. Suddenly its armoured shelter seemed hopelessly fragile. The scale of the ship became apparent through the endless labyrinths of torn metal opened up by the forces of the crash.

The Tempestus let out a terrible dying scream of tearing steel. Exploding fuel tanks and ammunition stashes rose like a choir hitting a crescendo. It was the sound of a dying god.

The ship lurched to the side. The bridge was a ruin of twisted metal. The building that had impaled the Tempestus through the belly was being torn down by the ship’s weight. Sheherz could do nothing but stand on his island of deck, watching the magnitude of the destruction. The ruin tore through the ship like a knife through muscle and organs, laying open the hundreds of decks, the crew quarters and sick bays, shrines, mess halls, armouries, the brig and the shipmistress’s quarters, the grey expanse of the crew’s drilling-ground and the long dusty labyrinth of maintenance tunnels.

Even the forgotten places, where no man had walked since the ship’s construction, were ripped open and exposed like the raw nerve endings.

But he could not see the steel-clad caverns of the muster decks. They were further aft than the enormous wound in the ship’s belly. There the Astral Knights were weathering the crash, and the destruction had not reached them yet.

There was hope.

The Tempestus hit the ground. The lower decks, exposed by the great wound, flattened into crushed strata of steel. Fires burst there, and showers of sparks from severed power conduits. Sheherz watched it unfold as if in slow motion and the enormity of it filled his mind. Crewmen tumbled into the abyss of ruin. Burning fuel poured from conduit breaches like blood from an artery.

The deck beneath Sheherz gave way. He fell into that black canyon, into the mass of burning steel below.

His last thoughts were calm. A great weight had been taken off, for he had allowed fate to take the Tempestus from him. He had given the old ship permission to die in the name of victory, as Sheherz himself had accepted long ago. It was not just a Space Marine’s obligation to offer his life to his duty – it was his right, as well, and he had granted that right to the ship.

It was gratitude he felt, sorrowful but accepting.

Then through the burning darkness loomed a shape like a steel skull, stretched and featureless except for deep sockets with green flecks for eyes. Its hunched metallic shape came closer and it aimed a gun of the same grey metal at him, its details obscured by a sudden glare of green energy and an accompanying burst of pain.

But it did not matter. His duty had been done. The sacrifice had been made.

Then Sheherz thought no more.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Leonid Kozienko.
Internal artwork by Alex Boyd, Paul Dainton, Hardy Fowler, Bjorn Hurri,
Nuala Kinrade, Cheol Joo Lee, John Michelbach and Leos NG.

© Games Workshop Limited 2014. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-78251-848-8

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