James Swallow - The Flight of the Eisenstein

Furious, the Death Guard struck the naval officer with a sudden backhand, battering the man to the decking with his cheekbones shattered and blood streaming from cuts. 'Evade, then!' he spat, 'but warp curse you, I want everything thrown at that bloody ship before we let him go!'

The rest of the bridge crew scrambled to carry out his orders, leaving the mewling shipmaster to tend to himself. Typhon snatched up his manreaper and held it tightly, his anger hot and deadly. He cursed Garro as the Eisenstein slipped out of his grasp.

The Terminus Est bore down, the warship's drives casting a halo of crackling red light, a shark snapping at a minnow. The craft groaned as the monstrous thrust of her drives tore the ship out of the White Moon's gravity well, the blade-sharp prow crossing the path of the frigate. As it did so, every lance cannon

on Typhon's battle cruiser erupted as one in a scream­ing concert of power, tearing across the dark towards the fleeing vessel.

'Incoming fire!' barked Sendek. 'Brace for impact!'

Garro heard the words and then suddenly he was airborne, the deck dropping away from him. The Death Guard spun and tumbled across the bridge, rebounding off stanchions and clipping the ceiling before the energy of the slamming impact dissipated and he collided with a control console.

Nathaniel shook off a daze and dragged himself back to his feet. Small fires were burning here and there as servitors struggled to bring the bridge back to any semblance of order. He saw Carya sprawled over the command throne, with Vought at his side. The woman had a severe cut across her scalp, but she seemed to be unaware of the streaks of blood down her cheek. Dimly, he heard Iacton Qruze swear in Cthonian as he climbed off the deck.

'Report,' Garro commanded, the rough metallic smoke that hazed the air tasting acrid on his tongue.

Sendek called out from the other side of the cham­ber. 'Terminus Est has broken off pursuit, but that last salvo hit us hard. Several decks vented to space. Drive reactors are in flux, engines are verging on critical shutdown.' He paused. 'Slingshot manoeuvre was suc­cessful. On course for intercept with jump point.'

Decius grunted as he pushed aside a fallen section of panelling and stepped over the lifeless body of a naval rating. 'What good is that if we explode before we get there?'

Garro ignored him and moved to Carya's side. 'Is he alive?'

Vought nodded. 'Just stunned, I think.'

The shipmaster waved them off. 'I can stand on my own. Get away.'

Garro disregarded the man's complaints and pulled him to his feet. 'Decius, call the Apothecary to the bridge.'

Carya shook his head. 'No, not yet. We're not fin­ished here, not by a long shot.' He staggered forward. 'Racel, what's the Navigator's status?'

Vought cringed as she listened to a vox headset. Even at a distance, Garro could hear yelling and shouting from the tinny speaker. 'Severnaya's still alive, but his adjutants are panicking. They're climb­ing the walls down there. They are weeping about the warp. I can hear them screaming about darkness and storms'

'If he's not dead, then he can still do his job,' Carya said grimly, chewing down his pain. 'That goes for all of us.'

'Aye,' said Garro. 'Order the crew to make the prepa­rations for warp translation. We will not have a second chance at this.'

'We may not have the first chance/ grumbled Decius beneath his breath.

Garro turned on him and his face hardened. 'Brother, I have reached my bounds with your doleful conduct! If you have nothing else to volunteer but that, I will have you go below and join the damage control parties'

'I call it as I see it,' retorted Decius. 'You said you wanted the truth from me, captain!'

'I would have you keep your comments to yourself until we are away, Decius!'

Nathaniel expected the younger Astartes to back down, but instead Decius stepped closer, moderating his tone so that it would not carry further. 'I will not.

This course you have set us upon is suicide, sir, as surely as if you had bared our throats to Typhon's scythe.' He stabbed a finger at Vought. You heard the woman. The Navigator is barely sane with the terror of what you ask of him. I know you have not been deaf to the reports of the turbulence in the warp in recent days. A dozen ships were displaced just on the voyage to Isstvan-'

That is rumour and hearsay/ Qruze snapped, com­ing closer.

'Are you sure?' Decius pressed. They say the warp has turned black with tempests and the freakish things that lurk within them! And here we sit, on a ship held together by rust and hope, with intent to dive into that ocean of madness.'

Garro hesitated. There was truth in Decius's words. He was aware of the talk circulating about the fleet before the attack on the Choral City, that there had been isolated incidents of Navigators and astropaths going wild with panic when their minds stroked the immaterium. The sea of warp space was always a chaotic and dangerous realm through which to travel, but so the reports had hinted, it was rapidly becom­ing impassable.

We have already tested ourselves and this ship beyond all rational margins/ hissed Decius. 'If we touch the warp, it will be a step too far. We will not endure a blind voyage into the empyrean.'

The skin on the back of Garro's neck prickled. The innate danger sense that was second nature to an Astartes sounded in him and he turned towards the bridge's main hatch. Standing in the doorway, wreathed in thin grey smoke, the woman Keeler was watching him. The battle-captain blinked, for one moment afraid that reason had fled from him and

she was some kind of ephemeral vision, but then he realised that Decius saw her too.

Keeler picked her way through the wreckage and came to stand directly in front of him. 'Nathaniel Garro, I came because I know you need help. Will you accept it?'

'You're just a remembrancer/ said Decius, but even his bluster was waning before her quiet, potent pres­ence. 'What help can you offer?'

'You'd be surprised/ murmured Qruze.

'The survival of this ship is measured in moments/ she continued, 'and if we remain in this place we will surely die. We must all take a leap of faith, Nathaniel. If we trust in the will of the Emperor, we will find sal­vation.'

'What you ask of him is blind belief in phantoms/ Decius argued. 'You cannot know we will survive!'

'I can/ Keeler's reply was quiet, but filled with such complete certainty that the Astartes were given pause by it.

From the forward consoles, Vought called out. 'Captain, the ship's Geller Field will not stabilise. Per­haps we should abort the warp jump. If we enter the immaterium, it may fail completely and the ship will be unprotected.'

'You have only one choice, Nathaniel/ said Keeler softly.

There will be no abort, deck officer' Garro watched the shock unfold on Decius's face as he spoke. 'Take us in/

ELEVEN

Chaos

Visions

The Resurrected

The Eisenstein fell.

The warp gate opened, a ragged-edged wound cut through the matrix of space, and it drew the damaged frigate inside. Unreal energies collided and annihi­lated one another. With a brilliant flicker of radiation, the ship left reality behind.

It was impossible for a person possessed of an unal­tered mind to comprehend the nature of warp space. The seething, churning ocean of raw non-matter was psychoactive. It was as much a product of the psyches of those that looked upon it, as it was a shifting, wil­ful landscape of its own. On Ancient Earth there had once been a philosopher who warned that if a man were to look into an abyss, then he should know that the abyss would also look into the man. In no other place was this as true as it was in the immaterium. The warp was a mirror for the emotions of every liv­ing thing, a sea of turbulent thought echoes, the dark