James Swallow - The Flight of the Eisenstein

Garro shouted into his vox, a desperate gambit coming to the fore of his thoughts. 'Qruze!' he cried, 'Heed me! Get us out of the warp, crash reversion! MowV

Over the clash of the skirmish and the buzzing interference, he heard raised voices in the back­ground, the bridge crew reacting with shock at his demands. The Luna Wolf was wary. 'Garro, say again?'

'Drop out of the immaterium! These intruders, the warp must be sustaining them somehow! If we stay here we'll lose the ship!'

'We can't revert!' It was Vought, her words laced with panic. We have no idea where we are, we could emerge inside a star or-'

'Do it!' The order was a thunderous roar.

'Captain, aye/ Qruze did not hesitate. 'Brace your­self!'

'No, no, no!' Grulgor pounded across the deck towards him, raising his blade. You will not deny me my satisfaction! I will see you dead, Garro! I will out­live you!'

The battle-captain brought up his sword and batted Grulgor away. 'Be gone, you stinking freak! Back to your hell and choke on it!'

Through the armoured window slits, a flurry of bril­liant blue-white discharges signalled the creation of a warp gate, and the frigate dropped through the screaming maw and back into the realm of real space. Grulgor and his freakish kindred bawled a chorus of agony and frenzy, and dissipated.

Garro saw it with his own eyes and still he could not explain it. He witnessed a roaring, shimmering phantom tear itself from the meat sack of a body, drawn up and away as if it were a leaf caught in a hur­ricane, and for an instant he saw the shapes of both

the mutant and the man that Ignatius Grulgor had once been before the screaming shade was torn away. It vanished through the hull of the ship with dozens of others, the captured energy of all the twisted Death Guard. Souls, he told himself, his mind unable to fur­nish any other explanation but this most numinous, unreal of notions. Their souls have been taken by the warp.

Trailing fire and pieces of itself, shedding waves of radiation from the brutal emergency reversion and the collapse of the Geller bubble, the tiny frigate returned to common existence in a dark and unpop­ulated quadrant of interstellar space. There were no stars to sight, no worlds within range, only dust and airless void. Directionless and adrift, the Eisenstein fell.

TWELVE

The Void

A Church of Men

Lost

'The fragrance of the sick and the wounded/ said Voyen with grim annoyance, 'this ship reeks of it.'

Garro did not meet his gaze, instead ranging about the interior of Eisenstein' 's infirmary. The frigate's vale-tudinarium was filled to bursting, temporary partitions made from sheets of metal segregating the areas of the long chamber to stem any chance of cross-infection. At the far end, hidden behind walls of thick, frosted glass and iron seal doors, was the isola­tion ward. Garro walked steadily towards it, picking his way around medicae servitors and practitioners. The Apothecary kept pace with him.

The remains were doused in liquid promethium and set to burn for the better part of a day,' Voyen continued. Then servitors were used to eject them into space. The helots were then terminated by Hakur, just to be sure.'

Remains. This was the word they were using to describe the diseased flesh-matter that was all that

was left of Grulgor and his men. It was easier to depersonalise it that way, to think of the puddles of ichor and bone as just effluent to be disposed of.

To face the reality of what those corpses had once been, what they became, nothing in the lives of Garro's men had prepared them for such sights.

Voyen, in particular, had taken it poorly. As much as he was a warrior like Garro, he was an oath-sworn healer as well, and for him to witness the dead rise to life as crucibles of seething pestilence troubled the Astartes more deeply than he might ever care to admit. Garro saw it in his hooded eyes, and saw the mirror of his own feelings there as well.

Now they were adrift and their flight stalled for the moment with the Navigator's death, the adrenaline of the battle and chase faded. In its place was the reck­oning of what had transpired, the realisation of its bleak import. If death was not the end, if what hap­pened to Grulgor was real and not some kind of warp-spawned illusion… then could such a fate be waiting for all of them? That this might be some ele­ment of Horus's pact with betrayal chilled Garro's marrow.

Voyen spoke again. 'Has Sendek had any success with the star maps?'

Garro shook his head, seeing no reason to keep the truth from him. 'The woman, Vought, she has been toiling with him, but the results are not favourable. As closely as they can determine the ship reverted to normal space somewhere beyond the edge of the Perseus Null, but even that is nothing more than an educated guess. No traders or scouts have ever ven­tured into the zone.' He took a deep breath. How long had they been becalmed out here? Days, or was it weeks? Inside the vessel all was a permanent, smoky

twilight that made it difficult to gauge the passage of time.

Voyen hesitated as they passed a section of the wall where refrigerated pods hung in clusters around heavy steel stanchions. The autopsy on the Navigator Severnaya was completed and I have viewed it.' He indicated one of the frosted pods. Garro could make out the impression of a drawn grey face inside the capsule. 'It is as Master Carya suspected. The Naviga­tor was injured in the engagement, but he died from the psychic shock of the emergency transition from the warp. The apparent bleed-over took the lives of his adjutants and helots. In his already weakened state, it was inevitable.'

'I might as well have placed my bolter to his skull and pulled the trigger/ Garro frowned. 'I should have known. With all the madness running riot through the ship, I should have known he wouldn't survive the journey' When Voyen didn't respond straight away, Garro shot him a look. 'What choice did I have?' he said flatly. The Geller Field was seconds away from collapse. We would have been torn apart in the warp or obliterated in a drive explosion.'

'You did as you thought right/ Voyen replied, unable to keep an element of reproach from his words.

'First it was Decius questioning me, and now you? You would have made a different choice?'

'I am not a battle-captain/ said the Astartes healer. 'I can only observe the aftermath of the choice my com­mander made. Our ship lies aimless and astray in uncharted space without means for rescue. The astropaths and Navigators are dead, so we cannot cry for help or chance another venture into the warp.' His eyes flared with restrained anger. 'We have escaped

the sedition at Isstvan only to die here, our message unheard and the Warmaster free to reach Terra before word of his perfidy. Despair stalks the corridors of this ship, sir, as real as any mutant killer!'

'As always, I appreciate your candour, Meric,' Garro allowed, resisting the urge to chastise him for daring to voice words that bordered on insubordi­nation. They moved on. 'Tell me about the other casualties.'

'Many of the officers and enlisted crew suffered injuries, and there were several deaths from the… the incursions.'

'And our battle-brothers?'

Voyen sighed. 'Every man who fell in combat with those things is dead, lord. Every one except Decius, and even he barely clings to the edge of life.' The Apothecary nodded to the sealed section. 'The infec­tions in his body strive to overwhelm him and I have done all I can with the medicines and equipment at my disposal. I confess I am at the limits of my knowl­edge with his malady'

'What are his chances of survival? I want no obfus-cation or hedging. Will he live?'