The Unremembered Empire Part 3

Ghosts walked here, images of things light years away, drawn into the Pharos by its quantum processes. They were often fleeting, but always real. It had taken Dantioch two weeks and immense astronomical calculations to tune the Pharos as he wanted it.

As he walked onto the tuning floor, Dantioch saw Guilliman appear before him, as if in the flesh.

He had finally tuned the xenos device to far distant Macragge.

*It is as you speculated, my lord,' Dantioch said. *The Pharos is part of an ancient interstellar navigation system. It is both a beacon and a route-finder. And, as we just saw, it also permits instantaneous communication across unimaginable distances.'

*You say I speculated, Dantioch,' said Guilliman's image, *but I never had the slightest clue what manner of technology it was.'

*It is not fully understood by me either, lord,' replied the warsmith. *It certainly involves a principle of quantum entanglement. But I believe that, unlike our warp technology that uses the immaterium to by-pa.s.s reals.p.a.ce, this quantum function once allowed for site-to-site teleportation, perhaps through a network of gateways. I also believe its fundamental function lies not with psychic energy, but with empathic power. It is an empathic system, adjusted to the needs of the user, not the will. I will provide fuller findings later.'

*But it is a navigational beacon?' asked Guilliman.

*In many ways.'

*You said it was part of a network?'

Dantioch nodded.

*I believe other stations like the Pharos must exist, or once existed, on other worlds throughout the galaxy.'

Guilliman paused.

*So it is not one, single beacon, like the Astronomican?'

*No, lord. In two ways. I believe the Pharos and other stations like it once used to create a network of navigational pathways between stars, as opposed to a single, range-finding point the way the Astronomican does. Or did.'

*Go on.'

*It is more like a lantern than a beacon, lord. You tune it. You point it, and illuminate a site or location for the benefit of range-finding. Now I have tuned to Macragge, I can, I believe, light up Macragge as a bright spot that will be visible throughout reals.p.a.ce and the warp, despite the Ruinstorm.'

*Just as I see Sotha as a new star in the sky?'

*Yes, my lord.'

Guilliman looked at him.

*I am loath to use xenos technology, but the light of the Astronomican is lost to us because of the Ruinstorm. To hold Ultramar together, to rebuild the Five Hundred Worlds, we must restore communication and travel links. We must navigate and reposition. We must pierce and banish this age of darkness. This is the first step towards our survival. This is how we fight back and overthrow Horus and his daemon allies. Dantioch, I applaud you and thank you for the peerless work you have done, and the labours you are yet to undertake.'

*My lord.'

Dantioch, with difficulty, bowed.

*Warsmith?'

*Yes, my lord?'

*Illuminate Macragge.'

3.

From the Heart

of the Storm

*Hjold! The sea is set against us, for

it is the sea, and the darkness is set about us,

for it is the darkness, but

we will row on, brothers, backs breaking into each stroke,

we will row on because no other

life or comfort awaits us.

Fja vo! Survive! The sea and the dark are our context!

We will, before eternity, out-row all storms.'

a from The Seafarer (Fenrisian Eddas) The hull had been screaming for months. Screaming like a newborn thrown to the night-packs.

Their s.h.i.+p was called the Waning Crescent; zeta-cla.s.s, a courier s.h.i.+p. It was not the proud wars.h.i.+p or longwarp they might have hoped for, but they were a small company of Wolves, and Leman Russ had no resources to waste.

Faffnr Bludbroder had felt his heart swell with pride when Russ had given him the duty. It was a duty that had been handed to the VI Legion by the Sigillite. However, Faffnr had felt his heart sag when he realised it was not going to be some great, sharp-edged expedition of battles.h.i.+ps and barges, but ten wolf-brothers on a lowly s.h.i.+p to distant Ultramar.

Faffnr had quickened his edge anyway, accepted the fold of parchment upon which his duty was laid out, and bowed to the primarch of the VI Legion.

*Ojor hjold. I will do this, lord,' he had said.

They had set out, sworn and dedicated to what was one of the most shocking duties any of the Legiones Astartes might ever undertake.

Three weeks into their voyage, the warp had gone dark, the storm had risen, and the s.h.i.+p had begun to scream. It had been screaming ever since.

Most of the crew, the human crew, had gone mad. The Wolves of Fenris had been forced to kill some, and deprive most of the others of their liberty for their own protection. The Waning Crescent, aside from ten warriors of the VI Legion s.p.a.ce Wolves, was carrying gene-stock grain samples and ceramics. Within a day, the violence of the warp storm had smashed all the ceramics in the holds. The screaming... The screaming was...

It was as if the world were ending. The b.l.o.o.d.y Sunset of legend, the end of things, the wolf eating its own tail, the end of the great cycle, to be followed only by the cold moonrise of the afterworld. Faffnr had been forced to tie the whimpering s.h.i.+pmaster to his seat. Bo Soren, known as *The Axe', had stood watch day and night over the Navigator's socket-pit, blade ready to administer mercy. Malmur Longreach, spear in one hand and bolter in the other, had guarded the defibrillating engines. Shockeye Ffyn, Kuro Jjordrovk, Gudson Allfreyer, Mads Loreson and Salick the Braided had patrolled the empty companionways and echoing corridors of the stricken s.h.i.+p in rotation, watching for manifests.

Biter Herek had watched the fore-station.

Nido Knifeson had watched the stern quarters.

None of them had gone unchallenged.

The broiling warp had squeezed out daemonforms, creatures that had pierced the screaming, and slipped in through the hull plates of the s.h.i.+p. The Wolves had been tasked. They had been forced to draw down, stand their ground, and b.l.o.o.d.y their blades to drive the warp-things back. Malmur had fought two nights in the spastic engine room. Kuro had lost an arm to a tar-blackened maw that had swung in from nowhere. Biter Herek had split a lunging skull in twain with his axe, and had done it every night, to such an extent that it was almost a ritual. As the s.h.i.+p's master clock struck four, the raging skull would appear at the fore-station, and Biter would be ready with his axe to greet it, and split it.

They all had stories, pieces of a saga that none of them would ever live long enough to pa.s.s on to a skjald for retelling.

It was a voyage of the d.a.m.ned. They believed that each day, marked out by the increasingly unreliable deck-clocks of the battered s.h.i.+p, would be their last.

Then their voyage and their saga ended in the most unexpected way; not in the jaws of the doomwolf, or a drench of blood spilt by an enemy's blade or teeth.

No, their saga ended in a light, in a beacon.

In hope.

Somehow, during the storm crossing, they had become friends. Eeron Kleve of the X Legion Iron Hands, black in his mourning cloak, and Timur Gantulga of the V Legion White Scars, pale as tundra frost.

Their paths had crossed at Neryx, where Kleve's forces had been caught in flight after the Isstvan ma.s.sacre that had taken his beloved primarch. A sixty-day fight through the asteroid belt had finally ended when the Sons of Horus, snapping at Kleve's throat, were driven off by Gantulga's strike force.

Word had already begun to spread of the Warmaster's treachery, and Gantulga's force had been hunting for targets. His remit had been to seek confirmation of the atrocity and its perpetrator, but Gantulga had found all the confirmation he needed in the sight of eight wars.h.i.+ps bearing Horus's mark hounding a battered barge of the X Legion like dogs baiting a wounded bear.

The Sons of Horus had not gone quietly. Knowing their astropathic death screams would swiftly bring more of their kind, the Iron Hands and White Scars had formed up and made a run for Momed, where further Iron Hands were reported to be mustering. Gantulga had transferred to Kleve's barge to share intelligence data just before the a.s.sembled flotilla had entered the warp.

Then the storm had struck and they had been lost. Their crossing had begun.

Gantulga did not count the hours or the days. It was fluid to him.

*Time is merely the distance between two objects,' he said.

Kleve had no choice. Settings in his optical implants automatically displayed the track of local time. He would relate the tally to Gantulga, and the White Scar would shrug, as if to note that while the data was practically meaningless, he appreciated the sharing.

When the death of Ferrus Ma.n.u.s had been authenticated, Kleve had decreed that his companies would observe ten years of mourning. But as time was meaningless and fluid within the storm, and merely an arbitrary count in the corner of his vision, Kleve had also declared that the mourning would only begin once they were back in reals.p.a.ce, within the flow of time as it is understood in the physical universe.

It had become his obsession: not deliverance or salvation, not to escape the storm, not even to find the enemy and avenge the fallen of his Legion. He simply wanted to end the crossing and translate again so that he could reset his counter and begin the mourning.

That day, just another period marked for convenience on the s.h.i.+pboard watch, for the bucking, bridling s.h.i.+p travelled through the eternal storm-blackness of the warp, Kleve found Gantulga in an upper wardroom, teaching Chogorian combat slang to some of Kleve's company and a party of remembrancers. Gantulga believed that there might be strategic benefits from having Iron Hands understand the private patois of the White Scars if they were to fight in close cooperation against a remorseless foe who otherwise knew all Imperial codings. The remembrancers were present to learn, and then act as tutors for those in Kleve's company prevented from attending because of watch duties. Kleve had requested his remembrancers set aside their original role, a function that had been established to celebrate the glory of the Great Crusade. Since the treachery, there was nothing pure or worthy to remember. The only thing Kleve felt worth commemorating was the broken past before the fall, so the remembrancers had become willing memorialists.

That day, which was just another meaningless mark in Kleve's stoic timekeeping, and just another non-day to Gantulga, would turn out to be a day to mark after all.

The Iron Hands and the memorialists rose as Kleve entered the wardroom. Gantulga did not. Kleve addressed him directly.

*There is a light,' he said. *A beacon.'

*This I have heard,' said Gantulga.

*We steer towards it,' said Kleve. *I have instructed the s.h.i.+pmaster so.'

*Do we know if any of my s.h.i.+ps are still with us?' asked Gantulga.

Kleve shook his head.

*Is it the light of Terra?' asked Gantulga, getting to his feet. *Is it the Astronomican, light of the Throne?'

Kleve shook his head again.

*The data is inconclusive. It seems unlikely. a.n.a.lytically, its pattern is similar, but not the same. However, we are half-blind, and our sensors are hardly reliable.'

*We should steer towards it,' Gantulga agreed. He took out his long, slightly hooked sword, and laid it on the table in front of him. He placed his palms flat on the surface beside it, and made a silent oath of blessing to its trustworthiness and sharpness.