Warp Spawn - Matt Ralphs Read online

  WARP SPAWN

  Matt Ralphs

  PETTY OFFICER DRANT manoeuvred his wheelchair closer to the edge of the loading ramp and peered out into the gloom. The light from the cargo hold spilled out before him, illuminating a portion of the landing compound; it looked like a vast frozen lake, shining dully in the encroaching dusk. He drummed his fingers nervously on the arm rests and shivered as frigid tendrils of cold penetrated through his tunic. The crisp evening chill steamed his breath and he blew on his fingers, inwardly cursing his captain, who at this very minute was probably tucked up in bed. As far as his aging eyes could tell, the cargo port was empty and still. He cursed and waited, stewing in his own disquiet.

  Where were they?

  A few small spacecraft, mostly private merchant clippers, sat squat and silent, their hulls softly lit up orange by the sodium lamps that battled valiantly against the deepening dark. These ships, although large, were dwarfed by the vessel Drant looked out from. Guild Freighter Sable Bess, half a mile from stubby snout to square cut fins, loomed up massively. Her holds were laden with military supplies destined for the Imperial Guard, and she patiently waited for departure at dawn.

  But she was not yet fully laden. There was more cargo still to arrive.

  Drant activated a comm-link on the bulkhead and it buzzed into life.

  ‘Private link, captain’s quarters,’ he whispered.

  ‘Unable to respond. Please speak up,’ a mechanical voice replied.

  Drant smacked the offending device in exasperation.

  ‘Private link, captain’s quarters,’ he repeated, louder this time.

  He waited, fidgeting nervously - then looked round towards the loading ramp, his pale face panicked.

  Voices!

  He retreated back into the shadows behind a bulkhead mainstay, terrified by the seemingly deafening noise his chair made in the quiet that surely anyone could hear. In his haste to hide he bumped into a loading cradle, toppling a precariously balanced pot of grease which he managed to grab in the second that two arbites rounded the corner onto the ramp. They stopped and peered up, shining their torches into the hold.

  At that moment the comm-link connection to the captain’s quarters was made and the line opened with a crackle. Drant’s eyes widened and his grip on the slippery pot slipped; it overturned, spilling two litres of stinking axle grease onto his uniform.

  The arbites heard the comms unit bleep, and hurried up the ramp. A rough voice, heavy with sleep, crackled over the connection.

  ‘Captain Matteus here. That you, Drant?’

  The arbites exchanged perplexed looks, and one touched the ‘‘respond’’ icon.

  ‘Er, good evening, captain, this is perimeter patrol, Private Hu speaking. Any reason you’re paging an empty hold?’

  Drant held his breath, waiting for his captain’s reply. S’blood, it’d better be good! There was a slight pause, then: ‘Dammit, that connection’s still faulty. Where’re you speaking from trooper?’

  ‘Says hold one-forty on the floor, sir,’ Hu replied, slightly bemused.

  ‘Answer me this, Hu. How can a freighter captain such as myself, charged with supplying the brave men of the Imperial Guard with important equipment, be expected to run a tight ship when his supposed comm-link with engineering patches him through to an empty cargo hold?’

  Drant could see Hu grin at his colleague, and relief swept through him. They were going to get away with it!

  ‘I can’t answer that, sir,’ Hu chuckled. ‘But I suggest you get it fixed before departure.’

  ‘Good advice, trooper. Thanks for checking up on us. I’d better close that hold door now.’

  ‘Understood, sir. Safe voyage.’

  ‘Emperor protects.’

  The connection clicked off.

  Drant let out his breath as the arbites ambled down the ramp, idly swinging their power mauls, and disappeared into the night. He whirred back over to the comms-unit and re-connected back to the captain’s quarters.

  ‘That actually you, this time, Drant?’ Matteus growled.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Drant replied. He kept the exasperation he felt out of his voice and replaced it a weary tone of irony. ‘Our extra cargo is not here and the compound arbites are, as you’ve just experienced, somewhat alert tonight.’

  ‘I should hope they are, that’s their job. And calm down, our cargo will be here. They paid in advance so I don’t much care if they turn up or not, though I suspect they will. They seemed… keen, shall we say, to leave this sector entirely. Told me the local gangers were after them. Behind in protection money. Sad.’ Matteus paused as if reflecting on something. ‘They had a little girl too…’

  ‘You and your hard luck cases,’ Drant muttered. ‘We were nearly caught with those Cumanian refugees in the silage ducts last year. I don’t need this kind of excitement. It was too much excitement that lost me my legs.’

  ‘Then you’ve nothing to worry about, old friend,’ Matteus replied slyly. ‘You can’t lose your legs twice.’

  The connection cut off, leaving Drant alone again in the silent cold. He scanned the perimeter of the compound for any signs of movement, getting more nervous with every passing minute. The next half hour dragged by until two figures carrying a limp bundle appeared from behind some loading frames and dashed over to the cargo ramp. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or frightened.

  AFTER A SUCCESSFUL launch, with the planet Vrantis III receding into nothing more than a bright light behind her, the Sable Bess began preparations for the warp jump. Her decks were alive with activity as the crew busied themselves with maintenance and routine duties. Captain Matteus found Drant outside the infirmary.

  ‘All well?’ he asked.

  Drant eyed him darkly. ‘Well enough. They’re in hold one-forty.’

  ‘Good. As planned then,’ Matteus replied. ‘Was the girl with them?’

  Drant regarded his captain shrewdly. ‘Is that why you took this contract on, Matteus? Because of the little girl?’

  Matteus glanced down, ‘They paid. That’s all the reason I need.’

  Drant snorted, unconvinced. ‘She was asleep, looked dead to the world.’

  The phrase echoed in Matteus’s mind.

  Dead to the world. She’s dead to me now, or may as well be. Where is she now? While she is gone, I will know no peace. Ten years since… It felt like a prison sentence.

  Matteus collected himself, as Drant looked on trying to read his inscrutable face.

  ‘Check on them would you, Drant? Make sure the child’s not sick.’ He paused, thinking, ‘I may move them somewhere more comfortable for the journey.’

  Drant grunted and whirred off down the corridor. Matteus closed his eyes for a second, then turned on his heel and strode towards the bridge.

  A SCENE OF organised chaos greeted him when he arrived. He watched the hurried preparations from a darkened alcove in the bulkhead. He could see Lieutenant Eusoph, his rangy second-in-command gesticulating to the pilots as they busily entered data into the ship’s main computing engine and conducted last minute safety precautions. Dozens of servitors crouched before banks of machinery, checking and cross-checking numbers that flooded their screens in endless reams. Black-clad crewmen hurried around taking gauge readings; and amongst all this movement and bustle two robed tech-adepts glided, anointing both men and machines with blessed oil from silver tureens. Noticing Matteus in the shadows, Eusoph looked questioningly at him, but his captain waved his hand, allowing him to continue conducting the final preparations himself.

  The atmosphere was tense. Matteus had lost count of how many warp jumps he had undertaken, but always he felt a giddy, nervous excitement at this point in the proceedings. Safety che
cks be damned, he thought; we’re in the power of the warp now, anything can happen.

  ‘One minute,’ Eusoph snapped over the bridge-vox. ‘Be ready.’

  The noise and flurry of activity slowly petered out and then ceased altogether. All eyes turned to the huge stained glass window that monopolised the starboard side of the bridge. The coloured glass depicted a stylised outline of the Bess surrounded by a halo of protective light, which was itself surrounded by a horde of ravening daemons. This impressive diorama was part of a wall that sealed off the navigator’s chamber. The bridge crew stared at the twisted and wizened man behind the window, who himself overlooked them from a cradle that hung on dozens of chains from the high ceiling. He looked like a living sacrifice.

  Although the imperfect surface of the window blurred and distorted his form he could clearly be discerned; silent, apart, but omnipresent to a crew that regarded him with a mixture of fear and awe. His body was wrapped in a harness of interlinked straps that swung gently to and fro. A mass of cables and wires extruded from the mummified creatures’ face, linking him to the ship’s navigation equipment and the engine servitors below decks. The only human features visible were sightless milky eyes, flat nostrils and the thin line of his mouth. The third eye that allowed this otherwise blind man insight into the flux of the warp was hidden by a circular metal plate, which fitted snugly around his domed forehead. Upon this was etched the outline of a staring eye.

  Eusoph cleared his throat. ‘Navigator?’ he prompted.

  The cocooned man shuddered, as if waking from a deep sleep. His mouth opened and a voice like sandpaper on rust rasped over the vox-com.

  ‘I am ready,’ he said. From the floor before him a large screen rose up elegantly on a jointed support pillar. His mind activated the metal plate on his head which opened up like a flower, allowing his third eye access to the warp field as it appeared on the screen. ‘The warp is ready,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘It is time.’

  Eusoph nodded. ‘Blast shields down,’ he said.

  Matteus gazed out of the viewing port before him. Staring back was a vista of stars, bright and clear against the blackness. It was starkly and coldly beautiful. Matteus shivered. With a heavy grating sound, a thick shield began to lower over the forward windows and the stars blinked out one by one as it slowly ground down into position. With a solid thump it stopped and locking bolts snapped into place.

  Tech-Priest Iotep Kull, garbed in a silver trimmed black cowl, bowed low before the main engine control board, and whispered the final initiation sequence that would ignite the warp engines. A deep booming throb began to seep up from the decks below, as the power unleashed from the warp core in the bowels of the ship was distributed to the engines themselves: the Machine God was awake. Matteus could feel it emanating through the soles of his boots.

  ‘Prepare for warp entry,’ Eusoph said, his voice tight with tension. ‘On the captain’s command.’

  Matteus settled down into his giant leather chair, savouring the moment, ‘Now, if you please,’ he said, indicating to Kull. Kull, flanked on either side by two priests swinging incense pendulums, lifted his face up to the towering bank of instruments that blinked with dozens of glowing runes. Streams of heavy smelling vapour issued forth from fluted pipes to settle in miasmic layers around his feet.

  ‘Ignis, aduro, illustro!’ he intoned.

  The engines crackled into violent life and the ship lunged forward. The navigator strained to steady the vessel as she nosed past the forced rent in the fabric of space and into the warp. Matteus leant forward in his chair, feeling the intensity of the merciless pressure winds buffeting them. In the face of this unmanageable power and fury, he felt helplessness and futility deaden him to his core. It was a personal struggle against his own inadequacies that he battled with during every warp jump.

  The navigator’s scratchy voice rattled over the vox: ‘The warp has swallowed us whole.’

  Eusoph flicked off the vox-link.

  Brock, the security officer, watched the crew for telltale signs of warp psychosis. Seeing none, he relaxed a little. The danger period passed and the bridge crew settled back to their respective duties, anticipating another uneventful journey through one of the safest supply routes in Imperial space.

  ‘Into the maelstrom,’ Matteus whispered.

  The reserve navigator, curled up in his cot in a recess in the bulkhead and lost in a deep slumber, twitched and whimpered.

  THE LIFT SCREECHED slowly down on grime encrusted runnels and settled heavily on the deck. Drant heaved the rusty lattice door open and activated his chair. As he whined down the dank corridor, inquisitive rats poked sleek black muzzles from out of their holes to see what the intrusion was. He ducked his head rhythmically to pass under hissing overhead pipes and wrinkled his nose as the heavy odour of promethium fuel battered his nostrils. For centuries the Sable Bess had been a tanker until she was downgraded to a dry freight vessel. She was now consigned to an easy routine, supplying non-essentials manufactured on Vrantis III to the Imperial Guard garrison on Jared’s World, deep inside Imperium controlled space.

  The name Sable Bess was derived from the black fuel she once towed from supply depot to war-zone, in the more exciting period of her career. But that time was now passed. Her former cargo’s powerful smell hung in her holds and corridors, dormitories and gangways like a pungent ghost from the past. The stench was particularly bad near the stern where hold one-forty was situated. Drant glided down the corridor, enjoying the quiet.

  He reached the hold door. It towered above him, a rusty orange colour with dark streaks smeared down its length. Under the layer of dirt was painted ‘‘140’’. He punched in the relevant code on the rune pad set into the door frame. With a grinding roar the huge doors heaved apart and Drant was momentarily stunned by the smell of promethium that wafted over him. But he was more stunned by the scene that confronted him inside compartment one forty.

  The hold opened out immeasurably on either side, the walls receding into darkness. Two portable glow-globes, plugged into the door mechanism lit up an area of floor about fifteen yards distant. Several packing cases had been pushed together to form a makeshift table. Lying on this was a little girl. Her face, white as cotton and turned towards Drant, was fixed with a livid expression of despair; frightened eyes, framed within dark rings of fatigue, were wide open and alive with movement. Her mouth, the edges pulled down in an expression of utter misery, oozed drool. Spittle flicked and her pink tongue lolled grotesquely behind white baby teeth. She hissed as her thin body bucked and arched from the table as if caught in an uncontrollable spasm of agony.

  Over her, stooped with intent, was a man. In his bony hand he held a long, liquid filled syringe that was poised over the struggling girl’s neck. At the sound of the opening door he looked up, alarmed. Seeing Drant, he roared with fury and before the medic could react, lunged for him.

  WHEN MATTEUS WAS assured his ship was safely on its way, he handed over the bridge to Eusoph and headed to hold one-forty to see to his stowaways.

  As he rounded a corner, whistling lightly through his teeth, the ship lurched, throwing him heavily against the wall. Deafening klaxons sounded and the light globes in the ceiling dimmed, flickered and came back on a deep orange hue. Underneath the noise of the alarms Matteus heard the ship’s superstructure groaning like a stricken beast; dread twisted his guts as the noise grew. He reached out a hand to steady himself against the bulkhead and he felt it shiver under his touch.

  For a split second his mind flashed back ten years…

  …the sickening crunch as the eldar corsairs latched onto his vessel. The ruptured hull imploding inwards. The billowing smoke and crackling flames. The murderous boarding crews, screaming like banshees, seizing his cargo. And his child…

  Clutching his numbed arm and regaining his shocked senses, Matteus found a vox-corn control on the wall.

  ‘Bridge, this is the captain. What’s going on up there?’ he said, fighting to
hide the panic in his speech.

  Eusoph answered, his voice strained but controlled: ‘We don’t know. You’d better get up here quick.’

  In the background Matteus could hear the clamouc of the bridge crew, and men shouting urgent orders.

  ‘Did we hit something? Any sign of intruders?’

  ‘No, and there’s no damage that we can tell. As yet…’

  Matteus winced as the hull around him quivered, sending shallow shockwaves down the length of the corridor. The light above his head shattered in a shower of bright sparks. He cowered as slivers of glass rained down, pattering onto his head and shoulders.

  ‘Tell that to the Bess! On my way. And for the love of all that is holy, turn off these alarms.’

  Still holding his arm, Matteus pounded back up the passageway as the ship strained and protested around him.

  DRANT’S VISION WAS filled by the quivering needle just an inch from his eye and a rabidly angry face looming behind it. The man’s knee was on Drant’s chest and his elevation over the chair-bound medic gave him an advantage; but Drant had once been a corporal in the Imperial Guard and, although disabled, he was stronger than most able-bodied men. With one meaty hand he clutched the man’s throat, and with the other his thin wrist; but still the point edged closer. Drant struggled, heart beating fast; all he could see was the wicked looking needle, one drop of clear liquid hanging like a tear from its tip.

  Then the ship reeled, and the lock was broken. Losing his balance, the man pitched over Drant’s chair and in doing so sent him rolling back against the bulkhead. All the lights went out, plunging the hold into darkness. For a second the light fizzled back into life and Drant had a snapshot of the man picking himself up; and someone else, slight of build and with raven black hair covering her face, leaning over the comatose child who now lay crumpled on the ground.

  Blackness returned. He could hear movement, and urgent whispers that echoed confusingly around the enormous hold. Then it went quiet.