The Beast Arises

They could see her on the hololith now. Her bridge was a charred ruin behind her. The image distortion had cleared somewhat, but part of what they had first taken as distortion remained. Shipmistress Aquilinia, and those members of her command crew who were in view, were all swathed head-to-foot in white cloth. It was stained in patches, as if pink fluid was gradually seeping out from within.

‘Radiation burns,’ muttered Kiran. ‘Sweet Throne, I’ve never seen such extensive… They’ve shrouded themselves in protective veils, but they are burned, burned so badly…’

‘Shipmistress,’ Heth announced. ‘We are sending rescue boats to you. Medicae teams will—’

‘Negative,’ she said. Her voice was quiet but firm. ‘We are thoroughly and lethally irradiated, my lord. All of us, poisoned and scorched. We will not survive long. My entire ship is contaminated by the drive damage and utterly deadly. No one must come aboard. To board us is a death sentence.’

‘But—’ Heth protested.

‘You have dragged us from the flames, sir, but we do not have long to live. Stay away. All I can do for you now is present my testament of events and convey all the information I have.’

‘I won’t accept that, shipmistress!’ cried Heth.

‘You must, my lord. A great disaster has overtaken the Imperial Fists here at Ardamantua.’

‘We can plainly see,’ said Kiran, ‘a cosmic event, a gravitational hazard that—’

‘It is not natural, admiral,’ said the shipmistress through the vox-link.

‘Say again?’

‘It is not a natural phenomenon. Ardamantua has not killed us all because of some whim of the universe. This effect is artificial. This location is under direct attack.’

‘Attack?’ echoed Maskar.

‘By what? By the Chromes? The xenoforms?’ asked Heth.

‘I do not believe so, sir,’ answered Aquilinia. ‘There are alien voices in the noise bursts. Listen to them. And watch the rising moon.’

‘Ardamantua has no moon,’ said Kiran.

‘It does now,’ said the shipmistress.

Twenty-One

Ardamantua — orbital

‘That simply cannot be a moon,’ said the Azimuth’s First Navigator, studying the large printout that had been unfolded on the silver display tables of the charting room. ‘It is far, far too close to the planet itself. Look, it is within the very aura of the nearspace disruption. That close, its gravitational effects would split Ardamantua in two.’

‘Am I honestly hearing this?’ asked Heth. ‘We have what appears to be best described as a full-blown gravity storm besetting this planet and coring out the heart of the system, gravitational anomalies all around the nearspace region, and you say—’

‘My lord,’ said the First Navigator. ‘I am quite precise. The gravitational incidents, the disruptions that we are seeing, are considerable. But it is random and it seems to be manufactured by distortions in space. If a planetoid appeared in such close proximity to the world, it would be a much more focused and significant effect. Ardamantua would have shifted in its orbit, perhaps even been knocked headlong. The hazard we are encountering is like sustained damage from a shotgun. A moon… that would be a blow from a power hammer.’

‘But still,’ said Maskar, tapping his finger on the oddly shaded part of the printout. ‘This… What is this?’

‘An imaging artifact,’ said the First Navigator.

‘It’s of considerable size,’ said Maskar.

‘It’s a considerably sized imaging artifact, then, sir.’

‘The Amkulon was an imaging artifact too,’ Heth reminded them quietly. ‘Then it turned out to be a ship.’

‘The physical laws of the universe would simply not permit a moon or other satellite body to move so close to a planet, nor could such a body appear—’

‘I’ve seen daemons,’ Heth growled. ‘Up close. Don’t talk to me about the physical laws of the universe.’

They stood in silence and stared down at the huge printout. The chart room was cool and well-lit, arranged for the study of cosmological documents. The air circulator stirred the edges of the vast vellum sheet that hung over the edges of the silver table.

None of the ships in Kiran’s fleet had been able to detect or resolve anything resembling a moon in the gravitational and radioactive maelstrom surrounding Ardamantua. The printout image had come from the mission log data transmitted to them from the Amkulon. Aquilinia had recorded and stored the auspex scan as she dragged her ship out of its death-dive. This had been shortly before the tumult increased, swallowed her up, and blinded her.

‘We have examined the resolution,’ said one of the several tech-adepts assembled in the chamber. ‘The so-called “moon image” is indeed a ghost. Verifiable data is hard to find, of course, but that object seems to be only partly material, as if it is an echo of something not quite there.’

‘An imaging artifact!’ the First Navigator declared.

‘No, sir,’ said the tech-adept. ‘It is like something trying to emerge. To pass through. To translate. As if through a warp gate.’

‘Hellsteeth!’ cried Heth. ‘Then who or what are we dealing with?’