Deathwatch (2 page)

‘How arrogant we were before His coming, and how naïve. The structures we trusted to maintain our unity were so fragile. Too fragile by far. We lost ourselves out there. We became strangers. We set off down different evolutionary paths. No wonder we faltered. No wonder we turned against each other. Had He not come to us then, chasing the shadows from the dark and the haze from our memories, we would have perished en masse, waging war against kin, not recognising each other, any difference seized upon as fuel for the fires of hate.

‘He reminded us all that we were human, and He showed us that together, only together, could we endure the endless onslaught of those that were not.’

– Inscription at Bilahl (anon.),circa. 800.M31

Darkness, sudden and absolute, swallowed everything, even the noise of a fully staffed bridge. The crew fell silent all at once as if plunged into a vacuum. And silent it might have stayed but for Captain Sythero, his voice cutting through the blackness like a cracked whip.

‘Mister Brindle!’ he barked.

‘Aye, sir,’ came the reply about ten metres off to the left in that utter dark.

‘I’d very much like to know what the hell is going on with my bloody ship! Back-up systems. Where are they? I want some light in here, and I want it now!’

As if the ship itself were listening, the bridge was suddenly painted in the red of emergency lighting. Everything reappeared, but dull, murky, revealed in hues of blood. The banks of monitor screens, however – both the captain’s huge personal screens and those in the bridge control pits – remained as black and lifeless as space.

Crewmen at ancient metal consoles began desperately tapping on their runeboards, trying to get any kind of response from the
Ventria
’s primary systems.

Nothing.

First Officer Gideon Brindle hunched forwards over the screen of a secondary systems monitor which had finally flickered to life. ‘Looks like we have full bio-support, sir,’ he told the captain. ‘Secondary and tertiary power units have kicked in for the air-scrubbers, waste reclamation, emergency lighting, shipboard communications, system resource monitors and door controls on all levels. No primary systems whatsoever.’

Brindle let that sink in for a moment before adding, ‘I don’t know how or why, sir, but we’re locked out.’

Sythero hammered a fist on the ornate armrest of his command throne. ‘Saints’ balls! Do we at least have local space comms? Can we contact the
Ultrix
or GDC
[2]
?’

In the gloomy red light, the captain saw his first officer cross to the comms pit and confer with the men and women there. His body language gave the answer away before he voiced it.

No comms! What in Terra’s name is going on here? Are we being jammed? Are we under attack?

‘Orders, sir?’ asked the first officer.

Sythero was stumped. What could he do without engines and weapons? If there were enemies out there… Damn it, the auspex arrays were as dead as everything else.

‘No motive power at all, are we absolutely sure of that, Mister Brindle?’

‘None, sir. We’ve been frozen out of all engine systems and subsystems. We’re sitting dead in the water.’

‘I want observers at every viewport on this ship. I want eyes on anything that moves out there. Jump to it!’

Brindle was about to do exactly that when there was a sudden, ear-splitting burst of static over the ship’s vox-speaker system. The monitors stuttered and rolled back to life, displaying not their usual scrolling columns of glyphs and pict-feeds, but a lone icon in razor-sharp detail. It was a leering white skull overlaid on a pillar of deep red.

No, not a pillar. A letter from the Gothic alphabet.

Captain Sythero squinted at it, puzzled, angry and deeply unsettled.

An eerie voice accompanied the image: flat, cold, emotionless and inhumanly deep. To those listening, it seemed the voice of some great and terrible entity, a being to which they might seem little more than worms or ants.

And so it was.

‘Bow down before the glory of the God-Emperor and his most trusted agents,’ throbbed the voice. ‘Your ship’s primary systems have been disabled on the authority of His Majesty’s Holy Inquisition. This is a Centaurus level override. Do not attempt to circumvent it. You cannot. Do nothing. Say nothing. All systems will be restored in due course. Until then, know that we are watching you. That is all.’

The crew gaped at the wall-mounted vox-speakers in stunned silence.

‘Your ruddy arse that’s all!’ roared Captain Sythero, leaping up from his throne. ‘Brindle, open me a channel with that bastard right now!’

Brindle crossed hurriedly to his captain’s side, wringing his hands anxiously. He leaned close and spoke low so that the others would not hear. ‘With respect, sir, we had better sit tight. Whatever business they’re about, let them get on with it. We ought to just keep our heads down.’

Sythero glared at his first officer. Brindle was no coward, he knew. He’d never had cause for complaint till now. But the man was barely fighting tremors. Fear was written all over his face. What had gotten into him?

‘Listen, Gideon,’ said Sythero in more conversational tones, using Brindle’s first name in the hope of re-instilling a little of the man’s usual confidence. ‘I’ve got a crew of four hundred listed men here, and we’re floating in space at the absolute mercy of anyone or anything that shows up. I’ve been charged with protecting that bloody rock out there, all the Imperial resources on it, not to mention about three million people. So, I don’t care if the Emperor Himself shows up and asks me to wait it out. I want some bloody answers.’

Brindle nodded sympathetically, but spoke again, his eyes pleading. ‘I’ve heard a lot of stories in my time, sir. And I’ve shared more than a few with your good self at table, not so? But have you ever heard me talk of the Inquisition, sir? Can you remember even one occasion?’

Sythero simply scowled, wishing his first officer would get to the point.

‘That’s because there are none, sir. Every sailor talks when the booze is flowing. Talk of every horror known to man and then some. Traitors, witches, heretics, ghosts, xenos, you name it. But I tell you this, sir. You’ll never hear a word spoken about the Inquisition. Not a whisper, sir.’ Brindle paused to swallow in a throat gone dry. ‘You know why that is, captain? The people with those stories… They don’t live long enough to tell them.’

The captain raised a dubious eyebrow. He would have scorned anyone else for such talk – tall tales of shadowy conspiracy seemed to be a favourite pastime among the Navy’s lower ranks – but this was Gideon Brindle. The man was his rock. He never drank on duty. He could quote core Naval texts back to you verbatim if you asked, even when bone-tired. And right now, he was scared.

Captain Sythero had heard of the Inquisition, of course. He was an officer of thirty years’ experience, not some pup fresh from the academy. The name had cropped up now and then in war rooms and briefings. But he had always considered them just another arm of the Adeptus Terra, and a small one at that. Weren’t they mostly responsible for dealing with obscure religious matters? Something like that. As far as he knew, he had never run into them before.

Well, now he had, and somehow they had shut down his ship.

He folded his arms and stared out over his command bridge. The eyes of every crewman in that great long room had turned his way. He blew out a deep, frustrated breath, drew in another, and called out, ‘Stand down all of you. It’s not like we have any choice. Permission granted to rest at your stations until further notice. Mister Korren and Mister Hayter, stations six and ten. I’ll want to know the moment something changes.’

Two grudging
yessirs
came back at him. The captain had never liked Korren and Hayter much, and he was not above demonstrating it.

He dropped back into his chair and rested his chin on a clenched fist. Brindle still stood beside him. The captain waved him off, gesturing for him to go and rest at his station. The first officer moved away. Before he had gone five metres, however, Captain Sythero called out to him again.

‘Inquisitors are just men, Gideon,’ he said. ‘Just men and women like you or I.’

Brindle turned, but his eyes did not meet his captain’s. They rested on that macabre icon still glowing from the nearest screen.

‘I don’t think so, sir,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they’re like us at all. But if we’re lucky, we’ll never find out the truth of it.’

Those words hung in the red gloom long after Brindle had returned to his chair. Captain Sythero turned them over and over in his head. Commanding a system defence ship, even all the way out here on the fringe, had always given him a sense of power, of importance. Four hundred trained men and women under his command. Forward weapons batteries that could level a city in minutes or cut through a battleship three times the
Ventria
’s size. How easily this Inquisition had come along and stripped him of that, ripped it away from him like a gossamer veil.

How had they shut him down? A Centaurus level override, the voice had said. Did that mean override codes had been pre-written into the ship’s systems? The
Ventria
was a vessel of His Holy Majesty’s Imperial Navy; it didn’t seem possible. But if the overrides had been broadcast from an external source, a ship somewhere in-system, why hadn’t the long-range auspex arrays picked it up? They had full-scan capabilities right out to the system’s edge and beyond.

If the override codes had been broadcast from another ship, the implications of them falling into enemy hands were, frankly, terrifying.

I can’t abide this. Naval Command needs to be told. This undermines every capability we have. To hell with the warnings. As soon as the override lifts…

Four hours and twenty-seven minutes later, it did lift. The
Ventria
’s primary systems came back online. Colours other than red flooded the bridge as if erasing a murder scene, restoring life, noise and activity. Cogitator screens and vocaliser units started churning out status reports and statistical data. The control pits buzzed in a frenzy.

Sythero thrust forwards in his chair and called out, ‘Brindle, open me a two-way with the
Ultrix
. I want to speak to Captain Mendel at once. And make sure it’s bloody secure.’

‘Aye, sir,’ said Brindle, punching the relevant runes.

A pale-skinned old man in a crisp Naval uniform soon appeared on the main display above Sythero’s chair. He was clean shaven, with craggy features, and his white hair was oiled back smartly. A dark scar, legacy of a past wound, traced a path from his forehead down to his left ear. This was Mendel, captain of the
Ventria
’s sister vessel, and Sythero read on his face that the old man had known this call was coming. Typically a forceful and vigorous man despite his years, Mendel looked unusually weary now. There was no formal greeting. The old man simply held up a hand and said, ‘Please, captain. If you’re about to ask what I think–’

Sythero cut him off. ‘Tell me the
Ultrix
hasn’t just spent the last four hours in some kind of blasted lockdown!’

Mendel sighed and nodded. ‘We just got all our primaries back online, same as you.’

‘And that’s all you’ve got to say about it? For Throne’s sake, Mendel. What’s going on here? Someone out there has override codes that leave two Naval warships completely defenceless, and you don’t seem ready to do a damned thing about it. We could have been cut to pieces already. What’s gotten into you, man?’

Mendel looked off to the side, gave an order to someone on his own bridge, and returned his attention to the link. ‘You saw the insignia, same as I did, captain, and we only saw
that
because they wanted us to know we were not under attack. It was a courtesy. I’m not about to start asking questions to which I honestly don’t want the answers. And trust me, you don’t either. Do us both a favour and forget anything happened.’

‘Like red hell I will! I’m going straight to Sector Command with this. The implications–’

‘The implications don’t bear thinking about, son,’ interrupted Mendel. ‘I’ll assume you like breathing as much as I do, so I’ll say this and then I’m done. I hope you’ll credit me with at least a little age-based wisdom. Drop this thing completely, captain. Don’t mention it in any reports. Don’t record it in your log. If anyone ever asks, it was a glitch in the monitoring scripts. Nothing more. That’s your story, and you stick to it.’

Sythero knew his expression betrayed his distaste, but it was clear, too, that he was alone in wanting to take the matter further. As is so often true, the resolve of a man standing alone is that much easier to shake. He cursed under his breath, wanting to do something, but not quite adamant enough to act against such strong counsel. Mendel and Brindle were neither of them fools, after all.

‘If it happens again?’ he asked the older captain, his tone signalling his acceptance of defeat.

‘We stay nice and quiet, and wait it out,’ replied Mendel. ‘I’ve worked system defence for a dozen other worlds, captain, and I’ve only ever… Look, I doubt it’ll happen again, but if it does…’ He shrugged.

Sythero nodded, hardly satisfied but subdued at last. ‘Very well, captain. In that case, I’ll not keep you any longer.’

Mendel gave a sympathetic half-smile and signed off.

Sythero remained staring silently at the comms monitor long after it had gone blank. In the days that followed, the numerous duties of a Naval captain helped to push the matter further and further towards the back of his mind. But he never quite forgot it. From time to time, his mind would throw up the image of the skull-and-I symbol that had appeared on all his screens, and he would wonder at it, at the power it represented and the questions no one else seemed willing to ask.

Of the men he had ordered to the ship’s viewports, only one reported anything unusual. Two hours and thirty-three minutes into the primary systems lock-out, Ormond Greeves, a low-ranking weapons tech assigned to one of the aft plasma-batteries, reported a brief flicker of fire skirting the edge of the dark hemisphere of the planet below. It looked, he said, as if something – perhaps a small craft, perhaps just debris – had entered the atmosphere of Chiaro at speed. Greeves had good eyes – he was a religious man, too, whose words were seldom, if ever, false. But his report was never entered in the ship’s records.