The Flight of the Eisenstein (26 page)

'Don't test my patience, Death Guard! Shall I call
your
primarch to the vox to have him chastise you instead? Your ship has left the formation. What are you doing?'

'Attempting to excise an irritant. I have received warning that one of my battle-brothers, the lamentably conservative Captain Garro, has taken control of a frigate called the
Eisenstein
and even now attempts to flee the Isstvan system.' He leaned back in his command throne. 'Is that matter enough for your attention, or should I address myself directly to Horus instead?'

'Garro?' repeated Maloghurst. 'It was my understanding that Mortarion had dealt with him.'

Typhon snorted. 'The Death Lord has been too lenient. Garro should have been allowed to die of his wounds after the battle on Isstvan Extremis. Instead Mortarion hoped to turn him, and now we may pay for that folly'

Maloghurst was silent for a moment. Typhon could imagine his unpleasant face creased in thought. 'Where is he now?'

'I am pursuing the
Eisenstein.
I will destroy the ship if I can.'

The equerry sniffed archly. 'Where does Garro think he can go? The storms in the warp have grown fiercer with every passing hour. A small vessel like that cannot hope to weather a journey through the immaterium. He'll be torn apart!'

'Perhaps,' admitted Typhon, 'but I would like to make sure.'

'I have your course on my data-slate,' said the other Astartes. 'You'll never catch him in that cumbersome barge of yours, he has too much distance on you.'

'I don't need to catch him, Maloghurst. I just need to wound him.'

Then do it, Typhon,' came the reply. 'If I am forced to inform Horus that word of his plans has been spread unchecked, it will be you who feels his displeasure soon after I do!'

The first captain made a throat-cutting gesture and his vox attendant severed the connection. He glanced down from his command throne to where the shipmaster of the
Terminus Est
was bowed and waiting.

The man spoke. 'Lord Typhon, the
Eisenstein
has altered her course. It's traveling at full burn towards Isstvan Ill's satellite, the White Moon.'

'Come to new heading,' snapped Typhon, rising once more. 'Match
Eisenstein's
course and get me a firing solution.'

The shipmaster faltered. 'Lord, the moon's gravity well-'

'That was not a request,' he growled.

'Still with us.' Vought read the distance vectors from a pict-screen. Aspect change confirmed.
Terminus Est
is following, no other signs of pursuit.'

'Just so,' said Carya. 'Continue on a
zigzag
heading. Don't make it easy for Typhon's gunners to get a firing angle.'

Garro stood directly behind the shipmaster, looking over his head and out of the viewports. The stark, chalk-coloured surface of Isstvan Ill's largest moon steadily grew larger as he watched it, craters and mountains taking shape on the airless surface. To an untrained observer, it might have seemed like the frigate was on a collision course. 'Be honest with me.' Garro spoke quietly, so only Carya could hear him. What chance is there that Vought's computations will be in error?'

The dark-skinned man glanced up at him. 'She's very good, captain. The only reason she hasn't been given a ship of her own is because she has a few issues with fleet authority. I have faith in her.'

Garro looked back at the moon. 'My faith is in the strength of a starship's hull and the power of gravity,' he replied, but even as he said the words, they seemed hollow and incomplete.

Carya eyed him curiously. Perhaps he sensed the captain's disquiet. 'The universe is vast, sir. One can find faith in many places.'

'Coming up to first course correction,' called the deck officer. 'Stand by for emergency maneuvers.'

'Mark,' said a servitor in a toneless voice. 'Executing maneuver.'

The frigate's deck yawed and Garro felt the motion in the pit of his stomach. With all the available energy channeling into the drives, the ship's gravitational compensators were lagging behind and he felt the turn more distinctly than usual. He gripped a support stanchion with one hand and put his weight on his organic leg.

'Thermal bloom from their bow,' warned Sendek, having taken it upon himself to assist the bridge crew at the sensor pulpit.
'Discharge]
Incoming fire, multiple lance bolts!'

'Push the turn!' shouted Carya. He said something else, but the words were drowned out as heavy rods of tuned energy struck the aft of the
Eisenstein
and pitched her forward like a ship cresting a wave. The compensators were slow again, and Garro's arm shot out and grabbed the shipmaster, halting his fall towards a console. The battle-captain felt something in Carya's wrist dislocate.

'Engine three power levels dropping!' shouted Vought. 'Coolant leaks on decks nine and seven!'

Carya recovered and nodded to Garro. 'Increase thrust from the other nozzles to compensate! We can't let them gain any ground!'

The ship was trembling, the throbbing vibration of a machine pushed to the edge of its operating limit. Sendek called out from his station. 'We're entering the White Moon's gravity well, captain, accelerating.'

Carya gasped as he snapped his augmetic hand back into place. 'Ah, the point of no return, Garro,' he said. 'Now we'll see if Racel is as good as I said she was.'

'If her calculations are off by more than a few degrees, we will be nothing but a new crater and a scattering of metal shavings,' Decius said darkly.

The moon filled the forward viewport. 'Have faith,' Garro replied.

'Lord, we have been captured by the lunar gravitational pull,' reported Typhon's shipmaster. 'Our velocity is increasing. I would humbly suggest we attempt to evade, and-'

'If we break contact now, the
Eisenstein
escapes,' the first captain said flatly. 'This vessel has power enough to pull free, yes? You'll use it when I order you to and not before.'

'By your command.'

Typhon glared at the gunnery officer. 'You! Where are my kills? I want that frigate obliterated! Get it done!'

'Lord, the ship is agile and our cannons are largely fixed emplacements'

'Results, not excuses!' came the growling retort. 'Do your duty or I'll find a man who can!'

On the giant pict screen over his command throne, Typhon watched the trails of fumes and wreckage spilling from
Eisenstein
and smiled coldly.

Racel Vought blinked sweat out of her eyes and pressed her hands on the flat panel of the control console. The reflected ivory starlight from the White Moon's surface illuminated the bridge with stark edges and hard lines. It was a funerary glow, devoid of any life, and it seemed to draw her energy from her. She took a shuddering breath. The lives of every person aboard the frigate were squarely in her hands at this moment, gambled on a string of numbers she had hastily computed while Isstvan III had died before her eyes. She was afraid to look at them again for fear that she might find she had made some horrible mistake. Better that she not know, better she hang on to the fragile thread of confidence that had propelled her to this daring course in the first place. If Vought had made any miscalculations, she would not live to regret it.

The theory was sound, she could be sure of that. The gravity of the dense, iron-heavy White Moon was already enveloping the
Eisenstein,
dragging it down towards the satellite's craggy surface. If she did not intervene, it would do exactly that, and like the dour Death Guard had said, the frigate would become a grave marker.

Vought's plan was built on the mathematics of orbits and the physics of gravitation, a school of learning that extended back to the very first steps of mankind into space, when thrust and fuel were precious commodities. In the Thirty-first Millennium, with brute force engines capable of throwing star-ships wherever they needed to go, it wasn't often such knowledge was required, but today it might save their lives.

Racel glanced over her shoulder and found both Baryk and the Death Guard battle-captain looking back at her. She expected judgmental, commanding stares from both men, but instead there was silent assurance in their eyes. They were trusting her to fulfill her promise. She gave them an answering nod and went back to her task.

Klaxons warned of new salvos of incoming fire. She tuned them out of her thoughts, concentrating instead on the complex plots of trajectory and flight path before her. There was no margin for error. As
Eisenstein
fell towards the planetoid, the drives would shift and ease her through the White Moon's gravitational envelope, using the energy of the satellite to throw the frigate about in a slingshot arc, boosting the vessel's sub-light speed, projecting her away towards the jump point. The
Terminus Est
would never be able to catch them.

The frigate's shuddering grew as the craft entered the final vector of the slingshot course. 'Prepare for course correction,' Vought shouted over the rumbling.
'A/tarkV

Streaks of fire jetted from the
Eisenstein's
port flank as the autonomic trim controls slewed the ship away from the moon. The bow veered as if wrenched by an invisible hand, shifting the axis with brutal force. The extremes of tension between the lunar gravity and the artificial g-forces generated inside the vessel knotted and turned. Hull plates popped and warped as rivets as big as a man sheared off and broke. Conduits stressed beyond their tolerances ruptured and spewed toxic fumes. Forced past her limits,
Eisenstein
howled like a wounded animal under the punishment, but it turned, metre by agonizing metre, falling into the small corridor of orbital space that would propel the frigate away from Isstvan III.

'Typhon!' shouted the shipmaster, throwing procedure aside by daring to address the first captain without the prefix of his rank. 'We must evade! We cannot follow the frigate's course, we'll be drawn down on to the moon! Our mass is too great-'

Furious, the Death Guard struck the naval officer with a sudden backhand, battering the man to the decking with his cheekbones shattered and blood streaming from cuts. 'Evade, then!' he spat, 'but warp curse you, I want everything thrown at that bloody ship before we let him go!'

The rest of the bridge crew scrambled to carry out his orders, leaving the mewling shipmaster to tend to himself. Typhon snatched up his manreaper and held it tightly, his anger hot and deadly. He cursed Garro as the
Eisenstein
slipped out of his grasp.

The Terminus Est bore down, the warship's drives casting a halo of crackling red light, a shark snapping at a minnow. The craft groaned as the monstrous thrust of her drives tore the ship out of the White Moon's gravity well, the blade-sharp prow crossing the path of the frigate. As it did so, every lance cannon on Typhon's battle cruiser erupted as one in a screaming concert of power, tearing across the dark towards the fleeing vessel.

'Incoming fire!' barked Sendek. 'Brace for impact!'

Garro heard the words and then suddenly he was airborne, the deck dropping away from him. The Death Guard spun and tumbled across the bridge, rebounding off stanchions and clipping the ceiling before the energy of the slamming impact dissipated and he collided with a control console.

Nathaniel shook off a daze and dragged himself back to his feet. Small fires were burning here and there as servitors struggled to bring the bridge back to any semblance of order. He saw Carya sprawled over the command throne, with Vought at his side. The woman had a severe cut across her scalp, but she seemed to be unaware of the streaks of blood down her cheek. Dimly, he heard Iacton Qruze swear in Cthonian as he climbed off the deck.

'Report,' Garro commanded, the rough metallic smoke that hazed the air tasting acrid on his tongue.

Sendek called out from the other side of the chamber.
'Terminus Est
has broken off pursuit, but that last salvo hit us hard. Several decks vented to space. Drive reactors are in flux, engines are verging on critical shutdown.' He paused. 'Slingshot maneuver was successful. On course for intercept with jump point.'

Decius grunted as he pushed aside a fallen section of paneling and stepped over the lifeless body of a naval rating. 'What good is that if we explode before we get there?'

Garro ignored him and moved to Carya's side. 'Is he alive?'

Vought nodded. 'Just stunned, I think.'

The shipmaster waved them off. 'I can stand on my own. Get away.'

Garro disregarded the man's complaints and pulled him to his feet. 'Decius, call the Apothecary to the bridge.'

Carya shook his head. 'No, not yet. We're not finished here, not by a long shot.' He staggered forward. 'Racel, what's the Navigator's status?'

Vought cringed as she listened to a vox headset. Even at a distance, Garro could hear yelling and shouting from the tinny speaker. 'Severnaya's still alive, but his adjutants are panicking. They're climbing the walls down there. They are weeping about the warp. I can hear them screaming about darkness and storms'

'If he's not dead, then he can still do his job,' Carya said grimly, chewing down his pain. 'That goes for all of us.'

'Aye,' said Garro. 'Order the crew to make the preparations for warp translation. We will not have a second chance at this.'

'We may not have the
first
chance,' grumbled Decius beneath his breath.

Garro turned on him and his face hardened. 'Brother, I have reached my bounds with your doleful conduct! If you have nothing else to volunteer but that, I will have you go below and join the damage control parties'

'I call it as I see it,' retorted Decius. 'You said you wanted the truth from me, captain!'

'I would have you keep your comments to yourself until we are away, Decius!'

Nathaniel expected the younger Astartes to back down, but instead Decius stepped closer, moderating his tone so that it would not carry further. 'I will not.

This course you have set us upon is suicide, sir, as surely as if you had bared our throats to Typhon's scythe.' He stabbed a finger at Vought. You heard the woman. The Navigator is barely sane with the terror of what you ask of him. I know you have not been deaf to the reports of the turbulence in the warp in recent days. A dozen ships were displaced just on the voyage to Isstvan-'