The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,25
had been a bad journey, as they all were now, with several drops back into real space to avoid the Navigators losing their limited grip on reality.
I seethed the whole time. There was nothing more frustrating than knowing something bad had been unleashed and being prevented from intervening. It was just a word, hissed from the mouth of a deceiver, but my soul knew it to be true.
I say ‘my soul’, but of course I’m speaking figuratively. We still had hunches.
By the time we finally arrived into Arraissa’s system limit, all my fears were swiftly confirmed. The beacons were gone, smashed into a belt of spinning metal. Just out from the Mandeville point we encountered the corpses of two Navy monitors. It looked like they’d got a few shots away before the end came, but not much more than that.
Take us straight in, I ordered in battle-sign, standing on the bridge next to the captain. Full burn.
The crew did not hesitate to comply. We were relatively lightly armed by Naval standards, and thus running a terrible risk, but if there was any chance of arriving in time then we had to take it.
Arriving at a planet after a void-raid is always a strange experience. Unless something truly apocalyptic has occurred, there’s never any sign of trouble from the augurs – a world, even the smallest, is just too vast to show signs of pinpoint attack. Arraissa was no different – it looked just as I always remembered it from a hundred homecomings, pearl-white and banded with drifting cloudbanks.
The orbital defences, though, were gone. Tumbling fragments circled like a planetary ring, blasted dark. There were more empty ship hulls drifting, all powered-down. Most were the kind of things I’d have expected to see – trading barges, landers and lifters, a few void-capable zeta-grade haulers. There should have been Navy ships there too, a dozen of them, but there was no sign, not even wrecks.
‘Do you want us to hold anchor, lord?’ Captain Erefan asked quietly.
No, I did not. I gave him a quick flurry of battle-sign orders, then went down to the hangars to find the interceptor. Just as before, I went alone. There was no use in risking their lives on the ground, and in any case I wanted the Cadamara to scan the system for any hostiles still remaining. It looked like we’d come far too late to play any meaningful part, but you never knew what foulness might linger.
I was feeling sick by then, mostly from frustration and fear – not for myself, but for those who manned the convent walls. There was nothing else of military value on the planet, nothing else that might have drawn the attention of the Enemy. That was why Hestia had chosen it, carefully keeping us away from the roving eyes of both Imperial and other authorities.
I took my place in the Cull, watched the hangar bay doors creak open, and powered the ship out into the void. I pushed it hard down through the atmosphere, making the forward viewers roar with fire. As the superstructure shook, I pushed the ship harder, taking a little sour pleasure in hurting it.
That had always been my weakness – a desire for violence that ran beyond the righteous. At that point, though, I could hardly admonish myself for it. I was worried, and keyed for battle, and increasingly sure I had missed out on the action.
As I plunged beneath the clouds and levelled out over Novion Urban Primus, the damage became clear at last. Six of the great hives were on fire, sending smoke boiling out of rents in their sides. The urban lowland between them was also burning, punched through as if by massive bullet holes. Flyers were everywhere, swarming like angry and impotent wasps. My console flashed with alerts as ongoing activity – fighting? – was picked up, but I cared nothing for those signals. I drove the Cull steeply, not bothering to hide my approach as I would normally have done. As I neared my destination I could see the palls of inky smoke rising, thicker and more concentrated than anywhere else.
Our convent was housed in what passed for a regular Ecclesiarchy basilica. The occupants looked like priests or Ministorum menials; the Sisterhood could easily be mistaken for a minor order of the Adepta Sororitas. Anyone looking too closely might have noticed that we were nothing of the sort, and that we never had visitations from the true diocesan authorities, but Hestia