The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,48

Slovo looked up at me. ‘They knew you were here. They were smashing up against the hull to get to you. There were hundreds of them.’ He shook his head. ‘We had to drop out of it. I don’t know how long we had – a few seconds more.’

But one got through, I signed.

‘Just as we dropped to real space,’ Slovo nodded. ‘Must have done it then. Caught on the wrong side, and it was weak by then.’

Erefan turned to me. ‘The Geller array’s in a bad state,’ he said. ‘We have a lot of burned-out relays. It’ll take a while to repower it.’

It would have been good to have been able to use Thoughtmark then, to ask the kind of subtle questions I needed to ask. I wanted to know more about what was going on.

‘It’s like… a rift,’ Slovo said, his voice full of foreboding. ‘A crack. A canyon. It’s growing.’

‘I don’t know what that means,’ said Erefan.

Slovo barked a hoarse laugh. ‘I don’t know either, captain. I’m trying to make sense of what I saw.’ He pressed his hands together, trying to stop them shaking. ‘It felt… as if the whole galaxy were breaking apart down the middle. I saw the edge of it, dropping into a deeper void. I saw the light running out of the universe. Leaking out of it.’

I leaned forwards.

The Beacon? I signed.

‘The Astronomican? It’s damned faint. Damned faint. We lost it for a while, back there, but I could just about lock on before the aegis started to crack.’

I felt impatience growing. Slovo was in shock, that was clear, but I had little patience for his weakness. He had a task, and I needed him to fulfil it.

I turned to Erefan.

How long? I signed.

‘I can get the warp drives back online in a few hours. We’ve taken some hull damage, but nothing the servitors can’t patch. It’s the Geller field that worries me.’

‘We can’t go back in there,’ said Slovo, vehemently. ‘They’ll tear us apart. They know you’re here, and they hate you.’

I remembered the star map, with its lines of snaking warp channels. It felt then as if the universe were falling into some long-arranged configuration, its tectonic plates shifting, and we were caught in the heart of it.

‘And they know what we’re doing,’ Slovo went on, rambling now. ‘They know where we’re going, and they’ll break us open to prevent it.’

I could have silenced him. Some battle-sign gestures were physically painful for an untrained recipient, and I could have gummed those lips together easily, but I thought it best to let him get it out of his system.

‘I think it’s the Gate,’ he said, his eyes flickering from Erefan to me and back again. ‘I think something’s broken and the balance has gone. We can’t go back in there.’

I turned to Erefan.

Four hours, I signed.

‘I can do it in five,’ he replied.

Four, I told him.

Then I got up. I needed to clean myself properly, wipe the stench of daemon from my armour and boil-wash my hair. Then I needed to refuel the flamer, attend to my blades and begin the process of drilling the crew.

We would have to barricade the most vulnerable sections – the Navigator’s blister, the command bridge, the exposed enginarium chambers. The Cadamara had a standing garrison of a few hundred, and if they were prepared for combat they might be able to hold their ground for long enough for me to do what was necessary.

I was sure Slovo was right. I was sure that the empyrean was rupturing, and that the inhabitants of the warp would be on to us as soon as we cleared the veil again, and that the chances of us emerging unscathed were zero. But if his visions were correct, then this growing rift risked stranding us forever in the void, or at least on the wrong side of where we needed to be.

So we would do it. We would fight our way through.

The Navigator was looking at me, appalled. At least he wasn’t talking any more. Erefan was a professional and kept his feelings to himself. I had no idea whether it would be possible to get us back on course within four hours, but at least he had something to work towards now.

I left them in the chamber and walked briskly to my own. I could worry about the Navigator’s state of mind later, when crossing the veil was a possibility again. For now, though, I had a defence scheme