The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,83

agri world of Ertecia, and shared much of my slow-burn fury at the way we had been treated. The other three were crew taken from the League of Black Ships, and they professed themselves unable to understand our lingering disgruntlement. They were strange, grim-faced women, and I doubted they’d have been likeable even if they had possessed souls.

I found out later that our ingress had almost ended there, shot to pieces on the broadside of the Imperial cruiser In His Manifest Constancy. The Enduring Abundance, it seemed, had no intention of slowing down for challenge-hails, and it was only Navradaran’s presence over a frosty vid-link that prevented us being annihilated before we’d even set eyes on the Throneworld.

The entire system, it became apparent, was already in turmoil. The Naval cordon was vast, but something had got to the crews. Ships had collided, defence stations had found themselves overrun by spontaneous outbreaks of madness, energy coils had overloaded and wiped out whole gun-platforms. Most of the truly heavy battle cruisers had already been recalled to Terran orbit, and so a veritable cavalcade of heavy voidcraft was churning its way towards system-centre, streaming back to the source to assist in the incursion that had bypassed all of them and struck at the Throneworld direct.

I couldn’t know any of this, of course, closeted as I was in the narrow, cramped crew bay of the lander. All I could sense was the jaw-break rattle of the pressed-metal deck as the outer doors of the Black Ship began to cantilever open. Under normal circumstances it would have taken us days to negotiate the tortuous approaches to Terra’s orbital space. Now we were making the entire journey in a matter of hours, propelled by gargantuan engines running at full tilt. It was like arriving at some vast citadel and finding no one was home, the battlements manned by ghosts and madmen.

As the huge roar of the plasma drives began to wind down, we knew we’d arrived. I felt the lander swing away, carried out and down by the enormous extending arms. I could imagine how it looked from the outside – a sliver of metal suddenly thrust from the embrace of the Enduring Abundance’s slick black outer armour, tiny against its bulbous hide.

Rune-screeds appeared in front of me, hanging in the air from my armour’s lithcast bead. I still hadn’t got used to these tricks, these little machine-spirit devices that made my current equipment so much better than the dregs I’d made do with for so long.

I only needed to study a few lines.

Imperial Palace under active assault. Concentration of forces at Lion’s Gate major intersection. Coordinates are being sent to your landers. Defence response under way. Make planetfall and liaise with assets already in theatre. The Emperor guide your blades.

It was all happening so fast. We had our assigned squads, our lines of command developed over the preceding days. Most of those on board had been in transit for longer than I had, and so the thrust into action had not come so suddenly, but even so I felt hardly prepared.

I looked over at Reva.

Ready? I signed.

Always. You?

Of course not.

She smiled, and I liked what I saw. I couldn’t see her mouth, just her eyes, but they glittered with genuine mirth.

Something heavy slammed out of place below us, and the lander trembled. I had a sudden impression of us hanging like a leaf in autumn, shaking in the cold wind before being torn from the bough.

Then the bolts pulled back, the lander’s thrusters boomed into life, and we were thrown into our dizzying descent.

I slammed back against my restraints, as did my companions. We shook and we juddered, enveloped in the numinous roar of those incredibly powerful thrusters. Soon a greater roar overtook even those, and the hold temperature began to rise.

I switched to a tactical external feed, and a vid-link of our progress flickered into jerky life across one of the roof-mounted lenses. The forward view was burning. For a moment I thought something had set us on fire, but then realised I was looking at the entire world’s troposphere. The fires were both immense and ethereal, as unnatural as the sham-flames conjured by the shedim but presumably still deadly.

I had a quick glimpse of other craft on our trajectory – tear-shaped interception landers, bulkier armoured caskets like our own, even steeply angled Naval gunships – before the burning clouds raced up to envelop us.

The lander kicked and jumped as it hit the turbulence,