25The watch-change bell rang, waking Alexander Jardin from his sleep. He rolled out of bed, placing both feet on the comfortingly-cool slate tiles of his chamber.
All twenty by thirty feet of it, that is. "Representative of the Family" or not, here aboard the Bellarmine his being the official House Trask representative — albeit from a cadet branch — bought him little personal room compared to the ship's officers.
He knew cousins of his that had had people executed for trying to squeeze them into staterooms larger than this.
But it was all his, and so would more than suffice. After all, a refitted Cobra-class destroyer had little enough room to spare, anyways. His few personal possessions fit comfortably into a corner of the room, a neatly-stacked pile whose small size lent it a near-comical air.
He knew that many of the ship's officers looked down upon his… 'austere' lifestyle. That they felt a proper Family representative should display House Trask's wealth and influence as a sign of their Emperor-given authority over all aboard. That they grumbled about how his trainers and teachers must have failed to instill the proper lessons into their young pupil, for him to live a life so unseemly for a man born of his station.
They were right, in more ways than one.
He had not been trained for this duty, to be posted aboard one of the Family's vessels and serve out his duty to the God-Emperor, House Trask, and the Family homeworld of Tallarn — in that order — as had so many of his cousins before him. He hadn't even been born for it, technically.
But then had come the Great Rift.
Without warning, the Imperium was split in two… and so was the Family. More than half of House Trask's vessels, planetary and orbital bases, contacts, all of it separated by this monstrous strike by the Great Enemy. It was only by the God-Emperor's own Grace that great-aunt Mariya — the Family's own head and holder of the sacred Warrant of Trade itself — had been on Tallarn itself at the time of the Rift.
She had reacted to the literally galaxy-shattering disaster as any Rogue Trader with her centuries of experience would do: she set about ensuring that the Family would profit from it.
New ships had been ordered from what shipyards remained in contact that owed the Family favors, and if those vessels were perhaps smaller than those that a Trask — or even a Jardin — would have been seen traveling aboard earlier, then that would serve only to remind them what they had lost and were tasked to regain.
New contacts were sought, among the disrupted power structures of the remaining Imperium. Admirals and generals who suddenly found themselves in urgent need of supplies to carry out their desperate new orders, Inquisitors whose normal routes of travel had been interrupted and required new transport... and Planetary governors whose preferred cosmetics or favorite bottles of Valhallan spirits were suddenly out-of-supply thanks to the rather rude machinations of the Great Enemy.
But old contacts were searched out as well, ones whose ties with the Family went back millennia… if only intermittently. And so it was that a very young Alexander Jardin had found himself assigned to liaise with… 'foreign' co-workers.
It had been best not to throw the term 'xenos' around too much after all, no matter how tempting it had been.
Once he had finished dressing, Alex knelt by the side of his bed for morning prayers. His daily devotions in the ship's chapel would come later; those were meant more to keep up appearances rather than out of any public expression of faith. No, a man with his powers had a more… direct understanding of the Emperor, whose universal presence he was especially aware of.
"Our Emperor, who art on Terra..." he intoned his way through the stilted High Gothic of the morning's Ave Imperators. The familiar white-hot glow tingled deep in his mind, as his inner eye picked up the distant glow of His light.
It had been that reassuring, holy presence that had kept him sane during those months aboard the Eldar vessel. The small flotilla led by Alaith Yndrael had long served as the link between Biel-Tan and those few on Tallarn who remembered the ancient alliance against Chaos. Derided as 'Corsairs' by their Craftworld brethren mostly because of that contact, they had strayed from the strict rules of their people far enough to agree to take aboard a single young human, as a 'favor' to House Trask.
Not a task for which the House would have risked one of its full-blooded children, but having been adopted into the Family as an infant Alex was perhaps judged as a more… 'fitting' choice of envoy.
While he had understood even then that he was there more as 'hostage' than as 'student,' it had been a duty which he fulfilled happily enough. After all, ever since his powers as a psyker had first manifested two years earlier, he had lived in constant dread of the inevitable arrival of the next Black Ship over Tallarn. But those craft did not visit Eldar squadrons, and the xenos among whom he found himself eventually taught him — mostly for their own amusement, he was quite certain — to… 'shield' his powers when needed. To hide both from other humans with the Sight and also — albeit with much less reliability — from the foul denizens of the Immaterium.
And so he had been carried along when Yndrael rushed to the defense of Biel-Tan when that Craftworld came under assault by the vile forces of Chaos. But the flotilla, ever scouting far ahead of the ponderous world-ship, arrived too late. Where once a single, grand Craftworld had soared defiantly through the stars, only a shattered fleet of fragments remained.
It had… not been a good time to be the sole resident human aboard Yndrael's ship. The xenos normally kept their emotions tightly controlled, but for that first day he had seen what it looked like when they let their anger flow freely. None had turned their fury directly upon Alex, but he had spent many hours hiding in the most out-of-the-way corridor he could find aboard the strange, inhuman craft.
The only one to keep his temper had been Yndrael himself. The Corsair Captain had returned from a meeting aboard a fragment of the Craftworld and immediately called Alex to his cabin. There, he had explained two things:
One, that Biel-Tan's own Seers had glimpsed a future discovery which must be made, an ancient weapon of their people last seen in an uncolonized sector of worlds, well beyond the fringe of even their pre-Fall Empire.
Two, that Alex would somehow be personally involved in that rediscovery. "The Searcher shall discover the Weapons, and he shall recover them, yet the Self-Taught Seer shall wield them." indeed. And that he must set out on this journey by himself, supposedly, without any allies present. A worrying thought.
Remarkably direct and straight-forward as Yndrael's explanation had been — for an Eldar, of course — it had left Alex's head spinning. A condition which had persisted even as the xenos had provided him with the copied star-charts that would lead him towards his foreseen destiny.
Even as the House Trask shuttlecraft arrived for him a week later.
Even as he had been spirited away and assigned to the Bellarmine, an older exploration vessel of their House. The advice of Eldar was ever-untrustworthy, and so 'he shall pursue this Journey alone' turned into 'alone with the exception of a House voidship and its crew.'
Only when that ship had leaped into the insidious embrace of the Empyrean had he been truly jolted from his reverie. Even with the Gellar fields fully-engaged — praise Him on Terra… and the ship's Enginseers — any psyker, even one as weakly-talented as Alex, knew when they had plunged into those grasping, pitiless depths.
Which brought him to today.
Alex stood in front of his chamber door, drawing his shoulders back. His House uniform — bright orange, with blue and gold trim — was as immaculate as ever. Fitting, for clothes that he had only recently began to wear regularly. Now that his duties to the House had placed him in a position of no slight authority, he had only to see them carried out properly. And of course, to be seen by a ship's crew as displaying anything less than a House-appropriate level of grace and wealth would be to disregard those duties.
With an image to maintain, he stepped out through the opening door.
"Good morning, sleepyhead! I was worried that you'd dozed through the alarm!"
There might be a… slight challenge to his air of formal authority.
Armswoman Kirkland grinned up at him, arms crossed across her chest. He knew that the House had to assign a personal guard to someone like him, even being from a cadet branch of the Family. Perhaps especially so, given that his ability to peer into the Immaterium — even if only faintly — warranted having a close guard to keep an eye on him.
Just in case.
But from all of the vast numbers of trained fighters that House Trask could call upon, did they have to pick Ellen?
"What's the matter? Gyrinx got your tongue?" his childhood friend winked.
He glanced down along the corridor. Empty. He flashed a wry grin. "'Gyrinx,' really? Have you ever even seen one of those xenos-pets?"
"No. But maybe you have, recently?" Even as she replied in the familiar teasing tone that he had grown up alongside, Ellen nodded meaningfully towards the next doorway at the end of the corridor.
Right. He started walking, Ellen keeping pace. "Yndrael had none of them aboard. At least, none that I ever saw." He muttered "If anything, I think I was the ship's pet."
Ellen snorted. "Sounds like xenos, all right. But you survived, and it probably gave you a good taste of humility, mister high-and-mighty House hotshot!" The laughter in her voice took any bite out of her words.
One thing that his rank did get for him was a stateroom quite near Bellarmine's bridge. And so it was that the two of them shortly stepped out into the cavernous room.
The heady scent of incense warring with sacred machine-oils, the droning hum of cogitators and the clacking of fingers against the control-runes, the radiant golden light of the overhead illuminators… it was all just as he had dreamed of as a child.
And if Bellarmine was not specifically his to command, at least he had a position of authority aboard her. One that the younger Alexander of several years ago could only have dreamt of, while being kept in seclusion by the Family and hidden from the Black Ships.
The tall figure at the center of the bridge turned to look at Alex and Ellen over his shoulder, fixing them with a knowing, calculating look.
One that was definitely familiar to him. Lord-Captain Hamilton was among the House's seniormost ship-commanders, and while not technically part of the Family he was always to be found at any formal gathering of House Trask whenever he was available. And with his rejuvenat-extended centuries of experience, he had forever been a rather intimidating figure in Alex's life.
"Lord-Captain Hamilton." Alex inclined his head in a shallow bow. Family member or not, the man had earned such respect. And then some. "We approach our destination?"
"Within minutes, Liaison."
And wasn't it a weird feeling to have Carl Hamilton himself addressing him by such a Family title?
Alex walked up to stand behind and to one side of Hamilton, Ellen taking the same position behind him.
The Lord-Captain continued, in a quieter voice "Is there anything that you can… see about our arrival point?"
"No more than what I have shared already, I'm afraid." Alex responded in the same way. "It is… uh, a great challenge to peer through the very Immaterium to see where our future lies ahead." He stumbled slightly at putting his thoughts into words. "Especially in this region, despite our proximity to the Astronomican's light."
Which was part of why there were only the sparsest of records on what might be found in this area of space, even so deep within the Segmentum Solar. 'Regio Silens,' the astro-maps called it. A most unusual effect blanketed the region, presumed to be some inverted variant of a Warp Storm: the Mechanicus Explorators who had first attempted to chart the area many millennia ago had found their vessels utterly unable to force open an exit Warp portal within the area, and had to divert past their intended destination. Slower-than-light servitor-probes had confirmed that the area held little of interest, only the usual mix of near-habitable planets.
The latest probe, only two-thousand years prior, had registered a few primitive xenos races, but none worth worrying about. They were planet-bound and would remain so, being unfortunate enough to have developed in a region where no true interstellar travel could be possible.
It had been judged as not worthy of further investigation or expansion into an area that would be functionally isolated from the greater Imperium, and written off long ago as merely one more strange discovery in a galaxy teeming with far worse. A bubble of useless space barely three-hundred light-years across was of only trifling interest to Humanity.
Yet the Eldar had spoken with — apparent — certainty that Alex would successfully travel to the region. For whatever such assurances from xenos were worth. After all, their 'vision' had mentioned nothing of just how he would actually reach the area; Bellarmine planned to make a series of attempts to exit the Immaterium near the Regio Silens; if none worked any better than the Mechanicus' earlier tries, then they would move on to more unusual methods.
Hamilton grunted. "I see." Then, in a louder voice, he called to one of his bridge officers, "Ensure that all weapons emplacements are ready upon our return to the Materium." To another, "Bring the void shields online as soon as we have completed transition."
One did not survive to become an old voidship captain by taking needless risks, after all.
"Less than one minute until emergence, Lord-Captain." reported the ship's helmswoman, turning her head slightly to speak over her shoulder. The data cables which snaked up one arm and were implanted in the side of her skull rattled softly at the movement.
"Very well. Signal all armsmen to stand ready, and—"
Bellarmine trembled underfoot, ripping an exit vector out of the resisting Immaterium amidst a groan of stressed metal... and other things.
Alex shrugged. Estimating travel time through the Empyrean was a rather imprecise job at the best of times; if anything, the ship's Navigator should be congratulated for being within a minute of the expected time.
And more to the point, they had arrived. He had felt how Bellarmine cut her way free of the Immaterium in much the same way that a human fortunate enough not to have been born a psyker would feel a great weight suddenly lifted from his shoulders.
At which point the magnitude of their accomplishment crashed in upon him. They were the first manned human craft — servitors didn't count — to have ever visited this region!
The grand shutters at the front of the bridge rattled upwards, revealing the inky blackness of space. The empty void, stretching out before them.
Well, mostly empty.
"Contact!" shouted one of the bridge crew even as a cogitator shrieked its own warning siren. "Unknown vessel, directly ahead of us, nose-on. Range is thirty thousand kilometers and closing fast!"
The servo-screens of the bridge windows highlighted the target vessel, but Alex didn't need their help.
After all, he could feel the unknown ship's signature, through the Warp.
It was not a good feel.
"They are charging weapons!" he hissed, a moment before Bellarmine's sensor officer gave the same alarm.
Alex's eyes ached as they rolled back, the pain adding yet one more layer to the difficulty of peering ahead through the onrushing strands of time. But these were circumstances that certainly called for him to rush his powers. Even if he had never been able before to see past a mere minute or two into the future, that may prove decisive here.
After all, the other vessel's perfect positioning, in the incomprehensibly-vast emptiness of space, could not be an accident.
It was an ambush.
Yes, he could see it now…
Bellarmine rumbled/would rumble underfoot, her single forward macrocannon loosing a round even as her maneuvering thrusters fought to shove her five-point-seven megaton bulk aside.
The round streaked/would streak through the intervening distance in a heartbeat, impacting and splashing against the armored prow of her target. A target which made no attempt to dodge, accepting the hit in order to line up their own return shot.
A shot which came/will come in the form of a lance beam.
The oversized weapon leapt out/will leap from the small vessel, grazing past Bellarmine's forward hull and slamming into her bridge windows.
Which shattered/will shatter under the impact, sending spall fragments whistling through—
"Look out!" Alex shouted, turning and roughly shoving Ellen away from him.
For a frozen moment in time, her look of utter and complete confusion stared back at him as she hung in mid-air, off-balance.
Then, before she had time to hit the floor, the world exploded.
Bridge crewmen cried out.
Servitors shrieked their confusion.
Cogitators spat sparks and died.
A chunk of structural metal twice as thick as Alex's own body whistled past him, a centimeter away from his skin.
Right through the space where Ellen had stood a half-second before.
Rushing air tugged at him.
The deck underfoot bucked, hurling him up off the floor.
Ellen reached out one hand for him, but she was so far away now.
And getting further.
The empty hole where one of the bridge windows had stood only moments before — had done so for the many millennia of Bellarmine's proud service — enveloped him.
Flashed past him.
Dozens of other voidsmen were vented outside along with him, yanked through the gaping rents in Bellarmine's structure by the truly explosive decompression.
Some were already motionless, blood flash-boiling into a hazy corona around their broken forms.
Others struggled, writhing pointlessly against the pitiless grasp of hard vacuum.
Trained reflexes brought Alex's hand down to the breather-mask hanging at his waist. Not something he'd ever thought he'd need on this mission, but it would become useful now.
Slapping it across his face, he fixed the strap behind his head. And pulled in a ragged, hurried — not panicked! — breath.
Stars drifted past him. He was tumbling, but slowly.
Only allowing his eyes to move, he tracked Bellarmine as she spun into view. Her warp-portal closed behind her, the destroyer's engines flaring as she continued to dodge aside.
Wreckage still streamed in a thin trail from her bridge.
A grievous blow, yes, but not enough to disable a vessel built to the ancient and sturdy guidelines of human shipwrights. Bellarmine would launch shuttles any moment now, to recover her drifting survivors even as she fought off her ambusher. A lance battery took much longer to reload than a macrocannon when mounted on a sub-sized vessel such as the enemy craft; Bellarmine held the advantage in this battle.
But then why was she still maneuvering?
A streak entered his vision, rocketing in from one side.
The enemy ship itself.
It slammed dead-on into Bellarmine's bow, the splayed lance emitters of the enemy craft taking on the appearance of tentacles grasping at the bulkier prow of the House Trask warship. White-hot twisted metal exploded outwards into the void, torn and hurled asunder by the unimaginable force of impact.
Engines flared across both craft as they tumbled around each other, like wrestlers a kilometer long.
Now he could see the ambushing craft's lines — Idolator-class, an escort.
A Traitor craft.
Blue and green paint graced the lean flanks of the vessel, silver trim highlighting her sleek armored plates.
Her main engines glowed brightly, exhaust plumes painful to look at against the blackness of space.
Inhuman, distorted faces grinned and leered out of those engine plumes.
A great pain split his head only a moment before a greater pain split the universe open, as a new warp portal was ripped open behind both craft.
No, ahead of them, as their twisting path shoved the two vessels ever closer to the yawning maw of the Immaterium.
Into it.
The last he saw was a point-blank shot from Bellarmine's single macrocannon, muzzle flash indistinguishable from the explosion of the projectile deep inside the Idolator's flank.
And then the portal snapped shut.
Leaving Alexander Jardin drifting through the depths of space, on the outskirts of an empty system in the Segmentum Solar that had been so utterly unimportant that it had only received a catalogue number in the Astronomer's Charts.
This… was a problem.
Three hours.
For three hours he had drifted, with nothing to listen to but the fading cries of his fellow victims — at least, the other ones wise enough to wear emergency vac-suits with their inbuilt radios while on routine bridge duty.
Not that it had done any of them any good, in the end.
He had refrained from adding his own. There was nothing nearby. Nobody was coming to save them.
And so he had prayed. The Emperor had helped others through worse circumstances, right?
Then again, Alex had came out here as part of a joint mission guided by the Eldar.
By xenos.
Family business or no, Warrant of Trade or no, could it be that the Immortal Emperor took a… dim view of Alex's presence here? His mission?
He suspected that he would be finding out personally, in only a few more minutes.
Not many more, by how his vision faded around the edges.
The hungering darkness, advancing second-by-second.
Well, better see that his last moments alive in the Materium were spent in a manner fitting of a Faithful Imperial.
"Yndrael, you knife-eared bastard! You knew this was doomed, didn't you!?" he bellowed into the void, radio broadcasting his betrayed fury to the listening stars. "You and the rest of Biel-Tan's vile xenos! Well, guess what? Your Craftworld is in pieces, and Tallarn's still fine! So who's laughing now!?"
Probably that Eldar's second-in-command Meldrath, a hysterically-calm corner of his mind noted. You could take the Corsair out of the Harlequin Band, but it turns out you couldn't take the Harlequin out of the Corsair. Always laughed at everything, the smiling, smug bastard.
In his last moments, Alex tried his hand at one thing that he'd always wondered, ever since he had first learned to use his powers of divination. If he could glimpse even a minute into his own future, would doing so when he had seconds left show him a glimpse of… Him? Resplendent on His Throne?
It would be a final image that any faithful adherent of His Creed would cherish.
This time, the pain in his eyes was as nothing to the pain in his lungs. Yet he cast his sight forwards, seeking, searching.
Nothing.
Well. Perhaps the Emperor wished to keep things a surprise.
"Ave Imperator, Immortal God." Alex ground out, forcing the last traces of air from his aching lungs. "Master of Mankind, watch over—"
Suddenly, the thin column that was all which was left of his vision was filled with green.
And white.
Biel-Tan colors?
Alex blinked. He didn't see that coming.