Hand of Abaddon by Nick Kyme

Author:Nick Kyme
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction: space opera (FLS)
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2024-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

motherlode

the council speaks

star fortress

She had hunted the prize for many years, but this was the closest Vutred had ever come to obtaining it. Their elusive motherlode, the greatest prospect of the Omrigar’s history, which would bring them out of imminent destitution and into prosperity. It was her destiny to find it and take it for the Kin; the Votann had decreed it. And by the will of the ancestors, Vutred would see it done.

‘Promising,’ she murmured, and sucked at her teeth. ‘Very promising.’

She leaned over an imaging plinth, surrounded by her Votannic council and aboard her mining ship, the Delver. Cloistered around the three-foot mechanised stump protruding from the Delver’s deck, the Kin were bathed in the ice-blue illumination cast from the plinth’s screen. A map was rendered upon it, together with the material readings from the ship’s pan-spectral scanners.

‘Potential yields look very high,’ Brêkka concurred. ‘Titanium, adamantine, metathane, even painite. Not an inconsiderable find.’ The Iron-master’s gnarled fingers traced the amounts on the screen as if to touch them would somehow render them the Kin’s property.

Vutred knew they were their property. This was it. They had it, at long last. She had but to take it.

‘Are you trying to make me salivate, Brêkka?’

‘Always check the depth,’ she replied, alluding to patience with matters of importance.

‘Aye, true as wrought,’ said Vutred, but her eyes flashed and her smile widened as she began to project what she could do with this much material wealth. ‘This will restore the Kindred to prosperity. More than that. Our readings are sound. Our scanners have a firm lock.’

‘It’s in there,’ Brêkka confirmed.

Vutred whistled. ‘Trust the void. Any other claimants?’

‘No other ships on our long-range scanners.’

‘Luck has. Toil earns. Need keeps.’ She addressed the Grimnyr, who had yet to speak. ‘Othed… this is the will of the ancestors, aye?’

He had consulted with the Votann at length, discerned their will, parsed their knowledge. He and he alone could give the ancestors’ blessing to this endeavour, but Vutred felt the truth of it in her blood, as keenly as she did the void.

After a long pause, during which the wintry light of the screen seemed echoed in Othed’s eyes, the Grimnyr finally spoke.

‘It is the motherlode, our destiny. Aye, it is the ancestors’ will.’

Vutred leaned back, arms folded, and looked pleased with herself. As well she might. ‘Very well, then…’ She called out to the voidmaster of the Delver who sat stoically at his station. ‘Make heading at once, Krykkâ. All ships…’ Her teeth shone as she bared them in an avaricious grin. ‘Make for the Stygius Gilt.’

Seven vessels emerged from the plunge, ethereal matter trailing off their hulls in gossamer strands.

For the Kin, traversal of the immaterium was entirely less perilous than it was for their Imperial counterparts. They favoured short ‘plunges’ rather than protracted journeys. This, alloyed to their natural resistance to the warp, made moving through this realm far less risky. And so Vutred and her Oathband reached the edge of the Stygius Gilt without incident.

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