I am Slaughter by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2015-11-03T15:06:53+00:00

Nineteen

Ardamantua – orbital

‘Any signal from the surface?’ asked Admiral Kiran.

The vox-officer shook his head.

Kiran slowly crossed the bridge of the Azimuth to meet Maskar and Lord Commander Militant Heth. Heth had joined them from his warship as the reinforcement fleet decelerated to the drop-point.

‘We’ve lost them, then,’ said Maskar. ‘Sheer madness going down into that murk and mayhem blind.’

Heth looked at him.

‘I suggest you get your men ready, Maskar, because you’ll be following soon enough. We’re not going to leave the Imperial Fists to rot down there.’

‘And what makes you suspect they are anything except dead already, sir?’ asked Maskar. ‘With respect, look at the screens. Look at the dataflow. This is a fool’s errand. Nothing has survived the fate that has befallen Ardamantua. Not even their damned fleet survived.’

‘We give them another five hours,’ said Heth. ‘That’s my word on it. Five hours, then we send in more scouts. The first thing Daylight will do is set up a workable uplink or send some kind of signal.’

Maskar looked at Kiran. There was no love lost between the Navy man and the Guard commander, but they were thinking the same thing. Heth, a High Lord, was painfully out of touch. He clearly thought the Adeptus Astartes immortal. There were certain situations, certain conditions, certain environments, that nothing could survive. They were both working men, fighting men, and they had seen how bad it could actually get, not how bad it could be imagined from a throne in the Palace.

‘Move the picket ships in closer,’ Admiral Kiran told his deck officers. ‘Have them despatch more long-range probes.’

‘Probes will be obliterated, just like the last spread,’ said Maskar.

‘Some may survive,’ replied Kiran curtly. ‘Even if one of them survives to send back a millisecond of data, it will help. Besides, with the picket ships closer to the atmospheric rim, we can try penetrating deeper with auspex and primary sensors.’

Heth nodded. The deck officers hurried to their stations and began to relay instructions.

They watched the strategium display as the reinforcement fleet began to move into its new spread, circling the stricken planet. Indicator lights and icons drifted like sunlight dapples across the topographic grid. In the lower portion of the strategium’s vast hololithic array, columns of data spread, jumbled and reassembled, processing the energetic flux and signature of the planet. Kiran had never seen a planetary body generate so much wild and contradictory data so rapidly.

‘Wait!’ he said, suddenly.

He crossed to one of the observation consoles and shoved two sensor-adepts out of his way. He began to manipulate the controls himself.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Heth.

Kiran didn’t reply immediately. Most of the crew in the huge bridge space were watching him. Kiran irritably yanked off his gloves so he could better manipulate the control surfaces. His fingers wound back the brass dials and adjusted the ivory sliders until he had recaptured the data-stream information from a few moments before.

‘There,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at,’ Maskar ventured.

‘Admiral, please elucidate,’ said Heth.

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