Legacy by Matthew Farrer

Author:Matthew Farrer
Language: eng
Format: MOBI, epub
Published: 2012-11-13T22:20:08.998000+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Coronet Triatic MRA-47, Imperial Navy sentry gate,

Outlying Hydraphur system

THE FIRST PERSON to see the flotilla break warp on the outskirts of Hydraphur was an opticon rating named Jarto, who saw the tiny, distant pinprick of light as the ships came spilling through the gap in reality, surfing their momentum and setting their prows toward Hydraphur’s bright sun.

Jarto dutifully slid the bronze measuring rods into place and charted the co-ordinates of the sighting, called them up the speaker-tube to the Opticon Intendant’s control cabin high above him, and punched them into a grey card that was sucked into the slotted mouth of a gargoyle on his viewing-deck’s central pillar and carried smoothly to the gate’s archive stacks. He never thought any more about it, as he never thought any more about any of the tiny warp-flares he recorded. Everyone knew Hydraphur was too well fortified and too deep in the Imperium for hostile traffic - Jarto’s priority was earning enough commendations for a transfer off this crowded, Emperor-forsaken little pocket of tedium and back to one of the big planetside bases, where the fortifications went deep under the crust and there were warm rooms, and women, and forgotten little passageways where a man could ran a still.

So if the first man to see the arriving flotilla did not, perhaps, accord it the importance its masters would want, that would not last for long. The astropath in the top spire of the gate’s slender metal spindle sent a hail to the flotilla which was courteously returned, and then a message by both astropathy and vox to the naval squadron of Captain Irian Traze, the nearest node in the complex web of warship patrols that prowled all through Hydraphur.

The Navy’s goodwill toward the Phrax flotilla tarnished quickly. Despite an invitation, then a request, then a demand that it halt one hundred and fifty kilometres out from Coronet Triatic MRA-47 to await escort, the flotilla grudgingly dropped its velocity to a little under cruising speed and set a course that would take them between Hydraphur’s two ecliptics, around the star and toward the planet itself. Offended by the flotilla’s rudeness and unimpressed by the repeated and unsubtle references in its communiqués to the privileges the charter granted it, Traze took the opportunity to give his squadron a little live close-manoeuvring drill.

So the observers on the flotilla decks were startled to see the high, crenellated prows of half a dozen Battlefleet Pacificus warships bearing down on them, fast enough for some of the more nervous flotilla commanders to issue orders to brace for collision. The Navy formation speared into the side of the Phrax flotilla and then, in a beautiful display of piloting and discipline, the powerful warships wheeled around onto the flotilla’s course, effortlessly matching speeds. The flotilla crews, used to looking out of their viewports to the comforting sight of other flotilla ships blazing with light, now looked out at the pitted grey hulls of the battlefleet vessels, their arched gunports and the venomous, hulking shapes of lance turrets.

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