Abnett, Dan - Warhammer - Gaunt by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

'Flense? Clear that up, would you?' Inquisitor Heldane asked, gesturing to the

corpse at his feet with a swish of the blood-wet, long-bladed scalpel in his

hands. He turned back to the patient.

'Hello, Major Rawne,' he crooned softly. 'Let me show you your heart's desire.'

Thirteen

Reclining in his leather upholstered command throne, Lord Captain Itumade

Grasticus, commander of the Adeptus Mechanicus Mass Conveyance Absalom, raised

his facilitator wand in a huge, baby-fat hand and gestured gently at one of the

many hololithic plates which hovered around him on suspensor fields, bobbing

gently like a duster of buoys in an ebb-tide. The matt, dark surface of the

chosen plate blinked, and a slow swirl of amber runes played across it.

Grasticus carefully noted the current Warp-displacement of his vast ship, and

then selected another plate to appraise himself of the engine tolerances.

Through reinforced metal cables that grew from the deck plates under his throne

and dung like thick growths of creeper to the back of his chair, Grasticus felt

his ship. The data-cables, many of them tagged with paper labels bearing codes

or prayers, spilled over the headrest of his throne and entered his cranium,

neck, spine and puffy cheeks through sutured bio-sockets. They fed him the sum

total of the ship's being, the structural integrity, the atmospheric levels, the

very mood of the great spacecraft. Through them, he experienced the actions of

every linked crewman and servitor aboard, and the distant rhythm of the engines

set the pace of his own pulse.

Grasticus was immense. Three hundred kilos of loose meat hung from his great

frame. He seldom left his throne, seldom ventured outside the quiet peace of his

private strategium, an armoured dome at the heart of the busy bridge vault, set

high on the command spire at the rear of the Absalom.

One hundred and thirty standard years before, when he had inherited this vessel

from the late Lord Captain Ulbenid, he had been a tall, lean man.

Indolence, and

the addictive sympathy with the ship, had made him throne-bound. His body, as if

sensing he was now one with such a vast machine, had slowed his metabolism and

increased his mass, as if it wanted him to echo the swollen bulk of the Absalom.

The conveyance vessels of the Adeptus Mechanicus were not like ships of the

Imperial Navy. Immeasurably older and often much larger, they had been made to

carry the engines of war from Mars to wherever they were needed. Their captains

were more like the Princeps of great walking Titans, hardwired into the living

machines through mind-impulse links. They were living ships.

Grasticus wanded another screen which allowed him direct observation of his

beloved navigators, husks of men wired into their shrine, set in an alcove a few

marble steps down from the main bridge. Their chanting voices sung him the

Immaterium co-ordinates and their progress, forming them into a data-plainsong

which resonated a pale harmony through his mind. He listened, understood, was

reassured. There was a slight course adjustment which he relayed to the senior

helm officers. The Menazoid Clasp was now just two day-cycles away. The ether

showed no signs of storm fronts or Warp-pools, and the signal from the Astronomicon beacon, whose psychic light guided all ships through the Empyrean,

was clear and clean.

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