Shira Calpurnia 2 - Legacy by Warhammer

Author:Warhammer [Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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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.

This time there was no invitation, request or demand, but an order. Navy pilots would come

aboard with data-plaques and vox-links to

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