The Dark City (Vaults of Terra: Warhammer 40,000 Book 3) by Chris Wraight

Author:Chris Wraight [Wraight, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2022-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

There was no chance of coming in close. That remained true even though the voidspace above Luna’s surface was not especially crowded, even across the colossal stages of Port Luna, indicating that Zijes had been right and the action had moved on. If the Imperium was good at anything, it was good at suppressing information and clamping down on inconvenient truths, and so as the Acheros skimmed into high orbit, the comms traffic was fairly routine – complaints about the Terran embargo, pleas for landing slots, concerns about spoiling cargo. For all that, the levels of orbital security were high, with atmospheric transports flitting everywhere and Navy monitors holding geostationary positions over all the main conurbations.

Zijes showed her some of the few high-level comms bursts his analysts had succeeded in cracking. The content was fragmentary and still hard to interpret.

‘Did you lay eyes on him yourself? Any vid-footage? Because I have injunctions from the Ministorum ordering an imminent purge unless we can prove this isn’t a hoax of galactic proportions, and right now I–’

‘I still do not believe it. I cannot believe it. The madness is everywhere now, and this is just another part of it. I have made requests for immediate Inquisi­torial investigation, with no reply. I may have to take matters into my own hands, and begin to root out those behind such foul–’

‘Adeptus Astartes. Yes, you heard me correctly. In numbers. Many Chapters. They can’t all have come from Terra. Throne! I never thought I’d see it. Everything they say is true. You hear me? It is true. This is a new–’

‘What do you make of it?’ Spinoza had asked.

‘No idea,’ Zijes had replied. ‘The focus has moved back to Terra now. Massed ship movements, all coordinated. It takes some of the heat out of things here, but nerves are still frayed. They’re talking as if…’

‘As if?’

‘Never mind. Some excitable souls down there. Taking comfort in their imaginations, no doubt.’

They planned their approach carefully. The locus of the remaining clean-up activity on Luna was focused on the Mare Tempestus, a vast area of wasteland far to the north-east of the settled zones. As far as the scans could determine, that landscape was entirely desolate, a waste of toxic dust and craters broken only by the carcasses of scrapped voidships left to be gnawed over by tech-scavengers. Filtered augur readings of the restricted zone showed a heavy Mechanicus presence – several giant atmospheric barges hovering over a cleared site, rapidly constructed perimeter walls, temporary structures bristling with activity. Skitarii seemed to be everywhere, crawling like insects across the skeletal bulk of half-built defensive towers. Right at the centre of the complex was a tall structure entirely covered with heavy translucent sheeting hung from a makeshift scaffold, though the poor scan-resolution prevented any close investigation of what lay within.

Like all Inquisitorial ships of its class, the Acheros had bafflers and stealth countermeasures that enabled it to slip through most standard detector-aegis screens. The gun-cutter dropped quietly down through

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