The End And The Death, Volume 1 by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2022-12-07T14:25:09+00:00

3:ii

888

‘Try it again,’ says Sandrine Icaro. Her voice is brittle and sharp.

The Hegemon’s Rotunda is hushed, but for the murmur of instrumentation and the occasional warble of an alert. No one speaks.

‘Negative vox,’ says the War Court officer at main communication at last. ‘Negative noospheric link. Negative trace signal or transponder locator. Negative lock on teleport marker beacons.’

‘Keep trying,’ says Icaro. ‘Ten-second cycle. They must be alerted to the situation change. They… He has to know of Ultramar’s approach.’

And we have to know, thinks Ilya, watching from her station. We have to know if they even got there. The data reported by Lion’s Gate port is deeply concerning. It suggests that all augury scans and sensoria reports are dubious at best, falsified or unreliably incomplete. Anabasis assault should have been called off. But who tells Him that He cannot do something?

There should be joy, the first real joy in months, a renewed hope of salvation. The Emperor has risen to lead the final fight, and the liberating fleets of the last, loyal sons, in all their fury, are but nine hours out.

But there is no way of confirming the signal from Guilliman, and no way of answering. The avenging sons come too late anyway, for their father has already committed and passed the point of no return. And, though nine hours close, the vengeance fleet is blind. It cannot find Terra in the warp storm wracking the Solar Realm, and Terra has no beacon to light to show it the way.

Ilya looks at the stations nearby, where senior tacticians have been analysing auspex returns and detection grid metadata since she first brought the issue regarding Target Principal to Icaro’s attention. Sidozie also has two seniors running a forensic review of the teleport pattern log.

One of them suddenly signals to Sidozie. The Chosen reviews his data-slate, then hurries it across to Icaro. Ilya just gets out of her seat and follows him. She’s at Sidozie’s side when he presents the findings to Icaro. Icaro doesn’t even bother sending Ilya back to her station. She is at the very edge now. Ilya can see it in her, the frantic, milling spiral of panic.

‘What does this mean?’ Icaro asks Sidozie.

‘It’s a transmission report coding,’ says the Chosen. ‘It is appended to all teleportation transfers. One-one-one, for example, signifies successful transfer, with complete materialisation integrity, at selected destination and–’

‘I know that!’ Icaro snaps. ‘What is this? What is eight-eight-eight?’

‘We… aren’t sure, mistress,’ says Sidozie. ‘It appears to be an archaic error signature, usually expressing a teleport failure due to insufficient power. Either that, or it’s some invasive scrap code.’

‘What are you saying?’ Icaro asks. ‘Are they still here? Is He still here? Did they not transfer?’

‘They are not here,’ Sidozie replies. ‘Throne Room confirms this. Power level discharge was also confirmed as optimal on all bulk teleport platforms. But we are also unable to hard-fix Target Principal.’

‘But it’s right there. Shields down. Wide open.’

‘It appears to be, mistress. But, with repeated attempts, we cannot acquire solid target or location solutions on it.

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