Herald of the Stars: Chapter Fourteen (Patreon)

The blasts knock me to the floor, and fill my chest with shrapnel as my valiant armour fails. With me on the floor, E-SIM opens fire with the shuttles and absolutely shreds the hanger and everything in it.

Explosive rounds sweep across the room for a full twenty seconds. The five shuttles each spew over twelve thousand rounds.

The carnage is absolute.

Among the blasted remains are scattered the lucky few. The orks stir and moan, many too injured to stand. The tyranids have fared better, their smaller size and greater numbers have kept a third of their swarm safe from the guns. The orks, E-SIM estimates at a fifth their original number, with gretchin the most numerous among the surviving greenskins.

A shuttle hovers over the muck and approaches me; a side door clangs open and I jump inside and stow my backpack. It’s badly damaged but still intact, the excess undersuit material it was sewn from and the library scrap armour plates have done the job.

To my left, the tyranid leader orders a retreat, and as the shuttle door closes, the ork boss sits up. His armour is curled and blackened. Half his skull is missing, his torso is a mass of smashed bone plates, and yet he lives, his lungs visibly inflating and his blasted organs pulsing as he stands.

I hurry to the cockpit, and strap myself in. A wailing siren blasts through the hanger, so loud it rattles the shoddy additions to my shuttle. The orks flee and the tyranids retreat even faster.

A minute later most of them are gone. Flashing yellow lights strobe back and forth; with the torturous rumble, the hanger doors ease open. A vantablack surface hides whatever lies beyond the creeping doors.

E-SIM pilots the shuttle towards the exit as I peer at the green tinted screens and single holo display. Skulls and cogs adorn every free surface, alongside the imperial aquila and an engraving containing the 16 commandments of the mechanicus. Buttons and lights blink at me.

Much of the decoration has been defaced, welded over with ork skulls, or had feathered fetishes and metal charms hung from it. Even so, the tangled grafiti cannot hide the care and skill with which this machine was built, or its imperial origins.

On one of the screens, I see Bola and his crew leap at one of the hovering shuttles, trying to break into it with knives and guns.

“Are there external speakers?”

++Yes. Shall I activate them?++

“Please.”

++Done. Speak when you are ready.++

I nod, “Bola. I once promised you a vehicle if you aided me.”

The gretchin stop their assault, though a couple keep it up and get nowhere.

“I’m going to keep my word. If we meet again, you’ll owe me something good.”

Bola takes off his hat and bows, then gives me a two fingered salute.

I snort. “Cut the speakers please, open the shuttle door for Bola and his little horror crew, then depower all its systems. No need to make it too easy.”

++Command complete. Speakers disabled. Target shuttle abandoned. Do you wish to keep the remaining four?++

“Yes please, especially as we’re in one. Take us out, E-SIM, and put the cockpit shutters down. I don’t want to see what’s out there.”

There’s a whine and a clang. One window is covered by thick armour plates, but the other remains clear.

“The orks really busted this thing, eh.”

++Please retreat to the cargo bay, Aldrich.++

“On my way.” I unstrap myself from the pilot's seat and exit the cockpit. An armoured door grinds shut behind me. I pull down and jumpseat and secure myself with the harness. The moment I’m secure, the craft accelerates.

E-SIM feeds the scan data into my head and I finally get a good ‘look’ at the station. All that remains of the edifice is a quarter circle of a single ring and a small chunk of the central pillar.

Multiple vessels are welded onto the station from the force of their impacts, including an asteroid that has scrap engines plastered to the back of it, much like my shuttle. There’s also a trio of small organic vessels nibbling at the central pillar, and a kilometre long, tentacle covered, bar-shaped ship stuck side onto the outer edge of the ring.

An exotic vessel hangs in the warp between me and my goal. It has smooth lines and is over two kilometres in length, with triangular wings sweeping from every side, the patterns on the wing remind me of the ribbed fins of flying fish. Probably an eldar vessel, a xeno race of self-destructive, precognitive, emotion driven individuals. Like the orks, they’re engineered bio-warforms of a distant era. In theory.

“Keep the station between us and the other vessels, especially the eldar one. No idea if there’s anyone on it, but I’m sure they’ll find a scheme to ruin my day no matter what.”

++Flightpath updated.++

E-SIM keeps close to the hull of the station, flying in a flat, arch-shaped formation with the other three shuttles. Here, we remain within the gellar field, the bubble of reality that maintains physical forms within the immaterium. The surface of the station isn’t smooth, but decorated with grand spires, long sensor arrays, and recessed weapons. We fly between these structures at a sedate twenty metres per second (72kph/ 45mph) and reach the forward keel-side hanger of the Distant Sun without issue.

The vessel is four point two kilometres long and zero point five kilometres abeam, a third of which is seven massive propulsion engines, which E-SIM informs me have an absurd theoretical sustained acceleration of six G (58.8m/s2).

If my pub quiz knowledge holds true, back in my day, an unloaded container ship was approximately four hundred metres long, had a mass of twenty thousand tons, and could manage twenty two knots, about eleven metres per second.

You could probably fit a pair of container ships in Distant Sun’s cargo bay. I mime my mind being blown and chuckle.

The Distant Sun has four main weapon batteries along its rectangular, bar-like shape: prow and dorsal turrets, and port and starboard broadsides, as well as hundreds of smaller turrets. Even in its forward arc, it would struggle to bring its three main batteries on target at any one time. For all the mechanicus’s supposed drive for efficiency, such a design choice strikes me as odd. I’m sure there’s a reason for it, but I can’t tell from a scan in a shuttle.

Maybe they assume they’ll always be outnumbered and outgunned, so firing in all directions at all times is fine, but they can also only cover three of the six arcs they need to without manoeuvring that massive chunk of ship, so I’m not sure that theory holds up.

You know what? I’m looking forward to exploring the ship and finding out.

I smile. Isn’t that a wonderful feeling? For the first time in months, a glimmer of curiosity drives me rather than the endless rush of action to live another breath.

The shuttle enters the Distant Sun’s hanger. I’m not sure what security measures were in place to prevent borders, but E-SIM must have spoofed permission somehow.

“Put me to sleep E-SIM and wake me when I’m healed or there is an emergency. Exploring while heavily injured is a poor idea and we’re not pressed for time at the moment.”

++Acknowledged, Aldrich.++

Eleven hours later, I wake, eat some supplies, then put my backpack on and exit the shuttle and step onto the deck. It’s littered with crates, stamped with the half skull and cog of the mechanicus’ sigilry. Withered cyborgs, slumped against the floor and chunky machinery, languish in rot and rust. Some wear red robes and have silvered tendrils poking from their backs, while others have large clamps, thick metal hands, and other poorly grafted implants. These lower quality cyborgs are mostly naked, with only red shorts and nasty brands on their chests to mark their allegiance.

Tech-priests and servitors, machine masters and slaves to machines, these decaying mockeries are all that are left of humanity’s scientists and engineers.

“Is there a network node, or something similar? We need a map.”

++Overhead, in the flight control centre.++

Above lies a large window, overlooking the cavernous hanger. Scorch marks mar the armourglass. I head for the closest exit, hoping there’ll be a sign or two. There are eleven stubby shuttles in the hangar, the four junk shuttles I bought with me, and two absolutely massive shuttles with big, triangular wings, fat fuselages and big guns.

Last, there’s a shuttle with even more guns and armour with a blocky fuselage more like a shipping container than something aerodynamic. I think it might be a thunderhawk, a military shuttle belonging to the space marines, the Imperium’s elite, transhuman warriors.

I reach the door. It’s big enough for cargo and craft. It’s labelled: ‘Hanger 01 Exit 01’, it reminds me more of part labels on flatpack furniture than navigation information. I try the door anyway, and it does open. Slowly. I don’t wait for it to finish and slip through the moment I can. There’s a stretch of twenty eight metres, then another door of equal size.

I try opening that one too, but it won’t let me. The control panel beeps and hisses at me like an old modem and E-SIM translates it into an error code. Following the instructions, I return to the first door, close it, then go to the inner door, which now opens.

The corridor I step into is twenty metres tall and fifteen wide with gothic arches bracing it every twenty metres. To me, this seems like an odd use of space on a spaceship, but given the proximity to the hangar and the gold, gems, and carvings absolutely everywhere, I suspect it's for posturing. It’s not like someone would march a warhound titan down this thing, firing highly penetrating rounds inside a spaceship, would they?

I’m not going to take that bet.

There are a few signs and I follow them to ‘flight control’, passing many, many bodies. Most have broken bones and smashed implants, as if they died from a massive impact, whereas others show signs of mutation, and a few have significant damage from weapons fire.

Seeing out of my cracked helmet is getting annoying and I move my hand up to trigger the release mechanism.

++Keep your helmet on, Aldrich. Oxygen is at five percent. Temperature is minus twenty degrees celsius. The atmosphere is predominantly nitrogen, with a little carbon and other trace gases.++

“Why are they so low?”

“++The environmental sustainer reports this is by design. It reduces the impact of fire and corrosion, as well as minimising the risk of oxygen loss. However, five percent is sufficient for rebreathers and exosuits to replenish their supplies. Low temperature removes water, reducing the formation of carbonic and nitric acids.++

“Ah, that’s clever, if uncomfortable. I suppose there are similar reasons for the dim lighting.”

++Correct. When all your crew have implants, as these bodies suggest, bright light is unnecessary. I hypothesise there are habitation blocks where conditions are more generous. The controls are available to reverse these resource saving measures throughout the ship when required, though the process can take upto ten days, depending on how much of the ship is being altered simultaneously.++

“Can you speed up the helmet self-repair?”

++Yes. For maximum speed, please spit at the cracks as best you can.++

“Seriously?”

++Affirmative.++

Liquid seeps into my mouth and I hawk silver saliva over the inside of my helmet. It creeps evenly over the surface.

I glare at the paste obscuring my vision. “How long will that take?”

++About thirty minutes. Without assistance, repairs would take another day or so, maybe even fail. It is only suitable for general wear and tear, or preventing critical damage from spreading. The damage you sustained counts as critical.++

I reach the flight control room. It has a small guardpost. A destroyed turret hangs from the ceiling and a dozen metal chested cyborgs, most clutching stocky weapons. One has a pistol and a sword, with phosphorus rounds and a powerfield, while another has a massive laser.

“Some real weapons!” I’ve never been a firearms enthusiast, but after being shot so many times, I want one for more than just preservation. I want payback.

++Don’t touch them, Aldrich. They’re genelocked and possibly trapped. You’re not trained with them either. Nothing that can’t be fixed, but now isn’t the time.++

“OK.” I give the weapons one last glance. They will all be mine.

I enter the flight control centre and there, curled up atop the central console by the window is a holographic, mechanical cat.

The construct lifts its head and looks at me with one eye.

“Greetings magos. The Distant Sun serves.”