'If we break contact now, the Eisenstein escapes/ the first captain said flatly. 'This vessel has power enough to pull free, yes? You'll use it when I order you to and not before.'
'By your command.'
Typhon glared at the gunnery officer. 'You! Where are my kills? I want that frigate obliterated! Get it done!'
'Lord, the ship is agile and our cannons are largely fixed emplacements'
'Results, not excuses!' came the growling retort. 'Do your duty or I'll find a man who can!'
On the giant pict screen over his command throne, Typhon watched the trails of fumes and wreckage spilling from Eisenstein and smiled coldly.
Racel Vought blinked sweat out of her eyes and pressed her hands on the flat panel of the control console. The reflected ivory starlight from the White Moon's surface illuminated the bridge with stark edges and hard lines. It was a funerary glow, devoid of any life, and it seemed to draw her energy from her. She took a shuddering breath. The lives of every person aboard the frigate were squarely in her hands at this moment, gambled on a string of numbers she had hastily computed while Isstvan III had died before her eyes. She was afraid to look at them again for fear that she might find she had made some horrible mistake. Better that she not know, better she hang on to the fragile thread of confidence that had propelled her to this daring course in the first place. If Vought had made any miscalculations, she would not live to regret it.
The theory was sound, she could be sure of that. The gravity of the dense, iron-heavy White Moon was already enveloping the Eisenstein, dragging it down towards the satellite's craggy surface. If she did not intervene, it would do exactly that, and like the dour Death Guard had said, the frigate would become a grave marker.
Vought's plan was built on the mathematics of orbits and the physics of gravitation, a school of learning that extended back to the very first steps of mankind into space, when thrust and fuel were precious commodities. In the Thirty-first Millennium, with brute force engines capable of throwing star-ships wherever they needed to go, it wasn't often such knowledge was required, but today it might save their lives.
Racel glanced over her shoulder and found both Baryk and the Death Guard battle-captain looking back at her. She expected judgemental, commanding stares from both men, but instead there was silent assurance in their eyes. They were trusting her to fulfil her promise. She gave them an answering nod and went back to her task.
Klaxons warned of new salvos of incoming fire. She tuned them out of her thoughts, concentrating instead on the complex plots of trajectory and flight path before her. There was no margin for error. As Eisenstein fell towards the planetoid, the drives would shift and ease her through the White Moon's gravitational envelope, using the energy of the satellite to throw the frigate about in a slingshot arc, boosting the vessel's sub-light speed, projecting her away towards the jump point. The Terminus Est would never be able to catch them.
The frigate's shuddering grew as the craft entered the final vector of the slingshot course. 'Prepare for course correction,' Vought shouted over the rumbling. 'A/tarkV
Streaks of fire jetted from the Eisenstein's port flank as the autonomic trim controls slewed the ship away from the moon. The bow veered as if wrenched by an
invisible hand, shifting the axis with brutal force. The extremes of tension between the lunar gravity and the artificial g-forces generated inside the vessel knotted and turned. Hull plates popped and warped as rivets as big as a man sheared off and broke. Conduits stressed beyond their tolerances ruptured and spewed toxic fumes. Forced past her limits, Eisenstein howled like a wounded animal under the punishment, but it turned, metre by agonising metre, falling into the small corridor of orbital space that would propel the frigate away from Isstvan III.
'Typhon!' shouted the shipmaster, throwing procedure aside by daring to address the first captain without the prefix of his rank. 'We must evade! We cannot follow the frigate's course, we'll be drawn down on to the moon! Our mass is too great-'
Furious, the Death Guard struck the naval officer with a sudden backhand, battering the man to the decking with his cheekbones shattered and blood streaming from cuts. 'Evade, then!' he spat, 'but warp curse you, I want everything thrown at that bloody ship before we let him go!'
The rest of the bridge crew scrambled to carry out his orders, leaving the mewling shipmaster to tend to himself. Typhon snatched up his manreaper and held it tightly, his anger hot and deadly. He cursed Garro as the Eisenstein slipped out of his grasp.
The Terminus Est bore down, the warship's drives casting a halo of crackling red light, a shark snapping at a minnow. The craft groaned as the monstrous thrust of her drives tore the ship out of the White Moon's gravity well, the blade-sharp prow crossing the path of the frigate. As it did so, every lance cannon
on Typhon's battle cruiser erupted as one in a screaming concert of power, tearing across the dark towards the fleeing vessel.
'Incoming fire!' barked Sendek. 'Brace for impact!'
Garro heard the words and then suddenly he was airborne, the deck dropping away from him. The Death Guard spun and tumbled across the bridge, rebounding off stanchions and clipping the ceiling before the energy of the slamming impact dissipated and he collided with a control console.
Nathaniel shook off a daze and dragged himself back to his feet. Small fires were burning here and there as servitors struggled to bring the bridge back to any semblance of order. He saw Carya sprawled over the command throne, with Vought at his side. The woman had a severe cut across her scalp, but she seemed to be unaware of the streaks of blood down her cheek. Dimly, he heard Iacton Qruze swear in Cthonian as he climbed off the deck.
'Report,' Garro commanded, the rough metallic smoke that hazed the air tasting acrid on his tongue.
Sendek called out from the other side of the chamber. 'Terminus Est has broken off pursuit, but that last salvo hit us hard. Several decks vented to space. Drive reactors are in flux, engines are verging on critical shutdown.' He paused. 'Slingshot manoeuvre was successful. On course for intercept with jump point.'
Decius grunted as he pushed aside a fallen section of panelling and stepped over the lifeless body of a naval rating. 'What good is that if we explode before we get there?'
Garro ignored him and moved to Carya's side. 'Is he alive?'
Vought nodded. 'Just stunned, I think.'
The shipmaster waved them off. 'I can stand on my own. Get away.'
Garro disregarded the man's complaints and pulled him to his feet. 'Decius, call the Apothecary to the bridge.'
Carya shook his head. 'No, not yet. We're not finished here, not by a long shot.' He staggered forward. 'Racel, what's the Navigator's status?'
Vought cringed as she listened to a vox headset. Even at a distance, Garro could hear yelling and shouting from the tinny speaker. 'Severnaya's still alive, but his adjutants are panicking. They're climbing the walls down there. They are weeping about the warp. I can hear them screaming about darkness and storms'
'If he's not dead, then he can still do his job,' Carya said grimly, chewing down his pain. 'That goes for all of us.'
'Aye,' said Garro. 'Order the crew to make the preparations for warp translation. We will not have a second chance at this.'
'We may not have the first chance/ grumbled Decius beneath his breath.
Garro turned on him and his face hardened. 'Brother, I have reached my bounds with your doleful conduct! If you have nothing else to volunteer but that, I will have you go below and join the damage control parties'
'I call it as I see it,' retorted Decius. 'You said you wanted the truth from me, captain!'
'I would have you keep your comments to yourself until we are away, Decius!'
Nathaniel expected the younger Astartes to back down, but instead Decius stepped closer, moderating his tone so that it would not carry further. 'I will not.
This course you have set us upon is suicide, sir, as surely as if you had bared our throats to Typhon's scythe.' He stabbed a finger at Vought. You heard the woman. The Navigator is barely sane with the terror of what you ask of him. I know you have not been deaf to the reports of the turbulence in the warp in recent days. A dozen ships were displaced just on the voyage to Isstvan-'
That is rumour and hearsay/ Qruze snapped, coming closer.
'Are you sure?' Decius pressed. They say the warp has turned black with tempests and the freakish things that lurk within them! And here we sit, on a ship held together by rust and hope, with intent to dive into that ocean of madness.'
Garro hesitated. There was truth in Decius's words. He was aware of the talk circulating about the fleet before the attack on the Choral City, that there had been isolated incidents of Navigators and astropaths going wild with panic when their minds stroked the immaterium. The sea of warp space was always a chaotic and dangerous realm through which to travel, but so the reports had hinted, it was rapidly becoming impassable.
We have already tested ourselves and this ship beyond all rational margins/ hissed Decius. 'If we touch the warp, it will be a step too far. We will not endure a blind voyage into the empyrean.'
The skin on the back of Garro's neck prickled. The innate danger sense that was second nature to an Astartes sounded in him and he turned towards the bridge's main hatch. Standing in the doorway, wreathed in thin grey smoke, the woman Keeler was watching him. The battle-captain blinked, for one moment afraid that reason had fled from him and
she was some kind of ephemeral vision, but then he realised that Decius saw her too.
Keeler picked her way through the wreckage and came to stand directly in front of him. 'Nathaniel Garro, I came because I know you need help. Will you accept it?'
'You're just a remembrancer/ said Decius, but even his bluster was waning before her quiet, potent presence. 'What help can you offer?'
'You'd be surprised/ murmured Qruze.
'The survival of this ship is measured in moments/ she continued, 'and if we remain in this place we will surely die. We must all take a leap of faith, Nathaniel. If we trust in the will of the Emperor, we will find salvation.'