Free Eclipse of Hope by David Annandale Page B

about me. I find the mad rage. It is a background radiation, barely detectable, but omnipresent. The planet is infected. The disease that killed its population has a pulse, an irregular beat like that of an overtaxed heart. I pull back my awareness back to the here and now, but now that I have seen the trace of the plague, I can identify its workings. It scrabbles at the back of my mind. It is an annoyance, barely there but never absent, scratch and scratch and gnaw and claw. It wants in, and it will work at us until, like wind eroding rock, it has its way. It is in no hurry. It is now as fundamental to the planet as its nickel-iron core. It has forever. If we stay here, given enough time, we will all succumb. This is not defeatism. It is realism. A Blood Angel can and must recognize inevitable doom when it is encountered. The doom we face, coded into our very genes, is just as patient, just as certain of its ultimate victory.
    The difference is that we can leave Supplicium Secundus and its disease behind. I am loathe to do so without discerning a cause, however.
    Then a voice sounds in my ear bead. ‘Chief Librarian?’ It is Castigon, captain of 4 th Company. He is aboard the strike cruiser Crimson Exhortation , which awaits us at high anchor.
    ‘Yes, captain.’
    ‘Do you concur with the other reports? There are no survivors?’
    I glance at the dead colonel. ‘That is now the case, yes.’
    ‘Is it possible for you to return to the ship?’ Castigon does not give me orders. He would never be so foolish. But his request is not unreasonable.
    I hesitate, thinking still that perhaps some revelation might await us in the abattoir of the hive before us. ‘Is this a matter of urgency?’ I ask.
    There is a pause. Then: ‘Possibly.’ I sense no deliberate vagueness on Castigon’s part. He sounds genuinely puzzled. From his tone, I would say that he has chosen his answer carefully. After a moment, he speaks again. ‘We have found the Mordian fleet.’
    Found . The fleet should not have needed finding. It should have been in constant communication with us. But there was none when we arrived in the system, and no immediate sign of other ships in orbit around Secundus. ‘There is an ominous ring to your words, captain,’ I say.
    ‘It is in the nature of this day, Chief Librarian.’
    The Supplicium System is perched on the edge of extinction. This is nothing new. It is its very nature. There was once, against all sense, a colony on Supplicium Primus. The small planet is perilously close to the sun, but its gold deposits are vast. Its rate of rotation is the same as its revolution, and one face burns in an eternal day, while the other is forever trapped by night. Along the band of its twilight, a temperate zone permitted habitation until six centuries ago, when a solar storm of terrible magnitude stripped Primus of its atmosphere.
    Secundus and Tertius, larger, more distant, and with stronger magnetic fields, weathered the storm, preserving their atmospheres and their civilizations. But here, too, humanity’s grip is precarious. The orbits of the two planets are very close, but fall on either edge of the range of temperate distances from their star. Secundus is arid, Tertius frigid. But the Imperium is filled with worlds far more hostile, and they are held for the eternal glory of the Emperor. The Supplicium system has called for help. It must be heeded.
    It was. Help came.
    And failed.
    Aboard the Crimson Exhortation , I stand with Castigon in the strategium. There are many tacticarium screens offering information, but our attention is focused on what we can see through the great expanse of armourglass at the front of the bridge. The hololiths and readouts render the meaning of the view clear, but there is a terrible majesty to the unfiltered, uncatalogued, raw vision before us.
    The Mordians were but one system over when Supplicium Secundus cried out for help, and so they came. Now their fleet is dead. Its ships move,