Warhammer 40k: Ours Journey

Chapter 53: The Coming Storm

"Master Astropath!"

"I need you to broadcast a muster call to every crusade fleet. Highest priority."

Aboard the battle-barge Flame of Pursuit, within the grand, cathedral-like Astropathic Sanctum, Marshal Orlando made his solemn request to the Master of the Choir.

"With all due respect, my Lord, if we send this message, the crusade fleet will lose all long-range astropathic communication capabilities," the Master of the Choir replied. "Is the information you possess so critical as to demand such a price from the fleet?"

He was not afraid, merely stating the gravity of the situation.

"It is!" Orlando replied, his voice firm.

Unlike his demeanor with the Inquisitor, he afforded the Master Astropath his full respect. Within the Black Templars, who fanatically worshipped the Emperor as a god, only Navigators and Astropaths—those who had gazed upon the Emperor's light and passed His trial—could earn their reverence. As such, the Black Templars had always cherished the lives of these masters.

But the current situation was too dire.

Orlando thought of the elders who had, with just over a hundred of their own warriors, annihilated over five hundred Drukhari without a single loss. A hundred white-haired veterans, their faces as hard as granite, the scars they bore more chilling than any medal worn by a modern Space Marine.

He knew he could not persuade these elders to turn back, to abandon their honor. If anyone had dared to suggest such a thing to him, Orlando would have unhesitatingly smashed their head in with his power maul.

To advise those living fossils to avoid a battle? The moment the words left his mouth, the old veterans would probably stuff him into a torpedo tube and fire him into a Chaos stronghold as a human cannonball.

But the impending Chaos ritual, one involving five trillion souls, was not something their small force could handle alone.

They needed reinforcements.

Orlando clenched his fists. Nothing was more important than protecting the lives of these ancient elders!

"These are the brothers who must be contacted, and this is the message that must be sent," the Chaplain said, handing over a copper plate. In addition to the messages for the various Black Templar crusade fleets, it also included the Crimson Fists and the Executioners Chapters. They did not know the exact locations of other Chapters, and broadcasting a blind message might attract their arch-nemesis, the Iron Warriors, which would only make the situation more chaotic.

Creak—

The Chaplain's grip was so tight that it left a handprint on the copper plate.

It's not enough. It's truly not enough.

If the Black Templars had not withdrawn from the Last Wall protocol—a move that had fractured their relationship with most of the sons of Dorn, including the Imperial Fists—he would have sent the message to every single successor Chapter. This would be a grand crusade, a crusade alongside elders who had met their gene-sire in the flesh. As a son of Dorn, no one could refuse such an honor.

"I understand. A contingent of astropaths will remain to provide short-range informational exchange for you, my Lords," the Master Astropath said, accepting the plate. He committed the ciphers upon it to memory, then turned and walked towards the center of the hall.

His psychic robes billowed without a wind. The eyes of the Emperor's statue suddenly flared with golden light. As his fingers traced the inscriptions on the copper plate, a mixture of cerebrospinal fluid and sacred oils seeped from the neural-jacks at the nape of his neck.

The Imperium required his sacrifice. That answer was enough.

"Children of the Imperium, the time has come for us to give our lives for the Emperor!" the Master Astropath cried out, standing in the center of the Sanctum. "Calibrate the chant. Invoke the Thirteenth Canticle. Modulate to the Martyr's Finale."

Dong— Dong—

A heavy rhythm echoed through the hall. Every member of the choir, without hesitation, donned the apparatus that would channel their psychic might. They were all humans who had been touched by the Emperor's gaze; their very existence was to be offered up in His name.

The Master Astropath, standing at the center, communed with the Emperor's light. The purple psychic energy erupting from his body was instantly transmuted into gold.

FWOOM!

A golden pyre consumed his body. The other astropaths, guided by him to face the Emperor's light directly, were ignited at the same instant.

To send a clear, precise message to every crusade fleet and Astartes Chapter across the galaxy was an impossible task for a psyker. The information would be twisted, the words corrupted. It could only be done with the aid of the Emperor's great power.

The Emperor's power was infinite.

It just required a price.

To demand a response from a god of the Warp? It could be done. Offer up your life, offer up your soul as a sacrifice. This was the underlying logic of their universe.

Bronze bells chimed a bloody, heavy accent. The members of the choir drove neural spikes into the foramen magnum at the base of their skulls. Their eyes snapped open at the exact moment their souls were exposed to the Warp, their pupils dancing with the light of a cold sun from Terra. In a world unseen by mortal eyes, they all beheld it.

Terrifying pressure surrounded them. The Master Astropath, his soul laid bare to the tides of the Warp, could even see the evil shadows closing in around him. He selected the regions where the fleets and Chapters were located, then pushed forth the words that needed to be sent. With every character of the impossibly clear message that was inscribed upon the Immaterium, another astropath was burned to nothing in the Emperor's light.

This was the price. For a mortal to wield the power of a god, they could only burn themselves.

Ignoring his own melting body, the Master Astropath's face contorted in agony. He focused on the wondrous sight in the Empyrean. When the final stroke was made, his expression finally became peaceful and quiet.

Not a single word was missed.

When the Master Astropath's body finally stilled, all that remained was a withered skeleton, the skin roasted and devoid of all moisture.

"My task is complete, my Lord," he reported to Orlando with his last breath. He knelt before the Emperor's statue in the center of the hall, then held out a hand that was turning to ash.

"O Emperor, Your light... it is so bright—"

"High Marshal, a communication from the Eighth Crusade Fleet."

Aboard the Eternal Crusader, a Gloriana-class battleship, the ship's captain respectfully presented the astropathic message to the High Marshal of the Black Templars.

High Marshal Helbrecht frowned, accepting the cipher that only the Marshals and Chaplains of each fleet could decipher. The crusade fleets rarely sought aid from their brethren. The millennia of accumulated renown and honor-debts meant they could raise a holy host wherever they went. To ask for aid from a fellow crusade was considered a mark of shame, a last resort for a fleet in dire straits.

But the outcome of a war should be determined at the outset. Helbrecht had to consider whether Orlando was still fit to command a crusade fleet.

His eyes followed the abstract lines of the message, his mind rapidly deciphering their meaning. It reported the enemy the crusade fleet was likely to face, and at the very end, there was a coded phrase.

"The Fists are here."

The words were golden, shimmering with the brilliant light of the Imperial Fists.

High Marshal Helbrecht's hand trembled.

This was a cipher used ten thousand years ago, back when the Black Templars were still the First Company of the Imperial Fists, before the Chapter had been split from its parent Legion. What could possibly compel a Chapter, long-separated from its Primogenitor, to use a cipher from that era? For other, more secretive Chapters, this might just be another in-house secret. But for a son of Dorn—

There was only one answer.

Either Dorn himself, or true sons of Dorn from that age, were there!

Helbrecht suppressed the violent stirring of his own gene-seed. Only after the fleet had completed its starport docking procedures did he ask in a low, heavy voice, "Captain, what is our travel time to the xenos' nest?"

"High Marshal, it is a two-year journey."

"Then what is our travel time to the planet Pierdra?"

The captain bowed his head, his mind rapidly plotting a new course. Pierdra was in the Ultima Segmentum, on the edge of the galaxy. It was far, very far from their current position. Based on past experience, he wasn't sure the Eternal Crusader could reach it in a short amount of time.

"Three months, my Lord!"

Before the captain could answer, an ethereal voice echoed through the bridge. Everyone turned. It was a noble lady, and even from a distance, they could see her distinctly non-human features. The crew on the bridge averted their eyes. Only the captain and the Astartes remained steadfast, looking at the lady who had just emerged from her sanctum.

She was a Navigator of the Imperium, a noble of unparalleled status. The very foundation that had allowed this decaying Imperium to stand for ten thousand years was the Navigators' ability to look directly into the light of the Astronomican.

"Only three months, my Lord," she declared. The third eye on her forehead, the symbol of her sacred duty, shimmered with a brilliant, golden flame. The light was so bright that it shone through her translucent skin.

On the bridge, almost everyone stood up.

The Navigator's third eye was weeping liquid gold. This anomalous phenomenon sent alarms screaming from the bridge's main cogitator. But she paid no mind to her own charring facial muscles, using her cracked fingers to trace a new course through the Warp on the star-chart.

"The light of the Emperor has already cleared a path for us."

It was a cold sun, eternally burning in the Warp.

Surging flames tore several long gashes in the tides of the Immaterium, linking the locations of several fleets and leading them all to the same point, far beyond the distant stars. It was a fire of hope, a brilliant light watched over by the Emperor.

At almost the same instant, in the mind's eye of every Navigator, the golden sun issued a decree.

"Find them! Help them! Liberate them!"

Facing the surging light of the sun, throughout the endless cosmos, aboard the crusade fleets that roamed between the stars, countless faithful believers and warriors fell to their knees in reverence.

"The Emperor's will be done."

In the roiling tides of the Warp, the hungry gods awaited the arrival of their feast.

But the moment the souls entered the Immaterium, they were pulled by the cold, golden sun into an unseen space and whisked away.

The gods, who had come to hunt, found themselves empty-handed and surprised.

Where did the Anathema find this extra strength?

But they quickly dismissed their confusion. In their eternal game, allowing their opponent a small win was of no consequence. They then turned their clouded gazes to another place where souls were gathering. There were countless more offerings there, waiting for them to savor. They had to be quick.

They had to get there before that hungry shadow arrived.

(End of Chapter)