242 – ECHIDNA DELIVERY SERVICE

Admiral Dresden stared into space, watching the tiny flickering stars in the distance. They didn’t seem to move even though his ship was moving fast enough to fly a full circuit around Holy Terra in a minute. He glanced down at the estimated time until they were finally free of this wretched system’s gravity well. Minutes. So short, yet so dreadfully long.

He didn’t know what prompted this unforeseen offensive from those accursed Tau, he didn’t know what damned hole they pulled that monstrosity of a ship out of, but he knew they would pay for it dearly.

That they committed so many resources to taking the Ravacene system would cost them in other battles, and when the Imperium inevitably beat them back, they would be broken. They must have committed the majority of their reserve fleets to this attack. Once it was halted and broken, their precious worlds would be left largely defenceless.

Foolish Xenos. They got impatient. A mere few centuries of gruelling warfare, and they were already ready to start gambling with their continued existence.

He just had to deliver the news and make sure the crucial new information he had gathered here reached the ears of the Lord Commander. His ship was the fastest in the system, and since it could take along a smaller fleet along with it, he might as well save what ships he could from inevitable destruction while he was at it. Yes.

The Ravacene system wasn’t half as valuable as the information he was carrying, and the sooner he delivered it, the more precious time it would buy the Lord Commander to prepare for the inexplicable Tau offensive.

He knew the system didn’t have any true worth; it was just a jungle-infested hellscape with little in the way of useful resources. What resources it did have could be harvested elsewhere, somewhere where the world itself didn’t want to make your life a living hell. Asteroid mining was much simpler than getting down on a planet and getting your hands dirty.

No, Ravacene’s only use, and the only reason the Commander even wasted Imperial lives on taking it from the Tau, was that it just so happened to be located in the tiny — by galactic standards — gap between the two wings of the Black Reef, a cataclysmic chaos storm that wrapped protectively around those accursed Tau’s worlds.

Retreat didn’t mean loss; he was taking a step back so he could then advance three steps forward. It was basic tactics. Yes.

He glanced down at the ETA again, resisting the urge to fidget. In the corner of his eye, the latest reports still lingered, almost tauntingly. The forces he’d left behind, however unwillingly — or gleefully, in General Holt’s case; the man had been unbearable — barely even managed to serve as a speed bump.

Worse yet, no actual Tau even fought in the battles. Only that white monstrosity of a ship that he couldn’t make heads or tails of.

He shuddered and averted his gaze. The knowledge that the missile barrage that the ship released broke through Void Shields in less than an hour was haunting. By Imperial army doctrine, if one properly cycled through ships and tended to their generators, recharging them when appropriate, a naval battle could last weeks. Fleet versus fleet battles were no adrenaline-inducing blitzes; they were wars of attrition, when the commanders of the two fleets had to pay more attention to resource management than anything else.

One hour. Absolutely horrifying. Whatever new experimental technology this was, it needed to be eradicated before it could spread. The only solace he had was the reported number of fired missiles.

Admiral Dresden didn’t have that many missiles on his flagship altogether, for the Emperor's sake. Those things were damned expensive, and the Mechanicus was ever oh-so miserly with handing them out, especially the more advanced models.

That battle must have bankrupted entire systems. They must have strip-mined planets, drained gas giants and remade entire planetary economies just to supply that monstrosity of a ship with the ammunition it needed.

The Tau truly were gambling everything they had on this, on a single ship. So desperate. But why? By the looks of it, nothing had changed. Did they get besieged by some other force from their other borders? Why were they so desperate to end the war in one fell swoop?

The Lord Commander could figure it out in any case. Admiral Dresden’s job didn’t involve thinking about the larger picture; he just had to win battles on a system scale.

The minutes ticked by, and much to his embarrassment, the Admiral found himself tapping his nails on the armrest. The sound it made was loud in the crypt-like silence of the bridge.

Then finally, after what felt like an eternity, he saw the counter reach zero. The auspex still showed their pursuers lingering hours away, having stopped to crush the resistance on the planet before chasing his main fleet. Idiots, the ground troops were stranded. Anyone with the slightest smidge of tactical sense would have left them for later in favour of chasing down the escaping fleet.

He shouldn’t have expected anything else from the Xenos scum. They weren’t even using their in-system FTL technology to catch up, since they’d apparently wasted it just to get to Ravacene faster. Another foolish mistake.

Admiral Dresden tapped his fingers, frowning as he glanced over at the mechanicus adept fiddling to the side.

“I said to engage the Warp Drives the moment we are out of the gravity well,” he said, glaring. “Do it already, or have you gone senile?”

“Admiral,” the Magos replied, a note of hesitancy making its way into the lifeless machine’s voice. It would have stumped Dresden had he not been livid at his orders being ignored. “It seems like there is some manner of malfunction with the Warp Drives, the personnel tasked with maintaining and operating them have failed to execute the orders, or, as evident, accomplish them.”

“What are you saying?” The Admiral growled, eyebrows twitching furiously. “That there is a mutiny? Now?! How could you have let Tau sympathisers operate our frakking Warp Drives?”

“I can assure you, Admiral,” the Magos said, his voice stoic and emotionless. “That any adept of the Mechanicus would sooner die than harbour sympathies for the xenos. It is much more statistically likely that traitors have assaulted them after managing to blackout our communications. I’d advise sending marines to relieve them, or see what damage the sacred machines have incurred. It might take time to repair the Drives if the traitors have managed to do any significant amount of damage.”

“Do so,” the Admiral barked, leaning back in his chair. He didn’t need to do more; the order was given, the task delegated.

He was a proper blue-blooded officer of the Imperial Navy, having earned his posting as the second in command to the captain of a small frigate right out of the academy. The dirty corridor-to-corridor fighting was for the marines, and the up-jumped guardsmen who could rise high enough to be given the honour of serving in the navy. It was their job to make sure he could strategise and plan freely as the Admiral, so that he didn’t have to worry about some infiltrator blasting his brain out or traitors sabotaging his ship.

This had been a cataclysmic failure on their part. Someone’s head would roll for it, but not now, not when seconds counted. Disciplinary action could wait until he was safely behind Imperial lines.

Minutes went by until the elite marine commando finally made their way down to the engine bay, and their preliminary reports came through the vox.

“Sir,” the colonel leading the platoon of commandos spoke, sounding hesitant and, more importantly, he was delaying. The Admiral’s irritation spiked, and he was just about to shout at the overly-squeamish idiot to get on with it when he blessedly continued. “Everyone’s dead. The guards, the Adeptus Mechanicus personnel, everyone. The Warp Drives seem untouched to me, but I’m not Engineseer.”

The man then turned away from the vox, barking out a few orders and getting some answers back, then turned back to the vox. “The bodies are still warm, the medic is saying they were alive not an hour ago and that they’d all been killed by melee weapons, some kind of super-sharp blade. The wounds remind the medic of Eldar monomolecular warblades and Tyranid boneswords. There is no obvious damage to anything other than the bodies, and each of those was killed by a single blow. To the heart, neck, some are bisected while others merely decapitated.”

Admiral Dresden felt a shudder run down his spine. There was a Xeno assassin on his ship.

“Is this isolated?” The Admiral asked, turning to his comms officer. “Is my flagship the only vessel with this problem?”

“No, sir,” the man answered quickly. “Other captains have sent in reports that are eerily similar to what we’ve just heard from the colonel. They are attempting to secure their Warp Drives as we speak … although it seems the Light Cruiser, the Star of Vengeance, and the Cruiser Hand of Retribution have escaped infiltration, as did all the Frigattes.”

That meant there were only two Warp-capable ships in his fleet at this moment, since frigates were escort craft and weren’t outfitted with the outrageously expensive devices. They were just taken along for the ride by larger ships when they needed to be transported.

“I want those damned Xenos found!” Admiral Dresden said, barely managing to restrain his fury. How could his guards have allowed such a thorough infiltration of his sacred warships to happen?

But beneath his rage, there was a thought. What if the warp drives couldn’t be repaired in time?

He glanced at the auspex readings, his teeth gritting in agitation as he saw the Tau fleet close in on them. They weren’t even pushing their engines, just flying at cruising speeds. They knew. Those bastards knew his fleet was crippled, unable to escape, and so they were taking their time. They were letting him stew, watching his inevitable death approach.

No, he wouldn’t let them have the last laugh. He would deny them victory, even if it cost him his dignity and reputation.

But that plan, germinating in the back of his mind, would only need to be implemented if his commandos were blind and somehow failed to see marks of damage on his ship’s Warp Drive.

“I want the engines and Drives surveyed and back to being operational as soon as feasible,” Admiral Dresden said. “Magos, I want this ship warp-capable before the aliens reach us. Make it happen.”

“I cannot make any promises without further information,” the Magos responded evenly. “But all due attempts will be made to cleanse the sacred machines of the foul Xenos taint. They will require re-sanctification and thorough examinations to make sure they haven’t been defiled more thoroughly than simply by sharing the same space as a Xeno.”

Perhaps he would truly need to implement his plan. Mechanicus rituals of such magnitude tended to be lengthy procedures, and the Admiral would rather take a spacewalk without a voidsuit than enter the Warp with an unsanctified Gellar Field generator or Warp Drive.

He leaned back on his command throne, linking up with the ship’s Machine Spirit for just long enough to give it an order. He opened his eyes after a moment, then gave a sigh. Preparations would be made. He would have the option open to him, at least, if there ended up being a need for it.

The survey results came back another half an hour later, and Admiral Dresden’s heart sank. The machine itself that made up the Warp Drive was fine enough, but the Machine Spirits inhabiting it were not. The tech-adepts said they had been so thoroughly defiled that they might be crippled forever, which obviously horrified and outraged the Mechanicus in equal measure.

“So it has come to this,” the Admiral muttered, rising from his command throne. “Tell Captain Pyke he has overall command. I relinquish my title as Admiral to him. That command takes effect once I’ve left the system. Also, notify Captain Vulagen that I am heading for the Hand of Retribution. He is to prepare for my arrival and ready the Warp Drive for immediate departure.”

The bridge was silent, his men turning to him with varying expressions. Betrayal, confusion, surprise. Admiral Dresden ignored them all, a gesture having his personal guards form up around him protectively as he swept out of the room. Their feelings were inconsequential; they would fulfil his orders. He chose all his officers to be loyal unto death. They were good soldiers and valuable assets. It would hurt to lose them, but less than losing his life.

A small, paranoid part of him was worried one of them would betray him, order some platoon of soldiers loyal to them to intercept him before he could get on the shuttle and demand they be allowed to come along or something of the like. That paranoia had kept him alive for most of his life, and he listened to it this time too, gathering platoons of his own loyal guards drawn from his family’s household guards.

Somewhat surprisingly, he reached the shuttle without encountering anything more dangerous than a scathing look or a curse some marines thought he couldn’t hear. It didn’t matter; they were all dead men walking. The Tau would destroy them. None of them mattered.

He breathed a sigh of relief as the shuttle took off and was let out of the hangar without trouble, though he eyed the auspex for any sign of the targeting systems locking onto the shuttle. He found none. It seemed like he would be losing some truly loyal assets today.

“Hi!” A cheery female voice spoke up right next to him. He did not have any female personnel on the shuttle. Admiral Dresden snapped his head around, hand reaching for his sidearm, but he stilled when he laid his eyes on the impossibly beautiful and very obviously human woman. She was perfect in a way that couldn’t be natural, a perfection Dresden was familiar with from having once visited a high-class brothel, where the girls were all made to look perfect through an exorbitantly expensive set of procedures. The shock made him pause, hesitate to place the well-deserved las-bolt through the intruder’s head. “I have an express delivery to one, uhm-” she glanced down, frowning as she read a small sticky note stuck to a wooden box “,Admiral Dr- Dremsel? Damn, some people shouldn’t be allowed to write. What the hell is this cursive? Anyway, there couldn’t be that many Admirals around these parts, so I’m gonna assume this one’s for you. Here you go!”

“Wha-” Admiral Dresden started, then suddenly he was holding an armful of boxes that were surprisingly heavy.

“We do no refunds, I’m afraid,” the woman chirped, standing there with her fists on her hips like she’d just finished an honest day’s work, wearing an appropriately self-satisfied expression. “Gotta skedaddle before that thing goes kaboom, cya!”

Then she was gone, like she’d never been there, and were it not for the box in his hands, Admiral Dresden would have thought her some hallucination of his delirious mind. Stress made people see strange things, after all.

“Hold on,” Dresden muttered, frowning. Why the hell hadn’t his guards shot the blasted woman? He glanced over at his guards, the two that he had with him in the cockpit along with the pilot, and found both staring forward absently with a thousand-yard stare. That couldn’t be good. Then his mind caught up with the last of what the woman had said, finally comprehending exactly what she had said. Kaboom? “The frak did she mean? GUARDS!”

His panic mounted, then it climbed some more than none of the guards came to answer his call, and a faint ticking sound caught his ears. Coming from the box in his hands.

He dropped the damned thing and leapt for the door at the back of the cockpit, but he only made it halfway there as his world turned into fire and agony as the box hit the floor. The shockwave swept through him, pulping his body in an instant and blasting the shuttle he’d been travelling with into a thousand smouldering fragments of scrap metal.

In the distance, the colossal alabaster spaceship, the Sovereign, swam closer to its prey. Its approach was slow, but inexorable. There was nowhere to run.