Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 58
They had left Copan XII in a Shadowhark two days ago, slipping out of the atmosphere and setting off without disturbing a single auspex. The handful of mineral processing stations and transfer points remained blissfully unaware of their departure, the people never knowing the comings and goings of their invisible protectors. Into the red-tinged vastness of space the Shadowhawk soared, moving to a secret rendezvous. All was typical among the drifting planetoids and asteroid belts, but the same could not be said inside the gunship.
"Get it off me!" Aapo yelled as he fended off a flurry of sharp claws.
"He's establishing dominance," Hanphu quipped.
"It's going for my eyes!"
"Trying playing dead, that should do it," Hanphu suggested.
"Red in tooth and claw, life blood stains the world!" Aapo slipped into his native tongue.
"If you must," Hanphu sighed, "K'oy, be elsewhere."
The cyber-creature froze, ceasing its attempts to gouge Aapo's eyes out. The creature tensed, then leapt free in the Zero-G environment, catching a cargo net and scurrying away. Aapo was left bleeding from a score of cuts, his face scabbing over as Larraman cells clotted. He looked about for a tool to throw after the snickering construct but K'oy jumped further down the troopbay, avoiding retribution as it jeered scornfully
Aapo turned away, crossing his arms in frustration. Two days locked in the hold with this pair was getting to him. Xavaar had sealed himself in the cockpit upon take-off, claiming anyone disturbing him would have his nightmares brought to life. Aapo's youthful awe of his companion's legend had swiftly faded, leaving him greatly disgruntled. A deviant loner and a brain-damaged fool and a reject, what a pathetic Prowl they made.
"Cheer up," Hanphu prompted as he fiddled with some gear, "We're nearly there."
"Not soon enough," Aapo muttered.
Hanphu connected a cable to a portable power pack and remarked, "Glory and adventure await, you will have quite a story to tell when you return."
"I cannot return with a name like illchosen."
"A name is what you make of it, if you think it a curse then it shall be so," Hanphu dismissed as he slotted a focussing lens home.
"What is that anyway?"
Hanphu grinned as he hefted the bulky device. Aapo's hypno-indoctrination informed him it was a Multi-las, a rapid firing anti-personnel laser weapon. Multiple barrels were thin and tipped by focusing lenses and the casing was fitted with heat vents. A thick cable ran to a power pack that could be slotted around Hanphu's backpack, allowing him to support the gun's enormous energy demands. Aapo was surprised, Multi-las were typically fitted to PDF vehicles, not meant to be man-portable, and Astartes usually favoured solid munitions or high-energy destruction. Less powerful than a plasma cannon, shorter ranged than a missile launcher, less target suppression than a Heavy Bolter, Aapo was baffled why a Space Marine would want one.
Hanphu beamed at his weapon, "I built this myself, a work of art."
"Wouldn't a Heavy Bolter serve better?" Aapo asked carefully.
"That's what they expect us to do!" Hanphu cackled.
"Who does?" Aapo asked.
Hanphu didn't answer as his eyes gleamed, "I set out to make a Volkite Charger, but I ran into a few difficulties. My hands were not ready to quit and made this of their own accord."
"The capering of fools is a curse upon the ear," Aapo muttered under his breath.
A noise further down the hold distracted him from the conversation. K'oy had snuck near to Takana, who had removed his jump pack to inspect the pinions. The little ball of spite swung near Takana but the Dark Fury let loose a wet leopard growl that sent it scurrying away. He did that every time K'oy got within reach and the cyber-simian hadn't laid a finger on him. Aapo had never heard a sound that could be described as a "Wet-leopard growl" before, but Takana managed it. Aapo had tried to copy the sound, to thwart K'oy, but the best he could manage was 'annoyed-kitten', his voice not nearly deep or moist enough to be threatening.
Aapo's penance was brought to an abrupt halt as the cockpit door slid open and Xavaar called, "Illchosen, get up here!"
"I hear and obey!" Aapo replied, so glad of the reprieve he didn't even bristle at the hated title.
His mag-locked boots clunked on the floor, allowing movement despite the lack of gravity, and rang as he climbed a ladder to the top. He slipped through the door, passing an embedded servitor in the rear of the cockpit, and made for the co-pilot's seat, only to freeze at the vista that awaited him. Space, vast in scope and infinite in hostility. Red-washed and shimmering with motion like an ocean swell, with random flashes of lightning flaring in the distance. A couple of stars hung forlornly in the murk, valiantly shining despite the horror surrounding them. Aapo stood amazed, drinking in the sight of space around his homeworld.
Xavaar glanced over his shoulder, "First time?"
"Wonder unbound, the deep seeps into the soul," Aapo replied unthinkingly.
Xavaar nodded, "A Doan goes straight from gunship hold to starship hold and the battlefield. Get used to it, you'll be seeing a lot of this in your lifetime."
Aapo stared, "Was it always so…"
"Red?!" Xavaar laughed, "No, not at all. It should be black, with a lot more stars than this. What you are looking at is the physical manifestation of a warp-storm, circling like a hurricane with us trapped in the eye. Some two-score systems trapped in the sphere of silence we call Boscage. Still it could be worse, the effect has a curiously dampening effect on Chaos activity in the dead zone. Five centuries and I've barely had to put down a handful of cults and a couple of Daemonic sprites, barely worth mentioning compared to what roamed free during the Legionary War. If it wasn't for the Orks life would be boring."
Aapo slid into the co-pilot seat and asked, "Beyond lies an Imperium of a million worlds?"
"So we assume," Xavaar sniffed.
"If the storm clears, can we visit Deliverance and pay homage to Corax?"
"You can, I doubt I will bother," Xavaar grunted.
Aapo sensed more to that sentence but changed the subject, "How long does it take to fly to our target?"
"In this tub?!" Xavaar laughed, "At this speed it would take fifty-three thousand years! No, we head to one of our dockyards to pick up a warp-capable ship. So long as we keep our warp jumps under five lightyears, it's reasonably safe to cross the Boscage."
Aapo frowned, "Shade-Seer, would it not be swifter to place the docks in orbit of Copan?"
Xavaar snorted in amusement, "Not with Orks in the system. We've never managed to cleanse them entirely. Feral tribes still roam the inner planetoids and if there's one thing Orks can't resist it's a challenge. If we ringed our world with gun platforms and docks and starships we'd have a Waaagh bearing battering down our door within a year. Better to keep our harbours hidden."
Aapo spied something in the distance, a dark blot against the background of space. He'd been taught that Copan was a young system, with planets still forming out of the accretion disc. A score of volcanic worlds were cooling near the star, infested with Greenskin tribes and tens of thousands of asteroids drifted idly between them. This was just another rock, spinning silently in the gulf between words, ugly and entirely forgettable. The Shadowhawk slowed as it closed, retro thrusters pushing Aapo forward in his seat, reducing an approach velocity of thousands of kilometres an hour to mere scores.
Xavaar voxed, "The prodigals promise, a journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step, the gloaming." It was a Smoke Jaguar vox-code, as old as the Chapter itself and known only to themselves. The response was immediate, floodlights across the asteroid sparked to life, illuminating a section of the surface. In the bright glare the rockface split open, a whole side of the asteroid shown to be a camouflaged door. Craggy boulders and bulging protrusions slid away, carried on Adamantium doors each three kilometres long.
Aapo was taken aback as the scale of the dock was revealed. From a distance it had appeared at first a pebble, then a mountain, but as they entered he saw it far vaster than that. It must be fifty kilometres in diameter, and the interior was entirely hollow. The Shadowhawk entered a dockyard so vast he could scare make out the far side, even with Transhuman sight. Gantry cranes shifted cargo pallets, tugs dragged armoured slabs to waiting ships and floodlights revealed hab-modules, workshops, forges and warehouses. Sparking arc-welders proclaimed busy industry everywhere and Aapo revised his estimate again, this was a city adrift in space, there must be thousands of Servilles working here, tens of thousands.
Aapo breathed, "This is but one dock?"
"One of several, Implacable Judgement has her own dedicated dock," Xavaar explained, "Alar-Median builds ships for us, they aren't happy about it, but it is preferable to Orks overrunning their holdings. The Tech-priests supply us with arms to keep the Greenskins at bay, and the worlds of the Boscage supply us with victuals and other materials to keep Alar-Median from getting ideas of conquering everything outright. Meanwhile we commit to our own taskings: look at that one."
Aapo spied a huge vessel resting in dock. A flat wedge of a prow, with serrated steeples along the spine and a spindly bridge tower. Her flanks supported triangular hanger bays, presenting gaping launch tubes in forward aspect. One of those launch bays was in pieces, savaged by vicious wounds, which hundreds of Servilles worked feverishly to repair. A predator of the stars was she, but an injured one, licking her wounds in the safety of her den.
Xavaar sighed, "The Eventide, a Pagan-class system control cruiser. The Orks made merry sport of her crew; barely a third of her Serviles survived the ambush. We should be glad they limped home, else we'd have had no warning the Greenskins were about to invade Marajo. The blood spilt bought us precious time to prepare."
"Will she carry us to our destination?" Aapo asked as they coasted past.
"Not her, she'll be in drydock for years," Xavaar replied sadly.
"What about those?"
A trio of smaller ships lay in a lower dock, their hulls solid bastions replete with flying buttresses. They were squat vessels with blunt prows and low bunkers for bridges. Almost rotund, their small engines seemed too puny to move them through the stars, but the number of gun batteries lining their flanks promised that any foe venturing too close would regret it, Arcupines, Aapo thought, a prey beast of Copan's jungles with armoured scales upon their backs but vicious poisoned tails, leaving many a hungry predator as a feast for the insects of the underbrush.
Xavaar remarked, "Sable Brand squadron, modified ironclad-class heavy escorts. An aged pattern, obsolete before the first expeditionary fleet left the Sol system, but Alar-Median always followed deviant strands of machine lore. We had to add shield generators, which didn't help their speed any, but many a roaming Ork band has run afoul of their guns. Unfortunately we need something faster."
Aapo spied a lone ship berthed further along, smaller than Eventide but larger than any of the Sable Brands, "That is our conveyance?"
"The Cast Spear," Xavaar agreed, "A Thunderbolt-class torpedo destroyer, she's fast in realspace, and faster in the Warp. She'll get us there in record time."
Aapo took in the sight. The Cast Spear was a worthy vessel with a bulging rear section, packed with engorged plasma drives. Her midsection was a short cylinder but her prow was flattened into an arrowhead. She looked like she was going all-ahead-full even whilst still in dock, built for speed and little else. One could almost imagine her racing into battle, ready to pierce the beating heart of the foe with her torpedoes. She was well-named, Aapo reflected.
Xavaar nudged the Shadowhawk onto a course that would bring them into one of Cast Spear's shuttlebays. Aapo craned his head back to admire their ship's majesty as they closed, wondering what other wonders he would see on their voyage. So far the journey had been anything but impressive, yet looking on this vessel he believed their adventure may be worthy of legend after all.
