"You've made the right decision," Abaddon said with satisfaction. He nodded once toward Typhus's hololithic image, then turned to the adjutant waiting below his throne. "Send my last remaining vortex torpedo to the Terminus Est." His gaze held the officer in place. "My last one."
The adjutant acknowledged the order and left to arrange a warded transfer. Typhus watched him go, then gave Abaddon a small nod. The Plague Fleet would stay.
"You're not worried I might tamper with the vortex torpedo?" Abaddon asked coldly. "If your Terminus Est tries to flee, I could detonate it remotely."
Typhus turned back toward him.
"I trust you wouldn't do such a thing," he replied. "You're many things, Abaddon, but you wouldn't sabotage an ally."
Abaddon chuckled and inclined his head.
"So," Typhus said, "can we continue this campaign?"
Abaddon looked through the warded viewport. One of his towing cruisers was visible against the Warp's shifting glare. The flagship still depended on those ships to keep moving.
The Will of Eternity could maneuver, but Talon's attack at Anuari had wrecked its cannon's stabilizers. Power still reached the weapon; its damaged mountings couldn't hold firing alignment. A full discharge might destroy what remained of them.
He called over the officer handling the fortress's reports. "When can it fire?"
"No estimate yet, Warmaster. The overseers are determining what can be repaired and what needs replacing."
"Then get me an estimate. Even an unfavorable one."
Abaddon checked the ordnance inventory. Several cyclonic torpedoes remained from the Inquisitorial vessel seized in their last raid. They could scour a world's surface and burn away its atmosphere, but the planet itself would remain. The rarer two-stage variants could burrow to the core and potentially shatter it. He had none.
The ritual's promised expansion depended on breaking those celestial anchors. Killing their inhabitants might feed the powers behind it, but he had no reason to assume a lifeless, intact planet would be enough.
The Planet Killer wasn't with the fleet. Nor could he spend the last vortex torpedo as a replacement for the fortress's cannon. One had been needed just to escape Anuari. The remaining weapon was both their reserve against another disaster and the price of keeping Typhus here.
"Then we can't finish the next target," Typhus said.
"Not until the cannon is restored."
"And Talon will be waiting when it is."
Abaddon closed the inventory. "Then we learn how they responded at Anuari. Arrival positions, reinforcement times, which ships came through first." He turned toward the officers below the dais. "Collect the records from every surviving vessel. Incomplete logs as well."
The bridge crew began calling them in. Abaddon wasn't ending the crusade, but another attack now would waste ships he could no longer replace. He needed repairs, a working cannon, and a target worth the risk. Until then, he would keep the fleet together.
"Your orders?" Typhus asked.
"We wait," Abaddon said, and cut the link.
....
Aboard the Terminus Est, Typhus turned to his subordinate.
"Send two sorcerers to the armory. I want that vortex torpedo corrupted, secured, and bound to us. No one fires it without my command. Especially Abaddon."
"The Warmaster's crews will send the release ciphers, lord. Shall we accept their arming instructions?"
"Accept the records. Trust nothing in them."
Typhus stepped closer, flies crawling across the subordinate's gorget. "Keep it isolated from our launch controls. Have the sorcerers work with the ordnance master. Sever or bind anything that answers to another ship. Leave the containment seals intact, and report any problems before the torpedo goes near a launch tube."
"Understood, lord."
The subordinate bowed and hurried out.
....
On Cadia.
"The enemy fleet that appeared in the Anuari System has been repelled."
The Talon Navy vox-officer handed Creed an authenticated report. Repair crews were hammering somewhere below, while runners hurried past the office door.
Creed noticed the officer looking up at Qin Mo while giving his report. His own clerks generally walked past the towering living-metal figure without noticing him, sometimes making room without seeming to know why. Talon's personnel could see him, and so could Creed. Apparently, Qin Mo was choosing his audience.
"Excellent," Qin Mo said, nodding. "Our ships?"
"All accounted for. The enemy withdrew before completing its attack on the planet."
"Keep the patrols in place. Rotate damaged ships out for repairs."
"Understood, Lord Governor."
The officer saluted and left. Creed followed the arrival times down the page, imagining himself in command of the attacking fleet. Killing the patrol would only delay the alarm until its next check-in. An ambush would then have to catch reinforcements without knowing their strength or where they would appear.
Several attacks at once might stretch the network. They might also leave several smaller enemy forces facing Talon's reserves in turn. With enough ships and careful timing, it could be done. He could find no cheap, dependable answer, and none of this would comfort a world used as bait.
He set the report beside an amended repair schedule. A Cadian engineer had added three installations previously written off as unrecoverable. Each now had a completion estimate and a Talon specialist offering equipment. The engineer wanted to start before another department found a reason to stop him.
Creed had signed it. With dimensional links and Talon's machinery, officers who had been deciding what to abandon were finding ways to recover damaged positions and reinforce isolated units. He would have to make sure their enthusiasm didn't work exhausted troops into the ground. Still, he preferred being asked for permission to rebuild something.
Creed glanced at a folded letter beneath the document weight.
"An Inquisitor arrived on Cadia seven hours ago," he said. "I think we should meet her."
Qin Mo glanced over. "What does this one want?"
Creed held out the letter. "She claims she can close the rift."
Qin Mo took it. The writer requested a private audience with both commanders, but offered no explanation of her method. The signature caught his attention.
"Bellona?" Qin Mo muttered aloud. "That name sounds… familiar."
"Shall I send for her?" Creed's gaze traveled over the silver frame. "You might want to do something about that first."
"I can change what she sees. Let's meet her."
If she could close the breach instead of merely containing it, Qin Mo was willing to hear her out.
Creed gave the order. Bellona entered three minutes later, having waited in the outer reception area. Her rosette could have secured a much more forceful introduction. Creed appreciated the courtesy without assuming she would accept a refusal.
"Lord Castellan," Bellona said, offering the Aquila salute to Creed before turning to Qin Mo. "Sector Governor of Talon."
Creed stood to return the salute, then sat. To Bellona, Qin Mo was an ordinary young man. Creed still saw the living-metal avatar beside his desk.
Qin Mo studied her cropped white hair, the mole beneath her left eye, and the faint scar at the corner of her mouth. Her coat was travel-worn, her rosette visible beneath its lapel. She looked familiar, but he still couldn't place her.
"I know how to close the rift."
Bellona set a slim case on the desk, keeping one hand on it. "Its effects reach beyond this system. Your fortress commanders are already reporting a rise in unsanctioned psychic manifestations."
Creed nodded. Children were showing talents without warning. Soldiers and laborers who had passed their screenings were developing symptoms, and even the maternity wards had sent warnings. The most urgent cases had been isolated. Every new case meant guards, secure rooms, medicae staff, and difficult decisions. An untrained psyker could kill the people trying to help; leaving them unattended was hardly safer.
"How do you intend to close it?" Qin Mo asked.
He hoped she had something about the blackstone pylons: an activation sequence, a missed connection, a record Cawl could work with. Perhaps she had simply refused to put it in a letter.
"With every rogue psyker we can find," Bellona replied.
She opened the case and lifted out a small vial of colorless liquid.
"Sanctus," she said. "It forces psychic output beyond the subject's natural limits."
Creed's cigar stopped halfway to his mouth.
"You intend to make untrained psykers more powerful?"
"Briefly, and under direction. We'll synchronize their surges and channel them through a prepared psychic network toward the breach."
"And who keeps that network under control?" Qin Mo asked.
"A trained choir would establish the initial pattern. The other subjects would amplify it."
"How many survive?" Creed asked.
"None."
Bellona returned the vial to its cradle. "Their deaths produce the final impulse. The method depends on it; they are a necessary expenditure."
Creed lowered his cigar. He had sent troops on missions they had little chance of returning from and signed containment orders with too little information. He understood expenditure. That didn't tell him whether these deaths would achieve anything.
"And what assurance do I have that their deaths won't make the breach worse?"
"You saw what it did before your allies arrived," Bellona said. "I am trying to save far more lives than this would cost. The deaths must follow a controlled sequence. Each impulse reinforces the next until the shock is strong enough to collapse the opening."
"You've tested it?"
She paused. "Not against a breach of this kind. My calculations support it. We have the chance to apply the method here, before a greater disaster makes the cost unavoidable."
She was already moving on to the arrangements. "I'll need the detained psykers, a suitable choir, and help with containment and synchronization. Your command can provide the subjects. Talon's equipment may make the rest more reliable."
Creed looked to Qin Mo. He could assess what losing a choir would do to Cadia's communications. He couldn't judge whether Bellona's psychic shockwave would work.
Qin Mo was staring at the vial.
Oh, shit. He remembered her now.
Bellona. The Radical Inquisitor who had devised a plan to seal the Great Rift by linking a billion psykers across a hundred worlds and synchronizing their deaths.
To gather that many victims, she had planned to have planetary rulers killed and drive their worlds into unrest. Once Imperial oversight collapsed and the Black Ships stopped coming, the psyker populations could grow until she had enough.
Gheisthaven's astropathic choir, positioned over blackstone, would start the cascade. Sanctus would kill them. Their psychic shock would travel along the linked Warp nexus, killing other psykers and growing stronger as it went. The accumulated wave was supposed to seal the Rift.
Cadia still stood. The Great Rift he remembered hadn't opened, yet Bellona had arrived with the same drug and reasoning, ready to try it on the smaller breach threatening the system.
He didn't know whether she had already destabilized other worlds or built that wider network. The trial she was proposing here was dangerous enough.
A misjudged cascade could reach other choirs and psyker populations, feed the breach, or give something in the Warp a route through the network. Even apparent success could persuade her to repeat it on a greater scale.
Billions could die in the preparations and the final sacrifice. A failure across that many linked worlds could endanger an entire segmentum.
He could demand her calculations, examine the drug, study every measurement she had. None of it would let him look into the Immaterium and see whether the cascade would behave as she expected. Bellona was asking them to supply the victims and find out once the chain reaction was underway.
The fleet had bought them time, and Cadia's defenses were being restored. They could still hold the breach in check without gambling the world on her calculations.
〈"Get her out of here."〉 Qin Mo's voice echoed inside Creed's mind.
Creed's fingers tightened around the cigar. Qin Mo had not spoken aloud. His metal face remained fixed upon Bellona.
Creed eased his grip. He had reasons of his own to refuse. She wanted him to hand over prisoners and strip a trained choir from Cadia's service. If she was wrong, he would have sacrificed part of his defenses to make the breach worse.
Bellona waited beside the open case. Creed knew he was defying an Inquisitor. She could call it obstruction, ignorance, or disloyalty; his rank did not put him above her authority. He would answer those accusations if he had to. He would not approve the experiment merely because she had the power to make refusal dangerous.
"I hereby expel you from Cadia under wartime authority," Creed said. He pointed his cigar toward the door, his hand steady. "As Lord Castellan, I am responsible for this world's defense. You will conduct no experiments here. Leave now."
.....
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