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Fool's Ruin – Mike Brooks

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Huron Blackheart: Master of the Maelstrom’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

FOOL’S RUIN

Mike Brooks

The High Lords of Terra had called.

Captain Catallus Naxon of the Minotaurs knew nothing more than that. There were rumours, of course, because even Space Marines were not immune to rumours: rumours that Terra was under attack; rumours that Roboute Guilliman had returned; rumours that Roboute Guilliman was a traitor; even rumours that Terra had fallen. Rumours, though, were inconsequential. All the Minotaurs knew for certain was that the High Lords of Terra had called. As such, the Minotaurs would answer, as they always did.

‘Update,’ Catallus called.

‘Little to say, lord,’ ship’s captain Aerun Domock replied, from his command throne. He was hardwired into the Bronze Catechist, and had not left the strike cruiser for over sixty years. ‘The warp remains in turmoil, but we are still in contact with the rest of the fleet, and the Navigator believes that we are making good time, under the circumstances.’

Catallus grimaced. The Minotaurs were not used to being at the mercy of circumstances; they were more commonly the circumstances that befell others. However, there was nothing he could do. The warp was not an enemy that could be fought with blade and bolter, and it could not be intimidated into doing as the Imperium wished. He simply had to trust in the Emperor, and ignore the whispers in the back of his mind that queried how the Emperor could still exist if Terra had fallen. Of course, he reminded himself, that was only a rumour. But if it had, if the Emperor had also fallen, might that explain the warp’s turbulence? It was dangerous, perhaps foolish, to draw a line of connection between an observable event and the worst possible theoretical explanation. On the other hand, Catallus Naxon believed in preparing for the worst.

He was vaguely aware that mortals added a second half to that thought, something about also hoping for the best, but the Minotaurs did not believe in hope.

The Bronze Catechist shuddered more severely than before, as though it were wracked with fever, but this shaking did not die down after a few seconds, as much turbulence in the warp did. Instead it persisted, vibrating through the very bones of the ship.

‘Update!’ Catallus shouted again. The servitors at their stations continued with their roles uninterrupted, as they would unless and until whatever passed for life within their meat-and-metal frames gave out completely, but the bridge crew were wide-eyed. They were Chapter-serfs, sworn to service and ferociously loyal, and had Catallus ordered a suicide run into the teeth of an enemy fleet then they would have given their lives without question. The warp, on the other hand, was a more insidious threat. No mortal wanted their life to end pointlessly, and certainly not while mired in the immaterium. Catallus Naxon himself had only the vaguest understanding of the so-called Sea of Souls, but he knew he did not trust it in the slightest.

‘The warp storm is intensifying,’ Captain Domock replied levelly, but Catallus could hear the strain in his voice. Domock had concerns he was not voicing.

‘And the rest of the Chapter?’ Catallus asked.

‘Communications are… scrambled,’ Domock said. ‘I will try to–’

This was not the ship shaking. This was the ship being shaken, like a rodent in the jaws of a felid predator. Catallus stumbled sideways, at least until sideways became downwards, and collided with a cogitator bank with a clatter of ceramite on metal. The ship’s crew were screaming as they were thrown around. Catallus heard the distinctive snap of breaking bone, and his enhanced Astartes senses picked up the metallic tang of spilled blood.

‘Geller fields failing!’ Captain Domock barked. An unsecured data-slate flew through the air, and missed his head by a hand’s breadth. ‘Warp drives overloading! Brace for emergency translation!’

Catallus Naxon bared his teeth in anger and frustration, but there was nothing for it. Only a fool would try to outstare the warp, and the Minotaurs were not fools.

Klaxons sounded, the swirling wail that every ship hand both loved and dreaded: it was the signal that they would be leaving the warp, but sometimes those could be the most dangerous moments of all. Right now, however, it was definitely the lesser of two evils.

‘Translation!’ Domock yelled. There was a long, drawn-out moment when everything somehow continued to shake despite being frozen in place, and then the universe turned inside out.

Space Marines were supposedly immune to dizziness and nausea thanks to the Lyman’s Ear implant, but the warp made a mockery of biology. Catallus struggled back up to his feet, fighting against the sensation that the ship was spinning around him.

‘Status!’

‘We are in realspace,’ Captain Domock rasped. Half his brain and spinal column might be replaced by cybernetic implants, but it appeared he had suffered even worse from the translation. Catallus wondered for a moment what it felt like to be dizzy when you also had the sensation of being a twenty-megaton voidship. ‘Translation successful.’

Catallus glanced around the bridge. Here and there, a crewer had managed to claw their way back to their station, but many were still injured from the shaking the Bronze Catechist had undergone, and he could see at least two that were unconscious and spasming, likely as a result of the translation.

If you’re still in one piece, it counts as a success. Those had been the words of Scout Sergeant Edram, on the occasion of Catallus’ first trip through the warp. Now, he had a better idea what the veteran meant.

‘Where are we?’ he asked. The dizziness was fading fast, and he was able to stand up straight without issue.

Domock hesitated before answering. ‘Your pardon, lord, but I have little information with which to contextualise my answer. We are adrift in deep space, light years away from any star or planetary system.’

Catallus opened his mouth to reply, then frowned. ‘What exactly do you mean by “adrift”, captain?’

‘The warp engines are badly damaged,’ Domock said heavily. ‘We will not be able to make another warp jump without extensive repairs or refitting.’

‘And… we would have to do it alone,’ Catallus said uneasily. A Space Marine felt no fear, but a Space Marine had a tactical brain. He was already calculating the odds of being discovered by chance – essentially zero; of summoning help via the ship’s astropaths – low, given the ongoing warp disruption; of making successful repairs to the warp engines… ‘Is it possible?’

‘Given enough time, perhaps,’ the captain replied, ‘but the enginseers will need to take a more detailed look–’

‘Captain Domock!’ a crewer croaked. ‘I’m picking up a distress signal!’

Catallus exchanged a look with Domock. This was another occurrence for which he would have calculated the odds as essentially zero.

‘Vox?’ Domock asked.

‘No, sir – it’s an electronic Mayday,’ the vox-officer reported. ‘The code identifies it as the Dauntless-class cruiser Fool’s Ruin.’

Domock licked his lips: one of the last holdovers of his bodily habits, from when he had walked the bridge of his ship himself. ‘Distance?’

‘It’s a strong signal, sir,’ the crewer said. ‘Within a few hundred miles, at most.’

‘Give me the heading,’ Domock ordered. The deck thrummed beneath Catallus’ feet as the Bronze Catechist’s realspace engines ignited at their captain’s will. ‘Try to raise them on the vox.’

‘There were no Dauntless-classes in our fleet,’ Catallus said, his gloomy calculations replaced by a more generic unease. The Minotaurs did not deal in mysteries. They dealt in death, where and when the High Lords of Terra directed them.

‘I know,’ Domock said. ‘Perhaps this ship ran afoul of the same warp phenomenon that forced us to translate, and has information about it they can share. More importantly,’ he continued, with a meaningful glance at Catallus, ‘they may have the components we will need to repair our own warp engines.’

He did not need to say anything more. If the Fool’s Ruin had what the Bronze Catechist required, then it would give it up, willingly or unwillingly. There were fifty Minotaurs on board who would see to that, because the will of the High Lords of Terra would not be thwarted.

‘I shall assemble a boarding party,’ Catallus said, and turned to leave the bridge.

Attempts to raise the Fool’s Ruin on the vox had been unsuccessful. The ship continued bleating its electronic distress call, but if there were any living crew on board then they were unable or unwilling to communicate in any other fashion. Now the light cruiser hung beyond the Bronze Catechist’s hangar bay, with the cold illumination of distant stars picking out turrets and crenellations, and leaving the rest shrouded in deep shadow. However, even the poor lighting was not sufficient to disguise the gaping rents in the hull. Something had mauled this ship.

Catallus wished he could be sure that it was something as mundane as macrocannons, lances, torpedoes and turbolasers, but his mind kept going back to when something had had the Bronze Catechist in its grip. He knew that the tides of the warp were fickle and violent, and needed no further explanation, but it was not hard to imagine the immaterial equivalent of one of the legendary sea monsters which legend said had dwelled in the oceans of ancient Terra, and pulled hapless ships down to their watery ends.

Still, he was back in realspace now. Whatever inexplicable horrors lurked in the warp, at least he had a fighting chance if they came at him here.

‘Launch,’ he ordered.

The Thunderhawk gunship lifted off and leapt forwards, burning out through the hangar mouth and across the scant few miles remaining between the two cruisers. The Bronze Catechist had its starboard weapons battery trained on the Fool’s Ruin, ready to administer a point-blank death blow should there be any sign of a trap, but Catallus was all too aware how vulnerable they were. His Thunderhawk contained Tactical Squad Serapion and Assault Squad Isocrates of his company, both in the advanced Mark VIII ‘Errant’ power armour, as well as Librarian Pelagius, Apothecary Ariston and the Techmarine Brother Sophos, while the other half of his demi-company remained behind. Catallus himself was wearing his suit of Arkonak-pattern Tactical Dreadnought armour, a relic storm bolter in his right hand which he had recovered from the traitorous Astral Claws Chapter and had resanctified, and his left hand enveloped in a mighty power glove. They were a potent fighting force, but against even the smallest weaponry of a starship the size of Fool’s Ruin, their Thunderhawk would be all but helpless.

However, no such threat materialised. The damaged cruiser remained dark and lifeless, even as the gunship’s pilot steered them towards one of the massive tears in its flank.

‘Look for a landing point on our starboard side,’ Sophos voxed to the pilot as they passed into the greater darkness within, lit only by the Thunderhawk’s searchlights. ‘That will be closer to the warp engines.’

Catallus peered out and saw the ruins of corridors, rooms and bulkheads, all violently truncated. He became aware of multiple light impacts on the craft’s hull, as they encountered tiny pieces of detritus that had been suspended in space for the Emperor knew how long.

‘Setting down,’ the pilot voxed back. The Thunderhawk swung around and came to a hovering halt in front of what had once been a floor, but which was now little more than a platform extending out into the central rift. The front access ramp hissed, and began to lower.

Catallus went first, as befitted his status as both commanding officer, and the warrior clad in the armour which lent the greatest protection. He trudged down the ramp and stepped off it onto the ruined floor, the mag-seals on his boots making connection with a solid thunk. No enemy fire spat out of the darkness to challenge him, and he advanced towards the twisted frame of what had once been a doorway. His armour’s shoulder lumens pierced the darkness beyond, revealing a corridor that began just as twisted and uneven as the surface over which he was now walking, but which became straighter and more uniform the farther it got from the damaged section of the ship.

There was no atmosphere through which his helmet’s audio sensors could register anything, but he felt the vibration of Sophos’ steps behind him.

‘You know what is needed, brother?’ Catallus voxed privately.

‘It is not my area of expertise,’ Sophos replied. ‘However, I have consulted with the Catechist’s enginseers, and I believe I will be able to ascertain whether we can salvage the parts and components we need to give our ship some manner of warp capability once more.’

‘And what will you do if we cannot?’ Catallus asked. He had not asked this before, but the uneasiness was back. Give him death in battle any day, over the prospect of spending the rest of his enhanced lifespan slowly starving in useless limbo.

‘Then I will try anyway, brother-captain,’ Sophos said, with a huff of breath over the vox which might have been a snort of grim humour. ‘After all, I will have little else to do with my time.’

Catallus tried to set a pace that balanced speed with caution. They were not performing a search-and-destroy mission, sweeping the entire wreck to eradicate any hostiles that might be aboard; they were here to determine the feasibility of salvage. Still, Catallus had no intention of blundering into a trap, and his team needed to ensure that the Fool’s Ruin would be safe for less hardy types such as enginseers and tech-adepts to come aboard and get to work.

Once past the initial beachhead, Catallus directed Sergeant Isocrates and his squad to move out in two fire-teams. They were not equipped with jump packs – those would only be a hindrance in the close quarters of a ship, especially one built for baseline mortals rather than armoured Space Marines – but they still moved forwards swiftly, bolt pistols and chainswords at the ready.

They found the first intact internal airlock – precautions included in ship design for just such an eventuality – just under a minute after setting foot aboard. That one yielded no atmosphere on the other side, so it must have still been connected to a portion of the ship now open to the void. However, the next one they encountered had a small green rune glowing beside the control pad, signifying breathable air beyond.

‘There is power here,’ Catallus noted. ‘The ship is not entirely dead.’

‘It was still transmitting,’ Sophos pointed out. ‘For low-level functions like this, power cores can remain active more or less indefinitely.’

‘Then why were there no running lights? Why are there no interior lights?’ Catallus said.

‘Perhaps the crew turned off all functions except life support and the distress signal to conserve power, then holed up in an undamaged part of the ship,’ Apothecary Ariston suggested. ‘We may yet encounter survivors.’

Catallus studied the airlock for a moment longer. The safest course of action would be to destroy both its doors with his power fist, allow the atmosphere behind it to vent, and asphyxiate and freeze anyone within who lacked the protection enjoyed by his battle-brothers. Under normal circumstances he would have done just that: this was not a rescue mission, and the life of one Minotaur was of greater value to him and to the Imperium at large than the entire crew of a Dauntless-class, even if thousands of them still remained. Any threat that could be eliminated before it was encountered, should be.

Yet there was the possibility, however remote, that the crew of this ship might know something about the warp anomaly which had forced the Bronze Catechist to make an emergency translation. That information might prove crucial – there was no point in Sophos and his Mechanicus allies jerry-rigging the warp engines back online, only for the ship to enter the immaterium right into the same problem from which it had so narrowly escaped.

‘Proceed with caution,’ he advised, tapping the release rune. The first door slid open, revealing an airlock chamber large enough for half a dozen Space Marines, but no more. It would make an excellent choke point, if anyone wished to pin him and his battle-brothers down.

Well, if they did, then he would smash the mechanisms, and his ambushers could choke instead.

Even protected by his Terminator armour, Catallus still braced himself as he stepped out of the far side of the airlock. His Tactical Dreadnought suit could shrug off virtually any human-portable weapon, in theory, but theory did not always pan out; and besides which, the thickest ceramite would not always provide protection against some of the foul xenos species that infested the galaxy, or their twisted technology.

Or their claws, he added silently to himself, as he thought of the loathsome genestealers. He had seen the corpses of veterans who had gone up against those tyranid scout organisms in close quarters: their armour plate looked like the flank of the Fool’s Ruin.

‘How far?’ he voxed to Sophos. The Techmarine checked his auspex.

‘Another two hundred yards in this direction should bring us to the enginarium,’ Sophos said.

‘Any life readings?’

‘Nothing. But…’ It should not have been possible to brandish an auspex with a wry flourish, but Sophos managed it. Catallus nodded in understanding. Auspexes were valuable tools, but notoriously unreliable in environments like this, with so many thick metal walls in close proximity.

‘The atmosphere reads breathable,’ Sergeant Isocrates said, and disengaged his helm. He took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. ‘There are odours of ration packs, and alcohol, which have not yet been lost to the recycling systems. But I cannot smell much rot or decay. I think there are still living people here – or there were until recently.’ He replaced his helmet without needing a command from Catallus to do so. The Minotaurs were not Space Wolves, to walk around bare-headed and dare the galaxy to shoot them in the face.

‘Proceed,’ Catallus ordered, and Sergeant Isocrates and his team moved out on point once more. Catallus felt a grim eagerness building inside him. Living people meant the possibility of combat, and he would welcome the kick of his storm bolter and the jolt of impacts against his armour. Battle contained an elegant simplicity that the rest of this venture sorely lacked, and he found that he might be disappointed if they turned out to be nothing more threatening than miserable Imperial survivors, huddling together in the faint hope of rescue.

He paused. Something was not quite right.

‘Codicier Pelagius,’ he said, turning to the Librarian. ‘Is all well?’

Pelagius had been lagging by half a step, his helmet cocked slightly to one side – tiny indicators, but ones that Catallus was alert enough to notice. The Librarian nodded and placed a hand on Catallus’ pauldron to allay his concerns.

‘There is… something here, I think, tugging at the edge of my mind. But I cannot be certain, and I get no sense of any sorcerous working directed against us. It may just be bleeding through from the warp anomaly.’

Catallus frowned. ‘Is such a thing possible, without heretical intervention?’

‘Most things are possible where the warp is concerned, brother-captain,’ Pelagius said, which was little reassurance. ‘In any case, I can give you no reason not to continue, and we have many reasons why we should.’

Catallus did not tell Pelagius to inform him if the situation changed: the Librarian would do so automatically. Instead, he voxed to the rest of the strike team. ‘Be particularly alert for any signs of sorcerous activity. Rituals, effigies…’ He tailed off. His knowledge of warpcraft was limited, as it should be; that was the department of Pelagius and his brothers. The Minotaurs had fought heretics and rogue psykers, but only someone who was a fool or a heretic himself tried to understand their methods.

They proceeded without incident until they reached a huge set of doors, which was obviously the enginarium. Catallus detailed one fire-team each from Serapion and Isocrates to cover their rear, then gave Sophos the instruction to open the doors.

Light spilled out over them – first as a narrow crack, which then grew wider and wider as the doors parted, like a mechanical sunrise. The lenses in Catallus’ helm adjusted to the sudden blaze of illumination, and he snapped his storm bolter up when he saw what lay within.

‘This would be the sorcerous activity, then,’ said Lydos, who carried Squad Serapion’s flamer, and whose grim humour was well known within the company.

Even Catallus could tell that this was true. Bodies were strewn on, across and around the strange, huge shapes of the machinery that powered the warp drives. No, he realised as the low, discordant moaning reached his ears – not bodies, or at least not dead ones. These were living people.

They were bound in place by chains, or pinned down by sharp spikes of metal driven through broken limbs, and their blood ran out into grooves cut into the floor or the machinery – grooves that formed glyphs the like of which Catallus knew better than to look at too closely. Most mortals in such a state would be shrieking in pain and terror, but these simply moaned incessantly, a slowly rising and falling drone that was somehow more unnerving than any scream.

‘They were crew members,’ Ariston said, pointing at the uniforms.

‘No one enter,’ Catallus said tightly. ‘Codicier, your assessment?’

‘Little you have not already guessed, brother-captain,’ Pelagius replied. ‘This is a ritual of some sort, there is no doubt, but we here are not its target. It may, however, be connected to what threw us out of the warp in the first place.’

Catallus nodded slowly. ‘Can you disrupt it?’

‘The simplest way to do so would be to cut off its power source,’ Pelagius said. ‘In this case, it appears to be using the agony of these mortal crewers.’

Catallus studied the enginarium for a moment more. He was wary of entering, but still more wary of damaging the machines they might need with gunfire. ‘Very well. Use your blades.’

He took the first step into the chamber, but no sorcerous energies assailed him. The nearest mortal had been a large man, but now was nothing more than a slab of meat, pinned to the deck. Catallus did not bother to stoop, which in any case would not be easy in Terminator armour. He simply lifted his ceramite boot and drove it down onto the man’s head. The crewer’s skull exploded like a ripe fruit, killing him instantly. Catallus’ battle-brothers moved forwards with him, expertly opening arteries with their weapons, or simply beheading the luckless mortals for ease and swiftness. They were not mercy killings, for mercy was not in the nature of the Minotaurs, but they were efficient, which in this context served much the same purpose.

It was approximately three seconds after he had killed the first man that Catallus felt the psychic scream.

It rose up from somewhere, although he could not say where from, or where it was rising to. It was as though a noise which had constantly been on the edge of his hearing suddenly changed, and so made itself noticeable at last. It went up through the octaves of the mind, until it became a soundless shriek that vibrated in his very bones. The sensation pinned him in place for a moment, then just as he rallied himself to fight against it, it disappeared completely.

‘Pelagius!’ he shouted, looking around. The Librarian had been driven to his knees, but was already forcing his way back up again.

‘What in Terra was–’ someone began, but they were interrupted by the bark of bolter fire from the enginarium’s entrance.

‘Multiple contacts, closing fast!’ shouted Sergeant Serapion. The deeper cough of Brother Hesiod’s heavy bolter opened up, punctuated by human screams. Catallus took the few steps back to the entrance, and looked out.

Corridors on three sides were swarming with ragtag mortals. Most of them lacked mag-boots of the sort that allowed the Minotaurs to walk normally through the ship, but this simply meant they were not limited to one surface along which to propel themselves. Screaming heretics – for that was what they were, Catallus realised, as the light of muzzle flare lit up crude, disturbing sigils adorning their clothes and flesh – swarmed along the ceiling and walls as well as the floor, launching themselves forward from handholds. Most carried auto weapons, and cruel-looking blades or brutal bludgeons.

Catallus fired his storm bolter, mowing down half a dozen without bothering to aim, while return fire sparked harmlessly off his armour. ‘Bring them down, brothers! Numbers are all they have, and we can quickly shift that balance!’ Still they kept coming, hundreds pressing forward with the fell light of fanaticism in their eyes, but he had twenty Space Marines at his side. It would be slaughter.

‘If this was a trap set for us, it feels woefully impotent given the effort spent preparing it,’ Sergeant Serapion observed, hurling a frag grenade. It flew down the middle of the right-hand corridor, and detonated to send out a perfect sphere of shrapnel that shredded more heretics than Catallus could easily count.

‘Kill the enemy first, criticise his strategy later,’ Catallus advised, as possibilities ran through his head. They could punch back to the Thunderhawk – Space Marines against baseline mortals in enclosed environments such as this favoured the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes even more than usual, since it was far more difficult to outflank or overwhelm them – but that would leave their mission incomplete. It made more sense to signal the Bronze Catechist and order the rest of his demi-company to join them with all speed, so they could clear out this rancid nest and continue…

As if on cue, his vox crackled. ‘Lord Catallus?’

‘Captain Domock,’ Catallus replied. ‘We have been ambushed, but we are holding. I want all–’

‘Pardon the interruption, Lord Catallus,’ Captain Domock cut in, his voice tight, ‘but we are no longer alone.’

For one second, Catallus felt the keen bite of hope: another ship of the Minotaurs’ fleet had found them! Then he registered the tone of Domock’s voice, and realised how unlikely such good fortune would be.

‘What vessel?’ he asked.

The stars shimmered and shifted, and the nausea-inducing hues of the warp bled through just long enough to discharge a ship into realspace, no more than twenty miles from the Bronze Catechist. The Imperium’s wisdom held that such a precise translation was impossible, but the Imperium treated the warp as a tool of which it was terrified. It understood just enough to sometimes – and only sometimes – achieve what it intended; the commander of this vessel had learned more of the warp’s ways in a century than the Imperium had in ten millennia.

‘Shields up!’ roared Huron Blackheart, master of the Red Corsairs. The Spectre of Ruin’s crew were already obeying, frantically coaxing the void shields into life, activating the realspace engines and routing power to the weapons systems. ‘Which vessel did we capture?’ the Blood Reaver asked, as systems that had been powered down while his ship lurked in the warp began to come online again.

‘Systems are reading it as the Bronze Catechist, lord!’ a crew member called. Huron’s half-dead lips twisted into a savage grin. He could remember the name of every so-called loyalist ship that had plagued his rebellion; they were burned into his mind just as thoroughly as his own flesh had been burned away by the meltagun of that accursed Star Phantoms captain. He recognised it.

‘Well done, Garlon,’ he said with relish. ‘Your psychic snare captured just the kind of quarry we were after.’

Garlon Souleater, the Red Corsairs sorcerer by his side, inclined his helmeted head. ‘You identified the turbulence that already existed in the warp, lord. My work with the crew of the captured cruiser merely… enhanced matters.’

‘The Bronze Catechist is coming about, lord!’ the auspex officer shouted.

‘Are they hailing us?’ Huron asked.

‘No, lord.’

‘How disappointing,’ Huron muttered. ‘Still, that’s the Minotaurs for you – all business. If these were Space Wolves or Black Templars, I might have at least got a few amusing insults out of them before they died.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Open a broadbeam channel.’

The vox-officer, a spindly figure with weeping sores on her visible skin, flicked switches. ‘Channel open.’

‘Hear this, dogs of Terra!’ the Blood Reaver snarled, acidic spittle falling from his lips. ‘I am Lugft Huron, and I have not forgotten your treachery! It might take me until the end of time, but I will wipe your miserable Chapter from existence, starting with those who opposed me.’

‘The Bronze Catechist is opening fire,’ the auspex officer reported. Huron heard the faint tremor of fear in his voice, but ignored it. Mortals were easily scared.

‘Let them.’

The salvo was from the strike cruiser’s port weapons batteries, and the bridge crew of the Spectre of Ruin had time to see it coming: not enough for their massive ship to evade, but sufficient to watch the burning points of light streak towards them like a volley of shooting stars.

Huron spread his arms to welcome them. His enemies couldn’t see his gesture, but some things you just had to do for yourself.

The bombardment had nearly reached the hull of the Spectre of Ruin when it encountered the battle-barge’s void shields. Bursts of punishing concussive and explosive force detonated against them in flashes that painted the Spectre’s bridge in harsh, stark light, and was answered by barely noticeable rainbow flickers from the shields as they dumped the energy off into the warp. Huron glanced quickly at the shield read-outs, which wavered, then returned to steady levels.

‘Valiant,’ he remarked, ‘or desperate. The two are often much the same.’ The strike cruiser was well armed for its size, particularly at short ranges, but it had little chance of prevailing against a battle-barge in a firefight unless the larger ship was already significantly damaged.

‘Why are they exchanging fire with us?’ Garlon asked, his voice like the chime of a deep bell from behind his helmet’s faceplate. ‘They are outgunned, but more manoeuvrable. If they hit and run, they could at least drag this out.’

‘They could,’ Huron agreed, ‘but they won’t. They have a team on the Fool’s Ruin – a sizeable portion of their ship’s strength, I suspect, since the Minotaurs are never ones to do things by halves. The Bronze Catechist will not move far since they will hope to retrieve that team, and will not want to give us a clear shot at a ship that has no hope of evading it. They will tie themselves down, just as efficiently as our rabble on the stricken cruiser are preventing those aboard it from making it back to the Catechist.’ He wiped the spittle from his chin with the back of his left gauntlet. ‘Return fire!’

The guns of the Spectre of Ruin spoke, and spat death into the void.

Huron could picture the scene aboard the Bronze Catechist as vividly as though he was there: shouts to brace for impact just audible above the clanging sirens indicating they were at battle stations; the smell of fear amongst the serfs; and the occasional stern-faced Minotaur, too stubborn to admit to himself that this was a battle they could not win.

Then the flares of light from the void shields as they first protected the ship, then overloaded and winked out under the ongoing onslaught.

Finally, his grin widening as the images in his mind’s eye were mirrored by faint explosions visible from the bridge, Huron pictured the thunderous concussion of shells slamming into the superstructure of the Bronze Catechist. The entire ship would shake. Metal would be torn asunder, and lives would evaporate in flame, bodies blown apart or simply crushed. Klaxons would change pitch to signify pressure loss, and then the sound would fade as the atmosphere which carried it was sucked out into the hungry, cold void. Airlocks would slam shut, leaving those outside to cling futilely on to wreckage as their bodies began to freeze, the blood vessels in their eyeballs ruptured, and the breath in their chests treacherously tried to force its way out, to be replaced by nothing except death. Meanwhile, those within could do nothing except flee further within the ship before the next punishing salvo arrived, hoping against hope that they could find a space where the guns of their enemy could not reach them.

‘Cease fire,’ Huron ordered after half a minute of destruction. Whatever undamaged weapons were left on the Bronze Catechist’s flank would be too few to pose any threat.

‘Boarding parties, lord?’ Garlon asked. That was how the warband had taken many of their ships, for there were few more ferocious and skilled in boarding actions than the Space Marines of the Red Corsairs, whatever their Chapter of origin.

‘No,’ Huron said. ‘Let them come about and present their other flank to us. They will seek to fight, for it is all they know. We will wait until they nearly have a firing solution on us, to give them the hope of striking one final blow, and then we will obliterate them.’

‘We are not capturing the ship?’ Garlon Souleater did not often sound surprised, for he was a sorcerer lord, but this clearly took him off guard. A strike cruiser, even a damaged strike cruiser, was a fine prize.

‘We are not,’ Huron said, through his teeth. ‘I will turn many things to my own purposes, Garlon, but not this vessel. This vessel was one of those that hounded me out of my home, and so it deserves death. A lingering death, perhaps, but a final one.’

‘Lord!’ the vox-officer called. ‘Incoming transmission from the Fool’s Ruin!’

Huron frowned. The warriors he had left aboard were cultists sworn to the Ruinous Powers. They had no communications equipment: their purpose was simply to wait until the psychic signal was cut, then attack anyone aboard. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘–tain Catallus Naxon of the Minotaurs. Blackheart, you venomous filth, can you hear me?’

‘I can indeed, captain,’ Huron replied. Grim delight flowed through him as he heard the voice of an enemy, tight with anger. ‘Tell me, did you participate in the Badab War?’

‘I am not going to assist your failing memory, traitor. Know only that we have destroyed your foul rite, and slaughtered the wretches you left here in your pathetic attempt to entrap us.’

‘Oh dear,’ Huron said jovially. ‘And if I had been counting on them to do anything other than delay you, I might be disappointed. As it is…’ He raised a finger. ‘Destroy the Catechist.’

The Spectre of Ruin opened fire again. The Bronze Catechist’s void shields had just recovered, but were overloaded again within moments. There was no mercy, this time: the Spectre’s batteries pounded the Minotaurs strike cruiser until it was more ship-shaped wreckage than recognisable as a vessel, innumerable fires flaring as the last of its oxygen fed the flames. Then the Spectre of Ruin’s bombardment cannon fired three times, and magma bombs blew the once-proud ship apart.

‘I wish I had the ability to broadcast this sight to you, captain,’ Huron sighed, as great chunks of ruined metal began to drift apart.

‘You may take our lives, you fiend, but the vengeance of our battle-brothers will find you one day, and finish what we started!’

‘Take your lives?’ Huron repeated. ‘Captain, I have no intention of doing any such thing. The Bronze Catechist was my target – a grudge I have held for a century or so. You are… insignificant. Prepare for translation!’ he barked.

‘Huron!’

‘Is that a smear of despair I hear at the edge of your voice, captain?’ Huron asked with a predatory grin. ‘You have a ship with power and air – at least, unless you have vented it. You have, however, disabled the psychic snare that might have pulled another ship from the warp which could have aided you. You are a long way from anywhere that matters, so the odds of anyone running across you are vanishingly small… but then again, the distress signal is still broadcasting, so there is always hope!’

‘HURON!’

‘Of course,’ Huron continued gleefully, ‘you may be able to get the warp drives working. But, without an intact hull and a Geller field, I would not like to think of the fate that might await you in the immaterium.’ He paused. ‘Well, that is a lie. I suspect I am going to quite enjoy thinking about it.’

Silences were not made equal. To Huron’s practised ears, the one emanating from the vox had the flavour of incapacitating fury.

‘I wonder what will happen first, if you choose to wait it out,’ Huron mused, as the Spectre of Ruin’s void shields powered down, and the warp drives began to draw energy. ‘Will you lose your minds? Will you run out of air? Will you starve? Will you even eat the flesh of others around you in order not to starve? Where will you draw the line, loyalist? How far will you deprave yourself in an attempt to remain alive, chasing the hope that you may one day again be of use to your masters?’ He sighed. ‘Do not make your choice in the hope of impressing me. I will not be coming back to find out.’

The vox remained silent. Whatever Captain Catallus Naxon was feeling, he was either unable or unwilling to verbalise it.

A series of glyphs lit up on the bridge consoles, the Mechanicum adepts signalling that the warp engines were ready. Huron’s vox crackled, but this was not a Minotaur.

‘What is your desired heading, lord?’ came the weary voice of Beis Fortuna, the Spectre of Ruin’s captured Navigator. She was treated well, and so she served with a certain fatalistic misery, in the knowledge that anything else would see her days end in agony.

‘New Badab,’ Huron told her. ‘Take us home.’

‘As you will it, lord.’

Huron cast one last, lingering look at the Fool’s Ruin and the chunks of the Bronze Catechist as the warp engines engaged, and reality began to come apart. The Blood Reaver’s days were ones of unending pain, permanently wracked by the grievous wounds he had taken in his flight from the first Palace of Thorns, and only his ferocious will gave him the strength to continue. Sometimes, in the darkest moments of his own soul, he wondered why he continued to fight rather than let death claim him, as it had so nearly done a century ago.

It was moments like this that gave purpose to his suffering.

About the Author

Mike Brooks is a science fiction and fantasy author who lives in Nottingham, UK. His work for Black Library includes the Horus Heresy Primarchs novel Alpharius: Head of the Hydra, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Rites of Passage and Brutal Kunnin, the Necromunda novel Road to Redemption and the novella Wanted: Dead, and various short stories. When not writing, he plays guitar and sings in a punk band, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him.

An extract from Huron Blackheart: Master of the Maelstrom.

Blood flows.

Not in veins, where evolution has dictated that it should, but over metal decking pitted with the gradual ravages of oxidisation that no amount of care could prevent. It dribbles down walls, from where it arced after being brutally released from its fleshy prison. It seeps into cracks and crevices. It pools in slight depressions, and drips through gratings to drizzle onto whatever lies beneath. The metallic tang of it is everywhere, mixing with the stink of burned hair, the chemical reek of promethium fumes, the sharp scent of cordite, and hints of ozone as the charged blades of power weapons gradually fuse the atoms of the air.

And through the blood comes the Blood Reaver.

Once, Lugft Huron was the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws. Once, he was a towering Space Marine warrior, the galaxy’s image of nobility and righteousness: at least, to those parts of the galaxy that cowered behind the shield his warriors made from their bodies, and their guns, and their will. Once, Huron believed in the Imperium, and in the Emperor, and in his Chapter’s duties: at least in his own way.

But in the Imperium there is little tolerance for any way other than that which the Imperium itself dictates. The tool that does not completely fit its role is eliminated; and if, like Lugft Huron, the tool is too tough and too stubborn to be properly eliminated, it is cast out.

The problem with that, of course, is that those who are cast out can come back. And when they do, their bodies and their guns and their will are no longer a shield, but a sword aimed for the heart.

Huron Blackheart looks around and sees death: not just death, but slaughter. This is not a military outpost; not an Astra Militarum barracks, an Adeptus Astartes fortress-monastery, or a convent of the Adepta Sororitas. This is Adeptus Mechanicus mining station Delta-Kappa-39006, plundering the mineral resources of an asteroid with a diameter of roughly three hundred miles, and its defences have been easily overwhelmed. The ships tasked with its protection were annihilated by the Spectre of Ruin within moments of its exit from the warp, and the Red Corsairs have overrun the station itself. Huron could have targeted the astropath’s tower, to ensure that the station could not call for help, but he has not cared enough to do so.

Let the blind psykers scream. Abaddon the Despoiler has ripped the galaxy apart, and the Imperium has far greater matters to attend to. No one is coming here.

‘Progress?’ Huron rasps. His voice is as damaged as the rest of him. What was once a commanding basso boom is now a phlegm-edged rattle. Sometimes it betrays him altogether, until his underlings can coax his half-dead flesh back into synergy with the mechanical implants that allow him some measure of control over his own body. These are souvenirs of events in the Palace of Thorns: a reminder of how the Imperium treats its own when they dare question an unfair system.

Still, damaged or not, Huron’s voice is acknowledged and obeyed just as fast as it ever was. Perhaps faster.

‘We’ve taken most of the complex, lord,’ a man replies, dropping to one knee, heedless of the bloody remains of a Mechanicus defender within inches of his leg.

The man is wearing a uniform that once belonged to a member of the Mordian Iron Guard, now with the aquila torn off and the epaulettes replaced by loyalist skulls. Perhaps he is its original owner. The Red Corsairs are a warband: the strong core of it is made up of renegade Space Marines, both from the old Astral Claws and those of other Chapters who have traded their former colours in for Huron’s, but great numbers of mortal warriors have also flocked to his banner over the decades. Huron welcomes all those who will fight in his name; or at least those who do so well.

‘“Most”?’ he repeats, and the ragged team of men and women stiffen. There are a dozen or so of them, armed with lasguns and autoguns, and Huron could tear through them all in a matter of seconds. They know this.

‘One part holds out, lord,’ the kneeling man says hoarsely. Perhaps he fears that Huron’s power axe will take his head, or the Tyrant’s Claw will envelop him in its crackling fingers and crush the life from him, or Huron will trigger the heavy flamer embedded in the palm of that power gauntlet and simply roast him alive. ‘There is only one access corridor, and the defenders are fiercer than we anticipated – combat automata, at least three of them.’ He begins to speak faster, perhaps hoping to head off the displeasure of the renegade standing over him. ‘If the lords of your brethren were willing, I’m sure they could attack that part of the complex from the outside, but we lack void suits and so–’

‘Enough.’ Huron cuts him off with a dismissive wave of fingers from the Tyrant’s Claw, and the man falls silent. Huron can hear his heart pounding, can see the pulse of the vein in his neck as his blood courses through him. Human blood, mortal blood; so very different from that which cycles through Huron’s twin hearts, and yet the basis for it.

Or so Huron presumes. He has been in the Maelstrom for years now, in that rift where the warp bleeds through and has its way with realspace. There is no predicting how the warp will change you: it defies logic, defies science, defies reason. The man kneeling in front of him, in fear of his life, may have already been altered. Perhaps his blood is no longer human, either. He came to the Red Corsairs as a weak mortal, the sort of malleable clay the warp can twist without effort.

Those possessed of a stronger will, on the other hand, can be harder to change; and there are few beings in the galaxy with a will stronger than that of Huron Blackheart. Most warriors, even those of the Adeptus Astartes, would have succumbed to the injuries he took in the retreat from the Palace of Thorns, rather than live on as he has. Part of that is due to a potent mix of spite and his indomitable spirit. Part of that is due to the skill of his loyal warriors Armenneus Valthex and Lord Apothecary Garreon, who worked to save him when he lay wounded. And part of that is because of the bargain Huron has struck.

He can feel a part of that bargain patrolling back and forth on his shoulders. The Hamadrya chitters softly as it phases into visibility, and the kneeling man looks up at the sound, then blanches and lowers his eyes again quickly. Huron finds the contrast amusing. A towering, horrifically scarred transhuman warrior in blood-red armour plate, wielding weapons of fearsome potency, is to be feared and obeyed; yet his daemonic familiar, a creature no larger than a domestic felid, is too unnerving to even look upon.

‘Combat automata?’ Huron asks, turning the words over in his mouth.

The Legio Cybernetica are formidable foes indeed; at least when they have a datasmith to update their command protocols, and adapt them to changing situations. A headlong rush into their guns will serve little purpose other than to amass skulls for the Blood God, and Huron prefers those sacrifices to be offered in scenarios where they will materially benefit him. He has brought a small number of Heretic Space Marines with him for this strike, oath-bonded killers with centuries of combined experience in bloodshed, and they could indeed approach over the asteroid’s surface and breach the last part of the complex from the outside. However, he is not certain he is willing to risk them on such an assault. Such is the weight of command, for Huron has no superior. Even as a Chapter Master of the Imperium, and supposedly the sovereign commander of the Astral Claws, he was expected to respond to the ‘requests’ made of him for aid. As Master of the Maelstrom, he has no orders to carry out save his own. There is no hiding place, should his strategies falter.

Perhaps another approach can be attempted.

‘Where is the start of this killing ground?’ he demands.

There is a pile of burned and pulverised bodies outside a pair of blast doors, and they bear the ragtag motley of the mortal warriors of Huron’s raiders, rather than the red robes of the defenders. The Mechanicus sigils over the door mean nothing to Huron, and he does not bother to call for any of the heretek priests who have accompanied his force on this raid to translate for him. Instead he simply presses the release, and steps to one side.

A roaring barrage of fire is the immediate response, as the incandescent fury of heavy phosphor blasters rips into the already half-melted bulkhead opposite. Huron keys the pad to keep the door open, and waits. After three seconds, the shooting stops, leaving the wall glowing.

‘Impressive,’ Huron rasps, pitching his voice to carry over the faint pinking of cooling metal. ‘To whom am I speaking?’

There is no reply from beyond the hatch. Huron listens intently. Kastelan battle robots, unless he misses his guess: mighty automata perhaps twice as tall as he is, ferociously tough and very well armed. If he hears them coming for him, he will have to be ready to react at a moment’s notice. There is presumably a reason they are holding this ground, though, instead of coming out to try and repel his force’s intrusion into the complex as a whole. Perhaps they will stay put for now.

There is still no reply.

‘Nothing to say?’ Huron asks the silent hatchway. No, not quite silent: if he strains his hearing, he can just make out the very faint buzz of the machinery and circuits of the warrior automata, although it is barely audible over the sound of his own armour. ‘You have just tried to kill me – do you not wish to know who I am?’

He closes his eyes, and reaches out with his senses. On his shoulder, the Hamadrya chitters a babble of quiet syllables that come close to being words, but which never quite develop that far. They ease his mind loose, allowing part of it to quest out in search of answers.

Blunt shapes, present and whole, entirely free from the spark of life, and yet animate. The kastelans: five of them, arrayed across the corridor. Huron can feel the belligerent energy of their machine-spirits, well suited to the task to which they have been set. And behind them…

‘There you are,’ the Blood Reaver whispers to himself, his dead lips twisting into a smile.

Behind them is true life. One soul only, about whom fear hangs as thick and obvious as captured banners on the walls of a warlord’s hall. Fearful, yes, but also resolute of purpose. If it is just a labourer taking shelter behind these guards then there is no way through that will not claim a high price in blood; perhaps higher than Huron is willing to pay for such uncertain reward. If, however, it is the Legio Cybernetica datasmith – the one who controls the kastelans – then another approach is possible, and Huron has always been one to keep his options open. The commander who leashes themselves too firmly to a course of action is the one who will find themselves led by it, and not the other way around.

‘A formidable force you have there,’ he says. ‘Too formidable to leave intact to serve the Imperium. Even now, my warriors are tearing this complex apart to secure the materials we came for. When we are done, I will have my ship level it. We have the weapons and the precision to achieve it, believe me.’

Still no response. No words, no attack. However, Huron can sense fear surging higher. Whoever this is, they have not progressed far enough down the path of the Machine Cult to eliminate all their emotions.

‘I am Huron Blackheart, master of the Red Corsairs,’ Huron says conversationally. ‘Who is it who has stalled me so?’

Still nothing. Until–

‘Cybernetica Datasmith Griza Dallax,’ comes the reply, the words tinged with both fear and pride. ‘I command these machines, so do your worst.’

‘My worst?’ Huron gives a breathy chuckle. ‘My worst would see you reduced to your component atoms as your existence catches fire around you. Have you ever died, Magos Dallax? I have, or as close to it as makes no difference. Let me tell you that your last instants are stretched out into a subjective eternity. I came out the other side. I am not certain you would be so fortunate.’

Silence.

‘And what of your charges?’ Huron continues. ‘Valuable servants of the Omnissiah, all of them. Can they withstand an orbital bombardment? I doubt it. I am a practical man, and I detest waste. Perhaps I can offer an alternative.’

Magos Dallax does not reply, but Huron can practically taste the desperation on the air. He knows the emotion well. Dallax might stand alongside her kastelans and fight and die with them in the teeth of an attack, but to stand quietly and wait for obliteration? That is another matter entirely. And yet, fighting to the death as a last stand is a different matter to charging into the teeth of a superior enemy. One is a fight to extend your existence for as long as possible, the other actively seeks to end it sooner than is necessary.

A Space Marine of the Imperium, when faced with the choice, might decide to die in a manner of their own choosing. Magos Dallax is no Space Marine, however, and nor is she one of the skitarii, many of whom have little more free will than the kastelans, despite their biological parts. Dallax values her life enough to bite on the lure that Huron has left dangling.

‘What alternative can you offer, traitor?’

The voice drips with all the scorn that can be mustered through a vocal synthesiser, but even that cannot hide the desperate hope that lurks within. Magos Dallax may not agree to any alternative, but she will listen to it.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1,D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

Fool’s Ruin © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2022. Fool’s Ruin, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-80407-117-5

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