Battle for the Abyss Read Online Free PDF Page B

many station houses and listening spires, ending in a trio of fanged docking clamps where the various visiting craft could make harbour and take on or drop off cargo.
    Arriving at the main control hub of Coralis, the three Astartes found themselves in a tight chamber that overlooked the dock.
    Thick, interwoven cables looped from the ceiling and dim, flickering halogen globes illuminated the bent-backed menials and cogitator servitors working the hub. A backwash of sickly yellow light thrown from numerous pict screens and data-displays fought weakly against the gloom.
    An azure holosphere was located in the centre of the chamber, rotating above a gunmetal dais. It depicted Vangelis space port in grainy, intermittent resolution and a wide arc surveyor net that projected several thousand metres from the surface.
    A large, convex viewport confronted the Astartes at the far wall through which they could see the magnificent vista of real space.
    Distantly, writhing nebulae patterned the infinite blackness with their iridescent glory and fading suns. Starfields and other galactic phenomena were arrayed like the flora and fauna of some endless obsidian ocean. It was a breathtaking view and stole away the fact that the recycled air within the control hub was sickly and stifling. A machine drone accompanied it from the 27

    Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
    space port’s primary reactor located in the subterranean cata-combs of Vangelis. The insistent hum of latent power could be felt through the reinforced plasteel floor. It was hot, too, the stark industrial interior barely shielded against the dock’s generatorium.
    Saphrax was already on the command deck of the control hub, consulting with the hub’s stationmaster, when the other Astartes arrived. Saphrax was the honour guard squad’s standard bearer, and the Ultramarines honour banner was rolled up in its case slung over his back. The rest of Saphrax’s battle-brothers were below at the hub’s gate, preparing for their imminent departure.
    ‘Greetings, Saphrax. You know Brynngar of the Space Wolves,’
    said Cestus, indicating the brutish Wolf Guard who gave a feral snarl.
    ‘What news?’ the brother-sergeant asked his banner bearer.
    ‘Captain, Antiges,’ said the Ultramarine to his battle-brothers.
    ‘Son of Russ,’ he added for Brynngar’s benefit. Saphrax was a bald-headed warrior with a long scar that ran from his left temple to the base of his chin: another souvenir from the Kolobite.
    Cestus often mused that none in the Legion were as straight-backed as Saphrax, so much so that he seemed permanently at attention. Dependable and solid, he was seldom given to great emotion and wore a stern expression like a mask over chiselled stone features. Pragmatic, even melancholic, he was the third element to the balance that existed between Cestus and Antiges.
    Even so, the banner bearer’s mood was particularly dour.
    ‘We have received an astropathic message,’ Saphrax informed them.
    There were three astropaths in residence at the hub, and more in the space port at large. They were sunk into a deep, circular vestibule, just below floor level, and swathed in shadow. Dim lights set into the edge of the vestibule cast weak illumination onto their faintly writhing forms. A skin of translucent, psychically conditioned material was draped over the trio of astropaths like a clinging veil. Beneath it, they looked like they were somehow conjoined, as if feeling each other’s emotions as one being.
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    Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
    Other, less obvious, wards were also in place. All were designed to safeguard against the dangerous mental energies that could be unleashed during the course of their duties.
    Withered and blinded, the wretched creatures – two males and a female – like all of their calling had undergone the soul-binding ritual; the means by which the Emperor moulded and steeled their minds, so that they might be able to look into the warp and not