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shuddering against the onslaught, the lights of Vangelis space port went out.

    THE BRIDGE OF the Furious Abyss was like a sprawling city in miniature. The banks of cogitators were like hive-stacks rising above the streets formed by the exposed industrial ironwork of the deck. The various bridge crews sat in sunken command posts like arenas or deep harbours. Three viewscreens dominated one end of the bridge, while a raised acropolis at its heart was formed by the captain’s post. A strategium table stretched out before it from which he could raise an orrery display, showing the ship and its foes wrought in rotating brass rings.
    High above the sprawling bridge was a decked clerestory where the astropathic choir of the mighty warship were slaved.
    The vaulted space was shared by the Navigator’s sanctum, concealed in an antechamber so as to be secluded whilst traversing the perils of the warp.
    The command throne, raised upon a hard-edged pentagonal dais, was the seat of a god.
    Zadkiel was that god, looking down upon a city devoted to him.
    ‘Listen,’ Zadkiel bade those kneeling before him in supplication. The dulcet roar of the Furious Abyss ’s plasma engines, even dulled by the thick adamantium plating surrounding the ship’s hull and interior, was like a war cry.
    ‘Listen and hear the sound of the future...’ Zadkiel was on his feet, sermonising, ‘...the sound of fate!’
    Three warriors, true devotees of the Word, heeded Zadkiel’s rhetoric and stood.
    ‘We pledge our service to you, Lord Zadkiel,’ said the tallest of the three. He had a voice like crushed gravel and one of his eyes was blood-red, surrounded by a snarl of scar tissue. Even without the injury, his granite slab of a face would have made him a figure of fear even among his fellow Word Bearers. This was Bae-31

    Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
    lanos, assault-captain and Zadkiel’s private terror weapon. A potent warrior, Baelanos lacked imagination, which made him the perfect follower in Zadkiel’s eyes. He was obedient, deadly and fiercely loyal, all fine qualities in an underling.
    ‘As do we all,’ Ikthalon interjected blithely. Another Astartes, Ikthalon was a company chaplain, demagogue and expert tortur-er. Unlike Baelanos, he wore his helmet in the presence of his commander, a skull-faced piece of armour with a pair of discreet horns on either side of the temple. Even through it, Ikthalon’s thinly veiled contempt was obvious. ‘Perhaps we should address the matters at hand, brother,’ he counselled, lingering sarcastically on the last word.
    Zadkiel sat back down in the command throne. It was sculpted to accept his armoured frame, as if he had been born to take command of this bridge, to be the god of this warship.
    ‘Then let us tarry no further,’ he said, his viperous gaze lingering on Ikthalon.
    ‘Sensorium reports that the Fist of Macragge was destroyed and all weapon’s systems tested successfully, sire.’ It was Reskiel who spoke. He was a youth compared to the other Astartes on the command dais, gaunt of face with a keening hunger in his black eyes, a strange quirk of his birth. Reskiel was a veteran of many battles, despite his age, and he wore the newly fashioned studded armour of his Legion proudly, keen to baptise it with the scars of war. He was widely regarded as Zadkiel’s second, if not in an official capacity – that honour fell to Baelanos – and made it his business to know all the happenings aboard the Furious Abyss and report them to his master. Where Baelanos was the dutiful lap-dog, Reskiel was the eager sycophant.
    ‘It was as expected.’ Zadkiel’s response was terse.
    ‘Indeed,’ said Ikthalon, ‘but our astropaths also suggest that the stricken ship, though smitten by our righteous fury, managed to send out a distress call. I would not like to think that all our caution at commissioning the vessel’s construction in the Jovian shipyards has been undone so swiftly and