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needlessly.’
    32

    Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
    Zadkiel allowed a flutter of emotion to cross his features for a moment at the news. He considered drawing his power mace and staving in Ikthalon’s skull for his persistent insubordination, but in truth, he valued the chaplain’s council and his Word.
    Though he was a barb in Zadkiel’s side, even since the Great Crusade had been in its infancy, he did not couch expressions with sycophantic frippery as Reskiel was prone too, nor was he so singled-minded that he was unable to convey subtlety and the need for delicacy when required like Baelanos. Zadkiel did not trust him, but he trusted his Word and so he was tolerated.
    ‘It is possible that a message reached a way station, or some isolated listening spire at the edge of the segmentum, but we are well underway and there is little that any vessel can do to prevent our destiny. So it is written,’ Zadkiel said at last.
    ‘So it is written,’ the assembled commanders intoned.
    ‘Reskiel, you will maintain a close watch on the sensorium. If anything should stray into surveyor range, I want to know immediately,’ Zadkiel ordered.
    ‘It will be done, my lord.’ Reskiel bowed obsequiously and retreated from the dais.
    ‘Baelanos, Ikthalon, you have your own duties to attend to,’
    Zadkiel added, dismissively, not waiting to watch them depart as he turned to regard the viewscreens before him.
    ‘Engines,’ said Zadkiel, and at once the central viewscreen blinked into life, the bridge lights dimmed and the image on the screen lit the miniature city in hard moonlight. It showed the Furious Abyss ’s cavernous engine room, the prostrate cylinders of the plasma reactors dwarfing the crewmen who scrabbled around them in their routine duties. The crew wore the deep crimson of the Word Bearers; they were servants of Lorgar just as the Word Bearers were, devoted to the primarch’s Word and grateful for such a certain place in the universe.
    They did not know the details of the Word, of course. They were ignorant of the web of allegiances and oaths that Lorgar had created among his brother primarchs, or of the mission that would seal the inevitability of the Word Bearers’ victory. They 33

    Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
    did not need to know. It was enough for them that they laboured under the wishes of their primarch.
    Amongst the piteous menials, a tall figure stood out. Looming from the darkness, he was swathed in black robes and bore the cog symbol of the Mechanicum around his neck on a chain of bolts.
    ‘Magos Gureod, you are to keep us at a steady speed, but be ready to increase our plasma engines to maximum capacity.’
    ‘It will be done,’ the magos replied, his artificial voice relayed through a series of synthesisers. Gureod’s face was hidden by the massive cowl over his head, but a pair of blinking red diodes was vaguely discernible in the void where his eyes should have been.
    Odd protrusions in the sweep of his long robes suggested further augmetics, and his withered hands, crossed over his abdomen, offered the only clue that Magos Gureod was indeed human. At the order, he withdrew into the shadows again, doubtless heading for the sanctum and deep communion with the machine spirit.
    Turning to another screen, Zadkiel uttered, ‘Ordnance.’
    The crowded munitions deck was displayed there. Weapon Master Malforian was in residence, barking harsh commands to crews of sweating orderlies and gang ratings, toiling in the steam-filled half dark of the cluttered deck. Full racks of torpedoes stood gleaming, fresh from the Martian forges. The ordnance deck stretched across the breadth of the Furious Abyss beneath the prow, and like the rest of the ship it was wrought in a bare industrial style that had an elegance of its own.
    Realising he was being summoned, Malforian attended to his captain at once.
    ‘Keep broadsides primed and at ready status, Master Malforian,’ Zadkiel instructed him.