Void Stalker by Aaron Dembski-Bowden Read Free Book Online

received.
    Septimus spat out two of his back teeth, and the man who would soon be a father promptly lost consciousness.
    Talos gathered the Claws in the war room around the long hololithic council table. Eighty-one warriors in total, each standing in midnight clad. Many were bloodied, or yet bore armour scars from the purgation duties still taking place in the bowels of the Echo of Damnation. Stealing the ship back from the Red Corsairs had only been the first step. Cleansing a warship of this size would take years, with flamer teams incinerating the worst touches of Chaos taint – where the hull was corroded with foulness, or worse, where the metal had mutated into living tissue.
    The Echo of Damnation, much like the Covenant of Blood before it, was essentially a city in space, carrying a crew of over fifty thousand souls. She was, in all ways, a grander beast and a greater beauty than the Standard Template Construct cruisers and barges of the Adeptus Astartes that patrolled the heavens of the modern Imperium. The Echo had first tasted the void in the Great Crusade ten thousand years before, when the warriors of the Legiones Astartes claimed the finest vessels for themselves, and sailed their warships at the vanguard of expansionist fleets. A strike cruiser of yesteryear wasn’t always equal to its Imperial counterpart, and the Echo showed how they often eclipsed their newer cousins in size and firepower.
    Fifty thousand souls. Talos had never grown used to the number, even as they toiled for decades below his boots. His life was among the ever-diminishing elite, and their most favoured slaves.
    On the rare occasions he descended into the ship’s dank reaches, it was for the duty of purging any insidious taint that threatened the ship’s optimal function, or for the more plebeian desire for murder. Most of the slave-caste workers dwelled in the deepest reaches and lowest bowel-decks of the immense warship, toiling their lives away in the darkness, working as engine crews and the other menial tasks suitable for human cattle. Hunting for skulls and screams among the mortal chattel was merely one of the traditional paths of training. It was undeniably the most pleasurable.
    Talos regarded his brothers, the eighty-one warriors pulled together by fate into a fragile alliance, drawn from the remnants of the Night Lords’ Tenth and Eleventh Companies. However he’d intended to begin the war council was discarded once he saw them all gathered. One thing was abundantly clear from their ragged ranks, with some squads reduced to two or three surviving members.
    ‘We must restructure the claws,’ he said to them.
    The warriors shared glances. Neck joints hummed as they turned to one another.
    ‘The infighting ends here, brothers. First Claw will remain six-strong. The other claws will reform as close to full strength as they are able.’
    Xeverine, a warrior never without his ornate chainglaive, raised his voice to speak. ‘And who leads these new claws, Soul Hunter?’
    ‘Honour duels,’ answered Faroven, wearing a similar ceremonial helm to Xarl. The winged crest dipped as he nodded. ‘We should commit to honour duels. The victors lead the seven new C laws.’
    ‘Honour duels are for the weak and fearful,’ said one of the scarred veterans nearby. ‘Murder duels should settle an issue of leadership.’
    ‘We do not have the numbers to bleed away in murder duels,’ replied Carahd, leader of Faroven’s claw.
    Arguments broke out among the gathered squads, each seeking to shout the others down.
    ‘No one is reaching for a weapon yet,’ Xarl said quietly, ‘but give it time, and we’ll be wading through a bloodbath.’
    Talos nodded. This had gone on long enough.
    ‘Brothers,’ he said. He kept his voice coloured by nothing but patience. Sure enough, one by one they fell silent. Eighty helms regarded him, variously painted with skulls, Nostraman runes, crested with high wings, or darkened by battle damage. To First