Deathwatch Read Free

six and ten. I’ll want to know the moment something changes.’
    Two grudging yessirs came back at him. The captain had never liked Korren and Hayter much, and he was not above demonstrating it.
    He dropped back into his chair and rested his chin on a clenched fist. Brindle still stood beside him. The captain waved him off, gesturing for him to go and rest at his station. The first officer moved away. Before he had gone five metres, however, Captain Sythero called out to him again.
    ‘Inquisitors are just men, Gideon,’ he said. ‘Just men and women like you or I.’
    Brindle turned, but his eyes did not meet his captain’s. They rested on that macabre icon still glowing from the nearest screen.
    ‘I don’t think so, sir,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they’re like us at all. But if we’re lucky, we’ll never find out the truth of it.’
    Those words hung in the red gloom long after Brindle had returned to his chair. Captain Sythero turned them over and over in his head. Commanding a system defence ship, even all the way out here on the fringe, had always given him a sense of power, of importance. Four hundred trained men and women under his command. Forward weapons batteries that could level a city in minutes or cut through a battleship three times the Ventria ’s size. How easily this Inquisition had come along and stripped him of that, ripped it away from him like a gossamer veil.
    How had they shut him down? A Centaurus level override, the voice had said. Did that mean override codes had been pre-written into the ship’s systems? The Ventria was a vessel of His Holy Majesty’s Imperial Navy; it didn’t seem possible. But if the overrides had been broadcast from an external source, a ship somewhere in-system, why hadn’t the long-range auspex arrays picked it up? They had full-scan capabilities right out to the system’s edge and beyond.
    If the override codes had been broadcast from another ship, the implications of them falling into enemy hands were, frankly, terrifying.
    I can’t abide this. Naval Command needs to be told. This undermines every capability we have. To hell with the warnings. As soon as the override lifts…
    Four hours and twenty-seven minutes later, it did lift. The Ventria ’s primary systems came back online. Colours other than red flooded the bridge as if erasing a murder scene, restoring life, noise and activity. Cogitator screens and vocaliser units started churning out status reports and statistical data. The control pits buzzed in a frenzy.
    Sythero thrust forwards in his chair and called out, ‘Brindle, open me a two-way with the Ultrix . I want to speak to Captain Mendel at once. And make sure it’s bloody secure.’
    ‘Aye, sir,’ said Brindle, punching the relevant runes.
    A pale-skinned old man in a crisp Naval uniform soon appeared on the main display above Sythero’s chair. He was clean shaven, with craggy features, and his white hair was oiled back smartly. A dark scar, legacy of a past wound, traced a path from his forehead down to his left ear. This was Mendel, captain of the Ventria ’s sister vessel, and Sythero read on his face that the old man had known this call was coming. Typically a forceful and vigorous man despite his years, Mendel looked unusually weary now. There was no formal greeting. The old man simply held up a hand and said, ‘Please, captain. If you’re about to ask what I think–’
    Sythero cut him off. ‘Tell me the Ultrix hasn’t just spent the last four hours in some kind of blasted lockdown!’
    Mendel sighed and nodded. ‘We just got all our primaries back online, same as you.’
    ‘And that’s all you’ve got to say about it? For Throne’s sake, Mendel. What’s going on here? Someone out there has override codes that leave two Naval warships completely defenceless, and you don’t seem ready to do a damned thing about it. We could have been cut to pieces already. What’s gotten into you, man?’
    Mendel looked off to the