'Helm, seven degrees pitch to starboard! Number three's misbehaving again. Deal with it.

Lucian Gerrit, rogue trader, turned his back on Raldi, his helmsman and resumed his vigil at the bridge viewing port. His vessel, the heavy cruiser Oceanid, felt cold to him. The after-effect, he knew, of so long a voyage through the empyrean to reach this far-flung system at the very border of the Emperor's domains.

A jarring shudder ran through the deck plate, felt in the bones more than heard.

'If you can't compensate for a grizzling plasma drive, Mister Raldi, I can always disconnect one of the waste ingestion servitors and see if it's capable of making a better show of it than you appear to be. Do I make myself clear?

If the helmsman answered, Lucian wasn't in the mood to hear. Though a ship to be proud of, the Oceanid was long past her prime. Even in a space-faring culture in which vessels remained in service for centuries, even millennia, she was old. Her homeport, Ariadne Halo, had fallen to alien attack in Lucian's great, great grandfather's time. All her sister ships were distant memories. She was the last of a long line. Much like Lucian himself, in fact.

Where once a deck crew of dozens had attended to their stations in the crew pit, now half of Lucian's crew were hard-wired servitors, each mumbling an impenetrable catechism of the Machine-God. Vacant-eyed and drooling, each monitored a single aspect of the vessel's running. Vessels such as the Oceanid relied on their like, for many tasks were beyond the abilities of a man to perform. Yet, over the years, the availability and quality of competent crewmen had diminished to such an extent that Lucian was forced to rely on servitors. Though essential in many roles, the hideous machine-corpse custodians were no substitute for a man when it came to obeying orders in a crisis. Each knew only its allotted purpose, and would remain tethered uncaring to its station even were it to burst into flames.

Raldi, one of the men of flesh and blood, rather than carrion and oil, onboard the Oceanid, called out. 'Sir, we're beginning our ran on the rendezvous point. Provided we don't pick up any ionisation we should be within hailing range.

'Well enough, helm. Keep her even.

Once more, Lucian took in the view beyond the armoured port. The nameless star, recorded merely as QX-445-2 on the star charts, cast its wan light, barely illuminating a thick corona of misty stellar dust. Somewhere within that befogged region lay Lucian's destination, the system's only inhabited world: Mundus Chasmata.

Before making planetfall on that forgotten backwater of a port, however, Lucian had first to gather about him his flotilla. The cruisers Rosetta and Fairlight were due to enter range at any moment, but any number of fates could have befallen them whilst traversing the unreal dimension known as the warp. The least of such fates was delay, the worst was too terrible to ponder.

'Surveyor return at three twenty by nine sir! called a junior rating.

Lucian strode to his command throne and sat, reclining in the worn leather seat from which generations of his predecessors had directed the fortunes of the dynasty.

'Punch it up'

A servitor, its eye sockets replaced by data ports from which bundles of cable snaked and writhed, bobbed its head once in response. Half its cranium was replaced by cybernetic implants, the right side of its brain, associated with creativity and emotion, having been cut away, deemed unnecessary by its creators. At an unheard command, the bridge lights dimmed and a revolving green globe of light, criss-crossed by motes of static, sprang into being before the command throne.

Grainy points of light resolved themselves into distinct features. At the hologram's centre sat the Oceanid, all around her banks of pale green and jade stellar dust clouds. Deep within one such bank the position of Mundus Chasmata was indicated by a crosshair, her moons dancing around her. To the Oceanid's stern, an indistinct smear indicated the distant return.

'All engines to idle. Fore thrusters to best speed. Thirty-second burn on my mark.

Lucian's words were relayed through the deck crew to the entire ship. Within seconds, the omnipresent rumble of the Oceanid's engines changed pitch, deepening to a subsonic drone as sweating engineering crews nursed them to idle.

'Mark.

A mournful siren pealed throughout the vessel, echoing down dark and dingy companionways. The mighty banks of retro thrusters mounted either side of the armoured prow coughed into life. The titanic force of the deceleration caused Lucian's head to pitch forward. Raldi barely won his fight to remain standing.

'Station nine! Why aren't the compensators on line?

The servitor at station nine, the position responsible for monitoring the Oceanid's gravitic generators, opened its mouth and squealed a response in garbled machine language. The engine pitch deepened and the bridge lights flickered before Lucian felt the gravity field fluctuate, compensating for the deceleration.

'Better' growled Lucian.

The retro thrusters ended their burn, and with the main plasma drives idling, the Oceanid was eerily quiet. Previously unheard, the groaning and creaking of the ship's metal skeleton was now plainly audible.

'Station keeping please, helm. ordered Lucian, and stood once more, hands clasped behind his back. Now the vessel was still, the hologram grew clearer. Where a single, garbled return had indicated the presence of another ship, or ships, that blob now resolved itself into five, then four, then two distinct points. Hard machine language yammered from the baroque grilles around the base of the projector, and in a moment, a stream of text flowed beside each of the two points. The noise ended at the same instant the text froze. The word 'Rosetta' flashed next to the lead return, 'Fairlight' next to the second.

Lucian released a breath that no one other than himself would have known he was holding. Though the last leg of their voyage had been upon a relatively safe course, warp travel between systems was rarely without incident. That both vessels had evidently arrived simultaneously was testament to the skills of their Navigators, for time within the warp bore little or no relation to that within the physical universe. Every mariner, from the most veteran of ships' masters to the lowliest rating, was well versed in the tales of ships setting out, to arrive at their destination mere weeks later yet having aged decades. Other tales told of vessels that had arrived many centuries late, having spent mere days within the warp, while others still told of vessels arriving before having even set out. The life of a space mariner was one filled with superstition and ritual: they clung with nigh religious fervour to anything that might belay such bad luck.

'Station three, open a channel to Rosetta.

The servitor at the communications station croaked a vaguely human-sounding response, and angry static flooded the bridge address system. Machine noise broke through the static, a random staccato that would establish a secure communications channel synchronised with the systems of the other vessel. A second series of harsh bleeps cut in, the two streams flooding the bridge with arrhythmic machine nonsense. The servitor at station three turned a brass dial, and the two code streams converged until they burbled and gargled in synchronisation.

…id. Repeat, this is Rosetta hailing Oceanid. Holding station at primary rendezvous point, awaiting your response. Repeat, this is-