The Warmaster- Part 2
@the-fluffy-underbelly
Three: And Back
"‘It’s quite distinct,’ Spika said, sadly. ‘Number two drive. There’s an arrhythmia in its generative pulse. The modulation is out of step. There. There. There. There.’" Well, that's not a good thing to hear in a ship.
"‘The Master of Artifice,’ he said, ‘prefers the theory that it is micro-particle damage taken during our approach to Salvation’s Reach – ingested debris. This theory has some merit. The Reach was a particularly dense field.’" There were a ton of bits of metal floating around. More once they blew shit up.
"They’d travelled non-stop since departing the Reach, except for one scheduled resupply halt at a secure depot, Aigor 991, a week earlier. It had not gone to plan. Resupply was urgently needed: the raid had expended a vast quantity of their munitions and perishable supplies, but they’d been obliged to abort and press on without restocking. Gaunt was reluctant to make another detour. He wanted to reach their destination as fast as possible." That's not good. If they run out of food and other supplies, they're screwed.
"‘Is there anything,’ Gaunt asked the shipmaster, ‘which suggests to you that luck follows the occupants of this vessel around on any permanent or regular basis?’" You've lived this long. You survived Gereon. That should mean something.
"Ice had formed in some places, glazing the walls, and unexpected hotspots trembled their haze in others." It seems like the warp causes this by just being in it. Great. Great place to be. Love it.
"The light strings, glow-globes and wall lamps flickered at what seemed like a too infrequent rate, as if power was intermittent or struggling to reach the extremities of the ship. Bad odours gusted like halitosis from the air-circ vents: the rank stink of oil and grease, of sump water, of stagnant hydraulics, of refuse and badly draining sanitation systems, of stale cooking, of unwashed flesh, of grilles overheating because they were clogged with lint and soot and dust." All the smells that build up when nothing's cleaned well and years go by.
"Gaunt often forgot how hard his new eyes could be. He hadn’t meant to discomfort an officer as loyal and dependable as Obel." Oops. Well, that'll happen when your eyes are robotic and vaguely glowy.
"The implications of the drive problem troubled him, and the aborted resupply on Aigor 991 played on his mind. Major Kolea had encountered some form of the Ruinous Powers that seemed to be hunting for them. It had claimed to be the voice of Anarch Sek, and it had demanded the return of something called ‘the eagle stones’." Oh, right, I think the resupply mission is in a short story that got published in an anthology before this came out, back in 2017. I'll have to track it down.
"Gaunt looked down. It was Yoncy, Tona Criid’s little girl. She clutched his knees and grinned up at him." That's adorable.
"‘Not a conscious one, no. But while she’s an innocent child, everyone is her father or her uncle or her aunt. It’s how she copes. How she feels safe.’" Maybe it's just that. Or maybe there's some psychic influence. Which, in this universe, is nothing good.
"High above, the company’s mascot, the ceremonial psyber eagle, flew from roof girder to roof girder, squawking from both beaks." The fact that they have a literal two-headed eagle is still weird for me, for some reason.
"‘Dah,’ she replied, holding up her hands in distaste. ‘Formality is discipline.’" Is she Russian? Are the Verghasts Russian suddenly?
"Before the raid, Trooper Costin, a chronically unreliable soldier, had been found guilty of death-benefit fraud through the Munitorum’s viduity allowance. It had seemed an especially repellant crime to Gaunt. Someone had made large amounts of money by exploiting the regiment’s dead and fallen. Costin had been killed before his associates in the fraud ring could be identified." On purpose, of course. Meryn had the door closed on him and his fellows so they'd die there.
"Gaunt had considered it more than once. He wanted to show respect for Tanith tradition, and he felt that certain names – Corbec, Caffran and Bragg, for example – should never be far from him. He’d felt it even more for Dorden." He'd had a hell of a list, though.
"It did. It really did. Except it didn’t for a snake like Meryn, a man who had previously displayed absolutely zero company sentiment or sympathy for his troops." At least Gaunt's aware Meryn's terrible.
"Gaunt felt a sting of jealousy, but he could hardly complain. His own nights were filled with another woman, and Ana knew it. If there had ever been any sense of them waiting for each other, Gaunt himself had crushed it." Yep, you fucked it up first! Maybe you shouldn't have slept with whatsherface.
"He’d always held back from Ana Curth, partly for reasons of regulation and decorum, and partly because he believed that he wasn’t really the sort of man any decent woman would need or want." So you inflicted yourself on whatsherface? (Also, this sort of comes out of nowhere. I don't remember him thinking shit like this before. More that he just had other priorities than a relationship.)
"‘So, what?’ Curth asked. ‘Meryn killed Costin before he could roll?’
‘No, of course not–’" Uh, yes. That's exactly what happened.
"‘I just don’t have enough skin,’ he said." Ah, yes, that is the reason.
"Their relationship had been generally and robustly physical. He understood his attraction to her. Her face had been augmetically modified to resemble that of Merity Chass, so as to reassure Felyx. Gaunt had responded to that on an instinctive level." Why? You boned once, over a decade ago. For fuck sake.
