‘Seven light years short of Clarion-Sigma,’ said Praxa­medes, mentally picturing the sector map. ‘Only barely halfway to our destination after experience-relative seventeen days of travel.’

‘And thirty-nine days actual temporal shift,’ added Aeschelus.

‘You must understand the scale of the task you ask of us,’ said Kosa. ‘I have told you before that you cannot use travel determinations that were calculated before the coming of the Cicatrix Maledictum. That we have traversed any spatial distance at all is remarkable, given the warp conditions through which we have been travelling.’

‘Oh, you want praise instead?’ said Aeschelus. ‘Perhaps you would like me to despatch honours to the lord commander for your efforts?’

Kosa said nothing but glowered at the captain’s suggestion.

‘You gave assurances that as your experience with the conditions improved, so too would our jump distances,’ said Praxa­medes, sitting himself between the captain and Nem­etus. ‘That seems to have been an error.’

‘No, I stand by the promise,’ said Kosa. ‘We are getting better, but you need to understand what you have been asking of me and my kin. The whole galaxy is in such turmoil that our charts are almost meaningless. Even the light of the Emperor, the holy Astronomican, is sometimes shrouded from us by the intensity of the storms that engulf the Imperium.’

‘We are not alone in this experience, and yet other battle groups, other crusade fleets, make speedier passage than us,’ said Nem­etus.

‘You are being too cautious,’ said Aeschelus. ‘We make little progress because you drop us back from the warp after such small jumps.’

Kosa laughed bitterly, a finger moving to fidget with the rings through the lobe of her left ear. Her yellow eyes regarded each of them for just a moment before settling on a spot somewhere on the wall behind the captain.

‘Cautious?’ Scorn dripped from the Navigator’s tone, unlike anything Praxa­medes had heard from her before. ‘We travel across the greatest upheaval to the warp that has occurred since… The chronicles of the Navis Nobilite go back far indeed, to the only other time that the Imperium has been so sundered. A product of the vilest sorcery, it was known as the Ruinstorm and it heralded the near-destruction of the Emperor’s domains. Not for five hundred generations has it been more perilous to cross the othersea. If you think we are cautious, it is an accusation I am happy to bear, Captain Aeschelus.’

‘Caution did not win the Heresy War,’ growled the ship’s co­mmander. ‘Caution will not push back the forces that besiege the Imperium now. Caution will see us stranded and isolated while our enemies close their grip on all that they hope to steal from the Emperor.’

‘And still I would not plunge us headlong into the fastest course to save a handful of days, and risk the ship arriving at all.’