The wolftime, p.3
The Wolftime, page 3
Fear had enslaved twelve worlds more swiftly than any occupying force.
Astopites continued, breaking Gaius’ chain of thought.
‘The Night Lords’ scans, perhaps even that filthy warp tech shadow they unleashed, must certainly detect our presence. It is to tempt us into premature engagement that the traitors are making such a show of slaughtering our allies.’ A sudden pause in the lieutenant’s tempo gave the impression of a similar pause in his steady tread, about three yards to Gaius’ right. ‘Remind me, Brother-Sergeant Faulkstein, why our allies are deployed to the front when we might hold the line ourselves?’
Astopites was as painstaking in his briefings as he was everything else. He firmly believed that his field-company, such as it was, would go on to be the glorious officer corps of the future. To that end he briefed them thoroughly on all strategic decisions and encouraged his Primaris Marines to tactically improvise when necessary.
‘The Night Lords rely upon morale-sapping attacks, swiftly initiated and moving from target to target,’ Faulkstein replied, repeating the lieutenant word for word. ‘The disposition of our allies will blunt the enemy’s momentum and draw them into a disadvantageous and divided position. We will counter-attack when they are at their most vulnerable.’
‘And not a millisecond before,’ Astopites concluded. ‘No matter how many of the Emperor’s servants fall. To act earlier jeopardises victory and would be a waste of their sacrifice.’
Planetary governors, ruling councils and Imperial commanders had been so terrified of the Night Lords bringing their warriors that they had willingly spread the fear themselves. They had reason to be fearful: the Night Lords were hated and dreaded almost as much as Abaddon, especially along the Iron Veil, which had been subjected to many raids over the millennia. Ten thousand years of murder and torture were warning enough that the Lords of the Night did not make idle threats. Every violence and humiliation they said they would visit upon dissenters was backed up by millennia of proof. Every capitulation had hastened the next, as each world sought to comply and pass the threat along the Iron Veil, on to their neighbour.
If that first world – Endlespin – had stood firm and called for aid the Night Lords might have been undone. But the lord regent had not blamed the Imperial commanders.
‘Selfishness is the companion of fear,’ he had said. ‘The cataclysm of the Cicatrix Maledictum has made every system feel as though it is fighting alone against the darkness.’
The battle group had been tasked with liberating these systems from the bloody-fingered grip of the Night Lords, to bring hope to the Iron Veil. Lord Guilliman had sent them off with sound words.
‘Fear multiplies when not confronted, gaining strength when unchallenged because its true potency is never tested.’
Gaius and his brothers were here to challenge that fear, just as thousands of others did likewise across the broken Imperium.
The energy of the terrorstorm flowed through Ektovar, filling him with vitality just as the stacked crystal reactor in his jump pack powered his warplate. He was the storm, feeding it the horror of his foes while it sustained him in return. Its flaring embrace caressed his armour; its driving hunger filled him with desire, stoking the emptiness of his soul until it was ignited by a fire of need that could only be sated with rapturous slaying.
As one of the Darkstrike it was his honour to be at the forefront of the attack, becoming the maw of the terrorstorm as it fed on the dread of the hive occupants. For too many days he and his midnight-clad companions had waited in orbit, poised to unleash their heavenly slaughter yet held back by the tight leashes of their masters. Day followed by endless day, dry and dusty, the life-thirst unslaked and growing. Every passing hour an agony of wanting, until he had felt the first hint of soulwash as the sorcerer Ke’Hiva channelled the misery of the Emperor’s lackeys, becoming the conduit for the terrorstorm.
At first the wave of sudden shock and panic had buoyed him up, sending jolts of pleasure through Ektovar even before his blade tip had pierced flesh to release the blood of his victims. The Darkstrike attacked like flesh-feeders in the underlakes of night-wreathed Nostramo. Striking quickly, they butchered without art, while their senses reeled with the influx of despair.
Once the edge of his desire had been taken off, Ektovar started to seek more particular morsels. Gifted the dreadtaste by his binding to Ke’Hiva, the Raptor followed the undulating curves of fear that rippled through the living fog that had carried him and the others to the hive city. Moans and sobs, the sickly sweetness of hormone release, the flicker of movement in his peripheral vision confirmed the presence of new prey.
A las-bolt glanced from his chestplate, the spark of it bright red among the white and pale blue energies coursing over the ancient ceramite. He retraced its trajectory, desire rising, but Felskas found the cowering woman first, the wings of his pack obscuring Ektovar’s view as her whimpering became a howl of despair that sent a quiver through the storm and Raptor alike.
Ektovar moved on, filtering one scent from another, following the strongest spoors of fear-hormones. In blackness he moved, forked tongue flickering at the air passing through the adapted vent of his visor.
With silent bounds, the Raptors sought their prey. With them came umbral companions, flitting along the ebony fog bank that forced its way through cracked ferrocrete and seeped along fractured pipes. From the questing fingers of the terrorstorm Ektovar caught a surge of synthetic hope – cortical stimms to improve reasoning, to quench the fear. Coming out into a broad, semicircular hall, the Raptors were met by a sudden hail of las-bolts and the slower, deeper thud of an autocannon. Just behind Ektovar, Serius cried out amid the cracking of armour and snapping of wings.
‘Ruinbrother,’ he wheezed across the vox as Ektovar ignited his pack and leapt towards the muzzle flare of the heavy weapon. ‘My flesh ails. Sustain me!’
Ektovar felt the spirit of his dying Darkstrike companion like fingernails scratching at a door, insistent and demanding. He swatted the psychic pulse away as if ridding himself of distracting flies. He had been starved too long, he would share his meal with no other.
A couple of seconds later Serius realised he would die, scorned by his ruinbrothers, alone in the darkness. His own fear spiked and within moments Nordra and Elizir fell upon their wounded companion, ripping his fear-tainted breaths from his lungs as snarling chainswords opened his armour and body, suckling on his last despair.
Firing his ornate pistol, Ektovar landed among the hive defenders, his boot-talons raking the face from one gunner, the pommel of his sword smashing open the head of another. The autocannon collapsed as he alighted, its tripod buckling beneath the weight of armour and occupant. Perched upon the crumpled metal, Ektovar allowed the fog to roll back, revealing himself before his true victim. The shrieks of the faceless gunner crackled across the Raptor’s senses and lightning flared over his armour in response. But the trooper’s fear was tainted with raw pain, innervating but not satisfying.
He turned on the officer commanding the defence platoon, bedecked in a long grey frock coat with a silver breastplate bound tightly over the thick fabric. Not a commissar, but still a worthy morsel. An Imperial aquila was moulded into the armour and Ektovar briefly wondered if the Corpse-Emperor enjoyed the same thrill of completeness from those He consumed.
Ektovar fixed the lenses of his helm upon his prey, letting the man see himself in their blood-red mirror. Defiant, the officer lifted a basket-hilted blade and pistol. The Night Lord allowed him a shot, a blast of blue careening from the side of his helm that brought a surge of hope from the Imperial lackey – a hope that made the spike of fear that much greater when the Raptor let out a shrill cry and pounced.
Gaius was not enamoured of strategic thought, beyond what he needed to know to kill traitors. As sergeant of his squad, his focus was more localised, trying his best to create an effective fighting unit for every situation. His task had become harder in the recent months of fighting against the Night Lords, with only himself and three other members of his squad as survivors of the unit that had originally deployed with Fleet Primus; over that time eleven other Space Marines had fought and died at his side.
The Night Lords had been unwilling to engage in a massed battle, but rather than abandoning their victim-worlds back to the Imperium they had instigated widespread uprisings, which had turned what should have been reconnection missions into bloody reconquests. Such was the hold they had on their prey, the vassal planets would rather face the wrath of the lord regent’s armada than a Night Lords punishment attack. The three Iron Veil worlds so far retaken had drawn away valuable fighting resources – Astra Militarum, Naval and Adepta Sororitas assets required to reassure the populations and their rulers that they were safe from Night Lords reprisals.
And then, after more than half a Terran year of evasion and raids, the Night Lords had come to Caldon IV in strength. That they had arrived while the task force landings from orbit were commencing could not have been coincidence.
‘Estimate one minute until counter-strike begins,’ Lieutenant Astopites informed the force, quiet and confident. ‘Final weapons check.’
As he revved the motor on his chainsword and slid his pistol from its holster, Gaius could feel the battle-eagerness growing inside him. Since the breakout from the landings he and his warriors had suffered enforced idleness, concealing their strength and conserving warriors and materiel.
Holkenved was the capital hive, seat of the Imperial commander, and had signalled its surrender to the Imperial forces even before they arrived in orbit. Yet it was an island among a sea of insurrection, the rulers of rival hive cities having thrown in their lot with the Night Lords and rebels to oust ancient adversaries. Now it seemed the Night Lords thought to crush all resistance, and reinforcement, with a single devastating attack. If Holkenved fell, Caldon IV would revert to the traitors and – as sure as snow fell on Fenris – the whole of the Iron Veil would be in open revolt again.
That could not be allowed to happen. The Lord Commander had been most adamant.
The people of Holkenved paid for their loyalty with their lives, as did any good servants of the Emperor. Ships were vital to the continuing impetus of Battle Group Retributus, while architecture and people were not. The command staff had feigned weakness, not wishing to scare away their enemies, dispersing the fleet as though fleeing attack. A predator acting like prey, playing dead. The gambit had meant less orbital support and Gaius could not help but wonder if Heindal and Gestartas would be alive if the landing zone had been targeted with a saturation bombardment prior to the drop.
Virtually unopposed, the Night Lords had targeted the hive from orbit. The void shields had failed on the second day, the defence lasers and missiles on the fourth. The further sixteen days that had followed served no military purpose but to ensure the total eradication of all life in the upper spires.
‘Bait,’ Captain Veirsturm had warned, when asked why the Night Lords were allowed to inflict such death and misery upon the hive city. ‘The hive is the young goat staked in the clearing, their assault companies are the arrow set in the bow poised to be let loose. They torture the people to draw our attack, and if we bare fangs too large for them, they will withdraw.’
The sergeant thought of the pict-grabs and vid-feeds that the lieutenant had used during the briefing. They had been intended for tactical assessment, but while Astopites had talked about the layout of passageways and damage absorbency reckonings of various materials, Gaius had fixed upon the hands jutting from rubble; the rictus grins on children’s faces covered with the ash of their parents; the walking wounded scrabbling at debris piles with bloodied fingers. The images both still and moving were silent, but cries for help, desperate moaning and noisy death had been the soundtrack of Holkenved for the past sixteen days, only drowned out by the thunder of starship shells and the irregular hiss of lance strikes wreaking more devastation.
Gaius’ grip on his chainsword tightened at the thought of bringing bloody reckoning. The idea that warriors created to be the cutting edge of the Emperor’s blade had been forced to hide behind a shield of civilians, Imperial Guard and defence troopers brought a bitter taste to his tongue.
Every day, every hour and every minute spent waiting would lend speed and strength to his arm when he was finally unleashed.
‘By squads, attack pattern alpha.’
The words the Unnumbered Sons had been waiting for issued across the vox from Captain Veirsturm.
The lead squads broke into a run, swiftly moving past Lieutenant Astopites. Gaius and his Intercessors were in the third line. Without a word they set off after another four seconds, fifty yards behind the squads in front. As he accelerated to combat pace, Gaius was aware of the smallest of weight differences at his hip, caused by the book he now carried in one of his ammunition pouches. Or perhaps it wasn’t the physical weight but the emotional burden that made him hyper-aware of his new acquisition.
A disruption to the routine of pre-drop doctrine caused a momentary ripple of disturbance across the muster deck. Gear checks and squad assembly perfected over thirteen previous drops suffered a second-long stutter as the gathered Space Marines each reacted to the foreign presence in their midst.
No remarks needed to be uttered for the intruder to be noted. An extra breath in the hymn. Movement where there should have been stillness and stillness where there should have been movement. Glances that caused split-second hesitation amid arming protocols. To anyone not a Space Marine, it would have been nothing at all of remark, perhaps not even felt. To Gaius it seemed like a sudden crash of unexpected percussion amid the pre-battle symphony; a discordance that grew as he realised it approached him.
A figure dressed in a simple grey military uniform, small amongst giants, picked his way over trailing refuelling pipes and charging cables that snaked across the muster hall floor. He glanced from one squad to the next, eyeing each carefully as though appraising a room of interesting antiquities, but to the transhuman senses of the occupants his nervousness betrayed itself in a dozen tiny ways.
The interloper stifled a flinch as Brother Kemi lifted a bolt rifle and sighted on him.
‘Just calibrating my targeter, historitor,’ the Intercessor said with a chuckle, lowering his weapon.
The adept smiled without humour and looked around, seeking his objective. He hurried forward as his gaze fell upon Gaius’ squad.
‘Historitor Mudire,’ the sergeant said with a nod of greeting. ‘What brings you to the muster? Are you going to be dropping with us?’
There was a hesitation as Mudire mastered an involuntary twitch.
‘As much as I appreciate the thrill of plunging towards a war-torn planet with my fate entrusted to a few inches of armour and the timing of a retro rocket, regretfully, no,’ the historitor said. He took a moment before continuing, blinking quickly as he regained his train of thought. ‘After Gelsepllan… When you… When that…’
He swallowed, eyes sliding past Gaius as memories took him elsewhere, lips forming a grimace.
‘When I saved your life, historitor?’ prompted the Primaris Marine.
Mudire nodded, focusing again on Gaius. His gaze flickered to the sergeant’s shoulder pad and Gaius recalled that it had been his pauldron that had taken the brunt of the fusillade when he had shielded Mudire during a heretic ambush on Gelsepllan.
‘You asked if we had anything about the world of your gene-father,’ the historitor said brusquely. ‘Something “authentic”, you said, which would link you back to those ancient times.’
‘Great Cawl gave us much during our long sleep,’ said Gaius, raising a gauntleted finger to tap the side of his head. ‘Facts and figures. Verified stories. Accounts and reports. Nothing…’
He could not find the words for what he sought: a connection beyond mere genetic manipulation and historical data. He spread his fingers and approximated a shrug that made his armour whine.
‘Spiritual?’ suggested Mudire.
Gaius nodded even as he heard the grunting laughs of a couple of his squad-brothers behind him.
‘It is not primary, as a source,’ said Mudire, reaching into a satchel. He brought forth a book that was small but thick, the pages yellowed and worn, the cover missing. ‘But it is almost contemporary to the time of the First Founding.. And though the tone is a bit convoluted and archaic, it requires no translation.’
‘I look forward to reading it on our return,’ said Gaius.
‘It’s for you,’ said Mudire, thrusting the book forward, suddenly awkward. ‘For… A gift. I have come to know myself a bit differently since Gelsepllan. Perhaps it will help you know yourself too.’
Gaius looked at the outstretched hand and the thin paper ruffling in the vent breeze.
‘This is unnecessary, historitor,’ he said. ‘I performed my duty, nothing more.’
‘I have some influence in the ranks of the historitors,’ Mudire said, straightening, his gaze hardening. ‘It took considerable effort to retrieve this for you, as a sign of my gratitude. It would be impolitic to refuse. Consider it an award, a commendation from my organisation.’
‘Impolitic, you say?’ said Heindal, moving up beside Gaius. ‘You’d best take it, brother-sergeant, or Mudire will complain to the Lord Commander.’
Mudire’s stare was unwavering. He still held the book out in a steady hand. Gaius took it and read the details on the frontis page.
He smiled.
‘It is perfect, historitor,’ he told Mudire. ‘Thank you.’
Fear was infectious, leaping from one weak mind to the next, coursing through unseen veins of mutual need. As one line of resistance toppled, the resolve of the next was weakened, the taint of dread followed swiftly by the assaults of Ektovar and his companions. The shrill death cries of the Emperor’s slaves, baying howls of the Raptors and unearthly keening from the storm-spirits carried the contagion of terror into the minds of those ahead.
