The wolftime, p.4
The Wolftime, page 4
‘Seldom has butchery been so easy,’ boasted Lenthe as he eviscerated a thrashing defence trooper. Unsheathing his claws from his victim, the Night Lord waved a hand towards the gutted and decapitated corpses littering the corridor. ‘Their defence seems ill-prepared and random. Had they met us in force, the challenge would have been greater.’
‘They are weak because they do not understand the nature of their foe,’ crowed Keslos, jump pack bright as he landed next to Ektovar. ‘They reckon not with the power of the terrorstorm.’
The defenders had indeed been sporadic in their placement and reaction, but Ektovar retained enough sense amid the thrill of the hunt to question whether it was incompetence or design. The terrorstorm – its concealing, demoralising miasma – was certainly something the hivers would never have encountered before, rendering their layered defence more vulnerable. But he hesitated as the others moved towards the half-closed security gate ahead of the squad.
‘It is not the humans that guide this, but the hand of the Misguided Son,’ he said to his companions. He felt the last juddering escape of the soul from the corpse at his feet and paused to feel its presence slide through the dark fog that permeated his flesh. ‘There will be a counter-attack.’
‘We should signal the main force to begin the assault,’ said Keslos. ‘Their sudden attack will crush the spirit from the survivors and dull the cut of the enemy’s riposte.’
‘We shall be the point of the blade driving deeper, with their weight to push us on, direct for the heart,’ said Elizir.
Ektovar knew of what his companions spoke. The terrorstorm could feel the cold knot of the Emperor’s Space Marines behind the lines, waiting for their moment. Greyness descended on his senses as the bodies cooled around him and the dread of their departure flittered away to be absorbed by the semi-sentient mist.
‘Do it,’ he decided, despising the emptiness in his soul, its gnawing at the edge of his awareness. ‘The Dreadmaster shall descend and we will lead the way.’
He cut open the ironwork of the gate with two swings of his glittering blade and stepped beyond, while his vox crackled with the effect of long-range transmission from Elizir. Just a few dozen yards ahead the next enclave of defenders waited, surrounded by the probing appendages of the terrorstorm. He felt discipline there, a solidity that had been missing from many of the defenders.
He would enjoy breaking it.
The corridor was too low for his jump pack so Ektovar swept forward with long strides, carried along by the warp miasma. His sword left a trail of pale blue energy in his wake, occasionally flickering into a bright arc as the energy earthed through an exposed lumen or power conduit.
Sharper than any auspex, the terrorstorm showed him the way, guiding him from the main passage to a smaller access corridor. His wings scraped sparks from metal-clad walls as he ran along the ducting, hunched slightly to avoid the cable-lined roof. The maintenance tunnel brought him out into the hall where the Imperials waited, several dozen yards above them.
Ektovar burst through a rusted grating amid a billow of blackness. His jump pack responded to his desire like the wings of a bat, spiralling him down towards the panicked defenders as tatters of the storm wreathed his descent.
More than fifty troopers manned makeshift barricades built across the hall, blocking two exits. A bellow from one of them drew his eye – a commissar in burnished carapace armour and peaked cap, a power sword in one hand and pistol in her other.
Ektovar’s bolt pistol barked, picking off the soldiers around his chosen target, isolating his prey. From behind him the others opened fire, explosive rounds illuminating the stunned expressions of the troopers with brief flares of yellow. The plunging warriors knew instinctively what their leader desired, and directed their own attacks to other parts of the defensive line, the wall of overturned furniture, dismounted doors and piled ration boxes no barrier against vertical assault.
Panic swelled like an undercurrent, rising to meet Ektovar as he swooped. His next bolt took the commissar in the ankle, turning booted foot and lower leg to a ruddy mess, toppling her with a sharp cry. Yet there was only pain there; the schola-ingrained stoicism of the commissar was like a fortress protecting a golden treasure just out of reach.
Her mind was not like that of a Space Marine. The iron will of the Emperor’s sons was cold and dry, bereft of nourishment. The commissar’s mental walls were thick but not impenetrable; prising them open would be a delight in itself, to eventually release the delicious morsel within.
Gaius’ squad turned east, heading towards the left flank of the counter-attack. The ferrocrete floor cracked under the pound of their tread, the plasteel-lined walls reverberating like an immense war drum. The sound of gunfire ahead had quietened but there were still screams of fear and cries of pain in plenty.
Gaius checked the auspex feed from the receiver in his forearm. ‘Multiple signals half a mile away,’ he confirmed to the squad.
‘Augurs confirm secondary enemy wave incoming. Respond as necessary but maintain strategic objectives,’ Brother-Lieutenant Astopites ordered over the vox.
‘This is it,’ said Gaius, looking at his companions. They ran so fast along the corridor, the lumens seemed to strobe across their blue-grey armour. He held up his chainsword and brought the teeth into snarling life.
He remembered a line from the book and gave voice to an old battle cry as the Sons of Russ charged into battle.
‘Vlka Fenryka!’
Chapter Two
HE PROTECTS
SACRIFICES
RIGHTEOUSNESS
The beetle was about the size of Orad’s thumb, long-legged and with a dull green shell. He had never seen one like it before, among the many different insects that made the ship home. It must have come across with the attackers. He watched it crawl out of a split between the bulkhead and the deck, pattering a few inches at a time, antennae twitching ferociously. Every now and then it found a morsel too small for Orad to see, its mouthparts working on something picked from the deck.
Orad wanted to reach out and flick the creature away but there was no strength in his body. Every muscle was past aching and into the realm of total numbness. His brain was in a similar place, dulled with fear and fatigue, to the point where it took all his effort to focus on the bug.
It skittered over dried blood and stopped next to the mashed face of Rossi. White bone poked through the mouldering flesh, pale maggots and ants stripping the dead meat one tiny mouthful at a time. Orad felt sick as he looked into the empty eye sockets of his former gun captain, trying to remember if Rossi had been blue-eyed or brown-eyed. He wanted to roll over but the discomfort would be even greater, and the view no better: the other side of the turret was where Moaro’s remains were slowly decaying.
It had been habit to come back here, and a mistake. Tired thoughts, exhausted limbs, had carried Orad back to the familiar. Except it was no longer familiar, but a horrifying nightmare twisted from his life before.
Lamposa from gun sixteen had said they were orks but Orad had shouted at her for believing in children’s stories. Now he was not so sure. The green-skinned monsters could well be the diabolis from the deep void that had plagued the likes of Lord Solar Macharius and the other Imperial Heroes, whose exploits Orad had listened to so avidly from the preacher when he had been growing up.
Orks.
If orks were real, then what of the witches of the eldar and the horrors of the tyranids? Were they real too? Just who had they been firing their guns at in those battles?
But if the wicked beasts were real, that meant the heroes were as well, right? Commander Dante and Commissar Yarrick, Herak Nhuson and Corvin Severax, Canoness Jasmine and General Creed.
And he had loved the stories about Great Wolf Grimnar and his Space Wolves. Those, at least, he knew were true. They had been told the Rigorous was on a special mission as one of the fastest ships in the Fleet Solar. They were on their way to fabled Fenris, carrying something that would help the Great Wolf in the war against the heretics.
Panic gripped Orad. They were not headed for Fenris any more. What of the treasured cargo they had been carrying? Two whole squads of Space Marines had been brought aboard to protect it, such was its importance. Coldness seeped through him at the realisation that the Space Marines were now dead. Had any survived, or the half-mechanical guards of the tech-priests, the orks would not rule the lower decks.
They had failed in their mission and whatever it was the Great Wolf needed would not arrive.
The main deck door opened with a noise of misaligned gears and scratching metal. It had been a matter of days, maybe a week, it was hard to tell, and already the orks – yes, they had to be orks – were having an effect on the ship. Nobody polished anything. Nobody oiled anything. Nobody ran the checks on the electrical systems or said the prayers of appeasement to the plasma conduits that ran from the aft reactors to the foredecks. The Rigorous was enslaved too and treated every bit as poorly as the humans that had once crewed it.
A whip cracked and a guttural bellow rang down the corridor.
Orad tensed, his body remembering the touch of that barbed thong on his shoulder. With a groan, he pushed himself up and stumbled out of the turret. Others, about three dozen of them, were down here with him, but this was just where they snatched a few hours’ sleep; most were from elsewhere on the ship. He really wished he had the strength to drag the bodies somewhere else, or the wit to find another place to collapse. Perhaps next break he would.
They fell into line, eyes downcast, none daring to meet the red stare of their enslaver. Smaller greenskins chattered and laughed and pointed at the gunnery crews as they shuffled out of the gun deck towards the midships stairwells. It was twelve floors up, just the first leg of a will-sapping trek to the main deck, where they laboured by hand with scores of others to remove the debris that trapped the brutal ram-prow of the ork ship in the spine of the Rigorous.
When they were done, when they were no longer needed to free the two conjoined ships, what then?
Orad hoped it would be death, because the alternative was just too sickening to contemplate.
‘Scream… Scream for your Corpse-Emperor.’
In Ektovar’s fist the commissar’s sword looked more like a knife. The point was lost in the thickness of the loyalty officer’s coat, but blood ran down the blade from where it pierced her side. Ektovar slid it a little further, pushing between the ribs towards the lung.
‘Scream for Him to save you.’
Her contempt hammered at the Raptor as ineffectively as her weakening fists beat against his lightning-coursed armour. Every blow, both mental and physical, was lit with a flame that only Ektovar could see. His stormsense flared with her touch.
‘A believer,’ he whispered, tongue flicking at the thought. ‘Your faith is strong.’
The commissar sneered, her gaze daggers from beneath the peak of her skewed cap.
‘I will break it,’ the Raptor growled, leaning close. The commissar’s resolve faltered, just for a heartbeat, rewarding Ektovar with a sliver of doubt. It was nothing, barely a taste in his mouth, a fragrance in his nostrils, but it served to reignite his hunger. He had been feeding on ashes until now. The need for satisfaction, to feast on the hot terror of broken faith, coursed through him. His warplate creaked as it tried to replicate the shudder of desire that gripped him.
‘He protects,’ growled the loyalty officer.
Ektovar pushed the commissar’s blade an inch deeper, eliciting a groan of pain. With his other hand he took off the woman’s cap and tossed it aside, revealing dark hair cropped almost to the scalp. A gauntleted hand caressed her exposed cranium, stroking the fuzz of hair. He tried to imagine the sensation but could not recall anything of softness, of warmth. There was only the need to fill himself with the dread of others, to serve the terrorstorm.
His fingers gripped her skull, pushing together with irresistible pressure.
‘You will die alone and unremembered,’ he wheezed through the vox-unit of his armour.
‘The Emperor protects,’ the commissar said, lips curling back from her teeth.
‘He is not here,’ Ektovar told her. He leaned closer still so that he eclipsed all of her reality, his batwing-flanked helm filling her vision, fingers of the terrorstorm coiling and sliding across her sharp cheeks and thin lips. ‘The Perfect One shall own this place soon.’
‘The Emperor protects.’ The woman’s words lacked her prior conviction, spoken in rote. Ektovar’s desire rose as her weakness grew. She was so close to breaking. So close to becoming his. His fingers tightened and bone started to fracture.
‘Scream for me,’ he said, ripping the sword from her flank. ‘I want to hear your terror. Scream for your corpse-god.’
‘The Emperor protects.’ Her eyes were dulling. Not from blood loss or brain damage, but catatonia. A surge of apprehension flooded Ektovar.
‘No, no, no,’ he growled, flinging away the officer’s sword. ‘Look at me. See me!’
‘The Emperor protects,’ muttered the commissar, the words coming softly.
Her walls were dissolving but the flame behind them, the dread Ektovar desired, was guttering as her sanity fled, taking away the fuel of her fear. The emptiness in his chest clawed at him, thrashing through his soul as it demanded sustenance. He was almost there. Ecstasy was just a heartbeat away if only he could stir one last surge of dread from the woman.
‘Scream, you craven filth!’ he shrieked, standing, picking up the commissar by the neck. She dangled without resistance, murmuring her platitude.
‘The Emperor protects…’
The moment was gone. Like a flood of cold water, his unsatisfied need tore away his breath, choking and painful.
With a wordless shout, Ektovar hurled away the offending wretch, her body spinning through the air before breaking upon the barricade. He stood for a moment, unfulfilled and dazed.
‘Talon leader!’ Keslos was insistent, as though he had been demanding attention for some time. ‘The enemy are coming.’
‘Let them come,’ Ektovar growled. There would be no more delicacies of dread. The Space Marines had no fear to give. A different feast was coming. Pure slaughter would have to assuage his desires now.
The gunship fuselage moaned and rattled around Gaius but he did not hear the strain of atmospheric entry. His attention was focused on the book Mudire had given him. His Cawl-created brain could assimilate data at a rate far faster than an unaugmented human, but instead he wanted to revel in every detail of his gift.
He stared at the frontis page. A scrollwork graphic marked each corner and his eye followed every curl, noting the tiny differences between them. It had been originally hand drawn, he realised, the artist’s fingers not quite tracing the same arc for each embellishment. A hair’s width of variation, but plain to Gaius’ eyes. Each minor deviation had later been replicated upon the printing press that had churned out these volumes.
How many? he wondered. Mudire had not said that the tome was rare, but it had taken him several months between Gelsepllan and Caldon IV to acquire. How many had been printed, and how many remained, over nine thousand years later?
He examined the print, the paper, the remnants of glue on the spine left from where the cover had fallen off. He felt its weight, almost nothing to his enhanced strength, and wondered whose hands it had passed through before coming to his. The historitors were tasked with not only unearthing the lost past of humanity but also recording the current history as it unfolded. The book was a link from then to now, and Gaius would be its conduit to the future.
Mudire had been right, it was not of his gene-father’s birthplace. The connection was not absolute, but the author of the book had been there, they had written these words and somehow, across the vagaries of the Age of the Imperium, while Gaius had slept in a methalon-induced coma, the volume had made its way from owner to owner and place to place until it had come to him.
He opened the pages at random, subconsciously noting the change in tone of the wind whistling past the dropping gunship, understanding that they were below the twenty-mile altitude mark now, give or take a few hundred yards depending on local atmospheric pressure. The rest of the squad were talking – Gestartas was leading them in battle-prayer – but Gaius barely heard them, repeating the words without thought.
‘Ten minutes to landing. Zone compromised. Combat landing protocols in effect.’ Lieutenant Astopites made his way between the seated Primaris Marines, speaking in time with each deliberate step. ‘Swift dispersal. Mark targets for each other. Secure perimeter without delay.’
In five seconds, the brother-lieutenant would be turning down the row of benches where Gaius sat. Personal effects were not contraband – several of his battle-brothers had taken kill trophies and campaign souvenirs from the previous battles – but Gaius felt oddly coy about Mudire’s gift. He read the frontis text again before slipping the book into the extra pouch he had hooked onto his belt.
Wolf Wildes
By Charles of Baden.
The People, Places and Customs of Fenrys;
The Fortress of the Russ-sons; Traditions of the Rout.
A drawn-out rumble announced the detonation of the seismic charges that had been placed within the upper mile of the hive by martyr teams during the Night Lords’ bombardment. Their positions had been pinpointed by the tech-priests using complex formulae, causing overlapping waves of disruptive energy to create rebounding energy cavitations in the molten slurry caused by initial melta blasts.
