The wolftime, p.5
The Wolftime, page 5
A structure the size of a hive city could not be brought down by munitions alone, but with the destruction wrought by the orbital attack, the upper spear had been sufficiently weakened. Tens of thousands of tons of rockcrete and plasteel shuddered apart as the bombs pulsed out their devastating waves. Just thirty seconds after the Imperial strike force’s Librarians had felt the second, main wave of Night Lords warp-jumping into the attack, the entire upper spire collapsed in on itself, sending streams of molten metal and avalanches of debris plunging another mile into the interior. The enemy were below the devastation but any route back to orbit was blocked. Naval and Space Marine ships that had been ghosting back towards the world on minimal power now erupted into full life, spearing towards the rear of the traitor vessels in orbit.
Opening fire on the first Night Lord he saw, Gaius felt the tremble of detonations and smiled with grim satisfaction. This time there would be no retreat for the Night Lords.
‘Squad Lupus-Six engaging enemy, sector four-delta,’ he reported, pulling the trigger again to send a second bolt slamming into the midnight blue armour of his target. The flicker of more shots from his companions and from Squad Ferritus to the right caught the traitors in a blaze of crossfire.
The traitor assault squad responded immediately, their jump packs coughing crimson flame as they launched themselves along the hall towards Gaius’ warriors. Darkness swirled with them, coiling around the leaping Space Marines. Gaius opened fire a third time, tracking his target as the depraved renegade reached the zenith of his leap about twenty yards up. The explosive bolt tore off a shard of wing, spinning the Raptor off course.
‘Purge them all!’ Gaius roared, firing again and again, his pistol following the plummeting traitor, chainsword ready in his other hand.
His brothers-in-battle shouted too, their righteous calls echoing from the high walls along with the snarl of jump packs and bark of bolt-rounds. Days – weeks – of frustration flowed away, Gaius’ pent-up rage becoming a white-hot energy that guided his limbs. Where the Unnumbered Sons fired, the darkness recoiled from the rounds, leaving vortices of clear air criss-crossing the large hall. The Night Lords fired in return, the muzzle flare of their weapons ruddy in the fog that concealed them. Gaius felt an impact on his right pauldron, the bolt deflected before it exploded. More hit Anfelis at his right, leaving a trail of cratered ceramite across the Primaris Marine’s chest and helm.
Shrieks and callous laughter added to the cacophony as the enemy assault squad descended, their voxmitters blaring hate like a weapon. Gaius’ auto-senses briefly squealed in protest and then dulled his hearing, moments before the lightning-wreathed traitors crashed into their attackers, pistols snarling and claws shining. Nasdr and Enforfas both went down in the initial attack, helms cleaved open, their attackers sweeping over their falling bodies to leap at those behind.
Armour charged with snaking infernal energy, a traitor thundered to the ferrocrete floor half a dozen yards in front of Gaius.
‘Target front,’ the sergeant barked, opening fire. Anfelis and Doro added their bolts to his, engulfing the enemy Space Marine with a barrage of detonations, shards of ceramite flying from the impacts. Another concentrated volley ripped apart the warrior’s breastplate as he tried to bound forward.
Gaius charged, matching his chainsword’s roar with his own.
A wayward shot from his target flared past his left shoulder. In the next moment the Primaris Marine was upon his foe, the churning teeth of his weapon plunging into the traitor’s exposed chest as he landed, barrelling him backwards with the momentum of the attack. Gaius raised a foot and stamped on the falling traitor’s helm, driving it into the hard floor. He stomped again even as he twisted the chainsword through hearts and lungs, ripping free its blurred blade in a spray that anointed his armour with the dead heretic’s thick blood.
A whine of alarm from Gaius’ warplate alerted him to an incoming threat – not a projectile but a Night Lord hurling himself full-thrust across the hall. Taloned boots ripped up chunks of ferrocrete as his landing became a sprint, sword arm crooked for the attack, baroquely ornamented pistol blazing bolts towards the Primaris sergeant.
Gaius was already moving to the left even as the new threat registered in his conscious thoughts. Everything was sharper than ever; every colour, sound and scent picked out with exact clarity. His savagery came with a feeling of elation he had not felt before. Rather than fight the battle-rage, he let it flow, throwing himself towards his new foe.
The Emperor’s new warriors were faster and stronger than any Imperial Space Marine Ektovar had slain before, but they were stilted and predictable in their movements. His ruinbrothers shared millennia of experience, working as a predatory flock more than a military unit, while the servants of the Misguided Son were a programmed pattern of interleaved aggression. Like the terrorstorm that carried them, his squad were a fluid mass, ever-moving, churning around their statuesque enemies as a wave breaks past pillars of rock, eroding with multiple flicks of blades and well-placed bolts rather than single killing blows.
Something caught his eye amid the blistering turmoil of close combat: a blur among the warriors in blue-grey that moved slightly differently. Backhanding his blade into the thigh of a warrior fending off the claws of Nordra, Ektovar powered out of the crash of blades and thunder of bolts, his jump pack carrying him quickly towards this new prey. He landed at a run, ready to slip aside from the incoming volley to drive his sword at the warrior’s throat. No bolts came: the Space Marine threw himself into a counter-charge, voxmitters thrumming with a bass growl like that of a hunting cat.
Taken aback, Ektovar barely skidded aside. The whirring teeth of his enemy’s chainsword flashed with pale energy as lightning flickered from the Night Lord’s storm-clad armour to crackle along the weapon, leaving scraps of ceramite from his helm flying in its wake. All hunger was gone, sharpened by the more sudden threat of his enemy. He saw himself reflected in the lenses of his opponent’s helm, a shadow of storm and lightning, red eyes gleaming.
For the first time in centuries he remembered himself as he’d been. A Night Lord. Raptor. He had stormed the walls of the Emperor’s Palace and been the death of thousands of foes.
The other Space Marine stood in a half-crouch, poised to attack, ready to defend.
‘Your time is over,’ said the Emperor’s lackey, taking a step.
‘You are too late,’ sneered Ektovar, circling left, watching for any hesitation. There was none. ‘The galaxy is already ours.’
With a roar, the upstart charged.
The warrior of the storm flowed like oil, as if becoming part of the shifting miasma. Gaius ignored the darkness and the creeping tendrils of energy within it, focused on two things: the pair of red eye-lenses and the sharp gleam of the power sword’s edge. The latter flicked out, teasing, trying to force him backwards, but Gaius would not be herded like livestock. He was a hunter, even more than this thing of shadow and lies that confronted him.
A snarl of irritation erupted from the billowing smog. Gaius’ training commanded that he prepare his defence but a deeper instinct overrode it, pushing him into the attack with chainsword raised.
The gleam of the traitor’s power sword was blinding as it speared towards Gaius, burning brighter than the lightning scrawling across his foe’s armour. It sheared through Gaius’ chainsword, scattering razor-edged teeth and ceramite housing. Even so, the parry was enough to deflect the blow onto Gaius’ pauldron, the curve of the shoulder guard sliced flat but no worse.
As he let the remnants of his blade fall from his fingers, Gaius’ other hand smashed the muzzle of his pistol into the faceplate of his enemy, just below the ruddy eyes, buckling the fang-like grille. His finger tightened and for an instant the red wings that splayed from the Night Lord’s helm were joined by a spray of crimson.
Dull warplate crashed to the floor, dark and inanimate, jump pack wings buckled. The fog receded like clouds in a strong wind, leaving nothing but ceramite, plasteel and dead flesh.
Ten thousand years had passed since the Night Lord had broken his oaths to the Emperor. Ten millennia of preying on the weak, of recanting on every ideal of the Legiones Astartes. No more. All the lies, the betrayal, the death and suffering had brought the traitor nothing. Any power he had possessed was gone, leaving nothing but a mortal’s carcass. There was nothing spiritual here, no higher purpose. Just selfishness given form, enslaved to insane powers bred of jealousy and fear.
Gaius felt a rush of exhilaration at the thought that an evil so long-lived had been ended at his hand. Through him and the many thousands of the Unnumbered Sons, the blight of the Traitor Astartes would be expunged forever.
Chapter Three
CHAMPIONS OF FENRIS
A HEARTHEGN’S DUTY
BETWIXT DEFEAT AND DEATH
‘By the Allfather, this place is filthier than a throggor’s drop hole,’ moaned Torfin. The Daggerfist lifted a bulky foot, the systems of his massive Tactical Dreadnought armour groaning as they compensated for the imbalance. Thick sludge sloughed off the blue-grey ceramite like a discarded snake skin. The air was thick with microscopic spores and the stench was enough to permeate the filters of Arjac Rockfist’s helm vents.
‘Keep moving,’ growled the Great Wolf’s Champion, pointing forward with the gleaming head of Foehammer.
The azure glow of the hearthegn’s thunder hammer met with jade bio-luminescence from thick patches of fungi that clung to the walls and floor of the broad corridor. The meshwork underfoot was nearly covered with spore-belching nodules and slick mulch while ropes of dripping, tendon-like growths hung from the ceiling, patterning the armour of the squad with lines of filth as they passed through.
Behind the warrior Skor – named Oft-Shot by his peers for his propensity to push forward into the enemy regardless of other considerations – the other five Space Wolves of Arjac’s tactical command followed in staggered double file, along a passageway nearly fifteen yards wide. The sickly light was no obstacle to auto-sense-augmented sight, through which Arjac could see his squad in stark contrast, highlighted in his vision by a distinct aura. Each was a hulking mass of transhuman created by the alchemy of the Allfather and clad in an armoured suit equivalent to a battle tank. Though he could not see the blue-grey of their livery, the runes of their weregost and honours were clear as dark sigils on their sloping shoulder plates. Against a black pauldron each bore the glyph of the Wolf that Stalks Between Stars, the Upplandr Vathulf of the Great Wolf’s own company. Elsewhere, each wore a talisman bearing the sign of the Champions of Fenris, for such name had they borne before Logan Grimnar had been voted to command of the Chapter.
Even clad in half a ton of machine, the Fenrisian Space Marines walked with poise and purpose, weapons at the ready; the heaped furs and totems upon their armour made it easy to picture them in hunting garb tracking through broad ironoaks rather than advancing along a rusted, fungi-choked starship passage. They covered the ground at speed, using the momentum of their suits rather than fighting it. Passing openings, each trained their weapons towards any potential attack in turn, so that there was never any moment when their flanks were not covered by a warrior’s gaze. They moved constantly, like broken ice on a stream, one or another momentarily pausing to take up guard position or check the rear quarters while the rest moved on; never needing to utter a word of command or compliance.
‘Hold,’ warned Skor from the front of the line of Terminators. They assumed their defensive posture in a second. ‘Spore-pile.’
His heavy flamer added bright yellow to the illumination for several seconds. Alien things squealed and writhed in the promethium fires before turning to ash and grease. Cinders whirled around the Wolf Guard as he turned to move on.
The corridor they followed ran roughly north-west to south-east, with operational north having been established at the start of the mission as a point on the rim of the space hulk. Likewise, ‘up’ and ‘down’ had been designated at right angles to the general plane of the mass of crushed starships. By such reckoning, the squad advanced through the upper part of the colossal debris-beast, close to an outcrop in the eastern region formed by the jutting remains of an ancient bulk hauler. The rest of the space hulk comprised nearly two dozen ships, some of them completely lost within the interior, all encrusted with millions of tons of random stellar debris and bearing the scars of comet impacts and asteroid hits.
‘More orksign this way,’ declared Hrothgar, the beams of his suit lamps disappearing through an open silo door, swallowed by the massive cargo bay beyond.
Using the sensorium link of their Terminator armour Arjac could see through Hrothgar’s auto-senses. Wet boot prints led across the ferrocrete floor of the storage bay, and almost as many barefoot, dozens of them overlapping each other. Whatever cargo the ship had once held, it had long since been looted or disintegrated with age. As yet they had no clue where or when the ship had been lost to the tides of the wyrdverse before being caught in some cosmic storm and crushed into the rest of the space hulk. It didn’t show up on any registry accessible to the Chapter and they were still looking for a component vessel that might be recognised – a warship preferably.
‘Switch to thermal,’ Arjac told Hrothgar. A moment later the view turned into a swirl of dark reds and a few smudges of orange. The lighter colours followed the general trail of greenskin footfall but there was no other sign of heat sources within line of sight.
‘Hours old. We move on to the rendezvous.’
There was still three-quarters of a mile to go before the passageway met up again with its mirror on the starboard flank of the hauler, somewhere close to what had been the living quarters. Surveyor scans by the fleet had identified the area as a hotspot of life signs, along with several others. Being closest to the perimeter and surface of the hulk, the hauler had made an ideal breach point for the assault, but as yet the most dangerous foe the squad had encountered had been rat-like vermin the size of hunting dogs. Despite their grotesque growth, they had been easily crushed by hammers and cut apart with blades.
A burst of gunfire, immediately recognisable as storm bolter shots, echoed from somewhere to the left. Arjac listened to the report over the vox.
‘Heimdr’s squad,’ he passed on to the others. The shooting continued for several seconds, joined by unfamiliar reports and bangs. ‘Several dozen orks encountered.’
‘Lucky bastards,’ grumbled Torfin. ‘We’ve had nothing but skitja and vermin.’
‘Perhaps Heimdr needs help?’ Skor suggested expectantly.
‘Yes, let’s find out,’ said Arjac, much to the surprise of the others. ‘I’ll let you explain to the Great Wolf why we left our attack route and missed the link-up.’
Their enthusiasm audibly waned at the prospect. For several more seconds the only sound was the thud of footfalls and whine of heavy-duty servos. The sensorium link gave off a constant pip-pip-pip pip-pip-pip in Arjac’s ear, sounding like a heartbeat monitor. Gunfire rattled and rumbled infrequently, muffled by distance, while the murmur of the command vox filled his subconscious with a stream of updates.
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say the orks were afraid of us,’ said Skor. ‘I thought they relished a good battle.’
‘More than enough fighting to be done yet,’ Arjac replied. ‘Stay watchful.’
Ninety seconds later, Arjac’s prediction proved true and Skor’s wish was granted.
‘Multiple signals, incoming fast,’ warned Sven Halfhelm, who was bringing up the rear, as the sensorium came alive with augur returns. ‘Thirty… Forty… Fifty or more!’
‘Movement. Flanking on our left,’ added Arjac, teasing out more sensor readings from the background miasma of life signs that crowded his sensorium display.
‘Trying to cut us off,’ said Herjolf, pausing to turn to the rear so that Sven could move up to the squad. His storm bolter targeter feed flickered across Arjac’s vision but there was nothing within a hundred yards save the fungal gloom.
His attention was drawn to a voice across the company vox-channel, all other sounds dulling as the hearthegn focused on the words of the Great Wolf.
‘This is the attack, brothers! This is the moment we have waited upon. Give them the bolt-greeting and the blade-welcome with such hospitality as you have proven in our many years together.’
‘Not coming for us,’ said Arjac, pushing his suit to move faster. ‘Going around us, heading for the Great Wolf.’
He growled in frustration, inwardly cursing his armour for its slowness though he would never voice such discontent for its spirit to hear. Even as he forced stride after stride, he could see the mass of the orks to the left outpacing the Wolf Guard squad, while those behind were rapidly catching up.
Like a chunk of wave-battered cliff falling to the seas, a fragment of the sensorium smudge broke away, heading directly for Arjac’s warriors. It was clear they meant to intercept the Space Marines and delay them until the much larger force behind the squad could engage.
‘Arjac!’ Herjolf’s call drew the hearthegn’s attention to the other warrior’s view in a sensorium sub-display. Dozens of orks piled along the passageway behind the squad, many of them darting into the cargo holds to either side. ‘There must be access through the bay walls not shown on the scans.’
‘Like gnawing rats in the grain hall,’ snapped Skor. ‘Burrowing and digging holes everywhere.’
The sparkle of muzzle flare followed a moment later, followed almost immediately by the crash of crude guns and the rattle of bullets careening off the walls and ceiling, a few clattering from Herjolf’s armour as he stood rearguard.
The others had not been so headstrong in their advance and some twenty yards had opened up between Arjac and his companions when the ork interception force fell upon him.
