The Burden of Loyalty

by Various

  ‘Slower,’ ordered Gunn. His hearts were hammering now, his eyes fixed on the prize. The Delta was a similar size to Ragnarok, and the two immense vessels – one burning, the other undamaged – dwarfed all others in immediate range. ‘Not yet...’

  All his remaining guns angled aft of the Alpha Legion battleship, slicing past its rear thrusters. The final salvoes of torpedoes were launched along the same trajectory, snaking impotently towards Delta’s hindquarters. It was trivial for the Alpha Legion navigators to keep their ship away from such erratically aimed dregs – all they had to do was hold station, hovering just under the curve of the blood-red clouds and raining more accurate fire down on the approaching Ragnarok.

  But holding station was all Gunn required of them – a ranged firefight was not what he had in mind. ‘Now, everything!’ he roared. ‘Everything!’

  The jump in power was instant. The Ragnarok had sacrificed all else to give itself one last boost to the plasma drives – a final surge, its spine aflame, its weapons gone, its shields flickering out, but still with just enough brute mass to endure the desperate barrage from its target.

  The Delta saw the danger too late and tried to move, but it was hemmed in, trapped against the inner wall of the gas clouds, caught ahead of the arriving Alpha Legion ships, and blocked below by the rapidly closing mass of Ragnarok. The two monsters hurtled towards one another, one flaying its engines in direct-line speed, the other twisting awkwardly to evade the collision.

  Gunn drew in a deep, satisfied breath, seeing the outcomes narrow down. He watched as the Delta’s flanks filled the forward oculus – rank after rank of raging macrocannons, huge overhanging plates of sapphire hull-sections, the hydra icon of the enemy picked out in bronze and verdigris.

  ‘I still serve,’ he whispered.

  Ragnarok’s prow crashed into the Delta amidships, plunging through its outer shields with a rolling crack of dissipating energy fields. The entire bridge slammed over, tilting hard. Armourglass shattered, the floor thrust up and the remaining thralls were thrown from their stations. Aesir was crushed as one of the supporting pillars came down across him, while Skrier was lost in a riot of explosions down in the servitor pits. Lord Gunn alone kept his feet, staring up at the carnage overtaking both ships.

  For all its incredible mass and momentum, Ragnarok’s charge was not enough to break the Delta apart. Its prow lodged deep, grinding to a halt amid the twisted glut of melded decks. The ­Delta’s own powerful engines kicked back, and the snap and boom of macro-charges announced the imminent arrival of boarding parties.

  All of that, though, was now useless. The Ragnarok’s charge had not been launched with the aim of destroying the Delta, but to push them both into the looming tunnel’s edge. As Gunn’s bridge began to fold in on itself, the first blush of crimson rushed across the­ ­Delta’s trapped flank, gnawing at the reactive shield cover.

  He began to laugh, taking pleasure in the kill. He was alone now: his crew slain, his throne consumed by fire, his domain imploding. A cluster of cables swung down from the roof, spewing sparks that skittered and bounced across the deck. From below, he heard the booms of the superstructure coming apart, consigning any still alive to the chill of the void.

  It had been enough. The engines still burned, disconnected from his control but raging with their inferno hearts, shoving both ships into the embrace of corrosion. He imagined the panic spreading on the Delta, cascading from deck to deck. He imagined the fury of the commanders, and the scrabbling, futile search for teleporters before all was lost.

  ‘No time left,’ he said out loud, savouring the knowledge.

  Ahead of him, witnessed through the jagged edge of smashed armourglass viewers, the Delta was clawed apart, its outer shell oxidised and its soft innards burst into pulp. Something huge detonated – fuel lines, perhaps, or a shield generator – and a tide of unleashed fire swept from stern to bow, breaking up hull plates as it travelled. The entire structure shivered, and deep explosions blew out from its heart. The spine broke, folding around the Ragnarok’s onward trajectory like a crumpled fist.

  Tangled together, the two void-titans tumbled deeper into the consuming haze, their hides bubbling and bursting, their bowels igniting. By the end, Gunn could see nothing but the walls of his own kingdom collapsing in on him. Pillars crumbled, arches disintegrated, view portals clogged.

  But Gunner Gunnhilt knew. He knew, as his own ship crushed the life out of him, that he had driven his enemy into the blood-well and destroyed them both, and that in the apocalypse of their mutual annihilation the rest of the fleet had been given just a little longer to evade their own reckoning.

  So he had served. In the end, given all vows, that was all he had ever wanted.

  ‘For Russ and the Allfather!’ he roared, smiling, as the darkness took him.

  The Hrafnkel hurtled along the winding capillary, its shields flaring as it scraped the edges of the devouring shoals. Ragnarok’s sacrifice had given them a start, but the Alpha Legion did not slacken the pursuit. Russ drove the remains of his fleet mercilessly, flogging their engines harder and pushing them deeper down.

  Their progress was visible on the tactical schematics – a strung-out line of battleships, bereft of formation, corkscrewing in procession as they raced further into the cluster. More had been lost on the turn, to the Alpha Legion’s forward guns or to the ravening cloud banks, but the core had held, bolstered by the backbone given by the Nidhoggur, Fenrysavar and Russvangum. Hrafnkel had pulled to the fore, its Gloriana-class engines still potent despite the horrific damage they had taken.

  Bjorn could only watch. He had no control now – the captured Iota Malephelos was commanded by Godsmote, and still burned along with the rest of the fleet. It was a wretched sight: the VI Legion, limping ahead of destruction, its warships a motley mix of the looted and the crippled.

  And in all of that, with all the rush and race, he had still not asked the question of his primarch.

  ‘What do you hope to find in there, lord?’ he asked.

  Russ, absorbed in the command of his flagship, barely acknowledged him. ‘Find in there?’ He pursed his lips. ‘Guesses.’

  Before Bjorn could press him further the blast doors at the rear of the bridge hissed open. Kva burst in, followed by his two Runewatchers, who between them dragged the bloodied body of a VI Legion warrior.

  ‘Lord,’ the Rune Priest announced, ‘you will wish to see this.’

  As he approached, all those on the command dais – Grimnr, Bjorn, Russ and the others of the Legion’s honour guard – instantly sensed the wrongness. The half-conscious warrior looked Vlka Fenryka, but he smelled like nothing of the kind.

  Russ gazed down at the captive. ‘Kva,’ he said. ‘What have you dredged up?’

  ‘The First Legion,’ replied the Rune Priest, pulling Ormand’s chin up and exposing his face.

  Russ drew closer. Ormand stared up at him blearily.

  ‘And what are you doing on my ship, Dark Angel?’ asked Russ, sounding genuinely curious. ‘You are a long way from home.’

  Ormand coughed, and blood flecked his lips. ‘Not so far, lord.’

  Russ’ eyes narrowed. ‘Then what dwells here? You know this?’

  ‘I have seen your fleet data, lord,’ said Ormand. ‘I have seen your damage-tally. I know what pursues you. Frankly, I do not think you will live to see what dwells in the Alaxxes Nebula.’

  Russ smiled. ‘Just like your gene-sire,’ he said, fondly. ‘Arrogant skítna.’

  Freki sidled close, snickering. Russ was about to ask him more when the forward scopes suddenly streamed with fresh data. The Hrafnkel’s shipmaster called out, and routed the new sensor readings to the overhead tactical lenses.

  ‘Lord,’ the shipmaster reported, ‘the tunnel ends.’

  All eyes snapped to the pict screens. The twisting gas tube was giving out, opening up. A
long way ahead, the walls of churning cloud fell away, spreading into a broad bowl. Soon it became apparent that the gulf was vast, far larger than the chambers they had already passed through. Long-range augurs beamed images of a lightning-bound sphere within the depths of the cluster – an abyss, ringed by distant walls of the ship-burning plasma. Mid-range augurs plumbed less than a third of it – the rest gaped away, a world-sized lacuna, circled by fire.

  All knew what that meant. The perilous safety offered by the closed-in world of the cluster had ended, and they were headed back into a space big enough for many fleets to deploy.

  Russ looked at the data grimly. A flicker of confusion marred his grizzled features, as if some promise had been broken. He looked at Grimnr, at the shipmaster, then at Kva.

  ‘So Gunn was right,’ he said, dryly. ‘There is no protection for us within. Send out word to the fleet – on my mark, turn to face the enemy.’

  He could never look entirely unhappy, not with the prospect of battle, whatever odds remained. He reached for Mjalnar, ignoring the Dark Angel.

  ‘No more running,’ he said. ‘We make our stand here.’

  IV

  Once inside it, the inner gulf stretched out around them. The gas clouds pulled back so far that it looked almost as if the fleet were back in the open void. Course-correction orders were given again, cascading down command levels, spilling out from the centre and into the bridge of every frigate and gunship carrier. Exhausted navigation crews responded again, dragging more power from their overstretched engines, keying in murderously tight response times and pulling back into new defence patterns.

  There was no time to enact a proper defence. Russ roared out his orders, drawing up his forces in the best approximation of a holding formation – the four remaining capital ships in the centre, underpinned by the cover of their surviving strike cruisers. Two rapid-reaction forces, each six destroyers strong, drew up on the flanks, primed to streak forwards on command with the aim of breaking enemy clusters as they formed up. A long miscellany of less capable ships, mostly missile-boats and corvettes, hung back as a reserve, bolstered by the captured Alpha Legion craft. Together with the remnants of the frigate squadrons, all of which were deployed either at the zenith or nadir to prevent outflanking, the VI Legion prepared itself for the coming impact.

  It hit them just as the final ships were sliding into position. The Alpha Legion had not fallen far behind, despite Lord Gunn’s holding manoeuvre at the intersection. Two wings of hydra-marked frigates powered into the gulf, lances already firing. They were followed by more frigates, then strike cruisers, battlecruisers and finally the heavy battleships, six of them, clustered around the Gloriana-class Alpha – a monster in sapphire and gold, impregnable amid its tight web of interlocking support craft.

  The assault was fast, hard and overwhelming. With no physical constraints on any axis, the Alpha Legion scattered wide, unravelling into a classic encirclement manoeuvre. Gunships streamed from open hangar bays, whole swarms, tumbling as they dropped into attack vectors. Forward lances opened up, sending spears of ship-killing energy crunching into void-shield arrays.

  In seconds the two fleets had hit full engagement, tangling into one another, rotating and coalescing. The major battleships became islands of stability around which riots of destruction radiated. Squadrons of attack craft were immolated by single broadsides, their blasted shells smashing into bigger hulls at full speed and scattering debris along the baroque flanks of their killers. Every vessel operated at full capacity, hollowing out their last reserves of shells and torpedoes, filling the vacuum with a maelstrom of spiralling wreckage.

  The Hrafnkel dominated the centre of the Wolves’ line, wreathed in a steady corona of suppressing las-fire and flanked by its hard-pressed strike cruiser wings. Unlike the other battleships, which held steady at their allotted sectors, it thundered up through the heart of the battlesphere, smashing aside any minnows too slow or too clumsy to get out of its path.

  On the flagship’s bridge, every Space Marine had helmed up and drawn weapons. Over a hundred of the Rout’s warriors were assembled there, spread among its many levels and terraces. Every mortal crewmember had donned a rebreather and strapped on carapace armour, dull grey under the low-level combat lighting.

  ‘That is the target,’ breathed Russ, watching as the Hrafnkel cut its way towards the looming Alpha. The enemy flagship wallowed in an expanding ring of smouldering ship-shells. Already it had accounted for two attack frigates, their hearts ripped out by the volume of lance-fire before they had been able to respond. ‘This time he will face me.’

  All those assembled on the bridge knew the risks, saw the danger, and approved. They had tried to avoid a pitched engagement for as long as possible, knowing they could never win it, but since one had been forced upon them the only option was to go for the throat, to tear out the neck of the enemy Legion’s master. Alpharius had so far not shown himself, even in sham, but Russ had always been convinced his brother was somewhere in the enemy ranks, marshalling the campaign from the safety of his hidden throne.

  The flagships powered closer to one another, smashing aside the waves of lesser craft that piled in to slow them, their void shields cascading in whirls of colour as incoming fire slammed into the hull-lines. Hrafnkel’s bridge trembled as each of its guns fired in rotation, cycling madly through the last of the ammunition reserves. The ship was tearing its own innards out, spewing them up and spitting them in raw defiance at the horde of en­emies that circled, stabbed and goaded it.

  ‘Seen enough yet?’ asked Russ sardonically, turning to the Dark Angel who still stood beside him. ‘Or did you only come here to watch us die?’

  Ormand now held his stance unaided, but was clearly still in no condition to fight. ‘I have no power to save you, if that is what you believe,’ he said.

  ‘Then your presence here is a mystery to me.’

  ‘I only observe.’

  Russ turned on him, massive in his full battleplate, his fanged face hidden behind a wolf-snarl death mask. ‘Then observe this,’ he snarled. ‘Observe the way of death for the Wolves of Fenris. The serpent will fight his way to me now, as he smells weakness at last, but still he does not see the danger. We have nowhere left to go. They have run us down, and all we have is the corner.’

  As the primarch spoke, the Alpha swam up towards them in the forward viewers. The flagship’s huge bridge oculus, its facets cracked, showed the immensity of their opposite number, towering ahead and above them, holding station like a raptor in the high airs, secure and inviolable. Its weapon banks had already opened up, hurling waves of projectile fire at the Hrafnkel’s flame-backed hide, making the void shield coverage flex and spit.

  ‘Flay it!’ roared Russ, knowing that all power had already been fed to the forward weapons array.

  Hrafnkel’s lance punched out, sending a lone beam cracking into the Alpha’s prow. The strike was good, smashing across the thick hull armour and diving deep within, but it did nothing to halt the battleship’s trajectory.

  When the return strike came, it was withering. Every one of the Alpha’s undamaged batteries opened up in unison, flooding local space with flame and making the viewers go white. So many strikes hit their mark that Hrafnkel’s hull sensors overloaded and screamed nonsense readings to the station operators. The entire ship keeled over, thrown out of its barrelling run by the massed impact. The bridge shook, rocked by cracks that shot up from the deck to the dome, swayed by explosions that surged out of every fractured power line and energy conduit.

  ‘Steady course!’ bellowed Russ, still on his feet, his great frostblade in hand, raging at the ruin around him. ‘Return fire!’

  As the words left his mouth there was a secondary explosion from several decks down, one that made the plasteel beams under them swell. The fore void shields gave out in a scream of static, exposing the deeper black of the unbarred void.


  A second later, in a move that had clearly been planned, the eye-watering sting of teleport energies filled the bridge, followed by the hard bang of air displacement. A hundred warp-spheres burst into being, clustered around the far end of the bridge chamber. Each one exploded in a shiver of hoarfrost, revealing a Terminator-armoured warrior within.

  The entire bridge exploded with bolt-rounds as both sides opened up with all the weapons they possessed. The Terminators were immediately deluged in shells, launched from every kaerl, every adept, every Wolf. The invaders fought back with murderous efficiency, striding through the storm of bolts and bullets, letting their heavy armour absorb the punishment before doling out more of their own.

  ‘To me, Vlka Fenryka!’ Russ thundered, charging down from the dais, his voice ringing with black fury. ‘Slay swift!’

  Bjorn was already running, weaving through the hurricane of shells to get to the enemy. There were thousands of armed mortals on the bridge and almost a hundred Wolves, but the Terminator-clad adversaries more than had their match. They had come to sever the wolf’s neck, to cut off the head and let the body wither.

  Bjorn vaulted over a disintegrating comms-pillar, ducking down into the servitor pit below as return fire whistled back at him. Then he was up again, firing from his own bolter while his lightning claw blazed from its disruptor field. He closed in on the first enemy – a monster in scaled Tactical Dreadnought plate laying down a bow wave of auto-cannon fire that was pulverising everything in its path.

  Bjorn got a volley of bolts away; they clanged into the enemy’s gorget and made him reel. Bjorn pounced after him, slicing with his claw to rip out the enemy’s stomach. The Terminator matched the blow, lashing his power fist around and slamming Bjorn bodily out of his path. Then he turned the cannon on him, coolly aiming at his helm to finish the uneven contest.

  But the barrels never spoke – the Terminator was ripped from his feet in an explosion of silver and flung five metres back, crashing along the deck with a squeal of gouged metal.