Wolfsbane

by Guy Haley

  Long ribbons of energised gas glowed across the straits. Faint at first, they grew more visible the nearer the ships sailed, sketching in the lines of conflicting rip tides. The vox was a squealing howl of competing stellar voices, angry pulses of natural radio waves that sounded, at times, as if intelligence lay behind their emissions, and secret messages were hidden within. The red light intensified. Never bright it grew thicker, until it saturated everything and wounded vision with its strength.

  Alarms blared. The Hrafnkel entered the straits proper. Shouting kaerls raised the opacity of the oculus' armourglass. Far-flung stars went out. The suns remained, darkly forbidding.

  The flagship groaned. It dropped and swerved, its course upset by the arguments of the twins. It ran the knife edge between two gravity wells, teetering one way then the other, threatening to slip down to fiery min. The activities of Russ' ship kaerls - off-worlders in the main, for the natives of Fenris were poorly suited to manning void ships - picked up tempo. They shouted their communications where before they were muted. The peaceful toil of the bridge took on the aspect of battle, but this time, physics itself was their foe.

  Electric squalls battered at the shields. Gravity fluctuations made the Hrafnkel yaw and dive. The ride was bumpier than an ice-rigged wolf ship riding over rocky beaches. They were deep in the straits now. The twin suns framed the edges of the oculus with their round bellies, the Hrafnkel so close to them that the internal temperature of the ship soared, and the gaseous fringes of the suns' photospheres writhed behind the darkened armourglass. Grimnr spat on the floor to ward off maleficarum. He was not the only one.

  'It is a vision of Hel,' he said. 'They are souls burning in torment.' A hundred and forty years Blackblood had sailed Uppland and been party to all the wonders of Imperial science. Superstition died hard.

  The fleet drove on, accelerating all the while. The suns pressed in, threatening to slam together and crush the ship. On the far side of the straits the cool safety of the void beckoned.

  'We're nearly through!' shouted an exuberant brother. The Long Fangs among the pack voiced disapproval.

  'You will bring misfortune on us!' chided one.

  'Never count on land before it is beneath your feet,' agreed Russ.

  The brother was chastened.

  'Too late,' said Grimnr. He made a warding eye on his forehead, curving forefinger and thumb into an oval. 'Wyrd has been challenged by his unwise words, and fate never backs down.'

  Klaxons sang out distress. Instruments all over the ship turned red, deepening the rubicund twilight of the stars shining through the darkened oculus.

  'Solar flare!' one of the kaerls at the auspectorium screamed. They felt it before they saw it, a great push of power licking out from Trisolian 2a. The vox crackled louder, bombarded by a particle sleet a trillion strong.

  Before the oculus' dimming properties reacted, the light in the bridge grew brighter. The flare passed close to the Hrafnkel's prow, like a fem or a whip slowly uncoiling. Its position and speed were illusory. It was a million kilometres ahead, it moved a hundred thousand kilometres a second. It was so enormous it warped perception. 'Brace for impact!' roared Grimnr.

  A fractal hand of starlight swatted at the void ships as if they were flies.

  Now the fleet took injury. A miscalculation saw a squadron of torpedo boats veer from the solar flare too steeply. Their trajectory put them hard into the fronds of its trailing side. Two were consumed instantly, their shields overloaded and hulls stripped back to the frame by roiling, multicoloured plasmas. The third was wracked by the flare's electromagnetic fields. Its light went out, its engines guttered to nothing, and it tumbled, powerless, towards the outer layers of the nearest star.

  Russ' kaerls moved to save it. They sent messages that could not reach it. They hailed ships that could not catch it. They looked at their lord expectantly, willing him to find a way.

  'Leave it,' said Russ, staring ahead. 'If we slow, we will lose more lives.' As he commanded, so he was obeyed. The ship was abandoned to its fate.

  The starboard star responded to its brother's entreaty, shooting out its own curling lash. In return, the first sent another, and so on, until the void screamed with burning atoms and the Vlka Fenryka flew pell-mell down a twisting gut of fire. Imperial ships were mighty tools of war, but nothing made by man can compete with a star, even ones so puny as the Trisolian binary. Instruments overloaded in showers of sparks, their circuitry fried by a surfeit of the Motive Force. The priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus moaned, and the Vlka Fenryka could not say if it was in fear or ecstasy. The cruiser Valhall detonated. A dozen escorts were overwhelmed. Void shields all over the fleet buckled under the attentions of the binary as they were beaten hard by stellar scourges.

  The punishment abated. The tremors subsided.

  'We're down to our last shield bank,' announced the kaerl of the aegis. 'The next one will tear us in half.'

  'Charge all the capacitors. I want every void generator operating at peak capacity,' said Russ. 'Take power from the engines. Strengthen the aegis.'

  A final blast of power from Trisolian 2b ripped away the blanket of energy protecting the Hrafnkel, leaving it exposed to the binary stars' wrath.

  'Stand by for hull impact!' yelled the kaerl of the auspex.

  The blow did not land. The fury of the stars subsided. No more flares burst from the spheres.

  'They have had their fill of violence,' said Russ. He relaxed his hands. They were gripping hard at the arms of his throne.

  As he pronounced those words, the Hrafnkel burst through the gravitic envelope, and sailed into calmer space. The drag of the suns lessened, and the fleet pulled free.

  Damage reports came in thick and fast. There had been many casualties, RUSH did not hear them. He had his eye fixed on the primary tacticaria. The main world of the system was an icy moon orbiting a gas giant. Seven large facilities were suspended high over its surface on tall, macro-sized tether-tubes. Around it, caught unawares, was the fleet of Horus Lupercal.

  'I count more than fifty capital ships. Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, Sons of Horus, World Eaters, Iron Warriors. By the heart of Fends, it's a feasting table of traitors. The whole lot of them are here,' said Grimnr.

  'They are spread across the system,' said Russ. 'We have them unawares.' He frowned. 'And my huscarl, this is only a fraction of Horus' forces. Can Horus really be here with such a poor fleet? The Vengeful Spirit, can you see it? Is he here? Find him!'

  'Yes, my jarl,' responded the auspex kaerl. Then, a moment later: 'I have it.'

  'Bring the Vengeful Spirit to prominence in the tacticaria,' said Russ.

  Auspex feeds were adjusted, and within the hololith's ball of light the Vengeful Spirit grew from an anonymous sliver of metal to a vast, space-borne fortress.

  'There he is,' growled Russ. 'Make all speed towards the Warmaster, my sons.'

  'Yes, my lord!' his servants responded.

  'Such a small distance,' said Russ. 'Close for the murder-make!' he commanded. Today, we shall see a reckoning.'

  Twenty

  Fury Of Fenris

  Friedisch was on shift when Cawl marched in and hauled him out from his work station by the elbow.

  'Domina Magos Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma wishes to see him,' he said to the supervising tech-priest. The man waved them out with a complete lack of interest. No one liked to go against the domina, especially now.

  Unlike Friedisch's place of toil, the corridor Cawl hustled him along was brightly lit, and Friedisch's human eye screwed up against the change in illumination.

  'What are you doing? Aren't you supposed to be seeing to your troops?' he said mockingly.

  'What's that attitude for?'

  'I never saw you as a warrior, Belisarius,' said Friedisch.

  'Are you jealous, Friedisch?' asked Cawl.

  'No!' said Friedisch, too fervently to be believable.

  'You're the one who was always pressing me to take up a specialisa
tion,' said Cawl. 'I've had one chosen for me.' 'Then why aren't you with the thallaxii?'

  Cawl glanced about to make sure they were alone I've taken an unauthorised leave of absence. 'A permanent one.'

  'You're not!'

  'I am,' said Cawl. 'I am leaving. I'm going to give you a choice Friedisch. I am leaving this system today.'

  'How?'

  Cawl bundled Friedisch into a servitor recharging bay. Six energy stands stood against the walls. Only one was occupied, the cyborg slumped in inactivity while its batteries drew power.

  'Aspertia has a needle ship. Small and fast, warp capable,' Cawl said.

  'I know she's got a ship!' said Friedisch snappishly. 'You can't take it.'

  'I can. It's called stealing.'

  'I know what it's called! You can't do it!'

  'Our kind steal knowledge all the time How is a ship any different?'

  'I'm going to get killed listening to this.' Friedisch made to move. Cawl shoved him into the wall.

  'You'll get killed anyway,' he said harshly. 'The Space Wolves are coming here. Now.'

  'The Space Wolves? The executioners?' said Friedisch quietly. 'Long-range scans picked them up twenty minutes ago. They'll be here within three hours, and they will kill us all. If they don't, being in the service of the Warmaster will. And I will not serve that traitor. Did you see him?'

  'But what are we going to do?' said Friedisch in a panicked whisper. 'The domina is still doing hourly sweeps for dissent.' He shuddered. 'She dissolved the last adept who showed signs of defiance in add. Oh, by the blood of the machine, we're going to get caught!' He gave the inactive cyborg a terrified look. 'She's got ears everywhere!'

  'No one can hear us!' said Cawl exasperatedly. 'Friedisch Adum Silip Qvo, I sometimes think you believe me an idiot. I have made sure no one will be aware of what I am saying to you. No one do you understand?'

  Friedisch slumped and nodded.

  'Serving Horus will kill us, or worse,' Cawl went on. 'Did you see his witch? Did you see him?'

  'I was not privileged enough to be so close as you,' said Friedisch. 'It was no privilege. Count yourself lucky,' said Cawl. 'Horus Lupercal is no longer human, of any son. Nor are his servants. I have seen them up close dear friend.'

  'He promised knowledge,' said Friedisch. 'Forbidden knowledge. Are you not tempted?'

  'Of course I am tempted. But sometimes forbidden knowledge is forbidden for good reason. We have to get out of this place.'

  'I don't know. Domina Aspertia says…'

  'Never mind what Aspertia says!' snapped Cawl. 'She's wrong. You can't serve creatures like Horus and profess the neutrality of knowledge. High principles are no defence against the kind of corruption Horus' service brings.' He gritted his teeth. 'Knowledge can never be neutral. She has fallen prey to the limitations of human thought.'

  'What do you mean?' said Friedisch.

  'She is convinced she is right, as everyone with an opinion is convinced they are right.' Cawl stared hard at his wide-eyed friend. 'The truth is, no one ever is. The assumption of truth blinds one to the shading of actuality. It's all subjective. We can only do the best we can, and she has made the wrong choice.'

  'The Warmaster is probably going to win, you realise that,' said Friedisch. He was already defeated, already giving in. 'He's going to take Terra. It might be better to be on the winning side.'

  Cawl punched his friend hard in the chest.

  'What did you do that for?' Friedisch said, shocked.

  'I'm knocking some sense into you, fool, it is probable that Horus will win,' admitted Cawl. 'But some things are too precious to be left to the whims of probability! If we all give in, he will win for certain. Every one of us that defies him lessens his chances,' Friedisch's eye narrowed. 'Hang on, if I decide not to come with you…' His gaze fell on Cawl's serpenta.

  Cawl gave Friedisch an angry, meaningful look.

  'Now I'm a murderer?' he said after a moment's uncomfortable silence. 'I'll rely on you keeping your mouth shut. I'm not going to kill you if you don't come with me, but that's all academic, because you are coming with me.'

  'You're making a big mistake, I just know it,' said Friedisch.

  'I assure you, I am not,' said Cawl. 'Action is the instigator of success. If we stay, we will die.'

  Friedisch's face screwed up with the agonies of indecision.

  'Oh, very well!'

  'Good. We are going now. We need to cross Momus to the other side of the Heptaligon. Aspertia has her ship in a private dock in Septa station's tube-tether. We've got a lot of ground to cover, and precious little time to do it.'

  For the second time in a month, Trisolian found itself under attack. The Space Wolves drove relentlessly to the centre of the Warmaster's fleet, making directly for the Vengeful Spirit itself. As Horus' command ship was moored at the capital, Heptaligon was caught in the centre of the storm. Before Cawl and Friedisch had made it halfway to their destination, the tiny moon and its parasitic stations rocked to the pounding of loyalist guns. Beyond the flimsy walls of the facility the Legion fleets were locked in battle, ferocious as brawling animals.

  The tech-adepts abandoned the main ways as soon as the Space Wolves began landing raiding parties, and moved to the lesser tubules linking the massive tube-tethers. These were fragile, but unimportant, and Cawl was banking on them being empty of combatants and therefore safer. His decision seemed erroneous to Friedisch, as the tube they traversed was swaying dangerously, metal and plastek moving liquidly as the tube-tethers it budded from came under bombardment. Friedisch clutched at Cawl's arm.

  'We can't get away,' he moaned. 'We'll never be able to steal her ship.'

  'We can, now shut up,' said Cawl. He stopped the transit cart he'd liberated, and waited to ride out the ripples in the corridor. The station settled, groaning with metallic pain as its fabric tore under the stress. Breezes gusted over them, carrying the rumour of far-off decompressions.

  'Fine,' said Cawl. He set the cart into motion again. Its angled wheels gripped the sides of the narrow tubeway, propelling them down it at high speed. Lights flickered by, blurring into streaks.

  An explosion nearby shook the floor. Cawl did not stop this time. Friedisch's face slammed into the roll cage of the cart and he howled in pain. Lumens flickered out. Smoke poured from atmospheric recycling units, hazing the air. Tez-Lar stood solid as a rock on the back of the cart, heavy duty magclamps making him as imperturbable as a statue.

  Blood spurted from Friedisch's broken nose. 'That was a hit! A hit on the tube! We should have stuck to the main way.'

  'The main way is full of legionaries!' shouted Cawl over the rush of the wind.

  Another hit crimped the corridor's sides. Air whooshed loudly through holes in the metal. Cawl braked with a second to spare, coming to a halt, tyres smoking, a mere metre before the damaged section. The floor was concertinaed, and impassable.

  'The cart won't make it over that. We'll have to walk. There's the door at the end. We're nearly there.'

  'We're going to die!'

  'Move!' Cawl shouted. The door out of the corridor lay a few hundred metres ahead. Cawl dragged Friedisch up from the cart seat. 'Move!'

  Head bowed, shoulders set, Cawl half dragged the other tech-priest behind him towards the door. Tez-Lar clambered from the cart and thumped after them. The spar shook again, whipping about like a wounded snake. Cawl tumbled down the way like a stone rattled in a rations tin. He came to rest, his head spinning, and could not rise Maybe Friedisch was right. Maybe they were going to die Chemical smoke burned his nostrils. His eyes watered. The battle was coming closer. The explosions were louder. Alarms screamed from every quadrant. An iron grip snapped closed around his robes. Tez-Lar hauled him to his feet. Friedisch dangled from the servitor' s other manipulator. Tez-Lar plodded forwards as if the floor were completely still.

  They passed through the door. Tez-Lar cast them into a corridor full of blessedly clear air.

  Its machine-spir
it honking out a doleful warning, the door closed, and a blast door slammed over the top, sealing the spar way for good. Cawl scrambled up to an armourglass window.

  The void sparkled like bright sunlight on water. Ships passed each other at insanely close quarters, rolling over as they brought their full complement of weapons to bear. Void shields blazed with impact displacement. Vessels drifted, ablaze from stem to stem.

  At the centre of this storm of war the Hrafnkel grappled with the Vengeful Spirit. Cawl recognised them both, such was their fame. They were brothers, equally immense, Gloriana-class battleships of the largest sub-patterns. Their kilometres-long bulks made the Heptaligon and its host moonlet seem pathetic in size. They were old warriors now, diminished in potency by war, but still deadly, and still determined to kill. Broadsides belched from the massive guns ranged along each ship's flanks, hammering into their opposite number, trading punches like ageing pugilists unwilling to give in. Their shields crackled with lightning. They were committed to a brutal slogging match that would end only when the strongest combatant remained alone, bloody but standing.

  The Heptaligon suffered for its role as battlefield. The Space Wolves were not neglecting the station. Heavy bombardment blasted columns of shattered ice from the surface of Momus that escaped easily from the weak gravity well. Seconda Station had broken free from its tower, and floated away with strange serenity, like a leaf in a stream. Its mooring collapsed slowly towards Momus, spewing burning atmosphere from the ragged end. Space Marine gunships duelled over the moon. There were even, he saw, groups of warriors wearing void jets fighting outside. Cawl was no expert in the field of void war, but he thought the Space Wolves unlikely to make it out of the system. The Warmaster's subsidiary fleets, comprising elements of the many Legions loyal to him, were moving in from the other small worlds to join the battle. Russ' Legion faced a large part of the Sons of Horus. The skill of the VI Legion was widely known, but they were outnumbered at least two to one. Cawl could think of only one good reason why Leman Russ would be behaving so.