Wolfsbane

by Guy Haley

  Friedisch's pallid, nervous face appeared at Cawl's shoulder.

  'This is suicide!' he said.

  'They have come to kill the Warmaster,' said Cawl. 'Isn't it obvious? Leman Russ has committed his entire Legion. He's the Emperor's executioner. He's come for the Warmaster's head.'

  'Look!' shrieked Friedisch. He pointed with a shaking finger.

  Cawl turned to look. The tube-spars surrounding the trunk of the Septa station were coming apart. Some attacks were targeted upon the giant shaft, but many appeared to be incidental to the battle going on around the moonlet. The Heptaligon's void shielding was minimal, graded only to protect the station from cosmic debris. A missile struck the weakened tube he and Friedisch had exited. The resulting explosion turned a fifty-metre section into a glittering haze of particulates. Tethering hawsers snapped like spider's silk The spar bent away from the trunk of the tower, until acceleration and material stress sheared it off and it floated away to add to the growing mass of battle debris. The trunk was as yet firm, but was marked with many holes, and it vibrated with the impact of city-levelling weaponry. It would not stay intact forever.

  'Blood of the machine,' said Friedisch. 'That could have been us.'

  'They're coming,' said Cawl.

  Shoals of boarding torpedoes rocketed out from a frigate that dipped low towards the Septa shaft. The frigate was under attack and coming apart even as it disgorged its armies. Dozens of the torpedoes were obliterated by raging point defence fire, but far more made it through. A different sort of impact shook the tower. Shortly after, new noises reached them from down the endless corridor, a throaty howling and the awful flat banging of Space Marines small-arms fire.

  Friedisch pawed at Cawl's shoulder, pulling his attention away from the battle outside. He found it fascinating. There was so much information in the dance of starships and the patterns of fire exchange. It was beautiful. He was no longer afraid. He no longer feared death.

  The same could not be said of Friedisch.

  'Cawl,' he said.

  The noise of feral warriors echoed up the way. It was impossible to tell where it was coming from, but past the vanishing point, destructive light flashed.

  Cawl nodded. 'We need to move on.'

  'They sound so savage,' Friedisch said in terror. 'Who would make something like them?'

  'The Emperor had His reasons.' Cawl looked out of the window at the battle again, where men who were once brothers tore each other apart. That was why the Space Wolves were made. They were watchdogs, created to guard against betrayal.

  'Are you sure we're choosing the right side?'

  'My friend,' said Cawl. 'In this war, there is only the least bad side, and we are on it. Come on. Let's go.'

  Cawl went ahead. Friedisch dithered, looking back down the long outer corridor of the tether-tube, trying to guess where the battle was.

  'But Cawl, where are you going?' Friedisch called after his friend. 'The domina keeps her ship in the mid-range docking halls. That way.' He pointed at a maintenance door set into the floor that led inwards, towards the hollow core of the tower and the giant expressway that ran from Septa, through Momus and up the tether-tube of Prima.

  Cawl looked ahead, which, in relation to the moon, was up towards the station at the end of the trunk and the void beyond.

  'We're not going to her ship just yet. We have to pay the domina herself a visit. And we have to get there before the Space Wolves do.'

  'You never said we were going to do that! You said we were going to steal her ship!'

  'We are,' said Cawl. He set off. Tez-Lar lumbered after him.

  'But Cawl! They'll be going after her, they'll kill us!' Friedisch shouted up the corridor until he realised that Cawl would not listen to him. At a loss as to what to do, he hurried after.

  Leman Russ had his assault launch before the Vengeful Spirit's shields were down.

  In their dozens, the Thunderhawks, Fire Raptors, Storm Eagles, assault rams, assault pods, boarding torpedoes and Stormbirds of the Vlka Fenryka raced across the narrowing gap between the two flagships, carrying three Great Companies into the den of the enemy. Tra, Sep and Tolv were granted the honour of serving their king so boldly. Explosions filled the void around them, seeking to bring them down. Anti-fighter and anti-munition guns added their loads of death to the tempest raging between the flagships. It was a desperate action. Only a general with one goal and no requirement of survival would mount a charge that final. The Vlka Fenryka knew what it meant to cross that gap, but they did so willingly.

  Many gunships were lost, cored out by las-beam and shell. The pride of the Vlka Fenryka burned in space. But for every boarding craft lost, another five hundred metres was gained. With the blood of his sons, Leman Russ bought entry into the embarkation deck of the Vengeful Spirit.

  They penetrated the void shields at a reckless pace, their velocity close to the speed that would trip the energy field's displacement response. Their pilots howled with battle joy as they passed into the space beyond the shield's protection and accelerated. Behind them boiled a wall of fire where the Hrafnkel's ordnance encountered the void shields' barrier. Ahead the sides of the enemy's flagship rose high. Occasional shells made it through the shields, annihilating themselves against plasteel ramparts in balls of flame, adding to the deep scarring marring the Vengeful Spirit's plating. Turrets swung into action. Streams of laser light and tracer shells converged on the attacking transports. Gunships exploded, their fragments pinwheeling away, casting dead Space Marines into the cold grave of space. The gunships' own weapons remained silent, holding their might back for the defences around the embarkation deck.

  The last of the Vengeful Spirit's void shields guttered out in a blaze of violet flame, and the full wrath of the Hrafnkel vented itself against the hull. Dozens more transports followed the first wave. Their path covered by thunderous broadsides, the gunships dropped low, and angled upwards, streaming towards the wide hangar slots of the embarkation deck.

  Blast doors covered over the vulnerable entrances. Hails of missiles powered away from the Thunderhawks' wings to remove these obstacles. The attack craft swooped in tightly formed flights, discharged their most potent weapons and peeled away to allow the next formation to take aim. Mounds of flame briefly built themselves up. They fell away like curtains, to show blast doors that had become the mouths of metal caves.

  Russ' squadrons now broke apart. Many flew directly towards the embarkation deck, braving the lattices of lascannon fire from the emplacements covering the entrances. The rest peeled away to land parties elsewhere to support Terminator squads teleporting in from the Hrafnkel, or to shoot down fighters chasing boarding torpedoes sent to penetrate the upper decks.

  All across the Space Wolves fleet, breaching craft and boarding torpedoes took flight, heading for the Vengeful Spirit's supporting vessels. Following the lessons of nature's swarming insects, they relied on sheer numbers to get them through. Thousands died. The attack seemed reckless, ill thought out. But every move was made with cold calculation. Casualties were but one factor in Russ' plan, a cost to be borne, as the Great Wolf committed his entire Legion to the single purpose of killing the Warmaster.

  In a strobing flash of engines from hundreds of launching ships, every remaining warrior of the Rout went to war.

  Twenty-One

  Into The Vengeful Spirit

  Russ' Stormbird Hugin came shrieking into the embarkation deck through decompression gales. Bodies and loose objects bounced from its faring as it slewed into the vast hangars. His pilots were the best the Legion had. Precisely aimed bolt-fire cut down dozens of warriors rushing to drive out the boarders. Missiles screamed away from its wings, wreaking havoc among the ships parked along the deck's huge landing aprons.

  More and more gunships roared through the compromised blast doors. Explosions ballooned from missile impact points and died, their flames sucked prematurely away by the howling wind. Sound lost its potency as the air thinned. Barrels of
promethium, ammo pallets, loaders - anything not chained to the deck slid along the floor under the battering windstorm. Lighter objects were upended completely and sent hurtling out of the breaches.

  Hugin put down. Void shields flexed around it presenting a protective dome that turned aside the returning fire of the traitors. The doors opened, and the Varagyr, Leman Russ' personal guard, poured out.

  They were met by the Sons of Horus. Hate flared on both sides. The loyal Legion slammed into the traitors' shield walls and firing positions, overtaken with killing frenzy and desirous only of slaughter. Killing fields before the numerous bunkers built into the walls cut down many of the first out of the ships, but the gunships deployed their heavy weapons to break them down, and fire support teams fanned out to add to the barrage. The volleys sent to and fro were murderous, killing a great many of Russ' sons in the open spaces of the deck before they could close with the foe, but here and there they made it into melee range, and moment by moment the volume of the traitors' fire declined. By then the first wave was down, and more were arriving. Howling like beasts, they rushed through doors and rents deeper into the ship. Soon enough the Sons of Horus were locked in combat blade to blade with Vlka Fenryka.

  Bjorn was among them, taken on board Russ' personal transport. He ran out with the first warriors, keener to be away from the primarch's side than he was to engage the enemy. It was an honour to be favoured by Russ, but he had not earned it, not in the eyes of his brothers, and not in his own mind. He fought alongside warriors decades older than himself when all he longed for was the company of his old pack. He was wyrd-marked, a bad star. He had never asked for this lofty fate.

  Mass-reactive rounds detonated against Bjorn's pauldrons as he ran ahead of all others, marking an access door let into the deck's thick walls as his target. He had a melta charge in his good hand before he reached it, diving below the gunfire blasting out of the loopholes either side of the door to slam the device home. He threw himself to the left as it went off. Thermal reaction spread across the door, turning plasteel bright white with heat. It collapsed into steaming slag. Bjorn dashed through. The enemy were waiting for him, but he attacked without fear, eviscerating the first Traitor Space Marine with his claws, and striking the head from the second while he was drawing his pistol.

  Bjorn loped on, alone. He forced his way into a bunker at the base of a reinforcement buttress, but found the occupants dead, their armour burnt and flesh flash-evaporated by a plasma cannon hit.

  The Vengeful Spirit shook with the discharge of its main armament, and trembled with the returning impact of the Fenrisian fleet's weapons. Bjorn looked out of the firing slot. There were few Sons of Horus left alive. His brothers were winning. The wind dropped as blast doors sealed entrances to the deck. Resistance was dwindling, bracketed into pockets that allowed more gunships to enter without harrying fire. Automatic turrets were shut down or blasted to pieces, but the deck was far from theirs.

  The embodiment of war walked the embarkation deck. Russ had come out of his ship, and was directing his warriors. He bore the Emperor's Spear in full battle for the first time. The Vlka Fenryka were splitting into preassigned hunting parties, heading off towards different parts of the giant vessel. Bjorn glimpsed his own pack, and watched them jog off with a unity of purpose he missed. The air had all vented from the hangar, but in minutes, the decompression wind would blow again as the Space Wolves fought their way from their beachhead and out into the body of the void ship.

  A moment of relative calm intruded into the tempest of war. Bolt-gun fire petered out, surrendering to the quieter background fury of discharging ship cannons and returning impacts. The Vengeful Spirit shook as it fought, but the lack of atmosphere made the deck weirdly quiet, quiet enough for Bjorn's own breathing to sound loudly in the confines of his helmet, quiet enough for him to become aware of a pressure inside his head. Beneath the rumble of his twin hearts he could hear, or thought he could hear, a hundred whispered voices.

  Bror Tyrfingr had warned the Rout about the maleficarum that afflicted the flagship. Every warrior bore protective runes blessed by the gothi. Bjorn looked at the stamped lead ovals tied by cord to his wrist. They showed hot in his helm's thermal overlay though the temperature in the embarkation deck had dropped close to the killing chill of the void.

  He would have spat if he had his face free of the helm. Instead he touched the lead panels for luck, took out his combat knife, and carved a warding eye into the lintel over the bunker door.

  The voices didn't like that: they spoke louder, almost loud enough for him to hear. If he could just catch what they were saying… A dirty taste filled his mouth, choking him, pressing against the back of his eyes.

  The vox buzzed in his ears, startling him away from the lure of the maleficarum. The voices vanished. He shook his head. The feeling of uncleanness would not lift. Shakily, he sheathed his knife. Russ' growl reached out to the task force.

  'To your tasks, my Wolves,' he said. 'Wreak destruction where you can, bring the murder-make to every corner of this corrupted vessel. Ignite the pride of my brother. Cause such havoc he will come willingly to my spear. Lure him out. Bring him to me!'

  The vox clicked as it switched to a private channel.

  'Bjorn, to my side,' Russ said to Bjorn alone. 'Don't leave my sight again. Our wyrd is entwined. Fate demands you fight with me.'

  Chastened by the tone in the Lord of Winter and War's voice, Bjorn went to rejoin his primarch.

  Bror Tyrfingr fought with his brothers again.

  He dropped ten metres from the tilted mouth of his boarding torpedo onto the space beside the ventral gun deck's ammunition runnel. The boom of his impact on the deck plating would have woken the dead. Thralls scattered before him, terrified by the Vi's arrival.

  Mechanicum overseers in black and red whirled scourges over heads, driving emaciated gun crews at the boarders. Bror made sure to drop a few with his bolt pistol before he smashed into the crowd. The sheer mass of the crew delayed the Space Wolves while alarms called for reinforcement from better troops.

  Bror's pack was at the back of the gunnery deck. Other torpedoes bored their way in closer to the still firing macrocannons, sending sheets of molten metal and ignited insulation showering onto the luckless mortals. Burning men ran screaming from their stations. A rising hail of boltgun fire cut down hundreds. One torpedo came straight in through the atmospheric shielding that warded the deck from space. It bounced hard through the mass of slaves, smearing them to paste, burst through a pile of stacked shell pallets and came to a rest near a maintenance crane. The ramp bolts blew, and the occupants dashed out into the thick of the mortals, the rise and fall of their weapons causing a red rain.

  Bror slew the wretches, though it brought him no pleasure. He barged them over the railing of the runnel where shell sleds raced back and forth, he cut them down with his sword. The mass-reactives from his bolt pistol blew them into bloody scraps. Better-equipped armsmen poured in from entrances at both ends of the gallery, led by wailing priests. They came at the Space Wolves with admirable courage, but their shotguns could not penetrate Legiones Astartes battleplate. Bror turned to face the new threat. High-velocity pellets pinked off ceramite like handfuls of cast stones. He blasted three armsmen down, their carapace suits cracked easily by his bolt pistol. When Bror atomised the skull of their cult leader, they wavered. Tyrfingr howled, ran into the group and cut four more down with his chainsword, driving them back. They could not stand before him, and the last few fled back the way they had come. Blind Ragner brought a couple down with improbably accurate shots. The rest vanished into the warren of connected tunnels joining the gun deck to deeper parts of the ship.

  Across the gun deck the situation was repeated. Packs of Vlka Fenryka scoured the gallery free of life, gunning or cutting down whoever they found.

  There were six left from Bror's pack. Ragner, Himmlik, Enrir the Fat, Chattering Flokr, Gren the Happy and himself. The rest had died while he had be
en on Terra with Malcador, slain in this traitor's war.

  Bror took a moment to catch his bearings. The open mouth of their torpedo poked at a steep angle through the ceiling. Rivulets of cooling metal ran down the plating. Acoustic baffling smouldered around the edge of the breach. They had come in well, right on target. Icons flashed on the cartolith displayed on his helmplate: the locator signals of more torpedoes arriving around the main gun decks.

  He looked around. He grinned to himself. Up on the wall near the head of an iron stair leading to the gun deck was a fiitharc inscription, carefully hidden behind a bunch of dangling cables. Somewhere nearby would be the locator beacon, planted even beyond his capacity to see by Rama Karayan or Iacton Qruze. Both were dead, but their deeds were bearing fruit.

  The previous occasion he had come this way he had been stealthy and the gun deck had been empty. The idea of stealth seemed a rich joke. When the Vlka were finished the guns would never speak again, but the runnel presented an aural wall of mechanical clattering still. Shell sleds the size of armoured personnel carriers whizzed up and down the tracks, pulled by man-thick chains whose links blurred with speed. As one sled rushed up, full of ordnance, another shot back down on the neighbouring line, carrying enormous casings still smoking from their discharge from the next gun bay. They were close enough to the runnel's terminus to hear the deafening clanging as the casings were tipped into chutes leading directly to the Vengeful Spirit's forges.

  'Where are the dogs of Horus?' said Enrir. 'Why do we have to fight these lowly worms?'

  'Pity them,' said Himmlik. He turned one over with his boot. The man's expression was fixed with terror. A natural reaction to encountering the Rout, but the lines in his face suggested he had worn that expression for a long time. He was filthy, malnourished, his limbs stick-thin and covered with sores. Over the criss-cross of whip wounds, his uniform had gone to rags, and the skin of his forehead was inflamed around a crude, eight-pointed star carved into his flesh.