Stormcaller

by Chris Wraight

  At the same time, the retreating Heimdall and Vindicatus loosed a coordinated barrage from all available weaponry. The move had been prearranged – thick columns of coruscation lanced in at the same point, just under the curve of the Festerax’s hull where the underhanging spires jutted. Every cannon on the two ships, every remaining torpedo tube and plasma launcher, every las-barrage and missile station, was aimed at the same zone. The repeated volleys smashed against the hulk’s void-coverage, cracking against it with a scream of nova-hot energies.

  Just as the first of the assault rams neared the designated impact zone, Heimdall finally loosed its main bombardment cannon, and Vindicatus followed suit with its ventral lances. The Grand Cruiser’s gunners found their range, and the combined maelstrom slammed in amid a hurricane of blazing, spitting energies.

  Under such an immense hammerblow of mingled fire, the plague-hulk’s void shields guttered out in a blaze of static, exposing a narrow section of mottled hull beneath. Just as the barrier ripped away, the assault rams scythed clear through the rent’s flame-edged maw, plunging into the heart of the newly carved rent. It was a tiny gap in the void-umbrella, but just enough.

  As they screamed towards the Festerax’s flanks, the assault rams loosed their fore-mounted melta weapons. Glittering wreaths of vivid orange fire shot out, slamming directly into the fast-closing hull. The impact was crushing, driving in thick layers of adamantium plating, burning through it and dissolving the struts beyond.

  Then the assault rams hit, one after the other in a ragged line of head-on collisions. A rip, hundreds of metres wide, was cut into the flank of the Festerax as the reinforced prows of the rams plunged deep into its hide. Secondary explosions went off, rippling along the plating as the rams burrowed in further.

  By then, though, the volume of return fire had become apocalyptic. The Festerax opened up with a vast array of arcane weaponry, vomiting las-spears, spiked incendiary shells and sensor-disrupting clouds of green-blooming gases. Heimdall took a series of heavy impacts as it tried to roll clear, tearing up its ventral plating and forcing it to disengage. Vindicatus, which had remained further out during the combined assault, endured a similar battering, and lost a whole ridge of gun-towers when the shielding above them overloaded.

  The Festerax seemed to have an infinite number of guns, and unleashed them all. With its escorts burning or fleeing, it was free to open up with everything left in its offensive arsenal. The void around it shimmered with the rolling barrage, and both Imperial ships were bludgeoned further out of range. The remaining gunships and interceptors hared for cover, aiming to dock with the larger craft before being overcome by the tidal wave of destruction.

  Heimdall and Vindicatus finally pulled clear, ravaged and broken. They gained position just beyond the edge of the hulk’s main range, absorbing a reduced level of punishment just to remain in contact. Heimdall, having run closest, was in the worst shape, and it was all it could do to maintain position. Vindicatus was able to launch a few retaliatory strikes, but did little more than pepper the Festerax’s immense profile with glancing hits.

  Contemptuous of such threats, the plague-hulk maintained trajectory towards Kefa Primaris, its escorts destroyed but its integrity almost perfectly intact. The contagion-spores still survived, locked in the launchers deep in its core. Its weaponry remained potent, and the only real damage done to it was restricted to a tiny pocket on the immense tracts of its lower hull, the product of all the Imperial forces’ combined might in arms.

  It was a minor wound, no more than an insect bite in the hide of a sauroid. Within that wound, though, bodies stirred, blades were drawn and oaths were sworn.

  Deep in the darkness, the Wolves were already moving.

  Chapter Twelve

  The impact of the assault ram hitting was all-consuming – a tearing, burning, juddering collision that threw its occupants hard in their pistoned restraint mechanisms. Ingvar’s mind immediately shot back to the assault on the plague-destroyer over Ras Shakeh. The hit was greater this time, though – the hulk’s outer hull-plate was far older, and far thicker.

  The rams drove and ground their way far inside, crunching onwards through walls of solid metal as the melta-tipped prow burned. Ingvar gripped on just like the others, thrown around by the immense shocks striking the ram’s exterior.

  The speed, the roar of the engines, the tortured scream of shearing adamantium – it made him want to roar. Even as the thunder-rain of jolts juddered down the shock absorber columns, he found himself straining at his bonds, desperate for the crew bay doors to slam open.

  Baldr was shackled ahead of him, swaying jerkily.

  ‘Ready for this, brother?’ Ingvar voxed over the crashing echoes.

  Baldr laughed eagerly. ‘Craving it.’

  Every time Baldr spoke, he was more like the old warrior he’d been. The dryness, the cracking, was going.

  The assault ram’s momentum finally slowed. The shrieks and cracks fell away, replaced by a howl of escaping air and a thunder of flame.

  They had lodged deep, wedged at an acute angle. Bolts and brace-rods slid back from Ingvar’s armour, freeing him up to move again. With a wrench of tortured ironwork, the doors at the front end of the assault ram crashed down. A caldera-hot wave rushed over them, flecked with spinning motes of ash and rust, followed immediately by the echoing roar of racing atmosphere.

  Gunnlaugur was first out, shouldering through a tangle of twisted support struts. Baldr followed him, then the rest, spilling from the melta-hazed prow of the assault ram and levelling bolters.

  A ruined chamber stretched away from them, partially lit by flickering green lumens. It was ink-dark and stinking. The assault ram had demolished the inner wall it had come through and was now wedged amid a heap of smouldering wreckage. Fire still ran across its back, catching on the white-hot edges of seared metalwork.

  Gunnlaugur took point, hefting skulbrotsjór and activating the hammer’s energy field. Electric light spilled from it, picking out the gloomy surroundings. Baldr and Hafloí took up bolters, Ingvar his power sword. Four other warriors burst from the ram’s second crew-berth, all marked with the insignia of Bloodhame’s pack.

  Ingvar activated his helm’s proximity sensor. It was dotted with rune-locators from other ingress points. Some were just a few dozen metres away – a deck up, or across. Others had come in far out of position. He saw Njal’s signal several levels up and fixed on it.

  Gunnlaugur moved out. The pack fanned across the chamber behind him, keeping close on his heels, scanning as they went. Eight pairs of glowing red helm-lenses pierced the shadows.

  The chamber ran for ten metres before terminating in a heavy-set wall of iron. Every surface was thick with glistening slime, pooled over rusting pressed-metal panels. It could have been in the hold of any Imperial vessel in the fleet, only given over to the ravages of corrosion in a way that no ship of the line would ever be. Blooms of rust spread everywhere, gnarled and pocked and glinting in the faint light of the Wolves’ power weapons. The glare from their blades illuminated pools of oily water on the decking, rippled from the howling wind and streaked like blood-splatters.

  From far below them came the dull rumble of weapons-fire. The hulk’s ordnance was still active, sending recoil judders through the entire structure.

  Gunnlaugur reached the door and pressed himself against it, listening. Then he pulled the hammer round, smashed the bolt-lock, and pushed through the splintered gap.

  The corridor beyond was narrow and clogged with filth. The Wolves jogged down it, heading for Njal’s marker signal. As Ingvar moved, he caught glimpses of old Imperial iconography on the walls. They had broken into one of the old ships that made up the Festerax’s hull – it might have been a Navy frigate by the pattern of aquilae on the roof, though impossible to tell through all the grime and corrosion.

  ‘Target,’ reported one of Bloodhame’s warr
iors.

  Ingvar picked it up a fraction later – a cluster of runes on his helm-display, closing fast. He ran his tongue over his fangs.

  ‘Here they come,’ he breathed, almost to himself.

  The eight of them broke into an iron-walled octagonal chamber lined with moisture-slick chains. Other corridors led off in the four cardinal directions, and a deep well-shaft ran down from the centre.

  Gunnlaugur looked up. The chamber was roofless – the base of a larger shaft that seemed to run up for at least several decks. The chains swayed down from unseen heights, clanking together and dripping with liquid.

  ‘We climb,’ he said, seizing two chain-lengths and hauling upwards. The steel links took his weight, and he kicked off, climbing fast. Bracing against the walls, each warrior followed suit, grabbing a handful of chain-lengths and ascending quickly.

  Just as they did so, a cluster of bodies broke into the chamber below – the first inhabitants of the hulk they’d seen. Ingvar was barely a few metres up when he saw them. They were full-helmed, mortal fighters, clad in rags and carrying drum-barrelled projectile weapons.

  ‘Mine,’ voxed Ingvar, letting go of the chains and plummeting back to the chamber floor.

  He took two of them out as he landed, kicking out with his armoured boots and crushing them against the chamber wall. Dausvjer whipped around in a lashing arc, spraying blood across the grimy decking.

  Something heavy crunched down next to him, and he whirled to face it.

  It was Baldr. He opened fire, and a storm of bolt-rounds surged off into the darkness, punching into the press of bodies. Baldr then aimed up at the lintel and destroyed the metal housing, bringing the corridor ceiling down in a crash of heavy panels. There were a few high-pitched screams, then the debris settled, silencing the defenders and sealing the ingress point.

  Ingvar grinned under his helm. Baldr fought just as he always had – calm, clean, effective. Ingvar leapt back up for the chains and started to climb, slamming his boots against the shaft’s inner wall for purchase.

  ‘So you are ready,’ he voxed.

  ‘Just the start, brother,’ Baldr replied, following him up.

  Jorundur brought Vuokho up and out of a potentially ruinous spiral, gunning the engines hard and boosting clear of danger. All around him, space was filled with the tumbling carcasses of destroyed assault craft, most of them bearing enemy insignia on their ripped-up hull plating. A few had survived the inferno and were harrying the bigger warships, so his hands remained full. Keeping alive during the initial assault had been the hardest task, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  ‘Shut that down,’ he snapped to his co-pilot, a female mortal from Njal’s retinue named Morven. She was good – as good as any mortal – but it was irritating not to have fellow Sky Warriors handling the support functions of void-combat.

  Morven nodded smartly, working to close the fuel-loop to the gunship’s damaged spine section. They were still leaking promethium into the void – a perilous thing to be doing when half of the space around them seemed to consist of plasma explosions.

  The two other crew, also mortals, worked furiously at their stations. Beor was a competent enough navigator and had kept them out of the most obviously suicidal points on the battle-sphere, and Terrag, the gunner, already had a brace of kills against his name.

  ‘Incoming enemy, fyf-un vertical,’ reported Beor.

  Jorundur pushed the gunship harder into its climb, wondering how long it would be before Heimdall’s guns came back online. He caught sight of the incoming ships – two skinny-looking interceptors with missile-underslung wings, thrusting clear of the Fury squadrons and heading up after Vuokho.

  ‘We can outrun them,’ said Morven, still working hard to plug the leak.

  ‘Of course we can,’ snapped Jorundur, calculating angles. He punched a series of coordinates into the cogitator. ‘Gunner, you can handle that?’

  ‘Affirmative,’ said Terrag, running his fingers over the firing mechanism.

  The Thunderhawk abruptly lost momentum, falling back towards the approaching interceptors. Seeing that they were going to overshoot and stumble into Vuokho’s fire-angle, the interceptors spun away to starboard, using their agility to pull out of the attack.

  As they did so, though, Jorundur kicked the drives back to full power and swung the gunship hard about, swinging neatly onto a parallel course and opening up a shot for the starboard heavy bolters.

  Terrag performed ably, working both mounts at once and sending twin lines of armour-shredding shells lancing out into the void. One of the interceptors took heavy damage to the rear engine quarters. Its fuel tanks were punched open, after which the igniting bolts detonated the promethium stores and destroyed the ship in a cloud of spinning metal. The second took hits all along the facing flank, forcing it to climb rapidly in an attempt to break away.

  Jorundur calmly hauled Vuokho’s prow after it, keying up the lascannons as he did so. ‘There you go,’ he voxed to Terrag. ‘All lined up for you.’

  Terrag punched the controls and the lascannons cut the interceptor cleanly in two.

  Vuokho sailed through the wreckage, smashing the fragments apart and driving back up to full battle-speed.

  Jorundur stole a glance out of the cockpit armourglass, looking up to where the curve of the plague-hulk’s hull filled his visual field.

  It was almost like atmospheric combat, fighting so close to such a massive object. The detail on its surface was clear enough – a forest of interlocked and embedded ship-corpses, tied together by strands of ossified matter. Tiny lights glowed like marsh-gas amid the arcane tangle of gothic buttresses and ancient hangar bays. Somewhere under all of that accumulated carnage was the original structure, the forgotten battleship that had started the whole millennial process, now buried under kilometres of detritus.

  ‘Power spikes detected, all along underside batteries,’ reported Beor.

  Jorundur switched his attention back to the near-range augurs. ‘They’re gearing up to fire again,’ he growled, judging distances and feeding more power to the main thrusters. ‘Run for Heimdall – those lances will end us.’

  The crew got to work – calmly, coolly, obeying his orders without a second thought. Vuokho swung around, pitching through a glowing debris-zone and boosting down away from the range of the hulk’s fearsome guns.

  Work quickly, brothers, Jorundur thought, already spying his next targets and working the controls hard. This grows difficult.

  Gunnlaugur reached the lip of the shaft and hauled himself over the edge, emerging into a vast open chamber lined with iron pillars. The thick gloom was oppressive and dank – a near-perfect dark, broken only sporadically by flickering lamps or faulty strip-lumens. The environment was hot and close: a heavy cocktail of methane and carbon dioxide with an aftertaste of more exotic chems.

  He loped across the chamber floor, his boot-falls echoing with dull clangs. Behind him came his brothers, spilling out of the shaft, their helm-lenses glowing. Njal’s location-beacon glowed on all their helm-displays – still several levels up and already moving deeper into the heart of the hulk.

  An archway towered up ahead, thirty metres high and ten across. The lintel was engraved with old Gothic, now worn away and unreadable in the murk. He picked up echoing booms, just on the edge of hearing, like distant detonations in the deeps. Either the hulk was still firing, or something was stirring in its labyrinthine innards.

  Then he heard it for the first time.

  Scuttling.

  ‘Getting that?’ voxed Ingvar, going swiftly, his head low as he ghosted through the archway.

  ‘They are gathering,’ growled Gunnlaugur, watching proximity points on his helm-scanner converge. ‘Make your kills swift.’

  As Gunnlaugur ran, he had to duck under a collapsed bulkhead before powering onwards, his shoulders hunched low, his hamm
er held two-handed. Blooms of gas hissed from shattered pipework, gusting across the tortured floor panels in luminous snarls. The spaces constricted into tight, claustrophobic capillary tunnels.

  Then he caught sight of the first mutants, up ahead where the ways grew even more confined. Their eyes glowed in the dark – many eyes, like insects. They surged towards him, scrambling on four limbs over every surface, scampering along the walls, the decks, hanging from the sagging tunnel roof on hooked hands.

  The tunnel filled with the whoosh of bolt-shells, followed an instant later by the dull crack of explosions. The mutants were blasted from their perches and sent spinning across the width of the passages.

  Then Gunnlaugur was among them. He lashed out with his thunder hammer, crushing the head of one and sending it slamming into a knife-sharp wall section. The backswing caught another, sweeping it up at the roof where its spine severed with a wet snap. He ploughed on, tearing through the horde of defenders, driving into them with hard, swift strokes.

  The rest kept pace. Ingvar remained at his shoulder, working his blade with ferocious speed. Bodily fluids slapped and sprayed across the narrow passageway, bringing with them the screams of the dying. The pack-members kept close together, forming a wave of grey-edged steel that tore down the twisting tunnels, never dropping speed, never pausing.

  Eventually they burst out into the open again, and the tunnel walls gave way entirely to a new set of surroundings – bone-white matter. The new terrain curved away from them in sinuous arcs, glimmering softly in the deep night of the hulk’s interior. A vast plain extended into the gloom, studded with sculptural undulations like some frozen sea.

  Gunnlaugur nearly slipped as he ran. The mutants were everywhere, spilling out of crevices like blowflies clustered on rotten meat.

  ‘This is… unusual,’ he muttered, pivoting on one foot to send the head of skulbrotsjór into the midriff of a mutant. The screams echoed strangely, rebounding from the immense void above them. It felt like they’d stumbled into some bizarre hololith world.