[Space Wolf 06] - Wolf's Honour

by Lee Lightner - (ebook by Undead)

  Wulfgar glowered at the young Space Wolf. “You wouldn’t last ten seconds, lord,” he said with a snort. “We’ve got to get you as close to the planet as we can before you launch, or they’ll blow you apart.” Greenish light flickered through the high viewports as an enemy salvo flashed past the battle cruiser’s bridge. Wulfgar turned back to the command lectern. “Once we’re through and you’re on your way, we’ll come hard about and jump again. With Loki’s luck we’ll still be in one piece when we come out on the other side.”

  A series of deafening blasts battered the port bow of the stricken battle cruiser. Men were thrown to the deck by the impart. Only Ragnar’s speed and strength kept him upright, although his grip creased the command deck’s metal rail. A bloom of orange and red swelled in slow motion on the port side of the warship, just aft of the armoured prow. Ragnar saw molten hull plating streak like meteors down the length of the battle cruiser and tumble into the void.

  “Shields have failed!” cried the ship’s deck officer. “Augurs report an enemy ship dead ahead, coming about on a collision course! We have to come about—”

  “Steady as she goes!” Wulgar roared back as he pulled himself to his feet. The ship’s master pressed a hand to a cut, smearing blood across his forehead. “Dorsal lance battery, fire at will!”

  Ragnar could see the Chaos ship now, a distant, arrowhead shape, glimmering with pale, unnatural light. It lay squarely in the battle cruiser’s path, firing bolt after bolt at the Imperial ship’s prow. The young Space Wolf shook his head. “A single lance won’t be enough, Shipmaster Wulfgar,” he said.

  “So now you’re a ship master, lord?” Wulfgar snapped, but he gave the young Space Wolf a fierce grin. “They suspect what we’re doing, and they’re moving to stop us. If we alter our course even a single degree it will make the task of reaching orbit that much harder.” The bondsman shook his head. “No. We’ll plough right through that bastard if he doesn’t bear away. You have my oath on it!”

  A cyan flare from beyond the viewport showed that the battle cruiser’s remaining lance battery had gone into action. The arcs of voltaic force leapt across hundreds of kilometres in the blink of an eye, and flared in a raging storm against the shields of the onrushing Chaos ship. The battery charged and fired again within seconds, and once more the powerful beam weapon battered against the still-glowing curve of the enemy cruiser’s void shield, until it failed in a blaze of light.

  More explosions battered the flanks of the Imperial ship. Sparks showered from a power conduit along the starboard bulkhead, and alarms began to wail across the command deck. Wulfgar quickly checked the readouts on the command lectern, and his expression turned grim. “Engineering, increase reactor output to one hundred and thirty-five per cent. Helm, bring us to ramming speed.”

  The Fist of Russ was almost completely surrounded and taking fire from all sides. Her surviving batteries answered, and the space around them was so dense with enormous ships that every shot found a target. Macro cannon shells smashed aside enemy shields and blasted deep craters in the flanks of the Chaos ships. One cruiser sheered abruptly to starboard, streaming molten debris from a blast that had smashed its command deck. Its sudden manoeuvre carried it directly into the path of another Chaos ship, and the two collided in a spectacular eruption of blazing plasma, and shorn hull plating. However, deprived of her shields, the damage to the ancient battle cruiser was mounting swiftly. Fiery explosions rippled along the length of her hull, and she bled ragged streamers of burning oxygen that tangled in her wake.

  Then, like a wounded bear, the Fist of Russ surged forward, her surviving thrusters blazing. Caught unawares by the sudden change of speed, many of the enemy salvoes fell harmlessly behind her as she bore down on the lone enemy vessel in her path. The two ships closed the distance rapidly, still blasting away at one another with their remaining weapons. Lance fire had wrought terrible damage along the Chaos ship’s bow, and the battle cruiser’s armoured prow and superstructure had been repeatedly cratered by high-energy bolts.

  The Chaos ship swelled in the battle cruiser’s forward viewports. “Sound collision!” Shipmaster Wulfgar cried. “For Russ and the Allfather!”

  Ragnar had just enough time to grip the command deck rail with both hands and check to make sure that Gabriella was still sealed in her vault, before the two ships collided.

  Though the Fist of Russ was burned and broken, she was still a massive ship, weighing tens of millions of tonnes. The armoured prow of the battle cruiser struck the cruiser’s bow and split it open like a rotten fruit. Crumpled hull-plates and shorn bracing beams burst outward from the impact, propelled by a cloud of superheated metal and escaping gas. The Imperial ship tore through the cruiser from stem to stern, plunging like an iron tipped spear thrust by a wrathful god.

  The wounded battle cruiser suffered too. Ragnar was thrown hard against the deck rail and the air reverberated with the groan of tortured metal and the scream of tearing hull plates. Several of the bridge officers were thrown forward by the impact, hurled over the deck rail and onto the bridge crew below. Sparks exploded from a pair of overhead conduits, and then suddenly the lights went out. Ragnar heard screams of pain and terror, and the deck trembled with powerful explosions from deep below decks.

  Then, with a flare of multicoloured light, the Chaos ship’s reactor exploded, wreathing the forward end of the battle cruiser in fire. The Fist of Russ shuddered, and Ragnar felt an ominous tremor pass along the warship’s battered keel. Then, all was silent, save for the faint cries of the wounded.

  Red emergency lighting slowly illuminated the command deck. A faint haze of acrid smoke hung in the air. Ragnar surveyed the deck in the dim light and was amazed to find many of the crew still at their stations, working hard to keep the warship in the fight. Shipmaster Wulfgar still stood at the command pulpit, bent with pain, but quickly scanning the readouts on the lectern before him. “Damage report,” he ordered in a raspy voice.

  “We are on emergency reserve power,” the damage control officer replied. “No one is responding on the engineering deck, but indications are that the reactors have failed. There are reports of multiple fires below decks, but most of our damage control stations are not responding.”

  Wulfgar nodded. “What about the hangar decks?”

  The damage control officer checked his gauges. “Both hangar decks report ready, though I don’t know for how much longer.”

  Ragnar listened to the exchange and felt a cold ball of dread settle in his stomach. “What does this mean, Shipmaster Wulfgar?” he asked, even though he already suspected he knew the answer.

  Wulfgar slowly straightened and addressed the young Space Wolf. His face was pale, and a trickle of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. “It means we’ve gone as far as we’re able,” the bondsman said. “Take your lady and make for the hangar deck as fast as you can. There’s not much time.”

  Ragnar felt a surge of desperation. He glanced back at the Navigator’s vault and saw that the armoured containment system was already starting to cycle open. “But the jump—”

  The master of the ship shook his head. “We can’t make the jump now that the reactors have failed.” Wulfgar replied. “Now go, lord! Get to the surface and do what you came to do. We’ll cover you for as long as we can.”

  Ragnar bared his teeth in a silent snarl. “I’ll take your engineering officer and we’ll try to reach the reactors. We can make repairs—”

  “No,” Inquisitor Volt said. His voice was sombre, but there was cold steel in his tone. “Shipmaster Wulfgar is right. We must reach the shadow world and confront Madox, or all of this is for nothing.”

  A growl of anger welled from Ragnar’s throat, but he knew that Volt was correct. Hard discipline asserted itself, and the young Space Wolf nodded curtly. “I understand,” he told the inquisitor, and then nodded his head respectfully to Shipmaster Wulfgar. “We’ll take our leave of you, master,” he said. “Inform Harald to load his men and stand b
y for launch.”

  “I will,” Wulfgar said. Then, the bondsman reached forward and extended his hand. “It has been an honour to serve, lord.”

  The young Space Wolf shook his head. “No, Shipmaster Wulfgar, the honour has been ours.” He clasped the master’s bloodstained wrist. “I shall tell the Old Wolf of your deeds,” Ragnar said. “You have my oath on it.”

  The bondsman smiled, and then straightened his tunic and turned away. He studied the pages of the book propped on the lectern before him, and began to read aloud in a strong, clear voice. “For if the Emperor is with me, who may stand against me…”

  Ragnar turned to Inquisitor Volt, and the old man nodded silently. Torin and Haegr were already escorting Gabriella to the lift at the rear of the command deck. His heart heavy, the young Space Wolf hurried to join them.

  The decks beneath the battle cruiser’s bridge were a hellish realm of fire, smoke and twisted wreckage. Torin salvaged an emergency air supply from the body of a damage control technician and gave it to Gabriella, while Haegr and Ragnar took turns forcing their way past the worst of the debris. More explosions hammered at the hull of the dying battle cruiser, and with every passing minute Ragnar feared that they would not reach the hangar deck in time.

  Yet luck was with them once they were within a few decks of the hangar bay. They made it past the worst of the fires and quickly regained their bearings. The many days Ragnar had spent wandering the lower decks of the huge ship paid off, and he was quickly able to lead the party down a series of maintenance accessways that brought them directly to the waiting Thunderhawk. Harald had the engines idling as the group burst onto the deck, and Volt gave the order to launch as soon as they were aboard.

  Ragnar struggled to reach the Thunderhawk’s command deck as the assault ship roared down the launch platform and into a storm of enemy fire. The Chaos fleet had come about and was blasting away at the Fist of Russ. Ragnar saw at once that the battle cruiser’s main thrusters had been reduced to a twisted mass of metal, and her dorsal superstructure had been all but ripped apart. Fires glowed like sullen coals in the deep wounds along the warship’s flank.

  The horizon spun crazily as the pilot rolled the assault craft and pulled away beneath the Imperial ship. Ragnar gripped nearby stanchions for support and kept his eyes on the dying battle cruiser the entire time, bearing witness to its final moments.

  She went down fighting, her guns still defiantly answering the enemy barrage. Ragnar saw an enemy cruiser burst apart under a punishing strike from the battle cruiser’s lance battery. Then an enemy shell found one of the Imperial ship’s magazines. The Fist of Russ disintegrated in a massive chain reaction, a fitting pyre for her heroic crew.

  Ragnar took a deep breath and looked through the forward viewports at the ominous curve of the ebon world. “How long until we make planetfall?” he asked.

  “Forty-five minutes, lord, give or take,” the pilot replied, his voice subdued. “I’ll keep the wreckage between us and the enemy ships until we’re well out of range.”

  Ragnar nodded. With the Fist of Russ destroyed, there would be no escape from the shadow world for any of them. Wulfgar and his crew were only the first among them to die.

  Setting his jaw, Ragnar forced such thoughts ruthlessly from his mind. They had a mission to perform. Beyond that, nothing else mattered.

  He was just about to turn and head back into the troop compartment when a warning telltale began to blink on the augur officer’s panel. The crewman leant forward, twisting a series of dials.

  “Russ preserve us,” the bondsman said, reading the icons on the screen. “I have multiple contacts launching from the enemy ships. They look like fighters!”

  Ragnar swallowed a curse. “Full power!” he snapped at the pilot. “Get us on the deck as fast as you can!”

  Thrusters flaring the assault ship dropped like a thunderbolt towards the shadow world. Behind them, the first of the sleek attack ships was already passing through the battle cruiser’s debris field and starting to dive.

  The hunt was on.

  THIRTEEN

  World of Darkness

  “I count twenty — no, thirty — contacts, closing fast!” the Thunderhawk’s augur operator cried, his eyes glued to the phosphorescent display screen. The bondsman’s gloved hands played with the augur unit’s tuning knobs. “At present speed they’ll be in range in seven seconds,” he calculated.

  “Very well,” the assault ship’s pilot replied calmly. He reached up and keyed his vox-mic. “Gunners, look alive! Contacts at six o’clock,” he said, alerting the four crewmen manning the weapon stations in the compartment beneath the command deck. As an assault ship meant to carry troops into hostile landing zones, the Thunderhawk traded speed and manoeuvrability for weapons and armour. Along with a massive forward firing battle cannon and a pair of lascannons, the Thunderhawk also mounted four twin-linked heavy bolters on remote hardpoints. Two of these hardpoints were mounted beneath each wingtip, allowing them to fire both forward and aft. Ragnar felt the vibration of the hardpoint gimbals and the clatter of the autoloaders as the two mounts swung about and began tracking the incoming Chaos fighters.

  Ragnar’s grip tightened on the stanchions to either side of the command deck’s hatch. He hadn’t counted on the possibility that the cruisers circling above the shadow world could carry attack craft as well. “How long until we make planetfall?” he asked, eyeing the lightning-streaked curve of the ebon planet.

  “Twenty minutes, more or less,” the pilot answered tersely. “Setting up the proper re-entry angle is going to be tricky at this speed.”

  “We’ll be lucky to last twenty seconds,” the young Space Wolf growled. His hearts were hammering in his chest, and he thought he could feel the blood hissing in his temples. It took every ounce of will not to lash out, to feel something break and bleed in his hands. He closed his eyes and forced the Wulfen from his thoughts. The red tide seemed to ebb somewhat, after a moment, leaving his mind a little clearer.

  “Is there any sign of a city on the planet’s surface?” Ragnar asked. “If this planet is truly a mirror image of Charys, there must be a shadow version of the capital as well.”

  The pilot shook his head. “I don’t see anything but lightning,” he replied, and then glanced back at the augur operator. “Otto, switch to navigational surveyors and sweep the planet.”

  “What about the enemy ships?” the operator asked, looking up from his screen with a panicked expression on his sallow face.

  “Forget about them!” the pilot snapped. “You heard the lord. Find me a city down there.”

  Swearing under his breath, the augur operator jabbed at a set of runes on his control panel, and the display screen shifted to a new set of oscillating lines. Frowning the bondsman adjusted a series of knobs, and studied the pulsing readouts. “I’m picking up small collections of ground structures at wide intervals. They fit the profile for agri-combines,” he said. “Hard surface reflections from transit lines, but nothing… wait!” he leaned forward, gently twisting a pair of brass dials. “Looks like a hard set of returns bearing zero-one-five, right at the planetary terminus. There’s your city.”

  The pilot nodded and brought the assault ship into a shallow turn to starboard. “Lining up on zero-one-five and starting our descent,” he said, reaching up and adjusting a set of controls on a panel over his head. The Space Wolf looked over his shoulder at Ragnar. “Good news, lord. The city is right at the edge of our glide path. We can touch down near the outskirts without adding any more time to our descent.”

  Ragnar nodded. “And the bad news?”

  As if on cue, streams of seething energy bolts filled the darkness around the Thunderhawk, and the assault ship rang with a series of heavy blows along its fuselage. Warning icons flashed amber on the tech-priest’s control panel, and the crewman began to recite the Litany of Atmospheric Integrity as he frantically jabbed at damage control runes. At the tips of the assault ship’s wings, the twin-li
nked heavy bolters went into action, barking out stuttering bursts that reverberated through the Thunderhawk’s armoured frame as the high-speed dogfight began.

  The enemy fighters were sharp and angular, like shards of polished obsidian. Faint, greenish light glowed from their angled cockpit viewports, giving the ships a sinister, insect-like appearance. They descended on the larger Thunderhawk in a swirling, chaotic swarm, blasting away at the Imperial ship from a dozen different angles. Energy bolts burst across the assault ship’s wings, fuselage and tail, wreathing it in a web of small explosions that ate away at the Thunderhawk’s dense armour plate. The assault ship side-slipped abruptly left, and then right, trying to spoil the attackers’ aim, but it wasn’t enough to fully evade the storm of enemy fire.

  Red tracer rounds slashed through the enemy formation in response as the Thunderhawk’s heavy bolters returned fire. A pair of Chaos fighters blew apart in clouds of glittering fragments and glowing plasma. The shattered fighter craft dissolved in the ebon world’s upper atmosphere, consumed by arcs of sorcerous lightning, but there was still more than a score of attack ships dogging the battered Thunderhawk’s tail.

  A powerful impact struck the assault ship’s port side, causing the craft to slew sideways for a dizzying instant before the pilot could regain control. “Number one engine is hit!” the tech-priest cried out. “Pressure indicators are spiking!”