Tyrant of the Hollow Worlds

by Mark Clapham

  ‘Beyond that, manual manipulation of the Orrery would seem to be necessary,’ said Valthex. ‘All energies on all spectra are concentrated within the Orrery itself. There is nothing else in this chamber that could operate it.’

  ‘There is something here though,’ said Anto, moving his staff as if to scan the walls. ‘A presence…’

  Part of the far wall exploded, and a torrent of raging Space Wolves poured out into the chamber, bolters blazing.

  Anto, thought Rotaka as he screamed an order to attack, you’re a genius.

  The communications room on Ressial had been repaired as well as possible since Pranix’s kidnap, and there had been no further disturbances. Whatever terrible forces had swept through to abduct the inquisitor, they had shown no interest in anyone or anything else in the Gatehouse.

  After such an attack, the silence seemed almost unnerving. Wounds had been tended to by the medicae, order had been restored, but the absence of Pranix was felt.

  To his surprise, with the inquisitor gone and Haakan in the field, Dumas Cheng found eyes turning to him for leadership.

  Damn you, Pranix, he thought. Damn you for undermining my authority here, then getting yourself swept away or killed and leaving to try to reassert it in the middle of a war.

  Not that there were many decisions to be made. Cheng had told Pranix the myth of the Lost Archway beneath the Onyx Palace, the secret route to the Orrery, and the inquisitor had seized that faint hope like a starving hound with a hunk of meat. Even Cheng had been surprised that, following the demolition of large chunks of the Onyx Palace, the myth had proven to be entirely true.

  A miniature Archway, leading to a cramped corridor approaching a hidden wall adjacent to the Orrery, one where the activities within that chamber could be secretly observed.

  Why had it been constructed? To covertly monitor the use of the Orrery, millennia ago? As an emergency exit? It was impossible to tell, but its presence now was fortuitous.

  Cheng had sat, completely still, listening to vox reports as Haakan’s force watched Huron Blackheart and a small force entering the Orrery. Blackheart had kept his entourage small, perhaps to prevent any of his treacherous kind seizing control of the Orrery for themselves. The Space Wolves had weight of numbers and surprise on their side, advantages that Haakan intended to fully exploit.

  That was the last report, before all that could be heard over the vox was a shattering explosion and the sound of battle.

  ‘Not now, you dogs, not now!’

  Huron Blackheart was wild with incandescent rage as the enemy crashed through the wall – not just with hate but with outrage, as if his gods had betrayed him, letting the Space Wolves attack him here and now, when he was on the verge of seizing the power of the Orrery.

  Rotaka neither knew what Huron intended nor in this moment particularly cared. His every scrap of effort was focused on not dying.

  There had been roughly fifty Red Corsairs when they landed on the Ironshore, and less than half of them were present in the Orrery chamber now. The Space Wolves outnumbered them three to one, and were led by some kind of general, an ancient-looking Space Marine with ornate embellishment on his armour, white hair and beard and a jaw full of thick fangs that made him seem even more of a beast than the rest of his feral kind.

  Rotaka’s squad instinctively dropped into a defensive formation, opening fire on the Space Wolves as they crashed into the chamber. The bolter fire would do little but slow the Space Wolves down until they could engage the enemy face-to-face, but a blast from Verbin’s plasma cannon threatened to bring part of the roof down.

  ‘Do not damage the Orrery!’ bellowed Huron, something close to panic etched on his dead features. ‘Hold this chamber, but do not damage the Orrery!’

  Then the Tyrant was away, swinging his claw into the nearest Space Wolf with enough force to knock even a savage Space Marine off his feet. The tide of Space Wolves crashed into the handful of Red Corsairs with swords and axes and fists, and Rotaka was fighting for his life.

  Less than an hour after Folkvar had brought her through the Archway to Kerresh, Anju Badya found herself holding a gun and wishing she had stayed on Hacasta to freeze to death. Watching the machines they had been warned about roll towards them, it seemed she and Folkvar had journeyed far for little.

  After initially passing through the Archway, she had almost fallen to her knees to kiss the ground of this new world. Her main reason for not doing so was that she feared her current state of fatigue would make it difficult to get up again.

  Kerresh was bleak, but lacked the piercing cold of Hacasta. Badya and Folkvar had emerged from the Archway into the aftermath of battle, wrecked enemy defences still smouldering, a rank smoky smell drifting across from a nearby encampment, where the Space Wolves continued to purge the last of the traitors’ mortal servants.

  Nonetheless the lack of ice had been a balm to Anju after Hacasta. The heat had begun to seep back into her body, and the layers of protective clothing she had worn through her long journey had begun to weigh heavy. Soon she would be too hot, a state unthinkable in recent days. She needed to acclimatise.

  Standing amongst the smoking wreckage she had pulled off her thick gloves, fingers shaking as she did so. Having been exposed to such severe cold for so long, even while insulated, her body was having difficulty adjusting. Her skin tingled with the warmth, not entirely comfortably.

  As she peeled off more layers, Badya had tried to concentrate on something other than herself and her body’s reaction to the heat. Folkvar was nearby, discussing recent developments with another of the Space Wolves. Badya and Folkvar had travelled across a hostile world together, but he was still largely unknowable to her, as all the Space Wolves were.

  What they did have in common was their loss, the riderless rider and the tank commander without a tank. They had lost their comrades and their steeds in the same battle, left stranded here on two feet.

  Although he was a fearless immortal, more a machine for war than a human being, Anju suspected Folkvar’s grief was deeper than her own, a loss compounded by centuries of war and the ancient heritage and tradition of his pack. Anju was glad that she had only one lifetime to lose, and didn’t carry the weight of such history with her.

  She flexed her fingers, and stared down at them. The skin had a raw pink hue to it, a shade off from the natural light brown, but her hands had at least stopped shaking. Her wounds from the battle were healing, but she hoped to have some small amount of time before the next conflict.

  ‘Word from Godrichsson,’ another Space Wolf shouted to the small group that had surrounded Folkvar since his emergence from the Archway. ‘The traitors move against us.’

  One of the Space Wolves laughed.

  ‘We drove them back mere hours ago,’ he scoffed. ‘What do they expect to have changed so soon?’

  ‘They come with vehicles,’ said the other. ‘Some kind of machinery, converted for war.’

  Anju and Folkvar had requisitioned various small vehicles while crossing Hacasta, civilian transports and tracked vehicles customised for the ice and snow. None of those had been an exceptional threat. She had imagined this was something larger, and she was right.

  They were not machines of war, but they were engines of destruction: demolition engines several storeys high, fronted with rotating hammers that smashed buildings down and crushed the debris to dust, their upper sections heavily armoured so that any falling rubble would bounce off. The cumbersome, tracked machines had been redesigned, stripped out for speed and equipped with additional armour and weapons. The red saltire of Huron Blackheart was emblazoned on each.

  Folkvar made a low grunt, a deep bass noise that echoed in his armoured chest. Anju looked up at him curiously, and to her surprise he answered her unspoken question.

  ‘These are not true tanks, no machines of war,’ he said. ‘For all their heretical o
rnaments they have little manoeuvrability, and no serious weaponry. But they are strongly armoured and will crush any obstruction.’

  They stood on a rooftop a short distance from the Archway.

  ‘Then how do we defeat such things?’ asked Anju. The demolition engines were tearing through buildings as they approached, a whole skyline collapsing.

  Folkvar grunted again.

  ‘I say we tear those things to pieces chunk by chunk,’ said a nearby Space Wolf.

  ‘No,’ said Folkvar. ‘Let them come. We split up, one group to draw their fire and coax them through the Archway if possible, while others attack them from the flanks. On Hacasta we will flourish and their components will freeze. Then we surround them, and destroy them.’

  There was a murmur of agreement down the line. As one of the few mortals present, barring a small number of the kaerls who accompanied the Space Wolves, Anju was used to orders and exchanges going literally over her head.

  ‘This is where we part,’ said Folkvar, looking down at her. ‘You will best serve our purpose by finding a position here on Kerresh from which to strike our enemies, Sergeant Anju Badya.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Fight well, sergeant,’ said Folkvar in his low metallic voice. ‘Prove that I was not wrong to save your life so you could fight again today.’

  Then Folkvar was away to form a faction to draw the enemy through the Archway, and Anju was running to find a good firing position, and the rumble of the traitor machines grew louder and louder.

  The Space Wolves fought with every bit of the savagery Rotaka had expected of their considerable reputation, but it was Huron Blackheart that Rotaka found himself mentally damning.

  Even if Rotaka had wanted to form a protective cordon around his leader and master, as would have been strategically sensible, it was impossible: Blackheart had waded into the incoming mass of Space Wolves with a fury to match theirs, but while the Space Wolves’ ferocity came from their bestial nature, Huron’s was looser, more unhinged. He lashed out with the Tyrant’s Claw with manic energy, not reckless exactly, but without any driving purpose.

  As a Space Wolf ran towards Rotaka, dodging a shot from his bolter, Iltz let out a burst of blue flame that briefly disoriented the Space Wolf. Rotaka stepped in to smash his enemy’s helmet with the butt of his bolter, then drew his dagger and swung it up towards the vulnerable joint in the Space Wolf’s armour around the neck. Iltz hovered back at Rotaka’s shoulder, the servo-skull engaging in a crude defensive pattern of distracting enemies as they got close.

  ‘You allow yourself to be distracted, Rotaka,’ said Hulpin, firing past Rotaka. ‘Do not die easily – such a death dishonours the gods.’

  ‘I will endeavour to meet your approval,’ said Rotaka. It came out as defiant, but Rotaka knew Hulpin was right. His doubts about Huron were polluting his mind.

  The Space Wolf blocked Rotaka’s swing, pushing down the knife, and slammed an elbow into his helmet. Rotaka’s head was knocked back, warning sigils flashing on the display. He smashed his fist into the Space Wolf’s helmet, letting his knife drop to the ground. They were locked together now, each beating the other with fists and knees, armour clashing with metallic clangs. The sigils on Rotaka’s display multiplied as his power armour was damaged in several places, and he guessed his enemy must be experiencing the same.

  Nearby, Hulpin was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with two Space Wolves. The rest of Rotaka’s squad were similarly under attack from all directions. Rotaka knew he had to focus.

  The Space Wolf cracked first beneath the pressure of malfunctioning power armour, ripping off his helmet to reveal a head that was a mass of scars and piercings, a tattoo running down one side of his face, lank reddish hair scraped across his skull.

  Rotaka punched him in the face, but the Space Wolf ducked the blow and slammed a gauntleted fist into Rotaka’s throat. He reeled backwards, lost for breath, the runes in his helmet now screaming at him. He too pulled his helmet off, gasping for breath, and in that moment he could feel the Space Wolf’s killing blow coming down on his exposed head.

  Had he been wrong about Huron all along? Did this malaise of Huron’s stretch back to the Palace of Thorns? To before that? Doubt clouded Rotaka’s mind as surely as the pain coursing through him.

  Then the Space Wolf was reeling backwards, head on fire, Malinko having unleashed a torrent of burning promethium, while Verbin was at Rotaka’s shoulder, helping him to his feet. Iltz hovered nearby, the dead gaze of the servo-skull a mockery of concern.

  Hulpin, Malinko, Verbin, Wuhrsk, Iltz. All his men. The latter was dead, but the rest were alive. They were scum – he hated them for many different reasons – but they were his squad, his scum. When all loyalties withered, he had a duty to keep them alive, to keep himself alive, in the face of both rabid enemies and insane leadership.

  Rotaka picked up a discarded Space Wolves chainsword from the ground, and forced himself upright. He immediately had to swing the chainsword upwards to block an attack from an incoming Space Wolf.

  As he did so, the Space Wolf with its head ablaze from Malinko’s flame seemed to be taken by some kind of rage, all reason evaporating from its eyes. It seized the servo-skull out of the air, and smashed it repeatedly against the stone floor, ignoring the flame consuming its gauntleted hand.

  Rotaka had heard of this, the way that the Space Wolves could lose themselves in the animalistic side of their nature, the wolf within overpowering their intelligence. He had thought them beasts before, but this was a new level of mindless savagery, the Space Wolf lashing out with Iltz as a club before repeatedly striking it against the ground.

  Rotaka, now caught between two other Space Wolves, one bringing a sword down against his chainsword while the other slashed at him with a power claw, was left powerless to intervene as the rabid Space Marine smashed Iltz to pieces, components spilling over the ground and the unnatural flame guttering and dying.

  Then, when all that was left was Iltz’s burned-out skull, the rabid Space Wolf looked for another target.

  Rotaka had kicked away one of the Space Wolves attacking him, giving him seconds to rid himself of the one with the sword. Rotaka pulled his chainsword away, whirling out of reach to let the Space Wolf’s sword pass through the space he had just occupied. A blow from the Space Wolf with the power claw knocked him sideways.

  Once again, Malinko intervened to protect Rotaka, diving between him and the Space Wolf before the power claw came down on Rotaka. Malinko received the full impact of the blow from the power claw, tearing through his helmet, and Rotaka was up on his feet, defending him in return, knocking the power claw aside with his chainsword before another blow could be struck.

  Malinko tore off his shattered helmet to reveal long scars down his face, blood turning black as it rapidly coagulated and healed. He dabbed at the cuts, and looked down to see the blood on the fingertips of his gauntlets. Then he shrugged and smiled, his mouth warped and crooked, speaking through shredded lips.

  ‘They add character, yes?’ he said.

  Then the frenzied Space Wolf brought the remains of Iltz down into the side of Malinko’s skull, two giant skulls clashing together in a semi-posthumous headbutt.

  Malinko went down, the rabid Space Wolf all over him, the bloodied servo-skull being raised and brought down to deliver further blows.

  In his frenzy, the Space Wolf had left the back of his neck utterly exposed, not caring about attacks from anywhere else as he battered Malinko. Rotaka took the chainsword and thrust it down the back of the Space Wolf’s armour, shattering the spinal column and leaving the whirring blade digging into his torso.

  The Space Wolf collapsed sideways, blood gushing from the collar of his power armour. Iltz rolled uselessly away, burned-out and crushed.

  Rotaka pushed the corpse aside but he knew it was already too late. Even a Space Marine’s skull would be cr
ushed by a solid object brought down with that many blows of such ferocity.

  Malinko was dead.

  On Kerresh, Garreon knew that this was a vital moment. As one of his master’s most trusted advisers, he had been as close to Huron Blackheart as it was possible to get to such a creature; failure now would breach that trust forever. Regardless of his reduced circumstances and the services Garreon had performed in the past, Huron did not forgive repeated failure from anyone, especially in response to a direct, simple order.

  Drive the Space Wolves through the Archway. Hold the line.

  Garreon was not privy to Huron Blackheart’s thoughts, and for much of the time was very glad of this – who would wish to look inside such a mind?

  Not knowing Huron’s plan, all he could do was fulfil that order to the letter.

  Drive the Space Wolves through the Archway. Hold the line.

  He would make that line, and he would hold it whatever it took, for however long, regardless of cost in lives or assets.

  The demolition engines, the bloated machines crushed everything in their path, chewing up the area around the Archway that the Red Corsairs had failed to defend against the Space Wolves’ earlier attack. As they pushed towards the Archway to Hacasta, rolling over their own former defences, the Red Corsairs under Garreon’s command were crammed into armoured boxes within the bellies of the vehicles. Garreon addressed the Corsairs in his presence, and his voice was voxed to those in the other two engines.

  They all needed to hear this; he wanted his words to dig into their minds like the sweetest barbs and stay there in the battle that would follow.

  ‘You all stand on the verge of extinction,’ shouted Garreon. ‘In not defending our territory sufficiently, you have failed our lord and master Huron Blackheart, and the only punishment for such failure is death. Right now, you are already dead.’

  He looked down at the Red Corsairs before him. They showed no fear, but that did not mean they lacked a keen sense of self-preservation.