Tyrant of the Hollow Worlds

by Mark Clapham

  Sindri barrelled into the room, unarmoured and holding the girder he had broken the door down with. His body was filthy, covered in cuts and burns, and half his face was a mass of bruises.

  ‘They let you off lightly, I see,’ grunted Tormodr.

  ‘Shut up or I’ll leave you in chains,’ said Sindri, but he was already limping towards Tormodr, casting aside the girder.

  ‘How did you get free?’ asked Tormodr, as Sindri released him from his chains. Tormodr flexed his arms properly for the first time in weeks, feeling the muscles burn.

  ‘Garreon’s manacles were built for a brute your size,’ said Sindri, slurring slightly, one side of his mouth swollen with bruises. ‘For a Space Wolf of slender build like myself, it was possible to slide out, once the right limbs were dislocated.’

  ‘Well, you could have done that earlier and saved me some grief,’ Tormodr snarled, but he felt sympathy for Sindri. The Corsairs had clearly been working him over more recently than they had himself.

  Sindri flashed a smile on the good side of his face, some of his old personality coming back. ‘I needed to wait for the right moment,’ he said. ‘I can’t help it if these traitors just can’t bear to leave me alone, so inspiring is my company.’

  ‘Sounds like they’re distracted now,’ said Tormodr, nodding his head to the door, from which the sound of further bolter fire could be heard.

  ‘Aye,’ said Sindri. ‘Let’s take advantage of the distraction further, and find where these untidy bastards have thrown our armour.’

  Together, they began to limp to the door.

  Rotaka had a narrow window to do what he needed down in the basement of the facility. The Space Wolves were coming in at ground level on the other side of the building, and while they were far away from the central stairwell now, it wouldn’t be long before they took that, cutting Rotaka off from his route back to the roof and the train that would take them to the Red Corsairs camp by the Threshold gate.

  Loathe as he was to be reunited with the Corpsemaster, who had withdrawn there to support Huron some days ago, Rotaka liked the company of Space Wolves even less.

  Wuhrsk was at Rotaka’s heels, and they found Verbin and Hulpin waiting for them at the bottom of the stairwell. Although Rotaka had ostensibly been charged with this detail, he had barely been down to the basement since his squad were assigned to guard the prisoners. It didn’t seem necessary for him to be involved; their orders came straight from Garreon.

  ‘Ready?’ said Rotaka.

  ‘Command is yours, captain,’ said Hulpin.

  So, they retained some respect for his leadership, thought Rotaka, even after everything. That would help.

  ‘Have you briefed the captain?’ Verbin asked Hulpin, with unusual formality.

  ‘I’m standing right here,’ said Rotaka, before Hulpin could answer. ‘And I don’t need to be briefed to deal with escaped prisoners.’

  Rotaka checked his bolter as he spoke, and before Hulpin or Verbin could hold him back further he spun around the corner into the corridor lined with cells.

  He found himself targeting two unarmed, armourless Space Marines.

  ‘Halt!’ Rotaka shouted, but the larger of the two Space Wolves, the one with all the tattoos, bundled the slimmer one through a side door.

  ‘They’re out of their cells,’ said Rotaka as the rest of his squad took positions around him. ‘Not going to get far without weapons, though.’

  Rotaka made a gesture, and Wuhrsk ran slightly ahead, moving to get line of sight on where the Space Wolves had run.

  He was almost in position when a bolter shell hit the wall next to him, showering him with brick fragments as the bolt exploded.

  The shot came not from the prisoners, but from fully armoured Space Wolves, storming down the other end of the corridor.

  ‘Cover Wuhrsk,’ shouted Rotaka, opening fire down the corridor. As the Red Corsairs shot back, one of the Space Wolves took cover in the doorway of the cell one of his brothers had only just vacated. There was irony.

  Wuhrsk ran past Rotaka, who was already backing down the corridor after him, firing rapid bursts from his bolter as more Space Wolves came down the far stairwell.

  ‘To the station,’ snapped Rotaka as he turned back around the corner, and began to run up the stairs he had only just come down. ‘The Space Wolves can have their damn prisoners. I don’t want that sorcerer leaving without us.’

  Verbin seemed to be about to say something, but instead threw a very casual salute.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, before racing up the stairs past Rotaka, followed by Hulpin and Wuhrsk.

  Rotaka shook his head and followed.

  Anvindr was so busy pursuing the Corsairs that he almost ran straight past Tormodr and Sindri. It was fortunate the Corsairs had already disappeared around a corner, as Anvindr froze in the corridor, staring dumbly into a small room where the two missing Space Wolves from his pack were helping each other back into their power armour, a difficult enough task without kaerls and extremely tricky in such a narrow space.

  Anvindr stared for a second at the beaten and bruised Space Wolves, their armour half on, unsure what to say.

  Then he threw back his head and laughed. ‘It seems you two are just fine,’ he said. It was a lie – he could see the torment they had been subjected to not just in the fresh scars but in their general demeanour – but a necessary one to get them into action quickly. ‘I don’t know why we even bothered coming to rescue you.’

  ‘We may look fine,’ snapped back Sindri, and Anvindr winced beneath his helmet to see his arrogant, fine-spoken friend slurring through swollen lips. ‘But these uncouth traitors didn’t leave us our bolters.’

  ‘Russ’ fangs,’ said Gulbrandr, at Anvindr’s shoulder. ‘They really are alive.’

  ‘They look like hel, though,’ added Hoenir.

  ‘Enough,’ said Anvindr. ‘Hoenir, Gulbrandr, with me. Let’s show these traitors what we think of how they’ve treated our brothers.’

  ‘Thank them for their hospitality,’ croaked Sindri, and next to him Tormodr nodded with a grim smile.

  ‘Arm yourselves, and follow as soon as you can,’ said Anvindr. ‘You’ve rested enough.’

  And with that he started down the corridor, the scent of the traitors in his nostrils, determined to make them pay for what had been done to his pack.

  ‘Captain Rotaka reports the Space Wolves have released their prisoners,’ shouted a Red Corsair from down the carriage of the ridge runner. ‘Rotaka and his squad are on board, and the Space Wolves are close.’

  ‘Then let us depart and blow the damn station,’ snarled Anto. ‘Lord Huron awaits.’

  Pranix, still squeezed between two towering Corsairs, had regained his breath since entering the environmentally sealed train carriage, and remembered the taunt his shock at Kerresh’s state had made him forget.

  ‘Won’t Lord Huron be surprised to see me,’ said Pranix. ‘Considering I’m supposed to be dead.’

  The train began to move, rapidly accelerating, and there was a distant explosion from behind them as they left.

  ‘Do not overrate your importance,’ said Anto. ‘No one in our ranks other than my closest allies even knows who you are, and there will be plenty of opportunity once we reach camp to have you packaged and sent away without the Tyrant knowing you are there.’ He pointed out of the window. ‘Look at that sky, inquisitor. Do you really think Huron Blackheart, destroyer of worlds will be interested in whether you are alive or dead? You are below him.’

  Anvindr uttered an old Fenrisian curse as the rooftop exploded, nearly throwing him off the edge altogether. He rolled to a halt just short of the edge and fired a few bolter rounds at the departing train, but to no avail.

  They had rescued their brothers, as Anvindr had hoped, but the Red Corsairs had denied the Space Wolves the battle they wer
e due.

  ‘Soon, witches,’ Anvindr said, adjusting his helmet as warning runes gradually settled down on his display. ‘Soon.’

  ‘Call me old fashioned,’ said Kretschman. ‘But aren’t you supposed to be dead?’

  ‘Good to see you too,’ replied Kulbard.

  Kretschman had been at the edge of a bustling encampment on Trincul when Kulbard found him, and they stood facing each other as a light rain fell. System Governor Cheng, alongside one of the surviving Wolf Lords, had gathered all the forces remaining on the Lightward worlds under one banner, and was leading them to a new Archway that had emerged on Trincul.

  Through that Archway, they believed, they would find the traitors, and have some kind of final stand. It was not the most complex of strategies, but following the disasters that had befallen the Hollow Worlds, and the problems of communication that had plagued them since, it seemed to be the only option.

  This drawing together of sixty or so Space Wolves, a hundred Tallarns and a couple of hundred Lastrati into one army had, at least, returned Kretschman to the centre of the action, brought back from expeditions on Ressial. The Archway was a day’s march away, and the battles to come should have been Kretschman’s main concern.

  Instead, he was talking to a dead man, and finding himself enraged rather than scared or pleased to see Kulbard in the flesh.

  ‘I’m serious, Kulbard,’ said Kretschman, jabbing a finger at the other man’s chest. ‘I left you stranded on Laghast, didn’t hear from you again. I was sent away from the regiment, and now they’re all dead, as far as we know, massacred by traitors.’

  He stepped back from Kulbard, boots sploshing through the mud, glaring at the other man.

  ‘How do you think I survived?’ Kulbard asked.

  ‘This is not a game or a bloody joke,’ snapped Kretschman, though his anger was waning now, as he could think of several legitimate ways Kulbard got to Trincul. ‘I know why I’m alive – I got shunted off the front line, but why you?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Kulbard. ‘I’m a scout, I scouted. I slipped through the Archway from Laghast after it was reopened, and I’ve been making my way around here since then, reporting in when I could. Direct reports to the system governor and the inquisitor, thanks to their little birds. They wanted me back here, so here I came. I got off Hacasta before it blew, and here I am. I just reported in.’

  ‘What did they want with you?’ asked Kretschman.

  ‘That’s an ironic question for you to ask, Kretschman,’ said Kulbard. ‘You seem to be the golden boy they keep hanging around.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kretschman, his anger completely drained now. ‘On that, your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘Having had some communication with your inquisitor, I’d say it’s hard to judge what is going on in a mind like that,’ said Kulbard. Throughout his exchange with Kretschman the scout had maintained his customary wry smile.

  ‘Not that it matters now,’ said Kretschman. ‘Without Pranix, we’ve Space Wolves to lead us now, and they’re nothing if not direct. An all-out strike on the enemy on Threshold, everything we’ve got. Space Wolves, Tallarns, Lastrati…’

  ‘And us,’ added Kulbard.

  Kretschman looked up in surprise.

  ‘You’re not sitting this one out?’ he asked, then regretted the question. It suggested that Kulbard feared combat situations, a grave insult to any Cadian. Even though Kretschman felt uneasy that he and Kulbard had survived where the others had not, it was unfair of him to suggest any lack of valour on Kulbard’s part.

  Characteristically, Kulbard did not take offence.

  ‘I will not be on the front line, but this conflict is coming to an end now, and my eyes are needed on the ground,’ said Kulbard. ‘I’ll be near, don’t you worry.’

  ‘It’s good to know,’ said Kretschman. ‘I fear that we’ll need every last fighting man and woman out there. Perhaps we will meet on the battlefield at last, after so many of these encounters behind the lines?’

  ‘Perhaps we will,’ said Kulbard, walking away. ‘Until then…’

  He trailed off, giving Kretschman a loose salute, and walked away, disappearing into the mist.

  ‘You seem distracted, Anto,’ said Pranix. ‘Afraid the destroyer of worlds might not be impressed with your performance so far?’

  Pranix had stayed utterly still for several minutes, only moving side to side with the motion of the train, and gradually his guards had unconsciously relaxed. They were still watching him intently, their bolters ready to be raised at a second’s notice, but they had left some space between themselves and their prisoner in the spacious interior of the train.

  Others might consider it counter-intuitive for Pranix to draw Anto’s attention to him when it was already elsewhere, but the alternative was silence. For what he was about to attempt, Pranix needed to play with the attention of his captors, to knock it back and forth between himself and Anto.

  Pranix was a short distance from the set of double doors by which they had entered the train carriage, but one of his guards was between him and that escape route. Beyond, there was nothing but the distant horizon, which suggested a sheer drop outside.

  The situation was less than ideal, but Pranix could not afford to be taken too far away from the Space Wolves and into Red Corsairs territory. He needed to rejoin the forces of the Imperium, whatever the risk.

  ‘I appreciate your concern, inquisitor,’ Anto was saying, bile dripping from every syllable. ‘But you would be surprised how many tasks I can manage at once.’

  ‘Impressive, and fortunate,’ said Pranix. ‘I wouldn’t want your mind to wander so much you let me escape.’

  Then he ducked sideways, away from the grasp of the Red Corsair observing him most closely. That Corsair lunged for him, a gauntleted hand descending quickly and instinctively.

  Instead of jerking away from the grasp, Pranix let himself drop out of reach, and rolled head first between the Corsair’s legs towards the outer door, coming to a stop next to a battered wooden box covered in official warnings that was fixed to the wall. Pranix rolled upwards, opened the case, and grabbed both of the gun-shaped objects hanging on hooks within, rising to his feet holding one in each hand.

  Anto, his hand still to the side of his helmet, screamed for someone to find and activate the alarm. Then he looked at Pranix, who was backed up against the outer wall of the train, two guns raised.

  ‘Emergency flare pistols, inquisitor?’ said Anto, with audible irritation. This mortal was wasting his time. ‘Really?’

  ‘Against you?’ said Pranix. ‘No, not really.’

  The inquisitor tucked one of the pistols into his belt. Then he pointed the other at the safety lock on the train’s outer door, and fired at point-blank range.

  The carriage filled with red smoke as the flare exploded against the lock, burning it off. Pranix levered the double doors open and jumped out through the cloud of smoke, into the unknown.

  Anto ran to the door, looking out. The rush of air out of the sealed carriage had cleared the smoke quickly, but Pranix was nowhere to be seen. Anto looked back down the train, and down at the ridge the train was running on. The ridge gave way to a sheer drop of considerable distance.

  Wherever precisely the inquisitor had fallen, it would have been fatal. Clearly, he had chosen death over capture.

  This was a blow to Anto’s long-term plans. Stripping an inquisitor of his knowledge could have provided considerable advantage.

  There was no time for regrets, he thought, as Red Corsairs loyal to him levered the doors shut. Lord Huron awaited, and Anto intended to be with him on every step of the journey to come, seeking out the secrets of these Hollow Worlds.

  The inquisitor was dead. That was the end of it.

  Twenty-Five

  Pranix fell.

  Inquisitors had tremendous power, and wer
e regarded with almost mythical awe by the few mortals within the Imperium who knew of their existence. But for all their psychic powers, honed combat skills, extended lifespans, fine minds and physical enhancements, they were not Adeptus Astartes. They were not that close to godhood.

  Drop an inquisitor a considerable distance onto bare rock, for example, and they would die as instantly and permanently as any normal mortal.

  As Pranix fell from the ridge runner, dropping down the sheer side of the ridge towards a rocky slope that led down to level ground, he had a handful of seconds in which to work out how not to die.

  His psychic powers had returned to him since being released from his cell, and although he had not used them during captivity, he now had great incentive to re-establish his mastery of one of the talents very, very quickly.

  Telekinesis. It had never been his strongest suit, and he found wielding it with precision difficult, but this was not a situation that required subtlety.

  As he fell, Pranix willed a contained ball of telekinetic energy into existence a short distance ahead of him, in the rapidly closing space between himself and a rocky death. He strained his mind, pushing as much psychic energy as possible into the telekinetic wave, while also squeezing it tighter and tighter, until the air in front of him was boiling with white-hot psychic energy, to the extent that he almost couldn’t see the approaching ground.

  Almost. As impact loomed, Pranix released his hold on the telekinetic power he had created.

  The release of telekinetic pressure spread out in all directions, knocking rocks down the slope that led to flatter ground, pushing the air out of the way and buffeting Pranix upwards, killing the speed of his descent and throwing him back into the air.

  Winded by his own telekinetic attack, Pranix was batted into the air at an angle, and his bruised body began to tumble downwards towards a lower point on the slope. He had lost most of that fatal momentum, but was still falling towards rocky ground at a speed that could easily break bones.

  The inquisitor’s mind felt almost as exhausted as his battered body, but he made one final effort to create a telekinetic field again. This time, he didn’t need nearly as much power, instead drawing a simple cocoon of telekinetic energy around himself, a basic shielding technique that could be used to slow thrown objects or even, with sufficient power, bullets and bolter shells.