[Horus Heresy 10] - Tales of Heresy

by Nick Kyme

  Bulveye held up a hand. “I appreciate your courage, but we don’t need the help.”

  “Really? Do you know how to fly one of those transports?”

  “Not at the moment,” the Wolf Lord replied. “Do you?”

  “Not… at the moment,” Andras grudgingly admitted, “but over the last couple of centuries my people have gleaned quite a bit about the aliens’ tongue.” The young nobleman drew himself up to his full height, which still left him at roughly chest-height next to the huge Astartes. “We can deliver a transport into your hands and tell you how to read its controls. All we ask is that you allow us to accompany you when you attack the spire.”

  Bulveye could not help but admire the young man’s courage. “How fast could you accomplish this?”

  “We can strike tonight if you wish,” Andras said confidently. “Is that so? All right. Tell me of your plan.”

  Once Andras and Bulveye had agreed upon the plan, the Wolf Lord gathered his battle-brothers and the Antimonans led them back to Oneiros on foot. At the outskirts of the city the Wolf Lord saw firsthand the devastation wrought by the xenos occupiers. The sky above the city was orange with flames from burning buildings at the city centre, and Bulveye could see signs of activity on the hills surrounding Oneiros as the aliens besieged a great many of the white stone hill-shelters. Fliers buzzed back and forth through the night air, but Andras and his companions led the Astartes on a circuitous route down the winding streets towards a large square just a few kilometres from the Senate building. In the square sat four of the alien transports and close to forty of the raiders in an improvised field base.

  Andras led the Wolves into the burnt-out shell of a municipal building and left them there while he and his compatriots went to set his plan in motion. Andras returned with eight others a short while later, this time wearing the curious scaled armour and weapons of Antimon’s warrior caste. The hexagonal links of the armour were polished to a mirror-bright sheen, and carried a faint scent of ozone that wrinkled Bulveye’s nose.

  “It’s done,” the young nobleman said. “We’d been planning this for some time, but for a different purpose. The diversion had been intended to draw the Harrowers away so that other groups could leave their shelters and forage for food.” Andras’ expression turned grim. “Hopefully, if our plan works, there won’t be a need for such desperate measures.”

  Bulveye nodded. “How long?”

  Andras glanced at his chrono. “Another twenty minutes, give or take.”

  The warriors settled down to wait, checking their weapons and observing the activity in the plaza. Bulveye settled down beside Andras. “You asked me a number of questions before,” he said. “Now I’d like to ask one of you.”

  Andras looked up from the partially disassembled pistol in his lap. “All right,” he said evenly. “What do you want to know?”

  “When we first arrived over Antimon, no one answered our hails—except for you,” the Wolf Lord said. “Why did you disobey the Senate and answer our call?”

  Andras didn’t reply at first. His lips compressed into a tight line and his eyes grew haunted. “The Harrowers took my mother and my sister when I was only four,” he said. “They broke into our shelter. My father had barely enough time to hide me, but the raiders found everyone else. They spared him because he was a member of the Senate, but they… they took the others away, and he didn’t even try to stop them. My sister was only two at the time.” The young man reached up and pinched the corners of his eyes. “When I was ten I crept into the attic and started practising with my great-grandfather’s blades. I swore to myself that if I ever had the chance, I was going to make the Harrowers pay for what they’d done. When your ship arrived in orbit, I thought that chance had finally come.”

  Bulveye laid a hand on Andras’ shoulder. “It has, Andras. You have my oath on it.”

  Off in the distance came the faint but unmistakeable sound of an explosion, followed by the rattle and pop of gunfire. The sounds of fighting intensified within moments, until it sounded like a full-fledged battle was underway.

  Andras straightened. “That would be the diversion,” he said. “Now we wait and see what the Harrowers will do.”

  Out in the plaza, the aliens had sprung into action. Within minutes, three of the transports were lifting off and rushing over the hilltops in the direction of the fighting.

  Andras smiled as the transports faded from sight. “They always leave one back in reserve,” he said, nodding towards the grounded craft. “Now all we need to do is take care of the ten warriors that are left.”

  Bulveye nodded. “Leave that to us.”

  The building they were concealed in was down a side street just off the square, about a hundred yards from the transport and its complement of raiders. Bulveye summoned his eight warriors with a curt command, and the Astartes readied their weapons. “Be swift, brothers,” he told the Astartes. “This is not the time for stealth. Kill the bastards as quick as you can, and let’s be away.”

  Without waiting for a reply, the Wolf Lord led the way into the street and set off towards the Harrowers at a dead run.

  He’d barely covered fifty metres when the aliens spotted him. His enhanced hearing picked up a stream of hissed orders from the enemy officer, and the warriors quickly took cover and opened fire. Splinters hissed through the air all around Bulveye or rang off the plates of his armour. In reply, he raised his plasma pistol and let off two shots: the first struck the xenos officer as he ran from one position of concealment to another, cutting the alien nearly in two. The second blast struck a raider just as he rose from cover to take shot with his rifle, vaporising the alien’s head and shoulders.

  Bolter fire rang out all around the Wolf Lord, and howls of battle-fury split the night. Once again, Bulveye felt the beast inside him stir at the sound, but still he held it back. Not yet, he thought to himself. Not yet, but soon.

  Firing on the move, the Space Wolves felled one alien after another, until the last three lost their nerve and fled down a side street on the opposite side of the plaza. Wasting no time, Bulveye reached the transport and leaped aboard, his axe held ready. He landed just in time to see the transport’s pilot dive over the opposite side of the craft and flee as well.

  Within a few moments the rest of Bulveye’s war-band and Andras’ warriors had climbed aboard the alien craft. Right away, the Wolves’ pilot, an Astartes named Ranulf, and two Antimonans whom Andras claimed were conversant with the alien’s strange language, clustered by the transport’s controls and began to puzzle them out. A minute later Ranulf keyed a number of controls, and the craft’s powerplant activated with a rising whine. Then the pilot took hold of what looked like a control yoke and slowly, carefully, the transport rose into the air. It swung its nose ponderously to the west and began gliding gracelessly forwards.

  “Faster!” Bulveye urged. “The aliens will be on us at any moment! If we don’t get to the spire before they raise the alarm we’re all done for!”

  “Aye, lord,” Ranulf answered. “Everyone hang on to something!” he said, and pulled a lever. At once, the craft surged forwards, gathering speed until the city and the twilit countryside blurred away beneath them.

  As the transport sped like an arrow towards the xenos spire, Andras worked his way forwards to stand beside Bulveye. “Are you sure this is going to work?” he asked.

  Bulveye considered his answer. “If we can reach the reactor chamber, then I’m sure we can bring down the spire,” he said. “As to the rest…” He shrugged. “It’s in the hands of the Fates now.”

  “But how can you be certain we’ll find their leader?” the nobleman asked.

  The Wolf Lord answered with a savage smile. “Once he realises what we intend to do, don’t worry. He’ll come to us.”

  Ten minutes later they saw the alien spire. The massive structure was silhouetted against the night sky, limned in a faint blue glow cast by the citadel’s gravitic suspensors. Pale green lights flashed at inter
vals along the surface of the spire, and here and there a craft rose from a landing spot on the side of the structure and sped away into the night.

  Suddenly, Ranulf called out from the control room. “My lord! The vox in here’s started hissing! I think we’re being challenged!”

  Bulveye bent at the knees, placing as much of his body behind the armoured railing of the transport as he could. The rest of the Wolves followed suit. The Wolf Lord looked over at Andras. “I’d get down were I you,” he said. “Here’s where things get interesting.”

  All at once the night sky lit up with beams of energy and stitching streams of fire as the spire’s defensive batteries went into action. Energy blasts struck the prow of the transport, blasting holes through the armour plate and showering the passengers with molten shrapnel. Bulveye turned back to the control room. “Aim for the centre of the spire!” he told Ranulf. “There have to be landing pads there for maintenance and supply!”

  The transport plunged onwards through the hail of fire. Its high speed and the surprise of the spire’s gunners made it a difficult target, and it crossed the distance to the citadel in a matter of seconds. Ranulf caught sight of a suitable landing pad at the spire’s midpoint and raced towards it. Only at the last minute did he try to flare the engines back and come in for a landing.

  They touched down with a bone-jarring crunch and a long, rending sound of tearing metal. Everyone was thrown forwards, piling up in the craft’s mutilated bow as the transport skidded wildly down the landing pad in a shower of sparks. Finally, friction asserted itself and the transport slowed, skidding to a stop less than a dozen metres from the far edge of the pad.

  It took several moments for the warriors to extricate themselves from the bow of the transport. Jurgen and Halvdan led the way, leaping over the rail onto the landing pad with weapons at the ready. The rest of the Wolves and Andras’ warriors quickly followed, their faces concealed by armoured veils. Bulveye yelled to Ranulf as he reached the rail. “Make sure this bucket is ready to fly by the time we get back,” he said, “otherwise it’s going to be a long walk back to Oneiros!”

  The Wolf Lord leaped over the rail and landed with a clang onto the pad. Five yards away, a long, low hatchway led into the spire. Bulveye waved his battle-brothers towards the hatch. As they advanced, Andras came up beside him, closely trailed by his warriors. “What now?” he asked.

  Bulveye nodded at the hatch. “This has to be a loading hatch for carrying parts and supplies into the citadel,” he said. “The passageway beyond will take us to the reactor chamber sooner or later.” He nodded to Halvdan. “Melta charge! Make us a hole!”

  The lieutenant nodded and fitted one of their six anti-armour charges to the hatch. Moments later there was a whoomp of superheated air, and a large, molten hole had been blown through the door’s thick plating. Without hesitation, Jurgen and two of the Space Wolves dived inside, and boltguns echoed in the space beyond. The staging area beyond was littered with wreckage from the blast; smashed containers spilled half-melted debris across the black floor and smouldering, armoured corpses attested to the force of the melta charge’s focused blast.

  The Wolf Lord and the rest of the assault team charged through the breach as Halvdan pulled a small auspex unit from his belt. The Astartes keyed in a series of commands, and the unit lit up immediately. “I’m getting a strong energy source at about seven hundred metres,” he said, gesturing towards the centre of the spire. “That’s got to be the reactor.”

  “Take point,” Bulveye said with a curt nod. “Find us the shortest route to the core and stop for nothing.”

  For the next twenty minutes the assault team drove their way deeper into the spire, navigating by the energy traces on Halvdan’s auspex unit. Bulveye and his Wolves moved swiftly and lethally through the access corridors of the alien citadel, orchestrating a well-rehearsed dance of death that tore through everything the Harrowers put in their path. The huge passageways were teardrop-shaped and oddly faceted, as though the entire citadel had been carved from a strange kind of crystal, and the walls hummed with stored energies. Every surface was suffused with a purplish light, picking out strange, graceful carvings on the crystalline walls but leaving much else in shadow.

  The xenos defenders sealed all the hatches leading into the spire and organised hasty defences behind each of them, but each time the Wolves would use a melta charge to create a breach and then dive through firing while the defenders were still recovering from the effects of the blast. It was a time-honoured technique that the Astartes had mastered in boarding actions over the course of decades, and so long as they kept up their momentum the warriors were difficult to stop.

  Bulveye knew they were getting close when they blasted their way into a large room lined with strange, pulsing controls and filled with almost fifty xenos warriors. The Wolves made their breach and broke through into a storm of hissing splinter fire. Jurgen and the two warriors who went in first were struck dozens of times, but the armour succeeded in deflecting most of the deadly needles. Without hesitating they rushed at the mass of aliens, their power swords and chainaxes held high, and in moments were locked in a savage melee.

  The Wolf Lord was next through the breach, and found himself attacked from three sides by armoured raiders brandishing rifles and jagged knives. He drove back the assailants on his left with a shot from his plasma pistol, then slashed furiously at the rest with his power axe. The keen blade split rifle barrels and armoured torsos with equal ease, and the aliens fell back in disarray. Bulveye charged after them, allowing room for Halvdan and the rest to make their way into the chamber behind him.

  Splinters howled through the air, and the crackle of Antimonan pistols replied in kind. Andras came up on Bulveye’s left, slashing at the aliens with his sword. Splinters raked him, but the projectiles sparked and deflected away from the noble—evidently the armiger harness incorporated a defensive force-field of some kind. The rest of the Antimonans joined in with ferocious zeal, shooting and stabbing at every Harrower they could see.

  The aliens fought to the last, emptying their weapons and then using their bayonet-tipped rifles as pole-arms until they were finally cut down. One of Andras’ men lay dead among them, and every one of Bulveye’s warriors had sustained a number of minor wounds. “Press on,” the Wolf Lord commanded, indicating the open archway at the far end of the chamber.

  They emerged into a vast room whose ceiling rose to a peak far above their heads. Control consoles lined the walls of the octagonal chamber, and three other archways led off in different directions from the room. At the centre of the chamber, suspended in a complex network of struts and field induction matrices, rested an enormous, spindle-shaped crystal. The feeling of ambient power was thick inside the chamber; each pulse shivered along the Wolf Lord’s bones. “This is it,” he said. “Halvdan, set the remaining charges. The rest of you cover the other entrances.”

  “Two had best be enough,” the lieutenant said, limping forwards and scrutinising the crystal to determine where his charges would do the most damage.

  The rest of the warriors raced forwards, fanning out around the huge reactor room to block access via the other three entrances to give time for Halvdan to do his work. Bulveye was only a few steps behind them, crossing to the opposite side of the chamber, when the Harrowers launched their counter-attack.

  They struck from all three sides at once, pouring splinter fire through the openings that ricocheted dangerously around the room. The fire was so intense that the defenders had to duck away and take cover, which gave the xenos troops the opening they needed to launch their charge. Armoured warriors burst into the chamber from left and right, driving back the Antimonans and coming to grips with the warriors of Bulveye’s Wolf Guard.

  Across the chamber, Bulveye saw one of Andras’ warriors lean into the third archway and open fire with both pistols. Splinter fire sparkled across his shields—then a pair of indigo energy beams struck the warrior full in the chest, collapsing the e
nergy field and blasting the man apart. Right on the heels of the energy bolts charged a force of black-armoured warriors wielding long, powerful glaives that crackled with blue arcs of electricity. Within moments another of the armigers was dead, cut in two by the blow of one of those deadly weapons, and the two Wolves guarding the entrance had been driven back, hard-pressed by the fearsome attackers.

  Into the space created by the sudden charge came a tall, lithe figure, clad in intricate, arcane armour and wreathed in a corona of swirling, indigo-hued energy. A long, curved black blade hung loosely in his right hand, and a long-barrelled pistol was ready in his left. His hair was long and black, hanging unbound past his shoulders, and his face… The sight of his face caused Bulveye’s blood to run cold.

  The xenos chieftain had no face—or rather, he had a multitude of them. Ghostly, agonised human faces flickered and wailed in the place where the alien’s face ought to be. Men, women, children—each face twisted in a mask of unutterable terror and pain. From across the room, Bulveye could feel the horror radiating from the terrible holo-mask, as palpable as a knife drawn against his cheek.

  The wolf inside him rose up, baring its fangs. Its rage and bloodlust filled him. Now? It seemed to ask.

  Now, Bulveye answered, and he let the rage of the Wulfen fill him. The Wolf Lord raised his glowing axe and howled, a primal sound born in the primeval forests of ancient Terra itself, and then charged at his foe.

  Two of the chieftain’s bodyguards leaped into the Wolf Lord’s path, their glaives held ready. He shot them both with blasts of his plasma pistol, dropping them with glowing craters blasted in their chests. A third bodyguard leaped forwards, stabbing with his glaive. The motion was almost too swift for the eye to follow, but the battle-madness had taken hold of Bulveye, and his body moved almost without conscious thought. He swept the blade aside with the flat of his axe, then brought the weapon around in a back-handed blow that sheared through the warrior’s neck. Bulveye shouldered the headless corpse aside and charged on, howling as he went.