Legacy of the Wulfen - David Annandale & Robbie MacNiven

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘We are not subordinate to them, captain,’ Oppen pressed. ‘The Imperial Navy answers to none but–’

  ‘I’m aware of the hierarchy of the fleet, thank you, First Lieutenant,’ Krief snapped. ‘Now kindly return to your post. You too, Mister Renmann.’

  Another strike rocked his ship. His soul groaned in counterpoint to the agony of the overburdened shields. He’d captained the Wrath for the past twenty-five years, Terra-standard. When the venerable Lunar-class cruiser suffered, he suffered, and its triumph was his own. To take her out of what was on the brink of becoming a life-and-death fistfight with what could surely now only be a band of renegades and traitors went against every Navy-given value ingrained in him.

  But ignoring orders also went against his nature, and regardless of Oppen’s bombast, Krief was under no illusions as to the position he occupied within the crusade fleet. Oppen could answer to the Angels of Death if he wanted.

  ‘Message to gunnery,’ Krief said. ‘Cease fire, effect immediate. And pray to Him on Terra that those warp-damned Wolves do the same.’

  Wolftide, in high orbit above Midgardia

  ‘Lord, they’ve ceased fire.’ The huscarl’s voice was breathless. Egil’s flagship seemed to have gone quiet, still and silent like a weary predator, waiting to see if the killing was done.

  Egil watched the bridge’s blinking auspex displays and the oculus visuals, expecting them to flare red and furious once more with interstellar ordnance. He felt the deck beneath him shudder with release as Wolftide’s bombardment cannon fired again. The monitors, however, remained a sterile green.

  ‘Lord,’ said the vox huscarl. ‘The Rock… is hailing us.’

  ‘Order to all ships,’ Egil said slowly. ‘Cease fire. And accept the link. Bridge speakers.’

  The Wolftide’s command deck was overlaid with static as the vox horns came online. After a moment a voice, hard and cold as a basilica’s keystone, broke through the interference.

  ‘Do you want to die, Wolf?’

  ‘Supreme Grand Master Azrael,’ Egil said. ‘I see you’ve finally found the transmit button on your vox set.’

  ‘Choose your next words carefully. Why did you just open fire on an Imperial fleet?’

  ‘Why did you just fire-bomb one of the Allfather’s worlds?’

  ‘I am not here to chase your tail, mongrel. You have two hours to withdraw your fleet from orbit and proceed to Fenris, where you shall await the Imperium’s judgement for what you have done here.’

  ‘The Imperium’s judgement, or the Lion’s?’ Egil demanded. ‘Withdraw your forces from this system within the next two hours, and we will discuss your actions from a less fatal distance.’

  Egil was aware that they were mirroring each other. Near annihilation would be mutual. The Iron Wolf had opened fire not just because Conran and the murdered citizens of Midgardia had been crying out for vengeance, not just because the Lions had violated their sovereign territory, and not just because they had put the Great Wolf in danger. He had done it to buy time. He had no idea how large the crusade fleet was, or whether it had engaged other Great Companies elsewhere in the system. Until Azrael had said it, he didn’t even know that Fenris hadn’t suffered the same fate as Midgardia.

  The Iron Wolf, logical as ever, had seen the Wolves under attack, and he had responded. Now that he had checked them, the time had come to discover who the real traitors were.

  The Lions, or the Wolves.

  Svellgard

  From the grey heavens, the weight of the Imperium’s wrath fell upon Svellgard.

  First it was firepower. The precise strike of Iron Requiem had been nothing next to the weight of ordnance unleashed by the combined fleets in Frostheim’s uppermost orbit. Lance strikes, melta torpedoes, augur-guided macrocannon shells – they ripped and shredded Svellgard’s clouds and shook its islands to their bedrock.

  The bombardment was centred on three different sectors, around the edges of the warp rift anomalies pinpointed by the fleet’s scans. There the corruption was at its worst, the sucking, swirling oceans seething with nightmares of blubbering flesh and grasping tentacle-limbs. Cohorts of lesser daemons pushed their way through the morass of submerged warp-flesh, all massing in the direction of the World Wolf’s Lair. Until the orbital barrage began to annihilate them, splitting apart the ocean waves and flinging great pillars of evaporated water skywards.

  As the great guns of the Imperium’s fleets continued to hammer Svellgard’s deformed deeps, more contrails filled the air. The objects fell with almost as much force as the macroshells, but their payloads were considerably more deadly. They struck in clusters near two of the three portals, hammering the exposed seabed close to where the receding waters still lashed and foamed.

  Drop pods. Their flanks fell, armoured figures deploying from their cramped interiors with experienced ease. To the north of the World Wolf’s Lair, the blue battleplate of the Ultramarines, to the east, the black and silver of the Iron Hands.

  Thunderhawks followed the drop pod assault down, leaden with armour support. Bolters flashed and barked as the Space Marines secured their landing zones, the concentrated firepower more than enough to banish the daemons dragging themselves from the surf towards them.

  The world the Adeptus Astartes found themselves fighting in was a strange one. Even as the oceans retreated they left behind hundreds of choppy micro-oceans in the lower depths of what had once been the seabed. An advance route was planned out across uplands of craggy exposed bedrock, thick with dripping growths and writhing aquatic life.

  Few of the growths of life were without the hideous stigmata of Chaos.

  The Space Marines cleansed as they went, the Ultramarines with a Codex-approved combination of pre-planned advances and individual unit flexibility, the Iron Hands with remorseless implacability. All the while, the capital ships maintained their bombardment from above, hammering the things crawling up out of the rips in reality, searing away Svellgard’s seas with fiery wrath.

  The Space Wolves were the last to join the assault. Harald and Sven waited. When Epathus asked why, Harald claimed they were giving Bran Redmaw more time. In truth, they wanted to ensure the crusade fleet deployed its strength to attack the warp portals, and not the World Wolf’s Lair. Only when heavy Astra Militarum troop shuttles had started to plough through the lower atmosphere did the Wolf Lords give the signal.

  ‘I’ll see you afterwards, Deathwolf,’ Sven said, clasping his brother’s vambrace.

  ‘Enjoy yourself, pup,’ Harald replied, returning the warrior’s grip. ‘For Russ and the Allfather.’

  The Wolves went on the offensive. The weight of daemonic attackers around the Lair’s shores had slackened considerably as the wyrdspawn turned to protect the rifts. Harald and Sven led their packs from the defence networks and bunker tunnels with vengeful howls, thundering out into the cloying wet sand. Only then did the Wolves’ ships in orbit join the bombardment, hammering the wyrdlings around their objectives – the largest portal, south of the Lair.

  The Astra Militarum were joining the attack against the other two. Valkyrie airborne assault carriers picked up the Harakoni Warhawk detachments defending the islands around the Lair and deposited them via short grav-chute drops onto the new front lines. The Ultramarines and Iron Hands found their gradually ever-more exposed flanks bolstered by platoons of airborne infantry in black combat fatigues and tan-coloured carapace flakplate, salvoes of semi-automatic lascarbine fire snapping out from the rugged shoals and dunes that had once been the seabed.

  Heavier ground troops were landed behind the front, around the drop zones initially secured by the Angels of Death. To the north, the 443rd Adraxian Legion and the 15th Naimen Armoured, to the east, the 16th Kattak Grenadiers and the Sixth Virillion Steelborn. The Guardsmen followed in the wake of the Space Marines, burning and slaughtering remaining pockets of infestation with the application of massed, point-blank firepower.

  Above them, the Imperial Navy added yet more we
ight to the fight. Thunderbolts and Lightnings screamed from the fire-scarred skies, peeling off from their squadrons one by one to strafe the never-ending hordes shuffling from the receding deeps. Higher up, wings of Marauder bombers rumbled, their payloads pockmarking the already ragged landscape.

  The Navy did not enjoy air superiority for long. The clouds soon played host to rippling shoals of blue and purple sky-screamers and flocks of black-fleshed furies, as well as bigger, indefinable things with beating or buzzing pinions and darting talons. They latched themselves onto wings and fuselages, claws splitting open cockpits and hauling pilots, screaming, out into the air, to be devoured or thrown to their deaths. The fighters closed around their bombers in response, painting the sky with beams of las and thudding trails of autocannon rounds that bisected the daemonic flocks. The Adeptus Astartes joined the battle for Svellgard’s skies as well, Thunderhawks and Stormtalons churning out bolter fire in support of the Navy formations.

  Beneath, like reflections in a bloody river, the battle raged. Only in the south did the Wolves remain unsupported, fighting on with only the orbital strikes of their fleet to help clear the way. Sven led from the head of his Skyclaws, his face a rictus of ichor-splattered determination. Gone was the laughing warrior who thrilled at the roar of his chainsword and the crackling power of his frost axe. Gone was the young Wolf who staked a battle’s success on the number of heads taken, and struggled to outdo the antics of his youngest, most savage pups. Now he killed in near silence, grunting with each powerful swing of Frostclaw, ignoring the ache of his split rib-plate or his useless left hand.

  Olaf Blackstone fought at his side, lightning claws a blur of charged razor-steel, finishing anything his Wolf Lord didn’t send screaming straight back to the immaterium. The Skyclaws pressed into the heart of the wyrdling legions, chainswords howling and flamers roaring, infected by the grim, killing fury of their jarl. The daemons parted before them.

  ‘Not too far, pup,’ Harald said over the vox. He was astride Icetooth once more, the huge thunderwolf slick with wyrdling gore, snapping and snarling through a clutch of wailing daemonettes. Around him the remainder of his Riders of Morkai had also mounted their Fenrisian war beasts, the savage fang at the tip of the attacking Deathwolves. The Firehowlers, however, were pulling ahead.

  Sven didn’t respond. He hit the turbo on Longbound, letting the jump pack slam him almost horizontally across the slime-slicked seabed. He struck a brace of horrors as they tried to summon their mutating flames to stop him, the things disintegrating beneath the impact of the power-armoured warrior. Frostclaw lashed out – a glittering, icy arc in the ichor-misted air – to reap more wyrdling un-lives. A moment later and Olaf was at his side once again, slamming down on his pack amidst the melee. Still the Firehowlers pressed on.

  And around them, stronger than the rising tide, the daemons surged.

  Terrek slammed his power fist into the snapping, living jaws of the skull cannon’s chassis, feeling the warp-forged steel buckle and split beneath his energy-wreathed gauntlet. The discharge of the disruptor field tore through the neverborn engine, blasting it apart in a blizzard of burning metal and shattered bone.

  ‘Status,’ the Iron Captain demanded as his squad pulled apart the screaming construct’s remains.

  ‘The machine-spirit is in pain, brother-captain,’ came Morex’s reply over the vox. ‘I estimate the supplications will take five minutes more.’

  ‘You have them,’ Terrek said, inputting the delay into his visor’s combat matrix and switching to the Clan-wide channel.

  ‘This is Terrek to all squads. Hold.’

  The Iron Hands stopped as abruptly as deactivated servitors, before automatically taking up defensive positions along the exposed reef they found themselves straddling. Behind Terrek the Clan’s Iron Father, Morex, was applying his cog glaive to the disabled tracks of Land Raider serial two-one-one-six-A, designate Black Vengeance. The blazing daemonic skulls fired by the living cannon just destroyed by Terrek had dented the tank’s adamantium hull and shattered the links of one of its heavy tracks. Bolters and lascannons still blasting, it had slewed to a ponderous halt atop the reef’s crest.

  ‘Captain, what of the humans?’ Sergeant Baalor voxed. ‘They are still attempting to advance.’

  ‘Let them,’ Terrek said after a split second’s analysis. ‘If they make headway now they may be able to keep pace with us when we resume the advance.’

  ‘Acknowledged, Clan Commander.’

  Terrek could well imagine the frantic vox calls inundating the Guard officers, and their uncertainty over whether to halt alongside the silent, black-armoured automata, or whether to press on unsupported. Terrek would not permit them to halt. Pausing to maintain the integrity of his Clan’s advance was imperative, but stalling the entire offence against the eastmost warp portal would be wasteful.

  While he waited, the Iron Hand reviewed the progress of the other counter-attacks. The Ultramarines were lagging, too focussed on maintaining contact with their supporting units. Epathus’ squads had interspersed themselves among the Militarum, bolstering the width of their thrust towards the northern portal whilst weakening the tip of the spear, centred around Epathus and his Sternguard. That was the difference between Guilliman’s offspring and those of the Gorgon – the former always engaged with at least two objectives: to win, and to minimise the losses of their allies. The machine-minds of Iron Captains like Terrek were unhindered by such dangerously indulgent concerns. Without victory, the lightest losses were damning. With it, any losses were acceptable.

  The Wolves were doing no better. Though their progress towards the southern portal was impressive, the sigils blinking across Terrek’s visor were without any form of coherence. The savages were launching a blind, all-out charge towards the largest of the three warp rifts, plunging through a veritable sea of neverborn. Even the most favourable analysis had them being cut off, surrounded and annihilated long before they reached their objective.

  ‘Praise the Machine.’ Morex’s monotone exaltation interrupted Terrek’s assessment. ‘The iron is willing, brother-captain.’

  Terrek glanced back to see Black Vengeance rolling forwards once more, greasy smoke churning from its rear exhaust ports.

  ‘All squads, resume,’ Terrek voxed. Like a pict feed that had been unpaused, the Iron Hands rose and went forward once more.

  Ramilies-class star fort, designate Mjalnar

  A world burning. Darkness.

  Ragnar’s eyes snapped open. There was a face above him, square-jawed, scarred, the eyes a stony grey-blue. The Wolf Lord’s hand came up instinctively. It was intercepted by a fist of silver steel.

  ‘Daemonhunter,’ Ragnar said, snarling up at the Grey Knight kneeling over him. ‘Where are my Wulfen?’

  The Knight said nothing, but released his hand, and offered an open palm. Ragnar took it, and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

  ‘Safe,’ the Knight said. Ragnar gazed around, blinking. His packs were clustered around him – Blood Claws, Wulfen and the Blackpelts, watching their lord attentively. For the first time since boarding Mjalnar he realised his head was clear. The throbbing ache that had split his skull was gone.

  As were the daemons.

  ‘Where is Madox?’ Ragnar demanded.

  ‘Who?’ the Grey Knight responded. Ragnar looked up at the control platform. The command deck was slashed with ichor and littered with Space Wolves dead, but of the Tzeentch wyrdlings there was no sign. The platform itself was deserted, the command throne empty, and only a livid scorch mark on the domed ceiling told of the former existence of the warp rift.

  ‘What happened?’ Ragnar asked.

  ‘When you stormed the platform you broke the daemon’s glamour,’ said the Grey Knight. ‘You fought and slew the Tzeentch Herald at the heart of the corruption. When you banished it the warp portal collapsed in on itself.’

  ‘I saw a vision,’ Ragnar said, staring up at the empty throne. ‘Someone I have not se
en in a very long time.’

  ‘Lies and deceit,’ the Knight said. ‘Even more than his brothers, the Changer loves trickery and illusion.’

  ‘Madox said Midgardia is burning,’ Ragnar said. ‘I saw it. Fires set from orbit, eating up everything. He said a daemon is behind the Lion’s actions.’

  The Grey Knight exchanged a glance with de Mornay. The inquisitor’s face was grim.

  ‘Regardless of the daemon’s trickery, we must press on to Midgardia,’ he said. ‘For all our sakes. Brother-Captain Stern, will you take passage on my vessel?’

  ‘Gladly, Lord Inquisitor,’ the Grey Knight said. ‘Once we have retrieved our two fallen brothers from Star Drake. Lord Blackmane may also wish to take custody of the Wulfen we’ve left locked in the brig.’

  ‘You truly mean my Murderpacks no harm?’ Ragnar asked, not bothering to mask his suspicion. The surrounding Wulfen watched with silent, rapt intensity, like children observing an Emperor’s Day ascension play.

  ‘There are more pressing matters at hand, Lord Blackmane,’ Stern said.

  ‘And when there aren’t?’

  ‘I cannot promise you won’t hear from me again.’

  ‘We can discuss such delicate matters en-route,’ de Mornay said. ‘Mjalnar is cleansed. I will set an Inquisitorial quarantine marker, and then we must be on our way. Before the situation in this system deteriorates even further.’

  ‘I fear it already has, witch hunter,’ Ragnar said, seeing again the fire-wreathed world the thing disguised as Madox had forced into his mind. ‘I fear it already has.’