by Various
Beyond was unmistakeably the nerve centre of the tau operations on Dactyla. The huge circular room was full of concentric cogitator banks of advanced alien design. Screens were everywhere, with those on the curved surface of the dome overhead showing enormous orbital displays. Information streamed across each screen, making for a glittering constellation of colour.
The tau had prepared for the Space Wolves. Waiting behind the banks of cogitators was a band of creatures who did not resemble the tau at all. They were insectoids almost seven feet tall, clad in vibrant blue carapaces. They had clawed talons and buzzing wings, and each had six compound eyes set into its mandibled face. More than a dozen sheltered in cover, each with a bulky blaster weapon and segmented body armour of unmistakeably tau design.
‘Auxiliaries,’ voxed Baldyr White Bear as he entered the nerve centre. ‘Xenos from the Tau Empire. Vespid.’
Ulrik vaulted one bank of consoles as the first fire came down. The vespids rose into the air, firing from every angle, and whining shots burst around the Wolf Priest as he sprinted and rolled.
Flamepelt was next into the room, supported by Oakenheart. He fired up into the vespids with his storm bolter, shooting down two that were too slow to dart out of the way of the stream of explosive shells. The vespids fell, wounded, and Lief Stonetongue led the Blood Claws in falling on them. Then Thord Icenhelm and Olav Brunn of the Wolf Guard followed, sending chains of storm bolter fire chattering across the dome, forcing the vespids down into the range of the Blood Claws’ chainswords.
Xenos blood sprayed across the consoles. Stonetongue leapt off a cogitator and grabbed a vespid’s trailing limb, dragging it down and slicing the creature clean in two through the abdomen with a slash of his power sword.
Tau reinforcements were making it into the command centre. A squad of fire warriors were accompanied by more auxiliaries, these ones the lanky, avian creatures the Imperium knew as kroot. Beside the orderly tau, they had a feral look, and were festooned with feathers and trinkets. They carried knives of bone and bronze for the kind of up-close fighting the tau themselves eschewed. One of the kroot was holding back a trio of animals with the same savage, scaly appearance. They snarled like attack dogs, and their master let them off the leash.
The kroot hounds bounded towards the Space Wolves. Ulrik felt the weight of his crozius arcanum in his hand, the power weapon an emblem of a Wolf Priest’s authority. The gilded wolf’s skull head was surrounded by a power field, crackling blue-white.
One kroot hound leapt at Ulrik. Its beak-like maw opened wide to snap down on him. Ulrik met it with a swing of his crozius, shattering the bony jaw and driving it back into the creature’s brain. It was dead when it hit the ground, and by the time the second hound closed in, Ulrik’s plasma pistol was in his hand.
The weapon kicked as superheated plasma burst in a plume against the kroot’s shoulder. It burned through skin, muscle and bone, and the kroot hound thudded to the floor a yard from Ulrik. As the pistol’s power coils recharged, Ulrik ducked forwards and drove the crozius down into the beast’s spine. The power field disrupted the gristle holding its vertebrae together and its upper back disintegrated.
The Blood Claws hit the kroot in a thudding, brutal melee. Chainswords sawed into kroot flesh. Xenos knives sought out joints and seals in power armour. Lief Stonetongue stayed up on the console, slicing down with his power sword at the kroot who tried to surround him.
‘Wolf Guard!’ ordered Ulrik. ‘Bring down the fire warriors! Cleanse this place!’
The Wolf Guard hammered bolter shells at the tau. Pulse rifle fire spattered back in return but the Wolf Guard did not duck and scrape for cover as other troops might have – they were relentless, trusting in their armour to hold as they advanced towards the tau.
The tau were disciplined and skilled soldiers. They were veterans of countless battles, exemplars of their species’ way of war, but they had not faced anything like the Wolf Guard before.
Flamepelt roared through the pain of his injuries and smashed into the broken cogitator housings, firing as he went. Baldyr was beside him and Oakenheart took up the rear, ripping out volleys of autocannon fire. The dome was full of bursting shrapnel and through it the Wolf Guard advanced until they were within power fist range.
Flamepelt was bleeding from several pulse rifle wounds, but the pain just seemed to give him more strength. A swing of his power fist caught one tau square in the chest and smacked the resulting gory mess against one of the huge orbital display screens, shattering the image of the stars over Dactyla and spreading xenos blood across the wall. Flamepelt cracked another tau’s skull with a downward swing of his storm bolter.
Baldyr swatted aside the last kroot hound with his chainfist. The creature was thrown across the dome in pieces. Ulrik ran in behind Baldyr to get among the tau, blasting one point-blank with his plasma pistol as the glittering arc of his crozius scattered three more.
It took a lot to keep the wolf caged in the thick of the fight. The Space Wolves were not here just to take alien heads – their mission was to blind the tau sensors watching Dactyla’s skies, and Ulrik could not let the force get split up here pursuing the enemy for its own sake. The son of Fenris wanted to embrace the berserker rage of his people and paint this place with alien blood, but the Wolf Priest reined it in and focused.
The leader of the fire warriors was trying to direct his disintegrating squad from the rear, snapping shots from his rapid-firing carbine as the Wolf Guard closed in and the kroot line threatened to collapse under the Blood Claws’ assault. Ulrik picked him out from the fray and waded through the fight towards him, shouldering aside the fire warriors who tried to bar his way.
The tau leader backed away towards the doorway through which he had tried to storm the dome, firing as he went. Pulse fire cracked and thudded against Ulrik’s breastplate as he pursued. The tau glanced behind him, then back at Ulrik, and in that moment the Wolf Priest saw that he had changed.
Where there had been only the blank surface of the tau’s visor, now there was a pool of formless dark. It plunged down through the tau’s skull and into another reality, where ancient stars boiled away and new nebulae bloomed into existence. It was a glimpse of infinity, a vision of the void beyond the void, and it could ensnare a man’s mind with the endless possibilities it promised.
It could not ensnare Ulrik. He had one of the strongest minds of any son of Fenris, moulded by the icy embrace of his home world and tempered by battles with the fiercest of daemons. He would not fall into the vision’s trap, or feel despair. He was a Wolf Priest. He was the Slayer.
Ulrik tore his eyes away and shook the fog from his mind. He had glimpsed the same thing not long ago, when he had torn the disguise from the imposter speaking in the Great Hall of the Fang.
A daemon. The Changeling. It was here, on Dactyla.
Ulrik barely noticed as he smashed aside a kroot that leapt at him with its blades outstretched. He did not acknowledge the fire warrior who was crushed beneath his armoured feet as he ran. He saw nothing but the daemonic presence, and heard nothing but the echo of the Changeling’s laughter as he had heard it in the Great Hall.
The wolf was loose. Ulrik felt its shackles breaking in his mind. Its howl filled his consciousness. He was running through the chambers of the base now like a hunter pursuing his quarry across a Fenrisian glacier, past banks of alien technology and the scattering bands of tau labourers. The fire warrior leader was just ahead – on open ground Ulrik could outrun the alien, but the base was cluttered and the creature knew his way.
The daemon had followed the Space Wolves to Dactyla, to spring whatever trap it had prepared for them there. Ulrik had outwitted it by ordering the bulk of the Chapter to remain on Fenris. Now it was time to finish his victory over the daemon by trapping and destroying its physical form. If the Changeling could feel regret, it would regret ever having picked out the Space Wolves as the target for its games.
His quarry bolted through a doorway and
the door descended behind him. Ulrik slid beneath it and caught it on his shoulder, roaring as he forced it back open. The motors of the doors screamed and smoked as he pushed his way through.
He was outside the dome now, on a stretch of rocky plateau between the base’s structures. Ruins of ancient Imperial buildings filled the area. Overhead, silvery fire streaked across the sky as the Canis Pax led the tau fleet in an intricate dance. Shipmistress Asgir was keeping the strike cruiser alive against the firepower of the whole tau fleet. When the Changeling was defeated, then Ulrik could worry about assisting with her battle in orbit. For now, his objectives had changed.
A pack of kroot emerged from one dome, interposing themselves between the Changeling and Ulrik. Ulrik crashed into them, bowling half of them over with the force of the impact. They carried long rifles with blades attached to the barrels which they wielded like halberds. Ulrik parried one and shattered the knee of the kroot who held it with a downwards strike of his crozius. The power field leapt up and his follow-up strike into the kroot’s chin took the alien’s head clean off its shoulders. Ulrik whirled, catching two more in crozius’ arc, casting them broken and bloody across the rock.
Ahead, another section of dome slid aside. The fire warrior being puppeted by the Changeling disappeared inside. From the dome strode a bipedal battlesuit twice the height of a Space Marine. One arm ended in an energy cannon and the other held a circular shield that cast a force field around it. On the side of its armoured chest was an oversized combat knife in a sheath, worn not as a weapon but an emblem of rank. Ulrik recognised it through his fury.
Shas’el Dal’yth Sona Malcaon. The tau leader who had demanded the Space Wolves leave Dactyla or die. One more tool of the Changeling.
The wolf inside Ulrik howled. If Ulrik had to go through this alien too, then he would. He was a Space Wolf. The blood of Leman Russ burned in him. Nothing could stand before him when he was gripped by the fury.
Ulrik batted another kroot aside. They scattered as the battlesuit approached, propelled on incandescent jets from the exhausts mounted on its back. The suit crunched to the ground just ahead of Ulrik and took aim with its cannon. Ulrik rolled to the side as a tremendous burst of energy ripped into the ground beside him, blasting a deep trench through the rock.
Ulrik was back on his feet. He leapt at the battlesuit. This was a machine designed to keep foes at a distance, and to capitalise on their vulnerability as they fled. Ulrik would not flee. He found a handhold between two armour plates and swung up towards the battlesuit’s head, an armoured rectangle fronted by a nest of glowing lenses. He drew back his crozius and rammed it into the battlesuit’s eyes, letting the power field discharge to blast the head apart.
The battlesuit’s shield arm had an oversized hand that now reached up and closed around Ulrik’s thigh. It threw him off and he landed hard, skidding on his back along the rock. The battlesuit was reeling, blinded.
Ulrik was barely able to focus enough to check his body for injuries. He was battered, but he’d suffered nothing that would keep him from fighting. The rest of his mind was taken up with the rage.
He would tear this machine apart, piece by piece, and when the morsel of alien coward inside was revealed, he would rip it open and hold the bloody chunks up to the sky.
The power field of his crozius had recharged. This time it would tear off the battlesuit’s arm or split its torso open. Ulrik ran at the machine, taking advantage of its blindness to cross the arc of its cannon.
A panel on the battlesuit’s chest opened up like a hatch on a spaceship. Inside, lit by the winking readouts of the battlesuit’s controls, was the shas’el. A faint pane of clouded air suggested an energy field that kept the cockpit’s atmosphere pressurised in Dactyla’s thin air. The tau’s lipless mouth was open and the warning lights inside his cockpit were reflected in the liquid black of his eyes.
He saw Ulrik just in time to bring the shield arm around. The energy shield flared as Ulrik slammed into him at full speed. He bounced off and sprawled on the rock. The shas’el brought the shield down like a guillotine blade into Ulrik’s abdomen. Trapped against the rock by a weight of shimmering energy, Ulrik struggled like an insect on a pin.
The battlesuit’s cannon swung around to aim at him. If the tau ever smiled, Shas’el Dal’yth Sona Malcaon smiled then.
Ulrik forced his arm out from under him and drew his plasma pistol. The weapon was powerful enough to sear a hole right through solid power armour, but its power coil needed a few seconds to recharge after each shot. That meant Ulrik only had one pull of the trigger.
He fired straight up. The bolt of plasma hit the shield generator and the energy field crackled out of existence. Ulrik rolled out of the way as the cannon fired into the ground at the battlesuit’s feet.
The explosion lifted Ulrik off his feet and threw him against the battlesuit’s leg. Ulrik stayed conscious and aware as the side of his breastplate buckled with the force. His inner armour of fused ribs cracked, and shards of bone were driven into his chest cavity. He felt every one, needles of fire shrieking through him as his organs were burst and lacerated.
Ulrik hit the ground and gasped in a breath. His torn lungs flared in pain. Beside him was a glowing crater in the ground where the cannon had vaporised rock. Ulrik still had his crozius in one hand and pistol in the other. He holstered the pistol, ignoring the pain from the torn muscles down his side.
The wolf inside Ulrik was not quietened by the pain. He only heard it louder now. He reached up and grabbed the lower edge of the battlesuit’s open cockpit, pulling himself back up to the level of the shas’el.
Ulrik was face to face with the alien. The shas’el looked surprised to see Ulrik still living. As Ulrik brought his crozius back for the kill, he caught the reflection of his skull-faced helm in the tau’s large black eyes.
The reflection changed. The shape of the wolf’s skull distorted and broke apart in a spray of stars. Galaxies spun away and thunderheads of glowing stellar gas boiled out from an endless void. Millions of years spiralled away in chains of dying stars.
Ulrik was almost lost. Again, he forced his mind away. A terrible realisation was breaking at the back of his mind.
He heard distant laughter, and he understood.
Something slammed into Ulrik’s side. He fell away from the cockpit and hit the ground by the crater again. The tau fire warrior, the one Ulrik had pursued from the command centre – the Changeling – had run up and knocked him away from the shas’el.
Ulrik’s injuries cried out again. The shas’el turned to face Ulrik. The image of the void rippled across the fire warrior’s helm and the shas’el’s face, and Ulrik heard that laughter again, ringing from some dark place.
Of course the Changeling was not on Dactyla. The daemon was on Fenris, lurking at the threshold of the Fang, waiting for its chance to invade the minds of the Space Wolves. It had cast an illusion to distract Ulrik and force him to make himself vulnerable in a way that no Wolf Priest ever should. Because the Changeling knew Ulrik’s one weakness.
The caged wolf. The rage of Fenris. The Changeling knew it was inside Ulrik, and that when it ran loose all the mental discipline the Wolf Priest had created would shatter and be forgotten.
Ulrik rolled onto his front. His strength was bleeding away as he crawled. The anger was gone now, and he could feel only pain. He had suffered physically before – he had no fear of pain alone. But the pain was a reminder of how completely he had been outfoxed by the daemon. It had known every move Ulrik would make, the exact way to make him forget himself and become the furious son of Fenris that lay inside. He had split off from his battle-brothers and made himself vulnerable, and got himself cornered alone by the enemy in a way that would have had him scolding the most ignorant of novices.
The fire warrior backed off. The battlesuit manoeuvred to stand over Ulrik now, the face of the shas’el visible in the open cockpit. The battlesuit lifted a massive armoured foot, and raised it over Ulrik.
In that moment, when death became certain, a strange emotion surfaced somewhere amid the pain and regret. It was a peculiar form of admiration – nothing positive, nothing that suggested forgiveness or kinship. But nevertheless, Ulrik could not help but acknowledge the sheer cunning of the Changeling, the way it had found the one weakness in a man who should have no weakness at all. For all Ulrik took pride in being a Fenrisian and a son of Leman Russ, his homeworld and his primarch had engendered in him the flaw in his mental armour that the Changeling had exploited.
The battlesuit’s foot rushed down to crush and destroy.
Beyond the battlesuit, the void was streaked with starship fire. And somewhere among those stars, Ulrik realised with what would surely be his last thought, lay a Fenris now open to the predations of the Dark Gods.
PART THREE
EYE OF THE DRAGON
The pressure on Ulrik’s chest suddenly eased.
The shadow of the gargantuan battlesuit above him – the shadow of death – unexpectedly disappeared.
He could barely see or hear past the alarms in his helmet. His auto-senses were in overdrive, diagnosing the damage to his armour, to his body, mostly telling him what he already knew. They told him only one thing that mattered: he was alive. His wolf amulet had protected him from being crushed, though it couldn’t have done so much longer.
The venerable Wolf High Priest had been spared to fight yet another day. He muttered a grateful prayer to the Allfather, as he looked for the agency through which his will had been done here.
The sky of this dreary alien world was screaming; its ground was trembling. Drop pods in blue-grey livery, the Space Wolves’ colours, were plummeting through the clouds, striking the ground like meteors. One of them had landed just behind the battlesuit, the force of the sudden impact throwing it off-balance.
Ulrik forced his battered armour, and his equally battered body, to move. Before the battlesuit’s shas’el pilot could regain control – before that heavy foot was raised to crush the life out of him again – he dragged himself out of the dirt and staggered away from it. His damaged lungs burned with every breath of air he gasped in.