‘An hour, perhaps. Less, if you let me get on with things.’
‘Thank you. Report as soon as you can.’
Blackwing shut off the comm-link. There was a commotion ahead of him. One of the realspace viewers over the command bridge, a huge dome of plexiglass a metre thick and several wide, was cracking. The line of stress snaked its way from the adamantium frame, breaking into rivulets at it reached the centre of the curve.
There were no void shields active. When the physical hull went, the whole bridge would be open to space.
Blackwing stood up.
‘That’s enough,’ he announced over the ship’s open channel. ‘We’ve done all we can. To the saviour pods. Now.’
Some of the crew looked up at him, hope suddenly kindling on their faces. Others, the kaerls mostly, looked appalled.
‘We have not yet translated, lord,’ came Georyth’s voice.
The Master was standing on the stairway immediately below Blackwing, slumped with fatigue. His voice was thick and slow, betraying the liberal use of stimms to keep him on his feet.
Blackwing had to smile. Georyth had been a pain in the arse – a pernickety, officious pain in the arse – but he’d also been a fine Master and had earned himself a place in any sagas that came out of this sorry episode.
‘I had noticed that, Master,’ said Blackwing. ‘Our trajectory is fixed, and only Neiman can pull us out of the warp. As soon as the Geller field’s down, I’ve triggered the saviour pods to eject. Much as I find each and every one of you personally objectionable, it seems a waste to let them go empty.’
Georyth swallowed.
‘And you, lord?’
Blackwing picked up a helm from the floor beside him. He was in Scout-pattern void-armour, the last suit he’d managed to salvage from the ship’s armoury before the fires had engulfed it. An extension of his usual carapace plate, it did little more than keep the vacuum out and the temperature at survivable levels. Not for the first time on this mission, he missed his old Hunter plate.
‘Your concern is touching,’ he said, clamping the helm in place and feeling the seals hiss closed. ‘Patronise me with it again and I’ll shoot your pod down myself.’
Georyth nodded, responding to the sarcasm with a weary resignation. He’d learned how to cope with it over the past seventeen days.
Seventeen days. Four fewer than the estimate. Blood of Russ, I love this ship. When she’s gone, I shall weep for her.
‘Very well, lord,’ said Georyth, clenching his fist against his breastplate in the Fenrisian style and making to leave. ‘The hand of Russ ward you.’
‘That would be nice,’ agreed Blackwing.
Already, the mortals were streaming down from their stations and making for the service corridors leading to the saviour pod bays. The bridge emptied quickly. All the crew knew how precarious the situation was, and getting out of the path of the breaking realspace viewer was simply good sense.
With their departure, the bridge looked vast. Vast, and fragile. The cracks in the viewers continued to grow. They looked out on to nothing but blackness, but it wasn’t the dark of the void. If the chromo filters were removed from the plexiglass, the view would be of the immaterium, a mad whirl of colour and movement. No human wished to look out onto that, and so the viewers were made permanently blank while in warp-transit.
For a moment, Blackwing pondered opening them, revealing the true substance of the matter through which the doomed ship plunged. It was a tempting prospect, and one he’d never indulged before. Would he go mad, just by looking at it? Or would it leave him indifferent, just as so much else in the galaxy did?
His thoughts were interrupted by a crack far below him. Something big and heavy had given way. Despite himself, despite all his conditioning, Blackwing felt a tremor of alarm pass through him. Standing on the bridge of a ship that was literally falling to pieces as it hurtled out of the warp and into a planetary war-zone was about as insane as it got.
And once he thought about it in those terms, the situation made a whole lot more sense.
I am a son of Russ. Not a good example, to be sure, but one of his mad progeny nonetheless, and this is the kind of thing the Blood Claws dream of doing.
He strode forwards to the railing around the command platform, as if by getting closer to the prow he could ride the coming inferno better.
Something else broke then, a strut or a bracing rod, far back in the spine of the vessel. The echoes of its demise filtered through the burning corridors, prompting more muffled crashes from down below.
The Nauro was dying under his feet, component by component, rivet by rivet.
‘Come on, Neiman,’ Blackwing hissed, his pulse pumping, watching the cracks in the plexiglass above him grow. ‘Come on...’
The Long Fangs unleashed their cargo of destruction and the gates to the pyramid dissolved into piles of smoking slag. Huge bronze lintels crashed the ground, brought down by toppling Corinthian pillars. Images of zodiacal beasts were blasted apart, masterpieces of depiction destroyed in a few moments of concentrated fire.
The Eye was the last to go. The beaten metal, hung over the main entrance gates, took more punishment than the rest before it finally caved in, raining broken chunks on to the burning detritus below. As it broke open, a sigh seemed to pass through the air, as if some warding presence had been withdrawn. The giant pyramid shuddered, and fragments of iron and stone tumbled down its sheer sides. The mighty gates had been reduced a gaping, jagged-edged mouth, utterly dark and forbidding.
Ironhelm didn’t hesitate. He was first in, leaping over the tangled ruins at the base of the breach and barging aside metal struts the size of a Rhino’s flank. The Wolf Guard came with him, crashing through the devastation in their Terminator plate, loping fast and low across the uneven terrain. In their wake came the rest of the Great Company, a whole host of gunmetal-grey warriors thirsting for combat.
‘The vengeance of Russ,’ hissed Ironhelm over the mission channel.
Every pore in his body oozed with kill-urge. He could feel the Wolf within uncurl again, stretching its limbs in the dark, stirred by the prospect of fresh blood. Yellow eyes opened in his mind, red-rimmed and intense.
The breach opened out into an inner hall. Its roof disappeared into the gloom above, supported by gigantic pillars of obsidian. The air was hot and dusty, thick with red motes thrown up by the explosions. Giant sigils of the Thousand Sons had been engraved into the stone, dim and half-seen in the shadows. The place was thick with the sweet smell of corruption, as if some ancient wrong had sunk into the stone and remained there, dormant and deadly.
The Wolves swept onwards, surging through the echoing hall, their armour black in the darkness and their helm lenses glowing. All carried their weapons ready, some with bolters, others with blades. There was no whooping or bellowing, just a low, murmured snarling. The Great Company had been unleashed on the pursuit, and every mind within it was focused with remorseless purpose on the task at hand. Like blood running down an axe-edge, the Wolves raced straight into the heart of the pyramid.
They were met by no enemies. The first hall led to another, even vaster, laid out in the same fashion. The Wolves’ footfalls echoed into the shadows, rebounding back from the dark.
Ironhelm felt no lessening of his vengeful fury in the eerie silence. Mortal enemies would have been an irrelevance in such a place – they would simply have delayed the encounter that he yearned for, the one that he’d yearned for ever since the dreams had started.
As he ran, he found he recognised the stonework around him. He recalled the sigils, looming out of the gloom and passing in the shadows. Their patterns had walked in his mind for decades. He had run this path before, over and over again.
I am meant to be here. This place, this kill, has been ordained for me, locked in the wyrd. I am ready for it. By the Allfather, I am ready for it.
The second hall gave way to a third, then a fourth, each one larger than the last. The sheer scal
e of the pyramid began to become apparent. In its sullen, shrouded majesty it was the equal at least of those glass-faced edifices destroyed in Tizca. There were no libraries here, though, no repositories of learning and scholarship. This was a poor imitation, an empty copy of that which had once existed, for the original was impossible to replicate. What was destroyed by the Wolves remained destroyed.
The packs passed through a final gateway, soaring high beyond imagining. A central chamber yawned away from them in all directions, gigantic under the apex of the pyramid. The air felt even thicker, as if something massive pressed down heavily on it. Great braziers, each the size of Imperial Guard Sentinel walkers, sent sapphire light bleeding across the marble floor. Banners, hundreds of metres long, hung heavily from chains suspended in the distant roof, all inscribed with dimly-lit devices.
They were company emblems. Ironhelm didn’t look at them. He had no wish to be reminded of what the Thousand Sons had once been.
In the centre of the chamber was a raised platform reached by steep stairways extending in four directions. It was the pyramid in miniature, crowned by a flat space little more than a hundred metres across.
On the platform was an altar.
Before the altar stood a man.
Ironhelm increased his pace as he saw his target. His helm display didn’t pick up anything, but his eyes didn’t deceive him. A hunched figure was there, slightly under standard mortal human height, waiting for them. Even from far away, Ironhelm’s keen vision picked out the details on the man’s face.
The skin was lined and ancient, puckered like leather and festooned with age-spots. He wore wine-red robes that clung to a slender frame, and leaned against a long wooden staff. His hands were like claws, scrawny with uncut nails. His hair must once had been long and full, but now hung from a balding pate in silvery straggles.
As the Wolves closed in, the figure looked up to watch them approach. The man saw Ironhelm approach, and shot the Great Wolf a strange look. It was a mixture of many things.
Contempt. Pity. Pride. Sorrow. Self-hatred. Hatred for them.
Perhaps the expression was hard to read because the man’s face was unusual in one important respect.
Ironhelm bounded up the steps, leaving his retinue a few paces behind as ever, letting the disruption field across the frostblade flare into life.
‘Now let the galaxy witness your second death!’ he roared, hauling his blade back as he crested the final steps, tensing to leap into contact.
The man lifted a withered finger.
Ironhelm froze in mid-stride. Behind him, his pack was similarly locked into stasis. The entire Great Company ground to a halt, imprisoned in their gestures of impending murder.
Ironhelm roared soundlessly with frustration, flexing his steel-hard muscle-bundles against the maleficarum. His power-armour servos whined, straining at the unnatural bonds that constrained them. He felt sweat burst out across his brow, trickling down his temples. The vice remained, though it yielded a little.
I can fight this.
The Great Wolf clenched his jaw, feeling his fangs scrape across his flesh, battling the sorcery that clamped down on his limbs with every sinew.
‘You are powerful, Harek Eireik Eireiksson,’ said the old man. His voice was thin, dry, and tinged with an oddly paternal-sounding regret. ‘That should not surprise me. I have watched you grow over many centuries.’
Ironhelm felt his lungs labouring, his hearts pumping. If he could have shouted, he would have screamed his defiance. One of his arms shifted a fraction. The deadening power over his body trembled.
‘All that you wish for is to kill me,’ remarked the old man, looking through a single rheumy eye at his assassin. ‘You may succeed. Even now I feel your vital spirit overcoming the bonds I have placed on it.’
He shook his head in grudging respect.
‘So strong! You Wolves were always my father’s most potent weapons. What could I ever do to withstand that? Even at the height of my powers, what could I ever have done?’
Ironhelm felt his lips pull back in a snarl. Control over his muscles was returning. He sensed his warriors all doing the same thing. The frostblade inched closer to its target.
The man made no effort to get out of the way.
‘Time is short,’ he said. ‘So let me tell you why I brought you to Gangava. It was to give you a choice. That is the way of my kind. You think us without honour or scruple, but that verdict obscures many truths. We have standards of conduct, though they differ from the ones you still cherish. I myself make a point of observing them.’
Ironhelm felt the bonds crack further. His arms moved a whole centimetre before the restraining clamps reasserted themselves. If he could have smiled, he would have broken into a wolfish grin.
Your sorcery will fail you soon. Then my blade will finish your babbling.
‘I was once told the truth, and failed to heed it. Mindful of that, I offer you the truth now. I have passed beyond your comprehension, son of Russ. Even now, my soul is split. Only a fragment remains here. It was enough to bring you, to keep you from the greater battle as it unfolds. If you kill me, I shall be free to go to the other place, and my presence there will be terrible. But if you stay your hand, your future may yet be different. That is the choice.’
The old man looked at Ironhelm keenly, his single eye unwavering.
‘Consider this the honour of my calling. A path of ruin awaits you, and I show you the way to avoid it. If you do what your primarch could not, and stay your hand, then the Bane of the Wolves will never come to light.’
Ironhelm managed to grind out a guttural snarl, though static flecks of blood burst from his lips with the effort. His arms shifted again. The bounds set on his limbs felt suddenly fragile, as if one more push would shatter them.
I feel you weakening now.
The old man remained rigidly in place, though he winced. His wasted hands clutched the staff more tightly, and he leaned against it with effort. His control was being dragged to its limits.
‘And so the moment comes. I can hold you no longer. This is the choice, Harek Eireik Eireiksson. You can walk away, and you will never see me again.’
Then he lowered his voice, and the wizened face took on an expression of dreadful warning.
‘But slay me, Dog of the Emperor, and we shall meet again very soon.’
The realspace viewer buckled outwards, torn between the forces raging against it. It had been well designed and made, a peerless example of Imperial craftsmanship from the era when mankind had truly aspired to unmatched mastery of the stars. Blackwing watched the material flex horribly, trying to hold itself together. It had lasted longer than he’d expected, but still looked ready to blow at any moment.
‘Neiman...’ he voxed, bracing himself for whatever came next.
‘Calm yourself,’ grunted the Navigator over the comm. ‘We’re coming out now.’
The mutant’s voice was cracked and gasping. Flames crackled in the background.
Blackwing felt a surge of relief. Below him, fires were now running riot through the servitor pits. The semi-human automata just kept working, even as their skin flaked and rolled back. From far back in the bowels of the ship, Blackwing heard massive warp-coils begin to wind down. They made a strange grinding noise, as if huge iron bearings had been placed out of sync with one another and were trying to negotiate some kind of priority.
‘That’s what I wanted to hear. You’ve done well.’
‘You have no idea, Space Wolf.’
Blackwing bristled at the term. It was what offworlders called the Vlka Fenryka, ignorant of the ways and language of Fenris. Like all his breed, he thought it was a stupid name.
But Neiman was hardly ignorant of any of their ways. He spoke with all the precision of his profession, and now he was dying. So Blackwing replied carefully too, honouring him as he would a pack-brother.
‘Until next winter, Djulian,’ he said.
There was no further response
from the comm, just a snap and a hail of static. Blackwing tried it again, with the same result. The Navigator had gone.
Then the floor of the bridge buckled, as if the ship had hit a sudden burst of turbulence. Blackwing braced himself awkwardly in his void-suit, clambering back toward the throne. A gantry collapsed close to where he’d just been, hitting the rail around the command platform and crashing into the pits below. The rest of the bridge groaned as the metal was twisted and stressed by the forces of realspace re-entry.
Blackwing achieved the throne again and sat heavily on the burnished seat. There was a shudder, and more explosions. Klaxons began to blare out across the upper decks.
No one is left to hear you. No one but me.
Blackwing felt the effects of translation before the instruments reported it. His whole body lurched, as if his organs had been dragged out into the open, re-arranged and put back again. The fabric of reality seemed to slur, to drag, before reasserting itself. A powerful wave of nausea rushed across him, nearly blinding him with its intensity.
Then it passed. The Nauro had dropped out of the warp.
Blackwing depressed a control rune, and the snapping sound of saviour pods blasting free of their support cages echoed up through the burning corridors. Then he withdrew the chromo on the realspace viewers. The true black of space replaced the false black of the warp-guards. The long-range augurs picked up signals. Ship-signs. Dozens of them.
And far off, past the cordon of battleships, was the planetary signature he’d keyed into the cogitators himself seventeen days ago.
Gangava Prime.
The floor began to ripple like breaking pack-ice. The cracked realspace lenses trembled, spawning new snaking hairlines. More booming explosions ran through the ship, shaking the backbone of it. Every warning rune on the tactical console was red and flashing.
Blackwing got up from the throne, running his gauntlet finger across the arm-rest as he did so.
‘Glad I insisted on getting you, girl,’ he said aloud, watching as the structure of the bridge began to fold in on itself. ‘Arfang was right. Oirreisson is a man of poor taste.’
War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Page 36