Stormcaller

by Chris Wraight

  Other visions would come, then. Other times, places. Two amber eyes would be trained on him, lost in an ancient world of dreams, stalking through the void for eternity.

  ‘This will hurt,’ he warned, then threw the first switch.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Hjolda!’ roared Olgeir, firing hard as his momentum propelled him into a disintegrating storm of rock and racing, churning oxygen.

  The chamber’s wall had cracked and broken into a cloud of debris, blasted outwards by the explosive force of the released atmosphere behind it. The station’s unnatural silence rushed back into a whirl of howling sound, punctuated by the massed screams of mutant throats.

  Olgeir was first through the breach, and slammed straight into a spinning crowd of them. They clawed at his armour, piling on top of one another, scrabbling at the battleplate to get their teeth at the flesh beneath. They were everywhere, like locusts, flailing and jostling in the pitch-black zero gravity. Despite the rapidly depressurising chamber, they kept up their shrieks of bloodlust, lost to anything but the sudden prospect of slaughter.

  Hafloí piled through the gap next, careering into a knot of writhing bodies. He fired his bolt pistol as he came, punching into the solid glut ahead of him. Olgeir kept up his volleys but the detonations were muffled, clamped down by the pressure of skin and limbs around them. Blood speckled out from the impacts, spinning in glutinous droplets and spiralling in the whooshing air.

  ‘Blades!’ roared Olgeir over the vox, struggling to free himself from the dozens of claws scrabbling for his throat. The space was pitch black, confined and clogged with bodies, and gaining orientation while weightless was a nightmare – every push sent him spinning into fresh tangles of mutant legs and arms.

  Hafloí somehow hauled his axe from his belt and lashed out wildly, rolling headfirst and clung to by scores of screaming mutants. Fresh blood-slicks rolled out, slapping incongruously into the bodies around them.

  Olgeir resorted to his fists, punching blindly into the mass of the plague-damned. He cracked the first skull clean through, shattering the fragile bone amid a cloud of pulpy, red-blotched matter. He swung again, bursting the ribcage of another, then jabbed his elbow back, feeling the crack and snap of more bones.

  More mutants came to replace those, hands swimming up out of the gloom like shoals of diseased fish, lashing out in a frenzy of claustrophobic hatred. The attacks came from every direction, all in a confused welter of jerky movements. Olgeir felt a blade scrape across the armour-joint at his knee, cutting into cabling, and kicked out against it.

  Both Space Wolves were entirely smothered by then, covered in a ball of raging, calloused, desperate bodies. Olgeir felt himself driven back into the nearside wall. Able to brace against something at last, he lashed out harder with his punches, ripping a narrow space just ahead of him. The mutants’ screams were the worst he had ever heard – amplified and fractured by the rushing howl of fast-escaping air.

  Hafloí was dragged down, his axe pressed against him. Even as Olgeir kicked off from the wall to aid him, he was hauled back by a dozen hands. He twisted, using his bulk to crush a few more against the chamber’s edge. He kicked again, feeling his boot drag through muscle. It was like fighting a single, amorphous mass of decaying meat, albeit one with a hundred biting maws and stabbing blades.

  In the end, the vacuum tipped the balance. The last of the air ripped away, dissipating out into the breached station. The mutants began to gag, coughing on the thinning air as it whistled out of reach. Their eyeballs swelled, the cords of their necks strained.

  ‘Heidur Rus!’ roared Hafloí with real rage, sensing the change.

  Then the sounds around them shredded away into the eerily silent dance of void-combat. Olgeir saw the jaws of the mutants screaming at him soundlessly. He smashed into them with greater freedom, using his gauntlets and bolter-grip. Gasping in oxygen-starved panic, their bodies were slammed away, cracking against the walls with back-breaking force.

  ‘Further in,’ growled Olgeir, angrily discarding the last of the clutching mutant hands around him and pushing on towards the chamber’s far end.

  Hafloí finished off the mutants around him, and followed, pushing aside the final choking, tumbling bodies. The chamber terminated in a circular hatch at the lower end, two metres in diameter, still sealed and powered. Faulty lights flickered around its edge. The metal rim was a mess of gouges, all full of blood, as if the mutants had mutilated themselves in their frenzy to get through the final barrier.

  Olgeir scanned it. There was another air-pocket on the far side, and light, and some heat. ‘This is where they ended up,’ he said, looking for some kind of vox-unit to use.

  Hafloí stared at the portal. ‘Really think there’s anything beyond that?’

  ‘They did.’ Olgeir pulled open a panel next to the hatch-rim, his armoured fingers clumsy in the zero gravity. He punched some buttons, and connected a vox-cable to his helm. ‘Respond,’ he said. ‘Any survivors?’

  A crackle came back over the comm, seething with static. Then it cleared.

  ‘Thank the Throne,’ came a trembling human voice.

  The sun was high, a white hole in the sky, burning away with pitiless strength. The land extended in all directions under it, nearly flat, broken only by rust-coloured ridges of stone on the far northern horizon. There was no shade, nowhere to hide, just an endless expanse of shimmering, shaking heat.

  Ingvar crouched down behind the low rise. Fifty storm troopers of Delvaux’s command crouched with him. Their colonel, a man called Rigal, who wore the full crimson carapace armour of his order, lay on the earth next to him, magnoculars pressed to his visor.

  Two hundred metres away rose the ruins of Hjec Falama, one of the satellite settlements that had once guarded the long road to the capital. The burned-out shells of troop transports littered the landscape around them, rising like carbonised skeletons from the topsoil. A few thin columns of smoke rose from the cover of the buildings, though with less intensity than other enemy positions they’d already purged. The defensive line started with a long, low earthwork, crowned by razor wire. Behind that rose the sawtooth lines of hollow, roofless buildings.

  ‘Tell me what you see,’ said Ingvar.

  Rigal initially hadn’t wanted the Space Wolf to join the kill-team, though Ingvar hadn’t given him much choice. After the first few assaults, the colonel had changed his mind. Ingvar alone killed more than the rest of the team combined, and such strike-ratios went a long way towards changing attitudes. For his part, Ingvar studiously deferred to the colonel’s authority during operations. He’d served with storm troopers before, and knew how their minds worked.

  ‘They’re dug in beyond that first line,’ Rigal replied. ‘A few hundred. Three artillery pieces, some heavy weapons. After that, the usual rabble. They know we’re here.’

  Ingvar knew all that, but it did no harm to let the colonel tell him. ‘It’s your command,’ he said.

  Rigal stowed the magnoculars. ‘I’ll take any guidance, lord.’

  Ingvar studied the approach, using his helm-lenses to zoom in and pan across the hardscrabble vista ahead. Rigal might have been too conservative in his estimates – there were plenty of defenders in position. Behind them, though, there was movement. Fresh plumes of smoke were blooming from some way back into what remained of the settlement. He thought he caught the outlines of troops running across patches of open ground between the carcasses of shelled-out habs.

  ‘Any other forces in this zone?’ he asked Rigal.

  ‘Just us.’

  Ingvar nodded. ‘I can break the line. Once they’ve started panicking, begin your advance.’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  ‘Begin your bombardment,’ said Ingvar, unholstering his boltgun.

  Rigal gave the signal and his two mortar-squads prepared to launch. Ingvar hoisted himself up onto his kne
es and crouched for the sprint.

  ‘We’ll be right on your heels,’ said Rigal, shuffling further up the rise and resting his bolt pistol on the earth ridge.

  Seconds later, mortar trails arced high into the air before thudding down behind the enemy positions. The crews had aimed them well, and explosions burst out all along the line. Reloading took place quickly, and more trails streaked out above the enemy.

  Ingvar burst into motion, kicking out into the open and running hard. He was a big, bulky target and his grey armour gave him no camouflage. Las-fire started to flicker in his direction immediately, skittering across the open desert like flashes of sunlight off glass.

  He kept low, zigzagging across the open terrain, picking up speed and twisting unpredictably. A few sharpshooters had taken position up in the habs, though most were clustered at ground level, hunkered down behind the barricades. Rigal’s troops opened up a covering barrage from the flanks, pinning some of the bolder defenders behind the earthwork.

  Ingvar selected the point to strike. Las-beams pinged from his shoulder-guards and drilled into his breastplate, doing little damage. Solid rounds puffed up the dust at his feet, fruitlessly trying to catch him as he raced into contact.

  He fired as he ran – a short brace of pinpoint shots, each aimed from instinct, each one finding its mark with a wet pop, followed by the messy slap of bodies being ripped apart. He seized a frag grenade from his waist and hurled it ahead of him. It bounced over the barricades and into the semi-walled space beyond, exploding in a messy, spiralling boom.

  Then he was at the barricades and smashing through the razor wire. Those still on their feet raced away from him, firing steadily.

  ‘Fenrys!’ roared Ingvar, laughing with savage pleasure. He unsheathed dausvjer with his right hand, firing his bolter with his left, then charged them.

  They kept their lasguns levelled and their mauls and flails in hand. Ingvar swept through them like a desert wind, ripping down the length of the barricade and bringing terror with him. Even the plague-damned fell back in the face of the furious assault, limping away from their posts and shambling back into the blasted townscape beyond.

  That was the cue for Rigal to advance. His storm troopers moved from cover and charged across the open ground. The last of the mortars, angled for long range, whistled overhead and crashed into the ruins, blowing up amid cohorts of retreating enemy soldiers.

  Ingvar went after them, saving bolts in favour of cutting their legs from under them. Rigal’s forces were quick to catch up. They split into two squads, spreading out along either flank of the barricade and coming at the remaining defenders in a pincer movement. Their carapace armour – superior to the flak-plates worn by Ras Shakeh’s Guard regiments – gave them good protection from return fire, and their hellguns sent better-aimed, more focused beams into their targets.

  Caught between Ingvar’s lone devastation and the disciplined push of Rigal’s forces, the enemy line shattered entirely, breaking into bands of retreating warriors. Once they lost their shape, the storm troopers went after them remorselessly.

  Ingvar pulled ahead. Like a grey ghost he flitted through the dust-kicked sunlight, pouncing on his prey before tearing it to pieces. Soon he had penetrated into the heart of the old settlement. A few big buildings still stood, blackened by fire and windowless, but with their walls largely intact. A wide courtyard ran away ahead of him, bordered on one side by a large municipal edifice with granite columns and a domed belltower. A huge Imperial aquila lay on the ground before it, broken in pieces.

  Ingvar skidded into the open, catching a retreating mutant by the neck and lashing him against the stone. Dozens more fled ahead of him, stumbling over the shattered rockcrete.

  His instinct was to race after them, taking down as many as he could reach before they dispersed into the ruins. Just as he was about to sprint after the nearest, though, he caught the snap and fizz of las-fire coming from the far side of the square. Some of it hit the fleeing mutants, causing them to crash to earth.

  Ingvar’s helm picked up multiple targets hidden in the buildings on the far side, some positioned higher up amid the hollowed windows. He raised his bolter, training it on the first such position. His finger slipped over the trigger, and he lined up the shot.

  It never came. More las-fire scythed down from the cover of the buildings, cutting down more plague-mutants. The aim was good – professional, not wasteful.

  As Ingvar hesitated, Rigal’s troops caught up. The storm troopers pushed on, making cover and aiming their hellguns at the buildings beyond.

  ‘No!’ roared Ingvar, holding his blade up.

  Rigal gave the order, and the entire square fell into echoing silence, the dust settling slowly over the corpses.

  Ingvar strode ahead, looking up at the windows ahead of him. As he emerged into the open, a cry broke out from the far side. The language wasn’t native to Ras Shakeh.

  ‘Fenrys Hjolda!’ came the cry, repeated over and over from hoarse throats.

  Soldiers emerged from cover, encrusted with grime and bearing a motley assortment of lasguns and improvised weaponry. All of them wore grey uniforms, though covered in thick layers of caked dust and dried blood. Their hair was long and shaggy, many of them blond or red-headed. They laughed raucously as they advanced, saluting Ingvar with the fist-against-chest gesture.

  Ingvar watched them come, dumbfounded for a moment. Only when their leader approached, pushing those around him to one side, did he realise the truth.

  ‘Bjargborn,’ Ingvar said. ‘How, in the name of–’

  Torek Bjargborn laughed. All of them laughed. The sound was one of relief, the release of long-coiled tension.

  ‘We waited, lord,’ said the old master of the Undrider, grinning. ‘We held on.’ He fell to one knee then, as did all those around him. There must have been more than eighty of them, all in grey Fenrisian garb.

  Rigal joined Ingvar. He, like the other storm troopers, regarded the newcomers with suspicion, and kept his weapon levelled.

  ‘Is all well, lord?’ Rigal asked.

  Ingvar reached down to Bjargborn and pulled him back to his feet. His fanged mouth broke into a smile.

  ‘Better than well, colonel.’ He looked up, gauging how much of the settlement remained infested, then turned back to Bjargborn. ‘First, we fight,’ he said. ‘Then, when this place is clean again, you can tell me how in the name of Hel you’re still alive.’

  When Baldr came round, his vision remained blurred for a long time. For a few moments he had no idea where he was. Grey shadows loomed over him, shifting like candlelight. He heard a metallic cawing, and boots scuffing on stone.

  Recollection came back slowly, along with the pain. It ran down his back like cold fire. He reached up to his forehead, feeling bloody scabs on his temples.

  ‘Welcome back,’ came a familiar deep voice from the shadows.

  Baldr lifted his head, blinking thickly.

  Njal was still there, towering over him. The smell of burning filled the chamber, as if he’d been cooking meat.

  Baldr pushed himself up into a seated position. His head hammered as he moved. He was desperate to ask, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Njal prolonged the agony for a few more moments.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said at last, putting his instruments away and coming to stand by his side. ‘Nothing at all.’

  Baldr swallowed thickly, tasting his own blood in the bile. He wasn’t sure whether he fully believed it. ‘No corruption?’

  ‘None.’ Njal fixed him with his frost-clear gaze. ‘I sense nothing, I see nothing. If I had, you would not have awoken.’

  The Rune Priest reached for a ceramic cup and filled it with water from a ewer. He handed it to Baldr. ‘When you return to the city, restart your training. Work hard. You have lost muscle mass, and I want you fighting again as soon as possible.’ />
  Baldr nodded, draining the cup. His throat remained parched and sore.

  ‘I have done nothing but interrogate since I got here,’ said Njal irritably, turning back to his instruments. One by one, he cleaned them and put them away, treating the devices reverently, like an Iron Priest with his tools. ‘First the Plague Marine, now you. This must be the end of it.’

  At the mention of the Traitor, the pain burning at the base of Baldr’s neck briefly flared, as if in sympathy with old memories. ‘Did you discover anything from the Traitor?’ he asked, before remembering it was not his place to ask.

  To his surprise, Njal merely nodded, and carried on with his work. ‘We have names now. The Mycelite. This one is new to me, but there is another which is not: Festerax.’

  Baldr flexed his fingers gingerly, feeling the blood slowly flow back into the arteries. ‘Another Traitor?’

  ‘A ship. A hulk. It has been in the annals of the damned for millennia.’ Njal smiled grimly. ‘This is the enemy. Once this world is purged of the last dregs, we will hunt it down.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘We do not know. Not yet.’ Njal put the last of the devices away in leather-lined caskets, clicking the locks closed firmly and making the sign of warding across the lids. ‘We’ll know more if the deep-void stations can be trawled. If not, we’re in the dark over their movements. I don’t think our prisoner knew more than he told us. At least, while he still had a tongue.’

  ‘Does he live?’

  ‘I killed him.’ Njal opened a heavy iron door in the chamber walls. ‘The Cardinal seemed happy to keep going indefinitely. I was not.’ He retrieved something from behind the door, and closed it again. ‘Not good for the soul, that kind of work. Ulric has more stomach for it, but even he takes no pleasure. We were made for the clean kill.’

  Njal returned, carrying what looked like a torc. It was white, carved from ivory or bone, and covered with lines of tiny runic script. Baldr found his eyes drawn towards it uncomfortably. As the torc emerged into the light, Nightwing became agitated, hopping from one foot to the other.