Ingvar looked doubtful. ‘I’d rather have sigrún with us on the hulk.’
‘As would I, but the ruling’s been made. I’ll speak to Heavy-hand – he’ll understand.’
Ingvar thought for a moment. ‘We could use this,’ he said. ‘Klaive remains on the cruiser. He is the one we seek.’
‘Brother, you told me I did not need to worry…’
‘And you do not. We will follow our orders, but if the oath is broken…’ Ingvar held Gunnlaugur’s gaze steadily. ‘Then we take Klaive.’
Gunnlaugur resumed pacing, prowling the narrow chamber like a caged animal. ‘Njal already watches us. He watches Baldr. If we slip the leash, he’ll have our eyes. We need good kills, brother. We should have done better at Hjec Aleja.’
‘We did what we could.’
‘It wasn’t enough.’ Gunnlaugur stared moodily at the embers, grinding his fangs as his mind worked. ‘I’d have welcomed fighting with her again. Skítja, these allies are poorer.’
Ingvar couldn’t disagree. ‘We’ll be rid of them soon enough. I feel the old rages – they’re coming back. We have Njal with us now, a whole hunting-pack at our shoulder.’ He grinned. ‘What is better? What more is there?’
Gunnlaugur nodded. Ingvar’s enthusiasm was infectious.
‘Nothing, brother,’ he said, thinking ahead to the slaughter and feeling acid saliva quicken in his mouth. ‘There is nothing better.’
II. The Mycelite
Chapter Eleven
Four hours before Heimdall broke the veil, the Wolves gathered in the ship’s main assembly hall. Ancient war-banners of the Chapter hung from the distant ceiling, each one charred at the edges. Columns of alabaster and granite soared up into the smoky heights, banded with iron and studded with red-tinged lumen-beads.
Njal stood on a stone platform at the far end, flanked by the two Wolf Guards Álfar and Gunnlaugur. A fire burned behind them, mounted on a granite altar and sending a column of thick soot twisting up at his back. The symbol of the Priesthood – a wolf-skull against an angular lightning bolt – had been graven into the far wall and lined with bronze.
The rest of the warriors, Járnhamar included, stood facing the platform. The fighting force was divided into four packs, all Grey Hunters. Only Járnhamar had the distinction of fighting with a Wolf Guard at the helm; the other three pack leaders – Fellblade, Long-axe and Bloodhame – carried the same silver-and-black pauldron devices of their brothers.
‘So we come to it,’ announced Njal, his harsh voice ringing through the hall. ‘All of you know void-work. All of you know your craft.’
As he spoke, a glowing representation of the plague-hulk, drawn from the Chapter datacores, spun into existence in front of the watching warriors. The profile was ugly and bulbous. Long, jagged stalactites of fused metal hung underneath it, jutting beneath scarred carapace edges and tangling as they speared into the void. The semi-intact hulls of a hundred space-vessels protruded from its back, rusted and deformed as they were slowly interred within the heart of the corrupted giant.
‘We know the spoor of this from the records of those who fought it before,’ said Njal. ‘Maleficarum has birthed taint in the hulk’s innards. It will treat us like a wound treats infection. We will be its disease.’
The glittering hololith zoomed in.
‘The skin of the hulk will endure our ships’ weapons, and it has void shields. The best we can hope for is a narrow strike, taking out enough to send boarding torpedoes into the underbelly. From there our only path is to destroy the furnace at its centre. The hulk’s atmosphere is methane rich, stinking like an auroch’s gut-line. We will set off charges in the enginarium core and the blast will eviscerate the entire vessel. It will test us, but it can be done.’
The assembled warriors took in the schematics quickly, scanning the lithcast, orientating themselves and committing the profile to memory.
‘Getting out will be fun,’ grunted one of them – a scarred, bionic-eyed veteran from Bloodhame’s pack called Aesgrek.
‘We will have to kill fast,’ agreed Njal. ‘We won’t have long.’
Some of the others snarled under their breath. The danger of it appealed – if any of them got out again, it would be worth a saga back at the Aett.
‘Who is on the ship?’ asked Fellblade. ‘We know that?’
‘We have names,’ said Njal. ‘There will be mutants in their thousands. Remember, though, it is not a battleship – it is a weapon, a vessel for the plague-spores in its belly. That is its only task – to disperse them into the atmosphere.’
‘So it’ll have fleet escorts,’ said Hauki.
‘It will. Heimdall and Vindicatus will keep them busy. We have three Thunderhawk gunships also, but we will need every ranged gun for the hull-breach.’
Gunnlaugur stole a glance at Jorundur, and caught the Old Dog’s satisfied expression. He’d be in command of Vuokho again, out on his own, just how he liked it.
‘We keep together when we are inside,’ said Njal. ‘We keep moving. This is about speed – if we get slowed down inside then we will never get out.’ The Rune Priest stared at the hololith, his expression eager. ‘This is the filth we were bred to cleanse. Sharpen your blades. Ready your claws. No greater prize for us exists in this war.’
He bared his fangs in a challenge-gesture, and glared at them all.
‘But it is ours now. We have marked it. Its fate is fixed.’
Two hours before Heimdall broke the veil, the six members of Járnhamar assembled on the deck of one of the ship’s five hangar bays. A sleek system-runner stood on the rockcrete. It was less than ninety metres long, with a crew complement of just a few dozen mortals. A hawk-sharp prow jutted towards the distant external doors, dwarfed by the collection of oversized drives clustering along its ventral hull-edges. Njal’s device had been painted on its nearside flank, just under the icon of the Chapter. Steam vented from a dozen thruster-housings as the last checks were made on the sub-warp drives. A few loader-bay hatches were still open, swarming with masked menials and loader-gurneys.
‘How is it named?’ asked Gunnlaugur, looking at it doubtfully.
‘Hlaupnir,’ said Olgeir, casting his own expert eye along the ship’s length. ‘Njal says it’s fast.’
‘I can believe it,’ said Jorundur, nodding in appreciation. ‘They laid these down on Ryza. Not a touch of Mars on them. You don’t see many.’
‘You will miss the hunt,’ said Ingvar to Olgeir.
Olgeir shrugged. ‘Njal gives the orders.’
‘You won’t have long enough,’ muttered Hafloí. ‘What does he expect you to do?’
‘What I can,’ said Olgeir. As he spoke, the loaders began to trundle away from Hlaupnir’s undercarriage. ‘I don’t mind it. If this goes to skítna, I’d rather die among mortals than those fanatics.’
Jorundur grunted in agreement.
The last of the fuel-cables clunked empty and detached from the runner’s hull, carried away reverently by tech-servitors. The kaerl crew members clambered up the open ramps and into their stations. Warning horns began to blare, and the hangar cleared of support staff.
‘Go with Russ, brother,’ said Baldr to Olgeir. His voice was stronger than it had been.
‘And you,’ said Olgeir, cautiously. ‘You’ll remember how it feels, once the axe whirls again.’
Then he saluted the rest of the pack, turned on his heels and strode towards the ship. As he neared the ramp he started to call out orders. Between now and the entry into the Kefa Primaris system there was still much to do to get it ready for its mission.
Gunnlaugur looked at the others. ‘This is it, then,’ he said.
They turned and marched away from the apron and towards the corridor that would take them down to Heimdall’s torpedo chambers. As they reached the blast-doors, Jorundur peeled off towards Vuokho’s berth.
Jorundur rolled his eyes. ‘Where else am I going to be?’
‘You have Callia’s device? The one I gave you?’
‘You need it, I’ll find it.’
Then Jorundur was gone, stomping down the narrow corridors towards the Thunderhawk hangars. That left the four of them – Baldr, Ingvar, Hafloí and Gunnlaugur.
The lumens in the corridors switched to red combat lighting. The drum of running boots and slamming bulkheads swelled up through the ship’s innards. Far above them, the cruiser’s weaponry was being rolled out and powered up.
‘I want us at the forefront,’ insisted Gunnlaugur, his gait now rolling, assuming the belligerent swagger that the kill-urge kindled. ‘I want the axes of Járnhamar at the edge. This is our war.’
The others matched his pace and mien. Each of them was primed now. Their bodies were restored, their minds refreshed, their spirits keen. Ingvar drew his blade, looking down the length of it and seeing how the red light caught the edge of the runes.
It thirsted again, just as he did.
With a burst of ionised energy, the veil broke. Heimdall was first through, tearing into real space through an expanding corona of torn aether-energies. Its sub-warp drives exploded into life a second later, ricocheting it into the icy vacuum as if hurled from a slingshot.
Vindicatus crashed through a second later. Its impact wave was far bigger – a violent splash-pattern of torn reality, resolving almost instantly into the fire-wreathed profile of a jagged Grand Cruiser of the Ecclesiarchy. Its real space drives thundered into life, throbbing crimson like burst veins. As it surged forwards, its turrets and spires left streamers of flickering luminescence behind them, guttering away as the wound in the universe snapped closed.
The inky starfield of the Kefa Primaris system sprawled away from them. The planet itself was still out of visual range, only barely detectable on the high-gain forward augurs.
Both ships had speared into reality with precision. Dead ahead, already visible through the armourglass real-view blisters, burned the Festerax.
Its bulk was staggering – a vast, fist-shaped tumour of dark metal, underpinned with knife-sharp stalactites and crowned with ridges of the ship-hulls that had been drawn into its necrotic embrace. Its bulk blotted out the stars beyond, casting a shroud of ruin across the void. It was surrounded by its own petty fleet of lesser craft – gunships and assault boats, shepherded by two Infidel-pattern raiders.
Both Imperial vessels powered up to intercept speed. Heimdall was faster, and pulled away from its counterpart in a blaze of neon-white thrusters. Before its void shields snapped fully into place, it disgorged four craft from its launch bays. The first, Hlaupnir, broke away immediately, spiralling down out of the battle-plane and igniting its engines to full burn. It was soon powering clear, locked on to the coordinates for the planet far ahead. A few of the enemy escorts started in pursuit, but as soon as it became clear it was heading away from the combat-sphere they pulled back.
That left the Thunderhawks – Vuokho, Kjarlskar and Grimund. They stayed in close formation with Heimdall, powering alongside it but not straying far from the cover of its mighty gun-ranks.
By then Vindicatus was catching up. It released its own squadrons of escorts – Fury-class interceptors in the blood-red livery of the Ecclesiarchy. They spun out of the launch bays and streaked towards the enemy escort-cordon, outpacing the Thunderhawks and pulling into the vanguard. Twenty-four of them dropped into formation, arranged in six squadrons of four.
The Infidel raiders were the biggest threat – savage assault vessels with serrated jawline prows, macrocannon batteries and prow-mounted torpedo launchers. Both took up position over the hulk’s anterior zone and opened up with a flickering barrage of shells. The Furies evaded the worst of it, ducking under the fire-lanes and angling upwards at the more lumbering enemy assault craft. Tracer-lights sparked silently into the void, creating a sphere of crackling energy around the hulk’s retreating profile.
The vast plague-ship itself did not pick up speed. It maintained course, barrelling through space with a fearsome, implacable momentum, unconcerned by the gnat-like movements of the lesser ships in its wake. Its array of engines glowed dully under the segmented layers of outer hull, flecked with angry snarls of plasma-discharge.
Still out of range of the hulk’s massive broadsides, the Imperial flotilla closed in on the escort ships. Once within gun-range, Vindicatus stood off, rolling starboard to present its twin-ranked rows of broadside cannons. The Fury squadrons, acting as part of the prearranged plan, pushed clear of the front wave of enemy assault craft and dropped low to the battle-sphere’s nadir.
The Cruiser’s guns opened up, and a blinding flash of light ripped across the void. Enemy escorts caught in the withering assault exploded in sequence, their shields overloaded and their engines detonated.
Even before the corpses of the destroyed had spiralled out of contact, Heimdall hove into view, sweeping down from its vantage above Vindicatus’s fire position. It loosed torpedoes, each one already primed for the enemy raider coordinates. They tore off towards the targets – six trails of flame, three for each target.
The enemy flotilla, still forming up, raced to fend off the barrage. One of the Raiders was caught amidships by Heimdall’s torpedoes and fell out of the defensive pattern, venting heavily. The other one was saved by a suicidal squadron of enemy craft, interposing themselves in a scatter of tight explosions. Three assault craft were destroyed outright, winnowing their numbers down further.
By then the Furies and Thunderhawks had re-engaged, swooping up through the broadside-cleared approaches and opening fire. The three Wolves gunships barrelled up the centre of the engagement, letting loose with battle-cannons and linked lascannons. The Furies angled and twisted in their wake, adding thickets of las-fire to the intense bursts spearing out from the gunships.
The combination was intensely destructive. An entire wing of enemy fighters was immolated, caught in a bow-wave of combined fire. A dozen survivors pulled clear of the engagement, heading for the doubtful cover of the lone Infidel.
By then, the engagement-zone had drifted into range of the hulk itself. As the distance narrowed, the true scale of the monster became apparent. It soared away into the endless void-night like a cliff-face, gouged, scarred and ancient. Its sheer flanks dwarfed even Vindicatus, casting a heavy shadow across the Grand Cruiser as it passed between it and Kefa Primaris’s sun. The crushed outlines of impacted starships, each one a colossal void-goer in its own right, twisted and jutted across a landscape of ruined immensity.
With a shudder, the plague-ship loosed a volley of ship-killing energies. The barrage was as misshapen as the vessel was – a combination of las-arcs, cannon-shells, torpedo trails and plasma bolts. Some gun-trails came from the dozens of wrecks accreted to the hull, others from deep within the corrupted structure itself, launched from forges and fire-halls lodged in the beast’s unfathomably ancient core.
The impact was punishing. Vindicatus strayed too close, and took a scything run of lascannon beams along its golden flanks. Its void shields flexed and crackled, stressed to near-breaking by the collisions. Several Furies were caught up in a wave of solid-round fire and exploded into clouds of fast-moving shrapnel.
Emboldened by the carnage, the remaining Infidel escort spearheaded a counter-offensive, burning in hard at the exposed Imperial craft and sending a wave of fighters ahead of it.
By then, though, Vindicatus was able to launch its second broadside. Despite the damage sustained by the hulk’s attack, the rejoinder was even more ferocious than the first. The battle-sphere blazed white again as every cannon on Vindicatus’s nearside flank opened up. A wave of solid, dense destruction flew out at the approaching assault craft. The Infidel was caught up in the radius – it
held out for a few seconds, firing all the while, before its shields overloaded and it blew apart.
The Thunderhawks and remaining Furies closed in on what remained, taking out the ragged wings of enemy assault craft. The void clogged with glowing scraps of metal as the wreckage swirled out from the kill-zones, bouncing from speeding hulls amid the criss-cross of lascannon beams.
Amid all of it, Heimdall drew in closer to the Festerax itself, braving the ferocious torrent of incoming fire to position itself under the hull’s shadow. The plague-hulk’s trailing underside stalactites hung close, glinting in the flashes of las-fire, each one as immense and crustaceous as a hive spire.
Green-edged beams arced out at Heimdall, striking it across its snarl-prow and knocking it out of line. Torpedo trails curled out and sped towards it, but Heimdall remained in position, firing back from all points along its facing flank. Soon the reason for its positioning became clear – a dozen Caestus assault rams blazed out from the outward-facing hull-edge and swept round under Heimdall’s keel. The Wolves cruiser pulled away immediately, firing hard to cover the attack run of the boarding craft.
The assault rams’ boosters ignited in unison, sending them hurtling, arrow-straight, towards the looming edge of the Festerax. One was taken out by a snarled lattice of incoming fire, another slammed off-course by a torpedo hit, but the remaining ten made it into range and loosed missiles against the hulk’s tangle of outer plating.
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