Stormcaller

by Chris Wraight

  ‘Keep moving,’ Baldr voxed, breaking back into a run, scanning the tunnels around him as he went.

  Álfar joined him, and the two of them raced through the narrow, switchback tubes. The second time the shuddering came, there could be no doubt – the flesh-like covering of the walls had come loose. About ten metres ahead, a tumbling mound of translucent skin detached, slipping down like an eyelid drooping.

  Álfar fired instantly, punching two holes in the barrier, but the bolts popped harmlessly within the thick curtains of glutinous matter. With a rip and a splurt, the ceiling started to sag. Thick walls on either side of them sucked closed, sealing them off in both directions.

  Baldr joined up with Álfar in what space remained. Both of them mag-locked bolters and took up blades. Álfar punched his longsword into the quivering bulk ahead, drenching himself in watery pink fluids. Baldr joined him, hacking into the thick blubber and pulling the edges apart. The first cut revealed a brief glimpse of the tunnel beyond, but it was quickly obscured by more folds of glistening fat.

  ‘Grenades,’ voxed Baldr, reaching for a krak charge from his belt.

  Before he’d had time to prime it, a shattering explosion burst out from behind him, filling the narrow bubble with flying, gore-splattered debris. Baldr was thrown hard to the tunnel’s far side, impacting with a wet crack of ceramite against iron. Álfar was hurled further back, his armour charred from the blast.

  Baldr struggled to his knees, reaching for his bolter again. One entire side of the tunnel wall had been driven in and stood in a tangled ruin of metal struts. As smoke boiled from the molten ruins, six power armoured figures emerged out of the smog, their eye-lenses glowing pale green.

  Álfar was the quickest. With a growl of aggression, he leapt at the lead warrior. He got his axe-blade up into its face, hacking into the bulbous helm and biting deep. The two of them crunched together, trading hammer-blows that tore shards from their battleplate.

  Baldr opened fire, striking one of the intruders and sending him staggering. Then the bolt-rounds came in. Álfar was smashed back against the tunnel walls again, his armour pitted and cracked. Baldr was hit before he could get another shot away. One bolt crunched into his shoulder, spinning him around, then another exploded into his side.

  He scrambled away, firing back, keeping the shots low, aiming to topple one of the advancing Traitors. One of his shots must have connected, as he heard a throaty grunt of pain and the wet snap of corrupted ceramite breaking.

  That was drowned by a strangled bellow of pain from Álfar – he’d felled his first adversary, but a second had closed him down. The Traitor plunged a power maul into Álfar’s bolter-ravaged torso, driving through the armour with an explosive burst of disruptor energy. Álfar fought on, hacking out wildly, but the maul lashed round, striking him in the throat and nearly severing his head entirely.

  Baldr charged at the closest enemy, his bolter kicking in his grip, his sword crackling with energy. He lashed out, driving his blade into a pockmarked chest and twisting it. The Traitor collapsed, and more of his shots drove home, fragmenting armour and sending another to his knees.

  Then he took a direct hit, this time to the helm, blinding him. Another hit exploded against his breastplate, sending ceramite fragments spinning. He tried to rise, to get another shot away, but a power scythe hit him hard, whistling in at chest height and driving him down onto his back. He felt a heavy boot clamp on his neck, and the agony of a blade-edge pushing through his cracked breastplate. His wrist was stamped down, his sword ripped away from him.

  For just an instant, he caught the smeared outline of a Plague Marine helm hovering above him, expressionless and splattered with blood. He saw a power fist clench up, crackling with worm-like energy, and could do nothing to evade it.

  ‘The one,’ he heard, filtered through a rust-laced vox-grille.

  Then the fist beat down, smashing into his damaged helm, shattering the lenses and pushing the faceplate inwards, and he knew no more.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Heimdall’s structure shook as the impacts ran along it. Deep inside, confined to the medicae observation cell, Bjargborn could do nothing but listen.

  ‘We’re not thralls,’ said Aerold, bitterly.

  ‘There’s a reason for it,’ said Bjargborn.

  ‘We deserve more.’

  Bjargborn turned on him. ‘Deserve? What are you talking about?’

  The rest of the retrieved kaerls sat or lay about them. All ninety-two had been crammed into the same cell, one that had been built to accommodate a little over half that number. There was food, water, medicae supplies, and not much else. Overhead lumens flickered every time the cruiser took a hit.

  ‘We never stopped fighting,’ muttered Aerold.

  ‘We didn’t.’ Bjargborn ripped a piece of reconstituted meat-stick from its packing and chewed. ‘Too stupid to do anything else.’

  Aerold looked at him darkly. His beard was straggly, his flesh still unwashed since the lifter from Ras Shakeh. They all still bore the mark of the desert on them, and the stink was oppressive.

  ‘Then why don’t they let us?’ Aerold asked.

  ‘Because they know what happened down there,’ said Bjargborn, working his jaw methodically. It felt good to eat proper rations again – the food, at least, had improved. ‘So do you.’

  Aerold pulled the sleeve of his tunic up to the elbow and brandished his arm. ‘See any signs?’ he asked. He pulled his collar down and bared his neck. ‘Any sores?’

  Bjargborn shrugged. ‘You’d need a full scan. We were lucky they didn’t leave us behind.’

  ‘Lucky.’

  ‘Yes, lucky.’ He leaned closer to Aerold, lowering his voice. ‘This is a lucky wyrd. Fate smiles on us.’

  Aerold didn’t look convinced. ‘I wish to fight. They’re short-handed.’

  ‘You know you’re healthy. I know you are. They don’t. They can’t. Rest up. When they come for us again, you’ll remember this as a good dream.’

  Other kaerls looked over at them. Some had the same belligerent expressions as Aerold. They’d taken it hard, being accused of carrying plague after fighting for as long as they had.

  Bjargborn glared back at them all. ‘You heard me! What are you going to do? Forget your vows?’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Remember who you are.’

  They turned away again. They were a long way from revolt – they were sons of Fenris, committed by blood and conditioning to fight for the Sky Warriors until death took them. About the only thing that would shake that faith was the idea, even the suggestion, that their loyalty had become somehow questionable.

  Whatever he said to the troops to keep them in line, Bjargborn could understand their resentment. Despite himself, a fragment of it burned away inside him. When he’d seen the Grey Hunter emerge from the haze, he’d imagined battle would call again soon, this time alongside the masters.

  Instead they had confinement, suspicion, followed no doubt by the gruelling examination of the apothecarion once the void-battle was over.

  He ripped another slice of meat from the pack and rolled it up in his fist. The walls of the confinement chamber shuddered again, either from Heimdall’s macrocannon batteries firing or from taking another hit.

  It would have been better to be out there, manning a gun-station or a tactical console.

  That wasn’t going to happen. The only choice now was to wait it out, to sit idly until the chance to prove themselves came again.

  ‘A good dream,’ he said to himself, and started to eat again.

  Gunnlaugur raged at the bio-matter around him. The walls had come sucking in on him just as they had all across the capillary tunnels. His hammer ripped through the screens of flesh, driving them back against the rotten metal substructures that underpinned them. The decking underfoot pulled at his boots, the sluice of fluids ran down his helm.
Everything dragged at him, weighing him down, tying up his arms, wrenching him deeper into the fleshy entrails.

  ‘Fenrys!’ he bellowed, lashing out double-handed. His hammerhead flew wildly, eventually breaking through a final tattered skirt of pulsating blood-vessels. Staggering from released momentum, he burst into the open again, dripping with bloody residue.

  A gruesome chamber opened up ahead of him – a stomach-shaped bowl of bile-flecked effluent. The walls themselves were contorted into organic nodes and folds, each one popping with fluids. Further chambers could be glimpsed beyond, each one similarly draped in pulpy bio-residue. Flamers roared in the dark, illuminating the flesh-sheets with flares of crimson.

  Others had broken through ahead of him – he saw Fellblade, and Hafloí and Hauki, all hacking at the retreating walls of blubber and torching what remained. More emerged at every moment, crashing through the retreating flesh-piles from a dozen different orifices. The sudden contraction of bio-matter had caught them off-guard, but the application of blade and flame was driving it back with ruthless efficiency.

  Njal stalked through the chamber, his huge armour-shell coated in the burned remnants of tunnel-bile. He looked furious.

  ‘Too slow!’ he thundered at the warriors around him. ‘We cut it out, then we move!’

  Gunnlaugur came up to him. ‘Losses?’ he asked.

  ‘Three to the xenos-construct, three in here,’ Njal snarled, the numbers clearly angering him. ‘Six is too many. They’re wearing us down.’

  Gunnlaugur looked up, to see Ingvar emerged from the next chamber along, his blade-edge still running with semi-cooked phlegm-gobbets. ‘Eight, jarl,’ he reported flatly. ‘Baldr is gone, as is Álfar.’

  The word Baldr hit Gunnlaugur like a blow. For a moment, the news seemed to rock even Njal. The Rune Priest stared back, and in that instant, for all his immense power and bulk, he looked wounded.

  Then Njal lifted his head, and drew in a deep, rasping breath. ‘Enough. We keep moving.’

  Ingvar remained where he was. ‘Was he ready, jarl?’ he asked.

  Gunnlaugur couldn’t believe it. It seemed the Gyrfalkon had not changed as much as he’d hoped.

  Njal turned his red-lensed gaze back to Ingvar slowly, astonished that his decision would be so much as commented on, let alone questioned. Ingvar glared back up at the huge Rune Priest, holding his ground.

  ‘You play with danger, Grey Hunter,’ Njal growled, his old, deep voice grating with an instinctual threat-note. ‘You are here to fight. Now, move on.’

  For a moment, Gunnlaugur feared Ingvar would not comply. He could feel the rage emanating from his pack-mate. He knew how hard Ingvar had worked to keep Baldr alive on Ras Shakeh, and how dark and strange his fervour could be.

  Then, slowly, Ingvar backed down. ‘I recognise my error,’ he said, bowing stiffly.

  Nightwing, mounted on Njal’s shoulder, extended its pinions and screeched out denunciation. Njal turned away from him, shaking his head in disgust. ‘There is ironwork ahead,’ he said to Gunnlaugur. ‘Multiple tunnels, all leading down.’

  As he spoke, the rest of the Wolves fell into their pack formations again, clustering in the blood-streaked chamber.

  ‘Then we are getting close,’ Njal announced. ‘I sense the core. We press deeper.’

  Njal shot a brief glance at Ingvar before turning his death mask helm back to the path ahead.

  ‘And no more delays,’ he snarled.

  It had been hard for Callia to ensure she remained stationed on Vindicatus’s bridge. Since taking on duties as part of the Order of the Fiery Tear, she had been pressurised into assuming a more junior position elsewhere in the warship’s lower reaches. Nuriyah didn’t trust her, and nor did the other Sisters of the Cardinal’s entourage.

  Once battle broke out, though, there had been no time to let the issue come to a head, and even Nuriyah could not argue with her combat-rank and experience. In the end Callia’s presence was tolerated on the command level, perhaps out of a lingering sense of unease over what had happened to de Chatelaine, perhaps for more pragmatic reasons.

  Once the void-strike had got under way, Callia had glanced up at the huge Penitent Engine as little as possible. The last time she’d walked under its shadow she’d risked a proper look, daring to hope that somewhere amid the gears and pain-nodes and cabling the canoness might still be able to respond to stimuli.

  Yet Callia had seen nothing but that frozen scream, hidden under a sheet of pure white linen. De Chatelaine, for all her loyalty and valour, had ceased to exist. What remained was a mechanical thing, a bringer and an endurer of pain.

  Delvaux kept the Penitent Engine close to him at all times, perhaps as some kind of trophy. Together with its counterpart, it stood guard behind his throne. Every so often, servitors would shuffle up to the two Engines and apply some sacred oil to their joints or whisper some prayer for the continued shriving of the souls at their hearts.

  Callia maintained her distance after that, attending to the many small duties that her position gave her. The plague-hulk loomed on Vindicatus’s forward viewers, just as staggeringly vast as ever. The volume of exchanged fire had fallen away sharply since the Cardinal had given the withdrawal order. With the last of the escorts destroyed, Heimdall still risked attack runs, but the shared task now was a limited one – keep in watching range, ready for when the Wolves gave the signal to re-engage.

  Callia wondered how likely it was that they’d ever receive that signal. She yearned to see it appear on the consoles, vindicating boldness over pragmatism, remembering Gunnlaugur’s almost casual bravado towards the task at hand.

  She looked over her shoulder, back up towards Delvaux’s throne. As her eyes alighted on his corpulent robed form, an involuntary spike of hatred rippled through her, quickly pushed down again.

  That is unworthy. He is still the Cardinal.

  She walked over to a cluster of navigation stations just below the throne platform. As she did so, she heard Klaive enter the bridge. Huge slide-doors at the rear of the bridge chamber hissed closed, and the confessor padded up to the Cardinal’s throne.

  Callia lowered her head, making a show of studying the pict screen closest to her, listening carefully.

  ‘Back again,’ remarked Delvaux to Klaive, unenthusiastically.

  From the corner of her eye, Callia watched Klaive make himself comfortable on the steps leading up to Delvaux’s seat. The Engine that had once been de Chatelaine stood silently over him. She could have crushed him with a single stride, if any of her will remained.

  ‘We have had communications,’ said Klaive. ‘From… Well, you know.’

  Callia always found Klaive’s tone with Delvaux surprising. It was over-familiar, not tinged with the fawning attention to precedence that coloured all the others’ dealings with the Cardinal. If there was a reason for that, she’d not discovered it yet.

  ‘And?’ asked Delvaux.

  ‘They judge the Wolves’ ambition overreaches itself. I told them of your proposal. They approved.’

  Delvaux pursed his lips, causing his jowls to wobble. ‘Did they, then?’ He looked out through the forward viewportals. Heimdall was just visible, far out into the void, holding station as close to the hulk as it dared. ‘But they are not here. I am.’

  ‘Their views are hardly insignificant.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And there is the question of reputation.’

  ‘So you have often reminded me.’

  ‘Such things are important.’

  Delvaux smiled at him coldly. ‘Enough. You can save the arguments you came to make. The matter is already decided, so your presence here comes after the event.’

  Callia tensed. Klaive raised an eyebrow. They both waited.

  ‘Then you have–’ Klaive started.

  ‘What did you think, that I’d l
et them burrow away until the End Times? This is madness. I have changed my mind.’

  Klaive bowed, unusually respectfully. ‘You have come to the right decision, lord,’ he said. ‘Though the Stormcaller…’

  ‘You think I fear him?’ Delvaux’s lips curled in outrage. ‘You think I fear the bone-rattler and his entourage? He can howl as much as he likes – it will change nothing.’ His cheeks reddened. ‘I have given them long enough. The Throne knows I have. Let this be an end to the madness.’

  Klaive folded his arms, satisfied. ‘Then shall I pass on the order?’

  ‘You do not give the orders. You never have. Just watch, and keep your counsel to yourself.’

  Callia turned away, looking back at the pict-feed before her. Already coordinates were scrolling down the lens aperture, updating a matrix of movement vectors for the enginarium to act on.

  As she saw them, her heart sank. He was really going to do it.

  ‘Can we still outpace the plague-hulk?’ she heard Klaive ask Delvaux.

  ‘Of course. The margins have been calculated.’ She heard Delvaux sniff. ‘By the time the vessel reaches orbit, the last flames over Kefa Primaris will already have died down.’

  ‘A noble sacrifice,’ said Klaive, softly, as if awed by it.

  ‘A necessary one,’ said Delvaux.

  Callia felt the bridge deck vibrate as the engines powered up. Lights flickered on all across the tactical stations, warning of imminent course change.

  Somewhere down below, she knew, the life-eater canisters would be being shunted into torpedo casings. The priests would already be reading benedictions over their deadly cargo.

  On another mission, she might have swallowed her unease at that. She had performed many difficult tasks during her service, not least the destruction of plague-bearers on Ras Shakeh, and it was part of her conditioning to obey.

  But loyalty worked both ways. She glanced up at the Engines again, seeing de Chatelaine’s frozen scream impacted on the linen.

  She moved smoothly away from the navigation station, keeping her demeanour natural. Silently, she activated the comm-bead at her collar. Once out of earshot of the throne, she opened the secure channel she’d given Gunnlaugur access to.