Stormcaller

by Chris Wraight

  The rest of the pack-brothers were scarcely less formidable. They entered combat low and fast, swinging and pivoting to bring their blades to bear. They smashed heads, ripped open torsos, punched through spines. Even before their fists had stopped moving they were pouncing onto their next prey. Their armour ran with trails of gore, slapping around them like flails as they moved.

  Hafloí laboured to keep up. He drove his axe with as much speed as his burning arms could muster. He fired his bolt pistol into the dark as accurately as his mind would allow. He leapt to the aid of his brothers on the rare occasions when their guard was broken, just as they kept watch over him when his judgement faltered.

  Once, during the long, horrific fight down from the hub towards the hulk’s core, he’d spotted the desperate lunge of an eyeless terror as it pounced towards one of Fellblade’s pack. Hafloí got to it first, sending it tumbling with a pistol-shot before eviscerating it with two crosswise swipes of his axe.

  The warrior he’d saved, a grizzled old fighter named Eir, nodded at him, once, before loping off after fresh prey.

  By then Hafloí was sprinting again, never resting, always heading further down. The bodies of his battle-brothers loomed around him in the dark. He could smell their acrid hunt-scent – sweat, armour-coolant, the sharp tang of overloaded disruptor fields. The humidity was incredible, bearing down on him like a vice.

  You will have to learn faster.

  His breath became rapid. His vision clouded at the edges. His axe strikes became erratic from weariness, but still he kept his feet, maintained the pace, ran with his brothers in the very maws of Hel. All that was left was to keep going.

  ‘Maintain speed,’ came Njal’s vox-command again from up ahead, somewhere in the clogged mass of twisting tunnels. ‘The core approaches.’

  Hafloí kept his head down and his legs pumping hard. A bloated mutant swung down at him from the sagging tunnel ceiling and he lashed out with his axe, severing it diagonally. Another loomed up out of the murk from the left, grasping at his waist with tentacled arms, and he sent a lone bolt-round into its scabrous torso.

  Down they ran, further down, and the environment became even more febrile. Echoing screams ran up the tunnels, the sound of whole crowds of blood-maddened damned roaring up to meet them.

  When the break came, when they burst through into the open once more, Hafloí barely noticed the change. The shrieks echoed differently, but for a few moments nothing else altered – it remained corpse-dark, fever-hot and stinking.

  Then Njal’s staff lit up. Hafloí saw that they had charged into a vast space again. Actinic light lashed up into the void, rebounding from soaring walls of iron. As the storm-lightning kindled, green-tinged flames thundered into life ahead of them, surging out from deep pits in the floor.

  For a fraction of a second before his conditioning kicked in, Hafloí didn’t exhale. The sheer scale of it was hard to get a grip on. Ranks of obsidian columns soared into the high roof. The pits between the walkways boiled and seethed with unholy fires, sending smoke roiling up in thick pillars. At the far end of the chamber, half lost in a miasma of drifting soot, was the target – the impossibly huge engines that powered the entire hulk. Each one was cast in bronze and iron, towering up in terraces of twisted pipework and organ-like heat exchangers. Dull red flames growled away behind thick metal grilles the size of Reaver-class Titans. Colossal, eyeless, multi-limbed statues stood sentry about the drive units, hewn from granite and depicting obese and foul deities of ruin.

  Huge arcs of energy snapped and snaked across the surface of the enginarium chambers, briefly throwing flares of putrid green light across the fiery shafts. Enormous wheels turned slowly in the depths, driven by linked-iron chains and shackled to hab-sized gearing mechanisms of beaten adamantium.

  Every surface glistened with corruption. Every metal component was thick with rust, and every exhaust vent belched toxic sludge. The whole edifice looked liable to collapse in on itself at any moment, driven apart by the incomprehensible levels of power thrumming through its cancerous structure.

  In that split-second moment, just as he looked up at the full extent of the drive chamber, Hafloí realised for the first time just how potent its destruction would be. His armour-readings of the power contained in the coils and fusion chambers were off the scale – if its shell could be cracked, the blast would be world-endingly huge.

  But the enemy knew it, too, and had pulled all of its strength back towards the ship’s ancient heart. The space between the Wolves and the engine gates swarmed with legions of mutants. Among them strode greater horrors – figures twice the height of a mortal man with clawed fists and elongated, muscle-bunched arms. Demented vermin scuttled and shrieked across every surface, their eyes shining in the fire-flecked dark. Traitor tech-priests stalked among the hosts, their tattered robes exposing bizarre biomechanics of contaminated flesh and bolted augmetics.

  But beyond them all, by far the most potent of all the terror troops assembled in that cathedral of ruin, were the Traitor Marines. Their armour swelled and cracked as they stood sentinel, massive and unmoving, under the engine gates themselves. They carried power scythes and snub-nosed boltguns. Some wore armour from forgotten ages, with angular vox-grilles and heavy ceramite plating. Others stood in Mark V or VI variants plundered from more recent campaigns, slung with skulls and surmounted by blunt spikes. In every case, their helm-lenses glowed pale green, glimmering spectrally as the hordes of Chaos howled before them.

  They would wait there. They would let the filth before them absorb the brunt of the attack before taking the field themselves. Only when the packs had waded through the deranged masses at their feet would the scythes be taken up. Then the real test would come – equally matched, equally potent, each driven by an equal hatred nurtured over ten thousand years of endless war.

  Hafloí wasn’t blind to the extent of the test. All things being equal, this chamber would see the death of all of them. Even the fury of the massed packs had little chance of penetrating such deep and eternal corruption.

  But things were not equal. One factor tipped the balance.

  Njal strode into the open, his outline already shimmering with storm-energies. His heavy Terminator tread cracked against the stone, his staff lifted high. Lightning spilled from the runes on his battleplate, fierce and eye-watering. A chill, steel-hard wave of intimidation radiated out from him, as pitiless as Helwinter. When facing the xenos-construct his rage had been wild and free, the exuberance of the hunter. Now, with the deaths of Álfar and Baldr, it had become a thing of pure, distilled hatred, and even Hafloí was taken aback by its intensity.

  ‘Heidur Rus!’ roared Njal Stormcaller, summoning the storm-wind once more. His cloak snapped and billowed, and silver forks of lightning blazed from his staff’s tip. His runes flared, and he stood, inviolate and immense, a pure shard of defiance against the limitless nightmarish hordes.

  ‘Gothi!’ the Wolves roared in unison, thrusting their blades high into the flame-edged dark. ‘Stormurstjórn!’

  Hafloí roared his soul out with them, forgetting fatigue, revelling in the raw potency of the battle-challenge. Flames flared up again, greater than before, rippling like walls of plasma. The mutated denizens of the engine core yelled and bawled their defiance, and surged across the cavern floor towards the thin line of steel-grey. The Wolves thundered out raw death-oaths, levelling their axes just as the tribes of the iron seas had done since the age of legend, choosing those whom they would slay in the name of the Stormcaller, the Allfather and the Wolf King.

  Then they charged.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘We have ships. They are already prepared for launch. Let us fight it.’

  Annarovea’s tone was defiant. She sat in a high-backed chair at the head of a long table. The walls of the narrow room around her were black and glossy. The table was black. The floor was black. Every surface reflec
ted dully from the few low-power sodium lamps set into the ceiling.

  Olgeir faced her at the opposite end of the table. Annarovea’s staff sat along both sides: General Galx Favel, the commander of the Joint Guard Regiments; Marshal Brejial Hagh, controller of the orbital defence forces; Lord Commissar Selucius Morfol; Hamoda al-Yeshiv, Mistress of Astropaths; Salvia Verdello, Senior Judge of the Adeptus Arbites.

  They had all had their say, and had all voiced similar sentiments. Hagh estimated he could have twelve of the planet’s void-fighter wings out of their orbital hangars within ten minutes. Eight more wings could be called from reserve within three hours. Favel judged he could mobilise six armoured divisions for the main spire zone, thirteen more for the rest of the planet’s urban territories. They could, he claimed, hold out for weeks. Morfol agreed – Kefa Primaris was a well-defended world, a linchpin system: it had reserves, munitions, supplies. It had raised nine Guard regiments, six of which had garrisons in-system.

  Olgeir admired the sentiments. As the mortals spoke, he tried not to show impatience, even though the chrono in his armour-collar kept ticking down steadily. If he had been in their position, he would have argued the same way. They were cogent, measured, defiant.

  ‘You have heard all this, lord,’ concluded Annarovea. ‘Only hours remain. We must give the order now.’

  Olgeir still liked her.

  ‘No order will be given,’ Olgeir said. ‘You’re getting off the planet. Guard only, no civilians. You can’t defend against this. As many as you can, all into deep void.’

  His words stunned the chamber into silence. Commissar Morfol, who had welcomed Olgeir effusively on arrival as a fellow zealot for combat, looked as if he’d been kicked in the stomach.

  Annarovea’s jawline dropped a little, only to be swiftly clamped shut again.

  ‘Is this some jest, lord?’ she asked.

  Olgeir shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t insult you.’ He leaned forwards, resting his arms heavily on the tabletop. ‘You can’t stop it. Line battle cruisers would not stop it now. It’ll make orbit whether you launch your fighters or not. It’s already mauled ships with more firepower than your entire defence grid. Once it comes into range, it’ll launch contagion spores. Millions of them. You’ll take a hundred out, but when the rest hit, they’ll burn through your cities. A few of you will be able to take refuge, the rest will be infected. They’ll begin to change. They’ll look sick, but they’ll be far stronger than your best warriors. They’ll overrun every defence-line you have. They’ll keep coming. You’ll empty ammo-dumps at them, and they’ll keep coming. Your own troops will begin to change. You won’t be able to kill them fast enough.’

  Olgeir looked at Favel. ‘Hold out for weeks? Not against this. You’ll have a few days. Once the spores are in the atmosphere, it’s over. The infected don’t die. They’ll take any voidcraft you have and they’ll launch for other worlds. More plague-ships will come here once your defences are down and they’ll pick up more. The army will swell, getting bigger with every conquest. This place will be the source, then. It’ll be the incubator.’

  He returned his gaze to Annarovea.

  ‘You wish to serve?’ he asked. ‘Get off-world. Every battalion you can pull out of the system is another battalion that will fight again. That’s the truth, governor. There are no other choices now.’

  For a moment, no one spoke. The lamps burned away in their brackets; the air-filters hummed behind mesh grilles. Olgeir remained where he was, letting the news sink in. It was a strange thing, being a diplomat rather than a killer. In other circumstances he might have enjoyed the challenge. As it was, the words he was forced to speak made him feel hollow.

  Morfol was the first to respond. ‘I had dreamed of meeting one of you,’ the commissar said, holding his emotion in with difficulty. ‘And now, you come here, and tell us…’ His voice trembled with fervour. ‘We have ships. Guns, fighters. What kind of… cowardice is it that–’

  ‘Enough, Morfol.’ Annarovea’s voice – calm but steely – cut him dead. Her cool grey eyes remained fixed on Olgeir’s, as if trying to work out whether he was some kind of horrific fraud. ‘This cannot be right, my lord. We have the resources of an entire world ready to deploy. There must be something we can do.’

  ‘Nothing you have would get close to it,’ said Olgeir, flatly. As he spoke, he felt a dull ache run through his body. Morfol was right – it felt like betrayal. ‘This thing is no ordinary ship. Such vessels leave the warp once in a thousand years, and even a full Navy battle-group would struggle to halt it. It is your misfortune that it came here, but something can yet be saved. There will be other battles, and your guns will be needed for those.’

  Annarovea’s eyes never left his. Her defiance slowly gave way to understanding. She took it in, absorbing the bitter truth.

  ‘Is there nothing, then?’ she asked.

  ‘My brothers have already boarded it,’ Olgeir said. ‘They fight towards its heart. A Rune Priest is with them, as well as more than thirty warriors of my order. That is the last hope for this world. They will kill it or they will die in the attempt.’

  Hagh perked up immediately – before that, he had been slumped in a kind of mute state of denial. ‘Then it is not all lost,’ he said.

  Olgeir made no mention of Delvaux. There was no reason to – it would not help their resolve to know that if the Wolves failed to destroy the hulk then the Ecclesiarchy stood ready to immolate the planet instead.

  ‘Not yet,’ Olgeir said. ‘But it will be soon.’ He flexed his gauntlets, ruefully wishing they clutched at an axe-shaft rather than air. ‘So, then. This is the situation. We need to stop talking, and you need to start moving. I have your word of command?’

  The disillusionment in Annarovea’s face was still heavy. A lesser soul might have been crushed by it. Slowly, though, the hardness of her features reasserted itself.

  ‘If there is no other way,’ she said slowly, sitting erect in her chair, her back straight in defeat, ‘then there is no time to lose.’

  She turned to her staff.

  ‘Begin the evacuation.’

  Jorundur had flown gunships for longer than most mortals had been alive. He felt their every tremor, their every yaw and shudder, and knew just what they meant. At times he could almost imagine the machine-spirits whispering in his ear, summoned up from the coils and logic-boards buried deep in the sacred heart of the vessels.

  To fly a Thunderhawk was a privilege and a joy – the only true joy he felt any more. The heavy vibration of the engines thundering away at full blast, the immense power of the main cannon, the surprising manoeuvrability of such a huge and cumbersome object – they were the things that stirred his withered soul.

  To take such a thing into the edge of annihilation, then, was a test of nerve. He held no fear for himself, nor for the mortals around him who struggled stoically to keep the machine in one piece. His fear was reserved for the thing of beauty that would depart the universe forever should the near-infinite gunnery of the plague-hulk catch up with it.

  His rage at Hafloí for nearly destroying it on Ras Shakeh had not been feigned. To see it cut apart by the guns of some plague-addled star-behemoth would infuriate him far more than the likely prospect of his own demise.

  ‘Are you getting him yet?’ he snapped, pulling Vuokho out of a steep plummet, just in time to evade a ship-killing brace of las-beams.

  The hulk’s impossibly gigantic hull soared away from them, a cliff-edge in space, scarred and tangled with the patina of the warp. Vuokho danced and shot across the ruinous vista, darting among the lines of incoming fire. There was no point in firing back – nothing the gunship carried would so much as scratch the hulk’s surface. All they had to keep them alive was speed and guile.

  ‘Negative,’ said Beor. The faintest note of accusation hung in his voice. The attempt was becoming more than suicidal, and even the lo
yalty of Fenrisian kaerls had its limits.

  ‘Coming round again,’ said Jorundur, working the controls as deftly as he’d ever done. Projectiles and energy-lines shot silently past the gunship as it corkscrewed and thrust. So far they’d only taken glancing hits. That couldn’t last.

  ‘If we maintain course–’ began Terrag.

  ‘We’ll run into those macrocannons,’ finished Jorundur, well aware of the make-up of the hulk’s nearside weapon arrays. ‘Keep monitoring for signals. We can give it one more pass.’

  As he pushed the Thunderhawk’s tortured frame harder and faster, he glanced at the close augur readings. Heimdall was already crawling towards Vindicatus, but slowly. The frigate looked badly mauled, and its engines were bleeding into the void. On its own it wouldn’t last much longer against Vindicatus than Vuokho would against the Festerax. The Cardinal’s flagship was still stationary, but its main drives were demonstrably keying up. Time was fast running out.

  Jorundur coaxed an iota more power from Vuokho’s straining drive-train, sending the gunship skimming across the face of the plague-hulk. More fire scythed in at them, launched from the hundreds of emplacements embedded in the Festerax’s grotesque underbelly.

  Jorundur checked back out of a dive, rolled hard, and pushed up towards the hulk’s nearest stalactitic vane before shoving mercilessly down back into the void. The gunship’s structure cracked and shrieked, causing red warning runes to flood across the cockpit consoles like bloodstreams.

  We are the prey here. An unfamiliar sensation.

  ‘Are you getting anything?’ he demanded again, working the control columns hard.

  ‘Nothing,’ reported Beor flatly.

  Jorundur cursed, and prepared for another hard dive.

  Just as he did so, something hit Vuokho’s ventral plating. Hard.