They can disbelieve it all they like, thought Njal grimly, surveying the ruin. It changes nothing.
Then he strode out, crushing the remnants of his enemies under his boots. Around him, surviving Grey Hunters regrouped and followed him back into battle. The toll had been horrendous, but enough still fought to gain the gate. The hordes screamed, and pushed back, but there was panic lacing their hatred now.
Step by step, stride by bloody stride, the Wolves were closing on the target.
On Kefa Primaris, word had got out. It had been impossible to hide the movements of so many ships, and attempts by the high command to shut down the city-wide comm-channels had been only partially successful.
Once the data from short-range planetary augurs came in, panic began to spread. Whispers ran from hab to hab, speaking of Guard officers summoned from their cells in the middle of the night, and of an enemy fleet making its way into orbit above them. The story got about that Annarovea had already left the planet, and that every voidcraft in-system was primed to leave, stranding the planet to the mercy of whatever ravening force was heading for the drop-zones.
Not all the details were correct, but the gist was close enough. The people of Kefa Primaris knew something terrible was about to happen, and they could see that their rulers were abandoning them to it.
In the face of all that, no amount of deference would hold them back. They took to the comm-stations, demanding action. They marched out of the manufactories, massing in crowds at the main hive intersections. They besieged the Adeptus Arbites control points in the core spire, unperturbed by the frequent vox-casts warning them to return to their assigned zones and get back to work.
As the morning wore on and the official response continued to be muted, the levels of disorder grew. Broadcast reassurances that all was in hand had no effect – they could see the data from unofficial augur screeds, and they could see with their own eyes the long trail of off-world traffic from the Guard garrisons.
With three hours until the Festerax was due to reach orbit, the crowds began to reinforce one another, pooling into larger groups and marching up from the lower levels. Most were menial workers from the big production lines, hardened by a lifetime of labour in the manufactory levels. Their overseers needed to be brutal to keep them in line at the best of times; now, as often as not, they marched alongside them.
Olgeir watched the incoming datafeeds from the vantage of the governor’s private chambers. Annarovea’s domain was a slender tower jutting from the northern flank of the main command spire, set just below the landing stages and astropathic pylons at the very summit. The entire tower had been cordoned off, and was guarded by the last remnants of her personal protective unit – blue-armoured soldiers wearing blank, reflective helms and carrying heavy-calibre autoguns.
The governor herself sat in her throne, surrounded by mobile pict units and shuffling attendants. The incoming tide of data brought no reassuring messages. The plague-hulk’s speed had not diminished. Time was running out to get the last of the big troop carriers away, and many regiments were struggling to get to their launch-points in time. Low-level disorder was becoming widespread, with transport arteries blocked and convoys slowed. Shots had been fired over at the Bedelo training yards in order to secure the base perimeter, something that had only inflamed passions further.
Olgeir said nothing. Annarovea had a hundred other demands on her limited time, and he had no wish to add to them.
He turned his attention to the spire schematics. The intricate network of corridors and levels rotated slowly before him, picked out in the glowing lines of a hololith. Flashpoints were marked with a skull-rune, based on reports from the hard-pressed enforcers down in the depths. Slowly, the markers were creeping up the height of the spire.
He accessed pict-feeds from the upper-spire security net. The scenes were much the same wherever he looked – mobs running down transit lanes, looting or storming control points. The pict-feed had no audio track, and so he watched the eerily silent images of a world collapsing under the weight of mass hysteria.
He switched to the hab-levels immediately below the command dome. In one scene, he saw enforcers being driven back by a huge crowd. In another, he saw spire Guard units opt not to fire on a similarly massive mob, abandoning their barricades as the rabble charged them.
The tide of disorder was getting perilously close. As Olgeir studied the various incoming strands, he noticed how well organised they were. Their movements were coordinated expertly, flanking command points before taking them, isolating bottlenecks until they could be overwhelmed with force of numbers.
He scanned over to a different bank of pict screens. The story was the same everywhere – enforcers abandoning their posts or being overrun. As he pored over the feed, Olgeir noticed a familiar face at the forefront of the closest disturbances.
He zoomed in, correcting the image for distortion. Slowly, the features clarified.
Morfol.
Olgeir reached for his bolter, turning it to check the ammo-counter.
‘You are not thinking of using that, I hope?’ came Annarovea’s concerned voice from the throne. She had seen the same thing.
Olgeir turned to face her. ‘Your commissar seems to have forgotten his vows,’ he said.
‘Or is he the only one who remembers them?’
Annarovea looked fragile, yet defiant. Imperial governors were taught that their greatest and final duty was to fight and die to defend their worlds, and Olgeir knew that every sinew of Annarovea’s body strained to call the Guard units back.
‘You gave the order, governor,’ said Olgeir quietly. ‘You cannot take it back now. He must be stopped.’
‘He is a good man.’
‘He could be a saint. That means nothing.’
The populace were acting just as herd animals did when panicked – stampeding for an exit, any exit. It had been bound to happen, sooner or later, but Morfol had stirred them too soon. The commissar could not be allowed to jeopardise the void-lift – there were still three hours. A lot of carriers could be got away in that time, but only if anarchy were postponed for a little longer.
‘I’m going down,’ Olgeir said, walking over to the doors leading to the main hive transit shafts.
‘My troops can handle him,’ said Annarovea. The protest was weak – she had more than enough on her mind without worrying about trying to rein in a Space Wolf.
‘Evidently not,’ said Olgeir, reaching the gates and gesturing for the guards to let him pass.
‘No slaughter, though,’ called out the governor. ‘Not unless you have to.’
Olgeir turned to face her. He was aware, as always, of how he looked – the scraggly beard, the metal studs in his tattooed flesh, the grim panoply of kill-markers and bone-totems covering his heavy battleplate.
Annarovea’s face was drawn with anxiety. It was not for herself – it was for the world she had built, patiently and faithfully, and which now teetered on the edge of annihilation.
There was nothing he could say to that. He was built for slaughter. It was his only function, and the sole reason he had stayed on Kefa. If the enforcers could not stop Morfol, then that left only one option.
So he said nothing, but strode through the blast-doors and into the antechamber beyond.
From below, far below, he could already detect weapons-fire.
Vindicatus was racing. Once fully powered, the Grand Cruiser had phenomenal motive power, and Delvaux was happy to push it as hard as he could.
With the ignition of the main drives, the plague-hulk fell swiftly away aft. The Festerax was now barely a figment of the sensor-net, and it felt good to be out of its shadow. Heimdall had stayed in pursuit for a little while, before falling back again, its engines glowing over-hot. The Wolves’ early bravery had cost them dear, and their teeth had been drawn.
Delvaux relaxed a little in
his throne. He’d tensed up after the order was given, desperate to pull away before the decision reached the ears of Stormcaller. While the crew struggled to key up the sub-warp engines, he’d drummed his fingers impatiently, gnawed at by the fear that they would come for him.
On Fenris, the oathbreaker is lower than a beast.
Now, at last, they had ripped clear. Stormcaller would either die on the plague-hulk or remain too far behind to impede him. Vindicatus would arrive at Kefa Primaris well ahead of the deadly spore-pods, ready to immolate the planet and deprive the enemy of the army it sought.
It had been determined. There was no turning back. A great victory was at hand, a decisive stroke, and forever his name would be associated with it.
Not all men would have had the stomach to give the order. Those who did so were the elect, the chosen, the ones for whom greatness beckoned.
‘Do we have the planet on our forward scopes yet?’ he asked, trying to take his mind off the thought – even hypothetically – of pursuit.
‘Not visual, lord,’ replied Harryat, standing down below the throne dais, on a platform just above the sensor pits. Officers of his command staff came and went, handing him data-slate after data-slate to sign off on. ‘You may inspect the augur schematic, if you wish.’
Delvaux narrowed his eyes. Was Harryat being curt with him? Was that disrespect in his voice? It was hard to tell. The captain spoke in an officious manner that gave nothing away.
Delvaux’s eyes scanned across the expanse of the command bridge. Battle Sisters of Nuriyah’s command were stationed at all the strategic points. The crew, from servitor up to tech-priest, were busy at their work. The low hum of conversation and data-exchange was just as it ever was.
Still, the nerves were there. There were thousands on the ship. Some of them could be plotting against him. Many of them could. Perhaps he should order Klaive to run a purge, once the business was over. You could never be too careful.
‘Yes, I will take a look,’ Delvaux said, adjusting his robes.
Harryat gestured to one of the sensorium operators, and a moment later a translucent schematic shimmered into existence at Delvaux’s eye level. The Festerax was indicated with a red rune, and glowed softly to the right of his visual field. Kefa Primaris was marked out by a large blue circle, and stood on the very left. Between them, bisecting a long curved trajectory-line, was Vindicatus, approximately a third of the way between the two bodies. Even as Delvaux watched, the glyph blinked a little further along the line.
‘And we are travelling at maximum speed?’ he demanded.
‘We are, lord.’
Delvaux grunted. He’d have liked to see the distances shrinking faster. He could feel his stomach beginning to knot. Tension always made his innards flare.
He was about to order the hololith away, when a warning rune lit up on the arm of his throne. He gazed down at it for a moment, unsure what it referred to.
‘Do we have a problem?’ he asked, almost to himself.
Harryat went over to a console, and consulted a bank of optical pict screens. ‘Are you sure?’ the captain muttered, speaking to the operator.
‘Sure of what?’ asked Delvaux. ‘Captain, you will address your queries to me.’
Harryat ignored him, absorbed in what he was seeing, and ran another test. Just as he did so, more runes lit up on Delvaux’s throne.
He knew what those ones meant.
‘Nuriyah,’ Delvaux voxed, trying to keep his voice steady.
The Battle Sister was already on the move, striding over from her station and calling a squad to her side. Her flamer-arm cast off its ceremonial drapery, and the feeder-nozzle kindled with a spurt of blue.
Harryat looked up at the throne. ‘No response from checkpoints in outer security zone,’ he reported. ‘Weapons discharge in antechambers sixty-six and seventy-one.’
By then, Delvaux could see the results for himself, transmitted to his personal retinal implant. Something was heading towards the bridge, and it was moving very fast.
He is hunted unto the ends of the world.
How had they got on board?
Delvaux twisted around in his seat, growing alarmed. Squads of Battle Sisters were running now, heading for the entry points to lock them down. Sister Callia, one of those who had been taken from de Chatelaine’s old force, was jogging towards one of the side entrances along with eight of her warriors, their bolters already drawn.
‘Where is Klaive?’ Delvaux blurted, speaking to no one in particular, running an increasingly panicked gaze over the command bridge. The black-robed confessor was nowhere to be seen.
A warning klaxon sounded. The faint sound of bolter explosions was now audible, growing louder with each moment.
‘Seal the bridge!’ cried Harryat, striding up from his position at the sensor station. He pulled a slim projectile pistol from the holster at his waist and released the safety. ‘Do it now – full lock-down.’
There were many entrances and exits into the command space – at least eight visible from the throne dais. Immediately, all of them were shuttered by thick blast-doors that slammed down from their housings. The power supply switched to a separate generator, making the lights fade to a dull red. Proximity scanners whined into life, sending out faint bleeps as the augur equipment probed the spaces behind the sealed doors.
Delvaux felt his heart thumping hard, and swallowed thickly. The bridge contained over fifty Battle Sisters in full armour. They stood before each barred entrance, their weapons trained on the blast-doors. Several hundred armed guards in Ecclesiarchy body armour backed them up or stood sentry on the high terraces. The two Penitent Engines behind his throne were fully primed and armed, and each one of those was surely a match for a whole pack of Space Wolves.
In the distance, the sound of muffled bolt crashes grew louder. He thought he could hear, just on the edge of detection, something like snarling, and the hairs on the back of his arms rose.
‘How soon before we reach Kefa?’ he demanded.
Harryat looked up at him. That time, it was unmistakable – a faint blush of contempt. When this was over, the man would have to go.
‘One hour, nineteen minutes,’ Harryat replied.
‘You can keep us secure for that long?’
‘Depends who’s trying to get in.’
‘Do you venerate the soul of the Immortal Emperor?’ snapped Delvaux. ‘Do you love His Church with all your being? Do you wish to see the will of the Holy Ministorum enacted here?’
Harryat fixed Delvaux with his practised look of stony forbearance. ‘I do, lord.’
‘Then do your duty. Increase velocity two points beyond safety margins. We will not be derailed. We will not be deflected.’
Delvaux’s thick lips pressed into a determined grimace.
‘That world will burn.’
Chapter Nineteen
Ingvar raced through the final chamber before reaching Vindicatus’s bridge. Jorundur loped alongside him, axe in hand. The two of them had made it up twenty levels and two kilometres in, killing silently and swiftly, before the alarm had been raised. After that, the fighting had escalated quickly. Ecclesiarchy-trained guards were well equipped and fanatically loyal, and the ship had a whole series of automatic defence mechanisms that had kicked into life once their progress had been discovered.
The Battle Sisters, though, were the real problem. On Ras Shakeh, Ingvar had observed how well the ones under de Chatelaine had fought. Those on the Cardinal’s ship were no different, and once they had responded to the warning klaxons screaming out on every level, things had slowed up.
‘I can’t enjoy it,’ voxed Jorundur, panting as he ran.
‘What?’
‘Killing them. I’d started to see them…’ Jorundur snorted sourly, as if disgusted with himself, ‘as allies.’
‘Some still are,’
said Ingvar, just as the doorway loomed before them.
The chamber around them was dark, lit only by devotional lumens that floated somewhere high in incense-clouded arches. Vast graven images of saints and primarchs stood in two files all along the main processional corridor, draped in shadow and wearing sombre, dull-eyed expressions. Ingvar hadn’t been able to resist a grim smile when passing Russ’s likeness. The Imperial sculptor had made him tall, noble, clean-shaven.
Perhaps he was, Ingvar had thought.
Just as they reached the ornate doorway leading to the bridge, bolt-ignitions whooshed out. Ingvar instantly dived over to his left, Jorundur to the right. The rounds pumped through the air where they’d just been.
Ingvar found the cover of a statue’s plinth and spun around, rising to one knee to fire back, but his pursuers were already moving, darting into the cover of the statues ten metres back. He caught a faint glimpse of crimson power armour before the darkness swallowed them.
‘Nuriyah’s,’ he voxed. ‘Bring them down.’
By then Jorundur had reached cover of his own. He stowed his axe, unlocked his bolter, and began to creep forwards.
Ingvar ran a scan, but something in the ship’s counter-offensive systems was dampening his helm-systems. He shut the proximity detector down and used his own hunt-sense.
Four of them. No, five. Spread out, moving behind the cover of the statues. Three this side, two the other.
Just as if he’d been stalking live prey on Fenris, he put himself in the mind of the enemy.
They’ll break from Jorundur’s side – fast and low. They need to draw us out.
He slunk forwards, still in the plinth’s shadow. Every second that passed gave the Cardinal more time to prepare, to summon more defenders, but impatience could not be allowed to ruin this – Adepta Sororitas were serious opponents.
‘Brother,’ he voxed to Jorundur, ‘stay in cover.’
‘You are serious?’
‘Stay in cover.’
Ingvar waited another two heartbeats, still in the shadows, his hyper-acute eyesight peering into the gloom ahead. He had to judge it to perfection.
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