by Braden Campbell, Mark Clapham, Ben Counter, Chris Dows, Peter Fehervari, Steve Lyons
What mattered was that his limbs were swift, his armour strong, and that there was alien blood on his blade. What mattered was the way the next ork overextended its lunge, the way Graam’s initial strike cleaved off its arm, and the backstroke opened its throat. What mattered was how the next greenskin tried to gun him down, realised its pistol was jammed, and died with his combat knife through its chest.
By the time Drenn Redblade came to his senses, he was standing on the very edge of the refinery, slick with stinking alien gore and staring out into the heavens.
There was a storm coming. The clouds had turned even uglier and more nebulous. The gravity well below was becoming a yawning, black maw. The wind was picking up, and was clawing at him. He spread his arms wide, twin hearts still hammering out the addictive rhythm of combat, a howl building in his–
A gauntlet smacked into his pauldron, shattering the moment. He turned, snarling, expecting to face Svenbald.
The snarl died when he instead found himself confronting the black battleplate of the Deathwatch leader.
‘You fought well, Wolf,’ Vorens said. His own armour was almost as bloody as the Flame Hunter’s. ‘What is your name?’
‘Drenn,’ he replied. ‘They call me the Redblade.’
‘Listen to the pup,’ scoffed Utred, one of the older Flame Hunters, as he slapped a fresh clip into his bolt pistol. ‘Not even a single moon with us and he’s already given himself a deed-name. He’s no true Skyclaw, just an upstart Blood Claw out of his depth. Tell me, who calls you the Redblade? Bar yourself, of course.’
‘If I don’t deserve the name, then come take this from me,’ Drenn snarled, pointing Fang at Utred. Its blade was slick with dark xenos blood.
Vorens pushed between Drenn and the older Wolf, breaking their eye contact. ‘The xenos have been purged, but our long-range communications have been disabled. We need to regroup. Come, Drenn.’
Vorens held out a hand, as though to pull the Space Wolf away from the oblivion which beckoned just beyond the refinery’s rim. Drenn stepped back from the edge, but didn’t take the proffered gauntlet. Utred had already gone.
Epsilon’s plates looked like a scene from a skjald’s epic. The eviscerated remains of orks carpeted the plascrete. Zarn’s red-robed adepts were scurrying between the combat servitors, attempting to effect repairs, their pump-lungs swollen and straining in the thin atmosphere. Sparks flew and saws hummed as pale, dead flesh was stitched back up and rent metal welded shut.
The refinery’s servitors weren’t the only casualties. Drenn saw the Deathwatch kill-team’s Apothecary kneeling over the body of one of his brothers, retrieving his gene-seed with a bloodied narthecium. The Flame Hunters were assembling on the eastern side of the platform, and he noted that two of them were also missing: Ivarr and Karlson.
‘Lost over the edge,’ Svenbald said. ‘Ivarr took a hard round through the visor, Karlson was dragged down by two greenskins. May the Allfather guide their souls to the Great Hall.’
‘We will feast with them again one day,’ Drenn said. The other Flame Hunters growled their agreement, and even Svenbald allowed himself a curt nod.
The sound of armoured boots interrupted the obituary.
‘The greenskins that engage in jump-pack assaults are not like the rest of their kind,’ Vorens said, parting the circle of Wolves. ‘Discipline and determination are their hallmarks. We cannot assume that was the end of their assault, or that any future attacks will be so direct.’
‘You think there’ll be another wave?’ Drenn asked.
‘Atmospherics are hampering our attempts to re-establish communication with the scrying Navy vessels in orbit,’ Vorens replied, ‘but fresh xenos formations are already on their way.’
‘We can hold them.’
‘That’s if they attack us hand-to-hand again.’
‘You said they didn’t want to damage the refinery,’ Svenbald said.
‘They don’t want to destroy it. Damage is another matter.’
‘A bombing run this time, then?’
‘Possibly. We should prepare Epsilon’s shuttles for evacuation. We’ll rig the central hub with melta charges before we leave.’
‘A true warrior doesn’t retreat,’ said Drenn, facing Vorens.
Svenbald cut in before the Deathwatch leader could respond. ‘A true warrior doesn’t speak out of turn, especially before his superiors. Show some respect.’
Drenn fixed the Wolf Guard with a glare.
‘I see no superiors here. Only equals at best. If anyone considers themselves my better, let them challenge me, blade to blade.’
Svenbald took a pace forward, fangs bared, and Drenn’s hand went back to his chainsword’s hilt. Distantly, the storm’s thunder rumbled, heavy with threat.
Then the Lightning struck.
It came from the north, using the rising storm as cover. Two ork bombers were plummeting into the gas giant’s black embrace before the Imperial forces even realised they were under attack, scrap-covered fuselages lanced through by heavy lasbolts. Autocannon rounds riddled a third heavy flyer before the formation began to scatter.
They were too slow. The Lightning was followed by five lithe air superiority fighters bearing the matt-grey colours and red talon crest of the local Imperial Navy battlegroup.
The orks had no fighter topcover. Obeying their primitive instincts, most of their war planes attempted to turn and fight, defence turrets swivelling. The Imperial aircraft, however, had been built for this particular type of slaughter. They danced, rolled and darted, whilst the blind rage of the greenskins resulted in their own aircraft colliding or mowing one another down in a confused tangle of fire arcs.
Epsilon 9-17’s defenders watched in silence as the Imperial Navy tore the clouds asunder with the weight of the wreckage they sent tumbling into the yawning, swirling gravitational well at Theron’s heart. As the final ramshackle bomber was ripped to pieces by strafing fire, Epsilon’s cross-command vox-net lit up.
‘This is Flight Lieutenant Dall to task force designate Epsilon Nine-Seventeen. Come in, over.’
It was Vorens who answered, tapping into the command frequency. ‘Flight Lieutenant Dall, this is Kill-Team Leader Vorens of the Deathwatch. We congratulate you on your timing. You do the Imperial Navy great credit.’
‘You honour us, lord,’ Dall replied, ‘but my wing can’t remain on-station. Another xenos asteroid is attacking platform Sigma Thirteen-Eight, four miles south-west of here. My warbirds need to rearm before we can go to their aid.’
‘The xenos will send another bombing run,’ Vorens said. ‘We can’t protect the platform from that, and the refinery’s shuttles are likely too slow for effective escape. Is there any way you can assist with aerial extraction?’
‘Central Command at Alpha One-One can scramble Valkyries,’ Dall said. ‘Their ETA would be around twenty minutes. We should be able to make another pass by that time, to see them safely through.’
‘The lives of everyone aboard this station may depend on it,’ Vorens said. ‘Our thanks again for your assistance, flight lieutenant.’
‘Good hunting, my lords.’
And then the Lightnings were gone, slamming south-west through the cloud cover, the roar of their jets drowned by the wind’s howl.
Drenn looked at Svenbald, but the Wolf Guard was pointedly ignoring him. He felt his anger spike, driven on by the battle lust he’d yet to slake.
‘Look at me!’ he barked, stung to fury by the older Wolf’s disdain.
And that was when the first explosion tore through the heart of Epsilon 9-17.
Vorens was right. These were no ordinary orks.
Epsilon lurched again, yawing towards its southernmost plate. The movement wasn’t vast, but it was enough to force Drenn to thought-activate his auto-stabilisers, clamping himself to the deck.
‘Hel’s teeth,’ snapped another Flame Hunter, Hrolfgar. ‘What was that?’
Warning klaxons began to wail from the central hub’s s
pire. Adepts, mechadendrites writhing in alarm, were hurrying to the outlying nodes. The platform groaned, tilting a fraction further.
‘One of the grav-sphere engines,’ Drenn heard Erik growl down the vox. ‘It’s gone.’
‘They’re below us,’ Vorens added. He was crouching at the platform’s side. ‘They’re on the engines.’
And suddenly it all made sense. The main assault was a diversion. While one mob dropped from above, a smaller contingent had flown their rickety aircraft in below Epsilon and leapt up using their rocket packs. Now they were clambering over the curving plasteel framework of Epsilon’s underbelly, rigging the platform with bundles of piped explosives.
‘Don’t fire,’ Vorens ordered. ‘We can’t risk damaging the gravitic spheres.’
‘We’ve got to get them off,’ Drenn said, stepping to the refinery’s edge. ‘If they take out any more, we won’t be able to stay airborne.’
‘They’re not trying to bring it down,’ Vorens said. ‘They want to capture the platform intact, and if they want to do that they’ll have t–’
But Drenn wasn’t listening. He was jumping.
Vorens shouted after him, but it was too late. The young Flame Hunter fell, combat knife unsheathed, fangs bared, his red hair whipping out behind him.
Now was not the time for thoughts. Now was the time for great deeds.
Now was the time for Redblade to make his mark.
The first ork he hit didn’t even know it. Drenn’s boots burst its skull open and snapped its neck, smashing it off the engine’s flank. He activated his jump pack the moment he struck, and the powerful turbos thrust him viciously upwards and to the left. He collided with another greenskin clinging onto a strut binding one of the crackling grav spheres, the beast’s blunt features contorted by a grimace as it tried to bring its crude firearm to bear. The impact of the Wolf, pauldron-first, tore the ork from its grapnel and sent it roaring out into the ether.
Drenn tried to jump again, but his pack chimed. The turbo hadn’t recharged yet, and suddenly he was in freefall. There was nothing below, nothing but an endless sea of swirling, sickly clouds and the grinding pressure of Theron’s gravity well many miles below.
He lashed out, trying to get a hold on the flank of the sphere sliding past, but his gauntlet could only scrape against the smooth outer plates. With a yell, he lunged with his other fist, plunging Fang into the engine’s frame.
His arm jerked and he slowed, but didn’t stop. The lightning bolts feeding the gravitic engine’s inner core cracked and lashed at the gash he’d torn in the light metal frame, the blade carving its way through the sphere’s outer shell. Drenn spat a curse as he gripped onto the weapon’s hilt two-handed, but to no avail.
And then, abruptly, he stopped.
The knife struck one of the plasteel stanchions ribbing the platform’s swollen belly, the final one before the drop away into nothingness. The metal bent but held, and Drenn found himself dangling helplessly.
Thunder crashed. Beneath his dangling feet, Theron’s swirling maw gaped, seemingly desperate to turn the young Wolf to pulp.
He managed to grip the stanchion with his other hand. His jump pack chimed again, finally recharged, but he had nothing to kick up off. Gritting his fangs, he began to pull. The servos in his power armour whined as they added to his strength, heaving him up onto the narrow strip of metal. It groaned and bent further. Finally he snatched hold of the rent his knife had torn in the engine sphere’s shell, and found his feet.
Lightning crashed again, lashing up past him. The arcs caged within the grav-sphere twisted and crackled in sympathy. Drenn heard a ticking in his ears and realised it was his vox, barely audible over the storm.
‘Above you!’
Drenn looked up and saw two shapes – Vorens and Svenbald – traversing the side of the engine. Svenbald had discarded his jump pack. Both were strapped into harness coils usually plugged into the servitors responsible for maintaining the engine flanks.
There was a crack, and Drenn felt something strike his leg. He turned to see the nearest orks firing at him, their wild aim sending rounds rattling off the stanchions. He mag-locked Fang and bellowed at them, unable to do anything but hold on.
‘Jump!’ It was Svenbald this time. Both figures had paused halfway down the engine’s side, just above where Drenn had first stabbed Fang in.
‘We can’t rappel past the damaged section,’ Vorens voxed. ‘It’s too volatile. You have to jump. Now.’
The plasteel rib underfoot was buckling. More ork slugs hit him, smacking off his breastplate and his right vambrace. He grimaced, growled a heathen prayer, and hit the activation rune just as the stanchion beneath him snapped.
The jump pack flared to life and he powered upwards, arms outstretched, searing along the vicious rent he’d torn in the engine. Vorens and Svenbald reached out and snatched hold of him, their gauntlets meeting just as the jump hit its apex.
Drenn planted both feet on the engine’s side, fangs gritted as he held onto the two tethered Space Marines.
‘Bring us up!’ Vorens shouted. The harnesses began to whirr in reverse, the taut cables straining as they dragged the three of them back towards the platform.
They reached it just as more thunder split the heavens. The storm was breaking, the winds screaming and hammering at the refinery from all sides. The ork asteroid was moving closer, now barely visible amidst the livid clouds, its armoured bulkheads and bristling guns occasionally outlined by flashes of red brilliance.
The pack hauled Drenn, Vorens and Svenbald up over the edge. Drenn tried to stand, but a sudden stab of pain told him that an ork round had found the weak point behind his knee plate. He’d been so focused on reaching Vorens and Svenbald that he hadn’t noticed he’d been hit. He scowled and pulled himself upright, blocking out the pain.
Svenbald was facing him, grizzled face contorted with anger. Before Drenn could speak, the Wolf Guard slammed a fist into his jaw. The blow sent him staggering. Svenbald snatched him before he hit the railings at the refinery’s edge, and the young Wolf went down on one knee.
‘You’re a stupid, arrogant little piece of gristle,’ Svenbald spat. ‘If you disobey orders, anyone’s orders, ever again, I will kill you myself.’
Drenn didn’t reply. He could hear roaring and the hammering of bolters, and realised that the orks were attacking up over the platform’s edge. Svenbald gripped his vambrace and dragged him forcefully back onto his feet, reopening the wound behind his knee.
‘You owe me a life-debt, pup,’ the Wolf Guard snarled. ‘So in the name of Russ, fight!’
The greenskins died.
The Deathwatch and the Space Wolves cut them down on the open plates, bolters and hand flamers blazing. A crackling stab of lighting struck the station as they fought, slamming like the spear of the Allfather into the great rods and spikes projecting from Epsilon’s hub. The impact sent fat sparks scattering across the decking and threw the combat into dark shades of crimson. The generatorum thrummed with power, the arco-banks within alive with energy. The whine of the grav engines, barely audible over the storm, rose to a pained shriek.
‘We’re losing altitude,’ Vorens voxed. ‘Magos Zarn is trying to stabilise the rig. All brethren, report to the central hub.’
Epsilon tilted still further. Drenn activated his jump pack, bounding up the plate towards the hub and its halo of energy-wreathed spikes.
Inside, amidst the vaulted, red-shot darkness, the Adeptus Astartes and Epsilon’s crew gathered. Magos Zarn stood before the great coils of the generatorum, flanked on either side by his enginseer and adepts. The tech-priest’s face was as pallid and lifeless as ever, but he pitched his synthetic voice in a manner that conveyed the seriousness of their situation.
‘The xenos have destroyed one of the gravity engines,’ he said. ‘And the damage to the second is irreparable. It is losing its charge as we speak.’
The cowled heads of the adepts turned to scan Drenn, but he simply
glowered. Zarn pressed on.
‘I have calculated that the strain on the remaining four engines is too great. One has already crossed the stress tolerance threshold, despite our blessings, and I compute that another will follow within the next eight minutes. We are losing altitude. I estimate that we will reach critical descent within the next half hour. After that we will cross the horizon line into Theron’s gravitational well. Nothing can escape after that.’
‘Naval fighter support will be here soon,’ Vorens said. ‘We will evacuate the station.’
‘And we will have failed in our mission,’ Svenbald added, looking pointedly at Drenn.
‘At least the xenos won’t capture the generatorum banks,’ Vorens replied.
‘We’ll just have to hope the other refineries are more successfully defended,’ Svenbald went on.
‘Would you consider it a success,’ said Drenn, his voice hard and low, ‘if we destroy the ork’s battle asteroid?’
Lightning pounded the hub, and for a second the power failed, the only illumination coming from the red energy crackling behind the murky panes of the generatorum’s banks. The lumen strips overhead blinked back on, but dimmer than before.
‘And how would we do that?’ Svenbald asked, his tone slick with scorn.
‘We won’t,’ Drenn said. ‘But Epsilon Nine-Seventeen might.’
Again, no one spoke. Vorens turned to look directly at the young Space Wolf, the light giving his black armour a fresh, bloody sheen.
‘Elaborate,’ he said.
‘We’re a lightning harvester,’ Drenn said, and as though to underscore his words the lightning struck again. The whole platform shuddered. ‘We can’t save Epsilon, but we can still use it. Ram the asteroid.’
‘The orks will board us long before we reach them,’ Svenbald said. ‘That’s even assuming that there’ll be sufficient lightning charge left to damage the rock.’
‘I doubt any physical impact could cause sufficient damage,’ Zarn interjected. ‘But the generatorum has absorbed vast amounts of power in the past few minutes. It may be possible for my adepts to overload the coils, and compress the magnetic flux using combat servitor munitions. We could create a minor electromagnetic pulse that would likely shut down the majority of the xenos’ technological systems and cause them to drop into the gravitational well. As for directing the refinery’s course, we shall remain on board. I have served this station since I was an adept, still mired in the ways of the flesh. Regardless of your intentions, I will not leave now.’
