by Gav Thorpe
‘Some kind of listening post, perhaps?’ The lieutenant pointed to a burning wreck not far from the embattled keep. He could make out the shattered remnants of another Thunderhawk fuselage. ‘It’s got anti-air weapons for a start, and probably anti-orbital since the Sons of Horus ship is staying well away.’
Neroka glanced back at him. ‘A listening post? Is this why the Sons of Horus came here? Seems pretty worthless at the moment. A barren moon circling an empty world.’
‘Someone is inside, that’s for sure. Maybe our Space Wolves.’
Hef looked around, memorising the layout of the canyons below. Then he returned his attention to the enemy warriors.
‘Too hard to count them, but even if they all survived the Thunderhawk crash then that makes no more than ninety of them, maybe a hundred. A skeleton crew left aboard the ship. You were right, it can’t be a battle-barge – or if it is, they’re woefully undermanned.’
‘If they want whatever’s in that station, it’s our duty to stop them getting it,’ said Neroka. ‘This is what Lord Corax wanted, to take the fight to enemy wherever possible.’
‘I don’t know why you think I need any encouragement. We’re here now, so we’ll see this through to the end. Killing Horus’ thugs isn’t a duty, it’s a pleasure.’
The infiltration squad followed their lieutenant down into the maze of gorges. Scouts were sent ahead and they advanced warily, alert for any overflight or sentries posted by the Sons of Horus. They regularly sought the higher ground to keep an eye on their foes, but it seemed the Warmaster’s forces were wholly concentrated on the small fortress, unaware of any other threat.
Progress became a lot harder on the final approach to the citadel. Hef could hear the bark of bolters and the snap of las-fire echoing down the gorge ahead, and beyond the steep rocks to the right he could see the detonation of shells and flare of lasers. Looking up he saw the planet around which the moon orbited – an enormous orb of shifting orange and purple gases, not far from occluding the local star.
‘We’ll wait for darkness,’ he murmured. ‘Full stealth measures.’
The Raven Guard dispersed along the valley, their black armoured invisible in the deepening shadows. Each found a concealed spot and powered down his battleplate, running on minimal systems only. Hef remained on watch, all systems except his auto-senses reduced in power as he crouched in the darkness behind a finger of rock twice as tall as him.
Now and then he would turn his head slowly, scanning along the ridge tops and cliffs with full-spectrum vision. The sky glittered with the sheen of battle, pulses of heat and ultraviolet energy creating fountains and whorls long after the visible flash of flame and las-fire dissipated. He was still amazed by the whole spectacle of war hidden from the sight of unenhanced warriors, and felt privileged to have been chosen to witness its destructive beauty.
He watched and waited until the star disappeared from the sky and an all-blanketing darkness descended over the moon.
‘On my location. Kharvo, take up forward scout position. Nastar, take sternguard. Movement by pairs, fifty metre intervals. Follow me.’
The air buzzed with armour powering up as the dormant Raven Guard came back to life. Around Hef, the darkness moved.
They had advanced no more than another two hundred metres when the vox clicked three times – a signal from Kharvo to stop. Hef froze along with the others, his auto-senses picking up the sound of footfalls and disturbed stones, though he could see nothing. With deliberate steps he moved forward, keeping close to the cliff face. Patience was his greatest strength, moving with such slowness that his armour made virtually no sound, his tread so light that he could not even hear it himself.
Eventually he reached Kharvo, a blurred shadow slightly darker than the rock behind him. The Raven Guard extended a hand, pointing up and to the left. On a shelf of rock about thirty metres above the valley stood two Sons of Horus. They were obviously sentries, but both kept looking back down the valley, distracted by the ongoing battle.
‘Neroka, join us.’
It was some time before the sergeant arrived, during which Hef had completed a detailed survey of the cliffs on either side.
‘Take them from above. Neither is paying much attention. Kill essential.’
Neroka and Kharvo said nothing before disappearing into the darkness. Hef moved towards the Sons of Horus, choosing a spot less than a hundred metres away, from where he could see them clearly silhouetted against the starry sky.
Nothing happened for a while, but the lieutenant kept his gaze fixed on the traitors, trusting his fellow Raven Guard to be watching his back, alert to any other danger.
All of a sudden, the helm of the closest traitor erupted, spraying blood and ceramite shards. His companion half-raised his bolter as he looked up, but Hef heard the crack of an optical lens shattering and the second traitor fell, falling to the ground a moment after the first. Almost immediately, two darkly armoured figures slid down the steep incline. One stooped briefly, a blackened knife cutting across the throats of the downed warriors. The pair then stood, instantly assuming the poses of those they had just slain.
Hef activated the squad vox.
‘Route is clear. Move on.’
From the lip of a narrow defile not far from the armoured station, Hef could see the base more clearly. It consisted of a central building, hexagonal in shape, on three storeys. Corridors linked this to a trio of outbuildings, which in turn were joined by armoured earthworks to an outer ring of turrets and empty gun positions. Judging by the fire patterns, the gun platforms were firing on automatic, spewing bursts of autocannon and laser fire at the Sons of Horus that surrounded the facility. The traitors had raised works of their own and had evidently had several days to do so. A few of their dead could be seen lying in the kill-zone closer to the defensive guns.
To one side of the main structure was a cluster of communications antennae and dishes. Hef activated the command link built into his vambrace and sighted the narrow-beam transmitter onto the vox-array.
‘Attention station occupants. Can you receive this message?’ He waited for a few moments. ‘Attention station occupants. Can you receive–’
His vox-bead crackled as it detected an incoming transmission.
‘We hear you. This is Packmaster Arvan Woundweaver of the Wolves of Fenris, and you choose a bad day to taunt me, traitor filth.’
‘Negative, Packmaster. This is Lieutenant Navar Hef, we’re here to help. We’re not from the Sons of Horus.’
The pause that followed could only mean that Woundweaver was not sure what to make of this change of circumstance. He soon made up his mind.
‘Go away, we don’t need any assistance, thanks all the same. We have these idiots right where we want them.’
Hef could scarcely believe what he had heard.
‘Please say again. There are fifty, maybe a hundred or more, Sons of Horus besieging this station. How many of you are there?’
‘Enough. Go away before you spoil everything.’
‘With respect, we didn’t sneak our way through the enemy lines just to turn around and go back to our ship without finding out what’s happening here.’
‘Sneak through? What Legion are you, Hef?’
‘Nineteenth Legion, Raptors contingent. We found your ship.’
‘The Raven Guard! Why didn’t you say? We’ve been looking for you for a long time. Let us know when you’re at the perimeter, we’ll open one of the gates for you.’
The sound of approaching engines alerted Hef to a change in the movements of the Sons of Horus close by. He turned to see two armoured carriers peeling off from the main attack, heading in the direction of the Raven Guard. A Predator tank followed them.
‘Packmaster, is this channel comms-shielded?’
‘What for? No point trying to hide, the enemy know exactly where we are.’
‘But they didn’t know where we were!’ Hef switched to his squad frequency. ‘Rapid advance, the enemy know we’re here. We have incoming armour and infantry. Counter-attack with me.’
The Raptors bounded out from their hiding places, following Hef as he scrambled up to a ledge of rock about halfway up the face of the gorge. The lights of the nearest Rhino transport glimmered around a bend in the defile, gleaming from the moon’s rust-and-grey surface.
The carrier appeared, a legionary manning the combi-bolters mounted in a cupola on its top, headlights blazing. Moving slowly, the Rhino nosed around the bend as the gunner tracked left and right with his weapon. A searchlight above the cupola cut back and forth across the jagged rocks where the Raven Guard had been half a minute earlier.
The legionary looked up, swivelling his weapon towards Hef’s hiding place. But he was too late, as the lieutenant leapt down from the rocks, chainsword in one hand, a melta-bomb in the other, and his squad-brothers behind him.
Landing on the hull of the Rhino, Hef smashed a boot into the side of the gunner’s head, crashing it against the open hatch of the cupola. The chainsword roared into life as he slashed it down across the legionary’s exposed neck, lacerating the vulnerable ridged seal and the flesh within. The spray of blood arced slowly from the fatal wound, individual droplets carrying far in the low gravity.
The others landed around Hef, their bolters and melee weapons at the ready. Hef activated the mag-clamp of his melta-bomb and slapped it to the side of the access hatch. The breaching charge detonated, blasting through the Rhino’s armour with ease, and killing the driver below. Other charges set by the rest of the squad exploded in quick succession, turning the engine into a smoking mass of slag and blowing holes in the transport’s roof. The Rhino careened across the gorge for several metres before crashing to a halt against a pillar of rock.
The rear hatch slammed open and a handful of Sons of Horus spilled out, turning their bolters back towards the Raptors. But Hef’s warriors were ready, and met them with a hail of bolts and a shot from a plasma gun. The traitors were down in the space of a few heartbeats, without a single shot fired in return.
The Predator and a second Rhino rounded the bend in the canyon. The moment the gunners saw what was happening they opened fire, a storm of autocannon and heavy bolter rounds slamming into the mangled wreck beneath the Raven Guard. Tarbor was struck full in the chest and thrown into the air, where the trace of heavy bolter shots tore his armour apart with a flurry of rapid detonations.
‘Down!’ yelled Hef. ‘Use the wreck as cover!’
The Raven Guard followed their lieutenant to the ground, finding sanctuary behind the smoking remains of the transport. Rock splinters, chips of ceramite and slivers of metal shrapnel showered down after them as the Predator continued its fusillade.
Neroka moved to one edge of the rapidly deteriorating wreckage and looked out. He snapped his head back quickly as a storm of bolts rattled against the hull.
‘The other Rhino is moving in on our left. They’ll have us flanked in a minute. That’s if our cover lasts that long.’
Hef looked back down the gorge, where they had come from. It was several hundred metres of nearly open ground. ‘We’ll be picked off as soon as we make a move.’ He looked up the steep walls of the canyon. ‘Too long to make the ascent. It’ll be like a firing range for that tank crew.’
‘You want to just sit here and wait for the inevitable?’
‘I’m thinking. Let me think, for the love of–’
But Hef’s thoughts were interrupted again, by the white streak of a lascannon beam from the lip of the gorge above. The energy blast was followed by a huge fireball soaring over the wreck of the Rhino, as the Predator’s fuel tanks exploded. Looking up again, Hef saw grey-armoured figures against the gloom.
‘Just in time, Hef of the Raptors!’ Woundweaver was obvious by his more ostentatious gear - an ornate skull and fang necklace and the dark wolfpelt hanging across his backpack, as well as golden torqs and runes worked into the ceramite of his battleplate. ‘Lucky thing we hear your trouble and come for you, eh?’
‘Lucky?’ Hef almost shrieked the word. ‘You compromised our position with your stupidity!’
‘Huh. There’s gratitude for you.’
The Space Wolves took aim again just as the second Rhino came into view, striking the vehicle’s track housing on the far side. The Rhino skidded, shedding track links as the lascannon blazed again, the beam slicing neatly through the driver’s compartment this time.
‘Raptors, attack!’ Hef cried, leaping away from the cover of the wreck. He crossed the ground to the other Rhino in a dozen gigantic strides, in time to meet the first Son of Horus as the large firing hatch on the top of the transport opened. Hef’s growling chainsword took off the top of the Space Marine’s head, the weapon juddering in his hand as it carved through helm and thickened skull with equal ease.
The lieutenant leapt back as bolter fire burst from the open crew compartment. As he landed, the other Raven Guard were charging in, jumping up to the Rhino’s roof with their own bolters firing. Kaddian was caught by a burst of burning promethium from a flamer. The fire enveloped him from head to foot as he stumbled across the vehicle’s roof, smoke rising from his burning war-plate, coolant and lubricant hissing and steaming as he pitched to the rocky ground.
The firefight around the Rhino was ended with a clutch of grenades thrown into the transport’s open top. Shrapnel and fire filled the interior for a moment, finishing off all within.
Hef looked across to Kaddian’s body, the slick of promethium still sheathing him in blue flame. He spared a moment to mourn the passing of another from the First Nine, but his bleak thoughts were interrupted by Woundweaver.
‘There’s a Land Raider heading your way, you’d best come inside with us.’
‘Bring the dead,’ Hef said, remembering the mission protocols of his Legion. It seemed likely that the Sons of Horus would assume the Space Wolves had contacted their own reinforcements. It was better, then, that the enemy did not know there was another Legion involved. ‘We will avenge them soon enough.’
The heavy inner doors closed behind the group, leaving the Raven Guard and Space Wolves looking at each other across a bare chamber. Beyond Woundweaver’s squad, Hef could see two more of their Legion propped up against the wall, obviously wounded, perhaps dead.
Tired of sucking in stale air, Hef unsealed his helm and, without thinking, took it off. The moment he revealed his twisted face, he realised his mistake.
The Wolves raised their guns and the Raptors responded in kind. Woundweaver stepped forwards, pistol in one hand, a power axe in the other.
‘This is unexpected, Hef of the Raptors.’
Hef waved a hand at his warriors. ‘Lower your weapons!’ The lieutenant turned his gaze back to Woundweaver and slowly hung his chainsword on his belt. ‘We are not enemies.’
The Space Wolves sergeant looked from one Raven Guard to the next as they reluctantly obeyed Hef’s command. ‘Are you all like this?’
Neroka took off his helm.
‘Not all. It makes no difference, we are all Raptors. We take the rough with the smooth, as we say. All Raven Guard together.’
‘Is that so?’
The rest of Hef’s contingent followed suit, revealing a mixture of unchanged and malformed faces. Hef reached out to Woundweaver.
‘I know what you are thinking, packmaster, but it is not so. We’ve also seen some of the things our foes have become, but we are different. It is an affliction of the gene-seed. Some of us are changed, some of us aren’t – a price to be paid, perhaps, for trying to improve on the Emperor’s own design.’
One of the other Space Wolves laughed and pointed at the Raven Guard, speaking in the VI Legion’s own guttural Fenrisian. ‘Baier eru weregelder, eh?’
He slung his bo
lter and took off his own helm. A shaggy mane rolled down across his chest and shoulders, framing a face that was covered in thick hair save for the eyes and mouth. Fangs as long as fingers were revealed as the Space Wolf grinned. His eyes flashed yellow in the harsh lights.
‘I did not know the Raven Guard had such warriors, Arvan.’
‘Silence, Svarad!’ snapped the packmaster. ‘We do not discuss with outsiders.’
Hef looked on incredulously as the rest of the handful of Space Wolves removed their helms, revealing faces in greater or lesser degrees of canine-like mutation. Woundweaver’s was almost a snout, his hair a mixture of black and grey, his eyes a bright blue.
‘We are not beasts, Hef of the Raptors.’
‘Nor are we.’
They continued to eye each other suspiciously for a few more seconds, until Hef broke the silence.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? We come here to die.’
Woundweaver despatched his warriors back to their positions, and Hef realised that the five Space Wolves were all that were left. The packmaster led the Raven Guard to an adjoining chamber where ammunition crates and other supplies were stacked. At the Space Wolves’ invitation, Hef gestured for his warriors to resupply. He stepped close to Woundweaver so that they could speak with some privacy.
‘You think you can hold this place with just a handful of legionaries?’
‘Of course not, Hef of the Raptors. But we will hold long enough.’
There was something that Woundweaver wasn’t telling him. His explanations didn’t entirely make sense. Hef tried another tack. ‘What brought you to this system?’
Woundweaver nodded towards the boxes and crates.
‘We need more supplies. Many seasons pass since we left Fenris seeking your king. Five years, maybe more.’
‘Seeking our king? You mean Lord Corax? What business do you have with the primarch?’
‘By decree of Russ and Malcador, we are here to join the Ravenlord and act as guardians, to remind him of oaths sworn and endeavours to be undertaken.’
