The Omnibus - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  On the bridge of Hel’s Daughter Grimur listened to his ship sing as the warp storms clawed at it and the fires of battle kissed its prow. He swayed as the ship creaked, his eyes closed, feeling the seconds flick past and finding that they were all still breathing. In his mind he was remembering ships cutting waves like long knives, the wind hissing as it cracked the sails taut, the spray flicking across the bow as the waves met its cutting edge. ‘Running the claws of the storm’, they had called it, dancing across a sea of white-crested mountains with thunderheads spread from horizon to horizon at their backs. And in that moment, his mind living in the past while the present trembled all around him, he knew joy for the first time in a thousand years. It was the joy of skill tested against chance, of running at a shieldwall and knowing that you were rolling the bones of fate and hoping for favour.

  ‘Entering outer system sphere,’ called a servitor in a dull monotone.

  Well now. He felt his lips split over his teeth. Let’s run the storm’s claws, and see if we are still sons of Fenris.

  The hull shook, and shook. Alerts and sirens began to ring through the cavern of the bridge. Servitors were calling out in their iron voices. Beside him his brothers stood, weapons held loose in their hands, red warning lights glittering in the coldness of their eyes. The ship shook again. The note of the engines rose and rose. Grimur tilted his head back, his grin splitting wide.

  The song of the ship and the scream of the storm were one note, rising up to the sky like the call of the hunt.

  Grimur howled. Death’s blade was resting on the threads of fate. Beside him the other Wolves joined their cries to his.

  Out in the void the arrowhead of ships cut through the system edge. Weapon fire reached after them. The Wolves’ ships danced and spiralled, kissing the edge of explosions. The pursuing ships began to fall behind, their engines already burning to their white-hot limit. But two did not.

  ‘They are still coming.’ Halvar’s voice reached through the howls. Grimur went silent, the joy draining from him as he looked at Halvar bent over an auspex readout. One by one the howls of the other Wolves faded. Just the snarl of the ship remained, rolling about them like thunder. Grimur looked at Halvar, his expression question enough. ‘Two ships,’ said Halvar. ‘Very fast. They have stopped firing weapons.’

  Grimur nodded. Fire power traded for speed: that was why the two ships were not firing. They had guessed that Grimur’s ships had made the same trade-off, and so would be unlikely to fire back as the distance closed. They were racing to get close, and that meant they intended to use weapons that needed no power; they intended to board the Wolves’ ships.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked, although he thought he knew the answer already.

  ‘The mark of Ultramar is in their lines,’ said Halvar, nodding grimly. ‘They are Legion kin, jarl. They are Space Marines.’

  Grimur took a breath, let it out, and shifted his grip on his axe, feeling the familiar sensation of its weight in his fingers.

  ‘Make ready for battle,’ he said.

  The Space Wolves ships ran and their hunters came after them. There were two, their engines gouging wounds of flame across the void towards Hel’s Daughter and her sisters. The Lament of Calth was a notched spear blade, the Rubicon a blunt hammer head. Both had once served the Ultramarines, but for two millennia they had borne new colours and oaths. The White Consuls aboard the two ships had served in the shadow of the Eye for a decade and blood had often hidden the white of their armour. They knew their trade, had been bred for it and honed by genetic mysteries.

  As the distance to the target ships closed Lepidus, sergeant of the Fifth Squad of the Fourth Company, waited in the boarding torpedo’s dark insides. Around him his brothers sat still, the white of their armour lost in the dark. They waited as the silence stretched, and the torpedoes shook around them. Phrases rolled through his thoughts, canticles and teachings worn smooth by repetition. Under the words his mind worked, flicking through dozens of conditioned possibilities and responses with every double beat of his hearts. Calm, total and complete, filled him. He had seen human warriors tremble before battle, their fear oozing out of them in nervous laughter and hands shaking on weapons. He had heard that Space Marines of other breeds relished the moments before battle, as adrenaline surged in their blood. Both were unfathomable to him. Battle was focus, uncluttered by feelings or thoughts that did not serve the moment. There was a time for fury, a time to take lives like a reaper wading through corn, but they were moments to be chosen and put aside like any other tool of war. That was what the Codex taught.

  He blinked, and an image of the space outside the ship opened in his helmet display. The engines of the Lament of Calth and Rubicon burned brighter. Each of them would need weeks to recover from the damage they were doing to themselves by pushing their engines, but they had no choice. Their quarry was almost at the system edge, almost free and clear into the waiting black beyond.

  The boarding torpedo rang as mag clamps disengaged. Lepidus felt the vibration through his armour. He kept his eye on the image of the fleeing ships. He wondered what manner of corrupted creatures they held. He dismissed the thought. It was irrelevant. He would see the enemy soon enough, and speculation could cloud judgement.

  Red light pulsed through the torpedo. A siren sang in Lepidus’s ear and alerts pulsed at the edge of his sight. The torpedo felt tense, an arrow held nocked and drawn, waiting for flight.

  The White Consuls ships waited until their reactors were screaming, until they could go no faster or further, until the quarry were as close as possible.

  Lepidus felt the launch as a blow. Amber alerts washed his eyes. His flesh pressed against the skin of his armour.

  The torpedoes hit the void and ran clean to their targets.

  Grimur felt his fingers twitch on his axe haft as he ran through the Hel’s Daughter. At his back his brothers followed, boots ringing on the floor, strings of claws and teeth rattling against their armour.

  ‘Mid section, lower arterial corridor. Incursion confirmed.’ The dull drone of the bridge servitor filled his ear.

  ‘Number of impacts?’ he growled.

  ‘Uncertain. Two probable. Storm Wyrm and Blood Howl report incursions in progress.’ Grimur gave a silent curse. The boarding torpedoes had struck true and now most of his ships were compromised.

  ‘Lower arterial corridor. Internal bulkheads breached, sections one hundred and five through thirty. Moving aft.’

  Blood of Fenris, they are quick, Grimur thought. Whoever the Space Marines who had boarded the Hel’s Daughter were, they were cutting their way through the ship with ruthless directness. They would be making for the reactors and engines. If they could damage them, the Hel’s Daughter would drift on powerless, easy prey for the rest of the defenders to destroy once they caught up. It was an old tactic, as old as the first time a man had cut the ties of a sail to leave a ship as prey for the waves.

  Grimur began to run faster, his twisted frame lumbering through stuttering strides. At his back a pack of Wolves who had once been men quickened their pace. The decks rang like thunder.

  Lepidus pivoted from behind the corner, and fired four rounds – two high, two low. He was already running forwards as the gun-servitor’s head and track unit exploded. Behind him his brothers advanced in a staggered line, hugging the walls of the passage.

  They were thirty paces from the next bulkhead. One narrower passage opened to the right after ten paces. His eyes had marked it as soon as he had spun from the last corner. This close to the ship’s engines the air itself shook and hummed with power, which meant he heard the servitor only an instant before it came around the corner. He dived towards the opposite wall as heavy bolter shells chewed the air and decking where he had been.

  He came up and kept running forwards. The drum roll cough of a bolter echoed behind him, and the gun-servitor went silent. His brother behind him in the line had aimed and taken the shot the instant Lepidus had moved. They had not
even slowed down. That was what brotherhood and the Codex meant – thinking as one, moving as one, synchronising without consideration and without pause.

  Five strides from the bulkhead he shook the melta bomb free from his belt. He reached the door and swung the charge up, felt it mag-lock, and let go as he ducked to the right of the slab door.

  One second.

  He dropped into a crouch, pulled the two-thirds-empty clip from his bolter and slid a full clip home. An ammo counter flashed green in his lens display.

  Two seconds.

  Blue markers went still in his sight as the rest of the squad dropped into place either side of the door. Lepidus’s eyes skimmed the walls, noting the soot of old fires and the rune marks scraped through to the bare metal beneath.

  What enemy do we face here? part of his mind wondered. He tensed his leg muscles, and felt his armour mimic him.

  Three seconds.

  The melta charge detonated with a scream. Liquid metal exploded down the corridor from the centre of the door.

  Lepidus was up and running through the glowing wound. Molten orange light fought against the darkness beyond. The passage broadened into a junction. The mouths of three other passages yawned darkness from across a wide floor. Lepidus had taken two strides when he heard the howl.

  The sound ripped from Grimur’s throat as he broke from the dark. A ragged hole still glowed red in the breached bulkhead. A Space Marine in white armour had just run through it, two more behind him. Grimur could see the raptor head on their shoulders, and the flecks of liquid metal cooling on the armour plates. Blue light danced across his axe as he leapt across the gap. Behind him he heard chainblades and power fields light as the pack broke from the dark at a run. The white-armoured Space Marines were turning, the muzzles of their guns moving with their eyes.

  They move as one, thought Grimur as his arms swung up, the head of his axe dragging lightning behind him. Like a single animal.

  The Space Marines fired.

  Lepidus’s first round ripped the left side from the howling warrior’s helm. The figure dropped to the deck. The second hit square, exploding across its chest in a spray of fragments and light. He ran on and switched fire, hammering rounds low into the mass of warriors swarming from the tunnel mouths. His brothers were already clear of the breach, firing as they moved. Explosions danced across the decking, throwing armoured figures to the floor. Plasma whipped through the air, glowing and shrieking as it turned armour and flesh to vapour.

  Strength thirty to forty, Lepidus thought. He reached the corner of another tunnel. Two of his brothers dropped close behind him. Movement and light filled the junction. Threat runes spun in front of his eyes. As one, Lepidus’s squad chose the leading threats and fired two rounds each. The first enemy fell, and they were already firing into the next, and the next, hitting each of them with a deluge of bolt fire.

  He saw grey armour, blackened and dented, hung with bones and teeth, matted beast furs hanging from hunched shoulders. Yellow eyes flashed above mouths which glinted with sabre teeth. These creatures were not Space Marines, not any more. Their jaws distended as they howled, skin and muscle stretching. No matter what flowed in their veins, they were creatures of the Eye now, and they would not pass into the Emperor’s realm. Yet they poured into the fire and blood-daubed junction even as their brothers were cut down.

  They were fast, of course they were fast. But they expected to have cut down their foes by now. Lepidus could read it in their movements as though they had screamed it. He pulled a frag grenade free, armed and threw it as he ran to the next tunnel mouth. Three more followed it from the hands of his brothers. A drum roll of detonations thumped into the air.

  They just had to keep moving, keep pulling the enemy apart before their numbers and ferocity could prevail.

  Lepidus dropped into cover, and raised his bolter. There were too many of them, even in an optimal position there were too many, and this was not an optimal position.

  He did not see the blood-masked figure until it broke from the swirl of fire, its axe keening as it cut down.

  Grimur felt the blow thump through the axe as it cut armour and bone. Inside, his blood was howling, straining at his skin. The white-armoured Space Marine staggered, crimson streaming from the stumps of his arms. Grimur could almost smell the warrior’s shock in the iron-scented air. He cut again, spinning his axe low. The Space Marine tried to jerk back, but he had misread the blow. The axe head slammed into the Space Marine’s knee. He fell. Grimur stamped down, felt, and heard, bone and armour break. Deep inside he could hear howls ringing across the moon-silvered night of Fenris.

  No. Not now, not at this moment. These are noble warriors who die under our blades.

  But the thought died, and he could feel the howling growing louder, echoing out of a dream.

  He could feel his mouth opening inside the broken shell of his helm. Cartilage and bone cracked. He sucked a breath, felt his ribs and bones shift as blood-scented air filled his lungs.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Halvar split another of the white-armoured Space Marines on a broken sword blade. The Space Marine fired, even as Halvar wrenched him from the floor. Bolt-rounds shredded the front of Halvar’s armour. He jerked but did not let go, even with his armour ripped from his body. The Space Marine slid down the sword blade. Halvar’s hands were wet and black with blood. He snarled, the sound echoing from his broken speaker grille.

  The broken sword ripped free. Blood glittered like red pearls as it scattered and the dead warrior fell. Out beyond them the pack was ripping into the remaining warriors. All control had gone. Feet skidded on the offal-streaked floor. Blades rang and screeched across armour plates. There were dead Wolves on the deck, their heads and helms ripped open by bolter rounds shot into their eyes.

  It should not be like this, thought Grimur, but his hand was already ripping the remains of his helm free. His eye caught a strip of honour parchment smeared to the warrior’s shoulder with blood. The name ‘Lepidus’ was still clear beneath the gore. Grimur stopped. His limbs were shaking, his whole body was shaking. Around him the fire and clash of weapons was a dim tide that echoed the racing of blood in his veins. He had not felt like this for a long time, not since before the hunt began. He wondered if it was the Eye, its malign presence tugging at their flesh and minds one last time before they broke free.

  He forced his muscles to stillness. He looked down. Lepidus was still trying to rise, still trying to fight, but his blood was deep on the decking, and his movements were becoming weaker. Grimur looked into the dying warrior’s eye-lenses. A reflection looked back, stained in the red lenses’ light: a hunched warrior in chewed power armour, his face bared to show yellow fangs as long as fingers.

  ‘This is not a good death.’ The words were heavy on his tongue. ‘But you died well, cousin,’ Grimur said and swung the axe down in a clean arc.

  Four of Grimur’s ships shook free of their attackers and clawed into the clear black beyond Cadia’s rim. One remained, the Blood Howl, tumbling on as its engines cooled and power dimmed. It would die later, its hull broken open by macro salvoes from three system monitors. The Space Wolves on board would die standing, their weapons in their hands, howling as the fire and void took them. As their brothers ran beyond the reach of Cadia’s defences, the Wolves of the Blood Howl called out a final message shouted into the night.

  ‘To the hunt’s end,’ they said. Spattered with the blood of a foe he wished he had not had to fight, Grimur Red Iron heard the signal, raised the amulet at his throat and touched it to his lips. It tasted of cold blood.

  ‘To the end,’ he whispered. Around him Hel’s Daughter shivered as power touched its warp drives and Geller fields. He turned, and walked from the blood-painted junction. His pack brothers watched him go, but did not follow.

  ‘Sycld,’ said Grimur into the vox.

  ‘Jarl,’ replied the Rune Priest’s thin voice.

  ‘We are clear of the gate. Go back to the Sea
of Souls.’ He paused, thinking of the face he had seen reflected in the dead Space Marine’s eyes – the face of a beast dragged back from hell. ‘Dream us a course. Take us to him.’

  XV

  CONNECTION

  ‘I don’t like it. Leaving my tower, I mean.’ Silvanus glanced at Hemellion as they turned a corner.

  The red-robed serf said nothing, his face a fixed mask inside his hood. Hemellion looked old. His skin was folded, his mouth a line in a pattern of wrinkles. A slight stoop to his shoulders showed through the thick fabric of his robe. In truth he was no more than four or five decades old, but that time seemed to have cut deep marks in passing. Apart from the eyes, thought Silvanus. There was young anger in those eyes, glinting just beneath the surface.

  Silvanus licked his lips. They had been walking for three hours, weaving their way through the ship towards its forward decks. Silvanus was already sweating under the layers of his attire. Black velvet and silver gauze covered him head to toe, hanging in heavy swathes. What he had said was true; he did not like leaving his tower. He did not like the other things that walked the Sycorax. He also did not like the way they looked at him: like he was no different. He coughed nervously.

  ‘Did they say why I had to come now?’ he asked. Hemellion said nothing, but turned through a wide door framed by feathers cast in brass. A platform of worn metal waited beyond, red-lit tunnels extending to a vanishing point at either side. Hemellion and Silvanus stopped in the centre of the floor. The doors closed like biting teeth, and the platform began to clank down the tunnel.