Battle Of The Fang

by Chris Wraight

  Blackwing strode down the corridor with two dozen fully armoured kaerls marching in his wake. He was wearing his carapace armour and carried a bolt pistol out of its holster. His men went warily, their weapons poised to fire, their eyes wide behind their face-masks. Even after so many hours of searching, he still felt alert. Now that the task had moved from engine maintenance to a kill mission, his weariness had fallen from him.

  Neiman had examined the corpse of the crewman in the council chamber and told the rest of them what they knew already. The man had been a spy, altered to blend into the background, silently feeding information from his unnatural eyeballs to whomever or whatever was controlling him. Since then, Blackwing had ransacked the entire ship, moving through decks with remorseless efficiency. Other spies had been found during the search, all with the same transplanted eyeballs. Now they were all dead, their bodies hurled into the fires of the enginarium.

  Blackwing looked around him carefully. They were low in the ship, passing through regions where the light was bad and few crewmen had reason to go. The perfect place to hide.

  The Wolf Scout knew how vulnerable he was. Whatever intelligence had controlled those puppets was a master of sorcery. Blackwing had no weapons to combat such powers and his crew were even less able to defend themselves. Even if he managed to find where the stowaway was hiding, the chances were that he’d come up against something he couldn’t hope to kill.

  The prospect didn’t scare him, but it was definitely annoying. At the very least, he’d hoped to survive long enough to get his manoeuvre above Fenris into the sagas. The thought that it might all be for nothing was an irritant.

  And, of course, there was the matter of the Fang’s survival. That was important too.

  ‘Where the Hel are we?’ he voxed, looking at the dirty, dark tunnels ahead with distaste.

  ‘Beneath the aft fuel tanks, lord,’ came the voice of Raekborn, the huskaerl. His voice sounded tight. Not scared either, but definitely stressed. Blackwing occasionally forgot that mortals required a few hours’ sleep in every cycle. If they didn’t strike gold soon, he’d have to tell them to stand down for a while.

  So weak. So tediously weak.

  He glanced at his helm display. Scouts rarely wore helms into combat, which was a habit Blackwing had never understood. Risking losing your head to a stray las-beam seemed less a case of bravado and more a case of stupidity. His clear-visored unit gave him a tactical display that showed up life-signs within a range of thirty metres, as well as reporting on the status of his unit. Not as comprehensive as the Mk VII helm he’d worn as a Hunter, but not far off.

  All his visor-runes showed at the present time were the increasingly disrespectful recall requests from Neiman. The Navigator had wanted him back on the bridge for the past six hours to sign off the course vectors before he retired to his observation chamber.

  Blackwing grinned. There was no chance of him calling off the search for such mundanity. Even if the need to uncover the infiltrator hadn’t been so pressing, he enjoyed irritating the three-eyed mutant by keeping him waiting.

  ‘You getting anything down here?’ he voxed to his squad, in the probably vain hope that his men’s equipment had picked up a signal that his hadn’t.

  ‘Negative.’

  Blackwing let his photo-reactive lenses do the visual work for him. Like all his kind, he had astonishing sensitivity to movement even in near-pitch dark conditions. His nostrils could differentiate the subtlest aroma lingering under the fug of engine-oil and general bilge-grime. His tactile senses could detect movement on the floor a hundred metres away and his hearing would pick up a kaerl coughing on the command bridge.

  Still nothing.

  ‘Let’s move,’ he growled, motioning forwards. Ahead of him the tunnel narrowed, sweeping around a damaged bulkhead draped in wiring. Lights flickered erratically in the distance, briefly illuminating the outline of meshed metal barriers.

  Blackwing swerved around the bulkhead. The footfalls of the troops behind were stealthy for mortals, but still announced their presence to one who knew how to listen. The squad went forwards for about twenty metres before reaching a T-junction. The corridor running right-left was in a bad way. Clusters of cables hung from the ceiling like tufts of wild grass, fizzing and sparking. There were cracks in the floor where something had pushed the struts up, and the headroom was minimal. Even the kaerls had to duck, and Blackwing hunched down uncomfortably. The only remaining lighting was at floor-level. It seemed to be running at about quarter-intensity.

  ‘Left, or right?’ mused Blackwing, training his pistol at the shadows and sweeping it round. As he did so, he felt a slight pricking sensation in his palms. An indefinable sense of expectation caught hold of him, and he narrowed his eyes.

  A few metres down the corridor to the left was an open service hatch, its covering grate swinging lazily from a single intact bearing.

  There were times when the preternatural senses engendered by the Canis Helix trumped any technology. Blackwing looked at the hole and felt his muscles tense up of their own accord.

  ‘On my mark,’ he voxed, preparing to advance. ‘Stay–’

  That was the last word he got out before the wall exploded. A vast armoured figure with a sapphire battle-helm burst through whirling slivers of metal, its boltgun lowered and already firing.

  Blackwing hurled himself face-down to the floor, feeling the rounds whistle across his back and detonate amongst his men. The corridor behind was suddenly filled with screams, punctuated with erratic return volleys that zinged off his carapace plate.

  Ignoring the projectiles, Blackwing rolled on to his back, trying to draw a bead while avoiding the hail of incoming bolt slugs. It was then that he saw the second figure loom up out of the shadows, limping under a cobra-hood crest and wheezing like a burst bladder.

  ‘Oh, not good,’ he growled, cursing his stupidity and scrabbling backwards. ‘Not good at all.’

  The boom of the detonations ran along the ground, shaking the roots of the mountains, shivering veins of rock that ran kilometres down. Gate-breakers, vast engines of destruction, settled into their firing formation. Single gun-barrels, mounted on immense armoured tracks, two hundred metres long, dark as the shadows of the Underfang and streaked with the smoking patina of war. They’d been hauled into position under the barrage of the lesser artillery and were now unleashed.

  Each engine was a piece of tech-sorcery in itself, a fusion of forbidden devices and proscribed mechanics from across a dozen lost worlds. Strange energies slewed across the surface of the barrels like quicksilver, shimmering with ghostly, half-seen witchlight. A low-pitched howling came from within the cavernous firing maws, a shadowy sound that echoed like the fractured sobs of great, nameless crowds. The muzzles of the cannons were ringed with the esoteric bronze shapes so favoured by their creators, each one different, each drawing on some significance long forgotten by the darkening mortal galaxy.

  They had names, those monsters. When they’d been assembled over the centuries in daemon-stalked foundries deep within the Eye of Terror, the Thousand Sons had insisted on that. So there was Pakhet, and Talamemnon, and Maahex, and the damaged Gnosis, rocked by heavy fire from the defending batteries. That last one was smoking heavily, leaking rolling columns of death-black soot as it shuddered from incoming impacts.

  They fired. They all kept firing. The detonations were tremendous, scattering the ranks of troops around them, scrambling auspex readings, overloading auditory feeds, atomising the very air as huge neon-yellow beams of energy lanced to their targets. The explosions of impact were like tidal waves – huge, thundering walls of rippling flame that sluiced down the already tortured flanks of the Fang.

  Again and again the gate-breakers loosed their power, drowning out the sounds of all else, blocking the incessant rain of plasma from the orbital blockade, masking the screams of the dying and the wounded across the approaches to the gates.

  They were not subtle weapons. They relied
on vast numbers of supporting troops for protection, drank whole reservoirs of promethium in moments, and were operated by hundreds of shackled mortal crew, many hard-wired into the chassis in a grotesque fusion of man and weapon.

  Their only purpose was to break the portals of the Fang, to disintegrate the protection over Russ’s fortress and render it as broken as the scoured wastelands of Prospero. Thousands had died to create them, their souls welded into the structures to bind the infernal powers within. The Legion had exhausted itself on them, poured every resource it still had into them, knowing full well that they would only be used once.

  They were statements, those devices.

  We will ruin ourselves, starve ourselves, cripple our future viability and leave ourselves destitute, all so long as we can destroy the gates that guard your citadel.

  So they fired again, vomiting beams of destructive essence like shards of a supernova, venting the hatred that had seethed for over a thousand years, focusing it on the gates.

  And those massive arches, each carved from the cold rock by ancient machines no less powerful, began to glow red from the impact, wavering in the heat-shimmer. The void shields were strengthened by desperate kaerls, fed with more power from the inexhaustible wells below the Fang until the unseen barriers screamed. The stone cracked and buckled, rocked by the torrent of fire and energy.

  Above the lintel of the Sunrising Gate, the rune Gmorl had been graven. It signified Defiance.

  When it was broken open at last, a vast sigh shuddered through the stone. There was a snap in the air, and a bow-wave of force rushed out from the citadel. Piers of granite and adamantium collapsed, breaking the symmetry of the buttresses. Cracks opened beneath the doors, running over the ground like rivulets of dark lava.

  The remaining void shields shivered, and those at ground level went out. A hail of fire immediately poured through the gaps, slamming into the mountain beyond. The gate-breakers recalibrated, aiming for the weakest point. Their enormous barrels loosed columns of immolation, and Sunrising disappeared behind a wall of plasma.

  When the fireballs cleared, the mighty doors were broken open, swinging crazily on hinges the size of Thunderhawks, buoyed by nothing more than the continuing explosions around them.

  For a moment, no one moved. As if suddenly horrified by what they’d done, the entire Thousand Sons host held back, gazing up at the hole in the side of the mountain. The howl of the wind raced across the battlefield, its note of fury replaced by a whine of anguish.

  Then the paralysis passed. Men began to run forwards, flanked by rows of tanks and troop carriers. The artillery resumed its crushing onslaught. The horde of vanguard warriors, thousands strong, rank upon rank of them, surged towards the gates, suddenly filled with the hope of victory.

  Behind the climate-masks, they had all begun to realise what they’d done, what no-one had done before them. In the face of that knowledge, even the fear of the Wolves shrank back slightly.

  Every trooper, from the lowliest gun-servitor to the mightiest sorcerer knew the truth, a truth that would now never be erased from the annals of galactic history.

  They had come to the Citadel of Russ, the mightiest human fortress outside Terra, and they had broken it.

  Blackwing ducked and ran, weaving between the bolt-rounds that tore gashes in the tunnel walls. Electrical cables were ripped open, causing showers of sparks to sluice across the floor. His men had either been killed or were fleeing back down the corridor ahead of him. It was a shambles.

  Blackwing veered around the T-junction corner and crouched down against the near wall, turning back to face his pursuers. The body of one of his kaerls was flung across his field of vision, limbs cartwheeling, before the Rubric Marine careered into view.

  Blackwing opened fire, loosing a dozen rounds at point-blank range before leaping back to his feet and hurtling down the corridor. From over his shoulder he could hear the crack of his bolts’ detonation, and risked a glance back.

  The Traitor Marine had been rocked, its armour dented and smoking, but was already recovering his feet. Its boltgun barked, and Blackwing slammed himself into the cover of the broken bulkhead. Six slugs thunked into the structure and exploded, obliterating it, forcing Blackwing to scramble further back, covered in a rain of broken metal.

  +Just one of you,+ came a voice in his mind. Its sending was halting, as if the speaker was in terrible pain. +I didn’t quite believe it until now.+

  Blackwing had no way of replying, and concentrated on staying alive for a few moments longer. Leaping and ducking, relying on his gene-enhanced agility, he scampered away from the Rubric Marine, firing blindly behind him as he went.

  The corridor opened out into a larger chamber, one he’d patrolled through just moments earlier. His men had set up a bulwark there, overturning tables and crates for barricades. They opened fire as Blackwing burst into the room, just managing to avoid hitting him as they aimed for the leviathan hard on his tail.

  Blackwing pounced behind one of upturned tables. He drew his power-sword, a short stabbing blade, and flicked on the disruptor field. A heartbeat later and the Rubric Marine had followed him in.

  It shrugged off skjoldtar fire as if it were a hail of pebbles. The Traitor Marine moved incredibly quickly for its huge size, hurling barricades against the wall and pumping bolt-rounds into the exposed troops before whirling round to smash apart more flimsy pieces of cover.

  +A mere Scout, too. It seems I am in luck.+

  Blackwing pushed his barricade aside and launched a stream of bolts directly at the Rubric Marine. It evaded some of them, swaying back with astonishing agility. The rest hit, exploding against the armour and shattering the ornamentation from the helm and shoulder-guards.

  Then Blackwing pounced, swinging his blade into the contact zone and aiming for the cables at the neck. The Traitor’s Mk IV armour only had a few weaknesses, but that was one of them. His blade whistled towards its destination.

  It never arrived. The Traitor sidestepped the swipe, pulled its fist back and punched out. Blackwing jerked his head away but the gauntlet still connected, crunching under his jaw and throwing him into the air on the follow-through.

  +Not much of a contest, is it?+

  Blackwing swivelled in mid-flight and crashed face-down to the ground. His visor shattered on impact, turning his vision into a crazy patchwork of angular lens fractures.

  That’s why they don’t wear helms.

  Groggily, he dragged himself back around. He heard sporadic gunfire as the few remaining kaerls launched a desperate assault on the rampaging Rubric Marine.

  Blood ran down his temple. The gilded monster was busy finishing off the kaerls, breaking limbs with casual flicks before blasting men apart with single shots.

  And in the background, limping up the corridor beyond, was the sorcerer.

  +We will take this ship when you are dead, Dog,+ the cobra-masked figure wheezed. +Right into the middle of your fleet.+

  Blackwing cleared his head, curling his fist around the grip of his sword, judging the distance. The last of his kaerls was dispatched contemptuously, and the Rubric Marine turned back to him.

  +Then I’ll detonate the warp drive. What do you think of that?+

  Blackwing sprang to his feet. Moving with all the explosive power he could muster, he fired his pistol straight at the Traitor Marine while simultaneously sending his power sword spinning towards the sorcerer. It glittered as it travelled, the biting edge whirling dead-eyed towards its target.

  It was the most perfect manoeuvre Blackwing had ever executed, a stunning double-handed attack launched at unstoppable speed. The aim was perfect. His bolter rounds hammered home, thudding into the Rubric Marine’s armoured shell and tearing off plates.

  The cartwheeling blade flew to its target too, blazing with ceramite-cleaving energies as it span. Even in the midst of everything, poised to leap at the sorcerer to finish the job, Blackwing felt a burst of pride. Not many of his battle-brothers could have don
e what he’d just done. It was magnificent.

  Then the blade hit the sorcerer’s kine-shield and broke into fragments. The Rubric Marine reeled, its right arm blasted off, exposing a gaping hole at the shoulder. Then it righted itself, and started to advance again.

  At that point, Blackwing knew he was dead. There was nothing further he could do to halt them.

  I’ll scar you, though, you bastards.

  ‘Fenrys!’ he roared, charging towards the sorcerer, emptying his clip at the hunched figure, feeling the weapon kick back against his palm as it unloaded its mass-reactive contents.

  An explosion of wild, writhing, multi-coloured light boomed out from the sorcerer, followed by a deafening crash of something terrible breaking open. The stink of the immaterium bloomed out, and Blackwing was thrown on his back again, landing crushingly hard amid the ruined barricades and corpses. Something heavy hit his head, knocking open the damaged visor further. The world reeled around him, punched off its axis by the unholy release of warp-energy.

  For a moment he lay still, stunned. There were more crashes, more blasts of eye-watering warp-power. They passed.

  Then, slowly, something occurred to him.

  I’m not dead.

  He lifted his head painfully, feeling the compression in his neck. The Rubric Marine stood immobile three metres away, locked in a half-completed stride forwards. The sorcerer had crumpled to the floor, his robes burning with lurid flames and his armour prised open. The flesh within was... horrible.

  ‘Do not look yet,’ came a familiar voice.

  Ignoring the advice, Blackwing craned his head round to see where it had come from.

  Neiman was there, re-binding his warp-eye. The Navigator looked shaky, and his face was pale.

  ‘I came to get you,’ he said, furiously. ‘And thank the bloody Emperor I did, you stupid bastard.’

  Greyloc surged towards the breach, his retinue a pace behind him, his twin claws shimmering in the dark from their disruption fields.