On Wings of Blood

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Two hundred yards.’

  Twelve ships became eleven as an already damaged Valkyrie from Third Wing finally gave in. Its engines choked and shuddered as it began to lose altitude, its pilot guiding it into a pair of rising necron ships in a final act of defiance.

  ‘One hundred yards.’

  Point defences from the tomb ship and the attack runs of the interceptors cut down more of the Imperial vessels, sending them spinning and crashing against the ship’s hull. Gryphonne One was struck again and again, glancing blows that shook the craft. A console blew out to Ness’ right and showered him in sparks. Graves’ knuckles turned white on the control stick as he fought to maintain his course.

  ‘Keep them off me!’ Graves barked into the vox.

  The Imperial pilots now paid little heed to their own survival. Graves watched a necron interceptor come about, and Gryphonne One was a sitting duck until a Valkyrie trailing thick black smoke hammered into it. Graves had no doubt it was intentional. Even in death the pilots fought to protect their wards.

  ‘I didn’t think I would die today,’ said Ness.

  ‘Did you think you would live forever?’ asked Graves.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then know that the Emperor is watching you, and He will greet you with open arms,’ said Graves.

  ‘It’s been an honour, commander,’ said Ness.

  ‘And you, Ryker, and you.’

  ‘Impact in five, four, three… The Emperor protects,’ said Ness.

  ‘The Emperor protects,’ echoed Graves.

  Gryphonne One struck the base of the crystal at full speed and exploded. Moments later the barrage followed. The first Deathstrike struck the exact point of the Valkyrie’s impact turning alien metal to molten slag. The next struck close to each side, destroying vast chunks of the crystal’s plinth. Another struck the crystal’s base, destroying its mounting and sending a thick crack snaking up its length. More punched through the holes created by the first and penetrated deeper into the ship, their detonations sending great plumes of fire bursting from the ship’s hull. Secondary explosions tore through the tomb ship, spreading out uncontrollably from the impact site. Another Deathstrike carved a large piece of the crystal free and the greater mass began to topple. The final missile hit the crystal head-on as it fell and split it down the length of the weakened fissure.

  The crystal fell in two. From the break a vast ball of energy like a raging green star erupted. The front half of the tomb ship was engulfed and those few surviving fighters, human and necron alike, were disintegrated as forks of unconstrained alien energy plucked them from the sky. As quickly as the miniature star formed, it exploded. The shock wave hit Gamma One and more of its once-proud buildings crumbled to dust.

  The runes across the tomb ship’s surface pulsed wildly then shattered. Green lightning arced across the hull, leaving flames and scorch marks in their wake. Then everything went quiet. The tomb ship fell from Antropia’s foetid sky, breaking apart as it did so, and disappeared back into the darkness of the core whence it came.

  Magos Dominus Omicron-231 was dead. His body was slumped forward but was held up by a cradle of mechadendrites plugged all along his mechanical form that gave him the appearance of a grim marionette. All around him, Gamma One’s central control shrine lay in ruins. The floor was strewn with the bodies of dead tech-adepts and servitors. Consoles sparked and set fire to pools of sanctified oil. Antropia had been defended but at great cost. Even now one of its great cities fell from the sky to meet its foe in death.

  On the magos dominus’ control panel a single screen still flickered with life. Numbers streamed across it, a packet of condensed binary code. A message, a warning no one would receive.

  Waaagh! Gutslasha had reached the Artran System. The orks were coming to Antropia.

  STORMSEEKER

  Alec Worley

  The huge wolf pelt hung like a rancid curtain. It was ragged and infested with maggots, the whole thing as moist as the day it had been peeled from the flanks of a dead Fenrisian wolf. Anvarr Rustmane unpinned the final rivet and the heavy pelt flopped into his waiting arms, unveiling the bulkhead that housed the sacred engine of his Stormwolf gunship. Pipes and cables pulsed like arteries, their junction box embossed with the emblem of a glowering wolf’s head.

  The immense Iron Priest recited a memorial prayer of the Adeptus Mechanicus, folding the stinking pelt as reverently as if it were the banner of a Wolf Lord. As Anvarr had explained to those of his brothers who had grumbled about the smell, the Stormwolf’s machine-spirit had insisted the pelt remained untreated, so the trophy could better permeate the gunship with its feral aura.

  The assortment of charms and relics that adorned Anvarr’s battered blue-grey power armour clinked in the darkness, the significance of these mementoes unfathomable to all but the Iron Priest himself. The matted ropes of rust-red hair that ran down his back presented a tapestry of fangs, spikes of bone, cogs, spent bolter casings and lengths of relay wiring tied in elaborate knots. Each braid offered a chronicle of battles past. Anvarr’s mane clattered as he bowed his head before the engine and raised the folded pelt before him, backing away and down the Stormwolf’s hold as he concluded his prayer. The Iron Priest glanced up as he reached the open ramp, and the embossed wolf’s head seemed to glare back at him from the gloom.

  Anvarr frowned and handed the pelt to a waiting servitor before emerging onto the busy flight deck of the strike cruiser, the Ragnarök. His battle-brothers surged about him, the boots of their power armour clattering as they hurried between the docked aircraft that loomed like rows of monoliths either side of them. To Anvarr’s preternatural senses, the flight deck reeked of bio-enhanced adrenaline, as dozens of hearts pounded in anticipation of clashing with a hated foe.

  Hailing from the Deathwolves Company, Anvarr and his detachment had been stationed in this sector to hunt a pair of elusive dark eldar pirates. The xenos had been raiding the vast mining cities located upon the sun-scorched death world of Vityris. Hardened by generations of crystal-mining beneath the planet’s blistering sun, the colonists had apparently proved to be durable material for the pain-farms of Commorragh, the degenerate stronghold of the dark eldar.

  The Deathwolves had hunted for weeks without detecting any sign of their quarry. Then, less than an hour ago, a Scout pack had reported that one of these pirates, along with his entire raiding party, had captured a remote research station overlooking a network of canyons. It appeared the xenos were stranded there, although the Scouts knew not how. After weeks of frustration, Anvarr was eager to join his pack in combat, but knew the hunt could not commence in earnest just yet.

  ‘Brother?’ said a voice beside him.

  It was Eadric, the youngest of the Iron Priest pilots in Anvarr’s assault wing.

  ‘This is all I could find,’ he said, presenting a handful of totems: bundles of bones, fangs suspended from strips of leather, and a huge severed paw bearing claws the size of ork cleavers.

  ‘Trinkets!’ spat Anvarr. ‘The machine-spirit requires a tribute of suitable magnitude! That pelt was torn from the beast’s back after I slew it with my bare hands! Have the Rune Priests nothing else for us?’

  ‘Nothing that can be prepared without the proper ceremony,’ Eadric said.

  ‘You’ll have to fly without, Anvarr,’ said another voice.

  Anvarr turned, his braids clinking, as he faced his fellow alpha.

  Skaldr Frostbiter mag-locked his chainsword and bolt pistol to his belt, the weapons having just received blessings from the Iron Priests Kaarle and Varg. Frostbiter, a pack leader of the Wolf Guard, was a fine Space Marine, a blond-bearded giant whose radiant charisma inspired all those around him, although he smiled far too much for Anvarr’s liking.

  ‘My Stormwolf’s machine-spirit has just told me the pelt is no longer a worthy tribute,’ Anvarr said. ‘I need a replacement, or
else disaster will befall this hunt, I promise you.’

  Skaldr exchanged a glance with Eadric.

  ‘I need a proper totem,’ Anvarr said impatiently. ‘A relic fragment. Anything! Perhaps you have a trophy I might borrow, brother…?’

  ‘Anvarr, we need to make planetfall within the next fifteen minutes. The Ragnarök has jammed the research station’s comms-relay. We must strike before the xenos hear us coming.’

  Anvarr stared at him, incredulous.

  ‘But to fly without tribute is an invitation to disaster,’ he spluttered, his voice rising, spit flecking his beard. ‘An insult to the Omnissiah, neglect of the sacred mechanics of fate itself. To break with ritual is to break with faith, brother…’

  Skaldr placed a calming hand on Anvarr’s shoulder.

  ‘And I have faith that you will honour the Allfather with your skill, Anvarr,’ he said calmly. ‘You are not one for boasts, Rustmane, which is why perhaps you need reminding that you stand among the finest pilots in our Chapter.’

  A pack of Blood Claws approached them, reckless wild-haired whelps. They jostled and laughed as they filed into the hold of Anvarr’s Stormwolf.

  ‘It is time,’ Skaldr said, slapping Anvarr’s pauldron. ‘Fear not, brother,’ he said, departing with yet another smile. ‘Sometimes valour is tribute enough.’

  Anvarr kept his curses to himself as he turned to the three Iron Priests under his command.

  ‘Very well,’ he growled. ‘I doubt compliments alone are honour enough for the Omnissiah, but the Deathwolves have xenos to kill. To your ships then, brothers.’

  Eadric, Kaarle and Varg nodded and hurried to their ships as Anvarr looked away and whistled. From across the flight deck loped Cogfang, Anvarr’s cyberwolf. The hulking creature had once been a coal-black Fenrisian Ironpelt, whose pack had fought alongside the Deathwolves on several campaigns. After an invigorating clash with a horde of World Eaters, Anvarr had found the beast dying upon the battlefield, a chainaxe buried in its chest and a dead Traitor Marine still clamped in its jaws. Anvarr had taken his find as a sign from the Omnissiah that he should save the life of this valiant beast. Cogfang’s bionic front leg clanked as he ascended the ramp, saliva trailing from the serrated iron trap that replaced his lower jaw as he followed his grumbling master inside the Stormwolf.

  The Blood Claws were cursing and arguing as they locked themselves to the walls of the hold. Anvarr shoved past them. When the Iron Priest reached the bulkhead, Cogfang sat on his haunches, his head almost level with his master’s shoulders. Anvarr produced a clay cup carved with runes and filled it with a pungent measure of mjod from a metal decanter built into Cogfang’s throat. The cyberwolf yawned – a strange metallic whine – and shook himself, rattling the cybernetic cables that wormed through his pelt. His bionic eye cast a bloody glow over the Iron Priest’s face as Anvarr murmured a prayer of contrition, dipping his fingers in the cup and painting runes around the engine bulkhead.

  A hush had descended upon the hold and Anvarr felt the eyes of his young passengers upon him. It amused him to think of the stories that circulated around the feast halls on the many occasions he declined to attend, that Anvarr Rustmane communed as much with the voices in his head as with the spirits of the armoury. He concluded his ritual by raising his cup to the engine then tipping what was left of the Fenrisian liquor down his throat. The mjod scorched his tongue and warmed his chest, filling his nose with a perfume of fermented honey and frost-nettle.

  He caught the eye of the nearest Blood Claw. Nudged by his fellows, the whelp looked as though he were about to comment but had thought better of it.

  ‘Mjod is a sacrament, little brother,’ Anvarr said, smiling to himself. ‘It helps me commune with the machine-spirits.’

  As he downed another measure from Cogfang’s decanter, his ears twitched at the sound of an amused whisper.

  ‘Clearly he and the spirits have much to say.’

  Anvarr paused as he ascended the ladder into the cockpit, casting his red-rimmed eyes over the two ranks of Blood Claws.

  ‘Aye, we have much to discuss,’ Anvarr said. ‘Flying this vessel without proper tribute to the machine-spirit is a heinous offence, tantamount to flying under a curse, some might say. Unless I can convince it that you are a cargo worthy of being borne into battle, it may allow a fan blade to snap or a fuel line to leak and we’ll die in flames before we reach the battlefield. And so your names shall go unheard in the sagas to come.’

  The Blood Claws were silent.

  ‘But rest assured, little brothers,’ Anvarr laughed. ‘Should we burn, my guts shall be filled with drink enough to light our passage all the way to hel.’

  Anvarr’s yellow eyes flashed like coins as the ramp lifted and darkness enveloped them all.

  ‘Fangs of Russ!’

  Anvarr voxed the Blood Claws in the hold beneath.

  ‘Save your songs for the feasting halls, damn you!’

  The whelps had been singing battle hymns ever since leaving the strike cruiser. Perhaps they were honouring the Stormwolf in their own crude way, but their howling distracted him from reciting his own murmured entreaties to the machine-spirit.

  The hurtling Stormwolf emerged into the planet’s atmosphere, and the rippling sheet of fire that covered the canopy gradually disappeared, revealing the gunship’s long, shuddering snout and a piercing sun beyond. Canyons veined the rust-red mesa far below, cracking the landscape as though some waking behemoth strained beneath its surface. The sun gleamed viciously upon lakes of shattered crystal, the remains of countless glass bodies that formed in the upper atmosphere and rained upon the planet’s surface. Anvarr felt the engine behind him growl like a restless beast. He shifted uncomfortably.

  The ship trembled and rattled as Anvarr continued his descent, shaking on his pilot’s throne as he absorbed a weight of acceleration that would have crushed the chest of an ordinary man. Atmospheric and positional data scrolled and flickered across the Iron Priest’s vision, the gene-implants in his brain feeding him a constant stream of information from the ship’s sensor array. Four arrowheads bleeped before his eyes in a steady diamond formation. Kaarle and Varg’s Stormfangs flew abeam on Anvarr’s flanks. They each carried a unit of Long Fangs, white-haired veterans all, as prodigious and majestic as the great lascannons they bore into battle. Eadric remained steady on Anvarr’s tail, his Stormwolf carrying another unit of eager young Blood Claws.

  ‘There’s Skaldr,’ voxed Kaarle.

  The Iron Priest looked up to see four golden dots emerging like comets from the clouds ahead. Anvarr voxed the Ragnarök.

  ‘Drop pods sighted,’ he said.

  ‘Received, assault wing,’ the Ragnarök replied. ‘Drop pods will reach the target in thirty seconds.’

  ‘Too late, I fear, to save those poor wretches who were manning the research station,’ Kaarle voxed.

  ‘Indeed,’ Varg said. ‘Any the xenos have left alive will be welcoming death by now. May Russ guide us in granting them vengeance.’

  Anvarr continued his dive, leading his assault wing towards a magnificent canyon, slowing to cruising speed as he levelled out high above a river of crystal shards that ran along the floor of the chasm. He leaned on the sticks and the canyon walls rose either side of him, the level mesa disappearing from view. With a blink-click, he dismissed part of his tactical display and snapped a row of switches above his head, activating the sensor relays in the Stormwolf’s prow. Anvarr’s helmet filled with the hot scent of the outside world, the smoky smell of arid rock, the hot tang of seared crystal.

  ‘Snouts to the wind, brothers,’ he voxed, accelerating slightly ahead of the pack and dipping low enough above the crystal river for his thrusters to carve a glittering spray as he passed. Although initiated in the mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus, Anvarr remained a Space Wolf, his Canis Helix gifting him with the senses of an apex predator. He r
ead the land as it flowed beneath him, detecting every subtle pattern wrought by wind and sun, devouring every secret as he rode the curve of the canyon walls.

  As the Space Wolves’ briefing had explained, the surface of this death world was beset with what the mining colonies called ‘shard-devils’. Stirred into life by columns of superheated air, these vast swirling towers guzzled loose rocks and crystal debris and spat them in all directions. Anvarr scanned the trail ahead for the telltale sign of whirling dust that heralded the arrival of such a maelstrom.

  The Iron Priest led his pack down a fork in the canyon, following the buffeting wind like a wolf tracking prey. Streamers of smoke appeared ahead, lining the sky atop a sheer canyon wall. As Anvarr slowed, he detected not only the familiar musk of bolter fire, but also the sour, oily stench of the xenos. Acting as one, the Space Wolves assault wing angled their thrusters, their ships rising out of the canyon and looming over the smoking research station.

  The four empty drop pods surrounded the station like the pinnacles of a castle. Skaldr and his Wolf Guard had broken into the various bunkers and would be deep in the underground tunnels by now, exterminating the cornered xenos with blade and bolter. Occasionally a lithe black figure would spring like a spider from an exit hatch and flee towards the outlying crags, crying out as it stumbled through ankle-deep drifts of razor-sharp crystal debris.

  ‘Ready yourselves, whelps,’ Anvarr voxed his Blood Claws as the rest of the assault wing fanned into position behind the drop pods.

  ‘Be grateful the machine-spirit has deemed you worthy of being carried into battle,’ he roared. ‘Now, destroy the xenos filth as your brothers drive them into your arms. Blood your blades and win yourselves honour enough for a ride home!’