Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Fleet is engaged, Jarl,’ reported Hamnr Skrieya, turning from the screens to face him. The blond, hulking Wolf Guard had a warrior’s shame etched on his face, and it made his speech savage and clipped. ‘Skraemar has taken heavy damage but holds position. Grid is down to twenty per cent.’

  ‘Who dares this?’

  Skrieya let a flicker of hatred mar his intense expression for a second.

  ‘Archenemy, Jarl. The Sons.’

  Greyloc froze for a second.

  The Thousand Sons! Ironhelm, what have you done? You were the prey for this trap.

  He shook his head to clear it and looked at the tactical hololiths. For a moment, even he, a veteran of a hundred void engagements, was taken aback. The invasion fleet was huge. Around the fifty-four points of light indicating capital vessels, hundreds of smaller signals swarmed and harried. The red lights indicating defensive assets were beleaguered. Even as he watched, three of them guttered out.

  ‘How did they get in so close?’ he demanded, feeling frustrated anger suddenly rise up within him. ‘Where was the warning?’

  There was a distant rumble across the walls of the Chamber as the Fang’s defensive batteries opened up, sending salvos of ship-killer missiles hurtling into the void above.

  ‘We’ve been blinded,’ said Sturmhjart. Like Skrieya, his face was written with shame. ‘I saw nothing, the augurs saw nothing.’

  ‘Damn Ironhelm!’ spat Greyloc. He felt the urge to lash out, to slam something heavy into the screens that reported the carnage above. ‘Can we contact him?’

  ‘No,’ said Skrieya, bluntly. ‘We can’t contact anyone. All astropaths are dead, all system exits blockaded.’

  ‘We need to join the void war,’ urged Rossek, looking away from the tactical display and preparing to leave. ‘There are Thunderhawks still in the hangars.’

  ‘No.’

  Greyloc took a deep, ragged breath. The tactical displays were unequivocal. Though it had been raging for less than an hour, the war above was already lost.

  ‘Prepare the Rout to defend the Aett. We cannot stop them landing.’

  ‘Jarl–’ began Rossek.

  ‘Open a channel to the Skraemar,’ he ordered.

  A crackling link was established. Over the background of it came huge, shuddering crashes. The strike cruiser was taking heartbreaking levels of punishment.

  ‘Jarl!’ came a Space Marine’s voice over the comm. It was thick with fluid, as if blood had welled up in the speaker’s throat.

  ‘Njan,’ replied Greyloc. He kept his voice soft. ‘How long can you hold them?’

  There was a crude laugh. ‘We should already be dead.’

  ‘Then cheat it a little longer. We need time.’

  A reverberating crash distorted the comm-link, followed by what sounded like a rush of flames.

  ‘That’s what we had in mind. Enjoy the fight when it comes for you.’

  Greyloc smiled coldly.

  ‘I will. Until next winter, Njan.’

  The link broke then, suddenly cutting off the reports of distant carnage. All that remained to indicate the struggle above them were the points of light on the tactical displays.

  Greyloc turned to face his commanders, his white eyes burning.

  ‘We can debate how this happened later,’ he said. ‘For now, get ready to fight. Ready the Claws, ready the Hunters. When they get down here, we’ll rip their throats out.’

  There was another rumble as the Fang’s colossal defence batteries sent death roaring into orbital space. Greyloc allowed the wolf within him to rise to the surface, and fixed the assembled Wolf Guard with an expression of pure animal loathing.

  ‘This is our place, brothers,’ he snarled. ‘We’ll teach them to fear it.’

  The Nauro corkscrewed through the crimson blooms of detonating charges at full tilt, weaving a path through the shells of dying vessels and spinning away from the flickering tracery of incoming las-fire. In the cold silence of the void, the manoeuvring had a sharp-edged beauty to it, an exhibition of peerless ship-mastery.

  Within the ship, activity was frenetic. Crew members raced to combat the fires raging on the lower decks while kaerls struggled to keep the void shields from buckling completely. The plasma drives were dangerously hot from being overburned, and the ventral augur arrays had been almost completely shot away. Any more big hits, and they’d be fast moving junk.

  ‘Get those lances back online!’ roared Blackwing, sending his ship plummeting steeply to avoid a barrage of plasma bolts.

  The two underslung energy lances, the only significant offensive weapons the ship had left, had been knocked out of action after a collision with a huge, spinning chunk of somebody else’s prow-shield. The Nauro was already painfully exposed, and the inability to fire back wasn’t helping.

  ‘We can’t save them both!’ shouted a crewman from the pits below him. Blackwing couldn’t see who he was – he could barely see anything other than the dancing lights on his hololith display. Piloting a single vessel in three dimensions through a maelstrom of plasma and las-fire was a nightmare, even for a pilot with his superlative reactions and training.

  ‘Get me one, then!’ bellowed Blackwing, pulling the prow round just in time to thunder past the shattered, blazing hull of a Space Wolves frigate as it rolled gently into destruction. ‘Just one. Morkai’s hairy balls, that’s not asking for much.’

  He wrenched the Nauro into a rare corridor of open space and tried to make sense of the tactical situation. His launch path from the Valgard had sent him straight into the orbital battle as it was breaking out. The Wolves, unprepared and massively outgunned, were being taken apart. The first rank of gun platforms was now cold and dead, a circuit of dark, drifting metal. The second and final layer was holding for the moment, but it had taken a horrendous mauling. Every successful hit from the defenders had provoked a hurricane of return fire. The Thousand Sons’ rapid strike vessels were quickly gaining the space to move with impunity, clearing the way for the larger battleships to take their places and pile on the pain.

  The arrival of the Skraemar and her escorts had briefly halted the carnage, but the defending fleet was still outnumbered many times over. Only a handful of the Space Wolves, frigates were still operational, and once their protective chain was broken the Skraemar would take the full force of the onslaught.

  ‘Starboard lance semi-operational, lord!’ came a triumphant cry from below the command throne.

  ‘Semi?’ snarled Blackwing, wheeling away from a wing of enemy fighters and exposing his less-damaged starboard flank to them. The telltale juddering in the ship’s frame told him that there were still flank gun batteries in operation, which was something. ‘Semi? What does that mean?’

  ‘We’ve got one, maybe two shots. Then we’re all burned out.’

  ‘Another kill – that’s all I’m asking.’

  He knew then that they were going to die. It would happen in the next second, or the next minute, but not long after. The planetary defence had turned into a bloody-minded attempt to take out as many of the enemy as possible before they were all turned into orbiting streams of dust. Despite all of that, not one of the Twelfth’s ships had turned and run. Not one.

  Stubborn bastards, thought Blackwing, glancing at the forest of warning runes on his console with mild interest. Stubborn, magnificent bastards.

  ‘Lord, I’ve got a link from Fenris,’ reported a kaerl manning the comms platform. ‘You should hear this.’

  Blackwing nodded, his attention still fixed on piloting his ship through Hel, and blink-clicked to received the feed.

  ‘Nauro, Sleikre, Ogmar,’ came the broken, dry voice, filtered through the ship’s internal systems. It was a recording – how long had they been trying to get through? ‘Astropathic communications are down. Repeat: Astropathic communications are down. Break blockade and translate for Gangava System. Rendezvous with Great Wolf and demand urgent recall. Repeat: Demand urgent recall.’

  Blackw
ing cursed under his breath.

  ‘They’ll think we’re running out on them,’ he muttered, already looking for possible exit vectors. The Nauro was in the middle of the swirling mass of ships, and there weren’t obvious escape tactics open to them. Beyond the immediate layer of attack craft there were larger vessels closing in. The net had a fine weave.

  Ahead of him, close to the edge of the sprawling engagement sphere, he saw an enemy destroyer recoil from a direct lance hit. That was good – at least some of the platforms were still dealing it out.

  ‘Lock on to that one,’ growled Blackwing, already planning his attack pattern. ‘Prepare the ship for warp transit, but we’re not leaving till I get that kill.’

  Klaxons blared deep inside the massive walls of the Fang, echoing down the snaking corridors of stone and making the bone trophies on the walls shudder as if still alive. Shouts rose up from the deep places, the shouts of mortal men mingled with the roars of their superhuman masters. The Aettguard, the body of kaerls committed to the defence of Russ’s fortress, had been mobilised. Hundreds of heavy boots drummed the floor as entire rivens mustered in their garrisons throughout the Hould level, reporting to armouries to collect additional ammunition belts and blast helms.

  The Hould was the beating heart of the Aett. The thousands of mortal warriors, craftsmen, technicians and labourers who maintained the massive citadel lived out their entire lives there. They rarely left the Fang unless taken out of it by troop transports; the air was thin even for natives at that altitude. Their skin was as pale as the ice that covered the upper slopes, and they were all Fenris-born, of the stock that still roamed across the ice-fields below Asaheim and provided the recruits for the Sky Warriors. Their breed had been taken into the vast halls of the Aett when the first chambers had been hollowed out, and all could trace their lineages back over thirty generations or more. Only some – the kaerls – were kept at arms at all times, but all knew how to wield a blade and fire a skjoldtar, the heavy, armour piercing projectile weapon favoured by the Aettguard. They were children of a death world, and from the youngest infant to the oldest crone they knew the art of killing.

  Higher up, past the huge, shadowy bulwark of the Fangthane, was the Jarlheim, the abode of the Sky Warriors. No mortal remained on those levels except on the orders of his Sky Warrior masters, for it was here that the twelve Great Companies were housed. The halls of the Wolves were often empty and silent, since they were ever called away on campaign to some far-flung corner of their galactic protectorate. At least one Great Company always kept the hearths burning, however, tending the sacred flames and paying obeisance to the wards that kept maleficarum from entering the Fang. In the Jarlheim were the war-shrines to the fallen, the totems collected by the Rune Priests from distant worlds, the armouries full of sacred weaponry. In the holy places, tattered banners from past campaigns were laid to rest amid the dusty rows of skulls, armour and other prizes.

  As the klaxons flared across the Twelfth Company’s demesne, the narrow ways were lit with a savage fire. The masters of the mountain had been summoned, and it was as if the earth itself had been shaken into sentience. The stone reverberated with a deep tremor as the massed wolf-spirits were goaded into life. Armour was strapped on and drilled into place, beast pelts reverently draped over the ceramite, runes daubed on shoulder guards in thick animal blood, charms hung piously over necks and wound around armoured wrists.

  Deep within the centre of the maze of shafts, galleries and tunnels, there came the beating of the great drum. It underpinned all other sounds, thumping out a heartbeat rhythm of dissonant savagery. Other drums joined it, working against the single note in a cacophonous, barbed disharmony. The vibrations coloured everything, making the entire labyrinth resonate with a growing crescendo of hatred and energy.

  There were few sights more intimidating in the entire galaxy than a Space Wolf Great Company kindling the murder-make. One by one, their armour bolted into place and sanctified by Sturmhjart’s subordinate Rune Priests, the Grey Hunters emerged, hulking and strapped tight with lethal energy. They went softly like the hardened infantry they were, their red helm lenses glowing in the oily dark. Behind them came the ranged-weapon Long Fang squads, shadowy and bulkier, their faces heavily distended into the maws of beasts, hefting their massive weaponry as if it weighed no more than an axe-shaft.

  Then, last of the infantry to emerge from the armourers’ care, were the Blood Claws, the raw recruits. Bellowing curses at the enemy they lusted to engage with, the red-and-yellow streaked armoured giants jostled with one another to get to their mission-points. They were the most human of all the angels of death, still only half-changed by the moulding power of the Helix-enabled gene-seed, but their eyes burned hottest with the ferocious delight of impending violence. They lived for nothing but the joy of the hunt, the winning of prestige at arms, the delight in the stink of blood and fear in those they’d been unleashed on.

  Amid them, joined to Sigrd Brakk’s pack, came Helfist and Redpelt. The superficial injuries of their duel had long since faded, as had the others they’d incurred during the days of constant training. The pack, twelve strong including the Wolf Guard packleader, jogged down a wide, semi-circular tunnel as the drumbeats thundered in their ears, shoving aside kaerls and thralls too slow to get out of the way.

  ‘Morkai,’ spat Brakk, his voice filtered through the battered grille of his helm. ‘To get you bags of dung...’ He shook his head, and bone totems rattled across the armour like dreadlocks. ‘Just die quickly, or don’t hold me up.’

  Helfist grinned.

  ‘We’ll be hauling your pelt out,’ he laughed savagely, flexing his power claw. Like all of the pack he wore his helm – the near-void altitude of the Fang was too punishing for the bare-headed bravado he preferred.

  ‘If we think we can get something for it,’ added Redpelt, raising his bolt pistol and checking the ammo counter as he ran. His pauldrons had been drenched in blood-red and the jaws of his helm had a row of teeth running along the lower edge.

  ‘Where’s this old man taking us, anyway?’ asked Helfist. A shock of straw-pale horsehair hung from his helm and the two Runes of Ending, Ymir and Gann, had been etched on his breastplate.

  ‘Sunrising Gate,’ snarled the packleader. ‘The only thing on the planet harder than your skulls.’

  ‘Was that a joke, brother?’ enquired Helfist.

  ‘An insult, I think,’ replied Redpelt.

  Brakk came to a halt as the tunnel roof suddenly soared above them into emptiness. Ahead, the floor petered out into a pier overhanging a huge, dark shaft. The pit below was massive, wreathed in shadow and lit only by scattered red glowglobes. The beat of the drums rose out of it, deep and threatening.

  ‘Don’t we have Aettguard for gate-duty?’ demanded another Blood Claw, Fyer Brokentooth. His voice was thick with the wolf-spirit, guttural, throaty and aggressive.

  ‘You think we’re waiting for the bastards to get to the gates?’ asked Brakk, turning to face the pack and backing toward the shaft. ‘Russ’s arse, lad, grow a pair – and then a brain.’

  Then he was gone, sweeping down through the thermals, descending hundreds of metres a second, swooping from the Jarlheim levels to those of the Hould.

  Helfist looked at Brokentooth.

  ‘I thought it was a fair question.’

  Brokentooth ignored him and followed the packleader over the edge. Helfist’s helm signals showed the two of them plummeting toward the gate level.

  ‘Try to keep up, brother,’ he said to Redpelt, joining the remainder of the pack and stepping lightly over the edge.

  ‘Try to stop me,’ said Redpelt, taking up the last position and spreading his arms to control the descent.

  Hurtling like scree in an avalanche, the Blood Claw pack sped toward their zone of engagement. Above and below them, the beat of the drums hammered out the fresh, urgent call. On every level, in every passageway, figures took up their allotted positions. Bolter batteries swivelle
d into fire-locks, Land Raider engines gunned throatily into life, and throughout the Aett packs of grey-armoured warriors raced to their stations.

  The Wolves had been challenged in their lair, and like ghosts loping across the ice they swept to answer the call.

  Chapter Five

  Blackwing had lost track of the damage done to his ship. After so many runes across the console had gone red, it started getting hard to differentiate between them all. The picture was bad, though. The Nauro had never taken pain like it. Even if every remaining shell, las-beam and torpedo somehow managed to miss them, the battered vessel was probably doomed from the damage it had already taken.

  Still, the message from the Valgard had shaken things up a bit. Unlike his more hot-blooded brethren, Blackwing had never been too keen on the heroic last stand. He was a dark wolf, a hugger of the shadows, and that bred a powerful sense of self-preservation. It was why the Claws and Hunters disliked him, and why he disliked them. The seed of Russ was bountiful, though, and provided for the whole range of killers – his knife-hook from the gloom was as lethal as a bolter-round in the daylight, after all.

  The destroyer he’d targeted lurched into view on the ventral screens. It was in a bad way too, having been hit directly by a gun platform. Those things spat out terrifying amounts of energy, and when one got you, you knew it. Apart from its heavy structural damage, the enemy ship seemed to have lost engine control and had begun to spin away planetwards. A long trail of rust-red plasma ran out to its starboard-zenith. Blackwing could see the pricks of light along its flanks as it tried to power up its broadside batteries, but it wasn’t getting them online any time soon.

  ‘Do we have that shot?’ demanded Blackwing, rolling the ship to bring his starboard guns in line with an incoming wing of gunships.

  ‘Affirmative,’ barked a kaerl at the gunnery pulpit, sounding more confident than he had done a moment ago.