In the distance he could hear men moving. These were not prisoners. They could come and go as they pleased. Either they were freedmen, or officers, or maybe they were some of the real crew, trained starfarers rather than indentured prisoners of the Inquisition. Ragnar and Sven strode through the aisles. He could hear the men coming closer. They appeared to be on convergent courses. Ragnar wasn’t too bothered by that. He would be interested to meet more starsailors and talk to them. He wanted to understand all about this ship: the way it worked, the way its crew was organised, everything. Perhaps when he found the time, he would talk to the inquisitors about it. If they would talk to him now. This was, after all, their ship. They had duties here that might be too important to neglect.
The Space Wolves emerged into an area more brightly lit than the rest of the bay. Men worked here on massive scaffolds, transporting the crates like ants bearing rocks. These must be rations, Ragnar thought, or maybe machine parts or something else, he added. He became suddenly aware that he had no idea what they might be. The workings of the ship were indeed a mystery to him.
Close by, on ground level, were a number of men. They worked a winch that lowered a small platform down the scaffold, bringing crates to the floor. Another group of rough-looking men supervised the work. As the two Space Wolves came into view, one of the men looked up. Ragnar sensed the tension in him. The man was ready to do violence. A near imperceptible change in Sven’s stance told him the other Blood Claw had detected it as well. Despite his knowledge Ragnar forced himself to look relaxed even though he was ready to spring at a heartbeat’s warning.
‘What have we here?’ asked the man. He was wearing a uniform that marked him as part of the ship’s main crew. He carried no sidearm or any obvious weapon, but the heavy crowbar he held in his hand would be an adequate substitute, Ragnar thought. ‘Some of the Emperor’s chosen. Sacred Space Marines, eh?’
The tone was scornful but Ragnar sensed fear in the man too. It intensified when he used the words ‘Space Marines’. It seemed the reputation of the Emperor’s finest preceded them.
‘Greetings. We are proud to be members of the Space Wolves,’ Ragnar said smoothly, in Gothic. He sensed other members of the group were getting ready for a fight now. He was not quite sure why, but their hostility was obvious. And all of these men had crowbars in their hands.
‘And don’t you bloody well forget it,’ Sven added truculently.
Inwardly Ragnar winced. Tact and diplomacy were not skills in which Sven excelled. His tone made the men around them more hostile. What by Russ was going on here?
‘Cocky pups, aren’t you?’ said the crew leader. ‘Maybe we should knock some of that cockiness out of you.’
‘You’re welcome to bloody well try,’ Sven said, not at all bothered by the fact that they were outnumbered almost ten to one. Ragnar knew he had reason for his confidence. These were normal men armed with crowbars. He and Sven were Space Marines, and they carried bolt pistols.
‘Big words for a man armed with pistol,’ sneered the officer.
‘I wouldn’t need it to deal with a cockroach like you,’ Sven said. ‘Nor your dozen girlfriends neither. Ragnar, if you would step aside for a moment, I’ll teach these thralls a lesson.’
Arithmetic was not a skill that Sven had much time for either, Ragnar noted. Still he had to admire Sven’s style. The number of their enemies in no way daunted him.
‘Arrogant whelp!’ another starsailor sneered. This one was a burly, brutal man. A white scar ran the length of his tanned face. Ragnar had enough experience of wounds to know a knife scar when he saw one. Ragnar felt a sudden surge of anger in himself, the beast struggling to free. Why were these men trying so hard to provoke them? They surely must know they had no chance in combat.
Perhaps because he was concentrating so hard on the sneering sailors, Ragnar almost missed the major threat until it was too late. Only the whoosh of air and a shadow growing on the ground near him gave him the slightest of warnings. It was enough. Even as he dived to one side, pulling Sven with him, he glanced up and saw the falling crate. Two starsailors had pushed it down on them from the pile above. The anger within Ragnar turned to fury. These men must be punished. The crate smashed into the floor. Splintered wood flew everywhere and silvery cans of meat ration tumbled out onto the floor.
Seeing that their ambush had failed the rest of the men advanced, brandishing their crowbars or vicious curved billhooks; they were intended to handle cargo but their sharp points looked as if they might pierce ceramite.
Idiots! Ragnar thought. Well, they would soon learn their lesson.
He surged forward, not even drawing his pistol. No need to waste precious bolter shells on these scum. He lashed out with his right fist at Scarface. The impact of the blow, driven by Ragnar’s mighty augmented muscles and the servomotors of his armour, mashed the man’s nose flat. The thug flew backwards as if hit by a battering ram. His falling body slammed into the men behind him and sent them tumbling. Ragnar reached forward, picked up one of the fallen men and effortlessly hoisted him clean above his head. The man’s feeble struggles availed him naught against the Space Wolf’s awesome physical power. Ragnar tossed him headlong at a pair of his companions, bowling them over. Sven dived past Ragnar into the ruck, striking left and right with his armoured fists. With every blow he downed another man. It was like watching a whirlwind tear through a field of barley; the sailors had no chance whatsoever. Sven was moving so fast Ragnar doubted that anybody else could even follow his motions. Only his own razor keen senses allowed him to see anything other than a blur.
Bones cracked. Blood flowed. Men fell. Ragnar glanced up and around him, to see that more of the starsailors had grabbed the chains of the lift and, showing more bravery than common sense, were dropping into the fray. Ragnar snarled, showing his fangs, and let out a long ululating howl of battle lust. The sound of it so unmanned one of the dropping starsailors that he let go of the chain and dropped to the ground. From the way he flopped, like a newly landed fish, Ragnar could tell that his back was probably broken. His shrieks spoke of awful agony.
To Ragnar’s surprise, his anguish did not cause his companions to reconsider their folly and flee, but seemed to spur them on to attack with redoubled fury. Ragnar ducked the swing of a crowbar, then plucked it out of its wielder’s hands, like a man taking a stick from a child. For a moment he considered using it as a weapon against his assailant, but then tossed it contemptuously aside. It buried itself in the thick wooden side of a crate and stayed there quivering.
The man kicked at Ragnar. His foot connected with Ragnar’s armoured side with a crunch of breaking bone. The man’s mouth dropped open and he screamed in pain. Ragnar’s punch silenced him. The thug fell to the ground, blood and broken teeth dribbling from his ruined mouth. Ragnar glanced around him and noticed with some satisfaction that Sven had all but finished off the rest of their attackers. He had the uniformed leader by the throat and held him easily at arm’s length, one-handed. The ringleader’s feet dangled half a stride above the floor.
Ragnar heard the last of the men from above drop to the ground behind him, and turned to face the new threat. He saw there were only five of them and dived into their midst, howling his war cry. His outstretched hands closed around the arms of two of his attackers. He closed his fingers and felt fragile human bones break. A kick with his right foot propelled another man ten strides and sent him smashing into a wooden crate. The man landed badly and then tumbled to the ground.
The remaining two, seeing the way the fight was going, turned to run. Ragnar was not about to let that happen. He sprang forward and grabbed them by the necks and then knocked their heads together. The two men dropped at his feet, unconscious. Ragnar turned to look back at Sven. He had dropped the stunned body of the ringleader at his feet. The Wolf gave Ragnar a sour look.
‘Not much bloody fight in this lot, was there?’
‘I haven’t even got a scratch on my armour.’
‘Well, they messed up mine!’
‘How?’
‘By bloody well bleeding on it, Russ damn them! I’ll have to give it a good clean now.’
‘Two men dead! Fourteen men hospitalised. Five of them critically and four more temporarily unable to work because of their injuries. What do you have to say for yourselves?’ Commander Gul demanded in a tone that brooked no excuses.
‘I thought we had killed more. We must be getting soft,’ Sven said disdainfully, looking around the commander’s spartan rest chamber as if admiring the decor. He did not care for Gul’s tone, that much was obvious. ‘We will next time if they try and ambush us again.’
‘You say they attacked you?’
‘Are you implying that we are somehow mistaken?’ Ragnar shot back. ‘They insulted us, then some of their companions tried to drop a crate of canned meat on our heads.’
Gul had seen the site of the battle for himself. He seemed a little mollified, and unclenched his fists. ‘Some of the crew are a little testy, it is true. The different work squads don’t like each other, let alone any strangers on the ship. There might be more of these attacks. Perhaps in future it might be better if you remained in your chambers unless summoned.’
And was that, Ragnar thought, the whole point of this little exercise? His suspicions of this ship and its crew returned redoubled.
FIVE
Ragnar watched uncomfortably. As part of the talisman’s honour guard, he was bound by chains of duty to be present at this moment, but he wished it were not the case. Sorcery, even sorcery performed in the service of the Imperium, made him more than uncomfortable. He didn’t need to look around to tell that his battle-brothers felt the same way. Their scents told him all he needed to know about their concern.
The chamber was deep in the hidden heart of the Light of Truth. All around them were thick steel bulkheads. The doors had been sealed, the lights dimmed. The heady smell of narcotic incense filled the air and made Ragnar’s mind swim until his body adjusted to the presence of the drug. The floor was bare metal; in the centre was a double circle inscribed in sanctified inks and salts. Between the outer and the inner rings were various symbols sacred to the Emperor and the Inquisition. A series of lines radiated out from the exact centre of the circle. Ragnar did not know why, but he knew that somehow the direction in which they pointed was significant. At the end of each line was a blazing copper brazier, the source of the incense.
And at the exact point where the lines converged, Inquisitor Karah Isaan sat cross-legged on the cold steel floor. She was naked save for the talisman, which dangled from her neck. Ragnar could see the whitened scars that marked her dark brown skin. Badges of honour from old combats, he expected. The woman breathed deeply and rhythmically. She was gathering her powers for an attempt to psychometrically locate the next part of the amulet they sought. Ragnar had heard Sternberg and Hakon discuss this earlier. Apparently there was some sort of psychic link between all the different segments of the broken talisman, and these could be used to divine their exact position in relation to each other. Ragnar was not quite sure how this worked, but then psykers and their arts were a total mystery to him.
Around the circle stood the Blood Claws, all five of them, together with Sergeant Hakon and Inquisitor Sternberg. All of them watched, grim-faced, as Isaan continued her ritual. Ragnar sensed Sternberg’s excitement. The hunt was on again. They were about to take another step forward towards saving his world from the plague.
Inquisitor Isaan started to chant in Imperial Gothic, the elevated language of ancient psyker litanies rolling from her tongue. The rhythm of the words lent them power, made her voice seem deeper and more resonant, as if something else was speaking through the woman’s mouth. Regrettably that was all too possible, Ragnar knew. Psykers were notoriously prone to daemonic possession, which was why most of them were soul-bonded to the Emperor, or fed to him as sustenance in his Golden Throne. Ragnar guessed that, like the Space Marine Chapters, the Inquisition had its methods of screening and protecting its psykers. He only hoped they were as effective as those used by the Fang’s rune priests.
He guessed that protection was the reason for the circle and those sacred symbols. They were designed to protect the psyker from unwholesome external influences as the ritual progressed. Ragnar gave his attention back to his own prayers. The inquisitor had instructed them all to pray silently as the ritual progressed so that no malign influences might be attracted by their thoughts. Ragnar wasn’t sure what she meant by that but he was determined not to take any chances. He prayed fervently to Russ and the Emperor to watch over them, and guide the psyker in her task.
Suddenly the hairs on the back of Ragnar’s neck rose, and it felt like the temperature had dropped a degree or two. His mouth opened in an involuntary snarl. He sensed the presence of something. Strange energies crackled in the air around them, unseen and yet undeniably present. There was a smell like burnt metal. He opened his eyes once more and gazed at Karah Isaan. At first he doubted his eyes: was there the faintest trace of a halo of light surrounding her head? Maybe. No, definitely. As he watched, prayers forgotten, it grew brighter, until it was a shimmering circle of amber light which grew stronger as he watched, became brighter and brighter until it eclipsed the dim lighting of the room and made the female inquisitor the focus of every gaze.
Her short-cropped hair rippled slowly, as if caught by a breeze, although there was not the slightest breath of wind within the sealed chamber. When she opened her eyes, Ragnar could see the unnatural light within them. Her pupils and iris glowed like two tiny suns, as if they were part of a binary system within her head that provided the illumination for the halo. Slowly she raised her thin brown hands until the talisman was cupped between them. It, too, began to glow, the light of her halo catching on the thousands of facets of the gem, becoming split into millions of points, refracting all around the room. Ragnar could see the beams of light playing over the faces of his comrades. Some of them landed on his own chest like the eerie red dots of a targeting laser. The thought made him shiver slightly and give his attention back to his prayers.
The chanting continued. Ragnar watched in fascination. From the woman’s mouth a mist had started to emerge, a writhing vapour which shimmered and glittered and swirled around her – and then began to take on concrete shapes, like images projected by a holosphere. Ragnar saw a world gleam against the cold depths of space. He saw the blue of oceans, the white of clouds and the green of jungles.
Even as he watched, the bizarre scene projected in the air changed. It was as if they were dropping from space onto the surface of the world. One continent leapt into view. They dropped closer towards an endless sea of green. The dizzying speed of descent slowed. Ragnar saw huge towering trees, and brightly coloured flowers almost as large. Huge insects. Strange beasts. A monstrous stone temple, ancient, shaped like a stepped pyramid, covered in strange eroded carvings of humanoid faces. Creepers and lichens swelled into view. Ragnar shivered, sensing some sort of inimical presence in the air. He wondered about daemons and prayed more fervently. The temperature in the room was dropping very rapidly now and the stink of burning, mingled with the incense, was foul.
The point of view descended, passing like a ghost through the walls of the pyramid and into a hidden chamber at its core. On an altar tended by emerald-robed priests lay an amulet twin to the one that glittered on Karah Isaan’s neck – save that the gem was green and seemed slightly smaller. This was what they sought, Ragnar knew.
The chill in the air of the chamber deepened. Ragnar’s breath came out as a stream of mist. Droplets of moisture seemed to condense then freeze on his armour. He was a Space Marine and his armour was designed to let him survive in far more extreme temperatures, but still he felt the difference. The sense of an evil presence deepened and the picture changed again, swirling, condensing, until it formed a single huge, green-skinned head. Malevolent yellow eyes glared out at everyone in the room. Huge tusks protruded from the
thing’s leathery lips. A massive scar ran from the forehead across the left eye, down across the mouth and ended on the right side of its chin. It looked as if it had been crudely stitched together with rough twine, and the twine left in place. As Ragnar watched, the thing opened its mouth and bellowed in rage. The echo of that distant roar seemed to ring in his own head. It was spoken in a language other than his own, but still he understood the meaning.
Come here, and you will all die! Every last one of you!
The vision vanished. There was a shriek of pain. A gust of wind which came from nowhere blew out all the braziers and the lights flickered. For a moment the room was plunged into a blackness as deep as death.
Inquisitor Isaan shivered. She was wrapped in Sternberg’s cloak now but it was still cold in the metal chamber. A sense of that brutal alien presence lingered all around them, making Ragnar’s fingers seek the butt of his pistol.
‘That was an ork,’ Sven muttered. Ragnar nodded slowly. He remembered the descriptions of the things, and the images which had been pumped into his brain by the tutelary engines back in the Fang. They were a warrior race, savage, brutal and wicked, utterly without redeeming features. They fought endlessly to conquer and enslave any world they came to.
Sternberg stared at Karah Isaan meaningfully, a fanatical glint in his eyes. ‘Your vision quest was successful?’
The woman shivered and nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Names! Places!’
Sternberg sounded like a man possessed, Ragnar thought.
‘Galt,’ she said simply.
‘Then that was the Temple of Xikar?’
‘Yes.’
‘So the talisman ended up there.’
The woman looked very weak and pale. Using her strange powers had obviously drained her. She looked direly in need of rest and yet her colleague showed no sympathy. He touched the communication amulet on his throat. ‘Helmsman! Lay a course for the Galt system. I want to get there with all possible speed.’
The Space Wolf Omnibus - William King Page 38
