Ragnar thought for a moment. Garm had been the site of more encounters with the Thousand Sons than any other world in the sector. Since his encounter with the Chaos Marine Madox, he had taken a personal interest in such things. He had read as much as he could about it, for he felt certain that he would encounter the heretical Traitor Marines once more.
He flexed his knees to absorb the shock of landing and bounded out into the corridor once more, kitbag over his shoulder. Sven raced along by his side, keeping pace easily, despite Ragnar’s longer stride.
‘It is an industrial world,’ he said eventually. ‘Part forge, part hive. Dark clouds of pollutants fill the skies. Steel citadels cover the surface. Each is ruled by an industrial order, sworn to serve its own master. Each master is sworn to serve the governor, and the governor is sworn to serve the Imperium.
‘The members of the orders represent only a small fraction of the population. Each owns its own factories and foundries and the services of the clans who work there like thralls. Every man, woman and child has a lord.’
‘Sounds more or less like bloody Fenris.’
‘On Garm, the distinctions between classes and castes are much more strict. Obedience is demanded and expected. Disobedience can be punished by death.’
‘Doesn’t sound like the system is working too well at the moment.’
‘Perhaps it is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If a lord becomes a heretic, all of his followers will too. If a lord becomes a rebel, so will his people.’
‘Why should they obey a rebel or a heretic?’
‘Just because he is an oath-breaker does not mean that they are too. Besides, they may know no better.’
‘They must be bloody stupid if they can’t work that out for themselves.’
‘Wait until you see for yourself before you judge.’
‘Yes, oh wise one. You sound more like a bloody priest every day.’
‘You’re the one who asked me about Garm.’
‘I’m sorry I did, your holiness.’
They emerged into the hangar area. Already companies were forming up to take shuttles, one for each company present, one for each ship. Each of the great companies was assigned its own vessel for the duration of the campaign. Each would carry its supplies and equipment and thralls, containing everything it needed to keep that company on the field.
These shuttles were different from the one he had taken when he had accompanied Inquisitors Sternberg and Karah Isaan on the starship Light of Truth. They were smaller, more streamlined and much more heavily armoured. They bristled with weapons, and looked more like large Thunderhawks than normal spacefaring vessels.
As Ragnar watched, a Rhino armoured personnel carrier roared up the ramp and into the interior of the shuttle. It was swiftly followed by another and then by squads of bikers. Ragnar glanced around and saw several thralls in power-loader exo-skeletons carrying massive crates on the tines of their mechanised armour. One by one they disappeared within the depths of shuttle freighters and emerged without their loads.
All through the hangar hall hundreds of thralls loaded dozens of shuttles. Some of the vessels, less well armoured than the others, were used only for carrying stores to starships. Ragnar was suddenly aware of the scale of the operation going on around him, and how well organised it was. Most of the Chapter was already on the move, ready to make the leap between the stars, mere hours after their supreme commander had given the order.
‘Hope we get our own bikes this time out,’ said Sven. ‘There’s nothing I bloody like more.’
‘I think you have ork blood in you,’ said Ragnar, thinking of the awesome greenskin warriors and their fondness for loud fast machinery.
‘I’ve had plenty of ork blood on me,’ said Sven and laughed as if he had said something funny.
As he and Sven clambered up the ramp into the interior of the shuttle, the duty sergeant, Hakon, as fate would have it, called out their names and checked them off a list.
‘Not taking any chances on leaving anybody behind, sergeant?’ asked Sven, cheekily.
‘If we didn’t make this list some of you would probably sleep through the Horn of Doom and miss the ship. And we couldn’t have that now, could we? Now get on board and less of your lip.’
‘Aye, your lordship,’ Ragnar bellowed and narrowly avoided the sweep of Hakon’s boot. Grinning, he and Sven entered the innards of the shuttle. It was warm and dark and smelled of oil, weapons, ceramite and the exhaust fumes of vehicles. Lubricants had pooled in the well-worn floors. Ragnar made his way up a set of stairs balustraded with wolf-headed gargoyles and moved through a series of bulkhead doorways till he found the take-off chamber containing the other Blood Claws.
A quick check told him everybody was present. Strybjorn as well as the boys of the new packs. They looked at him and then Sven with a mixture of excitement and anxiety written on their faces. He realised that some of these youths had never been off-planet before. Casting his mind back, he managed a surge of sympathy for them. He recalled his own first voyage into space in the company of Sven, Strybjorn, Hakon, Nils and Lars. An unaccountable sadness filled him when he thought of his dead companions and the dead inquisitors who had accompanied them, particularly Karah Isaan, for whom he had felt an un-Space Wolfish fondness.
‘What’s it like, travelling through the immaterium?’ Aenar asked enthusiastically.
‘Bloody horrible,’ said Sven. ‘The ship shakes and vanishes and you hear the howling of daemons and dead men outside its walls. Your stomach feels like it’s about to jump up your throat and romp off down the corridor all by itself. Your bowels get weak and loose and–’
‘Sven is just describing how he always feels when he faces any danger,’ said Ragnar. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Hark to Ragnar, the bloody hero,’ said Sven. ‘I’ll have you know he wouldn’t be here now if I had not pulled his bloody bacon from the fire a dozen times.’
Before Ragnar could reply, red warning runes glowed along the walls, and they heard a great air-horn blast. In the distance, Ragnar could hear massive airlock doors clang shut.
‘Strap yourselves in,’ he said. ‘We’re taking off.’
Ten heartbeats later, the shuttle shuddered into the air, and headed for the distant sky. What waited for them beyond it, Ragnar wondered, feeling an ominous sense of foreboding.
THREE
Ragnar watched the approach of the Fist of Russ, Berek’s ship, through the porthole of the shuttle. On first inspection, it was a disappointment. Seen from close up it was smaller than the Light of Truth, the first starship on which he had travelled, though it looked more densely armed and armoured. Around the ship, shuttles and Thunderhawks came and went. Judging by the loops and flare of landing jets, many of the gunship pilots were merely testing their vessels, performing shakedown trials before hurtling into the docking bays of the mothership.
Briefly Ragnar considered whether, when he finally made the rank of Grey Hunter, he would apply for pilot training. He found the idea attractive, and mentioned it to Sven.
‘Does this mean you want to bloody well skive off from hand-to-hand fighting? Typical.’
Ragnar considered this for a moment, as he watched a Thunderhawk hurtle by so close that he could make out the pilot’s features through the armour glass windows.
He must be doing that deliberately, Ragnar realised, matching velocities exactly so that there were only a few dozen metres per second difference in the speeds of the two vessels.
‘No. I still want to be in the front line. I just quite fancy being able to fly one of those things.’
Sven looked at him as if he were mad. ‘If the Emperor had meant us to fly, we would grow wings along with our second hearts.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Sven. That’s like saying if He meant us to be able to fly between the stars we would make warp jumps instead of farting.’
Sven laughed. ‘There are some people I wish could do that.’
/> The Fist of Russ came ever closer. The rune sign of Berek’s company was visible on the side, a massive silver hand clutching a lightning bolt. ‘Do you think our lord and master could have had that painted any bigger?’ Sven’s tone was affectionate, but showed an awareness of their captain’s besetting sin.
‘Not without having the ship made bigger,’ Ragnar replied.
‘I wager he would do so if he could.’
‘Or if he thought Sigrid Trollbane was having it done,’ added Strybjorn. Ragnar looked over at the Grimskull. His former enemy must be a little excited. He did not usually take part in Sven and Ragnar’s good natured mocking of their chieftain.
There was a faint sense of motion as the shuttle rotated for docking. Ragnar saw massive dish antennae rotating on the side of the Fist of Russ. Above it, on the jutting tower where the ship’s bridge was situated, was another symbol. It was not in the familiar runic script of Fenris but showed flowing Imperial characters surrounding a winged man.
‘What is that?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Sven. ‘I thought you were the scholar around here.’
Sergeant Hakon overheard them, as he made his way down the steel corridor. ‘It’s the sign of House Belisarius.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Navis Nobilitae. Navigators.’ Ragnar remembered the two slender foppishly garbed figures he had seen with Logan Grimnar back in the Fang.
‘How come they have their sign on our bloody starships?’ asked Sven.
‘Because without them these starships would not be going anywhere,’ responded Hakon curtly. ‘They guide us through the immaterium. Without them–’
‘I know what a Navigator does, sergeant. I am curious to know why our ship bears their sign. Does it not belong to the Chapter?’
‘I sometimes wonder whether the teaching engines managed to drive anything into that thick skull of yours, Sven. Ragnar, did they do any better with you?’
Hakon was being unfair, Ragnar thought. The teaching machines had placed enormous amounts of information within their brains but that did not mean you instantly had access to all of it. Sometimes, trying to find what you needed to know was like being lost in a great library, looking for a single volume. And, of course, sometimes the information was simply lost, forgotten or never transferred at all. Like most of the ancient machines owned by the Chapter, the tutelary engines were not entirely reliable.
Still, it was worth a try. Ragnar closed his eyes and invoked the mnemonic prayers he had been taught, concentrating on the image of the winged figure, the name Belisarius, and the concept of the Navis Nobilitae. As if from a great distance concepts drifted up, like half-forgotten memories suddenly recalled by the stimulus of a scent or a song.
‘They are our allies,’ he said eventually. ‘Our pact with them dates from the time of Russ, from the Dawn Ages, before even the founding of the Imperium.’
‘Very good, Ragnar,’ said Hakon. Sven grimaced sourly at this. Obviously his grasp of the process of mnemonic prayer was not quite so good as Ragnar’s. ‘They are sworn to guide our ships and to provide twenty-four of their best pilots to serve the Great Wolf. In return we are sworn to come to their aid should they summon us, and to provide sanctuary in times of need. Their chieftain has a bodyguard of Space Wolves, just as our lord has a retinue of Navigators.’
‘Why do we need twenty-four bloody Navigators?’ said Sven. ‘The Chapter has only fifteen great ships. One for each company. Three in reserve.’
‘Slow as ever, Sven,’ said Hakon. ‘Replacements and reserves are always needed – with Navigators as much as with ships. More so, for there are times when men need to rest and ships do not.’
As Hakon and Sven talked, other images and ideas flowed into Ragnar’s mind. He realised he had never given consideration to a lot of things before now, to the level of support that stood behind every Space Marine. It was not just thralls and mechanicians they needed, but Navigators and crews. For he realised that the crews must be raised from the folk of Fenris and trained by those who preceded them on the great ships. In a moment, he became conscious of the fact that he and his battle-brothers were merely the tip of a great spear, the cutting edge of a huge organisational structure intended to send them into battle anywhere in the Imperium.
Out of the porthole he caught sight of glittering lights, so distant as to be little brighter than stars, each in reality a huge ship. In another moment the giant sphere that was Fenris came into his field of vision, remained there for a moment, and then vanished as the shuttle entered the vast metal cavern that was the hangar deck of the Fist of Russ.
As they moved through the ship to their assigned cells, Ragnar could not help but contrast his experience on the Space Wolf ship with his first experience of an Imperial starship, the Light of Truth, and with that of the transport which had eventually brought him back from Aerius to Fenris. On those ships most of the crew had been conscripts and convicted criminals, either sentenced to serve punishment for some crime or press-ganged by a naval shore party. Most of them had been chained to their machines, and harshly disciplined by their officers.
The folk of the Fist of Russ were free men, proud to serve the Chapter, permitted to come and go as they pleased. They looked on Ragnar with awe but no fear. They did not expect the lash for the slightest infringement of discipline, real or imagined. They were an elite among spacefarers and knew it. All of them showed the mark of Fenris. They were tall men, mostly blond, rangy and fierce-looking. They wore grey tunics that bore the sign of the wolf, and went armed and ready to do battle, if need be, in defence of their ship. They moved with a purposeful stride, certain of what they were doing.
The Fist of Russ smelled different too: cleaner and more efficient, more like the air of Fenris. There was no taint of pain and torment in it. Obscurely, Ragnar felt proud of his Chapter. This ship was just another one of the myriad of small but important things that separated his people from the other arms of the Imperium like the Inquisition. The thought stayed with him as he marched to the cell he had been assigned.
His cell was small and steel walled. It had a porthole that looked out into space, and a small terminal that allowed access to the ship’s datacore. There were racks for his weapons, and stands for his equipment. A hard bed filled one corner. He tossed his kitbag into the chest bolted to the floor and stowed his wargear before making his way over to the terminal altar.
It was slightly different from those he was used to in the Fang but still recognisable. A small cube of metal topped by a circlet of hologems surrounding a small brazier for the machine incense. A long brass umbilical connected the machine to the data cavity in the wall. Two rearing metal wolves, bolted to the tabletop, flanked it and held it in place.
Ragnar squatted cross-legged before the altar. He lit the small block of machine incense, tapped the ivory keys and spoke the words of invocation. His fingers worked through the invocation sequence to summon the knowledge spirits of the datacore. In answer, the altar shuddered, the air shimmered and a glowing sphere of light sprang into being over the glowing hologems.
Ragnar’s fingers flickered over the keyboard. In answer, the ectoplasmic nimbus of light before him swirled and a picture of the Fist of Russ came into being. It was a small but perfectly accurate facsimile of the mighty vessel he had seen from the shuttle. In answer to another catechism, the machine spirits showed images of the other craft. To Ragnar’s surprise they were all different.
Logan Grimnar’s Pride of Fenris was similar to the Light of Truth, a grim warship far larger than the Fist of Russ. Egil Ironwolf’s was of the same type, if marginally smaller. The others ranged from one half to one third the size of those ships, and showed many subtle differences. In answer to his questions the spirits whispered facts about the fleet. Most of the ships were old. The Chapter had captured many of them in battle during ancient actions millennia ago. Some had become Chapter property more recently.
The Iron Wolf for instance, had been taken during a
battle against a rebel fleet when Egil’s own ship, the original Iron Wolf, had been crippled. The Chapter had claimed the battleship as plunder, and refused to return it to the Imperial fleet, an act that apparently still caused problems in certain quarters. Ragnar could not for the life of him understand why. On Fenris these things were simple: when you captured an enemy’s ship it belonged to you or your liege lord. It did not matter if your foe had stolen it or claimed it in battle with someone else.
Apparently, certain factions within the Imperium thought differently. Ragnar was worldly wise enough to know that strangers had strange customs, and that not everybody held to the law as it was adhered to on Fenris, but he could not help but feel sorry for anyone who sought to claim the Chapter’s spoils back from it.
Ragnar wondered what it must be like to have command of your own ship, to be a Wolf Lord like Berek Thunderfist? To be in charge of your own company, to be considered a hero by your Chapter, and a legend in your own time, particularly by yourself. To a Blood Claw like himself it was an almost unimaginable position. Aside from becoming Great Wolf, it was the highest position anyone in the Chapter could aspire to.
Of course, it was rumoured that Berek was not content with it, that he desperately wanted to be Great Wolf. Ragnar wondered if that was one of the things that made him a Wolf Lord with his own company. Would anyone with the drive to reach such heights be content to stop there, one rung below the ultimate achievement?
It did not seem likely that Logan Grimnar would die soon. At least not of old age, but then few Great Wolves had ever died in their beds. There was always the possibility when the Chapter went into battle that even the highest ranking could become a casualty. If that were the case, perhaps Berek would achieve his ambition.
As a lowly Blood Claw, Ragnar was not privy to all of the scuttlebutt that passed around the ranks, but even he had heard discussions of Berek’s ambition and his rivalry with Sigrid Trollbane, who was seen as his chief competitor for the Wolf throne. Ragnar had also heard of brawls and duels being fought between men of the two great companies, a shadow of the tension that lay between their chieftains.
The Space Wolf Omnibus - William King Page 61
