‘I most certainly am. How about you?’
‘They will not find a better bloody teacher. I wonder if old Berek has a plan or whether he is making this up as he goes along.’
A massive fist emerged from a doorway and clipped Sven around the ear. It was followed by Sergeant Hakon. ‘The Wolf Lord undoubtedly has a plan, just like he has more brains in his arse than you have in that empty cave you call a head. I have followed Berek Thunderfist out of far tighter scrapes than this! Now follow me! Battle awaits!’
The sergeant took the lead as they barrelled along the corridor. Ahead of them someone had opened a postern gate through one of the bulkheads. As they reached it, Strybjorn emerged from a side corridor. He too was armed and ready for combat. In his mind’s eye, Ragnar tried to visualise how close they must be to the enemy ship and found that he did not have a clue. The Fist of Russ shuddered once more, like a man in the grip of breakbone fever, as another blast smashed into it. For a moment, Ragnar found himself tumbling through the air, as the artificial gravity failed, then training took over, and he cartwheeled, kicked himself off the walls and followed his comrades through the postern at increased speed.
He felt as if he was swimming, pushing himself off the floor or ceiling or wall and hurtling headlong down the corridor like a diver. He could see that the others had holstered their weapons to give themselves a free hand to control their direction or take advantage of any rungs or other handholds. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of other company members doing likewise as they moved along parallel corridors. It seemed like every Wolf on the ship was responding to Berek’s command.
Sven and Hakon had disappeared from sight The corridor ended in a steel ladder, metal rungs set in the wall. He cartwheeled again to bring his legs around and absorb the impact, then piked forward, grabbed a rung and pulled himself upwards. Above him he could see Sven’s boots. Below him he could sense Strybjorn duplicate his own manoeuvre.
Ten heartbeats later he emerged into a long gunnery hall. Sweating men rammed massive cartridges into the maws of huge weapons. Teams of gunners responded to the bellowed instructions of their officers. Each of the weapons was larger than a Rhino APC, and most impressively, Ragnar knew these were among the least of the guns mounted by the Fist of Russ. At a signal, one of the gunnery officers pulled a massive lever, and a weird halo of energy surrounded the weapon as it discharged. The smell of ozone filled the air. The Fist of Russ was fighting back. An instant later, he had passed the weapon and joined the rest of the company in the forward boarding hall.
Ahead of him, Berek Thunderfist stood astride the mount of another great gun, flanked by Mikal and his Wolf Guard, the toughest, bravest and most highly honoured warriors in the company, each a veteran of a hundred frays. It was Ragnar’s ambition to one day be worthy of joining them, but he knew he had a long way to go. You had to be a Grey Hunter of at least ten years of very distinguished service to be invited to join that select group. It had been made very clear to him on numerous occasions that they were almost as far above a lowly Blood Claw, as Berek Thunderfist himself.
Astonishingly, the Wolf Lord looked as if he was enjoying himself. His lips were split by a wide grin, revealing his enormous fangs. His booming laughter echoed round the chamber, filling all who heard it with confidence, dispelling all fears.
‘Greetings, brothers!’ he roared. ‘In approximately two minutes and four seconds, assuming we are not all blown to hell in that time, we will make contact with our opponent. They undoubtedly think they are going to board us, and take our ship as a prize. We shall teach them a different lesson. Our ship is now aimed directly at them. The boarding beak is in position. As soon as we make contact, we are going through. The enemy is an Acheron-class cruiser and I think we can assume the schematics have not changed all that much since the Second Gorechild War. We will fight our way into the heart of the heretic ship and detonate its power core with thermo-charges.’
A roar of approval greeted this bold plan.
‘The charges will be set on a variable fuse, length to be decided by the man who plants them. As soon as they are activated we will return to the Fist of Russ and break away. We are Space Wolves. There should be plenty of time for us to take a little stroll and kill a few Chaos worshippers on our way back. If not, if we run out of time, I will see you all in hell.’
Ragnar realised that despite Berek’s jovial tone, their mission was a desperate one. It would require them to fight their way through a host of deadly warriors to the heart of an unknown vessel. There was very little chance that they would be able to make their way out again, once the charges were set. And yet, it was a plan that allowed them a chance at glory. It certainly beat being blasted into non-existence by the Chaos ship, or the ignominy of being taken captive.
‘In the unlikely event that our mission fails, I have ordered the crew to arm the self-destruct sequence of the Fist of Russ, so one way or another we will take these bastards into hell with us.’
And assuring that there is no retreat possible either, Ragnar thought. He was reminded of those Fenrisian warlords who would burn their ships on the beaches when they arrived on a hostile island, telling their men and their foes alike that there was no retreat and no way out save through victory. It was all a very desperate gamble, yet still it appealed to him.
Which was probably why he found himself cheering like a madman along with all the others.
FIVE
Suddenly, the Fist of Russ decelerated. There was a thunderous clash of metal. A rumbling vibration passed through the deck as the beaked boarding prow cleaved through the armoured hull of the enemy vessel. Ragnar held his breath involuntarily, knowing that this was one of the most difficult of all special manoeuvres. The Fist’s captain had just a few seconds to exactly match the velocities of the two vessels or the impact would destroy them both. The grinding sound continued.
The absolute tip of the ship, a great neutronium bit, the hardest substance in the known universe, smashed through solid duralloy and steel, chewing through metal like a drill through soft wood, creating a route for them into the heart of the enemy vessel. The Space Wolves stood ready. Ahead of him, Ragnar could see Berek check the sensor on his wrist. It was doubtless set to locate the impulses of the Chaos power core. Near him, several of his Wolf Guard hoisted weapons in one hand, and massive square thermo-charges in the other. Nearby he saw Hakon and the members of his own squad checking their weapons as automatically as he was doing.
All around him, metal creaked and shuddered as the reinforced bulkheads absorbed the strain of the impact. From somewhere came the smell of blazing chemicals. Overhead, a power cable spurted a jet of sparks. It was like being trapped by an enormous accident. He breathed deeply and recited litanies of calm, determined to push the image of the two ships colliding and crumpling out of his mind, of him and his brothers being crushed to a bloody pulp.
Suddenly, the motion ceased. Ragnar knew this was an illusion created by the two vessels’ velocities now being perfectly matched, but it was an illusion so compelling that it might as well have been true. Ahead of them, the neutronium bit ceased its rotation. There was a hiss and a spurt of steam or smoke as the two vessels joined and pressure attempted to equalise.
A barrage of new scents assaulted Ragnar’s super-keen senses: the bitter smell of the polluted machine oil the heretics used, the odd scents created by their strange machines, all of it mingled with the weird undercurrent of unnatural life that was the hallmark of Chaos.
Ahead of them the light was dimmer and more reddish than on the Fist of Russ. Already the Wolves of Berek’s company were racing through the boarding tunnel towards it. When his turn came Ragnar joined them.
They emerged into the Chaos ship. It was like entering a different world: everything looked colder and darker. The machinery seemed simpler and much more massive, evidently patched and repaired with whatever came to hand, stuff salvaged from wrecks and looted craft. It looked as if it were given the b
are minimum of maintenance by tech-adepts who just did not care. Despite this, there was moulded metalwork done with amazing if insane skill. Embossed daemon heads leered above archways. Moulded metal claws tipped every lever and door handle.
It was madness – what kind of tech-priests would spend their time crafting ornate casings and not pay attention to the spirits they contained?
The hellish lights illuminated corridors speckled with rust and marred by huge holes and dents. The sometimes sour, sometimes sickly-sweet scent of Chaos and mutation was stronger, carried everywhere by the monstrous ventilation ducts.
Quickly, the Wolves spread out. Every sergeant had linked his locator to Berek’s through the comm-net, just as his own was linked to Sergeant Hakon’s. Berek and his Wolf Guard were already racing deeper into the ship. There was nothing to do but follow them.
Almost immediately they emerged into a large hall, in the centre of which loomed a massive gimbal mounted weapon. All around it milled a group of Chaos crewmen, armed with a motley assortment of weapons, led by a huge scaly-skinned mutant whose stalked eyes emerged directly from his forehead. In one hand he brandished a massive cleaver, in the other a large antique-looking gun. The crewmen were clad in what might once have been a mixture of uniforms but were now simply tattered rags. They were like an army of beggars who had garbed themselves in the tattered remnants of some defeated army.
Before the Chaos worshippers could respond, the leading Wolves were in position, blasting them with a withering hail of fire. It was a testimony to the mutants’ toughness that it took a number of direct hits from bolter shells to put them down. Ragnar saw the leader keep coming, despite the fact that one of his arms had been blown off, and a bullet had passed right through his forehead, and blown half his brains right out the back of his skull.
‘Bloody mutants don’t need their brains to fight,’ muttered Sven.
‘Just like you,’ Ragnar replied. He took aim with his pistol and put a bullet through the huge creature’s right eye. This time it tumbled and fell, a look of blank incredulity on its brutal face, as if it could not quite understand what had happened to it.
Ragnar felt the beast stir within him, and howl with rage and battle-hunger. He fought down a rising tide of excitement that threatened to overwhelm him. It was difficult; for him, as for many Space Wolves, combat had an effect comparable to the most powerful stimulant drugs. He felt exalted. The constant flow of stimuli fed his emotions. All of the new scents and sounds, the thunder of battle, the roar of weapons, acted to feed the frenzy, as did the scent of excitement coming from his battle-brothers.
There was nothing to match this feeling. It wiped away fear, and nervousness. It increased the keenness of his senses to near unbearable levels as he scanned his surroundings for threats. There was nothing to quite compare with the feeling that your life lay in your own gauntleted hands, and that you lived or died by the keenness of your perceptions, the quickness of your reflexes, the strength of your sinews and your skill with your weapons.
Briefly, some distant detached part of his mind wondered whether this might be one of the flaws of his Chapter, a legacy of impetuousness and ferocity left by the gene-seed of Russ. Not that it mattered. He drank in the nectar of battle, sweeter than any wine.
The bolt pistol kicked in his hand once more. Before he was fully conscious of it, he had shot another enemy. A flash of pallid greyish skin caught from the corner of his eye, a blur of movement, and too quickly for the conscious mind to process it, he had spotted the threat and acted to remove it.
Like a tide of steel and ceramite, the Space Wolves raced through the Chaos craft, heading towards their goal. At their head ran Berek and his Wolf Guard. Occasionally, Ragnar would catch a glimpse of his leader in action. It was as awesome as it was revealing. Berek was a warrior of the utmost deadliness. In close combat, nothing could withstand his fury and the ancient power of his thunderous fist. He smashed through the Chaos worshippers like a steel-prowed ship cleaving a stormy sea.
Somehow, without understanding quite how it happened, Ragnar and his squad found themselves in a different corridor from the rest of the Wolves. He had vague memories of a rush from a side door, a massive bull-horned enemy barrelling into him, and a swift, savage hand-to-hand battle that ended with the enemy dead at his feet. He could remember the stink of the monster’s tainted blood, and the feel of its taloned fingers on his throat as it strove to hold him in place and smite him with a power axe. He recalled vividly how his own counter-stroke had taken its hand off at the wrist, and how the corpse had seemed to dance across the floor as it tried to resist the impact of the bolter shells exploding in its chest.
He looked up and saw Sven grinning at him. His bulldog features held the same look of fierce joy that Ragnar knew must be on his own face. He grinned at Ragnar and mouthed, ‘Good fighting.’
Ragnar could only agree. Now all worries and fears had fallen away. The fact that they were fighting their way ever deeper into a vessel filled with deadly enemies meant nothing. The fact that even if they reached their objective they had little chance of escape before those terrible charges detonated meant even less. Now there was only the moment, the turbulent sweep of battle and the deadly thrill of combat. Ragnar felt truly alive, running along the edge of existence.
Sergeant Hakon paused to glance at the locator on his wrist, pursed his lips and indicated that they should proceed down the corridor. Filled with excitement, Ragnar took the lead, knowing instinctively that Sven and Strybjorn were at his heels. The whole Blood Claw pack trotted in single file.
The corridor widened and gained height. Huge girders reinforced the ceiling over their heads. More daemon heads leered down. Foul altars depicting monstrous creatures marked the sites of controls. Metal stairs led up to balconies above. Ragnar kept his eyes peeled knowing that this would be a good spot for an ambush. He noted the metal doorways in the walls. Their hinges were massive. They were made from reinforced steel that looked like it had been stripped from the turret of a tank. Enormous pipes snaked along the walls. Large regulator wheels protruded from the joints where two or more of them met.
In the distance small-arms fire echoed down the corridor. It seemed like the battle continued unabated. Ragnar risked a quick glance over his shoulder to see if he should take the passage leading towards it, but Hakon shook his head. It appeared that in this massive hull, echoes were just as deceptive as they were anywhere else. He nodded acknowledgement and strode forward.
Briefly he considered what must be going on around him. All throughout this monstrous craft man and mutant were engaged in a life or death struggle. Judging by what he had seen so far, Berek had not encountered stiff resistance. Unsurprising, really, since the last thing the heretics would have expected would be for their prize to assault them. They were about to learn what it meant to do battle with Space Wolves.
Briefly, another image intruded into Ragnar’s mind, of the Chaos worshippers, unaware of the attack, pressing ahead with their assault on the Fist of Russ. He pushed the thought aside of what would happen if the Wolves were successful in blowing up the ship, and then returned to their own ship, only to find it held against them. That was a bridge they would burn when they came to it, as Sven would say.
From up ahead, he caught sight of the bright muzzle flash of bolters, and heard the unmistakable howling of battle-cries. He picked up his pace, emerging onto a high metal balcony that looked down onto some sort of vehicle storage hangar. Beneath him Ragnar could see row upon row of massive tanks, studded with spikes and stained with vile insignia of Chaos. The coarse glow of the ceiling lights bathed the area in ruddy light, illuminating the fierce battle that was taking place.
A group of Space Wolves was pinned down behind one of the tanks, surrounded on all sides by bands of howling mutants, cut off from Space Wolf support. Ragnar smiled. As fate would have it, he had emerged on the balcony above and behind the largest group of mutants, putting him in the perfect position to attack them
from the rear and ease the pressure on the embattled Wolves. Not one of the creatures had noticed him yet. He touched the grenade dispenser on his belt and allowed a few of the lethal metal eggs to drop into his palm. He set the fuse of the first and tossed it, lobbing the rest in quick succession.
Huge explosions rent mutant flesh. Gobbets of enemy meat flew in all directions. Tainted blood sprayed their cover. Almost out of grenades Ragnar opened up with his bolt pistol. Moments later, he was joined by Sergeant Hakon and the rest of the Blood Claw pack who added their contribution to the hail of fire.
The heretics were thrown into utter confusion, suddenly finding themselves under assault by an unknown number of foes from an unexpected direction. They were brave though, Ragnar had to give them that. Some of them turned, seeking the source of the danger. One of them, a massive mutant, a giant really, twice the size of all the others, bellowed instructions to his fellows. Ragnar saw him grab one of his men and push him roughly forward. The fellow fell flat on his face and for a second, Ragnar had a clear shot at the leader. He took advantage of the moment, and snapped off a burst of fire that took the leader in the head, below the helmet. The mutant’s face exploded, and for a second his torso stood there, still waving encouragement to his followers, before toppling forward onto his sprawling minion who let out an enormous, demoralising scream of terror. It was too much for the other mutants, who scattered in all directions seeking cover from the menace at their rear.
Ragnar saw the opportunity he had been waiting for. He ignited a flare and leapt up from behind the cover of the balcony’s metal banister, and sent a fixed-beam transmission on the comm-net to the trapped Space Wolves. The flare stick crackled in his hand, and Ragnar felt his gauntlets heat slightly.
+You down there! There is a way out of the trap! Get your sorry arses up here quickly! Look for the flare!+
He put every ounce of command he could into his voice, hoping that whoever was down there would have enough sense to respond.
The Space Wolf Omnibus - William King Page 63
