They did. As Ragnar had hoped, they were quick to see a way out of their predicament. Instantly, as a pack, they broke from their cover and headed in Ragnar’s direction, storming through the remains of the broken mutant band. Ragnar felt a thrill of pride. He had just helped save the lives of some of his battle-brothers.
A massive hand smote him on the shoulder, and knocked him back down into cover. Ragnar snarled and turned to see Sergeant Hakon glaring at him. ‘You did well there, Ragnar, but there’s no sense dancing around making a target of yourself with that flare.’
Ragnar suppressed a growl, and forced the beast back down within him. He could see the sense of the sergeant’s words. He had let his own exaltation blind him to the harsh realities of the situation. He nodded and Hakon grinned. He gestured at Ragnar to toss the flare back down the corridor. He did not want Ragnar to throw it in any direction where the retreating Wolves might see it, and be misled. Ragnar obeyed. Hakon nodded. ‘Right. Let’s give the Wolf Lord and his retinue some covering fire, shall we?’
The Wolf Lord, Ragnar thought? Was that who had been down there? Ragnar thought he might not have used such a peremptory tone if he had known. He shrugged, thinking there was nothing he could do about it now, then leapt up into a shooting crouch and sent another burst of fire into the oncoming Chaos horde.
SIX
Ragnar could see now that the men coming up the stairs were indeed Wolf Guard. Normally he would have been able to recognise them by the heavy Terminator armour they wore, but now they were garbed in the standard armour of Space Marines. Doubtless there had not been time to don their wargear when the order to ram was given. Not that they seemed to mind; they were all of them large, fell-looking men, grinning at the prospect of a good fight. Ragnar could smell no anxiety, despite the closeness of the call, only keenness and a desire to shed blood once more.
Sensing eyes on him, Ragnar turned and saw that Berek was looking at him. He realised that the Wolf Lord knew exactly who it was who had so insolently called orders to him. He forced himself to meet Berek’s gaze, and to his surprise saw that the Wolf Lord was grinning as he strolled over to him.
‘That was quick thinking, lad,’ he said, ‘and you have my gratitude. The company might have been building a funeral pyre for Berek Thunderfist this very day if you had not intervened, and I am not yet ready to greet my predecessors. I will not forget this, Ragnar.’
Ragnar was even more surprised that the great Wolf Lord had remembered who he was, and felt a surge of pride at this acknowledgement. Berek turned to Hakon and bellowed, ‘It’s good to see that you have taught your cubs how to bite, Hakon. Now, let’s get on with this.’
Ragnar risked another glance at the veterans of the Wolf Guard. He was surprised that he could count only five of them, including Morgrim and Mikal Stenmark. Surely, the rest of those powerful warriors could not be dead? Morgrim caught his glance and seemed to read his mind.
‘Our force was cut in two by the ambush,’ said the skald. His speaking voice was hoarse and rough and quiet, completely at odds with the clarity and range of his singing. Ragnar noted that silver hair framed his long lean face. His eyes were a strange gold colour. ‘The others were driven back through the doorway by a hail of fire. I am certain they have joined up with the rest of our force.’
Ragnar nodded, considering this. He was not entirely sure of the wisdom of the Wolf Lord’s decision to lead the vanguard of his force into battle. No one could doubt his bravery but… He shrugged. It was not for him to judge the likes of Berek Thunderfist. If the Wolf Lord chose to lead his troops in the traditional Fenrisian manner that was his business.
Morgrim clapped him on the shoulderpad of his armour. ‘No time for wool-gathering, boy. We better get to the heart of this tub before the heretics realise what we are about.’
With that he lengthened his stride, and followed the rest of Wolves into the depths of the ship. Ragnar followed, knowing that he had got all the praise he was going to get for his exploits.
They emerged into a larger gallery. Looking down into the vast space Ragnar could see a massed horde of Chaos warriors assembling, far too many to fight. Like the others he ducked back into the shadows to avoid being seen. He was astounded by the size of the vessel on which they moved and fought. Brought up among the barbarian islanders of Fenris, the word ‘ship’ had certain connotations in his mind. It conjured up an image of a dragonship, one of the longboats made from the hide and bones of the monstrous sea-going lizards his people hunted. They were perhaps fifty strides long with benches for twenty oarsmen on each side. To some part of his mind, that still was a ship.
This was something else. It seemed larger than any structure ought be, bigger even than one of the vast starscrapers he had seen on Aerius. Entire islands from the world sea of Fenris could have been lost within it. It was a labyrinth large enough to swallow the entire island on which he had grown up.
Ahead, Berek had gestured for them to stop. Ragnar paused just quickly enough to avoid bumping into Sven’s back. ‘What are they saying, Morgrim?’ Berek asked.
‘They believe about ten thousand warriors have boarded their ship and are trying to take it from them. They are making ready to repel boarders,’ said Morgrim, amusement was evident in his soft voice. The Wolf Guard laughed quietly. The Blood Claws joined in, more to take part than because they understood the joke. It dawned on Ragnar that Morgrim must have patched himself into the heretics’ own comm-net and must be able to understand their twisted language. For the first time he understood how very useful this skill was to have. If they survived this, he would ask Morgrim how he had managed it.
‘They plan to sweep through the corridors en masse, catching us in the jaws of a trap.’
‘We must hurry on then,’ said Berek, ‘and find the power core before they pin us down again.’ He sub-vocalised orders into the comm-net, giving instructions to all of the other squad leaders on the sealed command channels. He spoke so quietly that not even Ragnar’s hyper-acute hearing could pick up the words.
Mikal Stenmark checked the sensor unit on his wrist. ‘We are not more than five hundred metres from the power core now, Lord Berek.’
‘Aye, Mikal, so I can see, but who knows how long it will take us to get there? Those five hundred metres are by the straightest route. These corridors might wind for leagues before we get to the core.’
‘Then best we start soon, lord,’ said Stenmark cheerfully.
‘My thoughts exactly, Mikal. Let us be moving before those Chaos worshippers down there realise we’re here and try and treat us to a tasty meal of hot bolter shell.’
Judging by the roars and bellows from below, the heretics would be only too happy to oblige. Ragnar could see some sort of cloaked priest or officer was whipping them up into a frenzy. There was a sense of ominous power about the man that Ragnar had come to associate with sorcery.
As they moved, Morgrim kept up a running commentary that let Ragnar follow the flow of the battle. It now looked as if the crew of the Fist of Russ had managed to stall the Chaos intruders, and it appeared as if the confused heretics were doing their best to hunt down the Wolves who had boarded their own vessel. They were under the impression that they were under attack by a much larger force than was actually the case. As he listened to the skald, Ragnar deduced that Berek had ordered his company to split up into their component squads and spread as much mayhem as possible, to perform hit and run attacks, and avoid becoming bogged down in firefights they could not possibly win.
As he listened, Ragnar became aware of countless tales of heroism and valour. It appeared that Varig’s squad had managed to trap a huge warband of heretics by attacking it from two sides at once and blowing up both ends of a corridor with demolition charges.
Hef’s lads had managed to extricate themselves from being encircled by a hugely superior Chaos force by crawling out through the airvents, leaving proximity fused mines to destroy the heretics when they eventually investigated their abandoned
position.
Ferek’s squad had managed to fight all the way to one of the magazines before being driven back by a withering hail of fire from the defenders. It was possible that if they had succeeded they might actually have been able to blow themselves and perhaps the ship to the other end of the galaxy, so Ragnar was relieved they had failed. There was such a thing as being too enthusiastic, he decided.
The heretics were well and truly confused. As they raced along near abandoned corridors, Morgrim gleefully quoted a Chaos commander claiming to have encountered forces numbering in the hundreds, while Hef reported that the two wings of the Chaos force were being caught in their own crossfire, confused by the smoke of the explosions.
It appeared that in situations like this there were advantages to being a small, compact, well-organised and disciplined force. Ragnar was not sure how much longer their luck would hold but right now things seemed to be going better than he would ever have imagined possible.
He looked over to see if the other Blood Claws were paying attention. In the flickering light of the glow-globes, he could see Aenar looked both worried and exalted in equal measure. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung half open. A frown of near ludicrous concentration marred his brow. He was obviously intimidated by being under the eye of the legendary Wolf Lord as much as at being caught up in his first shipboard action. Torvald looked surprisingly calm under the circumstances, gazing around with a sardonic expression fixed firmly on his face. If not for his scent, Ragnar would never have guessed that he was as nervous as Aenar. Strybjorn looked as grim as always, his brooding features carved from rock. Sven grinned cheerily back at Ragnar. Hakon looked relaxed and confident.
Up ahead Ragnar could see a greenish glow. The scent of the air changed. It tasted now of ozone, and there was a charge to it that made the hairs on the nape of his neck rise. As they emerged into the power core of the Chaos ship he half expected to see that they had entered the boiler room of some mighty steam engine. He was not entirely disappointed.
Enormous cast metal engines towered above them, disappearing into the shadowy recesses of the cavernous ceiling far above. High atop each of them was a huge steely sphere clutched by a massive brazen claw set on a copper spike. As the sphere rotated, greenish lightning flickered across its surface. Every now and again, there was a thunderclap of noise, and a lightning bolt leapt from the sphere to impact on the massive metal tower in the centre of the room. At the top of this tower rotated the largest of the moving spheres, all but invisible behind the curtain of power bolts that danced across its surface. The thunderclaps almost drowned out the roar of the great engines.
On the nearest engine Ragnar could see rotating cogwheels, the smallest of which was larger than his body, the biggest of which was the size of a dragonship. They were fouled with rust, and dripped oil. Occasionally from a massive pipe a burst of superheated steam emerged with a noise like a huge kettle whistling. Ragnar wondered whether even the Chaos engineers who had built this strange device could know exactly what every component did. Maybe. He heard Mikal mutter, ‘How can this work? This is not a power core. It’s more like a factory.’
‘This is the power core, my friend,’ said Berek. ‘Unless my sensor is totally malfunctioning.’
‘It looks like no core I have ever seen.’
‘I doubt that you have seen every form of power core in the galaxy, old friend.’
‘You are right, Wolf Lord, yet… it is all so alien, so strange.’
Ragnar could see what the man meant. His skin tingled. There was something in the eerie radiance from those machines that made his flesh creep.
‘The thing is unshielded and seems to use tainted fuel,’ said Morgrim. ‘No wonder so many of the crew are mutated.’
‘It will be scrap by the time we’ve finished with it. Oleg, Korwin, set those charges. The rest of you keep your eyes peeled and your noses twitching. This is a big place, but I doubt the Chaos worshippers have left it unguarded.’
As if in answer to the Wolf Lord’s statement, a bellow of rage filled the air. Ragnar turned and saw an enormous heretic, garbed in some sort of soiled uniform, a crab-like pincer on the end of his right arm. The mutant glared at them in fury, bellowing instructions to several squads of burly followers.
‘Looks like we’ve another bloody fight on our hands,’ said Sven, diving behind the cover of the nearest large machine. Ragnar followed him, a hail of bolter fire sparking off the steel plates of the floor behind his feet. ‘At least the Chaos worshippers are good for something.’
‘More than can be said for you,’ said Ragnar, ducking low around the corner and snapping off a shot with his bolt pistol. The shell whizzed past the ear of a charging heretic. His comrades returned fire, forcing Ragnar back into cover.
‘That wasn’t very clever, Ragnar,’ said Sven. ‘You might have lost your head. No great loss admittedly but–’
‘You lot follow me!’ barked Sergeant Hakon, rushing down the corridor away from the central aisle.
‘I think the sergeant has an idea,’ said Sven, as Strybjorn, Aenar and Torvald headed off in Hakon’s wake.
‘Probably means to circle this generator and flank the heretics,’ said Ragnar.
‘I worked that out for myself,’ said Sven, rushing after the rest of the squad.
‘It’s sometimes hard to tell.’
Ahead of them a large flight of metal stairs rose along the side of the structure, disappearing out of sight around its curved bulk. It was a maintenance walkway, designed to give access to the core, but it could be used for other things. Hakon led the Blood Claws up the stairs. Moments later, Ragnar found himself circling the structure with a good view of the battle spread out below him. The Wolf Guard had taken up position behind several of the smaller Chaos engines and blasted away at an oncoming tide of heretics and mutants. They shot with a calm precision, making every shot count, keeping up a hail of fire that twice the number of Chaos worshippers would have been hard pressed to match. Many deaths rewarded their efforts, but not enough. For every foe who fell there was always another to take his place, and they were closing the ground with the outnumbered Wolf Guard swiftly.
‘Grenades!’ ordered Hakon. Instinctively Ragnar obeyed, squeezing the frag grenade dispenser on his belt. A small oval egg of death dropped into his palm. He set the timer for three seconds and lobbed it into the oncoming mass of heretics. Heartbeats later the rest of the Blood Claws did the same. Severed limbs flew everywhere as flesh was ripped to gobbets. Mutant blood and bile flooded the floor. Incredibly, several of the huge wounded creatures kept coming despite having lost arms or legs. Ragnar could see one armless giant roaring with rage more than pain racing towards Berek. Another missing both legs pulled itself onwards with its arms. One less wounded hopped forward, the stump of one leg leaving a stream of blood behind it.
The remaining heretics glared around to see where the attack had come from until their pincer-clawed leader roared orders and they advanced forward once more. Ragnar readied himself for another salvo of grenades when he became aware that the metal platform on which they stood was vibrating. Shots raised sparks around his feet. He glanced up and saw that another group of heretics had emerged onto a higher platform on the side of the great machine opposite them. They were pouring bolter fire down onto the Blood Claw position. It seemed Sergeant Hakon was not the only one with an idea of sound tactics.
Ragnar saw Aenar fall. An exploding bolter shell had sheared away a chunk of ceramite from the shoulder pad of his armour, exposing red raw flesh below. The young Blood Claw tumbled forward onto his hands and knees. Ragnar made a grab for him, catching him before he could go over the edge of the platform. Aenar looked up at him and smiled weakly. Ragnar glanced around. Sven and the others were already returning fire on the heretics above them, but it was a one-sided battle. They were too badly outnumbered.
Ragnar helped Aenar to his feet. Blood from the wound splashed his armour, but the flow was already starting to slow down
as Aenar’s re-engineered body began to heal itself. Holding his wounded comrade with his left arm, Ragnar snapped off a shot with his right, as they headed back round the corner and out of the enemy’s line of sight.
Now he sensed the metal staircase vibrating with the weight of many booted feet, and he caught the acrid stink of mutants nearby. Apparently they were not the only ones who had decided this ledge would make a good spot for an ambush. Either that or the heretics had guessed they would use it for an attack position, and had divided their forces, one part to pin the Blood Claws down, while the other part closed.
He glanced at Aenar and saw that he too had heard the approaching enemy. As gently as he could Ragnar let go of the wounded man and drew his chainsword. He was going to need both weapons if he was going to keep his companions from being overwhelmed. A quick glance at Aenar reassured him. The younger Blood Claw slapped a synthi-flesh plaster on his wound, and proceeded to seal the breach in his armour with repair cement. Behind him, the other squad members were backing into view, keeping up a continuous rain of fire on their attackers. Ragnar wondered if they were aware of the new threat approaching, or whether they were too distracted by the firefight. Not that it mattered; it looked like it fell to him to do something about it.
He sensed the heretics were already nearing the head of the stairs, and would soon emerge onto the platform. There was nothing for it now, but headlong assault. He rushed forward and leapt into the air, letting momentum carry him downwards. As he did so his stomach lurched. Below him he could see dozens of hideously mutated faces leering up at him.
SEVEN
Ragnar twisted in the air, kicking both feet into the chest of the lead heretic. Not even the mutant’s massive musculature could protect it from the power of the blow driven with all the force created by his running jump, augmented muscles and the carapace’s hydraulic systems. Ribs snapped, and the heretic was propelled back into the ones behind it, sending them tumbling back down the stairway. At the same time, the force of the kick killed Ragnar’s velocity and allowed him to land nimbly on the stairs.
The Space Wolf Omnibus - William King Page 64
