He was aware that Hakon had begun the Prayer to Russ, and found that he had joined in, mouthing the words without really realising it. ‘Lend us the strength to smite the Emperor’s foes. Grant us the grace of an honourable death if our hour is come,’ he muttered. ‘The Emperor be praised.’
Even as the old sergeant spoke, there was a loud clang, and a juddering sense of movement. ‘Drop pod away,’ murmured Sven. ‘Garm here we come.’
At first, there was the immense pressure of continuing acceleration as the drop pod arced downwards on its approach trajectory. Hakon reached up and touched one of the controls on the board above. Suddenly in the air in front of them a holospheric image appeared.
Ragnar saw the fleet retreating behind them, and all of the other drop pods leaving the blast-tubes of the fleet and rushing downwards like so many burning flakes of thistledown. Ahead of them loomed the great glowing shield of the planet. Great oceans of white cloud drifted over the face of the continents.
Hundreds of tiny runes glittered below the image, giving out myriad bits of information to those who could understand them. Some of their meanings had been lost in the dim mists of time in the days when such systems had first been devised, but Ragnar knew enough of the symbols to be able to pick out those which displayed their speed, altitude and ambient temperature. Outside now it was cold, the chill of interplanetary space.
They were away. It would take long minutes for them to reach the insertion point for atmospheric entry and many more minutes after that for them to penetrate the atmosphere. In that time, the fleet would have moved on to to a position over their drop point, and if the Navigators had got their calculations right, would begin the support barrage, stopping mere seconds before the course of the falling drop pods intersected with the blast of their mighty weapons.
Ragnar told himself that this was all a long-established ritual, that the Chapter fleet and its warriors had done this thousands upon thousands of times, but this was his first long drop in anger, and the thought of mistakes being made troubled him deeply. As the drop pod reached its final angle of attack, the sensation of acceleration and of its associated weight vanished, leaving him drifting upwards from his seat, free of gravity, restrained only by the tug of his harness.
Within the drop pod all was silent now, save for the muffled breathing of the men. There was no turning back now; they had passed the point of no return.
The first faint tremor in his seat drew Ragnar out of his brief reverie. The whole pod vibrated slightly. His training told him that it was merely the first tickling touch of the atmosphere on the pod’s shell, but for a moment a deep primordial fear reached up from the depths of his being and screamed that the pod was malfunctioning and they were all going to die.
‘The breath of the wind,’ said Sergeant Hakon, in his calmest and most reassuring tone of voice. From the sudden relaxation of the tension all around him, Ragnar knew that he had not been the only nervous battle-brother. The sergeant’s next words were less than reassuring. ‘Best brace yourselves. Things could get rough.’
Ragnar glanced around him to see how the others were taking this. The sergeant looked calm, and as stone faced as ever. Sven grinned like a lunatic, fangs glinting in the light of the holosphere. Aenar looked pale and nervous. Torvald kept a small cynical smile on his face. Strybjorn looked as grim and calm as Hakon. A glance up at the holosphere showed Ragnar that the planet was no longer visible as a disk. They were now racing down into the atmosphere and the wind demons of the upper air had them firmly in their grip.
The whole pod shuddered and shook. A faint creaking sound fretted at Ragnar’s nerves. It sounded as if any moment the whole ceramite and duralloy structure might crumple inwards and crush them all. Much as he knew how unlikely this was, the thought still haunted him. He also found it all too easy to imagine the blazing beams of defensive lasers reaching up to burn them from the sky. At least such an end, if it came, would be quick. Once more the sense of being trapped in a confined space returned, redoubled. Ragnar fought down the urge to rip at the restraining straps and lash out about him.
Now flames licked all around the hulls of the drop pods above them. The heat shields on the bottom of the drop pods were starting to glow cherry red. Streamers of super-heated hair flickered all around them. This was no normal atmospheric entry such as a shuttle or a Thunderhawk would make. This was a swift insertion, designed to get them on the ground as quickly as possible and with little fuss. They were flying on minimum power, easy to mistake at this altitude for a shower of meteorites.
Even as Ragnar watched, bits of the pods above them burst away. The whole pod shook as if hit by a gigantic hammer, and something hot and metallic fell away from them too, its contrail visible on the viewscreen. For a moment it looked as if they were disintegrating, but he knew this was not the case. This was merely the pod shedding its outer skin, creating decoys that would show up as multiple images on any sensor system that might be observing them. The theory was that this proliferation of targets would make it difficult for the defenders to pick them off as they came in to land. At this altitude it would also increase their resemblance to a meteor shower breaking up under atmospheric impact.
Ragnar hoped that it would work. For the first time, in all of the times he had ridden groundwards in a drop pod, his life might depend on the success of this stratagem.
Now the view in the holosphere flickered alarmingly. Either there was some problem with the power circuit or it was simply being obscured by the plasma trail of the pod itself. The shaking of the pod increased. The runes orbiting the holosphere told Ragnar that their velocity was increasing at an alarming rate as they plummeted through the thin upper atmosphere of Garm. An eerie high-pitched whine rose to audibility, swiftly followed by small thumping noises as if rain were pattering against the outside of the capsule. Ragnar knew it was not rain, merely the turbulent air.
The thumping noise grew and along with it so did the shaking. It sounded now as if the fists of thousands of air daemons were pummelling the drop pod’s side. The whole craft shook and echoed. Ragnar felt the craft veer and swerve minutely as it dropped. He clutched the seat with both fingers to give himself some sense of stability. The flickering light of the holosphere illuminated the faces of his companions. Their features all seemed frozen in expressions of excitement, dismay or exaltation.
Sven opened his mouth and let out a long wolf howl. It echoed around the confined space like the wail of some demented spirit, drowning out for a moment even the whining of the wind and the pounding of the turbulence. Aenar joined in and, within moments, the whole pack was howling save the sergeant.
Hakon was busy making minute adjustments to the control panel above them. Ragnar watched him. The drop pod was moving through the thin air at a far greater speed than a human body would fall normally. The resistance of the air was too small to slow it much at this height.
The turbulence became much worse. Now it seemed like the pod was caught in the fist of a giant who was determined to shake the life out of the tiny people trapped within it. Without their restraining harnesses the Blood Claws would have been tossed helplessly around within the pod from floor to ceiling. As it was, Ragnar could see the flesh on the faces of his companions wobble like jellies. They continued to howl now, maddened by excitement and the prospect of imminent action.
Ragnar knew the massive orbital bombardment would begin soon. It had been carefully timed to start just before their drop, so as to not give the enemy too much advance warning. By the time the heretics realised it was over, the Space Wolves would be on the ground and swarming over them. That, at least, was the theory.
In his mind’s eye, he pictured the titanic wave of las- and projectile fire blazing down from orbit, cratering the ground, smashing their foes’ defences, clearing the way for them. He tried not to imagine an error that would result in this fragile pod being caught in the deluge of destruction.
‘One minute,’ said Sergeant Hakon. The words cam
e over the comm-net and were audible even over the thunder of the turbulence. The howling stopped abruptly. Ragnar felt a tension in the pit of his stomach and a deep-seated excitement surge through him. Another glance at the runes told him that the drop pod had decelerated enormously. The turbulence must have come from increased air resistance. The view in the holosphere was becoming clear again. Wisps of red and grey and yellow marred by inky stains of black were all around them.
Clouds, he thought. Clouds mingled with pollution. We’re almost down. Relief warred with tension. This was the point of maximum crisis. If the defenders had spotted them, this was when they would be shot down. Destruction could take them unawares; they would be removed from existence instantly and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. Such a sense of helplessness was not something Space Marines were used to. The only protection now was prayer; the only shield was faith.
An enormous wash of yellow light blazed through the holosphere. For a moment Ragnar was disoriented, then he realised that he had just caught the final blaze of the barrage before it cut out, as they passed through the lowest band of the polluted clouds. Beneath them he could see the astonishingly large towers of Garm. In a glance he got some idea of the geography of this part of the world.
The land beneath them was divided into hundreds of small islands, separated by channels of water and industrial run-off. Massive metal and plascrete structures – factories, hab-units, power cores and industrial temples – covered each island. Some were mere blackened hulks, plasteel skeletons lying amid the rubble that had once clothed them. Others showed huge gaping holes, the result of artillery fire or internal explosion.
At one point, around their drop-zone, it looked like the barrage had set the whole polluted river alight. Flames danced unnaturally along the surface of a fluid that bore little resemblance to water. Arcing into view he could see the blasted craters of the place where they would land. Far, far off in the distance he thought he saw massive war machines moving. It appeared that loyalist ground forces were mounting a diversionary attack to cover their landing. No. That had not been mentioned in the planning session. Perhaps it was simply some opportunistic warlord taking advantage of the distraction provided by the barrage. Perhaps it was merely coincidence.
Sporadic fire from building-mounted defence lasers leapt into the sky around them. None came close to their drop pod. Had they been spotted or was this merely some form of automated point defence system, designed to fire on anything that dropped into this particular airspace? If so, Ragnar was glad that the barrage had done its work. Normally such networks covered the entire sky over a city. This seemed to be functioning only sporadically.
Sporadic or no, he thought, offering up a prayer to Russ, all it would take would be one shot and this world would be rid of them. There was no way the armour of a drop pod could withstand the impact of a blast from a defence laser.
‘Suspensor failure,’ said Hakon over the comm-net. ‘Brace yourselves.’
Looking at the runes on the holosphere Ragnar suddenly realised they were not slowing down. The gravitic suspensors which were supposed to slow the final stage of their descent had not automatically cut in. In moments they would be smashed to bloody pulp against the ground. This was not looking good, Ragnar thought.
TWELVE
Panic briefly threatened to overwhelm Ragnar. His worst fears all seemed to have come true. He was trapped in this tiny pod with no way out, about to smash into the earth after dropping from a great height. Then the moment passed; self-control returned. If he had only moments of life remaining then he would not give way to fear. He would meet death like a man, even if it was not the death he would have chosen.
Sergeant Hakon had other ideas. He reached up and flipped the emergency handles on the panels above his head, manually activating the suspensor drive. For a moment, nothing happened, then Ragnar felt as if a giant hand were crushing him into his seat as the suspensors wrestled with the planet’s gravity. A smell of ozone filled the air, and Ragnar thought he heard a high pitched scream as the ancient machine’s overloaded generator quit. Acceleration returned sickeningly. The sensation of dropping twisted Ragnar’s gut. The hope that had flared briefly died, only to return a moment later as the secondary power system cut in.
‘Brace yourselves!’ Hakon bellowed again. ‘This is going to be touch and go.’
The altimeter runes told Ragnar that impact was imminent. He held himself in the crash position, thinking they were still going too fast. Seconds later he was thrown tight against the restraining straps with enormous force. He felt the harness flex but hold. His neck muscles strained to prevent whiplash. The force of the impact was enormous.
Any moment, he expected to feel a tidal wave of agony rip through his body. It did not come. Instead, the drop pod began to roll end over end, finally coming to rest with a jarring bump. After a few seconds, the sides groaned open, like a metal flower unfolding its petals to greet the sun.
‘Disperse,’ said Hakon in a cold commanding voice. Ragnar hit the buckle of the restrainer harness and sprang clear, drawing his weapons and readying them. A wave of steam greeted him as his feet touched the plascrete covered surface of Garm, the snow boiled away by the heat of the drop pod’s impact. Ragnar thought it was the heat shield cooling, but a quick glance told him a different story. Part of the side of the capsule glowed cherry red. It looked like one of the enemy las bursts had come a lot closer than he had thought, hitting the drop pod a brief glancing blow.
Probably why the automatic systems failed, Ragnar thought, as his eyes searched for a target. He knew just how lucky they had been. If that ravening energy beam had kissed the cupola of the drop pod for more than a micro-second, they would have been vaporised.
The stutter of small-arms fire from nearby told him that some enemies at least were still battle ready.
He stood knee-deep in snow and took a breath of the cold air of Garm. It was chill as Fenris in winter, but smelled of rotten eggs, sulphur, and all manner of pollution. A faint wave of nausea told Ragnar that his body had already started the process of adapting to it, of filtering and purifying. Strange, he thought, what small things attract the attention after moments of crisis.
Despite the danger, exaltation filled him. The cause was not merely the chemicals his altered glands were pumping into his bloodstream. He was on the ground. He had survived the rough passage through the high atmosphere and he was here with a foe in front of him and a weapon in his hand. Dangerous the situation might still be, but at least here was a danger he could so something about. It felt like his destiny was once more within his own hands.
With another quick glance, he took in the situation around him. The other drop pods were on the ground. The Wolves were out, weapons spitting death in all directions.
Small groups formed up to assault the Shrine of the Spear. At this range it looked more like a fortress than a shrine, and one that had recently been taken. The burned out remains of automatic defence systems dotted its sides. Ragnar could see uniformed heretics on fortifed balconies. The snouts of las-rifles poked out through windows.
Here and there runes, the signs of Chaos and heresy, polluted the sacred walls. Ragnar snarled a curse and prepared to advance.
As far as he could tell there had been no casualties among Berek’s company. The only slight problem was that due to their drop pod’s malfunction, they had fallen far out of the cluster pattern, and they were much closer to the massive doorway than they were supposed to be. Behind them, craters and rubble rose from the plain. Here they were on a level killing ground, the only cover being the remains of their drop pod.
A stream of shells hit the plascrete in front of him, sending rock-hard chips clattering against his armour, raising small fountains of snow. Ragnar raised his head and spotted the shooter, mounted on the high battlements above the door. With one fluid motion, he raised his bolt pistol and fired. His single shot smashed through the sniper’s skull and decorated the carved wall be
hind him with brains.
‘Nice shot,’ he heard Sven murmur. ‘Now all we need is twenty more like it.’
A hail of fire sent Sven scurrying behind the still glowing pod. Ragnar leapt to join him. He could see that Hakon and the others were pinned down on the open ground in front of them. Unless they could take out their attackers it looked like life was going to be short for the rest of their squad.
Suddenly there was a roar of rockets and streaks of fire smashed into the enemy emplacements on the walls. Briefly the guns fell silent. Clouds of smoke billowed.
‘Looks like the Long Fangs finally decided to unpack their rocket launchers,’ said Sven, grinning cheerfully. He glanced towards the remains of the massive shrine doors. ‘You thinking what I am thinking?’
Ragnar nodded. He vaulted over the side of the pod and raced towards the steps, Sven right beside him. Seconds later the rest of the squad had joined them, taking advantage of the confusion the Long Fangs’ heavy weapons had wreaked among the defenders.
Within moments they were on the stairs. Suddenly a hail of fire erupted all around them. He saw the sandbags in the doorway and the nest of heavy guns within it. Acting instantly he threw himself flat on the massive steps, and lobbed a grenade towards the foe. A chain of explosions told him he was not the only one who had had this idea. Moments later he was back on his feet again, running forward towards the emplacement.
Bullets churned the ground around his feet. One clattered off the shoulderpad of his armour with enough force to spin him around and send him to the ground. Sven raced past, blazing away with his pistol at the surviving heretics, chainsword already keening in his hand. As he picked himself up, Ragnar watched his fellow Blood Claws vault the half-demolished wall of sandbags and go ravening through the shocked enemy. Obviously the defenders had not expected an assault of this speed and ferocity.
The Space Wolf Omnibus - William King Page 69
