War of the Fang - Chris Wraight

by Warhammer 40K

  Aphael shrugged.

  ‘Do I detect admiration, brother?’ he asked. ‘If so, it is misplaced. They were made to do the dirty work no other Legion would do. They are the exterminators, the vermin control of the Imperium. They cannot change, and they cannot improve. Just like us, they are imprisoned in the image of their primarch.’

  At the mention of Russ, Hett made a warding gesture. Aphael laughed harshly.

  ‘Do not fear – he cannot come to their aid now, as you well know.’

  Both sorcerers fell silent. Far below the platform, more heavily armoured vehicles were crawling their way through the ranks. They were of an ancient and obscure design, though a historian of the Imperial military would have been able to detect the faint emblem of the Legio Cybernetica on their flanks.

  ‘So what now?’ asked Hett.

  ‘It is as I said before, brother,’ replied Aphael, watching the vehicles with distracted interest. The feathers at his neck were irritating him. ‘The Cataphracts will be deployed. The Dogs have chosen to go to ground.’

  Aphael took a deep, combat-weary breath then, feeling the sharpness of the air even through the filters.

  ‘And we, my friend, have chosen to drill them out.’

  Blackwing had resumed his place on the command throne of the Nauro. Neiman was back navigating the ship in his isolated chambers, and the remaining kaerls were at their stations. The course had been maintained, still at full speed despite the engines haemorrhaging fuel and coolant.

  A standard Terran day had passed since the encounter with the Thousand Sons sorcerer and his mute bodyguard. It was a meaningless period of time, neither corresponding to the Fenrisian diurnal cycle nor the natural rhythm of a starship, but the crewmen clung to it nonetheless, perhaps thinking that something of their essential humanity was reflected in it.

  Whatever the reason, twenty-four hours had still not been long enough for the Nauro to recover its equilibrium. Blackwing’s command reputation had taken a hit. All the kaerls he’d taken with him on the hunt had died, and the whole crew was aware that it had only been the fortuitous use of the Navigator’s deadly warp eye that had saved his hide. In the normal run of things, perhaps even that wouldn’t have damaged Blackwing’s standing much with the ratings, but everyone was exhausted, run ragged by the endless demands placed on them. So it was that the muttering had begun, quiet enough for the whisperers to feel secure, but loud enough for Blackwing’s animal-sharp hearing to catch what was being said.

  The gossip and moaning didn’t bother him. What did was the fact that he’d been so comprehensively out-fought by a badly wounded spellcaster and a single warrior in power armour. The encounter should have gone better. He had been in his element, stalking in the shadows like a Wolf Scout should. He should have detected the intruders sooner, laid some ambush for them and caught them just as he’d been caught.

  The fact he’d stumbled into the firefight so brazenly was worse than sloppy. It was embarrassing.

  At the least, Allfather be thanked, it had not ended worse for him. The Rubric Marine had been half-destroyed by the Navigator’s baleful gaze. When the sorcerer had been killed in turn, the last of its animating genius had been removed and the lumbering warrior-drone had slumped into inaction. The engines had consumed their remains, turning the corrupted metal and broken flesh into just one more piece of fuel for the hungry furnaces.

  Blackwing had spent a lot of time thinking about the two stowaways since then. The sorcerer’s body, though crippled by a botched transport, was much the same as his – extended physiology, a broad, stocky frame with overdeveloped musculature and enhanced organs. In many ways, the sorcerer’s corpse had been closer to the Adeptus Astartes ideal than Blackwing’s own, with his rangy, loping frame and Helix-derived peculiarities.

  But the Rubric Marine... that had been strange. Underneath the shattered armour, there was nothing. No flesh, no bones, just a smattering of grey dust. Blackwing had heard the stories, of course. The Wolf Priests had declaimed sagas of the bloodless remnants of Magnus’s Legion, cursed by the dark sorcery of the faithless Ahriman to march to war forever with their souls destroyed, so he shouldn’t have been surprised. He should have found it routine, just another quirk of the galaxy’s tortuous, tragic history.

  But he couldn’t stop thinking about it. For some reason, the notion that Space Marines could mutilate themselves so completely, just to avoid an inexorable flaw in their constitution, was abhorrent to him. There were some things that just had to be dealt with. For the sons of Russ, it was the Wulfen, the dark spectre of the Wolf that hunted in all of them.

  Perhaps the Thousand Sons had suffered from some similar flaw. If so, they hadn’t stood up to it like men, but had turned themselves into monsters. The longer Blackwing contemplated it, the more it horrified him.

  That’s the difference. We are all corrupted, the old Legions, but the Wolves didn’t run away. We face it, every day. We keep the danger close to us, use it to make us strong. Whatever else we do, we must remember that.

  ‘Lord.’

  Blackwing shook himself out of his introspection. Georyth was standing before him on the command platform. Like all the ship’s mortals, he looked terrible. His uniform was crumpled, and there were dark rings under his eyes.

  ‘Speak,’ drawled Blackwing, feeling hollow himself. He’d been awake for days.

  ‘Secondary search has been completed. No further anomalies detected on any decks.’

  ‘Good. And the engines?’

  Georyth let out a long breath.

  ‘I’ve got crews on triple rotation. We’re keeping the worst of the fires back, but I don’t know for how much longer.’

  ‘We need six days.’

  ‘I know. If we had more men...’ he trailed off. ‘But we don’t.’

  Was that a dig at him? Would Georyth have asked for those dead kaerls to be pressed into engine duty? Blackwing felt his hairs prickle with annoyance.

  ‘That’s right, Master,’ he said. ‘We don’t have enough men. We don’t have enough anti-flamm, we don’t have enough parts for the damaged plasma drive, and we’ve got a cracking Geller generator. All these things I know, so I don’t need to hear them repeated. I need you to tell me things I don’t know. Have you anything further to say?’

  The Master let a rare flash of belligerence pass across his face. In his state of fatigue, he was ready to lash out at almost anything.

  ‘You know my advice, lord,’ he said coldly.

  So he was still advocating the void-flush. The fact he’d offered it up twice was itself proof of Blackwing’s flagging authority.

  Suddenly, Blackwing realised that the thralls manning the bridge below the command platform were listening intently. Georyth was speaking for all of them. This was something they’d planned.

  A cold sensation passed through him. The implications of that were serious.

  ‘I do know your advice,’ he answered. He spoke clearly, knowing he could be heard all across the bridge, and let a low, snagging growl undercut the speech. He fixed his pin-pupil eyes on Georyth and pulled his scarred lips back to reveal his fangs. ‘Perhaps my earlier guidance on the matter was not sufficiently clear. This ship has one purpose: to deliver the message to Wolf Lord Harek Ironhelm on Gangava and recall his forces to Fenris. I do not care whether it does so with all the daemons of Hel crawling through the pipework, or if we have to feed our thralls to the furnace to maintain the current speed. Hel, I don’t even care anymore if it’s me that hands over the message. But we will get there, and we will get there on time.’

  Blackwing leaned forwards in his throne, raising a claw to point directly at Georyth. The look of menace on the Scout’s face made the Master visibly blench.

  ‘And know this. I am lord of this vessel. It exists by my will. Its wyrd is in my hands, as are all of yours. If I detect any effort to subvert that will, to turn this ship against its ordained purpose, then I will not hesitate to bring down the full quotient of pain upon you.
We will maintain speed. We will maintain the repair programme. We will not fall out of the warp. Is that clear?’

  The Master nodded hurriedly, his face white with fear. The tentative measures he’d taken to transmit some indication of crew dissatisfaction had backfired badly.

  Blackwing smiled, but it was not a kindly gesture.

  ‘Good,’ he said, letting his voice fall to a level only the two of them could hear. The growl of threat still reverberated in his voice, a mere echo of the savagery he could bring to bear if he chose. ‘Between the two of us, we may speak even more plainly. Perhaps you will pass the sentiment on to the rest of the crew. The first mortal to consider mutiny on this ship will find a close welcome under my claws. I will tear his skin from his body and use the hide to plug the gaps in our hull. It won’t help our integrity much, but it will make me feel better.’

  He leaned back against the hard steel of the throne.

  ‘Now go,’ he snarled, ‘and find a way to keep us alive for another six days.’

  A figure had formed over the altar. It was not entirely substantial; Temekh could see the far side of the summoning chamber through translucent skin. More troublingly, it was not quite what he’d been anticipating. It was not the icon of a flaming eye that his dreams had promised, nor was it the mammoth profile of a primarch, clad in red and gold with a towering helm.

  It was a child. A red-haired boy, wearing a white shift, looking painfully immature.

  ‘Lord,’ said Temekh, descending through the Enumerations gracefully.

  His work was not over, and there were many days of trial still to come, but the hardest part was over. In the absence of Aphael’s interruptions, much progress had been made.

  ‘My son,’ replied the child.

  ‘You do not look quite as I expected.’

  ‘How did you expect me to look?’

  Temekh found comfort in the familiar dialectical speech. He’d learned a long time ago not to place much faith in visual appearances. The way a man spoke, however, was hard to imitate.

  ‘Much like you appear in the Tower. I’m not sure the Wolves will find this aspect... threatening.’

  The boy smiled, and the skin around his closed eye creased.

  ‘And what makes you think my image on the Planet of Sorcerers has any special veridicality? You are corvidae, Ahmuz. You know that what we see depends, in large part, on what we want to see.’

  ‘Maybe. In that case, I wanted to see some reflection of your true power.’

  ‘Look harder.’

  Temekh concentrated. Perhaps this was some kind of test. If it was, he didn’t understand it. The child looked as unassuming as milk, though the steady, single eye and adult mode of expression were disconcerting.

  ‘I think you are only a fragment, lord,’ he said at last. ‘A possibility. Despite my work, you represent only the first steps on a journey.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the child. ‘Much of me remains on Gangava. It must be so, or the illusion will fracture.’

  Temekh frowned.

  ‘I do not understand this, lord. I have tried, but the fundamentals elude me.’

  The child didn’t look perturbed by that.

  ‘Ahriman was the same. For all his gifts, he chose the wrong solution. There is no succour in remaining static, in trying to fight the power of the Ocean with spells. What has he brought us? Empty husks, slaved to sorcerers. There is a higher truth about our transformation, one that we need to learn to embrace.’

  ‘To be everywhere, and nowhere.’

  ‘I’m glad you remember.’

  ‘I remember the terms you use. I still don’t understand them.’

  The child shrugged.

  ‘There is time for you to learn. And for Hett, and Czamine, and the others. Once the distractions of this episode are over, we shall have the leisure to begin again.’

  Temekh paused then, struck by an unwelcome thought.

  ‘You do not mention Aphael.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘He is the greatest of us, the most powerful of those who refused Ahriman.’

  ‘And he will become more powerful still, more than he can possibly imagine, but I did not reach this level of emergence to discuss his fate.’

  ‘No. I didn’t think so.’

  ‘I came to encourage you. I have invested much in you, Ahmuz Temekh. The fleet and army we have assembled will wither away soon enough – this is its only purpose, and after that our goals will be different.’

  The child smiled. The gesture was simple, but it conveyed a whole host of subtle emotion. Pride, perhaps, and recrimination, but mostly regret.

  ‘Do not fail me, Ahmuz,’ said Magnus softly. ‘It is a grave matter, for a son to fail the father.’

  ‘I will not, lord,’ said Temekh, knowing to what his primarch referred and speaking earnestly in his turn. ‘That lesson, at least, has been well learned.’

  Over Gangava, the hour finally came, and comm-signals were sent throughout the fleet. Seamlessly, without fuss or fanfare, the shields over the launch portals of the warships flickered out. Waves of drop-pods flew out of the launch tubes, hurtling down into the atmosphere and blazing like comets. Thunderhawk gunships followed in arrow-shaped squadrons, spiralling down at phenomenal speeds, their angular prows dipped steeply at they plunged through the ever-thickening air. Behind them came heavier drop-ships, falling fast and manoeuvring with the aid of jetting thrusters. All were decked in the grey of the Space Wolves, bearing black-and-yellow banding and the crest of the snarling muzzle on their flanks.

  There were dozens of deployment zones, all beyond the shielded perimeter of the city. Ironhelm had overwhelming force at his command and had allocated his troops accordingly. There were three principal targets. Massive power generating facilities had been detected in the north-west quarter of the urban sprawl, and two Great Companies had been assigned to their destruction. Another two Companies had been deployed to strike at the city’s void shield projectors, situated in the south-west and surrounded by heavy defensive formations.

  The centre of the giant city, though, was the main prize. A whole district, many tens of kilometres across, had been constructed in the image of Tizca, with pyramids rising high into the dust-thick air. They weren’t the gleaming silver edifices that had glittered under the pale skies of Prospero, though. On Gangava, the industrial filth clung to their sides, turning the surfaces the same dirty red as the rest of the planet. From space they looked almost organic, like strangely geometric mountains looming above the chaotic tangle of hab-blocks and manufactoria around them.

  Magnus was in those pyramids. Frei had confirmed it again. All the Chapter’s Rune Priests could sense it, could feel the terrible presence lurking under the greatest of the structures, polluting the wyrd like a slick of oil on water. Ironhelm led the assault on that central target, taking five whole Great Companies and the majority of the Chapter’s Rune Priests in a spearhead of colossal firepower. Their landfall was directly to the east of the void shield fringes, a hundred-kilometre slog away from the heavily defended heart of the city.

  The fleet Tacticae had estimated that hundreds of thousands of troops, possibly millions if the civilians had all been armed, were hunkered down behind extensive fortifications and protected by gun emplacements. Augurs had picked up the movement of mobile artillery pieces moving through the streets in convoy, clogging choke-points and blocking passage along the main highways. Whatever forces Magnus had been assembling were clearly well-armed and ready for action, despite their lack of orbital cover.

  Intercepted comms traffic had given some idea of the defensive strategy. The orders had been encoded, but many of the ciphers had been cracked during Kjarlskar’s blockade and little remained unknown to the attacking commanders. From the interceptions, it was clear that the Gangavans knew full well the fury that awaited them. Their only response lay in numbers. Huge numbers. They couldn’t hope to take on the Wolves in combat, but instead planned to wear the invaders do
wn through sheer inertia, dragging them into tar-pits where thousands of dug-in mortars and lasguns would present – so they hoped – a whole series of killing-zones.

  The Gangavans also talked, in hushed tones of horror and fear, of what was in the pyramids. Over and over again, the vox chatter had referred to the Bane of the Wolves. The expression had brought a wry grin to Ironhelm’s battered face the first time he’d heard it.

  ‘Bane of the Wolves? He’s gone in for melodrama in his old age.’

  That had brought a laugh when he’d said it, up on the command bridge of the Russvangum surrounded by his Jarls, but the time for laughing had now passed. Every warrior in the first wave had gone about his purpose with a cold, clear attention to detail. Rites of hatred were performed with close attention, manes of unruly hair were lacquered down ready to take battle-helms, bolters were carefully checked and reverently stowed. There were no smiles, no raucous banter from the Blood Claws, no casual joking from the Long Fangs. All of them knew what this prey was worth.

  And then the drop-pods had begun to fall, scything down through atmospheric turbulence and sporadic anti-aircraft fire from the glittering suburbs beneath.

  Ironhelm’s own drop-pod, christened Hekjarr, was one of the first to come down in the eastern landing zone. It threw up a giant cloud of red muck as it made planetfall, the adamantium structure still furnace-hot from the atmospheric descent. With a hiss, the hatch bolts blew, sending the outer shell-segments slamming down against the impact-crater sides. Bolters descended from the roof-space and barked into action even as the restraint harnesses flew up and cracked back into their cradles.

  As the bands of metal that held Ironhelm were withdrawn, the Great Wolf thundered down the ramp and on to the soil of Gangava. The night sky was the colour of old blood, striated with the dark tracks of his Chapter’s vehicles plummeting into range. There were buildings all around him, huge black spires of iron that jutted upwards, linked with bridges and mass transit tubes. Spotter lights whirled, trying valiantly to give the defensive gunners something to aim at, and there were wailing klaxons somewhere far off. Already the broken hammering of heavy weapons fire had started up close to his position, echoing from the precipitous flanks of the structures around him.