War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Read online

  ‘Gotcha,’ said Kjolborn grimly, careless of the las-fire coming in from a squadron of fighters hard to port-nadir.

  ‘Solution ready,’ reported the second kaerl, working to compensate as the incoming fire sent the platform lurching again.

  ‘Knock it out of the void.’

  Eye-watering fluorescent beams leapt across the gap, slamming into the frigate a hundred kilometres distant and breaking open the shell of void shielding. Massive, silent explosions rippled along port-ventral galleries of the vessel as the lethal energy cut though the hull-plates and ripped them aside. The ship stopped turning and began to spin down into an aimless death-spiral. More explosions broke out as something within the structure ignited and set off a chain.

  Kjolborn watched the target die with a cold satisfaction. More enemy fighters homed in on the dark disc of the platform, tearing up the physical shielding with heavy las-fire.

  ‘What have we got left?’ he asked, wincing with each hammer-blow his platform took.

  Vreborn smiled wryly in the dark, her face under-lit red.

  ‘Nothing,’ she reported. ‘That finished us.’

  Kjolborn laughed savagely, watching as vengeful enemy contacts surged towards their position. Other gun platforms were firing more frequently now, but they were being destroyed as quickly as they were taking down their targets. The void was aflame across every viewer, punctuated with the dark shapes of broken hulls and the incandescent burn of debris falling planetward.

  ‘Worth a shot just to piss them off,’ he said to himself, watching fresh signals close in on his position and bracing for further hits. A squadron of gunships was wheeling toward them now, weaving between a slow-moving phalanx of larger ships to get a clean shot.

  Vreborn wheeled around to face Kjolborn, suddenly animated.

  ‘The saviour pods,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not going to get to them in time, huskaerl.’

  If the lights had been up, Kjolborn would have seen her look of injured scorn.

  ‘They’re projectiles.’

  Kjolborn realised what she had in mind then, and shrugged. ‘If you can spin it, do it.’

  The gunships, wedge-nosed sapphire Thunderhawks, raced into position, battlecannons primed to fire. Kjolborn watched them come, wishing he’d had the time to get drunk before taking his seat. Just because he didn’t fear death didn’t mean he liked the idea.

  And I don’t even know who’s doing this.

  Vreborn worked furiously, tilting the platform upwards. The platform’s low-power manoeuvring drives had been shot to nothing, and the cumbersome disc swung round only slowly. As it turned, Kjolborn heard heavy clamps shoot back on the level below, releasing the saviour pod docking claws.

  He stood up from the throne, watching death come for him from the stars.

  ‘This isn’t the way I wanted to go,’ he announced to the others in the module. ‘But you’ve been a better than mediocre crew. I mean that. There are only two others I’d rather have died with, and one of them–’

  They were the last words spoken on gun platform Reike Og before the incoming Thunderhawks of the Thousand Sons unleashed their main cannons on the listing target. Without shielding, the end was almost immediate, and the fragments of metal, plasteel and bone that weren’t immediately vaporised in a cloud of atoms spun into the upper atmosphere, lit up, and burned into nothing.

  So it was that huskaerl Vreborn would never know that, of the seven empty saviour pods jettisoned milliseconds before the explosion, four made it down to Fenris, two more were immolated by the backwash from another platform destruction, while one of them, against all probability, found its target. A Thunderhawk, roaring under the destroyed gun platform at full attack velocity, could do nothing to avoid the punching fist of adamantium-braced metal that had been ejected at the last possible moment. It was hit hard in the cockpit, flew wildly out of control and tore into the upper atmosphere at lethal, unrecoverable speed.

  Just like the debris of the platform it had killed, it lit up like a meteorite before dying in a blaze of promethium-fuelled destruction.

  Greyloc stormed into the Chamber of the Watch, seconds behind Rossek and Wyrmblade. The Rune Priest Sturmhjart was already there, as were six of Greyloc’s Wolf Guard. One of them, Leofr, was still being enclosed in his armour by a dozen thralls, and the sound of drilling echoed around the dark space.

  ‘Tell me,’ the Jarl growled, taking up position within the column of light. From that vantage he could see every pict-screen that lined the Chamber.

  Greyloc could feel his mind working quickly, poised to tease out possibilities, assessing every scrap of information. There was no fear, just a rapid, mechanical process of appraisal. All around him, his Guard stood ready, expectant.

  ‘Fleet is engaged, Jarl,’ reported Hamnr Skrieya, turning from the screens to face him. The blond, hulking Wolf Guard had a warrior’s shame etched on his face, and it made his speech savage and clipped. ‘Skraemar has taken heavy damage but holds position. Grid is down to twenty per cent.’

  ‘Who dares this?’

  Skrieya let a flicker of hatred mar his intense expression for a second.

  ‘Archenemy, Jarl. The Sons.’

  Greyloc froze for a second.

  The Thousand Sons! Ironhelm, what have you done? You were the prey for this trap.

  He shook his head to clear it and looked at the tactical hololiths. For a moment, even he, a veteran of a hundred void-engagements, was taken aback. The invasion fleet was huge. Around the fifty-four points of light indicating capital vessels, hundreds of smaller signals swarmed and harried. The red lights indicating defensive assets were beleaguered. Even as he watched, three of them guttered out.

  ‘How did they get in so close?’ he demanded, feeling frustrated anger suddenly rise up within him. ‘Where was the warning?’

  There was a distant rumble across the walls of the Chamber as the Fang’s defensive batteries opened up, sending salvos of ship-killer missiles hurtling into the void above.

  ‘We’ve been blinded,’ said Sturmhjart. Like Skrieya, his face was written with shame. ‘I saw nothing, the augurs saw nothing.’

  ‘Damn Ironhelm!’ spat Greyloc. He felt the urge to lash out, to slam something heavy into the screens that reported the carnage above. ‘Can we contact the fleet?’

  ‘No,’ said Skrieya, bluntly. ‘We can’t contact anyone. All astropaths are dead, all system exits blockaded.’

  ‘We need to join the void-war,’ urged Rossek, looking away from the tactical display and preparing to leave. ‘There are Thunderhawks still in the hangars.’

  ‘No.’

  Greyloc took a deep, ragged breath. The tactical displays were unequivocal. Though it had been raging for less than an hour, the war above was already lost.

  ‘Prepare the Rout to defend the Aett. We cannot stop them landing.’

  ‘Jarl–’ began Rossek.

  ‘Open a channel to the Skraemar,’ he ordered.

  A crackling link was established. Over the background of it came huge, shuddering crashes. The strike cruiser was taking heartbreaking levels of punishment.

  ‘Jarl!’ came a Space Marine’s voice over the comm. It was thick with fluid, as if blood had welled up in the speaker’s throat.

  ‘Njan,’ replied Greyloc. He kept his voice soft. ‘How long can you hold them?’

  There was a crude laugh. ‘We should already be dead.’

  ‘Then cheat it a little longer. We need time.’

  A reverberating crash distorted the comm-link, followed by what sounded like a rush of flames.

  ‘That’s what we had in mind. Enjoy the fight when it comes for you.’

  Greyloc smiled coldly.

  ‘I will. Until next winter, Njan.’

  The link broke then, suddenly cutting off the reports of distant carnage. All that remained to indicate the struggle above them were the anodyne points of light on the tactical displays.

  Greyloc turned to face h
is commanders, his white eyes burning.

  ‘We can debate how this happened later,’ he said. ‘For now, get ready to fight. Ready the Claws, ready the Hunters. When they get down here, we’ll rip their throats out.’

  There was another rumble as the Fang’s colossal defence batteries sent death roaring into orbital space. Greyloc allowed the wolf within him to rise to the surface, and fixed the assembled Wolf Guard with an expression of pure animal loathing.

  ‘This is our place, brothers,’ he snarled. ‘We’ll teach them to fear it.’

  The Nauro corkscrewed through the crimson blooms of detonating charges at full tilt, weaving a path through the shells of dying vessels and spinning away from the flickering tracery of incoming las-fire. In the cold silence of the void, the manoeuvring had a sharp-edged beauty to it, an exhibition of peerless ship-mastery.

  Within the ship, activity was frenetic. Crew members raced to combat the fires raging on the lower decks while kaerls struggled to keep the void shields from buckling completely. The plasma drives were dangerously hot from being overburned, and the ventral augur arrays had been almost completely shot away. Any more big hits, and they’d be fast-moving junk.

  ‘Get those lances back online!’ roared Blackwing, sending his ship plummeting steeply to avoid a barrage of plasma bolts.

  The two underslung energy lances, the only significant offensive weapons the ship had left, had been knocked out of action after a collision with a huge, spinning chunk of somebody else’s prow-shield. The Nauro was already painfully exposed, and the inability to fire back wasn’t helping.

  ‘We can’t save them both!’ shouted a crewman from the pits below him. Blackwing couldn’t see who he was – he could barely see anything other than the dancing lights on his hololith display. Piloting a single vessel in three dimensions through a maelstrom of plasma and las-fire was a nightmare, even for a pilot with his superlative reactions and training.

  ‘Get me one, then!’ bellowed Blackwing, pulling the prow round just in time to thunder past the shattered, blazing hull of a Space Wolves frigate as it rolled gently into destruction. ‘Just one. Morkai’s hairy balls, that’s not asking for much.’

  He wrenched the Nauro into a rare corridor of open space and tried to make sense of the tactical situation. His launchpath from the Valgard had sent him straight into the orbital battle as it was breaking out. The Wolves, unprepared and massively outgunned, were being taken apart. The first rank of gun platforms was now cold and dead, a circuit of dark, drifting metal. The second and final layer was holding for the moment, but it had taken a horrendous mauling. Every successful hit from the defenders had provoked a hurricane of return fire. The Thousand Sons’ rapid strike vessels were quickly gaining the space to move with impunity, clearing the way for the larger battleships to take their places and pile on the pain.

  The arrival of the Skraemar and her escorts had briefly halted the carnage, but the defending fleet was still outnumbered many times over. Only a handful of the Space Wolves frigates were still operational, and once their protective chain was broken theSkraemar would take the full force of the onslaught.

  ‘Starboard lance semi-operational, lord!’ came a triumphant cry from below the command throne.

  ‘Semi?’ snarled Blackwing, wheeling away from a wing of enemy fighters and exposing his less-damaged starboard flank to them. The telltale juddering in the ship’s frame told him that there were still flank gun batteries in operation, which was something. ‘Semi? What does that mean?’

  ‘We’ve got one, maybe two shots. Then we’re all burned out.’

  ‘Another kill – that’s all I’m asking.’

  He knew then that they were going to die. It would happen in the next second, or the next minute, but not long after. The planetary defence had turned into a bloody-minded attempt to take out as many of the enemy as possible before they were all turned into orbiting streams of dust. Despite all of that, not one of the Twelfth’s ships had turned and run. Not one.

  Stubborn bastards, thought Blackwing, glancing at the forest of warning runes on his console with mild interest. Stubborn, magnificent bastards.

  ‘Lord, I’ve got a link from Fenris,’ reported a kaerl manning the comms platform. ‘You should hear this.’

  Blackwing nodded, his attention still fixed on piloting his ship through Hel, and blink-clicked to received the feed.

  ‘Nauro, Sleikre, Ogmar,’ came the broken, dry voice, filtered through the ship’s internal systems. It was a recording – how long had they been trying to get through? ‘Astropathic communications are down. Repeat: Astropathic communications are down. Break blockade and translate for Gangava System. Rendezvous with Great Wolf and demand urgent recall. Repeat: Demand urgent recall.’

  Blackwing cursed under his breath.

  ‘They’ll think we’re running out on them,’ he muttered, already looking for possible exit vectors. The Nauro was in the middle of the swirling mass of ships, and there weren’t obvious escape tactics open to them. Beyond the immediate layer of attack craft there were larger vessels closing in. The net had a fine weave.

  Ahead of him, close to the edge of the sprawling engagement-sphere, he saw an enemy destroyer recoil from a direct lance hit. That was good – at least some of the platforms were still dealing it out.

  ‘Lock on to that one,’ growled Blackwing, already planning his attack pattern. ‘Prepare the ship for warp transit, but we’re not leaving till I get that kill.’

  Klaxons blared deep inside the massive walls of the Fang, echoing down the snaking corridors of stone and making the bone trophies on the walls shudder as if still alive. Shouts rose up from the deep places, the shouts of mortal men mingled with the roars of their superhuman masters. The Aettguard, the body of kaerls committed to the defence of Russ’s fortress, had been mobilised. Hundreds of heavy boots drummed the floor as entire rivens mustered in their garrisons throughout the Hould level, reporting to armouries to collect additional ammunition belts and blast helms.

  The Hould was the beating heart of the Aett. The thousands of mortal warriors, craftsmen, technicians and labourers who maintained the massive citadel lived out their entire lives there. They rarely left the Fang unless taken out of it by troop transports: the air was thin even for natives at that altitude. Their skin was as pale as the ice that covered the upper slopes, and they were all Fenris-born, of the stock that still roamed across the ice-fields below Asaheim and provided the recruits for the Sky Warriors. Their breed been taken into the vast halls of the Aett when the first chambers had been hollowed out, and all could trace their lineages back over thirty generations or more. Only some – the kaerls – were kept at arms at all times, but all knew how to wield a blade and fire a skjoldtar, the heavy, armour-piercing projectile weapon favoured by the Aettguard. They were children of a deathworld, and from the youngest infant to the oldest crone they knew the art of killing.

  Higher up, past the huge, shadowy bulwark of the Fangthane, was the Jarlheim, the abode of the Sky Warriors. No mortal remained on those levels except on the orders of his Sky Warrior masters, for it was here that the twelve Great Companies were housed. The halls of the Wolves were often empty and silent, since they were ever called away on campaign to some far-flung corner of their galactic protectorate. At least one Great Company always kept the hearths burning, however, tending the sacred flames and paying obeisance to the wards that kept maleficarum from entering the Fang. In the Jarlheim were the war-shrines to the fallen, the totems collected by the Rune Priests from far-off worlds, the armouries full of sacred weaponry. In the holy places, tattered banners from past campaigns were laid to rest amid the dusty rows of skulls, armour and other prizes.

  As the klaxons flared across the Twelfth Company’s demesne, the narrow ways were lit with a savage fire. The masters of the mountain had been summoned, and it was as if the earth itself had been shaken into sentience. The stone reverberated with a deep tremor as the massed wolf-spirits were goaded into life. Armo
ur was strapped on and drilled into place, beast pelts reverently draped over the ceramite, runes daubed on shoulder-guards in thick animal blood, charms hung piously over necks and wound around armoured wrists.

  Deep within the centre of the maze of shafts, galleries and tunnels, there came the beating of the great drum. It underpinned all other sounds, thumping out a heartbeat rhythm of dissonant savagery. Other drums joined it, working against the single note in a cacophonous, barbed disharmony. The vibrations coloured everything, making the entire labyrinth resonate with a growing crescendo of hatred and energy.

  There were few sights more intimidating in the entire galaxy than a Space Wolf Great Company kindling the murder-make. One by one, their armour bolted into place and sanctified by Sturmhjart’s subordinate Rune Priests, the Grey Hunters emerged, hulking and strapped-tight with lethal energy. They went softly like the hardened infantry they were, their red helm lenses glowing in the oily dark. Behind them came the ranged-weapon Long Fang squads, shadowy and bulkier, their faces heavily distended into the maws of beasts, hefting their massive weaponry as if it weighed no more than an axe-shaft.

  Then, last of the infantry to emerge from the armourers’ care, were the Blood Claws, the raw recruits. Bellowing curses at the enemy they lusted to engage with, the red-and-yellow streaked armoured giants jostled with one another to get to their mission-points. They were the most human of all the angels of death, still only half-changed by the moulding power of the Helix-enabled gene-seed, but their eyes burned hottest with the ferocious delight of impending violence. They lived for nothing but the joy of the hunt, the winning of prestige at arms, the delight in the stink of blood and fear in those they’d been unleashed on.

  Amid them, joined to Sigrd Brakk’s pack, came Helfist and Redpelt. The superficial injuries of their duel had long since faded, as had the others they’d incurred during the days of constant training. The pack, twelve-strong including the Wolf Guard packleader, jogged down a wide, semi-circular tunnel as the drumbeats thundered in their ears, shoving aside kaerls and thralls too slow to get out of the way.