Wolf Trap - Robbie MacNiven Read online

  ‘That thing must die,’ Egil said. ‘We cannot let them infest any more of the underground. On me.’

  The Ironguard fell upon the wyrm’s twisting, writhing length. Their power weapons carved out great chunks of flesh and stinking, misshapen organs, cursing the thing back to the wyrdrealm as it splattered them with sizzling yellow slime. Egil aimed a strike for the folds beneath the Wolf who was being slowly swallowed, slicing the membranous skin open. Like some foul parody of a birth, the remains tumbled from the wound in a cascade of steaming digestive juices.

  The Wolf started screaming again.

  Egil stabbed down without hesitation, piercing what remained of his skull and ending his blind, acid-melted agony.

  ‘In the Allfather’s name, die!’ came a shout. Throwing caution aside, Lenold had flung himself directly towards the wyrm. As it reared before him he emptied his bolter on full auto into its maw, howling as he blasted apart fangs and flesh in a storm of mass-reactive shells.

  The wyrm struck, snaking down beneath Lenold’s barrage to snap at his legs. The sudden, sinuous strike pitched the Wolf from his feet. In an instant the Champion of Fenris was half locked in the thing’s shattered jaw, bolter falling from his grasp as he sought purchase on its slippery skin. He grunted in pain as its sucking maw grated through his power armour.

  ‘Lenold!’ Egil threw out both hands, claws retracting as he grasped onto the Wolf’s vambrace. His armour hummed and whirred as he dug his heels in, battling the daemon’s strength. It twisted and shook its head like a hound, dragging Lenold a foot deeper into its acidic gut.

  ‘Give… me… a grenade,’ Lenold managed between clenched fangs.

  ‘I’ll have to let go,’ Egil snarled.

  ‘Do it.’

  Egil released Lenold’s vambrace. In an instant the Champion of Fenris was dragged down by the thing’s horrific peristalsis, but not before the Iron Wolf was able to smack a primed krak grenade into his gauntlet.

  ‘Back!’ Egil barked. He threw himself away from the wyrm, dragging the nearest Champion with him. The tunnel highway echoed with the thunderclap of a detonation, and once again a jet of stinking offal splattered the Wolf Lord. He scrambled back to his feet, wiping yellow viscera from his visor’s lenses.

  The wyrm was headless, but still far from dead. It writhed madly in a pool of its own effluvium, as though still seeking bodies to devour. Even as Egil watched he could see its flesh growing and reknitting, the nubs of half-formed fangs sprouting around the decapitated skin.

  ‘Focus your attacks,’ he ordered. ‘Start fighting like one pack and we may finish this damned thing.’ He triggered his claws again and swung for the daemon’s gaping wound.

  Together Egil, his Ironguard and the Champions of Fenris ripped into the plague wyrm’s remains, hacking and stabbing and slicing at the wound torn by Lenold’s sacrifice. Beneath the savage fury of the Wolves, even the daemon’s powers of regeneration were not strong enough. The sons of Russ fought on, drenched helm to boot in wyrdling filth, ripping the thing apart with their gauntlets, ploughing waist-deep through pulsing, sucking flesh. Egil’s claws finally tore through the last hunk of its meat, splattering it in dripping chunks against the tunnel’s wall. He spread his arms and loosed a rare howl, turned mechanical-sounding by his vox amplifiers. The Ironguard and the Champions joined him, united in their slaughterous exaltation. The noise echoed eerily down the tunnel as the stinking remains of the wyrm shimmered and, finally, flickered from existence.

  The hunt for the Great Wolf would go on.

  Ramilies-class star fort, designate Mjalnar

  Ragnar beat the horror’s head against the side of the vox station. The thing simply giggled, gibbering some arcane nonsense. With a snarl the Wolf Lord swung Frostfang, splitting apart the amorphous pink flesh and revving the weapon until the thing imploded into nothingness. From the nothingness, popping into being like a conjurer’s trick, two lesser blue horrors lunged at him. He beat them both down with his chainsword, spitting on their shifting remains. Finally, they too vanished from reality.

  ‘Room secured,’ Ragnar growled, panting.

  With the maleficarum trickery broken the vox terminal hadn’t been far from their boarding point, but nor had the way been easy. More daemons had dropped from a service hatch, mottled black furies with fluttering wings. Confined to the corridor, they’d been butchered in seconds. The beast of Nurgle in front of the terminal’s doors had been a more difficult challenge. De Mornay had eventually vaporised its bloated skull with a plasma bolt after Sister Marie’s combi-flamer had set it alight.

  The vox terminal beyond had been filled with capering horrors, who let out an almighty cacophony when the Wolves blasted their way in. Ragnar had kicked the first in the face as wyrdfire had begun to coalesce around its flailing arms, smashing it into a hundred glass shards that reflected back crazed images before they vanished.

  The rest of the horrors soon followed. Svengril and Tor secured the far door while Ragnar activated the star fort’s vox uplink. After a moment the monitors blinked into life, and a low hum permeated the room. The glow underlit Ragnar’s smile.

  ‘This is Ragnar Blackmane to all Vlka Fenryka. The Ramilies-class star fort designate Mjalnar is currently subject to a daemonic infestation. It is being cleansed. Repeat, it is being cleansed. All forces take note, but no reinforcements are required.’ He ended the recording and waited while it uploaded to the beacon, the transmission cogitator rattling.

  ‘“No reinforcements are required”,’ de Mornay echoed. He sounded incredulous.

  Ragnar shrugged.

  ‘The corruption isn’t as bad as Krom made out it would be.’

  ‘You nearly tore each other apart,’ de Mornay said, looking from Ragnar to the Blackpelts who crouched tense, silent, waiting for his next order.

  ‘That was before we found an enemy to fight,’ Ragnar said, without a hint of irony.

  ‘Give me the vox horn.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said give me the vox, I need to send a transmission.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘You forget yourself, Wolf,’ de Mornay snapped, his voice suddenly loud. ‘I am a member of the God-Emperor’s Holy Inquisition. The sum total of those I answer to in this galaxy is nil, bar Him on Terra. Now give me the warp-damned vox horn!’

  One of Ragnar’s Wulfen growled at him. De Mornay turned to the bestial warrior, eyes blazing.

  ‘Be silent!’ he barked. The Wulfen took a crouched pace backwards, eyes wide. Its packmates whimpered.

  Ragnar stared at the inquisitor. For the briefest moment, he could see the fiery young warrior that had resisted the Dark Angels on Calva Senioris, still bloodied, still unbowed. Wordlessly, he passed the vox horn to him. The disparity in sizes between the towering, armour-plated, ichor-streaked Wolf Lord and the old, palanquin-bound mortal only emphasised the latter’s strength of will.

  ‘This is Lord Inquisitor Banist de Mornay, Ordo Hereticus, Divisio Segmentum Obscurus, ident code four five seven, seven three eight alpha. Voice scan initiate.’ Ragnar looked at his pack-kin, all staring at the glaring inquisitor. The voice scan must have come back positive, for de Mornay continued.

  ‘Requesting clearance to all data files on ordo forces currently operating within the Fenris System, priority A-one.’ He entered a string of galactic coordinates and location tag-codes. ‘Combat group Omicron, Ordo Malleus Chamber Militant Third Brotherhood. Establish link.’

  Ragnar’s surprised expression was replaced by a frown as de Mornay spoke again.

  ‘Captain Stern, this is Lord Inquisitor Banist de Mornay of the Ordo Hereticus, currently transmitting from the star fort Mjalnar.’

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Ragnar demanded, but de Mornay ignored him.

  ‘Yes, we’ve met resistance. Corruption level three beta or kappa, no higher. But I suspect it will grow
worse the deeper we get.’

  Ragnar turned his back on the inquisitor and gestured to Tor. ‘Take point, we’re moving on.’

  The Blackpelt nodded eagerly, punching the door’s activation rune. Beyond it lay another empty corridor. Ragnar scowled.

  De Mornay caught up with them quickly, palanquin grinding and juddering on its servitor tracks.

  ‘What was that?’ Ragnar said without bothering to look at the inquisitor.

  ‘I called in reinforcements.’

  ‘I told you we don’t need any. I have six more packs waiting with the fleet, they only need a word from me to board and storm this accursed place.’

  ‘Then forgive me if the thought of being surrounded by your Wolves isn’t the comfort it was before I saw you nearly turn into ravening monsters,’ de Mornay said. Ragnar snarled, but the retort died in his throat as the walls shuddered, and a fresh wave of wyrdlings launched their ambush.

  The Void, Fenris System

  Stern cut the vox-link and turned to the Star Drake’s gunnery huscarl.

  ‘That’s enough. I have new orders. Helmsman, set a course for Mjalnar’s last recorded location. I shall provide more detailed co­ordinates momentarily.’

  As the Space Wolves serfs scurried to do their new masters’ bidding, Stern returned his gaze to the strike cruiser’s viewing port. Beyond it Gormenjarl drifted through the sea of stars. The mighty Ramilies was no more. It listed, oxygen venting from its shattered spires and bulkheads, surrounded by a halo of burned, broken debris. Its gun decks lay blown apart and its docking spines twisted, while a single ruthlessly accurate, point-blank strike from Star Drake’s main cannon had demolished its command deck and whatever slinking, squirming horrors had lurked in the darkness within it.

  The star fort was still far from completely annihilated, but it was badly wrecked. Stern had tagged it with a priority beacon, forbidding entry to it by Inquisitorial mandate. When time allowed, the Emperor’s servants would return to finish the job he had started. For now, though, he was needed elsewhere.

  ‘Brethren, perform the Rites of Cleansing and rearm. We are not done yet. Give thanks and praise to the Emperor that He has blessed us with further purpose this day.’

  The World Wolf’s Lair, Svellgard

  Like a spear cast by the Allfather from distant Terra, a lance of fire fell from Svellgard’s heavens and destroyed all it touched. The pillar of flame ignited the grey clouds, burning them away and leaving a halo of radiance around its crackling shaft. It struck the very heart of the island housing the World Wolf’s Lair, slamming down onto the parapets of the central fire control keep.

  Infurnace burned. The monstrous greater daemon had proven impervious to every hard round and munition fired at it. Against the force of a concentrated lance strike, however, even it was not untouchable. The ultra-heavy energy beam caught the Bloodthirster at its heart. As the battlements around it shattered, Infurnace stood transfixed, hooves braced and arms spread wide, its roar of fury melding with the thunderous crack of the beam’s impact. The daemon began to disintegrate, flesh turning brittle, bursting apart, wings snapping and becoming ash. The light of the lance strike engulfed it, as the walls of the keep melted and collapsed.

  As swiftly as it had come, the pillar of energy blinked from existence, its thunderclap rolling across the ever-receding sea and echoing back from the nearby islands.

  The noise woke Sven. For a moment the impact with the dirt had combined with the sensory overload of the lance’s strike to short out even his enhanced senses. His chrono display told him he’d been unconscious for a little over thirty seconds. In that time the keep had gone, replaced by a crater of fused rockcrete blocks and melted plasteel girders.

  The Wolf Lord dragged himself to his feet. Beside him Harald stirred, blinking in the aftermath of the strike. Clotting blood on his brow had joined that of his broken nose, matting his hair. Sven had grabbed him when he’d realised what was happening and triggered his jump pack, Longleap, driving the modified dual-vector thrust Valkyris pattern to full turbo. According to his visor display the strain had momentarily shorted out the pack’s lift capacity. Kregga and Olaf had both leapt clear as well, dragging a pair of Harald’s Riders of Morkai with them. Of the rest of the twin packs, however, there was no sign.

  Frostclaw was embedded in the stony earth a few yards from the deep furrow that marked Sven’s brutal landing. The Wolf Lord limped to the axe and tugged it free, absently noting the injuries scrolling across his visor. A twisted right calf and two fractured ribs, along with a sprained left hand. He tried to flex it but could not. Pain flared momentarily before it was overwhelmed by the stimms pumping through his body. He gritted his fangs. Focus.

  The edge of the crater where the keep had once stood was smoking. Sven hefted his frost axe and limped towards it. He heard Olaf call out behind him as the Bloodguard gathered his wits, but he ignored him. His wounds throbbed, but he ignored them too. He had to know.

  His jump pack recharged with a ping, its rune blinking green again. He reached the crater’s lip, mounting the rubble of its outer edge with some difficulty. Beyond, he found himself looking down into a tangled bowl of wreckage, the keep’s remains melted and fused together by raw heat.

  At its centre stood Infurnace.

  At first Sven thought the daemon had been petrified. It stood with its arms wide, its flesh now ashen and stiff, its wings gone. Like some nightmarish statue, it reigned in silence over the devastation surrounding it, a testimony to total annihilation in a galaxy of eternal war.

  Then it moved, its horned head turning fractionally to face Sven, ash drifting from it. The Wolf Lord saw the fires that still smouldered, deep in the cracked pits of its eyes.

  Sven howled, and triggered Longleap. The pack flared in harmony with the Firehowler’s rage, launching him at full turbo into the pit on a pillar of fire. Infurnace moved, but only slightly, as though battling its own paralysis, parts of its burned form breaking and crumbling. It could not stop the Wolf, not now. Sven struck it from above, boots-first, the impact shattering whatever remained of the daemon’s spine. In a great cascade of ash and sparking embers he crashed through the greater daemon, and Svellgard’s cruel wind finally whipped its remains away. For a moment, the Wolf Lord’s advanced hearing detected the distant echo of an angry roar. Then the last of the dust settled, and all was still.

  Sven rose from his crouch amidst the wreckage, and turned slowly back towards the crater lip. The crack in his fused ribs ached. Harald, Olaf, and the surviving Bloodguard were standing looking down at him, splattered in grime, blood and ichor. Sven bared his fangs.

  ‘Find out whose ship did this,’ he snarled, pointing at the rubble beneath him.

  Iron Requiem, in high orbit above Svellgard

  The machine-spirit of Iron Requiem thrilled with the knowledge of another successful strike. Hardwired into the ancient warship via his command throne, Iron Captain Terrek felt the ship’s exaltation as his own. It brought joy to a soul that had not experienced such an emotion in over a century, momentarily warming cold synth-skin and making the Iron Hand’s autoheart thud a little faster. For a moment – just a fraction of a second – the Iron Captain remembered what it had been like to be human.

  And then the moment passed, a statistical anomaly, subsumed and made irrelevant by the cold, hard reality of the present. The Space Marine shifted in his throne, data cables rattling. It would not do to become so engrossed in the triumphs and failings of his own flagship, no matter how tempting. As much as it vexed him, his duties demanded more than a purely machine instinct.

  Still, the exhilaration was not entirely misplaced. The lance strike had been accurate to a thousandth of a degree, a noteworthy achievement even for the Requiem’s venerable targeting systems. It had also resulted in the annihilation of the target. The heat signature being emitted by the neverborn entity no longer registered on the
Requiem’s powerful augurs. The flow of information Terrek was constantly receiving via his auto-senses estimated that fatal collateral damage consisted of no more than two to three dozen individuals and some rockcrete and plasteel command structures. Again, for a lance strike into the heart of a contested battlefield, it was an excellent final result. One to be replicated, and swiftly.

  Terrek requested further data. It flowed to him without hesitation, ramping up his sensory input, his mind a blur of scrolling, ever-changing digits and statistical readouts. Beneath the frenetic activity of his neural nodes, his deeper consciousness swam, torpid, heavy and cold. He would like – it considered – to petition the Iron Council for a transferral to the position of Master of the Fleet. The current Master was reaching the end of his independent productivity, weighed down as he was by almost half a millennium of augmentations. Given his experience and machine-bred aptitude in the field, Terrek considered the likelihood of the success of his application to be as high as seventy-eight per cent.

  Such thoughts did not register with the main thrust of the Iron Captain’s attention. He was busy communing with the other ships of the fleet, touching upon their machine-spirits directly without having to waste time going through the tedium of vox-channels and the sluggishness of fleshy minds, so prone to misunderstanding and obstinacy. There could be no delay. They had to strike, as the old Medusan phrase went, while the iron still burned. He estimated a window of opportunity no wider than a few minutes, after which the optimality of a full-scale orbital bombardment would begin to decrease.

  As though in answer to his thoughts, a worrisome miscalculation reared its ugly head amidst the stream of data codes. Something nagged in the Iron Captain’s ear. It took him a moment to realise it was the click of his personal vox. A transmission.

  As though from a dream, the drifting, distant voice of his vox seneschal reached him. He dismissed the tiny man with a single, raised silver digit, already aware of the contents of his message.