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[Space Wolf 06] - Wolf's Honour
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A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL
WOLF’S HONOUR
Space Wolf - 06
Lee Lightner
(An Undead Scan v1.0)
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred
centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne
of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the
gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his
inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly
with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the
Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are
sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his
eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested
miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their
way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the
Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on
uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the
Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-
warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial
Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant
Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to
name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely
enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens,
heretics, mutants — and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold
billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody
regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times.
Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has
been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of
progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future
there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars,
only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the
laughter of thirsting gods.
PROLOGUE
Heart of the Wolf
The four Thunderhawks swept in at full power with the sun of Hydra Hydalis at their backs, plunging like a sheaf of iron tipped spears at the dark leviathan drifting before them. If someone — or something — on the space hulk was watching for signs of attack, Ragnar Blackmane wanted to mask their approach until the last possible moment, concealing their emissions amid the raging solar winds given off by the system’s three suns.
It hung in the void like the pitted shard of a broken world. Ridges of stone, plains of ice and towers of trapped metal stretched for more than ten kilometres, dwarfing all but the largest of Imperial battleships. And not the biggest of its kind by any stretch, Ragnar thought grimly, studying its ominous bulk through the viewports of the lead Thunderhawk’s command deck.
Space hulks were the flotsam and jetsam of the warp, or so the theory went, drifting in and out of the Immaterium as though carried on an invisible tide. Many were nothing more than hunks of lifeless rock, perhaps torn from worlds by the teeth of warp storms in ages past. Others, however, were studded with the hulls of entombed starships, some of them tens of thousands of years old and not all of them human in design. Such discoveries were legendary; often they contained treasure troves of lost technology and xenos lore.
Sometimes they also carried horrors hidden deep within their decks: foul alien raiders, hordes of twisted mutants, or worse.
When the space hulk first arrived at the edge of the system almost eight standard months ago the handful of decrepit ships that comprised the Hydalis system defence squadron drew close enough to perform a series of long-range auguries. Not long afterwards, the alarm had gone out via astropath, and three months later Fenris sent its answer.
Now all that stood between the oncoming hulk and the forty-five billion Imperial citizens of Hydra Cordalis was Ragnar Blackmane and his small company of Wolves.
The harsh light of Hydalis’s primary gave the notional prow of the hulk a bleached out, blue-grey cast. Tendrils of steam wreathed the rocky surface as pockets of trapped ice boiled away beneath the suns’ harsh glare. Here and there, the light flared painfully bright along a spar of metal or a shard of jagged hull plating. Abyssal shadows pooled in the depths of ancient impact craters. They seemed to shift with the changing position of the Thunderhawk, like the multiple eyes of some vast predator. The thought left a cold feeling in the Wolf Lord’s gut. Ragnar was first and foremost a son of Fenris, and his people had a healthy dread for the horrors of the deep.
Baring his fangs in a silent snarl, Ragnar surveyed the red-lit interior of the command deck. It was a cramped space at the best of times, the pilot and co-pilot side-by-side at the forward end of the compartment. A master tech-priest and the senior augur operator situated directly behind them. The two bondsmen were fitted in bulky, armoured flight suits that made them look slope-shouldered and apelike, but Ragnar’s power armoured bulk loomed head and shoulders above them all. With the Wolf Lord standing at the back of the compartment the atmosphere was nearly claustrophobic, but the crew did their level best to go about their work as though Ragnar wasn’t there.
The Wolf Lord turned his gaze to the augur operator at his right. “Any change?” he asked.
“None, lord,” the crewman replied, never taking his eyes from the wavering lines on the augur screens before him. The operator reached up with a gloved hand and made a minute adjustment to a set of brass fronted dials. “No engine heat or augur signals. It’s drifting at a constant rate, heading for the centre of the system.”
“Any power emissions at all?” Ragnar inquired.
The crewman shook his head. “None so far,” he said. “We’ll know more as we get closer.”
Ragnar nodded thoughtfully, and then addressed the pilot. “Where is the hull that the defence ships spotted on their augurs?”
The pilot glanced over his shoulder at the Wolf Lord; like Ragnar, the Space Wolf wasn’t wearing a helmet. Bright blue eyes glittered beneath a pair of shaggy red eyebrows, and a web of fine scars indented the pale skin of his right cheek. “We’ll find it on the dorsal side of the hulk, lord,” the pilot said in a rumbling voice, “roughly amidships, so they said. We’ll be there in another few minutes.” Then he turned back and keyed the vox-bead behind his ear. “Jotun flight: approach pattern Epsilon,” the pilot growled, “and Snorri, keep your fat arse tucked into formation this time. If you get shot down again you’re walking back to Fenris!”
Ragnar couldn’t hear Snorri’s reply, but the flight leader let out a booming laugh and pushed the throttles forward. The three other Thunderhawks in the flight shook out into a rough arrowhead formation, and their thrusters flared blue-white as they began the final phase of their approach.
The Wolf Lord shifted his weight and reached for a nearby stanchion as the assault craft pulled into a climb that carried them over the hulk’s bulbous prow at a distance of less than a hundred metres. Jumbled plains of rock and twisted metal flashed by underneath the Thunderhawk’s nose. Ragnar caught fleeting glimpses of broken hulls jutting from the surface: here the curved bow of an Imperial merchant ship, there the saw-toothed profile of an ork raider. Once he thought he caught the dull sheen of yellowed bone encased in a steaming sheet of ice.
Then he saw it, like a dark cathedral rising from a broken field of stone. “There, off to starboard,” Ragnar said, pointing just to the right of their current course.
“That’s it!”
“Where?” the pilot
said, peering into the darkness. Then he straightened in his seat. “Ah, yes. I see it now.”
The ancient warship rose from the centre of the hulk as though it had taken shape around her. Plains of broken stone stretched away on all sides, rising almost to the level of her dorsal turret deck. Her buttressed command bridge stood straight and tall, still remarkably intact after more than four thousand years. The prow of the Imperial battleship was almost completely buried, but Ragnar saw that instead of the customary eagle’s head at its crown there rose the figure of an armoured warrior, sword and shield held ready.
The tech priest shifted in his seat and pulled a thick, leather-covered tome from a satchel tucked underneath his console. The priest flipped through the yellowed pages, comparing the winged statue on the warship with the images pictured in the book. Suddenly he sat upright. “Here it is,” he said, his voice tinged with awe. “She’s the Dominus Bellum. One of Vandire’s ships, according to the text. Disappeared right after the battle of Ophelia VII.”
Ragnar studied the derelict carefully. The condition of the ancient battleship was crucial to his plans. As soon as he’d received the report from the Hydalis defence squadron he knew that his lone strike cruiser, the Stormwolf, had no chance of destroying the hulk on its own. If the Dominus Bellum’s reactors were still intact, however, it was possible they could destroy the drifting hulk from within.
“Any power readings?” the Wolf Lord asked.
The augur operator studied his screens and shook his head. “No lord. It’s… wait!” He began tuning a set of dials, and the lines on one of the screens suddenly spiked. “I’m picking up energy spikes along the dorsal hull and z-band augur signals!”
“Morkai’s teeth!” the pilot cursed, grabbing for his mic. “Jotun flight! Evasive action!”
Just as he spoke, Ragnar saw pinpricks of fire flash and stutter along the length of the battleship’s upper deck, and suddenly the Thunderhawk was engulfed in nets of tracer fire and blasts of explosive shells. Hammer blows rang against the Thunderhawk’s armoured hull, and the Wolf Lord was thrown forward as the assault ship dived even closer to the hulk’s treacherous hull. The other Thunderhawks of Jotun flight followed suit, smoke streaming from minor hits along their fuselages and wings.
Ragnar tightened his grip on the stanchion as the Thunderhawk plunged through the chaotic storm of fire. The battleship’s defensive turrets blazed away at the oncoming assault ships, filling the void with a wall of energy bolts, shells and streams of high-velocity slugs. Shrapnel from near misses raked at the Thunderhawk’s flanks, and a blow like a Titan’s fist smote the craft on the starboard side. Lurid red icons flashed urgently on the tech-priest’s console, and the young crewman began flipping switches hurriedly as he whispered a prayer of salvation to the Omnissiah.
The Wolf Lord growled under his breath. The plan had been to try and find an intact hangar deck to land on, but that was out of the question now. Ragnar realised that any hope of a rapid and orderly sweep of the derelict had just been thrown out of the airlock. He reached forward with his free hand and gripped the pilot’s shoulder. “Full assault profile!” he yelled. “Get us on board any way you can.”
Nodding his head, the pilot keyed his vox-bead to relay orders to the flight. Another blow shook the assault ship, and Ragnar’s keen nose caught the smell of burning circuitry. Quick as he could, the Wolf Lord turned and stepped through the rear hatchway, heading down the ladder beyond to the assault bay where his Wolf Guard and the company’s priests waited.
Ragnar dropped down to the metal clad deck with a clang. The cavernous assault bay, large enough for thirty fully-armed Space Marines, was crowded with ten warriors in massive Tactical Dreadnought armour. Though slow and ponderous, the ancient suits of Terminator armour were ideal for the close confines of a space hulk’s passageways, and Ragnar had brought every one of the ancient suits he could muster. Power fists flexed and armoured heads swivelled to regard the Wolf Lord, and a chorus of rough howls greeted Ragnar from the Wolf Guard’s vox-units. Jurgen, the company’s Iron Priest, waited at the far end of the bay, flanked by four powerful thrall servitors. Jurgen was locked into his assault cradle like the other Wolves, his helmeted head bowed as he read a litany of protection from a small, metal clad book in his gauntleted hands.
Next to Ragnar, an adamantine helmet worked in the shape of a massive wolf skull turned slightly to regard him. Pale golden lenses the colour of lupine eyes studied him from the depths of the helm’s black oculars. The vox-unit on the Wolf Priest’s Terminator suit crackled. “I take it the hulk is hostile,” he said laconically.
Ragnar chuckled, stepping to his assault cradle and reaching for his waiting helmet. Normally he hated wearing the thing, preferring to feel the thunder of battle and the hot touch of blood on his skin. That sort of thing required air, however, and there was no way to know if they’d find any inside the battleship’s hull. “Frankly, it never occurred to me that it might be otherwise,” he replied. “I didn’t expect this hot a reception, though.”
He pulled the helmet on and locked it into the adamantine gorget. There was a moment of darkness, and then, immediately, the helm’s optical systems flickered into life. Icons and readouts shone in dull colours at the corners of his vision, showing the status of his suit and those of his pack. With a murmured command, he tapped into the Thunderhawk’s command channel and received status icons from the rest of the company as he locked himself into the assault cradle. The Wolf Lord noted grimly that three icons in Hogun’s Blood Claw pack were flashing amber. Jotun Four’s been hit hard, Ragnar thought grimly. Three men out of action and we haven’t even reached the target yet. An ill omen.
A massive impact struck the rear quarter of the assault ship, hard enough to throw Ragnar against the cradle’s restraints. His stomach lurched for half an instant as the whole ship seemed to slew sideways. The battle lanterns flickered. In the darkness, one of the Wolf Guard threw back his head and howled like a fiend. Fist and sword clashed against armour, and rough voices barked out battle chants as old as Fenris itself. Ragnar bared his teeth in the close confines of his helmet and felt his blood burn.
Then there was a thunderous roar, and the Thunderhawk shook from stem to stern. A bright red icon flashed a warning but Ragnar already knew what was coming. “Here we go!” he bellowed, and the assault craft touched down on the battleship’s hull with a bone-crushing impact and a scream of tortured metal.
Ragnar rebounded from the cradle restraints and smashed a fist against the quick release. With a murmured benediction, he queried the Thunderhawk’s machine-spirit and gauged the position of his forces. Jotun flight had broken formation at the flight leader’s order and their high-speed approaches had scattered them in a wide arc across the battleship’s dorsal hull. Jotun Four was closest to Ragnar’s Thunderhawk, landing parallel to the Wolf Lord’s assault ship almost 750 metres away. Jotun Two had landed in the shadow of one of the battleship’s massive dorsal lance turrets, well over a thousand metres distant. There was no way to tell by the readout if the assault ship would be able to take off once more. Jotun Three was nowhere to be seen, the Thunderhawk’s icon conspicuously absent from the readout.
Ragnar bit back a sulphurous curse. He gestured to Jurgen. “Ventral breach,” he ordered, and the Iron Priest leapt into action. Slipping out of his assault cradle, Jurgen moved nimbly among the hulking Terminators and knelt before a hatch on the deck in the centre of the bay. The Iron Priest’s voice rolled sonorously from the vox-unit of his ornately worked power armour, asking forgiveness from the ancient spirits of the Dominus Bellum, and then pronouncing the Benediction of the Fiery Breach as he flipped open an access panel beside the hatch. Jurgen lifted a heavy lever, and the shaped melta charges attached to the ventral breaching unit detonated with a leaden thump. There was a shrieking of incandescent gases as the focused plasma charge drove like a molten spear tip through more than half a dozen metres of heavy armour and pierced the battleship’s hull.
The company’s Wolf Scouts and Leif’s Grey Hunter pack aboard Jotun Two checked in first. “We’re going in now,” the Wolf Guard pack leader reported. “I mark your position at twelve hundred metres. Hogun’s pack is closer. Do you want me and Petur to link up with the Blood Claws first?”
“You look to your own pack, Leif,” Hogun cut in. The Blood Claw pack leader’s voice was rough-edged with fury. “The Blood Claws hunt alone!”
The vehemence in Hogun’s voice surprised Ragnar. The Wolf Guard had proven to be a cold, clear-eyed warrior, which was why he’d been given command of the hot-headed Blood Claws in the first place. “What’s the status of your pack, Hogun?” Ragnar snapped.
“Three brothers are badly wounded. They have slipped into the Red Dream,” Hogun snarled. Space Marines, with their enhanced physiology and redundant vital organs, were extraordinarily difficult to kill.
Space Marines in the field who had been incapacitated by their wounds often went into a life-sustaining form of suspended animation until they could receive proper treatment. “A burst of shells tore through the assault bay,” the pack leader continued. “The rest of us got away with minor wounds.”
“Does anyone know what happened to Jotun Three?” Ragnar asked.
“They were hit hard, just short of the target,” Leif reported. “I can’t be certain, but I think they overshot and landed on the starboard side of the ship.”
“Have they contacted you?”
“No, lord. It’s possible their vox system was knocked out. As I said, they were hit hard.”