Tyrant of the Hollow Worlds Read online

  The corvids came less frequently now, with their reports from the Cadians, Jandarme and Lastrati Guard units still at large on worlds tainted by the Red Corsairs. Pranix had more direct contact with the Space Wolves moving out into the field, as the Fenrisians had fully functional comms protected from Red Corsairs scrapcode by the powerful blessings and wards of their Iron Priests, but the Space Wolves had yet to reach enemy territory and so had little to report beyond their own movements.

  While they secured the throne world, they waited for news from the front.

  The great, single continent on Hacasta, the one lumpen block of ice-covered dry land on a world characterised mainly by frozen seas where icebergs broke against each other, was a freezing wasteland, a lifeless expanse that few living things could survive, and which required great preparation and resources for human beings to traverse.

  To step through the Archway from the damp but entirely habitable marshes of Trincul was to plunge into a world of inhospitable ice, the relentless cold attempting to steal the breath straight out of a person’s lungs.

  Throughout the Hollow Worlds, Hacasta was generally regarded as hell.

  ‘It’s like being home!’ exclaimed Sindri, looking out over the icy wastes as he jumped down from the Rhino.

  They had made camp near to the Archway from Trincul, in one of the more bearable parts of Hacasta, where the heat from nearby hot springs allowed some degree of human activity to go on. They were at the edge of a supply station where vehicles were being refuelled, near a frozen lake.

  Sindri looked down into its waters longingly.

  ‘I imagine there are some truly appalling beasts lurking in such dark depths,’ he said. ‘Who wants to lose this power armour and have a swim? I want to strangle some eight-eyed fish that has never seen daylight.’

  ‘Your valour in the face of monsters that exist in your imagination does you credit,’ said Anvindr, walking out onto the icy ground. ‘But we have bigger beasts to hunt.’

  ‘Aye, that is certainly true,’ said Sindri.

  Traitor Marines. Anvindr himself had found the thought taking him aback occasionally, since they had discovered who had invaded the Hollow Worlds.

  It was not that they were afraid – the Sky Warriors only let themselves experience fear around the hearth, telling their accounts – or that they were unaware of the existence of Traitor Marines, simply that they found the blasphemy of Space Marines turning against the Emperor, their leader and the distant genetic ancestor of all their kind, hard to stomach.

  Such enemies did not just need to be defeated, or even killed. Their presence needed to be struck out of existence, a blasphemy scoured from the surface of the universe.

  Traitor Marines. The thought was repellent, an abomination. Anvindr realised that one of his gauntleted hands was clenched in anger.

  He would enjoy killing these traitors, but sadly the privilege of striking Huron’s army head on would be denied to Anvindr and his pack, at least for now. The Space Wolves’ transport capabilities had been devastated by the Alixind Campaign, and there was a shortage of Rhinos and the other hardy vehicles required to cross the wastes and intercept the enemy.

  Folkvar’s tanks would travel as the crow flies – an expression exceptionally appropriate, considering the Lastrati’s use of such birds as spies and messengers – to an icy plain between two dagger-like mountain ranges, the battlefield where the Space Wolves would intercept the Corsairs before they reached the Archway to Karstveil.

  It was a fast, hasty strike against unknown numbers of enemies in hostile conditions, in which many of them would surely die.

  While Folkvar led this strike, the rest of the Space Wolves and Tallarns would travel within the train-like vehicles that ran across the ridges within the Hollow Worlds, to a location near the Archway between Hacasta and Kerresh. From there, they would march towards the Archway, breaking the traitors’ foothold on Hacasta through swift, stealthy attacks, interrupting any supply lines, before launching an attack through the Archway itself and on to Kerresh.

  Both assaults were part of the same strategy, both would undermine the enemy, but Anvindr envied those who went with Folkvar, who would do battle against overwhelming odds. That would be a battle to be retold in the sagas.

  At some point in the distant past, so it was said, the climate of Hacasta had collapsed, causing great disruption. The planet had been thrown into an endless ice age, but in one small area volcanoes had erupted from the ground. The logic of this was baffling – how could a world without a core have such phenomena? – but the volcanoes existed nonetheless, another example of the Hollow Worlds operating by rules no human could hope to comprehend.

  The Ecclesiarchy, as was their perverse tendency, had interpreted the existence of this warm, highly unstable part of the planet as the Emperor’s blessing, and built a series of cathedrals and monasteries in the volcanic region. From these great houses of faith came the preachers and monks who brought righteous terror upon the populations of all the Hollow Worlds. That they trained for holy service in an area where thousands of their kind had been killed by random lava flows in the past was a testament to the strength of their faith.

  The holy men produced by the seminaries at the feet of the volcanoes were called the Burning Priests.

  Anju Badya and her Rough Riders were told this story as they camped overnight on the blackened volcanic rock, a brief few hours of rest before they were loaded, along with their steeds, upon the tracked transports that would allow them to accompany the Space Wolves tanks in the next part of their trek.

  The tale was told by one of their Lastrati guides – most instrumentation seemed to fail altogether on Hacasta, a reason most travel on the planet went via the far longer, but more navigable sea routes rather than across the wastes – and while the cathedrals were mere spires in the distance, Badya had no reason to disbelieve the man’s tale.

  The risk of death in a warm climate was at least preferable to the endless chill out in the wastes. The Tallarns had already set out from the encampment a number of times since the strike force came through the Archway to Hacasta, spreading out beyond the volcanic regions to scout for enemy activity.

  Badya had taken her turn scouting. She had seen nothing – as their intelligence indicated, the enemy had no presence this far away from their incursion point around the Archway to Kerresh – but the experience had been hazardous nonetheless. Even under layers of protective clothing, the chill had reached to Badya’s bones, which was why she warmed herself so close to the fire now.

  The Space Wolves didn’t appear to notice the piercing cold, and many of them seemed more content than she had ever seen them, as much as such restless, aggressive beasts could be said to be content.

  Any levity ceased when Folkvar passed. The great master of tanks had become something of a legend during the Alixind Campaign. Old, a Long Fang in the Space Wolves lexicon, Folkvar had crawled out of so many wrecked tanks in his long life he was practically a tank himself, bulky metal limbs augmenting his Terminator armour, his helmet welded into a heavy apparatus that covered his shoulders, the faceplate grilled and shovel-shaped like the front of a Vindicator.

  It was Folkvar who led them now. The Tallarns, fleet as they were on their horses, would be a useful distraction while Folkvar’s tanks pounded the enemy. Flanked by Iron Priests, Folkvar clunked around the encampment, barking orders for repairs and maintenance to be conducted. No vehicle would disgrace him when they drove out tomorrow.

  And tomorrow the Tallarns and their mounts would go with the Space Wolves, humans and animals crammed together in stinking pens aboard their transports, waiting to be let out onto the frozen plains of the wastes, to strike as hard and fast as they could.

  That was tomorrow. For now, Badya and the riders would feed their steeds, watch the fires of the burning mountains and wait for dawn.

  From a tower near the Ar
chway that led from Kerresh to Hacasta, Garreon looked out across the Red Corsairs forces building there, at the army of mortal soldiers, slaves and followers they had amassed. A sea of humanity turned to Chaos by his own influence, as well as that of the Red Corsairs’ corrupting presence. Some amongst the throng were already showing the signs of blessed mutation, indicating their commitment to the faith.

  Many of them would soon die. Garreon had led the expedition to capture the Archway, including the Hacastan side of the divide, and knew that these mortals, with their crude tattoos of heretical symbols and makeshift weaponry, were not prepared for the harsh environment of Hacasta, for the relentless cold.

  To Garreon, the ice winds of Hacasta were merely an inconvenience.

  To these mortals, they would be fatal. They had little armour. Their converted vehicles, while augmented with weapons, were not environmentally sealed to keep the weather out. As these mortals drove in the shadow of the galleons, crossing the plains of Hacasta to reach the Archway to Karstveil in optimum time, they would freeze over, their hearts stopping, their bodies left to be buried in snow drifts.

  Garreon knew this for a fact. He had conducted extensive tests on mortals and their tolerance to extremes of temperature, and no level of fanaticism or faith could halt the ravages of hypothermia.

  Not that he cared. They were mortals; to die for their betters was what they were good for. It provided some purpose to their short lives. He could always round up more from the Hollow Worlds the Corsairs had already conquered.

  Garreon acknowledged that a mortal army was a necessity. The Red Corsairs were powerful but few, with newcomers defecting from other warbands only matching the deaths in their ranks.

  One Corsair could level a city, given the correct weaponry and opposing even the most well-armed mortals. As a warband, they could raze a planet.

  But to conquer a system of worlds, to hold territory and advance beyond it? This required sheer numbers, a growing infrastructure of followers and fellow travellers to solidify the occupation. In other words, mortals.

  The stupidity of these mortals, relative to their masters, was also an asset, the haze of wilful ignorance that welled from the intensity of their newly discovered faith. These mortals, who fell to their knees before the lowliest ranking Red Corsair, expected nothing of Huron Blackheart, and had no point of comparison for his current behaviour.

  The Red Corsairs had other expectations. Rage and instability were normal for Huron Blackheart, but the periods of seclusion he had recently undertaken were not. The Corpsemaster, along with Valthex and Huron’s innermost circle of sorcerers, had zealously guarded the truth of Huron’s current condition, the instability that threatened to pitch him into mindless daemonhood.

  But the Red Corsairs were by nature treacherous, paranoid and ambitious, highly attuned to frailty or uncertainty, even in one so powerful as Huron Blackheart. Those more void-attuned amongst their ranks may even have been able to sniff out this… illness.

  All this, while their forces had been spread thin across multiple worlds. Plenty of time away from the eyes of their leader, plenty of time for treachery to fester.

  There was danger, here, but opportunity also. While Huron led his army to Karstveil, Garreon would remain behind, and would likely witness any growing tensions in the Tyrant’s absence.

  He would need to take the measure of the situation very carefully as the days unfolded, and act with the same surgical precision he applied to his experiments.

  Above the massing army of Huron Blackheart, a corvid circled, its implanted, pict-capturing artificial eye looking down on the forces below. It made a wide arc over the massed Corsairs and mortal slaves, the galleons and the tanks, then made to fly back through the Archway to Hacasta.

  A sniper’s bullet hit it in the torso, detonating and leaving nothing but a thin spray of blood, scraps of flesh, black feathers and metal filings, most of which were carried away on the winds.

  ‘One less spy for the lord inquisitor,’ said Wuhrsk, lowering the long-barrelled rifle. He was standing in the centre of Huron’s massed army, and no one, Red Corsair or human, paid any attention to him firing into the air.

  ‘It could just have been a bird,’ replied Malinko. ‘Although, I would understand if you just didn’t like birds.’ He paused. ‘I don’t like birds.’

  ‘It wasn’t just a bird,’ said Wuhrsk, detaching the hugely extended barrel. ‘Normal birds don’t fly in the pattern required to assemble a grid of picts covering this entire area.’

  Malinko shrugged. ‘I still don’t like birds.’

  ‘You don’t have to like the birds,’ said Rotaka. ‘Just shoot them when you get the chance. Lord Huron’s orders.’

  ‘I don’t like them,’ said Malinko. ‘Doesn’t mean I want to waste a shell on them.’

  ‘Yours is not to question,’ snapped Rotaka. ‘Just to obey.’

  Malinko shrugged again.

  It was minor insolence, Rotaka knew that, nothing on the scale of treachery for those who had rejected their God-Emperor to embrace Chaos, but these minor incidents were becoming more and more persistent. Not just from loudmouths like Malinko, but among the rank and file of the Red Corsairs. Subtly, authority was being challenged.

  This discontent was yet to be crushed. Huron’s forces heeded the call, coming together at the Archway, preparing to move out to Hacasta, yet Huron himself was virtually absent, sequestered within his personal quarters on one of the galleons. In his absence, dissent was growing.

  Before, Rotaka would not have hesitated to strike down any dissenter, but now he held back. After what he had seen… He had tried to dismiss it as a brief vision, some side effect of drinking from the Cup of Blessings, but it all fit too well.

  He had not mentioned what he had seen to anyone, but still he could see a restlessness amongst the Red Corsairs. Away from the controlled hostility of ship-to-ship raids, and the personal fiefdom of their base within the Eye of Terror, the freedom that they had tasted within the Hollow Worlds, of conquering and dominating mortals, of being gods amongst men… it was intoxicating.

  It was home. Rotaka realised he had not felt such freedom since the glory days of Badab, before they were driven out, before they even were the Red Corsairs.

  To not be a scavenger, but to rule over worlds.

  If Huron Blackheart simply wished to strip the Hollow Worlds of whatever he needed to ensure his recovery, Rotaka did not know how the ranks of the Red Corsairs would react. He did not know how he would react, he who had sacrificed so much already out of loyalty to the once Lufgt Huron.

  And so, when Malinko spoke out of turn, Rotaka stayed his hand, and did nothing.

  By the time the army of Huron Blackheart rolled out of the Archway onto the surface of Hacasta, Garreon’s raiding parties had already razed the complex that surrounded the Archway.

  The Red Corsairs and their mortal slaves had taken hammers and explosives and fire to everything, demolishing every building, crushing it to create a smooth entry ramp for what would emerge from the Archway.

  They left a small city reduced to flames dancing across burning rubble, and those in turn were extinguished by the gently falling snow, until all that was left was a white expanse across which Red Corsairs and heavily wrapped human soldiers patrolled back and forth.

  These patrols ceased as a dark shape began to emerge from the Archway, half the height of the great arch itself, a galleon of Chaos rolling on huge wheeled tracks. Its darkened bulk creaked and groaned as it pushed between the worlds, a shifting black monolith to contrast with the endless white.

  As the galleon rolled out onto the wastes of Hacasta, the master of that galleon watched from the prow as smaller vehicles emerged from the Archway too, swarming around the galleon like greedy fish following a great whale, hoping to feed on any scraps it left behind.

  Huron Blackheart looked out across t
he wastes, his solitary organic eye unblinking, staring out into the relentless cold.

  He emerged out of seclusion not to give a speech to his army as they drove out to conquer a new world, nor to give any specific orders. He simply stood silently, observing, as if he could see whatever distant objective he sought, whole worlds away.

  One final day passed.

  Lord Dumas Cheng felt some sense of personal contentment now that he had returned to the Gatehouse on Ressial with Pranix’s forces at his back. To walk the corridors that so many system governors had before him, to look out from the Gatehouse’s windows to see Space Wolves, Adeptus Astartes no less, marching past.

  With these Space Wolves and the inquisitor at his side, surely Ressial would be secure? And from the secure base of Ressial they would take back his Hollow Worlds from the traitors before any even set foot on the throne world. The Hollow Worlds would endure, as they had for so many millennia. Yes, they would.

  Cheng found the inquisitor in his war room. Pranix was staring at his charts, but his eyes were unfocused, as if he were looking at something other than the view.

  ‘Inquisitor Pranix?’ asked Cheng.

  ‘It’s not enough,’ said Pranix, not looking at Cheng as he spoke.

  ‘I’m sorry, lord inquisitor?’ asked Cheng. ‘What is insufficient?’

  ‘Information,’ said Pranix. ‘The supply of intelligence is running dry. I know that the enemy have consolidated their forces – I suspect they’re on the move, but…’

  He let the sentence trail off, waving his hand in a jerky, frustrated gesture, as if trying to pull the answer from himself and cast it into the room.

  ‘The corvids must have been spotted and destroyed,’ said Cheng. ‘It was to be expected. We still have scouts on the ground and other channels, albeit slower ones. Once the Space Wolves have made contact, they will doubtless report back with more accurate intelligence.’