Tyrant of the Hollow Worlds Read online

  ‘That will be too late,’ said Pranix. ‘To know the numbers of the enemy on the verge of conflict gives us no advantage at all, and time is very short.’

  ‘You believe the battle will be soon?’ asked Cheng.

  ‘With such fragmentary intelligence it’s hard to make a precise prediction, but I believe our forces will be intersecting with the path of the traitors… now. More or less,’ said Pranix, still staring at the table in front of him.

  ‘Then these traitors will be driven back. They will die for their insolence in invading this system,’ said Cheng.

  ‘Of that we can be certain,’ said Pranix.

  But for once, to Cheng’s ears at least, the inquisitor didn’t sound certain at all.

  Fifteen

  Few living species survived for long on the frozen plains of Hacasta, but the Vostroyan iceworm was one of them.

  Even in deepest hibernation, an iceworm was always sensitive to vibrations in the ice, to the signs of something moving above. Swiftly, the creature would tunnel up to the surface, ready to burst from beneath the ice and sink its sharpened teeth into vulnerable, warm flesh.

  One such worm felt a deep vibration through the icy ground above, and began working its way upwards, wriggling through the packed snow. This prey was large, and approaching at a steady rate. Instinctively, the long iceworm positioned itself in the path of the huge creature and sprang from the ground in one fluid motion, its open mouth striking its target in less than a second.

  The iceworm’s teeth shattered as it tried to bite into the wheeled track of a land galleon. Before it could even recoil the great wheel rolled over the creature, crushing it utterly.

  As the worm’s thin, purple blood seeped out into the snow, the forces of Huron Blackheart rolled on, remorselessly. Ahead lay a range of sheer mountains, and a narrow corridor through which the land galleons of the Red Corsairs could pass.

  Beyond that corridor lay the Valley of Blades.

  The Rout were renowned for their capacity to kill with their bare hands, for the immediacy and ferocity they brought to the act of slaughter. For some who had never set foot on Fenris, who knew only of the Space Wolves by reputation, the existence of armoured divisions amongst the Space Wolves was a curiosity, though few would ever be foolish enough to challenge a Space Wolf on how he waged war.

  For Garik, driver of Folkvar’s command Land Raider Burning Frost, there was no contradiction, no inconsistency. He had first seen the tanks of the Space Wolves as a Blood Claw, and was enraptured by the sight of the great vehicles manoeuvring with the agility of a hunter, gun turrets swinging around to obliterate their targets. To the young Garik the tanks had been more than machines; they were great beasts themselves, animalistic extensions of their drivers.

  To wield a chainsword or axe as an extension of oneself was difficult, but easy to imagine. To come together with others of your pack to control a great machine like a Vindicator tank with the same organic fluidity, to let the warrior spirit flow as naturally through complex controls, was a different order of challenge.

  Greater still was the challenge undertaken by Garik’s commander, Folkvar, to make not just Burning Frost but all the tanks under his command an extension of his will, to lead the vehicles as a pack.

  Folkvar commanded the greatest of respect. So when he chose to speak, the Space Wolves under his command listened. Garik and the ten Space Wolves crammed into the Land Raider’s hold were rapt as Folkvar spoke in his grating, metallic voice.

  ‘We do not command these machines,’ Folkvar said. ‘We are our armour, part of the machine.’ From his command throne he rapped a knuckle against the metal of Burning Frost. ‘The iron guards the Space Wolves within, Frost and Space Wolves together become guardians of the Imperium, of the Emperor’s will, armour made not just from welded metal but from the spirit of the Space Wolves within.’

  It was a lesson Garik had heard many times before, but never tired of. Having risen through the ranks, Folkvar had hammered those who served under him into his own image, brooking no failure. Every tank beneath Folkvar’s command was of a type he had once commanded himself, from the nimble Whirlwinds to brutish Vindicators.

  Now he had the honour of commanding Burning Frost, a monstrous Land Raider with centuries of service to his pack, and Garik had the honour of being Frost’s driver. In preparation for facing the Red Corsairs the Iron Priest had made offerings of flesh to the Frost’s machine-spirit and Garik could feel the tank’s hunger for battle, an aggressive presence pushing at the back of his mind.

  ‘We wait,’ said Folkvar, clearly feeling it too.

  The tank had been still for a while, and looking back from the driver’s seat, Garik could see an exchange of glances between the Space Wolves in the hold questioning why Folkvar had spoken. Only Garik truly understood that Folkvar addressed the machine-spirit of Burning Frost itself.

  Folkvar pressed a rune and spoke into the vox: ‘Whirlwinds, report.’

  They would confront the Red Corsairs at the entrance to the Valley of Blades, a wide-open plain between two ranges of frosty hills covered in spiked ice formations. Those peaks were not entirely impassable, and the four Whirlwind tanks under Folkvar’s command had been deployed to take firing positions overlooking the plains.

  ‘Approaching position,’ voxed Ake, commander of the Whirlwind White Squall, and Garik could hear him speaking through gritted fangs as the Whirlwind painstakingly worked its way up a narrow mountain path. Atgeir, Tempest and Laniger were already in position, and voxed in to say so.

  The Burning Frost, and the other heavy tanks Frozen Blade and Ice Storm were out of sight at the foot of the hills, rolled behind drifts of long-frozen, ancient snow. The four Vindicators, with their short firing range, had been covered with fresh snow and positioned closer to the more easily navigable part of the valley, so that they might get in range quicker. Folkvar had half a dozen Rhinos and a Tallarn company of sixty Rough Riders under his command, all of which had dug themselves in, ready to ambush the Red Corsairs.

  The other commanders reported in. All were moving into position.

  None of them knew exactly the force they were about to face, having only received blurred picts of large, ship-like vehicles and the accompanying tanks and carriers, but the plan was to ambush the first vehicles to enter the valley from a narrow pass at one end.

  ‘Whirlwinds, fire on sight,’ Folkvar ordered over the vox.

  Bringing down the first vehicles in the convoy would create an obstruction and confusion in the enemy ranks. With the convoy bottlenecked at one end of the valley, the Vindicators and other tanks would move in to strike hard and close, driving back the Red Corsairs and causing a rout. The Tallarn Rough Riders would be set loose to bring down any smaller targets, to help hold the line.

  Garik liked this plan. It was simple, an onslaught of measured aggression to rain destruction on the enemy in a swift but lethal strike.

  All that remained was to wait for the enemy to arrive.

  In the command chair of the Burning Frost, Folkvar waited, a man of iron at one with the iron around him.

  Tothsen, shipmaster of the Red Corsairs galleon Implacable Stalker, was a once-human creature riddled with cancerous growths, some of which had their own mouths. As he stood on the bridge of the Stalker, looking over the busy deck to the mountain walls the galleon was passing between, Tothsen was restless. The convoy of vehicles had slowed considerably once they entered the pass between the mountains, the mutated crews of the galleons constantly struggling with the minute course adjustments required to avoid collision with the sheer walls of icy rock on either side, walls that towered over even the land galleons. Behind the Stalker in the convoy was Huron Blackheart’s personal galleon, his flagship, the Unyielding Fist, and Tothsen could imagine the boundless rage the Tyrant would have if he considered the Stalker to be delaying his own progress.

 
He kept his primary mouth shut, but the other mouths on Tothsen’s body were treacherously whispering terrible oaths in an unknown tongue.

  ‘It goes on forever,’ said Tothsen’s comms officer, Skartz.

  Tothsen looked askance at Skartz, whose purple, crab-like head looked like it would crack easily with a solid enough blow. Sometimes Tothsen was tempted to try it.

  ‘If only it did, Master Skartz,’ said Tothsen, his words summoning a laconic courage his other mouths lacked. ‘Soon we will get to the Valley of Blades.’

  ‘Yes, shipmaster,’ said Skartz, but his tiny black eyes showed little understanding.

  Then the dogs will fall upon us, thought Tothsen.

  As he looked out for the entrance to the Valley of Blades ahead, Tothsen kept one hand on the newly installed rune in front of him, and hoped that this latest creation of Lord Valthex would buy them the fighting chance they needed.

  ‘Great Russ,’ said Gosta, driver of the Whirlwind tank White Squall, wrestling with the control runes to stabilise the tank. ‘It would have been easier to climb on foot and pull the Squall up with a rope.’

  ‘You have kept to narrower terrain than this,’ said Ake, the tank’s commander. ‘Remember the trenches of Bendeev? We reached the enemy lines without a scratch from those close walls.’

  ‘Aye,’ replied Gosta. ‘But an error there meant damaged paintwork, not a drop into a ravine.’

  Looking through the narrow slit, Gosta could make out the white expanse of the valley to his left, the white expanse of the ice wall to his right and the thin trail of white that was the path he was driving up ahead. He was of Fenris; he had no fear of snow or ice, but damn did it make navigation difficult.

  Eventually, they found a firing position overlooking the valley. Gosta climbed out to pack snow around the Squall to conceal it while the missile launcher was adjusted to aim at the entrance to the mountain pass below.

  It was from there that Gosta saw the first enemy ship emerge.

  The scattered reports from survivors that had filtered back to the Space Wolves had called these vehicles galleons, and even though they rolled on giant wheeled tracks on land, that was still an accurate description. The nose of the vehicle that emerged could only be described as the prow, a sharp, high-sided hulk of dark, oily, rusted metal that seemed to cut into the white of the valley below. Gosta could see movement on the deck, and knew that those specks were mortals, which only emphasised the hideous scale of the galleon.

  ‘Fire,’ shouted Ake, and the Squall unleashed its ‘teeth’, powerful frag missiles that cut through the thin, freezing air between the Squall and the galleon.

  From his command throne on the Frost, Folkvar watched on his auspex as the frag missiles from the Squall streaked towards the galleon, along with missiles from the three other Whirlwinds planted on high vantage points. There followed a huge explosion, the impact of which was felt through the ground across the entire valley, as smoke billowed out in all directions, temporarily obscuring any view. The noise of the explosion echoed back and forth, causing avalanches and shattering many of the icy blades that gave the valley its name. The vidscreen went white with smoke and powdered snow.

  As the noise receded and the vibration ceased, the traitorous hulk emerged from the smoke, rolling completely on to the floor of the valley and free from the mountain pass. It seemed to be unharmed.

  ‘We’re still alive,’ said Skartz, without any particular emphasis.

  ‘We are for now,’ said Tothsen. His hand was still pressed down on the rune for Valthex’s device. ‘Inform the Unyielding Fist that the fireburst worked.’

  ‘Aye, shipmaster,’ said Skartz, who started relaying the message via the vox.

  The fireburst was a one-shot missile disruption system rigged on the deck of the Stalker, installed on the orders of Valthex on the presumption that the Stalker would come under immediate missile attack when it entered the valley. When activated it had launched bursts of red-hot debris from several launchers on the deck, causing the missiles to explode before hitting the galleon. An ingenious device, but one that could only be used once.

  It would also have been for nought if Tothsen’s crew couldn’t take out the tanks that fired those missiles.

  ‘Gun batteries to port,’ Tothsen shouted. Outside the armoured confines of the bridge, Tothsen could see the crew on deck dodging fragments of burning matter still falling from the sky after the disrupted missile attack. ‘I want that cannon moving too. Pilot, bring us hard to starboard, but don’t lose forward momentum. The sooner we cut the Fist loose the better.’

  Gosta was back at the White Squall’s controls when the las-fire started melting the snow all around the tank.

  ‘Reverse as far as we can,’ shouted Ake over the noise.

  Gosta didn’t answer; he was too busy enacting the order. Whirlwinds were relatively nimble on the worst terrain, but the gears still ground as Gosta threw the tracks into reverse and started rolling backwards from the edge. As the Squall reversed it was out of direct line of sight to the galleon’s deck, and the las-fire, but through the viewing slit Gosta could see las-fire tearing into the mountain side, dislodging chunks of ice and rock that rattled down on top of the tank.

  ‘Are we ready to fire yet?’ Ake snapped.

  ‘Almost ready,’ came a voice from up top.

  ‘All Space Wolves and Tallarn attack,’ ordered Folkvar. ‘I want that galleon taken down.’

  The moment of surprise was gone. The galleon would be targeting the Whirlwinds that attacked it, and if the galleon slid into the valley altogether then Russ knew what horrors would be free to emerge from the mountain pass.

  Garik slammed the acceleration rune and Burning Frost was one of the first tanks to break cover, packed snow falling off the great Land Raider as it rolled out into the valley. From his command throne Folkvar controlled the Godhammer-pattern lascannons, and targeted the galleon. He cursed that he was not yet in range to use them.

  Either side of the Frost, Folkvar could see the smaller, faster Vindicators and the Tallarn Rough Riders edging ahead. Around the valley the Space Wolves and Tallarns were converging on the enemy.

  Folkvar hoped they would be in time.

  ‘We have a target,’ came the shout across the bridge of the Stalker.

  ‘Then don’t wait – fire,’ ordered Tothsen. From the bridge he could see the huge cannon pointing to port.

  While the fragmentation missiles had flown overhead in a graceful arc, the monstrous gun of the Stalker had no such grace or subtlety. It aimed in a straight line, and when it fired it recoiled down tracks on the deck of the Stalker, crushing many of the slaves who had dragged it into place and whipping those who still held its chains off their feet. Tothsen watched impassively as one unfortunate was snapped in half by the whiplash of one chain, while another was flicked off the side of the deck, falling to his death on the icy ground below.

  The kickback shook the Stalker and smoke bloomed across the deck, but the shell was launched.

  For a brief moment, Gosta thought he wasn’t going to die.

  It was less than a second. As he slammed the White Squall into reverse, a giant shell, almost half the size of the Squall itself, cut through the air in front of the tank, and missed.

  Then it hit the mountain wall near to the Squall and exploded, tearing into snow, stone and tank alike. The blast ripped the Squall to pieces, and Gosta, Ake and the crew of the Whirlwind were killed instantly, their flesh and armour reduced to incinerated fragments as an explosion became an avalanche, debris tumbling down into the valley below.

  Sergeant Anju Badya had felt elation as she rode out across the Valley of Blades.

  Between the goggles that protected her eyes from the bitter winds, and the scarves wrapped around her mouth and nose, very little of her skin was exposed to the elements, but the area around her goggles began to sma
rt from the searing cold.

  It hurt, but she didn’t care. She was a Tallarn rider, and this was what she lived for, to ride into battle amongst the rest of her company, dozens of men, women and horses sweeping across the valley.

  Her horse bucked recklessly, giddy with freedom, but Badya pulled on the reins sharply, bringing it into line. Around her, her squad were similarly settling their mounts.

  Anju’s high spirits were shattered as the enemy galleon fired on a high spot up on one side of the valley, reducing a Space Wolves tank to fragments and causing a collapse in the packed snow up the valley’s side.

  ‘Avalanche!’ she shouted as the reverberations echoed across the valley, but the warning shouted down the line was too late for Tallarns riding close to the edge of the valley, who were consumed by a torrent of snow.

  It was a horrible way to die, powdered snow flowing around rider and steed alike, sealing them in while rushing into nostrils and mouths to asphyxiate them, but there was nothing Anju could do. The surviving riders had a bigger problem.

  The galleon was such a simple shape, a blocky hulk of toxic looking dark metal against the constant white around it, that it was hard to get a sense of its size until it began to loom over them.

  ‘Laniger preparing to fire,’ snapped a voice over the vox. ‘Don’t get too close.’

  Once more, missiles streaked across the sky, launched from one of the high-placed Whirlwind tanks. Anju and the others circled their horses as the missiles hit the deck of the galleon. She recognised the shape of them – dragonracers, loaded with poisonous, flaming liquid.

  This time there were no diversions for Tothsen to use. He recoiled from the viewing slits of the Stalker’s armoured bridge as the missiles hit the deck, unleashing a payload of fire that obliterated every living thing out there. Splashes of burning, toxic gloop shot through the viewing slits into the bridge area, catching Tothsen on one arm, causing him to scream and roll on the deck of the bridge, putting out the fire. While he managed to bind the wound tight enough to extinguish the flame, he could feel the corroding liquid eating into his flesh.