After six hours of rest, they broke fast on ration tablets washed down with purified water, and then pushed on deeper into the hulk. Once again the nature of their surroundings changed. The glowglobes became less common, and in many places they had burned out altogether. The shadows became deeper. The guards turned on the beacons on their shoulder pads to give them more light. As yet Ragnar’s altered eyes could still penetrate the gloom easily, but the increasing darkness had a dampening effect on his spirits.
Sometimes, up ahead of them now, he thought he could hear sinister scuttling movements, so faint as to be barely perceptible even to his superhumanly keen ears. He tried telling himself it was rats or some of the huge mutant cockroaches that were all too common in ships like this, but he could not. A quick glance at Sven told him that his fellow Blood Claw was thinking the same thing. He raised his hand and gave the signal for Be careful. From the change in the rhythm of their movement, he knew without looking back that the guards were paying attention.
“Wonder if it’s edible,” Sven said. “I hate bloody food tablets.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” said Ragnar, catching the tension behind his friend’s words.
“You know what I like about you, Ragnar? You always have a stupid answer to whatever I have to say.”
“You know what I like about you, Sven?”
“What?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Like I said before,” Sven snorted, “you missed your calling. You should have been a court jester, not a Space Wolf.”
Ragnar smiled and clutched his weapons tighter. If there was trouble ahead, he was glad Sven was there. Any man who could trade such dumb insults when danger threatened was worth having around.
They moved on through the depths of the great hulk. Ragnar felt as if it were coming alive all around him. He had a sense of ancient evil things waking from long dormancy. Even with his hyper-acute senses he could not quite put a finger on why. There were subtle changes in the scent patterns in the air. The almost subliminal hum of the life support systems had altered. Occasionally he felt vibrations pass through the hull beneath his feet as if some giant were moving or a vast piece of machinery had been activated.
He could tell by the tension of Sven’s body and the subtle alterations of his stance and scent that his fellow Blood Claw felt it too. Sven held his weapons ready and glanced around as if he expected to be called upon to use them at any moment.
Karah Isaan’s words about a new threat coming from the ship that followed them echoed through his mind. Was this sense of something stirring connected with their own presence, trespassing on the ship, or were the two unrelated?
“At the next junction take the passage that slopes down.” Karah’s voice sounded loud and clear over the comm-net earbead.
The tension was starting to drain him. He spoke into the comm-net: “Are we any closer to what we seek, or have we been wandering around in circles?”
“Be patient, Ragnar; we’re getting there,” Karah soothed.
“Thank Russ for that,” Sven muttered.
As they progressed downwards, it became evident that machinery had been switched on. Huge compressors were at work, great flexible accordion tubes expanding and contracting. Mighty pistons pumped up and down. Huge clouds of steam and smoke swirled out of cracked and defective piping.
“What in all the bloody cold hells of Frostheim is going on here?” Sven asked.
“It looks like somebody activated all of this machinery,” Ragnar replied.
“You don’t bloody say,” said Sven. “I mean — why?”
“It could have switched on automatically when we came in. Some ancient devices do that.”
“Or, Ragnar? I hear an ‘or’ in your voice.”
“Or maybe somebody switched it on to provide themselves with cover. Noise, smoke, confusing smells. They will all make it more difficult to spot an ambush.”
“Noise and smoke, yes, I understand. But scents — why that? Surely they can’t know there are Space Wolves on board.”
“Can’t they? Why make that assumption? You are assuming that whoever did it thinks and senses like a human; that may not be the case. Many alien races have made their homes on hulks.”
“You’re not a particularly reassuring man to talk to in a situation like this, Ragnar.”
“This is not a particularly reassuring situation.”
“Aye, you are right there.”
Suddenly the stink that hit his nostrils suggested something that was not even remotely human. The figure emerging from the smoke reinforced this impression.
It was larger than a man and it moved much, much faster. Four huge arms, tipped with monstrous rending claws, swivelled from its shoulders. Row upon row of hideous fangs gleamed in its mouth. A horny shell of armour encased its body. It loped along on clawed and padded feet. Its manner suggested the scuttling of some enormous insect. The memories placed in his brain by the teaching engines told him what it was instantly.
“Genestealer!” Ragnar yelled, taking a bead on the thing with his bolt pistol and squeezing the trigger. Quick as he was, the thing was quicker. It jinked to one side and his shells passed over its head. Ragnar had never seen anything move so swiftly. Its reflexes made his own seem slow by comparison. The fear he had felt earlier returned like a wave of ice running through him and, for one horrible vital moment, he froze. The thing came straight at him and it was on him before he could react. Its weight crashed into him, bowling him over with irresistible force.
In an instant its face was in his, snarling and snapping. He could smell its foetid breath, see the thick, mucus-like saliva dribbling from its mouth. He could feel those impossible strong talons grasp him, and heard his armour begin to crack under the pressure. He knew that his split-second of hesitation was going to cost him his life.
Blood and flesh splattered his face. The blade of a chainsword sheared through chitin an inch before his eyes and the beast stopped moving.
“Get up!” he heard Sven bellow. “We’re under attack.”
Ragnar shook his head and sprang to his feet, throwing the genestealer’s corpse to one side with the force of his movement. He was appalled. In the moment of crisis he had frozen, as he feared he might. Only Sven’s quick thinking had saved him. The fact that he had been surprised by the thing’s speed and strength was no excuse. He was a Space Wolf. Nothing was supposed to be able to take him unprepared.
No sense in worrying about it now, he realised, hearing the padding of dozens of approaching feet, and seeing the monstrous forms of half a dozen genestealers emerge from the smoke. In his state of heightened awareness he noticed that their carapaces were all blotched and cracked. They had an odd, diseased look that differed from the images placed in his brain by the tutelary engines.
The beast within him snarled in fury. He knew that it, too, had been shocked by its near-death, and that its rage was all the stronger because of it. Gratefully Ragnar surrendered to it.
Laser bolts spat over his shoulder as the inquisitors’ guards opened fire. He heard the thunder of bolters as Sergeant Hakon and Inquisitor Sternberg opened up too, and he could hear more bolter fire from the rear. It was Strybjorn and Nils, he realised. The things were attacking from behind them too, then. So these were no mere beasts. An inhuman intelligence was at work here, guiding the attack.
Ragnar raised his pistol and shot. This time his aim was true. The shell passed right through the head of one of the stealers. He howled with satisfied bloodlust and fired again. The stealers were too closely packed to miss, but this time the armour of his target’s carapace partially deflected the shot so that instead of killing it cleanly, it merely removed one of its huge clawed arms. If the creature felt any pain it gave no sign, and it kept on coming.
The smell of burning flesh filled the air as the lasguns bit home. Ragnar could see armour sizzle and liquefy and run under the heat. Still the beasts came on. From behind him came the sound of battle cries and the s
creams of dying men. The smell of spilled entrails and human blood assaulted Ragnar’s nostrils. He knew that behind him the battle had become close and deadly.
The terrible suspicion that at any moment one of the genestealers was going to break through and claw him in the back filled his mind. He dared not look back though, for doing so meant taking his eyes from those swiftly closing inhuman foes. They were so quick that any distraction might prove fatal, and he was not risking such a mistake a second time.
Half the stealers had fallen now but the rest were almost within striking distance. He could hear curses from the guards behind him and sense their fear, and he knew that they would not be much help when the melee came. They were but ordinary men, however well trained, and there was no way they could stand against the fury of the stealers’ charge.
Ragnar did not wait for them to come to him. Filled with the beast’s anger, he sprang forward, swinging his chainsword through a huge arc which ended with it buried in the insect-like skull of one of the stealers. With a reflex like the death strike of a scorpion it lashed out with its claws. Ragnar sprang back but not quickly enough. One of the dying stealer’s talons connected glancingly and the force of the buffet sent him flying backward off-balance to land beside Karah.
Ragnar rolled over, brought his feet below him and regained his balance. He stood in a fighting crouch and had a perfect view of the struggle before him. Sergeant Hakon had joined the melee and Inquisitor Sternberg and Gul were at his side. Together with Sven they fought savagely with the surviving stealers. It was impossible to tell who fought with the greater fury, the humans or the aliens. Such was the savagery of the battle.
Even as he watched, Hakon dubbed one of the genestealers with the butt of his pistol. Bones and armour crunched with the force of the impact, and as the alien beast fell backwards the sergeant decapitated it with one sweep. Sternberg blasted another in the face point blank sending a huge gout of blood and brain and splintered skull everywhere. Gul wrestled with one of the creatures and in a show of near superhuman strength was holding his own.
From out of the corner of his eye, Ragnar saw that one of the stealers had flanked Sven and was about to spring in his back. The Blood Claw was busily engaged by two of the stealers’ brood and could do nothing to stop it. Ragnar growled; it was time to repay his debt.
He leapt forward, landing on the genestealer’s back, just as it had intended to land on his comrade’s. The vile thing began to tumble forward. Ragnar clubbed it on the back of its head with his pistol, smashing through the skull. As it tumbled forward, to sprawl on the deck he brought his heel down on its neck, just as he had seen Gurg do to Lars. Vertebrae snapped as the neck broke. He snapped off a shot over Sven’s shoulder, risking the chance that his battle-brother might move into its way, in order to remove the threat of one of the other monsters facing his friend, then as a last precaution he decapitated the stealer at his feet with his chainsword.
He looked up in time to see Sven finish his last monstrous opponent, and together they sprang to aid Hakon and the others. They chopped into the genestealers in a storm of chainsaw blades and bolter shells, and in moments the conflict was over. From behind him, the sounds of battle had also ceased. Ragnar glanced around.
He could see that Strybjorn and Nils still stood. Their armour was so covered in filth that their Blood Claw emblems were obscured and reeking gore steamed on their carapaces. Around them lay the corpses of dead genestealers — and half a dozen dead humans, all from the ranks of the guards.
“It seems we have repulsed the attack,” said Sternberg, panting hard.
“Yes, but how many more of these dire things lie between us and our target?” Sergeant Hakon asked.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ragnar studied the scene of carnage. The attack from the rear had been the stronger of the two and had inflicted greater casualties. That spoke of a swift, evil intelligence at work. It had struck where they were weakest, not strongest, and it had known enough about them to assault the precise spot. How could that be?
He dismissed the thought as irrelevant. It did not matter how. It just mattered that it had happened. More worrying still, looking back on it, was the fact that he had frozen when attacked. It could have cost him his life, he knew. Worse, it could have cost others theirs. If he was the weak link in the chain, it could have all sorts of consequences. If he had not been there Sven might have fallen, and perhaps the genestealers would have reached Karah. From there, who knew?
In this place, at this time, all of their lives were in each other’s hands. He knew that they all relied on each other, and that the failure of one could easily lead to the doom of them all. He resolved that this was the first and last time he would ever let the others down.
He became aware of the fact that Sven was staring at him. The guilty sense that the other Blood Claw knew his thoughts flooded into Ragnar’s mind.
“What?” he asked savagely.
“Nothing. I was just going to say thank you for saving my damn life, that’s all.”
Ragnar let that sink in for a moment. Sven had not noticed his fear. He thought Ragnar had behaved well. “No. Thank you for saving mine. It would have been the end for me if you hadn’t cut down the genestealer when it was on top of me.”
Sven’s crooked grin lit up his ugly face. “Think nothing of it. I don’t. Having you around makes the rest of us look good. That’s why I did it.”
“Thanks anyway, oh gracious one.” Ragnar felt better already. He glanced around at the others. Sternberg and Karah looked fine, if a little shaken. Sergeant Hakon was spraying synthiflesh on his face to cover a gaping wound. Even as Ragnar watched the artificial skin closed over the gash, sealing and cleansing it. Ragnar knew it was quite a bad wound for the sergeant to need the arcane stuff at all, but if Hakon was in pain, he gave no sign of it. Looking at him, Ragnar wondered how often in his long career Hakon had been wounded. Had he ever felt the way Ragnar did, after taking damage? If so he had not let it affect him too deeply. Ragnar resolved that in future he would be like the sergeant. If Hakon could learn to endure, so could he.
The guards moved around, seeing to their own wounded. Watching them, Ragnar became aware of just how fragile a thing a human being was. The corpses looked pitiful. Some had been split open by the stealers’ claws, reduced to slashed sacks of slimy organs and wet, bloody muscle. Compared to those, some of the others looked strangely rested; their wounds looked minor, so small that they should not have been able to kill a grown man — and yet they had.
The survivors looked tired and weary after a battle that had left him feeling mostly invigorated. He wondered if this was natural for some men, or yet another part of the reconstruction of his body as a Space Marine. He wished there were someone he could ask about these things.
Already Gul, Sternberg and their own corporals were starting to chivvy them into some sort of marching order. Warily Nils and Strybjorn came closer. Ragnar could see that like him they were constantly scanning their surroundings for new threats. Strybjorn’s face was gloomy as always. A bright intense light burned in Nils’s face. He seemed exalted.
“That was a good fight,” he said. “Must have killed about five of the four-armed bastards single-handed. They were all over us for a bit. We showed them back.”
Strybjorn shrugged and glared off into the distance. He seemed possessed by a strange melancholy. At the same time, his scent spoke of a furious excitement that was, if anything, stronger than Nils’.
“We killed a few down here as well,” said Sven. “Would have killed more if bloody Ragnar hadn’t decided to lie down on the floor and have a kip in the middle of the battle.”
“All right! Form up!” Gul yelled. “We’re moving on.”
“We’re getting close now,” Karah said by way of encouragement, though her face gave the lie to her confidence.
“Bet we’ll meet more of those bloody stealers before we get what we’re looking for.”
“They’re what I
’m looking for,” Nils said, as he and Strybjorn hung back to cover the rear.
“Aye, easy for you to say,” muttered Sven. “But it’s Ragnar and me who are on bloody point.”
The inside of the hulk became darker and gloomier. Here and there traces of flesh-like substance became visible on the walls. Ragnar smelled new scents in the air. Traces of something organic. The sort of smells you got when you opened a human body or gutted an animal. Musks, like exotic perfumes. Overlaying it all a strange alien aroma like the one the genestealers had possessed and yet subtly different, as if it belonged to something related to them, and yet not wholly like them.
“Smells like we’re crawling around inside somebody’s body, doesn’t it?” said Sven. Ragnar nodded. It was not a pleasant sensation, and it was getting worse.
Along with the smell, there was an oppressive sense of presence in the air. It was like the one which surrounded the ork chieftain in some ways. It suggested a powerful psychic force. Ragnar knew that they were moving ever closer to the intelligence that had guided the stealers. He wondered whether they would discover it in possession of the fragment of the talisman they sought, and perhaps using it in the same way as Gurg had. He would not be surprised if that was the case. He glanced back to see how Karah was taking it.
She seemed lost in heated discussion with Sternberg. Her face was drawn and a frown was painted on her brow. It looked as if she was in pain, and growing more so with every step. He guessed that if the presence that enveloped them was strong enough to be sensed by a non-psyker like him then it must be causing her considerable distress. He imagined that the psychic spoor must be as strong to her as the scent was to him. It was not a reassuring thought.
There was a definite change in the walls of the corridors now Here and there, traces of glistening slime were visible. Occasionally patches of a substance resembling flesh clung to the walls like a patch of mould. If he looked closely he could see the remains of a near translucent membrane. It was as if something had burst out of the metal and strode off. In his mind, he pictured obscene, man-sized monsters hatching from the walls. He shuddered as he tried to shake off the image.