[Space Wolf 02] - Ragnar''s Claw

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ragnar almost laughed aloud as he watched the great shield of the world drop below the horizon, remembering the way he had arrived at the Fang, what seemed half a lifetime ago. Once more he was strapped into the couch of a Thunderhawk gunship. Once more he was passing beyond the atmosphere of his homeworld. Once more he was watching the planet fall away beneath him.

  Only this time it was different. This time he was not on a short hop designed to put him down somewhere else on the planet’s surface. This time he was heading out into the depths of space, to where the inquisitors’ ship waited in orbit. This time, he was going to leave his homeworld behind and go somewhere unimaginably distant from Fenris. Furthermore, it was possible, he had to admit, that he would never return. That knowledge made his departure all the more poignant.

  He looked down onto the surface of his home planet with an emotion he had never really felt before, a feeling somewhere between love and longing almost. He watched clouds scud over the vast ocean and glimpsed islands through the gaps in the vapour. He recognised some of them in outline from the maps and globes he had studied in the Fang. He knew that he would not be able to pick out his home island, the place where he had grown up, fallen in love and finally fallen in battle, only to be resurrected into the ranks of the Space Wolves. It was simply too small.

  It occurred to him that quite soon he might feel the same way about Fenris. It was only one world but there were millions of such worlds in the Imperium, separated by thousands of light years of distance. He had heard it said that if a man could visit one new world in the galaxy every day of his life, he would not have visited a thousandth of the inhabited worlds by the time he died.

  For a moment a sense of his own smallness in the vast scheme of things filled Ragnar. He closed his eyes and breathed a silent prayer both to the Emperor and to Russ to watch over him and his companions, then smiled. Cold comfort there. Both were chill distant gods, remote from man, their duties performed on a scale that gave them little time to watch over tiny specks like him. They gave men courage and strength and cunning at birth, then expected them to forge their own destinies.

  The moment of weakness and loneliness passed, to be replaced by a feeling of excitement about the approaching journey. He could scent that his brothers from the Blood Claw pack shared both his excitement and his unease. He could taste both in the slightly metallic air. He was reassured by the presence of so many recognisable scents. He was proud that he was one of the five who had been chosen to accompany Sergeant Hakon and guard the ancient talisman. And he had to admit that if he had chosen his companions himself, these would have been the ones he would have picked. It was reassuring to have his pack-brothers around him, to feel part of something larger than himself. He was glad of the presence of even those brothers he did not like as people — and in that moment, was certain that they felt the same way about him.

  He opened his eyes again and glanced around the darkened compartment of the Thunderhawk, able to distinguish his comrades even in the subdued light of the dimmed glowglobes. Seated next to him was Sven, muttering and cursing to himself, and grumbling about his hunger. His coarse features were twisted into a snarl, his stubby fingers locked together as if in prayer. He grunted and belched, then looked over at Ragnar and winked. “Silent but bloody deadly,” he muttered, and then Ragnar noticed he’d farted. The stink was awful for a moment in that enclosed space. Such was the keenness of Ragnar’s senses that he could distinguish the varying scents of what Sven had had for breakfast that morning.

  “Fish gruel and black bread,” Ragnar said, without meaning to.

  “Always a good base for a gas attack,” Sven muttered cheerfully. A bright gleam entered his eye. All of the Blood Claws were having some difficulty adjusting to the awakening of the Wolf Spirit within them. In Sven it took the form of this constant talking to himself and mumbling.

  “I don’t think the engines need any more thrust,” Nils murmured from the seat behind. “We’re going quite fast enough. I swear, though, that Sven rose two finger’s breadths out of his seat.”

  “You’re just jealous,” muttered Sven. “You can’t match my awesome power.”

  “It’s Sven’s secret weapon when we have to fight aliens,” Ragnar said, knowing this was all so childish, but unable to stop joining in with their banter. “He’s going to gas them to death.”

  “Better make sure he doesn’t do for us first,” said Nils. “I know our implants are supposed to let us adapt to poisons but that was beyond a joke. My head is still swimming.”

  “In the name of Russ, be quiet,” dark-haired Lars murmured from the other side of him. “Can you children never be serious? I can barely meditate for all your chatter.”

  “Yes, your holiness,” Sven said and farted again to let Lars know what he thought of his complaint. In truth, all of the young Blood Claws were becoming a little tired of Lars and his constant carping. In him the Wolf Spirits seemed to have fostered an excessive humourless devotion to the religious aspects of their calling. If any Space Wolf could be called ascetic, it would be Lars. Rumour had it that he was going to be tested again for nascent psychic powers by the Rune Priests. He had been having dreams recently and visions which some thought might be prophetic — but which Sven and Nils put down to too much meditation and fasting.

  “He did. He took off. I saw him,” Nils insisted, smirking. “And I swear I felt the ship accelerate.”

  “That wasn’t funny the first time,” Strybjorn growled suddenly down the line at them. Ragnar flinched a little at the sound of his old rival and enemy’s deep, powerful voice. He still did not like Strybjorn, even though he had saved the fellow’s life on their last mission, and his instincts almost rebelled at the thought of having a deadly rival alongside him. Still, of all the men in the Blood Claw pack, these were the ones he knew best. He had trained with them, fought with them, messed with them, and they were as close to him now as his flesh and blood kin once had been.

  He glanced along the row of shaven heads, each with the one long strip of hair across the skull that was the mark of the Blood Claw, down the vaulted chamber, towards the front of the craft. He could not say that the people up there were his kin. Right at the front of the craft, close to the command deck, Inquisitors Sternberg and Isaan were strapped into old leather gravity chairs. Between them was the lead-lined casket containing the fragment of the Talisman of Lykos. They had decided to accompany it in the Thunder-hawk rather than return to their ship with their own people.

  Beside them sat the head of the honour guard, Sergeant Hakon. His scarred face was an impassive mask. His back was rigid. He looked ready to fight at any time. As if feeling Ragnar’s gaze, he glanced backward at where the Blood Claw and his companions sat. One look from those harsh grey eyes was enough to cow them all into silence. All of them remembered him well from Russvik and few indeed, even the irrepressible Sven, were willing to risk his displeasure.

  Ragnar closed his eyes and began the first of many meditation exercises to clear his mind. Around him he sensed the others doing the same.

  The first glimpse of the inquisitors’ spaceship was a disappointment. Ragnar opened his eyes when he felt the Thunderhawk begin to decelerate and a mild discomfort in his inner ear told him that the craft was engaged in some sort of manoeuvre. He glanced through the thick, scratched plexiglass of the porthole and noticed that there was a tiny sliver of metal gleaming in the distance, barely visible even to his keen eyes in the blackness of space. As he peered, it began to swell in his field of vision, growing rapidly as they approached it.

  Ragnar began to appreciate that in space distances were deceptive. There were no landmarks to give scale to what you were seeing. As the inquisitors’ ship began to grow, and kept on growing and growing in his sight, he suddenly realised how big it really was. Gasps from around him told him the others did too.

  The thing was a flying mountain, a huge wedge of steel and ceramite which dwarfed the Thunderhawk the
way a whale might dwarf a minnow. As they neared it, the Space Wolf could see that it bristled with enormous weapons. Huge turrets and emplacements bulged in its side. The Imperial eagle painted on its meteor-pitted flanks was almost a thousand strides across. Beneath it, in Imperial Gothic script, were painted the words Light of Truth. Ragnar guessed it was the ship’s name. Ragnar had never seen any work of man which gave the impression of enormous power that this starship did. It made his heart beat faster to think that this was the work of mere humans, and under his breath he muttered a short benediction to the Emperor of Mankind.

  Smaller spacecraft hovered around the behemoth, coming and going like the shoals of small fish that surrounded an orca. Ragnar watched amazed as their running lights flickered past in the darkness like so many swiftly falling shooting stars. He saw the others lean forward to look in amazement too — all, that is, except the two inquisitors and Sergeant Hakon, who looked as bored and unexcited as people who had witnessed such wonders a million times. Their scents told Ragnar that was true; they had.

  Slowly the Thunderhawk rotated around its axis and the great starship slid smoothly from view to be replaced by the vast field of stars once more. A warning bell tolled to announce their imminent arrival at their destination. The sensation of weight returned. Ragnar felt as if a great powerful hand were pushing him into his seat as they decelerated.

  Below them the sides of the starship became visible again, a plain of metal and ceramite from which rose turrets and pipes and gratings. Warning lights winked as they rotated so they were landing flat onto the surface of the spacecraft. Jets of gas erupted from funnels and became floating crystals of ice in the chill of space. Ragnar remembered from his basic training that it was cold enough out there to freeze an unprotected man in mere seconds. It was something he had never really considered until that moment, and he was suddenly glad of the ancient armour which covered his body.

  The Thunderhawk was on its final approach now, and momentarily it went dark as they raced down through a huge metal cave in the side of the ship. Ragnar was thrown forward and held in place only by the restraining straps as the ship came to rest. The vibration passing through the Thunderhawk told him that somewhere a huge airtight doorway was sliding into place. Looking through the thick porthole, he could see vapour rising like mist all around them and patches of rime congealing on the gunship’s side. Air was being pumped into the landing bay and freezing on contact with the ship’s sides which were much colder at that moment than the ice floes of Fenris.

  Another bell sounded, telling them it was all clear and safe to disembark without protection. The airlock door swished open and for the first time Ragnar caught the strange sterile scent of the interior of a starship. He caught the tang of thousands of alien aromas, things he could not quite place, mixed with the scent of machine oil, technical unguents and cleansing incense. He heard the clamour of voices, the whirr of unseen machinery and the constant drone of recyclers which pumped air around the ship while cleaning and purifying it. He realised that he was now living in a totally separate, self-contained world, floating free in space, made ready to go anywhere the inquisitors commanded.

  He suddenly felt very far from home indeed.

  Soldiers greeted them as they exited the ship. They were clad in black uniforms similar to those worn by the Imperial Guard but marked with the sigil of the Inquisition. Ragnar knew that these were Guardsmen seconded to the inquisitor’s service for the duration of his mission. Even though they were drawn up in tightly disciplined ranks, they did not impress him. He had a young Space Marine’s natural contempt for lesser warriors, untempered yet by the experience of fighting alongside them. It was not the men or their leaders who drew Ragnar’s attention but the towering figure that stood at their head, waiting to greet Sternberg and Isaan.

  He was a large man, even bigger than Sergeant Hakon, who was huge even by the standards of Space Marines. He was dressed in a uniform of inquisitorial black which fitted him as tightly as a glove. Black leather gauntlets gleamed on his hands. High leather boots encased his powerful calves. His head was bare and shaved hairless. His nose was beaklike, almost aquiline. His lips were thin and cruel. Black eyes dominated the gaunt fanatical face. He glanced at the Space Marines with respect but no fear.

  “Inquisitor Sternberg. It is good to have you back. You too, Inquisitor Isaan.” His voice was booming and powerful and there was a coldness to it that might have chilled Ragnar had he been anything but a Space Marine. It was the voice of a man used to command, and Ragnar could tell from its authority that it had boomed out over a thousand battlefields.

  The man’s left hand was gone, no doubt left on some distant battlefield, replaced by a mechanical metal claw. A bolt pistol and a chainsword hung from a broad leather belt at his waist. Three honour studs similar to those worn by elite Space Marines were driven into his shaven head beside the sign of the Inquisition which had been tattooed there. Obviously, Ragnar thought, this was a man who took his duties and his loyalties seriously.

  “It is good to be back, Commander Gul,” Sternberg said, as he and Isaan returned Gul’s salute, right fists hitting their chests just above the heart. “May I present Sergeant Hakon and his pack of Blood Claws? They are our guests on board the Light of Truth and the honour guard of a very special cargo.”

  “Your mission was a success then, my lord inquisitor?” Gul asked. White teeth flashed, and the tan of the man’s skin made them look even whiter. Ragnar caught the man’s scent. There was keenness and excitement there — and something else, some disturbing undertone which he could not quite put his finger on. That in itself was disturbing, for as a Space Wolf he had learned to trust the perceptions of his senses implicitly. Despite himself, his earlier foreboding about the inquisitors returned redoubled. He wondered whether he should share them with the others. Perhaps when they were alone.

  “We have what we came to find, and are on the trail of the other things we seek.”

  “I pray to the Emperor that that will be soon,” Gul said. “We must find the answer before the plague devours our home-world.”

  “I share your prayers, commander,” Sternberg said.

  Gul seemed to have as much of a personal stake in this as either of the inquisitors. That was not necessarily surprising if he was the commander of the inquisitor’s bodyguard, for Aerius was their homeworld. Still, the man’s scent had cancelled something of the earlier favourable impression the man had made. Ragnar decided that he did not entirely trust Commander Gul.

  Nor were the glances his troops threw the Blood Claws altogether reassuring either. Ragnar sensed hostility there -not that it troubled him much. It could simply be jealousy of an elite unit or it might be resentment that the Blood Claws were there to perform a duty they thought should rightfully be theirs. Ragnar knew that only time would tell which.

  “I will have your men shown to their quarters, Sergeant Hakon.” There was respect and courtesy in the tone Gul used towards the Space Wolf. Hakon nodded and stooped to pick up the heavy casket containing the talisman one-handed.

  “My orders were not to let this out of my sight,” he said, looking directly at Inquisitor Sternberg.

  “Of course, my friend,” the inquisitor said soothingly. Ragnar shivered. They were on the Inquisition’s ship now, surrounded by their troops. They numbered but six, while Sternberg’s minions were thousand strong. Space Marines or no, Ragnar doubted that they could stand against all of them. Regardless of whether Hakon held the talisman or not, it was at this moment safely in the inquisitor’s possession whenever he wanted it.

  “They do all right for themselves, these bloody inquisitors, don’t they?” Sven murmured disrespectfully, sticking his head around the doorway of Ragnar’s chamber. Ragnar sensed that he was not as displeased as he sounded. Glancing about their new quarters, neither was he. Compared to their cells back in the Fang, these chambers were positively luxurious. Not that he had much to measure them against, but Ragnar suspected that comp
ared to almost anything, they were luxurious.

  This room was huge, forty strides by twenty strides with a high ceiling, and each Space Wolf had been given his own chamber just like it. The floors were of gleaming inlaid marble, covered in thick rugs of exotic weave. The drapes upon the panelled walls were as plush as the carpets. The chairs were of soft padded leather, the furnishings of fine wood and bone ivory. There was a televisor screen built into a mirror which stood on an intricately carved stand. Paintings of alien landscapes hung around the walls. The only clue to the fact they were on a spacecraft was the porthole in the middle of one wall, through which stars were visible against the infinite blackness of space.

  “It’s palatial,” agreed Ragnar, glancing around warily. “One of the nicest dungeon cells ever built, I would say.”

  Sven exchanged looks with him. Ragnar could tell that his fellow Blood Claw shared his feelings about the place. He had seen the way Sven studied the layout when he came in. The only visible entrance to each chamber was the one leading into the central communal eating hall. There were only two exits from there: one at the north end, one at the south. It was easily defensible but it would be just as easy to pen them in. In fact the huge blast doors which gave access to the hall looked like they could be welded shut. Not that it would be needed, Ragnar thought. He doubted that any of the weaponry the Blood Claws currently carried could force them if they were simply locked and barred. Those armoured doors must be a span thick.

  “Might not be wise to say such things too loud,” Nils said quietly, coming through the doorway. He glanced around and whistled. “I see you have a window. Walls have ears. Remember this is an Inquisition ship.”