He could not afford to be distracted once the raid began. Even a moment's hesitation could mean disaster.
The assembled warriors paid Ragnar no heed as he strode across the chamber. He took careful note of Sigurd and the Blood Claws, and then caught sight of Torin on the opposite side of the room. The older Wolfblade was finishing an inspection of his chainsword as Ragnar approached.
'Where's Haegr?' Ragnar asked with a frown.
Torin slid his chainsword into its scabbard and grinned ruefully. 'Where else?'
'Morkai's black breath!' Ragnar cursed. 'If that overfed walrus is late—'
'Peace, brother,' Torin chuckled, raising a gauntleted hand. 'Haegr can be a fool sometimes, but I've never known him to shirk his duty. He'll be here when the time comes, probably clumping along with an ale bucket on his foot, but he'll be here nonetheless.' The older Space Wolf studied Ragnar carefully. 'What's troubling you? I've never known you to get a case of nerves before a battle, even one as risky as this.'
Ragnar shrugged. 'It's nothing,' he began, but stopped trying to pretend when he saw Torin's disbelieving glare. 'Nothing I can explain, at least,' he said grudgingly. 'I don't know, Torin. Truth be told, I haven't felt right since we returned to Fenris. My temper is on a hair trigger, and I feel like I could crawl right out of my skin.' He shook his head savagely. 'Even my eyes are playing tricks on me.'
Torin's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. 'You , too?'
Ragnar froze. 'You mean you feel the same way?'
The older Space Wolf lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. 'Since we arrived on Charys I've been seeing things, like shadows or wisps of smoke, flitting at the edge of my sight.'
'Yes! Exactly!' Ragnar whispered excitedly. He leaned close to Torin. 'Anything else? Did everything planetside feel… I don't know… unsettled, somehow?'
'Like nothing was solid or real?' Torin breathed a sigh of relief. 'Thank Russ. I was starting to think I was losing my mind. But wait, you said you were feeling like this back on Fenris?'
Ragnar frowned. 'Well, not exactly. I didn't start seeing things until later, once we'd set off for Charys. On Fenris it was mostly just strange dreams.'
'Dreams about what?'
'Monsters,' Ragnar answered. 'Monsters in the shape of men.'
Torin frowned. 'Monsters… or Wulfen?'
Ragnar felt his hackles rise. 'Does it matter?' he asked.
'Of course it does,' Torin answered. 'Have you talked to the Wolf Priest about it?'
'Even if I'd thought of it, there was no time to talk to Ranek,' the young Space Wolf replied. 'What about Sigurd?'
Ragnar snorted. 'Don't be stupid. We're just a bunch of nithlings as far as he's concerned. The only things I plan on sharing with him are my fists.'
The older Wolfblade shook his head. 'Don't be so quick to judge him, Ragnar. Yes, he's a bit of an idiot, but we all were at that age. He still thinks he's the son of a jarl, not a young priest who's just earned his crozius. He's unsure of his authority and overwhelmed by the role he's been thrust into. Basically, he's terrified of failure.' Torin looked pointedly at Ragnar. 'Sound like anyone you know?'
'I'm not sure what you mean,' the young Space Wolf growled.
'Fine, consider this instead: Sigurd wouldn't have been raised up unless Ranek and the other priests saw some potential in him. Talk to him about the dreams. Give him the benefit of the doubt, and perhaps he'll learn to do the same for the rest of us.'
Ragnar thought it over. Finally, he shrugged. 'All right,' he said, 'as soon as we get back, provided we don't get blown to pieces in the meantime.'
Torin grinned and clapped Ragnar on the shoulder. 'That's the cheery soul I used to know. Trust me on this, brother. I know what I'm talking about.'
The young Space Wolf turned and surveyed the chamber once more. 'Is that so? Then where is Haegr? We jump off in thirty seconds—'
A booming laugh rolled down the passageway outside the chamber. Haegr's bristly, grinning face appeared in the hatchway, his massive drinking horn clutched in one great fist. 'Mighty Haegr is here!' he roared, sloshing a bit of frothy ale onto the deck. 'Draw your swords and beat your shields, sons of Fenris! Battle and red glory await!'
For a moment, it looked as though Haegr wouldn't be able to force his bulk through the narrow hatchway. Iron Priests and acolytes hurried over to help, but the huge Space Wolf paid them no heed. First one foot, then the hand bearing the ale horn, then a hip the size of a boar's flank and a torso half again as large as a mead cask, and with a grunt and a creak of metal, Haegr squeezed sideways into the room. Still grinning, he took a long draught from his ale horn and licked the froth from his whiskers. 'Next time I see the Old Wolf,' he said to Ragnar, 'remind me to tell him we need bigger ships.'
Far below, on the surface of the embattled world, the first stages of Ragnar's plan were swinging into motion.
At Gorgon-4, an Imperial Guard firebase five kilometres east of the starport, a vox teletype began to clatter in the company commander's blockhouse. The sound jolted the vox operator awake, dragging him from a pleasant dream about a girl he used to know back home. Rubbing his bleary eyes, the young Guardsman read off the script as it printed and confirmed by the message header that it had been sent to the proper unit. Then he tore the flimsy copy from the machine and dashed out into the trenches to find the artillery officer.
The vox operator found the battery commander sipping lukewarm recaff from a tin cup as he watched the sun start to rise through the smoke-stained horizon to the east. The officer, a veteran of many campaigns, took the proffered script without a word and read the orders between sips. His dark eyes widened a bit as he saw the time stamp on the page, and he turned to rouse the gun crews with a stream of leathery curses.
Within minutes, the long barrels of Gorgon-4's Earthshaker batteries rose into the sky. Six hundred kilo shells had already been fed into the guns' open breeches, and bare-chested Guardsmen were still blinking sleep out of their eyes as they wrestled pro-pellant bags from their armoured caissons.
Still watching the glow on the eastern horizon, the battery commander slowly raised his right hand. All along the line, the gunnery crews scrambled clear of the gun carriages. Each gunnery sergeant in the battery checked his gun, checked his elevation, checked his crew and then shot his right hand into the air.
The battery commander smiled in satisfaction. At that exact moment, the first rays of the sun broke through the haze.
'Fire!' he cried, dropping his arm, and the eight heavy guns roared. Thunder shook the earth to the north and south as five other firebases added their guns to the barrage.
Five kilometres west, the vox-units crackled in the cockpits of Mjolnir Flight. 'Mjolnir Lead, this is Echo five-seven. Green light – repeat, green light. Good luck and good hunting.'
Ten pilots and their crews straightened in their jump seats and put away their pre-flight checklists. They had been wakened in the dead of night, briefed and taken out to their birds an hour before dawn. Now wide awake, they reached for the throttles and brought idling turbojets to a full-throated roar.
One by one, eight Valkyrie gunships and two Thunderhawk assault transports rose heavily from their revetments and headed off to the west. They would be over their target in just twelve minutes.
Back aboard the Fist of Russ, the Iron Priests and their acolytes filed one by one from the teleportation chamber. An unearthly hum began to fill the air, sinking deep into Ragnar's bones.
'Form up!' Ragnar ordered, drawing his bolt pistol and sword. The Blood Claws fell silent at once, separating into three teams as Ragnar had planned. Three of the Claws trotted over to join Ragnar, Torin and Haegr. Raising his crozius, Sigurd moved quickly to the head of another team of five Claws. Harald stood ready with the remaining six members of the pack. There were no dark looks, no challenges or recriminations. Whatever Sigurd or the Blood Claws thought of Ragnar and his companions, none of it mattered now. They went to war as battle-brothers, as their forebears had done since the dawn of the Imperium.
Sigurd the Wolf Priest turned to his brethren and began the Benediction of Iron. One of the Blood Claws clashed his axe against his breastplate and started his battle-chant, singing of salt waves and splintered shields in a low, rumbling voice.
Haegr threw back his head and drained his ale horn in a single draught. Foam dripping from his whiskers, he gave his companions an enormous grin. 'By Russ, these are the moments that make a man's blood sing!' he roared, laughing like a drunken god. 'Try to keep up with mighty Haegr if you can, little brothers, lest he claim all the glory for himself!'
Chainblades growled to life. Power weapons crackled and moaned. Bolt pistols rattled as shells were driven home, and then the teleporter activated with a searing flash of light.
There was a moment of terrible, blind dislocation, and in the space of a single heartbeat the Space Wolves found themselves near the southern edge of the sprawling rebel base, caught up in a storm of fire, thunder and steel.
Ragnar staggered and dropped into a crouch as the earth shook beneath the Imperial barrage. Heavy shells howled overhead, falling across the rebel base with thunderous detonations and tall pillars of dirt and smoke. They were well within the base's defensive walls, perhaps two hundred metres from the broad ferrocrete bunkers of the tank park. The mangled wreckage of a staff car blazed brightly nearby, its passengers scattered in smoking pieces for a dozen metres around the impact site. No one else could be seen. The base's garrison had mn for the shelters the moment the barrage began.
Red-hot shrapnel rang off Ragnar's armour. He ducked his head and shouted at the top of his lungs. 'Go for objective one!' he shouted into the cataclysmic storm. 'Go!'
Without hesitation, the three teams of Space Wolves separated, charging off into the howling storm of shells. They had to deal with the anti-aircraft batteries first. Their air support would be over the base in less than ten minutes.
It was General Athelstane's comment about bombarding the PDF base that had given Ragnar the idea. Despite his protestations, he knew full well that the Blood Claws stood no chance facing the base's garrison in a conventional fight. Dealing with them one element at a time, however, was another matter. One pack, he reckoned, would be enough for what they had to do. Any more and they risked taking unnecessary casualties from their own artillery fire. As it was, there was a good chance that some of them would be caught by an unlucky blast, but that was a risk Ragnar was willing to take.
There were three large Hydra anti-aircraft batteries situated around the base, consisting of four quadruple cannon mounts and a high-power auspex unit. Ragnar chose the battery furthest from the insertion point as his team's objective. The Space Wolves dashed through the pall of smoke and dirt, navigating more by memory than sight. Concussions smote at them with invisible fists, and steel fragments whizzed past their heads. Ragnar heard Torin grunt in surprise and pain, but a quick glance showed that the older Wolfblade was still running alongside him. Bright blood leaked from a shrapnel wound in his arm.