He vaulted a slit trench connecting two of the batteries and ran to the low ferrocrete bunker in the centre. Pulling a grenade from his belt, he put his armoured boot to the bunker's steel hatch. The door crumpled and fell inward on the third kick.
Bolts of blue light snapped out of the interior of the bunker, detonating against his breastplate. One shot sizzled past his head, close enough to leave an angry welt on his cheek. Ragnar fired a pair of wild shots from his bolt pistol and ducked to the left of the door as he chucked the grenade inside. A chorus of shouts was silenced by a sharp bang as the grenade exploded. Moving quickly, the young Space Wolf dashed into the smoke filled bunker and made certain the occupants were dead before heading back outside.
By the time he was finished the four gun mounts were wrecked. Ragnar waved to his men and keyed his vox. 'Objective one-one clear,' he shouted.
'Objective one-two dear,' came Sigurd's reply
'Objective one-three clear,' Harald answered a moment later.
Ragnar nodded in approval. So far, so good. 'Go for objective two!' he called.
The Space Wolves converged on the centre of the base from three different directions, heading for the garrison's cluster of barrage shelters. Two and a half more minutes elapsed. According to the plan, the Imperial barrage was about to lift.
Ragnar and his men reached the first of the barrage shelters. Each one was a low, ferrocrete bunker capable of holding a hundred men, with a reinforced steel door and a set of narrow vision slits running along their flanks.
A hundred traitors versus five Space Wolves, Ragnar thought, taking cover to the right of the door. Those were odds he could deal with.
He motioned to a pair of Blood Claws. The Wolves ran to the door, one of them detaching a heavy melta charge from his backpack. Working quickly, they attached the charge's magnetic clamps to the door and keyed the timer.
The bunkers' ferrocrete construction made them strong enough to shrug off a direct hit from an Earth-shaker round. It also made them strong enough to channel the blast of a melta charge instead of bursting apart and dissipating it. Ragnar had seen what melta charges did to the crews of enemy tanks. He expected a similar result here.
With a hollow thump the charge detonated, vaporising the steel door and hurling it inwards as a plume of incandescent plasma. The concussion wave struck the far end of the bunker and rebounded through the open door with a thunderclap of superheated air. Grinning fiercely, Ragnar signalled his warriors, and they swept inside, hunting for survivors.
They didn't find many.
Ragnar's men cleared fifteen bunkers in just under four minutes. By the time the last Imperial shells landed across the enemy base its garrison had been almost completely destroyed.
The three teams linked up again on the west side of the central bunker complex. A quick head count showed that three Wolves were missing. Two had been unlucky running through the barrage, and one Blood Claw had got over-eager assaulting the bunkers and had stepped in front of a rebounding concussion wave. He lay inside a bunker awaiting extraction, deep in the Red Dream.
A chorus of petrochem engines growled off to the west, on the other side of the bunker complex. The tanks would be rolling out of their shelters soon. The faint roar of jet engines off to the east told Ragnar that the traitors were about to be in for a brutal surprise.
'Here's where the fighting begins in earnest,' Ragnar told the assembled Space Marines. 'We don't know how many troops are inside the central complex, but Russ knows they'll put up a stiff fight. Expect anything,' he said. 'You've all got maps of the complex loaded into your memory cores. If you get separated, fight your way to the vault or head back outside for extraction. Kill everything that gets in your way.'
The Blood Claws growled in assent. Ragnar glanced at Torin and Haegr and nodded. 'All right, let's go.'
They ran to the western side of the bunker, emerging like vengeful spirits out of the smoke and haze. Autogun fire and bolts of energy snapped out at them from the bunker's firing slits, but the enemy was too startled to draw beads on the fast-moving Wolves. Two Blood Claws ran ahead and started fixing their last demolition charge to the western bunker doors. They keyed the timer just as Ragnar and the rest of the force arrived.
The concussive blast buffeted Ragnar and his companions from ten metres away, checking his headlong charge for half a step. Then, with a howl, he plunged into the searing heat and smoke beyond the gaping doorway. The young Space Wolf found himself in a short narrow corridor, emerging after a few moments into a large, square room that reeked of hot metal and burned flesh. A squad of rebel stormtroopers had been formed up inside the room. At least three of them had been caught by the force of the blast and torn apart, while the rest were hurled like rag dolls against the stone walls. Ragnar burst upon them just as they were staggering to their feet. Their sergeant let out a yell and shot the young Space Wolf full in the chest with his hellpistol. The crimson bolt cracked harmlessly against the ancient ceramite breastplate. Ragnar hacked off the sergeant's left arm and head with a backhanded swipe of his frost blade, and then shot two more troopers as they tried to flee from the room.
Another sharp concussion rang from the bunker walls as Haegr stepped to Ragnar's left and smashed two more rebels to bits with a swing from his thunder hammer. The last surviving stormtrooper threw down his hellgun and raised his hands in surrender. Torin stepped into the room and shot the man in passing. They were going to have enough trouble with prisoners as it was.
Two corridors led out of the entry room, heading left and right. Ragnar recalled the maps he'd studied of the bunker layout, looked to Sigurd and pointed left. The Wolf Priest, his pale face speckled with fresh blood, nodded and led his and Harald's teams down the corridor. There were two staircases in the complex that led down to the lower level where the vault was located. They would work their way across the bunker to the stairs on the west side, while Ragnar and his companions fought their way to the closer staircase. That way they could ensure that none of the rebel commanders got past them if they decided to flee.
Shots and lasgun bolts whipped through the entry room from the right-hand corridor as rebels opened fire on Sigurd's team. Ragnar pulled another grenade from his belt and hurled it down the passageway. A second before it detonated, he nodded to Haegr, and the burly Wolf charged into the wake of the blast. Screams and brutal thunderclaps echoed down the corridor, punctuated by the Space Wolfs booming laugh.
Ragnar readied his bolt pistol and dashed off after Haegr, running past broken bodies and shattered weapons that littered the passageway floor. The massive Space Wolf was ploughing ahead like a stampeding mastodon, crushing any resistance in his path. Ragnar and his men charged, more than once, into a bloodstained room, and found themselves fighting stunned guardsmen, who Haegr had simply overrun and left behind.
They caught up to Haegr several long minutes later, at a four-way junction deep within the complex. The huge Wolf had his back against the wall near the corner of the junction, wrapped in swirling tendrils of smoke. The smell of ozone and shattered stone filled the air.
Haegr looked over at his battle-brothers as they approached. Ragnar saw that the right side of Haegr's face was red and blistered, and half of his unruly whiskers had been burned away. 'Mighty Haegr is unusually nimble for one of his heroic girth,' he grumbled, 'but these tight corridors make it hard to dodge plasma fire.'
'Like shooting fish in a barrel,' Torin said tightly. He glanced at Haegr. 'Sorry. More like spearing whales.'
'Must I do the foe's work and thrash you myself?' Haegr said. 'That would be tragic, would it not?'
'Where is the plasma gunner?' Ragnar said.
Haegr jerked his head to the left. 'Around the corner, about twenty metres,' he replied, 'and he's not alone. Looks like another squad of storm troopers is covering the staircase.'
The young Space Wolf nodded. 'Did you try any grenades?'
Haegr blinked at him. 'Grenades. Yes. A good idea,' he agreed.
Torin rolled his eyes. 'What did you do? Eat yours?'
The burly Wolf glowered at Torin. 'The mighty Haegr prefers to look the foe in the eye before ending his life, not cowering behind a cloud of shrapnel.'
'Meaning your thick fingers can't work the grenade dispenser,' Torin said drily.
Haegr shifted uncomfortably. 'Yes, well, possibly that, too,' he growled.
Ragnar couldn't help but chuckle. 'Now I know why the pair of you were sent to Terra,' he declared, shaking his head. He sheathed his sword and drew a grenade from Haegr's belt. Thumbing the fuse, he tossed it around the corner. Immediately, a hail of fire chewed along the length of the stone wall and ricocheted across the junction. Seconds later the grenade went off, and Ragnar spun around the corner, firing as he ran.
The young Space Wolf saw at once that Haegr had neglected to mention the barricade a few metres down the corridor.
A barrier of layered flakboard had been erected across the width of the passageway, and his grenade had left a scorch mark at its feet. The stormtroopers taking cover behind it were just popping back up from behind cover as Ragnar started his charge. Scarlet bolts of hellgun fire burst across his breastplate and pauldrons, leaving scorch marks across the ceramite plate. He saw the rebel plasma gunner pop up and level his weapon. Ragnar brought his pistol around and shot the man in the head.
Another bolt detonated against his thigh, and Ragnar felt a jolt of pain as the shot burned through his armour. He stumbled, and then redoubled his pace, charging headlong at the enemy barrier while he dragged his frost blade from its scabbard.
Two more shots struck his midsection as he leapt over the barrier. Ragnar's frost blade flashed and two storm troopers toppled in a welter of blood. He landed on a third rebel, driving the soldier to the floor before shooting him in the neck. Ragnar spun to the right, slashing downward with his sword and slicing another screaming trooper in half.
The remaining stormtroopers fell back, snapping off shots from their hellguns as they went. Drunk with battle lust, Ragnar stalked after them. He shot the closest man in the head. Then the crowd before him parted, and he was facing a sergeant with a glowing power sword in his hand, and a trooper with a hissing flamer levelled at Ragnar's chest.
There were two loud booms behind Ragnar, and a pair of heavy rounds hissed past the young Space Wolfs head. The first shot struck the man with the flamer in the shoulder, and the second tore through the trooper's throat. The stormtrooper spun to the right, his finger tightening on the trigger, spraying his comrades with a stream of liquid fire.
Ragnar dodged to the right, away from the flames, and the storm trooper sergeant rushed forward, slashing at the young Space Wolfs chest. Ragnar caught the glowing sword on the diamond-hard teeth of his frostblade and ripped open the rebel's chest with a back-handed blow. The survivors fled down the hall, firing wildly as they went, abandoning their post at the head of the staircase to Ragnar's right.
The young Space Wolf looked back the way he'd come and saw the rest of his team rushing up to join him. Haegr was out front, smoke curling from the barrel of his bolt pistol. Ragnar scowled at the burly warrior. 'You could have warned me about the barricade,' he growled.
'Barricade? You mean this pitiful thing?' Haegr drew back a foot and kicked the layered flakboards apart. 'I thought it was just a pile of rubbish.'
Shaking his head, Ragnar gave the wound in his leg a cursory check. Finding nothing serious, he bent and picked the flamer and plasma gun off the bodies of the dead stormtroopers. 'Take these,' he said, passing them over to two of the Blood Claws. 'Flamer up front. Let's go.'
The Blood Claw with the flamer nodded curtly and stepped to the head of the staircase. The iron rungs receded into darkness.
A breath of cold air rose up from the depths, smelling of old stone and lingering rot. Ragnar bared his teeth and slapped the lead Blood Claw on the shoulder. Slowly, cautiously, they began their descent.