The stone floor seemed to sway beneath Ragnar's feet. Numb with shock, he surveyed the blood spattered chamber. Harald and half a dozen Blood Claws were still on their feet, their eyes wide and their armour splashed with gore. Three others knelt or lay among the bodies on the floor, wounded grievously but still alive. Two battle-brothers would not rise again, their bodies ripped apart by tentacles and snapping, serrated beaks.
Haegr knelt by Torin's prone form a few metres to Ragnar's left. The older Wolfblade was struggling to rise with Haegr's help, despite a deep wound in his hip.
A feeling of dread settled in Ragnar's stomach as he began to inspect the dead. Every one of the rebel officers had been torn apart by daemons or melted by sorcerous flames.
Of Sigurd, there was no sign. The young Space Wolf Priest was gone.
They rode back aboard the Thunderhawks in silence, each warrior lost in his own grim thoughts. Harald had suggested looting the war room of every bit of useful information they could find, and they dragged away makeshift boxes full of maps, data-slates and memory cores. As they loaded up their wounded and dead, however, the Wolves could not help but feel that they had failed.
Ragnar reported to Mikal Sternmark while the raiding party was still in the air, apprising him of what had happened. The loss of Sigurd was an exceptionally hard blow to Sternmark, recalling as it did the ambush at the governor's palace a few weeks earlier. Ragnar accepted full responsibility for what had happened in the bunker, lauding the courage of Harald and his pack as well as his fellow Wolfblades, but he wasn't sure Sternmark paid attention to any of it.
The return flight took them low over the southern outskirts of the city, and it was obvious to everyone on board that the forces of the enemy were on the move. Plumes of blue-black petrochem exhaust hung in a poisonous haze over the cratered transit ways leading into the capital, as regiments of infantry and armour moved towards the tenuous Imperial lines. White flashes stuttered and strobed beyond the hills west of the city as rebel gun batteries pounded the eastern rim of the capital. More than once the Thunderhawks and their Valkyrie escorts had to dive behind broken ridges or weathered hilltops to evade rebel anti-aircraft rockets or gun positions, and it was more than an hour after dust-off before the assault ships reached friendly lines and could land at Charys starport.
They disembarked in the middle of another rocket attack, carrying their seriously wounded brothers to the port's medicae facilities through a storm of fire and shrapnel. Torin wanted no part of the packed and chaotic field hospital, with its exhausted chirurgeons and outdated equipment. He insisted his wound was minor and would heal quicker on its own. 'I'd rather lie down in the dark somewhere like a wounded hound than risk getting my limbs cut off by some drunken bone-cutter,' he declared, and his protests grew so vehement that even Haegr shrugged his broad shoulders and relented. Of course, they hadn't the faintest idea what to do with the older Wolfblade, so finally Ragnar and Haegr turned around and carried him back to the Thunderhawk.
Once they'd settled Torin back in the same suspensor-web he'd lain in on the flight out of the PDF base, Ragnar left Haegr to watch over their battle-brother and headed to the command bunker to report to Athelstane and Sternmark. On the way there he thought to check with Gabriella and ensure that she was safe, but the memory of what he'd done back at the rebel base was still painfully fresh in his mind. I'm as much a danger to her as the enemy is, he thought in despair, wondering what was going to happen to him now.
Every Space Wolf struggled with the wolf inside him. The gifts of the Canis Helix made them into peerless warriors, but such savagery was two-edged. The wolf within was always testing its limits, seeking escape in the fire of battle to rend and tear until its appetite was sated. Once the wolf had got its teeth in a man, there was no turning back, so far as Ragnar knew. Little by little his mind slipped away and his body succumbed to the influence of the helix's bestial influence. Sometimes there were Wolf Lords who took one of the Wulfen into battle with them, but most often the wolf-bitten were given into the care of the Wolf Priests and taken from the Fang, never to fight for the Chapter again.
Now he understood from whence his dreams had come, and why he had been feeling so strange of late, but the realisation gave him little comfort. He would probably be dismissed from the Wolfblade, he reasoned, and without a Wolf Lord willing to speak for him, this campaign would doubtless be his last.
Ragnar gritted his teeth and pushed such thoughts from his mind. For now, there was a battle to be fought and won.
The young Space Wolf found an open crate of field rations in the command bunker, and forced himself to eat. It had only been a few days since he'd last had a meal, but focusing on his body's mundane needs kept more troubling thoughts at bay. The ration paste also helped kill the taste of blood that still lingered in his mouth.
'We should have expected this all along after the ambush at the governor's palace,' Sternmark said bitterly. 'What I want to know is how they knew when we were going to strike?'
The Wolf Guard was pacing along the back wall of the bunker's war room, gauntleted hands clasped tightly behind his back. Sternmark's face was fierce and brooding his dark eyes darting from Ragnar to Athelstane and back again. The Guard general sat in a nearby camp chair, fixing the situation holo with a dark stare. From the beleaguered look on her face Ragnar suspected that she hadn't slept in days.
Ragnar stood at parade-rest at the foot of the table opposite the general. He raised his scarred chin and addressed them both. 'I don't believe it was an ambush at all,' he said. 'If the rebels wanted to lay a trap for us at the base they could have done it easily enough without putting their generals in the crossfire.'
'At this point I'm starting to have my doubts that they were generals at all,' Athelstane said with a frown. She gestured at the holo with a gloved hand. 'Their planned counter-offensive hasn't skipped a beat. Reconnaissance imagery shows that the traitors have moved another forty thousand men into the city since daybreak, and they'll be in a position to hit us by tomorrow. The Emperor alone knows how we're going to stop them.'
Ragnar shook his head. 'You didn't see the looks on their faces when we broke into the vault. Those men were high-ranking officers, all right, and they were desperate to escape,' he said. 'They had painted some kind of symbol on the floor. It looked like they were calling for help, honestly.'
'Yet the Chaos champion and his daemons killed those same men during the fight,' Sternmark pointed out. 'If the champion killed the army commanders, who then is leading the counter-offensive?'
The young Space Wolf shrugged. 'The Thousand Sons themselves, I would think,' he replied. 'We know this world is the lynchpin to their entire campaign. I can't imagine that they would trust a cabal of Guard officers to defend it.' He glanced uncomfortably at Athelstane. 'No offence, ma'am.'
Athelstane brushed the remark aside with an impatient wave of her hand. 'If the Thousand Sons are commanding the planet's defence, where are they? They must have a base somewhere on the planet, correct?'
'Not necessarily, I'm afraid.'
Heads turned at the sound of Gabriella's voice. The Navigator and Inquisitor Volt stood at the edge of the former stage, their arms piled with dusty books. She looked to the Inquisitor, who nodded and addressed the general. His face was pale and grim.
'We think we know where the Thousand Sons are striking from,' he said. 'If we are right, we are all in far greater danger than we imagined.'
TEN
Tripwire
'It was Lady Gabriella who provided the key,' Volt said quickly. The inquisitor shuffled up onto the stage and spread his weathered books on the situation table. The holo image above the table warped into a storm of rainbow hued static as Volt covered many of the hololith's projector eyes.
'What's all this about?' Athelstane asked, unable to conceal a note of irritation in her voice.
The inquisitor didn't seem to hear the general at all. 'As focused as I was on events here on Charys, I failed to pay close attention to reports from the other affected worlds across the subsector,' Volt said, fumbling with his trembling, bandaged hands at the iron lock and hinge securing one of the tomes. The book's cover was smoke stained and charred along the edges, and one corner of its heavy, cream-coloured pages was spotted with red.
'A… a campaign of this size, with so much preparation, it should have been obvious that there were deeper patterns in play,' Volt said, almost to himself, as he rifled through the thick pages. 'The diversionary attacks, yes, and the choice of targets… Ah! Here,' he said, gripping the bottom of the open book with both hands and turning it around so that Athelstane and Sternmark could see. 'This is what I'm talking about.'
The general and the huge Space Wolf leaned over the table. Volt had opened the book to a page covered in hand lettered High Gothic script. Spread across the pages was a vast, intricate circle, inscribed with dense patterns of blasphemous runes. Athelstane caught just a glimpse and turned away, making the sign of the aquila and muttering a prayer under her breath. Sternmark raised his eyes and studied the inquisitor carefully.
'This is not the symbol I saw in the governor's palace,' he said.
'No, not at the palace!' Volt snapped, his grey eyes blazing. He turned and beckoned to Ragnar. 'You were at Hyades, were you not? Tell me what you see.'
Frowning bemusedly, Ragnar stepped over to the table. The lines etched in red across the page burned into his mind, calling up a memory of the tense shuttle flight off the beleaguered Imperial world. He glanced from Volt to Gabriella. 'It's the symbol we saw burning over the capital city,' he said.
'Aha!' Volt said, pleased to hear the young Space Wolfs confirmation. 'This is what is known as a cornerstone, an anchoring sigil designed to shape the boundaries of a much larger occult symbol,' he said. 'In my time, I've seen them spread across the hab blocks of a small hive city, even once across the breadth of an entire island.' He traced a finger across the surface of the page. 'Only once in history has anyone attempted such a feat on an interstellar scale.'
Volt turned his attention to the remaining books on the table, searching through them impatiently. Gabriella stepped forward quietly and handed over a battered tome from the top of her stack. The inquisitor looked up with a grunt of surprise and took the volume with a mutter of thanks. 'It happened around thirteen hundred years ago,' he said, flipping quickly through the ancient pages. 'A traitor named Arsenius Talvaren tried to open a permanent gateway to the Eye of Terror, centred on Holy Terra itself.'
Athelstane, Sternmark and Ragnar shared incredulous looks. The general shook her head. 'Obviously, he failed,' she said.
'Obviously, yes,' Volt replied. 'The attempt was doomed almost from the very start, but the madman's underlying theory was entirely sound, from an arcane standpoint.' He paused at a particular page, reading closely, and then nodded to himself. Volt looked up from the book. 'Lord Sternmark, come here and take a look at this for a moment,' he said. 'Tell me if this is more familiar to you.'
The powerful champion moved slowly around the perimeter of the table, a look of dread settling like a mask over his features. He looked down at the book, and grimaced at once. 'It is similar,' he admitted, 'very similar.'
'So you're telling me that the traitors are trying to pry open the Eye of Terror?' Athelstane asked, her stoic expression tinged with concern.
Volt snapped the tome shut. 'No, not this time,' he said. 'Talvaren, the mad genius, overreached himself. He could not master the forces necessary for such a feat, and even if the Inquisition hadn't stopped him on Luna, the demands of the ritual would have destroyed him.' The inquisitor glanced at Sternmark and the general. 'Here on Charys we're dealing with forces that are altogether more powerful and sophisticated.'
'Then what, pray tell, are they attempting?' Athelstane asked, her patience clearly nearing its limit.
'A bilocation,' Volt said gravely. 'A… link, if you will, between Charys and a daemon world within the Eye.'
The lady commander rubbed her brow with an augmented hand. 'I thought you just told me that wasn't possible,' she growled.
Lady Gabriella cleared her throat diplomatically. 'A co-location is not the same as a conduit,' she said, setting her books on the table. 'Because the Eye of Terror is a location where the warp spills into physical space, the notion of distance and time within the region is fluid,' she said. 'This is the same reason why we use the warp to travel between the stars.'
'Yes, yes, I know all that,' the general said with an impatient nod.
'Well, think of the warp as a fast-flowing river,' the Navigator continued. 'A person could either walk along the bank to get from one town to another downstream, or he could leap into the water and be rushed there at a much faster rate. Now, what Talvaren tried to do was create a tributary of that river, allowing the water to flow from the Eye of Terror directly to sacred Terra, a tremendous feat that had little chance of success.'
Gabriella reached into her belt and removed her vox-unit. 'We think Madox is trying to strain the fabric of reality around Charys and create a shadow of the world inside the Eye of Terror.' She extended her hand slowly, edging the rounded vox-unit into the projector field of the hololith. As the object occluded the edge of the projection field it created an oval shaped dark patch in the shimmering, distorted map.