HUNTED
(part 4 of 5)
Decision time,
Dragonclaw, Volstag told himself.
In the confusion of the hunt, he’d
been able to escape the valley undetected.
He now stood at the precipice of a wooded peak overlooking two scenes
under the dim purple sky. To the north
was the heart of Tundra Station. From
here it looked like a quiet town with simple buildings and snowy streets. There were no structures higher than three
stories and several columns of furnace smoke dissipated into the sky. The remote outpost was not important enough
to have its own astropath for telepathic communication, but he knew there was a
long-ranged vox transmitter somewhere down there, probably at the very
headquarters building he’d visited when the wolf scouts first approached the
PDF with their plan. After to the scout
ship, Tundra Station’s radio was the next obvious choice.
Therefore, the enemy was likely to
be expecting him there, too, and ready to receive him.
To the west, separated from the
town by a couple kilometers of snow-covered grox fields and skeletal corral
fencing, was the Night Lord’s ship. It
was a dark vessel of smoking vents and twisted metal spires, several times the
size of the stealthy Void Stalker
scout ship. This was a mobile platform
of war, home to a renegade war band, and at least as big as all the structures
of Tundra Station put together. It was also
a tomb where four of his pack mates had been deprived of an honorable death and
where the sinister apothecary had tortured Volstag with the intention that he
die as painfully as his brothers. The
ship was the den of the enemy, a nest of poisonous vipers, and the last place
they’d expect him to go. And being a
space vessel, it would have the communications equipment he needed.
His decision was made.
#
Among the herds of huge grox sleeping on their feet stalked
something even bigger, a hulk of steel and ceramite nearly five meters tall
with a three-taloned claw on a mechanical arm and twin autocannon barrels fixed
to the opposite shoulder. A daemonic
iron mask hung over the front of the Chaos dreadnought’s sarcophagus, two thick
horns curling outward from its horrific face.
The earth shook as the metal beast stepped forward, shouldering around
the giant sleeping grox, who stumbled to one side or the other against their
herd brothers, trying to avoid the monster while still half-asleep on their hooves. It moved forward again and spun forty-five
degrees on its axel, shoving the flanks of another wooly beast. The grox gave a low moan and shuffled
sideways, bumping the animal next to it, who then stumbled into two more. The whole herd groaned and sidestepped, much
to the dreadnought’s amusement. A deep,
mechanical chuckle could be heard just above the animal noises.
The
creature’s mad, Volstag thought. Centuries,
maybe millennia entombed in that metal monstrosity had obviously reduced the
mind of the Chaos Marine inside to that of a cruel child. But a very dangerous cruel child.
Volstag remembered the ambush. Two of the wolf scouts were leading a platoon
of Tundra Station PDF troops through a rocky crevasse toward the enemy ship,
executing the wolves’ surprise assault on the Night Lords. The party had rounded a bend within the crevasse
and crouched down to take pause. Behind
the pair of Space Wolves were twenty mortal soldiers of the Planetary Defense
Force, some toting heavy weapons. The
plan was to have platoons attack the Chaos ship from two directions with heavy
fire while a third team of wolf scouts planted melta charges in the
confusion. The enemy was not supposed to
know they were coming. Femyr, the pack
leader, took a knee and checked his com-bead.
The second party was in position but the third, the scouts with the
bombs, were not responding.
“Could be the weather,” the PDF
platoon sergeant said, a strange sneer on his lips. The wind was blowing above their heads but
nothing severe. “That happens here from
time to time,” he said.
Femyr and Volstag shared a look but
decided to go ahead, that their scout brethren would know what to do when the
time came without a verbal order. Femyr
got to his feet and moved around the rocky turn. As soon as his head came around the boulder
they had been crouching behind, reaper autocannon fire erupted into their
midst. The crevasse became a deathtrap,
heavy shells and rock fragments exploding in the confined space. Blood spatter painted the stone walls as the
leading PDF troops were hit. Femyr fell
back away from the fire lane but even his superhuman reflexes had been too
slow; his left hand was gone, blasted to splinters in the first autocannon burst,
and his left leg had been torn up by shrapnel.
He fell back into Volstag’s arms, gripping his bolt pistol tightly in
his right hand. Above the din was the
metallic laughter of the Chaos dreadnought as it filled the stone corridor with
heavy weapons fire. Volstag turned to
the platoon sergeant and ordered one PDF squad to fall back the way they’d
come, but the trooper just grinned in his face.
In the next moment the treacherous soldiers were on top of the two
wolves. The traitors came on
confidently, mistakenly thinking that they had the advantage. They soon found out that a wounded wolf is
ever more dangerous than a healthy one.
Femyr kicked two into the dreadnought’s firing line and killed several
more. Volstag’s combat blade worked in
and out quickly and fiery bolts from his plasma pistol burned clean through its
conspirator targets. The two wolves were
bloodied but victorious, having killed or routed nearly all of the fragile PDF
troopers.
Then the Night Lords entered into the
fight. Six of them leapt into the trench
on jump packs, just meters from the now wounded and drained wolf scouts. Two raptors died before the fight’s end, as
did pack leader Femyr. Bleeding and
wounded, Volstag could not out-muscle the remaining Chaos Marines, who grabbed
and bound him. He became their prisoner
and was soon introduced to their apothecary and torture-master, the bionic renegade
Abaenon.
Twin barrel blasts echoed over the
twilight corrals, bringing Volstag back to the present. The midsection of a sleeping grox exploded in
a gory star of blood and bone. Those
dreadnought’s sick laughter rang out over the night. Panicky grox moaned and scattered, but those
still half-asleep moved too slowly. The
dreadnought’s spotlight switched on, finding a sluggish animal on the outskirts
of the herd. The grox broke into a run
and gave a fearful cry, as if it knew what terrible fate the spotlight beam
foretold. The metal monster giggled to
itself, tracking its prey with smoking barrels but holding fire for the perfect
moment.
As it turned on its axel, the
dreadnought exposed its back to Volstag’s hiding spot. This was his chance.
The wolf broke sprinting from the
brush, bare feet pounding the snowy ground, chainsword in hand, boltgun
jostling at his side from its shoulder strap.
He met the high fence and bounded over it, then leapt again onto the
dreadnought’s back. His long fingers
found purchase between metal plates and his chainsword buzzed to life. With two tight swings of the whirring blade
he severed several tubes and wires and tore open a rear repair hatch. The metal monster roared furiously and fired
its twin cannons but hitting nothing but earth.
Grox scattered and moaned even faster now, adding to the cacophony. Volstag dropped off the hulk and into a
crouch, slapped a krak grenade under the crotch of legs and axel, then dashed
away again. Two seconds later the explosives
detonated, hurling hydraulic rods and pinions in every direction. Shards of debris bit into Volstag’s exposed
back but he ignored the pain. When he
turned around again the dreadnought was still facing the opposite direction,
unable to walk or turn. His chainsword
had rendered its clawed arm useless and opened up access to the firing
mechanism of the reaper autocannon. The
monster cried out like a wounded bear, unable to move or avenge itself.
Volstag strode confidently back to
his victim. “Not so damned funny now, is
it?” he said. He lifted off a rail from
the corral fence and used it to lever the upper body of the dreadnought
one-hundred-twenty degrees to the left.
The broad side of the Night Lord’s ship sat only a couple hundred meters
away.
The dreadnought moaned like the
grox he’d been torturing.
“And thanks to your cruel games,
anyone who hears you moaning will just think you’re still having fun.
“Until the ship’s damage alarms go
off.”
The Space Wolf hauled himself back
up to the open compartment on the dreadnought’s rear. Twelve seconds of trial and error and he had
complete control of the twin autocannons.
The creature entombed within complained with bestial noises but could do
nothing to stop him. This should give me just the diversion I
need to get aboard, Volstag thought as he triggered the firing
mechanism. The heavy shells detonated
against the hull just to the left of the primary engine cones.
“But a space ship’s hull is built
to take more punishment than that,” Volstag said aloud. “Let’s try this instead.” He adjusted his aim and fired again. This time twin trails of fire shot right into
the engine cones, followed by explosions deep inside. He fired another volley. Green-blue plasma belched out from deep
within his target, indicating an engine breach.
“And while we’re at it...” The dreadnought’s body ground and clicked in
an arc, the cannons roaring off several more rounds as it turned. The earth around one landing leg exploded,
then the leg itself. Volstag directed
the fire to a second leg and destroyed it, too.
The whole ship listed backward, tilting the whole ship into further confusion.
“I know you’re wracked with guilt
over this,” Volstag told the dreadnought, “but don’t worry, you won’t have long
to live with it.” He clicked another
krak grenade inside the beast’s hull, set it with a long fuse, then dropped
back to the ground.
“In Femyr Longspear’s name.”
The wolf rushed back into the darkness. Thirty seconds later there was an explosion
within the dreadnought’s body, followed by several more as his remaining
munitions went up and finished him from the inside out.
#
The conclusion in just a few days...
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