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HUNTED
(part 5 of 5)
Alarm klaxons were sounding aboard the enemy vessel. Volstag pulled himself up the open access ramp, having to jump up to reach its edge as the grounded ship was cocked backward on its damaged landing gear. He paused there in the doorway in a low crouch, chainsword across his back, guns on his belt. He could hear very little below the howling of the fire alarm, but he did smell someone nearby; the tang of mutation was in the air.
A thin figure appeared from around
the corridor, robed in dark blue with shining orange eyes. The wolf pounced and dispatched him in an
instant, easily snapping the mortal’s neck.
Limp in his arms, he could see this was a serf like those that crewed
loyal Space Marine ships, though here they were more likely slaves. This one appeared to also be a plaything of
the depraved apothecary, having several scars and surgical augmentations.
A memory flashed in his mind:
breaking free of his bindings and slaying two such slaves with a few brutal
swipes of his clawed hands. He felt the
sweaty humidity again, smelled the oil and burning flesh, heard the painful
cries of those dying.
Volstag looked at his hands
now. Had those really been his taloned
paws? No time to consider that now. He tossed the slave’s body out the hatch,
pulled his sword and bolt pistol, and proceeded into the shadowy labyrinth of
the ship.
The hot, narrow corridors were
strangely familiar to him. With his
general knowledge of Imperial ship designs combined with his unconscious memory,
it wouldn’t take him long to locate the radio tower. Along the way he’d seen only a couple more
serf slaves, who had gone about their regular maintenance duties without
noticing the scout creeping among the shadows.
Most of the Night Lord warriors were no doubt scattered across several kilometers,
searching for their lost prey. The rest
of the ship’s company and crew would be fighting the fire in the rear engine
departments, though by now that situation was likely under control. Still the alarms sounded, giving him cover
and assurance.
On the third deck of the ship,
Volstag finally located the radio tower sealed behind a standard vacuum hatch. Just as he was prepared to enter, the hatch
doors parted. A robed figure slouched through
the threshold dragging a twisted appendage that may have once been a leg. The slave’s pale face flashed surprise as the
chainsword swung in and tore into its throat.
Volstag bounded inside.
This was a cylindrical chamber no more
than ten meters in diameter with the ceiling lost in the antenna arrays several
meters above, all lit an eerie green by blinking lights and waveform
screens. Two mortal servants and a Chaos
Marine stood inside, one slave yelping with surprise. The Night Lord turned from receiving the latest
report on the hunt and smiled. One thick
finger clicked a switch on the panel.
“Nevermind, Squad Five. I have
him.” He clicked off the channel.
“You’ve led us on quiet a chase,
little pup,” the Night Lord said. His
face was an irregular grid of scars, the chest piece of his power armor almost
matching. He pulled a jagged combat
blade from his belt. “But the game is
over now.”
One mutant slave raised an arm and
his dark robe’s sleeve fell back. The
bionic arm beneath unfolded with a mechanical whir, extending into three thin
metal limbs, two with claws of various size, one with a long drill that whined
as it spun up. The other slave stood
still, waiting to see what would happen next.
“Shall we?” the Chaos Marine said.
Volstag hesitated, listening to the
alarm klaxon continuing overhead. He
realized it could stop any second but would cover any noise until then. “I’d love to,” the wolf snarled, “but I don’t
have much time, and you’re wasting it.”
He dropped the chainsword to the deck with a loud clang. The renegade’s mouth twitched into an even
broader smile, but only briefly.
Vostag’s now free hand seized the boltgun that hung at his side, tugged
it free from his shoulder, and opened fire.
The weapon’s report echoed around the walls of the small chamber as its
vicious bolts spattered tainted blood on the walls and instruments. After two seconds of bolter fire his ears
were ringing, the room was choked with smoke, and three enemy bodies lay on the
floor.
That
was stupid, he told himself, moving forward to inspect the radio
controls. One misplaced shot could have
destroyed the very equipment he’d come to use.
It was the wolf inside that made him so anxious to spill blood, so
careless with his weaponry. The wolf. His teeth clenched tight, eager to bite, to
feed. There was little doubt now;
Volstag knew he was tainted by the wulfen.
A sharp-toothed grin touched his lips as he fished the voice-corder from
its belt compartment. He realized that
he had no regrets about the darker side of Russ and would give himself
willingly to the creature’s full fury, when his business was done. But not yet.
Quickly assessing the radio panel,
he found the appropriate link, plugged in the voice recording device, tuned up
the standard Imperial distress frequency, and pressed the play button. The fire alarms ceased at that moment,
leaving only his own voice in the room: “...I shall do what damage I can, then
see you in the mead halls of the afterlife.”
Volstag set the device in a repeating loop and gathered up his
weapons.
One
more task, he told the beast within, leashing it with his will. The
signal’s out, we’ve little else to live for now. But I have to be sure. Something the traitor PDFs had said under his
tree resonated in his head, something about being rewarded with the gene-seed
of Kurze, thus made into the Night Lords Space Marines. What if Abaenon had stolen the gene-seed of
Russ from his tortured captives? He had to
find and destroy the apothecary’s lab. Then he’d unleash the beast. Then
he could die in blind, furious combat with honor in his heart.
#
The wolf’s unconscious memory guided him easily to the place
of its birth; he therefore knew where the laboratory could be found. But now that the fire had been squelched the
ship’s passageways were busier with robed slaves and servitors returning to
their usual duties.
That suited Volstag fine.
He heard mumbled conversation around
a corner and sped his pace to meet it, his bare feet pounding hard on the steel
grid of flooring. The Night Lord Space
Marines and their servitor were not expecting a half-naked beastman to come
bounding around the bend, chainsword growling in both hands. With two swings and a howl of bloodlust,
Volstag beheaded one Marine and cut down the other two. Their bulky bodies would choke the
passageway, slowing down any pursuers.
He climbed a ladder to the fourth
deck and shot two slaves waiting there with his bolt pistol. Subtlety was falling away. Something in him was no longer being
cautious.
Two more robed figures saw him
coming down a long corridor; there was no way to hide himself now. One was a half-machine servitor. It leveled its inhuman limb at him and fire
poured forth, filling the hallway with orange flame. Volstag leapt through the wall of fire, bare
skin singed, the hair on his face and chest burned off or smoking. His chain blade hacked off the offending limb
and his massive body smashed the other man against the bulkhead. The servitor stared in shock as his severed
arm’s promethium fuel squirted on the walls and deck plates.
“Another fire,” the Space Wolf
said, himself burning with several tiny flames.
“Just what we need.”
He lowered his pistol and shot the
mutant he’d knocked to the floor. The
exploding bolt scattered the slave’s brains and sparked the lost fuel. A new barrier of flame roared to life. Volstag’s chainsword gave the servitor its
death.
A savage eagerness within told Volstag
that he’d reached his destination. The
laboratory doors slid open. It was a
large chamber with two metal medical slabs in the middle of the room. Still strapped to one was the cold corpse of
the wolf scout Holm Blackfoot, left to decay in disgrace. Each of the three walls were dedicated to
profane equipment: one a bank of instrument cabinets; one displaying tanks of
chemicals and vials of drugs; and the third alive with mechanical medic arms
and warp-infested growths pulsing with white eyeballs and gibbering
mouths. Standing at that wall, feeding a
monstrous mouth with a lump of flesh cut from Volstag’s lost pack mate, was the
depraved apothecary Abaenon. He was
cloaked in black. His face and exposed
hand were more dark metal bionics and black tubing than pale flesh. Two augmented slaves were also present in the
room. All three stared to see what had
opened the door.
The smoldering, wounded wolf stood in the threshold, highlighted from
the right by the flickering orange fire outside. His body smoked, his chest heaved, his eyes
shined, and he showed his teeth.
“Quickly,” Abaenon snapped,
directing the nearest slave to grab the Claw of Agony from a pedestal in the
corner.
Volstag paid no attention. His glare was locked on the bank of glass
tanks and bubbling vials, a wall of multi-colored potions lit from behind. Somewhere in one of those alchemical elixirs
could be a captured Space Wolf gene-seed.
The second attendant stood in front
of that chaotic aquarium, frozen in the intruder’s sights.
Volstag raised the boltgun held the
trigger, spraying explosive bolt rounds in wide arcs until every bolt was spent
and every tank was shattered. The mutant
slave that had stood between him and the tanks was now a warm heap lying atop
broken glass.
The gun’s barrel smoked. The sound of a heavy rain rushed through the
steel grid floor, a mix of alchemical soups and blood.
The boltgun clicked several times,
empty. Volstag dropped it.
The first slave retrieved Abaenon’s
weapon and held it up in front of his master.
The Night Lord shoved his spindly metal hand into the bionic glove. Its thin scalpel blades hummed to life and
took on a blue-ish glow.
BOOM. A single bolt pistol round exploded inside the
slave’s forehead. His remains slumped to
the floor.
Volstag dropped the pistol.
Abaenon showed his teeth, some dark
iron, others rotten bone. His bladed
fingers twitched playfully.
The Space Wolf paused to lock the laboratory
door behind him. He revved his
chainsword a couple times, making slow sweeps with it through the air, then
dropped it too.
It’s time, he told himself. The wolf within stirred and stretched, as if
it’d been lying in its bed after a nap, patiently waiting for its turn at the
hunt. Volstag flexed his fingers and
felt a pleasant ache as they grew a full centimeter longer, the nails
thickening and curling into claws.
His senses
sharpen even further: he heard alarmed voices in the hallway outside; smelled
the stinging chemical fumes dripping through the floor; saw more clearly the
scars and bionics of Abaenon’s altered face, the single yellow eye flinching
anxiously, a bead of nervous sweat rolling down his cheek.
“You’ve met this side of me before,
haven’t you?” Volstag growled. “You
remember better than I do, and you fear it.
Good, traitor. Fear redemption. By the time your servants cut through that
blast door I will have torn out your throat and spit it out.”
Abaenon side-stepped over his dead servant,
never taking his eyes from the transforming Space Wolf. His glowing, bladed fingers scratched at the
air between them. “You think you’ve
destroyed my reserves, my samples,” the Night Lord said, “but I still have you.
And what a wonderful specimen you
are. The gene-seed I take from you will
be far more valuable than everything I took from your brothers—”
This was too much for Volstag to bear. The beast within snapped its mental leash and
the Space Wolf lunged forward. He moved
fast but had to dart around a steel table.
That obstacle allowed Abaenon the chance to react. The Claw of Agony met Volstag as he pounced
around the table, four humming blue blades slicing easily through the knotted
muscles of his left shoulder. Volstag
threw himself to the right, smashing against a cabinet of medical instruments
and torture toys but successfully avoiding the Claw’s follow-through, which
certainly would have severed his entire arm.
Four deep cuts sizzled and smoldered, the smell of burnt flesh
overwhelming all else. Abaenon’s
mechanical smile shined from beneath his hood.
The apothecary
then danced backward to a small arms locker in the corner. He tore off the cabinet door with his Claw and
seized a bolt pistol from within.
But when the Night Lord turned to fire the Space
Wolf was already there, centimeters from impact. Both bodies slammed against the sundered
locker and the bulkhead behind. Savage
instinct took hold and Volstag tore at the throat before him with elongated
fangs. Instead of flesh he found a
mouthful of fragile tubes which now leaked their black fluids down his bearded
chin. The wulfen claws of his right hand
dug deep into the flexible ribs of the Night Lord’s power armor and found a
spring of red blood there. But Volstag’s
full charge made him vulnerable as well; the four scalpel-like fingers of the
Claw of Agony were now buried deep into his bare flank. The searing heat of the blades pierced his
vital organs.
The Space Wolf pushed himself away, dragging
some of Abaenon’s innards out as they parted.
Four streams of blood broke from the wounds left by the Claw of Agony,
wounds that would not clot, despite his superior Astartes anatomy. Just like the torture scars on his chest, the
Claw’s power defied all healing. And
Volstag’s left arm now hung limp and nearly useless, vital muscles and tendons
having been cut in the first attack. But
at least he was standing.
Abaenon’s dark form slumped to the floor. The mechanical side of his face seems frozen
now, as did the entire left side of his body; the hoses Volstag had bitten
through must have provided his artificial parts with whatever they needed to
function. The black fluid mingled with
red blood across his exposed intestines.
The pale, human side of his face seemed even whiter now. With great effort, Abaenon raised his bolt
pistol in an unsteady hand. Volstag
stepped forward again, paused. The Night
Lord’s hand shook, the pistol’s muzzle flashing wildly at and away from its
target. Volstag slapped the weapon away with
his good arm and returned with claws to finish the job, ripping under the collar
and hood and all but severing the dark apothecary’s head.
Three more bodies leaked blood and organs, the
room stunk of death and chemical fumes, broken glass littered the floor. And despite the gory scene, Volstag felt a
calmness come over him. It was done.
There was pounding at the door and angry voices
outside. A few seconds later came a
hissing sound, followed swiftly by green sparks spitting through the edge of
the door. A plasma cutter, Volstag realized.
He looked around at the wrecked lab and ruined
bodies, drew a deep breath.
“It doesn’t matter,” he told himself aloud. He had done all he could. That which he had
denied himself hours before he could now succumb to: it was time to give
himself fully over to the Wulfen. Perhaps I’ll wake again in another tree,
he thought. The beast managed to escape before. Though Volstag really didn’t care if he ever
awoke from the rage again. It wouldn’t
matter now. The traitors of Tundra
Station would be found and dealt with by his coming Wolf brothers. He’d destroyed any stolen gene-seed of Leman
Russ and he’d had his vengeance. All
that remained was an honorable death.
He rolled his head about, feeling the muscles of
his neck tighten and swell as his jaws bit down in anticipation. The green sparks continued and the stink of
burning metal added to the chemical bouquet of the room. Pain flowed from each digit along the bones
and into his wrists as the beast readied its claws. His head started swimming. Was it the fumes or was he simply losing
domain over his own body?
The Space Wolf that was Volstag Dragonclaw faded
back into the darkness of his mind, trusting the beast within to finish his legacy
for him.
END
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