There Is Only War Read online

  ‘Position, brother,’ snapped Kvara, running hard, feeling the sweat run down his temple.

  ‘Rann… all gone…’

  And that was it. The comm spat a fog of static. Kvara kept running, keeping his head low, weaving through the rubble. Solid rounds fizzed over his head, impacting against the rockcrete and showering him with rubble.

  Blood of Russ – where are they?

  He sensed a detonation to his left, and leapt clear. The already ruined wall exploded, hurling out an orb of fire and rusty shrapnel. The blast wave threw him from his feet, slamming him into the nearside bulwark. His armour crunched through it, tearing up the stone and showering him in dust.

  ‘Position!’ he spat, righting himself and breaking into a run again.

  Nothing but hissing came over the comm. The fractured sky of Deneth Teros rumbled with electric storms, and a fork of violet lightning licked the burning horizon.

  ‘Lek. Svensson. Position.’

  He ducked down again and starting to run. Above him, huge artillery trails lanced between the shells of the spires, exploding in a cacophony of overlaid, shuddering booms.

  The static mocked him, and he blinked the feed closed. Far ahead of him, the city core was tearing itself apart. A vast hab-spire, hundreds of metres tall and crested with jagged towers, toppled over with eerie, magisterial slowness. Already broken open by a hundred major impacts, the walls imploded as it crashed down amongst the ruins, throwing up a bow wave of burning dust. The screams of those inside were lost in the ripping, flickering wind, burned away by the igniting promethium in the air.

  Kvara raced across a narrow transit corridor, dodging the smoking craters and leaping over the lines of barbed stranglewire. Explosive rounds followed him, puffing up as they hit the tarmac. Since he’d left Vrakk, coughing up his own blood in the gutter with his lower body on the other side of the street, Kvara’s tactical display had showed nothing but interference. The location runes of his pack all showed blank.

  We’re being torn apart.

  He spotted movement, right on the edge of his left visual field, and swerved after it. Something – something big – ducked under a huge, low-hanging metal beam.

  Kvara fired. The bolts screamed off into the fire-flecked murk, exploding as they demolished the beam in a cloud of spinning metal shards.

  Then he was running again, leaping past smoking mortar holes and sweeping around smouldering heaps of twisted slag. He hadn’t killed it. He’d have known if he had killed it.

  Warned by some inner sense, he skidded to a halt, dropping down to a crouch.

  A ball of plasma seared out of the gloom, missing by centimetres, slamming into the wall behind him. Kvara lurched forward, feeling the heat as another plasma bolt flew across his back.

  He rolled to one side, bringing up his pistol and firing blind. The bolts connected with something, there was a shrill shriek, and the plasma torrent ceased.

  Kvara sprang up, bounding after the source of the noise, ducking and swooping across the broken ground. As he went, his senses processed a thousand minor events in every direction – Guardsmen howling and weeping with fear and pain, juddering fire from dug-in positions over by the refineries, the grind and crack of armoured formations coming up from the transit hub along what remained of the Joslynssbahn. He processed those sounds, but did nothing about them. Everything was focussed on the elusive shadow, the shape that stayed one step ahead, the shape that had come among them and summoned blood.

  Kvara tore round the shell of a burned-out Chimera, tasting the sweet taste of the hunt in his cloyed saliva.

  Ahead, two hundred metres, he saw it again, dark between clouds of engine smoke. Huge, edged with spikes, loping like a maddened devil of the Helwinter. Corruption rolled from its carapace in a stink of oily shadow.

  It turned, and eyes the colour of newborn flesh blazed at him.

  Kvara fired as he ran, loosing a rolling column of explosive rounds and zigzagging through the broken remnants of the 576th Armoured Falchions.

  The bolts connected, and the creature rocked back on huge, cloven feet. It cast aside a charred and broken plasma cannon and reached for a glittering blade. A scream sliced through the air, echoing in nightmarish polyphony.

  Kvara didn’t slow down. The pistol clicked empty, and he cast it aside, drawing up his blade Rothgeril and activating the lashing disruptors.

  The thing he faced had once been a man. After that, it had been a Space Marine. After that, it had become a living altar of sadism, a prophet of the darkest corner of insanity and depravity in a galaxy already drenched in it.

  Its armour, a grotesque blasphemy of Tactical Dreadnought plate, had burst out and split from the pulsing flesh beneath. Translucent tumours swelled up in the cracks, glowing and leaking and trembling. A face – part helm-grille, part skeletal rictus – grinned out from under a cowl of whip-curl bronze snakes. Eldritch energy rippled across the warped ceramite like meltwater. Blood flecked and speckled the pale pink tracery, boiling and hissing as the raw ether touched it and recoiled.

  Kvara swung the blade low, driving it with frightening speed and precision. He could sense the acuity of his own movements, and gloried in it. Every nanometre of his body was straining for the kill. His hearts thudded, his blood raged, his lungs burned with a cleansing pain.

  The blades clashed, and a boom of power discharged, throwing Kvara back and blunting his charge. The monster reared over him, pulling its pulsing sword-edge round for another blow.

  Kvara pulled away, opening up a narrow space and spinning round to build up fresh momentum. The creature sliced its own blade across at him, tearing the very air itself asunder and leaving a trail of agonised matter in its wake.

  Kvara ducked under it, feeling the charged edge tear a chunk from his backpack. He thrust up, ignoring the sickly stench of filth that poured from the corrupted horror, grabbing the hilt of Rothgeril two-handed.

  The sword bit deep, blazing like a field of stars as it crashed through the distorted ceramite and warp-addled flesh.

  Then it was hauled away, dragged from his hands by a wrench so hard that Kvara lost his feet and was dragged, face-down, into the ash and dust of the ruined city. He recovered instantly, rolling away to evade the downward killing plunge before jumping back to his feet and backing away, disgusted at how easily his weapon had been taken from him.

  Now the creature held two swords. One, its own, blazed with sick, overripe energy. The other, Kvara’s, held upside-down by the blade-tip. The beast’s long fingers squeezed through the furious disruptor field, bleeding dark purple blood where Rothgeril’s biting edge sunk deep into its twisted flesh.

  It laughed, and the sound was like the screaming of children.

  Weaponless, Kvara clenched his gauntlets and snarled, ready for the onslaught. The creature was nearly twice his height, mutated and imbued with the essence of the Ruinous Powers. The Grey Hunter gazed up at it through red helm lenses, fearless and desperate, judging whether any blow he landed could do any damage to such a monster, tensing to sell his life with as much blood and fire as could still be mustered.

  But not yet. A hurricane of heavy bolter fire slammed into the towering monster, smashing up the twisted armour and churning deep into the rose-pink muscle. It reeled, flailing against the bludgeoning hail of exploding projectiles.

  Beorth limped out of the roiling clouds, his underslung bolter thundering from his two-handed grip. The comm-link was still a hiss of nothing. In broken bursts, Kvara could only hear a strangled, desperate sound from Beorth’s feed.

  The man, the big man, was roaring.

  ‘A blade, brother!’ shouted Kvara, stretching out a hand imploringly.

  Beorth ignored him. He strode toward the staggering creature, firing all the while, ripping the armour-shell free of its sickening sigils and unholy signs. His own armour was as black as night, burn
ed and rent open, and blood still poured from a dozen mortal wounds. He walked on regardless, massive and implacable, pouring a steady stream of withering, searing destruction from the red-hot muzzle of his huge weapon.

  The monster waded through it, clawing at the bolts even as they punched into it, blowing shards from its armour and spraying plumes of purple. It staggered toward Beorth, screaming the whole time in a paroxysm of outrage and madness.

  Then it leapt, streaming out in trails of blood and shell-discharge, arms outstretched and jaws open. It crashed into Beorth, knocking them both to the ground and rolling over. It savaged at his neck, tore at the cracks in his armour, stamped down with cloven hooves on to his prone limbs.

  Kvara raced after them, pouncing on to the back of the creature. He grabbed the ornate lip of its armour and heaved, pulling it away from Beorth. The horror snarled and lashed round, trying to throw him off. Kvara clung on, digging his fingers deep into the exposed flesh under the ceramite, tearing it up and pulling it out in strips.

  Beorth clambered back to his feet, drawing his blade. The heavy bolter thudded to the floor, spent and smoking.

  The creature of Chaos threw Kvara off, hurling him to one side and swinging the twin swords down at his prone body. Kvara rolled away, evading them by centimetres, before Beorth charged back, slashing with his own combat blade, whirling and dancing with all the skill of Frorl.

  Together, the two of them rocked back and forth, hacking and blocking. The Traitor was reeling now, weeping blood in rivulets down its shattered armour. Beorth’s left arm hung limply by his side, awkwardly twisted, his every move radiating agony.

  Kvara lurched to his feet in time to witness his brother’s sword knocked away with a vicious swipe from the Traitor’s warp-tainted blade. It spun away, glittering in the firelight, clattering across the stone. Spurred on by desperation, Kvara scrambled after it, grabbing the hilt just as it came to rest.

  He whirled back round, only to see the creature break Beorth’s neck with a final, horrifying lunge. The huge warrior was hoisted into the air and cast aside with a sickening crunch of bone.

  Then it turned to Kvara, and grinned.

  Kvara ignited the disruptor on Beorth’s blade, barely noticing the runes signifying ‘Djalik’ along the blade. It felt light in his hand, balanced the way a combat sword should be.

  ‘For the Allfather,’ Kvara breathed softly, staring at the murderer of his pack, sensing the death-spirit locked tight in the killing blade.

  The creature charged at him, both swords flailing, but its movements were jerky and erratic. Massive wounds had opened out across its body from Beorth’s onslaught, all bleeding torrents.

  Kvara darted forward, ducking under the first incoming swipe before jabbing up with the point of Djalik, twisting as the edge punched up through the outstretched chin of the Traitor.

  The point cleaved cleanly, thrusting up through bone and brain. The monster, impaled on the lashing, spitting energy blade, jerked like a marionette, lashing out blindly with its twin weapons.

  Huge fists battered Kvara, buffeting him from either side, but he remained firm. He fed power to Djalik’s disruptors, and the creature’s head bulged, cracked, and exploded.

  A rain of pulp and bone shot outward, blinding Kvara and sending him reeling backwards again. Disorientated, he stumbled, landing heavily on his back. A sharp pain radiated from his side, and he caught sight of the Traitor’s blade lodged in his torso. Runes flashed red across his helm display, giving him a tediously thorough summary of just how badly hurt that made him.

  The headless body of the Traitor toppled, thudding dully against the tortured earth of Deneth Teros. Tendrils of warp-matter flickered across its ruined corpse, dancing like grave-sprites.

  Still on his back, Kvara grabbed hold of the corrupted blade, gritted his teeth, and pulled. It came free with a wet squelch, dragging strands of muscle and skin with it through the jagged gash in his armour. He could feel the poison in the wound already, hot and boiling away like a swarm of insects. He tried to rise, and failed. Blood was leaking out of him freely, defying the clotting agents in his body. His vision blurred, going black, and his head fell back against the hot soil.

  Above him, the sky was scored with trails of fire. As if from far away, he heard the rush and clamour of warfare. The ground trembled underfoot as huge war engines trundled toward one another. High up in the dark skies, black silhouettes of drop-ships hung, shaky in the heatwash from their labouring engines.

  Kvara watched it all mutely, feeling paralysis creep up to his lips. He could feel his consciousness slipping away, even as his ravaged body rallied against the poison frothing in his blood.

  ‘Position…’ he murmured, automatically, repeating the word he’d used so often over the last hour, feeling the bitter futility of it even as his mind lost its grip on the world of the senses.

  Beorth was dead. Vrakk was dead. Rann and Aerjak had died together, just as they had surely been fated to do. The pack – all of them – were dead.

  Kvara felt a solitary tear of rage run down his burned cheek. He wanted to take his helm off, to taste the air of the world that had done this, but his hands no longer obeyed his commands.

  Night closed in on him, the night of oblivion. The last thing he saw was the helm display, functional and stark. The eight runes, eight identifier marks, were all blank, like empty holes into the void.

  All dead.

  The thought burned at his mind even as it retreated in nothingness. It stabbed at him, far sharper than the wound in his side, sharper than the many wounds across his battle-worn body, sharper than the knowledge, coming to him even as lost everything else, that he was equal to the poisons, and that this would not be the last fight he would live to see.

  That didn’t matter. For the first time since coming off the ice and taking the Helix, that didn’t matter.

  Nothing mattered.

  All dead.

  ‘This is your choice.’

  ‘I have made it.’

  ‘Not yet. You need more time.’

  ‘My decision won’t change.’

  ‘It may. I’ve seen it before.’

  The eyes in the dark were red and slanted. If he had died, he would have expected eyes like those.

  But he hadn’t died, not physically. The eyes behind those lenses were like his. They were sunk deep into a black wolf skull mask with teeth set around the helm-grille.

  Around him, the isolation chamber of the Vrafnki hummed with the grind of sub-warp travel. He didn’t know where it was going, or how long it would be in transit. Much still had to be explained to him, though he was in no hurry to ask for information.

  ‘It’s a privilege, not a right,’ said the Rune Priest, though less harshly than he might have done.

  Kvara let his head sink back to the metal surface of the medicae cot. Every part of him still ached. His blood felt painfully hot, as if he’d been given a transfusion of molten lead.

  ‘With all respect, lord,’ he said, working his swollen lips painfully, ‘I don’t believe you. It’s never been refused.’

  For a moment, the skull mask remained static. Then a low, grating chuckle broke out from behind the black armour.

  ‘Maybe.’

  The mask drew closer, looming over him, coming to within a few centimetres of his face. Kvara looked up through the translucent mask of the medicae shroud with the one eye that still worked. He felt the soft pulse of the machinery around him, cycling his blood, working his hearts, filling his lungs, keeping him shackled to life.

  ‘What do you think taking the lone path will be like, Hunter?’ he asked. ‘How long do you think it will take to find a prize big enough to extinguish your grief? When we pulled you from the ice, as near to death as you are now, you’d killed a hvaluri. How much bigger would your beast have to be, Aj Kvara, before its death would be enough
?’

  Kvara smiled grimly.

  ‘When I was a child, I dreamed of killing a krakken. That’s what I thought it took to become a Sky Warrior.’

  ‘Then you are a fool. The krakken cannot be killed.’

  ‘But Jarl Engir–’

  ‘The krakken cannot be killed. It will tear at the roots of the world for eternity, weakening them, making them frail.’

  The Rune Priest withdrew his skull mask. Kvara closed his eye. He felt the drugs in his system dragging him back to unconsciousness, and fought against it.

  ‘It can be killed,’ he said, feeling his words slur. ‘I know it, and you know it. Everything that lives can be killed.’

  He kept moving, heading down, ever down, fighting through the hormagaunts as they swarmed up from the lower levels, relishing every wave of them as they crashed and broke against his armour. Djalik was slick with their fluid, as was the muzzle of his bolt pistol, now dangerously low on ammunition.

  The creatures had come from below. They’d run up the sensor shafts from the underwater sections, fast and silent. The human crew would have had no warning – no time even to send off a panicked transmission before the living wall of teeth and claws ripped into them. Before Kvara had arrived they’d been dispersing again, falling back down in scattered packs, making way for the monster whose appearance they’d heralded. Only his intervention had stirred them again, rousing them back into the slavering, indignant fury they’d shown before.

  Now, once again, their numbers had been thinned. Kvara wheeled around smoothly, knocking three of the creatures bodily into the chamber walls. Two thumped wetly against the plasteel, slumping to the floor. The other managed to get up, and he grabbed it, snapping its neck with a contemptuous twist.

  The floor rocked as something collided with the outside wall. The collisions were getting more violent, and he braced himself against them. A hormagaunt, one of the last remaining, skittered into the chamber and threw itself at him. Kvara cracked his fist into its oncoming jaws, not bothering to use the blade.