Battle of the Fang (Space Marine Battles) by Chris Wraight

Author:Chris Wraight [Wraight, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2011-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Gangava Prime. A dark world, far from its giant red star. As the solar terminator swept across the rust-red planetscape, the night-side sank deep into occlusion. There were pinpricks of artificial light all across the shadowed hemisphere, but they concentrated into a bright cluster towards the high northern latitude. Swirls of sulphur-yellow picked out a city. A vast, sprawling city.

From the bridge of the Russvangum, Ironhelm watched the lights wink on far below. The inhabitants of that place knew that the Wolves had arrived. They had detectors, sensor-arrays and void shields raised. The entire Chapter fleet, minus the few guard-ships left on Fenris, was now in high orbit. The firepower assembled there was immense, as great as anything pulled together during the Great Scouring. Gangava had no orbital defences, but they would have been an irrelevance anyway. Lean strike cruisers and ploughshare-bowed destroyers now prowled across the void with impunity, poised to unleash Hel on the world below them.

The Great Wolf felt a mix of emotions, looking down on the city he was about to destroy. He’d slept badly during the twenty-one days in the warp. Magnus had come to him in his dreams regularly, goading him, taunting his failure to catch up with him over the decades. Ironhelm hadn’t seen the face of the primarch, just as he hadn’t seen it over the many years of prior visitations.

But he had heard the voice. An unforgettable voice. Proud, powerful, cultivated, but with a touch of petulance that wasn’t quite under control. For all his primarch’s qualities, he now came across as a diminished, querulous presence.

My gene-father broke your back, monster.

Magnus had smirked at such defiance, but there was a residue of pain there. Real, mortal pain.

Brooding over the realspace viewers in his private chambers, Ironhelm felt his fingers itch within their gauntlets. The journey had been too long. Only hours now remained before the drop-pods would begin to fall, accelerating into a hail of dark seeds from the void, all aimed beyond the cover of the city’s shields.

Ironhelm saw the ingress routes in his mind’s eye. They were available at any time from his helm-display, but he knew he’d not have to use that. He could visualise all aspects of the battle as it would unfold. If he closed his eyes, the tactical outline would still be there, a pattern of hololith lines and deployment runes overlaid on the streets of the vast city.

Many in the galaxy believed that the Space Wolves were simply feral barbarians, brutes who charged headlong into battle yelling incomprehensible curses. Only later, when they found their supply lines severed, their comms jammed and their allies breaking out in rebellion behind them did they discover the weakness of that interpretation. Planning was everything, the coordination of pack-movements, the encirclement of the prey, the cleanliness of the kill.

The Wolves were savage, but not savages. Gangava would be destroyed swiftly and without indulgence. Primarch or no, Magnus would come to regret his decision to establish himself within strike distance of Fenris.

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