The Wild King - Robbie MacNiven by Warhammer 40K

Author:Warhammer 40K [40K, Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785722417
Publisher: The Black Library
Published: 2016-06-20T07:35:27+00:00

Svellgard

From the grey heavens, the weight of the Imperium’s wrath fell upon Svellgard.

First it was firepower. The precise strike of Iron Requiem had been nothing next to the weight of ordnance unleashed by the combined fleets in Frostheim’s uppermost orbit. Lance strikes, melta torpedoes, augur-guided macrocannon shells – they ripped and shredded Svellgard’s clouds and shook its islands to their bedrock.

The bombardment was centred on three different sectors, around the edges of the warp rift anomalies pinpointed by the fleet’s scans. There the corruption was at its worst, the sucking, swirling oceans seething with nightmares of blubbering flesh and grasping tentacle-limbs. Cohorts of lesser daemons pushed their way through the morass of submerged warp-flesh, all massing in the direction of the World Wolf’s Lair. Until the orbital barrage began to annihilate them, splitting apart the ocean waves and flinging great pillars of evaporated water skywards.

As the great guns of the Imperium’s fleets continued to hammer Svellgard’s deformed deeps, more contrails filled the air. The objects fell with almost as much force as the macroshells, but their payloads were considerably more deadly. They struck in clusters near two of the three portals, hammering the exposed seabed close to where the receding waters still lashed and foamed.

Drop pods. Their flanks fell, armoured figures deploying from their cramped interiors with experienced ease. To the north of the World Wolf’s Lair, the blue battleplate of the Ultramarines, to the east, the black and silver of the Iron Hands.

Thunderhawks followed the drop pod assault down, leaden with armour support. Bolters flashed and barked as the Space Marines secured their landing zones, the concentrated firepower more than enough to banish the daemons dragging themselves from the surf towards them.

The world the Adeptus Astartes found themselves fighting in was a strange one. Even as the oceans retreated they left behind hundreds of choppy micro-oceans in the lower depths of what had once been the seabed. An advance route was planned out across uplands of craggy exposed bedrock, thick with dripping growths and writhing aquatic life.

Few of the growths of life were without the hideous stigmata of Chaos.

The Space Marines cleansed as they went, the Ultramarines with a Codex-approved combination of pre-planned advances and individual unit flexibility, the Iron Hands with remorseless implacability. All the while, the capital ships maintained their bombardment from above, hammering the things crawling up out of the rips in reality, searing away Svellgard’s seas with fiery wrath.

The Space Wolves were the last to join the assault. Harald and Sven waited. When Epathus asked why, Harald claimed they were giving Bran Redmaw more time. In truth, they wanted to ensure the crusade fleet deployed its strength to attack the warp portals, and not the World Wolf’s Lair. Only when heavy Astra Militarum troop shuttles had started to plough through the lower atmosphere did the Wolf Lords give the signal.

‘I’ll see you afterwards, Deathwolf,’ Sven said, clasping his brother’s vambrace.

‘Enjoy yourself, pup,’ Harald replied, returning the warrior’s grip. ‘For Russ and the Allfather.’

The Wolves went on the offensive.

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