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The Ember Wolves – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Ember Wolves

Rob Sanders

The void rumbled at the arrival of the Dark Mechanicum. Monstrous coffin-ships thundered into the backwater systems of the Gorgonopsii Maestrale, glimmering with the fell light of corruption. Each transported tainted constructs – tech-pledged to the Warmaster. They were packed with traitor cyborgs of the Thallaxii cohorts. They carried the fallen god-machines of the Legio Audax.

The Ember Wolves. Death, by any other name.

At the heart of the Maestrale lay the shabby little hive world of Absolom. It was here, in the shadow of ancient hives, that the towering war machines of the Legio Castigatra made their stand. Overconfident and untried, they had been drawn together with other legions as part of the newly formed Adeptus Titanicus. The loyalist Titans marched forth under the banners of the false Fabricator General of Terra and met Horus Lupercal’s forces, god-machine to god-machine.

The hive world shook with landing Titans, brought down with rancid expediency from macro-carriers achieving low orbit. The dunes of the surrounding ash wastes trembled, while the crooked spires and looming accretions of the hives fell and crashed into the cityscape below. With ear-splitting horns of arrival, cybernetic shock troops spilled from landing transports. Screams spread through the shanties as Thallaxii soldiers made their maniac way through the corrugated townships, wildly gunning down the hive worlders. But the true terror came with the first steps of the god-machines, a cacophonous thunder that shook such structures to scrap and crushed families underfoot. Colossal weaponry boomed to life – power converters filled the air with the hum of static, while the heavy metal clunk of loading mechanism echoed through the canyons between the hives.

By the time the Emperor-class Titans of the Legio Castigatra arrived to intercept the traitor machines and retake the landing sites, the Ember Wolves had long been lying in wait.

Balthus Voltemand glowered in his command throne. His battle-scarred face looked like a topographical map in the red of the canopy lighting. As well as being commander of Canis Ulteriax, he was the ranking princeps amongst the Warhound Scout Titans of Battle-Pack Karnassia. Like others of the pack, Voltemand’s machine had once borne another name: a proto-Gothic moniker, little more now than a lousy, Terran curse word, that no longer had any meaning for the Warmaster’s battle-pledged.

The pack had taken position amongst the hyperstacks and fat chimneys of Hive Septus. The billowing, metallic clouds of industry cloaked the area, hiding even the towering forms of the battle-pack’s six Warhounds. They listened to hives in uproar, and the thunderous weaponry of loyalist machines and the Warmaster’s finest exchanging distant fire.

While they lay in wait, much had happened. Mechanicum-allied Thunderbolts on a bombing run ran afoul of barrage balloons surrounding Karnassia’s landers. The hive spire, with its palaces and grand ballrooms, suffered the quake of passing god-machines before toppling down the side of the monstrous city. With aircraft plummeting through the chemical smog and colossal chunks of masonry raining down after them, the Ember Wolves held their nerve and position.

When Tantorus Magnificat rounded the hive, the Warmonger’s stride taking it through the decimated shanties, Voltemand knew that he had acquired a target worthy of his battle-pack.

He stared through the cockpit eyes of Canis Ulteriax. He scanned for heat signatures, for echolocational feedback and movement among the cycling visual spectra. He didn’t need them. Overhead, between chimney-spumes of rancid smoke, Voltemand had thought he saw the jagged cityscape of the hive itself moving, but it was not. It was the fortress towers of the Tantorus Magnificat’s hunched carapace emerging from the crooked confusion of accretions and spires. The princeps knew the mighty Titan of old. He had fought both alongside the veteran machine at Vorda Corona and against it at Belisarr Alpha and Phendrick’s World. But he had never had the opportunity to actually engage the Warmonger, and wasn’t going to waste this one, now.

A grating ping reverberated across the cockpit enclosure.

‘I have an auspex contact,’ Moderati Shenk reported from his forward throne, his voice a monotonous drone.

‘You have more than that,’ Volemand said with a wolfish smile.

‘Is that…’ Kordella began, leaning over from her station.

‘It is,’ the princeps told her with relish. ‘Tantorus Magnificat. The False Mechanicum of Terra wishes to test us, and we welcome the challenge. The Ember Wolves do not shirk from the fight. For we are ferocity made metal. The doom of mightier machines. We bring gods to their armoured knees.’

‘Powering up,’ Shenk said, re-routing automotive energies to the Warhound’s dormant magna-hydraulics and legs. ‘Waking the enginseer.’

Voltemand banged his fist against the runebank wall behind his throne, hoping to rouse the cantankerous construct and his malformed servitors in the compartment beyond. ‘Tell that malingering priest to be ready. We stride into battle. Dark destiny awaits us in the thunder to come.’

‘Weapon systems online,’ Kordella reported as the clunk of the vulcan mega-bolter’s autofeeds rumbled through the superstructure. ‘Awaiting your command. Ursus claw ready, harpoon primed.’

‘Very good, moderati,’ Voltemand said. While the Warhound Titans of the Ember Wolves carried different primary weapons for tactical variety, the right arm of each was mounted with spear-and-cable weapons system, designed to ensnare and bring down greater prey. ‘Shenk, open a channel. All Warhounds of Karnassia.’

‘Affirmative,’ the moderati said. ‘You are patched through, princeps.’

‘Harken, my brothers,’ Balthus Voltemand called across the crackling channel. ‘Berate your crew and stir the monstrous spirit of your machines. The wait is over. The time has come. Prey worthy of our efforts draws near.’

‘Tantorus Magnificat?’ a voice like churned gravel ventured back across the channel. ‘Then the honour shall be mine.’

It was Grental Thrax, princeps of Rubella Mortem. His Warhound, ‘the Red Death’, had the greatest number of god-kills in the pack and, but for the fact that he was a disagreeable maniac, would have led the six machines of Karnassia in the hunt. In appointing a princeps primus, more tactical cogitators had prevailed and Balthus Voltemand and Canis Ulteriax had been given the honour instead. Across the open channel, Voltemand could hear Thrax threatening his moderati crew with the sceptre that he always carried, and the sound of the Red Death’s plasma blastgun priming.

‘There is no honour without victory,’ Balthus Voltemand growled back, ‘and there is no victory without the pack. You will take your place, princeps, amongst the Ember Wolves. As it has been. As it is. As it will always be.’

As the voices of other commanding officers resounded through the vox, Voltemand heard Thrax grunt an acknowledgement.

‘Form up, you Warhounds of Horus,’ Voltemand ordered. ‘Ready your weapons and call upon the savagery of your machine-spirits.’

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A Black Library Publication

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