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Chapter 175: Irreconcilable Differences
🕑 Added 2025-09-26 10:39:11 +0000 UTCChapter 175: Irreconcilable Differences
Whoosh—
A bitter wind, laden with ice crystals, shrieked through the narrow corridor.
The very instant the Space Wolves plunged into the passage, the entire darkness seemed to writhe like a waking beast. Under the dim light, the mottled rust on the bulkheads pulsed with a faint, sanguine glow.
Alm Iron-oath's nostrils flared. Beneath his grey brows, his sharp eyes narrowed to slits.
"How many?" he asked in a low growl, his calloused fingers unconsciously caressing the haft of his power axe.
"Around a hundred," the Wolf Priest's voice seemed to be forced from the depths of his chest. Frost that had condensed on his heavy pauldrons fell away in a fine powder as he spoke.
The number made every warrior's breath catch in his throat.
Slightly fewer than they'd hoped, but these were Alpha Legionaries—each skull would be a precious offering to the Allfather, a supreme honour to be wrested from the hands of their arrogant cousins.
"More than I expected," Alm rumbled, his bearded chin dipping low. His heavy wolf-pelt cloak snapped in the wind of their charge. He deliberately slowed his pace by half a step, allowing the younger warriors to keep up.
The wind howled past, mingling with the sound of rapidly beating hearts. The young Wolves tensed their shoulders, swallowing hard. This was more nerve-wracking than countless battles past, for this concerned their honour before their cousins.
"Hn?"
A dull clang of metal on metal echoed down the cramped passage. The impact of a power fist against the bulkhead sent a tremor through the air. A Dark Angel striding down the corridor stopped dead, his helmeted gaze snapping warily towards the source of the sound.
Alm's lips twisted into a predatory grin, his grey beard flecked with fresh blood. He ignored the enemy's attempt to raise a hand in a placating gesture; his crimson axe was already scything through the air with a hungry howl.
"Wolves of Fenris."
SQUELCH!
The axe blade clove the enemy's torso in two. With a twist of his wrist, Alm tore the body asunder. A plasma bolt, not overcharged, struck him in the chest, leaving only a shallow gash. Alm spun around instantly, felling the enemy who had tried to ambush him and bringing his iron-shod boot down to crush the structurally compromised helmet, skull and all.
"KILL!"
"AWOOOO—"
A long, mournful howl echoed through the ship's chambers, carrying far into the distance, sending a chill down the spine of every Alpha Legion operative.
"Hahaha, kill!" Red-mane's laughter boomed like thunder in the corridor. His massive frame moved with fluid grace, circling to his Oath-father's side, his bone-white fangs gleaming in the dim light.
Several 'Dark Angels' had just reached for the bolt pistols at their hips, their fingers not yet on the triggers, when grey shadows burst from the darkness. The power claws of the Space Wolves were already tearing the air apart.
As the Emperor's executioners, the Space Wolves had a unique olfactory memory encoded in their very gene-seed. Alm's nostrils flared again, precisely pinpointing the faint, cloying scent of disguise beneath the stench of blood. The Alpha Legion's signature infiltration techniques were as obvious to them as a bonfire in the night.
Now that the prey was identified, any hesitation was blasphemy against the Allfather.
The Wolves spread out with practiced instinct, pouring into the various chambers like a true pack on the hunt. Red-mane's power axe hummed with thirst as he cleaved an enemy attempting to raise a weapon in half at the waist. In the next chamber, a young Wolf had an enemy pinned by the chest with his knee, his power fist smashing again and again into the foe's twisted helmet.
Faced with such a sudden, savage assault, the 'Dark Angels' formation began to collapse. Some operatives abandoned their comrades and began to retreat, their boots making viscous sounds in the pools of blood as they slipped back into the shadows. As was their Legion's tradition, the Hydra would always choose stealth over an honourable death when the odds turned against them.
"That's it. Run. Run until you lead us to all of you," Red-mane snarled, swinging his axe. With a flash of cold light, the enemy before him was severed in two. He hunched his body like a true Fenrisian wolf, deliberately slowing his pursuit, using the heavy tread of his power armour to herd the fleeing 'Dark Angels'.
Drip... Drip...
Blood fell from the edge of his axe. He twitched his nose, following the scarlet trail staining the metal deck. These routed curs would lead the pack to more hidden prey.
But just then, his keen wolf-ears picked up a sharp whistle in the air.
Wheee—
He looked up. His incredible eyesight allowed him to spot the small grenade arcing towards him from the end of the corridor. An Imperial-issue krak grenade, standard for Storm Troopers. Their potency varied wildly with their payload; many a Chaos Marine, overconfident in the gifts of the gods, had fallen to such weapons.
The Iron Priests made every new blood learn to identify every weapon they had ever encountered, and taught them how to counter each one. The memory flashed through his mind, the Priest's rough voice echoing in his ears as lessons from the monastery's armoury-cellars became pure instinct.
His muscles reacted before his mind could. The servos of his power armour whined sharply.
He charged towards the grenade. Bolter shells sparked against his ceramite armour at close range, one punching through his abdomen, but Red-mane used the momentum to slam two Alpha Legionaries to the ground. In the instant before the explosion, he coiled his powerful waist and rolled, taking the two enemies with him towards the corner bulkhead. One of the Alpha Legionaries managed to drive a combat knife into his gut, the blade screeching against his enhanced ribcage.
BOOM!
The grenade detonated scant feet away.
The shockwave threw Red-mane across the corridor. Shattered ceramite rained down with a chorus of pings. When he struggled to his feet, his vision was a sea of red, the shriek of his armour's damage-klaxons ringing in his ears. He wiped his face, his palm coming away slick with gore. The mangled half-torso of an enemy was still hanging from his power pack.
CRACK.
Red-mane expressionlessly pulled the combat knife from his side, letting his mutant muscle fibres contract to seal the wound, and rejoined the hunt. For some Astartes, a fatal wound might lead to death by blood loss. For a Space Wolf, it was not a serious injury.
But he was more cautious now. He began to avoid melee, instead providing fire support for his brothers with his bolter, his precise shots tearing open paths for the charging pack. It was survival born from near-death, a madness tempered with cold reason.
"Not bad."
In the shadows, Dark Angels observers stood as still as statues, their helmet lenses glowing faintly, capturing every detail of the battlefield. Cypher's fingertips tapped lightly on the hilt of his sword, the sound sharp in the quiet passage.
"After ten thousand years, the sons of Russ have managed to recover a shred of the etiquette and humanity they abandoned, without losing the savagery and cunning in their blood," Cypher remarked. His comrades were long accustomed to his blunt assessments.
They had a thousand ways to handle these wolf-pups. The asymmetry in numbers, combat experience, wargear, and intelligence was vast. Had not the Hydra, which also contained ten-thousand-year-old veterans, been caught completely off guard by these same pups? It was all a matter of intelligence. And all of it, ultimately, was thanks to the exquisite planning of the First Legion.
"Watch the field. If any of the Wolves are about to fall, we must intervene," Zahariel cautioned in a low voice, before melting into the battle himself.
In other sections of the ship, Space Wolves who were grievously wounded or faltering in combat received support from the Dark Angels. These Wolves were then escorted to the feast hall their hosts had prepared for them long in advance.
To suffer a shameful defeat, to have your life saved only by the intervention of a Dark Angel, and then to be met with a smile and a party invitation—it forced a look of pure humiliation onto their faces as they were led, conflicted and resentful, to the feast.
Just watching it was a source of profound satisfaction. Why had they never realized before that the Space Wolves responded to courtesy, not to force?
Recalling Arthur's orders, Zahariel's respect for his Prince grew. As the First Legion, it was their duty to clean up the messes of their reckless juniors. It was just that in the past, they had too often been dragged down into the muck to bite and claw with them, nearly forgetting their own dignity. The Prince understood. This was the way of civilized men.
A single bolter round dispatched an Alpha Legionary. A long spike shot from Zahariel's vambrace and he plunged it directly into the chest of a nearly dead Space Wolf on the floor. It was a therapeutic agent developed by Archmagos Cawl and the Prince after they had acquired sufficient samples. When injected into the bone, it rapidly stimulated stem cell production and repaired damaged organs. The healing effect was dramatic; as long as the central nervous system was not permanently destroyed, it could save almost anyone. It was a kind of external Belisarian Furnace.
The side effect was a shortened lifespan. A single dose consumed nearly a century of a Firstborn Astartes's life, making it useless for mortals, and it required a week-long recovery period. Two doses in quick succession would likely kill a man.
Patting the Space Wolf on the shoulder with a chuckle, Zahariel hoisted him up and started towards the feast hall.
If you're going to make a man work, you can't very well let him die on the job.
The sounds of battle, a sibilant chorus of shouts and war cries, echoed through the ship. The Space Wolves' signature howls could be heard nearly all the way to the bridge. Yet, amidst the string of explosions, the Dark Angels continued their work in silence, seemingly completely unaffected by the chaotic melee raging aboard their own ship.
"Those arrogant fools!"
Hidden behind a C-shaped barricade of stacked data-slates, Hydra cursed under his breath.
A hunt with no warning. Yet the Dark Angels had clearly been notified and prepared. The only ones caught in the trap were Alpha Legion. Hydra's mind flashed through a dozen images: the flickering lights, the subtly altered runes on the bulkheads, the oath-swearing ceremony that had been held just before the attack. Countless signs had pointed to a sudden strike by the Wolves, but these newcomers knew nothing of the ship's ways.
Hydra knew the Dark Angels knew the Hydra had begun to infiltrate them. He also knew the Dark Angels were using these infiltrators for their own ends. The arrival of the Space Wolves was just another sign of it. The Dark Angels were systematically eliminating the unstable elements that had slipped into their ranks.
He had tried to warn his comrades, tried to get them to understand the ciphers and mysticisms of the Dark Angels' communication. But as everyone knows, the Primarchs of the Alpha Legion always encouraged their sons to "think for themselves." So, of course, these agents who trusted their own judgment above all else listened to their cell leader.
As in, they heard him.
They 'knew' their duty, 'understood' the Legion's secrets, and knew that this particular cell leader, a traitor from a loyalist warband, was not to be trusted. So they relied on their own abilities to infiltrate the organization, rather than follow the orders of a Chaos turncoat and risk falling into a trap of his weaving.
"All of them... gone."
Hydra felt a numbness creep over him. He wasn't mourning these traitors. The problem was that among them were several of his own assets, informants whose evil masters he had yet to fully identify. Now the trail had gone cold.
'And I can't stay on this ship. The factions are too complex, and now the Space Wolves are here.'
The complexity had naturally divided the Alpha Legion's strength. Apart from his own trusted agents, the rest had fanned out to infiltrate the various organizations. This sudden expansion had alerted the Dark Angels, triggering this purge. And now, similar purges would never cease. Because the Dark Angels also knew that when you find one group of Alpha Legionaries, you are surrounded by them.
'As expected of the First Legion.'
Hydra stared at the classified document in his hand. It contained the true identities and proposed dispositions for many of the Risen within the Grand Companies. Some were to be kept, but the more egregious cases, such as those attempting to infiltrate the Ironwing, had already been secretly executed.
He was deep inside their command structure now. He had gained the trust of Zahariel, Master of the Ironwing; his access to these files was proof of that. The Dark Angels universally avoided handling this kind of paperwork, preferring to supervise. They were deliberately forcing the Alpha Legion to assist with administration... Hydra rapidly analyzed their strategy, a rough outline forming in his mind.
'I can use this.'
He already had a plan to unite more of his scattered brethren. Being exposed didn't matter. As long as he could transition this new batch of operatives into administrative roles, the Dark Angels would tolerate their presence. The Dawnbreakers' internal structure was not stable; the Dark Angels were constantly challenging Romulus's authority for having usurped the title of the Knightly Orders' master. The Alpha Legion was a tool they could use.
'But I have cleverly anticipated this and have already put my own plans in motion.'
Hydra felt a pang of relief that he had arrived early and had already maneuvered himself into the high command before the Dark Angels had resolved their own internal issues. His next step was to establish communication networks within the various Wings and build the framework for the Apothecarion, which they were apparently calling the 'Angels of Redemption'.
Placing the classified file—composed entirely of fragmented histories and mundane reports—into a shadowed compartment, Hydra began to plan his next move.
'Everything for the survival of humanity,' he thought.
Rustle—
The passing Grand Master of the Pentaculum Wing took the processed document and began to review it.
"Hn."
He scanned the agent's surface thoughts for a moment, then nodded in satisfaction.
Elsewhere.
Ulvam Red-mane, drenched in blood, stared dumbly at the scene before him.
The battle was over. It had ended in a perfect victory for the Space Wolves.
And here, before him, was a raucous feast hall.
Bronze flagons gleamed with an amber light in the firelight, arranged in a serpentine line down long oaken tables, like a nine-headed hydra being devoured by the revellers. Upon racks made of elk antlers hung drinking horns, each emblazoned with the crest of a different Great Company of Fenris. A crest with a greedy maw was inlaid with raven-black obsidian; another, depicting a sun-devouring wolf, was set with fiery red gems.
And before each seated Wolf was his own company's drinking horn—the very one they had left behind at the other feast.
Every place set for a bloodied warrior was laden with a magnificent feast. On silver platters, the head of some unknown great beast had its eyes replaced with frozen berries, its tusks dripping with frost. The drinking horns were coated in beeswax. Beneath each horn, the silhouette of the Howling Moon Wolf was clearly visible.
The Fenrisian Champions Great Company.
The Great Company led by Logan Grimnar, the Great Wolf himself.
Red-mane sniffed the air. The scent of burning wood from the hearth reminded him of a tavern outside the Black Forest部落 from his youth. Every detail was perfect, every element a reflection of Fenrisian culture, yet it was all presented with the unshakeable confidence of the First Legion.
The Dark Angels stood among them, still observing the strict etiquette of their respective Wings as they conversed with the Wolves. Mortal attendants moved between them, serving delicacies to the Angels.
They had built a Fenrisian stage, and were now hosting the Wolves with their own culture.
Damn it, we've been played!
A silent roar erupted in Red-mane's heart. He met the eyes of the Dark Angel who had led him here. The amusement in them was blinding.
He might be impulsive, but he was not stupid. And there was no way a victorious Space Wolf would docilely follow another's lead.
He had been beaten, and brought here.
Everything had transpired under the watchful eyes of these mysterious cousins. His honour, his victory—it was all a gift they had bestowed upon him.
He was furious.
Red-mane dropped the eight skulls of the Alpha Legionaries he carried. Mortal attendants swiftly collected them and placed them before a suit of Terminator Armour that bore a plaque with the name Ulvam Red-mane. The armour was plainly decorated, painted a simple ice-blue, as if waiting for its master to adorn it with symbols of glory. Besides the Terminator suit, there was a full suit of Mark X power armour perfectly sized for a Firstborn Marine, along with a complete set of wargear, including the power axes and lightning claws so beloved by the pups.
"Hmph!"
The enormous, furious warrior stomped over to the seat marked with his nameplate. It was a pure provocation. Weren't they just trying to show off their flawless, meticulous planning?! It was utterly humiliating!
But then again...
Red-mane glanced around the table. His own Oath-father was drinking heartily with a lord named Zahariel. The Wolf Priest was in deep conversation with a Dark Angel completely hidden within his robes. One Wolf was proudly showing off a freshly healed wound on his chest, boasting loudly. Another sat drinking sullenly, his face a mask of shame.
A familiar female soldier came to his side and filled his horn.
Red-mane looked away, grabbed a huge slab of meat, and took a savage bite.
It was damn good.
