Corax- Lord of Shadows

by Guy Haley

  ‘They will not!’ said Kway. ‘Their shells provide nothing more than target practice for the interdiction gunnery crews.’

  ‘I never take anything for granted,’ said Pexx. ‘Bad luck falls heaviest on the unwary.’

  ‘Are you all right, brother?’ asked Ferr.

  ‘Never better,’ said Pexx, but there was a glumness in his voice all his brothers noted.

  ‘We are closing,’ said Agapito. ‘Maintain comms silence. Vox off.’

  Without further words, the squad obliged. Quiet of the deepest sort engulfed them. Agapito scanned the heavens. Between the strobing weapons, he thought he caught a brief glimpse of one of the other cutters. Maybe not. He definitely saw no more than one. Good, he thought. If I can’t see them, neither can the enemy.

  For much of the journey Aphelion-2 seemed an unattainable island in the void. It was like they were not moving at all, until drawing near to the moonlet shattered the illusion. A threshold of scale was crossed, and the city inflated with sudden ferocity. Clifflike bastions loomed high overhead. The barrels of gun batteries were revealed as giants. A glinting mote of metal became a continent, replete with man-made geographies. Domes, vents, cooling assemblies, solar collectors, parklands encased in shimmering atmospheric shields, jewelled palace spires. The moonlet was asymmetric, and its shape suggestive of a slow accretion of effort over generations rather than singular design. Close to the centre was a giant sphere held in place by an array of complex energy fields. Aside from metal banding projecting the containment grid, the whole was translucent. Within was a model ocean, a sphere of water bent slightly ovoid by the station’s weak gravity well. The shapes of large creatures swam through it, fading into obscurity not far from the surface.

  Gentle coasting became deadly speed, though no further acceleration had taken place.

  Where? signalled Kway, utilising Legiones Astartes battlesign. They were far too close to risk even the unit vox.

  Agapito looked over their options. The scans they had of the internal structure were partials at best, supplemented by data gathered by the iterators before their outrageous mutilation. There was nothing familiar to the design. They had little idea of the central layout. The plan, therefore, began with this reconnaissance in force. Half the initial wave was tasked with hunting down the city’s military command cadre, the other half with knocking out enough of the city weapons that a full assault could be undertaken by the remainder of the Chapter. Agapito hated going in so blind, but there was no other way. The energy required for a deeper scan would have revealed the shielded ships to view, and resulted in a ruinous confrontation of the grandest sort.

  Agapito pointed over Kway’s shoulder-plate towards a flat area fronted by crenellations. Doors led off either end of the truncated wall walk. What useful purpose a false castle wall would serve in the void he could not guess. Aesthetic, maybe, or some cultural space. Whatever the reason for its existence, it offered a way in.

  The cutter’s jet fired twice. The microbursts of plasma were lost in flash-frozen las coolants outgassing from a nearby cannon array. The sickening yaw of the cutter as Kway adjusted their flight path looked to herald certain death. Metal blurred beneath them, but there came instead a gentle bump as the cutter met the void city’s outer skin. The Raven Guard set their feet down. Boots locked magnetically to the outside, halting the light craft. They had arrived upon the strange porch.

  Cutters. Breaching field, Agapito gestured sharply. Their voxes remained inactive, all systems operating at absolute minimum power draw. In that state, their armour fibre bundles provided the least assistance to them. Less of a problem under zero gravity than it would be once they were inside, but by then the game would be up and they would reactivate their battleplate.

  Tiny tremors ran through the fabric of the city at the firing of its armament.

  Ferr and a legionary named Qvova approached the wall by the door and took out lascutters from long holsters attached to their legs. The door was likely to be alarmed in some way, the hull less so. Half of the squad spread out into defensive formation, most of the rest took out specialist equipment from the cutter’s central storage bin – charges, cogitator units, sniper rifles, auspexes and other devices useful to infiltration. Agapito’s Apothecary, Daneel Otaro, took to the centre with the commander.

  Kway? Agapito signed.

  The squad sergeant peered into the reinforced screen of an augury array. He shook his head. There was nothing on the far side of the wall. Agapito signalled to Ferr and Qvova. Qvova slapped four emitters into place in the rough shape of a door. The smoky blue skin of an atmospheric containment field sprang into life. Ferr was already burning his way in when Qvova activated his own las-cutter.

  Agapito waited. He decided the wall walk was an architectural conceit. A viewing platform, probably. He searched for point-defence guns primed to sweep the city surface of intruders, but he saw none. The city was reliant on the kill-sats orbiting it to keep it safe. This was not the first human civilisation he had encountered that trusted technology too much.

  Ferr and Qvova were through the wall quickly. A brief puff of atmosphere escaped before the field emitters reconfigured themselves and clamped their energy sheath tight to the wall. Qvova caught the slab of metal they had cut away. The wall was only tens of centimetres thick, not well armoured in the slightest. Ferr poked his head through, bolter up, then beckoned.

  All clear.

  Agapito signalled his squad forward.

  They stepped through into a dark corridor. Motion-activated lumens brightened. There was no other indication they were noticed. Energy parsimony, but no intruder alarms. Another complacency.

  The station’s deck plating generated a local gravity field not far off that of Deliverance’s half-G. Agapito signed that they should bring their armours up to full operation. His helmplate came on, filling in a cartolith in the top right as his suit’s short-range auto-senses scanned the area. More detail followed from Pexx’s augury array. The map zoomed out as it grew, until he had a clear view of a hundred-metre sphere around their position. There were no signum runes to show where the rest of his men were. They would keep their suit beacons inactive until the fighting started. He trusted them to do their jobs.

  Another legionary, Reicun, replaced the removed section of wall and held it in place while Qvova took out a canister of ferrofoam and sealed around it. The foam set on contact with the air, closing the gap. The repair would be spotted instantly, but now when the charge on the field generators died the atmosphere would not vent, and with luck no automatic sensors or maintenance drones would register the breach.

  Hand signals flashed down the corridor showed the area was clear. Agapito took a risk.

  ‘Reactivate vox. Short range only. Full cyphering.’

  A battery of clicks sounded in his ears as the squad complied.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Otaro. ‘Looks like gun decks two levels down, but what is this place?’ He looked at a potted plant in the corner by the single-person airlock vestibule that led onto the terrace outside. Vestibule and plant were the only features. The walls were smooth and a soft beige, lightly textured, utterly bland.

  ‘I have no idea.’ Agapito racked a bolt into his firing chamber.

  ‘Doesn’t look residential. Doesn’t look much of anything,’ said Eldes, who, along with Timonus Tenef and Ik Manno made up the remaining three of the squad.

  ‘And it doesn’t matter,’ Agapito responded. ‘We’re moving out. Stick to powered gas rounds for now. Let’s keep this quiet as long as we can.’

  ‘Where are we going, commander?’ asked Tenef.

  Agapito grinned behind his mask. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned, the rich enjoy a sea view.’

  It wasn’t long before the inhabitants of Aphelion-2 became aware of the war erupting in their midst. The red dot runes signifying three of Agapito’s squads burst on
to his helmplate, suggesting they had made contact with the enemy and had abandoned concealment. Blaring alarms confirmed his assumption a few seconds later.

  Agapito’s own squad remained hidden for a while longer. They opted for stealth while they could, drawing back into the shadows as soldiers in light composite armour ran past their position. They were in too much of a hurry to see the armoured giants standing motionless not ten metres away from them.

  Once the clatter of boots had drawn away, the squad continued on in the opposite direction, emerging into a canyon criss-crossed by dozens of walkways. People fled towards the city centre over many, but still Agapito’s squad went unseen. Energy weapons fire barked somewhere. Agapito’s suit cogitator analysed the patterns to pin down the location without success.

  ‘Pexx, locate that fire,’ Agapito said.

  The veteran consulted his display. ‘Augury cannot get a fix on it.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Agapito said. They crossed the canyon into a wide thoroughfare with many side corridors and closed doors leading off it. The cartolith’s reach grew fast as his squad penetrated further into the moonlet and detail from the other squads filled in the areas behind him. A signifier rune flashed green and large over a gun battery three hundred metres away. The first of the force’s many objectives was fulfilled. A couple more runes followed in quick succession as the command squad ran further towards the centre. The thoroughfare broadened. Windows appeared in the fabric of the building, giving sweeping views of the city’s exterior and the captive ocean.

  ‘Look at that,’ said Ferr, staring at the ball of water. ‘That is impressive. If they can do that, I wonder what kind of weapons they have.’

  ‘Nothing we cannot handle,’ Kway growled.

  The windows adopted flowing shapes, taking up more of the wall until it became totally transparent. They had penetrated three kilometres into the city, and still no one had come to fight them. The ocean was close. There was a pier extending out from the main body of the city into its centre, Agapito saw now. He sent a data pulse to his squad, highlighting the structure.

  ‘That will be it,’ he said. ‘That is our target.’

  Using the ocean to orient himself, Agapito led his men on down a branching passageway. Half his attention was on the flash of red dots and steady stream of combat screed scrolling down the left half of his faceplate. He still had enough left over to deal with the men who came running out of a side corridor straight into the squad.

  The warriors came to a skidding halt on the polished floor. Too stunned to react, they stared in surprise at the infiltrators.

  Agapito’s men were blessed with superior reactions, and had their guns up a fraction before the enemy. Gas-propelled bolts made hollow popping noises. There was no muzzle flash, and no core detonation of the bolts’ solid slugs. The discharge was so quiet that when the men fell down in a sprawl and their guns clattered away, they appeared to be acting in a game or a play, until the blood leaked out of them and pooled widely across the ground.

  The squad spread out, guns up.

  ‘Clear,’ Ferr reported from the mouth of a corridor.

  ‘Nothing here,’ said Manno.

  The others approached doors and other ways intersecting, reporting every one empty.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Kway asked.

  ‘Who knows,’ said Tenef. ‘This is easy.’

  ‘Too easy,’ said Pexx.

  By now, the Raven Guard had spread out across the sunward portion of Aphelion-2, and there were few areas on that side of the ocean yet to be filled in on the cartolith. The squad picked up pace. They approached a high wall inset with an ornate door. Pexx raised his hand and closed it into a fist.

  ‘Halt!’ he called out.

  ‘What is the problem?’ asked Manno.

  Pexx looked the wall over. ‘There is a large volume beyond.’

  ‘Kway?’ asked Agapito.

  The sergeant consulted his augury. ‘Pexx is right. And I have life signs. Lots of them on the far side of the door.’

  ‘Are we detected?’ asked Agapito.

  The city shook to distant explosions. Reedy alarms echoed down corridors.

  ‘No,’ snorted Kway. ‘We could have walked the entire Legion into this place. They are lax, and arrogant.’

  ‘They will know we are here soon enough,’ said Pexx.

  ‘This is the quickest way to the ocean. Do we go round?’ asked Qvova.

  Agapito considered a moment. He pulled the gas bolt magazine from his gun, ejected the chambered round and replaced it with standard munitions. ‘It could be civilians on the far side of that door, but we are going to meet the enemy in force at some point. Change out your bolts for explosive rounds. We stop hiding now.’

  The efficient clicks of swapped magazines gave way to stealthy treads as Kway and Qvova took up position either side of the door.

  ‘Locked,’ said Kway. He looked up at the top of the door. ‘No sensors though. These people are fools.’

  ‘Eldes,’ Agapito said.

  The legionary knelt by a door panel, unscrewed it rapidly and attached subversion leads to its circuitry. A glance at the workings gave Agapito a fair estimate of the Sodality’s tech level. Reasonably high.

  Something deep inside the door made a heavy, metallic sound.

  But not that high, Agapito thought.

  ‘Open,’ said Eldes. ‘Easy, like Tenef said.’

  ‘That can change,’ said Pexx. ‘Be on your guard.’

  ‘Blind and shroud,’ Agapito ordered. ‘I want minimal civilian casualties. The primarch commands this to be a liberation, not a massacre.’

  His men nodded and hefted the grenades. The rest covered the door.

  ‘Open!’

  Pexx keyed his augury. The door parted down the middle and slid into the wall. A welcoming, musical chime sounded. Agapito had a glimpse of a dozen terrified faces before Kway and Qvova tossed in their explosives. The blind went in first. A burst of noise and multi-spectral light dazed the occupants. They were screaming by the time the shroud went off.

  ‘In! In! In!’

  The Space Marines pounded inside. People screamed and scrabbled to get away. The hall was big, full of seating areas and cultivated plants large as trees. A cultural centre or place for socialisation, Agapito thought. Five engraved glass doors offered a way out. Agapito ran towards them, scattering men, women and children, a lot of them crying.

  The sensible ones noticed quickly that the Space Marines were not firing, and took shelter in the nests of seats. Humans being what they are, there weren’t many of those. The rest panicked, and ran to and fro screaming in terror. Others were trampling each other trying to get out of the side exits. A few threw themselves at their feet and babbled in an incomprehensible tongue.

  ‘We mean you no harm!’ boomed Kway. But they did not understand.

  ‘Out of my way!’ Agapito shouted at a wailing man trembling in his path. His voice came out as a terrifying roar from his voxmitter, and the man crumpled into a terrified ball. Agapito shoved him aside, eliciting a further scream. He’d probably broken the man’s arm. He had little sympathy.

  ‘The far doors!’ he shouted. ‘Move! Move!’

  Qvova got there first, running straight through the door without slowing. Glass burst everywhere. A second later he was firing.

  ‘Multiple enemy ahead,’ he voxed. ‘Engaging.’ His brothers were at his side a moment later. Hyper-velocity flechettes shrieked into the hall. A civilian went down, his body pierced through in a dozen places. The civilians began screaming again. Agapito put himself between the darts and the people. A number hit him, pinging into his armour and sticking fast into the plating. Before he reached the door his left side was thickly quilled with needles. Beyond the doors dozens of Aphelion-2’s defence forces were arrayed in another large room, this one a long rectangle,
three storeys high, with a gallery around all sides. Pieces of abstract sculpture floated at the gallery level, equidistant from one another. One wall was a single, huge run of glass overlooking the ocean. They were close to the centre, but now opposed.

  As in the previous chamber, there was seating, this time arranged in high-walled booths that the enemy were using as cover.

  Agapito plugged the gap between Qvova and Kway. Flechettes tinged into his armour, burying half their ten-centimetre length in his battleplate. Muted alarms alerted him to damage to the suit’s fibre bundles. Lubrication fluid seeped from a dozen holes. Ferrofoam sealant bubbled around more, closing the breaches. None of the darts penetrated all the way through to his undersuit.

  In return, the Raven Guard’s bolters cut down the men without mercy. The room strobed to the firecracker ignition of bolt rockets. They punched through the booths. They shattered armour. Men were blown apart in short order.

  Agapito switched targets quickly, putting down their opponents one after another. A storm of flechettes rushed at them. A few months prior to Carinae, Agapito had fought upon a continent plagued by violent hailstorms. The noise of the flechettes hitting his armour reminded him of that.

  Bolt casings tinkled off the ground. Magazines were ejected and discarded. There were more men coming into the gallery from the large double doors at the other end of the run of sculpture, and lining up on the gallery to fire down on the Space Marines. Their numbers were impressive, but they were being massacred.

  ‘Are they not afraid?’ growled Ferr.

  ‘It appears not,’ said Agapito.

  ‘We will kill them all, then. These guns cannot get through our armour,’ said Kway.

  ‘No,’ said Pexx, pointing, ‘but that might.’

  At the far end of the gallery, a team of two men were wheeling a small gun carriage into position. Agapito aimed at it as soon as Pexx pointed it out. His bolts flew true, but exploded half a metre short of the weapon and its crew. An oily flare of light shivered around the gun.