Corax- Lord of Shadows

by Guy Haley

  None of this could be said out loud, not to his most trusted advisors or to his closest friends. The greatest burden of command was the maintenance of appearances. Holding his tongue galled him as he watched Corax’s fleet power through the failing energy shields of Zenith-312 and, like seeds shed from grass by the thousands, disgorge the landing parties of the Raven Guard.

  Flotillas of boarding torpedoes, gunships and assault rams poured through clouds of neutralised kill-sats while black warships kept up a steady bombardment on the city’s main gun emplacements.

  The end of Zenith-312 had begun.

  Thunder and fury came at the behest of black-clad murderers. Terminator-armoured Deliverers deployed in mass drop-ship assault to seize the city’s outer docking rings. This initial action was over quickly. In their wake Corax’s army poured aboard Zenith-312 by the thousand, killing as they went. Orders were given to preserve the lives of the civilians, but in such a furious assault it was certain innocents would suffer, and thousands died. Armoured vehicles ploughed through hab-zones and parks. Fires burned in arboreta. Captive seas drained from broken tanks.

  Zenith-312 had its share of beauty. On the sharp edge of the war it was destroyed. The Imperium gave its judgement in flame and death.

  While static battle lines formed to hold the docks, hunting cadres of the Raven Guard dispersed into the deeper city. The defence forces of Zenith-312 were numerous, but in the face of the Legiones Astartes they had little chance of survival, and certainly none of victory. Wherever the forces clashed, the Sodality was swept aside in short order, ceramite boots pounding past bolt-shattered bodies as the Legion swept on.

  Within an hour of the assault’s commencement, half the city was under Imperial control. Soon after that the voidward inner docks were taken by a second, surprise landing, giving the Legion a foothold around all the city’s periphery.

  The landing of the Therion Cohort could begin.

  A lightly armed drop-ship roared into a sunward hangar. Roaring plasma jets blasted up wreckage made during the taking of the docks. The ship put down beside a shattered refuelling gantry, its ramp slammed down into a slick of spreading promethium, and the allies of the Raven Guard rushed out. Four squads of well-equipped human breacher troops broke from neat ranks and dispersed across the hangar to form a protective cordon.

  Praefector Caius Valerius believed in leading from the front. His boots touched the riven deck as the last of the boarding party were still in motion. If his aides had not insisted otherwise, he would have led the first wave himself.

  Valerius halted in the middle of the deck. Soldiers were streaming out of his lander and forming up around their officers in neat ranks. Wrecked enemy void craft occupied more than half the landing pads. There were bodies everywhere, most of them violently dissected by volkite beams. Hot metal smoke scented the air. Fires guttered in several places. Holes riddled the walls, the characteristics of each revealing the weapon that had inflicted it. Meltas left runnels of metal. Lascannons drilled neat, precise holes surrounded by carbon starbursts. Plasma left round holes where explosive sunburst shots had hit, long scores where plasma streams had played across the walls.

  A second lander blasted in from outside, wavered over a debris-choked landing pad and put down gingerly amid shattered baffle panels and piles of sparking cables. Insulation fibres and bits of wadding blew up into whirlwinds.

  There was a long traffic control gallery overlooking the hangar whose windows ran the full depth of the dock from void to the inner wall. Some of its protective shutters were jammed closed, the rest were up. Behind glass crazed with weapons impacts moved huge armoured figures out of scale with the duty stations inside. A couple of the windows were blown out. Smoke from extinguished fires smudged the walls

  ‘Milontius!’ Caius called for his manservant. ‘With me!’

  ‘Yes, praefector.’ A short man trotted down the ramp. He was dressed in the uniform of an officer, but without badges of rank. He carried two lasguns on his shoulder. A large bag containing the praefector’s effects dangled from his right hand.

  ‘The Legion waits for us. I’m going to get our orders. You’re coming too.’

  ‘Yes, praefector,’ said Milontius.

  Caius forged across the buckled deck plates, Milontius in tow.

  A lone legionary stood sentry at an open door. He waved Caius and Milontius through. A run of stairs led up to the observation deck.

  The damage to the traffic control deck was worse than it appeared from the outside. Half the lumens were broken. Dying machinery vomited sparks. A dead legionary, his thorax and throat armour cracked by a reductor, lay on the ground. Flechettes studded his amour with a forest of needles. A dozen dead Carinaeans paid the price for the loss of this one Raven Guard. They lay about in various attitudes of death, their long, spindly arms outflung, jaws slack, eyes open. Frag grenades had killed most, bolt-rounds the rest. Collateral blast damage had destroyed much of the machinery. In the confines of the deck the smell of hot metal blended sickeningly with ruptured guts and drying blood. Caius covered a cough with a fist to his mouth. He would have pulled up his rebreather but did not wish to appear weak before his men, so breathed lightly through his mouth.

  Three legionaries were in the room. Though the deck was large, it was cluttered with desks and monitoring equipment. The spaces the Carinaeans inhabited were oddly proportioned, tall but narrow, and the gaps between the room’s consoles were tight. The Space Marines’ armour banged into something every time they moved.

  ‘Captain,’ said Caius, calling to their leader.

  ‘You are the praefector’s representative?’ asked the captain.

  Caius did not recognise the voice. Captains came, fought, died and were replaced, and there were scores of them in the Legion. ‘I am the praefector,’ he said. He drew himself up a little. According to their relative hierarchies, Valerius outranked the legionary.

  ‘My apologies,’ said the captain. He did not introduce himself but launched straight into instructions.

  He has to be new, thought Caius, to speak to me this way.

  ‘My company will move out now you are here. In thirty-six minutes the first of the civilians evacuated from district nine-zero-three will arrive. There is heavy engagement with the enemy in that sector.’ The sector would have had a local name. All the planets, towns and bases taken by the Great Crusade did. Terran forces had no time to learn them. Imperial holdings grew so quickly numbers had to suffice. ‘There is warehousing in the levels below,’ continued the captain. ‘I recommend that these are used to house the civilian popu­lation while the fighting is ongoing. This hangar and its attendant stores are separate from the rest. There’s only a single loading door. Easy to keep them in. They need to be processed. Officials, military, anyone with any influence. You are to prepare a perimeter first, and then move on to ­vetting the civilians.’

  That settled it. The captain was new. Caius was seventy years old. He’d done this dozens of times. Therion proverbs about respecting your elders, and a few choice curses, flitted through his mind. ‘I am aware of the process, captain.’

  The captain caught a little of Caius’ annoyance, and modified his tone. ‘Of course. I trust you will see it is done.’

  ‘Indeed. What about food and water for these people? How many can I expect?’

  ‘A few thousand, I think. There is a reservoir tank nearby. Food they will have to wait on. With the primarch, this battle will be over soon and they should be able to return to their homes. Tell them that.’

  Caius nodded. ‘Hearts and minds.’

  ‘We will win both of those,’ said the captain. ‘Minimal casualties. Good treatment for any detainees.’ He sounded like he was reminding himself, thought Caius.

  ‘Where is the primarch?’ asked Caius.

  ‘You have known him a long time?’ asked the captain.

  ‘Sin
ce the Therion Cohort pledged themselves to him, yes, I have.’ Longer than you, he added to himself.

  ‘Then you need not ask. He is where he always is. He is hunting.’

  Corax ran ahead of his army far into the city. He clung to the shadows, dashing past surveillance devices, disabling those he could not hide from.

  Human eyes were easy to deceive. Among the many wondrous gifts the Emperor had blessed Corax with was the gift of hiding in plain sight. Some innate ability, psychic in nature, Corax surmised, blocked out his presence from the minds of humans and most xenos. If he concentrated, he would fade from their perceptions until he was invisible. This power had come to his notice while he was young in the prison warrens of Lycaeus. At first it had been hard to keep his focus up, but his facility had grown with time. Now he could maintain his shrouding gift while he killed his bewildered enemies. They could not see him even then, their bodies torn asunder while they looked in terror for the phantom slaughtering them.

  Corax was by nature an independent thinker, preferring to do his own work; not a general, but a warlord. His men were encouraged to think for themselves, partly so Corax was free of directing them. Often, he operated alone. His Legion’s actions were often little more than a cover for his own, decisive strike. So it was on Zenith-Three-One-Two.

  Corax intended to capture Arch-Comptroller Agarth himself.

  With him went a dozen others with the same, uncanny power. The Shadowmasters, the Mor Deythan in the Kiavahran tongue, were a tiny proportion of the Legion who, by a quirk of the gene-seed derived from his primarch’s body, had inherited Corax’s knack for invisibility.

  Nobody saw them. Nobody stopped them. They jogged down abandoned corridors and through barracks full of soldiery scrambling to repel the Raven Guard assault. They were not seen, no matter how crowded the places they went. Outliers dealt with pict-units, auguries and auspexes where necessary, for machines could not be tricked. The enemy were too occupied to investigate.

  Being able to move freely through enemy territory gave Corax a unique perspective on war. He had stood in the command centres of enemy generals whose occupants argued forcibly about the best way to kill him. He had walked down trench lines of troops trembling with fear at the thought of facing his sons. People behaved differently when they thought they were unobserved. Such secret insight into the minds of men he had. Such awful things he could have done, were he blacker of heart.

  There remained an uneasiness deep in his soul at the gift he possessed. He suppressed it. While the ability was useful, and its purpose clear, he did not like to question its provenance.

  Corax followed a cartolith pieced together from deep auspex soundings of the city. There had been no need to hide their scans this time. Agarth knew they were coming.

  He turned into an industrial processing zone the equal in dirt and poverty of any found on old Lycaeus. It was dark, thunderous and rank. Even now, in the midst of an enemy attack, the giant machines worked, reprocessing Zenith-Three-One-Two’s organic waste into foodstuffs for its inhabitants. Waterfalls of filth thundered through tiered filtration scoops. Machines scraped a thick layer of algal scum off the surface of flotation pools and directed it into open chutes towards steaming pasteurisation machines. There were dead-eyed people everywhere, covered in dirt. Occupied by their tasks, they ignored the rumble of impacts quaking through the city’s fabric. They had no protective equipment, but breathed in the unfiltered miasma, and let the muck splash onto their skin.

  Corax ran alongside three kilometres of parallel growth beds. The stench of human excrement pervaded everything. The canals terminated in an array of steaming pipes whose heads plunged under the green skin on the surface. Thick sludge ­bubbled around the tubes. Froth climbed into wobbling heaps.

  Though they were invisible to other human eyes, Corax could see his twelve warriors ranging high and far through the recycling plant’s structure. They were loners, like him. Corax’s gift was kept from the wider Legion. Those who had it were separated as soon as it manifested and inducted into the Shadowmasters.

  He passed under a bridge, skirting deep pools of bubbling urine being drawn into reclamation ovens. Streets of mean houses lit by green-flamed methane torches branched off to the right.

  He saw his first overseer soon after.

  Slavery had an economic cost for the slavers. Men were needed to watch over the oppressed. The man and the workers could all have been fighting the invaders. Their vile traditions drew valuable manpower from the defence. They would fall quicker for it.

  The overseer paced back and forth on a bridge which had been built solely for the purposes of supervision over a wide settling tank that reeked of ammonia. He carried a slaver’s gear: a whip, non-lethal sidearm, and one that was very much deadly. Short ladders led up to the platform.

  Corax should have left him, but he couldn’t. The overseer’s simple being offended him. He leapt high.

  The man spun around in alarm at Corax’s impact. He saw nothing. A great weight had landed stealthily behind him, but to his eyes there was clear air behind him. Yet metal creaked, and the air moved. Corax had seen the look on the man’s face so many times. Animal instincts told the overseer something huge and deadly came for him. Corax could smell his adrenaline.

  ‘Who goes there?’ he shouted. Fear played a tremolo in his voice.

  Death was the answer. Corax lifted him high off the ground by his head, the mechanical fingers of his gauntlet wrapping all the way around his skull. The primarch held him so tightly he could not breathe nor speak. One hand clawed at the invisible grip, and he cried out soundlessly as his fingers, flailing, encountered a razored edge and were severed. They fell to the ground. Blood welled from the stumps.

  The man was too shocked to feel the pain. He screamed as he was dangled over the tank.

  Corax allowed himself to be seen. For a moment, he revelled in fear as his helmeted face appeared before the overseer.

  ‘No man has the right to take freedom from another,’ Corax said, in the argot of Carinae.

  The primarch ripped the man’s guts out with his power claws, showering viscera into the tank and turning it red. He dumped the overseer, still alive and choking, into the waste. Hot, reeking liquid filled his empty abdominal cavity. He sank without a trace.

  ‘Justice,’ said Corax.

  Frightened faces looked at the square housing the tank. Confronted by this alien monster, the people screamed and ran away. But one held fast. Whether she was frozen by fear or possessed of great courage mattered not to the primarch. To this woman Corax spoke gently.

  ‘I will free every one of you before this is done. I swear it, in my father’s name.’

  A second creature clad in metal, smaller than the first, appeared by the giant’s side. They conferred in a language the woman did not comprehend.

  The darkness blinked. The monsters were gone from mortal sight.

  Twelve

  problems of mercy

  ‘It’s down here,’ said the surgeon general. ‘I think it’s best you see for yourself.’ He led Caius and Milontius on down the stairs leading from the hangars to the warehouse.

  The stairway emerged onto a companionway bolted to the wall high over the warehouse floor. A massive piston at full extension held up the cargo lifter, which currently formed a part of the floor of the loading dock above. The Therions had done their best to clear space, but the warehouse had been full, and the civilians were crammed into a small square in the middle walled in by cargo containers.

  Fuggy heat hit a moist slap of sweat about Caius’ face. Thousands of Carinaeans crammed the warehouse. Caius was pleased with the way his men were handling the situation. The armed presence was unobtrusive, and they were being as helpful to the local population as they could be. But it was crammed and swamp-hot in there, and the people were understandably in dismay. A lesser man than Caius might have scorned the
m all. To his thinking, he had no right to. They had not declined compliance; that was their leaders’ fault. It would be a mistake to damn them for the decisions of their rulers. There was not always the luxury of making that distinction. Caius had seen thousands of innocents killed to realise the higher goal of unification, but where he had a chance to preserve life, he did.

  He was allowed a moment’s calm.

  ‘Looks like everything is all right here,’ said Milontius.

  ‘Don’t say things like that, Milontius.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Have you ever heard of tempting fate?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  Caius half expected something to immediately go wrong. The universe had an evil sense of humour. But the situation remained as it was. Groups of sorrowing people sat quietly together. Babies cried. Individuals in uniforms and luxurious clothes were singled out and led to the line of desks manned by Therions situated in front of the giant-toothed main cargo gate for questioning.

  ‘It’s hot in here,’ Caius said. ‘And stuffy.’

  ‘We’ve the same problem down here as we do in the hangar. That’s why I brought you down here.’ The surgeon general pointed to the large, inverted trumpets hanging down into the room at one side. Currents of refreshed air should have been blowing from them. They were quiet. ‘The air system’s offline all through our section. The mix is breathable for now, but it is going to be a problem,’ said the surgeon general. He checked the display on his arm-mounted diagnostic unit. ‘The carbon dioxide levels are rising.’

  ‘And it is the same in the other two warehouses?’ asked Caius. The heat was making him light-headed.

  ‘The ventilation systems for all of this level are offline,’ said the surgeon general. ‘It is as bad in the other two as it is in here, and it will soon affect the hangar. How long until we can move them back to their hab-zones?’

  ‘Not for some time,’ said Caius. ‘I have had no word from the primarch. The fighting continues in the sector these people are from.’ He folded his arms, and frowned at the problem. ‘No air.’ Caius shook his head. ‘All we have to do is keep these people breathing. Is that so damn hard? Station someone down here with some monitoring equipment. Let me know when the gas mix becomes dangerous. We can always move them to the hangar. Perhaps we might evacuate them to our ships.’