Corax- Lord of Shadows

by Guy Haley

  ‘As you wish, sir,’ said the surgeon general. ‘I could show you the other warehouses.’

  ‘It won’t be necessary, Cordellus. Let’s go back and see how the repairs are getting on.’ Caius looked back down to the herd of humanity sweltering in the warehouse. ‘We have taken their homes. We owe them our haste.’

  Hangar Four, where Caius based his command, was less of a mess than it had been. The debris had been cleared away by teams of void pioneers soon after his arrival. The hangar space sparkled to the hot, metal dance of plasma torches cutting apart the remainder of the fallen gantries. The bodies in the hangar and in the control room had been removed, and it smelled a lot less like death despite the lack of atmospheric circulation. Physically, the complex was in a far better shape than when Caius had taken it on. But the impression was misleading. The malfunctioning air system below was just the start. Nothing was fully operational.

  They had the Space Marines to thank for that. They struck with all the finesse of a hammer.

  Caius’ support staff were working hard to restore functionality to the control centre equipment. So far their efforts were fruitless.

  ‘Most,’ explained his chief technician, when they returned to the control room, ‘is broken.’ The technician was tense and covered in smuts.

  ‘I can see it’s broken,’ said Caius. ‘I know it’s broken. It is why I called you in here to repair it. To, if you like, unbreak it.’

  The technician shrank under Caius’ sarcasm. ‘We cannot get it all to work. We’re lucky the atmospheric shielding is online.’ He gestured vaguely at the hangar aperture where a view of the outer docking ring shimmered beyond blue energy fields. ‘The Legion damaged a lot when they came in here.’ He pointed to a number of consoles in turn. There was blood spatter on all of them, and holes from which electronic guts spilled. ‘Life support, airflow, auto-repair, vox-systems. It’s all screwed. Pardon my language,’ he added hurriedly. ‘We’re close to getting some air movement in here, and in the upper part of the complex, but down there, in the warehouses.’ He shrugged. ‘Hours. Maybe days. Maybe never.’

  ‘Shrugging is not an adequate solution,’ said Caius. ‘Is there an alternative to effecting repairs here? Are there not alternative control points?’

  ‘We found one on the schematic. When we checked it out, we found it had taken a direct hit from a penetrator shell. There’s a hole in the hull there now, nothing else. This is it. We can get Imperial units in here and plug them into the systems. The machinery is fine. It’s all waiting for commands. It’s the control system that’s gone.’

  ‘Then do it,’ said Caius.

  ‘I would have done so in the first place, sir. But repair seemed the quicker way. I had to try this first. Though this technology is proving difficult to mend, I don’t think it’s going to be easy to get an interface between their tech and ours. It’ll take hours.’

  ‘Longer than it has taken you to fail to repair it?’

  ‘About as long, but we’ll make it work this time,’ he said. The technician was more disappointed in himself than Caius was.

  ‘What about him?’ Caius pointed past the technician. A Martian priest had recently been attached to his command. Why he’d had this bizarre character foisted on his regiment baffled him. The priest squealed about on the tracks he had instead of legs, wafting smoke from burning oil at the consoles. ‘The magos. What by Terra is he doing?’

  ‘He’s conducting a purification ritual. He’s more concerned about the heathen ways of the Carinaeans disrespecting the machines than the damage the Legion caused.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I think it means he can’t get it to work either.’

  A soft chime struck up from the observation deck’s atmospheric monitor, one of the few things that did work. Immediately, the trill of the command squad’s auspex equipment joined it.

  ‘Pathogen in the air outside this sector!’ barked Cordellus.

  ‘Marvellous.’ Caius calmly fastened the rebreather about his mouth. His command squad did the same. ‘What’s the exposure?’

  ‘For us, negligible. There’s not enough airflow through here.’ The surgeon general looked them all over. ‘Anybody feel anything?’

  Men patted themselves and looked at one another dumbly.

  ‘Let’s assume for a moment we’re all fine,’ said Caius, ‘and consider what is going to happen to everyone else, because we’re the only squad in this company wearing breathing equipment. What are we dealing with?’

  The surgeon general consulted equipment. Reports were streaming in from elsewhere.

  Cordellus frowned. ‘It’s an engineered virus of some sort. I won’t know what its effects are unless I take a sample back with me. But it’s aggressive. Very aggressive.’ He peered closer at the screen. ‘We should be all right in here. If it gets in, I recommend goggles. The sort of activity this is exhibiting, air contact alone could dump enough of a viral load through our eyes.’

  ‘Delightful,’ said Caius, seating his goggles in place. ‘Lock it out,’ he ordered. He turned back to the technician. ‘Get air purification back online. Prioritise it.’

  ‘Before the airflow?’ asked the technician.

  ‘Yes before!’ snapped Caius. ‘What’s the use of purifying the air after we let it back in? Bring it up to maximum. I want regular reports from the camps to see if the civilians are affected. And see if you can get that Martian to be of some use.’

  ‘Do you think they would poison their own civilians?’ asked Milontius.

  ‘You’re young. I’m old. I’ve seen every form of barbarity man can perform. Yes, I think they might poison their own civilians. Don’t worry, Milontius,’ said Caius sourly. ‘They’ll probably suffocate first.’

  Thirteen

  anima-phage

  The gilded blister of Agarth’s palace dominated the city hub. The dozen avenues dividing the artificial moonlet’s districts met in a plaza beneath the palace’s baroque underside. Thus exalted over all, the arch-comptroller’s private domain crowned Zenith-312.

  Corax advanced along a service catwalk suspended high above one of the avenues. The walkway was broad enough for the city’s large maintenance drones to traverse. Ten men could comfortably walk upon it abreast between the lattice of cables that hung the walkway from the city’s roof. An access shaft moulded into the fluid forms of the ceiling supports lay dead ahead of him, its concealed door leading back into station skin. A second was some four hundred metres behind his position.

  The avenue was impressively large, accommodating parkland and a town of some size. Down the centre, a track for autonomous transit pods ran on pillars through the quiet glades and public gardens. Rich buildings stood alone in the park, gathering in number until they became streets, then packed ever more densely until they blended into the structure of the city’s massive internal walls. Woods dotting the park grew up the sides of the buildings in lush tangles, all Terran species, some extinct upon the world of man’s birth. At one point a lake filled the avenue from side to side, its deep blue waters crossed by the pod line. Sinuous walkways wound their way over marshes full of birds. Corax cast eyes over a living world unto itself, a cosmic oasis adrift upon the void. The myriad stars of space shone through faceted domes too big to shutter that rose up at the high points in the roof like the triumphant notes of a symphony. This paradise was the home of the elite. The squalor Corax had witnessed elsewhere seemed a thousand light years away.

  The plaza beneath Agarth’s palace was equally impressive, its patterned paving adorned with graceful sculptures. Through its monumental precincts, the long, pollen-hazed distances of other avenues were visible.

  The beauty of Zenith-312 was the equal of any constructed environment Corax had seen elsewhere, but presently it was crammed with refugees hiding from the war. There were tens of thousands of them, many ragged and out of place in their l
ush surroundings. They gathered most tightly towards the giant plaza as if their lord could personally protect them. Down the avenue, back towards the front, the power was out, and though the dark zone was as safe as the lit area the people huddled instinctively away from it.

  The domes in the ceiling provided a panorama of the battle to the civilians. They watched the dance of warships transfixed, fear writ plainly on every face.

  Corax cursed Agarth for corralling his people so close to himself. He erected a shield of innocent lives around his palace. The primarch loathed him all the more for that.

  Then the people began to die.

  Death came to the edge of the crowd first. Primarchs were possessed of acuity of vision far beyond that of a normal man, and Corax noticed odd movements among the people as soon as they began. He slowed his advance, and looked directly down at a wide meadow two hundred metres below.

  The movement emanated from atmospheric venting ducts hidden in the landscape. People closest to the vents began to choke and shriek. Shock grew swiftly into a panic that moved outward like the ripples kissed into a field of wheat by the wind. The metaphor was not a natural one to the prison-raised Corax. The first time he had seen crops growing outside was not so long ago. But what he saw looked like nothing else but the pattern in long grasses. People surged one way, saw the same choking death coming from another direction, and surged back, their arms waving over their heads. It was momentarily hypnotic, until they began to fall. Nervous chatter burst into a roar of screaming, and the crowd broke in every direction.

  Alarms rang in Corax’s helm. Short vox bursts bounced from man to man in the dispersed cadre of Shadowmasters. He clicked out a code burst, bringing them all to a halt.

  ‘There is something in the atmospheric mix,’ he said, braving open broadcast. Pipes crowded the space over the service way. Funnels every eighty metres wheezed out air, interspersed intakes huffing it back in. He flicked through the viewing options provided by his auto-senses. High-spectrum vision revealed a carrier agent billowing out of the vents in sinister clouds. The gas was but the bearer of bad tidings.

  It carried the worst news of all.

  ‘Viral agent! Close down your breathing masks!’ Corax commanded. ‘Switch to vacuum operation protocols.’ More chimes sang in his helm.

  People in a crowd are motes of information. They lose their individuality, becoming particles as predictable as those oscillating through a liquid. They stampeded away from the rings of death spreading out through their number in inevitable patterns. They shoved, bounced off each other and crushed those that fell down in their rush to escape. The greater battle in the heavens was forgotten.

  Hundreds fled up the avenue, streaming into the dark like sand through the neck of an hourglass. But the disease was quickly diffused through the whole of the space. Corax saw it through his enhanced false-colour vision as a rolling, violet fog. There was no escape. The inhabitants of Zenith-312 fell as they ran, tongues swelling in their mouths, eyes rolling back. A lucky minority collapsed within three breaths. The rest fell in spasms, beating at their skulls at the agony sprouting inside, tearing at their own flesh and frothing from their mouths.

  In seconds it was all over. The crowd collapsed into a pointillist mosaic of brightly coloured clothes, the figures tessellated by outflung limbs into disturbingly regular patterns.

  One of the Mor Deythan broke the dreadful silence, his calm voice preceded by the crisp click of incoming vox traffic.

  ‘My lord, what are your orders?’ the Shadowmaster asked.

  ‘Essential communications only,’ Corax ordered. ‘We are vulnerable to detection.’ He walked forward, passing directly through the rush of contaminated air. His eyes darted across the crowd below. Every human being was dead. Anger flooded his soul.

  ‘What kind of tyrant murders his own people?’ said Corax to himself. ‘Why has he done this?’

  Moments passed. The pulsing locator runes of his Mor Deythan moved silently over his helm cartograph.

  ‘My lord, there is some movement here among the dead,’ voxed one of the warriors. The name Dio Enkern blinked up in Corax’s helm. ‘Maybe survivors.’

  ‘Investigate,’ Corax commanded. ‘The rest of you, stay in the shadows.’

  Corax located Enkern moving through a square of bluish grassland. He darted from tree to tree, maximising his cover, then ran to the shelter of a transit line pillar.

  ‘Here,’ Enkern voxed. He stopped at the edge of a group of people. Corax watched as he approached. Arms stirred. Legs jerked. Heads flopped. Enkern moved cautiously, his boltgun ready. Other movement drew Corax’s eye away. Across the sea of corpses, knots of similar activity stirred.

  ‘I have life signs. Auto-senses show minimal heart patterns returning to normal,’ voxed Enkern. He paused. ‘Their hearts were still. Respiration and circulation restarting all around me. None of them are dead.’

  All across the crowds there were signs of life. A dread foreboding gripped Corax.

  Enkern’s voxed shout drew Corax’s attention back to his son.

  ‘Beware! They can see me.’

  A man was sitting up in the middle of the group. He stared at Enkern, trembling fingers lifted towards him. Corax frowned. It should not be possible. He linked with Enkern’s auto-senses to check. Stealing a look through his son’s eyes he saw it was true. The man was staring directly at the Shadowmaster. Others of the fallen people were getting to their feet, swaying unsteadily, all of them staring at the Mor Deythan. They bared their teeth. Hisses and snarls escaped their mouths.

  ‘Stay back,’ Enkern said. He repeated himself in Carinaean trade argot. More of the crowd were getting to their feet. Corax took in their glazed eyes and clashing teeth. He had never seen this before, but he had an inkling what it was.

  ‘Enkern, withdraw immediately,’ said Corax.

  ‘Understood,’ said Enkern. He began to fall back.

  His suspicions aroused, the primarch engaged his armour’s higher-level cognitional functions. Corax’s wargear was individual to himself, equipped with unique subsystems that played to his strengths. Included in his sensorium were multiple auguries and analysis cogitators. His auto-senses tasted the disease on the air, sliced it to pieces, spelled out the nature written in its genetic code. Something complex and ancient. Something so evil it could only have come from the depths of man’s wickedness and refined at the heights of his power.

  He cursed. ‘Anima-phage,’ he said in disgust. An ancient disease, programmed to rewrite a human’s brain, wiping out his higher functions and transforming him into an unreasoning beast.

  ‘All of you, withdraw. These people cannot be helped. They have become a danger to us. Keep your armour sealed.’

  The gene-coding was bewilderingly complex, even to his primarch’s mind, and the data his battleplate presented was insufficient for him to decide if the agent would affect his sons. He thought it probable. The Emperor’s gene forging was supreme, but the genetors of the Age of Technology were master artisans of death.

  Gunshots burst off to his right. Corax glanced down. One of his other men was moving through the crowd on the other side of the park. The afflicted were running at him. Where before he had walked unseen, now he was visible, and trapped. He moved rapidly towards the sanctuary of a building, barging through the crowd where he could, letting off shots with deadly grace when he could not, each one a perfect hit. The runners exploded. Ordinarily boltguns inspired terror, but the crowd had lost all reason.

  More controlled bolt fire sounded from a dozen locations around the avenue.

  ‘Conserve your ammunition,’ Corax ordered. ‘Withdraw. They no longer have minds that can be tricked by the shadow gift. You must fall back now.’

  A hollow groan came from Corax’s left. A group of afflicted had come down onto the catwalk from the access point behind him. As soon as they saw him they broke
into a shambling gallop. Their eyes were dead of thought, replaced by a desire to rend flesh.

  They had no fear of him. As they reached him, Corax cut them down with his lightning claws. The sounds of the disruption fields drew more onto the catwalk from the nearer access way.

  Cursing, Corax abandoned stealth entirely. He brought his armour systems to full power and opened his strategic vox-link. Immediately, reports streamed in from all over the city.

  The entire population was affected; two hundred thousand Carinaeans now stood against the Legion, along with eight thousand Imperial Army soldiers turned from allies to enemies. Everyone on board who was not wearing breathing equipment had fallen, and in the worst-affected areas, all of those who were as well. In one stroke, Agarth had turned the entire city against the Raven Guard. A series of careful surgical strikes had become a battle against a massed enemy. Along the front, hordes of violent citizens were attacking his men. Behind the line of conquest, where regiments of standard humans were intermingled with Space Marines, anarchy reigned as mindless soldiers turned on the Legion. All reports were delivered to a background of thumping boltgun fire.

  More afflicted poured onto the catwalk from the service access. In seconds they were all over him, snarling and clawing. Their finger­nails ripped free of their beds in the fury, their fingers broke on his ceramite. They scrabbled at him so hard the flesh was stripped from their fingertips, leaving smears of blood all over the black of his armour. They could not get through, but they could drag him down.

  Corax lashed out. His claws slashed many of the afflicted to ruin, but more took their place and pressed at him. They piled on him, drooling mouths working out painful moans, eyes rolling. Teeth shattered on the edges of his armour plates.