Corax- Lord of Shadows

by Guy Haley

  A swipe of his hand knocked flechettes tinkling from his chest.

  He took the leftmost passageway towards his target. The fleeing Zenith-guard were too terrified to notice he was not following them.

  Successive flights of stairs and short landings took Pexx out from the centre of the station. A thumbnail cartolith hanging by his right eye told him exactly where he was, but he would have known he was getting further out without it, for the temperature rose half a degree with every fifty metres he walked closer to the station’s edge. Occasional sounds of fighting echoed down the corridors. Soon after insertion the Moritat had broken apart from one another. They fought alone, in the main. Pexx was grateful of that. The misery of the sable brand was compounded by his new status. He did not wish to share.

  His helm chimed. He was near his target. A wall-mounted sentry gun swivelled towards him. He blasted it apart and strode past the sparking mess. The temperature increase quickened. Half a degree for every ten metres now.

  There was a door set in the wall to his right. The passages were narrow down there to save space, though still tall to accommodate the Carinaeans’ attenuated form. He turned awkwardly. The volkite attached to his right hand swivelled aside to allow him to grasp an annular twist-switch set into the wall. The mechanism was designed for the long fingers of a low-G-born human and his gauntleted hand would not fit. He poked at it with two fingers until he got it to turn. The door clunked back and rolled aside. Higher-pressure air blasted out of the room behind. It was searing, and stale. The chamber was not connected to the main ventilation system.

  A platform ran around the inner three walls of a two-storey room, looking down onto large, humming mechanisms. A ruby energy field made the fourth wall, cutting in at a steep angle and wrapping itself around the machinery below. Past the shield a long radiation deflector vane extended into space. The magnetic field it projected sizzled with artificial auroras. Beyond, the sun walled space away. The star was too close to give any sense of its spherical nature, and appeared as a flat sheet of bubbling fire. It lit the room deep orange. There were no lumens. His volkites’ charge cells cast odd blue highlights onto the angles of the walls. Pexx slipped gratefully into the bloody shadows.

  The energy field was an atmospheric retainer combined with thermal shielding, but still the room burned with a furnace broil. The workings of Pexx’s suit hit a fever pitch to keep him from cooking inside his armour. Where the cooler air of the corridor seeped into the room, a furious thermocline shimmered.

  The room had the feel of a place men did not often go. Pexx walked over to the single control console situated at the centre of the platform facing the sun. Its instruments were dark, save a few bright red lights. Gauges twitched like fitful dreamers.

  He stared at them. His vox-beads hissed in his ears. Rarely had he been so alone as then. He welcomed the solitude. The sun blazed invitingly at him, coaxing him to step to the edge of the chamber, clamber over the machines and leap out into the void and the fires there. He would cease to be. The ravens clamouring in his skull would be consumed with him. He would be free. No more war, no more killing. One easy death, and it would all be done.

  He took a step forward.

  A hand appeared from nowhere to grasp at his elbow.

  ‘Do not give in to the sable brand.’ A Moritat stood where there had been nobody.

  Pexx’s right hand whipped up to press its gun against the warrior’s left eye-lens. He did not move.

  ‘Either by killing me, or yourself,’ added the warrior. His armour lacked any form of identification, being as black and glossy all over as a raven’s feathers.

  Pexx deactivated the gun and brought it away. ‘A Moritat Shadowmaster. You are truly one with all the gifts,’ said Pexx sardonically.

  ‘Making light?’ said the Shadowmaster. ‘That is good. You may survive your affliction.’

  ‘You are an expert on this condition?’

  ‘I am as expert as anyone can claim to be,’ said the Shadowmaster.

  Pexx experienced mixed emotions: relief that he may get better, a fresh tide of horror that it could happen again.

  ‘Sometimes, we must face what we are lest we go mad,’ said the warrior.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Pexx.

  ‘I am a friend. I am your brother.’

  Pexx pulled away. The warrior’s hand slid from his arm. He turned back to the console. He looked to his new companion. ‘I would withdraw. As soon as I deactivate this machinery, we will be exposed to the full force of this star.’

  ‘I am staying here,’ said the Shadowmaster, with a note of sad humour, ‘to make sure you do not remain.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Pexx. The machinery was simple enough to work. He turned off the radiation vane then the stubby gravitic stabilisers ranged along the hull in its shelter. An alarm barked at him. Lights flashed, their output feeble in the face of the sun. His finger hovered over the field cutout button.

  ‘Deactivate it, then follow me,’ said the Shadowmaster. ‘If you are quick, you will survive.’

  Pexx’s finger stabbed down decisively.

  The field blinked out. Air gusted out explosively.

  The raw power of the sun hit him like a blow. His suit let out so many warnings it sounded like it was screaming. The temperature indicator went from low amber to the very extreme of its grade range in an eye-blink. Ceramite plates creaked with sudden expansion.

  ‘Out. Now,’ said the Shadowmaster. He grabbed Pexx and hustled him from the room. Machinery exploded behind them. Alarms whooped. Fires caught on insulated wires.

  Pexx was thrust into the narrow corridor. His armour steamed with evaporating paint, though it did not change colour; the metallo-ceramic beneath had been scorched as black as his livery.

  The Shadowmaster made to shut the door. Pexx held up his hand.

  ‘Wait,’ he shouted over the howl of escaping air. He loosed a shot into the room, blasting apart the control console. ‘Just in case,’ he said. ‘Close it now.’

  The Shadowmaster twisted the door lock. It banged shut. The decompression gale ceased.

  ‘We must be away,’ said the Shadowmaster. The wall of the corridor was beginning to glow. ‘This place will be unsafe in a few minutes.’

  Pexx nodded. His armour was cooling but still hot. The smell of singed bodyglove tickled his nostrils.

  They set out back the way they had come. Panicked shouts came at them down the stairs in the corridor head.

  ‘It looks like we will have to fight our way out,’ said Pexx.

  ‘That is not necessarily a bad thing for one in your condition,’ said the Shadowmaster.

  They fought side by side for the rest of the mission. Pexx did not ask the Shadowmaster his name, and the Shadowmaster did not offer it. The station shook with explosions as other key targets were destroyed or disabled. Subtle movements told them the outpost was being pulled from its orbit by the star. They did not have long to escape, but no order to withdraw came.

  Knowing they were doomed, Agarth’s guard fought desperately. Few of them fled any more. They had nowhere to go. More of the Moritat died, joining those who had failed to complete the journey from the Tenebrous.

  The Shadowmaster wielded a one-handed cycler cannon. Its fusillades passed through their targets as if they were wet paper, riddling the walls with holes. Gas and water sprayed from ruptured lines. Fires burned wherever they passed. They walked undaunted into the worst of enemy weapons fire, the Shadowmaster using his uncanny abilities to stalk ahead while Pexx acted as decoy. Hundreds fell to them.

  ‘They are surprisingly numerous,’ said Pexx.

  ‘Agarth has worked out what we are doing, and has released the full force of his army to hunt us down. It is too late for that now.’

  Among the troops were frightened technicians being hustled to undo the damage caused by the Moritat
. Pexx and the Shadowmaster killed them without compunction.

  ‘The station is beyond repair,’ said the Shadowmaster, as he mowed down a group of men with his cannon. Their flechettes bounced from his battleplate. ‘But we must not give them the opportunity to try.’

  ‘You do not need to explain. I have thirty years combat experience,’ said Pexx, annoyed at the warrior’s tone. ‘I fought with Corax for Deliverance.’

  ‘Are you saying I do not have experience, or did not fight in the liberation?’

  ‘I am saying I do not need you to explain the craft of war to me,’ said Pexx, punctuating his words with shots from his volkites. The weapons were superb, keeping up a high rate of fire without overheating.

  ‘I believe you may be experiencing remission.’

  ‘Do you always talk so much?’ Pexx lobbed a shroud grenade down the corridor. Zenith-guard stumbled out of the smoke to be gunned down by the Shadowmaster.

  ‘I do!’ laughed the Shadowmaster.

  ‘A regrettable characteristic for one such as you,’ said Pexx.

  ‘Maybe,’ said the Shadowmaster.

  They gained the third of the circular corridors running around the station. No place was untouched by the Moritat. Emergency lumens took over the roles of damaged lighting systems. Smoke ran along the ceilings in serpentine torrents. The walls were ragged and spitting sparks. Fires burned. Systems failed everywhere.

  A wide-cast vox message called for attention. Pexx listened.

  ‘Fall back to the primary hangar bay.’ The speaker was a murderer named Kaedes Nex, drafted in from the 14th Company to serve as leader for the Moritat strike force, as much as the Moritat could be said to be led by anybody. ‘Our mission is accomplished. Secure means of transit. Leave one ship intact, destroy the rest.’

  Like flocking birds, the Moritat reached the furthest extent of their flight, turned back, and headed to rejoin their fellows.

  Pandemonium reigned in the hangar approach tunnels. The Carinaeans were converging on the hangar as the retinues of differing lords sought to secure transit off the station before it fell into the sun. Elements of the Zenith-guard fought each other as well as the Raven Guard Moritat in their desire to escape. Pexx and the Shadowmaster approached a major way choked with corpses. There were a few lordly Carinaeans among the dead, their complicated headgear and their beads marking them for what they were. Pexx stopped by one. His red robes were stained crimson by his blood, his finely boned face bled white. He lay surrounded by the bodies of his soldiers. Boltguns had finished them all.

  ‘In death, we are all made the same,’ he said to the corpse. ‘Lacking motion and determination, all deeds are done. When we are dead, the only distinction we have is that which we did in life.’

  ‘Then he died poorly,’ said the Shadowmaster. ‘Come. You are leaving.’

  They made their way to the edge of their target. There was only one hangar, but it was extensive in size. Bolt fire rattled around its maintenance and landing bays. Four of five shuttles housed there burned. They were impressive machines, larger than a Legion gunship, with a transport capacity close to that of an Imperial Army drop-ship. Weapons blisters studded the hull and the stubby wings. The Legion had made short work of them. The sole remaining vessel was sheathed by the soapy glimmer of energy shields. Three Moritat fired a variety of weapons from the open ramp. Dead Zenith-guard carpeted the floor. More came into the hangar to replace those who had died, taking up positions of cover and the higher ground to fire at the Space Marines. They were becoming desperate, pushing on where before they would have held back. They traded mag-impelled flechettes with bolts. The bolts had the higher worth in terms of death.

  Pexx and his companion crept up to an ingress point – one of many around the hangar periphery, and shot down a squad sheltering behind a loading rig a few metres from their position. He’d hit three, he thought. The Shadowmaster murdered the rest, his cycler cannon blasting seven men into chunks that fell down upon the deck to leak copious blood.

  ‘Raven Guard, board enemy craft. We depart immediately.’ Nex again. His cold voice contained no capacity for mercy. Anybody not on the ship when it was due to depart would be left behind. He would not wait.

  ‘Now,’ said Pexx to his nameless friend. He sprinted across the open ground between transport and hangar door without looking to see if the Shadowmaster followed. Flechettes thudded into him from several directions. A few pierced his ceramite with the accuracy of a torturer’s needles, skewering vital systems. Gas whistled from the holes. Systems warnings blinked red across his faceplate. The power feed to his left leg became patchy.

  Nine Moritat converged on the hangar – in all likelihood no more remained alive – announcing themselves with data bursts for their comrades and a plethora of technological death for their foes. They dashed from every direction towards the shuttle. According to Pexx’s display, thirteen had made it through the journey and the mission. A forty-six per cent survival rate set against all mission goals accomplished. For most other branches of the Legion, the figure would have been cause for punitive action against the commanders. For the Moritat it was a solid success.

  Pexx ran up the ramp of the shuttle. Its engines were firing as he limped aboard, his armour grinding, his dragging foot kicking aside delicate metal meadowlands of embedded flechettes. Hands pulled him further within the craft. It shook with the force of its primitive motive units. The remainder of the Moritat ran in. They abandoned all caution, and entered the ship with their backpacks studded with glittering needles, their systems venting gas. Pexx glimpsed the warrior he had shared the battle with already aboard, somehow, and raised a hand. The Mor Deythan dipped his head, then sank into the shadows of a bulkhead like a black rock disappearing into oil. Something struck Pexx as wrong about that. With a sense of building dread, he went over to the place the Shadowmaster had been.

  There was no one there.

  ‘Brother!’ he said to another Raven Guard who sat upon the bench. ‘Do you know the warrior who was here?’ he asked.

  The man’s helm tilted up at him.

  ‘What warrior?’ he said.

  ‘We go, now,’ said Nex over the vox.

  The roar of engines killed Pexx’s questions.

  No more Moritat were in the hangar. The three covering the ramp turned and came inside. The Zenith-guard abandoned their positions and ran at the ship, firing recklessly, until the hull weapons of the shuttle opened up, and rent them into particles. Pexx’s last sight of the hangar was a man vanishing in a flash of dispersing energy – then the ramp closed, and the ship nosed up. There was a momentary pause as it swung about-face and blew out the hangar doors, then a spike in temperature, and the sickening feeling of sudden exposure to a high-gravity field. The ship whined piteously as its Moritat hijackers bullied it away from the sun, the temperature climbing to deadly heights. Suddenly, they were in the shadow of the dying station and clear, accelerating fast. No weapons fire troubled them.

  Pexx was exhausted, but at peace. The gnawing sense of doom had left him. His pessimism was gone. He wondered if the Shadowmaster was real, or if he was a manifestation of the sable brand. Either way, he offered the warrior silent thanks. Without him, he would be dead by his own hand.

  Pexx rested his head against the inner wall of the transport bay hull, and let the shaking of the craft lull him into sleep.

  No ravens darkened his dreams.

  Eighteen

  saviour’s vengeance

  The entire legionary force was arrayed around the Saviour in Shadow, bearing witness to the primarch’s sentence upon Arch-Comptroller Agarth.

  Corvus Corax brooded on the command throne. His crew went about their work in silence under the glaring eye of the Carinaean sun. The oculus shutters were open, the reactive armourglass turned up to near full opacity to shield the deck from harmful radiation. The sun occupied most of the vie
w and only a thin curve of black, writhing with coronal flares, hinted at the void beyond.

  Having the shutters withdrawn from the oculus presented many dangers. The Saviour in Shadow was very close to the star, its human eyes and machine systems blinded by it. Without the metres of armour the shutters gave, the command deck was vulnerable to suicide runs by enemy ships or the hyper-range weaponry of the floating cities. But Corax wanted to watch.

  The outpost was falling into the sun. Gravity impellers and engines disabled, the Carinaean star exerted its undeniable pull upon the station’s mass. From Corax’s perspective the outpost appeared as a black silhouette dropping slowly, almost gracefully, into the sea of fire, but the primarch saw through the optical illusion. The station was travelling at vast speeds and accelerating rapidly. Only the distance it must travel and the relative enormousness of the sun granted its seeming dignity.

  Within a hololithic projection sphere a light-spun model floated. Corax had the device set to a thermal view, showing the dying orbital as a blended pattern of whites, oranges and, upon the surface pointing away from the sun, a faint trace of cool red.

  A sole voice gabbled, that of Agarth, broadcast over the vox into the bridge, and sent on to the remaining cities by the ­Saviour in Shadow’s communications staff. Nearly four hours had passed since the Moritat had returned to the Tenebrous. Four hours of pompous declamations of the sovereignty of the Thousand Moons and ranting denunciations of the Imperium. All the while the temperature aboard the station increased. For short periods, Agarth was silent, but then his anger or his fear would get the better of him and he would begin anew. Corax ordered no one to reply. Similarly, the multiple requests for remote audience sent by Admiral Fenc went unanswered. The business with Agarth must be concluded first.