by Gav Thorpe
He looked at it for a few seconds, amazed that such power could be contained within something so miniscule. Life, superior transhuman life, was held in that molecule-thin sliver of material. The ability to create legions of unstoppable warriors floated just in front of him. All he had to do was dash that glassite tube on the floor, and the doom of the Raven Guard would be sealed. Yet the primarch had a far grander purpose. The same secret formula would make the Alpha Legion an unstoppable force. Captivated by the thought, Alpharius realised that he had a choice. What he did next might well decide the outcome of Horus’s war against the Emperor, could decide the fate of the entire galaxy.
Did Horus deserve such a gift? What grievance against the Emperor could be so vast that such a war was needed to settle it? Alpharius knew that there were greater forces than him at play in this rebellion, but at that moment none of them held the power he did.
He laughed quietly at himself, embarrassed by his grandiose thoughts. The primarch had made it clear that the destiny of the Alpha Legion lay alongside Horus’s, for the good of the Legion and all of mankind. Alpharius knew his primarch would not make such a statement unless he knew for certain that it was true.
Dismissing his doubts, Alpharius plucked the capsule from the grip of the suspensors and turned, looking for the gene-coder as he had been instructed. He located it on one of the work benches, a large machine with several receptacles the same size as the gene-tube, hooked up to a bank of analysing engines.
He switched on the gene-coder and placed the template material into one of the apertures. Punching in the command sequence he had learned, he activated the coding mechanism. As the machine purred into life, he took the virus container from his belt and opened it up. Inside was a near-identical glassite phial. He made the mistake of looking at the contents. The gaseous mixture inside writhed with a life of its own, changing colour and contorting madly, sliding against the phial as if trying to escape. For some reason it reminded him of the descriptions of the warp he had heard from Navigators: ever-shifting and restless.
Swallowing his revulsion, he placed the virus into another receiving pod and closed the lid.
His fingers tapped away at the keypad, allowing the gene-template and viral solution to mix inside the coding machine. He stopped as he felt a tremor shaking Ravendelve: the defence turrets were opening fire. Alpharius had to move swiftly. The time he had taken would either be noticed by Sixx or one of the turret crews, or the attack put in motion by the primarch would soon be hurled back and the lockdown would be ended.
He finished the input sequence and waited a few seconds while machinery whirred in the depths of the gene-coder. An alert pinged the completion of the task and the phial casket opened with a hiss.
He retraced his steps, returning the gene-template to its stasis chamber and sealing the door. Using the cipher-breaker, Alpharius entered the data logs and deleted the entries reporting his interference. It was not as secure as a complete wipe, but he did not have time for such a precaution. With implantation reaching the level it had, it would take a deep auditing scan to pick up on the anomaly, during which the system would have to be shut down. Such an event was unlikely, given Corax’s determination to build up the strength of the Raptors as fast as possible.
With everything back where it should be, Alpharius exited the central chamber. Sixx and the tech-priest were engrossed in their labours, stooping over one of the implant recipients. Not drawing any attention to himself, Alpharius left the digi-key on a shelf and slipped out.
Once in the corridor he broke into a run, heading for Turret Three where he was supposed to be guiding the defence gunnery.
THE WHEEZE OF the autolung and staccato rattle of the monitor needles was oddly soothing. Navar Hef felt disassociated from his body, a state induced by a cocktail of preparation agents and hypnotic suggestion. He flitted between wakefulness and shallow sleep, barely aware of what was happening, the fleeting moments of lucidity serving to reassure him that Vincente Sixx and his attendants were never far away, constantly observing his progress.
There was pain, but his trance-like state allowed him to siphon the sensation to a part of his mind where it did not impact his thoughts. Navar’s body felt as if it was burning, within and without, yet he remained icy cold in his mind.
Organs were moving and growing, bones were thickening and lengthening, cells were duplicating and mutating. He dreamed he was a shadowmoth, hanging in its chrysalis from a gantry in one of the prison wings. Navar’s body was in flux, a semi-solid construct transforming from the physique of a human youth to the transhuman physiology of a legionary.
Time passed without meaning. Occasionally Navar felt a surge of energy or agony, flares of feeling from limbs or innards undergoing implantation. Such sensations were confined to his mind, his body fixed in a paralysis that prevented screams and laughter. The lights hanging from cables above dimmed to darkness or became blindingly bright, sensed through his closed eyelids. He wondered if this marked the passing of the day and night or simply reactions to the changes in his body.
More than anything, when he experienced any emotion, Navar felt joy, a constant ecstatic feeling of becoming his true self.
Locked in his thoughts, the Raptor-to-be formed a picture of himself as he was and as he would be. He could vaguely sense the huge increase in his mass, his chest and arms and legs becoming heavily muscled. At some point he realised there was a different rhythm to his heartbeat, the familiar pulsing in his throat accompanied by a secondary beat, more rapid but weaker. He breathed and tasted the air in a way he had never tasted it before. Sweat and antiseptic, ozone and brushed metal lingered on his enhanced tongue and in his improved olfactory sensors.
Even his brain was changing. As if from a distance, he observed new structures and pathways forming in the grey matter of his thoughts. He came to realise that there were no drugs in his system any longer. His fugue state was being maintained from within by an interaction of his newly grown catalapsean node and sus-an membrane.
It was then that he knew the process was complete. With an effort of will, Navar forced himself from his semi-sleep, gaining clarity of thought and sense. The ward surrounded him in sharp focus: the scuff of the attendants’ feet, the whine of Magos Orlandriaz’s servitors, the smell of blood and adrenaline, the flickering of the light fittings.
He sat up, suddenly aware that he was ravenously hungry. Despite being intravenously fed proteins and nutrients throughout the implantation, his body had devoured its store of fat to fuel his massive growth.
Navar chuckled as he realised his feet were at the end of the bed. When he had lain down just a few days ago, they had barely reached two-thirds the length of the sheet. He lifted his right hand and formed an immense fist, knuckles flexing underneath hardened skin. Bunching the muscles in his arm, he marvelled at their power and felt the urge to crush something in his grip.
‘You must move to the rehabilitation room,’ said an orderly, all but her eyes hidden under hood and behind face mask. Navar could see the flecks of grey in the blue of her irises, and every tiny blood vessel in the whites. He saw his reflection in her pupils, a naked giant lying on bloodstained sheets. Her breath carried wisps of caroumal, a sugar-rich supplement used by the Raven Guard and their serfs to fuel short bursts of energetic activity. The bags under her eyes and lines around her brow offered testament to her fatigue.
‘Please, follow me to the rehabilitation room,’ she said, taking Navar’s wrist. He could detect the minute inflections in her voice, the weariness that caused looseness in her larynx. It seemed to Navar that she almost slurred her words, whereas a normal man would have just heard the same familiar tones.
He swung his legs from the bunk, and stood up. There was another moment of delight as he towered over the attendant. He saw his shadow engulfing her and was filled with a sense of mastery. She was not impressed, having dealt with dozens of Raptors in recent days. Without further word, the attendant turned and walked towards a
set of double doors with glass windows. Navar heard the pad of her slippered feet and swish of her medical robe as loud as heavy boots and piston-driven armour.
Something caught in Navar’s throat and he coughed. The attendant pointed to a metal bucket on a hook beside the door. An awful stench rose from it.
‘You’ll need to expel some dead tissue from your lungs,’ said the attendant.
Navar hawked and spat a thick clot into the bucket. He took a deep breath and found no other obstruction. The attendant pushed open one of the doors, revealing rows of benches and loose robes. There were several dozen Raptors cleansing their bodies from long troughs, sloughing away blood clots and thick sweaty residue.
Several turned and grinned at Navar, and he smiled in return. If he understood correctly, these would be his battle-brothers within a matter of days, fully grown and combat-ready.
‘Thank you,’ he said to the attendant, and stepped through the door to join the rest of the Raptors.
THE EMPTY FUEL tank ruptured from the impact of Omegon’s fist, a hollow clang resounding around the deserted freight terminal on the outskirts of Nairhub, hidden in the rad-wastes of Kiavahr. With a snarl, Omegon looked to the heavens through the gaps in the metal sheets of the roof; skeletal craneworks jutted up into the cloudy red sky, around them chains hanging from scaffolding and walkways like creepers of an industrial jungle. Pulling his gauntleted hand from the ragged hole he had made in the steel drum, the Alpha Legion’s primarch directed his murderous glare to Magos Unithrax.
‘Do you have an explanation?’ Omegon demanded. He rested one hand on the hilt of his chainsword, and curled the fingers of the other around the grip of the bolter slung at his hip. ‘Another batch of Raptors has undergone transformation without a hitch, and no hint of your virus.’
‘Your operative must have made an error when he attempted to introduce it to the gene-template,’ said Unithrax, meeting the primarch’s anger with a calm, cold stare. ‘Perhaps he compromised the integrity of the viral code.’
‘He followed your instructions precisely,’ Omegon replied. ‘My operative is not at fault.’
‘The viral agent will have mutated the gene-seed if the procedure has been correctly implemented,’ the magos insisted, assured of the truth of what he said.
‘This is not satisfactory,’ said Omegon, calming himself so that he could think clearly. Whoever was to blame could be dealt with later. He had to devise a secondary plan, and quickly. ‘Is it possible the virus is somehow still dormant? What sort of safeguards did you engineer into it to ensure it would not spread out of control and become infectious?’
‘The virus is a common variety, harmless on its own,’ said Unithrax. He shrugged, and a third arm, mechanical in nature, momentarily appeared from under his robes in imitation of the gesture. ‘It is merely a vehicle to introduce the corruptive element.’
‘And what corruptive element have you used?’ said Omegon. ‘Does it need time to activate?’
‘It is warp-based in origin, the stuff of the immaterial rendered into solid form,’ the magos said quietly.
‘Warp tech? It’s notoriously fickle,’ snapped Omegon. ‘Why would you use such a thing?’
‘Not so much warp technology as something more primordial, primarch,’ said Unithrax. ‘The viral agent uses modified daemon blood.’
‘What?’ Omegon snarled the question as he snatched hold of the tech-priest’s robe. ‘You exposed my operative to the taint of Chaos?’
‘A near-synthetic compound utilising trace amounts,’ said Unithrax, unperturbed by the primarch’s outburst. ‘Daemons do not have blood, as such, it is merely a useful euphemism. It contains minimal daemonic power in itself, but its presence is a powerful mutagen. If it was correctly mixed with the gene-template, there will be corruption.’
‘Well, it has not worked,’ said Omegon. He released his hold and began to pace, and then stopped himself, annoyed by the display of agitation. Reaching a decision, he fixed Unithrax with a hard stare.
‘The Order of the Dragon is ready to move?’ said the primarch.
‘Give us the word and we will act,’ replied Unithrax.
‘Good,’ said Omegon. ‘We have delayed long enough; it is time to begin the final phase of the project. I will organise a little testing skirmish for our Raven Guard friends while you begin the coup. Corax will have his eye fixed on Ravendelve and he will not see your preparations until it is too late.’
‘Very well, primarch,’ said the magos. ‘Unless I receive a signal from you, we will make our move at the temple council in three days’ time.
‘Be sure that you do,’ said Omegon. ‘The Seventh and Nineteenth Legion vessels are still at high anchor close to the Lycaeus moon. I will bring the Beta stealthing into closer orbit and have my warriors shuttled down, if you can guarantee the protection and secrecy of the agreed landing site.’
‘The Starfall docks belong to the Order of the Dragon. Your troops will arrive without remark or record.’
Omegon dismissed the magos with a wave of the hand, and equally dismissed him from his thoughts. The guilds would not move until they had seen some solid sign of the support of Horus, which would be given to them when the Order of the Dragon turned their weapons on the Mechanicum. Until then, Omegon would have to find some smaller force to attract Corax’s attention and increase the security measures at Ravendelve; measures that he would need to cover the involvement of his legionnaires.
He had the ideal candidate, someone whose loyalty had been assured from the earliest days of the revolution, a man who would not hesitate to lay down the lives of his followers to protect his own. Omegon set up his cipher-net communications equipment and established a signal. A few minutes passed before a connection was made.
‘Greetings, Councillor Effrit. This is Armand Eloqi.’
THE CHEM-CLOUDS WERE thicker than anything Alpharius had seen before, causing him to wonder if the insurgents had some control over their formation. It seemed too convenient that a thick swathe of noxious vapours had swept over Ravendelve only hours before their attack.
Along with the rest of his squad, he stood at the western rampart, looking for targets. Residual fallout was playing havoc with his auto-senses, no matter which spectrum filter he used. Now and then, he or one of the other squad members unleashed a bolt-round or two into the cloud mass, spying a swirl that might betray enemy movement, or aiming at darker patches in the fog.
To his right, Turret Four pounded out a steady stream of macro-cannon shells, the buildings in the distance blazing with detonations that set alight gas pockets and carved fifty metre-wide craters in the heaped rubble. Secondary emplacements roared with heavy bolters and chaingun fire, churning through the thick mist but hitting little.
‘No aerial support available,’ came Commander Branne’s voice over the vox-net. Alpharius was not surprised in the least. Without Thunderhawks or Stormbirds to fly recon, the Raven Guard would be forced to patrol on foot or in Rhinos, exposing themselves to ambush. For a Legion that prided itself on strategic flexibility and the mobility of force, they had been neatly trapped in Ravendelve by the initial attack.
Leaning over the rampart, Alpharius could see the piles of bodies from the first wave: dozens of mangled corpses left by the Raven Guard fusillade. If this was Omegon’s attack to secure Ravendelve, it was very poor. Alpharius could not believe that the long preparations of his primarch would lead to something so desultory, but he had received no instructions. All he could do was stand on the wall and continue to play his part as a loyal Raven Guard legionary. To do anything else would expose his secret without reason.
‘South gate opening, direct fire to cover column,’ said Branne.
Under the sergeant’s orders, Alpharius and the squad moved closer to Turret Four, to set up a fire position covering the blind spot beneath the high tower. There was nothing to see, no targets to fire at. There was sporadic las-fire in the distance though, bursts of energy bolts leaving fiery trails
through the contaminated fog. The insurgents had certainly not abandoned their attack.
‘Stay keen,’ said Sergeant Dor. ‘They’re planning something. Be ready.’
IN THE HULL of the second Rhino in the column, Navar Hef sat on the narrow seat with his bolter across his lap. The transport rocked wildly from side to side as it sped over the uneven ground of the rad-fields, but his suit compensated for most of the movement so that he just swayed back and forth a little.
‘Rapid deployment, thirty seconds!’ snapped Sergeant Cald. ‘Weapons check.’
Navar went through a quick inspection of his bolter and grenades. He unhooked the fastener on the sheath of his combat knife and tested the magnetic grips on the spare magazines clamped to his belt and thighs. All was in order, as it had been when he had boarded the Rhino.
‘Stand ready!’
Cald and his nine Raptors stood up and turned towards the rear hatchway. The bumping of the Rhino was more pronounced, but the gyrostabilisers of the Mark VI armour kept Navar balanced. He took a step backwards as the Rhino trundled to a halt.
Drop-bolts exploded along the sides of the hatch, dropping down the access ramp. Navar was the fourth out, fanning to the right with three other squad members. He saw movement through the doorway of a collapsed building ahead and fired without hesitation. His bolt-round found its mark, an arm swathed in bandage-like cloth sent spinning into view.
‘Enemy, twenty-five metres, secondary arc,’ Navar reported breathlessly.
The squad reformed without any need for command, laying down a curtain of fire into the rubble of the ruined building, leaving contrails in the ruddy miasma and fist-sized holes in the rockcrete walls.
‘Cease,’ ordered Cald. ‘Section one, move up. Section two, flank protection.’
Navar was in section two, so he held his ground and kept watch to the right. The sergeant led his team of five men towards the ruins, their black armour almost disappearing in the haze.