by Gav Thorpe
A wingtip lashed out, slicing through the blades of the Sons of Horus legionary and decapitating him. Spinning with the attack, Corax smashed the heel of his boot into the head of the downed warrior of the III Legion, crushing helm and skull into the floor.
The remaining Emperor’s Children turned and ran, sprinting towards the open doorway behind them. The primarch lifted his right hand and his combi-weapon spat fire, sending a flurry of bolts after the fleeing Space Marines. Detonations sparked from armour and one of the renegades went down, head turned to bony shrapnel that embedded into the ceramite of his companions. The others reached a bulkhead, the last of them slowing to stretch a hand towards a keypad on the wall. A shaped charge from the other barrel of Corax’s combi-weapon smashed into the renegade’s back, splitting armour in an instant before ejecting its melta core through his spine.
The last two survivors fled down the corridor, not looking back. Corax dashed after them, long strides assisted by half-opened wings so that he seemed to glide between every step. Reaching his prey, he drove his armoured hands through their backpacks, shattering vertebrae, and lifted them both from the ground. Their panicked flailing caused him no difficulty.
Another door opened to his left as he tossed their twitching bodies aside. He turned to see several Raven Guard, weapons at the ready, with Arendi at their head.
‘Follow me,’ said the primarch. He turned his back on the new arrivals to head down the corridor towards the main chamber of the keep.
‘Press on! Fight harder! The primarch’s life depends on it!’
Branne’s bellow rang out over the din of gunfire as he fired his combi-bolter in a long burst, mowing down a handful of the turncoat prison guards. Men and women in scarlet and black uniforms pitched to the floor, bodies rent by bolt detonations. Lifting his power sword, he waved the others forward.
Around the Raven Guard commander, his Raptors stormed along the ramp leading up to the central courtyard. Some were clean-limbed, wearing the distinctively snouted helms of Mark VI armour. They laid down a curtain of fire with bolters and heavy weapons, pinning back the crush of humanity standing between them and the huge exit gates.
Around them, the other Raptors boiled forwards.
These were the warriors suffering gene-seed mutation. Some could still wear armour, or pieces of it; others were dressed in padded coveralls furnished with dense mesh and artisan-fashioned plate. The Techmarines had done their best to provide their twisted battle-brothers with the same protection as those free from the gene-taint. Bestial roars and screeches took the place of proud battlecries as they lumbered, skittered and ran towards the enemy. Many carried weapons – bolt pistols, power axes, chainswords – but some sported claws and bony protrusions that served just as well.
Between them, the two Raptor-kin cleaved into hundreds of renegade soldiers that had poured down into the lower cells to stem the jailbreak, little knowing they faced a battle-group of Legiones Astartes. Some tried to retreat, blocking the entry of others, while bolts, las-blasts and bullets whined, cracked and zipped through the close confines of the subterranean complex.
Branne glanced at the chronometer in his helm display. Lord Corax would be making his final move for the commandant’s keep. The dampening field of the cell block, powered by a sub-generator to prevent teleportation and communications, was still blocking all signals.
The Raven Guard commander had to get to the surface, still an agonising three hundred metres away.
He had to warn his primarch about the traitor.
One
The battle-barge Avenger
[DV -128 days, Terran adjusted standard]
Corax summoned his commanders to him, with Arcatus of the Legio Custodes and Captain Noriz of the Imperial Fists, so that all factions of his force were represented. They had come from afar, brought together by the call of the Raven Guard primarch.
Scattered across dozens of systems, the Raven Guard had been waging their guerrilla war against the forces of Horus and the other traitors. Reinforcements ambushed en route to the battlefields creeping closer to Terra; supplies intercepted and taken by the Raven Guard, turned on those that sought to benefit from the shipments of arms and armour coming out of traitor-held forge worlds; scouting fleets destroyed.
In the years since Corax had made the Avenger his flagship much had changed. Once Commander Branne’s chambers, now the rooms of the primarch had been extended, refitted and turned into a sub-strategium. The main room was still plainly decorated, plasteel walls a muted blue. A carved relief of the Raven Guard’s device – a heraldic bird with wings and claws stretched, surrounded by a coiled chain – marked the wooden boards of the floor. The table that had once stood upon the symbol was now relegated to a side chamber, for when aboard ship Corax preferred to conduct his councils and briefings standing, to give urgency and movement to the thoughts of his commanders.
Around the walls were the blank screens of monitoring and communications stations, keyboards and runepads neatly stowed, stools tucked under the counters. For the past several days the primarch had waited here listening to the incoming reports from returning ships and flotillas, but all ancillary staff had been dismissed. He wanted his subordinates and the others to speak their minds freely without fear of showing dissent or hesitation in front of lesser ranks.
Corax waited for the last attendee to settle himself – Noriz, in his ochre battleplate. As Corax’s gaze fell upon him the captain stood sharply to attention, his crested helm under one arm. He had recently arrived from Deliverance, where his Legion’s particular skills had been put to good use; the home-moon of the Raven Guard and the forge world it orbited would be far more secure after a year of defensive improvements by the Imperial Fists. He was the youngest, head sporting a crop of blond curls, bright blue eyes that never rested.
At the opposite end of the scale, the eldest was Aloni, with Asiatic complexion and a naturally bald scalp riveted with many gilded service studs. The leader of the assault companies of the Falcons, his armour showed the most recent repairs and maintenance, sporting fresh-bonded rivets and plates yet to be adorned with the ceremonial black paint. Despite his ragtag appearance, his wargear was in good order, metal oiled and gleaming, pouches and mag-packs on thighs and greaves filled with ammunition and grenades.
Agapito and Aloni stood to Noriz’s right, Branne and Souk-hounou to the left, all clad in the midnight hue of the Raven Guard. As brothers, Branne and Agapito were not quite identical, but both had square jaws, heavy brows and flat cheeks. There was a sallow cast to their skin from being born and raised under the artificial lights of Lycaeus, which even the augmentations of the Legiones Astartes could not remove. Agapito was marked out by a weathered scar on his face.
Soukhounou was the darkest of them all, a testament to his gene-heritage amongst the Sahelian League on Terra. He had short-cropped, curled black hair and a beard of the same furred his chin and cheeks; he had arrived only the day before and was yet to shave off the growth of the last patrol. His dark flesh was cut by pale scars and tribal tattoos from his childhood, where he had been raised as a praise-singer before being taken by the Emperor’s newly raised Legions.
All were large men, boosted by their Space Marine genes, but they were slightly shorter than Arcatus, who was not only physically larger – though not as big as Corax – but held himself straight, with easy poise and grace. A thin face, sharp nose and swept-back blond hair had earnt him a nickname amongst the Raven Guard: the Emperor’s Eagle.
Corax nodded a greeting to each of them and then started to speak, eyes moving from one to the other and back, gauging their reactions without accusation.
‘We have fought hard since the disaster at Ravendelve curtailed any hope that we might return the Legion to some semblance of its former strength. In the way only the Raven Guard know best we have struck at Horus time and again, sapping his strength, drawing his ire away from o
ther forces.’ Corax sighed. ‘It is not enough. The Warmaster’s armies and fleets still constrict like a noose upon Terra.’
‘Are you suggesting we return to the Throneworld?’ said Noriz, with hope in his voice. ‘Are we going to join the defence?’
‘I would rather lay down my life amongst the stars than cower behind a wall,’ said Agapito.
‘Cower?’ Noriz bridled at the comment. ‘You think Lord Dorn a coward?’
‘Your pardon, I did not mean any such thing,’ said Agapito, raising a hand in apology. He looked at the primarch. ‘We fought to be free of imprisonment, my lord. To incarcerate ourselves within walls once more would make a mockery of everything we believe.’
‘What more can we do?’ asked Soukhounou. ‘We only have so many men, so many ships. As skilled as we are in such conditions, we cannot conjure warriors from nothing.’
‘From nothing?’ Corax shook his head, eyes closed. ‘I tried that, and it has caused us great pain.’
His mind was swept back to the events at Ravendelve some years earlier.
Fear and desperation. Not in the eyes of the men he had turned into beasts, but hiding in his own heart. Having faced death twice, almost succumbing to the despair, it had been a different sort of fear that had propelled him into such recklessness – the fear of being wrong.
Hundreds of Deliverance’s brightest had paid the price of Corax’s desperation and were paying it still. Every passing month took more of a toll on their mutated physiques and he had to watch them being slowly crippled by the blight he had loosed into their bodies. The war allowed no time for pity, no time to go back to his research to look for a cure; the data itself had been too dangerous to keep and what remained of the psychic knowledge implanted into his memory by the Master of Mankind had all but faded.
If he could win the war he could deliver up the broken Raptors to his gene-father for a cure. If there was any hope for them being returned to normal, it would be in the hands of the Emperor.
But the war had to be won first.
He opened his eyes.
‘No, we do not seek to conjure warriors from nothing. There are other fighters to be found, though. We hear word of them, catching their transmissions – the messages of their astropaths. Remnants, companies, squads of Legions broken by war, distant expeditions now returning, garrisons half-forgotten since the crusade began, survivors of offensives and counter-attacks that have broken apart from the Imperium. They are scattered out here with us, fighting as best they can. I will bring them together and we will train them in our way of fighting. That is how we will grow strong again.’
‘It would take forever to round up every waif and stray legionary, even just those within a few thousand light years,’ said Arcatus.
‘We will not go to them, they will come to us. A single, simple message to pierce the roiling warp storms. A clarion call for those without a leader to come together. We will issue the cry to muster and we will strike back with more ferocity than before. We will make Horus rue the day he underestimated us! If the Warmaster wants the galaxy to burn, we will see him consumed by its flames.’
‘If loyalist factions hear this summoning, will not also our enemies?’ Noriz said quietly.
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Corax. He shrugged away the captain’s concerns and looked at Arcatus. ‘If you intercepted an enemy message openly broadcast, calling forces to a particular place, what would you make of it?’
‘I would suspect it to be a trap,’ said the Custodian. ‘It would seem like the perfect opportunity for an ambush.’
‘But won’t our allies think it also?’ said Soukhounou. ‘A rebel ruse to bring them to one place?’
‘Perhaps, but lone ships, small flotillas have more chance of eluding such a trap than a massed fleet. And they will want to believe it is true, whereas our enemy will be guided by caution. When they begin to arrive we can have them send their own messages, so that by word of their own more will be brought to us.’
The Custodian looked unconvinced, and rubbed his chin in thought.
‘By whose authority would you command these forces? You assume much if you think that warriors from many Legions will follow you. The last person to be granted such power was the Warmaster…’
‘I need no greater authority than I was given by the Emperor on the day he made me commander of the Nineteenth Legion,’ Corax replied. ‘I am a primarch of the Legiones Astartes, and though that title has been sullied these past years, it still means something to me, and to others. I will restore the honour of that role and prove that loyalty remains a virtue in these dark times.’
‘And where would we muster this army?’ asked Arcatus.
Corax turned to the controls on the wall and activated a hololithic map, projected from lenses installed in the high ceiling. He manipulated the dials and pad until the view zoomed in to an isolated star system a few dozen light years away.
‘Here,’ said the primarch. ‘A system we liberated only fifty days ago – Scarato.’
Two
Scarato
[DV -91 days]
‘In the years of the Great Crusade the conclaves of Legions were magnificent affairs filled with celebration, ceremony and grandeur.’ Aloni was wistful, staring into the flames in the immense fireplace that illuminated the great hall. The fire glinted from the dozen golden service studs that pierced his brow and scalp. ‘This feels more like a council of thieves.’
The immense hall was used to far grander occasions, like those that Aloni now remembered. Nearly two hundred metres long and forty metres high, its huge vaulted ceiling was held aloft by pillars like the legs of Titans. The grand fireplace was large enough that a Rhino could have been driven into it, and the heat from the gas-fired blaze was easily felt although the Space Marine was several dozen metres away. Hidden in the chimney was a heat-reclamation system that powered the enormous chandeliers hanging like constellations above.
It was the only chamber in which his primarch felt comfortable, it seemed; the other rooms of the palaces were too small to contain his energy, the corridors too tight, even for one who had been raised in the cells of Lycaeus. Since his declaration and their arrival at Scarato he had been full of movement, barely able to hold in check the desire for action.
He sat in a custom-made throne behind a large desk that had been brought down from the stateroom of the Avenger. Combined with the gilded decor and bright frescoes of the hall it made for a grandiose office more suited to gala balls than councils of war.
‘Circumstances dictate,’ replied the primarch. ‘What is the latest tally?’
‘Three hundred and twelve legionaries,’ said Aloni, not needing to check the data-slate in his hands. ‘A small cargo lighter, retro-fitted with warp engines and Geller fields, just arrived with seven Iron Hands on board. They’d been holding out in the Aquinia system.’
‘I told Arcatus they would come if we called,’ said Corax. He leaned forward, pushing aside the piles of reports on the desk. He was about to speak, but looked away at the sound of the doors opening. Aloni turned his head to see Baroness Naima Starothrendar enter. Short, middle-aged, with a distinct limp and a freshly healing cut across her left cheek, she was physically underwhelming. But on Scarato it had been her refusal to give in to the Sons of Horus, her tenacity to keep alive some of the old ruling class and muster a resistance movement, which had paved the way for the rebellion instigated by Aloni’s secret insertion less than a hundred days earlier.
She approached the primarch, forcing Aloni to step aside so that she could stand by the desk; not for a moment had she doubted the Space Marine would give way. Her expression was stern, but when she spoke her words were soft.
‘A few rebel elements – those that openly collaborated with the Sons of Horus – are still holding out in a few of their boltholes,’ the de facto world ruler told them. ‘I have set in motion legal procedure to
set up tribunals but I fear the people are too hot-blooded and angry to wait for due process.’
‘Understandable, but intolerable,’ said Corax, equally quietly spoken. He regarded Naima for a few moments, rubbing his chin with a long finger. ‘I sense you have a further proposal to stave off mob justice.’
‘We need to issue a joint statement,’ said Naima, folding her arms. ‘A call from both of us together, asking for calm, should assuage the worst anguish. You are well-known as a liberator and a warrior of justice. If you add your word to mine, if you guarantee that those who turned on their own people will face punishment, the people of Scarato will believe us.’
‘I cannot make such a promise,’ said Corax. He shrugged. ‘I have every faith that you will keep your word, but I will not be here to ensure adherence to Imperial law.’
‘Some warriors will remain, surely?’ Naima tensed, eyes flickering to Aloni. ‘You must maintain some kind of presence here after the tumult you have unleashed. A dozen ships in as many days, and what of those that arrive after you have left? Or if the Sons of Horus return to reclaim what you have taken from them?’
‘I have prised the grip of Horus from Scarato, but it is up to the people of your world to prevent it tightening again. We will leave a few ships that you can crew, but my legionaries will be needed elsewhere, freeing other planets and systems.’
Naima sagged, but Corax smiled and stood up, extending a hand to the woman. The primarch looked right at her, black eyes glinting in the light of the fire, skin like chalk.
‘When the Sons of Horus came here before they were at the height of their power, in great numbers. It is my aim that they will not come back, and certainly not with such force, but to achieve this I must wage war in other places. If I remain, if I turn Scarato into a base for operations, you can be certain that the traitors will return – in numbers such as I cannot protect against.’