by Gav Thorpe
‘Lord Corax does not trust us,’ said Nuon with a grim smile. ‘He is clearing out the unworthy.’
‘The distractions,’ Branne corrected him. ‘The “Long Shadows”, he called those he had chosen to not participate in the main assaults. He had another job for them, one they could undertake without him having to worry about what they’d done. In fact, he would be far past worrying if they had to do it.
‘The Long Shadows hid across the cell blocks. Their job was to man the detonation charges we’d placed on the dome generators and seal-ways. If it went badly, if the uprising failed, they were to blow the prison to pieces, break the domes and suffocate everyone inside...’ Branne stroked a hand across his brow at the memory. ‘There were to be no survivors that next day. No life in bondage, Corax had said. For all of us, volunteers, fighters, those that didn’t even know there was going to be a revolution. No middle ground. Victory or death.’
‘So he doesn’t trust us to help bring victory today, but is expecting us to clean up afterwards if he fails,’ said Annovuldi.
Branne nodded. He stepped closer to Noriz and pulled something from a pouch at his belt. It was the rusted iron ring with two equally corroded keys hanging from it – he had offered it to Noriz in a wager regarding which primarch would kill the Warmaster, what seemed like a lifetime ago now.
‘I figure Russ isn’t going to get to Horus any time soon,’ he told the Imperial Fist, holding out the prize.
‘You’re right,’ said the captain, taking the keys. Removing a golden shield from the lanyard on his right shoulder plate, he held up the Narandia battle-honour he had originally offered in return. ‘There’s been no word that Sanguinius is doing any better. It seems I’ll be wrong as well.’
Branne laughed and took the shield. He clasped it in his fist and banged Noriz’s breastplate a couple of times.
‘Don’t let the traitors take the Palace,’ he told the Imperial Fist. ‘I want to see it again.’
‘Then bring us Corax and the Wolf King, if you can. I’ll look for your return.’
Branne nodded once, but he knew that such was not in the thinking of his primarch. As the others boarded their gunships, Balsar Kurthuri approached. He gave Branne a salute.
‘My brothers will keep to their oaths,’ he assured the commander. ‘I can’t say what shadows surround the primarch of late but there is no taint amongst us. Stay true to each other, to him, to the Emperor.’
‘Have no doubt of it,’ Branne replied. ‘Say what you want about Beta-Garmon, about where we’re going, but Terra is going to be the last and greatest battlefield of this war, and you’ll be right there.’
‘I’m certain that Malcador will find something needlessly complicated for me to do.’ He leaned closer, his voice earnest. ‘We are part of the universe, interacting with it and being shaped by it in ways impossible to trace beyond the immediate. I have gazed into the darkest corners of reality and they have gazed back into me, but I am true to the Imperium and its creator. Every foe slain, every battle fought means something. If not that day then the next, or the next, or a year later or ten thousand years. Echoes of the greatest wars sound for a long time.’
Branne said nothing, taken aback by the frankness of those words, and not sure that he understood them entirely. He watched the Librarian board the closest Stormbird and then moved towards the corridor when plasma jets burned into life. The door was open, and Gherith Arendi waited in the passage.
‘The Long Shadows depart,’ said the leader of the Black Guard. ‘The last night before the hardest day.’
‘Corax has everything prepared,’ said Branne. ‘No more distractions, no more hangers-on. Tomorrow, we jump for Yarant.’
Corvus Corax, Ravenlord and Saviour of Deliverance
Four
Guided by the best Navigators in the fleet, the warships of the Imperial Army broke warp on the far side of Yarant’s star, partially masked by its incandescence. Despite such precautions, their entry was not flawless. Alerted to their arrival, if not sure of their numbers and purpose, the orbiting flotillas of assembled traitor warships divided. Some continued their close support of the battle on the surface of Yarant III, but the greater part broke away to investigate the newly arrived threat.
The incoming battleships and cruiser seemed undeterred by the size of the fleet moving across the system to confront them. Passing the stellar boundary, they made battle lines in preparation to meet the renegade ships bearing down upon them. Perhaps believing the Therions and Natollians desperate or insane, the traitors managed their own formations to encircle the arriving warships. The two forces powered towards the inevitable contact, gun decks ready, shields crackling.
Committed, there was nothing that the traitors could do when Corax ordered the ships of the Raven Guard to deactivate their reflex shields.
Each battle-barge, cruiser and frigate was tethered to a Therion warship. Towed through the warp, each had crossed the translation boundary into Yarant at the exact same moment as its twin, invisible to all detection, even the senses of Librarians and Navigators.
The Legion ships had just enough time to detach their docking claws and power away from their surrogates, redirecting the output of their energy defences to banks of void shields.
Torpedoes from the two clashing fleets filled the void. While the traitors emptied their flight bays of gunships and interceptors the loyalists continued to accelerate, keeping close behind a wave of lethal ordnance.
The Raven Guard and auxilia had a single, simple objective: break through to the orbit of Yarant III. Their attack lacked finesse, but it did not need any. The ships of Horus’ followers burned retro thrusters and manoeuvred hard to come to new headings, but it was too late to counter the single hammer blow directed at the heart of the traitor fleet.
Though outgunned across the system, Branne’s genius ploy had brought the Raven Guard and their allies against just a third of the enemy. As the lead Alpha Legion ships parted to avoid the concentrated wave of torpedoes directed at them, the warships of Corax pounced, catching them in lethal crossfires.
Ship after ship passed through the centre of the splitting traitors; bombardment cannons and broadsides hurled the last of their munitions, spitting plasma and las in constant salvos. While the traitors scrambled to recover some semblance of order, grand cruisers burned and battle-barges broke from stern to prow under the incessant attacks.
On the bridge of the Avenger, Branne cheered. He could not control himself, so pleased was he that the plan had actually worked. He gave no thought to the fact that Corax had specified that the strategy only needed to get them to Yarant – no consideration had been given to how they would leave the system. The Avenger formed the point of the attack alongside the battle-barges Providence and Shadowed Guardian commanded by Agapito and Soukhounou respectively, the drop pod cascades and flight bays filled to capacity from the rest of the fleet, ready to despatch the Raptors and Black Guard down to the surface in a single devastating drop.
‘Well done, commander,’ Corax said quietly, standing just to one side of Branne. The primarch had been so taciturn of late, so withdrawn, those three simple words were as much a cause for celebration as the success of his plan.
Giving no thought to return fire, their void shields flaring from the cannonades of their foes, the Raven Guard pressed on towards the battle on Yarant III. The Natollians and Therions turned, magazines still full from recent supply, gun crews at full capacity. The warships formed up to protect the Legion of Corax, creating a barrier of torpedoes, fighter-bombers and ships-of-the-line to dissuade the traitors from pursuit. Squadrons of destroyers and frigates hunted down crippled enemy ships many times their size and finished them with blasts from lance turrets and mass driver batteries.
Having been driven from orbit by the traitors, the scattered remnants of the Space Wolves fleet converged from the outer system too – guessing Cora
x’s intent, they seized upon the arrival of the Raven Guard and headed back towards the contested world. Faced with approaching foes from opposite directions, the ships still at high anchorage faced an impossible choice: abandon their watch over the planet, or be trapped between two vengeful fleets.
Their commanders chose the worst of both, dividing their forces.
Many Alpha Legion ships and those of the Thousand Sons chose to withdraw before they were trapped trying to fight within the gravity well of the planet. The World Eaters universally opted to fight, supported by a few remaining Alpha Legion cruisers and vassal ships from the Imperial Army.
Their resistance did not last long.
As the Avenger closed towards high orbit, Corax immediately recognised the voice that hailed from one of the approaching Space Wolves squadrons.
‘Captain Rathvin, I am pleased that you managed to make your delivery,’ the primarch replied.
‘I am sorry to say that it didn’t help. But that is another conversation, Ravenlord, for another time.’
‘How goes the battle? Have you received report from your high command?’
‘Nothing but scraps. I hope it is because my brothers are more intent on waging war than sending communications.’
‘I have to locate my brother. Early scans show fighting across a large battlefront. Where on Yarant is Leman Russ located?’
‘I don’t know, Ravenlord, but finding him shouldn’t be difficult.’
‘How so, captain?’
‘Look for the greatest number of foes, the biggest battle. He’ll be somewhere close to the middle of it.’
The pulse of anti-aircraft fire lit the skies. Flickers of blue and green gleamed from bleached bones – the skeletons of vast beasts littered the Red Dunes for many kilometres. Huge ribcages and vertebrae jutted like the wreckage of war machines. Phalangeal outcrops and femur-propped hills shaped the ruddy sands, breaks against the gentle but constant wind that blew from dark frothing seas to the south.
Had the hab block-sized monsters been wiped out by some cataclysm, or had they been drawn to the Karadek Valley on some deathly migration over centuries in times past?
It was an idle interest that distracted Korin as he waited for the next opportunity to move. The Mor Deythan crouched in the lee of a thighbone that rose twice his height from a sand drift – and extended much further underground it seemed. In this sandy nook he waited, counting down the seconds until the closest laser cannon paused for its recharge cycle.
It used to be that the Shadowmasters had hunted in squads, using their unique Corax-gifted abilities to sow discord and terror amongst their foes. Now they worked alone, their number reduced to a handful amongst all the legionaries of the Raven Guard.
The Skyhammer gun emplacement just a dozen metres ahead fell quiet. Soundlessly Korin rose from his position, sliding over the dunes like a desert serpent. He seemed to flicker like the shadows cast by the more distant gun batteries, as though jumping from one shadow directly to the next.
He was within pistol range of the crew in a few seconds, but the weapon remained at his belt, his forearm-mounted blades dull for the time being. They were not his target.
The next salvo of fire lasted thirty seconds, a blind fusillade trying to catch the Whispercutters and Shadowhawks circling unseen above. With a loud whine, the gun powered down again. The crew, three Imperial Army soldiers, complained quietly about the weather while they blew on their hands in the chill night.
By the time the cannon opened fire once more, Korin was well past the boundary and heading towards his objective. He moved quickly now, inside the cordon of vehicles and patrols guarding the headquarters of one of the World Eaters commanders. Elsewhere along the battlefront, other Mor Deythan would be infiltrating the traitor lines in a similar manner.
The World Eaters command centre had been easy enough to find. Ciphers and codes were poor defence against the Raven Guard. The confusion caused by their attack had elicited a storm of traffic, broadcast on many media, and a flurry of messengers, gunship flights and other activity. Isolating the node points of such bursts identified the crucial elements in the enemy command network as easily as if they had erected flags to announce their presence.
In the case of this particular commander, he had hung flags – two Legion banners hung from cross-poles mounted on the backs of a pair of Spartan heavy transports that were parked close to the pre-fabricated drop-bunker he used as his command centre.
Korin found a spot in which to nestle that hid him from all angles except the bunker. He adjusted the auto-senses of his specialist war-plate, dropping down all the readings except audio, which intensified to bring the myriad sounds of the desert alive. The Shadowmaster existed in pure soundscape for several seconds – even the hiss of the wind over the sand shaped his picture of the environment. It was simple enough to filter out the extraneous noises to focus on human sounds.
He heard the World Eaters talking. Much he could not understand, either a local argot of their Legion or an artificial battle-cant devised for secrecy. It made no difference, as he heard a word over and again – Delerax. The name of the lieutenant commander. He was definitely in the bunker.
Korin slid closer to the outpost, his stripped-down armour making no more noise than the desultory snap of the flags and the hum of the Spartans’ batteries.
There was no guard set at the door, though two legionaries manned the roof guns. Korin was already beneath the closest, the shield of his autocannon blocking his sight to the Shadowmaster. Almost within touching distance of the bunker wall, Korin pulled a coin-sized beacon from his belt and tossed it to the base of the ferrocrete structure.
He withdrew quickly, lest by chance some enemy legionary happened to spot the low-spectrum signal pulsing from the beacon. Twenty seconds later he was a hundred metres away, concealed amidst the great bony landscape.
A spark appeared in the blackness, a blue dot that rapidly expanded into the plume of a missile engine. Sirens wailed across the traitor camp. Anti-air turrets whined but they were not quick enough. Korin smiled and tracked the executor missile right until the moment it struck the base of the bunker.
Like the Caestus assault rams used to breach fortifications, the executor was tipped with a melta detonator that seared through two metres of ferrocrete in an instant. The gleaming core of the projectile disappeared into the foundations. Half a second later the wall of the structure exploded, turned to fragments and particles carried aloft by an expanding plasma cloud.
It was not enough to destroy the headquarters, nor was it intended to be. The walls had gone though, the roof partially collapsed, leaving a five-metre hole open to the elements.
Overhead a Whispercutter glided noiselessly into the glow of the missile strike. Armoured figures along its length dropped away to fall groundwards – a Dark Fury squad, dedicated to assassination missions. Their jump packs whined into life just moments before they hit the ground, heard only by Korin among the shouts of dismay and confusion that had erupted from the remains of the bunker. The shimmer of lightning claws broke the shadows. Sergeant Ghelt, the Chooser of the Slain, led his Dark Furies into the ruddy light of the headquarters’ interior and their claws crackled into deadly life, cerulean sparks reflecting from the plasma-smoothed edged of the crater.
Korin’s mission was accomplished and he drew back into the darkness. When he was half a kilometre away, he signalled the Darkwing gunship from which Commander Agapito coordinated the decapitation attacks.
‘Target Four-Alpha eliminated,’ he reported.
‘Affirmative, Wraith Four. Await Whispercutter transportation to next target.’
The traitors lost a dozen command-level officers. Augurs and vox-casts were met with static as the fleet of Raven Guard ships above Yarant III employed their ‘shadowcast’ strategy and blanketed all channels and wavelengths with fluctuating barrages of energy and
traffic, making it impossible for anyone to communicate or scan for more than a kilometre.
The Raven Guard needed no such communications, for they had been carefully briefed, and down to individual squads knew their specific role in the battle to come. As the terminus of dawn crossed the battle line where the traitors continued their attack against the beleaguered Space Wolves, Corax led the main assault.
Mor Deythan and Dark Fury squads already on the surface attacked behind the enemy formations, picking objectives of opportunity to waylay or destroy. Under the cover of these fresh attacks, dozens of Stormbirds, Thunderhawks, Shadowhawks and Darkwings fell from orbit, unpowered for the first few kilometres, invisible to all augurs.
When their jets finally burned into life, they swept out from the glare of the rising sun, vague silhouettes against the glaring pale blue orb of Yarant’s star. Missiles, rockets and lascannons announced their arrival; the fire of detonations raked through traitor squads and battle tanks massed for the next attack against Leman Russ’s Legion.
Agapito was on a Darkwing in the first wave, leaping from the gunship with his command squad before it even touched down. The impact of his landing did not shock him, but the scene that greeted him gave him pause for a moment.
The hillside was littered with hundreds of dead, in the livery of the Space Wolves and their enemies. Traitor guns pounded out a thunderous beat from the nearby batteries. The tangled remains of legionaries seemed to grasp at Agapito’s feet, causing him to stumble, and dead eyes stared accusingly at him from broken helms.
In his mind he was back at the Urgall Depression, surrounded on all sides. He fired indiscriminately, shooting any figure that was not black-clad. There was no shortage of foes to target. Heavy-weapons fire screamed and whined past him, lighting the battlefield with more explosions.
And like Isstvan, Corax was there.
The primarch stood on the ramp of a descending Stormbird, his claws bright against the gloomy interior, an ornate pistol in his fist. He stepped away from the gunship into the rushing wind, his wings snapping out a second later. Corax soared down through the smoke and flames. Fire Raptor attack craft flanked the swooping primarch, their guns leaving trails of dead legionaries with their passing.