Ravenlord

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘You are Terran, yes? We’ve fought together, haven’t we?’

  ‘Not side by side,’ admitted Soukhounou. ‘There was little occasion until Isstvan for me to share air with the primarch’s guard. And yes, I hail from Terra originally.’

  ‘Then that explains why my brothers greet me with smiles yet a cell is the welcome I received from you.’

  ‘Forgive me, but the circumstances that led to my promotion make me wary of those that claim loyalty with false guise. You were treated no differently from any other that responded to the primarch’s call.’

  ‘False guise?’ Arendi looked confused and turned to Branne and Agapito. ‘What false guise?’

  ‘A long story, Gherith,’ said Branne. ‘One that will live long in infamy and shame. It can wait. Soukhounou, be assured that this is Commander Arendi. You must trust to the judgement of the primarch, and those that shared air with him since we were children. This distrust will be our undoing – an injury inflicted by the traitors that continues to nag at us.’

  Taking a deep breath, Soukhounou acquiesced with a nod.

  ‘You are right,’ he said, raising a fist of brotherhood to Arendi. ‘It was wrong of me to be so suspicious. However, I would urge caution still when dealing with the other legionaries not of Deliverance. Nothing can be guaranteed in these trying times.’

  They stood for a moment in silence, each taken by his own thoughts.

  ‘A slightly disturbing thought, isn’t it?’ said Arendi, breaking the quiet. He looked past Soukhounou at the murals.

  ‘What is?’ Soukhounou asked. ‘Painting on walls?’

  ‘The elite of this world, living like kings,’ said Arendi. ‘I fear that you have displaced the Sons of Horus only to make room for more veiled dictators.’

  The others looked at the pictures, trying to understand what the former commander meant.

  ‘There is no evidence that the planetary aristocracy mistreated any of their subjects prior to the arrival of the traitors,’ Agapito said. ‘Scarato came to compliance peacefully.’

  ‘You don’t see a life of privilege as evidence of excess?’ Arendi looked at Soukhounou and then to Branne. ‘The benefit of a youth not spent as a cell-brother, I’d say.’

  ‘If you have an accusation, make it plain,’ said Soukhounou. ‘Do you think any of us less dedicated to the cause? I’d say your time away has clouded your memory, or your judgement.’

  ‘No accusation, I assure you. It is simply a matter of fact that those who have not felt the touch of the lash can never imagine its sting. Oppression comes in many forms. Not all tyrants are immediately obvious. By subtle word, by application of quiet threat and bribe they coerce and cajole. Righteousness requires terrible effort.’

  ‘It is as if you speak with the voice of your father, old Reqaui,’ said Branne, forcing a laugh. ‘Political discussions must wait on more pressing matters. We need to devise dispositions and arrangements for the forthcoming campaign for presentation to Lord Corax. He made it plain that he seeks to leave within days.’

  ‘We need to pick task force leaders and assign commands to the other legionaries,’ added Agapito.

  ‘And I will leave you to it,’ said Arendi, with a curt nod.

  ‘You should stay,’ said Agapito.

  ‘Yes,’ said Soukhounou in a gesture of conciliation. Though he did not care for Arendi’s attitude since returning, he was influential amongst the Deliverance-born legionaries. His return would be taken as a good sign by many in the Raven Guard. ‘You have an insight that will prove valuable. A perspective none of us can imagine. And even if the current situation sees you without rank, you were once commander.’

  Arendi looked at Soukhounou, perhaps trying to judge if there was any further meaning behind his words. His brow creased slightly and his lips thinned.

  ‘I hold no command now,’ he said. ‘If Lord Corax sees fit to restore me, then I will join your deliberations. Until then I must see to the welfare of the warriors that came with me.’

  Stalling further protest, Arendi turned and left without another word. Branne shook his head and glared at Soukhounou.

  ‘I thought you would offer more welcome to a long-lost son of Deliverance. Think on what we suffered on the fields of Isstvan and then think on the hardships he and the others must have endured in the years afterwards. Arendi is an example to us all, and you should not be so dismissive of him.’

  ‘Does it not make you think, brothers?’ said Soukhounou, looking at the door as if Arendi was still there. ‘Who of us has not been changed by these past years? There is something in Gherith that I do not think I like.’

  ‘The primarch speaks for him,’ said Agapito, though he looked uncertain. ‘We should not second-guess Lord Corax.’

  ‘We should set aside such thoughts of division,’ said Branne. ‘Why can’t you be glad that our own have survived and been returned to us?’

  The question was left hanging in silence as Agapito and Soukhonou exchanged a look. Soukhounou decided that this was no time to voice any argument against Arendi’s loyalties or agenda. It was obvious that the bonds of history were far stronger than that of Legion alone. The Raven Guard were all fiercely loyal to Corax, but a doctrine that promoted independent thought and self-sufficiency was also prone to creating moments of fracture as personal identity surpassed group allegiance.

  ‘With Corax’s command that the other newcomers are to be spread amongst the Raven Guard companies there will be rivalries and division enough without resurrecting old suspicions between Terrans and the Deliverance-born,’ he said.

  ‘I concede to your superior knowledge on the subject, brothers.’ Branne raised his hands in appeasement. ‘We must bury our differences, or be sure that Lord Corax will bury them for us, and our rank. This is no time to let small gaps become gaping chasms.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Agapito. ‘We have all been put out of sorts by Arendi’s return. In a few days’ time we will be more settled and the matter nothing more than memory.’

  Soukhounou hoped what his fellow commander said would hold true but could not help but worry that Arendi’s return signified something far more damaging.

  VII

  Kapel-5642A [DV -67 days]

  Red littered the corridor: the red of Mechanicum robes and the blood of those wearing them. Here and there steel and silver and brass stood out in the bright flare of Corax’s lightning claws. The darker shadows of power armour provided a softer contrast – a handful of Sons of Horus that had been overseeing the shipyard.

  ‘Branne, move forward and trigger targeting.’

  The primarch stopped, standing over the crumpled ruin of a traitor with the markings of a sergeant. Looking down at the renegade, Corax did not feel anger or hatred. Disappointment, perhaps. There were those that he had learned had refused to follow the Warmaster into rebellion, but the Sons of Horus could not be blamed for following their primarch. He wondered if the dead sergeant had required persuading or if a last small step to turn against the Emperor had been easy to take, the culmination of a longer process.

  ‘One hundred and eighty seconds. Orbital defences are responding.’

  Nearly a kilometre away, on the other side of the orbital facility, Branne and his Raptors had breached the main transmitter array for the star base. It would be a simple enough task to set up a comm-link between the Avenger and the berth monitoring systems that policed the space traffic around five massive starship hulls being assembled above the asteroid-base of Kapel-5642A.

  Corax had ordered the strike just in time. One of the new battleships was almost operational, the others nearing completion within weeks. Not the Mechanicum’s finest work, Corax assumed, but speedily built in relation to the decades-long construction normally required. The primarch knew first-hand the efficiencies of forced labour and interned workers, and Horus’s allies in the Mechanicum had been r
eplicating such methods across dozens of forge worlds and shipyards like Kapel.

  ‘Sixty seconds,’ Corax told his warriors as he pulled back down the corridor towards the entry point blasted by his Stormbird. ‘Avenger, do you have the berth grid matrix?’

  ‘Affirmative, Lord Corax,’ Ephrenia replied. ‘Programming torpedo firing solutions now.’

  Clad in golden armour, Arcatus Vindix Centurio of the Custodian Guard burst into the corridor from a junction ahead, accompanied by another six of the superhuman warriors; survivors of many battles since they had departed Terra to guard the gene-formulas gifted to Corax by the Emperor. They cut down augmented soldiers and semi-mechanical servitors amidst the flare of the powered blades and boltgun flash of their Guardian Spears. The Custodian cleaved a hulking praetorian servitor in two with a sweep of his halberd, shattering gears and bones with equal ease. Stepping astride the remnants, he raised his weapon in salute to the approaching primarch.

  ‘I am beginning to see the merit in taking the fight to the enemy,’ said Arcatus. ‘There is more than one way to protect the Emperor. Sometimes a solid offensive is the best defence.’

  ‘If Horus cannot reach Terra, the Emperor is safe,’ replied Corax. The two of them fell into step together, picking their way past the steaming, smoking, bleeding remnants of the Mechanicum warriors that clogged the passage. ‘This is a war we simply cannot afford to lose.’

  Arcatus nodded. He paused to drive the tip of his glaive into the squirming body of a serpentine machine-beast jittering under the toppled corpse of a combat-servitor.

  ‘A handful of years ago, when Horus turned at Isstvan, it was a shock to everybody,’ he said. ‘We of the Legiones Custodes had to believe that the worst might come, but in the back of their minds many thought it impossible that the renegade Warmaster could actually take on the might of the Imperium.’

  ‘I never doubted it,’ said Corax.

  ‘You must understand how powerful denial can be. Yes, Horus had destroyed three Legions, or close enough, and as his schemes unfolded the Dark Angels and Ultramarines were removed from the main theatre of war. But even then there were those that could not envisage a galaxy where the traitor forces held the balance of power.’

  There had been some amongst the Raven Guard upper echelons who had thought the same. Corax had allowed them to give voice to their concerns, but he had never harboured any doubts about Horus’s abilities as a war leader.

  ‘What is impossible, to my mind,’ Arcatus continued, ‘is the notion that Horus would even embark on such a cataclysmic course of action without being absolutely certain he would win. Throughout the Great Crusade, Horus proved time and time again that he was capable of tremendous victories, conquering swathes of the galaxy through planning, charisma and sheer bloody-mindedness.’

  ‘He is also adept at utilising the strengths of his brothers to his best advantage,’ added Corax, somewhat bitterly. ‘Always ready to ask his brothers to sacrifice their Legions in the shadows, away from the annals and picts of the remembrancers; always arriving in time to deliver the final blow. I struck Horus once for usurping the victories of the Raven Guard for his own glory, a moment that no doubt festers in the Warmaster’s thoughts. I aim to repeat the insult, whenever I can.’

  ‘He has done the same with his rebellion, blunting the counter-attack of the loyalist forces with the likes of the Emperor’s Children, the Iron Warriors and Word Bearers. Month by month, year by year the Warmaster has consolidated his position, readying for the strike that is sure to come – an assault on Terra.’

  They turned into the corridor leading back to the entry blasted into the station by the Stormbirds and Thunderhawks.

  ‘And there are those only too willing to favour the side that appears to be in the ascendancy,’ said Corax with a sad shake of the head, ‘They judge their futures more secure with the rising star than the old elite. Rebellion is in vogue across the Imperium, whether for the traitors or simply against the Emperor.

  ‘Dorn was adamant that Horus could not win without toppling the Imperial capital, and I agreed. Where we differ is in the manner in which that can be stopped. The Fist of the Emperor is determined to make a stand at the walls of the Palace itself, but it is defeatist to assume that the traitors will reach the Sol system regardless of the efforts of loyal warriors.’

  The primarch of the Raven Guard believed – had to believe – that history would prove him right. Horus was no fool, but he had planned for the Raven Guard to be wiped out on the blackened fields of Isstvan. Their continued existence, and the attacks launched by Corax and his followers, delayed the last assault, demonstrating the lie that a battle for Terra was inevitable.

  ‘Thirty seconds,’ Corax announced, needing no chronometer to keep track of time – his inner sense was as accurate as any conventional timepiece.

  He bounded up the ramp of the drop-ship – the selfsame drop-ship that had lifted him from Isstvan, he noted – and waited at the top for the withdrawing Custodians and Raven Guard with him to file past.

  ‘Breaking a few warships will not swing the course of the war,’ said Arcatus, stopping beside Corax.

  ‘No, but their absence will be felt. One lost convoy will not break the rebellion either, you are right,’ replied the primarch. ‘A freed world will not stem the tide on its own. Yet they come from the same source, and victory is simply the accumulation of countless unimportant events and decisions in your favour. Every defeat Horus suffers brings time for Dorn to build his defences. Every shipyard destroyed or taken back limits the traitors’ reach. Every world kept in the Imperial fold or delivered from the traitors stretches Horus’s resources. Every gun and suit of warplate withheld from the renegades adds up and in time they will be the measure of our enemies’ defeat.’

  Corax waved Arcatus into the depths of the drop-ship.

  ‘We swiftly approach the tipping point,’ the primarch said. ‘The Sons of Horus are on the offensive, hounds of war finally unleashed by their lord after the others have weakened us. The Warmaster desires a great battle to end all battles, one final confrontation to prove himself superior.

  ‘We will not give him that. Lycaeus was not seized overnight. It was taken by meticulous preparation and a thousand tiny victories. The Warmaster will not be stopped by a single battle. On a dozen worlds, a hundred worlds, a thousand worlds, the Emperor’s loyal servants will resist, each taking their toll, bleeding dry a rebellion held together only by ego and desperation.’

  ‘You think you can wage that war?’

  ‘The greatest enemy is the one you cannot see, and so cannot fight. That is the essence of the Raven Guard.’

  With a roar of thrusters, the drop-ship lifted up from the orbital facility. The ramp closed; Corax’s last view was of immense torpedoes cruising past only a few kilometres away, heading unerringly towards their targets. In the distance orbital stations and monitor vessels were just starting to detect the threat in their midst.

  They would be too late. The Avenger was already turning away, ready to sweep up its assault craft and activate the reflex shields. Within three minutes the newly commissioned ships would be nothing more than molten metal and wreckage. In five minutes the Avenger would be heading out-system cloaked from detection, ready for the rendezvous with the rest of Corax’s forces.

  The primarch smiled.

  ‘Horus will not lose the war at the walls of the Imperial Palace, but out here in the forgotten places between the stars, in the darkness beyond the light of his presence. This is where the Raven Guard thrive. This is where Horus will fail.’

  VIII

  The Cretherach Reach

  [DV -22 days]

  On the strategium of the Steadfast, nothing stirred. Commander Aloni stood alone among muted servitors, casting an eye across the scanning arrays and communications feeds. His attention was fixed on two displays in particular: the internal energy re
adout and the passive defraction antenna.

  The first monitored how much sound and radiation was emanating from the huge starship: a curiously antique-looking dial – an illuminated display would itself contribute to light and energy pollution – with a red line that indicated the maximum threshold of the reflex shields. The needle wavered at the three-quarter mark, easily within tolerable limits, and the shields themselves were not running at full yield. Fully crewed and with its full complement of two hundred legionaries, the Steadfast would struggle to conceal its whereabouts under such conditions; but with barely a skeleton attendance and only fifty Space Marines on board it was running with higher scanning and manoeuvring capacity than usual.

  Which was essential, because the defraction antenna was fixed on the plasma discharge of thirty-four more starship engines.

  One was the Wrathful Vanguard, a strike cruiser of the Imperial Fists Legion. Captain Noriz and his small company were heading towards the other signals: traitor supply ships. Seven of the auspex contacts were convoy escorts – a pair of light cruisers, a grand cruiser and a handful of destroyers and frigates.

  The traitors were cautious, one of the light cruisers moving towards the approaching VII Legion vessel, with smaller escorts heading out to cut off the strike cruiser’s retreat; the transports stayed close to the guns of the remaining cruisers in case the Wrathful Vanguard was a decoy.

  They were not wrong, but the traitors did not understand the nature of the other hunters waiting amongst the gas clouds of the Cretherach Reach. Warning data scrolled across several screens as the renegade ships scoured the surrounding void with deep-search surveyors, seeking the other ships they knew had to be waiting amongst the stellar debris. Their sensors were turned towards the scattered dust and asteroid pockets – ideal concealment for conventional ships.

  They were looking in the wrong place.

  The Steadfast drifted closer to the convoy from the opposite direction, while the Shadowstrike approached at a perpendicular angle. The one cruiser showed nothing on the sensor displays – as was intended – leaving Aloni to trust that the other Raven Guard ship was in the right position.