Ravenlord

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘Lock up!’ Branne snapped.

  With the others, Nef backed into his holding space and activated the impact suppression systems. Locking bolts dropped down, intersecting with his backpack, while a grip rod descended in front of him. He curled clawed fingers around the bar.

  ‘Fifty seconds to breach.’ The commander looked around to check everybody was secure before fixing himself into the forward support harness.

  Hef looked at his fellow Raptors, eight of them. Some were deformed like him, three of them untouched by the mutagenic corruption that had bedevilled the company’s first and last raising. The Land Raider hit a slope and he felt the vehicle rising for a moment before crashing down, jarring them in their harnesses.

  ‘Trenchline crossed,’ Branne told them, head turned towards the strategic display.

  Hef looked at Devor across the compartment from him. Friends since being taken as novitiates, he now barely recognised his comrade. Devor’s skin had slowly sloughed away, leaving bared fat and muscle. It did not hurt, apparently, but through the red meat and tracery of veins jutted contorted bone – three tusks either side of the jaw. The Apothecarion removed them but fresh ones kept growing. He was due for more surgery soon. Unlike Hef, Devor’s body was not too bad, save for growths on his elbows that he had to file down every few days with a las-rasp.

  Neroka, another lifelong friend, was completely different, untouched. He wore the Mark VI that had become the hallmark of the original Raptors, boltgun held across his chest, standing straight and proud in the embrace of the suppression bars. The Raptor caught Hef looking at him.

  ‘Time for some righteous violence, lieutenant. There are plenty of traitors need killing.’

  ‘Certainly are,’ replied Hef. He flicked a look at Branne, who was talking curtly over the vox-link, still monitoring the ongoing attack. ‘Time to show our worth again.’

  ‘You can count on it.’ Hef could hear the smile in Neroka’s words. ‘There’s nothing that can stop us.’

  ‘Breach in ten… nine… eight…’

  Hef tried to stay relaxed as Branne continued the countdown. He could hear the boom of gunship strikes through the hull, very close. They were tearing a path through the defences for the assault column to follow, the Land Raiders at the head of the attack.

  The assault tank came to a sudden halt, hull reverberating with an impact. The harnesses were firing back into the hull even as the ramp dropped. Hef was the first out, closest to the exit. He pulled free a chainsword with his right hand and started the motor, razor-sharp teeth spinning with a roar. His other hand readied a frag grenade – fingers too thick and clumsy now to operate the trigger of a bolter or pistol.

  The Land Raider had crashed through the wall of an outbuilding, almost flattening the entire structure. Hef sprinted down the ramp and tossed the grenade ahead, the blast filling the room with smoke and shrapnel. Something moved towards him through the dust and he struck out, slamming the whirring teeth of the chainswoird into the side of a man’s head as he stumbled out of the gloom. The chainsword bit through the helm and sheared off the top of his would-be attacker’s skull in one swipe.

  The crack of bolts and flare of propellant accompanied Hef as he pushed on. He had no helm display but he knew that his battle-brothers were with him, to each side, the smell of their armour and the whine of servos as clear to his augmented senses of smell and hearing as any transponder return.

  More guards waited, wearing a hexagonal mesh like ancient chainmail over black bodysuits. They were armed with rapid-­firing autoguns, spewing bullets at the incoming legionaries without much discipline or accuracy. Hef felt something graze the side of his head as he charged. Bolts sparked past him into the defenders, tearing away chunks of flesh and sending glittering, broken scales showering into the air.

  Up close the garrison soldiers stood no chance. Hef ripped the face from one with his claws. His chainsword took the leg from another a moment later. A woman with a power sword lunged at him, some kind of squad leader – he saw the glowing blade spearing towards his chest and stepped aside. He snatched hold of the woman’s wrist, splintering fragile bones inside her heavy glove; a twist broke more and dislocated the limb. Shrieking she pulled up her pistol to jam it into Hef’s face. He lashed out with the chainsword, and both pistol and hand clattered to the floor.

  Alarms blared and red lights flashed overhead as Hef drove the tip of the chainsword up through the woman’s abdomen and into her ribcage. Shredded gore splashed from the wound as he ripped the weapon free to let the twitching corpse drop from his grasp.

  The fighting was dying down; only two or three of the guards were left, the other Raptors taking them out with knife and bolter in short order. Hef looked around for Branne and spied the commander bending over a low console of viewscreens and controls.

  ‘Gate access,’ said Branne, punching a series of buttons. ‘Everything has been opened. That should make progress swifter.’

  Branne led the squad out onto the flat ferrocrete apron of the main complex. The sun was bright in the mid-morning, barely a cloud in the air except for the smoke streaming from fires started by the attack. The sky had a turquoise cast to it, criss-crossed by the contrails of circling aircraft and the haze of plasma exhaust.

  ‘Main complex is open, commander,’ said Neroka, pointing to a pair of Predators that had forged past the Land Raiders. They were still blasting away at a gatehouse that led down into levels below the ground.

  ‘Force One, converge on my position for assault. Force Two to maintain perimeter. Force Three, break into squads and start clearing the rest of the complex.’ Branne broke into a trot as he headed towards the smashed remains of the gatehouse. ‘Time to find out who they’ve been hiding.’

  XII

  Carandiru

  [DV +90 minutes]

  The Legiones Astartes had conquered the galaxy. It was an irrefutable fact. During the Great Crusade countless worlds had been brought to compliance in the name of the Emperor by the Legions. Looking down at the teeming horde of poorly-armed prisoners hurling themselves at the gates and windows of the inner citadel, Soukhounou considered the oft-quoted codicil to this statement. The Legiones Astartes had conquered the galaxy but it was the unnumbered millions of the Imperial Army and the adepts of Terra coming in their wake that had kept it.

  A noise in the auditorium caused him to turn. It was Fajallo, one of the cell leaders, who had been a servant in the citadel and provider of most of Soukhounou’s intelligence. The lad was only seventeen years Terran-standard but had sharp eyes and sharper wits. It was a shame that he was just a little too old for geneseed implantation by the Legion’s new, more rigorous standards. He was lithe and strong and, providing there were no hidden genetic abnormalities, would have made a fine legionary. As it was, he was a fine commando leader instead.

  ‘The gate is not open yet,’ Soukhounou said, gesturing for the youth to join him on the balcony. ‘Dozens are dying needlessly.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ said Fajallo, confident but not cocky. ‘It took a few minutes longer than we planned to get into the basement weapon lockers. Kasslar and his team have the guards pinned down in the forum. Castillin is at the gate mechanism now.’

  Soukhounou accepted this with a nod. He studied the boy and wondered what Branne, Agapito and the others had been like during the liberation of Deliverance. It was an experience he could never share with them, but he did not feel any less a Raven Guard because of it; no more than they felt inferior because they had not taken part in the Great Crusade campaigns before the rediscovery of the primarch.

  ‘I’m amazed that you managed to pull all of this together in twenty days,’ said Fajallo, looking over the parapet. He glanced back at Soukhounou with awe. ‘I thought it impossible.’

  ‘I disagree,’ the Space Marine replied. ‘If you had thought it impossible you would not have listened to me. You thought i
t improbable.’

  ‘Same difference,’ Fajallo said with a shrug. A bruise was darkening on his cheek, obscuring the freckles. ‘I was desperate, nothing else.’

  ‘The desperate have nothing else but hope.’ Soukhounou waved a hand at the trammelled masses now venting their rage against their former captors. ‘It is said that when one has reached the bottom the only way to continue is up. In my experience it often needs someone else to show that it is possible to climb.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just come in and attack straight away,’ said the youth. He looked up, as if to see the battle-barges, cruisers and destroyers of the fleet in orbit. ‘Just blast everything to pieces with your starships and then drop onto the survivors. Why just send in a lone legionary? I mean, no offence or anything.’

  ‘A reasonable question, and no offence taken. What happens here is a message. A message to those that turned against the Emperor. They do not have the support of mankind. Such allies as they have are bartered with threats and bribery, not fashioned out of true loyalty to their cause. If a single legionary can raise rebellion here, it can happen anywhere.

  ‘A single legionary can conquer a world, just as a relative handful – perhaps a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty – kept Carandiru under the boot of oppression. Just as hope is my weapon, the hope of victory and freedom, so fear can cow an entire population. Fear of reprisal against self and family. Fear of failure, to lose even more. The tyrant will persuade the slave that they have even more to lose when they have nothing but dirt and rags, persuading them that dirt and rags are something worth protecting.

  ‘And they divide the people, turning them against each other. A hundred and fifty legionaries is a potent force, but not on any world could they physically suppress a billion people. No, it took others to do that, willing to trade their own kind for the smallest privilege, to be free of lash and drudgery themselves. That is how the dictator grasps an entire world, a whole star system. He takes it in his fist and crushes it for everything it is worth. Offer rewards to the few, empower them, and they will destroy the will of the many.’

  The thought was making Soukhounou angry. Though he had not been born on Deliverance, had not fought against the tyrannical tech-guilds of Kiavahr, he had still accepted wholeheartedly the axioms and philosophy of Corax. If it had not been the purpose of the Legiones Astartes to bring freedom to the galaxy, if war and butchery on an unimaginable scale had no greater cause than domination, then everything he had fought for was pointless.

  ‘It does not even have to be a legionary. It requires one man or woman, nothing more. The first to risk everything for an ideal. They put their life on the line, their whole future for a cause in the hope of being an example. And then there is someone even braver. The person that chooses to step up next to them. One man or woman is an individual, fighting for themselves. Two is a cause.’

  ‘That makes me braver than you, doesn’t it?’ Fajallo said with a grin. ‘If you were the first and it’s braver to be second.’

  ‘Technically, I had recruited several hundred followers before I approached you,’ said the Space Marine. He saw the youth’s expression turn crestfallen, and laid a hand on Fajallo’s shoulder. ‘But you did not know that at the time. From your perspective you were the first – or the second I suppose – and yes, what you did took more bravery and was harder than anything I have ever done in my long life.’

  A loud detonation rang out across the square as an explosion tore out part of the wall above the gates. The crowd surged away as metal and stone showered down onto the plaza. From windows below, rebel fighters bellowed to the people that the gates were unbarred. Cheers and fierce cries greeted the announcement and the downtrodden of Carandiru came on again with renewed vigour.

  ‘You need to start the next phase,’ Soukhounou told his companion. ‘Time to get to those charges we rigged under the secondary wall.’

  Fajallo swiped a casual salute and darted off, leaving Soukhounou to scour the skies above the square for a sign of a Stormbird – Arendi and his small group were supposed to be supporting the battle for the citadel.

  But there was no sign of them, and even with the advantage of numbers it was not certain that the inmates of Carandiru would overpower their foes.

  Disappointed, Soukhounou moved off the balcony and started back to the stairwell. He would have to trust to Fajallo to lead the attack through the breach of the secondary wall so that the commander could lend his might to the battle raging a few storeys below. He was only one legionary and more would die because of Arendi’s absence.

  He would have words for the former commander when the two of them next met.

  XIII

  Carandiru

  [DV +2 hours]

  The Raptors advanced with purpose along the broad tunnel, alert for any danger. Hef marched alongside his commander, amazed and horrified by what they found. The underground chambers they passed were fronted by flickering power fields and beyond the force walls lurked all manner of creatures.

  The rooms were decked out like cells, with bunks and ablution facilities, but most looked more like animal lairs, containing piles of shredded blankets and soiled sheets. The inhabitants capered and slithered and stalked around their cages, some throwing themselves at the energy barriers as the Space Marines passed, each attempt met with a crack and a blast of purplish light.

  No sound passed the power fields, leaving Hef to wonder what howls, yammers and screeches resounded beyond them. Many of the inmates were obviously furious, some sobbing. A few approached the legionaries with suspicious or hopeful eyes, all too human amongst distorted, canine faces and scaled skin.

  It was soon obvious why the main controls had not operated the wards in this part of the prison. Some of the creatures they passed were hulking beasts as large as Dreadnoughts, twisted with outlandish muscle and sprouting tendons and veins. They hunched in their cells with horns and tusks and sword-like claws. Furrows carved into the walls and ceilings stood testament to long frustration. Some of the mutants picked up the remnants of their furnishings and hurled them at the barriers as the legionaries passed; beat fists on their chests like base primates or put back their heads and let loose silenced howls.

  Each new apparition made Hef shudder with recognition, as though he was looking at the chambers beneath Ravendelve where he and the Raptors had been kept until the Horus sympathisers had attacked. He tried so hard to push the memories back, to focus on the mission at hand, but as each new leering monstrosity and anguished wretch was revealed he could not think of anything else.

  ‘We will avenge them,’ Branne said, sensing the unease of his warriors.

  It seemed an odd thing to say, given the nature of many of the warriors that accompanied the commander. Other than armaments, battleplate and livery, the only difference between some of the Raptors and the prisoners was which side of the force wall they were on. If these poor unfortunates had to be avenged, what did that mean for the Raptors?

  A burst of gunfire from ahead brought welcome distraction from the unsettling train of thought. Hef bounded forwards as a squad of Raptors broke through into another part of the complex with melta bombs, and met by a storm of bullets and heavier weapons fire.

  Racing along the freshly opened tunnel, Hef glimpsed fur and horns and scaly skin, but paid each new horror no heed, and with the others he burst from the front line of Raven Guard. His arms had grown longer in the last months, part of the continuing process that had stretched bones and cartilage and bolstered muscle and organs, and he almost raced on all fours in his desire to get at the foe.

  He bounded past bodies of the guards, some of them oddly mangled, twisted and broken like dolls where they had been discarded. He noticed in passing no bolter wounds or blade cuts on the bodies; they had all been butchered by hand.

  A missile detonated just ahead, smashing a Raptor from his feet in the blast,
ripping another in half. The fire coming from up ahead was more accurate than before, shots pounding into the chests of the power-armoured legionaries while las-bolts flickered from the doorways with surprising vehemence.

  Turning a corner, Hef came face to face with a giant of a man, as tall as a Space Marine and just as broad. He was half-naked, chest bulging with scarred muscle. Hef struck with his chainsword out of instinct, but the warrior moved just as quickly, ducking the blow and driving a fist into the lieutenant’s gut. Another punch crashed into Hef’s jaw, sending him reeling backwards. A bolt-round slammed into his attacker’s shoulder, tearing out a fist-sized chunk of flesh. It did little to stop the man as he lunged after Hef, who was retreating back to the corner of the passageway while more of his kin advanced in support of the attack.

  ‘Cease firing!’ Branne’s bellow rang along the metal-lined corridor. ‘Fall back! Cease fire!’

  Hef could not understand why they would not press the advantage but he followed orders without hesitation, stumbling away from his adversary as the man stooped to pick up the chainsword knocked from Hef’s grasp. The Raven Guard could not even remember dropping the weapon, and shame burned as he retreated.

  Sporadic fire covered the Raven Guard retreat as the Raptors regrouped in a central passageway.

  ‘What is the First Axiom of Victory?’ Branne shouted, standing at the junction.

  Hef was starting to recover his senses from the bloodlust and confusion. The Raptors formed up around their commander to either side of the side-tunnel. Branne stood with his back to the wall.

  ‘Be where the enemy desires you not to be,’ a reply echoed back.

  ‘This is Commander Branne of the Raven Guard, identify yourselves!’

  ‘Branne?’ There was distant muttering that Hef could not quite make out. ‘Show yourself!’