by Gav Thorpe
Corax allowed his presence to fade, reeling back the majesty of his nature behind walls of discipline and humility. The facade he had built during those years hiding amongst the prisoners of Lycaeus felt like a return to normality rather than a caging of his might. Always had it been his preference to inspire his followers with deeds and words rather than force subservience through coercion. His eyes dimmed as he looked at the cowering magi.
‘Such is the threat,’ he said quietly. He held out a hand, offering reassurance and friendship. ‘The promise is to free Constanix from the coming tyranny of Delvere and the Word Bearers. Make no mistake, an alliance with their kind will doom your planet to slavery or destruction. Make your choice well.’
III
THREE SLEEK WHISPERCUTTER landers skimmed across Atlas, the ten-man craft invisible in the last minutes of darkness. The Whispercutters were little more than winged anti-grav engines, the Raven Guard clinging to their sides exposed to the elements as they soared above the roofs of refineries and worker habitats. Dropped at high altitude from beneath the belly of a Stormbird, the landers were almost undetectable.
‘Hard to port,’ warned Stanz, shifting his weight.
Agapito clutched the grab rail tighter as the pilot harnessed in guidance cupola just in front of the commander brought the Whispercutter into a tight turn, steering away from the centre of the city. The other two craft split towards their separate destinations, assigned during Agapito’s briefing before they had left the Kamiel.
Below, Atlas was in turmoil. The headlights of a skitarii column moved along a main avenue towards the Third District, where three fires were burning; arson at empty ruins chosen by Corax to attract attention without putting the populace in needless danger. Here and there, not far from the blazes, the crack of gunfire echoed from the tenements and manufactoria. Las-fire sparkled from several rooftops, targeting one of the abandoned structures.
On the ground, squads of troopers moved from street to street, alley to alley, building to building. Most were normal men, raised under the aegis of the Mechanicum, dedicated to the cult of the Machine-God but otherwise unaugmented. Their squad leaders and officers were boosted, some throughxybernetics and augmetics, some through gene-therapy and biological enhancement depending upon the temple and magos to whom they were sworn.
At the forefront of the search for the city’s elusive attackers was a small cadre of praetorians. These were the favoured warriors of the Mechanicum, some sporting near-completely artificial bodies. Each was unique, whether sleek and fast or bulky and beweaponed, possessing energy-crackling blades or multiple rocket launchers. Led by lesser tech-priests in the hierarchy of Atlas, the praetorians were as much dedications to the Machine-God as they were flesh- and-blood fighters.
Looking down, Agapito was glad that Atlas - indeed, Constanix as a whole, as far as the intelligence went - had no herakli. The monstrous, heavily-gunned brutes that had assisted in the fighting against the tech-guild rebels during the latest insurrection on Kiavahr would have been a tough proposition to face. Even so, the enemy had tanks, armoured walkers and transports in abundance, though several companies of infantry were loyal to the magi allying themselves to Lord Corax. It was mainly these divided forces that were currently bearing the brunt of Magokritarch Vangellin’s reprisal against the Third District.
Workers had been forced from their homes in the pre-shift hours, filling the streets with dazed, fatigued crowds that hindered both sides. To their credit, the skitarii of Vangellin were as unwilling as those of Loriark and his peers to endanger the non-combatants in the barge-city.
‘What is the First Axiom of Victory?’ Agapito asked Lieutenant Caderil, who was poised on the side of the Whispercutter behind the commander. A Terran veteran, Caderil would have made company command by now had the Legion not been devastated at the Dropsite Massacre. They exchanged over the vox-net - at this altitude the wind would have required them to shout over their external communicators.
‘To be where the enemy desires one not to be,’ replied Caderil.
Agapito turned his attention to another of the honour guard he had hand-picked for the mission. ‘Harne, what is the First Axiom of Stealth?’
‘To be other than where the enemy believes you to be,’ came the legionary’s sharp reply.
‘So what do we do to gain victory by stealth?’ the commander continued.
‘Attack where the enemy does not want us to be, whilst feigning presence elsewhere,’ said Caderil. He pointed towards the centre of the floating city. ‘The main temple is our objective, but it is too well defended for direct assault. We have to draw out the enemy force, leaving the temple vulnerable to counter-attack.’
‘Just like the Perfect Fortress,’ said Harne.
‘And Copatia, and Rigus Three, and lots of other places,’ said Agapito. ‘We don’t have the numbers or firepower for a straight feint-and-attack here. Vangellin and his tech-priests won’t deplete their defences unless they really need to, so our attack is a second diversionary assault. We have to make the enemy believe we’re in much greater strength than we actually are.’
‘The lord primarch gets the killing blow,’ said Harne with a nod ‘I understand that.’
‘It sounds like there’s something you don’t understand, Harne.’
‘If the Word Bearers are on Iapetus, why are we fighting to take over Atlas?’
‘Caderil, what is your explanation?’ Agapito replied.
‘A simple decapitation mission is unlikely to succeed without the element of surprise, and with the defences of the capital against us we lack the time needed to prepare a proper assaut. Atlas is only achievable thanks to the presence of Loriark and his dissidents. There is no guarantee we would have any support on Iapetus. We simply don’t have the numbers without the aid of the skitarii. Once we control Atlas, we have an established base of operations and also the firepower of a barge-city at our disposal.’
‘And any skitarii that survive will likely side with the winners, regardless of who is commanding them at the moment,’ added Shorin from the other side of the Whispercutter’s narrow fuselage.
‘A good assessment,’ said Agapito.
‘Four hundred metres from drop-point,’ warned Stanz. The Whispercutter started dropping groundwards.
‘Power up,’ ordered Agapito. The whine of jump packs reverberated along the length of the lander as turbines spun into life.
The Whispercutter banked sharply between two smoke-belching chimneys, descending into the glare of an outdoor assembly line. The cabins of mechanical diggers were being attached to their chassis, line after line of servitor labourers with welding torches and grafted facemasks lighting the ground with white sparks and dribbling lines of red-hot metal. Ghosting above them, the Raven Guard passed unseen.
Lining up on the roadway beyond the factory, the Whispercutter glided down to fifty metres. In the lenses of Agapito’s helm an objective reticule glowed into life, centred on a junction ahead. The metres counted down rapidly beside it.
‘Drop!’ he snapped the moment the countdown reached zero.
As one the Raven Guard released the grab rails and fell groundwards. Stanz had activated the machine-spirit guide in the moments before leaving; the Whispercutter ascended swiftly into the darkness, and would then head out to sea before ditching itself.
The ten Space Marines fell towards the road, activating their jump packs a few metres from impact to slow their descent. Even so, they hit the ground hard, ferrocrete cracking under their boots.
‘Caderil, up and left.’ Agapito was issuing orders without a moment’s pause, waving half their number with his second- in-command towards an elevated railroad station on the north-eastern corner of the junction. Heading directly to the right, the commander led the other four warriors into the shadow of a large silo. A momentary flick of his helm display to the local cartography confirmed that they were just over a kilometre from the main temple, outside its priority defence grid.
�
��Follow me,’ he told the squad, igniting his jump pack as he headed towards his objective.
THE MECHANICUM STRATEGY-NET was a pleasingly efficient way of conducting war, Corax concluded. He issued another set of orders to the lexmechanics and logisticians gathered around him on the lower level of the temple. Without hesitation, the augmented machine-cultists translated and disseminated the information to their sub-commanders fighting across the city. Neurally connected to the command channels, the platoon leaders acted swiftly, breaking away from the fighting where they were likely to be overwhelmed, gathering again where the enemy were weakest.
Unlike the shrine at the top of the district temple, the command chamber was purely functional. Communications and monitoring servitors relayed information to the lexmechanics, who analysed the data-stream for pertinent information which they then passed to the logisticians updating the battle-space display. Systems that were more usually tasked with the marshalling of raw materials, fuel, manpower and production were equally suited to doing the same for soldiers and war engines.
‘Your strategy interface reminds me of one of the many battle simulations devised by my brother Guilliman,’ Corax remarked to Salva Kanar, who was overseeing the coterie of attendants. Just as then, the squads and men of the tech-guard acted by the will of Corax, effortlessly moved from one position to another as the primarch surveyed the scene depicted on a three-dimensional hololithic representation of Atlas, focused upon the Third District. Intelligence updates were fast and accurate, far more so than was possible with his Therion Cohort allies.
‘I have heard that the primarch of the Ultramarines constantly tested his war theories and stratagems during the Great Crusade in the artificial constructs of metriculator engines, as well as with real warriors,’ replied the magos.
‘Even the most sophisticated simulation is crude compared to real war,’ remarked the primarch. ‘Guilliman tried to learn everything he could from the experiences of his brothers when he first met them. I was constantly vexing him with complaints that he focused too much on distinct military units, not taking into account possible civilian participation. To him there was a line between combatants and non-combatants that I did not see. Before our first encounter Guilliman’s treatises had been swift to rule out casualty-depleted combat forces as incapable, since he was so used to wielding whole battalions and Chapters rather than handfuls of warriors. I demonstrated the error of these beliefs on several occasions, creating effective resistance out of meagre resources that Roboute had considered no longer viable.’
‘An occurrence to be proud of, I am sure,’ Kanar said evenly.
‘The cry of "no retreat" is meaningless to the Raven Guard,’ explained Corax, ‘a prideful boast rather than a sensible tactical doctrine. It was not until our third confrontation that Guilliman realised this for himself.’
‘To best one of the greatest strategos in the Imperium is no mean feat. We are blessed by your attendance.’
‘I make no such claim,’ Corax replied with a lopsided smile. ‘From the fourth simulation on, he had my mark and I could not beat him. He learns well, my brother, and he has far greater vision than me. While I was rescuing a single world from slavery, he was already building an empire of hundreds. I won battles against him, but never a war.’
Corax allowed himself a moment of reflection. He had received no word from Roboute Guilliman since before the treachery on Isstvan, though he had assumed that the Ultramarines were fighting against Horns given their primarch’s unquestioning adherence to the Emperors commands in the past. They had been operating far to the galactic east, around their burgeoning realm of Ultramar, far from the carnage that Horus’s forces had wrought over the following months. Isolated by the vicious warp tempests - the Ruinstorm, as Sagitha had called it - Ultramar might as well have been in another galaxy altogether.
However, the Navigator who had been imprisoned aboard the Kamiel had been able to provide more information regarding the XIII Legion. The Word Bearers had attempted to destroy Guilliman and his forces at the muster on Calth, and though their ambush had not quite succeeded in obliterating the Ultramarines as a threat, Guilliman’s warriors were sorely beset on the many worlds of their domain.
There was unlikely to be any swift victory in the galactic east, and Corax’s determination to slow and counter Horus’s advance was being vindicated with every world prised from his grip, every potential ally hardened against the wiles of the traitor primarchs.
It was this that lent such weight to the fight here on Constanix II. The resources of one world, even a forge world, were inconsequential in and of themselves in an Imperium of more than a million such planets, but every system that fell to Horus could tip the balance in the Warmaster’s favour.
Unfortunately, the forces loyal to Magokritarch Vangellin benefited from the same strategic facilities as Corax, though they lacked a primarch’s brilliance to orchestrate the entire affair. Less than two minutes had passed before Corax was needed to make adjustments to his battle plan once more.
‘Your adepts have arrived,’ announced the metallic voice of Loriark from the doorway behind Corax.
‘Adepts?’ said the primarch as he turned.
With the magos was Stradon Binalt, the chief Techmarine of Corax’s small force. His helmet was hanging on his belt and his expression was one of frustration.
‘Your pardon, Lord Corax, but you told me that the magi had given their permission for our work,’ said the Techmarine.
‘I was assured full cooperation,’ replied Corax, turning his gaze to Loriark. ‘Is there some problem, magos?’
‘Adept Binalt’s working methods are highly unorthodox, primarch,’ said the tech-priest with a shake of his head. ‘He tampers with complex mechanisms without the proper rites. Though there is much merit to your plan, it risks disabling one of our greatest combat assets if the correct procedures are ignored.’
‘We don’t have time for mumblings and censer-swinging, lord primarch,’ protested Stradon. ‘We’ve done it a dozen times before on ships, we know what we are doing.’
‘I concur,’ said Corax. ‘Magos Loriark, please ensure that my Tech-marines can continue their modifications without interruption’
Loriark bowed his head in acquiescence but the hunch of his shoulders communicated his displeasure without words.
Corax turned to Stradon. ‘All is well. Return to the arming bay and ensure the work is completed on schedule. By my reckoning, Commander Agapito will be making his move in a little under four minutes. You have twenty to be in position.’
‘We’ll be ready,’ said the Techmarine, leaving with swift steps.
There was grave misgiving in Loriark’s posture and although Corax had no time for the superstitions of the Mechanicum, it was important that he did nothing to unnecessarily alienate his allies.
‘When the battle at hand is won, you may perform whatever rites and checks you deem necessary,’ he told the magos.
Mollified by this concession, Loriark bowed and left. Corax returned his attention to the hololith. Vangellin’s forces were pushing into Third District from the east and north, just as Corax had planned. He snapped off a couple of commands to draw them further from the main temple complex, widening the gap for Agapito to exploit. Beside the primarch, Kanar was looking pensively at the display as the red runes of their foes approached within two kilometres of the temple.
‘Relax,’ Corax told him, soothing the tech-priest’s worries with a calm tone. ‘We’ll know if the plan has worked in mere minutes.’
‘And if it has failed?’ asked Kanar.
‘Plenty of time to come up with another.’ Corax gently laid a reassuring hand on the magos’s shoulder. ‘Do you trust me?’
Kanar looked up at the primarch’s face and saw only his honest intent, despite Corax’s concerns.
‘Yes, lord primarch, yes I do.’
‘Then send the signal,’ Corax said quietly, fastening his armour seals ready to leave. ‘Open a pat
h to the temple. An invitation Vangellin cannot ignore.’
He was passing command to Kanar and his fellow tech-priests. If they planned to betray him, then that would be the prime opportunity. But with such a small force at his disposal, the primarch had no other option.
AN EXPLOSION SEVERAL kilometres away lit up the skyline of the First District at Atlas’s heart. Agapito knew it was the charges set by Sergeant Chamell’s team, destroying a refinery feedline on the far side of the main temple complex. He watched the fireball ascending into the heavens without magnification, his armoured suit running on minimal power as he and the two squads with him crouched atop the roof of an empty transit terminal half a kilometre from the main gates.
Powered down, the Raven Guard were giant statues of black in the darkness, their armour running only essential support systems. With no display chronometer to keep track of time, Agapito mentally counted down from the blast, allowing Vangellin time to react and send out forces to counter-attack. Forty-three seconds passed before a flurry of anti-grav skimmers ascended through the lights of the temple and headed south towards the fresh blaze. Warning sirens echoed along the deserted streets as a column of russet-painted armoured quadrupeds emerged from the widening gate - ‘Syrbotus-class’, Corax had called them - followed by dozens of infantry heading out at a run.
The Raven Guard commander waited patiently as the ten vehicles turned along a sidestreet, lumbering in the direction of Chamell’s attack. The red-armoured infantry followed close behind, lasguns glinting in the light of the refinery fire. The last of the column was almost through the gate when Agapito ordered the squads to move. At the edge of his vision, he saw Sergeant Korell’s squad moving in on a convergent course from the left while Caderil’s combat squad approached from the right.
Their timing was perfect.
Energy flooded through his armours systems and Agapito’s jump pack flared as he leapt across the road to the next rooftop, his warriors bounding along behind him. His tactical display glimmered into life, targeting reticules springing up everywhere he looked. Landing, he took three swift strides and jumped again, aiming for a crane gantry that straddled the next road.
