by Gav Thorpe
What had happened had been unthinkable, and that was part of the problem for Corax. Should it have been so outlandish that he had never considered having to fight his brothers? He had been sent with the others to Isstvan to bring Horus to account – surely he should have wondered whether Horus had acted entirely alone. Had the shock of the Warmaster’s turn against the Emperor befuddled him, caused him to blunder into an obvious trap?
The questions were all the harder because they were unanswerable.
Another vibration, another course change. The hours ticked past. The primarch needed no data-screen to tell him what was happening. He had a picture in his mind of the Avenger and the ships arrayed against it, their courses plotted in his thoughts as accurately as any schematic. Any notable divergence from the picture he had drawn would be reported, and he had received no such communication from Ephrenia. The complex web being woven to catch the Avenger was not tight enough, there were always gaps.
Patience.
Hours, days, weeks of waiting. Years, in fact, when he had been making his preparations, hidden amongst the prisoners of Lycaeus. There was something of a purity in the stillness; something energising about the solitude.
His wounds still pained him, occasional stabs of sensation that broke through the walls of his semi-mesmeric state. He would shift his weight to relieve the stress on ravaged ribs, to move pressure away from damaged organs. Corax’s engineered body could withstand incredible amounts of damage, and yet there was something deeper than the physical wounds that afflicted the primarch. The pain was something he forced himself to endure, as a reminder of his failure. He suffered a hurt that no superhuman body could rectify: a grievous injury that the attention of the Apothecaries would not cure. Until he could bring an end to that internal agony, he would not allow his body to heal.
Roused from his contemplation by one such brief burst of pain, Corax activated a data-screen. Analysing the intersecting courses displayed on the monitor, Corax spotted something he had not seen before: a convergence of possibilities brought about by some minor alterations in the enemy’s disposition a few hours ago.
There was a gap. Or rather, there was not a gap, but a coming together of four Traitor ships. The wash from their own plasma drives, the emissions of their reactors, would obscure the Avenger and provide a pathway to the transition point earlier than he had planned, if he dared take it.
Seeing the possibilities unfolding, Corax stood up, re-examining the chart. He was sure he was correct. Passing from inaction to motion in moments, the primarch leaned over towards the communicator activation stud.
He stopped with his finger millimetres from the switch.
Corax weighed up the situation once more, cooling his excitement, ignoring the lure of sudden activity. The manoeuvre would bring the Avenger within range of the guns of at least three enemy vessels. If he changed to the new course, they would be committed. Any significant alteration by the enemy would change the dynamic, revealing the Raven Guard’s position dangerously close to the foe.
He discarded the idea.
Though Corax was eager to reach the relative safety of the warp – eager to do anything proactive – there was more to be said for caution than daring at the moment. He had gone after Lorgar at the dropsite, driven by a thirst for revenge, briefly abdicating his responsibility as a Legion commander. Had that emotive response cost his Legion, more of them falling to the ambush than would have done had he been commanding the retreat? He would not act rashly again.
The most important thing was that he had lived, and that was as true now as then. Half a day was not important; survival was important. That need to survive, that animal instinct to keep drawing breath had driven him on, filled him with purpose. He would not lie down and accept death willingly. Even now, his Legion almost wiped out, his enemies outnumbering his allies, Corax knew that he could not give up. His duty now was to keep the Raven Guard alive, no matter the temptations and instincts to act with resolve and daring.
On Deliverance, when it had been called Lycaeus, there had been true desperation. Weaker men had fallen and lesser men had balked at the task ahead. Not Corax. He had dragged Lycaeus, bloodied and screaming, into freedom, and not once doubted the righteousness of his effort. Why now did he wonder if he had the resolve to triumph?
He sat immobile in the darkness once more. He liked the dark; the shadows had always been an ally. He might spend the last hours of his life like this, waiting, anticipating the next shudder of a course correction, expecting a knock at the door to bring a fresh report of the enemy’s movements, trying not to relive the mistakes and horrors of Isstvan.
Trying, but failing.
THE ROOM WAS dank with the smell of sweat, the air thick with the stench of his own fear. Marcus was more than happy to face any foe in an open fight, or even to stand firm while battleships destroyed each other with blasting broadsides. This war, the Raven Guard way of war, vexed his nerves and tightened his chest around his heart.
The praefector lay on his bunk, his eyes closed, wishing the ventilators could be activated to siphon away the filth of his perspiration. His hands trembled on his chest, his hair was lank across his brow and the pillow and sheets were soaked beneath him.
All it would take was one warhead to find the Avenger and they would all be killed. Valerius was certain of it; the reflex shields provided no defence against a dozen megatonnes of atomic destruction. The walls vibrated with the shockwaves of distant detonations – thousands of kilometres away, yet all too close for the praefector’s liking.
Pelon was in the antechamber. Marcus could hear his short, panicked breaths and imagined his servant sitting in the corner of the room hugging his knees to his chest. The praefector understood well the dread that gripped his man, because he shared it.
The bombardment had started less than half an hour ago. He had been sent from the strategium by Corax as the first nova cannon shells had erupted, far from the battle-barge yet too close for comfort. As he had hurried down the corridors and descended seemingly endless stairwells, he had felt the ship vibrating beneath his tread, the metal of the handrails quivering under his fingers.
He had tried not to run. The Raven Guard he had passed were unperturbed by their predicament, trusting their existence to power of the reflex shields in a way that Marcus simply could not. He was Imperial Army, a Therion, and he was used to fighting an enemy he could see, his life entrusted to power fields or tank armour or the metres-thick walls of a bunker. He had endured artillery duels and orbital attacks, but nothing compared to the helplessness he felt right now.
The darkness was absolute. No lights could be lit. In a way, he was grateful. It was better that he was confined to quarters, where Lord Corax and the others could not see his cowardly reactions, could not hear his suppressed whimpers with each rattle of a passing shockwave.
Yet it was also a nightmare to be alone. Pride might have helped him master the fear, had he been within sight of others. With just himself to impress, his resolve was revealed to be woefully weak. The darkness was as cloying as the sweaty air. It weighed heavily on his chest, pushing the wind from his lungs, throttling him.
He choked and gasped and swung to the edge of the bed, booted feet touching upon the bare decking, arms hugged tight around his chest as he winced at another vibration that rattled from starboard to port, accompanied by creaks and cracks from the bulkheads around him.
‘This is insanity,’ he muttered.
His words were a whisper, but echoed inside his head. Sanity had been a scarce resource of late for the praefector. At first he had been relieved that the nightmares had ended. The blissful oblivion of sleep had been returned to him and he had embraced it.
The sensation of relief had not lasted long. Barely a few days after the evacuation of Lord Corax and the Legion, Marcus’s empty dreams had started to nag at him. He woke in the middle of the night watches, a void in his thoughts, feeling dragged down into an abyss. Soon he had come to fear the nig
hts as much as when the fires and the cries of dying ravens had haunted him. It was not the searing hot terror, the paranoia that had gripped him before, it was a cold dread that trickled down his spine and sank to the bottom of his stomach.
Alone in the dark of his cabin, that dread had returned, seeping out of the darkness while missiles and shells lit up the firmament beyond the steel and rockcrete walls. The nothing that awaited him was too much like the vacuum of space. In his dread, Marcus was convinced that he was going to die. Just as he had dreamt of the Raven Guard’s predicament, now his sleeping thoughts were bringing him a vision of his doom. He would die alone, freezing in the void, swallowed by the emptiness of the universe.
Marcus let out a whimpering moan and threw himself face-first into the pillows and covers, trying to bury his head, striving to block out the emptiness that was leeching away his existence.
‘THAT WAS A little too close,’ remarked Branne as a nova cannon shell blossomed into nuclear life a few thousand kilometres off the starboard bow.
‘Too close is a hit,’ replied Agapito. ‘Anything we survive is far enough away for me.’
‘Hush,’ said Lord Corax. His voice was calm, his features expressionless, as he watched the dull glow of sensor readings on the primary display. ‘I am thinking.’
The primarch had taken over the helm controls as soon as the latest raitor fusillade had started, guiding the Avenger along a safe course that only he himself could see, his mind constantly calculating and adapting with each launched torpedo salvo and nova cannon detonation.
‘Lord, we are heading to danger-close proximity with an enemy cruiser,’ warned one of the attendants at the scanner array.
‘I know,’ replied the primarch, eyes locked on the display.
‘Lord, they will detect our plasma wash if we pass that close,’ Controller Ephrenia added, her tone quiet and respectful, yet tinged with concern.
‘That is not all they will detect,’ Corax replied, turning to smile at the woman. He paused for a moment and then held up a finger. ‘I judge that we have reached safe distance for translation.’
‘Lord?’ Ephrenia’s confusion was matched by Branne’s. A sideways glance at Agapito and Aloni showed that his fellow commanders were tense, eyes narrowed.
‘We will not be fleeing without a last remark to our enemies,’ said Corax.
‘Should we power up the void shields and weapons batteries, lord?’ asked Ephrenia, hand hovering over the command terminal.
‘No,’ said the primarch. ‘I have something more dramatic in mind.’
ON THE STRATEGIUM of the Valediction, Apostle Danask of the Word Bearers was finding his latest duty a stretch on his patience. The joyful anarchy and slaughter of the dropsite attack seemed a distant memory after days of fruitless searching for the fleeing Raven Guard. His latest orders were no more exhilarating. For more than a day his ship had been sporadically firing torpedo spreads into the area the Warmaster had ordered, with no result at all. It was a waste of time, and made all the more insulting because his brother legionaries were already en route to Calth for their surprise visit to the Ultramarines. It was hard not to feel that this was in some way a punishment for some breach of Legion rules of which he had not been made aware.
Danask wondered if perhaps he had not been dedicated enough in his devotion to this new cause. He had noticed Kor Phaeron looking at him strangely on occasion, and was sure that the Master of Faith was testing him in some fashion. He had offered no complaint when he had received his nonsensical orders, and had offered effusive praise to the primarch for considering him for such an onerous but essential duty.
‘Energy signature detected!’
The words of Kal Namir came as a triumphant shout from the scanner panels, snatching the Apostle from his thoughts.
‘Where?’ demanded Danask, rising up from the command throne. Sirens blared into life, shattering the quiet that had marked most of the patrol’s duration.
‘Almost on top of us, two thousand kilometres to port,’ announced Kal Namir. ‘Weapons batteries are powering up. Void shields at full potential.’
‘Mask energy signature and get me a firm location. Brace for impact,’ snapped the Apostle, realising that the enemy would only reveal himself to open fire.
He heard Kal Namir mutter to himself, swearing under his breath.
‘Speak up or stay silent, brother,’ rasped Danask. He was in no mood for his subordinate’s grumbling. He punched in a command on the arm panel of the throne and brought up a real-time view of the enemy’s rough location. A shimmer against the stars betrayed the presence of the Raven Guard ship.
‘The scanners must have malfunctioned. This makes no sense,’ Kal Namir said. He checked his displays again and then turned to look at Danask with eyes wide from shock. ‘Signature is a warp core spike, commander…’
On the screen, the enemy battle-barge came into view, dangerously close, black against the distant pale glimmer of Isstvan’s star. Moments later the space around the vessel swirled with power, a writhing rainbow of energy engulfing the ship from stem to stern.
‘Take evasive action! yelled Danask, but even as he barked the words he knew it was too late.
The Raven Guard ship disappeared, swallowed by the warp translation point it had opened. The warp hole roiled wider and wider, washing over the Valediction. Danask felt the flow of warp energy moving through him, a pressure inside his head accompanied by a violent lurching of the cruiser.
‘We’re caught in her wake,’ announced Kal Namir, somewhat unnecessarily, thought Danask.
The Valediction shuddered violently as the spume of warp energy flowed past, earthing itself through the void shields. Tendrils of immaterial power lashed through the vessel, coils of kaleidoscopic energy erupting from the walls, ceiling and floor, accompanied by the distant noise of screaming and unnatural howls.
More warning horns sounded a moment before an explosion tore apart the stern of the ship, the void shield generators overloaded by the surge. Secondary fires erupted along the flanks of the Valediction, detonating ammunition stores for the weapons batteries, opening up ragged wounds in the sides of the vessel.
The shriek of tearing metal accompanied fiery blasts of igniting atmosphere gouting from the massive holes to port and starboard. The Valediction heaved and bucked, artificial gravity fluctuating madly, tossing Danask and the others on the strategium to the ceiling and back to the floor. To the right of the Apostle, a communications attendant fell badly, snapping his neck on the mesh decking.
Then there was stillness and silence.
The shielding of the reactors had held firm and no further explosions occurred. Several minutes of disorientation ensued, during which the strategium staff busied themselves getting damage reports. The scanners were all offline due to the warp wash, the dozens of screens surrounding Danask all grey and lifeless.
‘Get me helm control,’ he rasped.
Anti-damage procedures continued for some time. Danask’s head throbbed, an ache in the base of his skull growing in intensity until it threatened to be a significant distraction.
‘That could have been worse,’ said Kal Namir. ‘At least we survived.’
Blood started to drip from the Word Bearer’s eyes and nose, thick rivulets of crimson streaking Namir’s face. The blood vessels in his eyes were thickening and his skin was becoming stretched and thin. Danask held a gauntleted hand to his nose as he tasted blood, and saw a drop of red on his fingertip.
One of the weapons console attendants gave a scream and lurched away from his panel, his robes afire with blue flames. The man flailed madly as others tried to help him, pushing him to the floor and swatting at the flames with cloaks and gloved hands.
‘Get them off me! My face! Get them off my face!’ shrieked another serf, tearing at his eyes and cheeks with his fingers, stumbling from his stool.
A subscreen flickered into life at one end of the scanning panel. Danask knew what he would see but looked anywa
y. Outside the ship the stars had disappeared, replaced by a whirling vortex of impossible energies that hurt his eyes to look at, even through the digitisation of the display.
They were in the warp.
Without their Geller fields.
Unprotected.
As realisation settled in the Apostle’s numbed mind, he felt something clawed scratching inside his gut. He dared not look down.
A detached part of his brain marvelled at what had happened. To engage warp engines close enough to drag the Valediction into the immaterium yet far enough away not to destroy the cruiser was an incredibly difficult thing to do. He wondered what manner of man could do such a thing.
Around him, madness reigned. He felt apart from it all as his serfs and legionaries howled and roared, limbs cracking, warp energy swirling through their bodies, distorting and tearing. He realised he had asked the wrong question. Exposure to the warp was the most horrific death that could be visited upon any living creature. It was not what manner of man could do such a thing, it was what manner of man would do such a thing.
He never got to answer his own question. Moments later, a horned, red-skinned beast erupted from his innards, splaying out his fused ribs and chest, his twin hearts held between fanged teeth.
Danask’s agonised scream, so inhuman, so unlike a legionary, joined with cries of the rest of his crew.
THEY WERE SAFE in the warp. As safe as the warp could ever be, though the Avenger’s Navigators had complained about a roiling tempest as soon as they had translated. The Astronomican, the light that guided them through the immaterial aether, was all but obscured by storms of immense proportions.
Corax had told them to do the best they could. Their goal was simple: head to the source of the Emperor’s light and they would reach Terra.
