by Gav Thorpe
Branne glanced at the secondary chronometer display in his visor: 22.03 seconds until the main attack was in place.
‘Keep it up! Keep them busy!’ he yelled. The Raptors would not be allowed to fall short of the standards demanded by the Raven Guard. He would not be found wanting either.
THE TOP OF the escarpment was littered with loose rocks, but it did not hamper the legionaries as they bounded across along the slope with long strides. As part of the Ravendelve garrison, Sergeant Dor’s squad had been temporarily attached to the Raptors, honorary members it seemed, and so Alpharius found himself descending on the Word Bearers outpost alongside the warriors of the Raven Guard.
It was a strange feeling, almost as odd as the sensation he had felt when the primarch had given the order to open fire at the dropsite ambush. They had been warned then of the plan to back Horus’s defiance of the Emperor, but the reality of firing on another Legion had quite surprised Alpharius. Far from being shocked by it, he had found it liberating. Decades of being overshadowed by the extravagant exploits of the other Legions had built up in him a resentment that he had not acknowledged until the moment he first pulled the trigger.
There had been a sense of vindication then, but now Alpharius was feeling more pragmatic. The Word Bearers had proclaimed their loyalty so loudly, had spouted their liturgies and oaths so proudly, it was perhaps their rebellion that was the most unseemly and least like true legionaries. Alpharius had always thought they had protested their dedication to the Imperial cause too much, and when he had found out they would be siding with Horus it had come as no surprise.
They were allies, as much as any of the Legions that had collaborated to destroy the Emperor’s task force, but that didn’t mean Alpharius had to like the bombastic, preaching turncoats. He could well imagine them extolling the praises and virtues of Horus as loudly as they had once proclaimed the righteousness of the Emperor. Of all those who had taken part in the massacre, it was the Word Bearers he considered the most hypocritical.
‘Ready for drop,’ announced Sergeant Dor.
They were almost at the lip of the cliff overlooking the facility. Two hundred Raptors, and twenty of the former Talons, surged through the sandstorm.
The Raptors were a strange sight with their beaked facemasks and new armour, looking the part of hunting birds of prey. Alpharius had already accessed the technical schematics of the new Mark VI armour, and was waiting for the opportunity to upload them to Omegon. It was probably not much of a revelation, considering the tendrils Horus had infiltrated into the Mechanicum, but how much of that information the Warmaster was willing to share with the Alpha Legion was questionable.
A squad to Alpharius’s right reached the edge of the cliff first. They carried on, leaping into the swirling sand. Alpharius took a breath and followed, hurling himself into thin air. The roof of the compound was twenty-three metres below, a distance that posed little problem to a fully armoured legionary even in normal gravity, and that of Cruciax’s moon was two-thirds Terran standard.
Clouds of dust billowed up as Alpharius thudded onto the pitted rockcrete roof. The fibre bundles in his armour bunched as he landed, a sudden flicker of systems reports scrolling past his right eye.
‘Meltas!’ said Dor, pulling one of the charges from his belt. Alpharius did the same, slapping the melta bomb onto the roof in front of him and setting the timer for three seconds.
He stepped back half a dozen paces and readied his bolter in one hand while arming a frag grenade in the other. With a white-hot detonation, the melta charge blasted through the rockcrete, creating a hole just over a metre across. Dor’s bomb went off half a second later, widening the gap. All around him, the Raptors were doing likewise, opening up cracks across the compound. Alpharius tossed the grenade into the opening. He grabbed his bolter in both hands and jumped down through the breach as he heard the crack of the fragmentation charge detonating.
Tiles split underfoot from the impact of his landing. There was dust everywhere, the floor littered with shards of rockcrete that crunched as he took a step. The only light came from the breach above, the harsh glare creating a column of blue around him. With a glance in front and behind, he found himself in a short corridor, open archways at each end. He stepped forwards again, aiming ahead as Sergeant Dor dropped into the station. Alpharius swung his bolter to the right as a door opened a little way ahead of him, but he relaxed his finger on the trigger as he recognised the distinctive profile of a Raptor in the gloom.
The bark of a bolter ahead spurred Alpharius into action. With the rest of the squad thudding down behind them, he and Dor advanced on the archway, five Raptors emerging from a side room to join them.
A figure appeared at the archway. In the swirl of dust it was impossible to tell friend from foe and Alpharius checked his fire. The warrior ahead took a couple of steps closer, revealing a legionary clad in crimson armour. There was something strange about him, a hunched look that unsettled Alpharius.
Dor opened fire first, the Raptors adding their own salvoes an instant later. The Word Bearer stumbled backwards out of sight, pieces of armour flying in all directions.
‘Come on!’ shouted Dor, breaking into a run. ‘Clear out this room.’
Alpharius followed on his heels, bursting through the archway with his finger already tightening on the trigger of his bolter. He swung the weapon left at a pair of legionaries crouching by the shattered sill of a window. His first blast ripped into the backpack of the closest. The second was aimed higher and crashed into the Word Bearer’s sculpted helmet.
Or at least that was what Alpharius had first thought.
The Word Bearer toppled sideways, blood pouring from his shattered skull. What Alpharius had taken as an ornate helm was no such thing – the Word Bearer’s head was misshapen, a small horn protruding from his brow, canine teeth jutting down to his chin. His skin was bronze-coloured and the blood that pumped from the hole in his skull was black and thick.
Alpharius fired again with a shout of disgust, pulverising the Word Bearer’s misshapen head. The other legionary spun around and fired, his burst catching Alpharius in the gut. A cable ruptured, artificial muscle bundles fraying in a welter of white sustaining fluid.
A Raptor surged past Alpharius, bolter blazing, opening up a line of bloody craters across the Word Bearer’s chest. The traitor swung his bolter like a club, but the Raptor was too quick, deftly deflecting the blow with his own weapon, before repeatedly smashing his elbow into the side of the Word Bearer’s helm. The Raptor hooked a foot behind the traitor’s leg and tripped him with another blow to the head.
One foot on the Word Bearer’s chest, the Raven Guard warrior fired, bolt after bolt punching through the traitor’s armour, coating the Raptor’s greaves with gore.
‘Move on,’ said Dor, pointing towards a sealed archway on the opposite side of the chamber.
Looking around, there were no Raven Guard casualties. Alpharius counted five dead Word Bearers, another of them showing bestial, twisted features similar to the one he had slain.
‘Let’s not think about that too much,’ said Dor, guessing Alpharius’s thoughts from his posture. ‘According to the pulse survey, there’s a reactor two levels down, almost directly below us. Look for a stairwell.’
It was impossible for Alpharius not to think about what he had seen. There had always been rumours. Less than rumours, more fanciful soldiers’ tales. Ships had been lost and found with their complements ravaged by some horrific power. Every legionnaire who had spent time in the warp had a story about a strange dream or discomforting occurrence. Alpharius had half-glimpsed bizarre things on the cusp of wakefulness while in warp transit and Legion command had never directly denied that the warp was inhabited. Seeing the contorted faces of the two dead Word Bearers reminded Alpharius of those vague dreams and he wondered just what was happening to the Legiones Astartes who had sided with Horus.
Another corridor led them into a mess hall that ran the width o
f the facility, nearly seventy metres long. A firefight was already raging when they arrived. The air was filled with criss-crossing salvoes, bright sparks of bolt propellant and fiery detonations reflecting from steel-topped tables and laminated shelves. The roar of bolters and ring of impacts was deafening. The Word Bearers had taken up positions behind overturned tables and in the galley at the far end, and were exchanging fire with two squads of Raptors pinned down at a set of double doors opposite Alpharius.
A burst of shots greeted Sergeant Dor as he ran into the room, bolter on full automatic fire. He heaved over one of the long bench tables and hunkered behind it, splinters of metal spraying around him, bolt detonations sparking across his armour.
Without hesitation, the Raptors piled into the hall from behind Alpharius. The first was taken off his feet by a plasma bolt that melted through his chest plate and incinerated his innards. The Raptors exacted instant vengeance, blazing away at the plasma gunner, the Word Bearer’s armour and a glass-fronted cabinet behind him exploding with hits.
‘Flank move, squad three!’ The order was snapped out by one of the Raptors as he bounded up on to a table with a grenade in hand. He lobbed the grenade over the serving counter separating the hall from the galley. A blossom of fire erupted in the heart of the galley, setting off a chain of secondary detonations from ruptured power lines.
The black-clad Raptors surged down each side of the hall, racing forwards without firing. Two more were sent tumbling by the volleys of the Word Bearers but the dark-armoured legionaries pounded on, ignoring their casualties.
‘Keep up, old fella,’ one of the Raptors laughed at Dor as he sprinted past the sergeant.
‘Cheeky bastard,’ snarled Dor, powering himself over the fallen table, bolt-rounds blasting down the hall from his weapon. ‘Support fire!’
Alpharius sidestepped into the hall and squeezed off a salvo of five rounds, targeting a Word Bearer bringing a plasma gun to bear from behind a trolley stacked with water jugs. The ewers disintegrated into shards and silver slivers, the Word Bearer forced to dive out of sight, the fresh red paint of his armour pockmarked by several direct hits. The rest of the squad dashed into the hall and took up firing positions, bolt-rounds hammering into the metal counter and tables shielding the Word Bearers.
The Raptors reached the far end of the hall, pulling free combat knives to hurl themselves at the waiting Word Bearers. Alpharius saw one of them shredded by the combined fire of three traitors, moments before his squad-brother vaulted over the counter, his bolter firing point-blank into the face plate of a Word Bearer. The Raptor slashed his knife backhanded through the throat seal of another even as his left pauldron shattered in a hail of ceramite fragments from a bolt impact.
The Word Bearers had not expected the sheer swiftness and ferocity of the Raptors’ attack. Black-armoured legionaries were pouring between the shelves and cupboards of the galley, overwhelming the traitors with bolter and knife.
At a word from Dor, the squad started forwards, ready to cover the Raptors if they were forced back. There was no need for such caution. Alpharius saw a Word Bearer go down, bludgeoned by the bolters of three Raptors. Another traitor was lifted off his feet and hurled bodily into the power cables exposed by the grenade, sparks and arcs of lightning scorching across his twitching body.
The last time Alpharius had seen anything like it had been the World Eaters’ charge into the Salamanders at the dropsite. That had been raw carnage on a scale he had never imagined possible. The fight in the mess hall was far less of a spectacle, but the lethal efficiency of the Raptors was no less impressive.
He pictured the superhumans ahead of him in the colours of the Alpha Legion, tearing through Ultramarines or Dark Angels. There was an irrepressibility about the way they fought, a disciplined fury coupled with extraordinary speed and precision. And they were just fresh recruits. Alpharius imagined the Alpha Legion descending on Terra with fifty thousand such warriors, hardened by previous battles, with the canniness and guile they would learn from the primarch.
That was a force Horus would respect. Suddenly, Alpharius realised just how important his mission could become and why he had not yet received orders to destroy the gene-tech. This was not about stopping the Raven Guard. This was about strengthening the Alpha Legion.
The hall fell quiet, the death cry of the last Word Bearer quietly ringing from the steel walls. Alpharius moved into position to secure another doorway ahead, while the Raptors moved amongst the traitors, wordlessly ensuring they were all dead with knives to the back of their necks.
‘New orders!’ barked Dor. ‘The reactor has been set with charges. We’re leaving now. Thunderhawks for extraction at grids seven-sixty and seven-ninety. We have sixty seconds. Move!’
‘That’s it?’ said Alpharius, before he could stop himself. ‘We’re done?’
‘Strike and withdraw, you know the procedure,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Mission was to destroy the station. In fifty seconds, we will have been successful.’
The Raptors needed no repeat of the orders. Squad by squad they fell back from the galley and across the mess hall. Alpharius retreated, still keeping a wary eye for any counter-attack.
‘Are the enemy eliminated?’ he asked.
‘They will be when that reactor explodes,’ Dor said with a laugh. ‘No time to hang around.’
They withdrew to the corridor along which they had advanced and clambered out of the shattered windows. A stream of black-armoured legionaries was pouring back into the sandstorm, disappearing from sight. Alpharius felt grudging respect for the Raven Guard as they melted away as quickly as they had appeared. Forging through the sand drifts, he glanced back but the facility was now enveloped in the dust storm and obscured from sight. Ahead, his locator locked on to the signal of a descending Thunderhawk. Ramp open, the drop-ship plunged down into a dune, adding to the swirl of sand.
The ground shook underfoot just as Alpharius reached the ramp. Stepping aboard the drop-ship, he turned to see a dark red ball of flame expanding in the hazy distance. Moments later, a violent wind swept the dunes, sending a wall of sand hurtling into the open compartment of the Thunderhawk.
‘We’re full,’ the pilot announced over the internal announce system. ‘Clear the ramp.’
Dor dashed out of the cloud and leapt onto the ramp as it started to close, grabbing Alpharius’s arm to haul himself into the main chamber.
‘Mission complete,’ Corax announced over the main vox channel. ‘We are victorious. The Raven Guard have shown that they cannot yet be ignored in the battle-plans of our foes. The Raptors have proven their worth and earned their first battle honour. The fight against Horus has begun.’
Alpharius lowered himself into his seat and pulled on the harness as the Thunderhawk banked sharply. The entire engagement had lasted less than ten minutes: ten minutes that might have changed the course of the whole war.
THERE WAS A jubilant mood at Ravendelve as the last of the shuttles from the Avenger disgorged its cargo of warriors. Even the loss of fourteen of their number had not dampened the spirits of the latest Raven Guard recruits, though it was cause for some sombre reflection for Branne. The casualty ratio was a little high for his liking, considering the Word Bearers could not have numbered more than fifty legionaries against four hundred in the main assault, but his concern came from another source. Corax had said little about the operation except for his short victory speech, and had cloistered himself in Branne’s command chamber for the trip through the warp, giving the commander no opportunity to voice his doubts.
While the Raptors were being returned to their dormitories, Branne and Corax travelled back to Ravenspire, to report on the mission to the other members of Legion command. They were waiting in the briefing room when the primarch and Branne arrived. There was still a large amount of activity going on, as Legion attendants gathered as much intelligence as they could regarding Narsis and the Perfect Fortress. Solaro, Agapito and Aloni sat at the table like giant sta
tues amidst the bustle of the command functionaries.
‘The outpost at Cruciax is destroyed,’ Corax announced as he entered the chamber. ‘The Raptors, whilst a little tactically naive, performed beyond expectation and the victory signals to me a new beginning for the Raven Guard.’
‘A one hundred per cent success?’ asked Solaro.
Corax did not answer, but instead looked at Branne.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ replied the commander of the Raptors, staring right back at his primarch. ‘We sustained avoidable casualties.’
‘They will improve, given experience,’ said Corax. ‘Their exuberance will be tempered.’
‘They were foolhardy, lord, not exuberant,’ Branne said, sitting at the table. ‘While all combat is a risk, there were many that took unnecessary gambles and that not only cost valuable lives, it potentially threatened the success of the mission.’
‘If we take them to the Perfect Fortress in that state of mind, they will be slaughtered,’ said Agapito. ‘We’ve been studying what information we have in the archives, and it is a formidable obstacle. I expect the Emperor’s Children have been further fortifying Narsis since their alliance with Horus. It is no place for rash action.’
‘The Raptors will only be part of the force,’ said Corax, frowning with irritation. ‘You judge them harshly for a little poor discipline during their first engagement. They knew they were being tested, and overcompensated in their enthusiasm. I remember you and Branne trying to impress me with your heroics when you were young.’
‘A good point, lord,’ said Agapito. He looked contrite for a moment, then shook his head. ‘But there is a difference between two adolescent prison boys and several companies of transhumans armed and armoured with the best weapons we currently have available. As legionaries, they should impress you with dedication and discipline, not raw zeal. Attention to dut–’
