Corax

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘Not so vile as those that lead them,’ snarled Agapito.

  He listened to the vox-net for a few seconds, picking out the interleaved reports and messages from other forces spreading out through the enemy strike cruiser. Squads Chovani and Kalain were encountering stiffer resistance than the others: more Word Bearers.

  ‘We head to starboard,’ the commander told his companions. ‘Follow me.’

  ‘The reactor chamber is aft, commander,’ Ashel replied, staying where he was as Agapito took a step. ‘The primarch’s orders are–’

  ‘The enemy are to starboard,’ Agapito snapped. ‘As are the escape shuttles. Do you wish them to elude their punishment? Have you forgotten Isstvan so quickly?’

  Ashel glanced back at his squad for a moment, and shook his head.

  ‘For Isstvan,’ the sergeant said, lifting his bolter.

  ‘For Isstvan,’ Agapito replied.

  Disgust welled up inside Corax as he pulled the blades of his lightning claw from the body of the crewman. The liquid that sprayed across the corridor was not human blood but a foul greenish fluid, fed through the slave from a brass cylinder riveted to his back. Many others, similarly altered, lay dead around him. At first Corax had thought the creatures mindless servitors, but the fear and desperation in their eyes had betrayed a spark of life not seen in the half-human creations of the Mechanicum. They were men and women with fully human faculties, modified and experimented upon by their Word Bearers masters.

  The primarch’s disgust was not for the pitiful figures that flung themselves into his path, but for the traitors that had created them. The followers of Lorgar had become wicked, inhuman things – a twisted parody of the honourable legionaries they had once been.

  In the red light of the passageway his lightning claws gleamed. Crafted by his own hand on Deliverance after the victory at the Perfect Fortress, the weapons made him feel complete again. The Raven’s Talons, his warriors called them – as much a symbol to the Legion of their determination to fight on despite their losses as they were weapons. Corax had forgone his flight pack in the close confines of the boarding action, but he felt as comfortable in the arched halls and winding corridors as he did the open skies.

  He had been taught to fight in a place like this: a maze of ferrocrete and metal where every corner hid a potential foe. In the prison where he had been raised, endless passageways had become his hunting ground. He had never forgotten the lessons.

  He did not head directly for the strategium but chose a less obvious path that would circumvent the strongest defences. The strike cruiser was like so many others in layout, with a central corridor running for most of the length of the ship; but Corax instead made his way along the gun decks, already ravaged by the broadsides of the Avenger as the battle-barge had closed for the boarding. In places the hull had been cracked wide, leaving the batteries open to the freezing void. The primarch, with a memorised schematic of the Avenger’s last pre-attack scan in mind, found routes around the breached sections, moving up and down through the decks to keep the defenders uncertain of the Raven Guard’s route.

  With him came a company from the Avenger, but for the moment the legionaries were little more than onlookers as the primarch carved his way towards the starship’s strategium. It seemed the Word Bearers had thought it wiser to unleash their horde of mutated creations rather than face the ire of the primarch themselves.

  They were not wrong.

  Advancing swiftly, Corax encountered several dozen more slaves in the next gallery, armed with nothing more than wrenches, hammers and lengths of chain. Some had cybernetics grafted to them, others carried the artificial ichor-tanks he had already seen. All of them had pale skin slicked with the sweat of exertion and dread, their eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. They did not shout any war cry as they ran at the primarch, and there was resignation, perhaps even relief, in their eyes as his lightning claws slashed left and right, hewing them down by the handful.

  None of the crew-creatures survived long enough to strike Corax as he waded into their midst, his energy-sheathed fists turning metal to splinters and flesh to spatters. Glancing through the windows of the gallery he saw the Avenger holding course alongside the boarded ship, and beyond that the gleam of plasma engines from the Triumph and Aeruginosis, while further away still waited the rest of the Raven Guard flotilla.

  Had they arrived two or three days later the Word Bearers might have continued on their way, to wreak whatever malevolence they intended. Good fortune for the Raven Guard had brought the enemy out of the warp just a few thousand kilometres from where the Legion had been mustering. Even before the bombardment by the Raven Guard, the traitor ship had shown signs of prolonged combat, damaged warp engines amongst its more obvious battle scars. Whatever had forced the strike cruiser to travel in such a state had to be important.

  So it was that Corax sought to capture the vessel and learn its secrets, rather than destroy it out of hand.

  Resistance grew stronger as the Raven Guard neared their objective. Securing the chambers and halls surrounding the strategium, the primarch and his warriors created a cordon clear of enemies. The rooms were strangely devoid of decoration. On the few occasions that Corax had spent time on Word Bearers ships before the Warmaster had turned, he had marvelled at the carvings and banners, icons and murals dedicated to the celebration of the Emperor and his deeds. What must have once been the officers’ quarters were now empty shells, devoid of furnishing and embellishment, as though everything that once had lauded the Emperor had been expunged.

  The strategium portals – two sets of huge double doors sealed by immense lockbolts – proved to be only a minor obstacle. Corax’s lightning claws cut through one of the doors with a few blows, sending the reinforced plasteel tumbling into the darkened command chamber.

  Corax was taken aback for a moment by the quiet. He had expected a hail of fire to greet his entry, and his charge onto the mezzanine overlooking the main floor of the bridge faltered as he met no resistance.

  Glancing around the chamber, the primarch was confronted by clusters of interred servitors meshed with glowing consoles, their half-dead faces and withered limbs nearly white in the glow of the static that filled the main screen. Lights winked on and off in the gloom, the red and amber of failing systems, while exposed wiring buzzed and flickered. The chamber was filled with a faint smell of decay coming from the servitors; of flesh slowly going rank, mixed with oil and rust.

  ‘Where are the Word Bearers?’ asked Commander Soukhounou. As he had stormed into the strategium behind Corax, he too had come to a halt, confused by the absence of foes.

  ‘Not here,’ was the only answer Corax could give.

  His gaze was drawn to a shape swaddled in bloodied robes, pierced by many pipes and cables, at the heart of the strategium. The figure’s corpse-like thinness showed her human skeleton despite the profusion of implanted machinery. All that could be seen of her face was a slack mouth showing a few broken, yellowed teeth, the rest of her head encased in a many-faceted helm of ceramite into which passed dozens of coiled filaments.

  Corax descended the steps to the main hall, his footsteps resounding across the quiet murmuring of the servitors and the buzz of poorly shielded circuits. To Corax’s amazement, the woman stirred. She raised her head as though looking at him, a small black gem fixed to the brow of the enclosing helm.

  ‘Release me,’ she whispered. Blood-flecked saliva drooled from between cracked lips, a dark tongue lolling across raw gums. ‘I can serve no more.’

  ‘We are not your captors,’ Corax told the woman as he stopped beside her. Now, closer, he saw the glint of silver thread in the tatters of her clothes. The patterns were broken, but taken together the remnants revealed the woman to be a Navigator. ‘I am Corax, of the Raven Guard.’

  ‘Corax…’ She breathed the name and her lips twisted into a hideous smile. ‘Grant me my death. Y
ou are the Lord of Deliverance and I need delivering from this torment.’

  The primarch moved one of his energy-sheathed claws towards the Navigator, but he hesitated before granting her wish. It tore at his conscience, but a harder part of him – the part that had sent atomic charges into the cities of Kiavahr to kill thousands of innocents, and allowed him to pacify worlds resisting compliance – stayed his hand.

  ‘Soon, I promise you, but first I have need of answers,’ he told her. The Navigator slumped, causing the pipes and wires to rattle fiercely like the twitching of a grotesque puppet’s strings.

  Before Corax could begin his questioning he diverted his attention to the vox-net, distracted by an exchange between Branne and Agapito on the command channel.

  ‘We can’t break through here,’ Branne was saying. ‘You were supposed to flank the forces defending the reactor, brother.’

  ‘I will be with you shortly,’ Agapito replied, breathing heavily. ‘One of the bastards fled, the coward. We’ll have him cornered soon.’

  From long acquaintance Corax could sense Branne holding his temper in check, with some effort.

  ‘Reactor readings are reaching critical,’ the commander eventually responded. ‘The reactor will reach meltdown if we do not seize control of it. We can deal with the Word Bearers once the ship is secure.’

  ‘Agapito, what is causing your delay?’ the primarch demanded, irritated by the commander’s tardiness in completing his mission.

  ‘I…’ Agapito’s voice trailed away. When he spoke again a moment later, there was contrition in his voice. ‘Apologies, Lord Corax. We will make all haste to the reactor chamber.’

  ‘As you should have already, commander. We will speak of this later.’

  ‘Yes, Lord Corax. Forgive my distraction.’

  ‘If we are still alive in ten minutes, I will consider it,’ Corax replied. He knelt down next to the imprisoned Navigator and spoke gently. ‘I am sorry, but I must attend to another matter first. Be strong.’

  He stood up and turned to Soukhounou.

  ‘See what you can do to slow the reactor overload from here,’ the primarch said, pointing to the engineering station where a rheumy-eyed servitor murmured a monologue of status reports. ‘I want this ship taken intact.’

  Warning lights glared red along the corridors surrounding the plasma-core chamber. The accompanying sirens had been cut off abruptly from the strategium, but the ruddy gloom was a reminder to Commander Branne that the ship was far from secured.

  ‘Cavall, Nerror, Hok,’ Branne called out to three nearby sergeants. ‘Flank right, one deck up.’

  Their squads peeled away to a stairwell as Branne led the rest of the company forwards. The waves of grotesque ship slaves had ceased for the moment, no doubt pulled back to form a last defence around the overloading reactor. Branne did not know whether that was a final act of spite from the Word Bearers, or to prevent the Raven Guard discovering the crew’s purpose in the sector. He did know that Lord Corax had issued no warning of an evacuation, and within the next one hundred and twenty seconds it would be too late for the boarding parties to escape the doomed ship.

  Branne’s Raptors were fighting well and he felt a moment of pride as he watched them sweeping along the engineering deck, efficient and deadly. They had been fully blooded at the Perfect Fortress, and in later engagements against the forces of the Death Guard at Monettan, and in the seizing of several traitor Imperial Army warships that had been intercepted during an attack at Tholingeist. With each battle they gained valuable experience.

  Now they had been transformed from instinctively superior fighters to disciplined, effective warriors. Even those that had been twisted by the later gene-seed mutations had surpassed their bodily difficulties, fighting as equals amongst their clean-limbed brothers. Branne had become so familiar with his charges that he barely noticed the deformities that marred them. They were all simply his Raptors, though he knew that there were others in the Legion who did not wholly trust them.

  The feeling of pride passed, to be replaced by an ever-present sense of profound responsibility. The Raptors, both the perfectly formed and those that had suffered the body-altering mutations, were a new generation of Raven Guard: the future of the Legion, Lord Corax had called them. The primarch certainly had no qualms about utilising the Raptors’ abilities, enhanced by their improved Mark VI armour systems. As Corax had promised, the Raptors were treated as any other fighting force from Deliverance, given ample opportunity to prove themselves worthy as legionaries.

  A huge detonation ahead shattered Branne’s contemplation. For a split second he thought the plasma wards had been breached, his Raptor squads silhouetted against the sheet of white fire erupting along walls and floor, creating a stark vignette.

  The instant passed as the fire washed over Branne for several seconds. Temperature warning alerts rang in his ear but his suit’s systems were more than a match for the flames, dumping coolant from the armour’s power plant into the secondary systems. Paint blistered and bubbled and thick sweat ran from Branne’s pores, but no lasting damage was done. The conflagration passed in moments, leaving the commander to assess the damage.

  ‘What was that?’ he demanded, striding forwards. Ahead of him the Raptors closer to the blast had not fared so well. The broken remains of a handful of his warriors lay at the top of the stairwell where the explosion had originated.

  The surviving Raptors picked themselves up and regained their senses.

  ‘Improvised charge, commander,’ reported Sergeant Chayvan. ‘A shell from a close-defence turret, I think.’

  ‘Self-terminating strike,’ added Streckel, one of Chayvan’s warriors. ‘It was being carried by one of the slaves. Insane bastard.’

  ‘What have they got to lose?’ replied Branne as he reached the stairs. The steps had been turned to dripping slag a dozen metres below him, the walls spattered with droplets of molten plasteel. ‘Stay vigilant. There will be more of them. I want them taken out before they can self-detonate.’

  Affirmatives rang across the vox-net as Branne looked up the shaft. The flight of stairs to the upper deck had been incinerated, stranding the commander and his companions below the entryway to the main plasma-conduit chambers. He glanced at the chronometer.

  Eighty seconds left. Still there had been no word from Lord Corax.

  The Raptors fanned out through the corridors, auspex scanners sweeping for a stair or conveyor. There was no effort wasted on mourning the fallen; everyone knew that they would share the same fate if they could not stop the reactor overload.

  There was a calm, measured fatalism about the Raptors that Branne found reassuring. Perhaps it was something about the nature of their founding, or maybe his own outlook that had shaped their demeanour. Whatever the cause, he considered the members of his company to be amongst the most sober of the XIX Legion – youthful exuberance had quickly given way to deep gravitas in the light of galactic civil war and the very likely possibility that the Raptors might be the last generation of Raven Guard to become legionaries.

  Branne knew that his company would always be a step aside from the rest of the Raven Guard, despite the primarch’s words and the platitudes of the other senior officers. They were different not just physically, but in temperament also. It was nothing new. There had always been subtle divisions amongst the warriors of the Legion. There were the Terrans, who had fought alongside the Emperor himself, their legacy traced back to the start of the Great Crusade. Yet despite their proud heritage, the Terrans had never shared the same intimate bond with Lord Corax enjoyed by those who had fought for the salvation of Deliverance. The ex-prisoners, Branne amongst the many thousands who had taken part in the uprising, had taken Corax as one of their own, first as protectors and then as followers. The Terrans treated Corax with awe and respect as their gene-father, but their entire history with him was as the Emperor’s warri
or-servants, never as equals.

  Now the Raptors were added to the mix. They all shared two common experiences: they had been inducted into the Legion after the treachery of Horus had been revealed, and they had not suffered through the massacre at the dropsite and subsequent running battles. It was this that set them apart from both Deliverance-born and Terran. They were not warriors of the Great Crusade; they had a darker but no less vital purpose. The Raptors were trained not for the pacification of non-compliant worlds nor the eradication of alien foes, but for the simple task of destroying other Space Marines.

  The Isstvan survivors were still haunted by their experience, either by anger or guilt, bearing a burden of loss that Branne could never share. Perhaps this was why Corax had chosen Branne to lead the newest recruits, sensing he would share an affinity with this untainted generation that he could never wholly regain with the massacre survivors. It would be typical of Corax’s wisdom and his keen insight into the minds of his warriors.

  ‘Enemy contacts, several hundred,’ reported Sergeant Klaverin from one of the lead squads. ‘More than a dozen Word Bearers leading the defence, commander.’

  ‘Acknowledged. Eliminate all resistance. Access to the plasma chamber is highest priority.’

  Agapito hacked down another foe, the gleaming blade of his power sword slicing through flesh that was mottled a pale blue, the crewman’s strangely canine face splitting from brow to chin. The commander turned his next blow against a slave-mutant with bulging eyes and a forked tongue, driving the blade into the hideous creature’s chest.

  ‘One hundred metres more!’ he barked, swinging his sword to urge on the Raven Guard around him.

  There had been only a handful of Word Bearers between Agapito and the reactor chamber, but that did not make progress any easier. Perhaps wishing to end their miserable lives, the deformed crew had flooded into the aft sections of the ship, using themselves as a barrier to prevent the Raven Guard accessing the reactor chamber. It was no spiteful scheme of the slaves to take the boarding parties with them, but a calculated sacrifice by the Word Bearers. The critical state of the plasma reactor could only be possible if they had started to push it into overdrive the moment that they had been discovered.