Corax

by Gav Thorpe

  Between the light of the docks and the fiery aura of the city’s centre lay a gloom of smog and lightlessness. It was towards this that the Shadowhawk glided, with only the breeze whispering from its wingtips to betray its presence. The pilot guided the craft into a steep climb that turned into a swift dive, bypassing the bright quaysides and seeking the shelter of the shrouded city streets.

  The quiet hum of anti-grav motors rose as the stealth lander pitched towards an area of waste ground strewn with slag heaps and the acid-scarred skeletons of ancient machines. The smog swirled heavily as it landed, the Shadowhawk nestling neatly between a great pile of discarded engine parts and a slope of rubble-littered spoil.

  Swathed by darkness, the ramp at the rear of the drop-ship eased open. There was no light from within and the black-clad figures that emerged made barely a sound. Morphic treads on their boots muted their footfalls as ten Raven Guard legionaries fanned out into a perimeter around their craft. Ducking through the opening, Corax followed, his armour the colour of raven feathers, the white skin of his face obscured behind a layer of black camouflage. In his youth he had hidden his flesh with the soot of Lycaeus’s furnaces; these days a more sophisticated compound he had developed with the Mechanicum of Kiavahr served even better.

  He spoke a few words, the syllables barely heard. Even had some casual observer been close enough to hear, they would have made no sense of what had been said. The primarch’s voice was a combination of wind-whispers and delicate sighs, almost indistinguishable from the keening of the breeze across the wasteland; the stalk-argot of the Legion, with which basic commands could be issued in total secrecy.

  Falling into pairs, the Raven Guard spread out further while Corax made his way towards the closest buildings. The wasteland, perhaps ten hectares broad, was surrounded on three sides by high tenements. Though taller and reinforced with plasteel columns, the buildings bore a resemblance to the work habitats of Kiavahr; but the razorwire-topped fences and barred windows reminded him more of the prison complexes on Lycaeus, and the memory stirred distaste in the primarch. Feeble yellow light glowed from a handful of slit-like windows on the upper storeys, but the Raven Guard had chosen the darkest part of night to make their insertion – between midnight and dawn, when the work teams would be sound asleep in their exhaustion – and he could hear no sounds of activity.

  The fourth edge of the waste ground petered out into a ferrocrete yard adjoining the empty shell of a sprawling factory. The site appeared to have been stripped of anything useful but for the walls of the buildings themselves. It was easy to conclude that Constanix II had been isolated, unable to ship in the raw materials needed for its manufactories due to the Ruinstorm and the other effects of the civil war spreading across the galaxy. The Mechanicum rulers had taken to cannibalising their own, though to what end Corax did not yet know. He was determined to find out.

  Issuing an order to his warriors to guard the landing zone, and to use non-lethal force against any intruders, if possible, the primarch set off alone towards the empty factory. Beyond the grey slab walls he could see the central temple of the Mechanicum priesthood soaring up from the heart of the city, a three-hundred-metre-high ziggurat structure. Secondary turrets and bastions broke its outline and curving accessways and lifting engines further crowded its stepped levels. At the summit burned a white flame surrounded by smaller fires, massive chimneys looking like ceremonial braziers from this distance.

  Clear of the wasteland, Corax headed directly through the abandoned manufactorum. The wind keened through empty windows and across half-collapsed mezzanines. The darkness was no obstacle to the primarch and he navigated across desolate spaces that had once been assembly chambers. Even the doors to the overseers’ offices had been taken, creating a vast, cavernous interior. Cracked ferrocrete separated the various work sheds, here and there covered with patches of lichen and stunted plants.

  Corax realised that the rain that had fallen on the Shadowhawk since breaching the cloud layer did not blanket the city as it did the seas. Looking up at the low clouds, he could see just the faintest blur of a weather-shield protecting Atlas from the elements. It was likely not the only energy defence possessed by the barge city. Even so, the air was thick with humidity, the acrid taste bringing to mind the chemical-tainted air of an ice refinery.

  The complex extended for about a kilometre – a distance quickly covered by the primarch’s long strides. Coming out of the other side of the buildings, he discovered a broad roadway that marked the inner perimeter of the factory site, potholes and wide welts in the surface showing that the poor maintenance extended beyond the manufactorum. There were no street lamps, but dim light trickled from the windows of the surrounding tenements, which rose up on either side like the walls of a ravine.

  The quiet was unlike any forge world he had ever seen. Normally the Mechanicum ran their production lines day and night, shift after shift of tech-priests and labourers toiling for the glory of their Machine-God. Atlas was almost silent, starved of the ore and other materials it needed, the only sound the background electrical buzz of generators feeding the worker habs.

  The primarch was here to gather intelligence, but he was at a loss for a moment regarding where to find the information he desired. The stealthy entry of the Shadowhawk had precluded any form of close-range scan that might have been picked up by the local sensor grid, so his first priority was to establish the general layout and strategic disposition of the city. Equally important was the need to find out whether the ruling elite of the Mechanicum were aligned to the Word Bearers, or if the forge world had simply suffered attack from the Kamiel.

  The first would be a simple matter of navigating the city from one side to the other. Corax’s superior mind could catalogue every-thing he saw in minute detail, taking account of side routes, elevations, firing positions, choke points and everything else he needed to know. The second was a far more difficult proposition and would require either careful first-hand observation or interaction with some of the locals. For both, time was limited. He did not know when the morning labour shift would begin, but it would be within a few hours.

  Corax took a pace out onto the roadway and then stopped. Someone was watching him.

  He scanned the soaring blocks around him and spied a silhouette at one of the lighted windows. It was a woman, but her back was turned. She was holding a fussing child, patting him gently on the back as he gazed down wide-eyed at the giant warrior.

  I am not here, Corax thought, drawing on the inner power he had to cloud his presence from the perception of others. Just as it had once worked on prison guards and traitors, his innate ability shifted him from the conscious thoughts of the child, who shook his head in confusion and then laid his cheek upon his mother’s shoulder, content.

  Though powerful, his ability was not without limit. It would be better to seek a less observed route into the city. Still cloaked by his aura of misdirection, Corax activated his flight pack. Metal-feathered wings extended with a soft whirr. He took two steps and leapt into the air, the flight pack lifting him up into the smog that shrouded the rooftops of the tenements.

  Alighting on the flat summit of the closest, Corax broke into a run, eyes scanning left and right to take in the layout of the city as he sprinted along the wall at the roof’s edge. Another bound took him across the road, gliding silently through the darkness like a bat.

  From building to building he roamed, criss-crossing the tightly packed worker blocks as he made his way towards the heart of Atlas. Amongst the run-down slums he noticed a patch of light smeared in the fumes that blanketed the city. On artificial wings, he steered his way towards the illumination, dropping down between the hab-blocks to settle on a metal walkway overlooking the scene.

  Below was a low, squat Mechanicum temple, much smaller than the main ziggurat. In shape it was a truncated pyramid, three storeys high, with yellow light spilling from arched windows that cas
t shadows of the skull-cog sigil of the Machine-God into the haze. Girder-like iron columns ran up the walls, becoming a vaulted scaffolding above the summit of the temple. Here brass and silver icons hung from heavy chains, glinting in the glow of forge-fire cast up from skylights in the roof, half-hidden in the polluted swirl from a dozen short chimney stacks.

  The murmuring of voices, muted by thick walls, came to the primarch’s ears and from his vantage point he watched cowled figures moving past the windows on the upper storey. He left his perch and skimmed through the smog, aiming for the arched metalwork above one of the grand windows. Grasping hold of the pitted metal, he furled his wings and leaned closer.

  The storey was a single chamber; at its heart a furnace burned, its shutter doors wide open to spill heat and light across the gathered tech-priests. Corax counted five standing in a group to his right, while shovel-handed servitors plodded back and forth from a fuel chute to the left, feeding the sacred fires of the Omnissiah with pale fuel cubes.

  Corax looked for means of entry and exit, analysing the tactical situation. The engine and cage of a conveyor stood not far from the window and a spiral staircase on the far side of the chamber led up to the temple roof and down to the lower levels. The five tech-priests were close to each other, a single target group, and with the conveyor carriage already on this floor only the furnace-servitors offered any potential additional threat – and they looked like monotasks, incapable of performing any other action.

  The ruddy walls of the temple room were adorned with inlaid precious metals wrought into alchemical sigils and formulae, sprawling equations displayed as holy texts. Centred on the furnace, the tiled floor was inlaid with an obsidian-like stone in the shape of a large gear, diamonds fashioned as skulls set into the black material on each of the twelve lugs.

  Much of the room was filled with a clutter of ancient brass instruments on stands and altar-tables. Astrolabes and quadrants were set out on velvet cloths, alongside torquetums and complex orreries. Ornately etched theodolites stood in front of shelves full of alembics and spectrographs, barometers and microscopes, magnetographs and oscilloscopes, las-callipers and nanocouplers. Some were clearly replicas of far more ancient technologies, others appeared to be in functioning order. There seemed to be no pattern to the collection; a random conglomeration of artefacts of no use to the tech-priests’ work but kept in this museum out of reverence as artifices of the Machine-God.

  The hoods of the Mechanicum priests swathed their faces in shadow, but the glassaic was not so thick that it barred their words from reaching the primarch. Their low voices set the window’s surface vibrating just enough for his keen ears to pick up every word, now that he was close.

  ‘This latest call for our resources cannot be ignored,’ one of the tech-priests said. A claw-handed cybernetic arm protruded from his left sleeve, gleaming in the furnace-light. ‘Vangellin made it clear that if we did not liquidate the Third District then he would remove us and see us condemned to servitude.’

  ‘Would he really turn the skitarii against his own?’ asked another. Corax identified the owner: a tall, barrel-chested individual with sapphire-like lenses shining in the shadow of his cowl.

  ‘More than skitarii… if the rumours from Iapetus… are to be believed,’ said a third. His breathing was laboured, the front of his robe open around a whirring, pumping machine set into his torso. Each time he spoke, pistons in the artificial lung clattered. ‘The words may come… from Vangellin, but we know… the command originates with… Archmagos Delvere. He has the support of… the Cognoscenti… and so we must obey.’

  ‘Delvere speaks the words of another.’ This fourth voice was artificial; clipped and metallic. ‘The Word Bearer Nathrakin shares equal blame. He is not to be trusted.’

  ‘Trust is irrelevant,’ said the second tech-priest. ‘Force wins all arguments.’

  ‘The Cognoscenti have not decreed such,’ said the fifth member of the group. He was short, no more than a metre and a half tall, his back cruelly bent and the hunch further exaggerated by a sprawl of pipes curving from his spine to canisters around his waist. ‘The skitarii are loyal but they will not follow blindly to act against their masters.’

  ‘It is folly to contemplate armed resistance,’ said the first tech-priest. ‘What have we to lose by compliance? The Word Bearers bring assurances from Mars. Delvere follows the will of the Fabricator General.’

  ‘Such assurances… can be easily… falsified. The Word Bearers seek… to defy the Omnissiah. Their creations are… abhorrent. We cannot support this in good… conscience.’

  ‘It is not like you, Firax, to be so dismissive of learning,’ said the first voice. ‘Lord Nathrakin has opened our research to areas we thought impossible. Are these new creations any more abhorrent than what we do for Geller fields and warp drives?’

  ‘Azor Nathrakin is a liar,’ said the metallic voice. ‘Pure knowledge resides not in the alternate but in the reality we inhabit. He has corrupted Archmagos Delvere’s thinking.’

  ‘I will not be part of this rebellion,’ said the first tech-priest, turning away.

  ‘Lacrymenthis… do not be hasty,’ Firax called out as the recalcitrant tech-priest headed towards the conveyor cage.

  ‘A rebellion against rebels,’ said the stunted one. ‘Surely a contradiction. A paradox.’

  The primarch caught the look in the eyes of the dissident priest as he opened the doors of the cage. He saw conviction and defiance in that gaze and knew in an instant that he meant to betray his companions. He had seen that look in the eyes of other traitors.

  He acted instantly, crashing through the window into the temple, showering broken glassaic and leading into the room. Before the tech-priests reacted he was next to the departing adept. The primarch thrust out a hand, tempering his strength so that the blow merely knocked the semi-mechanical man to the ground rather than pulverising his body.

  ‘Make no alarm!’ Corax barked at the others, the authority in his voice quelling their instinct to shout out. He continued before the shock of his appearance wore off. ‘I am Corax of the Raven Guard, primarch of the Emperor. We seek a similar end to the Word Bearers’ presence here.’

  The servitors continued their monotonous plodding as primarch and tech-priests stared at each other, motionless. In that moment Corax calculated his next attack should the Mechanicum priests oppose him; half a dozen strides and four strikes from his lightning claws would see them all headless in two seconds.

  ‘The liberator… of Kiavahr,’ wheezed Firax, holding up a gnarled hand in a gesture of peace. ‘On Constanix… no less.’

  ‘Is he dead?’ asked the priest with sapphire eyes, motioning towards Lacrymenthis’s supine form.

  ‘Not yet,’ Corax replied, straightening. ‘He knows more than he has told you.’

  ‘Inquiry,’ said the artificially voiced tech-priest. ‘What brings the Lord of Deliverance to our planet?’

  ‘My entrance will bring remark from others,’ said Corax, ignoring the question as he glanced back at the shattered window and then to the conveyor. ‘Is this place safe?’

  ‘There are no… others,’ said the wheezing tech-priest. ‘Just the five here… and mindless servitors. I am Firax, Magos… Biologis of the Third… District. Our demesne has… fallen in favour of late and… our adepts departed.’

  ‘Loriark,’ said the tech-priest with the metal voice. ‘Cybernetica. Magos Senioris of this temple.’

  ‘I am the Magos Logistica, Salva Kanar,’ the hunchback told the primarch, pulling back his hood to reveal a misshapen, wart-marked face. He pointed at the fallen tech-priest. ‘That one is Lacrymenthis, our Cogitatoris Regular. I always thought him a lackey of Delvere, never liked him.’

  Corax turned his attention to the sapphire-lensed adept, who appeared to be fixated on the unconscious tech-priest. The adept noticed the silence and looked up at Corax. Shutters b
linked rapidly over his blue eyepieces in surprise.

  ‘Bassili, Primus Cogenitor of the Biologis,’ he said abruptly. He looked back at the downed tech-priest, shaking his head in astonishment, his voice an awed whisper. ‘Lacrymenthis was augmented well, yet you felled him as easily as an infant.’

  ‘I am a primarch,’ Corax answered simply. ‘He is just a man. Do you command any forces of note?’

  ‘Some skitarii commanders may still answer to me,’ said Loriark.

  ‘More may heed… the word of a… primarch,’ added Firax. ‘You are the essence… of the Omnissiah given form. Perhaps… even Delvere will… heed your words when our… protestations fall on uncaring… ears.’

  ‘If your archmagos shares counsel with the Word Bearers, I have no words for him,’ said Corax, lifting up a lightning claw. ‘Only deeds.’

  ‘Then what need have you of our warriors, when the Legion of the Raven Guard awaits your command?’ asked Loriark.

  The question surprised Corax, causing him a moment’s pause. He saw expectation in the faces of the tech-priests – those whose faces were capable of movement. Loriark’s was simply a steel mask, with a respirator grille and eye holes behind which blackened orbs regarded the primarch without emotion.

  ‘I have enough legionaries with me for the task,’ said Corax. ‘The remainder of my Legion prosecutes the war against Horus on other worlds.’

  ‘And how do you propose to bring Delvere to account?’ asked Loriark, his words implacable, and though the monotone irritated Corax the truth of the question vexed him more. ‘Your fleet will annihilate Iapetus from orbit?’

  ‘No,’ Corax replied vehemently. That he had no fleet was irrelevant. ‘I will not condemn thousands of innocents to death so swiftly. Our fight is with the archmagos and the Word Bearers, not the people of Constanix. Such brutality is the weapon of our enemies – not the Raven Guard.’