by Gav Thorpe
There had been some amongst the Raven Guard upper echelons who had thought the same. Corax had allowed them to give voice to their concerns, but he had never harboured any doubts about Horus’s abilities as a war leader.
‘What is impossible, to my mind,’ Arcatus continued, ‘is the notion that Horus would even embark on such a cataclysmic course of action without being absolutely certain he would win. Throughout the Great Crusade, Horus proved time and time again that he was capable of tremendous victories, conquering swathes of the galaxy through planning, charisma and sheer bloody-mindedness.’
‘He is also adept at utilising the strengths of his brothers to his best advantage,’ added Corax, somewhat bitterly. ‘Always ready to ask his brothers to sacrifice their Legions in the shadows, away from the annals and picts of the remembrancers; always arriving in time to deliver the final blow. I struck Horus once for usurping the victories of the Raven Guard for his own glory, a moment that no doubt festers in the Warmaster’s thoughts. I aim to repeat the insult, whenever I can.’
‘He has done the same with his rebellion, blunting the counter-attack of the loyalist forces with the likes of the Emperor’s Children, the Iron Warriors and Word Bearers. Month by month, year by year the Warmaster has consolidated his position, readying for the strike that is sure to come – an assault on Terra.’
They turned into the corridor leading back to the entry blasted into the station by the Stormbirds and Thunderhawks.
‘And there are those only too willing to favour the side that appears to be in the ascendancy,’ said Corax with a sad shake of the head, ‘They judge their futures more secure with the rising star than the old elite. Rebellion is in vogue across the Imperium, whether for the traitors or simply against the Emperor.
‘Dorn was adamant that Horus could not win without toppling the Imperial capital, and I agreed. Where we differ is in the manner in which that can be stopped. The Fist of the Emperor is determined to make a stand at the walls of the Palace itself, but it is defeatist to assume that the traitors will reach the Sol system regardless of the efforts of loyal warriors.’
The primarch of the Raven Guard believed – had to believe – that history would prove him right. Horus was no fool, but he had planned for the Raven Guard to be wiped out on the blackened fields of Isstvan. Their continued existence, and the attacks launched by Corax and his followers, delayed the last assault, demonstrating the lie that a battle for Terra was inevitable.
‘Thirty seconds,’ Corax announced, needing no chronometer to keep track of time – his inner sense was as accurate as any conventional timepiece.
He bounded up the ramp of the drop-ship – the selfsame drop-ship that had lifted him from Isstvan, he noted – and waited at the top for the withdrawing Custodians and Raven Guard with him to file past.
‘Breaking a few warships will not swing the course of the war,’ said Arcatus, stopping beside Corax.
‘No, but their absence will be felt. One lost convoy will not break the rebellion either, you are right,’ replied the primarch. ‘A freed world will not stem the tide on its own. Yet they come from the same source, and victory is simply the accumulation of countless unimportant events and decisions in your favour. Every defeat Horus suffers brings time for Dorn to build his defences. Every shipyard destroyed or taken back limits the traitors’ reach. Every world kept in the Imperial fold or delivered from the traitors stretches Horus’s resources. Every gun and suit of warplate withheld from the renegades adds up and in time they will be the measure of our enemies’ defeat.’
Corax waved Arcatus into the depths of the drop-ship.
‘We swiftly approach the tipping point,’ the primarch said. ‘The Sons of Horus are on the offensive, hounds of war finally unleashed by their lord after the others have weakened us. The Warmaster desires a great battle to end all battles, one final confrontation to prove himself superior.
‘We will not give him that. Lycaeus was not seized overnight. It was taken by meticulous preparation and a thousand tiny victories. The Warmaster will not be stopped by a single battle. On a dozen worlds, a hundred worlds, a thousand worlds, the Emperor’s loyal servants will resist, each taking their toll, bleeding dry a rebellion held together only by ego and desperation.’
‘You think you can wage that war?’
‘The greatest enemy is the one you cannot see, and so cannot fight. That is the essence of the Raven Guard.’
With a roar of thrusters, the drop-ship lifted up from the orbital facility. The ramp closed; Corax’s last view was of immense torpedoes cruising past only a few kilometres away, heading unerringly towards their targets. In the distance orbital stations and monitor vessels were just starting to detect the threat in their midst.
They would be too late. The Avenger was already turning away, ready to sweep up its assault craft and activate the reflex shields. Within three minutes the newly commissioned ships would be nothing more than molten metal and wreckage. In five minutes the Avenger would be heading out-system cloaked from detection, ready for the rendezvous with the rest of Corax’s forces.
The primarch smiled.
‘Horus will not lose the war at the walls of the Imperial Palace, but out here in the forgotten places between the stars, in the darkness beyond the light of his presence. This is where the Raven Guard thrive. This is where Horus will fail.’
Eight
The Cretherach Reach
[DV -22 days]
On the strategium of the Steadfast, nothing stirred. Commander Aloni stood alone among muted servitors, casting an eye across the scanning arrays and communications feeds. His attention was fixed on two displays in particular: the internal energy readout and the passive defraction antenna.
The first monitored how much sound and radiation was emanating from the huge starship: a curiously antique-looking dial – an illuminated display would itself contribute to light and energy pollution – with a red line that indicated the maximum threshold of the reflex shields. The needle wavered at the three-quarter mark, easily within tolerable limits, and the shields themselves were not running at full yield. Fully crewed and with its full complement of two hundred legionaries, the Steadfast would struggle to conceal its whereabouts under such conditions; but with barely a skeleton attendance and only fifty Space Marines on board it was running with higher scanning and manoeuvring capacity than usual.
Which was essential, because the defraction antenna was fixed on the plasma discharge of thirty-four more starship engines.
One was the Wrathful Vanguard, a strike cruiser of the Imperial Fists Legion. Captain Noriz and his small company were heading towards the other signals: traitor supply ships. Seven of the auspex contacts were convoy escorts – a pair of light cruisers, a grand cruiser and a handful of destroyers and frigates.
The traitors were cautious, one of the light cruisers moving towards the approaching VII Legion vessel, with smaller escorts heading out to cut off the strike cruiser’s retreat; the transports stayed close to the guns of the remaining cruisers in case the Wrathful Vanguard was a decoy.
They were not wrong, but the traitors did not understand the nature of the other hunters waiting amongst the gas clouds of the Cretherach Reach. Warning data scrolled across several screens as the renegade ships scoured the surrounding void with deep-search surveyors, seeking the other ships they knew had to be waiting amongst the stellar debris. Their sensors were turned towards the scattered dust and asteroid pockets – ideal concealment for conventional ships.
They were looking in the wrong place.
The Steadfast drifted closer to the convoy from the opposite direction, while the Shadowstrike approached at a perpendicular angle. The one cruiser showed nothing on the sensor displays – as was intended – leaving Aloni to trust that the other Raven Guard ship was in the right position.
For that matter, it had taken some effort to persuade Noriz to allow his
vessel to be used as bait. The Imperial Fists captain was risking a lot, that much was true. If the reflex-shielded ships were detected too early then the whole plan would fail and the Imperial Fists would face the worst of the backlash.
All seemed to be going well, though. Aloni monitored the Steadfast’s progress, making minute adjustments with single attitude thrusters, nudging the starship onto a better heading as a machinist might trim away nanometres of a complex component on a las-lathe. As long as the traitors made no major course corrections the cruiser would intersect perfectly with the gaggle of lightly armed and poorly armoured freight-carriers.
The transports had mustered from the traitor-dominated forge world at Antasic IX and the manufactory of Kapel-5642A, en route to take their payloads of weapons to Carandiru. The Sons of Horus had been stretched thin over a dozen sectors by Raven Guard raids, as well as the massed assault of the Therion Cohort and their Titan Legion allies through the Euesa region, forcing the convoys to rendezvous in wilderness space like the Cretherach Reach. The beacon at Cretherach was the perfect point to bring together so many ships, and that was why the Steadfast and the other two ships had been lying in wait for nearly forty days.
As ship after ship had arrived, Aloni and the others had watched with growing amazement. They had hoped for a few vessels but the merchant fleet that had gathered suggested a sizeable reinforcement of Carandiru was being planned. It was a happy coincidence for the loyalists, and though the enemy were too numerous for a head-on assault it was a situation that could not be ignored.
Aloni frowned. The traitor light cruiser commander was being very bold, heading straight for the Wrathful Vanguard at full speed. Evidently the enemy captain was determined to spring the trap as quickly as possible, or perhaps believed he could defeat the strike cruiser without the aid of the other escorts. Noriz had to hold his nerve and get the frigates and destroyers as far away from the main convoy as possible; the grand cruiser would be too laborious to counter the Raven Guard attack and the remaining light cruiser was out of position performing scanner sweeps of the stellar debris fields.
Noriz also had to hold tight on another matter. A single communication, even a narrow-beam transmission, could give away the presence of the other two ships. Had the decoy ship been a Raven Guard vessel Aloni would not be stalking the displays so assiduously, but the Imperial Fists were an unknown quantity in these circumstances. Fine fighters, Aloni knew first-hand, but not as subtle as a warrior created under the Axioms of Corax.
Gaze fixed on the scanner returns, Aloni watched the Wrathful Vanguard closely, seeking some sign of what Noriz might do. It looked as though the Imperial Fists commander was going to meet the incoming light cruiser head-on, perhaps trying to force the traitor officers to commit to an attack without assistance.
It was a foolhardy move by both the Imperial Fists and the Sons of Horus; a mutual match of daring and show of ferocity to scare off the other, like two hounds baring their fangs at one another.
Aloni sighed. Years of war between the Legiones Astartes and there were still those who had learned nothing. For many foes of the Emperor the display of strength would have been enough, but this was legionaries fighting legionaries. Neither side would back down. Both ships’ captains were incapable of fear and would see their threats through to actual battle.
He considered whether he was being inconsiderate of Noriz’s expertise, and underestimating the poise of the Sons of Horus commander. Both having embarked upon a course of direct confrontation it was necessary to see through their actions to their consequence, knowing that to blink, to show a moment of weakness could spell disaster. They were locked on a collision course, maybe literally.
The commander of the Falcons, the corps comprised of the Raven Guard’s remaining assault companies, thought of a third option as he watched the two opposing vessels powering towards each other, determined to end each other in a short-ranged conflagration. The Imperial Fists had been known to engage heavily in honour-duelling, and the Sons of Horus were equally famed for their skill and dedication to single combat. It was entirely possible that the two commanders had, by virtue of common custom, a tacitly issued and accepted challenge between them. They would duel with starships and to the victor would go the spoils.
A flare of energy on the scanner indicated a sudden burst of thruster power. It came from the Wrathful Vanguard. Noriz’s ship burned its retros hard, swinging away from the light cruiser and flanking escorts. At first it looked as though the Imperial Fists commander had baulked at the attack, but Aloni knew better.
‘Praise to you, captain,’ whispered Aloni as he watched the Imperial Fists turn and draw the smaller enemy ships further from the convoy.
Long-range lance fire scattered returns across the display as the Sons of Horus moved into the pursuit, the spray of particles from activated void shields demonstrating that the officers of the Wrathful Vanguard had left it to the last moment before countering, ensuring the enemy would be committed.
Checking the Steadfast’s location, Aloni confirmed that his ship was almost in position. The next few minutes passed slowly as he watched his Imperial Fists allies dragging the enemy ships out of the battle sphere. Noriz could have easily ordered the reactors to overpower and burned away at full speed but instead he was staying just outside optimal range of the pursuing cruiser, trusting to the void shields to withstand the sporadic laser fire directed at them. It was canny fighting by both commanders. The Sons of Horus could not accelerate past battle speed without risking the Wrathful Vanguard turning and giving them a full broadside whilst they were vulnerable, but on the other hand Noriz was making sure he kept the enemy hopeful.
Moving to the engineering console, Aloni activated the internal communications.
‘Power up, full battle readiness.’
There was no need for spoken confirmation. Almost immediately the lights flickered to full power and displays and indicators blazed into life all across the strategium. The spread of multi-coloured glows reminded Aloni of the Deliverance Day celebrations across Kiavahr, when the tech-priests allowed the people of the forge world to commemorate those that had fallen to rescue the world from the tech-guilds. ‘Allowed’ was perhaps not the right term; the day of memory was enshrined in law by edict of Lord Corax as part of the agreement that had seen the Mechanicum take control of the planet.
Horus’s rebellion had ended that. No more Deliverance Day parades. No more celebrations of the ending of Old Night. Darkness had been brought back to the galaxy.
A single whoop of a siren signalled the move to attack stance. As well as this audio warning, a recovery rune flashed across the comms of every legionary aboard. Like statues coming to life, the bridge officers waiting dormant around the edges of the strategium powered up their suits. Eyes of yellow and red blazed into life as their auto-senses activated. Black-armoured giants stepped out of the diminishing gloom.
Aloni rattled off a string of commands as his lieutenants strode to their stations and servitors burbled into consciousness. His next act was to send a communication to Captain Noriz.
‘Gratitude, captain. I did not know the Imperial Fists were so adept at playing the part of bait.’ It took a few moments for the reply to crackle back.
‘We are the Sons of Dorn, the wall-brothers,’ Noriz replied. ‘We are used to letting the foe throw themselves at us. It is nice to actually withdraw once we have their attention.’
‘I suggest you do that, captain. I will see you when we rendezvous with the fleet.’
‘Good hunting, Commander Aloni.’
While the Wrathful Vanguard moved up to full power, opening the distance from the pursuing Sons of Horus as the Imperial Fists raced to get enough separation for a warp translation, the Steadfast arrowed into the heart of the enemy convoy. The power from the reflex shields diverted back into the void shield generators as the cruiser slid into range. Even now, fully revealed, it
took a couple of minutes for the enemy sensors to detect the approaching ship.
As the Steadfast dived down into the midst of the convoy the Shadowstrike dropped its reflex shields and appeared about thirty thousand kilometres to port, on a crossing course.
‘All batteries, open fire!’ snapped Aloni as the main guns came into range. ‘Targets free!’
The Sons of Horus grand cruiser was turning ponderously towards the suddenly revealed Raven Guard ships, too far away to prevent the pair of void-predators slicing into the transports. Missiles, plasma and shells ripped into the virtually unprotected freighters while sporadic, ineffectual fire from enemy defence turrets splashed harmlessly against the warships’ fully active shields.
Blossom after blossom of exploding gas and plasma charted the course of the two hunters, one cutting down through the mass of cargo-haulers, the other moving along the length of the convoy. The enemy light cruiser turned sharply about but, with the other escorts so out of position, its commander was reluctant to face a pair of enemy vessels single-handed. The Sons of Horus could do nothing as the Raven Guard turned together, broadsides and dorsal weapons still blazing, and blasted a path back out of the fleet.
For some it might have been difficult to withdraw from the battle without once laying a shot upon the warships of the traitor Legion, but Aloni was well-versed in the Axioms of his primarch. There was nothing to be gained and everything to be risked by direct confrontation. The greater prize had been seized.
Twelve freighters destroyed, and another seven crippled, in a single attack run.
‘Losses not easily replaced,’ said Lieutenant Shaak, standing by the sensor array, sensing Aloni’s mood. ‘Legionaries without ammunition cannot storm Terra.’
