Corax

by Gav Thorpe

  The primarch looked away, taking in his surroundings. They were still out in the open and vulnerable to attack. The Raven Guard had despatched the first wave of soldiers from the roofs but more would be on their way.

  ‘Probably best that we move inside,’ he told the others, stepping towards the nearest bunker door. ‘Follow me. Clear the complex.’

  ‘And if we find that ill-spawned bastard Nathian?’ asked one of the legionaries.

  ‘Mine,’ Corax snapped in reply. He flexed his fingers in anticipation of them closing on the turncoat Raven Guard. ‘Another traitor that needs to be taught the folly of not finishing the task at hand.’

  Fifteen

  Carandiru

  [DV +2.5 hours]

  The last two survivors fled down the corridor, not looking back. Corax dashed after them, long strides assisted by half-opened wings so that he seemed to glide between every step. Reaching his prey, he drove his armoured hands through their backpacks, shattering vertebrae, and lifted them both from the ground. Their panicked flailing caused him no difficulty.

  Another door opened to his left as he tossed their twitching bodies aside. He turned to see several Raven Guard, weapons at the ready, with Arendi at their head.

  ‘Follow me,’ said the primarch. He turned his back on the new arrivals to head down the corridor towards the main chamber of the keep.

  A cold rage burned through the primarch at the thought of Nathian’s betrayal. It was not the notion that a Raven Guard might side with Horus that drew his ire; intellectually Corax understood there would be warriors from his Legion who had fallen to the temptations of rebellion. With Nathian the treachery seemed personal. Corax had favoured Nathian over doubts keenly expressed by others, taking him in to the inner circle of the rebellion on Lycaeus and, later, bringing him into the Raven Guard against the objections of others.

  Perhaps that was what angered Corax: that he should have known better. Nathian’s betrayal was the primarch’s pride staring back at him, an embodiment of Corax’s refusal to back down, so often a boon but on occasion a terrible vice.

  With these thoughts burning through him the leader of the Raven Guard cut and smashed his way through the scarlet-uniformed soldiers he found in his path, barely giving them a second thought. He gave more mind to the cracks and holes and burns of his armour and the soreness of the wounds within; reminders of how close Nathian had come to killing his former master.

  The inner sanctum was located underground, reached by several sloping corridors. Corax stopped to despatch Arendi and the remaining bodyguards to cut off escape, but the primarch knew that Nathian would be waiting for retribution. There had always been a nihilistic streak in the traitor, which Corax had hoped loyalty and dedication to new duty would erase.

  Now that he was unfettered by oath or fraternity, Nathian’s less favourable tendencies had come to the fore.

  Corax descended to the next level and then paused. Nathian had boasted that Corax had been easy to predict. Did the renegade have some other welcome planned for the primarch in his headquarters? It seemed very likely, but unless Nathian had created a whole brigade of New Men to wait in ambush with a forge world’s worth of experimental weapons – and evidence suggested that was not the case – Corax could not foresee what threat the former legionary posed.

  The hydraulics of the door rumbled open at Corax’s approach. Through the doorway the primarch could see Nathian, his back turned, hunched in front of a bank of screens. Lights glimmered from his black armour and his face was lit by the images on the displays. Corax saw that they were vid-feeds from across Carandiru – scenes of battle around the various installations and monitors showing the populace overthrowing their guards in the internment settlements.

  The door opposite hissed open to reveal Arendi’s stealthy warriors. Corax held up a hand and waved them back, preferring to enter the traitor’s lair alone. He was impervious to all but the most powerful weapons, but his legionaries were not.

  Nathian turned as Corax crossed the threshold. He smiled, thin lipped, eyes filled with madness.

  ‘Nice of you to come after me,’ said the renegade. ‘Welcome to my abode.’

  Corax glanced around the chamber. It was about twenty metres across, on two levels, with a broad walkway around the walls alongside consoles of comms equipment and scanning arrays, and a lower circular sub-floor in the middle furnished with chairs, tables and cabinets.

  ‘Messy,’ Corax said, curling a lip at the detritus piled on the floor and furnishings. Most seemed to be empty bottles. The primarch cocked a curious eye towards his foe. ‘Drinking? Really?’

  Nathian shrugged.

  ‘’Fraid so, my lord. But have no fear, I’m perfectly sober at the moment. Do you know how hard it is to get drunk when you have all these special extra organs processing toxins out of your bloodstream?’ Nathian gestured towards his torso. ‘Another fine gift of the Emperor. A man who, if ever I’ve met one, needs to enjoy a good drink now and then.’

  ‘I am going to kill you,’ said Corax.

  ‘Of course you are,’ said Nathian.

  ‘But first you are going to answer my questions.’

  ‘If you like.’ Nathian said, stepping down into the sub-level. He slumped into an oversized chair, armour wheezing, the metal of the seat protesting under his weight. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

  ‘What happened to you on Isstvan? I thought you were dead,’ said Corax, ignoring the traitor’s taunts. ‘Why turn on me now?’

  ‘You abandoned me first!’ snarled Nathian with real passion in his voice and eyes. He stood up and jabbed an accusing finger at the primarch. ‘Buried beneath a pile of Word Bearers I slew with my own bolter and blade, you left me and dozens of others.’

  ‘I never left you. I was wounded. Your loyal brothers took me away.’

  ‘Before that,’ said Nathian, waving away Corax’s reasons. ‘When you quit the fight with the Night Haunter and Lorgar. You ran. You left us to die!’

  Corax said nothing, jaw tightening at the memory.

  ‘I see you know what I’m talking about. I gave you everything – soul and body, life and death. I believed in you, in the Emperor and his damned crusade. That’s what you did to me, Corvus. You made me believe in something, made me proud.’ Nathian sighed and turned away, fists clenched. ‘And then you left me, proving the lie of everything that had come before.’

  ‘It was not a lie. The treachery of Horus w–’

  ‘Horus? You blame Horus?’ The traitor whirled back, eyes bright and wide with rage, blood flushing his pale cheeks. ‘Horus was not there on the battlefields of Isstvan. You were!’ His voice dropped. ‘And Lorgar was there. He found me, and some of the others, hurt and discarded. And when he spoke the fog was lifted from my eyes – fog you have spun around me with your posturing and lies!’

  ‘Lorgar cares nothing for you.’

  ‘He spoke and we listened and it made sense, proper sense, for the first time in decades. The nature of the universe, the things you wouldn’t tell us for fear we would see that we no longer needed you. And his love... He loved us and told us so, and we felt the truth of it. And so the love we gave you that was never returned we gave to him instead.’

  ‘Pathetic,’ snapped Corax. ‘Absolutely pathetic.’ He turned slowly, gesturing at everything around them. ‘Self-indulgent, pathetic and weak. Everything I would expect of a traitor. You learned nothing from me. You grew up in a prison and now you become the jailer? You want to torture and maim those weaker than you? What vileness did Lorgar and the others pour into you? For the architect of these “New Men”, you’re nothing but an insane egotist.’

  ‘Really?’ Nathian’s voice rose in pitch and broke. ‘I found a use here. You had a use for me once.’ He laughed, baring yellowing teeth. ‘And besides, you call me insane?’

  He bounded up to the outer walkway and stabbed
at controls, bringing up a pict-feed on one of the larger screens. Corax felt a knot in his stomach and his mouth dried as he watched a squad of Branne’s Raptors breaking into a cell wing – warriors that his gene-manipulations had tainted.

  ‘That’s different,’ he said before Nathian could voice his accusation, but the words sounded weak, a flimsy excuse, and the traitor knew it.

  ‘So different, my lord. So very different.’ Nathian bared his teeth, brow furrowed with rage. ‘The difference is that I am honest about what I have done here. You will never stand in judgement of me again, Corvus. None of you!’

  He took in a shuddering breath and turned back to the console. His hands activated several controls and then he whirled back to confront Corax. Now there was real madness in his gaze, a mania that made Corax shudder.

  ‘You don’t rule my fate. Nobody does!’

  Corax’s eyes moved to a small screen with a flickering message on the display.

  REACTOR SAFEGUARDS DISABLED.

  ‘That is your grand plan?’ said Corax. ‘Self-destruction? You know I will kill you.’

  He saw that Nathian had a bolt pistol in his hand. ‘No. No, you will not.’

  ‘That is not going to do me much harm, is it?’ said Corax.

  ‘Oh, this is going to hurt you for a long time to come, Corvus. Maybe the rest of your immortal life.’

  And with that, Nathian pressed the muzzle of the bolt pistol under his own chin and pulled the trigger.

  The bolt cut up through his mouth. A millisecond later, the top of Nathian’s head disappeared in a fountain of blood, bone and brains, and he collapsed back onto the console.

  Corax’s face was spattered red. Jaw clenched, he wiped the gore from his features, unable to tear his gaze from the ruin that he had once called comrade, disturbed in a way that he had not been since he had looked into the eyes of the Night Haunter and seen a dark reflection of himself. Were death and despair the only gifts he had to offer?

  Then his eyes flickered to the reactor display. It was at eighty per cent of critical function and had been building for some time – ever since the New Men had been killed, Corax assumed. Nathian’s tirade had been nothing but a play for time.

  The other door hissed open and Arendi dashed in. His puffy eyes searched the room for threat before they settled on Nathian’s corpse. They then moved to the countdown display and widened.

  ‘I heard a shot.’

  ‘The traitor has set the plasma reactor to overload,’ Corax confirmed as he crossed the chamber.

  ‘I always thought he was a spiteful bastard.’ There was understandable concern in Arendi’s voice. ‘How long do we have? Should we evacuate?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Corax. He carefully punched in a command, bringing up a code-protected access display. The primarch’s fingers tapped out numbers on the runepad and then the screen went blank. A few seconds later an acknowledgement scrolled into view.

  REACTOR SAFEGUARDS ENABLED. SAFE OPERATIONAL MODE RESTORED.

  ‘You already knew the code?’ Arendi stared at Corax with awe, mouth open.

  ‘No,’ replied the primarch. ‘Nathian was never an original thinker. The pass-code was his prisoner number from Lycaeus. Lucky first guess.’

  ‘I...’ Arendi shook his head, confused and then waved away his concerns. ‘Well, it is good that we’re in no immediate danger. I wouldn’t have believed even Nathian could turn on you, if I hadn’t seen some of the things I’ve seen these last few years. It looks like he couldn’t handle it, even then, whatever his justifications were.’

  ‘He was weak,’ said Corax. ‘I knew it, and I should never have ignored it.’

  ‘Seems to me he had a moment of weakness, you’re right. But you’re an idiot if you think it was easy for him. Anyone that’s survived until this point, on either side, has shown a strength of sorts, be it for good or bad.’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve called me an idiot, Gherith,’ Corax said quietly. ‘Nathian made the mistake of underestimating me as well.’

  ‘You think...’ Arendi looked at the headless body. ‘You think I’m like him?’

  ‘I am detecting a fair amount of insubordination in you,’ the primarch said.

  Arendi looked wounded at his words. ‘I know things have changed a lot, but I never knew you would put yourself above criticism, Corvus. If I speak out of turn, it’s because I’ve learnt that softening words is a waste of time. Mean what you say, as the saying goes. If you want prim and proper Ultramarines doing as they’re told, or zealous Word Bearers hanging off your every word, you shouldn’t have tried so bloody hard to make us rely on ourselves. If you want Raven Guard, you have to take the rough with the smooth. I remember when you weren’t so keen on formality.’

  The former commander seemed to be testing Corax. He had called him ‘Corvus’, just like Nathian, harking back to those older times. Why was he goading his primarch? Maybe there was something else happening here...

  ‘It was you that told me about this place,’ said Corax.

  ‘It was.’ Arendi looked around at the screens and nodded. ‘Good thing I did. These “New Men” freaks could have been a big problem, if the traitors had perfected the gene-techniques.’

  ‘And so it was coincidence that Nathian was here, waiting to trap me?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it coincidence, but I don’t know what you’re implying.’

  The primarch gestured to the walls around them. ‘A facility dedicated to manipulating and mutating the Legiones Astartes gene-seed? And of all those that might discover it, it falls to me, the one primarch that has learnt more about the origins of our kind than anyone else? That stretches credulity. I think that whoever created this place knew I had access to secret knowledge. How else would they get me here, except through one of my own?’

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that, Corvus? I brought you here to end this.’

  ‘End what? My fight? The resistance to Horus? It’s too neat. Victories do not come this easily anymore.’

  ‘I should warn you – I’m about to use that word a third time, Corvus,’ Arendi muttered, backing away. ‘And some others you might not like.’

  Corax stepped closer, looming over the Space Marine, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘How did you get off Isstvan, Gherith? What happened to the others? Where are they now?’

  ‘I don’t understand you, lord.’ Arendi took another step back, retreating into a console.

  ‘This place was not the secret you were keeping from me. The librarian saw it, in your head. Something you were not telling me. Nathian has made me think about it again. We were lucky to get away from Isstvan with our lives. Nathian did a deal with Lorgar in return for his. How did you get away, Arendi, when so many didn’t?’

  ‘I can’t believe...’ Arendi slumped, jaw trembling, eyes downcast.

  ‘How?’ Corax was implacable, barely keeping his anger in check.

  ‘We used them!’ Arendi blurted. ‘We – myself and the other Raven Guard – were meant to take the lighter and wait for the others. They were attacking the main facility, a feint while we slipped unseen into position. We used the Salamanders and Iron Hands as a distraction and made our escape.’

  He stepped back from Corax, his shoulders hunched, his head bowed.

  ‘You sacrificed them?’ Corax said, shocked.

  It was not the answer he had been expecting, but it was small comfort. The truth was almost as harsh as the primarch’s fear had been. Yet for all that, Corax could hear the hurt, the honest guilt, in Arendi’s words.

  ‘There were more traitors at the landing field station than we had thought.’ Arendi turned haunted, imploring eyes to the primarch. ‘We had to leave. Had to. If we had waited, nobody would have escaped.’

  The primarch looked at the headless corpse and considered two different fates. Arendi, w
ho had continued to hope, and Nathian, who had given in to despair.

  ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘It was a difficult choice for you.’

  Arendi took a breath and straightened, still not meeting the primarch’s eye.

  It was a worry. Perhaps Arendi had not betrayed his primarch or the Raven Guard, but there were oaths of brotherhood that he had broken. The trust of comrades that he had betrayed. If Lorgar had spun his golden words to Arendi, would he have fared any better than Nathian?

  Could any of them ever truly be trusted?

  So said the cautious part of him, at least, but Corax knew that in treacherous times it was easy to see traitors everywhere. Could he trust Arendi? No, but then he no longer truly trusted himself. Risks had been taken and confidences had to be earned. If Arendi had wanted Corax dead or in Nathian’s clutches, then he could have simply left him to be bested by the New Men.

  The only reason to let Corax survive as it had transpired would be to get another traitor close to the primarch. Could such a convoluted suspicion be true?

  Caution and paranoia, a grey area easily crossed. No, Corax had no reason not to trust Arendi, and the damage done by the knowledge of Nathian’s treachery becoming known could be offset by the example set by Arendi and his companions.

  Hope was too valuable an asset to sacrifice it to paranoia.

  ‘One other thing, Gherith.’

  ‘Lord Corax?’

  The primarch did not have to trust Arendi, but he could choose to. For the moment, at least.

  ‘Thank you. For keeping faith with me.’

  Corax leads the search through the prison complex

  Epilogue

  Carandiru

  [DV +2 days]

  ‘I’m not sure this is right,’ said Branne. The words were spoken quietly but the weight of his disagreement spoke at far greater volume.

  Corax looked down at the commander and then across to the squads of Raptors forming up on the ramps leading to the underground complex where the failed New Men were still imprisoned.