Ravenwing

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘No harm suffered,’ said Cadael, laying his hand on the arm of Telemenus. ‘Your apology is accepted.’

  ‘No.’ Amanael’s sharp word stung like a whip to Telemenus’s pride. ‘You are becoming insular and selfish, Telemenus. Apology is not enough. You risk contempt of your brothers with this behaviour. You will make further amends as I deem required.’

  ‘There is no contempt, brother-sergeant, I assure you,’ Telemenus argued. ‘I was distracted, that is all.’

  ‘Your deeds speak differently to your words,’ Amanael said, turning away. The Ravenwing attack bikes were advancing slowly towards the squad, moving between the piles of orkish casualties, the riders putting rounds from their bolt pistols into any alien that still moved. ‘Offer no further argument, my judgement has been made. Do not embarrass us in front of the Second Company.’

  ‘I submit to your will, brother-sergeant,’ said Telemenus, lowering to one knee in deference to his superior.

  ‘Good.’ Amanael beckoned to Nemeon with a finger. ‘Brother, give Telemenus a spare magazine, if you have one.’

  Still shamed, Telemenus mumbled his thanks as Nemeon proffered the ammunition. He stood up, sheathed his knife and loaded his bolter, feeling better the moment the magazine slid into place.

  ‘Sergeant Seraphiel is mustering the company grid-north,’ said Saphael, pointing past the smouldering ruins of the ork settlement. ‘About three hundred metres. We should move.’

  ‘Good,’ said Amanael. ‘Take lead, brother. Apollon, accompany Brother Cadael until we can render him into the care of the Apothecary.’

  ‘I can still fight, brother-sergeant!’ protested Cadael as Saphael led the squad into the ruins.

  ‘Only just,’ replied the sergeant. ‘If Gideon cannot improve the mobility in your arm you will return to the rearguard at the main breach.’

  ‘Yes, brother-sergeant,’ Cadael said with a heavy sigh. ‘As you command.’

  ‘I want to hear no more complaint or bickering,’ Amanael said. ‘We still have a stern test to face. These ‘Divine’ will not be as easy to defeat as the Unworthy, I am sure. We must keep our wits sharp and our weapons ready.’

  The words were spoken to the whole squad but Telemenus felt them directed at him in particular.

  ‘Yes, brother-sergeant,’ he chorused with the others as the squad advanced into the fire and smoke.

  Strange Forces

  Following behind Sammael, as the Grand Master and his command squad followed the circular transitway that ran around Port Imperial’s central tower, Epistolary Harahel felt uneasy. The encounters with the cannibal cults had left him suspicious of some deeper motive behind the existence of the Unworthy. He had not spoken of the matter with Sammael or Malcifer but he was sure that they each harboured similar disconcerting thoughts.

  He had mind-scanned a few of the Unworthy and found nothing more sinister than misguided teachings of cannibalistic resurrectionism. They had only ever eaten their own dead in the belief that the souls of the deceased would be reborn again in future generations. It was part of the Overlord’s mechanism to control the renegades, making them believe they were a favoured people, cutting off contact with outsiders. It was an effective measure to instil fervent loyalty and fanatical devotion in the Unworthy, and having achieved higher status those who were selected to become Divine owed their success to the patronage of the Overlord.

  The squad passed over an enclosed bridge, the tunnels of the rail system beneath. Through crystalflex panels in the ceiling Harahel could see the spire stretching up towards the stars, its surface pinpricked by windows, their white light harsh and sharp in the vacuum outside the station. Above the tower flickered three blue stars; the plasma engines of the Implacable Justice seen against the darkness as the strike cruiser orbited above Port Imperial.

  In many of the spire’s arching windows there were reflected flames from the starships’ bombardment, the battery magazines and power housings ablaze while oxygen from the breaches fuelled fires that danced as shimmers in the distant windows. Amongst the ruin of the rest of the star fort, the central spire rose untouched; Sammael had not wished risking the death of the Overlord by attacking the tower directly. It was the starlight and tower lights and firelight that illuminated the transitway with rectangles of shifting brightness, the black-armoured command squad passing in and out of the darkness as they raced along the road. The metronomic changes between light and dark were almost hypnotic.

  As the tunnelway dipped back towards the foundation plate of the station Harahel felt something at the edge of his perception. His instincts were telling him something was amiss and he pulled over his bike so that he could concentrate. Noticing this manoeuvre, Sammael brought the squad to a halt a short way ahead and over the comm made inquiries about the nature of the delay. Harahel said nothing but held up a hand to signal for the interruptions to cease.

  He had come to a stop in one of the patches of light from the overhead windows. Dismounting, the Epistolary looked up at the spear-thrust of the spire and then closed his eyes, picturing the tower in his mind. He allowed his othersense to strengthen, his mind flowing from the confines of his head, his soul detaching from its mortal vessel to seek the truth.

  Blue sparks flared along the cables of the Librarian’s psychic hood and danced across the lenses of his helm. He felt the warp opening up like a gulf beneath him, the ground shifting to a maelstrom of energy under his feet. Like quicksand sucking him down, Harahel felt the warp drawing him in, trying to drown him. It was only a momentary sensation and one that he had been trained long ago to dismiss. The whirling gulf narrowed as Harahel exerted his will, drawing together the edges of the ravine that sought to topple him into the immaterium. Leaving only the tiniest cracks in his mind, through which the power of the warp could pass into real space, the Epistolary focused on the tower.

  He could feel dozens, scores of minds. There were two hundred and thirty-five, all of them adult humans, but touched by something else. He did not want to delve too deeply for the moment, but widened the crack into the warp a little more to allow a greater flow of energy into his mind. With this he was able to reach out further, sensing the gestalt entity of the Divine.

  All thought, all emotion, all life made ripples in the warp. The lives and thoughts of a normal human were brief flickers that barely registered. The minds of psykers were like candle flames or bright bonfires depending upon their power. Where there was similarity of purpose, the thoughts gathered, like attracting like. The Dark Angels’ purpose was like an iron curtain across the warp, forged from faith and courage. It was a near-impenetrable barrier. For the Unworthy, it had been pools of despair, surrounded by a miasma of bleakness yet each of them had also lit the warp with a flickering spark of hope. The after-images of the orks’ psyche was dimming, a roaring green wave that had pulsed and thrashed during the battle and was now subsiding.

  From the tower, from the minds of the fighters within, Harahel sensed very little. There was a background buzz of blood and war, but that was only to be expected from a cadre of pirates and murderers. The Epistolary could not quite identify the binding sensation of the Divine, too few perhaps or maybe the Overlord had taught them techniques for shielding themselves from psychic attack; one of the Fallen could well know such tricks. Certainly the enemy were masked in some part by their false faith in the Overlord, shielding them from the warp as the pure faith of the Space Marines guarded their minds.

  Seeking more power Harahel opened up the breach into the warp just a little further still, though nowhere near the boundary of his ability to tap into its energy. Even so, he felt nauseous, a sensation he had not felt for many years. His gene-seed-modified organs did not sicken easily and nor was his physiologically-improved body prone to dizziness or vomiting. Yet on touching the power of the warp and the minds of the Divine, Harahel felt something utterly corrupt. The feel of it was slick on his skin and c
loying in his nostrils, stinging his eyes and making his ears ring.

  He choked, coughing just once, before recovering. Even this momentary lapse had not gone unnoticed by Sammael.

  ‘Brother, what is it?’ the Grand Master asked. ‘Is it psychic attack?’

  ‘Worse,’ Harahel replied over the command channel, his words for Sammael and Malcifer. He coughed again, trying to clear a lump in his throat that he knew was only in his mind. ‘There is something more to the enemy than we know.’

  ‘And of the Overlord?’ asked Malcifer, turning his bike around and riding back to the Librarian. ‘Do you detect the Overlord?’

  ‘Alas, no, Brother-Chaplain,’ Harahel replied with a shake of the head. Malcifer growled but the Librarian sought to dampen the Chaplain’s frustration. ‘It is not conclusive. The effect of the Divine forced me to break the scan before I was able to register on individual minds. It may be that we are dealing with one of the Fallen Librarians.’

  This news was greeted with silence and Harahel knew well why it was such a cause for concern. All Fallen were corrupt, their treachery confirmed as such. Some had descended further than others, though, and there were some Fallen who gratefully accepted the judgement and mercy of the Chapter. Many of the Fallen were simply renegades, but also many of them had turned to the worship of the Dark Powers of Chaos. So far, every Fallen who had been a psyker was in the latter category.

  According to the records of the Librarium, there had been twenty-eight psykers on Caliban when the Lion had returned from fighting Horus, and of those three were accounted for in the fighting, which left twenty-five psykers of varying skill, power and discipline. The Chapter had found seventeen in the last ten thousand years and Harahel considered it a good omen that they may have discovered another. Despite this, apprehending the Overlord would be dangerous. Combining the discipline of a Space Marine Librarian – and Harahel had no idea of the rank the Overlord had attained before turning on the primarch – and the raw power of the Chaos sorcerer, the Fallen Librarian would not allow himself to be taken meekly.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Sammael.

  ‘Of course not, brother,’ said the Librarian. ‘Nothing we know at the moment is for sure. We have still to prove beyond doubt that the Fallen are still here, or were ever here. With that borne in mind, the conditioning of the Unworthy, the psychic barrier protecting the Divine, both point to the interference of a psyker. Whether present or not, I could only say if I press further with my scans.’

  ‘Is that hazardous?’ asked Malcifer. ‘What threat does this psyker pose if you do so?’

  ‘I am unwilling to risk a direct psychic confrontation at this time,’ Harahel told them. ‘For all that we can say, the Divine are also psykers, and it is a measure of talent that separates them from the Unworthy. It would be prideful to assume that my mind is strong enough to resist or defeat a foe that has access to the raw power of... of the Empyrean Dwellers to draw upon. Against such energy my psychic hood might prove insufficient defence.’

  ‘What do you suggest we do?’ asked Sammael. ‘Should I alter the attack plan?’

  ‘Not for the moment, Grand Master,’ said Harahel. ‘We shall be in the vanguard of the attack and so I will be on hand to deliver a fresher verdict once we have encountered the foe directly. You may wish to issue warning to the rest of the force, to be aware of possible psychic manipulation or attack.’

  ‘Better to be prepared than sorrowful,’ agreed Sammael. ‘Is there any particular reason why we should remain at this place?’

  Harahel looked around but neither saw nor felt anything remarkable about the stretch of bridge they were on.

  ‘No, it is simply where we were when I felt the disturbance,’ said the Librarian.

  ‘What disturbance?’ said Malcifer. ‘A warp-related event?’

  ‘No fear of a breach,’ Harahel assured the Chaplain, realising that Malcifer was skirting around the subject of daemonic intrusion. ‘There is nothing here to suggest the veil is any weaker. If the Overlord is a pawn of the Dark Powers he has not entreated them to send otherworldly minions at his behest. I think it is simply that the inner tower has wards placed upon it, to guard against psychic attack. It is dampening my powers and it was this effect that I sensed as we approached closer.’

  ‘What could have such an effect at this range?’ said Sammael. ‘It is a powerful psyker that can suppress his abilities nearly half a kilometre distant. The tower itself would take immense reserves of psychic energy to shield.

  ‘When we approached, you noted that Port Imperial’s void shields were inoperative, correct?’

  ‘Yes, there should be several banks of void shields protecting a star fort such as this. None were activated in defence of the station.’

  ‘An intriguing possibility suggests itself,’ said Harahel as he stepped across his bike. He and Malcifer rejoined the others and Sammael signalled for the squad to continue towards their rendezvous with other elements of the Ravenwing force. ‘It is highly speculative, though. I should not waste time with idle chatter. We should concentrate on the execution of the battle plan.’

  ‘Be brief, brother, and no distraction will be incurred,’ said Sammael. ‘Tell us what intrigues you.’

  ‘Often when a star fort such as this is moved from system to system, it must be evacuated – it has no Geller fields to protect the populace while in the warp. Specialist teams from the Navigator houses and the scholastica psykana must be brought in to guide the fort through the warp whilst protected by battle psykers. Void shields utilise warp energy to create a defensive barrier, in effect an omni-directional warp portal that displaces incoming matter and energy.’

  Harahel stopped, realising he was rambling slightly, telling his companions what they already knew. He focused on the point of his explanation.

  ‘The sensation I felt was not dissimilar to the warp-suppression effect of a Geller field. The Overlord could possibly have used the warp cores of the void shields to create a Geller-type effect.’

  ‘That seems to be a lot of effort expended to counter the rare eventuality that Port Imperial would be discovered and that it would come under psychic attack,’ said Malcifer.

  ‘You misinterpret my hypothesis, Brother-Chaplain,’ said Harahel. There were sealed doors ahead and the squadron slowed. In less than a minute they would be back with other members of the company and the Librarian’s speculation would have to end. ‘The Overlord could be preparing to move Port Imperial through the warp.’

  ‘A roving battlestation?’ said Sammael, not quite masking his incredulity.

  ‘A one-way journey, by my estimation. The field encloses only the province of the Divine, not the rest of the station. The areas inhabited by the Unworthy would be left open to the raw element of the warp. Perhaps that is even the Overlord’s intent, to smooth passage with his infernal masters with a sacrifice of his people?’

  ‘Disturbing,’ said Sammael. ‘Speak no more of this idea for the moment. We shall discuss it further when the spire has been won.’

  ‘As you command, Grand Master,’ said Harahel, bringing his bike to a stop with the others while Daedis accessed the door controls.

  The doors hissed open, revealing a plaza-like area at the conjunction of several corridors. The command squadron moved forwards to join the rest of the Ravenwing force at the area designated Assault Zone Alpha. Several Land Speeders floated close by, two attack bikes and two bike squadrons with them. To the left was a single passageway that gently rose up towards the central spire. It was one of half a dozen entrances that Sammael had identified as routes of attack. The Ravenwing and Fifth Company would assault together, the bikes and Land Speeders securing the main access and transit routes while the Fifth Company cleared the tower level-by-level.

  Checking the chronometer display of his bike, Harahel saw there were forty-five seconds until the attack began. Letting just a
chink open between his mind and the warp, he surveyed the tower beyond the gate at the end of the passage. He felt nothing; no life at all. Checking the digital display, he saw that the energy reading from his bike’s sensors confirmed his psychic scan. There were no enemies directly guarding the doorway.

  ‘The portal is undefended,’ he said to Sammael, surprised.

  ‘I know, and I like it not,’ replied the Grand Master. ‘Scans from the Implacable Justice place them at three main areas in the upper levels of the spire. We can expect the road ahead to have been prepared for us.’ The vox-bead in Harahel’s ear hissed as the Grand Master changed to the company-wide channel.

  ‘The enemy have been expecting us for some time and have made suitable welcome, I am sure,’ Sammael told his warriors. ‘So far we have encountered dregs of this rebel force. The Divine who hold the central spire may be tougher opposition but they are no match for the Dark Angels. The Emperor is on our side and with the righteousness of our cause to propel us we shall overcome all foes. This cohort forms the last defence of Port Imperial and when they are vanquished victory will be ours. Strike hard, strike swift, strike sure. For the Emperor! Praise the Lion!’

  ‘Praise the Lion,’ whispered Harahel, pulling his force axe free. Its blade sprang into crackling life as he eased part of his psychic power through the crystalline matrix embedded in the weapon. ‘Praise the Lion, indeed.’

  The Divine

  The interior of the central tower was in the same state of disrepair as the rest of the star fort, a fact that surprised Telemenus. The squad, minus Cadael who had been deemed unfit for battle by Apothecary Gideon, had pushed into the spire with the other squads of the Fifth Company, advancing into a cordon set up by the swift-moving attack of the Ravenwing. Establishing a perimeter at the major transport hub at the heart of the tower, the Ravenwing had pushed up several levels via the system of conveyors and goods elevators that reached two-thirds of the way to the summit of the tower.