Hammer and Bolter 13

by Christian Dunn

  He could not outpace his foes and he could not outfight them. Corax’s only option was to hold his nerve and stay focused on evading detection. It was something he had been good at since he was a boy, and he was not going to start making rash decisions now.

  Blacklight protocols meant the complete shutdown of all non-essential systems. One by one, life support, lighting, heating and other environmental systems powered down to their minimum levels; just enough for the human crew to survive. Even the artificial gravity was lessened to one-half Terran normal, freeing up valuable power for the plasma drives.

  In the busy transport compartments in the depths of the hold, nearly fifteen hundred legionaries were packed together as darkness descended. The battle-barge had been designed to carry a fraction of that number.

  Space had been made in storage holds, weapon bays, and amongst the gantries and decks of the engine rooms. Squads had found room in maintenance crawlways and in stairwells, and several dozen elevator and conveyor shafts had been decommissioned to provide even more space. Even with such measures, the warriors of the Raven Guard had little freedom of movement. Only the main access corridors had been kept clear, to allow runners easy access between the strategium and other essential stations.

  Amongst the throng, Alpharius watched the lights dimming and then going out. Of course, he was not the Alpharius, but by some clever mind-programming and a little psychic intervention by the Legion’s Librarius, he had chosen to forget his real name. To all intents and purposes, he now was Alpharius.

  And he was a little concerned. He sat with his adopted squad on a gangway above the plasma reactors, clad in his armour. Environment warning sigils lit up in his display as the air thinned and gravity lessened. Without thought he gave a sub-vocal command to power up the auto-senses of his helmet.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  Alpharius turned his head as Command Aloni’s voice rang along the gantry. He realised the captain was talking to him.

  ‘You know what blacklight means,’ continued Aloni. ‘Power to minimal. Do you realise what kind of energy signature one and a half thousand power armoured legionaries are going to give off? Everybody pay attention! Everything is to be set to minimum output, lowest cycle. Rebreathing, moisture recycling, locomotion. Everything. No communications, no external address, no movement.’

  Nodding his compliance, Alpharius powered down his suit, becoming an immobile statue of ceramite, plasteel and adamantium. His secondary heart began to beat, compensating for the lower temperature outside, and his multi-lung inflated, enabling him to cope with air that had not been properly recycled.

  Around him the others were doing the same. Here, out by the reactors, all life support was being withdrawn, leaving each legionary cocooned within his own personal environment. Artificial night descended, broken only by the wink of illuminated gauges and monitor lights on the twin reactors fifty metres below the walkway. Moisture began to ice over the armour of the legionaries, thin trails of vapour dribbling from face masks and backpack exhaust vents.

  Locked inside his suit, Alpharius realised how precarious his position was. Discovery was not an immediate problem. What with the reorganisation of the Legion, and the general unwillingness of the others to discuss what had happened on Isstvan, it had been simple enough to take up his new role.

  His face was still sore from the grafting surgery, particularly where the implanted flesh of his new face met his original skin at the base of his neck and around his throat. The bone beneath had been remoulded and ached, while tendons and muscles that had been shortened or lengthened felt raw beneath his stolen skin.

  Alpharius swallowed, remembering where the body had been found, no more than five minutes dead, leg blasted off by a Whirlwind rocket, spine snapped across a ridge of rock. The Apothecaries had acted as quickly as possible. For decades the Alpha Legion had striven to look alike, modelling themselves on their primarch, glorying in their anonymity. To have black hair, to have distinctive features and eyes that were a pale green, was a new sensation for him.

  And the memories lurked inside his mind too. He knew a little about the legionary whose persona he had taken. He had taken in the meat of the fallen Raven Guard, allowing his omophagea to dissect and absorb the information about his prey. Bolstered by the abilities of the Librarians – abilities forbidden by the Decree at Nikaea but still widely practised by the Alpha Legion – he had gathered what fragments he could of the dead legionary’s life.

  He could feel them, flashes of images, snippets of conversation. More than that, Alpharius could feel how his new persona had felt. He had been proud, a veteran of the Lycaeus uprising, and had earned distinction with the Raven Guard since they had been united with their primarch.

  The memories itched as well, jarring inside his thoughts, confusing him occasionally. Over the time he had spent fleeing across Isstvan V with his new comrades, he had learned their names and faces and the way they fought. The most fraught time had been the first few days, when commands had been issued in codephrases, and formations called out in battle-lingua that he did not know, a language evolved on Deliverance that he had not grown up with. Yet he had been picked for this mission because of his gift with languages, his quick mind and his instinct for adaptation. His deficiencies had been covered by the efficiency and cohesion of the Raven Guard themselves and soon he had managed to blend in during the hit-and-run attacks, avoiding the suspicion of his squad comrades as well as the deadly attention of those pursuing the Raven Guard.

  All of that seemed to be poised on the verge of pointlessness now, as he sat immobile over a reactor that would turn into a small star the moment it was breached, aboard a warship ghosting through an enemy fleet protected by nothing more than a few metres of bonded plasteel and adamantium. One lucky hit and he would be incinerated, along with the rest of those aboard the Avenger.

  He did not know how many others of the Alpha Legion had been successful in taking their place; he did not know if he was the only one or if there were dozens of them. It did not matter. For the moment he was alone, and had to act accordingly. He had to do all he could to stay alive, remain undetected, observe Corax and get in touch with Omegon once they returned to Deliverance.

  As fervently as he had ever hoped for success, he now hoped for his allies to fail. Whoever it was out there chasing the ship – Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, World Eaters, Sons of Horus, Iron Warriors, Imperial Army – Alpharius wished them every disaster that he could imagine: engine failure, outbreaks of disease, weapons malfunction, anything that would stop that one lucky hit from eradicating his existence. He was prepared to give his life for his primarch and his Legion, but not this way, not without a foe to fight and a mission to protect.

  It would be such a pointless way to die, he thought, as the sound of a detonation echoed dully through the hull.

  ‘Nova cannon shell,’ reported Ephrenia. ‘Six thousand kilometres, starboard bow.’

  Corax did not react immediately. Two cruisers had joined the destroyers, the growing enemy flotilla saturating the intervening gulf of space with torpedoes, missiles and plasma blasts in an attempt to catch the Avenger in a blanket of fire. It was not a particularly effective tactic.

  The volume of void they were trying to cover was vast and they were trying to get very lucky, or frighten Corax into an act that would betray his location.

  That the Traitors knew the battle-barge was in their vicinity was beyond doubt, but the question that now concerned Corax was whether they knew any more than that. The nova cannon detonation had not been so close as to convince him it had been deliberately aimed at the Avenger, but neither had the margin of the miss been enough that it was outside the normal margin of error for such a long-ranged shot. Could he afford to wait for a second plasma explosion to prove things one way or the other?

  ‘Decline by fifty thousand metres, three degrees starboard,’ he snapped to the men at the helm controls.

  ‘Navigational shields abso
rbing plasma residuals and debris,’ announced another crewman. ‘Nearing reflex shield tolerance levels.’

  Corax gritted his teeth. The low-power navigational shields were usually in place to ward away microasteroids and other space-borne debris, but now the nova cannon blast was swamping them with more than they were intended to handle. If he increased power to prevent any of the shockwave reaching the Avenger, the energy spike would reveal their position.

  ‘Ride it,’ he said, as the ship started shuddering around him. ‘Implement previous order.’

  The battle-barge made best use of the space available, using all three dimensions to change course away from the point at which the nova cannon had been targeted. It was not an eventuality Corax had expected – the nova cannon was still considered highly experimental by most Imperial forces, and few commanders would allow one to be mounted on their vessel.

  ‘Can you calculate the launching vessel?’ he asked Ephrenia.

  ‘Just detecting a third line-class ship, Lord Corax,’ the strategium controller replied. ‘Probably a grand cruiser. Approaching from almost directly astern, broadcasting

  Iron Warriors identifiers.’

  ‘Typical,’ Corax whispered. Give one of Perturabo’s captains the chance to mount a bigger gun and he would snatch your hand off to take it.

  ‘Detecting another nova cannon launch,’ warned Ephrenia.

  In her worry, she had forgotten his title, something the primarch had thought impossible. Corax noticed her face paling and the knuckles of her thin hands whitening, supporting callipers flexing, as she grabbed the edge of the display console, expecting an impact. There was no way a warning could be given to the crew without giving away the battle-barge’s position, and if the nova cannon scored an unlikely direct hit, no amount of bracing and preparation would save lives.

  ‘Passing to port, fifteen thousand kilometres and increasing, Lord Corax,’ Ephrenia said, smiling slightly and relaxing her grip. ‘Detonation detected. Seventy thousand kilometres away.’

  ‘It is safe to assume the fire is random. Set in a course for closest translation point.’

  Corax had noted the two separate detonation points and filed them away in his memory. It seemed likely the Iron Warriors were using a firing formula to calculate their target points. Three or four more detonations would allow Corax to calculate the formula in retrospect and take appropriate action to decrease the odds of another close call. Other than that, there was nothing else to do except continue to hope for the best.

  The Avenger continued on, dipping and rising, zigzagging its way towards the translation point, cutting an elusive path through the net of Traitor ships. At times Corax headed directly towards the enemy, passing within ten thousand kilometres of battle cruisers and frigates, trusting the reflex shields to mask any emission that would betray their presence.

  The cordon tightened, the glimmers on the traitors’ scanner displays drawing in more and more vessels, chasing ghost returns that were little more than fuzzy mirages against the backdrop energy haze of the universe.

  Sitting in the darkness of his requisitioned command chamber, Corax felt the change in vibrations that signalled another course alteration. They were less than half a day from the translation point. It was tempting to make the warp jump now and take the risk of gravimetric interference, but he stayed patient.

  There had been some close calls: torpedoes unleashing their warheads a few thousand kilometres from the Avenger, last moment changes in direction to avoid enemy scans, nova cannon detonations that had pushed the navigational shields to the limit, random reactor spikes that had brought the battle-barge to a virtual halt to compensate for the energy flare-ups.

  The primarch had taken all of this without a moment’s fear. There was no room for error, but there was also no room for uncertainty. His situation was very stark: escape and survive or be detected and destroyed. Such extremes made clarity simple, and drove away other thoughts that might have clouded his judgement.

  For the moment they were exploiting a small break in the traitor cordon and had had several hours of unopposed travel. Blacklight protocol was still in full operation, and so Corax sat at the large command console staring at the blank screens and dead displays, his eyes picking out the details of the room in the smallest glow from blinking red standby lights and the gleam from the doorway leading to the strategium.

  He was used to waiting.

  Over long years, he had learned the lessons of patience, of precise timing. During hundreds of battles he had known the moment to act and the moment to pause, and had known victory every time because of those decisions.

  The massacre at the dropsite had caught him off-guard. It troubled the primarch that he had perceived nothing of the traitorous intent of his fellow Legion commanders. Sitting in the dark, alone with his thoughts, he wondered if he had been blinded to their treachery by some weakness in himself. Had he been too trusting? Ignored subtle signs of his brothers’ intent? Been overconfident?

  What had happened had been unthinkable, and that was part of the problem for Corax. Should it have been so outlandish that he had never considered having to fight his brothers? He had been sent with the others to Isstvan to bring Horus to account – surely he should have wondered whether Horus had acted entirely alone. Had the shock of the Warmaster’s turn against the Emperor befuddled him, caused him to blunder into an obvious trap?

  The questions were all the harder because they were unanswerable.

  Another vibration, another course change. The hours ticked past. The primarch needed no data-screen to tell him what was happening. He had a picture in his mind of the Avenger and the ships arrayed against it, their courses plotted in his thoughts as accurately as any schematic.

  Any notable divergence from the picture he had drawn would be reported, and he had received no such communication from Ephrenia. The complex web being woven to catch the Avenger was not tight enough, there were always gaps.

  Patience.

  Hours, days, weeks of waiting. Years, in fact, when he had been making his preparations, hidden amongst the prisoners of Lycaeus. There was something of a purity in the stillness; something energising about the solitude.

  His wounds still pained him, occasional stabs of sensation that broke through the walls of his semimesmeric state. He would shift his weight to relieve the stress on ravaged ribs, to move pressure away from damaged organs. Corax’s engineered body could withstand incredible amounts of damage, and yet there was something deeper than the physical wounds that afflicted the primarch. The pain was something he forced himself to endure, as a reminder of his failure. He suffered a hurt that no superhuman body could rectify: a grievous injury that the attention of the Apothecaries would not cure. Until he could bring an end to that internal agony, he would not allow his body to heal.

  Roused from his contemplation by one such brief burst of pain, Corax activated a data-screen. Analysing the intersecting courses displayed on the monitor, Corax spotted something he had not seen before: a convergence of possibilities brought about by some minor alterations in the enemy’s disposition a few hours ago.

  There was a gap. Or rather, there was not a gap, but a coming together of four Traitor ships. The wash from their own plasma drives, the emissions of their reactors, would obscure the Avenger and provide a pathway to the transition point earlier than he had planned, if he dared take it.

  Seeing the possibilities unfolding, Corax stood up, re-examining the chart. He was sure he was correct. Passing from inaction to motion in moments, the primarch leaned over towards the communicator activation stud.

  He stopped with his finger millimetres from the switch.

  Corax weighed up the situation once more, cooling his excitement, ignoring the lure of sudden activity. The manoeuvre would bring the Avenger within range of the guns of at least three enemy vessels. If he changed to the new course, they would be committed. Any significant alteration by the enemy would change the dynamic, revealing the Raven Gua
rd’s position dangerously close to the foe.

  He discarded the idea.

  Though Corax was eager to reach the relative safety of the warp – eager to do anything proactive – there was more to be said for caution than daring at the moment. He had gone after Lorgar at the dropsite, driven by a thirst for revenge, briefly abdicating his responsibility as a Legion commander. Had that emotive response cost his Legion, more of them falling to the ambush than would have done had he been commanding the retreat? He would not act rashly again.

  The most important thing was that he had lived, and that was as true now as then. Half a day was not important; survival was important. That need to survive, that animal instinct to keep drawing breath had driven him on, filled him with purpose. He would not lie down and accept death willingly. Even now, his Legion almost wiped out, his enemies outnumbering his allies, Corax knew that he could not give up. His duty now was to keep the Raven Guard alive, no matter the temptations and instincts to act with resolve and daring.

  On Deliverance, when it had been called Lycaeus, there had been true desperation. Weaker men had fallen and lesser men had balked at the task ahead. Not Corax. He had dragged Lycaeus, bloodied and screaming, into freedom, and not once doubted the righteousness of his effort. Why now did he wonder if he had the resolve to triumph?

  He sat immobile in the darkness once more. He liked the dark; the shadows had always been an ally. He might spend the last hours of his life like this, waiting, anticipating the next shudder of a course correction, expecting a knock at the door to bring a fresh report of the enemy’s movements, trying not to relive the mistakes and horrors of Isstvan.

  Trying, but failing.

  The room was dank with the smell of sweat, the air thick with the stench of his own fear. Marcus Valerius was more than happy to face any foe in an open fight, or even to stand firm while battleships destroyed each other with blasting broadsides. This war, the Raven Guard way of war, vexed his nerves and tightened his chest around his heart.