Corax- Lord of Shadows Read online

Even after five decades of warfare, it was one of the most awful things Caius had ever seen.

  ‘Sir!’ Milontius grabbed him. ‘My lord praefector! The ship!’

  Stabs of coherent light scythed into the burning phage victims, knocking them mercifully dead. Milontius grabbed at his master, hustling him through the thickening smoke. Alarms blared everywhere. A female Carinaean voice announced an imminent atmospheric purge to quell the flames. It was a recording. Caius imagined the woman was one of those spilling out of the stairwell, mindless, aflame from head to foot.

  The ring of metal underfoot changed from the dull bass thud of solid decking to the higher pitch of the gangway to the drop-ship. Hands yanked at Caius, bundling him into a troop hold lit emergency lumen-red.

  Dozens of faces, Therion and Carinaean, stared in horror at the carnage outside.

  The ramp closed before the voice finished its countdown. The atmospheric shields winked out. The pouring of the hangar atmosphere into space was a slight jolt to the rising ship’s progress.

  ‘Let me through!’ said Caius, and fought his way through the crammed hold towards the ship’s upper levels, and the cockpit there.

  The way was crammed with refugees. Caius gave up trying to step gently past them and stepped on them. They were paralysed with fear. Several were close to catatonia. Soft weeping filtered up the stairs from the hold.

  ‘Move, damn you, move!’ shouted Caius. Finally, he made the drop-ship’s small cockpit.

  Through the inches-thick armourglass of the canopy, the void spread in every direction. Raven Guard ships lurked ahead, black on black, their grey Therion counterparts conspicuous beside them. The guns of the fleet were inactive, but away to the upper right the spark and flare of void shields gave away the position of the Twenty-Seventh Expeditionary Fleet. The cities of the Carinaean Sodality were repositioning, covered by a torrent of fire.

  ‘What a disaster,’ breathed Caius softly.

  The vox squawked. A badly distorted voice filled the cockpit.

  ‘Therion drop-ship, this is combined fleet command. Cut engines. Reverse burn. Come to a dead stop and await further orders.’

  The pilots glanced at each other.

  ‘We are on a trajectory to land aboard our own ships,’ one said. ‘Please advise.’

  ‘You are to come to a dead stop now. If you proceed beyond fleet perimeter, you will be destroyed.’

  ‘We have wounded and civilians on board. We are over capacity. We need to land,’ the pilot said.

  ‘Halt now,’ the voice said.

  ‘They’re powering their weapons.’

  ‘They fear contamination,’ said Caius. ‘Give me a vox-pickup. And cut the engines.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do as they say, now,’ said Caius. One of the pilots handed him a delicate vox headset. Caius held it to his mouth and ear.

  ‘Combined fleet command, this is Caius Valerius, praefector of the Therion Cohort. We will do as advised.’ His eyes strayed to the instrument panels. Blinking lights warned of weapons lock. He imagined guns recoiling from their dreadful duty, ejecting scouring balls of plasma towards the fleeing Therion ships.

  He would almost welcome it, he thought.

  ‘The phage has worked itself out. My men and I are un­affected despite exposure. Although I understand there can be no chance this phage gets aboard our ships, we cannot wait indefinitely. These ships cannot support this number of people for longer than…’ He looked quizzically at the pilots.

  ‘Three hours, sir.’

  ‘Three hours,’ said Caius. ‘When shall we be assessed?’

  There was a short pause. The red lumens flickered on the panel.

  They are going to shoot us, thought Caius. This is it. All this war and service to be shot down by my own side as a precautionary measure.

  ‘Stand down,’ the voice said abruptly. ‘Wait for further instruction.’

  They were kept waiting for two hours before further messages reached them. They only came because the primarch returned.

  Fifteen

  the raven’s choice

  ‘Here, my Lord Corax.’

  The strategium operative slowed the pict-feed to a crawl. A bright light flashed on the underside of Zenith-312. Ejection spall glittered a shining cone into space, cloaking the departure of a swift needle of metal.

  Corax leaned in. The smell of drying blood had the crewman lean away from the primarch. His armour was covered in it. Corax had returned to his ships, issued orders for the recovery of his most vulnerable servants, then set out again immediately at the head of his Terminators, leading swift rescue missions to snatch his men back from the claws of disaster. The companies which had deployed en masse to take the docking ring and the sunward hangars and gun decks of the city emerged more or less unscathed. They formed firing lines in the wider halls and avenues, shutting off major access ways with tanks and Dreadnoughts ordered to kill anything that moved on sight. Their weight of fire combined mowed down the afflicted Carinaeans by the thousand, while flamers set crowds of hundreds ablaze. They contained the hordes and cut them apart. Those areas were secure and still in Raven Guard hands, though even the legionaries were left perturbed by the unremitting nature of the slaughter.

  It was the small, advance units sent to disable or capture key targets that found themselves in trouble. Groups ranging from lone operatives to reconnaissance demi-companies of fifty men. All of them were stranded, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of citizens rendered into raging beasts by the phage. Caught up in the city’s warrens of ducts and corridors, the advantage of boltgun and power armour was greatly reduced. They rapidly ran out of ammunition. They broke their weapons through overuse. Dozens were dragged down. Hundreds remained unaccounted for. A concerted push from the safer sectors was ridding Zenith-312 of its mindless inhabitants. Planned venting purged some of the central sections but it would take time to secure the city, and the Apothecaries had yet to determine if the virus was truly inactive.

  ‘That is Agarth’s ship,’ said Corax. The sight of the small, half-visible dart rushing for freedom turned his heart to ice. He had thought that perhaps the arch-comptroller had sacrificed himself along with his population in a misguided act of defiance. Murder-suicide would have been bad enough, but it appeared that he had condemned his people to death to cover his own escape.

  ‘Freeze the image,’ the primarch said.

  The crew were nervous. They expected him to demand to know why they had missed this escape vessel, why it had not been noticed, targeted and destroyed. But Agarth had been clever. The ship launched at the height of the confusion caused by the phage. It was small, quick, unreflective, and shaped for minimum registration on augur systems.

  ‘He has planned this for a long time,’ Corax said. He pointed at the ship. ‘This is why my father wishes to unify mankind, to prevent this sort of atrocity from ever happening again. War is one thing, but this, this is cowardice.’

  ‘He is scum of the worst kind,’ said Branne quietly. His brother was beside him, equally incensed. Most of those on the wide command deck were born of Deliverance. Agarth’s actions were as callous as those of their Kiavahran tormentors.

  Corvus Corax faced the crew upon the command deck of the Saviour in Shadow. ‘Arch-Comptroller Agarth is to be hunted down. Fleet to adopt wide search patterns. Find him. Bring him to me.’

  There were mutters of agreement. But not all were convinced of this course of action.

  ‘What about the rest of the system?’ asked Agapito.

  ‘The Twenty-Seventh Expeditionary Fleet will make an immediate assault upon the Thousand Moons, as per Fenc’s plan.’

  Agapito hesitated before speaking.

  ‘What is it, brother?’ asked Branne.

  ‘If we are not there to support them, they will struggle. With us at their side, we can end this q
uickly before the cities reach optimal firing situation. Without us–’

  Corax’s pale white face leaned towards his old comrade in arms, interrupting him. ‘Agapito, Agarth has denied us the opportunity to show convincing force. He has escaped. If we allow Agarth to go free, we will undermine the Carinae Sodality’s understanding of Imperial justice. The elite will see themselves free of consequence, the populace will despair that we cannot save them. We cast ourselves as saviours from tyranny and the bringers of civilisation to all men. We lie if Agarth does not face justice. Those who commit outrage cannot be allowed to escape. We will hunt him down and destroy him.’

  Ephrenia stood from her station at the deck strategium.

  ‘Forgive me, my lord. We should think about what Agapito says. Perhaps we should discuss this in private?’ she said.

  Corax’s eyes narrowed. Those around him reacted uneasily. It was not normal for a mortal to address a primarch so bluntly.

  ‘Whatever you have to say to me, Ephrenia, can be said in front of all. Unless you dare not.’

  She smiled at him sadly. Ephrenia had been with Corax since the moment he had been freed from the ice, deep inside Lycaeus. Few knew him as well as she did. They both knew she did not wish to embarrass him. They both knew she would not let that stop her. ‘My lord,’ she said. ‘The expeditionary fleet is struggling to contain the united forces of the Sodality. If we do not aid them, we will give the Sodality time to better coordinate their efforts at resistance, and the war here will drag on for months. Their fleet is waiting for an opportunity. If we break now, they will attack Fenc’s position.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Branne. ‘I hate to let him go, but we have to strike now. Listen to Fenc, for the love of the crusade. Agarth is one man. Thousands of lives are at stake. We have to finish them now.’

  ‘Do you, Branne, dare to question my command. I am primarch–’

  ‘And we’re just the brats of prison scum?’ interrupted Branne. ‘A child I was when we first met, but no more. For thirty years I have fought at your side. We have known you since we all were children. I know you are wrong. Your plan was sound, but it has failed. This desire to pursue Agarth is driven by emotion. We must follow Fenc’s lead now.’

  ‘Do not address me this way, Branne,’ said Corax. He put some of his inner potency into his words. As a creature of the shadows, rarely did Corax allow his innate majesty to show through his studied human guise. Nothing outward changed, but a sense of immense might radiated from him. Branne flinched from his lord’s revealed glory, but pressed on.

  ‘I will not be quiet, when you lead us into disaster. Corax, I am speaking to you as your friend.’

  ‘You will be silent!’ demanded Corax. His voice thundered. This time, he had no disagreement. ‘The oppressors of the weak can be shown no mercy,’ said Corax. He stared at his attendants, leaving them with no doubt of his resolve. ‘This is what the crusade is for. To raise men up and save them from the likes of Agarth. He must be punished for his genocide, or the freedom we bring to this system will be hollow indeed. Hunt him down, and make him pay.’

  Sixteen

  representative of the legion

  Sergeant Belthann looked at Tensat disapprovingly. A glare like that was hard to take in a space as small as briefing chamber 86, and what parts of the room that did not shiver with Belthann’s irritation, the sergeant filled physically. He was huge. Truly huge. Tensat was well aware the Space Marine could twist his head from his neck with one hand. He still gave Belthann a wounded look.

  The Space Marine continued to stare at him.

  ‘Have you finished?’ said Belthann.

  ‘What?’ said Tensat.

  ‘You are being less than serious about this endeavour.’

  It was a week after the Salvation Day bombings. A disproportionate amount of that time had been taken up by Tensat and Belthann exercising their mutual mistrust. Tensat resented the Legion interfering, Belthann wasn’t happy about working with an unmodified human – in fact Tensat got the impression Belthann thought non-legionaries beneath him. Tensat reckoned he had begun to irritate the sergeant within half an hour of their meeting.

  The procurator mechanical kept out of the bickering. Just then he was hovering on the far side of the room, watching their exchange with irksome mechanical inscrutability. They were the only three present. A two-way mirror looked through into an empty interrogation chamber. The lights were out, and the auto-inquisitor folded up neatly on its rack. It lacked anything more threatening than pharmaceutical truth inducers. Corax disapproved of torture.

  ‘All right,’ said Tensat. ‘I’ll put it in more respectful language. All I’m saying is, what makes you say these “Children of Deliverance” are a large group? It could be a small band of malcontents, or even an individual, though I admit that’s unlikely.’

  ‘I am a member of the Shadow Wardens, the guardians of the primarch himself. It is my business to know. A small group would lack the resources to execute all these attacks. Consider the message.’

  Tensat looked at the data-slate he held in his hands. The message was two minutes of vid claiming responsibility for a number of crimes against the tech-guilds.

  ‘It looked slickly made. They have a good imagifer. But that doesn’t mean much on its own.’ Tensat made an effort to sound conciliatory. ‘There have been any number of half-baked plots to attack the guilds since the primarch departed on the crusade. And the Mechanicum, for that matter. I’ve even had a few directed against the Legion itself.’

  ‘I was aware of them,’ said Belthann.

  ‘Are you sure? You sound surprised,’ said Tensat.

  ‘I am not. Discontent is everywhere. Humanity is inherently ungrateful.’

  ‘What do you expect? Give people freedom, and they get quite particular about how they are treated. They were promised a lot by the iterators. It hasn’t materialised yet.’ Tensat dropped the dataslate onto a pile of flimsies. A couple escaped the pile and sifted to the floor. ‘Look, forgive my suspicion, this just isn’t the sort of thing the Legion gets involved with. You don’t care what happens down here. Lycaeus is the Legion’s ground.’

  ‘Deliverance,’ corrected Belthann.

  Tensat carried on unabashed. ‘What does Kiavahr matter to you?’ he said, letting some of his bitterness out. ‘We’re all slavers down here, right? You don’t care. You leave it to the likes of me to squabble with the likes of him.’ Tensat gestured at the procurator.

  ‘We are concerned with what happens here,’ said Belthann.

  ‘I’d say not very often,’ said Tensat.

  Belthann leant on the desk. The metal creaked with his weight. ‘We are warriors, not enforcers. That is your role.’

  ‘Fine then. So explain to me why you are here now. Help me enforce the law.’

  ‘This message is directly addressed to the primarch, that is why I am here.’

  Tensat snorted in disbelief. ‘You’re a little behind on how many people here want to catch his ear. It could be any number of lunatics. Does he spare time for them all, or indeed, any of them? Why are you here really?’ said Tensat. ‘Unless, there’s something else going on here that you are not telling me about.’

  Belthann presented a stony face and did not answer.

  ‘Fine. In that case, we can handle this.’ Tensat looked to the procurator mechanical for support. He burbled something unintelligible. ‘If we are going to work effectively together, you are going to have to trust me.’ Tensat glanced at the procurator meaningfully again. ‘Us.’

  ‘All right!’ Belthann rapped the table. Although he did so lightly, the objects on the surface jumped, and his gauntlet left three perfect knuckle indentations. ‘I have reason to believe that whoever is behind this spate of attacks on the guilds was trained by Corvus Corax himself.’

  ‘Really?’

  Belthann nodded solemnly. H
is expression seemed strangely childish on such a wide face.

  ‘Now I am surprised,’ said Tensat. ‘Is it a legionary?’

  ‘No!’ Belthann said vehemently. ‘Impossible. An old comrade, perhaps. There were many who fought for Deliverance that were too old to be elevated to the Legion. We have our suspicions who it might be.’

  ‘One of Corax’s original insurgents?’ Tensat whistled.

  ‘That is why I am here. You have had nothing on this scale before,’ said Belthann. ‘You cannot handle this affair alone.’

  ‘So you do watch.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ said the procurator.

  ‘Decided to join in, have you?’ said Tensat.

  ‘Your attitude is annoying, Enforcer-Principal Diorddan Tensat,’ said the procurator. ‘I beg you to desist.’

  ‘Well, if you’ve any suggestions, procurator, I’m listening,’ said Tensat.

  ‘There will be more attacks,’ said Belthann. ‘We cannot avoid that.’

  ‘I agree when you say you’re not an enforcer,’ said Tensat. ‘You’ve come all this way to tell me you’ve noticed but you are still not going to do anything?’

  ‘I did not say that.’

  ‘You didn’t say very much of anything.’

  A look of profound irritation passed over Belthann’s face.

  ‘Listen to me!’ the Space Marine said. His tone was a warning. Tensat took the hint.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘I apologise. Please, speak.’

  ‘We must provoke an attack that we can control and turn to our advantage. That is the quickest way to lure out these insurgents, and capture them. If there is one of the old prisoners involved, there may be many. Their networks were tight.’

  ‘You mean bait a trap?’ asked Tensat.

  ‘You are going to use the guild representative as bait,’ said the procurator. ‘It is the logical course of action.’

  ‘I just said that!’ said Tensat.

  ‘You did not guess who the bait would be,’ said the procurator. ‘Sergeant Belthann wishes to use the guild representative as his lure.’