‘What was that about? What stench?’ asked the commander.
‘Must be a primarch thing,’ replied Agapito. ‘I smell nothing here except the sweat of a dead man. You go and fetch Branne, I’ll deal with this.’
Agapito spent several minutes looking at Khoura’s corpse after Solaro had left, thinking about what the primarch had said. Solaro was indeed blind to it, perhaps had not seen the taint, but Agapito knew what Corax had referred to. The taint had a name, a name he had heard whispered for the first time on Isstvan: Chaos.
RAD-FIRES FLICKERED BLUE at the heart of the mangled city, turning the ruddy sky purple with their blaze. The ruins stretched for dozens of kilometres, silhouettes like broken teeth jutting against the glow. For nearly a century the fires had burned, a warning to Kiavahr not to return to its despicable past. The impact site was a cratered bowl of glass, levelled in an instant by the atomic mining charges the rebels had dropped down the gravity well. The stump of the orbital elevator remained as a twisted upthrust of solidified slurry that pointed accusingly at Lycaeus above.
Further out the buildings had survived, though some were little more than molten piles of rubble and slag. Gas pockets and ruptured fuel lines added their own sporadic glare to the scene, brightening the dead landscape with flashes of white-hot promethium plumes and clouds of venting vapour that oxidised into flurries of green and orange before dissipating into the polluted atmosphere.
With no buildings to break it, the wind raged, scouring the ruins with hurricane force, adding its own erosion to the destruction wrought by the improvised nuclear bombs. Bridges over glowing rivers of molten ferrocrete swayed dangerously, their metallic creaks and groans an eerie cry in the desolation. Stairwells ascended into thin air where once stratoscrapers had soared towards the heavens. Foundry cooling pools had become rad-lakes, tumbled aqueducts spilt forth sluggish rivers that oozed rather than flowed along sheer-sided ravines that had once been the streets of Nairhub.
Into this crawled a convoy of armoured vehicles, their broad tracks churning through the dust and ash. Each vehicle was low and broad, carried on four independent sets of tracks. The wind keened from their heavily riveted hulls and whipped communication aerials back and forth. They were marked with the symbols of the Mechanicum, but the armoured legionaries manning the open defence cupolas showed the livery to be a deception.
Five in all, the transports advanced slowly, the lead vehicle picking its way over the piles of rubble, grinding and crushing brick and ferrocrete beneath its bulk. Alpharius manned a turret on the foremost rad-crawler, twin heavy bolters on the pintle in front of him. Despite the ruin, the rad-zone was not without its inhabitants, both humanoid and otherwise. He had been surprised by talk of guilders hiding out in the wastes, protected by flimsy rad-domes and force shelters. Corax had left it to the Mechanicum to clear the last remnants of the old authorities, eager to join the Great Crusade. That the Mechanicum had been lax in their prosecution of the guild survivors would no doubt be of great benefit to the Alpha Legion’s task here.
One building stood proud amongst the debris of the old war. Swathed with noxious fog, it stood three storeys high, slab-sided like a hangar, and bore the sigil of the Raven Guard. Armoured towers at each end followed the advance of the vehicles with batteries of lascannons.
‘Ravendelve in sight,’ Commander Agapito reported over the vox.
It was a training facility, used by the Raven Guard to conduct wargames in the nuclear wasteland. Sometimes the recruits were sent out against the separatist camps that still eked out an existence in the heart of the atomic carnage. It was here that Corax had chosen to set up his new facility, away from the eyes of the Mechanicum.
It was a good choice for seclusion, and with news of Horus’s treachery bound to have reached Kiavahr, it struck Alpharius as good cover for the gene-tech laboratory. Those few who might notice would not be surprised at an increase of activity here.
There was an outer wall guarding the compound, ten metres high. Armoured gates slid aside to allow the vehicles to enter, and then ground shut when the last transport had passed. Radiation detectors in Alpharius’s suit flashed from green to a warning amber for a moment as they passed along the road to the building: a rad-pocket. He had no concerns for his safety. Even without his armour, his modified body was capable of withstanding the levels of nuclear pollution in the area. Further into the wastes would be a different matter, and as the transporter shuddered to a halt in the shadow of Ravendelve, he wondered again how the dissidents could survive at all.
Covered by the defences of the station, the Raven Guard disembarked and formed up beside their vehicles while Corax, Agapito and Branne headed into the facility. The hydraulic ramps on the side of each transport lowered and they began the process of unloading their precious cargo.
Alpharius had noticed something particular about the force sent down to Kiavahr when they had boarded the strike cruiser that had brought them here: they were all from the vault expedition. Clearly Corax trusted only those he was forced to with the knowledge of the gene-tech. There were no serfs, only legionaries, the most trustworthy of the Emperor’s servants. The only exceptions were the tech-priest and his servitors, who were essential to the project. The Alpha Legionnaire wondered what story had been told to the rest of the Raven Guard to explain the goings-on on the world below.
Secrets made Alpharius happy. In secrecy, Corax hoped to rebuild his Legion, but secrets were the favoured battleground of the Alpha Legion. The Raven Guard were entering alien territory now, and would be made to pay for their inexperience. Secrecy created its own problems of communication, and would ultimately hamper Corax. The primarch had stepped into a twilight world of misdirection, and would be made to pay for the mistake. The increased security did not bother Alpharius now; he was already one of the trusted few. The Raven Guard feared their secret would be discovered and would bend their efforts to maintaining the falsehood, not knowing that their security had already been compromised and the enemy lurked within.
The interior of Ravendelve was far larger than Alpharius had expected. It burrowed into the ground for several more levels. He followed the rest of the squad down a ramp towards the sub-levels, a motorised trolley steered in front of him, into the bowels of the facility. Most of the space was taken up with the dorm rooms for recruits and legionaries sent here on exercise – empty for the moment – with the rest taken up by a huge drill hall and firing ranges.
‘Where are you going?’
Alpharius froze at the sound of Branne’s voice. He looked over his shoulder to see the Commander of Recruits and his brother standing at a doorway he had just passed, the twinkling lights of command consoles winking behind them.
‘Pardon, commander?’ said Alpharius, not sure what was expected of him.
‘That crate, it’s clearly marked for the infirmary,’ continued Branne. ‘What are you doing down here? We don’t have the luxury of time to dawdle about.’
‘Have you lost your way?’ asked Agapito, a smile on his lips.
The unease of Alpharius increased dramatically as he realised the two commanders were expecting him to change direction and head towards the infirmary there and then. He had no idea where it was! His eyes scoured the walls for any sign or markings that might indicate its location. There was nothing to aid him. He looked back at Agapito and Branne, something like desperation surfacing in his thoughts.
‘You can share the elevator with me,’ a voice called down the corridor. Alpharius swung around and saw the white armour of Vincente Sixx, an Apothecary he had met after infiltrating the Legion on Isstvan V. He was standing at the open door of a conveyor in a small vestibule behind Alpharius.
‘Good idea,’ said Alpharius, breathing a sigh of relief. He thumbed the motor of the trolley into life and guided it towards the waiting Apothecary, who slid the door closed behind him as Alpharius brought his trolley to a stop on the metal floor of the elevator.