‘Calm down and try again,’ said Alpharius. ‘What is your name, novitiate?’
‘Hef, sergeant,’ said the recruit. He struggled again with the release catch, sweaty hands slipping on the smooth metal of the rifle. ‘Navar Hef.’
‘Let me see,’ said Alpharius, holding out his hand. He took the rifle, examined it quickly and handed it back to Hef. ‘The last round did not properly clear the chamber. Look.’
The novitiate examined the rifle, shamefaced. He manually expelled the spent casing and then ejected the magazine.
‘Punishment, ten laps,’ said Alpharius. ‘Battle pace. Move!’
Hef took hold of his rifle properly and set off towards the edge of the hall, perspiration glistening from his shaved scalp. Alpharius could hear him counting out the rhythm of his strides between gasping breaths. There was innocence and dedication there. Hef was a fine recruit.
It was a shame he would be killed along with the rest of the Raven Guard.
Alpharius felt uncomfortable at the thought. More than uncomfortable, in fact. He was not sure how he would define the emotion that made his chest a little tight as he watched the novitiates continue their weapon practice. Guilt, perhaps? It certainly was not a sensation he had felt before, and the Alpha Legionnaire did not like it at all. He cleared his throat in agitation and snapped out a reprimand to a pair of recruits who had sagged down to a crouch at the back of the line. They stood up sharp at his words.
It seemed such a waste. Corax and the senior commanders would never be moved to join the Alpha Legion, but these novitiates were fine young men, who would be ideal recruits for the Legion. Their deaths seemed a little unnecessary.
Alpharius was not sure where these doubts were coming from. He blamed the false memories. They had been increasing in recent days. He could clearly recall the first time he had set out from Ravendelve into the atomic wasteland, though nothing of what had happened after leaving the armoured compound. Names of fellow legionaries haunted him, Raven Guard that had fallen on Isstvan. His fellow legionaries referred to them sometimes and he would have a flash of a face, or instinctively smile at some half-remembered joke, or briefly relive a moment in battle alongside the fallen warrior.
He had to focus. He was not a legionary of the Raven Guard, he was an Alpha Legionnaire. His primarch was not Corax, his oaths had been made to Alpharius and Omegon. In their wisdom, the twin primarchs had chosen to back Horus’s rebellion, and he had to trust that it was for good reason. The fall of the Raven Guard, the taking of the gene-tech, would serve a greater purpose.
Holding on to that thought, Alpharius suppressed the memories bubbling up from the depths of his altered mind. I am Alpharius, he told himself. I am Alpharius.
DESCENDING THE RAMP of his Stormbird, Branne was surprised to find Controller Ephrenia waiting for him in the docking bay. She held a data-slate, which she wordlessly passed to the commander as he walked towards the bay doors. With so many lost at Isstvan – legionaries and ordinary humans alike – the controller had been promoted from strategium officer on the Avengerto the command centre at the tip of Ravenspire.
‘What am I looking at?’ asked Branne. ‘I have come back to answer a summons from the primarch.’
‘Transmission data, commander,’ said Ephrenia. She took the tablet back for a moment, tapped the screen twice and returned it to Branne’s grip. ‘As per your orders, we conducted a survey of all communications logs that the Word Bearers Chaplain had access to, both from Deliverance and via Kiavahr’s network. We detected several anomalous transmissions.’
‘Anomalous?’ said Branne. Pistons wheezed as the great doors to the dock opened up in front of him. He stopped to look down at the controller. ‘Be more specific.’
‘Non-Mechanicum and non-Legion frequencies and channels, commander.’
‘Not that surprising, really,’ said Branne, resuming his stride. ‘There are many commercial vessels, Imperial Army ships and other non-affiliated ships in the system.’
‘These transmissions have a Legiones Astartes signature, commander,’ Ephrenia said patiently.
Branne stopped again and studied the tablet with more deliberate intent. The controller was correct, there was a Legiones Astartes cipher and modulation pattern to the recorded transmissions.’
‘All are flash-traffic, commander,’ continued Ephrenia. ‘Compressed, in my opinion.’
‘Wait, I recognise this transponder code,’ said Branne, highlighting one of the entries with a jabbed finger.
‘Yes, commander, it is a Ravenspire access cipher,’ the controller said. Her voice lowered as she continued. ‘I came to you directly because of that. It is Commander Agapito’s broadcast channel.’
‘I see,’ said Branne. This information perturbed him, but he assured himself his brother would be able to offer a sensible explanation for its purpose. That did not explain the mystery of the remaining transmissions. ‘What of the others?’
‘Some are old Lycaen security frequencies, and two are on the defunct guild networks, commander. Impossible to pin down a source, but they originate on Kiavahr.’
‘Dissidents, no doubt,’ said Branne.
‘A significant peak in traffic, commander. Previous communications detected on those frequencies were sporadic and clustered. The pattern here is more sustained. I believe it might signify some attempt to reestablish the old guild structures.’
‘Good work,’ said Branne. ‘I will take care of this matter from here. Nothing to get too worried about yet. I shall perform further investigations before I distract Lord Corax with this information.’
‘As you wish, commander,’ said Ephrenia, with a bow.
‘Wait a moment,’ said Branne as the controller made to step away. ‘Contact Commander Agapito and request him to meet me in my chambers in an hour.’
‘Yes, commander.’
‘And set up a monitor on Commander Agapito’s channel. Let me know if there are any further irregularities.’
‘Yes, commander. Is that all?’
‘Return to your duties.’
Ephrenia strode down the corridor, leaving Branne with uneasy thoughts. The pro-guild sympathisers on Kiavahr were stirring up trouble, he was sure. It was inconvenient but not a significant threat. It would be simple enough to inform the Mechanicum of the matter.
He took a step and then stopped with a hissed curse. If he warned the Mechanicum of any surge in dissident activity, they would be required to perform a scouring of the rad-wastes, or at the very least intensify their observation and security of the area. That would lead to greater scrutiny around Ravendelve, a turn of events Lord Corax would be keen to avoid.
Branne rubbed in his chin, caught between courses of action. He was sure that the dissidents could pose no military threat to the facility, but their timing was inconvenient. With so much out-system traffic coming through the star system at the moment, it was quite possible that agitators sent by Horus were stirring up trouble to keep the Raven Guard occupied.
It was just a theory, and he would need more solid evidence before it was worth notifying the primarch. Lord Corax was intent on the gene-tech project, spending most of his time bunkered up in Ravendelve with Sixx and the tech-priest. Even when he was back on Deliverance, the primarch spent most of his time poring over the reports and studies, incommunicado except for urgent matters.
Unsure how to proceed, Branne realised he was going to be late for his meeting with Corax. He folded up the data tablet and hurried along the corridor, hoping the primarch would not remark on his tardiness.
TWELVE
Brothers in Conflict
Mark VI
Creation of the Raptors
SITTING ON A shallow chair in his rooms, Branne stared at the data tablet laid on the table in front of him. A perfunctory knock on the metal bulkhead preceded Agapito’s entry. Branne glanced up at his brother and waved him to the couch opposite.