THE DISCUSSION BETWEEN the commanders and Corax had lasted for several hours. Branne was happy to leave the command chamber, the last of the council to do so, having been intensely questioned by Corax regarding the insurgent attack, and he was anxious to return to Ravendelve and oversee its defence. The primarch had been adamant that the timetable for the attack on Narsis was not changed. If the Raptors could not be included in the force, the Raven Guard would adjust their strategy. Branne definitely wanted as many legionaries as possible to take on the Perfect Fortress, and so his place was at Ravendelve to provide an encouraging presence for Sixx and Orlandriaz.
As he stalked towards the conveyor down to Alpha Dock, he was met by Controller Ephrenia. She held a data tablet in her hand, a sight that Branne did not find encouraging.
‘A moment of your time, please, commander,’ said Ephrenia.
‘Walk with me,’ Branne replied, continuing past.
‘We have found several odd signals, commander,’ she said. Branne stopped.
‘Commander Agapito’s channel?’ he asked quietly.
‘No, commander, not this time,’ said Ephrenia. She handed Branne the data-slate. ‘There have been several encrypted messages concealed within normal Legion traffic. Hidden amongst the data-pulse between Ravenspire and Ravendelve, riding the pulses to bypass the communications block. They appear to originate from several places on Kiavahr.’
‘So we’ve found out how the guilders are communicating? Good work. Can we stop it?’
‘I already have, commander,’ said Ephrenia, looking a little hurt by the implication. ‘One such transmission that was hijacked was a routine upload from the infirmary core in Ravendelve. In picking apart the entwined codes, it became apparent that the core log had been tampered with. The log was accessed and then the access was crudely wiped.’
‘There are only a handful of us with access to that log,’ said Branne. ‘Why would any of us try to hide such action?’
‘Digital markers indicate that it was Commander Agapito,’ Ephrenia said, her voice hushed. She stepped closer to Branne, though he could hear her lowered voice with ease. ‘I was about to tell Lord Corax, but as you are here I think that perhaps you should deal with the matter.’
‘Thank you, controller,’ said Branne. ‘I’ll handle this.’
Branne turned around and headed back towards the central transporter that ran the full height of Ravenspire. Whatever reason Agapito had for accessing the gene-tech datalogs, it could not excuse an attempt to conceal the act. The commander quietly fumed as he made his way up to the personal chambers of his brother. He did not knock, but threw open the door, ready to demand an explanation from Agapito.
The chambers were empty, and showed no sign that Agapito had returned here after the command council. Branne activated his vox.
‘Spire command, can you locate Commander Agapito?’
‘One moment, commander.’
Branne waited impatiently, pacing around Agapito’s main room. He spied a tablet on the arm of a couch and picked it up. Activating the slate, he brought up the last screen display. It seemed to be a duplicate of the files Branne had been given by Ephrenia no more than ten minutes before.
His communicator chimed.
‘Commander Agapito authorised a pilot and Stormbird for launch, commander,’ the Legion functionary in the command chamber told him. ‘Course logged was for Ravendelve.’
‘When?’ demanded Branne.
‘Two and a half hours ago, Terran standard, commander.’
Branne cut the link and threw both data-slates to the floor.
‘What are you doing, brother?’ he asked the empty room. Two hours was enough time for Agapito to already be at Ravendelve. Branne ran from the room, heading for the Thunderhawk waiting for him at Alpha Dock.
THE SCANNER TICKED monotonously, every pulse accompanied by an image on the screen in front of Alpharius. He turned his chair and checked the audio pick-ups, seeing nothing detected except for the wind. The gun towers had been constantly manned since the last attack, and Alpharius and the rest of the squad had been on watch since dawn. Nothing was happening, there had been no sign of any insurgent activity in the last twenty hours.
The chair creaked as he leaned back, laying his hands in his lap. Behind him in the control room, Sergeant Dor was cleaning his bolter, cloth and tools laid out on an instrumentation panel. Marko was also there, monitoring the communications station.
‘Time for another visual sweep,’ said Dor, not looking up from his work.
Alpharius said nothing as he stood up and moved to the reinforced door. He keyed in the security code and the door extended out and slid to one side. Stepping into the airlock, he sealed the door behind him. He took his helmet from his belt and fitted it before opening the outer seal. Wind rushed in, bringing the acrid taint of pollution.
Stepping out onto the rampart, Alpharius glanced down at Ravendelve. Searchlights from the towers and walls scoured the surrounding ground, their beams lost in the hazy air no more than a hundred metres out. He could see armoured figures patrolling the walls beneath him, their eye lenses bright yellow dots in the gloom. Unslinging his bolter, he walked around the rampart, passing under the shadow of the huge twin-barrelled cannon in the emplacement atop the tower.
He performed a point check, using the magnification of his auto-senses to inspect the gatehouse, armourium doors and other points of entry. All he saw were Raven Guard, patrolling tirelessly or standing sentry. One thousand Talons had been sent down from Ravenspire to reinforce the garrison, taking the place of the Raptors who had succumbed to the genetic corruption.
It had pained Alpharius to see the tainted legionaries, some of them wracked with agony, all of them a perversion of the Legiones Astartes. It would be a mercy to kill them, and when the time came, the Alpha Legion would surely grant them swift release from their torment. The Raven Guard were enemies, but Alpharius had a great deal of respect for the warriors of Deliverance, having shared in their tribulations.
He continued on his circuit, moving to the outside of the tower to look out over the rad-wastes. He already knew from the sensor reports that there was nothing out there, but the Raven Guard were highly suspicious of guild-tech and left nothing to chance. It was possible that the insurgents possessed something that might mask them from the scanner sweeps.
There was nothing to see, only a tortured landscape of flattened buildings and cratered rock.
He started towards the door to complete one loop around the tower, but stopped at the corner to look into the far distance. To the north-east, five kilometres away, the outskirts of Nabrik jutted from the bank of red fog like the fingers of a drowning man breaking the surface of the water. Lights blinked from their rooftops and the lamps of armoured airships passed sedately between them.
Alpharius was about to turn away when he noticed a flickering in the gloom, close to the base of one of the towers. A series of flashes illuminated the fog. Moments later, a dirigible erupted into flames, the mangled remains of its gondola sent plummeting into the city. A second or two later, the Alpha Legionnaire heard the muffled but distinct rap of heavy cannons drifting over Ravendelve, followed by the crackof the airship’s detonation.
Astounded, he watched tracer fire erupting from several of the cloudscrapers at the heart of the city, and more explosions billowed into life further into Nabrik. He thought it to be just another insurgent attack at first, targeting the Mechanicum following recent defeats against the Raven Guard, but then several things happened at once.
Two huge detonations rocked one of the soaring towers, almost cutting it in half. The upper storeys crumbled and toppled, crashing into the streets below in a huge cloud of flame and smoke. Alpharius’s first thought was that it was a bomb, but his amazement grew as a gigantic figure appeared silhouetted against the growing column of fire. It was at least ninety metres tall, its right arm a massive multi-barrelled cannon, the left another immense weapon that gleamed with the blue sheen of plasma generators. Its armoured carapace was packed with turrets that streaked laser and shell fire into the city: an Imperator-class Titan!