Текст книги "Deliverance Lost"

Автор книги: Гэв Торп

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Malcador bowed his head in greeting and Corax returned the gesture as his guard of honour filed into ranks behind him.

‘I hope they are for ornamentation and nothing else,’ said Corax, directing a purposeful gaze at the armed Custodians.

‘Purely ceremonial, I assure you,’ replied Malcador. ‘I apologise for the formalities you have been forced to endure, but you understand that we cannot afford any laxity in our security in these times.’

‘It seems a primarch’s word is no longer his bond,’ said Corax as he stepped forwards, the Custodians moving to form two lines of escort around him and Malcador, encircling the primarch’s entourage of Raven Guard.

‘Only for some, Corax,’ said the Sigillite. ‘A number of your brothers remain true to their oaths of allegiance. Your loyalty is greatly appreciated.’

The primarch laughed, but there was no sign of humour in the Sigillite’s expression. Malcador continued to talk as they walked from the landing apron.

‘Rogal asked me to assure you that he will be joining us tomorrow as he promised. We are very keen to hear everything you can tell us about Horus’s forces and perhaps what you think he intends to do.’

‘I can add little to the discussion,’ said Corax. They passed under an arching silver gateway a hundred metres high and headed down a ramp leading to a line of silver-hulled shuttle craft. They looked like giant scarabs, with steel wings that fluttered under the vibration of idling engines. ‘It sounds like there are other survivors.’

‘Of course,’ said Malcador, waving for Corax to precede him onto the ramp of the closest atmospheric shuttle. Inside, the main compartment was furnished like an austere lounge, with low couches and tables on a carpeted deck, the walls covered with hangings depicting scenes from the Unification Wars. Corax assumed it was Malcador’s personal transport. The Sigillite sat down on one of the long couches and instinctively waved a hand for Corax to do the same. The primarch declined with a shake of his head, knowing that the furniture was totally unsuited to someone of his height and weight. He leaned against the bulkhead instead, head dipped beneath the shuttle roof.

‘There are not only those like yourself who escaped the ambush,’ the Sigillite continued, ‘but also brave warriors who have recently arrived from within the traitors’ ranks.’

‘And you can be sure of their loyalty? Misdirection and falsehood seem to be Horus’s primary weapons at the moment.’

‘We are convinced of their continuing support for the Emperor,’ said Malcador. ‘They will have a very important role to play in the waging of the war to come.’

‘The war has started already, if you haven’t noticed,’ growled Corax. He had noticed Captain Noriz using a similar turn of phrase, implying that somehow the massacre at Isstvan had been an end point rather than a beginning.

The two of them were alone in the shuttle, the Custodians and legionaries being directed to the other transports. With a growl, the engines of the craft throttled to full, the hull trembling as the ornithopter’s wings sprang into blurred life. The shuttle lifted quickly away from the starport and turned northwards, rising to clear a range of mountains that thrust up from the ground. The mountains were as much artifice as natural phenomena. Corax could see vast galleries and windows several storeys high cut into the crags and ridges, betraying the labyrinthine structure hidden beneath the snow-capped peaks.

Corax sensed Malcador studying him at length, but the two of them sat in silence for some time as the ornithopter sped over the mountains, shuddering slightly in the buffeting winds. Occasionally the primarch glimpsed one of the other shuttles through the oval windows, their shining fuselages glimmering against the white and grey of the sheer-sided peaks.

‘And what is the opinion of the Emperor?’ Corax asked, realising that Malcador had yet to mention him specifically. ‘Dorn said that he had been placed in charge of the defence.’

‘The Emperor is very aware of the situation and Dorn has his full support,’ replied the regent.

‘That’s it?’ said Corax. ‘His Warmaster turns half the Legions against him and all he has to say is that Dorn has his full support?’

‘He is entirely absorbed in another matter, one which overshadows his thoughts even more than this distraction with Horus. If his current endeavour is successful, this rebellion will be short-lived.’

‘I have come to Terra to seek audience with the Emperor,’ said Corax. He glanced out of the window and saw cranes and earth-movers remodelling a massive shoulder of the mountain below, crafting immense revetments and fortifications from the naked rock. Swarms of thousands of labourers were at work.

‘It is with regret that I must warn you that is highly unlikely,’ said Malcador, his gaze unwavering as Corax turned his stare back on the Sigillite. ‘His current project requires all of his attention. I have seen him only a handful of times since we learned of the events at Isstvan. Dorn has not spoken to him at all, receiving the Emperor’s instruction only through me. I cannot give you any guarantee that our master will grant you an audience.’

The firm expression on Malcador’s face forestalled any further comment Corax might make on the matter. Though he did not say as much, the primarch believed that he would be seen by the Emperor. No matter what Malcador said, there could be no endeavour so pressing that the Emperor could not find time to speak with one of his primarchs at this dark hour.

Then a thought occurred to him, which would explain why Malcador was being slightly evasive and seemed so convinced that Corax would not get an audience.

‘The Emperor isaware of my arrival?’ asked the primarch.

‘No,’ said Malcador. ‘I have been unable to contact him since you first entered the Sol system.’

‘Unable or unwilling?’

If Malcador took any offence at the question, he did not show it. His reply was calm, his face earnest.

‘The Emperor wages a different sort of war to the ones you and I have ever seen,’ explained the Sigillite. ‘To attempt to contact him whilst on one of his… expeditions, would be to endanger his cause. When he has returned, he will be immediately informed of your presence, rest assured.’

‘You make it sound as if the Emperor is not on Terra.’

As before, Malcador hesitated, though Corax did not sense any duplicity in him, merely reluctance. The regent’s thin fingers slowly tapped the haft of his staff as he contemplated his answer.

‘That is not a thing I can easily quantify,’ said Malcador. ‘Forgive my vagueness, but I am not at liberty to discuss the Emperor’s plans, nor am I in a position to fully comprehend them. It would be indiscreet, a betrayal of my position as regent, if I were to furnish you with information that the Emperor has not chosen fit to share with you himself.’

What Malcador was saying unsettled Corax greatly. Ever since his return to Terra after the victory at Ullanor, the Emperor had shrouded himself in secrets, when once he had walked freely amongst his sons and shared his plans and visions. Malcador spoke with such a reverent tone that Corax was left in no doubt that the Emperor’s current campaign was indeed very important, but the Sigillite’s assurances that it was more worthy of attention than Horus’s treachery rang hollow. The Imperium, the spreading of Enlightenment, had been the Emperor’s great scheme, and now it was all for nothing. Surely he would have to emerge from his cloistered endeavours to lead those still loyal to him?

As the squadron of ornithopters swept along a high-sided valley, Corax wondered what he would do if he could not speak with the Emperor. After the debacle at Isstvan, the primarch was not sure of anything, including his ability to effectively command. He needed the Emperor’s guidance now more than ever, and the thought of returning to Deliverance without seeing his gene-father filled him with a subtle dread. With primarch turning on primarch, Corax wanted to bend his knee to the Emperor once more and assure him of the loyalty of the Raven Guard.

THE FLIGHT UP into the mountains took the Raven Guard past the burgeoning fortifications being erected under the leadership of Dorn. The scale of the endeavour was vast, larger than anything Corax had witnessed before, and he had seen the rebuilding of worlds shattered by his Legion.

The mountains themselves were being shaped into great bastions, carved by explosive charges and monolithic machines into buttresses and keeps, curtain walls and towers. The shadows of the ornithopters flitted over many-tracked cargo haulers in convoys kilometres long, bringing loads of ferrocrete and adamantium, ceramite and thermaglas, plasteel and diamatite. With them came cranes with booms half a kilometre long, and shovel-fronted earth movers the size of tenement blocks.

Snaking multi-compartment crawlers edged along newly laid roadways, their cargo more workers to join the hundreds of thousands already labouring on the upper slopes. These caravans were in turn supplied by forage trucks and water tankers numbering in the hundreds. Everywhere was seen the blazon of the Imperial Fists and the splash of their golden livery.

‘My brother does not take half measures,’ said Corax, looking across the cabin to Malcador.

The regent roused himself from a half-slumber and glanced out of the window, barely interested by the gargantuan effort laid out below.

‘A wall unmanned is no defence against attack,’ said the Sigillite. ‘If Horus’s forces were to strike now, who would hold the ramparts and gates?’

‘I thought the White Scars were headed for Terra.’

‘Jaghatai Khan was ordered to return with his Legion, but we have had no contact with the White Scars since the warp storms began anew.’

Corax absorbed this news in silence, still looking at the edifice taking shape around him. Peaks were being toppled, the material thus created used to erect walls closing off the passes and valleys between. Huge lifters powered by dozens of rotors and thrusters hovered over the vales, carrying generators and building-sized capacitors to new defence laser silos. The barrels of these weapons were transported on flat-beds a hundred metres long, over bridges and through tunnels carved from naked rock.

Within this growing outer cordon, the activity was less frenetic. Here and there a slope was broken by high gallery windows or the curving front of an embrasure. Roadways disappeared into dimly-lit passages and forests grew around flattened landing pads. These were the outer reaches of the old palace, first raised up by the Emperor as the Great Crusade began. Buildings fashioned in layout to appear as Imperial aquilas from above clustered atop a peak to the east. To the west, down a winding valley, hundreds of square kilometres were covered with huge wind farms powering the city hidden beneath, each fan three hundred metres high.

Ahead were the tallest mountains, still silhouettes against the sky. One of the floating sky platforms had been brought down to dock, a thirty kilometre-wide city jutting from the side of the mountain like a balcony, resting on a maze of piles and girders stretched between two summits. The shuttles banked away, turning more to the west where the sun was setting behind jagged peaks. The last rays of sunlight glinted on golden arches and pearlescent towers, stark against the blues and purples of the dusk.

After several hours, the shuttles reached a cavernous dock set into the side of a mountain whose peak had been flattened and replaced by a sprawl of jutting antennae and communications dishes. An immense pillar stood to each side of the kilometre-wide opening, carved with lightning bolt designs that forked between rising, turning columns of eagles.

Swallowed up by the dark interior of the shuttle port, the ornithopter’s lights flickered on inside and out, strobing navigation lights illuminating row after row of craft on the wide landing apron beneath. Corax saw Thunderhawks and Stormbirds, plus dozens more of the ornithopters. There were larger craft too: slab-sided Harbinger drop-ships in the varied colours of many Imperial Army regiments.

Into this vast dockyard descended the craft carrying Corax’s warriors, spiralling down after each other before scattering to their allotted landing spaces. The primarch glanced towards Malcador with a frown.

‘Accommodation has been made for your legionaries,’ said Malcador. ‘They will be well catered for.’

The Sigillite’s shuttle did not land amongst them, however, the pilot steering it up towards a much smaller opening a little below the vaulted roof of the port. Rising towards this tunnel, the shuttle’s lights passed over gallery after gallery overlooking the port. The area was strangely deserted, a city delved for millions of inhabitants who were now absent. The thrum of the ornithopter’s wings echoed in the immense hollow, interrupted by no other sound.

Passing into an opening between the legs of another carved eagle, the ornithopter followed a narrow channel for several hundred metres until it came to land in a circular chamber situated at the heart of the mountain. Its walls were of plain dressed stone, showing the striations of the mountain rock. A single door led from the docking site, fashioned from bronze, embossed with two crossed lightning bolts beneath an armoured fist. With a whine of decreasing power, the shuttle’s wings settled and Malcador’s craft lurched to a halt on the stone floor. The doorway opened with a rush of escaping air and immediately Corax detected an atmosphere far thinner than at ground level. Malcador led the primarch out of the shuttle, seemingly unaffected by the low oxygen content in the air.

‘If you will follow me, I will show you to the quarters that have been set aside for you, while your warriors will be garrisoned close at hand.’

The door opened at the Sigillite’s approach, Corax hearing the faintest buzz of a communications connection emitted from Malcador’s staff. Beyond, steps led steeply downwards into the bowels of the Imperial Palace.

WATCHING THE GOLD-ARMOURED figures of the Legio Custodes advancing ahead of him, Alpharius could not help but measure himself against them. Physically they did not seem to be any more impressive than a legionary, though certainly their armour and weapons seemed to be individually fashioned, something only a captain might expect in the Legions. He had heard before that each warrior was also a product of unique effort, as hand-crafted by the genhancers and tech-serfs as his wargear was by artisans of the Mechanicum. Since he had gunned down several Salamanders at the dropsite, he had been confident that the Alpha Legion were the match of any in the Legiones Astartes, but it was not until he had been confronted by the ranks of the Custodian Guard that he had contemplated fighting against the Emperor’s other servants.

There was some idle chatter from the other Raven Guard as they followed the Custodians deeper into the Imperial Palace. Corax and Malcador had left them not far from what Alpharius assumed was the Sigillite’s private shuttle chamber – another little nugget of intelligence to pass on – and they had descended through forty-six floors in a gigantic elevator to the barracks level.

The upper parts of the palace had been ornate, fashioned from marbled stone and obsidian, hung with banners and paintings of scenes from before the Unification Wars. Alpharius had seen depictions of old cities with onion-domed towers and ruined pyramids jutting from desert, rivers flowing in swift torrents over wide falls and landscapes of green pastures. Nothing of those times remained except for these pictures; the beauty of ancient Terra had long ago succumbed to millennia of pollution and war.

After leaving the elevator, the Raven Guard had been brought into an area far more functional and austere in appearance. The walls were of rough ferrocrete, covered by plain whitewash. The long dorms that opened out through arches on either side of the corridor were empty, and the smell of fresh paint and residual particles of rock dust still in the air indicated that they had been newly built, no doubt to house more defenders in the future.

There was little enough to report at the moment, but Alpharius kept his eyes and ears open for anything that might be of value. It was impossible to tell how deep within the mountain they were. There were no windows, the light provided by endless glowing stripes set into the ceiling and walls, the air coming through ventilator housings too small to allow entry or exit except perhaps by a child. The only way in or out was through the doors at each end of the main corridor, a defensive measure in all likelihood, but it also made for an effective prison. There was some discontented muttering amongst those Raven Guard who had been raised in the cells of Lycaeus, but this was stilled by a few words from the sergeants.

The leader of the Custodian Guard stopped and pointed with his spear to an archway on the left, beyond which was a dormitory housing several hundred beds in long lines. There were lockers and shelves, as well as weapons racks and armour stands. Everything was proportioned for legionaries, larger and more robust than the furniture required by normal men.

‘Remain here,’ the Custodian leader said sharply, his voice coming through the grille of his helm tainted by an external emitter. ‘Food and drink will be brought to you. There are drill rooms suitable for close-quarters weapons practice at the southern end of the hall,’ his spear tip pointed further down the corridor, ‘and should you wish to conduct live firing exercises you will be taken to an appropriate part of the facility.’

‘And how will we contact you?’ asked Commander Agapito, his voice conveying his displeasure at this abrupt treatment. ‘We are here to escort our primarch, not lounge around down here with you for company.’

‘Lord Corax is under constant watch, be sure of that,’ replied the Custodian, his metal-edged voice betraying no hint of whether that was for the primarch’s safety or other reasons. ‘You will be assigned a secure communications frequency. You may make full use of the barracks and its attached facilities, but you are not authorised to move beyond the southern and northern extents of this hall. Failure to abide by these restrictions will result in summary execution.’

‘Nice to be trusted,’ said Agapito.

The Custodian turned his head towards the Raven Guard commander, bringing the black lenses of his helm to focus on the legionary.

‘Trust is a depleted resource, commander. There will be no exceptions. I have been given personal authority over your stay here. I am Arcatus Vindix Centurio. All communications will be directed through me. My companions are not authorised to communicate with you, so save both your time and theirs by sparing them any questions or complaints. I will return in one hour to conduct a full security briefing.’

The Custodian Guard filed out through the gigantic lock-door at the end of the corridor, leaving the Raven Guard to their own devices. Squad by squad, the quarters were allocated. Alpharius found his squad assigned bunks close to the corridor, but he did not entertain any thoughts of sneaking out for further investigation. His primarch had made it clear that he was to remain undiscovered at all costs, until the full nature of his mission had been revealed. He was not going to risk exposing himself to go on a sightseeing jaunt under the noses of the Custodians.

When the legionaries had ordered the dormitory to their liking, stowing weapons and other gear on the racks bolted to the walls, Agapito called the company to attend him.

‘I know this is all quite strange, and those Custodian Guard are stiffer than a dead man’s fingers, but this is the situation and we must deal with it,’ said the commander. ‘When we have communications access, I will signal Avengerthat we have arrived and I will parley with Arcatus to arrange a suitable routine. I don’t know how long we will have to stay here, so let’s just keep alert and wait for the primarch’s orders.’

There being little point in staying at combat readiness, the Raven Guard aided one another with the removal of their armour, each legionary stripping down to bodysuits and robes. Normally such assistance would be provided by the Legion’s army of non-augmented attendants, but there was no such personnel available here. Despite the apparent security of their barracks, a watch rota was drawn up and the squads allocated shifts on duty. A lifetime of routine and discipline could be quickly eroded by periods of inactivity and Agapito was not going to allow any laxity to grow in the minds of his warriors.

As Arcatus had promised, attendants arrived with food, which was brought to the dining area in the chamber on the opposite side of the main passage. The serfs came and left in silence, obviously under orders not to fraternise with the legionaries in any way. They were all middle-aged men and women, wearing identical white jackets embroidered with the aquila of the Emperor, baggy black trousers and slippers of the same thick material, their faces etched with polite indifference from years of experience.

Alpharius was able to loiter in the passageway for a little while, and had a look past the sealed door at the end of the corridor when the attendants were leaving. As he suspected, beyond lay another chamber and another lock-door. There certainly would not be any way to slip out through there.

He rejoined his squad and sat down at the long table, taking a welcome lungful of steam that was rising from the roast meats laid on platters before each legionary. Fresh fruit and vegetables were heaped in bowls along the length of each table, along with an assortment of other foodstuffs. After many days of ship’s rations, it certainly was a feast. There were harsher conditions in which he might have found himself trapped, and as Alpharius ripped a leg from some giant poultry bird in front of him, he considered this one of the less arduous duties he been asked to perform for the Legion.