‘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.’