Corvus Corax

The Interview

FBI Blacksite, Washington DC

To Corvus, the place looked like a primitive supply depot, where cargo would be ferried spaceward by trawlers to the large battlebarges and cruisers that would hum impatiently in orbit. Amelia had told him it was an airport mostly for public use but this hangar was used when they wanted to get someone in or out of the country without anyone knowing. The Primarch smirked, his brother Alpharius would appreciate the tactic of subterfuge. The talk of countries made him think of the Unification Wars the Emperor had fought to bring Terra together, it depressed him slightly to remember the rise of his father was nearly thirty thousand years in his future. They had settled on the hangar due to Corvus's large frame stopping him from entering regular doors and his refusal to remove his armor meaning he would cause structural damage to many buildings he walked through.

A few small tables, at least to his standard had been set up in one corner, Amelia stood near them shifting and sorting papers across its surface. A nostalgic and rare commodity in the Imperium, Lorgar would have appreciated seeing it put to so much use. He eyed the men in the rafters that had him loosely surrounded, their equivalent of high powered rifles tucked into his shoulder and aimed squarely at him.

Eventually, the woman who spoke on behalf of their leader waved him over. "I wanted you to see this." It was a large version of the map he'd been shown on her data-slate. It certainly was a map of Terra. "Do you recognise it?" She asked.

"It is as it should be but not as I remember it." Corvus told her.

"How do you remember it?"

A large finger tapped the center of North America, "This was the seat of the Emperor's Palace-" His finger moved from the Pacific ocean to the Atlantic, "-this ocean wasn't here, this ocean was much smaller-"

"What happened to the oceans?"

"Hydrogen wars burnt much of them away." He put bluntly.

"When?" She asked.

"At some point in the Age of Strife, tenth to fifteenth millenium, The Imperium knows little of that time and even less of this one."

She was a little dumbfounded by the simpleness of the answer and had to take a moment to regain her composure. "I think when we met I asked you the wrong question, when do you come from."

Corvus looked her up and down. "The thirty-second millennium."

She heldback a gasp. "How is that- why did you come here?"

"It wasn't by choice." The Primarch said. "My legion and I were laying siege to an alien world and suddenly, I was here." He remembered back to what the Emperor had told him, that forces of chaos had taken him from Terra, perhaps the same thing had happened to him again, except not through space, but time.

"You said before that you were Primarch of the Raven Guard, what does that mean?" Amelia asked.

"That I'm the son of the Emperor, and commander of his 19th legion, The Raven Guard." Corvus explained to her as he examined the map still, his fingers ran over the Gyptian desert, much smaller now and the Himalazian Range, where his father's genetic forge was hidden, his birth place.

"What did you, you and your legion I mean, do?" Amelia asked.

"We reclaimed humanities birthright, there were millenia of turmoil where advanced space travel became impossible, thousands of human colonies were lost for years, until the Emperor began his crusade to reunite them. We explored space, found human colonies and culled xenos where we find them." Corvus explained

"You've said that word before, 'xenos', what does it mean?"

"The Alien." He told her. "They come in many shapes and forms but none of them are peaceful, not to humanity."

"Has anything like this happened before?"

"Timetravel on this scale? Unheard of, if I can perhaps get into the warp-" He trailed off into an internal monologue of calculations before remembered he was thousands of years before the first psyker was said to appear. Which means no astropaths and no warp engines.

"Do you think you can return?"

The first answer into the Primarchs head was a resounding no. Then came a slightly long game plan. He was biologically speaking immortal, could he wait the two dozen millenia required to see the Emperor rise to power, to perhaps help him in his quest. It would be difficult, but doable. "I don't think so."

"Tell me about where you were raised, you said it was called Lycaeus?"

"It's a small moon, many lightyears away from here, formerly a slave-run mining facility." The Primarch told her. "As a teenager I had helped liberate it."

"You were a slave?"

"Raised, hidden and protected by them."

"You and your father both seem like great men." Amelia said as she straightened her posture. The tone of her voice changed. "Now, the person I speak for was wondering, if you could assist us in some matters in exchange for your asylum."

"I do not require asylum." Corvus told her, a slight frustrated crease forming in his brow. "I am a Primarch, I do not need your safekeeping." She opened her mouth but stammered, he knew she was taking orders through an ear piece. The primarch didn't think she realised he was aware of the eavesdropping. "What does he want from me?"

"Firstly, he would like permission to have scientists come to look at your arms and armor. And-"

"I refuse." Corvus interjected. These were blessed, sacred weapons of destruction crafted by the Emperors personal artificiers. To give them to the humans of this time could start wars over technology that wasn't supposed to exist.

"-and and secondly, he would like to know if you would assist in our military operations."

"War currently plagues this time?" Corvus asked.

"No major conflicts at the moment, but minor ones? all the time."

"Tell me of your enemies, if your cause is noble, I can not turn blindly away from it."