Planetfall, Minus Two Minutes Terran Sidereal
The Shadowhawk shook in the air as it plummeted for the blasted surface of Isstvan V. Nex hadn't moved from his spot, away from the others. He heard the crew talking through the open doors to the cockpit; they spoke of landing zones, target locks, and fire density. They sounded… worried? Was that the term?
A strange idea, for that to be coming from Astartes.
"We blacken the sky," one of the Reconnaissance Legionaries muttered. "This many craft, they can't possibly miss us all."
"It looks like the Iron Tenth are taking the brunt of it," another said. "Mad bastards wanted to drop into the middle of the line."
"The Gorgon's angry. Heard Fulgrim tried to recruit him to Horus' cause."
Nex ignored the chatter; he supposed it was too late to pick a quieter Shadowhawk.
The transport bucked as something slammed into it with a screech of metal. The shaking increased. "Incoming flak," one of the pilots called. "Engaging stealth countermeasures."
"They're not targeting us," another crew member said. "It's just general fire." Another impact.
"That doesn't matter if they fill the skies!"
The Shadowhawk groaned, metal screeching as it dove for the surface. Nex tightened his grip; he'd made the mistake once of freestanding in a Thunderhawk when enemy fire brought it down.
More rattling impacts shook the craft. Legionnaires cursed in their harnesses; the amount of incidental hits for unaimed fire spoke to the sheer volume the traitors were sending up. More than one blamed the Blood-Crow's presence. "Thirty seconds to deck!"
Nex activated the cameleoline inlays embedded in his armor with a thought. He watched his outstretched arm shimmer and turn the same dark gray of the compartment interior, mimicking his surroundings. The long flowing nanoweave of his cloak did the same, rendering him into a hazy blur.
"Full spread!" The Reconnaissance sergeant yelled over the rumbling. "Maintain fire discipline! Mark targets and zones of domination! Do not engage unless necessary! Remember, we are coordinating with Legion command!"
The Shadowhawk gave a shuddering lurch as it pulled up from its suicidal dive. Retro jets fired with a kick that threatened to knock Nex from his feet. He swayed with the impact, shifting his stance in anticipation of-
The forward ramp dropped with a whisper of modified hydraulics. Nex was already halfway down by the time it touched the ground. He sprinted over the dry volcanic ground, footsteps silent upon the black earth. Even among a Legion renowned for its stealth skills, Nex was a cut above most of them.
He heard the Reconnaissance squad follow down the ramp, hazy figures in their own cameleoline armor. The Destroyers followed, nowhere near as stealthy. They advanced, moving towards the massive fortress line at the head of the Urgall Depression.
Nex left them all behind as he roamed forward. None of his Legion attempted to join him. He didn't mind: fewer people to get in his way.
War erupted across the entirety of his autosenses, on a scale and savagery unlike anything he'd ever seen. The Raven Guard's vanguard forces were landing on the right flank of the traitor fortifications, as Ferrus Manus had planned – insisted rather. Bleak rock outcroppings dominated the terrain here; some of them were so vast they formed their own plateaus. Fresh craters, smoking scars, and shattered stone marked where the orbital bombardment had punished the land. The broken ground formed steep canyons and cliffs from the black earth; maneuver here would be a matter of sudden and close contact with the enemy.
Kaedes Nex smiled to himself.
Excellent.
Tracers and beams filled the sky, carving bright trails against the backdrop of roiling black clouds the width of the horizon. The loyalist bombardment had been so powerful it disrupted the region's weather patterns, drafting storms from the rent atmosphere. Fiery downward trails heralded the descent of drop pods, gunships, and transporters. Blossoms of flame winked where traitor weapons found loyalist vehicles, but their numbers proved impossible to stop.
Flashes filled the primary zone of the Urgall Depression to his left. The Iron Hands Primarch led his sons in a frontal assault against the Warmaster's forces, hammering the traitors in an implacable advance. And the heavy support hadn't even arrived yet.
Nex's enhanced vision picked out the descent of Raven Guard Assault squads, jump packs flaring in freefall to orient them towards strike zones. He'd considered a jump pack once, the way some Destroyers and Moritats used them to close the distance to their prey. But that meant committing to a noisy, open approach, and Nex found that he preferred stalking his targets quietly.
The hunt was the only time he… felt anything.
The first wave of black drop pods bearing the icons of the Nineteenth slammed down into the earth, sending more sprays of dust, dirt, and rock into the air. Ramps slammed down, disgorging power armored Marines by the hundreds. Monstrous Kharybdis Assault Claws touched down on spindle-like legs; access hatches irised open to reveal Cataphractii suits of dark gray marked with intricate etchings – the Deliverer elite. Land Speeders and jetbikes flitted down through the air from transporters in low-altitude flights.
The Raven Guard assault did not go unanswered. Heavy bolters opened fire from concealed and dug-in strongpoints, lacing the sky with fist-sized mass-reactive rounds. Plasma and bolter fire skimmed the ground, cutting into black-armored Marines. The first enemies showed themselves as they surged from dug-in pits that had survived the bombardment. They wore sea-green armor emblazoned with a stylized eye: the Raven Guard had engaged the Sons of Horus.
The vanguard kept up the offensive, hurling themselves into short ranged firefights and diving headlong into bloody melees with their jump packs. Gunfire echoed: sharp bolter cracks and the lower, bass roars of heavy cannons. The stony ground forced the opposing Astartes on the ground into tight, twisting canyons. Sons of Horus assault squads rose into the air on plumes of flame, engaging their Raven Guard counterparts in midair duels. Blood poured out onto the ground where boots and treads ground it into filthy mud. Nex moved through the carnage, just a flicker of blurred movement in the chaos.
The Blood-Crow found his first victims in a blasted crater that had once been a dugout. Whatever munitions had hit it had torn it open to the sky above and rendered most of the Sons of Horus squad within into gobbets of ruined meat and armor fragments. Four remained, clutching bolters and covering fire sectors towards the landing sites.
Nex had already circled around behind. He dropped down from the broken stone outcropping above the crater, a Fulcrum in each hand. One of the enemy Legionnaires started turning – Nex downed him first with a round through the left eye, shattering through the dull red eye lens. Three more shots followed before another quarter second had passed; accelerator coils launched slugs at such high velocities that they left distorted trails through the air. Nex didn't even feel the recoil.
Four shots, four ki- three kills. Nex scowled as the fourth Son of Horus turned and lunged, ignoring the gaping hole in his faceplate and the blood oozing from his mangled cheek. The wounded Space Marine drove into Nex with a tackle, knocking the pistol from his right hand. Nex hammered his elbow into broken faceplate, drawing a pained grunt as he drove ceramite shards into torn flesh. A wrench and a twist of his victim's arm spun his body away. Hand freed, he drew a combat knife. Running on long instinct, his blade was already halfway to his victim's kidney before he remembered the thick armor. Repositioning his other hand, Nex hauled the other Marine's head back with a vicious tug, reached around, and plunged the blade in through the softer neck joint to the hilt.
He wrenched the blade around, sawing it back and forth as he clutched the Son of Horus's head in an elbow grip. There was surprisingly little blood, he thought. This was the first time he'd experienced Astartes physiology working against him. He slapped aside multiple elbow blows; it took an inordinate amount of sawing before his victim finally stopped struggling. He released his grip and let the corpse slump to the battered earth.
The Blood-Crow retrieved his pistol. Four ki- three kills. The last Son of Horus rolled over, bolter raised to-
Nex shot him through the mouth-grill, angling the round to lance up through the brain. The Marine slumped; his bolter thudded onto his chest and slid off.
Nex felt a rare twinge of… hmm. He wasn't sure if he was annoyed, or impressed. That was the most effort he'd needed to spend for so few kills in years – decades, even. This would be… what was the word? Ah. Fun.
His cameleoline flickered, returning to normal operation after the flurry of activity. The Blood-Crow stalked on, leaving the crater of corpses behind. He glanced over to his right; a hundred meters away a Dark Fury squad smashed into a Sons of Horus Reaver position. Lightning claws tore through ceramite and flesh. Bolter rounds, chainblades, and power weapons answered.
He didn't move to join the melee, but moved off the other way. His brothers would decide that fight on their own, without his intervention. They both preferred it that way.
The memories rose as he hunted, flittering about his mind like phantoms he'd never been able to exorcise.
The Primarch's pardon, after the liberation of Lycaeus.
The others had shunned him even then, he remembered. He'd already borne the title of "Blood-Crow" among the freedom fighters. And even before that.
They'd called him that on Kiavahr, when he was a boy. He hadn't had a proper name, or at least he didn't remember one. He didn't remember when he'd killed his first man, or the – was it several dozen? – after that. He'd lost track of how many he'd killed before they finally caught him and dumped him on the prison moon.
Corax had found him while plotting his uprising. Even then the Primarch had been recognizably Other, something far more than human. Corax had offered him a chance for freedom – if he brought his lethal skills to the rebellion. The pale giant laid one condition on him; that he would kill only those whom Corax designated. The boy had agreed, more for the opportunity to take lives than the chance for freedom.
Some – many, even – had wondered why Corax sought out the empty-eyed murderer who seemed to regard human life as some curiosity to pluck apart. Others whispered that like recognized like; that Corax felt a solitary kinship with the disquieting boy.
The murderer cared not; he fought for the uprising as he'd agreed. He did so alone for the most part, stalking guards, officials, and overseers that Corax marked for death. He left their corpses in shadowed tunnels for others to find. Or rather, he left parts of their corpses. Close enough.
The liberation came. He didn't feel any different. More whispers, that some shining figure of gold had visited Corax, spoke with the uprising's leader before the nuclear bombardment of Kiavahr. It didn't matter to the young man. Life continued much as it had before.
The others continued to avoid him, finding alternate routes when they noticed him in the dark tunnels of the former prison moon – though that wasn't often, given his penchant for the shadows. More than one of the newly liberated inhabitants petitioned Corax to quietly eliminate him.
In a rare moment of curiosity, he'd asked Corax what his response had been.
The demigod had chuckled. He said he'd told the others they were free to take Nex if they felt capable of it.
Nobody had tried.
Then the revelation of the Imperium, of the Emperor and his Legiones Astartes, of the Primarch project, of the Legion bearing Corax's genetic records. Corax rose to take his place as master of the Nineteenth Legion, and brought many of his freedom fighters to join the ranks. Among them was the quiet murderer, now known as Kaedes Nex.
He remembered little of the implantation process – the transformation from mortal murderer to transhuman… well, still a murderer, albeit a sanctioned one. Mostly there'd been pain: the agonies of a late transformation. The Legion Apothecaries said the process should have been fatal by any expectations. Others joked that the universe could not let so fine a killer die without first doing more of what he was so good at.
Ascension to the ranks of the Astartes did nothing for the others' acceptance of him, or his connection to greater humanity. Controller Ephrenia, who'd been present at Corax's discovery on Lycaeus, had commented on it once. Nex had walked through the command bridge of the Shadow of the Emperor, to report a mission success to the Primarch. Crew and serfs backed away from him, as if the blood coating his armor was somehow anathema. He didn't understand the fuss; of course feeding a man through jet turbines would make a mess.
Ephrenia had frowned and shook her head as he passed. Nex paused, looked back at her blankly. "It's like the parts that make up most men aren't there in you," she'd said.
Kaedes hadn't understood what she was talking about. He'd cut, shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, and otherwise mutilated enough men that he was reasonably certain he possessed all the same parts, and in the same places. Maybe even more, as an Astartes. After all, how many mortal men could lay claim to being able to survive losing a heart? He'd shrugged and moved on.
Humans were so strange.