+++Chapter 4+++
Corvex licked his lips tasting the smoke drifting through the farm buildings, the acrid tang tasted of burnt plastics and metal from the artillery's smoking wreckage. As he strode through the farm the surviving rebel soldiers cowerered and scampered away, making themselves busy, anything to avoid his attention. Corvex was terrifying figure, a 7ft tall giant in the ancient black power armour of the Black Legion, his armour's silver trim moved with a life of it's own, slowly twisting and curling itself into different baroque curving razor sharp edges. He carried no weapons other than an ancient pair of Lightning Claws, sparks of white lightning crackled around the blades extending from his armoured gauntlets. Corvex wore no helmet, his chalky white hairless head open to the smokey air, besides it's colour his face was unremarkable except for his eyes. Opaque yellow orbs twitched within in their sunken sockets, a sickly glowing mist seeping from them and circling his head like a corrupted halo. Despite the grim look on his face he wasn't angry with the soldiers stationed here, he knew there had been nothing they could do, the warrior cult the Black Legion had created here consisted of professional soldiers, certainly as well trained and equipped as the Imperial lackeys, but last nights attackers were no mere soldiers. However a fear of failure still had to be maintained, his public butchering of the site's commanders had seen to that. Approaching the southern Hydra emplacement Corvex scanned the ground as he walked past a warehouse, checking for any more clues to the identity of this new enemy. He'd found boot prints that were unmistakably from Spacemarine power armour, but so far that was all. The artillery site's vox-pict recorders had mysteriously failed, some form of disruption field blurring patches of the recording where he presumed their unknown saboteurs were passing through the recording device's lens.
++Corvex, what have you found?++ The gruff voice over the com instantly recognisable as that of the Sorcerer Asturias.
++The enemy are Spacemarines, their stealth skills are exceptional and they have some unusual equipment.++
++What manner of equipment is this?++
++All vox-picts images were scrambled when these marines moved through their field of vision. I believe we are not dealing with the Emperor's pets, the subtleties of warfare are beyond them, and why would they conceal their identity?++
++It is the same at all Artillery sites. Hmmmm, it seems we must draw them out. Stay there, re-organise the defensive perimeter and make open preparations for a rite of summoning.++
++By your command.++
Corvex, turned his attention back to his surroundings. He pointed a clawed gauntlet at a cult soldier scurrying past. "You!" The man skidded to a halt and turned round, a look of near terror on his face. "I want everyone assembled here in 10 minutes, move!"
A mile distant on the plains sloping up from the farm Shadowsniper Garan lay still amongst the shadows of the rusting remains of a Leman Russ Battle Tank, he watched the Black Legionnaire bark orders at the cultists lined up in front of him. Aswell as the new camouflage scheme his armour had been smeared in mud from the devestated Avengis terrain, bits of dead wood were attached to help break up his profile and the boxy casing of his long barrelled Dominator Rifle had been painted in a matt black and smeared with stripes of muddy earth, unmoving amongst the wreckage even to the trained eye he was invisible. Garan, the Shadowhawks 3rd Company Shadowsniper, was linked through his Dominator Rifle's mind impulse link, the zoomed images of the Black Legionnaire displayed within his helmets visor changing focus instantly to his every whim. For two nights he had lain still watching events at the farm, for a moment he had caught sight of Victer from Klast's team as he shot a Hydra crew, the impressive accuracy had been noted. The explosions shortly aftwards had been huge, Klast's team had placed their charges well and not a single Siege gun had survived the detonations. The rest of the night the farm had been a hive of activity as it's occupants desperately, and of course unsuccessfully, tried to locate the Shadowhawk saboteurs. He'd realised why they'd been quite so frantic when the Black Legionnaire came roaring into the farm upon an ancient Vincent Blackshadow bike. After tearing what Garan presumed were the site's officers to shreds in a murderous rage, the Chaos Marine had stalked about the area. Now Garan watched him bellowing orders, the Dominator's targeting reticule locked to the Chaos Marines head following it's target as he stomped up and down the line of cultists. Again Garan asked himself if he should take the shot, weighing up the effect on the cultists morale against the need to observe the enemy more. Until now they had not known the strings were being pulled by the Black Legion, it certainly explained how a cult could wage such a major war on what had been a well defended Imperial Planet quite so succesfully. To Garan it merely made the mission a more interesting challenge, the Black Legion were feared across the galaxy and he would enjoy pitting his wits against them. A strange coincidence that the Legion should make their presence known exactly as the Shadhowhawks arrived, the Shadowhawks Techmarines had secretly gained access to Avengis' data recording the history of this war, but there had been no indication of Chaos Marine involvment anywhere before now. He ignored the temptation to fire and contented himself with just watching, he decided to let the Chaos marine live a bit longer.
By Bootae