Hive City No. 23 of Merseyside.
Corvas Corax looked down through the narrow viewport at the darkness below.
The Darkwing-pattern Storm Eagle passed soundlessly through the hive city's deep-detection array and reached the airspace above the industrial processing district.
The Storm Eagle was a supplement to the Stormbird and Thunderhawk. It was smaller, and the standard pattern could carry only twenty Astartes.
The Darkwing-pattern Stormbird was manufactured on Kiavahr, and its manufacturing template had not been shared with the Adeptus Mechanicus. It was a special pattern unique to the Raven Guard.
The space taken up by the Quantum Field Repulsor meant the Darkwing-pattern carried three fewer warriors than the standard pattern, and also allowed this pattern of Assault Boat to pass invisibly through most surveillance zones.
A string of runes flashed inside Corax's helmet. He opened the Communicator. "Attack!"
Nimrod had offered his aid, breaking the kind of fortress the Raven Guard were not adept at assaulting. Now it was time to repay him in his own way.
Shortwave vox pulses spread through the Shadowmasters' portable radio Communicators, and hatch doors slid open in silence.
Corax shot into the night, the raven-feathers of the Shadow Armor spreading wide.
The Master of Ravens glided soundlessly through the air, his black eyes looking down over the food-processing plant below.
War had not interrupted the plant's operation. The machines roared as they ran, much like Lycaeus before it had been named Deliverance.
Filthy waterfalls of waste passed through layer after layer of swaying strainers, together with algae scraped from the lower surfaces of the floating pools in the reservoirs of each dome, and were dumped into the open chutes of the Pasteurizers.
Dull-eyed laborers without filtration gear breathed unfiltered ammonia as they worked amid foul-smelling splashes of sludge that occasionally spattered across their