Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley Read online

  ‘All Chapters have secrets.’ Hadrios rested his hand on the casket. ‘Some of which have only become apparent to me recently.’ He looked at Thracian. ‘You didn’t know Captain Argus very well.’

  ‘He was my brother-captain,’ said Thracian.

  ‘But did you know him?’ said Hadrios. ‘Did you know him as a man or as a friend?’

  Thracian’s first instinct was to say yes, and accept for himself that that was the truth. He frowned. It was not the truth. He looked at the casket again. He was finding it hard to think. Some force emanated from it, clouding his mind. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think anyone knew him. He was private.’

  Hadrios nodded again. So calm in the face of this awful knowledge. Thracian felt himself teeter on the brink of madness.

  ‘This hybrid came from Sotha itself,’ Hadrios said. ‘Argus selected me to be part of his inner conclave, a position sanctified by the Chaplaincy and the Apothecarion, invested with great responsibility, great secrecy. We are the tool of the Chaplaincy, independent from the Chapter Master’s control. There were five of us. We three remain.’ He gestured to the other two Space Marines. ‘Our task was to keep the Chapter’s holdings pure.’

  Thracian stared at the casket. ‘Sotha was infected? That’s impossible.’

  ‘Evidence suggests otherwise.’

  ‘We watched them for millennia. They were our families, our brothers in arms. I cannot believe it.’ The sensation from the casket increased, as did his disbelief.

  ‘And yet they turned on us.’

  ‘That is not true!’ said Thracian. ‘They were devoured.’

  ‘You were there. No one came to help you, did they?’

  ‘And you are saying that both the Chaplaincy and the Apothecaries knew this?’

  Hadrios nodded again, a slow, calm gesture.

  ‘They knew it. They were trying to root out the rot, that is why we had to be so secretive. It only takes one, captain. One genestealer to corrupt a world, even a world that is home to the Adeptus Astartes.’

  ‘Sotha.’ Thracian felt a great agitation and began to pace. ‘The uprising on Brakur Dominus. The other incidences of civil unrest before the fleet hit the league.’

  ‘The whole of the Sotharan League was thick with genestealers. Our world was directly targeted, brother, to neutralise us. There was a cult on Sotha, right under our noses.’

  ‘No. That cannot be true,’ said Thracian. ‘We would have known.’

  ‘But you didn’t know. Why do you think that is?’ Hadrios continued with relentless logic. ‘Were we negligent, or were we prevented from seeing? Did it not strike you how easily Sotha fell? The confusion? The lack of coordination in the defence? The failure of the void shields and orbital guns so early in the battle?’

  ‘Then why are you operating outside of Thorcyra’s authority?’

  ‘As I told you, at the behest of the Chaplaincy. What do you think about Thorcyra’s coming here, to Miral Prime, making a stand against all sense when we should flee and consolidate?’

  ‘That is the Chapter Master’s judgement,’ said Thracian. ‘We are honour bound to obey him.’

  ‘You think his judgement bad nonetheless. There are strong links between the Chapter and the Sothan government. The Chapter Master has always been advised by the elders of Sotha. He still is, by those that remain. Why do you think they managed to survive? Why do you think they suggested this place? Have you seen Thorcyra? I was hoping to bring this news to him. I feared what I might discover. Alas, my fears were borne out when he refused to see me. He is panicking. Such a defeat is enough to affect even us. He falls back on tradition when he should be decisive.’

  ‘Careful what you insinuate, brother.’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Hadrios. ‘The Scythes of the Emperor are compromised. The hive mind beat us, because it has us. It used our concern for our countrymen as a weapon. The infiltrators are still here, among the fleet, working against the Imperium. Thorcyra cannot see it.’

  ‘Then we should execute the council of elders, every one of them.’

  ‘It is not so easy,’ said Hadrios. ‘If we act, they will strike. There are too few of the Chapter left. Our serfs are dead. They were screened thoroughly, but who knows how many of the enemy hide among our void ship crews, or among the hundreds of thousands of refugees that follow our retreat? Besides,’ said Hadrios, looking to the casket. ‘Would you abandon our traditions, and indiscriminately massacre all we hold dear? We were made to protect humanity, not slaughter it. There are subtler ways. That is the purpose of my small brotherhood. Help me, brother captain, to continue my sacred task and purge the taint from our people.’

  Even through his helm, Thracian could feel the other man’s eyes locked onto his own.

  ‘What do you propose we do?’

  ‘I shall continue the work of Argus and the Inner Conclave. I will scour the refugee vessels coming to us here. I will vet those recruited to replenish our Chapter serfs. The geneseed brought to Miral must also be checked.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘It may have been tampered with in the confusion.’

  ‘That’s a ridiculous suggestion.’

  ‘Is it? Listen to me, Thracian. We are the guarantors of our Chapter’s future. Thorcyra leads us all to our deaths here. As soon as we can, under whatever pretext, we must leave, and we must not return.’

  Thracian stared at Hadrios. He did not wish to agree. He refused to believe his brothers and sisters of the common blood were tainted. The sense of foreboding from the casket pushed at him, and there was so much light…

  Circa 10,000 years ago

  …flowing in a channel of square angles. Magma pumped from the depths of the planet, sent via canals to Sarum’s metallurgical plants whose devices sucked out every scrap of useful mineral they could before vomiting the cooling slag back down into the planet’s heart.

  Cawl was only dimly aware of this. Her passion was fighting. The lava canal was a wonder of the world, but for her it was part of the scenery, something to warm the fighting platform of the agoge where she trained under the multiple-eyed guidance of Warleader Soren every day.

  ‘That’s right, girl! Harder! Take his legs out from under him!’ Soren buzzed overhead on shimmering anti-grav generators. His most striking feature was his four arms, all flesh, a cloned pair set back to back against his born pair. It was traditional among the students to try and guess which were the originals, though those more informed in the mysteries of the cult would also construct arguments as to why he kept them at all, because only Soren’s arms were flesh. The rest of him was metal, cylindrical, blessed by the cunning of the Machine-God with ocular sensors and clever devices. He had no head, his brain being housed in the column that had taken the place of his body, so his four arms crowned his mostly mechanical being as a sort of strange, fleshy sculpture.

  ‘Get him!’ he shouted. ‘Come on, Hester Aspertia! Hit him! Hit him!’

  The acolyta fought with electro staves turned down to the lowest setting. Even so, a good blow could break an arm, and the shock they gave was painful. Cawl was smaller and younger than her opponent. Cadillain-8-Opir stood a head taller, and had taken his first combat augmetics at a markedly young age.

  These advantages made him arrogant.

  Cawl swung her stave with deadly accuracy. The generator pods clashed off each other with satisfying displays of sparks.

  ‘You’re fast, little girl,’ said Cadillain-8-Opir. ‘But speed is not enough.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ she said through gritted teeth. Her braids swung around her face, given added weight by the data cables plaited into the hair. She jabbed and slashed, the touch of their weapons birthing miniature lightning storms that earthed themselves all over the fighting platform. She shouted in anger, stabbing faster and faster, then whirled, leapt, spun a savage blow towards
Cadillain-8-Opir’s head that made him chuckle.

  ‘Nice try,’ he said, ducking back.

  She responded with a flurry of attacks that stopped him laughing there and then.

  ‘That’s right, Hester,’ Soren shouted, drifting over the arena and buffeting his students with contra-grav backwash. ‘That’s right, feel the motive force in your weapon. Let your intuition entwine with it. He’s bigger than you, so what? Bring him down! If the Omnissiah wills it, it will be so!’

  On she came, fast and swift. Cadillain-8-Opir fell back into a defensive pattern. Cawl was angry, tired of losing to those bigger than her. She slammed her weapon against his, and he pushed her back. She cursed the feebleness of her muscles, wishing for sinews of steel and joints of brass that would never tire.

  Suddenly, it was over. Cadillain-8-Opir spied a tiny opportunity and exploited it flawlessly. He was gentle. His weapon tapped her head. Nevertheless the burst of power that shocked her memcore and supplemental systems floored her.

  The others watching from the tiered benches winced in sympathy. She heard their sucked in breaths through the crackle of discharge crawling round her implants, and it made her angry.

  The motive force ceased its lesson and relinquished control of her body. She opened painful eyes and saw Cadillain-8-Opir standing over her, stave held at ease in the crook of his left arm, three-fingered metal right hand reaching comradely for her.

  ‘Let me help you up,’ he said.

  She gritted her teeth, but took his hand.

  ‘I’ll beat you one day,’ she said. ‘I’ll beat you all.’

 

  Cadillain-8-Opir smiled, showing metal teeth as he pulled her up. ‘Maybe. Perhaps then we’ll see…’

  Circa 100 years ago

  … a world of green. Brother Tyliphus blinked and stood taller on the wall. This was Sotha as he remembered it.

  Home.

  One moment he was looking upon dust and ruin, the next a night of warm winds. The scents of quicktrees in bloom were relayed by the armour’s autosenses to his nose, filling him with melancholy for what was lost.

  But it wasn’t lost. It was right there in front of him.

  Tyliphus walked along the walls. He had performed this duty a thousand times. Walking the walls was his favourite task. To see Sotha by night, the crests of waves dirty white on black in the dark, and the lights of Sothopolis shining by the sea, knowing that it was in his power to safeguard the people sleeping in their beds. Quicktrees creaked, putting on several feet a night, so fast it was said you could see them grow if you had the patience to watch. In the rustling forest a phantine bull bellowed its mating call. Not close, he thought. The cries carried for miles. The coast was strung with beads of light from other settlements, while Odessa Port shone out a haze of light pollution, but back away from the shore, on the other side of the mountain, Sotha was black as any primordial world. It was a special place.

  He remembered a night like this, he thought, a night he took off his helm against all regulation to breathe in the soft, loamy scents of the forest, the sharp stone of the mountain, the comforting smells of the city by the sea.

  Was this the memory, or was he living it now? Realities overlaid themselves, confusing him. He barely felt the gun lock to his thigh. His hands rose up to undo the helm seals, because that is what he had done, and was therefore fated to do.

  A tiny hiss of escaping air was followed by the scent of a living world. He stood breathing it for long minutes. It was good to take pleasure in simple things.

  Blackness took him.

  Now

  Alarms blared in the Repulsor, bringing Felix out of his catalepsian trance. He felt a twinge of discomfort as the dormant half of his brain shook off sleep and linked fully with the rest. With it came a sharpening of senses and intellect, and a certainty of what had occurred.

  ‘We are under attack,’ he said, wide-casting to the entire expedition.

  He emerged with his warriors into the airless square of the barbican. The vox waves were alive with chatter from his own men, the Scythes and the archmagos’ party. Pulse interference generated by multiple scans thrummed through the voices. Lights came on overhead as the Adeptus Mechanicus’ servo-skulls lit up the night.

  ‘There, up on the wall!’ Cominus shouted.

  The Chosen of Vespator ran towards the southern wall, to the right of the main gatehouse if one was facing away from it. The dark shape of a Space Marine in Mark X battleplate bent over a smaller figure. Cadmus’ ident flashed up in Felix’s helm. Others crowded round.

  ‘Cover the gates. Secure the perimeter,’ Felix ordered. His armour was heavy, but equipped with high powered motive units, and he ran up the wall staircase easily.

  ‘There’s no need, my lord,’ said Cadmus, looking up as Felix approached. ‘There are no foes. He killed himself.’

  Felix came closer. The Space Marine was dead on the ground, skin frosted, eyes cloudy with ice.

  Thracian arrived with his Apothecary. Cadmus stepped aside to allow him access to the corpse.

  ‘He died without violence. It looks like he removed his helmet,’ said the Apothecary. His ident rune named him as Aratus.

  ‘Hard vacuum should not be enough to kill a Space Marine,’ said Felix. He looked down over the wall. The masonry gave way to cliff that plunged away. The land beneath was lifeless stone.

  ‘I don’t think he knew he was dying,’ said Aratus. The whine of a redactor drill pressed into ceramite came over the vox with his voice. ‘He didn’t fill his multi-lung. He suffocated.’

  ‘Passively? How?’ said Cadmus.

  ‘The mountain,’ said Thracian. ‘The mountain did it.’

  ‘It didn’t affect me this time,’ said Felix. ‘Anyone else?’ He looked to his warriors, those that were not scouring the vicinity for enemies.

  ‘There was a tremor fifteen minutes ago,’ said Cominus.

  ‘I experienced a vision,’ said Thracian. ‘An unwelcome one.’

  Felix could feel the black bulk of the Pharos behind him. He fancied it was watching them. ‘Theoretical, it is testing us, gauging our weaknesses one by one. Practical, warn the archmagos. He was right. We are under attack. I want everyone watched at all times. Pair off. No one is to be left alone from now on.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The Crooked Stair

  Day returned mercilessly as a sword blade of light slicing across the land. By dawn the expedition was ready. They had taken no more rest during the night. Although the earth had not shaken again, they remained on heightened alert.

  Thracian stood side by side with Felix and Cawl. Behind them the remaining Scythes of the Emperor waited in a double line, the geneseed casket escorted between the four Terminators, and the body of Tyliphus carried by four other brothers upon a makeshift stretcher. Cominus headed eight of the Chosen of Vespator behind the Scythes of the Emperor. Diamedes and Austen were to remain with the tanks, whose machine-spirits had been elevated to maximum awareness. Qvo-87 and Alpha Primus brought up the rear.

  They stood in silence, half-expecting the ground to shake and the mountain dreaming to come on them again, but no disturbance either of the earth or of their spirits was forthcoming. Felix had them wait before the battered main gates of the fortress-monastery until the sun rose over the peak of the mountain, and slanted its light down into the bailey. Light crept up and over their backs, then with a sudden rush, stabbed through the ruined main gates and into the inner courtyard.

  ‘Expedition, move out,’ said Felix.

  ‘We go towards enlightenment,’ said Cawl. His eyes gleamed with anticipation behind the shimmer of his atmospheric field. ‘But best be careful just in case.’ The massive weapons on his lowest arms rotated into readiness and powered themselves to fire.

 
Felix thumbed on his power sword and cycled up his boltstorm gauntlet. The gun’s machine-spirit danced reticles over every feature before him with such dizzying eagerness he was forced to rebuke it.

  The Scythes of the Emperor began to sing a lament of fallen heroes, and the procession filed through the broken gates, down the long tunnel through the gatehouse, and into the fortress-monastery’s middle defences.

  A few more empty suits of armour lay on the paving in the courtyard, broken open like the husks of crustaceans. Space was limited so high upon the mountain, so the courtyard was small, triangular and looked down upon by high, roofed walls whose inner faces were pierced with loopholes. The apex of the triangle was not quite opposite the gate tunnel. To the right of the triangle’s tip, a second, smaller gateway led through the wall towards the mountain summit. In the opposite wall was a wide, low vehicle door that led down to the Chapter armouries. The space was a killing zone, and slaughter had been done on both sides. No trace remained of the dead beyond the wargear, but evidence of the fight’s ferocity was visible in marks on the walls: huge claw gouges, missile impacts, lasburns; every sort of damage from man-portable armaments imaginable, along with the chemical wounds of bioweaponry.

  Thracian halted. ‘The gatehouse and then the galleries were taken quickly once we fell back,’ he said. ‘We fired on our own fortifications here, from this side to that.’ He traced a line across the gap between the opposite sides of the triangle with two fingers. One wall had more bioweapon damage, the other more from Imperial guns.

  ‘How did they overrun this place so quickly?’ asked Felix. ‘Even with your guns down and your void shields failed, it is a formidable obstacle.’

  ‘I have no good answer to that,’ said Thracian. ‘We were ready to stand here, then the gates failed, and we were forced to fall back. All was confusion.’

  ‘The quickest way to take a fortress is from the inside,’ said Felix.

  ‘Are you suggesting we were betrayed?’ said Thracian angrily. ‘You impugn our honour, tetrarch.’