Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley Read online

  ‘Our history says this tower was built in the time of the Emperor, by great heroes of the age,’ said Ulas. ‘This is the most ancient part of our citadel, and the most holy. It was the heart of our fortress-monastery. They say the Emperor Himself came here, once.’

  ‘What of it?’ said Alpha Primus. Daelus was forming the opinion that Alpha Primus tried far too hard to sound disinterested.

  ‘Don’t you feel the smallest bit awed, Primus?’ said Daelus. ‘The history here. Guilliman walked these halls in the days of the Heresy. Perhaps others of the primarchs did too. The Pharos itself, its age, think of the secrets it contains. It is millions of years old. Millions.’

  ‘It is xenos technology. Dangerous. Unclean.’

  ‘You serve Cawl,’ said Daelus. ‘He does not believe so.’

  Troncus disappeared into the dark. His suit light bobbed along the corridor, and vanished round a corner.

  ‘I don’t serve him. I belong to him,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘That doesn’t mean my mind is the same as his.’

  ‘He is brilliant,’ said Daelus. ‘He made us all.’

  ‘He saved our Chapter,’ Ulas said.

  ‘You do not know him as I do. He made me first,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘I have been at his side for a long time. He gave me too much. His designs were too ambitious. I suffer because of it.’

  ‘How so?’ said Ulas. ‘You are mighty. If every Primaris Marine had your strength then–’

  ‘I hurt,’ Primus interrupted. ‘Everywhere. My dreams are black. My soul is shackled by another man’s ideal. I see more and know more than any human being ever should. In creating me, Cawl tried to match the Emperor’s achievements. It did not work. I pay for his arrogance every second of every day. I tell you because you should know that the archmagos dominus’ talents are not infinite. I am your prototype, and living evidence of his overreach.’

  Alpha Primus pushed past Daelus roughly. His strength was phenomenal, and he knocked Daelus’ servoharness into the wall.

  When they had turned down the corridor Troncus had taken, the ceiling lumens blinked on. Daelus’ suit registered a steady flow of power through the tower walls. Troncus emerged from a door further down and beckoned.

  ‘The great Cawl,’ Daelus voxed. ‘Ever in favour with the machine-spirit.’

  Troncus, as usual, said nothing.

  ‘That is it,’ said Ulas. ‘Your friend has found the environmental control centre.’

  ‘Then let us get some air into these halls,’ said Daelus.

  Sebastion came across another empty suit of armour. He spent a few minutes gathering the pieces together. When they were in a neat pile, the helmet on top, he marked them with a small datatag, and recorded the location in his cogitator while Esau looked on.

  ‘Brother Sidonus,’ said Sebastion sadly. ‘Who will say the rites of the fallen over him? There are Chaplains again in the Scythes of the Emperor, good men, with souls as heavily armoured as their bodies, but though they may say the words and feel the sorrow of laying a brother to rest, they were not here when Sotha fell. They can never understand how we suffer.’

  ‘We should move on,’ Esau said.

  ‘We make good time,’ said Sebastion. ‘These are relics of our Chapter. All must be properly treated. As one age turns into the next, we cannot forget who we were.’

  ‘We are few.’

  ‘But we live.’

  Sebastion activated the datatag and moved on. The stablights mounted on their battleplate picked out bolt impact craters on the walls. Whatever Brother Sidonus had fought there, in the centre of the Scythes of the Emperor’s home, no trace was left. There were many such areas of damage. Battles which would never be recorded, fought by warriors left to die alone.

  They came to a stair that descended deep into the mountain. The route they took went down into the most heavily defended parts of the fortress-monastery citadel, the most isolated. It was utterly black. Their suits provided the sole source of illumination. Crisp rounds of bright white light slid over a mural that curled downwards with the stair. It was very old, the paint faded, missing in many places where plaster had been replaced and the mural not repaired. It was more a relic than a decoration. Among its many battle scenes were long segments depicting humans and transhumans at work together, clearing the swiftly growing quicktrees that had cloaked the planet. It was constant work, and the nature of the terrain dictated that at least some of it had to be undertaken by hand.

  ‘This was who we were,’ said Sebastion. ‘The Lords of Mount Pharos. We were not distant. We were protectors of the weak, the shield of the Imperium, as Space Marines were meant to be.’

  ‘The Chapter will remember,’ said Esau.

  ‘It will,’ said Sebastion. ‘In dusty tomes and datacrystals. It will remember its history. But it will be history, Esau. A collection of curiosities and traditions, brought out and revered. Words to be recited. Deeds to be collated. But only history. To mean something a tradition has to survive, it has to be lived. I remember discovering when I went to Mars, to study there under the Auxilia Technologica Astartes, how much the tech-priests venerate knowledge. Through them, I too came to respect it, to crave it. I understand, however, that knowledge without experience is dry. It is an adornment to the intellect, it is not useful in the way a gun is useful. Knowledge is a weapon, but not while it is on paper. It is the same with these traditions. Even should the Chapter return to this mountain, and reoccupy these halls, the world these images remember is gone and will never return. The Primaris Marines will never work shoulder to shoulder with the common folk. They will never train in the phantine-haunted wilderness. They will never learn to love the wildness and the peace of this world as we all did, no matter our origin. Our people are devoured. The forests are gone.’

  ‘Thracian believes Cawl can bring it back,’ said Esau. He swivelled the massive shoulders of his Terminator armour to play his suit light over a stylised image of Mount Pharos. Sothopolis was painted around its base. The Chapter fortress stood over all, depicted larger than life, the guarantor of the planet’s safety.

  ‘Cawl can deliver a facsimile. Nothing can bring back the past.’ The stairs turned from stone to metal. The walls became embossed panels of plasteel. At that point the Emperor’s Watch left the rock behind, its roots thrusting down into a great emptiness. The battery command centre and void shield control systems were located safe at the centre of a cavern.

  ‘I remember the jubilation the day the Primaris contingent joined us. That feeling that we were saved, and we were. The Scythes of the Emperor would survive, but as something new. The old days are done, Esau. It is not our job to bring them back, but to lay them to rest. We have one last task to perform before that can be so. We must find the source of the evil that took us, and expunge it. We have to recover our honour.’

  ‘Do you think Thracian can do it? He suffers great shame and anger.’

  ‘Are you suggesting it clouds his thinking?’

  ‘No, Forgemaster.’

  ‘You should not. Fury makes him stronger,’ Sebastion said. ‘His fury will see this task done. He will look into the eyes of the foe and it will not be able to stay his hand.’

  ‘Then we need to hurry. Soon there will be too few of us left to see the task done.’

  The first of several heavy blast doors barred their way. When it refused to open, Sebastion went to the side and began to cut into the plasteel plating.

  ‘We will do it, brother, though it will kill us all.’ Plasma light played over the angular planes of his helm. ‘When we have accomplished the final mission of the Scythes of the Emperor, we last few may fade, and leave the future to others. Let us pray our shame goes unrecorded.’

  Yansar’s stablight was bright and large, intended to illuminate his surgery when in battle, so it lit the powerless apothecarion well enough. His sole patient lay on the diagnostic slab o
f an auto-chirurgeon. The machine’s spindly arms were pulled in like those of a dead insect. Whether it would work was as yet untested. He’d run diagnostic analysis on it through his own systems, but though the mechanism appeared whole he couldn’t be certain its datalooms were entire. He was no machine-priest. The look of the rest of the apothecarion didn’t imbue confidence, and he’d already decided to perform the surgery himself. The place had been thoroughly smashed by the invaders. He had heard it was often the way with the tyranids.

  ‘Mess halls and medicae,’ he said to himself. Easy sources of organics for the invaders to consume. The apothecarions of the Space Marines contained genetic material of rare potency.

  Tullio was in a bad way. Genestealer claws were sharper than scalpels, and many times stronger. They cleaved through ceramite as if it were a minor inconvenience. Tullio’s breastplate was a shattered mess. The claws had gone deep, and Space Marine bone posed less of an obstacle than Space Marine armour. Scans suggested deep tissue trauma beneath the broken box of his ribcage, but the real problem was that until the atmosphere was restored, there was nothing Yansar could do about it. Sealant foams exuded by the damaged armour’s cellular sub-structure had glued shattered bone, flesh and ceramite into an unholy mess. In this case the genius of the armour’s construction worked against the Apothecary.

  His vox bead chimed.

  ‘Tetrarch,’ he said.

  ‘Yansar. How is your patient?’

  ‘Stable. There is not much I can do for him yet. The facility is badly damaged, but I should be able to treat him effectively if I can get his armour off. He’s sedated right now. I’ve given him medicaments to forestall the activation of his mucranoid and the Belisarian furnace. If he goes into a deep healing coma with his armour crushed into his chest it will kill him. I need an atmosphere in here.’

  ‘Understood. Try to bring him back to combat readiness, if you can. I have reached the communications array and am standing by for power restoration.’

  ‘You cannot reach the fleet yet?’

  ‘Negative. The comms array was damaged, and the mountain’s voice is too loud. They will not hear me without a significant signal boost. Should Cawl achieve his objective, all will be well. If we cannot restore power, I will have Ixen return down the mountain and out of the interference shadow while Gathein attempts psychic contact. Keep me apprised of Tullio’s condition.’

  ‘Yes, my lord. Before you go, there is something I feel I should report.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘When I brought Tullio here, I performed a quick investigation of the apothecarion facilities.’

  ‘You found something?’

  ‘When I reached their geneseed vault, I discovered that some of the storage containers had been removed, but not all. Those remaining had been cracked open and the material inside consumed by the enemy. My question is, my lord, if the Scythes had time to retrieve any of their genestocks, why not take them all? Why did they leave some of it behind?’

  ‘A question I hope we will have answers for soon, Yansar. Felix out.’

  Felix cut the channel.

  He was at the highest point of the Emperor’s Watch. A turret projected from the main building. It was slender, not much use for defence, but a good place for a comms mast. A collection of rods and resonator coils, the mast had been tall enough that it could broadcast over the rumpled bustle of hills and lesser peaks behind the mountain into the valleys beyond. The main emitters were down; about halfway up they’d been cut diagonally across by bioplasma, leaving the upper part dangling by twisted cables which Felix had had to cut away. But enough of the smaller aerials remained.

  He knelt by the base of the tower, leads snaking from an open panel in his arm to connect him to the array. After speaking with Yansar he cycled through the various groups within the fortress-monastery. Daelus. Ixen and Austen, then Cominus and Cadmus. Then Thracian, and last of all Cawl.

  ‘You have it working, my lord,’ said Gathein, returning through the access hatch from a patrol of the tower’s uppermost chambers.

  ‘I do,’ said Felix. ‘Cawl sends an automated message, Thracian answered me with the most perfunctory response, and Sebastion gave me a vox click, so although I can hardly say I have been met with the acme of Imperial cooperation, we at least have the option of contact.’

  Gathein nodded. His helm was bulky with his psychic hood. He was imposing when helmeted, disturbing in a way that other Space Marines were not. In his reaction to Gathein’s abilities, Felix wondered if he was experiencing an echo of the unease mortals felt when facing him. A Librarian was an object of mistrust and awe, even to another Space Marine.

  ‘We are in a stronger position if we can communicate with the fleet.’

  ‘Communicating with the void should be simple enough,’ said Felix. ‘If Cawl can provide us enough power to boost the signal over the Pharos’ voice. We shall know in a few minutes.’

  ‘I will prepare myself to speak mind to mind, in case the objective is not met.’

  ‘Do so,’ said Felix. ‘Although I would prefer you to save your strength. This mountain is not done surprising us yet.’

  ‘If I weary myself, you have Alpha Primus. He is a rare talent.’

  ‘He is very powerful,’ said Felix.

  ‘Far more powerful than I,’ said Gathein. ‘I tried to look inside him, but he stopped me, and I would not dare attempt to skim the mind of Cawl for fear of Primus’ reaction. What manner of creature is he?’

  ‘He is a chimera,’ said Felix, making a few last adjustments. ‘Among certain circles he is well known. He is known to the primarch, and he is known to me. Infamous would be an appropriate word.’

  ‘For his deeds, or his nature?’

  Felix didn’t answer immediately, but looked up from his comms panel. ‘I will tell you what Roboute Guilliman believes him to be, then you may decide yourself. This is information of the highest order of classification, but you, as a member of my bodyguard, must be aware of all threats. Do not repeat what I am about to say.’

  ‘Then you believe him to be a threat. That is good,’ said Gathein. ‘A gift like his makes for a fickle ally. You have my word I will speak to no one of what you say.’

  ‘Primus was among the first of us,’ said Felix. ‘Cawl says the first, though I suspect there were others, and that he is simply the first successful Primaris. Lord Guilliman had a device called the Sangprimus Portem. Do you know what that is?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘It is a repository of all surviving information pertaining to the creation of Lord Guilliman and his brothers. The Emperor’s greatest work. It is incomplete, so I was told, or else I doubt Guilliman would have given it to anyone, let alone Belisarius Cawl. Cawl was commanded to use the information contained inside to create a superior breed of Space Marine, which he did. But he is prone to flights of fancy. His ambition knows few limits. For example, he was expressly forbidden from putting Space Marines from the fallen primarch gene-lines into full production.’

  ‘He experimented with them?’ said Gathein in amazement.

  ‘Cawl is a follower of the Emperor as Omnissiah. He believes the eighteen genelines to be part of a sacred plan, and that that plan will only function properly if all its components are utilised. Lord Guilliman disagrees.’

  ‘Is Primus one of these abominations?’

  ‘Not quite. Lord Guilliman believes that Alpha Primus is something more than a prototype. He is a personal project of Cawl’s. He has certain gifts that no others have. His psychic ability is only part of it.’

  ‘Did he attempt to reproduce the Emperor’s work?’

  ‘I have no doubt Guilliman would have killed Cawl had he gone that far. Primus is a Space Marine, not like the rest of us perhaps, but a servant of the Imperium nonetheless, and Adeptus Astartes. He is no primarch. Not even Cawl would dare to attempt something th
at audacious. Even so, he abused Lord Guilliman’s trust. Our genefather does not approve of Primus. But he could not object. He was in his death state while Cawl worked. Nobody knew of Primus until he appeared one day at Cawl’s side. You were not present at the Yxian campaign.’

  ‘I am not like you, my lord. You were born when the Imperium was young. This is my century. I took little part in the Indomitus Crusade. But who has not heard of the Yxian campaign?’

  ‘Primus appeared there in public for the first time, but when I encountered him I was certain I had met him before. It was only through much effort that I recalled seeing him sometimes, aboard the Zar Quaesitor when I was being changed. If my memories are true, then Primus is as ancient as I am. More so, for he has been active for much longer than I have.’

  ‘I shall remember, and be wary,’ said Gathein.

  ‘Anyone with that amount of ability is a threat, brother. If history has taught us anything at all, it is that threats come more often from within than from the outside.’

  Gathein stood by the parapet, looking down the plunging drop of the Emperor’s Watch to the layered courtyards of the monastery, and out beyond, down to Sothopolis and the empty ocean. ‘This must have been a beautiful world.’

  ‘By all accounts it was,’ said Felix.

  ‘Do you believe Cawl can restore it?’

  ‘Who knows what the magos is capable of? He is enigmatic.’

  ‘Those that hide their abilities and intentions are dangerous,’ said Gathein.

  ‘Dangerous he certainly is,’ said Felix.

  The vox crackled in Felix’s ears.

  ‘My Lord,’ said Daelus. ‘Cawl has activated the back-up powercells. We have power enough for at least the next twelve hours. Troncus is close to bringing the atmospheric cyclers to good function. While he’s doing that, I’m going to give us all a little light.’

  Lumens snapped on all over the fortress-monastery, illuminating the tower from top to bottom. Fresh vibrations trembled through the citadel’s structure; the regular, steady feel of Imperial machinery at work, not the wild tremble of the xenos artefact.