Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley Read online

  Felix disliked pomp but he accepted the bodyguard. Another warrior of his skill might be annoyed by the constant watch, and the implication he could not take care of himself. Felix was pragmatic enough to know that being annoyed by his attendants would do nothing to change the fact of their presence, so he did not allow himself to feel anything much about it, and thanked them often for their service. Likewise, Cominus’ terse, officious manner failed to irritate him. Felix did his best to follow Lord Guilliman’s example in all things, and see a thing for its potential utility, not for how it made him feel.

  When he did examine those feelings, he resented the constant cosseting his position forced on him. These moments of weakness only strengthened his resolve to behave as Lord Guilliman would wish. The bodyguards and all his many attendants back on Vespator had purpose and they must therefore be allowed to fulfil it and not be hampered nor criticised merely for being. Theoretical, practical – the Ultramarian way served him well.

  But emotions are disobedient creatures, and he found himself glad that he had only his bodyguard with him. He welcomed the break from his staff. Since being appointed as tetrarch, one of the four lords of Greater Ultramar, by Roboute Guilliman, Felix had done his best to visit every sector. This was his first trip this far into the old Sotharan League. His lord castellan on Vespator had pointedly remarked that Felix took his tours to avoid politics. There was perhaps truth in that.

  Felix turned his attention outwards to the ruin of the orbital. The signs of recent reoccupation grew more obvious as they made their way towards the command hub. Again his emotions rose up from beneath his conditioning.

  ‘It is strange the way this makes me feel,’ he said to Veteran Brother Cadmus, who hailed from the Scythes of the Emperor Chapter to whom the station had belonged. ‘There is so little evidence of what happened here, but what remains is as clear as a sword cut in ancient bone. While the tale of the attack is only implied, the evidence tells a more poignant story than a bloody corpse would.’

  They continued down a corridor lit by lumens on poles linked by suspended cable. There was no air and no gravity, so the eleven of them walked with the strange, deliberate gait of warriors with active maglocks. ‘I see everywhere the signs of bioweapons. Puncture wounds to the metal, acid burn, the marks of teeth and claws, but no organics remain, all reabsorbed by the Kraken, I assume.’

  ‘That is the way of the xenos, my lord,’ Cadmus said. Cadmus was a Scythe, but he was also a Primaris Marine, and had never been to Sotha. His voice was level, if a little distant, leading Felix to suspect he too wrestled with what he felt and what he was supposed to feel.

  ‘You have fought the tyranids?’ Felix asked.

  ‘My Chapter makes a point of confronting them where they can,’ said Cadmus. ‘I have faced splinters only, the left-behind and the lost. Nothing compared to the fleet that devoured Sotha, but deadly nonetheless.’

  Felix nodded. The effects of the tyranid weapons had sculpted the metal. Ahead, sunlight streamed through a huge breach in the hull. It was curious that the deck remained level, he thought, without the distortion to the deck plating one could expect from more conventional weaponry. When they drew level with the hole he saw that the cause of the breach was not a weapon, but partial absorption; the metal had been devoured. The scrapings of tiny teeth were still bright at the edges a century later.

  ‘They consume more than organics,’ said Cadmus, following his lord’s gaze. ‘The tyranids will take everything.’

  ‘Then why not all?’ said Felix. He paused in the breach, and his security detail came to an instant halt, arrayed by order of march in a perfect protective pattern.

  ‘A question for the archmagos, when he gets here,’ said Cadmus.

  Felix nodded. ‘If anyone knows, I am sure he will. Did you serve the Scythes of the Emperor long before you joined the Chosen of the Tetrarchy?’

  Cadmus stared out into the void. Such blackness in such strong light created an odd, velvety effect that appeared unreal, no matter how many times it was seen. ‘Six years, by the Sotharan date stamp.’

  Felix knew this. He selected every man for his Chosen personally, but he preferred to hear the information from the men himself, when he could. There was no soul in cold data. A commander learned a lot from his warriors by listening to them, even if they only said what could be more easily read; the way they spoke, the way they held themselves and how they handled particular subjects revealed their innermost thoughts in a way written words did not. Speech revealed a humanity not even Adeptus Astartes conditioning could blunt.

  ‘I was there on Hamagora. Most of my experience has been fighting the traitors and their daemons, my lord. The xenos are something else.’ Cadmus paused to better formulate his words. ‘It is impossible to overestimate the hatred my brothers in the Chapter hold for the tyranids. The veterans are fixated, but it affects we Primaris brothers too. It is a contagious hate. It defines us all.’

  ‘Then it should be made use of,’ said Felix.

  ‘I agree,’ said Cadmus. ‘Hate is a sharp blade, but there is something else to them that concerns me. A distance to the last few of the original Scythes.’ Cadmus looked at Felix. ‘I apologise, my lord, if I speak out of turn. It is not my place to criticise a man as great as Chapter Master Thracian.’

  ‘You will speak as you will, Cadmus,’ said Felix. ‘I understand your reticence, but in the matters of the Scythes of the Emperor, I ask you to be my advisor, and not merely my bodyguard. If anything at all gives you reason to doubt, to pause, you must share it. Not all of the Chapters accepted their Primaris brothers easily.’

  ‘It is not that,’ said Cadmus. ‘We were welcomed as saviours, my lord. We are feted and honoured beyond what our achievements should have earned.’

  The orbital was spinning slowly. Its motion brought cold, dead Sotha into view. Stripped of life, it shone mirror bright, white as a polished skull.

  ‘Then your worries go deeper?’

  Cadmus nodded. ‘There were so few of them left, my lord. A handful. The last of the original Scythes are secretive and grim.’

  ‘They lost much. I have read what records there are. If we are to be honest, they performed poorly in battle. They bear responsibility for their own near-destruction.’

  ‘I agree with this, but it is more than shame,’ said Cadmus. Again he paused, reluctant to voice his doubts.

  ‘What, then?’ prompted Felix.

  ‘I believe they are hiding something, my lord.’

  Glaring sunshine cut across them quickly as the movement of the station turned the Aegidan orbital from the planet, swept past the sun, and plunged them back into gloom. Cadmus’ red helm lenses glowed. In the dark, Felix saw the eyes behind them, and the silvered effect of retinas glowing under direct laser data writing. As he confessed his human fears, Cadmus looked far from human.

  That was the fate of the Adeptus Astartes. To remain a man, yet to be divorced from mankind, fighting monsters in the dark.

  ‘I note it well,’ Felix said. ‘And I thank you for your counsel, Brother Cadmus. Advance,’ Felix said to the others. ‘To the central hub. Let us meet these heroes ourselves, and judge them as we find them.’

  His bodyguard moved on, weapons at the ready.

  The approach to the hub was scarred with bioweaponry discharge and the telltale starburst damage of boltgun fire. Fighting had been heavy there. Further along the scars of acid and claw disappeared under fresh plating. A temporary airlock barred the corridor near the command deck, where new wall sections had been welded in place. A servitor on a tracked unit waited, inactive, outside. A pair of tripod-mounted twin plasma sentry guns, painted the red of Mars and stamped with the maker’s mark of Belisarius Cawl, tracked the Space Marines, their charging coils glowing in readiness.

  The way was wide and tall, big enough to take the larger Dreadnought models, but the airlock was small,
enough to admit only one Space Marine at a time. A temporary measure.

  A skull mounted at the apex of the arch over the airlock came to life. Ocular sensors at the back of eye sockets glowed with sudden alertness. A fleshless jaw worked around a vox-caster, snapping together so hard that had there been an atmosphere in the corridor, it would have rattled out a bony percussion.

  ‘State purpose and name,’ a grating machine voice blurted into their helmet vox.

  Cominus stepped forward.

  ‘Cominus, veteran sergeant, seconded from the Sons of Orar Chapter Adeptus Astartes, group leader for the Chosen of Vespator, tetrarchy security unit assigned to Tetrarch Decimus Felix of that world.’

  ‘Ranking officer required. Tetrarch Felix will present himself,’ said the skull. ‘Stand aside.’

  Cominus stood his ground until Felix ordered him to step back.

  ‘I am Tetrarch Decimus Androdinus Felix of the Ultramarines, born of Laphis, Lord of Vespator and the Eastern Marches.’ Felix datapulsed his credentials and the seal of his office to the machine. ‘Allow us entry.’

  ‘A moment,’ the machine said. The lights went out in the skull’s eyes. The jaw hung slack.

  ‘Friendly,’ said Daelus. The Techmarine’s servo arms followed the motions of his hands as he gestured at the plasma guns. ‘They are well made, though.’ He bent down so that his faceplate was level with the weaponry and moved his head from side to side. The guns tracked his movement. ‘Very responsive.’ The reactor cores spooled up and the coils glowed brighter.

  ‘You take too many risks,’ said Cominus.

  Daelus stood. ‘Everything I do is weighed against the balance of probability. Theoretical and practical every step of the way. Ultramarian dialectic is a tradition of thought your Chapter could do with reinstating. You can’t hold it against me if I calculate risk better than you do.’

  Cominus grunted dismissively.

  The skull’s eyes relit, prompting an instant reaction from the Chosen. Bolt rifles aimed smoothly at the door and emplaced weapons.

  ‘Identity confirmed,’ said the machine. ‘Please proceed within, tetrarch.’

  The airlock door rolled back. Cominus made to lead, but Felix stepped ahead of him and entered the pressure chamber first. The chamber had been adapted from the corridor, and was therefore large enough for all eleven of them.

  Blast doors of ancient design faced the airlock entrance. They had been repaired, but the great gouges inflicted by tyranid melee weapons were evident as outlines, filed down and filled though they were. The remains of the turrets that had protected the doorway were boxed in with fresh plates. Around these, too, were the score marks of huge claws.

  Air rushed into the chamber from a newly installed pipe leading into the command deck. Sound returned to Felix’s auto-senses. The doors screeched back on buckled tracks.

  A serious attempt had been made to bring the Aegidan command hub back to a useable state. Besides a supply of air the gravity plates were operational. Wrecked machinery had been cleared away and the holes their removal left had been plated over. Little of the original layout was therefore intact. The central dais and the gallery around the room were integral to the structure and remained, again much-patched, but most else was gone, leaving a large, empty space. Seams of bright metal showed where elements had been cut out. Dull plasteel covered the worst damage. Loose plates provided bridges over utility ducts currently open for repairs. Temporary workstations lined one wall, power cables snaking off from them out through a fresh hole cut to allow access to a functional energy conduit. Alcoves around the room housed statues of ten horses in various states of action. All but one had been damaged in some way. The worst of them had been caved in entirely, turning them into wrinkled bronze sacks with incongruous equine details. They reminded Felix of the abominations of Chaos, and he looked away from them.

  A large section of wall had been torn away. This damage had so far been left untouched, and the breach was closed off by an atmospheric energy screen stretching from one side of the room to the other. On the far side of the field’s blue shimmer, void frost glimmered on the ragged deck.

  Thirteen Space Marines waited for the tetrarch. Five other beings of human origin occupied the room. Four were mind-slaved combat servitors, two outfitted for close range gunfights, the other pair pure melee models. The fifth was almost as heavily augmented but of free will, being an adept of the Cult Mechanicus. His humanoid body was entirely made of plasteel, though the face atop the banded neck was of flesh and blood. He wore no protection beyond a calming smile. A number of small, subsidiary arms tapped restlessly inside his robes.

  The majority of the Space Marines were facing the door in anticipation of Felix’s entrance; those that weren’t were in the process of getting up as he entered. They arranged themselves in groups according to friendship rather than squad, if their markings were anything to go by.

  The Chosen filed in and faced the Scythes of the Emperor. Felix had never seen a bigger difference between two groups of loyal Space Marines. His Primaris Marines wore burnished armour with perfect heraldry. The Scythes’ wargear was scuffed and dinged, the yellow and black applied over mismatched components from differing armour marks. There was an Apothecary among them, and a Forgemaster whose presence was marked out by the better state of his wargear as much as by his rank marks and red colouration. A lack of uniformity was common in Space Marine units forced to fight unsupplied for a long time, but the Scythes of the Emperor took it to an extreme. Four of the warriors wore Terminator plate. Three of these were neatly presented, but the fourth’s armour was an ugly mix of different sets, and many elements had been hastily repaired. In a force less desperate, Felix thought, the fourth suit would not have left the armoury. Even his own Scythe of the Emperor, Cadmus, looked apart from his supposed brethren despite their shared heraldry, so clean he appeared like an imposter.

  Felix was reminded of the Ultramarines’ tyrannic war veterans. All of the Scythes sported trophies of xenos bone and chitin in faded shades of crimson and cream. They were individuals. There was no coherency to their unit or their attitude. Some stood to attention, others looked ready for combat, one was insolently slouched. Felix realised that although the Chapter had been restored to full strength by the influx of Primaris Space Marines, what was stood in front of him was the remnants of a dying brotherhood. They were the last.

  At their head was their Master. His armour was hung with more teeth and claws than all the rest, burying his more conventional honours under a savage display.

  Soft chimes in Felix’s helmet informed him that the atmosphere was suitable for breathing, and that the temperature, though frigid, was tolerable. He had barely formed the thought of removing his helm when Cominus privately voxed him.

  ‘I advise you, tetrarch, to leave your helmet on.’

  ‘A meeting like this is best conducted face to face,’ Felix said aloud.

  He lifted his hands to his head, always an awkward motion thanks to his boltstorm gauntlet. A further barrier was the cowl common to all Gravis armour, but he had had much practice taking out the helm, and he managed it smoothly. Seals hissed. An inrush of freezing atmosphere replaced the breath-warm air in his power armour. He clasped his helm beneath his arm. His features were strong but bland in the mass-produced way of many Space Marines. He had pale brown skin, a last reminder of his homeworld’s thin air. A heroic jaw, a nose that echoed Guilliman’s, piercing grey eyes and black hair. He would have been handsome, were he fully human, but his features were too much blunted by the process of apotheosis to be so. He wore his intelligence for all to see.

  ‘Do not worry yourself about your master’s wellbeing. I assure you gentlemen, that the atmospheric shield I and my servants fitted to this orbital functions perfectly,’ said the tech-adept.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Felix.

  The adept dipped his head. ‘I am Qvo-
87. I was sent ahead by the archmagos to prepare this station for our rendezvous. I apologise that it has not yet been returned to full functionality, but the damage is extensive. Returning the Aegida to its original glory will take time.’

  ‘As is evident.’ Felix looked at the blue field holding in the air. ‘You have done well in such a short period.’

  Qvo-87 dipped his head again. ‘It will suffice for now. For ten thousand years, the Aegida has stood sentinel over Sotha. It will do so again.’

  ‘If you can achieve that, Magos Qvo, then you will have my respect.’ One of Felix’s tasks was to evaluate the station for repair. Sotha might be dead, but it was still strategically important. Reports had led him to believe the station was irreparable, but what he had seen so far had been promising.

  ‘You must be Chapter Master Thracian,’ said Felix, turning to face the leader of the Scythes.

  Thracian responded by removing his own helm and showing a scarred, fierce face to the tetrarch. ‘I am he,’ said Thracian. Burns mottled his left cheek; the eye they crossed was milky white.

  ‘I thank you for attending and for giving your permission to use this orbital.’

  ‘I could not likely refuse one of the tetrarchs,’ said Thracian. ‘You speak with the authority of the primarch.’

  ‘You have a reputation as a loyal servant of the Emperor. My thanks are genuine.’

  Thracian shrugged. His patched armour wheezed as it matched his movement.

  ‘The galaxy is in turmoil and Sotha is gone,’ Thracian said with obvious emotion. He looked through the atmospheric field where the planet’s bare skull was rising again. ‘The primarch himself has given over this portion of the Imperium to you to rule as you see fit. I would not deny you.’

  Sotha’s seas were empty bowls, the denuded continents showed networks of dry water channels and the spidery fractals of mountain ranges. It was like a precise geological model of a world.

  ‘Behold the bounty of your realm,’ Thracian said bitterly. Sotha’s barren­ness filled the breach side to side. In the harsh light of the star, reflected from the world, the room turned hard monochrome. Every scratch and crack in the ceramite of Thracian’s armour was mercilessly illuminated. The colours that disguised the worst of the damage bleached away. The sockets of the skulls adorning his armour were caves of night staring hungrily at the tetrarch. Thracian’s face was battered, bald, craggy, broken, luminous; the living spirit of the planetary corpse. ‘This is the extent of your forces?’