Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley Read online

  Creuz bowed and departed with a polite ‘good day’.

  Cawl blew out a long, exasperated sigh. This man who called Himself the Emperor, He asked too much. He needed a rest. He wanted to go to the bridge. To watch the sun rise over old Miamar. To hear the sound of the wind and the…

  BANG.

  ‘Cawl.’

  BANG.

  ‘Belisarius Cawl.’

  BANG.

  Friedisch lay dying in his arms, blood spilling from his mouth as he tried to speak. ‘Belisarius, don’t do it. Please. Not for me. Save yourself.’

  BANG.

  Traitor Space Marines fired at him in a burning, subterranean field.

  BANG.

  Metal in the wind.

  Insignificant.

  BANG.

  Come to me.

  Now

  Cawl opened his eyes.

  He was in the power sink control node. Angled batteries were laid out in a circle around the platform. All hummed. Activity lights shone on them and on the machines that controlled them.

  ‘I am Belisarius Cawl,’ he said. ‘I am!’

  ‘Of course you are, archmagos dominus.’

  Cawl blinked.

  ‘Are you all right, archmagos dominus?’

  ‘Yes?’ said Cawl quizzically. ‘Yes,’ he affirmed. ‘Scythes of the Emperor fortress-monastery citadel, Emperor’s Watch. Sotha, post tyranid harvest.’

  ‘That is the correct location,’ Qvo-87 said. His limited mind was unnerved by Cawl’s behaviour. He reached out with unsure hands to comfort, or perhaps ward off his madness. Nevertheless, he still recorded everything. Subsidiary arms worked quickly in the shadows of his robes, the stylus a blur on its data-slate.

  ‘There was a voice,’ said Cawl. ‘That was new.’ He blinked again. He moved around on his giant body. It seemed clumsy and unfamiliar.

  ‘Master?’

  ‘The Pharos is attempting contact. Real contact. I think it wants to talk. I must try a full interface.’

  ‘Our equipment will be here soon, master.’ Qvo-87 paused.

  ‘There’s not time for that. Matters are coming to a head.’

  ‘Are you sure you are all right, my lord?’

  ‘Never better, my dear Friedisch.’

  Qvo-87 smiled at him sympathetically. ‘I am not Friedisch, magos.’

  BANG!

  The noise threw Cawl a moment, but only a moment by the measure of the Mechanicus. A sliver of a second. An iota of time. He was already formulating a dozen responses before the noise had died away, and had chosen the one he would employ the millisecond it ended.

  ‘Was that an explosion?’ Cawl said.

  Yansar quickly reattached Tullio’s powerplant, then Tullio leaned weakly against the wall while Yansar wrenched and heaved at the chirurgeon cot until he flipped it over. Behind this makeshift barricade, the two of them took shelter. Yansar piled up all the ammunition they had and placed their stock of grenades within easy reach.

  The door was almost gone. Solid metal became a lacy sculpture under the mandibles of the drones. They fringed the door all the way round, legs clamped to the wall, cones of green light emitting from their mouth parts dissolving matter. Although there were now plenty of ways in for the robots, they ignored the Space Marines and concentrated on dis­assembling the door, atom by atom.

  ‘Necron scarabs,’ said Tullio. ‘I fought their like in the War of Silence. You?’

  ‘My Chapter was occupied with the Chikanti incursion. Did you battle their king?’

  Tullio chuckled dryly, wincing at the pain it caused him. ‘Not personally. I’m still alive. I don’t think we were even in the same sector.’

  ‘If this is a tomb complex, then these automata will be the least of our worries,’ said Yansar. Both of them spoke low, not wishing to draw the attention of the drones. ‘Why aren’t they attacking?’

  ‘They haven’t registered us as a threat yet,’ said Tullio. ‘I’ve seen whole companies of Adeptus Astartes march through tomb complexes at the first stage of awakening and be ignored, as long as they’re careful. They’ll consume anything, but if you get out of the way while they’re busy, they won’t even notice. You can even kill them.’ Tullio adjusted his grip. ‘Then something changes, and that stops, and they attack.’

  ‘So, we wait here until they attack and overwhelm us, or we wait here until they eat their way over here and consume us.’

  ‘Those are the likely outcomes,’ said Tullio. The scarabs withdrew, and they could see into the outer chamber. The walls were reduced to a skeleton of exposed support beams which were being assiduously disassembled as they watched. ‘This world has had poor fortune. Devoured by tyranids, with the bones for necrons to gnaw.’

  ‘Mark the third line in the deck plating,’ said Yansar.

  ‘Marked,’ said Tullio.

  ‘They cross that, then we open fire. Grenades first into the outer chamber, you drive back the vanguard.’

  The last of the door collapsed into black dust. As one, the gauss beams shut off. Green eye lights blinked in rippled sequence. Yansar’s autosenses registered the pattering drum of alien sensor arrays tasting the room. One of the robots ventured forwards. Sensing barbels stroked at the floor. Hyperplastek wings stirred.

  ‘This is it,’ said Tullio. ‘Ready?’ He sighted down his gun, mentally marking a target for each of the bolts in his magazine.

  Yansar pulled a grenade out of its looped belt. ‘Ready.’

  Other scarabs peeled themselves from the mass around the door, trooping after the first in a precisely straight line for a couple of yards then splitting apart with geometric precision into a fan of silver. More and more of the drones joined the advancing group. They spread in hypnotic patterns.

  The scarabs began to deconstruct the floor.

  The first drone reached the third line. There were now several hundred scarabs in the room.

  ‘Now,’ said Yansar. He flicked out the pin from a frag grenade and tossed it through the door.

  Tullio squeezed his trigger, blasting apart the first scarab into a rain of metal particles. He kept his gun in single shot mode, aiming carefully before firing. A second scarab exploded as Yansar’s grenade detonated. Dozens of damaged drones were blasted into the room, smashing medicae equipment into pieces.

  Hundreds of glowing eyes turned on them.

  ‘That got their attention,’ said Tullio.

  An angry buzz of wings rose, and swarms of scarabs flew into the room, some aflame from the explosion. Yansar tossed two more grenades one after the other into the mass. Both were swarmed. The first exploded, blowing out a sphere of fire and shattered robots. The second was deconstructed before it could detonate, its energies siphoned into the abdomens of the scarabs.

  The Space Marines were both shooting. Tullio switched fire mode, emptying the entire magazine in a couple of seconds. Metal ricocheted off their armour and the walls. Tullio hissed as his bare torso was stung by chips of flying shrapnel. Yansar tossed more grenades, holding on to them till the last moment before tossing them into the swarm to ensure they exploded. The magazine dropped from Tullio’s gun. He had another in place smoothly, never moving his gun from firing position, breaking his fusillade for the minimal amount of time.

  The swarm drew closer, the whirring of wings an aggressive buzz. Killing green light flashed between glittering mandibles. A drone clamped itself to Yansar’s backpack, chewing through the arm supporting his medical light before he seized it and smashed it against the wall.

  ‘There are too many!’ he shouted.

  ‘There are.’

  Tullio moved his bolt rifle smoothly. Each bolt claimed at least one scarab; the explosion of the micro-warhead and shrapnel from the blast taking down those nearby they were so tightly packed.

  ‘Down to my last maga
zine,’ said Tullio.

  Yansar picked up a grenade bandolier. He primed one.

  ‘For the Emperor,’ he said.

  ‘For the Emperor,’ said Tullio.

  Yansar hurled the grenade belt as hard as he could. It punched a hole through the cloud of mechanical insects, and flew into the next room. A tremendous explosion followed that took out the weakened wall between the theatre and the outer chamber. Scarabs were destroyed in their hundreds.

  Smoke filled the apothecarion. The wings fell silent.

  ‘That will not be enough,’ said Tullio.

  Silver limbs twitched on the floor. The scarabs righted themselves.

  ‘Farewell, brother,’ said Tullio. He drew his combat knife.

  A blast of fire roared into the outer chamber, engulfing the recovering scarabs, burning promethium frying their systems. A second blast whooshed in. Tullio and Yansar got up, and began stamping scarabs to pieces. Three Scythes of the Emperor emerged from the smoke and fire, the lead bearing a flamer.

  ‘I am Brother Bokari,’ he said. ‘Thracian sent me.’

  An explosion shook the room. Weakened metal crashed down in a nearby chamber.

  ‘Come,’ Bokari said. ‘We must be quick.’

  They were at the top of the tree, higher than they had ever been before.

  ‘We should be getting home now,’ said Felix. ‘It is near supper and mother will be upset if it goes cold again.’ There was something bothering him. A memory that slipped and twisted just out of sight. Maybe it was because they were out too late again.

  ‘Just a few more minutes,’ said Nonus. ‘I want to look. You can see the whole world from up here!’

  ‘This isn’t the world. It’s a dome. There’s our hab-block.’ Felix pointed through a gap in the trees to the metal skin of a slender domicile building. There were dozens of them in a spiral pattern you could only see from the air.

  ‘Is that the whole Imperium?’

  ‘No,’ he said, looking at his brother strangely. ‘That is just Pembria, on Laphis. The Imperium is lots of worlds.’

  ‘How many?’ asked Nonus.

  ‘A million, more or less,’ said Felix. ‘It is big. The biggest, best empire in history, and the Emperor is our master.’

  ‘And what is the primary constituent of its military strength?’ said Nonus in a harsh voice.

  Felix looked at him sharply. The illusion flexed. He came close to remembering who he was.

  Nonus blinked, his face all innocence. ‘I mean, the Space Marines! They are so strong. Are there lots and lots of them?’

  The question from his brother made Felix uneasy.

  ‘Not very many,’ said Felix.

  ‘They are blue. I like blue.’

  Felix smiled. ‘They’re not all blue. There are lots of different Chapters, all different colours.’

  ‘Really,’ said his brother. His manner had become strangely cold, his voice growled. ‘What about the warriors with the ability to wield the powers of the warp. Are there many of them?’

  Felix moved back from his brother. ‘Nonus, what are you talking about?’

  ‘I want to be a Space Marine!’ said his brother, childish again.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ said Felix uneasily. Outside the dome, clouds were turning orange, scudding rapidly across hard blue skies, blown by steppe winds. Inside, shadows slunk together under the trees for their evening congregation.

  ‘All right!’ shouted Nonus. He slid off the branch and clambered down the tree with the agility of a pterasquirrel.

  ‘Wait!’ said Felix. ‘Careful, you’ll hurt yourself.’

  ‘I won’t!’ said Nonus. He came to rest on a branch a few feet above the ground. Felix joined him.

  ‘I’ve got an idea!’ said Nonus. ‘Let’s jump down.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Felix. He tensed to leap, but he couldn’t.

  ‘Why are you waiting? Coward!’ teased Nonus. ‘You won’t be an Ultramarine, not if you can’t jump off the branch. We’ve done it loads of times.’

  ‘All right! All right!’ said Felix. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Let’s count to three.’ His brother slipped his hand into his. It was small, warm, and a little sticky. Felix squeezed it.

  ‘I love you, Nonus. I am sorry,’ he said, but could no longer recall why.

  ‘I love you too, brother,’ said Nonus. ‘Are you ready?’

  They looked down at the drop.

  ‘One…’ they began together.

  ‘Felix.’ The voice came from nowhere. Felix started.

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Two…’ Nonus continued. His hand gripped Felix’s so hard it hurt. Felix looked down and saw Nonus’ hand was skinned with shining metal. Light too powerful to contain shone through it. His own hand seemed huge, clad in armour. He blinked, and the image faded.

  ‘Tetrarch. Stop. Look at me. Tetrarch!’

  ‘Three!’ squealed Nonus in delight.

  As Nonus leapt, something pulled hard at Felix, preventing him from leaping. He wanted to jump more than anything, to show his brother he wasn’t scared, then go home for his meal and the warm, dull predictability of scholum tomorrow. Nonus dragged at him, threatening to pitch him forwards off the branch. His brother was eight, and slightly built, but for the half second before their hands slipped apart he felt as heavy as eternity. Then he was off balance, falling back. The forest flickered, became a cold sky full of stars.

  The killing drop off the roof of the Emperor’s Watch yawned before him.

  Fall, the harsh voice said. Fall!

  ‘Tetrarch!’ Gathein had him, his right arm locked about Felix’s left. Felix’s battleplate was significantly heavier than Gathein’s. He was in danger of falling to his death and taking the Librarian with him. His suit’s muscle system and joints whined and growled, fighting to keep him upright.

  Gathein was slipping. ‘Tetrarch, please!’

  Felix came fully to his senses. The two of them staggered back onto the roof of the emitter tower, armour clashing together.

  They recovered quickly.

  ‘How did I get up here?’ Felix asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I went down into the tower. I lost a few moments, then you were gone. I found you up here.’

  ‘The others,’ Felix said. He attempted contact with the groups of Space Marines scattered through the monastery. Static greeted him.

  An explosion trembled the tower, so far deep as to be almost imperceptible, but the vibrational pattern was unmistakable.

  ‘Where is Belisarius Cawl?’ Felix said to Gathein.

  The vox crackled. Thracian spoke.

  ‘Tetrarch,’ he said. ‘We are under attack.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Into the Pharos

  Gunfire drew them together. Felix coordinated the groups of scattered Space Marines as best he could, gathering them in the Vigilatum.

  He and Gathein were first into the high chamber, chasing down the thunder of bolters from gallery to gallery. Before they reached the ground floor, Daelus, Troncus, Alpha Primus and Ulas came onto the mid-levels, shortly followed by Yansar and Tullio, whose armour was half removed. Some of the Scythes were with them. They were firing behind them as they arrived, and ran shouting from the gallery down the stairs to the main floor. Felix joined them. The Scythes of the Emperor Apothecary Aratus was helping Yansar check over Tullio, who, although he bore a number of fresh wounds on his bare skin to go with the livid mess of his chest, seemed ready to fight.

  ‘Where’s Thracian?’ he asked one of the Scythes.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Bokari. ‘We left him in the armoury to rescue your men. Be ready, tetrarch. The enemy are behind us.’

  ‘They’re coming!’ shouted Keltru.

  A swarm of flying constructs, thick as locusts, came roarin
g out of the passage.

  ‘Fire!’ said Felix.

  Together the Space Marines put out such a tempest of bolt-fire that the swarm was shredded to pieces. Metal rained around them in sparking shards. More gunfire echoed up the lower passageways as Thracian and the rest of his men emerged in the Vigilatum.

  ‘Sebastion?’ Felix voxed.

  ‘Dead in the service of the Emperor,’ Thracian said. ‘Esau too. The guns are disabled. We have brought the wrath of the mountain on ourselves.’

  The swarm seemed to go on forever, boiling relentlessly from the corridor and swooping down towards the Space Marines. The machines had no long-ranged weaponry, or else they would have perished. The roaring bang of bolters was deafening even to Space Marines. All the extra sensors on Felix’s battle suit were confounded by the storm of metal. It was therefore a surprise when Cawl, accompanied by his aide, came stalking from the same lower passageway as Thracian had, aimed his weapons up into the swarm of robots, and opened fire.

  His solar atomiser spewed out a fat beam of searing energy that cut through the swarm and into the wall behind, vapourising hundreds of drones. Metal fell as molten rain.

  Qvo-87 pulled a short stave from beneath his robes and brandished it over his head. Section after section telescoped out of the centre until he held a slender, tapering staff in his hand. Cawl fired again. The swarm burst apart around the energy beam, twisting itself up into a monstrous spiral to avoid it, turned about, and dived.

  From the top of Qvo’s staff an energy shield spread, slow as syrup, running down the air around the Space Marines to encase them in a hemisphere. The Imperial force continued to fire, blasting apart the front of the plunging mass so that although it drove down at them, the drones were continuously shattered into fragments that rained down thickly, tinkling loudly enough off the paving to be heard over the roar of guns and the thrum of wings.

  The energy skin reached the floor.

  ‘Prepare yourselves!’ Cawl boomed over the drone of thousands of contra-grav engines.

  ‘For what?’ grunted Thracian.

  Cawl let his actions speak for themselves.

  A metal ovoid shot out of the top of his dorsal array with a loud pop. It lofted up, where it was caught by the swarm.