Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley Read online

  Bokari looked down. The glassy rock around his feet was shining with a brightening green glow.

  ‘Get out of there!’ Thracian yelled.

  Bokari began to run. Behind him the skeletons stirred. Three xenos constructs phased up through the glass and into the air, half in one reality, half in another. Their angled plates picked up fragments of genestealer bodies that clung on for a moment before falling through and clattering off the floor. One bore long whips of banded metal that it lashed after Bokari, yanking him off his feet and dragging him through the pit of bones. Claws hummed with alien power, flashed down, and Bokari was no more.

  ‘Wraiths!’ yelled Brother Ren.

  The Pharos trembled.

  The Scythes of the Emperor opened fire, blasting at the wraiths from close range, but the creatures were fast, hard to hit as they spun about, lithe as dancers, their bodies moving like ribbons of cloth. When bolts found their target they passed through their semi-solid forms. Those that caught the constructs when they were fully manifested exploded on armour plating.

  A beam of violently coloured light speared Brother Ren. His bones showed through his armour in glowing negative, black on white, then the beam focus imploded, casting him into some other pocket of space and time.

  ‘Bring them down!’ Thracian roared. His gun barked.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  The Pharos shook.

  The lead wraith phased out to a phantasmal outline. Bokari’s body fell through its claws. It swam through the air towards Ulas, phasing back into reality at the last second, when its claws were already angled for a decapitation strike. Ulas was ready, deflecting them with his power fist. One claw exploded, flying away from the construct and crashing into the heaps of bones. Ulas’ storm bolter filled the machine’s underside with detonations, and it was thrown back, broken and smoking.

  Thracian’s world shifted.

  ‘Not now!’ he cried, and emptied his magazine into a wraith. All the bolts save one passed through its ghostly form. He ejected his magazine, and slammed in a fresh load, but already his hold on the present was slipping.

  Bang! Bang! BANG!

  Thracian remembered.

  He ran alone onto the bridge of the Heart of Cronus. His armour was scored with claw marks. His hearts were broken.

  He had failed.

  Mind-slaved thralls that came at him fell as scraps of flesh and mists of blood before his bolter, but he was too late, the rebellion was close to success.

  There was fire everywhere. Bodies burned at their stations. The chorus of servitors ranked up the back of the command deck were all ablaze, each touched by promethium to become a human candle. Bereft of sensation and reason, they tried to perform their allotted tasks on broken instruments, while their organic parts cooked and augmetics melted.

  It was to be expected of servitors, but most of the bridge crew was as passive. They stood, mouths slack, unable to act as they burned.

  They should have been screaming. They should have been fighting, but they did nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

  The rot had spread right through the fleet. All of them were psy-locked.

  ‘Hadrios!’ Thracian roared. He ran through the flames. Alarms rang from panicking machines. Fire raced along combustible cable housings, gutting work stations. Drifting embers of insulation fell as fiery snow.

  ‘Hadrios!’

  A whoosh of promethium igniting drew the Chapter Master across the deck. He ran through walls of fire, vaulting the burning forms of silently screaming serfs. A torrent of liquid flame washed down into the main hololith pit.

  ‘Hadrios,’ said Thracian. He advanced on the traitor through sheets of flame and smoke, drawing short of where they did their work. The inferno blocked his view. When the fires died back a moment, the man he expected was not there.

  Shipmistress Hannelore calmly ejected an empty promethium flask from her flamer, unclamped a replacement from her belt and screwed it into place.

  Thracian raised his gun and his sword.

  ‘Hannelore!’ he said.

  ‘You were expecting someone else?’ She looked towards a broken pile of blackened armour. ‘Poor Hadrios, misunderstood to the end.’

  Thracian recovered his senses. ‘Put down your weapon.’

  ‘No, my lord,’ she said. ‘You know I cannot do that.’ There was a smile in her voice under the dreamy, glassy-eyed look.

  ‘Then I have no choice.’

  ‘No, you really don’t.’

  Hannelore turned towards him.

  The Chapter Master’s finger tightened on the trigger, but he couldn’t pull it. Sweat sprang out on his brow. The trigger was immovable.

  Hannelore walked down the bridge’s central walkway, raised her flamer and sprayed out a burning cone of liquid. Everywhere it landed it kissed little fires into life. Gel screens burst. Glass shattered. Placid people burned. She stood before the Chapter Master, and pushed his gun aside. Inhuman strength hid in her slight limbs.

  ‘Why?’ Thracian gurgled.

  Hannelore laughed. ‘You know why. You know exactly why. You’ve been complicit since the start. Can’t you see that?’ More promethium whooshed from the muzzle of the gun. The bridge was a large space, but the shipmistress had been efficient, and most of it was ablaze.

  ‘They’re coming. Your replacements. These new children of a new era. I did not want this, you understand. I don’t want to die. None of us do. But they’ll find out. I do not have time to put them off the scent. I am going to have to start again. It should be possible. It’s been done once. All the Family had to do was be patient.’

  Gunfire rattled outside. Thracian’s last men had fought a running battle with monsters surging up from the lower decks. Loyal crew who had served since Sotha fell had turned on them without reservation.

  Hannelore looked over Thracian’s shoulder. She did not seem concerned about defeat. An icy knot in Thracian’s gut told him she might win.

  ‘You cannot stop us all,’ Thracian said. He struggled to speak. The same weight that foiled his trigger finger crushed at his throat. Hannelore’s eyes burned with psychic power. ‘Your spawn are dying. We have won.’

  Firelight danced on Hannelore’s cheeks. ‘Not yet. How many battle brothers remain, Thracian? Four dozen, three? Hardly any at all. And there are more of the gifted ones waiting in the dark. I am not so foolish as to risk them all.’ She walked towards Thracian.

  ‘Then this is your plan? Burn everything before the reinforcement fleet arrives? You’ll never be able to explain it.’

  ‘I can be very persuasive, as you have seen.’ Hannelore stopped in front of him. ‘You never suspected me. I pity you, Thracian. You probably think yourself a fool, believing me, never questioning who I was or what I was doing, all the while suspecting poor, loyal Hadrios. He was doing his job, as much as he was able. If it makes this any easier, you had no choice. None of us do. The will of the Four-Armed Emperor is so powerful, so pure, it cannot be resisted. I am so sorry you will not see his coming. I am sorry you will not be saved. You are a good man.’

  ‘You are a slave to those who would devour us! The genestealers are tyranids, Hannelore.’

  ‘The hive fleet is a test,’ she said. ‘I passed it. The worthy will ascend, to fight at the Emperor’s side forever. I pity you. I shall remember you in my prayers.’

  She levelled the flamer at the Chapter Master.

  ‘This is what I will tell them. There was an accident. A plasma leak. The bridge burned out, most of the brethren dead. So few of us left anyway. Our crews infected with xenos plague, a rebellion, regretfully, that was nearly successful. I find lies are so much more believable when they are scaffolded in truth. There will be no evidence to examine, not here where it counts. And no one to gainsay me, I, the last true servant of the Scythes of the Emperor. The Family will go back into the dark, and
we shall bide our time, until the day of ascension is at hand.’

  The hissing pilot light came close to Thracian’s eyes. Gunfire was coming closer to the command deck.

  ‘You have lost. We have won out. Put down the flamer. Surrender. Accept judgement.’

  Hannelore shook her head.

  ‘You will be saved. I will save you. All of you.’

  Thracian.

  ‘Goodbye, Thracian.’

  Thracian.

  Flames engulfed the Chapter Master, biting into him, charring heat resistant ceramite.

  ‘Thracian! Thracian! Wake up!’

  ‘By the warden of the light, is he with us?’ Doror looked to the Apothecary.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Aratus consulted his narthecium screen. ‘I have never seen brainwaves like this. He’s not asleep, he’s not unconscious. He’s just not there.’

  The Chapter Master lay on the ground. His armour prevented anything like a natural posture. He looked more like a malfunctioning machine than a man.

  Galerius and Ulas had the last wraith penned in by the wall. It phased out, passing through their bodies, but Keltru was waiting when it rematerialised, firing one handed as he struggled with the hybrid’s leash.

  ‘Get him up, by the Emperor,’ said Doror.

  ‘My lord!’ Aratus tried again. ‘Come back to us, the enemy are–’

  Thracian came around screaming. He lunged up from the floor, grappling Aratus about the chest before the Apothecary could move. Their armour rang from the stone as they wrestled.

  ‘My lord! Stop!’ Doror moved in to pull him back, but Thracian twisted, and shoved Doror so hard he lost his footing on the treacherous floor and fell.

  Thracian rained blows onto his brother. Aratus’ helm twisted with every strike. Ceramite clad fingers skidded over his faceplate, seeking to wrench it from the Apothecary’s face.

  Thracian felt the fire. He felt his skin burn, the sight cook out of his left eye.

  ‘Hannelore!’ he roared. ‘Hannelore!’

  He jammed his hands under the chin of Aratus’ helm, found the soft seal, and began to strangle.

  ‘My lord! Please! Thracian!’ Aratus struck inwards at the Chapter Master’s arms with his forearms, but could not break his grip.

  ‘You will not destroy our Chapter,’ Thracian grunted. ‘I will not let you.’

  Ulas and Galerius chased the wraith around the room with a hail of bolts, but it ducked and weaved, and then dived in to attack. Keltru, Ulas and Galerius blasted at it as it came, hoping to catch it when it phased back into its solid form.

  Doror scrambled up, armour whining, and launched himself at his lord, slamming into Thracian’s side and knocking him off balance and sending them both tumbling down the incline of the floor into the heaps of bones. Aratus broke free, coughing.

  Brother Doror had the Chapter Master on the ground, but Thracian was strong, and bucked under Doror’s hold, his cries of rage echoing far along the Pharos’ network of tunnels over the barking of bolters. Aratus flung himself down onto Thracian’s body, and together he and Doror pinned him in place, their armour screeching on the blackstone. Bones rattled off them.

  ‘Get his helmet off!’ cried Aratus. He locked out Thracian’s arm, freeing up one hand. Together, he and Doror wrestled off Thracian’s helmet. For a moment he stared at them uncomprehendingly, his sighted eye wide in his scarred face.

  ‘He doesn’t recognise us!’ Aratus fumbled at his own helm and cast it aside. It bounced along the curving tunnel floor and vanished into a side vent.

  ‘It’s me! Thracian, it is Aratus.’

  Thracian gasped. Sweat ran off him in rivulets.

  ‘Calm yourself! Calm! Thracian, Thracian, look at me!’

  The Chapter Master stared up at his battle brother. Recognition dawned.

  ‘I cannot stop them. I cannot stop the visions. I don’t know if it’s this damned machine or the father beast waiting for us.’

  Warm air sang mournfully through the tunnels from the depths of the mountain.

  Thracian reached up a hand. Aratus and Doror pulled him to his feet.

  ‘Neither is good.’

  The wraith was thrashing about on the ground. A lucky hit had broken its dimensional phase shifter, and Ulas had its tail trapped under his boot. Galerius went to its head, kicked away its stabbing scythe arms, and punched its head flat with a single blow of his power fist.

  The last gunshots died away.

  Thracian looked to his men earnestly. ‘We have to finish this,’ he said. ‘I have to finish this. Help me find the beast that corrupted our world.’

  Far beneath their feet, distant machinery rumbled.

  ‘We need to find it now,’ Thracian said. ‘Before I lose my mind.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Pit

  They fell through a fractured landscape of black mirrors and dazzling flashes of green lightning. Felix could not see Alpha Primus or the magos, although he saw himself endlessly repeated. The reflected versions nearest him were subtly different, those far away extremely divergent. He tumbled for what seemed like hours, surrounded by multiplying variants of himself, one leaf among a million leaves. His body twisted, smeared about like paint applied to a board and pushed by fevered artistry to resemble something other than himself, yet in essence the same. There was no pain. There was no emotion or thought, only strange spectacles that were snatched away as soon as glimpsed, and consigned to oblivion.

  Suddenly, he stopped.

  He lifted his head with a sharp breath. He was lying face down on a floor of shining blackstone.

  ‘Cawl!’ he said instinctively.

  Giant machines thudded around him, persistent as heartbeats, just as vital, beating out the finite time of reality as surely as Felix’s own hearts measured his mortal life.

  ‘Cawl!’ he said. His face was wet. Blood, he thought at first, but the soft burn of spilled Betcher’s venom told him he had drooled freely while he lay insensible.

  ‘Cawl, respond to me. Where are you?’

  He turned his head. The cowling of his armour restricted his view to either side. He saw sloped machines cut with channels where energies raced. Helm displays were down. His retinal feed was off. He tried to rise, and had no help from his battleplate. All of its systems were dead. The weight of his armour and the slipperiness of the floor conspired against him, and he fell down before he attained his knees.

  A hand grabbed him under the armpit.

  ‘I will help you,’ Alpha Primus said.

  Aided by Primus’ strength, Felix rose up. His reactor coughed, an unhealthy sound for such blessed technology, but its power flooded him and his displays reignited. Readings showed a breathable atmosphere.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Felix. ‘Where is Cawl?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Primus. ‘Not for sure. This place resembles somewhere my master once described to me.’

  ‘Then he has been here before.’

  Primus shrugged. He did not seem to care. He wasn’t wearing his helmet. His usual miserable expression had a touch of mystification to it.

  The itch of acid spittle on his chin suddenly irritated Felix. He wrestled his own helmet off, and took a breath of air charged by arcane energies. It smelled hot without being so. Chemical scents he could not identify made it pleasantly rich.

  Machinery was all around them. Dozens of low, long, ingot-shaped devices covered over with angular patterns of light. Each was the size of a battle tank, and all were identical. Only a few tunnels opened up into the great cavern that housed the machines. A shelf ran along one wall. The wall next to that bore the traces of walkways and machinery of human make.

  ‘The Heart of the Pharos?’ said Felix. ‘Is this it?’

  Primus shook his head unsurely. ‘Cawl told me of the Heart of the Pharos
a long time ago. I forget nothing. He told me it was empty.’

  ‘He said the same to me,’ said Felix.

  ‘This place is not empty,’ said Primus. He went to collect Cawl’s axe from where it lay on the floor.

  The buzz of contra-grav approached, and Felix raised his gauntlet ready to fire. An insectile construct drifted past. Multi-lensed eyes glowed, and weapons arms twitched, but it ignored them and floated by.

  ‘Maintenance canoptek construct,’ said Primus. ‘This part of the complex is not on a defence footing.’

  ‘Then they will not attack unless we attack,’ said Felix. He powered down his gauntlet. ‘We must find the magos.’

  They walked between the engines of the ancients. Felix was no savant of the tech cults, but he recognised power. Whatever these things did, they radiated might. Their very existence spoke of undreamed of knowledge. According to Cawl, the original machines had been carved up and taken away by the priests of Mars, and yet here they were, remade by the floating drones that tended them.

  They passed among the scarabs and the spyders drifting through the maze. Felix couldn’t help but see echoes of insects in summer gardens, contentedly drifting over fields of blooms. The Primaris Marines kept their weapons inactive and holstered, and were ignored, though Felix couldn’t count on that state of affairs lasting, and the command to reactivate them was ever at the forefront of his mind.

  After crossing the machine hall, they came to an opening in the wall that led through a tunnel of energy fields projected through solid rock. Primus stopped at the edge. On the far side was a reddish light, and the busy thrum of more mechanisms.

  ‘Do we proceed?’

  ‘There is not much choice,’ said Felix. ‘The vox is jammed. We must search for the archmagos. He is an irksome character, but he is of too much value to leave behind.’

  Primus frowned at Felix.

  ‘I am joking, Primus,’ said Felix. ‘I seek to lighten the mood. We are in grave danger.’

  ‘Humour is no weapon against death,’ said Primus.

  ‘I emulate the primarch,’ said Felix. ‘He can be unexpectedly light. I agree it does not work.’