Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley Read online

  ‘As requested, I brought no more than my bodyguard. I assume the remainder of your men are aboard your cruiser?’

  Thracian laughed. ‘This is the extent of my forces. The Primaris young bloods sail the void at Guilliman’s behest aboard the Heart of Cronos. These few veterans you see here are all that remains of the original Scythes of the Emperor. We have business below that is ours alone to undertake.’

  ‘Cadmus informed me your contingent of original Space Marines had become small.’ Felix frowned. ‘How did this occur? The most recent Munitorum estimate put your Chapter at two companies’ strength at the time of the Primaris reinforcement.’

  ‘Those figures are a century out of date,’ said Thracian. ‘The rest have fallen into shadow. We are all that remains. When we die, our geneseed will be laid to rest and the Primaris Marines will take our place. They are the future, Emperor be thanked for the gift of Cawl. We are the past.’

  ‘You brought none of your new warriors with you?’ asked Felix.

  ‘We welcomed their coming, and honour them, but this mission is not for the new.’ The rotation of the platform pivoted shadows across Thracian’s features as Sotha crept away. ‘Sotha is our world. It never belonged to the children of Cawl. Let them have a fresh beginning as we fade away. It sorrows me that you bring Brother Cadmus to see the source of our shame.’ He watched the world rolling past. ‘The rest of our Chapter have no memory of Sotha, and I have no wish to risk the reborn Scythes on this expedition into the past. The Emperor’s Watch is no place for them, or us. Not any longer.’

  ‘What risks do you anticipate?’

  ‘My warriors have a great deal of experience in fighting the tyranids, lord tetrarch,’ said Thracian. ‘When they harvest a world they often leave sentry organisms behind. We surmise this is to inform the hive mind of the return of life. Oftentimes, genestealers roost in some number near sites of settlements, lying in wait to infect those who come to offer aid or to investigate what has happened,’ Thracian said angrily. ‘They are a perfidious race.’

  ‘Then we are twenty-four Adeptus Astartes, with the warriors of the archmagos to call upon,’ said Felix. ‘Worlds have fallen to less.’

  ‘And larger forces have been lost without trace.’ Thracian pointed at the great disc of the world, picking out a lonely mountain by a dry sea, its feet cloaked by a dead city. ‘If we overcome the horrors the Kraken will have left behind, the archmagos wishes to disturb the Pharos. No good can come of that, so yes, “risk” is the word.’ Thracian exhaled heavily. The planet continued on its journey over the breach, half of it past the broken walls by now, and its light dimming. The colour crept back into Thracian’s armour. ‘I offer you the chance to turn back. The ten steeds of Sotha will ride on for the Emperor. We owe Cawl a great debt for our Chapter’s resurrection, and so I grant his wish willingly. If he wants to dice with fate, so be it. But as Space Marine to Space Marine, I urge you to go now, Decimus Felix. The heritage of the Scythes of the Emperor is secure.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Who will carry on your legacy if you perish here? Do not enter the mountain.’

  Felix’s eyes narrowed at the warning. ‘I live to serve, I do not care for legacies. I have fought daemons and fallen primarchs at the Lord Guilliman’s side,’ said Felix. The passing planet relinquished the command deck to lumen light. ‘Nothing daunts me. Nothing can.’

  Thracian smiled again ruefully, the sort of expression an uncle gives an overly confident nephew. He looked down, and when he looked up again, he was suffused with a Chapter Master’s authority, and when he spoke his voice rang. Even Felix, who had stood at the right hand of Roboute Guilliman himself, felt the hairs on his neck prickle.

  ‘They shall be my finest warriors,’ Thracian quoted the Emperor, ‘these men who give of themselves to me. Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them.’ His voice rose. ‘They will have tactics, strategies and machines so that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear.’ When he finished the quote, all were silent. Thracian’s voice dropped. ‘Fine words, but I know they are not true. I know there are beings a Space Marine cannot best. I am not ashamed to say to you that I have known fear.’

  Chapter Three

  A debt repaid

  Circa 10,000 years ago

  ‘Belisarius Cawl! I am Belisarius Cawl!’ Cawl released the vox button. ‘Cog and tooth!’ he swore. ‘It’s not working!’

  Energy flare burned around the small oculus of the Silencia, hiding space in a mix of oily void shield discharge and licks of flame. The ship yawed hard, punched down by kinetic overspill.

  Friedisch Adum Silip Qvo launched himself out of his own seat and staggered over the heaving deck to Cawl’s station.

  ‘What are you doing, Friedisch?’ said Cawl. ‘You’ll do yourself an injury! Sit down.’

  ‘You are positing a choice between a bump on the head and imminent atomic dissolution. I know which I prefer.’ He slapped Cawl’s hands away from the vox controls. ‘Let me try.’

  ‘Get off!’ shouted Cawl.

  ‘Let me try!’ Friedisch snapped back, fussing hopelessly over the buttons, stabbing them until the console’s inbuilt hololithic display indicated an open vox-channel.

  ‘I just tried that!’ Cawl snarled. ‘I’m getting their ident beacon but nothing else.’

  ‘You don’t know as much about inter-ship vox systems as I do.’

  ‘Since when did you know more than me about anything?’

  ‘Since now,’ said Friedisch. He pulled a data tether from a socket in his wrist and plugged it into the console. Cawl had to admit he was mildly impressed by Friedisch’s ability to remain upright while the ship bounced under fire.

  ‘Will you please, please, please stop firing on us,’ said Friedisch.

  ‘I don’t think pleading is going to work, Friedisch,’ said Cawl. ‘They’re not responding!’

  ‘But the channel’s open,’ said Friedisch.

  Another hit had the Silencia drop alarmingly.

  Tez-Lar, the bridge’s third occupant, stood maglocked to the deck, unmoved by the danger they were in. His cyborg brain, expertly reconstructed by Cawl, was incapable of emotion. His slack face showed nothing but idiot disinterest.

  The same could not be said of the tech-priests. They shouted in panic as a hard hit slammed at the ship. The tortured shriek of void generators resounded up the corridors. Friedisch grabbed at Cawl to stop himself falling down, prompting an undignified flurry of robed limbs as Cawl shoved him off.

  ‘One more impact like that and the shields will be down, and then we’ll be dead,’ said Cawl.

  ‘But this is Ryza. Ryza is on our side still, isn’t it?’ said Friedisch plaintively.

  A loud shrieking warble screamed up the ship from the generatorium.

  ‘Have you got the vox working?’ shouted Cawl.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The vox! The vox! The all-knowing, blessed Machine-God’s voxmitter!’ yelled Cawl. ‘Does it work? You’re plugged into the thrice-malfunctioning thing!’

  ‘Yes, no, I don’t know!’ said Friedisch, his augmetic eye flashing with rapid data inload. ‘The machine-spirits say we lost our comms mast when we fled Septa Station. That’s why they’re not responding.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ growled Cawl. ‘My turn! I’ll try redirecting the signal through the mag deflector. We’re at close enough range if I modulate them properly.’ Via the hardlines linking him to the ship’s dying manifold, Cawl activated the vox’s deck speakers, adding a roar of angry static to the clamour of alarms and whoops of pained machinery. ‘Right. That’s got something. Mecha
nicum monitor–’ Cawl cursed under his breath, and began again. ‘Adeptus Mechanicus monitor Archaeus, cease fire. We are refugees from the Trisolian extraction facility Momus, designation Phi-9120, Segmentum Solar. We are fleeing the forces of the Warmaster. We are loyal members of the Machine Cult, pledged to Mars and Terra. We request mercy!’

  The tone of the vox changed, and a blip broke the sound, leading them to believe, just for a moment, that an answer was forthcoming, but then the blip turned to a rising warble of high-energy interference.

  ‘Their induction coils are powering to fire!’ shouted Friedisch.

  ‘I can tell!’ Cawl snapped. ‘I can hear it!’

  The ship was engulfed in a wash of plasma as blue-white as the brightest star. The oculus shield slammed shut in response, but the screen and tri-d displays conveyed enough of the glare to make the adepts wince before they gave out in showers of sparks and crackling bangs. Metal groaned. Cawl blinked painful afterimages away. He was unable to see which bits of the Silencia had stopped working as a result of the hit. Nothing but nonsense data poured into his memcore from the vessel’s frazzled cogitators. Sparks burst in a spectacular fan from Cawl’s console.

  ‘I don’t like it!’ Friedisch threw up his hands to protect himself, banging his wrist hard on the substandard augmetic embedded in his face, and staggering about the bucking bridge. ‘Ow!’ he wailed as his data tether yanked loose.

  ‘I hate to rebuke you, dear Friedisch, but there are very few people in this galaxy who do enjoy being fired at!’

  ‘We’re going to die!’ said Friedisch. The backs of his knees connected with a chair and he folded into it heavily. He clasped his hands together in prayer. ‘Oh, Omnissiah, prepare me to enter the annals of the Great Work. Prepare my knowledge… my knowledge to…’ his eyes flew open. ‘Oh no! My records. My work… It was all on station! My life’s work, it’s gone!’

  ‘What life’s work? You never did anything and I’ve barely begun!’ Cawl responded incredulously.

  ‘I had,’ bawled Friedisch, ‘some startling insights!’

  ‘Relax, it’ll all be fine!’ snapped Cawl so sharply it was clear to them both that he did not believe a word he said. He forced the oculus back open.

  ‘It won’t! It won’t!’ Friedisch looked out of the oculus. ‘Look!’ The ship’s sole void shield was going out. A final hit felled it with a flash of purple light. A feeble buzz on the vox accompanied its collapse.

  ‘It’s over,’ said Friedisch. ‘We’re dead.’

  ‘There is always a way out!’ said Cawl fiercely, a tenet he had lived his life by, only this time he was not so sure. Red lights flashed over the Silencia’s bridge in such profusion they dazzled him. Three sharp whoops informed them the Navigator had boarded his salvator pod and ejected. To add to the insult, the pod overflew the dying ship, engines burning, as it fled unmolested to a safe distance, a broadcast of Navigatorial cant and protestations of neutrality keeping it safe from attack.

  ‘That’s charming,’ said Cawl. ‘Utterly charming.’

  ‘This is your fault!’

  ‘You came along with me.’

  ‘I had no choice!’

  ‘Yes, you did!’

  ‘I didn’t! Be aware, Belisarius Cawl, that although you are my dearest friend, I have always hated you,’ spat Friedisch.

  Something hit the hull, almost gently after the shield-killing storm of plasma. A whole host of new alarms added fresh layers to the orchestra of disaster playing around the bridge. The biggest, loudest alarm warned of a plasma leak.

  Friedisch cringed. ‘The reactor is breached! This is it! Goodbye!’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Cawl. He peered at a display, and added with rising excitement, ‘I don’t think so at all!’

  The force of the leak bursting from the side of the small vessel sent the Silencia into a lazy corkscrew. ‘That was a pinpoint strike,’ he said. ‘A disabling hit! They don’t want us dead!’ The ship suddenly juddered to a halt. ‘As I thought! Now they have us in a grapple beam,’ he said with relief. ‘We’re going to be boarded.’

  ‘That’s good?’ shrieked Friedisch. ‘How by the three-in-one’s most holy emissions can that be good?!’

  The ship wobbled under the gravity wake of the larger vessel. A shadow fell over them. Several booming clangs rang the hull, loud as a gong.

  ‘Well, it is better than atomisation, I’d say?’ said Cawl. ‘Yes? Come, come, Friedisch! Better, yes?’ His spirits were rising again. He was sure they’d be saved.

  ‘How I detest you, Belisarius!’ wailed Friedisch.

  The ship’s erratic progress was arrested. Further clangs boomed from the hull. The ship lurched to a stop. The alarms ceased their clamouring.

  Silence fell. Sparks pattered upon the floor.

  ‘What now?’ breathed Friedisch. ‘We’re going to die.’

  ‘They’ll be here in a moment,’ said Cawl. ‘Through that door.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Friedisch, calming a little. ‘Yes.’ He looked down at his dishevelled garments. ‘By the Omnissiah! They can’t see me like this!’

  The tech-priests stood. Cawl withdrew his input dendrites from the console ports while Friedisch fussed over his clothes. A collection of disconcerting noises came from the other side of the bridge door.

  ‘Now, they’ll only be low-grade Navatoi crew,’ said Cawl. ‘If we present ourselves as the adepts that we are – well,’ he paused, ‘that I am, then we should be fine. They’re only Basilikon Astra menials.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Cawl!’ said Friedisch. ‘What experience do you have with the Navatoi?’

  ‘I’d say…’

  ‘None! None! That’s what! Let me handle this for once!’ Friedisch smoothed his robes down a final time, thrust his hands deep into the sleeves, and stood tall.

  A bang made them flinch. A small gap opened up in the middle of the bridge doors. A pair of right-angled pry bars rattled into the smoking hole, jerking about until they had a firm grip on the metal and locked tight. High-powered pressure pistons wheezed, wrenching the doorway open.

  Three Adeptus Mechanicus cyborgs outfitted for void-warfare and clad in the blood orange of Forge World Ryza marched into the command deck. All three bore low-yield plasma carbines which could be discharged more or less safely aboard a starship. The navatos-alpha, his status clear from his unit markings and lateral crest, had his gun shouldered, and instead carried in his steel hand a small device with a wide funnel.

  Past the warriors, Cawl glimpsed the grievous damage done to their stolen vessel, and felt sorrow, for the Silencia had been a very fine ship.

  ‘Get on with it then, Friedisch,’ whispered Cawl. ‘You wanted to talk to them.’

  Friedisch drew in a deep breath.

  ‘Greeting, Navatoi of the Adeptus Mechanicus,’ he intoned. ‘I am Tech Acolytum Friedisch Adum Silip Qvo of…’

  blurted the navatos-alpha in rapid binharic.

  A cone of pale blue energy burst from the device in his hand. It struck both tech-priests simultaneously. Friedisch let out a girlish shriek, and tapped out the dance of an electrocuted man, before falling down hard onto the deck, his body stiff as a rod. Curls of smoke wisped from his augmetic. He let out a pained groan.

  said the navatos-alpha.

  The Navatoi turned questioning gazes of ruby armourglass upon Cawl.

  ‘Hello,’ Cawl said.

  The leader depressed the trigger on his funnel device again. Blue light hit Cawl a second time.

  Nothing happened.

  Cawl looked down at himself, then up at them. He smiled apologetically.

  ‘I’m afraid your override won’t work on me, you see–’

  the navatos-alpha code-blurted.
/>
  ‘No, no, no! It’s all perfectly within the lore,’ said Cawl, holding up his hands.

  A scanning beam flicked up and down Cawl. The alpha took three clanking steps forwards, holstering the device as he came.

  ‘This weapon is a volkite, I’ll have you know!’ said Cawl, offended on behalf of his weapon’s spirit. ‘Stand back! I am not afraid to use it.’

  canted the alpha.

  ‘My friend, please. If you would just let me explain–’ said Cawl.

  ‘Negatory,’ said the alpha, aloud this time, in a voice like the churning of a rockcrete mixer. ‘Target memcore non-responsive to obedience protocols. Physical neutralisation required.’ With that he drove the butt of his carbine hard into Cawl’s face.

  Cawl’s nose broke with a crunch, and he went down like a sack full of bolts.

  The actuary-judicium was not much to look at, but held Cawl’s fate in its various mechanical pseudo-hands. It was a brain in a cylinder of faintly luminous fluid that rose up from the desk when activated, and slid back inside when its business was concluded. Nothing that possessed charisma, even in the odd reality of the Cult. Cawl had no idea if it lived in the office permanently, wedded to its job, or if it had access to some sort of chassis that could carry it about on other business. He had no idea, either, what sex it had once possessed. Such beings were so far past gender it hardly mattered, but he found himself fascinated by the question. During every session the actuary had with Cawl, Cawl speculated on the matter to stave off the worst of his boredom. There wasn’t much else he could do. They chained him to the chair in the interview room. He couldn’t even pace about. It didn’t take much to restrain him; he was mostly human, and only a couple of manacles were required to hold him in place.