Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley Read online

  Eight socket ports ringed the actuary’s upper assembly, where, under a smooth ring of metal that matched the desk top, various life-supporting machineries were concentrated. From seven of the ports long, banded, metal data tethers connected the actuary to a flock of servo-skulls that whooped and buzzed and darted about, staring at Cawl with cold, glass eyes and taking it in turns to probe at him on every wavelength. The eighth port was sealed over with a riveted cap that loudly proclaimed it inactive. This had been done for entirely obvious reasons – eight was an unpopular number after the Great Heresy War, it being held sacred by the apostates of the Dark Mechanicum. Any whiff of treachery was to be avoided.

  And that was precisely why Cawl was in so much trouble.

  The actuary’s nerves hung from the stubby remains of its spinal column in rootlike profusion, each delicately linked to a golden wire. Disturbingly, despite its headlong desire to purge itself of all flesh, the actuary had opted to retain its startlingly green eyes, which floated in the suspension liquid, moored to the foreparts of the brain by carefully preserved optic nerves. Tiny ducted propellers had been attached to the bloodshot whites to enable the eyes to keep station and look about. It was an unsuccessful augmentation, for the eyes floated in the fluid not quite level with one another. Cawl found them completely repulsive to look at, but he did his best to keep his nerve and hold the actuary’s necessarily unblinking stare.

  ‘Subject 3199876,’ the actuary blared. A servo-skull fitted with a voxmitter spoke for it. The language processor was harsh and the speaker poorly modulated. Cawl’s cell was a silent space of white noise and EM waves intended to block every kind of data projection from the human voice to laser pulse. He would have found the actuary’s voice grating under normal circumstances, but after his lengthy, enforced meditations, it was unbearable. ‘Data has come to light regarding your claim of innocence.’

  ‘It is not a claim,’ said Cawl irritably. ‘It is a fact.’ He tried hard to keep his eyes on the floating orbs in the tank, but their unevenness made it a task that bred headaches.

  ‘Do you recognise this individual?’

  A servo-skull opened chromium-plated jaws. A compact hololithic projector emerged with a click, and sketched a poor quality light sculpt of a heavily augmented adept into the space between them.

  Cawl peered at it.

  ‘You do not recognise this individual?’ barked the actuary again. ‘He is a member of the Cult Destructor of the Myrmidonae.’

  Cawl peered some more.

  ‘You do not recognise it.’ The actuary seemed almost disappointed. ‘Your case is suspended.’

  ‘Wait! Give me a moment,’ said Cawl. ‘He looks familiar, but it’s hard to tell, because your projection matrix is very badly aligned if I’m completely honest, and the resolution is, quite frankly, as one adept to another, very low.’

  The actuary squalled in irritation. ‘Do you recognise him or not?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cawl, and sat back. The manacles binding his wrists to either side of the chair clinked. ‘I do. I fought alongside him and his myrmidon clade on Trisolian A-4, in the agrifields, before Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma turned traitor and handed over control to the Warmaster. They saved me from the Night Lords. I repaired one of his followers.’

  ‘Did you do so from gratitude, or was it a cloak for treachery?’

  ‘I was doing my duty!’ Cawl’s jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. ‘We were fighting the traitors!’

  The actuary emitted a pleased bleep. ‘Do you know his designation?’

  ‘I…’ said Cawl. ‘No, I don’t. I’m sure he canted it to me, but I’ve had a few data purges since then, most of them at the hands of your careless staff.’

  ‘They are investigatory exloads, not purges.’

  ‘You should try telling that to your adepts,’ said Cawl. ‘My augment hurts. I didn’t even know that was possible.’

  ‘Your memcore is non-standard. There have been difficulties.’

  ‘Yes, well, but it did work. Now it does not.’

  ‘Then you do not recall him.’

  ‘Not digitally, no, but I remember him in the organic sense. Why? Is he a traitor too? Is this more evidence to damn me in the Adeptus Mechanicus’ eyes? I’ve told you before. I didn’t even know the war was over when we got here. I’m telling you the truth.’

  ‘We took this image from your own memcore.’

  ‘So why are you asking if I remembered him?’ Cawl said tetchily. All his meetings with the actuary tended to follow the same, maddeningly circuitous logic.

  ‘As part of the judicial processes against apostate members of the Cult Mechanicus, all data is being harvested and will be kept for all time. By the will of the Omnissiah, Motive Force and Machine-God, let it be. This individual was investigated. This individual was contacted regarding your supposed innocence.’

  ‘And?’ said Cawl wearily, who wanted to get it all over with.

  ‘His name is Theodulus Pallisar. He is of Cult-Hierophant rank within the destructor brotherhoods.’

  ‘That is his current rank?’ asked Cawl.

  ‘Yes,’ said the actuary smugly.

  ‘That is quite a high rank?’ hazarded Cawl.

  ‘Yes,’ said the actuary.

  ‘And… he is not a traitor?’ said Cawl.

  A servo-skull floated down close to Cawl’s face and looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘Far from it. He is, Belisarius Cawl, a war hero,’ it said. The skull’s innards flashed in time with its words.

  The servo-skull floated back up. A bank of machines behind the desk made a noisy clattering.

  ‘He vouched for you. Your story has been subjected to the ninth degree of inquisition. It holds up.’ The actuary took a pompous pause. ‘By the power vested in me by the ruling synod of Ryza, who in turn draw their authority from the most holy auspices of the Machine-God Himself, you are free to go.’

  The manacles fell open and dropped to the floor with a clatter. Cawl rubbed his wrists. The manacles had caught on his wrist port, and the skin around the implant was sore.

  ‘Where do I go?’

  ‘That is not my concern. My concern is your guilt. You have been judged innocent. You are no longer my responsibility.’

  The door swung open on silent hinges.

  ‘Please depart.’

  ‘But I’ve never been to Ryza before.’

  ‘Not my concern.’

  ‘Give me something, please! I can’t just walk out of here into a world I know nothing about.’

  ‘Not my concern. You will depart, now.’ The actuary-judicium’s servo-skulls detached with seven metallic rasps. Trailing cables, they flew off to their charging roosts while the brain jar spiralled down slowly back into the desk.

  ‘Wait!’

  ‘Goodbye, Belisarius Cawl,’ said the actuary. Its vox-skull settled into its charging roost and spoke no more.

  The jar slid home with a pop of air. A heavily armed servitor stepped into the doorway and pointed a radium carbine at Cawl’s head.

  ‘I get the message.’ Cawl stared at the desk. A look of dawning realisation spread over his face. ‘What about Friedisch?’

  Cawl felt incredibly guilty when he saw where they’d been keeping his friend. As acolytum, and not an ordained adept, Friedisch had been confined to an overcrowded common cell block with all manner of Mechanicus dregs. The room stank of unwashed bodies, decaying organic components and old oil so rank it made Cawl cough. He was led past steel cages full of malfunctioning servitors and renegade tech thralls who had, somehow, wormed their way out from under the control of their overseer programming. Badly maintained stasis tanks holding more dangerous beings buzzed noisily. People shouted and blurted obscene streams of anti-logic at him as he walked past. The same contra-communications technologies that had hemmed in his cell made an inviolable w
all around this block too, but amplified to block dozens of minds from the Ryzan noosphere, it was crippling. Oppressive magnetic waves slowed his mind, disrupting the interface between augmetic and the human body. He felt sick, sleepy, irritable and madly gleeful all at once.

  ‘What an awful place,’ he muttered to himself.

  The skitarii alpha who led him to Friedisch’s cell was specially modified to be unaffected by the data wall. He stopped and gestured into another cage. Within, a circle of low rankers sat on the floor around a chalked circuitry diagram, and were arguing loudly with each other about its design.

  Friedisch was among them. He had his back to the door.

  ‘Friedisch,’ Cawl said gently.

  ‘Cawl?’ Friedisch turned to look at him. He had lost weight, and the irritation around his ocular augmetic was worse than ever.

  ‘We’re free, you and I.’ Cawl gave him a tight smile. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Friedisch smiled back.

  Now

  ‘Interesting,’ said Belisarius Cawl. His augmetic eye flared as he came awake. ‘Very interesting indeed.’

  His huge, augmented body hauled itself out of the maintenance dock. Cables disconnected themselves and whipped back into the armoured housing. As he moved forwards, he uncurled, extending himself to his full magnificent height. Cawl emerged from the dock unclothed, showing the array of mechanisms he had appended to his body over the millennia. His torso was the most human part of him remaining, and even then only the uppermost part of that remained flesh. Exposed bone meshed with adamantium, his withered skin puckered around the augmetics. His flesh was as necessary to him as an overcoat, nothing more than that. He kept it mainly for sentimental reasons. In his mummified chest cavity blue light shone from active organs, each one superior in every way to the original. His ribs were bonded directly to armour plates protecting the main interface between lower assembly and torso, which sat proudly on a long underbody – and that was completely mechanical and entirely non-humanoid. Numerous legs moved him. Fringes of data cables followed along behind him like a bridal train of madly tapping metal tentacles. He was a centauroid arthropod topped by a man’s face wrinkled by a life more than ten millennia long. Tufts of white hair stuck up from his scalp. Scar tissue shone around interface ports. He swayed about, wafting the scent of old skin and counterseptic gels around him. It was a stale and astringent morgue smell.

  By any definition of human, Cawl was a monstrosity.

  ‘What is interesting, master?’

  A lone Primaris Space Marine stood guard over Cawl’s instrument dock. Though it was the Space Marine’s duty to wake the archmagos, no action taken on his part had brought the ancient Cawl back to life. The archmagos required no help. Other people were, at most, witnesses to his existence. An audience. It was always he who acted. The Space Marine’s function in the process was largely ceremonial.

  ‘Visions,’ said Cawl. At odds with his body, his voice retained its humanity and his old enthusiasm. ‘Memories, to be more precise. ­Recollections I thought lost. Indeed, were lost.’

  Cawl clattered past the Space Marine, who followed him with soulful, sad eyes. The warrior was heavily scarred, appearing cut up and stuck back together in haste. His armour bore no heraldry but was the pale, unpainted gunmetal grey of raw ceramite.

  ‘What does it mean, master?’ The Space Marine fell in behind Cawl as the archmagos passed through a maze of machinery. Not all Cawl’s laboratories were this untidy, far from it, but when the archmagos required inspiration and adopted a more chaotic persona, he preferred this workspace over his others.

  ‘Mean? Mean? It’s a little early to ask about meaning, Alpha Primus,’ said Cawl. Servo-skulls swooped down from the forest of machines covering the high ceiling and took up guard around Cawl. Long cables whipped about under them, hanging from the places their spinal columns should have been, eager to plug into his body. They were premature, and Cawl waved them away. He paused at an armoire, reached for and pulled on magos’ robes. They draped over him, hiding the greater part of his machinery. Then he took a cloak to cover what was left of his organic body, hiding his head beneath its deep hood. Mechanical limbs mounted on podiums bent at awkward angles to fiddle with the robes, seating them properly around his input ports. The sacred red of Mars in place, Cawl paused below a winch and waited with impatient, tapping claws for his upper assembly to be lowered from above. Armour plates clasped his shoulders, their link spikes mating with the ports running down his back. The spinal sensor vane locked into place with a loud clunk. Then his power unit slotted itself carefully into place, the long arm that bore it retreating silently. Cawl was away again before the core had locked itself firm. Indicator lumens blinked as the reactor spooled up and filled his augmetics with fresh might.

  Busy feet clacked on the deck. His lower assembly rippled with their motion but, like the furious paddling of the mythical swan of Old Earth, down below was all activity, while his upper portion glided on serenely. As he passed through the workshop, more parts of him were reattached. Extra limbs, field generators, diagnostic tools, everything he thought he might need for the expedition to Sotha. To his jaw, he attached one of his augmitter arrays, this one mounting an atmospheric shield generator. Powerful magnets caught as he slipped it in place. He held out an arm and his great Omnissian axe came blurring across the room, ringing on his metal palm. Clusters of armour plates floated down, layering themselves over the robes of his lower assembly, clamping onto the hips of his many legs.

  ‘You were not expecting any such visions?’ asked Alpha Primus.

  Cawl laughed. ‘My dear boy, do not play the ignoramus with me! I made you far too intelligent to flatter me for the sake of it. You already know what is happening. We discussed this! Use that transhuman mind of yours to its fullest extent.’ He turned back and grinned over his mouthpiece. ‘I am far more impressed by the brilliance of my own creations than I am by toadying, you know that.’ His voice distorted as his augmitter went through functionality checks, voicing the magos’ words in numerous languages and a grating squeal of binharic.

  Alpha Primus looked up to the ceiling, an expression that could easily have turned into an eye roll.

  ‘It is the mountain. It is speaking to you already,’ said Alpha Primus.

  ‘Exactly!’ said Cawl, pointing at his servant with an assortment of fingers. He rattled up to a stasis tube. From inside, a tall metal mechanoid being stared out with a single glass eye. The being was shut down as well as suspended in time, but it gave off an air of awareness even so. Cawl put his face up close to the glass. ‘Thanks to what I learned from our friend here, my new implants function perfectly. First contact with the machines of the ancients, Primus! It is deeply fascinating. I had accounted for the possibility of trans-warp capabilities of the device, but even so…’ He shook his head in admiration. ‘Such art. I have successfully achieved long-range preliminary interface. In return, the mountain is bringing the past back to life.’

  He turned away from his guest and clattered on. ‘If you consider, most of my memories are hidden from me, lost for all time. But the past exists still in absolute terms. Time is a river. The mouth and source are there even if you cannot see them. Incredible that the quantum empathy of the device should be able to effortlessly tune my energetic state to be able to receive past emanations of my wave form, all without recourse to the empyrean.’ He held up a finger tipped with a three-pronged data robe. ‘We have so much to learn from them. Such pure science! Such mastery of the material! This is only the beginning, Alpha Primus, only the beginning!’

  ‘If you say so, master.’

  ‘Ah, such mordancy,’ Cawl said. ‘You are pleasingly sarcastic.’

  ‘I was not attempting wit, master,’ Alpha Primus said. ‘I simply do not comprehend you.’

  Cawl chuckled. He had reached the armoury space of the laboratorium. He held up his primary a
nd secondary arm sets, exposing the interface sockets for his tertiary limbs.

  ‘Now, now – guns, guns, guns. What shall I take? Something ranged, something for close-in work on this expedition. Something deadly. What do you think?’

  ‘Whatever you deem fit. Perhaps your favoured choice, master? The ones you always take.’

  ‘Even I’m allowed to have favourites, Alpha Primus. Bring them down!’

  Primus threw a giant switch. Cawl beamed as his arc scourge and solar atomiser were lowered down and pushed into place. They spun about and fired up, making numerous clicks and purrs as they self-tested. The reactor’s hum climbed a note.

  With his weapons in place, Belisarius Cawl was done. He held aloft all his arms, probes, weapons and mechadendrites.

  ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Fearsome, master,’ said Alpha Primus.

  ‘That’s the right answer.’ Cawl hunched down.

  ‘Master?’

  ‘Yes, Alpha Primus?’

  ‘What did you remember? What did the mountain show you?’

  Cawl became subdued. ‘Something that happened a very long time ago, Alpha. It showed me my friend.’

  Neither of them spoke. The buzz of Cawl’s cybernetics filled the space.

  ‘We must be on our guard,’ Cawl said eventually. ‘The device is more powerful than I thought. I let myself open up to it, and I am glad that the interface functions.’ He tapped his skull. ‘But I must be careful I am not too open. I have shut down most of my sub-minds so that I may concentrate.’ He pulled a face. ‘I am beginning to wonder if I did not choose the wrong persona for this mission after all.’

  ‘Which one did you select for your primary consciousness?’ asked Primus. ‘Out of curiosity, master.’

  ‘Can you not tell?’

  ‘My facility for reading human personalities is somewhat blunted,’ said Primus.