Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley Read online

  ‘My lord,’ Thracian interrupted him. ‘We have nearly finished loading our equipment.’

  Four of the veteran Scythes of the Emperor were escorting a methalon casket up the right hand access ramp. Tech-priests loading their own materials stopped and offered prayers to the device. Heavy vapours streamed down from exhaust vents, curling in strangely regular patterns in the suspensor fields holding the casket above the ground. The casket was of a different sort to those aboard Cawl’s ship, but close enough that its presence chilled Felix’s hearts.

  ‘Genovaults,’ said Felix. ‘You are bringing your geneseed with us.’

  ‘That of the older Space Marines. Once, the lifeblood of my Chapter,’ Thracian looked pained, ‘now a relic I must lay to rest. It is useless now it has been superseded, but it is worthy of our respect still. I wish to take it to the Vault of Heroes and see it properly interred along with the remains of my fallen brothers.’

  It was clear that this was not the whole truth. Before Felix could press Thracian further, the heavy tread of a Primaris Space Marine approached from behind. His signum broadcast indicated he was an ally. He was not, however, one of Felix’s own.

  ‘Alpha Primus,’ said Felix, and turned around to face Cawl’s giant.

  ‘I will see to the final loading of my warriors,’ Thracian said, excusing himself.

  Primus watched the other leave with sad eyes. ‘You called for me, tetrarch,’ he said dourly, when Thracian was gone.

  Alpha Primus was like no other Space Marine Felix had seen. He was huge, even by Primaris standards, and a strange-looking individual in many other ways. There was a coppery sheen to his pale, horribly scarred skin. His eyes were black with just a hint of white around huge pupils. His habitually shaved head and chin were dark with fast growing stubble. There was an air of great potency around him that set Felix on guard whenever they met.

  Primus’ embassy in Cawl’s stead was irritating, and insulting. Felix had never liked the man, and his presence provoked painful memories. Cawl had yet to show his face in person. Felix wanted more than anything to get that meeting over with.

  He was therefore short-tempered.

  ‘Where is the archmagos?’ said Felix. ‘When will he inform us what he intends?’

  Primus stared down at him lugubriously. ‘You ask me again, my lord. I can only say he will meet you on the surface as I have already relayed.’

  His lips were plump and purplish, always downturned, giving him a saturnine expression. It suited his soul, thought Felix.

  ‘The archmagos dominus has many preparations to make before we descend.’

  Felix looked out to the Zar Quaesitor and its fleet of attendant ships. The void was alive around it.

  ‘Tell him again that the Primarch Roboute Guilliman has given me express orders that he is to report to me immediately. The archmagos has been out of direct contact for years. In the absence of regular communications, the lord regent expects a full report from me on Cawl and his activities soon.’

  ‘It will all become clear, I am sure,’ said Primus unenthusiastically. ‘I am powerless to compel him to attend you.’

  A vox-chime announced word from the command deck, where Daelus had assumed charge while Thracian’s men prepared for the return to Sotha.

  ‘Tetrarch. There’s something about to happen on Cawl’s ship.’

  ‘Details,’ Felix demanded.

  ‘I’d give them if I had them. I’m reading an immense power surge from the Zar Quaesitor’s reactors. The most likely theoretical is that he is about to open fire on Sotha. But there’s something more behind it. I’ll run further scans to see if I can find out, but the vessel has every augur baffle known to man.’

  Felix rounded on Primus. ‘I told you to tell him that this mission was to be undertaken cautiously.’

  Primus stared back at him sadly.

  Daelus voxed again.

  ‘My lord, it’s not just weapons. Can you see the front of the ark?’ said the Techmarine.

  ‘Not from this position.’

  ‘I would take a look outside if I were you. I don’t think you’ll like what Cawl’s doing.’

  Felix made a noise of annoyance and ducked under the Overlord’s drooping prows. In a half crouch to allow him to pass under the central fuselage, he made his way to the hangar entrance, where he stood tall again under the Overlord’s thruster arrays just inside the atmospheric field.

  ‘By the Throne,’ swore Felix.

  The Zar Quaesitor was coming apart. Its blunt, aggressive bow was detaching, revealing itself as a self-contained subsidiary vessel. It was but a part of the ark, but large in its own right, big enough to land lances of knights, thought Felix. Clamps came free and puffs of gas burst all round it to push it from its housing. It slid along and then off a connecting arm, pipes and cables popping free and reeling themselves in to the larger part of the ark.

  Alpha Primus emerged with difficulty from underneath the Overlord.

  ‘Do you care to explain what your master is doing?’ said Felix.

  ‘I do not know what he is doing. I can only apologise,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘What more can I do? Belisarius Cawl is as Belisarius Cawl does. He is the Prime Conduit of the Omnissiah, a law unto himself.’

  Hundreds of servitor escort craft streamed out of the ark’s hangars and flew after the giant lander. Unhindered by atmosphere, the flotilla proceeded at a steady pace towards the surface.

  ‘If there is anything down there, it is now aware we are coming,’ said Felix. ‘And if any part of the fortress-monastery’s defence matrix remains active, he risks triggering it.’

  ‘I am sure my master has taken that into account,’ said Alpha Primus.

  ‘Lord Felix, the Zar Quaesitor’s weapons are charged and are about to open fire.’

  Huge energy cannons pushed themselves out of gunports all along the ventral line of the ship. They fired as one, sectioning a large area around Mount Pharos with a square of brilliant white light.

  ‘I see,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘Neutron beamers. Anything around the landing zone will have been instantly killed,’ he said. ‘I would not worry. My master has an answer for everything.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Felix, annoyed by his reaction to Cawl’s behaviour. ‘So, it appears, do you.’

  ‘It was the way he made me,’ said Primus.

  Felix pushed past the bigger Space Marine and returned to the confusion around the front of the Overlord, where he waited to be away after Cawl.

  By the time the Overlord was loaded with Qvo-87’s equipment, Cawl had already been on the ground for two hours. Felix’s temper strained to the point that he was set on challenging Qvo about the delay, and accusing him of keeping them back purposefully, but just as he resolved to do so, Qvo-87 came to him with many apologies and assurances that all was done, citing the gathering-up, reprogramming and loading of rare marques of servitor that could not be left behind as the reason for his tardiness.

  So it was that finally, Daelus eased the Overlord out of its cramped nest and set it on the way to the surface. Felix and Thracian rode in the cockpit, despite Cominus’ habitual misgivings about the risk.

  ‘He would keep me in a box, if he could,’ Felix confessed to Thracian.

  The Overlord ventured once more into the void. From outside they saw that the repairs to the main hangar on the station underside were close to completion. That was a far greater space, and much better suited to a gunship of the Overlord’s size class, than the smaller, subsidiary dock.

  ‘It will be easier getting back into the station,’ said the Techmarine. ‘Qvo-87 works fast.’

  ‘It is a marvel, and a gift, that the Adeptus Mechanicus provide us,’ said Thracian.

  Felix felt little of the gratitude Thracian did. Cawl could grant him every technological favour in the galaxy and it would never be enough to make up
for the years Felix spent as his test subject. Until Felix had got his meeting with Cawl out of the way, he would find no peace. It was always that way, whenever they encountered one another.

  With great impatience, he watched Sotha approach.

  All trace of atmosphere had been ripped away by the hive fleet. Although the system’s other worlds had been touched, they had been but lightly, with minor harvesting of the two gas giants and cometary cloud. Living worlds always suffered the most, for the tyranids ever sought genetic material over baser forms of sustenance.

  Nothing remained alive on the surface of Sotha. From high orbit it looked like a barren garden patch, with a few handfuls of dry stalks poking from the dust. As the Overlord descended these resolved themselves into the lacy remains of feeding towers. The fleshy parts had been stripped from them, leaving behind the mineral structure that held them aloft. This was durable, keeping a portion of the feeding towers upright even without their musculature and flesh tethers, and evidently problematic enough for the hive fleet to reabsorb that it was left behind.

  Other than these alien additions, the world was bizarrely pristine. Once more Felix was reminded of a model created to show planetary geology. The details of the world’s topography were exposed. Never had he seen a continental shelf or oceanic plain so clearly displayed other than on a geologian’s orb. The Overlord roared over the flatness of the empty seas towards Sothopolis, the world’s capital and only city of significant size, above whose airless streets Mount Pharos reared high. Pict files flicking through Felix’s retinal displays showed Sotha to be verdant. All that was gone, devoured.

  ‘They left only stone,’ Thracian said grimly. The Chapter Master was shaken in a way one would not expect of the Adeptus Astartes. This was his homeworld and its protection had been his Chapter’s prime duty. Rarely would a Space Marine be confronted with a failure this complete, and seeing Sotha so denuded, Felix shared some of his shock.

  They came in obliquely towards Sothopolis. Felix’s wargear cogitator used the picts to superimpose emerald oceans over the cracked stone, and he saw the world simultaneously as it was and as it had been. Plains of dry seas rose from depths to shallows, and finally to the shore, where wealthy districts once enjoyed far reaching ocean views and now-blind windows gazed at empty immensities. Felix had seen a few worlds ravaged by the tyranids – they were lamentably common in the east of Greater Ultramar – but somehow Sotha was particularly awful. Everywhere were signs that this had been a thriving, life-rich world. Ships lay like discarded toys in ocean dust sucked free of all organic matter. Piers extended over bare rock from the dockside. The Overlord flew over the shoreline, and Felix found himself looking down at a city in an eerie state. In places the battle for the world had levelled blocks. Damage from large-scale bioweapons carved gouges into the suburbs, but impact sites were the exception. The tyranids’ favoured mode of attack was ground invasion. Imperial scholars theorised that it was the most economical means of offence and risked the least damage to their food source. Where cities were concerned, tyranid methods left untouched infrastructure isolated in a world of dust. Sothopolis was a small city, but there were whole, pristine districts where glass still glinted in roofs and ground vehicles waited for passengers that would never come.

  Mount Pharos dominated the landscape. In life a green king, in death a slumbering gyptian faro. Atop its peak the fortress-monastery of the Scythes of the Emperor stood. The Blackrock Mountains to the east, of which Mount Pharos was a distant outlier, toothed the horizon, and with the fang of the fallen monastery close to the ship, the landscape gave Felix the impression of open jaws about to snap shut.

  The state of Sotha sank him into a black mood. There was so much to be done. The ravages of Kraken were the least of the sector’s concerns. Mortarion’s forces still attacked Ultramar, and large tracts of the jewelled realm were poisoned beyond repair. What could be set right would take decades, if not centuries. What could he, one man, do?

  The crackling of spiking rad-sensors broke his ruminations. They were passing over the area cleansed by Cawl’s eradication beamers. The instrument noise rose to a crackling crescendo and held there.

  ‘We’re approaching the fortress-monastery exclusion zone, my lords,’ said Daelus. ‘No sign of activity from the defence matrix. Shields are down. I have minimal power readings from the monastery generatoria.’

  ‘Our orbital guns failed,’ said Thracian quietly. ‘Our anti-air defences did not last long after that. Kraken has evolved to perfect the art of aerial assault. When we left, nothing remained functional.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we should be careful,’ said Felix. ‘Brother Techmarine, take us closer to the mountain,’ he ordered. ‘Close enough to trigger close-range defensive responses. If there is no response, we shall see if we can land directly at the fortress-monastery. That will save us much time and effort.’ The growl of the rad-sensor climbed abruptly as they crossed some deadly, invisible line. ‘Curse Cawl’s arrogance. This radiation will make our mission all the more difficult.’

  ‘It is within survivable parameters, my lord,’ said Daelus. He banked the Overlord round. Shore and mountain squeezed the coastal plain and it was quickly crossed. Mount Pharos opposed them, its soaring cliffs barring their way. Daelus put the ship into a slow spiralling ascent. Felix observed the world through his retinal display while looking through the window. The Overlord machine-spirit’s augur input pulsed directly to his autosenses. Although it would be overwhelming for all but the most highly trained mortal, such a profusion of data was simple enough for a Space Marine to assimilate.

  An outlying castellum watching over the capital lay toppled at the mountain’s feet. A switchback access road crawled upwards from the site of the ruins past hundreds of rounded cavern mouths covering the slopes from foot to crown.

  ‘Incredible,’ said Thracian. ‘So many caves. I don’t think we knew how many. With the quicktrees gone only now are they visible.’

  ‘They were not mapped?’

  ‘Some, yes,’ said Thracian. ‘All cartographical data had to be gathered first hand. The mountain had its secrets. It was resistant to scans. Our people say the caves moved, and there are legends from millennia ago. I did not believe most, but–’

  An alarm peeped over the crackle of the rad counter.

  ‘Our presence is getting a response,’ said Daelus. ‘I have signals. Weapons augurs attempting to secure a lock.’

  ‘Hold at this distance,’ ordered Felix. ‘What has us in sight?’

  ‘Short to mid-range weapons batteries. It looks like all the major orbital weapons are down. But I am seeing las, plasma and missile tracking us. Hang on, no. There’s one defence laser active. Possibly two.’

  ‘How can that be?’ said Felix. ‘You said the guns failed.’

  ‘I have no answer,’ said Thracian. ‘But I do not lie.’

  ‘No communications… That’s odd.’ Daelus took his hand off the flight stick and peered at a screen. ‘Troncus, take the helm.’

  Daelus’ co-pilot, wordless as ever, switched control to his station.

  ‘What is it?’ Felix said.

  Daelus slid his chair along rails to a sensorium suite next to the pilot’s chair. The mortal manning it moved his own seat aside so Daelus could access it. ‘It could be interference from Cawl’s eradication beams, but these energy readings are a little peculiar,’ said Daelus.

  ‘Peculiar how?’ Felix demanded.

  ‘Non-Imperial peculiar,’ said Daelus. He worked quickly at the console. ‘I am attempting to shut the defence grid down, but the system is not responding. It should recognise us as friendly. It is ignoring our identification signum chain. That should override everything.’

  ‘It is an older system,’ said Thracian. ‘Sotha fell before the primarch rose again. Our noosphere and cogitator infrastructure was not initiated into the mysteries of the neo-tetrarchy. It does no
t know you. What about the Scythes’ codes?’

  ‘I’ve tried them. They are also non-effective,’ said Daelus distractedly.

  The vox squawked a rush of static. From out of the sleety hiss of radioactive emanations, a stentorian machine voice emerged.

  ‘You are entering restricted airspace. Remove yourselves or face destruction by order of the Scythes of the Emperor. You are entering restricted airspace. Remove yourselves or face destruction by order of the Scythes of the Emperor.’

  ‘A generous warding beacon,’ said Daelus.

  ‘Our fortress was close to the civilian population centre, as you can see,’ said Thracian. ‘The main starport is not far to the north.’

  ‘What’s left seems feeble, my lord,’ said Daelus, sitting back. ‘The Overlord can take it if you wish to put down. I do not think we are in any danger.’

  ‘What state are the fortress-monastery’s hangars in?’

  ‘Blocked, my lord. Doors shut over three main flight bays, no power to any of them. A couple of the upper landing pads are viable. The rest are collapsed,’ said Daelus. ‘I could try this hangar.’ He tapped at a screen. ‘I could shoot our way in. Or this landing pad at the northern end.’

  ‘If there are enemies inside the Emperor’s Watch, we could be walking into an ambush. The ways into the citadel from the landing ports were made to be held by a few men on their own,’ said Thracian. ‘Most means of entrance were blocked.’

  ’Then I could attempt landing in the outer bailey, outside the main gate. It’s the only place that isn’t a sheer drop. It’ll be tight, but no tighter than the Aegidan hangar was.’

  ‘You would be doing it under fire. Hold position,’ said Felix. ‘I will not take any unnecessary risks. Thracian, do you have deeper level access protocols you can provide?’

  ‘I gave all I had to your brother Techmarine,’ said Thracian. ‘But I will attempt shutdown myself, perhaps my voiceprint will help.’ Felix’s armour vox popped as Thracian shifted channel. ‘Emperor’s Watch command nexus confirm databridge.’