Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley Read online

Qvo-87 turned his head slowly to look at Cawl. He really was incredibly intelligent, but limited. There was no understanding of the emotional content of what Cawl was trying to say.

  ‘I thought you should know,’ said Cawl.

  Qvo-87 gave him a patient look. ‘Hypothesis as to xenos machine-spirit reactivation. For the record.’ The quill nib scratched over the screen.

  ‘The Rift must have something to do with it, as observed elsewhere in similar installations,’ said Cawl, businesslike again. ‘Critical mass of reawakening was reached some time ago in other dynastic territories, so I suspect destruction of Imperial presence on Sotha to be the catalyst here. Hypothesis – this device has been biding its time.’

  ‘Initial actions of xenos machine-spirit,’ said Qvo-87. ‘For the record.’

  ‘Hypothesis only.’

  ‘Dictate away,’ said Qvo-87.

  ‘Self-repair,’ said Cawl. ‘Reestablishment of function. Reconstitution of machinery. Its ultimate goal is the reopening of the beacon and ­reestablishment of super-luminal network in Ultima Segmentum.’

  ‘Hypothesis regarding visions experienced by Belisarius Cawl?’

  Cawl drummed metal fingers on the inside of the hull.

  ‘Either the Pharos is trying to communicate with me, or it is attempting an attack. Both options are disquieting. Neither are self-exclusionary. End hypothesis.’

  Qvo-87 nodded, because Cawl had built him to emulate human behaviours, before stowing away his data-slate.

  Alpha Primus yanked his driving sticks. The tank negotiated the rubble, and moved on up the road to the Emperor’s Watch.

  Chapter Seven

  Those left behind

  Contra-grav pulsed with headachey strength, the backwash too weak to tremble the metal but strong enough to ripple the humours of the human body. Felix felt the throb of the engine in his eyes, in his teeth, and in his bowels. The Repulsor carried several banks of heavy anti-gravitic engines. Being huge and massively armoured it required far more than most other levitating vehicles, and its displaced mass ironed flat whatever it travelled over. Light craft held aloft on such fields skimmed gracefully. They almost flew. A Repulsor tank was neither light nor graceful, and it growled with the machine-spirit’s ill temper as it laboured up the road to the fortress-monastery of the Scythes of the Emperor.

  The rear thruster array roared loudly. The amount of power required to move such heft forwards was sufficient to propel a void fighter, yet the tank moved slowly and the engines were running hot. Cooling systems thrummed at the rear of the seating area. Heat beat at the occupants of the transit bay: Felix and half of his bodyguard.

  ‘This way is almost too steep for the tank,’ said Daelus. As was his role as technological liaison in the Chosen, he piloted Felix’s transport like he piloted the Overlord. Troncus drove the lead tank, where Cominus rode ahead with the others, insisting that Felix ride in the second vehicle in the column. On the numerous screens of the tank, Felix watched the progress of the group. Veteran Brother Austen manned the turret of Cominus’ Repulsor. His helmet flashed in the sun as he panned the guns back and forth across the road.

  Felix ran multiple scans on their surroundings. The mountain resisted all attempts to penetrate its stone deeply. The exact scannable distance varied from a dozen to over fifty yards, but whatever the distance, in each case the scans suddenly stopped, leaving a sinister blankness on the screens. The kind of scan did not matter. Every sort of pass resulted in the same. Sonar was as affected as neutron pulses. The other three Primaris Marines watched Felix work, offering help where they could, except Cadmus, who stared fixedly at the exterior view, and became more pensive the closer they came to the monastery gates.

  ‘There is nothing beyond this point,’ said Felix, pointing at the screen. ‘I cannot see within the mountain.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ said Yansar, his gravelly voice distinctive even through the voxmitter.

  ‘A phrase we’re hearing too often,’ said Diamedes.

  ‘What do you sense, brother?’ Felix asked Gathein.

  The Epistolary’s fingers flexed around his force stave. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I see the same as the machines.’

  ‘A material that is impervious to all scans, material and immaterial,’ said Felix. ‘I have encountered this before.’

  ‘Blackstone,’ said Gathein. ‘Nothing else has these properties. Cawl speaks of awakening structures.’

  ‘Necrons then,’ said Diamedes. He was of the Silver Skulls, and the jewels set into his armour twinkled in the tank’s dim interior light. He kicked the bench plinth opposite him. ‘Necrons hide beneath every damn rock we look under these days.’

  ‘Halt,’ Cominus voxed from the lead tank. ‘Obstruction ahead.’

  The Chosen readied themselves for a fight. Helms were replaced and weapons retrieved from their racks. They moved with a choreography honed by long practice, and despite the close confines they were ready in moments.

  The tank coasted to a stop. The road was broad enough to allow the Repulsors to sit side by side, though only just; doing so left no space for the passenger compartment doors to open, so Daelus brought the tank to a halt offset from and behind the lead vehicle, so both their turrets could cover the road.

  Felix looked to the forward vid screen. Past the solid block of Cominus’ transport, the way was closed by rubble. The remains of a gatehouse clung to the mountain rock face. Straight lines of masonry welded to the stone described lost rooms. The walls had been yards thick. It was not sufficient to stop the Kraken. The rest of the gatehouse was heaped on the road it had guarded.

  ‘Gathein, Cadmus, Yansar, with me. Diamedes, into the turret. Daelus, hold position,’ Felix said.

  Weapons systems hummed as power was diverted from the reactor. Ready lights blinked on control banks. The machine-spirits awoke hungry for combat. Diamedes clambered upwards, his backpack automatically plucked from his back by robotic arms and power feeds snaking out from below the turret ring to plug him directly into the tank.

  Alarms whooped to warn of atmospheric purge. The air in the compartment was sucked up and packed away into pressurised cylinders. Doors to the left and right clanged down, forming ramps that gave slightly as the Space Marines disembarked. The landscape outside was noiseless, cold and drear, a worn pict of a real place. Waves of contra-grav buffeted Felix’s legs from the idling tank. His rad sensors crackled under a rain of displaced subatomic particles.

  The Primaris Marines spread out, weapons up.

  ‘Damn fine place for an ambush,’ Diamedes voxed. He angled his onslaught gatling cannon up on the pintle, and commanded the machine-spirit to rotate the turret slowly towards the mountain face. The road had been cut into the mountain at sharp angles. Thousands of years of erosion had worn at the basalt facing, but the cliff remained sheer.

  Cawl’s odd transport was coming to a halt behind, Thracian’s tanks close after.

  The gatehouse had come down in massive cubes bristling with hyper-dense carbon rebar. Felix took a few steps forwards.

  Cominus was already out, the warriors with him covering the blockage as Tullio knelt at the base of the rubble, the auspex built into his right forearm playing a fan of light over the lumps of rockcrete.

  Felix came to a halt beside the veteran sergeant. ‘We can’t go over it.’

  ‘No,’ said Cominus. ‘It’s a collection of tank traps an enginseer would be proud of.’

  ‘I have something. Voids in the mass. Organic matter.’ Tullio pointed. ‘Over there.’

  Ixen moved to the place indicated, his transhuman physiology enabling him to heave aside a huge chunk of rockcrete as if it were packing material. He poked at the ground with his foot.

  ‘Tyranid,’ he said, aiming his bolter into the hole.

  A monstrous head lolled out of the rubble. A symbiotic sub-form was clamped around i
ts shoulders and face. Both its skin and that of its host creature were raw with rad burns.

  ‘Dead,’ said Ixen.

  ‘That one is,’ said Tullio. He flipped his auspex panel closed and aimed his bolt rifle up. Fragments of rockcrete were slipping down the rubble heap, grains, gravel, rocks then boulders bouncing by in avalanche. ‘That one isn’t.’

  The Space Marines opened fire at the beast as it heaved its way from the pile. Felix didn’t recognise the type, though he’d studied the xenoforms threatening his domain with his usual diligence. It was hexapedal, like all tyranids, and resembled their common heavy assault beasts, though it was smaller and slighter. Its four arms all ended in bonded melee symbiotes, no ranged weapons, while its spore chimneys were vestigial with no visible openings. This one also sported a symbiote. The sub-creature consisted mostly of sacs that inflated and deflated in sequence, with thick gristly tubes leading into the host’s breathing spiracles.

  It emerged into a storm of bolt rifle fire. The tanks opened up, piercing its body with coherent light and a hail of bullets. Diamedes played gatling fire over the symbiotic creature breathing for the attack beast, shredding the delicate body. Yet the creature did not fall, but came on, clawed hooves pushing fans of broken tower before it. Its own weight hindered it in the loose material, and it sank up to its hocks.

  The tanks bristled with armament, the pair of them outfitted with differing payloads that granted a mixed anti-armour and anti-infantry capability. Their crew and their machine-spirits made liberal use of both types, hammering the beast with bullet and blast.

  A double lascannon shot drilled the creature through the head. It fell with a scream vented silently into the void.

  ‘Not so fearsome,’ said Ixen. He advanced on it, gun up. He put a bolt-round through its eye to be sure.

  ‘Are there any more in the rubble?’ Cominus asked.

  ‘Negative,’ said Tullio, consulting his auspex again. ‘All clear.’

  ‘Epistolary?’

  ‘I can sense nothing,’ said Gathein.

  Felix paced forwards to the beast. Its body was covered in sores.

  ‘Cawl’s beams did their work,’ he said, deliberately refraining from glancing back at the archmagos’ chariot.

  Yansar played a medical scanner over the corpse. ‘Heavily irradiated,’ he acknowledged. ‘But it was alive. If there are any more buried deeper, then they will give us trouble.’

  ‘Get me a scan, see if there are any more further up,’ ordered Felix.

  ‘We can count on these things being scattered across the planet,’ said Thracian, only now joining them. ‘I have seen these rearguard organisms before. There will be more of them, laid up in a hunting net around the world, though I do not think we are in enough numbers to trigger a summoning call.’

  ‘The tyranids return?’ asked Yansar.

  ‘If sufficient biomass is present, they will,’ said Thracian. ‘These organisms are not the only risk. We must be wariest when we go within.’ He pointed up the mountain.

  ‘You are speaking of genestealers. They will almost certainly be present in the monastery,’ said Felix.

  ‘That is their standard behaviour post-predation,’ said Thracian. ‘You see this addition here?’ Thracian bent low and lifted a leathery flap of skin, burst open now, on the breathing symbiote. ‘It is an atmosphere recycler. Genestealers do not need air. They can survive for weeks without taking a breath when active, and for centuries in hibernation.’

  ‘There is no trick that is beneath them. All xenos are worthy of our hatred,’ said Ixen. ‘But I am growing to hate these tyranids more than most.’

  ‘Then you have an idea of how we feel,’ said Thracian.

  ‘Get digging. If we level the top off, we can get the tanks over,’ said Felix. He voxed Daelus. ‘Any more sign of active Chapter defences?’

  ‘No, my lord,’ said Daelus. ‘We are out of the fire arc for orbital and anti-air weapons. I have no readings from the wall guns.’

  Felix nodded. ‘Be on your guard. Regular scans. Regular attempts at datalink with Chapter assets. I would prefer not to arrive under fire.’

  ‘This rubble pile is definitely clear, my lord,’ said Tullio, and stood back. ‘There’s nothing alive within a mile of our position.’

  ‘Then clear it,’ said Felix. ‘We delay too long.’

  The Space Marines began hurling boulders over the edge of the sheer-sided mountain road.

  ‘My lord,’ Diamedes voxed. ‘Company. Cawl’s creature.’

  Alpha Primus emerged from Cawl’s transport and strode towards the others. The uncoloured ceramite of his plain armour was as grey as the landscape. His helm, though perfectly maintained, somehow conveyed the ugliness of his butchered face.

  ‘Stand aside,’ he said. ‘The archmagos has commanded that I deal with this obstruction.’

  ‘On your own?’ said Tullio in disbelief. ‘Let us help you dig, brother.’

  ‘I have no brothers,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘I am unique, the first of our kind, and I do not need to dig. Stand aside.’

  The warriors on the pile paused and looked to their tetrarch.

  ‘Move back,’ said Felix. ‘Let him.’

  ‘Aye, and the quicker he fails the quicker we can dig our way through,’ voxed Diamedes. He did nothing to blunt his disdain for Cawl’s servant. The rest felt the same way, Felix was sure. Primus made his skin crawl.

  Alpha Primus set himself before the rubble, and placed his feet apart. ‘Back,’ he said. ‘Further. I have no wish to harm you.’

  With shared looks the Primaris Marines retreated to their vehicles. Thracian’s men followed. Gathein glanced back. As Alpha Primus raised his hand, fingers spread, his force-stave flared with counter-sorcery.

  ‘Emperor’s bones,’ said the Epistolary. ‘He’s a–’

  Psionic power burst from Primus, buffeting them all, and making the hover tanks bob about. The ground cracked around his feet with webs of purple light. From his hand emanated a lash of fire the same colour, and where it touched the rockcrete it exploded upwards and outwards, spun about in the air and whirled away over the precipice. The great bulk of the blockage heaved, as if a flat board had been placed underneath and lifted. A glowing bubble through which the way ahead was clearly visible pushed the rubble up and sideways. Primus clenched his fist; the bubble exploded outwards, and the rubble tumbled off the road and down the side of the mountain.

  His job done, Primus turned back to the group, his eye lenses shining with dying power, and walked towards Cawl’s transport.

  Gathein voxed him as he passed. ‘Why didn’t I sense your power?’ he said.

  Primus kept his gaze ahead and his stride unbroken.

  ‘The Emperor gave the Space Marines many gifts,’ said Alpha Primus leadenly. ‘I was given more than most.’

  The taskforce returned to their vehicles, and continued their ascent.

  They passed upwards with no further challenge. Several more gatehouses straddled the road, but all were intact, silent, only their gates destroyed or withdrawn. Twice the column was obliged to stop where wrecked armour blocked the way, but each time Thracian gave his consent for the tanks to be pushed off the mountain to speed their progress. Felix made note of this haste. To Space Marines all wargear was sacred, and hard to replace.

  ‘Surely Cawl’s gift to his Chapter was not so great that Thracian can afford to abandon his relics?’ he asked Daelus via a private channel.

  ‘He is in a hurry to get to his monastery,’ said Daelus. ‘That is for sure. There must be objects of greater worth there. They were forced to leave in haste.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Felix. He was not convinced. Cadmus’ words returned to him.

  ‘They are hiding something.’

  He watched a Predator fall from the lip of the road and fly into pieces on the rocks bel
ow.

  Near the summit the road passed through a tunnel bored through the mountain stone. The outer wall had been carved with fine windows looking out over Sothopolis far below. All the armourglass was broken, and many of the pillars between. Acid burns etched mutilating lines across the faces of statues. On the other side of the road a row of sentry guns dangled slackly in their mounts. But it was the inner surface of the tunnel, to the right of the column and beneath the guns, that drew Felix’s attention.

  Through the basalt that clothed the mountain a second kind of rock emerged. A thread-fine fault to begin with, it soon grew wider, showing stone that was a green so deep it appeared black in the shadows, and only revealed a hint of its true colour where the sun hit it. It was this substance that the scans would not penetrate.

  ‘Blackstone,’ said Felix.

  The Repulsor thumped past a cluster of entrances into the mountain. The tallest was an oval sixty feet tall, surrounded by dozens of others of much smaller scale, all of them blocked by age-worn ferrocrete. After these the amount of black rock visible increased in proportion to the basalt, until it walled off the whole of the tunnel side.

  The tank’s sensorium went dead.

  Felix adjusted his instruments. An insistent, pulsed crackling dogged the vox.

  ‘Thracian? Thracian?’ Felix voxed. Getting no reply he shouted through to Daelus. ‘Vox problems – diagnose, Techmarine.’ His voice was unsteady. The suit voxmitter, too, was malfunctioning.

  ‘All of them are out, tetrarch. Outside interference.’

  ‘Cawl’s radiation?’

  ‘Negative,’ Daelus said back.

  ‘It is coming from the mountain,’ said Gathein.

  The tank emerged out of the tunnel and into the open. The blackstone pushed its way back under the mountain’s skin. The sensorium’s instruments flickered and came back on line.

  ‘Chapter Master Thracian, respond,’ Felix tried again.

  Thracian’s response was immediate and clear. ‘Tetrarch.’

  ‘I experienced a loss of communications. Is this a usual occurrence here?’