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1CHAPTER ELEVEN
2THE CROOKED STAIR
3
4
5Day returned mercilessly as a sword blade of light slicing across the land. By dawn the expedition was ready. They had taken no more rest during the night. Although the earth had not shaken again, they remained on heightened alert.
6Thracian stood side by side with Felix and Cawl. Behind them the remaining Scythes of the Emperor waited in a double line, the geneseed casket escorted between the four Terminators, and the body of Tyliphus carried by four other brothers upon a makeshift stretcher. Cominus headed eight of the Chosen of Vespator behind the Scythes of the Emperor. Diamedes and Austen were to remain with the tanks, whose machine-spirits had been elevated to maximum awareness. Qvo-87 and Alpha Primus brought up the rear.
7They stood in silence, half-expecting the ground to shake and the mountain dreaming to come on them again, but no disturbance either of the earth or of their spirits was forthcoming. Felix had them wait before the battered main gates of the fortress-monastery until the sun rose over the peak of the mountain, and slanted its light down into the bailey. Light crept up and over their backs, then with a sudden rush, stabbed through the ruined main gates and into the inner courtyard.
8‘Expedition, move out,’ said Felix.
9‘We go towards enlightenment,’ said Cawl. His eyes gleamed with anticipation behind the shimmer of his atmospheric field. ‘But best be careful just in case.’ The massive weapons on his lowest arms rotated into readiness and powered themselves to fire.
10Felix thumbed on his power sword and cycled up his boltstorm gauntlet. The gun’s machine-spirit danced reticles over every feature before him with such dizzying eagerness he was forced to rebuke it.
11The Scythes of the Emperor began to sing a lament of fallen heroes, and the procession filed through the broken gates, down the long tunnel through the gatehouse, and into the fortress-monastery’s middle defences.
12A few more empty suits of armour lay on the paving in the courtyard, broken open like the husks of crustaceans. Space was limited so high upon the mountain, so the courtyard was small, triangular and looked down upon by high, roofed walls whose inner faces were pierced with loopholes. The apex of the triangle was not quite opposite the gate tunnel. To the right of the triangle’s tip, a second, smaller gateway led through the wall towards the mountain summit. In the opposite wall was a wide, low vehicle door that led down to the Chapter armouries. The space was a killing zone, and slaughter had been done on both sides. No trace remained of the dead beyond the wargear, but evidence of the fight’s ferocity was visible in marks on the walls: huge claw gouges, missile impacts, lasburns; every sort of damage from man-portable armaments imaginable, along with the chemical wounds of bioweaponry.
13Thracian halted. ‘The gatehouse and then the galleries were taken quickly once we fell back,’ he said. ‘We fired on our own fortifications here, from this side to that.’ He traced a line across the gap between the opposite sides of the triangle with two fingers. One wall had more bioweapon damage, the other more from Imperial guns.
14‘How did they overrun this place so quickly?’ asked Felix. ‘Even with your guns down and your void shields failed, it is a formidable obstacle.’
15‘I have no good answer to that,’ said Thracian. ‘We were ready to stand here, then the gates failed, and we were forced to fall back. All was confusion.’
16‘The quickest way to take a fortress is from the inside,’ said Felix.
17‘Are you suggesting we were betrayed?’ said Thracian angrily. ‘You impugn our honour, tetrarch.’
18‘Have you considered it?’ asked Felix, refusing to let the matter drop. ‘Have you considered that you were in fact betrayed?’
19Thracian’s eye lenses glinted in the hard sun.
20‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have.’
21Thracian made it clear that line of conversation was over by setting off again. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘The major ways are sealed. There is but one way remaining to the tower. It is a hard climb. We shall ascend the Crooked Stair.’
22The party followed on behind him.
23They went through the smaller gate and headed upwards, climbing a huge stairway carved directly into the basalt face of the mountain and roofed over with a vaulting of patterned brick. Every inch of the stone was carved with statuary of awe-inspiring beauty. The stair took a circuitous path, switching back on itself unexpectedly. The width, too, was inconstant. There were stretches where it was wide enough for Space Marines to march ten abreast, then long runs far narrower. It varied in pitch from precipitous to shallow. The effect was neither aesthetically pleasing nor did it follow the optimal route, and did not seem to suit defensive purposes.
24‘Where the black rock extrudes through the basalt, our predecessors were forced to go around,’ said the Scythes’ Forgemaster, Sebastion. ‘The black rock does not cut easily, it breaks when worked, and there were ­legends that it should not be disturbed if possible. It is because of the black rock that the way to the citadel bends about so. It is called the Crooked Stair for good reason.’
25As if the mountain itself wished to provide proof of Sebastion’s words, they rounded a sharp corner and found a pile of rubble where masonry had cracked off, revealing the blackstone beneath. Their boots crunched on broken reliefs of past heroes. The blackstone glowed with inner life, swift motes of green darting away out of sight when observed.
26‘The mountain is shedding its skin,’ said Cominus.
27‘All my life I thought the builders of the monastery beholden to child’s tales, and I thought of them with scorn,’ said Sebastion. ‘No longer.’
28Shortly after they came to a pile of armour lying on a small landing, empty of every trace of flesh and blood. Damage from explosives and weapons fire had melted the rock and scorched many of the armour pieces black, but as elsewhere there were no corpses.
29The stair began its final stretch.
30Felix walked to the end of the landing in disbelief. What confronted him was more of a wall than a way up. He looked up the brick tunnel, which bent itself perpendicular to accommodate the change in angle as the stairway became a ladder. He reached up, and rested his hand on the steps by his head.
31‘The Angel’s Ladder,’ said Thracian. ‘We are nearly at the citadel.’
32‘Epistolary Gathein,’ Felix said.
33The blue-clad psyker came forwards, and surveyed the empty wargear. The others remained silent as he performed his witch’s work. A heaviness came over them, suddenly gone when Gathein ceased his scrying. He drew in a deep breath and stood back.
34‘They fell alone,’ said Gathein. ‘They were trying to hold the invasion back from the citadel.’
35‘This is the main access?’ asked Felix.
36‘There are tunnels,’ Thracian said. ‘But none of those routes are direct, and all of them were collapsed before the attack. They are plugged by stone blocks of a thousand tonnes each. When Kraken came for us, this was the sole way remaining on the ground,’ said Thracian. ‘It is a ceremonial way. Most traffic came into the Emperor’s Watch by air. Our aspirants must tread the stair as part of their final initiation. There is no other way to the top.’
37Felix looked up again.
38‘Then this fortress should never have fallen,’ said Felix. He sheathed his sword, and began to climb.
39The steps in the rock were barely wide enough to take the toes of the armoured Space Marines, and they slowed, even their might taxed by the difficulty of the climb. They did not tire, but they lacked nimbleness in their battleplate, while their reactor packs and wide chests made balance difficult, and they were forced to stow their weapons. Felix in particular struggled: his Gravis plate was almost too large and heavy to make the climb. The Scythes were prepared for the ascent, but their gene vault, Brother Tyliphus’ corpse and the Terminators needed winching up. Several of Thracian’s warriors went ahead and lowered cables for the purpose. Felix watched as the methanol vault crawled upwards. Its labouring suspensor unit nullified mass as best it could, but still it taxed the Scythes of the Emperor, who sang their laments through teeth gritted with the effort.
40Cawl clambered up with the efficiency of a spider, his multiple legs rippling easily up the steps, arms grasping for hand holds, while his weaponised lower limbs swept both upper and lower reaches of the shaft for threats. His giant axe he held far back from his body in one rigid arm, the most humanlike of all his supplemental limbs, but the awkward weight did not inconvenience him, and he was soon out of sight of Felix.
41Qvo-87 followed next, floating past the labouring Space Marines on a contra-grav engine with a small, metallic chuckle.
42The Angel’s Ladder went a quarter of a mile straight up. Even the Space Marines were sweating within their power armour by the time they reached the top. The stair was at its steepest there, and had become plain in construction, with the carvings restricted to inspirational mottos, but as Felix hauled himself up over the lip, he found himself in a hall of great grandeur.
43Polished marble, only slightly damaged by the planet’s fall, led along a straight hallway to a pointed arch furnished with polished bronze doors that stood half-open. The way was lined by statues on podiums which rose over three hundred feet from dark trenches either side of the hall to stand level with the floor. The ceiling had been made of crystal, now all broken. Surprisingly, the statues were not all of Space Marines.
44Several Scythes of the Emperor had already attained the top, and were securing their gene vault before rigging their cables to bring up their Terminator armoured brethren. Cawl stood at the far end of the hall with Qvo-87. Felix paused on his way to join him, looking up into the faces of the mortal humans and the Space Marines lining the walkway. Several were missing pieces. Not one was unmarked by battle damage.
45Thracian joined him.
46‘This is the Walk of the First Scythes. These are the first of our order and the men and women of ancient days who fought at our sides in the Heresy,’ said Thracian. ‘Since then we have had special care for the humans of Sotha. They were heroes to us all, human and transhuman alike.’ He stopped before a heroically posed human soldier. ‘This one, Meriq, he was my favourite when I was a boy. They say he was such a great warrior he could fight with a Space Marine on his own terms.’ He shook his head at the idea. ‘Who knows if any of the legends from those times are true. The same stories say this hall was once a promontory of rock, and Roboute Guilliman himself rewarded the survivors of the war with our mark.’ He tapped at the crossed scythes on his shoulder plate. ‘I like to think the tales are true, but who can tell?’
47‘When you meet the primarch, Chapter Master, you can ask him yourself,’ said Felix. ‘Though I warn you to be straightforward and not too worshipful. It annoys him. But he can be coaxed to reveal the truth of ancient days. The stories he tells are often surprising.’
48‘You are from those times, so I heard,’ said Thracian. ‘What do you know of the days of legend?’
49‘Nothing. I was a boy when I was taken,’ said Felix. ‘And what do boys know?’
50‘Decimus! Decimus!’ Cawl’s voice intruded, bringing unwelcome recollections of Felix’s apotheosis back to him.
51‘Archmagos,’ said Felix.
52‘We are ready to proceed within. Join me.’
53Felix looked down the corridor. While he had been examining the statues, Cawl had gone to the bronze doors leading into the lower reaches of the Scythes of the Emperor’s citadel.
54Cawl had spoken with Felix privately, so Felix now spoke to Thracian.
55‘The archmagos is up to something,’ he said, as Cawl and Qvo passed the gate. ‘Come with me.’
56Thracian checked his warriors’ progress. Forgemaster Sebastion was overseeing the winching of the Terminators up the Angel’s Ladder into the Walk of the First Scythes.
57‘How long?’ Felix heard Thracian ask his men. He was not privy to the reply. The Chapter Master then turned to Felix.
58‘It will take some time to bring the Terminators up the stair,’ the Chapter Master said. ‘Yet Cawl forces us to follow. I gave him full rein to do as he pleased here, but the Hall of the Founder is one of our most sacred sites. I will not let him loose alone in there. I wish he would have waited.’
59Thracian and Felix passed through the bronze doors into a large chamber, the Chosen and a good portion of Thracian’s men following. The Hall of the Founder was also faced with marble and played host to more statues, these all Space Marines in heavily decorated battleplate. An iron rondel set into the centre of the floor bore the crossed scythes of the Chapter, and was surrounded in turn by mosaics of cut stone depicting the ten stylised equines who represented the Chapter’s companies. Two flights of stairs led off at the back of the room, one upwards and one downwards, both flights being more elegantly finished and less punishing to climb than the Crooked Stair.
60Not enough daylight got in through the doors to light the room, and it was as dark as any natural cave. Nevertheless, it was apparent a terrible battle had taken place in the Hall of the Founder. It was badly damaged; much of the marble facing in the room was shattered, showing the black rock of the mountain beneath, and half the statues had been toppled. Blackstone shone behind the holes in the false ceiling. Over sixty suits of armour lay in pieces all over the ground, many atop webs of cracks in the paving that showed how hard they had fallen. The wargear was uniformly ruined, ripped open by immense claws, burned by chemical flames and pierced by spears of bone. Acid spatter dotted the wall facing and the paving, but – as it was everywhere upon Sotha – no trace of organic mat­erial remained. Each gobbet of flesh and splash of mucous had been gathered up by the harvester creatures of the hive fleet and taken away for reuse.
61Cawl and Qvo-87 performed mysterious work at the centre of the room. They stood still for a while, then their artificial enhancements would go into a brief burst of activity, then they would stand still again. There was a tension there.
62The ground shook.
63‘Did you feel that?’ Felix asked Thracian. ‘Another tremor.’
64‘It is a pattern,’ said Thracian. ‘Regular.’
65Soft, brief pulses of energy pushed through the stone. Unlike the earlier earthquakes, they came unaccompanied by visions, and were of short, regular duration and power.
66‘Cawl,’ said Felix. ‘Stop what you are doing.’
67The archmagos ignored him. He performed further actions of esoteric technomancy, his hands moving through the air as if conducting an orchestra, while his servo-skulls swooped about his head in tight patterns.
68The pattern of the tremors changed, becoming a repeating cycle of five brief vibrations followed by a sixth, stronger quake.
69‘Cawl!’ Felix shouted over the vox. ‘I know you can hear me. What are you doing?’
70A large slab of marble slammed down from the ceiling.
71‘Cawl!’
72Thracian looked up and pointed. ‘There!’
73Lights blinked on in the depths of the blackstone. It glowed with line-straight runs of pulsing dots that raced around one another in increasing density. The tremors picked up strength, until the mountain shuddered with each. Lesser beats joined the shaking, and it became a percussive beat.
74The rest of the Chosen came running into the room with a number of Thracian’s veterans. All of them had their guns up and ready. Ixen leapt sideways as a statue leaning forwards on its plinth broke off at the ankles and toppled to the floor.
75‘Tetrarch! What is happening?’ shouted Cominus. The vox blurred, smearing his message to broken gibberish. Each tremor spiked interference in their vox-comms.
76‘Cawl, that’s enough!’ Felix said. He marched forwards, only to be intercepted by Alpha Primus halfway across the hall’s floor, who blocked his way. Each step Felix made to bypass him he matched.
77‘The archmagos must not be disturbed,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘Wait.’
78‘Out of my way!’ Felix said. ‘He’s going to bring the mountain down.’
79‘You will wait,’ said Alpha Primus. Witchfire shone around his head.
80Bolt rifles and bolters were trained on the giant. Alpha Primus swept his dull green eye lenses over the other Space Marines like they were nothing.
81‘Move!’ Cominus shouted. ‘Move or we open fire!’
82‘Do not threaten me,’ said Alpha Primus. His hand settled on the hilt of his chainsword. Cold energies crawled across his head and shoulders.
83‘Cawl!’ shouted Felix.
84The tremors became a thrumming, then stabilised, so that the mountain vibrated constantly at a low, tooth-jarring frequency. A final panel of marble cracked and shifted to hang half off the wall.
85‘I do apologise, Decimus, but this is an exciting development,’ Cawl shouted. ‘I intended only to attempt a preliminary linkage with the xenos machine, but its activity levels have enabled me to do far more than that.’ He gave a little bow. The light of his augmetic eyes dimmed as his vision turned inwards. ‘It is my great pleasure to present to you a little of the Pharos’ ability.’
86CHAPTER TWELVE
87THE HALL OF THE FOUNDER
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89
90Light flooded the hall, and then there were warriors everywhere; men of the Scythes of the Emperor, running down the stairs and up the stairs into the hall, firing behind them as they came.
91The party reacted predictably, switching their weapons to bear upon the newcomers, but it took them only an instant to see them for what they were. Though solid seeming, they were not. Yansar gasped as one ran right through him. Tullio moved out of the path of another.
92‘Hold fire!’ Felix commanded.
93‘They are phantoms. They’re not real,’ said Daelus. His voice broke up, and he had to repeat himself twice.
94‘Steady!’ Felix said, seeing the unease taking the Scythes of the Emperor. ‘This is an image capture.’
95‘This is xenos sorcery,’ said Cominus, watching the silent rush of Space Marines.
96‘No,’ said Thracian helplessly. ‘Why must we bear witness to this? I could not save them. I could not help them.’
97‘I do not see you among them,’ said Felix. It sounded more of an accusation than he had intended.
98‘I was not here,’ Thracian said. ‘I was not here to help them. I pulled my company out.’ The vox stabilised, as if relishing Thracian’s shame. ‘I ignored my orders. We evacuated. We left them to die. This is the last stand of the Scythes of the Emperor.’
99‘Your Chapter lives, thanks to you,’ said Felix.
100‘My brothers died,’ said Thracian angrily.
101The way the light shone on these Space Marines betrayed a different time of day and active lumens in the ceiling. Shadows from objects Felix and his men could not see passed over the room. The projection field encompassed nearly all of the Hall of the Founder, but it ended with sharp delineation between the then and the now before it hit the walls, and the company instinctively moved to the edge of the display. Once they were out of the display field it seemed to become more real and the present became unreal, no more solid than an uneasy premonition. Felix felt as if he were being pulled into the scene the machine replayed, and that if he only listened a little more attentively, he would hear the shouts of the warriors and the reports of their guns.
102In silent play the warriors ran together, forming up in a circle around a pair of captains, a Chaplain and three company banner bearers who occupied the great iron rondel. Stray tyranid beasts exploded under gunfire as three warriors forced the bronze doors closed. Owing to the limitations of the projection, Felix could not see what was coming for them, but he knew, and his hearts quickened in sympathy. Many of the Scythes of the Emperor in the display were unhelmeted, and Felix saw their lips moving in song. The words were different to those he knew from his own Chapter, but he recognised a death hymn when he saw it.
103Cawl watched Space Marines past and present with interest. Qvo-87 took notes.
104The guns of the Scythes of the Emperor flashed. Bolt trails disappeared beyond the edge of the projection field. Short bursts became fully automatic fire.
105In a tsunami of garish alien flesh the tyranids rushed into the chamber. Felix felt their ghostly presence as they passed through him, stirring his Emperor’s gifts to life and flooding his body with combat stimulants. The same was happening to them all. They tensed, ready to sell their lives as their brothers in the doomed Chapter died.
106Running tyranids burst from the staircase leading down. Winged tyranids boiled from the staircase leading up in a rush of crimson and cream.
107In seconds, the Scythes of the Emperor were overwhelmed. The desperation on their faces, the sorrow at the loss of their Chapter and the shame of defeat, all seemed so much stronger without the faintest whisper of sound.
108Felix watched the standard of the Fifth Company fall to the ground, painted with arcs of arterial spray. He saw a desperate scout try and fail to take it up.
109‘Enough,’ said Felix.
110The Chaplain swung his crozius, obliterating the skull of a genestealer in a cloud of disruption lightning. Three more tore him to pieces. He fell near where his broken armour still rested on the floor. Statues collapsed under the onrushing horde to lie where they lay in the present.
111‘Cawl! Turn it off!’ Felix ordered.
112More death, more blood. Loyal servants of the Emperor clawed down to make feedstock for tyranid bioforms. They could not save themselves. They could not be helped. All Felix could do was watch them be ripped apart and be consumed.
113‘This is an abomination,’ growled Cominus.
114The living Scythes were lost in grief, their weapons lowering as they saw their brothers slaughtered.
115A Space Marine was hardier than a man, tougher than steel, immune to shock and doubt in all but the worst of circumstances, but if the mind of an Adeptus Astartes broke, it broke catastrophically. Such dishonour as presented to them now was enough to shatter any warrior’s sanity.
116‘Alpha Primus, stand aside,’ Felix said.
117Primus looked down implacably.
118‘Out of the way! Cawl, shut down the machine!’
119Cawl did not respond. He stood half hidden by the whirl of past combat, tyranid attack beasts leaping through him and stabbing down with bladed limbs to finish the last few Scythes of the Emperor, his hands moving in ecstatic gestures.
120The mountain shook in response to Cawl’s delving. A heavy pulsing emanated from deep beneath their feet, throbbing through the mountain with such force that Felix’s vision blurred with each pounding thump, but the tableau of destruction remained clear as the airless Sothan day.
121‘Cawl! Shut it down!’
122‘He cannot hear you, tetrarch,’ shouted Daelus. ‘He is lost to machine rapture. The xenos engine has him.’
123‘Can you do anything?’
124Daelus shook his head. ‘There is nothing I can do, my lord. Do you not see, this is far beyond my abilities.’
125‘Watch your tone, brother,’ Cominus voxed. His reprimand was shredded by violent, alien static.
126‘Let me through,’ Felix said again. Bolt rifles pointed at Primus until he stood aside, allowing Felix to move towards the archmagos. He steeled himself to push his way through the phantoms fighting and dying in the light of that fateful day.
127The mountain shook around the embattled Scythes. Further portions of the room collapsed, revealing more of the active blackstone beneath. The hall was losing its form, becoming a rubble-filled cave of dark rock full of racing lights. Space Marines shouted out warnings as huge chunks fell from the ceiling. Their voices broke up completely and the vox filled with a roar.
128‘Cawl!’
129In the middle of the past, Felix could not see the present, only another bulwark of the Imperium falling to alien hate. Men who had died in that room years before died again. Moving through the crowd of ghosts was physically taxing, and his armour protested. He leaned into invisible forces that tried with all the mountain’s might to push him back until finally, he was forced to stop. He was poised an arm’s length from Cawl, his face inches from a warrior bathed in battle sweat fighting for a few more seconds of life against a towering beast composed solely of chitinous plates, gristle and ravening hunger.
130The machine was howling. Weird screeches and hooting boomed from the depths of the fortress-monastery over their vox network.
131‘Cawl! Shut it down! Shut it down!’
132His words were heard only by himself. The mountain shook.
133‘Cawl!’ He pushed against the storm.
134A genestealer turned slit yellow eyes upon Felix, detached itself from the projection, and attacked.
135Circa 10,000 years ago
136Cawl was in some other place where a vast and poisonous mind regarded him. Yellow and black armour, red and cream chitin, the mad tumble of melee, all gone. Instead there was blackness of the most warm and intrusive sort. Someone, or something, was breathing down his neck. He was surprised to find himself sitting in a chair, a warm metal cylinder a foot long in his hands with a single green light burning steadily at the top. Besides the indicator lumen, it was featureless but for a micron-thin seam where the lid screwed into the vessel.
137He was holding it in hands that were still all flesh. He twitched in surprise. This was not his body as he remembered. It was small, and lacking facility.
138‘Still human,’ he breathed.
139‘What?’ The presence behind him was Friedisch. Of course it was. The sense of the other, greater being was quickly forgotten.
140Cawl blinked eyes that were also of flesh. Confusion faded.
141‘Stop breathing on me, Friedisch, you are putting me off.’
142Friedisch moved away. Cawl became aware of the gentle hum of well-maintained systems, and reality slotted itself back together. They had escaped from Horus’ war fleet. They were in the warp. There were no xenos monsters. No Space Marines fighting. No burning ambition.
143‘Silence on the Silencia.’
144Cawl looked up from the cylinder with a scowl. ‘Are you making a joke, Friedisch?’
145Friedisch gave a little grin. ‘I am!’
146Cawl turned back to his work with a shake of his head.
147Friedisch gripped his friend’s shoulder amicably. ‘You always have to be the best at everything, Belisarius. The most intelligent, the most gifted, the quickest witted.’
148‘That is because I usually am.’
149‘You are modest too,’ said Friedisch, who was in too good a mood to be infuriated by Cawl.
150‘I am modest!’ Cawl wore a technologist’s loop. Focusing motors whirred as he turned the cylinder over carefully in his hands, reading the machine marks on the metal with a seer’s attention. Fragments of memories perturbed him yet. He saw a flash of a Space Marine in an unfamiliar armour type die to the claws of a xenos fiend.
151He put the cylinder down hard, certainly harder than he meant. It clanked on the bench.
152‘Are you all right, Belisarius?’
153Friedisch sat down in a chair behind Cawl. Though the Silencia was a luxurious barque as befitted its previous owner’s status, Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma had been of the Mechanicum, and so it benefitted from a well-supplied workshop.
154‘I honestly don’t know.’ He glanced upwards, perhaps expecting to see an answer in the turmoil of energies surrounding their ship. Instead he saw a ceiling crowded with hanging tools and dormant mechanisms. ‘Maybe it’s the warp.’
155‘It’s funny, I was going to mention that. Have you noticed how smooth our transit is?’
156‘I had not, actually.’ Cawl glanced at the cylinder again. Too preoccupied with the clone-jar. Or…
157Teeth and claws and dying men.
158‘But it is,’ Cawl said, forcing the image away. ‘Very smooth.’
159‘The last time I took a voyage through the immaterium, I thought I would die. Or worse,’ said Friedisch. ‘But this, well this…’ He frowned. ‘This is like it used to be. Before the war,’ he said quietly. ‘Why do you think that is?’
160‘I’m sure we’ll find out when we emerge,’ he said. ‘There is no point speculating on the unknown without sufficient data to reach a conclusion. If we allow ourselves to be drawn into the conversation, we will waste valuable time on unprovable hypotheses. We will find out in due course.’
161‘Never a wasted moment, eh, Belisarius?’ Friedisch picked up a magnetic wrench, peered at it, and put it down. He had never shared Cawl’s drive for work, but then, few did.
162‘I know you don’t share my concern about wasting time, Friedisch, but you should. Of all things, time is the most precious. More precious than knowledge. Time is the only thing we cannot make more of. Time is the limitation on all other things. When a person is born, they are in servitude to time. We spend time stupidly, when we should hoard it like treasure. I do not like to waste time. There is never enough of it, and there are many thieves who covet it.’
163He picked up the cylinder again, appalled with himself at how carelessly he had dropped it.
164‘We might die before we arrive,’ said Friedisch. ‘The warp is cruel.’
165‘If we do, we are dead. If we are not, and I do nothing, spending the hours in speculation, leisure or fear, they are wasted. Death comes for us all. What we do while it approaches is the only freedom we have. And I have this to think on.’
166‘Any progress?’
167‘So now you engage?’
168‘I am frightened, Belisarius,’ said Friedisch, ‘but I am also bored, and though you seem to forget it sometimes, I too am of the Cult.’
169‘Well then,’ said Cawl. He tapped the cylinder. ‘Within this is a half-formed clone copy of Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma, late and treacherous magos domina of Trisolian.’
170‘Indeed. A clever guarantee of immortality.’
171‘Not so clever,’ said Cawl. ‘A little desperate, even. She will not be coming back, for we have her last remaining clone seed. If this were to fall into the hands of our peers, it would almost certainly be destroyed, but that would be a terrible shame. Sigma-Sigma encoded all her knowledge into her clones. It’s just waiting there to be picked up. Think, Friedisch. She was a shrewd tactician. We could become so ourselves.’
172‘But why? I never had you for a soldier.’
173‘I am not. But tactics and strategy are knowledge. All knowledge is valuable. All knowledge yearns to be known, and we as members of the Cult Mechanicus yearn to know it. Do you know that I was once a student of Diacomes of Gestus Decorum?’
174‘I confess I have never heard of him, or of wherever Gestus Decorum is.’
175‘You know I have served many masters.’
176‘Yes, yes, as you are always telling me.’ Friedisch affected Cawl’s voice. ‘“Friedisch, while you were diligently working your way through the lower mysteries, I was travelling the galaxy! Buck up, my man! Learn! Learn! Learn all you can, from whom you can.” That’s about it, no?’ He toyed with another tool.
177Cawl scowled at Friedisch’s mockery, but continued just the same. ‘Diacomes was a magos-ascetic. A hermit. He was also an incredibly skilled biologian.’ He smiled. ‘I think the path biologicus is my favourite discipline.’
178‘Organic life is the Machine-God’s greatest accomplishment within the scope of the Great Work, all praise He who is three-in-one,’ agreed Friedisch. ‘By giving us life within an organic shell he presents us with the means and opportunity to improve upon physicality, as is his divine plan. He grants us complex weakness so we might learn metallic strength, and ascend to his level of machinic perfection.’ He scratched absentmindedly at the raw skin around his augmetic.
179‘Such is life’s great test,’ said Cawl. ‘Now, the linkage of minds has been possible since the Age of Technology,’ said Cawl. ‘But there are a number of risks. Full linkage between living minds leads inevitably to psychosis as the personalities make war on each other for dominance. Hence the need for the moderation of the manifold in our Titan Legio. As such technologies demonstrate, it is impossible to achieve full blended consciousness between two living minds. Of course, it is possible to boost one’s own brainpower by linkage to a cloned or repurposed brain, thoroughly wiped, but the key there is that the brain be unformed, and patterning must be undertaken by the user. If one wishes to gain the full extent of knowledge within a deceased or living brain, it is impossible, for knowledge is indivisible from experience, and personality is the accumulation of experience. Ergo, personality must survive.’
180‘Therefore, absorbing a person’s full knowledge risks conflict between personalities, which leads to psychosis,’ said Friedisch.
181‘Which leads to death, and the loss of knowledge,’ said Cawl. ‘It is not a risk, it is a certainty. Diacomes, however, was certain this could be overcome. There are many interpersonal cybernetic networks, temporary and permanent, that enhance the capabilities of all involved, but no way of absorbing human knowledge into an extant personality without damaging or destroying that personality.’
182‘Did Diacomes do it?’
183‘The Dark Age technologists did it. He was sure of that. There is a way to transcend human limitations. Knowledge may be passed on.’
184‘But did Diacomes rediscover the technique?’ Friedisch pressed.
185Cawl placed the clone cylinder carefully back into its rest.
186‘No,’ said Cawl. ‘But he came close.’
187Cawl’s hand strayed to his memcore. His fingers rubbed on warm metal.
188‘And you think you can do it?’ Friedisch snorted. ‘Really, Belisarius.’
189‘I–’
190Bang.
191‘What was that?’ said Friedisch.
192Bang. The ship shuddered.
193‘I think we’re coming out of the warp.’
194‘With no warning?’ said Friedisch incredulously.
195‘I don’t think Hester Aspertia’s Navigator likes us very much,’ said Cawl. ‘He’s a nasty little mutant.’
196A musical refrain began to play throughout the ship.
197‘Oh, now he’s telling us!’ said Friedisch. ‘I’d dearly like to wring his scrawny neck.’
198‘No you wouldn’t,’ said Cawl. He locked the cylinder into place, then after a moment’s thought, picked it up, opened his robes and inserted it into a compartment concealed in his stomach. ‘You’re not very warlike.’
199‘When did you put that in?’ said Friedisch. ‘In your, in your gut!’
200‘We’ve been on this ship for weeks, my friend. While you’ve been moping, I’ve been working.’
201Bang.
202The ship jumped hard.
203‘Come on, we should get to the command deck, we’re about to arrive at Ryza.’
204‘Lead on, Beli–’
205BANG!
206Circa 10,000 years ago
207Cawl frowned. He was on a ship, now he wasn’t. Something wasn’t right. He felt…
208Tall, he thought. I feel tall?
209Bang. Metal struck dully off rock. Bang.
210The ship was gone from his mind. He was as tall as he had always been. He was outside the laboratorium complex, on the bridge in the mountains where he liked to go to think, and there was someone else upon the bridge with him, but he could not look at him. How could he forget that?
211‘I am sorry, I am disturbing you,’ said the man. ‘I will leave you to your meditations.’
212Bang.
213‘Do not go,’ pleaded Cawl. ‘I want more than anything to speak to you.’
214Bang.
215‘Then look upon me,’ said the man. ‘You have nothing to fear.’
216Cawl laughed apologetically.
217‘I find I can’t, I am sorry.’
218Overhead a mangy bird circled, black and brown feathers stuck out at untidy angles. Terra once had an abundance of wildlife matched by few worlds. They were so precious, Terran analogues. Inevitably, mankind ruined them wherever they were found, as he had ruined his own home. On Terra a few pest species persisted, mutated more often than not. The planet was not unique in its impoverishment.
219‘I know you could make me, but,’ he gabbled. ‘But I’d…’ Cawl swallowed. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. It behoves one to make these efforts oneself. Do you not think?’ His voice was strange, not his own, deeper, more arrogant.
220‘I do not force men to do anything, Belisarius Cawl.’
221Why did the man call him that? Belisarius Cawl was not his name.
222The man chuckled softly at what Cawl thought. He could hear what he was thinking. He could hear what everyone was thinking. He came to stand by Cawl’s side. ‘I require a break from the work also. I will stand with you here a while, and we can enjoy the view together. I find it helps to imagine how it will look when it is restored, and life is returned in full measure to this world. Would you like me to describe how it should look? I remember. I could show you, if you would like.’
223Cawl still could not turn his head to look at the man, but he smiled, and let gratitude warm his foreign voice.
224‘I would like that very much.’
225‘Then you must look at me.’
226Hesitantly, Cawl looked up into the brown eyes of the man. He expected them to be brown, because they always were. Incredible eyes, steeped in compassion and power. Otherwise, He seemed so nondescript, with long brown hair and skin the colour of light recaff. At least He was today. The Emperor’s face was unremarkable, and should have been easily recalled, but although Cawl had met Him many times, he could never remember exactly what He looked like between meetings, as if He were not a man, but a figure from a recurring dream only remembered during sleep, and forgotten with the first rays of daylight. It was rarely the same face twice.
227The Emperor of Mankind smiled. He had an easy smile. Reassuring. Warm. His smile was so full of positive things that the thought of His frown frightened Cawl. If it were as judgemental as the Emperor’s smile was uplifting, he had no wish ever to see it.
228‘Please,’ the Emperor said, gesturing down at the riverbed. ‘I did not mean to interrupt your rest. It is good to stop and think, to prevent us rushing in haste into decisions we may later regret. Haste is man’s greatest enemy. Contemplation is a neglected art.’
229Bang went the metal.
230Cawl’s body prickled with electricity to be so close to Him. It was neither a pleasant nor a wholly unpleasant feeling.
231‘I have something to ask you,’ said the Emperor. ‘A personal favour.’
232Cawl was taken aback. The mightiest man in existence wanted something from him. He gaped. The Emperor found this amusing. His smile quirked.
233Cawl recovered himself. ‘Anything, my lord. You have but to command it.’
234‘Thank you.’ He paused. The Emperor was unsure of what to say. When He opened His mouth, from it came…
235Bang bang bang BANG!
236The sensation of the presence returned. Not Friedisch, not the Emperor, the other thing, the thing in the warm and intimate dark that was watching him. It seemed… bored.
237Now
238BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG.
239Felix let his boltstorm gauntlet fire on full automatic. The machine-spirit exulted in the freedom to do violence, chattering out a delight of staccato explosions. Fire burst all around as the bolts found their mark. Shrapnel cracked from his ceramite, and his helm chimed warnings at the proximity of the explosions. The genestealer was gutted, lifted up and away from him, its back blown out. Alien blood spattered over Felix’s faceplate, obscuring his view of the Hall of the Founder further.
240Among the echoes of the Scythes’ last stand, living genestealers lurked, and they were throwing themselves out of the Pharos’ remembrance and onto Felix’s men. Threat alarms chimed in his helmet. He held his fist out, shooting almost blind. His battleplate cogitator had as much trouble telling past from present as he did. Targeting reticules danced over xenos killing machines and fired, only to find them phantoms. He activated his sword’s power field and swung wildly. In passing through a creature that was not there, it cleaved into one that was, cutting through its exoskeletal ribs and exploding its organs with a flash of light.
241Felix was knocked off balance by the blow. The forces emanating from the centre of the chamber buffeted him, sending him turning about as he was pushed back. The projection of the battle showed nothing of these vortices, but to be close to the centre of the display was to suffer the wrath of invisible storms.
242‘Cawl!’ he shouted. ‘Shut it off!’ His vox emission was strangled by the Pharos’ workings, shattered into feedback that made his ears ring. Cawl stood rigidly at the centre of it all, his acolyte still calmly taking notes. A genestealer leapt out of the projection, and claws outstretched to gut the magos encountered an energy field that threw it back with a flash of light. Stray bolt-rounds were similarly deflected. Several were transmuted to bursts of energy as a full burst clipped him.
243‘Watch the archmagos!’ Felix roared. ‘Control your fire!’
244Again his words were thrown back at him. Vox was dead. He turned from the centre, guard up, and headed out to the edge of the room.
245The other Space Marines were doing the same, backing further away from the projection circle and the play of ghosts. Genestealers that emerged from the hard edge of the phantoms were easily marked and cut down. Felix’s helm display was a confused mess of broken inputs. He could not call up the status of his warriors, but at least one armoured figure of today was down amid yesterday’s dead.
246Felix signed one-handed with his boltstorm gauntlet, the fat digits of the power fist limning his orders with lightning.
247Double fire line, backs to wall, avoid magos. Move! he signed.
248His and Thracian’s men stood shoulder to shoulder, their boltguns and bolt rifles putting out a wall of shot that nothing could cross. Genestealers reared up and died, purple blood flying from their crimson bodies. There was confusion, no time to think, only to fire. Thracian’s Terminators were moving round the projection to create a crossfire, trusting their heavy suits of armour to protect them from savage tyranid claws.
249The creatures had seemed to be materialising directly from the projection, but then Alpha Primus and Gathein began to hurl psychic lightning at the enemy, lighting up the room, and Felix saw the source of the threat was on the far side of the chamber.
250They’re coming from the lower levels, he signed, and directed half the Space Marines to lay down covering fire on the entrance. Brother Ixen pumped the slide of his grenade launcher repeatedly, filling the down stair with clouds of shrapnel. The light from the explosions and the witchfire revealed a press of aliens, all rushing up heedlessly into the Imperial guns. All was performed in the perfect silence of vacuum, no vox, no communication or outside sounds, only the sound of his own breathing and tremors from detonations powerful enough to overcome the Pharos’ trembling.
251Cominus ceased firing. He took his bolt rifle in one had so he could sign to the tetrarch.
252They are fleeing. They are making for the exit.
253Felix saw that this was true. The majority of the creatures that made it into the room were not coming for them, but pouring towards the bronze doors and the Crooked Stair. Screened by the Pharos’ projection, their flight had evaded his notice but now he saw.
254The genestealers were running away, right into the guns of the Space Marines outside.
255A surge of power from the alien machine caused a loud crack across the vox. The display went out. The room fell dark. A pack of genestealers ran along the wall, heading for the doors. They died by the strobing light of bolt-fire.
256The vox snapped back on.
257‘Cawl!’ Felix shouted, striding forwards. The room seemed smaller now the display was off. Alien bodies crunched under his feet.
258‘Ah, tetrarch,’ said Cawl. He smiled as if he had been momentarily distracted. ‘Impressive, isn’t it? More active than I thought.’
259Felix stood before the magos.
260‘You could have killed us all,’ said Felix. Behind him Yansar and Aratus were attending to the fallen. Felix’s systems were working again. Two mortis runes shone in his eyes.
261‘Yes, well. Every investigation carries a certain amount of risk.’ Cawl seemed distracted. Qvo irritated Felix by continuing his note taking.
262‘My lord!’ Yansar hailed him. ‘Brother Tullio is gravely injured. Brother Tobias and Sergeant Quintos of the Scythes are dead.’
263The Scythes’ Apothecary was already working on them to extract their geneseed, while Thracian sent two of his warriors out to check on the gene vault in the Walk of the First Scythes.
264‘Give me your prognosis on Tullio,’ Felix demanded.
265‘I can return him to combat effectiveness, if I can treat him somewhere with adequate facilities.’
266‘If you don’t?’
267‘There is a fifteen per cent chance of death. In any case, he can’t fight like this, and his armour’s compromised.’
268‘You may use our apothecarion,’ said Thracian. The Chapter Master joined Felix and Cawl. ‘We can regroup in the Emperor’s Watch and assess the situation while Brother Tullio is seen to and Sebastion completes his task. The tower can easily be held if need be. The upper chambers will not be so affected by the things under this mountain. They were sanctified by the Emperor Himself at the dawn of the Imperium.’
269‘The Emperor has no hold over this place,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘It is old, and evil.’
270‘Do you feel it, brother?’ asked Gathein.
271‘I feel nothing at all. That is how I know,’ said Primus.
272‘That’s all theoretical. The practical is that I’ll need to get Tullio’s armour off and work on him in a properly equipped facility,’ said Yansar.
273‘I am sure we can repressurise part of the tower,’ said Thracian.
274‘Yansar?’ asked Felix.
275‘It would be better than taking him back down the stairs and evacuating him from the mountain,’ the Apothecary agreed.
276‘The disabling of the defence grid is our primary objective at this time,’ said Felix. ‘We will see it is done. Cawl, before you attempt anything like that you are to consult with me.’
277‘As you wish, Decimus. But I’m sure you’ll agree, impressive results. Impressive results!’ He moved off in consultation with Qvo.
278‘The genestealers are the lords of Mount Pharos now. We must be more careful,’ said Gathein.
279‘Can you sense their psychic net?’
280‘It is incoherent,’ said Gathein.
281Primus nodded. ‘Disrupted. They are afraid.’
282‘They are weak,’ said Cominus. He bent over a shattered corpse. ‘Look at this. These wounds are not from our weapons.’ He jabbed two fingers into a perfectly neat hole burned into the creature’s side. ‘Nor is this.’ A similarly clean slash wound had cut away some of its spinal crest. ‘These look like particle beam wounds.’
283‘They were fleeing,’ said one of the Scythes. His name plate proclaimed him to be Keltru. Both his legs were bionic replacements.
284Felix nodded, and looked down the stairs. ‘From the Pharos.’
285‘The engines are still running,’ said Daelus. He datapulsed a screed of readings to the tetrarch. ‘I’m seeing ghost echoes of energy spikes everywhere. What has Belisarius Cawl done?’
286CHAPTER THIRTEEN
287THE LORDS OF MOUNT PHAROS
288
289
290‘I have checked over the monastery systems, and we can refill these three levels with atmosphere,’ said Daelus. Felix watched the Techmarine move his finger through the hololithic image projected by Cominus’ forearm comms unit. The image was semi-transparent, showing all the layers of the fortress-monastery. The central tower of the Emperor’s Watch clung to the very top of the mountain, its footings sunk right into the basalt encasing the blackstone. The rest of the fortress had grown up around it; though never engulfing the uppermost levels of the tower, it spread out and down the mountainsides. In the cartolith, the Pharos itself was an absence, an unscannable block of darkness beneath the fortress.
291‘These levels include the apothecarion and the upper armouries,’ said Thracian. ‘It would be useful to both the Chosen and to the Scythes to have these parts pressurised.’
292They were in the Vigilatum, a cylindrical, central hall that rose fully halfway up the tower’s height. Balustraded galleries overlooked the plunging drop, statues of Space Marines at every major support. Stairs wound their way up the interior, linking the landings. A set of blast doors, currently sealed, led onto the stairs going down into the Hall of the Founder.
293‘What about power?’ said Felix.
294‘The reactor is out and cold,’ said Cawl. ‘It would take several days and much fuel to reignite. However, there are indications of power output, separate from that of the mountain, that bear Imperial wave signatures. These will be the Chapter’s emergency battery systems. It should be easy to bring them to wakefulness. They will provide days of power, if they were fully charged before the monastery’s fall.’
295‘Then power and air are to be restored as secondary objectives. As a matter of priority communications must be established with the fleet and with Odessa Port,’ said Felix. ‘The primary objective remains the deactivation of the defence matrix.’
296‘A simple input of the armoury codes in the primary armament cogitation systems should be enough to shut it down,’ said Sebastion. His finger moved down the tower’s length to the very bottom, where a series of chambers sheltered beneath more than three hundred feet of rock. ‘The Defensor Strategium centre is here, well below the peak.’
297‘The codes were not accepted remotely,’ said Felix.
298‘What if your main systems have been compromised by the mountain like the gun on the wall?’ asked Daelus.
299‘Then I will excise the xenos intrusion, overload the cogitators and destroy the control systems,’ said Sebastion. ‘Leaving the weapons intact. If that does not work, then the guns can be spiked remotely.’
300‘How long will that take?’ said Felix.
301‘Two hours, maybe less,’ said Sebastion. ‘There are many armoured doors between here and there. If they do not respond to Chapter cyphers either, I shall have to cut my way through.’
302‘Troncus and I will help you,’ said Daelus. ‘It will be an honour to watch you work, Forgemaster.’
303Troncus nodded.
304Sebastion shook his head. ‘Those of us with insight into the mysteries of Mars should divide our efforts,’ said the Forgemaster. ‘Accomplish all mission objectives at once. You are tech-acolytes. You should reengage the life support systems while I deal with the weapons.’
305‘That is the most efficient course of action,’ said Qvo-87.
306‘Qvo-87 and I will attend to the power sinks,’ said Cawl.
307‘Then Troncus and I will take environmental control, as the Forgemaster suggests,’ said Daelus.
308‘Brother Esau will accompany you, Forgemaster. Brother Ulas shall go with Daelus’ party,’ said Thracian. ‘I will be gladder if you are properly protected.’
309‘I will go with Sebastion also,’ said Alpha Primus.
310‘Brother Esau will be sufficient,’ said the Forgemaster.
311‘Then I will accompany Daelus’ group,’ said Primus.
312‘Who will watch over the archmagos?’ said Thracian.
313‘The archmagos will!’ scoffed Cawl. ‘I am perfectly capable of protecting myself.’ He raised up his weapons and spun them around. ‘I do not require Primus to be safe. The power sinks are isolated. Qvo and I will be fine. A better combat efficiency will be achieved if he travels with Daelus. The environmental controls are most central, and therefore the group there will be swiftest to respond to calls for aid. It makes sense they be the biggest company, and that Primus be most able to respond should something go wrong. He is the most gifted of you. Qvo-87 and I will not be long. We will join the central group once we have power restored.’
314Felix reluctantly agreed. ‘Stay vigilant. Auspex scans indicate no lifeforms in the tower, but that does not mean there are no hibernating organisms here. Deactivate the weapons. Get those cannons offline. Cominus will guard the lower stairs with Cadmus,’ he continued. ‘Gathein will accompany me to the tower summit. We will check the citadel communications mast preparatory to reopening channels with the fleet. Yansar has already gone to the apothecarion and begun stabilising Brother Tullio.’
315‘I and the remainder of my men will head to the armoury to retrieve our Chapter relics,’ said Thracian, ‘and prepare for the internment of our dead and the geneseed in the tombs. From the armoury my warriors will be able to act as a second rapid response force if the enemy attack.’
316‘You are sure I will be able to overcome the Pharos’ interference from the top of the tower?’ Felix asked.
317‘Our main communications array is powerful,’ said Thracian. ‘You will have no difficulty contacting the fleet from that altitude, even with the Pharos awakening.’ Thracian looked to Sebastion for confirmation.
318‘It should be the case,’ said the Forgemaster. ‘I may be wrong. I’ve never seen interference like this. It is probable that you will have limited time. The mountain’s strength is growing.’
319‘Then I will depart immediately. Once we have contact, I will order our drop-ship up to the northern landing pad the moment the fortress-monastery defences are offline,’ said Felix. ‘Daelus tells me it is the most intact.’
320‘And then the real work can begin,’ said Cawl.
321‘We shall meet here again in three hours,’ said Felix. ‘Set mission count.’
322In a dozen Space Marine helmets, miniature chronographs blinked to zero.
323‘Begin,’ said Felix.
324Daelus watched Ulas through his autosenses. The Scythe was watching him back.
325They are hiding something. Felix had told them all of Cadmus’ warning.
326The corridors appeared as clean as if the fortress monastery were still operational, but then they would pass the wreck of one of the servitors that had serviced the place, its metallic components scattered and picked clean of organics, and the illusion broke.
327Troncus was following the lines of piping along the ceiling. They reached a junction, and the group paused while Troncus pulled out a small auspex to take readings. He gestured down the left hand corridor to indicate the others should follow him.
328‘Your brother does not speak much,’ said Alpha Primus softly.
329Daelus made a noise of amusement. ‘Troncus doesn’t speak at all.’
330Daelus waited for Alpha Primus to ask. You could build a picture of a man’s mind by letting your sentences hang, and seeing where their curiosity took them. They always wanted to know when you were hiding something. In Daelus’ experience, it was how they asked that let you look into their minds.
331‘Why?’ Alpha Primus said eventually.
332‘Because when Troncus met the primarch, he was awestruck. He ­fumbled his words, he babbled, he made a fool of himself. He felt that he had so disgraced himself, that he had gone so far from what he thought a Techmarine should be, that he went down to his Chapter armoury and burned out his own tongue with a plasma cutter.’
333‘Really?’ said Alpha Primus. He affected an emotionless air, but he could not conceal his interest.
334‘Yes,’ said Daelus. ‘You’d think an oath of silence would suffice, but Troncus never does things by halves. You have to imagine that a plasma cutter makes a mess of a man’s face. He could have killed himself. He should have been executed, but his Chaplain enforced penance and they let him live, Emperor alone knows why. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Guilliman can have that sort of effect on people. It affected me when I first met him.’ His voice became thoughtful. ‘I’ve heard of mortals killing themselves after being in his presence, because they will never experience a more important moment.’ His voice resumed its usual bright tone. ‘I can’t guess what it must have been like meeting more than one primarch at once. Whole rooms of people must have gone insane.’
335Troncus was a blur ahead in the dark. When stablights glanced off his armour, the brief glimpses afforded made him seem like a mechanical ghost fleeing into the gloom.
336Primus watched him closely.
337‘Are you lying?’ Primus said.
338‘What do you think?’ said Daelus.
339‘I could look into your mind.’
340‘You wouldn’t violate the mind of an ally like that though, would you?’ said Daelus.
341Primus growled. ‘If Troncus’ ideal of what a Techmarine should be is silent and sombre, what does he think of you?’
342‘Primus has a point,’ said Ulas, breaking his watchful silence. ‘It is unseemly the amount that you speak.’
343Daelus laughed. ‘Brothers! I take no offence. Troncus thinks I talk altogether too much. But I say to him, just because we tend to machines, it does not mean we have to love them more than our brothers or more than other men. Machines are made by men. Understanding the human mind properly gives insight into their spirits. Machine-spirits have their quirks as men do. I like to talk, because through talking and listening you learn. Brother Troncus doesn’t contradict my argument, so I assume I am right.’
344‘Space Marines should not jabber,’ said Ulas.
345‘We shall remain in amicable disagreement then.’ Daelus slowed and let his arm trail along the wall. The rockcrete changed colour there, where newer materials were bonded to a much older core. ‘See these walls?’ He tapped the inner band, weathered dark by ancient storms. ‘The original outer surface. This tower was much smaller when first built.’
346‘Our history says this tower was built in the time of the Emperor, by great heroes of the age,’ said Ulas. ‘This is the most ancient part of our citadel, and the most holy. It was the heart of our fortress-monastery. They say the Emperor Himself came here, once.’
347‘What of it?’ said Alpha Primus. Daelus was forming the opinion that Alpha Primus tried far too hard to sound disinterested.
348‘Don’t you feel the smallest bit awed, Primus?’ said Daelus. ‘The history here. Guilliman walked these halls in the days of the Heresy. Perhaps others of the primarchs did too. The Pharos itself, its age, think of the secrets it contains. It is millions of years old. Millions.’
349‘It is xenos technology. Dangerous. Unclean.’
350‘You serve Cawl,’ said Daelus. ‘He does not believe so.’
351Troncus disappeared into the dark. His suit light bobbed along the corridor, and vanished round a corner.
352‘I don’t serve him. I belong to him,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘That doesn’t mean my mind is the same as his.’
353‘He is brilliant,’ said Daelus. ‘He made us all.’
354‘He saved our Chapter,’ Ulas said.
355‘You do not know him as I do. He made me first,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘I have been at his side for a long time. He gave me too much. His designs were too ambitious. I suffer because of it.’
356‘How so?’ said Ulas. ‘You are mighty. If every Primaris Marine had your strength then–’
357‘I hurt,’ Primus interrupted. ‘Everywhere. My dreams are black. My soul is shackled by another man’s ideal. I see more and know more than any human being ever should. In creating me, Cawl tried to match the Emperor’s achievements. It did not work. I pay for his arrogance every second of every day. I tell you because you should know that the archmagos dominus’ talents are not infinite. I am your prototype, and living evidence of his overreach.’
358Alpha Primus pushed past Daelus roughly. His strength was phenomenal, and he knocked Daelus’ servoharness into the wall.
359When they had turned down the corridor Troncus had taken, the ceiling lumens blinked on. Daelus’ suit registered a steady flow of power through the tower walls. Troncus emerged from a door further down and beckoned.
360‘The great Cawl,’ Daelus voxed. ‘Ever in favour with the machine-spirit.’
361Troncus, as usual, said nothing.
362‘That is it,’ said Ulas. ‘Your friend has found the environmental control centre.’
363‘Then let us get some air into these halls,’ said Daelus.
364Sebastion came across another empty suit of armour. He spent a few minutes gathering the pieces together. When they were in a neat pile, the helmet on top, he marked them with a small datatag, and recorded the location in his cogitator while Esau looked on.
365‘Brother Sidonus,’ said Sebastion sadly. ‘Who will say the rites of the fallen over him? There are Chaplains again in the Scythes of the Emperor, good men, with souls as heavily armoured as their bodies, but though they may say the words and feel the sorrow of laying a brother to rest, they were not here when Sotha fell. They can never understand how we suffer.’
366‘We should move on,’ Esau said.
367‘We make good time,’ said Sebastion. ‘These are relics of our Chapter. All must be properly treated. As one age turns into the next, we cannot forget who we were.’
368‘We are few.’
369‘But we live.’
370Sebastion activated the datatag and moved on. The stablights mounted on their battleplate picked out bolt impact craters on the walls. Whatever Brother Sidonus had fought there, in the centre of the Scythes of the Emperor’s home, no trace was left. There were many such areas of damage. Battles which would never be recorded, fought by warriors left to die alone.
371They came to a stair that descended deep into the mountain. The route they took went down into the most heavily defended parts of the fortress-monastery citadel, the most isolated. It was utterly black. Their suits provided the sole source of illumination. Crisp rounds of bright white light slid over a mural that curled downwards with the stair. It was very old, the paint faded, missing in many places where plaster had been replaced and the mural not repaired. It was more a relic than a decoration. Among its many battle scenes were long segments depicting humans and transhumans at work together, clearing the swiftly growing quicktrees that had cloaked the planet. It was constant work, and the nature of the terrain dictated that at least some of it had to be undertaken by hand.
372‘This was who we were,’ said Sebastion. ‘The Lords of Mount Pharos. We were not distant. We were protectors of the weak, the shield of the Imperium, as Space Marines were meant to be.’
373‘The Chapter will remember,’ said Esau.
374‘It will,’ said Sebastion. ‘In dusty tomes and datacrystals. It will remember its history. But it will be history, Esau. A collection of curiosities and traditions, brought out and revered. Words to be recited. Deeds to be collated. But only history. To mean something a tradition has to survive, it has to be lived. I remember discovering when I went to Mars, to study there under the Auxilia Technologica Astartes, how much the tech-priests venerate knowledge. Through them, I too came to respect it, to crave it. I understand, however, that knowledge without experience is dry. It is an adornment to the intellect, it is not useful in the way a gun is useful. Knowledge is a weapon, but not while it is on paper. It is the same with these traditions. Even should the Chapter return to this mountain, and reoccupy these halls, the world these images remember is gone and will never return. The Primaris Marines will never work shoulder to shoulder with the common folk. They will never train in the phantine-haunted wilderness. They will never learn to love the wildness and the peace of this world as we all did, no matter our origin. Our people are devoured. The forests are gone.’
375‘Thracian believes Cawl can bring it back,’ said Esau. He swivelled the massive shoulders of his Terminator armour to play his suit light over a stylised image of Mount Pharos. Sothopolis was painted around its base. The Chapter fortress stood over all, depicted larger than life, the guarantor of the planet’s safety.
376‘Cawl can deliver a facsimile. Nothing can bring back the past.’ The stairs turned from stone to metal. The walls became embossed panels of plasteel. At that point the Emperor’s Watch left the rock behind, its roots thrusting down into a great emptiness. The battery command centre and void shield control systems were located safe at the centre of a cavern.
377‘I remember the jubilation the day the Primaris contingent joined us. That feeling that we were saved, and we were. The Scythes of the Emperor would survive, but as something new. The old days are done, Esau. It is not our job to bring them back, but to lay them to rest. We have one last task to perform before that can be so. We must find the source of the evil that took us, and expunge it. We have to recover our honour.’
378‘Do you think Thracian can do it? He suffers great shame and anger.’
379‘Are you suggesting it clouds his thinking?’
380‘No, Forgemaster.’
381‘You should not. Fury makes him stronger,’ Sebastion said. ‘His fury will see this task done. He will look into the eyes of the foe and it will not be able to stay his hand.’
382‘Then we need to hurry. Soon there will be too few of us left to see the task done.’
383The first of several heavy blast doors barred their way. When it refused to open, Sebastion went to the side and began to cut into the plasteel plating.
384‘We will do it, brother, though it will kill us all.’ Plasma light played over the angular planes of his helm. ‘When we have accomplished the final mission of the Scythes of the Emperor, we last few may fade, and leave the future to others. Let us pray our shame goes unrecorded.’
385Yansar’s stablight was bright and large, intended to illuminate his surgery when in battle, so it lit the powerless apothecarion well enough. His sole patient lay on the diagnostic slab of an auto-chirurgeon. The machine’s spindly arms were pulled in like those of a dead insect. Whether it would work was as yet untested. He’d run diagnostic analysis on it through his own systems, but though the mechanism appeared whole he couldn’t be certain its datalooms were entire. He was no machine-priest. The look of the rest of the apothecarion didn’t imbue confidence, and he’d already decided to perform the surgery himself. The place had been thoroughly smashed by the invaders. He had heard it was often the way with the tyranids.
386‘Mess halls and medicae,’ he said to himself. Easy sources of organics for the invaders to consume. The apothecarions of the Space Marines contained genetic material of rare potency.
387Tullio was in a bad way. Genestealer claws were sharper than scalpels, and many times stronger. They cleaved through ceramite as if it were a minor inconvenience. Tullio’s breastplate was a shattered mess. The claws had gone deep, and Space Marine bone posed less of an obstacle than Space Marine armour. Scans suggested deep tissue trauma beneath the broken box of his ribcage, but the real problem was that until the atmosphere was restored, there was nothing Yansar could do about it. Sealant foams exuded by the damaged armour’s cellular sub-structure had glued shattered bone, flesh and ceramite into an unholy mess. In this case the genius of the armour’s construction worked against the Apothecary.
388His vox bead chimed.
389‘Tetrarch,’ he said.
390‘Yansar. How is your patient?’
391‘Stable. There is not much I can do for him yet. The facility is badly damaged, but I should be able to treat him effectively if I can get his armour off. He’s sedated right now. I’ve given him medicaments to forestall the activation of his mucranoid and the Belisarian furnace. If he goes into a deep healing coma with his armour crushed into his chest it will kill him. I need an atmosphere in here.’
392‘Understood. Try to bring him back to combat readiness, if you can. I have reached the communications array and am standing by for power restoration.’
393‘You cannot reach the fleet yet?’
394‘Negative. The comms array was damaged, and the mountain’s voice is too loud. They will not hear me without a significant signal boost. Should Cawl achieve his objective, all will be well. If we cannot restore power, I will have Ixen return down the mountain and out of the interference shadow while Gathein attempts psychic contact. Keep me apprised of Tullio’s condition.’
395‘Yes, my lord. Before you go, there is something I feel I should report.’
396‘Go ahead.’
397‘When I brought Tullio here, I performed a quick investigation of the apothecarion facilities.’
398‘You found something?’
399‘When I reached their geneseed vault, I discovered that some of the storage containers had been removed, but not all. Those remaining had been cracked open and the material inside consumed by the enemy. My question is, my lord, if the Scythes had time to retrieve any of their genestocks, why not take them all? Why did they leave some of it behind?’
400‘A question I hope we will have answers for soon, Yansar. Felix out.’
401Felix cut the channel.
402He was at the highest point of the Emperor’s Watch. A turret projected from the main building. It was slender, not much use for defence, but a good place for a comms mast. A collection of rods and resonator coils, the mast had been tall enough that it could broadcast over the rumpled bustle of hills and lesser peaks behind the mountain into the valleys beyond. The main emitters were down; about halfway up they’d been cut diagonally across by bioplasma, leaving the upper part dangling by twisted cables which Felix had had to cut away. But enough of the smaller aerials remained.
403He knelt by the base of the tower, leads snaking from an open panel in his arm to connect him to the array. After speaking with Yansar he cycled through the various groups within the fortress-monastery. Daelus. Ixen and Austen, then Cominus and Cadmus. Then Thracian, and last of all Cawl.
404‘You have it working, my lord,’ said Gathein, returning through the access hatch from a patrol of the tower’s uppermost chambers.
405‘I do,’ said Felix. ‘Cawl sends an automated message, Thracian answered me with the most perfunctory response, and Sebastion gave me a vox click, so although I can hardly say I have been met with the acme of Imperial cooperation, we at least have the option of contact.’
406Gathein nodded. His helm was bulky with his psychic hood. He was imposing when helmeted, disturbing in a way that other Space Marines were not. In his reaction to Gathein’s abilities, Felix wondered if he was experiencing an echo of the unease mortals felt when facing him. A Librarian was an object of mistrust and awe, even to another Space Marine.
407‘We are in a stronger position if we can communicate with the fleet.’
408‘Communicating with the void should be simple enough,’ said Felix. ‘If Cawl can provide us enough power to boost the signal over the Pharos’ voice. We shall know in a few minutes.’
409‘I will prepare myself to speak mind to mind, in case the objective is not met.’
410‘Do so,’ said Felix. ‘Although I would prefer you to save your strength. This mountain is not done surprising us yet.’
411‘If I weary myself, you have Alpha Primus. He is a rare talent.’
412‘He is very powerful,’ said Felix.
413‘Far more powerful than I,’ said Gathein. ‘I tried to look inside him, but he stopped me, and I would not dare attempt to skim the mind of Cawl for fear of Primus’ reaction. What manner of creature is he?’
414‘He is a chimera,’ said Felix, making a few last adjustments. ‘Among certain circles he is well known. He is known to the primarch, and he is known to me. Infamous would be an appropriate word.’
415‘For his deeds, or his nature?’
416Felix didn’t answer immediately, but looked up from his comms panel. ‘I will tell you what Roboute Guilliman believes him to be, then you may decide yourself. This is information of the highest order of classification, but you, as a member of my bodyguard, must be aware of all threats. Do not repeat what I am about to say.’
417‘Then you believe him to be a threat. That is good,’ said Gathein. ‘A gift like his makes for a fickle ally. You have my word I will speak to no one of what you say.’
418‘Primus was among the first of us,’ said Felix. ‘Cawl says the first, though I suspect there were others, and that he is simply the first successful Primaris. Lord Guilliman had a device called the Sangprimus Portem. Do you know what that is?’
419‘No, my lord.’
420‘It is a repository of all surviving information pertaining to the creation of Lord Guilliman and his brothers. The Emperor’s greatest work. It is incomplete, so I was told, or else I doubt Guilliman would have given it to anyone, let alone Belisarius Cawl. Cawl was commanded to use the information contained inside to create a superior breed of Space Marine, which he did. But he is prone to flights of fancy. His ambition knows few limits. For example, he was expressly forbidden from putting Space Marines from the fallen primarch gene-lines into full production.’
421‘He experimented with them?’ said Gathein in amazement.
422‘Cawl is a follower of the Emperor as Omnissiah. He believes the eighteen genelines to be part of a sacred plan, and that that plan will only function properly if all its components are utilised. Lord Guilliman disagrees.’
423‘Is Primus one of these abominations?’
424‘Not quite. Lord Guilliman believes that Alpha Primus is something more than a prototype. He is a personal project of Cawl’s. He has certain gifts that no others have. His psychic ability is only part of it.’
425‘Did he attempt to reproduce the Emperor’s work?’
426‘I have no doubt Guilliman would have killed Cawl had he gone that far. Primus is a Space Marine, not like the rest of us perhaps, but a servant of the Imperium nonetheless, and Adeptus Astartes. He is no primarch. Not even Cawl would dare to attempt something that audacious. Even so, he abused Lord Guilliman’s trust. Our genefather does not approve of Primus. But he could not object. He was in his death state while Cawl worked. Nobody knew of Primus until he appeared one day at Cawl’s side. You were not present at the Yxian campaign.’
427‘I am not like you, my lord. You were born when the Imperium was young. This is my century. I took little part in the Indomitus Crusade. But who has not heard of the Yxian campaign?’
428‘Primus appeared there in public for the first time, but when I encountered him I was certain I had met him before. It was only through much effort that I recalled seeing him sometimes, aboard the Zar Quaesitor when I was being changed. If my memories are true, then Primus is as ancient as I am. More so, for he has been active for much longer than I have.’
429‘I shall remember, and be wary,’ said Gathein.
430‘Anyone with that amount of ability is a threat, brother. If history has taught us anything at all, it is that threats come more often from within than from the outside.’
431Gathein stood by the parapet, looking down the plunging drop of the Emperor’s Watch to the layered courtyards of the monastery, and out beyond, down to Sothopolis and the empty ocean. ‘This must have been a beautiful world.’
432‘By all accounts it was,’ said Felix.
433‘Do you believe Cawl can restore it?’
434‘Who knows what the magos is capable of? He is enigmatic.’
435‘Those that hide their abilities and intentions are dangerous,’ said Gathein.
436‘Dangerous he certainly is,’ said Felix.
437The vox crackled in Felix’s ears.
438‘My Lord,’ said Daelus. ‘Cawl has activated the back-up powercells. We have power enough for at least the next twelve hours. Troncus is close to bringing the atmospheric cyclers to good function. While he’s doing that, I’m going to give us all a little light.’
439Lumens snapped on all over the fortress-monastery, illuminating the tower from top to bottom. Fresh vibrations trembled through the citadel’s structure; the regular, steady feel of Imperial machinery at work, not the wild tremble of the xenos artefact.
440‘How sure of their power these tyranids are, not to slight our fortresses when they are done,’ said Gathein. ‘This place could stand for a million years more.’
441‘All things have weaknesses. Hubris is common to many species, even those that are the most alien,’ said Felix. ‘Help me, brother. We must realign the array. It is time to speak with our ships.’
442CHAPTER FOURTEEN
443A RECKLESS CUT
444
445
446Sebastion and Esau descended further. Several doors stood in their way. All required opening, and that took time. A journey of minutes stretched into an hour, then longer. Finally, they reached the bottom.
447Beyond the final door was a circular chamber. From it several heavily shielded doors led to various other chambers of strategic import. Bodies preserved by the vacuum lay about, all of them showing the signs of violent death. Lasguns and boltguns, not claws and acid, had felled these warriors. Chapter serfs lay among warriors dressed in the uniforms of Sotha’s modest defence forces.
448‘Treachery,’ said Sebastion. ‘Our own kind turned against us.’ He pushed over the frozen remains of a three-armed abomination. ‘No other race is so foul.’
449‘These two doors are still sealed,’ said Esau. ‘No sign of enemy presence.’
450Sebastion approached one of the doors and rested his hand upon the metal. ‘Here is the place our Chapter fell – not on the walls, but here.’
451A few minutes’ work saw the door mechanisms hooked up to Sebastion’s power unit and unlocked with Chapter cypher codes.
452‘Open,’ Sebastion commanded the door-spirit.
453The instant the door cracked, a rush of stale air blasted from inside. They walked down an access corridor guarded by dormant guns. Nothing had been touched. The tyranid swarm had never made it into that part of the monastery.
454Then they passed through another door into battery command, and witnessed there the results of betrayal. Though the swarm had been kept outside, the subverted warriors of Sotha had broken in.
455‘The xenos slaves came in through the wall from the cavern,’ said Sebastion. He pointed out a square melta-cut through the side of the room. ‘This is how we fell. Emperor alone knows how they got through the mountain.’
456He strode forwards into a scene of battle preserved by the airless dark. Mummified corpses lay everywhere. Many were mortal servants of the Chapter, their uniforms discoloured by spilled fluids and covered with frost. Many more were others dressed in the uniforms of the Sotharan defence force. There were more misshapen creatures among them.
457‘The twisted progeny of man and alien,’ said Sebastion.
458At the centre of the room there was a single transhuman figure slumped over the command station, a lasgun wound to the back of his head, placed exactly where it would kill him. An empty bolt pistol lay on the console near his open hand. Sebastion stopped when he saw him.
459‘Brother Balthazar,’ said Sebastion. ‘Commander of the Batteries. Look, Esau, upon a hero of the Imperium. His body was ruined in battle. Still he served. I crafted these augmetics myself. No legs, one arm, his spine destroyed. He could have taken the Emperor’s mercy. He could have requested a Dreadnought’s tomb, but he opted to retire here where he might serve more. He always loved the biggest guns.’ Sebastion looked around at the corpses in the room. All had died violently. A couple of skeletal figures not far from the battery commander lay savagely embraced, hands locked about each other’s throats. ‘Three hundred years of loyal service,’ said Sebastion. ‘Treachery was his reward. They shut down the guns and the void shields. We thought we were safe. We were wrong.’
460Sebastion stood in silent contemplation a moment, surveying the room as if it were a shrine. Then with a sudden growl of active motors, he began to move briskly, the arms of his servoharness picking up the corpses and moving them aside. Frozen limbs broke from torsos. Skulls wearing cracked masks of skin bounced along the floor. ‘Esau, aid me. Remove the dead from here. I must access the control panels.’
461As they worked, the room thrummed to the surge of returning power. Screens came on under corpses welded to them by blood and ice.
462‘The archmagos has done his part,’ said Sebastion. ‘Time for us to do ours.’ He went to the desk and blew frozen blood out of a primary input port with a jet of hot, compressed air. A mechadendrite emerged from his backpack and extended, a dataspike emerging from its spinning end.
463The spike plunged home.
464‘Curious,’ said Sebastion. ‘I am not getting any response from the fortress-monastery datanet.’
465‘Forgemaster,’ said Esau. ‘Is this the cause?’
466Sebastion looked to where Esau was pointing, his mechadendrite extracting itself and retracting as he turned.
467Not far from the xeno-slaves’ ingress the room was breached a second time, by a silver spear of metal which split into smaller threads and wormed their way into the casings of machines. Invisible in the dark, they glinted malevolently under the revived lumens.
468‘Xenos subversion tendrils, same as on the parapets. More blasphemy.’
469Scanning beams played over the tendrils from Sebastion’s armour as he approached.
470‘By Mars, it’s in everything.’ He went closer to the main root of silvery metal. ‘I dare not sever this.’ He walked alongside the spread of filaments, following one thread as it split and split again.
471‘Here is the defence laser matrix,’ he said, reaching a boxy cogitator casing.
472An arm lifted upon his back. The plasma cutter ignited.
473‘Forgive me, spirit of this mechanism, for what I must do,’ he intoned. ‘This will not be an elegant repair,’ Sebastion said to Esau. ‘If I sever these linkages, it should remove the xenos influence from the main battery. Once it is expunged, we will remotely spike the guns, and the fleet will be able to draw near. We have no hope of saving them, not without risking their use against our own ships.’ He ran his hands along the path of the silver thread, not quite touching it. ‘Cutting this will provoke a response from the mountain. You must watch over me. Do not trust what you see.’
474Sebastion opened a vox-channel to all the expedition members.
475‘Brothers, archmagos. I have reached battery command and am about to commence excision of xenos infiltration. Destruction of orbital defences will follow. Prepare yourselves.’
476He lowered the plasma cutter towards the thread.
477The mountain began to shake before the flame touched the metal.
478Esau raised his storm bolter, and stood guard.
479Felix cut connection with the fleet.
480‘It is done,’ he said. ‘The transport is prepared to come. The fleet is on standby for extraction. We shall go within.’
481Gathein and he went inside the turret, descending metal steps towards the top level of the citadel.
482‘I wish you to perform another psychic scan of the mountain, Epistolary,’ said Felix when they were halfway down. ‘I want to know if the increased activity has any effect on the etheric readability of the–’
483He stopped on a short landing. Gathein was nowhere to be seen. There was nowhere he could have gone. The inside of the turret was a hollow circle. The access stairs to the roof ran in a dull red circuit around the walls. Cables were neatly pinned to the ancient rockcrete, broken by a junction box decorated with a jawless steel skull. The room was completely featureless besides these few details. There was a single way in, and a single way out. Gathein had vanished.
484‘Gathein!’ Felix brought his weaponry online with a thought. Powerfields crackled in the quiet.
485He went back up the stairs to the armoured hatch leading to the roof. It was shut tight. He slammed his shoulder into the hatch, causing it to boom, but it would not budge.
486‘Gathein,’ he voxed.
487Soft static replied.
488‘Decimus!’
489A soft voice called to him from the ground, impossible in the vacuum, and yet he distinctly heard it. The door into the main body of the tower was closing. Felix caught a glimpse of movement before it swung closed.
490‘Gathein? Gathein, I have a contact, I am in pursuit, tower upper level. Follow me if you can.’
491He carried on down the stairs and went out cautiously, his boltstorm gauntlet held out in front of him. There was another stair down, a short flight that led into a hall in the centre of the tower. Several rooms occupied the level, all empty cells. Felix didn’t know much of the Scythes’ cult, but they looked like isolation rooms or meditation cells. They were all lockable from the outside only, each one having a hard cot and a single water spout.
492He searched them one at a time. Nothing was in any of them. They must have been unoccupied at the time of the invasion, because they were undamaged. No real attack had come against the tower. The tyranids always went where there was prey.
493Still, he was careful, pushing open the door with his closed power fist, the machine-spirit of his twinned guns ready to fire.
494Atmospheric mix was pouring into the tower. The hiss of it grew in volume as the air thickened.
495He’d checked five cells when he heard a burst of musical laughter from the end of the corridor. He backed out of the cell he was in quickly, banging the wall hard with his bulky armour. The door in the last cell was closing. Again there was a flash of movement.
496‘Wait!’ called Felix.
497The door closed. He heard it now. Sound was filling the tower along with the air.
498He ran down the corridor. The door was locked and would not open. The lock was a simple slide bar, sturdy enough to shut a Space Marine inside, but not sophisticated. No matter how hard he tugged on it, it would not move. He felt a terrible urge to get inside the room.
499‘Thracian, Cawl, Cominus, respond.’
500The vox hissed in his ear.
501‘Gathein!’ he shouted. His amplified voice killed the silence. The tower closed in on him. It seemed aware.
502‘Decimus?’
503The soft voice came from the other side of the door, and he knew it.
504‘Nonus?’
505‘Come on, Decimus!’
506‘Nonus!’ he shouted. His head swam. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t think. Nonus was dead. A period of time large enough to swallow the birth and death of an empire separated them. He knew this. Why then did he raise his fist with a cry and slam it into the bolt?
507The door exploded off its hinges into the room, clanging off the wall. Felix plunged in.
508The moist fronds of ferns slapped him in the face.
509‘Decimus!’
510He was running. His feet were bare. Turf gave beneath his toes.
511‘Decimus, come find me!’
512‘Nonus!’ he shouted.
513He burst into a familiar clearing. Nonus was kneeling on the grass, an array of toys laid out in front of him.
514‘Nonus,’ Felix said.
515Nonus looked up from his playthings.
516‘You came! I’m so glad. I miss you. Come play with me.’
517Felix held up his hands in amazement. They were human, unmodified. More than that, they were a boy’s hands. He went over to his brother. He was the age he had been when Felix was taken, millennia ago, the day he was supposed to go to the Fortress of Hera, but was taken off the lighter moments before it launched.
518‘Is this a memory?’
519Nonus shook his head.
520Felix walked forwards cautiously, taking everything in with a Space Marine’s attentiveness. It was comical in a small boy and his brother laughed.
521‘It’s exactly as I remember it. The forest dome of Pembria park. The arboretum.’ He looked through a tangle of trees. High above them the crystalflex of an agri dome glinted in the sunlight. Laphis was too dry and sunburned to support natural forests. Grassland predominated. The only forests were in the parks. ‘I remember it all.’
522He picked up a small toy, a mass-produced spacecraft bearing the iconography of the XIII Legion. ‘This was mine. I wanted to join them so badly.’
523Nonus smiled. He had been three years younger than Felix, and looked upon him as if Felix were the centre of his universe. The future tetrarch felt a stab of pain in his single heart.
524‘I know.’
525He patted his brother’s knee and took the toy from his hand.
526‘Where did you go? You were supposed to go to Macragge, but you vanished.’
527Felix made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob.
528‘Where didn’t I go? It wasn’t my fault. I’m so sorry.’
529‘We didn’t expect to see you again, but we never got to hear that you arrived. We never got news like the others. When we found out you were gone we were so sad. Mother cried every day for years. Father never smiled. People talked about you. They thought you’d done something wrong. Some of them said so, to mother, and that made her cry more. I tried to be happy for them, but I couldn’t. I tried and tried, but she cried and he never smiled. I missed you. We never knew what happened to you. Father never gave up. Never. Petitions to the enforcers, to the arbitrators when that didn’t work, then to the Ultramarines. He got into trouble. An arbitrator came to tell him off. But he never gave up. He was sad. So was I. Right until the day I died.’
530‘Did you have a good life?’ asked Felix, half-dreading the answer.
531‘I did.’
532‘I am sorry I was not there to share it.’
533‘It’s all right. You’re here now.’ Nonus smiled at him. ‘Nine and ten, together again.’
534Felix ruffled his brother’s hair. ‘She wanted ten children.’
535‘He only two.’
536‘She counted down.’
537They giggled at the joke in their names.
538‘Father let her after, you know,’ he said. ‘She had four more, my brothers and sisters. But we never forgot you, my biggest and best brother.’ He smiled up at Felix in a way that crushed his heart.
539‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
540‘Well, you’re here now. Hey!’ said Nonus, suddenly cheerful, pointing up. ‘Let’s climb the big tree.’
541‘Which one?’ said Felix. All the trees in the arboretum were big, huge Macraggian oaks and silverpine.
542‘The very biggest,’ said Nonus.
543Gas hissed through vents into the apothecarion. Repressurisation to tolerable levels took only a few minutes. Yansar set to work on Tullio as soon as he was able.
544He salvaged what materials he could from the Scythes’ medical centre. Everything was in disarray, but he was able to put together a kit for the procedure that was far more versatile than his battlefield equipment. While he was waiting for atmosphere, he brought the apothecarion’s medicae units into operation, including cleansing and sterilisation cabinets that he used upon the equipment. When the air pressure was high enough, he began cutting Tullio’s armour away with a power saw. Dull metallic flakes of ceramite were gathered up and sucked away by a vacuum tube attached to the saw. When the plate was cut, he took out spray bottles of solvent and doused the area, softening the hardened gels that held the broken plate together.
545This took several minutes. While he waited, he removed his helmet. Retinal displays made certain procedures easier, but he preferred to see what he was doing with his naked eyes, and removing the helmet gave his head a greater range of movement, important in a tricky operation such as this.
546He checked the screens of the machine he had hooked up to the medical ports in Tullio’s armour. The device constantly sampled the Space Marine’s blood. Yansar was particularly attentive to the levels of pseudo hormones that governed the Belisarian furnace housed in Tullio’s chest cavity. He frowned at the data, and adjusted the amount of counteragent the machine was pumping into him.
547‘Not yet,’ he said to himself. ‘Let’s have a good look in there first.’
548Yansar had removed Tullio’s power plant to get him into the cot. Power was being supplied to his suit by a large battery pack under the table. Now he took Tullio’s helmet off, easing it from his head. Tullio was in chemical sleep, and his head lolled. Yansar laid it carefully against his armour neck ring.
549Next he busied himself with the bolts locking Tullio’s wargear together. He selected the appropriate head for the power driver mounted in his gauntlet. The blow that had wounded Tullio had been hard but not brutally so, so the chestplate was shredded but not badly distorted. All except one of the bolts came out as they should. The last was bent and had him clucking his tongue in annoyance. He retracted his driver and picked up the powersaw. Cutting lockbolts was difficult and made him feel more like a Techmarine than an Apothecary.
550By the time the bolts were dealt with, the sealant gels were sufficiently softened. A shallow scan showed bonding between the foam and Tullio’s clotted blood, gluing his mangled breastplate, under-armour and his bodyglove into his wounds.
551‘I’ll be as gentle as I can, brother,’ said Yansar. ‘Because this will be painful.’
552He eased the breastplate off. The under-plating was badly buckled and came away with the chest plate. A large section of Tullio’s bodyglove lifted, tearing scabs away from wounds. Dark blood welled.
553Yansar scowled. The wounds were worse than he thought.
554Tullio’s eyes flickered. His head rolled.
555‘Steady, brother.’ Yansar worked quickly to cut away the bodyglove. A surgical laser mounted on his backpack arm vaporised fragments of plastek in the wound. The blood slowed. Larraman cells clotted it quickly.
556Yansar extruded an array of lenses from his collar. They separated, and one flipped down in front of his right eye, magnifying the trauma site and highlighting flecks of ceramite and plastek in green. Yansar plucked them out with a tweezer, and pulled away the last of the torn bodyglove. After that, he took away Tullio’s belly plating, cutting out the bodyglove from there as well.
557Tullio’s torso was naked from his belt to his neck. The wound was fully exposed – two long furrows that cut diagonally down from left to right.
558The furrows started within a hairsbreadth of the arteries pulsing in the hollow of Tullio’s neck, and raked across the site of his primary heart, where the fused box of his rib cage had been exposed and shone whitely in parted meat. Past that, the ribs had been breached. The claws of the xenos were so sharp that they had cut cleanly through rather than breaking the bone.
559Yansar peered into the wound. The source of the vitae was an internal bleed that would have finished a mortal human. A Space Marine’s blood was more easily staunched, but an arterial tear like that could still kill, given enough time, and the danger of embolisms caused by hyperclotted blood circulating round Tullio’s system could not be underestimated.
560He had to cut away a section of Tullio’s rib box to get to the injury. He was quick. Through a gap an inch square, a world of engineered organs was revealed.
561Tullio’s eyes flickered. He moaned. Yansar refrained from upping his sedation. He was nearly done.
562Yansar’s narthecium extended a probe, which he inserted into the hole. As he did so he changed the setting on his lenses so that they projected a laser drawn view of Tullio’s innards onto his retina, the same way his helm could.
563So much was packed into a Space Marine’s body cavity, organs of such refined design and function no evolutionary process could have created them. Yansar allowed himself to feel awed as he worked. Few beings got to see what he saw. Cawl might name himself creator of the Primaris Space Marines, but this was the Emperor’s work Yansar was witnessing.
564The bleed was easily found, a tiny nick. Five bursts from the micro-las attached to the probe broke up the clots around it. A tiny grabber whipped out from the probe to clamp the tear shut while Yansar unfurled an adhesive web to close it. Once he allowed Tullio’s enhanced systems to operate freely, the wound would heal fully within a day.
565Tullio was stirring. Yansar increased the tempo of the operation. He withdrew the probe, then replaced the section of removed bone and stapled it to hold still while he sealed it up with a bone welder he’d taken from a cabinet. That done, he pulled the skin back into place, sutured the cuts closed and sprayed them with healing balms. He gave his work one last look over. He was satisfied, and permitted himself a smile.
566He turned to the machine and disengaged the pumps filling Tullio’s body with hormone suppressant. In a few moments, his Emperor’s gifts would engage and finish Yansar’s job for him.
567There was a click, the soft, sharp noise of a safety catch being disengaged.
568He turned back to Tullio. He had his bolt pistol in his hand. Slowly, he raised it to point at Yansar’s head.
569‘Get down,’ said Tullio hoarsely.
570Yansar dropped to the floor.
571Tullio fired once. The report, ignition and explosion of the bolt blurred into one loud boom that reverberated around the small room.
572Yansar looked around.
573On the ground were the smoking remains of a mechanoid drone.
574The Apothecary walked over and nudged it with his foot. Six metal legs curled around its broken mechanical thorax.
575‘Xenos,’ he said. ‘Necron. It came through the vent.’ He looked up to where a grille had covered over an air circulation shaft. The centre had been neatly disintegrated.
576‘Quiet,’ said Tullio. ‘Can you hear that?’
577The sound of rustling came from outside the theatre door. Yansar drew his absolver pistol.
578‘Help me up,’ said Tullio hoarsely.
579‘Stay there, brother. Cover me from the cot. You will not regain your strength for an hour or more. Let your body heal.’
580‘There’s not time, something’s coming.’
581‘Stay down!’ Yansar went to the door and keyed it open, stopping it partway with a second press of the button.
582The room on the other side was crawling with small, hexapedal robots. Flat green beams of light shone from their heads. Where they touched, matter frittered away into particles, which others of the swarm sucked up. The robots crawled over everything. A line of them entered and a line departed, carrying away their bounty as diligently as ants.
583They did not appear to see Yansar, and he quickly shut the door.
584‘More of them.’
585‘Fetch me my bolt rifle,’ said Tullio, gesturing weakly to the stand the gun rested on. Yansar strode across the room, picked it up and handed it to Tullio. The veteran checked it over, and racked a bolt into the firing chamber.
586‘If they attack, grenades will be of more use,’ said Yansar. ‘There are many of them.’
587‘What about my armour? It will be hard to fight like this.’
588‘It needs repair,’ said Yansar. ‘We’re going to need help to get out of here.’ He activated the vox. ‘Tetrarch, this is Yansar, respond,’ he voxed.
589A menacing static hiss filled his hearing.
590‘Tetrarch, we have a problem.’
591‘No contact?’
592Yansar held up a hand.
593‘Apothecary!’ Tullio aimed at the door.
594Dozens of spots of green light began to shine through the metal of the theatre door.
595‘Perhaps you’d better get up after all,’ said Yansar, going to help Tullio to his feet.
596The vox whined.
597‘Tetrarch?’
598The sound of boltgun fire came with a distorted voice.
599‘This is Thracian.’
600‘We are under attack. We are trapped in theatre four of the apothecarion.’
601‘Then we are coming to you.’
602The door was frittering away to nothing, craters growing around the dots of light.
603‘Hurry,’ said Yansar.
604‘Forgemaster, something approaches.’ Esau datacast readings from his suit sensorium to Sebastion. A swarm of red dots crawled down towards their position on his cartograph. ‘The location and manner of enemy is uncertain,’ said Esau.
605‘Whatever they are, they are on the exterior of strategic command,’ said Sebastion calmly. ‘Stand ready. I am nearly finished. The xenos machine infection is too widespread for me to regain control. All organic servitor components of the fortress network are gone, but the invading xenos network has replaced them. I have to rig the primary cogitation junction for detonation to prevent the mountain regaining control, then destroy the weapons themselves.’ He looked upwards. The multiple arms of his servo harness continued to work around him. ‘See to it I complete the task. If we leave these weapons active, I predict all will return to functionality and be suborned by the mountain. The fleet is in danger. Destruction of this nexus must be achieved.’
606‘As you command, Forgemaster,’ said Esau.
607Filaments of living metal lay shrivelled all around the main cogitation array. He had freed it, for now, but the speed with which the strands stirred and began to reconstruct themselves suggested they would not remain sundered for long. Having removed all linkages from the surface, Sebastion found more beneath. He burned back what he could.
608Esau’s cartolith pulsed with movement.
609‘They are gathering above us. Concentration here.’ He sent the location to Sebastion and raised his storm bolter to aim at the ceiling. ‘Increasing energy emissions. They are coming through.’
610Esau’s power fist crackled into life, sending dancing blue light around the room that brought false life to the dead.
611Sebastion unclamped a melta flask from his thigh. He depressed a panel in the side, exposing the input jack for a remote detonator. He attached this with his human hands while the arms of the servoharness darted and cut, driving back tendrils of the silver metal reinvading the systems. With the detonator in place, he twisted the handle on the top of the bomb to arm it, then placed it within the machine.
612‘Forgemaster,’ Esau said calmly. ‘I see them.’
613A portion of the ceiling glowed green. A faint square, brighter to the centre, where a growing black dot spread outwards.
614Sebastion glanced up at the breach. ‘Gauss beams. I hypothesise first wave canoptek organisms. We have awoken the guardians of the mountain, my brother.’
615Metal and rockcrete was being broken down into black, grainy particulate that pattered down from the ceiling like the sands in an hourglass.
616‘We will never be able to reoccupy this site,’ said Esau. The brighter green spread to the very edges of the square. The blackness within it followed, compressing the green tighter and brighter; though both green and black were circular, neither exceeded the limits of the square. More disrupted matter fell.
617‘Initiating control implosion in main batteries.’ Sebastion’s many hands danced over the dusty console. The first of four cylinders rose from beneath a screen.
618A tocsin honked, followed by a machine voice. <Warning. Defence battery control system self-destruct active.>
619A small red cap flipped open on top of the first cylinder, revealing a dataport. ‘Priming first defence laser denial device. Execute.’ Sebastion’s data shunt stabbed down into the lock, twisted, and depressed the cylinder. Code readers chimed acknowledgement. A brief tremor shook the room as the gun blew.
620<Defence laser one inactive.>
621The second cylinder rose upwards and exposed its dataport.
622‘Now this is the one that caused the trouble in the first place. The active cannon that fired upon the tetrarch,’ Sebastion said.
623Again his data interface slammed down. A second clarion of chimes. Another explosive rumble.
624<Defence laser two inactive.>
625The third cylinder was rising when Esau spoke.
626‘They are coming through.’
627The square turned into a perfect shaft burrowed through dozens of feet of layered armour. Something moved back at the top, the green light cast by its mechanisms shifting over the floor.
628A flood of robotic drones dropped through.
629Esau opened fire. He paced his shooting. Storm bolters were destructive, but ate ammunition greedily.
630‘Hurry,’ he said.
631He couldn’t kill them all. Many of the insectoid robots exploded but more crashed onto the floor, where they drew themselves up into a living carpet of silver. They poured in all directions, covering the floor with their undulations. A thousand green ocular sensors shone. They swarmed Esau’s legs, and he stamped them flat. Where they clambered up his legs he plucked them free from his body and crushed them in his power fist. They exploded with mighty bangs. Mandibles twitched over his plating, playing spreads of deadly light. Ceramite and plasteel dissolved into nothing. Exposed systems sparked with short circuits before they too were dissolved. Still he continued firing.
632<Defence laser four inactive.>
633Sebastion hurried. The living metal of the mountain was growing back quickly, accelerated by the presence of the drones. The upper limbs of his servoharness darted into the cogitation junction, cutting and burning. The lower pair reversed themselves, switched out their utility heads for short range plasma casters, and opened fire.
634‘Now the lesser batteries,’ Sebastion said. Eight more cylinders. Two went down, the charges they were connected to detonating deep within the fortress-monastery and ripping out huge tranches of the control systems. Esau gave out a moan of pain.
635He was being overwhelmed. Silver covered him head to toe, lit by flashes of gauss light. His storm bolter blasted a hole in the swarm, then vanished.
636Esau’s flailing shape stood a moment longer, then collapsed in on itself. The swarm spread and flooded over the floor towards Sebastion. More of the drones were coming through the hole in the wall bored through by the traitors, during the fall of the fortress.
637Sebastion left the last six cylinders, took up his bolter and turned to face his doom.
638‘Severing your master’s link was a reckless cut, but it is done. Our guns will never be yours.’ He opened fire.
639They came at him in a wave. He emptied his magazine into them and blasted their front rank apart. His servo arms whirled about, slaying hundreds with the energies of captive stars.
640There were too many.
641‘Detonate,’ Sebastion commanded.
642The melta charge in the cogitation junction responded. Fusion glow backlit the Forgemaster as he fought, then fire ripped through the strategium, driving the dark back into the Pharos.
643CHAPTER FIFTEEN
644IN THE SERVICE OF MANKIND
645
646Circa 10,000 years ago
647There was a problem. There always was a problem.
648Cawl lay back in his chair. Its mechanisms cradled him more effectively than his own dear mother had centuries ago. Plush upholstery soothed his bare skin where he brushed it. Firm springs supported him. The air purification unit purred soothingly. But it was situated directly over his desk, it was always set too cold, and that spoiled everything.
649He couldn’t think in his office. He couldn’t think out on the experimental line. It was too noisy, or too cold, or annoying in any one of a hundred different ways. He needed a little time to puzzle out the latest problem, but no one would give it to him.
650A notification clarion played softly. Before he could respond the door opened, letting the soft noises of the experimental centre into his haven. Even that was too much to bear, and he groaned.
651‘Not feeling it today, Director Sedayne?’
652A long, thin-fingered hand fell away from Cawl’s eyes. A headache pulsed behind them. Jespin Creuz smiled at him winningly.
653‘No. Do you have to gurn like that?’
654Cawl sat forwards. A small, pre-Dark Age device sat on the glass of his desk. He picked it up and began to fiddle with it.
655‘I am sorry my good humour offends you,’ Creuz said good-humouredly. He was holding an active data-slate against his chest. Cawl could only see the back of it, but the lights from the screen shone colours from Creuz’s white smock coat, and caught on the metal of the pens arrayed neatly in his pocket.
656‘What do you want? Are those targets you have there?’ said Cawl.
657‘They are.’
658Creuz slid the slate across the desk.
659Cawl glanced at the screen and grunted.
660‘You are behind,’ said Creuz. ‘Significantly behind.’
661‘I am old, that is what I am, Creuz. Three centuries weigh a man down. I need a rest.’
662‘There can be no rest.’ Creuz gave Cawl a look of mock sympathy. His eyes were too small for his big bald skull, and they were lost in his sockets, which were smudged around with purple and black. ‘I wouldn’t bring up questions of age with Him, if I were you. He’s older than all of us, so they say.’
663‘Well, He doesn’t look it, and He doesn’t look like He feels it,’ Cawl said. He put the ancient device down on the desktop, and gestured at it with an open hand. ‘This device was made by men with a far greater grasp of science than we have. Not one person I have met can decide exactly what it was created for. Yet if you look at it, it is simple. A spring loaded arm, no spring now, but that’s what it was. A proto-plastek disc to take something, perhaps a larger disc. This groove here,’ he ran his finger around it, ‘I think it took a protective material. Some kind of felt, maybe. And this.’ He picked it up and flipped it over. ‘This took a motor, I am sure. Perhaps this hole here took a lens of some kind.’
664‘A data recording device?’
665Cawl pointed at Creuz. ‘A lot of people say that. None of them can explain why they think so, or how it worked.’
666Creuz shrugged. ‘Maybe He knows.’
667‘He probably does. He probably saw the damn thing when it was working.’ Cawl looked into the reflection in the glass tabletop. A face that was not his own looked back. It had a high forehead over a face that was tall overall, a downturned mouth, a long, thin nose that would have been aquiline if it didn’t change its mind at the tip and turn upwards. Long hair, obviously dyed black, lay flat over his technologist’s robes. It was the countenance of a vain man who was not blessed with the genes to justify vanity. ‘He won’t say though, will He? He keeps His secrets close. We wallow about in the darkness of ignorance, He knows so much, but will He share? No.’
668‘You sound disillusioned.’
669‘I’m tired.’
670Creuz retrieved his slate and gave Cawl a stern look. ‘It doesn’t matter if you are tired. You have a task. You were chosen by Him. He thinks you can do it, He expects you to.’
671‘And I will!’ snapped Cawl. ‘I need more time. There are problems with the protein sequencing. The coding provided by the genarchs of Cambon is incorrect. I have had to go through the whole spool and reset it multiple times. It is not I who is at fault.’
672‘Then work quicker.’
673‘How many test subjects do you want me to kill?’ said Cawl. ‘I have run through four batches of volunteers, and innumerable vat blanks. The carapace is stable until implantation. The same problem, every time, only the cause of death changes.’
674‘This time?’
675‘The last batch spread uncontrollably and hardened prematurely,’ said Cawl, waving his hands irritably.
676‘Six months ago it was disintegrating.’
677‘Well, they still all die, Creuz.’
678‘Amar Astarte will come down here next herself, you know, it won’t be me.’
679‘I’m sick of that name,’ growled Cawl. ‘Tell her I have to go back to the baseline coding again. There are more faults in there. I will find them, but I need more time!’
680Creuz bent lower. ‘Well that you don’t have, Director Sedayne,’ he said. ‘Work faster, or the Emperor will replace you. I’m warning you. I’ve seen it happen.’
681‘You mean she’ll replace me.’
682‘You are serving mankind, not Him, and certainly not her,’ Creuz scolded him.
683‘Then I will redouble my efforts, in the service of mankind,’ said Cawl sourly.
684‘See that you do.’ He looked around. ‘Nice office. It would be a shame to lose it.’
685Creuz bowed and departed with a polite ‘good day’.
686Cawl blew out a long, exasperated sigh. This man who called Himself the Emperor, He asked too much. He needed a rest. He wanted to go to the bridge. To watch the sun rise over old Miamar. To hear the sound of the wind and the…
687BANG.
688‘Cawl.’
689BANG.
690‘Belisarius Cawl.’
691BANG.
692Friedisch lay dying in his arms, blood spilling from his mouth as he tried to speak. ‘Belisarius, don’t do it. Please. Not for me. Save yourself.’
693BANG.
694Traitor Space Marines fired at him in a burning, subterranean field.
695BANG.
696Metal in the wind.
697Insignificant.
698BANG.
699Come to me.
700Now
701Cawl opened his eyes.
702He was in the power sink control node. Angled batteries were laid out in a circle around the platform. All hummed. Activity lights shone on them and on the machines that controlled them.
703‘I am Belisarius Cawl,’ he said. ‘I am!’
704‘Of course you are, archmagos dominus.’
705Cawl blinked.
706‘Are you all right, archmagos dominus?’
707‘Yes?’ said Cawl quizzically. ‘Yes,’ he affirmed. ‘Scythes of the Emperor fortress-monastery citadel, Emperor’s Watch. Sotha, post tyranid harvest.’
708‘That is the correct location,’ Qvo-87 said. His limited mind was unnerved by Cawl’s behaviour. He reached out with unsure hands to comfort, or perhaps ward off his madness. Nevertheless, he still recorded everything. Subsidiary arms worked quickly in the shadows of his robes, the stylus a blur on its data-slate.
709‘There was a voice,’ said Cawl. ‘That was new.’ He blinked again. He moved around on his giant body. It seemed clumsy and unfamiliar.
710‘Master?’
711‘The Pharos is attempting contact. Real contact. I think it wants to talk. I must try a full interface.’
712‘Our equipment will be here soon, master.’ Qvo-87 paused.
713‘There’s not time for that. Matters are coming to a head.’
714‘Are you sure you are all right, my lord?’
715‘Never better, my dear Friedisch.’
716Qvo-87 smiled at him sympathetically. ‘I am not Friedisch, magos.’
717BANG!
718The noise threw Cawl a moment, but only a moment by the measure of the Mechanicus. A sliver of a second. An iota of time. He was already formulating a dozen responses before the noise had died away, and had chosen the one he would employ the millisecond it ended.
719‘Was that an explosion?’ Cawl said.
720Yansar quickly reattached Tullio’s powerplant, then Tullio leaned weakly against the wall while Yansar wrenched and heaved at the chirurgeon cot until he flipped it over. Behind this makeshift barricade, the two of them took shelter. Yansar piled up all the ammunition they had and placed their stock of grenades within easy reach.
721The door was almost gone. Solid metal became a lacy sculpture under the mandibles of the drones. They fringed the door all the way round, legs clamped to the wall, cones of green light emitting from their mouth parts dissolving matter. Although there were now plenty of ways in for the robots, they ignored the Space Marines and concentrated on dis­assembling the door, atom by atom.
722‘Necron scarabs,’ said Tullio. ‘I fought their like in the War of Silence. You?’
723‘My Chapter was occupied with the Chikanti incursion. Did you battle their king?’
724Tullio chuckled dryly, wincing at the pain it caused him. ‘Not personally. I’m still alive. I don’t think we were even in the same sector.’
725‘If this is a tomb complex, then these automata will be the least of our worries,’ said Yansar. Both of them spoke low, not wishing to draw the attention of the drones. ‘Why aren’t they attacking?’
726‘They haven’t registered us as a threat yet,’ said Tullio. ‘I’ve seen whole companies of Adeptus Astartes march through tomb complexes at the first stage of awakening and be ignored, as long as they’re careful. They’ll consume anything, but if you get out of the way while they’re busy, they won’t even notice. You can even kill them.’ Tullio adjusted his grip. ‘Then something changes, and that stops, and they attack.’
727‘So, we wait here until they attack and overwhelm us, or we wait here until they eat their way over here and consume us.’
728‘Those are the likely outcomes,’ said Tullio. The scarabs withdrew, and they could see into the outer chamber. The walls were reduced to a skeleton of exposed support beams which were being assiduously disassembled as they watched. ‘This world has had poor fortune. Devoured by tyranids, with the bones for necrons to gnaw.’
729‘Mark the third line in the deck plating,’ said Yansar.
730‘Marked,’ said Tullio.
731‘They cross that, then we open fire. Grenades first into the outer chamber, you drive back the vanguard.’
732The last of the door collapsed into black dust. As one, the gauss beams shut off. Green eye lights blinked in rippled sequence. Yansar’s autosenses registered the pattering drum of alien sensor arrays tasting the room. One of the robots ventured forwards. Sensing barbels stroked at the floor. Hyperplastek wings stirred.
733‘This is it,’ said Tullio. ‘Ready?’ He sighted down his gun, mentally marking a target for each of the bolts in his magazine.
734Yansar pulled a grenade out of its looped belt. ‘Ready.’
735Other scarabs peeled themselves from the mass around the door, trooping after the first in a precisely straight line for a couple of yards then splitting apart with geometric precision into a fan of silver. More and more of the drones joined the advancing group. They spread in hypnotic patterns.
736The scarabs began to deconstruct the floor.
737The first drone reached the third line. There were now several hundred scarabs in the room.
738‘Now,’ said Yansar. He flicked out the pin from a frag grenade and tossed it through the door.
739Tullio squeezed his trigger, blasting apart the first scarab into a rain of metal particles. He kept his gun in single shot mode, aiming carefully before firing. A second scarab exploded as Yansar’s grenade detonated. Dozens of damaged drones were blasted into the room, smashing medicae equipment into pieces.
740Hundreds of glowing eyes turned on them.
741‘That got their attention,’ said Tullio.
742An angry buzz of wings rose, and swarms of scarabs flew into the room, some aflame from the explosion. Yansar tossed two more grenades one after the other into the mass. Both were swarmed. The first exploded, blowing out a sphere of fire and shattered robots. The second was deconstructed before it could detonate, its energies siphoned into the abdomens of the scarabs.
743The Space Marines were both shooting. Tullio switched fire mode, emptying the entire magazine in a couple of seconds. Metal ricocheted off their armour and the walls. Tullio hissed as his bare torso was stung by chips of flying shrapnel. Yansar tossed more grenades, holding on to them till the last moment before tossing them into the swarm to ensure they exploded. The magazine dropped from Tullio’s gun. He had another in place smoothly, never moving his gun from firing position, breaking his fusillade for the minimal amount of time.
744The swarm drew closer, the whirring of wings an aggressive buzz. Killing green light flashed between glittering mandibles. A drone clamped itself to Yansar’s backpack, chewing through the arm supporting his medical light before he seized it and smashed it against the wall.
745‘There are too many!’ he shouted.
746‘There are.’
747Tullio moved his bolt rifle smoothly. Each bolt claimed at least one scarab; the explosion of the micro-warhead and shrapnel from the blast taking down those nearby they were so tightly packed.
748‘Down to my last magazine,’ said Tullio.
749Yansar picked up a grenade bandolier. He primed one.
750‘For the Emperor,’ he said.
751‘For the Emperor,’ said Tullio.
752Yansar hurled the grenade belt as hard as he could. It punched a hole through the cloud of mechanical insects, and flew into the next room. A tremendous explosion followed that took out the weakened wall between the theatre and the outer chamber. Scarabs were destroyed in their hundreds.
753Smoke filled the apothecarion. The wings fell silent.
754‘That will not be enough,’ said Tullio.
755Silver limbs twitched on the floor. The scarabs righted themselves.
756‘Farewell, brother,’ said Tullio. He drew his combat knife.
757A blast of fire roared into the outer chamber, engulfing the recovering scarabs, burning promethium frying their systems. A second blast whooshed in. Tullio and Yansar got up, and began stamping scarabs to pieces. Three Scythes of the Emperor emerged from the smoke and fire, the lead bearing a flamer.
758‘I am Brother Bokari,’ he said. ‘Thracian sent me.’
759An explosion shook the room. Weakened metal crashed down in a nearby chamber.
760‘Come,’ Bokari said. ‘We must be quick.’
761They were at the top of the tree, higher than they had ever been before.
762‘We should be getting home now,’ said Felix. ‘It is near supper and mother will be upset if it goes cold again.’ There was something bothering him. A memory that slipped and twisted just out of sight. Maybe it was because they were out too late again.
763‘Just a few more minutes,’ said Nonus. ‘I want to look. You can see the whole world from up here!’
764‘This isn’t the world. It’s a dome. There’s our hab-block.’ Felix pointed through a gap in the trees to the metal skin of a slender domicile building. There were dozens of them in a spiral pattern you could only see from the air.
765‘Is that the whole Imperium?’
766‘No,’ he said, looking at his brother strangely. ‘That is just Pembria, on Laphis. The Imperium is lots of worlds.’
767‘How many?’ asked Nonus.
768‘A million, more or less,’ said Felix. ‘It is big. The biggest, best empire in history, and the Emperor is our master.’
769‘And what is the primary constituent of its military strength?’ said Nonus in a harsh voice.
770Felix looked at him sharply. The illusion flexed. He came close to remembering who he was.
771Nonus blinked, his face all innocence. ‘I mean, the Space Marines! They are so strong. Are there lots and lots of them?’
772The question from his brother made Felix uneasy.
773‘Not very many,’ said Felix.
774‘They are blue. I like blue.’
775Felix smiled. ‘They’re not all blue. There are lots of different Chapters, all different colours.’
776‘Really,’ said his brother. His manner had become strangely cold, his voice growled. ‘What about the warriors with the ability to wield the powers of the warp. Are there many of them?’
777Felix moved back from his brother. ‘Nonus, what are you talking about?’
778‘I want to be a Space Marine!’ said his brother, childish again.
779‘Let’s go home,’ said Felix uneasily. Outside the dome, clouds were turning orange, scudding rapidly across hard blue skies, blown by steppe winds. Inside, shadows slunk together under the trees for their evening congregation.
780‘All right!’ shouted Nonus. He slid off the branch and clambered down the tree with the agility of a pterasquirrel.
781‘Wait!’ said Felix. ‘Careful, you’ll hurt yourself.’
782‘I won’t!’ said Nonus. He came to rest on a branch a few feet above the ground. Felix joined him.
783‘I’ve got an idea!’ said Nonus. ‘Let’s jump down.’
784‘Yes,’ said Felix. He tensed to leap, but he couldn’t.
785‘Why are you waiting? Coward!’ teased Nonus. ‘You won’t be an Ultramarine, not if you can’t jump off the branch. We’ve done it loads of times.’
786‘All right! All right!’ said Felix. ‘I’ll do it.’
787‘Let’s count to three.’ His brother slipped his hand into his. It was small, warm, and a little sticky. Felix squeezed it.
788‘I love you, Nonus. I am sorry,’ he said, but could no longer recall why.
789‘I love you too, brother,’ said Nonus. ‘Are you ready?’
790They looked down at the drop.
791‘One…’ they began together.
792‘Felix.’ The voice came from nowhere. Felix started.
793‘Did you hear that?’
794‘Two…’ Nonus continued. His hand gripped Felix’s so hard it hurt. Felix looked down and saw Nonus’ hand was skinned with shining metal. Light too powerful to contain shone through it. His own hand seemed huge, clad in armour. He blinked, and the image faded.
795‘Tetrarch. Stop. Look at me. Tetrarch!’
796‘Three!’ squealed Nonus in delight.
797As Nonus leapt, something pulled hard at Felix, preventing him from leaping. He wanted to jump more than anything, to show his brother he wasn’t scared, then go home for his meal and the warm, dull predictability of scholum tomorrow. Nonus dragged at him, threatening to pitch him forwards off the branch. His brother was eight, and slightly built, but for the half second before their hands slipped apart he felt as heavy as eternity. Then he was off balance, falling back. The forest flickered, became a cold sky full of stars.
798The killing drop off the roof of the Emperor’s Watch yawned before him.
799Fall, the harsh voice said. Fall!
800‘Tetrarch!’ Gathein had him, his right arm locked about Felix’s left. Felix’s battleplate was significantly heavier than Gathein’s. He was in danger of falling to his death and taking the Librarian with him. His suit’s muscle system and joints whined and growled, fighting to keep him upright.
801Gathein was slipping. ‘Tetrarch, please!’
802Felix came fully to his senses. The two of them staggered back onto the roof of the emitter tower, armour clashing together.
803They recovered quickly.
804‘How did I get up here?’ Felix asked.
805‘I don’t know. I went down into the tower. I lost a few moments, then you were gone. I found you up here.’
806‘The others,’ Felix said. He attempted contact with the groups of Space Marines scattered through the monastery. Static greeted him.
807An explosion trembled the tower, so far deep as to be almost imperceptible, but the vibrational pattern was unmistakable.
808‘Where is Belisarius Cawl?’ Felix said to Gathein.
809The vox crackled. Thracian spoke.
810‘Tetrarch,’ he said. ‘We are under attack.’
811CHAPTER SIXTEEN
812INTO THE PHAROS
813
814
815Gunfire drew them together. Felix coordinated the groups of scattered Space Marines as best he could, gathering them in the Vigilatum.
816He and Gathein were first into the high chamber, chasing down the thunder of bolters from gallery to gallery. Before they reached the ground floor, Daelus, Troncus, Alpha Primus and Ulas came onto the mid-levels, shortly followed by Yansar and Tullio, whose armour was half removed. Some of the Scythes were with them. They were firing behind them as they arrived, and ran shouting from the gallery down the stairs to the main floor. Felix joined them. The Scythes of the Emperor Apothecary Aratus was helping Yansar check over Tullio, who, although he bore a number of fresh wounds on his bare skin to go with the livid mess of his chest, seemed ready to fight.
817‘Where’s Thracian?’ he asked one of the Scythes.
818‘I do not know,’ said Bokari. ‘We left him in the armoury to rescue your men. Be ready, tetrarch. The enemy are behind us.’
819‘They’re coming!’ shouted Keltru.
820A swarm of flying constructs, thick as locusts, came roaring out of the passage.
821‘Fire!’ said Felix.
822Together the Space Marines put out such a tempest of bolt-fire that the swarm was shredded to pieces. Metal rained around them in sparking shards. More gunfire echoed up the lower passageways as Thracian and the rest of his men emerged in the Vigilatum.
823‘Sebastion?’ Felix voxed.
824‘Dead in the service of the Emperor,’ Thracian said. ‘Esau too. The guns are disabled. We have brought the wrath of the mountain on ourselves.’
825The swarm seemed to go on forever, boiling relentlessly from the corridor and swooping down towards the Space Marines. The machines had no long-ranged weaponry, or else they would have perished. The roaring bang of bolters was deafening even to Space Marines. All the extra sensors on Felix’s battle suit were confounded by the storm of metal. It was therefore a surprise when Cawl, accompanied by his aide, came stalking from the same lower passageway as Thracian had, aimed his weapons up into the swarm of robots, and opened fire.
826His solar atomiser spewed out a fat beam of searing energy that cut through the swarm and into the wall behind, vapourising hundreds of drones. Metal fell as molten rain.
827Qvo-87 pulled a short stave from beneath his robes and brandished it over his head. Section after section telescoped out of the centre until he held a slender, tapering staff in his hand. Cawl fired again. The swarm burst apart around the energy beam, twisting itself up into a monstrous spiral to avoid it, turned about, and dived.
828From the top of Qvo’s staff an energy shield spread, slow as syrup, running down the air around the Space Marines to encase them in a hemisphere. The Imperial force continued to fire, blasting apart the front of the plunging mass so that although it drove down at them, the drones were continuously shattered into fragments that rained down thickly, tinkling loudly enough off the paving to be heard over the roar of guns and the thrum of wings.
829The energy skin reached the floor.
830‘Prepare yourselves!’ Cawl boomed over the drone of thousands of contra-grav engines.
831‘For what?’ grunted Thracian.
832Cawl let his actions speak for themselves.
833A metal ovoid shot out of the top of his dorsal array with a loud pop. It lofted up, where it was caught by the swarm.
834There was a brief flash. A punishing electromagnetic wavefront blasted out from the device, then another, then three more in quick succession.
835The energy shield was extinguished. The pulses hit the Space Marines and the tech-priests hard. Cawl let out an electronic squawk. Qvo staggered. Felix’s displays crackled off and his power plant was knocked offline, even though his armour was hardened against haywire attacks. The Space Marines sagged, forced to rely on their own strength to stand in their heavy battle suits.
836The necron drones were far worse affected. The green lights burning in their eyes went out in a spreading ripple. The glow emanating from their innards guttered and died. Wings froze. Gravitic impellers cut out.
837‘By the Emperor,’ swore Thracian.
838The swarm collapsed.
839With a crash of metal, hundreds of drones fell from the air onto the Space Marines. Qvo threw himself down under Felix, who crouched to protect him. Tullio hunkered down, his hands held over his unarmoured head. The drones battered at the warriors. They were hefty, and rang from ceramite with punishing force. Together, they pummelled the warriors of the Emperor into the ground. Only Cawl stood unaffected, the drones slamming into his conversion field where their mass was annihilated and converted into searing bursts of light.
840Felix knelt trapped and dazed under a pile of alien metal. His armour clicked and whined as it attempted to restart its power feed. Chimes sounded. His displays blinked back on.
841He heaved himself up. The inert shells of xenos drones slithered off him.
842Qvo cowered on the ground.
843‘Are you all right?’ asked Felix. He offered a hand. Qvo took it and pulled himself upright.
844‘I live,’ said Qvo.
845Space Marines stirred under a silver carpet as thick as fish poured from a pelagic harvester’s nets. Metal clattered. Cawl looked upon them all with an amused expression.
846‘I told you to inform me of your actions, archmagos!’ Felix said.
847Cawl chuckled. ‘And spoil the surprise? There was no time.’
848‘The phrase “haywire pulse” takes less than a second to voice,’ said Felix.
849‘Well,’ said Cawl, which along with a shrug was halfway to an admission of guilt. ‘We’re all alive, aren’t we?’ A mechadendrite darted from his casing and plucked up one of the robots from the floor. Its legs were curled inwards, making it look like a sculpture of a dead arthropod. Cawl shook it then tossed it aside. ‘All things are dependent on the motive force, that will always be a weakness, even for the necrons,’ he said. ‘Although they are somewhat inured to these tactics, so I apologise for the strength of the pulse. Their circuitry must be burned out, it is the only way. Now we must be quick. The immediate threat is past, but the peace is temporary. A facility like this can manufacture an infinity of these devices, and worse. Now we have acted against the mountain, larger and more dangerous constructs will be awakening. Even these will not lie dead for long. Already their self-repair mechanisms begin to make good the damage caused.’
850‘Then what is your suggestion?’ said Felix.
851‘I have another solution to the problem of the swarms. But to effect it we must go into the Pharos now, where I may interface with its control matrix. The longer we delay the more danger we are in.’
852‘Agreed,’ said Felix. ‘I have ordered the Overlord to relocate to the north pad. We now have a way out.’
853‘Wise,’ said Cawl.
854‘There is more, and you will not object to it,’ said Felix. ‘I have ordered my ship into an anchorage geosynchronous with the mountain. As we speak, its weapons are trained upon the Pharos. If we are not out of this facility before twelve hours have passed, it will be destroyed. If we leave before then, it will be destroyed. If the shipmaster deems fit, it will be destroyed. There is no scenario, Cawl, that sees this mountain remaining intact.’
855‘I agree,’ said Cawl, affecting surprise. ‘Why would I not? Send them these codes, and the Zar Quaesitor will help in the destruction. I shall have what I need by then.’
856Cawl canted a hefty spread of data to Felix. The tetrarch tasked his cogitator to reroute it to the Lord of Vespator.
857‘I am sorry, Thracian,’ said Felix, turning to the Chapter Master. ‘I had hoped to return your fortress-monastery to you, but this device is too dangerous to be permitted to stand.’
858Thracian and the remaining Scythes of the Emperor stared at him long enough that Felix thought they would object, but then Thracian nodded.
859‘I agreed to its destruction, if necessary,’ he said. ‘Nothing that has occurred here alters that. We lost our fortress-monastery to one alien horror, now another awakens. Mount Pharos belongs to the past. Let the Chapter find a new home now. I told you I would not object, and I do not.’
860‘I am glad you agree.’
861‘I will follow you willingly, tetrarch, but I have a request.’
862‘Name it.’
863‘Allow us to leave you now. We must attend to our own task. Performing the last rites for our old geneseed is a matter of honour. Our Chapter has come to the ending of an era. We must lay our legacy to rest.’
864They are hiding something. Cadmus’ words came back to Felix. He almost asked them what it was. He did not. The question died inside him. Sometimes, a man must bear his shame alone.
865‘Go with my blessing, Chapter Master. Twelve hours, no more. Be at the north landing pad or die with your ancestors.’
866Thracian took Felix’s arm in the ancient warrior’s clasp, wrist to wrist.
867‘It has been my honour to fight with you, tetrarch. Sothara is in good hands. Destroy this place. Do not let a necron tomb world rise here to add to the sector’s woes.’
868‘Oh,’ said Cawl cheerfully. ‘I have already said that it is not a tomb world, Chapter Master. It is something far worse than that.’
869Before they opened the blast doors to descend back down to the Hall of the Founder, Felix voxed Diamedes and Austen. Already the Pharos was beginning to overcome the boosted vox signal, and he spoke hastily, ordering Austen to lead the tanks back down the mountain to Odessa Port, which was at sufficient distance to escape the destruction of the mountain. Austen would drive the lead tank, while the others would slave link to his, and proceed under the direction of their machine-spirits.
870Diamedes he ordered to bring armour spares up into the Hall of the Founder, though he urged him to take all caution as he came within the monastery, where he would link with Cadmus and Tullio, aid Tullio in rearmament and then accompany them to the northern pad. Tullio was too injured to fight on, and Felix feared the occurrences in the monastery may affect Cadmus’ judgement. Together, the three of them were to secure the pad and await the gunship.
871That left Felix, Gathein, Cominus, Ixen, Troncus, Daelus and Yansar to accompany Cawl, Qvo and Alpha Primus. Thracian’s depleted party made ready to leave, with their geneseed vault and their recovered dead protected by their remaining three Terminators.
872They all faced the blast doors, waiting for Cawl and Qvo to override the mechanisms. Felix kept a wary eye on the mound of disabled drones, but they did not move. Finally, the tech-priests were finished.
873‘These doors will never close again, once we are through. Are we ready?’ Cawl hummed.
874‘We are,’ said Felix.
875‘Then I bid thee, machine-spirits, open this door for the final time.’
876Felix couldn’t tell if Cawl were being sincere or was grandstanding. It could well have been both.
877The door opened, and they went down wide marble stairs back into the Hall of the Founder, where Cawl once again busied himself at the centre of the room.
878‘Tetrarch,’ said Thracian, ‘it is now that we shall part ways.’
879‘Emperor be with you, brother,’ said Felix.
880The Scythes filed past onto the downward staircase, carrying their dead. Thracian waited for the gene vault and its Terminator escort to begin its descent, then slammed his fist against his breastplate in salute.
881‘Farewell, Decimus Felix.’
882With that he turned and followed his men into the dark.
883‘We shall not see him again,’ said Alpha Primus.
884‘They may survive,’ said Felix.
885‘They will not,’ said Primus. ‘They do not intend to live.’
886Cawl was up against the wall towards the rear of the Hall of the Founder, running his hands and other appendages over the marble facing still surviving. ‘Did you notice anything strange about Thracian, Decimus?’ he asked. A mechadendrite played a scan beam over a decorated panel. Metal knuckles knocked on the stone.
887‘He is hiding something, so Cadmus said.’
888‘What, though?’ said Cawl. ‘Did you not see the modifications to his armour?’
889‘There were many,’ said Felix. ‘Field repairs, honours and battle trophies.’
890Cawl looked at him while his supplementary limbs continued their work. ‘Really, Decimus. Did you not see anything more significant?’
891‘No.’
892‘Ah well, the modifications are subtle, and so I suppose easy to miss.’
893‘I will put you out of your misery, lord tetrarch,’ said Primus, prompting a grumble from Cawl.
894‘You spoil my fun,’ said Cawl, and went back to feeling the marble.
895‘Then do you command me not to speak, master?’
896‘No, go ahead,’ said Cawl, moving onto the next panel. He gestured impatiently at Qvo-87 to come to his side. ‘Felix obviously did not see. Enlighten him.’
897Primus’ glum manner had a hint of amusement. ‘The Chapter Master was wearing a psychic inhibitor as part of his panoply. It was situated at the back of his helmet though I noticed it because of its effect – Thracian is surrounded by a null-field.’
898‘What of it?’
899‘It is a weak field. Devices like that are of little use against battle psykers or sorcery,’ said Primus.
900‘They are commonly worn by those who wish to remain unobtrusive. Criminals. Petty witches. So we have to ask why a Chapter Master of the Adeptus Astartes was wearing it,’ said Cawl. ‘Either he was an undeclared psyker of mean talents, which is unlikely, or we have to consider what possible benefit it could bring him in this particular place?’
901‘Are you suggesting he was seeking to block out the genestealers’ psychic net?’
902‘It would make sense, don’t you think?’ said Cawl. ‘A low level psychic field like that could be disrupted by such a device. Come on, he is wearing a psy-suppressor. A null-field. Why do you think that is?’
903‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me,’ said Felix wearily.
904Cawl reared up. ‘Think! That’s why I’m talking to you, my boy. You think I patronise you. I do not. You have a keen mind. It is time to use it. Item one – why is Thracian wearing a null-field?’
905‘The Scythes are compromised,’ said Felix.
906‘It would explain their secrecy,’ said Cawl. ‘It’s only an idea, and not that I’m right all of the time, but,’ he said slyly, ‘if they are, then we must address item two – what do they have in their box?’
907‘The box? It is a gene vault.’
908‘Is it?’ said Cawl. ‘Now, here I think.’ A short-range laser flashed at the end of a metal tentacle, scoring an x into the stone. ‘Alpha Primus, if you would.’
909Primus searched around the statues, paying close attention to their weapons.
910‘What do you mean?’ said Felix. ‘About Thracian.’
911‘All in good time. You think about it. I have finished with the subject.’ Cawl came scuttling over to Felix. ‘This place is marked in the old books as Primary Location Alpha. Before it was a memorial to the Scythes of the Emperor’s first Master, it was the centre of research in this mountain. It is named in the books remaining as a tuning stage. It is an apt name. You saw the phantoms we conjured here?’
912‘They were hard to miss, archmagos,’ Felix said.
913‘Quite. Well, that was my attempt to see if the mechanisms that underpin Primary Location Alpha worked. The mechanisms of the necrons are nothing so crude as moving parts and wires, but atomic arrangements of the most sublime intricacy built into the very stone. From what little remains in the library, I was led to understand that this location was irreparably damaged during the Heresy. It has evidently repaired itself to a degree. However, it does not have the full functionality that I require. Once, this place could project a living being instantaneously across the cosmos. It could send information anywhere in the galaxy.’
914‘We do not require those things.’
915‘No, we require a map,’ said Cawl. ‘I need to find my way into the belly of this machine before you vaporise it. We can’t do that without a map. This facility does not exist in solely four dimensions. If we go in without a map, we will never come out. I can access the infosphere of the device, but it has yet to regain full functionality. For that we must go deeper.’
916‘What is your ultimate goal?’
917‘To reach the centre, the Heart of the Pharos. This map will lead us to another map. The second map is what I seek.’
918Alpha Primus stopped by the statue of a Chapter Master whose hand rested on the counterweight of a two-handed hammer. He grabbed the handle, and heaved at it, snapping the handle halfway down and yanking the head from its seat. He hefted it as if it were a real weapon, and strode to the marked section.
919‘Stand back, everyone!’ Cawl shouted.
920Primus hit the marked spot three times. With each strike chips of marble flew. Upon the third blow the hammer shattered into lumps of stone as it crashed through the wall facing. Primus discarded the sculpture and used the opening to wrench the wall away.
921On the other side was a surface of blackstone. Halfway across the hole Primus had made the stone turned into ferrocrete, rough with age and discoloured by mineral leaching.
922‘Expose more, if you would, Primus!’ Cawl asked.
923‘Yes, master,’ Primus replied. He tore down the marble with his bare hands, pulling away whole panels now he could brace himself against the hidden stone of the mountain. In a few minutes, he had revealed a plugged tunnel leading out from the Hall of the Founder.
924‘Our way is blocked,’ said Felix.
925‘Only for a moment,’ said Cawl. He moved his immense self to the middle of the chamber and raised his hands, then dropped them. ‘You asked me to inform you the next time I did anything dramatic. I am about to. In a few moments, the scarab swarm will be brought back to life, and it will come down those stairs there. They will get us into the Pharos.’
926‘How?’ said Felix.
927Cawl raised his hands. ‘The breadth of my knowledge is quite amazing, Decimus. They will get us in, because they will be under my control. Now, I advise you to stand back, warriors. You don’t want to get in their way.’
928Cawl smiled. He held up his arms. The mountain trembled with the activity of hidden alien machinery.
929‘Watch,’ he said.
930CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
931THE GATES OF DEATH
932
933
934Down the stairs from the Hall of the Founder were the catacombs of the Chapter. That section of the fortress-monastery alone occupied parts of the alien labyrinth, the rest avoiding the Pharos’ blackstone core and either burrowing through the basalt shell or built atop of it. It was dark down there, and eternally silent, the perfect home for the dead.
935At the foot of the stairs was a broad corridor that headed down at a steady angle. For part of the way the walls were ancient masonry, different in style to the rest of the fortress, hiding the black uncanny stone of the Pharos. Legend had it that the Sons of Dorn had built that part of the Scythes’ home. If they had, Thracian and the rest had no idea why.
936After a time the ancient masonry ceased, and stonework nearly as old but differently dressed took its place. The work was inferior, and in those parts tremors and the actions of tyranids had taken part of the walls down. Behind them the mountain’s alien rock gleamed.
937Thracian and his men proceeded on high alert. They could have run to the tombs in minutes, but they went at a cautious pace, guns held at readiness. Every shadow was scanned and checked. Soft lightning played around power weapons. Their auspexes and other devices were useless. The mountain throbbed now with the activity of the xenos machines, and tremors coursed from depths to summit with predictable regularity.
938Hadrios had the keys to all of this. Thracian interrogated his memories, trying to place him in some context before the flight from the fortress-monastery, but he could not. Nobody, it seemed, could remember Hadrios before the fall. It wasn’t unusual in a Chapter of a thousand and more members, especially when elements of the order could be away on campaign for decades, but Hadrios insisted he had been present at the monastery and had escaped himself. Perhaps he had. It was impossible to say what was truth and what was a lie.
939Like fools, they had accepted his story. They had accepted him, each assuming the others knew him, none of them ever checking. Not one of them had put the pieces together. When they turned their attention towards the matter of the infiltrators, their vision was obscured. They became pliant, stupid. Aratus had said repeatedly that they had had no choice, that they were victims of xenos conspiracy. This message formed a large part of Thracian’s reconditioning. Aratus said what Hadrios had done could never be undone. Thracian refused to believe they had no choice. They had been weak. There were no innocents when it came to failure.
940The things he had discovered, after the full horror of the situation came to light, chilled Thracian to the core still.
941He felt the nullifier nestling against the back of his neck. He felt the shame it represented. He felt more at having deceived the tetrarch.
942He was impure.
943Every shadow, every crack in the wall, every tunnel uncovered by the Pharos’ shifting, they approached as if it were an armoured portal with enemies behind. It was tedious. They were chafing to get on with the mission, but Thracian trusted only the tenets of the Codex Astartes and applied Guilliman’s wisdom to the letter. He did not trust his own judgement any longer.
944The methalon casket and its contents must survive.
945There was an empty stone bier outside the gates to the tombs. It was plain, fashioned from a single piece of rock without carvings, the only adornment a stone pillow whose edges, despite its enormous age, were still sharply defined. There were many legends attached to the bed. One said the first human settler had lain in state there upon his death. That was not widely believed. The bier had been made large enough for a Space Marine to lie upon. Another version of the legend said the bier had never been occupied. The same story said it was made for a traitor redeemed who gave his life for Roboute Guilliman, and whose body had not been recovered. Another story told that it was a symbolic resting place for the vision of Imperium destroyed by Horus in his betrayal.
946Versions differed. Who or what the memorial had actually been meant for was lost to time. That it predated the Chapter was all that was known for sure.
947Thracian had cared about these tales, finding the distant history of his Chapter entrancing. He had written treatises on the matter. Now all he felt was embarrassment and shame when he thought of the unknown warrior, knowing that whoever he was, he would have condemned the Scythes of the Emperor for their failings.
948Directly behind the bier was a blackstone tunnel. Some yards away, a huge archway of Sothan basalt was worked into the width. Giant bronze hinge spikes projected from the carved supports, but the arch had never possessed gates. Fallen warriors must be allowed to pass from life to death with no barrier, or so the Sotharan belief had it. After death a warrior should have no more gates to storm.
949Above the arch, in ornate script, was worked the legend ‘Finis Officium’.
950Duty’s End.
951They stopped before the gate. A faint breeze blew from below. The tunnel was repressurising slowly, only this was not the work of the fortress-monastery’s life support systems, but the actions of the mountain.
952‘Air,’ said Aratus. ‘At this rate, there will be a breathable atmosphere within the Pharos inside a day.’
953‘The Pharos will no longer be here by then,’ said Thracian. He turned to his men. The blackness of the tunnel and the tombs it held framed him.
954‘My brothers, we stand here on the threshold of death. Each one of us has sworn an oath to see the stain on our Chapter’s honour removed, so that those warriors who have replaced us may carry our legacy onwards into the future without shame or fear of censure.’
955He looked to them all: Keltru, who had fought on through so much agony; Apothecary Aratus, who had assumed responsibility for their spiritual as well as their physical welfare; Galerius, Ulas and Ren, who plodded implacably forwards around the cryo-vault in carefully salvaged Terminator plate with all the skill and honour of centuried veterans; Bokari, half-trained by Sebastion to replace him, and who would now never be initiated into the Machine-God’s mysteries; and Brother Doror, whose valiant attempts to replenish the Chapter’s numbers had been so treacherously undone.
956‘We who were once a great brotherhood, are now a tiny band,’ Thracian said. ‘But in each of us exists a germ of the Emperor’s will – through His gifts, and His teachings, and the wisdom of His son. It is but a mote, a tiny flicker in the great darkness that threatens to consume the galaxy, and yet it is mighty, strong enough to overcome the hive mind. Strong enough to keep us true to who we are despite the invidious tactics of our enemies. The future of our Chapter is secure, that we must not concern ourselves with any longer. It will be a long and glorious future, but it is a future we shall have no part in, and nor should we. Once we pass through this portal, through which the mortal remains of our brethren have been conveyed for nigh on a hundred centuries, we too shall be no more. We too shall be lost. We stand here as the dead. We enter these vaults and we become the dead, for though our bolters shall kick in our fists and our weapons crackle with the Emperor’s wrath, we shall be dead. But in our death, we shall have our vengeance.
957‘It is time,’ he said. ‘Set aside the dead. Wake our cargo.’
958‘Here and now, my lord?’ Aratus stood forwards.
959‘Yes.’
960‘Then I challenge you as I must. Hear this – once the subject is awoken, it will be impossible to put it back into hibernation.’
961‘Here and now, Apothecary,’ said Thracian. ‘As abhorrent as it is, we must make use of it. Time grows short.’
962‘As you wish, my lord,’ said Aratus. With all the solemnity the occasion demanded, he retrieved a small scythe hanging around his neck on an adamantium chain. It appeared to be a piece of jewellery, but hidden inside was a signum key.
963‘With this key, I reveal the shame of our Chapter for all to see,’ he said.
964He broke the head from the scythe, activating the key.
965‘Our brotherhood is sundered by our shame,’ he said.
966Lights blinked all down the side of the gene vault. Super-chilled gas vented from the sides, dispersing rapidly into the sparse air.
967The sides opened, spilling billowing white out into the near vacuum.
968Inside should have been racks to carry armoured geneseed flasks, the most precious resource of any Space Marine Chapter. They had been removed, and a cramped methalon casket rigged in their place. Liquid close to absolute zero kept the occupant in a state of suspended animation. The suspension chamber in such devices was usually a rigid container of some sort. Lack of space had forced Aratus and Sebastion to make the unit from a resistant plastek sack. The material was opaque, but the thing inside was roughly humanoid, presenting the outline of a bulbous head and a body curled into a foetal position. Three arms wrapped around a hunched torso. Its legs were sharply defined against the pliable material.
969Aratus went to a control panel bolted into the innards of the machine. The genevault had been carefully cut to take several cylinders of various fluids. Tubes led from the cylinders into the sack via tight seals. Everything was covered in a thick layer of frost.
970‘Shall I commence the reanimation cycle, my lord?’ said Aratus. ‘This is the last chance we have to abandon this course of action.’
971‘Do it,’ said Thracian. ‘This is the end of us. Our death approaches.’
972‘As you command,’ said Aratus. ‘Initiating reanimation cycle.’
973Aratus keyed in a code on a grid of featureless green buttons. He depressed the final cypher in the code, and the machine set to work.
974The temperature of the hibernating occupant was raised rapidly. Cryo­protectants in the fluids that replaced its blood prevented ice crystals forming and destroying its cellular walls. When the cryoprotectants were sufficiently fluid, they were pumped out, and warmed blood pumped in.
975Aratus monitored the process. The three Terminators faced outwards, on watch. The rest of the brothers observed in silence. The sack and cylinders, being warmed by the machine, steamed with the sublimation of ices. Inside pressurised glassite, liquids bubbled.
976‘Vitae replacement complete,’ said Aratus. ‘Beginning cardiovascular restart.’
977A small screen blinked on, displaying flat lines and readings all at zero. Lights flickered on the console. With a keystroke, Aratus sent a jolt of power into the sack’s occupant. It spasmed. Some of the lines bumped, then went flat.
978‘Again,’ said Thracian.
979Once more Aratus sent a jolt into the being. Its limbs spasmed together. The lines spiked, settled back to flatness, then twitched into peaks and troughs: heartbeat, breathing, finally brain activity.
980The head turned outwards. Heavy brows pressed against the plastek, then a handless arm, the stump cap pushing out.
981‘Free it,’ said Thracian.
982Aratus took out his combat knife, spun it round in his hand so he was holding it hilt up, and sliced quickly down.
983The occupant spilled out trailing wires and tubes. Some small fraction of it was human, that was evident in the eyes. Though yellow and deeply set, they had a human’s quick intelligence. The rest of it was entirely alien. Three arms, a swollen head of off-white hue, plates of chitin and a pronounced exoskeletal cage around a torso of ivory. Towards the extremities its colouration approached that of a Sotharan human, a warm olive, but only just. A vestigial tail of bare, human bone snapped back and forth at the bottom of its back.
984The Scythes of the Emperor had mutilated the creature. A muzzle covered its mouth, immovable, bolted through flesh to bone. A heavy collar sat on its neck. All three of its hands had been amputated, and the talons on its toes clipped to the quick. It stared at them with hatred that, in its purity and ferocity, was human too.
985Thracian had no pity for this creature. It was a tyrannic being, a hybrid fathered by vanguard organisms to spread unrest and bring down civilisations before the hive fleets arrived to feast. The fact that it was part human only made Thracian hate it more. It was the weakness of the Terran race incarnate. It was the symbol of the Chapter’s shame.
986He stared into its eyes. Under its muzzle-mask, a fanged maw hissed.
987It leapt at him, the stumps of its arms held out to strike.
988Aratus tapped a box attached to his belt. The creature fell down mid-leap and landed hard on the floor, where it squirmed in agony. Its limbs pounded the glassy rock. It arched its back and squealed.
989‘Enough,’ said Thracian.
990Aratus tapped the box again. The creature curled up on itself.
991Keltru stepped forwards and snapped a heavy chain to a ring welded to the back of its collar and dragged it to its feet.
992Thracian stared at the hybrid. Its eyes locked with his. Even with the null-field, he could feel its psychic influence, a calming aura that urged him to trust it. The soothing effect it had on him fired his anger. This was the most insidious trick of this particular brood, psychic subversion to cow those who would discover them, strong enough to dull a Space Marine’s wits. ‘Turn on its vox beads,’ Thracian said.
993Aratus did so.
994The Chapter Master crouched low, so he might stare into its eyes directly. It wrinkled its nose beneath its mask at its own reflection. It knew on some level what it was, Thracian was certain.
995‘When Hadrios first showed me you, days after the fall of Sotha, he said one day you would help me find the source of corruption that had undone our world and our Chapter. Everything else Hadrios said was a lie, but by the Emperor I shall have that one truth out of him.
996‘Abomination, redeem yourself,’ said Thracian. ‘Take us to your father.’
997CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
998PRIMARY LOCATION BETA
999
1000
1001Necron drones formed a wall of seething metal. They burrowed through the ancient ferrocrete with incredible speed, mandibles flashing with molecular deconstruction beams. They whirled about in complicated patterns, a living drillhead, wings thrumming, those that had their fill of matter flying away to the edges of the tunnel where they laboured anew to lay down fresh layers of blackstone. Cracks, barely glimpsed as the rockcrete was stripped away, were filled. Pitted surfaces were brought to a lustrous sheen. When excavated, the tunnel’s walls played with distant foxfires deep within the rock.
1002Felix’s group proceeded out of the Hall of the Founder, or Primary Location Alpha, as Cawl now referred to it, at a steady walking pace. In the vacuum there was no sound, but their vox-net was alive with small noises as thick and varied as a jungle soundscape. The scarabs gave off a rattling noise. The miniature gauss beams hissed, crackling out an occasional burst of electromagnetic violence as a large lump of false stone was rendered into energy and absorbed. Otherwise the disturbing quiet of the vacuum blanketed them, accentuating the eeriness of the drones.
1003There were many lesser tunnels branching from the main, and a crevasse running along the floor, also plugged with ferrocrete. Sub-swarms of scarabs repeatedly attempted to peel away to attend to these, but Cawl’s subversion routines pulsed loud enough that Felix’s vox beads thumped with their signals, and the scarabs flew back to the main mass. Felix leaned aside as two groups of a dozen each rushed by his head, the emissions of their xenos motive units tripping alarms in his battle­plate. Cawl’s servo-skulls bobbed behind them like single-minded herding dogs, but Cawl himself was dangerously relaxed. There was a kinship between this many-legged ex-human and the alien machines he had enslaved. It was not right.
1004‘Do not worry, Decimus,’ said Cawl. ‘They are completely under my command. They will not harm you.’
1005‘They want to break free,’ said Felix.
1006‘Their basic drives are strong. They wish to repair all of the Pharos. Indeed, as we go lower, I expect this little coopted colony of ours will become unnecessary. The lower tunnels will have been cleared already by their fellows. There will be many thousands, if not millions, of the scarabs at work in the depths of the mountain. Their basest instincts are to repair and reproduce. They are marvellous things. In terms you might understand, they render matter down into raw energy, and use it to construct whatever they wish. If they are left to their own devices, they will reproduce exponentially. One of my colleagues told me of a world that had been entirely disassembled by them, replaced with a ball of endlessly recycling scarabs. Gravity worked against them – it ever will attempt to make planets from sufficient mass – but the scarabs fought.’ He smiled. ‘I would dearly love to see it. Amazing. Imagine that power under our control. We have so much to learn from the necrons, Decimus. So much.’ He tapped a metal finger against this temple. ‘Blasphemy, I know, but that does not mean it isn’t true, as I like to say.’
1007‘How can you control them? Not once have I heard of a tech-priest managing to break into the necron carrier signal.’
1008Cawl sighed with contentment at his mastery over the scarabs. ‘This is me, Decimus, you know I can do many things. The tuning stage of Primary Location Alpha gives access to much more than the old Mechanicum believed. It is a primary interface with the mechanisms of the mountain, and although it has yet to re-attain full functionality, it does allow one to control these drones, if one has the appropriate knowledge. That I do, having gained certain information from one of their technicians, though how I did so I shall keep to myself. It would shock you.’ He winked, a gesture Felix found entirely inappropriate.
1009‘Your lack of seriousness is a failing,’ Felix said. ‘You will make a mistake.’
1010‘I will not,’ said Cawl. ‘Besides, I wear this personality for you, Decimus. It is the one you respond best to. Your psychological profile cannot lie.’
1011‘You don’t know everything, Cawl,’ said Felix. ‘Your profile is wrong.’
1012‘Is it now?’ said Cawl. Felix hated that turn of phrase. The way Cawl used it, in a lofty, superior sort of way, he hated even more. ‘For example, I know you are annoyed with me, Decimus,’ Cawl said conversationally.
1013‘I am angry with you, not annoyed,’ said Felix stoically. ‘You are infuriating, and irresponsible. You hide the truth from me for the purposes of drama. You are unstable, aggravating, arrogant and dangerous.’
1014‘Will that be your report to Roboute?’
1015‘That will be the start of it, and the general flavour. There will be details. Lots of them. The lord regent likes detail.’
1016‘Doesn’t he just?’ said Cawl. ‘Ah well, I should not mock him for it. What are the statistics and information he craves if not data, and what is data if not knowledge in its rawest form? I annoy him like I annoy you, dear Decimus, but he and I are not so different.’
1017‘Your requests to be Fabricator General of Mars irritate him,’ said Felix. ‘And reveal the depths of your ambition.’
1018At that Cawl’s weird locomotion ceased, and he turned about suddenly to look at Felix. The drones’ smooth working hiccupped, and Cawl had to bring them back under control. When he had, his voice was concerned.
1019‘I have done no such thing,’ said Cawl.
1020‘Your machine, the Cawl Inferior, it keeps asking him. With every message,’ said Felix.
1021The scarabs continued their excavation, drawing away from the humans.
1022‘Really? That is interesting. I will have to do something about that.’
1023‘Do not pretend you do not know. This repeated request irritates the Lord Guilliman more than anything. He says you know you cannot be made the leader of the Martian Cult. Not without risking civil war.’
1024‘Of course I can’t be Fabricator General!’ said Cawl. He set off again, his feet tip-tapping on the glossy floor. ‘Half the Mechanicus think me the anti-maker cloaked in metal and flesh.’ He swayed in close to deliver a loud stage whisper to Felix. ‘I do research, you know. There are some that call me scientist!’ He laughed. ‘There would be immediate and devastating violence across all the forge worlds if I raised so much as a meaningful eyebrow in the direction of the Fabricator General’s Forge. We would suffer a replay of the Heresy itself. Though I do admit that makes me sound a little full of myself, it is true.’
1025‘Then why do you keep requesting it be done?’
1026Cawl smiled. ‘Here’s the funny thing, Decimus – I don’t. I have no wish to be Fabricator General. Absolutely none whatsoever. It is a political role. I am not a politician, I am a genius. I do not crave power. I have no desire to rule. Rulership comes with many responsibilities. Responsibilities are fetters, and genius should never, ever be fettered. Do you really believe that is my heart’s desire?’ He chuckled and shook his head. ‘No, no, no.’
1027Felix looked at his creator. ‘Then what is it you do want?’
1028‘I want what you want, Decimus. I have told you repeatedly! How many more times must I say?’ said Cawl. ‘I want to save humanity from Chaos, and all the other great evils of this universe. I dream one day of slaying the great daemon of ignorance and setting mankind free from darkness. I want what your gene-father wants, even if we don’t always see eye to eye on how it should be done. It pains me that others must suffer.’ He became serious. ‘Would you believe that it pains me what I did to you? If I could, I would never have turned any of you boys into Space Marines. You would have stayed at home and lived out your lives, but the Machina Opus of the Machine-God is polluted. The Great Work of the universe does not run as it should. It must be set right, so that men might live in peace. And I can do it, Felix. I see how to do it. I can see how to banish Chaos, how to meet the threat of the necrons, how to convince the aeldari to cease their manipulations. But I need your help, Decimus. I need so much help. I cannot do it all alone.’
1029Felix’s temper remained sharp. ‘Then why must you infuriate me so? You do it on purpose.’
1030‘I do,’ Cawl admitted.
1031‘Why?’
1032‘I annoy you?’
1033‘Yes.’
1034‘Enrage, frustrate, upset and goad you?’
1035‘Every time I see you.’
1036‘How does that make you feel?’
1037‘More determined to get out from under your shadow than you can know,’ said Felix.
1038‘Well then,’ said Cawl, his smile showing coyly round his augmetic mask. ‘I think we can say that you’re not afraid of me. Are you frightened of me, Decimus?’
1039Legs rattling, Cawl pulled ahead, humming an ancient air that brought Felix cold chills of recognition.
1040Annoyingly, Cawl was right. Felix wasn’t afraid of him. Not any more.
1041They continued down. The geography of the Pharos was uncanny. Felix’s cogitator presented cartoliths that made no sense. According to his auto-senses, they were walking on the ceiling in defiance of gravity, heading down when to all intents they looked to be going up, or passing through the same section several times without doubling back. The device’s attempts to build a meaningful map came to nothing, and it bleeped in frustration. Felix shut the function down before the machine-spirit took ill from the effort.
1042The corridor branched more frequently, and the branchings became larger. Some of these must have been airtight, for they yielded pockets of ancient air that had kept out the ferrocrete. The tunnel became steeper and narrower, treacherous to ceramite boots, and gave no purchase to either their grips or to maglocking. Felix saw traces of metal in the ferrocrete. When he pointed these out to Cawl, the archmagos paused, drew back his stolen excavators, and pulsed out fresh instructions. When the scarabs burrowed onwards, they left behind ancient walkways and steps cast from plasteel.
1043‘These are of Imperial make,’ said Felix, taking in the Opus Machina stamped into the metal.
1044‘They are the product of the old Mechanicum, left here ten thousand years ago,’ said Cawl. ‘We are not the first of our species to come this way.’
1045Evidently, the mountain had been active, even then, for the Imperial artefacts were half absorbed into the green-black stone of the tunnels. The scarabs seemed to find these additions especially abhorrent, and Cawl needed to repeatedly divert them away from the fastenings holding the walkways to the alien stone.
1046They passed an open tunnel that corkscrewed around on itself. A walkway followed the curve, warped and buckled and half drowned in living rock.
1047‘There was a map in the Library of Ptolemy,’ said Cawl. ‘It is useless now. As you can see, the Pharos is not bound to one shape.’
1048An hour later, the tunnel opened up into a huge cavern. The ferrocrete there was restricted to one side of the space, the inner face rippled with partial absorption. A number of dead scarabs – Felix could think of them in no other way than living things – lay on the ground. Several of Cawl’s hijacked swarm detached themselves to tend to their inactive fellows. They darted over the broken machines, their silver surfaces glinting. In a few seconds repairs were effected. Reactivated scarabs rose from their resting place, and resumed work abandoned who knew how many centuries before.
1049‘There is a large amount of ferrocrete to remove here,’ said Cawl. ‘I must give the xenos drones my full attention. You may rest, if you wish.’
1050Felix’s men would do no such thing, but spread out through the cavern. Suit lights bounced off the glossy black rock without penetrating it, although they could see deep within to where luminous shapes moved. Many tunnels opened off the cavern, worming their way to parts unknown. They entered through every surface of the cave, and varied enormously in size, from microscopic to several big enough to accommodate a Land Raider.
1051Felix looked into the stone. Ghostlights congregated where he watched, pulling his attention closer. Under his gaze, the lights coalesced, becoming shapes that he almost recognised. He reached out a hand. The shining rock rippled.
1052‘Tetrarch!’ Cominus’ vox snapped Felix’s attention away. His fist clenched. The lights were gone, the rock still.
1053Cominus was advancing on an aperture five feet high, set in the side of the cave with the base at about waist height. Its oval encompassed blackness, and so it appeared a tunnel, but when Cominus’ light shone through, it glanced off far walls. There was a second cavern on the far side.
1054‘I saw lights,’ he said. He had his gun ready.
1055Ixen and Daelus flanked Cominus. They approached the gap from the sides, then Cominus flung himself in front of it.
1056Light flashed from the other side.
1057‘There’s someone there!’ Cominus shouted. ‘Adeptus Astartes! Hold fire!’
1058Lights flashed in and out of the cave. Then Cominus’ gun wavered; he peered forwards, and stepped back, his aim renewed.
1059‘By the Emperor,’ he whispered.
1060Felix pushed forwards to stand by his sergeant.
1061On the far side of the hole he saw Cominus, Daelus and Ixen staring back. The doppelgangers were inverted, standing on the ceiling. Past the tops of their heads Felix saw another Cawl working xenos drones to clear ferrocrete, and other Space Marines drawing near to look.
1062‘Stand down!’ Cominus said to them.
1063The other Cominus was doing the same, their guns pointed directly at each other. Felix saw his counterpart reach up a restraining hand as he did so himself.
1064‘It’s us,’ said Felix. ‘Don’t shoot.’
1065‘It’s a xenos trick,’ snarled Cominus.
1066‘I am ordering you to stand down,’ said Felix. He looked to his men. ‘All of you.’
1067Reluctantly, Cominus put up his gun. The other Cominus did so a fraction of a second later.
1068‘Astounding,’ said Daelus. ‘What is it?’
1069‘Come away,’ said Alpha Primus. He joined them. ‘Do not look.’
1070‘Is it an image?’ said Daelus. ‘Is it a trick?’
1071Felix noted then that there was no Alpha Primus on the far side. He peered around and saw there were more Space Marines in his stead stood in guard around Cawl. They were all in grey armour, and numbered twenty in total.
1072‘It is a dimensional mirror,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘We see a representation of reality as it might have been, had fate taken another course.’
1073Three of the grey-armoured Primaris Marines left their master and approached. They seemed to be arguing. A fourth came, then a fifth, and around the fists and heads of these last two, nimbuses of psychic power ignited.
1074Felix saw other differences. There was no Ixen in the image. Another warrior stood exactly where Ixen was, and his heraldry was not of the Aquiloan Brotherhood. Gathein wore a normal battle brother’s wargear. Troncus lacked his Martian red and servoharness, and wore Apothecary’s white, while Felix saw belatedly that the hand his other self rested on Cominus’ pauldron was a shining augmetic.
1075‘Look away from it,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘I can feel agitation. Step back, and the vision will fade.’
1076‘You know this because of Cawl,’ said Cominus, who turned away.
1077Primus nodded. ‘Cawl teaches me many things. He made me for these eventualities.’ He drew in a sharp, pained breath. ‘Quickly! We peer through barriers not meant to breached.’
1078‘It is not the warp,’ said Gathein, fascinated.
1079‘It is not any place. It is a glimpse of different possibilities,’ said Primus. ‘Other ways things might have been.’
1080‘Is it real?’
1081Primus shrugged. ‘Objectively? Who can say? I feel thoughts from them. But it could be a projection of the machine designed to confound us. Ask Cawl. He might tell you, if he feels like it.’
1082The psychic warriors were coming closer. The alternate Cominus was becoming angry, and threw off his tetrarch’s hand.
1083‘Do it. Turn away now,’ said Felix. ‘We do not know if we can interact with them. It is safest to remain ignorant.’
1084‘I’ll not turn my back on someone holding a gun on me,’ said Ixen.
1085‘You will, brother, and you will do so now,’ said Cominus.
1086The entire party turned their backs except Alpha Primus. Slowly, they walked away. Felix expected a bolt-round between his shoulders at any moment.
1087‘Stop,’ he said, when he had taken a score of steps.
1088‘Do not look back,’ said Alpha Primus.
1089‘I must,’ said Felix.
1090He turned back to look. For a second he saw through the hole into a kaleidoscopic display of variant caves, whence a multitude of Felixes stared back.
1091Alpha Primus’ hands fell on him and turned him around.
1092‘That is enough, tetrarch.’
1093Some minutes later, when Felix looked again, the tunnel mouth had gone. Smooth rock covered it over so flawlessly he doubted the aperture had ever been there.
1094They stayed close to Cawl while he worked after that. Ferrocrete fell away in glittering showers. The archmagos directed the drones to fabricate more of their kind, and the work hastened. The rest of the energy they stored needed venting, and the cavern sparkled with the reflected light of discharge as from energy, the drones made air.
1095At length, Cawl stepped back, and the xenos drones fell into a drifting flock overhead, shepherded by his servo-skulls.
1096‘We’re through’ he said, gesturing to smooth black walls and an open tunnel. ‘After you, Decimus.’
1097The amount of ferrocrete the party encountered thereafter diminished. Cawl’s suborned swarm of drones spent most of its time flying about him in ordered streams. Each patch of false stone they came across showed signs of having already been gnawed back by particle beams, melted away like snowdrifts dying in the warmth of spring. Likewise there was less and less of the ancient walkway left, until there was none at all, and the Space Marines were forced to proceed slowly in case they slipped and fell into the darkness of the mountain.
1098They came to a near vertical drop that ran right across the width of the passage. On the far side, the passage continued. It was a distance a Primaris Space Marine could clear with a jump, but Cawl went to the edge of the chute, peered down and said:
1099‘We must go down. The secondary control stage is beneath us. Primary Location Beta, as my illustrious brethren called it.’
1100The chute had been cleared by other hands, and no trace of the walkways remained, or else the chute was new and there had never been any structures placed there by humans; either way it was impassible to the Space Marines, being utterly smooth and impossible to climb. Cawl managed it easily enough. He was big enough to brace himself against the sides of the chute, and had enough feet and hands that the stone’s slickness didn’t matter. But the Space Marines could not climb like him. They had no measure of how deep the pit was. Armour could protect them only so much against a fall.
1101‘I will go alone,’ said Cawl. ‘Primus will accompany me. We will return shortly.’
1102He waved a hand. The drones flew off back up the passage and landed in neat ranks that stretched far back up the way they had come. Thousands of single green eyes dimmed into blackness.
1103‘You will not go alone,’ said Felix. ‘I’m coming with you.’
1104‘If you insist, Decimus,’ said Cawl distractedly. ‘If you insist.’
1105‘My lord…’ began Cominus.
1106‘No, sergeant, not this time. Wait here. If we do not return, you are to retreat to the extraction point at the northern landing pad. Is that clear?’
1107‘Tetrarch…’
1108‘It is an order, Cominus. Follow it.’
1109Cawl gave a wave and clanked away down the drop, where he vanished quickly into the inky black.
1110‘Ixen,’ Felix said. ‘Bring me ropes.’
1111‘Not necessary,’ said Alpha Primus. He stepped forwards and raised a hand. Blue light blazed around his fist, and he lifted up from the floor and floated forwards. When Primus was over the drop, he raised his other hand and Felix rose up upon a second cushion of psychic force.
1112‘How do you manage these feats?’ Gathein called to him. ‘Can you sustain levitation all the way down?’
1113‘I can,’ said Primus.
1114‘The blackstone pains my soul. Does it not hurt you?’ the Epistolary said as Primus sank down the shaft.
1115‘It hurts me,’ said Primus. ‘But I am used to pain. Everything hurts, all of the time.’
1116Felix followed him down the shaft. Beneath his feet the lights of Cawl’s augmetics glanced from polished stone, but he could not see the archmagos himself.
1117A lip of black rose past his face, and he sank into blackness as thick as oil.
1118Primus grunted with effort as they set down. If the ferrocrete poured down the shafts in ancient times had got that far, there was no sign of it any longer. They emerged at a nexus where several tunnels came together. Cawl was waiting for them there. The passageway he pointed out for them to follow was tall and narrow, a slot rather than a tube. A servo-skull drifted out, its reconnaissance completed.
1119‘It is this way, I am sure of it,’ he said. ‘All has changed since the old maps were made, and according to the chronicles the tunnels were inconstant anyway, but this slot is the same as the one described within the tomes of the Library of Ptolemy.’ His pale face, lit blue by his atmospheric energy mask, smiled.
1120Felix thought there was little chance that Cawl could fit through the gap, but the giant tech-priest contorted himself, various portions flattening out or retracting, until he was of a good shape, and he slid into the slot like a sword into a scabbard. The tunnel curved around inwards, and he disappeared from sight again.
1121‘You first,’ said Alpha Primus miserably, holding out his hand. ‘I will guard the rear.’
1122Felix prepared his boltstorm gauntlet.
1123‘Weapons are not necessary here,’ said Primus.
1124Felix held his fist out all the same when he headed into the spiral.
1125Cawl found Primary Location Beta as intriguing as the books had suggested. It was tall, divided into two bell-shaped chambers set neck to neck so that it resembled an hourglass. The top was graced with one of the Pharos’ many tunnels that wound off through stone and time and space. It had a sculpted, purposeful beauty that moved Cawl, all the more so since he was beginning to understand why it was that shape, why the stone shone so, why the wall came in a few hundredths of an inch just so by the entrance. He was on the cusp of discovery, and it excited him deeply.
1126Expectant silence filled the chamber as surely as water would a pitcher.
1127Decimus Felix came edging into the bell chamber, then Alpha Primus. They noticed the import of the moment. Alpha Primus tried so hard to be stoic at all times, but this time failed. His miserabilism was too pronounced. He wallowed in sorrow, that one. If Cawl had the capacity to make another Alpha Primus, he would start over and tweak the genes for joy. Regrettably that was impossible. Primus was and would remain unique. Even so, he looked around the chamber in wonder.
1128Felix, on the other hand, was far more human in his humours. There was a childish defiance in Felix, a desperate need to prove himself worthy of the authority the primarch had bestowed upon him. Felix was a favourite of Cawl’s, he brought out paternal instincts in him he never knew he had. The interface was going to be more difficult with them present, but life with an audience was always better, especially when such great deeds were about to be done.
1129‘Decimus, stand over there.’ Cawl made his way to the centre of the chamber. He pulsed invisible commands to his attendant flock of skulls, and they filed out in orderly fashion, one by one.
1130‘The forces that are to be unleashed in here might damage my devices,’ he said. ‘I can’t have that.’ Mechadendrites rattled back into housings. His guns deactivated and pulled in closer to his body. ‘Take my axe, please, Primus,’ he said, holding out the massive, cog-toothed weapon he bore. Primus took the haft. ‘Go stand by Decimus, right there. Yes,’ said Cawl.
1131He hunkered down a little as his legs pulled in. He made a show of bracing himself, but he really did need to do it.
1132‘What I am about to attempt has never been done before,’ he said portentously, indulging himself. ‘I have the means in here,’ he tapped his head. ‘To my knowledge, no Imperial servant has successfully joined with a necron network to the extent that I am about to, not once, ever,’ he said emphatically. ‘Do not leave the side of the room. Do not touch me. Do not touch the walls.’ In his tightly packed cranium, augmetics came alive. He felt the alien heat of the blackstone bead in his head. ‘No matter what happens. Very well?’ Green lights flickered in the rock. Random at first, they drew together, and sketched predictable, circuit-like patterns.
1133‘Get on with it, Cawl,’ said Felix.
1134‘You do know how to spoil a dramatic moment, Decimus,’ said Cawl.
1135He placed his primary hands palm to palm. The lights ran quicker in the stone.
1136The Pharos sang.
1137‘Now I begin,’ he said. He plunged headlong into the xenos infosphere, whereupon some potent force slammed into his machine-laced soul.
1138It hurt to an almost intolerable degree.
1139CHAPTER NINETEEN
1140A REFUSABLE OFFER
1141
1142
1143Insect, said the voice of the mountain.
1144‘I bring most humble greetings,’ said Cawl. ‘I am so very pleased to make your acquaintance. I am Beli–’
1145Insignificant, but bold. You come to us now, out of your cage of metal and flesh. You show yourself, light to light. Why?
1146Belisarius Cawl was alone in the dark, his body lit only by the light of his augmetics. This was not a physical space. His body was a machine projection. A form of imagination shared.
1147<Unauthorised memcore access.>
1148Cawl enacted a dozen sub processes to guard his mind. The probing presence withdrew.
1149Interesting, the voice said. Primitive, but well protected. Let us try another way.
1150A force gripped Cawl and pulled his limbs outwards, leaving him like an insect pinned to a board. Cawl screamed. This time, the being breached his outer data walls and slipped into the upper layers of his soul. The laws of time and space stretched and bent. Cawl had the impression of an immense data probe riffling through his past.
1151Not your original form. Not your original being.
1152Again Cawl screamed. The pain was a phantom, but felt all too real. Every one of his augmentations was carefully ripped away and pulled out for display. The Pharos sought to model him, and turn back his existence through time to see what he had been before. It was all illusory, but it still hurt.
1153Nerve impulse, organic, bioelectrical, overlaid mechanical and electronic enhancements, but evolved from… the thing paused. You are one of their things, ultimately. Another pause. You do not know this. You are ignorant of your genesis. A debased thing of a debased age.
1154‘Oh, great one!’ Cawl panted. ‘Hearken to me. I bring offers of an alliance between–’
1155Nerve impulses detected in material form of subject. Purpose of impulse, production of vibrations in gas medium. Result, it talks, said the voice. It will cease talking.
1156Pain flooded Cawl’s being, tormenting him down to the lowest sub-atomic particle and beyond.
1157He yelped. ‘No need for that!’
1158Still it talks. Cease!
1159The pain increased.
1160‘I have a proposal to bring to you!’ said Cawl. ‘Show yourself! Let me speak with you, face to face!’
1161Face? queried the being. Face. Frontal expressive area to fore of upper body, often attached to endoskeletal box housing the organ of material-immaterial interface, it said with finality. Face. Face to face. A curious expression. Implication of personal contact. You have no ‘face’, only the facsimile of one, and in your corporeal state the face you have is not your own. The voice was pleased with itself. We have no face. Light needs no face. Let us see what face was yours, once.
1162The most deeply rooted of Cawl’s implants were teased from their housings. Cawl shrieked as metal separated from bone. He blinked in surprise as flesh long ago purged crept across his features. By now, his immediate vicinity was crowded with floating components.
1163Time is nothing to us, the voice pompously declaimed. You are a thing of time. It paused. Cawl felt it scrabble at his consciousness. So far, the deeper parts of his being remained inviolate. This annoyed the being. Insect, it said petulantly.
1164‘You wish to understand me,’ said Cawl.
1165We wish to vivisect you, said the thing. There is nothing worth understanding in you, but we will pull you apart all the same, to see how you work. We must understand this new age.
1166‘There’s no need for that, we are kindred spirits, you and I!’ Cawl gasped, somehow. Bits of his thoracic extension were drifting away in the dark, where they disassembled themselves into their constituent components and floated in exploded diagrammatical form. It was very neat, if rather disturbing.
1167We are not like you, said the voice. We are a god. You are nothing.
1168Immobile, wracked with pain, Cawl still laughed. The thing’s annoyance grew.
1169‘God’s a flexible term, in my experience. There is one god, the Machine-God, and you are not He.’
1170It was the thing’s turn to laugh. Its voice broke into a dozen mocking voices, booming from unseen horizons and overwhelming Cawl’s mind. The thing redoubled its efforts to penetrate Cawl’s defences and mine his soul for information. It forced itself a little deeper. Cawl groaned.
1171These are the gods of your time. God of Machines. Gods of Chaos. God of… men? Men. It paused, evaluating the word. There is weakness in this era. You are a man. You are weak. Your species is weak, far removed from the original plan of our enemy. These are not gods you worship, this Machine-God, these entities in the warp, this Emperor. We will explain. The first is a lie. The second are emergent consciousnesses caused by etheric disturbance. The third is a weapon. It paused at this. There is war. The… rift? A rift has opened. The purity of reality is polluted. The war continues. Our war. You fight it. But you are weak. You are echoes. Echoes of might. Blots on purity. Glory has left this galaxy.
1172‘Actually, I can be strong if needed,’ said Cawl. ‘If we talk, you and I, you shall see. I have much to offer! See how I continue my efforts to charm you while you torment me.’
1173Searing pain coursed through him. He howled, then smiled.
1174‘You’re not going to shut me up. Listen to me.’
1175The thing was silent.
1176Perhaps, it said.
1177‘I can help you.’
1178Perhaps.
1179‘We have much to teach each other.’
1180That is definitely not so. You can never learn what we know, and you have nothing to teach us.
1181‘You are wrong.’
1182Instead, you will free us.
1183It paused.
1184You have heard that before. We see it in the patterns of your mind.
1185Cawl said nothing.
1186You have heard that before, from one of your so-called gods. The voice insisted. Cawl got the sense of something settling back to regard him from a greater distance, the action of a being desiring to understand the whole of a complex mechanism by changing perspective. This is a strange era. We have much to learn. We shall adjust your temporal resonance again, so that you may show us more.
1187‘Wait!’ said Cawl, but by then he was back in the past.
1188Circa 10,000 years ago
1189Cawl and Friedisch spent an uncomfortable month locked in their quarters on the Altrix’s ship. The craft was fast, and the warp smooth, but Terra was a long way from Ryza. Time dragged. They became fractious and Cawl, especially, disgraced himself with his pettish behaviour. They were allowed to socialise at first, but eventually became sick of each other, so spent much of the voyage apart at opposite ends of their shared quarters, bickering every time they spoke.
1190In a moment of unusual thoughtfulness, the Altrix allowed them onto the observation deck when the ship passed the holy orb of Mars. A guard came for them and led them up through the ship. They sniped and argued like rival dowagers until they came to the gallery windows, where the sight of the great evils done to Mars silenced them.
1191They gaped. Friedisch gripped Cawl’s arm.
1192They sailed near Mars, not far off the higher anchorages. The world was crowded by debris clouds of stupendous scale, their components ranging in size from substantial parts of battle cruisers to flecks of paint that glittered in the sun like morning frost, misting the view. But though thick, the clouds could not conceal all that had happened to Cawl and Friedisch’s world.
1193Giant black scars cut across the red deserts. Whole cities had been razed. New and awful craters gouged the surface where once temple forges and industrial complexes had lifted their spires in praise of the Machine-God.
1194‘Belisarius, it’s gone. My home, it’s gone.’ Friedisch raised a shaking hand and pointed to where a deep fissure marked the location of Mundus Planus fabricatory conurb.
1195All over Mars cities had been wiped away. Impact patterns spread their dark splashes over the ground. The fabled Ring of Iron, which circled the equator, had suffered as much as the mother world. Sections were missing, the material broken off and floating among the wrecks huddling around the red world. Mars’ polluted skies twinkled with re-entry tracks and the flash of laser discharge shooting down the largest pieces of debris.
1196‘This is Mars,’ said the Altrix. She stood with her hands clasped behind her, back straight, like an officer delivering a report to her general. ‘This is your home. You will note the large amount of damage done to the world by the Adeptus Mechanicus reclamation force. I understand that fighting is still going on in the deeper hives. The traitors are tenacious.’
1197‘All the knowledge, all those people,’ said Friedisch quietly. He stifled a sob.
1198‘I assume you are making some kind of point here,’ said Cawl grimly.
1199The Altrix nodded once. ‘I am making a point. I want you to see how much has been lost. I want you to remember what you see here when the director makes his offer. Knowledge is precious. Almost as much wisdom as blood was spilled in the war. We must work together to preserve what remains.’ She looked at them and curled her lip. ‘No matter how distasteful that might be.’ She unclasped her hands. ‘I shall leave you here to observe the results of man’s folly, and think upon what I have said. My men will take you back to your quarters. We arrive at Terra in three days.’ She walked by them, pausing as she passed. ‘This will soon be over,’ she said.
1200It was the only kindly thing Cawl ever heard her say.
1201Terra greeted them with the cold indifference of a neglectful mother. The worn out birthplace of humanity had little affection for its trillions of children before Horus’ great betrayal. In the aftermath of war, it had none left at all. For Cawl and Friedisch this coldness was to be expected, and they returned it. Their loyalties lay with Mars.
1202Terra was in worse condition even than the Red Planet. Wounded, grey and black, all traces of the Emperor’s efforts at rejuvenation wiped clean, it cities were smouldering piles and its people, where they survived, were lost in shock. Its mighty court of orbital plates was missing. Old Earth was naked, dead, diminished; a corpse world crawling with vermin.
1203They rode their shuttle down in grim silence. Altrix Herminia caught Cawl’s eye and raised a questioning eyebrow at him.
1204He turned away.
1205They arrived at the half-ruined Lion’s Gate spaceport to find a world in mourning, and not solely for the loss of the Emperor. There was not one person untouched by the war. Everyone, from legionary to peon, had lost someone. Black adorned everything.
1206Security was tight, but the Altrix had clearance of the highest sort. Her warriors were ushered through the crowds of troopers manning the checkpoints. No questions were asked regarding her guests.
1207They had to drive through what was left of the Imperial Palace. Most of the transit system was wrecked. Only the most important roads were clear. They wound a circuitous route through a broken wasteland of metal and rubble haunted by grey survivors. Legionaries patrolled the streets in incongruously bright armour. They were all laden with honours that told of heroic actions in the defence. Even such minor celebration of victory seemed obscene.
1208There were precious few of these transhumans. The Legions were shattered, their survivors gone in pursuit of the fleeing enemy.
1209Their transport was military, all-terrain, a truck held high over the ground on eight fat tyres. Nothing less than that could have traversed the ruins.
1210They passed long lines of emaciated people waiting for rations being distributed from a burned-out hab block. Though barely more than a shell, it was in far better shape than its neighbouring buildings, which were reduced to cones of rubble scores of yards high.
1211Through armoured windows Cawl peered at diseased faces. He knew enough of human physiology to see that most of the people would not last out the winter. ‘Such a waste,’ said Cawl. ‘So much death.’
1212‘The wages of treachery are always collected by the undeserving,’ said the Altrix. ‘You see, now you understand what Director Sedayne understands – that humanity needs to be saved from its victory. Only knowledge can do that.’
1213Cawl looked at her from under his cowl. He was in a foul temper and didn’t care to hide it. ‘You know, you will not hear much disagreement from me on that count, so why the need for the men with the guns?’
1214‘Mortal minds are fickle. Individual choice cannot be allowed to stand in the way of destiny.’
1215‘Charming. What manner of education produced a woman like you?’ Cawl said.
1216‘A truthful one,’ she replied.
1217The transport turned a corner on to one of the palace’s gargantuan processional ways. Its great width was narrowed to a ravine by falls of debris from downed hives. In the distance, the jagged buttes of the broken palace walls bit at the horizon.
1218Night was coming. Days were short and cold. There was so much material in the atmosphere it would take a thousand years for the sun to shine cleanly again. Sol tracked across the grey heavens, a woeful smear as miserable in colour and movement as every other soul on Terra.
1219There were a few places where luxury hid. There were buildings intact, and some entire spires, the surprise survivals that exist in any war, and, as in any war, such places were monopolised by the rich.
1220Herminia took Cawl and Friedisch to a starscraper in Outer Gryphonia, not far from the remains of the Celantine Wall. The building stood amid a multi-level wasteland formed from the bones of its brothers and sisters. Though still erect, the scraper’s lower levels were a honeycomb of blasted-out walls and gaping, artificial caves. The effects of war continued all the way up its considerable height to the top, where wounds in its silvery skin caused by voidship lance fire looked like the claw marks of gargantuan beasts.
1221But there was life within. The inside was full of servitors shoring up the structure. They laboured, each absorbed in their own limited tasks, but together they produced work of stunning complexity, and at speed.
1222‘Terra will rise again,’ said Friedisch. ‘I hope the same is happening on Mars.’
1223‘Both worlds survive,’ said Herminia blackly. ‘They will never be the same again.’
1224They entered a lifter with Herminia’s guards at their back. It rose rapidly. Atmospheric controls were malfunctioning, and their ears popped several times before the lifter began its long deceleration.
1225They disembarked on a high floor which appeared whole but whose corridors played host to the antics of freezing Himalazian winds. Atmospheric cyclers groaned in their attempts to maintain a breathable pressure. Already high upon the mountains, the altitude the building added thinned the air to nothing, and both Cawl and Friedisch panted plumes of ice crystals.
1226Herminia took no consideration of their difficulties, and they were hustled down the corridors by her guards. Neither she nor they suffered from the rarefied atmosphere, and they arrived in perfect formation, helms and weapons gleaming amid the dereliction, while Cawl and Friedisch struggled to breathe.
1227They came to a grand door swathed with the limp plastek sheeting of an auxiliary airlock. The airlock inflated like a balloon, until it stood rigid, enabling the door to open. Cawl and Friedisch were shoved inside, where they took grateful gulps of warmed, thicker air. Once inside they got a good look at the room door. It was bronze, ten feet high. The etched decoration of civilians and Space Marines leading humanity to a better future seemed painfully quaint.
1228A suite of rooms welcomed them, the principal of which was huge and opulent. There was a window overlooking the battered city, but it had been darkened to near total opacity, shutting out Terra’s pain. Rich carpets ran to walls of pleasingly sinuous shape. Antiques furnished the rooms. Artefacts and pieces of art from Terra’s long past stood in downlit alcoves. It was designed perfectly, a calming space. But this echo of Imperium’s lost promise had not escaped the ruin entirely. A thin layer of fine dust lay on everything, despite the best efforts of the ventilation system to keep it out. At least in there the pressure was more bearable, and the tech-priests’ breathing settled.
1229There was a single man in the room. Two of Herminia’s soldiers stayed behind to stand sentry, the rest exited to an antechamber, leaving the sum of the occupants at six. It seemed too small a number to fill the room. The carpeted floor hid dangerous gulfs.
1230‘Belisarius Cawl, Friedisch Adum Silip Qvo, I present to you Director Ezekiel Sedayne, technologist and scientist of the Emperor’s inner research cadres, biotechnical division.’
1231Sedayne took the delivery of his title with studied diffidence, and turned to a table covered in dull gold leaf, where stood a selection of decanters and several expensive looking glasses.
1232‘Do you drink, Cawl? Qvo?’ he said. ‘Alcohol, I mean.’ He addressed the bottles rather than his guests.
1233‘I am not as pedantic as some of my colleagues,’ said Cawl. ‘I don’t deny myself the pleasures of flesh either. They are given to us by the Machine-God to enjoy.’
1234‘Your religion is so charming,’ said Sedayne.
1235‘Yes, I drink,’ said Cawl frostily.
1236Sedayne smiled, again at the bottles and not at the men. ‘Then allow me to select you something.’
1237He spent a moment doing so, then picked a tall, fluted vessel, and poured purple liquor from it into three glasses. He took them all up in one large hand, and presented one each to Friedisch and Cawl.
1238‘Plum brandy.’ Sedayne looked at them gravely, then smiled. He had grey, intense eyes and the thin skin of someone living on mortgaged time. ‘They have made this for thousands of years around the Mediterran desert. I am rather partial to it. I hope you enjoy it.’
1239Cawl took the glass. Friedisch’s hand shook as he accepted his.
1240Sedayne was tall and thin. Cawl would have suspected off-world heritage, a life in low-g habitats, but Sedayne wore no supplementary braces on his limbs to help him move under Terra’s pull. Although he did lean for support on a glossy cane, that seemed more because of his age. He had long black hair, and features that had many of the ingredients of handsomeness but which did not come together to provide it. Clothes of simple cut but expensive make clad him in black and greys.
1241‘I shall try not to be trite, nor mysterious, but straightforward,’ said Sedayne. ‘I know you have training in the arts biologica, Cawl. I don’t know about you, adept…?’
1242‘Acolytum Friedisch Adum Silip Qvo,’ said Friedisch, annoyed his name had already been forgotten.
1243‘Acolytum?’
1244‘I was days away from securing my first ranking when the war came to Trisolian,’ said Friedisch. ‘You will find me competent in several fields, notably–’
1245‘Thank you,’ said Sedayne, silencing him with a raised hand. ‘As I was saying, it will be apparent to you that I am old, and that I have but a little time to live. I am sorry to interrupt you, acolytum, but time is short. Please, be seated.’ He gestured to a nest of over-padded chairs. ‘I will tell you what you must know, and make the offer the Altrix here has no doubt intimated I will.’
1246They sat. Sedayne moved with grace, but stiffness was setting in.
1247‘Adarnian vitality?’ said Cawl.
1248‘You know your rejuvenats.’ Sedayne nodded. ‘Stolen life, I regret to say.’
1249‘Illegal,’ said Cawl. He sipped his drink. Sweet and heady with a scent from the past, in it were trapped long summers and gentle lands gone into dust.
1250‘Then you know me a little already,’ said Sedayne. ‘I did not take it lightly, and I did not take it for myself.’
1251‘No? You wished to give the Adarnians a sense of purpose?’ said Cawl.
1252‘Droll,’ said Sedayne. His grey eyes hardened. ‘I heard that about you, that you undermine others by making light of what is important to them, while pompously declaiming your own worth.’
1253Cawl shrugged. ‘I strive for perfection in the eyes of the Machine-God. I have yet to attain it. I do better than most though.’
1254Sedayne shook his head. ‘You see, Altrix, this is the poor standard of inquiring minds in this benighted age. Machine-God!’ he snorted. ‘But I am sure we agree on some things, Cawl. Tell me, what is the most valuable thing in the universe?’
1255‘Knowledge,’ said Cawl and Friedisch simultaneously.
1256‘Exactly,’ said Sedyane. ‘It was for knowledge’s sake that I prolonged my life in so barbaric a way. Do you think I have no empathy for the sentient beings that died so that I could live? No. Similarly, it is for the sake of the same knowledge I had you brought here.’ He cradled his drink in long, veinous fingers. ‘I am one of the fortunate few who worked with the Emperor Himself. There are not many of us left now. Old age took many of us. The war many more. Soon there will be one less. I am dying.’
1257Cawl sipped his drink again. Friedisch peered at his suspiciously.
1258‘I know you must have an interest in the biological work of the Emperor. You were a student of Diacomes, yes?’
1259Cawl nodded.
1260‘He was a colleague of mine, a long time ago.’ Sedayne attempted a winning smile. He had cosmetically altered teeth, very straight, and horribly, unnaturally white. They looked bizarre in his chem-smoothed face, as if he were a plastek recreation of a man. ‘He was gifted, if deluded like all your creed. That was before I worked on the creation of the Legiones Astartes. I was the director of the carapace project.’
1261False modesty wrapped his words, tight as apple skin.
1262‘Do you know that the black carapace was an unusual part of the Astartes program?’ Sedayne said. ‘It is the final stage implant, and unlike some of the other organs, that can, if necessary, be grown internally from seed germs, the carapace must be grafted in substantial pieces. Once in place, it encourages the human body to adopt it as its own, and it spreads. It is an engineered, controlled cancer.’ He smiled at his recollections. ‘This is now a matter of fact, and the signature element of Terra’s greatest warriors. No other gen-altered warriors have it. You will know a legionary by his carapace. It nearly was not so. It looked for a long time that we would not perfect it. Try as we might, we could not get the body to grow the carapace. It is far from the materials of the human body, being mostly a plastek compound with mineralised elements of rare sort. Nevertheless, it is crucial to the functioning of the Adeptus Astartes. Without it, their neural plugs are hard to implant, and without the plugs they cannot control their armour. As glorious a creation as the Legiones Astartes are, they are creatures of two parts, the biological, and the mechanical. Not so very different from the qualities your Cult finds so appealing, the union of man and machine, yes?’
1263‘Indeed,’ said Cawl.
1264Sedayne sat back, getting into his stride. He was a man who enjoyed regaling others with his achievements. ‘Much of the black carapace work was undertaken by servants of Amar Astarte, a name which is already ill-favoured, when not so very long ago it was spoken with respect. She was one of the greatest genotects of this era, perhaps any era. Her work outshone that of the gene-witches of the Selenar. You know of them?’
1265‘Of course!’ said Cawl. ‘We are not entirely ignorant.’
1266Sedayne was unoffended by Cawl’s waspishness. Instead he seemed to approve. ‘Good, good, you fight your corner. That is good,’ he said, stroking the side of his glass with his forefinger. ‘No one will remember her, in a few hundred years. The favour of the powerful means so much, and she no longer has it. I didn’t rate her myself. The work I received was substandard. It didn’t work, so I fixed it. I made the carapace possible. You could say that the success of the Emperor’s own Legions was only possible because of what I did.’ Sedayne sipped his wine with a triumphant expression. ‘Now, imagine what you could do if you shared that knowledge.’
1267‘Is he joking?’ said Friedisch suddenly. He set his untouched glass aside on a low table. ‘He is joking, isn’t he?’
1268‘He certainly seems very pleased with himself, Friedisch, old friend,’ said Cawl.
1269Sedayne’s expression darkened. ‘Why shouldn’t I celebrate what I have done? I have achieved so much. What have you done, Cawl, but dodge your responsibilities? Whereas you,’ he curled his lip at Friedisch. ‘You are a red-robed, Martian nobody.’
1270‘Well, this is getting off to a flying start,’ said Cawl. ‘I believe there was something you were going to offer me. If it is simply this tedious lecture, I think we’ll be going, eh, Friedisch?’
1271‘Let’s,’ said Friedisch.
1272‘I am offering my knowledge!’ said Sedayne loudly. His mood turned as quickly as badlands weather. ‘I am offering you everything that I am, and everything that I have learned. Your religion purports to worship knowledge. Here I am offering it, and you scoff at me.’
1273Cawl smiled. ‘I’m sorry if we insult you. But there are a number of things that trouble me about this. If this is such a marvellous offer, why drag me and my friend here halfway across the galaxy at gunpoint? I have to say that your underling has been nothing but threatening from beginning to end. This leads me to believe that you think I might turn down your offer, so I have to wonder, why me? And why is it inevitably not going to be as attractive as you are attempting to make it sound?’
1274‘Name me the methods of direct knowledge transfer,’ said Sedayne.
1275‘Engrammatic reproduction,’ said Cawl. ‘Psychic rip, genophagy, noospheric upload. There are many, but they are flawed.’
1276‘They all are,’ agreed Sedayne.
1277‘Diacomes thought there was another way,’ said Cawl.
1278‘He did.’
1279‘The direct grafting of one consciousness, via machinic connection through the infospheric medium, from one mind to another.’
1280‘Yes.’
1281‘You know he utilised xenos technologies for this,’ said Cawl.
1282‘I do,’ said Sedayne.
1283‘Technologies that were proscribed.’
1284‘They were and are,’ admitted Sedayne. ‘That didn’t seem to stop you working for him. In fact, if I am correct about you, I would hazard a guess that it’s why you went to him in the first place.’
1285Friedisch gave Cawl a questioning look. Cawl ignored it.
1286‘The technology is dangerous for both parties,’ said Cawl. ‘He never managed to do it, you know. When I left him he had been trying for hundreds of years.’
1287Sedayne leaned forwards. ‘Does that trouble you?’
1288‘What do you think!’ snapped Cawl. ‘You are obviously intent on using this technology on me, in which case I will effectively die. So thank you, but no thank you.’
1289‘I offer you all my experience, all my memories, my discoveries. It is a gift,’ said Sedayne.
1290‘Yes, a gift with a guarantee of my mind being wiped, and a high probability of death or insanity for the new being created. The only thing certain about it is failure. Diacomes turned the brains of his test subjects into gruel, director,’ said Cawl. ‘I was there. I wanted no part of it then, and I certainly want no part of it now. Good day.’
1291Cawl stood.
1292‘Wait,’ said Sedayne.
1293Cawl tensed. Herminia was staring at him. She shook her head emphatically and drew her gun. The guards levelled theirs at Cawl.
1294‘Since you put it like that,’ said Cawl.
1295Cawl turned back to see Sedayne also had a weapon in his hand. It was small, perfectly formed, built to an aesthetic standard of a higher age. It was one of the most beautiful and dangerous things Cawl had ever seen.
1296‘I thought people like you got others to do their dirty work for them,’ said Cawl. ‘You have your own gun. Remarkable.’
1297‘Sit down,’ said Sedayne.
1298Cawl sat. Friedisch hadn’t moved.
1299‘Experience taught me it’s always best to be armed,’ said Sedayne. ‘Hear me out. I perfected Diacomes’ techniques. It will succeed. Minutes, that is what it will take, minutes to grant you my lifetime’s knowledge. You will be wondering why I chose you.’
1300‘I wasn’t,’ said Cawl. ‘I was on my way out of the door, but I assume I’m going to find out whether I want to or not.’
1301‘You have memcore alterations recommended to you by Diacomes. You were one of only eleven apprentices that he took on.’
1302‘Then approach one of them.’
1303‘I did. The first three were with him before he perfected the memcore alterations. Two of them are in any case dead. Two are unaccounted for. Two went insane. Three more died during the war, the last died when, well, Herminia killed her trying to bring her in. That leaves you. You have the memcore alterations. You are also knowledgeable yourself, and intelligent. Think what our intellects might achieve together.’
1304‘It is not together, is it, director? I know that one intended effect of these memcore alterations is an increased receptiveness to mental overwriting. It’s one of the reasons I left him. He was using us.’ Cawl sighed. ‘Diacomes was almost successful during my apprenticeship with him,’ said Cawl. ‘It is theoretically possible to blend minds, permanently, but Diacomes found that the donor mind always suppresses and ultimately supplants that of the host body. Always. It would have been the great failing of his work, had all of his test subjects not gone mad or died. I’d say those were bigger failings, on balance.’
1305Sedayne smiled regretfully. ‘A pity.’
1306‘You know what I say is true.’
1307‘I do.’
1308‘I won’t believe you if you tell me you overcame the problem.’
1309‘I won’t, because I haven’t. You will have my knowledge, all of it. But you will also be me. We’ll make a fine pair, you and I. You won’t be lost. You will live on, in me, a tiny piece at least. A whole new lifetime of discovery awaits us, Belisarius Cawl. You may watch it through my new eyes. Your eyes.’
1310‘I’m not going to do it.’
1311‘You will,’ said Sedayne.
1312Cawl laughed at Herminia and the guards, and at Sedayne, all of whom were pointing weapons at him.
1313‘It will do you no good to shoot me. Then we both lose.’
1314‘That is why I am not going to shoot you,’ said Sedayne. ‘The Altrix will shoot your friend instead.’
1315As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the bullet was out of her gun.
1316Friedisch fell to the floor. Fyceline drifted between the tech-priest and the scientist. The back of his chair was a bloody mess of stuffing and splintered wood. It was the only reason he was still alive.
1317‘Belisarius!’ said Friedisch. His hands paddled in the pool of blood filling the hollow in his gut. ‘I am shot!’
1318Cawl fell to his knees by his friend’s side. He gripped Friedisch’s hand in his own. It was slippery, hot.
1319‘A small calibre bolt pistol,’ said Sedayne dispassionately. ‘Enough to kill. If we are quick, and complete the transfer now, I might be able to save him.’ He smiled his skull’s smile again. ‘Once I am you.’
1320Another age, another place, another grand intellect looked down on Cawl with contempt.
1321It was a repeated theme in Cawl’s life.
1322Insect, the mountain said. Useful. Find us. This is what you seek. Take it. Come to us. Be our slave. You will free us. We will bring you to us. We are here.
1323Knowledge speared Cawl hard. Information was agony when delivered so forcefully, but he felt its sweetness all the same.
1324Now
1325Cawl came round with a gasp. His body had not moved, and the sense of dislocation was so pronounced he swayed and almost fell.
1326‘I…’ He was hot, tired. Something troubled him, the way the ancients said that someone had walked over their grave. ‘I have the most peculiar sensation. I…’ He looked to his companions. ‘I remember. Friedisch. I remember how it happened.’
1327‘Cawl,’ Felix came to his side. ‘Magos, are you well?’
1328Cawl felt decidedly unwell. Curious alien subroutines were rushing through his neural infrastructure, judging him.
1329‘I am fine,’ he lied, simultaneously enacting a cortical purge, while his own defensive hunt phages sorted out the pain from useful data. They chased out the mountain’s inquiring spirits, latching onto what was needed and keeping it close. He felt immediately better.
1330‘Do you have your map?’
1331‘Um, no…’ said Cawl. ‘No I do not. Instead, well, something else has occurred.’
1332The mountain rumbled. Far beneath them, something stirred.
1333‘Cawl!’ Felix shouted as the tremor built in strength. ‘It is happening again.’
1334‘No,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘This is something different.’
1335The floor vanished into nothing, and they fell suddenly away into the dark.
1336CHAPTER TWENTY
1337TAINTED BLOOD
1338
1339
1340The hybrid strained against its chain, forcing Keltru to lean back and brace himself as best he could on the slippery floors. As they went deeper, Imperial stonework faded away, and the ferrocrete petered out. Glossy green-black took its place completely. There were walkways here and there, and where a run of side tunnels had been coopted by the Chapter to lay their dead to rest stone and brass effigies stared out from tomb walls, but blackstone predominated. That part of the Pharos had not yet awoken. Green lights flashed deep in the walls, the beginnings of processes that raced round angular circuit loops, never quite catching each other. Perhaps the dead really did hold sway in the tunnels the last Scythes of the Emperor trod, but whatever ruled the mountain stirred, even in those sacred environs.
1341The hybrid strained and lunged, dragging them deeper into the mountain. The air was thickening. The scrabble clack of alien claws upon the stone echoed from silent apertures. There were many openings, of all sizes, and those that were not plugged with shrines or tomb doors glared blackly at the Space Marines as they passed by. The presence of air, though enabling sound, enabled silence too. There was a difference between the silence of vacuum and the silence of a tomb. The latter was alive, watchful, disturbing because it could be broken.
1342They came to a large cave that was unevenly fluid in shape and pierced with many holes, resembling a stone organ in the living body of the mountain. There were more lights in the walls there, languidly switching about in unknowable mineral currents. Otherwise it was dark, too dark even for the alien eyes of the hybrid to see.
1343The floor of the chamber was some way below the level of the tunnel. The Terminators went first, their power-armoured brothers pulling on cables to prevent them falling. When the heavier brethren were down, the rest followed, skidding down slick rock to the lower level. Doror lost his balance and banged into the back of the Terminator-clad Ren, almost sending them both down. Bokari slipped and clashed down the stone, sliding out of control into the bowl of the floor. He fell several dozen feet, his suit light flashing off rounded corners and black entrances.
1344Eventually he came to a stop.
1345‘Brother?’ Thracian asked.
1346‘I am unharmed,’ Bokari said. ‘There is something here, on the floor.’
1347The Terminators trained their suit lights on him. Bokari got onto his hands and knees. Around him fragments of bone and chitin lay in pools of light. He picked up a partial skull and examined it.
1348‘Genestealer,’ he said.
1349The hybrid jerked on its chain and hissed. Keltru yanked it back, tugging it off its feet.
1350‘Sliced clean through. Particle beamer.’ Bokari got to his feet. ‘They’ve been picked clean, partially absorbed. Look.’ He panned his stablight onto a skeleton half sunk into the floor. Strands of milky white trailed from it, as if the floor were acid, and the remains were dissolving into it.
1351‘The devourers devoured,’ said Ren.
1352‘A little irony to ease our death,’ said Thracian. ‘Bokari, get out of there. Keltru, which way?’
1353Keltru payed out a little chain. The hybrid moved its mutilated head around, casting for psychic spoor. It pulled hard towards the largest tunnel on the far side of the room. ‘That way.’
1354‘Very well,’ said Thracian. ‘Move out.’
1355‘Wait!’ shouted Doror. ‘The floor!’
1356Bokari looked down. The glassy rock around his feet was shining with a brightening green glow.
1357‘Get out of there!’ Thracian yelled.
1358Bokari 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.
1359‘Wraiths!’ yelled Brother Ren.
1360The Pharos trembled.
1361The 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.
1362A 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.
1363‘Bring them down!’ Thracian roared. His gun barked.
1364Bang! Bang! Bang!
1365The Pharos shook.
1366The 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.
1367Thracian’s world shifted.
1368‘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.
1369Bang! Bang! BANG!
1370Thracian remembered.
1371He ran alone onto the bridge of the Heart of Cronus. His armour was scored with claw marks. His hearts were broken.
1372He had failed.
1373Mind-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.
1374There 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.
1375It 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.
1376They should have been screaming. They should have been fighting, but they did nothing. Nothing whatsoever.
1377The rot had spread right through the fleet. All of them were psy-locked.
1378‘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.
1379‘Hadrios!’
1380A 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.
1381‘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.
1382Shipmistress Hannelore calmly ejected an empty promethium flask from her flamer, unclamped a replacement from her belt and screwed it into place.
1383Thracian raised his gun and his sword.
1384‘Hannelore!’ he said.
1385‘You were expecting someone else?’ She looked towards a broken pile of blackened armour. ‘Poor Hadrios, misunderstood to the end.’
1386Thracian recovered his senses. ‘Put down your weapon.’
1387‘No, my lord,’ she said. ‘You know I cannot do that.’ There was a smile in her voice under the dreamy, glassy-eyed look.
1388‘Then I have no choice.’
1389‘No, you really don’t.’
1390Hannelore turned towards him.
1391The Chapter Master’s finger tightened on the trigger, but he couldn’t pull it. Sweat sprang out on his brow. The trigger was immovable.
1392Hannelore 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.
1393‘Why?’ Thracian gurgled.
1394Hannelore 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.
1395‘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.’
1396Gunfire 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.
1397Hannelore looked over Thracian’s shoulder. She did not seem concerned about defeat. An icy knot in Thracian’s gut told him she might win.
1398‘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.’
1399Firelight 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.
1400‘Then this is your plan? Burn everything before the reinforcement fleet arrives? You’ll never be able to explain it.’
1401‘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.’
1402‘You are a slave to those who would devour us! The genestealers are tyranids, Hannelore.’
1403‘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.’
1404She levelled the flamer at the Chapter Master.
1405‘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.’
1406The hissing pilot light came close to Thracian’s eyes. Gunfire was coming closer to the command deck.
1407‘You have lost. We have won out. Put down the flamer. Surrender. Accept judgement.’
1408Hannelore shook her head.
1409‘You will be saved. I will save you. All of you.’
1410Thracian.
1411‘Goodbye, Thracian.’
1412Thracian.
1413Flames engulfed the Chapter Master, biting into him, charring heat resistant ceramite.
1414‘Thracian! Thracian! Wake up!’
1415‘By the warden of the light, is he with us?’ Doror looked to the Apothecary.
1416‘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.’
1417The Chapter Master lay on the ground. His armour prevented anything like a natural posture. He looked more like a malfunctioning machine than a man.
1418Galerius 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.
1419‘Get him up, by the Emperor,’ said Doror.
1420‘My lord!’ Aratus tried again. ‘Come back to us, the enemy are–’
1421Thracian 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.
1422‘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.
1423Thracian 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.
1424Thracian felt the fire. He felt his skin burn, the sight cook out of his left eye.
1425‘Hannelore!’ he roared. ‘Hannelore!’
1426He jammed his hands under the chin of Aratus’ helm, found the soft seal, and began to strangle.
1427‘My lord! Please! Thracian!’ Aratus struck inwards at the Chapter Master’s arms with his forearms, but could not break his grip.
1428‘You will not destroy our Chapter,’ Thracian grunted. ‘I will not let you.’
1429Ulas 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.
1430Doror 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.
1431Brother 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.
1432‘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.
1433‘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.
1434‘It’s me! Thracian, it is Aratus.’
1435Thracian gasped. Sweat ran off him in rivulets.
1436‘Calm yourself! Calm! Thracian, Thracian, look at me!’
1437The Chapter Master stared up at his battle brother. Recognition dawned.
1438‘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.’
1439Warm air sang mournfully through the tunnels from the depths of the mountain.
1440Thracian reached up a hand. Aratus and Doror pulled him to his feet.
1441‘Neither is good.’
1442The 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.
1443The last gunshots died away.
1444Thracian 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.’
1445Far beneath their feet, distant machinery rumbled.
1446‘We need to find it now,’ Thracian said. ‘Before I lose my mind.’