Mark of Calth

by Edited by Laurie Goulding

  That he thinks such banal deaths will be enough to save him makes Kartho’s lip curl in a mixture of amusement and contempt.

  ‘Who knows?’ says Kartho. ‘At this point it hardly matters.’

  ‘Could it be salvaged? Turned against the Thirteenth?’

  Kartho shakes his head in disbelief. Hol Beloth mistakes this for his answer.

  ‘I suppose it is too badly damaged,’ says Hol Beloth.

  That the fool believes there is still a war to be won on Calth is laughable. The Word Bearers’ victory has already been achieved and the fate of this rock is irrelevant.

  Yes, the Ultramarines were not as humbled as Kor Phaeron desired, but they are broken as a fighting force. Spent. They will waste their efforts to reclaim a world that has no value. Lorgar has likely already forgotten Calth.

  The powers beyond the Great Eye have their gaze turned upon the Golden One, and the burning of Ultramar is just the beginning of his grand schemes.

  Maloq Kartho has ambitions of his own, and what he does here is simply the next step on his path to glory. He already feels his unnamed shadow moving through the darkness, an ink-black leviathan that swallows worlds and exterminates species for its fleeting amusement. He senses it hunting fresh prey even now, mortal beings who have somehow managed to escape Calth by means that should be impossible.

  His hand slips over the glass surface of his warp-flask as he senses its squirming, reptilian hunger. Whoever it hunts must be special indeed to have elicited such pleasure in one so vast as to be beyond human understanding.

  ‘We shouldn’t be out here,’ says Hol Beloth, breaking into Kartho’s thoughts. The commander looks up into the wide sky. He feels too exposed to enjoy its technicolor death-throes. ‘You saw what happened to Lanshear.’

  ‘I did,’ agreed Kartho. ‘And it was wondrous. But still we wait.’

  ‘You will see us all killed,’ says Hol Beloth, lapsing into uneasy silence.

  Hol Beloth feels acutely vulnerable here without his army, but to bring such numbers to the surface would bring the wrath of the Ultramarines orbital guns down upon them within moments. Besides, thinks Kartho, the brotherhoods will soon serve a much grander purpose where they are.

  Kartho cast his augurs wide in choosing the legionaries who would accompany them. To achieve his goal, only the deadliest warriors could hope to survive. Only the most devoted and ruthless.

  There are few as single-minded in their adoration as Eriesh Kigal.

  Encased in a war-scarred suit of Terminator armour, Kigal stands head and shoulders above Kartho, his arched pauldrons and slab-like breastplate dancing with static and irradiated dust. Each fist is a lightning claw and his daemon-visaged helm now bears two curling horns. Six similarly clad warriors stand with Kigal, armed with a mix of combi-bolters, lightning claws, chainfists and energised warhammers. They bear the mark of the Octed upon their shoulders, and Kartho has inscribed each veteran’s scarred faceplate with his own personal sigil.

  Towering over them all is a silent Dreadnought with a casket-plate bearing the etched name of Zu Gunara. Kartho knows nothing of that warrior; whatever flesh-scraps once sloshed in amniotic grease within have now been devoured by a void-hard darkness with teeth and eyes. The hulking war-machine is no longer simply a Dreadnought, but a thing of the night with iron fists.

  ‘So what are we waiting for?’ asks Hol Beloth, pacing back and forth in the shadow of a soot-blackened metal pressing plant.

  ‘For the bringers of a mighty gift,’ says Kartho, seeing a dust cloud threading its way through the ruins. The coughing splutter of a labouring engine echoes dully across the ashen remnants of the broken city. Hol Beloth hears it too and his hand goes to the crowned hilt of his sword.

  ‘Ultramarines?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Because we are still alive,’ says Kartho as a wide-bodied industrial vehicle with a transport compartment at the rear comes into view. It ploughs through the knee-high dust between the gutted buildings, riding low on its suspension, heavy with potential. The remains of a spread-eagled skeleton are lashed to the roof of the vehicle. Only the pitted, corroded plates of carapace armour and shreds of uniform hold the body together. No flesh remains on the skeleton, the bones bleached the pallor of ash.

  ‘Major Kadene, I presume,’ says Kartho with a throaty chuckle.

  Hol Beloth looks strangely at him, but he doesn’t satisfy his curiosity.

  Though he has dismissed Hol Beloth’s concerns, Kartho looks up for any sign of their having been discovered. He has chosen his moment carefully. The clashing electromagnetic storm should render any geo-sats overhead blind to this portion of the city.

  ‘Come,’ says Kartho, and he and Hol Beloth step from the shelter of the covering structure.

  Kigal’s Terminators and Zu Gunara follow them through the detritus of the flattened metropolis. Structures designed to withstand earthquake, fire and flood have been brought low by war, and the sight pleases Kartho greatly.

  The vehicle wheezes towards them, finally stopping in the shadow of Konor’s statue. Its blue paintwork has flaked off, as though burned away from the inside. The bare metal of its frame and panels is already corroding. The Terminators lock the double barrels of their guns on the driver’s window. Kartho hears the buzz of target acquisition lasers and ranging motors over the city’s groaning lament of steel and the dusty susurration of the wind.

  The vehicle’s crew doors open and Kartho smells the rich aroma of decaying meat. A man bearing the mark of the Brotherhood lurches from the cab’s interior and Kartho sees death upon him. He wears it proudly, a mass of rotten tissue that weeps milky fluid from the rampant sores covering every visible centimetre of his skin. His eyes are yellow, veined with ruptured capillaries and virtually blind with cataracts.

  Hol Beloth draws his sword as he sees the man wears the uniform of the enemy.

  He has not yet realised that this man is one of their own. Another brotherhood acolyte emerges from the opposite door, and his afflictions are even worse. Blood leaks from every pore and wind-borne dust abrades the flesh from his bones with every gust.

  Kartho sees a third man through the warped glass of the canopy. His skin has peeled from his skull and he stares sightlessly at the Dark Apostle through fluid-filled sockets. His hands are fused with the steering column in some strange biological symbiosis. Blind, and enduring unspeakable torment, he has been guided here by the dark monarchs of the warp.

  Hol Beloth reaches into the vehicle and rips the driver’s insignia from his uniform. A flap of wet meat comes with it and flops to the dust. He looks at the insignia, and it takes him a second to make the connection. Kartho steps around the vehicle, to where the dying men are pulling back a heavy tarpaulin. Hol Beloth appears at his side as the weapon they have come for is revealed.

  It is spherical in shape, and smaller than Kartho had expected. A metre long, including the protective metal case. Its surfaces are smooth, the blue paint gone, leaving its body a dull grey that matches the former colour of the Word Bearers.

  An unambiguous warning symbol is acid-etched onto its side.

  A circular ring, with three splayed arms radiating from its centre to form three circles in a pyramid form. Since the earliest days, this has been the sigil of an elemental power, an unknowing rendition of the fear of pestilence carried in the hearts and minds of mortals since the dawn of time.

  Hol Beloth holds up the driver’s insignia. ‘These men came from the Praxor shelter before it was destroyed.’

  ‘That they did,’ agrees Kartho.

  The shadow of Zu Gunara falls over them as the Dreadnought lifts the warhead from the transport compartment. It is heavy and the vehicle visibly lifts from the dust. The men whose flesh is slipping from their frames like wet cloth sigh in pleasure.

  ‘Is this
what I think it is?’ asks Hol Beloth.

  Kartho nods.

  He feels the warp-flask at his hip squirm with agitation. With the acquisition of this weapon of total destruction, his union with the immaterial creature grows ever closer. Kartho feels its resistance. It wants to finish its hunt, but the fates have decreed their joining and nothing will prevent it.

  ‘We cannot fight the Ultramarines conventionally,’ says Kartho. ‘We are newborn Catachan Devils in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.’

  The Terminators level their guns at the brotherhood warriors.

  ‘That is not how we will fight,’ continues Kartho.

  The dying men drop to their knees and spread their arms in gratitude. Bare bone gleams. Ribs shine wetly through sloughing flesh. A bark of gunfire tears their dissolving bodies apart in an explosion of rotten matter. Flaming lumps of meat spatter the buildings nearby.

  Eriesh Kigal affixes melta-charges to the vehicle. There must be no trace of it left for the geo-sats to discover. The intense heat will vaporise the transport and kill off any traces of biological taint. The Ultramarines must have no warning of the new threat that has emerged from the weapon stores of CV427/Praxor.

  ‘How do you intend to use it?’ asks Hol Beloth.

  ‘How do you think?’ says Maloq Kartho. ‘I am going to use it to kill Calth.’

  XIV

  A haze of light lies over the plotting table’s surface like a low-lying fog. Drifting particulates are caught in the diffuse light of the holos, causing flickering refraction errors in the topography displayed. It is Calth’s surface, rendered in greens, browns and yellow. Icons representing Ultramarines positions and their allies are marked in gold and blue; known Word Bearers and cultist positions in hostile red.

  Two consistent red icons are of greatest concern to Ventanus – one in the heart of the foundries north of Lanshear, the other within the Uranik Radial.

  ‘How often do the geo-sats initiate a surface augur?’ asks Sydance as Tawren zooms in on each icon, friendly and hostile. Time stamps appear above each one.

  The most recent is six hours old.

  ‘Access to orbital auguries is still sporadic,’ she says, shifting the map around with thought impulses through the MIU cabling plugged into the table. ‘Most of the geo-sats were knocked out in the first moments of the attack. The few that remain are slaved to the orbital weapon platforms to alert us to any surface movements of Word Bearers forces.’

  Ventanus repeats Sydance’s question. ‘How often?’

  ‘Every ten hours,’ says Tawren. ‘That’s as much inload as the Ultimus noosphere can accommodate until more powerful data-engines can augment its capacity.’

  ‘That’s a long time,’ says Hamadri.

  ‘A long time?’ snaps Sydance, shaking his head. ‘It’s a lifetime. This map is worthless. Remus, we can’t devise theoretical, let alone practical, from data that’s ten hours old.’

  ‘Six hours,’ says Ventanus.

  ‘It could be six or ten minutes and it would be just as bad,’ says Sydance.

  ‘The map is as accurate as circumstances allow,’ responds Tawren, as the map zooms out.

  ‘You’re overlooking one thing, Lyros,’ says Ventanus.

  ‘I am? What?’

  ‘There are more gold icons today than there were yesterday,’ he says. ‘Every day our forces grow. The Word Bearers can have no such expectation. Server, how many more loyalist forces have you established contact with since the last update?’

  ‘Thirteen more underground shelters and sealed cave systems are now confirmed,’ answers Tawren, and the new additions bob like eager children on the map.

  ‘Two weeks ago we were broken and scattered, on the verge of extermination,’ says Ventanus. ‘Now we have co-ordination with nearly forty thousand of our Legion brothers, a quarter of a million Army and Mechanicum assets and sixteen Legio Titanicus engines. Every day brings us closer to becoming a globally unified force. The Word Bearers are alone, cut off from every hope of aid. They are fighting just to stay alive, but we fight for Calth.’

  Ventanus spreads his hands to encompass the gold icons on the table.

  He sees renewed hope. His words promise them a victory, but they think the war will be won in a matter of months. They think the Word Bearers will be pushed from Calth without difficulty.

  They are wrong, and Ventanus needs to bring some cold reality to the table.

  Using the manual controls, he highlights the area of the map that shows the two red symbols that trouble him the most. Force disposition icons and unit identifiers flicker to life as he manipulates the controls. The data is old and incomplete, but together with what he has seen with his own eyes, it is enough.

  ‘A Word Bearers commander named Foedral Fell is building a fortress in the northern foundry districts,’ he says. ‘And Hol Beloth, the warlord who razed Lanshear, has regrouped beneath the Uranik Radial. Beloth seems to have adopted a holdfast position, so we can discount him for now, but we can’t allow Fell to establish a secure base in the north.’

  ‘You have a theoretical?’ asks Sydance, eager to be unleashed.

  ‘I do,’ grins Ventanus. ‘We march north and kill the bastard.’

  XV

  The tunnels around Ingenium Subiaco are gloomy, and lit by dancing flames that he cannot see. Each passage bears the hallmarks of being naturally formed, but their dimensions are too perfect, too geometric to be anything other than artificial. The underground structures of Calth are an ingenium’s idea of paradise, a realm where geology, engineering and art come together. There are few underground cavern systems he has not visited, mapped and devised great schemes for linking.

  An entire underground planetary ecology: self-sustaining and self-perpetuating.

  His plans are even now being put into action – designs, philosophies and practical means of achieving their completion have been transmitted to most of the largest subterranean shelters for implementation.

  The cavern is a glistening silver colour, suggestive of the eastern arcologies, the walls wet and dripping. Ingenium Subiaco has never feared solitude. He has found peace in the quiet times spent at a drafting slate, buried in a technical librarium or immersed in the design theory of the great thinkers of previous ages. He enjoys time spent with friends and family, but he acknowledges that he quickly reaches a point where he wishes to be alone.

  Those closest to him know this about him and recognise the signs of his wandering attention and nascent irritability. They make allowances for him and Subiaco is grateful for their understanding of what he knows is a flaw in his character.

  Subiaco relishes solitude and the chance to immerse himself in his work.

  But this is something else entirely; he is utterly alone.

  This is not just the absence of people, but the absence of the existence of other people.

  Ingenium Subiaco understands with total clarity that he is the only man alive on Calth.

  He does not know where he is and has no memory of coming here.

  Each cave mouth is a yawning abyss, a pathway to horror or a gateway to some dreadful terror, locked away in ages past and now free to climb to the surface.

  Caves and their exploration hold no terror for Subiaco. He has squirmed through the tiniest of cracks and pushed his wiry frame into some of the most inaccessible cave systems this planet has to offer, but these yawning entrances scare him more than anything.

  He cannot count how many there are; every time his gaze shifts, the cavern seems to rearrange its walls and the black-limned cave mouths constrict without appearing to move. Subiaco feels hot breath exhale from the nearest cave, and backs away.

  Which route leads to the surface? Do any of them?

  He can see none of the cave markings etched by the earliest explorers, designed to aid the l
ost in finding their way back to the surface. It is as though this cave has never been trod by Calth’s people. Laughter drifts from somewhere and he spins around as shadows chase one another over the walls.

  Drifts of steam sigh from cracks in the floor, but there is no heat to them. In fact, the cavern is like a storage chiller. His breath mists the air and he sees crackling daggers of ice form on overhanging crags of rock.

  ‘This isn’t real,’ he says, finally making the intuitive leap to realise that he’s dreaming.

  But Subiaco is wise enough to see that understanding this and ending it are two very different things.

  Orange light seeps into the cavern, the glimmer of distant fires. Subiaco remembers a crumbling text borne to Calth from Terra itself and said to be tens of thousands of years old. Its stasis-sealed pages spoke of a place far below the ground where all the devils and evil-doers of the world would be sent upon their deaths. This was said to be a place of fire and torment. With the sky above him and the light of the sun on his face, Subiaco scoffed at such ancient superstition, but here in the darkness, his animal core quails in fear.

  The deep flames are growing hotter and the walls of the cavern begin to drip, sloughing their substance as though shaped from wax and not solid rock. The entire cavern structure is disintegrating, coming undone with the speed of an unmasked lie. The walls flake and peel away like cinders in a fire, the ceiling falling in a rain of blood-soaked ash.

  And behind that waxen veneer, a swaying mesh of iron lath and haphazardly constructed supports. It is a madman’s structure that cannot possibly support the burden being placed upon it.

  And beyond that, a howling void of utter emptiness.

  No... not empty. Not empty at all.

  Unimaginably huge shapes move within the void, leviathans that have outgrown the paltry scale of the word.