by Guy Haley
Many who met him assumed he wore his warsmith’s mask to hide his disfigurements. To a very small degree this was true, but only to a very small degree. Dantioch was a man of the mind. He cared little for the aesthetics of his own form. The battered nature of his suit told that clearly. To those who asked, he said he wore it from shame, to remember who he was, so that he might never forget the treachery of his brothers. And this was also true.
But Dantioch did have pride. Pride in his Legion and in his oaths that had kept him steadfast in the face of Krendl’s betrayal at the Schadenhold. Pride had seen him wounded. Pride kept him masked. The pain of betrayal marked his face more than scars, and Dantioch did not want his suffering to be remarked upon – only his deeds.
‘This conduit is open often, Captain Casmir. The machine has become accustomed to it. I and Alexis find it a simple matter to focus it there. Macragge is not so far, in galactic terms. If the Pharos has been compromised, then speaking with you is not an adequate measure to judge it by. So the question still stands. Do we continue our search for other operating beacons in order to extend the reach of the new Imperium here as Lord Guilliman commanded, or cease our explorations to safeguard what we already have?’
‘Sacrifice potential strategic superiority for established, short range capabilities? A difficult set of theoreticals to resolve,’ said Casmir. ‘A decision of that importance can only be made by Lord Guilliman.’
‘What of the Emperor Sanguinius?’ said Dantioch.
‘Lord Guilliman’s orders are clear,’ said Casmir. ‘He alone is to make decisions on matters pertaining to the beacon, no one else. Not even the emperor would gainsay them without his consultation.’
‘And can Lord Guilliman be reached?’
Casmir’s mouth twisted. ‘Not at this time. The primarch is occupied with matters of state.’
‘I sense some dissatisfaction, Casmir.’
Casmir grimaced. ‘They will not leave my lord be. Every time the Pharos is fixed upon Macragge, more ships come in. All of them need to be greeted, their occupants appraised. Many of them are suffering from their betrayal. Guilliman attempts to help them all, but not all can be helped, and not all respond well to our way of doing things. Too many of them are at the mercy of their emotions.’ He stopped, aware that he spoke ill of their allies. ‘I am scheduled to meet with Lord Guilliman later today. I will discuss your concerns with him then. Until then, you are to attempt no further long-range locational attempts. Once today’s communications are finished, leave the beacon focused here on the Chapel of Memorial.’
‘As you wish, captain.’
‘It is not as I wish. I wish this war had never started. I wish your xenos machine could deposit us on the bridge of Horus’ flagship so that we could end this war with one stroke. But wishes never brought a satisfactory solution to anything. I am only being practical. Are you ready?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I shall leave you to Consul Forsche’s tender mercies. Twenty communications today.’
‘We shall attempt them all.’
‘You have our thanks. I am sorry to burden you so, warsmith, but the government of the Five Hundred Worlds is dependent on your efforts. If there is anything we can do to ease your task, please have the consul inform me.’
‘Knowing the proclivities of your Legion and Ultramar, I would expect that you are already doing everything you can.’
Casmir bowed. ‘It is so, warsmith.’ He addressed the guard. ‘Consul Forsche may enter.’ A formality, as there were no walls any longer between the chapel interior and the courtyard outside it.
In Primary Location Alpha, Dantioch’s small army of scribes prepared themselves.
Forsche entered, flanked by human members of Macragge’s Praecental Guard. A train of clerks and servants came with him, carrying heavy books, lecterns, tables, chairs and data-slates. A tent was erected within the ruin, portable heaters set up to drive off Macragge’s chill. Quickly and with the efficiency that Dantioch had come to expect of the Five Hundred Worlds, the Chapel of Memorial was ready for the day’s business.
‘Good day, warsmith,’ said Forsche. He was not an old man by mortal standards, but the last months had been heavy on him. His skin was beginning to sag and his dark hair was greying at the temples.
‘I shall leave you to it, other duties call,’ said Casmir. ‘Re-illuminate Macragge by nineteen-hundred hours, Sothan local. I will speak with you then.’ He departed.
‘Where is first on the list today, consul?’ asked Dantioch.
Forsche held up a hand. A clerk brought forward a sheaf of papers bound loosely in a folder.
The consul flipped through the binder and sighed wearily. ‘Orders for the Oligarchs of Thraia,’ he said. ‘Thirty lines. Immediate response required.’
The clerk read out the queries for Thraia. One of Dantioch’s own staff wrote them down. Carantine’s tech-priests adjusted their machines, and redirected the Pharos to the Acropolis of the Demos in Thraia’s capital. Dantioch’s aides had become adept at operating the Mechanicum devices that moderated the xenos technology, allowing Dantioch to concentrate on focusing the communications beam. Sometimes Polux took his place. Three other legionaries besides were being trained in the operation, but none of them had the finesse that Dantioch had developed. When he was on the stage the beam was brought to bear quickly. What took the time was the personnel side of the operation. Human beings were forever the weak link in every chain.
Ships could get to Macragge easily enough by following the light of the Pharos. But they could not easily return home, and so Guilliman had ordered that the Pharos be used for direct communication with his fiefdoms. The Pharos could only be focused on one location at a time. It could not bridge the gap between third parties so that they might be left to get on with their affairs. Therefore the entire administrative business of Imperium Secundus went through the cave at the peak of Mount Pharos. Together, Dantioch and Guilliman had created a timetable, allotting each of the worlds, outposts and fleets of Ultramar a set time for communication. It worked to a certain degree, but the exigencies of war disrupted this often. If communication from Sotha was not expected, heralds at the focal points had to fetch their masters. Then questions would be taken and answered, replies and reciprocal queries noted down, contact re-established with Macragge, and the matter of the report passed on, discussed with Forsche or others of the High Senate, and if necessary, acted upon.
It took hours. But it was better than nothing.
For the remainder of the day, Dantioch processed the woes of the Five Hundred Worlds. Pleas for aid, reports of minor enemy incursion, and dangerous levels of psychic incidence on two worlds made up the most urgent. Often the petitioners were angry and afraid. Frequently they attempted to get Dantioch to reveal the nature of the device they utilised and asked repeatedly over its provenance and location. Rarely was the news good. Entirely by chance, Dantioch had become the lynchpin that held Ultramar together. Even for a man of his will and dedication, it was mentally exhausting.
A chrono chime cut short the last conference hours later. Dantioch withdrew the beam from the furious Polymarch of Aphos and sent the alien beacon to alight upon the Chapel of Memorial again. After a few words with Forsche, the Officio Ultramara was efficiently disassembled, leaving the chapel’s ruin quiet.
Dantioch gritted his teeth as he stood and left the central point of Prime Location Alpha. A day in the chair left him stiff. The play of his muscles and bones as they were reawoken provoked a storm of protest from his nervous system. And still the day’s work was not yet done.
Servitors stepped forward unbidden to remove the throne to the side of the chamber. The Chapel of Memorial remained displayed in the focus field. It appeared real. It was real, he reminded himself. Not an image.
Dantioch’s officials filed out, leaving a skeleton Mechanicum crew to mind the Pharos’ machines. Dan
tioch looked them over himself and gave his mark to the duty orders, pacing all the while to work the pain out of his back.
He did not notice Polux waiting at the back of the room until he spoke.
‘Barabas,’ said Polux.
‘Ah, you have arrived already.’
‘I have been watching the whole session. It is important for me to understand.’
‘You saw the purple face of Lord Espon, then?’
‘I did. I do not envy you, my friend. I am no diplomat. I would likely have shouted back.’
‘I am not a diplomat either. We seldom get to choose our roles.’ Dantioch coughed. He could not help wincing and holding his side.
‘You should rest, Barabas. Let me take the conference tomorrow.’
‘I will be fine, Alexis. I will rest tonight. First, let us go and investigate the damage we have done.’
‘You told them about Inwit, but you did not tell them about my sighting of Lord Dorn,’ said Polux, falling in beside his friend.
‘I did not.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why. Do not worry, I will, and I thank you if you will hold your peace. News of that magnitude should only be given to the primarch.’
‘Which one?’ said Polux. ‘These lords of other Legions are strange to me. How we can keep secrets from one at the command of another concerns me. Do we tell the Lion? The Angel? What if Guilliman orders us to keep this from his brothers? We will be complicit in many lies. I do not like this secrecy.’
‘To be the master of communication is to know everything,’ said Dantioch. ‘We are neck deep in the schemes of others. Our time here has been enlightening.’
‘To be a warrior again!’ said Polux.
‘A thought I have often,’ said Dantioch wryly.
‘This is not the kind of war I am used to fighting,’ said Polux. He was as majestic as a god carved in marble, but there was something boyish to his features, and when worried he could not escape an unintended look of petulance.
‘As little as I like it, I believe. The Lion’s reasoning was sound. To reveal what happened to the neophyte Oberdeii might well have led Lord Guilliman to stop our experimentation.’
‘And you hold your tongue now for the same reason, I think.’
Dantioch laughed and regretted it. He coughed loudly, fighting the spasm back down into the cage of hooks his chest had become. ‘You know me too well. I meant what I said. I will tell Lord Guilliman, but only face to face. We do not wish to swamp him with rumour before he has the facts before him.’
Polux gripped his friend’s arm and turned him gently to face him. Polux was a giant among Space Marines, and towered over Dantioch’s injury-twisted form. ‘Swear to me that we will not become embroiled in shadow games. I will not become caught in the bickering of brothers. We must tell him. It is too important not to.’
‘You might have been seeing nothing, Alexis. Ghosts walk these stages when the Pharos is untuned. Not all of them are–’
‘Swear to me,’ said Polux. ‘Please, Barabas.’
‘I swear,’ Barabas said. This insistence of Polux’s was taxing his patience a little. Through the chamber mouth he could see onto the promontory. The sun shone redly there. ‘It is almost sunset. We must hurry if we are to inspect the damage with the benefit of the evening light drain. There is a theory that I wish to put to the test.’
Polux released the warsmith.
‘Very well.’ Polux followed Dantioch from the chamber, carefully matching his speed to his friend’s halting pace.
They followed a twisting route out of Primary Location Alpha. Many branches of Mount Pharos’ cave system had been equipped with walkways to bridge the numerous deadfalls, pits and chasms that broke the network, but not all. The metal shook and rattled on its pins under their feet. Against the smooth lustre of the stone, the walkways seemed primitive. Dantioch chided himself against setting the technology of the xenos above that of mankind, but faced with such evidence it was hard to resist.
For the most part they descended. The shiny black stone of the Pharos’ winding mechanisms closed in on them.
They went as far as they could on the human additions to the system. Five minutes before the sun was due to set, Dantioch unlatched a gate in a section of walkway railing and stepped with difficulty down onto the black rock. Polux tensed behind him, reaching out a hand to steady the warsmith.
‘The stone is not so slick that I will fall, Alexis!’ Dantioch said sharply. ‘I am broken, not helpless.’
‘My apologies,’ said Polux. He withdrew his hand.
Dantioch regretted his words. ‘Alexis, I apologise. A brother should never scold a brother for his concern. Your care makes me aware of my condition, and it is that which angers me, not you. It is I who should be sorry. I am tired. Our burden is great, even for such as us.’ He grasped Polux’s forearm in friendship. ‘Follow me, the section I wish us to inspect is this way.’
They went along the lip of a crevasse whose modest metre width hid a two-hundred-metre chasm. The glassy lip to it and the black, light-absorbent quality of the stone made the edge uncertain, even to a Space Marine’s eyes. A tensioned safety line ran along the wall, harnesses clipped to it waiting to be used, but the legionaries disdained them. They headed further into the mountain, following a tunnel that narrowed minutely but steadily. The crevasse thinned, becoming a fissure centimetres across.
The Pharos’ tunnels were frigid. A constant breeze blew upwards through much of the network, and its defiance of thermodynamics was one of the many strange things about the mountain. Drawn from the warmer lowlands, this air should have held a higher temperature than the air at the peak. But the moment the damp coastal winds entered the structure they became chilled. Humidity was well below its expected levels also. The moisture load of the air dropped with every metre one travelled upward. By the time the wind exited the summit, it had been sucked dry.
They had descended far from Primary Location Alpha, but were still far above sea level. At that altitude most of the moisture had been depleted. The air hooting out of the narrow gap in the floor brought with it a sharp dryness that stretched the skin of the nostrils.
The tunnel grew darker. Soon all that Dantioch and Polux could see were the grey shapes of each other against pronounced blackness. Every time Dantioch reached out to the tunnel wall and met rock he was surprised, for the place was so devoid of light his eyes told him to expect nothing. For a quarter-kilometre they went, the tunnel narrowing until they had to bow their heads. The gap in the floor became so thin that the mountain wind sang through it with an aggressive melancholy.
They turned a twist in the tunnel and a bright arc lamp suddenly flooded a tall, domed space twenty metres high. A black cavity opened up into a second, identical chamber, side by side with the first so that the rooms formed a structure resembling a pair of lungs. At the centre of the light the constituent mineral crystals of the rock glittered coldly, but the periphery of the illumination was sudden, unnaturally weakened by the stone. The portable generator powering the light buzzed annoyingly. Next to it a servitor stood sentry.
As they approached it swung its entire body round to face them.
‘Warsmith. Captain. Greetings.’ The voice was human, but devoid of all feeling. Blank eyes as round and silver as coins regarded them. ‘What is your command?’
‘No command. Continue, Unit 992.’
‘Compliance.’
Dantioch led Polux to the wall. ‘See, Alexis, here is a damaged section.’
The servitor dutifully waddled aside to allow them close. Dantioch showed Polux a network of pressure cracks crawling up the stone in a pattern similar to the diamond web of a fishing net. Small fragments of shattered stone were trapped in the lines of the web, ready to pop free at the slightest motion.
‘Shearing effect. The Pharos shook the mountain,’ s
aid Polux. ‘I shook it,’ he added wonderingly.
‘Indeed.’
‘Can we repair it, Barabas? Do we even need to?’
‘I am not sure, but not because it has no effect on the mechanism’s operation. That is why we are here.’
‘I do not understand. You are being oblique, my friend.’
‘If my hypothesis is correct, you will need no explanation from me once our observation is done. Please deactivate the lamp, 992.’
‘Compliance,’ said the servitor moronically. It stumped around and shut off the generator with a clumsy hand. The buzzing silenced and the mountain’s weight suddenly pressed in. The muted sound of the draughts blowing round its corridors took on the seeming of a mighty respiration, as if Mount Pharos were a giant slumbering away the aeons.
Once, neither Space Marine would have lent credence to such imaginings. Mental images, they would have said, the human mind constantly alive to analogy in its quest for understanding. No longer would they so lightly dismiss these notions – not when the galaxy was plagued by the impossible.
Dantioch checked a chronometer in his mask display.
‘Three seconds.’
The stone of the mountain was in all respects ordinary, a fine-grained basalt squeezed from the mantle under an ancient ocean, except where the xenos architects of the Pharos had engineered it into that smooth, glossy black. Light did not shine as it should within the tunnel network. For the most part it was quickly absorbed by the treated stone. At sunset and sunrise, the opposite was true. The song of the mountain was one of the planet’s finest spectacles. Dantioch had seen every manner of terror and wonder, and still the light song of the Pharos arrested him.
As Sotha’s sun sank below the distant Blackrock Mountains, the last rays of the day hit the westward-facing apertures of Mount Pharos. This light was not sucked away, but reflected, intensified, and re-emitted redoubled.