by Paul Kearney
Fury filled the vid-screens at the head of the nave, a black ovoid devoid of light, stark against the stars. The light of Iax’s sun crossed it in a jagged terminator, throwing into relief the ragged contours that rippled it.
An ugly thing to look at. Calgar was not one for imagination, but it did not take much to believe that the hulk was a brooding, malign presence here in Ultramar, something that did not belong, that had travelled too far and too long in the darkness to ever properly exist here in the Imperium of Man.
Destroy, and preserve; the twin duties of the Adeptus Astartes, now bound into a conundrum that confronted him along with the image of the hulk that loomed above him on the bridge.
Dark star, that hath no light;
Whither shalt thou wander,
If not back into the abyss
Where we must follow?
The lines came to him out of a long-forgotten scrap of text; the ramblings of a heretic who had once been a Saint of the Imperium. He did not know why they appeared in his mind at that moment, but they disturbed him, as though his thoughts had been touched for a second by a cold spirit passing by.
Calgar shook off the thought, uttered a brief prayer to the Sustaining Emperor, and left the bridge for his briefing room.
‘I will accompany Seventh Company down onto the hulk to join Fifth,’ Calgar said crisply, looking up and down the high officers of the Chapter who gathered around the ancient, scarred table in the middle of the chamber. ‘Librarian Tigurius will remain on the Octavius as commander of all orbital assets. I have already spoken to the shipmasters of the Spatha and the Mutatis Mutandis and they have agreed to subordinate their vessels to Ultramarines command while the magos and the inquisitor are down with us.’
‘Forgive me, Chapter Master,’ Captain Ixion of Seventh spoke up, ‘but are you saying that we will be operating side by side with agents of the Inquisition and the Adeptus Mechanicus upon the hulk itself?’
‘That is correct, captain. Inquisitor Drake and Magos Fane have insisted on landing, along with detachments from their Orders.’
‘That’ll complicate the tactical outlook,’ Brother Morent, one of Calgar’s honour guard, muttered, the overheads glinting on the gold ornamentation of his armour.
‘The Chapter will maintain overall command,’ Calgar said quietly, a low tone that always made his brethren listen more intently. ‘I will have the final say on all activity upon and within the hulk, and where a tactical situation arises, the senior Ultramarines officer present will make the decisions.’ Calgar’s human eye flashed coldly. ‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Chapter Master!’ they chorused.
‘Insertion of Seventh Company will begin at once. Captain Ixion, as senior captain on the ground I want you to set up a base of operations, fortify it if possible, and do what you can to improve communications. At present they are woefully inadequate.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Ixion was a lean, dark, serious-looking fellow, renowned as one of the more intellectual of the company officers. There were rumours that he had latent psychic abilities, but he had never manifested them, and had come through the line companies with a fine fighting record. He was careful with his men, which Calgar liked, and had a keen insight into strategic planning. Also, he was senior to Captain Galenus by many years. He would command the combined companies of Fifth and Seventh if the Chapter Master was not nearby.
Galenus was brave as a lion, a hard fighter, but he still had a tendency now and then to think like the sergeant he had so recently been – to attack problems before analysing them. His aggression was a valuable trait, but aggression alone could not plumb the depths of the enigma which was Fury.
‘I want a landing field cleared on the surface,’ Calgar went on. ‘Large enough to accommodate at least three Thunderhawks. The terrain is rough down there. For that reason I have seen fit to awaken all three of the Ancients with our forces. They are being prepped for revival even as I speak. Brother Fortunus on the Rex Aeterna, Brothers Tolkos and Uther here on the Octavius.’
‘Lord, is there any word on the First Company veterans?’ Captain Ixion asked.
‘Three are on vox, uninjured and still exploring the depths of the hulk. The fourth, Brother Starn, is unaccounted for. Fifth’s Librarian has lost contact with his locator beacon, and he has been out of vox for some thirty-six hours now.’ Calgar’s face gnarled in a frown.
‘At present we must assume that Brother Starn has been lost. We will not stop looking for him, but other priorities have now superseded that search. I intend to enter the hulk in full force and conduct an extensive survey of as much of the interior as we can reach. And I intend to do it quickly.
‘It is not unknown for these phenomena to disappear as quickly as they have arrived, though it would be unusual. Brother Tigurius will warn us if he senses that Fury is about to experience an imminent translation. If that occurs, we will evacuate at once. Every battle-brother in the line companies must be impressed with this knowledge, brothers. I do not intend to leave anyone behind if it can be helped.’ He paused, and his fists clenched.
‘We will find Brother Starn. Dead or alive, he will come back with us to Macragge. I promise you that.’
Back and forth the Thunderhawks went, shuttling the Ultramarines down to the surface of Fury. It took the better part of two hours before the two companies and their attachments were duly assembled, and the Ultramarines threw up a massive ring of breastworks out of the debris and rubble that made up the hulk.
Within that bristling ring were two smaller encampments; one belonging to Inquisitor Drake, the other to Magos Fane. The inquisitor had brought a small entourage of retainers with him; they were hard-faced human veterans in armoured vac-suits who bore a variety of weapons, and they kept themselves to themselves.
The magos had touched down with an escort of skitarii and a train of other specialist servitors, many of whom bore no resemblance to humanity. On landing, he immediately had a shrine to the Omnissiah constructed, and conducted a brief Techsorcistic Ritual to cleanse the immediate surroundings of the camp from the scrapcode of the Dark Mechanicum. And as the Dreadnought warriors of the Ultramarines emerged from their transports, he and his acolytes blessed the towering machines, and hallowed the ancient hulls that housed the Adeptus Astartes veterans.
The Dreadnoughts paused only a few minutes for their anointing, and then set to work constructing a larger landing pad for the Thunderhawks, hurling aside great masses of wreckage to provide a cleared space within the perimeter.
Marneus Calgar himself oversaw the landings; he had come down in the Galatan Rise, the first of the Octavius’ Thunderhawks to make landfall. He had donned the Gauntlets of Ultramar, ancient power fists mounted with storm bolters that linked into dorsal magazines. An Iron Halo glowed above his helm, and prayer strips streamed from his battleplate where the tech-priests of the Octavius had blessed and anointed it with purity seals. Under his gaze, the Ultramarines of his Chapter worked with swift and unerring efficiency, while the Thunderhawks came and went, roaring among them in clouds of shining dust.
All told, some two hundred and sixty servants of the Emperor were now on the surface of the hulk, a force to be reckoned with no matter who the foe might be.
And maintaining stationary orbit over them, the Octavius task force looked down protectively, though Calgar knew that there was little the Ultramarines battle-barge could do to assist them. If it came to combat aboard Fury, then the Octavius would not be able to use its heavy weaponry for fear of destabilising the hulk. But the sight of it, gleaming above them in the void, was reassuring nonetheless.
‘I want two squads from each company to patrol out from the defences and search for means of entry into the superstructure of the hulk,’ Calgar told Captains Galenus and Ixion. ‘Magos Fane will nominate members of his Adeptus to accompany each squad and provide technical assistance.
‘We must
find a way in, brothers. We must get to the heart of this thing, and swiftly. The remainder of the companies will stand ready within the camp we have constructed.
‘Captain Galenus, you will detail a further squad to liaise with the First Company veterans still inside the hulk. I want to link up with them and analyse their findings. From what I have heard so far, their mission came to a possible entry point – not ideal, but useable if we find no other. Now, to your commands.’
Calgar stood at the command post as his captains left him. His honour guard stood nearby; Brothers Morent and Ohtar, resplendent in their finely ornamented armour, and bearing power axes as tall as a man. They said nothing; they had no need to say anything. Their sole purpose was the preservation of their Chapter Master’s life, and if they were apart from him, then they worked in blood and fire to preserve the honour and integrity of their Chapter.
The other members of the guard were scattered across Ultramar, accompanying other task forces of the Chapter – as were the Master of Sanctity, Brother Ortan Cassius, and the Master of the Forge, Fennius Maxim. Calgar had come to Fury with little in the way of personal staff or retainers. He did not believe that the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines should always be surrounded by a coterie of officers. He preferred to deal directly with his company captains and sergeants – it was one of the strengths of the Chapter, he believed, that there was a streamlined chain of command. And it was recommended by the Codex Astartes his own primarch had written.
The Ultramarines worked through the day, setting up strongpoints in the perimeter, clearing fields of fire and stationing the Devastators of Ninth at critical locations. The scout squad from Tenth, in half-plate armour that had been modified for vacuum, ranged out quietly from the main body, scouring the tumbled landscape of wrecks and flitting in and out of the carcasses of broken ships.
As their first twenty-two hour interval on the surface of the hulk came to a close, the Scout sergeant, Narmaticus of Calth, split his squad up into two-man observation teams armed with high-powered vox transceivers and sniper rifles, to keep an eye on obvious lines of approach. And as the hasty fortifications of the encampment were finished, so the warriors of the line companies settled down to monitor their arcs of fire and await further orders.
There was no true day or night on Fury; vast though the hulk was, it was too small to register such changes. It was turning slowly in the void, it was true, and every eleven hours or so the light of Iax’s sun left them, and they were plunged into darkness as the structure spun slowly on its unsteady axis. In the thin atmosphere, the Ultramarines could clearly hear the creak and groan of settling metal when all those untold megatonnes of material cooled and warmed, expanding and contracting as the light came and went; as though the hulk were breathing quietly under them, a vast respiration, which they could feel through their very feet.
It was in one of these dark periods that Captain Galenus made his way to the command post to give his news in person.
‘Chapter Master, we have regained contact with Brother Starn. We are working on his extraction now. He has intelligence which he says you should learn at once.’
Seven
Brother Starn stood immobile in his Terminator armour while the tech-priests went to work on him, like vultures of Old Earth surrounding a downed carcass. They lifted off ceramite plates, delved into the fibre-bundles of his servo-systems, and adjusted the more delicate of his ancient armour’s protocols and programs with a linked mobile cogitator that they had brought down from the Rex.
The Terminator looked like some old statue left to decay in a forgotten ruin as he stood there, a giant shape covered in metallic dust, his armour scratched and scored and dented, bedecked by fragments of wiring and the gleam of naked adamantium. But his voice on the vox was unchanged. Before him on a crate lay the thing he had brought up with him out of the depths, very like a snouted skull, at once familiar and strange to those who looked upon it.
‘I penetrated about three and a half miles, my lord,’ he said to Calgar, ‘but it is my belief the chasm below me extended much further. I came across other structures which had obviously been created after the pit’s formation. Roadways and catwalks welded together, passages leading off which had been maintained in the more recent past.’
‘Any operational systems?’ Calgar asked the veteran.
Starn paused for a second. ‘None that were obvious. But I am sure I picked up... something.’ His hesitation was unusual. ‘There is definitely life down there. I tried to engage with something that crossed my route, but I do not believe I hit anything. And then there is this –’ He gestured to the helm which sat before him.
Inquisitor Drake bent and picked it up, massive in his gauntleted hands. The inquisitor wore a helm of grey ceramite with black lenses, a flat nasal grille and various optic and sensory attachments set on its temples. He turned the relic over in his hands.
‘Mark V – see the molecular bonding studs? This is of ancient make – it could be millennia old.’
‘Heresy-pattern,’ Calgar said tonelessly.
‘Yes, Chapter Master, though this Mark continued in use for hundreds, even thousands of years after the Great Heresy.’
‘Is there anything else on it to date its provenance?’ Calgar asked, his Corvus helm turning to the inquisitor.
‘I would need a closer examination. With your permission I shall turn it over to one of my tech-savants. He should be able to date the alloys to within a reasonable timeframe.’
‘What about identity?’ Calgar asked.
‘The enamels have long since been scoured off it and there are no visible markings, but there should be nano-registrative idents on the components. It will take time. I shall have to vox my findings to Talasa Prime, but I believe that given a few days, I shall be able to give you the name of the Chapter it belonged to.’
‘Does it matter?’ Brother Starn snorted. ‘Whether the thing dates back to the Heresy or not, it proves that some portion at least of the hulk is composed of Adeptus Astartes wrecks – they must be deep in the lower layers.’
‘I quite agree,’ Drake said. ‘But are they the remnants of some faithful Chapter’s lost detachment, or are they a harbinger of something more sinister?’
‘If anything still lives down there, then it is not likely to acknowledge the authority of the Emperor – you know that, inquisitor,’ Calgar told him.
Drake turned his grey helm to look at the Chapter Master. ‘What think you now of the need to destroy this thing at once, my lord?’
‘I think it is a viable option, as it always was. But no matter what we find down there, the final decision rests with me.’
Drake set the ancient helm down again. ‘I am reluctant to say it, Chapter Master, but in such cases the authority of the Ordo Hereticus supersedes all others. You know that as well as I do.’
Calgar inclined his helm, the lenses glinting in the half-dark. ‘I am aware of that, Drake. But there are the wishes of the Adeptus Mechanicus to consider also. Magos Fane is already working on a way to insert an expedition down the route Brother Starn has found. The gravitic sleds he has brought down from the Mutatis Mutandis will serve to transport the heavy stores and the troops themselves, once we have cleared a path to the great abyss Starn has described.’
‘So you intend to pursue this course.’
‘For now, yes. As you say, it will take time to identify the owners of this artefact. Until then, I intend to proceed as planned.’
‘But you agree that this discovery and Brother Starn’s report makes the existence of Heresy aboard this structure more likely.’
‘I never doubted that possibility. We will proceed with all caution, insofar as the Adeptus Astartes utilise caution.’
‘Then I will bow to your wishes, Chapter Master, in the interests of fostering amity between us.’
Calgar could not see Drake’s face, but he was sure
that the inquisitor had that peculiarly annoying half-smile on his face. He had worked with many agents of the Ordo Hereticus over the years, but none who had the same strange mix of levity and authority which Drake exhibited.
The man intrigued him somewhat; he did not evince the usual humourless severity of his kind. They had been oaks; this fellow was willow, willing to bend but never to break. Calgar sensed a steel resolve buried in the affable manner of the inquisitor – Drake could never have attained his current rank on affability alone – and he wondered when the true mettle of the man would surface.
‘How did you make it back?’ he asked, turning to Brother Starn.
‘There was a great deal of climbing, my lord,’ Brother Starn answered. ‘I fell many times – the blessed armour I wear is not built for agility. But eventually I found a broad roadway which had been cleared through the wreck. It had been carved right through the hull of the ship I was exploring, and through those of others. And it is more recent than this –’ he gestured to the helm he had found. ‘It is large enough for vehicles in places, in others it has clearly been damaged by the convulsions of warp translations. But it is still viable, and it cuts down to the great pit into which I fell.
‘Once I made it up to within a thousand feet of the surface, Brother Ulfius was able to home in on my locator beacon once more, and help guide me. But I did not teleport – I walked out, all the way. The tunnel I took has its egress not five hundred yards from where we now stand, the entrance half buried. By following it back, we would make much better time than I did.’