by Guy Haley
‘I have commanded fleets against the tyranids eleven times,’ said Asante. ‘I fought at Cryptus where the swarm was bigger than any we have seen before. What is your experience, brother?’
‘Sufficient,’ said Erwin. ‘I do not have to listen to this rebuke. It is unworthy of both of us.’ He replaced his helmet and motioned to his men to leave. It was good no one tried to stop him. In the mood he was in, Erwin would have fought.
‘Captain!’ called Asante.
Erwin paused.
‘I hear they paused in their assault during your escape. Why?’ said Asante.
‘Only Hennan could have told you that. Ungrateful wretch, reporting on me to you.’
‘Did it happen, or not?’
‘We drove them off, it is simple,’ said Erwin.
‘They never retreat, never. Do you know that, Captain Erwin?’
‘That is not my experience, captain.’
‘Really? I advise you to check your ship for signs of infiltration,’ said Asante. ‘You may be carrying genestealers, or worse.’
‘There are no infiltration organisms on my ship. None at all,’ said Erwin. He made to go again, then stopped and turned back. ‘The people you mourn. They would have died anyway,’ said Erwin. ‘They died quickly. Their bodies remain upon a world sanctified by their death. They will not provide reinforcements to our foe. The very stuff that makes them did not have to endure the most wicked form of slavery I have ever encountered. Forgive me, Blood Angel, but in my Chapter the destruction of Zozan Tertius would be regarded as a success.’
‘Get out,’ said Asante.
Erwin saluted, making the aquila over his heart. ‘I will see you on the field again, I am sure.’
The Angels Excelsis boarded the elevator again under the unfriendly stare of the Blood Angels.
‘You say that I have no faith in my abilities,’ said Achemen. ‘Your problem, my brother, is that you have too much confidence in your own.’
Erwin hissed theatrically. Achemen looked sidelong at him.
‘One day,’ said the sergeant, ‘you are going to get us all killed, captain.’
The pod’s inhabitant extruded its sticky foot from its shell. A set of razor claws composed of a synthesised mineral punched through its skin. The claws were intended to be used once, and had no exit from their sheaths but through the flesh of the pseudopod, destroying it in the process. The claws snapped out in a welter of fluid that froze in the voidal cold. A frenzied twisting of dying muscles sent them slicing into the resins sealing the pod to the hull of the Splendid Pinion. The pod convulsed and shook. Limbs trapped inside calciferous cavities beat hopelessly at their prisons, shaking the pod loose of the weakened resins, and it drifted free.
Sensing beasts came alive. A rich flood of prey sign swamped the pod’s secondary brain. In seconds it had processed multiple streams of data, identifying the target fixed in its memory by the greater hive mind, and calculated the best trajectory to land unseen.
The last propellant gases were expended, moving the pod away from the prey vessel, and leaving it at the mercy of fate.
Sophisticated baffles screened the pod’s descent through the crowded sky. Void craft gravity wakes perturbed its flight, threatening to cast it uncontrolled into the well of Baal Primus. With emotionless calm, the pod shifted fluid between internal bladders, correcting its fall. It would have died with equal phlegmatism.
Into the upper reaches of Baal’s atmosphere it fell, going from the killing chill of the void into the cold night sky of the Southern Dune Ocean. Atmospheric friction scorched the hard, wrinkled exterior of the craft, cooking alive the lesser subcreatures clinging to the shell. They died in silent agony, robbing the pod’s brains of sight, hearing, smell and every other sense one by one. The pod’s grasp on the prey’s position slipped away as it fell into sightless dark. The meaningless electromagnetic pulses booming from the metal-shelled craft of the prey were the last to go silent, and then the pod was isolated from everything but the burning heat of the air.
Terminal impact smashed the pod’s primary brain to mush, and wrenched the secondary from its cellular bindings. Floating free in draining fluids, it twitched its vestigial limbs for the first and final time.
Stimulant hormones flooded both the pod and its occupant. This last act accomplished, the secondary brain died, not caring about its own demise or that its mission had been accomplished.
Sand blew over the steaming shell. The pod was an insignificant speck in a plain of undulating sand, black in Baal Secundus’ moonshine.
Minutes passed with no sign of activity. The pod was already beginning to disappear under the drifting sand.
A wet crack heralded a false birth. Seams, ropy with thick mucous, burst open along the quarter lines of the hull, spasmed, then splayed wide. From within, a tall, gangling creature staggered out, unsteady as a newborn animal at first, but within a few steps it was striding confidently into the night. It unfolded multiple limbs, its great killing talons lifting high and opening upward. It cast back its head and tasted the air. Glowing eyes looked skyward. Tentacles moved beneath an alien skull in place of a mouth.
The lictor scanned the area with multiple senses. Hitting upon what it sought, it turned sharply on its hooves and galloped off. Its outline flickered, and it vanished into the dark.
Chapter Eight
The Octocalvariae
There were places in the Carceri Arcanum that actively denied the working of technology. Mephiston paused at the border of one, took up a torch of rare, resinous Baalian wood from a rack, lit it with a small fusion torch hanging by a chain from the crumbling brickwork, and went deeper within. Firelight supplemented the weak glow of the biolumen globes riveted to the vaulted ceiling. Water dripped from somewhere ahead. Baal was as dry as bone dust; the liquid came from some other place and time.
No one knew who had built the Carceri Arcanum. They were some of the oldest parts of the fortress monastery, if not the oldest. It had been suggested they predated the volcano they burrowed under, but they were of brick, and seemed to have been made by human hand, whereas the volcano was estimated to be over seven million years old. The tunnels had many peculiar qualities. If mapped against Baal’s physical terrain, they should have gone miles outside the Arx Murus, but there was no sign of them. Once, a curious Librarian had ordered a pit dug into the desert sands where the tunnels should surely be. He found the ruins of a defence complex abandoned after the sundering of the Legion, and no tunnels.
Many mysteries were attached to the Carceri Arcanum, but only one certainty, and that was that they were anomalous in every respect. They resonated with the warp, amplifying the power of the librarius. Because of this affinity, Mephiston held court in the Circle of Consonance at their centre, where his Quorum Empyric met to discuss matters of sorcery and the soul.
The Carceri Arcanum served a further useful purpose. Deep underground, only partially contained within mundane reality and with a fierce source of empyrical energy to tap, they were a fine place to house the Chapter’s most dangerous relics. The tunnel that Mephiston took led away from the centre of the labyrinth down one of its lengthy spurs. Short corridors curved off the passageway, their shadows resistant to his torch. In those corridors adamantium doors barred cells where ancient weapons languished. A sword which slew any foe, but that kindled the Black Rage swiftly in its wielder. The full armour of the blood-mad Chapter Master Araclaes, whose reign ended in such disaster for the Chapter it had been struck from every record. The skull of the haemonculus of Baal, a creature whose falsehoods almost brought the Blood Angels low.
There were devices salvaged from dead worlds, dangerous technology that had survived the fall of Old Night, idols to alien gods, cracked force wands whose splinters allowed a direct view into other realities, cursed blades, the shattered bodies of Necron lords held prisoner in stasis, bolters that fired true every
time but which required the blood of the innocent to function, the crowns of insane emperors and the banners of fallen squads whose histories were blacker than the void. These and worse things were interred there.
As Mephiston went past the galleries of cells, the sense of strangeness clinging to the place grew. The grinding thump of heavy machinery rumbled the brick, though there was no machinery there. Ghost lights flickered across distant passages, daring chase. Shadowy shapes blinked glowing eyes from inconstant corridors. At one junction the thunder of a waterfall was carried on a cold draft that smelled enticingly of water, but if the sound were followed, both smell and sound petered out, and the explorer was confronted by a collapsed section of tunnel full of bones and black sand.
Mephiston strode by all these wonders and horrors. None held any danger for the likes of him. The end of the corridor was where the librarius ended, and whatever lay beyond it began.
The sandy floor of the Carceri Arcanum stopped at an iron door rough and purple with oxidisation, but the warding symbols on it were clear to see for those with the right kind of sight. To Mephiston’s eyes they glowed. He rapped three times on the door with the head of his torch, causing it to sputter and shower sparks over the ground.
With an unearthly moan, the door opened inward. Mephiston stepped through. His torch guttered out in a breeze rich with incense. It was so black that his sensitive eyes were blind. His warp sight was dulled by the counter runes painted on the walls. He saw only these, and then as a feeble glow.
A machine coughed. There was the sound of a reactor powering up, and the smell of exhaust. The machine noise became a grunting rumble. Pistons hissed. A vision slit glowed green in the dark, gradually lighting the room enough so that Mephiston might see the extent of the small antechamber. A second iron door was situated opposite the first, iron loops set in the frame criss-crossed with hexagrammatically warded chains.
By the door the square shape of a Librarian-Dreadnought stood sentry.
‘Greetings, Mephiston, Lord of Death,’ a machine-moderated voice boomed out. ‘It is a long time since you visited my vault.’
The Dreadnought occupied more than half the room. Its engines growled unevenly, rough with long inactivity. In one mechanical fist the machine held an oversized poweraxe. The crystalline matrix was dormant. But the occupant of the Dreadnought could bring it to life in a moment, and though ancient employ it with devastating skill.
‘My Lord Marest,’ said Mephiston. ‘I have been fortunate that I have not needed to venture here for some time.’
‘What brings you to this most damned of places?’ said the Dreadnought. Marest was older even than Commander Dante. Once he had been the Chief Librarian, as Mephiston was now. Before he had been interred in the war tomb, he had commanded that a new vault be constructed, where all the worst things in the Chapter’s care be kept, including the thing that had killed him. With his dying breath Marest had pledged to watch over it for all time, and so he had. The room he now guarded was too small for his Dreadnought to enter. When the Vault of Marest had finally been finished, Marest’s sarcophagus had been dragged in on a wooden sled, and his new body assembled around it. His dedication to the Chapter was held up to the neophytes of each new generation. Every Blood Angel knew the story of Marest.
‘Have you come to view the scroll? Has the time come to seek new knowledge from our lord’s prophecies?’
‘I am afraid not,’ said Mephiston. He dropped his extinguished torch and placed his hand on the hilt of Vitarus. ‘I must go deeper.’
‘Is that so?’ rumbled the Dreadnought. ‘What occurs in the world beyond?’
‘Dark things, Lord Librarian. The Great Devourer approaches Baal, and another, older enemy.’
‘You require knowledge, then,’ said Marest. ‘You will visit the octocalvariae?’
‘I shall. I am sorry to disturb it.’
‘Why? Do you apologise because it was he who slew me, or because you fear my judgement on your actions?’
Mephiston did not reply.
‘It matters not. Your position is a key that will unlock any door. You must do what you deem right,’ rumbled Marest. ‘You are permitted to go where others are prevented. Nevertheless, I will provide the ritual warning. Be careful what dark things you look upon within this vault. Take none of their evil unknowingly out with you.’
‘Your words are worth heeding, my lord Marest.’
‘They are, Lord of Death. Go with my blessing,’ said Marest. His blocky upper body pivoted on the ball mount of the waist. He raised his force axe. Wychlight shone around the blade, and the chains fell from the doorway with a clatter. ‘And may the Emperor watch over your soul.’
‘My thanks, Lord Marest.’
Before he left the room, Mephiston drew his sword.
A chamber of marked contrast to Marest’s atrium greeted him. A smooth cylinder of rockcrete dropped away down to a machine comprising an upright disc spinning round at ferocious speed, shooting out noisy blue sparks. Embossed steel skulls around the shaft’s circumference stared up at him with bloodstone eyes. The cylinder was saturated with red light, the short bursts of electric blue mixing painfully into it. The limbless torsos of servitors were embedded in alcoves in the cylinder wall level with the top of the disc. Lidless eyes held the disc in eternal vigilance.
This unit accepted energy remotely broadcast from Idalia to power the vault’s mechanisms, for unlike in the greater undercroft, there were machines in the Vault of Marest, special devices shielded from the odd effects of the Carceri Arcanum. Using the power of Idalia, they formed the random energies coursing along the brick corridors and made of them strong psychic walls that none could penetrate. The Vault of Marest was a prison above all else. Every part of its physical and metaphysical fabric was dedicated to the purpose of confinement.
Dozens of fell things were kept inside. In the wider Carceri Arcanum were articles touched by Chaos, but those inside the vault were wholly of it. They were things that could not be destroyed for fear of unleashing the evil they contained, or simply because they were not destructible in any understandable way.
A catwalk ran around the circumference of the room. A single, silver-plated door led out again, covered in warding signs.
Mephiston went through this other door into the only pure chamber in the vault, and one of the largest: the Ecclesia Obscura. His footsteps echoed from distant walls. Stained-glass windows depicting scenes from Sanguinius’ life filtered light from an unknown source. No dust danced in the slanting beams, for the air was extensively scrubbed on its way in and out of the vaults by psychically active atmospheric filters. Whispers from the pallid scholiasts who inhabited the place murmured from the stones.
This was the home of the Scrolls of Sanguinius. In the vault they were safe from all harm, psychic or physical. Fifteen scroll casings as big as men hung in stasis fields, their tops closed with wire crimped shut with lead seals. Mephiston paused by the casings, closing his eyes and allowing the sanctity of his long-dead lord bathe his soul. Something in him recoiled at the touch of Sanguinius’ power, but he held his mind full in the fire, shuddering as it purified him.
Nothing else of goodness was kept in the Vault of Marest. The purity of the scrolls acted as a barrier to the evils that were housed in the deeper chambers.
Scholiasts paused in their duties. Their minds touched Mephiston’s own with feathered pressure. These men had been acolytum to the librarius before their failure, but though rejected they possessed some mental strength, and so they lived out their service in darkness, ministering to the relic of a hero whose glories they could never aspire to.
Mephiston ignored the attention of these cast-offs and walked to the end of the hall. As he approached, an iron gate clanked into the ceiling. Stale air tainted with the sharp scent of wickedness blew at him. Gripping Vitarus more tightly, Mephiston proceeded into the inner vaults.
>
Beyond the Ecclesia Obscura the vaults took on the character of the Carceri Arcanum, becoming a warren of tunnels again, though these were of rockcrete and silver rather than brick, and ribbed cables ran along the walls, carrying power to the locking mechanisms of the cells.
The psychosphere was of a different sort to that of the Carceri Arcanum. It was trammelled by strange machines, and darker in flavour. Though securely held, the things gaoled there leaked their malign influences into the fabric of the walls, making a dangerous cocktail for the soul. Mephiston felt its impurity saturate his being. He was unperturbed. There were darker things trapped inside his body.
Doors hummed with caged warp power. Grey rockcrete gave way to warded adamantium and back again. Each room was specifically tailored to the evil of whatever it contained, bespoke creations that melded warp sorcery and science. Whole tunnels had been adapted as cells for the larger obscenities. Giant pits had been dug into the unearthly soil, lined with sanctified silver and roofed with bars of purest iron. Sanguinius’ symbol was everywhere. Glass-fronted boxes projected hololithic symbols anathema to the working of the warp. Combat servitors prowled the complex, their brain cases stamped with counterspells, the first line of defence should anything escape. Maintenance constructs trundled by, constantly monitoring for malfunction, ready to summon aid from the forge to fix what they could not repair themselves.
Not everything there was an artefact. Some things had life, or a semblance of life, and were capable of action on their own.
It was to one of these beings that Mephiston went.
The vault was not particularly extensive. It took the Lord of Death only minutes to make his way to his destination, though time in the vault was difficult to accurately measure.
He turned off the main corridor and came to a crude-looking cell door of black wood, with a steel grille rusted orange at eye level. Its appearance was deceptive. Inside the tree the wood was harvested from, veins of psychically conductive crystal had been force grown, and they vibrated with the power of the empyrean.