Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  The methalon casket and its contents must survive.

  There 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.

  Versions 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.

  Thracian 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.

  Directly 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.

  Above the arch, in ornate script, was worked the legend ‘Finis Officium’.

  Duty’s End.

  They 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.

  ‘Air,’ said Aratus. ‘At this rate, there will be a breathable atmosphere within the Pharos inside a day.’

  ‘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.

  ‘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.’

  He 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.

  ‘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.

  ‘It is time,’ he said. ‘Set aside the dead. Wake our cargo.’

  ‘Here and now, my lord?’ Aratus stood forwards.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I challenge you as I must. Hear this – once the subject is awoken, it will be impossible to put it back into hibernation.’

  ‘Here and now, Apothecary,’ said Thracian. ‘As abhorrent as it is, we must make use of it. Time grows short.’

  ‘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.

  ‘With this key, I reveal the shame of our Chapter for all to see,’ he said.

  He broke the head from the scythe, activating the key.

  ‘Our brotherhood is sundered by our shame,’ he said.

  Lights blinked all down the side of the gene vault. Super-chilled gas vented from the sides, dispersing rapidly into the sparse air.

  The sides opened, spilling billowing white out into the near vacuum.

  Inside 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.

  Aratus 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.

  ‘Shall I commence the reanimation cycle, my lord?’ said Aratus. ‘This is the last chance we have to abandon this course of action.’

  ‘Do it,’ said Thracian. ‘This is the end of us. Our death approaches.’

  ‘As you command,’ said Aratus. ‘Initiating reanimation cycle.’

  Aratus 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.

  The 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.

  Aratus 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.

  ‘Vitae replacement complete,’ said Aratus. ‘Beginning cardiovascular restart.’

  A 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.

  ‘Again,’ said Thracian.

  Once 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.

  The head turned outwards. Heavy brows pressed against the plastek, then a handless arm, the stump cap pushing out.

  ‘Free it,’ said Thracian.

  Aratus took out his combat knife, spun it round in his hand so he was holding it hilt up, and sliced quickly down.

  The 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 quic
k 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.

  The 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.

  Thracian 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.

  He stared into its eyes. Under its muzzle-mask, a fanged maw hissed.

  It leapt at him, the stumps of its arms held out to strike.

  Aratus 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.

  ‘Enough,’ said Thracian.

  Aratus tapped the box again. The creature curled up on itself.

  Keltru stepped forwards and snapped a heavy chain to a ring welded to the back of its collar and dragged it to its feet.

  Thracian 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.

  Aratus did so.

  The 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.

  ‘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.

  ‘Abomination, redeem yourself,’ said Thracian. ‘Take us to your father.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Primary Location Beta

  Necron 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.

  Felix’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.

  There 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.

  ‘Do not worry, Decimus,’ said Cawl. ‘They are completely under my command. They will not harm you.’

  ‘They want to break free,’ said Felix.

  ‘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.’

  ‘How can you control them? Not once have I heard of a tech-priest managing to break into the necron carrier signal.’

  Cawl 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.

  ‘Your lack of seriousness is a failing,’ Felix said. ‘You will make a mistake.’

  ‘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.’

  ‘You don’t know everything, Cawl,’ said Felix. ‘Your profile is wrong.’

  ‘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.

  ‘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.’

  ‘Will that be your report to Roboute?’

  ‘That will be the start of it, and the general flavour. There will be details. Lots of them. The lord regent likes detail.’

  ‘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.’

  ‘Your requests to be Fabricator General of Mars irritate him,’ said Felix. ‘And reveal the depths of your ambition.’

  At 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.

  ‘I have done no such thing,’ said Cawl.

  ‘Your machine, the Cawl Inferior, it keeps asking him. With every message,’
said Felix.

  The scarabs continued their excavation, drawing away from the humans.

  ‘Really? That is interesting. I will have to do something about that.’

  ‘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.’

  ‘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.’

  ‘Then why do you keep requesting it be done?’

  Cawl 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.’

  Felix looked at his creator. ‘Then what is it you do want?’

  ‘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.’