Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  Without waiting for confirmation Zarhulash floated towards the swarm of scarabs. It let out a blazing pulse of light. The scarabs appeared blind to its presence until the light washed over the C’tan, but the moment they became aware of it, their behaviour changed utterly.

  The swarm froze instantly, all its many perturbations arrested so suddenly they looked like a pict capture. Then they turned, all together, and faced the C’tan. Hundreds of thousands of dull, green, glass eyes, perhaps millions, focused on Zarhulash.

  The mountain’s desperate wails stopped. Then, from every aperture in the rock, a single call blared, and it did not stop.

  Come to us, our gaolers, and know the time of your destruction is at hand!

  As one, the swarm streamed at the C’tan, their frantic activity of a moment ago forgotten. Their primary programming impelled them. Their prisoner must not be allowed to escape.

  Zarhulash met them with a wall of light. Scarabs shattered into glittering clouds, disassembled beyond the help of any self-repair ability. Thunder rolled from the god.

  Felix watched helplessly.

  ‘Don’t just stand there, help it!’ said Cawl. ‘Or it may doubt that you really are my servant, and that would be… That would be bad.’ The archmagos skittered over to the portal in the temple facade, and began the difficult task of shutting it down. Primus stood guard over him, staring defiantly at Felix.

  ‘Are you serious?’ said Felix. ‘Have you any idea how much damage a freed C’tan shard can do?’

  Cawl waggled his head. ‘A reasonably good idea. So be glad it is currently on our side.’ Cawl depressed polished glyphs of blackstone. They sank into the portal frame with soft and final clicks. ‘You know that entangled supermass I told you about?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Felix, unable to stop staring at the star god. ‘You mean the C’tan.’

  ‘No, I don’t!’ Cawl snapped. ‘I mean the supermass the gods’ powers controlled. The reason they were enslaved here. Those particles are destabilising. The C’tan were holding the mass in place. They have all gone. There is nothing to maintain equilibrium. I have to close this gateway, but doing so will only remove the weakness of the entrance from the dimensional pocket. It will buy us a little more time. Soon the dimensional pocket will collapse, the supermass inside will collapse, and the resultant singularity will spill out into real space unless, unless!’ he shouted, holding up a finger, ‘the Pharos is taken permanently offline. The quantum engines generate both the supermass and its containment. Destroy it and the supermass will dissipate.’ Cawl moved to the other side of the portal frame. His many arms moved with rapid surety, though his voice remained calm, as if he were talking while observing someone else at work. ‘Do you hear me, Decimus? When we get out of here you must level this mountain, or the planet will be sucked into a black hole, followed shortly after by the Sothan star, its other worlds and everything else within half a light year of this place, not that you’d see, because it will kill you first. Destroy it!’

  ‘What about the C’tan?’ said Felix. ‘I’d rather face a black hole.’

  Once more Cawl gave Felix his infuriating smile.

  ‘All will be revealed in due course, my boy.’ Cawl depressed another series of glyphs. ‘You must trust me, or else we are lost, and the hopes of mankind’s salvation with us. Now, I may be incommunicado for a few moments. I must interface with the machine world to collect the data I came for. I have access to it, but it must be retrieved and exloaded.’

  A giant piece of blackstone fell near the humans, shattering and pelting them with glass.

  ‘Go, Felix! Larger constructs are awakening, and they could do the C’tan harm. It must be allowed to think it is winning. I must have what I came for, or all is lost!’

  The core mine hall was shaking uncontrollably. Magma no longer fountained from the hole, but was instead welling implacably. It reached the top and formed a bubble under wrinkled, black skin. Once a certain pressure was reached, the skin silently broke, and the magma crept slowly across the floor. It gave off a sense of malign intent. The world of Sotha wished them all dead, tyranids, men, necrons and C’tan, and its suffering over.

  In the air, Zarhulash was periodically engulfed by swarms of scarabs. They worked around it in frenzied spirals, attempting to spin a fresh sarcophagus from the energy stored in their guts. Each time, they got no further than an outline before Zarhulash burst it asunder with a pulse of energy that played havoc with Felix’s comms system. They then began again.

  ‘If you have betrayed us, archmagos, then I will kill you myself,’ said Felix.

  ‘You would fail, Decimus. More powerful men than you have tried.’ The last glyph sank in. The gateway shut off. ‘There,’ he said. ‘But you’re not going to have to try. I give you my word. Now, I am afraid, gentlemen, that I really must go. Primus, protect me with your life.’

  ‘As you command, master,’ said Primus.

  Cawl folded his arms into himself and shut down.

  Felix shook his head and turned to face the battle raging above.

  A seemingly endless tide of scarabs poured from the ceiling. Other things were joining them. From the larger tunnels spyders came, giant claws tracing patterns of killing energy in the air. Even larger constructs phased into being from nowhere and scuttled towards the fray, while floating, locust-like kill-drones swarmed into the chamber. All were heading for the freed god.

  Felix attempted to use his vox. ‘Cominus, respond,’ he said. His ear beads whistled with feedback so sharp and wild it made him wince. ‘Cominus!’

  The vox buzzed. ‘…etrarch. Y… live!’

  ‘Cominus, listen to me!’ Felix shouted quickly. ‘Evacuate the mountain. Get everyone back from here, everyone! Move as far and as fast as you can.’

  ‘…ord. We …ust come to you.’ A loud, whistling howl cut off Cominus’ next words.

  ‘Evacuate! Evacuate now! That is a direct command, respond!’

  Felix heard nothing but static.

  A flying, ribbon-bodied machine horror sped overhead, metal jaws spreading wide. Needle tips generated a crackling annihilation field. It flew straight at Zarhulash. Before the star god obliterated it, it bit deep, rupturing its necrodermis and bringing a wrathful roar from the god’s mouth along with a spear of blazing starlight.

  You attack that which you cannot harm! We are imbued with the might of our devoured siblings! We are Zarhulash! We are a god! The construct was blasted apart by the star god’s gesture. It ruptured all along its segmented body, fragmenting into dissipated clouds of ash.

  Zarhulash levelled its staff at the drones, rendering them into sparking debris without any visible means. The canoptek swarm responded with a redoubling of effort, powering at the C’tan, weaving webs of fire and etheric steel around Zarhulash that hardened into another new tomb before Felix’s eyes.

  From the shadows giant things crawled, stings active, sensors locked on to the C’tan.

  ‘Curse you, Cawl!’ Felix swore. He activated his power weapons, and threw himself into battle.

  Cawl sank deep into the xenos infosphere. Technology of such sublimity it made Cawl want to weep attempted to stop him. The necron empire had existed millions of years before man had the wit to see the stars for what they were. Its scientists possessed knowledge of the most profound sort. Their expertise in the construction of independent machines extended beyond the realms of the physical. Within the infosphere, thinking, light-born predators swam.

  They caught Cawl’s scent as soon as he entered. When he penetrated the upper levels of their machine world security, they attacked.

  Cawl had not dared go this far before. The data was guarded by invisible fences and malign, abominable intelligences, and they required his full attention. To the Adeptus Mechanicus, the only thing worse than a thinking machine was an alien thinking machine, and the Pharos had those in abundance. />
  The machine world could not be described in human terms. In earlier eras, such vistas had been rendered as visual fancies, to allow the technomancers of the day to navigate the secret spaces of technology. But the Adeptus Mechanicus believed in the holiness of machines. They strove to adapt themselves to the inner world of the motive force, not it to them, to better understand their god’s plan.

  Great intelligences pressed at him, outraged that he could gain access to their world. Their outrage grew as his stolen cypher keys disarmed their every defence. They employed modulated encryption technologies that drew on myriad dimensional states, and hid the truth so thoroughly it would take more than forever to find. Cawl was the match of them. They flung deadly djinn crafted from numbers and hate to hunt him down. Cawl tamed them. Down he went, further into the core, through the ur-coding of the mountain’s survival impulses, to the essence of the Pharos’ over-spirit itself. Cawl was a virus. The Pharos was his host. Rapidly, his intellect spread through its branching ways until he infested it entirely from peak to pocket world dungeons. Wrapped tightly into the being of the mountain was a gargantuan presence that guarded a hoard of knowledge. Cawl stole from it. He passed into the machine-spirit, turned it about, plunged a million hands into a million gaps, and twisted.

  Keys, keys, so many keys. Cawl had spent a man’s lifetime gathering them, since Guilliman had returned from death and bade him release his Primaris Marines on the galaxy. There was always more to learn, more to know, and Belisarius Cawl would know it all.

  The keys turned.

  The mountain was his.

  Data speared him. He welcomed the pain. It meant success.

  With steady hands, he seized control of the Pharos.

  A torrent of knowledge poured into his memcore arrays.

  Belisarius Cawl opened his eyes. He was weary, but exultant.

  ‘It is done,’ he said to Alpha Primus. ‘Now for the next stage.’

  Felix deflected the tomb guardian’s phase blades with his power sword. Only disruption fields would turn the weapons away, and they did so with a raucous banging and feedback lightnings that made his power armour cogitator shrill. He was quicker than the machine, more nimble, he landed blow after blow upon its shining hide, but the living metal of its body closed over each smoking gash. When it hit him, its weapons passed through his armour as if no ceramite clad him, part-materialising within his suit to slit his skin and delve for his organs. Tyranids devoured life, necrons expunged it, Chaos corrupted it. So many enemies with so much power. Felix was the apex of Imperial might, and still it would not be enough.

  Yet will in man’s heart was strong. That was where victory lay.

  ‘Soulless abomination!’ he snarled. His Gravis plate was slow and heavy, but the strength it gave each blow was worth the trade off in speed. He plunged his power sword into the joints of one of the creature’s many legs. It screeched mechanically, and flickered, beginning to phase out so that it could pass through the weapon and bring its own to bear upon the tetrarch. Coils whirled around Felix. Green lightning flashed from his war-plate.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Felix. ‘You are staying here.’

  Before the phasing process could complete, he overloaded his power sword, sending a surge of energy into the construct that burned out its circuits and made it scream again. The sword’s field generator was reduced to a smoking box, but it had served its purpose.

  Felix pivoted on his left foot, bringing his power fist down into the creature’s insectoid head with all the might of the Emperor Himself. Metal exploded, spattering him with droplets that attempted to crawl away before dying upon his aquila. He plunged his fist deep into the thing’s head, tearing out fistfuls of crystalline alien circuitry. To him it looked like nothing more than black sand, but this mass of grains held the thing’s artificial soul, and he scattered them violently.

  The construct thrashed, knocking him from his feet. Felix held fast, grinding his fist deeper into the thing’s innards. Green light blazed from its head as he ruptured something vital. Encouraged, he let fly with the gauntlet’s attached twin bolters, hollowing the brain case, shattering the mechanisms, and blasting drops of squirming metal from the other side.

  The thing rose up, its bladed legs shuddering. Its maw-weapon ­spasmed a final burst of fire, and it crashed down, dead.

  Felix was pinned beneath. Neural aftershocks twitched the construct’s legs, then it was still. He heaved up, his armour boosting his strength to godlike levels for a moment, and he rolled out, letting the machine crash back down.

  He came to his feet. Scarabs were pressing inwards towards the star god, their carapaces running under the molecular manipulation beams of their fellows. Five great spyder drones directed them, pushing the smaller robots on, transforming them into a new prison quicker than the god could counter them.

  Two more of the giant arthropod things approached Felix, swaying like serpents, balefire in their crystal eyes attempting to shut down his mental processes by sensory overload.

  Felix braced. His power sword was gone. His in-display armour schematic showed several pieces of his plate in amber. His power feed was erratic. Half a dozen bolts were left in his ammo hopper, enough for a short burst. There was no way he could survive the coming onslaught.

  The constructs froze. They moved unsurely, as if waking.

  The spyders collapsed in on themselves, dropping hundreds of feet before their engines reengaged. Scarabs rained down, then they too righted themselves and, wings rattling, flew in docile order to hover over Belisarius Cawl.

  ‘Well well!’ the archmagos said. ‘I could do it after all. To control a swarm was quite a feat, but this!’ He raised many arms. ‘Taking control of an entire mountain’s worth of canoptek constructs is the work of genius.’ He took a modest bow. ‘Make note, tetrarch, that my deeds be remembered.’

  Silence fell on the mountain. The wailing alarm stopped. Soft notes, gentle as breathing, sounded in the tubes of the Pharos. The slow, crackling spread of lava provided the main source of noise in the chamber. From their high wall, the statues of dead gods stared blindly on.

  You impress us, slave Cawl, said Zarhulash, but we are not done yet. It pointed to the second portal, leading from the mine chamber to the machine hall. We must proceed. There you shall find us a way to our other splinters, resurrection, and true power.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A beacon silenced

  The tunnel over the void flickered. Each time it cut out, the space between the deep core mine and the quantum engine hall was replaced by solid rock. Cawl, Zarhulash and their attendant swarm of machines were enfolded by a golden nimbus which faded out, taking them with it, and leaving Felix and Primus behind.

  ‘We are going to have to jump, tetrarch,’ said Primus.

  The tunnel blinked on. Through it, they saw Zarhulash and Cawl phasing back into existence above the thundering machines. The mountain shook savagely, and the corridor cut out again. Huge sections of the ceiling were coming down. The lava crept closer, its great heat beating against their backs. Temperature gauges in Felix’s retinal displays slid dangerously up. Another tremor rocked the chamber, followed by a loud grinding. Felix looked back to the temple facade at the end of the hall. Cracks ran all across the glyphs. Blackstone fell in tinkling showers. One of the gods tumbled from its pedestal, legs shattered on the floor, head landing in the lava, where it bubbled and collapsed into itself.

  ‘We are losing the passage,’ said Primus. ‘We go the next time it mani­fests, or we will be trapped.’

  Felix nodded. Fizzles of energy wormed over the rock. They waited, tense, for the portal to reopen. The lava was moving faster over the featureless floor. The shaft of the mine was completely hidden by the growing lake of molten rock. Another tremor brought a wide section of the temple facade down in a rumbling avalanche.

  ‘There is a strong probability that w
e are going to perish here,’ said Primus.

  ‘Have faith,’ said Felix. ‘Now.’

  The portal crackled back into being. The two Space Marines hurled themselves through it. The void encasing the energy tube, dark before, blazed with bursts of deadly light. Radiation alarms clanged in Felix’s ears. Then they were through, finishing their leap in the quantum engine hall, boots clashing down, sparks raked up from the blackstone by ceramite.

  Cawl worked at a console made entirely of light. Shifting displays of glyphs hung over him. His servo-skulls had come out of their hiding places in his body and hovered still in the air, data pulse beams linking Imperial technology with that of the ancient dynasties. Violent tremors were bringing the ceiling down. A shield of constructs hovered over the hall, protecting the engines, Cawl and the C’tan from falling debris.

  ‘The archmagos handles this equipment as if he were born to it,’ said Felix.

  ‘I assume that is a jibe,’ said Primus, striding forwards. ‘The arch­magos works for our betterment.’

  ‘By consorting with xenos daemons,’ Felix said to himself, following after Primus.

  The time is now, Zarhulash said. It rose higher into the cloud of drones. We are ready. Begin removal of my necrodermis. Order the constructs to build a translation stage so we might seek out the first of our splinters.

  ‘As you command, great one,’ said Cawl.

  His hands danced through floating icons, triggering new responses from the drones. A large part of them peeled away, diving down to the floor where they began to weave raised blackstone platforms with their jaws.

  Zarhulash raised its arms. Its refulgence blazed through the metallic skin cloaking it, as if it were becoming thinner, more translucent. Four whirling strands of drones spun around the star god, and encased it in their glistening bodies, until only Zarhulash’s face was free of them.

  In their greed they allowed us to retain something of ourselves. That is their mistake. We remember! We remember what we were. We will gather ourself, and we will have our vengeance! Quickly, slave. Release us from this form and you shall have all that you desire!