The Burden of Loyalty

by Various

  The daemon becomes still in the Titan’s grasp.

  And then it is not a creature, but an expanding column of fire and black smoke. It reaches up, spreading across the Lychway in an anvil-headed cloud. The blast wave tears lesser daemons apart and spins them up into the embrace of a cyclone. Borealis Thoon staggers. Its right arm is a stump of shredded metal. Hydraulic fluids gush from it. Its front is burning. Ghost-light writhes across its wounds. The metal of its skin flows, trying to knit back together as it straightens.

  Hydragyrum is bleeding. The shockwave has burst his eardrums and the soft tissue in his nose. Blood is staining the whites of his eyes. The taste of wet iron fills his mouth.

  ‘Custodian… Tual…’ he hisses into the vox.

  ‘Prefect,’ comes the reply, growling with static.

  ‘Is the incursion into the Lychway at its peak?’

  Static fills his ears. The daemon is congealing from the fire and smoke before Borealis Thoon once more. Hydragyrum wonders who will bear his name and the name of his machine. For a moment – for the first moment in a life where he has never understood what it is that mundane humans feel when they say they are moved by the moment – he finds that he would have preferred not to have needed to be here at this moment, and at this place.

  ‘The neverborn’s force is at its greatest, prefect,’ says Tual, the words flat and echoing over the vox. ‘You may withdraw.’

  But here he is.

  Four cardinal elements slide into alignment around him. The obsidian globe spins to within reach of his hand one last time. At his feet, Darkness spasms, smoke fuming from his skull, and then lies still. The image of the daemon vanishes from the hololithic display.

  ‘Nul,’ says Hydragyrum, and Borealis Thoon roars pure blackness as the fire falls.

  The Imperial Palace – before

  The sky was fading from blue to purple and black when Hydragyrum stepped from the base of the Tower of the Sickle Moon and back onto the Palace walls. He paused. The lights of starships and smaller aircraft winked across the darkening heavens. Halos ringed the brightest of the false stars as their light fell through the haze of pollution. The true stars were still emerging, their brilliance stolen by the glow rising from the Palace. His eyes moved between the ancient patterns of constellations, noting the relative positions of each.

  ‘What do you see in the stars?’ came the voice of Tual from behind him.

  Hydragyrum did not turn. The Custodian’s armour buzzed with an electric melody as he came to stand next to the parapet. He had his helm in place. Its red plume stirred in the wind rising from beneath the wall.

  ‘I see…’ began Hydragyrum. ‘I see that the winds of destruction are rising. I see that the Hunter is bright in the heavens. I see that things change, and things end.’

  The Custodian shifted, the red crystal of his eye-lenses turned to the darkening sky.

  ‘You know that the arts of astromancy and astromathics are forgotten by most, and would be considered a denial of the precepts of the Imperium by many.’

  Hydragyrum shrugged.

  ‘Everything has its place in a greater design, a place where it belongs for a time. Just as clawed Karkinos must rise and, as it does, the Candle Bearer must fall. They are not free, or slaves, or good or evil. They just are. That does not change whether it is forgotten or agreed with.’

  ‘You make superstition into wisdom.’

  ‘I had a fine teacher,’ said Hydragyrum, and paused, his tattooed face very still as his eyes moved across the constellations above. ‘He once told me that He remembered when the stars had different names, and humans thought themselves alone in a universe that rotated around them, and them alone. Of all the lies of the past, Custodian, I think I like it best.’

  He stepped away from the parapet and began to walk along the wall towards the dark vault of the sky. Tual watched him for a second – a lone man in black, stepping across the worn stones, the night swallowing his shadow – and then the Custodian turned and went his own way.

  The Heart of the Pharos

  L J Goulding

  ‘He fell, my lord. Of that much, at least, we can be certain.’

  Captain Adallus’ words rang with an echo that did not entirely match the physical confines of the chamber in which he stood. The effect was apparently disorienting even for those who had used the Pharos many times before, making the smooth, polished walls appear shadowy and indistinct. Beyond them – through them? – the high pillars of the Convincus Cubicularum were clearly visible, many lights years away on Macragge. He blinked hard, trying his best to focus on the matter at hand.

  ‘I, uhh… I can find no evidence to suggest that anything unusual occurred in the initial stages of the descent. It seems that the correct procedures were followed throughout.’

  Adallus stood at the centre of the tuning stage in Primary Location Alpha, scanning the information on the data-slate in his hands as though it were all new to him.

  In truth, he had read it more than a dozen times. They all had.

  Behind his iron mask, Warsmith Dantioch sighed. ‘The sergeant’s report is comprehensive in detail, Captain Adallus, and yet it offers little in the way of real insight. I for one am still no closer to understanding what actually happened to young Oberdeii. That, if nothing else, is a problem.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Adallus replied sternly.

  Four of them were haloed within the communication field, there on Sotha. Three were centurion-level officers from three different Legions, a living testament to the ideals of Imperium Secundus. They stood as equals – Adallus of the Ultramarines, Barabas Dantioch of the Iron Warriors, and Alexis Polux of the Imperial Fists. A giant in his yellow battleplate, he remained always at the periphery, quietly tending to the esoteric functions of the Pharos and noting each minute change in the polarity readings as his kinsmen spoke.

  Adallus beckoned to the fourth of their number.

  ‘Neophyte Tebecai. Step forwards.’

  Far more slender than his superiors, Tebecai wore the light carapace and fatigues of a legionary Scout. He was a youth of no more than fifteen, still acclimatising to his transhuman physiology with the air of someone not entirely comfortable in his own skin. His final surgery scars would still be pink across pale flesh not yet truly tempered in the forges of war, his combat doctrines and weapon drills still requiring conscious thought in training.

  He saluted stiffly, though he said nothing and kept his gaze firmly on the chamber floor.

  Scrolling back to the top of the report, Adallus tapped one knuckle thoughtfully against the edge of the slate as he began to read again. ‘Sergeant Arkus led your training cohort on a mapping rotation, following the original request from Warsmith Dantioch. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘What do you understand the purpose of this task to have been?’

  Tebecai still did not look up. ‘Security, lord.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘There were… concerns. Concerns about how far the spaces under the mountain went down. Because normal auspex won’t work, no one knew, not really.’ He paused, nervously clenching his jaw several times. ‘No one knows, I mean.’

  Adallus looked to Dantioch. The warsmith sighed, and took a step back to settle onto the plain throne that had become a permanent fixture upon the tuning stage of late. The wooden frame creaked beneath the weight of his armour.

  ‘We used servitor drones to begin with,’ he explained. ‘As part of my earliest investigations into the workings of the Pharos, I had the Mechanicum adepts fit them with ranging markers and send them down on pre-figured exploration routes. Primary Location Alpha is connected to a vast network of chambers descending ever deeper into the mountain – far beneath the surface and local sea level, in fact. The immediate tributaries feed into the Pharos system in five places, but below the Epsilon cavern it sp
lits into dozens of separate passageways.’

  Dantioch gestured with his gauntlets, tracing large rounded shapes in the air.

  ‘Some of the passages double back on themselves in loops or great, spiralling whorls. We lost almost all of the drones. At first I supposed that their logic protocols were insufficient for the task at hand, but Magos Carantine was unwilling to volunteer any more advanced automata. If I am honest, at this point my enthusiasm was directed rather more towards the potential uses of the device, rather than explaining the exact science behind it.’

  He paused, glancing back through the communications field to where another seated figure listened intently.

  ‘But as you know, after we managed to establish the two-way, reciprocal contact with Macragge, it was decided that security measures should be stepped up if the Pharos was to be relied upon so heavily. There was agreement that if the extent of the network was still unknown, then it could not be effectively guarded without closing off everything beyond the range of our previous mapping expeditions. I made my thoughts known – such action would almost certainly reduce the accuracy of the device, or stop it working altogether.’

  Adallus frowned. He had never been particularly skilled at ­hiding his frustration, even when under the scrutiny of his superiors.

  ‘I wouldn’t know anything about the workings of the Pharos, my lord,’ he said, choosing his words carefully as he rechecked the details on the data-slate one last time. ‘But if the warsmith had made it clear that he had simply lost more than… forty servitors under the mountain in a five-month period, then Sergeant Arkus might not have been so quick to offer the use of one of my company’s Scout cohorts instead. And in that case, we would not be here now trying to establish what manner of threat lurks in the darkness beneath our very feet, preying upon any who stray too far into its domain.’

  There was a long silence. Adallus was content to let it remain, but Warsmith Dantioch looked to Tebecai once more. ‘It falls to you then, neophyte. Where your sergeant’s report is lacking, we would hear your account of what happened to young Oberdeii, beneath Mount Pharos.’

  Tebecai let out a slow breath. His voice sounded small beneath the weight of their expectation.

  ‘By the primarch’s command, I will tell you all that I remember.’

  They had taken the conveyor, then followed the main arterial gantry to its end and rappelled down to the fallen remains of the first temporary structure on the floor of the old Epsilon cavern.

  It was not far, only four hundred metres or so. They had all made the journey before. The soft, distant throb of the quantum-pulse engines could be felt all around them, in the very rock itself, and their dropped magnesium flares marked out a rough circle amidst the debris.

  Wordlessly, they drew their boltguns and paired off exactly as they had been trained. Sergeant Arkus took the handheld ranging markers from Florian’s open pack and passed them around, keeping one for himself, before gesturing for the neophytes to disperse. It was standard Legion protocol to use only battle-sign when on field reconnaissance duties, though there had been some question whether or not that applied here. Still, Arkus had said, it was good practice; that was why the Scout cohorts were allowed to range so far on the planet’s surface, away from Sothopolis and even the castellum.

  With the rest of the galaxy apparently crushed beneath the renegade Warmaster’s boot, the Ultramarines needed fresh battle-brothers like never before – warriors that knew the XIII Legion’s ways like the backs of their gauntlets.

  A greater war would come, soon enough. A war of vengeance against the traitors who had taken Terra.

  His own thoughts far from such grave matters, Oberdeii grinned at Tebecai as they picked their way around the edge of the cavern. They flipped on their harness lamps only when the last of the flares had burned out and they could no longer hear the careful movements of the other Scout teams heading away from them.

  ‘The sergeant’s gone,’ he said in a hushed voice, ‘so give me that ranging marker. I’ve been waiting weeks for my turn, and you lost our bet. Hand it over.’

  Tebecai grunted, thrusting the device into Oberdeii’s waiting hand. ‘Just don’t break it. Ark-o gave it to me, and I’ve taken enough grief for your clumsiness these past weeks.’

  He pulled a tatty sheet of parchment from his belt pack, and shone his lamp onto the hand-drawn map, tracing the path ahead.

  ‘Come on, move. We’re supposed to be heading north-west today... Then sort of... north?’

  Oberdeii looked up from the ranging marker’s display. ‘You’re not lost already, are you?’ he snorted.

  ‘Shut up. You know how these tunnels are. Calibrate the rangefinder and let’s go.’

  Shaking his head in amusement, Oberdeii shouldered his boltgun and aimed the marker at the nearest wall. A near-invisible thread of pale green light played from the emitter, and the device’s tinny voice spoke. ‘Range to target – one point six-three metres.’

  Tebecai checked the reading with a measuring line. Satisfied, the two of them trudged away and into the unknown depths beyond.

  ‘What is that you’re always humming?’ Oberdeii asked, after a goodly hour or so of managing to ignore it. He stopped, leaning against the smooth, black wall of the tunnel and wiping his forehead on the back of his glove.

  Tebecai wrinkled his nose. ‘What, this little ditty?’ He droned out a few bars of the same, repetitive tune, then shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I think I’ve always known it, even before we joined the Legion. It’s hard to recall much before that…’

  He pulled the drinking tube from his collar and drew a mouthful of tepid water.

  ‘What do you remember?’

  Oberdeii gazed off into the blackness ahead. ‘Caballus steeds. All I remember is caballus steeds.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a biologis designation. Equus... Ferus?... Caballus. That’s it. Horses, in the low tongue. That was my birth-family’s trade. Someone, somewhere in Ultramar, must have decided at some point that Sotha needed horses.’

  ‘What for?’

  Oberdeii turned, narrowing his eyes against the glare from Tebecai’s lamp.

  ‘How should I know? We had cold-bloods for field work, and more spirited Caprisian breeds for riding.’ He paused, sighing. ‘But I think they must all be gone now, anyway.’

  ‘The horses?’

  ‘No, my family. They would have been shipped off once Dantioch took over the mountain, I suppose. A shame. Seems to me like Sotha is just about the safest place in the galaxy to be, right now...’

  They stood in silence for a moment, each trying to recall a time that was now lost to them forever. Layers of hypno-conditioning and psycho-indoctrination had scoured their mortal past and left them ready to be reforged in Guilliman’s image. But although the future could hold nothing more for them than a life of unceasing battle and a glorious death at its end, no legionary neophyte ever felt anything as feeble as regret.

  Without realising it, Tebecai began to murmur the half-remembered tune again, his subconscious straining to form words around the melody.

  Oberdeii laughed. ‘I’ve never been one for music or poems. You should teach it to the herdsmen from the settlement. They love a good singsong.’

  ‘Ha! I’m not going near them, the filthy scrodders!’ Mischief glinted in Tebecai’s eye. ‘I always thought you had a bit of a whiff about you, too – now I know it’s because you’re a little stable boy!’ He slung his boltgun and cracked his knuckles, making it clear that another of their playful, brotherly scraps was certainly on the cards.

  Before Oberdeii could respond, the mountain began to quake.

  The quantum heartbeat of the Pharos shifted, setting the glassy walls of the tunnel resonating with an almost painful thrum. Such an effect was commonplace whenever Dantioch or Captain Polux tried to push the device too far.


  But this was different. This was more intense.

  Oberdeii dropped the ranging marker, clamping his hands over his ears. The sound still beat in his chest nonetheless, as though he were screaming silently at the top of his lungs. From further away in the unseen reaches of the tunnel, they heard the clatter of falling rock on the smooth curve of the floor, and the almost tectonic rumble of the planet’s crust shifting around them.

  Tebecai fell to his knees, mouthing something that Oberdeii couldn’t make out.

  Gradually, the quake subsided.

  They both remained there, crouched and poised, ready for any aftershocks. None came.

  Reaching for his vox-link, Tebecai cursed. ‘That damned fool warsmith! He knows we’re down here!’ He clicked open a channel. ‘Calling Cohort Arkus, Fifty-Five.’

  Oberdeii scuttled to his side, checking over the ranging marker for any damage.

  ‘What are you doing? We’re not supposed to break vox-silence except in an emergency!’

  ‘What would you call this?’ Tebecai snapped back at him. ‘We’re more than nine kilometres beneath the surface – we’ll be buried alive if they try that again. Cohort Arkus, Fifty-Five, please acknowledge.’

  The link crackled. The channel was empty.

  ‘The Pharos beam could still be on,’ Oberdeii muttered, aiming the marker down the tunnel. ‘If so, then the vox won’t work anyway.’

  ‘Range to target – eighty-eight point three-four metres.’

  Tebecai raised a hand. ‘Shh. Turn that thing down.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Quiet!’

  They both held their breath. The link still returned nothing but a flat hiss.

  Except...

  His eyes wide, Tebecai looked up. ‘There. You hear that?’