The Beast of Calth

by Graham McNeill

  ‘Emperor’s Mercy…’ she breathed, holding a hand to her mouth.

  Inquisitors saw a great many terrible things in their years of service, and Suzaku had a library’s worth of memories she wished she could forget: damned souls torn apart by possession, mountains of children’s skulls offered up as sacrifices by insane cults, planetary populations drowning in a hellish tide of daemonic incursion and the subsequent viral fury of the Life Eater. She had seen things that had driven lesser minds to insanity, but what had been done to Kellan was more horrifying for the all too human scale of it and the wanton cruelty of his mutilations.

  The sterile sheet couldn’t completely cover the man’s injuries, and Suzaku knew it would be a kindness to put a bullet through his head right now. His arms had been stripped of skin from wrist to shoulder, and his chest was a mass of deep incisions cut in the form of an eight-pointed star that no amount of anti-coagulant could stop bleeding. A steady dripping from the metal frame of the stretcher told Suzaku that the man had been hamstrung, his legs now useless appendages of meat and bone.

  But it was upon Kellan’s face that his attacker had wrought the most heinous tortures.

  One of the man’s eyes had been slowly gouged from its lidless socket, the other left relatively untouched so as to bear witness to the unimaginable malice. His cheeks had been sliced open to the farthest extent of his jawbone, as though a blade had been forced laterally into his mouth. Teeth gleamed bloodily through fresh sutures, and a leering skull had been cut deep into his forehead. Even if Trooper Kellan survived his injuries and debriefing, the Ruinous Powers had forever left their mark upon him.

  ‘Can he talk?’ asked Suzaku, holding back a wave of bilious nausea.

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ replied Selenus.

  She looked down at the ruined man and he gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  ‘My name is Namira Suzaku,’ she said. ‘Can you understand me?’

  Another nod.

  ‘I am going to catch the person that did this to you,’ she said. ‘With the help of these Space Marines, I am going to hunt him down and kill him.’

  She saw urgency in Kellan’s eyes and leaned in close as his lips trembled with the effort of trying to speak. The man was full of morphia, but she could see it was still causing him great pain to talk. The sutures at his cheeks pulled against the gouged flesh, and his remaining eye wept milky, blood-flecked tears.

  ‘Got… to… catch him…’ he said.

  ‘I will,’ promised Suzaku. ‘But you have to help me. Can you tell me who did this? It was an Iron Warrior, wasn’t it?’

  Kellan nodded, and she felt the righteous anger of the Space Marines swell around her. No greater foe existed for them. No enemy was hated more. The greenskin and the tyranid were little more than animals, and even the more advanced xenos races were simply enemies to be overcome. The purest hate was reserved for the fallen of the Traitor Legions, and it was a terrible thing to behold.

  ‘Need to kill him. Quickly,’ hissed Kellan, as parallel lines of blood ran down his face on either side from separating sutures. ‘Never. Defeat… Iron Warriors.’

  Dante leaned in and placed a surprisingly gentle hand on Kellan’s shoulder. It was a gesture of respect between warriors, a touching familiarity that Suzaku knew was wholly genuine.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Dante. ‘I’ll defeat this one.’

  Kellan shook, and gripped Suzaku’s hand. The glistening tendons that worked his hand trembled and she felt her gorge rise at the sight of the exposed inner workings of his arm. The bio-readouts on Selenus’s arm trilled sharply and every number spiralled higher.

  ‘No,’ hissed Kellan, pausing to let the blood collecting in his mouth drain through the wounds in his cheeks. ‘Said that even… even if you killed him… he’d take half of Calth… with him… Said that he has… a plan.’

  ‘A plan?’ demanded Suzaku. ‘What plan?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ interrupted Selenus. ‘We need to get this man to a proper medicae facility right now. The back of a Rhino is no place for life-saving surgery.’

  ‘Just a moment longer, Apothecary,’ said Suzaku.

  ‘I said no,’ stated Selenus.

  Suzaku rounded upon the Apothecary, and said, ‘There is an Iron Warrior loose on your world, and I need to speak to this man.’

  ‘He’ll die if I don’t medicate him, and I’m not letting that happen.’

  Suzaku fought the urge to pull out her rosette and remind Selenus of her absolute authority, knowing it would only undermine her position. She had to appeal to the Apothecary’s sense of logic.

  ‘Many more are going to die if we don’t find out everything this man knows.’

  ‘He is a warrior of Ultramar,’ said Selenus. ‘And he deserves a chance to live.’

  ‘And I’ll give him that chance,’ promised Suzaku. ‘As soon as I’m done talking to him.’

  ‘You condone this, Korvin?’ demanded Selenus.

  ‘I do,’ confirmed the sergeant. ‘I do not like it, but she’s right.’

  The Apothecary nodded. ‘Very well. A minute longer, but not a second more.’

  Suzaku returned her attention to Kellan. His skin was ashen, and there were deep shadows under his eyes. Any battlefield triage would have administered palliatives to allow Kellan to die painlessly before going on to attend less grievously wounded men, but she had no choice but to keep him conscious and talking. Her Inquisitorial instincts told her that a great many lives rested on the outcome of the next minute.

  ‘What did this Iron Warrior say, trooper?’ asked Suzaku.

  Kellan’s eye swam out of focus, and she knew he might not even last another minute. But with an effort that redefined the word ‘heroic’ in Suzaku’s mind, Kellan clamped tight to his will and blinked back the pain.

  ‘Said he was… going deep,’ said Kellan. ‘Cut out my eye… told me he would crack open the world. His greatest siegework… an approach to Calth’s heart.’

  Kellan coughed a wad of red-frothed fluid, and his entire body began convulse. Blood oozed from the skull carved into his forehead, and the image of an eight pointed star began to appear on the gauze sheet covering his chest as blood seeped from the deep cuts gouged there. Chiming warnings rang and a cry of anguish was torn from Kellan’s lips.

  ‘That’s enough!’ bellowed Selenus, barging Suzaku out of his path as he loomed over the stricken soldier. Suzaku watched him work with grudging fascination. Drug lines and anti-shock balms were administered with a swiftness that was as thorough as it was exact. Suzaku had been injured many times in the line of duty, but the next time she shed her blood in service of the Imperium, she hoped it was in sight of a Space Marine Apothecary like Selenus.

  ‘No!’ cried Kellan. ‘You have to stop him!’

  ‘We will,’ promised Suzaku, as Dante led her and Milotas from the back of the Rhino.

  The hatch pulled up behind them, and the cool, dry air of the cavern was a relief after the sterile, blood-soaked atmosphere in the back of the Rhino.

  ‘Will Apothecary Selenus be able to save Trooper Kellan?’ asked Milotas.

  Dante looked down at her savant, as though considering ignoring the question, but recognising the man’s value despite his obvious injuries.

  ‘He and a Deathwatch Apothecary once saved our captain from phage-cell poisoning after a tyranid bio-queen skewered him with a poisoned javelin,’ said Dante. ‘If anyone can save that man, it is Selenus.’

  Suzaku nodded and walked away from the Rhino, letting her eyes roam the crystal and rock walls of the cavern. Once this place would have been full of life, people and industry. It seemed a needlessly precarious way of life to choose an existence spent forever underground. Only a tenacious desire not to give an enemy the satisfaction of abandoning your homeworld would force a planet’s population to remain so close to the edge of survival.

  ‘So what do you think Kellan’s words mean?’ asked Milotas, tapping at his slate.

  ‘I
’m not sure,’ answered Suzaku. ‘It could be spite. A defeated foe’s last jibe at his enemies.’

  ‘But you don’t believe that,’ said Milotas, without looking up.

  ‘I don’t think Iron Warriors are given to empty threats.’

  ‘No Space Marine makes empty threats,’ said Dante. ‘Least of all Traitor ones. If this Iron Warrior believes he can do Calth great harm, then we must assume he has abundant reason to think he can hurt us.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what he might be planning?’

  Dante shook his head, and Suzaku saw the admission was painful to him.

  ‘If I might make an observation,’ said Milotas, turning his slate around so that Suzaku and Dante could see it. Amid the scrolling data-streams cascading down the sides, a central image swam into clarity, a colossal red-lit tower of ironwork, automated machinery and the black and white cog symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Billowing clouds of superheated steam and flares of venting gases fogged the image.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Suzaku.

  Milotas looked disappointed at the question, and tapped the blinking map icon in the top right corner of the image. Suzaku wasn’t familiar with the mapping conventions of Calth, where standard techniques of cartography were useless.

  ‘This is geo-station Aries Pyros,’ said Milotas, when she didn’t answer.

  ‘I don’t know what that means,’ snapped Suzaku. ‘Just tell me what it is.’

  ‘This is one of the dozen Adeptus Mechanicus geo-thermal power generating stations that supply the vast majority of the energy to the underground sub-station relays that link the cities of Calth together. Buried in artificial, force-shielded bubbles sunk into the planet’s upper mantle, they tap into the immense temperatures and pressure to generate vast reserves of power that make Calth more than self-sufficient.’

  ‘Where is that place?’ asked Dante, tapping the slate, and earning an irritated glance from Milotas Adelmo. The savant pointedly paused to wipe a silk cloth over the mirrored slate before answering the Space Marine.

  ‘It’s ten point six kilometres below us, fifteen point one to the east,’ he answered.

  ‘Could the Iron Warrior be planning to sabotage this facility?’ asked Suzaku.

  ‘Impossible,’ declared Dante. ‘You don’t just walk into a place like that. There are Mechanicus praetorians, battle-servitors, and entire detachments of skitarii protecting each one. It’s a fortress in its own right.’

  ‘And who do we know who excel at bringing fortresses to ruin?’

  ‘You are jumping at shadows, inquisitor,’ said Dante. ‘You are being paranoid.’

  ‘Do you want to risk your planet on that assumption?’ asked Suzaku. ‘This enemy warrior has managed to stay off the radar for six months. He’s avoided every sweep designed to catch any survivors of the invasion force, and he’s doing something that could complete his masters’ plans for this world.’

  ‘He is just one man,’ said Dante, unwilling to credit a Traitor with the skill to carry off so daring and suicidal a mission. ‘He couldn’t possibly succeed.’

  ‘But what if he did?’ pressed Suzaku. ‘Milotas, what kind of damage could be done if that place were destroyed?’

  Milotas called up a fresh batch of statistics, and pursed his lips with a rueful shake of his head. He swiped his fingers in a complicated motion across his slate and let out a soft exhalation.

  ‘The Calth energy grid is a delicate structure, one where the lines of power interconnect on hundreds of different levels. If our nameless foe somehow managed to destroy that facility, he could disrupt the entire grid.’

  ‘So a few places would lose power for a few days?’ asked Dante. ‘The grid would compensate.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sergeant,’ said Milotas. ‘You see, each of these power facilities is, in effect, a collection of atomic reactors resting on the molten structure of this planet. If an enemy were to, say, drop one of these plants into the mantle and detonate it, the effects would be catastrophic. And that’s a best case scenario.’

  ‘What’s a worst case scenario?’ asked Suzaku.

  ‘That the seismic shock rips through the upper mantle and cracks the crust open. Earthquakes, cave-ins, tunnel collapses on a global scale. Wherever the structure of the crust was sufficiently compromised, the mantle would pour through, and… well, you don’t need me to tell you how devastating that would be to any cities nearby.’

  Before Dante could reply, the assault ramp of the Rhino gave a metallic squeal as it lowered and Apothecary Selenus emerged, the white of his gauntlets smeared red and his face lined with anger.

  ‘Trooper Kellan died of his wounds,’ he said. ‘I hope whatever he told you was worth his life, inquisitor.’

  ‘He died serving the Emperor and Ultramar,’ said Suzaku, meeting Selenus’s accusing stare. ‘No death in such service is in vain.’

  ‘Is that it?’ demanded Selenus. ‘Platitudes?’

  ‘The truth,’ said Suzaku, softening her tone and knowing she had to give Selenus something. ‘He may have helped us save a lot of lives. We believe the Iron Warrior is planning to sabotage one of the geo-thermal power facilities.’

  Selenus looked to Dante for confirmation, and gave a slow nod when he saw the truth of the inquisitor’s words in his eyes.

  ‘Then the Emperor will remember him,’ said Selenus, wiping his hands clear of blood with a used dressing. ‘I will instruct Sergeant Lerato’s squad to return the bodies of their comrades to Highside City.’

  Dante opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak, Suzaku heard a fizz of static from the vox-bead in his ear. Dante pressed his fingertips to his head and squared his shoulders as he listened to the message.

  From the grim set to his features, Suzaku knew it was bad news.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘There has been another attack,’ said Dante.

  ‘Where?’ asked Milotas, ready to plot its location on his slate.

  ‘Three kilometres down,’ replied Dante. ‘In one of the tunnels en route to Aries Pyros.’

  Sergeant Lerato watched the Ultramarines Rhino chew dirt and speed off into the deeper tunnels of the cavern. The inquisitor’s vehicle roared after it, and within moments they had vanished from sight. He let out a breath, aware now that he had been on edge ever since he had seen the approaching woman. Not because of her Ordo affiliations, Atium Lareto had no reason to fear the Inquisition, but because he had heard what she had done on the walls of Castra Occidens.

  Anyone who could shoot her own brother in cold blood deserved a little fear.

  Lerato exhaled a long breath and pulled himself together. He had a job to do. Fallen comrades needed honouring, and they needed to be taken back to Highside City for return to their families. Trooper Kellan and the rest of Sergeant Joelle’s squad were laid out in neat lines, secured within in the regulation Munitorum body bags that were standard issue on every Defence Auxilia fighting vehicle. The thermal insulating properties of these bags enabled them to be used as sleeping bags when in the field, but few soldiers risked attracting Fate’s eye by lying down inside them.

  Better breathing and cold, than warm and dead, was a favourite saying when the temperature dropped. Lerato had heard that most of the men and women who fought for the Imperium in far-flung reaches of space would never return to the worlds of their birth, that they would be buried in alien soil or simply ejected from the airlock of a starship.

  The notion disgusted him. A soldier should be buried in the rock of the world he called home, the world he had fought and died to protect. When Lerato’s turn came, he hoped he would be returned to the balmy, tropical caverns of Uptis Majoris on the equatorial band, where the proud warriors of his family were buried along with generations of heroes.

  He shook his head clear of such maudlin thoughts and gathered his men around him with a circling gesture above his head.

  ‘On me,’ he shouted, his voice echoing from the walls.

  With cust
omary speed, his squad jogged over to him and took a knee. He knew each of them well, having chosen them for his squad with care and attention to detail that was unheard of in regiments beyond those of Ultramar. He had trained them to work as a team, and had seen every one of them fight with honour in the war.

  Trooper Jacen had fought to recover the banner of a brother unit of Defence Auxilia, sustaining two gunshot wounds to the leg in the process. He’d only just returned to active service, and was hungry to prove himself ready. The Chimera’s driver, Lorz, was the oldest in the squad, a heady twenty-seven years old, and he had taken on an entire Bloodborn squad armed only with a downed Space Marine’s chainblade. With the Ultramarines’ consent, that blade was now mounted in the company squad room.

  Yelzar and Luta had held a foxhole with a succession of heavy stubbers in the face of wave after wave of Bloodborn fanatics, and Lerosy had thrown himself on an enemy satchel charge that had landed in the midst of his platoon. That the charge had proved to be a dud did not lessen the courage of the deed, and his squad mates never missed an opportunity to good-naturedly mock him.

  ‘So what’s up, sergeant?’ asked Jacen. ‘Do they have a line on who did this to Kellan?’

  ‘I don’t have specific information just now, Trooper Jacen,’ said Lerato. ‘But judging by the speed the Inquisitor and the Space Marines pulled out, I’m guessing that Kellan gave them something useful.’

  ‘Was it the beast?’ asked Lerosy. ‘No man of Calth could do that to someone.’

  ‘I heard the beast was a warp monster,’ said Yelzar, her youthful features pale and tremulously excited at the prospect of such a hunt. ‘Like it was summoned or something.’

  ‘Secure that kind of talk,’ said Lerato, mindful of the speed with which rumours could spread in any military organisation. ‘There’s no monster, but there’s likely a rogue Bloodborn soldier still at large in the caverns.’

  ‘Then why aren’t we going with the Ultramarines?’ asked Lorz. ‘Calth’s our world too. We have a right to protect our own people.’

  ‘That we do, but we have another job,’ said Lerato, seeing his soldiers’ faces fall at the thought that they wouldn’t get to take down the bastard that had done this to their comrades. ‘A job that’s just as important. Sergeant Joelle’s squad need to be taken back to Highside City, and that’s not a job for the Ultramarines, it’s a job for us. They were our people, our fellow soldiers, and we owe it them to take them home with honour.’