Mark of Calth

by Edited by Laurie Goulding

  ‘By your hand, I suppose,’ I dare the Word Bearer.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘By my word. You roar your boldness, but sometimes actions speak louder. You restrain me here – a blind prisoner – with your blade at my throat and the clunk of a primed boltgun aimed at me from the corner. You stink of fear. Fear. That makes you weak. I need not blades nor boltguns. I have words, and I could end you with but a single one.’

  ‘And which word would that be?’ I furiously demand, the tip of my sword dimpling the flesh of his throat.

  ‘Penetral–’

  The small chamber echoes with gunfire.

  It is over. Azul Gor is dead. Three bolt rounds. Two in the chest, and one in the skull. Brother Daesenor’s weapon smokes in the silence that follows.

  I round on the sentinel, but Nicodemus raises a gauntlet.

  ‘I ordered it,’ the tetrarch admits, ‘as I told you I would. This is my fault. This was a mistake.’

  ‘He was talking,’ I protest.

  ‘He was,’ Nicodemus agrees. ‘He was talking you into the darkness. You’ve seen how far the Word Bearers have fallen. You’ve seen their depravities. That word was likely some kind of incantation, and his death at your hands would have been a latent bargain with some otherworldly creature.’

  I stare at the tetrarch.

  ‘We would do well not to underestimate our lost kinsmen,’ he continues. ‘The entire episode – being unarmed, the eyes, emerging from hiding – it was probably a ruse to get him into a room with an Ultramarines officer. A target worthy of his sacrifice. It is my fault. I take responsibility.’

  The tetrarch goes to leave the chamber. He looks to Daesenor and nods at the trussed-up corpse of the Word Bearer. ‘Take care of that please, brother,’ he says, before turning to me. ‘I’m going back to the Arcropolis. Have Sergeant Arcadas complete his sweep and then withdraw from this damned place. Assist the Army sappers in demolishing our breach point.’

  ‘Won’t you reconsider occupying the arcology?’ I say, but my heart isn’t in it.

  The tetrarch ignores my words.

  ‘Ensure that nothing can get through where we entered,’ Nicodemus says. ‘That’s your responsibility.’

  The breach point is nothing more than a ragged hole in the cavern wall.

  Seismic demolition charges had been requisitioned from a tunnel-team lockup. They are not military grade, or anything close to the power and precision of the tactical demolitions used by the Legiones Astartes. However, in sufficient quantity – and under expert supervision –the seismic charges would do the job.

  Sergeant Arcadas is clearing the last of his warriors from Arcology Tantoraem. With members of the Army, the sergeant’s Space Marines had made swift work of searching the cave system for Legion munitions and power packs. All else – rations, weaponry and plate – was destroyed on the further orders of the tetrarch for fear it might somehow be contaminated. Blades were broken. Fibre bundles were ripped out. Bolters were breech-blown or fouled with crude plugs.

  Imperial Army forces trudge by under the milky orb of Sergeant Brotus Grodin, carrying caches of recovered munitions and packs. Grodin is a retired soldier – one of the Emperor’s ex-serviceman, who has been placed in charge of one of the newly organised units of the Veridian Cicatrix. The Cicatrix had been the tetrarch’s idea: Cicatricians are all remnants of former defence regiments that have been decimated and scattered during the surface war. Their camo-chitons are a myriad of local colour, each member hailing from a different defence force or ceremonial guard. All wear flak plate from Konor – breastplates, skirts and guards. Their visored helms display the nose and cheekguards favoured by many of the Calth militia, and each carries a battered buckler, short blade and the slung length of a las-fusil.

  Their exposed forearms and thighs all bear horrific radiation burns and solar scarring. This is the now infamous Mark of Calth, a testament to their desire to fight on across the sun-scorched surface of their doomed home world. It was this unifying feature that Nicodemus chose to honour in their name, despite the fact that Grodin’s contingent alone is made up of former members of the Vospherus 14th and 55th Irregulars, and the Tarxis 1st Citizen’s Reserve. Helmetless, with the scowl on his roasted half-face driving the Cicatricians on, Grodin taps the passing soldiers on the arm with a swagger-sceptre.

  ‘All through, m’lord,’ Grodin reports gruffly.

  ‘Thank you, sergeant,’ I say. ‘Would you be so good as to accompany my legionary brothers back to the Arcropolis with the supplies?’

  Grodin nods and follows his dour troops, leaving me with Brothers Daesenor and Phornax as breach sentries.

  Ione Dodona also remains.

  She retreats, unspooling detonator cable. The three of us follow her to an outcrop, behind which she has set up a simple plunge-detonator. The equipment is only frontier mining-standard, but serviceable – like the seismic charges Dodona is using to collapse the breach point.

  ‘Are we set?’ I ask.

  ‘Two more charges to wire,’ she answers, fingering through the nest of cable. ‘One more minute.’

  Dodona has been invaluable. Grodin’s men have heart and grim determination but they are all topsiders. As a Sapper Second-Class, even before the conflict, Dodona had been part of the Calth Pioneer Auxilia. Commonly known as ‘the Benthals’, the sappers’ expert knowledge of the cave systems, structural integrities and explosives became a powerful weapon in the war as it progressed beyond a simply military endeavour. Many lives and much in the way of precious ammunition have been saved by the strategic collapsing of caves and tunnels swarming with cultist forces and degenerate Word Bearers.

  Collectively, Dodona possibly has a higher kill-count than some frontline battle-brothers. What they achieve with bolt and blade, the sappers accomplished with millions of tonnes of rock. In a way, Calth itself has taken the fight to the invaders.

  As we wait, Daesenor and Phornax monitor the breach for enemy activity. Without the opportunity to carry out a full survey, there was no way of knowing all of the entry and exit points in the Tantoraem arcology. An enemy force could stream through and flood our territory through our own breach point. My brothers’ bolters are there to give Dodona time to finish her work and bury any opportunists. As it is, all is silent and still.

  Casting my eyes across Dodona’s equipment and schemata, I pick up a scratched dataslate. It displays detailed maps of arcologies both completed and – before the war – in a state of construction. Tracing my ceramite fingertip across the slate, I follow the pillar-lined mag-lev tunnels out of Magnesi-South, through the breach point and down through the branching cave systems of Tantoraem. My digit drifts the torturous route of our incursion. I think on the brothers lost under my command, drowning in the sea of rabid cultists. I feel my boots slipping in the blood of our loyal Cicatricians, and relive the clash of our formations against throngs of fanatical Word Bearers, like ships smashing against rocks in the shallows.

  Then I reach the groundwater lake, the shallows where we captured Azul Gor. To my surprise, my finger travels on, arriving at a single slate designation: Penetralia.

  ‘What is this?’ I ask Dodona, who is clearly not impressed at having to disentangle herself from detonator cables to check the slate. Unlike the Cicatricians, her lamped helmet is close-fitting and her flak-plates are set into a dark body-suit, better adapted to clambering through rough caves and tight tunnels. She shines her lamps down onto the slate screen.

  ‘That would be the Penetralia,’ she tells me. ‘It’s a series of tunnels formed naturally in the rock. It’s quite a labyrinth down there, but the region was ear-marked for excavation as the entry point to another arcology.’

  ‘But it’s submerged,’ I mutter, having seen the lake for myself. Dodona nods.

  ‘Groundwater flooded part of the Penetralia and the mag-lev mining track leading to the excavation,’ she s
ays. ‘Pioneers were evacuated and operations were abandoned until pump-crews could be brought in, but by that time the war had already started.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I supplied with this information?’

  ‘It’s not an arcology,’ Dodona insists, ‘it’s a dead end – flooded, at that. An excavation barely begun.’

  ‘On the other side of the tunnels,’ I press the Pioneer, jabbing my ceramite finger at the screen, ‘is it possible that the caves remain dry? Airlocked, perhaps?’

  She considers this for a moment. ‘Yes, it’s possible – but why would you even think that? It’s deeper than we’ve ever bothered to go before.’

  ‘We pulled a Word Bearer from the waters of that lake,’ Brother Phornax informs her. ‘He didn’t come from Tantoraem.’

  I hand her back the slate and turn to my two brothers.

  ‘Hold off on the detonation,’ I order. ‘Send word back to Magnesi.’

  ‘But the tetrarch–’ Dodona begins.

  ‘I’m going to see the tetrarch now,’ I tell her. ‘Blow the breach point only in the event of an enemy incursion.’ Snatching up my helmet, I nod to Daesenor and Phornax. ‘Vigilance, brothers,’ I tell them. ‘I will send reinforcements. Our enemy could be lying in wait – remaining hidden from sight. We may not have finished our work here.’

  The mag-lev line runs into the lake – I can see it clearly now. Earlier, I had unknowingly emptied the freight car of some of the Red Munion sharpshooters. With fusil bolts lancing off my plate and my short sword cleaving through cultist bodies in the confines of the vehicle, I had not realised that it was part of the mag-way.

  Sergeant Brodin’s Cicatricians are clearing the bodies now, carrying the cadavers and dumping them in a fire. The reactivated freight engine hums and crackles its intention to move. The sergeant himself is rinsing down the car interior with buckets of lake water, while Ione Dodona works with a plasma torch to air-seal the vehicle as best she can.

  I have faith in her efforts. She has already worked wonders with the dormant electropolar engine. She has spent a lifetime working down in the arcologies on such machines and so I leave the workings and operation of the mining tram to her.

  We would not bother with the mag-lev but for the Army troopers; my brothers and I could traverse the flooded tunnels just as Azul Gor had done, with the benefit of enclosed suits and autosenses. The Veridian Cicatrix have no such equipment, however, and I am forced to rely upon the rotting rail system. It will undeniably hasten our journey, even though it has taken some time to ready the engine car.

  I am relying upon the Cicatricians to bolster our numbers. When I took evidence of an unfinished network beyond Tantoraem to the tetrarch, once again he was not pleased. He was not pleased that its existence had been missed in the first place, and not pleased that it might well harbour a hidden Word Bearers outpost. I reminded him of Azul Gor’s last half-spoken word, and showed him the unfinished Penetralia branch.

  He still angrily refused my request of two full legionary Breacher squads to clear the Penetralia tunnels; anger at me, himself or both, I could not tell. He did at least grant my subsequent request for a reconnaissance party – if there was a waiting enclave of Word Bearers on our doorstep, there was no denying that it was a tactical necessity to confirm their existence, number and threat level. This was at least the way I framed the request. Nicodemus regarded it more as a job unfinished, an objective untaken. I accepted responsibility and took the rebuke in silence.

  I have been allocated two battle-brothers. I asked for Molossus and Sergeant Arcadas, but I got Brothers Daesenor and Phornax, plus my pick of the Army troopers and Pioneers. I accepted without argument.

  Brotus Grodin and his men had just arrived at the Arcropolis with the Tantoraem salvage when I ordered the sergeant and a squad of his Cicatricians to resupply and head back out to the breach point with me.

  It’s fair to say that Tauro Nicodemus is not the only one who is currently not pleased.

  Dodona clears us to mount the freight engine. The Cicatricians stand, clutching the long barrels of their las-fusils. Dodona operates the chunky levers of the tram, while Daesenor, Phornax and myself tower over them in the freight compartment with our blades and combat shields at the ready. Phornax and I pack our pistols while Brother Daesenor carries his all-but-empty boltgun slung over his shoulder.

  The salvage from Tantoraem was paltry and already earmarked for the Magnesi defenders, and we only have a few precious bolt rounds between us. I rattle my single remaining shell in the grip of my gauntlet, as I frequently do. I hold it a little way from my mag-lock belt, then release it. The round flies to the belt from my finger and thumb, clicking into its usual place.

  The tram engine manages a throaty hum that takes us out of the siding and down the shore. The groundwater parts, churning aside as the tram pushes on before disappearing into the inky black depths of the lake.

  The hum builds to a whine as the carriage pushes through the weight of the water. The cab-lamps illuminate the flooded tunnels of the Penetralia beyond the rapidly steaming windows – everything is rough, rocky and unfinished. Dodona burdens the electropolar engine. Her plasma welding is serviceable, but it can’t hope to completely hold back the water. Closed ceiling vents disappoint, admitting a near-constant downpour, and water leaks in through some of the las-bolt holes that Dodona failed to spot. The door seals bubble and spume liquid darkness. Water pools rapidly in the freight compartment before crawling up the boots of the Cicatricians, much to their growing concern.

  As the water reaches their skirts and breastplates, Sergeant Grodin orders fusils held out of the rising inundation. Some of the men begin to panic.

  ‘How much further?’ Grodin calls up to the cab, trying not to sound too alarmed.

  ‘Not far, sergeant,’ Ione Dodona calls back to him. ‘I think,’ she adds under her breath.

  The freight tram rumbles on against the water. The cab-lumens suddenly flash before going out. Our suit lamps provide the only illumination now. Someone cries out in alarm as a closed vent shears off, water gushing into the space with renewed force.

  Everything is deluge and darkness. As the water rises beyond my belt, the Cicatricians begin to paddle and splash, holding onto the side of the compartment and trying to keep their heads above the surface. We assist them as best we can, helping them to climb the cab wall to the overhead stowage bins, but soon it is all they can do to keep their helmets between the ceiling and the frothing water. They are coughing. They are drowning in the dark.

  ‘Ione…?’ I press her, preparing to expand my multi-lung.

  I fear we might lose the Cicatricians, but the Pioneer is having her own problems. She is routinely pulling herself down under the water to operate the mag-lev’s manual levers and peer through the front screen. She surfaces.

  ‘Can’t see a damn thing,’ she splutters.

  ‘Ione!’ I shout back. She slips below the water again.

  A moment later we are all thrown forward by a sudden halt. The magnetic seals on our boots keep me and my brothers in place, but Grodin and many of his squad lose their grip in the surging water – it crashes them into the ceiling, then drags them back down again.

  The tram has stopped. The engine gurgles and sparks.

  With a sudden, ear-popping crash, the left-hand bank of windows burst outwards, dragging men and floating equipment out in the inescapable surge of water. The compartment evacuates quickly, but I claw open the exit hatch, my suit lamps providing ghostly illumination in the darkness beyond.

  The dry darkness.

  Turning, I see Ione Dodona slumped down in the cab like a drowned bilge-rat, her hand still on the brake and her chest rising and falling in deep, ragged breaths. Through the forward screen I see the rear bumpers of another engine – an engine our car almost collided with.

  I step down from the freight car with Phornax and D
aesenor, ordering the pair to secure a perimeter as the Cicatricians groggily regroup. Our vehicle still sits in the shallows, unable to go any further up the incline because of a longer, deactivated train that runs all the way up to the dead-end siding. I stand still for a moment.

  I look down at the water, my suit lamps lighting up the surface of the dark lake. The resplendence of my cobalt-blue armour is reflected back to me from the glassy ripples. I wonder if it has recently caught the armoured reflections of my sworn enemies – have I finally cornered Ungol Shax and his Word Bearers brethren?

  Walking the length of the first vehicle, my sword and shield ready, it becomes apparent that the train is partially flooded – suggesting that it must have been used fairly recently. Certainly since the flooding of the Penetralia with groundwater.

  ‘Anything?’ I growl over the vox.

  ‘Nothing… Aye, nothing,’ my brothers return.

  Activating barrel-mounted lamps on their fusils, Sergeant Grodin coughs out orders to the Cicatricians to perform a weapons test. Firing searing beams into the lake depths, we discover that over half of the squad’s weapons have temporarily succumbed to water infiltration. In the absolute darkness of the Penetralia, with no arc-lights or reflection vents, this isn’t ideal.

  ‘Dodona,’ I call out. The dripping Pioneer steps down from the tram, her helmet lamps on the data-slate she’s studying.

  ‘Three exits from this terminus chamber,’ she tells me. ‘All swiftly devolve into natural branches of the cave system, with chambers and grottos situated throughout.’

  ‘With Word Bearers lying in wait,’ I murmur. Grodin returns with his squad, and I turn to him. ‘Three entrances, sergeant – we’ll take one each. Brother Daesenor, follow Grodin and I’ll take Dodona. Sergeant, split your men between myself and Brothers Phornax and Daesenor. We will split up to cover more ground. I want every twist, turn, cavity and crawlspace checked for enemy presences. We are looking for Ungol Shax and his dark brotherhood. Keep channels open and vox back any contacts. If you run into numbers or are ambushed, establish a hold point and fall back by sections to the terminus chamber. We’ll regroup there. Understood?’