Calgar's Fury

by Paul Kearney

  He gibbered behind his mask, and his body shook as though in the grip of a fever. Beside him, his companions were in like condition. The skitarii fell to their knees and uttered a collective, drawn-out howl of agony as their conditioning was overridden. One of them tried to rise, then staggered as though struck. He raised his empty fists, and Alt-seven, with an enormous effort, managed to turn his head in time to see the bolt of arc-fire lance out of the mouth of a servo skull and sear the skitarii to molten metal and black meat from the chest up. The stench in the chamber intensified, and the acrid smoke sank down into the ribbons of mist that were now collecting thicker around them. The skitarii stood, burning, his helm melting on his skull, the eyelenses exploding with vicious pops. Then he toppled to the ground.

  The rest were now frozen in place, their limbic functions lost to outside control, their senses blinded, blown, their existence now nothing more than a mass of green static-laced data that invaded every atom of their biomechanical brains.

 

 

 

  Alt-seven raised his head to look up at the structure of the great bio-mechanical entity that towered over him, and he saw not a lowering mass of hanging metallic tendrils, a spitting sequence of transistors and vid-flares, a hovering line of skulls.

  He saw a face, as beautiful and serene as that of a benevolent god, smiling down at him. He saw peace, and the fulfilment of a lifetime’s need, the opening of a dream.

 

 

 

  And the bright face smiled on him.

  Twelve

  Marneus Calgar attended to the battle reports coming in from the surface in grim silence. Captain Ixion was heavily outnumbered, under all-round attack, and suffering a steady trickle of casualties – but he was holding his own. Seventh had dug in, and was well supplied with ammunition. Plus, the Thunderhawks of the Octavius and the Rex Aeterna would soon be returning in support. Ixion was confident he could hold.

  ‘But lord, there is something you should know,’ he said urgently over the crackling vox, ‘the enemy we are facing here – they are not forces of the Ruinous Powers, at least, not as we understand them. We are encountering murder servitors, battle maniples of skitarii, and clades of Kataphron Breachers with heavy arc rifles and torsion cannons. These are the forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus.’

  Calgar turned to Magos Fane, who stood close by, and replayed the message from Ixion over his vox speakers so the magos could listen in. The tech-priest’s alloy fists tightened on his axe of office and there was a bright glint from his eyelenses. A long hiss escaped from his mouth-grille.

  ‘This cannot be so, Chapter Master. My Adeptus would not attack the forces of the Imperium, not least the Adeptus Astartes – not if they were still holding to their ancient allegiance. There must be something else at work here, an ancient evil which it makes me sick to think on.’

  ‘Have you sensed the presence of the Dark Mechanicus here on the hulk, Fane?’ Calgar asked the magos.

  The tech-priest said nothing for a long moment. He was wondering what to divulge and what to hold back, Calgar thought, and a jet of anger shot up in him. He looked quickly back down the long column of Ultramarines that ran down the tunnel behind him, cast his eye over the Adeptus Mechanicus personnel – and at once he knew that there were some of the magos’ people missing. The anger grew. He should have noticed it earlier, but he had been too far to the front of the column, more concerned with what was ahead of them than what was behind.

  Consider the whole, the Codex said. A battlefield is like a body. Every limb is important. A mere nick in the right place, and it will bleed to death – the battle can be lost in the most unlikely of places.

  Inquisitor Drake strode up. ‘Problems?’ he asked in that arch way of his.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Calgar said bleakly. ‘Magos, you have not yet answered me.’

  ‘I have sensed something,’ Magos Fane said at last. ‘My techsorcist has been reiterating our incantatory rituals against scrapcode ever since we landed on the hulk, and he has, as yet, picked up nothing that is blatantly malign. But there is something – an intelligence.’

  ‘We knew there had to be something sentient at the heart of this thing – that is no great revelation,’ Inquisitor Drake snapped, and for once Calgar was in full agreement with him.

  ‘I do not speak of what you think, inquisitor,’ Magos Fane hissed back. ‘Elements of the Ruinous Powers are almost certainly at the heart of this artefact’s mystery – it came from the Eye of Terror after all – but there is something else, also. Some remnant of my own Adeptus is still in existence here–’

  ‘They’re killing my brothers on the surface even now,’ Calgar said, reining in his anger, his tone low. ‘I do not need the obvious restated to me, magos.’

  The tech-priest actually backed away a step from the simmering menace in Calgar’s voice.

  ‘There is more to it than that. I–’ he hesitated, and his thin body writhed within the scarlet robe, as if in indecisive torment.

  ‘I have, it is true, detached a small element of my entourage, to investigate what may prove to be a possible clue as to the true nature of what drives the enemy forces – those which are attacking your Ultramarines, my Lord Calgar. I and the tech­sorcist have sensed a major cogital logistack nearby, one which is big enough to house trillions of terabytes of data, a treasure trove of potentially enormous significance. We passed by it on our journey downwards, and as we did, I sensed that its signal was weakening. Rather than lose it entirely, I assigned a trusted adjunct to investigate.’ He paused. ‘I have not yet heard back from his party, but I should soon.’

  ‘The spider stalks the fly,’ Inquisitor Drake said with a sneer. ‘You did not see fit to divulge this to Lord Calgar or myself?’

  ‘I did not know if what we were looking for was viable. And the need for haste...’ The magos trailed off.

  ‘The need for haste – and for secrecy,’ Drake grated. ‘You withheld this information because you knew that I would insist on investigating it alongside your own forces, to check for taints of heresy.’

  ‘Therein lies the problem. You might well have been deceived, inquisitor. There are subtleties to the traits of my Adeptus that only our own can sense. I needed an initial assessment by my own people, unhindered, before I divulged this information to you.’

  ‘This changes things,’ Calgar said, cutting them both short. ‘Recall your team, magos. We must–’

  A high-priority vox rune flashed up on his helm’s readout, from Tigurius in the Octavius. He took it at once.

  ‘Send, brother, but be swift.’

  ‘My lord, augur sweeps from both the Rex and the Octavius have picked up a sudden, massive power-surge at the heart of Fury. The hulk seems to be bringing many unknown systems online. There are currents in the aether which I am picking up myself, a sudden wakefulness – an awareness if you will.

  ‘Chapter Master, the hulk is coming to life. More than that, the warp itself draws near to it. The currents of the immaterium are shifting all around us, and growing stronger by the moment. I cannot–’ He stopped. ‘Forgive me, my lord, there is more data inbound as I speak.’ There was a crackling gap, a pause which had Calgar clenching his fists in the Gauntlets of Ultramar, impatience growing like a cold fire down his spine.

  ‘My lord, the Geller field around the hulk is strengthening, as is the artefact’s gravitic generation.’ Tigurius’ voice fell, shock darkening it.

  ‘It is my opinion that Fury is about to make a warp t
ranslation.’

  ‘Throne,’ Calgar whispered. His mind ranged out in half a dozen directions at once, considering the long miles back to the surface, Seventh Company fighting there, the fleet in close orbit.

  And he, entombed here with Fifth Company, hopelessly deep in the guts of this monstrous, birthing nightmare that was waking up around him at last.

  ‘How soon, Tigurius?’ he demanded of his Librarian.

  ‘Hours at the very most – perhaps minutes.’ Tigurius sounded both angry and baffled. ‘I cannot be more specific, my lord. The energy signature is on a steep arc. The reactor which powers it must be of an immense capability, and fully functional – something we had not even guessed at.’

  Another flashing scarlet rune. Ixion, with Seventh.

  ‘Report, captain.’

  ‘My lord, the enemy have drawn back. They are in complete retreat on all sides.’ There was a mixture of triumph and puzzlement in Ixion’s voice. ‘They seem to be going to ground back in the wrecks which surround us.’

  They know, Calgar thought.

  There was not enough time for Fifth to make it out, but Seventh might, if they were very swift.

  He called up the Chapter-wide vox, keyed into all Ultramarines who were capable of picking up the signal.

  ‘Lord Calgar – Lord Calgar!’ Magos Fane was crying suddenly, ‘My augur readouts–’

  ‘I know. Be silent,’ Calgar snapped.

  Then he drew a breath, and spoke to his own brothers, the Ultramarines of the battle companies who were here on Fury with him, those listening on board the Rex Aeterna and the Octavius, the Thunderhawk crews, Tigurius and the few Adeptus Astartes who were with him in orbit. All those who shared his blood and bore the sigil of the Chapter on their shoulders.

  ‘Brothers, this thing is about to shift into the warp, to go who knows where. For me, for Captain Galenus, for our comrades in Fifth and those with us, there is no hope of escape. But Captain Ixion, you must evacuate your men as swiftly as you can. All Thunderhawks are to launch and bring off as many as possible. Brother Fortunus – you must try and join up with Seventh. Brother Tigurius, I name you commander of the fleet in orbit. Take the ships away from the vicinity of the hulk, otherwise they may be dragged into the warp along with it.

  ‘Now let us get to it, my brothers. Time is not our friend.’

  There was nothing more to be said. His battle-brothers knew what to do, and they would do it with all the pitiless determination of their kind.

  The vox filled with acknowledgements of his orders, clipped and precise, the voices of hardened warriors used to the prospect of mass death. Their voices warmed him.

  ‘Throne be with you, Chapter Master.’ He did not check to see who had said it – it was not Tigurius, merely a message from one of his brothers, a sergeant perhaps, or a warrior in one of the line companies. He did not want to know who it was. It was enough to have heard it.

  He looked down at Inquisitor Drake and Magos Fane, who stood silently beside him, having heard nothing of what had just passed on the Ultramarines vox net.

  ‘The spider and the fly,’ he said to Drake with a touch of cold humour. ‘Inquisitor, you may have spoken more truly than you know.’

  From the launch bays of the Ultramarines ships the Thunderhawks exploded like bullets from the barrel of a gun, piloted by battle-brothers who knew that every second counted. Between the Rex Aeterna and the Octavius, the Chapter still had nineteen of the heavily armoured craft flightworthy, and these now powered down into the artefact’s thin atmosphere, to roar into the starfield above Seventh Company’s positions, their hulls glowing red. Many were battle-damaged, some virtually unarmed, having volleyed out of the launch bays before their ordnance loads had been fitted.

  No ground fire met them. The enemy that had been assaulting Seventh’s positions seemed to have simply melted away, withdrawing into the maze of wreckage that composed the surface of Fury, offering no resistance. The Thunderhawks touched down in and around the company perimeter in a vast cloud of metallic dust that rose up to mangle all augury and auspex readings, and interfere with the vox, lacing it with static.

  Librarian Tigurius was old in service of the Chapter, and old too in knowledge of the warp and the monstrosities it contained. He kept the nave crew of the Octavius on continual alert, had teams of tech-servitors sweep Fury without pause, and analysed every line of data they produced, running through it at the adamantium aquila that perched at the head of the nave. The Geller field that surrounded the hulk was now at some sixty-five per cent of that which was judged minimal for survival in the immaterium. If it did not come up to one hundred per cent of Imperium standard, then, once the artefact translated, there was no telling what nightmares might slip through it.

  His Chapter Master was trapped, far too deep to be reached by any force available to him here. The only reason he was still in vox contact was because of the relays set in place on the way down. Tigurius could talk to Marneus Calgar, but that was all. In every other respect, the Chapter Master and the Ultramarines of Fifth Company, to say nothing of the Adeptus Mechanicus and Inquisition personnel, were already lost. He had to plan around that knowledge, to save what he could out of this looming disaster. And that meant evacuating Seventh Company.

  ‘Artefact’s Geller field is now at seventy-three per cent of Imperium minimums and still rising,’ a fleet officer said. ‘Power is–’ the middle-aged voidsman shook his head. ‘Lord Tigurius, the power readings are off the scale.’

  ‘I see it,’ Tigurius rasped. ‘Let me know as soon as the first Thunderhawks are back on board. I want an immediate report on conditions on the surface.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  Tigurius closed his eyes, and reached out with his mind. His psychic hood began to glow, a bright cowl which encircled his skull, threaded with cables, thrumming with the power of his psyche.

  In the storm of shining dust that surrounded the landing zones, Captain Ixion stood by his Librarian, Brother Belisar. The roar of the idling Thunderhawks was intense; it made the ground shake under his feet. He stood aside to let Brothers Uther and Tolkos, two towering Dreadnoughts, stomp past up the ramp of Sinbreaker. Around him, the squads of Seventh Company were filing into the other Thunderhawks while a skeleton force of some dozen battle-brothers formed a rearguard, in case the enemy chose to attack as the company was embarking.

  But there was no attempt to interfere with the evacuation. The surface of Fury was broken and blackened, heaped with the bodies of the enemy slain, pocked by still-smoking craters, on fire here and there with puddles of still-burning promethium. But aside from that it seemed as dead as when they had first arrived.

  Seventh’s senior sergeant, Brother Jarrow, joined Ixion. ‘Captain, what of the stores? We are leaving behind a mountain of ammunition and equipment here!’

  ‘Leave it,’ Ixion retorted. ‘It’s of no consequence now.’

  Jarrow shook his helm slightly. ‘No word of the Chapter Master and Fifth?’

  ‘They are six miles down, brother. There is nothing we can do for them.’

  ‘Throne!’ Brother Jarrow’s voice was full of angry grief, even over the shrill static of the vox. ‘Surely there must be something–’

  ‘Just get our people out, brother sergeant,’ Ixion said. ‘If anyone can survive this, it will be Lord Calgar. He has seen much worse.’

  ‘Aye, captain.’ Jarrow waved an arm. ‘The last are almost on – it is just you, Brother Belisar, myself and the rearguard.’

  ‘What of the third Dreadnought?’ Ixion demanded. ‘Any sign of brother Fortunus?’

  Brother Jarrow shook his head. ‘He is not here, and there has been no word from him.’

  Ixion clenched his fist slowly. ‘Then get aboard, brother. I will see you on the Octavius.’ He switched to a wider channel. ‘Rearguard embark. All Thunderhawks, take off and make for the Oc
tavius as soon as your complement is complete.’

  He could delay no longer – he was imperilling his brethren with each passing minute.

  The ground shuddered and shook as the great Mars-pattern engines of the craft powered up for take-off. As they lifted, their retros blew up an immense pall of dust and debris that was blasted up into the thin atmosphere, mushrooming out beyond Fury’s weak surface gravity and into space, a drifting cloud which shone as it twisted in the light of Iax’s star.

  The rearguard came in, trooping up the bow ramp of the Thunderhawk Andromache. Librarian Belisar stood on the lip of the ramp and called to his captain.

  ‘Brother! It is time to go!’

  Ixion stood a moment more, unwilling, somehow, to forsake the place his brethren had defended, the last link to his Chapter Master and the others who were with him – the faint hope that Brother Fortunus’ immense shape might still be seen striding out of the dust. It seared his soul to flee like this, leaving them all behind.

  The losses we endure may grieve us, but they must not cloud our thinking, the Codex said. Sometimes the fate of the dead must be put from the mind, until there is time to mourn, and to rejoice in the valour of their passing. Until then, the fight must continue. Let anger clear your mind.

  ‘May the Emperor forgive us,’ Ixion whispered. Then he walked up the ramp of the Andromache, and even before the heavy hatch was fully closed, the Thunderhawk was up and off the ground, ascending into orbit on a pillar of flame.

  ‘Last Thunderhawk is clear of the hulk, my lord,’ Shipmaster Sulla told Brother Tigurius. The Librarian did not open his eyes, but he nodded.

  ‘As soon as they are onboard, the entire fleet is to stand clear of Fury some fifty thousand miles. The translation is very near, shipmaster, and it is a powerful one, which will ripple out into real space for quite some distance.’