Calgar's Fury

by Paul Kearney

  And we will join them in death, Calgar added to himself.

  But it was one thing to die in victory, with his mission accomplished – quite another to face his end knowing that he had failed utterly, and in doing so had doomed an entire company of his brothers to an ignominious end.

  That was intolerable.

  There had to be another way.

  The Ultramarines around the entranceway raised their bolters as the first Mechanicus troops appeared at the top of the stairs.

  Twenty-Six

  ‘Stand fast,’ Calgar barked. As he stood there, he felt the dead weight of his armour shift a little. In his bionic eye’s linked readouts he saw his power meter climb up into the glimmering red, and new strength seemed to suffuse his limbs – fragile, temporary, but it was there. He cocked his remaining storm bolter. It was empty. And only one of his power fists would light up. But it was something.

  He ignored the pain that wracked his limbs and said, ‘Thank you, brother,’ to Techmarine Salvator.

  ‘The power will last only minutes, my lord, an hour at best.’

  ‘It will be enough.’

  He strode forward. A kastelan came up to the lip of the chamber threshold, and halted there. It was followed by another, clanking up the stairway. And then a third, followed by the datasmith and his remote console. Behind him came skitarii, twenty or thirty. They took up firing positions around the narthex and levelled their arc rifles. Calgar heard Inquisitor Drake’s sharp hiss of intaken breath, and held out a hand to keep his brethren in check. The four Terminators of First Company stood like graven statues, and over the vox Brother Starn said, ‘Only say the word, my lord, and we shall consign these renegades to the abyss.’

  Drake and Galenus came to stand by Calgar, and Brothers Morent and Ohtar took up station on either side, their power axes shining and spitting shards of blue-white light. They waited, as did the troops of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The tension in the air fizzed like the disruptor field on Calgar’s fist.

  More metallic steps on the stairs, a strange hesitant skittering of metal on metal, and then, at last, Dominus Hagnon-Cro came into view, tall on his angular many-jointed legs, like a red-robed spider. And beside him, Magos Fane, moving like a man who has taken a hard beating. The two came forward without a word, and not one of the warriors of either side moved an inch as they approached.

  ‘Do I have your leave to speak, Chapter Master?’ Hagnon-Cro asked in that surprisingly resonant voice of his, ‘Or shall we just start killing one another?’

  ‘Speak, dominus. I shall listen. But I weary of lies, I warn you.’

  The dominus came forward, his long torso bobbing as he advanced. ‘I think we are past the time for untruths. The daemon is dead – or at least, consigned back to the warp for an age of Men. The heart of the artefact has been cleansed of that which corrupted it. I congratulate you.’

  ‘Congratulate my dead brothers who lie strewn on the field below.’

  The dominus cocked his head to one side, the long proboscis gleaming. His robe was tattered, there were a few bullet-strikes on his limbs, but he seemed otherwise untouched, despite the fury of the fighting that had taken place.

  ‘They did not die in vain – I tell you that with all sincerity.’

  Calgar did not trust himself to reply. More than anything, he wanted to leap forward, to seize the bobbing monstrosity before him and tear it to pieces as a child might dismember a fly. But he stood fast, mindful of his current weakness, his brothers at the last of their resources around him, and the quandary that now held them all entrapped.

  ‘May I address the worthy Inquisitor Drake?’ the dominus said next, surprising them.

  Drake stepped up, hefting his Locke-pattern bolter. He, too, said nothing, but the way he held the weapon said it all.

  ‘You thought we were of the Dark Mechanicus, inquisitor, but you were wrong. To you we are mere renegades, perhaps tainted by the same evil which Lord Calgar has destroyed here today. What if I were to put it to you that we are not, in fact, an enemy for you to hate? We are not in league with Chaos, nor have we ever been. We have fought against it here for centuries, a war which seemed to have no end, and yet one which we never stopped waging. Imprisoned on this artefact, forced to share it with our bitter foes, we drifted from the path of the Cult Mechanicus, it is true, but we held always to the essential truth of the Omnissiah. That revelation we have not repudiated. This I swear to you.’

  Drake did not move. ‘Talk comes cheap,’ he rasped.

  ‘Indeed. But trust is a commodity in short supply. What if I told you that there is no need for any more of you to die today?’

  ‘I have heard turncoats and renegades of all kinds make such promises before, more times than I care to count, dominus.’

  ‘Ah, yes – of course. You are well versed in the wiles and machinations of those you fight, are you not? And you have also a psyker’s insight to guide you. It must be a wearisome burden to bear, here on the very edge of the Eye of Terror.’

  ‘All of life is a burden. One I shall shortly be free of.’

  ‘Perhaps you will take more account of another’s words rather than mine.

  ‘Magos Fane, kindly explain to your friends here the truth of things, before some one of us does something we shall all regret.’

  Fane limped forward, his one remaining eye glittering, green unguent oozing out of the shattered lens of the other.

  ‘Dominus Hagnon-Cro and his forces are part of an expeditionary force sent out by the Lords of Mars some twelve hundred years ago,’ the magos said, his voice shrill and harsh after the other. His words came out in a stream, with little inflection, like the recitation of a list. But he kept them listening with what he had to say, nonetheless.

  ‘They were sent out to track down the truth of a legend. Ancient records found in the bowels of Olympus Mons itself spoke of a team of my Adeptus which discovered a small, active moon some ten millennia ago, back even before the Great Heresy. The core of that moon was still active, as hot as the heart of a planet, and on it were scattered remnants of archaeotech from the Dark Age of Technology – Standard Template Constructs of immense age and untold promise.

  ‘The moon was explored, mined, and a Martian Mechanicum fleet was brought into orbit around it. There were plans to harness its core energies and create a great drive engine that would make it possible to bring the entire planetary body back to the Segmentum Solar – to the Terran home system itself.’

  He paused. ‘But then the great calamity occurred. The Eye of Terror was brought forth into our universe, the immaterium tearing at the fabric of real space, exploding into the void. In that maelstrom, the moon was thrown out beyond all navigable void lanes, tossed through endless warp storms, and lost.

  ‘The Martian Mechanicum fleet which orbited it was brought crashing down – here, on its surface. Those who survived the catastrophe worked on in the lonely isolation caused by the warp storm, striving to engineer the moon as they had planned. But they dwindled and died over the centuries as more and more lost ships were drawn in to crash on its surface, and more and more survivors of those landings fought to possess the artefact they had been creating.

  ‘The original design was lost in the slow accretion of wrecks, and while the few adepts who were left still struggled to maintain the vision which had brought them here, in the end it faded, as did they.

  ‘The centuries rolled by. The artefact was drawn wholly into the Eye of Terror, and it attracted the attentions of Chaos. The Viridian Consuls, decimated by years of fighting in the Abyssal Crusade, landed and took it as their own. But they could not fully understand the conception that had brought it into being, or appreciate that which still lay buried under them.’ Again, Fane paused, and now he looked first at Drake, and then at Calgar.

  ‘They possessed it. They kept the basic functions running. But they rejected the implic
ations of the technology they found, deeming it heresy. In the end, they, too, succumbed to the Dark Powers, becoming the Broken, a vile shadow of what they once had been, gnawing on their rage in the dark and taking comfort in despair. Their Chapter Master, a noble, honourable warrior named Phrynon, succumbed, and dragged his brothers into the pit with him. At first, those who would not follow him were exiled to the upper levels, among the crashed ruins of their battle-barge. But later, he sought to turn those who stayed faithful to their Emperor, through terrible tortures.

  ‘He became the daemon of the pit, rewarded by the Ruinous Powers for his treachery, with apotheosis. And so it went for centuries more.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Drake demanded, though his voice was less sure than it had been, and the bolter now hung at his side.

  Dominus Hagnon-Cro spoke again.

  ‘I have had a long time to think, and explore in this place, inquisitor. My ship was wrecked here almost a millennium ago. In my joy at finally tracking down the legend spoken of in the old texts, I came too close. In my arrogance, I took no precaution. I paid for it, with a thousand years of exile and war. My adjuncts were able to dominate the surface and upper levels of the artefact, but lower down, the forces of the Broken were too strong, and the evil of the Witness took hold of those who ventured into the depths, turning them against me. So I stayed, trapped, doomed to pick through the wrecks and try and create some kind of fragile economy, to keep my fellow adepts alive, until an opportunity should arise to take full control of the ancient relic we stand within.’

  ‘We were that opportunity,’ Calgar said, his deep voice echoing out across the narthex.

  ‘Yes. I used you as best I could, Chapter Master. I, too, had a mission to fulfil you see, and even after a thousand years I was still determined to see it through.’

  They stood there, the Ultramarines stock-still, bolters poised, the Terminators ready to unleash lethal violence. But if they did, it would come to nothing. They might kill a great many of the Adeptus Mechanicus – and Calgar was willing to acknowledge that is what they were now – but the end result would be the same.

  He looked at the inhuman faces of the dominus and the magos – there was no insight to be gleaned there.

  ‘You had best kill us all, then,’ he said quietly, and at the word every Ultramarine in the chamber sighted down his bolter, and the arc rifles of the skitarii came up.

  ‘It was what I had thought of doing,’ the dominus said. ‘No loose ends. No more witnesses. But the worthy Magos Fane, without whom we would none of us be still living, put it to me that if I did, then the Ultramarines would search for you, with all the unyielding tenacity of their kind, and they would not give up that search, no matter how many years intervened, until they found us once again.

  ‘The artefact is largely defenceless, Chapter Master – its gravity fields can be utilised as a basic short-range defence mechanism, but aside from that, the fleet of the Ultramarines – or any other major vessels of the Imperium – could reduce it to ash with a single cyclonic torpedo.

  ‘If we killed you, we would be in flight for the rest of our lives, and we would never have any prospect of laying the technologies it carries upon the high altars of Mars. It is a rather telling argument, I think you’ll agree, and Magos Fane has convinced me with it.’

  ‘So what then?’ Calgar asked, his deep voice a rasp of weary suspicion.

  ‘We stand here close to the Agripinaa Sector, within striking distance of the Cadian Gate. It is a perilous region of the void, but it is not quite within the ambit of the Eye of Terror.

  ‘On the surface of the artefact are several void-worthy shells of old ships. They have limited manoeuvring capacity, minimal life support, and no warp engines to speak off, but they could be utilised as a kind of saviour pod. I propose that you take your brethren and make your way back up to the surface. We will guide you to one of these, and I will manipulate the gravitic field to let it drift into orbit. A vox transmission will be made to the nearest Imperial authorities, and there is a significant statistical likelihood that you will be rescued.’

  ‘And by the time they pick us up, you will be long gone,’ Drake said coldly.

  The dominus bowed slightly.

  ‘I am not your enemy, inquisitor – we are merely creatures with competing priorities. At present, I am in a position to indulge mine.’

  ‘I shall set the Inquisition upon you, Hagnon-Cro. We will track you down.’

  ‘The Lords of Mars may have something to say to that once I, in my turn, contact them with my discoveries,’ the dominus said, unruffled.

  Calgar turned it over in his mind. It was not a familiar feeling, to find himself so outmanoeuvred, but it was this or death – for all of them. A death that meant nothing, achieved nothing. Whatever happened here in the next few minutes, the hulk would not be destroyed – it would endure, and Dominus Hagnon-Cro with it.

  And vast though the galaxy was, if it had been found once, it could be found again.

  To fight another day – he had done the same on Macragge once, leaving First Company behind to pursue the tyranid fleet Behemoth out of the system, leaving First Company to its terrible immolation. But that had been forced on him by circumstance of war. This was subtly different. He felt he would be acquiescent in his own defeat.

  He looked around at the Ultramarines who surrounded him. So few. Fifth Company had already been destroyed, but Galenus held the gene-seed of his dead brothers, retrieved from the battlefield. They could rise again, as First had. The Chapter would endure. The time to fight this battle could come around once more – even supposing it was a battle that had to be fought.

  Dominus Hagnon-Cro was not an agent of the Ruinous Powers – Calgar was convinced of that now. But that did not make him any less of an enemy to the Ultramarines. This gesture of generosity – if it were genuine and not just another trick – could not simply be spurned. It would mean throwing too much away.

  He made his decision. It burned his warrior’s soul, a pain worse than the wounds which covered him. But he had known pain before. He could deal with pain.

  Marneus Calgar walked forward, his ancient battered armour creaking around his limbs. He looked up at Dominus Hagnon-Cro.

  ‘On behalf of my brothers, I accept your proposal,’ he said.

  And he felt no joy whatsoever in choosing life over death. One does not take joy in defeat.

  Epilogue

  Calgar watched the stars through the bleared porthole of the scow. Beyond the immediate expanse of the void, the Eye of Terror loomed, a vast circular expanse of gas and debris that blighted the clean black of the rational universe. Within it was the doom of humanity. He hung here on its outermost edge, scant light years from a place which might one day open to swallow them all.

  But it was good to be in open space, to be free of the stink of the hulk, and the taint of Chaos that slimed it. Even though his surroundings were still squalid enough, in all conscience.

  He stood on a rusted catwalk which in turn ran high around a wreckage-strewn cargo-hold, fifty yards to a side. Below him, the surviving Ultramarines were gathered, helms off at last, seeing to what repairs they could manage to their equipment. Brother Salvator was working steadily, like a busy scorpion with its sting extended, and Sergeant Greynius was taking careful account of every bolter round. At his hip, a power sword was sheathed, one that Gerd Ameronn had once carried.

  Warspite had been found on the battlefield in the aftermath of the careful truce with the Adeptus Mechanicus, as had three more survivors who now lay in comas induced by their sus-an membranes on the deckplates amid their fellows, with the contents of scavenged medipacks scattered around them. One of these three was Chaplain Murtorius, terribly injured, but still clinging to life with all the faith and stubbornness of his nature. That, at least, was something. Fifth Company without the Bull to inspire it would never have b
een the same.

  Calgar clanked along the catwalk, the ancient metal groaning beneath him. There was a passageway leading up out of the hold, to the bow of the ship, if ship were not too grand a name for an orbital maintenance scow. He walked slowly along it, expending much effort to move the dead plates of his armour – despite the fitful gravity generator of the vessel. The ends of the broken bones in his body were beginning to knit, but he could still feel them grate together as he moved, a pain he welcomed. He felt that he deserved it.

  The tiny bridge of the craft was open to the passageway, the hatch long ago scavenged by some denizen of Fury. Inside, Captain Galenus and Inquisitor Drake sat at the controls, Galenus folded up in the cramped space, though Drake looked quite comfortable on the bare wire of the pilot’s seat. He caught Calgar’s look as the Chapter Master entered, and smiled thinly.

  ‘It is something to be of ordinary mortal stature.’

  ‘How does it look?’

  ‘We are six light years from the Cadian system, my lord,’ Galenus said. ‘This is an Imperial transport lane, well patrolled. It should not be long until we are picked up.’

  ‘We have air for nine days,’ the inquisitor added. ‘Imperial patrols are relatively regular in this region of the void. But so are passing Chaos warbands. We must hope to meet with the former.’

  Calgar nodded. He had said little in the last week. The weariness of the ascent to the surface of the hulk was still with him, and the helm of a dead Ultramarine was maglocked to his thigh, gleaned from the battlefield along with as much extra equipment and ammunition as they could find there. His armour had been roughly resealed by Brother Salvator, but its ancient power pack was beyond the Techmarine’s skills of repair. Irony of ironies, once they made it back to Macragge, the artificer armour would have to be shipped off to Mars for a full overhaul of its arcane technologies.

  And Fury was gone, translating into the warp within hours of their setting off. Who knew what journeys lay ahead of it still, what long years of travail through the darkness of the void? But Calgar promised himself that he would never stop looking for it, or those it contained. Not though all the tech-priests of Mars should set their faces against him. He still had a score to settle. He had been given his life, and that was as great an insult as he had ever endured.