Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work (Adeptus Mechanicus) by Guy Haley

Author:Guy Haley [Haley, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2019-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

A reckless cut

Sebastion and Esau descended further. Several doors stood in their way. All required opening, and that took time. A journey of minutes stretched into an hour, then longer. Finally, they reached the bottom.

Beyond the final door was a circular chamber. From it several heavily shielded doors led to various other chambers of strategic import. Bodies preserved by the vacuum lay about, all of them showing the signs of violent death. Lasguns and boltguns, not claws and acid, had felled these warriors. Chapter serfs lay among warriors dressed in the uniforms of Sotha’s modest defence forces.

‘Treachery,’ said Sebastion. ‘Our own kind turned against us.’ He pushed over the frozen remains of a three-armed abomination. ‘No other race is so foul.’

‘These two doors are still sealed,’ said Esau. ‘No sign of enemy presence.’

Sebastion approached one of the doors and rested his hand upon the metal. ‘Here is the place our Chapter fell – not on the walls, but here.’

A few minutes’ work saw the door mechanisms hooked up to Sebastion’s power unit and unlocked with Chapter cypher codes.

‘Open,’ Sebastion commanded the door-spirit.

The instant the door cracked, a rush of stale air blasted from inside. They walked down an access corridor guarded by dormant guns. Nothing had been touched. The tyranid swarm had never made it into that part of the monastery.

Then they passed through another door into battery command, and witnessed there the results of betrayal. Though the swarm had been kept outside, the subverted warriors of Sotha had broken in.

‘The xenos slaves came in through the wall from the cavern,’ said Sebastion. He pointed out a square melta-cut through the side of the room. ‘This is how we fell. Emperor alone knows how they got through the mountain.’

He strode forwards into a scene of battle preserved by the airless dark. Mummified corpses lay everywhere. Many were mortal servants of the Chapter, their uniforms discoloured by spilled fluids and covered with frost. Many more were others dressed in the uniforms of the Sotharan defence force. There were more misshapen creatures among them.

‘The twisted progeny of man and alien,’ said Sebastion.

At the centre of the room there was a single transhuman figure slumped over the command station, a lasgun wound to the back of his head, placed exactly where it would kill him. An empty bolt pistol lay on the console near his open hand. Sebastion stopped when he saw him.

‘Brother Balthazar,’ said Sebastion. ‘Commander of the Batteries. Look, Esau, upon a hero of the Imperium. His body was ruined in battle. Still he served. I crafted these augmetics myself. No legs, one arm, his spine destroyed. He could have taken the Emperor’s mercy. He could have requested a Dreadnought’s tomb, but he opted to retire here where he might serve more. He always loved the biggest guns.’ Sebastion looked around at the corpses in the room. All had died violently. A couple of skeletal figures not far from the battery commander lay savagely embraced, hands locked about each other’s throats.

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