Pharos Read online

  Watching his friend slowly master its workings made him happier still. To share a secret such as the Pharos was to double the pleasure of it.

  ‘Take your time, Alexis!’ he called.

  Half of the high cavern of Primary Location Alpha was obscured by a wavering image of a distant world. Captain Alexis Polux of the Imperial Fists stood in front of it, his face wrinkled with almost comical effort.

  ‘Good! Good!’ Dantioch spoke over the thrum of the quantum engines. The lower registers of their working set up unpleasant vibrations in his injuries, but he had learned to compartmentalise the pain along with the rest of his hurts. ‘The mechanism works by inducing quantum sympathies between particles. These occur naturally, but this machine somehow allows the fundamental elements of the universe to be tuned. It is a forcing of empathy between objects, places – perhaps even times – separated by the vast gulfs of space.’

  ‘You have told me this more than a hundred times, Barabas,’ shouted Polux as if he were struggling against a high wind. To Dantioch, the place was pleasingly quiet, the noise of the engines as calming as the play of waves. The voice of the Imperial Fist rang loudly. There was no echo. The chamber’s polished black walls swallowed sound waves as readily as they did light.

  ‘Then you should be learning.’

  Polux grimaced and shook his head. ‘I still lack your understanding, Barabas. I do not see why you cannot perform the search for the other beacons yourself.’

  A modest smile lit up Dantioch’s ruined face, invisible behind his stern iron mask. ‘I know too little of it myself to call it understanding. Given time I might endeavour to unlock the basis of its operations. As of now, I merely have a feel for the Pharos’ operation. It is poor strategy to rely on one mind. Besides, I need to monitor the equipment for a response, and you know even less about that.’ He checked the myriad dials and displays of the consoles installed along the wall. Thick cables spilled out of open panels at their bases, snaking off into the deeps of the mountain where they joined with other Mechanicum machines that moderated the alien device. Dantioch regretted the necessity of these cogitator banks. He had spent many days concerned that they might disrupt the Pharos’ processes. That did not seem to be the case, but there was another consideration; for all that the Pharos was xenos technology, and therefore to be mistrusted, the monitoring equipment marred the perfection of its form.

  True understanding would always elude him. He had come to terms with that. The construction of the interface for the monitoring equipment alone had taken weeks. Years would pass before he felt comfortable interfering with the Pharos’ workings directly, if ever.

  Polux sweated with the effort of effecting a tuning. The image of Semsamesh IV wavered as if it were viewed from behind a waterfall. For a moment the planet became solid, taking on the breathtaking clarity that only the Pharos could provide.

  ‘You overthink, my friend – this is not a machine of cold logic, but a spirited thing.’ Dantioch thought for a moment. ‘Do you ride, on your world?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘The more primitive tribes use sleds pulled by beasts,’ Polux grunted.

  ‘I have neither ridden nor been drawn by animals, so forgive me if my analogy is inappropriate. Imagine the Pharos as a spirited riding animal, a steed that wants to run and run. It is in your power to direct it, but you must reach out to it, work with it. Do not dominate it. Empathise with it, follow its guide and it will provide you with what you truly need. But do not let it dominate you either. Allow the relationship to progress away from balance to either side, and the focus will dissipate.’

  Polux ground his teeth in effort. Sweat ran down his face. He lifted his hand in imitation of the psykers he had seen in battle. He felt ridiculous.

  Dantioch smiled. ‘Yes, brother! You are doing it, feel, do not think! Do not try to force it to do what you want. Tell it what you need.’

  The distant world blurred, the colours smearing into refracted rainbow auras around the outline of its disc.

  ‘You are nearly there!’ said Dantioch.

  Polux made a choking noise, his face bunched and turned red.

  ‘For the love of Terra, Alexis, breathe!’

  Polux cried out. The image wavered and seemed to blow away, like mist on the wind.

  ‘I cannot do it!’ He threw up his hands in frustration. ‘It’s no use! I understand what you are trying to tell me, Barabas, and I have been diligent in my notes. But all this…’ He tossed his head angrily at the strange, alien dimensions of the chamber. ‘I am a soldier and an engineer of stone, no more. I do not have your affinity for machines.’

  ‘This is a machine of stone.’

  ‘It is still a machine.’

  Dantioch limped over to his friend, his power armour whirring awkwardly at Dantioch’s halting movements. ‘Do not be disillusioned, Alexis. Perhaps, yes… Let us reframe your reference. Think of the Pharos in terms of a strategic asset. See it in terms of a means to victory.’ Dantioch indicated the huge sheet of steel where he had painstakingly engraved a star chart set with a number of icons. ‘All these points, your observatory of the Emperor’s Watch has helped me to identify. The Pharos leans toward them. Perhaps once there were many similar devices, and this is the last. Think of the military application if we were to have two! Or ten, or twenty, or a thousand such beacons lighting up the sky! Warp storms would cease to trouble us – we might one day even abandon moving through the warp by ship entirely, if we so desired.’

  Polux went to a table and poured water from a bronze ewer into a great cup. ‘A fine sentiment, but I wish it were a weapon, Barabas.’ He drained the cup, refilled it, and drained it again. Then he went to the metal walkway leading out of the chamber and sat down heavily upon its edge. He looked at his hands – one pale, the other crimson – and frowned at them as if they displeased him. ‘There is always talk of the miraculousness of this technology. If it exists, why does the Mechanicum not have it? They barely understand it.’

  ‘They look for spirits in its workings, and are suspicious of its origins. Magos Carantine is torn between harnessing the Pharos and exorcising it.’

  ‘They are an odd breed,’ said Polux. ‘Their chatter of gods and ghosts in machines goes against the teachings of the Emperor.’

  ‘In a manner of thinking, it does. But their understanding is not so black and white as that. And in this time when the creatures of darkest myth spill from holes in reality to devour the innocent, who are we to say they are wrong?’

  ‘It bewilders me, and using the Pharos exhausts me. I am glad to help you, Barabas, but I cannot help but feel my talents would be best used elsewhere.’

  ‘Do not be angry, Alexis. We must press on. There are many applications for the technology. Pure weapons. Energy beams that could atomise targets layer by layer, field generators that might push an object out of phase with reality around it. And the possibilities for advanced machine interfacing are profound. All by tuning the quantum state of matter empathically.’

  ‘You could make these things?’ said Polux, his interest piqued in spite of himself. ‘Both would breach the thickest wall.’

  ‘You and I think alike! But alas, it is supposition only,’ said Dantioch apologetically.

  ‘We would work more quickly if you showed me what to look for on the monitoring equipment.’

  ‘We have a treasure here, Alexis,’ said Dantioch. ‘One that we must learn to use to the full in service of Lord Guilliman. I cannot be the only one who can operate it. If I were to be slain, then our position would worsen.’

  ‘Then ask the Mechanicum,’ said Polux.

  ‘I trust you, Alexis. So does Lord Guilliman. The Mechanicum do not have the appropriate mindset to utilise the device. There is too much of the machine in them. They have tried, and they have failed.’

  Polux sighed. ‘I will try har
der.’

  ‘Might I make an observation?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘You try too hard. Let it guide you.’

  Polux was by nature as serious a man as his primarch, guarded and taciturn. But his face took on a look of consternation. ‘I find it difficult to let go. All my training and my culture, they speak against emotion. It is a weakness for a warrior.’

  ‘It is the same for you and me both. You are of stone, I of iron. Both are unbendable. But in this time of darkness, old certainties are gone. We must trust instinct. Cold logic will only take us so far, and as much as such a sentiment goes against our natural inclinations, we must not reject it. I believe you to have more feeling than I, which is why ultimately I believe you shall be able to control the Pharos far better than I can, even now.’

  Polux extended his hand. Dantioch took it. The warsmith gasped a little with discomfort as he helped his friend to his feet.

  ‘You sound more like a damn poet every day.’

  ‘Now you go too far!’ Dantioch wheezed through his mask as he stopped himself from laughing; the pain was too great. ‘But perhaps, perhaps.’ He stood back. ‘You have your zeal, we should use that. Think on the utility for our efforts against the traitors.’

  Polux nodded reluctantly and went to the centre of the vast chamber to stand beside Dantioch’s high wooden chair, the position they habitually used to tune the device. There he stood, a lonely figure in yellow robes, and stared at the far wall.

  Dantioch held his breath.

  The wall rippled. Blackness remained. For a moment Dantioch thought Polux had achieved nothing, but then the thrum of the Pharos’ engines changed in pitch. Points of light winked into existence. The tell-tale redness of the Ruinstorm crept across the scene, and Dantioch saw they were looking at a vista of the void. A white disc wobbled in the centre of the picture, a moon reflected in troubled water. A small, icy world snapped into brief focus – vast sheets of white mottled with brown, the pale atmosphere stained with stratospheric pollution, and a cool white sun blazing in behind it.

  As quick as it came it vanished.

  ‘That was not Semshamesh.’

  ‘It was Inwit,’ said Polux in bewilderment. ‘The world where I was born.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I did what you said,’ said Polux. ‘I let go.’

  Dantioch turned to his instruments, the constant pain of his injuries forgotten in his excitement. He limped up and down the long console, noting energy spikes and vibrational variations to the quantum engines’ output. The crudeness of the Mechanicum’s devices frustrated him, for they told him little. He went to a unit dominated by an inset hololithic stage. He brought up a star chart, and scrolled over the galaxy quickly, plotting the distance between Sotha and the ice world.

  He gasped. ‘The furthest we have yet seen, and a clear image. Eighty per cent of the way to Terra itself! Well done, Alexis, well done!’

  ‘It was not what I was trying to see,’ Polux said. ‘How can that be judged a success?’

  ‘It is what the Pharos thinks you want to see. Try again.’

  ‘I am not succeeding.’

  ‘Put such thoughts from your mind, for fear of failure will prevent your success.’

  Polux sighed, and tried again.

  Again the sound of the Pharos’ engines shifted, building into a loud, hooting howl. They felt powerful infrasound under the quantum engines’ call, a thickening of the air as vibrations pressed in on them, shaking their flesh, armour, and bones.

  Dantioch watched needles flicker along brass-rimmed dials. They danced back and forth with the pulse of the Pharos. If the machines were exceeding their tolerances, he would not know immediately. For the moment, he reassured himself that nothing felt wrong.

  ‘Barabas! Barabas! I see him!’

  Polux’s excited shout had the warsmith turn quickly. Pain jabbed up his ruined side. It was quickly forgotten.

  In the focusing point, a blurry image had taken shape. The image was fractured into a number of ghostly layers that Dantioch could make no sense of.

  ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Dorn! I ‘Lord Dorn!’ cried Polux. ‘Hear me!’

  The mountain shook. A punishing beat took hold of the tuning stage, rocking the chamber to the pulse of an ancient, alien heart. A grinding sound came from deep within the mountain, the dangerous crunch of stone on stone, great masses of it shifting. Dantioch instinctively looked to the ceiling. ‘Alexis, you must stop…’

  ‘Father!’

  The light of the image flickered. The mountain howled a polyphonic chord of distress that blared from its multiple openings as loud as any war-horn.

  ‘Alexis, stop!’

  Polux looked to his friend, and Dantioch was arrested by the pain he saw in his face.

  The image blinked out.

  A calm fell by painful increments. The booming song of the peak quieted. The grumble of the engines deep underground hitched and became smooth again. Aftershocks troubled the peak, however, shiftings in the rock like the grinding of teeth.

  ‘I saw him,’ breathed Polux. ‘My father lives.’

  Dantioch hobbled over to his friend. ‘Are you sure?’

  Polux looked at him blankly.

  ‘You did not see him? He was there! I saw him in his chambers on the Phalanx. Could he yet live? Tell me you saw him, Barabas!’

  Dantioch hesitated at the look of sorrow Polux gave him. ‘No. I did not, my friend. I am sorry.’

  ‘But it was him!’

  ‘Alexis!’ said Dantioch. ‘We do not know. Perhaps you want it too much. Remember the visions the machines send. How can we be sure it was not one of those? It could be a memory, plucked from your mind.’

  ‘We have only begun to scratch the surface of the Pharos’ potential,’ said Polux.

  ‘You were only moments ago insisting that you could not tune it.’

  ‘Let us set our sights higher,’ pleaded Polux. ‘Let me reach out to my father!’

  They stood a while, a cripple in steel and a giant in yellow, eyes locked, neither willing to give way.

  The moment passed. The indefinable power of their friendship effected some change, and they both backed down.

  ‘Perhaps you did see him,’ Dantioch conceded.

  ‘Perhaps I did not,’ breathed Polux, his voice thick with emotion.

  Their voices were soft in the chamber, all power to them stolen away by the black stone.

  ‘If you did or you did not, I have another concern. I fear we may have damaged the Pharos.’ Dantioch moved back to the monitoring stations and brought up a hololith of the tunnel structures. Several glowed a warning red. ‘Whatever it was that happened induced great strain on the mechanism. We must be more cautious in future.’

  see Lord Dorn!’ shouted Polux.

  The quantum-pulse engines whined louder and higher again. The mountain throbbed with their effort. Dantioch ran his eyes over the devices. Needles crept into the red segments of their dials.

  ‘He leans over an ornate table,’ cried Polux. ‘Charts and data-slates are piled high all over it, and he consults them! Lord, lord, hear your son!’

  Dantioch still saw nothing. The moan of the engines rose, bringing with it a hot wind gusting through the endless tunnels of the mountain.

  Primarch Rogal Dorn, from Dantioch’s sketchbook

  EIGHT

  Brothers opposed

  Last stand

  Monsters

  Caias stumbled through the inner doors of a small airlock and back onto the Probity. He was a hundred metres aft and two decks below the main bridge. He feared he was too late. The sounds of combat rang throughout the vessel. There were not many Night Lords, but he had no doubt that with only a limited number of the Legion to protect the crew, the traitors
would take the bridge with ease.

  He breathed raggedly, each inhalation an agony. His primary heart had stopped. Blood soaked his mesh underarmour. He would not survive without medical attention. The chances of that were vanishingly small.

  He had to get to the bridge. As he walked, the blood frozen to the outside of his battleplate melted and fell in fat drops to the deck plates. Where he steadied himself on the wall he left scarlet smears. Never had a hundred metres seemed so far.

  The spinal corridor was deserted, but the sounds of fighting echoed off its hard metal edges. There was so much screaming.

  The bridge blast doors were closed. No signs of conflict there yet. ‘Gellius. It’s me, Brother Caias. Let me in,’ he voxed.

  The bridge doors slid open a crack. A single boltgun met him.

  ‘Caias?’

  ‘Tiberius, help me.’

  The doors opened a fraction more. Brother Tiberius slid out warily, looking past Caias down the corridor. ‘We feared you dead.’

  ‘You are mostly correct,’ said Caias. He took his brother’s arm and leaned on him. ‘My primary heart is damaged, and my lungs. I will not survive this.’

  ‘None of us will.’

  Tiberius helped him through the doors. They slid closed the moment he was through, and they were into a bridge full of tense chatter and fear. Brother Hellas was there with Tiberius.

  ‘Where is Lethicus?’ he said.

  ‘Ambushed,’ said Caias.

  Caias pushed Tiberius away and stood as steadily as he was able. ‘Hear me, servants of Ultramar,’ Caias said, addressing the command deck’s crew. ‘There is no winning this situation. We are outnumbered. Lethicus is embroiled on the station, possibly dead. The Night Lords attempt to take the ship. We have no choice but to prevent the Probity falling to the foe.’