'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 says. '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 Daesenor, 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?'
I get helmeted nods and a grim, 'Yes, my lord,' from Grodin and the Cicatricans.
'Maintain communications,' I say before leading Ione Dodona and three soldiers into the Penetralia.
Dodona isn't wrong: the Penetralia is a labyrinth. Tunnels corkscrew, jagged slopes erupt before our lamps and the ceiling regularly slopes down to meet the tops of our helmets. Passages wind and bifurcate, riddled with grot holes and burrows. Blind corners open into vertiginous vaults and small caverns form sudden dead ends. The darkness is almost palpable, its viscid obscurity devouring the light from our illumination.
My suit lamps lead the way, the halo of light feeling its way across the angularity and sharp stone. Dodona's helmet beam dances ahead, guiding me through the branching network of tunnels. Behind, the three Cicatricians all former members of Tarxis Reserve explore the holes and hollows with their barrel-mounted lamps. My shield scrapes around corners, while my blade stands ready and retracted, poised to sweep forward and take a Word Bearer's head from his armoured shoulders or to cleave down through the torso of an unfortunate cultist.
Our reconnaissance reveals little, however, but the black emptiness of the Penetralia's lonely depths.
'Daesenor, what do you have?' I vox.
'This place is dead,' he returns. 'If Ungol Shax was here, I think we missed him.'
'Phornax?'
'The Word Bearers were here,' my battle-brother informs me with confidence. 'We've pushed on to a larger chamber at the heart of the tunnels. There are statues and iconography.'
I nod to myself. If Arcology Tantoraem was anything to go by, our betrayer-kinsmen and their cult followers are wanton idolaters, constructing temples and statues and worshipping at the stone feet of their otherworldly sponsors. I make a note of Phornax's position from my optical-overlay. 'Hold position,' I tell him. 'We're coming to you. Brother Daesenor meet us at this chamber.'
'Affirmative,' Daesenor replies. 'But I've lost one of my men in the damned tunnels. Sergeant Grodin is looking for him now. We'll be there shortly.'
Pushing on through the thick darkness and a knot of intersecting passageways, we step out into the open space of a larger chamber. I can see the beams of lamps ahead in the pitch blackness, cutting through the murk like blades. Phornax and his men are waiting near the centre of the cavern, but the light from their lamps blinks and breaks. As I advance, I come to understand why.
Phornax was right. There are statues here, but nothing like I'd seen in the dark chapels and reverence-dens of cultist-held arcologies. These statues are different sizes but humanoid in shape. Each is crafted from an obsidian-like substance crystalline and angular. It absorbs the light from our lamps like a black hole. Even our reflections are absent from its glassy, midnight surface. There simply isn't sufficient light. This material swallows it all.
'Volcanic glass?' Pioneer Dodona says with a frown. 'Not on Calth, surely. Not in these quantities...'
I watch the dark material begin to wisp and curl under the light of our lamps. It dissipates and drifts away like a thin, black vapour. It is strange indeed.
'It's not obsidian,' I say. 'Touch nothing. Nobody touch anything.'
It is as though the statues were crafted from solidified darkness itself.
The representations are everywhere, obscuring the beams of Phornax's lamps. The Ultramarine and a soldier of the Vospherus 14th are examining something at the heart of the rocky chamber. Statues, many in number, are clustered about them a crowd of the crystalline forms, all facing inwards to a central point. It is decidedly unnerving.
'What do we have?' I ask my battle-brother impatiently.
Phornax is kneeling. He stands at my approach.
'An unholy temple of some kind,' he confirms, 'seemingly used for ceremonies and communion with the monstrous beings of the empyrean.'
He gestures to the floor at my boots. The rough surface has been smoothed and polished, and there is a pattern etched into the bedrock. It bears dreadful glyphs, and symbols that make my eyes ache.
'Cultist volunteers were brought here for sacrifice, Honorius, and a ceremony employed to commune with some beast or malignificant.'
I hear Phornax's words, but I rarely understand his Librarius-talk. I am a practical warrior to the core. I'm not often interested in the 'material or immaterial' nature of the universe. I believe in one thing: my Legion. The Ultramarines have proved time and time again that they can kill whatever they encounter. All other considerations are pure theoretical.
'So these were volunteers?' Ione Dodona asks.
Phornax steps aside to reveal a grisly pile of scorched bones at the centre of the pattern. Sprawled across the blackened ribcages lays a more freshly-dead member of the Red Munion a woman, with her slender fingers still wrapped around the hilt of a sacrificial blade embedded in her heart. Dodona's lip wrinkles with disgust.
I swiftly tire of the macabre scene and my brother's interest in it.
'Is there anything here that points to Ungol Shax or his location?' I ask.
'Ungol Shax is here,' Phornax tells me. 'I think that's him behind you.'
With my helmet on, Phornax cannot see the scowl that his ghastly revelation has brought to my face. I turn to find another statue at my back; it too is angular and crystalline. The idol matches me for height and brawn, and its arms are raised in some gesture of triumph or accomplishment. In one hand it holds a sceptre nay, a crozius with a headpiece in the design of a portcullis, or a gate. An Exalted Gate.
Under my suit lamps, the abomination begins to smoulder, bleeding its lighter-than-air darkness into the faint, draughty breeze.
I look around at the other statues. It all becomes clearer to me.
Despite the angularity and lightlessness of their forms, many do bear similar features: helms, packs and the broad outline of Legion war-plate. Smaller idols in between appear to be midnight representations of cultists, caught in moments of jubilation and madness. I find my helm shaking involuntarily from side to side. What, in the name of the Five Hundred Worlds, has happened here?
I hear shouts from the rear of the temple-chamber. At first I take it to be a greeting Daesenor arriving with his men. Then I realise then that it's my men that are calling out, and I feel an unseemly dread descend upon our gathering.
'We can't find Olexander,' Ione Dodona reports.
Names mean nothing to me. Numbers do, however, and our numbers are decreasing. I look to Phornax and his remaining Cicatrician.
'Where are the rest of your men?' I ask.
'Checking the tunnels leading from the far end of the chamber,' the former Librarian tells me, concern creeping over his features. 'Soldier?'
The remaining Cicatrician has two fingers to the side of his helmet. He has no contact with the missing troopers. He shakes his head.
'All units, report in,' I call across the vox.
Squad members present within the temple-chamber swiftly acknowledge my request. A haunting static stands proxy for the rest. 'Daesenor, report,' I insist.
Nothing.
I stride to the edge of the statues.
'The enemy are playing games in the dark,' I hiss through gritted teeth, my gauntlets creaking about the hilt of my sword, and my combat shield. 'Form up,' I order. 'Stick together. Phornax take point.'
The Ultramarine gives me a lingering glance. That's what Phornax does. Beyond the eerie nature of his former calling, he has a dislikeable habit of questioning orders without the forthright nature of actually doing so. He allows the silence to ask the questions. It is within the shallow soil of his breaks and pauses that the seeds of doubt take root. Then, like weeds growing up between marble slabs, his misgivings rapidly spread to others.
But before I have to repeat myself, he has holstered his pistol and has his sword and shield ready. He replaces his helmet and strides away from the forest of statues. His optical-overlays lead him towards one of the chamber's many craggy exits, taking us towards the coordinates of Brother Daesenor's last vox-transmission. I motion Dodona and the troopers after him.
'Name?' I say to Phornax's remaining Cicatrician.
'Evanz, my lord,' he replies. 'Vospherous 14th.'
I can hear the fear in his voice. Like a fortification on trembling foundations, the soldier's nerve will only hold so long. I have seen the common fighting men of the Imperium break under the fearful circumstances of explorative warfare and crusading. Facing the unknown enemies of the galaxy technological abominations, deviant isolationists, or the horrors of the xenos I have known soldiers lose control of their minds and bodies.
'Evanz of the Vospherous 14th,' I say. My voice comes at him like a wall, strong and unshakable. I attempt to lend him a little of my fortitude and fearlessness. 'I want you to watch our rear. You see anything creeping up behind us, and I want to know about it. Understood, soldier?'
The Cicatrician makes a show of priming his fusil and bringing the weapon close in at his flak-armoured shoulder.
'By my honour, Lord Pelion.'
As we negotiate the twisted darkness of the Penetralia, I feel the jagged passages closing in about me. My mind drifts to the millions of tonnes of rock above my helmet. Suddenly, the labyrinthine tunnels themselves seem threatening twisting and turning, rising and falling. Several times we seem to double back on ourselves, and I imagine the passageways like a knot of writhing serpents. There are dead ends and cavities around every corner, necessitating routine forays through tight apertures and shadowy side tunnels.