But we weren't here to gawp at the rugged crucible of landscape that had formed the Cadians.
We were here to look at the pylons.
* * *
'Cherubael's been here/ said Fischig, jockeying the control stick and eyeing the windspeed gauge. 'Far as I know, nine times in the last forty years/
You're sure?'
'It's what you pay me for. Your daemonhost – and whatever he's working for – is fascinated by Cadia/
Why have the Inquisition not had a hint of it?'
'Come on, Gregor. The galaxy is big. Aemos once told me that the weight of data generated by the Imperium would fry all the metriculators and codi-fiers on Terra in a flash if it was input simultaneously. It's a matter of making connections. Sifting the data. The Inquisition – and you – have been looking all over for signs of Cherubael. But some things just don't flag. I got lucky/
'How?'
'I was doing my job. Old friend of mine, Isak Actte, from the old arbites day. Used to be my boss, in fact. He rose, got promoted, wound up on Hydraphur as an arbites general and then got stationed here as watch overseer to the Cadian Interior Guard. I contacted him years ago, and got a message I had to check/
You're intriguing me/
He ran us low over a headland and our speeder made a small, sharp shadow on the glittering ice-lake below.
'Actte said the arbites had closed down a heretical cell here on Cadia about ten years ago. Called themselves the Sons of Bael. A fairly worthless lot, by all accounts. Harmless. But under interrogation, they'd admitted to following a daemon they called Bael or the Bael. The local inquisitor general spent some time with them and had them all burned/
What's his name?'
'Gorfal. But he's dead, three years gone. The current incumbent is a she. Inquisitor General Neve. Anyway, the cell has flared up a few times since then. Nothing a good team of riot-officers couldn't handle. Like I said, the Sons of Bael were pretty harmless, really. They were only interesting in one thing/
Which was?'
'Measuring the dimensions of the pylons/
The pylon had been looming in our windscreen for a while now, and Fischig swept us around it, almost kissing the black stone.
The moaning song of the wind as it laced through the geometries of the pylon was now so loud I could hear it over the racing turbines of the speeder.
The pylon was vast: half a kilometre high and a quarter square. The upper facing of the smooth black stone was machined with delicate craft to form holes and other round-edged orifices no bigger than a man's head. It was through these slim, two hundred and fifty metre tubes that the wind moaned and howled.
And the tubes weren't straight. They wove through the pylon like worm tunnels. Tech-magos had tried running tiny servitor probes through them to map their loops, but generally the probes didn't come back.
As we banked up higher for another pass, I could see the distant shape of the neighbouring pylon, across the moors, sixty kilometres away. Five thousand, eight hundred and ten known pylons dot the surface of Cadia, not counting the two thousand others that remain as partial ruins or buried relics.
No two are identical in design. Each one rises to a precise half kilometre height and is sunk a quarter kilometre into the ground. They predate mankind's arrival in this system, and their manner of manufacture is unknown. They are totally inert, by any auspex measure known to our race, but many believe their presence explains the quieting of the violent warp torrents that makes the Cadia Gate the single, calm, navigable route to the Ocularis Terribus.
'They were trying to measure this thing?'
'Uh huh/ Fischig replied clearly over the speeder's drive as we pulled another hard turn. This and several others. They had auspex and geo-locators and magnetic plumbs. Finding the exact dimensions… and I do mean exact… was the entire goal of the Sons of Bael.'
'They connect with Cherubael… I mean, beyond the 'Bael' part?'
The interview logs I've read show they name 'Bael' fully as a god called Cherub of Bael, who came amongst them and made demands that they measure the pylons in return for great knowledge and power.'
'And the inquisitor general… this Gorfal? He suppressed this?'
'Not deliberately. I think he was just sloppy'
'I want to speak with the current inquisitor general… Neve, did you say her name was?'
'Yeah. I thought you might.'
While daylight remained, we flew west to Kasr Derth, the largest castellum in the region and the seat of provincial government for the Caducades. Fischig switched on the speeder's vox-ponder and broadcast the day's access codes to the sentry turrets as we passed the outer ring-ditch. Even so, Man-ticore and Hydra batteries traversed and tracked us as we went over.
The vox-ponder pinged fretfully as it detected multiple target-locks.
'Don't worry/ said Fischig, noticing my look. 'We're safe. I think the Cadians enjoy taking every possible opportunity to practise/
We ran down the line of a slow moving convoy – drab, armoured twelve-wheeler transports escorted by lurching Sentinel walkers – and followed the highway up towards the ridge of the earthwork. Beyond it, and two more like it, the heavy, grey fortifications and shatrovies of Kasr Derth sulked in the twilight.
Watch-lights on skeleton towers stood on the upper slope of the earthwork. More turret emplacements and pillboxes studded the defence berm like knuckles. Again, the vox-ponder pinged.
Fischig dropped the speed and altitude, and swung us down towards the eastern barbican, a small fortress in its own right, bristling with Earth-shaker platforms. A bas-relief Imperial eagle decorated the upper face of the ashlar-dressed structure.
We ran in through the barbican's gate, over the hydraulic bascule that crossed the inner moat, and into the castellum's deliberately narrow and twisting streets.
Cadia's earliest kasrs had been built in the High Terra style, with the wide streets laid out on a grid system. In early M.32, a Chaos invasion had made wretchedly short work of three of them. The broad, ordered avenues had proved impossible to defend or hold.
Since then, the kasrs had been planned in elaborate geometric patterns, the streets jinking back and forth like the teeth of a key. From the air, Kasr Derth looked like an intricate, angular puzzle. Given the Cadians' mettle and their skills at urban-war, a kasr could be held, street by street, metre by metre, for months if not years.
We slunk along the busy, labyrinthine streets as the caged lamps came on and business began to shut for the night. I was about to remark to Fischig that it looked for all the world like a military camp, until I realised that even the civilian fashion was for camouflaged clothing. It soon became easy to pick out locals from visitors. The jag-white and grey of tundra dress or the panelled green and beige of moor fatigues marked out newcomers and off duty soldiery. The population of Kasr Derth wore grey and brown checkered urban camouflage.
We passed the stilted horreums of the Imperial Cadian Granary, and the tight- packed baileys of the rich and successful. Even the townhouses of the wealthy had armouring on their mansard roofs.
