Tallarn: Ironclad
Page 1
Book 1 – HORUS RISING
Book 2 – FALSE GODS
Book 3 – GALAXY IN FLAMES
Book 4 – THE FLIGHT OF THE EISENSTEIN
Book 5 – FULGRIM
Book 6 – Descent of Angels
Book 7 – LEGION
Book 8 – battle for the abyss
Book 9 – mechanicum
Book 10 – Tales of Heresy
Book 11 – fallen angels
Book 12 – A thousand sons
Book 13 – Nemesis
Book 14 – the first heretic
Book 15 – prospero burns
Book 16 – AGE OF DARKNESS
Book 17 – THE OUTCAST DEAD
Book 18 – DELIVERANCE LOST
Book 19 – Know no fear
Book 20 – The Primarchs
Book 21 – FEAR TO TREAD
Book 22 – SHADOWS OF TREACHERY
Book 23 – ANGEL EXTERMINATUS
Book 24 – BETRAYER
Book 25 – MARK OF CALTH
Book 26 – VULKAN LIVES
Book 27 – THE UNREMEMBERED EMPIRE
Book 28 – SCARS
Book 29 – VENGEFUL SPIRIT
Book 30 – THE DAMNATION OF PYTHOS
Book 31 – LEGACIES OF BETRAYAL
Many of these titles are also available as abridged and unabridged audiobooks. Order the full range of Horus Heresy novels and audiobooks from
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Novellas
PROMETHEAN SUN
AURELIAN
BROTHERHOOD OF THE STORM
The crimson fist
PRINCE OF CROWS
DEATH AND DEFIANCE
Audio Dramas
THE DARK KING
THE LIGHTNING TOWER
RAVEN’S FLIGHT
BUTCHER’S NAILS
GREY ANGEL
GARRO: BURDEN OF DUTY
GARRO: SWORD OF TRUTH
THE SIGILLITE
HONOUR TO THE DEAD
CENSURE
WOLF HUNT
Thief of Revelations
HUNTER’S MOON
templar
Echoes of ruin
garro: shield of lies
master of the first
the long night
the eagle’s talon
iron corpses
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It is a time of legend.
The galaxy is in flames. The Emperor’s glorious vision for humanity is in ruins. His favoured son, Horus, has turned from his father’s light and embraced Chaos.
His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, are locked in a brutal civil war. Once, these ultimate warriors fought side by side as brothers, protecting the galaxy and bringing mankind back into the Emperor’s light. Now they are divided.
Some remain loyal to the Emperor, whilst others have sided with the Warmaster. Pre-eminent amongst them, the leaders of their thousands-strong Legions are the primarchs. Magnificent, superhuman beings, they are the crowning achievement of the Emperor’s genetic science. Thrust into battle against one another, victory is uncertain for either side.
Worlds are burning. At Isstvan V, Horus dealt a vicious blow and three loyal Legions were all but destroyed. War was begun, a conflict that will engulf all mankind in fire. Treachery and betrayal have usurped honour and nobility. Assassins lurk in every shadow. Armies are gathering. All must choose a side or die.
Horus musters his armada, Terra itself the object of his wrath. Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor waits for his wayward son to return. But his true enemy is Chaos, a primordial force that seeks to enslave mankind to its capricious whims.
The screams of the innocent, the pleas of the righteous resound to the cruel laughter of Dark Gods. Suffering and damnation await all should the Emperor fail and the war be lost.
The age of knowledge and enlightenment has ended.
The Age of Darkness has begun.
~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~
Imperial Army
Silas Kord, Colonel Commander, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil, officer commanding Tallarn 71st
Mori, Driver, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil
Zade, 1st Gunner, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil
Sacha, 1st Loader, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil
Saul, Forward Gunner, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil
Kogetsu, Sponson Gunner, 001 Malcador assault tank, War Anvil
Shornal, Sponson Gunner, 001 Malcador assault tank, War Anvil
Abbas, Lieutenant, Vanquisher Mourner, commander, No.1 Sqdn, Tallarn 71st
Zekenilla, Lieutenant, Executioner Noon Star, commander No.2 , Sqdn, Tallarn 71st
Origo, Lieutenant, lead scout Razor
Augustus Fask, Colonel, Crescent Shelter command staff
Elo Sussabarka, Brigadier-Elite, commander of the Rachab fortress
Officio Assassinorum
Iaeo, Unbound Infocyte, Omega Tabulation, Clade Vanus
Dark Mechanicum
Sota-Nul, Disciple of Kelbor-Hal
Adeptus Astra Telepathica
Prophesius, Metatron
Navigators
Hes-Thal, Black Oculus Navigator
IV Legion ‘Iron Warriors’
Perturabo, Primarch of the Iron Warriors
Forrix, ‘The Breaker’, First Captain, triarch
Hrend, ‘The Ironclad’, Contemptor-class Dreadnought, commander of the ‘Cyllaros’ armoured assault group
Jarvak, Commander, Sicaran ‘78/5’, lieutenant of ‘Cyllaros’ group
Orun, Castraferrum-class Dreadnought – Mortis Pattern, ‘Cyllaros’ group
Gortun, Contemptor-class Dreadnought, ‘Cyllaros’ group
Volk, Commander of Sightless Warren – Core Reach I, Master of 786th Grand Flight armada
Taldak, Warrior of the 17th Grand Battalion elite
X Legion ‘Iron Hands’
Menoetius, Commander, Predator Cretatogran
XVI Legion ‘Sons of Horus’
Argonis, ‘The Unscarred’, emissary of the Warmaster, Chieftain of the Isidis Flight
XX Legion ‘Alpha Legion’
Thetacron, Commander, Harrow Group Arcadus
Jalen, Operative
‘Victory is a child of many parents. Defeat is an orphan.’
– ancient Terran aphorism, origin unknown
‘To know war we should ask the dead how they ended, not the living how they endured.’
– General Zavier Gorn, recorded remarks
‘To think that we know everything is a condition of the human mind. The animal within us cannot tolerate the possibility that knowledge is a matter of selection, judgement a matter of focus, clarity a consequence of exclusion.
There is not one truth.
Reality does not break along clean lines.’
– Precepts of the Vanus Temple, Officio Assassinorum
Night fell across the face of Tallarn, and the war machines followed the dying light. Dust rose in their wake as the drying ground powdered under their tracks. If any living thing could have stood on the surface of Tallarn and survived, they would have heard the approach of the machines long before they saw them. Spread out in long lines, or clustered together, they covered the dark ground in a carpet of armour. It was not an army. Such a name could not touch its nature.
It was a host.
They had come from dozens o
f the buried shelters across Tallarn, war machines bearing the scars of war like honours bestowed by great kings. Between them walked the automata of the Mechanicum, and above them the god machines of the Titan Legions strode. Signals crackled between them, swarming invisibly through the air.
Far behind the advancing host, men and women waited in small rooms filled with the voices that scratched from speaker grilles. Few spoke, most simply waited and listened. There was nothing they could do now. All the weeks of planning, preparation and coordination were unfolding across the dead land above. Some twitched with nervousness. Others simply stared into space with the dead eyes of people who were trying not to feel anything. A few slept, slumped over their consoles, in spite of the power of the moment. No one woke them. Sleep would be banished soon enough.
In the time since the first loyalist forces had reached Tallarn there had been two attempts to do what they now were trying to do again. This night would be the third attempt to break the Iron Warriors foothold on the surface of Tallarn, and bring the battle to an end.
ONE
Waking
Arrival
Sight
‘War Anvil, confirm unit status.’ The voice from the vox filled Kord’s ears.
‘Closing on waypoint,’ he replied, keeping his eyes on the auspex screen. ‘No enemy sighted.’
‘Attack pattern one, confirmed.’
‘Confirmed,’ Kord’s voice was low, steady. ‘We are at the kill edge.’
‘Good fortune, War Anvil.’
He did not reply to the sign-off. The rattle of his machine filled the silence which followed.
It was dark inside the hull. His breath had fogged the eyepieces of his enviro-suit. Six straight hours skinned inside the suit, breathing from tanks of air, unable to move more than a few inches; it was all so familiar that he had trouble thinking of how else war could be fought.
His machine was an old Malcador assault tank, its class named for one of the Emperor’s closest courtiers. No doubt the man was a fine example of everything that was best about people who never had to see those who stood in the excrement beneath them. The tank was a brute though, with a name to match. She was called War Anvil, and was an ugly slab of tracks, armour and jutting gun barrels. A battle cannon stuck out from a turret high on her back, and a wide-mouthed demolisher cannon from a mount on her forward hull. Two lascannons nested in sponsons on the tank’s flanks. A crew of six worked inside its hull. The primary gunner and crew squeezed into a space just in front of the commander’s nest, so close that Kord could tap each of them on the shoulder without reaching. The machine’s drive and ammunition took up most of its bulk, with the sponson gunners isolated behind crawl hatches on either side of a cramped central compartment. Both the forward gunner and driver were wedged down behind the front armour plates with just room enough for them not to be killed by the demolisher’s recoil.
It was a reliable, but ill-designed creature. The battle cannon had a limited forward traverse arc, and the sponsons could not cover the machine’s rear arc. Get behind it, and War Anvil’s armour counted for nothing. There had been a joke amongst the Jurnian officer corps that the Malcador hull was an ‘assault tank’ because no one could think of another use for a machine whose guns could only fire forwards. That did not matter to Kord. War Anvil had gotten him out of the fall of the Sapphire City, and made five kills in the process. Since then it had never failed, for all its age and flaws. If he had a home then War Anvil’s cramped and corroding insides was it.
And now we are going back to what remains of the city we fled, he thought. He blinked away a bead of sweat running into his eye, and rechecked the unit markers on the screen. All of his machines were there, rolling forward in a line half a kilometre wide. Executioners, Vanquishers, and all the other mismatched assortment that was now his regiment: the leavings, the dregs, the survivors. In truth it was barely company strength, but he was still a Colonel Commander, and rank meant that certain formalities followed, even out here, on the dead edge of existence.
‘This is not going to work,’ Sacha’s voice lilted over the internal vox. He ignored it, just like he had ignored the goodwill sign-off from command. There was, quite frankly, no point in replying to either. He thumbed the unit vox, and winced as it shrieked in his ears.
‘All units, this is War Anvil. We are in the attack path, estimate time to outer defence units two minutes.’
The acknowledgements came. Kord counted them off as he heard each call sign. Even if a machine was still moving, and showing an identification signal, that did not mean its crew were alive. Sometimes the seals went on a tank’s hatches, and the virus-laden air would eat through the crew’s air feeds without them noticing. Tanks had rolled on for kilometres with their crew dead inside them, their drivers’ dead hands still pressing the drive levers.
‘How much have we got out here?’ It was Sacha again. She was resting her head on the breech of the battle cannon. He did not look at her. The screen in front of him was more important than her need to talk her nerves out. ‘I mean,’ she carried on, ‘how many machines are in just this wave? Five hundred? A thousand? Throne, that’s just us tank riders. I heard the Titans are walking for this. That’s enough rolling iron to shake the ground all the way back to the stars.’ She laughed nervously. ‘They just expect the Iron Warriors not to have spotted it?’
Kord was watching the distance to their waypoint count down across the auspex screen. He keyed the external vox.
‘All units–’
‘I mean, is this plan just based on us being dumb, or them being dumber?’
‘Light weapons and fire free. Anything in front of us is a target. Repeat, light weapons, fire free.’
Sacha sat up and rolled her shoulders and neck, the heavy folds of her enviro-suit squeaking as they rubbed together.
‘And if they are not dumb–’
‘Sacha,’ he said, leaning in to press his eyes against the forward sight.
‘Yeah?’
‘Load the gun, and then be quiet.’
A second later he felt the thump as the cannon’s breech closed on a shell. Explosive, and incendiary; he did not need to check that Sacha had remembered the mission briefing. Her inability to shut up had nothing to do with her memory, or how she handled the main cannon.
‘Fog’s not thinned.’ It was Saul. Kord could almost hear the forward gunner trying to force down his fear and fatigue. Kord squinted into the swirling green light of his own gunsight, and keyed the regimental vox.
‘Razor, this is War Anvil, what can you see?’
‘Nothing, looks clear,’ Origo’s voice came back straight away, clipped and sharp, ‘but they are there. I know.’
Kord nodded. Origo’s scout squadron was half a kilometre in front of them, spread out and watching for the enemy.
‘Never a good start,’ muttered Sacha.
‘Passing waypoint one,’ called Mori from the driver’s nest. Kord took a slow breath, counted long seconds as he breathed it out again. Just in front of him Zade leaned into the battle cannon’s sight, and flicked the guard off the firing trigger.
Kord keyed the regimental-wide vox.
‘Okay, let’s light this up. All units on my word.’ He was sighting into the murk which boiled across the forward sight. ‘The word is Vengeance.’ He pulled the trigger, and the dark, shrouded world became a sheet of light.
The air of Isstvan V was fire. Hrend could not see the horizon. A firestorm rolled above and around Hrend. The shrill of his armour’s integrity and heat alarms had ceased several minutes before. He could feel coldness creeping across his flesh. He was breathing fumes and smoke but he could not smell them. He felt like shivering despite the flames all around. He knew what that meant. The air in his lungs, in his nose, in his throat, was burning him from the inside. The seals around his waist and knees had melted, and the fire was seeping in. He was co
oking inside his armour. He was dying.
‘Iron within…’ he rasped, feeling blisters form on his lips and tongue.
He kept wading forward, armour hissing and shrieking as it fought against damage. The ground sucked at his legs as he forced himself towards the cover of the wreck of a… He was not sure what it had been, a Rhino perhaps, but his helmet visor had dimmed to near blackness, and the wreck was a twisted shell. The vox scratched in his ear, but he knew better than to respond. It was just a ghost of distortion, the inferno laughing at him for his defiance. He was alone out here, in the swamp made by the burning blood of his brothers and their war machines.
‘Iron without…’
He had failed. That much was clear. Surrounded, betrayed and outnumbered, the Raven Guard and Salamanders were doomed. But they still had teeth to bite back with. He should have anticipated how they would respond. He should have deployed differently. He should… He should have died when the first rocket salvoes hit. That was the reward he had earned by his weakness, and if he ended now it would only be because he had proved weak again.
He reached the wreck. The edges of its shattered hull were glowing like metal pulled from a forge.
‘Iron…’ he heaved a burning breath. His vision blurred as the moisture cooked in his eyeballs. ‘Iron…’ He slid to the floor, and the fire closed over him… burning…
‘Master.’ The word sent a buzz of pain through him, and the dream of Isstvan melted into waking. For a second he felt as if he were drowning, as if warm, black water were all around him. Then his nerves reconnected him to the Dreadnought, and he was ironclad again. The remains of his body flickered with a memory of pain. For a second the weak core of his being wanted to scream.
‘Master,’ the voice came again.
Waking was worse than dying.
Silence surrounded him. When he had been alive, before he had been reborn as a Dreadnought, he had never noticed the soft clamour that life made: the beat of hearts and blood, the rise and fall of breath, the almost imperceptible noises of muscle and bone moving together. When he woke now it was to blank nothingness.