by John French
He felt nothing, not the ring of the sharp fragments against his iron skin, nor the gouges left as bright scars on his body, nor the heat of the burning tank. Iron without, iron within, cold, unyielding, unliving. His world was a gunsight view washed with data, his feeling the cold feedback from servos. He took a step and the pistons in his limbs responded.
Voices washed across the vox channels. He saw one of the Sicarans in his group slew around a wreck, turret turning, and its cannon thumping shells into the distance. Orun and Gortun were close to him though he could not see them. Threat runes began to bloom in his sight as the enemy’s second wave hit the ruin of the first.
He began to run. Pistons shortened and rammed down. A Predator in streaked white broke from the bright fog. Two hunter missiles loosed from his shoulders even as the recognition formed in his mind, White Scars, 5th Brotherhood. The Predator’s cannon twitched towards him. The missiles hit the turret collar, and ripped it from the hull in a blazing plume.
Hrend kept running into the embrace of destruction, and felt nothing.
‘Why are you here?’
Argonis listened as his words drained into the silence of the throne room. Perturabo’s black eyes glittered back at him from pits sunken into the primarch’s skull. At the foot and sides of the throne the still shapes of Perturabo’s Iron Circle automatons stood unmoving, shields held before them. Only Forrix stood at his lord’s side, the only triarch or senior Iron Warrior present.
Behind Argonis Sota-Nul swayed, the black mesh of her robes rustling on the floor. He heard her tri-ocular lenses whir as they refocused. A step further back Prophesius was utterly still in his green silk shroud, his breath a low hiss from behind his eyeless iron mask.
Perturabo’s silence extended. Argonis fought to maintain his gaze under the pressure of the Lord of Iron’s presence. The primarch and his First Captain had changed from when Argonis had seen them last. Forrix seemed diminished, shrunken in presence, if not in size, the twinkle of malice in his eyes replaced by emptiness. Perturabo himself seemed both more, and less, than he had been. His flesh had thinned on his bones, and the light clung to recesses of his skull in a way that Argonis’s eyes could not read. The Logos, the Lord of Iron’s war armour, was lost beneath the pistons and struts of black iron and brushed plasteel. His head nested in a mass of cables and metal tubes. In places the primarch’s skin seemed to have grown over the implants. Argonis noted the weapons bonded to the armour’s arms in bulbous clumps.
‘I do not answer to you, emissary,’ said Perturabo at last, his voice a measured rasp of steel. Argonis did not flinch.
‘You answer to the Warmaster, and I am his emissary.’
‘And that is why my brother sent you here, to ask why I am here?’
Argonis heard the edge in the words. He inclined his head, half in deference, and half in acknowledgement.
‘You sit above a dead world, pouring the strength of your Legion into its belly. You call our allies to you and spend them in battles without end, or purpose. Your Warmaster wishes to know why?’
‘You speak so?’ said Forrix. He raised an armoured finger and pointed it at Argonis as though it were the barrel of a gun. ‘Our commitment to Horus is beyond question.’
‘Our lord, the lord who holds your fealty and oaths, speaks, and asks, as he pleases.’ Argonis looked up at the bronze and ruby eye which capped the black pole in his hand. ‘And here and now I am his voice.’
Forrix’s mouth opened, but Perturabo’s eyes twitched, and the First Captain fell silent.
‘I will be at my brother’s side when the gates of our father’s realm fall. I will break Terra’s defences at his command, and stand beside him when the false Imperium is cast to the flames. Nothing, and no one, can prevent that.’
‘That is not an answer.’
Perturabo turned his head slowly, his gaze settling on the dark at the edges of his throne room.
‘This world was a vital base during the Crusade. The alignment of warp routes that spread from it, and the capacity and resilience of its shelters mean that if it is not ours then it will be used by our enemies. There are many routes to the Throne World, emissary, each one guarded by worlds such as this. The end of this war will not be won just by strength, or numbers, but by who controls those Gates to Terra.’ The Lord of Iron paused and rotated his gaze back to Argonis. ‘This is one such gate, and I will deliver it to the Warmaster.’
‘The forces you have gathered–’
‘Are what is required.’
Argonis held the primarch’s stare, but felt the chill spread through him under that gaze. It was like being submerged in ice. It was like standing in the presence of Horus Lupercal. After a second he bowed his head low, taking care to ensure that the banner remained upright.
‘I will remain, lord,’ said Argonis, taking care that his tone held defence, respect, and strength. ‘And watch the conclusion of this… endeavour.’
Perturabo inclined his head a fraction.
‘As you wish.’
The doors to the throne chamber began to grind open at an invisible signal. Argonis straightened and walked from the room, the banner of the Warmaster held in his hand. Sota-Nul and Prophesius following in his wake. As soon as the doors began to grind shut behind him, he clamped his helm over his head. Sota-Nul’s dry cog voice filled his ears as she spoke over the short-range vox. The signal was encrypted, and the tech-witch had sub-vocalised her words.
‘You were not satisfied-convinced with the Fourth Primarch’s answer-response.’
Argonis kept looking ahead, kept walking. Iron Warriors watched him pass, eyepieces coal-red in the low light. The sound of his footsteps seemed to echo as they walked down the wide passage.
‘Send the signal,’ he replied after a second. ‘Let’s see what Alpharius’s asset knows.’
Iaeo’s world narrowed in the instant it took her to hit the floor. The feeling of her body had vanished, the sensations of her flesh flattened to data sorted by her subconscious. Her kind were created as weapons, as murderers and executioners, but they did those deeds from a distance. They were not Eversor, or Calidus, or even Culexus. Vanus killed like gods, without ever having to hold the blade or touch the blood. The problem space of combat was uncomfortably small, the variables too fine and too easily misjudged. It was messy. It was inelegant. Wasteful. But occasionally necessary.
The blur-suited shapes were moving too fast to track. That did not matter. Reaction was not the way of the Vanus Temple. Prediction was everything.
The stink of ionising air was thick in her nose.
Data: Three weapons, energy-based, volkite 93 per cent likely. Cycle from charge to fire 0.03 seconds.
She came up from her roll.
Projection: Adversaries training and conditioning will mean that they anticipate target movement prior to firing.
She twisted and dropped flat to the floor, limbs splayed like a spider. Two red pulses of energy cut the air where she would have been.
Data: One adversary still to fire.
Her muscles bunched.
Projection: Shot held in case other two adversaries missed. Clever/competent/dangerous.
She leapt off the floor, with a single snap of muscle. The volkite beam struck the floor, and exploded a circle of rockcrete to dust. She twisted as she flew through the air. Her hands grabbed the edge of the still-open vent hatch.
Projection: Other exits from ventilation shafts compromised.
She yanked herself into the air duct.
Data: Corridor door, 20 metres away, currently sealed, only viable exit.
She could hear the soft, swift sounds of the figures in the corridor beneath her. Her hand had already slipped into a pouch and found the small, smooth sphere.
Projection: There is no way of escape while they live.
The grenade was of alien manufacture
rather than human. Its surface was smooth, like ground bone, and it always seemed the same temperature as her skin when she touched it, never warmer, never cooler. Where it had come from was data that she had not been given. She knew only what it would do when it detonated. That knowledge was enough.
Iaeo dropped the grenade through the hatch, and she pulled her body into the vent space.
Data: 1 second since grenade release.
A beam vapourised the edge of the hatch. A blast of heat washed over her. The skin of her face charred and blistered.
Data: 2 seconds since grenade release.
The grenade detonated with a sound like countless needles scraping metal.
Data: Silence. Projection: Adversaries eliminated.
She snapped the visor back over her eyes, and blinked her way to the net-fly feeds from the corridors around her current position. Empty, or at least they seemed so. An increased error/subversion factor now had to be applied to all direct data inputs. The compressed awareness of combat was fading. The skin of her face was severely burned. Her hands were cut to the bone, and she was bleeding. She needed to move. A clock began to count in her consciousness.
Count: 2 seconds since enemy asset elimination.
She slid out of the damaged vent hatch, and hung beneath it for a heartbeat. The corridor space was red. A thick jelly of pulped flesh covered the walls and ceiling. Hard objects lay amongst the wetness. Her eyes found the grenade, its shape glossed with blood. The monofilament strands which had exploded from its surface had withdrawn beneath its eggshell casing. A flick of her eyes identified, dismissed, and then selected other objects from the flesh soup.
Count: 5 seconds
She swung down, and landed with a small splash. She picked up the grenade, then made two quick steps to pluck up a trio of what looked like implanted comms units. A calculated jump took her to the edge of the spreading pool of blood. She stripped to the overalls she had been wearing, and stepped from them without losing her stride. Beneath, she was a matt black statue from the neck down, the pouches bonded to the synskin breaking the outline of her muscles across her back.
Count: 11 seconds. Projection: 9 to 15 seconds until enemy aware of asset loss.
She began to run. This was going to be messy, but there was no other available path to take. She was under direct threat, and that meant that the possibility of total mission failure was very real.
Count: 13 seconds.
The sealed door from the corridor into the rest of the shelter was in front of her. The visor was projecting the scene from an expanding sphere of rooms and passages around her, as her net-flies repositioned to form a shell around her.
Count: 14 seconds.
The net-fly on the other side of the door caught movement as a figure stepped into the corridor beyond. She took in the field overalls of the Sectanal Regency Guard, the rank pins and status implants around the eyes: an officer, mid-grade, support echelon. She had no idea if he was what he seemed, and at that moment it was irrelevant. The corridor she stood in was filled with the liquidised remains of three Alpha Legion operatives, and there was only one way out. The projections indicated that survival was a low probability.
Count: 16 seconds.
She opened the door, rammed it wide, and burst through it at a run. The Regency Guard officer turned at the noise, his mouth opening. Her hand came up and the digi-needler on her third finger spat a sliver of crystallised toxin into the roof of his mouth. He began to fall. Released air sighed from between his teeth. If anyone but a very, very highly trained and suspicious specialist examined the dead officer, they would conclude that he had died from a sudden massive heart attack. She ran past his corpse.
Count: 19 seconds.
The other Alpha Legion operatives would likely clean up the remains of their dead comrades. They had no interest in alerting the loyalists that there was a silent war being fought in their midst. A corridor of blood would cause as many problems for them as it would for Iaeo. That at least was what the projections said. That was what should happen. That was the best outcome.
She needed to leave the Crescent Shelter complex. She needed to get out, link back into her sources of data, and find a weapon to take her enemies down.
Count: 23 seconds. Projection: enemy aware of asset loss, 78 per cent probability.
She ducked into a small room, and wrenched up a rusted grate set in its floor. A long dark space looked back at her.
She would see this execution completed. But now she needed to run.
Count: 26 seconds. Projection: enemy aware of asset loss, 99 per cent probability.
She let out a measured breath, and dropped into the waiting dark.
The Sightless Warren held. In truth the loyalist attack failed to even penetrate its surface defences.
When dawn broke over the site of the loyalists’ assault, its weak light touched fresh fields of dead war machines. Smoke stained the thinning fog soot-grey, and the flames of still-burning wrecks created pools of red light. When the fires had died the failed assault would be just another layer of devastation on a landscape of ruin. The Sapphire City had long ago ceased to exist in all but name. Its buildings had been broken by the Iron Warriors assault which had taken the shelter beneath. Attempts to crack open the Sightless Warren with orbital bombardment had reduced what remained to rubble, and before the failed attempts could reach the Sightless Warren only a few defiant ghosts of the city’s past remained.
The corpse of a Warlord Titan stood slumped against a spire of girders and rubble from a building now a memory lost in crushed rock and shattered metal. The god-machine’s head was a merged lump, its carapace cratered and rippled by heat. The fused crystal of its eyes looked out over the tidelines of battle marked by heaps of metal.
Along the one-time coastal plains the loyalist forces withdrew in a ragged herd. The Iron Warriors harried them, deploying fresh reserves to bleed their defeated enemies, and the loyalists fought to stop the withdrawal becoming a rout.
High above the plains the grand cruiser Memloch held in low orbit. Flanked by the Veratas and Son of the Red Star it had beaten off three attempts by the Iron Warriors to bombard the retreating forces. It was its last action in the Battle of Tallarn. An hour before the last retreating units reached safety, the Memloch fell from the sky. Its hull pierced in dozens of places, it plunged into the sludge of Tallarn’s northern ocean. Debris fountained into the already clogged atmosphere. Its reactor exploded and sent a shudder through the earth that was felt thousands of kilometres away. On another planet this alone would have been a catastrophe. On Tallarn few even noticed.
THREE
Dreams of Order
Cracked
Unscarred
‘There has to be another reason,’ said Kord, taking the optics from his eyes, and massaging the bridge of his nose. ‘Stands to reason.’
He looked up at the face of Colonel Augustus Fask, and wished the man was not there. The other officer looked like he had been soaked and then hung out to dry. A damp sheen clung to Fask’s jowly face, and his Jurnian officer corps uniform looked like he had slept in it many times over and never washed it. But then there was little enough water in the shelter complex to drink, let alone ensure that uniforms were cleaned and pressed. Even if you were a command-level officer with strategic control, you wore the same uniform for months. After a while you just stopped noticing the smell.
Fask had turned up in Kord’s cramped billet, with a smile and a bottle of liquor, an hour after Kord had got through decontamination. The bottle was already a third empty, and Fask’s breath was rank with the smell of the spirit as he settled into the folding chair opposite Kord.
‘Terra, Silas, this is how you relax now?’ Fask’s eyes were skating over the maps laid out over the folding table next to Kord’s cot. Inked lines crossed the maps in different colours. Notes in neat, printed hand filled the spaces
next to areas marked with circles. Kord wished he had been able to put them away before Fask had started reading them. ‘Everything all right?’ asked Fask, after a long pause. ‘I mean, you holding together?’
Kord shrugged. He was very, very tired. He did not want to sleep, but he did not want to talk to Augustus Fask either. They had ridden war machines together back on Jurn, and then on Iconis. They were both squadron commanders then, younger, and full of the more comfortable sort of lies that went with a soldier’s life. Kord supposed that history allowed Fask to think of him as a friend. Only problem was he did not like the man, never had. And Fask was not there to check he was all right, at least not in a friendly sense.
Kord stood and made to fold the maps up. Fask put his glass down on the maps as Kord reached for them. Some of the liquid slopped over the chipped rim of the glass, and began to pool on the parchment.
‘I mean it, Silas. Is everything all right?’
Kord took a step back, and controlled the stab of anger needling at the back of his eyes. He reached into a pocket in his fatigues and found a lho-stick. He turned away as he lit the stick.
‘I wound up sitting on my hands on a backwater world while the rest of creation tore itself apart.’ He sat down on the folding chair, and breathed out a slow, smoke-heavy breath. ‘That planet gets virus bombed. The Iron Warriors decide to turn the sludge that’s left into a battleground. Then our side decide to get in the fight. I get my command all but wiped out, in what was, until last night, our biggest defeat. And we are still rolling around trying to break an enemy that has made its reputation out of being unbreakable.’ He paused, nodded to himself as if satisfied. ‘And we have no idea why they are here, or why it started. So yeah, everything is all right.’