Tallarn: Ironclad

by John French

  Data: Eyes and breath odour indicate spur addiction.

  Projection: 78 per cent probability of chronic insomnia, 56 per cent probability reduced fine motor function and sensitivity in extremities, 34 per cent probability of ni–

  ‘You floating on something?’ he said.

  Iaeo froze for a second. She had a deep compulsion to look around her. She felt blind, her awareness confined to the data coming from her base five senses. There could be eyes watching her, feet moving closer, hands reaching for weapons. She ran her tongue over her lips, eyes darting over the lieutenant’s face.

  ‘You know…’ she began, ‘gotta… stay on top of it somehow.’

  She had once heard a soldier say those words, and then watched him consume a large volume of alcohol. It had seemed to be a form of explanation.

  The lieutenant stared at her. She hoped that the correct/expected facial expression was on her face. After a second he nodded.

  ‘Down that way, second row over.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, but he was already moving away. She had to hold back the instinct to run. Instead she moved as she thought people would move in a hurry. She saw the machines she wanted within a second. She had looked them over remotely, and reviewed each detail of their specifications. They were as familiar to her as her own hand. Except, of course, she had never been inside a tank.

  Heads turned to look at her as she hurried closer. She scanned the faces, found one whose cardinal facial points corresponded to the squadron commander she was looking for, and saluted.

  The woman’s face was flat, and seemed to be sheened in a mix of sweat and bearing grease. The black hair framing her face was clumped and matted.

  Data: Lieutenant Casandra Menard, two years’ service in Saraga Armoured Continuity Force Lionus. Fought in the battle of–

  Iaeo cut the data recall from her awareness. This was a crucial moment, and she needed to get the interaction right. Useful though the data she had sucked from the shelter’s regimental records might be, right here and now it was utterly irrelevant.

  ‘What do you want?’ the lieutenant asked, barely looking up at Iaeo.

  ‘Gunner Vorina reporting for duty.’

  ‘I don’t need a gunner.’

  Iaeo spoke the next words carefully. She had constructed them from a patchwork of observed and recorded interactions between officers and tank crews. She had practised the cadence, intonation and studied weariness in the words one thousand seven hundred and eleven times. She was still wondering if that was enough.

  ‘Regiment sent me over.’

  ‘All right.’ The lieutenant nodded as though Iaeo had a point. ‘But I still don’t need a gunner.’

  ‘They said that I was for tank 681. Something about the gunner for that one being out, and you needing someone in the slot for a surface run.’

  ‘Huh. Cali’s out? What happened?’ Iaeo was about to answer when the lieutenant waved her hand. ‘Never mind, probably fell over her own boots.’ She jerked a thumb back over her shoulder at a Vanquisher with a long gouge across its front armour. ‘That’s 681. Commander’s called Fule. Get comfortable quick. We are rolling out in three minutes.’

  Data: 243 seconds to terminal projection deadline.

  Iaeo stood for a second, her mouth ready to give a reply that now did not fit the pattern of conversation.

  She had selected the squadron, tank and crew member she would replace with all the care she could afford. She had falsified a medical record that would confirm that the gunner of Vanquisher 681, Saraga Armoured Continuity Force Lionus, Fifth Subdivision, Gamma Squadron, had fallen and broken three bones in her arm. She had constructed a functional – if imperfect – ghost identity for herself, and implanted orders into the command chain which replaced the now absent gunner from Vanquisher 681 with her ghost identity. All of it balanced so that no one would spot the inconsistencies and contradictions, unless they were looking very closely. It was not the most delicate web she had ever created, but under the constraints it was still functional.

  ‘Need something else?’ asked the lieutenant as Iaeo continued to blink.

  ‘Err… No.’

  ‘Good. Then get moving.’

  Iaeo nodded, and jogged over to the Vanquisher. Crew were already dropping the hatches on nearby tanks. Engines gunned and breathed hot exhaust into the air. She reached the Vanquisher, swung up, and dropped through the turret hatch. The metal hull was already vibrating to a rising pitch.

  Data: 61 seconds to terminal projection deadline.

  She pulled the hood of the dead gunner’s enviro-suit over her head, plugged her breathe-line into the Vanquisher’s air supply, and pulled the hatch closed above her.

  Projection: Probability of exodus from Crescent Shelter 88 per cent.

  The battle for Tallarn was a matter of numbers: numbers of ships, numbers of war machines, numbers of war machines damaged, numbers of war machines lost, numbers of crews, numbers of officers to lead crews, numbers of reserves to make more crews, numbers of stores, numbers of shells, numbers of bullets. The simple truth, believed by both sides, was that they were involved in a battle that would be decided by who had most, and who would run out soonest.

  In the strategiums of the Sightless Warren the Iron Warriors calculated their active and potential strength ceaselessly. This was war as they had mastered it, the application of force and logistics until the enemy broke. Since they had come to Tallarn the numbers had changed drastically. They had begun with the overwhelming strength, and then seen that eroded by the flea bites of the resistance. They had pulled in more strength. Then the first forces loyal to the Emperor had arrived, and the advantage had shifted from overwhelming to simply significant. More had come to both sides, and losses for all had risen and risen. Which side possessed the numerical advantage had become far from clear.

  A new set of numbers became significant: the number of units each side had active on the surface. One side might have more war machines, or greater capacity to sustain, or recover from damage, but if the other side could outnumber and overwhelm them for a short time the reserves and stores would not matter. Governor Militant Dellasarius called it ‘the depth of cutting edge’, and by the time of the Third Assault on the Sightless Warren, it was the guiding principle of the loyalist strategy. The raiding tactics of old had become the past.

  ‘Just one vast push at the right time and the battle will be done,’ went the oft-repeated wisdom amongst the loyalists. Some commanders disagreed, some even took contradictory action, but their defiance meant little. It was a matter not of the small numbers, or of individuals. The groundswell of force, of strength and weakness, as measured in hundreds of thousands, in millions; that was what mattered, and individuals held no significance.

  FIVE

  Iron Warriors

  Dagger point

  Questions

  ‘All units, cut engines!’ Kord shouted the command as another sonic boom rang through War Anvil’s interior. Sacha was swearing, hands pressed over her ears. Kord was watching the auspex. It must have been a direct orbital drop, straight down from the edge of the void, fast, the kind of thing you only did if you were going straight into a war zone. He could see the aircraft now, small pips of light streaking across his screen as they banked east. Another sonic boom split the air above them, then another and another.

  ‘It’s a full flight!’ shouted Zade. Kord was adjusting the screen, throwing its viewpoint as wide as it would go. Blurred markers streaked the screen. They were out on the edge of the vast plateau which the Tallarn-born called the Khedive. The enemy formation they were tracking was forty kilometres in front of them, just at the edge of sensor range.

  Another thunder crack. Zade was not wrong, a full flight of warplanes had just dropped directly above their position. That might mean they were seconds away from being wreckage. The only thing holding him back from that
conclusion was that they were still alive.

  ‘How did they find us?’ shouted Sacha.

  Kord ignored her. He took a quick breath, felt his pulse steady, and flicked over to the regiment-wide vox.

  ‘Squadron leads, this is War Anvil, what are you seeing?’

  ‘Six aircraft, so far. They are coming back around, banking towards the east,’ the voice was loud but level. Zekenilla, Kord knew without looking that she had shut down her squadron on a coin as soon as he gave the order.

  ‘They ours?’ Abbas from the First Squadron lead tank, his breath ragged. Shock? Possibly, more likely anger. That was normally the way with him.

  ‘No signals,’ said Origo. ‘They are spitting out a hell of a lot of auspex distortion. If they hadn’t come down on top of us we wouldn’t have known they were here. Probably not ours, but probably not looking for us either.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean that they might not take the chance to come back around and pick us off,’ snarled Abbas.

  ‘This far away from anything else, maybe they are just wondering what we are doing,’ said Zekenilla.

  ‘If we stay still maybe they will think we are already dead in the dust,’ added Origo.

  Kord took another breath.

  ‘Hold position,’ he said. ‘If we find we are still alive in a few minutes we can worry about other things.’

  He listened, straining to hear the aircraft over the vox hiss. Was that rumble them, or just the wind on the silent hull? The screen showed him a series of distorted marks that might mean that the aircraft were still banking, or had already cut a course to the east. The seconds stretched on.

  The roar of rockets and the crack of lascannons did not come.

  That does not mean they won’t, thought Kord. This is a battle of hunters and prey. Assume you have escaped and you make your death certain.

  ‘Sir.’ Origo’s voice cut into his thoughts. ‘I have a read on the quarry. They are still moving. Much longer sitting here and we lose them.’

  He switched the view on the auspex. The estimated position of the patrol they were tracking was drifting into blurred uncertainty.

  ‘Sir,’ Abbas said. Kord could almost hear the Tallarn-born lieutenant purse his lips as he chose his words. ‘Colonel, with all respect, what are we doing out here?’

  ‘Searching for answers,’ said Kord.

  ‘Sir,’ still Abbas, still holding his emotion on a lengthening leash, ‘it’s just a sweep patrol. Might not even be Legion machines.’

  ‘I saw a silhouette as the mist thinned five kilometres back,’ said Origo. ‘It looked like a Predator.’

  ‘Even if it is,’ pressed Abbas, ‘they are just looking for targets to take out. Targets like us. If we go much further the smaller machines aren’t going to have enough fuel to get back to the shelter.’

  ‘They aren’t on this planet to fight!’ snapped Kord, and regretted it as soon as he said it. Silence.

  ‘Sir?’ It was Zekenilla, her oh-so-steady voice touched with concern.

  Kord shook his head. All of his officers, and most of those that rode under his command, knew what he believed. They never asked him, and he never talked about it. It was an unspoken understanding that had never been tested. Except now they were on the edge of their fuel radius, watching a quarry, which only he believed was important, disappear into the distance.

  He shook his head, closed his eyes, and began to speak, suddenly unable to hide his weariness.

  ‘They thought they had won as soon as they let the first bomb fall. So why come down here after that? Why not just move on?’ He opened his eyes, wishing that he could take the suit off and rub them. ‘You have seen it as well. Legion patrols far from their bases, in areas that have no strategic value. They are not looking for targets. They are covering the ground, or keeping it clear for others that follow them. This is one of those patrols, way out, heading towards nothing important. If we want to know what they are here for, we follow them.’

  ‘That’s full of it!’ Abbas spat. An uneasy silence fell, like the pause between seeing the flash of a bomb and being hit by the blast wave. But when Abbas spoke again his voice was filled with exhaustion rather than anger. ‘There needs to be no reason for this war. We are here because we are. We lost at the Sapphire City because we were outgunned and out-fought. There is no other reason. No hidden truth that makes sense of it. It just is.’

  ‘I will let you have that, lieutenant,’ said Kord, and his voice was stone. ‘This one time.’

  ‘Command authorise this, sir?’ asked Abbas.

  Kord said nothing, there was no point. They all knew the answer.

  ‘Origo, you got anything to say to this?’ asked Kord.

  They all respected the scout. He had volunteered, one of the first. He had been there with the rest of them at the fall of the Sapphire City. Cold as a knife blade, that was what most of those who met him said.

  ‘There is always another side to things’ said Origo at last. ‘Always.’

  ‘Aircraft have passed, sir,’ said Zekenilla.

  Kord shook his head slowly, glanced at Zade and Sacha. They were looking away, leaning on the gun. They looked as though they were trying to catch a few moments of sleep. They were not of course. His crew would have heard the exchange, but he knew that they would not say anything. He had got each one of them out of the ruin of the Sapphire City, and they would follow him without a word. But Abbas had a point. This was the last moment they could turn back, and if they were going to step into what waited beyond they had to do it willingly. All of them.

  ‘All units, this is War Anvil. You know why we are out here. We are chasing ghosts that no one else believes in. Some of you might not believe in them either, but you know me. Whether you believe me or not, you all have a choice to make now – turn around and head back to the shelter, or follow me. We move in twenty seconds. War Anvil out.’

  He shut the vox off.

  ‘Mori, warm the engines up. Everyone else, you heard that, I’m afraid you don’t get the choice.’

  ‘Don’t really need one, sir,’ said Sacha.

  War Anvil woke to life. Kord waited, counting the seconds off in his head. When he reached twenty, he keyed the vox again.

  ‘All units, start up the engines. Let’s get moving.’

  Gradually, one after another the machines of the Tallarn 71st began to roll across the earth and into the mist. One machine, an Executioner, peeled away from the others as they fell into formation around War Anvil. The lone machine turned south. After a few minutes it was lost from the screens and sights of its comrades.

  ‘So,’ Kord heard Abbas’s voice over the vox, and could not help smile. ‘Igra decided this was not for him. Shame. Where are we going, colonel?’

  ‘Into the unknown,’ replied Kord.

  Hrend paused on the edge of the tunnel threshold. The wind wound yellow vapour over the land before him. He had not slept again since the primarch had come to him, and he would not sleep again until he returned.

  If you return, itched a thought at the back of his awareness.

  His Dreadnought brothers stood to either side of him. Blunt slabs covered Orun’s Mortis frame, the barrels of his doubled lascannons catching the passing streams of fog like fingers held in running water. On his other side, Gortun was turning his head unit slowly from side to side, spinning the drill claws of his fists up, and then letting them spin to stillness, over and over again. The tanks of the Cyllaros assault group were formed up behind them, tracks still on crusted earth. At their centre sat a Spartan carrier and a bloated mobile drill machine. Of all the machines in the group these two had to survive if the mission was to succeed. Everything and everyone else was expendable.

  ‘Master.’ Jarvak’s voice spoke the word to him. He did not reply. He knew what his lieutenant was going to ask. ‘What do we wait for?’

&n
bsp; ‘Nothing.’

  The tunnel mouth they stood in opened in the side of a mountain range. A shallow slope slid down to meet low hills in front of him. Beyond that the land undulated away into the fog like the waves of a frozen sea. Above the tunnel mouth the bare rock of the mountain reached up to the hidden sky. The tunnel itself had been the entrance to an abandoned mine network. The Iron Warriors sappers and stone-wrights had connected it to their growing network of the Sightless Warren within a few days of the first shelter falling to them. Now it had provided Hrend and his force a door into a silent corner of the surface.

  What are we that we have made this? The thought pulled at Hrend.

  He adjusted his view, zooming in on where a line of pylons marched across the crest of a hill, and into the murk.

  ‘Do you think of the past, Jarvak?’

  ‘No, master.’ Jarvak’s voice cut into comms static. ‘I think of the task I must perform. I think of my duty.’

  ‘Duty?’

  ‘The duty we have to the primarch.’

  ‘What is that duty?’

  ‘To never fail. To never prove weak. To never break.’ Jarvak’s answer came without hesitation, but Hrend caught the note of puzzlement at the edge of the words.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Master?’

  ‘Answer.’

  ‘We are Iron Warriors.’

  We are Iron Warriors. That found an echo in his own thoughts. We are the Olympian-born, the Legion that did what others would not deign to do, the breakers and makers of war. We are the wronged, the slighted, the forgotten strength of an Imperium that turned its face from us even as we gave it the iron of our blood.

  ‘What does it mean to be an Iron Warrior?’

  ‘To be iron withi–’

  ‘Now. What does it mean now?’

  A pause, filled with the sound of the wind blowing the death shroud of a planet.

  ‘What it always meant,’ said Jarvak at last.

  Hrend said nothing, and then spoke across the vox to his entire group.

  ‘Forward.’ He stepped out of the tunnel mouth, and into the waiting desolation.