Tallarn

by John French

  The other Alpha Legion tank slewed around, guns tracking. A shell flared from the muzzle of its main cannon. Hrend could see it, could see the shell ripple through the air, as though everything had become a tableau stuttering from frame to frame: the white-and-red death flower of the Sicaran, the Alpha Legion Land Raider skidding to a halt, the two Venators positioned to their rear, Orun twisting at the waist to train his guns on the surviving Sicaran. Only a second before everything had been steady, predictable, the blue hulls of the Alpha Legion machines moving beside the grey of the Cyllaros battlegroup.

  The Land Raider accelerated away, braked and skidded around. Its assault ramp opened before it halted. Armoured figures scattered from within. Plasma and melta fire streaked from their weapons. The Land Raider began to pull backwards. A purple beam of light burned the ground where the Land Raider had been. The dust wind was a strobing swirl. The Alpha Legion was running forwards, the wind stripping the lacquer from their armour as they moved. They would not live long. The wind would cut through the seals on their armour, and Tallarn’s poisoned air would claim them. But until that happened they were still deadly.

  Hrend swivelled, brought his hands up to fire. A beam of light struck him. He reeled. Hot white pain was everywhere. It was real, shockingly, overwhelmingly real. Shrieks of static blanked out the voices of his brothers, as though the storm wind had spilled into the vox.

  And the black sun was there, like a hole cut in the storm.

  ‘Live,’ it whispered, a voice of silken promise, of breaking bones, of wind rattling through dry skulls and the call of carrion. ‘Your shadow waits.’

  No, he wanted to say. No… but the memory of the blood was filling his mouth with iron. The eyes of the Apothecary were looking down into his. They were empty, twin eclipses in the brightness.

  ‘What are you?’

  ‘I… am… Iron…’

  ‘Then live.’

  He came forward, blindness falling from his sight. He fired, and fired again, missiles loosed from his back, the boltgun roared in his hands, and there were lights, the bright colour of molten ruin, the shriek of armour shattering, and he was kicking a figure from the ground making it fall like a smashed idol, and his fist was descending, and the sand and sky and stars beyond were screaming back.

  He stopped, and the battlefield before him was quiet ruin. The song of iron wove around him, pulsing like the breaths he could no longer take.

  You are iron, child, said the song. The Alpha Legion machines and troops were gone. Fire and ruin remained where they had been unmade. There were other twisted piles of metal and flame, but Hrend did not think of them. The fact of them did not matter. What other purpose did it have but to destroy and end?

  Something was moving on the ground. He focused, his eyes swimming with the promise of targeting runes. A figure was crawling along the ground towards one of the wrecks. It was burning, flames and fluid rolling over the dust-scoured blue of its armour. Hrend walked to it, looked down, felt the heat and pleading of the strength in his hands.

  He kicked the crawling figure over. Green eye lenses looked up at him. Hands reached for weapons that were not there. Hrend placed his foot on the warrior’s chest.

  ‘It ends here for you,’ he said in the vox.

  ‘Treachery…’ The voice that replied was a wet rasp. He could hear something broken and seeping in the word.

  ‘You are not the only ones to know its value, son of Alpharius.’

  ‘You will die out here…’

  Hrend rotated his gaze up. The facts of the situation were slowly filtering into focus. Orun was there, close by, still alive, so was Jarvak and his machine. Crucially, the excavator also endured, its Venator escort clinging close. The storm was whipping the flames from the wrecks into bright spirals. Darkness was falling, the dust and dusk stealing all but the flame light.

  He looked back down at the Alpha Legion warrior. He wondered if it was the one called Thetacron; he could not tell from the voice. He extended the smallest portion of force into the foot resting on the warrior’s chest. The ceramite creaked with pressure.

  ‘No one knows you are here. The dust storm swallows your signals as well as ours. No warning will reach your masters.’

  He paused, and within the soft coldness of his being he felt the question rise into existence.

  ‘How many of my brothers have you murdered out here?’

  ‘More…’ The warrior paused, heaving a cracked breath. ‘More than you will ever know.’

  ‘How did you know what we came for? How did you know we would seek it?’

  At first he thought it was the sound of choking on blood. Then he realised it was a laugh.

  ‘We already knew it was here, Iron Warrior.’

  Hrend heard the words, and felt the silence form in the space after its passing. It felt like a lie. It felt like a desperate act of spite, like the last blow of a warrior breed who could never accept that they were not in control, who could not admit that they were not the centre of everything. It felt like it might be truth. He felt the fingers of his fist clack open and shut.

  Hrend removed his foot from the warrior.

  ‘And now that you have failed, who else is going to stop us now?’

  ‘We are many.’

  ‘And we…’ growled Hrend. ‘We are iron.’

  He stamped down once. The warrior’s head exploded in a spray of shattered iron and pulped skull. Hrend watched the corpse twitch once, and then opened another vox channel.

  ‘Navigator,’ he growled, and the panting breath of Hes-Thal answered him. ‘It is here, you are certain?’

  Hrend had kept his eyes on the blood seeping from the headless corpse into the dust. Already viral agents in the air had begun to reduce the blood and flesh to black sludge.

  ‘You see it, Ironclad,’ hissed Hes-Thal. ‘And it looks back.’

  Hrend felt the instinct to nod. His iron body answered by shivering. He switched the vox to the channel linking him to the crew of the Spartan carrying the Navigator.

  ‘Execute the Navigator,’ he said. He did not wait to hear the confirmation. A second later he felt something which had been itching at the back of his skull cease.

  ‘Here, on this ground you will begin.’

  The excavator machine rumbled forward, and began to unfold. Stabiliser feet slammed into the ground. Its back hinged upwards, and armoured plates peeled back like corroded insect wings. The drill head slid down towards the ground, teeth rotating, earth scoops rolling backwards over its bulk. Hrend stepped back. Beams of scanning light touched the dry ground, pulsed, swept then vanished. The other machines were moving around the great machine, settling into a circle. The drill teeth began to blur. Hrend watched piston feeds tense, and then the drill head slammed down. Earth fountained into the air, caught on the wind and blended into the billowing cloud. The ground began to tremble. Around him the fires of battle were still burning.

  He looked down. The black sun was there, at the back of his sight, a cold presence on his shoulder. The drill was keening as it cut into the skin of Tallarn. He remembered again the conversation with Perturabo, back at the beginning of his quest.

  ‘There is a weapon on this world, hidden in its heart, or buried in its skin,’ Perturabo had said. ‘The eldar call it the Cursus of Alganar. It is an ancient thing, old before Terra gave birth to humanity. It is why we came here, it is why we are still here – a weapon to lay low angels.’ The metal sheen of the primarch’s skin had dulled for a second, so that his face seemed dusted with ash. ‘I want you to walk the surface of Tallarn, I want you to find it for me.’

  Hrend had felt himself pause, and then gave the only answer he could.

  ‘I will do this.’

  Perturabo had begun to walk away without reply. He had been almost at the edge of the cavern when Hrend asked the question which had been drumming i
nside his head.

  ‘Lord.’ Perturabo had half turned, his automaton bodyguards halting with a ripple of overlapping shields. ‘When we have it what will we do?’

  The primarch looked at Hrend for a long moment, though whether judging or considering he could not tell.

  ‘When we have it we will be what the universe forces us to be, and do what we must.’ He dipped his head, and the light had drained from the lines of his face, leaving canyons of shadow. ‘We will destroy all those who stand against us.’

  The memory lingered at the edge of Hrend’s thoughts as he watched the dust billowing onto the flame-touched wind. The fusion cutters on the drill head flared to brightness. Smoke and steam began to spill up, blending with the powdered earth. The drill cut deeper and Hrend felt Tallarn tremble.

  The Iron Warrior was right in front of Argonis. The red eye-slit was so close that he could see the ghosts of tactical data projected onto the other side of the crystal. He reacted without pause. The gladius came up in a smooth motion, its power field snapping active the instant before its tip punched through the eye-slit. The Iron Warrior’s head blew apart in an explosion of lightning. Argonis grabbed the dead warrior’s shoulder with his other hand, yanked the corpse through the door before he could fall and kept running.

  The next door was coming up fast. Behind him Sota-Nul was hissing out sounds that sent sparks up his spine. They were counting on speed now, pure speed and aggression. The old way, the Cthonian way. The door snapped open in front of him. The space beyond spread outwards. Everything was the beat of alarms. He could hear the keening of aircraft engines. The ceiling above was peeling back to show the dust-smudged stars above. An oily shield flickered against the darkness beyond, holding back Tallarn’s toxic air.

  He kept moving, slowing his run to a determined stride, and clamped his weapons to his armour. He had passed this way before, when he had arrived. It had been filled with activity then, but nothing like this. Dozens of craft in black-and-yellow slashed metal were rising into the waiting dark. The noise was like the breath of iron gods. Gunships, strike fighters, bombers and landers rose from platforms on shimmering columns of anti-grav and jet thrust. They hovered in layers, waiting as those above them ascended into the night’s sky. He knew what he was seeing: it was a full battle deployment.

  He saw the Sickle Blade. The green and black of her fuselage a crow amongst the brushed metal of the Iron Warriors. Lights winked on the tips of her wings. A tracked servitor was uncoupling fuel lines from her belly. Part of him thanked the now dead Jalen for his preparation.

  He quickened his pace. He felt eyes and sensor blisters turn towards him. The downwash glow of thrusters caught his sea-green and black-armour. High above, a wing of Lightning Crows breached the shield, and roared into the dark. He swung under the wing. Further away, an Iron Warrior in a spider-limbed servo-rig paused and looked towards them. The tracked servitor was backing away. Its steel limbs snapped inspection plates shut, pulling pins from the weapon systems. Sota-Nul and Prophesius were climbing the rear ramp.

  He reached the ladder hanging beneath the cockpit, gripped and swung up in a single movement. Mag-clamps latched onto the power pack on his back and pulled him into the cockpit. Neural connections fizzed live with a tingle of static. Displays within the cockpit began to scroll with data. The engines woke. Power thrummed through the frame. His hands were moving without his thinking. The canopy closed over him. He could see data from the hangar’s launch control. Out beyond the armoured crystal of the canopy the Iron Warrior with the servo-rig was moving closer, picking up speed. Whatever luck or plan had got them this far, it was about to run out.

  Red warning runes began to pulse in his view. He could see other figures running now. The space above the canopy was a flow of ascending aircraft. Figures with weaponry were moving across the cavern floor: heavy bolters, claviers, missile launchers. He blinked system control markers, overriding cut-outs as they flashed back warnings. The Sickle Blade’s weapon systems woke. The power in the engines was rising, vibrating through him. Machine voices began to shout in his ears, telling him to power the craft down, telling him that he was not cleared to launch. Iron Warriors were dropping into cover across the launch pad. Over the neural connection to the gunship he felt their rangefinders touch the Sickle Blade. They felt like cold needles.

  He glanced upwards. The swarm of machines was still rising and rising. He looked down again. A voice was speaking in his helm, telling him to power his machine down.

  ‘We are ready,’ said Sota-Nul’s voice in his ear. He nodded, keyed a control, and squeezed the firing trigger on the control column.

  The Sickle Blade was a Storm Eagle. Tens of thousands of its breed served in the Great Crusade, and now in the civil war which had replaced it. But the Sickle Blade was more than a machine of war. She, and her ten sisters, had been born in the forges of Mars and given to the Sons of Horus as an honour gift. Masters had crafted each part of her. The gold feathers traced across her back and wings had been the work of one of the most gifted artisans, and the hand of the Fabricator General himself had woken her machine-spirit. She was a queen of her kind, and a queen made to fly through winds of fire and destruction.

  The twinned heavy bolters in her chin spat fire. Explosions swallowed the Iron Warriors as Argonis untethered Sickle Blade’s thrusters. She lifted off the launch pad, still breathing fire. A beam of light flicked out from across the platform, skimming her left wing. Argonis pivoted the gunship in mid-air. The line of fire traced across the platform edge and sawed through the shooter. Brass casings cascaded from the gunship’s cheeks.

  Argonis’s senses were a wall of target runes. The cavern floor was alive with frantic movement: more troops, more guns, less and less chance of survival. As soon as he had seen the Iron Warriors move to stop them, he had known that there was only one way out: havoc.

  He turned his gaze on a fuel bowser, and blinked the target rune. The line of shells flicked sideways and touched the fuel canister. A sheet of flame spilled out in every direction, burning white, and rage-red. Argonis felt the Sickle Blade rock. His eyes flicked across the cavern floor, blinking between grounded gunships, munition stacks and fuel cells. Rockets loosened from Sickle Blade’s back. Fire clouds thumped into the air, racing upwards to brush the craft hovering above. One column of fire slammed into the belly of a strike fighter. The craft rose, twisted, flipped over and struck the cavern wall.

  Argonis pushed power into the engines, and the Sickle Blade rose through the inferno. Beams of light and lines of shells cut the air beneath her. He paused for a second, holding the breath in his lungs as the power in the engines became a shackled scream. The Sickle Blade tilted its nose up, still floating above the sea of fire and smoke. Argonis saw the stacked aircraft above; some had halted while others still rose to the dark beyond. He unchained the engine’s power and they shot upwards. G-force punched him in the gut. Inside his helm, he smiled. Iron Warriors craft were streaming past, and he was an arrow spinning through them, spiralling higher and higher. The atmospheric shield was around them and then past them, and they were shooting high into Tallarn’s night.

  Clones, thought Iaeo, as she stared up at Jalen.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘The hydra has many heads.’

  She blinked, and facts came together in her pain-streaked thoughts.

  ‘Yes,’ he said again, as though in reply. ‘I am in your thoughts.’

  ‘One…’ she fought the word from her lips, ‘One… less head… now.’

  Jalen’s eyes hardened, and tattoos unfolded across his skin.

  ‘I thought your kind was created not to feel emotional pleasure at anything but a completed kill.’

  ‘You have no idea what I am.’

  ‘You are an assassin of the Vanus Temple, an infocyte operating under an Unbound Condition.’ He smiled, a pleased and cruel smile. ‘You did not think t
hat the temples were unknown to the Twentieth, did you? We are the Alpha. We were there while your masters were still killing for coin.’

  Data: Pride, the need for the defeated to acknowledge their superiority, a compulsive need for complexity and showmanship, all qualities of the Alpha Legion psychological pattern.

  ‘But you have been out here and active for quite a while, haven’t you?’ he asked. ‘You’re not really built for that are you? The conditioning is probably fraying by now. You probably have started making mistakes.’

  You have made an error, Iaeo.

  You have made an error, Iaeo.

  You have made an error, Iaeo.

  ‘Of course you have made an error…’ Jalen’s eyes narrowed. ‘…Iaeo, the current situation is that error manifested.’

  She closed her eyes, and tried to will her limbs to move. Fresh pain was the only answer. She managed to roll onto her side. Blood began to dribble from the right-hand side of her mouth. She could see her visor lying on the metal grating just an arm-reach away. She also saw the two other people she had heard. They were Alpha Legionnaires, but they wore compact recon armour. One held a fat-barrelled needle rifle, the other a block-framed assault shotgun. Both had near identical faces. They were not looking at her, but holding guard with the relaxed carelessness of poised predators.

  She tried to move her hand towards her visor. It moved a few centimetres, and then the ice needles hardened in her nerves and her hand froze.

  ‘That’s far enough,’ said Jalen.