by John French
On the ground, Tallarn's defences began to shout defiance at the sky. Laser platforms and missile silos threw ship-cracking payloads towards the orbiting vessels. The Iron Warriors fired in return.
For those looking up from the night side of Tallarn the bombardment appeared as a shower of falling stars. In the clear skies of the south, the falling warheads winked like golden coins scattered in the sun. Hundreds of bombs and torpedoes fell. After their initial launch they needed no propulsion; Tallarn's own gravity drew them to it. The warheads broke apart as they descended. They shed their ceramite armour first, sloughing it off like a cocoon to reveal polished metal beneath. The next layer simply fragmented seconds later, dumping the first dose of viral agents into the upper air currents. Beneath this, hundreds of winged bomblets nestled like insect young clinging to their mother. This layer released three hundred metres above the ground. The bomblets began to tumble like seeds, spraying atomised viral agents as they spun.
Finally, the core of each warhead hit the ground like a bullet, punching through rock and soil before exploding. Clouds of earth and debris burst into the air. Beneath the earth, the virus began to spread through the soil and into the water table.
The first casualties were those closest to the ground bursts. In the Crescent City a warhead hit one of the main arterial routes through the outskirts. The road was dense with people and vehicles, scrambling to reach the entrances of the shelters beneath the city. As the explosive cloud settled people began to fall, blood running from their eyes. Within seconds the flesh of those within the initial blast had begun to fall from their bones in blood-slimed ribbons.
Those that were further away lived a little longer. The mist of viral agents in the air mixed with the wind as it blew across Tallarn. People began to fall. They fell trying to get to shelter. They fell in their homes as the killing air seeped through the cracks in the walls. They fell looking up at the sky. Outside of the cities the virus scythed through the lush agri-belts and jungle regions. Forests became tatters of toxic slime hanging from the dead skeletons of trees. The slick bones of cattle floated in pools of black filth. Flocks of birds fell from the air in a rain of putrefying flesh and feathers.
Within five minutes of the first impacts the casualties in the major cities numbered almost a million. Within ten minutes they were over ten million. Within an hour the living population on the surface of Tallarn was negligible.
A few survived in isolated places far away from the impact sites. They would die in the following days. Within three days there was no measurable life on the surface.
The last person to die in the attack was a soldier attached to one of the northern tundra bases. His name was Rahim. Caught in an armoured vehicle far from the cities, he drove in search of other military personnel until his fuel ran out. His air supply failed two hours later.
Sealed in shelters far beneath the ground, the survivors of Tallarn waited. Many were soldiers, the remnants of regiments never shipped out to the Great Crusade. Beside them were a lucky few, civilians who had known of the shelters and reached them in time. Sipping recycled water, breathing processed air, they listened as silence settled across the surface of Tallarn like a shroud.
CHAPTER TWO
The hell above
Machine kill
Vanquisher
'You have to be kidding me,' muttered Jallinika. Brel shot her a look, and she shrugged. They stood in the shelter's primary dispersal area, just one of many clusters waiting to hear what would happen next. The officer standing on the turret top looked like he was about to be sick. His skin was pale and his eyes were wide and glassy, as though he had been staring at the world around him hoping that he was about to wake up. Brel remembered that look; it was the look of someone who had just found out what it felt like to be part of history.
'The reconnaissance is going to be light - squadron strength.' The officer, a Jurnian captain by his uniform, was pointedly not looking at the men and women clustered around the tracks of the tank he was standing on. He glanced down at a spool of parchment in his right hand, tried to smooth it out, failed and almost dropped it.
'Terra,' hissed Jallinika, and shook her head. Brel kept his eyes on the officer.
This was it: the calculation of fate, the roll of the dice. If there had been any gods left to pray to, Brel would have asked them to make sure that he remained forgotten. He had been ordered to report to this Jurnian captain - someone had actually found him and given him the order, and that could only mean bad things. Beside him, the Jurnian crews he had been lumped with shifted as they waited for the captain to find his voice. Brel glanced around the waiting circle, noticing the expressions on their faces. Some looked nervous, some numb. A few even looked excited.
Then his eyes found the others, the men and women in one-piece drab overalls without insignia or markings. They looked nothing like soldiers. They looked like refugees scraped together and stuffed into surplus uniforms. Brel gave a tired breath; he was suddenly certain how this was going to go.
'Atmosphere on the surface is toxic so full seal protocols are to be enforced inside your machines.' The officer paused, and licked his lips. Jallinika rolled her eyes and shook her head again, but he did not seem to notice. Brel was not surprised that the idiot was going through the full brief, top to bottom, like the drills, ignoring the fact that any idiot knew that any vehicle going out would have to be locked down and the crew skinned in enviro-suits. It, like the rest of the briefing, was irrelevant. Everyone was just waiting for the one thing that mattered: who was going out.
After all, thought Brel, they aren't going to answer the real question - why are we going out now?
It had been seven weeks since the bombs fell, and after the shock had come the panic, then the numbness of reality settling into place. There had been suicides, and the demand for narcotics of any and all description had gone through the roof. Then there were the survivors, thousands of civilians from the city above who had managed to reach the complex before it was sealed. Broken people wearing stained clothes from lives that no longer existed, they clustered in the unused chambers.
For a few days the complex had simmered on the edge of insanity. Officers had clung to protocol like drowning men to fragments of a broken ship. There had been some summary executions to enforce discipline, and things had settled into a dazed rhythm after that, and the weeks had passed.
Now, something had changed.
'Each squadron will have a scout guide attached to them.' The captain nodded to the men and women in the drab overalls. 'They will be in light vehicles. They are all volunteers. They know the surface and will help you navigate.'
Brel was not surprised when Jallinika stifled a laugh. They were taking some of the civilian survivors out onto whatever was left of the surface of Tallarn. It was worse than pointless, it was idiotic.
'The purpose of the mission is to establish if there are any enemy forces on the surface and to identify them,' said the captain, reading from his notes. 'We have no surviving forces on the surface, so you are going to be our eyes.'
We don't even know who we are fighting, thought Brel. A whole world dies and we are wondering who held the knife.
'The battle disposition is as follows,' said the captain. Brel felt the coldness in his gut expand and squirm. 'First Squadron, you are heading east along the coastal road.'
A female lieutenant with a sharp face and baggy fatigues raised a hand. 'Number three machine is down in my squadron. Main armament won't light.'
The captain looked flustered, and glanced down at the parchment in his hand. Brel almost felt sorry for the guy. Almost.
'Yes,' stammered the captain. 'Yes, it's been accounted for. You have a replacement attached to your squadron.' The captain looked up. 'Sergeant Brel?'
Brel let out a breath and raised a hand. 'Sir,' he said in a flat voice.
'Your machine is attached to Lieutenant Tahirah's outfit.' Brel nodded acknowledgement, and avoided the lieutenant's eye.
They were going out. After all this time war had found him again. Beside him Jallinika was whispering curses. Calsuriz and Selq were quiet. Brel felt nothing, as though the order had hollowed him out. The captain was still talking, but Brel was not hearing it. The world was the slow rumbling pulse of blood in his ears. The memory of Vandorus came to him again then, bubbling up, hot and vivid. Forests burning around him, the sound of rounds ringing on the hull, the bright instant the energy beam hit his machine and turned the world dark. And then all the rest came, one after another - all the battlefields, all the dead with their charred smiles. When the pain bloomed in his skull it was a relief, drowning memory in bright sensation.
'My name is Akil.'
Brel looked up. The briefing had broken up around them.
A man stood in front of him. He was lean and handsome with dark eyes and hair. The drab overalls marked him as one of the civilians pulled together and given basic machine training so they could act as guides on the surface. It was worse than ridiculous.
The man called Akil, smiled. He looked like he was used to being in charge, and used to money too. He extended his hand in greeting.
‘I believe I am your scout,' said Akil.
Brel looked at Akil's hand then turned away. Beside him Jallinika grunted in amusement, but Brel said nothing. Inside his head the fires of memory still danced and the dead were grinning at him in welcome.
This is not my world. This is not real. This cannot be real. The thoughts looped through Akil's mind as the machines crawled through the corpse of the Sapphire City. He wanted to look away but his eyes had stayed fixed on the narrow slot of armourglass since they had emerged from the shelter.
Fog hung over his view like a curtain. There was no sun, just a diffuse yellow glow that seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes the fog thickened and they had to halt. In those moments he found his mind forming images in the shift and swirl beyond the armourglass. He would watch and wait until he could see a few metres, then start to drive again. Occasionally the fog would peel back and show him what it hid.
Buildings still stood, but they were empty shells. Wooden balconies, doors and window frames had collapsed and dissolved to run down the stone walls. Skins of iridescent moisture clung to the fallen glass of windows. He saw the dead, too. At first he had thought that they were heaps of mud or sewage. Then he had seen half-melted teeth grinning from the slime. He had stopped looking so closely after that.
The two-man scout vehicle he was driving was a low slab of welded metal with a raked front. It apparently had a name: Talon. He had driven and piloted many different machines in his life, but nothing quite like Talon. Tracks ran across its front and up and over the top of its flanks. A sealed socket at the front waited for a weapon which had remained unfitted. When Akil had first seen it, the machine's hull had been a raw grey. Now slime mottled its surface.
Inside Talon the only noise was the engine and the suck and hiss of the air system. To Akil's ears it sounded like the beat of a dying man's heart. After a while he had found that he was waiting for every wheeze of air. He could not hear Rashne, but he knew that he was there, crouched in the small cargo space, hugging his knees and not looking at the armoured crystal viewports. Rashne was a soldier, a signal operator, but if it had not been for the uniform Akil would have thought him a boy. Rashne had looked outside only once. He had pressed his face against the glass as the fog rolled around them. He had seen, and stared for a minute before curling up in silence.
Both Akil and Rashne wore enviro-suits of thick rubberised material inside the vehicle, their eyes looking out of circular eyepieces, mouths connected to air bottles by tubes. Talon had tracks, like a battle tank, but no turret. The empty weapon socket was situated next to Akil's control rig. He was not sure if they did not trust him or simply did not have the correct weapon. The vehicle's controls were simple: two levers and two pedals. They had given him six hours training. Now, grinding through the outskirts of the dead city, unable to see where he was going, linked to the rest of the squadron by a scratching vox, he wondered how they could ever have thought that was enough. Controlling the machine was like wrestling an iron herd beast, the controls responding either hesitantly or with a sudden surge of raw power.
They had been driving for hours. Akil had no idea where they were. He had been heading south, using the vehicle's compass. The major arterial road to the nearest settlements ran along the coast, and before the bombardment the journey to the city's edge would have taken no more than half an hour. They had been moving for six hours and still they had found no sign of any enemy. Occasionally he saw something that he thought he recognised. A building or statue would suddenly appear out of the fog for an instant and then fade again. Each time he had tried to figure out where they were, but failed. The entire squadron would come to a halt. He had convinced himself several times that the compass was wrong and that they were heading north, or going in circles.
He tried not to think too much, not to think about why this had happened, not to think about all the people he had seen crowding the streets as the alarms sounded. Not to think about his daughters in his house, far to the south.
They would have just been going to sleep, he thought, and then cut the thought away as quickly as it formed. He was not sure why he had volunteered for this. Anger was part of it, anger at what had been done to his world; guilt as well, but he had an unpleasant feeling that more than anything it had been because he had wanted to look at the hell above ground and know that it was real. He knew now.
He blinked. The world outside had peeled back to show him a bare shore to the left of the road. The sea was the colour of a bruise and heaved with a thick slowness. Heaps of oozing matter lay along the tide line. It began to rain, greasy black drops spattering across the armourglass. He halted the machine, and turned to Rashne. The boy was looking back at him, eyes wide behind misted eyepieces, knees gathered to his chest. Akil nodded.
'Tell the others that we are on the eastern coast road.'
For a moment Rashne did not move. Then he unfolded and began to flick switches on the equipment that crowded the compartment. He plugged a lead from his suit's comms into the main bank, twirled a dial, depressed a switch and began to speak.
'Lantern, this is Talon.' A surge of static followed Rashne's voice, then a low hissing half-silence. 'Lantern, this is Talon.' The static rose again, then faded back to a low moan. Rashne began twirling dials, saying the same phrase over again: ‘Lantern, this is Talon.' Akil could hear the boy's breath sucking at the end of each transmission.
'Rashne,' said Akil into his own vox. The boy did not answer but flicked and twirled the vox-controls, his voice now a pleading monotone. Akil turned his head to look out of his front view slit. Thick yellow fog pressed close against the glass.
'They aren't there.' Rashne's voice was low, as though he was talking to himself. Akil turned to look at him. The boy was slumped with his head resting on the vox-panel. 'They aren't there.'
Then he looked up, and Akil noticed the beads of moisture smeared across the inside of the boy's eye lenses.
'We are alone,' said Rashne, and Akil felt the world close around him like a cold hand.
Silence ground forwards through the murk, tatters of bio-sludge trailing from its tracks and the long barrels of its main gun. Slime and debris crunched and sucked under its tracks. Its exhausts coughed in the soup-thick air. Silence was a Vanquisher, a machine made to kill others of its kind, and it bore its purpose with the scarred arrogance of an old warrior. She had fought on Credence, and Arzentis IX, and taken damage on Fortuna. It had been that damage that had marooned her on Tallarn; her masters had moved on, leaving her to be repaired but never to rejoin them. Brel had never ridden Silence into battle, but he did not doubt her. They were alike, bred of the same substance and experience.
'Where the hell have they gone?' muttered Brel, looking at the screen of his auspex. Five minutes earlier the Talon had vanished from their screens
, and now the whole squadron was getting static when they tried to raise them on the vox.
'Idiot was supposed to know this city,' said Jallinika. 'Now he is just gone.'
'Quiet,' said Brel, staring at the auspex screen. Shapes and colour washed across it. They had been four - the two Executioners, his own Vanquisher, and the scout machine. The green markers of the two Executioner hulls hardened and then blurred as if sinking back into the distortion. There was no sign of the scout. The scanner had been lousy with interference ever since they had left the shelter, but this was worse.
'Silence, this is Lantern,' Lieutenant Tahirah crackled in his ear.
He blinked. The inside of his suit lenses had fogged. The distortion buzzed across the auspex. He did not bother looking out of any of the periscope blocks. There was no point. If they could not see the scout on the screen then they would not be able to see it by staring at the fog outside, even with infra-vision.
'Damn it, Silence – respond.'
'This is Silence, go ahead,' said Brel, his attention not leaving the screen. Something was itching at the edge of his senses. A green blizzard briefly blew across the auspex.
'Can you see anything?' asked Tahirah.
Brel was silent. Blood was pounding through his skull. Screams rode on the surge of his breathing. It was like it always had been. Like all the places where he had killed, and come out alive hoping never to go back. The blur of static boiled across the auspex, then dimmed. He felt like he was waiting for something.
Calmness spread through him, as soft and sudden as a light turning off.
It's going to start again, he thought. All of it, just like before. He felt his body and mind fold over the feelings of panic, and slip into a calm rhythm. It was so familiar that it felt almost like coming home.
'Lantern, this is Silence. I see nothing,' he paused. He licked his lips and tapped Jallinika once on the right arm, an old command given without words. The breech of the main gun opened and swallowed a shell. Brel felt the clunk of it closing in his bones, another old sensation returned after so long. 'But something is wrong. Lantern. Something is out there. We should light weapons.'