Tallarn: Executioner

by John French

  Hit once, hit hard, and run. It was a system that had kept them alive and killed eight Iron Warriors machines.

  Brel watched as the Spartan closed in on the scout. Silence was almost a kilometre back from the kill site, and he was relying on infra-vision and auspex feeds to follow the battle. The Spartan was a glowing block, trailing streams of fire from the burning wreckage of the dead Predator. The surviving Predator was sweeping wide, its turret turning again to cover the Spartan's rear. They were good, of course - no hesitation and no panic. They had gone straight from being ambushed, into cover and counter attack.

  Brel felt his mouth twitch and almost shook his head at his own thought.

  Of course they were good. They were the Legiones Astartes.

  'But out here, we are all war machines,' he muttered to himself.

  'I have a clear shot to the Spartan's drive wheel,' said Jallinika. 'We might not kill it but we can cripple it.'

  Brel felt something itch at the back of his thoughts. Something was just not right about this ambush: a factor or possibility he had overlooked. He paused, listening to his own breathing, watching the colours shift and smudge on the auspex.

  'Boss?' said Jallinika.

  'Take the shot,' said Brel softly. In his head, the itch of uncertainty grew.

  * * *

  Tahirah waited. It had been twenty-six seconds since the engagement began. Before that they had been waiting for seventy-two minutes. She knew this; like counting, like breathing, like not moving in order to hide her shakes. This was all just part of how she did things now.

  'Do we go active, Tah?' asked Makis.

  'Nope,' she said without moving. It felt quiet in Lantern, even with the distant growl of ordnance and engines.

  'They must be ready to pull back by now.'

  'Light up early, we get seen, we die.' She paused, clicked the vox off, and then thumbed it live again. 'I think we would be slightly less useful dead than we are alive.'

  'All right,' said Makis, his tone saying that it was anything but all right in his opinion. Vail and the left and right gunners said nothing. They probably agreed with Makis, but quite honestly she did not care. She had got them into and back from six missions and nine separate engagements. That meant that, in her considered opinion, she did not care what they thought.

  I should learn the new gunners' real names, she thought. Was the left one Porn, or was that Vantine? She mentally shrugged, it did not matter. Neither was that good a shot, and she was not convinced about the repair to the sponson anyway; whichever of them was in there would probably be pasted sooner rather than later. Simpler not to worry about their names.

  Beside her, Lachlan shifted in his seat, his silence sullen and complete. He hardly spoke now, not on mission, not back in the shelter. It had bothered her for a while, but then she had her own problems. They all had enough of those.

  'You should have a look, Tah,' he said. She heard the edge in his voice and her head snapped up to look at him.

  'Why?'

  'Because this is about to go to hell.'

  The left side of Talon hit something hard, and the chassis skidded around. Akil hit the brakes and the scout slammed to a halt. His head whipped forward and the top of his face slammed into the infra-sight. He tasted wet iron in his mouth and throat as he gasped for breath.

  Udo had stopped cheering. Akil blinked, his eyes watering and blood flecking the inside of his eyepieces.

  'No, no...' he gasped, and grabbed at the controls. 'Please...'

  The power plant snarled and Talon rocked in place, stuck firm on whatever it had hit. A sudden cold void had opened inside him, spreading ice through his body and brain.

  'No, please, not now...'

  They had all seen it over the last few weeks, and heard stories of it again and again. Worse than a clean hit from the enemy, worse even than a seal failure, was to be stranded in the hell above. Thrown tracks, burned-out power plants, mired hulls: all were a slow death for the crew inside the tank. Unable to get out to repair or free themselves, they had to wait in their armoured coffin for the air supply to hiss to nothing.

  Beside him, Udo had his eyepiece pressed to the gunsight, gazing at the fire and smoke-polluted fog outside. Akil nudged the scout forwards, and then slammed it into reverse. Straining gears and tracks screeched over the rising growl of the power plant. They did not move.

  'It's coming,' shouted Udo.

  Akil looked up at the glowing image in the infra-sight. The Spartan loomed, heat washing from its power plant. He pushed more power into the reverse gear and Talon lurched again. It was coming straight at them. Akil released the power, felt the scout slump a little, and then rammed it back again. Something gave, and Talon's tracks scrabbled on the slime-covered rubble.

  The Spartan's lascannon clusters opened fire. Converging beams of lightning hit the rise of broken masonry just in front of Talon. The scout rang as chunks of white-hot plascrete struck its hull.

  'Brel!' he shouted into the vox, but the word was lost in the sound of detonating metal.

  The Vanquisher shell hit the Spartan's rear armour. Smoke and flames exploded outwards, and the massive chassis bucked like an angry beast. Its rear slammed back down in a cloud of smoke, lascannon clusters twitching.

  'Got you,' whispered Brel. The huge tank was still alive but it was going nowhere. He clicked the vox open. 'Get moving, Talon.' The Spartan's weapons could come back online at any moment, and the remaining Predator was coming about hard and firing. Heavy rounds danced impact flashes across the ruins around the scout's position. Brel glanced away from the view.

  'Get us moving, Cal,' he said, and the big driver grunted an affirmative.

  Beside him, Jallinika cursed. He looked around at her, his ears filling with a stream of expletives.

  'What?' he shouted.

  She stopped cursing. 'Look,' she said.

  He did.

  'Oh.'

  The front of the Spartan pistoned open in front of Akil's eyes. He saw something move in the space within, something that glinted dully in the fire. For a second Akil wondered if the tank had simply come apart from the damage it had suffered, but the burning figures broke from the Spartan's mouth at a run.

  There were ten of them, ten nightmares cast in dull iron and brushed steel. Hammers, axes and claw blades wept lightning in their hands. Curved layers of armour hunched their shoulders, moving like iron-slab muscles as they ran. At first Akil just stared at them, his gaze locked upon the eyes shining in their black metal faces. He felt his mouth work soundlessly in his face, speaking a word he had heard once but now realised that he had never truly understood.

  Terminators.

  A bolt of energy streaked across the closing gap - Akil blinked a second too late, and the outline of an armoured figure burned across his retinas. He was screaming, screaming without being able to stop. Explosions rang against the hull. The lascannon fired again and again.

  'I killed one,' gasped Udo. 'I think I killed one.'

  Akil forced his eyes open. The Terminators were forty metres away, firing as they came, the ground churning around their feet. Explosions and muzzle flare smeared his view. He yanked the control levers back. Metal screamed as the scout rocked in place, held for a second, and then jerked free. The controls juddered in his grip as power ran into the tracks and clawed them backwards.

  The Terminators kept coming. He could see the polished iron skulls on their chests now, and the shell casings falling from their combi-bolters. Udo fired again but the shot burned wide.

  Akil hit the brake on the left track. The scout twisted, skidding as the right track pulled it around. Akil rammed both levers forwards and Talon shot ahead. He could not see the Iron Warriors any more; the sight in front of him was a blur of cold rubble and ruins. They hit a wall and exploded through it. Udo was out of his seat, scrambling to the rear vision slits.

  'Where are they?' shouted Akil.

  'I can't see them.'

  Akil half-twisted in
his seat, instinctively looking behind. He snatched his gaze back around in time to see the remains of a fallen pillar just before they hit it.

  Talon burst through the fractured plascrete, rode up and crashed down. Akil slammed forward. For a second, everything was ringing silence and the sound of his own breathing. Then he realised that they had stopped moving.

  His hands went to the controls as his mouth opened. 'Can you see th—'

  The impact rang through the scout like a shattering gong. Roof plating buckled inwards. Akil could hear armour grinding on armour. Udo had curled into a ball behind his seat. Akil thought of the lightning clinging to the Terminators' weapons.

  'Come on!' shouted Tahirah. Lantern was still cold, its engine whining in protest at the speed Makis was demanding of it. Slime and mud sprayed from its tracks as it gouged a path towards the scout. Its gears screamed as it built up speed. They needed to be much, much closer for them to stand a chance of making a shot. Tahirah had ordered them on the fastest, most direct route to give it to them: straight across the sludge pan, straight towards the stranded scout and straight across the surviving Predator's kill-zone.

  Stupid, so damned stupid, Tahirah cursed inside her skull. 'Lachlan, do you have a shot?'

  'Not a clear one.'

  'How long until you do?'

  The rising growl of the engine and the rattle and ring of the Lantern filled the pause.

  'Five seconds, or maybe not at all.'

  Tahirah looked at the auspex. On their left flank the Iron Warriors Predator had tagged them, and was coming around in a wide arc, trailing its veil of heat and sensor baffling. In a few seconds it would be behind them. Kill shot, she thought.

  'Left gunner, fire at will.' She waited, but heard no reply. 'Do you hear that, whoever the hell you are? You see a target, you fire.'

  'Understood,' came a trembling reply a second later.

  'Good,' she snarled, and then switched the channel. 'Silence, this is Lantern'. Static boiled in her ears. 'Brel, you hear me?'

  The Iron Warriors Predator almost had a shot on them. If Brel did not take care of it, they would die. She laughed to herself. It was far too late for such thoughts. There was no choice now, none at all. 'Lachlan, take the shot.'

  The first terminator reached Talon and pulled itself onto its roof. The Iron Warrior straightened with a clicking hiss of oiled joints and servos. No man could stand on the surface of Tallarn and hope to live, but this iron-clad creature was not a man - he was a Space Marine, and the armour that encased his flesh was made to walk through the fire of war and the cold of the void. The head of the Iron Warrior's hammer glowed with a blue light in the thick air. The legionary looked down for a second, electric green eyes taking in the scout's armour plating. He raised his hammer.

  The plasma stream hit the Terminator from the side and pitched him from his feet. He twisted as he fell, his armour holding its shape for a second before melting. Chips of ceramite exploded with heat, burning the air as they fell. Inside the cage of his armour the Iron Warrior's flesh became smoke and steam.

  The plasma swept on through the air, peeling paint from Talon's hull in black bubbles. The Iron Warriors nearest the scout vanished as their armour crumpled under the stream and became nothing more than expanding spheres of gas and heat. Some of them remained alive long enough to turn and try to lumber out of the plasma storm, their shapes slowly deforming as they went.

  Light poured through the Talon's vision slits, hot white and harsh blue. The roof plating began to glow red. Akil heard the scream and rush of plasma-fuelled explosions. Static boiled and spat in his ears as the light grew brighter, shifting hue from white to orange. His hands went back to the controls and fired the scout's engines. It accelerated away over the rubble, the plasma fires burning in its wake.

  Akil heard distant voices over the vox as he turned Talon south, away from the kill-zone.

  'Put us in the kill-zone, Cal,' said Brel. There had been a pause, and Brel had not needed to see the driver's face to know that it had creased with confusion. 'Do it, Cal, put us right in the middle of it. As close to the live Predator as possible.'

  As soon as Brel had seen Lantern move, he had realised what Tahirah was going to do, and what she was gambling on him doing. He had cursed, and for a second had thought of not giving the order. A long breath later he had shaken his head, half in anger and half in admiration.

  'Yes, boss,' said Calsuriz, after a long pause.

  Silence clattered into motion, its tracks rolling slowly, then faster and faster as it bumped onto the flat pan of the kill-zone. Brel glued his eyepieces to the periscope, flicking between infra-vision and the basic sight of the human eyeball. The fog here was thin enough that he could see the Iron Warriors tank cutting through the vapour like a shark through sand-clouded water.

  'There you are,' he whispered. 'Jal, make them notice us.'

  The Vanquisher cannon spat fire, and a shower of mud and smoke hid the Predator for a second. When Brel saw it again it had changed course, turning hard with its dome turret traversing and its sponsons swivelling in their mounts. Damn, it was close - so close that its streaked metal hull almost filled his sight. He could see targeting lasers scatter red lines through the murk as they reached for him and the more distant Lantern. The Predator could do it; one machine could kill both Lantern and Silence, if it was not killed first. Tahirah had known that, had known that by roaring across the sludge pan she was opening herself up as a target, and that the only way she would live was if Brel brought the Silence in to split the Predator's attention. It was a move of total courage and utter stupidity.

  The Predator's turret was rotating around to Brel, Jallinika's curses filled his ears again as she tried to get the main gun steady for a shot. The breech slammed open next to him, and the smoking case fell from its throat. Selq was already rising, ramming another shell into position. The Vanquisher's firing block closed on the brass-cased shell with a ring like a struck anvil.

  Brel kept his eyes on the Predator. Both machines were close, far too close. This was not an engagement; it was a nose-to-nose brawl with fists of high explosive and iron. In such a fight there could be only one winner.

  The diffused red line of light from the Predator's targeter became a dot in Brel's sight, and he knew that behind the Predator's gun a pair of legionary eyes was looking right back at him.

  'Okay,' whispered Brel.

  Silence fired an instant after the Predator, the boom of the shot and the ring of impact overlapping in a metal-throated roar. The Predator vanished before Brel's eyes. A second later the shards of its hull rang on Silence's outer skin like the striking of a thousand hammers. Jallinika whooped, slapping the breech block. Brel stayed silent, watching the fire and smoke rising from the blasted bones of the Predator, listening.

  Clatter-clunk, clatter-clatter, clatter-clunk.

  'They hit us,' he said.

  They all heard it then: a grinding whir of half-sheared metal, like the drumming of broken iron fingers upon the hull.

  'Full halt,' said Brel, but Calsuriz had already disengaged the power from the tracks. Silence lurched to a stop, and the metallic clatter-clunk sound ceased. For a second none of them said anything. They all knew what had just happened. Brel took a slow breath of sterilised air.

  It was Selq that broke the silence.

  'The track isn't broken,' he said. Brel could hear the control in the loader's soft lilt. 'It would have spun out or jammed if it was a straight break.'

  'It's half broke,' added Calsuriz, his voice casual, as though he might be talking about the chance of winning a hand of cards. 'You can hear it scrape the skirt, and it's not just the track. Left drive wheel is shot as well, or I'm the new Regent of Terra.' Jallinika barked a laugh, then went quiet.

  Brel let out a slow breath. There was no point asking the question that was running through all their thoughts: can we still move, or will we go a few metres and then be stranded?

  'Brel, you got it, you beautif
ul, beautiful bastard,' Tahirah's voice breathed over the vox, and he could hear the delight at still being alive in her words. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back.

  'You're welcome,' he said. So this is how it happens, he thought. After all this time I am going to suffocate on the surface of a dead planet because a stray shell clipped a track. He shook his head.

  'Brel?' Tahirah's voice crackled in his ear again, a sudden tension in her voice. ‘We should be moving, why have you stopped?'

  He ignored the question, and flicked the vox to the internal channel only.

  'Cal, engage drive power slowly. Let's see if we can move.' Or if we are dead and just haven't stopped breathing, he added to himself.

  'Brel?' Tahirah's voice grated in his ear again, and again he ignored it. He listened as the noise of the engine changed in pitch and the gears engaged with a clunk. His chest was aching, and he realised that he was holding his breath.

  There was a rattling thud, and Silence lurched forwards. The engine noise dipped as Calsuriz notched the power down, and then there was the familiar rumble of movement. They were moving, slower than a man could walk, but moving nonetheless, and that meant they were alive.

  The first ship came alone. Tearing from the warp at the edge of the system, it sliced towards Tallarn. At first the Iron Warriors pickets presumed it was a trader or a bulk transporter unaware of the war raging at its destination. Three Iron Warriors destroyers moved to intercept it. They would board it, cripple it if they had to, and strip it of anything of value.

  Only when they were within gun range did they realise they had miscalculated. The ship was no bulk carrier or lost trader. It was a warship.

  The Lesson of Ages was a brawler of a vessel, made to take damage in exchange for the destruction of its enemies. An ugly block of fire-scored armour studded by weapon barrels; it had served the Emperor since the Great Crusade had first gone beyond the light of the Solar System. Every one of its previous commanders had died in action, and the ship had been on the threshold of destruction over a dozen times. But it had never faltered, and its dedication-oaths to the Emperor remained unbroken. In reply to the Iron Warriors' hails, the shipmaster sent a single message looped through all frequencies.