by John French
Thinning atmosphere streamed past the Sickle Blade. Feathers of heat edged its wings. Space bloomed above Argonis, and the roar of passing air dropped away.
Alert chimes screamed from his helm. Threat warnings flashed at the edge of his eyes. He slammed the Sickle Blade into a tumble as lines of las-light scored the void behind it.
‘Brother,’ Volk’s voice fizzed across the vox. ‘Cut your engines.’
Argonis glanced at the auspex. A trio of runes was closing on him, fast. Weapon lock warnings chimed in his ears. Ahead of him the marker of the Iron Blood was swelling in his sight. Screens of ships and shoals of fighter craft blistered the void around it.
‘You fire on me, you fire on the Warmaster,’ said Argonis.
‘You have drawn our blood, you have broken our trust.’
‘There is no trust left in this war, brother.’
‘You will not escape.’
‘I do not intend to escape.’
‘Whatever you intend, you will die here.’
‘You did know your limitations, brother,’ said Argonis, and cut the connection. Hostile weapon lock alerts screamed in his ear. He spun the Sickle Blade, shedding countermeasures in a fire-burst cloak. Bursts of las-fire licked the void. He was breathing hard, gravity slamming into him like hammer blows. He fired his thrusters, and the Sickle Blade tumbled.
‘Missiles loose, and locked onto us,’ said Sota-Nul’s voice.
‘I am aware,’ he said. An explosion bloomed in the spinning night as a missile hit a decoy pod. He waited, feeling the G-force smear his flesh against the inside of his armour. The Iron Blood and its escorts were closing fast. There were a lot of ships in the spheres around Tallarn, the war in the void mirroring the escalating battle on the ground.
‘Incoming ordnance,’ called Sota-Nul, and building-sized torpedoes were suddenly burning past him. He spun through their thrust wake. The Iron Warriors were close behind, lacing the void with las-fire. Everything was getting very tight. Flying directly into a battle-sphere was not ideal, but did give Argonis certain advantages. A pursuing missile cluster hit one of the warheads and detonated. The torpedo corkscrewed off course, hit another warhead, and the void became a bright layer of boiling light.
The Sickle Blade rode ahead of the blast wave. Warships loomed ahead of them. Stitched planes of cannon fire spread from their flanks. Challenges and warnings filled Argonis’s ears.
The trio of strike fighters broke from the inferno behind him, dragging banners of burning gas.
‘Those ships have seen us.’
Argonis ignored the tech-witch, and flicked the vox to a multiple band, maximum power transmission.
‘Iron Blood and escorts, this is Argonis, emissary of Warmaster Horus and bearer of his will. You will prepare for us to come aboard.’
A clod of burning debris spun in front of the Sickle Blade. Argonis rolled under it. Behind him the three strike fighters hugged close. Las-bolts streaked past.
‘Cut your engines now,’ said Volk over the vox.
Argonis flipped the Sickle Blade over, watched a target rune lock green on a strike fighter, and squeezed a firing trigger. The closest fighter became a burst of blue and white light. The Sickle Blade flipped back over and rolled away from its kill.
‘Fall back, Volk,’ said Argonis. ‘You were never good enough to take me, and mercy does not suit me.’
A scattering of las-bolts answered.
Argonis switch back to the broad transmission, and spoke again.
‘Iron Blood, this is the emissary of the Warmaster. I demand immediate audience with your primarch.’
Identification ciphers travelled with his words. No reply came. Behind him the two remaining strike fighters were closing and firing. The Iron Blood was a growing splinter of light against the stars, its shields fizzing as it ploughed through battle debris.
‘In the name of Horus, you will comply.’
He could see the great gun batteries of both the flagship and its escorts, building-sized barrels yawning at him with the promise of certain obliteration.
So far to come, he thought, and the dance of light and explosions seemed to fade into a background. So far from the tunnels of Cthonia. So far from a near-starved youth with a mirror knife and a false smile. He was not sure if he would have chosen the decades of life he had lived. But then it seemed there was little choice in this life, and the first lesson of the gang wars he had learned was the only thing that still held true: we are born alone, and if we live it is alone, and in the end we die alone. His hands went still on the controls, and the Sickle Blade’s dance became a simple, straight line drawn towards its future.
Fire and darkness slid past him. He heard voices, but did not listen to them. He did not want this, he had never wanted any of it, but there had never been an alternative besides the swift, endless fall to oblivion. He thought of those he had grown up with, the gang warriors who had bled out into the dark. He thought of the brothers he had watched go down to Isstvan III not realising it was the last thing they would ever do. He thought of Horus, the warrior king who was his master, his primarch, but not his father. And he waited for the fire, and the silence beyond.
‘Emissary,’ the voice filled his head and grated down his spine. The las-fire had vanished from the void around him. The markers of the two remaining strike fighters moved into positions just beyond his wing tips. ‘You wish my presence. So come to me,’ said the voice of Perturabo. In front of Argonis the guns of the Iron Blood turned away, and he saw doors open on a black and waiting space within, like teeth around a mouth.
The Iron Warriors fired as they broke onto the gantry. Iaeo had an instant to recognise the scream of rotor cannons spinning up. Then the first line of bullets cut across the platform. Jalen dived to the side. Behind him the two Alpha Legionnaires were dropping and firing, the gun booming a counter-rhythm to the scream of the cannons.
Data: Estimated force of Iron Warriors deployed fifteen.
She could see them out of the corner of her eye, heavy silhouettes of armour, slab shields and glowing gun barrels. They were advancing down the gantry, shaking it with synchronised strides. She had brought them here. A timed signal aimed precisely to bring an Iron Warriors detail here at this moment. Without Argonis’s breakout it would not have worked. She had brought target and termination together, just as intended.
The Alpha Legion warriors were calling to each other, short harsh stubs of decisions and commands. Jalen was flat on the grating. She saw one of the Alpha Legion warriors begin to move forward towards the pinned man. A second rotor cannon opened up and cut the warrior in half before he had taken a stride.
Jalen turned his head where he lay. She was looking right into his eyes. She felt something move in her mind, an echo of disbelief and fury. The tattoos of serpents and lizards were squirming under his eyes. She still could not move, but she thought of nodding, and knew that he felt the gesture.
The Iron Warriors’ fire shifted. Jalen began to rise. A round pinged from the floor grating, and blew out his knee in a shower of bone and blood. He stumbled, tattooed face twisting in pain. He pushed himself up. A line of rotor cannon fire ripped him in two.
Data: Two of three triplet operatives, designate name Jalen, eliminated.
The numbness pinning her limbs released. There was a lot of pain to cope with. She tensed her muscles. Splintered bones cut into them. Fresh pain. Hard rounds ripped through the gantry, shaking it, shredding it. The Iron Warriors had formed a shield wall thirty paces away. The rotor cannon fire stopped. The last Alpha Legion warrior was still alive but had retreated, trying to reach a point where he could exit the kill zone. She saw movement behind the shield wall, and two narrow gaps opened in its front. The muzzles of heavy flamers thrust through the gaps, pilot lights bright against scorched metal.
She rolled to her left, her hand finding and grasping
her visor. The torn edge of the gantry framed a drop to darkness. She paused for an eye-blink, hearing the rising pressure of the flamer hoses, seeing the black gulf below.
The end was so close now, all the lines of possibility drawing to a point, to a resolution. The projections said that most likely things would proceed without her now. Causality had developed its own, irreversible momentum.
Most likely… an imprecise phrase, the kind of phrase that would have earned her punishment and scorn from her mentor. But she was beyond exhausted, and the old master was a long time dead.
The flamers fired. She rolled over the edge of the gantry, blackness rising to meet her as flames filled the air above.
Fire, smoke, and the roar of shattering metal filled the vast bowl of the Khedive. The mountains and hills running its circumference cupped over three million square kilometres of land. Wide enough that the sun would rise on one edge hours before its first rays would touch the other, it had been an ocean of swaying grass before the virus bombing. Terraced orchards had marched up the lower slopes of the surrounding mountains. In the high years of the Great Crusade, armies had gathered on the plains beneath, vast, system-cracking forces laid out in gridded order across areas so large that time marks changed twice between the outer edges of the muster.
Armies filled it again, and the sky above roared with the engines of warplanes and landing craft. But the order of the past was as much a memory as the sway of grass and the smell of fruit blossom blowing from the mountains.
The Khedive had become a nest of battles. There was not one engagement, there were hundreds, coiling together, spawning and eating each other by the second. By night the plain rippled with detonations and explosions, turning the fog-laced air to bloody red and strobing orange. By day the smoke thickened the fog to hide the sun behind black veils. Titans strode through the murk, firing at targets beyond the horizon. Within hours a new, ever-changing topography of wreckage had swallowed the shape of the earth beneath. Tangles of dead machines formed forests of black metal beneath the slumped bodies of Knights. Plasma storms raged for hours in places where the greatest war machines fell. Spirals of glowing energy howled as they sucked the wind inside them.
Into this cauldron both sides poured more and more of their strength. Columns of loyalist forces from distant shelters continued to arrive. Many had spent much of their fuel and air just to reach the battle site, and failed within hours of joining. Many rolled from the southern passes only to die within seconds of touching the plateau. Fighters spun through the smoke as they hunted the landers that still dropped from the orbiting ships.
To the eyes of those looking down their gun sights, or at the screens of their auspexes, there seemed to be no order, just the unending roar of explosions and the flash of detonation. They were not fighting to a plan, they were just fighting what was in front of them. To other eyes, though, eyes that watched from high above and far away, there was a pattern, written in the shift of numbers, losses and ground held. It said that victory could go to either side, but that whoever lost the Khedive would not be able to hold Tallarn.
FOURTEEN
Iron from within
Metatron
Termination complete
War Anvil was firing blind. Every gun was roaring, the sound of the storm drowning in the rolling crash of guns. He could hear the voice of Menoetius, of Origo, and the rest, each one calling out words which shattered as the hull rang and rang like a struck anvil.
They had found the Iron Warriors.
The auspex showed the heat blooms of multiple machines. Heavy calibre rounds began to strike the front of War Anvil. The main gun fired, and the breech slammed back. The smoking casing rang as it fell into the space beneath. A second late the demolisher fired. Kord was half aware of a red target mark vanishing from the auspex.
A kill, he thought, but his eyes were pulling back to the sight block. The world outside was a swirl of dust and storm wind split by lightning and gunfire. He could see something though, something blunt and vast, covered by cables, its bulk stabilised by piston feet. He recognised it: a macro drill, its back tilted up. He could see the wind sweeping the top off heaped earth. A thrill of elation snapped through him. This was it, this was the answer. The Iron Warriors were not looking for something on the surface but beneath the earth of Tallarn.
He watched, tracking the silent drill machine, even as Menoetius’s Predator cut across his sight, firing on the move, stabbing at machines which were blurs behind the storm curtain. They were receiving fire, but he could tell they were winning. How could they not? He had been right, he had–
The beam snapped out from the storm and skimmed the top of War Anvil’s right track. Kord felt the heat of the beam’s touch through the hull. The other track kept turning. The machine slewed around.
The bottom edge of its running track hit a pile of debris and pitched it over. For a long, terrible second, Kord felt War Anvil’s weight shift like a ship riding a wave. Then the tank tipped onto its side, rocked, and went still. Kord’s head hit the sight mount in front of him, and the world went grey. The engine drive kept turning the left tracks. He could feel blood on the inside of his suit’s hood. He could still hear the roar and boom of battle outside.
Something moved close to him, and he twisted to see Origo holding the side of his head. There was blood on the inside of his left eyepiece just under where his hand was pressed. The replacement gunner twisted around as Kord moved, and his hand snapped out, gripping Kord’s own hand. There was still strength in the grasp, a lot of strength. Kord instinctively pulled his hand back but Origo held on.
‘Call for help,’ he said, his voice a rasp over the internal vox. ‘Call them, call anyone and they will know, they will come for us.’
The engine drive finally cut out, and now there was just the muffled clamour of battle beyond the hull.
Kord shook his hand free of Origo’s grasp and the gunner curled back, still holding his head. Kord found the key for the squadron-wide vox.
‘Menoetius,’ he called.
‘Two targets still active, colonel.’
‘We are–’
‘Your situation is evident, colonel. It will be addressed after the engagement.’ Menoetius’s voice was ice cold, and unmovable.
Kord’s head was whirling with pain, numbness and delayed panic whirling.
‘Call, they will hear,’ said Origo again, his hand still pressed to the bloody side of his head. His voice sounded distant, almost slurred. ‘They will come. My brothers are dead. I am the last but they will come. We have found it. Tell them. They will come.’
Kord looked at the gunner. There was something odd in the man’s voice, a simultaneous note of desperation and certainty. He sounded like he was not really talking to Kord. He thought of the blood smeared on the inside of the man’s eyepieces where his head had smashed into the main gun mount. Damage, concussion, delirium, but in one thing he was right. Kord twisted and strained until his fingers found the main vox controls, and switched it to broad transmit with maximum power on every loyalist frequency. The storm wind was rising rattling dust on War Anvil’s belly, the sound rising to blend with the noises of battle. He hesitated, adrenaline making his hands shake.
Was there any point? Would his words reach through the storm? Would anyone come if they heard?
‘To anyone that can hear, this is Colonel Kord of the Tallarn Seventy-First. We are damaged, unable to move. Current location grid 093780 in the Hacadia Flats. Please respond.’
‘Master?’ spoke Hrend, but did not move. His sight was popping with static, runes and data fizzing into and out of existence.
‘You have succeeded, my son. You have succeeded where all others have failed. You have walked the paths which others have walked, but for you, they have led you here.’
‘What is this?’
‘This is destiny. This is a chance that will never come aga
in, not for you, not for your brothers or your father.’
‘You are not my master. You are not Perturabo.’
Hrend raised his remaining arm, fingers snapping wide, meltagun… cold and dead in his grasp. The creature which was not Perturabo, but which wore his face, smiled.
‘No I am not. We are your shadow, Iron Warrior, but that is not why we are here.’
‘This discussion is over,’ growled Hrend. He activated his vox-link, formed a transmission to Jarvak on the surface. The signal did not even start.
The creature shook its head slowly.
Pain burrowed through Hrend, as one by one each of his neural connections began to burn. The pistons on his legs began to bleed pressure, cogwork and servos unwinding. He slid to the floor like a great, metal puppet with its strings cut.
Light continued to stream from his carapace-mounted lights, sheeting upwards, catching the angles of his fallen shape and casting them against the roof and walls. The figure of Perturabo cast no shadow, but bled into the gloom at its edges. It looked down on him, and cocked its head to one side as though observing phenomena it had not encountered before.
‘We are here to offer you a choice, Ironclad.’
Hrend could feel the metallic bulk of the Dreadnought frame all around him. He could not move, even the ghost sensations of his severed arm were gone.
‘What are you?’ His voice scratched from his speaker grille.
‘You know what we are,’ said Perturabo’s voice. ‘We have met many times. We were there in the birth of your Legion and your brother Legions. We were there as you bloodied the stars. When you felt your first surge of martial pride, we felt it with you. When you bled, we were in the blood that stained the ground. When you felt the wounds to your honour, and dreamed of iron, we were both the wound and the dream.’
The figure’s shape blurred, its substance and shape becoming dust and smoke. Other faces rose from the cloud: a face of cold hard lines beneath a shock of white hair, a face smiling in sympathy and mockery, a face which radiated control from its feral lines. On they went, sliding from one onto another until they were a blur, until they were one.
