Garro

by James Swallow

  With flawless logic, the relentless machines had chosen a more direct approach to Tallery’s capture. Reconfiguring their talons into mailed fists, the Thallaxii set to work smashing an opening through the wall of the tower, sensing her through the stonework with their thermal imagers. A thick plasteel arm emerged through a rent in the masonry and grabbed at Tallery’s robes, snatching at the material.

  She cried out and tried to pull free. ‘Release me!’

  ‘Do not resist.’ Stone crumbled and cloth ripped. She saw it happening, and Tallery knew there was nothing she could do to stop it. The stone ledge beneath her feet cracked and broke away, her robe tearing as gravity pulled her down. For one sickening second, she hung suspended by what remained of her hood.

  And then she fell.

  Garro eyed her coldly and without pity. ‘You should be dead.’

  ‘I thought so.’ The scribe was shaking, reliving the terror of her ordeal. ‘But there was a cargo flyer – it passed beneath me and I struck it as I fell. I grabbed on for dear life…’ Tallery paused to wipe tears from her cheeks. ‘I survived. The Emperor protects.’

  ‘He does. Fortunate for you.’ Garro shook his head. Had Tallery really been spared by providence? Blind luck was more likely the reason, but he couldn’t bring himself to voice that thought. ‘You made the worst choice you could have. The window was a foolish decision. Where did you possibly hope to go? What were you thinking?’

  ‘I was terrified!’ she cried. ‘I reacted on instinct. I told you before, I am merely an imperfect human. Not a fighter like you. This is all new to me.’

  ‘That much is certain,’ he allowed. ‘Your choices have been flawed, simple to predict. It is why I was able to track you so easily. Count yourself lucky that the Legio Cybernetica’s machine-soldiers are lacking in such insight. If they could think instead of just react, you would have been in their clutches days ago.’ He frowned. The woman represented a complication of the kind he wished to avoid. But with each passing moment he realised with greater certainty that Tallery’s dilemma could not be easily resolved.

  ‘Perhaps this is meant to be. It is fated.’

  Her words gave Garro pause, and he considered his own circumstances, his own experiences. ‘I have thought the same, in days past.’

  She went on, finding her composure once more. ‘I heard the warrant in my name being broadcast over the watch-wire. They have labelled me a traitor. My own colleagues are turning on me, that rodent Kelkinod and all the others. They all believe that I am guilty of treason against my world and my Emperor. But nothing could be further from the truth!’ Tallery stared at him, her eyes ablaze. ‘Do you believe me?’

  The question caught Garro off guard. He stopped short of nodding in agreement, and looked away. ‘What I believe… is that there are lies here. And traitor or not, you are bound up with them, scribe.’

  ‘If you take me to the authorities, I will be executed.’ Tallery’s bleak summation of her situation was as honest as it was brutal. ‘If the Mistress of Riga is part of this, she will want me silenced. If not, those who have manipulated events up until now will manipulate her as well. No one can be trusted.’

  He eyed her. ‘And yet you trust me with what you know, to make me stay my hand. How do you know I am not a part of it?’

  She gave a quick, brittle smile. ‘Because you would never have let me speak. That great sword of yours would have taken my head from my neck.’

  Garro brought his weapon up from where its point rested against the steel decking, and to her credit, the scribe did not flinch. ‘This blade is called Libertas,’ he explained. ‘The name can mean many things, among them “truth”. And I believe that is what you have given to me.’ He drew himself up. ‘Do you know what I am? What it is that I do?’

  She nodded. ‘You are one of the Emperor’s Angels of Death, a Space Marine. Although I confess, I do not recognise the colours of your armour. Of what Legion are you?’

  ‘A question now often asked of me, it seems,’ Garro replied. ‘I have no brotherhood, not any more. The Legion I was born to has fallen to infamy, and I have been renewed in a greater duty. I have a new purpose. I serve as Agentia Primus for Malcador the Sigillite, Lord Regent of Terra. I hunt for him, scribe, to find warriors of like spirit, and to track and terminate the Warmaster’s spies.’

  ‘Is that why you are here, in the city? You were sent to end my life?’

  Garro ignored the question. His reasons for being on the Riga orbital plate were his own, and for now he had no desire to reveal them to anyone else. ‘I was drawn to your hunt when I heard the warrant on the watch-wire. My presence here is a secret, even to Malcador.’

  Doubt filled Tallery’s eyes. ‘The Sigillite sees all.’

  ‘So he would like us to think,’ he corrected. ‘But I have learned that there are some places where his gaze does not fall.’ He put away his blade, and Garro considered the slight, unassuming woman. Her story of this missing materiel, of the insidious turning of Imperial might against itself, all of it rang a familiar note.

  A few years earlier, as Horus pulled the trigger that began his bloody rebellion, another incident of treachery like the one Tallery described had taken place. The gargantuan warship known as Furious Abyss had been stolen by traitor forces from the shipyards of Jupiter. It was a great failure of Imperial security, the culmination of a clandestine plot that revealed exactly how vulnerable the Solar System was to the Warmaster’s network of spies. Despite the purges and pogroms that had followed, it was certain that traitors still lurked close to the Throneworld. As close as Riga, so it seemed.

  There was another reason why Garro had let Tallery live. It was not just to hear her tale. His gaze was drawn again to the golden aquila about her wrist. ‘I know what you are, Katanoh Tallery. I know what you believe in.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She failed to conceal her shock at his words.

  ‘The charm you wear. It is the secret sign of the cult of the God-Emperor. You believe that the Master of Mankind is more than He claims. You consider Him a living deity, worthy of your worship even as He forbids it. Your church, your faith, is forbidden by the Imperial Truth.’ He said the words without weight.

  She stared at the ground and nodded slowly. ‘It is true. I believe in Him. It is by His grace that I live still. It must be so.’ Tallery took a shaky breath. ‘You think me a fool for admitting this.’

  Garro gave a rueful smile and shook his head. ‘Then I too am a fool. I have learned with blood and fire that faith is the only true constant. The Emperor protects, Tallery. If that is a lie, then there is no purpose to this conflict, and I will not accept that.’ He shook off the moment of introspection and beckoned her. ‘To your feet, scribe. We cannot stay here. The gunships will return.’

  With a civilian in tow, Garro no longer had the luxury of using the Falsehood to shroud his movements. The camouflage cape folded back over his wargear and instead he returned to baser tactics, sticking to the depths of the shadows as they made their way through the shipyard. To her credit, the scribe was a quick study and she mirrored Garro’s motions as best she could, stepping where he stepped, staying well clear of anything that could get them noticed. She did not question him, and that spoke to her character. His genhanced senses could smell the sweat on her skin, hear the urgency of her breathing, and he knew that terror walked with her. He imagined that it was only fear of death itself that ranked above her fear of him.

  The common humans of the Imperial citizenry, people like Katanoh Tallery, had been taught from birth that the Legiones Astartes were war incarnate, scions of battle to be revered and dreaded. Sometimes Garro and his kinsmen lost sight of that. He turned and gave her what he hoped was a nod of approval, but it was difficult to tell if she took it as such. He wanted to explain to her that they were not so different, the warrior and the scribe, both the victims of betrayal in their own ways. Garro too ha
d been called traitor by short-sighted men, and he knew how that accusation burned. Even if he understood nothing else of Tallery, he understood that.

  He pointed. ‘That way. Move quickly.’

  ‘Where are we going, my lord?’

  ‘To find–’

  The words died in Garro’s throat as without warning, bright beams of light stabbed down from the gantries above their heads, drenching the deck with a stark glow. He hissed as his augmented eyes adjusted to the glare. But Tallery had no such genetic enhancement and she shielded her face with her hands, staggering backwards.

  The grating snarl of a Thallax’s amplified voice sounded out around them. ‘Remain still. You have been detected. Do not attempt to flee.’

  Garro cursed their luck. He had gambled that doubling back along their path would sneak them through the patrol lines of Thallaxii, but it appeared that the machines were not as dull-witted as he had hoped. ‘How many of these things have they sent?’ He asked the question aloud. ‘All this just for an accountant?’

  Bulky metallic forms were visible as shadows behind the sharp illumination of the spotlights, and he picked out the shape of electro-stunner weapons and shock mauls. One such cyborg would have been no match for him, cut to shreds by the edge of Libertas in short order, but there was a full cohort of the machines descending towards them, and with Tallery to keep safe, the balance of any engagement would slide away from Garro’s favour. He chose to wait, keeping his hands close to the hilt of his sword and the bolt pistol holstered at his hip.

  ‘They’re going to kill us,’ murmured the scribe.

  ‘I will not allow that,’ he vowed. ‘Stay back.’

  A dozen of the mechanoids marched out to surround them, covering every avenue of escape. Sapphire light flashed over Tallery’s face and she cowered; then the beams crossed up over Garro’s armour and his stoic countenance. ‘Your presence in this sector is not sanctioned,’ grated one of the machines. ‘Identify yourself.’

  ‘I am Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro, Agentia Primus of the Regent of Terra.’ He made certain to stand so that the faint tracery of the Sigillite’s Mark on his armour was visible to the cyborg’s sensors. ‘By my authority, I order you to lower your weapons.’

  The Thallax responded without pause. ‘Your authority is not recognised. Step aside. Surrender the scribe to our custody.’

  ‘You defy the will of Lord Malcador?’ He tapped the lone sigil on his pauldron, the literal representation of the Sigillite’s official sanction. ‘You know what this means, machine. Stand down. I command it.’

  ‘Command refused,’ said the cyborg. ‘Termination of target supersedes all other authority. We answer only to the Mistress of Riga.’

  It was not the answer he had been expecting, and Garro sensed Tallery tensing behind him. No human would have dared to speak so to a representative of the Regent, even if Garro was operating outside the Sigillite’s orders at this moment. But the masters of the Riga orbital plate were not mere humans any more, he reminded himself. Unique amongst the floating cities that drifted over Terra’s surface, rulership of Riga had been granted to the mech-lords in exile after their new master, Fabricator General Kane, had escaped the Fall of Mars. In the aftermath of those events, certain loyal houses of the Legio Cybernetica had gained favour in the Imperial Court, and Riga had been a reward for their constancy. Garro was not privy to the politicking behind such power games, nor did he wish to be. All this meant to him was that there were emotionless machine patrolmen standing in his way, instead of flesh-and-blood Arbitrators who he might have cowed more easily.

  ‘Scribe Tallery has been designated Excommunicate Traitoris,’ said the cyborg. ‘Her life is forfeit. Final warning. Stand aside.’

  ‘I refuse. She is under my protection.’ So it would come to battle, then. A part of Garro welcomed the honesty of it.

  The Thallax took aim at him. ‘Then you will be reclassified as an accessory to her crimes, and treated accord–’

  In the blink of an eye, Libertas left the scabbard on Garro’s back and he used it to draw a shimmering arc through the air, ending in a seamless cut that beheaded the machine-soldier.

  ‘Scribe, seek cover!’ he shouted, and his other hand brought up the bolt pistol and fired a close-range shot into another of the Thallaxii, before it could discharge its electro-gun.

  ‘Attack. Apprehend. Terminate.’ The cyborgs spat a metallic chorus of commands and came at him in a mob.

  Garro waded into the engagement and let the old, familiar battle-sense wash over him. In combat with these machines, he had no need to pull his blows as he might have if he were engaging human opponents. The warrior’s lip curled as he began to take the artificial beings apart with swift, forceful and deadly strikes. Blow by devastating blow, shot by pinpoint shot, Garro battled the small army of machines. The lesson he taught them was that transhuman flesh and bone could be every bit as unyielding as plasteel and brass.

  Shocked and awed, Tallery watched the legionary fight. Garro dismembered the Cybernetica’s machine-soldiers with brutal precision, weathering blows from their shock mauls with grim determination and beating them back. The decking beneath his feet ran dark with spilled oil and organic fluids. Severed robotic limbs twitched where they had fallen, grasping blindly while power still ran through their systems.

  The grey-armoured warrior killed another mechanical with a point-blank shot, blasting fragments of metal shrapnel into the air. He had cut a gap in their line, and as Garro risked a glance towards her, Tallery instinctively knew what she should do.

  ‘Scribe!’ he bellowed ‘Run!’

  She felt a pang of guilt as she broke into a headlong sprint, a strange reaction towards someone who a short time ago had been on the cusp of executing her. But with this deed, and with his willingness to let her speak, Garro had proven himself a good soul, ready to defend her. To believe in her. It had been so long since anyone had believed in Katanoh Tallery that she hardly recognised the feeling.

  She half turned as she ran. ‘Come on! They’ll be calling in reinforcements!’ A gasp caught in her throat, as she saw the quick, deadly machines marshal their strength and attack the legionary as one.

  ‘Don’t look back!’ he shouted. A salvo of shock-blasts bombarded Garro from every angle as the machine-soldiers fired in concert. Serpents of brilliant lightning slithered over his battleplate and into his flesh. Pain that would have killed ten men tore an agonised howl from the warrior’s throat and he stumbled, falling to one knee, struggling to stay conscious. Or so she thought.

  With a monumental roar, Garro took in the agony and endured it. He rose again, shrugging off coruscating webs of blue fire. His sword shone in the hard glare of the spot-lamps, coming around in a blazing arc of murderous steel. Tallery understood. He had let the machines come close, reeling them in so that he might end this engagement with a single, perfect strike. The sword crossed the necks of the remaining Thallaxii, beheading them one after another. Libertas flashed, ending the fight in a final, breathless instant.

  There was something magnificent in the power of it, and terrible too. ‘It is as they say,’ she breathed. ‘Your kind are the hammer of the Emperor. His will is made manifest through you.’

  Garro approached, shaking droplets of dark fluid from his gauntlets. ‘That is one way to see it.’ He frowned at her. ‘I told you to keep running. What if I had been defeated by their superior numbers?’

  ‘That did not seem a likely outcome.’

  His lips thinned. ‘I am not invincible. No one is. Not even the Emperor, no matter what we may think of Him.’

  Tallery did not want to consider that Garro’s words might be true, and she nodded towards the heap of wrecked machine limbs. ‘It would seem the Mistress of Riga wishes me dead.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the legionary. ‘But a machine can be made to think anything you tell it to. They have only the
loyalty they are programmed with. Other influences may be at work.’

  ‘Whoever is behind this, they’ll be coming for both of us now.’

  ‘No doubt.’ He rubbed his chin in thought. ‘So it falls to you and I. We must find the truth.’

  ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ she said; but whatever reply the warrior was going to make was suddenly lost in a shrieking storm of jet noise from above.

  The raptor-like gunship drone hovered over them, wings curving downwards, its thruster wake striking with the force of a tornado. Heavy ballistic cannons, powerful enough to rip through the hull of a battle tank, turned to target them. It came in low and Tallery saw the blank sensor eyes of the machine-mind predator lining up for the kill.

  Garro scowled at the bolt pistol in his hand and gestured with his sword. ‘My pistol is empty. Scribe, get behind me!’

  ‘Targets located.’ The words sounded from a vox-horn on the underside of the autonomous aircraft. ‘Terminate.’

  Garro sneered his defiance at the drone aircraft, brandishing Libertas before him. ‘I will not perish in this place, at the hands of some clockwork avian!’ he shouted. ‘Come then, try to kill me if you dare!’

  The machine paused, ready to open fire, but briefly uncertain of its targets. Garro realised why as the scribe suddenly ran out into the open and sprinted directly towards the gunship. ‘Tallery, no!’

  The drone recalculated and shifted its aim to the woman, to its primary programmed target. Garro thought that the woman was making some brave, suicidal gesture, willingly putting herself in harm’s way to save him from being fired upon; but then he saw Tallery throw up her hands and address the twitching sensor head of the drone directly. She was calling to it.

  ‘Heed me!’ screamed the scribe. ‘Command input directive, Officio Centrum Omnis Pentalia!’ To the legionary’s surprise, the gunship’s machine-brain actually hesitated.