Tallarn

by John French

  It was not actually empty, of course: two regiments and a few other stranded units lived in the upper sections. Then there were the stores, supplies for campaigns that had most likely ended long ago, all rusting and decaying in silence. Even in caverns like this one, there were crates stacked against the walls, and big blocky shapes under regulation green tarps. Despite that, an entire armoured regiment, perhaps two, could have vanished into the remaining space.

  And there were more shelters, ten more in this complex alone, and more complexes all across Tallarn. Space enough for a star-cluster-breaking army to gather.

  Not any more, thought Tahirah. She had never really bothered with the unoccupied parts of the underground shelter until now. Three damned years and she had never thought to look around.

  The rest of them had, of course. She had the feeling that Makis and Genji knew far more about the complex than was healthy, but then what else was there to do? It was Makis who had found the chamber, and suggested taking one of the incomplete machines for a joyride. At least that was how it had seemed. Tahirah had a feeling that this was not the first time her crew had passed the time this way, just the first time they had asked her along.

  Tahirah and the rest of the Jurnian 701st had been in holding condition – pre-deployment – on Tallarn for twenty-seven Solar months. After six months they had gone through every drill imaginable just to try and bleed off some of the tension running through the unit. There had been fights, both amongst the crews of the 701st, and with the Chalcisorian 1002nd Mechanised who shared the complex. There had been floggings. It had made no difference. They were all clamped down too tight waiting for a war that seemed to have forgotten that they were waiting.

  Then the news had come. The Imperium was at war with itself. Horus, Warmaster of the Great Crusade, had turned upon the Emperor and half the fighting power of the Imperium had turned with him. Some had doubted that it was true, as though the lack of immediate sound and fury denied the possibility of Horus’s treachery. And still Tahirah’s unit had remained without orders, without a ship to carry them to a front, without a war that wanted them.

  Tahirah turned and saw Makis leaning down into the tank’s open turret ring just behind the driver’s position.

  ‘Get out of the seat, Udo,’ he said, his voice low and measured.

  ‘Why? Can’t I make a mistake while I learn?’

  She could not see Udo but the whiny bastard’s voice was more distinctive than his ratty face.

  Makis scratched the grey stubble on his chin, and gave a small shake of his head. Lachlan caught her eye from where he sat on the top of the right sponson. He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Just get out,’ said Makis.

  Udo’s head popped out of the turret collar, his spot-covered scalp gleaming in the light. He reached up for someone to give him a hand. No one did. After a second he pulled himself up, his faced pinched with the effort. The kid was all pale skin and ribs under his grey-and-green fatigues.

  ‘I didn’t hit anything,’ Udo protested as he stood on the upper hull.

  Makis said nothing, but swung down into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Oh. You were trying to avoid hitting anything?’ said Vail. ‘Sorry, I thought you were being reckless. I guess incompetent is better.’

  ‘It was funny.’ Udo’s thin face was pinched and red. ‘You guys laughed.’

  ‘Udo.’ Vail had turned his head, a frown bunching above his black eyes. ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I didn’t hit anything,’ mumbled Udo again as he sat down, his legs hanging into the turret collar, and he shot a sour look at Vail. The tattooed loader closed his eyes as if he were catching up on some sleep. Udo flushed pink with anger.

  Udo. She should do something about Udo. Her crew was doing what small groups of bored people that spent too much time with each other did: they found an outlet for their frustration. She should have done something about it months ago. She had always got results from her crews without using the hard methods of other officers. It was getting to her – the waiting and not knowing. She bit her lip as she watched Udo glance again at Vail, then down into the tank where Makis settled into the driver’s seat. She really should have done something months ago. Her skills were slipping. She ran a hand through her close-cropped hair.

  She would do something.

  Udo gave Vail another glance, then spat onto the tank’s hull. The saliva drooled down the grey-sprayed metal.

  Trouble was, the little tick was so easy to dislike.

  ‘Boss?’ Lachlan’s voice cut through her thoughts and she blinked, realising that he had got off the tank and was standing just a couple of paces away. He wore a green vest, and his combat trousers were an ochre-and-grey tiger pattern that was not Jurnian issue. He held up an open pack of lho-sticks. Tahirah nodded and he tossed her the packet.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said as she lit up, and handed the pack back. Lachlan nodded at the tank chassis, as the engine gunned and a fresh plume of exhaust boiled towards the roof.

  ‘You ready for another spin, boss?’

  ‘Huh?’ She looked at the tank. ‘Yeah, sure, in a minute.’

  She turned to the tarpaulin-covered shapes that she had rolled into when she came off the tank. The edge of one of the tarps was loose, and she could see rust-spotted metal beneath. She lifted the edge of the heavy fabric and flicked it back. The vehicles underneath were small, barely a third of the size of the Mars chassis that Udo had nearly crashed. They were stacked in threes, one on top of another, in metal frames.

  ‘You seen this stuff?’ said Tahirah, as her eyes moved across the rust blooms and stencilled numbers.

  ‘What are they?’ Lachlan stepped next to her.

  ‘Scout cars, I guess. Never seen this pattern before.’ Tahirah pointed her lho-stick at the small mount jutting from the front of one of the vehicles. ‘That looks like it should take a lascannon.’

  Lachlan nodded and bent down next to the bottom vehicle in the stack. He ran his hand over the projecting wheel mount. It came up black with dust-covered grease.

  ‘Never been stripped of the manufactorum grease. They must have come in and been stuck here before they could get to the poor bastards who were supposed to ride them.’ He ran a thumbnail across a patch of rust, and came away with a flake of brown-red metal the size of an aquila coin. ‘Don’t think they will ever make it.’

  ‘I know how it feels,’ she said, and let out a long breath. ‘Come on, let’s get back to the upper levels.’ She walked back to the waiting tank, swung herself up onto the upper hull and dropped herself onto the turret collar opposite Udo. Lachlan followed. The engine growled from idle, and the tank clanked around. She glanced at Udo and saw his mouth start to open.

  ‘No, Udo. You can’t drive.’

  Akil Sulan waited in silence until Jalen’s footsteps had receded across the tiled platform. For a long moment he watched the letters scroll across the data-slate in his hand before he shut it down and slipped it into his pocket. Akil took another slow breath, tasting the smell of the Sapphire City as it settled under the failing light. The scent of dust blending with the sea wind filled his mouth and nose. He liked this time of evening: the heat of the day rubbing against the cool of lengthening shadows, the scent of water as the warm stones of the streets were washed of dust, the thin plumes of cooking smoke rising from the tangle of roofs. It was as though the city itself was breathing out.

  He took another slow breath, allowing it to hold him for a second suspended between moments. The sky was a cobalt-blue vault, edged by the golden pink of the sun’s retreat. The city dropped away from the edge of the balcony in irregular tiers, and the shadow-cut valleys of streets, sliding down until it met the flat lands of the coast and delta and its stone roofs gave way to the crystal of agri-domes that extended to meet the sea. Most of the city was a tangle of flat-roofed buildings, but it was the towers th
at drew the eye. There were hundreds of them, some small and weathered, others seeming to scrape the sky. All were stone, but stone of a thousand textures and colours. The black tower of Asil sparkled with flecks of crystal, while the Spire of Nema looked like a spiralled horn of bone. Akil smiled for a second, as only a man who owned much of what he saw could.

  The Sapphire City: a jewel amongst Tallarn’s many great cities. His city.

  He leaned on the stone balustrade, and looked down at his hand. The skin looked older somehow: how had that happened? How had so much time and responsibility piled upon him?

  He brought his hands up, running them across the smooth skin of his face and then back through his greying hair. It was an old gesture, imitating splashing water across the face at the end of a day of toil. His daughters had picked up the gesture almost before they could talk. The thought of them laughing as they copied him briefly brought the smile back to his lips.

  The wind rose and the smile faded.

  He turned and walked away from the balustrade, tapping the data-slate in his pocket as he walked down the steps to the narrow streets below. His clothes were far poorer than those he normally wore. Those who knew him would be shocked to see him dressed in the worn black and purple robe so common amongst the toiling classes. He liked the simple clothes, though; they were comfortable and he enjoyed the frisson of anonymity when he walked through the streets of the Sapphire City as the darkness gathered in the recesses. People passed him, a few raised their hands and muttered him good fortune, but none spared him more than a glance. He seemed just another man walking home at the end of the day, with nothing but food and the promise of sleep on his mind.

  He had grown up around these streets, had run across the rooftops and climbed the fruit vines that crawled over the walls of the old buildings. He had never been poor but riches were far in the future. Life had not always been pleasant then, but it had been simpler.

  He missed that simplicity. He missed its clarity. He liked returning to the streets, the comforting feel of the worn stones beneath his feet, the mingled smell of cooking meat and flower tobacco softening the stench of stagnant drains. Most of all he enjoyed the difference in how people looked at him, or failed to look at him, when he was not surrounded by life wards, wound in suitably exotic fabrics and trailed by aides. He enjoyed not being Akil Sulan for a while.

  Tallarn is dying a slow death. The thought rose in his mind as he walked through the deepening shadows. Without the supplies and troops of the Great Crusade passing through the planet it would revert back to what it had been in the time of his grandfather: a backwater planet of little consequence. It might take a hundred years but it would happen. He would be dead himself by that time, but his daughters would not be. The twin girls were few years old, all smiles and careless laughter. They needed a future.

  A cry shook him from his thoughts. He stopped. The cry came again, clear and sharp. He could hear the sound of feet scrabbling on stone from around a corner a few paces ahead. Akil was moving before another thought passed through his mind. His blade was in his hand as he came around the corner. The leatherbound hilt of the knife felt familiar and warm in his grip. He remembered his grandfather smiling as he had given it to him. Curved and double-edged, every man and woman on Tallarn carried a knife like this.

  Akil turned the corner. The street beyond was narrow, the buildings to either side pressing close to pinch off the failing light. There were two of them, one a mound of flesh and muscle, the other thin and gangling. A third figure lay huddled on the ground. In the low light the men looked like blurred silhouettes, bodies and limbs. One of them lashed a kick into the figure on the ground. A cry cracked the air again.

  ‘Give us the coin, old man,’ said the thinner of the two. Akil was three paces away. The big man turned. Akil had the impression of a wide face and saw the glitter of an eye as it fastened onto him. The big man opened his mouth to shout, his hand moving towards his own knife.

  ‘If you want to know a people’s character, look at their weapons,’ his grandfather had said, ‘and we of Tallarn are children of the knife.’

  The big man’s blade lashed out, its edge a twilight glitter. Akil ducked under the blow and his own knife flicked across the man’s thigh. The man yelled. Akil came up and sliced across his knife-arm above the elbow.

  The man’s blade fell from his fingers, blood streaming black down his slack arm. He looked around for his friend but the thinner man was already running. Akil took a pace back and met his foe’s eyes. The man hesitated. Akil brought his own knife up slowly so that it caught the light. Then the man nodded and limped away, trailing a line of dark drops on the stones of the street.

  Akil watched him go and wiped and sheathed his blade. He looked to the figure on the ground. A worn face looked up at him as he bent down, old, with dust worked into the creases and framed by grey hair and beard.

  ‘Can you stand?’ asked Akil.

  The old man grimaced, shifted and nodded.

  ‘Thank you, honoured worthy,’ said the old man. Akil could hear the age and lack of teeth in the man’s speech, but the words almost made him smile. ‘Honoured worthy’ was a form of address already antiquated before compliance. Akil noticed the grey folded cloth of the man’s clothes, frayed and stained with sweat and dust. The man was a rustic from one of Tallarn’s less developed settlements.

  ‘Did they take anything?’ asked Akil as he helped him up.

  ‘No, honoured worthy.’ The old man steadied himself on Akil, and took a shuddering breath. ‘The stars smile on your kindness.’

  ‘Here.’ Akil took a handful of trade markers from his pocket and held them out.

  ‘No, no.’ The old man shook his head and pushed Akil’s hand away. ‘I cannot take twice from your kindness.’

  Akil held his hand out again, but the man shook his head and stepped away. ‘You have given more than enough. Fortune’s gifts rain on you.’ The man began to shuffle away. Akil moved to help him but the old man shook his head again.

  Akil could sense the man’s desire to be away from this silent street. He glanced around. The darkness was almost complete. He needed to be off the streets himself.

  ‘I know where I am going.’ The man gave a toothless smile and nodded. ‘It is not far.’

  Akil nodded back and was about to say something, but the man was already shuffling around the corner.

  For a second Akil did not move. Something in the exchange did not fit. He turned and took a step down the street, his hand unconsciously brushing his pocket.

  He went still. The pocket was empty, the data-slate gone. Cold dread spread through him. He checked his other pockets, and then the street.

  Nothing.

  He began to run in the direction the old man had gone, icy panic surging in his veins. He turned the corner. The wider street extended away into the gloom, silent and empty apart from scraps of rubbish dancing in the breeze.

  ‘You have given more than enough,’ the old man had said. Akil took another step, half thinking of running through the streets looking for the old man. He stopped. He would not find the old thief. The twilit alleys of the Sapphire City could swallow someone in a few swift paces; there were a dozen different ways the man could have gone from here.

  He took a deep breath and tried to steady his thoughts and pulse. He would have to–

  A flash in the sky suddenly bleached the street white. Akil raised his hands to shield his eyes. For a second he could see the veins in his eyelids.

  He looked up. The stars were falling, breaking apart into sprays of sparks, tumbling across the night sky.

  Fireworks, he thought. An unplanned celebration. A meteor shower…

  Sirens began to scream. First one in the distance, then another, then another until the blaring chorus echoed all around. He could see doors and windows opening, people looking out. Somewhere deep inside him possibilit
ies and fears combined. He thought of his daughters, sleeping in the manse on the other side of the city. People were filling the street now, pouring from doorways. Most froze as they emerged, their eyes locked upon the sky, their mouths moving, their words lost as the sirens wailed.

  Akil started to move, a few slow steps at first. Then he began to stride, shoving people out of his way. Then he was running.

  Above him the heavens wept tears of fire.

  The metal was cool against Brel’s forehead. He kept his eyes closed, allowing the headache to bleed out of his skin into the rim of the turret hatch. Somewhere outside the tank’s hull he could hear raised voices. He ignored them. A lot of crews did not like spending more time in their vehicles than necessary, but Brel found the presence of his machine peaceful. Silence he had named her, long ago in the aftermath of a battle that he was not sure anyone on Tallarn actually remembered. Whether fired up, or engine cold as she was now, she was his place, his realm, where everything lined up as it should. When the headaches came, it was the only place he wanted to be.

  The voices were getting louder, angry words filtering in through the open hatch above him.

  Not now, he thought. Not while the headache was drumming through his skull. He let out a breath and tried to shut out the sound of the voices.

  ‘You gotta pay,’ said a female voice, high-pitched, spite whining at the edges. He knew the voice. It was Jallinika, of course.

  ‘I can’t,’ said another voice, male, pleading, nasal. ‘I just can’t. Look–’ The man’s voice cut off with a grunt.

  ‘There’s more, lieutenant, sir,’ said Jallinika. Brel could tell that she was enjoying what was going on. ‘All the pain you want, just keep saying you can’t pay.’

  Another voice spoke, male, growling like the sea grinding pebbles against a cliff, too low for Brel to pick out words. It didn’t matter; he did not need to understand Calsuriz to recognise his voice. The big driver would be doing the muscle work, of course.