Tallarn

by John French

  ‘I can’t see anything.’

  Genji, thought Tahirah. Terra, she wished the girl would stop shouting. Tahirah did not answer; she had no idea what was going on. The enemy had vanished off the auspex. Flashes of amber, green and red danced across the black screen. She tried to focus on the auspex screen, flicking glances out of the periscope blocks. She could not see a damned thing either.

  She turned her view to the green icons of Silence and Deathlight on the auspex screen. Together they formed a wedge with Lantern at the tip. The first kill had been straight ahead and even then they had only been able to see it because of the heat bloom. Now they could not pinpoint the rest of the enemy force. She knew that there was a very real chance of the squadron falling apart, of doing something fatally stupid and hitting each other as they tried to kill the enemy. She pushed the right-hand cup of her headphones over her ear and clicked to transmit.

  ‘All call signs, this is Lantern, engage only with visual confirmation.’

  Hector and Brel acknowledged the command, their voices almost lost in the rising jumble of sound around her.

  ‘Where the hell have they gone?’ said Lachlan. His face was pressed against the rubber eyepieces of the Executioner’s main weapon targeter.

  ‘I’ve got one,’ came another shout. It was Udo, in the right sponson. She glanced at the auspex and saw the angular red return of metal and heat to their right. A target.

  Sharp-eyed little rat, she thought.

  ‘Turn, right, right, right. Target, right flank, eighty degrees narrowing, visual confirm to engage.’ The tone of the engine changed and the turret began to turn.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ shouted Udo.

  ‘Confirm enemy,’ said Tahirah, but the right sponson’s firing light was already glowing amber on her control panel. She opened her mouth to shout.

  ‘Firing.’

  ‘Udo! Confirm, damn you.’

  The lightning-crack of the lascannon echoed through the compartment.

  ‘Hit,’ whooped Udo.

  Tahirah pressed her eyes against one of the periscope viewers. She could barely see ten metres. Ochre clouds swirled in front of her eyes like silt in churned water. She switched to infra-sight and the world became a haze of grey. The heat of the las discharge was a fading line through the fog.

  ‘Lantern, this is Deathlight.’ Hector’s voice spat from her headset. ‘I have las flare to my front. Almost hit us. What’s going on?’

  ‘Udo!’ shouted Tahirah.

  ‘It was them, I saw,’ called Udo. She could almost see his face twist with denial, as if shooting the front off a friendly was just another understandable mistake.

  ‘Shut up,’ she snarled. Icons were dancing across the auspex now, fading from red to amber, overlaying and contradicting. It was like trying to punch someone you could only hear in the middle of a rain storm. The enemy were there, they were right–

  Red blossomed across the auspex. The Lantern rocked. White light flashed from the eyepieces of her periscopes. Lachlan swore. She glanced at him. His hands were pressed against his eyes. Genji and Makis were shouting. The auspex cleared. She stared.

  Deathlight’s green icon had vanished. A white smudge of heat rolled where it had been. Lantern kept driving forwards, its turret traversing so that it faced back towards Hector’s last position. Tahirah’s fingers slipped as she thumbed the comm-stud.

  ‘Deathlight, this is Lantern,’ she began.

  ‘It’s gone,’ shouted Lachlan. She did not want to look at him. She could hear enough in his voice.

  ‘Deathlight, respond.’

  ‘It’s gone.’

  Her skin suddenly felt very cold. Sounds seemed to be louder and further away.

  Genji’s voice cut through her. ‘Target. Firing.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Tahirah, but the word was lost as the left sponson fired.

  Akil closed his eyes against the glare as the fog outside lit up. Rashne was screaming into the vox. The world was all vibration and sudden noise. For a second when the oncoming tank had vanished in a ball of fire he had thought it was them – that they had been hit, and that he was trapped in his last second of awareness.

  Then the light had turned red, and black smoke had stained the firelit fog.

  More sound and light, and teeth-aching tremors spun around him as he pressed his eyelids shut and Rashne screamed on and on.

  ‘Stop,’ said Brel calmly. The rest of the crew said nothing, but he felt the engine disengage and the tone of the noise drop in the compartment. Jallinika was looking back at him, waiting for him to tell her if there was a target worth trying to see; they both knew that if she had her eye to gunsight without reason she would start firing at ghosts, or her own side.

  Old ways, and old tricks, thought Brel. And here we all are again. Home, like we never left.

  The fight had begun just how they always had, with a roar of death and then the hurtling descent into anarchy. He had felt Silence rock when Deathlight had gone up, and had heard Tahirah calling for a response. Tahirah’s machine had no idea what was going on, but they were still moving and firing anyway, at an enemy of unknown strength and unknown nature. All they had were the blips on their screens and the images skidding across their sights. They might get another kill, but they were dangerous to stay close to.

  Brel watched the auspex display. The Lantern had one confirmed kill, and the enemy had fired back and killed the Deathlight in reply. That meant a minimum of one enemy machine still out there, as well as the lost scout machine. The enemy were good. They must have broken formation as soon as they were ready to engage, and they were using the fog and auspex interference to hide themselves.

  Or they were jamming our scanners and comms, he thought, reducing both to unreliable junk. Very good indeed.

  ‘Jal,’ he said into the intra-crew vox. ‘Strength of an elite hunter unit in these conditions?’

  ‘Three.’ She shrugged. ‘No more than four.’

  ‘Two?’

  She laughed. ‘Only if you had no choice.’

  Brel nodded, and let out a long breath.

  ‘Yeah. I was worried you would agree.’

  He thought for a moment longer, and then gave one order.

  ‘Shut down the engine. Keep the load in the main gun. Keep comms, air, sights and auspex up, but close down the transponder.’

  There was the barest moment of hesitation. The transponder sent out a constant signal telling all other friendly units set to the same frequency where they were and that they were not something to fire at. Without it the Silence would appear as an unknown return on friendly auspex screens, and in a battle like this they would be a target to everyone.

  ‘Now,’ said Brel, and a second later the Silence became an inert slab of cooling armour.

  ‘Hit,’ called Genji. Tahirah shook her head, tried to focus, tried to grasp the passing threads of events.

  ‘Kill confirmed,’ said Lachlan. ‘I see fire.’

  Tahirah pressed her eyes to the periscope’s eyepieces. Flames lit the fog, spreading through it in an angry red glow as if the air itself was burning. She blinked moisture from her eyes. The fog thinned and she saw the enemy machine. She had not seen the first target clearly – none of them had, not even Lachlan as he pulled the trigger. The wreck had a low hull with raked frontal armour, and two weapon booms jutting from its flanks. One of the booms was gone, severed to a blackened stump. Its turret was a carbuncular dome, bearing the ribbed barrel of a conversion beamer. A skull grinned from the front plate in black wrought iron. She knew the class and she knew the emblem from a thousand remembrancer captured images of the Imperial conquest.

  Predator class, she thought. Iron Warriors Legion. And it was not dead, not even close.

  ‘Oh, illumination,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’ said Lachlan.

  T
he Predator was moving, thrusting towards them, its turret traversing to point back at her.

  ‘Kill not confirmed!’ yelled Tahirah. ‘Kill it, Lach! Kill it now!’

  ‘I see it,’ called Lachlan as the turret traversed. He went still, his finger on the firing trigger. ‘Oh, skies of Terra,’ he breathed.

  ‘Fire!’ Tahirah cried. The Predator was slowing, the muzzle of its turret gun settling on her like a dead stare.

  ‘I–’

  ‘Now!’ she shouted.

  Lachlan squeezed the trigger, and the destroyer cannon screamed. The blast hit the Predator’s turret collar and blew it off in a shower of half-melted armour. The destroyer kept firing, streaming plasma into the target, raking it with a sun’s fury.

  Heat warning lights bloomed around Tahirah, and suddenly the inside of Lantern was soaked in red. She reached across and knocked Lachlan’s hand from the gun’s trigger. Gas vented into the turret. Vail was swearing, scrambling for the coolant release lever at the rear of his pit beneath the main gun. He yanked it down and Tahirah heard the coolant lines ring with sudden pressure. The red lights turned amber a second later.

  She breathed out. Vail had released the auxiliary lines just in time. Another second and the gun would have vented searing hot vapour into the turret; now it would off-line while it cooled properly. Lachlan was looking at her, his eyes wide behind the circles of his suit’s eyepieces.

  ‘Main weapon down,’ she announced calmly, and thanked the suit for hiding the tears she could feel on her cheeks.

  ‘Boss…’ Lachlan’s voice was low.

  She turned away, taking in the auspex at a glance and speaking into the vox. She shook her head, focused on the auspex, on the red markers showing the two machine kills, and the eerie white where Deathlight had died. A yellow marker flickered on the edge of the screen highlighting an unidentified contact.

  ‘Target left – there is something else out there,’ she said, and heard her words echo across the vox.

  ‘Boss, I saw them before I fired,’ said Lachlan as if he had not heard her.

  She squinted at the static-laden display. The yellow marker of the unidentified machine was dimming, ringed with fading heat.

  ‘As if it were a cooling wreck,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Or as if it cut its engine.’

  ‘I saw the enemy crew trying to get out of the wreck,’ said Lachlan.

  ‘Target is live,’ she called. ‘Say again, target is live. Bastard is trying to hide.’

  ‘They were legionaries,’ said Lachlan, and snorted as if he had said something ridiculous. ‘The enemy out there are Space Marines.’

  Tahirah heard the words, and thought of the iron skull on the hull of the Predator. Space Marines, the thought rang in her head. Our enemies are Iron Warriors.

  ‘I have visual!’ shouted Genji in the left sponson.

  Tahirah looked out of the periscope. The target was there, a low angular shape, half exposed by a billow in the fog. She opened her mouth to give the kill order.

  ‘Fir–’

  ‘Can you hear us?’ the voice burst into her ears, filled with panic and static. Human. Tahirah felt her mind turn over, her mouth and body frozen. ‘Please,’ came the voice again. ‘Please say you can hear us.’

  ‘Tah, I have the target,’ called Genji.

  ‘Hold!’ shouted Tahirah. She was suddenly aware of fresh sweat prickling over her skin inside the enviro-suit.

  ‘This is Lantern. We hear and see you. Identify yourself.’

  For a second there was nothing, and then the voice came back.

  ‘Rashne, my name is Rashne.’ She could hear the tremble in the words.

  It’s them, she thought. It’s the scout and I almost ordered them dead.

  She glanced back at the auspex, the heat markers of the dead flickering in the green swell of static. No sign of Silence. Perhaps the seals had failed on their machine. Perhaps they were somewhere out there beyond auspex range. Perhaps the fog…

  She shut off the train of thought.

  Two enemies dead – maybe – for the loss of half her squadron. Somehow, she had never thought her first engagement would come down to such a cold equation.

  But it did not matter. Not now. It was a long way back to the shelter complex, and what remained of her squadron needed to be far away and fading in the fog before more Iron Warriors came for them. She thumbed the external transmission button.

  ‘Rashne,’ she said into the vox. She noticed that her voice was still calm and steady. It did not feel like it belonged to her. ‘We are coming to you. Move to flank us when you see us, and stay so close that you can see the serial numbers on the hull.’

  ‘All right,’ said Rashne. ‘All right.’

  ‘Good. And use your call sign. Out.’ She switched to the internal vox. ‘Mak, get us moving. Left, forty degrees.’

  Makis called in acknowledgement, and she felt Lantern’s engine gun to full life as they came about.

  We have slain angels and lived, she thought, and began to let out a long breath.

  The Predator cannon round hit Lantern as it was turning, and blew the left sponson off in a shriek of shearing metal.

  ‘There you are,’ said Brel, his eyes steady on the auspex as the enemy flared red with heat. ‘Jallinika, target is right flank, twenty degrees and coming closer. Take the shot as soon as you can see its back. Cal, power us up and take us straight forward, on my word.’ He paused. Around him his machine and crew were waiting: Jallinika with her eyes pressed to the firing sight, Calsuriz with his hand on the ignition, Selq holding the next round for the main gun.

  So still, he thought. All of them so still.

  The enemy was accelerating forward from where it had folded itself into a pocket of interference. He could try and take it now, but the angle was not optimal, not for a machine kill. That and he had to be sure that it was alone. The Lantern was taking fire. He could hear the boom and smack of the enemy Predator’s cannon. The Lantern was slewing around as it tried to turn its frontal armour to meet the enemy.

  ‘Smart move,’ Brel muttered to himself. A flattened boom rang through the stillness. The enemy had fired again. The Lantern was trying to turn, but the Predator was faster and would be behind her again in a few seconds.

  Tahirah tried to breathe. Alarms were fighting with the howl of the engine. Udo was screaming into the vox. Dozens of thoughts crowded her mind.

  Where did they come from? They have us cold. Nothing we can do. Where were they? Has the hull lost integrity? We are going to die now. They were trying to get behind us. We have to turn. We have to return fire. We have to–

  Something hit the front armour with the force of a Titan’s kick, and Lantern rang like a gong. Tahirah’s head slammed into the cannon mount. Blackness bloomed at the edge of her vision. Then the machine slewed and the force whipped her backwards like a ragdoll. There was blood on the inside of her eyepieces. Her ears were ringing, her skull filling with darkness.

  ‘No!’ she shouted, but the Lantern was pulsing with wild alarm light, and all she could hear was Udo screaming that he could see something.

  Please, she thought, though she did not know to whom she was pleading. Not here. Not now.

  ‘Now,’ called Brel. The Silence roared as it came to life. Stillness became the bone-rattling scream of metal moving against metal, of engines breathing fumes and power. They ground forwards, slow at first then faster. The turret traversed, with a hiss of motors and bearings. The enemy had seen them and was slowing, turning to meet this new threat.

  ‘Got you,’ said Jallinika, and Brel could hear the smile in the words. ‘Firing.’

  The Vanquisher shell hit the Predator on its rear plating and lodged inside in the blink of an eye.

  The Predator detonated. A fire cloud expanded through the fog, scattering chunks of armour. The turret li
fted from its back like a leaf in a gust of wind. For a second, the fog was smeared the colour of blood and molten iron. Then the fire curdled to black smoke over the tank’s carcass.

  Brel blinked and nodded to himself.

  ‘Come into formation with the others.’

  After a second he flicked the external vox live.

  ‘Lantern, this is Silence,’ he said.

  A burst of curses filled his ears. For some reason it made him smile. After a few seconds a lull came. He clicked the vox open again.

  ‘Lantern, this is Silence. You are very welcome.’

  The Iron Warriors had thought the battle done. In the long weeks since the virus bombardment their forces on Tallarn’s surface had seen no sign of any survivors. Their first battle losses corrected that understanding. Their response was to pour more forces onto the planet’s surface. Dark-hulled macro-landers sank into Tallarn’s atmosphere to dump armoured vehicles onto the sludge-covered plains.

  Typhon siege tanks, Sabre Hunters, Land Raiders, Predators and Fellblades rolled from the landing grounds, gouging trenches in the sludge. These were the vehicles of the Legiones Astartes, crewed by Iron Warriors sealed in atmosphere-hardened armour. Beside them came detachments of Mechanicum war engines, Legio Cybernetica maniples and the war machines of half a dozen human cohorts bonded to the IV Legion. Tens of thousands of vehicles spread out from a dozen dropsites across Tallarn’s two main continents.

  It was a force that had broken enemies of many times their number, but in truth it was only a fraction of the Iron Warriors might. Much remained aboard their ships, but there was no error in the Iron Warriors calculations: they would end what upstart life remained on Tallarn. That was beyond doubt.

  Iron Warriors signals ran across the surface, scratching on the dead wind, blowing and clicking across ruined cities and sludge plains. The signals rose from the block-sided landing craft of the invaders, and scattered to the sky and the ships that waited above. Buried in their shelters the survivors listened. Arrays trawled the air, catching rattling snatches of code, and taking them beneath the earth to where men and women sat hunched in the half-darkness, listening to the signals scratch and whine. They did not know what the Iron Warriors were saying, but they knew that it meant that the enemy had come in strength.