Tallarn

by John French

  He keyed the vox. Static first, then a silence which seemed to wait for him to speak. He licked his lips, suddenly aware that his mouth was dry.

  ‘All units…’ he began. ‘This is War Anvil…’ he trailed away. Was the rest of his crew even alive? He looked at the air supply levels.

  Throne, they were low. He switched to a total band broadcast.

  ‘This is War Anvil, if you can hear, respond.’

  From somewhere deeper in War Anvil’s hull he heard a clank as something metal unlocked. A second later a masked face look up at him.

  ‘Sir,’ said a female voice over the vox. It was barely a croak.

  ‘Shornal?’ he asked, and the sponson gunner nodded. ‘Is no one else…?’ he began.

  She gave the sketch of a shrug.

  ‘I don’t know, sir. It’s been quiet for a while. Since the shooting stopped.’

  ‘Did we take any damage?’

  ‘No. I don’t…’ She just sat down then, slumping to the floor.

  ‘Shornal,’ he said, putting every scrap of strength and calm into her name. Her head jerked up towards him. Her eyes were veined blotches behind the suit lenses. ‘Damage?’ he asked speaking the word clearly.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She swayed where she sat. ‘But… but the engine went quite a while ago. Don’t know why.’ Her head nodded then came up sharply as though jerked by a string. ‘Sir,’ she added in a smudged voice.

  Kord blinked as what she had said soaked into him. If the engines were down then… then… the air supply was running on reserve power. His thoughts were running like thick oil. He blinked, and brought his hand up to his face. The gloved fingers filled his eyes. He tapped the front of his mask, breathed in, felt the smallest trickle of cool air on his face, and realised that they were all very close to dying.

  He reached over, trying not to move too quickly, trying to keep the grey fog to the edge of his sight. He pushed Sacha. Her slumped form shifted, but did not stir. He tried to move his legs, to slide down into the space beneath the turret. They would not move. They simply would not move. He looked at his hand, wondering for a dreamlike second if it too would refuse to move.

  ‘Shornal,’ he said carefully. ‘Can you reach Mori in the drive cradle?’

  ‘I… think so.’ She began to crawl across the floor. Empty shell casings rolled under her. Inch by inch, she moved out of sight. Kord kept the vox open all the while, trying to take, very, very shallow breaths. The minutes bled slowly past.

  ‘I’m here.’ Shornal was breathing hard.

  ‘Mori?’ he asked.

  ‘Not moving, sir.’

  ‘Try and wake him.’

  ‘He’s… he is gone, sir.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘There is blood all over his eyepieces. Throne!’ she swore, and Kord tensed. The grey clouds grew. He fought his heartbeat down. ‘There’s blood on the controls, sir. His face… he must have slammed into the rig when we took a hit.’

  ‘Can you see the controls?’ asked Kord measuring out the words.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is a lever, a red lever just beside the controls. You see it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pull it.’

  The noise of a faint clank reached him. Then another. Then nothing.

  ‘Sir–’

  ‘Try it again,’ he said. A pause, another clank, another silence. He heard her try and take a breath. How many more times can she try before she passes out, he wondered? Grey drifted across his narrowing world.

  These machines are supposed to have hearts that beat forever, he thought.

  Clank.

  But all hearts could fail.

  Clank.

  He closed his eyes.

  Clank.

  War Anvil woke with a shudder of power. Air spluttered across his face and he gasped.

  He coughed. The fresh air burned as it filled his lungs. He breathed, and breathed, and breathed as War Anvil’s engine plant shook its hull. Relief flooded through him. He looked at his hands, flexed the fingers, and found that he could move his legs. He glanced at the fire light still spilling through the armourglass vision slits. They had to get moving.

  He slid out of his seat. He would have to unplug his air until he was in the drive cradle. He took a deep breath and snapped the hose free. A stab of panic gripped him as the air cut out. He dropped into the crawl space under the turret, his feet sliding briefly on the brass cases of shells. Shornal sat next to the driver position, her chest heaving as she swallowed down air. Mori’s corpse hung half in and half out of the drive cradle. Blood had dribbled from his suit’s broken eyepieces and dried in sticky brown runnels on his suit.

  The breath he was holding in his chest had started to ache, and he could feel the grey fog pushing at the edge of his sight again. He slotted his air hose into place, heard the valve clink open, and breathed again. He looked around. He could see the unmoving shape of Saul, the forward gunner, hanging from the demolisher niche. He looked down to Shornal. She was breathing more steadily now.

  ‘You ever driven a machine?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. He nodded, and pulled Mori’s corpse out of the drive cradle. It lolled, the dead weight almost pulling him down as he lowered it gently.

  ‘Go check all of the others. Wake them if you can.’ She nodded, and began to crawl towards Saul in the forward gun niche.

  Kord lowered himself into the drive cradle and looked at the controls. It had been over two decades since he had steered a tank. There was blood on the sight block and control levers. It stuck to his hands as he took hold of them. ‘Saul’s alive,’ said Shornal. ‘So is Kog, and Zade, though they are still out.’

  ‘Sacha?’

  ‘Can’t tell.’ He could hear the hesitation in her voice.

  ‘Get into the turret,’ he said. ‘Watch the auspex and vox.’

  He turned back to the controls. The assault tank was larger, heavier and more powerful than anything he had driven before. He glanced through the forward viewfinder. The augmented display had dimmed the light of the fires to near black, but he could see the wreck of a machine directly in front of them. Flames gushed from its hatches, and its front armour ended in a twisted ruin. A white blaze, somehow still visible through the soot and flame, ran down the dead machine’s flank. Mourner, he recognised without having to think. Abbas’s battered old face floated in his mind as he watched the flames.

  Slowly he engaged War Anvil’s power, and the tank moved forward, gradually at first, and then with heavy purpose.

  ‘Colonel!’ Shornal’s voice cut through his concentration. ‘There is something moving out there.’ Ice pulsed from his heart. One of the enemy had survived, or another ambush group had come to see what had happened to the first.

  ‘War Anvil,’ the tired voice, came over the vox. ‘War Anvil, this is Razor. Respond, War Anvil.’

  Kord felt his hands shaking on the controls.

  ‘Origo?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Razor is still going?’

  ‘Still alive, sir. Yes.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  The pause spoke the truth before Origo put it into words.

  ‘No other signs of life.’ Another pause. ‘We were going to head north. I didn’t think anyone else was alive… until War Anvil’s plant started up.’

  Kord nodded, then realised no one could see. The fatigue that had been hidden beneath adrenaline began to nudge back into his limbs and thoughts. With it came another thought, one that he did not want to look at now, the thought that he had done exactly what Abbas had feared; he had killed almost everyone who had trusted him.

  ‘North?’ he said.

  ‘There’s supposed to be a shelter up on the edge of these flats. At least if we are where I think we are.’

 
; ‘All right,’ Kord said. ‘North. Lead us out.’

  ‘Sir,’ replied Origo.

  Kord began to feed power into the tracks again.

  ‘And, Origo…’ The words came without him deciding to say them.

  ‘Yes, colonel.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Hrend ran into the flames, his strides powdering stone to dust. His meltaguns were singing. The blast wave from the Baneblade’s death hit him. The world vanished in fire and the hail ring of shrapnel. His shields fizzed as they reduced the debris to fire and dust. He could taste his weapons’ need to burn. He could feel the death of metal, and the ring of shrapnel. He was burning, drowning in iron. He was…

  …running down the slope towards the spreading shockwave of the Baneblade’s death.

  Gortun was running beside him, a wet roar bubbling from his speaker units. The rest of the Cyllaros accelerated across and down the valley floor. Each of them had a pattern of attack, and a set of secondary patterns and target priorities. The trio of Predators were already firing, conversion beamers and lascannons reducing the surviving battle tank from the Baneblade’s guard to a scream of light and shattering metal. Orun and the two Venators were shifting position on the high ground. They would be ready to fire again in six seconds.

  Directly in front of Hrend one of the enemy squadrons was pulling around. A pulse of las energy hit the stone beneath his stride. Rock splinters hit his shields, flashing to powder. The dust rattled against his skin. He saw the long barrel of a Vanquisher turn towards him. It promised an end, a chance to rest from war, to let go of iron. But it would never fire.

  Hrend jinked to the side, raised his arms, fingers splayed. The Vanquisher was twenty strides away. The barrel of the cannon was a black circle in his eyes. Two spears of white heat leapt from his hands. The cannon barrel melted as it fired. The blast blew out of the top and back of the Vanquisher’s turret.

  He ran directly at the wreck. Behind it two more battle tanks were turning, hunting for targets. The air was hissing with gunfire, screaming as the fire rose to stain the clouds above.

  A scout tank came around the wreck of the dead Vanquisher. It was fast and the human piloting it had reacted faster than Hrend had estimated. That was a mistake. Hrend levelled his hand. The energy built in his palm. Inside his cocoon of iron, he felt the heat spill up his nerves. It felt impossible. It felt like being alive again.

  Gortun hit the scout an instant before Hrend was going to fire. Drill claws screamed into armour plate, as the other Dreadnought shunted the tank across the ground. Its tracks shredded free from its wheels as it gouged through snow and stone. It struck a boulder, and for a second Gortun reared up above it. The teeth of his drill claws glittered in the red, rolling light. Gortun slammed his claws down. Tatters of metal fountained up. Hull plates tore. Hrend could see a figure in a bulky suit scrabbling inside the split hull. Then the poisoned air found a weakness in the suit, and the figure juddered as his flesh became jelly.

  Gortun reached into the wreck’s guts, and his claws pinched shut. A ball of flame enveloped the other Dreadnought, but Gortun was standing, wrenching the burning wreck into the air. Hrend heard his brother’s roar spill through the vox and air. Then he realised that he was screaming too, running on, his machine form flowing as if it were his own muscle, as if it were following a hunger he had not realised he had, a hunger to live again, a hunger to live and burn.

  He killed the next tank with his hands. It was trying to turn, its tracks churning rock fragments in its wake. He struck it in the side. One hand clamped around its turning tracks and ripped backwards. A shattered length of track arced into the air above him. The tank slewed as its other track spun it into a circle. Hrend shook as the machine’s bulk slammed into him. He punched downwards, just behind the block of a side sponson. The welded join shattered. Hrend gripped and fired his melta. Molten armour bored into the machine’s heart and out of the other side. In his sarcophagus Hrend thought he could taste cooking flesh. Hrend stepped back. The wreck slewed to stillness. Flames were spewing from its back in a bright crest.

  He stood for a second looking at the dead machine. The battlefield seemed almost silent, the sounds of explosions a dull rumble, like the crash of distant waves. He knew where each of his machines was, but everything seemed remote, as though something had just been unplugged from his awareness. To his left the Predator trio were moving in deliberately erratic patterns on the lower slopes. Lascannon light flicked from their sponsons. The Venators were shifting firing position again. Jarvak’s machine was still on the opposite side of the valley, hidden from sight behind the wall of fire and smoke. They had torn the enemy force in half for no loss, the battle plan had unfolded exactly as it should have. Except something was wrong, something that had nothing to do with whether they would survive this fight.

  Something was calling him, something within him, something that perhaps had always been there.

  Iron within.

  He could feel it gripping, pulling him in with a relentless strength. With his own strength. It felt like the promise of air when drowning. It felt like life.

  Iron without.

  And he wanted to let go. He wanted to let it become. He wanted to feel alive again. He wanted to be more than a corpse clad in iron.

  He felt his limbs start to move.

  The Stormlord broke from the curtain of flame.

  Hrend twisted aside as the machine rammed through the wreck of the machine he had just killed. The hull hit Hrend with armour-cracking force. He fell, his senses filling with blinking warning runes. He hit the ground, gouging a track across the earth. He stopped and began to rise.

  The barrels of the Stormlord’s megabolter were turning faster and faster. One of Hrend’s Predators on the valley side was dead ahead of the spinning barrels.

  Hrend pulled a leg beneath him. There was oil on the ground, dribbling from his iron frame, black flecks pattering on dirty snow.

  The muzzles of the Stormlord’s guns were a blur. The Predators were breaking, scattering across the slope, their guns turning to point at the Stormlord.

  Hrend stood. Amber warning runes painted his sight. His shields were gone. He felt pistons twist and gears snap. They felt like broken bones, and shredding muscle. He charged.

  The megabolter fired. Shells breathed from the spinning barrels. The side of the valley vanished. Rock, dust and shrapnel spread in a roaring cloud. Shell casings sprayed from the Stormlord, raining on its hull as they fell. The Predators struggled on for a second, their armour distorting as round after round chewed into their hulls. Hrend saw the status runes of the three Predators pulse to amber and then blink to red. He began to run towards the Stormlord. Hrend had shut off his audio sensors when the first shot was fired, but he could still hear the megabolter. It shook the fluid-filled dark of his coffin and into his skull, like the roar of an iron dragon.

  He raised his hands to fire. At the edge of his sight he saw two of his Venators moving, trying to outrun the storm of gunfire which churned the slope. They would fail. The megabolter was simply cutting Hrend’s force to pieces.

  The Stormlord twisted back, tracks screaming and shattering stone. A sponson gun swivelled to point at Hrend. He fire–

  The shells slammed into his torso. Fire swallowed his sight. He staggered, his charge faltering. Shell impacts slammed through him. Blood seeped into the amnion around his body. More rounds struck, ringing his world to shrill silence. Part of him – the part which had been forged and trained to war – felt everything and catalogued it dispassionately.

  The Stormlord’s main gun was not firing at him; if it was he would already be dead. It was a heavy bolter. Its shells were substantial but not potent enough to crack his armour. Yet they could batter him down, hammer him to kneeling, shatter his sensors and leave him blind. They were not firing to kill him, they were firing to hold him until the main gun coul
d turn and reduce him to shards and blood slime. That moment was coming, winding down into certainty with each second he was not moving.

  He began to stand, fists raised, forearm plates reverberating as the bolter shells exploded against them. His sensors were blurring with threat markers and damage readings. The fire ceased. He took a step forward. His sight cleared. The Stormlord was pivoting its spinning barrels, glowing cherry red as they dragged fire down the slope, down towards him.

  He took another step, damaged servos wailing as he began to level his guns. He willed the missile free from his carapace. Nothing, just a sparking blank feeling of blown connections.

  A wedge-shaped hull broke from the screen of fire behind the Stormlord. Scorches marked the brushed metal of its plating. Hrend saw a trio of targeting lasers glimmer in the ash-thickened air.

  ‘Master,’ called Jarvak’s voice, across the vox, and – as though the word were a command – the Sicaran fired all of its weapons.

  The back of the Stormlord exploded in a gout of black smoke. The vast machine lurched, its tracks still turning for an instant before becoming still. Promethium flames spread up its back, as it rocked to stillness. It was not dead though, not yet. It fired all of its guns, panning them across the ground around it, like a half-blind warrior trying to fend off attackers. Hrend ran, feeling the damage to his frame dig deeper. This was foolishness, it was not optimal, and it was nowhere near rational. But he was no longer seeing the world through those eyes. He was the iron within, and he could feel more than he ever had, more than he had in life. He was a weapon, and a weapon could only live by killing.

  He hit the front of the Stormlord, and bounded up the sloped front, fist rising. A spear of heat struck the cannon. A sphere of molten metal sprayed outwards. It hurt him. The plates of his armour cratered and blistered. He punched into the wounded Stormlord’s hull, gripped onto sagging metal and fired his meltagun.

  And the world became silent whiteness.

  Frost flashed over Taldak. Argonis felt his own teeth clamp shut as the air became like tar. The Iron Warrior juddered where he stood. Pale mist rose from him. Argonis thought he could see faces and open mouths in the vapour. Taldak’s helm was shaking in its socket. A smell of burning hair and honey flooded Argonis’s mouth and nose. He gagged. Taldak’s arms began to rise, straining as though against a great weight. Prophesius’s fingers were glowing where they touched the Iron Warrior’s helm. Argonis saw the shadows of bones and blood vessels within the astropath’s hand. Taldak began to turn, slow heavy fingers reaching for Prophesius’s arm, boltgun rising. Argonis stepped forward and clamped his own hands around Taldak’s arms.