by John French
‘You see them?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Jarvak replied.
The dust and scoured rocks shifted like snow beneath his tread. The wind was rising. Snakes of dust were sliding across the ground. He kept his gaze on the storm wall. His weapons were ready. They had been ready from the moment he had seen the ghosts in the storm. At first he had thought they were simply shadows in the storm, scattered images created by the churning dust. Then one had briefly solidified into the shape of a tank, its silhouette swallowed as soon as it had appeared. Then he had seen more, each one a different size and in a different place, but every time he saw them they were closer.
‘I have no sensor readings.’
‘We should fire.’
‘Hold.’ He spoke the word as much for himself as the others. His world narrowed to the threat markers tracking the oncoming shapes. His weapon systems felt warm. He shifted. The fingers of his fists clacked shut and opened. He did not register the movement. The guns that were part of him were aching. ‘Hold,’ he said again.
‘It could be an entire army group,’ said a voice he could not identify. It did not matter. All that mattered was the building pain around the muzzles of his guns.
‘All the more reason not to shoot.’ That was Jarvak. At least he thought… He forced a thought to form in his mind.
‘Signal them,’ he growled.
‘Unknown units identify yourselves.’ The ghost shapes grew in the rolling wall of dust, shapes hardening into hulls of war machines, into gun barrels, and tracks.
‘Do we fire?’
‘Hold.’ The heat was bleeding through him.
‘Do we fire?’
Fire… Fire… Fire… The word echoed and rolled through him, like a drumbeat, like a heartbeat that had become his.
Fire…
The metal of his bones was aching. There was lightning under his skin. He was nothing. He was half a being, an empty skin hung like a banner in a dry wind.
Fire… We only live… in fire…
And above him a black sun hung in the half-dream of his thoughts, scattering light that cast no shadow. It grew, swelling, and bloating, and he had to fire, had to allow the shadow of destruction to become part of the world. The black sun swallowed him and he was…
Standing before the memory of Perturabo.
‘You will be given a… guide, to lead you, and your cadre will go with you, but you will be alone.’ The hard edge had returned to Perturabo’s voice, and his eyes had seemed to sink back into the stillness of his face. ‘There are eyes within our allies that watch us, and look for weakness in us. They are all around us, never blinking, never sleeping.’ The primarch turned and began to move away as one the Iron Circle moved to enclose him. ‘They cannot know of this. Even those that go with you should know only what they need. No other, even those within the Legion, may know what you do for me.’
‘I will find it, my master.’
‘Others looked. Others failed.’
‘I will not fail.’
‘Unknown units identify yourselves.’ Jarvak’s challenge rang across the vox. The image of his father was gone. The black sun was gone. He felt nothing, the embrace of his metal body cold without sensation. For an instant he felt loss. The dust wind was streaking past, swallowing the edges of everything in sight. The cliff-face of the storm was above, its crest flickering with dry lightning. The ghosts advancing with the storm were no longer ghosts, they were war machines of the Legiones Astartes. Three machines rolled forward as though riding with the wind, a Venator, a Sicaran and the slope-fronted slab of a Land Raider. Their armour was metallic blue, the edges of their armour plates rubbed to bright metal. Etched serpents reared across their plates. Numerals and archaic letters ran in neat rows down white bands painted along their flanks. Hrend did not recognise the unit markings or even the organisational structure they conformed to. But he recognised who they were.
They were scions of the last born: Alpha Legion.
The three Alpha Legion vehicles halted. Hrend switched to infra-sight in time to see that their weapons were hot, held at full charge.
‘Harrow Group Arcadus, Twentieth Legion.’ The voice came over the vox, filled with a pop and snarl of distortion. ‘We see you, brothers.’
‘Signal identifiers confirm,’ said Jarvak. Hrend said nothing, watching as heat bled into the surrounding air from the Alpha Legion tanks. The wind gusted and the ochre swirl of dust enveloped them. The sky above was gone, and with it the sun.
‘How are you here?’ he asked at last.
‘May I not ask the same question first, ancient?’ came the reply, the voice smooth and confident.
‘I am not of the ancients,’ he replied.
‘My apologies. I am Thetacron. Who do I address?’
‘How are you here?’ he repeated.
Hes-Thal’s sight had guided them on through desolation after the battle of the pass. They had not seen even the signs of the dead for a very long time. In his sight the targeting runes blinked between red and amber above the three Alpha Legion machines, the words of Perturabo rising from memory.
There are eyes within our allies that watch us, and look for weakness in us. They are all around us, never blinking, never sleeping.
‘We hit an enemy patrol on the other side of this depression,’ said the voice which had named itself Thetacron. Casual arrogance dripped from his tones. ‘We are moving back across towards a hold position.’
‘You move with the storm?’ asked Jarvak.
‘We are the storm.’
Hrend pivoted his head. Data from his sensors flickered as they tried to claw detail from the swirl of charged dust.
‘You can navigate through it?’
‘Of course,’ Thetacron replied, paused, then carried on. ‘From the damage I can see on your machines, you must have taken casualties. We also are below strength. Where are you bound?’
A line of lightning cracked above them, turning the ochre swirl to sheet white.
Hrend could feel the tension in the situation itching against his instincts.
‘South,’ he said.
‘With the storm wind,’ said Thetacron. ‘We share a path. We will join with you.’
‘Master?’ Jarvak’s voice cut through the vox, low, insistent.
‘If you wish to keep moving through the storm we can guide you.’
The moment lengthened, and the wind tugged sheets of dust across them.
‘That is acceptable,’ he said.
‘Master…’
‘Good,’ said Thetacron. ‘You are the greater strength, you have our command. Who is it that we have the honour of following?’
‘I am Hrend,’ he said.
Argonis’s prison was a cube of plasteel, without seam or rivet. He had entered through a single door as thick as tank armour, and had heard a cascade of locks turn when it closed. Air seeped in and out from holes around the door no wider than a child’s finger. They had taken his armour, of course, and left him with a robe of grey fabric. Water and nutrition paste came through tubes mounted on the door, though he could have lived without both for many months. The door had remained shut since he had entered, and he had no reason to suppose that it would open again. They were watching him though. A pict-lens and sensor blister sat behind a crystal dome at the centre of the ceiling.
He supposed that this state of isolation might have caused panic, or the mind to begin to eat itself with uncontrolled emotion. For Argonis, his mind became focused, his emotions stilled.
The mysteries that had made him allowed no other response. He had failed, but while that weighed on his thoughts it was secondary. First and foremost he had to plan, had to find a way of turning this situation. That there was hope of doing so did not matter. Hope was one thing that he did not need to live.
They had not killed him. Deceivi
ng the Warmaster was one thing, killing his emissary was another. The fact that they had resisted crossing that line implied that this was not treachery in the simple sense. If Perturabo had intended to move against Horus in the future, killing his representative would have been a simple thing. Holding him prisoner held more risk, but also opened the implication that Perturabo wanted to keep what he was doing secret from the Warmaster now. There were many possibilities as to why that might be, but one stood out more clearly than all the rest as Argonis considered them.
They have not succeeded in whatever their true purpose on Tallarn is, and if the Warmaster knew that purpose he might stop them before it was complete.
What that purpose was remained unknown, a shape suggested by the few details that Sota-Nul had told him before they were taken.
Black Oculus, ghost patrols, path seekers… the words resonated with implication but without clear conclusion. He thought of the words that Maloghurst had spoken to him before he had left the Vengeful Spirit.
Horus had not been present, but his throne with its empty chair had loomed in Argonis’s awareness as though his gene-father had been sitting there, silent, his eyes turned away in reproach.
‘Find out what they are doing,’ Maloghurst had said, looking down at him from beside the empty throne.
‘Cannot we just ask?’ Argonis had kept his voice respectful, but he had pointedly not bowed his head to the Equerry. He might speak for the primarch, but he was not Horus, and Argonis had been one of Abaddon’s chieftains for more than enough time to find making obeisance to Maloghurst a line that he would not cross, even now.
‘We can ask, but there are answers and answers.’
‘The Lord of Iron has always been stalwart in his backing for the Warmaster.’
‘He has, but we live in times when presumption is as dangerous as cowardice.’ Maloghurst left the word hanging at the tail of his words. Argonis felt the muscles tick in his jaws. ‘Besides, this engagement of his is sucking in and spending forces at a rate which must be justified. It is a hungry battle he is fighting, and we are fighting a war in which we cannot let such strength be spent blindly.’
‘What do you suspect?’
‘Suspect?’ A rattling smile had been in that word. ‘I suspect nothing. I fear everything. That is my great virtue. Find out what they are doing there, and why.’
‘If the reason is simple?’
‘Then impress on them that this battle cannot last for all time.’
Argonis had wanted to shake his head. It was not that he was being sent on a mission that was so clearly a punishment concealed in an honour, it was that it felt dirty, tainted by subterfuge. After all that had happened, all the bonds of brotherhood severed, and the blood on all their hands, such a sense perhaps should not have mattered to him. It did matter to him, though. It mattered a great deal.
Maloghurst had watched him with wet, pale eyes while the instincts of honour and obedience warred behind Argonis’s face.
‘This is the Warmaster’s will?’ he asked at last.
‘To the letter and word.’
‘And if there is… something else, some reason that is not simple?’
‘Bring them to heel,’ said Maloghurst.
Argonis had been able to hide the disbelief on his face. How was he supposed to bring a system-killing force, led by a primarch, to heel?
Maloghurst had heard both the disbelief and the question in Argonis’s silence, and his eyes had sparkled cold, as he raised a hand and a pair of figures had drifted from the shadows. They had come to a halt beside Maloghurst: a black-robed spectre, and a green-robed man with a head locked in iron. Maloghurst had raised his other hand. Between his armoured fingers he held a key with twisted teeth.
‘You will not go alone,’ he had said.
Argonis thought of the key, taken along with his weapons and armour. Sota-Nul and Prophesius too, taken and imprisoned, or so he presumed. He would need them both, if he was to complete the mission his primarch had given him. It was not in his nature to accept the possibility of failure, but as the time had passed in the cell he had felt its presence growing in his awareness.
‘This is a chance, Argonis,’ Maloghurst had said, as he had handed him the standard of the Eye of Horus. ‘A chance for forgiveness, or oblivion. Which will it be?’
Iaeo blinked. It was the closest she came to rest now.
Rest, what even was that? She had suppressed so many of the physical elements of severe fatigue that both exhaustion and rest existed only as concepts, terms to apply or not. She was fairly sure that the taste of blood in her mouth related to the presence of one, and the absence of the other, but she was not going to examine that data.
She could not rest, not now. She barely moved except to shift location, and she had taken the risk of not doing that several times now. There was just too much to process, too many lines of manipulation, of observed effect, and recalculation. She could not step away from it for even a second.
Half of the battle-scape of Tallarn breathed in and out of her subconscious. She had taps into the Iron Warriors communications, into the Alpha Legion’s communications, she saw her enemies and they did not see her. She had even re-tasked a portion of the Iron Warriors communication system to leech data and signals from the loyalists. It was the finest data harvest she had created. With a blink she could see the operative called Jalen, with another blink she could read the reports of Jalen’s operatives. There were holes, true, but what was art without imperfection? She had heard that once she was sure, but she could not remember where. She had suppressed a lot of extraneous memories recently. It did not matter, the point still stood.
It was beautiful. A few simple bare facts. A mission sent here, a location signal there, a report here, all circling ignorance like water draining into a hole. Fear, and defiance, and hope. People were supposed to be unpredictable, but they were not, they really were not. If you could see what they knew, their responses became like the directions of ships under sail.
Something wet rolled down from her nose in the physical world she was ignoring. It touched her lips. It tasted the same as the blood already in her mouth.
She had been wrong. Not wrong in her calculations, but wrong in her mission objective. It had been too narrow, too direct, too tame. The possibility she had sensed when Argonis and his witch discovered the Black Oculus Navigators was no longer a possibility. It was the primary target, and it was achievable, the calculations confirmed it.
She wondered if any being on the system knew the truth, besides her. Perturabo of course, but even he did not see as she did. Not now. This was her battle now. Her song.
She narrowed her awareness, focusing down on a few spurs of possibility. It just needed a shift, a little panic, a little desperation.
And there, shining like a silver fish cutting through dark water, was a beginning.
It was a simple signal. The layers of ciphers encoding it had baffled the Iron Warriors, but Iaeo had broken it by simply taking the key encoding from the Alpha Legion.
‘Iron Warriors sweep force under command of Hrend moving north towards Media Depression.’ A location code was embedded with the words.
She smiled, and the movement nudged a bead of still-liquid blood onto her tongue. The signal had yet to reach the Alpha Legion, and now it never would. She formed the signal which would, slowly taking her time over each phrase.
‘Iron Warriors sweep force under command of Hrend lost. Advise use of Imperial assets to intercept. Strong indications that they are closing the artefact. Advise use of all means to isolate and terminate this force.’
She paused after she composed the signal. It would be the last to come from the force trailing Hrend and his machines. Even if they sent more they would never be heard. This was it, their last word.
She nodded to herself, and loosed the signal. She would have to shift locat
ion soon. She could see Jalen now, could predict him and his attempts to shut her down, but part of her still remembered that she needed to be alive to function. She would move, she would, but not yet. She wanted to watch for a little longer.
Part Three
TERMINATION
Discord and desperation almost ended the Battle of Tallarn. The Governor Militant’s death cracked the old fractures in the loyalists wide. Though Dellasarius had not been their leader he had been a pivot around which the battle moved, a stone that even the wildest currents of dissent had to flow around. Now he was gone, and every officer, hetman, demi-admiral, commander and captain saw the future differently. Some wanted to withdraw forces from the planet entirely, and make the battle one fought in the void alone. Others wanted to attack the Sightless Warren immediately, others argued for a return to the hit-and-run tactics of the battle’s early phases.
The leaders of some factions did not even venture an opinion on a combined strategy. They simply began to take action. Myrmidax Kravitas Beta-Prime left the surface, their landing craft swarming up into the high atmosphere to create footholds in the charred remains of dead ships and gutted weapon platforms. A ragged company of war machines took to the world above, and began attacking any other machines they came across. Mesucon, Siridar Count of House Megron, formed a banner of fifteen Knights and struck to the southern polar marches in search of enemies. And more went their own ways, either to a battlefield of their own making, or to a grave made by their wilfulness. And the arguments raged on, echoing in the command chambers of the fortress shelters and across the vox connecting them. For some the conviction that they were right drove them to argue, for others the fears inside led them to see death and failure in every alternative put in front of them.
One man ended the discord. He was called Gorn. He had come to Tallarn with the rank of general, but for years had nothing to command. Caught on Tallarn when Horus’s rebellion ignited he had waited as the war ignored him. Then the Iron Warriors had come and given him a war. In the days which followed the bombardment Gorn had been amongst the first to contact other shelters, and to begin to coordinate a response. His name was known by all, as was his reputation. A hard man, they said. Hard to like, and harder not to respect. He had taken to the surface thirty times, returning each time with at least one personal machine kill. A breech failure in one of those sorties had gouged scars across his jaw and down his neck. He had said nothing throughout the long hours of argument. The best accounts agree that he broke that silence with three words.
