Tallarn Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  The Horus Heresy

  Dramatis Personae

  Witness

  Executioner

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Epilogue

  Siren

  Ironclad

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Part Two

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Part Three

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Afterword

  About the Author

  A Black Library Publication

  The Horus Heresy

  It is a time of legend.

  The galaxy is in flames. The Emperor’s glorious vision for humanity is in ruins. His favoured son, Horus, has turned from his father’s light and embraced Chaos.

  His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, are locked in a brutal civil war. Once, these ultimate warriors fought side by side as brothers, protecting the galaxy and bringing mankind back into the Emperor’s light. Now they are divided.

  Some remain loyal to the Emperor, whilst others have sided with the Warmaster. Pre-eminent amongst them, the leaders of their thousands-strong Legions are the primarchs. Magnificent, superhuman beings, they are the crowning achievement of the Emperor’s genetic science. Thrust into battle against one another, victory is uncertain for either side.

  Worlds are burning. At Isstvan V, Horus dealt a vicious blow and three loyal Legions were all but destroyed. War was begun, a conflict that will engulf all mankind in fire. Treachery and betrayal have usurped honour and nobility. Assassins lurk in every shadow. Armies are gathering. All must choose a side or die.

  Horus musters his armada, Terra itself the object of his wrath. Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor waits for his wayward son to return. But his true enemy is Chaos, a primordial force that seeks to enslave mankind to its capricious whims.

  The screams of the innocent, the pleas of the righteous resound to the cruel laughter of Dark Gods. Suffering and damnation await all should the Emperor fail and the war be lost.

  The age of knowledge and enlightenment has ended.

  The Age of Darkness has begun.

  ~ Dramatis Personae ~

  Imperial Personae

  Dellasarius, Governor-Militant of Tallarn

  Susada Syn, Designated successor of Dellasarius

  Akil Sulan, Merchant prince of the Sapphire City

  Sabir, Prefectus, Tallarn government administration

  Gatt, Menial, Tallarn government administration

  Kulok, Citizen

  Tahirah, Lieutenant, First Squadron commander, Amaranth Company, Jurnian 701st

  Lachlan, Gunner, 111 Executioner Lantern

  Makis, Driver, 111 Executioner Lantern

  Vail, Loader, 111 Executioner Lantern

  Udo, Sponson gunner, 111 Executioner Lantern

  Genji, Sponson gunner, 111 Executioner Lantern

  Hector, Corporal, commander, 112 Executioner Deathlight

  Brel, Sergeant, commander, 113 (field attachment) Vanquisher Silence

  Jallinika, Gunner, 113 (field attachment) Vanquisher Silence

  Calsuriz, Driver, 113 (field attachment) Vanquisher Silence

  Selq, Loader, 113 (field attachment) Vanquisher Silence

  Rashne, Gunner/signaller, 114 (field attachment) scout vehicle Talon

  Silas Kord, Colonel commanding Tallarn 71st, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil

  Mori, Driver, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil

  Zade, First Gunner, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil

  Sacha, First Loader, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil

  Saul, Forward Gunner, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil

  Kogetsu, Sponson Gunner, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil

  Shornal, Sponson Gunner, 001 Malcador assault tank War Anvil

  Abbas, Lieutenant, 111 Vanquisher Mourner, First Squadron commander, Tallarn 71st

  Zekenilla, Lieutenant, 211 Executioner Noon Star, Second Squadron commander, Tallarn 71st

  Origo, Lieutenant, lead scout vehicle Razor, Tallarn 71st

  Augustus Fask, Colonel, Crescent Shelter command staff

  Elo Sussabarka, Brigadier-elite, commander of the Rachab fortress

  Adeptus Astra Telepathica

  Prophesius, Metatron

  Halakime, Astropath

  The Dark Mechanicum

  Sota-Nul, Disciple of Kelbor-Hal

  Officio Assassinorum

  Iaeo, Unbound Infocyte, Omega Tabulation, Clade Vanus

  Navis Nobilite

  Hes-Thal, Black Oculus Navigator

  The IV Legion ‘Iron Warriors’

  Perturabo, Primarch of the Iron Warriors

  Forrix, ‘The Breaker’, First Captain, triarch

  Hrend, ‘The Ironclad’, Contemptor-class Dreadnought, commander of Cyllaros armoured assault group

  Jarvak, Commander, Sicaran ‘78/5’, lieutenant of Cyllaros group

  Orun, Castraferrum-class Dreadnought (Mortis-pattern) Cyllaros group

  Gortun, Contemptor-class Dreadnought, Cyllaros group

  Volk, Commander of Sightless Warren (Core Reach I), Master of 786th Grand Flight armada

  Taldak, Warrior of the 17th Grand Battalion elite

  The VII Legion ‘Imperial Fists’

  Lycus, Marshal, commander of the Light of Inwit

  The X Legion ‘Iron Hands’

  Menoetius, Commander, Predator Cretatogran

  The XVI Legion ‘Sons of Horus’

  Argonis, ‘The Unscarred’, emissary of the Warmaster, Chieftain of the Isidis Flight

  The XX Legion ‘Alpha Legion’

  Thetacron, Commander, Harrow Group Arcadus

  Others

  Jalen

  Witness

  394 days after

  the death of Tallarn

  ‘Forgetting is history’s compassion for the truth of the past.’

  – General Elite Helicade,

  in his 51st missive to the Council of Terra

  The last Titan left on Tallarn bore the world’s new master across the dust plains. It was a lonely god. Its brothers and sisters waited in the heavens, cocooned in the bellies of ships, healing and arming for the next battle. When this final task was done it would join them, but until then it strode on with the weariness of a wounded soldier. The wind rattled against its pitted grey skin, and pulled a caul of dust over its shoulders. Every few hundred metres it paused and shivered, damaged gears and clogged pistons clanking.

  Above its head, the sky was clear blue.

  Susada Syn, now the designated Governor-Militant of Tallarn, looked out from the Titan’s eyes at the dry land.

  My land, he thought, and coughed. The wound on the left side of his chest flared with pain. He blinked, but did not let the discomfort show on his face. At least, he hoped that it did not show on his face.

  Beside him, the looming presence of Kalikgol remained unmoving, the White Scar’s eyes fixed on the scene beyond the viewports of the Titan’s bridge. General Gorn stood at his other shoulder, gaunt face utterly still above the buckled collar of his environment suit
.

  Susada ran a hand around the neck seals of his own suit. The viral agents which had killed Tallarn still persisted in air and soil, and it would take hundreds – perhaps thousands? – of years before a human could breathe openly here again.

  He had not thought that his return home would be like this, but then how could he have? In all the decades of war across the stars, he had always thought that he would never see the world of his birth again. On Vessos and Tagia Prime during the Great Crusade, and on Caldrin after the Warmaster turned, and on a dozen lesser fronts, he had been certain that death would pull him aside into cold oblivion. But he had lived, and now returned to find that Tallarn was no more.

  The deck swayed beneath his feet, and the god-machine halted.

  Susada glanced at the unmoving forms of the princeps and the twin moderati. The three were wired into their thrones. Black crystal visors covered their faces, apparently to hide their eyes from others. He had never seen the custom in other Titan Legions. He did not like it, but he did not know why.

  ‘What is it?’ Susada asked after a few seconds. ‘Why have we halted?’

  Spools of punched parchment unwound slowly from the command consoles.

  It was Kalikgol who spoke. ‘Look.’

  The White Scar was staring out through the armourglass of the Titan’s eye, his own pupils as black pinpricks in grey irises. Susada followed the Space Marine’s gaze, and saw.

  The cloud had cleared from a patch on the ground, peeled back by a tug of the wind.

  Shapes emerged from the yellow murk. For a second, he was reminded of the backs of sea creatures breaking the surface of an ocean. Then he recognised what he was looking at.

  Spirals of corrosion covered the closest tank’s hull, snaking across the pitted metal. Its tracks lay beside and behind it, shed in the last moments before its destruction. A jagged-edged hole distorted the slope of the frontal armour. Its turret hatch was still sealed, but the barrel of the main gun was a splintered twig of blackened metal. He could see dust heaped within the gutted interior, opened up to the deadly elements.

  Another tank emerged from the retreating cloud, the lines of its bulk softened by acidic decay. Beside it another smaller machine, seemingly unmarked apart from the smooth hole passing cleanly through its turret from one side to the other – a clean bullet wound through a condemned man’s skull. More wrecks appeared, crowded together, or isolated in drifts of their own debris. He recognised dozens of patterns at a single glance, though he saw many that he had never seen before. There were the great slab-hulls of Storm Hammers resting beside the carcasses of legionary Predators and workhorse Executioners. Amidst the wreckage, the crumpled forms of battle automata spread in tangles of machine limbs. One of the larger walkers seemed almost intact, its fire-scoured carapace unmarked and its piston-clamp fists locked onto the broken hull of a Sicaran, seemingly frozen in the act of tearing the dead tank apart.

  The cloud continued to roll away, and the carpet of dead metal grew beneath the feet of the Titan.

  ‘The plains of Khedive,’ muttered Kalikgol. Susada heard General Gorn take a slow breath, but he said nothing.

  Khedive, Susada thought. I must have stood almost on this very spot…

  There had been rain in the air that day – warm rain blown in from the south, so that the grasslands swayed and flowed like the tides of the sea. He had stood beside the other men of his regiment, their heads turned to the heavens, watching as the transports dropped through the wet sky towards them. It had been the last time that he had been on the surface of Tallarn, the last time he had breathed its air. Now, he could never do either again.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked at last, his voice dry in his throat. He looked at Gorn, but the general’s scarred face had become a fixed mask, his eyes distant.

  ‘This?’ said Kalikgol, turning his grey gaze on Susada for a long moment.

  Then the White Scar turned back to the plain of machine carcasses. It spread all the way to the horizon.

  ‘This is victory,’ he said.

  Executioner

  The death of Tallarn

  ‘War is the death of rationality. Only in retrospect do events seem driven by choice and judgement. Those who fight rarely know why they fight, and those that command them rarely see clearly enough to make any true choices besides saying “we fight them here because this is where we are”.’

  – Aedolus, savant-militant to the Imperial court

  ‘Destruction is not obliteration. When we destroy we create. Break a sheet of glass and you create sharp edges.’

  – Aphorism of the Gobinal Blade clans, Terra

  (age unknown)

  ‘Speak to me of the kingdoms we made amongst the stars.

  No, we will not speak of those dead places,

  Of their coverings of night, and their quieted songs.

  Speak to me of the greatness which was ours.

  No, we will not speak of dry teeth rattling in dead mouths.

  Speak to me of the peace that will be ours again.

  No, we will not speak of the silence that will come.’

  – Song of Lament at Fall of Night, Tallarn

  (later era)

  The remakers of Tallarn arrived like driftwood carried on a breaking wave. A thousand ships tumbling into space from nowhere: first one, spinning end over end, then a second and then hundreds. They rolled in the starlight, ectoplasm melting from their black iron hulls. All were warships of the IV Legion, the Iron Warriors. They were not graceful galleons of war, but slab-hulled world breakers, armoured in pitted plates, their flanks and spines nests for guns and launch bays.

  The Iron Blood arrived last, thrusters firing down the length of its hull as soon as it tasted real space. The great ship shook as it forced itself into a controlled arc of flight, its superstructure shuddering, engine vents glowing white with heat. It ploughed a path through its scattered fleet. Some of the smaller ships managed to regain enough control to move out of its path, but not all could escape.

  The Purity of Fire spiralled into the Iron Blood’s path. The great battle-barge’s prow hit the torpedo destroyer like a hammer, and the smaller ship burst into ragged chunks, its plasma reactor rupturing in a sphere of blue-hot matter. The Iron Blood broke through the wreckage, its armour glowing briefly under the fire’s touch. It slid to stillness and lay in the darkness, its engines dimming like the eyes of a tired man. Slowly, the scattered ships formed around it.

  Signals began to crawl amongst the ships, orders and demands for data beginning to flow. Order returned to the fleet. Sensors rolled across the void, searching, judging.

  In the star-pricked sphere of space one star burned brighter than all the rest. At this range the naked eye saw it as a small glowing coin. Around that star its planets waited, unknowing of their future, sleeping peacefully in the cold wrapping of space.

  Slowly, like a great beast rising from sleep, the fleet turned its prows towards the star and a thousand ships went to murder a civilisation.

  One

  Forgotten weapons

  Heaven’s tears

  Silence

  Lieutenant Tahirah – officer commanding First Squadron, Amaranth Company, Jurnian 701st Armoured – swore as the tank braked sharply. She was still swearing as she came off the empty gun mount and spun through the air. The ground hit her hard as she tried to turn her fall into a roll. She skidded across the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, hit the tarpaulin-covered crates and stopped. The air thumped from her lungs. That stopped the swearing. She felt the cool rockcrete press against her cheek. A dull pain filled her chest. Her mouth was open; she could feel her lips and tongue flapping as she tried to breathe.

  I must look like a fish, she thought.

  The rest of the crew were laughing now, the sound blending with the idle growl of the tank’s engi
ne. The Mars-pattern chassis was grumbling where it stood a few paces away. Still in its factory grey, it did not look like a battle tank. Where the turret should have been was only a greased collar, and an opening into the chassis’s guts. Hull and sponson gun mounts were just empty slots. She could see the gunner girl Genji grinning out at her from where the forward hull weapon should be. Lachlan sat on the tank’s right sponson, Makis and Vail on the top of the hull, legs dangling into the machine’s open guts.

  ‘Inspecting the floor, Tah?’ The voice was high-pitched, almost boyish. Udo. It would be Udo. They all laughed some more. Terra, it was not even a good joke.

  ‘Just trying... to escape... your company.’

  They laughed, and she breathed quietly.

  The fall was her fault really. Udo could not drive to save his life, and the top of the gun mount had been a stupid place to sit for the ride. Even so she had to try very, very hard not to consider standing up and shooting Udo in the face. She pushed herself to her knees as a pathetic sip of air reached her lungs. She stood up, picked up her cap and jammed it back on her head. She was tall for a machine rider, but would have been short for an infantry officer. Wiry, warm-skinned and sharp-faced, she had a smile that she thought showed too many teeth, and her grey-and-greens always looked baggy, no matter their size.

  She glanced away from the tank, as much to hide the fact that she had still not got her breath as to take the sight in. Behind the idling vehicle the chamber extended away, a vast rockcrete cavern lit by harsh light. Now that she was not riding on the tank she noticed how the sound of the engine had filled the space with echoes. The floor was a patina of oil stains and gouge marks from heavy tracks. A fine gritty layer of dust covered everything, and there was a cool, slightly musty smell, which betrayed that the ventilation system had not been active for some time. Somewhere above them, separated by layers of rock, plascrete and steel, was the Sapphire City, bustling with life while beneath it a warren of military shelters lay all but empty.