The Silent War Read online

  There was much to admire about the XIII Legion. Their cohesion and discipline in battle was enviable, their execution beyond compare. They were without a doubt the most effective fighting force that Sor Talgron had ever faced, and he respected them greatly.

  ‘It is Erebus’ wish that every enemy taken alive be sacrificed to feed the Ruinstorm,’ Jarulek had stated at the outset of the system war. ‘This is to be done across all the Five Hundred Worlds.’

  ‘Erebus be damned,’ had been Sor Talgron’s response. ‘The snake does not command me. My orders are to kill this world. I will do it my way.’

  He walked from the atrium, past soaring white marble pillars pocked and cratered by bolter fire. Beyond was a broad semi-circular terrace, bordered by natural stone and immaculately maintained foliage now churned to ruin. A waterfall fell into a pool in the rock, where bodies floated face down. Sweeping marble stairs descended to lower levels of the concourse.

  Sor Talgron walked past a towering white statue depicting a robed figure in a thoughtful, seated pose.

  An Ultramarines legionary lay on the ground. He had been cut in half by gunfire; his lower torso and legs were nearby. Blood had pooled beneath him, and his insides were spilled out onto the terrace, but he was alive. Legionaries did not die easily.

  Ahraneth levelled his bolt pistol at him.

  ‘No,’ said Sor Talgron, and his standard bearer lowered his weapon.

  The Ultramarine was of a centurion’s rank – a fellow captain, as indicated by the insignia on his shoulder plates. He was clasping his innards with one hand, trying vainly to hold them in, while with his other he was dragging himself along the ground. A volkite serpenta pistol lay nearby. He fumbled for it. Even as he died, he sought a weapon to use against his enemies.

  Sor Talgron’s boot crunched down on his wrist, and he stooped to pick up the serpenta himself. He turned it over in his hands.

  ‘This is a good weapon,’ he said.

  The Ultramarine looked up at him. His helmet was in place. A Mark IV variant, some Ultramar-localised pattern. Its once-pristine cobalt-blue surface and gold-rimmed edges were splattered with blood, rich and bright. A golden wreath had been painted around the temples, some battle honour that Sor Talgron did not recognise.

  ‘Why?’ asked the legionary. His voice was crackling and bled with static.

  Sor Talgron placed the barrel of the volkite pistol to the Ultra­marine’s visor lens, aiming it squarely into his left eye. ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why do you do this?’

  Sor Talgron squeezed the trigger. The back of the Ultramarine’s helmet exploded, and the floor beneath lit up in flame.

  ‘Because I am ordered to,’ he said.

  Two

  Chapter Master Aecus Decimus of the Ultramarines Legion, 17th Chapter, planted one heavy boot upon the traitor’s chest and wrenched his blade free. The short sword slid from the enemy’s vox-grille with a wet scrape, and the red-armoured legionary collapsed, joining the blanket of others upon the blood-churned earth.

  Choking smoke clouded his vision, the chemicals and blinding micro-particles within it making his eyes sting and his throat burn. Visibility had been reduced to a matter of metres. Augury scanners were rendered useless by the shrouding fog. He had no notion of where the battle lines lay, but it hardly mattered. The engagement had completely lost its shape. The time for strategy had passed.

  Another enemy was upon him. He batted aside the legionary’s screaming chainsword and pressed the barrel of his bolt pistol to the Word Bearer’s chest. The force of the detonation hurled the traitor backwards, and he ended up on the ground four metres back, a deep crater in his ruptured gorget. Decimus’ second shot ended him, taking him between helm and breastplate. The detonation almost tore his head from his body.

  The neck seal was one of the few locations in the newer marks of armour where bolt weaponry could achieve a clean kill from a distance. He had never seen the effects of bolt weaponry upon legionary power armour prior to this campaign – as far as he knew, no one within the XIII Legion had even considered such an eventuality. The mere thought would have been abhorrent. Now that legionary-legionary engagement was a practical, they had been forced to revise their tactics.

  Future marks of power armour would likely be designed to cover such deficiencies, the Techmarine Naxor had predicted. High gorgets, like those of the Cataphractii, would likely be integrated into line plate, he had said, just moments before he was dismembered by a Word Bearers legionary draped in human flesh. That these treacherous savages had ever been called their kin made him want to retch.

  The battle had devolved into a savage melee. All around him, legionaries in the crimson of the reborn Word Bearers and the noble blue of the Ultramarines were dying. The scale of the slaughter was galling. There would be no retreat, not from this battle. They would fight and die to the last. All that mattered now was to hold the enemy here long enough. What had started as long-ranged tank battles and lightning-swift assaults had been reduced to slogging through the mud and hacking at the enemy with blunted swords and toothless chainswords. He saw one of his veterans – Vaul Agregius, the Victor of Staxus – gun down a Word Bearer mouthing vile curses, silencing the wounded traitor with a final bolt to the head. Another veteran punched a XVII Legion warrior into the smoking carcass of a desecrated Land Raider, pulping him beneath his energy-encased power fist.

  An Ultramarine nearby was dragged down into the mud, his attacker repeatedly stabbing a jagged-bladed knife into his throat until he was still. That Word Bearer was in turn ripped apart by heavy bolter fire, but there were always more, marching out of the fog and intoning their mournful chants.

  Evil had rooted itself within the psyche of the XVII Legion. It was the only explanation that Decimus had for what they had become.

  The silent company champion, Tillus Victorius, fought like he did in the duelling cages, favouring a small combat shield and gladius opposite his power sword. He was masterful to watch. He took a blow upon his buckler and spun, cutting a Word Bearer down at the knees before despatching him with a cross-bladed decapitating strike.

  The champion had never been beaten blade-to-blade, but as he turned to find a new foe, a stray bolt from out of the smoke took him in the eye. It punched through his left visor lens and detonated in his brain pan. He fell without a sound, blades slipping into the mud from his lifeless fingers. The warrior had been almost obsessive in his training. That had counted for nothing at the last. It was an ignoble end.

  Decimus stared down at the champion’s corpse, and hatred coursed through him. He had never known such depth of feeling. He had never hated any of the xenos that he’d fought during the Great Crusade, nor even the recalcitrant humans of those worlds that defied the Emperor’s dominion. He had felt pity for some of these misguided civilisations, disgust or apathy for others, but never hatred.

  His heavily artificed armour was barely functional. It was running on auxiliary power, and little of its surface still bore the proud cobalt-blue of his Legion, so scorched, dented and cratered were its plates. His left shoulder was a mangled ruin, spitting angry sparks and internal servos grinding incessantly. He could feel bone grinding on bone in the joint. He wore no helm – he had torn it loose after it had borne the brunt of a power maul swing earlier in the battle – and the left side of his face was crusted with congealed blood.

  The Chapter Master was bone-tired. It had been more than a week since he’d had any rest. For a second there were no enemies running at him, and he wanted nothing more than to drop to his haunches and lean back up against the dead Word Bearers Land Raider… but no. Even now, even as the end closed in with the inevitability of the setting suns, he needed to be seen, defiant and bellicose until the last.

  He checked his ammunition. Four bolts. He slammed the clip back into his pistol. He would make each one count.

  The ground shook with explo
sions, the grind of heavy tracks and what felt like an earthquake, but he knew the latter to be the thunderous footfall of Titans. He could hear them calling to each other with deafening blares of their warhorns, drowning out the pounding of artillery, the chatter of gunfire, the screams of the dying and the clash of blades. The eardrum-shattering roar of their weapons sounded intermittently, and when they did he felt sick thinking of the noble sons of Ultramar being cut down in swathes, like wheat before the reaper.

  Communications were down, even the closed Ultramarine vox-channels now infected with insidious whispers, screams and hellish warpsound. But he knew that his captains would be doing him proud, punishing the Word Bearers in this, the last XIII Legion push of the war.

  A shout from the rear drew his attention. Squinting into the smoke, he saw enemy figures emerging from the haze behind them. They had been flanked. His captains barked orders, but little could be done as Ultramarines were cut down, already caught in the savage crossfire.

  A diminished heavy support squad turned to face this new threat, swinging their autocannons around and planting their feet wide. Even as two of their number were dropped, they unleashed their fury into the enemy, tearing through their ranks and buying time for other squads to get into cover. The barrels of their guns were soon glowing red-hot. Still they pounded the enemy, forcing them down into the mud.

  An armoured figure crashed down through the smoke from above, bright flames gushing from his overworked jump pack. The Word Bearer landed in a crouch behind the heavy support squad, one knee and one hand planted to the ground for stability. More of them slammed down around the first, smoke venting from their jump pack stacks. The first gunner sensed the enemy behind him and made to turn, but he was too slow. The Word Bearer was rising, chainaxe screaming.

  Chapter Master Aecus Decimus was already up and running, his command squad one step behind. His shot hit the first enemy legionary in the side of the head. It deflected off before detonating, knocking him off-balance. Then Decimus was upon him, tackling him into the mud as he recovered. The Word Bearer’s chainaxe went flying.

  They rolled, slipping and sliding down a muddy incline. Decimus lost his pistol but still had hold of his power blade. As they came to rest at the bottom of the slope, in a ditch filled with armoured corpses, Decimus was on top. He tried to go for the killing blow, but his enemy’s hand was clasped around his vambrace, holding the blade at bay. The Word Bearer slammed his armoured fist into Decimus’ jaw, dislocating it and fracturing bone.

  He was momentarily dazed, and the Word Bearer pressed that advantage. He rolled atop Decimus, pinning him face down in the mud and gripping the back of his head. The Chapter Master tried to free himself, losing his grasp on his blade in the process, but he could not dislodge the traitor. His face was slammed into the ground, again and again. Mud and blood filled his eyes.

  ‘Now you die,’ snarled the Word Bearer. His voice was so twisted that he sounded more like a beast than anything that had ever been human.

  Then, in the thunder of close-range autocannon fire, his head disappeared in a red mist.

  Decimus wiped mud and blood from his eyes as he rose, scrabbling back up the slope to his frantic command squad under covering fire from the last remaining heavy weapon-toting legionaries.

  He threw a glance skyward. He could see nothing, but he knew it must be approaching the appointed time. His adjutant saw his glance.

  ‘Are you sure about this, my lord?’ he said.

  ‘I am,’ said Decimus. ‘May the Emperor forgive me.’

  They escorted him off the shuttle like a prisoner, two in front, two behind. They were nestled in the high foothills of Terra’s most dominant peaks, though he could not see them now; the articulated docking clamps attached to the shuttle’s hull had no windows.

  He was unarmed, as per their order. It had been phrased as a request, but it had been an order nonetheless. He stared resolutely forward as he was marched from the shuttle. Flexible jointed walls gave way to an armoured corridor as he entered the palace.

  His slate-grey war-plate was unadorned. Only the deep-red crest of his helm, tucked under one arm, gave any indication of his senior Legion rank. His armour was old and well-worn, the plates thick and heavy. It was the armour of a soldier, practical and utilitarian, and its surface revealed evidence of frequent repair. He bore those marks like battle scars. Each scratch and dent had a story.

  In contrast, the four members of the Legio Custodes escorting him into the palace wore highly ornate armour of burnished gold, replete with decorative lightning bolts and eagles. Long fur-lined cloaks hung from their gilded shoulders, and their features were hidden behind tall, conical helms. Their armour was more finely artificed than Sor Talgron’s humble plate, but it was not parade armour. This was the most highly advanced battle armour that the most skilled tech-priests of Mars had been able to devise – light, strong and nigh impervious to conventional firearms, and allowing greater freedom of movement than Legion plate.

  Each bore a guardian spear, the signature weapon of their order. Gilded halberds with inbuilt firearms, they were curious and exotic weapons. They would have been unwieldy in untrained hands, but even at rest, he could see that they were almost extensions of the Custodians’ bodies. They would be wielded with consummate skill, and while Sor Talgron had only seen them used in training, he judged that the key to fighting the Legio Custodes would be for an enemy to get inside their effective range.

  He felt no particular bonds of kinship with the Legio Custodes. They were as different from him as unaugmented humans, for all their shared similarities in gene-heritage. The divisions between the two strands of transhumanity were stark, even if an outsider might have been blind to them – in the main it was not a physical difference, even though the Custodians might seem uniformly taller in stature. They were simply a breed apart.

  The true strength of the Legiones Astartes was their unity of purpose, and the bonds of brotherhood they shared. Perhaps that was why they had insisted that Sor Talgron travel to the surface alone, the rest of his company ship-bound at high anchor. The Custodians might be individual warriors par excellence, but their mindset was fundamentally different to those gene-born into the Legions. They had been created for a different task, one that they were perfectly adapted to, and one that required a certain level of individualism and self-reliance that was at odds with the gene-ingrained pack mentality of the Space Marines.

  It would be an interesting thing, to pit the Legio Custodes against the Legiones Astartes. One on one, he suspected that the gold-armoured Custo­dians would have the edge, but the larger the battle got, the more he felt that his fellow legionaries would dominate.

  The Legio Custodes were not soldiers, but Sor Talgron was a soldier to the core.

  They halted before a third set of reinforced blast doors, flanked by slaved sentry cannons. Scans, identity confirmations, gene-key sequencing. Security was tighter than it had been when last Sor Talgron had walked the palace halls, back when his presence had felt far more welcome.

  The occluded portals snapped open. A Custodian officer stood beyond, resplendent in his gold plate. Sor Talgron’s gaze flicked left and right. Had he been wearing his helmet, threat glyphs would have been blinking before his eyes. The officer was accompanied by a squad of yellow-armoured Space Marines, bolters held across their chests.

  That was unexpected, but he let no hint of surprise cross his face.

  The visor of the officer slid back in a series of smoothly overlapping plates, revealing a face that Sor Talgron knew. It was hawkish and strong; unscarred, but Sor Talgron knew that meant nothing, not amongst the Legio Custodes. Had he been of the Legions, Sor Talgron would know that the warrior was either untested, or unfathomably good – the Custodians, however, were not built for a life of constant warfare on the front lines. That did not mean they lacked battle hardening. Far from it. Only a fool would underestimate
them.

  A ridge of short-cropped hair extended down the centre of the officer’s shaved head, a crest that mirrored Sor Talgron’s helmet. Whether it denoted rank or was merely an aesthetic choice, Sor Talgron did not know. Their kind had a strong, individualistic streak bred into them, so the latter was highly probable. Nevertheless, he found it somewhat ironic that this choice aped the appearance of the Captain-General, Constantin Valdor. So much for individualism.

  ‘I apologise for the manner of your reception,’ said the officer. His courtly accent was still strange to Sor Talgron’s ear, accustomed as he was to the more guttural Colchisian speech. ‘The universe has changed since you last stood on Terra.’

  His name was Tiber Acanthus, and Sor Talgron had spent time in his company on his previous visits to Terra. The sentinel had never offered his other one hundred and thirty-seven names, nor did Sor Talgron have any desire to know them.

  They greeted each other as warriors, wrist to wrist, clasping each other’s forearm. It was rare for the Word Bearer to look up at anyone, but the Custodian stood half a head taller than Sor Talgron.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said as they broke apart. ‘It looks as though Terra is preparing for a siege.’

  ‘War is coming,’ said Acanthus.

  Sor Talgron frowned. ‘War is nothing unusual,’ he said. ‘We’ve been fighting wars since the start of the Great Crusade. It is what we were made for.’

  ‘This war will be different.’

  ‘Why? Whatever new enemy the Crusade has uncovered, there is surely no threat to Terra itself,’ said Sor Talgron.

  Tiber Acanthus did not answer, and Sor Talgron’s expression darkened.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, his voice grim.

  ‘It is not my place,’ said the Custodian. ‘But I will take you to one who will. Come. Lord Dorn is expecting you.’