The Silent War Read online

  ‘Indeed, you are the perfect captain for Lorgar to send to Terra to re­assure the Emperor that all is well within the Seventeenth.’

  ‘All is well within the Seventeenth,’ said Sor Talgron.

  ‘The question of your loyalty is not the reason I have brought you here, captain,’ said Dorn. ‘Let me clarify my position. There is no reason for me to regard the Seventeenth as anything but a Legion loyal to the Emperor. As you say – if anything, your Legion has proven itself perhaps too loyal in the past. I do not believe you or your Legion are traitors. That is not the reason why I locked down your fleet in the Luna shipyards. It is not the reason I allowed you alone to cross the palace’s threshold. It is not the reason why your warriors garrisoned here have been placed under guard.’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘I have to be seen to treat all the Legions the same. To do otherwise would be to risk accusations of favouritism and cause more rifts between my brothers. Your warriors are not the only ones within the Imperial Palace that I have imprisoned.’

  Sor Talgron frowned. ‘What others?’

  ‘The Crusader Host,’ replied Rogal Dorn, flexing his immense fingers.

  ‘You’ve imprisoned them? All of them?’

  ‘All of them,’ said Dorn.

  ‘Even those of Legions you know to be loyal?’

  ‘Who can say how deep this rot goes?’

  ‘The Legions will not like it,’ said Sor Talgron, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Some less than others.’

  ‘I do not care,’ said Dorn. ‘I am trying to ensure the Imperium does not fall down around us. I will do anything to ensure that it does not. Anything.’

  ‘You’ve imprisoned the Imperial Fists who stand as part of the Crusader Host, then?’ said Sor Talgron.

  ‘No. The Imperial Fists are no longer a crusading Legion, therefore our representatives within the Preceptory have been withdrawn. We have been named the Emperor’s praetorians. It is difficult to guard the palace if we are under lock and key.’

  ‘I do not disagree, though that may be seen differently by others,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘It sounds like there is one rule for your Fists, and one for everyone else.’

  ‘It is what it is,’ said Dorn.

  ‘And what of the Sixth Legion’s watch-pack stationed with you?’ asked Sor Talgron. ‘What of those sons of Russ? You have imprisoned them as well, then?’

  Dorn’s face was stony. ‘No. They operate under orders from the Sigillite. They are exempt.’

  ‘Pardon my bluntness, my lord, but does that not reek of hypocrisy?’

  ‘This is the way it must be.’

  Sor Talgron looked away, gathering his thoughts. ‘This is all just politics, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘At a time when it has been proven that any Legion could turn against the Imperium, at least theoretically, I must be seen to be proactively ensuring Terra’s security while also walking a fine line to keep the loyal Legions together,’ said Dorn. ‘Yes, this is a political decision.’

  The primarch gave him a moment to let that sink in.

  ‘You are angry,’ he said, finally. ‘I understand that. You return to Terra to find your legionaries imprisoned. Any leader would be angry.’

  ‘As you say,’ said Sor Talgron.

  ‘In a perfect universe I would have no need to lock up loyal legionaries that could be of use garrisoning the palace should the worst possibility eventuate,’ said Dorn. ‘This is not a perfect universe.’

  ‘So what happens next?’ asked Sor Talgron.

  ‘Your garrison will be released and transported back to your fleet. The locks on your ships will be lifted. You will join them in orbit, and then you will leave. By the time tomorrow dawns, there will be no member of the Word Bearers Legion within the Solar System. Your time here has come to an end.’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Seven other Legions will join my retribution fleet in mustering upon the Isstvan System,’ said Dorn. ‘You will be there too, and will take the fight to the Warmaster.’

  The primogenitor of the Imperial Fists was not known to be as unpredictable as some of his brothers, but he was undoubtedly one of the most powerful beings in creation, and Sor Talgron was not familiar with his disposition and humours. He chose his words carefully.

  ‘With respect, my lord, my orders were to maintain a Seventeenth Legion presence in the Solar System,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘They came from Lord Aurelian himself. I cannot disobey his command.’

  ‘Consider Lorgar’s orders overruled,’ said Dorn. ‘This is an honour, captain. You will be a part of the battle that will set things right.’

  ‘No, it is merely politically convenient to send me away,’ Sor Talgron countered. ‘If I take the Thirty-Fourth to join the muster, will that not leave Terra more vulnerable?’

  ‘The Imperial Fists have been named as the Emperor’s praetorians,’ said Archamus. ‘It is our duty to protect Terra.’

  ‘An invasion fleet could be on its way here now,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘If that is the case, you will have need of my legionaries.’

  ‘Our duty, not yours,’ Archamus repeated. Sor Talgron met the Imperial Fist’s glare with one of his own.

  ‘You would let your own pride put Terra in jeopardy?’ he said.

  Archamus’ blade was half out of its scabbard when Dorn slammed his fist down into the centre of the table. He pulled the blow; if he hadn’t, the table would have been nothing but splinters scattered across the length of the chamber.

  ‘Enough,’ he said. He did not raise his voice; he did not have to. Archamus sheathed his sword, though his face remained murderous.

  ‘This will end where it began,’ said Dorn. ‘At Isstvan.’

  ‘If I was a traitor, you’d be sending me into the hands of your enemy, unharmed,’ said Sor Talgron.

  ‘I have enough legionaries incarcerated here as it is.’

  ‘With all respect, my lord, I believe this is a mistake.’

  ‘Your protestations are noted, captain,’ said Rogal Dorn. ‘Noted, and ignored. You are leaving Terra. But there is one last matter for us to discuss – the Seventeenth’s representative within the Crusader Host.’

  ‘Volkhar Wreth,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘Surely you cannot doubt where his loyalties lie?’

  ‘No, he is perhaps the only other member of the Crusader Host that I do not doubt. It is one of the reasons why I am releasing him into your custody. One more loyal legionary to join the muster.’

  ‘And one less to guard here within the walls of the palace,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘One less potential enemy within.’

  ‘That too,’ said Dorn, steepling his fingers before him.

  ‘He will be appreciative, my lord,’ said Sor Talgron, bowing his head. ‘A legionary should face his fate on the battlefield, not linger in a prison cell.’

  The primarch nodded. ‘He will be isolated from the others. They cannot know that he is being released. I will arrange for him to be transferred to a different holding location. Less security. You’ll be granted clearance. Would that I could be rid of them all as easily.’

  Five

  ‘The shaft goes deep into the heart of the mountain,’ said Reconnaissance Sergeant Loth. He spat on the landing pad deck. The acidic transhuman saliva sizzled as it ate into the metalwork. ‘Three hundred metres, straight down.’

  Loth had taken off his helm, augmented with non-standard sensor arrays and targeters, to give his report to Sor Talgron. One of his eyes had been replaced with a bionic, the lens whirring faintly as it focused. His one remaining organic eye was cold and utterly soulless. The captain noted the twelve-toothed cog symbol branded into his forehead, marking him as having received training on Mars.

  Such a mark was highly unusual outside of techmarine covenants. He had been groomed for that path, but had neither the temperament nor the
inclination to succeed upon it. He had been reassigned to the recon ranks, where his fierce independence, resourcefulness and insubordination were a more comfortable fit. Those same traits that had made him such a bad line soldier proved to be an asset, and his Martian training made him invaluable when working behind enemy lines as a saboteur.

  Indeed, that talent had been well used on Terra.

  He cradled a long rifle wrapped in camo-netting in the crook of one arm. A ragged cameleoline shadowcloak hung over his stripped down armour, the heavy material bending light around him. Beneath the dust and mud, that armour retained the slate grey of the Legion’s original colours.

  He had cursed, using low-caste Colchisian gutter-slang, when Dark Apostle Jarulek had questioned his choice not to consecrate his armour in the colours of the Legion reborn.

  ‘You try remaining unseen garbed in red, priest,’ he had snarled. Jarulek had sought Sor Talgron, requesting that the captain overrule the insubordinate recon sergeant. But he had not disagreed with Loth’s reasoning, and had let the protest stand.

  It had been Loth and his understrength squad that had spied the stealth-shrouded enemy craft flying low through the valleys of the mountains. They had been returning from a scouting kill-mission, and while the enemy craft had not appeared on the squad’s signum, they had locked onto its heat signature and tracked it as it came in to land. It had been Loth’s locator beacon that had guided Sor Talgron’s ship here.

  The XVII Legion warriors were working to gain entry to the shaft via the sealed, heavy reinforced blast portal that appeared to be the only entrance. Las-cutters spat and whined as they worked.

  ‘There’s a conveyor, currently at the base of the shaft,’ said Loth. ‘It’s been deactivated, and will be rigged if they have any sense. It’s what I’d do.’

  ‘Can you bring it back online?’ said Sor Talgron.

  ‘It shouldn’t be difficult.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘Once that door is free, I want you and your squad down that shaft. Bring the conveyor up. Try not to get yourselves blown up.’

  Loth nodded vaguely and moved to brief his squad, spitting again as he walked away.

  ‘Low-caste dog,’ said Dal Ahk, watching Loth squat and begin outlining his orders to the group crouched around him.

  ‘I was low-caste as well, remember,’ growled Sor Talgron.

  ‘I’m sorry, my lord. I spoke out of turn.’

  ‘Put your prejudice aside. If he wasn’t any good, he’d be dead by now.’

  ‘They’ll be waiting for us down there. We’ll be walking straight into their guns.’

  ‘I am aware of that,’ said Sor Talgron.

  ‘I don’t understand, captain. Why are we bothering with them? The war is won. The world is taken.’

  ‘I do not intend to leave this sector while a single Ultramarine still breathes within it,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘We could pound this mountain for weeks from orbit and they’d still be down there. They’d barely even notice. Are we walking into an ambush? Yes. Is there any alternative? No.’

  ‘Why retreat here?’

  ‘Ah, now that is the better question.’

  ‘And the answer?’

  Sor Talgron turned to look at his master of signal. ‘I have no idea,’ he said.

  ‘Pistols and blades,’ Loth announced, standing. His legionaries unburdened themselves of extraneous encumbrance: ammunition, power-packs, communications equipment and their bulkier weapons. They stripped off their refractive shadowcloaks. Lastly, Loth leaned his long rifle amidst the pile of gear, parting with it only reluctantly.

  ‘Nobody touch that,’ he snarled before slipping on his modified helm. His lenses did not light up – they were non-reflective and muted, as flat and dead as his single organic eye.

  The doors were cracked, and the secure portals were wrenched open. Loth directed a lazy salute at Sor Talgron and Dal Ahk before turning and leading his squad on the descent. One by one, they slipped over the lip of the conveyor shaft, as soundless as shadows.

  ‘Insubordinate bastard,’ said Dal Ahk after he had gone, moving amongst the stacked gear and pointedly kicking over Loth’s rifle. Sor Talgron shook his head.

  While they waited, another shuttle arrived, brought in at Sor Talgron’s order. A heavily armoured siege squad disembarked, clomping onto the landing pad. They were wore Mark III Iron armour, heavily modified for frontal assaults, and each carried a bulky siege shield. They were amongst the most battle-hardened legionaries within the Chapter, often forming the vanguard against fortifications and enemy ships, and while the rate of attrition within their ranks was notoriously high, that was also a mark of honour amongst them. These tough veterans were some of Sor Talgron’s premier line-breakers.

  ‘At your command,’ said Telakhas, the squad’s sergeant. A massive thunder hammer was mag-locked across his back.

  The Dark Apostle Jarulek also accompanied the breacher squad. The legionaries bowed their heads as he walked through their ranks, offering him a level of deference that Sor Talgron found distasteful.

  Still, he could not dispute the effect the preacher’s presence had on his men. Their resolve was visibly bolstered wherever he fought in the battle line, and there had been more than one engagement where the success of the 34th had hinged on his ability to inspire a fanatical zealotry among the legionaries. Sor Talgron mistrusted the way he manipulated the emotions of those who followed him, but he was not fool enough to be blind to the fact the priest served a purpose, and served it well.

  Perhaps what rankled most was that while Jarulek would never have the strategic acumen that Sor Talgron commanded, he instinctively knew how to get the best out of the men on the ground – better than Sor Talgron himself. The priest knew the power of well-chosen words, and when his fiery rhetoric should be punctuated with action. He inspired them. Sor Talgron was deeply respected by all, but he was not one for speeches or fancy words. He was built for direct action, and while he had a deep-seated aversion to the power of anything as ephemeral as mere words, he knew that this was more of a weakness on his part than a reflection of their lack of worth.

  Not that Jarulek was a poor soldier – the opposite, in fact. If he had not been claimed early in his tenure, plucked from the ranks of neophytes and chosen for a Chaplain’s ministry, Sor Talgron would have had him commanding a battalion of his own by now. His instincts were good, and they had been further honed in the time that he had spent seconded to Kor Phaeron, acting as one of his war consuls.

  Jarulek knew of his misgivings.

  ‘You do not require the rhetoric of faith in order to fight your best,’ Jarulek had said to him on the fields of Nalahsa. That day the Dark Apostle had led a savage counter-attack against the greenskins, driving a wedge into the heart of the enemy formations to slay their warlord. That action had won them that war. Both of them had been covered in sticky, foul-smelling greenskin gore. ‘That is not your way – and meaning no disrespect, my lord, it is both a strength and weakness. But these warriors,’ he had said, gesturing to the victorious legionaries around them, ‘they do not have your… singularity of focus. Your resolve. Your pragmatism. They need something more. They need faith and guidance. They fight all the better for it, and without it they would be lost.’

  It grated on Sor Talgron that he knew the preacher was right.

  He inclined his head to Jarulek now as the preacher made his rounds, stopping to speak in quiet tones to individual warriors, laying a hand upon the shoulder of others. Jarulek bowed to him, lowering his eyes in deference. Sor Talgron turned away.

  He commandeered a boarding shield from the newcomers’ weapon cache. It was heavy, with an inbuilt refractor field, and it covered a legionary from head to knee. Its surface was black, and it bore evidence of las-scoring and plasma-burns. There were other, newer shields that he could have chosen, but he had an aversion to weapons that had not y
et been tempered in battle.

  Dal Ahk had remarked, once, that it was just superstition. And he knew that the captain hated anything as pointless as superstition.

  Sor Talgron had not deigned to reply. ‘You really are a humourless bastard, you know,’ Dal Ahk had said. That had got a smile out of him.

  There was no hint of levity in the master of signal now, though. He could practically see the scowl on his face for all that he was wearing his battle helm.

  ‘You are going in yourself, then?’ said Dal Ahk. Any belligerence or disapproval in his tone was rendered indiscernible by his helm’s augmitters. Everything was transformed into an angry growl by Legion helms, such that all subtlety in tone and intonation was lost. It was perhaps one of the reasons why Space Marines were so poor at reading irony and sarcasm in unaugmented humans, he thought.

  ‘I am,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘You are not.’ The master of signal said nothing. He didn’t need to. ‘I need you up here. Keep the communication lines open.’

  Dal Ahk saluted and walked away without a word. His disapproval radiated off him like a heat haze.

  Sor Talgron locked the boarding shield to his left arm. He felt the humming vibration as the refractor field powered up.

  He moved to the edge of the landing platform. In the far distance, the bulk landers hung like vast swollen insects. He stood alone.

  ‘You are a different breed from the rest of the Seventeenth Legion. You are practical and pragmatic, where your bothers are overzealous.’

  Dorn’s words grated on him. Maybe he had been the right choice to act as the enemy within, but he had loathed every moment of it. He had hated the deception, stealth and falseness that had been demanded of him, and he hated himself for having performed that role so well. He had despised it, but a soldier follows orders. Perhaps Lorgar had chosen well.

  There were others within the Legion that hungered for power and would have revelled in the betrayal – Erebus for one. Few saw him for the conniving manipulator that he was. That said, Dorn wouldn’t have been taken in by him, of that he was sure.