The Silent War Read online

  ‘I knew you were coming,’ said the prisoner. ‘I foresaw it.’

  He stood, hefting himself to his feet. He was big, almost as tall as Sor Talgron in his armour. His eyes were dark and severe, with flecks of gold swimming in their depths.

  ‘Predicant Volkhar Wreth,’ said Sor Talgron, bowing in respect. ‘It has been a long time.’

  The prisoner smiled, exposing dark metal teeth.

  ‘I have not heard that title in many years,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you, lad.’

  ‘Put this on,’ said Sor Talgron, tossing a plain robe to him. ‘It’s time you left this place.’

  They encountered no one on their way out. Everything had gone as planned. There had been no unexpected complications.

  Sor Talgron and Volkhar Wreth boarded the ornithopter, the latter cloaked and hooded, his features hidden from those who might casually recognise him.

  The light craft’s gull-wing doors sealed, muting the ascending whine of its pinion engines and cutting them off from the icy low-oxygenated air outside. The ornithopter rose up the volcanized vertical shaft, blast shutters capable of withstanding orbital bombardment opening above to allow them through.

  ‘The rumours are true, then,’ said Volkhar Wreth.

  ‘They are,’ said Sor Talgron. With his helm back on, his voice was transformed into its usual mechanical growl.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ said Wreth.

  It was a Contemptor, a hulking machine of adamantium and cera­mite, and it smashed into the Word Bearers with the force of an assault ram.

  Easily as tall as three legionaries, it covered the ground in swift, thunderous steps and smashed four of them aside with the first sweep of an arm. Shields crumpled and bones were shattered as the legionaries were sent flying, crashing against the wall five metres away. Another was crunched beneath its heavy tread, and three more smashed aside, limbs flailing as they were hurled through the air by its next blow.

  The shield wall shattered.

  Bolts and gouts of plasma did nothing to slow the beast as the Word Bearers backed away, firing into its armoured chassis. It grabbed one around the torso, massive fingers circling his body, and unleashed the fury of the meltagun implanted into its palm. A searing hole was scorched through the legionary, and it tossed the dead warrior aside.

  The Ultramarines and Imperial Army soldiers around the perimeter had risen from cover, the bolters and lasguns in their hands barking and snapping as they fired upon the disarrayed Word Bearers. One of the XIII Legion warriors vaulted a barricade and buried a sparking power axe in the head of a Word Bearer. In answer, Sor Talgron stepped forwards and slammed his boarding shield into the Ultramarine, sending him reeling, then levelled his bolter to finish him off. Before he could pull the trigger, an overcharged las-blast glanced off his shoulder pad, knocking him off-balance and sending his kill-shot wide. He stepped back to join his legionaries, bolter barking in his hand.

  Another Ultramarine, armed with a modified long-barrelled bolter, snapped off two quick shots, taking out two more of Sor Talgron’s warriors, his shots shearing through the armour of their helms like nails driven through eggshells. Specialist ammunition, Sor Talgron registered, more from the sound of the projectiles than their effect.

  Kraken bolts.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Jarulek roll under the Contemptor’s arm as the Dreadnought swung at him. The Dark Apostle came smoothly to his feet and brained a black-armoured enemy soldier, his crozius hissing and spitting with energy.

  The servitor-driven laser destroyer whined as it reached full power once more, and Sor Talgron saw the ident-runes of two more of his legionaries fade into darkness in the corner of his display, slain as the laser destroyer fired.

  Sor Talgron moved away from the murderous juggernaut that was the Contemptor, his measured fire taking out one of the Ultramarines – a plainly armoured legionary yet to earn any adornments of rank or honour. He ran dry and mag-locked his bolter at his hip, drawing his newly acquired volkite pistol smoothly. His first shot blew out the chest of a soldier. Flames jetted from the dying man’s back, incinerating another.

  ‘Spread out!’ he ordered. ‘Dal Ahk,’ he said, activating his vox-link. ‘How long?’

  ‘Inbound,’ came Dal Ahk’s reply. ‘Thirty seconds.’

  The Contemptor turned its massive, red helm, its murderous gaze locking onto Sor Talgron. It had heard his orders, he realised. It recognised him as a ranking officer. It came around, lurching in his direction with a grind of gears and servos. It raised one of its huge, simian arms as it charged, and flames gushed from the palm of its taloned hand.

  Sor Talgron lifted his boarding shield to bear the brunt of the burning promethium. He backed away, his shield arm on fire, and fired his pistol, aiming at the Contemptor’s head. His shots left scorched craters in its visor, but did not slow it, and Sor Talgron hurled himself to the side as it swung for him. It caught him a glancing blow, buckling his shield and staggering him into a pla­steel pillar. The Contemptor stalked towards him, the light of its eye lenses glowing balefully.

  A heavy blow to its mechanised knee knocked it off-balance, and it staggered, crashing to one knee and steadying itself with a hand on the ground. Sergeant Telakhas brought his thunder hammer around for another strike, aimed at the same joint – it was easily capable of damaging even such a machine as a Contemptor. If the blow connected, it would cripple the massive beast.

  The blow did not connect.

  The Contemptor caught the swing in its free fist. Its massive fingers closed around the siege sergeant’s forearms, crumpling his vambraces like tin and snapping both wrists. Helpless, the struggling legionary was lifted off the ground – the Contemptor brought its other fist up, splaying its fingers to reveal its palm-mounted flamer, the pilot light glowing blue. Telakhas roared as he was bathed in burning promethium. His roar became a scream as his armour blackened and cracked, and his flesh began to cook. The Dreadnought ended his agonised cries, snatching up his flailing legs and ripping him apart in one violent motion. It hurled his remains in different directions, and swung back towards Sor Talgron.

  Nevertheless Telakhas’ death had bought them much needed time. The countdown on Sor Talgron’s visor display blinked to zero.

  There was a blinding flash and a sharp bang of displacing air. Five figures appeared where there had been none before, standing in a protective cordon around the captain. Shimmering light coalesced across the massive curved plates of their Cataphractii-armoured forms.

  ‘Take it down,’ ordered Sor Talgron.

  Eight

  Octavion watched on a small, crackling, monochrome pict-feed set into the communications bank as the battle swung in favour of the Word Bearers.

  On another screen, a number was blinking. One minute and thirty-five seconds. Thirty-four. Thirty-three. Too long, he thought.

  Since the start of the conflict, the XVII Legion forces had controlled the flow of communications. Some viral, invasive scrapcode had been unleashed on the defenders, rendering the vast majority of their vox-transmissions indecipherable and garbled. Worse, sometimes the comms appeared to work clearly, but the orders transmitted were false, the original message twisted and reworked, resulting in several decisive losses until Chapter Master Decimus had ordered them disabled completely, relying only on short-ranged closed-transmissions.

  Only two communications arrays on the planet had remained immune to the viral scrapcode. One of those had been in the city of Massilea, situated at the heart of the planet’s single continent. The second was the long-ranged transmitter hub in which he now stood, the command centre lying deep beneath the mountains. Now, it was the only way that they could communicate with anything in orbit or beyond.

  Thirty-six hours earlier, Decimus had settled on one desperate last throw of the dice.

  The enemy had thought that the entire fleet had
been destroyed. They were wrong.

  One vessel remained – the immense Righteous Fury, pride of the sector. It had been crippled in the devastating void battle, but it was not yet done. Without engine power, it was orbiting the planet along with the wreckage and detritus of the fleet. The Word Bearers had been thorough in their executions, but not thorough enough in checking if any of the bodies already there still had a pulse.

  Spinning slowly, and orbiting the planet once every eight and a half hours, it had merely been arithmetic to determine the precise moment when the ship would be in the right position.

  The sound of the desperate battle beyond the sealed pneumatic doors was muted, but Octavion felt every death like a lance through his soul. The floor shuddered each time the Contemptor stepped. It would not be long before it fell. Korolos deserved that peace, but Octavion hoped more than anything that he could hold out just a little longer.

  Forty-five seconds. Forty-four. Forty-three.

  It had been a shock to realise that they had been followed. A sense of frustration had beset the shamed Ultramarines when they had realised that the Word Bearers had found them, and that they may yet fail in this last, redemptive task. That could not be allowed. They had been relieved when Octavion had volunteered to be the one to stay in the command centre, to give the fatal order, while the others would go and stall the enemy as long as they were able. It was not a role that he relished, but it was necessary.

  Twenty seconds.

  He glanced at the small screen. Word Bearers were scattered across the floor out there, but it was not enough. The black-armoured Imperial Army veterans were all slain, as were his other censured Legion brothers. Korolos stood alone.

  The Contemptor had killed several of the newly arrived Cataphractii, but they surrounded him now like hounds around a bear. One of the Dreadnought’s arms was hanging useless, and it was limping markedly. Its armour plates were hanging off in ragged sheafs where the Terminators had hacked at it with power blades and chainfists, from all sides. It would not be long.

  Four seconds. Three. Two.

  Octavion tapped a sequence on the keypad of the antiquated control panel, establishing a direct link with the Righteous Fury.

  The main screen remained blank.

  ‘Come on,’ he breathed. ‘Come on!’

  He tapped another series of keys, and the screen refreshed. A grainy image of a woman’s face appeared – her eyes were hollow, and there was a hastily stitched wound on her brow. Ash, or perhaps blood, was smeared across her face. Her epaulettes marked her as an admiral. Behind her, the bridge of the once-hallowed ship was dark. He knew her, though he had never spoken to her himself.

  ‘–there?’ came her static-infused voice.

  ‘Repeat, Admiral Solontine,’ said Octavion. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘There is some interference, but yes,’ said the woman on the screen. The sound was not in synch with the image, making it oddly disjointed. ‘Who are you? I was expecting Decimus.’

  ‘I am Brother Xion Octavion. Chapter Master Decimus entrusted me with the responsibility of giving the order.’

  ‘You have the authorisation override?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Key it in now.’

  Each of the legionaries assigned to this task had memorised the authorisation code. Octavion keyed in the seventeen-digit number.

  ‘Authorisation override accepted,’ said Admiral Solontine. She rubbed a hand across her face. ‘This is the end, then. I had hoped it would not come to this.’

  She knew as well as he did that as soon as she gave the order, she was committing herself and her ship to death. Octavion glanced over at the pict-feed from beyond the sealed doors behind him.

  ‘Uploading targeting coordinates,’ he said.

  ‘Upload connected and processing. All arming decks are ready to fire.’

  ‘It needs to be done, now.’

  ‘We are not yet in position, Legionary Octavion.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A minor complication,’ said Solontine. ‘A collision. Space debris. Part of the Fist of Ultramar nudged us. Nothing too bad, but it has slowed the momentum of our turn.’

  ‘Will you still be able to complete this mission?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We will be in position in less than seven minutes.’

  ‘Seven minutes,’ said Octavion. He cursed. ‘We do not have seven minutes.’

  ‘Is there a problem, legionary?’

  ‘Yes, there is a problem. Can’t you bring your ship around faster?’

  ‘We are dead in the water,’ said the admiral. ‘We have no engine power, and even if we did, the enemy fleet would detect us as soon as we engaged the drive motors. Seven minutes. Keep the upload feed running.’

  ‘If I destroy these consoles…’

  ‘Then you destroy all hope,’ snapped Solontine. ‘I have no targeting guidance. All my systems are down. I need this line to stay open. With that frame of reference, I can bring the guns to bear manually. Do not let the enemy get into that room.’

  Octavion stared at the consoles in helpless desperation. Was this how it was going to end? In failure?

  ‘I will hold them,’ he said. ‘You will have the time you need.’

  The hall was empty. Scaffolding was set against the walls, but it sat half-finished and unused, as if the workers had abandoned their work before it was done. Dust, masonry and dried paint flecks covered the floor. It was not difficult to imagine that these halls had been empty for months, perhaps years.

  The curved ceiling was emblazoned with a faded fresco, the plasterwork beneath it crumbling and flaking. In its prime, the artwork would have been glorious: in its centre was a heroic portrayal of the Emperor, wreathed in golden light and flame, and around him were gathered stylised figures representing the Legiones Astartes. All the colours of the Legions were there. Orbiting around the Emperor were the planets of the Solar System, and beyond them, the constellations. Imperial ships filled the void, spreading out towards every corner of the fresco’s edges. Work had commenced on its restoration – and the repainting of a handful of warriors in new Legion colours. The most skilled artisans would have been brought in to duplicate the masterwork of the original and bring it back to its former glory, before their efforts had been abandoned.

  The stonework here had also been undergoing repairs. Tools lay scattered across the floor, and half-carved statuary stood unfinished. Huge blocks of unworked stone were trussed up with canvas and rope, and machinery lay half-hidden beneath tarpaulins, debris and dust.

  Perhaps the restoration had been deemed surplus to requirements and the crews reassigned elsewhere when Dorn had begun the process of fortifying the palace, or perhaps it had been abandoned decades earlier and forgotten amidst the bureaucracy of the Council. Either way, what was important was that it was an unused, old section of the palace, a lower wing that had been discarded and overlooked. It served Sor Talgron’s purpose, and that was all that mattered.

  ‘This is not the way to the shuttle decks, Sor Talgron,’ Volkhar Wreth said.

  ‘There is one last task that must be performed before we leave Terra, honoured predicant,’ Sor Talgron replied. ‘Something Lord Aurelian asked of me in person.’

  ‘He asked you himself? Your star must be in the ascendant within the Legion,’ said Wreth.

  ‘As you predicted when I was an aspirant,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘I am captain of the Thirty-Fourth now.’

  ‘You have done well,’ said Predicant Wreth.

  ‘You taught me well.’

  Sor Talgron picked his way through the debris, plaster chips crunching beneath his armoured boots. Wreth ghosted him, stepping more lightly. The captain pulled aside a heavy canvas drop sheet, throwing up a cloud of dust. Behind it, obscured by more collapsed scaffolding and other junk, was a set of stairs. The steps were worn
by time – once, they must have been frequently used. Sor Talgron descended into the gloom, and his Legion-brother followed.

  Sound was muffled down in the low-ceilinged darkness. The buzzing of Sor Talgron’s armour sounded like a swarm of angry insects. Arched passages led off in different directions, but Sor Talgron walked straight. A flickering orange light in the distance drew him on.

  They passed carved niches and hollows, all of them blockaded by chained iron gates and ferrocrete. Volkhar Wreth paused beside one of them, brushing his fingertips across its seal – an eagle’s head atop crossed thunderbolts.

  ‘Pre-Unity,’ he breathed.

  ‘This whole section of the Imperial Palace is old,’ said Sor Talgron, looking back at him. In the darkness, his lenses gleamed like the reflective eyes of a predator.

  ‘Very old,’ Wreth agreed.

  ‘And abandoned,’ said Sor Talgron, turning away.

  ‘There were those amongst the Crusader Host who felt they were abandoned,’ said Wreth. ‘Stuck here on Terra while their Legions were out there among the stars, doing what we were made to do.’

  ‘And you? Did you feel that way?’ said Sor Talgron over his shoulder.

  ‘Never,’ said Wreth. ‘My faith in the God-Emperor carried me through. As I said, I knew you were coming.’

  ‘I have never held much stock in visions and prophecies,’ said Sor Talgron.

  ‘That doesn’t mean they are not real.’

  Sor Talgron did not answer. He simply walked on, drawn to the flickering light ahead of them. It was clear now that it was a candle.

  At the end of the passage, one of the sealed archways had been opened. Lengths of chain lay spread upon the stone floor. A single wick burned within, sitting in a pool of melted red wax atop a stone block carved with intricate figures and dense lettering. The block had been pushed up against the far wall, revealing a gaping square hole where several more had been removed. Dozens of stones of all sizes were stacked low around the walls. Eight carved burial niches lined the walls.