Fire Warrior

I 04.58 HRS (SYS. LOCAL — DOLUMAR IV, Ultima Seg. #4356/E)

The storm was coming.

Shas’la T’au Kais closed his eyes and tried not to think of it.

There would be noise and confusion, he supposed. There would be guns and blood, comm chatter and smoke. There would be screams.

He’d been taught since birth that anxiety, especially when dwelt upon, was an inefficient sentiment. Mentally reprimanding himself, he closed his eyes and set his mind adrift, not caring to dwell upon his nascent fear.

He remembered...

On the eighth-tau’cyr anniversary of his birth there had been a brief pause in training.

The sand settled in the basin of the battledome, its tiered auditorium rising in silent rings overhead. Devoid of the massed crowds that gathered for the festivals every kai’rotaa, it seemed almost unreal in its emptiness. Kais preferred it this way, grateful that his training was conducted beyond the public gaze.

The other youths, glad of the hiatus, watched with casual interest as the shas’vre supervisor conducted a bemused conversation with the communicator on his cheek.

“It’s impractical,” he declared, apparently addressing the open air. “No. Well, yes, of course I appreciate that, but today’s exercises are uncompleted an — Who? Oh. Oh, I see.” He swivelled briefly to regard Kais, one eyebrow lifting subtly. “Yes, he’s here. Very well.”

The other youths, following their mentor’s gaze, turned their inquisitive faces to stare. An interruption of this nature was entirely unprecedented.

“Kais?” the old warrior grunted, features etched by a lifetime of T’au’s relentless sunshine glare. “It’s your father. He’s come to visit.”

Blip.

Another digit disappeared from the round-cornered countdown panel on the wall, its sudden absence sucking on Kais’s attention and plucking him lightly from his memories. He risked a guilty glance around the interior of the dropship, checking that none of his fellow warriors had spotted his lapse into reverie. Seated in rows along either wall of the windowless transit hold, supported by padded deployment seats with gently curving restraints, the others seemed as preoccupied as he was.

The dropship, an Orca-class shuttle with ample room for his entire hunter-cadre, made no noise. Somehow, Kais decided, that was worse. Somehow things might be better, easier, if the craft juddered and corkscrewed, battered by unforgiving turbulence and afflicted by all the horrors of unreliable technology the tau so stringently avoided.

If, perhaps, each fluted bulkhead was something other than perfectly sealed and rigorously tested, or if the ship’s stabilisers were less accurate, or the carefully moulded deployment seats less comfortable... If there were noises to distract him, discomforts to irritate him, minor inefficiencies to prey upon his nerves...

If, if, if.

If the plummeting vessel were anything other than perfect, sleek, silent and utterly efficient in every way then perhaps he wouldn’t be sitting there desperately trying to avoid the thought that was fighting for prominence in his mind.

I’m going to die out there.

He closed his eyes and wrestled his awareness back to the battledome on T’au.

His father arrived with a retinue, of course.

The entry portal yawned open to reveal six shas’la line warriors, moving with the feline confidence and grace that Kais was already beginning to recognise in his young shas’saal classmates. Their domed helmets swivelled left and right, wary of hidden dangers. On each figure’s left shoulder a gently curving torso guard caught the auditorium’s apex-light and blazed, the elegant symbol of his homeworld T’au — and, coincidentally, of the fire caste — pronounced sharply in vivid white. Kais found himself unable to look away from the circular icon, fascinated and daunted that such simple geometry could supposedly represent his life, his legacy, and his role within the universe, all at once.

Finally satisfied with the security of the location, and barely even glancing at the young trainees arranged nearby, the warriors lowered their long pulse rifles and stood at ease. Reacting to some unseen command, the portal opened again and Kais’s father stepped through.

Shas’o T’au Shi’ur — Commander of the Fifth Ten-Cadre, hero of Uor’la, favoured disciple of Aun’shi, thrice prevalent in Trials by Fire and honoured with the appellation “Strong Triumph” at the battle of Fio’vash — was not nearly as tall as Kais had remembered.

He hadn’t seen his father in three tau’cyrs: a long time, even by the detached standards of the fire caste. In the literature and imagery that filtered its way into the training facility, O’Shi’ur was typically seen clad in his colossal battlesuit, striking a pose against the pied skyline of some alien world. The por’hui media bolstered his legendary reputation, oozing rhetoric upon his defence of the tau empire and his efforts to carry its creed to the as-yet unenlightened races of the galaxy. He was a hero, plain and simple, and Kais had lived beneath his shadow since he could remember.

And now here he was, as unavoidable in life as was his image in the media. A medium-sized individual with unremarkable features: skin the pale grey-blue of his caste, nasal cavity a slash of perfect symmetry bisecting his brow, broad upper jaw and jutting chin entirely consistent with average fire caste features. He was somewhat lean, perhaps, but certainly not the muscled giant that stalked Kais’s nightmares, frowning and condescending, criticising everything he did. He wore simple combat fatigues, embroidered in places with small stripes of rank and caste. Kais thought he looked old. Old and tired.

A chime sounded, breaking the expectant tension of the dropship’s hold. Kais glanced at the drop-commander seated nearby, half dreading the significance of the signal.

Shas’el T’au Lusha, his scarred brow creased, seemed just as lost to the dangers of introspection as Kais had been. Only at the sounding of a second chime did the commander blink and peer around the hold, his frown dissolving. Kais felt reassured by his calmness, as if serenity were somehow infectious.

“Five raik’ors, first group,” he grunted, glancing at a readout beside him. “Final checks.”

The troopers obediently began examining weapons and combat gear, tightening servo clasps on armour plates, double-checking ammunition loads and polishing the already spotless optic clusters glaring from their crested helmets.

Kais appreciated the thoroughness. The group had been combat-ready for three decs already: a tortuous period of troubled imaginings and expectations, the malignant seeds of self-doubt growing and gnawing at each trooper. For many this would be their first real combat mission, a baptism of uncertainty and violence. Any last-moment wargear maintenance was entirely redundant, but at least it occupied their minds. Kais applied himself to the task with gusto, glad of the distraction.

Directly opposite, Vhol clucked his tongue in unconscious frustration at some imagined imperfection in his rifle. Deriving from the distant sept of D’yanoi, the stocky trooper was a constant source of amusement amongst Kais’s comrades, forever scrutinising the minutiae of technology like some misplaced member of the earth caste. His homeworld had a reputation for rusticity and the squad rarely let him forget it, nicknaming him “Fio’shas” — the worker-warrior.

By contrast, the trooper to Kais’s left seemed utterly uninterested in inspecting her gear. Ju, her cadaverous features even paler than normal, sat with eyes closed and lips moving soundlessly, forming some rhythmic mantra or other. Ever since Kais could remember, Ju’s spiritual intensity had irked the other warriors, forever espousing the sanctity of the tau’va and holding forth with whatever philosophical nugget she’d most recently picked up. It wasn’t that the other rookies begrudged her faith in the Greater Good; rather that the tau’va philosophy of collective progress had permeated every part of the young line warrior’s training, and her inclination to preach was regarded as a waste of energy and breath. Despite the collective apathy towards Ju, both he and Y’hol had become her firm friends.

Kais peered at each of them in turn, grateful for their presence. Thirteen tau’cyrs had passed since his father’s visit to the training dome; in all that time only Y’hol and Ju, each in their own way as different as himself, had continued to treat him with the same familiarity and ease he’d enjoyed before his father’s identity had become public knowledge. In the eyes of all the others Kais could feel only the weight of expectation, as if greatness should be somehow constituent in his blood.

But he also felt something more, something worse: it was the cold, quiet glimmering of disappointment, and he’d seen it before.

O’Shi’ur approached the young tau with a clipped gait, eyes flitting from face to face with insect precision, analysing, committing to memory, then moving on. The shas’la retinue moved with him, a living mantle of jutting weapons and lenticular optics. He was searching.

Kais fought hard against the sudden desire to step out of line and declare “Me! It’s me! I’m your son!” Somewhere in his gut a muscle contracted, spasming nervously, and he wobbled imperceptibly in his spot, terrified of falling over. All the time a tiny voice in the back of his mind reminded him that maybe, just maybe, his father would recognise him despite the tau’cyrs of growth and change, and greet him with the pleasure such a reunion surely deserved.

O’Shi’ur’s lip curled and he eyed the supervisor.

“Which one is he?” he grunted. Kais deflated inside.

“That one.” The shas’vre nodded in his direction.

His father stared at him for what seemed an eternity, then appeared to glide forwards, blotting the apex-light from Kais’s eyes and filling his vision with old, analytical inquiry made flesh. He respectfully lowered his gaze, fighting his jangling nerves.

“Kais,” O’Shi’ur said, almost softly.

The urge to look up was too strong. Father and son made eye contact for a brief moment before Kais looked away, feeling wretched and flayed by the older tau’s gaze. Flesh could disintegrate beneath such a stare, he imagined. All the far-fetched rhetoric of the media could become truth in an individual such as this. He bit his tongue and wished the sands at his feet would rupture and devour him, hiding him away from those expectant, critical eyes.

“How does he progress?” his father said, presumably speaking once more to the shas’vre. Kais felt exposed, an exhibit to be prodded and discussed, unworthy of interaction. The shas’vre’s faltering reply was crudely diplomatic.

“He is... able, Shas’o. Able indeed.”

“Able?”

Kais felt the pause like the end of the world. He knew the Shas’vre wouldn’t lie, could already taste the humiliation.

“Yes, Shas’o. Adequate.”

“But his dedication to the tau’va is commendable, I daresay? He excels?”

The shas’vre mouthed wordlessly, then sighed.

“He is... a little impetuous, perhaps.”

“Impetuous?” O’Shi’ur’s disapproving voice was a leaden bell ringing in Kais’s ears, tolling out across his private world of shame.

“Yes,” the shas’vre went on, apparently resigned to total candour. “Given to tempers, Shas’o. Changes in mood and focus. But... he is still young. Perhaps we mi—”

“Is this true, boy?”

Kais forced himself to look up again. His father’s eyes burnt themselves onto his memory, smouldering with distaste and disappointment, crystallising the world, shattering everything in his life and filling it instead with only the acidity of that unrelenting, unforgiving, unimpressed gaze.

“Yes, Shas’o,” he mumbled, barely able to form words.

His father stood and stared, hooves tapping at the sand. He grunted under his breath twice, clearly fighting his dissatisfaction in an attempt to articulate.

“We are told,” he began, forming words thoughtfully, “that there is a place for everyone in the tau’va, regardless of their... inadequacies. One merely need find one’s niche.”

Kais could hear the disbelief in the voice, falsifying its reassurance; all the rhetoric in the world couldn’t erase those disappointed eyes from his memory.

“Here.” O’Shi’ur’s calloused hand thrust itself into his vision, clutching a small display wafer. “A gift.”

Kais took it, numbly. The world was dead. It didn’t matter.

His father left, the retinue of warriors drifted away like mist and the training began again. The silent dome stared down in mute judgment, the sand rose in miniature explosions with every footfall, and everything was normal.

Only at rotaa-end did he dare to examine the wafer. It was a small litany, written by his father in his own clipped, angular hand. It read:

That night, after staring at the words for long, sleepless decs, Kais dreamed of falling into an endless abyss, and whenever he swivelled towards the surface all he could see was a pair of dark, disenchanted eyes, glaring down at him.

“Two raik’ors.”

El’Lusha’s terse proclamation jolted Kais from the reverie. He found himself unconsciously clutching at the utility pack clipped to his belt, feeling the familiar shape of the old display wafer through its thin material.

He knew his reluctance to discard the token was sentimentality of the worst kind: treasuring such a bauble long after its text had been committed to memory smacked of impracticality, utterly in violation of the principles of the Greater Good. Still, it exerted some form of impossible gravity upon him — he could no more throw it away than he could believe himself worthy of its lesson.

Satisfied that the wafer remained in its accustomed position, Kais glanced around the dropship. From across the hold El’Lusha stared at him with a sort of quiet amusement, completely at odds with his grizzled, scarred features. Kais looked away.

“Helmet checks,” the commander grunted. “One-on-one.”

Kais turned to find a partner quickly, grateful for the distraction. A hand landed heavily on his shoulder.

“Here, Shas’la. I’ll do it.” El’Lusha stood over him, the same quiet smile creasing the corners of his mouth.

“Thank you, Shas’el.” Kais mumbled, uncertain. He upended the helmet and lowered it over his head, feeling the familiar surge of sensory information as the faceplate made contact with his skin. The world opened up from a single speck of light, a horizontal explosion of colours and shapes overwritten by winking text brackets and analysis readouts.

“You’re La’Kais, aren’t you?” Lusha’s rasping voice enquired, hands firmly joining the clasps along Kais’s spine. “I checked.”

Kais frowned, unsure how to react. Why should a shas’el know his name? Unless...

“I knew your father.”

And there it was again: that crystallisation of reality, crumbling his senses and filling him with the certainty of his own worthlessness: all he was and would ever be was a reflection, and a faint one at that, of his father.

“He was a great warrior,” Lusha continued, knuckles rapping the base of Kais’s neck in a final test of the helmet’s seal. “I served with him for many tau’cyrs. I was with him on Fal’shia when the Y’he came. I mourned his death.”

Kais replied without thinking. “I didn’t know him well.”

Immediately he regretted it, chastising his own lack of respect. If Lusha noted the overfamiliarity he gave no indication of it, nodding sagely.

“I don’t think anyone did,” he said, thoughtful.

A set of digits in the corner of Kais’s vision blurred towards zero, an interface with the dropship’s systems reminding him visually of the vessel’s meteoric descent. Lusha was still staring at him.

“Thank you, Shas’el,” Kais mumbled, indicating his helmet seals, this time careful to observe the commander’s caste-and-rank epithet. “Should I check yours?”

Lusha shook his head with a small frown. “My thanks, trooper, but no. I’m staying aboard, apparently. Shas’ar’tol command doesn’t like its officers getting their hands dirty if they can possibly help it.” He shook his head again, muttering beneath his breath.

Kais said nothing, sinking back into his deployment seat in astonishment at El’Lusha’s open disapproval of his own superiors. Had a shas’la ever dared express such sedition they could be guaranteed an intensive course in mental correction at the very least, not that any were foolish enough to do so.

“First combat?” Lusha grinned. “I can always tell.”

“Yes, Shas’el.” Kais wrung his hands together, uncomfortable at the attention. He felt betrayed by his nerves, compelled somehow to prove his preparedness. “But... I’ve served four tau’cyrs already, Shas’el. And the combat simulations at the training dome are—”

“Ahh, simulations...” Lusha grinned, “and four tau’cyrs of standing about guarding por’vres and por’els, no doubt.”

Kais nodded, embarrassed. Lusha chuckled.

“Your father said something to me, once,” he grunted, pursing his lips in thought. “Might help you.”

Kais frowned, uneasy at the prospect of hearing his father’s words from beyond the funeral pyre.

“He fixed me with those eyes of his and he said, ‘Young one... Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re ready for this.’ Then he opened the drop doors and out we went.” Lusha’s face clouded, preoccupied by the memories.

“You don’t think us ready, Shas’el?”

“No. I don’t think it’s possible to be ready, La’Kais. The best you can do is expect the worst.”

Kais peered past the commander to his friends and comrades. Their postures betrayed them: each as anxious as he, unwilling to admit their fear to themselves. Somehow that knowledge was strangely reassuring. He wasn’t alone with his terror.

“Warriors!” Lusha boomed, startling them. “Attend! In half a raik’or we’ll be at deployment altitude! This is it! This is what you trained for! This rotaa you face your Trial by Fire. Do not expect it to be easy!”

A light began to flash. The door into the drop deck gushed open and the padded restraints around each seat relaxed.

Muscles tensed. Teeth ground against one another.

“Details are unimportant. There’s been an incident — that’s all you need to know. Remember your niche. Remember your place. You are a cog in a machine! Ask no questions! Obey and concentrate!

Your mission is simple: engage and destroy. Conduct the mont’sel combat-pattern at all times; be swift and leave nothing alive. There’s a trench network at the city’s perimeter, so spread out when you’re down and clear the area. The crisis teams are setting down on the other side of the city, so don’t expert any backup. Things are not going well down there. Let’s turn the tide!”

A chime sounded. The readout in Kais’s helmet counted away the moments implacably, refusing to slow or stop in answer to his shrieking nerves. His ears roared. Nothing was real.

“Remain focused on the tau’va! In unity lies progress! In harmony lies victory! Don’t let yourselves down, Fire Warriors!”

The ship shuddered. The hover thrusters rumbled to life. A fragmented thunderstorm raged beyond the hull.

A siren sounded.

“Deployment positions,” said Lusha.

There were nine, in total. Eight clutching guns, staring and sneering through the bars of the cage, and one bustling industriously amongst the instrumentation of the chamber.

They smelt bitter, an aroma as unvaried and unsubtle as it was unpleasant, so unlike the rich pheromone language the tau enjoyed. These creatures were a race of clones, pink, frail and moist.

Aun’el T’au Ko’vash, secured behind adamantium bars, found himself searching for traces of artificial individuality with which to tell them apart: rank stripes, facial scars, tattoos. As an ethereal, the ruling caste of the tau race, it was his particular assignation in life to understand and appreciate the unity and the deficiency in all things. Nonetheless, before he’d ever encountered the gue’la, he’d never imagined a species so utterly ignorant of its own imperfections. The gue’la, he had quickly learned, were going to be trouble.

And now he found himself their prisoner, abducted in a storm of violence that he was still fighting to understand. It didn’t matter. The reality of any situation was in its present, and in the “now” he was trapped. Helpless. An exhibit.

To Ko’vash, accustomed to the sweeping curvature and bright pallor of tau construction, his prison seemed unbearably grim. Given the lack of windows and the broad steps leading down to this low ceilinged space, he guessed he was incarcerated underground. The room itself was small and stifling, bordered by consoles and machinery, all typically gue’la in their rambling ugliness. Each of the eight soldiers faced his cage with an expression — in as much as he understood gue’la mannerisms — of intense disgust. One spat noisily.

“Don’t do that, idiot!” barked a ninth, the coarse language quickly filtered and translated by the didactic learning modules the Aun, like all tau, had absorbed as an infant. From what little of it Ko’vash could see beyond its thick black cowl, this guela’s face was a mass of twitching implants and sensors, copper wiring visible through its necrotic flesh. It jabbed a finger at the perpetrator, even now wiping spittle from his chin.

“This is a sterile area!”

The soldier appeared appropriately repentant until the black-cowl turned away, although Ko’vash entirely failed to interpret the bizarre hand gesture that followed. The ethereal was beginning to learn that such wasteful displays, utterly redundant in any constructive sense, were typical of his captors.

He made a decision. Opening his eyes fully, he dropped the facade of unconsciousness and rose to his feet in a single sweeping motion. The rush of shocked pheromones from each of the gue’la was, he didn’t mind admitting, deeply gratifying. The black-cowl recovered first.

“Well, well...” he muttered, hands rubbing together. A slight smile played across his metallic lips and he gestured vaguely at one of the soldiers, eyes not leaving Ko’vash. “Contact Severus. Tell him our guest is awake.” The soldier sprinted up the stairs, not looking back.

The robed human positioned himself before the cage and studied Ko’vash intently, rubbing his chin.

“Well,” he kept saying quietly, thinking to himself, “well, well...”

Ko’vash had neither the patience nor the inclination to remain silent in the face of scrutiny. He leaned forwards slowly.

“Who are you?” he said, testing his abilities to articulate the gue’las’ crude language. A second rush of astonished pheromones greeted his senses.

“You speak Imperial?” the black-cowl hissed, cable-strewn fingers clenching in surprise.

Ko’vash ignored the question, irritated by the gue’la tendency to state the obvious, and repeated: “Who are you, human?”

The face beneath the cowl leered. “You’re very well spoken — for an abomination. I respect that.”

Ko’vash merely stared, absorbing every shred of sensory information around him. The gue’la bowed with a sarcastic flourish, the bristling components of his face twitching excitedly.

“I am Turial Farrachus,” he said, “Genetor primus of the Magos Biologis and Adept of the Officio Xenobiologica. I’m what you might call an... enthusiast of all things ‘tau’.”

Ko’vash nodded, mentally storing the name. As much as his helplessness galled him, his first instinct was to gather information. Conversation seemed the most probable source of answers. He dipped his head respectfully, deciding politeness would be his best tool, and declared: “I am Aun’el T’au Ko’vash.”

“Ah, yes,” Farrachus purred, voice thick with insincere gravity. “Let me see now... That would make you an Aun of the rank ‘el’, correct? The... third highest, I think?”

“Fourth,” Ko’vash interceded, interested in the gue’la’s knowledge despite himself. Such basic factors of tau life were hardly secrets; surely these frail creatures didn’t bring him here for this?

“I stand corrected.” Farrachus grinned. “The central part of your name is your birthworld — what was it?”

“T’au.”

“That’s it... And the last section is the ‘given’ name, if memory serves. ‘Ko-vaj’, was it?”

“Ko’vash...”

The magos bowed flamboyantly again. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“What is this place, Adept Farrachus?”

“That’s irrelevant,” the man smiled, turning away to continue his inspection of a blinking datascreen. “Consider yourself a guest of His Most Sacred Majesty, the Emperor of Mankind. I suggest you enjoy his hospitality while it lasts.”

He selected a polished scalpel from a tray at his side and examined it pointedly. There was something almost amphibious to his features; the wide mouth and metal-infested skin spread in an ugly smile that derived, Ko’vash could clearly see, from his perceived seniority to those around him.

The ethereal refused to be cowed in the same way, staring disdainfully at the brandished scalpel. In truth, the didactic memories divulged little material regarding this “Officio Xenobiologica”, but the overtones were clear. Without a trace of arrogance Ko’vash was fully aware of his importance to the tau: to have fallen into the hands of beings as fiercely expansionist as the gue’la was nothing short of disastrous. He had no doubt that, at the first possible juncture, he would be tortured for whatever tactical knowledge he possessed. The shortsightedness of the gue’la was appalling.

Whispering a calming litany, he reminded himself that even the gue’la, in time, would come to embrace the tau’va. All things would, eventually.

“How did I come to be here?” he purred, examining his memories for clues.

He’d been visiting the colony world Yu’kanesh when it happened; a riot of gunfire and madness that left his retinue pulverised and him gagging for air. He remembered the gas they’d used, curling through his mind and dampening every sensation. He remembered shouts and screams, then vast shapes in the fog hulking implacably forwards, then nothing.

“My employer organised some... mutual friends to fetch you.” The human chuckled, not looking round. “He’s most anxious to meet you.”

“Your ‘employer’?”

“That’s right. Well... Our ‘host’, at any rate. Ultimately I serve a far greater cause, as do all of the Emperor’s flock.”

“We’re not so dissimilar, then,” Ko’vash trilled, testing him.

“You’re quite wrong,” Farrachus growled, smug features twisting with anger. He fiddled with the knife impatiently, testing its weight. “We’re worlds apart, you and I.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Ko’vash waved an elegant hand dismissively, gratified at the ease with which these inefficient creatures could be goaded. “Tell me... What is your Emperor?”

Farrachus’s eyes flashed angrily. “How dare you speak his name? I’ll not tolerate xenos sullying his purity.”

Ko’vash tilted his head, undeterred by the insult. “Nonetheless — the question stands. What is he?”

“He is the purity of mankind. Our light and our guide. I wouldn’t expect an abomination to understand!”

“Would you say, then, that he represents the whole of your race?”

“Of course! We live and die to serve him!”

“And in so doing, you serve all gue’la?”

The adept’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Where are you going with this, alien?”

Ko’vash allowed a serene smile to play across his lips. “The ‘greater power’ that I serve,” he said, “teaches us that in service to our race, we contribute to the Greater Good... Are your Emperor and my tau’va truly so different?”

“That’s enough,” the man growled, all vestiges of humour discarded.

“You called yourself an enthusiast of the tau,” Ko’vash persisted, “so you must know of the tau’va... You must know we seek to unite all things for their mutual benefit, not to destroy them? We are no threat to you, unless provoked.”

“You will be quiet!” the human barked, brandishing the scalpel.

“We are no threat to you, and yet you hold me against my will. You must see the illogic of it.”

Farrachus’s advance halted, and his mouth curled with cruel humour once more. “I told you why you are here,” he hissed. “My master was anxious to speak with you. You have so much to discuss together.”

“Whoever he is, he can’t imagine that I’ll tell him anything important.”

“Forgive my scepticism, alien. I’ve heard those words said before.”

“I’ll die before I betray the tau’va.”

“You would do well to forget whatever xeno gibberish you believe.” Farrachus growled. “It won’t help you any longer. And if you think I’ll let you die before you’ve... co-operated, you’re quite, quite mistaken.”

He chuckled, turning back to the instrument panels, sweaty fingers caressing the knife’s hilt.

The wait on the drop deck was significantly shorter.

The deployment doors melted open to reveal a smoke-blotted patch of dust and mud below. The first few warriors, crouched in readiness, shuffled agitatedly, knuckles tightening on rifles.

Early morning gloom raced by beneath, the first tentative splashes of light from the rising sun streaking the smoke and sand. Dolumar IV was a bleak world even when seen from above, and Kais glared morosely at the rocky wastes as they drew inexorably closer.

An altimeter chimed. The droplight turned green and the fire warriors in front of him began to tumble out into the haze.

Kais’s leg muscles bunched, smoke and dust churning past them into the drop deck. He took a breath, swallowed hard, and jumped.

Lieutenant Alik Kevla waved forwards the ragged remnants of his squad and advanced towards the next blind corner of the trench system. More of the alien vessels were bleeding out of the skies with every moment, filling the air with the awful shriek of their engines. Mind still burning with fury at the lucky airstrike that had wiped out half of his squad scant minutes before, he cursed every inhuman abomination that ever dared draw breath within the Emperor’s divine realms and gripped his lasgun to his chest.

They’d come from nowhere, unprovoked and unannounced, but by the grace of the Throne they’d regret the day they came to this world!

“Landing craft,” he snarled, peering cautiously around a corner at the pair of bulbous shuttles hovering nearby. They tilted downwards shallowly, as if sniffing at the dust, great plumes of haze lifting around their engines. Kevla turned to his squad with a growl. “Not one of them lives that walks on the Emperor’s soil. You understand? Not one!”

They chorused their assent, sharing his anger. None of them held any great fondness for this world or its people, but they’d be damned before they saw a single godless xenogen sullying the sanctity of an Imperial world. Kevla nodded, satisfied at their resolve, and broke cover.

Dolumar IV was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a well-developed world. The spaceport was Hide more than a cluster of limpet buildings and a field of rockcrete, the major city Lettica a haphazard arrangement of rock and steel and the population little more than a captive army of workers.

All through the day and night the smelting factories churned away, disgorging their noxious emissions and shattering any hope of a moment’s silence. The agriculture projects had all died within a few years of the first colonists’ arrival; only the relentless machines, grinding away eternity in a fugue of molten metal and weld sparks, gave the planet any sense of purpose now.

Dolumar was a weapon world. Eating itself from the inside out, its overseers kept a constant stream of impure metallic nuggets spilling onto rickety, steaming conveyors; churning out the oiled, brittle killing tools of the Imperial Guard. Give it enough time and Lettica’s factories would cover its entire surface — another forge world to birth the war machines of the Imperium.

Little wonder the Departmento Munitorum had chosen to garrison the planet with such a high density of guardsmen. Four entire regiments were, even now, scrambling to respond to this unannounced alien threat.

Lieutenant Kevla sneered as he darted forwards, reassured by the war cries of the men hot on his heels. Yes, he told himself, these tau had made a grave mistake in targeting Dolumar.

Which was when twenty rounds of burstcannon fire shredded Lieutenant Kevla and his small squad in a cataclysm of detonating flesh and half-lived screams.

Briefly, Kais flew.

When it rose up to meet him, the ground seemed impossibly solid. The earth impacted against his hooves with an astonishing lurch, jarring through his legs. He stumbled, regaining his balance in a clumsy spray of dust and rock. More troopers piled out behind him, scattering towards the myriad trench openings nearby. Thick with haze and smoke, his first impressions of the planet were uniformly cluttered, crudely constructed trench walls snaking away towards the distant angles and towers of the gue’la city.

Even over the scream of the dropship’s engines, with miniature cyclones of dust fountaining all around him, Kais could hear the unmistakable rattle of burstcannon fire. The multi-barrelled weapon mounted on the nose of the dropship came to life with a hungry buzz, its bright strobefire dazzling him. By the time his disordered thoughts were settled enough to wonder at the weapon’s intended target, all that remained was a ragged cluster of shapes, crumbling and dissolving before his eyes.

It took Kais long, ugly raik’ans to realise that the red mist hanging in the air was gue’la blood. Somehow he’d expected them to have water pumping through their moist bodies, fuelling their plump, pink muscles and sloshing through their vacuous inner spaces. The vibrancy of their fluids was startling. The bodies slumped awkwardly as the burstcannon shut off, smoke gushing from its barrels, rotations slowing lazily.

And then the explosions started, and the smoke lifted, and hell opened up before him. The sky was a patchwork of pulsefire and tracer streams, arcing magnificently between unseen ordnance and unseen target. Perfect t’roi-petal detonations rippled open from horizon to horizon, sending out questing tentacles of shrapnel, churning the already frothing air in ranks of airborne metal and fire. A phalanx of Barracudas howled overhead, riding the storm of smoke and chaos; a tawny blur of pastel and black against the overcast pall. Enemy fighters gusted after them, weapons chattering.

Kais absorbed it all in stunned fascination, oblivious to the fire warriors sprinting past him. A voice in his head snapped him to attention sharply.

“All hands clear,” it barked. “Secure the area and advance into the trenches.”

Kais glanced around, surprised to find himself alone. His comrades’ armoured forms melted through the haze, pulling away from the hovering vessel towards the cover of the trenches. A second dropship, similarly poised, was settling nearby, no doubt preparing to disgorge its own cargo of troopers.

Kais focused on a pair of his comrades and stumbled after them, mind still reeling. Gunfire fought with the howl of the shuttle engines, jostling for his attention. The bright flash-flare of distant airstrikes patterned him with light and shadow, thick mushrooms of smoke pillaring upwards above the walls of the trench. On every side the mangled crudity of gue’la engineering affronted his eyes: haphazard bridges crisscrossing the channels with buckling scaffold struts, half-crumbled pillboxes overlooking each meandering twist in the sandbag corridors.

It was madness, and he gagged to find himself at its centre.

The two warriors sprinted ahead before he could catch them up, ducking beneath a wide platform that straddled the trench. Kais recognised the squat physique of the shas’la on point: a female named Keth’rit who had trained with him on T’au. The other he didn’t know.

The pair stepped around the nearest corner and flew apart, las-fire knocking ugly chunks from their armour.

Keth’rit’s head jolted backwards with a snap, a pale jet of cyan blood hanging limpid in the air before scrawling itself across the trench wall. The other trooper fragmented at the limbs and neck as his chest absorbed a volley, slumping in a fractured heap.

Kais’s momentum carried him on, too astonished by his comrades’ strangled death throes to even think. By the time something approaching reality assembled itself in his mind it was too late to stop, too late to regret the rashness of the assault, too late to recite the Sio’t mediation of the Shas’len’ra — the Cautious Warrior. His legs betrayed him, carrying him past Keth’rit’s jerking form and into the path of whatever had killed her. The scent of her blood was overpowering.

He dropped a knee to the floor, operating on instinct, panicked and automatic actions taken without a thought passing his mind. Grit and fabric exploded from the sandbag wall at his back, las-blasts at head height harmlessly shredding the air above him. He raised the rifle, isolating a shape from the swirling melange of visual madness, and squeezed the trigger. Something shrieked and crumpled to the ground, legs kicking and flailing dumbly.

Kais watched the gue’la for a long time, wishing it would realise it was dead.

Kor’vre Rann T’pell, ensconced within the comfortable confines of the second shuttle’s cockpit, nodded in satisfaction at the sensor displays. Glancing at the concave grid of viewscreens before her, she noted that her sister vessel had finished deploying its cargo of fire warriors and was beginning to lift clear. Nodding, she finalised her smooth descent with practiced ease and tapped at a control, remotely informing the deck officer that disembarkation could begin.

The controls before her could hardly be more intuitive: finely balanced level gauges, pitch and roll tracker spheres, directional touchpads on hovering drones, all within easy reach of her slender arms, themselves a physical trait common to all the spaceborn tau of the air caste. It was a design of perfect ergonomic arrangement, a symbiosis of pilot and vessel, and she never failed to spare a respectful thought for whatever earth caste fio’el had designed it.

“The doors are open, Kor’vre,” her kor’ui assistant trilled, concentrating hard on regulating the hover thrusters.

T’pell clucked her tongue in acknowledgement, daring to relax her tense muscles. Thus far the troop deployment had been a complete success.

As if overhearing her thoughts, the dropship’s Al chimed in with a sonorous announcement. “General alert,” it warned, voice lifeless and cold. “Enemy ordnance seeking lock. Gridzone 3-5-2.”

T’pell hissed and forced herself to remain calm, fixing her eyes upon the appropriate viewscreen. Sure enough, a lumbering vehicle on dust-choked tracks, venting clouds of smoke, lurched along the rim of a nearby trench and swivelled its turret inexorably in her direction. T’pell stabbed at the burstcannon auto-track control and held her breath.

The two weapons fired together.

For the briefest fraction of a raik’an, T’pell was convinced she could see the artillery shell ripping through the air towards her. Then the dropship shuddered, the viewscreens flickered to darkness, and everything turned to fire.

Kais was retracing his steps, intent upon regrouping with others from his cadre, when he spotted the tank. It squatted on the bank above the trench enormously, gunmetal flanks as chipped and stained as any of the gue’la technology he’d seen thus far. Glaring at it from below with a cynical eye, he doubted the vehicle’s efficacy as a threat to his comrades. He was quickly forced to reassess.

The cannon fired, its roar shuddering through the air and lifting a layer of dust and sand from the trench floor.

Like an angry creature spasming its muscles to shed the parasites infecting its skin, the ground clenched and shuddered. Something nearby detonated, and Kais lost his footing at the rush of Shockwaves that followed. Scrabbling in the sand, he dragged his gaze painfully towards the end of the trench, where boiling gouts of smoke and dust lurched skywards. One of the dropships had been hit, toroq-side engine blown to shreds.

The comm erupted in shouts and screams and the world went white.

Burstcannon pulses punched craters in the trench-walls around Kais, knocking lumps of molten metal from the gue’la tank above his head and sending him scrabbling for cover. The tank rolled onwards in spite of the firestorm, attempting to negotiate the bridge that spanned the trench.

“...econd dropsh... oing dow—”

“...ear the site! Get to c—”

Trailing a plume of superheated fuel, continuing to spit a hail of pulsefire at the tank even as it foundered, the dropship hit the ground and dragged itself in an ugly arc. Dust churned upwards, obliterating the shrieks from the communicator and blocking Kais’s view. The last thing he saw was the other shuttle, the one he’d been deployed from, pulling away to the left as its dying sister-vessel gyrated in a fiery circle, heaving smoke and flame into the dust storm.

Shredded by the burstcannon, the scaffold bridge collapsed.

Spewing its mechanical innards, venting fire from the wounds all over its hull, the gue’la tank nosedived into the trench in a cascade of rock and oil, dragging with it the ruined skeleton of the bridge. The trench walls crumbled, smearing themselves across the devastation.

Scrabbling clear of the tumbling wreckage, Kais thought of the gue’la trapped inside the vehicle, wounded and baking, wondering why the access hatch wouldn’t open, slowly suffocating in the dark. Guiltily, aware of the untaulike sentiment of it, he thought: Good.

Rising up beyond the wreckage, thrusters faltering, the remaining dropship wobbled into the sky.

“General address!” his comm announced, startling him. “This is El’Lusha. The drop site is no longer safe! All troopers regroup! I’m sending new coordinates now. Make your way to the pick-up site and await further instructions.”

Kais felt panic gripping him, glancing around in the futile hopes of spotting other shas’las. “El’Lusha,” he transmitted, voice growing faster and louder as his terror betrayed him, “t-this is La’Kais. I don’t think I can regroup... The... the trench is blocked — I can’t see any of the others! I don’t know wh—”

“La’Kais.” The voice was maddeningly calm, a leaden slab that arrested his panic before it consumed him. “La’Kais, you must focus.”

He forced himself to breathe, grinding his teeth together until the horror subsided. He hung his head, ashamed of himself. “My apologies, Shas’el.”

“Listen to me: the rest of the cadre is scattered on the other side of the dropsite. They’re regrouping, but they’re too far clear of your position...”

“Shas’el? I-I don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry, La’Kais. You’ll have to advance to the extraction point alone.”

“T-there aren’t any others?” His voice was quiet, not ready to believe itself. Without even thinking, his hand clutched for the shape of the display wafer in his belt pouch.

“None, Shas’la,” came Lusha’s grave reply. “They’re making their own way.”

“I’m alone, then...” he murmured, more to himself than his commander.

“No, Shas’la. Not alone. No tau ever is — you know that.”

Kais breathed deep, unable to find any comfort in Lusha’s words.

The disembodied voice continued with a sigh. “You should be receiving those co-ordinates now.” A row of characters blinked to life in the corner of his HUD. He stared at them morosely, aware of the distance involved.

“You can do this, Kais.”

He watched the ship clamber into the smoke, suspecting that with it went his hopes of survival.

“Yes, Shas’el.”

Nico Junz was scared. He didn’t mind admitting it. Being a coward was something he’d learned to live with long ago, refining it into a virtual art form. Now he relied upon his innate sense of terror to keep him alive.

That was the principle, at any rate.

He’d flourished amongst the grunts of the 19th Glamorgian regiment thanks wholly to his literacy. His weapon skills were negligible and any one of his comrades could, had they wanted to, pound him into the ground. But could any of them compose letters to their families, or read prayers to pass the time on guard duty? Could any of them make equipment manifestos or help the captain administer the armoury? Of course not. Being a coward was one thing, but being a useful coward was entirely another. Life, if not good, was at least easy.

And then, arcing out of the morning sky like a hail of meteors, the tau had come.

Suddenly nobody had the time to write letters, the captain was too busy shouting orders and killing things to worry about expenses, and the armoury, as of fifteen minutes ago, was a smoking crater. So yes, he was scared. Scared and, even worse, completely and utterly useless.

The ceiling of the tight bunker, empty but for Nico, Captain Reicz and a communications servitor, vibrated in response to some explosion outside, dust misting downwards. Nico whimpered under his breath.

“Quiet,” Reicz snorted, turning back to lean over the servitor’s shoulder. Nico, pressed against a wall in an attempt to remain clear of the captain’s fraying temper, regarded the ghoulish thing with a shudder. Once a living human, now its dead features were riddled with mechanical apparatus and twitching components, logic engines replacing its cauterised brain. Its necrotic flesh tightened in concentration as it listened to the comm-feed from the sensor array on the bunker’s roof.

“T’au transmission intercepted...” it hissed, dead eyes long since rotted away and replaced by glowing optics. “Attempting to translate now...”

Its myriad fingers, branching horrendously from every part of its hands and wrists, began manipulating the gears and clattering logic devices on the console before it, every now and again pausing to tilt its head at some particularly hard-to-translate phrase. Reicz bent over it, watching the flickering display screen as the garbled message was deciphered. Nico felt himself creeping nearer, intrigued despite himself.

“Bastards...” the captain breathed, dismayed by the message. “Sneaky alien bastards...”

Nico had just spotted the words “deception” and “delay” from amongst the glowing text when something clattered loudly on the rockcrete above his head, then roared like a hundred thunderstorms. The whole bunker shook.

Nico dived to the ground with a shriek, curling in a whimpering ball as the ceiling splintered and dust rained down from above. Reicz regarded the damage with rather more decorum, angrily glaring upwards. As if mewling for his attention, the console whined painfully, then shut down with a protracted hiss. The screen flickered and went black.

“What happened?” Reicz demanded.

The servitor twitched and chattered, eyebrows dipped in confusion. “Comm link severed...” it reported helplessly. “External channels dead.”

“Sir?” Nico quailed, pulling himself upright with helpful eagerness. “What’s wr—”

“They bombed us!” he roared furiously, hunting for someone to vent his anger at. He grabbed Nico’s lapels and bellowed into his face. “The bastards knocked out our comms, you idiot!”

Nico cringed. “Helpful” was clearly not a wise career move. The captain dropped him and scratched his chin, furious.

“I need a line to Command!”

The servitor shook its head with a vacant rattle. Reicz’s lip curled.

“You,” he snarled. Nico looked up and found a gloved finger aimed at his face. “M-me?”

“Get to the command post. Tell them I know what the xenos are doing.”

“Wha—”

“Quiet. Listen. They’re drawing our fire. Lettica isn’t the target.”

“But, sir—”

“Shut up! It’s a diversion! It’s a warp-damned diversion, you hear me? The prison. You tell them! You tell Command from me — they’re going after the prison!”

Nico’s mind did a backflip. “Wh—”

Reicz glared. “Run!”

The whimpered complaint in Nico’s throat curled up and died. A laspistol muzzle had appeared magically in front of his eyes.

He came to a sudden, adrenalin-fuelled decision. If there was one thing a professional coward was certain to be good at, it was running. He was out the door and sprinting before he knew it.

Kais drew a long breath and crept further along the trench. The oblique curves of the recessed corridors fractured and distorted every sound, making distances impossible to judge. Every gunfire report or roiling artillery impact was a potential threat, and every corner represented an opportunity for deadly surprises.

Behind him, one of the dead gue’la gurgled. They did that, he’d quickly learned. They jerked and groaned and dribbled. Filthy.

His mind was unsettled: a storm of turbulence and dangerous excess. He’d seen and done so much in the few raik’ors since his separation from the cadre that he could barely think straight. He’d fought and sniped and shot. He’d punched holes through soft alien guts and cut short their blind, prejudiced little lives with no more effort than a trigger pull. He’d smelled their burning flesh, wiped their blood from his pale armour and listened, annoyed, to their shrieks and pleas. They were inefficient, he had decided.

In a corner of his mind, he wondered why he wasn’t dead yet.

Along this small stretch of trenchway, dwarfed by the engagement raging all around him, Kais had learnt more about the Way of the Fire Warrior than twenty tau’cyrs in the battledome on T’au. It was enough to disquiet even the firmest, most stable mind.

But worse, worse even than extinguishing the lives of these brutal, impetuous creatures, was the suspicion creeping over him that he was just like them. He had discovered within himself a proclivity for killing, and it terrified him like nothing else.

The comm interrupted his thoughts. “Kais,” Lusha said, sounding strained. “Kais, I want you to pay attention.”

“Yes, Shas’el?”

“There’s a bunker ahead of you. You see it?”

Kais peered along the winding trench, disquieted by his commander’s ability to remotely view the feed from his helmet optics. All throughout his training he’d been uncomfortable with the sensation: having someone else inside his eyes, staring out at his world without his permission, judging his actions from a distance.

“I see it,” he said, glaring at the rockcrete pillbox. He’d assumed it was deserted as he approached, a thick ebb of smoke lifting from its upper surface in silent testament to a recent airstrike. The mangled remains of a communications array sagged piteously above it.

“Listen,” Lusha commed, “I’ve just had word from shas’ar’tol. They’re concerned that the gue’la in that bunker might have intercepted some... sensitive transmissions. Their equipment is more sophisticated than we thought.”

“I don’t understand, Shas’el.”

“You don’t need to understand, La’Kais. You just need to obey.”

The rebuke rang hollow in Kais’s mind. He understood the convention of Shas’la obedience and had even thought himself prepared to abide by it, but now he came to it he felt a powerful need for information. He craved knowledge of the situation, intensely uncomfortable with blind obedience.

Ju would have called it arrogance of the worst kind, he thought with a smile. In questioning orders he was betraying a distrust of his superiors and an unwillingness to allow others to make decisions for him. He quelled the subversive sentiments and bowed his head again, conscientiously attempting to conform.

“Of course, Shas’el. What are my orders?”

“Clear out the bunker, Shas’la. Leave nobody alive. El’Lusha out.”

Kais listened to the silence of the comm-channel and breathed deeply.

Don’t think about it, he told himself. Don’t ask why, don’t concern yourself. Just do it.

Not allowing himself time to agonise, he snatched a grenade from his utility belt, thumbed the trigger, and hurled it. Moments before it tumbled through the bunker’s doorway a skinny gue’la leapt out into the trench, eyes wide in terror. The grenade skittered past him into the dark interior, and in a strangled expulsion of breath the gue’la leapt away, not even aware of the fire warrior standing three tor’leks from him.

Kais blinked. The whole thing had lasted moments.

The grenade detonated with a roar, lifting the top layers of dust from the bunker and forcing out the walls: a concrete belly spasming with shrapnel flatulence. Smoke and flesh vented unevenly through the doorway.

He peered inside cautiously, strangely unnerved by the ease with which he’d commanded such devastation. Less than a dec ago he was awash with fear and confusion, bewildered by the strangeness and terror of it all. Now he was peering at the shredded remains of two bodies — two more bodies — with barely a jot of interest. They were just meat.

“That soldier...” came Lusha’s terse voice in his ear. An orange icon blinked in his helmet display, distance tracker rising swiftly. “You need to pursue him. He could be carrying a warning...”

“What warning?” Kais blurted, astonishing himself. He could feel the blood rushing to his face and bit at his tongue, furious with himself. He hadn’t intended to vocalise the query that had bubbled impetuously in his mind, least of all in such a disrespectful manner. His inability to contain rebellious thoughts had landed him in trouble before, and he prepared himself for the chastisement that would no doubt follow.

Lusha surprised him again, sighing wearily. “Our deployment here was a distraction, Kais. Nothing more. We’re drawing their troops away from our true objective.”

“A... a distraction?” Kais felt sick. He saw again the two fire warriors dissolving before his eyes, picked apart by relentless las-fire. He saw the spinning bulk of the shuttle, whirling out of control in a storm of dust and flame. He saw the death and insanity that had surrounded him since he set foot on this planet, a web of blood and smoke and horror. All part of an elaborate ruse. “Just a distraction...” he repeated, unwilling to believe it.

“Kais!” Lusha’s voice was strained with impatience. “Remember the machine. ‘One people, one unity, one person.’ You’re a cog! You’re a component in a greater scheme, and if you’re ordered to take part in a distraction, then by the One Path you’ll do it!”

Kais lowered his head, the shame boiling in his mind. “Yes, Shas’el.”

“Good.” The voice softened again, almost apologetic in its tone. “It’s never easy, Kais. I know that. Accept your place in the tau’va and you’ll find your peace.”

“I will try, Shas’el. Y-you have my apologies.”

“The gue’la soldier. He mustn’t be allowed to raise the alarm. We think there’s a command post nearby. It’s possible he’s heading for that.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Get after him.”

The world hazed. Nico tried to breathe. The trenches grew wider as he approached Lettica’s northern outskirts, rising imperceptibly towards the welcoming cover of its squat buildings. Not willing to spend any time enjoying the sight, he glimpsed the distant rooftops through a haze of adrenaline and pushed himself onwards.

Dust, mud and blood caked his legs, a matted tangle of dry filth and moist gore. Twice he’d slipped on burnt, unrecognisable bodies, breath expended in great dry heaves as gossamer strands of sticky flesh and sinew clung to his boots. He scrabbled upright through the wafting smoke clouds, muscles aching, not caring whether he’d slipped in human or tau blood. He ran and ran and ran, stumbling and panting and gagging.

At some point — he couldn’t remember when — the anaerobic gasps burning his lungs had transformed into a hissed litany.

“...oh Throne... oh Throne... oh Throne... oh Throne...”

There was something following him. He hadn’t risked a headlong tumble by staring back over his shoulder, but his neck prickled with intuitive terror that he’d learnt to rely upon long ago. A coward without an innate sense of self-preservation was just a corpse.

Every now and again shapes appeared from the smoke haze hanging in the air. Friend or enemy, it didn’t matter which; they vanished just as abruptly, memories obliterated by each new corner to the trench-way. The location of the command post was inscribed on his mind with crystal clarity; as he ran he imagined a pulsing red lifeline threading through the forks and rises of the channel network, leading him forever onwards. A tiny, secret voice in his mind began to whisper: You’re going to make it!

He wouldn’t let himself believe it.

From somewhere nearby a storm of weapons fire chattered at the air, and his legs carried him along like a dead weight, bent at the waist with his arms over his head. He ran the gauntlet blind, tripping and shrieking, certain that each step would be his last. A blue-white orb of pulsefire smouldered across his shoulder, singeing the cloth of his regs and earning an anguished sob in response. In the last rational part of his brain he realised the wound barely even hurt, cauterised even as it was inflicted. That didn’t stop him from screaming.

And then the madness was left behind, the explosions and crackling gunfire reports faded in his wake, the world seemed to slow and his feet, unbidden, staggered to a halt. Obscured by dust, alternately bombed out or merely smeared with soot, the buildings that jostled around him like protective molluscs were nonetheless the most wonderful sight he’d ever seen. Stifling a relieved sob, he stepped into the city and left the trenches behind.

Which was when the xeno that had been following him, optic sensor burning with reflected light, shot his left kneecap into a thousand tiny, spinning fragments.

Shas’el T’au Lusha leaned over a hovering bank of viewscreens at the rear of the cockpit and scowled. The dropship Tap’ran had escaped major damage from the explosive convulsions of its sister vessel, though its juntas-side engine, now fluctuating annoyingly, had been marred by shards of debris. Lusha gritted his teeth at the lurching interruptions and fixed his eyes firmly on the grid’s screens.

In the course of his career he’d learnt to recognise the potential for greatness when he encountered it. In each aspect of the tau’va was the confirmation of equality: the lowliest earth caste fio’la, it espoused, was as vital to the continuing sanctity of the Greater Good as was the mighty Aun’o Kathl’an himself, high in the fluted towers of the walled city on T’au.

Lusha understood that. Respected it. But still, once in a while there came an... anomaly. Plain for all to see, an individual unable to fit in, without the means or the patience to find their niche in the correct — gradual — fashion. In La’Kais he could see skills beyond those of a mere shas’la: his stealth and speed, his innate craving for tactical knowledge — these things marked him out as plainly as did his impetuousness. Only the youth’s inability to accept his place in the present would prevent him from rising to greatness in his future.

Typically, even in the most meteoric of careers, there were incremental gaps of at least four tau’cyrs between each rank. One became a shas’la upon graduation from the battledome, then a shas’ui, then a shas’vre. An elite few became shas’els and, in only the most exceptional cases, shas’os. For Kais to achieve a status more in keeping with his abilities, he must exercise the one thing Lusha doubted he possessed: patience.

He peered at the sixteenth viewscreen and frowned. Kais’s helmet-feed was filled with the face of a gue’la soldier, writhing and screeching on the floor like some tyranid y’he’vre. He wondered vaguely what La’Kais was feeling, slowly raising his rifle to silence the pale creature. A readout beneath the monitor blinked red and began to rise in value: Kais’s pulse, growing faster. The youth was excited, Lusha realised, frowning uncomfortably.

The pulse rifle fired and the screen went red. Lusha looked away.

“Shas’el?” the kor’vre pilot trilled from the apex of the cockpit, interrupting his thoughts. “We’re over the extraction point now. Should I begin the descent?”

Lusha glanced at the other screens, a jumbled montage of different warriors’ views. The other survivors from the cadre were almost in position.

“Yes, Kor’vre. Let’s get them back.”

The dropship broke cover amid the cloudbanks and began its stately descent, marred only by the occasional sputtering of the damaged engine. Lusha tapped a control and the grid of screens switched to an external view.

Something flickered in the ruins below, a gue’la turret gun spitting streamers of tracer-lit bullets towards the city’s periphery. He wondered vaguely what it was shooting at.

“Shas’el?” The pilot said, concerned. “There’s something—”

The ship lurched violently, lifting Lusha off his feet and depositing him painfully on the floor. A squadron of drones hovered past, maintenance tools brandished.

“Report,” he demanded grimly, clambering to his feet.

“A tank,” the kor’vre stated flatly, voice admirably calm. “No major damage. I’m taking us back up, Shas’el. It won’t miss twice.”

Lusha nodded, fighting his irritation. Expressions of annoyance were wasteful and inefficient, more characteristic of the frail gue’la than the tau. He imagined the humans inside the tank cursing loudly at their near miss and hardened his resolve. Such creatures were not worthy of the tau’va, he suspected, regardless of the forgiveness and tolerance the Auns preached.

He switched the screens back to the fire warriors’ personal helmet-feeds, sadly aware of how many had faded to darkness. Kais’s HUD was a frenzy of movement too fast for Lusha to interpret.

“La’Kais?” he commed. “What’s your status?”

Kais’s voice sounded strained with effort. “Standby, Shas’el,” he grunted, angry weapons fire crackling in time with the lightning-pulses on the screen. “It’s under control.”

“La’Kais — what do you mean?”

The tumbling image began to resolve itself, oiled machinery catching the shifting smokelight. Kais’s gloved hands entered the viewframe, clenching down on a series of haphazard, rune-encrusted controls.

And then Lusha understood.

“By the path...” the pilot gasped, staring at the sensors. “He’s—”

“He’s hijacked the turret gun, Kor’vre...” Lusha said, forcing back a smile.

Kais held a gloved hand against the gun’s blocky controls, reasoning correctly that at least one of them must be a trigger. At the mercy of the weapon’s ramshackle vibrations, he held on for dear life and tried to aim as best as he could.

This part of the city had been all but flattened in the tau attack, targeted by one of the colossal Dorsal-class bombers that had pre-empted the ground strike, he guessed. The vessel’s unthinkable aerial ordnances had devastated whatever had stood here before, leaving nothing but fragmented rockcrete and rising smoke. He’d found the turret gun at the blastzone’s edge; fixed to a sturdy iron pintle it had weathered the storm with only a layer of soot to show for its fiery baptism. Its crew, what charred fragments remained, had not been so lucky.

The tank had clambered over a nearby ridge, beetlelike, just as the comforting whine of the dropship’s engines met Kais’s ears. Standing beside the ungainly emplacement, staring in horror as the lumbering vehicle took careful aim at the descending shuttle, Kais was wrapping his fingers around the weapon’s controls before he’d even had time to think.

Haifa raik’or of noise and madness later, in which the dropship had come frighteningly close to destruction, the tank swivelled its cannon with glacial slowness in Kais’s direction. It advanced along the ruined street with juggernaut implacability, grinding rock and metal beneath its tracks.

The gun quaked in his hands, spent ammunition cartridges spinning past his head. Attempting to absorb the onslaught, a block of metal detached itself from the tank’s hull, sparks and shrapnel capering away. The vehicle lurched in its place, squealing tracks protesting at the impact. More craters blossomed: a process of metallic flaying in which gobbets of metallic flesh drizzled into the air. Buckling beneath the relentless barrage, fissures began to open in the devastated hull. With mere raik’ans to spare before the colossal cannon acquired its target, a fuel reserve ignited.

The vehicle heaved itself off the ground on a jet of flame, flipping over and shredding itself in a tangle of cabling and armour. A secondary explosion prised apart its midriff, hull fragments pirouetting through the air and smearing themselves across the ruined landscape. Slabs of wreckage gyrated and bounced, slicing the air. One of the crew screamed from somewhere at the heart of the madness. Briefly.

Kais watched the smoke lift for what seemed like a long time. When finally the ragged remnants of his cadre clambered from the trenches he was too exhausted to even greet them.

Barely half had made it back alive.

The shuttle came down and the cadre clambered aboard. Hell vanished behind a closing blast-door.

Sitting once again in his deployment seat, wondering about the perfect stillness of the vessel, Kais allowed his mind to rest. The other shas’las were silent. They too, he supposed, couldn’t think of anything to say. He wondered if they felt like him. Hollow, somehow. Diminished.