IV 11.26 HRS (SYS. LOCAL — DOLUMAR IV, Ultima Seg. #4356/E)
The tau flotilla erupted from the final tentative warp hop in the midst of a blue-green corona, dissipating energies blossoming and fading into the void. Some forty vessels, none remotely as large as their gue’la counterparts but awe-inspiring in their sleek manoeuvrability and sheer weight of numbers, slipped into reality on the edges of the Dolumar system and surged towards the gue’la fleet, still in dogged pursuit of the Or’es Tash’var. Their rounded prows reflected the muggy light of the system’s star, casting luminous lines across the bulbous outer hulls of their fellows.
Lusha’s breath caught in his throat at the sight. The various “els and “os around him resisted the instinct to hiss in astonishment, wide eyes tracking the warships as they slunk past, disgorging swarms of fighters.
“By the path...” Fio’el Boran croaked, unable to conceal his amazement.
In no time the flotilla was lost beyond the view from the gallery window and the dignitaries turned to the kor’vre at the chamber’s sole monitoring console. The secondary bridge was little more than an armoured bunker near the lowermost segments of the Or’es Tash’var, but thus far it had proved impregnable. Soon, Lusha suspected, Ko’vash and the others would return to the real bridge — now secured, if reports were to be believed.
The kor’vre studied the complex series of icons and projection vertices lacing the screen. “The flotilla’s slowing to engagement speed,” he murmured. “The gue’la are scattering. Trying to get round without engaging.”
Ko’vash nodded sourly. “They have no stomach for battle. They just want their prize.”
“Aun’el — we’re being hailed by the Tel’ham Kenvaal. Patching it through...”
The console chimed as a channel opened.
“Or’es Tash’var? This is Kor’o Dal’yth Men’he. What’s your status?”
Ko’vash gestured for a transmitter drone. “O’Men’he. Your arrival is most welcome. This is Aun’el T’au Ko’vash.”
“Aun’el! Thank the path! We feared the worst.”
“I live yet, Kor’o. We’ve held them at bay so far.”
“What action, Aun’el? The gue’la are attempting to evade.”
Ko’vash twisted briefly towards Shas’o Udas, who stood staring at the sensor chart with a calculating frown. “Shas’o?”
Lusha watched the general carefully, wondering what discipline he’d consider the most appropriate. He scratched at his chin.
“Ken’rai,” he decided. “Cut off the head, the body will die.”
Ko’vash nodded, pursing his lips, and turned back to the drone. “Harry the fleet, Kor’o. We’ll target the flagship ourselves.”
O’Men’he’s reply took a long time. Lusha imagined him aboard the Tel’ham Kenvaal, gaping at the brazenness of O’Udas’s plans.
“U-understood, Aun’el. For the Greater Good.” The console chimed again and the room descended into silence.
“O’Udas... Do we have sufficient manpower for this?”
“I believe so, Aun’el. The boarding shuttles are operational at least, so insertion shouldn’t be an issue... providing we can knock through the shields, that is.”
“Very well.” The ethereal turned to the console with a deep breath. “Sound the attack.”
++Fleet, this is Admiral Constantine.++
++Do not, repeat, do not engage the enemy flotilla. Focus on the prize-ship. We must take the ethereal.++
[Admiral? Captain Brunt, Purgatus. They’re moving to intercept. Evasion’s not an option any mo—]
++Brunt — you’ll do as you’re told.++
[He’s right, admiral. Forsithe on the Baleful Gaze, here. Unless we engage now they’ll eat us alive.]
[You see?]
++There will be no discussion! We pursue the target vessel, as planned!++
[Sir — this is lunacy!]
++No, this is insubordination, Forsithe. I’ll have your head!++
[Admiral? Captain Tigarus. I’m afraid I concur with the others. We need to return fire.]
[We’re outnumbered two-to-one. Either we fight or we flee. There’s no way around.]
++The first commander that breaks from the chase will be court-martialled for flagrant sedition and executed!++
[Sir — the “chase” may be a moot issue... The prize-ship’s turning.]
++What?++
[By the throne... are they mad?]
++This doesn’t make sen—++
[They’re closing on the Enduring Blade, sir...]
[You may want to evade...]
++They can’t hope to outgun us... They’re mad!++
[They’re... Oh, Vandire’s teeth... They’re launching shuttles.]
[Admiral! They’re trying to board you!]
++They can’t. The shields will h—++
[Picking up plasma fire.]
[Living god! Look at that payload!]
[Terra’s bones!]
++Th... upid... can’t ho... n... astards!++
[Throne...]
++They’ve knocked out my shield! Assist! Assist!++
[I’m engaged. Can’t get away—]
[Oh terra! They’ve g—]
[Shuttles homing on you, admiral.]
[...ammit, the generarium’s brea—]
[...]
[Brace-brace-brace!]
[The Reverus has gone...]
[Sweet Emperor... They’re so fast...]
++Th... This is...++
++All vessels... All vessels engage and destroy!++
++Forget the bloody ethereal!++
++In the Emperor’s name, make them bleed!++
They called it se’hen che lel. Riding the lightning.
Kais had undergone training, tau’cyrs earlier in the battledome. He remembered the first time. He’d been heartily sick afterwards and was somewhat gratified to find his friends equally as green as was he.
The real thing was worse. Strapped into a one-tau pod like an insect moulded into a bullet, the shuttle tube was little more than a vast railgun: linear energies dragging the pod along a frictionless tunnel with a succession of sonic booms. The view through the small window above his face stopped making any sense as the pod’s velocity increased exponentially and the rounded struts of the tunnel became a single tawny-coloured smear. A vibration grew from nothingness into a dreadful quake, threatening to splinter his armour and turn his body to powder. He gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to cry out. Then the roar ceased, the blur of the tunnel was wiped away in a daub of star speckled blackness and he was streaking across the void.
“They’d tried to stop him. First Ju,” then the others in her team, then Lusha over the comm. He’d earned his rest, they’d said. There were more than enough shas’las for the assault. He’d done his duty. He was a hero. Let it be.
Then they’d grown angry, despairing of his obstinate refusal to rest. He’d been shot in the head, by the One Path. Even by the pragmatic unsuperstitious standards of taukind he was pushing his luck. Hadn’t he done enough?
No.
No, he had not. The trial wasn’t over. He felt it in his bones.
He must face the Mont’au devil again and again and again until he killed it or it became him. Then, he supposed, if he hadn’t died first, the trial would be over. So they rearmed and resulted, filled their packs with as much wargear as they could carry, distributed miniature kor’vesa slave drones, strapped each other into hypervelocity capsules and were unceremoniously blasted at the beaked vulture-shape that was the Enduring Blade.
He’d refused to take a new helmet, though he couldn’t exactly explain why.
The dud bolter-shell might detonate at any moment, he supposed, failed gue’la artifices fizzling to life and blasting his head from his shoulders. And, just as easily, he might detonate at any moment, the devil on his back reaching into his heart and snapping the frail chord leading to the tau’va. Parallels and echoes.
It was sentimentality of the very worst kind, and Ju had looked at him like he was insane when he refused the pristine replacement she offered him. It didn’t matter. This was his Trial by Fire and he’d deal with it in his way.
Alone in the capsule the silence was thick, like being suffocated in velvet. Peering through the maddeningly tiny viewport, Kais was barely aware of moving at all, let alone hurtling at dizzying speed. He wondered vaguely how many other shas’las streaked ahead and behind him, each one immersed in his or her own silent world of introspection and fear.
El’Lusha’s voice startled him, echoing across a multi-band channel.
“Shas’las? We’ve overloaded their void shields but they won’t stay down for long. Shuttle trackers have a lock on their juntas-side launch bays, so that’s your insertion point. Your first priority after splashdown is to knock out the hangar weapons and disrupt their shield generators in the long-term. After that, strategic boarding strategies apply Cripple the engines, capture the bridge, disable the weapons.
“The Aun’el offers his fondest regards and wishes you well in your endeavours. T’au’va be with you, line warriors.”
Before the comm-channel closed, Kais heard the quiet whistle of the bandwidth narrowing. “And La’Kais? Remember the machine.”
With that the comm died and the silence unfolded its wings around him. A bright row of characters at his side dimmed gradually, representing his approach to the target in a chorus of quiet chimes and light levels.
“Thirty raik’ans,” the capsule’s AI trilled. Kais swallowed.
Abruptly his view through the port window changed: the blackness of space was replaced by a ghastly facade of buttresses and spines, vast crenellated towers and spindly steeples, looming towards him. Perspective was impossible to judge; just as it seemed inevitable that he’d smash across the intricate cliff face his senses realigned to accommodate its despicable vastness. Every moment of diminishing proximity was a moment where its enormity became more and more apparent.
The capsule shuddered, AI chiming in alarm and thrusters struggling to realign. Angry light bloomed in the viewportal, little more than a flicker that was gone in a moment. It happened again and he frowned, confused. Above, high on the architectural mountain, bright pinpricks of las-fire and shrapnel flak stabbed from the vessel’s vaulted, pitted hull, detonating spectacularly around the ghostly arrowheads of tau fighters that soared past, burst cannons dissecting great blocks of obsidian armour. Another petal of fire oozed past him, close, and he realised with a quickening heartbeat that the gue’la were firing at the hail of capsules as well as the fighters.
He’d imagined this, tau’cyrs ago, after the simulations. He’d imagined rumbling artillery, a constant drone of blossoming explosions and the shuddering chaos of running the firebelt gauntlet, watching helplessly as his comrades were plucked from the air like irritating insects, wondering whether he’d be one of the lucky ones.
He hadn’t imagined the silence, the stillness. At any moment he could fly apart in a suffocating ball of shrapnel and fiery laser heat — singeing and freezing and detonating all at once — and he’d never see it coming. Until then he was a rodent, sealed in a s’peiy-bottle and cast adrift at sea, never knowing if it would reach the shore or perish, always expecting but never anticipating the jaws of a t’pel shark around it.
Drift with the current. Be not concerned with that which you cannot control.
A snippet from the D’havre meditation. He’d never remembered the rest.
“Ten raik’ans.”
He took a final, heartstopping glimpse through the viewportal as the launch bay swallowed him, a gun-metal blur of tunnel lights and shadows. The capsule chimed, volume growing.
“Brace,” it chirped, the artificial voice sounding bored.
It shuddered heavily, passing through the field generator separating the atmosphere-rich interior of the hangars from the hard vacuum beyond. There was silence for a brief moment before the capsule hit the deck with a galaxy-splitting crump. It bounced and skidded.
There was noise and pain. There was tumbling and spinning and splintering. There was nonsensical, blurring insanity through the viewportal.
And finally, after an eternity of madness, there was stillness.
Librarian Delpheus’s prediction had been correct, it would seem.
Ardias armed his bolt pistol with a cold rasp and stamped into the briefing hall. A servitor’s mechanised drone piped again and again across the vessel’s internal vox.
“All hands to repel boarders. All hands to repel boarders. All hands to repel boarders. All hands to—”
Ardias punched the speaker and resisted the urge to grin savagely as fragments of plasteel tumbled past him. Even in wanton destruction there must be discipline.
“Aal... nds to re... borrrrrrr... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzkk.”
“I heard the first time.” he grunted.
The assembly of company sergeants and veterans chuckled under their breaths, arranged in a perfect line. He turned to face them, gratified that their mirth instantly hardened to resolve.
“Brothers... Do you stand ready for battle?”
“Aye!” they chorused, clashing weapons against breast plates in perfect unison, faces glowing with martial pride.
“The company?”
Veteran-Sergeant Mallich took a clipped half step forwards. “It stands ready, brother-captain. Chaplain Mulvarius is intoning battle rites as we speak.”
“Good.” It had been a hundred years since his elevation beyond the rank of sergeant, but Ardias slid back into the posturing, parade-ground-inspection routine with ease. He kneaded his knuckles thoughtfully. “Brothers... In consulting with Admiral Constantine I have made a troubling discovery. We are not alone in our secondment aboard this vessel.” A few brows dipped, confused. “A full company of Space Marines of the Raptors Chapter, it would seem, shares our assignment.” He sighed, annoyance palpable to the listeners. “I neither understand nor care why we were kept ignorant of this, but questions will be asked of the Navis Nobilite, you may count upon it. One does not attract the Ultramarines with claims of goodwill, then insult them by bolstering their strength with lesser warriors. I know little of the Raptors, brothers, but their reckless disregard for the Codex is legendary.”
The veterans shook their heads angrily, muttering beneath their breaths. The Codex Astartes — composed by their Chapter’s primarch Roboute Guilliman — detailed the correct conduct and attitude of a Space Marine in any given circumstance. To Ardias and his kin it was more than a behavioural manual; it was sacred.
“They have been petitioned by the admiral to guard strategic points of the vessel. Engines, generarium, command deck and so on.”
The veterans’ discontent grew, flashing angry glances at one another, clearly insulted. “Captain? Why them?”
“A pertinent question, Sergeant Mallich — and one to which I have no answer. The Raptors were clearly forewarned of whatever trouble these navy fools have landed themselves in. They requested — and were granted — operative duties, before I was even made aware of the situation.”
“They’re unreliable, brother-captain!”
“I share your ire, brother, but we must be calm in the face of this insult. We must demonstrate that one does not garrison a company of Ultramarines then ignore them, Emperor’s tears!”
The veterans’ chant pounded at the air. “Aye!”
Ardias narrowed his eyes, voice suddenly cold. “When the Raptors make mistakes — and they will, brothers, have no doubt — we must be there to lead the way. We must show the children of the Imperium that a single Ultramarine, with his mind and heart filled with the words of blessed Guilliman, is worth any twenty firebrand Raptors.”
The storm of assent was deafening, the officers roaring and calling out prayers in the Emperor’s name, ringing their fists against their armour. Ardias basked in it, letting it wash over him.
“I want squads positioned at strategic points throughout this ship. Stay in contact and avoid confrontation with the Raptors. If you find yourself challenged, refer them to my vox. True warriors of Macragge brook no interference from loose cannons with no respect for the Codex! Is that clear?”
“Aye!”
“That’s all, brothers. Courage and honour! Move ou—”
Wait!
Ardias turned to the doorway with a frown. He disliked interruptions.
Librarian Delpheus staggered into the briefing room clumsily, supporting himself against the wall. His face was pale and wan, sweat collecting on his cable-pocked brow. The psychic hood glowed dully, like a faltering illuminator. Ardias’s ire turned immediately to concern and he rushed forwards to support his comrade.
“Delpheus? Brother, what’s wrong?”
“Another vision...” The librarian was gagging on his words, eyes rolling. Ardias had never seen him like this. “M-more signs. More pictures. The masked fiend, revealing itself...” He was sweating, suit’s thermal regulators struggling to equalise his temperature.
“Brother... I don’t understand. You’re not making sense.”
“The masked fiend. The masked fiend. The masked fiend...”
Ardias glanced at the sergeants, watching the display with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. Delpheus’s goggle-eyed loss of dignity was far removed from the Ultramarine way of life, and suspicion towards mutants — even those of incalculable value to the Chapter — was deeply ingrained in the creeds of the Codex.
“Delpheus,” Ardias hissed, uncomfortable. “You must control yourself.”
The Librarian’s oscillating eyeballs fixed on him, clarity returning with a jolt.
“It’s. The ship, yes. There’s something aboard...”
“We know that, brother. Throne-damned xenogens! We must purge th—”
“No! No — something more! S-something else...”
“What?”
Sergeant Mallich, a look of profound distaste creasing his features, lost his patience. “Captain? We should fall out, yes?”
“No!” Delpheus cried, finally dragging himself upright unaided. His eyes, ringed and sunken, prowled from face to face. He settled his gaze on Ardias and nodded, some semblance of reason returning to his features.
“Brother-captain... You must allow the Raptors their commission.”
“But—”
“There will be need for us afterwards. There are worse than tau aboard... I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it, don’t you hear me? I have seen it!”
“Seen what, by the Emperor? Talk sense!”
Delpheus leaned in close to Ardias’s face, feverish lips trembling. His voice was almost inaudible, psychic hood turning the air greasy.
“Old friend,” he hissed, “if you’ve ever trusted me... If ever you’ve believed my words, hear me now. A darkness approaches. There is... The Ultramarines, throne bless their thousand souls... They’ll be needed. Let the Raptors fight these tau, if they must. Win or lose — it doesn’t matter. We must be ready for the aftermath. We must steel ourselves for the masked fiend...”
Ardias stared deep into his old friend’s eyes and saw, as ever, the aching pain of the psychic curse, a lonely voice of sanity crying out from beyond a boundary of warp-spawned madness. But there was an inviolable core of certainty there as well. He took another glance at the sergeants. They weren’t remotely convinced.
“What would you have me do?” he asked his shivering comrade.
“Just... be ready... they come. They come...”
The librarian sunk to his knees, eyes rolling into his head. He collapsed to the deck with a groan and lay there unconscious, breathing heavily.
Sergeant Corlum broke the expectant silence. “Sir?”
Ardias didn’t take his eyes off the Librarian, gritting his teeth. “Cancel all previous orders.” he said. “Have the men standing by.”
“But sir! You can’t believ—”
“No arguments, brother. I want the men ready. Weapons loaded and armed. Distribute ammunition evenly. It seems we must wait for action.”
“Sir.”
“Fall out.”
The sergeants stamped out, shaking their heads and muttering. Ardias regretted their discontent, but could hardly blame them. He stared at the librarian, feverish breaths slowly normalising, and wondered what he’d meant.
They come... they come...
The other shas’las were in awe of him, he realised. Oh, they tried to conceal it, keeping pace with him, twittering professionally, taking turns to cover the rear or to take point. He’d decided to let them try and keep up, if they must. They were judging themselves along parameters for which he had no use.
Number of kills. Courage under fire. Objectives overcome. Real things; physical, violent things. For them these were the heart of their struggles and challenges, their Trials by Fire. He envied them the simplicity of their test.
Twice now since boarding this vaulted sepulchre-in-space he’d been forced to slam shut his eyes and drag the rage into a confined ball of focus, reciting his father’s meditation over and over and over.
The hangar had been a killing ground, a debris-strewn abattoir streaked through by crash landing capsules, mangled gue’la attack craft and artillery fire, digging gouges from the deck and dousing everything in burning fuel, air-skimming debris and blood. He’d lost control, briefly. He’d sprung from his burning shuttle with an adrenaline surge, spraying the panicky gue’la with carbine fire. He’d watched a boarding capsule plough into their pintle guns like a vengeful meteor, pulping their frail bodies and detonating in a whirlwind of overheating munitions. The other tau, converging on the masked plinth where he’d established his slaying point, had cried out in horror at the carnage. He’d smiled.
It happened again whilst disabling the guns on the deck below. It was as though a haze came down, like nothing was real and everything was distant. It felt like being numb: his inadequacies filled the world, a shadow gallery of frustrated instructors, mocking cadre mates and, above it all, his father’s disappointed eyes, seeing nothing but uselessness in his own son. In every moment of every heartbeat Kais knew... He’d never be so great, so respected, so focused as his father had expected him to be. He was flawed and it hurt.
And the only thing that could cut through the pain, that could remind him of being alive, that could convince him he was something other than a drone within a hive, was the screaming and the fire and the gurgling and the violence. It broke through the shell and it was addictive.
So he’d endured it, little by little, until he could see through the rage and think through the adrenaline. Every time it came upon him it became a little harder to claw his way back to the surface, back to rationality.
They’d disabled the weapons, they’d crippled the shield, they’d regrouped and congratulated one another like shas’saals after their first rotaa of training.
Kais had stood apart, new armour already tarnished with soot and blood, and thought: children.
Then the orders had come through, Lusha’s voice sounding broken and distorted by whatever dampening shields the gue’la ship employed, and Kais’s team was away, heading for the engine rooms in a gaggle of stringently by-the-book squad deployments. Kais rolled his eyes and kept quiet, guiltily waiting for the killing to begin again.
The Enduring Blade was unlike anything he could have prepared himself for. So radically alien to the gentle camber of all tau construction, this was a labyrinth of clipped corners, square-hewn buttresses and vast archways. Side arteries branched away unexpectedly, cloistered passages of conduit-striated shadows and undulating serpents of ducts and cables. A creeping tide of rust smeared itself across the gunmetal walls, water dribbling incontinently from fractured pipes and panels.
Narrow tunnels opened into breath-catching galleries, where backlit icons marking the walls illuminated capering dust motes high above, and chittering rodent vermin scurried in the gloom. In these vaulted chambers the faux-machismo of the team would stutter out and they’d slink silently as if cowed by the sheer enormity of the place. Kais appreciated the moments of quiet; as soon as the tunnel was rejoined the silence was inevitably shattered.
“Corner check, two by two.”
“Checking the blacksun-fil—. Hold... Zone clear. Moving on.”
“Scan track? Scan track?”
“High-level ye’qua’li radiation. Probable enemy presence.”
And so on. It was boring, thought Kais, and on both occasions where frightened knots of gue’la troopers had appeared, all the shas’las’ military bravado had served them not a jot. Within instants of the helmet scanners detecting movement the team split, a textbook left-right division. Those to the rear could provide cover in case of a fallback and the line warriors nearest the targets could lay down pinning fire. Thus covered, the secondary and tertiary pairs — carrying rifles — could take a more accurate bead on the enemy. Standard, routine: proven to work.
Kais had no patience for it. He shredded the first wave of gue’la with a grenade even as they rounded the corner ahead, then pumped carbine fire into the heads of the others as they staggered, shellshocked and gore-splattered, from the smoke. They went down in a tangle, pulped skulls shredding like overripe griy’na fruits, limbs twitching and clawing at the air.
The other shas’las never fired a single shot.
So, yes, they were in awe of him. They exchanged whispered conversations whilst glancing in his direction, tried to keep pace as he silently haunted the shadows and prattled uselessly to make themselves feel professional. It was pathetic.
Amongst the strangers of his team Kais recognised three of the warriors: fellow first-timers who’d trained and graduated with him in the battledome on T’au. They’d preened and performed flawlessly back then, impressing instructors and drill-shas’vres with their coolheadedness and their unblinking faith in the tau’va. Back then, he’d been in awe of them.
He caught one of them staring and grinned to himself.
Further along the corridor, its distant apex hidden behind the mask of deep gloom, someone screamed. Kais thought it probably gue’la but wasn’t sure; it was a shriek of terror and pain that transcended language and became a force, raising the cir’etz scales along his spine and neck with a shiver. The other shas’las froze, ducking into corners instinctively. The scream shut off as abruptly as it had begun.
One of the shas’las, voice quavering, said “What was—?”
“Quiet.” Kais waved the others out of their cover and cautiously moved along the corridor. The team exchanged glances and followed, fingers tight around gun triggers.
The walk seemed to last forever, the dim lighting achieving little other than hardening the resolution of the shadows. Everything was still and silent, like entering the gut of some long-dead behemoth. Dust rose spectrally from the floor with each step, tumbling in its slow dance before settling again. Each hoof-fall became a miniature gong blast that echoed briefly before being swallowed by the completeness of the silence.
The next scream was louder still, accompanied this time by a shuddering, clanging cacophony: something beating against metal. Kais felt his blood freeze and pushed himself against the wall, reassured by its solidity. One of the shas’las moaned quietly into the comm. The silence resumed, even thicker than before.
He activated his blacksun filters, nictitating lenses sliding across his helmet optics. Instantly the world was rendered lurid and kaleidoscopic, long corridor daubed in bright green hues. Rodents — bristling patches of bright yellow and white — lurked in the shallow gullies to either side of the deck grille. But there was something else: at the top of the hall where the path turned sharply to the left, a nebulous haze of yellows and oranges wafted ethereally across his vision. There was something warm up there.
“Wait here,” he murmured into the comm, not waiting for a reply. The others took up covering positions with characteristic good grace.
He inched into the green-lit gloom, his own breathing seeming unnaturally loud in the hot confines of his helmet. The glowing icons on his HUD representing the other shas’las faded slowly to the rear, leaving him utterly alone. Two tor’leks from the corner, eyes fixed rigidly upon that unbroken line of pitted wall, he stopped and held his breath, listening.
Nothing. Nothing but the distant squeals of rodents and the drip-dripping of leaking water.
No conquest without control. Pursue success in serenity.
Fine. Breathe deep. Relax. And—
He loped around the corner with a growl, gun held ready before him, mind racing. His vision exploded with whiteness: a nebulous heat signature too vast to understand. He winced and deactivated the filters, expecting at any moment the thumping impact of hell-fire shells or las-bolts. The world fragmented and returned to normal with a flicker, filling his HUD with redness.
“Oh, sweet T’au...” he whispered, aghast. His stomach turned over and he took two gulps of air, forcing back the bile in his throat. The other shas’las chimed in expectantly.
“What is it?”
“What’s there?”
“Kais? Report!”
What could he say to describe it? It was carnage.
It was only a small chamber — that didn’t help. He could feel the heat from the walls without even entering, just staring from the doorway.
They were humans, at least: that made it slightly less difficult to stomach. The vivid ruby of their parts was almost unreal, an exaggerated fictional parallel to tau blood. Had the scene before him been rendered in cyan and grey rather than rich j’hal-petal red, then the brief weakness in his knees that he felt might have overcome him. He’d seen so much brutality and violence since the trial began that some self-assured part of him had expected never again to be surprised, never again to feel that ugly rushing of blood and bile that he’d endured all those tau’cyrs ago when his father stared at him in disappointment. He’d never imagined something breaking through the numbness in his heart again with the power to astonish and revolt him, but here it was.
A thin strand of redness parted company with the ceiling and fell, a syrupy teardrop that pattered lightly against the slick grille decking.
He couldn’t guess how many gue’la there had been, originally The shreds of clothing and weaponry lying embedded amongst the pulped meat was silent testament to their multiplicity, a dozen different articles of fabric and leather lying shredded within the gore. It was as if the chamber had decompressed suddenly, hurling the flesh from its helpless inhabitants across floor and walls and ceiling. Anonymous strands of gore dappled the interior, sluglike lumps of tissue and muscle that slithered glutinously with the pull of gravity, flopping obscenely to the deck to vent their liquid cargo into the gullies on either side. Clumps of hair broke up the light catching wetness, half-sliced skulls stared in mute horror, eyeballs plucked and dangling, tongues bitten and lacerated in grisly astonishment. An arm, messily dissected at the elbow, grasped uselessly at the air, three fingers shredded to a pulp. A pink foot flopped from a fleshy stalactite above Kais’s head with a wet slurp and a squelch.
A quiet voice at the back of his mind nodded that at least he now knew what they hid within their boots.
It was insanity. It was flesh frenzy, made real. It was as if the room itself was a stomach or a womb, its arterial walls wet with warmth and blood.
The other shas’las arrived behind him, impatient with his silence. Some of them had to be helped out of their helmets so they didn’t choke.
Severus sat behind the code-chattering servitors and smiled.
They were bold, these tau. He’d imagined beings of far greater restraint and self-repression; in the last years the Imperium had openly flouted their territorial treaty and the xenos had rolled over and taken it, uncomplaining. He’d expected this operation to be swift and decisive. He’d expected a diplomatic surrender — leaving him to wearily orchestrate some way of prolonging hostilities.
As it was, there was no manipulation required. He hadn’t imagined in a thousand years that they’d summon the courage and recklessness required to attack an Imperial warship, the fools. He almost pitied them. Almost.
Their aggression quickened his pulse, filling him with visions of combat and war and bloodshed. His mind throbbed with it. Not long now, he reminded himself. Not long.
There had been too many leaks. The texts had been quite specific regarding the levels of concentration required, and he’d thought himself ready. Ten long years he’d prepared for this, and still the sheer strength of it had almost overwhelmed him. Contacting the Administratum had been difficult enough, a thousand tiers of bureaucracy to stunt the progress of his proposal and frustrate his efforts. Then, when finally the funds were made available and the idiots on Terra had given him their official and enthusiastic sanction to continue, there had begun the laborious task of raising up his prison-citadel and his grinding, smoking factories, finalising every tiny detail. There had been moments of doubt, he couldn’t deny it. But the text was there in black and white, alien symbols shifting and writhing with hidden power, and he’d known — he’d been certain.
It would work. With enough blood, with enough screams, the final seal would shatter and...
Yes. It would work, he was sure.
But the force had still taken him by surprise; he couldn’t be sure how many times the pressure had vented through him, releasing gobbets of crackling empyrean to scurry away in a melange of pseudomatter and amorphous outlines. It was getting beyond his ability to restrain, and the crew was growing suspicious. It didn’t matter. Not long now.
And the Ultramarine librarian — oh, what a gift! He’d become aware of the scrying, scratching mind-eyes of “Brother Delpheus” almost immediately, slamming closed his defences to prevent the inquisitive righteousness of the disembodied thoughts. The fool would be useful, when the time came. When victory and defeat were on the very brink of resolution, when the air was thick with crisis and triumph, he’d use that feeble little skull mercilessly.
He’d bring the ethereal to him. He’d gather up the most powerful pawns involved in this chaotic, maddening little game, and he’d use them. He’d spark a war and douse the system in blood. He’d shred the mind of human and tau alike to plant the seeds of his legacy and then, when all the finely carved pieces were in place, he’d break the seal and rise, rise, rise.
In the end, Kais was certain the team was pleased to be rid of him. The awe was turning to fear, he could see; a nervous timidity at his presence that the other shas’las were finding it harder and harder to conceal. They walked further away from him, they disliked him prowling the shadows behind them, they talked less and muttered more.
He heard the word “Mont’au” mumbled indiscreetly more than once.
Two had been lost to a gue’la ambush, rushing around a blind corner and erupting messily beneath streamers of gunfire, bodies jerking and shuddering as they toppled backwards. After he’d fragmented the humans, blithely rolling unarmed grenades along the corridor and gunning down the troopers as they quit their cover to flee, he’d been uncomfortably aware of the others glaring at him as he silently helped himself to the dead shas’las’ ammunition and supplies. It was standard procedure — cool and efficient — but nobody expected it to be easy. He suspected the others thought of his detachment, his numbness, as being somehow... unnatural.
Since discovering the mysterious abattoir chamber their military bravado had quickly waned. It was as if they’d seen the face of something real, something that convinced them of the ugliness and horror of their roles and left them in no doubt at all: this wasn’t a game. This wasn’t a safe little simulation in the battledome or a harmless domestic service operation. This was war.
Kais wondered how his father felt on his first combat mission. Efficient, doubtlessly. Didn’t bat an eyelid.
Never lost his temper, never grew scared or furious. Ice cold, probably. Served the Greater Good with a clear conscience and a rigid application of the shas’ken’to principles of combat. Flawless.
Comms with the Or’es Tash’var were failing, garbled messages becoming little more than static. The path had grown divergent, hooded corridors branching away into blackness, multi-doored chambers leaving the group disorganised and disagreeable. Finally they’d come to a tight vent access that led downwards and away, wide enough for a single shas’la only. The others favoured continuing along the cloistered hallway, relying on their cohesion with each other to sustain and protect them.
Kais felt no cohesion.
The others grated upon him and, worse, the knowledge of his inability to fit in made his guilt more palpable. Operating as part of a unit was an expectation placed upon every tau. “Never alone,” the Auns said. His isolation was a constant reminder of his flaw, and he hated it.
He was in the vent and crawling before the others could even protest. Not that they would, of course. He imagined them breathing sighs of relief as his retreating back diminished into the gloom of the tunnel.
Half a dec later and comms were a distant memory. The bright icons of the others had dwindled in his HUD as their path carried them further away, and in no time at all he was left alone, once more scampering rodentlike through brittle metal veins, his wounded arm aching from supporting his weight. He cut through the pain mentally and forced himself onwards.
Then things went badly wrong. Lost in the belly of an enormous creature, more vast than one mind could ever appreciate, his only sense of location was provided by the occasional breaks in the vent walls: thick membranes giving way to grille-slits and steel gauze openings. Through such indistinct portals he peered out on a world of dank chambers, strobe-lit techbays, anodyne sleeping cells and sterile, chrome-plated laboratories. Gue’la slouched here and there, filthy ratings and crew that seemed more akin to the rats they co-habited with than the pink-faced troopers Kais had grown used to. He scuttled silently through their midst, suit power on minimum to limit noise and heat emissions.
It wasn’t enough when he came upon the Space Marines.
Briefly, he felt a moment of pleasure at seeing their blocky grey-green shapes through the light-striated grille, patrolling a corridor vertex with measured strides — surely their presence indicated that he was on the right path. No mere troopers, he reasoned, would be assigned to guard something important. He nodded to himself and moved on.
One of the Marines swivelled in its spot, helmeted head tilting inquisitively, staring up into the vent. Kais froze.
The two giants appeared to converse, the first pointing vaguely towards the vent then shrugging, movement exaggerated by its vast shoulder guards. Kais could only guess at their discussion.
He tried to move, painful tor’ils of silence and sweat. His heart sounded like a jackhammer in his chest, thumping in his ears and convincing him that the Marines could hear him.
Satisfied at the silence, they began to move away. Kais allowed himself to breathe out slowly, his mouth dry. Buoyed up by relief, his glacial progress carried him past the grille and slowly, cautiously, he began to relax.
The text wafer in his utility pocket slid gently though a las-singed fabric tear he hadn’t even noticed and tumbled to the floor of the duct. It sounded like a cannon erupting in his ear. It was a gong peal, shivering and groaning noisily. It was a planet splitting across its equator, furious resonances echoing and reverberating throughout eternity.
He grabbed for the wafer, fear pulping his senses, even as the first bolter-shells sliced tubules of light spillage into the duct and detonated angrily near his feet.
He bolted, stealthy progress discarded in favour of blind panic. His limbs raised a cannonade of thumps and clangs as he slithered and dragged himself along the duct, gashes and lumps of debris pulverising the metal walls and turning the conduit behind him into a whirlpool of fractured metal and conflicting detonations. Bolter fire roared behind him, filling the tunnels with ghostly echoes and the sharp scent of smoke.
He scrabbled onwards, turning a corner, lurching upwards into a vertical shaft, taking tunnel branches at random with a stream of mumbled curses and groans. There was no rage here, no surrender to the Mont’au impetuosity — only blind panic and helplessness. Again he knew how the clonebeasts felt during the tau’kon’seh, sprinting impotently for their lives. But this time there was no recourse to turn and fight, no clever scheme to even the odds. In this labyrinth of intestinal tubes he was a parasite, at the mercy of any scalpel-wielding surgeon that could detect his movement and cut him out.
He stared at the tight confines and panic gripped him, an irrational horror at the suffocating closeness of it all. He yearned for the clear skies of T’au.
Is this how it feels to be buried alive, he wondered? Is this how it feels to die, lost and alone and flawed, with nothing to recall your existence beyond a decaying body, not even fit for the purity of a funeral pyre?
For the first time in his life, Kais wished he could remember a few more sio’t meditations on the subject of peace.
Shas’la Du’o’tan was so busy thinking of her recent team mate La’Kais, so busy wondering abstractly how it must feel to have such unvented anger lurking inside one’s soul, so busy recalling his shadow-dwindled form as it wormed its way down into the ductwork nervous system of the gue’la warship, that she wasn’t fully watching where she, and the rest of the team, was going.
She turned a corner.
Something came out of the wall and ate her alive.
The vox clicked.
“...ll brothers hear m... eneral alert, general al...”
Captain Mho glanced at his five battlebrothers and armed his bolt pistol. They followed suit quickly, racking bolters and meltaguns with professional relish.
“...nemy in the air-ve... ng the ducts to infiltr... tay alert.”
Mito shot a look at Sergeant Tangiz, who shrugged. He thumbed his vox-caster.
“Mito here — guarding the generarium access-door. Please repeat, brother.”
“...rother-captain, there are tau i... rone-damned air du...”
“In the air ducts, sir.” Tangiz rumbled, huge frame twisting to stare at the various conduits and pipes lacing the ceiling. On a vessel this vast and ancient it was anyone’s guess what each intestinal tube contained. Mito rapped his knuckles against one experimentally.
“Understood, brother,” he voxed. “Stay in touch.”
Brother Iolux, Mito’s youngest squad member, tapped the barrel of his bolter against a wide sheet-steel recess above his head. “Should we breach one, brother-captain? Just in case?”
“Negative. This close to the generarium, who knows what’s contained in each duct? Are you prepared to strike the wrong one, brother?”
“As the Raven wills it, brother-captain. I am prepared to take the risk.”
Mito nodded to himself approvingly. “Your zeal does you credit, brother,” he said warmly, “as does your altruism. However, in this instance caution is our best recourse. It would not do to be responsible for destroying the very thing we are here to guard, selfless or not.”
“I understand, brother-captain.”
“Good. Audio pickup to full. First hint of movement, don’t spare the ammunition.”
The others acknowledged quickly and fell silent, listening intently, watching scanners for any signs of air movement. Mito flicked infra-red filters across his eye-lenses distractedly, disappointed by the lack of obvious targets. This whole operation had been deeply tedious; the sooner he and his company could return to Cortiz Pol and the Fortress Monastery, the sooner they might find action in campaign or crusade. A Marine’s place was in battle, bolter chattering, enemies screaming, not seconded aboard some navy vessel like a worn-out hunting dog, guarding his master’s least valuable possessions.
“Captain?” Tangiz voxed, staring at the auspex of his motion detector. “Something...”
“I have a contact also,” Iolux nodded, tilting his head to localise the sound.
“Give me a bearing, Tangiz.”
“Standby... It appears to be direct. Advancing along the corridor.”
“Not in the pipes?”
“Affirmative.”
“Range?” Mito raised his pistol and thumbed the activation rune on the hilt of his chainsword, blurring the teeth in a hungry smear of steel and a feral growl of energy. The others lifted their weapons, taking up firing positions.
“Twenty metres and closing.”
“I see nothing.”
“Detecting air movement.”
“Fifteen metres.”
“Nothing...”
“By the Raven, what is this?”
“Ten metres... Still closing...”
“There! I see it! At the corridor apex!”
Mito saw a flicker of movement and jerked his arm upwards to cover it. Whatever it was it was tiny — barely larger than one of the green carrion birds from Cortiz. It shifted along the ceiling of the tunnel, ducking through and between the coils of cabling and pipework with unreal precision.
“Servitor drone?” Iolux grunted.
“Too small. Too manoeuvrable.”
“Xeno.”
“Knock it down.”
Mito opened fire with a snarl, enjoying the shuddering recoil of the bolt pistol. A localised thunderstorm began as the rest of the squad joined him, barking weapons hurling smoke and flame tears into the corridor.
The small shape caromed and weaved, tumbling and dodging faster than any living thing could react. It swept from side to side, dipping low to the ground and then pirouetting upwards, coming to a dead halt, then streaking off in a random direction without appearing to accelerate.
The hallway surged. After ten seconds of the useless barrage the corridor was a wreck, shredded channels of bolter-craters spewing liquid metal and tight-knit cable-bundles, raising crumpled mountains across the walls and ceiling and gouging oceans from every surface. Melta ribbons left curious fronds of cooling metal-splash, smoke leeched from shredded bulkheads, strobing bolter fire sent flickering shadows capering and cackling across the devastation. It was madness.
Mito realised too late that the hovering object — whatever it was — had evaded every last shell, every last explosion and every last shimmering melta-stream. It moved impossibly, a tawny streak across the smoke and debris that anticipated and avoided every shot, drawing inexorably nearer to the Marines and the gateway that they guarded.
It barrelled from the smoke in a blur. Mito snarled in frustration and chopped downwards with the chainsword, putting all his energy and rage into that single arcing swing. And he would have made contact with the tiny drone, had it not chosen that exact moment to detonate.
Captain Mito of the Adeptus Astartes Raptors died in a haze of his own blood, howling in fury.
Kais dragged himself from the ruptured duct with a grunt and swung down into the corridor. Bits of grey-green armour, lined by slabs of flesh, littered the pulverised hallway. He clucked his tongue, impressed at the tiny drone’s destructive legacy. His circuitous journey through the ductway had led him, finally, to the doors of the vessel’s power core.
It had been a uniquely odd experience, deploying the little robot through an access hatch and feeding its non-sentient AI the simple commands it required. Kais had found it hard to not draw parallels between his own situation and the drone’s: both were mindless cogs in a rumbling machine, expected to do their duty without question or resentment. He almost envied the robot’s mindlessness. It could never be so tormented as was he.
“Breach doorway bulkhead, avoid damage.” As simple as that. Straightforward, unconflicting, uncomplicated and efficient. Everything he wasn’t.
Just as Lusha had watched his progress via the optics of his helmet, Kais could sneak inside the drone’s vision and ride, spellbound, as it lurked amongst the shadows of the corridors. It felt unusually like flying, and despite being curled foetally within a small duct nearby, Kais found it difficult to control the fluctuations of his stomach and balance as his vision recorded the dips and crests of the small machine’s progress.
And then the firefight! He’d never moved so fast, consciousness gyrating and corkscrewing with impossible precision, the drone’s sensors chattering and whistling in his ear as it estimated fire trajectories and ran the gauntlet. He’d barely even seen the Marines — just green smudges of reflected light and chattering gunfire, growing gradually nearer with each hectic manoeuvre. Contact severed with a static hiss as the faithful little drone completed its approach and triggered the high-density kles’tak explosives packed throughout its chassis. Nothing had survived.
The destruction was strangely comforting. If a drone, the very zenith of mindless obedience and preprogrammed faith, could be responsible for such destruction, then perhaps he — with his trail of bodies and bloodstained armour — wasn’t so far removed from the tau’va as he seemed.
The bulkhead leading into the engine room sagged pathetically, pulverised hinges twisted out of shape. He picked his way past the barbarised bodies and ducked between the hanging gates, ears assaulted by the full fury of the reactors within. Across the chamber, standing skeletally on fragile gantries and pulpits, twisted amalgamations of human and machine — more mindless constructs devoted to fulfilling their masters’ commands — twitched their limbs and glared at him through narrow focussing eyelenses. One of them chattered, like a ratchet joint on a battlesuit.
Kais felt the weight of the explosives secured in his shoulderpack. He raised his carbine and smiled, anticipating the destruction he would soon wreak.
Kor’o Dal’yth Men’he piloted his vessel with the consummate ease and confidence characteristic of his rank and caste. The Tel’ham Kenvaal swung in a balletic spiral, rolling onto its side like a whale and disgorging another withering salvo of plasma orbs, railgun shells and AI-piloted torpedoes.
His target moved far too slowly to evade the barrage, its harsh gue’la hull twisting in a last-ditch attempt to present stern before the payload imparted across its belly. Fire and debris vomited into the vacuum, building-sized blocks of masonry and metal tumbling endlessly away in a clutching halo of cable tendrils.
A torpedo alarm gonged serenely and Men’he tapped at a sequence of control drones almost without thought. Immediately a squadron of Barracudas broke off from the dogfight raging along the Kenvaal’s toroq-side hull and ghosted into the firing line to intercept. Nuclear blooms flourished and dwindled in a heartbeat as the missiles were efficiently hunted and crippled, kor’vre pilots chattering their shorthand command language across the squadron-comm. A solitary torpedo evaded their careful ministrations and Men’he rolled his eyes wearily.
“Chaff,” he grunted out loud, not for the first time.
A kor’el nearby nodded and tapped at her control console. “Of course, Kor’o.”
A swarm of blocky drones slipped silently from a hatchway beside the Kenvaal’s batteries and threw themselves at the torpedo. Whatever crude gue’la intelligence was directing the tumbling missile, successfully avoided two of the heat seeking machines before a third, random pulses of magnetic interference scrambling its guidance, flew serenely into its warhead. The detonation fell just short of the damage zone. Men’he breathed out, licking his dry lips.
A Mako-class warship — smaller and slower than the Kenvaal but bristling with railgun emplacements and arms-factories — breached the top of Men’he’s viewscreen and emptied a confetti of drone-piloted fusion capsules at the human vessel. Like swimming insect larvae, the bright pinpricks of light swarmed and circled around their victim, closing in on carefully selected targets before unleashing the actinic energies sealed within them.
The sight made Men’he think of a huge grazebeast carcass, stuffed full of firecrackers and t’pre’ta decorations. It bucked and shivered from the inside, a living fire eating away at its flesh and leaving only the brittle, charred skeleton beneath.
“Kor’o? Their life support and weapons are down.”
“Good. Signal the Sio’l Shi’el’teh to finish the job. We’re rejoining the Or’es Tash’var.”
“Very good, Kor’o.”
The Tel’ham Kenvaal swung away from the hapless warship and accelerated towards the centre of the engagement zone. On all sides the toothy slabs of the gue’la fleet were outmanoeuvred and overrun by the smaller tau vessels, innumerable fighters and attack craft vying for superiority in the abyssal spaces in between. A latticework of munitions and missiles laced the voidspace, glimmering jewels that flickered and blossomed or winked out abruptly. Men’he silently thanked the earth caste for their breathtakingly intelligent computers, at a loss to understand how the gue’la could even begin to decipher such complex tactical showdowns without the benefit of automated systems.
Manpower, he supposed. A hundred thousand humans for every tau in the galaxy — that was the current intelligence estimate. Each of those ugly angular warships was a world, a population of servile ratings and crew without a single freedom beyond the ability to worship their cruel, blinkered gargoyle-god. Every missile fired at them, every fusion capsule shredding its atoms in a purple welt of radiation and fire, was genocide on his part. It was a sobering thought.
The Or’es Tash’var, battered hull dappled with soot patches and protruding boarding craft, circled the Enduring Blade slowly. The two vessels, prow-to-prow, moved around one another like veteran prize fighters, each unwilling to present broadsides for fear of absorbing as much damage as they might inflict. Thus stalemated, they gyrated ponderously, twisting and rolling but always matching one another’s movements; a slow, graceless dance of death, speckled by the furious fighter engagements all around. Torpedoes twisted and left dissolving ribbon trails across the nothingness, drones capered in a dizzying spiral to intercept or attack, chunks of debris and crippled fighter craft turned languidly and bodies, bloated and pulverised and frozen and crushed, slapped like brittle icicles against the Kenvaal’s hull. Men’he shook his head, revolted.
“Target the engines,” he grunted to the gunnery kor’el.
“They’re backing off, Kor’o. I have no firing solution.”
They saw us coming... Signal the Or’es Tash’var. Tell them to take the toroq side, we’ll go juntas. We have to kill those engines.”
“It’s too late, Kor’o... the gue’la are pulling away.”
“Pursu—”
“Kor’o — The surveyor drones make report...”
Men’he frowned. “And?”
“Some sort of energy peak. Standby...”
“Where? I want a location.”
“The gue’la warship, Kor’o. Aft segment.”
The comm chimed.
“O’Men’he? This is Aun’el Ko’vash. I suggest you pull back somewhat...”
“Of course, Aun’el. What’s happening?”
“It would appear our little gambit paid off, Kor’o.”
“Aun’e—?”
“Prepare to engage, Kor’o. They’ll be helpless in moments.”
Men’he glanced bemusedly at the viewscreen. The Enduring Blade seemed to shudder abruptly, the bright lights glimmering across its continental surfaces dimmed and winked off before rising again in an angry crimson luminescence. The stabilising thrusters on its belly — volcanic vents oozing a myriad of smoggy emissions and crackling energies — flared briefly, bringing the unwieldy shape to a premature halt.
Men’he carefully pulled back the Kenvaal to match the distance of the Tash’var and watched, astonished.
“Aun’el?” he commed. “What’s it—”
The engines exploded.
In one bright moment the scaffold arrays and tiered buttresses arranged around the Enduring Blade’s bulging engine vents plumed and shredded, a snaking chain reaction billowing up from beneath like pus from a wound. It spilled over in a garish torus of effervescent gases and vacuum starved flames, pulverising entire decks and fragmenting the rear sections of the vessel. The engine stacks heaved from their bases upwards as though expelling a final breath, long ribbons of mangled machinery and blocky architecture blasting clear from the wreckage.
“Bloodwind...” Men’he hissed beneath his breath, forgetting himself.
A kor’vre trilled calmly, “Brace for debris.”
The Tel’ham Kenvaal shuddered lightly as shards of fused, atomised detritus bounced from its hull. Gun drones quickly and efficiently atomised any potentially threatening wreckage.
Men’he stared at the devastation and gaped. The immobilised vessel swung around from the force of the detonations, the pathetic remaining thrusters venting impotently to control the gyration.
“O’Men’he?” the comm said, startling him from his astonishment.
“Y-yes? Uh, yes, Aun’el?”
“I rather think that should slow them down. Focus on their juntas-side batteries, please. I want them crippled.”
Librarian Delpheus felt the detonation all around him. Deep in the heart of the Enduring Blade its concussive force shook everything, roaring throughout the cavernous techbay which Ardias and his sergeants had commandeered. For a moment he was sure the walls themselves palpitated, a shuddering vibration running the length and breadth of the craft. He saw a ruby wet gut inside his mind, peristaltic waves of muscle contractions dragging him closer to digestion.
He shook his head, annoyed at the lack of focus. A thousand psychic screams churned across the ether, a final painful legacy of those who had died in the blast.
He sagged into a seat in the small console arena at one end of the tech-bay, watching as dust scurried tiredly from the duct courses around the ceiling, making the coils and loops of cables sway and buckle. A small illuminator on the wall, glowing with the angry red ochre of emergency conditions, spat sparks and clanked to the deck. The entire ship rumbled.
Captain Ardias scowled, clinging to a stanchion nearby. He’d led his command team from the Marines’ reclusium cells into the main sections of the ship, hoping to find a means of monitoring events vessel-wide. Delpheus’s psychic senses had led them unerringly to this techbay, finding within a group of tech-priests that cowered at one end of the chamber, chanting purifying litanies over a bewildering array of machines and metallic constructions.
“What was that?” Ardias growled, shooting an inquisitive glance at Achellus, his squad’s Techmarine. The red-armoured giant scowled and bent over the multifaceted monitors and consoles at the end of the hangar, augmented limbs and armatures fluttering across the controls.
“Stand by,” he grunted, slender metal fingers sliding into socket relays with a cascade of rasps.
“The engines have been destroyed.” Delpheus said, his voice dead. Ardias looked up at him in surprise.
“How do you know?”
He sought for an adequate explanation, unable as ever to find the words to explain. He shrugged helplessly. “I just know.”
Achellus tilted his head and shrugged. “The engines are gone,” he concurred.
“Hera’s blood...” Ardias growled, eyes staring into nothing. Delpheus’s probing mind could feel the anxiety oozing from him, a helplessness entirely alien to one so used to the rigours and certainties of the Codex.
“The Raptors failed...” the captain whispered. “We weren’t there.” He turned his gaze upon the Librarian, an intense glare of accusation and hostility. “We weren’t there, Delpheus, at your suggestion.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Delpheus replied, keeping the quaver from his voice.
“How dare you?” Ardias almost roared. “Countless lives lost and you think ‘it doesn’t matter’?”
The sergeants exchanged glances, uncomfortable with their captain’s palpable fury.
“No, brother-captain,” Delpheus maintained, closing his eyes, it doesn’t. “I told you before: we are needed elsewhere. Something is coming.”
Ardias almost snarled. “Brother Delpheus, my faith in the scrying of psykers — even those that I count among my brothers — extends only so far.” He took a breath, controlling his temper. “Thanks to this episode my faith is waning.”
“But—”
“Codex Article 4256, sub-section 4, third lesson. ‘In the face of an overt and exposed foe, the pursuit of intangible threats is a waste of resource.’”
“I know the text, brother-captain. You need not remi—”
“The Ultramarine is a realist and a pragmatist, Delpheus, who is careful not to divide his attention. I was a fool to accept your counsel.”
“It was not ‘counsel’, brother. It was truth. You will see, yet—”
“My patience is spent. Assemble the company, we go to battl—”
“Please!” Delpheus found himself begging, desperate to vindicate his prophecy. “In the Emperor’s name! I can’t explain what’s coming, but whatever happens, whatever we do, we’re needed here and now. I know it!”
“And where is ‘here’? Some forgotten techbay? Why bring us here?”
“I... I don’t know.”
Ardias turned away, muttering furiously. Delpheus rubbed his temples, wondering vaguely whether the clawing, chittering pain in his mind would ever be gone.
His eyes fell upon the wall. The light fitting that had fallen open sparked lamely, coils of ruptured cabling hanging out. He frowned. There was something...
Oh, Emperor-God no...
He looked up. A series of looped ducts hung overhead, arcing flaccidly with the weight of years. A dribble of water parted from a cracked, rust smeared pipe with a quiet plip.
No no no no no...
He looked back at the light fitting. The filament, exposed metal smoking and fizzing, lay half-concealed behind a tangle of wires. Overloaded and crippled by the force of the engines’ destruction, it blinked spasmodically:
Flash. Flash. Pause. Flash. Pause. Flash-Flash. Pause.
“Brother-captain?” Delpheus said, staring at it. Ardias turned to him with a weary grunt.
“What now?”
“I’m about to die.”
The wall yawned open like a hungry mouth, wet edges slurping and sucking obscenely, malefic light blazing around its edges.
Something came out and stabbed him through the heart.
Kais hurried across arterial bridges.
They sprouted chaotically from high tiered walls, plush tapestries and red velvet walkways branching and intersecting tapering cords of steel and rock. They arched out across abyssal spaces, smoke-fogged and bat-haunted. This high within the vessel’s infrastructure, bulbous viewing galleries and veinlike corridors opened up onto glass-fronted panoramas of the void beyond. The distant flickering of lights and tumbling shadows announced majestically that the fleet battle continued to rage. Every now and then a shuddering, grinding roar — like steel skies being torn open by celestial blades — heralded another tau-fired salvo of munitions gouging into the crippled vessel’s flanks. He lowered his vision and limped onwards, hoping the blood trail was dwindling.
The explosion that had ripped the engines from the gue’la vessel had shaken him. He thought he’d given himself enough time to get clear, setting the charges for five raik’ors then scampering, rat-like, along hallways and gantries; scuttling up ladders and diving into lifts. He’d broadcast several all-frequency alerts to the other shas’las aboard, urging them to get clear of the engine decks as soon as possible. There were no replies.
When it came, the detonation had been like the laughter of a thunder god, consuming every other noise and blasting great waves of destruction along the vessel. Kais had lurched headlong to the ground, momentarily astounded by the force of his handiwork. The deck split open beneath him and he scrabbled, crying out, for sturdier ground. Chain reactions rumbled for long raik’ans, shaking loose bolts from the ceiling and killing the lights in a surge of crimson standbys. Ripples of deflected force surged through the bulkheads, eliciting a great grinding, gnashing sound that hurt his ears and left him shaking his head in confusion.
And then it was all quiet.
All quiet, for the first time since he came aboard this ugly mausoleum ship. No more distant semiconscious reportage of the sonorous engines, rumbling throatily He’d wondered, skulking in the devastation, how many people, how many hundreds — maybe thousands — had perished. He could see them in his mind, pale lips gaping fishlike, as their lungs collapsed and their blood turned solid, tumbling out into the vastness of space.
He thought back to the decompressing chamber in the promenade aboard the Or’es Tash’var. All those tau and gue’la slipping into nothingness in a rush of blasted air and silent screams. He’d been horrified at the raw power of the vacuum, a destructive force above and beyond his tiny, mortal rages and flaws. It had humbled him.
And what now, now that he’d shredded a city-in-space and vented its chittering, maggotlike occupants into that same vacuum? Shouldn’t he feel godlike? Shouldn’t that single act of genocide obliterate whatever bitterness he might have in his soul, eclipsing utterly the numbness, outshining the relentless glare of his father’s eyes? Shouldn’t it be significant?
No. He didn’t feel a thing.
Dazed, appalled at his own detachment, he’d stumbled upwards through the ship’s layers until he could go no further and there, seeing all around him the dislodged wreckage and shorted circuitry of his handiwork, he’d moved onto the great buttresses and masonry causeways overarching the service spaces. Impossible pits yawned on either side of every path.
He was wandering blindly, trying to hail the Or’es Tash’var, a lone figure picking its way towards the distant monolith of the vessel’s bridge, when he was shot in the leg.
He’d run, of course. He couldn’t even see the sniper, let alone return fire with any accuracy. Warm dampness oozed across his hoof copiously, and he fired some random — useless — shots into the cavernous underhull and sprinted for cover, groaning and seeing stars with every step. Ensconced within a low-roofed bridge intersection, he shakily eased himself to the ground to examine the wound. The projectile had punctured the muscle of his lower leg, gashing an ugly hole and singeing the flesh around it. He fished for his last medipack and applied it heavily, pushing down until he almost blacked out, then tying it off. The pressure was appalling, like liquid metal cooling and expanding around the flesh, but it allowed him to walk, at least. In a perverse way the pain was invigorating, a constant reminder of his vitality (and mortality) that cut through the numbness more completely than wholesale slaughter ever could.
So now he hurried across the bridgeways, keeping low, grunting quietly every time the ragged wound flexed inside its healing binding. He wanted to laugh, somehow, some morbid sense of absurdity bubbling up inside him. He’d killed hundreds today, thousands even. He’d waded through the blood of his enemies and relished every moment, he’d overcome exhaustion and adversity with an almost supernatural aptitude, defeating the finest warriors these pale-faced gue’la could throw at him.
To be outdone now, to be maimed so suddenly by some distant, unseen foe— beyond control or retaliation: it was ridiculous. It was like a cruel joke, like a clonebeast outrunning its pursuers and earning the admiration of the crowd— only to be slaughtered for meat in the fio’toros’tai abattoir districts.
The bridgecastle loomed overhead, an ebony mace wielded victoriously above the ship’s spire-encrusted spine. Kais glimpsed it again and again through the irregular viewing portals above the causeways, set amongst the distant rafters and buttresses of the inner surface of the hull. Around its base an amalgamation of stone fortresses rose majestically into a single buttressed chapel, steel pendants and icons infesting its multifaceted roof, lowermost walls penetrating the ship’s shell. It rose up from within the Enduring Blade like a blistered melanoma, turrets for singed hair follicles and the angular bridge at its tumorous apex.
He’d wondered what to do after the engines died. He couldn’t raise El’Lusha on the comms — couldn’t really believe that there was anyone friendly left in the universe. He seemed so cut off, so immeasurably enmeshed within the grinding wheels of this confrontation, that nothing else was real. He resolved, mind clouded by anxieties, that alone or not he would attempt to pursue the goals his commanding shas’el had set. So he headed for the bridge.
The chapel’s entrance, accessible only via a bridge that extended across a gulf between an outer and inner strata of the vessel’s segmentation, was a causeway-deathtrap. Its slender crossings were pocked by bullet holes and las-scorches and several dead tau lay in a huddle at its entrance. Kais sprinted past without stopping, his mutilated leg a dull crimson roar in his mind. The snipers, wherever they were, announced themselves in a flurry of ghostly ricochets and squib blasts, too distant for the sound of their firing to betray their positions. The dead shas’las wriggled and shook obscenely as they absorbed the crossfire, not safe from damage even in death. Kais hurdled the butchered pile and landed with a muffled shriek, feeling the abused flesh of his leg tearing as he braced against the impact.
He rolled awkwardly and sprung forwards, sensing rather than seeing the impact craters disappearing behind him, and crawled upright feeling winded and dazed. The chapel swarmed open around him, an impossibly vast space that made him stagger in astonishment. Every pillar was a granite behemoth, ascending with prehistoric grace into the distant shadows of the ceiling, where leering gargoyles and stylised figures hulked and glared. Gargantuan stained-glass lenses fractured the light, daubing primary colours across his dirtied armour. He stood for a moment and basked in the massiveness of it all, insectified in an instant. Again he was a maggot, invading something incomprehensibly huge. How could he hope to topple all of this?
Then he looked around and a group of Space Marines was staring at him.
He lurched away with a cry, mind still fizzing with the shock of the bomb blast and the pain of his leg, melting his thoughts into an ugly hash of impression and details. Their features swam before his eyes:
Glaring yellow vision slits and grey-green helmets.
Domed shoulder guards and grasping segmented gauntlets.
Gunmetal weapons, racked and glaring hungrily.
But there was blood too, and the features didn’t seem to interlink properly. There was something...
He shook his head, wincing, and took a deep breath. When he turned back the image slotted into place with grisly precision and for the second time within as many decs he had to force himself not to gag. It was another massacre, another abattoir zone of gut-churning carnage, but this time not mere frail troopers that had been shredded. Their helmets were cleaved and shattered, eye lenses fragmented and the pulpy flesh beneath drawn out like mollusc meat.
Great gash marks rent the shoulder plates and armour fragments open, brittle edges awash with lubricating fluids and thick pulses of blood, running together in colloidal swirls. Kais found himself running a gloved hand in morbid fascination along one such tear, wondering what manner of blade could have so neatly parted such powerful armour.
There was no sign of a culprit, only a shredded perimeter of bolter craters, plasma-scorched metal and smoothed puddles of solidified melta-damage to attest to these abstract chunks of armour and flesh ever having lived.
Kais swallowed hard and let his eyes wander upwards to the red carpeted staircase that rose from the airy centre of the chapel. Somewhere above this bloody grotto was the bridge.
He looked back down at the fleshy detritus and stooped to pick something up.
Delpheus, sprawled on the deck, gnashed his teeth together and fought to stay conscious. It was happening. It was all happening. The masked fiend, inverted. All coming true.
Bolter fire hammered at the air, a furious staccato making his ears ache. Phosphorescent light blossoms capered across his eyesight, amorphous puddles of purple and blue left hanging nebulously in their wake.
Something screamed. He felt his first heart, punctured cleanly with a single razor-sharp blow, palpitating faintly and beginning to die. He expelled a gurgled lungful of air and was unsurprised to taste a thick syrup of blood and bile pooling from his mouth.
“A...” His voice was a lugubrious swamp croak, bubbling pathetically. He spat a gobbet of filth and tried again. “A... Ardias...”
Something blurred above his head, a crackling haze of form and light, rocketing across his vision with a hyena’s giggle. Bolter fire chased it and it was gone, a scampering shape swallowed by the shadows. Nothing he was seeing made any sense.
“What’s...” he mumbled, brain too detached to operate. He wanted information, wanted to cry out for a weapon so he could help his comrades fight back this... this...
What is it?
His first heart died by degrees, contractions diminishing in strength until it perished with a final spasm, its artificial counterpart accelerating its pulse to compensate. The overburdened organ’s hammering exertions made his head pound and his eyes ache, every throb tightening his blood vessels with a percussive roar. His legs wouldn’t work. He couldn’t even feel them.
He’d lost his gun in a slick of oily blood spill, lurching around when the... When the whatever-it-was had ripped from the wall hungrily.
“Ardias?” he tried again, voice weak. “Captain?”
More bolter fire. More death. Another scream as another shape blurred past. It was all happening in another world to someone else, as abstract as a cloud formation and just as unthreatening. He almost laughed.
A Space Marine helmet, lacerated head rattling inside, tumbled past him on the deck. Somewhere a plasma gun foomed breathlessly, destructive energy orb roaring its impact into the air. Delpheus blinked agonised tears out of his eyes.
A pair of sky-blue pillars stomped heavily from the pain haze beside him, cold hands cupping his head with a tenderness belying their brittle form. Captain Ardias glared down at him, concern etched incongruously on his grizzled face. He sounded choked.
“Delpheus? There’s help on its way. You’ll be fine.”
Delpheus smiled through the blood slick, hearing the concern in his captain’s voice. Ardias was a terrible liar.
“I was right...” he gurgled.
“You were right. We’re needed.”
Ardias looked away with a growl, bolt pistol tracking something across the periphery of Delpheus’s vision. It screamed and disappeared in a gout of ichor and light. And then there was a voice in Delpheus’s mind.
Twisting, probing. It was a cruel, venomous thing: slicing through his weakened defences and sinking claws of shimmering empyrean into his brain, ripping and stabbing. Playing him like a puppet.
“Nnnn...” he gurgled, fighting it. The look in Ardias’s eyes told him: You’ll be dead soon.
The thought fortress in his mind fell, once-impregnable walls sundered. The other mind, wherever it was, surged inwards, gripping at his lungs and larynx and manipulating his tongue.
“The bridge...” he hissed, unbidden. “Get to the bridge.”
Ardias nodded. “Of course. I’ll protect it with my life.”
“Stop the battle.” Not my voice! Not my voice!
“What?”
Delpheus tried swallowing, constricting his throat, biting his tongue— anything! It wouldn’t work. Weak and violated, his mind wasn’t his to control. He’d failed. He’d succumbed in his final moments. The shame overwhelmed him.
“Stop the battle,” his traitorous voice repeated. “The tau will parley. The new threat is more important.”
“They’ll cooperate? Just like that?”
“You must trust me.”
“I do, brother — I do.”
“The teleport arrays. They will take you to the bridge.”
“I understand.”
The shadows came down around his vision, like night drawing in. The controlling presence in his mind retreated stealthily, satisfied at its manipulations. Everything went cold.
The last vestiges of courage and honour inside Delpheus’s soul — a sputtering flame striving against the darkness — ripped forwards into the myriad skeins of possibility, crackling with psychic portent, and imparted one final warning, uncontrolled by whatever puppet master had spoken through him before.
“The... the rogue element. He lives on borrowed time. Seek him out. Find the warrior with the bomb in his head. Trust him.”
“What? Brother, I don’t understand...”
“Trust him...”
More gunfire. More screams. Delpheus gurgled.
The fog closed in, the blackness rolled over him, the Emperor smiled.
The world went away.
Severus smiled to himself, collecting his thoughts quickly.
The captain had looked so trusting — so sure of his dying comrade’s instructions. So much for the formidable defences of an Astartes Librarian! He’d played the fading fool like a rag doll — a brittle mask to be worn when required and cast away when redundant.
Not long now. The Ultramarines would intervene and stop the battle. All the pieces would gather together and he would take them all!
Ensign Kilson was sitting at his console aboard the bridge, unable to forget the hulking grey-green super-warriors he’d escorted through the vessel earlier.
Naturally enough the command deck was in a state of barely restrained anarchy, ranking officers screaming furiously at ensigns and servitors, apparently holding everyone but themselves responsible for the destruction of the main engines. Kilson did his best to allow it to wash over him, too experienced in the field of delegated blame to feel personally put out by the shrieked accusations.
A little part of him was thinking: we’re crippled. We’re under attack. They’re coming for us here and now and soon, without warning or mercy, we’re all going to die. The whole bloody lot of us.
But mostly he was too busy remembering the tremulous impact of the Space Marines’ footsteps, their glowering yellow eyeslits sweeping left and right, their weapons clashing against their breasts. He felt like a child again, back in the uptiers of CaerParav Hive, dreaming of meeting that season’s premier gladius fighter or collecting wafer engrams of the sector’s most renowned commissars.
He’d met them, those graceful grey-green brutes. He’d spoken to them, by the throne! A little part of him, detached from the termite nest madness of the bridge, felt like somehow, in a small way, it had touched divinity.
When the xenogen invader crept into the bridge and liquefied his body in a gust of thermal energy, Ensign Kilson was smiling serenely.
The bridge died.
“Intruder!”
“Get it!”
“Cover the officers! Cover the off—”
“Watch the instruments, damn you! Keep working!”
The meltagun was heavy in Kais’s grip, a blocky cumbersome thing that lacked the lightweight grace of his carbine. When he’d prised it from the mutilated grip of a dead Space Marine in the chapel below, he’d inspected the various coils and switches that clung like scales to its base. Eventually he decided that the trigger was the only control he really needed to understand and, leg wound still aching uncomfortably, had climbed the twisting staircase towards the bridge.
“Ensign! Get down! Get down!”
“Servitors to the front!”
“Mechserv #34 respo—”
“Emperor’s mercy!”
It didn’t shoot so much as dissolve its victims. He stood with legs planted sturdily, arm muscles bunched to support the growling, churning weapon. A splayed column of superheated air roared from its rounded muzzle; a devastating horizontal fountain that blasted flesh and bone apart like ash in a gale. The armsmen, supposedly guarding the bridge, were the first to go, shotguns igniting in their hands before they could even be brought to bear. Brass-mounted consoles slewed away in a waxlike sheen of melted surfaces and burning components, drizzling liquid metals across the room.
“Deck officer! Deck officer! To me!”
“—aaaaaaaaaaa—”
“—sweet mercy my foot’s gone oh Living God—”
“killitkillitkillit!”
A trio of servitors, blade-limbs grasping out for him, slunk away like snow devils in the sun. Their flesh peeled off in a second, leaving asymmetrical frames to twitch and shudder as their lubricants ignited and their strut supports melted to nothingness. The last few gue’la, hair singed and clothes scorched, exchanged terrified glances and sprinted clear. He enveloped them in the fusion stream and watched, heart racing, as they floundered and flapped and became part of the deck.
“—aaa—”
“—gkkhh—”
And then there was silence. He might as well have been the only living being in existence, in that moment. A solitary figure, exhausted and wounded, death clinging to his limbs like a black shroud. The enormity of the command deck wrapped him in a bubble of solitude and silence, even the clicking, whistling gauges and controls faltering away into an aural smog. From the vast viewing dome set above the room, the infinite reaches of the void peered down upon him— transforming him into a solitary bacterium staring in wonder from its perch on the back of a great, dead whale. The meltagun slid from his hands with a clatter that he didn’t even notice.
Somehow he felt... cheated. He hadn’t yet resolved his feelings. Hadn’t passed or failed his Trial by Fire with any certainty either way. He could still feel the Mont’au devil lurking below the surface of his mind, hungry to escape and flex its bloody claws again. He felt prematurely amputated from his rightful resolution — a quest that had neither ended in glory or ignominy, but rather fizzled out before its true conclusion.
He supposed, abstractly, that he should contact El’Lusha. He’d cleared the bridge. The Or’es Tash’var was defeated. The ethereal would want to know. Instead he found himself wishing for more, glancing about in the hopes of finding another enemy to fight.
So, like a light splitting through tormented clouds, like the impossible surreal luminosity of the tau’va, radiant and glorious at the termination of a long, snaking pathway, fate conspired to fulfil his request. An elevator grumbled nearby, rising with frozen slowness.
The doors began to slide open. Kais drew his knife.
Constantine burst from the officers’ lift in a black mood.
He’d wasted at least half an hour on some damn fool meeting requested by Severus, the preening bastard. Evidently the governor was either missing or dead, conspicuous in his absence at the boardroom. As a result of the unnecessary diversion Constantine had been unavailable to command his vessel in its moment of need, its engines had been systematically destroyed and now who knew what xenogen devilry the tau were planning to inflict upon his crippled vessel? Rushing back to the bridge, he was unable to contact his command crew for a status update, and, to top it all, had found himself confronted by a grisly abattoir of ruptured Space Marines in the chapel outside his command deck. The Raptors had failed.
An imperial warship, Constantine believed implicitly, was impregnable. The religious certainty of the Navy’s dominance, of their ships’ deific majesty, had been drilled into him since his youth, years before. For his command to irrevocably collapse in such a short period of time; for his god/ship to be so crippled and sundered in his absence and beyond his control, it was a feeling not unlike falling. Everything he’d ever known, everything he’d ever been certain of and taken for granted, fell away from beneath him in a rush of flame and debris and blood.
Fine. Let it fall. But let it not be said that in his most testing hour Lord Admiral Benedil Constantine had shirked his duty as a leader.
He would have Severus executed for ineffectual command, the time-wasting fool. He would dispatch messages conveying his great displeasure to the Administratum and to the Raptors’ fortress-monastery on Cortiz-Pol. He’d regroup the Fleet Primus, file an immediate request for backup from the Secundus and Tertius armadas, then obliterate every last one of the grey-skinned abominations currently wreaking havoc aboard his vessel. Heads, he decided furiously, would roll.
Besides, there were still the Ultramarines. He’d drawn upon the Raptors to guard the vessel’s principal sections at Severus’s demand, aware that Captain Ardias and his men might well regard the choice as an insult. Well, it couldn’t be helped; the governor’s Administratum documents had given him implicit command over the situation, and if he chose to snub the warriors of Ultramar then there was nothing Constantine could have done about it. At least now, in the midst of this madness, he had an entire company of the Imperium’s finest warriors to assist in his liberation.
With that thought in mind, he stamped from the elevator and found a long, wickedly sharp blade pressed against his throat.
“Nk,” he said.
“Be quiet, you.” Gloved hands gripped him from behind and the voice was thick with an unknown accent. An exotic, unrecognisable odour assaulted his senses, its explanation startling him.
“X-xeno!” he flinched away from the contact, gasping. Briefly he was struck by the insanity of finding himself more terrified of contamination than of physical death, but the thought was quickly chased away by added pressure upon the knife. He almost choked. The figure behind him pulled him into the shadows, like a spider seizing its prey.
“I said, be quiet,” the voice insisted, three-fingered hand gripping his shoulder. “Who are you?”
“No-hkkk-nobody.”
“Lies.”
“What?”
“The colours and the metal circles. You’re important.” The hand tapped pointedly upon the constellation of medals pinned to Constantine’s chest, making them sway and jingle prettily. The alien’s words were recognisable but clearly strained, impeded by a limited Low Gothic vocabulary. Constantine was briefly impressed that a mere warrior could speak an alien tongue at all (after all, could he, an admiral, speak tau?), but recognised it at once as a dangerously heretical thought and purged it from his mind.
“No...” he hissed. “J-just an ensign—”
“Lies. Who are you?”
“Nobo—”
The xenogen cut his throat. It was white fire — a single burning ribbon of pain beneath his chin that sliced open with dreadful slowness.
Not deep, he prayed, shaming himself with his own cowardice, not deep enough to kill.
He whimpered as the pain continued to blossom, warmth pattering serenely across his collar bone, soaking into his robes. The xeno replaced the knife centrally and pushed harder, tensing for another slow, surgical slice. This time, Constantine could tell, the cut would be deep.
“Admiral!” he groaned, begging the Emperor’s forgiveness, knees almost buckling. “I’m the admiral! In charge! Commander!”
“A kor’o?”
“What?”
“You command the vessel?”
Yes!
“And the fleet?”
Emperor’s undying mercy yes!
“Then listen. You... just listen.”
Constantine had the distinct impression that the alien was confused, thinking hard about what to do. He began to wonder at the possibilities of somehow exploiting the situation when full pressure was reapplied to the knife, making him gag.
“You contact the rest of your fleet. You tell them—”
“Warp take you! I’d rather die!”
“You tell them to fall back. You tell them to leave.”
“You’re pathetic!” Constantine fought to bring a cold laugh to his voice, breaking through the quaver of fear and hoping the creature was convinced. “They won’t listen. They’ll know I’ve been compromised.”
“We have your ship. We have you. It is best that they leave. There will be no more conflict.”
“The Emperor doesn’t compromise, xeno.”
The knife bit into this throat again, nicking at his skin. “Where is this Emperor now when you have need of him, human?”
Constantine suddenly felt a long, long way from home.
Cut him cut him cut him cut him—
It hissed and raged in Kais’s mind, a song of blood and anger and violence.
Make him bleed cut him cut him—
It was a killing lust born in frustration. Everything had seemed so simple before, killing and destroying anything that moved, cleansing the bridge of all life, capturing this quivering, whimpering kor’o. He’d felt like he could do anything, overcome any obstacle, crush any enemy.
But there were objectives here. Diplomatic outcomes.
The comm-link with the Or’es Tash’var was still down. He’d tried it twice, desperation mounting. So he’d tried to consider, just as before in the stygian gloom of the prison compound. He’d felt like he owed it to the tau’va to think — to force a conclusion to this conflict that didn’t rely on the squeeze of a trigger or the slash of a knife. To end it in blood, he felt, would surely be to allow the Mont’au devil its victory.
The personal glory of single-handedly forcing the gue’la fleet to withdraw, he had to admit, was alluring. Would it elevate him to hero status? Would it secure his promotion? Would it...
Don’t even think it.
...would it have made his father proud?
It was selfishness of the highest order, he saw with a guilty wince, imagining Ju shaking her head and patiently reading out another patronising meditation upon... upon the essence of humility, or the righteousness of unity, or something like that. Still, the image was hard to shake: cheering crowds, grateful ethereals...
But of course it wasn’t that simple, and his clumsy threats and attempts to control this tall, grey-haired human were going badly awry. He thought back to the por’vre from the expedition to Queh-quih and for the first time saw beyond the bumbling enthusiasm and almost comical attempts to placate the natives, appreciating instead the merchant’s grasp upon linguistics, his subtle words and hints, his mastery of interpersonal communication. Kais solemnly wished for a water caste diplomat now.
“Tell them to withdraw,” he shouted, pushing down on the blade.
“I’m-hekkgh-telling you... it won’t work!”
“Then you die.”
“Fine! Do it, abomination! I die in the knowledge that your race is doomed! They’ll be crushed underfoot! Kill me and have done with it — I won’t sully myself for you!”
Kais wanted to growl, enraged by the futility of his threats. The gue’la started to laugh madly — an hysterical cackle with more fatalism and terror in its tones than any great sense of amusement.
The rage shivered in Kais’s belly, widening its pin tooth grin and flooding his blood with fire. His arm muscle tensed. He closed his eyes and concentrated, fighting for control.
Focus focus focus focus—
Cut him cut him cut him cut him—
Calm. All you need is calm and balance and equilibrium and unity and—
Blood and death and bravery and reward and heroism and—
No expansion without equilibrium. No conquest without control—
Be a hero! Show the world! Show them you are your father’s son!
His grip tightened on the knife and he prepared to drag it sideways, seeing in his mind the ruby waterfall springing from the gash. The grey haired gue’la sensed what was coming, moaning low in his throat.
Time stopped. From somewhere nearby there came a flash of light and the hiss of a thousand serpents, wreathed in lightning. Kais paid it no attention.
There was a voice, shouting. It couldn’t drown the voice in his mind: Cut him cut him cut him!
The Mont’au devil bared its fangs triumphantly and shrieked. The blade bit.
A fist like a sky-blue meteor slammed into his helmet, lifting him off the ground. For the second time that rotaa the colour drizzled out of his eyes and he sagged to his knees, swallowed mercifully by thick, impenetrable sleep.
“Stop it!” the Ultramarine growled, more of his vast brethren bursting into existence with the crackling of teleportation energies behind him.
Constantine, shaking in horror, attempting to disentangle himself from the unconscious alien at his feet, fought for calmness.
“Stop what?” he quailed, quivering hands clamped to the wound on his neck.
The war. The fleet confrontation. The order to repel boarders. Everything!
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