Rogue Trader

by Andy Hoare

  ‘You insult me with words, xenos,’ spat Sarik by way of reply. ‘Enough with words. Now, we fight!’

  ‘I move,’ Lucian addressed the council, ‘that we vote on this issue.’

  ‘And what motion would you table? asked Sedicae the Navigator, surprising Lucian and, it appeared, the rest of the council by choosing to speak up at this time.

  ‘I ask that the council moves to delay any use of the cardinal’s ultimate sanction,’ Lucian replied, aware that the cardinal seethed with anger as he did so, ‘until such time as the situation on the ground is fully resolved.’

  ‘What right have you to naysay me, rogue trader?’ growled the cardinal, his tone dangerous and his bearded face scowling.

  ‘It is my right as a member of this council, should another member second me,’ replied Lucian, knowing full well the gamble he was initiating.

  The council knew the gamble too, so it seemed, for a tense silence settled on the chamber as each councillor considered his position. Lucian had taken a huge risk in calling for a vote, for should no other councillor second the call, then he would be humiliated, entirely isolated and devoid of power or influence. Furthermore, the councillor that seconded his call would be setting himself up against the cardinal as surely as Lucian had. A successful councillor might gain unimagined power, but a defeated one might be lucky to come out alive, so brutal could the power play become.

  ‘I will second the Lord Arcadius’s call.’ Lucian let out a silent breath of relief, seeing that it was Admiral Jellaqua that had spoken up. ‘If for no other reason than to settle this issue and move on to more pressing matters.’

  Lucian nodded his thanks to the admiral, before addressing the council. ‘I call then for a vote, on the issue of the enactment of the ultimate sanction against the taking of enemy prisoners. Gentlemen, please cast your votes.’

  Lucian smiled to himself, pleased that he had worked the issue of taking prisoners into consideration, setting it up as the natural opposite of the cardinal’s stance. And in his mind, it was, for if the cardinal convinced Grand to virus bomb Sy’l’Kell, then the taking of prisoners would be a moot point, and the crusade would be throwing away potentially vital intelligence.

  The council’s etiquette stated that the member nominated as chairman for the session should vote first, the voting passing around the table clockwise. The cardinal was the chairman. ‘I vote against the motion,’ he growled.

  ‘As do I,’ stated Inquisitor Grand, his voice dry and sinister, little more than a whisper emanating from the depths of his hood, but plainly audible nonetheless.

  ‘I vote,’ said General Wendall Gauge in his no-nonsense, gravel voice, ‘for the motion. Arcadius has the truth of it.’

  Lucian nodded his thanks to the general, and looked to the next man along.

  ‘I hardly need to do so,’ said Admiral Jellaqua, ‘or I would not have seconded the call to vote, but I too vote in favour of Gerrit’s motion. In war, one must marshal one’s resources and know what weapon to use when. I believe it wise to capture and interrogate an enemy. It is not “consorting with xenos”, it is common sense.’

  Lucian savoured the outrage the cardinal fought so hard and unsuccessfully to contain, but knew better than to celebrate just yet.

  The seat to the admiral’s left, belonging to Captain Rumann of the Iron Hands Chapter, was unoccupied, the Space Marine being otherwise engaged with his role in the planetary assault in progress below. That meant that Lucian was the next in line to vote. He said simply, ‘I vote in favour.’

  To Lucian’s left was the empty seat belonging to Sergeant Sarik of the White Scars. It was a shame the Space Marine was absent, Lucian thought, for he suspected Sarik might have voted against the use of the virus bomb, even if he would have no great desire to interrogate prisoners.

  The next councillor along was Jaakho, the Magos Explorator. Lucian counted two votes against his motion so far, and three for. He had no idea how the Magos might vote. A long silence preceded Jaakho’s answer, punctuated by the slow wheeze of his augmetic systems and the rattle of the many pipes and cables draped from the facemask hidden beneath his red hood.

  ‘I must,’ the Magos stated at length, ‘abstain from this vote.’

  Lucian waited for some explanation from the tech-priest, but soon realised that none would be forthcoming. Jaakho’s reasons for voting for or against any of the council’s actions appeared to be couched in an entirely unreadable logic, one that Lucian believed was divorced from the reality in which he lived.

  The next councillor to vote would be the Navigator, Pator Sedicae. As with Jaakho before, Lucian could not predict how the Navigator might vote, for he appeared to judge matters entirely by the unknowable concerns of his kin. The Navigators, as with the Techno Magi, moved in their own circles, and their ways were frequently alien and arcane to other men. The thought occurred to Lucian that Sedicae might feel the same about the circles in which rogue traders moved, so perhaps there was some possibility of finding common ground and of working towards an alliance.

  The Navigator visibly gathered his thoughts, before casting his vote. ‘On behalf of the Navis Nobilitie,’ he said, referring to all of the Navigator Houses, of which he was the head of just one, ‘I too must abstain.’

  Lucian was not entirely surprised to hear the Navigator’s vote, though he could not help but feel mildly disappointed. He looked at the two remaining councillors yet to cast their votes, cold doubt rising within him.

  Praefect Maximus Skissor stood to deliver his vote, Lucian’s view of the man plummeting even further. Skissor cleared his throat as he straightened his robes, before raising an ancient data-slate and lifting a tattered feather quill to its surface.

  ‘I, Praefect Maximus to the Damocles Gulf Crusade, do hereby exercise the right and responsibility entrusted to me.’ Skissor allowed a pregnant pause to drag on, apparently blind to the hostile glances that various councillors, not least among them Lucian, were casting his way.

  ‘I choose to abstain.’

  Lucian felt a cold sweat appear at his brow, but refused to let his discomfort show.

  ‘I believe,’ the Praefect continued, ‘that to actively seek out tau prisoners to interrogate would be to create a line of communication between the aliens and ourselves. This I believe to be tantamount to recognising their empire and its right to exist. The purpose of this crusade is to challenge the tau, not to talk to them. Having said that, I believe it is my duty to consider how the tau might be of use to us, and I believe that to exterminate them would be to throw away what advantage we might gain by doing so.’

  Lucian resisted the urge to rise to his feet and berate the councillor. Did he really believe his own nonsense? No, Lucian realised, that little speech was intended to bolster the Praefect’s position, no matter how it sounded to the remainder of the council.

  Looking across at the last councillor still to cast his vote, Lucian realised that he had, in all likelihood, lost this battle. The cardinal sat at the head of his faction, which included Inquisitor Grand, and, Lucian was sure, the logistician-general, even though Stempf had yet to cast his vote. Lucian could count on Jellaqua and Gauge, but with the abstentions and absences, it looked like that would not prove sufficient.

  It was no surprise to Lucian then when the logistician-general cast his vote against the motion, putting the result at three for, three against and four abstentions; not enough to carry the vote.

  Hot pain flared across Sarik’s chest as high-velocity impacts cratered and buckled his power armour. The alien spoke no more, but would fight, that much was clear. Sarik offered a brief but heartfelt thanks to the Emperor that the ceramite armour was proof against the alien weaponry, for now at least.

  Wasting no more time, Sarik launched himself at his foe, seeking to get within the tau’s guard, from where the alien’s weapons would be useless and his own lethal.

/>   Before he could close on the tau, however, Sarik’s enemy launched himself into the air upon flaring blue jets, leaping clear of the screaming chainsword blade as it sliced through the space he had just vacated. Sarik cursed, and rose to his full height, reaching up and grabbing hold of one metallic foot of the battlesuit. The tau’s upward motion was arrested as the Space Marine attempted to pull the suit back down to the floor. In response, the alien pilot increased the power to the jets, searing blue flames scorching Sarik’s left arm and shoulder pad, the white paint peeling off and the metal skin below beginning to blister.

  Sarik cursed as his flowing black hair set alight, forcing his right arm up against the jet wash, seeking to use the chainsword against his foe.

  The tau, seeing his peril, twisted around in an attempt to use the downdraught created by the powerful jets to topple the Space Marine. But Sarik’s power armour lent him superhuman strength, and he resisted the fierce blast even as his hair burned. He raised the chainsword and thrust it screaming into the battlesuit’s primary thrusters, causing a spectacular chain reaction within the propulsion unit even as the blade melted and fused, its screeching gears jamming entirely.

  Sarik threw himself clear as the battlesuit was engulfed in a series of small explosions, the pilot attempting to draw a bead on the Space Marine even as his suit disintegrated, blue bolts streaming from the rapidly spinning barrels of the suit’s primary weapon system.

  Drawing himself to his feet and shaking his face clear of his smouldering hair, Sarik could see that he had won. The battlesuit toppled backwards and fell with an almighty crash. The Space Marine watched in mute fascination as a series of tiny discharges popped the suit’s front plates clear and a figure rose from the ­flaming wreckage and staggered clear, flames licking around its torso, to fall on its face at Sarik’s feet.

  Sarik grinned as the tau commander raised his blackened face and looked up at him.

  ‘Surrender accepted,’ Sarik said, ‘you fought with honour.’

  ‘It falls to me,’ said the cardinal, addressing the council, ‘to declare the result of the vote.’

  Gurney’s face was a mask of triumph, the cardinal evidently keen to consolidate the power he felt had come to him thanks to the result of the vote. Lucian looked away, unwilling to acknowledge that his gamble had failed. In so doing, he caught sight of his son, who indicated with a tap of his data-slate that Lucian should look to the console placed in the centre of the table.

  A flashing light told Lucian that a priority transmission was incoming from the planet’s surface.

  ‘Wait!’ Lucian called, standing and reaching across the table to activate the console.

  ‘What is this, Gerrit?’ demanded the cardinal. ‘The vote is defeated. You are defeated.’

  Lucian smiled as he pressed the control stud on the console. Three large pict-slates rose up, cables and purity seals snaking after them. The screens flickered to life, and a familiar face appeared for all the council to see.

  ‘I repeat,’ said Sarik, his face visible on the screen through banks of drifting smoke, ‘this is Sarik to the crusade council, do you receive?’

  ‘We receive you Sarik,’ replied Lucian, the attention of every councillor glued to the screens. ‘How do you fare?’

  Sarik’s face grinned, a feral glow evident in his eyes. ‘We fare well, Gerrit. I have to report that the primary objective is secured. The enemy leadership is suppressed, and the world will soon be ours.’

  A round of approval swept the council, but Lucian guessed there was more to come.

  ‘I would also report,’ continued Sarik, ‘that I have captured the enemy commander. I recommend his immediate transferral to the fleet. I’m sure he will be of use to us.’

  ‘I think,’ said Lucian, turning his back towards the cardinal and addressing the council at large, ‘that makes it four votes in favour, three against and four abstentions. The vote, by my calculation, is cast.’

  Chapter Three

  The airlock door opened with an explosive hydraulic hiss. Brielle stepped through to the tau orbital, the first time she had left her vessel, the Fairlight, for many long months. She halted, taking in her surroundings, savouring the novelty after so long aboard ship.

  The docking hub’s inner ring was a wide area, its every surface from its deck to the high ceiling a brilliant white, unsullied except where long, crimson smears indicated that a fallen body had been dragged away. In all likelihood, an alien body, Brielle knew, for she had read the reports of the boarding action that had captured the orbital with such brutal efficiency.

  Replaying in her head the account of the action, she set out along the lonely, deserted corridors. The White Scars, thanks to her father’s intervention, had closed on the orbital in their wounded frigate Nomad, and had launched themselves in a boarding ­torpedo at the orbital’s main docking station. The torpedo had breached the orbital’s armoured skin, disgorging its contents of just a single Space Marine squad. That squad, led by veteran sergeant Sarik, had initially encountered few defenders, leading the crusade council to assume that the aliens had abandoned the station in the face of the Imperium’s overwhelming attack.

  As the White Scars had advanced further, they had encountered opposition, armoured and well-equipped tau warriors waiting in ambush at key defensive points. These would open fire before falling back to the next, prepared position, initially wounding three of Sarik’s men, though none were put out of the fight permanently. Brielle could see the evidence of the accounts as she passed a junction between major companionways, the site, she saw clearly, of one of the tau defenders’ early ambushes. The wall before her was pockmarked with a line of small craters. Each was surrounded by a dirty halo where a round fired from a Space Marine’s bolter had entered the wall and exploded an instant later. The weapon was intended for use against lightly armoured enemies of flesh and blood, upon which the effect of the exploding bolt was quite lethal. A wide, red stain across the corridor’s deck bore witness to just how potent the weapon was, testament to the price the tau had paid in discovering that fact.

  Brielle walked right through the dried blood, a faint sense of revulsion welling up in her as the soles of her boots stuck ever so slightly as she passed. She forced herself to ignore the sensation, knowing she would see a lot more death, and from much closer quarters before this so-called crusade was done.

  Passing a work crew of junior tech adepts engaged upon the installation of new, Imperium standard, phasic power transfer coils, Brielle considered just what her role in the crusade might turn out to be, and how she might prosper from it, so long as she could survive it. Her father, upon dealing with the renegade planetary governors of Mundus Chasmata and Arrikis Epsilon, had decided that the rogue traders should remain in the Timbra sub-sector. He had seen the opportunity to take part in the gathering Damocles Gulf Crusade, to revive some age-old family traditions and generally profit from the great undertaking as it got underway. All had gone well, Brielle mused, until the crusade had caught up with the rogue traders at the twin colonies of Garrus and Kliest, evacuated by small tau forces before the fleet proper could arrive and see them off by force.

  The rogue traders had been introduced to the key members of the crusade council at those colonies. Its head, by way of influence rather than title, was the bombastic Cardinal Gurney, and ever lurking in the shadows nearby was his ally, Inquisitor Grand of the Ordo Xenos. The cardinal had held the crusade’s reins, and had launched a series of courts of assize, putting to death hundreds of the liberated colonists whom he had accused of welcoming the recently departed aliens with open arms. The scenes of torture and execution had been etched into Brielle’s memory, her hatred for the likes of the cardinal multiplying a thousandfold that day.

  Then, she had heard of the assault on the world below. The tau presence on Sy’l’Kell was small, and like the defenders posted to slow the Space Marines’ boarding actio
n, were limited to warriors. The council had determined that the tau had evacuated all of their non-combatant personnel at the first sign of an attack. The cardinal’s faction had declared this to be evidence of the aliens’ inferiority to mankind, for whom every last man, woman and child was a combatant in the war against the xenos.

  Brielle had watched the orbital assault as it had unfolded, for the Space Marines allowed a portion of their signals to be routed to the crusade’s command network. She had listened as the blustering Sarik had led his squad in the attack on the tau command bunker, noting how the Space Marine sought to cover himself in the glory of victory, at the expense of his brothers of the other Chapters that had contributed squads to the crusade. She had been brought up around men like Sarik, and regarded them as little more than strutting wildedons, determined to prove their dominance over the lower ranked males of the herd.

  When Sarik had reported over the command net that he had neutralised the tau bunker, Brielle had felt a stab of distain. When he had boasted that he had captured the alien leader, she had determined to meet this tau, or to look upon him as he was executed at the very least.

  Approaching the last junction before the area of the station in which the tau prisoners were being held, Brielle felt a chill run down her spine. She came to an abrupt halt, hearing lowered, conspiratorial voices from around the corner as she did so. Even as she strained to make out the words, the voices stopped in mid sentence. Brielle held her breath for a moment, not really knowing why, her pulse thundering in her ears. Then she broke the spell, and stepped around the corner.

  Standing as if interrupted in the midst of treason, Cardinal Gurney and Inquisitor Grand both looked up at her approach. She saw surprise writ across the face of the cardinal, but the inquisitor, from beneath his deep, shadowed hood, appeared to Brielle to have been expecting her. She floundered for words, but the inquisitor addressed her first.