by Andy Hoare
‘And yet,’ Lucian said, supporting his son’s choice of target despite himself, ‘the tau have developed into a highly proficient spacefaring race, capable of crossing the Gulf and spreading Emperor only knows how far into the stars. With respect, lord explorator, that cluster occupies a strategically important position within the region. It provides an ideal staging post for expansion across the Gulf, or a bridgehead for any wishing to invade. Were we in the tau’s position, we would occupy in force.’
Lucian’s statement caused Gurney to simmer with barely contained outrage at the comparison of human and tau. Let him choke on his own bile, Lucian thought.
‘Thank you, father,’ Korvane said, nodding his head towards Lucian.
‘You will need a strong recon element,’ Lucian said. Though uncertain of his son’s agenda, he was already calculating ways in which the situation could be turned to the Arcadius’s advantage, ‘Admiral?’
‘Indeed,’ replied Admiral Jellaqua, who had remained thoughtful as the discussion had taken this odd turn, ‘I would not be averse to detaching a deep space reconnaissance wing to your son’s command. I believe the 344th will suffice. I can order the necessary arrangements, if the council agrees.’
‘You formally propose this course of action, admiral?’ Explorator Jaakho asked.
‘I do,’ replied Admiral Jellaqua, tabling the motion that Korvane be allowed to lead a scouting mission to ascertain the crusade’s first target.
‘Who here will second this motion?’ The explorator lord asked.
‘I will,’ replied Lucian. ‘I will second the motion.’
Lucian and Korvane stood upon the vast crowded main flight deck of the Blade of Woe. A navy lighter waited nearby to shuttle Korvane to the scout wing patrolling the crusade’s outer perimeter. The whine of the small vessel’s idling engines was almost lost amidst the clamour of the bustling deck.
Lucian watched as his son’s effects were loaded onto the waiting lighter, waiting for Korvane to offer him some form of explanation. He had been waiting since the council had broken up some hours before, and had yet to hear Korvane’s account of his actions.
‘So, you’ll leave without telling me what’s going on?’ he finally asked, growing impatient with his son’s silence.
‘I believe it’s for the best, father. I can do this.’
‘Whether you can do this or not is beside the point,’ Lucian growled, turning his back on his son and looking out across the busy flight deck. Small vessels arrived and departed by the minute, ferrying personnel and equipment between the capital vessels of the crusade fleet. ‘That you chose to inform me of your plan of action in the manner you did was unforgivable.’
‘I intended no disrespect, father. I sought merely to take the initiative in council.’
‘That you did,’ Lucian replied, turning towards his son once more, ‘and you may have done our cause enormous benefit in the process.’ Lucian grinned, unable to bear any malice towards his son, and certainly not when Korvane was about to depart into an unknown and hostile region of space.
Korvane however, remained impassive, his features dark and sullen. ‘You would not have heard me out were I to propose such a course to you, in private.’
Lucian was stunned. ‘You think…’
‘I know,’ Korvane said. ‘I saw the council turning against you, and I acted.’
Not entirely true, Lucian thought, for Korvane had evidently prepared a plot of the region prior to speaking up in council. He decided to leave it. ‘What’s done is done, Korvane. I do not wish us to part on ill terms.’ He spread his arms wide, inviting his son to embrace him at his departing.
Korvane turned his head, his rejection of Lucian’s gesture all too obvious and painful to behold.
‘Go then,’ Lucian said. ‘Prove whatever it is you need to prove.’
Korvane turned towards the lighter’s lowered access ramp and took a step up it.
‘But Korvane,’ Lucian said, his son halting, and turning his head towards him.
‘Yes, father?’
‘Try not to get yourself killed.’
‘Yes, father,’ Korvane said, and ducked into the lighter’s small passenger bay.
Chapter Twelve
The tau shuttle touched down with a barely perceptible jolt. Brielle looked across the small passenger bay at Naal, who nodded back at her. She touched the clasp holding the acceleration harness across her body, and it disengaged before retracting into its mounting on the wall behind her.
‘Will there be much…’ Brielle began.
‘Ceremony?’ Naal finished for her. ‘No. Our host will wish to keep things low key, at least to begin with.’
‘Until he’s decided how much use I might be to him,’ Brielle said. She really did not care that she sounded like a petulant child. She felt like one.
Naal smiled in a manner Brielle was coming to find somewhat patronising. ‘To a point, yes, but don’t forget, Brielle, that the tau do not mount grandiose ceremonies for the glorification of individuals. They may do so for the benefit of all, but this is not such an occasion.’
Brielle stood from the acceleration couch, stretching as she did so. The interface had taken less than an hour, and was far gentler than an atmospheric entry in many human vessels, but she felt cramped and tense nonetheless.
‘So, I’m not important enough to make a fuss over?’ she asked, a sly grin at her lips.
‘Quite the…’ Naal began, before he realised Brielle was toying with him.
‘So, who is important enough?’ she continued. ‘Who’s in charge around here?’
When Naal failed to answer her, Brielle turned and regarded him squarely. ‘What?’ she asked, instantly suspicious.
‘The tau govern in a manner quite unlike the Imperium,’ Naal answered. Brielle noted that he did not meet her eye as he spoke. Her suspicion was piqued.
‘I know that, Naal,’ she responded testily, ‘the envoy briefed me. But I could tell that there was plenty he didn’t tell me about.’
‘It’s true, Brielle, there is much more to learn,’ Naal answered, ducking past her towards the boarding hatch. ‘Please, be patient. The tau are in many ways a straightforward people, they shun affectation and pretence and are entirely selfless in the pursuit of the Greater Good.’ Naal turned and looked Brielle straight in the eye. ‘But there are some things they entrust only to friends. If you become their friend, you will be rewarded greatly.’
And if I don’t? Brielle thought to herself as she held Naal’s gaze for a long moment.
‘As to your other question,’ Naal continued, his tone light and conversational, ‘no one is “in charge around here”.’
She gave him her best incredulous look, and he continued.
‘The tau practice a form of collective government. It’s complex, but you’ll come to see that it works.’
‘Wait,’ Brielle said, ‘you mean to tell me there’s no single tau in charge?’
‘I do,’ Naal replied. ‘Various individuals may attain pre-eminence, enjoying great influence for a stretch, but they always accede to others when appropriate. Therefore, no one individual has total control, and he who may do so best exercises his influence while he may.’
‘And this works? Brielle asked, genuinely incredulous.
‘It does, and very well,’ Naal said, smiling. ‘You’ll come to realise, Brielle, that the tau display a distinct lack of ego. It takes some getting used to, but once you do, it all makes sense.’
Taking this in, Brielle gave Naal one last look, just to ensure that he was not toying with her. His continued smile told her that he was not. It all seemed incredibly implausible, but then, the tau was an alien race, quite outside the human frame of reference. She approached the hatch, and stood at Naal’s side as he reached out to activate the control at its side. With a barely audible hiss, the hatch
began to open outward. The shuttle’s small passenger compartment was flooded with the light that appeared around the lowering ramp.
Such moments always reminded her of a lesson she had been taught upon her first planetfall. Standing at her father’s side in the equally cramped passenger bay of a human shuttle, he had told her that nothing could match the first breath of a new world. The memory was a precious one from her early adulthood, but it was sullied by the fact that the world in question had been Nankirk, where she had been introduced to her future stepbrother. Korvane had come into the Clan Arcadius that day, the result of a perspicacious joining of dynasties. Brielle, however, had lost her position as heritor of the clan, and, in her view, had lived in Korvane’s shadow ever since.
Forcing such thoughts to the back of her mind, Brielle repeated the ritual she had first carried out on that day years before. She closed her eyes, and felt the gentle breeze on her face of the outside air as it rushed into the shuttle. Her eyes still closed, she took a deep breath. She savoured, as her father had taught her, the myriad subtle tastes and scents of this new world. The air was clean, with a faint undertone of some exotic spice. Something else was carried on the air too, the scent of artificial compounds, plastics, resins and the like. However, they were not the raw, harsh fumes belched out on many worlds of the Imperium, but something far more integrated into the society it served.
She breathed out and opened her eyes, to find the ramp entirely lowered before her. The bright light of the world’s sun dazzled her for an instant, before the photochromatic lenses she wore in her eyes adjusted the light to tolerable levels. As her vision resolved, the view settled into a sight of breathtaking proportions.
The shuttle in which she had arrived was perched upon a small landing pad, which was itself an offshoot of a far larger, narrow, fin-shaped structure. A narrow walkway led from the landing pad to the larger building, although Brielle could see no obvious entrance in its surface. She looked around the landing pad for any form of welcoming party, but saw none. Despite what Naal had said about the tau not standing on ceremony, she felt mildly snubbed. Perhaps that was the point, she thought. It would hardly have been the first time a host had attempted to put an unwelcome guest at a disadvantage by affecting disinterest in their presence.
Looking beyond the landing pad, Brielle saw that they were a very great height above the ground. The structure from which the pad protruded appeared to be part of a far larger city, consisting of a great many such buildings. Each was linked to the next by walkways that soared high above the landscape, which appeared, from Brielle’s vantage point, to consist of featureless, arid wastes as far as the hazy, distant horizon.
‘No welcoming committee,’ Brielle said, looking to Naal. ‘You’re the expert in these people,’ she said. ‘So what’s next?’
‘Please,’ Naal said, gesturing forward, ‘you are the guest, not I.’
She looked at him for a moment, not entirely convinced that all was well. No matter, she told herself; whatever happened, she would turn it to her own advantage soon enough. She had to, she mused; she could hardly go back and apologise to the council for killing one of their number.
Taking a deep breath, Brielle stepped down the ramp, steeling herself against whatever might await her on this world.
Having left the tau vessel on the landing pad, Brielle had allowed Naal to lead the way. He knew what he was doing, and had obviously been here before. She welcomed the opportunity to take it all in, to observe this new place, and to glean any advantage she could. She had followed Naal across a series of walkways, each of which passed through one of the soaring, off-white, fin-shaped structures, before continuing through the air to the next. At first, she had experienced vertigo, for the walkways had no hand holds, but she found that they were wide enough so that if she passed down their exact centre the effect was minimised. She had no idea who used these walkways, for the pair did not pass a single tau.
After a while, the walkways converged at a structure even taller than the rest. Brielle halted as it came into view, taking the opportunity to marvel in its construction. It must have been a thousand metres tall, and it rose in sweeping lines to a sail-like peak. Small clusters of what appeared to be sensor or communications gear were connected to its spine, and a great, gleaming spike pierced the sky at its very top, dancing blue lights chasing up and down its length.
Then, Brielle saw that small, floating machines were moving up and around the structure. She knew them straight away for the drones that the tau utilised at every level of their society, though these were far larger than the small utility drones she had witnessed onboard the tau vessel that had brought her to this world. The drones took the form of a flat, armoured disc, about a metre in diameter. Beneath the disc was a small sensor block, with its unblinking machine eye, and beside that, what was obviously a weapon of some sort. As she studied the drones, one detached itself from its orbit of the building, and approached her and Naal on a long, graceful arc through the air that brought it, hovering, before her.
The drone was so close she could almost have reached out and touched it, yet she sensed from its movements that such a gesture would not have been wise.
‘What is it doing?’ Brielle asked Naal.
‘What you’d expect of any guard doing his duty,’ Naal replied. ‘It’s determining whether or not we are a threat.’
‘It’s relaying back to someone in the tower?’ Brielle asked, keeping an eye on the drone as she spoke.
‘It is perfectly capable of making the decision on its own, Brielle.’
Brielle felt her hackles rise as she watched the drone begin a circuit of the pair. She knew that the tau utilised highly developed machine intelligences, but to see one close up was something else entirely. The teachings of the Imperial Creed warned against such things, and those admonitions had been drilled into her from a very early age. As she regarded the single lens mounted beneath the armoured disc, she felt that there was indeed some manner of intelligence at work within the machine, and the thought disturbed her to her core.
‘When will it be done?’ she asked Naal through gritted teeth.
‘Please, Brielle,’ Naal answered, ‘such things are commonplace on tau worlds. You must get used to them.’
Now he was really starting to annoy her. She cast him a glare that told him the drone had better hurry up its examination or there would be consequences. But, before she could say any more, she heard the gentle sound of the door in the side of the structure before them opening.
A group of tau stepped through the opening.
Brielle quickly counted five of them. One, obviously the most senior, stood at the head of the group. He was tall and thin, and wore long, shimmering robes, but it was his face that made the greatest impression on Brielle. Although she had found it hard to read the expression of the envoy on whose vessel she had been brought here, she had at least found some similarities between tau and human facial expressions. This tau appeared maudlin to Brielle, as if he greatly regretted his role. To Brielle’s understanding, the tau were born into their station, and all she had encountered to date had appeared quite content with their lot. Before she could ponder the matter further, the tau spoke.
‘I welcome you, Mistress Brielle Gerrit of the Arcadius, to the Sept of Dal’yth. My name is Por’O Dal’yth Ulor Kanti. Please,’ he continued, ‘call me Aura. The translation is close enough for our purposes.’
Even his voice seemed sad to Brielle, almost wistfully mournful. Was this some affectation on his part to gain some advantage in their dealings? Not wishing to cause offence, she hastened to answer.
‘Please accept my sincere thanks for the kindness you have shown me,’ Brielle said.
‘We have shown you no kindness beyond the spirit in which the Tau Empire approaches all the races it encounters. We do find ourselves, however, in a unique position.’
Brielle’s guard was
immediately up. She had been warned that the tau would not stand on ceremony, yet she sensed something more unfolding before her, something serious enough to disrupt the familiar course of any such meeting.
‘Mistress Arcadius,’ Aura said, ‘you have arrived at Dal’yth not a moment too soon. Even now, the human fleet closes on this system.’
So soon? Brielle had assumed the tau vessel on which she had crossed the Damocles Gulf would have arrived a long way ahead of the crusade, affording her some time to turn the situation to her advantage and find some way of averting the disaster that would ensue if Gurney’s plan was enacted. Now, she would have to think on her feet to turn things around.
‘Might I ask,’ Brielle said, ‘how far out are they?’
Aura did not answer Brielle’s question. Instead, one of the tau standing behind him took a step forward. Like his fellows, this individual was shorter and of more stocky build than the diplomat. The robes he wore were made of a far simpler, deep red, fabric, yet they did not disguise the tau’s more muscular frame.
Aura made a shallow bow, before introducing him. ‘Mistress Brielle, my colleague, Commander Puretide, will answer your question.’
‘The human fleet is thought to lie only a few days travel gulfward of Dal’yth,’ Commander Puretide said, his voice resonant and steady. ‘The deep space piquets of the Air Caste have detected their communications, though the main body of the fleet appears to be mustering still, following its crossing of the Gulf.’
Brielle considered this information, regarding the commander as she pondered. She was struck by the air of calm wisdom he radiated. A breeze whipped up, causing the top knot on the commander’s otherwise shaved head to stir. She felt a brief moment of vertigo, but forced her mind back to the issue at hand.
‘Have they made any attempt at communication?’ Brielle asked the commander.