by Andy Hoare
‘I think we need to speak with Gauge and Jellaqua, Sarik. I fear there’s a lot more fighting ahead of us yet.’
Quietly, so that she did not wake the slumbering Naal, Brielle pulled the glittering water caste robes around her body and made for the door of her living quarters. She made no attempt to arrange the formal attire in the intricate manner it had originally been arrayed in; she had no intention of taking part in Aura’s plan, and would not be playing the role he had ordained for her.
Pausing at the hatch, Brielle looked back into the chamber. Naal stirred, but did not awaken. She was leaving, not just Naal, who she had shared her life with these last few months, but the tau and the Greater Good. On the dresser beside the bed was the pendant Aura had given her, the symbol of the tau empire. She was leaving that too.
Brielle took a deep breath, knowing that she once again stood upon the precipice. She had been here before; the last time when she had made the decision to leave Clan Arcadius and follow Naal into the service of the tau empire. Now all of that seemed like a dream from which she was slowly waking. The tau, she now knew, were no different from the clan or the Imperium. They expected her to play her part in their great games, to subsume herself within the greater ideal. How was that any different from her former life? The only difference she could discern was that the tau offered her no way to forge her own destiny, while her life as a rogue trader at least allowed her some control of her fate.
Her hand hovered above the hatch control rune, and for a brief moment she considered rejoining Naal and accepting her fate. But the notion passed as quickly as it had come, and her mind was made up. She blew the sleeping Naal a last kiss, and opened the hatch.
The door slid open silently, and in an instant she had slipped through into the brightly-lit passageway outside. As the hatch closed behind her, she took a second to straighten her robes and brush down her dishevelled, plaited locks. She doubted the tau would notice the state of her hair, but they had taken great care in the arrangement of her ceremonial robes, and she did not want a stray glance to raise suspicion. Barefoot, for there was no way she was wearing the hideous shoes the tau had given her, she strode forth along the passageway, her mind racing as she formulated a plan.
She knew that she had to return to the crusade and throw herself upon her father’s mercy. That much was clear, for Inquisitor Grand would try to execute her the instant he discovered she was still alive. During their last encounter Brielle had assaulted him, burning him almost fatally with a burst of the micro-flamer secreted in one of the ornate rings she wore. She still wore that xenos-crafted ring, but it contained only enough fuel for one more burst. Hopefully, she would not have to use it.
She continued along the passageway, passing several earth caste technicians going about their business with typical efficiency. None appeared to pay her any notice. She was headed along the vessel’s central spine, making towards the shuttle bay she knew to be located amidships in one of the huge modular sections slung beneath the ship’s backbone. Several possibilities came to mind as she padded along the hard white floor.
The first possibility she had already discounted. She could have played along with the whole charade, playing her role as envoy to the crusade. Instead of delivering the tau’s message that the Imperium should surrender itself to the Greater Good, she could simply have told the truth. But that would not work, because Inquisitor Grand was sure to be amongst those she addressed, and there was no way the mind-thief psyker would let her live after what she had done to him.
The next possibility was to steal a shuttle and make for the crusade fleet. Again, that was extremely dangerous, for not only would she have to penetrate the shuttle bay and force a pilot to ferry her to the fleet, she might simply be blasted by the first picket vessel she encountered. Still, stealing a shuttle could work, if she could find a way of getting to the fleet or to her father without appearing in the crosshairs of a trigger-happy naval gun crew.
That left the third option, which Brielle was rapidly deciding was the only way to come through this alive. She would head to the shuttle bay and commandeer an interface craft. She would make for the surface, and from there try somehow to rejoin the crusade’s ground forces. Perhaps agents of her father were down there, or even her father himself. Even if they were not, she could find a way of infiltrating the staff and from there make her way back to the fleet.
Her mind resolved, Brielle arrived at a junction. There were more tau here, technicians and soldiers busying themselves with preparations for making orbit. The Dal’yth Il’Fannor O’kray was approaching Dal’yth Prime from the opposite side to the Imperial war fleet, in the hope that the tau would gain the element of surprise when they revealed themselves and demanded the crusade receive their envoy. As large as a warship was, it was still a speck of dust compared to the bulk of a planet, and there was a lot of orbital space. Brielle calculated the odds, and came to the conclusion that even if the tau were discovered on their final approach it would still take several hours for the crusade fleet to deploy into a battle stance.
Then Brielle turned another corner, and the sight she saw her made her halt. The passageway opened up into a long processional chamber, banners hanging from the tall walls. The entire ceiling was transparent, affording a breathtaking view of space. It was not only the black of the void that was visible, but the upper hemisphere of the planet Dal’yth Prime.
The tau war fleet had arrived in orbit around the embattled world. Brielle knew that she had mere hours to escape, if even that.
The sound of a thousand boots stamping the deck resounded through the hall, and Brielle lowered her gaze from the sight above. The chamber was filled with tau warriors arrayed in such precise ranks that the sternest of Imperial Guard commissars would have been proud. They wore the distinctive, hard-edged armour plates protecting shoulders, torsos and thighs, as well as the blank-faced, ovoid helmets. The armour was painted a mid tan colour, which Brielle knew from her talks with Aura to be the most appropriate scheme for the dry worlds that the tau favoured.
The warriors stood perfectly still for several minutes, and Brielle was considering pressing on along the hall, through their midst towards the exit at the other end. Then a swirling blue light appeared in the air over the warriors, cast by projector units set flush into the walls of the hall. The light resolved into a face, and with a start, Brielle realised it was the face of the water caste envoy, Aura.
Brielle took a step backwards, her back pressing against the wall of the long chamber. Every tau in the hall was looking towards the face of the envoy, which towered high above. Aura appeared to be looking down at the assembled warriors, making Brielle curse the fact that tau buildings and vessels were so starkly lit there were no shadows she could retreat into.
Then the envoy started to address the warriors. Brielle was far from fluent in the tau language, but she had been taught its basics and picked up more as she had interacted with the race, especially those of the water caste. Aura appeared to be briefing the warriors, informing them of the plan to use Brielle as an envoy to the human fleet and to demand its surrender. The whole scene struck Brielle as odd, for Aura was a diplomat, not a military leader. She could think of no case where an Imperial diplomat would even think of explaining an operation to the rank and file. Certainly a military leader might give the troops a rousing speech to get their blood up, but briefing them on the behind-the-scenes intricacies appeared to Brielle almost a complete waste of time. It only served to remind her how alien the tau were from the human mindset, and how out of place she really was.
After something like ten minutes, Aura concluded his address, and the massive projection of his face appeared to sweep the ranks, something akin to pride in his glassy, oval eyes. Then he said a phrase Brielle knew well from her time amongst the tau. ‘Tau’va’: ‘for the Greater Good.’ The thousand assembled fire warriors repeated the phrase in unison, a thousand clenched fists stri
king a thousand rigid chest plates. To Brielle’s great relief, the image of the envoy faded, and the warriors filed out of the hallway.
After another five minutes, the warriors had left the hall, leaving only ship’s crew passing along its length. Brielle cast another glance upwards through the transparent ceiling, where Dal’yth Prime’s northern pole was still visible. So too were several dozen other tau warships, the blue flare of their plasma drives telling her they were assuming a station-keeping formation in high orbit. A swarm of small motes of blue light clustered around each vessel and plied the space between them, each the drive of a small picket, tender or dispatch boat.
Clearly, the tau were readying for what they saw as their victory over the Imperium. Brielle suppressed a snort of derision as she recalled her conversations with Aura about the extent of human held space. No matter how she had tried to convince him that the Emperor’s domains spanned two thirds of the known galaxy and had stood for ten thousand years, he had refused to take her seriously. He had talked often about how the peoples of the Imperium would be welcomed into the tau empire, how they would willingly throw off the oppressive regimes of despotic planetary governors when the truth of the Greater Good was revealed to them. Eventually, Brielle had stopped trying to convince him otherwise.
But out here, beyond the borders of the Imperium, the crusade was isolated and exposed. The tau war fleet could certainly destroy it, though not without great losses. All the more reason to get back to her father, Brielle knew, and turn a potential disaster into an opportunity for gain.
Brielle smiled slyly as she hurried along.
The processional hallway several minutes behind her, Brielle was padding along another starkly-lit passageway when she was forced to duck into a recessed portal. Up ahead, she had seen a group of junior water caste envoys, and they were heading in her direction.
The seconds dragged on as Brielle waited for the envoys to pass. She could not be sure whether Aura had been amongst the group, for even though she was well used to his features, tau faces still appeared to her far more homogenous than those of humans. Several technicians strode past, followed by a fire warrior in light armour carrying a long rifle across his shoulder. Just when she thought the envoys had turned off, she heard their voices getting nearer, and she simultaneously shrank back into the recess whilst straining her ears to catch their conversation.
She thought she caught something about armed escorts, and then her own name was mentioned. A moment later the envoys passed by the recess, and she held her breath. Then they were gone, their voices receding down the corridor, and she could breathe once again. Aura had not been amongst the group, but they had been talking about her…
Gripped by a sudden sense of urgency, Brielle straightened up and stepped from the recess as if she had every right to be there. She continued along the passageway towards the shuttle bays, knowing that time was rapidly running out.
Eventually, Brielle came upon the Dal’yth Il’Fannor O’kray’s cavernous shuttle bay. Sensing danger ahead, she had ducked into a technical bay as soon as she had entered. Whatever intuition had made her do so, she was grateful indeed, for Aura, a number of his water caste juniors and a group of at least two-dozen fire warriors were waiting on the hardpan in front of the shuttle she was expected to be taking to the crusade fleet.
The shuttle bay was huge, at least a hundred metres tall and three hundred long. In common with the interiors of so many tau buildings and vessels it was brightly-lit and constructed of the ubiquitous hard resin material. Unlike most other areas, the bay showed some small signs of wear and tear, though even these were as nothing compared to the uniform state of decay and disrepair an Imperial facility of the same type would display. Small burn marks scuffed the hardpan, the only evidence of the coming and going of countless shuttles and other small vessels, at least a dozen of which were sat upon its surface. The far wall was open, the cold void beyond held at bay by an energy shield which glittered with dancing blue motes of light as a small lighter passed through and settled on hissing jets to an area indicated by tau ground crew waving illuminated batons.
Through the open bay Brielle could see the surface of Dal’yth Prime. At least two-thirds of the visible surface was land, and most of that dry and arid. Nonetheless, there were patches of green dotted regularly across the land, which Brielle guessed were belts of arable land surrounding each of the planet’s cities. The seas were especially eye-catching, for they were a deeply serene turquoise, sparkling with the light reflected from the Dal’yth system’s star.
From behind a row of fuel drums, Brielle strained her ears to catch what Aura was saying to the group. Such a thing would have been impossible in a shuttle bay on an Imperial vessel, which would have resounded with screaming jets, shouting deck crew, the thuds and scrapes of cargo being dragged about, the tread of lifters and a thousand other raucous sounds. The bay in front of her was eerily quiet compared to that, with little more than a background hum audible.
Aura was speaking in the tau tongue, but Brielle was by now well used to his manner of speech and could pick out a fair amount of what he was saying. He was telling the assembled tau to be ready to depart soon, for he was to return to the vessel’s command centre from where he would be transmitting a communiqué to the human fleet. Aura’s message was to inform the crusade that their lost daughter was returned, that she served the Greater Good with all her heart, and that she was to go before them in the spirit of peace. Brielle’s heart sank, for she knew that such a message would damn her. Even her father would find it next to impossible to protect her from Grand, and then only if he did not reject her and abandon her to her fate.
Brielle’s options were rapidly narrowing. It was too late to return to the tau, and if that message got out to the crusade she would be doomed. Her earlier notion of commandeering a lander to take her to the surface was looking increasingly impracticable, for it appeared that the tau warriors assembled in front of the shuttle were to be her honour guard.
Events were moving fast, but Brielle’s mind even faster.
Hunkering down in her hiding place, Brielle considered her priorities. First, escape the tau vessel, then later, worry about getting a message to her father. She had to get moving before Aura could deliver his message, to somehow contact her father before the envoy ruined everything. She just had to get to the surface…
Then it struck her. She did not need a lander to get to the surface. Her heart raced as she leaned out from behind the drums and scanned the shuttle bay’s outer bulkheads. Surely, there must be a…
There it was! A row of small hatches in the vessel’s outer skin, each edged with yellow. It was what she had been looking for. All she had to do to get to the surface was to reach a saviour pod, an emergency life raft designed to ferry crew from a crippled vessel and if possible, to land them safely on the nearest world.
The shuttle bay’s pods were out of the question, for she would have to skirt the brightly-lit space in full view of her honour guard. But she knew there must be others nearby, and so she hoisted her silver robes and padded off, back to the bay entrance and the corridor beyond.
Once back in the passageway Brielle assumed an erect stance and forced herself to walk at a normal pace. It became all but impossible for her to maintain her composure as she saw in the middle distance another row of yellow-edged hatches. She just had to pass a wide, open portal into a technical bay, and she would be away.
Her head held high, Brielle walked past the entrance, hearing as she passed the chatter and hum of the tau’s advanced, the Imperium would say heretical, communications systems… the systems that Aura would soon be using to transmit his damning message to the Damocles Gulf Crusade command council.
Brielle halted as she passed the entrance to the communications bay. Aura would be on his way to the command centre at the vessel’s fore, but the transmission systems were here, right in front of her. She turned her
gaze from the row of escape hatches not twenty metres away, and looked into the communications centre, a sly grin curling her lips…
Chapter Seven
Lucian’s command post was all but abandoned, the fleet staff having dismantled the majority of the tacticae-stations. It was dark outside, the cool night air gusting in through the open portal as Lucian and Sarik entered. A trusted cadre of Rakarshan staff officers manned those tacticae-stations that had not yet been removed, and these stood up and left as Lucian dismissed them with a curt gesture. Most of the remaining screens were blank, but two were not: those showing the faces of General Wendall Gauge and Captain Rumann.
‘Are you with me or are you not?’ the general growled, his face looking to Sarik even more craggy than normal. He swore he had seen Chogoran qhak-herders in their eightieth year with fewer lines.
‘You ask much, general,’ Captain Rumann said, his voice metallic but harbouring within it something of the raw furnace heat at the heart of the forge. The Iron Hand’s voice was hard to read, but his features were even harder, for both eyes and much of his face were made of metal, the weak flesh replaced with infallible steel.
‘I know, captain,’ Gauge said. ‘But I repeat. Operation Hydra must go ahead regardless of the inquisitor’s proclamation. We can take that star port and scatter the tau before us, and within the twenty-four hour limit he has imposed. If we do that, he’ll have no choice. We’ll have got the crusade moving again, and he’ll have to call off his Exterminatus.’
‘And if we take the star port,’ Lucian added, ‘we still have the option of using it to transport our own troops. In whichever direction.’
Sarik’s eyes narrowed as he considered Lucian’s words. The general and the rogue trader were right; capturing the star port would put the crusade’s ground forces in a powerful position, and force Gel’bryn’s defenders up against the southern coastline. Sarik did not want to countenance using the star port to evacuate, for there was little honour in doing so, but the plan opened up more possibilities than simply going along with Grand’s order.