[Warhammer 40K] - Fire Warrior

by Simon Spurrier - (ebook by Undead)

  The Space Marine gave him an appraising stare, pursing his scarred lips. “Just watch.”

  Kais crept closer to the window, fighting the screaming nerves. The wide chamber on the other side of the window was packed with figures, divided along a central line into human and tau groups. The gue’la looked angry, various officers hissing into one another’s ears, waving their hands expressively. A row of storm-troopers waited silently along one wall. At the table was the same tall, grey-haired man he’d almost garrotted earlier, frowning in distaste.

  He turned to the Marine quickly. “How long since…?”

  “Since you wrecked the bridge? About an hour.”

  A didactic memory at the base of Kais’s mind chipped in efficiently, identifying an hour as two thirds of a dec. Things had moved quickly since he was knocked out.

  “Who are you?”

  “Ardias. Captain Ardias of his Imperial Majesty’s Ultramarines.”

  “Why didn’t you… Why aren’t I dead?”

  “Call it a sign of goodwill.” The assurance was not convincing. Ardias turned away.

  Kais returned his eyes to the window, staring down at the tau group. At its head, dressed in gue’la-imitation robes, a phalanx of water caste diplomats led by Por’el Yis’ten stood and whispered to each other calmly. Kais had seen El’Yis’ten once or twice aboard the Or’es Tash’var before the rotaa’s madness began: if anything the grim angular surroundings of the gue’la vessel exacerbated her already stunning looks. Shas’las and shas’uis were arranged carefully against the wall behind them, watching their human counterparts suspiciously.

  Kais wanted to beat his fists on the window and scream: “Don’t trust them! Get out! Get out!”

  Ardias glanced at him shrewdly, as if reading his thoughts. Kais frowned at him, uncowed by the human’s stare. They returned their attention to the assembly simultaneously.

  Aun’el Ko’vash stood in thought, eyes wide with ancient wisdom, leaning on his honour blade. In Kais’s eyes he wore a corona of power and focus, a halo of intellect that eclipsed the brightness of the room’s artificial lights. He leaned down gracefully to whisper something to the por’el. El’Yis’ten turned to the admiral, smiling.

  “His eminence wonders why you chose to parley so abruptly, when all our previous attempts to communicate met with failure.”

  Kais could see the admiral was frustrated at having to converse with the ethereal via El’Yis’ten, tired eyes flicking from one to the other as he prepared his answer. Kais wondered vaguely whether such conduit conferencing was normal, or carefully designed to distract and disorient. The water caste were as notorious for their cunning as their diplomacy.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” the admiral barked, caught off guard.

  “Merely a matter of interest.” El’Yis’ten purred, her grasp of the human tongue far in advance of Kais’s, smiling in a remarkable impression of a cheerful gue’la. “His eminence would be disappointed to discover this little conference was a pretext to bring him aboard. He is aware of his value to your… ah… ‘tech-priests’.”

  The admiral, Kais thought, looked furious. The Marine beside him grunted. “Tell me — is paranoia prevalent throughout your race?”

  Kais didn’t answer.

  “How dare you!” the admiral neighed in the boardroom, indignant. “The very suggestion is—”

  “We suggest nothing, admiral. We merely wish to forewarn you of the repercussions of such… entrapment. His eminence’s failure to return to the Or’es Tash’var will, of course, result in immediate retaliation.”

  “Of course,” the admiral hissed with poor grace, knowing he was beaten.

  “The question,” El’Yis’ten continued, “remains pertinent.” She sounded like she was enjoying herself. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

  Kais watched the admiral’s face closely, trying to decipher the strange emotions playing across it. A sidelong glance at Ko’vash told him the ethereal was doing the same — penetrative glare fixed firmly on the old gue’la’s features. The admiral looked up directly at the window. Kais swivelled in his spot, confused.

  The Marine nodded once, almost imperceptibly.

  “We have a problem,” the admiral said, “that requires us to… reprioritise.”

  “Go on…”

  Another glance at Ardias. Another half nod.

  “A secondary threat. Already aboard this ship.”

  The admiral’s decorum left him in a long drawn-out sigh. He seemed to deflate, suddenly seeming old and tired. El’Yis’ten shared an alarmed glance with the ethereal. “You know as well as I,” the admiral growled, “that under normal circumstances we’d rather die than consort with fr—with your kind. But we have reason to believe these circumstances are far from normal, and until we’re certain of what we’re—”

  The boardroom doors opened with a fierce clang, eliciting a wave of instinctive head twists. The figure that stalked in had donned a vast fur coat since Kais had last seen him, an impressive mantle of tawny and blood red markings that widened his already substantial frame. His face was unchanged, twisted in a petulant sneer.

  It was the man from the viewing gallery in the prison torture chamber, and Ko’vash watched him enter with admirable calm.

  The shas’las lowered their guns slowly, satisfied that the unarmed figure was no threat. Kais’s quick impressions of the situation were manifold: the Space Marine grunting angrily, the admiral hissing in fury, the newcomer grinning hungrily…

  “What’s the meaning of this, Severus?” the admiral roared.

  “Admiral — so good to see you again. I feared you lost in the invasion.”

  “You’re not supposed to b—”

  “And, look…” the newcomer bowed to Ko’vash sarcastically, feral grin widening further. “My old friend Ko-vaj. How are you? It’s been so long.”

  “Severu—!”

  “Oh, hush, Benedil — do. You know I have all the authority I need to be here.”

  Ardias shook his head, muttering under his breath.

  Down in the chamber, El’Yis’ten recovered from her shock superbly.

  “His eminence extends his greetings to — I assume you to be — Governor Severus, and hopes his late arrival will not disturb these proceedings further.”

  Severus fixed the por’el with an amused grin and nodded cheerfully. “Ah yes… One breed to fight, one breed to labour, one breed to talk…” He returned his stare to the Aun. “…and one breed to stand about looking smug. How’s the head, old chap? Not too sore, I hope.”

  Ko’vash ignored him.

  “If we might return to the subject in hand?” El’Yis’ten persisted doggedly, looking pointedly at Admiral Constantine. The grey-haired man was glaring at the preening new arrival with barely restrained hatred. The por’el coughed politely; another subtle gue’la mannerism. “Admiral?”

  “Yes.” Constantine turned back to the conference. “Yes, of course. As I was say—”

  “This is a sham,” Severus declared, crossing his arms. “In all my years I’ve never seen anything so shameful.”

  “Severus!” Constantine’s face was bright red, like an unplucked greh’li-berry. “You will be silent or you will get o—”

  “Humans greetings xenogens aboard like old friends? For an admiral to have sunk so low…” He spat on the floor, face creased with disgust. “You should be ashamed, Constantine.”

  “There are circumstances you’re not famil—”

  “No circumstance warrants infection, admiral. Isn’t that what they say?”

  “I will not tolera—”

  “Noble sirs…” El’Yis’ten sung, voice somehow conspiring to be soft and penetrative at once. “His eminence grows impatient. We have attended this meeting in good faith with the aim of preventing further hostilities. We did not come to watch you argue amongst yourselves.”

  Constantine was about to speak, Kais could see, pompous apologies forming behind his ruddy face. But Severus
got there first, eyebrows arching disdainfully.

  “You will hold your tongue, alien!” he growled, talking over the admiral’s garbled protests. “How dare you speak to us in that manner?”

  “His eminence has de—”

  “His eminence is not worthy to even share our air. There will be no resolution here. This conflict will be resolved in blood, not in words!”

  Kais frowned. Something was changing in the tall gue’la’s manner, a deeper resonance in his voice, a certain… enlargement. Without appearing to grow at all somehow he was looming, radiating a sense of presence and importance impossible to ignore. There was a whispering at the back of Kais’s mind, just beyond his ability to discern. The air was thick suddenly, greasy with a hidden charge.

  “Emperor’s blood…” the Marine growled, fingers curling around the weapon in its holster.

  And Governor Severus spoke three words: ugly syllables that made no sense to Kais’s ears but somehow inflamed his thoughts, crackling in the air with vile potency and appearing to cast a shadow across the world. If they could have been given form, Kais thought, the words would be maggots, coated in a slick of blood and writhing from the man’s mouth in a haze of crimson power.

  Severus smiled and slipped a manicured hand into his coat pocket, withdrawing something with a flicker of light.

  The insanity began.

  Trooper Moyles was an uncomplicated individual.

  When the brightly garbed commissars had toured the cities of his homeworld, Gilreh, he hadn’t even paused for thought, so taken was he by the plush uniforms, the rousing tales of heroism and bravery and the prospect of promotion and sliding scales of payment. He’d signed up without hesitation.

  The uniform, upon reflection, had been a poor reason to join the Imperial Guard. It had changed, since then, five times.

  On the Adeptus Munitorium standard enrolment forms, his IQ was marked down as 75. He had never, ever succeeded in anything in his life.

  But the Guard accepted him, showed him which direction to point his gun, trained him until his muscles showed through the flesh on his arms and chest and made him worth something. He had never been so happy in his entire life.

  And then quite out of the blue, during a routine guard duty in the boardroom of the Enduring Blade (during which he’d seen his first real xenogen), a tall man from the planet below pulled a knife out of his fur coat pocket and opened up Trooper Moyles’s jugular vein like a ration pack of synth-et being punctured.

  He wondered, vaguely, why everything was going dark.

  The Marine ran, drawing its weapon in a fluid arc of articulating armour.

  Kais swivelled at the sound of its clattering steps, mind spinning, breath short. The memory of the trooper’s blood, thrashing into the air, was fresh in his eyes. The audio speaker hooked to the other room exploded in a cacophony of shouts and exclamations. Kais called out to the hurrying Marine.

  “Ardias! What’s—?”

  “Your gear’s through there,” the hulk roared, not slowing, massive fingers pointing to one side. “Stay out of my way.”

  The sapphire figure vanished through a door. An alarm began to ring, hurting Kais’s ears. He turned back to the boardroom to be confronted with a scene of riotous reactions: the gue’la shouting all at once, the tau backing away in confusion, the nameless trooper at the centre of the hubbub sinking to his knees, fingers clutching at his throat.

  The blood drizzle didn’t fall. Where the chaotic splatter effervesced into the air it hung immobile, as if spraying across some invisible shape suspended above the ground. Like water falling on glass.

  —woop-woop-woop-woop—

  The lights went orange then yellow, flickering on and off with a dizzy, oscillating rhythm. A cold voice, piped mechanically throughout the vessel, declared:

  “Anomalous energy readings detected, all decks…”

  The pulsing lights were an angry heartbeat, a palpitating gut, a crumpling lung. Kais fought to see into the adjoining room. The blood cascaded down, long tentacular rivulets dragging at his attention with some sensory gravity: forcing him to watch. The slit-throated trooper was dead now. Mostly.

  A grisly rectangle of blood fluid formed over his corpse, red-black sheen taking on some sinister internal light, agitating and bubbling as it began to glow a deep, angry crimson.

  The governor was laughing, long, dry whoops of air splitting his face, bloodslick knife brandished like a trophy. The glowing rectangle shimmered once, twice, three times.

  El’Yis’ten, voice recognisable above the terrified groans and moans of the gue’la, said: “What’s—”

  Then something came out of the rectangle and cleaved off her head. Time did its slowing-down jig.

  “—intruder detection — intruder detection — all decks — intruder al—”

  Blast shields closed on the viewing gallery windows and Kais hammered his fists impotently against them, adrenaline short-circuiting his mind.

  He’d seen it. Whatever came out. Black, like oil. Like cancer. As big as the blue-toned captain, Ardias, but rust-pied and metal toned. Spines and chains and skulls. Red eyes. Red eyes like a desert reptile, but glowing from within. Hot embers in a cold fire grate.

  He wished the screaming through the audio speaker would stop.

  Without really thinking, he spun around and sprinted for the side door to collect his wargear. All he could think, all he could see in his mind, was a glowing pair of embers and a word: Mont’au.

  The weight of the world surprised him, at first. He’d been too long without gravity, too long a shade of a shade, a wraith lost inside eggshell prisons of smoke and light.

  A single splatter of blood, that was all it had taken, eventually. The final sacrament to bring the walls crumbling down. Three words of power to undo the ancient curse and a drizzle of red fluids to open the doors. There had been cracks already, of course. Imperfections growing by the moment, allowing his brothers brief forays into the blocky, unfamiliar solidity of the “real”.

  For those lucky few, freedom had been short-lived, but they returned with tales of blood and carnage, with immateria-axes stained gore-red, with words of violence and hunger for killing. It fortified the rest of the prisoners, giving them hope and anticipation.

  He’d howled away his bloodlust into the warp prison, watching as second by second his release grew nearer. Three millennia had been a long time to wait.

  This Severus, this pawn of the Master, this small thing with its books and its incantations, this fur-hung fool: it gashed apart the throat of a single man-thing and the prison collapsed, the walls splintered with warpfire fury, the inchoate empyrean beyond wafted and grasped and—

  Keraz the Violator was born into reality with a roar and a shriek and a neck-splitting lunge that pulverised in an instant the years and years of inactivity. The blood flowed and the world screamed and he laughed and laughed and laughed.

  There were xenogens here: grey-faced things that cowered and shivered in his shadow. It didn’t matter. Blood is blood is blood. Red or grey or green or black, he didn’t care; it gushed and gouted, its rain splatter a cherished baptism against his armour, its slick ebbings hanging in matted chords from the chains wrapping his gauntlets. There was gunfire, somewhere. More of his brothers, emerging behind him. Less devoted, undoubtedly. Theirs was a service of command and obedience, an undivided gaggle of beliefs controlling their actions. They lacked Keraz’s devotion to a single aspect of their dark pantheon.

  Blood for the Blood God!

  Skulls for the Throne of Bone!

  As inescapable as the night, the madness came upon him. Gunfire couldn’t hurt. Plasma orbs and pulse shots were a background staccato, rattling on his armour ineffectually. Only the killing was real.

  A figure stepped into his path; a shape shrouded in a torus of energy and protective power that stayed his bloody hand, forcing a bellow of fury from his ancient guts. He recognised through the red haze the pinched features of Severus, his libera
tor, and tried to turn away to find a new plaything to crush, a new morsel to dissect.

  “Stop,” the man said, and unbidden his feet obeyed. He had no choice. His roar of anger quaked through the world. Severus smiled, enjoying himself. “Take these ones. Take them to the planet surface.” He pointed to a dark recess, blood-splattered walls shadowing a pair of figures, and then he was gone, stepping lightly through the shimmering portal.

  Keraz hefted his axe, chain edge shrieking, arrow wedge shadow falling across the cringing shapes. One was human, he saw without caring, old features open in terror, grey moustache quivering in a silent moan. The other was xeno, standing rigid and tense but betraying not a hint of fear.

  It didn’t matter. Terror wasn’t compulsory — only blood mattered.

  But the axe never came down — at its zenith the words of power gripped his body and Severus’s command overcame him. As meek as a lamb, but raging and boiling within, he dragged the two figures into the portal and vanished in a gust of energy and heat.

  Kais was too late.

  His mind still couldn’t be operating properly, surely. Surely he was too overwhelmed by this sudden escalation of events, this inexplicable horror. Surely that was why nothing was making any sense.

  Figures appearing from nowhere, fluttering creatures cackling and gibbering, everywhere was blood and fire and hate. He thought, am I going mad?

  Perhaps.

  Whispers like cobwebs, like dessicated corpse talk, like the papery rustling of a million inserts, filled his mind. Perhaps this was a gue’la trick? Some hitherto unknown technology and resource they’d concealed from tau intelligence until it was needed? Yes — yes, that must be it.

  A hidden army of berserk monstrosities, waiting to be unleashed; a cunning deceit they’d arranged to ensnare the Aun and crush the tau… He wondered briefly if El’Lusha and the others, still aboard the Or’es Tash’var, would concur. This was the remit of Auns and shas’os, not of flawed shas’las.

  But…

  But that wasn’t right… As he stumbled through twisted corridors, humans were screaming and dying, black monstrosities sweeping from glowing portals to murder the terrified paleskins, dragging them away to Aun-knows-where. And things, vermin with red-scale skin and spiny thorns, fluttered and swooped, scavenging amongst the bodies for flesh. They left trails of slime and pus as they crawled, chattering and giggling like infants.