The Arkunasha War

by Andy Chambers

  The Arkunasha War

  Andy Chambers

  Cymbals and drums sounded tinny and distant in the thin, cold air as they welcomed him to the new world. Looking down from the top of the ramp, the shuttle’s only passenger seemed surprised to find any kind of welcoming committee, even one as small and dispirited as this one, awaiting him. High overhead, twin suns lit the scene with a fierce glare but little warmth; what little heat there was to be had was being ripped away by a chilling breeze filled with fine, irritating dust. Gentle ripples of rust-red sand marked the edge of the landing pad and marched off towards the foreshortened horizon with monotonous discipline. A small collection of domes, blocks and stubby towers in the mid-distance constituted the apparent entirety of Arkunasha’s one and only colony, the handful of off-white shapes looking lonely and isolated on the too-wide canvas of an empty world.

  The newcomer was tall and broad-shouldered, and showed scarification, unusual in a society with the capacity to heal any such blemish at will. A warrior, clearly, past his first flush of youth but still vital. There was a penetrating look to his dark eyes as he squinted through the glare and stinging dust at the welcoming party, wishing he had accepted a filter plug for his nasal slit when the shuttle pilot had offered him one. He beheld the tall, serene-looking profile of the colony leader and the squat shape of the chief engineer among a handful of others at the bottom of the ramp. One of the cymbal players, a wiry-looking fellow with blue facial markings, broke away from the small crowd and hurried upwards.

  ‘Please to be meeting with the exalted prince, great warrior, I, unworthy associate, will conduct you hence if willing?’

  ‘Of course, I…’ But the low ranking associate was already backing away and gesturing as if to draw the warrior forward on invisible strings. The bemused warrior followed him, his armoured toe-hooves clacking down the ramp and onto the first true ground he’d touched in weeks of travel.

  ‘To make introductions,’ the associate said, gesturing to the broad-shouldered warrior and the colony leader in turn. ‘This great warrior is Shas’o Vior’la Kais Mont’yr. This exalted prince is Aun’o T’au Vasoy Ty’asla.’

  The warrior knelt before the stately Aun’o and bowed his head before rising and addressing him.

  ‘Aun’o, I am flattered that you came to meet me but I would not have discomforted you so.’

  The Aun’o’s face was thin and high boned, virtually a T-shape with a narrow slit of a mouth at the bottom that radiated faint but constant disapproval. The Aun’o’s mark of celestial devotion gleamed from the top of his nasal slit like a third eye. When he spoke his voice seemed dull and flat, a disinterested burr.

  ‘Nonsense, Shas’o, it was only seeming for me to be present in order to make acquaintance and welcome you to Arkunasha at the first moment of your arrival.’

  The associate cleared his throat and rattled his cymbals quietly before speaking again.

  ‘Also, great and exalted ones, here is honoured trustee Fio’ui Ke’lshan.’ The portly engineer nodded stiffly to the warrior, who saluted him in return.

  ‘We shall have much to discuss, Fio’ui,’ the warrior said politely, ‘and I hope we can work closely together for the protection of the colony.’

  The flat-faced engineer gave a non-committal grunt at the prospect, eliciting the shadow of a frown on the warrior’s face. The associate smoothly broke into the moment of silence that followed.

  ‘Please to be moving to the concourse area where refreshments are now being served.’ Taking their cue the drums and cymbals rattled again as the water caste members began leading the way towards a torus–shaped structure nearby. The warrior refused to be immediately drawn after them, addressing a question to the associate.

  ‘And where are the warriors I am to command? I am surprised to find that they have left greetings, welcome as they are, to others, while absenting themselves.’

  The Aun’o answered directly, cutting across the associate’s platitudes even as they began.

  ‘The Shas’la are sulking in their barracks after being refused permission to bring weapons along to a greeting. They declared that they would rather go naked than suffer the shame of being disarmed at the first encounter with their Shas’o! This, on a world completely empty of any other living beings save for ourselves. Just whom do they propose to shoot, I wonder?’ The Aun’o tittered briefly at the thought, before subsiding into an indulgent clucking. The frown returned to the Shas’o’s face and remained there.

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’

  ‘It’s a world, boss, the mekboss wants to go there.’

  Ork Warboss Gorbag Gitbiter leaned forward, peering down at the wiry little gretchin before his throne. The gretchin quaked, the big shard of glass in its hands quivering and making the dirty yellow-brown ball on its surface bounce around uncertainly.

  ‘The mekboss, eh?’ Gorbag rumbled with a voice like stones tumbling down a shaft. ‘Well, I’m the warboss and I say where we go!’

  The gretchin rocked back on its heels at the blast of sound and spittle flying from the impressively tusked jaws of the hulking warboss. It desperately wanted to chuck away the viewing glass and run off behind a console or into a duct, but it was smart enough not to try. The complex symbiotic relationship between the warlike orks and their smaller, weaker gretchin cousins has long depended on the quick wits and diplomacy of the latter. Thousands of years of genetic heritage conspired to keep the gretchin’s mind focussed enough to squeal out the words that might save it.

  ‘The mekboss said the ships are gonna break if we don’t go!’

  The warboss paused at that. Glaring red eyes pierced the quivering gretchin with new interest.

  ‘What… did you just say?’

  The gretchin’s healthy green pallor had gained a distinctly whitish cast, the world in the viewing glass oscillated tightly back and forth in its grip.

  ‘The mekboss said to tell you we got too many holes. Some are so big the boys are falling out and all the... the breathy stuff is leakin’ out.’

  Gorbag thrust his mighty jaw out truculently. ‘Breathy stuff? You mean the air, you stupid little grot?’

  ‘Yes boss!’

  ‘So we’re gonna be stuck there?’ Gorbag’s three-metre tall form seemed to sag at the prospect. No more reaving across the stars for him and his bloodthirsty crew of freebooters; they would be stuck on one stinking planet with no way off it and nothing to fight but each other.

  ‘No, boss! The mekboss says there’s metal on this world. We can fix all the holes an’ keep goin’!’

  Gorbag seemed to swell up visibly at the prospect. He grabbed the viewing glass from the gretchin with a gnarled claw as big as its torso and glared at it with a rapacious gleam in his eyes. The gretchin failed to relinquish its grip quickly enough and ended up dangling from Gorbag’s fist by one arm.

  ‘Anything to kill?’ Gorbag demanded.

  ‘No boss,’ the grot squeaked apologetically, ‘leastways nothing good.’

  The Shas’o found the warriors beneath his command awaiting him at their barracks, just as the Aun’o had said. The warriors stood in ranks inside the quadrangle formed between their quarters, garages and armoury. Each was in full armour, the jointed plates giving them an insectile quality in the harsh glare of the twin suns. They held their pulse rifles upright before them, long-barrelled firing chambers pointing rigidly at the skies. Small mounds of windblown dust reaching up to their ankles showed they had been silently awaiting him for quite some time. The Shas’o dropped his single carry bag with an audible clank before blowing out his cheeks in a long-suffering sigh.

  ‘And just what is the meaning of this?’ he shouted in a parade ground bark very different to the tone he had used with th
e Aun’o and Fio’el. A fire warrior with the stripes of a Shas’ui took a step forward and replied.

  ‘It is my responsibility, Shas’o,’ the Shas’ui said, their voice made slightly distorted by the audio pickup of their enclosed helmet. ‘Any punishment due is mine alone.’

  A murmur of discontent rippled out behind the Shas’ui as they spoke and the forest of pulse rifles swayed slightly in response. The Shas’o raised a hand to silence it.

  ‘I am led to understand you all refused to leave your barracks unarmed? On the idea that it would shame you in my eyes not to greet me as warriors?’

  ‘The Aun’o believes that with no enemies present our weapons are only a danger to ourselves and others, Shas’o’ The Shas’ui replied cautiously. ‘The exalted one believes us too ill-trained and unreliable to bear arms.’

  ‘Enough! Put down your weapons at once!’ The Shas’o barked. As one, the assembled fire warriors placed their rifles on the ground. ‘Now take off your armour. You heard me, every piece!’

  The Shas’o watched while the warriors more hesitantly unclipped shoulder guards and breastplates, thigh pieces and curved helmets. The Shas’ui proved to be an attractive female with a fine scalp-lock, the others lost their uniformity and were revealed as a selection of males and females of a young age, few probably even close to their first trial by fire. The variety of their physiognomy showed that they hailed from a variety of different septs. There were some dark faces from Vior’la that were eyeing him with approval, a gaggle of pallid D’yanoi that look confused, several Sa’ceans that obeyed quickly and efficiently without hesitation.

  Finally, each warrior’s weapon and armour sat beside them in the dirt and they stood shivering in only their undersuits. The Shas’o walked over to the Shas’ui’s neat little pile of equipment and kicked it over.

  ‘These… objects do not make you a warrior!’ he shouted into her face. He stalked to another pile and scattered it, catching the owner’s look of horror as their cherished pulse rifle clattered to the ground. He laughed, a short, harsh sound within the confines of the quad, and pushed another warrior in the chest causing them to stagger back a pace.

  ‘The will… the ability to fight, to be a warrior, does not reside in your weapons, nor is it inside your armour unless you bring it there yourself! The warrior begins within, a warrior is one who still fights with whatever they have and with nothing at all if they must!’

  The Shas’o had their complete attention now, every eye was on him and he saw the unconscious flaring of nasal slits in approval on many faces. He bent down and drew two fighting sticks from his carry bag, ironwood rods as long and as thick as his forearm. He tossed one into the dust before the fire warriors and hefted the other in his fist.

  ‘Now… who among you is enough of a warrior to fight me for the right to put your armour back on?’

  Two days later, a Devilfish personnel carrier skimmed over low dunes with all the smooth agility of its namesake, its graceful lines speeding across the sands. Inside, the Shas’o watched the external monitors with interest, noting the tall double plume of dust snaking in their wake that would be visible for miles. He bore the pain of his bruises stoically, as did the five other fire warriors beside him in the passenger compartment.

  He’d beaten all of them, one on one, even though it had taken all night and most of the next day. The smarter ones had waited until he was tired before taking their chances, managing to get a few telling strikes on him. Afterwards, the Shas’o had fought them in pairs and groups to allow them a little revenge. Not bad, but some of them really were ill-trained and all of them were very inexperienced. More importantly, they were now thinking of themselves as warriors again, instead of scolded children. He turned to the Shas’ui, raising his voice above the whine of the Devilfish’s ducted turbines.

  ‘No other living things on the entire planet?’

  ‘Nothing at all, not a plant, not an animal’. The Shas’ui’s responses were clipped and coolly professional but the Shas’o could tell that she was barely holding her excitement in check. The Aun’o, in his ineffable wisdom, had virtually confined the fire warriors to their barracks for fear of accidents or unnecessary wear and tear on their equipment. The current reconnaissance run into the desert would be their first training hunt in months.

  ‘But our colony here is purported to extend over three-quarters of the planet’s surface,’ the Shas’o prodded.

  ‘That is something of an exaggeration, Shas’o, the main colony is here in the Argap highlands. The Fio have indeed established many other facilities but they are all small, highly automated and widely dispersed.’

  ‘Their purpose?’

  ‘Metal extraction and purifcation. The sands we are traversing bear huge quantities of metallic oxides mixed with silica and carbon. The Fio believe them to be the detritus of a civilization that once covered this world.’

  The Shas’o blinked with surprise. ‘My briefing material said nothing about this, perhaps you jest with me, Shas’ui?’

  The Shas’ui gestured at the red dunes sliding past on the monitors, ‘No, Shas’o, I do not jest. The sands you see out there really are composed of rust. The Fio don’t know whether the gue’la or or’es’la lived here, certainly it was a long time ago.’ She paused. ‘Permission to ask a question, Shas’o?’

  ‘Granted; I value obedience, but ignorance is a weapon placed in our enemy’s hands. What is it?’

  ‘Your name - Shas’o Vior’la Kais Mont’yr. You’ve earned two adjuncts to your name already; you have seen battle and been named as skilful by your fellow warriors. You must have passed at least three trials by fire to achieve the rank of Shas’o…’

  ‘I’m sure you have a question in there somewhere, Shas’ui. What’s troubling you?’

  ‘It’s just… why would the Shas’ar’tol send someone like you to a place like this? Surely you would do more good in an active conflict region than being crèche supervisor in some forgotten outpost.’

  ‘I go where the greater good commands, like any diligent student of the Tau’va,’ the Shas’o replied. ‘If my seniors at high command believe I can have the most effect here, then that becomes my singular purpose and I give no thought to potential glories lost elsewhere.’

  The Shas’ui looked at him in frank disbelief, and seemed to be trying to deduce just who he had offended and how. She opened her mouth to ask another, probably even more impertinent, question when the Devilfish lurched suddenly, banking sharply to one side. The fire warriors were thrown against their restraining harnesses with a chorus of suppressed groans. On the monitors, the Shas’o caught a glimpse of a yawning darkness amid the dunes that rapidly vanished down one side of the personnel carrier.

  ‘Canyon,’ the Shas’ui explained. ‘Natural erosion cuts channels into the desert, they–’

  ‘I know; that part was in the briefing materials. It also means we’ve arrived at our destination. Prepare to disembark.’

  The sand-laden winds had ground the exposed rim of the canyon to a pitted smoothness. Across the gap, the far cliff was marked with uneven bands of strata made up of a fantastic array of reds, browns and blacks. Thirty metres below, on the canyon floor, spires and mushrooms of basalt protruded from a bed of rust-coloured sand. Behind the Shas’o, three Devilfish carriers lifted off in unison and turned their elegantly curved prows back towards base. Three bemused squads of fire warriors were left standing in the thick cloud of dust kicked up by their departing personnel carriers. They looked questioningly at the Shas’o. He opened a common frequency to address them all.

  ‘Until now, you’ve only thought about these canyons as obstacles to be crossed,’ the Shas’o told them. ‘We’re here to learn that they can be your best ally or your worst enemy. In this hunt, you must simply return to the colony without being tagged. The Devilfish will be patrolling the desert; hostile pathfinders and gun drones are in the canyons. Question one, which way do you go?’

  ‘Through the canyons, Shas’o,’
the Shas’ui responded promptly.

  ‘Very good,’ nodded the Shas’o. ‘Now tell me why.’

  ‘The Devilfish would easily detect us and tag us in the open.’

  ‘You discount the threat of pathfinders and gun drones?’

  ‘No, but the pathfinders will require support to stop us and the Devilfish will be highly restricted if they enter the canyons. The gun drones can be outsmarted or outfought one-on-one as necessary.’

  ‘I concur with your theories, Shas’ui. Now let’s go and put them to the test. Pay close attention because we will be performing another hunt out here tomorrow, with battlesuits.’

  Pulse blasts criss-crossed the canyon in a flickering web of light. Every nook and cranny seemed to birth and receive its own false lightning faster than the eye could follow. After a week of successive hunts in the desert, the fire warriors were improving, the Shas’o noted with approval. The blue ‘prey’ cadre in this hunt had turned on their pursuers and caught them with a classic mont’ka, a killing blow. The strung-out red cadre suddenly found their lead elements caught in a canyon too narrow to redeploy in. In thirty more seconds the surrounded warriors would be cut down and the red cadre would become prey.

  Shas’o and his team leapt from the canyon lip eighty metres above, the flat plates of their crisis battlesuits gleaming in the bright suns. Blue-white stabs of flame from their shoulder-packs steadied their fall as the canyon floor rushed up to greet them. At the last second, their jetpacks kicked in and robbed them of their momentum, their duralloy leg-claws crunching into the sands in unison. The three-metre tall armoured suits raised arm-mounted weapon pods and rapid bursts of plasma rifle fire ripped into the firefight from a new angle.

  The blue cadre ambushers were caught between the crisis suits and the red cadre survivors. Decisive action could still have saved them; enough were combat effective that a concerted attack on either the battlesuits or the reds might have still carried the fight. But the blue cadre’s cohesion had disintegrated when the crisis team landed. They panicked and fought their own immediate battles without regard to what was happening behind them. In a few seconds, the moment had passed and the red cadre carried the blue’s position. The blue’s hasty ambush became their last stand.