Blades of Damocles

by Phil Kelly

  The holograms behind Farsight became the view outside Gel’bryn’s serried domes, flickering and fading to monochrome as if taken from an ancient source – a deft touch from the water caste, intended to highlight the anachronistic, hidebound nature of the foes marching from the cavernous holds of Imperial bulk landers.

  Rank upon rank of gue’la soldiers strode forward, armoured in the grey-green of dead vegetation. Their faces were waxy masks of ignorance and contempt. Held against each human’s shoulder was a primitive rifle, a weak and inefficient laser weapon much like those the tau had encountered on the far side of the Damocles Gulf. A vicious-looking blade jutted from each rifle’s barrel, as if the bearers thought of their firearms as spears rather than as precision tools of ranged warfare. The fire caste too carried blades – known as bonding knives, they represented unity and hope, symbolising the sacred team-bond of the ta’lissera. They were rarely, if ever, drawn from their scabbards.

  ‘By a warrior’s tools you shall know him,’ quoted Farsight solemnly. ‘Just as the fire caste are defined by the Hero’s Mantle we all aspire to master, the Imperial soldiery is represented by the crude weapons you see here. In their hearts, they do not intend to engage at range, but to scrabble around in murderous close-quarters combat, stabbing and slashing. The most perfunctory of uniforms is the only thing separating them from their primitive, ape-like ancestors.’

  A ripple of disquiet filled the holotheatre.

  ‘Such a barbaric race has no place upon a core sept world,’ continued Farsight. ‘They have no role in the universe other than to be brought to heel, culled and consigned to slow oblivion.’

  There were murmurs of assent. Many turned into cries of awe and confusion as the drone-camera hologram panned back. Behind the serried ranks of gue’la troopers strode immense, broad-shouldered war engines with gigantic cannons in place of arms. They were crude effigies built in mockery of the noble battlesuit, colossi born of a race that respected only brute strength.

  ‘These bipedal war engines are classified by their owners as “god-machines”,’ said Farsight. ‘They may appear indomitable at first glance, but already one has been neutralised by precision strike from the Manta missile destroyers of the illustrious Admiral Li’mau Teng.’

  In the holograms behind Farsight, a burning goliath toppled onto the indigo wasteland outside Via’mesh’la. The bright fires of its demise threw the commander into silhouette.

  ‘A warrior who wears his strength openly is easily countered,’ quoted Commander Starflame from the midst of the audience.

  ‘Just so,’ said Farsight. ‘And though six of these behemoths are inbound upon our cities, they are predictable. It is not these engines of war the fire caste must seek to counter, but the gue’ron’sha, those warriors the humans call Space Marines, whose strikes are sudden and powerful. Their insertion craft are simple enough, but mercilessly effective. Though it pains me to say it, these Space Marines are experts in the application of pure force at a single point.’

  At this, the holograms showed the angular teardrop of an Imperial drop craft slamming through the glass curve of a hexodome. Upon impact its hull split into five sections, two blue-armoured gue’ron’sha emerging from each opening with sidearms blazing. Fire warriors positioned amongst the rubble were cut down in a series of messy explosions, though the water caste data teams had taken the liberty of editing out the blood.

  ‘The gue’ron’sha wear armour that cannot be pierced by the shot of the pulse rifle, nor shattered by the salvos of the burst cannon. Yet their weakness is as clear as a mountain stream. They are too few in number to effect more than shock assaults. Once deployed, these strike forces are committed to a single war zone, unless their air cover pulls them out.’

  Farsight saw many solemn nods in the holotheatre, and no few expressions of disdain.

  ‘By forcing the Space Marines to launch the spear of their assault and then ensuring our cadres withdraw before their blow can fall, we rob the gue’ron’sha of the military targets they are so keen to destroy. The air caste and our own fighter squadrons will work in tandem, stranding each gue’ron’sha attack without hope of recovery.’

  ‘A wise plan, Commander Farsight,’ said Commander Bravestorm from the front row. ‘It is typical of the Imperial mindset to trust in strength alone. I myself fought a flightless battlesuit equivalent clad in armour thicker than an Orca’s hull – it was powerful indeed, but slow to manoeuvre.’

  Seizing the opportunity, Farsight eye-flicked the holo to show drone-captured footage of Bravestorm’s triumph over the Imperial walker. He complemented it by appending scenes of battlesuits blasting holes right through the torsos of Imperial shock troops.

  ‘They are resilient, these Space Marines, but they can be killed. Equip your suits with plasma rifles and fusion blasters wherever possible. As a guideline, any time you face gue’ron’sha, treat them not as infantry, but as squadrons of enemy tanks.’

  He paused a moment to let the concept sink in.

  ‘We have the right weapons to overcome these warmongering trespassers. We are gathering knowledge of their weaknesses. There is no reason why we cannot repel the humans within a few rotaa of focused effort.’

  A chorus of approval filled the auditorium, many of the fire caste officers making the sign of unalloyed assent.

  ‘The efforts of Commanders Brightsword and Bravestorm thus far have been exemplary,’ continued Farsight. ‘As a result, recent air caste sweeps have confirmed that the gue’ron’sha have been repelled from Gel’bryn City…’

  At this, cheers filled the holotheatre. On the balcony, Aun’Dreca inclined his head in a subtle gesture of disapproval. Farsight made the lateral line of silence, and his fellow officers fell still.

  ‘They have been repelled, for now,’ said Farsight, anger simmering in his voice, ‘but a new attack gathers outside Gel’bryn in force. We have slowed it down with missile strikes from the hills, hunted and put down their outriders with overlapping sweeps of our stealth teams. But the main body remains intact, and still numbers in the tens of millions.’

  A pulse of pain twitched in his lungs at the thought, making his eyes widen involuntarily. He saw a shadow of concern cross the faces of Bravestorm and Sha’vastos; they had learned to be perceptive over the years.

  ‘We must study them, stall them, break them apart, and then,’ Farsight’s breath caught for a moment, ‘and then bring down the sword. They have great numbers still to commit, in orbit as well as planetside. Yet we have an entire empire to draw upon, able to focus its efforts fully on the conflict at hand.’

  The holograms behind Farsight showed the wider Tau Empire, its space lanes highlighted gold. Assets were inbound from a dozen worlds.

  ‘We will observe the Imperial army’s strengths, exploit its blindness, optimise our countermeasures, and defeat it beyond question. The killing blow will fall, again and again, until this new chapter in the ascendance of the Tau’va is lit with glory.’

  The footage behind Farsight showed a hundred battlesuits descending from a crystal blue sky, sunlight glinting from every burnished plane. They opened fire in blistering unison. The atmosphere in the room was tense with the thrill of anticipation, dry tinder waiting for a final spark.

  A voice cut through the jubilant atmosphere like an ice-cold knife.

  ‘No.’

  An athletic female warrior emerged from the iris door at the far end of the holotheatre, tall and proud. Her sleek head was crested with a red scalp lock that trailed behind her like a whip, the bands upon it symbols denoting a major military victory.

  There were many, many bands crowning her smooth pate.

  Commander Shadowsun had arrived.

  Farsight felt his nerves jolt as his former team-mate Shadowsun emerged into the light. Despite the bulk of her signature XV22 stealth battlesuit, she loped down the centre of the holotheatre with the grace of a
hunting cat. Her scalp lock had even more honorific bands than he had seen in the latest water caste stills. Behind her came an entourage – three specialist drones and two shas’ui, their own stealth battlesuits compact but imposing. Farsight noticed wisps of steam emanating from her fusion blasters, still cooling from some recent engagement. Even O’Shaserra was not unscrupulous enough to have fired them before her grand entrance just for effect.

  At least, not the Kauyon-Shas he remembered from Mount Kan’ji.

  Every one of the officers in the holotheatre had turned to look at the visitor in their midst, whispers of surprise rustling through them like wind through a field of crops. The breach of etiquette was quickly forgotten, washed away by Shadowsun’s aura of sheer confidence and self-belief. She strode up to the command dais and interposed herself between Farsight and the audience, standing head and shoulders taller than him in her battlesuit and largely blocking him from sight.

  Farsight looked up at Aun’Dreca, his blood uncomfortably hot in his veins, but the ethereal merely made a gentle beckoning gesture to proceed.

  ‘Commander Shadowsun,’ said Farsight to his fellow officer’s back. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. Please, take a seat; my address is almost complete.’

  O’Shaserra ignored him. ‘The time for talk is over,’ she said without turning, her stern tones cutting the last of the audience’s susurrus into silence. ‘Optimised kauyon plans have long been in place upon Dal’yth. We should enact them, not stall in order to devise more. Our people are dying. So now we act. As of this moment, the fire caste reserve cadres join those in the field.’

  Farsight heard not a single voice raised in contradiction. He looked to the holograph display behind him, but it was blank. All focus was on Shadowsun.

  ‘The fire caste is the current target of these Imperial shock troops,’ O’Shaserra continued, ‘so we shall relocate into less populous areas. Lure them into traps that minimise collateral damage. We wage a mobile war, following the planet’s rotation so that we remain upon its dark side at all times.’

  A few mutters of assent came from the audience, dotted with louder outbursts of approval.

  ‘We engineer confusion. We draw the enemy out. Piece by piece, we crush him in our grip. Starflame, you will form the polar point of the pincer to my equatorial. O’Sarakan, you will perform breaker strikes until relieved. O’Soara, put some cohesion into the Pra’yen refugees and rejoin Bravestorm’s retaliation cadres at Dal’ryu.’

  Farsight frowned, his outward expression the merest shadow of the storm raging inside. What did she think she was doing? How could she betray him like this? Their friendly rivalry had turned sour many years ago, and she had been distant and cold ever since. But this public division was a new low.

  The feelings catching in his throat were so intense Farsight had to force down the urge to cough. Unbidden, his hand strayed to the hilt of his ceremonial sword as O’Shaserra outlined her orders. Gone was the introspective strategist he had grown to admire, the ever-patient warrioress who had sat in the snows of Mount Kan’ji for long days until her prey passed within striking distance. This was not the Shadowsun famous across the empire for her cold and deadly deliberations. Here instead was a paragon of the Code of Fire, alive with the thrill of delivering a long-planned kauyon – the certain and lethal denouement of a carefully laid trap.

  Farsight told himself it was compassion, of a sort, that had driven her to humiliate him in such a fashion. Tau lives were being lost. If she could minimise those tragedies with decisiveness and efficiency, she would do so without hesitation.

  How their roles had changed.

  ‘Too much time has been spent here,’ continued O’Shaserra. ‘If any refinements to these plans are necessary, we can effect them over the cadre-net as we deploy. Move out.’

  Shadowsun strode back down the centre aisle of the holotheatre towards the exit, her entourage in her wake. Farsight found his fists clenching as a full half of his emergency conclave stood and followed her out, already talking into headpiece beads to coordinate their forces. His skin burned, and this time not because he had exited the healsphere too soon.

  ‘That will be all,’ he said to the uncertain officers that remained. ‘I have appended details of your individual briefings via data transmission. We shall combine our efforts with Commander Shadowsun as best we can. For the Greater Good.’

  ‘For the Greater Good,’ echoed Farsight’s commanders.

  But the fire he had lit inside them was no longer there.

  Tutor Sha’kan’thas was among the last to leave the holotheatre. He had lingered long to savour the taste of Farsight’s embarrassment, and fought hard to keep a smile from spreading across his features as he walked past a pair of fire caste officers earnestly discussing which of their two leaders had the better approach to victory. Dal’yth’s defenders might stand divided, they might even suffer for it at the hands of the Imperial invaders, but if it meant that Farsight lost enough status to be removed from command then Tutor Sha’kan’thas considered it more than worth it.

  Ever since mentoring the vaunted prodigy in the Mont’yr Battle Dome, Tutor Sha’kan’thas had seen the peril O’Shovah posed to the Tau’va. Since the inception of the Code of Fire, every cadet had followed the same path – and to break it, to show preference to one individual over the whole, was to invite disaster. For the fire caste to entertain the concept that a single young warrior knew better than his tutors, and by extension the ethereals, was deeply wrong.

  In the corridor ahead, Tutor Sha’kan’thas saw O’Vesa of the earth caste stumping along on his thick legs, struggling to match the confident stride of Commander Bravestorm. The genius-level scientist was well known to Sha’kan’thas from the rust deserts of Arkunasha. His prototypes had helped Farsight turn a disaster of a campaign into a hard-fought but glorious victory. The ten-year campaign had seen El’Vesa promoted to O’Vesa, given the honorific name Stone Dragon, and elevated to the upper tiers of his caste. In terms of intellect, he was a genius without doubt. Yet in terms of politics, he was an oblivious buffoon.

  ‘It is of course possible to achieve greater energy yield, but risky in the extreme,’ O’Vesa was saying to Bravestorm. ‘You say even a direct hit from a fusion blaster failed to neutralise this war machine?’

  Tutor Sha’kan’thas accelerated his stride as the two continued their conversation. He transmitted a greeting-blip to O’Vesa’s data wand, simultaneously activating the recorder-discus hidden in the flat of his palm.

  ‘Ah, Tutor Sha’kan’thas,’ said O’Vesa, his flat slab of a face broken by a gentle smile as he turned in the corridor. ‘I see you survived the Argap Plateau withdrawal.’

  Bravestorm held up the open palms of welcome. ‘An honour to see you, tutor,’ he said, his veil of politeness not quite covering his irritation at being interrupted. ‘And congratulations on having fought alongside Commander Farsight.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tutor Sha’kan’thas. ‘Arkunasha. A great victory. Perhaps ten tau’cyr too late, but notable nonetheless. A moment of your time, Stone Dragon?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said O’Vesa with a distant look in his eye. Commander Bravestorm made the sign of future paths crossing, and strode off down the corridor.

  ‘Were you present at Farsight’s briefing?’ asked the tutor.

  ‘I was. It was a rare privilege to be present at a fire caste gathering.’

  ‘A rousing call to arms, was it not?’

  ‘It was informative on a surface level,’ said O’Vesa, ‘though I prefer to dig deeper. Imperial technology is of great interest to the earth caste. This war offers an unparalleled chance to study it.’

  ‘Of course. And Farsight’s skill as an orator is impressive, you must agree. One need only have witnessed today’s inspiring address to see that, or his famous speech to the air caste at Zephyrpeak.’

  ‘I fear I am not qualified to j
udge, but yes, they tell me Commander Farsight’s skills at diplomacy are highly advanced.’

  ‘Would you say they are the equal of the water caste?’

  ‘It is possible. The commander’s skill sets are… admirable.’

  ‘Skill sets, you say? Do you mean those outside the remit of the fire caste?’

  A moment of awkward silence passed between them. As Tutor Sha’kan’thas had hoped, the Stone Dragon could not help but fill it.

  ‘Commander Farsight is a singular individual, and I respect him greatly. Only yesterday he restarted a malfunctioning battlesuit’s systems whilst it was waterlogged in the Gel’bryn Reservoir. That is a feat which most worker-level weapons scientists would find difficult to achieve.’

  ‘How illuminating,’ said Tutor Sha’kan’thas, his eyes narrowing. There it was, the chink in the prodigy’s armour, laid wide open by a trusted friend. ‘With such talents in the arts of the other castes, would you say that Commander Farsight’s true nature is vash’ya?’

  O’Vesa started back as if he had been slapped. ‘I would say… I would say I have little expertise on such matters,’ stammered the scientist. ‘Would you excuse me, tutor. I have weapons tests to oversee, and Commander Bravestorm’s prototype request to investigate.’

  Tutor Sha’kan’thas watched O’Vesa bow, turn and hurry away. His lips pressed into a tight smile. The Stone Dragon clearly thought O’Shovah to be between spheres, even if he lacked the courage to say it outright.

  How fitting that Farsight’s threat to the Tau’va should be undone by his own genius.

  Chapter Six

  INTRUSION/TRIAL BY EARTH

  The smell of the underground corridors stung at the back of Numitor’s sinuses, alien counterseptic mingling with the ice-cold tang of liquid nitrogen. Every footstep echoed loudly. The advance of Squad Numitor’s battle-brothers sounded like the rumble of an oncoming storm, caught and amplified as it rolled down the curving white corridors that led from the civilian housing area deeper into the labyrinth.