by Various
‘I understand your concerns, aun’o,’ he said tiredly. ‘However, it is necessary for me to remain in action. As I explained before, should the or’es’la reach the colony, they will destroy it and kill everyone there. I can only ensure your protection by engaging the enemy–’
‘You overrate your personal importance,’ the aun’o chided, ‘even if what you say is true – which, frankly, I doubt – your shas’ui can command in your absence. Is that not a keystone of your warrior philosophy?’
‘Leaving an inexperienced shas’ui in command at this juncture would amount to a gross dereliction of duty on my part. My presence at the colony is completely unnecessary and would jeopardise my warriors.’
The tiny image bobbed and darted silently for a moment and the shas’o feared the aun’o was going to give him a direct order to return. The other tau’s high-boned face turned away for a moment as someone spoke to him from off-screen. After several moments the Aun’o turned back with a pallid look on his face.
‘A courier has arrived from the shas’ar’tol… they say no reinforcements are available at this time. Limited evacuation may be possible later, but for now Arkunasha colony is exhorted to resist to its last breath, for the greater good.’
‘For the greater good,’ shas’o agreed. He waited for the aun’o to say something else but the silence stretched on until he spoke again.
‘Aun’o, you must board that courier and leave the colony at once. I will accept no argument about this and, if necessary, I will return and put you on the ship myself. Your protection is my first responsibility and the dangers will only increase from now on. Leave now while you still can. I must attend to my warriors.’ The tiny head on the screen nodded abruptly in response and the image vanished.
The shas’o looked at the lines of fire warriors winding along the canyon on foot and felt an invisible burden lift from his soul. With the aun’o gone, he would have a free hand at last, no more negotiating and explaining every action. He turned his mind to current dispositions. The surviving Devilfish were out some distance away, scouting for the enemy and the Hammerheads were perched somewhere above on the dunes, keeping a watch for flyers. Their attrition so far had been light, but maintaining supplies of ammunition and energy cells was a constant concern. The supply cache they were approaching was one of the last that had been placed before the invasion and the only one close to what now amounted to the front lines. Risk of interception and limited resources meant most of the newer caches were only a day or two’s travel from the colony. Too close, but they had been left with little choice.
One of the fire warriors left the line and picked their way to where the crisis suits were labouring along the soft sand of the canyon floor to conserve their energy. It was the shas’ui, her armour flecked and chipped where she had been caught in an or’es’la shell burst that morning. The monocular eye-piece of her helmet gazed up at the shas’o’s monitor head in mute question until he opened a channel to her.
‘Word has arrived from the shas’ar’tol that there are to be no reinforcements,’ the shas’o told her simply. ‘We must fight on with what we have.’
‘Not long ago I would have said that was impossible, but these past weeks you’ve led the or’es’la around by their noses so well that I can’t see why we can’t do it forever.’
‘Supplies, mostly, and the or’es’la will learn to be less cooperative over ti–’
An urgent communications request from the Pathfinders was winking in the corner of one of the Crisis suit’s screens. The shas’o accepted it and was treated to a grainy view of the desert above. His stomach turned over at the sight and his exhaustion vanished. An array of dark brown shapes were moving through the gathering gloom, the sullen flames gouting from their exhaust stacks briefly illuminating their rusting armour and the swarming or’es’la warriors clinging to every vehicle.
‘Course?’ the shas’o snapped.
‘Closing on our position. They haven’t sighted us yet.’
‘Pull back into the canyon and let them pass, we can’t–’
‘Second group sighted, shas’o!’ The view spun to show another distant column converging on the opposite side of the canyon. ‘The first group are halting now, it looks as if they’re stopping for the night.’
‘Plant five photon grenades on maximum delay and pull back immediately.’
‘Acknowledged, shas’o.’ He closed the link and addressed the shas’ui on a direct channel.
‘Pass the word, shas’ui, I want the supplies recovered and brought back down the canyon as quietly as possible, no one is to engage the or’es’la.’
‘Shas’o?’
‘I have something much better in mind for them.’
The shas’o triggered his jet pack and bounded away down the canyon in a series of low, swinging leaps to stay below its rim. He reached the retreating Pathfinders and had them markerlight the position of their photon grenades up above. He turned and leapt for the opposite lip, using his remaining reserves of energy lavishly to thrust himself over the edge. Dark shadows blotted the frozen waves of dunes to either side of the canyon and were made hard-edged by guttering oil-fires lit by the or’es’la.
The shas’o levelled his plasma rifle and let rip at the closest targets. They were beyond effective range, but he loosed off several incandescent bolts into the gloom before jumping back down into the canyon. A moment later, the photon grenades detonated, their stark white flashes burning away the night vision of anyone looking for the source of the incoming fire. Fat red tracers buzzed across the canyon in both directions, followed by the distinctive crack-swish sound of larger projectiles.
The Crisis suit’s energy reserves were into the orange, but the shas’o leapt a short distance further along the canyon before mounting the opposite side and firing again. That provoked another wild burst of fire from the or’es’la, and in the brief moment he was above the lip of the canyon he glimpsed the insane crossfire already occurring between the two camps. He dropped to the canyon floor and left the or’es’la to their sport; with any luck they would keep shooting at each other all night.
‘O’Shovah?’ the shas’ui’s voice was unsteady, the pain of her shattered body edging the word.
Shovah meant ‘farsight’. The fire warriors had taken to calling him that during the desert campaign. O’Shovah, Commander Farsight, just a jocular nickname at first but it had grown into a watchword, almost a prayer. Farsight will see us through, Commander Farsight will outwit the or’es’la once again, they can never catch Farsight.
It seemed like a bitter reprimand now, trapped for weeks in the Argap highlands with no room to manoeuvre and endless hordes of foes surrounding them. Every day was another day of grinding siege, insane assaults, and casualties on both sides. The or’es’la died by the dozen for every fire warrior they dragged down, but each loss was keenly felt by the small band of defenders.
Now the shas’ui was among the fallen, another casualty ticked off the shrinking roster of colony defenders. She had been caught in an or’es’la rocket attack while dragging an injured comrade clear, her limbs shattered and torso pierced by randomly flying metal. It all seemed so senseless.
‘Rest easy, shas’ui,’ he said. ‘Another shuttle got through. You’re going to be evacuated.’
‘No!’ The shas’ui lurched on her narrow cot, trying to rise. ‘I will stay and fight!’
‘You will heal and fight another day,’ the shas’o, O’Shovah as he was coming to think of himself, said coldly. ‘Your injuries would impede you in battle to the point of uselessness.’
The shas’ui sank back, too weak to protest further, her eyes searching O’Shovah’s face. ‘Why don’t they evacuate all of us? Why are we still here?’
O’Shovah had no answer. The aun’o was gone, the colony ruined and most of its population killed or fled. There was no reason to stay but the shas’ar’to
l insisted that they hold on. Reinforcements were trickling in, but they were barely enough to keep pace with the attrition incurred by the siege. No counter-offensive was possible, only endless positional warfare through the peaks and passes of the highlands.
‘I don’t know, shas’ui,’ he confessed. ‘We must place our trust in the greater good.’
Shells screamed down in ragged salvos, pulverising rock and throwing up towering clouds of dust at the edge of the colony. They were concentrating on the dugouts around the skeletal remnants of the workshops. Their howling mingled with the first explosions, and soon the fire warriors could hear nothing but the crash of explosions and the whickering of shrapnel.
In recent weeks the or’es’la had fallen into a pattern of hoarding up their ammo and loosing it all off before an assault. In terms of inflicting casualties, it was actually less effective than their old method of firing short, unexpected bombardments whenever a crate of shells was brought up, but it was a lot more unnerving. It meant the or’es’la were coming again.
O’Shovah crouched in his crisis suit inside a shelter he’d helped the Fio to dig for him at the head of a feature they’d dubbed the slipway. It was an erosion-cut channel leading down from Arkunasha colony to a nearby valley in the highlands. Windblown sand and dust from the plateau poured continuously down the slipway like a slow motion avalanche confined by high rock walls on both sides. The or’es’la had fixated on the area as the widest point of approach and it was already littered with half-buried wrecks left by their previous attempts to storm it.
O’Shovah crouched in his hole, feeling the bedrock tremble as shells burst nearby. He found that he trembled with it. The bombardment seemed endless, maddening. Shells of all calibres poured down and were joined by the howl of rockets just as it seemed it could get no worse. Red flames spurted up on all sides and flashes filled the air. The world seemed engulfed by roaring giants on every side.
Suddenly, the or’es’la barrage dribbled away to nothing, a few paltry shells whistling down as the towering smoke clouds began to drift away in the wind. Then he heard the roar of many engines and the rumbling sound of tracks. O’Shovah emerged from his shelter, far enough to see down the slipway, as around him, surviving fire warriors looked cautiously out from their own redoubts and bunkers. Perhaps four teams remained, holding onto a precarious horseshoe of positions at the top of the slope, with barely one team in reserve. Ugly or’es’la battle-tanks were crawling to the base of the slipway, five steel giants with groups of smaller vehicles ranged to their left and right. Behind them, another wave of at least twenty vehicles was coming into view, labouring hard in the soft sand.
O’Shovah was speechless. The enemy had never before attacked in such strength. A wave of improvised seeker drone-missiles flew past, plummeting into the approaching behemoths. Two of the leading vehicles crumpled in flames and were soon joined by others as two Hammerhead tanks began firing from the heights. The air was split by harsh flames as the duel was played out, the or’es’la firing at the blue-white flashes of the Hammerhead’s railguns. The first enemy tank was hit and burst into flames. A second, immobilised with track damage, continued to fire until it was hit beneath a turret by a railgun round. The shot tore the turret from the vehicle in a spray of sparks. Flames shot into the air, enveloping the crew as they tried to escape.
A call came in. ‘Infantry climbing the slipway, O’Shovah!’
From among the tanks appeared or’es’la warriors in blood-red armour. They were running up the slipway and making better progress than the slithering wave of vehicles. At an order from O’Shovah, precision pulse rifle fire swept across them, temporarily clearing the slope of running shapes. The Hammerheads were now firing in salvos. A dozen burning enemy vehicles lay scattered in the sand as testimony to their handiwork. The leading vehicles had climbed as far as a chain of tethered charges hidden in the slipway. Three were disabled with shattered tracks and the rest swung away to one side in apparent confusion. The second wave of vehicles began to climb the slope. Three took direct hits from the Hammerheads and blew apart, but the rest kept churning upwards towards the workshops with single-minded determination.
O’Shovah emerged from his shelter and signalled his surviving bodyguard to follow as he moved behind the protective glacis to reach the dugouts at the workshops. They loped along behind roughly-piled foam-metal blocks, already half buried by the sliding sand. Shells fired by the or’es’la hammered into the area. Red and yellow tracers from their secondary armaments buzzed around the fire warrior positions. A quick glance at his lateral monitors showed O’Shovah more vehicles climbing up on his right as he approached, while his two bodyguards loomed reassuringly in his rear view. O’Shovah leapt over the top of the glacis. Tracers streaked past him as he broke cover. He zig-zagged the battlesuit with surprising dexterity for such a cumbersome device, spotted a large, half-collapsed crater just below him and took cover in it. A moment later, his bodyguards were also in position above and below him on the slope.
Ahead of them, an or’es’la assault group was breaching the top of the slipway, moments away from overrunning the position. O’Shovah locked on to a vehicle and its surrounding infantry, punching a plasma bolt into the former and allowing a salvo of smart missiles to pick off the latter. More plasma bolts and fusion blasts from his bodyguards ripped into the flanked or’es’la. Almost simultaneously, a burst of heavy calibre slugs stitched across the upper torso of O’Shovah’s armour, pitching him out of the crater and sprawling him full-length in the sand. His systems displays were alight with warning indicators as he struggled to stand. His bodyguards moved to protect him. One was blown almost in half by a stray shell, his crisis armour bursting open like rotten fruit.
The shattered remnants of the assault group were running towards them with a truly enormous or’es’la in the lead. Darkness was sliding across the battlefield behind the charging alien like the shadow of death. O’Shovah sighted manually on the bestial-looking warrior and punched a plasma bolt into its torso. To his dismay the creature’s armour shrugged off the strike and it continued to surge forward with its hugely tusked jaws roaring thunderously. O’Shovah tried to fire his rifle again but found it inoperative, he tried to operate his jetpack and found that inoperative too. The or’es’la continued to charge forward, only metres away now.
A blaze of energy engulfed the or’es’la from above, brilliant white beams dancing from one figure to the next, leaving burning torches in their wake. Gazing up, O’Shovah laughed as he saw wide delta shapes blotting out the suns. The familiar silhouettes of Manta missile destroyers hovered above like guardian angels, finally enough of them to evacuate the whole colony.
The aun refused his requests for an audience immediately after evacuation. It was just as well; he’d been furious when he first saw the tau war fleet in orbit. That anger had cooled and hardened in the intervening time. He had visited the shas’ui and seen her adapting to her newly-grown prosthetics day by day. He had seen the other survivors of Arkunasha colony and mourned their dead with them. When the aun finally sent for him he came calmly enough.
There was a triumvirate aboard the Vior’la Gal’leath M’shan comprising Aun’o T’au Vasoy Ty’asla and two other aun, a male and a female, that O’Shovah did not recognise. They did not introduce themselves, nor speak at all when O’Shovah was conveyed to their veiled, opalescent sanctum. Instead Aun’o Vasoy smiled fondly at O’Shovah as he entered and bid his accompanying water caste associates to leave them. Only when they were alone did the female speak.
‘You have done well, shas’o. You bring credit to your caste and your sept. We understand that you are distressed by the casualties incurred under your command.’
She paused as O’Shovah shook his head.
‘Casualties are a fact of war,’ he replied. ‘I am distressed by being starved of reinforcements that evidently exist and the unnecessary hardships thereby inflicted on my comman
d.’
The unidentified male aun spoke. ‘Surely it is not your place to question the strategies of the shas’ar’tol?’
‘It is my place to question poor strategy whenever I see it, and this strategy did not originate from my honoured colleagues at the shas’ar’tol.’ He paused to pull a flimsy sheaf of message transcripts from inside his tunic. ‘I checked.’
Aun’o Vasoy replied. ‘Your success in small unit engagements with the or’es’la has enabled the build up of large reserves. When the campaign to retake Arkunasha begins, it will be undertaken with overwhelming strength.’
‘In other words, you decided to throw away lives now for an easier victory later.’
‘As is our remit, for the greater good.’
There was an awkward moment of silence as O’Shovah failed to respond. Aun’o Vasoy seemed genuinely puzzled.
‘Shas’o, you act as if the war was lost, when your actions have virtually assured victory.’
O’Shovah dashed the transcript on the floor in sudden fury. ‘Because I was not told!’
The aun drew back from his anger, their eyes becoming hooded. O’Shovah breathed deeply, mastering himself before speaking again.
‘You allowed me and my cadres to fight in the belief that no help was coming while you sat in orbit doing nothing. With sufficient forces, I could have ensured that the or’es’la never even reached the colony!’
‘Possibly,’ Aun’o Vasoy admitted. ‘Yet your situation spurred you to the highest efforts. As you said yourself, casualties are a fact of war. Yet you minimised your own and maximised those incurred by the enemy. Is that not victory?’
‘Of a sort,’ O’Shovah admitted bitterly. ‘And yet superior attrition seems to be the lowest form of success to my eyes.’
‘Come now, you must lay aside your grief for your lost warriors,’ Aun’o Vasoy said reasonably. ‘You have the gratitude of the Tau Empire and the approbation of your fellow caste members. I understand that they have even gifted you a new name in celebration of your success.’