by Various
‘Oh, good. You’re not dead,’ Hollett said dryly. He and Sabu’ro were climbing up the guardrail with agonising slowness.
‘No,’ she murmured. ‘Not yet.’
‘Can you make it up to the top, commander?’ Sabu’ro asked.
Shadowsun nodded weakly, and drained the blood from her mouth again.
The sun was rising when the three of them at last crested the cliff top. Across the Long Drop, the fires continued to rage. They lay there, completely spent, and watched the forest burn. Finally, Hollett stood and began limping up the winding path that led to the communications array.
‘Let’s go call your friends,’ he said.
The landing field was in chaos. All along the rockcrete the ochre shuttlecraft of the tau had landed and disgorged their passengers. Fire warriors swarmed everywhere. Earth caste scientists unloaded equipment and stacked supply crates. Water caste merchants took inventory of their wares. A few pilots from the air caste examined their vessels or made minor repairs. From every flagpole hung long, mustard banners proclaiming that the inhabitants of il’Wolaho – formerly Diepr-3 – were now under the jurisdiction of the Tau Empire.
Shadowsun displayed a banner as well: a waist-length purple cape hung over her left side. It was the official symbol for a tau in mourning. Sabu’ro walked proudly beside her. He wore a new suit of combat armour decorated with the insignia of a shas’ui. His helmet rested in the crook of his left arm. They passed into the shadow of the defence laser. The massive building reached up into a heaven streaked with grey clouds of smoke.
Shadowsun pointed through the crowd ahead of them. Through the throng she could see Hollett standing beside a large pile of suitcases and trunks. He wore knee-high boots, a simple pair of grey trousers and a brown leather jacket over the top of an off-white shirt. His plasma pistol rested in the holster on his hip. A large, white bandage etched with silver circuitry stretched across the bridge of his nose.
The two tau came to a halt. Sabu’ro gave a shallow bow of greeting. ‘Greetings, Hollett-la’, he said merrily. ‘How are you feeling?’
Hollett touched his nose and said, ‘You know this thing is just about healed? Those medics of yours sure know a thing or two.’ He looked at Shadowsun. ‘How’s your leg?’
Shadowsun merely thrust out a small digital readout. ‘Your transfer data,’ she said. ‘Show this to the pilots, and they will ensure that you get where you are going.’
Hollett accepted the pad, and tucked it inside a breast pocket. ‘And where is that, exactly?’
‘Colony Twenty-three,’ Sabu’ro answered. ‘I chose it myself. The port is sparsely populated, but multicultural. I thought that you might encounter other humans there from time to time.’
‘Nuni,’ he said.
‘You might not be so thankful when you get there,’ Shadowsun sneered. ‘It’s the epitome of desolation.’
Hollett looked over at his stack of belongings. ‘I’m sure we’ll make do,’ he said, and gestured with his fingers. A girl of perhaps five or six years cautiously leaned out from where she had been hiding and looked up at the blue-skinned aliens. She was long-limbed and thin and pretty. Her light-brown hair was cut to just above her shoulders. Her hazel eyes were wide with mistrust. She clutched a well-worn, four-legged, stuffed animal toy to her chest. She darted out from behind her cover, and latched herself to Hollett’s side.
‘Daddy, who’s that?’ she whispered loudly. Hollett hoisted her up in his arms and held her tightly. He bounced her lightly, told her to never mind, and kissed her cheek.
Shadowsun’s expression fell. ‘Your daughter?’ she croaked.
‘Janaya, yes.’
‘Where was she all this time?’ Sabu’ro inquired.
Hollett licked his lips and cast a glance towards Shadowsun before he jerked his head towards the dormant defence laser. All around its heavy base were nestled the hab-blocks of the citizenry and the barracks of the former Guardsmen.
‘We had a communal dormitory over there.’
Sabu’ro gasped with realisation. ‘If we had... if the fleet had fired on this place from orbit…’
From behind the four of them came a long, undulating wail, like a lamenting foghorn. They turned to see a small army of earth caste tau struggling to manoeuvre a massive cage up the boarding ramp of a cargo shuttle. Inside the enclosure, the ursaloth bemoaned his fate.
‘The king has been dethroned,’ Hollett muttered grimly.
‘What’s going to happen to him?’ Janaya asked.
‘I’m not sure, sweetie. I think he’s getting a new home. Like us.’
The flex-screen wrapped around Sabu’ro’s left forearm emitted three sharp chirps. He read the display, and whispered, ‘Commander, it’s Kor’el Kenhi’ta’s vessel. They have received a data packet from T’au, addressed to you.’
‘My shuttle is close by,’ she replied. ‘Have them transfer the message there.’
She took one last look at Hollett as he cradled his daughter.
‘Was it for this?’ she asked, but the former Guardsman’s only response was to hold the girl tighter. Shadowsun marched away through the crowd without another word. Sabu’ro started to follow, saw how Janaya buried her face into Hollett’s shoulder, and felt compelled to say something.
‘The ursaloth will be well cared for, I’m sure. The Menagerie is home to some of the most skilled xenologists in the Empire.’
Shadowsun was already standing just inside the open hatch of her shuttle. Sabu’ro joined her in the darkened interior, and activated a large viewscreen on the curving bulkhead.
‘We’re ready down here,’ he said.
The wrinkled, wizened face of Aun’va appeared. He was seated behind a grandiose, white desk. A towering hat was perched upon his head.
‘O’Shaserra, I hope that this message finds you not only alive and well, but victorious in your endeavours. The Aun’t’au’retha received your previous transmission, and have discussed it at length. The council acknowledges that you are well within your rights to take the Taal Saal’Y. Indeed, your retirement from active service in order to focus on a family is likely the wisest course of action. The Empire as a whole would suffer a great loss if Kiru’s line were to come an end. Therefore, if you wish to return home, you will be welcomed with all honour.
‘But I speak now, not on behalf of the Aun’t’au’retha, but for myself. Shadowsun, when I first met you, when you were just at the beginning of your caste training, I knew then that you would be one of the rare ones, one of those legendary few who push our entire race forwards with their actions. I did what I could to help. I used my influence to ensure that you received the most dangerous and difficult assignments, because the sharpest blade is tempered in the hottest forge.
‘Your father knew all of this, incidentally. Not only that, but he approved. He could never tell you himself, but he was very proud of you. He once said “in that girl, I see all of my best qualities and more”. That’s why he gave you your name. You eclipsed him while also being the light of his life.
‘I will understand if you choose to come home. But I also encourage you to rule your fears, and not be ruled by them. But you and I know that there is also a Greater Good. It often demands sacrifice and loss, but in the end, it is the wiser, better path.
‘Regardless of your decision, the Aun’t’au’retha and I eagerly await word from you.’
The image faded out. Neither Shadowsun nor Sabu’ro moved.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she muttered.
Sabu’ro’s face was etched with anticipation and worry. He swallowed and managed to voice the question burning within him. ‘Back to T’au, commander?’
She walked to the boarding hatch and surveyed the throng swirling about on the landing field. A cool breeze filled the shuttle with memories of smoke and fire. She saw Hollett seated on one of his trunks, cr
adling Janaya in his lap as she played with her stuffed toy. She saw that the ursaloth’s cage was nearly stowed away. She saw the tau boy standing at the base of the boarding ramp. He was dressed as before, in his crisp cadet’s uniform. His black hair-braid framed his face. Once, lying in the bog, she had asked who he was, but there was no need now. She knew who he was.
He was her boy.
You would have been E Rra’E – ‘Shadowsun’s son’. Others would have smiled whenever they heard your name. How ideal, they would say. Perfect alliteration. Balanced spelling. Even a clever homophone. You would have had all of my best qualities and more, a perfect inheritor of Kiru’s line. You would have eclipsed me, and I would have been so proud of you.
The boy regarded her forlornly and motioned for her to step down from out of the shuttle and join him. She thumbed the control panel next to her. The hatch swung shut, sealing away the noisy scene.
‘Why would we go home when there is so much still left to do?’ she said, answering Sabu’ro.
Behind her, the young shas’ui broke into a smile. ‘I’ll set course to rendezvous with Kenhi’ta’s vessel at once,’ he said, and headed to the cockpit with proud strides.
In the silence and isolation that rushed in, she placed a hand against the smooth metal door. Her head sagged and her body was wracked by three hard sobs. Tears splashed onto the tips of her hooves.
‘I’m so sorry, child,’ she whispered. ‘I just can’t.’
Then she drew a ragged breath, sniffled, and straightened her uniform. Oh, Oru’mi, she thought, wouldn’t you laugh to see your big sister right now. She spun on her heel and followed after Sabu’ro. There was work to be done for the last of Kiru’s line, she told herself. Important work. A Greater Good.
Moments later, the shuttle rocketed skywards. Shadowsun caught her reflection in the viewport as she watched the landing field recede. Her eyes were dry. After all, the boy on the planet below hadn’t really existed. And now, she realised, he never would.
The kauyon was called. The order was given. The hunt began.
Lightning split the sky. Fire raged unchecked, consuming the planet’s manufactories. Halfus burned. Storms raged in the heavens as descending troopships displaced the atmosphere.
The Tau Empire desired to liberate this world, this so-called bastion of the Martian priesthood.
They were here to free this place, to cast away the blind dogmatism offered by the distant heart of the Imperium. The choice was simple: live free, in harmony with the Greater Good, or die.
The humans, lost and blind in their belligerence, hidebound to ancient and obsolete traditions, rejected the Tau’va. Guns fired where words were offered. Screams shouted where peace was given. Silence reigned where dialogue was called.
The priesthood of Mars, as the gue’la called themselves, rejected the Tau’va with violence, with shouted prayers. Ambassadors were returned to the tau bloody and broken, executed before being allowed to speak. Accusations of fomenting rebellion were levelled. The tau, minds set upon this course, upon this planet, answered with weary hearts. This forge world would be brought into compliance with the Tau Empire, its forges repurposed, its people liberated in accordance with the Tau’va.
Shas’vre Fal’shia Bas’reh Valel paid no mind to this. Words still rang in his mind. His orders, delivered by the shas’o himself, were issued without preamble, without flattery. They were simple.
‘Hunt,’ the commander had said. ‘Teach the gue’la the price of rejecting the Greater Good.’
Vre’valel had nodded, content with his role and assured of his place in the greater conflict. His own relayed orders were just as simple.
Now he strode through the ruins of the human city. Fire warrior teams bowed with respect as he passed, something akin to awe flashing in their eyes. He paid them all no mind.
He passed a team of Broadsides hunkered down behind the tumbled brick walls of some gue’la structure. They ceased their railgun bombardment until he was past, guns dipped out of respect.
To these, his cousins, Vre’valel offered quiet words of encouragement.
Then he was past them, into the deeper parts of the night, through the powerless city streets.
Talaska Yones stared out into the dark Halfusian night, safe and secure within the Indomitable Iron. She could see nothing through the smoke and the dust and the fire. Even with the straining sensors of the Leman Russ’s auspex equipment, there was little to see. They passed beneath a towering half-cog structure, a sacred symbol to the Halfusian Mechanicus. She quickly made the sign of the cog against her breast.
Were she fully human, she might have cursed, but Talaska Yones had ceased to be fully human two decades ago. The Mechanicus, praises upon them, had excised parts of her brain and body and replaced them with the certainty of the machine. So Talaska Yones did not curse. She only muttered a prayer to the Omnissiah and to the Indomitable Iron’s blessed machine spirit.
The voice of the tank’s commander, Enri Harnold, bubbled at her in machine cant. It was phrased with polite markers, but the message was stern and emotive. ‘What can you see?’
Talaska Yones responded, appending her message with deference and discipline, ‘I see nothing, honoured sire.’
Harnold nodded in satisfaction, a curiously human gesture for a man missing almost sixty percent of his flesh-body. ‘Good,’ the commander of the Divine Right muttered to himself. They were far behind the front lines, far away from the xenos, but it never paid to be too cautious.
The tank trundled off into the night.
Two minutes later it was dead. The first casualty. The first to fall.
Talaska Yones, Commander Harnold, none of them knew what killed them. None of them saw it. None of them heard it.
One second they were alive. The next, they were a smoking ruin.
Four hundred metres to the right, advancing down a parallel street, was the Delta-88B. Adept Gurolf Pryce was using the Delta-88B’s sensors in an attempt to pierce the fog of war, pollution and industry that drifted about his own tank. The atmosphere of Halfus, never clear of industrial pollution, had grown worse since the xenos arrived, since the rioting menials put half the blessed manufactora to the torch.
They passed between two of those manufactora now, massive and imposing in the night, brick structures stamped from the same pattern, prayer banners burning in the breeze.
Adept Pryce cursed. The words he said were gutterspeak, scraps of code, and offensive merely by existence. They betrayed a deeper sense of unease, a deeper sense of emotion and a lack of blessed logic in the adept.
He received admonishment from the tank’s commander, but these were softened by attached signifiers expressing sympathy. ‘Emotive responses are unbecoming to servants of the machine.’
Adept Pryce murmured his apologies and continued to scan the route ahead. Bouncing artefacts jittered and capered on screen, resolving into buildings, or feral menials crouched down side streets.
Pryce watched the screens before him with augmetic eyes, clicking and whirring, while what remained of his brain scanned the rudimentary manifold for possible returns. The system malfunctioned, fuzzing in and out, rife with interference.
Something zipped across the manifold, something small and bowl-shaped and impossibly fast. His eyes did not see the same object. He tagged it and packaged the data for review by the commander.
‘What is…?’ the commander began.
He never finished his question.
Pryce never answered.
Plasma lanced into the Leman Russ, breaking apart the Delta-88B. Pryce, the commander and the crew atomised.
The Theorem was lagging behind. Some stubborn part of the machine-spirit, irritated at being awoken so soon after birth, refused to move at full speed.
Reggis Qerat, noospheric officer of the Theorem, was busy trying to explain the problem to his commandi
ng officer on the battalion command Baneblade, Alpha-01A. He winced as static washed out his aural feeds.
‘The 88B has vanished,’ hissed Treyor Gant, sensorii for the Theorem.
‘Explain,’ demanded Commander Luver Whyatt.
‘It’s just gone, sir,’ Gant replied, aghast at the lack of knowledge. Horror rippled through the tank. The lack of knowledge was both disturbing and terrifying.
Qerat attempted to set aside the conversation, to discard the unwelcome emotions washing through him. He focused on the blessed task assigned to him. He returned to his continued conversation with the officer on the Lament. Static again washed into his ears, but now Qerat swore he could hear something under it, something that sounded… other.
He was about to warn his commander, to ask for clarification when two shots hit the tank abeam.
The Theorem ceased to exist.
Vre’valel smiled. It was not a smile of gloating, nor a smile of arrogance or even victory. Such things were beneath one devoted to the Tau’va, beneath him, more fitting for the gue’la he hunted.
His drones surged ahead searching, reporting. In truth he did not need them. The gue’la made no attempt to hide their passage.
Two had already fallen by his hand. Destroyed in the name of the Greater Good, cast down for their rejection and their slavish adherence to a doctrine of intolerance.
Their machines, their ‘tanks’ to use the humans’ ugly tongue, were brutal things. They were creations of arrogance and brawn, little different than the ramshackle machines constructed by the be’gel. They were rattling vehicles of stark lines, dark colours and belligerent intent, nothing like the clean, sweeping curves of a Fire Caste machine, proud with the colours of Fal’shia and the Tau Empire.
Gue’la scattered before him, falling upon their knees at the sight of him and his machine. Screeches broadcast across the communications network, the signature of hunting kroot while the more clipped and professional tones of advancing fire warrior stealth teams kept him abreast of the greater battle abroad. Other voices were noticeable for their absence, as was only proper.