Shas'o

by Various

  ‘Perhaps you are just too stupid to know when you are dead?’

  The Space Marine’s weapon’s hummed into life, a sparking energy field enveloping its thick blade. He raised the weapon to strike.

  Kal’va looked down, turning his knife in his hand, angling the blade towards his own chest.

  The Space Marine paused.

  ‘You prove me right, xenos. No warrior would yield his life while there is still blood in his veins. Perhaps it is as well you favour this end. I have little wish to sully my blade with your craven flesh.’

  Kal’va took care to wrap each of his fingers around the hilt of his blade.

  ‘For the Greater Good.’

  With the last of his strength, he tightened his grip. The hilt flashed once, marking the Space Marine’s face with a targeting light.

  ‘No!’ Rage crushed his features, and the Space Marine raised his pistol to fire as his head exploded in a hail of brain-matter and bone fragments.

  Kal’va looked up, watching as the body toppled, convulsing, to the ground. Offering his thanks to the sniper drone who had taken the shot, he slumped back.

  He had lied to the Space Marine. Since the day he had been born, he had never been one, had never been alone. For that was what it meant to be tau. To be a single piece of the greater whole. The Greater Good. The thought brought Kal’va warmth as he smiled and closed his eyes.

  ‘A warrior with no enemies can win no victories. Do you accept this as true, fire warrior?’

  ‘Yes, aun,’ I reply with a nod. Keeping my eyes low, I follow the trail of the ethereal’s robe as he paces around me.

  ‘A fire warrior is an instrument of the Greater Good. He has no enemies but those who would stand against it.’

  ‘A second truth, aun.’

  The ethereal stops and looks at me.

  ‘Yet you, Kal’va, you sought enemies of your own. You acted to take the life from those who took from you.’

  ‘With honour, I killed those who stood against the Greater Good,’ I protest.

  ‘You killed for revenge,’ says the ethereal. ‘You, a valued instrument of the Greater Good, were almost lost for selfish cause.’

  I tense then, awaiting the cold stroke of the aun’s honour blade. It is no less than I deserve.

  ‘Still,’ he says, ‘there is no shame in such an act while it aligns with the needs of the whole.’

  He pauses, as if considering.

  ‘But what now, fire warrior? Your enemies are dead, and your victories are behind you.’

  I make to speak, but find my voice lacking.

  ‘As has been the truth since the beginning, the Greater Good shall be your salvation,’ the ethereal continues. ‘It has many enemies, Kal’va. I would have you fight for it. Through its triumphs you may still find honour and victory. Even death cannot defeat you, so long as the Greater Good prevails.’

  ‘The Greater Good lights all fires,’ I say. ‘Only with fire can a blade be tempered, the keenest blades to win the battle.’ I press my palms together and touch them to my head in respect. ‘What enemy would you have me face, aun?’

  ‘Time, Kal’va. You must help us defeat time.’

  I let myself fall, dropping from the Kass’Kor to victory, and to death.

  Above me, the Orca drop-ship recedes from view as its thrusters punch it back up into the stratosphere. Below, ashen clouds, thick with the debris of war, rush to envelop me.

  ‘Check weapons for readiness.’

  Shas’ei’s voice sounds in my comm-feed. There is a burning disquiet in his tone. A rawness I am certain I am the source of. I listen as Vas’la confirms his status.

  ‘Weapons primed for firing.’

  Unlike him, I am new to the team, and I am not honour bonded to Shas’ei. I will remain bound to Or’shara and Sas’la until I join them in death. It is no less than they deserve and what true Ta’lissera Va demands.

  ‘My life is your life, and your life is my life,’ I say.

  I let the words of bonding focus me as I flex my right arm. My suit responds to firing speed, spinning up the barrels of my burst cannon, mounted like a vengeful vambrace. A series of icons stream across my display, denoting ammunition and temperature.

  The fusion blaster welded to my other arm hums to full charge as I close my fist.

  It is a strange, removed sensation to pilot a Crisis battlesuit. To wield weapons that can reduce rock to sand and yet be unable to feel the cold of their alloy or the warm vibrations of their energy cells.

  Another icon blinks onto my display, indicating my flamer as fuelled and functioning. I cannot feel its weight. Perched on my shoulder, the suit bears its burden. It is then that I realise what it is to be shas’ui. To have survived as I have, to have killed as I have. It is to be numb to the heat of the fire burning in your breast.

  It is in that moment that I miss the weight of my rifle.

  I deactivate my suit’s internal stabiliser and steel myself against the rush of the descent. Closing my eyes, I bathe in a welcome flood of adrenaline. I am as a flaming meteor raining down upon the enemies of the empire.

  ‘Kal’va, confirm readiness.’

  Shas’ei’s voice snaps me back to the moment. I reactivate my suit’s stabiliser.

  ‘Ready.’

  Clear of the cloud’s embrace, I get my first glimpse of the ground. Our research centre is a grey stain that mars the green of the landscape. Around its perimeter, a wide curtain of open land is choked with bodies and the scorched shells of vehicles.

  Flashes of pulse rifle fire erupt from behind the walls of the compound.

  ‘We should take care not to obscure the defenders’ sight arcs.’ A series of alternate deployment locations scroll over my display as Vas’la speaks.

  ‘The fire warrior garrison will be dead before we impact,’ says Shas’ei. ‘Hold descent.’

  I look again to the walls of the compound, seeing fewer weapon flashes this time. Shas’ei was right. The horde of green monstrosities swarming towards the compound is endless. The fire warriors have only moments left. My display updates as Shas’ei tags the shuttle descending in our wake.

  ‘The earth caste need five rai’kor to evacuate the prototype,’ he says. ‘In the name of the auns, we will grant them that.’

  Five rai’kor. It is a lifetime in combat, where each moment is earned with blood. I look to the compound walls as the final trace of pulse fire falls dark. Lifetime. A blessing we have precious little of.

  I activate my suit’s jetpack and halt my fall. I fire my boosters, uttering the words of Cleansing Descent as targeting icons swarm over my tactical display.

  ‘We are the fire. Only death shall extinguish our flame.’

  As I hit the ground, I harden my jaw against the imagined force of the impact. My suit hisses and clacks in protest, the leg hydraul­ics bunching to absorb the shock and pincered feet cracking the stone of the courtyard beneath me.

  ‘For the Greater Good!’ I shout.

  The enemy are everywhere, hulking, green monsters with sinews as thick as my arms, and blood-red eyes that strain in their sockets. The closest opens its mouth, loosing a bestial cry of rage to herald my death. It bares its yellowed incisors, levels a rusted cleaver and rushes at me.

  I open fire. The ork dies, torn apart by the energy rounds spinning from my burst cannon.

  The rest of the horde erupts then, shaken from their stupor to brutish vigour by the other’s death. I turn my cannon on them. They come apart in irregular gobbets, their flesh churned and shredded.

  The tide of green thins, but I am offered no respite. A pair of gargantuan wretches stride into the gap, towering head and shoulders over the others. Thick, metal plating covers their bodies, bolted to their musculature and welded to their skin in a haphazard approximation of armour.

  I feel a flick
er of frustration as their makeshift war-plate turns aside my fusillade. The orks grin with malice, breaking into a heavy-stepped run. Fulgurant energies crackle over the weapon-appendages fixed to their arms as they close on me. I hold my ground. Their confidence is misplaced.

  It is my turn to grin as the pair vanish, incinerated by dual blasts from my fusion weapon. The horde pauses a moment, transfixed by the hissing trail left by my gun as it boils away the water in the air.

  Amused by their kin’s demise, the orks erupt in cruel laughter as they charge towards me. They are a rolling wall of sinew and blade, and I feel the reactive joints of my suit’s pinioned feet adjust as the ground shudders under their tread. Still I remain free of the freezing touch of fear. Too eager for the kill and packed too tight in their frenzied clamour, it is now that the orks are at their most vulnerable.

  My flamer roars as it brings them agonising death, bathing the orks in a sheet of liquid fire. It is a mercy that the enclosed environment of my suit spares me the stench of their skin; they melt to flesh-gruel as it runs from their bones.

  Even in the face of such horror, the orks come still. Driven by bestial stubbornness, they bear down on me with unyielding vigour.

  ‘Ma va’ra!’ I spit the curse and pace backwards, firing with every­thing I have.

  The orks crash into the wall of rounds, flame and heat, spraying me with their blood. Still they come. They die, and die and die. But I labour under no falsehood. I am not winning. I take another step back, and another, losing ground with every reverberating thump of my cannon. My ammo counter races to zero, speeding downwards far faster than the mission counter.

  Four rai’kor. Still a lifetime.

  I am alone, again. Shas’ei and Vas’la are dead, their ident-icons hanging dark on my display. Yet in place of the cold touch of sorrow or the burning desire for vengeance, I taste only the ashen cloy of frustration. Their lives were sold for almost no time at all.

  Three. The number on my mission counter flickers down. I pull back to the main blast-doors, using my suit’s bulk to block the orks’ path into the research silo. A monstrous beast shoulders its way through the horde and bears down on me.

  I open fire.

  Despite the wound it suffers, the ork barrels forward, slamming into me. I topple, and it lands on top of me, a twisted snarl creasing its face. Warnings fill my display as its crude weapon carves chunks from my armour. Hoping that my thermo-shielding is still intact, I fire.

  Flame washes over us both and the ork dies, dripping off me in viscous clumps.

  I rise into a torrent of bullets and return fire, guiding my flamer across the press of greenskins. Three more of them fall before a heavy blade cleaves through my weapon. I twist, driving my fusion blaster into my attacker’s head. He dies.

  I fire again, killing another of the armoured behemoths as they lumber towards me. It was my last charge. Not that it matters. My bones rattle as another withering fusillade slams into me. My suit hisses and whines as the ork slugs break it apart, smashing its power core and dropping me to my back.

  Pain lances through me, replaced in moments by a numb wetness as blood spills from my abdomen.

  I struggle to stay conscious as an ork stamps down onto my chest, pinning me under his boot. He thunders a fist into his breast in triumph and reverses the grip on his knife. I glance at the mission countdown as he prepares to plunge the blade into me.

  Two.

  The number twists in my gut like the cruellest of taunts. I have failed. The orks will overrun the base and plunder the empire’s technology. I close my eyes and wait for the pain that will mark the end of my trial.

  The familiar snap-thrum of pulse fire opens my eyes. I look up to see the ork’s body shudder and topple away, riddled with holes. To my left a lone fire warrior, an arm missing at the elbow, his rifle balanced across a dead ork, continues to fire. His eyes burn with the rage I thought long lost to me. I tap the eject protocol and my suit opens.

  Prising myself from my harness, I crawl towards the fire warrior, fixed on the embers in his eyes. I ignore the death at my back as I move, pulling myself across the floor hand-span by agonising hand-span.

  The counter on my belt chimes one, and I find the strength to quicken my advance.

  The fire warrior is dead when I reach him. I prop myself up on his corpse and swing his rifle around. As the familiar feel of its stock settles against my chin I realise that I am no longer alone.

  I am Kal’va, warrior of the Greater Good, and I will kill with all the fury of those who have come before me and of those who will come after. I open fire. An ork dies, his head exploded. Another dies, and another. I change the power pack between breaths and fire again.

  Moments – they are now all the earth caste need. I reach under the fire warrior’s corpse for another power pack and–

  I feel pain, and then I am in the air, hanging limp from an ork blade. He pulls me closer to his face, grinning. I smile back.

  Over the rumble of the ork’s laugh, beyond the clamour of the horde around me, I hear the thunder of shuttle engines.

  Victory. In the name of the Greater Good, I know victory one final time.

  About the AuthorS

  Author of the Path of the Dark Eldar series and the related novella The Masque of Vyle, along with the Necromunda novel Survival Instinct and a host of short stories, Andy Chambers has more than twenty years’ experience creating worlds dominated by war machines, spaceships and dangerous aliens. He lives and works in Nottingham.

  Peter Fehervari is the author of the novel Fire Caste, featuring the Astra Militarum and Tau Empire, and the Tau-themed Quick Reads ‘Out Caste’ and ‘A Sanctuary of Wyrms’, the latter of which appeared in the anthology Deathwatch: Xenos Hunters. He also wrote the Space Marines Quick Reads ‘Nightfall’, which was in the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology, and ‘The Crown of Thorns’. He lives and works in London.

  Braden Campbell is the author of Shadowsun: The Last of Kiru’s Line and Shield of Baal: Tempestus for Black Library, as well as several short stories including Tantalus. Braden has enjoyed Warhammer 40,000 for nearly a decade, and remains fiercely dedicated to his dark eldar.

  Joe Parrino is the author of a range of Warhammer 40,000 stories, including the novella Shield of Baal: Devourer, the audio dramas Alone, Damocles: The Shape of the Hunt and Assassinorum: The Emperor’s Judgement, and the short stories ‘Witness’, ‘The Patient Hunter’, ‘Nightspear’, ‘In Service to Shadows’ and ‘No Worse Sin’. He lives, writes and works in the American Pacific Northwest.

  Andy Smillie is best known for his visceral Flesh Tearers novellas Sons of Wrath and Flesh of Cretacia, and the novel Trial by Blood. He has also written a host of short stories starring this brutal Chapter of Space Marines and a number of audio dramas including The Kauyon, Blood in the Machine, Deathwolf and From the Blood.

  An extract from 'Blood Oath' by Phil Kelly, taken from ‘Damocles’

  A thousand decapitated heads. One for every battle-brother in the Chapter.

  By the time they had left Tarotian IV, the Third Company’s kill count had been closer to a million. He had killed over a hundred rebels himself. It was often the case. But like all White Scars, Kor’sarro knew the value of symbolism, and a round thousand was enough to make the point.

  He wanted to be there to see them. An ending, of a sort, a cauterising of the wounds the Chapter had sustained on Tarotian IV.

  Kor’sarro Khan stared out into the heat haze of Plain Zhou. From his vantage point within the highest eyrie in the fortress-monastery, it felt like he could see to the edges of the world. His topknot of greasy black hair flew erratically in the thermals, its thick strands mimicking the victory pennants waving high above.

  Though the khan’s narrowed eyes flicked from scrub to bunker to a herd of stallions galloping in the distance, his hands had their attention elsewhere. Cal
loused fingers worked mechanically but precisely at the balcony’s edge, always in motion. The tip of the khan’s curved dagger scratched like an awl, carving the Khorchin word for ‘seeking’ onto the side of a dormant bolt shell.

  Forty-nine more of the deadly little cylinders shone in the evening sun, ranged along the balcony neat as dominoes. Those to the khan’s left were finished, and those to his right were bare. Three full crates hid in the shadow of the buttress arch, the tiny golden curls of swarf around their bases rolled back and forth by a playful wind.

  The thud-stride-thud of Sudabeh crossing the eyrie yurut’s rugs in full battleplate made the khan’s cheek twitch. He placed the last of the unfinished shells to one side.

  ‘Sunning yourself between hunts, my khan?’ said the newcomer.

  ‘Stormseer. Your… gifts.’ Kor’sarro looked at the sky for a second. ‘They are wasted here.’

  ‘Anyone with half a nostril could tell that you’ve been standing in the sun. If you ever run out of promethium, you could scrape your skin and use the run-off to feed Moondrakkan’s engine instead.’

  ‘Ha!’ shouted the khan, grinning and clenching his fist in triumph as if Sudabeh had helped him solve a difficult problem. He would not take the Stormseer’s bait today, he was in too good a mood for it.

  Like all White Scars, Kor’sarro loved to feel the play of the elements first hand. For the last three hours he had been meditating in the boiling heat of Quan Zhou, clad in little more than loose white fatigues. His olive leather-like skin practically glowed, shining with oily sweat.

  The khan raised a thick bare arm covered in zigzag scars, revealing a tuft of armpit hair that protruded from the sutured edge of his torsal glove. ‘Have a proper sniff then, naysmith.’

  ‘I respectfully decline your generous proposal,’ said Sudabeh, using the formal Chogorian dialect. Both men chuckled, two sets of white teeth sparkling in the sun. They had been Space Marines long enough to know that moments of humanity were to be treasured, no matter how simple. In fact the simpler they came, the better.