“How does he progress?” his father said, presumably speaking once more to the shas’vre. Kais felt exposed, an exhibit to be prodded and discussed, unworthy of interaction. The shas’vre’s faltering reply was crudely diplomatic.
“He is... able, Shas’o. Able indeed.”
“Able?”
Kais felt the pause like the end of the world. He knew the Shas’vre wouldn’t lie, could already taste the humiliation.
“Yes, Shas’o. Adequate.”
“But his dedication to the tau’va is commendable, I daresay? He excels?”
The shas’vre mouthed wordlessly, then sighed.
“He is... a little impetuous, perhaps.”
“Impetuous?” O’Shi’ur’s disapproving voice was a leaden bell ringing in Kais’s ears, tolling out across his private world of shame.
“Yes,” the shas’vre went on, apparently resigned to total candour. “Given to tempers, Shas’o. Changes in mood and focus. But... he is still young. Perhaps we mi—”
“Is this true, boy?”
Kais forced himself to look up again. His father’s eyes burnt themselves onto his memory, smouldering with distaste and disappointment, crystallising the world, shattering everything in his life and filling it instead with only the acidity of that unrelenting, unforgiving, unimpressed gaze.
“Yes, Shas’o,” he mumbled, barely able to form words.
His father stood and stared, hooves tapping at the sand. He grunted under his breath twice, clearly fighting his dissatisfaction in an attempt to articulate.
“We are told,” he began, forming words thoughtfully, “that there is a place for everyone in the tau’va, regardless of their... inadequacies. One merely need find one’s niche.”
Kais could hear the disbelief in the voice, falsifying its reassurance; all the rhetoric in the world couldn’t erase those disappointed eyes from his memory.
“Here.” O’Shi’ur’s calloused hand thrust itself into his vision, clutching a small display wafer. “A gift.”
Kais took it, numbly. The world was dead. It didn’t matter.
His father left, the retinue of warriors drifted away like mist and the training began again. The silent dome stared down in mute judgment, the sand rose in miniature explosions with every footfall, and everything was normal.
Only at rotaa-end did he dare to examine the wafer. It was a small litany, written by his father in his own clipped, angular hand. It read:
My son,
No expansion without equilibrium.
No conquest without control.
Pursue success in serenity
And service to the tau’va.
With pride.
Shas’o T’au Shi’ur
That night, after staring at the words for long, sleepless decs, Kais dreamed of falling into an endless abyss, and whenever he swivelled towards the surface all he could see was a pair of dark, disenchanted eyes, glaring down at him.
“Two raik’ors.”
El’Lusha’s terse proclamation jolted Kais from the reverie. He found himself unconsciously clutching at the utility pack clipped to his belt, feeling the familiar shape of the old display wafer through its thin material.
He knew his reluctance to discard the token was sentimentality of the worst kind: treasuring such a bauble long after its text had been committed to memory smacked of impracticality, utterly in violation of the principles of the Greater Good. Still, it exerted some form of impossible gravity upon him — he could no more throw it away than he could believe himself worthy of its lesson.
Satisfied that the wafer remained in its accustomed position, Kais glanced around the dropship. From across the hold El’Lusha stared at him with a sort of quiet amusement, completely at odds with his grizzled, scarred features. Kais looked away.
“Helmet checks,” the commander grunted. “One-on-one.”
Kais turned to find a partner quickly, grateful for the distraction. A hand landed heavily on his shoulder.
“Here, Shas’la. I’ll do it.” El’Lusha stood over him, the same quiet smile creasing the corners of his mouth.
“Thank you, Shas’el.” Kais mumbled, uncertain. He upended the helmet and lowered it over his head, feeling the familiar surge of sensory information as the faceplate made contact with his skin. The world opened up from a single speck of light, a horizontal explosion of colours and shapes overwritten by winking text brackets and analysis readouts.
“You’re La’Kais, aren’t you?” Lusha’s rasping voice enquired, hands firmly joining the clasps along Kais’s spine. “I checked.”
Kais frowned, unsure how to react. Why should a shas’el know his name? Unless...
“I knew your father.”
And there it was again: that crystallisation of reality, crumbling his senses and filling him with the certainty of his own worthlessness: all he was and would ever be was a reflection, and a faint one at that, of his father.
“He was a great warrior,” Lusha continued, knuckles rapping the base of Kais’s neck in a final test of the helmet’s seal. “I served with him for many tau’cyrs. I was with him on Fal’shia when the Y’he came. I mourned his death.”
Kais replied without thinking. “I didn’t know him well.”
Immediately he regretted it, chastising his own lack of respect. If Lusha noted the overfamiliarity he gave no indication of it, nodding sagely.
“I don’t think anyone did,” he said, thoughtful.
A set of digits in the corner of Kais’s vision blurred towards zero, an interface with the dropship’s systems reminding him visually of the vessel’s meteoric descent. Lusha was still staring at him.
“Thank you, Shas’el,” Kais mumbled, indicating his helmet seals, this time careful to observe the commander’s caste-and-rank epithet. “Should I check yours?”
Lusha shook his head with a small frown. “My thanks, trooper, but no. I’m staying aboard, apparently. Shas’ar’tol command doesn’t like its officers getting their hands dirty if they can possibly help it.” He shook his head again, muttering beneath his breath.
Kais said nothing, sinking back into his deployment seat in astonishment at El’Lusha’s open disapproval of his own superiors. Had a shas’la ever dared express such sedition they could be guaranteed an intensive course in mental correction at the very least, not that any were foolish enough to do so.
“First combat?” Lusha grinned. “I can always tell.”
“Yes, Shas’el.” Kais wrung his hands together, uncomfortable at the attention. He felt betrayed by his nerves, compelled somehow to prove his preparedness. “But... I’ve served four tau’cyrs already, Shas’el. And the combat simulations at the training dome are—”
“Ahh, simulations...” Lusha grinned, “and four tau’cyrs of standing about guarding por’vres and por’els, no doubt.”
Kais nodded, embarrassed. Lusha chuckled.
“Your father said something to me, once,” he grunted, pursing his lips in thought. “Might help you.”
Kais frowned, uneasy at the prospect of hearing his father’s words from beyond the funeral pyre.
“He fixed me with those eyes of his and he said, ‘Young one... Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re ready for this.’ Then he opened the drop doors and out we went.” Lusha’s face clouded, preoccupied by the memories.
“You don’t think us ready, Shas’el?”
“No. I don’t think it’s possible to be ready, La’Kais. The best you can do is expect the worst.”
Kais peered past the commander to his friends and comrades. Their postures betrayed them: each as anxious as he, unwilling to admit their fear to themselves. Somehow that knowledge was strangely reassuring. He wasn’t alone with his terror.
“Warriors!” Lusha boomed, startling them. “Attend! In half a raik’or we’ll be at deployment altitude! This is it! This is what you trained for! This rotaa you face your Trial by Fire. Do not expect it to be easy!”
A light began to flash. The door into
the drop deck gushed open and the padded restraints around each seat relaxed.
Muscles tensed. Teeth ground against one another.
“Details are unimportant. There’s been an incident — that’s all you need to know. Remember your niche. Remember your place. You are a cog in a machine! Ask no questions! Obey and concentrate!
Your mission is simple: engage and destroy. Conduct the mont’sel combat-pattern at all times; be swift and leave nothing alive. There’s a trench network at the city’s perimeter, so spread out when you’re down and clear the area. The crisis teams are setting down on the other side of the city, so don’t expert any backup. Things are not going well down there. Let’s turn the tide!”
A chime sounded. The readout in Kais’s helmet counted away the moments implacably, refusing to slow or stop in answer to his shrieking nerves. His ears roared. Nothing was real.
“Remain focused on the tau’va! In unity lies progress! In harmony lies victory! Don’t let yourselves down, Fire Warriors!”
The ship shuddered. The hover thrusters rumbled to life. A fragmented thunderstorm raged beyond the hull.
A siren sounded.
“Deployment positions,” said Lusha.
There were nine, in total. Eight clutching guns, staring and sneering through the bars of the cage, and one bustling industriously amongst the instrumentation of the chamber.
They smelt bitter, an aroma as unvaried and unsubtle as it was unpleasant, so unlike the rich pheromone language the tau enjoyed. These creatures were a race of clones, pink, frail and moist.
Aun’el T’au Ko’vash, secured behind adamantium bars, found himself searching for traces of artificial individuality with which to tell them apart: rank stripes, facial scars, tattoos. As an ethereal, the ruling caste of the tau race, it was his particular assignation in life to understand and appreciate the unity and the deficiency in all things. Nonetheless, before he’d ever encountered the gue’la, he’d never imagined a species so utterly ignorant of its own imperfections. The gue’la, he had quickly learned, were going to be trouble.
And now he found himself their prisoner, abducted in a storm of violence that he was still fighting to understand. It didn’t matter. The reality of any situation was in its present, and in the “now” he was trapped. Helpless. An exhibit.
To Ko’vash, accustomed to the sweeping curvature and bright pallor of tau construction, his prison seemed unbearably grim. Given the lack of windows and the broad steps leading down to this low ceilinged space, he guessed he was incarcerated underground. The room itself was small and stifling, bordered by consoles and machinery, all typically gue’la in their rambling ugliness. Each of the eight soldiers faced his cage with an expression — in as much as he understood gue’la mannerisms — of intense disgust. One spat noisily.
“Don’t do that, idiot!” barked a ninth, the coarse language quickly filtered and translated by the didactic learning modules the Aun, like all tau, had absorbed as an infant. From what little of it Ko’vash could see beyond its thick black cowl, this guela’s face was a mass of twitching implants and sensors, copper wiring visible through its necrotic flesh. It jabbed a finger at the perpetrator, even now wiping spittle from his chin.
“This is a sterile area!”
The soldier appeared appropriately repentant until the black-cowl turned away, although Ko’vash entirely failed to interpret the bizarre hand gesture that followed. The ethereal was beginning to learn that such wasteful displays, utterly redundant in any constructive sense, were typical of his captors.
He made a decision. Opening his eyes fully, he dropped the facade of unconsciousness and rose to his feet in a single sweeping motion. The rush of shocked pheromones from each of the gue’la was, he didn’t mind admitting, deeply gratifying. The black-cowl recovered first.
“Well, well...” he muttered, hands rubbing together. A slight smile played across his metallic lips and he gestured vaguely at one of the soldiers, eyes not leaving Ko’vash. “Contact Severus. Tell him our guest is awake.” The soldier sprinted up the stairs, not looking back.
The robed human positioned himself before the cage and studied Ko’vash intently, rubbing his chin.
“Well,” he kept saying quietly, thinking to himself, “well, well...”
Ko’vash had neither the patience nor the inclination to remain silent in the face of scrutiny. He leaned forwards slowly.
“Who are you?” he said, testing his abilities to articulate the gue’las’ crude language. A second rush of astonished pheromones greeted his senses.
“You speak Imperial?” the black-cowl hissed, cable-strewn fingers clenching in surprise.
Ko’vash ignored the question, irritated by the gue’la tendency to state the obvious, and repeated: “Who are you, human?”
The face beneath the cowl leered. “You’re very well spoken — for an abomination. I respect that.”
Ko’vash merely stared, absorbing every shred of sensory information around him. The gue’la bowed with a sarcastic flourish, the bristling components of his face twitching excitedly.
“I am Turial Farrachus,” he said, “Genetor primus of the Magos Biologis and Adept of the Officio Xenobiologica. I’m what you might call an... enthusiast of all things ‘tau’.”
Ko’vash nodded, mentally storing the name. As much as his helplessness galled him, his first instinct was to gather information. Conversation seemed the most probable source of answers. He dipped his head respectfully, deciding politeness would be his best tool, and declared: “I am Aun’el T’au Ko’vash.”
“Ah, yes,” Farrachus purred, voice thick with insincere gravity. “Let me see now... That would make you an Aun of the rank ‘el’, correct? The... third highest, I think?”
“Fourth,” Ko’vash interceded, interested in the gue’la’s knowledge despite himself. Such basic factors of tau life were hardly secrets; surely these frail creatures didn’t bring him here for this?
“I stand corrected.” Farrachus grinned. “The central part of your name is your birthworld — what was it?”
“T’au.”
“That’s it... And the last section is the ‘given’ name, if memory serves. ‘Ko-vaj’, was it?”
“Ko’vash...”
The magos bowed flamboyantly again. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“What is this place, Adept Farrachus?”
“That’s irrelevant,” the man smiled, turning away to continue his inspection of a blinking datascreen. “Consider yourself a guest of His Most Sacred Majesty, the Emperor of Mankind. I suggest you enjoy his hospitality while it lasts.”
He selected a polished scalpel from a tray at his side and examined it pointedly. There was something almost amphibious to his features; the wide mouth and metal-infested skin spread in an ugly smile that derived, Ko’vash could clearly see, from his perceived seniority to those around him.
The ethereal refused to be cowed in the same way, staring disdainfully at the brandished scalpel. In truth, the didactic memories divulged little material regarding this “Officio Xenobiologica”, but the overtones were clear. Without a trace of arrogance Ko’vash was fully aware of his importance to the tau: to have fallen into the hands of beings as fiercely expansionist as the gue’la was nothing short of disastrous. He had no doubt that, at the first possible juncture, he would be tortured for whatever tactical knowledge he possessed. The shortsightedness of the gue’la was appalling.
Whispering a calming litany, he reminded himself that even the gue’la, in time, would come to embrace the tau’va. All things would, eventually.
“How did I come to be here?” he purred, examining his memories for clues.
He’d been visiting the colony world Yu’kanesh when it happened; a riot of gunfire and madness that left his retinue pulverised and him gagging for air. He remembered the gas they’d used, curling through his mind and dampening every sensation. He remembered shouts and screams, then vast shapes in the fog hulking implacably forwards, then nothing.
“My employer organised some... mutual friends to fetch you.” The human chuckled, not looking round. “He’s most anxious to meet you.”
“Your ‘employer’?”
“That’s right. Well... Our ‘host’, at any rate. Ultimately I serve a far greater cause, as do all of the Emperor’s flock.”
“We’re not so dissimilar, then,” Ko’vash trilled, testing him.
“You’re quite wrong,” Farrachus growled, smug features twisting with anger. He fiddled with the knife impatiently, testing its weight. “We’re worlds apart, you and I.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Ko’vash waved an elegant hand dismissively, gratified at the ease with which these inefficient creatures could be goaded. “Tell me... What is your Emperor?”
Farrachus’s eyes flashed angrily. “How dare you speak his name? I’ll not tolerate xenos sullying his purity.”
Ko’vash tilted his head, undeterred by the insult. “Nonetheless — the question stands. What is he?”
“He is the purity of mankind. Our light and our guide. I wouldn’t expect an abomination to understand!”
“Would you say, then, that he represents the whole of your race?”
“Of course! We live and die to serve him!”
“And in so doing, you serve all gue’la?”
The adept’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Where are you going with this, alien?”
Ko’vash allowed a serene smile to play across his lips. “The ‘greater power’ that I serve,” he said, “teaches us that in service to our race, we contribute to the Greater Good... Are your Emperor and my tau’va truly so different?”
“That’s enough,” the man growled, all vestiges of humour discarded.
“You called yourself an enthusiast of the tau,” Ko’vash persisted, “so you must know of the tau’va... You must know we seek to unite all things for their mutual benefit, not to destroy them? We are no threat to you, unless provoked.”
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