Delpheus leaned in close to Ardias’s face, feverish lips trembling. His voice was almost inaudible, psychic hood turning the air greasy.
“Old friend,” he hissed, “if you’ve ever trusted me... If ever you’ve believed my words, hear me now. A darkness approaches. There is... The Ultramarines, throne bless their thousand souls... They’ll be needed. Let the Raptors fight these tau, if they must. Win or lose — it doesn’t matter. We must be ready for the aftermath. We must steel ourselves for the masked fiend...”
Ardias stared deep into his old friend’s eyes and saw, as ever, the aching pain of the psychic curse, a lonely voice of sanity crying out from beyond a boundary of warp-spawned madness. But there was an inviolable core of certainty there as well. He took another glance at the sergeants. They weren’t remotely convinced.
“What would you have me do?” he asked his shivering comrade.
“Just... be ready... they come. They come...”
The librarian sunk to his knees, eyes rolling into his head. He collapsed to the deck with a groan and lay there unconscious, breathing heavily.
Sergeant Corlum broke the expectant silence. “Sir?”
Ardias didn’t take his eyes off the Librarian, gritting his teeth. “Cancel all previous orders.” he said. “Have the men standing by.”
“But sir! You can’t believ—”
“No arguments, brother. I want the men ready. Weapons loaded and armed. Distribute ammunition evenly. It seems we must wait for action.”
“Sir.”
“Fall out.”
The sergeants stamped out, shaking their heads and muttering. Ardias regretted their discontent, but could hardly blame them. He stared at the librarian, feverish breaths slowly normalising, and wondered what he’d meant.
They come... they come...
The other shas’las were in awe of him, he realised. Oh, they tried to conceal it, keeping pace with him, twittering professionally, taking turns to cover the rear or to take point. He’d decided to let them try and keep up, if they must. They were judging themselves along parameters for which he had no use.
Number of kills. Courage under fire. Objectives overcome. Real things; physical, violent things. For them these were the heart of their struggles and challenges, their Trials by Fire. He envied them the simplicity of their test.
Twice now since boarding this vaulted sepulchre-in-space he’d been forced to slam shut his eyes and drag the rage into a confined ball of focus, reciting his father’s meditation over and over and over.
The hangar had been a killing ground, a debris-strewn abattoir streaked through by crash landing capsules, mangled gue’la attack craft and artillery fire, digging gouges from the deck and dousing everything in burning fuel, air-skimming debris and blood. He’d lost control, briefly. He’d sprung from his burning shuttle with an adrenaline surge, spraying the panicky gue’la with carbine fire. He’d watched a boarding capsule plough into their pintle guns like a vengeful meteor, pulping their frail bodies and detonating in a whirlwind of overheating munitions. The other tau, converging on the masked plinth where he’d established his slaying point, had cried out in horror at the carnage. He’d smiled.
It happened again whilst disabling the guns on the deck below. It was as though a haze came down, like nothing was real and everything was distant. It felt like being numb: his inadequacies filled the world, a shadow gallery of frustrated instructors, mocking cadre mates and, above it all, his father’s disappointed eyes, seeing nothing but uselessness in his own son. In every moment of every heartbeat Kais knew... He’d never be so great, so respected, so focused as his father had expected him to be. He was flawed and it hurt.
And the only thing that could cut through the pain, that could remind him of being alive, that could convince him he was something other than a drone within a hive, was the screaming and the fire and the gurgling and the violence. It broke through the shell and it was addictive.
So he’d endured it, little by little, until he could see through the rage and think through the adrenaline. Every time it came upon him it became a little harder to claw his way back to the surface, back to rationality.
They’d disabled the weapons, they’d crippled the shield, they’d regrouped and congratulated one another like shas’saals after their first rotaa of training.
Kais had stood apart, new armour already tarnished with soot and blood, and thought: children.
Then the orders had come through, Lusha’s voice sounding broken and distorted by whatever dampening shields the gue’la ship employed, and Kais’s team was away, heading for the engine rooms in a gaggle of stringently by-the-book squad deployments. Kais rolled his eyes and kept quiet, guiltily waiting for the killing to begin again.
The Enduring Blade was unlike anything he could have prepared himself for. So radically alien to the gentle camber of all tau construction, this was a labyrinth of clipped corners, square-hewn buttresses and vast archways. Side arteries branched away unexpectedly, cloistered passages of conduit-striated shadows and undulating serpents of ducts and cables. A creeping tide of rust smeared itself across the gunmetal walls, water dribbling incontinently from fractured pipes and panels.
Narrow tunnels opened into breath-catching galleries, where backlit icons marking the walls illuminated capering dust motes high above, and chittering rodent vermin scurried in the gloom. In these vaulted chambers the faux-machismo of the team would stutter out and they’d slink silently as if cowed by the sheer enormity of the place. Kais appreciated the moments of quiet; as soon as the tunnel was rejoined the silence was inevitably shattered.
“Corner check, two by two.”
“Checking the blacksun-fil—. Hold... Zone clear. Moving on.”
“Scan track? Scan track?”
“High-level ye’qua’li radiation. Probable enemy presence.”
And so on. It was boring, thought Kais, and on both occasions where frightened knots of gue’la troopers had appeared, all the shas’las’ military bravado had served them not a jot. Within instants of the helmet scanners detecting movement the team split, a textbook left-right division. Those to the rear could provide cover in case of a fallback and the line warriors nearest the targets could lay down pinning fire. Thus covered, the secondary and tertiary pairs — carrying rifles — could take a more accurate bead on the enemy. Standard, routine: proven to work.
Kais had no patience for it. He shredded the first wave of gue’la with a grenade even as they rounded the corner ahead, then pumped carbine fire into the heads of the others as they staggered, shellshocked and gore-splattered, from the smoke. They went down in a tangle, pulped skulls shredding like overripe griy’na fruits, limbs twitching and clawing at the air.
The other shas’las never fired a single shot.
So, yes, they were in awe of him. They exchanged whispered conversations whilst glancing in his direction, tried to keep pace as he silently haunted the shadows and prattled uselessly to make themselves feel professional. It was pathetic.
Amongst the strangers of his team Kais recognised three of the warriors: fellow first-timers who’d trained and graduated with him in the battledome on T’au. They’d preened and performed flawlessly back then, impressing instructors and drill-shas’vres with their coolheadedness and their unblinking faith in the tau’va. Back then, he’d been in awe of them.
He caught one of them staring and grinned to himself.
Further along the corridor, its distant apex hidden behind the mask of deep gloom, someone screamed. Kais thought it probably gue’la but wasn’t sure; it was a shriek of terror and pain that transcended language and became a force, raising the cir’etz scales along his spine and neck with a shiver. The other shas’las froze, ducking into corners instinctively. The scream shut off as abruptly as it had begun.
One of the shas’las, voice quavering, said “What was—?”
“Quiet.” Kais waved the others out of their cover and cautiously moved along the corridor. The team exchanged gla
nces and followed, fingers tight around gun triggers.
The walk seemed to last forever, the dim lighting achieving little other than hardening the resolution of the shadows. Everything was still and silent, like entering the gut of some long-dead behemoth. Dust rose spectrally from the floor with each step, tumbling in its slow dance before settling again. Each hoof-fall became a miniature gong blast that echoed briefly before being swallowed by the completeness of the silence.
The next scream was louder still, accompanied this time by a shuddering, clanging cacophony: something beating against metal. Kais felt his blood freeze and pushed himself against the wall, reassured by its solidity. One of the shas’las moaned quietly into the comm. The silence resumed, even thicker than before.
He activated his blacksun filters, nictitating lenses sliding across his helmet optics. Instantly the world was rendered lurid and kaleidoscopic, long corridor daubed in bright green hues. Rodents — bristling patches of bright yellow and white — lurked in the shallow gullies to either side of the deck grille. But there was something else: at the top of the hall where the path turned sharply to the left, a nebulous haze of yellows and oranges wafted ethereally across his vision. There was something warm up there.
“Wait here,” he murmured into the comm, not waiting for a reply. The others took up covering positions with characteristic good grace.
He inched into the green-lit gloom, his own breathing seeming unnaturally loud in the hot confines of his helmet. The glowing icons on his HUD representing the other shas’las faded slowly to the rear, leaving him utterly alone. Two tor’leks from the corner, eyes fixed rigidly upon that unbroken line of pitted wall, he stopped and held his breath, listening.
Nothing. Nothing but the distant squeals of rodents and the drip-dripping of leaking water.
No conquest without control. Pursue success in serenity.
Fine. Breathe deep. Relax. And—
He loped around the corner with a growl, gun held ready before him, mind racing. His vision exploded with whiteness: a nebulous heat signature too vast to understand. He winced and deactivated the filters, expecting at any moment the thumping impact of hell-fire shells or las-bolts. The world fragmented and returned to normal with a flicker, filling his HUD with redness.
“Oh, sweet T’au...” he whispered, aghast. His stomach turned over and he took two gulps of air, forcing back the bile in his throat. The other shas’las chimed in expectantly.
“What is it?”
“What’s there?”
“Kais? Report!”
What could he say to describe it? It was carnage.
It was only a small chamber — that didn’t help. He could feel the heat from the walls without even entering, just staring from the doorway.
They were humans, at least: that made it slightly less difficult to stomach. The vivid ruby of their parts was almost unreal, an exaggerated fictional parallel to tau blood. Had the scene before him been rendered in cyan and grey rather than rich j’hal-petal red, then the brief weakness in his knees that he felt might have overcome him. He’d seen so much brutality and violence since the trial began that some self-assured part of him had expected never again to be surprised, never again to feel that ugly rushing of blood and bile that he’d endured all those tau’cyrs ago when his father stared at him in disappointment. He’d never imagined something breaking through the numbness in his heart again with the power to astonish and revolt him, but here it was.
A thin strand of redness parted company with the ceiling and fell, a syrupy teardrop that pattered lightly against the slick grille decking.
He couldn’t guess how many gue’la there had been, originally The shreds of clothing and weaponry lying embedded amongst the pulped meat was silent testament to their multiplicity, a dozen different articles of fabric and leather lying shredded within the gore. It was as if the chamber had decompressed suddenly, hurling the flesh from its helpless inhabitants across floor and walls and ceiling. Anonymous strands of gore dappled the interior, sluglike lumps of tissue and muscle that slithered glutinously with the pull of gravity, flopping obscenely to the deck to vent their liquid cargo into the gullies on either side. Clumps of hair broke up the light catching wetness, half-sliced skulls stared in mute horror, eyeballs plucked and dangling, tongues bitten and lacerated in grisly astonishment. An arm, messily dissected at the elbow, grasped uselessly at the air, three fingers shredded to a pulp. A pink foot flopped from a fleshy stalactite above Kais’s head with a wet slurp and a squelch.
A quiet voice at the back of his mind nodded that at least he now knew what they hid within their boots.
It was insanity. It was flesh frenzy, made real. It was as if the room itself was a stomach or a womb, its arterial walls wet with warmth and blood.
The other shas’las arrived behind him, impatient with his silence. Some of them had to be helped out of their helmets so they didn’t choke.
Severus sat behind the code-chattering servitors and smiled.
They were bold, these tau. He’d imagined beings of far greater restraint and self-repression; in the last years the Imperium had openly flouted their territorial treaty and the xenos had rolled over and taken it, uncomplaining. He’d expected this operation to be swift and decisive. He’d expected a diplomatic surrender — leaving him to wearily orchestrate some way of prolonging hostilities.
As it was, there was no manipulation required. He hadn’t imagined in a thousand years that they’d summon the courage and recklessness required to attack an Imperial warship, the fools. He almost pitied them. Almost.
Their aggression quickened his pulse, filling him with visions of combat and war and bloodshed. His mind throbbed with it. Not long now, he reminded himself. Not long.
There had been too many leaks. The texts had been quite specific regarding the levels of concentration required, and he’d thought himself ready. Ten long years he’d prepared for this, and still the sheer strength of it had almost overwhelmed him. Contacting the Administratum had been difficult enough, a thousand tiers of bureaucracy to stunt the progress of his proposal and frustrate his efforts. Then, when finally the funds were made available and the idiots on Terra had given him their official and enthusiastic sanction to continue, there had begun the laborious task of raising up his prison-citadel and his grinding, smoking factories, finalising every tiny detail. There had been moments of doubt, he couldn’t deny it. But the text was there in black and white, alien symbols shifting and writhing with hidden power, and he’d known — he’d been certain.
It would work. With enough blood, with enough screams, the final seal would shatter and...
Yes. It would work, he was sure.
But the force had still taken him by surprise; he couldn’t be sure how many times the pressure had vented through him, releasing gobbets of crackling empyrean to scurry away in a melange of pseudomatter and amorphous outlines. It was getting beyond his ability to restrain, and the crew was growing suspicious. It didn’t matter. Not long now.
And the Ultramarine librarian — oh, what a gift! He’d become aware of the scrying, scratching mind-eyes of “Brother Delpheus” almost immediately, slamming closed his defences to prevent the inquisitive righteousness of the disembodied thoughts. The fool would be useful, when the time came. When victory and defeat were on the very brink of resolution, when the air was thick with crisis and triumph, he’d use that feeble little skull mercilessly.
He’d bring the ethereal to him. He’d gather up the most powerful pawns involved in this chaotic, maddening little game, and he’d use them. He’d spark a war and douse the system in blood. He’d shred the mind of human and tau alike to plant the seeds of his legacy and then, when all the finely carved pieces were in place, he’d break the seal and rise, rise, rise.
In the end, Kais was certain the team was pleased to be rid of him. The awe was turning to fear, he could see; a nervous timidity at his presence that the other shas’las were finding it harder and harder to conceal. They
walked further away from him, they disliked him prowling the shadows behind them, they talked less and muttered more.
He heard the word “Mont’au” mumbled indiscreetly more than once.
Two had been lost to a gue’la ambush, rushing around a blind corner and erupting messily beneath streamers of gunfire, bodies jerking and shuddering as they toppled backwards. After he’d fragmented the humans, blithely rolling unarmed grenades along the corridor and gunning down the troopers as they quit their cover to flee, he’d been uncomfortably aware of the others glaring at him as he silently helped himself to the dead shas’las’ ammunition and supplies. It was standard procedure — cool and efficient — but nobody expected it to be easy. He suspected the others thought of his detachment, his numbness, as being somehow... unnatural.
Since discovering the mysterious abattoir chamber their military bravado had quickly waned. It was as if they’d seen the face of something real, something that convinced them of the ugliness and horror of their roles and left them in no doubt at all: this wasn’t a game. This wasn’t a safe little simulation in the battledome or a harmless domestic service operation. This was war.
Kais wondered how his father felt on his first combat mission. Efficient, doubtlessly. Didn’t bat an eyelid.
Never lost his temper, never grew scared or furious. Ice cold, probably. Served the Greater Good with a clear conscience and a rigid application of the shas’ken’to principles of combat. Flawless.
Comms with the Or’es Tash’var were failing, garbled messages becoming little more than static. The path had grown divergent, hooded corridors branching away into blackness, multi-doored chambers leaving the group disorganised and disagreeable. Finally they’d come to a tight vent access that led downwards and away, wide enough for a single shas’la only. The others favoured continuing along the cloistered hallway, relying on their cohesion with each other to sustain and protect them.
Kais felt no cohesion.
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