He was ten metres away from the man when, simultaneously, every last rebel in sight dropped to his knees and pressed his head to the ground.
‘Resh’vah!’ they intoned as one. ‘Resh’vah mukta akir!’
Karras addressed Copley and the rest of Talon, speaking low over the vox. ‘They were told by their prophet that Space Marines would come. They believe we are here as a reward from the Emperor for their faith. Do nothing to refute that.’
‘You read their minds?’ asked Rauth.
Karras spread his arms wide, encompassing all the rebels, and gestured for them to rise.
They obeyed at once, eyes bright, so alive, their patience and suffering finally vindicated in the armoured vision of Imperial might that stood before them.
‘I didn’t have to,’ Karras answered.
He crossed to the rebel leader, stopping four metres in front of him, and stared down at the man, eye to eye.
The burly rebel immediately dropped his gaze. Tears, Karras saw, were running down the man’s cheeks.
He truly believes the salvation of his people has come at last, thought Karras. They all believe it. And I must exploit their faith. I must feed the lie. Damn you, Sigma… You knew.
Karras already saw where this was going. There was a tragic inevitability one needed no scrying powers to see.
Operation Shadowbreaker would bring destruction and death to these people, not the salvation they had long awaited.
Because we are not here for them. We are not here to save these people or this world. Only one is to be saved. Only Epsilon.
Eighteen
The rebel leader, at Karras’ urging, managed to put his awed reverence aside and introduced himself to the Space Marines and Archangel. Maktar Kainis was his name. His men called him sahik in Uhrzi, which approximated to edge of the blade in standard Low Gothic. He was a veteran – two decades of fighting t’au and kroot. The Speaker of the Sands had personally chosen his unit to meet the new arrivals here in the glade, having seen it all in a prescient trance, even down to the presence of the t’au strike fighters.
Karras had questions aplenty about this Speaker, but it was more important at that moment to be underway. The t’au might send another air patrol out before long.
On Kainis’ orders, the rebel band turned east, moving from the clearing, most on foot, some on the backs of the loping beasts – called jharaks – that the Kashtu had tamed. They melted back into the forest, swallowed by deep shadow, heading to the crash sites of the downed t’au fighters. They would try to salvage what might be put to use. Only Kainis and one other – his aide, Touric – would fly north, guiding Task Force Arcturus to the Drowned Lands.
The two tribesmen joined Karras and Copley in Reaper One.
The camo-sheets and jamming modules were repacked, and everyone got back onboard. The three Reaper flight pilots powered up their turbines. With a long, throaty growl, the Stormravens lifted off from the clearing, leaving scorched grass behind.
They headed directly north, staying low, flying Nap-of-the-earth to avoid detection, following one of the great rivers that cut a broad highway through the dense trees.
As they skimmed over the river, whipping the branches of the trees on either side and kicking up a spray below, Archangel began to question the tribesmen. Neither was used to being addressed as an equal by a woman. They refused to look at her directly, scowled furiously when she spoke and gave long, pointed pauses before they answered her. When they looked up at Karras, it was in confusion, unable to imagine why he didn’t strike her for such open insolence in the presence of men. As this continued, Karras sensed Copley tensing, edging towards the limits of her tolerance, readying to unleash her wrath on the tribesman.
Pre-empting Copley’s wrath becoming physical, the Death Spectre fixed his eyes hard on the rebels and said, ‘This woman is a decorated warrior of the Imperium, leader of fighting men and a valued ranking member of this task force. Mark me well – if either of you shows her discourtesy just one more time in my presence, I permit her to cut your head from your body and throw it out of this aircraft.’
Both men paled and froze, gaping like fish. They had just been threatened by a figure from legend, the Emperor’s divine will made flesh. Together, they dropped to their knees before him and pressed their heads to the metal decking.
‘Forgive us, resh’vah,’ stammered Kainis. ‘We did not… It is not our way for women to speak unbidden in the presence of men. Among the Kashtu, even wives must await permission before addressing their husbands. But our ways are not your ways. Leniency, lord. We meant no offence.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Karras. ‘Offence has been taken.’ He turned to Copley. ‘How many t’au have you killed, commander?’
Copley glared down at the rebels. Her voice was hard when she said, ‘Confirmed personal kills – over thirteen hundred.’
‘How many t’au have you killed, sahik?’ Karras asked Kainis. ‘How many of the blue-skins? Not kroot. Blue-skins.’
Kainis looked at the deck, abashed. He could not bring himself to answer.
The number was not even a tenth of Copley’s count.
‘It matters not,’ said Copley at last, letting Kainis off the hook. ‘What matters, tribesman, is that our enemy is the same.’
‘But thirteen hundred,’ muttered Touric. ‘What manner of woman–’
‘My people and I,’ continued Copley, ‘are specialists in counter-t’au operations. We have operated behind t’au lines for most of our military careers. There are none better. None. We were selected by the Holy Inquisition itself, highest agency of the God-Emperor beyond Terra’s light. So listen to me very carefully. If you want to win this war, the biggest step you will ever take is to learn everything you can from us. Because you are losing it right now. And we are your best and only hope to shift the balance. Be clear on that.’
Karras watched the words take root in the rebels’ minds. ‘True that we do not know your ways, sahik,’ he boomed. ‘But while Space Marines are among you, it is our ways that matter. Be clear on that.’
‘We… we have been a long time without the light of the Imperium, my lord,’ offered Touric. ‘You have only to teach us, and we will obey.’
Karras nodded. ‘Even so, if you disrespect Major Copley again, you will have to fight her to the death in front of your men. And she will kill you and make it look easy, I assure you.’
Kainis swallowed and looked up at Copley from under thick black eyebrows. With effort, he said, ‘Major, if by word or deed I cause offence, I ask clemency and that you tell me of my error. Let us spill blue blood together, and hope that no red mixes with it save that of the traitorous ISF.’
‘ISF?’ asked Copley.
‘The Integrated Security Forces,’ said Touric.
Copley stared back at Kainis a while, then extended a hand.
It must have hurt Kainis’ pride, but he gripped it all the same.
Copley pulled him to his feet. ‘The slate is clear between us,’ she said. ‘We start afresh.’
‘Make sure the rest of your people understand,’ said Karras. ‘This woman and her storm troopers are agents of the Golden Throne. If any of your people treat them as less, Kashtu blood will be shed, serving the enemy’s cause, not yours, not ours. Let all understand this.’
Karras had known such men before – other worlds, other cultures within the Imperium. For a Kashtu fighter to die in combat at the hands of a woman was very likely one of the greatest forms of shame imaginable.
The warning had been given, and clearly. Still, it seemed inevitable that an example would have to be made at some point.
Kainis had risen to his full height, the compact Copley standing only as tall as his chest, but his aura had shifted into dull purples and greens. He was a man diminished in his own eyes.
That may yet be a problem, thought Karras
. Bitterness and resentment may fester in him. He’ll bear watching. With luck, we won’t be around long enough for him to make a fatal mistake.
‘I will instruct the others,’ said the tribesman, ‘but it will be better coming from the Speaker. It is the Speaker alone among us whose words carry the power of change.’
As the Stormravens flew further north, Karras and Copley pressed for details of Kashtu strength. How many fighters were there? How were they organised? What level of cooperation was there with the Ishtu in the south? What of material? Distribution? What of these haddayin, the infiltrators, maintaining and spreading their intelligence network from within the t’au-controlled cities and towns?
Kainis did his best to answer. Speaking in the presence of not one, but five of the Space Marines of legend was something he had difficulty processing. Since the Speaker had foretold of their coming, his hopes and expectations had run wild. In his mind, they were the fulcrum on which everything here was about to turn. And yet, facing them now, their massive black forms decorated with skulls and the iconography of death and war, he found himself unnerved. They did not radiate hope and light and promise as he had imagined. They were like cold black totems of death. Thick shadow seemed to cling to them.
He had always imagined them as perfect men, embodying all the qualities he himself prized and more. But here they were, and he found that they were far from human.
Whenever their leader, who had introduced himself as Karras but whom the woman repeatedly addressed as Scholar, looked at Kainis, the rebel felt his blood freeze and his soul wither.
The massive skull. The blood-red eyes. That corpse-pallid face…
Of the five Space Marines present in the hold of Reaper One, only Karras had removed his helm.
The other four… What terrible faces did they hide?
Their sheer size made them seem almost as alien as the t’au. No. These were not figures from the gilded pages of the old books, bathed in light, swords raised, radiant halos aglow. These were beings of terror and slaughter. Nothing he’d ever encountered caused him fear like this.
But perhaps, Kainis told himself, that is exactly what we need.
The woman was about to ask yet another question when another voice sounded over vox-speakers in the hold’s ceiling.
‘Got a landing beacon on the auspex,’ reported Ventius from the cockpit. ‘Short range. Imperial encryption. Old code, but verified.’
‘To guide us in,’ said Kainis.
‘Lock on and follow it in,’ Copley voxed the pilot.
‘Copy that, Archangel. There’s a city just coming into view. You ought to see this, ma’am.’
Copley gestured for Kainis to join her. The rebel waited for some sign from Karras.
The Death Spectre nodded his approval.
At the front of the craft, there was little room, but Copley and the rebel were able to peer out from behind the pilot’s seat and see the city slowly emerge like great black bones jutting up through dense banks of low cloud and curtains of torrential rain. It was a ruin, crumbling and rotten, every street and thoroughfare flooded.
Back in the hold, Karras donned his helm and interfaced with the aircraft’s forward gun-picter. Through the link, he saw the home of the Kashtu in exile – Chatha na Hadik.
It was a dark, moody place. Above hung a sky so heavy it looked ready to fall and crush everything. All around, battered by the tremendous and unrelenting downpour, was a jumble of slender towers and vast, boxy mega-structures – high-density hab-blocks and manufactories, all built in the typical, functional style of the Imperium.
What had once been a thriving planetary capital was now, thanks to the aggressive planetary climate engineering of the t’au, a drowned and lifeless husk. Only, not quite lifeless, thought Karras. Though no living man or woman could yet be seen, he could already sense the psychic resonance of the million souls who called this place home.
A million, where once it held twenty times that.
As the city grew in the lens of the gun-picter, Karras saw that many towers had fallen, their bases ruined by a mixture of age, flooding, old battle damage and the aggressive invasion of the jungle itself, bullishly pushing in from the edges, claiming the space back now that only a fraction of its original populace remained.
Everywhere were the signs of destruction and decay. Towers hundreds of metres tall had teetered and tumbled drunkenly to lean against their neighbours, their windows shattered. From those broken windows, torrents of water plunged to the flooded streets, calling forth in Karras’ mind the memory of the waterfalls at the great scarp on Irexus II.
But Irexus II was beautiful, he thought. Natural. The sun was bright there, and the sky was wide.
The scenes could not have contrasted more.
As the Stormravens passed through the outer districts, Karras’ enhanced eyes glimpsed movement from the shadowed upper floors of several of the tallest structures.
‘We’re being tracked by defence batteries,’ he voxed to Ventius. ‘All sides.’
‘Confirmed, Alpha,’ returned the pilot. ‘Auspex scanners show passive tracking only. The ammo feeds are powered down. Do you wish me to jam them anyway?’
‘No,’ said Karras. ‘They won’t fire.’
Copley and Kainis returned to the rear compartment. ‘We’ll be landing soon,’ said Copley. She gestured to two vacant stations on the wall. ‘Sahik, get yourself and your aide into those impact frames.’
Karras kept his attention on the gun-picter feed as the pilot swung left down a broad highway and angled towards a cluster of the tallest buildings in the city, most of which still stood upright as if in proud defiance of the weather and all the devastation that had been visited on their neighbours.
There was vox chatter back and forth between the pilots of Reaper flight and the heavily accented Low Gothic of someone on the ground. Despite the accent, this individual managed to guide the three craft in to land atop a broad, mid-sized block at the south edge of the cluster.
As Reaper One descended, Karras kept watch through the gun-picter in the assault craft’s nose. He noted the dim red glow of landing lights. From a distance, in all this gloom and heavy rain, only those lights gave any indication of a landing pad. The building was otherwise unremarkable but for its relative lack of vines and other foliage.
‘Brace for landing,’ voxed Ventius.
A few seconds later, Reaper One shuddered as its landing gear touched the roof and took the craft’s full weight. The sound of the engines receded to a whine then to nothing as Ventius shut them off. Reapers Two and Three touched down a dozen metres to the left and right. Several seconds after all three engines had powered down, the roof shook. Magnetic locks were released. Hydraulics hissed. A circular section encompassing all three Imperial aircraft began to descend into the structure below. Still watching through the Stormraven’s gun-picter, Karras saw the platform lower itself into a gaping, lume-lit hangar. Several other aircraft – large cargo lifters, mostly – were present. They looked old and not in regular use. Above the Stormravens, two doors like massive plasteel jaws began closing overhead, blocking out the rain and wind.
After two minutes of slow, controlled descent, the platform reached the hangar floor, stopping with a short but violent judder.
Ventius voxed from up front. ‘Clear to disengage impact frames. Opening hatches now.’
Karras slapped the release trigger and pushed his impact frame up into the lock on the ceiling. The rest of Talon Squad did likewise, along with Copley and her people. The two rebels, having watched the others, followed suit.
The hatch pneumatics hissed. Light from the hanger spilled into the hold.
Karras was first to march down the ramp. At the bottom, he stopped and raised a clenched fist to halt the others.
All around him, thousands of people were on their knees, heads pressed to the ground, chan
ting with one voice.
‘Ja hadiri! Ja hadiri!’
Talon and the rest of Arcturus had studied Uhrzi during warp transit. Karras knew what the words meant. They twisted and coiled in the pit of his stomach.
Hope has come! Hope has come!
Nineteen
Copley would not back down. She was adamant.
‘We’ve gone over this,’ she told Karras. ‘The inquisitor’s wishes were clear. They represent a potentially critical resource for this mission, and they’re desperate, ready to die for their beliefs. You will feed the fire, Scholar. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.’
Karras’ face was thunder. As he listened, Voss’ expression wasn’t much better. Neither liked the idea of exploiting a people who had fought loyally against the xenos for decades with no support. Chyron, too, was rumbling and venting black fumes.
Zeed, Rauth and Solarion seemed utterly unaffected by the notion.
For her part, Copley found it fascinating that among the six Space Marines, there could be such disparity. Her own people had been through this kind of thing before. They’d trained guerrilla forces on t’au-held worlds knowing full well that none of them would return alive, a diversionary force only to be spent gaining the main objective.
Whatever got the job done.
‘I need you to do this, Scholar,’ she reiterated.
Karras growled, his lip curling back over his teeth, but he readied himself to lead the others out onto the platform beyond the door and do as the mission demanded.
In the vast, echoing hall onto which it faced, tens of thousands of rapturous faces were already locked to the presence of a tall, willowy man of about forty years dressed in flowing robes of red and gold. He had been addressing them for several minutes while they listened with hushed reverence. Only the sound of his voice, sonorous and clear, rang on the cool, damp air.
This was the Speaker of the Sands.
In other great halls throughout the old city, the rest of the population watched via live pict feeds, patiently and eagerly waiting for the appearance of those long promised. Most had never thought to see this day in their lifetimes.
Shadowbreaker - Steve Parker Page 17