Shadowbreaker

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Melshala bless them and keep them,’ said Rava, his head bowed. ‘Saint Sartha cloak them from loathsome eyes.’

  Sadiv let it go, but he was not wholly dissuaded from his course.

  ‘These picts are from one of the spaceports, and that is not a pog ship. It is of Imperial manufacture.’

  ‘She landed at Kurdiza flanked by two Sky Sharks,’ said Arnaz.

  ‘Sky Sharks don’t operate outside the atmosphere,’ said Urqis. ‘Either she was escorted here by t’au spacecraft or she came of her own accord. But which is it?’

  ‘I was told fire warriors were already aboard her ship when it touched down,’ said Arnaz. ‘I cannot confirm it, but I was also told of damage on the starboard side of the hull. An engagement or a forced boarding, perhaps. The angle of the picts is unfortunate.’

  ‘So she is a prisoner,’ said Sadiv.

  ‘Flanked by armed Space Marines and with wrists unbound?’ countered Rava. ‘Marks on the hull may have had nothing to do with a forced boarding. Micrometeorites. Old battle damage.’

  ‘Too much speculation is as dangerous as too little information,’ said Gunjir. ‘Until we have facts, the status of the woman and the presence of the resh’vah raise too many questions. I can see no course of action that doesn’t require more information.’

  ‘You will have answers when I do, cousin,’ said Arnaz.

  ‘Where did she go from Kurdiza? Do we know that much?’ asked Sadiv. ‘Might she be in this very city even as we speak?’

  Rava became excited, agitated. ‘We must try to contact her. Surely, guarded by the Adeptus Astartes, she is a formal representative of the Imperium. A negotiator or envoy, perhaps no more, but she must learn of our struggle to overthrow the invaders. If we could secure off-world support–’

  ‘She may already know,’ said Diunar. ‘It may be why she has come.’

  ‘She was taken from the spaceport in a Devilfish with significant close support,’ said Arnaz. ‘The convoy headed east from Kurdiza, but she could be anywhere by now.’

  ‘Has the Speaker been sent copies of these?’ asked Diunar, holding up the picts.

  ‘An encrypted data crystal was sent north with a courier the moment I had them.’

  ‘We must try to get the woman’s attention somehow,’ insisted Rava. ‘If we cannot contact her directly, we must demonstrate our commitment to the war. An attack on a high-profile target. Even were she not in the city, if she has any information flow at all, she will hear of it. She could get word out.’

  ‘Reckless,’ barked Urqis, fists clenched on his thighs. ‘This woman appears with two of the resh’vah just as the curfews are being lifted. I don’t believe in coincidences. What is the Aun doing? He will work the woman’s presence to his own ends somehow. Action without proper thought would undo us all.’

  It was all Rava could do not to stand up and spit on the floor. ‘Acha!’ he growled. ‘Toothless Urqis! Always counselling caution! Will you bear arms at all when the day comes, I wonder? Or will your caution keep you from the fight?’

  Old Diunar moved swiftly for his age. In the blink of an eye, he was in a half-crouch, his knife gripped, the base of his blade peeking from its sheath.

  ‘Walah!’ he cried out. ‘Enough! You are a guest in my home, cousin, and so is Urqis. In offending him within my walls you sully my honour. I make a blood claim, and I offer it to Urqis.’

  Rava paled visibly. His head sank between his shoulders. He could not meet Diunar’s blazing eyes. Arnaz was impressed. Diunar’s presence was formidable. It was no wonder he was a leader of men. He was the old ways maintained and personified, a man of the real Tychonis, a desert man, pledged to the war.

  Or rather, he was, thought Arnaz. Such a pity he has already been turned.

  Not that anyone else in the room knew it.

  ‘Cousin, forgive me,’ pleaded Rava, turning to Urqis. ‘If you would have my blood as price, I present my arm to you. Let your blade bite as deep as anger demands.’

  Urqis sighed and shook his head. ‘My blade thirsts for blue blood, not red. It will bite no man here. You spoke in anger because the fires of hate burn in you as brightly as they do in me. If I am cautious, cousin, it is because I know the fragility of hope. Haste will kill us as surely as a t’au rifle. The xenos will fall when the time is right, and we will do this thing together, you and I. And our blades will be stained blue, not red.’

  Rava bowed and turned next to Diunar.

  ‘What of you, my cousin? Will your blade take its due?’

  Their host shook his head and settled back on his cushion. ‘I cannot allow any to speak so to another of the faithful in my home, but I disregard the claim. Urqis speaks my heart as well as his own. Blue blood, not red. The water in our cups is cool and clear, cousin.’

  An old phrase. A desert phrase. It meant all was well.

  Rava bowed. ‘By your example…’

  Gunjir spoke up, having observed that all tensions were now duly dissipated. ‘The matter is done, and we have others to discuss before daybreak. Come. Who will speak next?’

  The six men spoke for three further hours of secret weapons shipments, of disappearances, of t’au supply routes, of the rumours in the markets and reports from the haddayin who had infiltrated the Gue’a’Sha. The hour grew late and the sky began to lighten as Diunar at last rose to see each of his guests out of his basement. They left one by one, separated by several minutes, each cleaving to shadows still dense and black before the sunrise. Finally, with Gunjir gone, only Diunar and Arnaz remained. It seemed to Arnaz that his host had deliberately contrived for things to be this way.

  At the door, Arnaz bowed to the older man and said, ‘Sathra bless you for your hospitality and the risk you take in giving it.’

  Diunar nodded and accepted the blessing, but he raised a hand and placed it on Arnaz’s shoulder before opening the door to let him out.

  ‘Blessings back, cousin. May the saint cloak you from alien eyes. But before you go, I would ask you to take a risk of your own in return.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Arnaz. He had expected something like this, but that didn’t lessen his disappointment.

  ‘Your source at Kurdiza,’ said Diunar. ‘Such an asset is too important to the cause to be known to only one man. If anything should happen to you–’

  ‘When Gunjir spoke of protecting our sources, cousin, I saw you nod agreement. Now you ask outright.’

  Diunar inclined his head apologetically, but his stance was otherwise firm. ‘Shared between six, the risk of capture and interrogation is high. Too high. Shared between two, between you and I and no other, it serves the cause better. Too much cannot be allowed to rest on the shoulders of any single man.’

  ‘Laha! I see the logic in your request,’ said Arnaz, ‘but still.’

  Diunar looked pained. He shook his head. ‘Ah! Under the eyes of Melshala, what a fool I am. I see I have yet to earn your trust. That is as it should be, cousin. You are wise. I will endeavour to earn it hereafter. I should not have asked. Age makes me impatient at times. As a young man, I believed I would see the t’au cast out in my lifetime. Knowing better came hard to me. Your forgiveness, then.’

  ‘No, cousin,’ said Arnaz. ‘It is I who ask forgiveness. You speak only for the good of the cause, I know. And you are right. If you will swear to me a solemn oath before the great saints and on your loyalty to the Golden Throne, I will share my burden of knowledge with you. In truth, I will feel the lighter for it. I, too, worry that too much depends on individual men.’

  They were words he had rehearsed, and the solemnity he managed to put behind them was beautifully acted.

  Diunar hardly hesitated. He made his oath – on the surface of it, as sincere and zealous as any Arnaz had ever seen. But he knew better.

  Ah, if your life had been different, old man, you would have made a fine deep-co
ver agent.

  ‘Amadi,’ said Arnaz. ‘Ugnil Amadi, a sergeant in the spaceport security forces. He gets information to me through his sister Larshi, a worker in the powercell factory just south of the Ru’Xie access gate. Both were raised in the Dumru enclave to the far south before it was cleansed by kroot patrols. They are intensely loyal to the Speaker. They can be trusted.’

  Diunar closed his eyes and gave a slight bow. ‘As can I with their secret. And with yours. Should anything happen to you, I swear to offer them any help I can in fleeing to the Speaker’s side.’

  Arnaz grinned. ‘They are fighters and their hearts are aflame. They will not flee, but they would join you here for whatever fight may follow.’

  ‘Then I would welcome them as family,’ said Diunar. ‘And now, with the burden shared, it is best you go before the burning eye crawls skyward. Melshala protect you.’

  ‘And you,’ Arnaz responded. ‘A blessing upon you and your home.’

  Diunar closed and locked the door behind Arnaz. Outside, Arnaz listened as the bolts slid home. As he climbed the narrow stair to ground level, he grinned and shook his head.

  If it was that easy to trick me, you old lizard, I would have been dead a long time ago. As dead as you will be when the t’au have no more need of you.

  After Arnaz had left and the door was locked behind him, Diunar went to a small sub-chamber just off the main basement room and busied himself at a cogitator console. He selected frames from a vid-file, then zoomed in and cleaned up several sections. He hit a rune. The cogitator printed out three stills, each an enlargement of Arnaz’s picts from Kurdiza – the woman in black and her Space Marine bodyguards.

  Then he printed out several picts of the men he had met that night.

  His heart felt like lead, so heavy it was almost pulling him to the floor.

  Get it done, he told himself, then drink yourself into oblivion, you weak, selfish old bastard.

  As he gathered up the picts, he paused to look at the woman in black.

  Who was she? Did she bring hope? Not for him. For him, it was probably already too late.

  Wearily, picts in hand, he doused the lights and ascended to the ground floor of his hab. He was bone-tired, weary and sickened by what he had become. Tonight had been extra hard. He’d been so careful not to show outward signs of his distress, but that Arnaz had a wily look. He was different somehow.

  The t’au had left him no avenue of escape. Blue-skin scum! He was trapped utterly, powerless to throw off their control. Love was his weakness. If only he had been a colder, harder man.

  From the top of the stair, he shuffled into the main room. With a deep sigh, he sank into a seat at the old table of moulded plastek on which he took his meals. He leaned back and rubbed his hands over his face.

  What had he done to bring this curse down on himself and his household? He had always honoured the Golden Throne of Terra and the Imperial creed. He had lived his whole life fighting for a future free of the usurpers. Now he was subverting that future. His dreams woke him nightly, crying out in guilt and denial. Death was better than this, but he had not the courage for it. To take one’s own life was to be damned forever in the warp. And there was still that tiniest flicker of hope. If the t’au were as good as their word, then maybe…

  He wasn’t surprised when he saw the air in the far corner shimmer, displaced by something that quickly resolved itself into a humanoid figure dressed in distinctive curving armour.

  In clipped alien tones, it barked at him. ‘Report, gue’la.’

  Diunar thrust his chin at the stills on the table.

  The xenos stalked across to his side.

  As they both looked down at them, Diunar said, ‘Amadi. A security forces sergeant at Kurdiza. He has a sister, Larshi, working in the Ru’Xie industrial zone – the powercell factory. Together, they supply intel to the Speaker’s people here in the capital. From here it goes north by courier.’

  The alien stood staring down at the picts. ‘Gur’dya’al,’ it said, then added in Low Gothic, ‘It means mask-wearers. Spies. We suspected so.’

  ‘I know what mask-wearer means, damn you,’ hissed Diunar. He tapped his finger on the image of the woman. ‘I want to know what this means.’

  The t’au operative gave that low gurgle which passed for a laugh among his kind. Then he, too, tapped the finger of a gloved hand on the photo and said, ‘Gue’la, no one yet knows what this means. We call her the Qua’shai’dha. It is difficult to translate. It is close to say the feathered serpent who makes great promises. She is of no concern to you.’

  ‘As you say,’ said Diunar. ‘What is of concern to me is my wife and daughter. When do I see them? I have done as asked. It is enough.’

  The alien swept the picts from the table and was already crossing to the front door as it replied, ‘We decide when it is enough, five-toes.’

  Diunar rose, shoulders set, fists clenched, anger coursing through him. ‘I want more assurances that they are unharmed.’

  ‘You will be with your family soon. The commander will be informed of your compliance. Await further word from us.’

  There was a brief crackle and hum, a sound just on the verge of human hearing. With it, the alien melted back into shimmering air. Diunar watched the door open. The alien’s voice, now disembodied as if it were the voice of some taunting spirit, addressed him one last time.

  ‘Remember, gue’la. We see you. We are everywhere. We see everything.’

  The door closed.

  To be certain the damnable creature was gone, Diunar went to the door, waving his arms around in the air to make sure it really was empty.

  His fingers found nothing. With a snarl, he double-bolted the door and returned to his seat.

  He put his elbows on the table and placed his head in his hands.

  ‘Pog filth,’ he muttered. ‘You see everything? You didn’t see Amadi take those picts.’

  The thought hardly made him feel better – he had just given Amadi and his sister up. Hours only, maybe even minutes, remained before they would be dragged off for torture.

  Two brave haddayin… and he had just doomed both of them. And for what? So he might see his wife and daughter again?

  You are the lowest of cowards, he told himself, lip curling up over his teeth. Ancestors forgive me. I am a cur. Remah, Shirva, if only they had killed you outright. If only I could be sure I was free to take revenge.

  But because they might yet live, he was not free at all.

  No one on Tychonis was free.

  From a second-storey rooftop overlooking Diunar’s hab, Arnaz watched and waited, knowing that movement would come. The streets and alleys were devoid of all traffic. The curfew would hold for another hour. He knew the patrol routes, knew the schedule. He would not be caught out. And he had to be sure.

  He held a small, multi-spectrum auspex scope to his right eye, cycling back and forth through vision modes as he swept it around the circumference of the hab. When Diunar’s front door opened and closed again, Arnaz felt a twitch of satisfaction edged with sorrow.

  How and when did they turn you, tribesman? What was your price?

  To the naked eye, nothing emerged from that door. But through his scope, Arnaz watched the multi-coloured shifting of displaced air as it outlined a shape at its centre, roughly humanoid. Familiar.

  Still with his eye pressed to the scope, he reached down and slid a power knife from his boot.

  ‘Got you,’ he muttered.

  Eleven

  The air in the Reclusiam at Watch Fortress Damaroth was cool on Karras’ skin. Strangely, he found more comfort here, now, than he ever remembered feeling in the Reclusiam on Occludus. But then, he’d never been this troubled back on his beloved Chapter world.

  After all he’d seen, the visions and torments and falsehoods, it meant much to be somewhere real, somewher
e he could trust. Through the fabric of his black fatigues, his legs felt the chill of the stone pew on which he sat. His fingers brushed the book of litanies he held. He felt the texture, the solidity of the grox-leather cover.

  The psychic intrusion he’d experienced in that infernal eldar healing machine had been so vivid, so detailed and convincing, but this was different on a fundamental level. His mind and body knew instinctively to trust it.

  This is real, he told himself. Know it. Don’t doubt it.

  The soft glow of a thousand votive candles threw shadows out onto the great stone pillars on either side of the nave. Above the double rows of pews, glorious and ancient banners hung, resplendent in their colours and rich embroidery, detailing great battles and disastrous crises averted by the selfless heroes whose stories filled the deep and secret archives of the Watch.

  One of the banners depicted a Deathwatch-serving Ultramarine crushing an ork skull under his ceramite boot.

  I wonder what Prophet and the others are doing now. They must think I’m out of commission… Maybe I am.

  At the far end of the Reclusiam, beneath the fine, self-illuminating stained-glass works of art, were seven statues, figures of legend, the heroes of the First Watch. So stern and proud, and so finely sculpted they almost looked ready to spring to life. It was impossible to look at those bold, noble faces and think of them as harbouring any notion of self-doubt.

  Simpler times, perhaps.

  The Reclusiam was such a quintessentially Adeptus Astartes place. It was so much easier to feel centred here. He was thankful for that. Apart from the barely human servitors that carefully cleaned and maintained it, only the Adeptus Astartes were permitted to set foot within these dark granite walls. It did not matter to which Chapter they belonged. To most, the Emperor was father and idol, a figure from the ancient past one strove to emulate in His indomitable strength and prowess. To some the Emperor was godlike, a creator deity as celebrated by the Ministorum and the Imperial creed whose unblinking eye was ever upon them. To the Death Spectres, to Karras, the Emperor was a little of both, for it was He who had granted Corcaedus his great vision at the foot of the Golden Throne. It was He who had blessed Arquemann with a soul, He who had sent the Founder out among the stars to find the Shariax and establish the new Chapter on Occludus. Not a god, as such, but a being of an order above all others.