The voice was gruff, commanding, dense with that peculiar accent only the water caste ever managed to shed.
Azhan had no weapon. It had taken all his guile just to get the small explosive through security.
Twelve years he had spent solidifying his cover here. A perfect service record. Unremarkable, but no black marks either. No haddayin could afford to be noteworthy.
All for this. All for this day, this moment.
He looked again at his chrono. He was several seconds behind now.
He turned and saw the speaker, a squat, square-faced earth caste flanked by a stern-looking fire caste soldier whose blue, three-fingered hand was resting close to the pistol on his right hip.
Azhan waved them closer.
Familiar faces, but they weren’t known to him by name. They must have seen him on the monitors and come down from the upper floors where he seldom worked.
They were walking towards him now, flat faces stern.
Eager to get away from the bomb he had just placed, he walked out to meet them.
‘No,’ snapped the fire warrior. ‘Stay where you are. And keep your hands in plain sight!’
The earth caste technician muttered to himself in T’au as they neared, assuming as the blue-skins usually did that a human worker could never understand his race’s rich and highly nuanced tongue.
Azhan translated easily in his head: This stinking five-toes isn’t supposed to be here.
I have to get away now, he thought. I have to!
Again, a quick glance at his chrono.
His heart sank. The window he’d promised couldn’t be changed. It couldn’t.
Space Marines’ lives…
The liberation of his people…
Vengeance on the filthy pogs…
Suddenly weary, his soul heavy with all the years of lies, of suffering their proximity, he committed to the last course of action available.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he told the t’au as they closed on him. ‘I was looking for a flaw in the air-cooling control line when I found something unexpected. I don’t think it’s supposed to be there. If the noble earth caste will take a look…’
The t’au technician clacked his tooth-plates in disdain and pushed his way past Azhan, the soldier following suit, peering over the technician’s shoulder to where Azhan was gesturing, right at the bomb.
Azhan took another quick look at the chrono on his wrist and started counting backwards in his head.
Truly, he would have liked to live.
But I am haddayin, he told himself resignedly. I will find my reward by the Emperor’s side.
The stocky technician leaned forward and stared hard, raising a hand to his short, square chin.
‘That is no t’au device. It is a gue’la thing!’
Azhan put his hand in his overalls pocket and gripped the detonator. ‘Ah, you’re right,’ he said as his thumb found the trigger. ‘I see what it is now. How stupid of me. I should not have troubled you.’
The fire warrior looked round at him, impatience creasing his blue-grey brow. ‘Then what is it?’ he demanded.
‘You stupid, ugly pog,’ said Azhan with a final smile. ‘It’s a bomb.’
He pressed the trigger. Right on time.
The blast killed all three of them instantaneously.
Tower Six, covering the north-north-east approach on the spaceport’s perimeter, abruptly went dead.
Defence control consoles in the spaceport’s main control centre leapt to life, alarm glyphs rezzing into the air above them. T’au engineers began jabbering at each other. Senior techs began barking at aerospace monitoring personnel. The latter frantically searched their holo-displays for any sign of inbound contacts.
They found nothing.
No scanner returns.
No detections.
Only expected traffic, and most of that was fighter patrols at high altitude, placed on special duty when Commander Coldwave arrived two days ago. The shas’o had immediately ordered both a massive increase in security and a temporary cessation on all non-military activities at the spaceport.
It could be no coincidence that Kurdiza’s automated defence perimeter now had a gaping hole in it.
It was almost precisely three and a half minutes after the blast that fire warriors in Tower Six found the charred remains of three bodies in a smoke-filled corridor. Even as they frantically relayed this information back to central defence, claiming deliberate sabotage, it was too late.
Reapers One and Two had already dropped Talon Squad and Sabre Squad by zipline within the spaceport walls, then pulled back out to a safe distance to wait.
With quiet speed, ten shadow-clad figures split into two groups of five and moved off in opposite directions towards their first objectives.
‘Good hunting, Talon,’ voxed Androcles as he and his squad melted into the darkness.
‘Good hunting, Sabre,’ Karras voxed back.
Redemption or death.
Forty-one
‘You were right, inquisitor,’ said Coldwave as he stood looking down at a holo-screen. The woman in black stood by his side, her focus on the same display.
Behind him, glaring over his shoulders, towered her two giant killers.
Coldwave hated when they came close like this. They stank, and the smell was so offensively unnatural. It never seemed to communicate any other emotion than their lust for killing.
Did they never think of anything else?
Despite how they made his fingers itch, he was certainly not about to give them the satisfaction of seeing him in discomfort at their proximity.
His tone was flat, giving nothing away, but Epsilon knew he was irritated at the thought that his gambit in the desert canyon had failed. Talon Squad’s survival of a nuclear blast would only add to the tales his fire caste troopers were telling each other out of earshot of their officers.
‘I told you they would not be easy to erase,’ she said with a slight smile.
Was the woman a complete fool? She actually seemed amused. Coldwave was most definitely not, but he gave the blue-skin equivalent of a shrug and said, ‘They come to meet their death, in any case. They will not be allowed to interfere with our departure. I have issued deployment orders. No matter their number, they will find us unyielding.’
One of the giants spoke, his voice so deep and rough that Coldwave sometimes had to strain to make out the words. Both pretended not to know the T’au language, but he was certain they did. They simply refused to use it. The speaker was the one called Kabannen, he of the ugly all-mechanical arms and legs.
Why was his order known as the Iron Hands, Coldwave wondered, when they obviously boasted titanium prostheses that extended well beyond their hands?
Stupid Gue’la!
He smelled, by far, the worst of the two.
‘Do not underestimate the Deathwatch,’ he told Coldwave. ‘You did so before, shas’o, and the Tower of the Forgotten was lost to you along with hundreds of your people. The size of your force does not matter to the Adeptus Astartes of the Deathwatch. We can turn any situation to our advantage. Talon Squad may use your very confidence against you here today.’
He nodded towards the other, called Lucianos. ‘But we are here. That bodes well for you. They will not prevail.’
Again, thought Coldwave, that arrogance, that pride when they speak of this Deathwatch. How can they speak so smugly of a thing they have already betrayed? As if they still belong to it somehow. I don’t understand these damnable creatures and their constant twisting of identities and loyalties. They are as changeable as the winds in the storm season.
He had told his people to watch the inquisitor’s bodyguards constantly. He trusted them not at all. They might explode into mayhem and slaughter anytime it suited them. His accord with the woman was all that held
them back.
It wouldn’t last. He was certain they would try for his life eventually.
But not while the woman still needs us. Not while she still petitions for access to the star systems that interest her so.
When he and the inquisitor finally stood before the High Council of Ethereals on T’au, he would secretly petition the Auns to send an exploratory force to the region. He had to know why the woman was so desperate to gain access. What did she expect to find? Until he had his answers, she could not be allowed the permission she sought.
For now, she still had much to share in the effort to create the ultimate weapon against the Y’he. That was her only value. The moment it was no longer a factor, he would take great personal pleasure in watching the light go from her eyes.
She was more dangerous than a pit of pregnant firefangs.
He walked away from the monitor, thankful that the smell of the Space Marines did not follow him.
Before him curved the great, broad hull of the ship that would take them into orbit, there to dock with the interstellar craft the High Council had sent.
From Tychonis, further east. Rimward. Deeper into t’au space.
It would be several weeks of skipping across the surface of the void, what the gue’la called the warp, before they would arrive at their destination.
The breeding project would continue throughout the trip. The inquisitor’s Geller field generator would continue to isolate their specimens from the tyranid hive-mind.
How perilously critical that generator is, he thought unhappily.
If it ever faltered for long, the purestrain genestealers and even, perhaps, some of the t’au-tyranid hybrids they were transporting would suddenly find themselves able to signal the hive-mind.
Such a signal would, as he understood it, bring the might of the Devourer down on this entire sector of space. Tychonis and the system in which it sat would be consumed and left dead in the wake of that unquenchable hunger.
Again, the importance of what they were doing here struck him.
The Council should never have brushed him and Aun’dzi aside all those years ago, posting them to such an insignificant world as this. Pure politics. Less honourable servants of the Greater Good had schemed and brought influence to bear behind the scenes. Coldwave had been originally marked for a far greater posting. Aun’dzi, too, was to be honoured with a rich and vibrant world on which to share his guidance and wisdom.
It mattered no longer. Their political rivals had thought themselves victorious, but in truth, they had accidentally seeded the ground with an opportunity for redemption and glory beyond all expectation.
Was it Fate that had intersected the inquisitor’s path with his? Or was it all down to her machinations? Had she chosen Tychonis well in advance?
No matter. The accord had placed in t’au hands the first real chance to save their entire race from its greatest threat.
And old rivals will know, they will see, and they will bow their heads in shame.
A senior earth caste tech saw him gazing at the ship and hustled over in that particular way unique to the shortest and physically strongest of the t’au.
‘Shas’o,’ trilled the tech.
Coldwave turned and gave a curt nod. ‘How close are we to readiness?’
The tech gestured to the ship’s rear, where its massive engines hummed, the exhausts glowing a hot, dull red. Thick cables snaked away from ports in the ship’s sides, running to reactors and vast cylindrical tanks. Earth caste techs in non-military exo-suits were loading heavy crates via ramps at the fore and aft.
‘Within the decacycle, honoured hunter.’
‘Then we are behind,’ rasped Coldwave.
The tech began exuding a particular scent, a mix of guilt, resentment and unworthiness, tinged with a little dislike.
‘Forgiveness, hunter, but the special cargo presented… unique challenges.’
‘My orders on that were executed precisely,’ said Coldwave. It was anything but a question.
‘They were, hunter. I saw to it myself.’
‘For the Greater Good,’ said Coldwave.
‘Always,’ said the tech. ‘My life for the Greater Good.’
‘Very well, I hold you to the decacycle. Do not disappoint me. In doing so, you disappoint the Aun, a stain on your standing you might never remove, builder.’
He strode off, leaving the tech staring at his back, exuding that mix of emotions even more strongly than before.
Two air caste pilots – one male, one female – tall and willowy, frail-looking in their tight-fitting flight suits, moved to either side of him but stayed half a pace back in respect.
‘Word has just reached us, hunter,’ said the one on the right. ‘The Kashtu and Ishtu rebels have attacked our airbases at Na’sol and Zu’shan. The fighting is heavy. Many dead.’
Coldwave whirled to face them. He met the gaze of one, then the other. ‘Should I request air support from those bases, I need it delivered. Did they get fighters into the air?’
Again, it was the one on the right who spoke. ‘Our pilots were not able to take off. The assaults were very sudden and carefully coordinated. It is your fire caste brothers fighting to restore control on whom we must depend. If they can clear the runways, even temporarily, we can get Razorsharks and Sunsharks into the air.’
‘I don’t need bombers,’ snapped Coldwave. ‘Kurdiza must remain operational after our departure. Prioritise the launch of fighters. I want to know as soon as you have them in the air. I want to know how many and how long it will take them to get here if I should need them. Is that understood?’
The tall, slender t’au touched the fingers of their right hands to their upper abdomens and gave brief bows.
Coldwave left them to follow his instructions. It was time to make his own preparations.
The Space Marines, this Talon Squad the black giants kept talking about, had somehow survived. The bombing of the perimeter air-defence tower and the rebel attacks on the neighbouring airbases could only mean one thing.
They were coming for the woman.
Under other circumstances, Coldwave would have gladly given them her cold corpse.
They were coming, but the line stopped here. This time, he would obliterate them personally and destroy the dark legend that was growing around them among his soldiers. Space Marines bled like everything else. They died. They just took a little more killing than most.
He entered the sub-hangar housing his battlesuit. It gleamed in the light of the lumes, beautiful and noble, a martial masterwork of his people, calling to him, eager for union so that they could relish the surge and flow of battle again, the grace, the power, the freedom.
Here was the doom of his enemies, the vehicle of his glory and honour, his success.
‘Patience, mighty one,’ he told the silent giant. He ignored the curious looks of the techs still busy arming and priming its advanced combat systems. He was grinning, aware that he was exuding eagerness and confidence and a hunger for violent victory. What of it? He had every right.
He strode forward and placed a proud hand on the smooth, armoured leg of the machine.
‘The blood of powerful foes will be shed today. They are on their way, foolish and eager to die. They are coming, and we shall oblige.
‘For the Greater Good.’
Forty-two
Less than an hour till sunrise.
The t’au would have plugged the gap in their perimeter by now, rerouting power through other circuits to bring the sabotaged Tower Six back online.
As he led Talon through the darkness, Karras glanced at the sky, saw the spray of bright stars there, the tiny, distant orb of Tychonis’ only moon, Goetha. Sigma had to be in-system somewhere, the Saint Nevarre cloaked and undetectable to the t’au. Broden and Scimitar couldn’t have travelled here otherwise. Thu
nderhawk gunships couldn’t traverse the warp.
There was a t’au craft up there, too. Agga had told him. She had seen it in a scrying. She could not read Epsilon’s prime futures, but the chances were high that the ship had come for the inquisitor and her research project.
This assault on the spaceport really would be a last chance.
So far, only Talon and Sabre were on the ground. The only way to get the rest of the assault force on site was to knock out the t’au air-defence network for the whole facility.
Two options, then. Take it down via the defence control consoles in the command centre of the main spaceport building – heavily defended, and a surefire way to bring every t’au in the region running straight to your location – or knock out power for the whole damned town – a more temporary solution, but a lot more viable given the available assets.
With primary power down, the circuits would switch over to drawing power from stations outside the immediate local area. Those were outside the task force’s reach, but the switch from a primary local source to secondary distant sources would take the t’au an estimated eleven minutes.
Eleven minutes in which the Thunderhawk, callsign Black Eagle, along with the Stormravens of Reaper flight would do a missile run, knocking out as many of the armed turrets as they could manage before the spaceport power came back online.
The whole town around the spaceport would be seething with ground forces by then. Enemy air elements were being held at bay by the rebels, but that could change anytime.
Situational advantage was so tenuous. The pendulum could swing against them at any given moment. Karras could only deal with what was in front of him, however. He pushed the later stages of the assault from his mind.
Sabre Squad would hit fuel silos and cause a disaster. Fires would spread. The t’au would have to deal with that or see half the town destroyed.
Talon would hit the power station and open the way for the others.
He led Watcher, Prophet, Omni and Ghost through the shadowed streets, fully armed and armoured but stealthed and all but silent.
They passed through the main warehousing area where off-planet imports were stored before distribution. Twice they encountered small t’au patrols, the fire warriors made complacent by the late hour and the years of uneventful duty. Tychonis had been too peaceful for too long. Even with Coldwave on site, bringing extra fire caste forces with him, the average t’au soldier saw little cause for heightened vigilance. Events at the Tower had been kept contained, data shared on a need-to-know basis only, and most t’au simply did not need to know.
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