“Shas’el? A name, please. Someone reliable.”
The grizzled tau responded without hesitation. “La’Kais. Contact La’Kais.”
“Ah yes, the hero…” He nodded at the kor’ui. “Open a channel to La’Kais.”
The bridge systems chimed. The anxious personnel gathered held their collective breath and stared at the innocuous speaker drones.
“Shas’la?” Udas said.
“W-what—?” the return signal was weak, made tinny by the distance and distortion it faced. Udas thought the voice sounded drained. Tired. Traumatised. Hysterical, even. “Who’s that?” it quailed. “Who… oh… I thought the contact was down. Wh—?”
“This is Shas’o Sa’cea Udas, La’Kais. I’m aboard the Enduring Blade.”
“…thank the tau’va… oh, bloodfire… thought I was alone…”
Udas exchanged a raised-eyebrow glance with El’Lusha.
“Kais… I need a status report. Have you seen the Aun’el?”
“Gone… gone, by the path… eaten up by the blood door… It’s the terror. The terror, Shas’o. Do you hear me? It’s the terror!” The excess of emotion was palpable in his voice, breaking through the facade of dignity and calmness inherent to taukind. Udas placed a hand over the drone hovering at his side, covering the microphone array. He turned back to El’Lusha. “He’s gone mad.”
Lusha didn’t look convinced. “Shas’o… May I?”
“Of course.” Udas waved the drone towards the veteran.
“Kais? Kais — this is El’Lusha.”
“El’Lusha? I blew the engines. I did that. For the machine, Shas’el. I cleared the bridge. M-me. That was right, wasn’t it? ‘For the machine’, you said.”
The voice sounded like an infant, timid and querulous, clinging to certainties to displace whatever madness was gripping it. O’Udas thought: iur’tae’mont. Burnout. War madness. Shellshock. It happened.
El’Lusha, concern etched on his face, spoke with a soothing cadence. “That’s it, child, for the machine… Kais: listen to me… I want you to tell me what’s going on in there. I want you to tell me what’s happened to the Aun.”
The response was a long time coming. Nervous kor’uis exchanged worried glances. Udas rubbed his chin.
When it came, the voice was little more than a whisper.
“Kais? Kais, we can’t hear you.”
“M-m…”
“Kais?”
“Mont’au!”
The bridge filled with the murmured litanies and meditations of dozens of personnel, all warding off the connotations of Kais’s pronouncement. O’Udas ground his teeth together and shook his head. The youth had lost his mind.
“There are things…” the comm said, voice growing in strength. “They came out of the walls, they came out of thin air. I thought it was a trick at first but… oh… the blood…”
“Kais—”
“Black. Black things. And red. Like devils. Like Mont’au devils with their eyes on fire and their guns… oh…”
One or two of the kor’uis moaned quietly, terrified by the monotone description. Lusha tried again.
“Kais, that’s enough…”
“They took the ethereal. And a gue’la, I think.”
“Took them whe—”
“But it’s okay. It’s all fine now, because… because, you see, I know. I understand. It’s a nightmare. El’Lusha? I’m dreaming, aren’t I? This isn’t real…”
Udas thought El’Lusha looked sick, grizzled features closing in on themselves.
“Kais, you… You’re awake.”
“…and you… hah…” the voice sounded sleepy, fogged behind a cloud of unreality, “…you’re just part of the dream…”
“Kais…”
“There’s something coming.”
“Kais? Kais, you have to fight th—”
“I have to go now. Respect and Unity, tau’fann.”
“Kais!”
Silence hit the bridge like a weapon strike, shaking every tau to his or her foundation. The kor’ui at the comm swallowed and shook his head. El’Lusha deflated, face pale.
“Well,” mumbled O’Udas, not sure what else to say. “well…”
“The gue’la is hailing us again, Shas’o.”
“Right. Yes. Open the channel.”
Click.
“—ill there? Xeno?”
“I am here, gue’la. We…”
“You contacted one of your units, yes? I take it that I have earned your trust?”
“Perhaps…”
“Good. No attacks on the Enduring Blade. Not yet, at any rate.”
“You say the Aun is on the planet?”
“I said ‘probably’.”
Udas could hear gunfire and shouting voices across the comm. He swallowed, hardening his resolve. “Then we shall free him.”
“You are welcome to try, xenogen. This ship is overrun. I’m taking my men planetside as soon as I can; we shall clean this mess or die trying.”
“Commendable br—”
“I neither expect nor desire your commendation, alien. I contacted you to suspend hostilities, that’s all. Let us not waste time with pleasantries. Your troops will stay out of my way. That is all.”
“Is this… is this a truce, then?”
“Call it what you want. You’re on borrowed time.”
Udas felt the blood heat again. These were words he understood; military, fighting words. The desire to rise and outstrip the human’s arrogant threats was powerful indeed… but… The Aun must come first. Always.
“As you say, human. For now.”
The channel went dead, El’Lusha clenched his fists, the Kor’uis cleared their throats and fidgeted in anxiety, and O’Udas anticipated another ground war. Suddenly he felt much more at home.
++ All ships, attention.++
++This is the Enduring Blade.++
[Purgatus here… Constantine! What the blazes is going on over there!]
[Sir! Baleful Gaze. You’ve been out of contact for an hour!]
[Troubador—Is it the xenos? What action, sir?]
[My telepaths are having fits. One of them clawed his own face off, by the throne! What’s happening?]
++Be silent, all of you. Constantine is gone. Maybe dead.++
[What the devil?]
[Who is th—?]
++This is Captain Ardias of the Adeptus Astartes Ultramarines. I want you all to listen very closely.++
[What th—?]
++Listen.++
++There has been an incursion. The tau are no longer our priority.++
[I demand an expla—]
++No more interruptions!++
++Governor Meyloch Severus of Dolumar IV. There’s a photo ident on the carrier frequency.++
++He’s been tainted.++
[…]
[Tainted? What do you mean?]
++You know what I mean.++
++Chaos, gentlemen.++
++The Enduring Blade is overrun.++
[This is…]
[I mean… Living-god…]
[…Chaos?…]
[…came out of nowhere…]
[How do we know this isn’t a tau trick?]
++Oh, of all the ridiculous…++
++Hhh++
++Stand by.++
----------------Override.>
<….….….>
<…Subcore priority-code recog. G#3.>
++There. Satisfied?++
[Emperor’s blood…]
[My comms servitor just died!]
[Throne’s mercy…]
+I’ll take that as affirmation.++
++That’s one of the highest priority edict codes you’ll ever see, gentlemen. Astartes Prioritus Level. This is real.++
++I’m initiating the evacuation of the Enduring Blade. I suspect some sort of Chaos operation on the planet surface. I suggest high-altitude surveys as soon as possible.++
++I’m taking my men down there.++
[I… I’ll dispatch ground troops immediately.]
[Yes. Yes, me too.]
[A full-scale attack, then. All hands.]
[Agreed.]
++Do what you want. The Ultramarines require no assistance.++
++Stay out of our way.++
[And the tau?]
++Ignore them.++
[What about the Enduring Blade?]
++……++
[Ardias?]
++On my command, destroy it.++
* * * * *
Kais slipped into insanity. A dec passed.
The first thread of rationality returned to him with the beautiful, ugly thought.
This. This is surrender.
The burstcannon was far more graceful than the blocky meltagun. He vaguely recalled prising it, sticky with blood, from the grasp of a fragmented shas’ui in the concilium. Its lines were smooth and crafted, its balance perfect. He thumbed the trigger and didn’t let go.
This is freedom.
It was a living thing in his hands. A barrelled lance that foomed breathlessly, churning out a strobefire-barrage of pulse drops. Like rain, he thought. Like a water stream, filled with iridescent impurities.
This is letting go.
Something went down, screaming. Smoke and sparks clawed at the air, a whalespout of light and vapour. Blood, somewhere. It hit the deck and moaned and shifted, going still, and Kais walked past without looking. Maybe, he thought, it was an enemy. Maybe not.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
This is release.
The thunder barrage of gunfire; the flash lightning drumbeat of contact; electric-blue energy dispersing and dissipating across armour and flesh, gouging liquid metal, splitting muscle and sinew. Something small and chittering exploded with ichor splendour, a damp detonation of black and purple fluids that hung viscously in strands from the surfaces of his gloves and helmet.
A grenade cracked open a black-suited devil like a cockroach, spilling its rotten guts across the floor. It died with its ancient viscera clutched in its claw-gauntleted grasp, trying to reassemble its disordered innards.
Had he killed any tau, rampaging out of control?
Probably. Does it matter?
And the lights. Yellow-orange-yellow-orange. Pulse-pulse-pulse.
Portals heaved opened and closed, like heart valves, he thought. Organic machinery inside a stomach vessel, digestive enzymes with boiling red eyes and roaring axes hungrily breaking down the daily intake.
Dead tau, everywhere. Dead gue’la, everywhere.
Dead fire warriors and guardsmen and Space Marines. Dead officers and sergeants, dead ratings and crewmen and engineers and tech-priests.
Dead everything.
Scattered and blasted. Hanging from walls and ceiling. Bulkheads painted red. Decks awash in cyan. A here-and-there abattoir. Bits.
The madness lasted a solid dec, at least. His mind closed up: ephemeral thoughts passing through, peripheral considerations and concerns lost in a barrage of violence and blood. A whirligig storm of horror. The Mont’au thing slithered its way into his brain and took over.
Took over — or set him free? He wasn’t sure.
At the end of it, running through the circular platforms of the evacuation shaft, he began to remember details: little things first, but growing in size and relevance. A single dec. One point five human “hours’. So little time and yet so many memories crammed-together, slowly uncoiling.
There had been a voice in his head. There had been commands, perhaps. An impatient growl in his mind describing routes and pathways, opening doors and slamming them shut, warning him of the black hulk terrors lurking in wait for him. It was uncanny. The voice called him “xeno” and sounded angry. It spoke in the gue’la language.
He wondered why his madness should take such a precise form.
The voice had said that “they”—whoever they were — had struggled with the tau communication frequencies. It said he should consider himself lucky. The voice said that thanks to the Grace of the Emperor, they’d been able to latch on to his helmet code to reach him.
Kais didn’t understand, of course, but reasoned that one wasn’t, perhaps, supposed to understand hallucinations. The voice had said things were dire. The voice said if the enemy succeeded in firing the ship’s weapons into the tau fleet, then truce or not the war would begin again. The voice said someone had to cripple the lance arrays.
Kais’s memories were soup. They curled and coiled and writhed away from him, borne aloft on a bed of yammering, yowling voices; of whispering evil in his ear. Still, he remembered the guns… The voice talked him through it, thank the path. He concentrated on killing and dousing the world in blood whilst his madness — his patient, human-speaking madness — crackled in his helmet and told him how to plant bombs in file-edged ammunition stores and run, run, run.
He remembered the explosions. And now what?
This. This is release!
He thumbed the trigger again, pressure pad tacky with half-dry blood. There was almost no recoil and he delighted in the churning stream of teardrop plasma, biting and gnawing through the smoke and haze that seemed to have filled every last corner of this infectious, ruined ship.
Yes, maybe things were getting clearer. A dec had passed, or thereabouts, and now the mindfog was diminishing. He remembered the munitions chambers exploding, the voice in his head reluctantly congratulating him, the panicked screams…
He remembered a cold, grating voice pumped through every corridor like oxygen from a vent, hissing: “All hands, evacuate vessel. All hands, evacua—”
And the voice had said, “Get to the drop pods, xeno, if you can.”
And the voice had gone.
He remembered following the crowds. Humans and tau avoiding eye contact, fighting together but never speaking, descending through the ship together but never touching, never tapping one another on the back or helping one another when wounded. The gue’la ran and shouted and screamed and died. The tau hurried in silence, fanned out efficiently, exchanged commands, kept their cool — and died just the same.
And they all steered clear of him. It was like… it was like they weren’t sure who or what he was. He remembered that he’d tried, twice, to comm-link with the hurrying tau troops. Perhaps his helmet was more damaged than he thought, because not one deigned to answer.
The Mont’au thing was out of him now, draped like a shroud, like wings, like a bloody black mantle. He remembered rust-red Marines howling and bellowing, oozing from walls and floors with impossible spontaneity, hacking off heads and disappearing in a wet slurp of warp immateria. He remembered the hissing, whispering evil that saturated the air flexing and growing, biting at his madness, inviting him to join it.
A dec had passed, more or less. There was clarity returning now, by degrees. He wondered why. Was it, perhaps, desperation?
There were no drop pods. The evac-bay was a great circular abyss, platforms on all sides ringed by drop pod archways, level after level of evacuation galleries overflowing with panicking individuals struggling for freedom. Fights broke out, of course.
Briefly he toyed with turning back, returning to the snaking corridors and slime pocked cloisters of the ship
. Giving in to it would be so easy, so perfect; clutching in his hand a weapon, unburdened by fears and agendas. No objectives. No commands. No rationality. No focus. Just total surrender, smashing and breaking and shattering. Pouring himself out of himself, destroying for the sake of destroying, raging impotently against the bitterness inside.
See, father? See!
But… It was too easy. Too pointless. So he went down a level, and down again, and each time the madness cleared a little more. Something was jostling it in his brain, pushing aside the need to kill. Something much older than the rage, something stronger even than the Mont’au hunger.
Survival. The need to stay alive. Oh, maybe surviving to one day fight again. Maybe to achieve great and noble things. Maybe to live out his days in solitude and silence, pondering upon everything and nothing. There was no “why” to it. It didn’t matter what reason he gave himself for staying alive; the need to do so was all that mattered.
So a dec, more or less, passed. The insanity went away, piece by piece. He killed and fought and struggled. He descended past drop pods tumbling away into the void with gue’la or tau (but never both) cargo. He limped on a bloody, rotten leg, shut out the whispering madness in his skull and finally, mercifully-Clarity returned to him. Words from nowhere:
No expansion without equilibrium. No conquest without control. Pursue success in serenity And service to the tau’va.
Shas’la T’au Kais took a breath and shrugged off the horror. There was an unlaunched drop pod at the base of the shaft. He took a second, closing his eyes and allowing himself to reach equilibrium. He almost, almost managed it.
He was interrupted. Someone, nearby, shrieked.
The Blademaster Tikoloshe was mad. He knew it.
He concentrated and somewhere deep in his fractured, buzzing consciousness a command was dispatched. Ancient, rust-corrupted servos growled, tangled power cords tightening brutally.
His legs moved, a creaking werewolf cackle of protesting, unoiled joints and unnatural ossified growths shattering and grinding against one another.
His mind rolled over and lost itself, briefly.
Three thousand years ago: On an unnamed desertworld claimed by the Daemonlord Tarkh’ax he roars in silence, grappling his razor-talons against the shimmering wraith sword of a fiery Eldar monstrosity, its blazing eyes roaring with endless smoke—
[Warhammer 40K] - Fire Warrior Page 23
