He appraised me with a distrust so candid it was almost conspiratorial, as if we were both willing players in a game of lies. A game that he was used to winning…
‘So you wish to test yourself in the field, Asharil?’ He smiled again and this time I saw humour there, though no humour I cared to share. ‘Then I shall not deny you. Indeed, I believe I have a most suitable commission for you.’
I will never know why O’Seishin became my enemy in that one brief meeting, but he proved to be the least of the blights awaiting me on this world.
Of the long conflict between the Tau Empire and the gue’la Imperium for mastery of Fi’draah I shall not speak. Mysteries shroud the war like whispering smoke, but I learned little of them before O’Seishin dispatched me to oblivion. Of the planet itself I could say much, for I travelled its wilderness for almost five months, but I will content myself with a single truth: whatever you are told in your orientation, it will not prepare you for the reality of this place. To classify Fi’draah as a ‘jungle world’ or a ‘water world’ is to garb a corpse in finery and call it beautiful. Eighty per cent of its surface is drowned in viscid, lethargic oceans that blend into the sky in a perpetual cycle of evaporation and drizzle, wreathing everything in a grey-green miasma that seeps into the flesh and spirit. The continents are ragged tangles of mega-coral choked with vegetation that looks – and smells – like it has been dredged up from the depths. Stunted trees with fleshy trunks and bladder-like fronds vie with drooping tenements of fungi and titanic anemone clusters, everything strangling or straddling or simply growing upon everything else – fecundity racing decay so fast you can almost see it.
Whether Sector O-31 is the worst of Fi’draah’s territories I cannot say, but it must surely rank amongst them. The gue’la call it ‘the Coil’, a name infinitely more fitting than our own sober designation, for there is nothing remotely sober about that malign wilderness. A serpentine spiral of waterlogged jungles, it is the dark heartland of Fi’draah’s largest, most untamed continent. The war has left it almost untouched, but rumours haunt it like bad memories: of regiments swallowed whole before they could clash… Of lost patrols still fighting older wars than ours… And of ancient things sleeping beneath the waters…
Naturally, I dismissed such nonsense. My task was to cast the light of reason across this enigma and ‘unravel the Coil’ (as O’Seishin so artfully sold it). I was to accompany Fio’vre Mutekh, a distinguished cartographer of the earth caste on his quest to map the region. Fool that I was, I believed myself honoured! It was only later, when I saw how the Coil twisted in upon itself, that I realised the absurdity of our endeavour. I have often wondered whether O’Seishin is still laughing at me.
It says much about the nature of the earth caste that Mutekh approached his impossible assignment without rancour. A robust tau in his autumn cycle, he had a pompous manner that exasperated me, but he was utterly rigorous in his work. His assistant, Xanti, was a placid autaku (or data tech) who spoke rarely and never met my gaze. I believe he preferred the company of his neo-sentient data drone to his fellow tau.
The fourth and final person of note was our protector and guide, Shas’ui Jhi’kaara. A fire warrior and veteran of Fi’draah, she regarded the jungle with the tender distrust of a predator who knows it is also prey, and like many alpha predators she commanded her own pack: a dozen gue’la janissaries equipped with flak-plate and pulse carbines. They were all Imperial deserters, lured from the enemy by the promise of better rations rather than ideology, and despite the trappings of our civilisation they remained barbarians. Every night they gambled, quarrelled and brawled amongst themselves, but never in Jhi’kaara’s presence. Had they known I spoke their native tongue they would have guarded their words more closely. Listening in on their crude passions and superstitions, I marvelled that their stunted species had ever reached the stars.
Together we entered the Coil: earth, water, fire… and mud, travelling its strange waterways in a pair of aging Devilfish hover transports. Every few days Mutekh would spot a ‘notable feature’ and call a halt. Then we would spend an eternity recording some obscure geological phenomenon or ancient indigene ruin. As the cartographer updated his maps and the janissaries patrolled, the jungle would press in, watching us with a thousand hungry eyes that belonged to a single beast.
‘It hates us,’ Jhi’kaara said once, surprising me as I stared back at the beast. ‘But it welcomes us in the expectation that we will grow careless.’
‘It is just a jungle, Shas’ui,’ I said, squaring up to the warrior. ‘It has no thoughts.’
‘You are lying, waterkin,’ Jhi’kaara said. ‘You see the truth, but like all your kind, you fear it.’
‘My kind?’ I was shocked. ‘We are the same kind. We are both tau.’
Her face was hidden behind the impassive, lens-studded mask of her combat helmet, but I sensed her sneer.
As our expedition stretched from weeks into months I came to detest every one of my companions, but Jhi’kaara most of all. While I recognised the place of the fire caste in the Tau’va, there was a coiled violence about her that disturbed me. Perhaps it was her hideous facial scarring or her playful contempt… But no… I believe it was something deeper. Like O’Seishin, she had become tainted by this world.
Taint. Such an irrational term for a tau to use; surely one better suited to the Imperial fanatics who condemn otherness for otherness’s sake? Perhaps, but lately I have come to wonder whether the fanatics may have it right.
It is time I told you of the Sanctuary of Wyrms.
‘What is it?’ I asked, trying to decipher the dark shape through its veil of vegetation. Squat yet vast, it rose from the centre of the island ahead, evidently a structure of some kind, but unlike any other we had encountered in the Coil. Despite the obscuring vegetation, its harsh, angular lineaments were unmistakable, suggesting an architectural brutality at odds with the flowing contours of our own aesthetics. Even at a distance it filled me with foreboding.
‘The Nirrhoda did not lie,’ Mutekh said, lowering his scope.
The Nirrhoda? I recalled the feral, mud-caked indigenes we had encountered some weeks back. Technically ‘indigene’ was a misnomer since the native Phaedrans were descended from gue’la colonists who had conquered this world millennia ago and then, in turn, been conquered by it. Squat and bowlegged, with huge glassy eyes and yawning mouths, they were primitive degenerates who wandered the wilderness in loose tribes. All were unpredictable, but the Nirrhoda clan, who followed the chaotic arrhythmia of the Coil, were notoriously belligerent. Yet Jhi’kaara had known their ways and won a parley for Mutekh, who had traded trinkets for shreds of truth about their deceitful land. One such shred had led us here.
‘They certainly did not lie about the wyrmtrees,’ the fire warrior observed sourly. ‘That island is infested with them.’
I had taken the gentle undulation of the towering anemone-like growths encrusting the island to be a product of the wind… Yet there was no wind… Now I watched their swaying tendrils with fresh eyes: at the base, each was thicker than my waist, tapering to a sinuous violet tip that tilted towards us, as if tasting us on the air.
‘Are they dangerous?’ I asked.
‘Their sting is lethal,’ Jhi’kaara said fondly, ‘but they grow slowly. These must be over a century old. That structure–’
‘Evidently predates the war,’ Mutekh interrupted with relish. ‘We must evaluate this discovery thoroughly.’ Something like avarice swept across his broad face, revealing another shade of taint: the hunger to know. ‘You will clear a path please, fire warrior.’
Jhi’kaara turned the rotary cannons of our Devilfish upon the forest, shredding the rubbery growths into steaming slabs that seemed more meat than vegetable. The trees shrieked as they died, their warble sounding insidiously sentient.
‘It proved a poor sanctuary,’ Xanti said with peculiar sadness. I glanced
at Mutekh’s assistant in surprise. He shrugged, embarrassed by my attention. ‘That is what the savages called this place: the Sanctuary of Wyrms.’
Then the janissaries went amongst the detritus with flame-throwers, laughing as they incinerated the flailing, orphan tendrils. One brute grew careless and a whip-like frond lashed his face as it flipped about in its death spasms. Moments later the man joined it in his own dance of death. It was the first time I saw violent death, but I was unmoved. Fi’draah had already changed me.
Unveiled, the building was almost profound in its ugliness. It was a squat, octagonal block assembled from prefabricated grey slabs that were as hard as rock. The walls tilted inwards to a flat roof that looked strong enough to withstand an aerial bombardment, suggesting the place might be a bunker of some kind. Circling it, we found no apertures or ornamentation save for a deeply recessed entrance wide enough to accommodate a tank. A metal bulkhead blocked the path, its corroded surface embossed with a stark ‘I’ symbol. Despite its simplicity, the sigil had an austere authority that deepened my unease.
‘I am unfamiliar with this emblem,’ Mutekh mused, running a hand over the raised metal. ‘Your thoughts, Por’ui?’
‘It looks like a gue’la rune,’ I answered. ‘Linguistically it translates as ‘the self’, but in this context it probably has a factional connotation.’
‘So the gue’la built this place?’ Xanti asked.
‘Oh, I would most definitely postulate an Imperial provenance,’ Mutekh said, clearly enjoying himself. ‘Though it lacks the vainglorious ornamentation typical of their architecture, the configuration and construction materials are manifestly Imperial.’
‘Why would there be Imperials on Fi’draah before the war?’ Xanti seemed confused by the notion.
‘Why wouldn’t there be?’ Mutekh proclaimed. ‘Throughout the ages there have been Imperials almost everywhere. They are an ancient power that coveted the stars millennia before the Tau’va was revealed to us. There is no telling when they first came to this world. Or why.’
‘This place has the strength of a fortress, but not the logic,’ Jhi’kaara offered, speaking for the first time. ‘The walls are solid, but there are no emplacements or watchtowers.’
‘Perhaps they are hidden,’ I suggested.
‘No, remember this is a pre-war relic,’ Mutekh chided. ‘It was not constructed to keep an enemy out, but to keep a secret within.’
‘What kind of secret?’ Xanti asked loyally.
‘The kind that was worth hiding well!’ There was a glint in the cartographer’s eyes at the prospect. ‘The kind that is worth learning for the Greater Good.’ He slapped the bulkhead. ‘Open it!’
There was no obvious access mechanism, but Xanti’s data drone detected a biometric scanner embedded in the bulkhead.
‘For the gue’la it is a sophisticated system,’ the autaku murmured, his face lost in the dancing holograms projected by his drone. The small saucer-like machine hovered by the hatch, interfacing the mechanism with its datalaser and mapping it into territory its master could negotiate.
‘I doubt I could deceive this,’ Xanti said, ‘but it appears the seal has already been broken… and crudely reset.’ He looked up with a frown. ‘Someone has trespassed here before us.’
Despite the damaged seal night had fallen by the time Xanti synthesised the correct trigger. Dead cogs ground into life and the bulkhead rose, groaning at this second desecration. A sour fungal fetor seeped from the dark maw, so dense it was almost visible. Some of the janissaries chuckled as I retched and fumbled for my filtrator mask, but their faces were pale. Jhi’kaara silenced them with a sharp gesture, but I felt no gratitude. Her sealed helmet spared her the stench we suffered. Where was the equity in that?
We entered the cavernous chamber beyond in a practised formation, with Jhi’kaara’s hovering gun drone taking point and the janissaries fanning out to either side. Our torch beams thrust back the darkness, but it clung to every corner and crevice like black cobwebs. The burned-out hulks of amphibious transports and machinery loomed on all sides, casting shadows across a graveyard of barrels and crates.
‘The invaders closed off the escape route,’ Jhi’kaara said, gauging the devastation. ‘They destroyed the vehicles and sealed the exit in case anyone slipped past them.’
‘Why did no one fight back?’ I wondered. ‘There are no bodies here.’
‘A good question, waterkin.’
Across the chamber the inner hatch lay amongst the detritus, shredded and torn from its recess. Jhi’kaara knelt and ran her fingers over the wreckage. The edges were curled into serrated whorls of tortured metal.
‘Chainswords,’ she said.
‘How can you be sure?’ I asked.
‘The teeth leave a pattern.’ She paused and looked over her shoulder, staring right at me. ‘Their mark is… unique.’ It was almost a challenge.
‘Unique?’ As if by their own volition my eyes were drawn to the ghost of a scar running down the faceplate of her helmet, a wound that echoed the rift in her own face. And suddenly I understood why she knew these weapons so intimately.
The destruction petered out in the corridor beyond, but the sense of oppression did not. It shadowed us as we passed through one deserted chamber after another, closing in as we moved deeper into the outpost.
‘Smaller teams would cover more ground,’ Mutekh protested. ‘Your caution is illogical, Shas’ui. This place is long dead.’
But the fire warrior would not split our force, and I was struck anew by the differences between the castes. We worked together for the Greater Good, yet our natures were discordant. Mutekh and Xanti were creatures of reason, while Jhi’kaara was pure instinct. What did that make me?
I brooded over the question as we pressed on, passing through guardrooms and storerooms, the hollow tomb of a dormitory and a mess hall where food still waited on the table, fossilised and forgotten.
‘It took them unawares,’ Jhi’kaara murmured, ‘and it took them swiftly.’
‘It?’ I asked. ‘You mean the invaders?’
‘No…’ For the first time she sounded troubled. ‘No, I think this was something else.’
We found the first corpse in the communications room, propped up against the vox-console. Shrouded in heavy crimson robes, the mummified cadaver looked more machine than man. Its face was an angular bronze mask studded with sensors, seemingly riveted to the skull. A pistol was clutched in a bionic claw, the barrel shoved through the broken grille of its mouth. Its cranium had ruptured into a crown of splintered bones and circuitry.
‘He shot himself before the intruders reached him,’ Jhi’kaara judged.
‘Or because they reached him too late,’ I offered uncertainly. She glanced at me, waiting as I tested the intuition. ‘He’s the only one we’ve found. Perhaps that makes him different.’
‘He was certainly different,’ Xanti said eagerly. ‘Judging by his extensive bionics he was a Mechanicus priest, probably an important one. Unlike ourselves, the data techs of the Imperium aspire to become one with their machines.’
The autaku’s passion surprised me. Abruptly, I realised how little I knew about my companions. We had travelled so far together yet we were still strangers. Was it our castes that divided us, or merely our personal flaws? Uneasily, I put the question aside and concentrated on the facts.
‘Perhaps he summoned the invaders,’ I suggested.
Jhi’kaara considered it. ‘Perhaps he did, waterkin.’
And perhaps I am not the fool you took me for, I thought.
The elevator to the lower levels had been demolished and the hatch to the stairwell was welded shut from within, but that was no obstacle to our plasma cutters. Beyond, a metal staircase wound down into darkness.
Jhi’kaara’s gun drone led the way, levitating down the stairwell as we followed on the spiralling steps
, its searchlight diving ahead into the abyss below. As we descended, the walls became brittle and powdery, sucked dry by silvery seams of fungus. In places the filth had erupted into cancerous fruiting bodies, but they were all desiccated husks, seemingly petrified in the moment of blossoming. The stench was dreadful and I kept my filtrator firmly in place. Mutekh and Xanti soon followed suit, but the janissaries suffered stoically, unwilling to show weakness before Jhi’kaara.
They are like dogs trying to impress their master, I thought.
At regular intervals we passed access hatches to other levels, and I realised the bulk of the outpost lay beneath the ground, like a buried mountain riddled with tunnels and caves. Some hatches were sealed, other gaped open, but we ignored them all. Exploring the entire complex would take days and none of us cared to linger here. Instead we pressed on, drawn by a collective sense that the answers we sought lay below. But when the drone’s light finally found the bottom of the stairwell we froze.
‘Emperor protect us!’ one of the janissaries gasped, but nobody reprimanded him for his atavism.
Our path terminated in a charnel pit. Dozens of cadavers were piled up below, mangled and contorted by violent death. The walls around them were pitted with deep craters, suggesting heavy gunfire, but it was impossible tell whether it was bullets or chainswords that had cleansed these dead.
Cleansed. It is another term that sits uneasily with the Tau’va, yet it is the right term, for these creatures were unclean. Despite their wounds and decades of decay, it was obvious they were only superficially gue’la. Their withered flesh was stretched taut across misshapen bones, thickening to gnarled plates at the ribs and shoulder blades. Many had double-jointed legs and scythe-like appendages jutting from their wrists. Their faces were atrophied relics in elongated, almost bestial skulls, the jaws distended by hardened, stinger-tipped tongues. Some still wore shreds of clothing, but most were naked.
Hammer and Bolter Presents: Xenos Hunters Page 23
