Damocles

by Various

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ I said. My throat was dry and my words caught.

  Othelliar’s face was red. His eyes were bright, with tears or fury I couldn’t tell. The way he was glaring at me down the barrel… It was defiant, like he was challenging me to disagree with what he was doing, to call him to put his weapon down, to reach for my knife. Anything to make shooting me easier, because I saw then that he was relieved I’d obeyed him. He didn’t have it in him to kill me either. He wiped the sweat from his face on the undersuit in the crook of his arm. The gun remained quiet. He answered me instead.

  ‘They have my family.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The damned Inquisition!’ he shouted back. ‘Who do you think? Your thrice-damned Inquisition!’

  I held up my hands. ‘They’re not my Inquisition.’ They never had been, even back when I’d been one of the Emperor’s loyal subjects. Who regards the Inquisition as on their side, for the love of Terra? ‘I’m a member of the Tau’va. You are too. Don’t do this, Othelliar. They’ll cut him up alive to see what makes him tick. Can you do this to him? It’s Skilltalker!’

  Othelliar’s eyes flicked from Skilltalker to me and back again.

  ‘I have no choice. It’s him or my children. My children, Jathen!’

  ‘They’ll never let you have them back. You know that.’

  His eyes said he did know. I didn’t blame him. In his situation would I have done any different? I ask myself that sometimes, usually at night when the screams come and the dreams grow dark and dawn is long hours away. The answer’s always the same: Probably not.

  ‘I don’t have any choice,’ he said.

  He was right about that. People like him and me, we’re all pawns on the board in the end.

  ‘They’re dead already, Othelliar.’

  Othelliar stared at me. ‘You know I can’t let myself believe that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t have any choice!’ he screamed, and he pulled his weapon in tighter to his shoulder. ‘If I give up, if I go over, they’ll kill my family, and they’ll kill me. Deep cranial implant, so deep even these clever blueskins won’t spot it. They get close enough to me, bang! That’s it. Not that I care, but my children, Jathen…’

  Skilltalker was his usual placid self. He held up calming hands. ‘Do not fear, friend J’ten.’ He spoke to Othelliar. ‘Do not shoot J’ten Ko’lin. It will not advance your cause.’

  ‘I don’t want to kill him. They told me to leave no one alive, but I will. I’ll only dance to their orders so long as they’re watching. I’ll leave him be if you come without trouble.’

  ‘I have no intention of doing otherwise,’ said Skilltalker.

  ‘Good.’ Othelliar kept us both covered. He was getting twitchier by the second. The sound of fighting away on the other side of the ship was getting loud enough to hear.

  ‘He doesn’t really want to do this,’ I said. I was sure I could talk Othelliar out of it.

  ‘No,’ said Skilltalker. ‘I will go with him, it is what must be. For your safety.’

  And then, Skilltalker took a step toward me.

  ‘I thank you for the service. Truly you are gue’vesa, most faithful of companions. You have served the Tau’va in ways that you may never understand. You may recall I asked you once what form your ta’lissera would take?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Get away from him!’ Othelliar barked. We ignored him.

  ‘I hope you will think on it further. But, my friend, this shall be our ta’lissera.’ He put out his hand. ‘Is this custom an acceptable display of mutual friendship bonding?’ It was as if Othelliar and his gun didn’t matter any more. He might have shot Krix, but that was self-preservation, pure and simple, and Krix wasn’t human. When it came down to staring another man in the eye and pulling the trigger, he was as keen as putting a carbine particle into one of his team members as I was, for all he said.

  I reached out and took Skilltalker’s hand. Dry skin, I remember, quite rough; feels thicker than human skin. I’ve not touched a tau many times. Strange that, thinking about it. We’re more tactile than you.

  He gripped my hand back, his three wide digits around mine. Then he reached out his other hand and wrapped it over the top of our clasp. ‘This is my ta’lissera with you, Jathen, a binding that neither life nor death may sever,’ he said. There was real warmth in it. ‘I pledge my bond to you. I part ways from you as your friend. I thank you for your friendship. It has been most illuminating, but also…’ He said something in tau that I didn’t quite understand and then smiled with that flat space where your noses should be all wrinkled. ‘There is no word for it, not directly, in your language.’

  Othelliar was getting more anxious, looking at the doors as if a horde of Space Marines were going to smash them down any moment. He gestured with his gun barrel, the weapon still held high to his shoulder.

  ‘Go, go!’ he shouted. He reached out and slapped Skilltalker, knocking his hat askew. This made me more angry than anything, and I would have gone for Othelliar there and then had Skilltalker not gestured for me to stand down.

  Othelliar grabbed at Skilltalker’s robes, and yanked him backward from the room toward a lifeboat hatch. Its lock spun and the door hissed open.

  Othelliar was treating Skilltalker more roughly than he needed. I felt for him, for what he was going through, but it wasn’t right the way he was acting.

  Skilltalker made a gesture to me before the door slid shut, and this one I knew all too well – Tau’va.

  For the Greater Good.

  Only as the lifeboat’s engines firing shook the dock, did I realise that Skilltalker had used my human name.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Their alien technologies prove my undoing. Some device is clamped to my leg. I knock he who placed it there sprawling with the back of my hand, cracking the large shoulder pad he wears with the power of my blow. If only I held my axe in my right rather than my left hand, I would have slain him. I drop my bolt pistol, and reach down to rip the device free. It is circular, the size of a man’s fist. Lights blink a rapid pattern and it emits a building whine. I lay my hand upon it too late. A massive burst of electromagnetic energy drives the spirit from my armour. My systems go dark. I feel sharp stabs of pain through the neural interfaces in my black carapace. The displays in my helmet fail. The world seems suddenly smaller, framed by only the lenses of my helmet. The sudden burden of my armour without its supportive musculature has me off balance. I stagger backward, dragged at by the power plant and cooling unit upon my back. Driven down by the dead weight of plasteel and ceramite that clads and protects me, I fall to my knees. I struggle to stand, but the remaining elite are by my side. It is no trouble for them to hold me in position, one hand each on my shoulders. I cannot rise.

  Their leader comes before me, sinking to the ground on the white-hot jets of his flightpack. He lands lightly and they cut out.

  ‘Well met, son of man,’ he says. I raise my head. On my knees, he seems tall. If I were a lesser being, I would be intimidated. I am not, but I am taken aback by what occurs next.

  The chest piece of the suit cracks open, swinging wide upon hinges to reveal the occupant within. Unlike our own battleplate, his limbs do not fill the limbs of his armour, but he sits in a space inside, piloting the armour rather than wearing it.

  At this juncture, the reason for the suit’s greater size becomes apparent. What gets out to stand over me is no tau, but a man.

  ‘I am Gue’vesa Dal’yth O’Va’Dem.’ Tall, noble of features, a sure and steady gaze. He wears dazzling white armour of form-fitting plates, a high gorget covering the lower portion of his face. Upon his forehead is branded the adorned I of the Emperor’s Inquisition.

  ‘I was once Inquisitor Lucien van Deem. You may use that name, if you wish. It is long since I spoke with an adept of the stars,
’ he says. He is weighing my fate, this arch-traitor, but there is no hostility in his face. ‘I apologise for this conflict.’

  ‘And what would you have, if not conflict, when the enemies of mankind pit themselves against us and its very protectors turn persecutor?’ I say. My voice is muffled by my helmet. The traitor nods to the two battlesuited elites to either side of me. ‘Hold him,’ he says. The tau with him defer to his orders as if he were one of their own. He is every centimetre the alien commander, but his face is brown-skinned, not blue. The downward pressure from their hands increases. The rogue inquisitor reaches down to my helm. I jerk from side to side, but he grasps me hard, and with swift fingers depresses the hidden catches to release it. The seal hisses. I smell burning and scorched flesh at their fullest strength, and then he has drawn my helmet away from me and looks down at me with appraising eyes.

  If I could move quickly enough, I would break his neck. I test the strength of my captors, and still cannot rise. If the Raven Guard still possessed the full suite of the Emperor’s gifts within its genestock, then I would spit poison in his face, but I have no Betcher’s Gland. Some of my brothers do, those raised from seed tithed to Terra by other Chapters. But I am of the purer sort, a greater proportion of Corax’s own genetic material is meshed into mine. For this singular honour, I pay the price in lessened ability. It is the only time I have ever regretted this lack.

  The rogue’s gorget slips away into itself, and he looks at me, a traitor now fully unmasked. ‘What else? Cooperation, adept. Coexistence. Peace. Are these words so repugnant to a Raven Guard?’ He holds my helmet with respect. His hair is white, as is his beard. His eyes are a piercing green.

  ‘Treachery, deceit, dishonour. Are these words palatable to you?’ I reply. ‘They are anathema to me. You are anathema to me. What have they done to you, these creatures, to turn you from your sworn duty?’

  He crouches before me, and sets my helmet aside. He knows the reverence with which we Space Marines treat our wargear. He respects it. ‘They have done nothing to turn me but talk to me. I was part of the Damocles Crusade, two hundred years ago. I was left behind upon their world which we so brutally ravaged. And for what reason? Reason did not come into it! The bitter pride of an old man – that was the reaction our Imperium gave to a race who bring nothing but the promise of peace and salvation from the darkness. As they said to me, this is only what our own Emperor tried to achieve, so long ago, before the great treachery destroyed his dream on the cusp of its realisation. You are shocked. Oh, I see it even beneath the mask of hatred and contempt you wear. They know much of us. I swore to defend the Imperium of Man, from threats within and without. But what is the Imperium if not the guarantor of man’s survival? The oaths I swore were to serve humanity, not the prison it has built around itself.’

  ‘Those are not the oaths of the Imperium,’ I retort.

  ‘They are the spirit of the oaths. Or should be.’

  ‘And so you throw your lot in with these naïve children.’

  He snorts and smiles. ‘The eldar say the same of us. We say that their empire is done and we are the inheritors of the stars. Not so. Our time is done also. We had our chance, and fell. The Emperor failed to restore us. I throw my lot in with a race which is young, vibrant, and just. A race that will tear back the veils of superstition and bring a new age of enlightenment to the galaxy, an age in which mankind can prosper as part of the Greater Good.’

  ‘You seek to convert me. You will fail.’

  He shakes his head and looks down. ‘I do not seek to convert you, because I know I cannot. You cannot be taught the virtue of the Greater Good because you are not free. You are not a man, but a weapon, and there is no place within the new order for such as you. I am sorry.’ He motions to his followers. They haul me to my feet. My armour is dead upon me, and I cannot act.

  ‘You are a traitor.’

  ‘If I am, then what I betray is worthy of betrayal. Take him away.’

  And so I came here. Into this place. I am…

  No.

  I will not yield.

  I am Brother-Sergeant Herek Cornix of the Raven Guard. I am Brother-Sergeant Herek Cornix of the Raven Guard. I am Brother-Sergeant Herek Cornix of the Raven Guard, and I will do my duty.

  [Note, this was the last coherent thought pattern the nagi collectives were able to retrieve from the subject’s mind. He went into arrest some moments later, the feedback from his suicide taking the remaining members of our weakened secondary collective to their deaths. Earth caste mental intensification equipment, operating at this point at an unprecedented 99%, was severely damaged. From this interrogation we can draw one conclusion, no more: the gue’ron’sha cannot be incorporated into the Tau’va. Where encountered, all efforts must be expended to destroy them. This will serve the primary military goal of removing them as an immediate threat, but secondarily will also break gue’la morale, and demonstrate to them the self-evident superiority of the Tau’va. Report of Nagi’o Joauuulliiallo, third level synaptic adjudicator of nagi collective 45978 ends.]

  Chapter Sixteen

  O’Va’Dem came to me not long after Skilltalker was taken. I guess I should have been surprised that he was a man like me, but I wasn’t, not one bit. But I’ve never seen tau obey a non-tau like that before. Never.

  He came to me in his underarmour. His face was troubled.

  ‘I am sorry, O’Va’Dem. I have failed.’ I hung my head. I felt sick, my stomach kept turning over and over, and my mind went unbidden to all manner of tortures that Skilltalker would soon be subjected to.

  ‘Jathen Korling?’ he said. I looked him in the eye. He must have been old, he had that look you get from good antigerontics, an ageless face sheltering old, old eyes.

  ‘I am Lucien van Deem, in our shared language. Please, call me Lucien. We are all equals in the eyes of the Tau’va.’ He had an accent to his Gothic. A tau accent.

  ‘Lucien,’ I said.

  He smiled faintly in approval.

  ‘I came to reassure you. You are not to blame.’

  ‘How?’ I said.

  ‘Because the result of this entire deception was the kidnap and removal of Por’el Skilltalker into Imperial custody. You performed admirably, indeed, one might say a little too well – your dedication to your duty almost resulted in the failure of the mission. As it was, we thought Skilltalker would never be taken. After observing you – and I am a very good judge of men, Jathen – I feared you might suspect that Othelliar was an Imperial agent, however reluctantly.’

  ‘But…’ I said, not believing it. ‘The attacks, the ambush… The Space Marines…’

  ‘We had to make the task as hard as possible while making it achievable,’ said van Deem, ‘or our opponents on the other side would have suspected something. The Raven Guard in particular are masters at this sort of action, but I trust even they were convinced. A shame that the Inquisition is now almost certainly aware that we know of their sleeper agents. Even so, I expect that the misinformation Skilltalker will feed the Imperium will set back their war effort substantially.’ He sat beside me. I watched as earth caste medical staff carted a body sack containing Krix’s mortal remains past.

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘He’s been extensively trained and his memories have been manipulated. To all intents and purposes, he believes what he will tell them, or at least he has convinced himself he does. If they find him out, well… We know about their plants within the Tau’va – like Othelliar – Skilltalker would just even the score.’ He stood. ‘There are many kinds of shadow war, not only the kind the likes of the Raven Guard prefer to fight. Skilltalker is a part of that war. He went gladly, of his own accord in service of a higher ideal.’

  I remember the gesture he made at me as he stood in the lifeboat’s closing door.

  ‘Tau’va,’ I said glumly.

  ‘Tau’va,’ said the f
ormer inquisitor.

  It was then that I noticed the tube built into the side of Lucien’s underarmour. I’ve seen them before. A nagi housing; you sometimes see them with the ethereals. Lucien had a mind worm with him, ensconced in its own subaquatic environment, safe from our poisonous air. He caught me staring at it, he smiled at me, not entirely reassuringly.

  ‘This? Do not be alarmed. This is Illluoosun, he is my advisor.’

  ‘He is carried with you gue’o,’ I said, feeling a queasy horror. ‘Is he interfaced directly?’ I was pushing my luck asking such a question.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘All the better to advise me,’ said the ex-inquisitor. ‘You have done well, and proven yourself. We need more humans like you, who take the Tau’va completely to heart. Until that happens, we will not be able to do our best for the greater good of all. I will make recommendations for you, in my report. Rest assured, they will be propitious. With the glowing praise Skilltalker lavished upon you, I think you have a bright future. Tau’va.’ With that, he walked out of the room, and out of my life.

  ‘Tau’va,’ I whispered back.

  I like to believe that the worm was there as an advisor, that the aun had not put him under the creature’s control, that Lucien was his own master and served the Tau’va of his own accord.

  If not, then I have to believe that it’s all for the Greater Good anyway.

  What other choice do I have?

  I still feel responsible, for Skilltalker, I mean; that it was my fault. I’ve been told again and again that it wasn’t, but if I’d acted back on Mu’gulath Bay, then the whole scheme would never have come off, and he’d still be alive. I did what was expected of me, but was it the right thing? Was I good enough to be worthy of my own oaths? I wrestle with this still. I understand why I was used the way I was, but feeling and thinking… They’re worlds apart from one another. I wonder, thinking back on that conversation on the Manta shortly before he was taken from us, if his wager with Por’ui Ka’shato was not actually a means to try and keep me out of all this. I don’t know. What I do know is that Skilltalker was an example to us all. That’s why, in part, I signed up for the vocal enhancement surgery.