[Rogue Trader 02] - Star of Damocles

by Andy Hoare - (ebook by Undead)

  Looking beyond the landing pad, Brielle saw that they were a very great height above the ground. The structure from which the pad protruded appeared to be part of a far larger city, consisting of a great many such buildings. Each was linked to the next by walkways that soared high above the landscape, which appeared, from Brielle’s vantage point, to consist of featureless, arid wastes as far as the hazy, distant horizon.

  “No welcoming committee,” Brielle said, looking to Naal. “You’re the expert in these people,” she said. “So what’s next?”

  “Please,” Naal said, gesturing forward, “you are the guest, not I.”

  She looked at him for a moment, not entirely convinced that all was well. No matter, she told herself; whatever happened, she would turn it to her own advantage soon enough. She had to, she mused; she could hardly go back and apologise to the council for killing one of their number.

  Taking a deep breath, Brielle stepped down the ramp, steeling herself against whatever might await her on this world.

  Having left the tau vessel on the landing pad, Brielle had allowed Naal to lead the way. He knew what he was doing, and had obviously been here before. She welcomed the opportunity to take it all in, to observe this new place, and to glean any advantage she could. She had followed Naal across a series of walkways, each of which passed through one of the soaring, off-white, fin-shaped structures, before continuing through the air to the next. At first, she had experienced vertigo, for the walkways had no hand holds, but she found that they were wide enough so that if she passed down their exact centre the effect was minimised. She had no idea who used these walkways, for the pair did not pass a single tau.

  After a while, the walkways converged at a structure even taller than the rest. Brielle halted as it came into view, taking the opportunity to marvel in its construction. It must have been a thousand metres tall, and it rose in sweeping lines to a sail-like peak. Small clusters of what appeared to be sensor or communications gear were connected to its spine, and a great, gleaming spike pierced the sky at its very top, dancing blue lights chasing up and down its length.

  Then, Brielle saw that small, floating machines were moving up and around the structure. She knew them straight away for the drones that the tau utilised at every level of their society, though these were far larger than the small utility drones she had witnessed onboard the tau vessel that had brought her to this world. The drones took the form of a flat, armoured disc, about a metre in diameter. Beneath the disc was a small sensor block, with its unblinking machine eye, and beside that, what was obviously a weapon of some sort. As she studied the drones, one detached itself from its orbit of the building, and approached her and Naal on a long, graceful arc through the air that brought it, hovering, before her.

  The drone was so close she could almost have reached out and touched it, yet she sensed from its movements that such a gesture would not have been wise.

  “What is it doing?” Brielle asked Naal.

  “What you’d expect of any guard doing his duty,” Naal replied. “It’s determining whether or not we are a threat.”

  “It’s relaying back to someone in the tower?” Brielle asked, keeping an eye on the drone as she spoke.

  “It is perfectly capable of making the decision on its own, Brielle.”

  Brielle felt her hackles rise as she watched the drone begin a circuit of the pair. She knew that the tau utilised highly developed machine intelligences, but to see one close up was something else entirely. The teachings of the Imperial Creed warned against such things, and those admonitions had been drilled into her from a very early age. As she regarded the single lens mounted beneath the armoured disc, she felt that there was indeed some manner of intelligence at work within the machine, and the thought disturbed her to her core.

  “When will it be done?” she asked Naal through gritted teeth.

  “Please, Brielle,” Naal answered, “such things are commonplace on tau worlds. You must get used to them.”

  Now he was really starting to annoy her. She cast him a glare that told him the drone had better hurry up its examination or mere would be consequences. But, before she could say any more, she heard the gentle sound of the door in the side of the structure before them opening.

  A group of tau stepped through the opening.

  Brielle quickly counted five of them. One, obviously the most senior, stood at the head of the group. He was tall and thin, and wore long, shimmering robes, but it was his face that made the greatest impression on Brielle. Although she had found it hard to read the expression of the envoy on whose vessel she had been brought here, she had at least found some similarities between tau and human facial expressions. This tau appeared maudlin to Brielle, as if he gready regretted his role. To Brielle’s understanding, the tau were born into their station, and all she had encountered to date had appeared quite content with their lot. Before she could ponder the matter further, me tau spoke.

  “I welcome you, Mistress Brielle Gerrit of the Arcadius, to the Sept of Dal’yth. My name is Por’O Dal’yth Ulor Kanti. Please,” he continued, “call me Aura. The translation is close enough for our purposes.”

  Even his voice seemed sad to Brielle, almost wistfully mournful. Was this some affectation on his part to gain some advantage in their dealings? Not wishing to cause offence, she hastened to answer.

  “Please accept my sincere thanks for the kindness you have shown me,” Brielle said.

  “We have shown you no kindness beyond the spirit in which the Tau Empire approaches all the races it encounters. We do find ourselves, however, in a unique position.”

  Brielle’s guard was immediately up. She had been warned that the tau would not stand on ceremony, yet she sensed something more unfolding before her, something serious enough to disrupt the familiar course of any such meeting.

  “Mistress Arcadius,” Aura said, “you have arrived at Dal’yth not a moment too soon. Even now, the human fleet closes on this system.”

  So soon? Brielle had assumed the tau vessel on which she had crossed the Damocles Gulf would have arrived a long way ahead of the crusade, affording her some time to turn the situation to her advantage and find some way of averting the disaster that would ensue if Gurney’s plan was enacted. Now, she would have to think on her feet to turn things around.

  “Might I ask,” Brielle said, “how far out are they?”

  Aura did not answer Brielle’s question. Instead, one of the tau standing behind him took a step forward. Like his fellows, this individual was shorter and of more stocky build than the diplomat. The robes he wore were made of a far simpler, deep red, fabric, yet they did not disguise the tau’s more muscular frame.

  Aura made a shallow bow, before introducing him. “Mistress Brielle, my colleague, Commander Puretide, will answer your question.”

  “The human fleet is thought to lie only a few days travel gulfward of Dal’yth,” Commander Puretide said, his voice resonant and steady. “The deep space pickets of the Air Caste have detected their communications, though the main body of the fleet appears to be mustering still, following its crossing of the Gulf Brielle considered this information, regarding the commander as she pondered. She was struck by the air of calm wisdom he radiated. A breeze whipped up, causing the top knot on the commander’s otherwise shaved head to stir. She felt a brief moment of vertigo, but forced her mind back to the issue at hand.”

  “Have they made any attempt at communication?” Brielle asked the commander.

  “They have not,” replied the commander, transfixing her with his glare.

  “And neither will they,” said a third tau, stepping forward as he did so. Brielle could tell that this individual was younger than Commander Puretide, and he stood taller and more erect. Something in the way the tau carried himself gave Brielle pause. This one was dangerous, she thought.

  “Mistress,” Aura continued, “please forgive me. These others are the commander’s companions. I believe a better word, in your tongue, might b
e pupils or students, though neither word is entirely satisfactory.” Aura indicated with a graceful sweep of a long arm each of the tau as he spoke their names. “Farsight, Shadowsun and Icewind.”

  Each of the three nodded to Brielle as their name was spoken. Farsight was the tau who had spoken a moment before, and Shadowsun, a female tau stood next to him, her expression calm and unreadable. Next to her stood the tau introduced as Icewind, his expression one of calculated study of everything that transpired around him.

  Brielle nodded in greeting to Puretide’s pupils, before addressing the commander once more. “The fleet will send out scouts to identify its first target. Tell me commander, which system lies closest?”

  “Mistress Arcadius,” Commander Puretide replied, “this very system lies closest.”

  “Have you attempted to communicate with them?” she asked, a sense of dread mounting within her.

  “We have not,” Aura interjected. “We require that you do so on our behalf.”

  Now Brielle’s dread threatened to well up into panic. “No!” She turned from Puretide, to Naal. “I cannot, they will kill me before I…”

  “You will have the might of the Tau Empire behind you,” Aura cut in. “They will not dare harm you.”

  “You don’t know them,” Brielle said, her mind racing for an alternative even as she spoke.

  “Nonetheless,” Aura said, “you must do so, for the Greater Good. If you do not wish to join the tau, then you are free to return to your people.” The breeze whipped Brielle’s plaited hair into her face, causing her to flick her head in irritation. “But if you choose to do so, you do so alone. Join us, or return to them. The choice is yours.”

  That’s no choice at all, Brielle thought as Aura’s words sank in. Return to the fleet as a traitor in the service of the tau, or do so as a cornered renegade with nowhere left to run.

  “I need time to think,” Brielle said, desperately stalling for time.

  “You have until sunset, Mistress Brielle,” Aura said, his mournful voice barely audible over the mounting breeze. “Time is against us all, and I must have an answer before war comes to the Tau Empire.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The cramped bridge of Korvane’s scout vessel was dark and silent, every member of the bridge crew intent upon the operation of their sensor equipment. Korvane sat at the rear of the bridge space, the crew arrayed to his side and the pilot occupying the station below him. He stared out of the multi-faceted cockpit canopy, brooding at the system before him.

  His hand trembled, and he gripped the seat’s arm until his knuckles turned white. He forced his mind onto anything other than the pain and the substance that would mask it.

  The crusade’s charts listed this place as the Kendral subsector. It was a meaningless appellation as far as Korvane could tell, in all likelihood named for one of the explorators who had passed through six millennia before. Whoever Kendral was, he had not returned to settle the region named after him, and so no one would ever know what deed had earned him the right to have an entire region of space share his name. The system had no name, just a designation within the sub sector: KX122. Even now, Korvane’s scout wing was edging into the system’s outer reaches, each vessel on silent running lest they give away their presence to any tau in the locality.

  “Report,” ordered Korvane.

  A crewman, hunched over a glowing terminal, answered, “Passive readings confirm the presence of at least a dozen stellar bodies, my lord. We are approaching the nearest as ordered.”

  “Good,” Korvane replied. Looking through the canopy, he caught his first glimpse of the world in question. KX122/13 was expected to be a small, dense world consisting of little more than rock and ice. With only the passive sensors to rely on, the scouts would need to make a close pass in order to gather much more information, and this they would do as the world came into view.

  Very little light fell upon KX122/13 this far from the system’s single, cold white stare. Only the blue of the surrounding nebulae glinting from its icy surface caught Korvane’s eye.

  “Take us in low, pilot,” Korvane ordered. “I doubt there’s anyone about, but if there is, I don’t want them to see us coming.”

  “Confirmed,” replied the pilot. “Activating ground following radar in point…”

  “Denied!” snapped Korvane. “I ordered passive sensors only and I meant it.” Korvane’s rage was growing as the pilot turned to look up at him.

  “Sir, without the…”

  “I said,” Korvane said through gritted teeth, “denied. You will follow my orders to the letter, or you will stand down. Do you understand?”

  Correctly deducing that the question was entirely rhetorical, the pilot turned back to his task. Korvane stared at the back of the man’s head for a moment, before looking out of the canopy. KX122/13 was coming into view, its blue, cratered surface dimly visible against the blackness of space. The pilot instigated a change of course that levelled the small vessel out. The horizon reared up from below, filling half of the view, the light of the distant star casting a ghostly halo above. Korvane leant back in the acceleration couch and scanned the readouts around the bridge.

  It felt both liberating and frustrating to be in command, not of a mighty cruiser with thousands of crew, but of a scout wing of four vessels, each with only a few dozen crew. It was the first time in his career that Korvane had undertaken such a mission, though he felt supremely confident in his ability to carry it through. He sighed as he admitted that in truth, he was glad to be away from the crusade fleet, from the myriad demands of running his vessel. He knew that he was also eager to escape his father’s shadow, to ply his own course, for a while at least. He reflected ruefully how his stepsister had attempted to do something similar, and made such a mess of it. Well, he would prove that he was fully capable of making things work on his own, and to bring honour and profit to the Arcadius through his own actions.

  In the meantime, he mused, if Brielle was out there, on the run, he would ensure that she never returned to the crusade fleet and to the Arcadius. Thinking of his stepsister brought a dark cloud down upon him. When he had learned of Brielle’s assault upon Inquisitor Grand and her subsequent disappearance, he had been gladdened, though he had struggled to hide his reaction from his father. Recently, however, as the crusade had pushed on towards tau space, it had occurred to him that she must still be out there, somewhere. And so, he had seen the opportunity to place himself in a position of power, from where he could react should Brielle reappear. He had no idea exactly what he would do should he locate her, but, he brooded, he would worry about that if and when it happened.

  “Sir?” The pilot said, breaking Korvane’s reverie.

  “Report,” he snapped back.

  “Descending at your command.”

  “Do it.”

  Korvane felt an immediate change in the pitch of the scout vessel’s drives as the pilot altered course, bringing the small ship’s nose down towards the distant surface. Almost immediately, a series of small tremors passed through the vessel. Korvane looked to a pict-slate over the pilot’s station, and saw from the readings scrolling across its blue screen that they had hit the outer edges of a very thin atmospheric envelope. A second series of shudders jolted the scout vessel, and Korvane checked that his harness was properly secured. The sound of the drives grew more intense, building to a deafening roar, as the angle of descent grew more acute. Looking from the pict-slate to the canopy, Korvane saw small trails of gas dancing across the armoured glass, the leading edge of the shuttle’s blunt nose glowing faintly orange with the heat generated as it plunged through the atmosphere.

  “Sir!” a crewman behind Korvane called out, raising his voice over the cacophony of atmospheric entry. “Vox transponders are picking up a faint signal.”

  Korvane’s heart pounded as he read the data patched through to his console screen. He felt an exhilaration quite different to that he experienced at the bridge of the Rosetta in similar
circumstances. Now, he sat not aboard a might cruiser able to take fearsome punishment from other vessels, but in a tiny scouting vessel that could take none, relying instead upon stealth and guile to survive. He struggled for a moment to make sense of the data, before realising that it represented not a weak signal, as the crewman had reported, but a very tightly focused one. And that, he surmised, could mean only one thing: a small tau presence, perhaps an outpost or research station, and the perfect target for his first action.

  “Take us in, pilot,” Korvane ordered, thrilling to the prospect of an easy victory to report back to the fleet. “Lock on to the signal source. Bring us in low and fast.”

  The pilot hunched over his controls, driving the scout vessel lower. As Korvane watched, the view through the canopy became entirely obscured by superheated gases, and the ship bucked and jolted violently. Korvane saw that the pilot was flying entirely by the passive sensors, and by the uncanny instinct with which the pilots of the Navy pathfinder squadrons were rightly famed.

  A moment later, the view through the armoured canopy cleared, and Korvane saw that the vessel was coming up on the end of an impossibly steep dive. He resisted the urge to order the pilot to arrest the descent, and an instant later the pilot hauled back on the control column with all his might. Korvane was forced back into the acceleration couch as the gravitational forces at work on the vessel mounted. Even as he felt he might pass out, the pilot brought the vessel out of the dive, and on to an even trajectory less than a hundred metres from the cratered surface. Korvane gasped for breath as gravity returned to normal, and released the harness strapping him into the couch. He leaned forward, over the pilot’s shoulder, to gain a better view of the ground as it passed rapidly by below.