What kind of a people would consider this an acceptable methodology? That’s the question I should have been asking myself all along; because the answer, when arrived at, would have clearly showed me the form my response should have taken. Instead, I dawdled. I tried to negotiate with them. I appealed to their reason. I hoped against hope that they would eventually come to their senses and see the futility of resistance. Then, I was called out to Marae’Taa Gorge.
For fear of Ka’Tashun snipers, I travelled via modified piranha. The normally open top of the skimmer was now covered by a thick, windowless canopy. Even the cockpit was completely sealed. My pilot navigated with the aid of vidscreens and cameras mounted on the hull. Thus, I was unable to see anything of the surrounding countryside as I drew close to the site, but I could imagine the scenery blurring past. We were far beyond the plains by now, heading into the jungle highland with its dark red foliage, raging rivers, and jagged, broken topography. To one side of me was the mag-lev line; the track, when completed, would link Cytheria’s two largest colony sites together with high-speed monorails.
Infrastructure. That’s what the Tau Empire brings. When I first arrived here, the gue’la lived in a shameful state with their machinery in disrepair and their urban centres nothing but crumbling ruins. They believed this to be quite acceptable, for they had never known otherwise. I began to change all that. Before long, Cytheria had clean water to drink and fresh food to eat. Ample power ran to structurally sound buildings. Still, the Ka’Tashun called us oppressors. They were doing so even as I travelled to the gorge. All morning, the airwaves had been filled with their pirate signal, claiming responsibility for the attack on the railhead.
‘The enemy is reeling,’ a voice proclaimed through the static. ‘Today, we have struck a decisive blow for freedom, and in the days and weeks to come, we will do it again and again. We will not rest until the xenos have been eradicated. Take heart citizens, for the Emperor is on our side. His wrath is coming, and will soon deliver us from the oppression of the Tau!’
No one had yet been able to discern the source of these transmissions. It was maddening.
The vehicle slowed, and the canopy opened. As I climbed out of the piranha’s rear compartment, I was immediately met by Tan’bay; typical of him to have arrived on the scene before me. I first met him the day the annexation of Cytheria began and had found him to be the epitome of the water caste ever since. He was always prepared with whatever pertinent information I might need, even before I myself realised that I required it. His demeanour was one of unchanging calm. He seemed never to show worry or doubt. When he spoke, his sentences flowed unceasingly, free from any pauses or interruptions of thought.
Tan’bay’s hands were folded inside the voluminous sleeves of his robe as he bowed in deference. In the sky, an orange sun beat down, but his enormously brimmed hat kept his placid face in shadow. True to his years of training in the fields of diplomacy and interspecies negotiation, he constantly referred to himself using majestic, plural pronouns. One could actually hear the capitalisation in his voice. It was as if, when he spoke, he did so on behalf of the entire Tau race.
‘The Shas’o honours us with his presence,’ he lilted. ‘May it please him to hear our initial assessment of the events preceding his arrival?’
Tan’bay was standing so close that I couldn’t see past him. ‘What is it?’ I asked gruffly. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d had more than a few hours of sleep. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Our people have suffered yet another attack at the hands of the renegade gue’la of the Ka’Tashun Sept,’ he said. ‘A small contingent of fire warriors, assigned to guard the site, have fallen in battle, and will be remembered with all due honour for their valiant defence. The greater number of casualties consists of members of the earth caste; engineers and technicians involved in the building of the mag-lev bridge, which, to my lasting sadness, I must report has been effectively destroyed.’
I pushed past him then, and he dutifully melted off to one side. Marae’Taa Gorge, for those of you unfamiliar with Cytheria, is part of a massive chasm that bisects most of the continent. A river, which to my knowledge has never been named, rushes along the bottom. On average, the distance between the canyon walls is quite wide but in this one particular place, they are narrow. It was, therefore, a natural place to construct a crossing for the mag-lev system. I had seen the architectural designs months before. I am no expert, but I thought them to be quite aesthetically pleasing. The Fio’o in charge of the project was smiling as he described it, but I doubted he would be doing so now. The completed portion of the bridge had been firebombed; hit repeatedly with rockets and shaped explosive charges. Where once there had been graceful, white curves and support pillars, there was now only a twisted, blackened thing; a metal skeleton that sent plumes of acrid smoke up into the air even as the superstructure bowed down towards the river.
Then I saw the bodies. The rapid response team was reverently arranging them into two groups, earth caste on one side and fire warriors on the other. Within these, the fallen were being further organised into rows and columns from those with the highest rank and station to the lowest. Later, in accordance with caste traditions as old as the Greater Good itself, the workers would be buried and the soldiers would be cremated. The order and civility of it all should have given me some sense of peace, but it did not. The sheer number of the dead overrode such feelings.
‘Four hundred and seventy-seven killed,’ Tan’bay said gently. ‘None wounded.’
I turned to face him. ‘You mean there are no survivors? Not one?’
The man’s face was impassive. ‘It is half the reason we requested the Shas’o come in person.’
I blinked in the intensifying noon-day sun. ‘What’s the other half?’
Several buildings were still standing intact near the destroyed bridge. Tan’bay led me into one that, until recently, had been a facility for repairing heavy lifting equipment. It was now a makeshift field command. As we entered, several fire warriors of middling rank stopped their busy activities to bow. I was taken into a small office that contained two chairs set before a large vidscreen. On a nearby table lay a collection of metal tubes in varying sizes. As I seated myself, Tan’bay closed the door and dimmed the lights. He pulled a data crystal from some hidden pocket and, after inserting it into the machine, poured himself soundlessly into the chair next to mine.
The scenes that flicked past me were memory captures retrieved from damaged or destroyed security drones. They must have been stationed not only on the bridge itself but all around the compound, for the perspective was constantly changing. Through their electronic eyes, I watched with growing horror as the Ka’Tashuns launched their early morning assault.
No one saw the first barrage coming, but it was certainly audible. There was a series of muffled booms, followed by a high-pitched whistling. Many of the earth caste looked around in puzzlement, or turned to ask one another if they had heard the same thing. Then the first of the missiles slammed into the bridge’s support pillars. The structure shook and, as the workers began to flee, part of the deck twisted to one side. With a terrible, shearing sound, the entire thing sagged downwards. Those who had been trying to escape clawed frantically for handholds, but there were few to be found. Their eyes were wide as they fell off the bridge, tumbling down, down into the gorge to smash apart on the jagged rocks or drown in the churning water.
The element of surprise was now spent. Unlike the workers, our fire warriors were calm, disciplined. Within seconds they had formed into cohesive squads, and began to shoot back. Their pulse rifles tore the tree line to shreds with crackling beams of energy. Even the drones were firing now, following their programming and networking themselves into squadrons. Despite all this outpouring of fire, it was impossible to tell if any of the Ka’Tashuns were actually being hit, ensconced as they were in the jungle foliage. The quiet, ordered peace of the morning was now filled with the cacophony of battle.
>
There were small explosions all around. The ground was being cratered by some type of shell or heavy canister. Then two things happened. The workers began to clutch their necks and collapse on the ground and the heads of the fire warriors began to snap back sharply as, one after the other, they fell down dead. A fine, red smoke began to drift across the scene. At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. The fire warriors were being specifically targeted by long-range snipers; that much was obvious. But given the speed with which they were being cut down, the number of enemy marksmen hiding out there must have been great. The workers and engineers who had collapsed were now clawing the air, seemingly oblivious to everything else around them. Their eyes were bulging and their faces began to turn a deep purple. Suddenly, one of them shuddered so violently that I could hear his spine break. Something exploded from his mouth and nose. His body shook, and he was still. The same thing was happening to all of them now. Every Tau not wearing a suit of environmental battle armour was likewise dying in a suffocating, epileptic fit. The red smoke thickened as it drifted across the scene.
I looked over at Tan’bay. ‘Some kind of chemical agent?’
Tan’bay rolled one hand over in the air, a gesture he did often as if he were casting something away. ‘The Ka’Tashun Sept is widely known to employ hyperlethal poisons.’
‘Their snipers, yes’ I replied sternly. I had studied the Ka’Tashun’s methods and tactics down to the most minute of details. ‘But never like this. This is being delivered in shell casings. That implies portable mortars or shoulder-mounted launchers.’
The vidscreen was a panorama of death now. Hundreds of earth caste lay twisted and broken on the ground. Red foam filled their every orifice. My fellow warriors were also gone. Only the drones remained, but they were being quickly dispatched by volleys of lasers. Those that did not explode outright, wobbled as their flight systems failed. When they crashed, they recorded a world turned at odd angles, where the land and sky were reversed or completely knocked askew.
‘And in such a volume,’ I continued. ‘How could they produce so many toxins with their limited resources?’
‘We believe the compound to be organic in nature,’ Tan’bay said. ‘I regret to inform the Shas’o, it is also most abundant in the deep jungle areas of this world to which our foe has now retreated.’
With that, he rose and went to the table. He picked up one of the grey metal tubes and handed it to me. It was sealed at one end and had a diameter large enough to accommodate my forearm. A fine, red, powdery residue clung to the interior. I wiped some off with my finger and immediately felt a stab of burning pain.
‘These are sporepod blooms,’ I said with realisation. The interior of Cytheria’s major landmass was a steaming, foetid rainforest so thick as to be nearly impassable. It was home to all manner of biting, poisonous things, but few as bad as the hata’le bush. The fruit of this leafy, burgundy-coloured plant was a hollow pod about the size of a clenched fist. The slightest amount of pressure would cause it to spew forth its spores in a misty cloud. They were harmful to both tau and gue’la alike, burning any exposed skin they might land on, and causing haemorrhaging if ingested.
‘Indeed they are,’ Tan’bay replied.
‘They can be dangerous, but not deadly. Certainly not like this.’ I gestured towards the vidscreen where the slaughter continued to play itself out.
Tan’bay’s voice was clinically calm. ‘It appears that the Ka’Tashans have somehow managed to amplify the plant’s natural toxicity. The modified blooms are taken into the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract, where they begin to reproduce almost instantly. The victims not only bleed internally and go into toxic shock, but end up asphyxiating themselves as a hata’la bush literally takes root in their chest and nasal cavities. The sponge-like growth you see coming out of the victims’ mouths are actually their lungs being forced outwards by the expanding plant.’
‘How?’ I asked. ‘How could they have done this?’
‘To that, Shas’o, We regretfully have no answer. Yet one thing is certain. What you now face is a weapon that works on two levels. The first as seen demonstrated here, but secondly, and of perhaps a more pressing concern, is the fear that it will generate; fear among our populace, both tau and acculturated gue’la. Fear leads to distrust, distrust to disharmony, and that, as the Shas’o well knows, is anathema to the Greater Good.’
‘Using fear as a weapon,’ I mused. The Ka’Tashun barbarity was physically sickening. I rose quickly, and turned to leave. Then I heard a voice speaking in the harsh language of the enemy.
‘Sir, this one’s still running.’
My head snapped back towards the vidscreen. One of the drones, whose camera eye was still functioning, had been lifted from where it had crashed. The image jostled for a moment, then came to rest on a gue’la’s face. His skin was painted thick with mud and some kind of red camouflage. His mouth and jaw were covered by a stubbly, animalistic growth of fur. His brow was dark and heavy, and his eyes blazed with a white-hot hatred.
‘Shas’o Rra?’ he sneered. ‘Can you hear me?’
I knew at once who it was by the insulting name he used. Only one person on Cytheria had ever called me that. Ezra Mihalik, the self-proclaimed leader of the Ka’Tashun Sept.
‘Of course you can,’ Ezra continued. ‘That diplomat of yours will drag you out here in the name of procedure. And what’s more, someone of your education, you’ll want to see this first-hand.’
Off-camera, there was the sound of laughing.
‘I’ll be brief. This attack was a test and, I think, a pretty effective one. You and all your forces have eight days to leave Cytheria. If you don’t, my men will release these spores into each and every population centre on the planet. And don’t think I won’t actually do it because my fellow humans would also be killed. You should know that, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who isn’t helping to resist you is collaborating with you, and they deserve what they get.
‘Eight days, Shas’o Rra, or watch your people die.’ He looked away and nodded. The drone dropped back to the ground. From its new vantage point, I watched as several sets of boots walked away.
Tan’bay said nothing. Perhaps he was giving me time to think. Or perhaps there was simply nothing more to be said. I had one week to break the resistance. One week to somehow find Ezra Milhalik, and stop him. I’ll show you, I remember thinking. I am no ‘Commander Shadow’.
Ezra Mihalik had come up with his insulting name for me during our first and only negotiations. This was perhaps a month prior to the attack on the railhead. I was still suffering under the delusion that he was a logical being. So I sent out word that I would meet with Mihalik and try to put an end to the Cytherian conflict. A short time later, my offer was accepted. Two heavily muscled Ka’Tashun soldiers arrived at the gates of my compound. They were shirtless, dressed in heavy boots and camouflage-patterned pants. Each of them wore a bright red cloth tied around their heads. They were armed only with knives. One of them carried some kind of large communications device strapped to his back. They told the guards that they were envoys from the Ka’Tashun Sept come to see me, but were otherwise stoic and silent.
Once they had been disarmed and scanned, they were brought into a spacious meeting room where Tan’bay and I were already waiting. They placed the bulky device on the table in front of me, switched it on, and then stepped back with their hands clasped behind their backs. A voice began to emanate from a tiny speaker in the machine. It spoke in the choppy, harsh language of the gue’la. Fortunately, I spoke it too.
‘Are we good? Can you hear me?’ it said.
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I can hear you. To whom am I speaking?’
‘Why, this is Ezra Mihalik, commander of the fifty-sixth Ka’Tashun Company. I also speak for the few remaining members of two other Ka’Tashun companies, the twenty-sixth and fifty-first.’
‘I see. I take it then that you have chosen not to meet with us in person.’
‘You’re very perceptive,’ the voice replied.
I looked at the two Ka’Tashuns. Their faces were impassive, but behind their eyes, they were smiling.
Tan’bay leaned forwards and launched into his carefully prepared opening. ‘Commander, this is Por’el Tan’bay speaking on behalf of the Tau Empire, and may we begin by saying how pleased we are that you have agreed to negotiate with us, no matter the forum. If our two peoples can learn to live together in peace, then the benefits for both sides will, without doubt, be enormous.’
‘Emperor wept,’ Mihalik groaned. ‘Are you the guy in charge?’
‘If you are asking as to whether or not we are directly responsible for Cytheria’s pacification and regime change, then, no. If, however–’
‘Fine’ Mihalik interrupted. ‘Then let me talk to the one who is.’
I sat forward in my chair and addressed the transmitter. ‘I am the person in command of our military forces.’
‘Ah, good.’ There was a creaking in the background as Mihalik leaned back into whatever he was sitting on. ‘What do I call you?’
‘I have not yet chosen a name,’ I said slowly. ‘You may address me by my rank: Shas’o.’
Hammer and Bolter 8 Page 11
