Blades of Damocles

by Phil Kelly

  No matter, thought Numitor. The Eighth Company cared little for stealth. Neither did their brothers in the Fifth, come to that; Antelion’s squad were making just as much noise as his own. The Ultramarines existed to bring glorious destruction, not to skulk like assassins – and once the leaders of the enemy military had fallen, they would fulfil that duty in great measure.

  In the middle distance a wide circular door gave a soft chime. The light array above it winked red, and curved metal panels slid to bar the passage of the oncoming Space Marines. Already striding forward, Sicarius raised his plasma pistol. The barrel was dangerously close to Numitor’s head; he closed his eyes on reflex, not a moment too soon.

  There was a crackling roar, a wash of intense heat, and the smell of burning hair – the stubble on Numitor’s scalp, judging by the stinging pain across the side of his head. His vision was a white blur for a moment, then a tracery of blood vessels faded away to leave his sight unmarred. He ground his teeth, stifling his reprimand. Duty came first, and the Eighth could ill afford more division.

  Ahead, a glowing, yellow-white circle had been burned right through the door. Sicarius was already walking towards it, checking for hostiles before elbowing through the opening in a spattering of molten gobbets. Numitor climbed through after him, the rest of the strike force close behind.

  A well-lit corridor stretched out before them, glowing lumens ranged along its curving ceiling. Interspersed along its length were tall, lozenge-shaped doors with portholes of transparent material down their centre lines.

  With Sicarius so keen to take the vanguard, Numitor took stock of his surroundings, the better to watch for potential ambush. He paused at one of the porthole windows as he walked past and peered inside. The sight beyond filled him with an unnameable loathing.

  A quartet of wide pillars rose up to a cloud of ivory-hued vapour. Girdling them at six evenly-spaced heights were wide, splaying wheels with spokes that leant gently downwards, each turning slowly in contra-rotation to the one below. Upon each spoke was a curving, glass-fronted pod. Inside each was the barest flicker of movement. Something tiny was twitching inside each of the containers.

  Incubator carousels, each with an infant tau lifeform inside.

  Four pillars, four castes. Presumably the geometric markings adorning each pillar corresponded to the elements that made up the tau race. Their newborn were engineered, then, rather than raised from childbirth by natural parents. Just like these tau to pervert the miracle of life into an automated process, thought Numitor, no doubt as far removed from their own natural life cycle as they could possibly make it. To a warrior from the traditionalist arcologies of Calth, the notion was disgusting in the extreme.

  One of the nearest pods revolved so it sat directly in Numitor’s line of vision. The tau inside it was no bigger than a bolter clip, its thin limbs crossed across its chest like the relief sculpture upon a Blood Angels’ sarcophagus. Unlike a human infant, its head and limbs were in perfect proportion to those of adult tau life forms. Humanoid, but so very far from a true human that it made the sergeant feel sick to look upon it.

  There was other movement too, in the back of the chamber, a flash of white in the far reaches of the room. Numitor itched with the urge to act, his blood singing as his augmented nervous system dumped a fresh batch of stimulants into his veins. Out of the ivory mist came a disc-like drone, larger than those he had encountered at the reservoir. It had underslung manipulator limbs, scopes and syringes, somehow reminding Numitor of an Apothecary’s narthecium and reductor. One of the appendages contained a milky fluid that dripped from a long valve-tipped pipette.

  Numitor half-saw and half-felt a blue line of light flicker across his features as the drone’s sensor array scanned him for an identity match. His hand was already reaching for a grenade when the machine’s alarm rang loud, its limb-apparatus jerking in automated panic. The infant tau in the pods started squalling as one, their meditative repose replaced by clawing, thrashing frenzy. They hammered tiny fists on the glass fronts of their incubators, the sound rolling together into the far-distant rumble of wars to come.

  Two more drones emerged from the gloom. Pulse weapons, stocky and lethal, projected from under the lip of their disc-like bodies. They came towards the door at pace.

  Numitor drew back his power fist and put all his weight behind the punch, slamming it through the plexiglass with a jolting impact that sprayed shattered fragments across the incubator room. A plasma shot took layers of ceramite from his knuckles as one of the drones stitched the door with burning white light. Wrenching his fist back out, Numitor stuck his bolt pistol through with his forearm braced on the edge of the porthole. The drones were easy targets – two placed shots, two detonations, and they were blown to pieces. The larger monitor drone was caught in the second explosion and flew in a wide spiral through the air, trailing smoke as its carer-limbs twitched senselessly beneath.

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Duolor, ‘the true fight does not lie here. We must continue onward, if we are not to be left behind.’

  ‘Of course,’ replied Numitor, shutting his eyes tight for a moment before heading down the corridor after Squad Sicarius. ‘Of course. There will be far stranger sights to come.’

  Sicarius, some distance ahead, patched through on the vox.

  ‘Numitor, get up here. We’re keeping true to your heading. It’s led us into a warren all right. There’s enough in the way of xenos cogitators here to make a tech-priest choke.’

  Ignoring the stab of annoyance he felt at his brother’s tone, Numitor motioned for his squad to follow him, breaking into a loping run along the widening corridors. He passed through the mangled remains of another vault-like door, emerging into a sterile, white-walled chamber so large it could have acted as a hangar for a dozen Thunderhawks.

  At the chamber’s heart were a number of console stations hovering at waist height. Sicarius and his squad were gathered loosely around them. Each console took the form of a wide torus clustered with hololiths. The images coruscating across them were many and varied, but they all had one thing in common – they were without exception devoted to the artefacts of war.

  Along the walls of the long chamber were wide, window-like viewscreens, each long enough for a score of observers to peer inside at once. An oval door-portal stood to the side of each one. Numitor paced along the chamber’s length, hazard-scanning as he went. The drone attack in the interstitial corridor had flooded his system with the sharp buzz of hyperdrenaline, and even with the area secured by Sicarius’ Conquerors, he was still more than ready to fight. Any tau that appeared would meet a sudden and grisly death.

  Through one of the window screens Numitor saw an Imperial city, all ruined archways and shattered buttresses. Broken street-lumens adorned every corner; from no few of them, scarecrow bodies hung by the neck, turning limply in an invisible breeze. A crude representation of the two-headed eagle was stencil-sprayed onto every flat surface. Numitor noticed the aquila’s head that represented vigilance and justice wore a stylised hood like that of a hunting bird; no doubt some xenos technician’s idea of wry commentary.

  In the middle distance were the burnt-out shells of vehicles fashioned in the likeness of Astra Militarum battle tanks. The entire environment had been constructed to be reminiscent of an Imperial manufactorum district, even down to the scatterings of bullet casings strewn through the streets.

  ‘Training environment,’ said Numitor. Nearby, Trondoris grunted in agreement, hefting his eviscerator and looking through the window for signs of life before reluctantly moving away.

  The next room’s window screen was dark, but Numitor’s sharpened vision penetrated the gloom easily enough. He was looking across the pale, cratered surface of a moon. Through some artifice of light, it extended impossibly far in all directions; there was even a gentle curve to the horizon. Broken Imperial landers dotted the lunar sprawl. Amongst them were blackened
corpses stretching their claws towards the uncaring void.

  ‘Stop gawping and get up here,’ said Sicarius, motioning towards the window at the far end of the gallery-like chamber. ‘We’re out of options. This is the only way to continue if we want to stick to your original path.’

  Numitor approached the window around which Squad Sicarius was clustered. Beyond it was a thick green jungle, wreathed in diaphanous clouds of mist. The sergeant peered between the vine-choked trunks that led to the sprawling canopy high above, but he could see no end to the swathes of vegetation stretching into the distance.

  The idea of plunging into an underground jungle grown specifically as a weapons testing ground did not sit well with Numitor, but Sicarius had a point – if they were to continue their heading along the projected course, they would have to venture into that artificial worldscape and find a way out of the other side.

  ‘Right,’ said Numitor, flexing his power fist and smashing the plexiglass viewscreen into jagged shards. ‘Let’s get started.’

  Squads Sicarius, Numitor and Antelion trudged through the sludgy morass of the jungle floor. As well as its tangled mat of thorny vegetation, the artificial environment was thick with peaty black muck that clung to their battleplate up to the ankle. Every one of the Ultramarines looked around at the slightest sign of movement. There was plenty of it for them to take in, far too much to allow for any clear threat-scan. The place was filled with the hooting, calling and buzzing of a hundred different species.

  Numitor noticed something strange about the jungle’s fauna – every creature larger than his fist had four triple-jointed claws and a powerful, jutting beak. Most of the truly avian species boasted a profusion of brightly coloured quills from the back of their heads, crests that shook with a percussive rattle every time the Space Marines passed close by. Here and there a long-limbed gibbon-like creature brachiated through the canopy. These too had a vicious avian cast to them, their heads more like those of hawks than simians. Three had come at him, shrieking, but his backhand slap had broken the largest one’s neck and sent it crashing into a tree. The creatures had left the Eighth alone since then.

  The ape-like animals reminded the sergeant of something, something he’d read about in connection with the tau, but he could not place it.

  Not with the grumbles of his battle-brothers vying for his attention.

  ‘A world of sterility and order,’ said Kaetoros, looking pointedly at Numitor, ‘and the Eighth still manages to find a sea of foul-smelling muck to traipse through.’

  ‘We’ve come this far,’ he replied. ‘Do you wish to turn back?’

  By way of answer, Kaetoros merely shouldered his flamer and increased his pace.

  ‘There is undoubtedly a quicker way to proceed than this,’ said Veletan, ‘but not necessarily a more expedient one. We are not native to the planet, and hence we cannot factor in its kill zones.’

  ‘Quite,’ added Numitor. ‘When the Adeptus Astartes find their way barred, they forge a new path.’

  ‘I do not recall that proverb,’ said Veletan, an edge of uncertainty to his voice. The warrior was stoic enough to walk across a magma field without complaint, but the idea of Imperial doctrine he had not committed to memory filled him with deep unease.

  ‘It was first said by one Sergeant Numitor, I believe,’ Numitor replied airily.

  Veletan looked at him askance before continuing on.

  In the middle distance, Sicarius was crouching over a flak-armoured corpse sprawled face down in a clearing. Even from this far away, Numitor could see it had half of its torso blasted away, the ruddy hue of cooked meat festering under its shattered chestplate. He angled his course towards it.

  At Numitor’s approach, Sicarius grabbed the cadaver roughly by the shoulder and turned it over. A hideous doll’s mask stared back. It had a child’s sketch of a face, but wrought in flesh and skin.

  ‘Vat grown, by the look of it,’ said Sicarius, prodding at the thing’s pallid neck. ‘Some artificial facsimile of a human.’

  ‘Supposed to be an Imperial Guardsman, I’d wager,’ said Numitor. ‘The science division of their builder caste was testing weapons suites against us before we even arrived. No wonder the native platoons always have the right weapons for the kill.’

  Something ugly occurred to Numitor. He turned to Sicarius, his tone grave.

  ‘Like as not, we’ll find some armoured meat-puppets supposed to represent the Adeptus Astartes.’

  Sicarius met Numitor’s gaze.

  ‘Like as not, brother,’ he replied, ‘we will be playing that role ourselves.’

  Surrounded by the cushioned upholstery of his analysis cradle, O’Vesa watched the gue’ron’sha intruders from a dozen angles at once. Below him, the battlesuit hangar bustled with life. He had devised two new weapon prototypes in answer to Commander Bravestorm’s request, overseen the latest iterations of the neuroscience engram division, and had ensured his experimental battlesuits were ready for deployment in the unlikely event he got clearance for his field test.

  But when the intrusion alarms had sounded, he had not obeyed standard evacuation protocols like the others. Instead he had retired to his sanctum for a moment of meditation, tapping in a hidden override to ensure nobody came looking for him. The gue’ron’sha held no fear for him. In truth, he feared ignorance far more.

  Within a matter of seconds he had found himself clicking through the cadre-net’s images, assessing the tapestry of war unfolding across the planet and working out how the Imperial strike teams had located his base of operations. Understanding, as ever, was key to victory. The first of the clashing empires to truly comprehend the mindset and capabilities of the other would secure a critical advantage in every theatre of war. It was a thrilling situation, despite the immediate peril that faced Dal’yth. If there was one area of expertise O’Vesa enjoyed exploring more than any other, it was the science of warfare, and an opportunity to put so many of his projects into practice at once was rare.

  Not since Arkunasha had he felt so alive.

  In parsing the various spectacles of war that the fire caste’s cadre-net had accumulated, O’Vesa had spotted the telltale blue of several Ultramarines warriors making their way through the alphanumeric city hexes. Each of them had a large, bulky backpack – a simple and relatively compact jet propulsion system, by the look of it, capable of holding even a Space Marine’s great bulk aloft. They were presumably vanguard troopers, their wargear suites intended to function as primitive versions of the Hero’s Mantle.

  Their evolving distribution pattern had unspooled before him, and he had run a quick trajectory calculation in his head. The trail of corpses they had left in their wake, tau and Imperial alike, had begun at a crash site – the resting place of an air caste fighter that had demolished the side of a civilian hexcomplex.

  That complex joined arterial passageways that led to the hangar in which he currently worked.

  O’Vesa unconsciously made the twin fists of fortunate acquisition, his broad teeth showing in a broad smile. The Imperial shock troopers had made straight for the earth caste testing labs. In doing so they had triggered a series of intrusion alarms and a wide-scale withdrawal of personnel. Perhaps their intent was to strike at the workers that kept the city alive, or the scientists that supplied war materiel to the fire caste. He could see why. Without the labours of the earth caste, tau society would soon grind to a halt.

  O’Vesa pursed his lips, fingers steepling under his chin. Then again, to weaken the firmament of the Tau’va would take months to achieve – months the Imperium could ill afford with the castes united against them. They had to be after a more specific goal.

  The scientist extrapolated the invader-group’s trajectory, extending it all the way to Mount Kan’ji. He drew in a sharp breath as he realised it would cross Atha’dra, a set of five command towers used as a base of operations by all of the
tau castes as well as several prominent ethereals. They could not be allowed to reach it. They could not even get close.

  The gue’ron’sha strike force, bolstered by a unit of ground-borne elites they had joined forces with in the Plaza of Boundless Potential, had carved a direct path through Gel’bryn’s underground sprawl. They had barged their way through a water caste guest suite, a series of meditation chambers and a genetics farm to reach the earth caste laboratories beyond. The genetics farm had been compromised beyond recovery; O’Vesa mentally wrote it off without the slightest twinge of regret.

  Like raging krootoxen the Space Marines had crashed through every sealed door and bulkhead in their path, reaching the weapons testing facilities with disturbing ease before smashing their way into O’Vesa’s favourite war zone, the Pech dense terrain simulator.

  ‘A prime opportunity,’ said O’Vesa, punching up a ground-level view of his latest creations. ‘Prototypes are made to be tested, after all.’ Giant battlesuits loomed in the darkness, menacing guardian statues waiting for their master’s summons.

  O’Vesa picked up a data wand and sketched a series of symbols upon the smallest of the screens. There was a purr of hidden motors, a hiss of stale air, and a sleek black drone slid out from the console to his right. Red lights winked upon the machine’s perimeter, an aura of threat emanating from its every hidden panel.

  ‘Ah, Ob’lotai,’ said O’Vesa. ‘I have a job for you, faithful helper. An engagement your battle parameters should encompass without too much impediment. What do you say to a swift kauyon?’

  Sicarius ripped another serpent’s nest of vines from the canopy above. Around him, his squad slashed their chainswords through clumps of vegetation to force a path through the jungle. His scabbard was fouled with muck, the same black slime that was baked on to the outer layers of his armour.