Blades of Damocles

by Phil Kelly

  This one, by its stance, wanted to fight him and him alone.

  Farsight felt the weight of the Code of Fire upon him. He had contingencies left: two of them, in fact. But there was no way he would refuse this duel, even if there were no other living soul within a hundred leagues – and no way his warriors would breach the code by interrupting it. This was tau against human, the Greater Good versus the Imperium of Man. The clash of two spacefaring empires epitomised by two rival avatars of battle.

  It could not be denied.

  ‘Your name, bladesman?’

  ‘Sergeant Cato Sicarius of Talassar, Ultramarines Eighth Company.’

  ‘I am called Shas’o Vior’la Shovah Kais Mont’yr, Commander of the Second Sphere.’

  ‘Meaningless noise to me, alien. I will take your head, for the Imperium and for those of my brothers you have killed.’

  ‘Then you may call me death!’

  Farsight sprinted forward, honour pennants fluttering behind him as he raised his rifle and fired a double blast of plasma at the gue’ron’sha. His adversary was already leaping aside, just as the commander knew he would. Farsight swept his fusion blaster’s beam around two feet from the ground to take the warrior’s legs, but the bladesman was already leaping over it with a blast of his jump pack. Level with the XV8’s head, the Space Marine kicked out hard, almost tearing the sensor node from the battlesuit’s neck and sending Farsight’s control cocoon screens haywire for a critical second.

  Farsight heard a barking laugh, and sensed rather than saw the sword descending. He raised his shield, eye-flicking its field to maximum. There was a blaze of warring energies as disruption weapon fought shield technology, but Farsight’s generator was far more powerful, and the blade slid away.

  The Space Marine landed with a thump, and Farsight triggered his repulsor jets, his battlesuit gliding backwards a few feet from the ground. Raising a fat-barrelled plasma sidearm, the warrior took a shot as he ran forward with his blade carving in a figure of eight. A canny ploy; Farsight’s generator flared to prevent the plasma bolt, and in the miniscule lag of recharge his opponent’s blade slashed away a big chunk of the XV8’s torso and much of its right thigh. His damage control hub flashed, the tiny holographic doppelganger of his suit glowing red where the wounds had been inflicted. Farsight staggered backwards, kicking out in desperation. To his relief the blow connected as the Space Marine came in hard, sending him skidding along the white marble of the Ethereal Tower’s roof.

  With a blast of jump jets the warrior was straight back in, the plasma rifle shots with which Farsight had intended to end the duel flying wide. His adversary’s glowing blade came down again, and the commander raised his shield – only to realise it was a feint. The Space Marine reversed the sword’s course, span it, and sheared the barrel from his plasma rifle with no more effort than if it had been a paper tube. A straight kick in the plexus followed, and Farsight reeled backwards, eye-flicking his repulsor jets to keep from going over.

  This foe’s strength was in aggression, skill and limitless confidence.

  On the warrior came again, the same tactic. Off balance, Farsight saw his doom on the point of that sword. This time the plasma sidearm flared white, steaming, but did not fire. A stay of execution. Then a flash of insight – a duel with O’Kais upon Mount Kan’ji, a flick of the staff, well-timed. O’Kais staggering past to splash into the icy river, face a mask of fury.

  The gue’ron’sha warrior shouted an oath and came in, his sword crackling blue in an overhead sweep with the strength of humanity’s hatred behind it. Farsight brought his fusion blaster up in a warding sweep, intending to take his foe’s head, but he mistimed the strike. His fusion beam went high, taking his enemy’s blade instead.

  The top half of the sword span away to clatter, scorched black, on the roof. The thuggish Space Marine roared like a wounded krootox, leaping forward, his knee coming up to force the shield generator’s pulse – and then rammed his half-blade through the vision slit at the top of the XV8’s chest.

  Two feet of jagged metal burst through the slit’s meniscus layer, entering Farsight’s control cocoon with a scream of protesting metal. Its blackened tip rushed towards him, a hair’s breadth from his eyeball when it came to a sudden halt.

  There was a burst of noise and activity from the other side of the roof. Farsight’s screens, half-crazed by the fading energies of the powered blade’s disruption core, showed nothing conclusive.

  But he was still alive. For now, that was enough.

  Captain Numitor was the only one not watching the duel, and even then, only with the greatest effort of willpower. Subvocalising orders to the battle raging below, he heard the plaintive voice of Malagrea over the din of war.

  Jorus Numitor,+ came her wheezing tones, tickling the back of his mind like an itch. +Beware the long-hawks. And look to the stars.+

  Frowning, Numitor looked up in time to see a giant shape blot out the Dal’ythan gas cloud. Thin strips of light glittered on its underside like the bioluminescence of some ocean predator. It was as large as an Astra Militarum drop ship, yet almost entirely silent. Suddenly a pair of xenos warsuits dropped out of the sky. Long blades of light blazed down from one of them towards him.

  Numitor threw himself aside a fraction of a second before the beams burned black holes deep into the hex-tower’s roof, carving in a giant X pattern to bisect Aordus where he stood. The two halves of the Assault Marine’s corpse fell apart with a disgusting hissing noise before clattering onto the marble roof.

  ‘Attack!’ shouted Numitor, both a warning and an imperative. Sicarius span around, leaping away from the fallen xenos commander to fire plasma bolts into those enemies dropping towards them.

  Chaos erupted atop the hex-tower as the two warsuits touched down. One deflected Magros’ scything eviscerator with a shimmering wall of force before punching him in the chest with a glowing gauntlet. The blow sent the Ultramarine flying thirty feet across the roof. The other warsuit swiped twelve-foot long blades of fusion energy across Squad Sicarius. Most of the Space Marines read the blow as it came and evaded in time.

  Colnid, a fraction slower, was shorn in two from hip to shoulder.

  Numitor cried out, hurtling in with his greataxe swinging. The shield-toting warsuit stepped forward to meet him, taking the power weapon on his energy wall in a thunderous boom of clashing forces. Off balance, Numitor saw the return blow too late. The xenos suit threw a massive articulated fist that crashed against the field of Numitor’s iron halo so hard the energy discharge turned his vision grey and sent him stumbling back across the roof.

  The second battlesuit followed up close behind. Rendered monochrome by Numitor’s scrambled photolenses, it swung a blade of pure light at Numitor’s head. The iron halo burned bright. This time, the force field’s icon on the captain’s helm array faded out altogether.

  Numitor’s sight returned to normal just as the first warsuit swung its great fist. He rolled under the blow, kicking out to fold the thing’s knee before coming up with the greataxe curving in a low arc underneath its shield. The blow connected, ripping the tau’s shield arm away with such force it sailed out over the hex-tower’s lip.

  Numitor grinned fiercely, swinging his axe around in a killing arc.

  ‘Now you die,’ he said.

  Farsight finger-pushed failsafes and overrides on every screen of his control cocoon, desperately bringing them back online as his autocompensators got the XV8 back to its feet. The scene on the roof was utter carnage. By the look of it, as soon as the Space Marine bladesman’s sword had plunged through Farsight’s plexus hatch, Commander Bravestorm had dropped into the fight, heedless of the odds against him and regardless of their prearranged plan. With him was a battlesuit that was unmistakeably that of Commander Brightsword. His fusion blasters had long, tapering energy blades extending from their barrels that seemed permanently active.

/>   Farsight had a flash of memory – a dormant clone in the depths of O’Vesa’s laboratory complex, its resemblance to his dead friend Brightsword uncanny. No time to untangle that mind-knot now. The Space Marines, outnumbering the tau three to one, were on the cusp of victory.

  Time to redress the balance.

  ‘Bravestorm,’ he transmitted. ‘You and your companion must clear the zone immediately to the appended distance. Drone-net, come in close on my position, suppressive fire. All personnel, prepare for Rala’tas manoeuvre. We have no other choice.’

  ‘No, commander,’ said Bravestorm, his XV8 veering backwards as a Space Marine swept an impractically large axe a hand’s breadth from his plexus hatch. ‘I cannot leave. I will fight at your side until death!’

  ‘Bravestorm,’ said Farsight. ‘You are jeopardising my strategy. Leave immediately.’

  Something in his voice must have got through to the fearless commander, for Bravestorm blipped the gold sign of acknowledgement and launched from the lip of the tower.

  ‘All shaper kindreds, disembark and climb,’ said Farsight. ‘Whoever that is wearing Brightsword’s mantle, go high.’

  The warrior shot vertical, carving an X into the roof that sent the Imperials diving to avoid the same fate as their slain comrades.

  ‘Farewell for now, unworthy ones.’

  A storm of pulse carbine fire erupted as a drone-net cloud crested the lip of the tower, keeping the Space Marines low. The gue’ron’sha returned fire, blasting several of the drones out of the sky, but the distraction had bought the time intended. As his battlesuit righted itself, Farsight watched Bravestorm’s icon connect with that of the Aftermath, the Orca bearing the commander away at speed.

  A water caste accord message, priority gold, spooled across Farsight’s command suite. He read it, and smiled.

  Ahead, several of the Space Marines turned to face him, their strange tooth-edged blades roaring in their fists. He could feel the force of their anger, so pure it could burn an empire to ash.

  ‘O’Vesa,’ said Farsight, kicking the manual release of his suit’s access hatch. ‘Initiate.’

  The distant thrum of the earth caste hex-tower, represented by a tight sine wave on Farsight’s control display, spiked hard as an electromagnetic pulse of staggering force burst out from its depths. The purple hemisphere of its perimeter expanded out across one mile, then two, leaving nothing but darkness in its wake.

  Numitor raised his greataxe for the blow that would finally slay the crimson-armoured war leader, flaring his jump pack just as a purple wave of crackling electromagnetic force passed across him.

  Nothing happened. His helm displays dimmed and disappeared, his warsight reduced to whatever he could make out through its reddish-black lenses.

  A rising sense of unease swept over Numitor as he realised his armour’s systems had shorted out entirely. The serial generators of his backpack were silent as the grave. The captain took a heavy step forward, then another, but it was real effort. Many of his squad did the same, stamping the roof involuntarily as if its gravity had increased threefold. Veletan stumbled, and fell with a heavy crash.

  The machine-spirits of the Ultramarines’ battleplate were utterly dormant. What had once been some of the finest personal wargear the Adeptus Mechanicus could devise was now little more than dead weight. Numitor’s axe fell from stiff fingers to clang hard onto the roof.

  The captain’s sense of rising disquiet increased as he saw strange, hooked hands curl over the lip of the tower. Avian heads, beaked and quilled, were just visible in the gloom. Gangly silhouettes hauled themselves up and over the edge of the roof – a dozen, then two. With a grinding effort, the captain unholstered his bolt pistol, aimed and pulled the trigger. It too did not respond, its belligerent little machine-spirit exorcised by the tau’s nullifying witchery.

  Clawed fingers eclipsed Numitor’s eye lenses for a moment, nimble talons disengaging the exterior clamps with a hiss of depressuring air. His helmet was lifted free. The captain elbowed back hard, but did not connect. In instant later he felt a blade at his throat – razor sharp, with enough pressure behind it to draw blood.

  The oily stink of the xenos mercenaries known as the kroot filled his nostrils, so pungent it made his eyes water.

  ‘Captain?’ asked Magros. Numitor saw the warrior in his peripheral vision. He too had a blade at his neck. All of them did.

  ‘Just kill us then,’ growled Sicarius.

  Numitor thought back to Malagrea’s warning. Beware the long-hawk. The red warsuit facing them was stock still, rendered inert by the electromagnetic pulse. But these kroot, avian and stealthy, were not robotic facsimiles like those in the earth caste facility. These were the real thing – slender eaters of flesh, skin-takers and cannibals. They needed no war-tech to work their hunter’s arts.

  Ahead, the warsuit’s hatch was kicked open, and a slender tau warrior dropped out to land in a hunter’s crouch. He stood slowly, and bowed without taking his eyes from Numitor’s. The captain expected to see an alien expression of triumph on the flat slab of the warlord’s face, but instead saw something that looked more like sadness.

  ‘Parley, I think you call it,’ said the xenos, his Low Gothic strangely lilting but accurate.

  ‘Very well,’ replied Numitor. ‘As soon as you have your pets take their blades from our throats.’

  ‘I think not,’ said the tau warlord. ‘Not yet. Honoured citizens of Pech, please stay your hands. But if even one of these gue’ron’sha moves, kill them all.’

  Sicarius spat a gobbet of acidic saliva towards the xenos leader. It landed a hand’s breath from his three-toed foot, hissing as it burnt into the scorched roof. The alien calmly took a step backwards, and made a complex gesture with his hands.

  Something whispered at the back of Numitor’s mind. The astropath, Malagrea. This time, it was an impression, more than words – a trillion malevolent eyes, all united by a single, galaxy-devouring hunger.

  For the first time in his life, Numitor felt true horror.

  ‘You have inflicted much damage upon Dal’yth,’ said the alien warlord. ‘Scarred it deeply as you fought to conquer it for your Emperor. Though I should not say this, I respect you for the skill and strength you have shown here.’

  Numitor frowned, but did not speak. The threat of imminent violence hung in the air, almost thick enough to taste. But with every piece of Imperial war-tech temporarily rendered dormant, and with the tau able to bring in reinforcements from outside the electromagnetic blast zone, a single hostile action could result in a massacre.

  ‘You are faithless bastards all,’ said Sicarius, ‘and one day you will be put to death, in the name of the Emperor.’

  ‘Faith is a powerful force indeed, it is true,’ said Farsight. ‘We have our own faith – not in one of our number raised to godhood, but in a mutual destiny that cannot be denied.’

  ‘Think well before you talk of such things,’ said Numitor. ‘Though it may cost me my life, I feel sure I could snap you in two before I bled out.’

  ‘You would attack an unarmed opponent?’ said the alien. ‘You would put the lives of your brothers in unnecessary danger? I thought you had honour, you Ultramarines. Or is that the Hammers of Dorn?’

  ‘What would you know of honour,’ snarled Sicarius.

  ‘I know that if it is broken, it cannot easily be repaired. We too have a warrior code.’

  ‘Lies,’ said Sicarius.

  ‘For instance,’ said the alien, ‘I would consider it dishonourable to give my cadres the order to hunt down and kill every one of your white-armoured medics, ensuring their ritual death flasks are ground beneath our boots. That would be a stain upon my soul I could not erase.’

  Numitor felt his gorge rise at the thought of the primarchs’ legacy scattered in the dust, but struggled to keep his expression neutral.

 
‘It would be a great shame if matters came to that,’ continued the xenos warlord. ‘Enough lives have been lost, on both sides, for us to learn from this. But my advisors have recently told me your masters have ordered an evacuation, so perhaps such extreme measures are not needed after all.’

  The Ultramarines glanced at one another in disbelief. Numitor met Sicarius’ gaze. His fingers, stiff with the effort of moving the dormant power armour, picked out a message in Talassarian sea-cant.

  Home. In. Danger.

  ‘I see,’ said Sicarius, speaking as much to Numitor as the alien. ‘So be it. And if we do withdraw this day, alien, you will simply let us leave? Every last army, craft and trooper?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the xenos warlord. ‘You have my word on that, as a commander of the fire caste.’

  This time, Sicarius did not grunt in disbelief. ‘Stand down, squad,’ said the sergeant. ‘There is more truth to this foul alien’s claim than you realise.’

  A stunned silence pervaded across the roof. Nine pairs of eyes looked to Numitor, and he nodded, slowly and sombrely.

  ‘It is true,’ he said. ‘Ultramar is in danger.’

  ‘Citizens of Pech,’ said the warlord, ‘release these ones. They are under the shield of truce, and must return to defend their own planet.’

  Numitor felt the knife blade move from his throat, his augmented blood clotting within seconds as the stink of the kroot’s proximity faded away.

  ‘Allies can be most useful, captain,’ said the tau commander as he turned to Numitor, ‘and sometimes found in the strangest places.’

  A massive drop ship bellied down out of the clouds, its ramp extending as it neared the hex-tower’s roof. A pairs of battlesuits descended gracefully from the portals on the side of the craft. Extending their manipulator gauntlets, they reached under the inert warsuit and bore it upwards with a loud thrum of repulsor jets.