Shas'o

by Various

  ‘It is a curse then?’

  ‘It is what it is. As am I.’ He took a step forwards. Omazet took one back.

  ‘What you are is a heretic,’ she challenged.

  ‘From a narrow viewpoint.’ Another step forwards.

  ‘You have turned your back on Father Terra’s light!’ Another step back.

  ‘Light blinds, absolute light blinds absolutely.’ Forwards.

  ‘Is that how you lost your eyes?’ Back.

  ‘It is how I came to see.’

  ‘How long was I out?’ Mordaine asked hoarsely.

  ‘Not long.’ It was a vague answer yet an honest one, he sensed.

  ‘Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance, xenos?’

  ‘It would have served no purpose.’

  ‘Vengeance doesn’t interest you?’

  ‘Against you?’ The alien’s nostril slit dilated with wintry humour. ‘Enmity must be earned, gue’la. My people do not hate blindly, as yours do.’

  ‘Your people?’ Mordaine taunted, scrabbling for an attack. ‘Who exactly are you speaking for? You’re an outcast.’

  ‘You presume much and understand nothing.’

  ‘Then enlighten me,’ Mordaine offered. ‘Haven’t you turned your back on the ethereals and built your own little empire in the Damocles Gulf?’

  ‘In dark times empires arise around warriors of substance,’ the xenos said without obvious pride. ‘Fire purges the old and forges anew. So it goes.’

  ‘And what exactly are you forging?’

  ‘Such knowledge will not save you, Haniel Mordaine.’

  The blood drained from Mordaine’s face. Did everyone know his damned name? How…? The Calavera? But why would he tell this xenos renegade anything? Where do the lies begin or end?

  ‘Name your Chapter,’ Omazet said as she backed away from the giant, ‘so I might curse its memory.’

  ‘I have no Chapter,’ answered the Calavera, advancing, ‘for I am Legion.’

  And so it went, their words slicing back and forth as their steps carried them inexorably towards the emptiness waiting at the other end of the carriage.

  ‘What do you fight for?’ Omazet asked finally, stepping out onto the connecting gangway that no longer connected to anything.

  ‘Some might call it the Greater Good.’

  ‘You have betrayed your blood to serve a xenos heresy?’ Omazet had to shout over the wind, yet the Calavera’s whispers slipped through it like serpents.

  ‘Oh, a Greater Good than theirs…’ The notion appeared to amuse him. ‘Call it the greater Greater Good, if you will.’ He raised a cautioning hand as her finger tightened on the trigger of her pistol. ‘Do not imagine you can put my eye out as if I were some absurd monster of legend. The balance of the Aphelion exists outside the material sphere. You cannot touch it.’

  ‘I can try.’

  ‘Make the attempt and I will kill you.’

  ‘And if I don’t, you will spare me?’ she challenged.

  ‘I will offer you a choice. Die here… or take a leap of faith.’ He swept an arm towards the white void behind her.

  ‘We are both outcasts, gue’la,’ the xenos said, ‘but I have chosen my path. I know myself. What do you know?’

  Nothing, Mordaine confessed. I don’t know why Escher elevated me to become his acolyte or why he was murdered or even what I want from you, xenos. And worst of all, I don’t know what’s happening to me.

  ‘You are an enemy of the Imperium of Man,’ he declared, striking for safe ground, ‘but to your own people you are immeasurably more repellent.’ I have to go on the attack! ‘Shas’O Vior’la Shovah Kais Mont’yr,’ he said, pronouncing each meticulously memorised component like a curse, ‘I name you traitor.’

  ‘Make your choice, lieutenant,’ said the Calavera.

  ‘You offer me death either way!’ Omazet snarled.

  ‘Perhaps, yet my vassal beast endures.’ The Calavera tilted his head attentively. ‘I hear it still, failing and faint, but too hungry for life to accept death.’ That cold jewel of an eye fixed on her again, weighing her up. ‘Are you weaker than a xenos savage, Adeola Omazet?’

  ‘Why take the chance that I might survive?’ she demanded.

  ‘Perhaps because you have impressed me,’ the Calavera said, ‘or perhaps because the improbability of it intrigues me.’

  Omazet didn’t believe either explanation for a moment. This monster had sloughed off such sentiments long ago. All of it – the pride, the dry humour, even the weariness – were merely after-echoes of emotion. Inside that bronze skull only austere purpose remained. A purpose he believed she would serve equally well through life or death.

  ‘I will live, traitor,’ she promised. ‘And I will prove you wrong.’

  Then she spat in his eye and jumped.

  ‘Do you deny it?’ Mordaine pressed. ‘Or is the name too shameful for you to acknowledge?’

  The prisoner made no answer. Its expression was unreadable.

  ‘Confess.’ Mordaine lashed out, trying not to let desperation seep into his voice. ‘You are O’Shovah.’

  You have to be, or this is all for nothing.

  ‘You are–’

  ‘I am,’ the xenos said.

  Mordaine closed his eyes and let the void take him once more.

  VOID

  Gaze into the Void and you will see yourself glaring back.

  – The Calavera

  There were voices in the darkness, prowling the silence like wolves, hounding Mordaine towards wakefulness though he sensed this was not their intent.

  ‘… and what of the remaining gue’la troops?’ one was asking.

  ‘I have accounted for them all save their captain,’ answered a resonant whisper. ‘He was gone from his quarters when I purged the vessel.’

  ‘Your plan bleeds errors as the aun breed lies, Iho’nen,’ the first voice said.

  ‘It is the nature of things,’ the whisperer called Iho’nen replied. ‘The Primordial Annihilator taints all endeavours with escalating imperfection, hence foresight is a potent but inconstant craft, traveller.’

  ‘Yet it is your chosen craft, is it not?’ the traveller observed dryly.

  ‘As it is yours, but one must adapt to the changing tides of the maelstrom.’

  ‘I am a hunter. To my mind a beast that cannot be mastered is best slain.’

  ‘That has always been the way of warriors,’ Iho’nen acknowledged, ‘but you must become more than a warrior if you aspire to master fate.’

  ‘Fate is an excuse for weakness,’ declared the traveller. ‘The strong forge their own paths.’

  ‘Your path may yet forge a monster, Mont’shasaar.’

  ‘That is not my name,’ the other said coldly.

  ‘Not yet and perhaps never,’ Iho’nen conceded, ‘but you acquired its shadow on Arthas Moloch when you took the Dawn Blade.’

  ‘The Dawn Blade is a weapon like any other.’

  ‘Like no other,’ Iho’nen said intently.

  ‘Then you advise me to discard the blade?’ the traveller challenged.

  ‘No, that time has passed and you must reap the storm you have sown.’

  ‘As it should be, Space Marine.’

  Space Marine? Mordaine thought hazily. That whisper? Calavera… As he tumbled back towards darkness he sensed one of the presences approach. His eyes opened fleetingly and he saw the xenos prisoner appraising him.

  ‘I think you are wrong about this one, Iho’nen,’ it said. ‘He is broken.’

  The ventilation shafts reeked of a sour animal stench but they were the safest paths through the narrow warzone of the train, so Armande Uzochi had claimed them without hesitation, just as another predator had done before him. The crawlspaces had kept him hidden and mobile even when Grandfath
er Death was dangerously close, as he was now.

  Lying supinely above the prison carriage, Uzochi held his breath as the one-eyed Space Marine carried the inquisitor from the alien’s cell. Slumped senseless in the giant’s arms, Mordaine looked like a dead man and Uzochi wondered what torments he had endured in Father Terra’s service. His eyes widened in horror as he saw the xenos captive emerge from the cell a moment later, stretching its limbs as if to shake out the indignity of confinement.

  Horror turned to outrage as Uzochi remembered how these abominations had destroyed his company piece by piece, first in the hive through the uprising they had engineered and finally in the confines of this bedevilled machine, hunting down his men one by one. He had watched from above as Grandfather Death killed young Mifune, snapping the terror-stricken boy’s neck with the indifference Uzochi would have shown a rat. Instinct alone had saved the captain, compelling him to hide before the cull had begun.

  How did our La Mal Kalfu meet her fate? Uzochi wondered guiltily, remembering how he had rebuked her. I was weak…

  The giant carried Mordaine into a cell further along the carriage, but the xenos lingered at a window. Fleetingly Uzochi considered slipping down behind it. With fortune and faith he might take the creature unawares then make his escape before its ally returned.

  No, he decided, weighing up the alien with a shrewd hunter’s eye. There will be no surprising that one.

  He’d have just one chance at vengeance so he’d best make it count. This wasn’t the moment. Besides, patience was a hunter’s truest virtue and virtue would be his penance for failing Adeola Omazet. Uzochi let the tension slip from his muscles and waited.

  … DAYS AFTER UNITY

  Mordaine drifted towards wakefulness like a drowning man washed ashore, unsure whether the ocean had expelled him too late. Though the torment in his chest had subsided to a dull ache, his head was bloated with furtive, insistent voices. They whispered from a deep shadow stratum of memory, urging him to embrace an annihilating, irrefutable truth, like buzzing flies drawn to carrion dreams.

  What’s happening to me? Mordaine pleaded with them.

  ‘Focus your thoughts, interrogator,’ another, harsher whisper answered, silencing the shadow babble. ‘Your prisoner awaits.’

  Mordaine opened his eyes and saw the Calavera standing over him like a graven statue. Has he been there all night? The thought repelled him, but revulsion turned to confusion as his surroundings registered. Why am I in a cell?

  ‘I have relocated you to the penal carriage for your own safety, interrogator,’ the Calavera explained. ‘Our enemies have infiltrated this transport.’

  ‘The Iwujii…?’ Mordaine asked through parched lips.

  ‘Regrettably they have fallen,’ the Space Marine said.

  Fallen to invisible enemies on a speeding train in the middle of nowhere? Mordaine thought listlessly as he hauled himself from the bunk. You don’t even care if I believe you or not.

  ‘I will stand watch,’ the Calavera said. ‘You must attend to your duty, interrogator.’

  Yes, I must, Mordaine agreed, otherwise the voices in my head will begin to shout. And I don’t want to hear what they have to say.

  As he shrugged on his jacket he noticed his laspistol was gone.

  The young sentry was also gone and there was no replacement outside the prisoner’s door. Mordaine didn’t question it, but he knew he was alone with his enemies now.

  ‘You grow weaker, Haniel Mordaine,’ the alien said as he entered. ‘Ask your questions before you expire.’

  ‘And will you answer honestly, xenos?’ After all, what do you have to lose?

  The prisoner considered the question. ‘I will.’

  He’s admitted the name, Mordaine thought, but that means nothing. I have to be certain it’s him.

  ‘Farsight,’ he murmured, testing the name as Lieutenant Omazet might have done. ‘What’s in a name, xenos?’

  ‘To a tau, everything,’ the alien replied. ‘Bloodline and sept, caste and rank and conquest.’

  ‘Conquest? Surely that’s solely a matter for the fire caste?’

  ‘You misunderstand conquest, gue’la. A diplomat of the water caste might earn the name Softsword for the gentle blade of her flattery, an artisan of the earth caste–’

  ‘I understand the principle,’ Mordaine said curtly, ‘but I’d wager you don’t hold all conquests in equal esteem.’

  ‘Those of the fire caste have primacy,’ the xenos agreed, ‘for without our strength all others would be dust in the wind.’

  ‘And what conquest does Farsight honour?’

  ‘It exemplifies the first and finest precept of the Shas’va.’ The alien’s black eyes shone with icy pride. ‘I know my enemy as I know myself, indeed better, for my foe is but a shallow shadow of myself. I see as he sees, think as he thinks – and act upon his actions before he knows them himself.’

  ‘Is that what you’re doing now?’

  ‘You would be a fool to think otherwise, interrogator.’

  ‘Then tell me, xenos, what action will I take now?’ Because I’m damned if I have any idea myself…

  ‘You will know when you find me waiting for you there, gue’la.’

  So it began.

  Inevitably they talked of the Arkunasha War, where Farsight’s shrewd harrowing of the orks – be’gel he called them – had earned him his epithet. Mordaine expected more pride, but instead the xenos grew sombre as it recalled the campaign.

  ‘It was a long and bitter conflict,’ the alien said. ‘Many fire warriors were lost in the rifts of that blighted world, yet I cannot deny the beauty of it.’

  ‘Beauty?’ Mordaine asked. ‘In a world of rust and killer sandstorms?’

  ‘Not in the world, gue’la – in the war.’ The alien’s eyes dimmed with remembrance. ‘The be’gel live for war, embracing it without question or justification. They fight for the joy of fighting alone.’

  ‘And you admire them for this?’ Despite himself, Mordaine was intrigued.

  ‘No. They are beasts, but I respect their purity of purpose,’ the prisoner said. ‘After Arkunasha the water caste painted the be’gel as mindless primitives, diminishing them with words to salve the Empire’s anxieties, yet this was only a half-truth. I have waged war against the be’gel many times, but even in that first war I recognised they were neither foolish nor predictable. They adapt and prosper by instinct alone, becoming stronger with every loss they suffer. On Arkunasha we exterminated generations in a handful of years, yet they spawned faster than we could cull them, each wave adapting more swiftly to the battlefield than the last.’

  ‘The Imperium is eminently familiar with the orkoid threat–’ Mordaine began, but the xenos ignored him, caught up in the tide of its memories.

  ‘The veterans were the most dangerous,’ it continued. ‘Those who endured across many seasons borrowed Arkunasha’s strength, growing skin of hardened oxide that shielded them from the rust devils and razor storms that scoured the deserts. We called them be’kalsu, the iron beasts. They stalked us from the heart of the storms, hidden from the sharpest eye or scanner, turning the hazards of the land against us. Many were torn apart as they rode the tempest, but this only made the survivors more reckless, more lethal.’

  The xenos paused, steepling its fingers in contemplation.

  ‘I remember watching from the sheltering ridge of Mak’lar when a monster cyclone spat out an army of spinning, flailing bodies, hurling them to the ground like the rocks the be’gel use to travel the stars. Most were killed instantly, but those that lived were still laughing when we finished them, broken yet unbroken. If the be’gel were capable of loving anything other than war, I believe it was Arkunasha.’

  ‘And you?’ Mordaine asked on impulse. ‘Did you also love Arkunasha?’

  ‘It was an honest war,’ the xenos ans
wered obliquely, ‘until the end.’

  ‘Surely the end was a great victory?’

  ‘It was a stolen victory.’

  ‘I don’t understand. The Tau Empire defeated the orks decisively.’

  ‘I was not there, gue’la.’ For the first time Mordaine sensed the rage so tightly leashed within this glacial being. ‘Towards the end there were… difficulties. We walked on a knife edge, but I could see the shape of victory, so close I could almost grasp it.’ The xenos clasped its manacled hands, as if in supplication. ‘With reinforcements I knew I could crush the be’gel within another season so I requested a fresh hunter cadre.’ The prisoner’s knuckles cracked with tension. ‘The Empire sent an assassin.’

  ‘They attempted to kill you?’ Mordaine was stunned.

  ‘They attempted to kill my authority,’ the alien hissed. ‘They believed I had grown arrogant and wilful, straying from my prescribed place in the Greater Good. Aun’Shi himself came to Arkunasha to censure me, though I was too trusting to recognise this at the time. He commanded me to withdraw before I won the war.’

  ‘And then the Empire returned and won without you,’ Mordaine guessed, beginning to understand. ‘You were cheated?’

  ‘I was punished!’ The xenos lowered its hands, breathing deeply as it reasserted its iron discipline. ‘The aun will not tolerate the ascension of another caste. They feared I would become a beacon of dissent for the fire caste.’

  ‘Was that your intent?’

  ‘It was not.’ There was unmistakable pain in the alien’s voice now. ‘I believed in the aun. Completely. Every sacrifice I demanded of my cadre on Arkunasha, every drop of blood swallowed by the red sand and every death scream stolen by the red wind… It was all done for the Greater Good.’

  This is the heart of his story, Mordaine sensed, suddenly eager. I’ll end the speculation and the theories. The Imperium will know the truth of this renegade from his own lips…

  ‘But surely the ethereals – the aun – they must have recognised your loyalty,’ Mordaine speculated, sifting through the few facts known to the Inquisition. ‘After the Damocles War they elevated you, made you first among the fireblades…’