Fire Warrior (warhammer 40,000)

by Саймон Спуриэр

The others grated upon him and, worse, the knowledge of his inability to fit in made his guilt more palpable. Operating as part of a unit was an expectation placed upon every tau. “Never alone,” the Auns said. His isolation was a constant reminder of his flaw, and he hated it.

  He was in the vent and crawling before the others could even protest. Not that they would, of course. He imagined them breathing sighs of relief as his retreating back diminished into the gloom of the tunnel.

  Half a dec later and comms were a distant memory. The bright icons of the others had dwindled in his HUD as their path carried them further away, and in no time at all he was left alone, once more scampering rodentlike through brittle metal veins, his wounded arm aching from supporting his weight. He cut through the pain mentally and forced himself onwards.

  Then things went badly wrong. Lost in the belly of an enormous creature, more vast than one mind could ever appreciate, his only sense of location was provided by the occasional breaks in the vent walls: thick membranes giving way to grille-slits and steel gauze openings. Through such indistinct portals he peered out on a world of dank chambers, strobe-lit techbays, anodyne sleeping cells and sterile, chrome-plated laboratories. Gue’la slouched here and there, filthy ratings and crew that seemed more akin to the rats they co-habited with than the pink-faced troopers Kais had grown used to. He scuttled silently through their midst, suit power on minimum to limit noise and heat emissions.

  It wasn’t enough when he came upon the Space Marines.

  Briefly, he felt a moment of pleasure at seeing their blocky grey-green shapes through the light-striated grille, patrolling a corridor vertex with measured strides — surely their presence indicated that he was on the right path. No mere troopers, he reasoned, would be assigned to guard something important. He nodded to himself and moved on.

  One of the Marines swivelled in its spot, helmeted head tilting inquisitively, staring up into the vent. Kais froze.

  The two giants appeared to converse, the first pointing vaguely towards the vent then shrugging, movement exaggerated by its vast shoulder guards. Kais could only guess at their discussion.

  He tried to move, painful tor’ils of silence and sweat. His heart sounded like a jackhammer in his chest, thumping in his ears and convincing him that the Marines could hear him.

  Satisfied at the silence, they began to move away. Kais allowed himself to breathe out slowly, his mouth dry. Buoyed up by relief, his glacial progress carried him past the grille and slowly, cautiously, he began to relax.

  The text wafer in his utility pocket slid gently though a las-singed fabric tear he hadn’t even noticed and tumbled to the floor of the duct. It sounded like a cannon erupting in his ear. It was a gong peal, shivering and groaning noisily. It was a planet splitting across its equator, furious resonances echoing and reverberating throughout eternity.

  He grabbed for the wafer, fear pulping his senses, even as the first bolter-shells sliced tubules of light spillage into the duct and detonated angrily near his feet.

  He bolted, stealthy progress discarded in favour of blind panic. His limbs raised a cannonade of thumps and clangs as he slithered and dragged himself along the duct, gashes and lumps of debris pulverising the metal walls and turning the conduit behind him into a whirlpool of fractured metal and conflicting detonations. Bolter fire roared behind him, filling the tunnels with ghostly echoes and the sharp scent of smoke.

  He scrabbled onwards, turning a corner, lurching upwards into a vertical shaft, taking tunnel branches at random with a stream of mumbled curses and groans. There was no rage here, no surrender to the Mont’au impetuosity — only blind panic and helplessness. Again he knew how the clonebeasts felt during the tau’kon’seh, sprinting impotently for their lives. But this time there was no recourse to turn and fight, no clever scheme to even the odds. In this labyrinth of intestinal tubes he was a parasite, at the mercy of any scalpel-wielding surgeon that could detect his movement and cut him out.

  He stared at the tight confines and panic gripped him, an irrational horror at the suffocating closeness of it all. He yearned for the clear skies of T’au.

  Is this how it feels to be buried alive, he wondered? Is this how it feels to die, lost and alone and flawed, with nothing to recall your existence beyond a decaying body, not even fit for the purity of a funeral pyre?

  For the first time in his life, Kais wished he could remember a few more sio’t meditations on the subject of peace.

  Shas’la Du’o’tan was so busy thinking of her recent team mate La’Kais, so busy wondering abstractly how it must feel to have such unvented anger lurking inside one’s soul, so busy recalling his shadow-dwindled form as it wormed its way down into the ductwork nervous system of the gue’la warship, that she wasn’t fully watching where she, and the rest of the team, was going.

  She turned a corner.

  Something came out of the wall and ate her alive.

  The vox clicked.

  “...ll brothers hear m... eneral alert, general al...”

  Captain Mho glanced at his five battlebrothers and armed his bolt pistol. They followed suit quickly, racking bolters and meltaguns with professional relish.

  “...nemy in the air-ve... ng the ducts to infiltr... tay alert.”

  Mito shot a look at Sergeant Tangiz, who shrugged. He thumbed his vox-caster.

  “Mito here — guarding the generarium access-door. Please repeat, brother.”

  “...rother-captain, there are tau i... rone-damned air du...”

  “In the air ducts, sir.” Tangiz rumbled, huge frame twisting to stare at the various conduits and pipes lacing the ceiling. On a vessel this vast and ancient it was anyone’s guess what each intestinal tube contained. Mito rapped his knuckles against one experimentally.

  “Understood, brother,” he voxed. “Stay in touch.”

  Brother Iolux, Mito’s youngest squad member, tapped the barrel of his bolter against a wide sheet-steel recess above his head. “Should we breach one, brother-captain? Just in case?”

  “Negative. This close to the generarium, who knows what’s contained in each duct? Are you prepared to strike the wrong one, brother?”

  “As the Raven wills it, brother-captain. I am prepared to take the risk.”

  Mito nodded to himself approvingly. “Your zeal does you credit, brother,” he said warmly, “as does your altruism. However, in this instance caution is our best recourse. It would not do to be responsible for destroying the very thing we are here to guard, selfless or not.”

  “I understand, brother-captain.”

  “Good. Audio pickup to full. First hint of movement, don’t spare the ammunition.”

  The others acknowledged quickly and fell silent, listening intently, watching scanners for any signs of air movement. Mito flicked infra-red filters across his eye-lenses distractedly, disappointed by the lack of obvious targets. This whole operation had been deeply tedious; the sooner he and his company could return to Cortiz Pol and the Fortress Monastery, the sooner they might find action in campaign or crusade. A Marine’s place was in battle, bolter chattering, enemies screaming, not seconded aboard some navy vessel like a worn-out hunting dog, guarding his master’s least valuable possessions.

  “Captain?” Tangiz voxed, staring at the auspex of his motion detector. “Something...”

  “I have a contact also,” Iolux nodded, tilting his head to localise the sound.

  “Give me a bearing, Tangiz.”

  “Standby... It appears to be direct. Advancing along the corridor.”

  “Not in the pipes?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Range?” Mito raised his pistol and thumbed the activation rune on the hilt of his chainsword, blurring the teeth in a hungry smear of steel and a feral growl of energy. The others lifted their weapons, taking up firing positions.

  “Twenty metres and closing.”

  “I see nothing.”

  “Detecting air movement.”

  “Fifteen metres.”
r />   “Nothing...”

  “By the Raven, what is this?”

  “Ten metres... Still closing...”

  “There! I see it! At the corridor apex!”

  Mito saw a flicker of movement and jerked his arm upwards to cover it. Whatever it was it was tiny — barely larger than one of the green carrion birds from Cortiz. It shifted along the ceiling of the tunnel, ducking through and between the coils of cabling and pipework with unreal precision.

  “Servitor drone?” Iolux grunted.

  “Too small. Too manoeuvrable.”

  “Xeno.”

  “Knock it down.”

  Mito opened fire with a snarl, enjoying the shuddering recoil of the bolt pistol. A localised thunderstorm began as the rest of the squad joined him, barking weapons hurling smoke and flame tears into the corridor.

  The small shape caromed and weaved, tumbling and dodging faster than any living thing could react. It swept from side to side, dipping low to the ground and then pirouetting upwards, coming to a dead halt, then streaking off in a random direction without appearing to accelerate.

  The hallway surged. After ten seconds of the useless barrage the corridor was a wreck, shredded channels of bolter-craters spewing liquid metal and tight-knit cable-bundles, raising crumpled mountains across the walls and ceiling and gouging oceans from every surface. Melta ribbons left curious fronds of cooling metal-splash, smoke leeched from shredded bulkheads, strobing bolter fire sent flickering shadows capering and cackling across the devastation. It was madness.

  Mito realised too late that the hovering object — whatever it was — had evaded every last shell, every last explosion and every last shimmering melta-stream. It moved impossibly, a tawny streak across the smoke and debris that anticipated and avoided every shot, drawing inexorably nearer to the Marines and the gateway that they guarded.

  It barrelled from the smoke in a blur. Mito snarled in frustration and chopped downwards with the chainsword, putting all his energy and rage into that single arcing swing. And he would have made contact with the tiny drone, had it not chosen that exact moment to detonate.

  Captain Mito of the Adeptus Astartes Raptors died in a haze of his own blood, howling in fury.

  * * *

  Kais dragged himself from the ruptured duct with a grunt and swung down into the corridor. Bits of grey-green armour, lined by slabs of flesh, littered the pulverised hallway. He clucked his tongue, impressed at the tiny drone’s destructive legacy. His circuitous journey through the ductway had led him, finally, to the doors of the vessel’s power core.

  It had been a uniquely odd experience, deploying the little robot through an access hatch and feeding its non-sentient AI the simple commands it required. Kais had found it hard to not draw parallels between his own situation and the drone’s: both were mindless cogs in a rumbling machine, expected to do their duty without question or resentment. He almost envied the robot’s mindlessness. It could never be so tormented as was he.

  “Breach doorway bulkhead, avoid damage.” As simple as that. Straightforward, unconflicting, uncomplicated and efficient. Everything he wasn’t.

  Just as Lusha had watched his progress via the optics of his helmet, Kais could sneak inside the drone’s vision and ride, spellbound, as it lurked amongst the shadows of the corridors. It felt unusually like flying, and despite being curled foetally within a small duct nearby, Kais found it difficult to control the fluctuations of his stomach and balance as his vision recorded the dips and crests of the small machine’s progress.

  And then the firefight! He’d never moved so fast, consciousness gyrating and corkscrewing with impossible precision, the drone’s sensors chattering and whistling in his ear as it estimated fire trajectories and ran the gauntlet. He’d barely even seen the Marines — just green smudges of reflected light and chattering gunfire, growing gradually nearer with each hectic manoeuvre. Contact severed with a static hiss as the faithful little drone completed its approach and triggered the high-density kles’tak explosives packed throughout its chassis. Nothing had survived.

  The destruction was strangely comforting. If a drone, the very zenith of mindless obedience and preprogrammed faith, could be responsible for such destruction, then perhaps he — with his trail of bodies and bloodstained armour — wasn’t so far removed from the tau’va as he seemed.

  The bulkhead leading into the engine room sagged pathetically, pulverised hinges twisted out of shape. He picked his way past the barbarised bodies and ducked between the hanging gates, ears assaulted by the full fury of the reactors within. Across the chamber, standing skeletally on fragile gantries and pulpits, twisted amalgamations of human and machine — more mindless constructs devoted to fulfilling their masters’ commands — twitched their limbs and glared at him through narrow focussing eyelenses. One of them chattered, like a ratchet joint on a battlesuit.

  Kais felt the weight of the explosives secured in his shoulderpack. He raised his carbine and smiled, anticipating the destruction he would soon wreak.

  Kor’o Dal’yth Men’he piloted his vessel with the consummate ease and confidence characteristic of his rank and caste. The Tel’ham Kenvaal swung in a balletic spiral, rolling onto its side like a whale and disgorging another withering salvo of plasma orbs, railgun shells and AI-piloted torpedoes.

  His target moved far too slowly to evade the barrage, its harsh gue’la hull twisting in a last-ditch attempt to present stern before the payload imparted across its belly. Fire and debris vomited into the vacuum, building-sized blocks of masonry and metal tumbling endlessly away in a clutching halo of cable tendrils.

  A torpedo alarm gonged serenely and Men’he tapped at a sequence of control drones almost without thought. Immediately a squadron of Barracudas broke off from the dogfight raging along the Kenvaal’s toroq-side hull and ghosted into the firing line to intercept. Nuclear blooms flourished and dwindled in a heartbeat as the missiles were efficiently hunted and crippled, kor’vre pilots chattering their shorthand command language across the squadron-comm. A solitary torpedo evaded their careful ministrations and Men’he rolled his eyes wearily.

  “Chaff,” he grunted out loud, not for the first time.

  A kor’el nearby nodded and tapped at her control console. “Of course, Kor’o.”

  A swarm of blocky drones slipped silently from a hatchway beside the Kenvaal’s batteries and threw themselves at the torpedo. Whatever crude gue’la intelligence was directing the tumbling missile, successfully avoided two of the heat seeking machines before a third, random pulses of magnetic interference scrambling its guidance, flew serenely into its warhead. The detonation fell just short of the damage zone. Men’he breathed out, licking his dry lips.

  A Mako-class warship — smaller and slower than the Kenvaal but bristling with railgun emplacements and arms-factories — breached the top of Men’he’s viewscreen and emptied a confetti of drone-piloted fusion capsules at the human vessel. Like swimming insect larvae, the bright pinpricks of light swarmed and circled around their victim, closing in on carefully selected targets before unleashing the actinic energies sealed within them.

  The sight made Men’he think of a huge grazebeast carcass, stuffed full of firecrackers and t’pre’ta decorations. It bucked and shivered from the inside, a living fire eating away at its flesh and leaving only the brittle, charred skeleton beneath.

  “Kor’o? Their life support and weapons are down.”

  “Good. Signal the Sio’l Shi’el’teh to finish the job. We’re rejoining the Or’es Tash’var.”

  “Very good, Kor’o.”

  The Tel’ham Kenvaal swung away from the hapless warship and accelerated towards the centre of the engagement zone. On all sides the toothy slabs of the gue’la fleet were outmanoeuvred and overrun by the smaller tau vessels, innumerable fighters and attack craft vying for superiority in the abyssal spaces in between. A latticework of munitions and missiles laced the voidspace, glimmering jewels that flickered and blossomed or winked out abruptl
y. Men’he silently thanked the earth caste for their breathtakingly intelligent computers, at a loss to understand how the gue’la could even begin to decipher such complex tactical showdowns without the benefit of automated systems.

  Manpower, he supposed. A hundred thousand humans for every tau in the galaxy — that was the current intelligence estimate. Each of those ugly angular warships was a world, a population of servile ratings and crew without a single freedom beyond the ability to worship their cruel, blinkered gargoyle-god. Every missile fired at them, every fusion capsule shredding its atoms in a purple welt of radiation and fire, was genocide on his part. It was a sobering thought.

  The Or’es Tash’var, battered hull dappled with soot patches and protruding boarding craft, circled the Enduring Blade slowly. The two vessels, prow-to-prow, moved around one another like veteran prize fighters, each unwilling to present broadsides for fear of absorbing as much damage as they might inflict. Thus stalemated, they gyrated ponderously, twisting and rolling but always matching one another’s movements; a slow, graceless dance of death, speckled by the furious fighter engagements all around. Torpedoes twisted and left dissolving ribbon trails across the nothingness, drones capered in a dizzying spiral to intercept or attack, chunks of debris and crippled fighter craft turned languidly and bodies, bloated and pulverised and frozen and crushed, slapped like brittle icicles against the Kenvaal’s hull. Men’he shook his head, revolted.

  “Target the engines,” he grunted to the gunnery kor’el.

  “They’re backing off, Kor’o. I have no firing solution.”

  They saw us coming... Signal the Or’es Tash’var. Tell them to take the toroq side, we’ll go juntas. We have to kill those engines.”

  “It’s too late, Kor’o... the gue’la are pulling away.”

  “Pursu—”

  “Kor’o — The surveyor drones make report...”

  Men’he frowned. “And?”

  “Some sort of energy peak. Standby...”