Fire Warrior (warhammer 40,000)
Page 23
“We’d know about it. An army doesn’t just spring from nowhere.”
“Agreed but... Shas’o, isn’t it worth investigating? ‘Caution in the face of threat’—is that not the teaching of the Yie’rla’rettan meditation?”
O’Udas breathed out, reluctantly conceding. All this talking exhausted him: his nominal grasp of the gue’la language, coupled with his natural impatience for diplomacy, made him re-evaluate his feelings towards the water caste. He began to wish sincerely that El’Yis’ten hadn’t taken all of her por’ui assistants with her to the human ship.
He waved a weary hand at the Kor’ui and the channel reopened.
“Human... Convince me of this threat.”
“Contact your own units. There are still plenty of tau aboard — ask any of them for an appraisal. Space Marines do not lie.”
O’Udas shuffled his feet. To reveal the shortcomings of their technology was unthinkable but... Without the Aun, they had nothing left to lose.
“We can’t contact our units,” he said, neutralising his voice to dampen the significance of the admission. “There’s a signal-retardant field around your vessel.”
“Stand by” Was there a hint of smugness in the voice, he wondered? A triumphant lilt to its tone at having identified a weakness? A muffled conversation filtered dully through the speakers, another gue’la voice joining Ardias’s. He thought he could make out a sonorous chant, like a prayer, then the clicking reports of switches being flipped. After what seemed like an age the clipped tones of the Marine returned to the comm. “External comms have been opened, xenogen,” it said. “Now see for yourself.”
A few lights on the bridge’s wall screens flickered. Green icons began to appear on the display schematic of the Enduring Blade. The Kor’ui at the comms turned in his seat.
“We have contact, Shas’o... At least two cadres of line warriors still active aboard the vessel.”
O’Udas nodded, turning to Lusha. He still lurked with a thoughtful expression at the rear of the bridge.
“Shas’el? A name, please. Someone reliable.”
The grizzled tau responded without hesitation. “La’Kais. Contact La’Kais.”
“Ah yes, the hero...” He nodded at the kor’ui. “Open a channel to La’Kais.”
The bridge systems chimed. The anxious personnel gathered held their collective breath and stared at the innocuous speaker drones.
“Shas’la?” Udas said.
“W-what—?” the return signal was weak, made tinny by the distance and distortion it faced. Udas thought the voice sounded drained. Tired. Traumatised. Hysterical, even. “Who’s that?” it quailed. “Who... oh... I thought the contact was down. Wh—?”
“This is Shas’o Sa’cea Udas, La’Kais. I’m aboard the Enduring Blade.”
“...thank the tau’va... oh, bloodfire... thought I was alone...”
Udas exchanged a raised-eyebrow glance with El’Lusha.
“Kais... I need a status report. Have you seen the Aun’el?”
“Gone... gone, by the path... eaten up by the blood door... It’s the terror. The terror, Shas’o. Do you hear me? It’s the terror!” The excess of emotion was palpable in his voice, breaking through the facade of dignity and calmness inherent to taukind. Udas placed a hand over the drone hovering at his side, covering the microphone array. He turned back to El’Lusha. “He’s gone mad.”
Lusha didn’t look convinced. “Shas’o... May I?”
“Of course.” Udas waved the drone towards the veteran.
“Kais? Kais — this is El’Lusha.”
“El’Lusha? I blew the engines. I did that. For the machine, Shas’el. I cleared the bridge. M-me. That was right, wasn’t it? ‘For the machine’, you said.”
The voice sounded like an infant, timid and querulous, clinging to certainties to displace whatever madness was gripping it. O’Udas thought: iur’tae’mont. Burnout. War madness. Shellshock. It happened.
El’Lusha, concern etched on his face, spoke with a soothing cadence. “That’s it, child, for the machine... Kais: listen to me... I want you to tell me what’s going on in there. I want you to tell me what’s happened to the Aun.”
The response was a long time coming. Nervous kor’uis exchanged worried glances. Udas rubbed his chin.
When it came, the voice was little more than a whisper.
“Kais? Kais, we can’t hear you.”
“M-m...”
“Kais?”
“Mont’au!”
The bridge filled with the murmured litanies and meditations of dozens of personnel, all warding off the connotations of Kais’s pronouncement. O’Udas ground his teeth together and shook his head. The youth had lost his mind.
“There are things...” the comm said, voice growing in strength. “They came out of the walls, they came out of thin air. I thought it was a trick at first but... oh... the blood...”
“Kais—”
“Black. Black things. And red. Like devils. Like Mont’au devils with their eyes on fire and their guns... oh...”
One or two of the kor’uis moaned quietly, terrified by the monotone description. Lusha tried again.
“Kais, that’s enough...”
“They took the ethereal. And a gue’la, I think.”
“Took them whe—”
“But it’s okay. It’s all fine now, because... because, you see, I know. I understand. It’s a nightmare. El’Lusha? I’m dreaming, aren’t I? This isn’t real...”
Udas thought El’Lusha looked sick, grizzled features closing in on themselves.
“Kais, you... You’re awake.”
“...and you... hah...” the voice sounded sleepy, fogged behind a cloud of unreality, “...you’re just part of the dream...”
“Kais...”
“There’s something coming.”
“Kais? Kais, you have to fight th—”
“I have to go now. Respect and Unity, tau’fann.”
“Kais!”
Silence hit the bridge like a weapon strike, shaking every tau to his or her foundation. The kor’ui at the comm swallowed and shook his head. El’Lusha deflated, face pale.
“Well,” mumbled O’Udas, not sure what else to say. “well...”
“The gue’la is hailing us again, Shas’o.”
“Right. Yes. Open the channel.”
Click.
“—ill there? Xeno?”
“I am here, gue’la. We...”
“You contacted one of your units, yes? I take it that I have earned your trust?”
“Perhaps...”
“Good. No attacks on the Enduring Blade. Not yet, at any rate.”
“You say the Aun is on the planet?”
“I said ‘probably’.”
Udas could hear gunfire and shouting voices across the comm. He swallowed, hardening his resolve. “Then we shall free him.”
“You are welcome to try, xenogen. This ship is overrun. I’m taking my men planetside as soon as I can; we shall clean this mess or die trying.”
“Commendable br—”
“I neither expect nor desire your commendation, alien. I contacted you to suspend hostilities, that’s all. Let us not waste time with pleasantries. Your troops will stay out of my way. That is all.”
“Is this... is this a truce, then?”
“Call it what you want. You’re on borrowed time.”
Udas felt the blood heat again. These were words he understood; military, fighting words. The desire to rise and outstrip the human’s arrogant threats was powerful indeed... but... The Aun must come first. Always.
“As you say, human. For now.”
The channel went dead, El’Lusha clenched his fists, the Kor’uis cleared their throats and fidgeted in anxiety, and O’Udas anticipated another ground war. Suddenly he felt much more at home.
ly.>
++ All ships, attention.++
++This is the Enduring Blade.++
[Purgatus here... Constantine! What the blazes is going on over there!]
[Sir! Baleful Gaze. You’ve been out of contact for an hour!]
[Troubador— Is it the xenos? What action, sir?]
[My telepaths are having fits. One of them clawed his own face off, by the throne! What’s happening?]
++Be silent, all of you. Constantine is gone. Maybe dead.++
[What the devil?]
[Who is th—?]
++This is Captain Ardias of the Adeptus Astartes Ultramarines. I want you all to listen very closely.++
[What th—?]
++Listen.++
++There has been an incursion. The tau are no longer our priority.++
[I demand an expla—]
++No more interruptions!++
++Governor Meyloch Severus of Dolumar IV. There’s a photo ident on the carrier frequency.++
++He’s been tainted.++
[...]
[Tainted? What do you mean?]
++You know what I mean.++
++Chaos, gentlemen.++
++The Enduring Blade is overrun.++
[This is...]
[I mean... Living-god...]
[...Chaos?...]
[...came out of nowhere...]
[How do we know this isn’t a tau trick?]
++Oh, of all the ridiculous...++
++Hhh++
++Stand by.++
----------------Override.>
<...>
<...Subcore priority-code recog. G#3.>
++There. Satisfied?++
[Emperor’s blood...]
[My comms servitor just died!]
[Throne’s mercy...]
+I’ll take that as affirmation.++
++That’s one of the highest priority edict codes you’ll ever see, gentlemen. Astartes Prioritus Level. This is real.++
++I’m initiating the evacuation of the Enduring Blade. I suspect some sort of Chaos operation on the planet surface. I suggest high-altitude surveys as soon as possible.++
++I’m taking my men down there.++
[I... I’ll dispatch ground troops immediately.]
[Yes. Yes, me too.]
[A full-scale attack, then. All hands.]
[Agreed.]
++Do what you want. The Ultramarines require no assistance.++
++Stay out of our way.++
[And the tau?]
++Ignore them.++
[What about the Enduring Blade?]
++...++
[Ardias?]
++On my command, destroy it.++
* * *
Kais slipped into insanity. A dec passed.
The first thread of rationality returned to him with the beautiful, ugly thought.
This. This is surrender.
The burstcannon was far more graceful than the blocky meltagun. He vaguely recalled prising it, sticky with blood, from the grasp of a fragmented shas’ui in the concilium. Its lines were smooth and crafted, its balance perfect. He thumbed the trigger and didn’t let go.
This is freedom.
It was a living thing in his hands. A barrelled lance that foomed breathlessly, churning out a strobefire-barrage of pulse drops. Like rain, he thought. Like a water stream, filled with iridescent impurities.
This is letting go.
Something went down, screaming. Smoke and sparks clawed at the air, a whalespout of light and vapour. Blood, somewhere. It hit the deck and moaned and shifted, going still, and Kais walked past without looking. Maybe, he thought, it was an enemy. Maybe not.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
This is release.
The thunder barrage of gunfire; the flash lightning drumbeat of contact; electric-blue energy dispersing and dissipating across armour and flesh, gouging liquid metal, splitting muscle and sinew. Something small and chittering exploded with ichor splendour, a damp detonation of black and purple fluids that hung viscously in strands from the surfaces of his gloves and helmet.
A grenade cracked open a black-suited devil like a cockroach, spilling its rotten guts across the floor. It died with its ancient viscera clutched in its claw-gauntleted grasp, trying to reassemble its disordered innards.
Had he killed any tau, rampaging out of control?
Probably. Does it matter?
And the lights. Yellow-orange-yellow-orange. Pulse-pulse-pulse.
Portals heaved opened and closed, like heart valves, he thought. Organic machinery inside a stomach vessel, digestive enzymes with boiling red eyes and roaring axes hungrily breaking down the daily intake.
Dead tau, everywhere. Dead gue’la, everywhere.
Dead fire warriors and guardsmen and Space Marines. Dead officers and sergeants, dead ratings and crewmen and engineers and tech-priests.
Dead everything.
Scattered and blasted. Hanging from walls and ceiling. Bulkheads painted red. Decks awash in cyan. A here-and-there abattoir. Bits.
The madness lasted a solid dec, at least. His mind closed up: ephemeral thoughts passing through, peripheral considerations and concerns lost in a barrage of violence and blood. A whirligig storm of horror. The Mont’au thing slithered its way into his brain and took over.
Took over — or set him free? He wasn’t sure.
At the end of it, running through the circular platforms of the evacuation shaft, he began to remember details: little things first, but growing in size and relevance. A single dec. One point five human “hours’. So little time and yet so many memories crammed-together, slowly uncoiling.
There had been a voice in his head. There had been commands, perhaps. An impatient growl in his mind describing routes and pathways, opening doors and slamming them shut, warning him of the black hulk terrors lurking in wait for him. It was uncanny. The voice called him “xeno” and sounded angry. It spoke in the gue’la language.
He wondered why his madness should take such a precise form.
The voice had said that “they”—whoever they were — had struggled with the tau communication frequencies. It said he should consider himself lucky. The voice said that thanks to the Grace of the Emperor, they’d been able to latch on to his helmet code to reach him.
Kais didn’t understand, of course, but reasoned that one wasn’t, perhaps, supposed to understand hallucinations. The voice had said things were dire. The voice said if the enemy succeeded in firing the ship’s weapons into the tau fleet, then truce or not the war would begin again. The voice said someone had to cripple the lance arrays.
Kais’s memories were soup. They curled and coiled and writhed away from him, borne aloft on a bed of yammering, yowling voices; of whispering evil in his ear. Still, he remembered the guns... The voice talked him through it, thank the path. He concentrated on killing and dousing the world in blood whilst his madness — his patient, human-speaking madness — crackled in his helmet and told him how to plant bombs in file-edged ammunition stores and run, run, run.
He remembered the explosions. And now what?
This. This is release!
He thumbed the trigger again, pressure pad tacky with half-dry blood. There was almost no recoil and he delighted in the churning stream of teardrop plasma, biting and gnawing through the smoke and haze that seemed to have filled every last corner of this infectious, ruined ship.
He remembered a cold, grating voice pumped through every corridor like oxygen from a vent, hissing: “All hands, evacuate vessel. All hands, evacua—”
And the voice had said, “Get to the drop pods, xeno, if you can.”
And the voice had gone.
He remembered following the crowds. Humans and tau avoiding eye contact, fighting together but never speaking, descending through the ship together but never touching, never tapping one another on the back or helping one another when wounded. The gue’la ran and shouted and screamed and died. The tau hurried in silence, fanned out efficiently, exchanged commands, kept their cool — and died just the same.
And they all steered clear of him. It was like... it was like they weren’t sure who or what he was. He remembered that he’d tried, twice, to comm-link with the hurrying tau troops. Perhaps his helmet was more damaged than he thought, because not one deigned to answer.
The Mont’au thing was out of him now, draped like a shroud, like wings, like a bloody black mantle. He remembered rust-red Marines howling and bellowing, oozing from walls and floors with impossible spontaneity, hacking off heads and disappearing in a wet slurp of warp immateria. He remembered the hissing, whispering evil that saturated the air flexing and growing, biting at his madness, inviting him to join it.
A dec had passed, more or less. There was clarity returning now, by degrees. He wondered why. Was it, perhaps, desperation?
There were no drop pods. The evac-bay was a great circular abyss, platforms on all sides ringed by drop pod archways, level after level of evacuation galleries overflowing with panicking individuals struggling for freedom. Fights broke out, of course.
Briefly he toyed with turning back, returning to the snaking corridors and slime pocked cloisters of the ship. Giving in to it would be so easy, so perfect; clutching in his hand a weapon, unburdened by fears and agendas. No objectives. No commands. No rationality. No focus. Just total surrender, smashing and breaking and shattering. Pouring himself out of himself, destroying for the sake of destroying, raging impotently against the bitterness inside.
See, father? See!