Fire Warrior (warhammer 40,000)

by Саймон Спуриэр

  His knees started to weaken.

  That’s it...

  Just for a short while...

  The lake is so warm...

  He felt his eyelids grow heavy and couldn’t for the life of him think of any reason why he should try to keep them open.

  Yessss...

  But then there was something else. A smell, perhaps, or a feeling. Conducted through his tastebuds and his nasal orifice, seeping into his ears and eyes. Not like any sense at all; just a certainty that built from the core of his bones outwards into his skin that somewhere, somewhere nearby, was someone important.

  He remembered feeling peace, once. He could feel it again now: the first tentative echoes of that great focus he’d known, if only he could remember when and why. He could feel the glimmerings of serenity, unnaturally imposed but embraced nonetheless. He’d felt the peace and the awe and the security before, when for a few short raik’ors he’d been in the presence of...

  Of...

  “Ko’vash!”

  The sound of his own voice startled him, chasing away the delirium and fatigue that the smoggy air draped across his senses and convincing him, somehow, that Aun’el T’au Ko’vash was nearby.

  His mind cleared, as fresh water rushing across a muck-encrusted jewel, and he squared his shoulders and set off in the direction in which he guessed — no, that he knew — he’d find the ethereal.

  Severus glared at the pale figure and snarled. “Alien!”

  It didn’t respond, deeply ensconced in whatever trance or meditation it was mumbling. Severus wrinkled his nose, troubled by something he couldn’t quite put into words, and tried again.

  “Alien! What are you doing?”

  Again, nothing. Briefly, Severus considered the possibility of some hitherto unknown psychic ability possessed by the tau, but he reassured himself with a sneer. As the minutes counted away to the moment of Tarkh’ax’s release, the governor found his control over the dark powers growing ever stronger. An aura of crackling energy, a shifting halo of smoke and shadow, had formed around him, and now he could see into the coiling realm of the warp with as much ease as opening his eyes. This xenogen morsel hanging in the air was no psyker; no warp-sighted mutant that could cry out to its comrades for help. In fact, Severus was rapidly coming to the conclusion that the ethereal was of very little value whatsoever. The possibility of tainting a high-ranking tau had been worth exploring at least, he reassured himself: that it had failed merely assured their utter annihilation. Chaos had little time for incorruptibility.

  Pursing his lips thoughtfully, and absent-mindedly waving away an exotic scent that briefly teased against his nostrils, he glared at the alien and slipped his jewelled dagger from its scabbard.

  The Mont’au devil was scrambling Kais’s brains, an insidious whisper from within his own blood. Focus was the key. He remembered that from another time. He remembered the scent and presence of the ethereal.

  Focus.

  Unity.

  Be one with the tau’va.

  There was always something else to kill, as he descended further and further into the earth. Always something else to attack him, driving a wedge of despair and fury further into his brain.

  There was no use in the sio’t, now. No use in parroting the empty promises and propaganda of the por’hui media. No use in meditations and chants and lessons. No hope of rediscovering the path — the One Path — into the light and serenity of the tau’va. He’d strayed too far. He’d lost his way.

  He thought: I’ve failed.

  The Trial by Fire was intended to separate the elite from the adequate. There was no shame in missing out on a progression of rank. It was all a question of niche. Pass the trial and advance to the next rank. Don’t pass it and be content with your place.

  Kais had no niche.

  He killed with too much skill, he realised with a jolt, almost laughing at the ridiculousness of the paradox. He gloried in devastation and violence where no excess of emotion was encouraged or allowed. He was too good at what he did.

  The grizzled shas’vre from his youth in the battle-dome had seen it, all those long tau’cyrs ago. Even at that early age, Kais realised, his future had been set in stone:

  “Given to tempers...” the instructor had said, stammering on his words in the face of O’Shi’ur’s unforgiving glare. “Changes in mood and focus.”

  Flawed. Useless. Inefficient.

  He remembered the shame, burning in his cheeks and brain. The shas’vre’s damning words were all the more dreadful for the inescapable truth they contained.

  Kais’s didactic memories told him that the gue’la, innumerable populations smeared like a great plague across the galaxy, made full use of the insane and the volatile amongst them: presenting them with weapons, forming them into asylum legions and hurling them, like expendable human chaff, into the jaws of an enemy. They might die. It wouldn’t matter.

  But maybe, the gue’la philosophy went, maybe one or two would prove so unhinged, so insane and unattainable, that they’d turn the tide of a war.

  Using the deranged as sacrificial weapons: Kais could think of few uglier and more exploitative concepts. Except... Except hadn’t his commanders relied upon him? Hadn’t El’Lusha told him he was the only one who could do this?

  Weren’t the tau just as bad?

  A new bubble of bitterness and resentment welled up in his mind and burst obscenely, splattering his consciousness with its acid. They’d used him. They’d known he was damned, known he’d self-destruct, known he was lost to the guiding beacon of the tau’va...

  And they’d used him nonetheless.

  The Mont’au rage gobbled up the bitterness with relish and hunted hungrily for something to kill. Anything.

  * * *

  The desert rushed past, every grav-leap a colossal stride into the air. Sand became shale; a desolate wash of crumbled earth and stone pouring like a desiccated sea from the foothills.

  Lusha landed and leaped in one motion, clouds of dust rising around his suit’s chassis then falling away within moments.

  “Shas’el...” one of the team commed, voice exhausted. “We’re falling behind!”

  Lusha ignored them, paying little attention to the three icons receding into the distance behind him on his HUD, unwilling to waste any time. A bright blue light, pulsing unnaturally, writhing like some luminous tentacle, hung immobile over the hills: a jagged pillar of energy. He stared at it in bewilderment, wondering what malefic event the beacon’s presence presaged.

  Returning his mind to the journey, he fed every last scrap of energy he could muster into the suit’s motors and leaped again. Kais was in there, somewhere. Alone.

  The sun began to set behind him.

  Someone moaned nearby, a drawn-out groan of fear and pain that echoed airily throughout the moist catacomb. Kais racked the railgun with a metal-on-metal snarl and twisted to face the sound, feet splashing in the muck of the chamber’s floor.

  It was the grey-haired admiral from the gue’la ship, and, as plain as the nose on his face, he was mad.

  “Little... nn... little tau...” he giggled, spotting Kais through the drifting murk-haze. “Come here. Mm. Come close.”

  That the human had been twisted by his ordeal was beyond doubt. His naval robes were stained and torn, damp with clotted blood and Chaos sludge. Half his hair was gone, a ragged patchwork of burns and cuts riddling the bald scalp beneath. He rolled on the floor and chuckled and muttered to himself, clawing at his eyes every few moments. Behind him a valve-like doorway clenched shut, circular muscles contracting wetly.

  The human pulled himself into a half-upright crouch and coughed thickly.

  Kais circled cautiously, fighting the desire to open fire regardless of what the scrawny creature had to say. The railgun seemed to warm in his hands, straining at his trigger finger slyly.

  “Where is the Aun?” he said, quivering with the effort of restraint.

  “Closer, yes. Come close now. I... I h
ave things to tell you. You have to listen.”

  Kais sidestepped closer, never letting the gun muzzle falter from its target. If the admiral was uncomfortable at staring down a muzzle he gave no indication of it, bloodshot eyes seeming exhausted and old.

  “I’ve seen such things...” the man gurgled, scratching at one eyelid with an ungentle hand. “Things to... to... Things you can’t imagine.” he began to laugh, a damp and frail giggle that descended into a rasp of air. “Now look at us...” he hissed. “Emperor save us: our last hope riding on an alien... On a filthy little tau!” he threw back his head and laughed maniacally, great gouts of hilarity that quickly turned to sobs. He collapsed back onto the ground and heaved dry air, coughing and spluttering pathetically.

  To Kais, he seemed as threatening as a one-tau’cyr youngling. Even with the rage gusting furiously through his blood the idea of shooting this defenceless thing was repugnant. He lowered his gun and slouched forwards, inquisitive.

  The effect upon the human was electric. It jerked into a rigid crouch, face changing abruptly, stabbing out with the heel of its hand, fingers splayed.

  “Stop!” it cried, voice suddenly losing its guttural unnaturalness. “Don’t come closer! It’s trying to... nn...” The man rolled onto his back, flexing furiously, spasming and dribbling and clawing at his own face. “Getoutgetoutgetout!”

  Kais knew little of the ways of humans — his tutors had instructed him from an early age to think of them as a galaxy-wide pestilence, only dimly sentient and far from embracing the credo of the tau’va. But still, to his unpracticed eyes, it seemed like the admiral was struggling with some dark part of himself.

  Kais could relate to that. He re-aimed the railgun and forced himself to stop shaking.

  “Get out!” the man shrieked, punching himself in the eye. “Get back to the w... nn... J-just words, little tau. Feeling better now. Come closer. That’s it... No! Stay back!” Two voices, two faces, struggling and battering at one another viciously. Eventually the man slumped, exhausted, and lifted a tired face to stare at Kais.

  “There...” he panted, “I-I think it’s under control...”

  “What is?” Kais growled, needing little additional encouragement to squeeze his trigger.

  Constantine bowed his head, breathing deep. They... they changed me. Opened me up to... oh, God-Emperor preserve me.

  The man began to sob again. Kais took aim and began to tighten his finger, mouth a hard, tight line inside his helmet. Call it “mercy”, he thought.

  “Wait!” the gue’la hissed, raising a shaky arm. “Not yet. I have to tell you! You need to know...”

  “Tell me what, human? All I want is the ethereal. You’re in my way.”

  “More important than that!”

  “What, then?”

  “How to stop the Darkness!”

  The thing had no name, as such.

  It was a minor being, by the standards of its kind, and it had never tasted the hard-edged paradise that was “reality”. It had lived out eternity as a coiling warp urge, a disembodied malevolence that hungered — yearned — for the seductive glory of materiality. The way had been opened.

  A soul had been corrupted and twisted, burst into myriad shreds and left to gape open: an enticing entrance for any of the countless warp things that watched and waited. It was a light, a radiance of promise and power that the daemon minds had chattered and fought over, struggling to reach first.

  Alone amongst billions, it had triumphed.

  Inexperienced, still unfamiliar with the strange body it had entered, it found the host mind pushing back at it with annoying strength. It had plundered the thing’s memories for information: it called itself human, it had discovered, a shrivelled flesh morsel called “Constantine”. It had struggled against the warp mind’s incursion and now, of all the ignominy, had pushed it aside!

  It was talking to some alien thing nearby, its words a meaningless prattle. Furious, the warp mind coiled itself into a ball and flexed, pushing all of its countless millennia of frustration and torment into that one daggerlike surge of consciousness.

  The human’s mind broke like thin ice. The warp thing explored its new body quickly and decided, with a sneer, to make some changes.

  * * *

  “Y-you understand? The shrines! Remember!”

  “I remember,” Kais grunted, impatient with the gue’la’s gibbering. Its voice grew weaker with every word, eyes rolling into its skull.

  “It’s... it’s coming...” he gurgled, suddenly terrified.

  “What is?” Kais glanced around the catacombs for any approaching enemy. None seemed forthcoming.

  Constantine retched, then shifted.

  His jaw distended obscenely, chin lurching forwards, mouth ratcheting open with a creak. His eyes sunk back into his head, pain-twisted orbs rolling and taking on an angry red lustre. Blood oozed copiously from his mouth, writhing upwards in mutiny against gravity, spreading out thin fingertips of fluid to consume the man’s entire head. His skull splintered with a dry crack.

  His uniform ripped, moist fabric hanging briefly in the murky air. What bubbled and pulsed up from beneath the gaudy robes was far from human.

  Kais backed away. The blood cocoon surrounding the man’s head cracked like an egg, reptile flesh revealed beneath, glowing with scaled luminescence. Black and blue tiger stripes undulated across red cheeks; themselves stretched into a beaklike maw, stippled with tiny teeth that bulged and hinged like insect legs.

  The creature snapped its jaws together and dragged a long tongue into its eye to clean off the powdery residue of dried blood, gangly legs lifting it upright. It arched its back and leathery wings unfurled magnificently — a halo of tattered flesh and bone.

  Kais didn’t need any further encouragement. He opened fire with a snarl.

  The shell knocked the obscenity onto its back in a fountain of bone and gore, dust and smoke hanging around it as its flesh charred. It yowled in pain and lay still, taloned claws clutching rigidly at nothing. For a second Kais thought he’d destroyed it and the killing rage in his mind chuckled and whispered its congratulatory poison.

  You can kill anything.

  You are a god.

  The corpse jerked upright, tilted its head, and screamed.

  Kais staggered backwards, astonished, rocked by the force of the howl, clutching impotently at his ears and unable to block the audio-pickup from his helmet. The world wobbled on its axis, blurring in his mind, making his teeth rattle and his skull ache. Before he knew what was happening he was on his back, vaulted catacomb ceiling looming over. He shook his head to clear the haze and tried to move his arms, tried to rise up, tried to lift his gun but—

  But the beast was on him, pinning him like a kroot hound, muscle chords straining beneath the dry sandpaper rasp of its skin. The railgun had blasted a hole straight through its midriff, a needle-eye that dangled shredded viscera upon Kais’s chest and emptied awful fluids across his armour. An aborted spinal chord dangled limply inside the wound, the beast’s legs uselessly dragging behind it.

  His gun was gone, somewhere. Knocked aside in the rush.

  A memory swelled abstractly from his mind. He remembered the first time he’d been given a lesson in hand-to-hand fighting, during the first tau’cyr of his training. The instructor had stared his young charges up and down and said, with no sense of irony at all:

  “The first rule of unarmed combat is: don’t be unarmed.”

  Too late for that. He wrestled to move but the creature’s grip was too strong, bony dagger claws scraping into his arms, slicing at his flesh and leaving his armour shredded.

  It pushed its head, equine features surmounted by tall bone antlers of velvet and chitin, down upon Kais’s helmet, tongue slurping obscenely around the connector joints, searching for a way in.

  Kais thought, with crystal clarity: I’m going to die.

  “Kill me, if you must,” the ethereal said calmly. “My people will retaliate and crush you
to dust.”

  Severus giggled, idly dragging the tip of the blade across the tau’s flesh, enjoying the pale blue whorls and patterns it opened up in its wake.

  The Aun, pinioned by invisible forces in the air, hadn’t cried out once, so far. These things, these tau, they were simply no fun.

  Severus glanced at his timepiece.

  Ten minutes.

  “...tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock...” he muttered, grinning at the tau, then laughed like he’d said the funniest thing in the world. The voice in his head was so loud, now, that he couldn’t honestly say which of the two consciousnesses had been there first of all.

  Snarling, the daemon-thing lifted a claw from Kais’s arm and scrabbled at his helmet, perplexed by its inability to get at his head.

  “Wannnntt to eeeat your eeeyes...” it hissed, voice barely understandable beneath a drizzle of sputum and blood.

  Finding himself with one arm free, Kais scrabbled for a weapon. His gun was out of reach, his knife holstered at his other hip, pressed down by the weight of his enemy. Seeing no other options, he pushed his fist directly into the cavernous wound in its guts, grabbed a handful of slippery vertebrae, and pulled.

  It roared. It roared and squealed and shrieked, muscles spasming and arms twitching, tortured nerves sending contradictory messages through its unnatural form. It tried rising with its enormous wings, a thick blood sludge vomiting from its maw across Kais’s optics, but couldn’t control their leathery beating. It jerked and twitched and snarled, forever howling with enough force to shudder Kais’s very brain, but he held on to the brutalised spine with all his dwindling strength, and twisted.

  He realised, without any surprise, that he was shrieking and howling just as much as his enemy.

  Finally, mercifully, the beast flopped to one side in a tangle of rictus-stiff limbs and matted gore. Kais’s hand was wrapped around the pommel of his knife and tensing before his mind was even fully recovered from its exertions. The Mont’au insanity raised his arm, fed it with all of his remaining strength and brought it down in a glimmering arc.