The Greater Evil

by Peter Fehervari

  Drones skimmed around the beasts, chattering electronically as they harried them with bursts of plasma, but the machines were falling faster than their prey, their rigid minds confounded by their enemies’ erratic movements. Bhoral hissed as another of the flying discs was yanked from the air and shredded. The beasts’ claws were improbably strong. Even her battlesuit’s armour wouldn’t last long against a prolonged attack.

  There are too many, Bhoral judged, immolating an abomination with a spurt of fire as it veered towards her. Her flamethrower’s ammunition gauge chimed a warning. The weapon had already been running low when she’d entered the hanger and engaged the infiltrators. There had been seven when she’d arrived, but more had crawled from the ducts lining the walls, arriving faster than she could cull them. She had summoned all her forces, but they had turned up sporadically, never giving her the numbers to mount a concerted counterattack. Hurrell’s gue’vesa team had been overwhelmed within seconds of their arrival. The drones had fared better because of their mobility, but less than twenty remained now and the chitinous onslaught hadn’t faltered. The battle couldn’t be won.

  ‘Kor’vre Ubor’ka,’ Bhoral transmitted to the ship’s flight deck. ‘Withdraw the Whispering Hand immediately. The Concordance must be alerted to this treachery.’

  ‘I cannot abandon the exalted one,’ the pilot protested.

  ‘We must assume he is lost.’ Bhoral abhorred the words, but Kyuhai had made her duty clear. ‘The ship will be overrun if you delay. Authorisation cypher follows.’ She sent the code as her cannon finally overheated and fell silent.

  ‘I understand, Shas’vre. Signal me when you are on board.’

  ‘That is not an option. Go!’

  Bhoral kept the beasts at bay with brief bursts from her flamethrower as the docking clamps disengaged and released the slumbering ship. Before their echoes had faded the vessel’s engines rumbled into life, sending tremors through the chamber.

  ‘Come then,’ Bhoral whispered as her flamethrower ran dry. The tentacled abominations surged forward, vaulting over one-another in their eagerness to reach her. She clubbed the first one aside with a clumsy swing of her cannon and rammed her flamethrower into the face of the next, shattering its skull. Then they were upon her, hissing as they raked at her armour. Within seconds her battlesuit’s damage indicator was flashing red in countless places. She ignored it, knowing there was nothing more to be done. Chanting a mantra of certitude, she stood motionless. Waiting.

  The hanger’s massive external doors slid open behind her, unleashing a shriek of void-wracked air. A heartbeat later Bhoral was wrenched into the emptiness beyond, trailing a string of chitinous horrors. As she whirled about in the vacuum she glimpsed the departing glow of the Whispering Hand’s engines.

  ‘The circle closes,’ she said and overloaded her battlesuit’s power core. For a brief moment she burned brighter than the engines.

  I didn’t warn Erzul, Voyle thought bitterly, remembering his promise to the pathfinder. He sat stiffly in his chair, his hands steering the truck of their own accord. He couldn’t even turn his head to check if the woman slumped beside him was still breathing. His comrades hadn’t seen the violence that had transpired in the cabin, nor could they know the treachery playing out now.

  I’ve betrayed them all.

  ‘No, you have saved them, Ulver. Along with yourself.’ The voice was his, but the words were not.

  You lied to me, Voyle accused, struggling to break free. Where are you taking us?

  ‘You shall all be enlightened, but the Ethereal among you is of singular importance.’

  The Seeker… How…?

  ‘What you know, I now know, child.’

  Shame washed over Voyle in a corrosive wave, scouring him of all the hopes and hates that had bedevilled him since his long fall began. Finally all that remained was a bleak yearning for nothingness.

  ‘It is your shadow to burn,’ the Stormlight had advised. ‘Only you can light the fire.’

  Hesitantly at first, then with growing conviction, Voyle began to recite the nineteenth mantra of self-sublimation. The-Winter-That-Rises-Within focussed on attaining a state of perfect stillness, conditioning its aspirants to slow their breathing and lock their muscles rigid as they purged their minds of desire. Voyle had always been drawn to its oblique words and the ephemeral oblivion they offered.

  Emptiness unwound blinds the light that binds unseen.

  He repeated the spiralling phrase over-and-over, speaking with his mind until his body listened… and remembered. Like creeping frost his grip on the wheel tightened then froze, locking the truck to its current path. From somewhere far away he heard his own voice calling to him, wheedling then reasoning then railing, becoming ever more strident as the road ahead curved yet the vehicle didn’t follow.

  None of it mattered. None of it was real.

  But the deceiver was blind to such truths, and in its turmoil its control frayed. The lapse was brief, but it was enough for Voyle to stamp down on the accelerator.

  Emptiness unwound…

  With a roar the truck leapt forward, its frame rattling as its wheels left the road.

  …blinds the light…

  The usurper fled his mind as the building ahead rushed towards the windscreen.

  …that binds unseen.

  ‘Bloodtight,’ Voyle sighed, closing his eyes.

  Kyuhai hit the ground hard, but his armour absorbed the worst of the impact. He rolled with the fall and swept to his feet. For a moment he stood motionless, gazing inward to assess his body. There was some damage, but nothing significant. As in the recent crash, his armour and training had served him well, though he would not welcome a third such incident any time soon. He scanned the surrounding buildings but saw nobody. Up ahead the wrecked truck was still blazing, its death throes casting a red haze over the street.

  ‘Your truth dies with you, Ulver Voyle,’ Kyuhai said, then turned his attention to the living. Akuryo knelt nearby, wrestling with his helmet. Its dome was cracked and sparks flickered behind its shattered lenses. One of the gue’vesa lay further along the road, his neck twisted at a strange angle. None of the others had jumped from the speeding vehicle in time.

  ‘How will we reach the ship?’ Akuryo asked, finally tearing his helmet free.

  ‘We cannot,’ the Ethereal replied. ‘It is too late. Either the ship is gone or it is in the enemy’s hands now.’

  ‘Then only vengeance remains to us,’ the Fire Warrior said bitterly, throwing his ruined helmet aside.

  ‘Vengeance is immaterial. No, we shall keep to the shadows and learn our enemy’s truth.’

  ‘To what purpose, Seeker?’ Akuryo rose to his feet unsteadily. His scalp was scorched and bleeding.

  ‘To destroy it.’ Kyuhai sliced the air with his right hand, indicating an-outcome-already-proven. ‘It must be done. Of this I am certain.’

  ‘With respect… we are but two.’

  ‘We will find others. I suspect this broken world harbours many secrets, shas’el.’ Kyuhai allowed himself the ghost of a smile, though it passed unseen beneath his helm. ‘And we are four.’

  Akuryo swung round as a rangy avian figure dropped down beside him, landing in a feral crouch. A moment later a second one leapt from the roof behind to join it.

  ‘For Greater Good!’ the kroot carnivores growled together.

  – THE SPIRAL –

  OBLIVION

  Por’el Adibh opened her eyes as the door of her chamber opened. A t’au stood in the doorway – a female of the Water caste like herself, but much younger and clad in the purple robes Adibh had come to loathe.

  ‘So Fai’sahl was not the last of his embassy,’ Adibh observed, rising from her chair.

  ‘Eleven of us remain,’ the newcomer replied. She shared the malignant vigour that Fai’sahl had projected, though her aura was less
pronounced. ‘I am Por’ui Beyaal. Por’vre Fai’sahl was my bonded mate.’

  ‘His death was difficult,’ Adibh said flatly.

  ‘His death served the Greatest Good,’ Beyaal said without a trace of sorrow. ‘I trust your injuries have been attended to, Por’el?’

  ‘You know they have, traitor.’ Several days had passed since the Order’s minions had recovered her from the wrecked vehicle, along with the monstrous warrior that had seized her. Since then she had been confined to this room and her questions had gone unanswered. ‘You are aware that your attack on my embassy will be construed as an act of war,’ she challenged.

  ‘You attacked us,’ Beyaal demurred serenely. ‘Without provocation.’

  ‘I do not accept that, but I advise you to release me without delay.’ Adibh softened her tone. ‘Perhaps an accord may yet be reached.’

  ‘That is our aspiration.’ Beyaal extended her hands, palms upward. ‘The Cog Eternal has embraced the Greatest Good. It has always sought an alliance with the T’au Empire.’

  ‘Then release me.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Beyaal bowed her head. ‘Please follow me, Por’el.’

  Adibh didn’t move. ‘You agree?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘The Animus-Alpha will address all your concerns,’ Beyaal assured her.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He is the First Architect of the Cog Eternal, but many of us have come to see him as a father. I believe you shall too.’

  Adibh’s eyes narrowed as she spotted something lurking in the passageway behind Beyaal.

  ‘Your pardon, Por’el,’ Beyaal said, catching her glance. ‘I wanted to introduce my son, Geb’rah.’ She called over her shoulder. ‘Enter, child! There is nothing to fear.’

  A squat figure shambled in, its heavyset form swaddled in robes. Lovingly Beyaal pulled its hood back and smiled at her prisoner.

  Adibh stared, aghast, struggling to make sense of the infant’s face.

  ‘He is but three tau’cyr,’ Beyaal crooned, ‘but children grow swiftly here.’

  As the hybrid thing grinned at her through a veil of tendrils Adibh’s composure finally unravelled and a dark thought flashed through her mind: Perhaps the xenophobia of the gue’la is not a sickness, but a strength.

  About the Author

  Peter Fehervari is the author of the novel Fire Caste, featuring the Astra Militarum and Tau Empire, the novella ‘Fire and Ice’ from the Shas’o anthology, and the Tau-themed Quick Reads ‘Out Caste’ and ‘A Sanctuary of Wyrms’, the latter of which appeared in the anthology Deathwatch: Xenos Hunters. He also wrote the Space Marines Quick Reads ‘Nightfall’, which was in the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology, and ‘The Crown of Thorns’. He lives and works in London.

  In the jungles of the Dolorosa Coil, a coalition of alien tau and human deserters have waged war upon the Imperium for countless years.

  A Black Library Publication

  Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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  ISBN: 978-1-78572-828-0

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