Farsight

by Phil Kelly

  Soon the desert was littered with them, tangles of broken tau bodies punctuated by the odd ork corpse. A shattered transit hub hove into view, its rib-like spars still smouldering. The hub’s tunnels led to a bio-dome breached by a titanic boulder. Citizens lay scattered around the dome’s exits in their hundreds, dried gore staining the sands wherever the orks had cut them down.

  O’Shoh forced himself to look down at the massacre, to take in the consequences of the fire caste’s failure to defend Arkunasha. As a race they had failed to understand their foe, writing the orks off as a lost cause that they could wilfully ignore. So much blood had been spilt because of that fateful decision, staining the planet, and staining the honour of the castes that had strived to protect it.

  The commander stood sharply, strode to the nearest transmission node and opened a channel to the Constellation’s battlesuit hangar.

  Alone in the shattered med bay, El’Vesa turned from the wall-mounted communion console. His concern at being unable to reach O’Shoh ebbed away as he watched a trio of fist-sized sanitation drones finish their clean-up operation. It was almost hypnotising, their interlocking dance: a silent symphony of robotics that erased the stains of tau and ork alike.

  For a while, the scientist absently analysed their movements, working out their program patterns. The cleaning drones’ meagre artificial intelligences fit his predictions to within a point-four per cent margin of error.

  ‘Definitely some improvements to be made, then,’ said El’Vesa softly to himself. He glanced involuntarily at the last few smears of blood near the door; his fellow earth caste subordinates had left them behind after taking Ob’lotai’s body for its last preparations. For some unfathomable reason, the visceral colour of the fingerprints gave him a strange disquiet, though he was no stranger to the hue of tau blood.

  In the adjacent research bay lay Shas’vre Ob’lotai’s cooling cadaver, his pallid features just visible through the adjoining window. Soon the corpse would be borne away upon a hoverplinth to the incinerator dome, and a few moments after that, Ob’lotai would be no more – a martyr to the Tau’va, with an exceptional kill ratio to his name, yet ultimately little more than a footnote to O’Shoh’s illustrious career.

  ‘What a waste,’ said El’Vesa, startling himself with the sentiment. He put his anomalous outburst down to mild impact trauma, and made nothing more of it.

  A thought rose unbidden from the ordered matrix of his mind. He cocked his head, fractal possibilities blossoming. There was something else under the idea, a tingling that was both uncomfortable and familiar, but its details escaped him.

  The scientist deactivated the cleaner drones with a word. Tapping in a code into the med bay’s control console, he shut off its interior cameras, as well as those of the adjoining room. The scientist walked over to a wall section indistinguishable from its surroundings and pressed it in opposing corners.

  The wall section hissed open smoothly. Strung in the alcove behind was a complicated apparatus of galvanic webs and nodal electrodes that El’Vesa had constructed a long time ago, but never used.

  He took the apparatus from its alcove with the greatest of care, holding it with his fingers at full spread. The thing had always appeared analogous to a Dal’ythan jellyfish made of wires and discs. For some reason, he did not find it a pleasant comparison.

  The door to the adjacent medical bay chimed. Through the lozenge-shaped window, El’Vesa could see two earth caste workers approaching Ob’lotai’s hoverplinth. One of them was programming it to approach the incinerator dome.

  El’Vesa quickly turned his back, shielding the apparatus from sight with his body. His heart rate was speeding up for some reason, a disquieting development in itself. The scientist finger-swiped the nearest control console and leaned in to its microphone.

  ‘I have yet to conclude the postmortem process,’ he said as calmly as he could. ‘Please return to your duties and await my summons.’

  After a few microdecs, the bay door gave the clear chime, signifying exit.

  Once El’Vesa was sure the workers had left, he punched in the code for the door between the med bays. It slid obediently open without a sound. He stepped through into the darkened chamber and approached Ob’lotai’s corpse, the apparatus writhing slightly as he draped it upon the shas’vre’s head.

  The boxy shadow of the Blessed Surety flitted over the dunes as it sped north across the desert. Commander Brightsword stooped over the Orca’s command console, features lit by the azure triangle of light that represented O’Shoh’s battlesuit.

  After the council in which he was effectively banished to the desert, O’Shoh had requested Sha’vastos put in place an anti-ork protocol from the Tau Empire’s early days. All teams were to patrol the desert, engaging at long range using Devilfish-mounted seeker teams and advanced-model battlesuits only. Close, physical combat was to be avoided at all costs.

  All well and good, in principle. Except, as the wars of the First Sphere Expansion had shown, that protocol alone was never enough. There was always another ork warrior ready to pummel its way into command, or another strange technology that resulted in a deadly glitch. The beasts were so unpredictable that it was all but impossible to second-guess them for long, especially in such dire conditions. The phenomena the fire caste had been calling ghost storms had a habit of striking at the most inopportune of times.

  Brightsword cast a nervous glance towards the Blessed Surety’s meteorological display. Pursuing O’Shoh was a grave and unsanctioned risk, one that could cost Brightsword his rank if a storm rolled in. Perhaps Tutor Sha’kan’thas was right about the commander. O’Shoh’s appalling breaches of protocol could not be allowed to continue unchecked, especially if the dark rumours circulating around Bio-dome 1-1 were true. In the wake of the alleged disaster in El’Vesa’s med bay, the maverick commander risked permanent disgrace, and perhaps even the dreaded Malk’la ritual if he compounded his erratic behaviour. Brightsword would not allow that to happen, even if it meant earning censure himself.

  On the topographical display, O’Shoh’s image flickered. The stylised battlesuit covered the isometric framework of dunes and gullies in short bursting leaps, each bound taking it closer to the green blips of the ork war-vehicle convoy in the distance.

  ‘Time until engagement range, winged one?’ asked Brightsword.

  ‘Point-six-three decs, commander,’ replied the Orca’s pilot. ‘Calling up holo-counter now.’

  Brightsword pushed back from the console. He strode into the Orca’s transport bay, fastening the pilot suit clasp at his neck.

  ‘To strike,’ he quoted. ‘That is the distillation of purpose into a single perfect moment.’

  At the sound of its activation phrase, his replacement XV8 hummed into readiness. Its plexus hatch slid open to reveal the soft blue glow of the control cocoon.

  The Orca jolted, and Brightsword’s torn abdominal muscles pulsed with pain as the transport ship rode out a wave of turbulence. He turned the sudden momentum into a curving run across the grilled floor, leaping up and twisting into the battlesuit’s confines. He grimaced as he cracked his elbow on the interior edge on the way in. The bruise would be a chastisement well deserved, he thought, a badge of dishonour for letting his beloved Crisis suit take such heavy damage.

  Brightsword triggered his buckle clasps, and the suit’s torso unit chimed. Signal data flared within its holographic displays: readouts of the locale’s topography, the meteorological systems and the dispersion of the ork column.

  Brightsword skimmed the data with a series of eye-flicks. The suit’s fusion blasters were at maximum charge, though the weapons were not nearly as efficient as the versions installed in his own XV8. It made him feel unclean, somehow, to go into battle with his fusion yield less than perfect. It reeked of another costly failure.

  A rare moment of doubt came upon him as the Orca jolted once more, sending
pain rippling through his abdomen. Since becoming a pilot, he had always cared more about his battlesuit than his own physical form. That had to stop, especially if he was to complete his contribution to the Tau’va Eugenics Programme. Genetic stock like his was not to be wasted; the ethereals had been very clear on that. But he had a duty to his mentor that could not be ignored, and the memory of his rescue outside Bio-dome 1-1 was still fresh.

  The young warrior sighed and eye-clicked the azure triangle representing O’Shoh. It resolved into the Orca’s aerial footage. The accompanying analysis confirmed his suspicions: the rogue commander was at maximum burn, and closing with the ork convoy fast.

  Brightsword transmitted his thanks to the Orca’s pilot, casting a last look in his direction before the plexus hatch closed completely. He took a deep breath, reflecting on the engagement to come and making his peace with the Tau’va. Beside his head, a decimal countdown flashed red.

  A moment later Brightsword signalled readiness. His battlesuit shuddered as the Orca’s rear hatch slid open. Hot air filled the transport bay, sending his readings jerking frantically.

  He disengaged the suit from its transport clamps. Two mag-locked strides, and he stood at the Blessed Surety’s open ramp. Dunes hurtled past below.

  With a double blast of vector jets, Brightsword leapt.

  A breathtaking panorama sprawled beneath him as he rode the Orca’s borrowed momentum high over the desert dunes. The sensation of flight made his blood sing. He realised he was grinning fiercely, and forced himself to focus on his mission.

  There, in the middle distance, was O’Shoh. His battlesuit was carving through a gulley on an interception curve towards the ork vehicle column.

  For some reason, the commander’s Crisis suit colours had been reconfigured a deep red.

  Brightsword reached full burn just as his quarry plunged into the funnel of oxide dust billowing in the column’s wake. Compensating, the young commander switched sensor spectrums as he swung his control cocoon downwards. He recognised the heat-sign of O’Shoh’s modified XV8 up ahead.

  There was a familiar flare of plasma discharge. A split microdec later, a ramshackle junk-truck somersaulted up on a blossoming cloud of flame.

  O’Shoh’s heat-sign touched down briefly on the far side of the ork column before bounding from the dunes once more. Jets flaring, he cut another diagonal across the column of smoke-belching transports.

  A veering warbike shot out of the dust, its rider firing a crude pistol. O’Shoh answered with a swipe of his fusion blaster, burning the ork to molten ruin.

  ‘Permission to join the fight, commander?’ transmitted Brightsword, jetting forwards as fast as his suit would allow.

  There was no answer.

  Brightsword arrowed out of the dust like a hurled spear. He pivoted, slamming feetfirst into the gun deck of a rolling ork fortress. Its mismatched, lumpen hull shook under the impact. Plates of rusted metal fell away.

  Brightsword scanned the thickly welded armature of its chassis for a moment. He eye-marked its integral joints before boosting back up with his fusion blasters on full trigger, drawing the guns upwards. Their incandescent beams sliced through the armoured wagon’s vital locations. He boosted away, the vehicle below him coming apart in a shower of orange gobbets and hissing steam.

  ‘Did you notice that armour kill, observant one?’ transmitted Brightsword, leaning in his control cocoon as an ork slave-gunner sent solid shot skipping off his battlesuit’s thigh.

  O’Shoh sent a symbol of dismissal, and more disturbingly, that of the Monat.

  This was logged as a research mission, thought Brightsword, not a lone warrior’s suicide attempt. Alone against a column of over a hundred ork vehicles, even the most gifted Monat operative would be overwhelmed.

  O’Shoh jetted towards the ork column once more, cutting across the path of an articulated junker. The vehicle’s bristling guns fired indiscriminately at his passing. O’Shoh’s plasma rifle flared white, its blinding discharge filling the junker’s cockpit. The multi-wheeled monstrosity swerved, ploughing on for a moment on two wheels before hitting the crest of a dune at an oblique angle. It jackknifed, ploughing into a scattering swarm of greenskin gun-buggies. Crushing one under fat wheels, it toppled over to flatten two more with its metallic bulk.

  ‘This is unprecedented, commander,’ transmitted Brightsword, eye-sketching a plan for the two battlesuits to come together on the next pass. ‘Please clarify Monat status. And I cannot help but notice you wear irregular colours. Why is this?’

  O’Shoh’s only reply was to boost through the dust cloud, his course parallel to that of the ork convoy.

  Brightsword’s thrust/vector suite chimed an overload warning as he pushed his engines to maximum. O’Shoh’s heat signal pulled away, and Brightsword felt a surge of awed respect; O’Shoh’s optimisations had made his battlesuit impressively fast.

  The young commander emerged from the dust cloud to see his mentor charging across the dunes in a shoulder-led crouch, his shield generator flaring. Brightsword was puzzled by his mentor’s earthbound vector until he saw he was heading for an anti-aircraft wagon trundling on the edge of the convoy. Brightsword zoomed in on the wagon’s ork gunner. The grinning savage was cackling madly, panning its quad-barrelled flak gun downwards towards O’Shoh. With four long-barrelled cannons firing in one intense burst, even an ork might make a kill shot.

  The flak cannons roared, streams of solid shot slicing through the rust clouds. The gunner swung in its seat, the cannons’ fusillade carving towards O’Shoh as he charged into close range. Each snub-nosed shell detonated prematurely, a string of explosions setting the invisible dome of O’Shoh’s forcefield alight.

  Up ahead, a pair of primitive one-man skycraft hurtled into O’Shoh’s blind spot, the thokita-thokita-thokita of their rotor engines audible over the convoy’s din. Two rockets corkscrewed from their cockpit fairings, one going laughably wide even as the other detonated hard upon O’Shoh’s shoulder plate. The commander rolled with the impact, veering left.

  From the ground, the gunner’s stream of flak chattered towards him, detonations blossoming closer and closer. O’Shoh deactivated his shield for a moment, took a shot with his plasma rifle, and then reactivated it again before boosting into the air. Where Brightsword’s zoomed-in view had shown the ork gunner before, only a remnant of blasted flesh remained.

  The rotor-bladed contraptions veered in, the hydraulic shears under their prows champing like the mandibles of hungry insects.

  Brightsword pulled around in a turn so tight he felt his stomach flatten inside him. He raised his battlesuit’s arms like wings, jetting towards the peculiar ork craft and triggering his fusion blasters for a full microdec as he passed. Each blinding beam cut through the spinning shafts of the contraptions’ rotor arrays, sending them hurtling away into the dust. One of the ugly craft hit the dunes as the other smashed nose-first into a veering gun-bike. The double explosion threw a gratifying flare of heat-sign.

  ‘When the foe takes to the sky,’ Brightsword transmitted to O’Shoh, ‘clip his wings.’

  ‘Just so,’ replied the rogue commander, blipping the symbol of gratitude.

  Brightsword smiled. ‘May I ask what purpose this attack serves, inscrutable one?’ he said, veering away from a stream of tracer fire.

  ‘Research,’ said O’Shoh. He dove back down into plasma rifle range before loosing a shot. The tracer fire stuttered and stopped.

  ‘I have another theory as to its purpose, commander,’ said Brightsword. ‘I posit that the rumours of a grave incident at the bio-dome are true, and that your injured soul seeks atonement through physical pain.’

  There was a pause. O’Shoh’s suit was a hundred metres distant, visible on conventional as well as infrared spectrums. It slowed, allowing Brightsword to come alongside. A distance to the right, the ork convoy was eclipsed by a sudden
gale of dust.

  ‘So you do listen after all,’ said O’Shoh. His sorrow was tangible, despite the static of the rust sirocco.

  ‘Of course,’ said Brightsword. He touched down briefly before boosting back upwards. ‘I doubt I will ever prefer words to deeds, but in this case… my opinion might prove helpful.’

  ‘The channel remains open,’ said O’Shoh, ‘for now, at least. And in answer to your question, it is in remembrance of those who have died since our arrival.’

  ‘Commander?’

  ‘You asked me why I changed my battlesuit colours. It is to honour the Arkunashan dead. Their blood is on my hands, and I will not forget it.’

  ‘Commander, that is noble and worthy of respect, but to me it further indicates your judgement is clouded. I have come here alone to reason with you because you are acting through emotion, not logic. In doing so, I believe you truly are turning away from the Tau’va.’

  O’Shoh did not reply.

  Brightsword cringed in his control cocoon. It was a grave accusation indeed. He was about to explain himself when his environ suite chimed. A strange pulse of apprehension grabbed him as he switched his blacksun filter’s spectrum from infrared to kinetic.

  A raging wall of rust particulate reared upwards less than half a kilometre away, the tornadoes at its base plucking ork vehicles from the dunes and flinging them into the air.

  It was closing on them at speed.

  Commander Shoh gritted his teeth, fighting to lean his battlesuit into the gale-force wind. Clotted rust hammered him as the ork convoy broke apart and veered wildly below. The racing vehicles scattered, ramming one another in their haste to escape the raging tempest. The red-black wall closed over O’Shoh, and his screens glitched black.

  The sound of a trillion tons of ferrite dust grinding at his battlesuit filled the cocoon. The noise was so loud that O’Shoh muted his audio suite altogether. It made little difference. The tiny doppelganger XV8 above his damage control suite flickered as the hurricane wind gnawed ever harder.