[Warhammer 40K] - Fire Warrior Read online

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  FIRE WARRIOR

  Simon Spurrier

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries

  the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth.

  He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and mas-

  ter of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies.

  He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the

  Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the

  Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so

  that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eter-

  nal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested

  miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their

  way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the

  Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted

  worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers arc the Adeptus Astartes,

  the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades

  in arms arc legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary

  defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests

  of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all

  their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-

  present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants — and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold bil-

  lions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime

  imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power

  of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never

  to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understand-

  ing, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no

  peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter,

  and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  PROLOGUE

  Is this real?

  Someone, somewhere, is screaming. The world becomes phosphor and ozone; iridescent nebulae fire-bursting across the retina, purple and blue blemishes that gyrate then fade to black. A riot of percussive madness tears at the eardrums: angry chattering that pounds the air. Everything seems alive with its ugly, echoing resonance. Bolter fire.

  I can’t feel my legs.

  So: gather information. Analyse your surroundings. Commit details to memory. Concentrate.

  The mind has been prepared for this. It is a fortress, impregnable and implacable. Use it.

  There, directly above: a series of looping coils of ducting, once taut and efficient, now beginning to sag with the weight of years, smeared with desiccated rust, dribbling incontinently from elderly cracks and fissures. To the left, perhaps, something moving. Legs? Maybe. Colours are uncertain — a lifeless mélange of pastels and blacks phasing in and out of the pain fog. Shadows and icicles. Metal clothing. Maybe blue.

  I can taste blood…

  More gunfire. The familiar strobelight of a bolter barrel, flickering nearby. The distant report of detonating shells, finding their targets. Smoke and ashes, fire and pain.

  Something screams again. Is it me?

  There’s a voice I recognise, ordering me not to die. Be still, it says. Save your strength, brother. Help is on its way.

  The voice is lying, of course. Bitter words of comfort to the dead. My second heart just stopped.

  More details! Something unique, so I’ll know. Something recognisable to warn me when this, all of this, is ready to come true. There! To the right: an arrangement of cables and components, hanging in disarray from a breached console. At its centre, blinking with a particular rhythm, a pearl of perfect white light broadcasts its meaningless pulse to the world.

  Flash. Flash. Pause. Flash. Pause. Flash-Flash. Pause.

  I must remember it. I must synchronise the faint beating of my remaining heart so I’ll never forget; exerting every last part of my will to detect and perceive that jumbled electrical rhythm wherever it might be.

  More gunfire. More screams. Someone gurgles. Maybe it is me.

  The fog closes in, the blackness rolls over, the Emperor smiles.

  The man in the dark forced open his eyes and took a deep breath, dormant lungs cobweb-choked and starved of oxygen. Motes of serpentine incense roiled insidiously around his head, as suffocating as it was comforting. He beckoned it away into the dark corners of the meditation cell with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  Arranged as he had left them in a neat phalanx on the floor, the Imperial Tarot cards misted and returned to their neutral grey pallor, brittle psychic images bleeding away as the vision-dream concluded. One lingered briefly, the strength of its warp resonance palpable even to his exhausted mind.

  The Masked Fiend, inverted.

  Not a card of either major arcana, precisely, it was one of only three “wild” images, the significance of which depended entirely upon circumstance, timing and the preceding draw. It had been a long time since he’d last encountered the ghostly form, the angel-smooth mask concealing a reptilian visage of shadows and grins, as the last to fade: the endura priamator. Its translation was quite precise, in such an instance.

  Hidden evil, awaiting exposure.

  His heartbeat returned to normal by degrees, the blood rushing in his ears diminishing in force, no longer eclipsing the uneasy drone of the ship’s massive generarium. Gauntlet-clad fingers shaking minutely with the force of the prescient revelation, he allowed himself longer than usual to clear away the ritual icons and incense candles the ceremony required. His nerves needed the time to settle themselves, his mind gradually uncovering the significance of its illusory experiences.

  He was forewarned, at least. He had the time to prepare, Emperor be praised. He must be grateful for the receipt of this foreknowledge and not squander the gift in fear and regret.

  He closed his eyes and it was there again, lurking beneath his eyelids, mocking him. It was a vision of himself, flailing and screaming, draining away to nothingness, choking on his own blood. In the fortress of his mind, he watched himself die over and over again.

  The Enduring Blade moved across the void, impossibly massive, and deep inside its viscera of metal and stone, Librarian Delpheus, Epistolary of the mighty Adeptus Astartes Ultramarines, gritted his teeth and imagined the seconds counting away the last of his life.

  I

  04.58 HRS (SYS. LOCAL — DOLUMAR IV, Ultima Seg. #4356/E)

  The storm was coming.

  Shas’la T’au Kais closed his eyes and tried not to think of it.

  There would be noise and confusion, he supposed. There would be guns and blood, comm chatter and smoke. There would be screams.

  He’d been taught since birth that anxiety, especially when dwelt upon, was an inefficient sentiment. Mentally reprimanding himself, he closed his eyes and set his mind adrift, not caring to dwell upon his nascent fear.

  He remembered…

  * * * * *

  On the eighth-tau’cyr anniversary of his birth there had been a brief pause in training.

  The sand settled in the basin of the battledome, its tiered auditorium rising in silent rings overhead. Devoid of the massed crowds that gathered for the festivals every kai’rotaa, it seemed almost unreal in its emptiness. Kais preferred it this way, grateful that his training was conducted beyond the public gaze.

  The other youths, glad of the hiatus, watched with casual interest as the shas’vre supervisor conduct
ed a bemused conversation with the communicator on his cheek.

  “It’s impractical,” he declared, apparently addressing the open air. “No. Well, yes, of course I appreciate that, but today’s exercises are uncompleted an — Who? Oh. Oh, I see.” He swivelled briefly to regard Kais, one eyebrow lifting subtly. “Yes, he’s here. Very well.”

  The other youths, following their mentor’s gaze, turned their inquisitive faces to stare. An interruption of this nature was entirely unprecedented.

  “Kais?” the old warrior grunted, features etched by a lifetime of T’au’s relentless sunshine glare. “It’s your father. He’s come to visit.”

  Blip.

  Another digit disappeared from the round-cornered countdown panel on the wall, its sudden absence sucking on Kais’s attention and plucking him lightly from his memories. He risked a guilty glance around the interior of the dropship, checking that none of his fellow warriors had spotted his lapse into reverie. Seated in rows along either wall of the windowless transit hold, supported by padded deployment seats with gently curving restraints, the others seemed as preoccupied as he was.

  The dropship, an Orca-class shuttle with ample room for his entire hunter-cadre, made no noise. Somehow, Kais decided, that was worse. Somehow things might be better, easier, if the craft juddered and corkscrewed, battered by unforgiving turbulence and afflicted by all the horrors of unreliable technology the tau so stringently avoided.

  If, perhaps, each fluted bulkhead was something other than perfectly sealed and rigorously tested, or if the ship’s stabilisers were less accurate, or the carefully moulded deployment seats less comfortable… If there were noises to distract him, discomforts to irritate him, minor inefficiencies to prey upon his nerves…

  If, if, if.

  If the plummeting vessel were anything other than perfect, sleek, silent and utterly efficient in every way then perhaps he wouldn’t be sitting there desperately trying to avoid the thought that was fighting for prominence in his mind.

  I’m going to die out there.

  He closed his eyes and wrestled his awareness back to the battledome on T’au.

  His father arrived with a retinue, of course.

  The entry portal yawned open to reveal six shas’la line warriors, moving with the feline confidence and grace that Kais was already beginning to recognise in his young shas’saal classmates. Their domed helmets swivelled left and right, wary of hidden dangers. On each figure’s left shoulder a gently curving torso guard caught the auditorium’s apex-light and blazed, the elegant symbol of his homeworld T’au — and, coincidentally, of the fire caste — pronounced sharply in vivid white. Kais found himself unable to look away from the circular icon, fascinated and daunted that such simple geometry could supposedly represent his life, his legacy, and his role within the universe, all at once.

  Finally satisfied with the security of the location, and barely even glancing at the young trainees arranged nearby, the warriors lowered their long pulse rifles and stood at ease. Reacting to some unseen command, the portal opened again and Kais’s father stepped through.

  Shas’o T’au Shi’ur — Commander of the Fifth Ten-Cadre, hero of Uor’la, favoured disciple of Aun’shi, thrice prevalent in Trials by Fire and honoured with the appellation “Strong Triumph” at the battle of Fio’vash — was not nearly as tall as Kais had remembered.

  He hadn’t seen his father in three tau’cyrs: a long time, even by the detached standards of the fire caste. In the literature and imagery that filtered its way into the training facility, O’Shi’ur was typically seen clad in his colossal battlesuit, striking a pose against the pied skyline of some alien world. The por’hui media bolstered his legendary reputation, oozing rhetoric upon his defence of the tau empire and his efforts to carry its creed to the as-yet unenlightened races of the galaxy. He was a hero, plain and simple, and Kais had lived beneath his shadow since he could remember.

  And now here he was, as unavoidable in life as was his image in the media. A medium-sized individual with unremarkable features: skin the pale grey-blue of his caste, nasal cavity a slash of perfect symmetry bisecting his brow, broad upper jaw and jutting chin entirely consistent with average fire caste features. He was somewhat lean, perhaps, but certainly not the muscled giant that stalked Kais’s nightmares, frowning and condescending, criticising everything he did. He wore simple combat fatigues, embroidered in places with small stripes of rank and caste. Kais thought he looked old. Old and tired.

  A chime sounded, breaking the expectant tension of the dropship’s hold. Kais glanced at the drop-commander seated nearby, half dreading the significance of the signal.

  Shas’el T’au Lusha, his scarred brow creased, seemed just as lost to the dangers of introspection as Kais had been. Only at the sounding of a second chime did the commander blink and peer around the hold, his frown dissolving. Kais felt reassured by his calmness, as if serenity were somehow infectious.

  “Five raik’ors, first group,” he grunted, glancing at a readout beside him. “Final checks.”

  The troopers obediently began examining weapons and combat gear, tightening servo clasps on armour plates, double-checking ammunition loads and polishing the already spotless optic clusters glaring from their crested helmets.

  Kais appreciated the thoroughness. The group had been combat-ready for three decs already: a tortuous period of troubled imaginings and expectations, the malignant seeds of self-doubt growing and gnawing at each trooper. For many this would be their first real combat mission, a baptism of uncertainty and violence. Any last-moment wargear maintenance was entirely redundant, but at least it occupied their minds. Kais applied himself to the task with gusto, glad of the distraction.

  Directly opposite, Vhol clucked his tongue in unconscious frustration at some imagined imperfection in his rifle. Deriving from the distant sept of D’yanoi, the stocky trooper was a constant source of amusement amongst Kais’s comrades, forever scrutinising the minutiae of technology like some misplaced member of the earth caste. His homeworld had a reputation for rusticity and the squad rarely let him forget it, nicknaming him “Fio’shas”—the worker-warrior.

  By contrast, the trooper to Kais’s left seemed utterly uninterested in inspecting her gear. Ju, her cadaverous features even paler than normal, sat with eyes closed and lips moving soundlessly, forming some rhythmic mantra or other. Ever since Kais could remember, Ju’s spiritual intensity had irked the other warriors, forever espousing the sanctity of the tau’va and holding forth with whatever philosophical nugget she’d most recently picked up. It wasn’t that the other rookies begrudged her faith in the Greater Good; rather that the tau’va philosophy of collective progress had permeated every part of the young line warrior’s training, and her inclination to preach was regarded as a waste of energy and breath. Despite the collective apathy towards Ju, both he and Y’hol had become her firm friends.

  Kais peered at each of them in turn, grateful for their presence. Thirteen tau’cyrs had passed since his father’s visit to the training dome; in all that time only Y’hol and Ju, each in their own way as different as himself, had continued to treat him with the same familiarity and ease he’d enjoyed before his father’s identity had become public knowledge. In the eyes of all the others Kais could feel only the weight of expectation, as if greatness should be somehow constituent in his blood.

  But he also felt something more, something worse: it was the cold, quiet glimmering of disappointment, and he’d seen it before.

  * * * * *

  O’Shi’ur approached the young tau with a clipped gait, eyes flitting from face to face with insect precision, analysing, committing to memory, then moving on. The shas’la retinue moved with him, a living mantle of jutting weapons and lenticular optics. He was searching.

  Kais fought hard against the sudden desire to step out of line and declare “Me! It’s me! I’m your son!” Somewhere in his gut a muscle contracted, spasming nervously, and he wobbled imperceptibly in his spot, terrified o
f falling over. All the time a tiny voice in the back of his mind reminded him that maybe, just maybe, his father would recognise him despite the tau’cyrs of growth and change, and greet him with the pleasure such a reunion surely deserved.

  O’Shi’ur’s lip curled and he eyed the supervisor.

  “Which one is he?” he grunted. Kais deflated inside.

  “That one.” The shas’vre nodded in his direction.

  His father stared at him for what seemed an eternity, then appeared to glide forwards, blotting the apex-light from Kais’s eyes and filling his vision with old, analytical inquiry made flesh. He respectfully lowered his gaze, fighting his jangling nerves.

  “Kais,” O’Shi’ur said, almost softly.

  The urge to look up was too strong. Father and son made eye contact for a brief moment before Kais looked away, feeling wretched and flayed by the older tau’s gaze. Flesh could disintegrate beneath such a stare, he imagined. All the far-fetched rhetoric of the media could become truth in an individual such as this. He bit his tongue and wished the sands at his feet would rupture and devour him, hiding him away from those expectant, critical eyes.

  “How does he progress?” his father said, presumably speaking once more to the shas’vre. Kais felt exposed, an exhibit to be prodded and discussed, unworthy of interaction. The shas’vre’s faltering reply was crudely diplomatic.

  “He is… able, Shas’o. Able indeed.”

  “Able?”

  Kais felt the pause like the end of the world. He knew the Shas’vre wouldn’t lie, could already taste the humiliation.

  “Yes, Shas’o. Adequate.”

  “But his dedication to the tau’va is commendable, I daresay? He excels?”

  The shas’vre mouthed wordlessly, then sighed. “He is… a little impetuous, perhaps.”

  “Impetuous?” O’Shi’ur’s disapproving voice was a leaden bell ringing in Kais’s ears, tolling out across his private world of shame.