Fire Warrior Read online

  The two warden-guards lurking in the gloomy chamber beyond were too astonished to react effectively, bent over an array of switches, winking lights and clicking gauges. Unable to prevent himself, Kais grinned.

  The first one fell backwards, legs flipping athletically as his pulverised chest arced away, smoke lifting from the wound. His head hit the console on the way down, an ugly krak that flipped the body over. It landed on its knees, forehead pressed to the floor.

  “No!” the second one shouted, reacting mechanically, staggering backwards and groping for a weapon. Kais barely shifted position, carrying his body around in a perfect arc, as effortless as it was natural. He’d been born for this.

  He squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The untaulike desire to shout or curse in frustration bubbled up inside him, and he bit down on it hard.

  The las-shot hit him like a sledgehammer.

  He’d expected a sharp, ripping pain. He’d expected it to feel like a needle, sliding through his flesh, separating sinews from bones, opening muscles like ripe fruit.

  Instead it was an anvil crashing into his shoulder, spinning him around on his spot and sending angry, nebulous blobs of colour dancing before his eyes. He crashed to the floor, feet trailing before him.

  It was only when the initial shock had faded, when he blinked through the film of eur’ii moisture covering his eyes, that the sense of sharpened agony began to blossom. An ugly laceration marred his upper arm, a blistering mess of cauterised flesh and singed fio’dr fabric. The pain clouded the world and stole his ability to think.

  To Kais it seemed as natural as taking a breath: his mind phased out the world and replaced it with a grey dreamscape. There were words.

  They said:

  No expansion without equilibrium.

  No conquest without control.

  Pursue success in serenity

  And service to the tau’va.

  He breathed. He saw himself as part of the machine. Focus was the key.

  The pain went away.

  He jerked the knife from its holster on his hip, twisting to look up at the gue’la, its shaking hands taking aim for a second shot. He threw the knife and rolled. All one movement. Perfect. Precise.

  The lasgun fired just as the knife hit the guard in the neck, a surgical incision parting flesh like water. No blood. Not yet. The las-bolt kicked a block of stone from the floor, scant tor’ils from Kais’ head. He hissed in shock.

  The human stared right at Kais. Right into the optic of his helmet, knife hilt protruding absurdly, perpendicular to his horrified features. Then he dropped the gun and his head flopped forwards like an opening lid, fountaining liquid ruby.

  Reality came to Kais piece by piece. He retrieved his knife and clamped a medipack onto his blistered arm. He reloaded the gun. All without thought; mechanical, going through the paces, operating to the parameters of a simple, shell-shocked program. A machine.

  Through the thick windows of the control room he could peer down into the exercise yard at the compound’s centre, four heavyset access ramps preventing him—or anyone—from reaching the subterranean cells. He transferred his attention to the myriad controls spread out before him, utterly unable to decipher even a single runic inscription.

  He sighed, balled his fist tightly, raised his arm, and applied the only form of engineering he understood. After several raik’ors of destructive attention, he appeared to have hit the correct control. Out in the yard, lifting like the yawning mouths of slumbering giants, the access ramps began to open.

  “He’s gaining entry as we speak, Shas’o,” the transmitter reported, tiny speaker drone following the general around like a faithful ui’t cub. He paused at a schematic of the prison’s upper levels and nodded.

  Shas’o Sa’cea Udas was pleased. Everything was going according to plan, thus far. The serene, rounded interior of the warship Or’es Tash’var enclosed him in a womb of pleasant silence and contemplation: the perfect platform from which to conduct a war.

  “Good.” he replied, the small drone rolling onto its back to expose a microphone array. “Excellent. Is he unharmed?”

  “A minor wound, Shas’o. Nothing serious.”

  “Indeed. Tell me, El’Lusha—what’s the name of this shas’vre? The por’hui have been requesting details for their next bulletin.”

  There was a pause on the comm. Udas glanced at the drone, perplexed. When finally the red “receiving” light blinked, Lusha’s voice sounded reluctant, even embarrassed. “He’s not a shas’vre, O’Udas.”

  The general blinked. The schematic on the wall refreshed itself, an AI assembled mélange of radar, lasergrid and high altitude survey-drone telemetry melded together, now showing the access ramps in the prison courtyard hanging open.

  “El’Lusha…” he said, keeping his voice carefully neutral. “Who did you send?”

  “I assure you, Shas’o, my choice is more than capable.”

  “Who?”

  “Shas’la T’au Kais.”

  “A shas’la?”

  “Yes, Shas’o. I made a decision based upon the requirements of the mission. I believe he’s the best for the job.”

  Udas forced himself to calm, mumbling the D’havre meditation. There was no sense in anger.

  “El’Lusha… Perhaps you might explain to me what possessed you to send a shas’la on a mission vital to the security of the Empire.”

  The words seemed to come from far away.

  “It was something O’Shi’ur said to me once, Shas’o. He… he told me that sometimes even broken components can be useful to the machine…”

  “Broken components? Shas’el, explain yours—”

  “Forgive me, Shas’o—I have to go. The fortress guns are being remanned.” There was a loud boom in the background. “We could use that strike when you’re ready, Shas’o. Lusha out.”

  The comm went dead. Udas pursed his lips, fighting his irritation.

  “Dismissed,” he grumbled to the drone, still circling his head. It drifted off.

  He composed himself and turned around. Kor’o Natash Tyra, captain of the Or’es Tash’var, stood resplendent in his pale flightrobes at the centre of a swarm of drones, each one inscribed with a simple control icon. Every now and again, in response to a comm signal or fluttering display readout on the two sleek console drones at the head of the suspended swarm, O’T’yra would depress the touchpad on a drone’s casing transmitting whatever relevant orders might be required to some distant part of the ship’s crew. Other air caste personnel lined the outer walls of the command deck, operating sensors and secondary systems with as much fluidity and grace as their superior. The kor’o’s mastery of his vessel was an astonishing aerial ballet, and Udas had in the past decs regarded it with fascination. Now he had more pressing business.

  “Kor’o?” he grunted, approaching.

  “Shas’o,” the captain returned with a nod, tall frame towering over Udas’ squat form.

  “Commence bombardment.”

  Warden-Sergeant DiGril peered through the sniper slit on the prison’s upper level and shook his head. Something was wrong.

  Beyond the walls the massed alien forces, lurking and weaving through the billowing sand, domed helmets hazing in and out of the airborne filth like deep-sea predators prowling the murk, were slowly but unmistakably creeping backwards. Not retreating, exactly; rather… backing off. Giving some space.

  Emperor knew the prison needed it. Finally the reinforcement shuttles had started arriving from Lettica, picking their way through the churning smoke, harried by the xeno assault craft. Two had gone down, right in front of his eyes, the poor bastards inside strapped down and helpless in their seats as some warp-damned alien knocked a hole through their boat’s engine. Fire and death and the stink of burnt meat. Not the way he wanted to go.

  Not that he particularly wanted to go any way, given the chance. Certainly not shot through the head like Warden-Captain Praeter, downstairs. Someone had found his body and announc
ed it on the comm, right before all the cell-breach alarms started going off. It was one thing after another—just when the freaks outside stopped to take a break, it turned out there was one inside, creeping about like a orkspooring ghost.

  DiGril hadn’t joined the swollen ranks of the Emperor’s Adeptus Detentio just to die at the hands of some godless xenogen, a resolution that he had firmly continued to support by secreting himself in the most remote section of the prison he could find. Discretion, he had always maintained, was the better part of valour.

  If truth be told, Warden-Sergeant DiGril had (until this morning) thoroughly enjoyed his posting to this backwater world. The planetary governor’s renowned intolerance to criminality meant that those citizens foolish enough to break the law were more likely to find themselves executed than incarcerated; a state of affairs that had kept the vast compound all but deserted in recent years. DiGril had, on occasion, mentally questioned the sense in constructing such a formidable penal fortress if one never intended to use it, but having quickly settled into his undemanding role he knew better than to cause a fuss.

  Not that the strangeness had terminated there, oh no. Last week, out of the blue, the governor had ordered Captain Praeter to execute what few prisoners they held, clear all the cells for new arrivals, and stockpile ammunition for the artillery defences. Stranger still, a series of datum drones—dead skulls filled with memorised information—had arrived in the captain’s office courtesy of the governor. Each one was a mine of subversive articles on xenogen species: images, essays, interrogation documents, biological treatises, voice record seminars on weaknesses and strengths, a million-and-one ugly facts about ugly beings that the captain had ordered him to recite to the other guards over and over again. It was as if Governor Severus was expecting xeno-trouble.

  Well, he’d got his wish.

  Quivering in the deserted shadows of the sniper ring, whimpering at every rumbling bombardment from without, Sergeant DiGril was praying that it wouldn’t occur to any of his men that, with the captain dead, he was supposedly in charge now.

  “The alien’s in the courtyard,” someone barked on the comm. “I’m sealing the cell access ramps now.” There were men back in the control room, then. Good. DiGril nodded professionally, happy to have incidentally delegated responsibility. Finally, something was going right.

  With depressing inevitability, the voice on the comm swore. “Oh, throne… The north ramp’s jammed. It won’t do—Ah, damn. It’s gone! General alert! The intruder’s breached the underground levels.”

  DiGril rubbed his forehead. Typical.

  His conscience gave him a jab. Rather than sitting here complaining, it said, how about getting out there and issuing some orders? Taking command, maybe? Doing some good?

  “No chance,” he grumbled to himself. Not for all the many wives of the governor-sultan of Gammenon IX. Certainly not just for the chance to be a hero. Leave that sort of thing to the youngsters. Something caught his attention, gnawing on his senses. It took him a moment to identify what it was.

  It was silence. Absolute, perfect calm. The sonic barrage of vehicles and pulsefire beyond the prison walls had sputtered and died. He pressed his face to the sniper slit and peered through the shifting smoke-clouds, confused.

  The tau stood in quiet ranks, like ancient statues erected in the desert, ossified and unreal. Every last one of them was looking upwards.

  Kor’vesa 66.G#77 (Orbsat Surveillance) adjusted its primary optic focus on the planetary horizon and opened a datastream. Its parent node aboard the Or’es Tash’var responded with a withering hail of security checks and analysis scans lasting a fraction of a heartbeat. An oscillating band of microwaves tightbeamed between the two processors, narrowing its focus appropriately. A secure frequency was isolated, verified and maintained. 66.G clucked an emotionless greeting. The Or’es Tash’var responded in kind.

  Dolumar IV, a Kre’ui-class world with tolerable atmosphere and meteorological conditions, defined within 66.G’s memorysphere as “gue’la io’ra”, rolled beneath the surveillance drone’s field of vision enormously. The dark strip of shadow marking the planet’s terminator, where day oozed gradually into night, seeped across continents like a great, hungry parasite.

  A cluster of signals arrived from the Or’es Tash’var. The drone responded immediately by adjusting its secondary optics, focusing them upon the distant speck of light representing its parent vessel. A bright blue glow was building beneath the warship’s forward segment.

  66.G adjusted its horizontal position in relation to the planet. Damage analysis would require careful scrutiny. The warship broadcast a final set of emergency codes on all frequencies and fired.

  66.G tracked the glittering droplet of energy as it fell away towards the planet, briefly developing a milky corona as it punctured the upper cloud level. By the time it reached the surface it was little more than a blue speck, leaving a ghostly ion trail behind it.

  The little drone implemented its most powerful magnification filter and recorded the impact.

  Many gue’la died.

  Kais felt the impact underground.

  He’d dropped past the massive access ramp mere moments before it sealed behind him, its rockcrete surface grinding into place with tectonic enormity. Standing beside it now he felt the earth tremble angrily, sending splinter marks writhing across walls and avalanches of dry earth and rust-weakened bolts rattling from the ceiling. The control panel beside the ramp hissed a fountain of sparks in protest, tiny viewscreens shattering.

  “El’Lusha?” he transmitted, when finally the floor stopped shifting. “What was that?”

  The reply, masked and indecipherable behind an ambient hiss of white noise, aborted with an unpleasant rasp. Kais frowned and regarded his surroundings, fingering his gun nervously. The corridor, poorly lit by bulkhead-mounted illuminators, stretched away towards a sharp corner like the gullet of a krootox, slick with condensed moisture.

  The wound on his arm throbbed, a dull ache from beneath the medipack he’d clipped over it. He hoped he’d been quick enough in administering the covering—gue’la were notorious carriers of disease. Not for the first time, Kais curled his lip in distaste at the thought of being so deeply immersed in their unclean world. Every fibre in his body cried out for the serene cleanliness of T’au with its ancient, basking mountains and its functional cities of silver and ivory.

  The first guards came in a rush: a confused glut of guttural shouting voices and dark uniforms, attracted by the alarms that had accompanied the ramp’s closure. Kais made himself comfortable to receive them, wedging himself into an alcove near the tunnel’s apex and clenching his hooves together. He scooped his body into a low crouch and raised the rifle, its crosshair artificially superimposed over his HUD.

  They went down in a storm of grasping limbs, blocking the tunnel and tripping those behind them, orbs of pulsefire briefly illuminating the vaultway, hurling damp slabs of meat and bone across the walls and floor. Some of them, apparently able to operate beyond the remit of panic and adrenaline, sidestepped into a small antechamber, exchanging covering fire in a barrage of echoing insults and goads. A delaying tactic, Kais knew. They were waiting for backup.

  He rolled a grenade into the shadows of the alcove, and when it exploded he sprinted forwards, not waiting for the smoke to clear, following the dismal moans of the injured. He silenced them quickly—a single shot through the head for each.

  The last one, ragged scorch wounds dappling its legs and chest, pleaded with him, tear- and snot-clogged words an unintelligible drone of fear and helplessness. Its blistered fingers scrabbled against Kais’ legs, clutching and supplicating, sobbing pathetically. Kais recoiled from the contact, finger tightening against the trigger.

  Unbidden, a memory sagged, sludgelike, into his mind:

  “The alien is not intrinsically evil.

  Do not hate him. Pity him his ignorance.

  Seek to understand his differences

  And
acquaint him with his inadequacies.

  Only then will he accept his place

  in the Greater Good.”

  It was a Sio’t meditation—committed to memory long tau’cyrs ago—supposedly composed by the great hero O’Mau’tel. Since its inscription, of course, the tau had encountered both the insane, green-skinned Be’gel and the ever-devouring Y’he: two races, each in their own way utterly incapable of integration with the tau’va. The meditation had been quietly dropped from later editions of the Sio’t, but Kais had always remembered it. Perhaps in some dark, rogue part of his mind, the idea that his people’s social principles were not always correct had given him comfort.

  “What do you want?” he said, staring down at the creature. “Why are y… What are you doing here? Why are you fighting us?” Lame questions. Halfhearted questions. He was no water caste por’la, after all. But the need to try—the need to do something the right way—was too strong to ignore.

  The language itself felt just as bizarre now, grating against his throat, as it had done when the fio’ui medics grafted it into his mind at the third didactic treatment. He remembered spending decs afterwards with Ju and Y’hol, trying out the strange alien words appearing as if from nowhere inside their memories.

  The sobbing human didn’t seem to hear his questions. It just clutched at his leg gibbering. “Please throne no don’t sweet emperor no don’t kill me oh living god not now, p-please don’t I’m begging you…”

  “Quiet. Human. Be quiet.”

  It would not be silent.

  “Please oh I don’t want to, no, I… oh, I don’t want to die oh Terra please…”

  It would not be silent and, worse, it was bleeding all over his legs. Sticky warm gue’la blood, dribbling and filthy against his hooves.

  “Throne no please Emperor no no—”

  He pumped a shot into its head and blotted out the horror and revulsion before it even hit him. He was getting good at that.

  Something was clanging nearby, a rhythmic knocking that sent him dropping into an alert crouch, wary of every shadow, senses racing on overdrive. His slow scan of the room ended on a thick metal door, whorls of rust and moisture patterning it obscenely. A crude magnetic lock to one side winked its red eye conspiratorially at him. He lifted the rifle and obliterated the small device, quickly turning the gun on the door to face whatever horrors were revealed.