Damocles Read online

  I fall to one knee, the metal of my battleplate clunking on the black granite paving. I bow my head.

  ‘I am honoured to be called to the presence of our Lord Corvin Severax,’ I say.

  ‘Rise, brother-sergeant. Time is short,’ says Shrike.

  I comply… I…

  I am not aboard the Wings of Deliverance! I…

  [A flash of a dirty room in a city of metal. A mother’s face. A father’s sorrow. The sound of machinery is constant. The cry of young. Small spaces divided by dirty cloth. Danger is everywhere, the air smells of smelting and harsh chemicals. A young gue’la runs through dark streets, his feet swift, his eyes ever on the dark round of the moon looking down on his world… Further pressure was applied here. The vision of the subject’s past retreated. Truly their worlds are squalid.]

  I rise. Severax’s eyes glint as he follows my movements. He is motionless.

  ‘Our lord has a mission of great sensitivity for you. A council of war is even now being convened. We speak to you first brother, as your role is of the utmost importance.’

  A holomap comes to life in the air. It shows the entire front across the Gulf. Multiple systems blink with red infographics denoting the presence of the tau forces. Many more blink a sinister purple, showing the great swathe of worlds that have fallen to the alien’s false promises. It saddens me to see so many turn away from the Emperor’s light. We will retake them all, and their populations will be made to suffer for it once the Inquisition arrives. I pity them. Do they not see? It is true that this region of space is distant from Terra, and does not often see aid from the High Lords, but it is crucial. It is their duty to hold, no matter the cost. The cost for not doing so will be greater to them. Every crack in the fabric of the Imperium threatens to become a fissure. This cannot be allowed to happen. It is the duty of every citizen to make sure it does not.

  Shrike looks to Severax. There is a slight nod in reply. ‘Lord Severax has determined that this world is lost, brother-sergeant, and the Dovar System entire. Already the outlying planets have fallen. Agrellan cannot hope to withstand the attack that is coming. Analysis of their doctrine suggests that the tau would ordinarily bypass such a system, to return to it later once supply lines are cut. Surrounded, as populous a world as Agrellan cannot hold out. They would starve. But here, they have not the time. The tau seek to secure this system. This kind of war here is not of the tau’s liking.’ Shrike fixes me with his dark eyes. ‘Their ways are our ways, brother-sergeant, the lightning strike, the overwhelming application of force to vulnerabilities. A protracted ground campaign they prefer to avoid. It suits the Imperium better. But the tau require this system as a staging point, and they will do all they can to seize it. Already their numbers far exceed ours, and more are coming.’ Shrike bids the map to zoom in, showing the system, a densely populated cluster of worlds, the gap in the clouds – the Dovar Gap.

  ‘Nebulae hem Dovar. The tau’s drives cannot pass easily through them. It is the fortress gate in the walls of the Damocles Gulf. But we must abandon it,’ said Shrike. ‘Lord Severax has decreed it.’

  ‘I understand, brother shadow captain.’

  ‘We will choose our battleground, not they. Already we have lost too many men battling over Agrellan. The tau are closer to home than we. They will likely exhaust their empire to take it. Small as it is, the taus’ domain is vibrant, and confident. Lose here, and we lose the entire subsector. By the time a new crusade is prepared, they will be fortified and ready. We will melt away, and draw them where we will. Elsewhere, we will break their assault, crush their main forces in a battle of our choosing, and then reclaim what is rightfully the Emperor of Mankind’s.’

  ‘My lord,’ I say. I am astonished that such information is shared with me.

  ‘I am telling you this, brother-sergeant, because Lord Severax wishes you to go to the surface. Take your squad. You are to seize one of their number and deliver him to Inquisitor Gallius and High Magos Biologian Tulk here.’

  ‘You wish me to snatch one of their leader caste? I… Consider it done, shadow captain! I will…’

  Lord Severax chooses to speak. He leans forward in his throne, armoured hands gripping the carven rests. I see his face fully. His skin is as white as snow, his hair blacker than midnight.

  ‘You presume too much,’ he admonishes me. His voice is little more than a whisper, but his criticism cuts me. I bow my head, I hang upon his every word. ‘Capturing their ethereals is nigh on impossible. Every attempt that has been tried has failed with great loss,’ said Severax. ‘They will fight to the last to protect them. This task of which you speak we will save for another day. No. Your target is one of their emissaries. You will take one of them, and bring him to us, so that he might reveal the secrets of their persuasiveness.’ He falls silent again.

  ‘Our forces are sufficient to win this war, but we are losing many more worlds to the efforts of their diplomatic core than we are to military action,’ continues Shrike. ‘We are to be granted no more reinforcement for the foreseeable future. We cannot afford to become committed in one place, while their emissaries talk the worlds of the Emperor out of His light. Capture one of these emissaries while they are distracted. While we are evacuating, you will be on Agrellan. This is a great honour.’

  ‘We feel that they must have some kind of psychic or chemical hold over those they approach. How else can the number who capitulate be explained?’ The biologian’s artificial lungs wheeze as he speaks.

  ‘They need a live subject,’ adds Gallius. ‘He must be delivered alive, do you understand, sergeant?’

  ‘In order to verify our hypotheses,’ interrupts the biologian. He shows insufficient respect to our lord, he does not acknowledge him before he speaks. This angers me. The inquisitor is different. He shows deference, looking to Lord Severax before daring to speak. His face is lined with worry. It is the lot of the Inquisition to carry heavy burdens of knowledge and responsibility. Compared to my own duty to fight and die, his is onerous indeed.

  ‘We have further assets in play,’ says the inquisitor, ‘should you fail.’

  ‘I will not fail,’ I say.

  ‘Might is not always the sharpest weapon, a truth your Chapter exemplifies.’ The inquisitor paces around me slowly, looking me up and down. ‘We have an agent, a traitor among traitors, implanted with a tracer buried so deep that even the tau will not find it.’

  ‘This is good,’ I say. ‘He will deliver the emissary to us?’

  ‘They may,’ says the inquisitor. ‘Should it prove expedient. They have their orders. You have yours. Let us mesh them together for best effect. The one our agent guards, he is of particular interest to us.’

  ‘Any will do,’ interrupts Tulk.

  Gallius stares at the biologian. ‘But this one is of particular interest.’ He turns back to me. ‘If a direct assault does not succeed…’

  ‘If the quarry goes to ground, flush him out.’

  ‘And let one’s hound chase it down,’ says the inquisitor. He understands our ways.

  Our exchange pleases my Lord Severax. There is a fleeting expression of approval on his otherwise still features. None but a brother of the Raven Guard would notice it.

  ‘I have it on good authority that you are becoming adept at our ways, brother-sergeant,’ says Severax. ‘You have been chosen because of Shadow Captain Shrike’s personal recommendation.’

  To hear such words from my lord fills my hearts with pride.

  ‘I serve as best I can, lord,’ I say.

  ‘Then serve us well, and deliver to us this war-talker, who poisons the minds of rightful men against the proper rule of the Lord of Mankind. This is your duty. Go now, and prepare.’

  I obey, and with alacrity. Later, I and Inquisitor Gallius will have further words, and our trap will be set.

  Chapter Four

  The meeting was to take place
a dozen kilometres outside of Hive Chaeron’s walls. The Imperials had set up a temporary landing pad in a hole they’d carved in that awful forest. The trees had been cut back for a good three hundred metres, the red earth scraped raw by a heavy excavator. Our pilot took us through the canopy into the darkness beneath the trees. I couldn’t see out of the transport, but I felt the shadow close over me. There was a real presence down there, a menace that had the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The tau were unaffected, although I saw Krix’s quills shift. The faces of kroot are hard, most of them taken up by a mouth that’s more akin to a beak than anything else. Their flesh is thin, little musculature under it. To we gue’vesa, your average earth caste is inexpressive, but they’ve got nothing on the kroot. It’s like their faces are cast in stone. I could still tell that he felt the wrongness of Mu’gulath Bay too.

  The Devilfish touched down so softly that we couldn’t tell we’d landed until Kor’la D’yanoi Yel’fyr – the air caste up front – flicked the signal and the landing lights went from amber to green.

  ‘Well now,’ said Skilltalker, patting his knees with his hands twice and hitching up his robes in preparation to stand. ‘We have arrived, and our task is at hand. Let us see if we cannot save a few lives here. Gue’vesa’vre, if you would be so kind?’ he said to me.

  I had the squad sound off that they were set. They were. Their ‘affirmatives’ and ‘yes sirs’ told me far less than the air of wary readiness that came over them. They were a good la’rua, and I was very proud of them. We’d adopted a synthesis of Imperial Guard and fire caste teachings and I’d been gratified to see that it worked. With them behind me, and equipped with superior earth caste weaponry, I often felt that we could take on the entire Imperium on our own. And we all had reasons to want to.

  I was wrong about our effectiveness, of course, and even my team’s cohesion. You drill and drill and concentrate on one thing so hard you miss what’s right in front of you. We have a word for it in Gothic – hubris. I was relatively well-educated for an Imperial, I must add here. You won’t find this level of talk right across society, as I’m sure you’ve noticed by now in your dealings with other gue’la. Skilltalker was fascinated by the concept. Apparently there is no word for it in the modern tau language, although one day he did come up to me hurriedly, a look of delight on his face, to say he’d found an ancient term from the time of the Mont’ka that had an approximate meaning. In all honesty, I’d advise you reacquaint yourselves with it.

  The rear ramp opened. There’s wasn’t even a hiss, the internal air pressure had automatically and soundlessly matched that of outside. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to take tau tech for granted.

  We went out. I took point, Holyon behind me. He might have been a liar, but you could rely on him in a fight. We had to be prepared for battle despite the terms of truce we were meeting under. If we were attacked, it wouldn’t be the first time the water caste has been targeted.

  The clearing was muddy, broken tree stumps all around it, roots still clogged with the heavy red soil of Agrellan, bright scars in them leaking pale sap. A plasteel mesh had been laid down over the ground in the centre of the clearing, although it was far from level. Beacons blinked around the makeshift pad, the light coming off them making it hard to see under the trees, and that made me nervous. The trees of Agrellan are brittle, they snap so easily. The wood feels dead, their skins are slimy, leaves black like they are in the grip of decay, but they were alive somehow. I don’t know how something so sickly looking can grow into a forest. I didn’t like the place and I’m extremely grateful I’ve not been stationed there.

  I’d appreciate it if you didn’t send me back.

  A pathway of more mesh led off from the pad to the lip of a slope. From up there we had a fine view of Hive Chaeron. Big as a mountain, as hives are. The lower reaches must have been a hundred kilometres in diameter. Levels heaped upon level, reaching high up into the atmosphere so the top of it was lost in the yellow clouds.

  We were a ways out, but from the landing zone the walls looked huge. It was getting late in the afternoon, not yet evening, but the shadows were lengthening, and that of Chaeron lay like a slab of night on the haunted forest. The walls of Chaeron were white, blinding up close, but through the haze of pollution in the air they were coloured a gentle shade of apricot by the sun. A thousand metres tall, their length broken by bastions topped with macrocannon. A sixteen lane highway – a penline on a cloth compared to the bulk of the hive – went through a gate almost directly opposite us, but the gates were closed and the road empty. They were ready for war.

  It was all a little unreal, too big to be taken in and understood by the human mind. Like the Imperium itself, I suppose. The sunlight was broken by the haze, made dim, so that the hive looked like a painted backdrop. Only the lights on the evening side of it and the movements of fliers around the upper reaches told me it was not. I’ll bet my last pulse round that the landing site had been chosen so that we’d be intimidated by the size of the hive. It didn’t work. I still don’t quite grasp how blind my erstwhile countrymen can be. Earth caste weapons would have the walls down in a half hour or less. Bu clacked his tongue behind me in disapproval. He was wearing a respirator, as was the por’el. We all had our helmet seals engaged. There was something foul in the atmosphere.

  ‘How they live in such things? It is unsafe, unsanitary. Unsupportable. And this air!’

  I motioned him to silence ‘Someone’s coming.’

  Up the path hacked into the forest, a welcome party came. A functionary come to greet us, a squad of Guardsmen behind him. He wore heavy robes that looked like they’d not been washed for a while – if they could be, they were so stiff with brocade I doubt they’d survive any form of cleaning. Half his head was taken up by a lumpen cogitator and an ugly bionic eye. Not an Adeptus Mechanicus, as far as I could tell, but extensively modified anyhow. It was possible his own respirator was built into his face.

  They came close, the Guardsmen faceless behind their respirators, marching in perfect step.

  ‘I am Plenipotentiary Carrillon. On behalf of the Lord Grunkel of Hive Chaeron, I greet you in the spirit of peace,’ he said, touching a seal of office hanging around his chest. He spoke very loudly and slowly from behind his breathing apparatus. He was looking me up and down suspiciously. No doubt taking in my feet, the five fingers on my gloved hands, my height. I decided to put him out of his misery. As the routine we’d developed with Skilltalker dictated, I slung my carbine and unfastened my helmet, revealing my human face to them all. I had a smaller respirator on underneath simply so I could pull this trick. Like I say, it’s all carefully thought out.

  Carrillon managed to keep his reaction to a narrowing of his remaining eye. The Guardsmen with him were not so careful. Shocked intakes of breath and muttered curses came from them. I’m sure they’d all heard of the traitors who’d thrown in their lot with the xenos, but there aren’t that many of us in the Tau’Shas’Va as yet, and they probably thought of us as a myth. Carrillon held up his hand to silence them.

  ‘Gue’vesa’vre Jathen Korling, gue’vesa auxiliary diplomatic protection la’rua eight-four-four-eight,’ I said. I held Carrillon’s eye. If Carrillon was going to say anything, he never got the chance, because then Skilltalker made his entrance. Followed by Krix, he walked down the ramp of the Devilfish and into that sorry excuse for a landing zone.

  He was looking around with eyes wide and welcoming, as if he were drinking in every sight he could, and that each was a fresh wonder. They’re childlike, the por’la, at least in that regard. Appear childlike, I should say. Like everything they do and have us do, it’s all calculated to bring about a particular reaction. I stood aside and replaced my helmet. The air was making my eyes water. Skilltalker came to the fore. We all stood to attention, carbines held vertically in front of us. Another calculated show, this one to demonstrate our loyalty. I wasn’t too worried. Ko
r’la D’yanoi Yel’fyr would be on high alert in the Devilfish, and the drones housed on the front of the craft were always vigilant.

  Skilltalker crossed his hands in front of his chest and bowed. ‘Many thanks to you for our cordial reception, Plenipotentiary Carrillon. I am Emissary Por’el Bork’an Kais Por’noha, although I am more commonly referred to as Skilltalker.’

  Skilltalker ignored Carrillon’s derisory snort at his name. To humans, the names of tau can seem to be unduly immodest, although this mystifies most tau I know. Why would a tau have a name that bragged of something that were not true? Fine, I say. But often for us it is regarded as impolite to make a big deal about the things we are good at, at least in some human cultures. Mine is one of those. We are a more subtle and diverse species than most of you give us credit for, and on Gormen’s Fast, we don’t like braggarts.

  ‘I bring you greetings from the tau. We are five castes, one people. We offer you peace.’

  Carrillon shook his head ever so slightly, a sour look on his face. A mix of contempt and foreknowledge of his defeat, I think. ‘This way Emissary Skilltalker,’ his augmetic ground out an unlovely recitation of Skilltalker’s full tau name for him. ‘Lord Grunkel awaits you.’

  We were led down the path around a curve to a large, hermetically sealed pavilion fronted by an ostentatious airlock. One of Carillon’s guards activated the airlock and I, Krix, Bu and Skilltalker went inside. I voxed the squad to hang back by the entrance. ‘Watch them,’ I said, confident that there was no way the Imperium could crack tau encryption. ‘I don’t like this. The whole thing stinks of ambush.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time, Jathen’vre,’ said Goliath.

  ‘We’ve got your back,’ said Holyon. For once, I believed him.

  The outer door shut. Air was pumped out, then back in. The inner door opened. The exercise was accompanied by a cacophony of whirring, banging, clanging and whining. I saw just how primitive our technology is, how ramshackle. I can’t believe I used to take things like that to be normal.