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  ‘I had thought that very thing,’ Aun’Shi answered. ‘However, I now realise that our duty to one another doesn’t end just because we’re no longer in the Empire. No matter where we go, the Greater Good is our strength and shield.’

  ‘Even here?’ Bentu asked weakly.

  He laid a hand on each of their shoulders. ‘Especially here.’

  Someday, somehow, he told himself, I will bring the righteous fury of our people down upon the heads of the Var Sin’da. From now until then, that is all I will strive for.

  ‘Do not worry,’ he reassured them. ‘I am aun. I will lead and protect you. Always.’

  -BEGIN RECORDING-

  We walk blindly along a knife-edge slicing into oblivion. If we misstep we fall from our path. If we walk true we fall with our path. Perhaps there is a difference, but I have come to doubt it. Nevertheless, I will honour the Greater Good and allow you to draw your own conclusions from the facts.

  I have little time, but even in extremis one must observe the correct protocols. That is what it means to be a tau amongst savages. Whatever else I have lost to this diseased planet, I will not lose that. Therefore know that I am Por’ui Vior’la Asharil, third-stream daughter of Clan Kherai. Though I hail from a sept of worlds where the wisdom of the water caste is eclipsed by the ferocity of the fire caste, my family has served the Tau Empire with grace since the dawn of the first colonies. As I serve with this, my final account.

  And so I shall offer you a beginning. Let it be the grey-green murk that is the perennial stuff of Fi’draah, my new world. As I stepped from my shuttle the planet seized me in a stinking, sweltering embrace and wouldn’t let go. Blinking and choking in the smog, I heard harsh voices and harsher laughter; then someone thrust a filtrator mask over my face and I could breathe again.

  ‘The first time is like drowning,’ my saviour said. ‘It gets better.’

  I don’t recall who the speaker was, but he lied: breathing this world never got any better.

  ‘You have evidently made powerful enemies for one so young, Asharil,’ the ambassador said without preamble, peering down from the cushioned pulpit of his hovering throne drone. His voice was soft, yet vibrant. It filled the spacious audience chamber like liquid silk, the weapon of a master orator. His summons had followed directly upon my arrival and I was mortified by my dishevelled state.

  ‘I do not understand, honoured one,’ I blustered, stumbling between respect and revulsion for the ancient who presided over our forces on this remote planet. O’Seishin’s authority was a testament to the excellence of our caste, but he reeked of years beyond the natural span of the tau race. His flesh had aged to deep cobalt leather, barely concealing the harsh planes of his skull, but his eyes were bright.

  ‘This is a terminal world,’ he continued, ‘a graveyard for broken warriors and forgotten relics like myself, not a proving ground for the hot blood of youth. Who did you offend to get yourself posted here, Asharil?’ He smiled, but his eyes belied it.

  ‘I walk the water path,’ I answered, seeking the natural poise of our caste. ‘My blood runs cool and silent, so that my voice may weave–’ O’Seishin’s snort cut me short like a physical blow.

  ‘I am too old for wordplay, girl!’ He leaned forwards and a strand of spittle escaped his lips. ‘Why have you come to Fi’draah? Who sent you?’

  ‘Honoured one…’ I stammered, struggling to avert my gaze from the lethargic descent of his drool. ‘Your pardon, but I requested this posting. I have made a study of the language and customs of the humans,’ – I deliberately used the gue’la word for themselves – ‘and Fi’draah offers most excellent opportunities to deepen my insight.’

  He appraised me with a distrust so candid it was almost conspiratorial, as if we were both willing players in a game of lies. A game that he was used to winning…

  ‘So you wish to test yourself in the field, Asharil?’ He smiled again and this time I saw humour there, though no humour I cared to share. ‘Then I shall not deny you. Indeed, I believe I have a most suitable commission for you.’

  I will never know why O’Seishin became my enemy in that one brief meeting, but he proved to be the least of the blights awaiting me on this world.

  Of the long conflict between the Tau Empire and the gue’la Imperium for mastery of Fi’draah, I shall not speak. Mysteries shroud the war like whispering smoke, but I learned little of them before O’Seishin dispatched me to oblivion. Of the planet itself I could say much, for I travelled its wilderness for almost five months, but I will content myself with a single truth: whatever you are told in your orientation, it will not prepare you for the reality of this place. To classify Fi’draah as a ‘jungle world’ or a ‘water world’ is to garb a corpse in finery and call it beautiful. Eighty per cent of its surface is drowned in viscid, lethargic oceans that blend into the sky in a perpetual cycle of evaporation and drizzle, wreathing everything in a grey-green miasma that seeps into the flesh and spirit. The continents are ragged tangles of mega-coral choked with vegetation that looks – and smells – like it has been dredged up from the depths. Stunted trees with fleshy trunks and bladder-like fronds vie with drooping tenements of fungi and titanic anemone clusters, everything strangling or straddling or simply growing upon every­thing else – fecundity racing decay so fast you can almost see it.

  Whether Sector O-31 is the worst of Fi’draah’s territories I cannot say, but it must surely rank amongst them. The gue’la call it ‘the Coil’, a name infinitely more fitting than our own sober designation, for there is nothing remotely sober about that malign wilderness. A serpentine spiral of waterlogged jungles, it is the dark heartland of Fi’draah’s largest, most untamed continent. The war has left it almost untouched, but rumours haunt it like bad memories: of regiments swallowed whole before they could clash… Of lost patrols still fighting older wars than ours… And of ancient things sleeping beneath the waters…

  Naturally, I dismissed such nonsense. My task was to cast the light of reason across this enigma and ‘unravel the Coil’ (as O’Seishin so artfully sold it). I was to accompany Fio’vre Mutekh, a distinguished cartographer of the earth caste on his quest to map the region. Fool that I was, I believed myself honoured! It was only later, when I saw how the Coil twisted in upon itself, that I realised the absurdity of our endeavour. I have often wondered whether O’Seishin is still laughing at me.

  It says much about the nature of the earth caste that Mutekh approached his impossible assignment without rancour. A robust tau in his autumn cycle, he had a pompous manner that exasperated me, but he was utterly rigorous in his work. His assistant, Xanti, was a placid autaku (or data tech) who spoke rarely and never met my gaze. I believe he preferred the company of his neo-sentient data drone to his fellow tau.

  The fourth and final person of note was our protector and guide, Shas’ui Jhi’kaara. A fire warrior and veteran of Fi’draah, she regarded the jungle with the tender distrust of a predator who knows it is also prey, and like many alpha predators she commanded her own pack: a dozen gue’la janissaries equipped with flak-plate and pulse carbines. They were all Imperial deserters, lured from the enemy by the promise of better rations rather than ideology, and despite the trappings of our civilisation they remained barbarians. Every night they gambled, quarrelled and brawled amongst themselves, but never in Jhi’kaara’s presence. Had they known I spoke their native tongue they would have guarded their words more closely. Listening in on their crude passions and superstitions, I marvelled that their stunted species had ever reached the stars.

  Together we entered the Coil: earth, water, fire… and mud, travelling its strange waterways in a pair of aging Devilfish hover transports. Every few days Mutekh would spot a ‘notable feature’ and call a halt. Then we would spend an eternity recording some obscure geological phenomenon or ancient indigene ruin. As the cartographer updated his maps and the janissaries patrolled, the jungle would press i
n, watching us with a thousand hungry eyes that belonged to a single beast.

  ‘It hates us,’ Jhi’kaara said once, surprising me as I stared back at the beast. ‘But it welcomes us in the expectation that we will grow careless.’

  ‘It is just a jungle, shas’ui,’ I said, squaring up to the warrior. ‘It has no thoughts.’

  ‘You are lying, waterkin,’ Jhi’kaara said. ‘You see the truth, but like all your kind, you fear it.’

  ‘My kind?’ I was shocked. ‘We are the same kind. We are both tau.’

  Her face was hidden behind the impassive, lens-studded mask of her combat helmet, but I sensed her sneer.

  As our expedition stretched from weeks into months I came to detest every one of my companions, but Jhi’kaara most of all. While I recognised the place of the fire caste in the Tau’va, there was a coiled violence about her that disturbed me. Perhaps it was her hideous facial scarring or her playful contempt… But no… I believe it was something deeper. Like O’Seishin, she had become tainted by this world.

  Taint. Such an irrational term for a tau to use; surely one better suited to the Imperial fanatics who condemn otherness for otherness’s sake? Perhaps, but lately I have come to wonder whether the fanatics may have it right.

  It is time I told you of the Sanctuary of Wyrms.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, trying to decipher the dark shape through its veil of vegetation. Squat yet vast, it rose from the centre of the island ahead, evidently a structure of some kind, but unlike any other we had encountered in the Coil. Despite the obscuring vegetation, its harsh, angular lineaments were unmistakable, suggesting an architectural brutality at odds with the flowing contours of our own aesthetics. Even at a distance it filled me with foreboding.

  ‘The Nirrhoda did not lie,’ Mutekh said, lowering his scope.

  The Nirrhoda? I recalled the feral, mud-caked indigenes we had encountered some weeks back. Technically ‘indigene’ was a misnomer since the native Phaedrans were descended from gue’la colonists who had conquered this world millennia ago and then, in turn, been conquered by it. Squat and bowlegged, with huge glassy eyes and yawning mouths, they were primitive degenerates who wandered the wilderness in loose tribes. All were unpredictable, but the Nirrhoda clan, who followed the chaotic arrhythmia of the Coil, were notoriously belligerent. Yet Jhi’kaara had known their ways and won a parley for Mutekh, who had traded trinkets for shreds of truth about their deceitful land. One such shred had led us here.

  ‘They certainly did not lie about the wyrmtrees,’ the fire warrior observed sourly. ‘That island is infested with them.’

  I had taken the gentle undulation of the towering anemone-like growths encrusting the island to be a product of the wind… Yet there was no wind… Now I watched their swaying tendrils with fresh eyes: at the base, each was thicker than my waist, tapering to a sinuous violet tip that tilted towards us, as if tasting us on the air.

  ‘Are they dangerous?’ I asked.

  ‘Their sting is lethal,’ Jhi’kaara said fondly, ‘but they grow slowly. These must be over a century old. That structure–’

  ‘Evidently predates the war,’ Mutekh interrupted with relish. ‘We must evaluate this discovery thoroughly.’ Something like avarice swept across his broad face, revealing another shade of taint: the hunger to know. ‘You will clear a path, please, fire warrior.’

  Jhi’kaara turned the rotary cannons of our Devilfish upon the forest, shredding the rubbery growths into steaming slabs that seemed more meat than vegetable. The trees shrieked as they died, their warble sounding insidiously sentient.

  ‘It proved a poor sanctuary,’ Xanti said with peculiar sadness. I glanced at Mutekh’s assistant in surprise. He shrugged, embarrassed by my attention. ‘That is what the savages called this place: the Sanctuary of Wyrms.’

  Then the janissaries went amongst the detritus with flamethrowers, laughing as they incinerated the flailing, orphan tendrils. One brute grew careless and a whip-like frond lashed his face as it flipped about in its death spasms. Moments later the man joined it in his own dance of death. It was the first time I saw violent death, but I was unmoved. Fi’draah had already changed me.

  Unveiled, the building was almost profound in its ugliness. It was a squat, octagonal block assembled from prefabricated grey slabs that were as hard as rock. The walls tilted inwards to a flat roof that looked strong enough to withstand an aerial bombardment, suggesting the place might be a bunker of some kind. Circling it, we found no apertures or ornamentation save for a deeply recessed entrance wide enough to accommodate a tank. A metal bulkhead blocked the path, its corroded surface embossed with a stark ‘I’ symbol. Despite its simplicity, the sigil had an austere authority that deepened my unease.

  ‘I am unfamiliar with this emblem,’ Mutekh mused, running a hand over the raised metal. ‘Your thoughts, por’ui?’

  ‘It looks like a gue’la rune,’ I answered. ‘Linguistically it translates as ‘the self’, but in this context it probably has a factional connotation.’

  ‘So the gue’la built this place?’ Xanti asked.

  ‘Oh, I would most definitely postulate an Imperial provenance,’ Mutekh said, clearly enjoying himself. ‘Though it lacks the vainglorious ornamentation typical of their architecture, the configuration and construction materials are manifestly Imperial.’

  ‘Why would there be Imperials on Fi’draah before the war?’ Xanti seemed confused by the notion.

  ‘Why wouldn’t there be?’ Mutekh proclaimed. ‘Throughout the ages there have been Imperials almost everywhere. They are an ancient power that coveted the stars millennia before the Tau’va was revealed to us. There is no telling when they first came to this world. Or why.’

  ‘This place has the strength of a fortress, but not the logic,’ Jhi’kaara offered, speaking for the first time. ‘The walls are solid, but there are no emplacements or watchtowers.’

  ‘Perhaps they are hidden,’ I suggested.

  ‘No, remember this is a pre-war relic,’ Mutekh chided. ‘It was not constructed to keep an enemy out, but to keep a secret within.’

  ‘What kind of secret?’ Xanti asked loyally.

  ‘The kind that was worth hiding well!’ There was a glint in the cartographer’s eyes at the prospect. ‘The kind that is worth learning for the Greater Good.’ He slapped the bulkhead. ‘Open it!’

  There was no obvious access mechanism, but Xanti’s data drone detected a biometric scanner embedded in the bulkhead.

  ‘For the gue’la it is a sophisticated system,’ the autaku murmured, his face lost in the dancing holograms projected by his drone. The small saucer-like machine hovered by the hatch, interfacing the mechanism with its datalaser and mapping it into territory its master could negotiate.

  ‘I doubt I could deceive this,’ Xanti said, ‘but it appears the seal has already been broken… and crudely reset.’ He looked up with a frown. ‘Someone has trespassed here before us.’

  Despite the damaged seal, night had fallen by the time Xanti synthesised the correct trigger. Dead cogs ground into life and the bulkhead rose, groaning at this second desecration. A sour fungal fetor seeped from the dark maw, so dense it was almost visible. Some of the janissaries chuckled as I retched and fumbled for my filtrator mask, but their faces were pale. Jhi’kaara silenced them with a sharp gesture, but I felt no gratitude. Her sealed helmet spared her the stench we suffered. Where was the equity in that?

  We entered the cavernous chamber beyond in a practised formation, with Jhi’kaara’s hovering gun drone taking point and the janissaries fanning out to either side. Our torch beams thrust back the darkness, but it clung to every corner and crevice like black cobwebs. The burned-out hulks of amphibious transports and machinery loomed on all sides, casting shadows across a graveyard of barrels and crates.

  ‘The invaders closed off the escape route,’ Jhi’kaara said, gauging the deva
station. ‘They destroyed the vehicles and sealed the exit in case anyone slipped past them.’

  ‘Why did no one fight back?’ I wondered. ‘There are no bodies here.’

  ‘A good question, waterkin.’

  Across the chamber the inner hatch lay amongst the detritus, shredded and torn from its recess. Jhi’kaara knelt and ran her fingers over the wreckage. The edges were curled into serrated whorls of tortured metal.

  ‘Power weapons,’ she said. ‘Chainswords.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ I asked.

  ‘The teeth leave a pattern.’ She paused and looked over her shoulder, staring right at me. ‘Their mark is… unique.’ It was almost a challenge.

  ‘Unique?’ As if by their own volition my eyes were drawn to the ghost of a scar running down the faceplate of her helmet, a wound that echoed the rift in her own face. And suddenly I understood why she knew these weapons so intimately.

  The destruction petered out in the corridor beyond, but the sense of oppression did not. It shadowed us as we passed through one deserted chamber after another, closing in as we moved deeper into the outpost.

  ‘Smaller teams would cover more ground,’ Mutekh protested. ‘Your caution is illogical, shas’ui. This place is long dead.’

  But the fire warrior would not split our force, and I was struck anew by the differences between the castes. We worked together for the Greater Good, yet our natures were discordant. Mutekh and Xanti were creatures of reason, while Jhi’kaara was pure instinct. What did that make me?

  I brooded over the question as we pressed on, passing through guardrooms and storerooms, the hollow tomb of a dormitory and a mess hall where food still waited on the table, fossilised and forgotten.

  ‘It took them unawares,’ Jhi’kaara murmured, ‘and it took them swiftly.’