Elemental Council, page 14
‘The doors,’ Swordlight said, tapping her helmet to steady its feed. ‘Stay with me.’
The fire warriors moved first. The closest lunged out, jamming his baton into Swordlight’s side. She yelled as voltaic energy coursed through her armour and bones, her arms rigid with paralysis. As she absorbed the blow, Jules hammered the wielder’s hand against a rail, smashing the baton from his grip. Another fire warrior broke formation and tackled Jules into a wall, frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog.
It was the opening Swordlight needed. She planted her hooves, heaving the first fire warrior over the rail. As the fighter crashed to the first floor, Swordlight swept forward and raised her arms, blocking a heavy baton with her bracers, then planted her elbow into the snarl of the fire warrior who had swung it. He rolled down, clutching his bleeding mouth. His companion struck hard, but Swordlight caught the warrior’s wrist and twisted the compliance baton free. She gripped the weapon and drilled it into her adversary’s neck. The t’au grimaced, his eyes rolling up in their sockets before his face went smooth. The stink of sweat commingled with blood and burnt hair. This was nothing compared to the training domes; he’d be fine.
Gasping and grunting, Jules shoved his assailant into Swordlight, then pounded his heel into the hunter’s chest. The fire warrior stumbled and crashed into the deck. As he crawled on his back and elbows, his armour dragging on the grated metal, Swordlight and Jules advanced. The fallen fire warrior with the bleeding mouth scrambled to his hooves, but Jules gripped his scalp lock and rocked his fist into the warrior’s head with a fleshy thud. The hunter collapsed, dark blood from his split cheek painting the man’s knuckles.
‘Remember the objective,’ Yor’i said on the uplink. ‘Recover Kir’qath. Use lethal force if required.’
Swordlight raised her chin, lava in her veins. The ethereal’s mandate was a physical force, as invigorating as it was frightening. The voices on the other side of the doors were shrieking, but a steady few urged calm. Her aural amplifiers picked up the searing hiss of Ke’s torch. The engineer had almost breached the officium’s vault. A little longer, a little further. Then they would have Kir’qath safe and sound.
The final fire warrior dragged himself against the wall, his heavy armour scraping against the damp rockcrete. ‘Traitors,’ he snarled. He wiped dark blood from his nasal orifice, examining the gruel of slobber and vigour on his glove, then spat. ‘Traitors to the Empire.’
Swordlight froze. ‘What did you say?’
‘In bed with the humans,’ the hunter sneered. ‘Weakening us from the inside out. You fear us because we are right. The Empire’s sick. You bear the dark tidings yourself.’
Jules gripped Swordlight’s arm. ‘Fireblade. The seeker.’
Swordlight shook off the human’s arm and lurched forward. She gripped the collar of the warrior’s bodysuit and heaved him to his hooves, his bruised face ugly and granular through the magnification of her helmet optics. ‘I will relish the trembling in your limbs when they tell you,’ Swordlight whispered, her voice rustling through her vocal filters. ‘You have defied the Paramount Mover, scum. I am a loyal servant in submission to the T’au’va. You are the traitor to the Emp–’
A squall of blast force and noise hurled Swordlight and the hunter against the wall. High-velocity shards of rockcrete pelted her armour and shattered the officium windows. For a weightless moment, sound died in her helmet as her aural dampeners activated, warning icons flashing in her visualiser. Dust plumed from the centre of the manufactorum, clogging her air filters.
Swordlight pumped her helmet’s clearing valve, removing the obstruction and rising. Decibel by decibel, sound returned as grit showered the rusted iron deck and cargo crates below. An explosion had ripped through the manufactorum floor, ejecting dust to the ceiling. Shattered glass from the building’s skylights and runoff from the city’s upper levels chinkled on the broken deck and tossed cargo crates. The many-armed crane in the atrium screeched as it keeled over, its anchor legs broken. The crane’s rust-rotted frame crashed into an upper level, showering the floor with dust and flakes of oxidised steel.
Swordlight’s suffering helmet filters whined, her breathing a ragged rustle in her helm. Her gaze penetrated the dust-choked void that had opened beneath the manufactorum. Plates of cracked rockcrete led into a dripping darkness of foetid sewage within the city’s superstructure. The slack bodies of dead or unconscious t’au in the blast zone slid into the abyss, splashing where they landed.
A lone shadow climbed from the chasm like a fallen god. Damaged power armour hung from his muscled frame, its power pack smoking and wheezing. Plates of cracked ceramite had been secured to the armour, neat bands of military-grade fusion tape securing the segments. One of the suit’s arms was missing entirely, its frame ending in torch-blasted knobs of plasteel, the flesh beneath rippling with muscle and distention scars. A baroque respirator covered the warrior’s face, steam venting from its brass breathing grate, the old fissures in his flesh reminding Swordlight of Relo – dead Relo. The figure was clearly gue’la in origin, but too tall and too wide to be merely human.
Swordlight blinked on her blacksun filter. Her optics picked out filaments and spots of elevated temperature in the giant’s flesh. They were armour junction ports, on a meticulously implanted subcutaneous lattice of advanced material her visualiser could not identify. As Swordlight’s heart slowed, preparing for the inevitable fight awaiting her, she blink-activated a scanner ping. With a high-pitched beep, her helmet fired a concentrated burst of radiation through the newcomer, analysing his organic composition.
For a breath, two translucent hearts pumped in the man’s reinforced ribcage, beating with the steady serenity of an ascetic on the verge of enlightenment. An identification hex flew out from the image archive panel networked to Swordlight’s helmet, text scrolling across its surface.
CLASS 3 GUE’RON’SHA // GOTHIC DESIGNATION: ‘ASTARTES PRIMARIS’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Be calm,’ Orr whispered in Ke’s ear, gripping the hard shoulder of her engineering suit. ‘As still as the calm seas.’
Ke planted her hands on the hot circle of plasteel she had, layer by layer, shaved from the vault in the adjacent manufactorum. ‘You’re shaking me,’ she said. ‘We’re in.’
‘Yor’i,’ Orr said. ‘Stand by for exfiltration.’
He stepped back as Ke grunted and pushed. The metal slammed to the ground, lifting dust from the floor on the other side. Cracks spidered in the tiles around the impact.
T’au huddled within the dim vault against a bank of shelves. Two fire warriors in operational fatigues had positioned themselves before the others. One coiled her fingers around a charged compliance baton, its lug snapping.
The other levelled a pulse pistol at Orr’s head.
Jules surged into the vault, booting a steel table barricading the entrance. The table skidded into the first fire warrior, who dropped her baton and caught the table’s weight. Jules’ weapon flew to his shoulder just as the fire warrior with the pulse pistol pivoted to face him.
Orr was between them before he knew it, his hands outstretched, his eyes moving calmly between them. ‘Stop. This is not the time, friends.’
‘I will not let him hurt the aun,’ the fire warrior said.
‘Get out of my way or die,’ Jules snarled in Low Gothic, fuming with human stress-response hormones.
Outside, the liquid hiss of lasgun fire joined the crackle and clap of autoguns. Blue fists of pulse-fire streaked through the manufactorum. Survivors of whatever force had sequestered the seeker Kir’qath here had gathered their weapons to fight, but they were losing. Human rebels had attacked from beneath the manufactorum.
Orr gestured to his communications stud. ‘I am told rebels are out there, including a Space Marine. We need a plan, friends. Or we are all dead.’
Doubt flickered in Jules’ eyes, his weapon inching down. The fire warrior lowered his pulse pistol in jerking spasms, mirroring Jules’ movements, neither willing to commit without a display of trust from the other.
‘Put them down,’ another speaker said, her voice running through Orr like an electric shiver.
Aun’Kir’qath emerged from the huddle of t’au who had gathered to shield her with their bodies. Behind Orr, Ke croaked in wordless fascination. He couldn’t blame the young engineer. The seeker’s wisdom was palpable and etheric, sucking the air from his throat like the void that filled creation.
The sylphlike Aun’Ui Kir’qath wore a simple tunic of orange and blue dyes, with an unornamented scalp lock that ran from her elfin skull to her thin waist. Her voice carried the authority of the natural universe. In the crowded vault, the floor strewn with slagged plasteel and shattered glass, she looked as if she was supposed to be here. As though anywhere she went, that was where she was supposed to be.
Jules lowered his weapon. ‘Kir. You’re all right.’
The ethereal signed acknowledgement, then gazed at Orr. ‘What is the plan, brother of water?’
Orr looked at Jules. ‘Get her back to the Orca. Can you manage it?’
‘We’re going with her,’ the fire warrior with the baton said.
Orr’s hands clawed. ‘Is that really the optimal application of fire, sister? To run and hide as your brethren die?’
Hesitation flickered in the hunter’s fingers. She signed acknowledgement and gestured the fortress stands. ‘We will fight. We will lay our lives down for the ethereals. But two of ours will accompany her, no matter what. Better their lives than hers.’
Two merchant dignitaries stepped forward, volunteering themselves. Orr signed ambivalently. After all that had happened, part of him had feared the t’au here had kidnapped the ethereal. The hunter’s words suggested otherwise, but Orr wasn’t in the habit of puzzling out mysteries during firefights. Aun’Kir’qath’s safety was paramount. The t’au here could at least be trusted to protect her.
Orr pointed to a shattered officium window outside the vault. ‘Ke. Can you help them?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Ke said, her suit’s helmet filters lending her voice more steel than Orr thought was really there. ‘I’ll try.’
‘For the Greater Good.’
Ke’s shoulders straightened. She marched past Jules into the officium. Moments later, her drone jets roared and faded, followed by a screaming fusillade of las-fire.
Jules gripped the seeker’s arm, ignoring the scathing glares of the other t’au as he dragged her through the breach entrance, its ragged plasteel lips still runny and cooling.
Orr locked eyes with him. ‘Keep her safe.’
‘It’s the only thing I want in the universe,’ Jules said.
And then they were gone.
As the others filtered through the breach, Orr tapped his communications stud. ‘Yor’i. You said we are equals. To voice our doubts. I am voicing one now. You will not like it.’
‘I know,’ the Paramount Mover replied, cool and composed. ‘I have already contacted Nobledawn. Reinforcements are en route.’
The Space Marine stormed towards Swordlight, a blade flashing in his hand. She ducked aside. The heavy knife cleaved through the fire warrior who had taunted her, wedging into the panel wall behind him. Dark ichor gushed from his split armour. He slid down, his shaking hands questing for his medical pack.
The blade had cut through the hunter’s carapace like butter. Monomolecular edge, Swordlight recalled from her flash-didactic training on the Imperium’s common equipment.
The armoured giant lashed at Swordlight, the frame of his underpowered war plate groaning with the effort. She ducked away, his blade’s tip scratching the lacquer of her shield pauldron. Her armour tassets clanked as she danced around his bulk and vaulted the railing to the manufactorum floor, her hooves clapping against the rockcrete.
Above, the Space Marine paused, perhaps surprised by her swiftness. Greasy black hair hung over his pale face, and he tossed his ragged cameleoline cloak over his shoulder, its adaptive fabric refracting the dim glow of las- and pulse-fire flying through the manufactorum. The behemoth flew to the deck after Swordlight, pounding down behind her.
Swordlight armed her pulse carbine. From the caved-in floor, a massive crustacean surged up a damp plate of rockcrete, its pointed legs pocking the surface as it scrambled for a grip. A human rider in a ragged uniform and flak jacket crouched upon it, his feet bare. The sight of his repulsive foot-fingers splayed across the crab-monster’s waxed shell jarred Swordlight. He tucked his crab-mount’s reins under an arm, raising a whining hellgun in the other. Swordlight fired centre-mass, throwing the rider from his mount.
Then she moved. Behind her, the Space Marine’s monomolecular blade cracked into a cargo container. Swordlight returned fire, but the stream of pulse-light punched into an empty wall.
The Space Marine lunged from the side, having anticipated her attacks and relocated to exploit her distraction. He moved faster than Swordlight thought possible – faster than she had seen anything move in her life – but the burden of his armour slowed him, its power pack and wheezing musculature chugging to keep up. Twice he slashed; twice his blade’s edge whistled through empty air. He paused again, a ghost of intrigue haunting his eyes. The delay lasted a heartbeat. To Swordlight, whose armour had pumped stimulant reserves into her bloodstream, it might as well have been an eternity.
The Space Marine’s dark eyes flitted up. Thrumming engines from a pair of Devilfish shook the roof. A hot downdraught cleared the dusty haze in the atrium, sending more knives of glass from the damaged skylights. Nobledawn’s cadres had come.
Swordlight blinked through positional hexes to signal the t’au, but the distraction, even for a breath, risked her life. The Space Marine stomped after her. She focused on him again.
‘Arzha rar namarsh a loraliss,’ he said, the molasses-thick syllables of his Gothic tongue oozing into Swordlight’s ears through her aural feed. Blinking text scrolled across her visualiser, a translation.
‘– – YOU MOCK ME WITH YOUR EXISTENCE – –’
Swordlight shouldered her weapon and fired, but he was gone again – and then suddenly back. She dodged his strike. More human crab-riders scuttled from the chasm behind them, crawling into the manufactorum. Cloaked human rebels filled the space between them, taking cover and opening fire, guarding the breach they had used to make entry.
They intended to escape. A raid, then. They had come for Aun’Kir’qath.
Swordlight ducked another blow from the Space Marine, then caught sight of Ke and her ridiculous engineering suit. The armoured engineer scrambled along the many-armed crane above, clutching its rusted frame, her welding attachment flashing in white supernova bursts. Ke was trying to collapse the crane into the breach. From the ceiling, snake-like ropes uncoiled from hovering Devilfish troop carriers. Repression cadre fire warriors slid down the ropes to the levels above, pulse weapons screaming in their hands, sending the human rebels below diving for cover.
Force rocked Swordlight back, shooting static through her visual feed. The Space Marine’s armoured gauntlet clapped around her neck. Her hooves dangled beneath her, and oxygen deprivation blackened the edges of her vision. As her adversary’s grip tightened, static rippled through her helmet visuals. Her collar cracked, and her armour’s medicated atmosphere hissed into the humid air. Swordlight sputtered, but the Space Marine’s grip had sealed her throat.
‘Whoever you were,’ the Space Marine said, the thunder of his words rendered in accented but precise T’au, ‘our galaxy will forget you.’
Sensing Swordlight’s distress, her armour pumped a final slurry of nanites and chemical stimulants into her bloodstream. Her eyes shot open. Her muscles became iron. She brought her knee up into the Space Marine’s ribs. The force of that blow was enough to shatter fio’tak plating. Swordlight knew because she’d done it, cracking her armour from kneepad to thigh.
The warrior thudded to a knee. Swordlight gasped and pivoted, slamming her elbow into the Space Marine’s head, ignoring the twinge of pain that shot up her arm.
Then alert hexes flickered in her helmet display. A numbing fire deadened the senses in her belly. Swordlight’s eyes dropped. Her reticle highlighted the Space Marine’s blade, jutting from her midriff. He had impaled her.
He freed his knife, flinging the gel of dark blood that coated it to the floor. Without so much as another look, the warrior cast her aside and moved to another target.
Swordlight smacked onto the broken floor and rolled into the chasm. Rebel troopers stepped around her or lifted their legs as she slid past, finally crashing into the stagnant water below. Filth soaked through her violated armour, stinging her ruined flesh.
Above, ten tons of plasteel screeched as Ke leapt from the crane, her drone jets roaring. As the crane collapsed, its severed metal bones whistled to the atrium floor, smashing around Swordlight. Pipes and girders clattered and banged, crushing a pair of human rebels, splashing gems of blood-leached water onto her optics.
She was not afraid to die. She was born to die. But the bitter irony of the moment sank into her skull. Her trial by fire had come – her chance to slay the Space Marine and save Aun’Kir’qath. To prove who she was: a Fireblade without equal.
And she had failed.
Jules ushered Aun’Kir’qath down a stairwell into a low corridor. Explosions echoed behind them. Outside, skimmers thundered through the city, the roar of their engines shaking the structure. They were close to the extraction point. All they had to do was keep moving.
A pair of murmuring water caste accompanied them. One of the t’au drew a gently curved knife in her shaking hand, as if she would dare cross caste to use it, even in the defence of the ethereal. Jules was both pleased and disappointed to recognise the ta’lissera bonding knife had been forged in the T’olku style, lightweight but razor-sharp. He had been a traitor for a long time to know trivia like that. Jules suspected these t’au didn’t trust him. That was fine – he didn’t trust them, either. Though he had no idea where the Empire’s heretical Syra had come from, he could not fault their loyalty to the Empire, even if they did loathe humans like him.
