03 - Savage Scars (21 page)

If that were allowed to happen, then Gurney and his ally Inquisitor Grand
might take control of the crusade council, and nothing anyone could do would
stop them doing things their way. The tau would be wiped from the galaxy, their
empire cast down in flames. As a rogue trader, Lucian considered that a crime of
unimaginable proportions, for it deprived the Imperium of so many potential
resources. If the tau could be forced to a weak negotiating position, the
Imperium could benefit from the natural resources their region harboured. At the
very least, Lucian’s clan could make a fortune in trade, but only if there were
any tau left to force to the negotiating table and to actually deal with.

As he approached the lines of Battlegroup Arcadius, Lucian located his
signalman and gestured him over.

“Patch me through to Korvane Gerrit Arcadius,” he ordered.
“Blade of Woe.”

The signalman saluted smartly and set to work on his vox-set. After a minute,
he had established the uplink and handed the headset to Lucian.

“Father?” his son’s voice came through the static-laced channel. “Father, are
you well?”

“Well enough, son,” Lucian said. “But Gurney’s making a power play. What’s
the situation with the council?”

There was a pause as Korvane gathered his thoughts, during which Lucian could
hear renewed cheering from the assembled Imperial Guard companies. Then
Korvane’s response came through. “It’s been quite anarchic here, father, but
I’ve made inroads towards filling the vacant council seats.”

“Go on,” Lucian said impatiently. Even in the midst of a major planetary
invasion, he could not entirely relinquish his role of patriarch of a rogue
trader dynasty.

“Tacticae-Primaris Kilindini,” Korvane said. “How well do you know him?”

“Not well,” Lucian said as he recalled the man his son was referring to.
“He’s the head of one of the Departmento Tacticae divisions?”

“That’s our man,” Korvane replied, warming to his subject. “He’s the overseer
of codes and ciphers, but I’ve looked into his service record and I think he
might be agreeable to our faction’s agenda.”

“How so?” Lucian replied. “Isn’t he more concerned with breaking alien
comms?”

“Yes, father,” Korvane said. “But I’ve uncovered details of his serving
alongside an Adeptus Terra diplomatic mission. The mission was to an eldar
craftworld.”

“Interesting,” Lucian said, his mind racing ahead of him, aware that such
contact was rare, but not unheard of. “I take it this particular mission was
especially out of the ordinary?”

“That it was, father.” Lucian could hear the smile on his son’s lip’s as he
spoke. “In that it did not end in mass bloodshed or planetary devastation.”

“Then you think Primaris Kilindini would be willing to back our intent. He’d
be willing to enter talks?”

“He is willing, father,” Korvane replied. “I’ve spoken to him already.”

“You’ve already…” Lucian bit back a stern reproach. He had after all left his
son to deal with things. “You’ve got his agreement? He’ll join us?”

“He will, father. And both Gauge and Jellaqua will back him too. You’ll have
to speak to Sarik and Rumann though.”

“Agreed,” Lucian replied. “And son?

“Well done.”

Brielle gripped the railing as she looked down from the high gallery
at the operations centre below. The whole chamber was shaped like the inside of
a huge sphere, with row upon row of galleries working downwards towards the
projector of a massive holograph in the very centre. Hundreds of tau officers
manned stations all around the galleries, with each of the four castes of the
tau race represented. Fire caste warriors coordinated ground operations, while
air caste representatives controlled impossibly complex fleet manoeuvres like it
was second nature. Earth caste leaders coordinated the logistics chain, while
the water caste facilitated communications and the smooth operation of the
entire endeavour. The tau war fleet was on the move again, a massive force
heading in-system towards Dal’yth Prime.

“There’s no way they’ll do anything but accept your terms when they see the
size of this fleet,” Naal said. Brielle’s response was to grip the white rail
all the tighter, lest she make some remark she would later come to regret.

“The evacuation is ninety-eight per cent complete,” Naal continued, oblivious
to Brielle’s feelings on the matter. “Ground forces are massing at Gel’bryn. The
crusade has stalled before it’s even got going.”

“Will you just…” Brielle started, but Naal interrupted her.

“Main viewer, Brielle,” Naal gestured towards the operations centre below.

As Brielle followed Naal’s gesture, the holograph came to life. A huge,
semi-transparent globe grew from a single blue point of light in the dead centre
of the spherical chamber. It expanded to become a representation of local space
the size of the entire chamber, so that even from the high gallery it filled
Brielle’s field of vision. A tau icon showed the location of Dal’yth Prime, and
a cluster of smaller symbols indicated the position of the crusade’s main ships
of the line. A string of smaller icons showed the Imperium’s supply vessels as
they plied to and fro from the edge of the system, and, presumably, towards the
Damocles Gulf.

Then the globe expanded still further, its outer surface almost within arm’s
reach, and Brielle was struck by how flawlessly the projection device operated
compared to its equivalents in humanity’s service. Her father’s flagship, the
Oceanid
, had such a device on its bridge, but much smaller and far less
reliable. The secret of the manufacture of hololiths, as the Imperium called
them, was a closely guarded secret known only to a handful of Adeptus Mechanicus
forge worlds, and Lucian’s had been gifted to an ancestor of the Arcadius as
reward for services rendered during the liberation of such a world from an ork
invasion.

The globe stabilised, the individual icons representing the Imperium’s
warships amalgamating into a single, distant rune. At the edge of the blue globe
there appeared a series of tau symbols that Brielle recognised as indicating
alien naval battle groups. Naal was right. The fleet that Brielle was travelling
on massively outnumbered the Imperium’s force. Even if the crusade could summon
reinforcements from across the Damocles Gulf, there was no way any would arrive
in time to save it.

But, according to Aura’s plan, the crusade would not need saving. It would
need reasoning with, negotiating with. The tau still believed, despite all the
evidence to the contrary, that the Imperium could be convinced to join the tau
empire and sign up to the Greater Good.

The tau were nothing if not optimistic, Brielle thought, a state of mind
rarely seen in the Imperium.

“Mistress Brielle,” the voice of the tau water caste envoy Aura sounded from
behind her. She forced herself to appear unconcerned, despite the fact that she
had not heard him coming. She was normally very good at detecting people
creeping up on her…

“Aura,” Brielle replied, bowing as the envoy came to stand beside her at the
railing. “I trust all is well?”

Aura nodded back, his features set in the now familiar sadness they always
showed. If it were not for the fact that the alien’s voice sounded equally as
melancholic Brielle might have concluded that he had some sort of condition, or
had perhaps been dropped on his head when he had been hatched.

“All is very well, Mistress Brielle,” Aura replied. “We are closing to within
tactical communications range and a link with the troops on Dal’yth Prime is now
possible. Such a link has been established, and is about to be displayed in the
unit below.”

Brielle was instantly suspicious. Was Aura planning on showing her the tau
gloriously defeating human troops? If so, why?

Aura’s black, almond-shaped eyes held hers for a moment, and then he turned
to the scene below. The representation of local space faded away, a mass of tau
symbols scrolling through the air, before the projection flickered and was
replaced by a monochromatic image that could only have been captured from a lens
mounted on a warrior’s armour.

“What am I seeing?” Brielle said, as much to herself as to the tau envoy.

“This is a real-time uplink from one of our glorious warriors, who even now
is deploying against the invaders. His name is Cali’cha, which you might
translate as ‘quick purpose’, though the term has no exact analogue in your
tongue. He is the leader of a crisis team, and he is closing on a group of the
warriors you call Space Marines.”

“He’ll be slaughtered,” Brielle muttered, causing Naal to cast a warning
glance her way.

“Have no fear, Mistress Brielle,” Aura replied having overheard, but
misconstrued her remark. “Cali’cha is a warrior of great experience and skill.
He has served the Greater Good with peerless dedication and knows well the ways
of human warriors.”

“Has he ever fought Space Marines?” Brielle said.

“His battle suit is well equipped to counter their armour, Mistress Brielle,
of that you may be certain.”

“Space Marines are more than armour…” Brielle started, but Aura had turned
his attentions to the holo projection.

It was night, and the tau were moving out from the outskirts of Gel’bryn
city, moving in graceful, bounding leaps powered by the thrusters mounted on the
suits’ backs. Cali’cha set down at the western shore of a river, and his two
companions appeared in his field of view. Each wore one of these “crisis” battle
suits, boxy missile launchers mounted at their backs and stubby energy weapons
on their arms. The team exchanged what Brielle took to be ritualised, pre-battle
words, each touching the tips of their weapons to a representation of a
ceremonial blade painted onto their armoured torsos. In the background, the
night sky flickered with distant explosions and tracer fire rose with seeming
laziness high into the air.

“The Imperium have moved their anti-air assets forwards, Mistress Brielle,”
Aura said, having seen her following the tracers as they arced high overhead.
She merely nodded, and Aura turned back to the projection.

Their ritual complete, the three warriors moved out, gathering speed as they
approached the river. At the very shore, they leaped high into the air, soaring
through the night sky with a grace Brielle had only seen amongst the alien
eldar. As they reached the height of their bound, the land ahead was revealed.
Distant artillery boomed and flashed, and insect-like gunships swept in low over
the shadowed terrain. A huge flash lit the entire horizon, and for a second,
Brielle saw the towering silhouette of what could only have been a war Titan of
the Adeptus Titanicus.

“They have commenced a bombardment of the city’s outer limits, Mistress
Brielle,” Aura said. That was not good, Brielle thought, knowing that her father
would have objected to such a course of action had he the power to affect it.
Clearly, the more hawkish elements of the crusade council were gaining the
ascendancy.

The crisis team set down on the opposite edge of the river, splashing down in
the shallows before making its way past a cluster of dome-shaped buildings at
its edge. Evidence of war was all around, from the scorched surfaces of the
nearby structures to the wounded tau warriors being evacuated by teams of earth
caste medics. It struck Brielle how well the tau treated their combat wounded,
each individual casualty being tended by an entire team of medical staff as they
were rushed away on anti-grav stretchers towards waiting medical vehicles. In
the Imperium, especially in the Imperial Guard, the wounded were often treated
at best as an inconvenience and at worst as malingerers. They would be treated,
most certainly, but not through compassion or sympathy, but more to get them
back in the fight as soon as possible so that their duty to the Emperor might be
done.

The crisis team passed quickly through what must have been a forward assembly
area, and came to rest in the lee of a dense fruit tree formation. A group of
gangly aliens rushed by, squawking and whistling as they disappeared into the
trees and were gone. The view panned left and then right, and Brielle saw that
the team had joined a larger force, consisting of at least five more groups of
battle suit warriors.

“Flawless,” Aura said to himself. “Mission commences in four…”

Now every tau in the chamber focussed their attentions on the huge
projection, an expectant silence settling across the scene. The crisis teams
turned towards the east, the sound of a heavy weapon pounding away nearby
filling the chamber. Then they were leaping forwards and the fruit trees were
rushing past below, the shadowy forms of the rangy aliens weaving through the
plantation.

Tracer rounds scythed upwards towards the battle suits as they powered
through the air, at first appearing to move as if in slow motion, but speeding
up as they closed. Brielle knew that only one in four or five of the heavy
bolter rounds would be filled with the chemicals that made them burn bright red,
and that the air must have been filled with a storm of shots far greater than
the eye could see.