03 - Savage Scars (25 page)

“The council thanks you, Korvane Gerrit,” Cardinal Gurney interrupted
Korvane’s petition. “Given the urgency of the situation I call upon those in
attendance to cast their votes.”

Now Sarik knew that something was definitely awry. Gurney had sidestepped
procedure and gone straight for a vote, as if he was not even concerned that
those proposed for council seats might be sympathetic to his rivals’ agenda.
Within a minute, each of the councillors had cast their votes and the three were
elected, their faces appearing on the three remaining screens.

“Welcome, then,” Gurney continued. “With that settled, I call upon General
Gauge to appraise the council of the strategic situation.” Sarik could not help
but read a note of smugness in Gurney’s voice, as if he looked forward to his
rival being forced to recount bad tidings.

“Thank you, cardinal,” Gauge scowled, his flint-hard eyes narrowing as he
spoke. “I have this hour received a full report from the Departmento Tacticae,
presenting a reappraisal of our enemy’s strengths and capabilities. Needless to
say, I have not had the time to fully assimilate the report, but I can summarise
what I have read simply enough.”

Sarik glanced around the screens, gauging the reaction of each of the
councillors. Admiral Jellaqua looked as dour as Gauge, while Captain Rumann was
as unreadable as ever. Gurney still looked smug, while Inquisitor Grand looked
downright triumphant. “He knows already,” Sarik whispered to Lucian, nodding
towards the screen showing the inquisitor’s face. Lucian nodded slightly in
reply.

“It now appears that the tau are a substantially more established race than
previous intelligence maintained,” Gauge continued. “Their domain is larger by a
factor of ten than initially estimated, and their technology far more
dangerous.”

“And what do you propose, general, to overcome this situation?” Cardinal
Gurney interjected. “Given the evident perniciousness of our foe, how shall we
defeat it?”

It was obvious that Gurney was attempting to bait the general, to force him
to admit that conventional military tactics would not prevail. Sarik doubted the
veteran warrior would rise to so crude a tactic, and was pleased to be proven
correct.

“My staff have been busy preparing a new plan, cardinal,” Gauge replied, his
voice dry and dangerous. “I propose Operation Hydra.”

“I don’t think—” Cardinal Gurney began, before he was interrupted by Lucian.

“I would hear the general’s plan,” Lucian said.

“So too would I,” said Sarik.

Admiral Jellaqua and Captain Rumann added their ascent, and Gauge continued.
“I propose a rapid breakout across River 992, crossing using the bridge at the
settlement designated Erinia Beta. By massing the Titans and the armoured units
of the Brimlock Dragoons, we can take the city’s star port and push the enemy
back against the southern coast.”

“And what then?” Inquisitor Grand spoke for the first time. “When the star
port is in your hands and the tau beaten back, what would be your next course of
action?”

General Gauge’s cold eyes swept the screens in front of him, evidently
measuring carefully his next words.

“Having taken the star port, we will have reached a tipping point,” Gauge
said. “The tau will not be able to bring in any more reinforcements, and the
city will be ours for the taking. In fact, we can use it to bring in our own,
without the need to bring units through the desert from the landing zone.

“But there is this,” Gauge continued, his voice suddenly low. “The
reinforcements we were promised at the outset of the crusade have not
materialised. Without these, we may have to consider—”

“There are to be no reinforcements, general,” Inquisitor Grand interrupted.

Silence descended on the council and in the command post, all eyes now
focussed on the inquisitor.

“Explain,” Gauge said, his eyes glinting with murderous incredulity. “What do
you mean, inquisitor?”

“This crusade is over,” Grand said, pulling back his hood as he spoke. His
features were twisted and scarred, the result of Lucian’s daughter attacking him
with a flame weapon before she had fled the crusade and disappeared. In amongst
the scars, Grand’s face was decorated by a swirling mass of tattoos, describing
esoteric runes and symbols. His eyes had no lids, a deliberate message that his
gaze would see all and never falter. At his neck was the red-wax seal of the
Inquisitorial rosette, the irrefutable font of an inquisitor’s power and
authority.

The message was quite clear.

“The tau are to be exterminated, one world at a time. I have heard all I will
of pride and honour. They are xenos, and they deserve no mercy. Exterminatus
shall commence in precisely twenty-four hours, by which time any ground units
not evacuated will be left to their fate.”

A stunned silence followed, before Admiral Jellaqua spluttered, “The council
must vote—”

“There is no council!” Grand boomed, the first time he had raised his voice
above a sibilant whisper in all the council sessions Sarik had attended. “I
hereby invoke the authority invested in me by this rosette. My orders are to be
obeyed as if they came from the High Lords themselves.”

The Inquisition had such power throughout the Imperium that in theory, its
servants could do as they pleased, enacting every possible sanction from summary
execution all the way up to planetary devastation, for the survival of humanity.
In practice, however, the extent of an inquisitor’s power relied on his standing
within the Inquisition, and the broader strategic and political situation. To
Sarik’s mind, Inquisitor Grand was on anything but firm ground, dealing as he
was with highly placed officials and far from the Imperium’s borders.

Sarik reached a decision, and was on the verge of speaking when Lucian
gripped his forearm, and subtly shook his head. Anger welled up inside the White
Scar, a feeling that honour and duty were being set aside for the aggrandisement
of the inquisitor and his pet firebrand cardinal. The thought of the inquisitor
unleashing a virus bomb and enacting Exterminatus filled him with seething fury,
for where was the honour in reducing every last scrap of biological matter on
Dal’yth Prime to a rancid gruel?

He took a deep breath, and Lucian redoubled his grip on his forearm. “Sarik!”
Lucian hissed. “We’ll deal with this, but not now, not like this…”

Sarik forced himself to calm, and nodded back at Lucian. The rogue trader was
correct; Sarik knew that. Then his attention was turned back to the screen that
showed Gurney’s smirking face as the cardinal addressed the council.

“So there it is,” Gurney crowed. “I suppose it falls to me as chair to close
this convocation. Each of you shall be receiving his orders in due course, and
these will be obeyed without question, on the authority of the Inquisition. That
is all.”

“That is all?” Sarik fumed as he and Lucian stalked away from the command
post. “How dare he speak like—”

“Friend,” Lucian said, coming to a halt and placing a hand on the Space
Marine’s shoulder armour. “You are a warrior of great renown, and I have nothing
but admiration for your battlefield skills…”

“But?” Sarik interjected. It was obvious there would be a “but”.

“But,” Lucian smiled as he went on. “The council is not your native
battleground. I don’t mean that—”

“I know, Lucian,” said Sarik, smiling himself. “You are going to say that
around the council table, my skills are no more deadly than those of a
neophyte.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to go quite that far,” Lucian said. “But essentially,
yes. There is far more going on here than we just witnessed.”

“What else is happening?” asked Sarik, frustrated once more by petty
politicking. “What did I miss?”

Lucian looked back towards the command post, where several dozen staff
officers and Tacticae advisers were already starting to break down the tacticae-stations
and pict screens.

“I think we need to speak with Gauge and Jellaqua, Sarik. I fear there’s a
lot more fighting ahead of us yet.”

Quietly, so that she did not wake the slumbering Naal, Brielle pulled the
glittering water caste robes around her body and made for the door of her living
quarters. She made no attempt to arrange the formal attire in the intricate
manner it had originally been arrayed in; she had no intention of taking part in
Aura’s plan, and would not be playing the role he had ordained for her.

Pausing at the hatch, Brielle looked back into the chamber. Naal stirred, but
did not awaken. She was leaving, not just Naal, who she had shared her life with
these last few months, but the tau and the Greater Good. On the dresser beside
the bed was the pendant Aura had given her, the symbol of the tau empire. She
was leaving that too.

Brielle took a deep breath, knowing that she once again stood upon the
precipice. She had been here before; the last time when she had made the
decision to leave Clan Arcadius and follow Naal into the service of the tau
empire. Now all of that seemed like a dream from which she was slowly waking.
The tau, she now knew, were no different from the clan or the Imperium. They
expected her to play her part in their great games, to subsume herself within
the greater ideal. How was that any different from her former life? The only
difference she could discern was that the tau offered her no way to forge her
own destiny, while her life as a rogue trader at least allowed her some control
of her fate.

Her hand hovered above the hatch control rune, and for a brief moment she
considered rejoining Naal and accepting her fate. But the notion passed as
quickly as it had come, and her mind was made up. She blew the sleeping Naal a
last kiss, and opened the hatch.

The door slid open silently, and in an instant she had slipped through into
the brightly-lit passageway outside. As the hatch closed behind her, she took a
second to straighten her robes and brush down her dishevelled, plaited locks.
She doubted the tau would notice the state of her hair, but they had taken great
care in the arrangement of her ceremonial robes, and she did not want a stray
glance to raise suspicion. Barefoot, for there was no way she was wearing the
hideous shoes the tau had given her, she strode forth along the passageway, her
mind racing as she formulated a plan.

She knew that she had to return to the crusade and throw herself upon her
father’s mercy. That much was clear, for Inquisitor Grand would try to execute
her the instant he discovered she was still alive. During their last encounter
Brielle had assaulted him, burning him almost fatally with a burst of the
micro-flamer secreted in one of the ornate rings she wore. She still wore that
xenos-crafted ring, but it contained only enough fuel for one more burst.
Hopefully, she would not have to use it.

She continued along the passageway, passing several earth caste technicians
going about their business with typical efficiency. None appeared to pay her any
notice. She was headed along the vessel’s central spine, making towards the
shuttle bay she knew to be located amidships in one of the huge modular sections
slung beneath the ship’s backbone. Several possibilities came to mind as she
padded along the hard white floor.

The first possibility she had already discounted. She could have played along
with the whole charade, playing her role as envoy to the crusade. Instead of
delivering the tau’s message that the Imperium should surrender itself to the
Greater Good, she could simply have told the truth. But that would not work,
because Inquisitor Grand was sure to be amongst those she addressed, and there
was no way the mind-thief psyker would let her live after what she had done to
him.

The next possibility was to steal a shuttle and make for the crusade fleet.
Again, that was extremely dangerous, for not only would she have to penetrate
the shuttle bay and force a pilot to ferry her to the fleet, she might simply be
blasted by the first picket vessel she encountered. Still, stealing a shuttle
could work, if she could find a way of getting to the fleet or to her father
without appearing in the crosshairs of a trigger-happy naval gun crew.

That left the third option, which Brielle was rapidly deciding was the only
way to come through this alive. She would head to the shuttle bay and commandeer
an interface craft. She would make for the surface, and from there try somehow
to rejoin the crusade’s ground forces. Perhaps agents of her father were down
there, or even her father himself. Even if they were not, she could find a way
of infiltrating the staff and from there make her way back to the fleet.

Her mind resolved, Brielle arrived at a junction. There were more tau here,
technicians and soldiers busying themselves with preparations for making orbit.
The
Dal’yth Il’Fannor O’kray
was approaching Dal’yth Prime from the
opposite side to the Imperial war fleet, in the hope that the tau would gain the
element of surprise when they revealed themselves and demanded the crusade
receive their envoy. As large as a warship was, it was still a speck of dust
compared to the bulk of a planet, and there was a lot of orbital space. Brielle
calculated the odds, and came to the conclusion that even if the tau were
discovered on their final approach it would still take several hours for the
crusade fleet to deploy into a battle stance.

Then Brielle turned another corner, and the sight she saw her made her halt.
The passageway opened up into a long processional chamber, banners hanging from
the tall walls. The entire ceiling was transparent, affording a breathtaking
view of space. It was not only the black of the void that was visible, but the
upper hemisphere of the planet Dal’yth Prime.

The tau war fleet had arrived in orbit around the embattled world. Brielle
knew that she had mere hours to escape, if even that.

The sound of a thousand boots stamping the deck resounded through the hall,
and Brielle lowered her gaze from the sight above. The chamber was filled with
tau warriors arrayed in such precise ranks that the sternest of Imperial Guard
commissars would have been proud. They wore the distinctive, hard-edged armour
plates protecting shoulders, torsos and thighs, as well as the blank-faced,
ovoid helmets. The armour was painted a mid tan colour, which Brielle knew from
her talks with Aura to be the most appropriate scheme for the dry worlds that
the tau favoured.