03 - Savage Scars (26 page)

The warriors stood perfectly still for several minutes, and Brielle was
considering pressing on along the hall, through their midst towards the exit at
the other end. Then a swirling blue light appeared in the air over the warriors,
cast by projector units set flush into the walls of the hall. The light resolved
into a face, and with a start, Brielle realised it was the face of the water
caste envoy, Aura.

Brielle took a step backwards, her back pressing against the wall of the long
chamber. Every tau in the hall was looking towards the face of the envoy, which
towered high above. Aura appeared to be looking down at the assembled warriors,
making Brielle curse the fact that tau buildings and vessels were so starkly lit
there were no shadows she could retreat into.

Then the envoy started to address the warriors. Brielle was far from fluent
in the tau language, but she had been taught its basics and picked up more as
she had interacted with the race, especially those of the water caste. Aura
appeared to be briefing the warriors, informing them of the plan to use Brielle
as an envoy to the human fleet and to demand its surrender. The whole scene
struck Brielle as odd, for Aura was a diplomat, not a military leader. She could
think of no case where an Imperial diplomat would even think of explaining an
operation to the rank and file. Certainly a military leader might give the
troops a rousing speech to get their blood up, but briefing them on the
behind-the-scenes intricacies appeared to Brielle almost a complete waste of
time. It only served to remind her how alien the tau were from the human
mindset, and how out of place she really was.

After something like ten minutes, Aura concluded his address, and the massive
projection of his face appeared to sweep the ranks, something akin to pride in
his glassy, oval eyes. Then he said a phrase Brielle knew well from her time
amongst the tau.
“Tau’va”
:
“for the Greater Good.”
The thousand
assembled fire warriors repeated the phrase in unison, a thousand clenched fists
striking a thousand rigid chest plates. To Brielle’s great relief, the image of
the envoy faded, and the warriors filed out of the hallway.

After another five minutes, the warriors had left the hall, leaving only
ship’s crew passing along its length. Brielle cast another glance upwards
through the transparent ceiling, where Dal’yth Prime’s northern pole was still
visible. So too were several dozen other tau warships, the blue flare of their
plasma drives telling her they were assuming a station-keeping formation in high
orbit. A swarm of small motes of blue light clustered around each vessel and
plied the space between them, each the drive of a small picket, tender or
dispatch boat.

Clearly, the tau were readying for what they saw as their victory over the
Imperium. Brielle suppressed a snort of derision as she recalled her
conversations with Aura about the extent of human held space. No matter how she
had tried to convince him that the Emperor’s domains spanned two thirds of the
known galaxy and had stood for ten thousand years, he had refused to take her
seriously. He had talked often about how the peoples of the Imperium would be
welcomed into the tau empire, how they would willingly throw off the oppressive
regimes of despotic planetary governors when the truth of the Greater Good was
revealed to them. Eventually, Brielle had stopped trying to convince him
otherwise.

But out here, beyond the borders of the Imperium, the crusade was isolated
and exposed. The tau war fleet could certainly destroy it, though not without
great losses. All the more reason to get back to her father, Brielle knew, and
turn a potential disaster into an opportunity for gain.

Brielle smiled slyly as she hurried along.

The processional hallway several minutes behind her, Brielle was padding
along another starkly-lit passageway when she was forced to duck into a recessed
portal. Up ahead, she had seen a group of junior water caste envoys, and they
were heading in her direction.

The seconds dragged on as Brielle waited for the envoys to pass. She could
not be sure whether Aura had been amongst the group, for even though she was
well used to his features, tau faces still appeared to her far more homogenous
than those of humans. Several technicians strode past, followed by a fire
warrior in light armour carrying a long rifle across his shoulder. Just when she
thought the envoys had turned off, she heard their voices getting nearer, and
she simultaneously shrank back into the recess whilst straining her ears to
catch their conversation.

She thought she caught something about armed escorts, and then her own name
was mentioned. A moment later the envoys passed by the recess, and she held her
breath. Then they were gone, their voices receding down the corridor, and she
could breathe once again. Aura had not been amongst the group, but they had been
talking about her…

Gripped by a sudden sense of urgency, Brielle straightened up and stepped
from the recess as if she had every right to be there. She continued along the
passageway towards the shuttle bays, knowing that time was rapidly running out.

Eventually, Brielle came upon the
Dal’yth Il’Fannor O’kray’s
cavernous
shuttle bay. Sensing danger ahead, she had ducked into a technical bay as soon
as she had entered. Whatever intuition had made her do so, she was grateful
indeed, for Aura, a number of his water caste juniors and a group of at least
two-dozen fire warriors were waiting on the hardpan in front of the shuttle she
was expected to be taking to the crusade fleet.

The shuttle bay was huge, at least a hundred metres tall and three hundred
long. In common with the interiors of so many tau buildings and vessels it was
brightly-lit and constructed of the ubiquitous hard resin material. Unlike most
other areas, the bay showed some small signs of wear and tear, though even these
were as nothing compared to the uniform state of decay and disrepair an Imperial
facility of the same type would display. Small burn marks scuffed the hardpan,
the only evidence of the coming and going of countless shuttles and other small
vessels, at least a dozen of which were sat upon its surface. The far wall was
open, the cold void beyond held at bay by an energy shield which glittered with
dancing blue motes of light as a small lighter passed through and settled on
hissing jets to an area indicated by tau ground crew waving illuminated batons.

Through the open bay Brielle could see the surface of Dal’yth Prime. At least
two-thirds of the visible surface was land, and most of that dry and arid.
Nonetheless, there were patches of green dotted regularly across the land, which
Brielle guessed were belts of arable land surrounding each of the planet’s
cities. The seas were especially eye-catching, for they were a deeply serene
turquoise, sparkling with the light reflected from the Dal’yth system’s star.

From behind a row of fuel drums, Brielle strained her ears to catch what Aura
was saying to the group. Such a thing would have been impossible in a shuttle
bay on an Imperial vessel, which would have resounded with screaming jets,
shouting deck crew, the thuds and scrapes of cargo being dragged about, the
tread of lifters and a thousand other raucous sounds. The bay in front of her
was eerily quiet compared to that, with little more than a background hum
audible.

Aura was speaking in the tau tongue, but Brielle was by now well used to his
manner of speech and could pick out a fair amount of what he was saying. He was
telling the assembled tau to be ready to depart soon, for he was to return to
the vessel’s command centre from where he would be transmitting a communiqu� to
the human fleet. Aura’s message was to inform the crusade that their lost
daughter was returned, that she served the Greater Good with all her heart, and
that she was to go before them in the spirit of peace. Brielle’s heart sank, for
she knew that such a message would damn her. Even her father would find it next
to impossible to protect her from Grand, and then only if he did not reject her
and abandon her to her fate.

Brielle’s options were rapidly narrowing. It was too late to return to the
tau, and if that message got out to the crusade she would be doomed. Her earlier
notion of commandeering a lander to take her to the surface was looking
increasingly impracticable, for it appeared that the tau warriors assembled in
front of the shuttle were to be her honour guard.

Events were moving fast, but Brielle’s mind even faster.

Hunkering down in her hiding place, Brielle considered her priorities. First,
escape the tau vessel, then later, worry about getting a message to her father.
She had to get moving before Aura could deliver his message, to somehow contact
her father before the envoy ruined everything. She just had to get to the
surface…

Then it struck her. She did not need a lander to get to the surface. Her
heart raced as she leaned out from behind the drums and scanned the shuttle
bay’s outer bulkheads. Surely, there must be a…

There it was! A row of small hatches in the vessel’s outer skin, each edged
with yellow. It was what she had been looking for. All she had to do to get to
the surface was to reach a saviour pod, an emergency life raft designed to ferry
crew from a crippled vessel and if possible, to land them safely on the nearest
world.

The shuttle bay’s pods were out of the question, for she would have to skirt
the brightly-lit space in full view of her honour guard. But she knew there must
be others nearby, and so she hoisted her silver robes and padded off, back to
the bay entrance and the corridor beyond.

Once back in the passageway Brielle assumed an erect stance and forced
herself to walk at a normal pace. It became all but impossible for her to
maintain her composure as she saw in the middle distance another row of
yellow-edged hatches. She just had to pass a wide, open portal into a technical
bay, and she would be away.

Her head held high, Brielle walked past the entrance, hearing as she passed
the chatter and hum of the tau’s advanced, the Imperium would say heretical,
communications systems… the systems that Aura would soon be using to transmit
his damning message to the Damocles Gulf Crusade command council.

Brielle halted as she passed the entrance to the communications bay. Aura
would be on his way to the command centre at the vessel’s fore, but the
transmission systems were here, right in front of her. She turned her gaze from
the row of escape hatches not twenty metres away, and looked into the
communications centre, a sly grin curling her lips…

Lucian’s command post was all but abandoned, the fleet staff having
dismantled the majority of the tacticae-stations. It was dark outside, the cool
night air gusting in through the open portal as Lucian and Sarik entered. A
trusted cadre of Rakarshan staff officers manned those tacticae-stations that
had not yet been removed, and these stood up and left as Lucian dismissed them
with a curt gesture. Most of the remaining screens were blank, but two were not:
those showing the faces of General Wendall Gauge and Captain Rumann.

“Are you with me or are you not?” the general growled, his face looking to
Sarik even more craggy than normal. He swore he had seen Chogoran qhak-herders
in their eightieth year with fewer lines.

“You ask much, general,” Captain Rumann said, his voice metallic but
harbouring within it something of the raw furnace heat at the heart of the
forge. The Iron Hand’s voice was hard to read, but his features were even
harder, for both eyes and much of his face were made of metal, the weak flesh
replaced with infallible steel.

“I know, captain,” Gauge said. “But I repeat. Operation Hydra must go ahead
regardless of the inquisitor’s proclamation. We can take that star port and
scatter the tau before us, and within the twenty-four hour limit he has imposed.
If we do that, he’ll have no choice. We’ll have got the crusade moving again,
and he’ll have to call off his Exterminatus.”

“And if we take the star port,” Lucian added, “we still have the option of
using it to transport our own troops. In whichever direction.”

Sarik’s eyes narrowed as he considered Lucian’s words. The general and the
rogue trader were right; capturing the star port would put the crusade’s ground
forces in a powerful position, and force Gel’bryn’s defenders up against the
southern coastline. Sarik did not want to countenance using the star port to
evacuate, for there was little honour in doing so, but the plan opened up more
possibilities than simply going along with Grand’s order.

“I agree,” Sarik said, his mind made up. “There is no honour to be found in
evacuating now, and even less in enacting Exterminatus.”

General Gauge nodded his thanks, and Sarik and Lucian looked towards the pict
screen showing Captain Rumann.