Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

The Arkunasha War - Andy Chambers

About the Author

Legal

The Arkunasha War

Andy Chambers

Cymbals and drums sounded tinny and distant in the thin, cold air as they welcomed him to the new world. Looking down from the top of the ramp, the shuttle’s only passenger seemed surprised to find any kind of welcoming committee, even one as small and dispirited as this one, awaiting him. High overhead, twin suns lit the scene with a fierce glare but little warmth; what little heat there was to be had was being ripped away by a chilling breeze filled with fine, irritating dust. Gentle ripples of rust-red sand marked the edge of the landing pad and marched off towards the foreshortened horizon with monotonous discipline. A small collection of domes, blocks and stubby towers in the mid-distance constituted the apparent entirety of Arkunasha’s one and only colony, the handful of off-white shapes looking lonely and isolated on the too-wide canvas of an empty world.

The newcomer was tall and broad-shouldered, and showed scarification, unusual in a society with the capacity to heal any such blemish at will. A warrior, clearly, past his first flush of youth but still vital. There was a penetrating look to his dark eyes as he squinted through the glare and stinging dust at the welcoming party, wishing he had accepted a filter plug for his nasal slit when the shuttle pilot had offered him one. He beheld the tall, serene-looking profile of the colony leader and the squat shape of the chief engineer among a handful of others at the bottom of the ramp. One of the cymbal players, a wiry-looking fellow with blue facial markings, broke away from the small crowd and hurried upwards.

‘Please to be meeting with the exalted prince, great warrior, I, unworthy associate, will conduct you hence if willing?’

‘Of course, I…’ But the low ranking associate was already backing away and gesturing as if to draw the warrior forward on invisible strings. The bemused warrior followed him, his armoured toe-hooves clacking down the ramp and onto the first true ground he’d touched in weeks of travel.

‘To make introductions,’ the associate said, gesturing to the broad-shouldered warrior and the colony leader in turn. ‘This great warrior is Shas’o Vior’la Kais Mont’yr. This exalted prince is Aun’o T’au Vasoy Ty’asla.’

The warrior knelt before the stately aun’o and bowed his head before rising and addressing him.

‘Aun’o, I am flattered that you came to meet me but I would not have discomforted you so.’

The aun’o’s face was thin and high boned, virtually a T-shape with a narrow slit of a mouth at the bottom that radiated faint but constant disapproval. The aun’o’s mark of celestial devotion gleamed from the top of his nasal slit like a third eye. When he spoke his voice seemed dull and flat, a disinterested burr.

‘Nonsense, shas’o, it was only seeming for me to be present in order to make acquaintance and welcome you to Arkunasha at the first moment of your arrival.’

The associate cleared his throat and rattled his cymbals quietly before speaking again.

‘Also, great and exalted ones, here is honoured trustee fio’ui Ke’lshan.’ The portly engineer nodded stiffly to the warrior, who saluted him in return.

‘We shall have much to discuss, fio’ui,’ the warrior said politely, ‘and I hope we can work closely together for the protection of the colony.’

The flat-faced engineer gave a non-committal grunt at the prospect, eliciting the shadow of a frown on the warrior’s face. The associate smoothly broke into the moment of silence that followed.

‘Please to be moving to the concourse area where refreshments are now being served.’ Taking their cue the drums and cymbals rattled again as the water caste members began leading the way towards a torus–shaped structure nearby. The warrior refused to be immediately drawn after them, addressing a question to the associate.

‘And where are the warriors I am to command? I am surprised to find that they have left greetings, welcome as they are, to others, while absenting themselves.’

The aun’o answered directly, cutting across the associate’s platitudes even as they began.

‘The shas’la are sulking in their barracks after being refused permission to bring weapons along to a greeting. They declared that they would rather go naked than suffer the shame of being disarmed at the first encounter with their shas’o! This, on a world completely empty of any other living beings save for ourselves. Just whom do they propose to shoot, I wonder?’ The aun’o tittered briefly at the thought, before subsiding into an indulgent clucking. The frown returned to the shas’o’s face and remained there.

‘What’s that supposed to be?’

‘It’s a world, boss, the mekboss wants to go there.’

Ork Warboss Gorbag Gitbiter leaned forward, peering down at the wiry little gretchin before his throne. The gretchin quaked, the big shard of glass in its hands quivering and making the dirty yellow-brown ball on its surface bounce around uncertainly.

‘The mekboss, eh?’ Gorbag rumbled with a voice like stones tumbling down a shaft. ‘Well, I’m the warboss and I say where we go!’

The gretchin rocked back on its heels at the blast of sound and spittle flying from the impressively tusked jaws of the hulking warboss. It desperately wanted to chuck away the viewing glass and run off behind a console or into a duct, but it was smart enough not to try. The complex symbiotic relationship between the warlike orks and their smaller, weaker gretchin cousins has long depended on the quick wits and diplomacy of the latter. Thousands of years of genetic heritage conspired to keep the gretchin’s mind focussed enough to squeal out the words that might save it.

‘The mekboss said the ships are gonna break if we don’t go!’

The warboss paused at that. Glaring red eyes pierced the quivering gretchin with new interest.

‘What… did you just say?’

The gretchin’s healthy green pallor had gained a distinctly whitish cast, the world in the viewing glass oscillated tightly back and forth in its grip.

‘The mekboss said to tell you we got too many holes. Some are so big the boys are falling out and all the... the breathy stuff is leakin’ out.’

Gorbag thrust his mighty jaw out truculently. ‘Breathy stuff? You mean the air, you stupid little grot?’

‘Yes, boss!’

‘So we’re gonna be stuck there?’ Gorbag’s three-metre tall form seemed to sag at the prospect. No more reaving across the stars for him and his bloodthirsty crew of freebooters; they would be stuck on one stinking planet with no way off it and nothing to fight but each other.

‘No, boss! The mekboss says there’s metal on this world. We can fix all the holes an’ keep goin’!’

Gorbag seemed to swell up visibly at the prospect. He grabbed the viewing glass from the gretchin with a gnarled claw as big as its torso and glared at it with a rapacious gleam in his eyes. The gretchin failed to relinquish its grip quickly enough and ended up dangling from Gorbag’s fist by one arm.

‘Anything to kill?’ Gorbag demanded.

‘No, boss,’ the grot squeaked apologetically, ‘leastways nothing good.’

The shas’o found the warriors beneath his command awaiting him at their barracks, just as the aun’o had said. The warriors stood in ranks inside the quadrangle formed between their quarters, garages and armoury. Each was in full armour, the jointed plates giving them an insectile quality in the harsh glare of the twin suns. They held their pulse rifles upright before them, long-barrelled firing chambers pointing rigidly at the skies. Small mounds of windblown dust reaching up to their ankles showed they had been silently awaiting him for quite some time. The shas’o dropped his single carry bag with an audible clank before blowing out his cheeks in a long-suffering sigh.

‘And just what is the meaning of this?’ he shouted in a parade ground bark very different to the tone he had used with the aun’o and fio’ui. A fire warrior with the stripes of a shas’ui took a step forward and replied.

‘It is my responsibility, shas’o,’ the shas’ui said, their voice made slightly distorted by the audio pickup of their enclosed helmet. ‘Any punishment due is mine alone.’

A murmur of discontent rippled out behind the shas’ui as they spoke and the forest of pulse rifles swayed slightly in response. The shas’o raised a hand to silence it.

‘I am led to understand you all refused to leave your barracks unarmed? On the idea that it would shame you in my eyes not to greet me as warriors?’

‘The aun’o believes that with no enemies present our weapons are only a danger to ourselves and others, shas’o, The shas’ui replied cautiously. ‘The exalted one believes us too ill-trained and unreliable to bear arms.’

‘Enough! Put down your weapons at once!’ The shas’o barked. As one, the assembled fire warriors placed their rifles on the ground. ‘Now take off your armour. You heard me, every piece!’

The shas’o watched while the warriors more hesitantly unclipped shoulder guards and breastplates, thigh pieces and curved helmets. The shas’ui proved to be an attractive female with a fine scalp-lock, the others lost their uniformity and were revealed as a selection of males and females of a young age, few probably even close to their first trial by fire. The variety of their physiognomy showed that they hailed from a variety of different septs. There were some dark faces from Vior’la that were eyeing him with approval, a gaggle of pallid D’yanoi that look confused, several Sa’ceans that obeyed quickly and efficiently without hesitation.

Finally, each warrior’s weapon and armour sat beside them in the dirt and they stood shivering in only their undersuits. The shas’o walked over to the shas’ui’s neat little pile of equipment and kicked it over.

‘These objects do not make you a warrior!’ he shouted into her face. He stalked to another pile and scattered it, catching the owner’s look of horror as their cherished pulse rifle clattered to the ground. He laughed, a short, harsh sound within the confines of the quad, and pushed another warrior in the chest causing them to stagger back a pace.

‘The will, the ability to fight, to be a warrior, does not reside in your weapons, nor is it inside your armour unless you bring it there yourself! The warrior begins within, a warrior is one who still fights with whatever they have and with nothing at all if they must!’

The shas’o had their complete attention now; every eye was on him and he saw the unconscious flaring of nasal slits in approval on many faces. He bent down and drew two fighting sticks from his carry bag, ironwood rods as long and as thick as his forearm. He tossed one into the dust before the fire warriors and hefted the other in his fist.

‘Now… who among you is enough of a warrior to fight me for the right to put your armour back on?’

Two days later, a Devilfish personnel carrier skimmed over low dunes with all the smooth agility of its namesake, its graceful lines speeding across the sands. Inside, the shas’o watched the external monitors with interest, noting the tall double plume of dust snaking in their wake that would be visible for miles. He bore the pain of his bruises stoically, as did the five other fire warriors beside him in the passenger compartment.

He’d beaten all of them, one on one, even though it had taken all night and most of the next day. The smarter ones had waited until he was tired before taking their chances, managing to get a few telling strikes on him. Afterwards, the shas’o had fought them in pairs and groups to allow them a little revenge. Not bad, but some of them really were ill-trained and all of them were very inexperienced. More importantly, they were now thinking of themselves as warriors again, instead of scolded children. He turned to the shas’ui, raising his voice above the whine of the Devilfish’s ducted turbines.

‘No other living things on the entire planet?’

‘Nothing at all, not a plant, not an animal’. The shas’ui’s responses were clipped and coolly professional but the shas’o could tell that she was barely holding her excitement in check. The aun’o, in his ineffable wisdom, had virtually confined the fire warriors to their barracks for fear of accidents or unnecessary wear and tear on their equipment. The current reconnaissance run into the desert would be their first training hunt in months.

‘But our colony here is purported to extend over three quarters of the planet’s surface,’ the shas’o prodded.

‘That is something of an exaggeration, shas’o, the main colony is here in the Argap highlands. The fio have indeed established many other facilities but they are all small, highly automated and widely dispersed.’

‘Their purpose?’

‘Metal extraction and purifcation. The sands we are traversing bear huge quantities of metallic oxides mixed with silica and carbon. The fio believe them to be the detritus of a civilization that once covered this world.’

The shas’o blinked with surprise. ‘My briefing material said nothing about this, perhaps you jest with me, shas’ui?’

The shas’ui gestured at the red dunes sliding past on the monitors. ‘No, shas’o, I do not jest. The sands you see out there really are composed of rust. The fio don’t know whether the gue’la or or’es’la lived here, certainly it was a long time ago.’ She paused. ‘Permission to ask a question, shas’o?’

‘Granted– I value obedience, but ignorance is a weapon placed in our enemy’s hands. What is it?’

‘Your name – Shas’o Vior’la Kais Mont’yr. You’ve earned two adjuncts to your name already. You have seen battle and been named as skilful by your fellow warriors. You must have passed at least three trials by fire to achieve the rank of shas’o…’

‘I’m sure you have a question in there somewhere, shas’ui. What’s troubling you?’

‘It’s just… why would the shas’ar’tol send someone like you to a place like this? Surely you would do more good in an active conflict region than being crèche supervisor in some forgotten outpost.’

‘I go where the greater good commands, like any diligent student of the Tau’va,’ the shas’o replied. ‘If my seniors at high command believe I can have the most effect here, then that becomes my singular purpose and I give no thought to potential glories lost elsewhere.’

The shas’ui looked at him in frank disbelief, and seemed to be trying to deduce just who he had offended and how. She opened her mouth to ask another, probably even more impertinent, question when the Devilfish lurched suddenly, banking sharply to one side. The fire warriors were thrown against their restraining harnesses with a chorus of suppressed groans. On the monitors, the shas’o caught a glimpse of a yawning darkness amid the dunes that rapidly vanished down one side of the personnel carrier.

‘Canyon,’ the shas’ui explained. ‘Natural erosion cuts channels into the desert, they–’

‘I know– that part was in the briefing materials. It also means we’ve arrived at our destination. Prepare to disembark.’

The sand-laden winds had ground the exposed rim of the canyon to a pitted smoothness. Across the gap, the far cliff was marked with uneven bands of strata made up of a fantastic array of reds, browns and blacks. Thirty metres below, on the canyon floor, spires and mushrooms of basalt protruded from a bed of rust-coloured sand. Behind the shas’o, three Devilfish carriers lifted off in unison and turned their elegantly curved prows back towards base. Three bemused squads of fire warriors were left standing in the thick cloud of dust kicked up by their departing personnel carriers. They looked questioningly at the shas’o. He opened a common frequency to address them all.

‘Until now, you’ve only thought about these canyons as obstacles to be crossed,’ the shas’o told them. ‘We’re here to learn that they can be your best ally or your worst enemy. In this hunt, you must simply return to the colony without being tagged. The Devilfish will be patrolling the desert and hostile pathfinders and gun drones are in the canyons. Question one, which way do you go?’

‘Through the canyons, shas’o,’ the shas’ui responded promptly.

‘Very good,’ nodded the shas’o. ‘Now tell me why.’

‘The Devilfish would easily detect us and tag us in the open.’

‘You discount the threat of pathfinders and gun drones?’

‘No, but the pathfinders will require support to stop us and the Devilfish will be highly restricted if they enter the canyons. The gun drones can be outsmarted or outfought one on one as necessary.’

‘I concur with your theories, shas’ui. Now let’s go and put them to the test. Pay close attention because we will be performing another hunt out here tomorrow, with battlesuits.’

Pulse blasts criss-crossed the canyon in a flickering web of light. Every nook and cranny seemed to birth and receive its own false lightning faster than the eye could follow. After a week of successive hunts in the desert, the fire warriors were improving, the shas’o noted with approval. The blue ‘prey’ cadre in this hunt had turned on their pursuers and caught them with a classic mont’ka, a killing blow. The strung-out red cadre suddenly found their lead elements caught in a canyon too narrow to redeploy in. In thirty more seconds the surrounded warriors would be cut down and the red cadre would become prey.

The shas’o and his team leapt from the canyon lip eighty metres above, the flat plates of their crisis battlesuits gleaming in the bright suns. Blue-white stabs of flame from their shoulder-packs steadied their fall as the canyon floor rushed up to greet them. At the last second, their jetpacks kicked in and robbed them of their momentum, their duralloy leg-claws crunching into the sands in unison. The three-metre tall armoured suits raised arm-mounted weapon pods and rapid bursts of plasma rifle fire ripped into the firefight from a new angle.

The blue cadre ambushers were caught between the crisis suits and the red cadre survivors. Decisive action could still have saved them; enough were combat effective that a concerted attack on either the battlesuits or the reds might have still carried the fight. But the blue cadre’s cohesion had disintegrated when the crisis team landed. They panicked and fought their own immediate battles without regard to what was happening behind them. In a few seconds, the moment had passed and the red cadre carried the blue’s position. The blue’s hasty ambush became their last stand.

‘You cheated!’ the shas’ui was standing before the shas’o’s suit, glaring defiantly up into the monitor lenses that peppered its head. The shas’ui’s own light armour was discoloured where simulated plasma fire had killed her in the fight.

‘I’m sorry, shas’ui, in what way did I cheat?’ The voice came from the battlesuit’s external speakers, somewhere in its midriff.

‘You said that you would observe and take no part in the action!’

‘I did, but sometimes in combat you will also find things to be different to what you anticipated.’ The suit’s speaker made the statement flat and unaffected, yet it ended the shas’ui’s tirade as if she had been struck.

‘I apologise, shas’o. I did not mean to impugn your teaching.’

The heavily-armoured suit raised one weapon-mounted arm in a curiously lifelike gesture of conciliation. ‘No, it is I that should apologise, shas’ui. The reds were fairly caught, and credit is due to you for that. I felt there was no further lesson left to be learned there. However, there was still a lesson for you to learn. Can you tell me what it was?’

‘No rearguard,’ the shas’ui said bitterly. ‘When I was sure we’d caught them, I didn’t detail anyone to watch our back.’

The shas’o broadcast his findings on the hunt to all of the fire warriors present, reds and blues alike.

‘You have fought well, but with mistakes on both sides. Overlooking that a force of which you are unaware might come against you during an engagement is an easy mistake to make, just as easy as rushing headlong after a fleeing enemy and suffering a reverse. Natural eagerness to turn every weapon on the acquired target can obscure the need for a rearguard, or a reserve, to cover the eventuality that all does not proceed as hoped for. Learn from this.’

The shas’ui was studying the patina of simulated pulse rifle hits on the commander’s suit. ‘Are those mine?’ she eventually asked when the shas’o’s wisdom had been dispensed.

‘Indeed they are. Some nice grouping, shas’ui.’

‘I’ll get you next time.’

It took two more weeks of training hunts before the fio’ui took exception to the additional maintenance burden the fire warriors were incurring. As the shas’o returned to the barracks after dusk, he sighted the fio’ui’s dumpy form waiting patiently beside the gate post like some carved heathen icon.

They had been using battlesuits again that day, and the shas’o’s was close to the limits of its endurance. The suit’s armoured casing was streaked with smears of dust and its clogged servos whined plaintively with every step. They’d found that the crisis battlesuits were excellent for supporting the troopers in the close confines of the canyons, far more practical than the larger Devilfish or Hammerhead support vehicles. The only downside was the battlesuit’s limited endurance, which meant they would need to cache extra power cells to operate in areas remote from the colony.

The shas’o’s mind was filled with plans as he approached, but the sight of the fio’ui gave him pause. He halted the crisis suit and opened its chest cavity so that he could dismount and meet the fio’ui face-to-face. One of the earth caste would never be intimidated by a piece machinery, however martial its function, but it never hurt to show some politeness to another caste. The fio’ui was of the Kel’shan Sept, and so apt to be stubborn and mistrustful of outsiders at the best of times.

‘Greetings, fio’ui,’ the shas’o began. ‘You come without the por’la at your side. Am I to understand that this is a social visit with no call for negotiation?’

‘You understand wrongly,’ the fio’ui grumbled. ‘I have come to inform you that your… outings must stop. There is serious work to be done and my apprentices are being distracted by your indulgence.’

‘Training is no indulgence, fio’ui, if my warriors are to retain any value as a fighting force. Just as your own apprentices would not expect a mechanism to function if it was left unattended, I cannot expect my warriors to fight if they never lift a weapon.’

The fio’ui thrust his jaw out truculently and began again. ‘It must stop. The aun’o demands maximum output.’ Having evoked the name of the aun’o, the engineer closed his mouth and moved to leave, as if no more need be said.

‘Wait, fio’ui,’ the shas’o said. ‘Even absent the por’la can we not come to compromise?’

The fio’ui seemed a little shocked by the concept, but he paused to listen. Encouraged by his own boldness, the shas’o pressed his point further.

‘I have many pairs of idle hands on Arkunasha colony, not to mention numerous drones without true purpose. Teach my fire warriors how to perform their own maintenance schedules and I will have them assist in monitoring the extraction and purification facilities across the planet. You would exceed your estimated output in no time.’

The fio’ui’s heavy brow furrowed uncertainly as he wrapped his mind around the unfamiliar concept. His voice was still gruff but there was a gleam of hope in his eye. ‘The shas’la would refuse,’ he muttered. ‘You of the fire caste have always believed manual labour beneath you.’

‘Bold words,’ shas’o smiled, ‘some fire warriors would demand satisfaction for their bruised honour on hearing them. I am not so ignorant and I’m ready to shoulder my burdens alongside my brothers and sisters. The shas’la will obey my commands, and they are just as eager to be of more value to this colony. Only caste barriers prevent their willing contribution to it.’

‘Very well, shas’o, I shall consider your unorthodox proposal and discuss with my own kind. I… thank you for your time.’

The shas’o watched the chief engineer shuffle away through dim pools of illumination cast by the colony lights. He smiled to himself. Another opponent laid low by a surprise attack. After a time he went inside to prepare briefings for the next training hunt.

Fire and iron thundered out of the void with twisting, belching black trails chasing at its back. One, two, then three fiery meteors were vomited from the sullen skies, the clouds peeling back in ragged tatters where the smoking lances pierced them from above. Distance made the churning smoke and fire trails seem absurdly slow-moving as their burning tips crawled across the sky.

The shas’o watched the apocalyptic sight through the screens of the colony information center. A crisp line of characters at the bottom of the image announced that it was being relayed from a metal extraction and purification facility somewhere on the far side of the planet.

‘Still no word from the Vior’la Gal’leath M’shan?’ he asked.

The fio’la technicians hunched their shoulders helplessly. The only ship within communication range of Arkunasha colony had dropped off the grid hours before. All their attempts to raise it had met with stubborn silence. The fio’ui was clinging tenaciously to the idea of a meteor storm being responsible for the break in communications. He gestured sharply at the screens.

‘Meteors, see?’ the engineer grunted. ‘They’re starting to break up.’

A handful of smoking coals were indeed dropping away from churning masses and curving downward at a steeper trajectory. The shas’o shook his head as most of the smaller smoke trails corkscrewed and levelled out just before they hit the ground. One came rocketing straight towards the extraction facility, creating a momentary impression of something big and close before the image disintegrated into static.

‘Facility 7352 is no longer transmitting, fio’ui,’ one of the fio’la called apologetically.

‘Because those are Ore’s’la ships and attack craft, not meteors,’ the shas’o said quietly. ‘Fio’ui, I need you to tell your people to prepare for evacuation–’

‘You will do nothing of the kind, fio’ui,’ the aun’o’s voice rang out in the quiet information centre as he swept in through the outer doors. ‘There is no call for such precipitous action at this time.’

The aun’o stood at the entry surrounded by a small coterie of nervous-looking water caste members. His expression was that of a tutor finding his students engaged in some distasteful, and probably illegal, activity.

‘My apologies, aun’o,’ the shas’o replied somewhat tautly, ‘but the protection of this colony is my responsibility and I must advise immediate evacuation.’

‘Because a handful of pirates have landed on the far side of the planet? Something of an overreaction on your part. Understandable, I suppose – this must be very exciting for you.’

‘Apologies again, aun’o, but this is no mere handful of pirates. Or’es’la ships of that size carry tens of thousands of their warrior caste. I have insufficient forces to defeat them all when they locate the colony. We must remain mobile to stay ahead of the invaders until reinforcements can arrive.’

‘Don’t you mean if they locate the colony, shas’o?’

‘I mean what I say. It will only be a matter of time before the Or’es’la locate more of the extraction facilities, and believe me they will trace them back to us. They will travel any distance to find battle, aun’o – we must not be here when they arrive.’

Aboard the lead ork cruiser, Warboss Gorbag Gitbiter gripped the arms of his command throne and laughed uproariously at the sight of orks and grots being hurled around the ship’s bridge. Smoke and blasts of flame accompanied their thunderous progress through the skies. The vibrations running through the ship felt like a thousand jackhammers were being jammed against its patchwork armour plating.

Gorbag mashed random buttons on the arm of his throne until a frightened-sounding grot voice squeaked from a speaker grill in response.

‘Tell the flyboys it’s time to drop and give ‘em a boot up the arse from me,’ Gorbag growled happily. With nothing to kill on this planet, the landing was going to be the most fun part and he was going to squeeze out every bit of it. Distant clunks reverberated through the hull as landers and flyers dropped away from the giant ship with all the aplomb of baby chicks falling out of a large, ugly nest.

A chaotic selection of viewscreens flickered into life around the bridge, half exploding in showers of sparks before immediately going dead. Of the remainder, some showed only static, but others showed the juddering, leaping views from the noses of the ork flyers. Boring-looking sand dunes and rocks bounced around on the working screens for a few seconds before one was lit by the stabbing flames of nose guns firing. Gorbag’s attention snapped to the screen and his impressively-tusked jaws champed convulsively. A little sprawl of silvery towers and pipes in the desert was disappearing in a storm of explosions. Gorbag cuffed a nearby gretchin excitedly and sent him flying.

‘Something to kill!’ Gorbag roared, jabbing one clawed finger at the flickering image ‘Get us down there! Now!’

The desert horizon that had once been so crisp and clear was smudged with plumes smoke. The or’es’la had been busy destroying every extraction facility they could find in this part of the world, apparently racing one another for the joys of reaching them first and destroying the handful of drones defending them. The shas’o glanced out to his flank, where two Hammerheads were churning through the dust, their dart-like hulls completely dwarfed by the long railguns they carried in their turrets. He looked down into the canyon lying diagonally before him, where fire warriors advanced through rocks and took up positions.

It had taken almost a week of strenuous argument to persuade the aun’o to allow the fire warriors out of the colony at all. Eventually the aun’o had conceded that at least tracking the invader’s progress was necessary, and some reconnaissance might be in order. If the aun’o had paid attention to the forces the shas’o had chosen to take on his ‘reconnaissance’ mission, he might have questioned his intentions more thoroughly. He had brought almost a full cadre; half a dozen fire warrior squads in Devilfish carriers, pathfinders, two crisis teams and a squadron of Hammerhead tanks as a ‘covering force’. Even so they were horribly outnumbered by the or’es’la in this region.

Flickers of light at the horizon caught the shas’o’s attention. He increased the optical gain on his battlesuit’s sensors in time to see several disc-shaped drones fly into view. Brightly glowing tracers chased them, kicking up spurts in the dust as the drones bobbed and weaved frantically to avoid them. A second later, the first of their pursuers leapt over the horizon on a belching tail of smoke, a crude looking or’es’la flyer with its nose aflame with twinkling gun flashes. The shas’o’s crisis suit immediately registered two high-energy discharges to his flank as the Hammerheads fired their railguns in unison. The flyer disintegrated into an expanding cloud of flaming debris an instant later. The rain of hot shrapnel was still falling as the horizon darkened with the arrival of the main enemy force.

The dark silhouettes of what seemed like hundreds of vehicles came streaming into view, a mobile mass of churning dust and metal. The two Hammerheads turned tail and fled, in accordance with their orders, turning their long railguns rearwards to menace their still distant pursuers. As the enemy drew closer, they became distinguishable as a column of tanks, bikes, guns and trucks mixed together without any apparent formation. They came on with the subtlety of a battering ram, completely intent on the vanishing Hammerheads and unaware of the fire warriors lurking on their flank.

Invisible markerlight beams fired by the pathfinders reached out to the onrushing horde to guide in a salvo of seeker missiles. The seekers were a precious commodity, one-shot self-guided weapons being launched from a trio of Devilfish hidden further down the canyon. The slender missiles flashed unerringly into their designated targets, ripping ragged holes in the column wherever they struck. The or’es’la dissolved into a chaotic mess of vehicles, charging in every direction, careening into each other, crashing into rocks and toppling down soft dunes. The rapidly-thinning horde spilled within pulse rifle range and the fire warriors’ bright volleys crashed out to immolate individual vehicles in dirty orange explosions. Submunitions from the disappearing Hammerheads blossomed over the scene almost as an afterthought, shredding the exposed or’es’la gunners and drivers in a storm of hyper-velocity shrapnel.

The remaining vehicles turned for the horizon and sped away as fast as their tracks and wheels would carry them, leaving perhaps half of their number as twisted wrecks on the desert dunes. The shas’o was tempted to lead his crisis teams into the field of burning wreckage to chase down the survivors to truly seal the victory. There would be no quarter asked or given by the or’es’la, and any that escaped now would fight again with renewed ferocity in their next battle. He checked his impulse and signalled the fire warriors to begin withdrawing to the waiting Devilfish. More smudges were appearing on the horizon all the time, showing that more or’es’la were converging on this position. It was time to leave and set another ambush elsewhere.

The link to Arkunasha colony was weak and uncertain, jumping and sliding as the signal bounced off the ionosphere. Even so, the aun’o’s disapproval communicated itself readily through the tiny screen in the shas’o’s battlesuit as he trudged through a shadowed canyon along with the rest of his weary cadre. Night was falling, the time when the or’es’la stopped moving and the shas’o’s dwindling force could quietly shift between sectors. Endless days and nights of ambushes and running fights had taken their toll on the shas’o’s endurance, and his patience.

‘I understand your concerns, aun’o,’ he said tiredly. ‘However, it is necessary for me to remain in action. As I explained before, should the or’es’la reach the colony, they will destroy it and kill everyone there. I can only ensure your protection by engaging the enemy–’

‘You overrate your personal importance,’ the aun’o chided, ‘even if what you say is true – which, frankly, I doubt – your shas’ui can command in your absence. Is that not a keystone of your warrior philosophy?’

‘Leaving an inexperienced shas’ui in command at this juncture would amount to a gross dereliction of duty on my part. My presence at the colony is completely unnecessary and would jeopardise my warriors.’

The tiny image bobbed and darted silently for a moment and the shas’o feared the aun’o was going to give him a direct order to return. The other tau’s high-boned face turned away for a moment as someone spoke to him from off-screen. After several moments the Aun’o turned back with a pallid look on his face.

‘A courier has arrived from the shas’ar’tol… they say no reinforcements are available at this time. Limited evacuation may be possible later, but for now Arkunasha colony is exhorted to resist to its last breath, for the greater good.’

‘For the greater good,’ shas’o agreed. He waited for the aun’o to say something else but the silence stretched on until he spoke again.

‘Aun’o, you must board that courier and leave the colony at once. I will accept no argument about this and, if necessary, I will return and put you on the ship myself. Your protection is my first responsibility and the dangers will only increase from now on. Leave now while you still can. I must attend to my warriors.’ The tiny head on the screen nodded abruptly in response and the image vanished.

The shas’o looked at the lines of fire warriors winding along the canyon on foot and felt an invisible burden lift from his soul. With the aun’o gone, he would have a free hand at last, no more negotiating and explaining every action. He turned his mind to current dispositions. The surviving Devilfish were out some distance away, scouting for the enemy and the Hammerheads were perched somewhere above on the dunes, keeping a watch for flyers. Their attrition so far had been light, but maintaining supplies of ammunition and energy cells was a constant concern. The supply cache they were approaching was one of the last that had been placed before the invasion and the only one close to what now amounted to the front lines. Risk of interception and limited resources meant most of the newer caches were only a day or two’s travel from the colony. Too close, but they had been left with little choice.

One of the fire warriors left the line and picked their way to where the crisis suits were labouring along the soft sand of the canyon floor to conserve their energy. It was the shas’ui, her armour flecked and chipped where she had been caught in an or’es’la shell burst that morning. The monocular eye-piece of her helmet gazed up at the shas’o’s monitor head in mute question until he opened a channel to her.

‘Word has arrived from the shas’ar’tol that there are to be no reinforcements,’ the shas’o told her simply. ‘We must fight on with what we have.’

‘Not long ago I would have said that was impossible, but these past weeks you’ve led the or’es’la around by their noses so well that I can’t see why we can’t do it forever.’

‘Supplies, mostly, and the or’es’la will learn to be less cooperative over ti–’

An urgent communications request from the Pathfinders was winking in the corner of one of the Crisis suit’s screens. The shas’o accepted it and was treated to a grainy view of the desert above. His stomach turned over at the sight and his exhaustion vanished. An array of dark brown shapes were moving through the gathering gloom, the sullen flames gouting from their exhaust stacks briefly illuminating their rusting armour and the swarming or’es’la warriors clinging to every vehicle.

‘Course?’ the shas’o snapped.

‘Closing on our position. They haven’t sighted us yet.’

‘Pull back into the canyon and let them pass, we can’t–’

‘Second group sighted, shas’o!’ The view spun to show another distant column converging on the opposite side of the canyon. ‘The first group are halting now, it looks as if they’re stopping for the night.’

‘Plant five photon grenades on maximum delay and pull back immediately.’

‘Acknowledged, shas’o.’ He closed the link and addressed the shas’ui on a direct channel.

‘Pass the word, shas’ui, I want the supplies recovered and brought back down the canyon as quietly as possible, no one is to engage the or’es’la.’

‘Shas’o?’

‘I have something much better in mind for them.’

The shas’o triggered his jet pack and bounded away down the canyon in a series of low, swinging leaps to stay below its rim. He reached the retreating Pathfinders and had them markerlight the position of their photon grenades up above. He turned and leapt for the opposite lip, using his remaining reserves of energy lavishly to thrust himself over the edge. Dark shadows blotted the frozen waves of dunes to either side of the canyon and were made hard-edged by guttering oil-fires lit by the or’es’la.

The shas’o levelled his plasma rifle and let rip at the closest targets. They were beyond effective range, but he loosed off several incandescent bolts into the gloom before jumping back down into the canyon. A moment later, the photon grenades detonated, their stark white flashes burning away the night vision of anyone looking for the source of the incoming fire. Fat red tracers buzzed across the canyon in both directions, followed by the distinctive crack-swish sound of larger projectiles.

The Crisis suit’s energy reserves were into the orange, but the shas’o leapt a short distance further along the canyon before mounting the opposite side and firing again. That provoked another wild burst of fire from the or’es’la, and in the brief moment he was above the lip of the canyon he glimpsed the insane crossfire already occurring between the two camps. He dropped to the canyon floor and left the or’es’la to their sport; with any luck they would keep shooting at each other all night.

‘O’Shovah?’ the shas’ui’s voice was unsteady, the pain of her shattered body edging the word.

Shovah meant ‘farsight’. The fire warriors had taken to calling him that during the desert campaign. O’Shovah, Commander Farsight, just a jocular nickname at first but it had grown into a watchword, almost a prayer. Farsight will see us through, Commander Farsight will outwit the or’es’la once again, they can never catch Farsight.

It seemed like a bitter reprimand now, trapped for weeks in the Argap highlands with no room to manoeuvre and endless hordes of foes surrounding them. Every day was another day of grinding siege, insane assaults, and casualties on both sides. The or’es’la died by the dozen for every fire warrior they dragged down, but each loss was keenly felt by the small band of defenders.

Now the shas’ui was among the fallen, another casualty ticked off the shrinking roster of colony defenders. She had been caught in an or’es’la rocket attack while dragging an injured comrade clear, her limbs shattered and torso pierced by randomly flying metal. It all seemed so senseless.

‘Rest easy, shas’ui,’ he said. ‘Another shuttle got through. You’re going to be evacuated.’

‘No!’ The shas’ui lurched on her narrow cot, trying to rise. ‘I will stay and fight!’

‘You will heal and fight another day,’ the shas’o, O’Shovah as he was coming to think of himself, said coldly. ‘Your injuries would impede you in battle to the point of uselessness.’

The shas’ui sank back, too weak to protest further, her eyes searching O’Shovah’s face. ‘Why don’t they evacuate all of us? Why are we still here?’

O’Shovah had no answer. The aun’o was gone, the colony ruined and most of its population killed or fled. There was no reason to stay but the shas’ar’tol insisted that they hold on. Reinforcements were trickling in, but they were barely enough to keep pace with the attrition incurred by the siege. No counter-offensive was possible, only endless positional warfare through the peaks and passes of the highlands.

‘I don’t know, shas’ui,’ he confessed. ‘We must place our trust in the greater good.’

Shells screamed down in ragged salvos, pulverising rock and throwing up towering clouds of dust at the edge of the colony. They were concentrating on the dugouts around the skeletal remnants of the workshops. Their howling mingled with the first explosions, and soon the fire warriors could hear nothing but the crash of explosions and the whickering of shrapnel.

In recent weeks the or’es’la had fallen into a pattern of hoarding up their ammo and loosing it all off before an assault. In terms of inflicting casualties, it was actually less effective than their old method of firing short, unexpected bombardments whenever a crate of shells was brought up, but it was a lot more unnerving. It meant the or’es’la were coming again.

O’Shovah crouched in his crisis suit inside a shelter he’d helped the Fio to dig for him at the head of a feature they’d dubbed the slipway. It was an erosion-cut channel leading down from Arkunasha colony to a nearby valley in the highlands. Windblown sand and dust from the plateau poured continuously down the slipway like a slow motion avalanche confined by high rock walls on both sides. The or’es’la had fixated on the area as the widest point of approach and it was already littered with half-buried wrecks left by their previous attempts to storm it.

O’Shovah crouched in his hole, feeling the bedrock tremble as shells burst nearby. He found that he trembled with it. The bombardment seemed endless, maddening. Shells of all calibres poured down and were joined by the howl of rockets just as it seemed it could get no worse. Red flames spurted up on all sides and flashes filled the air. The world seemed engulfed by roaring giants on every side.

Suddenly, the or’es’la barrage dribbled away to nothing, a few paltry shells whistling down as the towering smoke clouds began to drift away in the wind. Then he heard the roar of many engines and the rumbling sound of tracks. O’Shovah emerged from his shelter, far enough to see down the slipway, as around him, surviving fire warriors looked cautiously out from their own redoubts and bunkers. Perhaps four teams remained, holding onto a precarious horseshoe of positions at the top of the slope, with barely one team in reserve. Ugly or’es’la battle-tanks were crawling to the base of the slipway, five steel giants with groups of smaller vehicles ranged to their left and right. Behind them, another wave of at least twenty vehicles was coming into view, labouring hard in the soft sand.

O’Shovah was speechless. The enemy had never before attacked in such strength. A wave of improvised seeker drone-missiles flew past, plummeting into the approaching behemoths. Two of the leading vehicles crumpled in flames and were soon joined by others as two Hammerhead tanks began firing from the heights. The air was split by harsh flames as the duel was played out, the or’es’la firing at the blue-white flashes of the Hammerhead’s railguns. The first enemy tank was hit and burst into flames. A second, immobilised with track damage, continued to fire until it was hit beneath a turret by a railgun round. The shot tore the turret from the vehicle in a spray of sparks. Flames shot into the air, enveloping the crew as they tried to escape.

A call came in. ‘Infantry climbing the slipway, O’Shovah!’

From among the tanks appeared or’es’la warriors in blood-red armour. They were running up the slipway and making better progress than the slithering wave of vehicles. At an order from O’Shovah, precision pulse rifle fire swept across them, temporarily clearing the slope of running shapes. The Hammerheads were now firing in salvos. A dozen burning enemy vehicles lay scattered in the sand as testimony to their handiwork. The leading vehicles had climbed as far as a chain of tethered charges hidden in the slipway. Three were disabled with shattered tracks and the rest swung away to one side in apparent confusion. The second wave of vehicles began to climb the slope. Three took direct hits from the Hammerheads and blew apart, but the rest kept churning upwards towards the workshops with single-minded determination.

O’Shovah emerged from his shelter and signalled his surviving bodyguard to follow as he moved behind the protective glacis to reach the dugouts at the workshops. They loped along behind roughly-piled foam-metal blocks, already half buried by the sliding sand. Shells fired by the or’es’la hammered into the area. Red and yellow tracers from their secondary armaments buzzed around the fire warrior positions. A quick glance at his lateral monitors showed O’Shovah more vehicles climbing up on his right as he approached, while his two bodyguards loomed reassuringly in his rear view. O’Shovah leapt over the top of the glacis. Tracers streaked past him as he broke cover. He zig-zagged the battlesuit with surprising dexterity for such a cumbersome device, spotted a large, half-collapsed crater just below him and took cover in it. A moment later, his bodyguards were also in position above and below him on the slope.

Ahead of them, an or’es’la assault group was breaching the top of the slipway, moments away from overrunning the position. O’Shovah locked on to a vehicle and its surrounding infantry, punching a plasma bolt into the former and allowing a salvo of smart missiles to pick off the latter. More plasma bolts and fusion blasts from his bodyguards ripped into the flanked or’es’la. Almost simultaneously, a burst of heavy calibre slugs stitched across the upper torso of O’Shovah’s armour, pitching him out of the crater and sprawling him full-length in the sand. His systems displays were alight with warning indicators as he struggled to stand. His bodyguards moved to protect him. One was blown almost in half by a stray shell, his crisis armour bursting open like rotten fruit.

The shattered remnants of the assault group were running towards them with a truly enormous or’es’la in the lead. Darkness was sliding across the battlefield behind the charging alien like the shadow of death. O’Shovah sighted manually on the bestial-looking warrior and punched a plasma bolt into its torso. To his dismay the creature’s armour shrugged off the strike and it continued to surge forward with its hugely tusked jaws roaring thunderously. O’Shovah tried to fire his rifle again but found it inoperative, he tried to operate his jetpack and found that inoperative too. The or’es’la continued to charge forward, only metres away now.

A blaze of energy engulfed the or’es’la from above, brilliant white beams dancing from one figure to the next, leaving burning torches in their wake. Gazing up, O’Shovah laughed as he saw wide delta shapes blotting out the suns. The familiar silhouettes of Manta missile destroyers hovered above like guardian angels, finally enough of them to evacuate the whole colony.

The aun refused his requests for an audience immediately after evacuation. It was just as well; he’d been furious when he first saw the tau war fleet in orbit. That anger had cooled and hardened in the intervening time. He had visited the shas’ui and seen her adapting to her newly-grown prosthetics day by day. He had seen the other survivors of Arkunasha colony and mourned their dead with them. When the aun finally sent for him he came calmly enough.

There was a triumvirate aboard the Vior’la Gal’leath M’shan comprising Aun’o T’au Vasoy Ty’asla and two other aun, a male and a female, that O’Shovah did not recognise. They did not introduce themselves, nor speak at all when O’Shovah was conveyed to their veiled, opalescent sanctum. Instead Aun’o Vasoy smiled fondly at O’Shovah as he entered and bid his accompanying water caste associates to leave them. Only when they were alone did the female speak.

‘You have done well, shas’o. You bring credit to your caste and your sept. We understand that you are distressed by the casualties incurred under your command.’

She paused as O’Shovah shook his head.

‘Casualties are a fact of war,’ he replied. ‘I am distressed by being starved of reinforcements that evidently exist and the unnecessary hardships thereby inflicted on my command.’

The unidentified male aun spoke. ‘Surely it is not your place to question the strategies of the shas’ar’tol?’

‘It is my place to question poor strategy whenever I see it, and this strategy did not originate from my honoured colleagues at the shas’ar’tol.’ He paused to pull a flimsy sheaf of message transcripts from inside his tunic. ‘I checked.’

Aun’o Vasoy replied. ‘Your success in small unit engagements with the or’es’la has enabled the build up of large reserves. When the campaign to retake Arkunasha begins, it will be undertaken with overwhelming strength.’

‘In other words, you decided to throw away lives now for an easier victory later.’

‘As is our remit, for the greater good.’

There was an awkward moment of silence as O’Shovah failed to respond. Aun’o Vasoy seemed genuinely puzzled.

‘Shas’o, you act as if the war was lost, when your actions have virtually assured victory.’

O’Shovah dashed the transcript on the floor in sudden fury. ‘Because I was not told!’

The aun drew back from his anger, their eyes becoming hooded. O’Shovah breathed deeply, mastering himself before speaking again.

‘You allowed me and my cadres to fight in the belief that no help was coming while you sat in orbit doing nothing. With sufficient forces, I could have ensured that the or’es’la never even reached the colony!’

‘Possibly,’ Aun’o Vasoy admitted. ‘Yet your situation spurred you to the highest efforts. As you said yourself, casualties are a fact of war. Yet you minimised your own and maximised those incurred by the enemy. Is that not victory?’

‘Of a sort,’ O’Shovah admitted bitterly. ‘And yet superior attrition seems to be the lowest form of success to my eyes.’

‘Come now, you must lay aside your grief for your lost warriors,’ Aun’o Vasoy said reasonably. ‘You have the gratitude of the Tau Empire and the approbation of your fellow caste members. I understand that they have even gifted you a new name in celebration of your success.’

The warrior’s face had become an immobile mask. He revealed nothing of his inner feelings when he responded finally.

‘Indeed, they have dubbed me O’Shovah – Commander Farsight – for my alleged ability to see into the future, and I have pledged to them that in future times the Tau Empire will remember my name.’

About the Author

Author of the Path of the Dark Eldar series and the related novella The Masque of Vyle, along with the Necromunda novel Survival Instinct and a host of short stories, Andy Chambers has more than twenty years’ experience creating worlds dominated by war machines, spaceships and dangerous aliens. He lives and works in Nottingham.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Hammer and Bolter Issue 9 (2011).
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

The Arkunasha War © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. The Arkunasha War, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-308-7

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.