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Voice of Experience – J C Stearns

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Farsight: Crisis of Faith’

A Black Library Publication

Voice of Experience

J C Stearns

I’ve given up trying to get my xenos friends to understand the true size of humanity’s galactic population. When I speak of figures in multiples of quadrillions, there’s always an inevitable breakdown in communication where my listener assumes one of two things: either I have a faulty grasp of mathematics, or one of us has a faulty grasp of the other’s language. I’m not aware of any hive worlds subsumed into the Greater Good thus far, so to my knowledge the t’au have never actually seen the extent of mankind’s fecundity. I, however, have been to many hive worlds, and jostled shoulder to shoulder in crowds so massive that their edges couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. I have a solid grasp of the scope of humanity’s size, and consequently I understand what a monumental honour it is to be counted among the infinitesimally small percentage of that population who have stood within arm’s reach of an ethereal, and been treated as a sure and loyal friend.

‘Gue’vesa’vres,’ he said, and inclined his bald head in my direction in the slightest of bows.

My new title still felt strange to hear. Trusted human helper, translated literally – a reflection of my position on the station, the highest-ranking of the human auxiliaries aboard the Suu’suamyth. Originally the Glory of Argyre, the orbital shipyard had come into t’au possession early in the Fifth Sphere expansion.

I bowed my own head in respect. The other t’au that were present did as well. Aun’song made it easy to respect him. The ethereal was graceful and poised. After a life spent in trenches and foxholes, up to my knees in the blood of my own troops and the dismembered corpses of the enemy, his presence was like something bordering on the divine.

‘Your service to the Greater Good has been nothing less than impeccable, Kalice Arkady.’ The even curve of the low, oblong table suggested no head, but the deference of the other commanders would have made it clear who the leader was even if I hadn’t known his caste. When he spoke, the four other t’au hung on his every word. I’ve never seen anyone in the Imperium given that degree of attention out of respect rather than fear.

‘You honour me, wise one,’ I said. My T’au was clumsy, but I saw El’Ganret, the representative of the water caste, smile and give me a slight nod of encouragement.

The other three were much harder to read, but then most t’au are. They can’t be read by their faces. Their emotions are instead betrayed by secondary clues such as tone, inflection and body language.

There were no bodyguards in the room, which demonstrated a stupendous level of trust in me, although I have no doubt that all four of the representatives – most notably the dour-faced and compactly muscled fire caste commander – would have borne me down and beaten me to death with their bare hands before they allowed their ethereal to come to harm.

‘Your service honours you,’ Aun’song replied, ‘and by turn, honours us.’

In the society of the Imperium, this sort of back and forth would have been so much high-handed jaw-flapping. Honorifics and accolades hadn’t mattered much to me in those days. A campaign medal and a pretty speech from a famed general might mean something to the rank and file, but by the time I’d made lieutenant I already knew what it really amounted to: nothing. Empty words that didn’t cost the lords anything and would keep the grunts on the front lines. The t’au, on the other hand, set great store in their words. It meant something to them that we belonged, that we knew we were as much a part of their empire as they were. That integrity meant more than all the speeches in the galaxy ever could.

‘How then may I honour us further, wise one?’ These conversations, while rewarding, could also go on for a ludicrous length of time if one side didn’t move to business first, and I’d long since learned that the t’au expected a certain degree of impatience among their alien allies. Being able to save face for everyone while still moving the conversation along was one of the many valuable skills I’d developed.

The representatives looked at one another in a scattering of half-glances – the t’au equivalent of uncomfortable fidgeting. There was something that they were clearly uneasy about.

El’Ufafri, the bulky fire caste commander, I knew. His skin showed the grey pebbling along its edges indicative of old age in his people, which wasn’t terribly surprising. I knew he was one of the members of the Fourth Sphere expansion and that he had been transferred to the station to command the fire caste forces here in recognition of his many achievements. Beyond that we’d had precious little interaction, even though I was theoretically his direct subordinate. He avoided my presence and I had begun to think he might harbour ill feelings towards humans in general. Not a surprising attitude for the Fourth Sphere warriors, who had suffered hardships beyond imagining, first in their long sojourn in the warp, then again later in the years of isolation in the Nem’yar Atoll. As a veteran myself, I could hardly bear a grudge against him for the psychological scars of his battles.

The air and earth caste members of the administrative council aboard the station were almost complete mysteries to me. I’d been before the council twice before, which were the only times I’d even seen the air caste representative. Tall and willowy like the rest of her caste, she had a tendency towards brusqueness that would have bordered on rudeness in human society, but she spoke to her peers in the same manner she did to me, so I assumed it was a trait of her culture rather than a reflection of her views towards aliens. The earth caste representative and I had met a handful of times on the station since most of the humans aboard worked as engineering labourers that operated under the earth caste’s jurisdiction.

‘You are familiar with the collapse of the loading ring yesterday?’ Por’el Ganret was by far the most familiar of the advisory council which served, for most purposes, as the ruling body of the space station. I knew there was an ethereal council of indeterminate membership as well, although they rarely interacted with the rest of the facility and only occasionally chose to issue orders to the advisory council. At least, that was the image which was maintained.

‘I am,’ I said. ‘Seven people were killed, unfortunately.’ Six humans and a t’au. I was not only familiar, I’d signed the mortifaction notices for the deceased personally. I could still remember each of their names.

‘A great and sorrowful loss,’ said El’Ganret. I believed him. Like all of the water caste, his face had a much greater range of expression than was usual amongst the other t’au – a trait that made him far more relatable. The sympathy on his features was genuine, which I appreciated. ‘Of even greater sorrow is the truth – it was not seven, but seventeen who perished. A further ten members of the earth caste were immolated when the ring was destroyed.’

I was shocked, but the rest of the council didn’t react. Clearly this was information they were already aware of. Transparency wasn’t a huge virtue for the t’au, which I suspect is a commonality in leaders the galaxy over. Outright falsehoods, however, were comparatively rare and it was enough to take me aback. Surely there was a reasonable explanation.

‘Nor is this the first accident,’ said El’Ganret. ‘The engine failure on the Dawning Eye did not claim an empty ship through an autopilot misfire, as has been publicly reported. There were twenty-two t’au aboard the vessel when it broke from its trajectory and exploded.’

‘You suspect sabotage.’ It wasn’t a question. The pieces were all there. Two accidents were a coincidence, but I immediately began to recall others. ‘The pressure failure last month on deck twenty-one? The air regulation malfunction on the departing cruiser before that?’

El’Ganret nodded gravely. ‘Beginning with the toxicity-driven food shortage two months ago, yes.’

I was troubled that I’d heard nothing and angered that someone had struck out against us in this way, but not horribly surprised. The gue’vesa who had accompanied the Fifth Sphere fleet from the t’au homeland to the Nem’yar Atoll were drawn from many human communities, some of which were recent additions to the T’au Empire. Misguided Throne loyalists were something to be expected: those that were too indoctrinated into the Cult Imperator to accept the Greater Good, but unable to escape before their worlds had joined the empire. Such malcontents often kept their heads down and most eventually saw reason, but they sometimes formed small resistance cells that could prove a nuisance to fleet operations.

‘You suspect humans.’ That wasn’t a question either. The council had reported the human deaths while downplaying the t’au ones. They were refusing to give the terrorists any attention for their actions while doing a damn fine job of making it appear that the sabotage was doing more harm to their own people than to the t’au.

Aun’song gave a slight nod.

‘Quite.’ El’Ganret nodded again, smiling at me as though I were a particularly bright scholam pupil. ‘Given your military background and your position among the humans, we believed it would be in our best interest to have you spearheading the inquiry. If it should come to light that we’re investigating the gue’vesa population, it will ease tensions to have a human trusted by both sides asking the questions.’ He glanced at Aun’song, who nodded again. ‘We also feel that it would do well to show the other species aboard the station that you have our full trust as well. To this end, we’ve authorised jidan protocols for the duration. Your mandate will be in effect until all of the saboteurs have been brought to justice.’

‘Make no mistake, Kalice Arkady, a swift resolution to this matter is required.’ El’Ufafri’s voice was soft and high, at odds with his martial appearance. ‘Each successive attack has escalated in severity. If one of these attacks were to reach a station commander, or one of the ethereals, the effect on station morale and operations would be catastrophic.’

He reached beneath his robes and then leaned across the table to set a pulse pistol in front of me. I nodded, swelling with importance. Jidan, or the bearing of live weapons outside of a military theatre, was an honour rarely accorded to anyone not of the fire caste. This was a tangible, visible reminder of the respect that I was being granted.

‘I am honoured to serve,’ I said.

‘We are honoured by your service,’ El’Ganret replied. He bowed his head. ‘Your liaison will meet you shortly.’

I paused for a moment, then stood and bowed myself, recognising a dismissal when I heard one. I’d never worked with a t’au in a position of equal partnership before. The idea was exciting.

I smiled as I left the administration chamber. Formerly an officer’s lounge, it was positioned high up within the station, elevated above the lower decks. The large windows had been kept phase-tinted when the station was under human control so that the overseers could see the labourers on the assembly bay floor, but not be seen themselves. The t’au, however, kept the windows clear so that those working below could see their leaders hard at work as well.

The small mag-lift up to the chamber had been replaced with a short staircase, which was the source of my constant amusement whenever I was summoned there. Built by earth caste members, the stairs had been designed with ungulate feet in mind which meant the steps were shallow and steep and always left my calves aching. Plantigrade staircases were uncommon in the T’au Empire.

A water caste t’au was waiting for me at the base of the stairs. A small drone, no larger than my hand, hovered over his shoulder.

‘They should be ready for you, friend,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘No, oru’vesa,’ he said, bowing. ‘They have already seen me. I am to be your liaison.’

I smiled again, processing the information. I had anticipated working with a fire warrior, perhaps even one of the honoured shas’vre, but of course they had paired me with a member of the water caste. This mission was more social than it was military, after all.

I bowed and he extended his hand, giving me a broad grin that was quite uncharacteristic of the t’au. He was on the short side even for a member of the water caste, but as I shook his hand I could feel a compact, wiry strength. He didn’t wear the robes customary among t’au civilians, eschewing them for a pair of pale, loose trousers, a simple tunic and a vest that had been embellished with spiralling beadwork in blues and reds.

‘Captain Kalice Arkady, commander of the Follaxian 113th Irregulars. Order of the Adamant Tread, awarded the Heart of the Crown on Syndythos, bearer of the Crimson Skull.’ I didn’t have to give him a full list of my names and honorifics, but what would seem laughably formal among human society was considered polite to my t’au friends, and I was always willing to take the extra moment to show them that I had a basic grasp of their culture. ‘Arkady to her friends.’

My new partner nodded, his lips pursed. ‘Very excellent. I am Por’ui Fi’rios Kau’kartyr. I am accustomed to being referred to as Kartyr by my human friends.’

‘Kartyr, then. Do you have much experience with this sort of thing?’ His XR-0 drone drifted around me in a loose, slow spiral as I spoke, recording my appearance, voice and other personal details for its records. I stood still to make its task as quick as possible.

‘I have some,’ he said, ‘although I have always before been stationed on worlds where t’au made up the bulk of the population.’ He hesitated. ‘But I am a kar’tyr, a hunter of justice. This will not be my first investigation.’

I nodded. He wasn’t what I’d expected. I knew the t’au had to have some form of law enforcement – military law breeds resentment in civilian populations, after all – still, I had never seen a t’au prison or heard them reference criminal codes. A criminal investigator he might be, but I had no idea what form that would take. He could occupy the same role as an inquisitor for all I knew, or he might be nothing more than the equivalent of a street-level enforcer. There was no telling.

‘I suggest we begin by examining the records in the station’s database and investigate any personnel with a history of disciplinary infractions.’ He gestured towards the hall that would take us to the datacore, but I shook my head.

‘I understand where you’re coming from,’ I said, ‘but that would not be productive. The workers with disciplinary infractions under the Imperium would have been punished for things like duty dereliction, or theft of materials for, say, distilling liquor. At best, the ones prone to fomenting rebellion would have been the citizens most likely to have embraced the t’au.’

‘What would be your suggestion?’ Kartyr smiled in a way I found slightly patronising.

‘The materials used in the sabotage are similar. I think we’ll get a better result if we try to find out where they came from.’ I smiled back, trying to be as diplomatic as possible. ‘If we’re seen to be tracking the materials it’ll look better. If we’re just interrogating humans as our first step it would be ammunition for the saboteurs to convince people that the t’au see humans as problems to be managed, rather than the partners we are.’

‘Ably reasoned, I suppose. I would be honoured to allow you to take the lead, of course.’ He bowed his head to me and I couldn’t help but nod back. The politeness of the water caste was infectious. Rogue traders, planetary governors and even certain inquisitors could be persuaded by their charm. Still, his word choice irked me somewhat. It was possible he was just being overly formal in the way his people tended towards, but I couldn’t shake the possibility that he was intentionally trying to establish which one of us was really in charge.

Kartyr had only recently arrived in the Nem’yar Atoll, and so we made small talk as we wound our way through the station, exchanging news from both of our sides of the galaxy. I made a point of greeting many of the human labourers we passed – it was important to me that we didn’t appear insular or segregated. The more of us seen to be socialising with the t’au, the better. If he was half as perceptive as the water caste was supposed to be, he’d take to heart how much esteem I had from the human population on the station.

The void docks of the Suu’suamyth berthed a sizeable number of vessels – and even more patrolled around us in a bristling net of defence, either awaiting repairs or freshly refitted and awaiting orders – but many of the large segments and components had to be worked on within the massive assembly halls. The bigger bays could accommodate large sections of spacecraft, even small ships in their entirety. In each bay, dun-clad earth caste t’au laboured alongside human work crews to keep the fleets in the Nem’yar Atoll in top shape. The bays were a chaotic mélange of sights and sounds, filled with spitting fountains of sparks from welding drones, the ringing of metallic grinding and hammering and the roar of voices shouting to one another over the din.

‘Where are we headed?’ Kartyr finally asked, as we ventured from one assembly hall to the next.

‘Visiting a friend,’ I replied.

There were any number of areas along the assembly bays that had been vacated when the station had changed hands. Corporal punishment stations for flagging workers, shrines to the Machine-God of the Adeptus Mechanicus, overseer posts – all had been pulled out to make way for more sensible installations when the t’au had taken command.

Treshom’s shop had been a shrine, I was certain of it. Wax stains still crusted the corners of the room, and there was a scent of incense so thick that I didn’t think it would ever be expunged. Even though the trappings of the tech-priests’ worship had been removed, the shop remained a bastion of human culture. Thick chains hung from the ceiling in looping arcs, engineering tools clipped to them in a display of the machinist’s wares. Old engine blocks and gearboxes had been dragged in to serve as makeshift furniture. Half-assembled parts were scattered about the place, many covered in rust or grease.

‘Captain!’ Treshom was leaning over a disassembled clutch drum. He snapped upright and fired off a crisp salute. ‘Fancy seeing you down here.’

During the decades of blood and fyceline, Treshom Lan had been one of my finest sergeants. In the years since, he had discarded the sharp, disciplined image of the Militarum and had slowly returned to the garish, individualistic appearance of Follaxian society. He was lean and knotted, like an adamantine skeleton wrapped in grox jerky. His hair was long, and as filmy with grease as his tawny skin. While his hair was shaggy, his moustache and beard had been oiled and shaped into loose, spiralling curls.

‘Sergeant,’ I said, smiling. I gave him a haphazard salute in return, wondering if Kartyr would find the gesture odd. ‘We wanted to ask you a few questions.’

At that, Treshom noticed Kartyr standing behind me. He didn’t turn aggressive, but I saw his smile stiffen. There was still a sense of vague unease between some members of the human and t’au populations. It was saddening to see Treshom affected so.

‘We?’ he said.

‘I am Por’ui Fi’rios Kau’kartyr,’ my companion said, smiling broadly, ‘although humans call me Kartyr.’

Treshom looked at my companion, then back at me. ‘What can I do for you, captain?’

‘We wanted to know if you had seen anyone come in looking for magnetic decouplers,’ I said. The loading ring collapse had been caused by a faulty decoupler, and the component was vital in creating makeshift plasma bombs, the kind that had claimed the Dawning Eye.

Treshom shook his head. ‘Can’t say I have, captain.’ He cast a sidelong glance at Kartyr. ‘The blues don’t use ’em for anything, so they’re a scrap part, but they’ve got enough palladium in them that the earth caste melt ’em down for their own use.’ He produced a rag from his back pocket and began wiping grease from one of the parts on his workbench.

I frowned. ‘Have you heard anything about someone looking for them?’ Treshom wasn’t looking me in the eye, and his suspicion towards Kartyr was making my hackles rise.

Another head shake. ‘No, captain. Haven’t heard anything.’ He looked up. ‘Do you want me to vox you if I do? Do you need one for something?’

‘Let me know, definitely, if you hear of anyone scrounging them up.’ He was clearly fishing. ‘There’s no cause for alarm, though.’

‘The Bountiful Herald has suffered battle damage to its targeting arrays,’ Kartyr said. ‘There’s a shortage of palladium components to repair them, so we’re just reaching out to anyone who might be able to contribute.’ He smiled. ‘For the Greater Good.’

His deftness was amazing. In one swoop he’d delivered a convincing lie and played himself up as a cow-eyed sycophant, definitely not a threat to any malcontents who may or may not be part of the conversation.

Treshom nodded. ‘Will do, boss, will do. Bet it.’

We thanked him and left, Kartyr following my lead as I circled us around into the unused side halls. The rusted, abandoned segments would be repurposed at some point, but the resources of the Fifth Sphere fleet were limited, and some projects weren’t a top priority.

‘Do all of the gue’vesa refer to you by your human rank?’ asked Kartyr as we walked. An innocuous enough topic for conversation.

‘Only the Follaxian ones,’ I said. ‘There aren’t that many of them on board, though.’

‘Surprising, given how many followed you.’

I’d heard that praise before. It was true enough; when I’d joined the Greater Good I’d taken nearly my entire company with me. Losing one hundred and nine defectors at a stroke had been a huge blow to Follaxian morale, and our arrival had been a massive coup for the t’au forces.

‘Human ranks aren’t given a great deal of priority now,’ I said. ‘But for the Follaxians who followed me, it’s a point of pride. We’ve been through quite a bit with one another, and it’s always good to see a kinsman.’ Unfortunately, the t’au had not kept the 113th together; the company was now scattered across the empire. Their combat expertise made them highly valued assets, but I could count on one hand the number of times I had met my old comrades, especially since crossing to the Nem’yar Atoll.

I stopped. We’d gone far enough. The only sounds this deep in the unused portion of the station were the groans of metal shifting in the void and the plink of fluids dripping from poorly maintained conduits. There were none of the improvements of the t’au here: no rounded corners, no plasticised facades, no low-input track lighting giving a uniform illumination. The halls were a mess of cold, unforgiving steel, pipes winding through one wall and across the grid-work of the ceiling, and the ever-present images of leering skulls and arrogant aquilas on every wall.

‘Is there another contact of yours down here?’ Kartyr asked innocently.

I stared at him, unsure of whether he was being sarcastic or not. Sarcasm wasn’t a typical t’au trait, but I’d seen enough surprising turns of behaviour from the water caste that I couldn’t be certain.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Did that interaction seem odd to you?’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t say that it did. Did it to you?’

‘Definitely,’ I nodded. ‘Treshom is hiding something. You put him on edge just being there, and the minute we started asking pointed questions, he started trying to avoid giving us straight answers.’

Kartyr nodded. ‘I see. Do you wish to have him detained?’

‘Not yet.’ I frowned. Detention without cause was a trait of human law enforcement, and one I’d hoped not to see repeated under the t’au. ‘Treshom’s place has a vox-link in it, and it was never walled over like in most of the t’au-occupied parts of the station. I’d like to see if we can find another vox-unit. If I’m lucky, I might be able to wire it to listen in on Treshom’s shop. It’s a long shot, but I might be able to make it work.’

We set off through the abandoned halls, guided by a map of the station I had requisitioned using one of the small wrist pads that the t’au used for minor data uplinks.

‘Your investigative abilities are to be commended,’ Kartyr said. ‘Did you acquire them in your time with the Inquisition?’

I paused and gave him another look. The question was innocuous and his demeanour didn’t suggest any suspicion or malice, but again, with the water caste one could never tell. He’d clearly read up on me, but if he was trying to work some information loose that I hadn’t previously disclosed he was out of luck. I’d already told the t’au everything I knew.

‘I don’t know where you get your data on me from,’ I said, ‘but it’s got a few errors in it. I never worked for the Inquisition.’

‘My apologies. Your file indicates that you operated as an adjunct of actions ordered by your Inquisition on numerous occasions.’

I nodded and waved my hand uncertainly. ‘Somewhat. You’re right that the Follaxian 113th got sent into action by the Inquisition on more than one occasion, but to my knowledge I’ve never even met an inquisitor. So, to answer your first question, no. By the time my Irregulars and I got our boots on the ground, the investigation was already over and it was time to start shooting things.’ I paused. I didn’t want him to think I was prevaricating. ‘Given how often we fought ’stealers and cultists and the like, I think it’s reasonable to guess that someone in my chain of command was friends with an inquisitor or two, but if there was such a connection, it was way over my head and I never got looped in.’

‘This seems like far enough,’ said Kartyr, as we turned into yet another hallway.

‘We’re still a way from a master vox-unit,’ I said.

The t’au investigator shrugged. ‘True, but we don’t necessarily need it. We already have a listening device in the room.’ I stared at him and he cocked his head as if waiting for me to pick up on some hidden clue. Finally, he smiled smugly. ‘Have you not noticed that my XR-0 drone is no longer with us?’

I scowled. ‘You had your drone hide in the shop? Why the hell didn’t you say something earlier?’

‘We couldn’t very well just sit in front of his door listening to what was transpiring inside the shop, could we?’ He was tuning his own wrist pad, trying to find the XR-0’s frequency. ‘We needed to loop around the halls until we reached a location that was close enough to pick up the drone’s signal but still beyond public view.’

I sighed. It was sensible and a good bit of investigative work. It would have been easy to have the drone slip under a table while we were talking. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed its absence earlier. Still, the t’au habit of withholding information until it was absolutely required was irritating, especially from someone who was supposed to be my partner.

‘Here we are,’ he said, as his wrist pad caught the signal.

‘…not something we need to be concerned about.’ I didn’t recognise the voice.

‘Are you certain?’ Treshom sounded worried. ‘I swear that blue bastard knew more than he was letting on. You should have seen the way he looked at me.’

I glanced at Kartyr. If he was discomfited, he didn’t show it.

‘I’m more worried about your former commander working so closely with them,’ the unknown voice said. ‘I thought you were going to try to work her.’

‘I said I’d try if the opportunity presented itself,’ said Treshom, ‘but it’s not like I can just waltz into the upper levels for a chit-chat. The hoofies don’t let us up there.’

‘Of course not. They want to make sure that they’re never out of sight and never within reach. Always watching but never listening. It’s all part of the design.’

The unknown voice’s words sickened me. None of what he was saying was true. More than the lies and twisted interpretation of facts, it was that he was pouring this poison into the ears of my own comrades that revolted me. What had he already convinced Treshom to do? If they hadn’t been discovered, what more might they have convinced my old friend to do?

‘If they’re on to us, though, we may need to arrange an accident to distract them. The polymer engineers that transferred in from Dalymar would be good dupes. They’re third generation t’au sympathisers, so they’re about as indoctrinated as it gets – we’re never gonna get any of them.’

I held my breath, hoping that Treshom wouldn’t go along with such a grotesque plan.

‘How do you want to do it?’

I ground my teeth in frustration. I had to wonder how long this had been going on.

‘They’ve got hull-side quarters. It’ll just take a single vacuum charge to space the lot of ’em. We plant some heretical icons on them and the blues will chalk it up to deranged humans. The charges are easy enough for anyone to operate. Here, see?’ Whatever device the unknown speaker had activated must have generated some manner of interference, because the audio link to the drone faded out.

I shook my head, my blood running cold. I’d seen more than my fair share of callous battle plans in my day, but seldom with so much malice from one human directed to another.

‘I take it that’s sufficient cause to detain them?’ I asked, my voice husky with grief.

Kartyr shrugged. ‘We’re investigators empowered by the ethereal caste to look into this matter. Our word alone is sufficient cause to detain them.’ His nose slit rippled slightly, an expression I’d come to recognise as a sigh or shrug. ‘If you’re asking if I think my judgement is that we should detain them, then I’d concur with you that we’ve found our primary suspects.’

I started back the way we came, cutting out some of the superfluous turns I’d made on our initial walk. I keyed into the t’au computer system with my wrist pad, instructing the security system to lock down Treshom’s door and alert me if anyone tried to open it. Kartyr tapped his earpiece and requisitioned backup for us.

‘To his credit,’ Kartyr mused as we walked, ‘the malcontent is correct. Our knowledge of the religious sects that the Imperium considers heretical is limited. If we’d found such iconography among the engineers’ voided quarters it would have been mystifying as to how they had been indoctrinated, but the investigation would have completely shifted to their previous associations. We wouldn’t have brought scrutiny back to this station for quite a while.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Quite devious.’

I shook my head. Trust was such a freely given commodity in t’au culture that it was easy for malcontents to prey on. On a human station, such a gambit would only have been a minor distraction for most investigators, easily disproven.

‘Is there any truth to what he said?’ I asked, casting a sidelong glance at Kartyr. ‘Am I unique in my access to the t’au commanders?’ What Treshom and his conspirator had said troubled me. I’d always been given to understand that the officers of the station were willing to hear anyone with a grievance or concern.

Kartyr shook his head. ‘Of course not. There will always be a certain amount of encouragement towards a task hierarchy, of course. Line workers would be expected to speak with their supervisor before addressing a problem directly to their caste administrator, for instance. But in cases of exigency, the administrators would never begrudge someone the opportunity to address a problem to them.’

If the hulking, faceless fire warriors I’d seen guarding the higher levels were any indication, I wondered how open the administrators really seemed to the common labourer. A perception of inaccessibility might be as effective a deterrent as an actual policy of isolation. Even better, because then you could claim there was no official policy preventing the lower workers from addressing their higher-ups.

I narrowed my eyes and dropped my hand to the comforting grip of my pulse pistol. This was exactly the kind of insidious logic that Treshom’s co-conspirator was using to convince people to betray their t’au benefactors. I wasn’t about to fall prey to it.

We swung around a hall and back into the noisy open air of the assembly bay. I nodded towards Treshom’s door. The team of fire warriors we’d called were arrayed outside by ranks, knelt in a ring. They nodded as we approached, their pulse carbines trained on the portal.

‘Here we go,’ I said. ‘They haven’t tried the door yet. You ready?’

Kartyr nodded. ‘Of course.’

I pulled my pistol and checked the safety, then noticed Kartyr’s empty hands.

‘Are you unarmed?’ I asked, incredulous.

‘I don’t ordinarily carry a firearm, oru’vesa,’ said Kartyr.

I tapped the pad to open the door. It hissed upwards, exposing the inhabitants, who gawped at us in surprise. To my own surprise, there wasn’t one additional person inside – there were three. Startled, Treshom stepped back from the workbench he had been leaning on, scattering various documents over the floor. A man in a ragged Astra Militarum uniform stood next to him, his eyes the only visible part of his face above the makeshift cloth mask he wore. Another man was stood to the side, clad in the dun robes that were common in t’au septs, a flat-topped cap pulled low over his face. Lastly, a burly woman shielded them all, by presence if not design. She had been standing with her back to the door when it had gone up and now found herself at the forefront of their group. The mining coveralls she wore were dirty and streaked with grime, but had been augmented with small plates and jack-chains – common additions in prison work-gangs, fringe worlds or anywhere else labourers expected to encounter violence on a daily basis.

The woman turned to stare at us. They all stared.

‘By the authority of the council, the four of you are hereby subject to arrest and detention,’ I said.

Before I could speak another word, the woman dropped to all fours and lunged. I don’t know if it was her sudden shift to a feral posture, or if the fire caste were trying to avoid hitting us with friendly fire, but they didn’t get a single shot off before she bulled her way through Kartyr and me and was on top of them.

I dropped to a knee, trusting the fire warriors implicitly to handle the miner. Treshom stood awkwardly, halfway between putting his hands over his head and looking for a weapon. The robed man pulled two autopistols and I shifted my attention to him.

He tried to move to the side, firing off a stream of shots in my direction, but I didn’t flinch. I’d knelt behind sandbags in the face of bolter-fire from lines of Traitor Marines; his ill-disciplined snap shots were of no concern. I breathed, picked my shot and fired. A single, scintillating pellet of plasma energy streaked out from my pistol, catching him in the upper chest, and the robed man’s run turned into a boneless collapse to the ground. The autopistols skittered away.

I turned back to the workbench in time to see the masked man flying through the air towards me. I swore. I’d assumed he’d duck back or have been forced to come around the bench to get to me. Instead, he’d leaped like a haran-cat and I was forced to throw myself forward in an ungainly roll.

My quick reflexes saved my life and I heard him slam to the decking behind me. I came to my feet and spun, hoping against hope that Treshom had just enough loyalty left in his traitor’s soul that he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to shoot his captain in the back.

The masked man snarled at me in the doorway. Behind him I could see the t’au desperately struggling with the huge miner woman. There was bright blood flying through the air every time she struck, as if she had a bladed implement concealed in her thick work gloves. The fire warriors were splitting up, peeling away to surround her in a killing circle. I had just enough time to see the manoeuvre before my own quarry forced my attention back to him.

He darted towards me, hunched down like a carnisimian, his hands outstretched to grab at me. I battered his grasping fingers away with a crowbar, only mildly surprised that I had picked the implement up in my free hand during my scramble. The dual-wielding fighting style that the Astra Militarum drills into its commanders is a powerful thing. Although the t’au actively discouraged their officers from wielding melee weapons, instinct forced me to default back to the old and the familiar.

He lashed out again, his hands held in an open, clawed position like a swooping raptor. The crowbar was sufficient to keep me at reach and beat away his grubby hands, but I knew I wasn’t going to beat him in a close-quarters fight; that had never been my strength. As he came on, I ducked to the side and fired another pulse shot at his face.

His reflexes were insane. He moved with the speed of a trained assassin, hurling himself down and into a low spin that took him away from me, but spared him the instant death of a plasma round to the mouth. Still, my shot had been on target and he had barely dodged it. As he squared up with me again, I saw that my shot had torn his mask from his face and left a ragged burn on the right side of his head.

‘Oh, Throne!’ yelled Treshom, his voice a wail of abject panic, and I could see why.

The man’s face was a horror. Sloped, angular cheeks fed into a mouth that was brimming with mandibular, insectoid fangs. Chitinous ridges dotted the chin. My eyes narrowed in disgust, I’d seen such monstrosities before.

‘Genestealer,’ I snarled.

He roared in rage and came at me again. All pretence was gone. A second, smaller set of arms tore loose from his tunic and he pressed in on me, ignoring the crowbar and trying to bear me to the ground for a flurry of attacks.

I smashed his grasping claws away, but I was being bent backwards and felt my knees hit the deckplate. I tried to get my pistol up to shoot him in the gut, but he had my wrist in an iron grip. I saw Kartyr’s face appear over the bastard’s shoulder, a heavy spanner hefted overhead. He smashed it down on the genestealer’s back to little effect beyond annoying him. The ’stealer elbowed the t’au, who fell away with an awkward squawk. However, the distraction had loosened my enemy’s grip on my wrist, and I took the opportunity to drain three rounds into his torso.

The genestealer slumped to the side and I staggered to my feet. I had a few small cuts, but nothing life-threatening. I cast a quick glance at Treshom, who was still staring in horror at the revealed face of his xenos ally.

I rushed to Kartyr’s side. The t’au was struggling to get to his feet, woozy from the blow to his head. Blood stained his scalp and he was snorting, trying to clear his nasal slit of fluid.

‘I’m fine,’ he burbled. He pointed towards the door. ‘Help them.’

I rose and lifted my pistol, but by the time I had swung out into the bay the fight was all but over. Two of the fire warriors were lying on the decking, clearly beyond help. Another was slumped against a bulkhead trying to staunch his own bleeding torso. The rest had gained the distance they needed and before I could act, they opened fire. A coruscating fusillade of pulse-rounds tore into the miner, who jerked, suspended in the air by the impacts before finally falling to the ground.

As soon as the last enemy fell, one of the fire caste lowered his weapon and rushed to his injured comrades’ side. The rest spread out, checking the bodies of the fallen to see if their allies could yet be saved and to ensure their enemies were well and truly dead.

A team of earth caste t’au, their shoulders emblazoned with the black patches that signified medical personnel, arrived moments later. The fire warrior medic switched places with the specialists and joined his team in sweeping into the shop. I started to follow them, but two of the medic team flanked me and began inspecting my throat, arms and ribs. The leader took a blood sample from me, immediately testing it with a handheld device, presumably to see if I’d been infected.

The fire warriors emerged moments later with Treshom. The saboteur’s hands were bound to his waist by a restraint belt, but he seemed in no shape to resist. His face was deathly pale, eyes wide with shock. His mouth moved wordlessly, reciting a silent prayer over and over. Kartyr followed, cradling his head with one hand. Dark blue bloodstains covered his face and vest, the latter also streaked with red.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

Kartyr grimaced. ‘I am told I have a minor bone injury which offers no significant impairment. I have sustained far worse in my career.’

I felt ashamed. ‘I’m sorry, Kartyr. I should have realised we were dealing with genestealers earlier. You nearly got killed because I didn’t make the connection.’

‘I am also aware of the existence of genestealers, Kalice Arkady.’ He winced. ‘There is no fault here which we do not share equally. To be truthful, I’m surprised you are not more proud.’

I shook my head. ‘Of what?’ I hadn’t done anything especially noteworthy.

‘Within the first two hours of our partnership there has been a firefight, five casualties and I have suffered a skull fracture.’ He grinned. ‘By human standards, that is a very successful first day, no?’

I snorted in laughter, an action my aching throat immediately made me regret.

‘If you’re well enough to be making jokes,’ I said, ‘then I suppose you’re well enough for us to go and report to the council.’

‘Were you able to recover any actionable information from the fallen?’ Aun’song stared at us over steepled fingers. His face was the perpetually impassive mask of the t’au, but Kartyr’s stiffness told me that the ethereal was less pleased than he might have been.

‘No, wise one.’ I’d spent an entire career delivering bad news to superiors, and as far as I knew I’d done nothing less than my best. I had nothing to be ashamed of. ‘The two secondary conspirators, identified in station records as Arna Quayde and Dovindar Senmurtha, were slain. The one that injured Kartyr, Lystronne Weagan-Hulls, survived for another two hours, but died of his wounds before yielding any useful information.’

The ethereal stared at us, then sat back in his chair, nodding. The other commanders leaned over towards him, whispering amongst themselves.

‘We regret the loss of lives,’ said Aun’song after a moment, ‘but commend you on your excellent investigative skills.’ He gave me a curt nod. ‘We would be honoured to have you resume your regular duties.’

I blinked, not quite sure I understood what I was hearing.

‘Honoured one,’ I said, slowly, ‘I’m afraid that the issue isn’t yet resolved.’

Beside me, Kartyr cleared his throat.

‘Do you agree, Ui’Kau’kartyr?’ Aun’song steepled his fingers again.

Kartyr’s legs tensed – a sure sign of apprehension in his people. ‘I do not wish to contradict the wisdom of the honoured Aun’song,’ he said, ‘but, I would be remiss if I did not make certain that I had presented all of the facts for your consideration. Lystronne was the ringleader of this group, according to the human, Treshom. However, he had not even arrived on the station when the food storage facility failed. As we have identified this as the first act of sabotage – and we know he could not have facilitated it – it then logically follows that he could not have been responsible.’

‘On this mal’hui evidence you would question the judgement of the ethereals?’ El’Ganret’s face betrayed a cold anger as he stared at Kartyr.

‘With the utmost respect,’ I interjected, ‘I must concur. The genestealers are, as my comrades in the fire caste tell me, a threat that the T’au Empire has encountered only sporadically at most, and never at the level of a fully embedded cult.’

El’Ufafri looked to Aun’song, who nodded. The fire caste commander returned the gesture before turning back to face me.

‘It is so,’ he said. ‘After our first few devastating encounters our kroot allies quickly learned how to detect them. All fleets now employ dedicated tracker units to ferret out such creatures.’

I bowed. ‘A wise decision, and one the Imperium has yet to implement.’ Meaningless flattery, of course. Even with every kroot on Pech the Imperium could never hope to spread the keen-nosed xenos far enough to root out every ’stealer infestation. ‘The Imperium’s inefficiency is, however, a boon to you now. Because such epidemics are relatively common on human worlds, I have had the opportunity to fight such creatures up close on numerous occasions. If a genestealer brood is acting so openly it is because they have sufficient numbers to begin their sabotage campaigns.’ I hesitated, unsure of how hard to push. ‘As skilled as the kroot sniffers undoubtedly are, if the traitors have a purestrain specimen at their disposal then they may even have infected some of the non-humans aboard.’

Kartyr made a clicking noise that I couldn’t identify. ‘If such a thorough resource is available to us, it would behoove us to heed it. My own recommendation would be that we continue to pursue our investigations into this organisation.’

Aun’song regarded us. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking or merely waiting in order to give the impression he was thinking. The other commanders were giving him their undivided attention, which told me that they didn’t know either.

‘We appreciate your thoroughness,’ Aun’song said, and I could already feel my heart sinking. ‘Your expertise is a great boon to the Greater Good. However, we are confident that this matter has been satisfactorily resolved.’

I was furious, but fought to keep my rage down. How could they be so obtuse? Such wilful ignorance was something I thought I had left behind in the Imperium. Beside me, I was both surprised and gratified to hear Kartyr emit a low, hissing exhalation. Too soft to be heard by anyone behind us, but a certain sign of aggravation among the t’au.

The walk out of the administration office held a different tone for me now. I walked down the shallow staircase, once more feeling the burning in my legs, and I couldn’t help but recall Lystronne’s viperous words. Was the design of the staircase merely an oversight? Or was it instead a subtle message, one intended to remind any human who made the climb that this was a place where they did not belong?

I paused in the upper walkway, my hands on the railing of the catwalk, staring down at the assembly bay below. The t’au and human workers laboured shoulder to shoulder, but I couldn’t shake the thoughts that rose in my mind. Were they truly as harmonious as they seemed? How many of the earth caste supervisors secretly looked down on their gue’vesa allies while they parroted noble sentiments? How many of the humans wished they hadn’t left the Imperium of Man?

‘Did you know?’ I asked, my question brimming with more malice than I’d intended. ‘Did you know they were going to try to shut us down?’

Kartyr shook his head. ‘I was as surprised by their decision as you, oru’vesa.’

I turned to look at him.

‘How could they be so blind?’ I asked. ‘Could the genestealers have infiltrated the council?’

‘Impossible.’ Kartyr snorted, clearly uncomfortable with the line of questioning. ‘The ethereal caste and those who work closely with them are subject to rigorous medical monitoring for contagions or introduced bio-weapons.’

I sighed. Kartyr might have been as aggravated by being shut down as I was, but there were always going to be limits to how far he would suspect his own people. If the ethereals had been corrupted, Kartyr would never be able to see it clearly.

‘Where, then?’ I asked. ‘Where did the infection originate?’

‘I think that when might be an appropriate question as well,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps even the more salient one. Human immigrants to the station are examined thoroughly. How could one have got through the medical screening?’

Aun’song may have indicated his dismissal, but I was relieved that Kartyr seemed no more willing to drop the issue than I was. It seemed that some of the t’au were more willing to believe their allies than others. No sooner had that thought occurred to me when it led me to another.

‘The kroot gain their expertise based on the fallen that they’ve consumed, correct?’

Kartyr nodded, his nasal slit rippling. ‘That is… largely accurate, I believe.’ His discomfort teased a smile out of me, some part of me enjoying watching Kartyr squirm. The cannibalism of their xenos allies was a matter the t’au were never able to assimilate psychologically.

‘But they can’t have eaten everyone,’ I said. ‘The nicassar, for example. Or the anthrazod, or the g’nosh. It’s unlikely the kroot ever had the chance to eat any of them, so they wouldn’t be able to detect an infection, would they?’

Kartyr looked around, making sure no one else was listening. I did the same. The existence of the t’au race’s allies were closely guarded secrets, especially from humanity, so I understood the caution. I wanted to be as specific as possible, however, to remind Kartyr that the fact I knew about such things reflected the degree of trust the t’au had shown me.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Such helpers are rare, even in t’au space. To my knowledge, only the most common of our ally races have come to the Nem’yar Atoll.’

I started walking, Kartyr falling in line behind me. I was onto something here, I was sure. As sophisticated as the kroot might be at examining their prey, if they were the primary line of defence against the genestealers then there had to be ways to circumvent their scrutiny.

‘What about the vespid?’ I asked, stopping. It was rare indeed to see the insectoid aliens, but most t’au space facilities had at least one stingwing squad on hand at any time; the vespid could operate in low gravity and toxic environments, which made them an invaluable resource for repelling boarding actions. The Suu’suamyth had not one unit, but three.

‘The mal’kor have limited contact with the kroot,’ Kartyr admitted. ‘We have learned that when left to their own devices, there is a certain degree of cultural… incompatibility between the two.’

I smiled grimly. Some gaps couldn’t be bridged. ‘And when did the most recent stingwing unit transfer to the station?’

Kartyr consulted his own wrist pad. As a water caste administrator he had different access keys than I did. I’d be willing to bet his status as a kar’tyr gave him access to even more. He bobbed his head, thinking.

‘Strain Leader Zchllchk arrived two months ago.’ His voice was soft and grim. ‘Twelve days before the grain poisoning.’ He started walking, for the first time in the lead. I don’t think I’d ever seen a water caste member so intense before. It appeared that the silver-tongued bureaucrat had the steel soul of a lawman after all. ‘The stingwing unit transferred in from Li’pora.’

‘It’s a shame that the council suspended our orders to investigate the matter,’ I said. The evidence had mounted up, too steep for me to ignore, but I needed to know if Kartyr was going to support me.

‘On the contrary, Kalice Arkady.’ Kartyr smiled back at me. ‘The beloved ethereal Aun’song merely stated that the council considered the matter resolved. Our original mandate was to discover the perpetrators of the sabotage, and we know that Lystronne’s band could not have carried out the grain poisoning. Since Aun’song did not revoke that mandate, I would put to you that we are still duty-bound to continue our investigation until such a culprit has been identified.’

‘Somehow I suspect the rest of the council won’t see it that way,’ I laughed. I was beginning to like my new partner a great deal.

‘If the rest of the council interpreted Aun’song’s words differently then it is a shame they did not communicate as such to me. I am merely a humble servant of the water caste and cannot be faulted for executing the orders of the ethereals to the best of my abilities.’

I grinned and widened my own stride to keep up. With a clear and likely enemy now revealed, much of Kartyr’s pretence dropped away. He tapped orders into his wrist pad before speaking low and swiftly through his earpiece.

He brought us to a halt outside a large steel door marked with hazard labels in four languages. Bay 112-Beta had been a contaminated area of the station when the t’au took over, uninhabitable by oxy-nitro breathers. The t’au had been working on filtering and scrubbing the toxins from it over the past several months, but for the vespid the bay would have been just as comfortable in its poisoned state. A pale-grey member of the air caste was waiting for us, along with a team of fire warriors.

‘Ui’Kau’kartyr.’ The tall, fey frame of the air caste t’au sketched a graceful bow. ‘I received your summons. How may we be of service?’

Kartyr nodded. ‘Honoured El’Yia’sha. We require admittance to this bay to question Strain Leader Zchllchk and his unit.’ I hadn’t realised the bay was sealed, but it made sense that a toxic environment under clean-up would be off limits to everyone but the caste in charge of it and the xenos tenants. El’Yia’sha began tapping security codes into the console by the door.

‘Listen up,’ I said, addressing the strike team. Their shas’ui cocked his head, fixing me with a hard stare, but if he had a problem with me taking charge I wasn’t in the mood to coddle him. ‘We’re almost certainly facing genestealers in here, and depending on who they’ve infected, they may have been tipped off that we’re coming. Don’t trust anyone beyond this point that Kartyr or I don’t specifically tell you to.’

One of the fire warriors mumbled something that I didn’t quite catch. Kartyr snapped his fingers like he was disciplining a dog or an unruly child and the soldier fell silent.

‘If the genestealers have a purestrain with them then they could have infected anyone. I don’t care if it’s your friend, your comrade in arms or your own sainted grandmother – if they’re inside this bay, they’re to be considered hostile.’

‘Even if they wear the face of an ethereal,’ Kartyr added. There was a low, discomfited hiss from the strike team. I hadn’t considered that possibility, but I was glad Kartyr had. Without specific instructions they’d have never put weapons on an ethereal. I still wasn’t sure if they would.

‘By dint of greatest experience facing this particular enemy, especially given the possibility of unknown psychic attack, operational command belongs to Vres’Kalice.’ Kartyr nodded at me. I was stunned and touched. The fire warriors seemed just as surprised, but from his demeanour I gathered that Kartyr had broad authority in assigning resources during the pursuit of criminals.

He turned and keyed an activation into the door panel. Several warning klaxons sounded and the huge bay doors began grinding open. Kartyr reached under his vest as we stood, waiting, and pulled out a snub-nosed pulse pistol.

‘I thought you didn’t ordinarily carry firearms?’ I said.

‘It is not an ordinary day, Arkady.’

Inside, the bay was filled with curling vapour. The mist was vile smelling, but no longer thick enough to be toxic. The walls rose in stair-step tiers, just like the occupied assembly bays above. Side tunnels arched away from those upper levels, lost in the greenish-grey mist. Dim blue lighting did little to dispel the shadows. We moved in formation, the fire warriors stalking behind Kartyr and me, followed by El’Yia’sha. I had been on the battlefield with t’au before, but this was different. The fire caste moved with an assurance and an ease they didn’t show in open warfare.

But this wasn’t warfare, I realised; it was hunting. The task that the fire caste had spent their existence honing and perfecting. I felt a little more comfortable. I had my pulse pistol held ready at my side. In my off hand, I gripped a combat knife like a comfort talisman. The t’au discouraged us from using our chainswords, but most of the former sergeants I knew still carried a small blade with them.

One of the fire warriors examined a handheld scanning device and then cast a glance back at me, speaking in broken Gothic.

‘I have no clear readings, gue’vesa’vres. The mal’kor appear to be in hiding.’

I nodded. ‘We should at least be able to hear them. It would appear that they were indeed alerted to our arrival.’

The fire warriors exchanged nervous glances, several of them directed my way. I should have been the only human who knew what we were about, but none of them wanted to consider the clear truth: one of their own had betrayed them.

My suspicion was confirmed moments later when the first of the cultists stepped out of the mist. He was dressed in the ragged clothing of a refugee, clutching an autogun. Like Lystronne, he wore a mask over his face, and I curled my lip at the thought of whatever malevolent deformities he was concealing. Another cultist followed him, clad in the dun coveralls of an enginarium menial. One after another they emerged, their trap sprung, around a dozen of them surrounding us in a ring of grim stares and makeshift weapons.

‘How are we betrayed?’ one of the fire warriors whispered over the comms net. The cultists continued to stare at us. Here, in their element, many of them had discarded the disguises they donned to pass among humanity. Dangling additional limbs, compound eyes and other, more bizarre vulgarities as they waited for some unseen signal.

‘I should imagine that El’Yia’sha told them,’ Kartyr said. The fire warriors cast paranoid glances back at the air caste commander, snapping their gaze between him and the cultists.

El’Yia’sha chuckled in a very un-t’au-like fashion.

‘How did you realise?’ he asked.

‘It was odd that a t’au of your rank would respond to a simple request for access to a door,’ said Kartyr. ‘When it became apparent that we had been lured into an ambush, the culprit was a matter of simple deduction.’ He raised his pistol, aiming it squarely at the t’au officer. ‘Kor’el Tash’var Yia’sha, you are hereby remanded to detention, pending inquiry into your involvement with the ongoing sabotage of this station.’ I smiled behind my mask, wondering if the formal language was some kind of required official intonation, or if Kartyr just liked being dramatic.

‘Very perceptive, Ui’Kau’kartyr.’ His eyes darkened and the lights to the bay flooded on, revealing the full array of cultists who had surrounded us. The buzzing overhead announced the arrival of the stingwing unit I had expected. El’Yia’sha was the only t’au I saw among them, but the collected human cultists were horrifying to behold. They stood in small knots, still staring at us. Acidic drool dripped from slavering jaws. Claws as large as combat knives gleamed in the harsh light of the bay. There were at least thirty, maybe as many as fifty. I’d seen much, much larger cults in my time with the 113th, but never one that represented such a large portion of the population where they dwelled.

‘You cannot hope to carry on this deception much longer,’ said Kartyr. I suspected he was merely playing for time at this point, but barring a shootout with the entire cult, I couldn’t see a better option. ‘You and the deviants you lead will be discovered and executed. If there is a single shred of devotion to the Greater Good remaining in you, command your followers to submit to us in the hopes that a cure for your condition can be found.’

The air caste traitor shook his head. ‘I am no leader. I am merely the face that our brotherhood thought you would be most receptive to.’ I admired Kartyr’s idealism, of course, but I’d known there was never a chance the ’stealers would come quietly.

‘Lay down your arms,’ said the t’au genestealer. ‘Join your brethren. All of us here believe in uniting mind and spirit within the Greater Good. We can show you greater unity than you ever believed possible, with none of the lies or suppressed malice you know now.’

‘For the Greater Good,’ intoned the cult, their voices in monotone unison. I shuddered.

‘You do not serve the Greater Good.’ Kartyr’s sneer of disgust was a shocking slip of the customary water caste composure.

A woman in a custodial jumpsuit stepped forward, holding an impact hammer in one hand. Her features were almost human, save for an abnormal crease by her temples and her cold, dead eyes, which were the colour of black glass.

‘What is the Unifying Truth of the Greater Good?’ she asked.

‘All is in Life.’ The synchronous reply echoed through the bay. ‘Life is in All.’

El’Yia’sha spread his hands. ‘And what represents the unity of all life more than the Great Devourer?’

Kartyr’s eyes widened. The absolute blasphemy of the cult’s twisted creed was beyond comprehension.

I cleared my throat. The attention of the cultists drifted towards me. The spokesman, like the rest of the cult, seemed at ease. They had us surrounded, after all.

I stepped forward and buried my knife in El’Yia’sha’s chest.

The genestealer stared in shock and horror at the wound in his chest, thin blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. The entire bay, cultists and fire warriors alike, paused. The notion of an enemy surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned lashing out in this fashion was insanity. It was suicidal.

It was a very, very human thing to do.

I was ducking through the mist, my pulse pistol firing before anyone, ally or enemy, recovered. I managed to pick off two of the closest enemies, a mechanic hefting a stolen pulse rifle and a rail-thin woman with four razor-clawed arms, before anyone else got a shot off.

Screams and roars cut through the bay, answered by the zipping pulse fire of my comrades. The fire warriors acclimated quickly and the nine of us cut through the bay, looking for cover. The shas’ui and half his team swept the air above our heads, prioritising the airborne and highly mobile vespid above all other targets. A stoop-shouldered brute with a gigantic scrap maul came lurching at us through the mist. Kartyr planted his feet in a pyramid stance and shot the ’stealer once in the knee, then again in the head as the enemy dropped.

The genestealers were already recovering. Two of the fire warriors dropped to one knee to stabilise themselves and opened up a blistering wall of pulse-rounds into a charging knot of ’stealers. Clad only in ragged engineer’s jumpsuits and wielding improvised weapons, they went down like grain before the scythe. Another human leapt over the backs of her dying comrades, her powerful legs propelling her into a high somersault.

She landed inside of our line and whirled a long, slender pipe overhead like a staff weapon. She spun it in a scintillating arc, clubbing one of the strike team to the ground and battering us out of formation. I growled and stepped in, and with one steel-capped boot delivered a brutal kick to the top of her knee. I was rewarded with a horrendous, chitinous crunch – the crisp, wet sound of stepping on a bloated insect – and she screamed. Ragged, bloody bones protruded from her ankle. I shot her in the throat and pulled the t’au she had stunned to his feet.

‘Get to cover!’ I yelled. I pointed to a line of sanitation conduit that had been spun out from a spool at some point. The flexible metal pipe was over three feet high and arranged in a loose oval – the perfect firing position. My pulse pistol blazed away as another cluster of mutated humans tried to run in, burning stinking holes through two of them and sending the third surging for shelter.

I scrambled for cover myself, throwing my body over the sanitation conduit and lurching to my feet. Several of the fire warriors were snapping fresh ammo plugs into their weapons. The cult was regrouping outside our position now that we were pinned down, and as I glanced over the conduit I realised how hopeless our situation truly was. Our initial rush had inflicted frightening casualties on the enemy, but we had no way out. I clicked my earpiece on the forlorn chance that I could contact someone, but got nothing but the silence of electronic jamming.

‘They’ll most likely sweep up the sides of the room,’ the shas’ui said. ‘If they’ve got stolen pulse rifles or any other form of long arm, they’ll be able to outrange us.’

‘Sounds like we might need to pressure them,’ I said. ‘If we keep the heat on down here, then if and when they do try to snipe us we can try to make a run for the door.’ It was a desperate plan, and I knew as soon as I said it that it contained only the barest glimmer of hope, but the fire warriors straightened their shoulders anyway. Someone was in charge and they had a confident, reasoned plan. That was enough for the t’au psyche, even if the leader was a human.

As if they had overheard, the cult rejoined their assault. Thrown implements sailed over our barricade. Makeshift pipegun autopistol rounds pinged against the conduit. A crackling beam of green energy knifed through the shadows and cut down one of the fire warriors. The unfortunate casualty wailed and collapsed, his armour folding in on itself, eventually filled with nothing but ash and marred by nothing more than a pinhole burn-scar. Three of the team snapped their carbines upwards and the last of the tainted vespid was cut down in a hail of white gunfire.

The cult roared, almost in unison, and those on the ground rose en masse. This was it. There would be no need for a cunning plan to snipe us from afar; they could bear us down with sheer weight of numbers.

The high whine of a pulse cannon cycling up cut through the darkness. Though it was normally a quiet weapon, the cavernous bay echoed the sound, and cultist and fire warrior alike looked around in horror.

White pulse fire blazed down from the top of a stack of pipes. A deluge of plasma orbs shredded into the cultists. A second and third stream ripped out from separate points. I cheered raggedly, seeing the shrouded silhouette of the stealth suits firing into our foes. Human engineers, their coveralls in flames, ran screaming for shelter, only to find the side halls leading away from the bay home to drifting crisis suits. The boxy, armoured frames unleashed torrent after torrent of flaming chem-spray. The bay had gone from the genestealer cult’s ambush site to a gruesome killing box.

I heard the howl before I saw what had made it – a squealing scream so tortured and wrathful that I first thought a stray shot had penetrated a bulkhead. Kartyr and I turned to see a monstrosity beyond imagining. It was nearly fifteen feet tall, so distended and bloated with excess bulk that the original form of a purestrain genestealer was almost unrecognisable. Lead-grey plates of chitin covered its body, thick enough to turn aside bolter rounds. Its upper arms were grotesquely swollen and tipped with claws the size of chainswords, with a pair of smaller but no less viciously equipped arms accompanying them.

The patriarch – for I knew that was surely what it was – lurched off the ground with an athleticism its bulk should have been incapable of. It grabbed one of the crisis suits by the ankle, plucking its quarry from the air, and smashed the t’au warrior against the deck of the bay. The lesser arms slashed, claws scissoring through the thick XV-8 armour and sending up jets of blood and hydraulic fluids.

A flurry of pulse-rounds peppered the deck around the thing, several of them striking home to little effect. The patriarch raised itself to its full height and roared – the terrible bellow loud enough to shake the deck beneath our feet and laden with telepathic malevolence. The t’au forces in the bay were scattered by the psychic fear. Fire warriors ducked behind cover. Battlesuits drifted away as fast as their jets could take them, gaining altitude or seeking refuge atop piles of boxes and spools of cable. Next to me I could hear Kartyr gibbering, trying to rally himself, his limbs quaking as he fought to stand his ground.

The patriarch turned its depraved gaze to me as if it could somehow sense that I wasn’t affected by its mental attack. Loping forward on its knuckles like a massive ground simian, it came towards me in a roaring charge.

I breathed out, remembering the elemental truths of the ethereals, and centred myself with the Calm of Tides. I would not run or shrink from danger, even if I was the only one still standing.

The monster bulled its way through the bay, its huge clawed hands and feet stomping over ally and enemy alike. Chitin-studded flesh and nanocrystal splintered beneath the thunderous tread.

I levelled my pulse pistol, aiming carefully, this time channelling the Sense of Stone. Frantic fire would do me no good; the thick hide of the patriarch was impervious to even the potent t’au weaponry. I would only get one shot that would matter.

The beast roared again, close enough now that I could smell the dry, acidic stink of it. Tripartite jaws opened wide as it closed in, the one massive arm outstretched in anticipation of rending my flesh.

The Zephyr’s Grace: another elemental invocation. I pulled the trigger.

The shot struck true, hitting the abomination in one of its compound eyes. The thick black orb burst and ichor sprayed as the round blew out the back of the creature’s skull. The patriarch screamed in anguish and lurched upright, impossibly still alive. Hands clutched over its face, the patriarch pulled back and delivered a brutal stomping kick. I tried to dive to the side, but even blind, the monstrosity struck true. The clawed foot crushed down on my hip, smashing me to the ground and throwing me across the floor.

The pain was agonising. I was soaked with blood and couldn’t rise to my feet no matter how hard I tried. The patriarch loomed over me, a gaping, dripping hole where half of its face should have been. Jaws studded with barbed teeth gaped open as it reared to make the kill.

A high-pitched whine screamed through the bay as a small object ricocheted off of the monster’s head. I felt my heart sink, certain someone had thrown a grenade which had failed to detonate. It was only when the disc looped around the patriarch’s head that I realised it was Kartyr’s faithful XR-0 drone. A moment later, the patriarch’s head snapped to the side in a burst of plasma wash. I heard Kartyr reciting mantras of focus as he drilled the beast with his pulse pistol. The massive genestealer backhanded Kartyr, sending him arcing through the air, but it had finally run out of time.

The t’au had rallied, free from whatever psychic malaise the patriarch had unleashed, and two crisis suits landed on either side of the creature. I saw the build-up of energy in the barrels of their plasma rifles, containment coils glowing hot enough to be seen even through the nanocrystal. The brilliant flash of the plasma rifles discharging turned my entire field of vision to pure white, fading slowly to black as I lost consciousness.

I was mildly surprised to find myself waking at all. That when I woke I was in the medical bay, surrounded by the sterile smell of antiseptic and the crisp white uniforms of the earth caste staff, surprised me less.

I rolled my head to the side. The motion felt thick and sluggish, as though moving through tar. More likely, the t’au had my system flooded with enough painkillers to drop a rampaging krootox.

To my left, Kartyr was lying in a bed identical to mine, staring into space with glassy eyes. His right arm was covered in a gelatinous bio-sheath that stretched from his wrist to his neck. His face was a purple almost deep enough to be black, the colour of a hideous bruise on t’au flesh.

‘Looks like you got torn up,’ I slurred. His face lit up with a smile, and he turned to look at me.

‘You are not in much better condition, Kalice Arkady,’ he said. I realised that I also had a regenerative bio-sheath that spread from my left knee all the way to my navel. ‘The earth caste medtechs say that you have suffered comminuted fractures of ridiculous severity in your hip and upper leg.’

A laugh burbled out of my lips. He wasn’t kidding. Beyond simply my leg, I felt as if I’d been run over by a Baneblade. My head throbbed from where I’d hit the floor, there were thick synthplast bandages over my abdomen where the claws had slashed me, and I dimly saw that a smaller bio-sheath encased my right hand where my finger had been broken as the pulse pistol had been yanked away from me.

‘Did we get them all?’ I asked. Kartyr nodded ever so slightly, the movement apparently causing him significant discomfort.

‘The vast majority of the genestealers were eradicated in the bay,’ he said. ‘One or two stragglers have been tracked down in the time since. El’Ufafri has quietly ordered the diversion of multiple bands of kroot to the station to keep a vigilant eye out for any that may have been missed, but I believe all of the cultists have been purged.’

My head lolled back onto the thin cushion that crowned t’au beds, thinking about the crisis suit teams coming to our aid. Just when we had needed them the most, there they were.

‘They believed us after all,’ I said, laughing incredulously. I had always been certain that I still represented the fundamental best of humanity, but I wondered if some of the naivete I saw in my t’au allies had begun to rub off on me.

‘We may have just been under surveillance,’ said Kartyr. ‘Given our assertions, it would have been a prudent measure.’

‘That big of a response? That quickly?’ I shook my head. My grin was mirthful, but there was nothing but bitterness behind it. ‘No, Kartyr. They knew. They knew there was a genestealer cult the whole Throne-damned time. Hell, Li’pora may have discovered it first and alerted them weeks ago.’ I shook my head. ‘But the t’au don’t have a lot of experience with genestealers. Conveniently for them, though, they have a human defector working for them who knows all about the bastards.’

‘You think…’ Kartyr seemed unwilling to voice the thought. ‘You think the council intended for us to stumble into this?’

‘Once we found the cult, they knew I wouldn’t let it go. The humans in the cult, at least the ones familiar with me, would know it too.’ I sighed, laughing again. ‘I’d never let such a danger go unanswered. If you hadn’t backed me I’d have investigated on my own, even against orders. Aun’song didn’t just know it, he counted on it. As soon as the cult knew where we were going they’d have to move to stop us, with unavoidable finality. Aun’song put us on this trail to lure the cult out of hiding so he could cleanse them all at once.’

The medtechs continued to glide past us, content to ignore both me and Kartyr as we sat in silence. That was fine. I think, right then, that he was the only t’au I wanted to talk to.

‘I can’t deny the logic of your claims,’ he said. ‘I know the ethereals are capable of such conduct, and I will try to take comfort in the knowledge that their actions, and our tenacity, saved the lives of many hundreds of people aboard this station.’

I stared into the middle distance. Kartyr had never left his own people. He’d never chosen duty to his comrades over duty to the twisted dictates of a god-thing enthroned on a home world he’d never seen. There were some gaps we would never bridge.

‘I serve the Greater Good,’ I said, ‘and always will. But I don’t appreciate being dangled like a worm on a hook.’

Kartyr nodded sagely. He studiously avoided looking at me, but his voice dropped to a low, conspiratorial whisper.

‘I think, Arkady, that I do not appreciate it either.’

I leaned my head against the cushion. Maybe some gaps could be bridged after all.

About the Author

J C Stearns is a writer who lives in a swamp in Illinois with his wife and son, as well as more animals than is reasonable. He started writing for Black Library in 2016 and is the author of the short stories ‘Turn of the Adder’ and ‘Blackout’ which have featured in various volumes of the anthology Inferno!, ‘Wraithbound’, and ‘The Marauder Lives’ in the Horror anthology Maledictions. He plays Salamanders, Dark Eldar, Sylvaneth, and as soon as he figures out how to paint lightning bolts, Night Lords.

An extract from Farsight: Crisis of Faith.

The tau have the right of it.

Many of our fellow inquisitors would hang me by the neck as a heretic if they heard me say that, for all the good it would do them. But this little xenoculture on the fringes of Imperial space has a way of interacting with the universe that is fascinating to me. I feel they are somehow more likely to see the truths of existence afresh, perhaps by being so far removed from the shattered fragments of knowledge that the older races so habitually cling to. They have open eyes, and comparatively open minds. A very dangerous combination, unfortunately, and one that cannot be left unmonitored.

These tau know nothing of nameless doubt, of existential fear, or the hideous reflections that even the meekest human souls can cast into the hell-dimension of the warp. They are not a psychically active race – or if they are, they are so weak that even I find it difficult to read their Empyrric presence. What blessed ignorance that must be, to live unthreatened by one’s own rapacious shadow. I can only imagine.

Given the grand scale of humanity’s realm, a xenos empire of perhaps a dozen scattered systems is no great cause for concern. The little wretches haven’t even mastered faster than light travel. Ambitious they may be, and technologically advanced in a way, yet their race is isolated and hopelessly outmatched. Conceivably, if they discovered the art of warp travel, they could one day pose an epsilon-level threat.

Frankly I doubt it will ever come to that. If not for their temerity in crossing the Damocles Gulf, I doubt the Imperium would have really bothered with them at all.

Far direr threats cast their pall across mankind’s realm than the tau. The bio-ships first engaged at Tyran, for instance, may soon have the whole Ultramar empire fighting for survival. Still, whilst the greater mass of the Adeptus Terra concerns itself with ghastly fiends, void-borne terrors and brutish savages, I am content to keep an eye on this pocket empire of optimists. Why? Not through lack of courage; you know me well enough to realise that. In short, it is because of that which lies beneath.

Today marks the third year of my assignment to observe this xenos race first hand, from within their society and without. It is fairly common knowledge on the Eastern Fringe that the tau seek to ‘enlighten’ those they encounter with the truth of their precious communality. This is known in common tau parlance as the Greater Good. It might seem a laudable idea, to a naïf. Trust me, dear Xyndrea, it is not nearly as benevolent as it sounds.

In my late-night conversations with my initial contact, the garrulous water caste emissary that calls himself Tidebringer, I have learned much about tau philosophy. Far more than he wished to impart, I’ll wager, but then the water caste do rather like the sound of their own voices. The blessed Tarot I see in the mirror has hinted at the parts of his mindscape he thought artfully concealed, those that concern his caste’s hopes and dreams. The Blind Wanderer was much in evidence, as was the Fountain of False Tears. Filling in the gaps has been very gratifying, much like deciphering a puzzle that is challenging, but still within one’s capabilities.

Once, the tau were very proud of their diplomatic conquests across the near side of the Damocles Gulf, and rightfully so. Not only had they finally managed to navigate across that vast expanse – no mean feat, given the warp currents that swirl and hunt within its nebulous reaches – but they had also talked their way into making uncontested planetfall upon Imperial territory.

Slowly, patiently, these silver-tongued newcomers managed to inveigle their culture – and even their technology – into a clutch of our fringe worlds. Perhaps that was easier than Segmentum Command would like to think, or even our fellows in the Ordo Xenos. All credit to them, the cunning bastards did a masterful job of subtly taking over four principal systems – and a string of orbital planetoids – without so much as a single shot fired. Tidebringer’s fellows, these smug water caste types, refer to their interplanetary negotiations as the Silken Conquests. Though it shames me to admit it, I can see why.

The worlds in the Timbra sub-sector are so far removed from Terra’s rule that dissatisfaction grows like weeds through every stratum of society. It is much the same story on every frontier, of course, but when the aliens inevitably come knocking, humanity’s inherent xenophobia usually sees the natives gather their guns under the Imperial eagle soon enough. That is sadly not the case in the star systems of Timbra. Not all invaders are ravening beasts hungry for destruction.

Slowly at first, with a merchant here and a trader there, tau agents with a near-perfect command of Low Gothic sold their excellent technologies to the indigenes of the fringe worlds. They did so at such a low price that many of the human populace considered the tau little more than idiot savants, gifted simpletons who would be easily exploited. The truth, of course, was closer to the other way around.

The sight of descending tau ships was soon welcomed everywhere from Vespertine to Matinsong. It was a precursor to easy deals, and weapons tech that gave a real edge in the black market – and on the field of conflict, should the deals turn nasty. The tau were relaxed and passive, more than happy to tell the Imperial citizens of their culture. For a while, even those faithful to Holy Terra’s ideals thought they were doing the right thing in dealing with them. Know thy enemy: it’s a maxim that even a backwater oaf can understand.

When asked about their home worlds, the tau merchants painted such a compelling picture of their sunlit utopia that the long-neglected fringers began to think perhaps they would like a piece of that lifestyle too. More tau tech made its way to the worlds of the Timbra sub-sector, more merchants and traders negotiated deals that seemed too good to be true. They had a hidden cost that none truly appreciated until it was too late – complicity. Minor tau settlements were established across the sector, all in the name of trade, of course. The dullards let them build.

Then came the medicine. The earth caste arrived, short in stature and humble in manner. They were introduced by the suave ambassador caste with such smooth grace that no one really objected to them toiling away in the background – especially when the earth caste’s med-packs proved so effective. Within a month, rustjaw, leprosy, screenblind and pneumonia became distant memories.

After the first batch of successful treatments upon Vespertine, a third caste arrived – the pilots of the tau navy. They had to breach orbit in order to ferry the apothecarion packs around. Well enough, thought the fringers; the air caste kept themselves to themselves, and were rarely if ever seen in the flesh. Before long the sight of graceful ochre aircraft was no longer worthy of comment. None realised they had missiles concealed in their wings, nor that the drones on their wingtips were not just fitted for data retrieval, but for the generation of powerful force fields.

With every child saved from death by disease, with every smooth transaction in the marketplace, the arguments against the tau’s presence on the fringe worlds became less strident. Here was something the citizens of the Imperium could sorely use – an easy victory, waiting to be taken from the benevolent lackwits next door. For the common people there was no question, these tau made valuable neighbours. And who knows, perhaps they were right.

Eventually, even the planetary governors were worn down by the endless words of Tidebringer and his kin. The tithes to the wider Imperium dried out to a trickle, and then stopped altogether as all wealth was invested in the future of the fringe worlds instead. Perhaps the governors were trying to impress the tau with their forward thinking. Perhaps they genuinely wanted to help their citizens, and the generations to come. We shall likely never know the truth.

But it was an insult the high Lords of Terra could not ignore.

The Timbra sub-sector became the subject of a redemptive war plan, telepathically transmitted to the Adeptus Astartes by a veteran team of astropaths. It took years, almost a decade, for the vengeance of the Imperium to manifest – Holy Terra has bigger fiends to slay, after all. But manifest it did. The wheels of the Emperor’s justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.

The Damocles Crusade would have put the fear of death into a tyrant from the Maelstrom, let alone a race of xenos upstarts with barely a single thread to their name in the greater tapestry of fate. Led by a coalition of Space Marine Chapters, this counter-invasion force slid through the unquiet currents of the warp towards the Matinsong system. They translated into realspace so close to the system’s Mandeville point they most likely bypassed every cordon and alert network the tau had. The xenos navy, such as it is, never really had a chance against the armada of Imperial ships that appeared from nowhere and barged through to the planets beyond.

On each of the fringe planets, the xenos mustered as much of their military caste as they could scramble. Perhaps through hubris, perhaps due to the ease of their conquests in what they refer to as the enclave worlds, they had left those worlds lightly defended. The Space Marines destroyed the tau garrisons like a sledgehammer smashing a china doll.

The Ultramarines, Hammers of Dorn and Scar Lords led the aggression in grand style. I don’t think the tau had any idea that we could bring such a tremendous concentration of force to bear at a single point and time. Each planetfall reduced a tau garrison cadre to a scattering of corpses and ruined tanks before its fellows could respond. With the Imperial beachheads established, the Astra Militarum battalions brought the fringe worlds back into compliance with slow but ruthless dedication.

The Ecclesiarchy in particular had a fine time ‘re-educating’ those who had strayed from the Emperor’s light. The Astra Militarum and a few elements of the Adeptus Astartes still have a presence there to this day, enforcing the Imperial way with bolter, blade and flame, but it is the Adeptus Mechanicus that has the largest demographic upon the capital worlds. I must tell you of Vior’los’ magma lakes in my next missive. I don’t think I have the spirit for it now.

The counter-invasion didn’t stop there. The Chapters that had launched the invasion had been given orders to teach the tau a lesson, to leave a scar on their collective psyche so deep they would fear straying into humanity’s realm for centuries to come. Making translation to the warp once more, the Space Marine fleet crossed the Damocles Gulf with relative ease and burst back into realspace in the heart of sovereign tau territory. This time the tau navy put up a fight, but against the capital ships of a crusade fleet, they were still found wanting.

The Space Marine armada bulldozed its way past the outlying worlds of Hydass, Sy’l’kell and Viss’el to strike directly at Dal’yth Prime. A sept world, as they call their prime territory, Dal’yth Prime was one of the jewels in the tau empire’s crown. I was part of that invasion force, posing at the time as a primaris psyker of the 122nd Baleghast Castellans. At one point I had the pleasure of fighting alongside the Eighth Company of the Ultramarines; it was a proud moment even for an inquisitor.

Dal’yth Prime is a very different story to the outlying fringe worlds. It is a world of indigo plains and vast hexagonal transit structures that link huge bio-domes. Its infrastructure is so advanced the defending military brought thousands of soldiers to each crucible of battle in a matter of minutes.

This time it was the Imperium that was over-confident. The tau struck back hard, and for a long while, they were crushingly, horribly dominant. The Eighth took heavy casualties, as did every other Space Marine strike force that made planetfall. Captain Atheus himself was struck down by Farsight’s protégé, a young officer whose name translates as ‘Bright Sword’. Those battlesuits engaged the Ultramarines wherever they landed, and transmotives packed full of fire warriors were never far behind. For a while, we were losing badly.

The now-Captain of the Eighth, Numitor, came up with a hypothesis that the tau had no real experience of fighting psykers. It turned out he was right. The xenos have worked with psykers before, and were eager to learn more about them – I think that is the main reason why they accepted me as an advisor – but they still see us as a curious alien phenomenon. At Numitor’s behest my little gang was brought in to give the xenos a nasty fright. It turned out the tau commanders were relying heavily on the teachings of a venerable war leader who had never encountered psychic warfare, and the sheer chaos and confusion engendered by my circus of freaks derailed their strategies over and over again. I miss them keenly, Darrapor’s wide-eyed wonder and Cobliaze’s pyrotechnics most of all. That old crone Malagrea promised she would take good care of them. I hope she stays true to that oath.

In truth, I think it was the assault squads of the Eighth that did more damage than my fellow psykers, but we wrong-footed the tau cadres, and victory is victory. The Imperial strategos ordered the tactic repeated, throwing the tau war machine out of kilter in a dozen zones. Captain Numitor’s leap of faith was the breakthrough that turned a massacre into a grinding war of attrition – the kind of war the Imperium likes best.

Fighting alongside the Ultramarines was an experience I shall not soon forget. I think, towards the end, the sons of Macragge had almost begun to respect the tau fire caste. Some shared notion of honour, perhaps. All well and good for these warrior types, but not a luxury that an inquisitor can afford to entertain. There is too much at stake.

When it came to giving the tau a much-needed revelation concerning the true size and power of the Imperium, ‘Operation Pluto’ was a resounding success. We were not able to finish the job, however. News of the Tyran bio-fleet heading towards Ultramar forced us to withdraw. We left before Dal’yth’s military heads, Commanders Farsight and Shadowsun, could be slain.

That was months ago, now, and those two war leaders remain at large. The water caste are claiming that the tau repelled us through skill, rather than a stalemate enforced by an exterior force. Still, the damage has been done. So shocking was the suddenness and violence of our attack that the tau will think twice before crossing the Damocles Gulf ever again.

Ostensibly, my posting here is to remind these xenos that they do not have the full measure of humanity, and to ensure that an incursion upon Imperial space does not happen again. It is my assigned task to learn about the inner hierarchies of tau civilisation so that if necessary, they can be swiftly and effectively beheaded. All well and good, on the surface of things.

In truth, however, there is another, deeper reason I am watching these new players in the great drama unfolding across the cosmos.

It is often the most innocent souls that turn to darkness.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2020.by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-280-9

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.