The other shas’las never fired a single shot.
So, yes, they were in awe of him. They exchanged whispered conversations whilst glancing in his direction, tried to keep pace as he silently haunted the shadows and prattled uselessly to make themselves feel professional. It was pathetic.
Amongst the strangers of his team Kais recognised three of the warriors: fellow first-timers who’d trained and graduated with him in the battledome on T’au. They’d preened and performed flawlessly back then, impressing instructors and drill-shas’vres with their coolheadedness and their unblinking faith in the tau’va. Back then, he’d been in awe of them.
He caught one of them staring and grinned to himself.
Further along the corridor, its distant apex hidden behind the mask of deep gloom, someone screamed. Kais thought it probably gue’la but wasn’t sure; it was a shriek of terror and pain that transcended language and became a force, raising the cir’etz scales along his spine and neck with a shiver. The other shas’las froze, ducking into corners instinctively. The scream shut off as abruptly as it had begun.
One of the shas’las, voice quavering, said “What was—?”
“Quiet.” Kais waved the others out of their cover and cautiously moved along the corridor. The team exchanged glances and followed, fingers tight around gun triggers.
The walk seemed to last forever, the dim lighting achieving little other than hardening the resolution of the shadows. Everything was still and silent, like entering the gut of some long-dead behemoth. Dust rose spectrally from the floor with each step, tumbling in its slow dance before settling again. Each hoof-fall became a miniature gong blast that echoed briefly before being swallowed by the completeness of the silence.
The next scream was louder still, accompanied this time by a shuddering, clanging cacophony: something beating against metal. Kais felt his blood freeze and pushed himself against the wall, reassured by its solidity. One of the shas’las moaned quietly into the comm. The silence resumed, even thicker than before.
He activated his blacksun filters, nictitating lenses sliding across his helmet optics. Instantly the world was rendered lurid and kaleidoscopic, long corridor daubed in bright green hues. Rodents — bristling patches of bright yellow and white — lurked in the shallow gullies to either side of the deck grille. But there was something else: at the top of the hall where the path turned sharply to the left, a nebulous haze of yellows and oranges wafted ethereally across his vision. There was something warm up there.
“Wait here,” he murmured into the comm, not waiting for a reply. The others took up covering positions with characteristic good grace.
He inched into the green-lit gloom, his own breathing seeming unnaturally loud in the hot confines of his helmet. The glowing icons on his HUD representing the other shas’las faded slowly to the rear, leaving him utterly alone. Two tor’leks from the corner, eyes fixed rigidly upon that unbroken line of pitted wall, he stopped and held his breath, listening.
Nothing. Nothing but the distant squeals of rodents and the drip-dripping of leaking water.
No conquest without control. Pursue success in serenity.
Fine. Breathe deep. Relax. And—
He loped around the corner with a growl, gun held ready before him, mind racing. His vision exploded with whiteness: a nebulous heat signature too vast to understand. He winced and deactivated the filters, expecting at any moment the thumping impact of hell-fire shells or las-bolts. The world fragmented and returned to normal with a flicker, filling his HUD with redness.
“Oh, sweet T’au...” he whispered, aghast. His stomach turned over and he took two gulps of air, forcing back the bile in his throat. The other shas’las chimed in expectantly.
“What is it?”
“What’s there?”
“Kais? Report!”
What could he say to describe it? It was carnage.
It was only a small chamber — that didn’t help. He could feel the heat from the walls without even entering, just staring from the doorway.
They were humans, at least: that made it slightly less difficult to stomach. The vivid ruby of their parts was almost unreal, an exaggerated fictional parallel to tau blood. Had the scene before him been rendered in cyan and grey rather than rich j’hal-petal red, then the brief weakness in his knees that he felt might have overcome him. He’d seen so much brutality and violence since the trial began that some self-assured part of him had expected never again to be surprised, never again to feel that ugly rushing of blood and bile that he’d endured all those tau’cyrs ago when his father stared at him in disappointment. He’d never imagined something breaking through the numbness in his heart again with the power to astonish and revolt him, but here it was.
A thin strand of redness parted company with the ceiling and fell, a syrupy teardrop that pattered lightly against the slick grille decking.
He couldn’t guess how many gue’la there had been, originally The shreds of clothing and weaponry lying embedded amongst the pulped meat was silent testament to their multiplicity, a dozen different articles of fabric and leather lying shredded within the gore. It was as if the chamber had decompressed suddenly, hurling the flesh from its helpless inhabitants across floor and walls and ceiling. Anonymous strands of gore dappled the interior, sluglike lumps of tissue and muscle that slithered glutinously with the pull of gravity, flopping obscenely to the deck to vent their liquid cargo into the gullies on either side. Clumps of hair broke up the light catching wetness, half-sliced skulls stared in mute horror, eyeballs plucked and dangling, tongues bitten and lacerated in grisly astonishment. An arm, messily dissected at the elbow, grasped uselessly at the air, three fingers shredded to a pulp. A pink foot flopped from a fleshy stalactite above Kais’s head with a wet slurp and a squelch.
A quiet voice at the back of his mind nodded that at least he now knew what they hid within their boots.
It was insanity. It was flesh frenzy, made real. It was as if the room itself was a stomach or a womb, its arterial walls wet with warmth and blood.
The other shas’las arrived behind him, impatient with his silence. Some of them had to be helped out of their helmets so they didn’t choke.
Severus sat behind the code-chattering servitors and smiled.
They were bold, these tau. He’d imagined beings of far greater restraint and self-repression; in the last years the Imperium had openly flouted their territorial treaty and the xenos had rolled over and taken it, uncomplaining. He’d expected this operation to be swift and decisive. He’d expected a diplomatic surrender — leaving him to wearily orchestrate some way of prolonging hostilities.
As it was, there was no manipulation required. He hadn’t imagined in a thousand years that they’d summon the courage and recklessness required to attack an Imperial warship, the fools. He almost pitied them. Almost.
Their aggression quickened his pulse, filling him with visions of combat and war and bloodshed. His mind throbbed with it. Not long now, he reminded himself. Not long.
There had been too many leaks. The texts had been quite specific regarding the levels of concentration required, and he’d thought himself ready. Ten long years he’d prepared for this, and still the sheer strength of it had almost overwhelmed him. Contacting the Administratum had been difficult enough, a thousand tiers of bureaucracy to stunt the progress of his proposal and frustrate his efforts. Then, when finally the funds were made available and the idiots on Terra had given him their official and enthusiastic sanction to continue, there had begun the laborious task of raising up his prison-citadel and his grinding, smoking factories, finalising every tiny detail. There had been moments of doubt, he couldn’t deny it. But the text was there in black and white, alien symbols shifting and writhing with hidden power, and he’d known — he’d been certain.