And then the firefight! He’d never moved so fast, consciousness gyrating and corkscrewing with impossible precision, the drone’s sensors chattering and whistling in his ear as it estimated fire trajectories and ran the gauntlet. He’d barely even seen the Marines — just green smudges of reflected light and chattering gunfire, growing gradually nearer with each hectic manoeuvre. Contact severed with a static hiss as the faithful little drone completed its approach and triggered the high-density kles’tak explosives packed throughout its chassis. Nothing had survived.
The destruction was strangely comforting. If a drone, the very zenith of mindless obedience and preprogrammed faith, could be responsible for such destruction, then perhaps he — with his trail of bodies and bloodstained armour — wasn’t so far removed from the tau’va as he seemed.
The bulkhead leading into the engine room sagged pathetically, pulverised hinges twisted out of shape. He picked his way past the barbarised bodies and ducked between the hanging gates, ears assaulted by the full fury of the reactors within. Across the chamber, standing skeletally on fragile gantries and pulpits, twisted amalgamations of human and machine — more mindless constructs devoted to fulfilling their masters’ commands — twitched their limbs and glared at him through narrow focussing eyelenses. One of them chattered, like a ratchet joint on a battlesuit.
Kais felt the weight of the explosives secured in his shoulderpack. He raised his carbine and smiled, anticipating the destruction he would soon wreak.
Kor’o Dal’yth Men’he piloted his vessel with the consummate ease and confidence characteristic of his rank and caste. The Tel’ham Kenvaal swung in a balletic spiral, rolling onto its side like a whale and disgorging another withering salvo of plasma orbs, railgun shells and AI-piloted torpedoes.
His target moved far too slowly to evade the barrage, its harsh gue’la hull twisting in a last-ditch attempt to present stern before the payload imparted across its belly. Fire and debris vomited into the vacuum, building-sized blocks of masonry and metal tumbling endlessly away in a clutching halo of cable tendrils.
A torpedo alarm gonged serenely and Men’he tapped at a sequence of control drones almost without thought. Immediately a squadron of Barracudas broke off from the dogfight raging along the Kenvaal’s toroq-side hull and ghosted into the firing line to intercept. Nuclear blooms flourished and dwindled in a heartbeat as the missiles were efficiently hunted and crippled, kor’vre pilots chattering their shorthand command language across the squadron-comm. A solitary torpedo evaded their careful ministrations and Men’he rolled his eyes wearily.
“Chaff,” he grunted out loud, not for the first time.
A kor’el nearby nodded and tapped at her control console. “Of course, Kor’o.”
A swarm of blocky drones slipped silently from a hatchway beside the Kenvaal’s batteries and threw themselves at the torpedo. Whatever crude gue’la intelligence was directing the tumbling missile, successfully avoided two of the heat seeking machines before a third, random pulses of magnetic interference scrambling its guidance, flew serenely into its warhead. The detonation fell just short of the damage zone. Men’he breathed out, licking his dry lips.
A Mako-class warship — smaller and slower than the Kenvaal but bristling with railgun emplacements and arms-factories — breached the top of Men’he’s viewscreen and emptied a confetti of drone-piloted fusion capsules at the human vessel. Like swimming insect larvae, the bright pinpricks of light swarmed and circled around their victim, closing in on carefully selected targets before unleashing the actinic energies sealed within them.
The sight made Men’he think of a huge grazebeast carcass, stuffed full of firecrackers and t’pre’ta decorations. It bucked and shivered from the inside, a living fire eating away at its flesh and leaving only the brittle, charred skeleton beneath.
“Kor’o? Their life support and weapons are down.”
“Good. Signal the Sio’l Shi’el’teh to finish the job. We’re rejoining the Or’es Tash’var.”
“Very good, Kor’o.”
The Tel’ham Kenvaal swung away from the hapless warship and accelerated towards the centre of the engagement zone. On all sides the toothy slabs of the gue’la fleet were outmanoeuvred and overrun by the smaller tau vessels, innumerable fighters and attack craft vying for superiority in the abyssal spaces in between. A latticework of munitions and missiles laced the voidspace, glimmering jewels that flickered and blossomed or winked out abruptly. Men’he silently thanked the earth caste for their breathtakingly intelligent computers, at a loss to understand how the gue’la could even begin to decipher such complex tactical showdowns without the benefit of automated systems.
Manpower, he supposed. A hundred thousand humans for every tau in the galaxy — that was the current intelligence estimate. Each of those ugly angular warships was a world, a population of servile ratings and crew without a single freedom beyond the ability to worship their cruel, blinkered gargoyle-god. Every missile fired at them, every fusion capsule shredding its atoms in a purple welt of radiation and fire, was genocide on his part. It was a sobering thought.
The Or’es Tash’var, battered hull dappled with soot patches and protruding boarding craft, circled the Enduring Blade slowly. The two vessels, prow-to-prow, moved around one another like veteran prize fighters, each unwilling to present broadsides for fear of absorbing as much damage as they might inflict. Thus stalemated, they gyrated ponderously, twisting and rolling but always matching one another’s movements; a slow, graceless dance of death, speckled by the furious fighter engagements all around. Torpedoes twisted and left dissolving ribbon trails across the nothingness, drones capered in a dizzying spiral to intercept or attack, chunks of debris and crippled fighter craft turned languidly and bodies, bloated and pulverised and frozen and crushed, slapped like brittle icicles against the Kenvaal’s hull. Men’he shook his head, revolted.
“Target the engines,” he grunted to the gunnery kor’el.
“They’re backing off, Kor’o. I have no firing solution.”
They saw us coming... Signal the Or’es Tash’var. Tell them to take the toroq side, we’ll go juntas. We have to kill those engines.”
“It’s too late, Kor’o... the gue’la are pulling away.”
“Pursu—”
“Kor’o — The surveyor drones make report...”
Men’he frowned. “And?”
“Some sort of energy peak. Standby...”
“Where? I want a location.”
“The gue’la warship, Kor’o. Aft segment.”
The comm chimed.
“O’Men’he? This is Aun’el Ko’vash. I suggest you pull back somewhat...”
“Of course, Aun’el. What’s happening?”
“It would appear our little gambit paid off, Kor’o.”
“Aun’e—?”
“Prepare to engage, Kor’o. They’ll be helpless in moments.”
Men’he glanced bemusedly at the viewscreen. The Enduring Blade seemed to shudder abruptly, the bright lights glimmering across its continental surfaces dimmed and winked off before rising again in an angry crimson luminescence. The stabilising thrusters on its belly — volcanic vents oozing a myriad of smoggy emissions and crackling energies — flared briefly, bringing the unwieldy shape to a premature halt.
Men’he carefully pulled back the Kenvaal to match the distance of the Tash’var and watched, astonished.