“Xeno? Xenogen, are you receiving this?”
This time the voice was impossible to ignore — more clear than previously and full of urgency. It spoke directly into his ear in the gue’la language. He resolved to ignore it.
“Guilliman’s oath, alien! If you’re there, answer me!”
“Who is this...?” he whispered, cold sweat gathering inside his helmet.
“Ah! You’re alive.”
“Who is this?”
“What do you mean? It’s Ardias, of course.”
The memories came tumbling in, and this time he couldn’t turn away from them.
At the height of the madness there’d been a voice in his head. This Ardias, he realised. The blue-suited Space Marine, with his grey on grey scarred features, his grizzled frown and his no-nonsense voice, helmetless and scowling. Instructing him how to destroy the weapon stacks, talking him through the worst of the murder rage. Part of his madness, he’d surmised. A gue’la in his ear.
“Ardias,” he said, trying out the sound of it. For some reason it was hard to visualise anyone other than Lusha at the end of the comm.
“That’s right. What’s your status?”
“Landed. I’m on the surface.”
“Obviously. I meant, whereabouts on the surface?” The voice was thick with impatience.
Struggling against the inertia, Kais dragged himself towards the gaping exit of the pod and peered out. The desire to withdraw and wrench closed the door was almost overwhelming.
A Barracuda shrieked overhead, heavy weapons throbbing at the air. Sooty arcs of dust and debris fountained skywards all across the horizon, bulbous mushrooms of flame and red-black smoke rising upwards at their hearts. A gue’la city spread out before him, crude earthen buildings of angry right angles and flat topped mundanity stretching away into the distance. He recognised certain landmarks — here and there the tall steeples of prefabricated chapels, erected by the book to mirror one another exactly. A serried rank of blocky factories and vast hangars cast a long shadow across the district. Somewhere behind him, long since deserted, were the trenchways where the madness had begun.
The drop pods came down like meteors hurled out of space, glowing red hot from the descent. Shrieking out their plummet like a tide of banshees, they ripped from the clouds and pummelled the city. Buildings dissolved to mud and dust, belching their pulverised walls air-wards. Streets were gouged and dented, succumbing to an artillery bombardment that spawned dizzy, shell-shocked passengers, gue’la and tau alike. They crawled from craters and wreckage groggily, clutching at heads and weapons and each other.
“There...” Ardias voxed. “We have a fix on your position. Stay out of the pod — it interferes with your communicator.”
Kais wasn’t listening. He’d seen something.
They came along the street like walking tumours. Armour articulating fluidly, dragging chains and horsehair capes behind them, ugly weapons chattering and crooning into the devastation. One of them had daubed seven-pointed stars across his armour using tau blood, opaque and bright against the matt-black shell.
Its private constellation of gore dripped and ran together as it killed. One wore no helmet, and its face was a bloodless white maggot-mask with eyes like embers. A nearby gue’la shot it, screaming out a prayer at the top of his voice, and ripped off the monster’s ear. Blood the colour and consistency of oil snaked along its neck and it smiled, enjoying the sensation.
One ripped open a building with a greasy krak grenade, laughing and cackling as the dust blossomed around it. It stalked into the wreckage and dragged the building’s mewling occupants into the street.
Then it...
It...
Kais watched until the civilians were all dead. It took a long time.
Mont’au Marines. Twisted versions of the blue-armoured colossus on the comm. He’d seen their kind on the Enduring Blade, of course, his memories were thick with their cruel laughter, but in that decaying ship tomb, overcome by the rage and the bitterness, he’d been beyond speculation. In the grips of the Mont’au he’d seen only beings to be destroyed, never differentiating between enemy or ally, never asking the question that now settled on him heavily.
“What are they...?”
“The enemy?” Ardias voxed, sounding matter of fact. “Chaos. Evil.”
Kais sought for words, hunting for resolve that he didn’t feel.
“The sio’t teaches us that evil is a falsehood,” he said, clutching at the display wafer in his pouch. “A-all truth is subjective. Evil is just valour, regarded from a different perspective.” He tried to put conviction into his voice, attempting to believe the dogma.
“Spare me your heresy!” the Marine voxed, angry. “How can you doubt the evidence of your own eyes?”
“How... how can we fight this?”
“A question that only a coward need ask, alien.”
Kais’s temper snapped, horror becoming anger in a flash. “Answer me! How do you fight this?”
“Ceaselessy, xeno. Ceaselessly.” The voice sounded tired suddenly, sighing heavily over the bolterfire chattering in the background of the channel. “This thing... this ‘Chaos’. You need to forget everything you know when you fight it. Do you believe that superior numbers matter? Do you think the calibre of your weapon, or... or the strength of your armour will avail you now? They won’t. There are no longer any rules. There are no approved tactics. All you can do, xenogen, is the best that you can.
“Anyone with a trigger finger and a pair of eyes can fire a gun — even those beyond the Emperor’s grace. But it takes more than that to fight Chaos.”
“I don’t underst—”
“Why would you? Listen to me, and remember: the greatest weapon you can possess in this struggle is not a plasma gun, or a bolter, or an entire armoury of tanks and cannons. It’s in your head, do you hear me? You need faith.”
Kais couldn’t conceal his scorn. “Faith in a shrivelled corpse? That’s your advice, is it? That’s your mighty power?”
The pause stretched out uncomfortably. When the gue’la spoke again, his voice was brittle and cold. Alien. “There will be a reckoning between us at the end of this. Is that clear?”
Kais just grunted, choosing not to enforce his point.
“You touched down in Lettica’s eastern district,” the Space Marine said, voice returning to its businesslike growl. “I have need of your assistance.”
Kais cocked an eyebrow and lifted his gun. He needed time to think, to sort through his mind. This gue’la prattle was a distraction. “Whatever it is, do it yourself.”
“My company was deployed to the south. It will take us too long to circle round.”
“I won’t be at your command, gue’la. I don’t take orders from the ignorant or the unenlightened.”
“And the Codex is unusually clear on the subject of refusing the assistance of abominations. Nonetheless — it has been a day of firsts; I suggest you learn to adapt.”
“Not likely.”
“You have something better to be doing?”
Kais frowned. He wanted to say: I’ve had enough. He wanted to collapse in the pod and let it all wash over him. He wanted to bury his head in the sand and forget about blood and killing and violence and chaos and... and his father’s eyes.
But it was too late, now. The Mont’au thing was awake in his mind and he couldn’t rest until it — or he — was dead. Besides, there was something...
Think. Why are you here? Killing was never your goal. It was a by-product. A symptom. You kill for a reason, remember!
“The ethereal!” The answer hit him like a warhead, splitting his world and filling him with sudden adrenaline, a shaft of light cutting through the confusion and madness. “I have to find El’Ko’vash!”
“You need to focus upon your priorities,” the voice said, thick with scorn.