Fire Caste Read online

  Roach felt a gentle tug at his shoulder. Gasping for breath, he surfaced amongst a bed of tall reeds. The Saathlaa scout was waiting for him, crouched low with only his neck showing above the waterline. Instinctively Roach followed his lead. The askari had guided him through their desperate underwater flight with occasional prods or tugs, always signalling when it was safe to come up for air. Apparently the native had no problems seeing in the murky water with those big, fish-like eyes of his. The greyback guessed he was lucky his guide had taken a liking to him, but the native’s impulsive loyalty made him uncomfortable. Claiborne Roach wasn’t much used to anyone looking out for him.

  He heard an electronic burble as something scudded over the water towards their position. With an urgent wave the askari dived again. As Roach followed he saw the shadow of a disc flitting by overhead. He heard several more of the things whiz past, their machine chattering dampened by the water.

  It felt like an age before the native pulled him back to the surface. The cacophony of battle raging across the swamp had intensified with the arrival of the flying discs. Peering cautiously through the reeds, Roach saw them whirling around his embattled comrades, sometimes skimming low over the water, sometimes flitting amongst the treetops. They were only about a metre in diameter and looked kind of ridiculous to Roach, but the twin guns fixed to their undersides were no joke. Fortunately their aim was poor when they were on the move, only stabilising when they came to a hovering halt. Each time one of the discs attempted that, the Arkan defenders tore it apart with concentrated fire, but it was a dangerous game.

  And then there were the snipers. Roach had counted three of them, scattered about the swamp, hidden deep in the mist. Their rate of fire was slow, but the power of their weapons far exceeded anything the Arkan infantry carried, slicing through flesh or solid bark with equal ease. The sneaky bastards had already picked off four greybacks. Unless something was done about them this skirmish was going to end badly.

  ‘We’re running out of time,’ Roach whispered to the askari.

  Keeping low in the water, the native gestured to a clump of mangroves some twenty metres away. Roach waited and a moment later a bolt of energy whooshed from the hideout.

  ‘Nice work, Mister Fish,’ Roach smiled, winning a lopsided grin from the askari. ‘Okay, let’s take him down.’

  They dived again.

  ‘Tell the colonel… tell him we’ve been thrown to the wolves,’ Templeton rasped through a raw tunnel of pain.

  ‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ Lubin muttered as he fiddled with his vox-set, ‘but I can’t promise you anything.’

  The pessimism was an old ritual between them, but the skinny little man was the best vox-operator in the regiment and Templeton had personally financed his long-range comms set. It was the kind of foresight that had served him well in the past.

  ‘Kapitan Bloodbait, we must advance, yes!’ Rudyk snapped at him. ‘A Guardsman, he must go forward always! The Emperor, he…’

  ‘He condemns. Yes… I do recall…’ Templeton said, quite sure that the Emperor had already condemned him. His infected hand had swollen monstrously under the bandages, pumping the skrab poison through his whole body, but mercifully his head had cleared a little. He scanned the jungle uncertainly, trying to work things through. His platoon was sheltering under the drooping canopy of a huge toadstool, crouched behind a bed of smaller fungi. The stingwings had broken off their attack, but there were other enemies out there.

  ‘We need… to regroup… find the others…’

  ‘And together we go forward, yes!’ Rudyk said, slapping his hands.

  ‘Yes,’ said Templeton, thinking no.

  Machen was staring at the scouting loxatl, willing it to signal the ‘all clear’ to its wary brood leader.

  ‘Sir, I’ve got a clean shot!’ Wade’s voice buzzed eagerly over the vox.

  Abruptly Machen’s loxatl reared up onto its hind legs and cocked its head, gurgling that liquid rattle deep in its throat. Somewhere behind the captain its companion responded. Machen cursed Wade, sure the beasts had detected the muffled vibrations of his voice.

  ‘Sir, don’t you think–’

  ‘Keep quiet you fool.’

  Suddenly the loxatl leapt, streaking through the air almost too fast for the eye to follow. It landed on Machen’s towering Thundersuit with a wet thud. One of its claws scrabbled against his domed helmet and a milky white eye peered blindly through the porthole of his visor. He froze.

  Perhaps it thinks I’m a tree. A strange tree to be sure, but then this Emperor forsaken jungle is full of strange trees. If Wade can just keep his mouth shut for…

  ‘It’s almost on top of me!’ Wade buzzed.

  The dead eye widened and the loxatl hissed. As it tried to spring away the captain’s iron-clad arms shot out and caught it in a vice-like grip, crushing its flechette harness like matchwood. Its claws raked desperately against his armour and its jaws snapped at his faceplate, but it couldn’t penetrate the carapace. He squeezed hard, grinding the beast against his cuirass until its attack turned to a frantic escape attempt. Behind him he heard Wade open fire on his own lizard, but he had no attention to spare. The lox in his grasp was writhing and contorting like a snake, its oily skin so slick he could barely hang on to it. But he did hold on, grimly tightening his grip as he paid back the horror eating him up from inside.

  The horror that could never be paid back…

  Machen had once thought he’d lost the capacity for horror on the killing fields of Yethsemane, but he had been wrong. Returning home after the war he’d found horror waiting for him like an old friend in the smouldering ruins of his estate. Valens Parish was far behind the loyalist lines, but horror had rushed ahead of his homecoming to give him a hero’s welcome in the charred bodies of his wife and daughters. One of the estate’s slaves had seen it happen: the killers had been stragglers heading back home, leaderless and drunk on victory. Badlanders. Loyalists.

  The captain had strung up the slave for surviving when his family had died, then tracked down and executed the murderers with the same fussy precision he directed towards troop movements and munitions supplies. Afterwards he’d screamed until he had nothing left inside but hate. Then, with nowhere else to go he’d returned to the 19th. His family had been avenged, but vengeance was greedy.

  And vengeance wasn’t choosy…

  Something snapped in the loxatl’s back and a froth of mucous erupted from its jaws, spattering Machen’s faceplate. For a moment the beast jerked about spasmodically, then fell still. With a triumphant howl the captain cast the broken carcass aside.

  There was an angry hiss from the mist and a hail of flechettes sliced towards him and clattered harmlessly across his armour. Snarling, he returned the gesture with a burst from his heavy stubber, raking the fog as his unseen attacker bounded away.

  ‘Wade, did you kill yours?’ Machen shouted into the vox.

  ‘I hit it!’ Wade replied excitedly.

  ‘Did you kill it, man?’

  ‘I… I’m not sure. It was so damnably fast, sir.’

  Machen swore and stomped over to the Zouave, who was tracking his weapon uncertainly across the smog.

  ‘I did hit it! It’s bleeding out all over the place!’ Wade pointed to a trail of black slime that disappeared into the mist. From somewhere beyond they heard a ragged growl as something dragged itself through the mulch.

  ‘You have to hound a killer down and finish him!’ Machen snarled, storming into the mist after the blood trail.

  He found the second loxatl crawling painfully towards a stagnant pool. It swung on him with a defiant hiss, its mangled flechette blaster clicking impotently. The creature’s left forearm and half its face had been torn away by Wade’s salvo, but it still lunged at him, snapping feebly with its shattered jaws. He batted it to the ground and crushed its skull beneath an iron boot.
<
br />   Just one more and this game is over, Machen thought hungrily.

  Roach and his guide surfaced quietly some ten metres behind the sniper’s hideout. There were three guerrillas hunkered down in the bushes. To his surprise the sniper himself was a native, almost naked under a thick paste of grey mud. Incongruously the Saathlaa’s head was encased in a sleek, backswept helmet fitted with a crystalline optical sensor. The warrior was a bizarre amalgam of the primeval and the hi-tech, but there was no mistaking his skill with the oversized rifle he cradled. He handled the heretical weapon with a tenderness that bordered on worship, whispering to it and stroking the barrel each time he took a shot.

  In a way, the other two guerrillas were even more surprising. Both were true humans and undoubtedly professional soldiers. They wore open-faced helmets and loose black fatigues augmented with cuirasses and shoulder pads. The armour looked like it was moulded from some kind of hard plastek and had a rounded, alien aesthetic.

  Alien. Yes, it was the xenos that Roach had expected to find here. The true enemy, not more savages and these human traitors. Some part of him had wanted to bring pain to the tau themselves, to get some payback for poor dumb Boone and the others. From somewhere across the swamp he heard the unmistakable whoosh of a flamer and the three guerrillas began to argue furiously, the humans harassing their Saathlaa sniper to switch targets fast.

  Well, whoever they are, they’re still the enemy, Roach decided.

  Signalling to the askari beside him, he sighted along his rifle and took the shot. The gun fizzled impotently, something inside it wrecked by the drenching it had taken. He grimaced as the native sniper cocked his head at the sound and began to turn. The askari leapt up and flicked something from his hand. A dagger-like thorn slapped into the sniper’s chest and sent him crashing back into the mesh of creepers he’d been lurking in.

  The two human traitors swung round and Roach dived forward, ducking under their first snapshots. Desperately he jabbed the barrel of his rifle into one man’s eye and sent him reeling, but the other smashed the butt of his own weapon into Roach’s face. Stumbling drunkenly he saw the askari cannoning into his attacker and heard the splash as they hit the water hard. The first soldier was lurching about, clutching at his ruined eye with one hand and trying to level his rifle with the other. Fighting the concussion, Roach lurched along with him and saw the dead sniper entangled in the creepers. He snatched the big thorn from the corpse’s chest and staggered into the half-blind solider, batting away the man’s rifle and ramming the makeshift dagger into his remaining eye.

  And then it was all too much and the world spun out from under his feet and came crashing down.

  Audie Joyce felt the Emperor’s wrath pulsing through his veins as he incinerated the xenos-loving heretics. Their hideout was a blistering wire-frame inferno and he could see the rebels flailing about in there like charcoal skeletons. One of them dived into the water in a cascade of steam, but Audie could tell it was too late for him. A couple of savages leapt out of the jungle to his right and he swung the cleansing stream of fire over to greet them, grinning as they flared up.

  Everything had gone to plan, just as he knew it would. Even the heathen discs had missed him as he paddled towards the sniper’s nest. When he had leapt up and unleashed the holy fire he’d caught a flash of surprised eyes in the foliage and smiled at his growing wisdom.

  ‘Get into cover you greencap idiot!’

  Joyce swung round at that familiar voice and saw Uncle Sergeant Calhoun charging towards him in slow motion, struggling through the treacle of the swamp. His lasrifle was spitting fire as he advanced, chasing the discs that were racing ahead of him towards Joyce. He caught one and sent it spinning and smoking into the water. The others chattered furiously and whipped round, soaring back towards the veteran. Roaring like a madman, Calhoun emptied his clip at the advancing discs, standing his ground as return fire from a dozen guns stitched the water around him into steam.

  As Joyce stormed back towards his hero he saw other greybacks leap out of cover to support Calhoun and draw some of the heat. Everyone was shooting and dashing about now, all caution thrown to the wind as the Arkan chased the Thunderground in their souls. Three of the discs went down in flames, three others swept past leaving a couple of Arkan dead. The surviving sniper claimed another victim, but several greybacks clocked his position and raced towards him, heedless of the risk.

  Joyce heard the clamour of martial music as a Steamblood knight waded in from their left flank at the head of another Arkan squad, its heavy stubber blazing away at the rebels fleeing before it. Arrows pinged off his armour from all sides and the beleaguered Arkan cheered mightily. As if in retaliation, a kind of madness seemed to wash over the Saathlaa and they charged out of the mist, whooping wildly as they cast aside their bows and bore down on the Arkan with coral-tipped spears and clubs.

  ‘Engage the savages!’ Lieutenant Sandefur shouted, his sabre flashing through the putrid gloom as he surged towards the guerrillas.

  Joyce heard someone hollering angrily at the Saathlaa to stay put and cursing them for brainless savages. Guessing he was hearing the enemy leader, he veered off towards the voice. A guerrilla leapt at him, jabbing with a spear and spitting like a venomous toad. He blocked with his flamer and answered with a burst of purifying fire. One of the machine discs whipped past, coming so close it almost knocked him off balance. He sent a stream of flames after it and turned it into a fireball. It flittered about blindly and splashed a couple of rebels with burning promethium before crashing into a tree. Joyce howled along with the savages.

  This was glory!

  Machen was creaking about and firing randomly into the mist, acting as bait while Wade watched over him silently. If the final loxatl went for the captain it would offer him a brief target. It wasn’t a bad plan, but the brood leader was cunning and Wade was nowhere near silent enough. The creature had already figured out that it faced two enemies, so it ignored the obvious lure and homed in on the muted clicks and whirrs from the smaller metal warrior.

  It was crawling stealthily through the heap of fallen Arkan, intent on Wade’s back when one of the bodies surged up from below and ripped open its belly. The creature squealed in pain and peppered Wade’s carapace with flechettes as Valance tore his hunting knife up through its body. Desperate to throw off its attacker, the creature flipped over onto its back, but the scout hung on, driving the knife in again and again. Driven by the loxatl’s pain reflexes, the blaster strapped to its back continued to fire, shredding its hide before exploding in a hail of white-hot shards. It was over, but Valance continued to hack into the corpse until Machen pulled him away. The scout’s eyes were glazed with hatred as he wiped his knife clean. He was panting hard, exhausted by the struggle.

  ‘I ducked down… behind you… when they hit us,’ Valance gasped.

  ‘It was well done, scout. I shall put you forward for a commendation,’ Machen said, entirely serious.

  Six other greybacks had survived the loxatl ambush, but two of those were beyond help. Solemnly Machen gave them the Emperor’s Mercy. As he’d suspected, the third Zouave was also dead. There must have been a flaw in Prentiss’s faceplate because the flechettes had shattered the reinforced glass. Inside the confines of his helmet the man’s skull had been liquefied, but his rigid exoskeleton had kept him standing. The suit would probably remain that way for decades after Phaedra had devoured the soft flesh inside its shell. Machen wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  ‘What’s the game plan, sir?’ Wade asked. The edge of pain in his voice was more pronounced now and Machen guessed he was bleeding badly. Unless he got the man to a medic soon he would lose both his wingmen today.

  ‘We find the others,’ Machen said and looked at Valance. ‘Can you do it, scout?’

  Sheathing his knife, Valance surveyed the fogbound jungle. Somewhere in the distance he could still hear the sounds of gunfire
.

  ‘This place hasn’t got anything on the Methuselah Swamplands back home,’ Valance lied. ‘Sure I can do it, sir.’

  ‘Then lead the way man,’ Machen growled. ‘There’s Arkan blood being spilt out there!’

  Joyce saw Willis Calhoun die. It was a bad death, clumsy and pointless. The sergeant took a spear in the groin from a dying guerrilla floundering in the water beside him and reeled backwards, right into the fire of a passing disc. It tore him clean in two.

  The boy went cold as part of him died with his unspoken guardian. He wasn’t exactly sure what he’d lost, but he thought it might have been the best part of him. Then he heard the guerrilla leader shouting again, still hidden but very close now. Like a drowning man grasping for a line, Joyce gripped the barrel of his flamer and gritted his teeth as the red-hot metal stoked up his rage. Then he was on the move again, fighting through the rebel scum like a man possessed.

  He heard the leader snapping at someone who replied in calm, oddly accented tones. Something about that second voice made his hackles rise and he snarled as he fought his way towards the unseen pair. He found them lurking behind a curtain of fronds, hunched down over one of the killer discs. The saucer was hovering at waist height, its casing bristling with sensor spikes and blocky modules of alien machinery. Joyce guessed it was carrying some kind of comms array, maybe even the control device for all the other discs. A warrior in strange armour had his head down in the array while a burly man in combat fatigues watched impatiently. Going by their bickering Joyce was sure they were officers.

  Grinning like a skull, he tore through the fronds and levelled his flamer. The rebels looked up and Joyce felt a thrill of horror as he recognised the flat wedge of the machine operator’s face – black eyes, no pupils and no nose. He’d seen the holo-pict of a tau but it hadn’t prepared him for the unclean reality of the xenos.