Fire Caste Read online

  ‘Why… why are you looking at me like that, sergeant?’ The wheedling tone was back and Cabeza turned away before it was too late. Olim was a degenerate, but he was the one who’d made contact with the rebels. How he’d managed it was anybody’s guess, but he was Cabeza’s ticket out of here. Lady Justice would have to wait a little longer. After all, she’d been in no hurry to claim Olim so far.

  ‘Sergeant… what’s wrong?’ Olim stuttered.

  ‘I was just thinking what a blind bitch she is, señor,’ Cabeza said darkly as he stalked away.

  The others were waiting outside the temple when Cabeza arrived with Olim at his heels. The fungal light faltered just inside the portico, but the sergeant was loath to break discipline and use a torch. He hesitated, sensing the same disquiet among his men. Not much unnerved Ignatz Cabeza anymore, but by the God-Emperor he didn’t want to step inside that living dead shell. He’d swept enough of the ruins in his time and knew what was waiting in there: the passage would bifurcate endlessly, the arterial branches twisting and turning as they burrowed deep into the tainted flesh of the island. Many men had disappeared inside the bowels of these things.

  ‘Where are the rebs?’ Cabeza asked.

  ‘Not far,’ Olim said. ‘There will be a beacon. They said it would be just inside the doorway.’ Olim pointed at the leering portico. When none of the others moved he licked his lips, stepped forward and knelt by the threshold. Hesitantly his hands explored the broken coral under the lintel, finding nothing but dust.

  ‘Here… they said… it would be… promised me…’ Pinned between the darkness ahead and the hard eyes behind, Olim became agitated, then frantic, scrabbling through the detritus, reaching deeper until…

  ‘Yes… Yes! Here it is!’ Olim glanced over his shoulder, smiling with relief. Something bright was clutched in his podgy hand. Awoken by his touch it emitted a soft, rhythmic pulse.

  And Cabeza looked up.

  Maybe it was a subtle disturbance of the light that drew his eyes or maybe it was pure instinct. Either way, he saw the shape unfolding on the lintel high above. It was just a swathe of shadows against the pale dome, but it turned his guts to ice. Wired on the Glory, Cabeza hurled himself backwards, firing on full auto before his conscious mind had caught up. As his violet fire ripped skyward the thing reared up and leapt from its perch. The las-beams stitched contrails of steam through the rain as they chased the bat-like shape and clipped a ragged leather wing.

  And then the beast was amongst them like a black whirlwind. Two men went down instantly, slammed into the ground by the force of its leap and cushioning its landing. The attacker teetered, almost losing its balance as it struck out again. There was a sharp crackle and a third man toppled and already the thing was spinning wildly towards Alvarez. Too close to fire, the Konquistadore swung out with the butt of his rifle, but something hard and unbending blocked the blow. Again that crackle and then Alvarez was roaring in agony, his rifle slipping from nerveless fingers. His scream was cut short by a brutal jab to the throat and he fell, jerking about in violent spasms. And the thing spun to its next victim…

  Staggering backwards, Cabeza tried to get a bead on its jagged, graceless dance, but the attacker was woven too deeply among his men. He understood its game. Outnumbered and outgunned it had gambled on surprise and shock. Shock… Abruptly he saw through the mythic flush of his narcotic fugue and recognised the baton in the attacker’s hand… then recognised the raw electric crackle as Estrada collapsed in a twitching heap. Shock maul! And when the whirlwind swung to face him, Cabeza finally recognised it.

  ‘Iverson,’ he said.

  The commissar had lost his cap and there was a smouldering tear in his coat where Cabeza’s las-fire had clipped his shoulder. He was swaying and breathless, the spidervine scars livid against his chalk white face. His eyes were burning with fever… and something more. Seeing the indigo fire in his pupils, Cabeza spat.

  ‘What the hell kind of commissar are you anyway?’ he yelled.

  ‘The wrong kind,’ Iverson said. He smiled bleakly, his scars twisting into a strange new geometry.

  And then Cabeza was shouldering his lasrifle and Iverson was loping towards him, one leg twisted and trailing, probably messed up by the jump. And Cabeza’s finger was tightening on the trigger… and Iverson was hurling the shock maul…

  Time snapped back into shape and Cabeza’s world exploded into pain. The shock maul smashed the rifle from his hands and a split second later Iverson barrelled into his chest and threw him from his feet. He landed hard and the commissar crashed down on top of him, grinding him into the sharp coral. Iverson’s fists pummelled down as his mad eyes bored into Cabeza.

  ‘She won’t… have… your soul…’ the commissar hissed through ragged breaths. ‘I won’t… let you… fall!’

  Finally the deserter lay still and Iverson lurched to his feet, stumbling as he retrieved his shock maul. He could feel his stomach convulsing with the fungal filth he’d consumed, but there had been no other way to ride out the fever. It was just another small heresy to add to his growing tally. Old Bierce would be turning in his grave if he hadn’t already clawed his way out to haunt his protégé.

  But I’ve done my duty. I’ve hauled them back from the brink… I’ll…

  ‘Take you back… all of you…’ Iverson mumbled as he counted up the scattered, semi-conscious bodies. He wasn’t sure how he’d manage that part of his plan yet. Seven broken men to carry back to camp… Seven? Where was the eighth? He turned to the temple and saw Olim crouched at the threshold. The noble’s eyes were wide with terror. Iverson felt bile rising in his throat at the sight of him. Yes, this was the eighth turncoat – the worm, the one who’d sown the seeds of corruption amongst the rest. For this one there could be no second chance. Iverson drew his laspistol and levelled it at the cowering noble.

  You’ll be Number 28, he realised. Maybe your death will exorcise Number 27.

  Number 27? Iverson saw her then, standing in the shadowed portico behind the fat man, watching him intently with her three dead eyes. Waiting to see him kill again.

  ‘For the Emperor,’ Iverson told her, trying to conceal the edge in his voice.

  Something darted from the trees behind him, buzzing like an angry insect. Iverson spun round firing, but the sleek white saucer streaking towards him zipped between his snapshots, skimming high above the ground on an anti-gravity field. The disc was only about a metre in diameter, but Iverson knew that a soulless intelligence guided the machine. It was only a drone, its artificial brain no more sophisticated than a jungle predator, but the very existence of such a thing was blasphemous.

  Blueskin technology is a heresy upon the face of the galaxy!

  Of more immediate concern were the twin pulse carbines mounted on the underside of the drone. As the disc whirled to dodge his fire those guns rotated independently to lock on him. He dived aside as they spat a stuttering enfilade of plasma. The dive slipped into a fall, saving him from a second burst as the machine whizzed by. He rolled over and fired after it, catching it with a couple of rounds as it banked into a turn, but his shots only mottled its carapace. Chattering angrily the drone soared back towards him.

  A hail of las-bolts spattered the machine from the side, knocking it off kilter and exposing its vulnerable underbelly. Careening wildly through the air, the drone raked the ground with plasma, shredding two of the unconscious Konquistadores. Someone roared in fury and fresh las-fire ripped into the saucer’s belly. One of its carbines exploded, taking the other with it and spinning the machine out of control. Gushing smoke and burbling in distress it retreated, losing altitude as it limped towards the trees, but Iverson was already on his feet and charging. Leaping, he swung the shock maul down on the drone, smashing it towards the ground. It tried to rise and he struck again and again, elevated by a hatred untainted by doubt.

  The machine exploded.


  Iverson was thrown from his feet. Falling for what felt like forever he watched a ragged arm spiralling towards the sky, its hand still clenching a shock maul. It was awful and absurd, but suddenly he was laughing and someone else was laughing along with him. He glanced across the clearing and saw Cabeza. The cadaverous Konquistadore was on his knees, cackling through a mask of mud and blood. His lasrifle was levelled at the wrecked drone.

  Cabeza didn’t know why he’d thrown in with the commissar at the end. He’d already turned his back on the Imperium to sign up with the enemy in the hope of a better deal. He wouldn’t be the first Guardsman to do it, nor the last, so why make a bad move now? What could Iverson offer him except more pain and maybe a quick death? Even for a commissar the man was crazy! Just look at him, lying there with his arm torn off at the elbow and laughing like it was the best joke in the Imperium. Crazy! Except Cabeza was laughing right along with him so maybe he was crazy too. And maybe that was all there was to it.

  ‘For the bloody God-Emperor!’ Cabeza cackled through the last of his broken teeth. Then a drone soared down behind him and his chest erupted in a superheated geyser of flesh and blood. Looking down at the sizzling cavity in his chest he frowned, thinking a full-grown mirewyrm could swim right through there. It was a miracle his torso was still holding things together.

  But then it wasn’t.

  As Cabeza’s corpse collapsed inwards like a slaughterhouse of cards the second drone flashed past, homing in on Iverson. Biting down on the sudden agony of his ruined arm, he rolled to his knees. His laspistol was gone, lost somewhere in the fall. It wouldn’t have stopped the machine, but it would have given him a stand. Hadn’t Bierce taught him that a stand was all that mattered in the final accounting?

  But hadn’t he stopped believing that long ago?

  And if he’d stopped believing it, why was he still fighting? Maybe because Bierce was standing at the edge of the clearing, hands clasped behind his back in that parade ground rigor, watching and judging his pupil until the bitter end.

  The drone swept past and began to circle him, chattering and chirping as two more descended to join its dance. The machines seemed to grow more alert and aware in numbers, almost as if they were parts of a collective mind coming together. Maybe it was just a delusion, but Iverson could have sworn there was real anger in that mind. He’d destroyed one of its components and it wanted revenge. And so the drones were playing with him, enjoying his hopeless, one-armed struggle against the coral, mocking his determination to die on his feet. He could almost taste their hatred. Wasn’t that why the Imperium shunned such technology? Didn’t the Ecclesiarchy preach that thinking machines loathed the living and would ultimately turn on their creators? Mankind had learned that hard truth to its cost long ago, but the blueskin race was still reckless with youth. Perhaps that would be its downfall. As the drones circled him Iverson took comfort in the thought.

  The machine chatter rose to a higher pitch and he steeled himself for death, but abruptly the drones fell silent and drifted back a few paces. To Iverson’s eyes they looked reluctant and sullen, like angry dogs leashed by their masters. And as the dogs withdrew, the masters emerged.

  They crept from the trees in a low crouch, their stubby carbines sweeping from side to side as they advanced, hugging the coral with a bone-deep distrust of open ground. There were five, lightly armoured in mottled black breastplates and rubberised fatigues. Their long helmets arched over their shoulders, giving them a vaguely crustacean look, the strangeness heightened by the crystal sensors embedded in their otherwise blank faceplates. Iverson recognised them at once: pathfinders, the scouts of the tau race.

  Despite their hunched postures the warriors were swift and graceful, fanning out to surround him with the perfect co-ordination of bonded hunters. Slipping on the coral yet again, Iverson abandoned dignity and faced them on his knees. He could see Bierce lurking at the periphery of his vision, demanding some final caustic rhetoric from his protégé, but Iverson had nothing to say. Glaring at the pathfinders, he noticed one of them was quite different to its companions – shorter and slighter of build, the set of its shoulders subtly wrong. The only one with hooves… Iverson’s eyes narrowed as the truth hit him: the odd-one-out was the genuine article.

  Under that loathsome xenos armour all the others are human!

  The lone alien stepped forward and dropped to its haunches, bringing its impassive crystal lenses level with his face. There was a crimson slash running along the spine of its helmet, identifying it as the leader, but Iverson was drawn to another mark – a deep crack running from its crown to the chin of its faceplate. The damage had been patched up, but the rippled scar of a chainsword was unmistakeable to a commissar.

  ‘Your face,’ he breathed. ‘Show me.’ The warrior tilted its head quizzically at the challenge. ‘Or are you afraid?’

  ‘Be watchful, shas’ui.’ It was one of the traitors, his voice surprisingly crisp through his sealed helmet. ‘This one is of the commissar caste. Even wounded this one will not yield.’

  The studied formality of the traitor’s words disgusted Iverson, particularly the way he’d spoken that unclean xenos rank, ‘shas’ui’, with such reverence. These traitors weren’t just mercenaries or cowards looking for a way out – they were true believers.

  The shas’ui considered Iverson for a moment, then it began to unclip its helmet, its four-fingered hands nimble as they uncoupled the power feed and flicked an array of seals. Throughout the ritual its cluster of crystal eyes remained fixed on him, unwavering until the helmet was swept away and he saw the face of his enemy.

  Even for an alien it was ugly. Its leathery blue-grey skin was tinged with yellow and pockmarked with insect bites. A rash of boils ran from its neck to cluster around a topknot of greasy black hair, but its most startling feature was the ruination left by the chainsword. A deep rift had been carved into the right side of its face, running from scalp to jaw, mirroring the crack in its helmet. It was an old wound, but still hideous. A bionic sensor glittered from the scabrous mess where its eye had been and the whole jaw had been replaced with a carved prosthetic. The remaining eye, black and lustreless, regarded the commissar inscrutably. For all its mutilated strangeness the creature was recognisably female. She was the first tau Iverson had seen up close and whatever he’d expected it wasn’t this filthy, disfigured veteran.

  You’re even uglier than me. It was such an absurd, irrelevant thought that he almost laughed out loud.

  ‘Ko’miz’ar.’ The word sounded unfamiliar on the creature’s lips, but he sensed it had faced his kind before… and had the scar to show for it. ‘Ko’miz’ar…’ It was an accusation ripe with hatred.

  ‘Once and forever,’ Iverson answered, denying the lie and refusing to meet Bierce’s gaze. The old raven was standing amongst the traitors now, his thirst for judgement blinding him to the irony. High above, the sky rumbled, pregnant with the storm… and Niemand’s shade shuffled up beside Bierce, haggard with his curse. A moment later lightning lashed the canopy into emerald fire and there was a knife in the alien’s hand, tearing towards Iverson’s eye… for an eye… flashing… so bright and swift… But don’t the blueskins despise close combat? Then a new pain as the blade impaled the hand he’d thrown up to ward off the blow… Not this blueskin. It wants to taste my pain… Share its pain… A stabbing agony as the blade punched through his palm and out the other side, the gleaming tip stopping just short of his eye… Black xenos eye, glaring with a rage so like my own.

  Then they were at the eye of the storm, transfixed by a pure harmony of hate as the blueskin pushed on the knife and Iverson pushed back, neither of them willing to break the perfect ritual of the struggle. Iverson grinned savagely into that foul, ruined face and saw its eye widen… grinning right back at me! And then Number 27 knelt down beside him, serene and oh so dead, and every moment bled into eternity as Iverson rose towards his Thunderground.
/>   The Mire, unknown

  The alien has cheated me of my Thunderground. One moment we were pinned in a deadlock of hate by its knife, the next… treachery! A twist of agony and then that blade was tearing up through my hand and slashing back down into my face. It took an eye for an eye and left a scar for a scar, but mocked me with my life.

  I awoke on this little atoll, stranded Emperor knows where. The traitors had bandaged my wounds, pumped me full of xenos drugs and left me with a week’s worth of supplies. They’d also left me the bloody relic of my severed arm, but the real insult was the pamphlet they’d stuffed into my pocket. ‘Winter’s Tide’ it’s called, named after the slippery tyrant who leads them on this world.

  Yes, of course I read it. One must know one’s enemy after all. Besides, it might have offered up some clue to Wintertide himself, but all I found was a diatribe extolling the so-called Greater Good, the blasphemous philosophy that binds the blueskin empire together. The threat was implicit in every line, so polite it was almost an apology of malice: ‘Join us, or else.’

  Emperor damn them! They thought I was finished, but I’m not alone here. My trinity of ghosts is with me and together we will endure. There is such strength in hatred. But of course you already know that. We are of a kind are we not? That’s why I’ve kept on writing with the wreck of a hand remaining to me. So you’ll understand. So you’ll be ready. But first we have to get out of the Mire…

  Bleeding ectoplasm from the stump of an arm, Niemand gestures defiantly and tells me we’ll be found soon, but sometimes it seems that this limbo has been forever and everything else was just a dream. Bierce always censured me for thinking too much, but out here there’s nothing else to do. Besides, it’s a flaw that runs blood deep, another shadow of my Arkan heritage that the schola couldn’t exorcise.

  You know, lately my thoughts keep turning back to Providence, the home I left so long ago. I think of the frozen Norland rifts and the blistering hell of the Badlands, the white marble colonnades of Capitol Bastion and the gabled mansions of Old Yethsemane. I think of the pioneers and the patricians, the machinists and the savages, all the clans and cartels and tribes, forever at each other’s throats but forever Arkan. They came late to the Emperor’s Light and they didn’t come quietly.