Fire Caste Read online

  ‘What is it, sir?’ asked Templeton, the quietly intense commander of the 4th Company as he peered at the hologram through thick round spectacles.

  ‘That, Captain Templeton, is a tau,’ Cutler said. ‘Take a long, hard look because it’s the reason you’ve been dragged halfway across the galaxy to this mud-ball. Seems these xenos have themselves a jumped-up little empire of their own and our Lady Phaedra is sat right between Them and Us. She’s a worthless harlot, but we can’t let her go and neither can the tau.’ Cutler chuckled, the sound low and harsh. ‘There’s a whole subsector’s worth of pain just waiting to happen if she falls. I guess the tau see it that way too.’

  ‘These tau boys, what have we got on ’em, colonel?’ Major Waite growled.

  ‘I’m told they’re big on guns and tech, but not so fond of getting up-close-and-personal.’ Seeing that Waite expected more, Cutler shook his head ruefully. ‘That’s all I’ve got, Elias.’

  ‘What about numbers? Mechanised divisions or air support?’ Under his bushy eyebrows Waite was frowning ferociously.

  ‘I can give you rebels – a whole planet full of them. They call themselves the Saathlaa. As far as I can tell, Phaedra was a pre-Imperial colony much like home, but unlike us the Saathlaa were dead in the water by the time the Imperium came along. Whatever civilisation they ever had was long gone.’

  ‘Savages,’ Captain Machen sneered. The 3rd Company commander was notorious for his loathing of the Outland tribes back home. ‘We cross half the hellfired galaxy and we still can’t escape their stench!’

  ‘Degenerates,’ Cutler corrected, ‘but that didn’t stop them turning on the Imperium when the xenos came along. I’d guess these tau boys are sneakier than the greenskin vermin we’re used to back home.’

  ‘What’s the game plan, colonel?’ Waite again.

  ‘Seems we’ll be touching down on what’s called a Poseidon-class battleship.’ Cutler snorted. ‘Which is a fancy way of saying a damn big boat. We’re talking the old kind here – the kind that sails on water, not across the stars. From there we’ll be joining up with a push on a chain of islands that go by the name of Dolorosa. Some kind of rebel stronghold…’

  ‘How long, colonel?’ Vendrake interjected. ‘Exactly how long has this war been going on?’

  ‘Sharp as ever, Captain Vendrake.’ Cutler rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily. ‘Like I said, I won’t lie to you. Gentlemen, the Imperium and the Tau Empire have been fighting over Phaedra for near on fifty years.’

  There was a long silence as the men thought it through. Then a murmur began, rising to a hubbub of disorder as the reality sank in. The explosive crack of a bolt pistol put a stop to it.

  ‘Much obliged, Elias.’ Cutler nodded appreciatively to Waite as the veteran holstered his sidearm. Vendrake could see the colonel gathering strength, dredging up every drop of his faded myth. Uncannily he seemed to be looking every man in the eye, talking to each soldier as if he were an old, personal comrade. ‘Arkan, I expect better from you…’

  Abruptly a klaxon began to wail. The main lights flickered on and Cutler glimpsed the hangar chief signalling to him. It was time to go, but he wasn’t finished yet.

  ‘In fact I expect the best!’ Cutler shouted over the noise. ‘It’s what you’ve always given me and it’s what you’re going to give me now. Do that and I’ll get you through this mess! Now move out and make Providence proud, Arkan!’

  He knew they had no cheers left in them and he didn’t much blame them, but at least they’d get on the drop-ships. Right now he couldn’t ask for more.

  The Sisyphus, Argonaut-class battle cruiser

  A recon patrol found me wandering along the shallows of the Qalaqexi River, almost a hundred kilometres from the Verzante outpost on Dolorosa Topaz. The captain here tells me I was half-starved and delirious, raving about holy ghosts and unholy traitors. He also tells me I was carrying the maggot-riddled ruin of my own right arm, decayed beyond any hope of repair. Of course I had no such delusions, but I do not tell him this. I carried my arm out of the Mire because I refused to leave any part of myself to Her, but I do not tell him that either. Just as I do not tell him that I still see my ghosts, though I am no longer half-starved nor delirious. And I certainly do not tell him how holy they are. He would not understand these things. Such truths are only for you and me.

  Instead I tell him about the traitors who are nothing but dead men running. I tell him about the fall of the Verzante Konquistadores and the encroachment of the blueskins into Dolorosa Topaz. I tell him that I have been following Commander Wintertide’s trail and must not falter now. I tell him that I am a commissar and he must offer me his every assistance.

  Instead he contacts Lomax, who is the High Commissar of the Dolorosa Campaign and my direct superior. And of course Lomax recalls me to Antigone base. The captain tells me she has concerns.

  Iverson’s Journal

  Abel… whispered the hollow voice.

  ‘Abel…’ she echoed, the name slithering from the immaterium onto her lips.

  ‘Skjoldis?’ It was the Whitecrow, urgent and angry, calling her back from the Whispersea. He was the only one amongst the blind folk who knew her true name. ‘Skjoldis, snap out of it, woman!’

  Abel seeks…

  ‘…seeks the Counterweight,’ she finished.

  Her eyes flicked open and she saw the Whitecrow leaning over her, frowning ferociously. Over his shoulder she could see her weraldur, watching her with that special sharpness that always turned her blood to ice. The Mercy was still slung across his back, but his right hand was on the haft, poised to wrench the axe free in a heartbeat.

  Is it my time? Am I poisoned?

  Dispassionately she turned her gaze inwards and explored the secret hunting grounds of her soul, sifting through seething rift valleys of frustration and turning over spiny stones of despair, questing for the spoor of corruption. She had sensed no poison in the speaker called Abel, but the serpents could be so very sly–

  ‘Raven!’ The insult snapped her back into annatta, the shadow maze the blind ones called reality. In the maze she appeared to be lying on a cold marble surface under starlight that was even colder.

  ‘Be still, Whitecrow.’ Her voice was raw with the strain of the wyrd. ‘There is no poison in me.’ The tension in him subsided, but his stormy grey eyes continued to search her face.

  My face? Open to the stars!

  Her veil was gone, leaving her face vulnerable to the soul serpents waiting between the stars. Once they knew her face they could shape themselves into a mirror of her soul and seep inside. Her instincts screamed out against the violation and she reached for her hood, but the Whitecrow caught her wrist.

  ‘Who in the Seven Hells is Abel?’ he demanded.

  It was the first time Cutler had seen her face in anything but the dim glow of an oil lamp. In the starlight he was struck anew by the mysterious confluence of her features. She certainly wasn’t beautiful in any conventional sense. Her skin was like faded parchment stretched tight over a skull that was too narrow, accentuating her sharp cheekbones and lending her a carved, half-starved fragility. A gossamer tracery of tattoos wound from her temples to encircle her vivid green eyes before tapering into the bloodless bow of her lips.

  Noticing Cutler’s fascination she snapped her wrist free and pulled up the cowl, hiding her face in shadow… from shadows. Her eyes glared accusingly at him. ‘You gave me your oath you would not touch the veil, Whitecrow.’ The bitterness in her voice made him blanch.

  ‘And I kept it,’ he said. ‘You took the thing off yourself, woman.’

  Her eyes widened and she glanced at her weraldur. The giant nodded, a hint of hurt creeping into his flat eyes. She knew it was true; while there was life in him he would not allow anyone to violate the veil. Not even the Whitecrow.

  What happened to me? Skjoldis wondered as she r
ecognised the gloomy vault of the viewing gallery. She rose and the marble-clad window onto the void drew her gaze like a beacon. Is it really a window… or a mirror?

  ‘What’s going on, Skjoldis?’ Cutler’s voice had softened, but she didn’t need to touch his mind to read the doubt in him. It stung like a betrayal.

  ‘I am not tainted,’ she said. It was the Imperium’s word for the soul poisoning. ‘Is that not enough for you, Whitecrow?’

  ‘No, that’s not enough.’ He sounded tired as he scooped up her discarded veil and joined her. ‘Even from you Skjoldis, that’s not nearly enough.’

  ‘Don’t you mean, especially from me,’ she said bitterly as she took the veil. If the soul serpents were watching it was already too late, but the garment was part of her identity. A truer friend than her own face could ever be.

  Because my face is an open wound to my soul…

  Cutler regarded the witch in silence as she covered her face. The wyrd had come over her in the hangar bay just after the second drop-ship had flown. He’d been chatting with Elias Waite when Skjoldis had started moaning. Feeling a sudden charge in the air he’d glanced round and seen her walking away with her watchdog at her heels. That had set Elias off, but Cutler hadn’t let him make a fuss. He still felt guilty about the hurt on the old man’s face when he’d ordered him to shut up and ship out.

  I’ll make it up to you, old friend, Cutler swore. We’ll talk soon and I’ll tell you whatever it is you need to know.

  He’d left Waite and followed Skjoldis to the viewing gallery, a place that had always fascinated and repelled her. There she’d stood staring into space with her hands touching the glass, whispering nonsense and ignoring his entreaties. He’d sensed the wyrd gathering strength around her, creeping through the chamber like static electric frost and turning the air to ice. And suddenly she’d cast away her precious veil and pressed her face up against the glass, almost as if she’d been trying to push herself through into the void.

  Can she hear the daemon bell? Cutler had wondered bleakly.

  His hand had drifted to his sabre, compelled by a gut-deep dread of psychic corruption. The weraldur had mirrored the action, preparing to fulfil his most sacred duty. Had she fallen? Would she turn and leer at them with a grin that tore her face in two? Would she look like the thing Norliss had become in Dorm 31? Or would she be like the broken ghouls they’d slaughtered back home in that doomed town? Would she be worse?

  But then the wyrd had receded and Skjoldis had fallen to the floor like a meat puppet whose strings had been cut. Drawing closer, Cutler had heard those last enigmatic words about ‘Abel’ and a ‘counterweight’. Every instinct told him not to let the mystery go, but it would have to wait.

  ‘We have to go, Skjoldis,’ Cutler said, but she wasn’t listening. Her eyes had slipped past the yellow crescent of the planet and fixed on the ancient corpse ship. And suddenly she remembered it all.

  None of them noticed Hardin Vendrake watching from the shadows.

  It was the stench that hit Roach first, a heady brew of the sea and the grave, like rotten fish vomited up by a corpse. A heartbeat later the heat came crowding in, thick and liquid, clinging to him like an oily second skin. He thought he’d beaten heat long ago, but this wasn’t like the slow burn of the Badlands. The drop-ship hatch had only just opened and he was already drenched in sweat.

  I’m never going to be clean again, he realised.

  ‘Quit dreaming and shift your arse outta my way, breed!’ Modine snarled over his shoulder. Roach glanced back at the men clustered in the drop-ship behind him. Their faces looked as grey as their fatigues. They could all smell the sickness waiting out there. All except Modine, who couldn’t smell anything through the promethium tar clogging his nostrils. The ape didn’t know how lucky he was.

  ‘What you got, Snake Eyes?’ Toomy asked, speaking for the whole squad. Roach might be a half-breed, but he was also their scout and they trusted his instincts. Probably because he was a half-breed…

  They want something dark and wise from me, a touch of the Norland wyrd to ground their fears. And so I’m Snake Eyes now, the squad’s totem against the unknown, but later on, when they’re all sat around the fire together, I’ll just be the breed again. At least Modine always says it like it is. Well to the Hells with ’em all!

  Without a word Roach turned back to the hatch. The exit ramp had lowered then stuck midway, but it was only a couple of metres to the ground so he swung himself over the lip and jumped. He landed with catlike grace on the deck below, but almost slipped on the slime coating the corroded plates.

  In this heat maybe even metal has to sweat, he thought with disgust.

  He heard Modine swearing above him and smiled coldly. Getting off was going to be a bitch for the pyrotrooper with that bulky flamer strapped to his back. Still, Roach was the squad’s eyes and he didn’t want any of them breaking their necks on his watch, not even Modine, so he called back a warning as he scanned the terrain.

  True to the colonel’s words, the drop-ship had touched down on the deck of a ship, but Cutler’s ‘damn big boat’ didn’t come close to the reality. Roach had served on his share of steamboats back home, but this monster was nothing like those brave old vessels. It defied belief that anything so vast could even float. He guessed the landing strip alone was some thousand metres long and maybe five hundred across, the space sliced into a grid of landing pads and fuelling stations, all connected by a web of pipes and cables. Ugly barnacles of machinery clung to the deck and a crane sprouted from the starboard side like a gallows for giants. He squinted at its outstretched arm. By the Seven Hells, there were bodies hanging up there! Not giants, just ordinary men – dozens of them. It was hard to be sure at this distance, but it looked like they’d been skinned.

  Uneasily Roach tore his eyes away from the crane and took in the rest of the ship. Sternwards the deck erupted into a sprawl of metal blocks and conning towers that loomed over the strip like a cast-iron fortress. The keep had been daubed with a crude rendition of the Imperial aquila, the double-headed eagle snarling savagely. The bow was dominated by the ship’s main gun, a mounted cannon that looked big enough to punch a hole in a starship. The monster was bolted to the deck by rivets the size of a man and tended by a whole squad of scarlet-uniformed troops. Psalms from the Imperial canticles ran the length of the barrel, the white paint livid against the black metal. Along the port and starboard sides smaller emplacements jutted from the battlements, manned by more men in scarlet. The troops were too far away for Roach to get a good look at them, but he sensed they were ignoring the newcomers.

  The clarion call of a bugle drew his attention to another drop-ship further along the deck. He guessed it had touched down a few minutes earlier because its passengers were already disembarked and standing to attention. They were Captain Templeton’s 4th Company and he could see the man himself strutting back and forth like he was on the parade ground. The captain’s dress uniform was sagging in the wet heat, making him look like a drowned peacock, but Roach had to give him credit for trying. Templeton wasn’t nearly as stupid as he looked and he wasn’t a total bastard like ‘Ironbones’ Machen, Roach’s own company commander.

  The Dustsnakes had once been part of the 10th Company, but that was back in the days before Yethsemane Falls, when the regiment still had almost two thousand men to its name. After that carnage the Dustsnakes were the only part of the 10th Company. It had been a similar story throughout the regiment and Cutler had been forced to reshuffle the survivors into four functional units, each numbering around two hundred men. Unfortunately the Dustsnakes had wound up at the arse end of the reformed 3rd, under Jon Milton Machen, a man who believed Norlanders and Badlanders were just two strains of the same plague. It was yet another piece in the cosmic puzzle that proved life, the immaterium and the Emperor all had it in for Mister Claiborne Roach.

  ‘Fire from the sky!’ Modine roa
red and slammed down beside him with a meaty thud. He had all the grace of a dead grox, but to Roach’s surprise the pyrotrooper didn’t stumble.

  ‘Almost squashed you under my boots like a ’roach, Roach!’ Modine said with a sneer that was oddly half-hearted.

  ‘Make some space down there you brain-dead sons o’ bitches!’ Sergeant Calhoun bellowed from above. As the two greybacks obeyed, more hatches clanged open along the ship and the rest of 3rd Company began to disembark. Sourly Roach noted that their exit ramps hadn’t jammed.

  He saw Captain Machen stomping onto the deck at the head of his command squad. In his Thundersuit the man looked like a vast iron crab that had reared up to walk on its hind legs. Under its elegantly moulded carapace the suit was an industrial masterwork of spinning cogs and pistons that clattered and hissed in perfect harmony, almost drowning out the stirring chords of ‘Providence Endures’ booming from its brass shoulder speakers. A heavy stubber was fixed to one ironclad paw, the ammo belt coiling into a fluted dispenser on the back, while the other ended in a massive drill inscribed with the ‘Testament of the Founding Fathers’. The captain’s crew-cut head was visible through the thick glass porthole of his baroque helmet. He was still wearing his wide-brimmed officer’s hat and there was a fat cigarillo rammed between his jaws, but even he wasn’t quite crazy enough to light it in there.

  Roach wasn’t impressed by the spectacle. The antique fighting suit was a legacy of Old Providence, a cherished heirloom passed down generations of the captain’s blueblood family. Sure, there was no denying its toughness – after all, the thing was closer to a tank than a suit of regular power armour – but it was unpredictable and hideously difficult to maintain – not to mention noisy as all the Hells! To the scout’s way of thinking such relics were more effective as status symbols than practical tools of war.