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  ‘Scans complete,’ the pilot continued. ‘All enemy craft remain planetside.’

  ‘My thanks,’ said O’Shoh, turning to face his fellow officers. ‘Curious. It appears the be’gel have no fleet at all.’

  ‘Perhaps these fearsome “orks” are in fact cowards, wise one,’ said Commander Brightsword from his honour throne at the front of the craft. The warrior lord stood, contempt clouding his youthful visage. His hand gripped the hilt of his ceremonial blade as if to draw it. ‘No starships, no cordon – not so much as a monitoring array. Why do they not wish to fight us?’

  ‘Perhaps, commander,’ said O’Shoh, ‘they seek to lure us into a trap.’

  At the back of the bridge’s curvilinear slope, the thickset figure of Shas’vre Ob’lotai nodded slowly. The veteran fire warrior’s features were thrown into blue-black shadow by the holobanks behind his head, making him seem more solid and indomitable than ever.

  Ob’lotai, a warrior of few words, met O’Shoh’s gaze for a brief second, and subtly made the sign of the sword-yet-to-strike.

  ‘Interesting,’ said O’Shoh. ‘On inspection of the planet’s surface, another theory presents itself. Consider the manner in which the orks have invaded – sudden, brutal, irreversible. Their craft are little more than asteroids hurled from orbit at the bio-domes. And not without success.’

  ‘To crush your foes in so literal a manner...’ Brightsword mused. ‘It would be almost admirable were it not so utterly without honour.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said O’Shoh. ‘They focus entirely on attack, with no thought for defence. It is a weakness I intend to exploit.’

  ‘Their strategy shows consummate arrogance,’ said Commander Brightsword with a wry smile. ‘We shall make the savages pay dearly for their mistake.’

  ‘An easy promise to make, young blade,’ said Ob’lotai, his sonorous bass resonating from the back of the bridge. ‘Not so easy to fulfil.’

  ‘Do not call me that,’ said Brightsword, loosening his ceremonial weapon in its scabbard. ‘I no longer answer to that name. I have the rank of commander, and you will address me accordingly.’

  Ob’lotai merely raised his muscular shoulders a fraction, his broad face as impassive as a glacier.

  ‘Commander Brightsword draws a reasonable conclusion,’ said O’Shoh, putting an end to the matter before the young warrior’s temper flared any further. ‘Yet there remains another.’

  ‘You think these primitive ones capable of setting up a Kauyon strategy?’ asked Brightsword.

  ‘The greenskins have a brutal cunning, I hear,’ replied O’Shoh. ‘Perhaps they let us approach unhindered in the hope of gaining a new opportunity. It is as Master Puretide taught us, “For a fortress to welcome reinforcements, it must first open its gates”. ’

  ‘Commander Shoh,’ said the air caste pilot, ‘my telepresence team have contacted Arkunasha’s garrison commander. Shall I open the dialogue?’

  ‘One moment,’ replied O’Shoh, stepping over to his command throne and tapping a sequence. A plate-sized holographer drone rose silently from the throne’s wide white armrest, scanners flicking. ‘Proceed.’

  Smoothly, a high-resolution hologram of a fire caste officer resolved within the commune bay. He was tall, upright and clad in full formal dress. From his domed head a long topknot was banded with many honorific rings, and his posture was as upright as a battlesuit at an ethereal’s grand arrival.

  ‘Greetings, Shas’o Vash’ya Astos,’ said O’Shoh. ‘We look forward to fighting alongside you.’

  ‘I am humbled by the notion, noble comrades,’ said the hologram. ‘Please, simply call me Sha’vastos. I am not worthy of the rank of commander, not whilst Arkunasha bleeds.’

  The Arkunashan met O’Shoh’s gaze and bowed stiffly, sincerity radiating from his features.

  ‘Shas’o Vior’la Shoh Kais Mont’yr, I bow to you. This is a day I have long awaited. It is a privilege to meet a student of the legendary Master Puretide.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said O’Shoh, ‘your protocol is immaculate. Still, I urge you to speak plainly. We must discuss matters of military advancement. Time is short.’

  Sha’vastos looked taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovered his composure. O’Shoh blink-flicked the screen at the side of his own command throne, and on the curving screens behind Ob’lotai a set of gently curving lines resolved over a map of Arkunasha.

  ‘Our vectors of approach are clear,’ said O’Shoh. ‘The orks have put no impediment in our path, so we shall simply land at Bio-dome 1-1 and make immediate rendezvous.’

  ‘I await your arrival with hope and a clear mind,’ said Sha’vastos. ‘It is said you are Master Puretide’s brightest pupil. The orks have been largely inactive since our withdrawal into the bio-domes, but we know the locations of their bases. With your famous inner light illuminating our way, the path to victory will soon become clear.’

  O’Shoh frowned slightly, but did not reply. He could feel a dangerous heat building in his chest, a hunger for the conflict to start. The idea of deliberate inactivity chafed at his soul.

  ‘It is a shadow upon my honour,’ continued Sha’vastos solemnly, ‘that not all of our people will be able to properly celebrate your arrival.’ He made the gesture of conciliation.

  ‘For the sake of the Greater Good, observe no more formalities, Sha’vastos!’ snapped O’Shoh. ‘This is a war, though by all accounts you are no longer fighting it. Those stranded in the outlying bio-domes are starving, and estimates suggest the orks outnumber us by three hundred and ninety-eight to one.’

  ‘So my officers tell me, Commander Shoh.’

  ‘Your tone indicates disagreement,’ said O’Shoh, his voice edged with warning.

  ‘I offer contrition, commander, but our air caste pilots believe the ratio you mentioned is worsening daily.’

  ‘Perhaps, oh patient one,’ said Brightsword drily, ‘your ork visitors have hidden auxiliary forces within their asteroid craft.’

  ‘That was my conclusion too,’ replied Sha’vastos. ‘Yet high-orbit drone scans reveal no additional lifesigns emerging from their asteroid bases.’

  ‘You have another theory, perhaps?’ said O’Shoh.

  ‘My primary earth caste advisor, Fio’el Vesa, believes they are reproducing. Worse still, our readings indicate they are slowly increasing in stature.’

  O’Shoh sighed heavily. The tau had encountered the orks before, but they were a long way from understanding them. The notion of a foe that grew stronger the more you fought it was unsettling indeed.

  ‘Constructive stalemate is of no use against these pests, Sha’vastos,’ said Brightsword. ‘The code of fire is clear. The orks must be either quarantined or annihilated. We should scour them from Arkunasha for good.’

  ‘Ideally so,’ replied Sha’vastos, nodding sagely, ‘though their numbers are too great for my cadres to meaningfully affect. If anything, it is the orks who are quarantining us.’

  ‘For now,’ said O’Shoh. ‘I cannot guarantee a swift resolution to this war, but I do know that further delay will only worsen matters. We must act, test the mettle of this horde and find its weak spot.’

  It was said the orks lived to fight. They were not alone. A part of O’Shoh yearned for the clamour of war, the thrill of battle, the spilling of blood and the exhilaration of the righteous kill. The urge to do violence resided within him, coiled like a slumbering wyrm.

  ‘The light of every new sun throws shadows of its own,’ muttered O’Shoh under his breath.

  ‘I beg repetition, commander?’ said Sha’vastos.

  ‘We hope to turn the tide in our favour very soon, Commander Sha’vastos,’ interrupted Brightsword smoothly. ‘Is there any additional information you have to impart?’

  ‘Ah… yes. The Arkunashan storms,’ replied Sha’vastos. ‘They are unpredictable in the extreme, far more so t
han you may have been briefed. They have been seen to change direction without warning, snatching up those who stray too close. However, I believe them to be nothing more sinister than a quirk of meteorology.’

  ‘An interesting choice of words,’ said O’Shoh, his eyes narrowing.

  The Arkunashan commander’s posture stiffened slightly, and he glanced away at something the holographer drone could not see. O’Shoh noted it as a point for later pursuit.

  ‘I simply mean to say it is wise to give these phenomena a wide berth,’ Sha’vastos continued. ‘El’Vesa has devised an optimum formula for dispersal.’

  At this, the hologram Sha’vastos tapped a finger on his cuff-mounted control node. Almost instantaneously, data spooled across the curved screens behind Ob’lotai’s domed head.

  ‘I assume your cadres are busy re-establishing supply lines, Commander Sha’vastos,’ said O’Shoh.

  ‘We are making every attempt, honoured one. My sub-commander Tutor Sha’kan’thas is striking hard and then withdrawing before retaliation.’

  O’Shoh scowled involuntarily at the name. Memories of the training dome regimes rose unbidden. So many cycles ago now, but the scars lingered on.

  ‘Ultimately, though,’ continued Sha’vastos, ‘the presence of so many ork aircraft denies any chance of large-scale resupply. To move even a single supply ship into place has been to attack a vespid nest. Until today, of course.’

  As he spoke, the Arkunashan commander smiled ever so slightly. In that single facial tic, O’Shoh saw the commander’s desperate need to believe in imminent salvation.

  ‘This is not a war that can be won with open confrontation, commander,’ said O’Shoh. ‘We will break them using the weapons of the mind as well as the gauntlet.’

  Ob’lotai leaned forwards at the back of the bridge. ‘He who wrestles the beast shall fall to its claws. He who outthinks it shall feast well.’

  O’Shoh nodded. ‘A lesson Master Puretide was keen to impress upon me.’

  Sha’vastos made the curled finger of questions-yet-to-come. ‘May I ask you to expound, commander?’

  O’Shoh rose from his command throne. He walked to the edge of the row of delegates and turned back, padding with perfect balance up the slender span of white alloy curving over the seating bay. Stretching up to the ornamental spars above, he took down one of the crossed ceremonial swords that crested the bridge. The commander leapt off the span, his cloak billowing out. As he landed in a crouch atop his command throne, he punched the sword, point down, right through the seat’s cushioned arm.

  The assembled officers watched in shock as O’Shoh wrenched the hilt to one side, the snap of its blade startlingly loud in the awed silence.

  ‘The Way of the Broken Sword,’ said O’Shoh. ‘Divide and slaughter.’

  3-0

  Bio-dome 31-8, Arkunasha

  The atmosphere of desperation in Bio-dome 31-8 was thick enough to taste. Mentor Y’eln, named for her patience, already loathed the humid stink of recycled waste and unwashed tau bodies. With the transport tunnels collapsed, the desert hostile and the skies infested with ork aircraft, the populace had been cut off from the protein stations and dew farms since the invasion began.

  The daily broadcasts from the water caste were supposed to bring hope. They should savour the anticipation of victory, the magisters had said, for O’Shoh’s arrival would be their salvation.

  At council, Mentor Y’eln had replied that one could not eat hope.

  Emaciated youngsters huddled around Y’eln’s skirts, their sunken eyes wide and unfocused. She forced herself to ignore them, instead staring intently at the dome’s holograph announcements. That was where the Greater Good lay now – in information and in surety of purpose.

  Her eyes hurt from the strain, but it was a small sacrifice. If the bio-dome’s walls were breached by the resurgent orks outside, a single moment of hesitation could be the difference between life and death.

  The water caste were talking around the subject, spinning the phase of war to come as a glorious opportunity for them all. To Mentor Y’eln, one of the eldest tau in Bio-dome 31-8, their wordcraft was just another cursed mind knot to unravel.

  In truth, she had little else to do. The youngsters had long ago stopped asking when they would next eat proper food. Many settlements had enough supplies to last a whole tau’cyr, maybe more, but not Bio-dome 31-8. Its harvest wing had been hit by an ork asteroid on the first day of the invasion, and the vault doors sealed soon after. Nutrient paste was all they had left.

  Over the last few cycles, the water caste’s broadcasts had become ever more focused upon war. They had shown low-orbit footage of the orks – dirty green hordes entrenched around the walls of each complex, spreading filth wherever they went. They roared and stomped and fired guns into the air, throwing up great clouds of rust as they shoulder-barged the bio-dome walls again and again. The water caste was painting the creatures as little more than hungry beasts. Somehow, that just made it worse.

  Each time she saw footage of the invaders, it reminded her of the incident at the viewing dome. A thrashing, bellowing throng of orks, battering themselves against the far side of the complex wall. Blood and dung smeared in equal measure. Slobbering jaws slapping strings of alien drool across the transplastic, teeth spitting from bloodied mouths and crude axes rising and falling to bounce a metre from her face.

  It was chilling enough that the beasts had been permitted to remain. Yet Commander Sha’vastos’s tactic of patience had not been without reward. With the fire caste stripping back its offensives to little more than armed patrols, the fringes of the ork horde were slowly drifting away into the desert in search of easier prey. A few more days and a dedicated resupply mission would have had a real chance of success.

  Y’eln watched the holograph displays smoothly transition to show a thousand lights glimmering in the azure sky, arranged in a perfect geometric lattice. A water caste envoy’s smooth tones slid over the broadcast. He proudly announced the live drone footage of Commander Shoh’s magnificent fleet descending, bringing their salvation through the rising Arkunashan dawn.

  The mentor grimaced, her face twisting with worry. O’Shoh’s fleet was making no effort to mask its approach. The ships would be seen for hundreds of miles all around. She knew enough about the orks to realise the prospect of war would stir them from sporadic bouts of violence into a planet-wide frenzy of battle lust.

  To Mentor Y’eln, there seemed no greater folly than salving the wounds of a burning world by setting new fires.

  One of the youngsters at Y’eln’s side gave a low moan. The mentor felt sadness and anger well up inside her as she stroked the young tau’s brow. The child cared not for the pomp and ceremony of the fire caste’s arrival. He was growing weaker with every passing night.

  Time was running short.

  Dok’s Rok, Equatorial desert, Arkunasha

  Vral walked down the baking rust dune, every step taking him closer to the orks’ mountainous asteroid. The thing was vast, its fore-mounted gun batteries massive enough to rival the engine arrays at its rear. Its titanic ugliness and weight were intimidating in the extreme.

  In his heart, the water caste magister was already regretting his assertion that the orks must be held at bay by any means necessary.

  The ethereal caste had long believed that, when it came to negotiation, the orks were a lost cause. Upon encountering an infestation, standard procedure was either to wipe them out altogether or to avoid them at all costs. But with the orks thumping down their asteroid fortresses all across Arkunasha, standard procedure had proven completely inadequate.

  When his once-mentor Por’o Kais had put forward the notion of finding a new strategy, Vral had given an impassioned speech recommending they revisit negotiation. Hundreds of Arkunasha’s people were dying with each new cycle. The water caste specialised in circumventing immutable ob
stacles – how was this any different?

  Por’o Kais had immediately approved the concept, much to Vral’s shock. Within microdecs, the old ambassador had arranged for Vral to visit the densest concentration of orks on the planet. Not quite what he had in mind, but after making so public a speech, his course was set.

  Vral told himself for the hundredth time that this was the direction dictated by the Greater Good, and that the sweat on the back of his neck was due to the baking sun, not crippling fear. This was the right thing to do for the Tau’va; personal safety was as nothing when set against the Greater Good. Yet somehow, when it meant his walking up to an ork fortress with only twelve fire warriors at his back, the righteous appeal of his cause quickly diminished.

  The water caste magister looked up in trepidation at the ork hulk ahead. Even the rock that formed the bulk of the asteroid ship was somehow grotesque. Holes like empty eye sockets pitted its surface from one end to the other, whilst its larger caves and niches were filled to bursting point with riveted plates and crackling machinery. Vast chimney-like engines jutted from the ramshackle craft’s upper slopes, a chaotic profusion in stark contrast to the earth caste’s sleek propulsion units. The asteroid base had been slammed into the tau’s peaceful world like the fist of a primitive god.

  The baking heat of the Arkunashan noon had driven even the orks into the shade. A dozen of the thickset monsters lounged in the lee of their gigantic fortress-ship, their raucous laughter drifting through the shimmering heat of the desert air.

  ‘They shall not laugh when the potency of our weapons is revealed,’ said Shas’ui Lhoro, the leader of Vral’s honour escort. Beside the fire warrior drifted a pair of cargo drones and an anti-gravitic bier stacked with plasma rifles, pulse carbines and portable burst cannons.

  ‘It is a pity they shall not experience our weapons technology first hand,’ said Shao, the youngest of the fire warriors. Her dry wit usually raised Vral’s spirits. Today, it fell far short.

  ‘I too would rather see these weapons used against them than traded with them,’ said Vral. ‘Yet that is not what the Greater Good demands of us. It is as the Golden Ambassador said, “When our approach is blocked, we must flow around the obstruction, finding a better route”. ’