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  O’Shoh tied his ceremonial cloak around his waist and walked over to the workers. Nodding respect to the team’s leader, he bent his knees and lifted a heavy chunk of debris. He carried it over to the improvised wall that they were building in the transit tunnel and placed it carefully before going back for another. Ob’lotai nodded solemnly and joined him in the task, his great muscles cording as he lifted boulder after boulder into place.

  Between the fire caste officers and the earth caste work team, the task of clearing the rubble was finished by the time the last of the hunter cadres had entered the bio-dome. On the horizon, the gloom had thickened into a dark wall looming into the firmament.

  ‘Shas’nel Xo,’ said O’Shoh to a battle-scarred cadre fireblade who had been standing guard. ‘Find the work teams enough water to soothe their parched throats. Then get them inside. Use the supplies we brought on the Supreme Light.’

  The disfigured fireblade bowed deeply. ‘As you wish, my commander,’ he slurred, ravaged lips twisting into a smile.

  The commanders moved into the contoured recesses of the bio-dome’s entrance, their honour guard flanking them as they took up position in the wide plaza beyond. After labouring in the desert sun, O’Shoh was glad of the cool blue light and soft breeze of the interior. Even Vior’la wasn’t this hot.

  Striding towards them down the processional entrance was Sha’vastos, his saz’nami honour guard walking close behind. He was perhaps the tallest fire caste warrior O’Shoh had ever seen, and his face bore the lines of one accustomed to the burden of command. Combined with his formal battledress and billowing cloak, he looked like one of the idealised warriors O’Shoh had drawn as a child.

  ‘Shas’o Vior’la Shoh Kais Mont’yr,’ said the garrison commander, his smile tired but genuine as he spread his hands in the host’s gesture. ‘I bid you welcome to Bio-dome 1-1.’

  ‘It is my honour, Shas’o Vash’ya Astos,’ said O’Shoh, making the guest’s bow. ‘Let us proceed to the audience chamber immediately.’

  ‘All is in place, noble O’Shoh,’ said Sha’vastos. ‘Your warriors briefed, your tank squadrons reconvened, and your battlesuits processed by our decontamination bays. We have become adept at desert combat and maintenance. I am afraid to say this ferrous particulate is invasive to the point of extreme inconvenience.’

  ‘I had noticed that,’ said O’Shoh, banging a trickle of rusted iron from his well-worn gauntlet. ‘I fear that just as Arkunasha plays host to me, I already play host to Arkunasha.’

  O’Shoh had intended the comment to diffuse the mood, but if anything, it made Sha’vastos all the more tense.

  ‘I… I offer much contrition,’ said the commander. ‘To inconvenience a protege of Master Puretide is to earn great shame. I shall have our earth caste workers attend to your cleansing.’

  ‘There is no need, really,’ said O’Shoh. ‘It was an artefact of speech, nothing more.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Sha’vastos, ‘I… I may have made a mistake.’

  O’Shoh inclined his head, intrigued.

  ‘We all misjudge the situation sometimes, Sha’vastos,’ he said, extending the gesture of the calming hand. ‘Perhaps we should discuss our military collaboration in private.’

  ‘If you believe that best,’ said Sha’vastos, his broad shoulders sagging in relief.

  O’Shoh dismissed his own honour guard, subtly waving away the silent question indicated by Brightsword’s half-curled finger. Sha’vastos did likewise, sending his saz’nami to their garrison duties.

  ‘Lead on,’ said O’Shoh to the Arkunashan commander. ‘We have much to discuss.’

  War klaxons sounded, loud and insistent. Their wailing blare sent pulses of excitement through every fire warrior in the complex.

  ‘All drone relays,’ said O’Shoh into his communion bead, ‘transmit your images to the screen disc at my position. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.’

  In answer, a broad screen mounted in the bio-dome’s arches glowed into lambent life. A confusion of colours resolved from red oxide to a filthy, green-brown vista.

  O’Shoh spat a vitriolic curse, his fingers clenching into fists.

  That was no storm, but a dust wall thrown up by an approaching army.

  And it was heading in their direction.

  O’Shoh and his fellow commanders made haste to the battlesuit decontamination bays. A nameless charge of excitement filled the air: war’s teeth were about to bite, and the fire caste was ready for them.

  The bays were brightly lit, each white recess containing a technological masterpiece. Those battlesuit teams who shared ta’lissera bonds clasped each other’s forearms in a solemn farewell before mounting the scaffolds leading to their control cocoons. The rest took position in silence. Once atop their scaffolds the pilots crouched down, turned, and slid into the torso units of their battlesuits with practised ease.

  Flanked by Ob’lotai and Brightsword, O’Shoh marched up the high stairs to the command-level alcoves. His old mentor leaned into the control cocoon of his beloved XV88. O’Shoh was fond of the lumbering great thing; it had been a rallying point for him on numerous occasions, and turned the tide of many a battle. Ob’lotai had reconfigured the Broadside suit to bear its enormous twin-linked heavy rail rifle in giant metal gauntlets rather than atop its shoulders. It had proven to be an effective pattern in recent engagements, but was still unofficial as yet.

  ‘Ob’lotai, if you insist on using your XV88 with that configuration,’ said O’Shoh, ‘then compensate with a rear-leaning stance. Arkunashan storms are said to be sudden and extremely violent, and I don’t want you falling on your backside.’

  ‘Precisely why I want a lower centre of gravity,’ grumbled Ob’lotai. ‘I know these things better than even you, despite what your sycophants tell you.’

  A pair of Arkunashan shield drones came to attend Ob’lotai, taking position on either side of his scaffold.

  ‘Get these things away from me,’ said Ob’lotai gruffly. His rail rifle swept around, smashing one of the disc-like drones from the air in a shower of sparks. Its companion veered backwards with a high-pitched whine.

  ‘Ob’lotai!’ said O’Shoh sharply. ‘There are better ways of refusing gifts.’

  ‘I offer contrition, commander,’ said Ob’lotai. ‘Though an insect that bothers a krootox soon finds itself swatted.’

  O’Shoh sighed, casting a glance towards Sha’vastos. The garrison commander was busying himself with his own high-end XV8, his stiff stance a telling sign that he had noticed the affront, but was pretending he had not.

  ‘Send an incident report afterwards, Ob’lotai. We don’t have time for this.’

  In his heart, O’Shoh was annoyed at himself for not warning Sha’vastos in time. Ob’lotai had never forgiven dronekind for their failure to protect his own mentor, Commander Flamechild. He had been killed in battle before Ob’lotai’s eyes, and the shas’vre had distrusted artificial intelligences ever since.

  As Ob’lotai’s plexus hatch hissed closed, Commander Brightsword strode to his flame-painted XV8. He kicked away the embarkation scaffold propped against it, instead nimbly leaping up to grab the battlesuit’s vision slit and hoisting himself upwards to twist into the control cocoon. O’Shoh shook his head at the young commander’s showmanship, but did not reprimand the breach of procedure. He had pulled similar stunts in the past.

  In pride of place at the end of the gangway was O’Shoh’s own modified XV8. The battlesuit was a testament to the tau way of war, a deadly statue waiting to come alive. The dimly lit confines of his control cocoon called to him. O’Shoh had to push away the desire to climb up with unseemly haste; no doubt the monitor drones of the water caste were upon him, broadcasting this moment across the planet.

  Head held high, back straight, O’Shoh climbed the scaffold with solemn dignity before pivoting and sliding back smoothl
y inside the cocoon.

  Sensing the presence of its master, the battlesuit came alive. Lambent screens shone as O’Shoh panned his gaze across them. Topographical maps rose in contoured splendour. As each of his teams reached readiness in smooth succession, their status icons blossomed gold. His autotrans spooled standby, the thrust/vector sphere waiting to flare into life. Plasma rifle and fusion blaster were primed and ready, and a brief eye-flick of his shield icon saw his disc-like force field ripple with cerulean energy.

  An almost imperceptible shiver thrummed through the XV8’s chassis. The suit was just as ready to kill as its pilot.

  O’Shoh eye-flicked an icon, and the incoming ork horde resolved upon his distribution array. The arrows showing its trajectory flowed, undulating across the holographic dunes. The suit’s remote estimate put the orks at just under three thousand in number.

  Shas’vre Ob’lotai’s icon flashed, its colouration the steel of caution. O’Shoh blink-pushed it gold, sketching a loose battle plan upon the hologram with one eye whilst the other panned over to assess the readiness of his cadre’s support elements. This was no time for the patient bait-and-slay technique of the Kauyon. With so many orks bearing down on them, lack of aggression would lead only to death.

  The commander twitched paired fingers, and the distribution array panned back to show the orks’ approach across a wide front. Sure enough, there were mass-related patterns in their formation. The commander assimilated them, overlaid them, drew them into himself and brought them out through carefully translated command programs. Lines of approach, target priorities and overlapping kill-fields appeared on O’Shoh’s isometrics as he unravelled the battle to come. Only when he had absorbed all the data did he stitch the whole tapestry together into a scenario where the tau alone could win.

  There was a possible Mont’ka strategy here. A blunt sham compared to the finely honed killing blows for which O’Shoh had become famous, but effective nonetheless.

  By the time the dome-like roof of the decontamination bays irised open to reveal the blazing blue Arkunashan skies, O’Shoh had plotted his victory a dozen times over.

  Nothing could have prepared Commander Shoh for the noise he heard as his battlesuit bore him outside of the dome. The orks were preceded by a guttural, bass roar that mingled with the crunch of countless hobnailed boots. As more of the Arkunashan military emerged from behind the bio-dome, the din grew in volume and pitch until it was louder than a Kan’jian avalanche.

  The green horde was bloodlust made flesh.

  ‘Phase one initiate,’ transmitted O’Shoh. Gold symbols of acknowledgement blipped across his command suite. ‘Ob’lotai, establish range.’

  Shas’vre Ob’lotai was quick to obey. His twin-linked heavy rail rifle whip-cracked hypervelocity rounds from the position he had taken atop the bio-dome’s outer wall. His team followed suit, taking aim upon the ork tanker-transports grinding across the dunes at the head of the horde.

  Their volley enfiladed past the preposterously heavy metal jaws shielding the front of the leading vehicles, punching instead through the cabs of those to their flanks. The sidelong impacts sent the juggernauts careening out of control. In the space of three heartbeats, Ob’lotai’s team had crippled several heavy transports and forced the wheeled wagons behind to swerve into each other in their haste to evade.

  The Hammerhead gun-skimmers hovering over the smashed transit tunnels took a more direct approach. Their railguns punched hypervelocity cylinders through the jutting metal ploughs of the nearest transports. Orks spilled out in jumbled knots. The Hammerheads switched to submunitions fire, and each cluster of greenskinned warriors was consumed in explosions of blood and shrapnel.

  O’Shoh’s mouth twisted in annoyance as he glanced at the battlesuit teams ranged along the crest of the transit tunnels. Key to the fire caste’s way of war was mobility; even their heavy elements had anti-gravitic engines and thruster arrays. Here, they were forced to assume the defender’s mantle.

  Behind the scattered wreckage of the ork vanguard came a sea of alien warriors so thick it hid the landscape from view. It stretched back to the limits of vision, the wall of dust thrown up by the orks’ advance hiding its true extent from O’Shoh’s blacksun filter. Crude walkers of dark metal bludgeoned through the horde, their piston-driven legs driving them forwards with a gait so ungainly it was almost comical.

  With the orks coming closer by the minute, additional fire caste teams added to the slaughter. As ork buggies and half-tracks launched high over the crests of the dunes, tau markerlights painted them as priority targets even before their rubbery wheels struck the sands. The tank-launched munitions that followed detonated with enough force to send wreckage spinning into the air.

  The kill count was spiralling high. Hundreds of orks had been reduced to smoking corpses already, though they swiftly vanished underfoot as their numberless comrades trod them into the sand. O’Shoh had an uncomfortable suspicion the horde could absorb such losses a dozen times over and still not lose impetus.

  With a chime, the proximity parameters O’Shoh had set turned from ash grey to a ruddy copper glow. Just as he had predicted, the rulers of the ork horde had not been able to resist the lure of a battle in full swing. Giant, muscular figures barged their way to the front of the green tide pouring towards the tau position. O’Shoh could see the need for violence etched upon their bestial faces.

  The foe had bared its throat at last.

  ‘Phase two initiate. Kill them all.’

  O’Shoh leapt into the air, his powerful jetpack carrying him in front of the blinding Arkunashan sun. It was an old trick, but a sound one, especially against so primitive a foe. Through the skies behind him came Brightsword and Sha’vastos, their Crisis teams bracketing them as they scanned the horde below for its leaders. Primitive rockets arced towards them – some wildly off course, others too near to ignore. Brightsword intercepted the closest two, detonating them with swipes of his fusion blasters and jetting through the fires of their demise.

  Commander Sha’vastos led his own team by example, a double bolt from his plasma rifle searing down to punch through an ork leader’s torso. A hundred savages roared war cries below him, their guns hammering out wildly inaccurate fire. Unperturbed, Sha’vastos took the head from another of their leader caste with a carefully aimed shot.

  O’Shoh set his sensor suite to scan the ork throng for individuals with uncommonly high mass. Target designations rippled across a wide front. The heads of the bulky ork leaders stuck up amongst their fellows, their banner poles bearing crude plates and symbols.

  Commander Shoh calibrated a firing solution, took a hit from a punching bullet, compensated and then calibrated again. Six beams shot out as his plasma rifle and fusion blaster fired over and over. Six headless ork leaders slumped back into the horde.

  He had Kauyon-Shas to thank for that technique. A flash of memory: sitting cross-legged upon the shoulders of Mount Kan’ji, their faces a hand’s breadth apart as she taught him the hunter’s art of looking in two directions at once. Catching two falling leaves by their stalks, O’Shoh had formed a bird in flight with a twist of his fingers and offered it to her as a gift. Bilateral focus had been an invaluable trick ever since.

  O’Shoh suppressed the memory with a shudder. She rarely came to him these days.

  The next of the leader-creatures in O’Shoh’s sights realised what was coming as O’Shoh’s shadow fell across it. The greenskin ducked down on instinct, and O’Shoh’s shot missed. Sha’vastos came in close behind, his shoulder-mounted flamer sending a blast of burning sunfuel into the orks’ packed ranks. Charred corpses fell away. One of the beasts, little more than a burning torch from the waist up, hurled an axe at its persecutors before collapsing to black cinders.

  With the common soldiery taken down, their leader-beast was revealed. The ork shouted its defiance, stomping through the dissipating ash of its fello
ws. O’Shoh put a plasma beam through its neck.

  Everywhere the orks’ ruling caste was being picked off, and yet the horde showed no sign of slowing. If anything, its rampage was gaining momentum. The roar of the ork warriors intensified as the horde spat more and more bullets towards the battlesuits in the skies.

  One of Sha’vastos’s saz’nami guards was caught in the crossfire from two heavy weapons, his limbs juddering before his battlesuit came apart altogether. The pilot’s symbol on O’Shoh’s command suite turned from gold to charcoal as the wreckage of his suit fell into the ork horde. Far behind them, even Ob’lotai took a hit – a cluster of orks wearing gun-harnesses had taken position atop the crest of a dune to pour fire into the shas’vre’s position. The old warrior blipped a silver symbol of reassurance before his team slew half of the orks in a single volley, scattering the rest.

  The roar of the ork attack was disturbing, almost deafening in its volume. O’Shoh’s lips curled, his eyes half-closing involuntarily. He stabbed a volume filter into place and found his focus once more.

  Swooping in low, the commander levelled his fusion blaster at an axe-wielding ork leader. He took the beast’s hands off at the wrist before angling the shimmering beam downwards to slice through its head. Incredibly, the ork’s lumpen form came on regardless. O’Shoh dipped and kicked it back into the ranks of its fellows before boosting up into the skies.

  The orks had suffered terrible casualties for negligible return. No army could lose so many leaders and still function efficiently. And yet, looking back, O’Shoh saw not a single ripple of fear amongst the horde.

  The barrel-bodied walkers the commander had spotted earlier were getting closer. Their long hydraulic limbs waved as if to attract attention. Four of the contraptions sent rockets flaring towards the Hammerhead gunships hovering above the transit tunnels. One found its mark, and was rewarded by the dull crump of detonation. Behind the ork walkers, a tall banner pole waved crazily. An unusual energy signature accompanied its image on O’Shoh’s sensor suite.