Damocles

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  Blood Oath

  Phil Kelly

  Chapter One

  QUAN ZHOU

  FORTRESS-MONASTERY OF THE WHITE SCARS CHAPTER,

  CHOGORIS, 713.999.M41

  A thousand decapitated heads. One for every battle-brother in the Chapter.

  By the time they had left Tarotian IV, the Third Company’s kill count had been closer to a million. He had killed over a hundred rebels himself. It was often the case. But like all White Scars, Kor’sarro knew the value of symbolism, and a round thousand was enough to make the point.

  He wanted to be there to see them. An ending, of a sort, a cauterising of the wounds the Chapter had sustained on Tarotian IV.

  Kor’sarro Khan stared out into the heat haze of Plain Zhou. From his vantage point within the highest eyrie in the fortress-monastery, it felt like he could see to the edges of the world. His topknot of greasy black hair flew erratically in the thermals, its thick strands mimicking the victory pennants waving high above.

  Though the khan’s narrowed eyes flicked from scrub to bunker to a herd of stallions galloping in the distance, his hands had their attention elsewhere. Calloused fingers worked mechanically but precisely at the balcony’s edge, always in motion. The tip of the khan’s curved dagger scratched like an awl, carving the Khorchin word for ‘seeking’ onto the side of a dormant bolt shell.

  Forty-nine more of the deadly little cylinders shone in the evening sun, ranged along the balcony neat as dominos. Those to the khan’s left were finished, and those to his right were bare. Three full crates hid in the shadow of the buttress arch, the tiny golden curls of swarf around their base rolled back and forth by a playful wind.

  The thud-stride-thud of Sudabeh crossing the eyrie yurut’s rugs in full battleplate made the khan’s cheek twitch. He placed the last of the shells unfinished to one side.

  ‘Sunning yourself between hunts, my khan?’ said the newcomer.

  ‘Stormseer. Your… gifts.’ Kor’sarro looked at the sky for a second. ‘They are wasted here.’

  ‘Anyone with half a nostril could tell that you’ve been standing in the sun. If you ever run out of promethium, you could scrape your skin and use the run-off to feed Moondrakkan’s engine instead.’

  ‘Ha!’ shouted the khan, grinning and clenching his fist in triumph as if Sudabeh had helped him solve a difficult problem. He would not take the Stormseer’s bait today, he was in too good a mood for it.

  Like all White Scars, Kor’sarro loved to feel the play of the elements first hand. For the last three hours he had been meditating in the boiling heat of Quan Zhou, clad in little more than loose white fatigues. His olive leather skin practically glowed, shining with oily sweat.

  The khan raised a thick bare arm covered in zigzag scars, revealing a tuft of armpit hair that protruded from the sutured edge of his torsal glove. ‘Have a proper sniff then, naysmith.’

  ‘I respectfully decline your generous proposal,’ said Sudabeh, using the formal Chogorian dialect. Both men chuckled, two sets of white teeth sparkling in the sun. They had been Space Marines long enough to know that moments of humanity were to be treasured, no matter how simple. In fact the simpler they came, the better.

  The khan pulled a cube of meat the size of his fist from one of the ammunition crates, picking off the largest bits of swarf before taking a massive bite. He turned to face his old friend, stale blood running down his long black moustache as he chewed loudly. Eyebrows knitted in mock concern, he motioned the Stormseer forward, his frown fading to a wet red grin.

  Shaking his head in resignation, Sudabeh joined his captain on the balcony. He looked up at his distorted reflection in the silvered, eyeless skulls that were spitted on pikes along the balcony’s edge. Most of the trophies were human-sized, but the largest was the size a Land Speeder.

  To the south, a large gunmetal lander was lowering its bulk towards the perimeter of Third Bronze Yurut. The squat ship’s backblast sent waves of plains-dust outward in concentric circles before its striped underskeleton finally touched down.

  ‘Cargo?’ asked Sudabeh, squinting through the dust.

  ‘Trophies,’ the khan replied around a mouthful of raw meat.

  The bulk lander’s front jaw lowered with a distant hiss of hydraulics. One at first, then a dozen, then hundreds upon hundreds of human heads poured down the ramp towards the yurut wall. Though the first to emerge bounced and rolled as if freshly taken from the neck, those spilling over the rear part of the lander’s jaw slopped over in a state of advanced decomposition. Their smell was unpleasant on the wind, but the khan’s stomach growled in appreciation nonetheless.

  ‘Heretics,’ said the khan, savouring the word. ‘Tarotian IV.’

  Sudabeh nodded thoughtfully. He watched the servitor work-teams retrieve the disembodied heads by the armful and dump them onto the vector carriages parked along the bronze yurut’s walls. Inside each carriage, wizened eyethieves rode the cupolas upwards towards the lances that jutted up from the wall’s crest. As they went, they took it in turns to stoke the carriage’s braziers and burn each trophy’s sockets clean with a length of red-hot iron.

  Out past the dropsite, steed-beasts broke from distant herds. They galloped in to fall upon those heads left unattended, gnawing strips of meat from faces and scalps before the low blast of the lander’s horns drove them away. Part of Kor’sarro longed to be back in the saddle at the head of his tribe, hurling his spear into the flank of some doe-eyed zellion or marauding felid with a taste for human flesh.

  ‘Spit it out, then,’ said Kor’sarro.

  ‘My khan?’

  ‘You didn’t hide your scars under battleplate just to come out here and bait me, Stormseer. My temper’s not that tight.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Sudabeh, his tone suddenly formal. ‘The astropathic choir has a message for you, my khan. The Third Company is needed on Agrellan immediately. We are to eradicate a tau infestation, as loudly and as memorably as possible.’

  ‘Out of the question,’ replied Kor’sarro, but there was doubt under his tone. ‘You told me yourself, the Tarot indicates that Blackheart’s renegades draw closer with every passing
hour. We are needed here, to defend our home world.’

  ‘Our elders have decided that our duty lies elsewhere, my khan,’ said Sudabeh. ‘Many other companies are ready to repel the Red Corsairs. Chogoris will endure without us, I can feel it. Quan Zhou will stand.’

  A wordless pause stretched out, both men staring upward as if Huron Blackheart’s fleet would glimmer into being at any moment.

  ‘Tau,’ sighed the khan. ‘So we face their cursed weapon-magicks again.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Sudabeh. ‘I believe they seek to use the planet Agrellan as a staging post in order to seize the mineral-rich tithe worlds on the cusp of the Damocles Gulf.’

  ‘Agrellan,’ the khan continued, fingering his long moustache. ‘Dovar System, yes?’

  ‘Correct again.’

  ‘Ha. Terrain?’

  ‘Unremarkable, for the most part. Technically a hive-world, but mostly scorched deserts and open plains.’

  The khan’s grisly smile reappeared, bits of meat bleeding between his teeth.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘It’s haunted,’ said Sudabeh, matter-of-factly. ‘The place was subject to Exterminatus centuries ago. The Malleus alone know why.’

  ‘No doubt they do. The stain of Chaos is not easily erased.’

  ‘As you say. Reading between the lines of the data-slate, it seems the virus bombs left a highly toxic legacy. The planet still bears the marks of its former death, both physically and spiritually.’

  ‘Ghosts, then,’ said the khan, shrugging. ‘Common enough.’

  ‘Not these ones,’ the Stormseer replied.

  Chapter Two

  IRONDELVE PLAIN

  SOUTH OF THE ACACIAN BASIN,

  AGRELLAN, 742.999.M41

  A shimmering black dot scarred the centre of the Agrellan sun. It grew by the tiniest of fractions, slowly expanding until it resolved into a smudged figure silhouetted against the blinding orb. Three smaller dots swirled around the figure like electrons orbiting a nucleus. Slowly, steadily, the outline swelled until it eclipsed the sun all but completely.

  The figure’s lines hardened into those of a tau battlesuit, bulky yet somehow still strangely feminine. The accompanying dots became a trio of discus-like drones, thick antennae canted in a perfect compromise between aerodynamics and sensory acuity. Only thin jet streams in low orbit gave any hint of how this solar angel and her strange attendants had come to earth. The marks of her Orca’s passage were two faint scars amongst hundreds of others lining the azure sky.

  Then, as soon as the figure and her retinue came within half a mile of the planet’s surface, they disappeared.

  Commander Shadowsun touched down with such measured delicacy that the puff of dust from Agrellan’s scorched surface was barely noticeable.

  Her appointment as the face of the Third Sphere expansion had been no accident. Tall for a tau and with a dancer’s perfect posture, on those occasions when she wished to be seen, she cut quite a majestic figure. When entering hostile territory, however, her highly sophisticated XV22 battlesuit rendered her practically invisible.

  Technically speaking she could be seen by the naked eye, Shadowsun reminded herself, albeit as nothing more than a vague haze. Tiny cells honeycombed not only the surface of her battlesuit but also her underslung fusion blasters. One side of each sensor cell was a miniscule camera, and the other side a pinpoint hologram array that could replicate that camera’s footage with unprecedented accuracy.

  Once she was back on her flagship after a military engagement, Shadowsun would transfer the footage from these cameras to a suite of holodrones and walk through a full-spectrum projection of her own performance, analysing, highlighting and consolidating her manoeuvres with the dedication and patience of a master.

  The master, come to that.

  ‘Oe-ken-yon, please begin your initial dataharvest,’ said Shadowsun, turning to the largest of her three drones. ‘Take as much time as you require, my friend. As Commander Puretide taught us, when utilised correctly, the battlefield itself is a potent weapon.’

  The drone blipped once in assent and moved away, sensor spectrums panning.

  Data was vital in the business of waging war. Shadowsun was one of the three finest tau commanders of her generation, due in no small part to the fact she considered every angle and outcome before committing her forces. Diligence was one of a great many things she had learned on Mount Kanji under the wisdom of Master Puretide. She had absorbed every drop of knowledge she could from dawn to dusk. The perfect pupil, he had called her, albeit only after her training was complete. Those three small words were still the best gifts she had ever received.

  For four long years Master Puretide had challenged her with gruelling trials. Trials so harsh she could never forget the lessons she learned from them, even had she wanted to. The lessons were hard won indeed. Her body still bore the scars – scars she sometimes traced when she was alone, dwelling on what she had learned.

  Only two other tau in the entire galaxy could truly understand what she had gone through in the name of the Greater Good. Strange young Kais, the Monat Supreme, cadre-of-one and founder of Fi’rios Sept. Kais, and… and the traitor Shoh.

  She shuddered, acutely aware of her skin brushing the inside of her suit. No time to think of him now.

  ‘Commander Shadowsun,’ blipped her c-link drone, its datatone prim and formal as it returned to her side. ‘My report is complete, and ready for your inspection.’

  ‘My thanks, Drone Commandant Oe-ken-yon,’ she transmitted back in kind, rapid-scanning the drone’s datacompile with one eye whilst her other remained fixed on her battlesuit’s sensor suite, just in case.

  There was something strange about Agrellan’s data… a feeling of a glitch, rather than the anomaly itself. She dismissed the notion as illogical.

  ‘It appears that the environment itself is hostile, Oe-ken. Not unusual for an Imperial world, and well within the parameters of the earth caste to fix once we have taken this world for the empire. Please remain within shield radius of either Oe-nu or Oe-hei from now on.’

  ‘Affirmed. Any additionals, commander?’ transmitted Oe-ken-yon.

  ‘Not at this point, little one. Be content to wait.’

  Back when she had simply been Shaserra, student of the fire caste academies, Commander Shadowsun had shown great talent in the arts of waging war. She consistently excelled in every simulation and battlescape her mentors could devise. After her training was complete, she had been accorded the signal honour of further study under Commander Puretide himself.

  At the foot of her master’s hover-throne, she had learnt every nuance and tenet of the martial style that had lain closest to her natural skillset. Hers was the oldest and most well established of all the tau ways of war. It was known formally as Kauyon, and informally as the Patient Hunter.

  Kilometres below the peak of Mount Kanji, Shadowsun had sat shrouded in snow at the side of a beast-trail for days. Her skin had been as cold as death, and her breathing as shallow as the tiny sighs of a hibernating mouse. She had remained so still that a large family of arctic spiders had used her as a frame for their tickling webs.

  Inert as stone, at one with the mountain, when the one-eared snow lynx had finally wandered past her, she had simply lunged out and broken its neck.

  Over the decades since her promotion to commander, Shadowsun had honed her natural patience and sense of timing to a lethal point. She had applied it like a scalpel to everything from the delicacies of diplomacy to the sudden destruction of alien battlefleets. And yet, despite her forces having overcome the tau empire’s foes for minimal loss on countless occasions, there remained a stubborn few who still questioned her ways.

  One in particular.

  The traitor Shoh had shunned Kauyon from the day they had begun their training together, concentrating solely on Mont’ka, the Killing Blow.
Just recently Revered Aun’shi, the Ethereal Supreme and speaker of great truths, had told her in person that the Traitor believed the philosophy of Kauyon was only for the weak.

  She shook her head in disgust and despair, her smooth brow creased. The idea of ignoring patience in favour of aggression was utterly alien to her. Surely, demonstrably as far as she was concerned, Kauyon was the path that led to the Greater Good. How else to use the foe’s own confidence against him, to do the maximum damage at minimum cost to the tau race? The Master himself had often said ‘To triumph with the least amount of risk must always be the goal.’ Unlike her headstrong peers, she had listened well.

  Shadowsun amped her audio pickups high for a moment, and they relayed the telltale whine of a nearby VX1-0 dronenet gathering topographical data. Behind it was the high, triple purr of a Piranha squadron on patrol. High above the T-shaped skimmers, Manta missile destroyers hummed by in stately grace. Each of the giant supercraft was enacting one of Shadowsun’s overlapping heavy recon loops, scouring Agrellan’s surface for signs of the foe. Their airborne comrades would detect the blundering fools of the Imperium before long; the patterns on her suit’s distribution array described overlapping geometries that would have pleased even the most precise earth caste scientist.

  There was something else there, though, something on the data-cusp. She blink-masked the audiosigns she recognised, cutting out all background elements until all she was left with was a subtle susurrus over a baseline of white noise.

  The anomalous waveform was not regular, like that of a machine, but something with the erratic spike of the biological. In fact – she isolated it and amped it high – it sounded a lot like distant whispers.

  ‘Commander!’ boomed her audio bead, jolting her senses. ‘Stealth team report!’

  She spun round, shield drones flying to her flanks. Her sensor suite’s blacksun filter revealed the ghostly heat signatures of a dozen XV25 Stealth suits. Whilst she had been lost in her reverie, Shas’vre Drai and his team had been standing behind her in full salute formation.