Fire Warrior

Not that the strangeness had terminated there, oh no. Last week, out of the blue, the governor had ordered Captain Praeter to execute what few prisoners they held, clear all the cells for new arrivals, and stockpile ammunition for the artillery defences. Stranger still, a series of datum drones — dead skulls filled with memorised information — had arrived in the captain’s office courtesy of the governor. Each one was a mine of subversive articles on xenogen species: images, essays, interrogation documents, biological treatises, voice record seminars on weaknesses and strengths, a million-and-one ugly facts about ugly beings that the captain had ordered him to recite to the other guards over and over again. It was as if Governor Severus was expecting xeno-trouble.

Well, he’d got his wish.

Quivering in the deserted shadows of the sniper ring, whimpering at every rumbling bombardment from without, Sergeant DiGril was praying that it wouldn’t occur to any of his men that, with the captain dead, he was supposedly in charge now.

“The alien’s in the courtyard,” someone barked on the comm. “I’m sealing the cell access ramps now.” There were men back in the control room, then. Good. DiGril nodded professionally, happy to have incidentally delegated responsibility. Finally, something was going right.

With depressing inevitability, the voice on the comm swore. “Oh, throne... The north ramp’s jammed. It won’t do — Ah, damn. It’s gone! General alert! The intruder’s breached the underground levels.”

DiGril rubbed his forehead. Typical.

His conscience gave him a jab. Rather than sitting here complaining, it said, how about getting out there and issuing some orders? Taking command, maybe? Doing some good?

“No chance,” he grumbled to himself. Not for all the many wives of the governor-sultan of Gammenon IX. Certainly not just for the chance to be a hero. Leave that sort of thing to the youngsters. Something caught his attention, gnawing on his senses. It took him a moment to identify what it was.

It was silence. Absolute, perfect calm. The sonic barrage of vehicles and pulsefire beyond the prison walls had sputtered and died. He pressed his face to the sniper slit and peered through the shifting smoke-clouds, confused.

The tau stood in quiet ranks, like ancient statues erected in the desert, ossified and unreal. Every last one of them was looking upwards.

Kor’vesa 66.G#77 (Orbsat Surveillance) adjusted its primary optic focus on the planetary horizon and opened a datastream. Its parent node aboard the Or’es Tash’var responded with a withering hail of security checks and analysis scans lasting a fraction of a heartbeat. An oscillating band of microwaves tightbeamed between the two processors, narrowing its focus appropriately. A secure frequency was isolated, verified and maintained. 66.G clucked an emotionless greeting. The Or’es Tash’var responded in kind.

Dolumar IV, a Kre’ui-class world with tolerable atmosphere and meteorological conditions, defined within 66.G’s memorysphere as “gue’la io’ra”, rolled beneath the surveillance drone’s field of vision enormously. The dark strip of shadow marking the planet’s terminator, where day oozed gradually into night, seeped across continents like a great, hungry parasite.

A cluster of signals arrived from the Or’es Tash’var. The drone responded immediately by adjusting its secondary optics, focusing them upon the distant speck of light representing its parent vessel. A bright blue glow was building beneath the warship’s forward segment.

66.G adjusted its horizontal position in relation to the planet. Damage analysis would require careful scrutiny. The warship broadcast a final set of emergency codes on all frequencies and fired.

66.G tracked the glittering droplet of energy as it fell away towards the planet, briefly developing a milky corona as it punctured the upper cloud level. By the time it reached the surface it was little more than a blue speck, leaving a ghostly ion trail behind it.

The little drone implemented its most powerful magnification filter and recorded the impact.

Many gue’la died.

Kais felt the impact underground.

He’d dropped past the massive access ramp mere moments before it sealed behind him, its rockcrete surface grinding into place with tectonic enormity. Standing beside it now he felt the earth tremble angrily, sending splinter marks writhing across walls and avalanches of dry earth and rust-weakened bolts rattling from the ceiling. The control panel beside the ramp hissed a fountain of sparks in protest, tiny viewscreens shattering.

“El’Lusha?” he transmitted, when finally the floor stopped shifting. “What was that?”

The reply, masked and indecipherable behind an ambient hiss of white noise, aborted with an unpleasant rasp. Kais frowned and regarded his surroundings, fingering his gun nervously. The corridor, poorly lit by bulkhead-mounted illuminators, stretched away towards a sharp corner like the gullet of a krootox, slick with condensed moisture.

The wound on his arm throbbed, a dull ache from beneath the medipack he’d clipped over it. He hoped he’d been quick enough in administering the covering — gue’la were notorious carriers of disease. Not for the first time, Kais curled his lip in distaste at the thought of being so deeply immersed in their unclean world. Every fibre in his body cried out for the serene cleanliness of T’au with its ancient, basking mountains and its functional cities of silver and ivory.

The first guards came in a rush: a confused glut of guttural shouting voices and dark uniforms, attracted by the alarms that had accompanied the ramp’s closure. Kais made himself comfortable to receive them, wedging himself into an alcove near the tu

They went down in a storm of grasping limbs, blocking the tu

He rolled a grenade into the shadows of the alcove, and when it exploded he sprinted forwards, not waiting for the smoke to clear, following the dismal moans of the injured. He silenced them quickly — a single shot through the head for each.

The last one, ragged scorch wounds dappling its legs and chest, pleaded with him, tear— and snot-clogged words an unintelligible drone of fear and helplessness. Its blistered fingers scrabbled against Kais’s legs, clutching and supplicating, sobbing pathetically. Kais recoiled from the contact, finger tightening against the trigger.

Unbidden, a memory sagged, sludgelike, into his mind:

The alien is not intrinsically evil.

Do not hate him. Pity him his ignorance.

Seek to understand his differences

And acquaint him with his inadequacies.

Only then will he accept his place

in the Greater Good.

It was a Sio’t meditation — committed to memory long tau’cyrs ago — supposedly composed by the great hero O’Mau’tel. Since its inscription, of course, the tau had encountered both the insane, green-ski