Fire Warrior

Genetor Farrachus wiped his sweating fingers on his robes and adjusted the valve wheel. A gurgle of steam belched past him, condensing on the cold components of his face.

High overhead the first ratchet joints of the chain clicked open and the device, wobbling and spi

Seated at the exact centre of the chamber, thin arms and legs pinioned by steel brackets, the alien captive regarded the suspended diadem from directly below, features betraying none of its thoughts. Farrachus watched it closely, hoping for some small flicker of fear. None was forthcoming.

“It’s ready, my lord,” he mumbled, doing his best to conceal the nervousness in his voice. Beyond a thick lead glass partition across the chamber the governor waited, arms crossed impatiently. He leaned forwards and flicked at an intercom.

“Then get on with it.”

Farrachus nodded, looking back at the xenogen. Thus far its placidity had belied the accepted dogma, portraying aliens as vicious and aggressive, abominations that threatened humanity’s very survival. Still, he told himself, adjusting the plasma pistol in his belt, best not to take any chances.

The ethereal returned his gaze calmly. Where the restraints dug into its skin the creature’s grey colouration grew pale and wan, starved of blood. Farrachus fought the desire to touch it, to drag a fingertip across the dry texture of its flesh, just to experience the feel of it.

But, of course, the governor was watching. Farrachus shivered, uneasy at being on display.

“You smell of fear,” the xeno trilled. He ignored it, secretly appalled at the obviousness of his anxiety.

The machina excrucia, so named by whatever ancient tech-priest had first called forth a machine spirit into its circular frame, had undergone his refinements with good grace. The physiology of the tau — a subject close to his heart — was somewhat different to that of the common human. He’d augmented the device’s conductors, subtly altering the positioning of its various synapse arrays, even narrowing the central locking spine. A tau’s skull, he had discovered during his studies, was rather more brittle than that of a human. Today, nothing must go wrong.

He saw with some satisfaction that the ethereal had ceased its empty glare in his direction, turning its dark eyes upwards again towards the device. The machine cast its globular shadow across the alien’s face, a toothless mouth positioning itself to swallow him whole.

“What will it do?” the alien asked, voice flat.

“It passes an energy stream across your pain centres,” he replied, guiding the hanging coronet as it descended. “At least, it’s supposed to. Our understanding of your biology is rather limited, more’s the pity, but I’m confident my alterations will yield fruit. Ideally, the excrucia simulates the sensation of physical pain without causing any real damage. I’m told that the more... tenacious subjects who’ve felt its bite have lingered for hours, with no respite and no medical attention. There’s no escape, Aun. Not even in death.” Farrachus smiled, stealing a sideways glance at Severus. He looked bored.

A skull-servitor corkscrewed its way through the chamber’s airspace, skeletal face sealed at the mouth and nostrils. Its eyelids hung open, lifeless, long-dead eyeballs replaced by polished silver beads. It looked like an insect, hovering on a trail of incense and disrupted air, compound eyes reflecting the world in an ugly convex distortion. Farrachus nodded at it.

“Commence recording,” he grunted. A red light high on the disembodied head’s brow blinked on. Farrachus glanced at the timecode artificially imposed over his vision. “Interrogation proceeding at 08.14 hrs, local time. Magos Farrachus attendi—”

The intercom clicked. “Priest? What are you doing?”

Farrachus scratched his eyebrow, uncertain. “Recording the interrogation, my lord. It is standard practice.”

“Don’t.”

“But, my lord... Don’t you want the, ah, the subject’s responses recorded?”

“Which responses?”

“To your questions, my lord. I-I assumed you wanted some information—”

“There are no questions, priest. Just hurt it. Make it... pliable.”

Farrachus mouthed wordlessly for a moment, searching for something to say. Pliable for what, he wondered? Severus’s shadowed glare burnt through him.

“Yes, my lord...” he blurted. He deactivated the recorder with a command and waved it away, sooty trails of scent smoke ebbing in its path. The excrucia halted its descent with a resounding click, settling lightly upon the upper dome of the alien’s skull like some barbaric headdress. Farrachus took a deep breath, resonance sensors on his face crackling in mechanical peristalsis, and stepped forwards.

Deus Mechanicus... he intoned, moving his hands in the prescribed gesture of awakening. The runes on the device glowed. Anima mechanica, exsuscitare... He flicked a control on the small console at the chair’s head and a sequence of clamps on the crown’s i

The xeno’s eyes were dosed, thin lips moving in some breathless alien litany, the words a strained melody of focus and defiance. Farrachus smiled to himself, knowing that meditation alone wouldn’t be sufficient.

“I told you...” he hissed into the alien’s ear, interrupting its mantra. “There’s no escape.”

Behind him, the access portal blipped quietly.

“I said no interruptions!” Severus snarled, his voice lent an artificial menace by the intercom. Farrachus turned his head from the prisoner with interest, wondering which dim-witted guard was about to suffer the governor’s legendary temper. The door ground open noisily.

A figure pounced through before the magos could even think, a squat form of articulating armour plates surmounted by a crested helmet. It sca

Farrachus’s thoughts moved sluggishly. The intruder was through the door and into the shadows of the room’s perimeter before he’d even fully identified it. T’au, the logic-engines subsumed into his biological mind told him. T’au warrior. Enemy.

He drew his pistol, movement sensors twitching with insect accuracy, hunting for the tau’s bodytrace. The human part of his mind, unashamedly terrified, struggled against the implacable coldness of his technological augmentations. Stimulants flooded his brain, making his senses race and his blood roar. They didn’t do any good.

A flicker of blue light at his side startled him and the tracking of his sensors, the unmistakable crack of bone broadcasting the locking spine’s grisly deployment. The excrucia flared to life with a horrific whine, greasy sparks coruscating around the punctured dome of the prisoner’s skull. Farrachus turned to watch, overcome with excitement at the culmination of his efforts. The ethereal’s composure shattered without trace, its thin-lipped mouth snapping open to emit a scream that dragged on and on and didn’t stop. Glorying in his work, the genetor all but forgot about the intruder.

The tau warrior stepped calmly from the shadows behind him and nestled the blocky barrel of its rifle against his skull. He felt the contact only abstractly, drug pulsing thoughts racing ahead to calculate reactions, hypotheses and projections.