Fire Warrior

He turned to face O’Udas with a slight bow. “As the One Path leads,” he said, pressing his hands together in respectful greeting.

The shas’o dismissed the ritual with a wave of his hand. “Enough of that, Shas’el — unless you want me to bow to you too.” He smiled, regarding the knot of perso

Guiltily, Lusha wondered if it had been worth it. Whatever happened to the equality of every tau? Would they have sent a warship to rescue him?”

More of Kais’s bitterness, addling his mind. It was too easy to lose faith. Too easy to set aside the ideals of unity in a fit of acidic hubris.

The serene part of him — the part he trusted — whispered: Of course. Of course it was worth it. It was done in the name of the tau’va.

In the path of the Greater Good, it said, all are equal. All are as important and as fallible. As worthy and as worthless. As a being, as a cog within the machine, the Aun’el is as valuable as any of us. There is no injustice here.

But as a thing, as a receptacle of knowledge, his importance warrants any sacrifice.

Lusha breathed out with a clearer mind.

“It had little to do with me, Shas’o,” he returned.

“Ah, yes... Our heroic shas’la. I shouldn’t have doubted your choice, El’Lusha. You have my apologies.”

Lusha dipped graciously, surprised. The shas’o went on, waving him upright. “Tell me — where is this La’Kais? I should like to meet him.”

Lusha wanted to say: He wouldn’t rest, Shas’o. He wouldn’t stop for reward or remonstration. He’s out there killing, destroying, out of control.

He wanted to say: O’Udas — he is not like us.

He wanted to say: He is a weapon. We may aim him and set him loose — but nothing more. We could never hope to control him.

He wanted to say: We’re losing him.

He wanted to say: He is Mont’au.

But instead he avoided O’Udas’s inquisitive stare and mumbled:

“He fights on, Shas’o, by the One Path. He fights on.”

Kais primed the explosive, surrounded by gue’la bodies.

Some were alive still, injured and dying. Crooked legs hanging, useless. Shattered arms, spurting wounds, pallid faces. They writhed and groaned in their own fluids, leaving slick patterns across the deck. Some of them watched him, too weak to intervene. Finishing them off, he’d decided, would be a waste of ammunition.

The surprise at his own survival was begi

The pulse carbine was an improvement, at least. All the new wargear was. Exchanging the filthy shell of his old armour for the pristine new suit had been an almost miraculous process. Standing there in the dropship with Lusha and the Aun, he’d seen himself as a kathr’yl desert reptile, heavy with the weight of its years, fronded scales pitted and sore, unable to walk any further. In the hottest part of the rotaa the oldest of them would slump to the dry sand and split from head to toe, tattered bodies disgorging a single unblemished offspring into the arid air. Purity out of infirmity.

That was how it had felt. Rebirth. Shrugging off all the doubts, the maelstrom of uncertainty and dissatisfaction that raked at his mind falling away like a tangled morass of withered skin. He should have known it wouldn’t be so easy.

So: new armour, new weapon. He’d slipped away through the besieged corridors of the Or’es Tash’var a new tau, thoughts washed clean by the Aun’s inexplicable serenity, refreshed, renewed. Then Lusha and the Aun were left behind, the gue’la were everywhere and—

And the killing started again.

He couldn’t run from it. Couldn’t hide it behind the cleansing influence of an ethereal or the guilty reassurances of sio’t lessons. He’d been a fool to believe he could expunge the rage with such little effort.

The winch dominating the rear section of the ugly gue’la assault craft gurgled and steamed, thick chains looping over and under the grinding drive-wheels. Outside, Kais knew, approaching inexorably, a troop-holder was guiding itself into position to dock. The assault craft contained elite storm-troopers, bursting into the deck to clear a space for their more numerous comrades aboard the carriers. They’d failed, in this instance. He checked the remote detonator, reassured by its glowing yellow status light, and hurried from the craft.

The damage it had wrought upon the Or’es Tash’var as it penetrated was astonishing: whole rooms crippled and caved-in, helpless kor’las crushed or suffocated as entire walls split and shifted, floors buckling and bulging. And where the doors of the gue’la vessel — itself little more than a hollow missile — hung open at the prow, a strange metamorphosis occurred, the serrated bore head of the barge amalgamating almost organically with the undulating disorder of the warship’s wound. Black ceramite, melted by superheated charges, fused in a splattered vomit cast to the mangled edges of the beige and cream hallway. It was like passing through tumorous flesh, leaving an area of ugly foreign material and entering the wounded layers of once healthy tissue around it without being able to pinpoint exactly where the transition occurred.

Kais stepped from the angular vessel into the ruptured i

That was when he’d known. That was when he’d felt the Mont’au devil clinging to his shoulders, refusing to let go. It was in him.

He’d thumbed the grenade trigger apprehensively as he approached his appointed reaction zone, still accustoming himself to the lighter weight of the carbine. The gue’la were everywhere, spilling from the barge like sludge, shouting and whooping as they came. The grenade had bounced off a wall with a clatter.

Then everything went outwards. There was no fire, no grandiose gout of flame or smoke roiling, mushroomlike, out of the grenade. There was just a wall — an expanding sphere — of force. Flesh came off bone and hurled itself across walls and ceilings. Bodies flipped in midair, slinking head over heels to collapse in boneless disarray. Shrapnel flickered like a galaxy. There was noise and fear and screams, and afterwards only groans.

And Kais had known, in that moment. He’d known that this was his purpose. He faced a choice, he saw now. He could pretend that every death was a step on the road to the tau’va, some distant glowing impossibility on the horizon, or he could accept the truth: he killed because he could. Because he was good at it. Because... because every death dimmed the glowering embers of his father’s eyes, boring into his mind.

You see? he wanted to scream, shrieking deep into that critical gaze from his memories, You see that I excel now? You see my gift?

But it wasn’t a gift, it was a curse. And he knew it.

“La’Kais here,” he grunted into the comm. “Forward-core segment. The first charges are primed. Whenever you’re ready, control.”

“Good work, fire warrior.”

Kais recognised the voice. “El’Lusha?”

“That’s right. Still here, Shas’la.”

Kais gri

“Get clear of the area,” the voice rasped. “We need to voidseal before detonating. There’s another impact point on the next level up.”

“On my way.”

Kais took a final look at the riot of gue’la bodies littering the floor and headed for the portal. It ghosted shut behind him, locking with a clang.