Only war stories from th.., p.33
Only War: Stories from the 41st Millennium, page 33
Kartyr had only recently arrived in the Nem’yar Atoll, and so we made small talk as we wound our way through the station, exchanging news from both of our sides of the galaxy. I made a point of greeting many of the human labourers we passed – it was important to me that we didn’t appear insular or segregated. The more of us seen to be socialising with the t’au, the better. If he was half as perceptive as the water caste was supposed to be, he’d take to heart how much esteem I had from the human population on the station.
The void docks of the Suu’suamyth berthed a sizeable number of vessels – and even more patrolled around us in a bristling net of defence, either awaiting repairs or freshly refitted and awaiting orders – but many of the large segments and components had to be worked on within the massive assembly halls. The bigger bays could accommodate large sections of spacecraft, even small ships in their entirety. In each bay, dun-clad earth caste t’au laboured alongside human work crews to keep the fleets in the Nem’yar Atoll in top shape. The bays were a chaotic mélange of sights and sounds, filled with spitting fountains of sparks from welding drones, the ringing of metallic grinding and hammering and the roar of voices shouting to one another over the din.
‘Where are we headed?’ Kartyr finally asked, as we ventured from one assembly hall to the next.
‘Visiting a friend,’ I replied.
There were any number of areas along the assembly bays that had been vacated when the station had changed hands. Corporal punishment stations for flagging workers, shrines to the Machine-God of the Adeptus Mechanicus, overseer posts – all had been pulled out to make way for more sensible installations when the t’au had taken command.
Treshom’s shop had been a shrine, I was certain of it. Wax stains still crusted the corners of the room, and there was a scent of incense so thick that I didn’t think it would ever be expunged. Even though the trappings of the tech-priests’ worship had been removed, the shop remained a bastion of human culture. Thick chains hung from the ceiling in looping arcs, engineering tools clipped to them in a display of the machinist’s wares. Old engine blocks and gearboxes had been dragged in to serve as makeshift furniture. Half-assembled parts were scattered about the place, many covered in rust or grease.
‘Captain!’ Treshom was leaning over a disassembled clutch drum. He snapped upright and fired off a crisp salute. ‘Fancy seeing you down here.’
During the decades of blood and fyceline, Treshom Lan had been one of my finest sergeants. In the years since, he had discarded the sharp, disciplined image of the Militarum and had slowly returned to the garish, individualistic appearance of Follaxian society. He was lean and knotted, like an adamantine skeleton wrapped in grox jerky. His hair was long, and as filmy with grease as his tawny skin. While his hair was shaggy, his moustache and beard had been oiled and shaped into loose, spiralling curls.
‘Sergeant,’ I said, smiling. I gave him a haphazard salute in return, wondering if Kartyr would find the gesture odd. ‘We wanted to ask you a few questions.’
At that, Treshom noticed Kartyr standing behind me. He didn’t turn aggressive, but I saw his smile stiffen. There was still a sense of vague unease between some members of the human and t’au populations. It was saddening to see Treshom affected so.
‘We?’ he said.
‘I am Por’ui Fi’rios Kau’kartyr,’ my companion said, smiling broadly, ‘although humans call me Kartyr.’
Treshom looked at my companion, then back at me. ‘What can I do for you, captain?’
‘We wanted to know if you had seen anyone come in looking for magnetic decouplers,’ I said. The loading ring collapse had been caused by a faulty decoupler, and the component was vital in creating makeshift plasma bombs, the kind that had claimed the Dawning Eye.
Treshom shook his head. ‘Can’t say I have, captain.’ He cast a sidelong glance at Kartyr. ‘The blues don’t use ’em for anything, so they’re a scrap part, but they’ve got enough palladium in them that the earth caste melt ’em down for their own use.’ He produced a rag from his back pocket and began wiping grease from one of the parts on his workbench.
I frowned. ‘Have you heard anything about someone looking for them?’ Treshom wasn’t looking me in the eye, and his suspicion towards Kartyr was making my hackles rise.
Another head shake. ‘No, captain. Haven’t heard anything.’ He looked up. ‘Do you want me to vox you if I do? Do you need one for something?’
‘Let me know, definitely, if you hear of anyone scrounging them up.’ He was clearly fishing. ‘There’s no cause for alarm, though.’
‘The Bountiful Herald has suffered battle damage to its targeting arrays,’ Kartyr said. ‘There’s a shortage of palladium components to repair them, so we’re just reaching out to anyone who might be able to contribute.’ He smiled. ‘For the Greater Good.’
His deftness was amazing. In one swoop he’d delivered a convincing lie and played himself up as a cow-eyed sycophant, definitely not a threat to any malcontents who may or may not be part of the conversation.
Treshom nodded. ‘Will do, boss, will do. Bet it.’
We thanked him and left, Kartyr following my lead as I circled us around into the unused side halls. The rusted, abandoned segments would be repurposed at some point, but the resources of the Fifth Sphere fleet were limited, and some projects weren’t a top priority.
‘Do all of the gue’vesa refer to you by your human rank?’ asked Kartyr as we walked. An innocuous enough topic for conversation.
‘Only the Follaxian ones,’ I said. ‘There aren’t that many of them on board, though.’
‘Surprising, given how many followed you.’
I’d heard that praise before. It was true enough; when I’d joined the Greater Good I’d taken nearly my entire company with me. Losing one hundred and nine defectors at a stroke had been a huge blow to Follaxian morale, and our arrival had been a massive coup for the t’au forces.
‘Human ranks aren’t given a great deal of priority now,’ I said. ‘But for the Follaxians who followed me, it’s a point of pride. We’ve been through quite a bit with one another, and it’s always good to see a kinsman.’ Unfortunately, the t’au had not kept the 113th together; the company was now scattered across the empire. Their combat expertise made them highly valued assets, but I could count on one hand the number of times I had met my old comrades, especially since crossing to the Nem’yar Atoll.
I stopped. We’d gone far enough. The only sounds this deep in the unused portion of the station were the groans of metal shifting in the void and the plink of fluids dripping from poorly maintained conduits. There were none of the improvements of the t’au here: no rounded corners, no plasticised facades, no low-input track lighting giving a uniform illumination. The halls were a mess of cold, unforgiving steel, pipes winding through one wall and across the grid-work of the ceiling, and the ever-present images of leering skulls and arrogant aquilas on every wall.
‘Is there another contact of yours down here?’ Kartyr asked innocently.
I stared at him, unsure of whether he was being sarcastic or not. Sarcasm wasn’t a typical t’au trait, but I’d seen enough surprising turns of behaviour from the water caste that I couldn’t be certain.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Did that interaction seem odd to you?’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t say that it did. Did it to you?’
‘Definitely,’ I nodded. ‘Treshom is hiding something. You put him on edge just being there, and the minute we started asking pointed questions, he started trying to avoid giving us straight answers.’
Kartyr nodded. ‘I see. Do you wish to have him detained?’
‘Not yet.’ I frowned. Detention without cause was a trait of human law enforcement, and one I’d hoped not to see repeated under the t’au. ‘Treshom’s place has a vox-link in it, and it was never walled over like in most of the t’au-occupied parts of the station. I’d like to see if we can find another vox-unit. If I’m lucky, I might be able to wire it to listen in on Treshom’s shop. It’s a long shot, but I might be able to make it work.’
We set off through the abandoned halls, guided by a map of the station I had requisitioned using one of the small wrist pads that the t’au used for minor data uplinks.
‘Your investigative abilities are to be commended,’ Kartyr said. ‘Did you acquire them in your time with the Inquisition?’
I paused and gave him another look. The question was innocuous and his demeanour didn’t suggest any suspicion or malice, but again, with the water caste one could never tell. He’d clearly read up on me, but if he was trying to work some information loose that I hadn’t previously disclosed he was out of luck. I’d already told the t’au everything I knew.
‘I don’t know where you get your data on me from,’ I said, ‘but it’s got a few errors in it. I never worked for the Inquisition.’
‘My apologies. Your file indicates that you operated as an adjunct of actions ordered by your Inquisition on numerous occasions.’
I nodded and waved my hand uncertainly. ‘Somewhat. You’re right that the Follaxian 113th got sent into action by the Inquisition on more than one occasion, but to my knowledge I’ve never even met an inquisitor. So, to answer your first question, no. By the time my Irregulars and I got our boots on the ground, the investigation was already over and it was time to start shooting things.’ I paused. I didn’t want him to think I was prevaricating. ‘Given how often we fought ’stealers and cultists and the like, I think it’s reasonable to guess that someone in my chain of command was friends with an inquisitor or two, but if there was such a connection, it was way over my head and I never got looped in.’
‘This seems like far enough,’ said Kartyr, as we turned into yet another hallway.
‘We’re still a way from a master vox-unit,’ I said.
The t’au investigator shrugged. ‘True, but we don’t necessarily need it. We already have a listening device in the room.’ I stared at him and he cocked his head as if waiting for me to pick up on some hidden clue. Finally, he smiled smugly. ‘Have you not noticed that my XR-0 drone is no longer with us?’
I scowled. ‘You had your drone hide in the shop? Why the hell didn’t you say something earlier?’
‘We couldn’t very well just sit in front of his door listening to what was transpiring inside the shop, could we?’ He was tuning his own wrist pad, trying to find the XR-0’s frequency. ‘We needed to loop around the halls until we reached a location that was close enough to pick up the drone’s signal but still beyond public view.’
I sighed. It was sensible and a good bit of investigative work. It would have been easy to have the drone slip under a table while we were talking. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed its absence earlier. Still, the t’au habit of withholding information until it was absolutely required was irritating, especially from someone who was supposed to be my partner.
‘Here we are,’ he said, as his wrist pad caught the signal.
‘…not something we need to be concerned about.’ I didn’t recognise the voice.
‘Are you certain?’ Treshom sounded worried. ‘I swear that blue bastard knew more than he was letting on. You should have seen the way he looked at me.’
I glanced at Kartyr. If he was discomfited, he didn’t show it.
‘I’m more worried about your former commander working so closely with them,’ the unknown voice said. ‘I thought you were going to try to work her.’
‘I said I’d try if the opportunity presented itself,’ said Treshom, ‘but it’s not like I can just waltz into the upper levels for a chit-chat. The hoofies don’t let us up there.’
‘Of course not. They want to make sure that they’re never out of sight and never within reach. Always watching but never listening. It’s all part of the design.’
The unknown voice’s words sickened me. None of what he was saying was true. More than the lies and twisted interpretation of facts, it was that he was pouring this poison into the ears of my own comrades that revolted me. What had he already convinced Treshom to do? If they hadn’t been discovered, what more might they have convinced my old friend to do?
‘If they’re on to us, though, we may need to arrange an accident to distract them. The polymer engineers that transferred in from Dalymar would be good dupes. They’re third generation t’au sympathisers, so they’re about as indoctrinated as it gets – we’re never gonna get any of them.’
I held my breath, hoping that Treshom wouldn’t go along with such a grotesque plan.
‘How do you want to do it?’
I ground my teeth in frustration. I had to wonder how long this had been going on.
‘They’ve got hull-side quarters. It’ll just take a single vacuum charge to space the lot of ’em. We plant some heretical icons on them and the blues will chalk it up to deranged humans. The charges are easy enough for anyone to operate. Here, see?’ Whatever device the unknown speaker had activated must have generated some manner of interference, because the audio link to the drone faded out.
I shook my head, my blood running cold. I’d seen more than my fair share of callous battle plans in my day, but seldom with so much malice from one human directed to another.
‘I take it that’s sufficient cause to detain them?’ I asked, my voice husky with grief.
Kartyr shrugged. ‘We’re investigators empowered by the ethereal caste to look into this matter. Our word alone is sufficient cause to detain them.’ His nose slit rippled slightly, an expression I’d come to recognise as a sigh or shrug. ‘If you’re asking if I think my judgement is that we should detain them, then I’d concur with you that we’ve found our primary suspects.’
I started back the way we came, cutting out some of the superfluous turns I’d made on our initial walk. I keyed into the t’au computer system with my wrist pad, instructing the security system to lock down Treshom’s door and alert me if anyone tried to open it. Kartyr tapped his earpiece and requisitioned backup for us.
‘To his credit,’ Kartyr mused as we walked, ‘the malcontent is correct. Our knowledge of the religious sects that the Imperium considers heretical is limited. If we’d found such iconography among the engineers’ voided quarters it would have been mystifying as to how they had been indoctrinated, but the investigation would have completely shifted to their previous associations. We wouldn’t have brought scrutiny back to this station for quite a while.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Quite devious.’
I shook my head. Trust was such a freely given commodity in t’au culture that it was easy for malcontents to prey on. On a human station, such a gambit would only have been a minor distraction for most investigators, easily disproven.
‘Is there any truth to what he said?’ I asked, casting a sidelong glance at Kartyr. ‘Am I unique in my access to the t’au commanders?’ What Treshom and his conspirator had said troubled me. I’d always been given to understand that the officers of the station were willing to hear anyone with a grievance or concern.
Kartyr shook his head. ‘Of course not. There will always be a certain amount of encouragement towards a task hierarchy, of course. Line workers would be expected to speak with their supervisor before addressing a problem directly to their caste administrator, for instance. But in cases of exigency, the administrators would never begrudge someone the opportunity to address a problem to them.’
If the hulking, faceless fire warriors I’d seen guarding the higher levels were any indication, I wondered how open the administrators really seemed to the common labourer. A perception of inaccessibility might be as effective a deterrent as an actual policy of isolation. Even better, because then you could claim there was no official policy preventing the lower workers from addressing their higher-ups.
I narrowed my eyes and dropped my hand to the comforting grip of my pulse pistol. This was exactly the kind of insidious logic that Treshom’s co-conspirator was using to convince people to betray their t’au benefactors. I wasn’t about to fall prey to it.
We swung around a hall and back into the noisy open air of the assembly bay. I nodded towards Treshom’s door. The team of fire warriors we’d called were arrayed outside by ranks, knelt in a ring. They nodded as we approached, their pulse carbines trained on the portal.
‘Here we go,’ I said. ‘They haven’t tried the door yet. You ready?’
Kartyr nodded. ‘Of course.’
I pulled my pistol and checked the safety, then noticed Kartyr’s empty hands.
‘Are you unarmed?’ I asked, incredulous.
‘I don’t ordinarily carry a firearm, oru’vesa,’ said Kartyr.
I tapped the pad to open the door. It hissed upwards, exposing the inhabitants, who gawped at us in surprise. To my own surprise, there wasn’t one additional person inside – there were three. Startled, Treshom stepped back from the workbench he had been leaning on, scattering various documents over the floor. A man in a ragged Astra Militarum uniform stood next to him, his eyes the only visible part of his face above the makeshift cloth mask he wore. Another man was stood to the side, clad in the dun robes that were common in t’au septs, a flat-topped cap pulled low over his face. Lastly, a burly woman shielded them all, by presence if not design. She had been standing with her back to the door when it had gone up and now found herself at the forefront of their group. The mining coveralls she wore were dirty and streaked with grime, but had been augmented with small plates and jack-chains – common additions in prison work-gangs, fringe worlds or anywhere else labourers expected to encounter violence on a daily basis.
The woman turned to stare at us. They all stared.
