Ideas are hard to kill. On a nameless backwater a flash of light heralds the re-emergence of a branch of humanity though lost to history.

/

/

His name in the common tongue was Cro'ps. In the ancient tongue of long-forgotten Terra, its closest translation would have been Strong of Voice. He had been born a full turning of the seasons after the sky had caught fire and the blue-skinned ones had come. His mother had been a Guardian of the water, one of those who stayed behind to protect the precious oasis that was the tribe's source of strength, from the other lesser tribes who envied them for their wealth. His father had been a mounted hunter. One of the few skilled enough to tame a Humped One. Atop its back and armed with the tribes only copper spear he had hunted the Leather skinned ones for meat. Then a month after the sky had burned the Blue Ones had come to the tribe.

For a while, they had simply stood impassively. Their warriors carrying strange blunt spears at their shoulders. A strange floating plate hovering in front of them as the tribe's Elders had cycled through every dialect they knew, from the guttural drawl of the mountain craftsmen to the singsong tune of the coastal fishermen. Then when the Blue Ones had listened for long enough they had spoken. They had explained that they were a new tribe, that they would welcome any who joined them. They had brought gifts, knives and spears of such quality they had to be seen to be believed. They had treated the sick with medicine that actually worked! Then they had left, with an offering that any who came to their tribe's new camps would be given water and food.

As Cro'ps had grown more and more tribes had merged with the Blue Ones. Most tribes were not as lucky as his. The oasis that his tribe lived around had never failed them. Yes, there was the dry season when its supply was reduced, but it never dried up, unlike those of so many others. Until the day the Blue Ones sent another of their floating plates to fly over the tribe. It was dark, and the moon was obscured by cloud so no one saw what the strange device did. They had only known it was there because of the strange humming of the magic that let it fly like the birds.

Then a two days later the oasis dried up. And stayed dried up. For a full cycle of the moon, the Elders had kept the tribe calm. They had led them in rituals and supplication of the ancestor spirits, whilst the stored water reserves they had been planning to use for the seasons trading were gradually consumed.

Then the Blue Ones had come. The Blue Ones had offered their condolences for the tribes suffering and had extended a hand of friendship. Joining together was surely the best for all involved. The Blue Ones offered a new place to live. They promised that thirst would be just a memory. Many, mostly the elders, men and women wayed down by a lifetime of hardship wanted to accept. Others had objected. Some had worried about abandoning the land of their ancestors. Still more had simply not trusted the Blue Ones. Life amongst the dunes was harsh and cruel. No one, not even the most well-meaning traveller aided another for free. Surely the Blue Ones had a motive, surely they sought to gain something?

His mother had been one of the most vocal opponents. She had killed to defend the waters of the oasis. She had driven away desperate traders and travellers begging for aid because there simply wasn't enough water to go around. And now the Blue Ones wanted to render all her hard choices worthless? No. That would not stand. She laid the blame on them. Their flying disk had done something, it had poisoned the oasis. She had rallied others to her way of thinking. The mood had changed. The faceless guards of the Blue One's envoy, with their strange glowing eyes, had tensed slightly. Their odd blunt spears had been brought from their resting position at their shoulders into the ready position.

His father had stepped forward to support his lover. Maybe he had raised his spear to gesture with to add emphasis, maybe he had decided to put it to a more physical use. Either way, the result was the same. Over the years of his childhood, Cro'ps had heard stories of the strange weapons of the Blue Ones. None of them did justice to the sheer brutality of their work. When his vision returned there were maybe a dozen of them left. The rest, his mother, father, the elders, they were simply gone. As the dazed survivors stumbled around the burning ruins of their huts the sand under their feet cut at them. The heat from the weapons had turned fused it into the obsidian the mountain traders spoke of sometimes.

They couldn't stay. There was nothing for them here. They gathered up what tools and water was left, and with the Blue Ones departing in one of their flying machines, the two dozen survivors had set off south. By some unspoken agreement, he had become the leader of all that was left.

Strife beset them. Traders offered steep prices. Settled tribes refused to allow them admittance. The others bitterly cursed them. For years their trib had been a source of envy for its wealth of water, now the other, lesser tribes were taking their petty vengeance. He didn't believe it. It was the Blue Ones. They had spread the word he was sure. That any who traded with the dwindling band of survivors, who had dared to raise, or seem to raise a hand against their envoys would not enjoy their favour.

Finally, after a month they reached the end. There simply wasn't enough left. Not enough food, not enough water, not enough hope. He had offered them all a choice. Separate and try and survive on their own or join him in a final meal before stepping off the cliff top they camped above and joining their ancestors. None of them had left. What was the point? Surly to die surrounded by those you knew, after filling your belly with what little food and water were left was better than wandering the desert aimlessly as a drifter, as a tribeless? Dying alone and unremembered by anyone.

So, they had dined and drank. They had laughed, sang, cursed fate and the Blue Ones, then it had been time. They had stood together at the cliff edge. The wind whipping in from the south, knifing into their tattered rags. They had prepared themselves. Linked hands and prepared to take that final step.

"Pathetic! I saw what they did to you. They sabotaged the Oasis, they doomed your tribe. Then they butcher you when you hade the nerve to complain. And now you're just going to end it all, to give up? Pathetic! You have to make a stand, to show them they can't do this to other humans, or it'll never stop!"

They turned. Standing behind them, silhouetted against the moon was a figure. He wore armour. Not leather armour, like the champion of a wealthy tribe, might, might just be equipped with if the ancestors smiled on him. But armour that seemed to be wrought from the same material as the Blue One's warriors. Except that it was dark as night with crisscrossing patterns of crimson lights running across its surface.

His voice reminded them of the Blue Ones. It had the strange effect of being overlayed on top of another language, one utterly incomprehensible to the men and women who stood utterly transfixed. Transfixed because the figure wore no helmet. They could see his face, and that face was human.

/

I found Cro'ps in the vehicle hanger. The overhead lights were off to reduce power consumption and energy emissions, but with his new Cybran implants he could see just fine. He was standing with the stillness that only a Cybran who was using his implants to control motor functions could manage. He was standing on top of one of the second-floor loading platforms gazing out over the assembled war machines. By the standards of the Infinite War, it was a pathetic force.

Three Hunter light assault bots, 12-meter-tall armless mechs with reverse jointed legs and an underslung light pulse laser.

Two Mantis assault bots. Slightly shorter than the Hunters at a mear eleven meters but far more threatening. Four-legged insectoid like machines that weighed in at almost a hundred tones, twin pulse lasers jutted from its front like the fangs of some apex predator. Its back arched up slightly to house a crude but functional engineering suit, complete with its own fabrication and repair abilities.

Further along were the "big guns" of my "army". A single Medusa self-propelled artillery piece, and a Sky Slammer mobile surface to air missile system.

I never piloted an Armoured Command Unit during the Infinite War. I never technically qualified to pilot a support Armoured Command Unit, it was just the shifting tides of war that found me in the cramped cockpit of XGU-136. Even so, even as a sideshow in a war of billions, I had commanded armies. I had directed artillery barrages that smashed the crusts of planets and drowned the surface in a molten sea of lava. When I smashed apart enemy cities to free my enslaved Cybran brothers and sisters from their prisons, I had carpet bombed tens of thousands with the tap of a finger.

Now I skulked in a cave with 30 barbarian primitives, from some lost colony, hastily educated to the nature of modern war and the technologies it was fought with, (not to mention basic hygiene) by Cybran implants and memory engrams. My arsenal consisted of seven functional machines with the slim possibility of increasing that number in the foreseeable future.

My opponents? An alien occupation force that, judging from my tentative eavesdropping of enemy communications was making significant gains in subverting the local human population to its cause, and I still had no idea where the hell the quantum rift caused by the destruction of my sACU mid jump had sent me.

If there indeed is a life after death, then a hell of a lot of people are cackling with mirth at my predicament. Still, with a little luck perhaps I can put off meeting them for a while yet.

I walked up next to Cro'ps, my eyes switching to other wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum as I entered the near total darkness of the hanger.

"You know, most soldiers tend to spend the night before their first battle doing… something."

He shot me a glance and then turned back to looking over the machines.

"Your fellows certainly are. I won't hold it against you. Go to the barracks, party with your people. The implants will make sure you're ready for tomorrow." I had set the fabricator's in the mess hall to produce a very week bear for the men and women scheduled to take part in tomorrow's offensive. For a people who viewed water as a valuable commodity, it was a novel experience. They were chanting and painting their faces with protective warding's, calling on ancestor spirits.

"You look down on us. We're just desert savages. Aren't we?" Cro'ps wasn't using translation software. He was forcing himself to speak English. His dark skin, typical of his people merged with the background. He had decided to forgo the facial circuitry that most Cybrans adopted as a matter of pride.

"You're using your facial expression analyser. Good. Its important to get used to the changes becoming a Cybran brings." I replied looking over the machines.

"You don't deny it." It was a statement, not a question.

"No. I don't." I sighed. Rubbing my head in irritation. I was never good at this… People talk.

"What's happened to your people is monstrous. That some fragments of humanity were scattered out in the galaxy, forgotten by the rest of us, left to regress technologically and then be slaughtered by aliens while the rest of us slaughtered ourselves? Unacceptable. You're right. I do look down on the people of this world. If you live to the age of 50, you're called an Elder. Bronze Is your most advanced weapon. Bronze!"

I felt my hands balling into fists. I considered activating the emotional regulation subroutines but decided against it. Bottling up emotions never worked out well in the long run. I was about to go on. To explain that my disgust came from the fact that so many had been killed in a thousand-year, three-way war while out here on this miserable planet good people had died for centuries if not millennia from completely preventable problems.

I was about to say that, but Cro'ps cut me off. "You're right."

"Wha-"

"You're right. We are savages. I've seen the pictures. The ones from your education packages. Citys that stretch into the sky. Limbs are regrown in moments. Even this." He raised his arms and swept the around to encompass the small underground base I had fabricated using me pilot suits SOS fabricator.

"You think of this place an embarrassment, to us it's a palace. We'll be your soldiers. We'll kill Blue Ones. Every one of them if we must. Just promise me one thing." He swept his hand out at the assembled war machines. "Promise me whatever happens you'll never let us go back to what we were before. Promise me that you'll never let another die of thirst or hunger when you can save them. Do that and you can think whatever the hell you think of us." He turned away leaving me standing alone in the hanger. Thinking about what was to come.

/

Year 495 M40 standard imperial calendar.

Administrative unit Alpha.

Por'Vre Noa reclined in his office chair. His assistant drone brought him a fresh set of the bittersweet tea that he had acquired a taste for since arriving on this world. His world. XV8815 also known to its inhabitants, its non-human inhabitants at least as T'au'ko. (Literally little T'au, due to its similarity to the homeworld.) was too small and insignificant for a member of the noble Ethereal caste to be needed to oversee its management.

As such the highest-ranking members of the four castes each managed their own affairs with the tacit understanding that whilst the situation remained stable the Water Castes with their training as bureaucrats would occupy a position as… first amongst equals.

The Tau had first come to T'au'ko for minerals. The efforts to rebuild in the aftermath of the Damocles Gulf Crusade had started to seriously drain the resources of the empire. Officially the stockpiles of strategic resources were full, and the ranks of the Fire Casest were swelling every day with freshly raised Cadres. As a bureaucrat of the middle-rank Noa knew…Otherwise.

The situation was not critical. Not yet. Hence the establishment of mining outposts like this one. The wealth of the deposits had been a pleasant surprise. The fact that there were approximately a hundred thousand humans eking out an existence on a world that was slightly too arid for the Tau to find comfortable was a considerably less pleasant surprise. The Fire Caste had wanted to launch punitive expeditions against the various human tribes that dotted the planet. Eliminating them one by one before they could become a threat.

Fortunately thought Noa smiling to himself as he finished his drink and placed the empty mug on the tray of the hovering personal assistance drone, cooler heads had prevailed.

In the last message dispatched to the rest of the Empire by courier ship, he had been able to report that approximately a third of the local Humans had joined into various Tau sponsored enclaves. It was taking time to educate them of course. Longer than Noa would like but it was happening. In another two or three generations it would be possible to transfer the duties of the Tau personal on the planet to the local Humans. The one hundred thousand Tau on planet could easily be scaled back to a few tens of thousands. As the Humans, grateful to their civilisers took over the role of maintaining the planetary defences force and the vital mining outposts. With just a few Tau to guide them of course.

There had been difficulties of course. Like that disturbance at the Tribe of The Ever-Flowing Water last month. Officially the Tau had offered aid to a tribe whose water supply had failed, been met with resistance and responded. Unfortunately for the Fire Warriors and his immediate Water caste inferior Ka,Th, who had informed him of the predicament of the tribe and their unfortunate response, this was Noa's third deployment as defacto planetary governor. He knew a few tricks. Small cameras had been placed in the drone hangers of all outposts. One had recorded the unorganised deployment of a drone approximately a month before the incident. It had been a matter of child's play to estimate its destination based on its exit vector.

There would have to be consequences. Initiative on the part of subordinates was expected, but there were limits. Idly he wondered who the instigator had been. The Fire Caste had been pushing harder for a more forceful integration and the drone's control system was under their purview. At the very least it would be some mid ranked member. A Shas Ui. Although realistically it would probably be Shas Vre Oml. The hardened one-eyed commander of the Fire Caste on the planet. She was always one for the direct approach.

A blinking light flashed on his desk's communication system. Speak of the Mont'au, and it shall appear. He thought as he answered the call.

Oml's face popped up in front of his own, projected by holographic emitters set into the desks. His eyes narrowed. The de facto commander of all Tau military assets on the planet was in full armour. Not unusual for her but in the edges of the image were other Fire Warriors. Dozens of them in various stages of preparation. In the background, Earth Caste technicians were calling to each other. Giving readiness reports on Battlesuits and gunships. The clipped tones of an Air caste pilot broke in on the communications net. He reported that his Orca transport flight was fully ready and awaiting the ground forces to commence loading.

"What is happening?"

/

Airbase Anor'the had a garrison of 2000 Tau and was one of 79 such facilities on the planet. As a rule, the Tau do not defend worlds by establishing huge fortifications as the Imperium did. Instead in those cases where the fleet did not manage to stop an enemy in the void, the Tau would use their superior mobility, in the form of a fully mechanised army and Orca drop ships to strike at the enemy as they landed from as many directions as possible. Small forces would be eliminated in their entirety before they could be reinforced. Those that made landfall in sufficient numbers would find themselves harassed constantly as they tried to expand their bridgehead. Until the Tau commanders felt that a moment for a decisive confrontation had come they would bleed the enemy for every inch they took, trading land for time and time for enemy blood.

At any one time, three Orca dropships were ready and waiting on the landing pads with a combined total of a full Hunter Cadre huddled inside the dim, cramped interior. Awaiting the call to defend Tau assets on the planet from any attack. The local Humans were no threat. In fact, many thousands of them had now been recruited as auxiliaries to help assist the Fire caste. No, the base and others like it had been constructed to defend against the possibility of the Orks or Imperials launching a raid on the mining outpost. The Navy was spread thin defending more important worlds and replacing losses. Its only presence was a single courier craft currently away on assignment. If an attack came it would be stopped on the ground. Still, the Fire caste was sure that they were up to the task.

And so, as fate would have it, with the sun rising in the north, Airbase Anor'the would become the sight of the first open conflict between forces of the Cybran Nation and the Tau Empire.

The attack began with 22 humans infiltrating and disabling the outer defences. They were not comparable to proper Cybran commandos, the legendary, heavily mechanised soldiers who for a thousand years had struck seemingly with impunity at any target they faced no matter the countermeasures put into place. Their implants were mostly just cranial in nature. Their midnight black armour was barely a step above civilian grade environmental hard suits and their weaponry pitifully light. None the less they had spent the past month in a cybernetically induced sleep, running through endless hours of training in the form of memory engrams.

I won't deny that a team of proper Cybran Commandoes would have been a whole lot sharper, but they did the best they could under the circumstances. In the weeks leading up to today's battle, I had used the little fabrication capacity I had to produce a series of "micro scouts." Crude flying horseshoe-shaped machines that had moved into the enemy perimeter at night and burrowed themselves into the sand recording enemy movements by passive sensors. Half a dozen of them were located around the base.

Using the information they had sent back to the Quantum Network the infiltrators had lain in wait for the patrolling drones that made up the outer part of the airbase perimeter. When the drones approached a Commando with the best score in the training simulations had raised a rifle and fired an engineering dart freshly forged by the weapon's magazine. Before the Tau drone could even recognise the incoming attack the small engineering suit in the dart had started to interface with the machines primitive mind. The Tau operators in the armoured command bunker 30 kilometres away did not notice a thing as the drone's systems were subverted. I pulled all data from the machine, adding its IFF database to my own and uploaded a ghoast program to the Tau network. In the eyes of the inexperienced Tau overseer, (A Shas-Saal-Pol if you're interested,) nothing of note happened. The system seemed to stutter for the barest moment. He thought nothing of it. The drones were due for maintenance soon, and he had another hour left on duty before he could hand over the responsibility and finally get some sleep.

Machines in the Infinite war used Quantum Entanglement Keys isolation to keep their networks secure. Requiring you to hack each unit individually if you wanted to gain control of them. The Tau system had no such restrictions. Like a pathogen spreading through the bloodstream the ghost program spread through the Tau data net. Within 102 seconds every patrolling drone was infected. Sitting in my command vehicle, a modified Mantis assault bot I sent a command through my implants and at a mental stroke blinded the electronic eyes of the drones and automated gun turrets that served as outer perimeter guards of the airbase. With that first obstacle cleared I sent another signal. With our infantry moving out ahead of us as a vanguard the rest of the attack force moved in. Our target was a point 15 kilometres from the airbase proper. At that range, the Medusa self-propelled artillery could prepare to shell the base. A single Hunter and the self-propelled AA would stay with it, whilst the rest of us moved on.

Watching through the cybernetic eyes of the Commandos I saw the first of the Tau die. A section of eight Fire warriors patrolling a kilometre from the start of the airbase proper. They walked like professionals. Weapons at the ready and heads on a swivel. But when they saw the two dozen darkly armoured figures emerge from the pre-dawn gloom they hesitated. They were inexperienced I was sure. Fresh soldiers who had been sent to this quiet place to finish their training and so release more experienced soldiers for service elsewhere. They didn't have a chance.

Aside from Cro'ps's tribe, I had recruited my little army from half a dozen bands of the Tribeless. The absolute dregs of society on this miserable world. Some of them had been opponents of integration and had been thrown out by their tribes to gain the favour of the Tau whilst others had committed genuine crimes and been punished accordingly. The Tau had for one reason or another in each of their cases refused to help them when they needed it. Now they had a chance to strike back, and they embraced with a vengeance.

Four Sanction Flechette rifles came up and fired. Their self-guided graviton accelerated darts crossing the distance between the Tau and the Commandos at just under the speed of sound for this world's atmosphere, lest the sonic "crack" a supersonic munition give away the attackers too early. When the rounds struck the micro engineering suit buried in their tips activated, disassembling the molecules of the armour in front of them atom by atom. The darts passed through the hole in the armour and the second stage of the weapon, a massive flood of gamma radiation was released cooking the body of the Tau inside. Wordlessly the Tau fell to the ground. Ordinarily, their vitals flatlining would have the base go on alert automatically, but my ghost program had already spread to other systems as well. The biometric data that the command centre was receiving was a loop of earlier in the patrol.

The infiltration force had a single primary role. My earlier scouting using passive sensors had identified the main Tau communication centre for the base. As I had guessed the Tau long-range communication system was on a separate system to the rest of the Tau network. A wise move, as my subversion of the drone defence network, had shown. I could have just blown it apart with artillery fire, but I didn't want to do that. It would look suspicious if a Tau airbase suddenly stopped transmitting. However, if I could gain access to the communication centre, then I would be able to pull off my trick with the patrols biometrics on a far grander scale. With a little luck, the rest of the Tau would never know that a battle was being fought at all. They would find out eventually of course but hopefully, it would take them long enough for us to disengage. Additionally, I would gain access to a vast amount of data storage which I could then analyse at a later date. I needed to know how far I was from human civilised space if I was ever to bring attention to the threat posed to humans by the Tau Empire.

The doors to the Tau communication centre's main operations room opened quietly. A couple of the Earth and Fire caste on duty glanced up at the door disinterestedly. They were already turning back to their consoles by the time it took them to realise their mistake. Then the killing started.

Sanction Flechette rifles spat their pointed munitions. Proton launchers fired projectiles that broke apart enemies on the subatomic level and low yield laser rifles boiled away the flesh and the blood and heated bone until it exploded. The Fire caste members scrambled desperately to bring their long and unwieldy pulse rifles up and to bear on the enemy. By the time it took the first of them to do so the dozen attackers had killed three-quarters of them. Only one of them managed to return fire. His shot caught a Commando in the chest, who had been too swept up in the revelry of slaughter to listen to his newly acquired instincts screaming at him to take cover.

The shot hurled him backwards, but mercifully the Structural Integrity Field of his armour managed to hold and prevent his internal organs from being pulped. His fellow attackers blasted the Tau responsible into a cloud of vaporised blood and bone. Whilst the Earth caste technicians, paralysed by such brutal violence were being hunted down, a trio of Commandoes made their way to the communications systems.

One pulled out a Universal Machine Interface Unit from a pocket and inserted it into the main communications desk. It adjusted its size and shape until it merged perfectly with the input socket. After twenty seconds it chimed a positive response. The system was theirs. One of the black armoured infiltrators sent a message and the true slaughter began.

"This is it, follow your orders and remember the training. Use emotional suppression algorithms if you have to. Set time acceleration to times 10. This is Captain Richard Cain. May Operation Desert Rat now commence!" We sprinted forwards at 60 standard Terran kilometres an hour.

Ordinarily, a Commander's forces would be entirely automated. Relatively simplistic machine minds receiving their orders via the same Quantum Network that allowed them to effectively operate without supply lines. When I had arrived on this world, I had had nothing, but the pilots suit on my back and a handful of machines on the verge of a catastrophic failure of their Structural Integrity Fields. The Quantum infrastructure I had managed to build was bearly able to handle the strain of supplying these machines with the Power and Mass they needed to function. There was no quantum bandwidth to send the messages that would control the machines with. That meant that unusually each of the machines operating today had an actual biological crew. Riding into battle with actual living people fighting alongside you is a strange feeling.

Red seven, our Medusa artillery piece, raised it's barrel and fired. Its first three shots were aimed at the Orca transports lying on the landing field with their bellies full of troops. Within half a second of each other, the first and third shells struck. First came the EMP charge detonated just before impact, to scramble enemy electronics in the area. Then when the shell was about to hit it activated its neutron accelerator. The nucleus of the atoms making up the Tau armour was blasted apart by the high-speed subatomic particles. The armour began to break apart in spontaneous nuclear fission. Adding to the devastation. When the shells did finally hit, it struck armour so weekend it penetrated completely through the upper deck and fully detonated inside the crew compartment.

Viewing reality at one-tenth of normal speed is a truly beautiful thing. The way sand is kicked up by the footfalls of a mech, the way that plasma is formed from air resistance as artillery shells tear their way through the atmosphere. The crisscrossing trail of lasers caused as their passage heating the gasses in the air to the point of ionisation. Streams of plasma crisscrossing the battlefield, like the webs of some terrible technological spider's web. The small induced nuclear explosions consuming the Tau dropships was particularly beautiful. Silhouetted against the rising sun as it was.

Our attack force cut its way into the enemy airbase. The Sky Slammer AA missile system added its firepower to the assault, switching to ground targeting mode and using the operators cybernetically enhanced reflexes to guide the shots on target via remote control. In the first thirty seconds of the attack, she killed 500 Tau by diving her Nanite Missiles into one of the buildings we had tentatively identified as a barracks accommodation. The resulting swarm of devouring nanites consumed the Tau even as they tried to arm themselves for battle. Watching through hacked security cameras, I saw Fire Warriors blasting away at the oncoming swarm of nanoscopic killers on full auto before being dragged down by them and devoured. Its operator was a woman called Jon'kl who had lost her son in the massacre of Cro'ps tribe. You could hear her cackling over the communication channels as she fired a flash fabricated missile after flash fabricated missile. In the end, I reached through our network and using my authority as the highest ranked individual present, forcibly activated emotional suppression systems. We couldn't afford any mistakes.

The two Hunters that had come with us busied themselves with the elimination of the panicking foot targets. Earth caste technicians, Fire caste soldiers and Air caste pilots all trying to make sense of the situation. The light pulse lasers slung underneath the nose of the Hunters were pitiful by the standards of the Infinite War, but on infantry they were murderous. Tau a dozen meters from the point of impact were simply evaporated as their clothing caught fire. Those twenty meters away collapsed to the ground clutching eyes that had become unbearably dry and thrashing as their skin blistered. As for those struck dead on not even ashes remained.

The two Mantis Assualt Bots, one piloted by my self the other Cro'ps focused on the bigger targets. A partially disassembled Hammerhead gunship in an open hanger was blasted apart by me, rupturing the hydrogen fuel tank being used to refuel it and creating a blast so big it consumed the neighbouring hangers as well. Together via our Cybran implants, we coordinated our fire over the Neural Net. Never striking a target that the other was already trying to destroy. No shots were wasted on enemies that were already as good as dead.

I was playing havoc on the Tau communications channels. A dozen automated attempts had already been made in the first minute before frantic Tau communications operators in other parts of the base attempted to get a message out to the rest of the planet. I killed it with my control of the communications system. I did other things as well. My access to the Tau systems was not perfect. There were still some systems simply beyond my ability to connect to. None the less I could still stack the deck in our favour. I reactivated the sensors on the bases various drones and automated gun turrets but modified their IFF. Through the cameras of a hundred different machines, I saw Tau cut down in their hundreds as their former mechanical allies shot them in the back. I was also filling the local coms network with static and incoherent shouting. Through my various feeds, I saw Tau sergeants and officers reduced to screaming and hand signals to try and regain control.

My Commandos were also busy. As we began the attack, I made out at least two dozen dead Tau soldiers on the outer perimeter, killed before they raise the alarm. Half the force had attacked the coms centre whilst the other half, using crude visual cloaking generators they had spread through the base planting explosives. Those explosives now detonated. An entire Cadra of Fire Warriors was obliterated when an ammunition depot exploded consuming every single on them. Four bunkers set up to give Fire Warriors a safe shooting position against an enemy attack were erased. In the case of one of them after it had been packed to capacity by Fire Warrior's whose eyes were still bleary from lack of sleep. After that, they joined the attack in a more conventional sense. Picking off officers and NCO's. The Tau had obligingly made the job easier by painting their helmets a distinctive bone white.

As the attack continued I multitasked with the skill that only a Cybran can possess. Identifying high priority targets and transmitting their locations to the artillery in the rear. Checking on the progress of the rest of the attack and issuing new orders accordingly. Updating the battle damage prediction algorithms based on what I saw of the enemy armours performance against our weapons. All of it was done in a fraction of a second.

At moments like this, I honestly could not fathom how anyone could live without Cybran cranial implants. It must be like trying to live life with a misfiring engine for a brain.

It was ninety seconds past since Operation Desert Rat began when we encountered enemy resistance that was actually some danger. Until that point, we had been contending with nothing but small arms fire. My retina display showed that none of the machines in our attack force had had its Structural Integrity Field fall below 95% The Tau rifles leaving little more than scorch marks on the armoured hulls.

Then one of the Hunters, busily cutting down a group of fleeing enemy infantry took a hit from something that cut its integrity field down to 70%. Its pilot started to panic, and again I had to use the Emotional Regulation Software to calm her. As I did that I bit the bullet and increased my time acceleration to 1/20th of normal time and started scanning the area for our mysterious attacker. The added mental strain would mean there was hell to pay later but for now, it was necessary.

There! A trail of superheated air caused by the friction between the atmosphere and the projectile. Whatever it was it was lurking behind the control tower at the far end of the airbase.

"Cro'ps with me, we have to take that thing out." I transmitted cross the Neural Network

He gave a grunt of compliance and our two machines set off at flank speed whilst the Hunters continued their butchery of the infantry. Alien infantry scattered before us as we surged forwards. As we advanced we ruthlessly raked their ranks when the opportunity offered itself. If the Light weapons of the Hunter were devastating to infantry, then the twin-linked heavy pulse lasers were simply cruel. Where their shots struck the ground the hardened surface evaporated in ten meters in any direction.

As we were approaching the control tower, an aircraft that my captured IFF information referred to as a Baracuda fighter left in its hanger and unable to launch because of the chaos of the attack tried to fire its weapons through the open doors of the hanger. I managed to avoid the worst of the damage by bending my mechs legs and "crouching" so that the majority of the weapons fire, including a very dangerous Ion beam if my sensors were correct, passed harmlessly over my machines head. Together Cro'ps and I riddled the machine with so much pulse fire that it was as though some vindictive god had used a magnifying glass to burn it away.

With that out of the way, we resumed our charge for the control tower. Half a kilometre from it I got my first glimpse of the enemy we were hunting. According to my new IFF, it was a Broadside battlesuit emerging from around the side of the tower. About half the hight of a Hunter with a humanoid body and twin railguns mounted on its shoulders. Without hesitation, both Cro'ps and I raked it with pulse laser fire. The machines boxy head was vaporised instantly taking the majority of the enemies pilots sensor equipment with it. On instinct, the enemy opened fire with his railguns. Firing blindly in our vague direction. One of the shots went wide, but the other struck the ground in front of me with such force that it gouged out a fifty-meter trench. Impressive firepower for such as small design I noted. The second fusillade from our lasers must have breached some kind of fuel source because the machine blasted itself apart with incredible force.

As soon as that happened, the other two Broadsides emerged from the other side of the tower. Before we could act they fired their railguns at us. There's something terrible about watching a railgun shot coming towards you with reflexes bosted far enough see it but not to act on it. Even with the inertial compensators installed in the machine's cockpit I still felt like a hammer blow had been dealt to my stomach. My structural integrity dropped to 61%. I snarled out a curse and opened fire. Not at the head or the railguns but at the six shot missile launcher mounted in place of hands. These had been empty on the first Broadside I had engaged. Presumably, because it was due for maintenance before we attacked. These two were clearly not. My blasts detonated the machines ammunition and hurled it into its neighbour. They both fell together in a crumpled mass which Cro'ps and I took no shame in using as target practice.

As our fighting ended I heard something strange on the communications net. Cheering. I turned my machine around. At the other end of the runway, the last of the Tau forces on base had just been obliterated. Men and women were clambering on top of destroyed aircraft and logistical vessels. Thrusting their weapons into the air and chanting in half a dozen different dialects. Singing to their ancestors, chanting to the spirits thous who lived on this world believed guided all things, some of them shouting just for the sheer hell of it. I hadn't lost a single one of them to the enemy. I allowed a few moments of revelry before cutting in.

As I watched my troops busied themselves collecting anything that could serve as an energy source. Fuel tankers containing hydrogen, air to air missiles with plasma warheads and even the magazines of Tau pulse rifles. As they did so I monitored the Tau's worldwide communication network. There was no increase in communication chatter. For now at least the Tau seemed completely unaware of what was going on, believing the fabricated status updates from the communication centre about the situation on base.

I moved my way over to the pile of energy source. This was the true goal of the mission. The information that I had gained might be incredibly useful but the potential reward of this was infinitely more impactful. It had taken me months to repair my few surviving units with my pilot's suits fabricators. If I had calculated the energy requirements correctly, however, I would not be forced to rely on such a inefficient system. When the last of it was added, I activated the engineering drone on my machine and had it move over to the pile. With a sigh of anxiety, I began the work. Crimson beams played over the high energy content objects. Breaking them down at the subatomic level and using some of the power from that to restructure the atom by adding or replacing subatomic particles. My hands were dripping with sweet every moment. Then as quickly as it had started, it was over. The fule was gone. Replaced by a four-wheeled rover with a single fin standing up from its back half. In my ears, I heard the words, "emergency fabrication of T1 Mobile Engineering unit complete, awaiting instructions." I sat in my cockpit and smiled.

"What do you mean its gone!? It's an airbase! It can't just disappear." Noa snaped.

"I mean that its gone bureaucrat, there's nothing left apart from bombed out buildings and corpses. A lot of weaponry can't be accounted for either. " Shas Vre Oml replied. Now transmitting from inside an Orca transport on a return flight from surveying the satiation for herself.

"What could have done this?" he asked feeling so weary suddenly.

"Unknown. Regardless we need to start taking precautions. I have given an order for all human tribes not yet in Tau built settlements to be relocated to them. That will make our job far easier when it comes to tracking down the enemy. "

"Now see here, I am the Governor of t-"

"Correction you were the Governor. Now there is a combat situation on the planet. I hold the most authority. Until we can be sure that this enemy force has been obliterated, we must treat every native with suspicion. If you want to make your self-useful, I suggest that you start the work on building more settlements."

"What makes you think they were even human? The Orks have never-"

"Are you honestly suggesting that Orks would be able to land without us noticing them? Look. Maybe these attackers are natives. Maybe they are some unknown species. Maybe they are from the Imperium, sent to sow chaos in our rear territory. Whatever the reason it doesn't matter. We will do this properly, for the greater good." She finished the transmission with a salute and then shut it down before he could respond.

Cro'ps found me in my new office two days after the raid on the airbase. Ever since we had managed to fabricate the Engineer we had gone through a massive expansion. The total volume of the underground base had increased ten times over. Much of that space was occupied by Quantum Power Generators and Mass Fabricators. It had been somewhat galling to see a room that would have taken a month for my pilot's suit's fabricator to build completed in minutes. Not that I didn't have bigger problems on my hands than envy.

"Hows the work going, Honoured Elder?" His face twitched into the faintest of smiles. In this world the difference between being a leader and an Elder was non-existent. Naturally, when the men under my command had found out that at 19 I was younger than many of them there had been a fair few jokes like that.

I glanced up at him from the freshly built desk I was sitting behind. I doubt he needed a facial pattern analysation software to realise my mood. The smile fell from his face, and he moved closer to me.

"What's wrong sir?"

"I…I've been looking over the data we stole from the Tau." With a mental command, the emitters in the desk activated and presented the Tau's understanding of the situation of the galaxy. Nation states I had never heard of sprouted up in star systems I didn't think had any human population in my own time. "More specifically what they know about the rest of the galaxy. I… I don't recognise a single thing about this place. I think... I think that the Quantum rift might have sent me forward in time! Based on the position of the stars I think it might be something like 36,000 years." My hands were shaking. i remember that clearly, the shock of never being able to back home again was starting to get to me.

A moment of silence fell between us. Neither of us willing to break it.

"What do we do?" he finally asked an unreadable expression on his face.

I took a deep breath. "Where ever we are, whatever time this is is irrelevant. The enemy is in front of us. We fight or we die." I replied.

He nodded, held out his hand and gave mine a firm shake. "We fight."