It was a city of the dead. Fire Warrior DarkBlade was not unused to the scenario. What made this city unique in his experience was one very simple fact.
The dead seemed to have acquired a need for living flesh.
At first the Fire Warrior and his comrades had not believed the frantic transmissions coming from the Race garrisons. Then more had come from the Elite garrisons closer to the city's center. Less than twenty-four hours later all Tau garrisons on the outskirts of the city were only getting static on their communication equipment. Pathfinders had been sent into the inner city. Less than half of them returned with horrific reports of animated corpses and horrible mutations running rampant in the interior. The Auns in command of the Tau component of the city's guard had sent an urgent message to the small Hegemony Fleet in high orbit.
The message had been sent over a week ago, DarkBlade had long given up counting the days since they all blended into one another, and officially there had been no response. Unofficially, as most barracks gossip was, the fleet had sent a message composed of one line of text.
May the gods of your people embrace you.
DarkBlade doubted if that had been the true message but the intent was clear. There would be no help coming and DarkBlade doubted if any shuttles would be greeted with open arms. There were five Tau garrisons, two thousand assorted Tau each, in this city alone. If reports from the other cities were any indication there were no true safe havens. Wild theories and ideas about a course of action ran rampant through the base. There was little question as to how this had happened or who was responsible.
It does not matter, DarkBlade thought as he turned to gaze at the beautiful sun slowly sinking into the vibrant blue-green ocean.
There were some benefits to being stationed on a world covered in ocean but DarkBlade would have given all of them up for a place to fallback to. DarkBlade's squad leader passed by and quietly asked his about his weapon charges and rations, before he moved to the next trooper on the wall. DarkBlade's cadre was assigned to the east wall above the vehicle garage. A long, wide throughway led right up to the garage's doors. Piles of stinking, rotting corpses filled the street. The blast doors had been destroyed by dozens of mutated Hunters on the fifth or six night of the siege. The Fire Warrior in command of the garrison had set up a trio of plasma rocket batteries to cover the entrance from inside the garage and that was the only reason they had held out that night. Most of the creatures were dormant during the day and that provided the beleaguered Fire Warriors a needed respite during daylight hours.
"Another beautiful night in the Hegemony, DarkBlade?" a beautiful Fire Warrior said just before she put on her helmet.
"Indeed," DarkBlade already had his helmet on, in fact he couldn't remember if he had even taken it off today except to grab a quick bite of a tasteless ration bar.
If I live through the night I should probably clean my armor, the thoughts of such a routine task seemed utterly bizarre to him under the current circumstances.
A low moan wafted across the wide avenue but it was just the wind.
"Sensor contacts," a Fio technician was providing this section of perimeter with on-the-spot intelligence, "Range three hundred meters and closing fast."
"Check your data," the cadre-commander, Lusha, spoke gruffly, "No visual contact. I repeat. No visual contact."
"Data is reliable, commander. Range at one hundred meters."
Now the moaning came from a tide of quickly shuffling bodies at the far end of the road.
"Remember to conserve your ammo," DarkBlade's squad leader called over the communicator in their helmets.
The sun was almost completely gone and the commander gave the order for the floodlights to be activated. Blue-white light, eerie in its brilliance brought the avenue into stark relief. It looked to be the biggest group yet. The black tide stretched as far as DarkBlade could see. Someone had said, he couldn't remember who, that all the noise was attracting the creatures in greater numbers. It looked like that Fire Warrior had been correct.
"Range is twenty meters."
"Visual?" Lusha asked over the cadre-wide channel.
"Negative," were the responses of all his squad leaders as the leading edge of the horde was at least one hundred meters away.
There was no warning as the ground ten meters below them spewed forth gigantic monstrosities. DarkBlade peered over the parapet and gaped in horror at the five-meter long worms that had erupted from the ground. They were armored in something akin to Hunter armor and on their backs…
"Down!" DarkBlade roared just as the worm-behemoth beneath him fired all four fuel-rod cannons embedded into its back.
What was issued from the cannons was not what DarkBlade expected. Thick, gray-green globs of viscous fluid arced up and onto the wall. One trooper beside DarkBlade was hit in the back of the head. The Fire Warrior only managed one scream before his helmet and then cranium were reduced to a boiling pile of slag.
"Grenades!" DeathKnight, his squad leader, barked and the eleven Fire Warriors in the squad tossed Tau hand grenades over the wall.
A hail of grenades cascaded down upon the worms and the mutants began to shoot their corrosive emissions at the barricades the Fio's had welded in place. The detonations came so close together that they were indistinguishable. Grenades were a finite resource so it was no surprise to anyone that the order to desist was quickly given by the cadre-commander.
DarkBlade's breath came a bit more quickly than he would have liked as he waited for the debris to clear with his Covenant plasma rifle at the ready. A massive shadow raced through the debris and a metallic crunching filled the air.
"Fire!"
DarkBlade was already depressing the firing stud when the order was given. The backwash from dozens of plasma rifles being fired cleared the dust that choked the air. There had been five of the mutants and now there were two. It was hard to imagine anything that could come through such a barrage of grenades almost completely unscathed.
"Volley fire on the mob," DeathKnight directed quite calmly, "The rocket batteries will eliminate those things."
DarkBlade stepped back and a trooper from another squad took his place. He noted with horror that the mob had broken into a shambling run. Out in front, just like the last attacks, were a mixture of Jackals and Grunts. The Grunts were without their methane masks, freeing their deceptively sharp teeth, and both species had switched to a quadruped format. It did not seem to matter that most of them had grievous wounds that continually leaked ichors. The forerunners were closing the distance rapidly.
"Fire!" came the shouted order and a wall of energy hit the advance wave.
It was a brilliant combination of Covenant plasma rifle, Tau pulse rifle, and whatever weapons had been stockpiled in the garrison armories. The energy bolts hit low, obliterating the limbs of many, in order to slow the enemy advance. It was how so many small mountains of rotting bodies had been built. Explosions, rocket detonations from the sound, rocked the entire building. DarkBlade turned to the north wall and was not surprised to see the tell-tale flash of plasma weaponry.
DarkBlade's plasma rifle had long since cooled down and he returned to the line as the trooper in front of him fell back to reload his pulse carbine. The veteran Fire Warrior was firing before he settled against the chest-high wall. The undying mob had only seemed to grow despite its losses. The mountain of corpses could not grow because the pressure kept making the mob push around any potential obstruction. There was little doubt that many were being crushed in the inexorable advance.
"Take cover!" Lusha roared and seconds after the squad did, an explosion shook the building beneath them.
Purple-white spears of light exploded spectacularly against the mob. Four meter swathes of crowd were cleared by one rocket. These gaps were quickly filled up by the flesh-craving maniacs.
The mob's range had closed to fifty meters.
A figure, brandishing a staff with a glowing orb atop it stepped to DarkBlade's side.
"Aun," DarkBlade bowed respectfully as he stepped back.
His plasma rifle's charge was empty so DarkBlade went to a nearby armory station to replace it. When he returned with a Covenant carbine and two full clips, the Aun and Lusha were talking.
"We can not hold for another night, Aun. That is my honest opinion. We may not hold this night."
The Aun smiled serenely, "Our salvation is at hand. The One Path truly blesses us this night."
"Five meters!"
DarkBlade rushed to the wall and began firing indiscriminately at the foreheads of every target that came up in his reticule. The volume of outgoing fire increased so dramatically that it seemed as though the enemy could just walk to them. Yet they still continued to close the distance to the wall.
"Grenades!"
DarkBlade tossed his last two grenades into the front of the mass. This time the rain of grenades had a less dramatic effect. The leading edge had been destroyed but those five meters behind continued shambling forward into more plasma fire.
"Incoming aerocraft," the Fio's announcement was like an audible tremor in the ranks of Fire Warriors. "ETA is thirty seconds."
"It can't be the Hegemony," whispered as he shot a Pathfinder that was missing both arms.
"It is our salvation," the Aun told Lusha.
The toughest foe DarkBlade had ever faced was within three meters of the wall when a Covenant Phantom soared over his head. It hovered directly above the leading edge and began to unleash its might. Plasma rockets arced from its back while its plasma turrets spat forth nearly solid bands of plasma. Several more joined it while off in the distance, where the mob continued, darting shapes dropped plasma bombs amidst sonic booms.
Anti-gravity pods made the building subtly vibrate and DarkBlade turned to see an Orca-class shuttle settling on the hundred-meter diameter landing pad. Fire Warriors, their armor gleaming, erupted from the shuttle almost before the ramp was down. They flowed to the north and east wall in a smooth, fluid manner that made DarkBlade slightly envious.
A Tau commander, head bare, approached the Aun and Lusha. Flaking this commander were two Fire Warriors wielding burstcannons.
"Aun'vre Toroun?" the commanding Fire Warrior asked.
"Please, if we are allies then allow me the courtesy of your true form."
The commander cocked her head and DarkBlade was witness to a most disturbing sight. The Fire Warriors became a shining mercurial color that quickly lost all features. With a faint hiss of escaping gas the bulky Fire Warrior armor shrank. The shapes became curvaceous and very human. By the time color faded back to reveal three Terran women, thirteen Tau Fire Warriors had their weapons trained on them.
"Peace," the Aun said, stepping in front of Lusha's attempt to shield him. "We have been expecting them. May I ask what your name is?"
"They call me Saint. Come, Aun, Shas'el, we have much to do."
DarkBlade stayed on the wall to help the reinforcements hold back any stragglers the air support might have missed. Medical scanners were set up around the landing platform. All the Fire Warriors and base personnel had to pass through them before boarding a transport. Some of the Tau, most wounded Pathfinders that had returned from the inner city, were quarantined on a Covenant Phantom. Quickly, far more quickly that DarkBlade would have thought possible; it was his squad's turn to board a shuttle. Each of them passed the scan and quickly settled exhaustedly into their assigned section. It had happened so fast that DarkBlade scarcely imagined it was real until they were in orbit. Someone piped an outside feed into the tactical monitor and DarkBlade removed his helmet for the first time in almost twenty hours. His eyes blurred for a moment before clearing.
"DarkBlade," the beautiful trooper, BrightDawn, made a face, "You really need a thorough grooming."
"Look," DarkBlade pointed toward the outside feed, his voice soft with wonder.
Around them the hundred-plus Tau studied the monitor with rapt attention. The shuttle was heading for a fleet of massive proportions. There were hundreds of capital ships, only half of which looked to be Hegemony, all clustered around a single Covenant City-Ship.
"Where are we going to go?" BrightDawn asked, worriedly.
"Wherever the Path takes us," DarkBlade answered, a grim smile coming to his thin lips, "I just hope we get to kill some Covenant along the way."
XXX
Tau Ethereal Vash'ti, formerly a proud son of Thanai Colony, hurried through the war-torn streets of an ancient Covenant City-Ship. Behind him nearly fifty Tau of every caste but fire, followed fearfully in his footsteps. He was trying to find them a safe place to hide but the slaughter seemed to follow them everywhere.
Over ten million Tau civilians had been gathered onto this abandoned city-ship by the Hegemony after the Tau Empire had fallen. They had toiled, mostly to produce weapons for the Hegemony machine, for at least a year. Many had died under the hellish conditions. Then the Coalition had begun to seed Hegemony worlds with plagues. A mere rumor whispered into the wrong ear had convinced the commander of the small fleet guarding them that the City-Ship had been infected by one of the many freighters that had docked. The fleet, split between Race and StarSpawn in retrofitted baseline Covenant war vessels, had attempted to destroy the city-ship.
The elder Aun, head of the city-ships Council, had somehow foreseen the turn of events. Brilliant Fio's, formerly of the 'la rank, had gotten the city-ships SlipSpace Drive functioning. Unfortunately the antiquated Drive was no match for the new models installed in the enemy ships. After a few small jumps they had been found and hundreds of boarding parties had breeched the hull. They had managed a SlipSpace jump before too much damage had been done. There were now an estimated five thousand soldiers inside the City-Ship and for the last few hours they had slaughtered nearly five times their number.
The Aun looked behind him at the fear-stricken face of a water caste Tau. There were no Fire Warriors in the City-Ship and for thousands of years no other caste had needed to learn the art of war.
There really needs to be a discussion of just what the tau'va means to the people.
The Aun was leading his small group down a wide alley deeply shadowed by a pair of high-rise residential buildings. Five hundred meters above them the dome glittered with the patchwork diamonds that was the emergency shielding to hold the atmosphere in. Normally it would have gently reflected the lights from below but half the sectors were powerless.
An explosion high above them on their left caused the crowd to cower in fear. The Aun, having guided Fire Warriors in battle, calmly watched as the gout of flame disappeared into the structure. He was supposed to guide his small group to a sub-level bunker. Vash'ti doubted that he would succeed more with every passing moment.
The click of a Covenant Carbine's bolt being released drew his gaze back down to the alley floor. Standing in two ranks before him, the forward on their knees, was a collection of Race soldiers. The reptilian soldiers were deathly quiet in their modified Elite-armor. Someone pressed tightly to his back and the Aun half-turned to put an arm around a quivering air caste child. Behind them was another squad of Race.
There were no thoughts of surrender or mercy. Vash'ti had long ago seen the extent of Hegemony mercy. Several Tau in the group began to openly sob. He could not blame them for he often sobbed in private at the path his people now trod. A Race soldier, his armor a burnished copper-color, stepped to the front of the ranks before Vash'ti. The Ethereal fixed the soldier with his most implacable gaze. He would show the disgusting creature no fear. The bipedal reptile clicked and growled in its own language. He raised his scaly hand and rifles were aimed just a trifle steadier.
The heavy thrum of an Orca-class shuttles anti-gravity thrusters came as a total surprise to Vash'ti. A surgically precise rail-rifle shot took the Race squad leaders hand off at the wrist and that came as a complete shock to the soldier. Objects, spikes with flaring protrusions at the top, buried themselves in the ground before Vash'ti. A protective energy shield sprang to life before him to a height of three meters. Rockets, utterly silent in their approach, detonated spectacularly amidst the squad of Race. Once the flash and smoke cleared, all Vash'ti could see were scattered chunks of armor and reptilian flesh.
Shapes that Vash'ti had doubted he would ever see again began to fall from the heavens. Fire Warriors, moving with the feline grace that had crushed countless foes for eons, fanned out among the decimated Race squad. Vash'ti turned as his group began to cheer for their saviors. He could see that the group of Race soldiers behind them had been dealt with in similar fashion. The shuttle above them, obviously too large to land in the alley, flew away towards another group of refugees probably.
The group commander of the small force deactivated the shield with a small, handheld device, and reverently bowed to Vash'ti.
"Honored One," the commander said in a clipped tone that was reminiscent of the Ethereal's home planet. "My platoon has been assigned to escort your group to the nearest departure area.
"Departure area?" Vash'ti questioned, "Where would we go?"
The Fire Warrior looked at him in puzzlement, "But Aun, I thought all of you were enlightened as to the nature of our deliverance."
"It is… hard to believe."
The Fire Warrior nodded, "Wait until you meet our deliverers."
XXX
The Prophet, whose full title was a convoluted thing too unwieldy to think without causing catastrophic synapse failure, rushed down the corridors of Hegemony Command in a rage. He was in charge of oversight of three subjugated species in the Hegemony. One of those was the Tau and that was why the highest-ranked Ethereal was kept in the less sensitive areas of Command.
The Tau had proven a tenacious foe until they had realized the futility of resistance. Their abysmal performance and diligence in their duties across multiple fronts had caused them to be reduced to garrison and policing duties. The Tau citizenry, numbering less than one hundred million, had been put onto hive- and city-ships in several different galaxies to ensure the cooperation of the Fire Warriors.
Something had gone wrong though when the Coalition had begun their shocking counterattack. Communication problems among rear-echelon units were becoming common as a result of the Coalition's deep strikes. So when the Hegemony lost contact with millions of Fire Warrior, though it had been worrying since they numbered less than thirty million now, in garrisons across Hegemony space it had been thought a result of losing contact with entire planets. Then they had lost contact with a few fleets guarding Tau Refugee Fleets. Soon entire armies of Tau were disappearing while subjugating primitive planets for conscripts. Talk of the desertion of the Tau people was running rampant among the Prophets responsible for the subjugated races. Today was the day the Prophet-OverSeer was going to go see the spiritual fulcrum of the Tau people.
It was hard for the Prophet to entertain the idea that the Tau had the capacity to rebel. They had been cowed quite easily once they had chosen to surrender as a whole. Army units had been disbanded, fleets destroyed, and their people flung across the universe. Communications between them were strictly monitored. It just did not make sense. This Prophet hated things he did not understand. With that rage boiling inside, the Prophet had summoned several of the cruelest Brute torturers in the complex.
No one made a fool of him.
The Prophet knew something was wrong as soon as he came to the Tau's quarters. The squad of Brutes guarding the doors was gone.
"Commander," he waved his Brutes forward.
After several moments the Brute commander came back outside.
"You should see this," the Brute was so shaken he forgot to add an honorific.
The Prophet passed through the barracks where the Ethereal's Fire Warrior protectors had slept and into the private quarters. The smell of rot hit him as soon as the door whisked to the side. He covered his mouth with a delicate hand as his hover-throne glided into the room. It was an expansive suite but the presence of his half-squad of Brutes made it seem smaller.
The bodies stacked neatly against the far wall made it seem even smaller.
Each of the Brutes assigned to guard the Tau lay in various states of death. Some looked untouched except for the unnatural angle of their necks while some had gaping wounds in their torsos. All had a tiny, blinking blue light shoved into one of their eye sockets. It was a locator beacon each Tau had been implanted with when they had come to Hegemony Command.
"They've escaped!" the Prophet exclaimed unnecessarily as he began fumbling for his communication panel.
The lights snapped off before he could and high-pitched laughter began to play all over Hegemony Command.
It sounded disturbingly human.