Blades of Damocles by Phil Kelly

Author:Phil Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2016-03-01T14:24:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

PREDATION/THE HIDDEN THREAT

In the deep black void beyond the Eastern Fringe, a living cataclysm glinted against the night.

At first it was only the outrider elements that reflected starlight from ice-crusted carapaces, but as the sands of time trickled on, a trillion dormant bio-forms emerged from the nothingness.

No lights winked upon the prows of the ships of this sentient armada. No engines growled in the darkness. Even the most acute waystations utilised by the Ultramar and Tau Empires found it all but indistinguishable from stellar debris.

The bio-fleet moved slowly, well under the speeds that triggered alert responses. It drifted forward with inhuman patience. Its coming was all but silent, invisible to a wide range of sensor spectrums. By the time it was detected, it would be far too late.

The killing cold of interstellar travel still clung to the bio-fleet, but as it neared the light and warmth of the star systems ahead, instinctive biological reactions brought its myriad organs and composite lifeforms to wakefulness. Ice sheets cracked and sloughed away. Nictating eyelids slid back over pupils the size of bio-domes. As the drifting grotesquerie began to focus, innumerable eyes gleamed blackly in the void.

Cold. Deadly. Insatiable.

Spread before the bio-fleet was a banquet of life stretching from the tip of one spiral arm to the other. Light-year swathes of biomass, all waiting to to be claimed. The fleet would consume it all, leaving nothing but barren rock and childless stars in its wake. No real delineation would be drawn between human, Space Marine or tau, nor between plant, insect, or bacteria. To the fleet it was all just biomass to devour, to assimilate, to spawn again as new organisms ready for the next invasion.

Everything before it, from the microscopic to the gigantic, was perceived the same way.

As prey.

Farsight ran headlong down the wide oval corridor, calling up the cadre-net on his headset as he went. Startled earth caste functionaries stumbled back as he barged past, their postures first of protocolic shock, and then, when they realised who it was shouldering his way through the throng, of contrite deference. On towards the Orca hangars he went, constantly barking orders to his sub-commanders and bringing aerial assets into place.

Two tall, wide-shouldered tau in the robes of the ethereal guard stepped into the corridor. When they crossed their ritual duelling halberds together to bar his path, Farsight knew that something was very wrong. A pair of air caste pilots hurried past them, making the sign of unavoidable contrition with their steepled fingers. Farsight used the momentary obstruction to brush his communion bead open with the back of his hand as he made a gesture of greeting. Tau of all castes were stopping their business along the corridor, gathering in a loose circle to witness the spectacle.

‘Commander O’Shovah,’ said the eldest of the two ethereal guard, his polite smile wrinkling the folds at the corner of his eyes. ‘It is an honour to meet you in person. I am Shas’tral Fue’larrakan, and this is Shas’tral Oa’manita.

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