The Book of Martyrs by Various Authors

Author:Various Authors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-15T11:39:52+00:00

Chapter Six

THE SAME COIN

Tsentran Upper Command Disc

Brrrrzzzzzzzt.

She ignored it, at first, clinging to the tattered cobwebs of sleep.

Brrrrzzzzzzzt.

‘No.’

A great internal weariness welled up within Anarchia as her body, shaking with the unhealthy by-products of her exhaustion, struggled to push a cogent thought through the haze of her mind.

Don’t listen. Don’t listen to the noise.

But it would not go away.

Brrrrzzzzzzzt.

‘Throne damn it all.’ That grating, intrusive sound. She hated it so very much. She knew then, even should she somehow survive, she would hear it in the back of her mind until the day she died.

The chamber’s scent was almost as bad. Its sterile, anodyne cleanliness made her feel like an unwashed troglodyte filling the room with her acrid, mammalian stink. It was almost enough to make her miss the methane fug of the swamp.

The anger she had felt at the xenos’ last visit had been invigorating. The discourse had even given her some small taste of victory. To see the look on the face of the t’au ethereal when she hurled his words back at him, turned his logic into knives of refutal and threw them back in his ugly, chasm-split face; it had been the closest she had come to feeling alive for days.

And here they came again. Their tactic was nothing new, for all their talk of being an advanced race. They would wear her down, day by day, using her own body’s demands against her until there was nothing of her left.

She got down on her knees, resting her head on the wall, and prayed.

‘Oh mighty God-Emperor, give unto me the fortitude…’

The door on the far side of the room hissed open.

‘…to endure the fires of adversity I must pass through this day,’ she finished. The words sounded slurred with tiredness, even to her, but it was the spirit behind them that was important. She made the sign of the aquila, thumbs linked and fingers spread over her chest. Only then did she look up.

Through the door came the magister Bel’gai, this time moving in front of his master. The ethereal had with him what looked to Anarchia like honour guards of some sort. Broad-shouldered and unusually muscular for t’au, they held long, extremely stylised halberds at their sides. Neither of the polearms were bladed, but she suspected they were more than cere­monial. Both the guards were a clear head and shoulders taller than the fire warriors she had faced in Mantra Primau’s swamp, and they walked with the ease of born fighters.

‘Greetings offered to you, Sister of the Imperium,’ said Bel’gai, making a sweeping-aside gesture, ‘in the name of the T’au’va.’

‘I see…’ She shook her head, fighting to clear her mind. ‘I see you’ve brought some friends this time, Paragon. They look a lot like guards. Feeling unsafe?’

‘Honour guards,’ said Bel’gai, ‘as befits one of Aun’Do’s exceptional rank.’

‘But they were not here last time.’

‘Very observant.’

‘War isn’t going so well, then.’ A harsh, croaking laugh wrenched its way free from her throat.

‘The war proceeds as we wish it to,’ said Aun’Do, waving his guards back to stand either side of the door.

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