The Tau Empire by Braden Campbell

Author:Braden Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2016-07-20T09:08:09+00:00

-END RECORDING-

COMMANDER SHADOW

BRADEN CAMPBELL

I am a warrior of the fire caste. I have seen the carnage of battle before, wherever the Greater Good has struggled to overcome the dark barbarity so prevalent across the galaxy. Death and destruction are distasteful, yes, but I now know the deeper truth. They are an inevitable by-product of our people’s civilising mission. They cannot be avoided, and thus must be embraced. That is a lesson not found in the curricula of the military colleges on Bork’an. That is something only my time here as Overseer of Cytheria could teach me.

The battle of Herzen Ridge is where it began. My enlightenment, that is, not our conflict with the gue’la rebels. That, as you well know, is a struggle that has dragged on for quite some time. We made great strides initially. By the third day of our occupation, we had destroyed an entire armoured regiment of the planet’s primary defence force, the warriors of the ‘Ka’Tashun Sept’. Yet, despite the fact that they had been decisively beaten in honourable combat, they refused to acquiesce. Remnants of their units retreated into the jungles and continued to engage us in a most uncivilised manner. They abandoned whatever standard military uniforms they might have once worn, making them visually indistinguishable from the gue’la citizenry who had submitted to our authority. They would remain hidden instead of openly presenting themselves, and would only attack vulnerable targets. So underhanded were their methods, so ignoble, that there existed no word in our language to describe it. My attaché, Por’el Tan’bay, eventually taught me the gue’la term for such violent opposition: ‘insurgency.’

What kind of a people would consider this an acceptable methodology? That’s the question I should have been asking myself all along; because the answer, when arrived at, would have clearly showed me the form my response should have taken. Instead, I dawdled. I tried to negotiate with them. I appealed to their reason. I hoped against hope that they would eventually come to their senses and see the futility of resistance. Then, I was called out to Marae’Taa Gorge.

For fear of Ka’Tashun snipers, I travelled via modified piranha. The normally open top of the skimmer was now covered by a thick, windowless canopy. Even the cockpit was completely sealed. My pilot navigated with the aid of vidscreens and cameras mounted on the hull. Thus, I was unable to see anything of the surrounding countryside as I drew close to the site, but I could imagine the scenery blurring past. We were far beyond the plains by now, heading into the jungle highland with its dark red foliage, raging rivers, and jagged, broken topography. To one side of me was the mag-lev line; the track, when completed, would link Cytheria’s two largest colony sites together with high-speed monorails.

Infrastructure. That’s what the Tau Empire brings. When I first arrived here, the gue’la lived in a shameful state with their machinery in disrepair and their urban centres nothing but crumbling ruins. They believed this to be quite acceptable, for they had never known otherwise.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.