236 – UNDER SUSPICION

Aun’vre Ay’ur watched the grand gates slowly swing open. First, the space monstrosity and the impractically oversized spacecraft, then the mysteriously appearing marines wearing white armour, and finally, these obnoxiously oversized doors. 

All smoke and mirrors. Grandiose shows of power to hide underlying weakness. It was all so obvious. 

The ship must have taken massive amounts of resources to build, likely crippling whatever pitiful economy this fringe system might have. All to impress, while serving little practical purpose.

Who needed spacecraft to be miles long? What idiocy was this? Bigger was not always better, but Ay’ur knew that might be beyond the understanding of a species as resistant to enlightenment and intelligence as the humans.

Did this ‘sorceress’ think he would believe her fake soldiers? That one as old as he wouldn’t see through her lies?

It had to be illusions, hard-light projectors of some kind that conjured up those warriors. Perhaps the space monstrosity was the same, an asteroid covered in hologram projectors.

The strange, mutated human who was supposedly their guide walked in first, showing an utter lack of respect and decorum. It was grating, but Ay’ur held his tongue for now. 

He had to keep in mind that these were primitive savages from the human Imperium, and not the Gue’la who’ve embraced the T’au’va. They didn’t know what an honour it was to be receiving an Aun’vre, along with two junior Aun.

Ay’ur was one of only a handful of Aun'vre in the entire Velk’Han Sept. Only the Holy One, the Aun’el outranked him within the Sept. There were other Aun’el in the other Septs, and the Aun’o above them all who ruled the Tau Empire, but the Velk’Han Sept was all but a separate entity of its own. It’s been many decades since any visitors from the other Septs had visited.

Ay’ur should be back in the core worlds of the Sept, caring for their development and governing them. Alas, that annoying upstart, Kel’tau, couldn’t be allowed to run wild with this harebrained crusade of his. If this offensive failed, when it failed, Ay’ur would be needed to gather the scraps and salvage whatever he could.

He could not fathom how the vote had passed, but it did. There would be a crusade against the Imperium with the aim of claiming its ‘Warp-Gate’. Ay’ur couldn’t stop it anymore, but he could run damage control.

Which was why he was here. Striding into the ornate throne hall

of the aggravating human who had started it all. 

He cast a quick glance at his youngest comrade, the Aun’saal, and frowned. The emotions displayed on his face were subdued, but obvious to a man as experienced in politics as Ay’ur. However, he couldn’t quite pinpoint all of them. Annoyance, reservation, vindication, schadenfreude. 

That didn’t bode well. The youngster had some dastardly scheme planned, he could tell. Another trick, perhaps, some new deception? 

Ay’ur snorted to himself. He would not be fooled, not like those fools on the council who salivated at the idea of finally striking a blow against the Imperium that would actually have benefits. It was all well and good to make your enemy’s life miserable; the Sept’s been doing that for centuries quite handily, but the front lines remained static, nonetheless.

Shortsightedness and greed. It was disturbing to see his fellows suffering from such ailments. Alas, he could not turn the tide of politics all by himself. He’d tried calling on his connections and owed debts, but it proved insufficient in the end.

If only more of his old friends, the ones who had enough foresight and common sense to see through the obvious lies, were still alive … alas, time is a cruel mistress, one that takes its due even on enlightened Ethereals such as him.

The paltry honour guard spread out as much as they could once the doors opened up. They were the best of the best, but limited by orders from the council, their weaponry and numbers were kept to something that could be considered polite for a meeting with an official allied state. Even if Ay’ur was convinced the vast majority of this sorceress’ shows of powers were just a clever use of smoke and mirrors, she had to have some military power on a ship this size if she could rule a world, enough to make the honour guard little more than a minor obstacle if she wanted to harm the three Ethereals.

Not that Ay’ur considered that possibility. The woman had committed a serious offence against her kind, the Imperium, they would never accept her back. She had only the Tau to lean on. 

The moment the elder Ethereal stepped into the room, he felt it, a heaviness in the air, a presence pressing down on his shoulders, demanding to be witnessed and respected. Almost out of his own control, his eyes snapped to the source.

She looked human enough, perfectly so … and yet, there was something. An aura of regal power that he could feel somewhere deep within, and yet couldn’t really pinpoint where it came from. Sorcery, it had to be. More deception, more false strength. 

With an effort of will, he tore his gaze away from the source of his woes, taking in the obnoxiously oversized and disgustingly gaudy hall. So much extravagance and wasted space, all to appeal to the ego of its primary occupant. He had heard of the gut-wrenchingly wasteful luxury human nobles seemed to love, but seeing it in person was different. He could dismiss reports from the other side of the Empire as exaggerations that came about from travelling through word of mouth, but this? Ay’ur was seeing this with his own eyes, and those didn’t lie, nor exaggerate.

Then there were the warriors, the supposed power-armoured marines that served aboard this oversized space-rubble that they had the audacity to call a spaceship. They stood still as statues, not even breathing.

It almost managed to draw a snort of condescension out of him. It was like they weren’t even trying to make the illusions realistic. Were these humans looking down on him so much? Perhaps having managed to fool that foolish youngster, Kel’tau, had made them overconfident?

His eyes caught on the titanic frescoes covering the far walls, towering from the floor to the bottom of the domed ceiling. They had to be more than twenty metres tall and twice that in length as they stretched from the gates all the way over to the dais, elevating the throne. 

A people’s art tells a lot about them, this Ay’ur knew, and so he paid attention to what was depicted.  

Many of them showed war, or battles of some kind, so his eyes caught on one segment that stood out as different. It was a painting of a planet, a blue planet with maybe a third of it covered in green continents, while the rest was ocean. 

That painting was almost idyllic, its colours so vibrant the planet almost seemed to jump out of the fresco. Its position in the collage also made it special, as it stood in a sea of stars, away from the warfare that many of the other paintings around it depicted.

The next painting he focused on was of a man standing on a grey wasteland, wearing a cumbersome spacesuit and holding an unfamiliar flag with red and white stripes. In the background, the same blue planet showed up, though distant, and yet still dominated the dark skyline.

To the left, he saw humans warring on the frescoes, their technology and weapons devolving and turning more and more primitive closer to the end, while to the right, it was the opposite. Spaceships, mushroom clouds, cybernetics, metallic automata and then, the familiar silhouettes of the Space Marines closer to the rightmost end of the fresco.

Human history. From the very beginning, starting with primitive building pyramids and hunting large, shaggy beasts and ending with a star-shaped space-station crashing into a planet. 

He turned to the right, running his gaze across the similarly sized fresco on the right wall. This one was different, much stranger, and only a small section of it depicted humans at all. 

Ay’ur recognised the Aeldari, the Orks and even the Necrons, but there were many more strange, alien creatures. It was all war, war and bloodshed and savagery, making the fresco depicting human history seem idyllic in comparison.

Planets burned, or were drained of life. Stars died at the hands of beings thinking themselves gods. Genocide, slaughter, war on a scale he couldn’t fathom.

Galactic history, then? The human’s warped view of it, at least. The Tau weren’t even included on so much as a single panel. 

It was another insult added to the pile. No matter, the humans and other unenlightened savages could have the past, for the future belonged to the T’au Empire.

Irritation, derision and spite warred in the old Ethereal’s heart as he turned his attention back on the primary occupant of the hall, the human ‘sorceress’ perched atop her alabaster throne.

His eyes met her emerald green ones.

The emerald cracked, fragmenting and swirling around like a broken gem. It drew him in, swallowing him whole for a moment, sending him flying through nothingness as something crashed into his mind and he screamed, feeling his mind fracture and-

He was back. No, he never left.

Ay’ur stumbled slightly, shook his head and dismissed the sudden bout of nausea. It was gone even quicker than it came, not a hint of it lingering by the time he straightened and huffed. His age must be getting to him. He would have to visit the medic on board his flagship for a check-up. 

Yes, that would be good.

*****

I had been wondering whether the mental fortitude, those rock-solid mental defences protecting Coldstone’s mind, were the norm among the Ethereals, or if he was just a paranoid outlier.

Now I know. 

Coldstone was indeed one paranoid motherfucker, because I cracked that annoying old coot’s mind open like a grape in less time than it took to blink. 

He didn’t have any implants, so I wasn’t worried about contingencies either. I learned from my mind-dive that the man abhorred cybernetics and ‘unnatural’ implants. 

The third Tau was a bit better, and I didn’t risk it with him, because he had enough cybernetics hidden under his skin to make a tech adept of the Mechanicus swoon. However, his mind felt disorderly, always swirling and pulsating without any apparent rhyme or reason. From the passive readings, which I could do on him almost as well as on a regular human, I could see he was a bit of the mad scientist type.

Not the evil mad, but the low-key crazy and chaotic mad. He was also utterly enthralled by one of the ‘statues’ I had on display, the cybernetic eyes steadily rising in temperature in my heat-sight as he overclocked them in his excitement.

“Welcome,” I said when they came to a stop at the foot of the dais, not bowing, but Coldstone gave a respectful nod at least. The scientist dude was off in his own world, so I didn’t mind him, but the old coot was looking up at me like a spiteful child. I ignored him in favour of turning to my associate with a slight smile. “Aun’saal, you returned ahead of schedule. Everything went as you planned, I assume?”

“It did indeed,” Coldstone answered with a nod, likewise ignoring his elder. The older ethereal may have had seniority over him, but not command. I know from Ay’ur’s mind that Coldstone was named one of the commanders of the crusade — the one in charge of coordinating their efforts with mine, in specific — while Ay’ur just attached himself without council approval to the fleet. “The council, and the honoured Aun’el, saw the obvious benefits and invested heavily in the effort. The fleet is on its way, a week behind us. They should wait for us on the supply world nearest to the front. Are you prepared to depart?”

“That I am,” I said, giving him a slight smile and a nod. “Send over the coordinates and we can be off in a minute. As for you, were you planning on staying on my ship, or is this just a courtesy visit? I don’t mind either way, there certainly is enough space to house your entire entourage."

“I’d like to stay and discuss how we will go about this offensive, and your place in it,” Coldstone said, notably more polite than in our earlier discussions. “My comrades merely came along out of curiosity, though, and I am sure that will be satiated by this short meeting and tour.”

Neither of the two hanger-ons liked that, but I ignored them effortlessly, now sure that neither held any actual political power in the fleet I was going to be a part of. Sure, Ay’ur would probably make a nuisance of himself, but with me having seen inside his mind, he would be predictable. Also, I wouldn’t have to be so damned careful with nudging him away from doing anything actually troublesome. 

The scientist Ethereal, meanwhile, just didn’t want to stop examining my stuff. But he, too, held no actual position in the Tau navy, or had any sway over them now that the council had made its ruling.

Surprisingly, despite both looking constipated, neither of them protested. Not aloud anyway. Ay’ur looked like he was considering how to strangle Coldstone, while the third wheel of their group looked at Coldstone like he’d just kicked his favourite puppy.

A few minutes later, the two were already heading back to their shuttle with the majority of their guard, leaving behind only a token number of them with Coldstone. 

“Let’s get back to the bridge,” I said, hopping down from my throne and stretching languidly. “That rock chair is uncomfortable.”

The coordinates pinged in my mind, snapping across a tight beam that some of my sensors caught and then translated back into legible data. 

Then we were off, the Narwhal gravity-engine bending space around us and launching the ship toward our destination at faster than light speeds, outpacing the more sluggish Tau vessels with some effort. Those improvements I’ve made to them over time were proving useful, even if they weren’t anything groundbreaking.

Just a bit more efficient, a bit faster and just marginally quicker to engage and disengage.

Still. It seemed it was good enough to beat whatever the Tau stuck into their military grade warships. That had to count for something.