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Less Than Human – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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LESS THAN HUMAN

Steve Lyons

The t’au attacked the Krieg trenches an hour before sunrise, using the cover of scorched and battered trees to their advantage.

They wore red battlesuits, similar to those seen by the Krieg before – only these were more compact, and somehow they didn’t stand out against the forest as they ought to have done. They seemed to bend light around themselves. The first sentry to look directly at one checked his magnoculars for flaws. He continued to scrutinise the odd shimmer in the air, and once he was certain that it was sneaking closer, he sounded the alarm.

Krieg Korpsmen rolled from their bunks and thronged to their places on the fire-steps. Through the dark lenses of rebreather masks, their keen eyes scoured the scarred terrain ahead of them. They crewed and loaded their venerable Earthshaker guns but held them in abeyance until they had more information.

Though they worked quietly, saying few words aloud, sounds of their activity carried through the still, damp air. Seeing that stealth had brought them as far as it could, the t’au dispelled the pre-dawn gloom with a fusillade of pulse fire. The Krieg made out their shapes now, yet couldn’t quite bring them into focus. Impatient cannons roared as they were finally unleashed. It was unclear if any t’au were caught in their deadly blasts, but their advance was barely slowed.

Hundreds of Krieg barrels popped and cracked as targets entered their range. Amid the bright pulse beams, their output looked anaemic, their rate of fire slower – but their wielders, dug-in behind their walls, had time on their side. Their overclocked lasguns chipped away at the t’au’s shells, wearing them down, until first one and then another toppled.

Some made it through the light storm, even so. They tore through barbed-wire coils, kicked sandbags aside with contemptuous ease. Suddenly, there were six, maybe seven t’au among the Krieg in the forward trenches. Their battlesuits, fashioned from some arcane xenos alloy, were lightweight but robust, giving them a huge advantage in close combat. The Krieg, in turn, had far superior numbers. Even in such cramped confines, their ears ringing, unable to coordinate their actions, they swarmed the invaders and pinned their limbs to keep them from aiming their weapons. Junior officers pumped bolter rounds into t’au armour, creating fractures. Knives and bayonets levered those fault lines open.

The stealth-suited t’au were not a lone force but scouts for a hunter cadre. As they occupied their enemies, the rest of their company charged up through the forest in their wake. A broad-nosed gunship forced its way through knots of brittle trees, balancing on anti-gravity engines. Laser beams swept the burnt ground in its path, seeking prey for its missiles and ion cannons. It was crewed by an eager team of fire warriors, while ten more teams kept pace with it on foot.

In the trenches, the t’au scouts were proving more resilient than skilled. Too proud of their blasphemous technology, their enemies considered, and far too reliant upon it. Their arm-mounted guns sprayed plasma fire about themselves. They fought to reach the Earthshakers and disable them – either by reducing them to slag or by killing their crews, they didn’t care which. Urgent directives buzzed in Krieg earpieces – they had to deal with these invaders quickly before the larger threat overran them.

As always, they rose to the challenge. One by one, the t’au scouts were peeled from their armour, exposing leathery grey-blue hides and flat, noseless faces. One pleaded for mercy, in vain, in some alien tongue, while another self-destructed as its life ebbed from its body. It took three Korpsmen with it, wounding several more. The last scout triggered its jetpack, attempting to escape. Unable to shake the deathly grips of a dozen gloved hands, it was dragged back down to a grisly fate.

The Krieg crewed their cannons and shouldered their lasguns again. The charging fire warriors had crossed just half the distance to them and now were facing a deadlier gauntlet than they had been prepared for. A well-placed shell vaporised a five-strong squad of them – and by the time the smoke of the explosion cleared, their comrades were in full retreat.

The skirmish was over as quickly as it had begun. Krieg quartermasters dealt with the wounded and the dead, while sentries resumed their watches. Engineers worked on the damaged guns and continued to dig sap tunnels from the trenches towards the t’au encampment.

They waited for the next wave of attackers to come marching into their clutches.

A thousand tons of metal dropped screaming from the sky.

Two Devourer drop-ships crashed through the forest canopy, unheeding of the carnage they were wreaking and the wildlife they cremated. The Imperium of Man had no regard for this small, backwater world. Its mineral resources were unworthy of the effort to extract them; its soil excreted a toxic gas in winter, which made it unsuitable for colonisation without extensive terraforming. They hadn’t even christened it, only given it a number denoting its position from its sun. The Imperium’s sole interest in this world was that they didn’t want anyone else to have it.

Captain Villemine Schtiel watched, stone-faced, as her army marched down the loading ramps. The sight of them mustering in their blue-and-gold dress uniforms caused her to swell with pride. Their belts, boots and cap peaks gleamed in the midday light. They were Mordian Iron Guard – disciplined, dutiful, efficient.

They left their artillery in storage. It was quicker to march the few miles to their destination than to clear a path for vehicles, and anyway, the Krieg were already well stocked in that department. The mission here ought to have been simple: a t’au pathfinder team had landed on this world, presumably assessing it for use as a military outpost. They had to know that it would cost them more to take it than it was worth. They had to be eradicated.

The Krieg outnumbered their foes and yet had failed to make much headway against them. Schtiel had been despatched to end the deadlock. At her request, her troop ship remained in planetary orbit. If she wasn’t done here within a day or two, then she wasn’t worthy of the badges and medals that she wore.

The Krieg commander’s dugout was cramped and dirty, unbefitting of his rank. Schtiel declined the offer of a stool, preferring to keep her uniform pristine. She grimaced as she knocked her head on a lumen-globe strung from the low roof.

Her opposite number wore a tank commander’s insignia on his buttoned-up greatcoat. He introduced himself as his company’s acting captain, but didn’t give a name. ‘My predecessor was killed during our last deployment,’ he explained. ‘His life,’ he made a point of adding, ‘was expended well.’

‘Still,’ Schtiel considered, ‘your company is somewhat under-strength.’

‘We await reinforcements from the home world.’

‘I’m sure that must affect morale.’

‘Why would it?’ asked the Krieg man. A rebreather mask concealed his face – Schtiel thought it discourteous of him not to have removed it – so she couldn’t see his expression, but he sounded genuinely puzzled.

She dismissed his odd reaction with a mental shrug. Clearly, she told herself, these soldiers need whipping into shape! She cast an eye over the Krieg captain’s tactical hololith. She noted the enemy’s assumed positions and the layout of the Krieg trenches. She motioned her command staff to inspect the data too. She asked what had been achieved in the past forty-eight hours.

The Krieg captain nodded to a technician, masked like the rest of his people, who caressed a bank of control runes. The sprawling light image barely changed. ‘Why have you not pushed forward?’ Schtiel demanded.

‘We are gaining almost half a mile per day,’ the Krieg captain stated.

‘Not nearly enough!’

‘The t’au are not like orks, not unsophisticated brutes.’ Schtiel’s company had been fighting orks in the Armageddon System for ten months – the Krieg man had done his homework. ‘They make the most of their tactical advantages. My ordinates have run the numbers. A frontal assault would result in–’

Schtiel interrupted him. ‘That may have been true until today.’

‘More boots on the ground will make a difference,’ the Krieg captain conceded, ‘but the t’au can hardly be unaware of your arrival.’

‘Good. I wanted them to see.’

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