Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

This was originally posted on Warseer, but I'm transferring it to Dakka along with all my projects. No, I don't know why it dawned on me to write a 40k romantic comedy. I guess it just seemed like something that hadn't been tried before. First time writing in that genre for me as well, so I consider it a bit of a personal challenge to try and make it work, despite the woefully inappropriate setting. Hope you enjoy it, as I have so far enjoyed writing it.




1
I dropped my pack and just stared up at it, sparks falling to the deck around me as the Fio caste carried on their work heedless of my dumbstruck, slack-jawed wonder. I had to take my helm off and see it with my own eyes just to be sure that what I saw was really there. Side by side in the engineering bay stood two of the gargantuan iron monstrosities of the Gue’la, Warhound pattern titan walkers. But between them, and standing lo less magnificently, was a fearsome beast of a battlesuit, a 900-class combat walker. Okay, I’ll admit it, I salivated just a little bit and I may have had inappropriate urges concerning the heavy ion ripper. Don’t judge me.
“She’s a beauty, aint she?” said a coarse voice behind me, and if I hadn’t been so dumbstruck I might have registered the hoof-falls and the swishing of leather against the deck that preceded it.
“W-wha?” Sure. You try and make a witty comeback after getting caught with spittle on your chin. I spun on my hoof and caught a face full of pungent smoke that sent me staggering back a pace. It was one of those awful Terran weed sticks. I had seen and smelled plenty of them on combined sorties alongside the Gue’la regulars, but I was surprised as hell to see one fuming between the teeth of one of my own kind.
He was shorter than I expected, coming up half a head below me and slouching in a most unbecoming manner for a Shas’vre. Even with the scaled cloak that draped from his shoulders, he didn’t cut much of a profile. If anything, his feathered cap made him look absurd. I had expected more, to be honest, but I guess that’s why you should never meet your heroes.
“You must be the new meat.” He looked me over appraisingly, and at long last I snapped to attention and pounded a salute on my chest.
“Sir! Shas’la Bork—“
“Stuff it!” He took a step forward and blew a cloud of that noxious smoke right into my face. I barely managed not to flinch, and I’d like to think that won me some small measure of respect. “You don’t have a name, newbie. Whatever titles, whatever name you made for yourself before now aint fit for me to wipe my ass. You are just Shas’la until you earn a new name, boy.”
I’d never heard of such a thing, but did I dare contradict him, Vre’Shagnasty of all people? “Sir!” was all I could manage under the circumstances. Meanwhile he just sat there watching me, waiting for me to crack if I had to guess.
“Alright, boy, ease up.” I hesitated a moment, not sure I’d heard him right. “Go on, kid, all that officer stuff is done. Let’s go get you settled in.” Suddenly he bore a broad smile and his horrendous smoke cloud almost took on a happier fragrance. He spun on his hoof and beckoned me follow as he clopped off across the hangar. With one final glance over my shoulder at the 900’s beautiful armament, I followed my commander to the barracks.



2
The impact of yet another shell knocked me right off my hooves and into a stagnant puddle at the bottom of the trench. I slipped trying to get my footing and almost planted my face back into the mud, but a firm hand seized me by the collar and hauled me up. Maya’s pale, freckled face was screwed up in pain and concentration, and muck smeared her tight red bun. There was a dark red stain spreading across the white fabric of her jacket, just below her ribs on the right side. That was not good. Her lips moved, and it took me a minute to realize she was shouting at me, asking if I was alright, but that I was deafened by the blast and could not hear her.
I nodded, and then shouted back as best I could in her language, “Go to medic!” It probably came out all wrong, but I was still learning. I took up my rifle from the much where it had fallen and hopped up to the step so I could rattle off a long burst over the top of the trench. Poor thing, I really hoped she made it to the rear in one piece, but I, and all the rest of the troopers in this hole, were too busy keeping the orks pinned down to watch her limp away.
This wasn’t going to end well; I’d seen this kind of stalemate before. Sure, we’d keep the greenskins pinned for a while between the volleys of pulse and las fire, but before long their numbers would swell up enough that they wouldn’t care. They’d come charging over that mangled craterscape and try to get stuck in with us, and damned if Freya’s flamer squad wasn’t out of position. If there was one thing I’d learned so far about the Rynnish 41st, it was that you could count on them not following the plan. Somewhere off to the east, almost masked by the hellish din of battle, you could hear the deafening wub-wub of the hammerhead opening up on some luckless green bastard.
The charge on my rifle ran dry, so I slid down the trench wall for shelter as I swapped out the power pack. Right then, Krom tossed a bundle of something into my chest and as I caught it I nearly soiled my armor when I realized it was a whole brace of Terran frag grenades.
“Are you insane?” I asked. Of course, this was Krom so it was really a fair question.
“Probably!” he shouted, and I could tell, just by the tone of his voice, that beneath his helmet he had that manic grin on his face again, just like every time he got a bad idea. “We charge them!”
He had to be kidding me.
“Okay, so you are insane after all.” I shouldered the brace of frags and stole a glance over the top of the trench, small arms kicking up dirt inches from my face plate. Lifting the rifle over my head, I fired blindly in response.
Krom stomped up and got right in my face. “You want to earn your scales? Are you a Shas’la, or are you a Pimp?!” A hard slap on the side of my helmet let me know he wasn’t joking. I looked around and saw that all the Desert Pimps had bandoliers of frag grenades. Some were testing the weight in their hands, limbering up for the upcoming suicide run. Vre’Shagnasty exchanged heated words with the Gue’la squad leader, Dupree, filling in the gaps in speech with the shared language of pantomime and profanity. All around me, the Rynns were slinging their lasguns and readying pistols and blades.
This was really about to happen.
“Alright you scum, listen up!” Shagnasty shouted over the din. Tracer rounds stitched the air right above his fluttering feather but he showed not an ounce of care. “These green bastards think they can just wait around for reinforcements to show up, so we’re gonna give ‘em a little surprise. On my signal we break the trench and we chuck these ‘nade belts right into their laps to pave the way for the charge. And what do we say to that?!”
All of us stomped our hooves and crashed our fists against our breastplates.
“Any of you scum wanna live forever?!”
Again we gave our wordless answer.
“Wait for it, boys and girls…” he took up a position on the step and hefted his grenade belt. All of us took our places on the line beside him. Crazy or not, it was an honor to die by his side. Yeah, I could live with that. Well, for a few more seconds at least. A harsh, shrill cry went up as the warrior females of the Rynnish 41st stormed up the trench wall. “Now, you scum, throw for all you’re worth!”
I don’t remember climbing the trench wall. I don’t remember throwing my grenades. All I know is that I was halfway to the enemy trench before the first explosive thumps threw a dozen greenskins into the air, followed by more and more until a rain of dirt and gore splattered against my armor as I ran. My wordless scream was drowned out by the earsplitting cry of the red-haired fighters charging alongside me, and it was then that I realized I heard no other Tau voices besides the one in my comm bead. It was Vre’Shagnasty, demanding in explicit and vehement language to know what exactly I thought I was doing.
Son of a—
Something hit me hard in the chest and I was suspended for a split second on the business end of an ork boot. The toe spike lodged itself in my armor, but the tip had gotten through and gouged the hell out of my ribs. I soon found myself tumbling ass over elbows back into the blasted mud, the brute rearing up to stomp me flat, but my rifle was still in my hands and I squeezed the trigger long and hard. The recoil on full auto was intense, but with the ork filling my field of vision I literally couldn’t miss. Its chest and guts exploded in a stinking wash of vaporized viscera, and as it toppled backwards I could see two more rising from the trench to take its place.
I fired until the power pack ran dry again, assisted by the plentiful covering fire coming from the rest of my team back at the lip of our trench, and dropped the other two orks before they could close on me. In that moment I wanted nothing more than to run and hide, to scurry back across and dive head first into the much at the bottom of my own trench. That puddle of muddy safety would be the sweetest nectar right now, but I was more likely than not to just catch a round in the back along the way. Or right square in the face, given how bad a shot Krom was. I did the only thing I could if I wanted to live—I primed a photon grenade and lobbed it into the throng of greenskins and charged in with the Rynns.
I wish I could say that melee wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, but in truth it was far worse. Blades and clubs and whirring chainsaw teeth flew around me at random, always punctuated by screams. Sometimes it was the guttural roar of an ork going down, sometimes the shrieking death rattle of one of the Gue’la females, but it was all around me and so constant it could have been one awful, endless noise. I fired the last pitiful dregs of my power pack into the side of an ork, its momentary flinch giving the Gue’la time to finish it off before a massive blade sprouted from her belly. I’ll never forget the look of sheer helplessness on her face as the ork behind her lifted her off her feet like a piece of skewered meat. It wasn’t that she was in pain. It wasn’t that I was about to die. It was that, when she looked at me, I could tell she wasn’t expecting me to be able to help. I was a Tau stuck in melee, stuck watching as the ork toyed with her on the end of its sword. Screw it. I had to die sooner or later.
I kicked up as hard as I could and lowered my head, covering the distance between us in three hard strides and driving my shoulder plate into the ork’s ribs so hard that the composite armor shattered. The thing fell backwards, all of us I think equally surprised at what had just happened. I didn’t know what gods the Gue’la prayed to, but I hoped they were merciful to the female. By the way she shrieked when she hit the ground, I could tell she was at least still alive for now. Of course, that left me to deal with the gigantic green monster that had just staggered to its feet.
I looked around in a panic. The orks were thinning in number, but all the Rynns were still engaged—nobody was going to help me. I scrambled back across the ground, through the filth at the bottom of the ork trench, and found my rifle. I brought it up and squeezed the trigger as the monstrosity loomed over me, but all that came out was a wisp of blue vapor and an impotent sizzle from the drained power pack. It cracked me across the side of my helm so hard that the concussion foam failed and the whole shell cracked wide open, falling off my head in a handful of jagged pieces. The blow could have easily killed me, but that wasn’t the point anymore. The ork had me, and it knew as much. I was no longer a real threat to it but a plaything. I dragged myself up to my knees. I thought I would at least die on my feet, but my shattered balance wouldn’t let that happen, so my knees would have to do. Somewhere in the concussed haze I could vaguely hear the thing roaring in my face, but I just didn’t care anymore. I brushed the last few helmet fragments off my head and found myself wondering why I had skipped breakfast that morning. Funny thing to wonder about at a time like that.
As the beast reached back for the punch that would end my life, I stabbed it in the face with part of my broken helmet. I think we were both about equally surprised. I sure as hell couldn’t stop laughing. Pretty sure I blacked out after that, for a few seconds at least, because next thing I knew I was swinging my rifle around like a club, right in the middle of the scrum between the orks and the Gue’la. No idea if I did any damage, but we were winning and that was enough for me.
The last few orks were getting ganged up on now, and I can say with some degree of certainty that my drunken staggering put me underfoot at just the right moment to trip one of the brutes and send it sprawling to the ground to be hacked apart by the frenzied humans. Just as the final greenskin fell and the bloody females let out a great cheer, there came a great rumble of heavy armored boots and the Rynns all ducked for cover as another ork mob descended into the trench.
Was there absolutely no justice in the world? One of them landed right behind me so hard that the tremor nearly threw me off my feet, but I managed to turn with the impact and swing my rifle upwards into its jaw, where it shattered uselessly against…wait, what? The greenskin wasn’t green at all. It had the color of a Gue’la, but it was much too large. It took a while for it to sink in, but to be fair I think half my brain was leaking out through my nasal crest. The Gue’la females weren’t ducking for cover.
They were kneeling.




3
I did my best to follow my Shas’vre through the winding mess of passages that led to the barracks. A proper Tau ship would have been far more logically laid out, not to mention a thousand times cleaner and better lit. What were the Gue’la thinking burning torches for illumination in a recycled air environment? It was a miracle they didn’t all suffocate in the reaches of deep space.
Every now and then we’d pass a bulkhead and my commander would point down the passageway. This way is the mess hall, that way is the chapel, and I tried to make a mental note of it all but there was just too much to take in, and I was more than a little bit star-struck from meeting Shagnasty. The Shagnasty of Thett Minoris. I mean, I never really believed that he wore a dragon scale cape until he walked right up to me with it hanging off his back. I had his trading card in my pack and I dared hope I could get him to sign it.
We passed through a tight passage and into a surprisingly open area filled with training equipment and dueling rings. The place was crowded with Gue’la, but there were also a number of Tau using strange contraptions to lift stacks of iron weights in a rhythmic progression. In one of the rings, a stocky Tau male and a scarred Gue’la female grappled one another and, to my surprise, my kinsman seemed to be winning. It was then that I realized that, almost without exception, the Gue’la in the gymnasium were all females.
“This is where you’d better be spending most of your free time,” said Shagnasty, gesturing around the room at all the strange apparatuses. “These humans, they have a few sciences we can learn and this is one of them. We train hard with these machines, we become stronger, faster. It complements our way of fighting.” He stopped and pointed at the sparring rings. “And I want you in those rings every damned day. I don’t care if you just show up and get your head caved in, you do it until you get better at it. Any of the humans will teach you how to fight hand to hand. They seem to love beating up on us, so take full advantage. Now come here and try not to embarrass yourself.”
The falling of his hooves was muted by the thick rubber padding on the floor as we made our way across the gymnasium to a sparse corner devoid of any of the machines. The biggest Tau I had ever seen gave a mighty roar and hefted an enormous weighted bar off the floor, thrust it above his head and dropped it with a thunderous impact.
“Ugh! That’s how it’s done!” He exchanged an awkward hand slap with his Gue’la counterpart, a female who was far less bulky but still very heavily muscled. She rattled off something aggressive-sounding in their unfamiliar tongue, and they both jumped forwards, bouncing their chests together in what seemed like a bizarre mating ritual. I couldn’t take my eyes off them as we approached, the strange pair seeming at times to fight or play, depending on one’s perspective.
Shagnasty stopped and I followed suit, snapping to attention before what I assumed were my superior officers. “This big animal is Krom,” he said, gesturing to the big musclebound male, “And this is Dupree, one of the team leaders in the Rynnish 41st.” I have to admit, Dupree didn’t strike me as much of an officer with her hair and clothing soaked with sweat and clinging to her body like that. She was a mess, and she smelled terrible, but who was I to question what these Gue’la looked for in their leaders. Not knowing what else to do, I pounded my chest in salute, which sent all three of them into a fit of laughter.
“Did this nameless punk just salute me?” Krom asked of Shagnasty in a deep, rumbling voice that came from somewhere down in his chest. More laughter ensued, and I felt my cheeks turning a deep cobalt blue. Finally, after an eternity of being laughed at by everyone, including a Gue’la of all things, Shagnasty finally confided in me.
“Krom is Shas’saal,” he said, and my shame finally found a proper form. I had just saluted someone with no rank at all. Effectively, I’d placed myself beneath him in the hierarchy.
“I…I see.”
“Oh, it speaks,” said Krom. The female at his side whispered something in his ear. “Ha! She says you’re blushing like a child in his first courtship.”
“It was a lot worse than that, actually,” said Shagnasty. “Their Gothic tongue loses something in translation, as does ours. Make a point of learning their language, boy.”
“Yes, Shas’vre,” I said, staring at the floor as if it would hide my shame from the world.
The female said something else, and Krom translated, “She says you look like an infant canine that has been kicked. She says she is sorry.” I certainly hadn’t expected the sweaty, stinking embrace that followed, but from then on it was made clear that Dupree was what the Gue’la called a “hugger.” I couldn’t help feeling soiled by it, the strange odor of the Gue’la and her sticky sweat all over the front of my armor.
“Gonna show him the barracks, Shas’vre?” Krom gave our superior a joking nudge. Apparently I was left out of the loop yet again.
So, unbeknownst to me, the barracks adjoined the gymnasium, just on the other side of the communal hygiene chambers. I had realized that there were a disproportional number of females in the ranks, but that fact did not sink in fully until I was surrounded by nude, wet skin both Tau and alien. I did my best not to stare, I really did. The Gue’la were…interesting, in their own way I suppose. They had a strange shape, made stranger by the lack of clothing to break up the alien lines. The legs were all wrong, though I supposed they felt the same way about ours.
To make matters worse, it seemed as though Vre’Shagnasty was deliberately taking his time, even pausing for idle conversation with one of the Gue’la. Meanwhile I stood staring at the floor or the ceiling, whichever happened to catch my attention from moment to moment. I was very, very uncomfortable.
I was suddenly snapped out of my inattentiveness when my commander clapped me upside the head. “What is the matter with you, boy? Commander on deck!”
Years of training took over and I stomped my hoof hard enough to crack the tile, pounding my fist against my chest and barking “Shas’O!” with my gaze fixed straight ahead. Right at Commander Darkblade’s naked breasts.
Damn it all.
Several awkward minutes later, I was sitting on my bunk and Vre’Shagnasty was handing me an ice pack for my black eye.
“You sure set your sights high, boy,” he said, shaking his head. “For future reference, she doesn’t mind if you stare, and she doesn’t mind if you try to court her, but you’d damn sure better earn it.”
I lost myself in the thought for a moment. Had I really gotten down on my knee and proposed courtship to my commander in the shower? I was lucky I wasn’t in traction.
“I don’t know what came over me,” I said, trying not to sound too pathetic. “It just…happened.”
“Long story, kid. And believe me, you won’t be the last to try it. But earn yourself a real name and you might make the list of Shas who succeeded.” He patted me reassuringly on the shoulder and left me on my bunk to ponder the mess I’d made. More than that, I pondered Darkblade’s skin, black like polished obsidian, and the thick yellow braid festooned with victory tokens.
You’d have done the same, I’m sure of it.

4

As I lay on the stone slab in the infirmary, I’m sorry, the Apothecarion as they called it, I couldn’t help thinking about the bizarre circumstances that brought me here. Breaking my rifle off on the face of the Gue’ron’sha lord, the stunned silence and the laughter that followed, the strange name the Rynns had started chanting. Dupree had hoisted me up on her shoulders along with two other team mates, and they had all begun chanting “Shas’la Sai’ko” over and over. I’d have to ask my fellow Shas what the word meant, if I ever made it out of here. The place was half a hospital and half a chamber of horrors, all the machines and strange devices seemingly torturous in nature.
And the Gue’ron’sha in white…there was something about his gaze, as if he wanted what was inside of you. I’d seen him pull the organs out of his still living comrades and then silence them with a stabbing device on his gauntlet. It was almost too much to take in. But, I was at least comforted by the presence of my roommate, the Gue’la female I’d saved, who ended up surviving and whose name I had learned was Mimi. She’d been barely alive when the battle had ended, and they’d left the giant blade stuck through her all the way until we’d arrived in this nightmare room. I’d held her hand and looked her in the eyes as they took it out, and I can’t say I’d ever seen a greater example of Gue’la bravery.
Mimi had passed out holding my hand, and I’d been sure not to let it go while we lay there, as though I were tethering her to this mortal plane. I lay there wishing that she would wake so that I could speak with her, at least what little Gothic I spoke, and perhaps she could tell me what this place was. It was almost a guilty feeling, lying next to her with only concussions and a few broken bones. Knowing the barbarism of the Gue’la medics, they might just slice her in half and replace her lower body with a set of wheels.
The door hissed and slid open. In my haze of pain and narcotics, I could barely make out the Gue’ron’sha in white stomp in. The thrumming of his armor resonated in my teeth, more felt than heard. Behind him came a smaller shape. It took me a few moments to recognize the silhouette, but finally I made out the enormous pink feather wafting in the breeze created by the air recyclers.
“Hey, kid,” he said. Vre’Shagnasty hadn’t yet washed the muck of battle off his armor, and the purple surface was marred with splatters of blue, red and black blood.
“S-shas’vre…” I tried to sit up and salute, but my spine spasmed and I fell back to the bed, gripping Mimi’s hand now for my own comfort rather than hers. “I’m sorry.”
“Boy, you and me are gonna have a long talk about mixed unit charges when you get back to us. The humans charge. We close in and give supporting fire.”
“Yes, Shas’vre,” I managed weakly. “I shall…endeavor…to—ah!” I couldn’t even finish the ritual supplication to accept my failings and grow from them. What a waste of skin I was. I looked over at Mimi’s prone body, her lingering life only evident by the rhythmic beeping of the machines monitoring her heart. What a pair we made.
“Here,” he said, tossing a blanket onto my chest. “Thought you might be cold. Don’t let me catch you trying to wash that thing, boy. You gotta clean it with sand, you got that?”
“Sand?”
“The drake’s a desert reptile,” he said, as though explaining a concept to a child. “No water in the desert, so after a fight you roll it around in a big bucket of sand to get the muck off. That reminds me, you’re on cloak duty for a full cycle when you get back, to teach you better than to run in and punch orks.”
Well I’ll be damned. The blanket had scales.
“You’re a Pimp now, boy.”
“Thank…thank…” I couldn’t finish, but this time it wasn’t pain that stopped me. I thought I might break down into a most dishonorable display of tears if I said any more. After a few silent moments, I managed, “Shas’vre. What is…’sai’ko’?”
He chuckled. “You’re not saying it right. You have to soften the sounds just a bit. Like this. ‘Psycho.’”
“Sai…Psyko.”
“Close enough. It means someone who has lost his way, whose senses have left him. You put a dent in Lord Akira’s jaw, boy. If he didn’t have a sick sense of humor you’d be a lot worse for the wear. And your little friend here wouldn’t have gotten special treatment.”
Oh. Right. I’d refused to let go of her, hadn’t I? I guess that earned her a trip to the White Gue’s slab.
“Psycho,” was all I could say, rolling the word over and over on my tongue.
“That reminds me,” Shagnasty said, pulling a clattering bundle from his pack. “You’ve earned your scales, your name, and you decked an Astartes commander.” He placed the bundle on my chest, on top of the cloak I was snuggling like a long lost lover. It looked like bones, thick, sharp bones on a piece of string. “Teeth from that ork you stabbed. She wanted me to tell you that her answer is yes.”
She?
 
5

There was a lot I didn’t know, and plenty more I didn’t want to. As I lay there in the Apothecarion over the next two weeks, I learned very quickly that the White Gue did not suffer my presence lightly, nor that of my comatose companion. From what little of their language I could speak, I learned that someone named Akira was in command here, and that his was the will that kept the White Gue’s blade in check.
With the White Gue refusing to speak to me aside from the occasional uttered curse, and Mimi still in her fitful slumber, my one constant companion was my data slate full of Gothic lessons. Vre’Shagnasty had taken the time to download several lessons on human slang and curses so that I could better communicate with the soldiers of the Rynnish 41st. I admit, many of the words did not make sense at first and I had to check with the other Shas to be sure that the disjointed strings of nouns and adjectives actually amounted to profanity and not just gibberish.
The Gue’la can be such a creative species.
On the tenth day, Mimi woke up. She didn’t recognize me at first, and the freakish machines of the White Gue terrified her. I tried to calm her down, but what amounts to a soothing tone to us, she later described as a hateful hiss. I guess we really do lose something in translation. It would be great to say that we became friends, but at the time I still wasn’t sure if that was true. We could barely speak to one another, but there was at least that common bond of having shared a trench and fought the enemy side by side. We’d eaten the same terrible rations, wound up face down in the same muck. I think we’d even been on the same scrumball team once, but that might have been a different Gue’la. Don’t judge me, I’m still working on telling them all apart.
When at last we were cleared to return to the troop ship, whose name Mimi informed me I’d been horribly mispronouncing, it was the commander herself who came to claim us. My jaw hit the floor when she arrived. Granted, this was only the second time I’d ever seen her, and the first time I’d seen her with clothes on, but she was somehow even more beautiful. It’s not the kind of beauty that the Gue’la aspire to, the specific contours of the physical form being their most sought after virtue. No, Shas’O Darkblade was beautiful, no, gorgeous in the Tau sense. Just looking at her, I could see that she was strong, capable, and iron-willed. She had a steel backbone and legs that could shift a capitol ship. Sure, her body was nice. Very nice, actually. But it would be inappropriate of me to think of my commander as an object of physical desire alone. All of that merit made her beautiful no matter how…unique her physical appearance.
I hadn’t been briefed on the specifics. All I knew at the time was that some physical change had taken hold of the commander, though the rumor mill swore it had something to do with her sword. Okay, some of the more scandalous rumors when quite a bit further, but I’d not have her defamed by their repetition. The end result was the same anyway. Instead of the normal color of a Tau’s body, Darkblade’s skin was pitch black, and her hair a bright, natural blonde. In some of the creases of her flesh, there were these cracks, for lack of a better word. Around the corners of her mouth, the base of her neck, beneath the swell of her…never mind. These cracks seemed to glow like firelight from within. The point is, her appearance was strange to say the least, but such a thing was not entirely unheard of in an age of alien encounters and conquests of forgotten planets. The Tau’va demanded that we look past the physical and focus on someone’s merit.
My hand reflexively went to the necklace of teeth she had given me. I’d worn it every day, and only taken it off to sleep so that the sharp fangs didn’t open my throat by accident.
“Shas’la,” she said simply, more than enough of a greeting from someone of her lofty rank. I sat up, but not without considerable pain still.
“Shas’O,” I said, thumping my chest in salute and trying not to wince. Mimi sat up as well, saying something to Darkblade that I couldn’t quite make out.
“She says you speak of me without end.” Wow, Mimi, way to blow it for me.
“I…ah, I only speak the praises of my commander, Shas’O.”
“A commander with, hold on.” She turned and conversed briefly with Mimi again, this time punctuated by the Gue’la female’s laughter. “Excellent d’yi, according to your friend here.” Mimi laughed again and mimed the curve of a pair of buttocks with her hands. That traitor.
I turned and shot Mimi a murderous glance, but she smiled and winked at me, an unusual gesture among the Gue’la that conveyed a sense of conspiracy, as though she were helping somehow instead of embarrassing me before my commander.
“Well?” she said. “Is that accurate?”
I lowered my head in shame, though I could not bring myself to lie to her. “Yes, Shas’O,” I admitted.
She said nothing at first, instead stepping closer to me and running a fingertip along the necklace she had made me. I kept my head down, eyes cast toward the sheets in the hope that she would at least spare me the demotion that such talk warranted. She tapped the largest tooth in the center of my chest twice, her fingernail clicking against the broken piece of bone.
“You’ve worn my courting token for several cycles now,” she said. “I would imagine there is little here with which to fashion one of your own.”
She was right, of course. I could hardly steal the use of the White Gue’s machines to fabricate a token of courtship, even if I’d had suitable materials.
“I could not manage much,” I said. Biting my lip with nervousness, I reached into the bin beside my bed where my armor and equipment had been stowed and pulled from it a small metal hoop. “From my rifle, what was left of it.”
“A gasket from the plasma pack,” she said, toying with it in her fingers and eyeing the details, the rippled ring of purple oxidation around its center. “Fifth generation, and manufactured on...Vior’la, if I am not mistaken.” Wow. I hadn’t even known that and I’d been working on it for days.
“The color—“
“From firing it again after the pack ran dry, effectively rendering the pack useless and unable to hold a charge.” Okay, I guess if you thought about it like that it wasn’t such a great gift. “But considering the materials at your disposal, I accept your token.” She tried to slide it onto her middle finger but, finding it too tight, slipped it onto her little finger instead.
“You accept?” I asked, completely oblivious. “Then we…?”
“Yes, Psycho.” Hearing her use the name I’d earned drove it home that we were not merely commander and subordinate anymore. Come to think of it, this courtship flew in the face of countless regulations.
“May I…may I call you Darkblade?” She seemed to visibly cringe at the idea. “Sorry I asked.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “It’s not my favorite word. I’d just rather you call me by my sept name instead. Bork’an will suffice.” Sure, it wasn’t exactly the most becoming name for such an illustrious commander, but I would gladly accede to it if it was what she wanted.
“Thank you, Dar—I mean, Bork’an.” I think she was blushing. The cracks in her features seemed to flare up brighter than usual.
She turned to Mimi once more. This time I understood when she asked “Can you travel?” Mimi nodded in response. “Gather your things and help this one to the shuttle bay. We depart in one Terran hour. And put some pants on.”
I looked down, and remembered how little these infirmary gowns covered.
“Yes, Shas’O.” I couldn’t help stealing a glance as she turned to leave. It really was quite excellent.









6
They taunted me mercilessly when I returned, Tau and Gue’la alike. Little jabs at my character rained down on me like the harsh spray carried on the winds of a hurricane, but I held firm and did not let my embarrassment show. Later, I learned that the Gue’la called it “ball breaking” but for the life of me I couldn’t understand the metaphor. Still, to stand out like that was an interesting experience for me. I had always tried to blend in, to become a seamless part of whatever team I was assigned, as was the Tau way. Notoriety, infamy, a reputation, these were new concepts to me, though not entirely unpleasant. It started to dawn on me why there were so many…divergent individuals within the cadre. Snowflake, Shagnasty, Krom, Dar—Bork’an. Silvertongue, whose name bore a scandalous origin that she flaunted shamelessly. Musashi the diplomat, with his cleaver-scepter-whatever the hell that was. Customized armor patterns, personal weapons, it all came from an odd sense of individualism that had been bothering me since my arrival.
I leaned heavier on Mimi as we made our way further into the ship. Strange, I thought, given that she had been the far more severely injured of us. I supposed that the White Gue’s machines and equipment had been made to heal humans rather than Tau, and in that capacity they seemed to be second to none. Me? I’d been told to spend the next two weeks in bed to let my ribs finish knitting together and my spine to stop swelling. We passed through the gymnasium where Krom and Dupree were exchanging a complicated series of hand slaps following an especially thunderous dropping of weights. “Power cleans,” Krom called it, though the phrase made absolutely no sense. He was the absolute last Tau on board whom I wanted to talk to right then, so I just kept my head down and tried to hobble faster.
“Oh, there he is!” came the bellowing shout, followed by sharp laughter. “The Shas of the hour! The maniac himself come home to show us all how it’s done.” He stomped over to me, his hoof falls loud despite the rubber floor padding. His sheer mass would never cease to astound me.
“Teammate Krom,” I said, giving the more appropriate greeting of our caste. He slapped me on the shoulder hard enough to make my eyes water as my injuries were jarred, but I’m sure it was meant as a friendly gesture. For Krom, anyway. “Are you…well?”
“I should ask you the same. ‘Shas’la Psycho,’ they’re calling you now. One campaign and you earn yourself a brand new name. Color me impressed, kid. You went full-Gue’la out there. You never go full Gue’la!”
“To be honest,” I said, wincing. “I’m not a fan of the name.”
He leaned in close, whispering as though we were co-conspirators in some great scheme. “Boy, you have no idea what these females have been saying about you in your absence.” He took several quick glances around the room to see if anyone was watching, though he didn’t seem to find Mimi at all offensive to his plotting. I looked to her just to see if she was paying attention, and she had the strangest smile on her face as though something incredibly funny was going on. “You’ve got a few admirers, let me just say that. Look, if you need an adapter or some vod’ka, you just come to big brother Krom and he’ll hook you up.” Adapter? What?
“T-thank you, Krom,” I said, using his given name as a show of familiarity. At least I had been spared another of Dupree’s disgusting embraces.
“Don’t forget!” he called out as we left the gym.
Mimi giggled incessantly as we moved down the long hallway. I really wasn’t looking forward to the next bit, and sure enough the trip through the showers was just awful. Between the taunts of my fellow Tau and the incomprehensible but very vocal haranguing of the Gue’la females, my face could not have been purpler. At least Bork’an wasn’t waiting around the corner this time. Was it just me, or were some of the females staring at me strangely?
I tried to ask Mimi about it when we neared the barracks. “Why looking so much?” I asked in broken Gothic. There was still so much to learn, so many different words.
“Maybe they like you.” She spoke slowly, for my benefit. It was very thoughtful of her to take my limitations into consideration.
“Not all of them can like me,” I said, losing something in translation.
“Human females,” she said, pausing to think of a way to phrase it that I would understand. “When one female likes you, others like you also. We compete like that sometimes.” I could tell from her face that there was more to it than that, a lot more in fact. But our language barrier made things very difficult. “On my data slate, I hear my friends say many females speak of you.”
This was all too much. Maybe it was the sudden attention, or maybe my concussion was acting up again, but the room started to spin and I nearly fell when Mimi helped me into my bunk. The barracks had that utilitarian, Fire Caste feel to it, cramped but clean and devoid of too much clutter. Technically there were supposed to be two Shas in the room, but the top bunk was unoccupied for now, giving me a lot of extra room than I would normally be afforded. She helped me out of some of my clothes, enough so that I could rest comfortably but not have my dignity jeopardized. What came next surprised the hell out of me. Mimi leaned in very close to me and pressed her lips to my forehead, just above my nasal crest. A brief suction, and then her lips parted with an audible ‘smack’.
I must have had the strangest look on my face, because she felt the need to say, “Do not worry. It is a good thing.” She pointed to her lips, then gave me one of the ubiquitous thumb-raising gestures they used to signify a positive outcome. I nodded, not knowing if I was supposed to return the gesture, and then gave my own awkward thumbs-up in response. She pulled the blanket up over me, a gesture I was told signified she cared but left me feeling like a complete invalid, then fished in her pack for something. “Your..varee…veer…”
“Vre?”
“Yes,” she said, relieved. I vowed to become fluent in Gothic just to end the awkwardness of this kind of communication. “He gives me this, I give to you.” She held out this…thing. Some kind of rubberized plastic thing, about the size of my palm and shaped very strangely. The color was vaguely similar to that of Gue’la skin, though it had a distinctly artificial look to it, whatever the hell it was. From the way her cheeks had gone completely pink, I could tell that Mimi was embarrassed to be seen holding it, so I took it without saying anything that might further mar her honor.
“Thank you,” I said, not knowing what exactly I was thanking her for. But if it came from Shagnasty, I could only imagine it was vital to my continued assimilation with the cadre. “Mi’mi,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully. “We…are we friends? Is that word correct?” She smiled and stared me directly in the eyes for a long time, the gesture somehow significant to her.
“Yes,” she said, and repeated her earlier lip ritual, this time pressing them to my cheek and leaving the spot rather damp. Such strange customs they had, but no worse than sharing a barracks with Kroot. Actually, compared to Kroot, I’d accept Terran lip rituals and damp hugs any day. As Mimi left me there to rest and mend, I pulled out a data slate and started to browse through the Gue’la equipment. Whatever the hell that rubber thing was, it had to be in the database somewhere.

I enjoyed that very much. The Tropic Thunder reference made me chuckle too. All the little details about the tau and humans not quite understanding each other seemed well observed to me as weel as Psycho imagining his tau shame. I guess there will be more to come to explain why they (and some Marines) are fighting with the tau.

Oh that? Homebrew, custom fluff I started way back in the day. Can't go into much detail because it gets really out of control really quick, but essentially this enormous alliance is carving through the southern end of the Imperium on a crusade to Terra, where they aim to euthanize the Emperor so he can reincarnate and be awesome again.

what a fun little read.

looking forward to more of it...i think the best part was the condom.

 alabamaheretic wrote:
what a fun little read.

looking forward to more of it...i think the best part was the condom.

Oh, it's not a condom.

oh lord...well there goes assumptions now im really interested in what it is...cant wait for the next episode.

Boss, everything you make is gold.
Subbed.

Yeah, that's going in my sig.

Brilliant and beautiful. Hurrah for 40K stories that manage to blend humor and character development and different cultural perspectives with the horrific violence. In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, there is not, in fact, only war.

Thanks. If you're interested in perusing my Dubstep project log, I elaborate on a lot of the individual characters like Snowflake, Shagnasty and Silvertongue along with some of the general background for the cadre. It's not really organized though, so the fluff is sprinkled throughout a bunch of picture updates.

Im going to sub to this, just as I have the Dubstep blog.

7

“I don’t understand ice cream,” I said, watching the astartes jump troops soaring over our heads, their armored forms brief flashes of cobalt blue against the blackened skies above.
“Frozen dairy paste,” said Shagnasty, sliding down the trench wall. He fixed his hat and smoothed out the feather that had so recently become discombobulated in the pressure wave of a nearby explosion. “It’s tasty, you should try it.”
“That’s not what I mean, sir.” My rifle shouldered, I tried to keep up with him as he stomped down the firing line. More of the Desert Pimps fell in behind me and soon we were ten strong. “Why does the leader scream about it when he charges?”
“Why do the gue’ron’sha do anything, shas’la? Some tradition from a thousand years ago or something to do with their religion. All I know is that it pairs well with cake, and they love that as well.”
“But why does their lord scream about it when he flies into battle? Perhaps there is some significance in their culture?”
“Not important right now, boy.” We had reached the westernmost section of trench, where several more teams of warriors were already waiting. Some wore the scales of the Pimps, some the fatigues of the Rynnish 41st. Despite fighting alongside them for the past month, I still found the human idea of single-sex regiments hard to understand. Were not the genders two halves of the same whole? Most of the civilized powers in the galaxy that I knew of raised mixed units of males, females, and whatever third or fourth genders they might produce. But then, the one constant of the galaxy was that it was a strange place that seldom made sense, much like ice cream.

I took advantage of the stoppage in the action to reach up and pull myself to the lip of the trench, peeking out over the blasted crater-scape of the battlefield. Bodies lay littered about the place, mostly the humans with the spikes piercing their flesh, but also a few of the red-armored gue’ron’sha. Those you had to put down hard, harder than I had ever expected. Something about their physiology, or perhaps it was a psychological malady, kept them charging forward when any sane mind would have retreated to renew their strength. They carried pistols, but even when they were in range I seldom saw them fire at anything except the sky, as if they existed purely for hand to hand combat. Beyond the expanse, perhaps five hundred meters out, a squat, chipped bunker housed an enemy heavy weapon team that had harassed our armor all afternoon. Night closed in on the horizon, and the night belonged to Tau armor, so long as we could clear this bunker in time for the push.
The grenades we carried for this charge were not the frags we used on my last shameful foray into the realm of mixed unit charges, but rather our more familiar photon grenades mixed with a few of the Terran blind bombs that sprayed smoke everywhere. Frags wouldn’t have hurt the bunker anyway. While we waited and mustered the four teams that would assault the bunker, I peeked through the scope on my rifle at the position. Two of the red armored giants seemed to be in charge, for whatever that was worth. They appeared half mad, pacing about like caged carnivores, sometimes revving their chain blades for no apparent reason. I could have shot one. The giant lingered in my targeting reticule for what seemed like hours, too preoccupied with his impotent bloodlust to keep his head down. But I would not break discipline and announce our presence, not while our kin poured fire at their position from the opposite flank to keep attention. I slid down into the trench again, my hooves sinking an inch into the muck, and clumsily fixed the shiny silver bayonet onto the improvised lugs on my rifle, turning it into something like a crude spear.

There was no speech this time, no great, shrill rallying cry from the Rynns. A slap on my shoulder guard from my nearest teammate told me it was time to go, and I sent that same slap down the line to the next shas’la. The Rynns had a complicated series of hand signals that formed some silent dialect that yet eluded me, but I had figured out that a closed fist meant ‘stop’ and various waving would signal a direction. That was enough for me. We of the Pimps crested the trench after the Rynns had already crawled forward on their bellies, their skin and clothing slicked with black mud to mask their advance. Still, the enemy had thermal sensors that would detect them at close range, so as we took our first few steps, every tau lobbed his belt of explosives as hard as he could toward the bunker. Most fell short, Krom’s sailed way over the mark, but plenty detonated on or around the bunker, disorienting noise and light and smoke and chaff to confound sensors and render the eyes useless. To their credit, the women of the human teams rose without a sound and pressed on in their silent charge, several igniting their flame units. Steady, I told myself as we followed behind them in a crouched hustle. The Rynns disappeared into the black smoke like ghosts, and then suddenly the dark cloud glowed a hateful orange from within as the flame units opened into the bunker’s windows. Screams, dozens of horrible screams as the humans inside died in the chemical hell of the flame units, and then the thundering cracks of gue’ron’sha sidearms in a rapid staccato rhythm. That was our cue.

We broke into a run, the black cloud enveloping us for a terrifying moment as we plunged into darkness only to emerge in the sudden insanity of melee. The two giant red astartes howled with undisguised glee, their hoarse voices beating even the screaming of their blades as they carved our kin and allies with reckless abandon. The weapon teams inside the bunker were dead, dead to the last man, but these two monsters barely seemed to register the burning flesh where their armor had given way. “Son of the bitch!” I shouted, invoking my favorite of the Gothic curses I’d learned so far and bringing my rifle to bear on the closest giant. My teammates had already done the same without any orders needed, and at this range we scarcely needed to aim anywhere but up, the sudden tsunami of blue plasma crashing into the warrior’s upper body in an explosion of energy. Even such a titan crumbled instantly at that range, disappearing from the chest up in wisps of bloody steam. I looked for the second and found him covered in Rynns and Pimps like some bizarre beast of burden. He spun and threw his riders into the air like mere toys, and was met with concentrated volleys of las and plasma fire. Krom appeared from the warrior’s blind side and opened up at point blank range with that enormous cannon he carried, right into the knee joint of the giant’s armor. Within seconds we were on him, shooting into his joints with our weapons at maximum power, our power cells draining fast as we tried to kill the thing inside all that plate. Krom jumped up onto the warrior’s chest and poured submunitions into its face until it finally stopped moving, and then we melted its body to slag just to be safe.
In the chaos of the charge, I had lost track of my Vre, and I scanned the surroundings through the haze of smoke and found Shagnasty hunkered down behind one of the nearby sandbag emplacements scanning the field ahead. I raised my rifle and scanned along with him, searching for the counterattack that might wrench this position back from us, but the flank was clear and we were, for the moment, safe.

“Casualties!” he barked, having lost his smoking weed stick in the scrum. We checked our teammates’ vitals in our helmet interfaces, calling out the dead and the wounded. Four of my kin had fallen for good and would have their scales passed on to the next generation of the Desert Pimps, while two had been maimed severely by the chain weapons but would recover in time. The Rynns had lost twice as many, and their soft, unarmored bodies had been utterly ruined by the enemy’s weapons. While our armor only afforded us so much protection against bolt weapons, it would still at least help with the…mess, there was no better word for it. I saw Shas’la Vys pouring out of a fist sized hole in her armor, her insides turned to sludge by the exploding bolt round. She wasn’t going to make it and she knew it, waving the medic away so he could focus on someone who could be saved. I tried not to think about how she’d teased me in the showers just yesterday. She could be my friend again later, when it was time to mourn. If I thought about her now…I just wouldn’t. That was all.
Reinforcements came rushing in from our lines immediately, forming up along the sandbags and scrambling into the still-cooling bunker to turn its protection to our advantage. Another flight of dark blue shapes flew overhead, the astartes returning from the fray. I wondered silently how many they’d lost. The order came for the assault team to fall back and shelter in the trenches, and we were all too happy to leave the scene of our great victory. We carried our dead and wounded, and helped the Rynns do the same with theirs.
In the trenches, we had cake and ice cream.

 bossfearless wrote:
7

“I don’t understand ice cream,” I said, watching the astartes jump troops soaring over our heads, their armored forms brief flashes of cobalt blue against the blackened skies above.
“Frozen dairy paste,” said Shagnasty, sliding down the trench wall. He fixed his hat and smoothed out the feather that had so recently become discombobulated in the pressure wave of a nearby explosion. “It’s tasty, you should try it.”
“That’s not what I mean, sir.” My rifle shouldered, I tried to keep up with him as he stomped down the firing line. More of the Desert Pimps fell in behind me and soon we were ten strong. “Why does the leader scream about it when he charges?”

there is no god-emperor but the god-emperor of ice cream

There is something about the absurdity of the side conversations that make this seem so realistic especially with the action being so visceral. The section about Vys is quite poignant too, she doesn't get to be a person whilst she is shot up and dying which is quite terrible and lonely, she is less herself alive in those last moments than she will be dead afterwards which is pretty tough. Great stuff as usual!

About the whole conversation at the beginning, Cmdr Akira's battle cry is "WHO WANTS ICE CREAM?!" Mostly because he's kind of a maniac.

@sydney: I don't understand that poem at all. Poetry is often beyond me, though.

@gogsnik: You have to try to think about it in the tau collectivist frame of mind. They can't quite emphasize the importance of the individual in the same way as humans, especially the fire caste.

Good point, I hadn't considered it like that.

...This is Faptau: Origins.

This is the last time I click on a signature link.

Well... I did want more Tau stories. I guess I got one.

I'm interested to see what happens next.