The Ethereal Guard did not hesitate when they saw Nolan coming. Whatever calculations had kept them measured and tactical up to that point disappeared the moment Aun'Va was directly threatened, and every guard still on their feet moved toward him at once, honour blades raised, the weapons catching what light the storm permitted.
The Tau were not a melee species. They understood this about themselves. Their doctrine was built around the acknowledgment of it, every tactical system designed to keep enemies at a range where that particular deficit was irrelevant. Here, in the dunes, with a Primarch in Terminator-weight vibranium armor already in the air and closing, there was no range left to hide behind.
Nolan came through them the way a predator moves through something it does not respect. The Warscythe swung in low arcs as he flew, each pass killing and each kill carrying him deeper into the formation, and what the honour blades managed to land against the Starfire Glory's shell produced sparks and absorbed kinetic energy and nothing else. He felt none of it as damage. He felt it as fuel.
One Shadow Step put him behind Aun'Va before the last of the guard had finished reacting to the first arc.
The Ethereal activated both honour blades the moment Nolan materialized. The destructive force fields around the weapons lit the immediate air with their interference signature, and Aun'Va's expression, blue-featured and wide-eyed, carried the specific quality of a being that has made all possible preparations and has just discovered they were not enough.
A line of bright green light crossed the space between them.
Nolan caught the head before it reached the ground. He straightened up through the dissipating force field around the Ethereal's body, the vibranium absorbing the field's last charge without visible effect, and stood there in the middle of the surviving Ethereal Guard with Aun'Va's head in his gauntlet.
He raised it above the skull helmet, turned slowly to face the width of the battlefield, and let out a single long roar that the sandstorm caught and scattered in every direction.
Every set of eyes in range found him. The Raven Guard who were still cutting through the last defenders stopped where they were. The Ethereal Guard who had been fighting with the focus of warriors protecting something irreplaceable went to pieces the moment they understood that what they had been protecting was gone. Fanatical admiration from one side. Absolute despair from the other. Both directed at the same tall figure standing in the churned-up dunes with a blue-skinned head held overhead in pale gold armor.
Prefetia. Mineral world. Damocles Gulf.
The Primarch Nolan, leading the Fifth Company of the Raven Guard, had killed Ethereal Aun'Va.
For the first time in this campaign, the Imperium had drawn something that looked like dawn.
The Ethereal Guard's collapse into suicidal close assaults was predictable. Nolan did not indulge them with further engagement. He ordered the Raven Guard to disengage, and the Thunderhawks dropped low over the dune field and finished what remained with their onboard armament. He also ordered Aun'Va's headless body and honour blades collected before the evacuation. Then he led the Fifth Company off the surface, their casualties for the entire engagement numbering in the low single figures, before the first Tau reinforcement elements reached the area.
The fleet action resolved itself over the following hours. The White Scars and Raven Guard ships combined to push the Tau fleet element back from Prefetia's orbit, denying it approach capability for long enough to matter. The victory there was real but incomplete: the Tau ground forces that had already landed used the window to entrench. They built defensive positions in the mineral fields and eventually occupied the planetary fortress that had belonged to the Imperium, converting it quickly and efficiently into an asset for their own campaign.
Shadowsun would know about Aun'Va by now. The news would have reached her through whatever channels the Tau used for such things, and what she did with it would define the next phase of the war. The Tau could fold the expansion campaign and return to consolidate, absorbing the blow as a strategic reversal. Or they could push harder, channeling the loss into momentum for a revenge offensive that pressed deeper into Imperial space. Either answer created a different problem, and neither of them was small.
Aboard the Avenger, on the upper deck, Nolan sat with a Techmarine and worked methodically.
The preservation process was straightforward in principle and painstaking in practice. The tissue and bone required careful removal, the internal structure prepared and treated, and then a layer of silver metal applied over the finished form. When it was done, the result would keep for as long as anyone could reasonably need it to keep. The practical applications were clear: a preserved head of an Ethereal was a rare psychological instrument, the kind of object that could create effects on a Tau battlefield that no amount of firepower matched. Beyond that, it was a piece of evidence about who had been present and what had been done, and Nolan had found that evidence of that kind tended to be worth carrying.
He was still working when Severax's footsteps announced themselves from down the corridor.
"Lord Primarch." The Chapter Master came to a halt behind him. "Kor'sarro Khan of the White Scars requests an audience."
Nolan turned his head slightly and passed the silver-coated skull to the Techmarine with a gesture indicating the refinement should continue.
"Send him in. We can discuss the next campaign at the same time."
Severax gestured to a mortal crew member nearby, who departed at pace.
Kor'sarro Khan arrived swinging a newly fitted bionic arm with the ease of someone who had already made peace with the replacement. He had lost the original in the boarding action. The new one moved with him as he crossed the deck, and he showed no sign of considering it anything other than a temporary inconvenience that had already been resolved.
He drew himself upright in front of Nolan and delivered the White Scars' formal greeting with full sincerity, including the wish that Nolan might soar like an eagle above the plains of Chogoris.
His knee had begun to lower toward the deck before some combination of Nolan's expression and prior instruction from Severax redirected the motion into a fist pressed to chest instead.
Nolan looked at him for a moment, then spoke.
"I have not been to Chogoris. I intend to correct that at some point." He paused briefly. "There is also something you should know. A comrade of mine encountered Jaghatai Khan some time ago. The Primarch is well. He has no current intention of returning to the Imperium. You and your brothers can set that particular concern aside for now."
He had not finished the sentence before the change came over Kor'sarro Khan's face. The White Scars commander was not a man who showed what he felt easily, but this particular information hit somewhere past the point where discipline held the line, and the knee came down anyway, touching the deck plates with a quiet solidity that said more than any formal words could have managed.
Nolan exhaled through his nose and said nothing for a moment.
"Up," he said eventually, without particular sharpness.
When Kor'sarro Khan had risen, Nolan looked between him and Severax and changed course.
"Let's discuss the campaign. We are three months into this war and the balance of the ledger is poor. One Ethereal dead. A handful of tactical engagements that went our way. Nothing that changes the strategic picture." He let that sit for a moment. "I want to hear what you both think the next step should be."
Kor'sarro Khan and Severax exchanged a glance. Then, carefully and with some degree of deliberate understatement, they laid out a proposal.
The Tau's expansion campaign depended heavily on its commander. Shadowsun was the architect of everything that had happened in the gulf since the offensive began. Remove her, as Nolan had removed Aun'Va, and the whole structure lost its centre. There was a world nearby, not yet fully under Tau control, where the conditions might be arranged to draw her into an engagement she had not prepared for. Intelligence planted at the right nodes. Pressure applied at the right points. A target valuable enough to make the risk feel justified from her side.
The complication, which neither of them stated openly, was that whatever bait was used would need to be credible. Shadowsun did not commit her personal presence to engagements that did not warrant it. The most credible bait currently available in the theater was the figure who had personally taken Aun'Va's head, and whose face was, by this point, the face of the Imperium's opposition to the Third Sphere Expansion as far as any Tau officer paying attention was concerned.
They did not ask.
They did not quite manage to avoid making it obvious what they were not asking.
Nolan looked at the silver skull the Techmarine was still finishing at the workbench beside him, then looked back at the two commanders in front of him.
One Ethereal was not going to stop this war. That had been clear from the moment Aun'Va's head left the sand.
"I will serve as the lure," he said. "Start working out the details of the trap."