Shadowsun watched the human forces deploy onto the battlefield with deep concern, yet there was little she could do to halt their advance. Beyond the white iridium-alloy walls lay land painstakingly transformed by the Earth Caste.
Green plants grew along both sides of the roads. They had once been pruned and tended by machine bees, but now every machine bee had been fitted with a pulse cannon. Without care, the plants had grown wild and disorderly, lacking the ordered beauty of the Greater Good. But no one had time to worry about that now.
Fresh air was contained beneath the shields, filtered and adjusted to suit the survival of every species. Humans and T'au had only minor differences in their atmospheric needs, but their tolerance for gravity differed greatly.
The gravity humans found comfortable was somewhat heavy for the T'au.
"Deadwind is gone... I still remember, on the first day of the expansion, gazing from afar at Deadwind's crimson magnetic-storm lightning and its extreme cyclones that stripped flesh from bone... Now it has vanished..."
The guards looked at one another. They did not understand the deeper meaning behind Commander Shadowsun's words. Yet Shadowsun continued speaking to herself, recalling how enormous Deadwind's storm system had once been. Humanity's heavily polluting industrial system had created a Scourges this planet could never have produced in its entire lifetime.
"And humanity's offensive is much like Deadwind. They are vast and brutish, but in the end, they will disperse beneath the light of the Greater Good." A floating chair drifted over, bearing a T'au dressed in magnificent robes.
His face was peaceful and composed, while his eyes shone with wisdom and ambition. The most advanced shield bees and the most powerful honor guards surrounded the floating chair. The moment Shadowsun and the other warriors saw