Choose Your Enemies, page 14
‘All the more reason to attend the meeting,’ I said. ‘Maybe someone there will have an idea.’ I brought the flyer’s nose up a little more. Now it had stopped panicking, it seemed the machine-spirit was taking care of varying the pitch of the fans all by itself, so all I had to do was point the nose in the direction I wanted to go and let the Omnissiah take care of the rest. Which was fine by me.
‘The planetary defence force have scrambled a flight of Lightnings to intercept them,’ Broklaw said, sounding faintly surprised by their efficiency. ‘No contact reported yet.’
‘Good,’ I replied, starting to feel a little better about the turn events had taken. There was no guarantee that the sortie would come to anything, of course, but the notion of having a trio of heavily armed fighter planes between me and whatever the eldar vessel had deployed was distinctly reassuring. ‘Keep me updated.’
‘Of course,’ Kasteen said, and cut the link.
TWELVE
Now I was beginning to get the hang of the air car’s controls, I found I was quite enjoying the sensation of piloting it. Feeling the agile little craft responding to every nudge of the control column was a pleasant novelty, and one I might have savoured to the full in less-crowded skies. As it was, I proceeded cautiously, peering through the murk surrounding me, wary of colliding with something big enough to swat me from the air. Fortunately the course suggested by the machine-spirit took me in a wide, gradually rising spiral around the main spire, which meant that there was little in the way of ancillary infrastructure to collide with, and the onboard ident beacon was transmitting a code reserved for the governor and his household, so everything but the largest and least manoeuvrable cargo haulers lost no time in getting out of my way.
Of course speculating about the identity and motive of my would-be assassin took up a good deal of my attention too. My first instinct was to contact Amberley and see if she could throw any light on the matter, but I couldn’t be sure that my vox transmission wouldn’t be monitored by some eavesdropping device concealed aboard the flyer: if whoever was behind the attempt on my life was unaware of my avocation as an occasional, and invariably reluctant, agent of the Inquisition, letting them know about Amberley and her mission wasn’t likely to end well. Besides, I had no doubt that she’d hear of it sooner rather than later, and take whatever steps were necessary to protect herself.[101] The would-be assassin had definitely been human, and the eldar weren’t known for using collaborators, so the most likely candidates were the Chaos cult we’d uncovered on Drechia. Why they’d bother trying to assassinate me, only the Emperor knew; but then Chaos worshippers are bonkers by definition, so it’s usually a waste of time even trying to find a rational motive for anything they do.
Inquisitor Vekkman might have some ideas, although I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to talk to him; Amberley clearly thought he should be kept at arm’s length, and that was good enough for me. Probably the best thing I could do would be to consult her at the earliest opportunity, and leave it to her to tell the other inquisitor as much as she deemed appropriate if she thought it would do any good.
Thus musing, and concentrating on manipulating the control column, which I found I had to do quite frequently to avoid drifting away from the course I was attempting to follow, it was some time before I realised that the murk surrounding me was a little less dense than it had been. The running lights of the other flyers and shuttles in the air were shining out more strongly, and the dim outlines of hulls connecting them had become more visible. The spire itself began to appear too, a vast shadow in the shifting yellow fog, gradually taking on a form and solidity which would dwarf mountains.
A short while later I found myself rising above the smog layer entirely, the air clearing with a suddenness which took me completely by surprise,[102] and laying the entire spire open to view, rising from the layer of foul, discoloured air like an ancient tree from the foetid waters of a swamp. At this altitude it was scarcely a dozen kilometres across,[103] rising to an elegant summit no more than a couple of klom from one side to the other. Looking upwards, I could see innumerable cargo vessels, still too far away to make out as anything other than tiny dots, circulating in a complicated arabesque like a cloud of midges over stagnant water[104] as they arrived at and departed from the upper docks. Between there and wherever I was, the sky seethed with other airborne traffic, swarming up and down the length of the spire and diving into the cloacal clouds below to reach the bulk of the hive itself. Many were arriving and departing at landing platforms and docking ports clinging to the outside structure, the relatively short trip around the exterior still being a good deal faster than trusting to the hive’s internal transport system.
Though I was no more than about halfway through my leisurely climb, the sky was beginning to darken in colour, taking on the fresh bruise tint that presages the threshold of space. While intellectually I knew it was nowhere near tall enough, I found myself wondering if it actually passed beyond the limits of the atmosphere. It was partially to reassure myself of the ridiculousness of the notion that I glanced outward, towards the far distant gnomon of another spire rising out of the cloud bank, and thus inadvertently saved my own life.
Two air cars, almost identical to my own except for being painted black instead of blue and gold,[105] were closing fast from above, and from outside the normal traffic lanes. The other big difference between our respective vehicles was the heavy bolter slung under each of them, centrally mounted, and shooting in my direction.
If you’ve read many of my ramblings, you won’t be surprised to find that my first instinct was to evade. I brought the nose up and fed power to the fans, both of which elicited squeals of protest from the little vehicle’s machine-spirit. I didn’t have time to remonstrate with it, however, opening the throttle to its limits and clawing for height; though hardly proficient at aerial combat, I’d spent enough time in enemy airspace to know just how vital being higher than your opponent could be.
‘Mayday, mayday, mayday,’ I transmitted, just to be on the safe side. ‘This is Commissar Cain, under attack by enemy aircraft.’ If the Lightnings Kasteen had told me about were still anywhere in the vicinity, they’d certainly make short work of the relatively light and slow-moving air cars; if the eldar scouts weren’t already keeping their hands full, of course.
‘Responding,’ Kasteen’s voice said in my ear. ‘We’re trying to get the defence force to put something in the air to support you. The Lightnings are still five minutes out at least.’
‘Acknowledged,’ I said, trying to sound calm, and probably not succeeding very well. ‘Any sign of the eldar?’
‘Not yet,’ Kasteen said. ‘But if they get below the smog layer…’
The fighter pilots wouldn’t get so much as a glimpse of them. Since there was nothing I could do about that, I immediately dismissed the matter; if I allowed myself to get distracted by potential threats now, I’d be dead from the actual one long before the flyboys turned up to avenge me.
The two sinister black air cars turned to follow my change of course, tracer rounds from their weapons floating lazily past my windscreen in the tenuous air. If any of the bolts hit, and there’d be at least five times as many rounds I couldn’t see, the flimsy civilian vehicle would be shredded – and at this altitude I couldn’t hope to stay conscious for more than a few seconds if the hull was breached.
‘Commissar,’ a fresh voice cut in. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it until it spoke again. ‘This is Governor Fulcher. I’ve despatched some of my personal guard to relieve you. They’ll be there in minutes.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, as politely as I could manage under the circumstances. Like the Lightnings, it sounded as though they’d be minutes I didn’t have. Seeing the tracer closing in on my position I cut the power to all four fans, dropping like a stone, and watched the two streams intersect exactly where I would have been a few seconds later. But though I’d managed to save my skin in the short term, in so doing I’d squandered the advantages of altitude. The pursuing air cars turned, and began to swoop towards me, their ventrally mounted weapons spitting again. I fumbled at the array of levers, and shot upwards and backwards – a good deal more quickly than I’d intended – before getting the vehicle back under control.
Once again the intended attack struck home against where I no longer was, but I couldn’t keep trusting to luck (and, if I’m honest, my lack of proficiency at the controls taking the pilots who knew what they were doing by surprise) for much longer. ‘Governor,’ I said, ‘does this thing have any weapons?’
‘Of course it doesn’t,’ he said, sounding faintly bewildered. ‘It’s an air car.’
‘So are the ones shooting at me,’ I said, a little more brusquely than I intended, ‘and that doesn’t seem to be stopping them.’
One day I’m going to learn to stop feeding the Emperor straight lines. No sooner had the words left my mouth than one of the explosive projectiles did hit home, detonating against the bodywork, and missing the front right fan mounting by a handful of centimetres and the grace of the Emperor. I felt the whole vehicle lurch, and fought to regain control, banking into the tightest dive I could manage in the hope of shaking them off. No such luck, of course; they both turned and dived after me, the civilian traffic scattering in panic as we powered down the side of the spire, close enough to make out faces staring from the viewports and the occasional void-suited spirejack, who broke off whatever they were doing to stare after us in astonishment.
To my relief, the passenger compartment didn’t seem to have been breached by the detonation, which, grateful as I was for the fact, confused me rather; only later did I realise that a vehicle intended to be ridden in by the governor was bound to be armoured rather more thickly than would be apparent at first sight.
‘Can you shake them off?’ Kasteen asked, and I found myself shaking my head from force of habit as I responded.
‘Not a chance,’ I said. The weight and drag of the bolters, which I was pretty sure hadn’t been installed by the original manufacturer, was probably impeding my pursuers as much as the mass of the armour was degrading the performance of my own flyer, but they were used to piloting these things, and I wasn’t – and, as I’d already discovered, blind luck can only last so long against superior skill. As if to emphasise the point, the air car lurched again as another bolt hit and detonated; this time a red warning icon, the precise meaning of which escaped me but the gist of which was pretty clear, lit up on the dashboard. I poked at the controls, and tried to turn, finding the little flyer noticeably less responsive than it had been. ‘One of the rear fans has been damaged.’ Making me a sitting target. I jinked frantically, but the two enemy air cars were nailed to my six[106] now, taking their time to line up a killing shot.
Which, ironically, was their undoing. Had they simply opened up immediately, relying on the hail of bolts to inflict a hit, they’d almost certainly have done enough damage to send me plummeting from the skies to my death. But for whatever reason, they were spending a few precious seconds to make sure of it.[107] So I was probably as surprised as they were when the leading air car disintegrated in mid-air, ripped apart by a hail of eldar shuriken.
‘I’ve found the missing eldar,’ I voxed Kasteen, although it would probably have been more accurate to have said that they’d found me. A trio of heavy jetbikes, the pilots tucked away in enclosed cockpits while their gunners spat heavy ordnance from an exposed pillion seat – which seemed like a distinctly uncomfortable arrangement to me – were soaring up out of the concealing smog below, blazing away with everything they had. ‘Three Vypers, in close formation. Not looking friendly.’ Like the eldar we’d faced on Drechia they were liveried in green with purple trim, a combination which put me in mind of the carnivorous plants of Mychtarsh[108] – not a particularly comforting association. The surviving air car jinked frantically, banking and diving for the refuge of the cloacal clouds below, but it was a futile endeavour, the eldar craft turning to follow it with balletic precision. A krak warhead detonated against the marauder’s canopy, blowing the roof off and sending its luckless pilot spinning out into the void. A moment later, what was left of the bodywork was shredded by a hail of fire from a shuriken cannon.
Then all three eldar raiders banked smoothly round and began to climb in a rising spiral, chasing one another’s tails; with a distinct sinking feeling I realised that my relatively ponderous air car was at the centre of the circle they were describing. I began to climb, putting off the inevitable for as long as possible, already aware that I could only buy myself a handful of seconds, but even that was better than nothing. To my surprise they were holding their fire, but I was under no illusion that such a happy state of affairs would be continuing; to be honest I was a little baffled as to why they hadn’t finished me off already.
‘They’re closing in,’ I told Kasteen. ‘May the Emperor protect you all.’ Which might strike you as a surprisingly pious sentiment for what I honestly imagined were to be my last words, apart from a probable ‘oh frak,’ on the way down, but it was the sort of thing someone with a reputation like mine was supposed to say, and it would play well with posterity. Besides, a small part of me was still assessing the options, refusing to give up hope before I actually hit the ground, which, given the number of times I’d already escaped death by millimetres, was hardly surprising; I’d cheated the reaper on those occasions by sheer bloody-minded refusal to accept the inevitable, and saw no reason not to do the same now. If by some miracle I did manage to survive this, it certainly wouldn’t hurt my standing among the troopers if my putative last thoughts had been of them, and a prayer for their welfare rather than my own. (Not to mention the fact that if I was about to meet the Emperor in person, it probably wouldn’t hurt to have made a good impression prior to my arrival.[109])
I glanced to the left, finding one of the Vypers pacing me, the gunner swinging their heavy weapon in my direction, while another slotted neatly into place above me, and the third behind and below. No chance of repeating the trick which had discommoded the air cars, then. If I cut the power to the fans, this time I’d simply drop straight through the lower eldar’s line of fire. If I put the nose up and tried to climb, the one above would get me, and if I turned right the one next to me would still have a clear shot. I was completely boxed in.
Unless I swung left instead, and rammed the Vyper pacing me. That would be pretty much suicidal, of course – but ‘pretty much’ isn’t the same as ‘definitely,’ and staying where I was certainly didn’t look like an option. In situations like this, I’ve found, it’s better simply to act before your self-preservation instincts kick in, rather than think about what you’re about to do long enough to have to argue with your subconscious, so I took a firmer grip on the control column, before glancing across at the Vyper preparatory to yanking it hard over.
And found myself looking straight into the pilot’s eyes. For a timeless second our gazes locked, then I completed the movement I’d begun, swerving the air car right at the eldar flyer a handful of metres away, and bracing myself for the impact.
Which never came. The Vyper swung smoothly out of my path, maintaining the separation between us almost to the millimetre. Then all three of them tilted their noses skyward, and soared upwards, vanishing from view within moments, lost among the myriad of motes dancing in the sky around the spire.
‘Taupe leader, we have a visual, and are in pursuit,’ a fresh voice crackled in my vox, and the air shook around me with a thunder of afterburners. The Lightnings ripped through the sky, their distinctive swept-forward wings making them stand out vividly against the weather-ravaged ’crete of the spire’s outer cladding – then they were past and away, creating more of a flurry in the local traffic patterns than the eldar ever managed. A second later the shock wave of their passing hit, leaving my damaged air car bobbing like a cork in a wastefall.
Straightening up and steadying my flight path took up most of my attention for a moment or two, and by the time I had any to spare for my surroundings again I’d already acquired new, and far more welcome, company. A couple of armed grav-speeders, in the same gubernatorial livery as what was left of the car I was piloting, were pacing me. My vox-bead crackled again.
‘Governor Fulcher’s compliments, commissar. We’ve been sent to escort you in.’
‘Much obliged,’ I said, and waved to them with all the insouciance I could muster. ‘I think I’ve had enough sightseeing for one day.’
THIRTEEN
I was greeted on my arrival by Fulcher himself, accompanied, as befitted his status, by a platoon of flunkies and hangers-on.[110] The grav-speeders had guided me to a small hangar in the outer wall of the spire, no more than a couple of hundred metres below the summit. I put the air car down with an almost overwhelming sense of relief as the outer doors began to grind closed behind us, settling it in the middle of a somewhat scuffed mosaic, in which the Imperial aquila and the Fulcher family crest had been jammed together to the aesthetic benefit of neither.
I powered down the lifting fans the moment the landing skids touched, with a silent benediction of appreciation to the Omnissiah for the robustness of the little vehicle which had served me so well, waiting for the blades to whisper into silence and the surrounding space to pressurise. After a few moments I noticed the grav-speeder pilots cracking their cockpits, and, reasoning it was safe to disembark, lost no time in doing so myself.
‘Smart work,’ I said, buttonholing the one I took to be the flight commander from the more elaborate rank insignia on her helmet, before turning to shake hands with her wingman as well. ‘I thought I was done for until you saw the blighters off.’ Which hadn’t exactly been true – the Lightnings had got there first. But I knew from long experience that spreading the credit around generally made more of it stick to me, and to be fair I’d been happy enough to see them arrive.
