Choose Your Enemies, page 2
‘I’ll get Sulla on it,’ Kasteen said, happy to pass the buck down the chain of command to her second most senior subordinate.[11]
‘Good choice,’ I agreed. Sulla had begun her career as a quartermaster, and retained a talent for logistics which made her positively relish a challenge like this. I rose, with the best show of reluctance I could feign. ‘And I suppose I’d better start rounding our people up. There can’t be too many bars and gambling dens on a void station this size.’ I still intended to make use of as many as possible before we left, though, especially as I now had a perfect excuse to make the rounds.
‘Good luck with that,’ Kasteen said. ‘I’ll send out a general recall message, but there are bound to be plenty who’ve switched off their vox-beads.’
‘Sounds like we’ve a busy night ahead of us,’ I said, which, although it turned out to be true, was as nothing compared to the job awaiting us on Drechia – which, in turn, was to pale into insignificance once the true nature and scale of the threat we were facing eventually became clear.
Editorial Note:
Since, as usual, Cain provides few details of the worlds he visits beyond the occasional complaint about whatever he regards as an inconvenience, the following may prove useful in filling in some of the more egregious gaps in his narrative.
From Interesting Places and Tedious People: A Wanderer’s Waybook by Jerval Sekara, 145 M39
The Ironfound subsystem is an interesting anomaly, and perhaps worth a degree of attention if passing through that region of the Imperium, although a prolonged sojourn there can hardly be recommended. The most that can be said for it is that the views of the subsystem primary, known to the locals as Avernus, are undeniably spectacular when seen from the surface of any of the worldlets in its orbit, although conditions on these bodies are sufficiently harsh to discourage all but the hardiest from lingering in the open air. The spectacle is thus better enjoyed from behind the armourcrys of a hostelry on the exterior of whichever hab cluster the discerning wayfarer is patronising, where it can be appreciated in comfort, with a libation of amasec to hand.
That said, the effort of finding one where the surrounding light sources are kept to a minimum will be amply repaid in the clearer view thus afforded, particularly if the subtle scintillations of the ring system are to be fully appreciated. Like the perpetual snows of the worldlets, they acquire a dull red cast from the emanations of Avernus, which appears to flicker[12] as it dominates roughly half the sky, creating the uncomfortable illusion that the entire globe is on fire.
Nevertheless, it remains bitterly cold, so much so that the vast majority of the population sensibly remain either in their sealed cities or toiling in the mines which riddle all the inhabited worldlets, relatively safe from the potentially lethal climate.
Which of the dozen or so worlds the passing wayfarer may choose to break their journey on matters little, since in all essential respects they are as dreary as one another.
TWO
The few expectations I had of our new deployment were rapidly lived down to. Our shuttle hit the snow-covered surface of Drechia in a gout of steam, which turned slowly into a slick of glass-smooth ice across the landing pad, and I watched the world outside become gradually visible through the thinning mist beyond the viewport. About half my limited field of vision was occupied by the looming bulk of the hab cluster in the distance, beyond the starport periphery, a klom[13] or so in height and about thrice that across. In the other direction I could see nothing but snow, gathering in small, gust-driven drifts, smothering the cargo containers stacked in the lee of the starport buildings and blurring the outlines of a squadron of our Chimeras, which had just been offloaded from the previous shuttle down. The huge planet above us hung low to the horizon like a vast blood clot, tinting the whirling snowflakes with its own baleful hue, so that the whole scene reminded me more of a forge surrounded by drifting sparks than the blood-chilling temperatures I knew would be waiting for me the minute the pilot cracked the hatch.
‘I’ll fire up the Salamander.’ Jurgen, my malodorous and indispensable aide, rose from the seat next to mine with as close to alacrity as he ever got. True to form, he’d suffered through the atmospheric portion of our descent with stoic silence and eloquent aroma, and his eagerness to get his boot soles on terra firma was palpable.
‘Fine,’ I said, rising a little more slowly, and adjusting my cap to a more heroic seeming angle for the benefit of the troopers sitting behind us. The prospect of travelling in an open-topped scout vehicle in the sub-zero temperatures prevailing outside was distinctly unappealing. Then I caught another glimpse of the Chimeras growling away outside, and inspiration struck. ‘But it’ll take a while to get it out of the hold. I’ll hitch a lift in the command vehicle of the squadron outside, and get up to speed with the deployment on the way in.’
‘Very good, sir.’ My aide nodded judiciously, as though his approval had been sought, and adjusted the lasgun slung across his shoulder. ‘Do you want to pick up your kit first?’
‘No, just take it straight to my quarters,’ I said. ‘I’ll be reviewing tactics in the command centre for some time.’ Where it would be warm, at least by Valhallan standards, they’d have a pot of tanna brewing, and I could easily contrive a reason for having got a lift in with the Chimeras.
‘Would you like me to join you there?’ Jurgen asked, and after a moment’s consideration I nodded.
‘Yes, I would,’ I said, adding ‘whenever it’s convenient,’ to his evident satisfaction. Jurgen’s dogged loyalty and adherence to whatever he considered his duty had smoothed my path in innumerable ways over the years, and it never hurt to show my appreciation of that; not to mention the fact that if he didn’t feel particularly hurried, my quarters would be a lot more comfortable by the time I found my way to them.
The cold outside was, if anything, even worse than I’d anticipated, the air burning into my lungs as uncomfortably as the foetid atmosphere of a forge world, although considerably less lethal in the long run, I supposed. Not that the long run would be much of a consideration if I hung about on the landing pad for long; I could already feel the chill leaching the life from my bone marrow, everything else already too frozen to be aware of. Not that the troopers disembarking around me seemed too bothered by the lethally low temperature; on the contrary, they seemed in a holiday mood, laughing and chattering as they clattered down the ramp, a few of them turning their faces to the drifting snow as though luxuriating in a shower.
Conscious that if I didn’t get a move on I’d probably end up frozen to the ramp, I began plodding towards the command Chimera I’d spotted from inside the drop-ship, easily distinguishable from its fellows by the cluster of auspex arrays and vox-antennae mounted on its hull. Which took me out of the lee of the grounded shuttle – the freezing wind promptly redoubled, hitting me with the force of an ogryn’s fist, stabbing me with a million shards of windborne ice and wailing in my ears like a berserker charge of eldar banshees.
Which I suppose was my subconscious giving my well-developed sense of self-preservation a heads up. I’d known the xenos were on Drechia, of course – for some reason the vast majority of their depredations had been on that benighted worldlet – so the comparison was a natural one, but making it recalled their presence to mind, and that probably saved my life.[14] As the howling rose in pitch, I glanced upwards, catching a glimpse of three fast-moving dots partially obscured by the flurrying snow.
‘Incoming!’ I yelled, heedless of the eardrums of whoever was monitoring my comm-bead back in the command centre, hoping I could at least warn the troopers around me. Not that I needed to have bothered, as most of them were already unslinging their lasguns, no doubt far more used to distinguishing the sounds of an approaching threat through the whining of a blizzard than I was.
Finding that I could move fast after all despite the strength-sapping chill all around me, I sprinted for the command Chimera, desperate to get behind its protective armour plate before the incoming jetbikes could close to firing range. The thought of returning to the shuttle behind me flickered briefly across my mind, but the ramp was already beginning to rise, the pilot obviously too old a hand to risk being caught on the ground unprotected.
Then, with the roar of a powerful engine, the scout Salamander Jurgen had requisitioned burst out of the cargo hold, flying off the end of the steepening slope, almost getting caught in the narrowing gap as it cleared the ramp. A shower of sparks, eerily similar to the crimson-tinted snowflakes swirling around me, followed it as it grazed the lintel of the cargo hatch on its way through, and crashed to the ground with an impact which resonated through my boot soles, no doubt doing things to the sturdy little vehicle’s suspension that would have made an enginseer blaspheme had any seen it. Maybe some of them did, but I suspect that by then the attention of any in the immediate vicinity would have been thoroughly diverted by the eldar attack.
Three green-and-purple jetbikes came howling out of the storm, swooping on the landing field like raptors spotting a scurrying rodent, strafing the area with whirling discs of razor-edged lethality. The Valhallans scattered, seeking what cover they could, but the majority returned fire with their lasguns as soon as they found it. Apparently unpleasantly surprised by this,[15] the eldar broke off, and circled round for another approach. Turning my head to follow them, I suddenly found myself uncomfortably exposed: the Chimera I’d been heading for gunned its engine and moved away, followed by the rest of the squadron, manoeuvring to intercept the marauders before they could start shooting into the mass of troopers on foot again. That some of the raiders’ fire had found its mark couldn’t be doubted: here and there patches of ice seemed redder than could be accounted for entirely by the baleful glow of the gargantuan planet hanging low on the horizon, and one or two of the lumps in the drifting snow seemed disconcertingly human sized. To my distinct lack of surprise, the torso protruding from the turret of the command Chimera was topped by a familiar face with a vaguely equine cast of features, the pony tail trailing from the rear of her fur hat confirming her identity if I’d ever been in the slightest doubt: Sulla, ready as always to confront trouble head on without stopping to assess the consequences.
This time, however, after a moment of eavesdropping on her command channel through the comm-bead in my ear, I had to concede that she had a point. The heavy bolters in the armoured personnel carriers’ main turrets would be our best defence against the fast-moving aerial targets, although you’d need the Emperor’s own luck to take them all down. That said, she was using the assets she had to the best possible advantage, placing them on the fringes of the landing field to maximise their overlapping fields of fire.
Which would have been fine by me, except for the minor detail of being left in the middle of a vast open space with airborne hostiles circling it looking for a target. There wasn’t much chance of being singled out personally, with so many other people hunkering down and readying their weapons, but I’d been in action far too often not to be aware that a stray round can be just as dangerous as one aimed by a marksman.
With nothing better to do I drew my laspistol from its holster and crouched down in the snow, waiting for the chance to take a wild pot shot in the general direction of the enemy like everyone else, and minimising my profile to the best of my ability. It would take even more luck to down a jetbike with a las-bolt than with one of Sulla’s heavy bolters, but the sheer volume of incoming fire would be enough to keep them from getting too close; the response to their first attack certainly seemed to have given them pause, and repeating the lesson might even be enough to drive them away entirely. In my previous encounters with the pointy-ears they had shown themselves to be cunning and resourceful, ruthless, even bloodthirsty,[16] but with a healthy dose of self-preservation to temper that – a far cry from the unrelenting savagery of orks, or the t’au’s willingness to face certain death in the name of their greater good if sufficiently motivated. I aimed skywards, trying to track the nearest of the fast-moving dots, thankful for the augmetic fingers which steadied my aim a little despite the shivering shaking my body like a case of the ague. Much longer out here and the cold would finish me off before the eldar even got a chance.
Abruptly, without warning, the eldar stopped their circling and began to dive towards us, ignoring the hail of bolter rounds whipping past them on all sides, despite the best efforts of Sulla’s gunners. I listened to her typically clipped instructions and the rather more excited ones of the vehicle commanders for a moment before concluding that there was nothing to be gained by my intervention – and even if there had been there wouldn’t be much I could contribute with my jaw frozen shut – before steadying my aim as best I could, trying to keep one of the jinking flyers in my sights.
Of course, pistols aren’t meant for long-range shooting at the best of times,[17] and this was far from one of those. On the other hand, more than a hundred people shooting at a relatively small volume of space at the same time are almost bound to hit something, and I was pretty sure I saw a few impact flares as the howling flyers swooped nearer. Then one slipped sideways, a large and ragged hole ripped in its streamlined fairing by a couple of heavy bolter rounds. It slewed wildly in the air for a moment, its rider evidently fighting for control, then steadied and broke off, pulling away and gaining altitude.
A ragged cheer went up from the troopers around me, only to die away again as the remaining pair opened fire. With a kind of numb detachment I saw a line of snow and ice in front of me splinter into shards and crystals as the steady stream of spinning shuriken chewed into them before ricocheting away in a random direction, spreading death and injury in a widening wake behind the swooping jetbikes. None of which mattered in my case, because the line of fire was heading straight in my direction, and in a handful of seconds there would be nothing left of me except a rapidly expanding crimson mist and a rather battered cap. Reflexively I tried to stand and run, but my frozen body refused to respond, merely stirring sluggishly in something approximating the right direction.
Then an engine roared, stressed far beyond its design parameters, and the Salamander slewed sideways in front of me, Jurgen grinning down from the driver’s compartment. He ducked just in time as the hail of deadly discs spanged loudly from the hull plating, passing just over my head on its way to chew up more ice, snow and slow-moving Guardsmen.
‘Perfect timing as always, Jurgen,’ I said, hardly slurring my words at all, relying on our comm-beads to communicate, as I wasn’t sure I had the energy to shout even if I could have been heard over the growling of the engine, the roar of the Chimeras’ heavy bolters and the crackle of five score lasguns blazing away, not to mention the screaming of the jetbikes.
‘You’re welcome, commissar,’ he replied, as though he’d done nothing more significant than hand me a sandwich, and gunned the engine, while I clambered aboard. Though the open passenger compartment was as uninviting as I’d expected, at least it afforded some protection from the wind, and I immediately felt a little warmer even though intellectually I knew I was still in danger of freezing to death. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, but I thought you’d appreciate a warm drink when I caught up with you.’
Sure enough, there was a flask of hot tanna sitting on top of my kitbag in the corner, which I lost no time in cracking open and swallowing gratefully. If anything it was too warm still, burning my tongue on the way through and tracing a little track of liquid lava down to my stomach, but by that time I was past caring. ‘You thought right,’ I assured him, and took another swallow, on the grounds that the damage had already been done by this time, and under the circumstances I needed to be able to move more than I needed my stomach lining.
‘The command centre, sir?’ Jurgen asked, and I nodded through sheer force of habit before remembering he couldn’t see me.
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ I said, gazing skywards. In all our years of serving together I’d grown so used to Jurgen’s robust driving style that I could normally keep to my feet no matter what he did, but – still sluggish from the cold – my body didn’t respond as instinctively as usual, and I found myself stumbling as he engaged the gears and slammed the throttle fully open, his usual method of starting off. I clutched at the pintle-mounted storm bolter for support, swinging it round as I regained my balance, and found one of the eldar raiders drifting across the sights. Even before my conscious mind had registered what I was seeing, I pulled the trigger, sending a hail of explosive-tipped projectiles in its general direction.
Luck or the Emperor was certainly with me that day, as the volley ripped along its starboard side, either detonating within the engine, or cooking off its powercells.[18] A miniature thunderclap echoed across the landing field, audible even over the racket of all that firing, and everyone in the vicinity ducked to protect their heads from the rain of debris and dismembered pointy-ear which descended abruptly from the middle of a short-lived fireball. The remaining intact flyer evidently decided enough was enough at that point, and made a run for it, slotting into formation with the one the Chimeras had dented, which was already wallowing away towards the south-west, trailing smoke.
‘Good shot, commissar,’ Sulla broke in, her voice a little attenuated by the miniature vox-device in my ear, and I belatedly realised that at least some of the cheering I could hear from the assembled troopers was intended for me. She’d obviously had a clear view of the incident from her perch in the Chimera turret, and if distance had made it look as though my lucky hit had been the result of skilful marksmanship, who was I to disabuse her?
‘Same to you,’ I said, with a wave in the direction of the retreating eldar. ‘The one you got won’t be in any hurry to tangle with the Five Hundred and Ninety-Seventh again either.’ Which may even have been true, but unfortunately there were still plenty of others who still had that lesson to learn.
