Cain's Last Stand, page 27
‘Fire in the hole!’ he bellowed, and the two cadets jumped, hitting the ground almost at the same instant the frag charge went off. The Chimera’s turret stopped moving, and they trotted over to join Jurgen and I, grinning like squaddies on their first R&R who’ve just discovered what joygirls are for.
‘That was reckless, irresponsible, and very well done,’ I told them, as they hopped over the sandbags and peered hopefully at the gate, no doubt itching for more heretics to bag. ‘But you got lucky. What do you think you’d have done if that idiot hadn’t opened the hatch for you?’
‘Used these,’ Frister said, pulling a couple of krak grenades from his pocket. ‘Jammed them under the barrel and run for it.’
‘You’re always telling us to have a backup plan,’ Dallory added. That was true, and I couldn’t really bring myself to chide them for saving my neck, so I simply nodded.
‘Commendably resourceful,’ I said. ‘Hang on to those, you may need them.’ I could see movement around the back of the wrecked Chimera, a trooper in the uniform of the Perlian PDF peering cautiously into the courtyard, no doubt having drawn the short straw, or hacked off his sergeant in some way, to earn the privilege of going first.
‘He’s Perlian,’ Maklin reported, the amplivisor to his eyes again. ‘But I can’t make out the unit insignia. They’ve been scribbled over with some sort of cartwheel design.’
Which told me all I needed to know. Clearly the guards at the Governor’s palace hadn’t been the only ones to turn their coats, although how widespread the mutiny had become, I had no way of telling. If I remembered rightly, however, the serial numbers on the wrecked Chimera identified it as belonging to one of the Havendown companies, which made sense; there were no other garrisons nearby that could have dispatched them so quickly.
‘Hold your fire,’ I told everyone. ‘Let them commit. We’ll only get the advantage of surprise once.’ The turncoat trooper took another cautious step or two, glancing around the courtyard as warily as a sump-rat emerging from its burrow, manifestly astonished not to have been gunned down yet. A moment later he looked behind him and beckoned, relaxing a little, evidently prepared to believe that any further resistance had been effectively suppressed.
‘We’re almost finished boarding,’ Kayla voxed, as a few more figures began to round the end of the crippled AFV. ‘Can you give us another few minutes before pulling back?’
‘We’ll do our best,’ I replied, as quietly as I could, not wanting to give the enemy troopers any warning that we were lurking in ambush. More of them were on the move, now, slipping past the disabled Chimera, and spreading out, their guns held ready for use in an instant. The first squad was followed by another, their green and grey battledress marking them out as Madasans, in contrast to the Perlian khaki[79], and I frowned at the implications of that. However deranged Varan was, it seemed, he was able to integrate any fresh defectors into his armies as effectively as though they’d been through basic training together. That was a trick a good number of Imperial commanders I’d known would have cheerfully sold their souls to acquire, although, from what I’d seen of the way the Powers worked, I had no doubt that that would have been the least of the price Varan had paid.
After a moment I judged that the time was right to strike; a few more enemy troopers in the bag would have been a welcome bonus, but if we waited any longer they’d be too spread out to be sure of, so I gave the word of command.
‘Fire!’ I shouted, and Stebbins opened up with the autocannon, no doubt hugely delighted to have finally found a weapon even he couldn’t miss the target with, scything down the front row of enemy troopers before they had a chance to react. Jurgen, the other cadets, and I opened up too, my aide eschewing the melta for the nonce in favour of his lasgun, taking full advantage of the wider spread it afforded. Caught between the SAW[80] and the blizzard of las-bolts most of them went down very nicely, only a couple surviving to run for cover, from where they returned fire without any noticeable effect. ‘Cover the gateway.’
‘Doing our best, sir,’ Maklin assured me. The autocannon went quiet for a moment, while he replaced the ammunition belt, then opened up again, just in time to force another traitor trooper to duck back behind the hull of the Chimera. Two or three other troopers hovered behind him, and another couple, a bit quicker off the mark, were already sprinting for the dubious cover afforded by the smoking ruin of the pile of sandbags Jurgen and I had abandoned a few moments before. One went down, felled by our las weapons, but his squad mate made it to safety, and began adding a little more to the hail of las-bolts aimed in our general direction.
I started running the numbers in my head, not liking any of the conclusions I came to. The choke point we’d created was slowing them down, but unlike the usual Chaotic hordes I’d faced, the enemy wasn’t about to charge obligingly down the barrels of our guns, dying in droves in the process. Instead, they continued to act like trained and motivated troopers, content to wait for an opportunity to advance, laying down suppressive fire as they did so, and taking full advantage of whatever cover was available. On the other hand, they seemed just as fanatical as the acolytes of the Ruinous Powers always did, indifferent to their own losses, and willing to take chances with their lives even Imperial Stormtroopers would probably baulk at.
The worst of both worlds, in other words; I had no doubt that they’d continue to slip past the wreck in ones and twos, every time we paused to reload, until they had the weight of numbers on their side, and that if we tried to disengage before then, they’d just rush us before we’d gone a dozen metres. The thought of running for the shuttle with a horde of murderous fanatics at my heels, shooting as they came, was far from a pleasant one, I can assure you.
At that moment, Maklin and Stebbins stopped firing, and I glanced across at the autocannon emplacement. Maklin was working the feed mechanism frantically, trying to clear a jam, and a sudden hail of las-rounds against the metal shield protecting him and Stebbins told me that the enemy were about to take full advantage of the lull.
‘It’s no good, it’s overheated,’ Stebbins said, starting to draw his laspistol.
‘Then I’ll cool it!’ Maklin said, practically shoving his fellow cadet back into the gunner’s seat, and beginning to fumble with his trousers. ‘Keep firing!’ A moment later a cloud of rank-smelling steam told me that he’d picked up an old gunner’s trick for cooling a weapon in an emergency, from Emperor knew where, and I found myself thanking the Throne that all our tech-priests were currently filing aboard the cargo ship, rather than being anywhere they could have witnessed so profane a desecration of the Omnissiah’s bounty. We’d never have heard the last of it. ‘Try it now!’
Stebbins squeezed the trigger again, and, to everyone’s relief except the enemy’s, the autocannon burst into life once more. By this point the damage had been done, however, almost a dozen of the turncoats making it through the gap despite the best efforts of the rest of us and, of course, the more of them who joined the fray, the more time we spent ducking behind our improvised ramparts, dodging the return fire, which allowed still more of their comrades to join them. Maklin’s success in getting the autocannon working again had stemmed the tide, but only briefly; at the rate Stebbins was burning ammunition it could only be a matter of time before it seized up again, or they simply ran dry, and then the heretics would be on us like Jurgen’s psoriasis.
Glancing round for a line of retreat, I noticed the deep cracks in the masonry around the gateway again, and the germ of an idea began to take root. It was a slender chance, I thought, but then I’d hazarded my life on a lot slimmer before now, and I was still breathing; as I’ve remarked on more than one occasion, even the narrowest of margins is better than no chance at all. I gestured to Jurgen. ‘The archway,’ I said. ‘Can you do anything about it from here?’
Divining my meaning at once, my aide nodded. ‘Piece of cake,’ he assured me, abandoning the lasgun for the melta once again. His aim was as sure as always, the ravening burst of thermal energy impacting on the crumbling masonry above the abandoned Chimera, and a large block of stone teetered, before crashing to the ground, crushing another of the traitors who’d ducked back behind it to wait out the storm of autocannon rounds spanging off the abused armour plate. Expelling his breath in a sigh of frustration, Jurgen steadied his aim again, but before he could fire Frister and Dallory had flung their remaining krak grenades at the gateway: the anti-armour charges exploded with a satisfying roar, which was drowned out almost at once by the thunder of toppling stone.
‘That’s plugged the gap,’ Dallory said, an unmistakable note of satisfaction in his voice, just as Kayla voxed again.
‘Almost everyone’s aboard, commissar,’ she reported, sounding a little frazzled, but that was no more than I’d expected. When I spoke to her later, it seemed that a few of the tech-priests had got a little difficult about having to leave some cherished items of junk behind to fit everybody in, which Nelys had finally sorted out by asking which of them was offering to stay behind to make room for it. The lad was definitely coming on.
‘We’ll be right there,’ I told her, privately wondering just how we were going to manage that without being overrun by the heretics already inside the walls, not to mention the dozens of others no doubt preparing at that moment to scramble up the pile of rubble we’d just thoughtfully provided for them to climb. I turned my attention to the others. ‘Pull back, by fire and movement. Stebbins and Maklin go first.’ No point in finding any hidden sharpshooters for myself.
The two cadets abandoned the autocannon, and scuttled for the safety of a buttress holding up one of the proctor’s lodges, while the rest of us laid down what covering fire we could. By a miracle they made it, although the next stage would be even trickier; two laspistols could hardly be expected to suppress over a dozen armed, and by now probably very hacked-off, heretics with any degree of success. If we kept as low as we could, taking full advantage of the sandbags, we might just make it as far as one of the outbuildings, though, and hope we could find refuge there. Of course it was pretty obvious where we’d be heading for, so all the enemy had to do was take aim at the two points the sandbags ended and wait, but there was nothing we could do about that except hope that Stebbins and Maklin could keep their heads down long enough for Jurgen to get a quick shot off with the melta.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any of those frag grenades left?’ I asked hopefully, and Dallory shook his head.
‘’Fraid not, sir,’ he said regretfully. I poked my head above the sandbags as much as I dared (which wasn’t much, believe me), and ducked back at once as puffs of vaporised hessian and kicked up dirt erupted around my position. This didn’t look good, but there seemed no alternative to making a dash for it, putting my trust in Stebbins’ dubious marksmanship, my battered set of carapace, and whatever attention the Emperor could spare from keeping the galaxy turning, which I didn’t expect to be much.
‘Need a hand there, Cain?’ a familiar voice asked, and Julien trotted into the courtyard, her power armour gleaming like freshly-shed blood, her bolt pistol and chainsword already in her hands. Behind her came the troop of novitiates, bolters cradled, sinister highlights dancing along the edges of the sarissas locked to their barrels[81].
‘I wouldn’t object to one,’ I told her, never having been so pleased to see a gaggle of Sororitas in my life. The heretics opened up as soon as they saw them, of course, their las-rounds expending themselves harmlessly against the crimson ceramite of Julien’s armour, and the freshly-painted white of her charges. With ear-splitting shrieks of ‘For the Throne!’ the novitiates bounded into the attack, tearing apart troopers and the cover they hid behind with a hail of bolter fire, slashing at the demoralised survivors with their sarissas, and generally wreaking a most satisfying amount of carnage.
Leaving the novitiates to enjoy themselves, we hurried through the strangely-deserted schola, its courtyards and quadrangles seeming eerie and lifeless. Only then did it occur to me that I’d never seen them anything other than bustling, in all the time I’d spent here. Despite the sense of urgency, and the buzzing of adrenaline in my veins, I found the prospect curiously melancholy, like seeing an old friend in the sanitorium for what you both know is liable to be the last time, and I found myself trying to take in as many little details of the closest thing I’d ever known to a home as I could.
The sounds of battle had long since faded behind us as we reached the shuttle pad, and I glanced up at the huge cargo hauler, hardly surprised at all to see a familiar shock of ruddy hair through the visor of the cockpit. Glancing down, Sprie waved a cheerful greeting, and returned his attention to his instruments.
‘Hurry up, commissar! No time for sightseeing!’ Julien’s voice was in my comm-bead again, and I turned, catching sight of her in the distance, flanked by her novitiates, whose white, blood-spattered armour made them look like vengeful ghosts in the half-light. None of them seemed to be missing, I noted with relief; we’d already suffered more than enough casualties, and when we arrived at our destination we’d need all the warriors we could muster. They were catching up fast, their augmented muscles allowing them to maintain a pace which would have had the cadets and I dropping with exhaustion by now, and their metal-shod feet clattered on the boarding ramp almost simultaneously with ours. ‘We gave them a bloody nose back there, but they’ll regroup in short order, and then they’ll be all over us.’
‘They won’t have time,’ I said, with heartfelt relief, as the ramp began to rise behind us. The cargo hold was just as crowded as I’d feared, and I resolved at once to go and annoy Sprie on the flight deck at the earliest opportunity. I glanced back through the narrowing gap, seeing a flicker of movement in the distance, which could possibly have been running men, but the thick metal slab thudded into place before I could be sure. A moment later the unmistakable surge of acceleration beneath my feet, and the familiar expression of nausea on the face of my aide, informed me that we were airborne. ‘Thank you for your assistance, by the way. It was most timely.’
‘My pleasure,’ Julien said, with every sign of sincerity. Then she smiled, a trifle grimly. ‘It gave the novitiates an easy blooding, which was probably no bad thing.’ She glanced at Monyka and Maklin, who were grinning at each other inanely, and lowered her voice a little, although between the babbling of overlapping conversations around us and the roaring of the shuttle’s engines the danger of being overheard was minimal. ‘I’ve no doubt the next battle we face won’t be anything like as easy.’
In that, of course, she was perfectly correct, although I couldn’t even begin to tell her quite how desperate things were about to become. When Varan became aware of the location of the Shadowlight, we’d no longer be fighting to save a world: the fate of the entire galaxy would be hanging in the balance, and I was by no means sure we’d be able to tip it in the right direction with the limited resources at our disposal.
EDITORIAL NOTE:
As will no doubt be obvious to most attentive readers, by this point the situation across the face of Perlia was confused to say the least. As Cain barely bothers to acknowledge the fact, I’ve appended another brief extract from a popular account, which, though far from comprehensive, at least touches on most of the salient points with commendable brevity.
From The Return of the Liberator: Ciaphas Cain and the Second Siege of Perlia by Orten Bassit, 037. M42.
Though Commissar Cain had been far from idle, rallying resistance to the detestable foe with single-minded diligence, unrest and sedition continued to erupt sporadically across the face of Perlia. The Liberator’s pictcasts, relayed from space by his heroic compatriots in the SDF, did much to calm the situation, which would undoubtedly have been far worse after the unmasking of Governor Trevellyan as a secret worshipper of the Dark Powers, stiffening the resolve of those determined to defend the planet from the Great Enemy whatever the cost. The decisive actions of Illyria Trevellyan, the newly-appointed incumbent of the office, who had been hastily sworn in to replace her treacherous uncle, also boosted morale among the loyalists, her own pictcasts denouncing the turncoats and fainthearts doing at least as much damage to their cause as the hunting rifle she lost no time in turning on the traitors who had dared to attack her vacation lodge[82].
As a result, although pockets of subversion continued to flare up, almost randomly, across the planet, usually in towns already held by the invaders, only a small proportion of the PDF heeded the call to surrender; most, instead, followed the example of their predecessors during the greenskin invasion, and scattered, commencing guerrilla strikes against the occupiers without recourse to any higher authority. In this they were greatly assisted by the newly-inducted members of the PDV, who, as civilians in all but name, were able to blend into the general populace far more easily, striking and vanishing again almost at will, creating disruption out of all proportion to their limited numbers.
The sole exception was in and around Havendown, where the taint of Chaotic corruption spread unbelievably fast, ensnaring most of the PDF units within the vicinity of the capital, who, to a man, began to swear unyielding fealty to Varan. Even the near destruction of his flagship, in a strike of breathtaking audacity by the SDF, failed to shake their faith in this supposedly invincible leader; and so the stage was set for the final confrontation between the embodiment of all that was foul, in the shape of the invading warmaster, and the incarnate compendium of the finest human virtues represented by Ciaphas Cain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The flight to the Valley of Daemons was a remarkably short one, or so it seemed to me, although that may have been due at least in part to my foreknowledge of the fate that almost certainly awaited us there. I diverted myself from these morbid reflections as much as I could by conversing with Sprie, as the laden cargo shuttle rolled back the night, hurtling eastwards through almost half a day’s worth of time zones, so that by the time we’d arrived at our destination the sun had shuffled back from the dusk of early evening to a point a little past noon.
