Death or Glory, page 28
As is so often the case with these anecdotes, Cain’s account of his adventures on Perlia concludes somewhat abruptly. I’ve therefore inserted a final extract from Kallis’s book in order to provide a more satisfactory overview of the outcome, which I trust will fill in most of the blanks.
From Green Skins and Black Hearts: The Ork Invasion of Perlia by Hismyonie Kallis, 927 M41
Cain’s audacious raid on the lair of the monster that had brought so much destruction and suffering to the people of Perlia, was to prove the final nail in the coffin of the ork invasion. With Korbul dead, the coalition of ork tribes he’d led so successfully disintegrated almost at once into the usual maelstrom of internecine feuding, rendering them easy pickings for the Imperial Guard forces which were beginning to arrive in orbit in ever-increasing numbers. Within the year, Perlia had been utterly cleansed of the greenskin taint, only a few scattered starships remaining in system to continue their mischief[113], and the other worlds touched by their noisome presence had been similarly freed from their loathesome grasp.
It goes without saying that Korbul’s whereabouts had always been a matter of great interest to the Imperial high command, and that orbital surveillance of his headquarters had been intense, so the Liberator’s attack on it didn’t go unnoticed for long. We can only imagine the astonishment with which the news of his intervention was greeted, astonishment which can only have been compounded by the realisation that it had been carried out by the mysterious fighting force which had been thought lost on the other side of the mountains only the day before. Speculation about who these exceptional warriors were, and who led them, must surely have been intense. Both were questions which were to be swiftly answered.
With the ork forces now in total disarray, the high command lost no time in mobilising their forces for the long-awaited offensive across the peninsular. Now that the greenskins were unable to mount an effective defence, the forces of the Imperial Guard and the PDF fell on the barbarous invaders like a hammer blow, sweeping from victory to victory as they went, finally coming within vox range of the returning heroes. And for the first time, the people of Perlia were to learn the name of the man they were to thank for their deliverance, Ciaphas Cain, the Liberator.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It wasn’t all plain sailing after that of course, we still had the bulk of the ork army to get through before we reached safety, but as the news of their leader’s demise began to spread the heart seemed to go out of them. Individually, they were still just as tough and ferocious as before, they were orks after all, but the cracks in their fragile alliance which Korbul had been able to keep welded together with the force of his personality (or whatever an ork warboss has instead), began to assert themselves almost at once[114]. Several times on the last stage of our journey we found ourselves approaching what we thought to be a battlezone, only to find that the combatants were all orks, settling their differences in the time-honoured way of their kind without the slightest regard for the damage they were doing to their own greater cause as a result.
Not that we were complaining about that. The more of each other they killed, the fewer were left to get in our way. The more organised groups that we couldn’t go around we punched straight through, aided in no small measure by the tactical updates we were beginning to get from the Imperial command net, which gave us a far better idea than we’d ever had before of what was lying ahead of us. In the process of accessing it, Marquony had finally managed to get through to someone among the Imperial forces, who bounced us up the chain of command with gratifying speed, until the vox man informed me with an air of faint incredulity that someone called Alcas, who turned out to be the divisional commander of the Westernlands, was waiting to speak to me.
‘This is Cain,’ I said, raising my voice slightly over the roar of the Chimera’s engine, and projecting what I thought was about the right amount of commissarial dignity. ‘How can I help you, general?’
‘A complete debrief would be a start,’ the voice on the other end said, with a faint trace of amusement. Never having spoken to someone of such an exalted rank before, except at the occasional reception, I was pleasantly surprised. ‘But that will have to wait. Can you confirm that Korbul is dead?’
‘He was when I left him,’ I said, realising that the more reticent I seemed now the more credibility I’d have when I managed to work out a story to explain why I’d made a run for it and blundered into him in the first place. The voice on the other end of the vox link faded a little, and I caught enough to gather that he was passing on the confirmation to someone else in the vicinity. When he came back he sounded more genial than ever.
‘Your sergeant’s report states that you left a covered position to confront him in person.’ Well good for Tayber: he must have assumed I bailed out of the Chimera because I’d caught sight of the warlord. I couldn’t come up with anything better myself, so I might as well reinforce that impression.
‘Once I’d spotted him there wasn’t any time to think,’ I said, truthfully enough. ‘But I suppose on reflection it would have been more sensible to sit tight and wait for the reinforcements to arrive.’
‘Lucky you didn’t,’ Alcas said, sounding gratifyingly impressed. ‘I’ll look forward to hearing the full story when I see you. Our forward units ought to be linking up with you any time now.’
‘If the greenskins are obliging enough to get out of the way,’ I responded. I glanced at the updated tactical display. The first wave of Imperial troops was across the peninsular already, the ork defences swept aside by air strikes and a determined armour thrust. They’d lost little time in advancing, and I have to admit I was impressed by how quickly they’d broken through[115]. As I took in the latest dispositions, the palms of my hands began to tingle, in the old familiar and unwelcome fashion. ‘There seem to be rather a lot of them heading in our general direction.’ Not all of them were routing of course, at least not yet, but the ones who were seemed to be running straight towards us.
‘I’m sure after everything else you’ve had to deal with that won’t be much of a problem,’ Alcas said cheerily, and I forced my voice to remain neutral as I replied.
‘We’ll think of something,’ I said, acutely conscious that any other reaction would undermine my credibility to a dangerous extent, although inwardly I was cursing about as much as you’d imagine. I glanced up at Piers, who was still basking in the success of our raid on Korbul’s headquarters and seemed to think he was the greatest tactician since Macharius as a result. The young captain nodded seriously.
‘We will,’ he agreed.
In the end, the plan we came up with wasn’t much of one at all, but it was the best we could contrive under the circumstances. We were well out on the coastal plain, running as hard and fast as we could directly for the salient occupied by our own forces, which was continuing to expand as they flooded across the peninsular. Fortunately we’d passed through the main concentration of agricultural lands to reach an area of relatively open moorland fringing the coast, over which our vehicles were able to make reasonably good time while maintaining a sound defensive formation (with me as close to the middle of it as I could manage, of course). As the bulk of the retreating greenskins closed with us, we pushed our armour forward, ready to punch our way through the weakest concentration of them that we could find.
The auspex informed me that this was something of a relative term. A positive blizzard of contact icons peppered the screen, and I stuck my head out of the top hatch in order to check with the amplivisor.
I soon wished I hadn’t. As the chill coastal wind, redolent of salt and the sharp tang of seaweed, lashed at my face, I raised the vision enhancers, resolving the long, wavering line on the horizon into wave after wave of ork vehicles, packed with greenskin foot soldiers, all heading towards us as fast as they could. Well it was too late to change our minds now, trying to flee ahead of that onrushing torrent would be futile, and there was nowhere in that undulating, bracken-strewn landscape to mount a defence. Speed and power would be our only allies in this, along with the hope that the fear of the forces behind them would outweigh the impulse to stay and slaughter us.
‘Break up the line,’ I ordered, and our tanks opened fire at optimum range, blowing holes in the larger formations, while our anti-personnel weapons swept the ranks, trying to prevent the disrupted groups from coalescing again. Behind the vehicles, a second line of running figures, orks who’d been unable to hitch a ride, pelted tirelessly after their more fortunate fellows. Shells from our mortars, perilously mounted in the backs of open-topped vehicles, began to detonate among them, provoking the beserker charge I’d expected, and ahead of them the motley collection of trucks and buggies began to accelerate in turn, their gunners firing in our general direction with their usual lack of accuracy.
‘Keep them dispersed!’ I urged, hoping to overcome the greenskins’ instinct to group action as we had in the desert all those weeks before. If we could do that, they might just keep going… One of our captured buggies exploded a few yards away from the hurtling Chimera, the victim of a lucky shot, and I ducked back inside as pieces of debris and its luckless crew pattered down around me. I hurried back to the auspex screen. ‘Is it working?’
‘Up to a point,’ Piers said, indicating the blips. Our attack had thrown the greenskins into disarray, there was no doubt about that, but they seemed to be regrouping in spite of our best efforts, and damnably effectively too. Even as we watched they took out one of the Leman Russes. Any moment now they’d zero in on the main bulk of the convoy, and it would all be over. I felt the bitter taste of bile in my mouth. After all we’d been through, to be baulked here, so close to safety…
‘Incoming aircraft,’ Orilly reported, pointing to a cluster of fast-moving blips, comfortingly tagged with Imperial icons. A few more friendly symbols were becoming visible on the fringe of the screen too, slower moving, presumably our ground units in pursuit of the greenskins. Perhaps the situation wasn’t quite so desperate after all. In spite of my instinctive caution, I peered over the rim of the hatch again, just in time to see the air strike arrive.
Three fast-moving dots, almost too swift for the eye to follow, plummeted earthwards, resolving into the familiar silhouettes of the Thunderbolts we’d seen before (or something pretty much like them). They howled over the ork lines like vengeful daemons, weapon pods sparkling like dew on a fresh summer morning, sowing death and destruction in their wake. A thick pall of smoke began to rise from the centre of the enemy formation, the dazed survivors milling around in abject confusion.
‘Head for the gap!’ I ordered, as our gunners targeted the survivors, mindful as ever of the necessity of keeping them from regaining a cohesive formation. (Or as cohesive as anything orkish ever got.) Our beserker charge, scarcely less desperate or insane than the ork one facing us, began to wheel, heading for the hole the Navy pilots had so considerately opened up for us. At the time, I just thanked the Emperor for the coincidence, little realising how closely our progress over the last few weeks had been monitored, and how eager the upper echelons were to debrief us.
We continued to take fire as we closed, of course, losing a few more of the militia units and a couple of Chimeras[116], but the majority of our vehicles kept going regardless, doing at least as much damage as we took, if not more so. I saw an ork dreadnought take a shell from the Vixen full in the chest, exploding violently, and taking out a couple of nearby bike things as its ammunition cooked off.
Then sudenly we were among them, and I grabbed the pintle-mounted bolter, blazing away at anything green I could find. It was too late to duck back inside and let Jurgen take over, the few seconds that would take perhaps allowing the greenies enough of a respite to gather what passed for their wits and start shooting effectively at us again. Whether I actually hit anything, I’ve no idea, but it seemed to encourage our people, who kept the survivors hopping, and I gradually became aware that the clumps of sporadically shooting greenskins I’d been targeting had been getting fewer and fewer, and that there were no more of their ramshackle vehicles crossing my sights. Our gunner obliterated a final group with a burst from the multi-laser, and I suddenly realised we were clear of them.
‘Friendlies approaching from the west,’ Orilly reported, with a faint air of disbelief. ‘No more enemy units in between.’
‘We made it.’ Piers patted me on the back as I ducked inside again, and a spontaneous cheer began to ripple around the battered survivors of our convoy. Well over half the troopers and most of the irregulars seemed to have made it[117], and as we coasted to a halt and Piers dropped the ramp they all seemed to be shouting my name.
‘Well done, Ciaphas.’ Felicia swung herself down from the cockpit of her Sentinel, which now looked even more battered than ever, and favoured me with the familiar mischievious grin. ‘You’ve finally run out of orks.’
‘And not before time,’ I said, with some feeling. A familiar odour materialised at my shoulder.
‘Recaff, sir?’ Jurgen asked, with his usual impeccable timing. I took the drink gratefully, and narrowed my eyes as a squadron of Sentinels came scurrying up to us. Something about the markings seemed familiar, and as they drew closer I breathed thanks to the Emperor. It was a long shot, but…
‘Commissar Cain?’ the squadron commander asked, clambering down to join us, his accent confirming the conclusion I’d just drawn. I nodded, returning his salute crisply. ‘Captain Renkyn, 362nd Valhallan. We’ve been sent to escort you in.’ He gestured towards the west, where the growl of Chimera engines was growing louder. ‘Is there anything you need?’
‘Medical supplies,’ I said at once, playing to my audience with the ease of a lifetime of practice. The captain relaxed a little, no doubt reassured by my display of concern for the troops. He nodded.
‘No problem. Anything else?’
I echoed the gesture.
‘Got any tanna?’ I asked hopefully.
[On which typically self-centred note, this extract from the archive comes to an abrupt conclusion.]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sandy Mitchell is a pseudonym of Alex Stewart, who has been working as a freelance writer for the last couple of decades. He has written science fiction and fantasy in both personae, as well as television scripts, magazine articles, comics and gaming material. Apart from both miniatures and roleplaying gaming, his hobbies include the martial arts of Aikido and Iaido, and pottering about on the family allotment.
For my grandmother, Lillian Wright, whose enthusiasm for all things science fiction infected me at an early age, and who would have been delighted to know I’d grow up to earn my living writing the stuff.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2006 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Clint Langley
© Games Workshop Limited, 2006, 2011. All rights reserved.
Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2011, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-85787-020-9
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise except as expressly permitted under license from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
eBook license
This license is made between:
Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and
(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)
(jointly, “the parties”)
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From Green Skins and Black Hearts: The Ork Invasion of Perlia by Hismyonie Kallis, 927 M41
Cain’s audacious raid on the lair of the monster that had brought so much destruction and suffering to the people of Perlia, was to prove the final nail in the coffin of the ork invasion. With Korbul dead, the coalition of ork tribes he’d led so successfully disintegrated almost at once into the usual maelstrom of internecine feuding, rendering them easy pickings for the Imperial Guard forces which were beginning to arrive in orbit in ever-increasing numbers. Within the year, Perlia had been utterly cleansed of the greenskin taint, only a few scattered starships remaining in system to continue their mischief[113], and the other worlds touched by their noisome presence had been similarly freed from their loathesome grasp.
It goes without saying that Korbul’s whereabouts had always been a matter of great interest to the Imperial high command, and that orbital surveillance of his headquarters had been intense, so the Liberator’s attack on it didn’t go unnoticed for long. We can only imagine the astonishment with which the news of his intervention was greeted, astonishment which can only have been compounded by the realisation that it had been carried out by the mysterious fighting force which had been thought lost on the other side of the mountains only the day before. Speculation about who these exceptional warriors were, and who led them, must surely have been intense. Both were questions which were to be swiftly answered.
With the ork forces now in total disarray, the high command lost no time in mobilising their forces for the long-awaited offensive across the peninsular. Now that the greenskins were unable to mount an effective defence, the forces of the Imperial Guard and the PDF fell on the barbarous invaders like a hammer blow, sweeping from victory to victory as they went, finally coming within vox range of the returning heroes. And for the first time, the people of Perlia were to learn the name of the man they were to thank for their deliverance, Ciaphas Cain, the Liberator.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It wasn’t all plain sailing after that of course, we still had the bulk of the ork army to get through before we reached safety, but as the news of their leader’s demise began to spread the heart seemed to go out of them. Individually, they were still just as tough and ferocious as before, they were orks after all, but the cracks in their fragile alliance which Korbul had been able to keep welded together with the force of his personality (or whatever an ork warboss has instead), began to assert themselves almost at once[114]. Several times on the last stage of our journey we found ourselves approaching what we thought to be a battlezone, only to find that the combatants were all orks, settling their differences in the time-honoured way of their kind without the slightest regard for the damage they were doing to their own greater cause as a result.
Not that we were complaining about that. The more of each other they killed, the fewer were left to get in our way. The more organised groups that we couldn’t go around we punched straight through, aided in no small measure by the tactical updates we were beginning to get from the Imperial command net, which gave us a far better idea than we’d ever had before of what was lying ahead of us. In the process of accessing it, Marquony had finally managed to get through to someone among the Imperial forces, who bounced us up the chain of command with gratifying speed, until the vox man informed me with an air of faint incredulity that someone called Alcas, who turned out to be the divisional commander of the Westernlands, was waiting to speak to me.
‘This is Cain,’ I said, raising my voice slightly over the roar of the Chimera’s engine, and projecting what I thought was about the right amount of commissarial dignity. ‘How can I help you, general?’
‘A complete debrief would be a start,’ the voice on the other end said, with a faint trace of amusement. Never having spoken to someone of such an exalted rank before, except at the occasional reception, I was pleasantly surprised. ‘But that will have to wait. Can you confirm that Korbul is dead?’
‘He was when I left him,’ I said, realising that the more reticent I seemed now the more credibility I’d have when I managed to work out a story to explain why I’d made a run for it and blundered into him in the first place. The voice on the other end of the vox link faded a little, and I caught enough to gather that he was passing on the confirmation to someone else in the vicinity. When he came back he sounded more genial than ever.
‘Your sergeant’s report states that you left a covered position to confront him in person.’ Well good for Tayber: he must have assumed I bailed out of the Chimera because I’d caught sight of the warlord. I couldn’t come up with anything better myself, so I might as well reinforce that impression.
‘Once I’d spotted him there wasn’t any time to think,’ I said, truthfully enough. ‘But I suppose on reflection it would have been more sensible to sit tight and wait for the reinforcements to arrive.’
‘Lucky you didn’t,’ Alcas said, sounding gratifyingly impressed. ‘I’ll look forward to hearing the full story when I see you. Our forward units ought to be linking up with you any time now.’
‘If the greenskins are obliging enough to get out of the way,’ I responded. I glanced at the updated tactical display. The first wave of Imperial troops was across the peninsular already, the ork defences swept aside by air strikes and a determined armour thrust. They’d lost little time in advancing, and I have to admit I was impressed by how quickly they’d broken through[115]. As I took in the latest dispositions, the palms of my hands began to tingle, in the old familiar and unwelcome fashion. ‘There seem to be rather a lot of them heading in our general direction.’ Not all of them were routing of course, at least not yet, but the ones who were seemed to be running straight towards us.
‘I’m sure after everything else you’ve had to deal with that won’t be much of a problem,’ Alcas said cheerily, and I forced my voice to remain neutral as I replied.
‘We’ll think of something,’ I said, acutely conscious that any other reaction would undermine my credibility to a dangerous extent, although inwardly I was cursing about as much as you’d imagine. I glanced up at Piers, who was still basking in the success of our raid on Korbul’s headquarters and seemed to think he was the greatest tactician since Macharius as a result. The young captain nodded seriously.
‘We will,’ he agreed.
In the end, the plan we came up with wasn’t much of one at all, but it was the best we could contrive under the circumstances. We were well out on the coastal plain, running as hard and fast as we could directly for the salient occupied by our own forces, which was continuing to expand as they flooded across the peninsular. Fortunately we’d passed through the main concentration of agricultural lands to reach an area of relatively open moorland fringing the coast, over which our vehicles were able to make reasonably good time while maintaining a sound defensive formation (with me as close to the middle of it as I could manage, of course). As the bulk of the retreating greenskins closed with us, we pushed our armour forward, ready to punch our way through the weakest concentration of them that we could find.
The auspex informed me that this was something of a relative term. A positive blizzard of contact icons peppered the screen, and I stuck my head out of the top hatch in order to check with the amplivisor.
I soon wished I hadn’t. As the chill coastal wind, redolent of salt and the sharp tang of seaweed, lashed at my face, I raised the vision enhancers, resolving the long, wavering line on the horizon into wave after wave of ork vehicles, packed with greenskin foot soldiers, all heading towards us as fast as they could. Well it was too late to change our minds now, trying to flee ahead of that onrushing torrent would be futile, and there was nowhere in that undulating, bracken-strewn landscape to mount a defence. Speed and power would be our only allies in this, along with the hope that the fear of the forces behind them would outweigh the impulse to stay and slaughter us.
‘Break up the line,’ I ordered, and our tanks opened fire at optimum range, blowing holes in the larger formations, while our anti-personnel weapons swept the ranks, trying to prevent the disrupted groups from coalescing again. Behind the vehicles, a second line of running figures, orks who’d been unable to hitch a ride, pelted tirelessly after their more fortunate fellows. Shells from our mortars, perilously mounted in the backs of open-topped vehicles, began to detonate among them, provoking the beserker charge I’d expected, and ahead of them the motley collection of trucks and buggies began to accelerate in turn, their gunners firing in our general direction with their usual lack of accuracy.
‘Keep them dispersed!’ I urged, hoping to overcome the greenskins’ instinct to group action as we had in the desert all those weeks before. If we could do that, they might just keep going… One of our captured buggies exploded a few yards away from the hurtling Chimera, the victim of a lucky shot, and I ducked back inside as pieces of debris and its luckless crew pattered down around me. I hurried back to the auspex screen. ‘Is it working?’
‘Up to a point,’ Piers said, indicating the blips. Our attack had thrown the greenskins into disarray, there was no doubt about that, but they seemed to be regrouping in spite of our best efforts, and damnably effectively too. Even as we watched they took out one of the Leman Russes. Any moment now they’d zero in on the main bulk of the convoy, and it would all be over. I felt the bitter taste of bile in my mouth. After all we’d been through, to be baulked here, so close to safety…
‘Incoming aircraft,’ Orilly reported, pointing to a cluster of fast-moving blips, comfortingly tagged with Imperial icons. A few more friendly symbols were becoming visible on the fringe of the screen too, slower moving, presumably our ground units in pursuit of the greenskins. Perhaps the situation wasn’t quite so desperate after all. In spite of my instinctive caution, I peered over the rim of the hatch again, just in time to see the air strike arrive.
Three fast-moving dots, almost too swift for the eye to follow, plummeted earthwards, resolving into the familiar silhouettes of the Thunderbolts we’d seen before (or something pretty much like them). They howled over the ork lines like vengeful daemons, weapon pods sparkling like dew on a fresh summer morning, sowing death and destruction in their wake. A thick pall of smoke began to rise from the centre of the enemy formation, the dazed survivors milling around in abject confusion.
‘Head for the gap!’ I ordered, as our gunners targeted the survivors, mindful as ever of the necessity of keeping them from regaining a cohesive formation. (Or as cohesive as anything orkish ever got.) Our beserker charge, scarcely less desperate or insane than the ork one facing us, began to wheel, heading for the hole the Navy pilots had so considerately opened up for us. At the time, I just thanked the Emperor for the coincidence, little realising how closely our progress over the last few weeks had been monitored, and how eager the upper echelons were to debrief us.
We continued to take fire as we closed, of course, losing a few more of the militia units and a couple of Chimeras[116], but the majority of our vehicles kept going regardless, doing at least as much damage as we took, if not more so. I saw an ork dreadnought take a shell from the Vixen full in the chest, exploding violently, and taking out a couple of nearby bike things as its ammunition cooked off.
Then sudenly we were among them, and I grabbed the pintle-mounted bolter, blazing away at anything green I could find. It was too late to duck back inside and let Jurgen take over, the few seconds that would take perhaps allowing the greenies enough of a respite to gather what passed for their wits and start shooting effectively at us again. Whether I actually hit anything, I’ve no idea, but it seemed to encourage our people, who kept the survivors hopping, and I gradually became aware that the clumps of sporadically shooting greenskins I’d been targeting had been getting fewer and fewer, and that there were no more of their ramshackle vehicles crossing my sights. Our gunner obliterated a final group with a burst from the multi-laser, and I suddenly realised we were clear of them.
‘Friendlies approaching from the west,’ Orilly reported, with a faint air of disbelief. ‘No more enemy units in between.’
‘We made it.’ Piers patted me on the back as I ducked inside again, and a spontaneous cheer began to ripple around the battered survivors of our convoy. Well over half the troopers and most of the irregulars seemed to have made it[117], and as we coasted to a halt and Piers dropped the ramp they all seemed to be shouting my name.
‘Well done, Ciaphas.’ Felicia swung herself down from the cockpit of her Sentinel, which now looked even more battered than ever, and favoured me with the familiar mischievious grin. ‘You’ve finally run out of orks.’
‘And not before time,’ I said, with some feeling. A familiar odour materialised at my shoulder.
‘Recaff, sir?’ Jurgen asked, with his usual impeccable timing. I took the drink gratefully, and narrowed my eyes as a squadron of Sentinels came scurrying up to us. Something about the markings seemed familiar, and as they drew closer I breathed thanks to the Emperor. It was a long shot, but…
‘Commissar Cain?’ the squadron commander asked, clambering down to join us, his accent confirming the conclusion I’d just drawn. I nodded, returning his salute crisply. ‘Captain Renkyn, 362nd Valhallan. We’ve been sent to escort you in.’ He gestured towards the west, where the growl of Chimera engines was growing louder. ‘Is there anything you need?’
‘Medical supplies,’ I said at once, playing to my audience with the ease of a lifetime of practice. The captain relaxed a little, no doubt reassured by my display of concern for the troops. He nodded.
‘No problem. Anything else?’
I echoed the gesture.
‘Got any tanna?’ I asked hopefully.
[On which typically self-centred note, this extract from the archive comes to an abrupt conclusion.]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sandy Mitchell is a pseudonym of Alex Stewart, who has been working as a freelance writer for the last couple of decades. He has written science fiction and fantasy in both personae, as well as television scripts, magazine articles, comics and gaming material. Apart from both miniatures and roleplaying gaming, his hobbies include the martial arts of Aikido and Iaido, and pottering about on the family allotment.
For my grandmother, Lillian Wright, whose enthusiasm for all things science fiction infected me at an early age, and who would have been delighted to know I’d grow up to earn my living writing the stuff.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2006 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Clint Langley
© Games Workshop Limited, 2006, 2011. All rights reserved.
Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2011, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-85787-020-9
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise except as expressly permitted under license from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
eBook license
This license is made between:
Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and
(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)
(jointly, “the parties”)
These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:
* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:
o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;
o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and
* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.
* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:
o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;
o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;
o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;
