Choose Your Enemies, page 3
Editorial Note:
There now follows one of the lacunae in Cain’s narrative which typically occur whenever he feels nothing of interest has happened to him personally in the intervening period. A great deal happened in the month he so cavalierly glosses over, however, so – as is my habit under these circumstances – I’ve attempted to fill the gap with some supplementary material.
Unfortunately, as so often the case where his period of service with the 597th is concerned, the most accessible and reliable account is that of Jenit Sulla, whose undeniable strategic and tactical expertise never extended to the selection of an appropriate adjective; or, indeed, a mere one when a handful would do. Those readers whose literary sensibilities are too tender to withstand one of her attempts to beat the Gothic language into submission will find Cain mentions enough in passing to infer much of what follows when he picks up his own narrative, and can therefore skip ahead without too much loss of clarity, but those robust enough to grit their teeth and plough on regardless will be rewarded for their persistence with a more rounded view.
The choice is yours: I know which I would make.
From Like a Phoenix on the Wing: the Early Campaigns and Glorious Victories of the Valhallan 597th by General Jenit Sulla (retired), 101 M42
The baptism of fire which we received on disembarkation was, as we’d been forewarned, an early harbinger of the conflict to come, though by the grace of the Emperor, and the inspirational leadership of Commissar Cain, the perfidious eldar got an early taste of the defeat which became inevitable as soon as our women and men set foot on the welcoming snows of Drechia. Had it not been for the redoubtable commissar’s alertness and typical concern for those fortunate enough to serve with him, warning us all before carrying the fight to the enemy without a thought for his personal safety, things might well have gone far worse than they did.
But thanks to Commissar Cain we had an early and easy victory, which did much to swell the hearts and stiffen the resolve of the daughters and sons of Valhalla – a resolve which hardened rapidly to ice,[19] inspiring us all to do our duty without fear or hesitation.
Indeed, at first we may even have been a trifle overconfident, as the tide of battle seemed to be turning in our favour with remarkable speed. The terrain we found ourselves in was ideal for skirmish warfare, being frequently wrapped in blizzards and lesser flurries which concealed our movements, and which enabled us to conduct a number of highly successful ambuscades. The last sight for many an eldar pirate was a Valhallan soldier rising from beneath the snow,[20] lasgun or utility blade in hand to strike them down without mercy in the blessed name of Him on Earth.
Despite the optimistic forecast of some of the rank and file that we’d have the xenos on the run within days of our arrival, however, I couldn’t quite shake a sense of foreboding that things had been a little too easy for us, and that the tide of battle might be about to turn. Accordingly, we busied ourselves with strengthening the defences bequeathed to us by the local planetary defence force, which, alas, was barely adequate to the task of protecting the strategically vital mines. Though no doubt doing the best job they could, their reluctance to engage the enemy in the open, where the attackers were most vulnerable, meant that there were very few heavy weapon emplacements on the surface approaches, and no trenches linking them to facilitate the protected movement of our reserves, which might have slowed an assault. Wary of underestimating our opponents, Colonel Kasteen ordered the immediate construction of adequate fortifications, which went on apace, removing the local defence troopers from the surface altogether in favour of deploying them at strategic points in the hab areas and the mine itself, where their local knowledge would be utilised to its best effect, and, as Commissar Cain jokingly put it, ‘they couldn’t get in the way when the fighting starts.’[21]
A piece of foresight which was to prove its worth ere long, as the eldar made their first attack in force. I had adumbrated such a move on the part of our enemies for several days by this point, since their periodic raids had diminished in frequency to the point of apparently ceasing altogether, and the only reasonable inference was that they were about to change their tactics. A conclusion, it must be said, which was shared by Colonel Kasteen, Major Broklaw and, of course, the inestimable Commissar Cain. Since the majority of the early attacks had been on the storage areas near the landing field, where the bounty of the mines was sent off-world for utilisation and such further processing as was economically unfeasible in the outer system, the stockpiles had been moved under cover where a chain of natural caverns, considerably enlarged by subsequent ore extraction, stood conveniently close to the entrance of the mines.
These, of course, immediately became the pirates’ prime target, and no little effort was made to secure them as far as was feasible. And, as we’d all anticipated, it wasn’t long before the perfidious[22] xenos struck, just as we had anticipated.
Our first intimation of trouble came as second platoon of my own company escorted a convoy of trucks to the landing field, to meet the first incoming shuttle from an orbiting ore barge. Such operations had become routine, of course, over the past few weeks, running almost around the clock,[23] and we had no reason to suspect that this occasion would be any different.
Until, that is, a squadron of eldar jetbikes screamed down out of the evening sky, spitting fire at our gallant defenders. This was a tactic we’d become used to, of course, and our Chimera crews responded with alacrity, laying down an impenetrable field of fire with their turret-mounted heavy bolters. In this they were greatly aided by a couple of Hydras, requisitioned from the local defence force, whose own enginseers had proved inadequate to the task of resanctifying them after they’d taken some disabling battle damage in the early days of the conflict.[24] So far, then, we’d seen nothing out of the ordinary – a minor irritation at best.[25] That was to change, however, as the leading Chimera took a hit to its flanking armour which killed its engine, driver and gunner but, by the Emperor’s good grace, left most of the squad riding in it relatively unharmed – who, of course, disembarked with speed, taking the fight to the enemy with all the righteous wrath it behoves us to display in the face of the unhallowed.
That such a grievous blow was far beyond the firepower available to the swooping jetbikes became immediately apparent to me, and I swiftly despatched first and fifth platoon to reinforce the beleaguered convoy, while deploying third and fourth to the flanks, intending to channel the incoming raiders towards the waiting guns of the rest of the regiment – a course of action, I’m gratified to say, which Colonel Kasteen immediately approved, mobilising two further companies to assist us. Further incoming fire, and a break in the mild blizzard[26] then prevailing, revealed the full extent of the threat we were facing: eldar Dreadnoughts, towering over the ground troops scuttling round their feet, their weapons dealing out destruction with every stride. Undaunted, the surviving vehicles retargeted their heavy bolters, ignoring for the nonce the jetbikes which continued to harry them like circling carrion birds, and were soon giving as good as they got, chewing away at the curious flexible material of which these hell-spawned monstrosities were composed.[27]
Nevertheless, as the battle continued to rage, Commissar Cain’s frustration at being, for once, out of the thick of the fighting palpable in his voxed exhortations of encouragement, the balance began to tip inexorably in favour of the xenos interlopers. For a moment, indeed, every woman and man of us held her or his breath, preparing for the onslaught, resolute in our duty and our loyalty to the Golden Throne until, with a loud huzzah!, our Sentinel squadron burst from the cover of the abandoned warehouses surrounding us to take the enemy by surprise in their turn. Caught between this fresh threat and the newly emboldened convoy escorts, the eldar began to waver, only to see one of the Dreadnoughts chewed to pieces by a Hydra, which had followed the example of the Chimeras and redirected its fire towards the targets on the ground. Strictly against standing doctrine, but under the circumstances I felt the gunner’s show of initiative was justified, if not actually commendable.
That was the final straw, and the whole pack turned, retreating in remarkably good order, but retreating none the less.
So ended the first major battle with the eldar, but it was a victory I felt was hard won – so much so that the thought of how close we had come to defeat continued to worry me for some days afterwards, spurring us all on to do our utmost to ensure our ultimate victory.
THREE
‘How are we supposed to keep the bastards contained when we don’t even know where they’re coming from?’ Kasteen asked, glaring at the hololith in the command centre as though it had just said something deeply offensive about her parentage. At the moment there were no confirmed enemy contacts marked, although a few runes indicated possible sightings within the last day or so. Since they’d all been reported by local militia units, who never ventured out of their comfortably heated transports or beyond their assigned patrol areas around the most populous hab zones, none of us were inclined to give them much credence though. ‘And where the hell do they go afterwards?’
‘Just what we’ve been asking ourselves ever since they first arrived,’ our constant, unwelcome and uninvited guest put in dryly. Kelso Proktor was our liaison with the local governor’s office, a fairly thankless task to give him his due, since the governor herself had barely so much as acknowledged our presence. In fact she’d made it abundantly clear from the moment of our arrival that she resented the imposition of an Astra Militarum regiment on her world, remaining convinced in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that her own local militia would have had the xenos interlopers on the run in short order.[28] Proktor was dressed in the grey vestments of a senior Administratum adept, and everything about him, from his pallor to the tenor of his voice, seemed designed to blur the boundary between the man and his clothing. On the plus side, I’d noticed, he tended to say what he thought regardless of how it might be received, took the time to consider whatever information was to hand before offering an opinion, and displayed occasional signs of a sense of humour rare in a bureaucrat of his eminence – which, I strongly suspected, went a long way towards explaining how he’d managed to hack off the governor enough to be assigned to us.
‘Ciaphas?’ Broklaw looked at me appraisingly over the lip of his tanna bowl, squinting a little through the rising steam. Through long habit I’d made sure (or, to be more accurate, made sure Jurgen made sure) that the samovar was close to the main briefing area, where I spent the bulk of my time ostensibly analysing what meagre intelligence we’d been able to gather about the enemy and their movements. Though the Valhallans around me, manning vox and data lecterns for the most part, were in shirt sleeves, the air temperature was still hovering at levels more suited to the preservation of meat, and a ready supply of warm beverages was at least as essential to my relative comfort as my Commissariat-issue greatcoat (for which I’d been constantly grateful since first being assigned to a regiment from an iceworld). ‘You’ve seen more of the eldar than the rest of us. What do you think?’
I shrugged, as though my previous encounters with the creatures had been of little interest or concern, although they’d taken me as close to death as I’d ever been on a couple of occasions.[29] ‘We were hardly on social terms,’ I said, noting the shadow of a smile on Proktor’s face at the remark with a flicker of gratified surprise. Kasteen and Broklaw had become used to my pose of self-deprecating humour over the years, and it was nice to see that it still worked on other people. ‘But they seem to get around by using some kind of tunnels through space. Which is why they’re so damnably hard to pin down, of course.’
‘You mean they can jump through the warp?’ Proktor asked, clearly astonished; his voice had acquired a quiver of emotion quite unlike his usual barely inflected delivery, which had become a little more nasal since he’d begun spending so much time in the command centre and acquired a semi-permanent cold. He made the sign of the aquila as he spoke, reflexively warding off any misfortune which might have accrued from the casual mention of the immaterium itself, then looked faintly embarrassed as he realised what he’d done.
‘I thought opening a way into the warp meant some kind of ritual,’ Kasteen said. ‘Like those cultists were trying to do on Adumbria.’
I nodded in reply, trying not to think too much about that particular incident. They’d been trying to let Emeli, a Slaaneshi sorceress I’d already killed once, return to the materium as a daemon, and had come within a heartbeat of succeeding. I generally did my best to put both incidents out of my mind, as Emeli had a disconcerting habit of invading my dreams whenever I was reminded of them, and I was morbidly certain she’d do so again tonight now the sludge of memory had been stirred up; but, on the bright side, a life like mine tended to stock the subconscious with more than enough material for nightmares, so I might end up reliving some other horror entirely.
‘It doesn’t work quite the same way with the eldar,’ I said, trying to recall some of the things Amberley had said about them over the years – although, to be honest, discussing the peculiar habits of xenos was hardly the first thing on my mind when I found myself in her immediate proximity. ‘These tunnels are sort of halfway between the real universe and the warp. Don’t ask me how it works, though.’
‘Tunnels have an opening at the end,’ Kasteen said thoughtfully, ever the practical warrior. ‘Can we blow up the ones on Drechia, and collapse them?’
‘I’m not sure they work like that,’ I said slowly. ‘There might be some physical structure we could damage, I suppose. But that wouldn’t necessarily affect the rest of it.’
‘If I may make a suggestion,’ Proktor said, with the inflection of someone who was going to whether anyone minded or not, ‘perhaps we could estimate the location of these tunnel mouths by looking at the sites of the previous eldar attacks, and seeing where they approached from and retreated to.’ Like the rest of us, he had a bowl of tanna in his hands, but he rarely sipped at it,[30] apparently regarding it as some kind of hand warmer.
‘Might be worth a try,’ Broklaw said, sounding faintly surprised, and calling up a rash of new icons which made the hololith display look as though it had just come down with a bad case of the mirepox. The image blurred even more than usual, and the enginseer stationed at the controls muttered a benediction, twiddled a knob or two, and kicked the casing in the ceremonial dent. The display steadied, and the major frowned, isolating a few of the runes. ‘These are the actions we’ve been involved in since deployment, and the red ones are the firefights with the locals. Shouldn’t be too hard to glean the information we need from the AARs.’[31]
‘Ours, anyway,’ Kasteen said, with more than a trace of scepticism. ‘Can’t see the ones from the local lot having much useful detail.’
‘We won’t know until we try,’ Broklaw said, with a fine show of optimism, though I noticed that it didn’t extend quite far enough to actually disagree with her. ‘I’ll get it analysed, and see what we can uncover.’ He turned to Proktor, the first faint traces of doubt beginning to enter his voice. ‘I take it your people have some sort of analyticum we can use?’
‘Of course we do,’ Proktor said, with the closest to anything approaching animation I’d seen on his face so far. ‘The scribes of the governor’s office have access to the finest cogitator array in the outer system. It’s supposed to keep track of the mining outputs, shipping manifests, tithing revenues and that sort of thing. But I’m sure you’ll be able to requisition it, with the authority of the Munitorum behind you.’
‘We can,’ Kasteen said, with the easy confidence of someone able to impose martial law whenever she felt like it.[32] ‘But the governor’s probably not going to like it.’
Proktor shook his head. ‘I disagree. The governor’s definitely not going to like it.’ Which seemed, if anything, to be an additional recommendation from his point of view.
‘If it gives us an edge,’ I said, feeling I ought to contribute something, if only to remind everyone I was still there, ‘it doesn’t matter who gets hacked off, or how much. Our duty to the Emperor comes first.’
‘Absolutely,’ Kasteen said, while Broklaw nodded vehemently, and even Proktor seemed quietly impressed. ‘You do have a knack for cutting through the frak, Ciaphas.’
‘Then I’d better make the arrangements,’ Proktor said, and bowed formally, preparatory to taking his leave. Bowing seemed to be a big thing with the Drechians, every formal interaction apparently requiring everyone involved to bob up and down like bottom-feeding waterfowl; fortunately my off-world status and exaggerated reputation spared me the bother. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Surprisingly, he was as good as his word and, unsurprisingly, the governor was just as annoyed and obstructive as he’d predicted. Nevertheless, by dint of subtle diplomacy, rather less subtle appeals to my exalted status as a bona fide Hero of the Imperium, and not subtle at all threats to execute anybody impeding us in our duty, up to and including Her Excellency, we got the information back that we needed. With the result that, several days after our previous conversation, Kasteen, Broklaw, Proktor and I found ourselves clustered around the hololith again. Proktor, I’d noticed, was evidently getting used to the Valhallan preference for temperatures which left the breath smoking, his robe a good deal thicker than on his previous visits, which – given my habit of bundling up in my greatcoat and donning an extra pair of socks every time I attended a meeting there – I could hardly blame him for.
‘The majority of attacks seem to be made from low orbit,’ he said, manipulating the controls with surprising ease, and ignoring the enginseer hovering anxiously at his shoulder whose mechadendrites twitched with manifest eagerness to make minute adjustments every time Proktor poked something. ‘And, fortunately, local traffic control has an extensive augur array to monitor the incoming and outgoing ore barges.’ He worked the control lectern again, and the mottled sphere of Drechia suddenly became entangled in what looked like the ball of string Jurgen found in the back of a storage locker once and decided to hang on to in case it came in handy, which it might well have done if he’d ever been able to locate one of its ends. ‘Which would put the end of the tunnel about here.’ He pointed to a particularly large and obdurate knot a few thousand kilometres out into the void, grazing the edge of Avernus’ inordinately large and elaborate ring system.
