Cain's Last Stand, page 35
[62] In fact Visiter was void born, which might have accounted for his eagerness to get back into space.
[63] A naval term for a kitbag; it’s not in use among the Imperial Guard, so presumably Cain picked it up from Visiter.
[64] ‘A trooper is a weapon in the hand of the Emperor, and should keep his edge keen.’ One of the so-called Forty Principles of Melkirk, a much venerated commissar of the 37th Millennium, whose writings are still popular among his successors even today.
[65] The Commissariat oversees all branches of the Imperial military, with the obvious exceptions of the Astartes and the Adepta Sororitas.
[66] By which he presumably means nightfall in Salubria Parva, as, of course, the fighting was going on all over the planet.
[67] A Perlian rodent, most notable for a number of disgusting personal habits.
[68] In fact Perlia was to be treated to an almost continuous display of cosmic fireworks for the next three years, before the majority of the debris was finally consumed. Long before that, however, the largest pieces, and those constituting a danger to navigation, had been either salvaged or blown to bits by the SDF.
[69] Perlia had no moon: hence the significance of the orbital peculiarity of the mining asteroid, which I drew attention to earlier.
[70] A Valhallan colloquialism, one of the many Cain picked up from his years of association with the natives of that planet. Suffice it to say that the polar regions of an ice world are pretty unpleasant, even by the normal standards of such places, and people only venture north (or south) of their nominal boundaries under the most desperate of circumstances.
[71] Luckily for the defenders of Perlia, the majority of the tanks in the invasion fleet do indeed seem to have been lost, either during the orbital engagement, or in the disorganised landings which followed. Enough appear to have survived to have been a considerable nuisance, however.
[72] Relatively speaking. Despite the best efforts of the ground staff, the marks of their passage are still visible if you know where to look.
[73] Which must therefore have been the command variant, rather than the scout pattern favoured by Cain.
[74] Surprisingly, given his habitual cynicism, Cain neglects the most obvious possibility; that, as well as egress, the passageways were intended to provide discreet access for certain favoured courtesans.
[75] Reasonably well, if I’ve managed to correctly identify the unit in question from the PDF roster and subsequent debriefings: as ever, Cain’s propensity to gloss over matters which don’t particularly concern him proved to be something of a handicap in this regard. They appear to have successfully raided an enemy supply dump, and ambushed traitor patrols on several occasions, sustaining no more than forty per cent casualties before being absorbed into a platoon again as order was eventually re-established.
[76] Rather badly; he’d been killed, along with most of his command, in the defence of Follendyke.
[77] Given the lad’s probable age, its unclear here whether Cain is being literal or figurative.
[78] Whereas Astartes scouts, in general, find unpowered carapace armour better suited to the role.
[79] From which we can infer that there was some source of artificial light in the vicinity which Cain doesn’t bother to mention, as these colours would have been virtually indistinguishable in the dark.
[80] More Imperial Guard jargon, which, in this instance, stands for Support Automatic Weapon, at least according to Mott, my savant. The military mind is far too fond of TLAs, if you ask me. (Which Cain once assured me, with a perfectly straight face, was the preferred Guard terminology for Three Letter Abbreviations. I’m still not sure if he was pulling my leg or not.)
[81] See my earlier comment about the ambient light levels.
[82] Popular accounts of the Second Siege generally devote at least a chapter to this incident, which has spawned a number of popular novels, holodramas, and picts, usually depicting the newly appointed governor as a cool and decisive heroine. Curiously, the squad of stormtroopers Rorkins dispatched to bodyguard her, and who almost certainly saw off the insurgents without any help from enthusiastic amateurs, barely feature in these narratives.
[83] An innocuous-looking merchantman which has been heavily armed, often to the standards of a warship, these vessels are sometimes used as covert escorts for vulnerable convoys, or as bait to lure pirate vessels into an ambush; by the time a marauder discovers that their apparently helpless prey actually outguns them, it’s usually too late.
[84] Caused by the air rushing in to fill the sudden vacuum.
[85] The town of Cainstead, formerly Prosperity Wells, was the site of Cain’s first major victory over the ork invaders, and the birthplace of the ad hoc army he was to lead across the continent. The change of name marked the resettlement of the community, the original town having been all but destroyed in the fighting, a gesture Cain found both hilarious and mildly embarrassing.
[86] From these recordings, almost certainly a Jackal raider.
[87] When the clean-up teams arrived at the shrine, they found the body of the pilot still sitting in the cockpit; it seems Varan had instructed the unfortunate fellow to wait for his return, and he’d simply starved to death at the controls.
[88] More probably the former, as, given what little we understand about necron motivation, they seem unlikely to let anyone live if they have the choice.
Sandy Mitchell, Cain's Last Stand
