Choose Your Enemies, page 8
Which, of course, was a big mistake, simply reminding it that Jurgen and I were a threat. Abandoning its blood-slick toys, which crawled beseechingly after it bleating their disappointment at being so cavalierly abandoned, the thing bounded towards us, tearing through the crowd of cultists like Jurgen through a smorgasbord. I barely had time to raise my chainsword, fending off a snapping claw which lunged for my face; the teeth whined, biting deep. A gush of foul-smelling ichor gouted from the wound, and the thing recoiled, an expression which would have denoted puzzlement in a human flickering across its hideous visage.[58] Clearly it hadn’t been expecting to be injured so badly, and stepped back, howling mellifluously, its flesh and chitin starting to knit together as it did so. I potted it in the face and body with the laspistol, seeing the cauterised craters fade and vanish in a heartbeat – clearly Jurgen’s abilities weakened it at close quarters, but not enough for anything we had with us to damage it sufficiently to force it back into the warp. The melta might have done the job, perhaps, but it now lay at Jurgen’s feet, as far out of reach as if we’d left it back in his quarters. Now he had a heap of fallen cultists in front of him, impeding the progress of those still intent on attacking to clamber over, he was able to fire in short, efficient bursts – but if he stopped to pick up the melta, he’d be overwhelmed in seconds.
No sooner had the thought occurred to me than Jurgen spoke.
‘Running dry, sir. Should have fixed the bayonet.’ The words were hardly out of his mouth before the intermittent crackle of his lasgun ceased abruptly. ‘That’s it, I’m out.’ And with no time to reload before they reached us. Reversing the weapon in a single smooth motion he lashed out with the butt of it, catching a portly middle-aged man across the bridge of the nose with a crack of breaking cartilage and a spray of blood. As the fellow fell backwards a young woman crawled forwards, grabbed my aide’s ankle and tugged, attempting to pull him off balance. She might even have succeeded, dragging him down to be overwhelmed by the horde of fanatics surrounding us, if I hadn’t anticipated the movement and lopped her hand off at the wrist in the nick of time. She pouted up at me.
‘That’s just mean.’
‘So’s this,’ I said, putting a las-bolt through her brain, or her skull at least, and turning to eviscerate another couple of cultists who were trying to hit me in the head with rocks they’d picked up from somewhere.
Our situation was desperate, there was no denying that; though Jurgen and I must have downed over a dozen of the cultists by now there still seemed no end to them, and their sheer numbers were bound to tell in the long run. Though I could hold them off with the chainsword for a few moments longer I was bound to tire sooner or later, and if Jurgen fell they’d be able to get behind me. I toyed briefly with the notion of passing him the laspistol, but he was already occupied walloping heretics with his gun butt, and distracting him seemed like a bad idea.
The daemon was circling us now, beyond its shield of expendable acolytes, reminding me disconcertingly of a felinoid catching sight of a rat hole – evidently wary of approaching Jurgen too closely, but I had no doubt that if its cat’s paws succeeded in killing him it would be on me like a rash.
And that was looking more and more likely by the second. I tried the comm-bead again, but as I’d expected, heard nothing; no hope of a last-minute reprieve from our comrades, it seemed.
At that moment, however, help arrived from a most unexpected source. A party of eldar bounded into the cavern from one of the tunnel mouths we’d noticed on our arrival, brandishing spears which flickered and glowed with arcane sorceries. Their armour, though sharing the green and purple colours of the ones we’d encountered before, was richly decorated with arcane symbols, and obscured by cloaks which seemed to swirl around them rather more than the air currents in the cavern would normally account for. One, in particular, stood out from its fellows, both its raiment and archaic weapon more richly ornamented than the others. As one, they flung their spears at the cultists who had turned to meet them, spitting several, but leaving themselves unarmed apart from the pistols holstered at their waists. I expected them to draw these at once to defend themselves with, but to my surprise the spears turned in mid-air and returned to the hands of their wielders.
‘Neat trick,’ Jurgen said.
I shot a glance at the daemon, which seemed almost as disconcerted by this turn of events as I was. It bounded towards the eldar, clearly identifying them as the greater threat; tempted as I was to encourage it on its way with a las-bolt to the back, I forbore, partly because attracting its attention again seemed foolish under the circumstances, and partly because I was still fighting for my life against the apparently never-ending tide of heretics, who seemed to have abandoned all sense of self-preservation. I opened up a small gap in the oncoming crowd with a flurry of las-bolts, only to see it fill again in a handful of heartbeats, and swung the chainsword once more, ripping open flesh and pulverising bone. It was tempting to try lopping a few heads off, but I kept the blade low. My opponents were all shapes and sizes, of differing height, and ducking and weaving in an attempt to get past my guard into the bargain – not to mention having trouble keeping their footing in all the gore and viscera I’d spilled so far. The last thing I needed was for one of them to get under my blade by accident – one opening was all they required. The moment Jurgen or I were injured they’d be on us like a swarm of sump rats, bearing us down by sheer force of numbers, and the two of us would be finished.
So thinking, I risked another glance at the eldar, who were turning to face the daemon. Once again their spears flew, slicing through the warp-spawned abomination one after another, ripping it into ichorous chunks which twitched and began to flow together – but the whirling blades, it soon became clear, could inflict damage more quickly than the hideous thing could regenerate it.
Not that this fortuitous turn of events was going to do me any good; intent on parrying a blow with some sort of narcotic dispenser being wielded by a young man with a glazed expression, I tripped against one of the bodies I’d felled. I raised the chainsword instinctively, shearing through his arm just below the elbow, and the metal sphere fell to the ground, trailing the severed limb at the end of its chain. It bumped against my shoulder on the way down, adding insult to injury in the shape of a scorch mark on my sleeve, and jolting my arm so strongly that I would certainly have lost the laspistol if it hadn’t been for the firm grip afforded by my augmetic fingers. Despite my best efforts, and the sash still tied across my face, I got a good lungful of its noxious contents too; my head swam as I stumbled, unable to remain on my feet, and fell heavily onto one knee. Fortunately the impact was cushioned by one of the bodies I’d felled, so I just landed on something unpleasantly squishy instead of cracking a patella against the unyielding rock.
Nonetheless, the damage had been done. Before I could regain my balance the shrieking fanatics were on me, bearing me to the ground, raining blows against me with foot, fist and a variety of makeshift clubs. I tried to cut my way free with the chainsword, and got off another couple of wild shots with the laspistol, but my arms had been seized by howling and giggling madmen, and I knew with a sudden, cold certainty that, barring the personal intercession of the Emperor Himself, which hardly seemed likely, my last moments had almost certainly come.
Then the pressure eased, the bodies weighing me down abruptly pulling away, while the cavern resounded to the unmistakable hiss-crack of bolt pistols being fired, along with the lighter crackling of laspistols. Fighting my way upright, relieving the pressure of the bodies attempting to pin me down by a couple of swipes with the chainsword (which, to my vague surprise, I’d managed to retain a grip on), I stared at our deliverers with undisguised astonishment. Half a dozen human figures, led by an unusually striking blonde woman who seemed vaguely familiar, were charging into the cavern through the same entrance the eldar had used, firing as they came – but these were no Imperial Guard troopers. All were dressed like civilians. For a moment recognition eluded me – then, when it hit, surprise was replaced by absolute astonishment.
‘Amberley?’ I asked, my jaw slackening like a cartoon yokel. ‘What in the name of the warp are you doing here?’
‘Ciaphas?’ To my relief, she looked equally taken aback to see me, although, being Amberley, she didn’t let it show for long, immediately adopting the air of tolerant amusement which suited her so well. ‘This probably sounds like a peculiar question, but where the frak are we?’
SEVEN
‘Drechia,’ I said, not bothering to press her any further about what she was doing here; she was an inquisitor, after all, and popping up unexpectedly was the kind of thing they did. ‘Fighting an eldar invasion.’
‘Drechia,’ Mott, her savant, said, in his usual dry, reedy tone, compulsively voicing the torrent of information cascading through his augmented cerebellum in response to the name. ‘Capital of the Avernus subsystem in the halo of Ironfound, given limited autonomy under Subsector Gubernatorial Decree dated 645 087 M41–’[59]
‘Not now, Caractacus,’ Amberley said, potting another heretic who’d been rude enough to try to interrupt us by attempting to stove her head in with a rock. The fellow’s ribcage exploded as the bolt from her pistol detonated, adding another dilapidated corpse to the pile surrounding us, and she returned her attention to me. ‘What eldar?’
‘Those ones for a start,’ I said, pointing to the spear-slinging psykers, who’d pretty much seen off the daemon by this point. It made a last attempt to rally, ripping one of the eldritch javelins which had it impaled through the chest away with a spasm of its claws, but the glittering shaft simply turned in mid-air and renewed the attack, skewering it through the left eye socket instead. The others returned to their owners, who held them expectantly, but hesitated, instead of throwing them again instantly as I’d expected. ‘What are they waiting for?’
‘To see what we do, probably,’ Amberley said, aiming her bolt pistol at the shrieking abomination and pulling the trigger. The explosive projectile detonated, vaporising half of what was left of its chest, and it wavered for a moment before solidifying again. I followed up with a couple of las-bolts of my own, and that seemed to do the trick. The first gouged another wound, which, Emperor be praised, didn’t seem to be regenerating. As the second struck, a fraction of a second later, the ghastly thing vanished altogether with a crack of imploding air, leaving the shining spear which had pierced it floating freely in the air. The weapon promptly returned to the hand of the eldar leader, who stood watching us impassively. Amberley called out to her little group of acolytes. ‘Flicker, Zemmie, finish up here.’
Truth to tell, however, there was little left to finish up by this time, most of the surviving cultists having fled into the tunnels the moment the daemon was thrown back into the warp, whatever influence it may have had over them now broken. Her entire entourage seemed to be there, or at least everyone I remembered from our last little escapade together; for all I knew there had been others in the intervening time who hadn’t been quite as lucky or skilful. I’d seen several of them come and go over the years, Inquisitorial service not being a particularly safe occupation even by the standards of the life I’d led, but these five had been particularly lucky, tenacious or skilled, and I nodded a greeting to each of them. There wasn’t time for more, and I’d have the chance to converse properly with them later (or most of them anyway, Rakel the sanctioned psyker being away with the fae most of the time) – assuming the eldar didn’t just turn around and kill us all in the next few seconds, of course.
I glanced at Rakel, hoping for some clue as to their intentions, as her precognitive flashes had saved my life on more than one occasion – but she was simply muttering to herself as usual, staring at Jurgen as though he were Horus incarnate, and keeping as far away from him as possible.[60] Pelton, the former arbitrator, was potting fleeing heretics with unfailing accuracy and professional detachment, while his protégé Zemelda, a former vendor of street snacks who’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, was matching her mentor shot for shot with undisguised glee. The only member of the party not too preoccupied to return my greeting was Yanbel the tech-priest, who raised a mechadendrite in response before returning his attention to what looked like the screen of an auspex. Mott’s eyes were still glazed as he catalogued information about the world we stood on, or possibly anything that might be useful in evading sudden attacks by eldar psykers.
Which reminded me. I turned to my aide, who was breathing a little heavily but seemed otherwise none the worse for wear. ‘Are you all right, Jurgen?’ I asked.
‘Fine, sir.’ He nodded a greeting of his own to Amberley, as though this bizarre encounter was as commonplace as passing a near neighbour on the stairs. ‘Afternoon, miss.’
‘Jurgen. You’re looking well.’ Which I suppose was true by his standards, although by most people’s it was a statement requiring a considerable stretch of the imagination.
‘Thank you, miss. So are you.’ The social niceties dispensed with, he snapped a fresh powercell into his lasgun, and glanced in my direction. ‘Do you want us to shoot the pointy-ears?’
‘Not at the moment, thank you. Let’s try talking first.’ The inquisitor took an outwardly confident step towards the little group of xenos, holstering her weapon and holding up her hand to show it was empty. Apart, that was, from the jokaero digital needler in her ring, which had been the last surprise in the lives of several people and things who had thought her unarmed over the years. ‘They’ve had plenty of opportunity to attack us already, if they wanted to.’
Which was a fair point. I felt my palms tingling again. None of the other eldar we’d seen since our arrival on this Emperor-forsaken iceball would have hesitated for a moment before going for our throats. I stood as close to Jurgen as I could, and kept my weapons in my hands.
‘If they attack the inquisitor, fire at once.’ Pelton’s voice was in my comm-bead, low and urgent, too seasoned a professional to risk alerting the enemy by calling across to me. In the early days of my association with Amberley I might have wondered how he was able to break into a secure Imperial Guard channel, but I’d soon learned that Inquisitorial override codes were even more comprehensive than the ones I had access to through the Commissariat. Now he’d run out of heretics to cleanse, his attention was entirely on watching Amberley’s back – as it should have been, of course.
‘You can count on it,’ I said. She’d probably survive a sudden attack, the displacer field she habitually carried when expecting trouble teleporting her several metres in a random direction in response to a sudden impact or energy burst, but the thing was ancient, and not entirely reliable.[61] It would remove her from the line of fire, though, giving Jurgen and me a clear shot at the eldar, which sounded like a positive result to me.
‘Zemmie, go left, try and get behind them. Yanbel, Mott, go the other way. Rakel – just try not to get shot.’
‘Too many ways,’ the psyker cut in, helpful as always, presumably in case it had escaped our notice that we were in the middle of a labyrinth, while the savant and the tech-priest moved to comply with surprising efficiency.[62] ‘They’re all tangled, and lead to blood.’
Which didn’t sound all that good to me, but then not a lot she said ever did.[63] I shrugged, and took a firmer grasp of my weapons, wondering if I’d be able to parry one of those spear things if it got chucked in my direction, and dismissed the thought at once. If I ever needed to find out I’d be reacting on instinct – too fast for conscious thought, anyway – and the one thing guaranteed to ensure I’d fail would be worrying about it beforehand.
‘Stand down, all of you,’ Amberley voxed, with a trace of asperity. ‘This one’s a farseer. He’ll have anticipated every move you could possibly make anyway.’
Personally, I was frakked if I could tell the difference, but xenos of one sort or another were her area of expertise, so I wasn’t about to argue. If she said the one in the particularly elaborate armour was a farseer, then a farseer he was.
‘What’s a farseer?’ Jurgen asked, saving me the bother, although I had little enough need with these people to save face by pretending to knowledge I didn’t have. It certainly wouldn’t have fooled Amberley, and probably wouldn’t fool any of the others either.
‘Weavers of fate, weavers of time,’ Rakel said, in the peculiar sing-song intonation which generally indicated that she’d long since gone off the deep end, and was placidly treading water in a galaxy of her own. ‘Pull the thread, and follow where it leads.’
‘They’re powerful precogs,’ Mott said, apparently relieved at being asked a direct question that didn’t involve too many supplementary bounces down the quincunx of information cluttering up his head. ‘They see a myriad of possible futures unfolding from every second they experience, and try to manipulate events to reach a desired outcome.’
‘So how come they haven’t won the war already?’ Jurgen asked.
Mott’s eyes began to glaze over, and I stepped in hastily to forestall a flood of battlefield analysis, probably going back centuries.
‘Because they haven’t completed their plans yet,’ I said, then thought about the implications of that, which weren’t comforting. ‘And because the soldiers of the Emperor are more than a match for them anyway.’
‘True,’ Jurgen agreed, nodding, and dislodging small flecks of grime from his neck against his shirt collar as he did so. ‘And a las-bolt to the head’ll fell a psyker just the same as anyone else.’
Which wasn’t entirely true, as I knew from personal experience, but it wasn’t a bad principle to keep in mind.
‘No one’s shooting anyone unless I say so,’ Amberley said, in a tone I knew well enough not to venture to contradict. She was over halfway to the eldar by now, advancing under the impassive gaze of their blank-visaged helmets. An almost palpable air of expectation hung around them as she approached, and I found myself wondering if the farseer had already decided the outcome of this encounter, and was merely going through the motions. A thought which made me extremely uneasy, as you can imagine, so I thrust it to the back of my mind. If push came to shove, I was sure I could still surprise them – after all, there were occasions when I’d even surprised myself by my reactions to the threat of imminent death, so catching some pointy-eared tanna leaf reader[64] on the hop shouldn’t be too much of a problem. She made some complex gesture with her hand, which I assumed to be an eldar form of greeting,[65] and spoke to them in their own tongue.
