[Caiphas Cain 03] The Traitor's hand Page 11

  In fact they hadn't, but the fear of it leant wings to my feet so that I was outside in time to be as startled as the rest of us.

  'Incoming arial contact, closing fast!' the auspex operator cut in, his voice tense.

  I narrowed my eyes against the flurrying snow, fitting the goggles into place and wiping them clear with trembling fingers. A small knot of heretics was wading through the drifts towards the clear area, exchanging sporadic fire with fifth squad and trying to keep the swooping sentinels at bay with what looked to me like a couple of krak missile launchers. They weren't having much luck, but they were managing to hold them back out of effective flamer and multi-laser range and I could see why Shambas hadn't ordered his pilots to close the distance. The traitors were obviously finished now, and they might as well wait for them to run out of rockets before moving in.

  The shriek of powerful engines tore through the skies overhead, and a vast, dark shape blotted out the starlight as it passed.

  'It's a cargo shuttle,' Jurgen pointed out unnecessarily. 'Where did they get one of those from?' It was a good question, but academic at the moment.

  'Target their engines.' Sulla ordered, an instant before I could, but it would be a futile gesture at best. Even a civilian shuttle is ruggedly built, and a couple of lascannons and a handful of heavy bolters won't do much more than scratch the paintwork.

  'Frak that,' Shambas retorted. 'Jek, Karis, go for the flight deck.' The two designated sentinels reared back on their haunches for maximum elevation and spat luminescent death at the approaching shuttle. It was a desperate gamble, and for a moment I thought they might just do it, but the armourcrys protecting the cockpit is tough enough to take the stresses of re-entry; even a couple of lascannon bolts wouldn't be enough to penetrate it. One struck home, however, leaving a vivid thermal bloom across the previously transparent surface, and the two sentinel pilots began a good-natured argument about which one of them had inflicted it.

  It was enough to break the shuttle pilot's nerve, however, and the engine noise rose in pitch as the main boosters ignited, powering it back up towards wherever it had come from in the first place. A howl of disappointment rose from the little knot of heretics as they watched their expected deliverance disappear as suddenly as it had arrived, then, as the followers of Chaos so often do, they began to argue bitterly among themselves. One group threw down their weapons and began to trudge wearily back towards the dome, their hands in the air, while the others began firing at the encircling troopers with even greater desperation than before. And, inevitably, some of them began to gun down those of their fellows who were attempting to surrender.

  I watched for a few moments, until the inevitable conclusion had played itself out, before turning back to the command Chimera more troubled than I would have believed possible before setting out on this assignment. True, we'd found what we were looking for, but instead of giving us answers, it just seemed to have opened the way to even more questions.

  Editorial Note:

  As so often in his memoirs, Cain's tendency to elide the details of what he regards as uninteresting threatens to deprive what follows of some much-needed context. I have accordingly felt the need to insert some additional material at this point, which I hope will prove illuminating.

  From Sablist in Skitterfall: a brief history of the Chaos incursion by Dagblat Tincrowser, 957.M41

  DESPITE THE FEARS which understandably gripped most of the world in the weeks following the heretics' daring and unexpected attacks upon the newly-arrived expeditionary force, the traitors chose not to show their hand again for some time. With hindsight we can quite clearly see that this was simply because their short-term objectives had been met; the security forces were compelled to waste incalculable man hours and precious resources preparing for a campaign of guerilla warfare which never materialised, and the longer it failed to do so the more firmly convinced those in authority became that this was because the cults they were facing were small, weak and poorly organised.

  This impression was abruptly dispelled by Commissar Cain's personal discovery of a hidden shuttle pad, cunningly concealed on the coldside within easy striking distance of Glacier Peak. It became instantly apparent that the conspiracy was far stronger and more organised than had previously been suspected, and that all they had done before was with the aim of diverting attention from this most insidious of threats. Who knew how many of their confederates had managed to infiltrate Adumbria undetected, and what manner of vileness they'd brought with them? Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that many within the Council of Claimants became convinced that the vanguard of the enemy fleet was already among us, awaiting their moment to strike.

  Such a prognosis was, of course, needlessly alarmist, but there were few on Adumbria, and even fewer among the Imperial forces ranged in its defence, prepared to discount the possibility entirely.

  To: The Office of the Lord General, by the grace of His Most Divine Majesty, protector of that part of the Holy Dominions known as the Damocles Gulf and Adjacent Sectors to Spinward.

  From: Commissar Tomas Beije, charged by the Office of the Commissariat with the maintenance of True Fighting Spirit among his most loyal and fervent warriors of the Tallarn 229th.

  My lord general, I have received this day, 273.937.M41, your recent communique regarding the discoveries made by my colleague Ciaphas Cain and his rabble of a regiment, and perused it with interest. You may rest assured that in the opinion of both myself and Colonel Asmar, there is absolutely no likelihood of a similar rebel foothold being established on the so-called ''hotside'' of Adumbria under the very noses of His Divine Majesty's most loyal and fervent warriors.

  Nevertheless, as you are at pains to point out, additional caution is never a bad thing; I have accordingly given my approval to Colonel Asmar's proposal to widen the range of our perimeter patrols by up to five kilometres and have urged the priests of our company to say additional benedictions invoking the Emperor's guidance of their footsteps. In the unlikely event of such heretical deviants polluting that part of the divinely-appointed realm given over to our charge, our soldiers will undoubtedly be led straight to them by The Emperor's Grace as a result of this intercession.

  I trust that this will prove sufficient to ensure the success of our Holy task. Tomas Beije, Regimental Commissar.

  Thought for the day: Faith is the strongest shield.

  EIGHT

  'Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.'

  - Imperial Guard tactical manual

  IT WAS A grim little group we made as we convened in a conference suite at the lord general's headquarters, virtually identical to the one we'd been using when our last meeting had been so rudely interrupted. Fortunately the hotel he'd commandeered possessed several, so the partial demolition of the other one during the heretics' botched attempt to assassinate Zyvan had turned out to be a minor inconvenience at best: in the manner of plush hotels across the galaxy it was almost impossible to tell the difference between the two rooms. Even the little side table of refreshments was in the same place I remembered it.

  There were a number of significant details which had changed, though, the most noticeable one being the fact that we were now on the ground floor and a battery of Hydras were parked outside with orders to shoot anything that crossed the perimeter no matter how authentic its clearances seemed. The sight of the anti-aircraft guns reminded me of the earlier incident and I asked how the enquiries into that were progressing.

  'Slowly,' Zyvan admitted, helping himself to a cyna bun from the table in the corner, famished from the trip back from Glacier Peak, which had been undertaken with gratifying speed aboard a flyer dispatched to collect me by the lord general himself, I lost no time in following his example. 'We arrested the owner of the aircar, of course, but he maintains that it was stolen without his knowledge.'

  'I suppose he would,' I said. 'Anyone we know?'

  'Ventrious,' Zyvan said, to my complete surprise. The aristocrat had struc
k me as a pompous idiot, of course, and a damn sight too eager for power, but that pretty much summed up the entire breed in my experience, and try as I might I couldn't picture the red-faced buffoon I'd seen throwing a tantrum in the council chamber as a Slaaneshi cultist. He'd have looked ridiculous in pink, for a start.

  'And you're satisfied with his story?' I asked.

  Zyvan nodded. 'Our interrogators were very thorough. If he knew anything he would have told us.' I didn't doubt it, and said so. Zyvan smiled bleakly. 'Under any normal circumstances I would have agreed with you. But we were dealing with the possibility of warpcraft, remember. I had to be sure his memories were real ones.'

  'I see,' I said, shuddering in spite of myself. I nodded cordially to the colourless young man in neatly-pressed fatigues devoid of insignia who Zyvan hadn't bothered to introduce. Hekwyn, Vinzand and Kolbe were all seated as far away from him as they reasonably could be, and I must say I didn't blame them. I'd met psykers before, and it had rarely ended well. Luckily I'd dispatched Jurgen to prepare my quarters immediately on our arrival, so there was no possibility of his secret being abruptly revealed by accident; I made a mental note to keep him as far away from the lord general's staff as possible, since there was no telling how many other mind-readers he had lurking about the premises.

  'His mind was intact,' the young psyker assured me. 'At least to begin with.' He must have read something of what I was thinking on my face, because he smiled without humour. 'I was as careful as I could be. He'll recover, more or less.'

  'Sieur Maiden is one of the most capable sanctioned psykers on my staff,' Zyvan said.

  I nodded again. 'I'm sure he is,' I agreed. Like I said, I've met several, albeit not exactly socially in most cases, and Maiden (I noted the use of the civilian honorific as protocol demanded)[46]was clearly one of the sharpest blades in the scabbard. Rakel, Amberley's tame telepath, for instance, was as barmy as a jokero and made about as much sense most of the time.[47]

  Now you might think that someone with as much to hide as I have would have been terrified at the prospect of sharing a conference table with a telepath, but one thing I'd picked up about them over the years was that they're not going to be listening to your deepest, darkest secrets. Not without trying very hard, anyway. Rakel once told me in one of her more lucid moments that catching stray thoughts from the people around her was like trying to pick a single voice out of a crowded ballroom, and even then it was just the surface thoughts she could detect. Going deeper takes a lot of effort and concentration, almost as dangerous to the psyker as the person they're trying to read, and for someone as practiced as I was at dissembling there was nothing on the surface for them to pick up on anyway.

  'I've been to the installation you found,' Maiden told me, his voice curiously toneless, which at least matched his appearance. The only word which fitted him was ''nondescript''. I must have been in the same room as him scores of times over the years, but I still can't recall his height, build, or the colour of his eyes and hair.

  'I found the experience… interesting.'

  I felt a faint tingling in the air, like the charge before a thunderstorm, and the hololith flickered into life without anyone touching the controls. Vinzand and Kolbe both flinched, no doubt muttering prayers to the Emperor under their breath, and I noticed the faint smile, genuine this time, which Maiden almost succeeded in masking. Only Hekwyn failed to react, no doubt inured to unpleasant surprises as a result of his duties with the arbities.

  'That's not quite the word I would have chosen,' I said casually, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeming in any way disconcerted.

  'Really?' The young psyker's eyes drifted towards me. 'What word would you have used?'

  'Terrifying,' I admitted. 'It reminded me…' I glanced at the trio at the end of the table, and Zyvan nodded.

  'Under the circumstances you can take it that everyone in this room is cleared for any information you may wish to contribute,' he said. 'Even that pertaining to the nature of Chaos.' I nodded soberly, conscious of the expressions on the three men's faces; a peculiar mixture of curiosity and apprehension. They all knew they were about to hear things that few citizens of the Imperium were ever made privy to, and were not exactly sure that they wanted to know them.

  'Some years ago,' I began, 'I encountered a coven of Slaaneshi cultists, who were attempting to create a daemonhost.'[48]Kolbe almost choked on his recaff and Vinzand went pale, even for an Adumbrian. Hekwyn raised an eyebrow a millimetre or two and began to look marginally more interested. 'There was something about that hab dome which reminded me of them.'

  'What happened to the daemonhost?' Hekwyn asked.

  I shrugged. 'Destroyed, I assume. I called in an artillery barrage and levelled the place.' Almost killing myself in the process, I might add.

  Maiden nodded once. 'That might work,' he said with a casualness which only intensified my unease.

  'Excuse me.' Vinzand coughed hesitantly. 'When you say create a daemonhost, you mean…' he waved his hands vaguely. 'I'm sorry, I'm rather new to all this.'

  'They were summoning a daemon from the warp and confining it in a host body,' I explained, trying not to remember that the body in question had been one of the Guard troopers accompanying me. He still looked baffled, so after a sidelong glance at Zyvan for an almost imperceptible nod of approval I elaborated a little. 'Daemons are creatures of the warp, and draw their power from it. But dangerous as they are, they can't exist in the material universe for long without being drawn back to where they came from.' And a good thing too, if the ones I'd encountered before were anything to go by. 'Trapping it in a mortal body allows it to remain here, although its powers are diminished, and it's usually under the control of whoever summoned it in the first place.'

  'Up to a point,' Maiden agreed, and I deferred to his greater knowledge of warpcraft with relief. 'Any control over it is tenuous at best. You'd have to be insane to try it.'[49]He shrugged. 'But the commissar is substantially correct. The only other way for a daemon to interact with the materium for a prolonged period is to find a world or a region of space where the two realms intersect one another. Fortunately such places are rare.'

  'The Eye of Terror,' I said, making the sign of the aquila as I spoke.

  Maiden nodded again. 'The vast majority are there,' he said. 'And the few exceptions are interdicted by the Inquisition.'[50]

  'Who are far better qualified to worry about such things than we are,' Zyvan said, dragging the meeting back to the point at last. Knowing a little more about the Inquisition and its methods than he did I had my doubts about that, but if I voiced them it might have been bad for my health, so I said nothing and waited for Maiden to turn back to the hololith. Just for once the image was still and crystal clear, and I found myself staring at a perfect miniature replica of the hideous chamber I'd discovered behind the wall.

  'What are those symbols?' Kolbe asked, trying not to look too hard at them. I couldn't blame him for that as I was doing the same thing myself, although their hololithic representations were far less disconcerting than the real things had been.

  'Some of them are wards,' Maiden replied. 'If you wanted my best guess, I'd say that something had been confined in there. Something touched by the warp.' This time, I noticed, mine wasn't the only hand which moved reflexively to invoke the Emperor's protection.

  'And the others?' I asked.

  For the first time the young psyker seemed unsure of himself. 'I've never seen anything like them before,' he admitted reluctantly. 'My best guess would be to channel warp energy, perhaps to summon something.' He shrugged. 'The warp currents around here are strange enough at the best of times. You'd be better off asking a navigator or an astropath, to be honest. It's more their department than it is mine.'

  'Perhaps they were trying to affect the flow of the currents,' Kolbe suggested. 'To speed up their invasion fleet or delay your reinforcements.'

  'That would make sense,' Zyvan conceded, nodding slowly in a
manner which told me just how much he didn't like that idea. 'I'll discuss it with the senior representative of the Navis Nobilitae.' It went without saying that the navigator of his flagship wouldn't lower himself to converse directly with the likes of us, and I have to say I was heartily glad of that fact. They're spooky little bastards at the best of times, and snobbier than a planetary governor with a pedigree going back to before Horus. And on top of that they can kill you with a look. Literally.

  'What about the bodies?' Vinzand asked, looking at them with a visible effort.

  'Lunch?' I suggested. 'For whatever was stuck in there?'

  Maiden favoured me with a smile which actually contained a modicum of warmth. 'Possibly,' he conceded. 'Or something to pass the time. But my guess would be a sacrifice. Heretics are big on sacrifice, especially when they're summoning things.'

  'Maybe one of the prisoners we took can tell us,' I said.

  We'd ended up with half a dozen relatively intact specimens in the end, which wasn't a bad haul, and Hekwyn's promised experts from the Arbites were crawling over the entire dome looking for Emperor knows what, so at last it looked as though we were getting somewhere.

  'Perhaps,' Zyvan said.

  I raised an eyebrow. 'I thought your interrogators would have extracted everything they knew by now.'

  'They appear to be unusually resilient. Some of them even seem to be enjoying themselves.'

  'In the meantime,' Hekwyn said, with an audible sigh of relief as the hololith clicked off, 'we have at least been able to start rounding up the smuggling ring from the Glacier Peak end.' He favoured me with a smile and a nod of the head.