[Caiphas Cain 03] The Traitor's hand Page 19

  'Quite,' I said. I addressed Zyvan directly again. 'I assume everyone here has the necessary security clearance to be discussing this?' Of course they would, or he would never have raised the subject, but he enjoyed a bit of melodrama as much as I did and nodded gravely.

  'You may continue,' he said.

  Well, that was a bit of a shock, I'd been looking forward to dozing through the meeting, rousing myself just long enough to tease Beije if the opportunity arose, but I've never been averse to being the centre of attention, so I nodded as though I'd been expecting something of the kind.

  'There are four principal Ruinous Powers,' I began, 'at least as far as we know. Heretics worship them as gods, and of all the warp entities so far discovered, only they are strong enough to challenge the Emperor Himself for dominion of the immaterium.'

  'Challenge the Emperor?' Beije was outraged. 'The very idea is blasphemy!' He leaned forward, apparently reaching for the controls of his pictcaster. 'I'll listen to no more of this heretical twaddle.' His face vanished from the collection of disembodied heads floating in the hololith. Asmar's remained, but looked far from happy.

  'The rest of you may care to note,' I said, concealing my amusement with some difficulty, 'that I said ''challenge'', not ''defeat''. That would indeed be heresy, and is, of course, utterly unthinkable.' Most of the heads nodded gravely. 'The precise nature of these powers is a subject to be studied and considered by those far wiser than I,[82] but the salient point is that all four are essentially rivals. They may make temporary alliances from time to time, but in the end they all seek complete dominion for themselves alone.' That I knew from personal experience; the sorceress Emeli, who for some reason kept invading my dreams of late, had been part of a Slaaneshi cult locked in a deadly struggle with a Nurglite faction for control of Slawkenberg. 'And none are more deadly rivals than Khorne and Slaanesh,' I concluded. 'If they're acting in concert here it would be almost unprecedented.'

  'Completely so,' Zyvan confirmed. 'The only examples ever recorded are during events like a Black Crusade, when adherents of all four factions are somehow able to put their differences aside. Fortunately, they start stabbing each other in the back sooner or later, and the whole thing falls apart.'

  'This is hardly on the scale of a Black Crusade,' one of the Kastaforean commissars pointed out mildly. I'd spent a bit of time in his company aboard the Emperor's Benificence, and felt the lad might have a reasonable future in front of him. He wasn't an overt Emperor-botherer, liked his ale and a hand of cards, and had a pretty good idea of when to be looking the other way instead of jumping on every minor infraction his troopers committed. 'More of a Black Skirmish.'

  'Precisely,' I said, smiling at the witticism until a few of the others decided they'd better too. 'Which leaves us with two possibilities that I can see. One of which is that there's something on Adumbria both factions want to get their hands on.'

  'What might that be?' Kolbe asked, looking understandably perturbed at the idea. It must be bad enough coming to terms with the fact that one of the Ruinous Powers is taking a special interest in your homeworld, never mind two.

  'Who knows?' Zyvan said. 'Adumbria's been settled for millennia. 'That's a lot of time for someone to hide or lose a powerful artefact. Or it might be something that's been here even longer than the Imperium.' I suppressed a shudder at that thought, being reminded rather too forcibly of the necron tombs I'd stumbled across on Interims and Simia Orichalcae. Still, I reminded myself forcibly, the metal monstrosities weren't the only source of archeotech, and it was possible some long-lost hoard of the stuff remained buried away somewhere on this peculiar planet.

  'What about the other possibility?' Kasteen asked.

  'The Khornates are here to prevent the Slaaneshi from doing something that'll tilt the balance of power between them,' I said.

  'Like raising daemons and frakking about with the warp currents,' the colonel concluded.

  I nodded. 'Given what we already know about the activities of the Slaaneshi cult here, that would be my guess. Although I haven't a clue what they're hoping to achieve, or why the Khornates would be so desperate to prevent it.' Which was just as well. If I'd had even the remotest inkling I would have been gibbering quietly under the table by now rather than talking about it.

  'Any further along on what's happening with the warp currents?' Zyvan asked Maiden.

  The young psyker shook his head. 'As we said before, they're turning in on themselves. It's as if whoever's behind it is trying to create a very small, very intense warp storm centred on the planet. How or why is still hard to pin down.'

  'Thank you,' the lord general said dryly. He shrugged. 'So I'm open to suggestions.'

  'How about the pattern of the attacks?' Kasteen asked. She brought up the display from the hololithic chart table. 'The first wave hit the Tallarns. Then they struck at Glacier Peak.'

  'They struck pretty much everywhere,' Asmar pointed out, clearly relishing the chance to shoot down whatever theory she was developing.

  But Kasteen merely nodded. 'They did. Which is hardly surprising, given the amount of ground fire their shuttles were taking and the fact that at least one of their transports was destroyed before it could offload most of its troop complement. Most of their forces didn't so much land as crash.'

  'A good point,' Zyvan conceded. 'But I don't quite see what you're getting at.'

  'I've been looking at the movements of the enemy here in Glacier Peak.' Kasteen magnified the map of the town and its surroundings. 'Five shuttles came down here. Two hit the town, one hit us and the other two deviated. One landed here, to the south, and the other crashed out here to the west, near the hab dome the commissar discovered.'

  'I've read the AARs,'[83]Zyvan said, a tone of curiosity mingling with mild reproof.

  Kasteen nodded. 'So have I. It was only while I was collating them that something struck me. Once the heretics were down, they only advanced in one direction. Due west. We assumed at the time they were hoping to take the town or reinforce the units attacking our compound, but I began to wonder if that wasn't the real objective.'

  'If that's so, then what was?' the lord general asked.

  Kasteen highlighted the hab dome. 'What if it was the site of the ritual? The shuttle that almost made it didn't overshoot the objective, as we thought at the time, the others all fell short.'

  'What would be the point of that?' Asmar asked scornfully. 'The heretics had already completed their foul sorceries long before these renegades even entered the system.'

  'But maybe they didn't know that,' I said, the pieces of Kasteen's chain of reasoning falling into place so neatly I was convinced she was right. And even if she hadn't been I wasn't about to let Asmar make her look stupid in front of the lord general. 'They attacked you too, didn't they? And you're practically sitting on the site of another heretic shrine.'

  As I'd hoped, the reminder of that fact left him looking severely uncomfortable.

  'Did any of them seem to be making for it?'

  'It's possible,' the Tallarn colonel conceded after a moment, looking distinctly unhappy at the prospect. 'I'd have to check. Our traditional tactics rely heavily on hit and run strikes and rapid manoeuvre, so the heretics were scattering in all directions.'

  'If you could let us know as soon as possible,' Zyvan said, making the simple request sound more like an order than if he'd visibly exerted his authority. Clearly the exchange I'd overheard before hadn't been the end of the matter.

  Asmar nodded. 'By the grace of the Emperor, it will be done.'

  'Good.' Zyvan's attention turned to Kolbe. 'Any hostiles approach the site in Skitterfall?'

  'A few elements made it through,' Kolbe said. 'We assumed at the time they were hoping to find reinforcements there.'

  'I see.' Zyvan nodded once. 'We'll have to improve our liaison channels with your people, obviously.'

  'Which raises an intriguing possibility,' Maiden said, in his usual drab monotone. 'The locations of the sites
do indeed appear significant, as Colonel Kasteen suggested before, and this new enemy is as aware of their importance as the one we've been attempting to track.'

  'Which helps us how, exactly?' Kolbe asked.

  Maiden spread his hands. 'The sorcerers clearly haven't been able to achieve their objective yet. This would imply that they need to perform their ritual at least once more, probably at a specific site or sites. If we analyse the pattern of the landings along the lines the colonel has pointed out, we might be able to locate it.'

  'Excellent.' Zyvan nodded. 'I'll get our intelligence people on it right away.'

  THE RESULTS WERE disappointing, however. After nearly two days of feverish activity by the analysts, during which time we twiddled our thumbs and reorganised ourselves to fill the gaps in our roster left by the recent engagements, Zyvan called us in person with the bad news.

  'It looks like a dead end,' he told us gloomily. 'Colonel Kasteen was definitely right about the invaders aiming for the ritual sites, but that doesn't seem to help us locate the next one.'

  'Why not?' I asked. By way of reply the image of his face in the hololith, which, thank the Emperor, one of our tech-priests had finally got around to doing something about, was replaced by the now familiar globe of Adumbria, which hardly juddered at all. As before, it was pocked with contact icons, the majority concentrated in the shadow zone.

  'Most of the intruders don't seem to have moved with any real sense of purpose,' Zyvan explained, 'other than the groups she already pointed out.' The clusters around Glacier Peak, the Tallarns and Skitterfall glowed a little brighter to highlight them. 'The others just started attacking the nearest PDF, Guard unit, or civilian population.'

  'Well that's Khornates for you,' I commented wryly, noting Kasteen's thinly veiled disappointment and hoping to lighten her mood. 'Show them something to kill and they just get distracted.'

  'Quite,' Zyvan said, clearly as disappointed as the colonel; once again a promising lead had evanesced into nothingness before our eyes. 'Most inconsiderate of them.'

  'Logically,' Broklaw put in, loyally backing up his CO, 'the next ritual site should complete a pattern. Surely your psykers can predict where it should be.' Zyvan's face reappeared, looking pained. 'You haven't had much contact with psykers, have you, young man?' Broklaw shook his head, clearly quite satisfied with that state of affairs.

  The lord general sighed. 'Then just take my word for it. Getting a sensible answer out of them isn't always as easy as you might think.'

  I recalled my last few conversations with Rakel and nodded in sympathy.

  'Maiden seems relatively well-balanced for a spook,' I said.

  Zyvan sighed again. 'A little too much so, if that's possible. He won't commit himself without more data, while the others on my staff are… more typical. The only other person with an opinion is the Lady Dimarco, who seems to think the only prudent course of action is to leave the system while the currents are still marginally navigable, and tells me so incessantly.'

  'Is that actually an option?' I asked as casually as I could, wondering how best to get myself aboard the flagship if it was.

  Zyvan shook his head vehemently, taking the inquiry as a joke. 'Of course not. We're here to defend this place, and that's what we'll do whatever the warp throws at us.'

  'Some of these units seemed to be moving,' Kasteen said, still studying the heretics' deployment in our chart table display. She highlighted a few, apparently skirting the shores of the larger of the landlocked seas. 'Perhaps we should be searching the shoreline.'

  'All sixteen thousand kilometres of it?' Zyvan asked mildly. Kasteen coloured slightly, never a good sign in my experience, and I stepped in hastily.

  'The sea is directly opposite Skitterfall,' I pointed out. 'A fourth site there would complete a geometrical figure.'

  'We've already considered that,' Zyvan said, smiling wearily. 'I'm not completely dense, you know, Ciaphas.'

  'I was beginning to wonder after that last regicide game,' I joked. For one of the greatest tacticians in the segmentum, he was surprisingly easy to beat, a fact about which I pulled his leg constantly. I suppose the abstract game was just too simple for him compared to moving entire armies around the void, but he was a gracious host and good company.

  'According to Maiden, anywhere along the coast would be too far out of alignment with the other sites. A couple of the others suggested that one of the poles would be a possibility, but none of the enemy units seemed to take a particular interest in either.' This was hardly surprising, really: one was occupied by a provincial town which seemed to subsist entirely on the cultivation of squinch, and the other by a PDF training facility which was stuffed to the gills with troopers and which annihilated the single shuttle-load of cultists that landed there in pretty short order.

  'How about an island?' Broklaw suggested. Zyvan shrugged. 'There aren't any, at least far enough out from the coast to make a difference.'

  'Well that's it then,' I said. 'We're right back where we started.'

  'Not quite,' Kasteen said. I looked at her curiously and she smiled without mirth. 'All we have to do is wait for the invaders to attack again, and see where they're going.'

  'If we don't get a break soon,' Zyvan said bleakly, 'it might just come to that.'

  Editorial Note:

  As so often, we find ourselves having to turn to another source at this juncture for a fuller picture of events. And, once again, Tincrowser's account covers the salient points as well as any other.

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

  The second onslaught began, as everyone had expected, with a clash in space between the two opposing fleets. By this point the invaders were committed, their course predictable, and the Imperial warfleet began to move out of orbit to engage them. The Escapade and Virago, the latter still limping from the wounds she had sustained earlier but eager for the fray nonetheless, boosted out to meet the enemy, accompanied by the squadron of destroyers. Their orders were to avoid contact with the enemy warships as much as possible, concentrating their efforts on the transport ships, but this was to prove more difficult than hitherto. The enemy escorts had had time to deploy against the approaching defenders, and the destroyer squadron was soon caught up in a desperate struggle against a pair of raiders protecting the flanks of the flotilla.

  They were ultimately successful, leaving one gutted and adrift in the void while the other turned and fled, grievously wounded, only to tear itself apart as its warp engines overloaded when it attempted to find refuge back in the foul domain from which it had sprung. This victory was bought at a high price, however, as all three sustained some damage, one being so severely mauled that it was reduced to a drifting hulk, its crew being forced to abandon it entirely.[84] The victory of the others was to be short-lived, however. As they closed with the enemy fleet the vessel at the heart of it, no less than a battleship, moved ahead of the merchant vessels for the first time and opened up with the full awesome power of its forward batteries. Both surviving destroyers were crippled before they could even come within the range of their own guns, one[85] being reduced to little more than a cloud of drifting debris by the first salvo.

  The two frigates were to fare little better, although they had succeeded in reducing the number of transports by three by this point.2 The lance batteries aboard the terrifying behemoth licked out once, destroying the bridge of the Virago and crippling the engines of the Escapade, which was soon left too far behind to continue the fight.

  All that stood between Adumbria and Armageddon now was the Indestructible, outnumbered and outgunned. Some expected her to go to the assistance of the stricken escort vessels, but she remained on station above Skitterfall highport, standing resolutely between the heavily-armed leviathan and the swarm of merchant ships.

  Effectively unhindered, the remaining transport vessels in the invasion fleet slipped into orbit and began dropping their cargo of heretical ver
min on the planet below.

  FIFTEEN

  'You can never have too many enemies.

  The more you've got, the more likely they are to get in each other's way.'

  - Jarvin Wallankot, Idle Musings, 605.M41

  IN THE END, Zyvan wasn't so far wrong. We spent the remaining time until the enemy fleet arrived in a fever of preparation, knowing that the assault to come would make the one we'd beaten off before pale into insignificance. Fortunately, our casualties had been relatively light, at least compared to the Tallarns and the PDF, so the amount of reorganisation we had to undertake was less than I'd feared.

  'Detoi's fit for duty,' Broklaw reported, helping himself to a refill from the pot of tanna Jurgen had brought into my office. It was a far cry from the opulent buffets in the conference rooms of the lord general's headquarters, but my aide had done his best to make the long meeting bearable for us, and given his almost preternatural talent for scrounging, he'd been able to keep us fed and watered well enough. I pushed the plate which had contained a trio of palovine pastries to one side of the desk to make room for the data-slate.

  'I'm glad to hear it,' I said, skimming the medicae report.

  Fit for duty was stretching it a bit, he'd taken a las bolt to the chest and was damn lucky the flak armour under his greatcoat had absorbed most of the impact, but there was nothing they could do for him now except wait for him to recover naturally and for the ribs to knit back together. Lying around in the infirmary wasn't going to make him heal any faster, and no doubt the thought that the longer he took to get up the longer Sulla would be in charge of his company was a hell of an incentive to discharge himself.

  'Well, it simplifies the personnel reassignments,' Kasteen said, brushing a crumb of pastry from the corner of her mouth. My office was crowded with the three of us present, let alone Jurgen when he wandered through, but it was a lot easier to work in there than in the command centre. What we were doing was sensitive and a regrettable neccessity: reassigning personnel to fill the gaps in our organisation left by our dead and severely wounded.