[Caiphas Cain 03] The Traitor's hand Page 20

  In most cases, the best course of action was to do nothing, as a squad light by a trooper or two would still function reasonably well, and rotating people in or out of a smoothly-functioning team would be more disruptive to their efficiency and morale than just leaving well enough alone. In a few cases, though, where NCOs and officers were down, someone had to be brought in to fill the hole they'd left, or designated the new leader until they recovered. Which brought us to the delicate matter of first company.

  'At least we're only looking for one new company commander,' I agreed. Captain Kelton had been unlucky enough to run straight into a group of heretics armed with rocket launchers, and a couple had penetrated the hull armour of her command Chimera with inevitable results. The platoon commanders had managed to hold things together reasonably well, but none of them had been clear about who had seniority and in the end Broklaw had had to take charge himself, directing them by vox from the command bunker. This was far from ideal and a striking example of why taking AFVs[86]into a cityfight against infantry is one hell of a risk.

  'The question is, who do we appoint?' Broklaw said. 'After the last debacle, none of the lieutenants strike me as being up to the job.'

  'I'm with you there,' Kasteen agreed. 'They're all good enough at platoon level, but someone should have taken charge on the ground as soon as Kelton was taken out. None of them had the confidence to step in, and that worries me.'

  'Right,' I concurred, making it unanimous. 'At least Sulla showed some initiative when Detoi went down. And she did a reasonable job too, under the circumstances.'

  Which was perfectly true. She might have been the most irritating junior officer in the entire regiment and a damn sight too reckless for my liking, but she got things done and the troopers seemed to like her for some reason. So despite my personal reservations, I felt I should give credit where it was due.

  'Sulla,' Kasteen said, a thoughtful tone entering her voice. Broklaw and I glanced warily at one another, already seeing where this chain of thought was taking us. But in all honesty I couldn't see a credible alternative.

  Broklaw nodded slowly. 'She's been keeping second company together well enough,' he agreed cautiously. 'But she's been serving with them since the amalgamation and the other platoon commanders trust her instincts. Would a new company be quite so willing to work with her?'

  'That's her problem,' I said bluntly. 'Hither she's up to the job or she isn't. And there's only one way to find out.' I sighed. 'Besides, who else is there?'

  'Quite,' Kasteen said. She looked thoughtful. 'A few of them are going to have trouble taking orders from another lieutenant, though. Especially as they match her in seniority.'

  'Brevet[87] her up to captain,' I said. 'If she doesn't make the grade she can always have her old platoon back when we find someone else.'

  'Fair enough.' Broklaw nodded his agreement. 'What do we do with third platoon in the meantime? Bump Lustig up to lieutenant?'

  'He won't thank you for it,' I said, remembering some of the veteran sergeant's more trenchant comments about officers in general. 'Better just tell him he's confirmed as platoon sergeant for the time being, until he's had time to get used to being in charge, and make him up to lieutenant in the next round of promotions. That way if we have to put Sulla back in place no one loses face.'

  'Good point.' Kasteen nodded decisively. 'Is his corporal up to running the squad on her own for the time being?'

  'I'd say so,' I said. 'Penlan's a good soldier. She and Lustig should be able to pick a new ASL for themselves without any interference from us.'

  'Penlan?' Kasteen looked thoughtful for a moment. 'Isn't she the one they call Jinxie?'

  'Yes.,' I nodded. 'But she's not neady as accident prone as she's supposed to be. I'll grant you she fell down an ambull tunnel once, and there was that incident with the frag grenade and the latrine trench, but things tend to work out for her. The orks on Kastafore were as surprised as she was when the floor in the factory collapsed, and we'd have walked right into that hrud ambush on Skweki if she hadn't triggered the mine by chucking an empty food tin away…' I trailed off, finally listening to what I was saying. 'You know how troopers tend to exaggerate these things,' I finished lamely.

  'Quite.' Kasteen said, keeping a remarkably straight face. 'Is that about it?'

  It was, more or less. We spent a few more minutes on personnel assignments and dealt with a few logistical matters, and were just about to separate to go about our other duties when Jurgen entered the office. I didn't take much notice, to be honest, as he'd been in and out several times over the course of the afternoon to deal with routine paperwork and keep us supplied with refreshments. Then he coughed stickily, his inevitable prelude to delivering a message when he thought my attention was elsewhere.

  'Begging your pardon, commissar, ma'am, sir, but there's an urgent message from headquarters. The heretic fleet has engaged the warships and the lord general expects them to start landing troops as soon as they can.'

  'Thank you, Jurgen,' I said as calmly as I could, reaching for my weapons. One way or another, the battle for the soul of Adumbria was about to be decided, although quite how literally I still had no idea.

  DESPITE MY FEARS, the initial reports coming in from the battlefronts made no mention of giants in crimson power armour, so it looked as though we were to be spared an onslaught of Chaos Marines at least. This wasn't so unusual; according to some highly classified files Zyvan had made available to me, the World Eaters Chapter[88]quite often sent out a few of their number to advise the hordes of wannabe warmasters infesting the galaxy. (But what advice a follower of Khorne would listen to other than ''Kill them all!'' is quite frankly beyond me.) It was quite probable that we weren't facing any more than a squad or two in the whole invasion force, which was still a disturbing enough prospect I grant you, but rather less intimidating than an army of psychopathic supermen would have been, especially if I didn't have to deal with any more of them myself.

  'Eight shuttles inbound,' the auspex operator called. Kasteen and I exchanged glances. The palms of my hands were tingling again, and my mouth suddenly felt dry.

  'We're taking a hell of a gamble,' I said.

  The colonel nodded tensely. 'Well, it's too late to change our minds now.' We glanced at the dispositions of our forces in the chart table holo tank, and inevitably I felt a flutter of apprehension; if we'd made the wrong call things were about to get very ugly indeed.

  After much deliberation, we'd decided to follow Kasteen's instinct and assume that the isolated hab dome would be their main target. Accordingly we'd deployed the whole of fourth and fifth companies in a wide ring around it, camouflaged as only Valhallans can be in a snowfield, hoping to close the noose around them once they were on the ground. Which, with second company still waiting to be deployed by dropship, left first to protect the town more or less unaided, unless you counted the handful of Hekwyn's people assigned there. Not for the first time I wondered if Sulla was really up to the job we'd handed her, and hoped I wouldn't get my answer in the form of a pile of civilian corpses.

  This left the problem of ensuring the security of our compound. In theory, second company should be more than enough to do the job, as they had before, but this time they were already embarked aboard the dropship which stood, engines idling, awaiting the lord general's orders to deploy to Emperor knew where at a moment's notice.We still had a couple of hundred warm bodies in third company, and being Guard troopers first and foremost they could shoot as well as anyone, but the thought of relying on a motley collection of cooks, medicae orderlies and the regimental band to protect our hides from a frothing swarm of homicidal lunatics wasn't exactly comforting. (Though it was marginally more so than the idea of the enginseers being issued with lasguns and shown which end to point forwards; being cogboys they could tell you every detail of how they worked, but couldn't hit the side of a starship if they were standing in one of the cargo holds. The sight of a group of white-robed tech-priests holding fact
ory-fresh small-arms as though they were incredibly delicate works of art, being bawled at by Sergeant Lustig as he attempted to impart the rudiments of their use, will remain with me to the grave.)

  'Contacts closing, fifty kilometres out,' the auspex operator droned, her voice as emotionless as a servitor. 'Descending rapidly, forty-three kilometres and closing…'

  The crimson blips crawled slowly across the hololith, heading straight for us and Glacier Peak. I tried to calculate the number of enemy soldiers that eight civilian shuttles might contain, then wished I hadn't. If they were packed out, each one could hold as much as a full company, which meant that in a worst-case scenario we could find ourselves outnumbered by two to one.

  'On the plus side, they've probably forgotten their cold-weather gear like the last ones did,' Kasteen said, clearly doing the same piece of mental arithmetic I was.

  'Let's hope so,' I said. It seemed likely; in my experience Chaotic troops tended to rush headlong into combat heedless of the suitability or otherwise of the equipment they had, or even if their weapons were adequate. And Khornate cultists were the most reckless of all. 'With any luck the cold will do most of the work for us.'

  'It did before,' Broklaw said hopefully.

  'Thirty-eight kilometres and closing,' the auspex operator chimed in.

  'Maintaining descent vector…'

  'Can you approximate an LZ yet?' Kasteen asked, her voice brittle with tension.

  'It could still be any of the targets,' the operator responded. 'Thirty-two kilometres and closing…'

  'Great.' Kasteen's hand closed on the butt of her bolt pistol, a reflexive response to stress I was long familiar with; indeed I tended to reach for my own weapons in moments of unease.

  'Twenty-nine kilometres and closing,' the chant went on. 'Descent vector steady…'

  'Regina, look.' Broklaw pointed to the chart table, relief evident in his voice. The potential landing zone was projected into it, a steadily shrinking circle, diminishing as the approaching shuttles neared the ground. The majority of it was now well to the west of both Glacier Peak and our own position. 'You were right!'

  'Emperor be praised,' Kasteen said fervently, relief evident in both her posture and voice. There could be little doubt now that the site of the hab dome was the heretics' main target. If they just kept going on the same course, they'd come down inside our noose neat as you please. Our trap was about to be sprung.

  'Three contacts veering off,' the auspex operator said. 'The rest maintaining course and speed, eighteen kilometres and closing…'

  'Weering where?' I asked, a tingle of apprehension beginning to run through me. It had all been going so neatly. By way of answer, subsidiary landing zone circles began to shrink in the chart table.

  'Where do you think?' Broklaw asked grimly, and I bit down on a couple of choice underhive epithets. Two shuttles were heading for the town, and one was unquestionably targeting us. It seemed that the enemy had learned something from their first attack, probably from vox traffic, and wanted to pin us down while they took care of their primary target. Well they were in for an unpleasant surprise, of course, but that wasn't going to help us or the citizens of Glacier Peak.

  'First company, stand by. You've got two shuttles inbound, ETA…' Kasteen glanced at the auspex operator for confirmation before continuing, 'three minutes. Engage on sight.'

  'Understood.' Sulla's voice was crisp and confident, but then it always was with combat imminent. Well, there was no point worrying about it now, she'd just have to do the best she could. I just hoped to the Emperor we hadn't made a big mistake. 'We'll be ready for them.' She switched channels to her platoon command frequencies and began chivvying up her subordinates. I listened in for a moment, but she seemed to know what she was doing, so I returned my attention to the chart table.

  'I low long have we got?' I asked.

  'Four minutes, give or take,' Broklaw said. I nodded tensely. It could have been worse, I supposed.

  A single shuttle couldn't hold much more than a company's worth of enemy, I reminded myself, so even if it was packed we were in for a fairly even fight. Assuming our rear echelon troopers were up to the job, which they most certainly should be. And if push came to shove we still had a company of front-line combat troops in reserve.

  'Should I disembark second company?' Broklaw asked, almost as if he could read my thoughts. 'Bolster our defences here?'

  Kasteen shook her head. 'Leave them aboard the dropship.' She indicated the main hololith, where contact icons were springing up all over the planet. 'All hell's breaking loose. Emperor alone knows where they'll be needed before long.'

  It was hard to disagree. From what I could see, bitter fighting was beginning to erupt in nearly every population centre and the PDF were being hard pressed throughout the shadow zone, even where they were being supported by the Kastaforeans. It was credits to carrots that Zyvan would be calling his mobile reserves into action any time now, and he wouldn't be at all thrilled to be told that they'd be with him as soon as they could but something else had come up.

  'We should be able to handle them,' I agreed, hoping I was right.

  'Contact at LZ one in one minute,' the auspex operator chimed in. 'Contact at LZ two in two.' That would be us, and I watched the descending blip in the chart table with a kind of weary resignation. 'Contact at LZ three in four minutes thirty.'

  'Fourth and fifth companies, stand by,' Kasteen ordered. 'Five shuttles incoming, ETA four minutes. They've taken the bait.'

  'They might be landing, but they won't be taking off again,' the commander of fifth company promised, and Kasteen nodded in satisfaction.

  'I don't doubt it.' She looked across at Broklaw and me. 'Good luck, gentlemen.'

  'Let's hope we don't need it,' I said.

  What we really needed was some serious firepower, but the sentinels had all been deployed with the ambushers out at the hab dome, so the best we could muster was small-arms and a few man-portable heavy weapons. Unfortunately, the number of people on the base capable of using the heavy stuff, apart from the specialists in second company who had been strapped into their crash webbing aboard the dropship since the first alert, were few and far between. Not for the first time I began to think things might be a little healthier somewhere else.

  Or not. A worrying thought was beginning to nag at me, all the more insistently the harder I tried to ignore it. I turned to the nearest vox operator.

  'I need a channel to the lord general's office,' I said. 'Highest priority.' Just to make sure, I added my commissarial override code.

  'Ciaphas.' Zyvan sounded harrassed, which I suppose was inevitable under the circumstances. 'This isn't really a good time.'

  'I know,' I said. 'And I'm sorry. But this is important.'

  'I don't doubt it.' Zyvan sighed. 'What's the problem?' Behind his voice I could hear the unmistakable rumble of heavy ordnance detonating in the background. It sounded like things were getting pretty rough in Skitterfall.

  'Kasteen was right,' I told him. 'The heretics here are definitely targeting the ritual site.' The distant crackle of lasgun fire became audible in the distance, seeping through the walls around us. 'Mainly,' I added, in deference to the prevailing circumstances.

  'Interesting.' Zyvan was no fool, of course, and could see the implications as clearly as I could. 'I'll check with the Tallarns and Kolbe's mob here in the city. Just to confirm. But that does seem significant.'

  'It's still our best chance of finding out what the sorcerers are up to and stopping it,' I pointed out. 'If the invaders are concentrating anywhere we need to get in there fast. Preferably ahead of them.'

  'I'll look into it,' Zyvan promised. I glanced at the gently rotating globe in the hololith, struck by the number of enemy icons clustering along the shoreline of the larger sea, in some areas it looked as though the entire coast was bordered in blood.

  'I'd concentrate on the shoreline,' I said. 'There has to be something there whatever Maiden thinks.'
/>   'I'll take that under advisement,' Zyvan said diplomatically, which is general speak for 'I'll make up my own mind, thank you very much.'

  'We're missing something,' I said, turning to Kasteen. The sound of gunfire was a lot louder now.

  'All the military intelligence we've got is on the hololith,' she pointed out. The coin dropped, and I turned to the vox operator so fast the man flinched.

  'What about the civilian channels?' I asked.

  'I'm sorry, commissar, I haven't been monitoring…'

  'Of course you haven't,' I said patiently. 'It's not your job. But you can connect me to someone who has.'

  'Hekwyn.' The arbitrator sounded as though he was out on the street somewhere, talking into a comm-bead. To my distinct lack of surprise there was gunfire in the background. 'What can I do for you, commissar?'

  'I need to know if there have been any unusual incidents around the equatorial sea,' I told him.

  He laughed briefly, without humour. 'One or two enemies of humanity wreaking havoc, I'm told.'

  'Something more specific,' I said, filling him in rapidly on the situation.

  His tone changed. 'I'll get back to you,' he promised. 'But it might take a while.'

  'Let's hope we've got long enough,' I said, cutting the link.

  Becoming aware of a familiar odour at my elbow, I turned to find Jurgen standing there, the melta in his hands as always in times of trouble. It had been fired recently, the actinic tang of scorched metal hanging around the barrel. I raised an eyebrow in wordless enquiry.

  'I thought you might be wanting to step outside again, sir,' he said. Well, not likely, with the compound being overrun with heretic foot soldiers and all, but I nodded anyway for the benefit of anyone who might be around to take notice.

  'I'm afraid I'm needed here for the time being,' I told him, with the best air of frustrated martial zeal I could muster. It was at that point that I became aware that the gunfire outside had become very loud indeed, and that Jurgen's hat and greatcoat were covered in melting snow. 'What exactly is going on out there?' I asked.