The Greater Good Page 3

  An instant after I’d hit, the tau dreadnought landed squarely atop the Salamander, crushing it into the rockcrete with a squeal of rending metal as though it had been no more robust than a cardboard box. Rivulets of promethium gushed from the ruptured fuel and flamer tanks, spreading out around the crippled vehicle like blood from mortal wounds.

  ‘Jurgen!’ I called. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Over here, sir.’ My aide rolled to a sitting position, half hidden in the shadow of a wall a dozen metres away, and tried to haul himself upright, one hand pressed to the side of his head. ‘I’ll be right… right with…’ Then his knees folded, and he slithered back down on his haunches. A dark stain was visible beneath his fingers, which admittedly was nothing new, but this one was spreading slowly; had it not been for his helmet, the impact of landing would probably have crushed his skull.

  ‘Stay down!’ I called to him, as though either of us had any choice in the matter. ‘Just got to see off this pile of unsanctified scrap, then we’ll get you to the medicae.’ And right after that, I added under my breath, the necrons will take up flower arranging. I tapped where my comm-bead should have been, hoping to summon help, but just got an earful of finger for my pains; somewhere along the way the tiny vox-unit and I had parted company. We were on our own.

  The tau battlesuit stepped back off the mashed remains of the expiring Salamander with one foot, leaving the other where it was, looking for all the world like a beast-hunter with a trophy, posing for a pict. Its head turned, scanning the yard, and I looked round frantically for some vestige of cover, only to find there wasn’t one. I was surrounded by nothing but bare rockcrete, a sitting target.

  I scrabbled for my sidearms, feeling better for the weight of the chainsword in my hand, even though against the heavily armoured battlesuit it would be worse than useless. Then the acrid odour of spilled promethium scratched my nostrils, and a desperate idea began to blossom, fertilised by panic. The laspistol in my other hand would barely scratch the thing’s paint, but…

  The looming figure raised an arm, a vicious-looking rotary cannon swinging towards me; even a single round from it would be enough to vaporise me where I stood. With no more time to think, I pulled the laspistol’s trigger.

  My aim was true, the las-bolt sparking off the sundered metal of the Salamander, although by this time there was so much promethium vapour in the air it hardly mattered where the round impacted. It detonated at once, a fireball boiling out from the wreck in all directions, close enough to shrivel my eyebrows. A wall of furnace heat arrived with the shockwave, slamming me back to the ground and sending my chainsword skittering off into the shadows. I hung on to the laspistol though, the augmetic fingers on my right hand slower to relinquish their grip, for which I was suitably grateful.

  For a moment I dared to hope that my desperate gamble had paid off and that the battlesuit had been immolated in the explosion or, at the very least, damaged enough to discourage the pilot from pursuing us. But of course I’d reckoned without the jump jets. They kicked in at once, allowing the huge machine to ride the shockwave in a single balletic leap, with no more ill effects than a faint charring around the ankles.

  I clambered to my feet once more, only to stagger again as the battlesuit crashed back to earth. This time I remained standing, however, my footing rendered no more unstable than during a typical drive with Jurgen, as the armoured giant plodded relentlessly towards me, shaking the ground with every stride. Raising my laspistol, I sent a desperate couple of ricochets bouncing off its torso plates, but didn’t even manage to slow the thing.

  Then, by the light of the burning Salamander, I finally saw a way out of the trap, a second loading door further down the wall of the warehouse, this time at ground level. Without another thought I sprinted for it; but before I could get anywhere close the corrugated metal sheet bulged and tore, ripped aside by another of the towering machines as though it was no more substantial than a curtain. It too began to plod unhurriedly towards me, and I retreated a few paces, firing as I went, but for all the effect I was having I might just as well have been throwing feathers at it. After a dozen or so steps I stumbled against something yielding and almost fell, being brought up short by the stout masonry wall behind it as a familiar odour assaulted my nostrils.

  ‘Run for it, sir. Don’t mind me,’ Jurgen slurred, already halfway to unconsciousness.

  ‘Not an option,’ I assured him, certain that by now escape was impossible. I raised my hands, and let the laspistol drop to the rockcrete. Perhaps they wouldn’t just gun us down out of hand, if they thought we were harmless. At least we weren’t dealing with vicious brutes like the orks, or refined sadists like the eldar reavers, in whose hands we’d be far better off dead anyway.

  Then the targeting beam swept my face again, and I flinched, cursing, wishing I’d chosen to go down fighting after all. At least that would have left me with the illusion of possible escape right up to the end, instead of the crushing certainty of imminent ignominious butchery. I braced myself, hoping the Emperor would be in a good mood when I arrived at the Golden Throne, or at least willing to listen to excuses.

  ‘You are commissar hero Ciaphas Cain?’ a voice asked, in halting Gothic, the curious lisping accent of the tau amplified by an external vox-system somewhere on the battlesuit facing me.

  ‘I am,’ I said, fighting to keep a sudden flare of hope from inflecting my voice. If they wanted to talk, they weren’t going to pull the trigger right away, although I was damned if I could see that we had anything to discuss. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Ui-Thiching, of the shas’ui ka’sui[14]. In the name of the Greater Good, we ask of you to convey a message to your fellows.’

  Better and better. They clearly weren’t about to shoot the messenger; I just had to hope Braddick didn’t either[15].

  ‘What message would that be?’ I asked, not wanting to seem too eager. For all I knew they were recording this and the last thing I needed was to be accused of collaborating with the enemy to save my own neck.

  ‘We wish the negotiation of a truce,’ the tau told me, as though that were the most reasonable thing in the galaxy, just as they were about to snatch the entire planet out from under us regardless.

  ‘A truce?’ I repeated, not entirely willing to trust my own ears. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Completely,’ the amplified voice assured me. ‘Hostilities must cease at once on this world. The Greater Good demands it. For both our empires.’

  EDITORIAL NOTE:

  One of Cain’s more annoying idiosyncrasies as a chronicler of events is his tendency to gloss over periods of time in which he feels nothing of interest to have happened from his singularly self-centred perspective. Just such an elision now occurs, picking up his narrative after a gap of several weeks.

  I have accordingly inserted the following extract, which I hope will go some way towards making up the obvious deficiency.

  From The Crusade and After: A Military History of the Damocles Gulf, by Vargo Royz, 058.M42.

  The tau’s offer of a truce was regarded with a fair degree of suspicion at first, not least by Commissar Cain, to whom it had been delivered. Nevertheless, with the Imperial forces poised on the brink of annihilation, the defenders had little option but to accept it.

  Accordingly, when the relief flotilla arrived, accompanied by a hastily-assembled diplomatic mission and no less a personage than the Lord General himself, they found General Braddick in uncontested control of Peakhaven, to no one’s greater surprise than his own. Before long the Quadravidia garrison had been reinforced by the new arrivals[16], of sufficient strength to deter all but the most determined of assaults. But such a precaution scarcely seemed needed, as the tau remained behind the lines to which they had withdrawn immediately upon the declaration of a ceasefire.

  Thus it was, with a fair degree of suspicion, that negotiations began, and the tau’s motives for such an unexpected move became clear.

  THREE

  ‘The
y’re up to something,’ I said, delighted to feel the deckplates of an Imperial vessel underfoot once again. The fact that it was Zyvan’s flagship, and therefore the most heavily armed ship in the flotilla, only added a little zest to my relief at finally making it off Quadravidia in one piece.

  ‘Of course they are,’ Zyvan agreed. He’d met me personally as I’d stepped off the shuttle in the hangar bay, much to my surprise; but it was pleasant to see him again, and he seemed to feel the same about me, although the purpose of my visit was far from social. ‘They’ve said nothing else since they first spoke to you?’

  ‘Nothing about their reasons for calling a truce,’ I said, raising my voice a little over the clatter the boots of his personal guard were making as they trotted ahead of us, clearing the corridor like a braid-bedecked dozer blade. Light from the overhead luminators ricocheted from their polished helms and hellguns, held ready for use despite the fact that we were among friends. I doubted that the captain and crew were all that happy about heavily armed Guardsmen waving guns about in their vessel, but protocol demanded it, and I for one was hardly going to complain, given the number of assassination attempts Zyvan had already survived[17]. ‘Just the usual bickering about the details.’ Details which Braddick and his staff had dealt with, leaving me free to seek more congenial diversions. ‘I’m afraid I can’t fill you in on those, I’m a bit behind on the paperwork.’

  ‘How is your man, by the way?’ Zyvan asked, as we reached the door to his personal quarters. ‘Recovering well, I trust?’

  ‘I’ll convey your good wishes,’ I told him. Jurgen was probably still sulking about being left behind, but the medicae had recommended light duties for a while, and being jolted around in a shuttle would hardly have helped his convalescence. Besides, I wanted him back in the bunker, so I’d know at once if Braddick did anything rash, like turning his newly-acquired firepower on the tau while their backs were turned. Throne knew, I’d be tempted in his shoes.

  ‘I heard what you did, going back for him like that. Not many men would,’ Zyvan said, leading the way into his state room while the storm troopers took up position outside to guard the corridor.

  ‘He’d have done the same for me,’ I said, truthfully enough. Evidently the tau diplomats had been talking to their Imperial counterparts already, and another spurious tale of my gallantry was doing the rounds. I settled into a comfortably padded seat, and accepted the goblet of amasec which Zyvan’s steward had already poured for me with a nod of thanks; it never hurt to get on well with the servants, particularly in my covert avocation as Amberley’s eyes and ears. I’d gleaned quite a few nuggets of information that way over the years, to my own benefit as well as hers.

  ‘No doubt,’ Zyvan said dryly, taking my modesty for granted, and firmly cementing the story in his mind as he did so. He accepted his own drink, and the steward bustled out, closing the door with a satisfyingly resonant thud. No chance of anything we said being overheard now. ‘I’d like you to sit in on the initial meeting.’

  ‘I could do that,’ I agreed, readily enough. The Commissariat would expect a report anyway, and if I didn’t agree to be their observer, one of the other commissars attached to the task force would be handed the job. I hadn’t met many, but most of the ones I’d conversed with would cheerfully urge a full-scale invasion of Quadravidia if the tau didn’t pack up and leave, a course of action which was bound to end badly. Besides, I’d had dealings with the tau and their vassals before, and couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something wasn’t right about all this; when the other boot dropped, I wanted to be there to hear it.

  ‘That would be most helpful,’ another voice put in, and I turned, to find a face I recognised; narrow, serious, and sporting a faint scar inflicted on a night I’d rather have forgotten.

  ‘Donali.’ I rose to shake hands, both surprised and pleased to see the senior diplomat I’d first met on Gravalax, the same night as Amberley, some sixty years before. ‘You’re heading the delegation?’

  ‘So it seems.’ He smoothed a non-existent crease from the front of his immaculate robe, regarding me with the air of calm deliberation I recalled so clearly. ‘You look well. Surprisingly so, for a man in your profession.’

  ‘I’ve been lucky,’ I said, with rather more sincerity than I’m used to. ‘And I could say the same about you.’ His hair was a lot greyer around the temples than I remembered, but then so was mine; hardly surprising, given the number of times something had tried to kill me since the last time we’d spoken.

  ‘I’d say we’ve all been lucky,’ Donali said. ‘If you hadn’t been on Quadravidia, the tau might well have decided against opening negotiations.’

  ‘Me?’ I said, in honest astonishment. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t see what I’ve got to do with it.’

  Donali settled into a seat between Zyvan and myself, and reached for the decanter the servant had left on the polished obsidian table, laid siege to by the chairs. ‘The tau still remember your part in resolving the Gravalax incident,’ he said.

  ‘Do they?’ I asked, an uncomfortable chill overtaking me. The stand-off there had ended in humiliation for the xenos, and if they were still carrying a grudge about it, I’d have to start looking over my shoulder.

  ‘Indeed. They speak very highly of your integrity, and your commitment to the Greater Good of the Imperium.’ Donali sipped at his drink, at just the right moment to mask any facial expression accompanying the words.

  ‘So they had every confidence that you would relay their message, and get someone in authority to listen to it,’ Zyvan added.

  ‘Couldn’t they just have voxed?’ I asked, ‘instead of chasing me across half the city?’

  ‘At that point they had no idea it was you,’ Donali said. ‘Fortunately their vox intercepts had made them aware of your presence somewhere among the Imperial forces, and the on-board cogitator of the battlesuit you encountered had instructions to look for an officer who matched the facial features of an old pict from Gravalax.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, recalling the targeter beam sweeping across my face, and trying not to think about how close we’d come to the xenos machine spirit having nothing recognisable left to read. ‘But voxing would still have been easier.’

  ‘I’m not sure General Braddick would have listened,’ Zyvan said dryly, and I had to concede the point. By the time I’d got back to the bunker, Braddick had concluded that the sudden cessation of the tau bombardment was the prelude to an all-out assault, and it had taken a fair amount of persuasion, not to mention shameless trading on my inflated reputation, to argue him out of sallying forth in a glorious do-or-die, pre-emptive counter-attack; which would have had precious little of the ‘do’ about it, given the forces ranged against him.

  ‘So where are we supposed to be meeting them?’ I asked. ‘Peakhaven, or somewhere in the occupied zone?’ Given the choice I’d have opted for the latter, as the tau held most of the temperate areas and I’d got heartily sick of the bracing mountain air in the capital by now. Besides, it never hurts to get a good look at your enemy’s resources while they’re not shooting at you. I had fewer qualms about venturing into the stronghold of the foe than I normally would, as, by and large, the tau can be trusted to observe the terms of a truce; they’re devious little buggers right enough, but hoisting a white flag to lure you into a crossfire doesn’t sit well with them[18].

  ‘Neither,’ Donali said, to my surprise. ‘The Lord General has expressed some disquiet about the opportunities for intelligence gathering afforded by a tau presence within the Imperial zone, and my opposite number from the water caste[19] has similar concerns.’ Which, as I’d been considering precisely that myself, I could hardly quibble with.

  ‘Where, then?’ Zyvan asked, leaning forward to pour himself a refill.

  ‘One of the abandoned orbital docks,’ Donali said. ‘We can secure it easily enough, and it’s not as though it’s needed for cargo handling at the moment[20].’

  ‘Works for me,’ I sa
id, assessing the pros and cons, and settling instantly on the major advantage from my point of view. If the whole thing went ploin-shaped and the war kicked off again, I’d be sitting comfortably above it for once.

  ‘Me too,’ Zyvan said. ‘I’ll ask the Navy to station a warship alongside then we can blow the whole thing to scrap at the first sign of treachery.’ An idea I liked the sound of a lot less, but Donali was already nodding in agreement.

  ‘The tau have already indicated that they’re taking a similar precaution.’

  Both men looked at me, and I plastered a wry grin on my face, wondering if perhaps I should find some pressing reason to palm the job off on one of my commissarial colleagues after all but even before the thought had time to form fully, I dismissed it. Zyvan and the tau both wanted me there, and if I pulled out, chances were the xenos would pick up their ball and go home, we’d all start shooting at each other again, and I’d get the blame for snatching defeat from the jaws of compromise. ‘That should keep everyone honest,’ I said instead, resolving to make sure I knew where the saviour pods were before anyone had a chance to open their mouths.

  In the event I didn’t need to make sure of an escape route, as everyone was on their best behaviour; although that didn’t stop me from doing so anyway. By this stage in my career, finding the quickest way out of any new place I found myself in had become second nature, which rather accounted for the fact that I was still around to be paranoid.