Knowing Amberley as well as I did, and having already gleaned a little more than I was comfortable with about the way the Inquisition functioned (but a good deal less than I was going to discover before the battle for Periremunda was over), I found this far less reassuring than the major evidently did. I felt it would be unfair to disabuse him, however, not to mention unwise, so I held my tongue.
“Did she say anything else?” Kasteen asked, eyeing me narrowly through the steam from her tanna bowl.
Until then, to be honest, I still hadn’t made up my mind whether or not to share Amberley’s final bombshell with my comrades, but now she was asking me directly I couldn’t see any good reason to withhold it. I trusted the two of them as much as anyone apart from Jurgen, and at least I wouldn’t be the only one fretting about the news.
I nodded slowly. “She did, but it isn’t to leave this room.” I looked at them each in turn, underlining the need for discretion with all the subtlety of a second-rate actor playing to the back row of the gallery. “She told me specifically that you two were the only other people I could trust with the information.” Kasteen and Broklaw nodded solemnly, barely even bothering to hide how smug they felt at being let in on a secret most of their superiors would remain blissfully ignorant of for the next few weeks. Of course their satisfaction probably didn’t last more than the next couple of minutes, but that was hardly my fault. I made a show of glancing at the door, to make sure it was closed, and the expressions of eager expectation grew on my colleagues’ faces.
“You can rely on us,” Broklaw said.
“That’s what I told the arbitrator. Inquisitor Vail, of course, knows that already,” I said.
Kasteen inclined her head at the implied compliment. “You can assure her that her confidence wasn’t misplaced,” she said. I was never quite sure how much of my personal association with Amberley she’d deduced, but she generally seemed to take it for granted that we were at least keeping in touch, and may have suspected that I was one of her loose association of covert agents. (Which of course I was from time to time, since there was no way of getting out of it: I’m sure most of the men in the galaxy are familiar with the sinking feeling that accompanies the words “Do you think you could do me a little favour, darling?”, but when the woman asking the question is an inquisitor it’s even less wise than usual to say “No”.) At least if she did think that, of course, it diverted attention from Jurgen, who was probably the biggest asset Amberley possessed, as well as the most unlikely-seeming candidate for the job.
“Good,” I said, lowering my voice instinctively, “because if any of this gets out, the unrest we’ve seen so far will seem like a couple of drunks brawling in the street. The entire population will panic, and with the PDF unreliable, we’ll never be able to contain it.”
“The hive fleet’s been sighted, hasn’t it?” Kasteen asked, her face even paler than usual.
“Not yet,” I said, “but Amberley’s convinced it’s on the way. Rakel seems to think she can feel its presence in the warp.”
“Then we haven’t got long,” Broklaw said. He seemed, if anything, more rattled at the news than the colonel had been, but the two of them were rallying fast, and I could hardly blame them for being somewhat disconcerted. The 597th had been formed from the depleted remnants of two other regiments, the 296th and the 301st, after the defence of Corania had reduced both to less than half of their original complement. It had been a tyranid swarm that had butchered their friends and comrades, and if the thought of facing any enemy of the Imperium was likely to give them pause, it would be the scuttling horrors of the hive fleets. Come to that, I’d seen more than enough of the hideous creatures to last me several lifetimes by that point myself. “I’ll start putting together a contingency plan for keeping the plateau free of any spores they start dropping. If we can do that we can hold out up here pretty much indefinitely.”
“Good thinking,” Kasteen said, glancing in my direction with every sign of her usual confidence. “One thing you can say for this frakked-up geography, it gives us a fighting chance. Most of their spores will drop into the deserts or the lava pits, where they’ll have nothing to consume. We’ll lose some of the plateaux, no question about that, but the uninhabited ones we can just sterilise from the air, and win back the others the old-fashioned way.”
“Well that sounds like a plan,” I said, trying to hide my own sense of relief. She was right, of course, the very conditions that made Periremunda such a nightmare when it came to rooting out the ’stealer infestation would play right into our own hands when it came to fighting the ’nids themselves. I hoped. Something told me it wasn’t going to be quite as easy as that, but the thought was a comforting one, and it would do to be going on with.
“We’ll start working on some immediate action drills for tackling the most common creatures too,” Kasteen added. “If we work them in to the standard counter-insurgency training no one outside the regiment should notice, and it’ll be good for the morale of our own people.”
“I’ll get the company commanders preparing the ground,” Broklaw agreed. He glanced at me. “As soon as they know we’re hunting hybrids they’ll want to start practising anti-tyranid techniques anyway. We don’t have to tell them we already know they’re going to need them.”
“Agreed,” I said, relieved to hear that our people would be as ready as possible for the coming storm without having to break the letter of my agreement with Amberley. Most of the troopers would remember all too well how the desperate battle for Corania had begun as a routine operation to clear out a genestealer cult, which had escalated rapidly into an all-out battle simply to survive once the splinter fleet the ’stealers had called arrived in orbit. Only the fortuitous presence in system of a Naval flotilla and the relative weakness of the tyranid swarm prevented the siege from turning into something far worse.[1] If anything, they’d be more suspicious if we weren’t taking precautions against the same thing happening again. “I’ll leave it with you, then.”[1. Cain had presumably heard the story from the survivors, as these events wok place before he joined the regiment. Anyone wanting a fuller account of them is referred to chapter eighty-seven of Arten Burrar’s The Abominable Chitin, cited earlier.]
Unfortunately, of course, it wasn’t quite that easy. I found my way to the quarters Jurgen had found for me, a tolerably comfortable room in a quiet corner of the garrison, which most of the Valhallans were avoiding because of the heat emitted by the power plant in the basement, and I fell into bed gratefully enough. But sleep was a long time in coming, and when it did was troubled by dreams of the tyranid swarms I’d encountered before, sweeping across deserts and through cities like a tide of scuttling death.
CHAPTER SEVEN
For the next few days, despite my understandable trepidation, Darien remained unrocked by civil insurrection: a circumstance which should have been comforting, but which just left me feeling restless and uneasy. My paranoid streak, normally so reliable, kept insisting that the longer things remained quiet the worse they were likely to be when everything finally went ploin-shaped, so I was unable to appreciate the lull as much as I’d have liked, despite the happy discovery that Darien possessed a reasonable number of good quality restaurants and discreet gaming establishments only too eager to acquire the cachet they apparently believed would be conferred by the patronage of a Hero of the Imperium. As a result my leisure time was spent pleasantly enough, despite the freezing temperatures, which my comrades in arms still seemed to think were positively sultry.
“We’ve completed our deployment,” Broklaw reported, gesturing to the image in the hololith, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows despite the way his breath misted into visibility with every word.
I leaned across it, brushing away the thin film of snow that my cap had acquired on the short journey from my quarters as I did so, noting the disposition of our forces. They’d been scattered all around the plateau with a speed and efficiency that I doubted anyone other than native-bor
n iceworlders could possibly have matched, and at a first glance I could find nothing to criticise.
Two full companies, first and second, had been given the job of defending Darien, continuing to operate out of our makeshift garrison, and if that strikes you as being somewhat excessive under the circumstances you should bear in mind that the city was the largest concentration of life on Hoarfell, and would attract any tyranid organisms that made it to the surface as surely as Jurgen to an “all you can eat” buffet; not to mention being the site of the starport, which represented our only line of retreat if things started going really badly.
Stuck on the top of a thin spire of rock as we were, we had precious little room for manoeuvre, and if it looked as if we were about to be overrun our only option would be to run for the shuttles and Horus take the hindmost. Not for the first time I found myself blessing the foresight of whoever had decided to billet us as close as we were to the landing field. I nodded approvingly.
“You’ve got the city well covered.”
“I think so,” Broklaw agreed. “I thought about detaching a couple of platoons from first company to bolster the outer picket lines, but if things get bad enough to need them there we’ll need them here even more desperately to help defend the civilians.” He spoke as if that were possible, but we all knew they’d be easy prey for the ’nids, and if the swarm ever made it into the streets of the city we’d have our work cut out just trying to survive ourselves. Any civilians managing to make it through would just be a welcome bonus.
“Fourth and fifth[1] look more than capable of holding the line,” I reassured him, and Kasteen nodded her agreement. [1. Third Company was the regiment’s logistical support arm, made up mostly of transport, medicae, sapper, and other specialised units. Though just as capable of fighting as any other troopers at a pinch, they would only be deployed in the front line in the direst of emergencies.]
“That’s what we thought,” she said briskly.
There were a handful of outlying villages scattered around the hills and valleys, most of them playing host to a platoon or two, which between them looked able to respond to any incursion within as short a time as anyone could reasonably expect given the rugged and wintry terrain. “We’ve managed to overlap most of the patrol areas, so the chances of anything that makes it down staying undetected are reduced as much as possible.”
“Good thinking,” I said. I didn’t really give much for anyone’s chances of finding a lictor or one of the other specialised scout organisms unless the creature fancied a quick snack, but the strategy should make it more difficult for ordinary gaunts and the like to sneak through our lines unnoticed. I indicated a few scattered hamlets and mining stations with no icons marking the presence of friendly troops. “What about these?”
Kasteen shrugged dismissively. “Settlements with fewer than a hundred souls: barely a dozen, some of them. Not worth the effort of trying to defend.”
Well, I supposed the inhabitants might feel rather differently about their homes, but I couldn’t fault the military logic, and nodded my agreement. “We’ve told the locals to evacuate to the nearest population centres. Some have, some are insisting on staying put.” She shrugged again. “It’s their call. If they want to play ’nid bait, I’m not risking any of our people to hold their hands.”
“Quite right,” I agreed, happy to have as many heavily armed troopers standing between me and the chitinous hordes as possible. I turned away from the flickering display. “Are we making any progress on the other matter we discussed?”
“Not much,” Kasteen said, turning to lead the way up the staircase to her office. The matter in question was a little too sensitive to talk about openly where any of the common troopers might overhear us, although I was pretty sure most of them could join the dots for themselves now word had filtered down the ranks to keep an eye out for any sign of genestealer activity. She waited until I’d closed the door behind us, reducing the never-ending chatter of the command centre to a muted murmur, before continuing. “We’ve been liaising with all the usual agencies, but so far we can’t say for sure which of the local PDF units have been compromised.” She shrugged, handing me a data-slate, which said the same thing at much greater length, and which I replaced on her desk after a cursory glance. “Of course we can’t entirely trust any of our sources either. It’s entirely possible the hybrids have infiltrated the justicars, the Administratum, starport security, and for all I know the local ecclesiarchs and refuse collectors too.”
“Pretty much what we’d expected,” I conceded, trying not to sound too disheartened at the limitless vistas of distrust her words had opened up.
Broklaw looked at me in a speculative fashion. “Could your friend in Principia Mons be any help in narrowing it down?”
I looked thoughtful. Amberley might have some more solid information, but if she did she wasn’t sharing it, and if that was the case she’d undoubtedly have excellent reasons for not doing so. In either event, I wasn’t about to ask her. Need to know is practically a twenty-third verse of the creed[1] to most inquisitors. [1. The version most widely used by the chaplains of the Imperial Guard is the abbreviated twenty-two verse one, as services in the field tend, of necessity, to be as brief as possible.]
“I doubt it,” I said. The matter was pretty moot anyway as she’d been out of touch for over a week, cleaning out any other nests of purestrains she’d been able to track down, in an attempt to block whatever psychic signal Rakel thought she could feel the brood lords channelling into the void. “Besides, she’s out of town.”
“I see.” Kasteen looked mildly disappointed. “Perhaps if you made a personal approach to the arbitrator?”
“I could try,” I said, without much hope. Keesh had been making precious little headway with the problem before we arrived, and would certainly have passed on anything new he’d uncovered that affected our position. On the other hand setting up a meeting with him would give me an excuse to return to the more equable climate of Principia Mons, at least for a short while, and after freezing my extremities off on Hoarfell for what felt like eternity I wasn’t about to let the chance of even the briefest of respites go by without grabbing at it. “I’ll get Jurgen to make the call.”
“We might as well face it,” Broklaw said, “the only people on the entire planet we know we can rely on are the ones in this regiment.” He glanced at me. “That is still the case, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. After my experiences on Keffia, where the infiltrating ’stealer hybrids had managed to infect scores of the Guardsmen sent to eradicate them by the simple expedient of running bars and bordellos where likely victims could be isolated and implanted, I’d placed all such establishments firmly off limits as soon as I’d returned to Hoarfell with the unwelcome news of what we were actually facing. The troopers had grumbled, of course, but for the most part had complied with the restriction. Only a few of them had actually seen me executing the infected soldiers among our own ranks on Gravalax, but the story had got round fast enough, and no one seemed keen to be the next in line. There had been the inevitable few who’d gone ahead regardless, out of bravado or sheer stupidity, but none of them had shown the telltale wounds of implantation when the justicars had returned them to us, and I’d made sure that however much fun they’d had the night before the morning after definitely hadn’t been worth it. After that, the problem had more or less petered out. “Well, that’s something anyway,” Kasteen said.
The response to my request for a meeting with Keesh was as gratifying as it was unexpected, my aide rousing me early the next morning with a mug of tanna and the news that the arbitrator himself was on the vox asking to talk to me. Hauling myself out of bed and grabbing the comm-bead from its accustomed place under my pillow, next to the laspistol, I screwed the little transceiver into my ear and took a mouth-scalding gulp of the fragrant drink while Jurgen handed me my trousers.
“Cain,” I said as crisply as I could while gulping for air. “Thank you
for getting back to me so quickly.”
“Our mutual friend made it very clear that we ought to co-operate,” Keesh said, too astute to mention Amberley’s name or title even over an encrypted link. “So I thought I’d give you some advance notice of something you’ll be hearing through the usual channels in the next hour or two. We’ve just had an astropathic message from Coronus.”
“That’s excellent news,” I said, sipping my tanna a little more carefully this time. The mere fact that a message had got through at all meant that the hive fleet was either still some distance from Periremunda, where the shadow it cast in the warp wasn’t able to disrupt communications with us yet, or weak enough for the area of interference to be significantly smaller than usual. Keesh’s voice took on a more cautious tone.
“Yes and no,” he said guardedly, and I felt the palms of my hands begin to tingle again. Despite his attempt to sound unruffled, he was obviously seriously perturbed by something. “I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that we have reinforcements on the way.” Well, that was cause for optimism anyway. He hesitated.
“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” I said, managing to mask my own unease a great deal more successfully.
Keesh cleared his throat. “My department has uncovered some fresh intelligence, which casts a disturbing new light on things. I’ve been invited by the lord general to brief all the regimental commanders in person,” he said, the implication obvious. This was something else he didn’t want to talk about over the vox. “The Imperial Guard commanders anyway.”
Better and better. Keeping the PDF out of the loop only confirmed the sensitivity of whatever he wanted to tell us. My palms began to itch worse than ever. “And the commissars too, of course.”
“Of course,” I echoed, making a mental note of the time and security arrangements he began to rattle off. As the link went dead, I found myself wondering if it was too late to crawl back into bed and pull the blankets over my head until it all went away, but of course there was no chance of that. Pausing only to finish my tanna, and the hot grox bun Jurgen had managed to find for me somewhere, I went to give the colonel the good news.
[Ciaphas Cain 05] - Duty Calls Page 7