“We can’t defend everywhere,” Broklaw pointed out. “Even if every regiment becomes air mobile, it’ll take time to respond to an attack.”
“Precisely,” Zyvan said, “which is why we’re implementing a strategy of phased reinforcement.” He smiled, looking more relaxed than he had done since I’d left him in earnest discussion with Amberley the evening before to return to Hoarfell. “Not unlike the way the Guard responds to an attack on the Imperium itself, as it happens, but on a much smaller scale, of course.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” the young commissar said.
“It’s fairly straightforward,” Zyvan assured him. “When the ’nids attack a populated plateau, the local PDF garrison will respond, and report the situation. Reinforcements from the nearest plateaux with PDF garrisons will start arriving at once, giving the nearest Guard regiment time to put its own rapid response force into the air.”
“That should work,” I agreed. If nothing else, it would buy Keesh’s people a little more time to evacuate the civilians, and the PDF gaunt fodder should at least slow down the ’nids long enough for the real soldiers to get there. All in all I couldn’t think of a better plan, although if I’d realised Zyvan was inadvertently setting me up for another attempt on my life, no doubt I’d have been a good deal less sanguine about it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
For the next couple of days Zyvan’s strategy seemed to be working. So far as we could tell the ’nids were still confining their depredations to the lowest lying and most sparsely populated plateaux, as our analysts had anticipated, and I have to confess to finding that curiously reassuring, Hoarfell being neither of those things. That wasn’t to say that we were at all complacent about the possibility of an unexpected attack on our own position, of course: the one thing we all knew from experience was that the scuttling horrors were nothing if not unpredictable, and Kasteen kept the regiment on high alert in case a lictor or a purestrain ’stealer brood had somehow managed to sneak onto the plateau despite our vigilance.
Apart from that unnerving possibility, of course, there was the constant looming threat of the hive fleet to worry about. Though its advent was expected hourly it still seemed in no hurry to arrive, which was fine by me, as once it emerged from the warp we could expect the entire planet to be blanketed in spores and battle to be joined in earnest wherever we happened to be.
The one piece of good news was that we didn’t have any more guerrilla attacks by ’stealer hybrids to worry about, the security precautions we’d imposed in the wake of the fuel tanker incident apparently proving enough to prevent them from re-establishing a presence in Darien, although hitherto unsuspected broods were emerging elsewhere around the planet to commit acts of sabotage aimed at undermining resistance to the swarms. I heard little from Amberley during this tense interlude of sporadic fighting, her attention apparently entirely taken up with rooting out the cancers in our midst, or following up whatever leads she’d discovered in Hell’s Edge that might lead her to the missing techpriest before the tyranids found him first (or Lazurus and his team managed to locate him, which she seemed to regard as almost as bad).
Keesh hadn’t been idle either. He and his justicars were attempting to evacuate the settlements deemed most at risk from the tyranid swarms roaming the desert, relocating the populations of the lowest plateaux to higher and safer ground (at least until the hive fleet turned up, and “safe” ceased to have any meaning other than a large metal box with a lock on it), a strategy which, in addition to saving countless lives, would also deny the invaders the resources they needed to increase their numbers. It was a massive undertaking, though, and all too frequently the dirigible fleet arrived too late at some luckless community to find nothing of it remaining beyond the kind of desolation we’d discovered in Hell’s Edge.
While all this was going on, the regiment was getting its first taste of action against the chittering nightmares that continued to besiege us. Several of our platoons had been airlifted to bolster the sagging resistance of the PDF when the ’nids moved against towns or industrial zones large enough to be worth defending, and, I’m pleased to say, had given a good account of themselves in the process, despite the trauma of facing their most dreaded foe once again.[1] [1. Elements of the 597th were deployed in support of the PDF on three separate occasions during this period, managing to repulse the tyranid attack entirely on one of them, and holding it off for long enough to successfully complete the evacuation of the surviving civilians before retreating in good order themselves in both of the other engagements. Their previous experience of fighting this particular xenos breed no doubt stood them in good stead, and the positive effect on morale these victories had went well beyond the regiment itself.]
Of course the more successful we were at evacuating the smaller colonies the more we were forcing the ’nids to mass their forces against larger, more vital targets, so in retrospect I suppose each victory we gained was somewhat pyrrhic, merely forcing us into another more desperate battle within a matter of hours, but the grim statistics of attrition seemed to be marginally in our favour. There was no doubt in my mind that we were making the tyranids pay for every centimetre of ground they gained in ichor. Any other foe would at least have been given pause by the pounding they took, but true to type they took no more notice of their own casualties than we would of an expended power cell. Nevertheless, just as we would have been handicapped by a shortage of ammunition, every hole we blasted through their ranks represented a marginal degradation of their ability to fight, and our policy of burning every ’nid corpse we could recover (to say nothing of our own) denied them the opportunity of replenishing their ranks. If the hive fleet that spawned them hadn’t arrived when it did, I suspect, we might even have been able to force our advantage past the tipping point, and succeeded in cleansing them entirely from the surface of Periremunda unaided.
That didn’t happen, of course. The fleet did arrive, along with our own reinforcements, and the focus of the campaign shifted to a more conventional system-wide engagement, where the battle in space became as important as events on the ground. (At least so far as the official record goes. The events I was to become involved in could well have changed the face of the entire galaxy, although just how far-reaching they were I’d have no idea until decades later, at the turn of the millennium, when Abbadon’s insane assault on the heart of the Imperium began.)[1] [1. Cain’s account of his exploits during the 13th Black Crusade, though fascinating, need not detain us at this juncture.]
But I’m getting ahead of myself. What I meant to be talking about was the day all hell broke loose, my shadowy enemies made another attempt to kill me, and I discovered far more than I ever wanted to know about the true nature of the Holy Inquisition.
It all started innocently enough, although in my experience it usually does when I’m about to be pitched yet again into mortal peril and bowel clenching terror. I’d been hanging around our command centre, trying, like everyone else, not to look as though I was staring at the hololith for the first sign of the hive fleet emerging from the warp, and discussing our state of readiness with Kasteen. So far we’d deployed four platoons in support of the PDF, and they’d all returned in high spirits, despite the inevitable casualties they’d taken.[1] I complimented the colonel once again on her decision to practise the anti-tyranid tactics the veterans among us had learned at so great a cost on Corania, and she nodded gravely. [1. Or perhaps because of them: they all seem to have lost around fifteen per cent of their initial complement (the vast majority of the fatalities being the inevitable ‘fungs’), a remarkably low total considering the nature of their foe. Not to mention the heartening effect that seeing the tyranids break and run must have had on the survivors of the massacre on Corania.]
“It seems to be paying off,” she conceded. I glanced at the status board. Second company was on standby for rapid deployment at the moment, a couple of platoons already sitting out at the aerodrome waiting for a vox message to pile into t
he transport shuttles we’d requisitioned, along with a couple of civilian pilots who seemed less than thrilled to be hopping in and out of war zones pretty much on a daily basis, but understandably disinclined to argue with an awful lot of people carrying guns. The dropships from our troop carriers would have been preferable, of course, but in the nature of things there were far fewer of those to go round than there were regiments demanding their use and our position on Hoarfell made us a low priority. Zyvan had decided that the company-sized transports would be better employed shifting troopers who were nearer to the enemy (which meant more of them could be plucked to safety if things went seriously ploin-shaped, but of course no one would have been tactless enough to mention that to the civilian authorities). I nodded approvingly.
“We’ve got by far the best survival rate of any of the Guard regiments,” I said, which happened to be true. The Harakoni had taken a real mauling that morning, and I’d found myself wondering briefly how their young commissar had fared. I didn’t even want to start thinking about the PDF. There was no doubt that Zyvan’s strategy was effective, but it left under trained and ill-equipped militia units holding the line against the tyranid horrors until the real soldiers could get there, and there was no doubt at all that the price they were paying was a heavy one. If the peculiar topography of their homeworld hadn’t made it impossible I’ve no doubt that many more of them would have broken and run than actually did.
Since they had nowhere to go in any case, and were fighting for their homes and loved ones, which I’ve observed time and again will make even the meekest civilian stand his ground like a Terminator, they remained at the front, and died in droves. Even allowing for our own people’s remarkable ability to engage the chitinous nightmares and emerge unscathed, these battlezones sounded extraordinarily unhealthy places to be, and I resolved to stay as far away from them as I could, at least until the spores started falling, and I couldn’t avoid the ’nids wherever I was.
Luckily no one had challenged my assertion that my place would be at the regimental headquarters when that ghastly prospect occurred (where, of course, I’d have a full company of troopers to hide behind), and that traipsing off on one of these periodic hit-and-run raids made it all too possible that I’d be wrapped up in what amounted to a glorified skirmish when the sky started falling. From years of practice I’d managed to sound a little wistful as I’d pointed this out, contriving to give the impression without actually saying so that I’d have liked nothing better than to charge off to face an endless tide of malevolent chitin, but my sense of duty was strong enough to override such a selfish impulse, leaving me no alternative but to skulk around our heavily fortified compound drinking tanna and generally getting underfoot while the troopers got on with defending the civilians like they were supposed to.
“So far,” Kasteen said, looking around us, her expression dour. Whatever doubts she might be feeling this was no place to discuss them. The command centre was swarming with men and women going about their regular duties, and we both knew morale wasn’t going to be helped if they got even an inkling that the senior command staff was less confident of our ultimate victory than we appeared. By mutual, unspoken agreement we began to walk towards the staircase leading up to the gallery where her office was. “But we still have to face the hive fleet. That’s going to be a very different game.”
“True,” I said, standing aside to let her mount the stairway first, “but our reinforcements can’t be far behind them.” My attention was quite pleasantly distracted for a moment by the callipygian spectacle ascending past my eye level, and as I placed my foot on the lowest tread I couldn’t help tilting my neck back a little to continue appreciating it for a moment longer.
Minute as it was, that movement was to save my life, as without it I’m sure I’d never have noticed the faint flicker of motion high in the girders supporting the roof. My first thought was that a bird of some kind had entered the vast enclosed space through the massive doors at the far end, which, as usual, had been left open to admit a howling draught and the occasional flurry of snow so essential to the Valhallan notion of wellbeing. That didn’t seem terribly likely, though, as the constant noise would have prevented any self-respecting avian from roosting comfortably, and if there was such an intruder it would almost certainly have left some trace of its presence on the room below. The palms of my hands began to itch, and, mindful of my recent experience with the psyker assassin, I craned my head for a better view, wondering where the hell Jurgen had got to now that I really needed him.
“There’s something in the rafters,” I said, drawing my laspistol, and trying to focus on the faint impression of movement in the shadows over our heads. Kasteen glanced up too, and reached for her sidearm. Around us I could see little ripples of alarm and consternation, most of the troopers on vox and auspex duty glancing at the lasguns resting against their control lecterns. Whatever the thing was, it was small, and I found myself reminded all too vividly of the spore mines that had attacked us in Hell’s Edge.
“I see it too,” Kasteen said grimly, aiming her bolt pistol. Then her gaze skittered off to one side. “And another one.”
“Arm yourselves!” I called, although the advice seemed somewhat superfluous by now, all the troopers I could see with a weapon having them to hand already. Then, as if suddenly becoming aware of our scrutiny, the mysterious intruders swooped to the attack.
“What the hell?” Kasteen said, surprised, as they came into view for the first time. An echelon of servo skulls, five in all, was dropping towards us, and her aim wavered indecisively. She turned to a loitering enginseer, his face predictably blank beneath the cowl of his Adeptus Mechanicus robe, and glared at him. “Who let those things in here?”
“They’re nothing to do with us,” the techpriest assured her, in the level voxcoder drone of so many of his kind. Something whirred behind his eyes, as he appeared to focus on something the rest of us couldn’t see. “The idents don’t match any of the local Mechanicus shrines—”
Whatever else he might have been about to tell us was lost in the sudden bark of what sounded like a bolt pistol, and his torso disintegrated in a shower of blood and shrapnel, which no doubt had been part of his augmetic systems before the explosive projectile had rearranged them. I returned fire at once, and I wasn’t the only one. Every trooper in the hall who could grab a weapon opened up on the macabre intruders like a bunch of drunken aristos on a shooting party who’d just caught sight of a flock of widgeon. The skulls were hellish fast and agile, though, jinking through the barrage of lasbolts like those flying platter things the tau use when they’ve got more sense than to stick their own heads over the parapet. Only one went down, smacking into the rockcrete floor with enough force to shatter bone and weapon alike.
“Keep firing!” I shouted unnecessarily, and the troopers complied with a will. I scurried into cover behind the staircase just in time, another couple of bolter rounds exploding against the metal mesh where I’d been standing an instant before, while Kasteen, her retreat cut off, sprinted upwards to the gallery, shooting as she went. She didn’t manage to hit anything, but the stray rounds from her bolt pistol punched a constellation of miniature stars in the roof of the command post, and the leading skull veered away from the fusillade of explosive projectiles.
I expected at least one of the swarm to turn on the colonel now that she was exposed on the narrow walkway outside her office, even though she’d ducked behind the balustrade to take as much advantage of the available cover as she could, but they all ignored her, dropping past the level of the mezzanine, and with a thrill of horror I realised that every single one of them was heading straight for me. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the sheer volume of fire making them evade as they came, they would have been nose to nose with me by now. (Well, strictly speaking none of them had noses any more, but you know what I mean.)
There’d be plenty of time to worry about what it all meant later. Right now my priority was survival, and I studie
d the airborne assassins carefully, searching for any kind of weakness. Two of them appeared to have bolt pistols built into them, the barrels protruding grotesquely from between their teeth like inside-out suicides, and if they hadn’t been forced to dance around to make themselves harder to hit, with the inevitable deleterious effect on their own accuracy, I have no doubt that I’d have shared the fate of the luckless enginseer. A third had a chainblade humming away beneath it, apparently in the fond hope that its gun-slinging brethren would have been able to keep me busy long enough for it to part more than my hair, while the fourth seemed to be completely unarmed for some reason.
That was the one. If it wasn’t carrying a weapon, it had to be there to direct the others. Taking careful aim I steadied my arm against the metal of the staircase, thankful yet again for the augmetic fingers that let me hold my laspistol more firmly on target than even the most skilled duellist could have managed, and squeezed the trigger.
To my immense relief the shot struck home, and the bone casing shattered, spilling lumps of auspex gear and the sensorium array attached to it across the floor. By some strange freak of chance the tiny antigravity unit that had kept the skull aloft shot upwards, still functioning and no longer weighed down by its payload, to shatter one of the skylights over our heads and vanish into the thin grey murk that kept Hoarfell almost perpetually wrapped in its chilly embrace. Looking up after flinching instinctively away from the shower of broken glass rattling against my refuge, and the flurry of snow that followed it, I tried to acquire another target, only to find the specimen with the chainblade swooping at my head.
I reacted at once, drawing my chainsword by reflex, not even consciously aware that I was doing so until I’d batted the thing aside. It bounced off one of the girders supporting the gallery, an ugly gash along its jaw where my blade had bitten deep into the bone. By sheer luck I seemed to have severed the power cable leading to its lift unit, and it lay inert on the rockrete, buzzing angrily and attempting to saw its way through the floor, until a couple of troopers put it out of its misery with a flurry of well aimed las-bolts.
[Ciaphas Cain 05] - Duty Calls Page 19