[Ciaphas Cain 05] - Duty Calls

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  After a moment, vague recognition stirred behind his fatigue-dulled eyes. “I’ve seen you in the picts,” he said slowly. His posture straightened a little, and he glanced around at the motley collection of troopers surrounding him, all of whom bore minor wounds of one sort or another, mainly bites, claw or talon slashes, and in a couple of cases flash burns from what looked like the near detonation of bio-plasma bolts. “Straighten up and look like soldiers, you dung shovelling rabble.”

  Instead of saluting, as I’d expected, he made the sign of the aquila, and most of the others followed suit, shuffling into a rough approximation of attention as they did so. “It’s an honour, sir.”

  “At ease,” I said, turning on the charm that normally served me so well. “If anyone’s earned the right to relax a little, it’s surely the heroes who’ve endured so much to protect this place.”

  “We can relax when the hell spawn have gone,” the corporal replied, looking at me a trifle oddly I thought. Then again, given what they’d evidently been through in the last few hours, it was hardly surprising if his elastic had gone a little slack. “We’re just regrouping, getting ready to follow up the main advance.”

  “Your zeal does you credit,” I said, nodding approvingly, and doing some rapid analysis in my head. If his unit had suffered the usual attrition rate there could only be a few score effectives left by now, if that, and exhausted as they evidently were they’d have trouble fending off a flock of irritable butterflies, never mind a swarm of tyranids intent on ripping every living thing on the plateau into shreds. “But the Guard are here now. Let us take up the slack, while you recuperate a little.” That way at least some of them might be in a fit state to fight again if my worst fears came to pass, and whoever was leading this suicidal charge into the heart of the enemy formation did overreach themselves and let the ’nids through our lines.

  To my surprise, however, the corporal shook his head, a quietly determined cast settling across his features. “We can’t do that, sir, it wouldn’t be right. It’s our holy duty to follow where the Sisters lead.”

  “Ah.” The coin dropped at last, and I finally registered the rosaries, fleur de lys, and icons of the Emperor that most of the troopers seemed to be sporting somewhere about their person. Not all that unusual, of course, but now I came to think about it, in greater profusion and rather more prominently displayed than was perhaps the norm. “You’re from Gavarrone.”

  “That’s right.” The corporal nodded, a gesture echoed by most of the group around us. Reflecting that there would be no point in arguing with a bunch of religious fanatics, and that if they were that determined to throw their lives away they’d at least distract the tyranids while the Valhallans inflicted some real damage on the horde, I stood aside.

  “Then by all means, do as your conscience dictates,” I said, making the sign of the aquila myself as I did so. (And, I may add, keeping a remarkably straight face in the process.) “The Emperor protects.”

  “And may he watch over you,” the whole bunch of them responded, for all the galaxy as if they were chanting the responses in some dull suburban chapel. Then they turned and shuffled away in the wake of our Chimeras.

  I clambered aboard the Salamander, suffused with a new sense of urgency. The reason for the insane charge straight down the throats of the enemy was now completely clear to me. Eglantine’s Emperor-bothering harridans wouldn’t stop moving until they were cut to pieces, no doubt believing that every foot of ground they gained was a sign of personal favour from Him on Earth, and utterly heedless of the wider tactical implications of their actions. I wondered briefly why Zyvan would even have contemplated ordering them in and then dismissed the thought. No doubt he hadn’t, the canoness having taken it upon herself to order a squad or two of her Battle Sisters along to accompany the Gavarronian PDF detachments the lord general had requested. In any case, the reason they were there was entirely moot. The only thing that mattered now was calling them off, quickly, before their misguided fanaticism doomed us all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  At least the troublesome Sisters were easy enough to find. I just had to look for the densest concentration of tyranids on the plateau, and, sure enough, as Jurgen swung us around the corner of what had apparently once been a fashionable shopping parade, there they were, merrily slaughtering their way through a dense thicket of onrushing hormagaunts, the bounding horrors’ scything claws making little impression on the women’s gleaming power armour. They’d taken some casualties of course, two or three of their number lying sprawled in the gutters, plainly beyond even the Emperor’s help, let alone any mortal medicae, but the psychotic sisterhood seemed as indifferent to their own losses as the ’nids were to theirs, and an impressive number of chitinous corpses lay scattered around the place too. Gaunts by the score, which came as no surprise, but several of the larger warrior forms as well, which probably accounted for their amazing success, at least so far. By luck or by judgement (almost certainly the former, although no doubt they’d claim it was the guidance of the Emperor), they seemed to have taken out all the creatures in the immediate vicinity relaying the influence of the hive mind, leaving them to face essentially mindless drones, which would continue to fall back slowly in the face of their fanatical advance until something capable of directing them intelligently came into range and brought them back under control again. Which it surely would do before long as smoothly and automatically as blood dotting around a wound, the vast inhuman intelligence no doubt already aware of the gap that had appeared in its zone of control.

  When that happened, of course, things would turn really nasty in a matter of seconds, as the entire horde became suffused with renewed purpose, and began acting as one again. Nevertheless, it seemed things weren’t quite as desperate as I’d feared. I still had a little time to act before the overconfident Emperor-botherers found themselves suddenly facing a focused attack. A quick glance at the slate reassured me that Sulla was bolstering our flanks, so that if the worst came to the worst we should at least be able to hold the scuttling horde at bay until further reinforcements arrived, although that would be scant comfort to me if I’d been reduced to indigestion by that time, and I memorised the quickest routes back to our lines just to be on the safe side.

  “We’re holding position on the edges of the salient,” the lieutenant reported a moment later, the sound of her voice in my comm-bead unusually welcome. “Do you want us to move up and support you?”

  Of course I’d have liked nothing better, especially as I was distracted for a moment before replying by the bothersome necessity of turning the heavy bolter on a flock of gargoyles that had spotted us and evidently thought we’d be easy pickings, but that could go horribly wrong too easily, despite the comfort having a squad or two of heavily armed troopers around me would have brought. If I had to run for it in a hurry I wanted somewhere to run to, where the platoon was well dug in and could provide adequate covering fire, rather than being cut to pieces around me while the ’nids broke through our overstretched defensive line and left me with nowhere to go.

  “Better to dig in and reinforce the line,” I said, although it was hard to tell which of the two of us was the most despondent at the sound of my words. “You’ll get your chance to hunt bugs soon enough.” I paused, struck by an afterthought. “There are some PDF survivors wandering around our rear, planning to follow the holy terrors into the breach. Stop them advancing any further if you can, and try to get them to dig in like proper soldiers. They won’t be much help from what I’ve seen, but there’s no point in letting them throw their lives away needlessly, and at least they can still shoot from cover.” That was to turn out to be a huge mistake on my part, of course, but I had no way of knowing that at the time.

  “Yes, sir,” Sulla assured me, and I returned my attention to the immediate problem. Jurgen and I had emerged into another piazza, in which a fountain still played, somewhat incongruously, the wide basin choked with genestealer corpses and the remains of a B
attle Sister, who, judging by the wide distribution of her mortal residue, had detonated her entire stock of frag grenades in the moment of being finally overrun. The main battle had swept on since the poor girl’s untidy demise, however, and seemed to be concentrated at the far end of the plaza, where three narrow streets entered the wide open space, one at each corner, with the third equidistant between them. I glanced around, with a shiver of apprehension. As I’d instantly surmised, the arrangement was repeated all around the square, which gave a grand total of eight potential entry points, although predictably the Sisters were throwing themselves at the only three through which an enemy was visible, completely ignoring the possibility of being flanked.

  “Which one’s the command squad?” Jurgen asked, and I scanned the seething knots of power-armoured viragos in search of someone evidently in charge of this debacle. I’d had as little as I could contrive to do with the militant arm of the Ecclesiarchy over the years, and most of the contact I’d been unable to avoid had been with one or other of the Orders Majoris, so the specific iconography of the Order of the White Rose would be completely unfamiliar to me.

  All the Sisters were dressed in the same dazzling silver armour that Eglantine had worn, with black or dark blue surplices bearing the symbol of their order flapping about them as they blazed away with their bolters or incinerated gaunts with hissing flamers, so that was no help. The squad in the centre seemed a little smaller in number than the others, though, and the movements of its members a little better coordinated and more disciplined, which marked them out as veterans, and reasoning that the most experienced warrior on the battlefield would be in overall command I directed my aide to head in that direction with all due dispatch.

  “Two squads of PDF have arrived,” Sulla told me, as Jurgen began threading the Salamander through the debris of the battle. Our treads crushed tyranid corpses pretty much everywhere we turned, and I found myself grudgingly impressed by the evident fighting prowess of the Battle Sisters, notwithstanding the fact that their single-minded zealotry still looked like coming within a hair of dooming us all. “They’re reluctant to accept our orders, though.”

  “Then use your best judgement,” I said, not having any time to waste on this now. The battle was getting closer, and we were beginning to attract the attention of more of the ’nids. Sulla acknowledged me briefly, and cut the link, and to my immense relief I began to pick up a fresh source of signals almost immediately.[1] [1. Although Cain would be able to contact pretty much anyone on the planet by relaying his signal through the vox equipment in Sulla’s command Chimera, the sisters of the White Rose were apparently using their own communication system independent of the Imperial Guard network. Only as the two sets of short-range personal vox systems came into close proximity was he able to talk to them directly.]

  “This is Commissar Ciaphas Cain,” I transmitted at once, swinging the bolter to take down a pack of hormagaunts that had leapt over the heads of the Sisters on the left flank and were now bounding towards us with baleful intent. I noted the sudden renewal of their fighting spirit with trepidation. Clearly at least one synapse creature was coming within range and the tide of battle was about to turn, perhaps within a matter of seconds. “Disengage and fall back!” The squad leader, who, now we’d come close enough to distinguish one psychotic psalm-singer from another, stood out from the others by virtue of the chainsword and bolt pistol in her hands, turned and looked in my direction. Like most of her Sisters she disdained the use of a helmet, despite the manifest foolishness of such a course,[1] and her narrow face was clearly visible, framed by the rather unflattering hairstyle common to most women of her calling. Dark eyes glared at me from beneath a crudely cropped black fringe, which didn’t quite manage to hide the fleur de lys tattoo emblazoned on her freckle-spattered forehead. [1. Given that the commissariat uniform has a cap rather than any more functionally protective headgear, Cain may be speaking from the heart here.]

  Thin lips compressed in disapproval. “We’re servants of His Blessed Majesty,” she snapped, “and not subject to the authority of your office. Go and shoot a few malingering Guardsmen like you’re supposed to, and leave us to our holy task.”

  “You’re about to be overrun,” I said. “Getting yourselves slaughtered isn’t going to help the Emperor very much, is it?”

  “Our destinies lie in His hands alone,” she responded, turning to disembowel a gaunt, which had just discharged its fleshborer at one of her comrades from point-blank range. The unfortunate woman shrieked as the living ammunition chewed most of her face away in an instant and began burrowing down beneath her armour in search of a vital organ or two, which they seemed to find mercifully quickly, judging by the way what was left of her suddenly spasmed and collapsed. I’d have expected the others to react in some fashion, but the hideous demise of their comrade only seemed to make them even more determined to fight on to the death.

  Well, frak them then, I thought, bringing the bolter to bear on a group of purestrain ’stealers emerging from one of the other alley mouths I’d noticed before. Time to be going. I gave it one more try.

  “If you don’t pull back now, you’ll not only die for nothing, you’ll let the swarm in through the hole you’ve left in our lines,” I said, fighting the feeling that I’d be better off talking to the ’nids. Then inspiration suddenly struck. “And as soon as that happens,” I went on, “they’ll head straight for the temple and slaughter every civilian taking shelter in there, praying to the Emperor for deliverance. If you really want to report to the Golden Throne after allowing that kind of desecration to happen when you know you could have prevented it, I suppose that’s a matter between you and Him on Earth.” I turned to my aide. “Get us out of here Jurgen. We’ve done what we can.”

  “Right you are commissar,” he agreed, as phlegmatically as ever, and swung the agile little vehicle around on its tracks.

  As I caught my first clear sight of what now lay behind us, my bowels spasmed. My worst fears were being realised. A veritable flood of chitinous horrors was pouring into the square from the side streets, and we were almost cut off from safety already.

  Leaving the Sister Superior to work out her own salvation, I crouched as low as I could, blazing away with the pintel-mounted weapon at anything that seemed to get too close, searching frantically for the larger creatures that would be imbuing the mass of scuttling obscenity with direction and purpose. I cut down one of the warrior forms as it aimed a deathspitter at us, but it fired as it fell, spattering the hull of our Salamander with foul smelling bio-acid as its payload of maggot-like creatures burst against the armour plate. A few stray droplets began eating away at my greatcoat, but fortunately I was able to shrug it off before it fully penetrated the weave, wishing I’d had the foresight to don my precious set of carapace armour beneath it.

  “Jurgen, the flamer!” I ordered, and my aide complied, clearing our way with a gout of blazing promethium, which fortuitously caught another of the warrior forms in the backwash along with the gaunts it was directing. It went down, shrieking as it burned, and a moment later the Salamander lurched as the hideous creature finally expired beneath our treads. I ducked as another flight of gargoyles swooped low over our heads, flinching in anticipation of a deadly rain of fleshborer beetles, but it seemed they had another target in mind, the tyranid intelligence no doubt considering that it had enough flesh and chitin between us and safety to pick us off with little difficulty, and right then I found it hard to disagree. The gargoyles soared over one of the Battle Sister squads, strafing them as they went, then beat their wings lazily as they rose to go around for another pass. Two of the women fell, and the others returned fire with their bolters, bringing down a handful of the swooping monstrosities. The Celestians I’d spoken to were at least attempting to break out now, but I had a horrible suspicion that they’d left it too late. That was certainly true of their comrades on the right flank, half of whom had got themselves entangled in the flesh-ripping growth of a barbed
strangles One of them managed to trigger her flamer, burning her way free, but it was too late for her companions, strange thorned growths bursting out through their unprotected flesh. Why they never seem to bother to put the helmets on those power suits of theirs is completely beyond me.[1] [1. Apparently because most of them believe that their faith in the Emperor is armour enough. A couple of extra centimetres of ceremite probably couldn’t hurt, though.]

  “Sulla,” I voxed, trying to keep an edge of panic out of my voice, “we’re coming in hot. The ’nids have broken through.”

  “Acknowledged.” Her voice sounded infuriatingly calm, although for all I know she was working as hard at giving that impression as I was. “We’ll cover you as soon as you’re in range.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” I said, raising my voice a little over the racket of the hull-mounted heavy bolter, which Jurgen was using in conjunction with the flamer to clear a path for us. I swung the pintel-mounted weapon, taking full advantage of its all around arc of fire to keep the fleas off our backs as best I could, the main weapons on the sturdy little vehicle being fixed forward. (Not for the first time blessing my foresight in having the thing installed, I may add.) “Any idea when that will be?”

  “Any time now,” Sulla assured me, which, vague as it was, sounded pretty good. “Fourth squad’s moving up to support your retreat.” She paused. “And the local mob insisted on going with them, for whatever that’s worth.”

  Not a lot, I thought, if they were all in the same state as the ones we’d met before, but every little helped, and even if they just ended up as ’nid bait, that would at least distract the creatures for a moment or two while we made a break for it.

  “Commissar,” Jurgen said, “really big one, two o’clock.” I turned in the direction he’d indicated, my heart hammering. True enough, just out of the line of fire of our main weapons, the unmistakable bulk of a hive tyrant loomed, pointing a venom cannon in our direction. I ducked reflexively beneath the armour plate surrounding me an instant before the deadly rain of poison shards pattered against it, bobbing up almost at once to grab the bolter before the creature could fire again. I managed to stitch a burst across its chest, and it staggered, but stayed on its feet, shrieking like a damned heretic.