The Last Ditch

by Sandy Mitchell

  That such a state of affairs would be intolerable to all devout followers of the Golden Throne need scarce be said, though none of us hearing the measured tones of Commissar Cain feared such an outcome for a moment. Inspired as always by his quiet confidence, I vowed on the spot that no greenskin would ever set foot in the very seat of Imperial power on Nusquam Fundumentibus, and I’m certain I was not alone in doing so.

  Our spirits thus buoyed, we embarked on the ship assigned to us for the voyage with stout hearts and firm resolve, as yet unaware of the catastrophic fashion in which the voyage was to end, and the heroism which Commissar Cain was yet again to display in the face of so unexpected a reversal.

  TWO

  ‘Doesn’t look like much,’ Jurgen said, punctuating his words with a blast of halitosis as he craned his neck for a better view of the vessel we were approaching. He’d maintained his usual taciturn silence as our overburdened shuttle battered its way through the atmosphere on its way to orbit, but now we were coasting smoothly through vacuum his stomach appeared to have settled sufficiently for him to attempt conversation again.

  I turned my head to see through the viewport more clearly, and move my nose as far from my aide’s vicinity as possible, feeling a faint flickering of apprehension as I got my first clear look at the hastily-requisitioned cargo ship which was to be our home for the next few weeks14. It loomed over our shuttle as majestically as any other starfaring vessel I’d ever seen, but my immediate impression was one of shabbiness rather than the awe-struck wonder I generally felt at such moments. Chimera-sized patches had been crudely welded over several of the hull plates, whose runes of protection looked faded and worn, while thickets of antennae and auspex arrays hung at odd angles, clearly later additions to the superstructure. It didn’t look anything like as decayed as the derelicts making up the space hulk I’d been foolish enough to board with the Reclaimers, of course, but, by and large, I’d seen orkish vessels which seemed barely less spaceworthy. As we drifted closer, I was able to make out several parties of servitors and void-suited artificers carrying out their arcane rituals on the hull itself, and felt far from reassured.

  ‘Neither did the Pure of Heart,’ I reminded him, more for my own benefit than his, ‘and that got us to Simia Orichalcae and back.’

  ‘She had her own tech-priest aboard, though,’ Jurgen said. ‘If this scow’s got one, he’s been slacking off.’ Which seemed a fair assessment, and it was certainly true that fully ordained disciples of the Omnissiah were hardly common on a vessel of this size.

  I shrugged, attempting to appear unconcerned for the benefit of the troopers surrounding us. ‘I’m sure it’ll be up to the job,’ I said.

  My first sight of the docking bay was sufficient to raise my spirits however, the purposeful bustle of troopers disembarking and stowing equipment almost soothing in its familiarity, and even the sight of Captain Sulla hectoring her platoon commanders about some discrepancy or other in their manifests wasn’t enough to dispel the sudden improvement in my mood. As ever, she seemed determined that First Company would get stowed away first, and more efficiently than anyone else, and her undeniable expertise in logistics made her just the woman to get the job done15. There had even been some debate once her promotion to Captain was confirmed as to whether she should be given Third Company16, where her skills could be best put to use, but by that time she’d settled in comfortably as acting commander of First, and Kasteen, Broklaw and I had eventually decided to leave well enough alone. Whether her tendency to impulsive action would be tempered by her greater responsibilities had yet to be answered, though, and I made a mental note to stay well out of the way if there was even the remotest likelihood of her going into combat until the question had been settled.

  ‘Commissar!’ Inevitably she hailed me, despite my best efforts to sneak past while she was distracted, her face breaking into the familiar toothy grin which always put me in mind of something equine. ‘Captain Mires here was wanting to speak to someone in authority.’

  The name meant nothing to me, as we had no one of that name and rank in the 597th, and for a moment I wondered if we were going to be sharing our voyage with another regiment after all; then the coin dropped, and I found myself extending a hand to a short, bearded man in a white robe cinched with an over-stretched vermillion cummerbund. Like many of the civilian freighter captains17 I’d met before, he seemed eager to show his appreciation at the honour being done his vessel by our presence, while underlining the fact that it was his ship and he wasn’t about to change the way things were done aboard it for our benefit.‘

  Are you in charge, then?’ he asked, taking my proffered hand for a single perfunctory shake, before dropping it again hastily as it dawned on him that not all the fingers inside my glove were the ones I’d been issued with at birth. Explaining my position outside the chain of command in terms a civilian could grasp was too tedious to contemplate, and I was sure Kasteen had better things to do than be bothered by self-important voiders in any case, so I simply nodded.

  ‘Commissar Ciaphas Cain,’ I said, ‘at your service.’

  I’d got used to a wide variety of responses to my name over the years, as my reputation continued to grow beyond all reason, especially once the wildly exaggerated tales of my exploits began to be circulated among the civilian population18, but Mires’s reaction took me completely by surprise. Instead of the faintly glazed expression of someone struggling to comprehend that I was real and standing in the same room, or slack-jawed awe, or the studied nonchalance of those refusing to appear impressed by me with which I had become familiar, he guffawed loudly, and slapped me on the back. ‘Course you are,’ he said. ‘Nice one. Bet the fems fall for that all the time, eh?’

  To my own surprise I laughed too, not least at Sulla’s expression of disbelieving outrage; she was usually so full of herself that it was a refreshing novelty to see her taken aback for once. ‘They have been known to,’ I admitted, truthfully enough, although my days of carefree dalliance were pretty much behind me by that point19. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Too many bits of cargo ending up in the wrong place,’ he told me, with a pointed glance in Sulla’s direction. ‘My deckhands are responsible for stowage. They know how to optimise the space properly, and none of your lot will let them do their jobs.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re the best crew in the sector,’ I lied shamelessly, ‘when it comes to handling regular portage, but military equipment needs special skills to move safely.’ I raised my voice a little above the noise of several crates of grenades cascading from their pallet, and the ensuing heated argument about whose fault it had been. ‘The explosives need regular checking, so they need to be kept accessible. And away from anything liable to cause an accidental detonation.’ Seeing Sergeant Jinxie Penlan, whose nickname was well earned, wading into her squabbling squad to restore order, I began to move away, Mires ambling after me.

  ‘See your point,’ he admitted, rubbing his nose thoughtfully. ‘Best not to upset your system, eh? Don’t want any holes in my deckplates.’

  ‘I think we’re in agreement on that,’ I conceded. ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘As it happens.’ He jerked a dismissive thumb in Sulla’s direction. ‘The stroppy mare I was talking to says you want a hold left empty. Is that right?’

  ‘It is,’ I confirmed, trying not to smile at his description of her, however much I might agree with it. ‘We’ll need a training area where our people can practise their combat drills in transit.’

  Mires shrugged. ‘So long as you pay for any damage to the bulkheads.’

  We’d reached the corridor beyond the cargo bay by now, the door grinding closed behind us to cut off the hubbub of disembarkation, and I took in our new surroundings with no little surprise. If anything, the interior of the vessel seemed even less prepossessing than my initial sight of its exterior had led me to expect.

  Several of the luminator panels in the ceiling were flickering fitfully, a couple
of them completely dark, and an inspection panel in the wall hung askew, revealing a little of the wiring inside. Judging by the degree of yellowing on the prayer slip sealed to its lip by a dust-encrusted blob of wax bearing the cogwheel imprint of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the tech-priest it had last been removed for was probably in his dotage by now, if not reduced to dust and rust. ‘I doubt we’ll leave anything in a worse state than it already is,’ I said.

  Mires bristled. ‘Nothing wrong with my ship,’ he said, as affronted as though I’d just accused him of an unnatural affection for gretchin. ‘She’s a bit patched, I grant you, but as sound as your faith in the Emperor.’ Which was far less encouraging than I imagine he intended it to be.

  ‘No doubt,’ I said, as diplomatically as I could. The last thing we needed was to hack off our skipper before we’d even broken orbit.

  Mires nodded, accepting the implied apology. ‘She could do with a bit of work,’ he conceded. ‘Here and there.’

  ‘If you’re lucky,’ I said, unable to resist teasing him a little, ‘you’ll take a bit of combat damage. Then the Munitorum will stand you a refit.’

  ‘You think that’s likely?’ Mires asked, trying not to sound apprehensive, and failing dismally.

  ‘Not really,’ I said, to his visible relief. ‘The orks don’t have spacecraft this time around. Unless they’ve called in reinforcements, of course.’ Which hardly seemed likely, as orkish freebooter crews tended to be more interested in going after lootable cargoes, or warships capable of giving them a good scrap, than getting involved in anything to do with ground actions. Unless the fighting on Nusquam Fundumentibus escalated to a full-blown Waaaaagh! of course, in which case it would attract every greenskin in the sector; which made nipping this outbreak in the bud even more of a priority.

  Had I known it at the time, the orks were going to be the least of our worries, even before the voyage came to its catastrophic conclusion; but in all honesty I don’t see how anyone could have predicted the unfortunate outcome of the decades of neglect the Fires of Faith’s most vital systems had been subject to.

  Editorial Note:

  Though Cain devotes a considerable number of pages to the conclusion of the Fires of Faith’s final voyage, he seems to assume that any readers of his memoirs would be as familiar as he was with the mechanics of warp travel, which I suppose is hardly surprising given the amount of time he spent in transit from one war zone to another in the course of his career.

  In order to fill this gap I consulted some of the less deranged members of the Ordo Malleus among my colleagues in the Concilium Ravus and, although helpful, the information they gave me seemed far beyond the comprehension of the casual reader, not to mention myself. Accordingly, I fell back on a rather more rudimentary source, which at least covers the essentials.

  From The Society for the Assistance of Travellers Handbook, 212th edition, 778.M41.

  Travel between the stars is not without hazard, since to do so is to pass through the realm of Chaos itself. Society members are accordingly urged in the strongest possible terms to seek the blessing of a priest before commencing any voyage, however short, and to ensure that every item of luggage to be stowed in the hold is protected by charms of warding, easily obtainable from duly sanctified vendors at the point of embarkation. Prayers of thanks for a safe deliverance are also customary as soon as practicable upon arrival; many chapels and temples are generally to be found in the vicinity of starports for such benisons.

  While under way, starfaring vessels are protected from the warp by powerful wards applied to their hulls, and the Geller field, which creates a bubble of reality around them, impervious to daemons and the other foul denizens of that dire and cursed realm. The most hazardous part of any journey is the transition into and out of the immaterium, and travellers are advised to spend these portions of the voyage in earnest prayer, seeking the Emperor’s protection.

  THREE

  Notwithstanding the dilapidated state of the Fires of Faith, the voyage to Nusquam Fundumentibus passed tolerably enough. Mires and his crew kept to themselves as much as possible20, which suited us fine, as we were able to concentrate on the upcoming campaign against the orks without any distracting friction between the Guard and the voiders. Even Corporal Magot failed to find someone to start a fight with, to her evident disappointment, and my unspoken relief. The pervading air of shabbiness aboard the Fires of Faith continued to nag at my overworked sense of unease, so any further cause for concern would have been distinctly unwelcome. I knew Kasteen and Broklaw well enough to realise that they were far from happy too, so when the message finally came down from the bridge that we were about to emerge from the warp, the air of relief among the senior command staff was palpable.

  ‘About time,’ Kasteen said, putting everyone’s feelings into words. She glanced at me. ‘You’ll be on the first shuttle down, I take it?’

  I nodded, as though considering the matter carefully. My leaving the transport ship as early as possible had become something of a regimental tradition, at least when there was little prospect of arriving in a hot LZ21. It consolidated my reputation for leading from the front, and it gave me a running start in securing the most comfortable quarters wherever we were being billeted. On the other hand, given her eagerness and organisational ability, the first shuttle down was almost certain to contain Sulla’s command platoon, and the prospect of being subjected to her vacuous prattle all the way down was somewhat less appealing.

  ‘I thought perhaps, under the circumstances, ladies first?’ I suggested. Kasteen’s impatience to get down to the desolate iceball we were destined to be stuck on for the next few months and start bagging orks as quickly as possible was more than evident, and it would have been churlish not to make the offer. She didn’t exactly do handsprings, as that would have been beneath the dignity of her uniform, but she did smile at me with considerably more warmth than I expected to find on the surface of Nusquam Fundumentibus.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘It’s been a while since I took point.’

  Broklaw looked considerably less happy than she did, but then he’d be stuck waiting for the last run now22, dealing with all the problems you’d expect to crop up while trying to get almost a thousand men and women, along with all their kit, vehicles, and supplies, offloaded, with only enough shuttles available to handle roughly a third of that number. He was too good a soldier to argue about it, though, so he just nodded. ‘Save a couple of greenskins for me,’ he said, with slightly forced levity.

  ‘I’d better go and observe the transit, then,’ I said. Protocol demanded someone senior on the bridge when we shifted into or out of the warp, although, like many traditions associated with taking passage on civilian ships, the origin of the practice was long since lost in the mists of time23, and they’d both have their hands full from now on preparing for our deployment.

  ‘Rather you than me,’ Broklaw agreed. The last time we’d approached an iceworld on a civilian vessel we’d all crowded round the hololith on the bridge, eager to see what we were getting into, but Simia Orichalcae had turned out to be tainted in ways no one had expected, and I suppose we all wanted to make our arrival on Nusquam Fundumentibus as different as possible from the outset. (Something we definitely managed, as things turned out, but hardly in a manner any of us could have envisaged.)

  The other main difference on this occasion was that the captain of the Pure of Heart had been so augmetically enhanced that he was practically an item of equipment; the only way Kasteen, Broklaw and I could talk to him was by visiting the bridge in person, so we’d spent rather more time there than we normally would during a voyage, and got to know him and his crew quite well. Mires, by contrast, had maintained his distance along with the rest of his matelots, so I hadn’t even set foot in the place yet. Broklaw had observed our departure from Coronus, and had been made decidedly unwelcome; but one thing you get used to very quickly in the Commissariat is an air of sullen hostility radiating from most of the people in your
vicinity, so a bit of snottiness wasn’t going to bother me in the slightest.

  Our deliberations were interrupted at that point by the welcome odour of fresh tanna, and the rather less welcome one of well marinaded socks, as Jurgen slouched in with a tray of refreshments. ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ he asked, as he finished handing round the tea bowls, and I nodded, struck by a sudden idea.

  ‘Yes, there would,’ I said. ‘I’m going to be paying a diplomatic call on the ship’s captain, and I think it would be appropriate for my aide to accompany me.’

  Jurgen nodded soberly, oblivious to the barely-suppressed grins on the faces of Kasteen and Broklaw. Though, at the time, I had nothing more in mind than rewarding Mires as he deserved for his discourtesy to the major, I was to be more grateful than I could have guessed for the mischievous impulse to take my aide with me. ‘I’d better get tidied up, then,’ he said, with considerable understatement.

  Well, he made an effort, even if I was the only man aboard who knew Jurgen well enough to realise the fact. By the time he joined me in the corridor leading to the bridge, his hair had been flattened by the hopeful application of a comb with a reasonable complement of teeth left in it, and his uniform hung less askew than usual, the arms and legs of his fatigues more or less aligned with the limbs inside them for once. He still carried the usual motley collection of pouches and kit which accompanied him everywhere, slung from his torso armour on a tangle of webbing that defied conventional geometry, but for once it was hidden, beneath the traditional Valhallan greatcoat most outsiders associate with the regiments from that world, and which in actual fact they hardly ever wear24.