[Caiphas Cain 03] The Traitor's hand

by Sandy Mitchell

  'Despite my scepticism, it seems Commissar Cain's assessment of the situation wasn't too wide of the mark after all. He just assumed the weapons were flowing into the town from Skitterfall instead of the other way round.'

  'I'm pleased to hear your confidence in the security of the starport was justified,'

  I replied graciously.

  'Up to a point.' The arbitrator frowned. 'The shuttle you scared off must have come from somewhere. My guess is it was one of the freighters in orbit.'

  'We're already combing the traffic control records,' Vinzand chipped in. 'But with thousands of shuttle flights a day, it won't be easy to track. Let alone the previous landings.'

  'If it's even one of those,' Kolbe suggested gloomily. 'Perhaps it came from one of the raiders, lurking in the outer system.'

  'No.' Zyvan shook his head decisively. 'If there was a Chaos ship here already we would have detected it when we dropped out of warp. And our pickets would have intercepted anything emerging into realspace once we got here that wasn't in one of the shipping lanes.' I remembered the myriad of dancing lights I'd seen from the observation window of the Emperor's Benificence, and didn't envy whoever got the job of trying to identify which of them was our smuggler.

  'Do we have any more of an idea when the raiders are due?' I asked.

  The lord general shook his head again. 'Three to twelve days is the best estimate the navigators can give me. Assuming General Kolbe isn't right about their confederates on the coldside having found a way of speeding up the warp currents, of course.'

  'Then we'd better assume they'll be here any time,' Kolbe said. He seemed surprisingly happy at the prospect, until it dawned on me that all this talk of daemons and warpcraft had him thoroughly spooked and he was grabbing the opportunity of returning the conversation to matters he understood with unconcealed alacrity. 'I'll put all our PDF units on full alert the moment I return to my headquarters.'

  'A wise precaution,' Zyvan said, activating the hololith the traditional way by pressing the runes on the lectern and thumping it with his fist until it sputtered into life. This time the image was as fuzzy as usual, which I found vaguely reassuring, the almost preternatural clarity of the images Maiden had shown us bringing back the sense of unease I'd felt in the habdome. A three-dimensional image of the planet appeared, with hundreds of green dots indicating the presence of the PDF forces arrayed in its defence. Most were in the shadow belt, of course, clustered most thickly around major population centres and sites of strategic importance, although a few were scattered across the hotside and coldside, where towns and other installations made convenient spots to place a garrison in the unforgiving landscapes.

  After a moment of studying the coldside I was able to find Glacier Peak and the reassuring amber rune which marked the presence of my own regiment, although the handful of similar icons making up the rest of our expeditionary force were all but lost in the rash of PDF locations. The Valhallan tanks were easy to find of course, being overlaid on Skitterfall, and the Tallarns stood out reasonably clearly in the sparsely-garrisoned hotside, but I had to search for some time before I found either of the Kastaforean regiments. It was a sobering moment.

  'How long before the reinforcements arrive?' I asked.

  'Five to eighteen days, according to the last message we received.' Zyvan hesitated a moment before going on. 'And that was three days ago.'

  'Three days?' Vinzand asked, the quiver of apprehension in his voice fortunately drawing everyone's attention and saving me the bother of controlling my own expression. The palms of my hands were tingling, which never augurs anything good. 'I was under the impression that you received updates on their deployment every twenty-four hours.'

  'Normally that's true,' Zyvan admitted, with the expression of a man sucking a bitterroot. 'But our astropaths have been unable to get through to the rest of the fleet.'

  'They say there seems to be some kind of disturbance in the warp,' Maiden chipped in helpfully, which did absolutely nothing to calm my fears, I can assure you. Clearly whatever the cultists had been up to in Glacier Peak (apart from stockpiling Emperor alone knew how much lethal ordnance, which was bad enough) had succeeded. What that was I had no idea, but I knew enough about the Great Enemy to know that it would be nothing good, and just hoped I wouldn't be the one to find out the hard way. (A hope in which I was to be grievously disappointed, as things turned out.)

  'So we're on our own until further notice,' Zyvan concluded.

  Kolbe squared his shoulders. 'My men won't let you down, lord general. They might lack the experience of your Guardsmen, but they're fighting for their homes. That makes up for a lot.'

  'I don't doubt it,' Zyvan said, although probably only I knew him well enough to see that he wasn't entirely convinced.

  'What worries me is that we're spread so thinly,' I said without thinking, then realising what I'd said I carried on as smoothly as if I'd never meant to pause. 'If we're going to back up General Kolbe's troops effectively, we'll need to deploy as soon as we know where they're coming under pressure. By the time the dropships get down to us, loaded and away, we'll just turn up in time to join in with the victory parade.' Or bury the bodies, more likely, but saying that wouldn't be tactful. I didn't have to anyway - Zyvan knew the score well enough to know what I meant.

  'I've been thinking about that,' he said. The image of the planet in the hololith shrank to make room for a couple of icons in orbit above the capital. His flagship and the Emperor's Benificence, I assumed. I was correct as it turned out, as his next act was to point out the troopship. 'Holding the dropships in reserve as I'd intended won't help, as the commissar has just pointed out. They'll be sitting waterfowl in orbit once the enemy fleet arrives anyway.'

  'So what's the alternative?' Vinzand asked, probably only just realising that all those civilian starships above us would be giving the raiders some easy target practice on the way in as well.

  Zyvan sighed. 'Five dropships, five regiments. I'm attaching one to each. That way at least one company can be ready to deploy in a matter of moments. With a bit of luck they can ferry Guard reinforcements in to wherever they're needed, and return to the staging area for another load.' He looked at me, thinking he could read my reaction in my face, and shrugged. 'I know, Ciaphas. It's a messy option, but it's the best we can do.'

  'I suppose it is,' I said, trying to sound grave. It would leave the lucky company in question out on a limb, of course, but a formation that size ought to be able to take care of itself until the second or third run arrived. More to the point, all I had to do was find an excuse to stick close to the dropship and I'd have a way off the planet if things went sour, which they looked very like doing at that point. All in all things seemed to be getting a bit brighter so far as I was concerned.

  I should have known better, of course.

  NINE

  'His loyalty couldn't be bought at any price, but it could be rented remarkably cheaply.'

  - Inquisitor Allendyne, after the execution of Rogue Trader Parnis Vermode for trafficking in interdicted xenos artifacts

  JURGEN, EFFICIENT AS ever, had managed to get my personal effects neatly stowed in the suite I'd occupied on my last sojourn in the lord general's headquarters, so once the conference finally broke up I lost no time in heading back there to avail myself of a hot bath, a good meal and a large soft bed, in that order. About the only thing missing was some feminine company, which would have rounded things off nicely, and as I drifted into sleep I found myself wondering what Amberley was doing at that moment.[51] That should have led to some very pleasant dreams, but seeing that damned hololith of the chamber I'd found in the heretics' hab dome had apparently stirred up deeper, less pleasant memories, and my slumbers were to be far from restful.

  As I've mentioned before, I still had occasional nightmares about my earlier encounter with a nest of Slaaneshi cultists. Usually vague, formless things in which I felt my sense of self slipping once again under the psychic assault of the
sorceress Emeli, who would appear as an insubstantial wraith as a rule, urging me on to damnation until I would wake with a shudder, entangled in sweat-soaked bedding. This time, however, the dreams were lucid, and vivid, and remained with me on waking, so that even now I can recall them in some detail.

  It began in her chambers, where she'd lured me with her sorcerous wiles, my mind clouded by the air of sensuous luxury which had quite disarmed my companions.[52]In the manner of dreams, the room was exactly as I recalled it, small details I had barely noticed at the time standing out vividly, but with the perspective curiously distorted so that it seemed to be without physical boundaries. Emeli was reclining on the bed, half out of the green silk gown which so closely matched her eyes, smiling at me enticingly, drawing me towards her as she had before. Unlike the reality, however, the ugly crater of the laspistol wound was already clearly visible, punched through her torso, where I'd broken the spell she'd placed on my mind by the most desperate and direct method I could.

  'You're dead,' I told her, aware as you sometimes are that you're dreaming, but somehow unable to reject the experience as entirely unreal.

  Her smile widened. 'I'm coming back,' she replied, as though it were the most natural thing in the galaxy, and once again I felt drawn towards her, desire and revulsion mingling within me until I could barely tell them apart. 'Then I'll taste your soul as I promised.'

  'I don't think so,' I said, reaching for my laspistol as I had in life, only to find that the holster had vanished, along with the rest of my clothing. Emeli laughed, the familiar enchanting trill of it drawing me in, and opened her arms to embrace me. I tried to pull away, panic flaring, and her face began to change, flowing into something I didn't dare to look upon but was powerless to turn aside from, more beautiful and terrifying than the mind was meant to perceive.

  'Are you all right, sir?'

  I woke abruptly, my heart hammering in my chest, to find Jurgen standing by the light switch, his lasgun in his hands. 'You were shouting something.'

  'Just a dream,' I said, staggering to the decanter of amasec and downing a hefty slug, far more hastily than so fine a bottle deserved. I poured a second and drank it a little more carefully. 'About that witch on Slawkenberg.'

  'Oh.' My aide nodded once, his own memories of the incident no doubt prompted by my words. 'Bad business, that.' And it would have been a great deal worse had it not been for his peculiar talent, which, at the time, we were both blissfully unaware of. He shrugged. 'Still. Dreams never hurt anyone, did they sir?'

  'Of course not.'

  I didn't feel like sleeping any more, though, and began to get dressed. 'Do you think you could find me some recaff?'

  'Right away, sir.' He slung the lasgun over his shoulder and turned to leave the room, barely suppressing a yawn, and I realised for the first time that I must have woken him; he'd commandeered a sofa in the lounge of the suite, which I was using as an office and which was the other side of the bathroom. Some nightmare if he'd heard me from that far away, I thought.

  'Better get some for yourself, too,' I added. 'You look as though you need it.'

  'Very good, sir.' He nodded once. 'Will you be requiring breakfast?'

  I wasn't sure, to be honest, still queasy from the nightmare and the amasec, which was beginning to look like rather a bad idea now that it had reached my head, but I nodded too. 'Something light,' I said, confident that he knew my tastes well enough and that I could trust his judgement better than my own at the moment. 'And whatever you feel like as well.' As he left and his distinctive aroma followed him from the room, I found myself trying to think of a reason to call him back.

  This is ridiculous, I told myself firmly. I was an Imperial commissar, not a frightened juvie. I tied my sash tightly, placed my cap squarely on my head and tried not to feel quite so relieved when I'd buckled my weapon belt around my waist.

  Nevertheless, as I walked through to the lounge area, fastidiously negotiating the litter of half empty plates around Jurgen's couch, I found myself wondering if what I'd experienced had been more than just a dream. Could some psychic residue of the cultists' ritual have crawled inside my head in the chamber I'd discovered?

  The idea was so disconcerting I found myself on the verge of voxing Maiden right then and there to ask if it was feasible. Then reason reasserted itself. For one thing, I'd had Jurgen with me the whole time, and I knew for a fact that nothing like that could possibly have happened in his presence, and for another raising the possibility was the surest way I could think of to have the young psyker rummaging around in my head before you could say The Emperor Protects.' And the thought of that, you can be sure, was enough to snap me out of my stupor post-haste. Apart from my own discreditable secrets, which I was keen enough not to have anyone else privy to, there was enough sensitive information about Inquisition resources and contacts cluttering up my mind to sign my death warrant ten times over[53]if they became known to anyone else.

  Once I'd realised that it was quite enough to put a couple of bad dreams firmly into perspective, and by the time Jurgen returned pushing a trolley laden with comestibles (having taken my injunction to pick up anything he liked as literally as he did pretty much everything else), I was already at my desk wading through the routine paperwork. It might seem strange, given the momentous events I'd been discussing only a few hours before, but it continued to accumulate regardless. Troopers are troopers, after all, and if the enemy isn't obliging enough to keep them entertained they'll find their own amusements.

  Now breakfast had arrived I found myself surprisingly hungry and managed to put a fair-sized dent in the stack of ackenberry waffles Jurgen had thoughtfully selected for me. Watching him eat was not an activity for the faint-hearted, so I returned to my desk where I could ignore everything but the sound effects, and was thus in a position to answer the vox myself almost as soon as the first chime sounded.

  'Cain,' I said crisply, trying not to notice the choking sound as Jurgen attempted to mask his outrage at the breach of protocol. He took it as an Emperor-given right to filter my incoming messages, deflecting the vast majority with apparently inexhaustible patience and obstinacy, for which I was normally heartily grateful. This morning, however, I needed whatever distractions I could get, the echoes of the nightmare still leaving me on edge, and felt that for once he might as well finish his breakfast in peace.

  'Commissar,' Hekwyn said, sounding surprised. 'I thought you'd still be sleeping.'

  'I might say the same about you,' I said, wondering why he would be calling me this early in the day. Nothing good, I suspected.

  ' ''The Imperium never sleeps''[54],' he quoted with a tinge of wry amusement in his voice. 'And something's come up I thought you might be interested in.' If I'd realised at the time just what this innocuous remark was going to lead to I would have cut him off with the first excuse I could think of and gone scuttling back to the relative safety of Glacier Peak, and to hell with the cold. At the time, though, I thought any distraction would do to lift my mood, and settled back in my chair to listen.

  'Sounds intriguing,' I said. 'What have you been up to?'

  'A bit of old-fashioned detective work,' Hekwyn said. 'Or at least watching the local praetors do some. They've picked up one of the middlemen in the smuggling operation you uncovered.'

  'I'm impressed,' I said, meaning it for once.

  Hekwyn's voice sounded quietly smug. 'It wasn't that hard. As you suggested, we took a look at people with access to the rail wagons going in and out of Glacier Peak. And frak me if there wasn't a freight dispatcher spending three times his annual income on obscura and joygirls.'

  'And does this paragon of virtue have a name?' I asked.

  'Kimeon Slablard. We've got him in a holding cell at the moment, thinking about all the terrible things that can happen to citizens who don't cooperate with the authorities in a properly public-spirited manner.' That made sense. If he was just a cat's-paw he'd probably spill his guts at the first opportunity, and making
him sweat first would only help. If, on the other hand, he was part of the cult, he'd take as long to break as the ones we already had in custody and an hour or two's delay in getting started wouldn't make any perceptible difference. 'I thought you might like to sit in. Once he realises he's in the ordure with the Guard as well, he should snap like a twig.'

  'It's worth a try,' I said. I risked a glance at Jurgen and decided he might as well finish his meal. It wasn't as if Slablard was going anywhere, after all. 'We'll be with you within the hour.'

  IN ACTUALITY IT took slightly longer than that, the streets being choked by the citizens of Skitterfall setting off to work as though the day was perfectly normal and their entire world wasn't about to be ravaged by a fleet of Chaos marauders. But then I suppose that's a part of what makes the Imperium what it is: the indomitable spirit of even its most humble citizens. Or their incredible stupidity, which amounts to more or less the same thing half the time.[55]At any event the carriageways were full of groundcars chugging along at a pace which left them being overtaken by the occasional energetic pedestrian, and even Jurgen's remarkable driving skills weren't enough to manoeuvre the Salamander through the narrow gaps between the smaller, lighter civilian vehicles. I was just beginning to think we should have commandeered an aircar instead, despite my aide's reluctance to fly, when he accelerated abruptly up a flight of stone steps between two towering buildings.

  'Short cut,' he said, heedless of the gaggle of Administratum drones scattering before us spewing an interesting assortment of profanity. He directed us across a wide plaza cluttered with statues of noble Adumbrian bureaucrats. A few vertiginous swerves later and an equally precipitate descent down another staircase apparently leading through a shopping district and a tram terminal, he drew up outside the Arbites building in a space reserved for official vehicles.

  A couple of officers stared at us suspiciously, but a glance at my uniform and the heavy weapons aboard our sturdy little vehicle seemed to disincline them to challenge our right to be there.