[Caiphas Cain 03] The Traitor's hand

by Sandy Mitchell

  'Third and fifth squad in position,' I reported, more to remind everyone I was still there than because it was necessary. A ratling gardener was staring at us and the deep furrows across what had obviously once been a lovingly-tended lawn, with an expression of stupefied astonishment even more pronounced than was usual for his kind. As his eyes fell on Jurgen he started visibly and fled.

  'Mister Spavin!' he cried as he went. 'Mister Spavin! The doom's come upon us at last!' He spoke truer than he knew, of course, but there was no time to worry about him or his employer now. I listened to a chorus of position reports in my comm-bead as the other squad leaders reported in, and Nallion gave the order to attack.

  'All units move in!' he shouted in a voice which barely trembled from the tension, and with a roar of gunning engines the Chimeras moved forward, their heavy bolters opening up and blowing large sections of the wall to rubble. The Salamander jerked under my feet as we ploughed across it, but I kept my balance instinctively after nearly two decades of being driven by Jurgen, and I hoisted myself up behind the comforting bulk of the bolter. Gouts of dust and the rattle of heavy weapons fire in the distance were all the confirmation I needed that the other three elements of our assault were on the move, although to their credit the squad commanders kept their heads admirably and relayed a steady stream of status reports as crisply and concisely as a Guardsman would.

  'Second squad disembarking,' their sergeant said, followed almost at once by similar messages from his counterparts in first and fourth. 'Resistance light.'

  A crackle of small-arms fire could be heard from the direction of the house now, as the occupants responded to the unexpected attack. Absently I picked out the sounds of stubber fire from the sharper crack of the lasguns the PDF troopers bore, which confirmed that at the very least the occupants had access to illegal weaponry. Slugs began to rattle against the armour plate of the Salamander and I returned fire without thinking, hosing down the facade of the house as Jurgen continued to bear down on it across a lawn no less immaculate than the one we'd chewed to pieces next door.

  Without warning, one of the Chimeras ahead of us lurched to a halt, the red flare of explosive detonation standing out starkly in the perpetual twilight, and panicked troopers began bailing out. A couple fell, caught by the blizzard of stubber fire.

  'Third squad! Stay in cover, damn it!' I just had time to yell, before Jurgen swung the bucking Salamander hard to the left. Something shot past us no more than a metre away, leaving a trail of smoke, and detonated against what was left of the garden wall behind us.

  'They've got missile launchers!' I voxed, trying to bring the bolter round to retaliate and reflecting that I could have been on a nice uncomfortable train by now instead of in mortal danger again. 'Leave the vehicles and move in on foot.'

  'Acknowledged,' Nallion replied. 'All squads advance by fire and movement.'[59]He was on the ball all right, I had to give him that.

  'Jurgen!' I called. 'Did you see where that rocket came from?'

  'About one o'clock, commissar,' he responded, as calmly as if I'd just asked him to get some more tanna. I swung the pintel-mounted weapon around in that direction, and my bowels spasmed. There were at least two missile launchers being aimed at us from within a pair of tall glass windows, and what looked like a heavy stubber on a tripod. Most, to my vague surprise, were being wielded with considerable expertise by young women whose minimal state of dress left little doubt as to their day jobs.[60]Any second now we'd be joining the Chimera behind us, which was blazing away merrily by this time.

  'Head for the nearest cover,' I yelled, squeezing the trigger and hoping to put their aim off just long enough for Jurgen to take us out of the line of fire. To my amazement he gunned the engine, accelerating even more rapidly towards the house.

  'Very good, sir.' He triggered the hull-mounted heavy bolter, reducing a couple of the amazons to unpleasant stains, and before I had time to realise what he was doing he had roared up the patio, scattering some ornamental shrubs in the process, to ram us through the flimsy wood and glass partition behind which our assailants had taken shelter. One of the survivors disappeared under the tracks with an abruptly-curtailed shriek, and the Salamander slammed to a halt against the far wall of an opulent living room, reducing a marble fireplace to rubble in the process.

  'Fifth squad! Follow the commissar!' The squad sergeant, Varant if my memory serves, bawled in the comm-bead, and before I knew it half a score of troopers had followed up our impromptu and precipitous entry, finishing off the rest of the defenders in the process, which at least saved us the bother. The survivors of third squad joined them a moment later, and everyone looked at me expectantly.

  'Very good,' I said, adjusting my cap and stepping down from the Salamander as nonchalantly as I could. 'Let's get this done.'

  'Yes sir,' Varant said, with an expression of awe on his face, and started organising the men.

  I looked at my aide. 'Jurgen…' I began, then decided there wasn't any point remonstrating with him. He'd followed my orders after all, and things had worked out as well as they ever did. 'That was…' Words, for once, failed me.

  'Resourceful?' he suggested, reaching back inside the driver's compartment for the melta, which, true to form, he'd brought with him. 'To say the least,' I said, drawing my laspistol.

  'Second squad advancing,' their sergeant reported in my comm-bead, his voice calm as ever. 'No resistance so far.'

  'Copy that,' Nallion responded. 'First squad report.' There was a pause, broken only by the hissing of static. 'First squad, respond.' My palms were itching again, a sense of forboding I could almost taste fluttering in my gut. The lieutenant's voice took on an edge of asperity. 'First squad, where are you?'

  'Fourth squad,' a new voice cut in, a note of suppressed panic quite clearly detectable. 'We've found bodies. Could be them.'

  'What do you mean, could be?' Nallion snapped.

  'It's hard to tell, sir. There's not much left…' His voice choked off.

  This wouldn't do at all. We'd clearly blundered into something very dangerous, and if anyone panicked now it would spread like a spark in a promethium tank. Which would cut my chances of getting out of here in one piece more considerably than I found acceptable.

  'This is Commissar Cain,' I cut in. 'Stay alert. Stay focussed. Fire on anything that moves which isn't one of ours. Is that understood?'

  'Yes sir.' It seemed to have done the trick anyway, the man's voice was shaking a little less. 'Moving on to the next mark.'

  'Good,' I told him, hoping to bolster the squad's sagging morale. 'Remember, the Emperor protects.'

  I never finished the platitude, the vox channel suddenly becoming swamped with sounds which, in an eerie, overlapping echo, carried to our ears through the air a fraction of a second later. Screams, the chatter of lasguns on full auto and a sound which raised the hairs on the back of my neck: melodious, inhuman laughter. A moment later, the sounds of the evidently one-sided battle ended abruptly.

  'Fourth squad, report,' Nallion bellowed, but no answer came, and if he honestly expected one he was the biggest optimist in the system.

  'What do we do, sir?' Varant asked, and after a moment I realised he was looking at me, ignoring the lieutenant's voice completely. I assessed the situation rapidly. Retreat, always a good choice in my book, was impossible. Apart from the fact that it would undermine my reputation, it would expose us to Emperor alone knew how much fire from the house as we made our way back across that wide open lawn, and I didn't intend to become a bit of easy target practice for some civilian tart with a new toy. I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant and speak through a mouth which had suddenly gone as dry as the hotside.

  'We complete the mission,' I said simply. 'There's something foul in this place, and we need to cleanse it.'

  It seemed painfully obvious now that my carefully contrived excuse for being here was no more than the truth after all, which I suppose at least proves that the Emperor has a well-developed sen
se of irony, and I'd seen enough sorcery over the years to know that confronting it straight away is the only chance you've got of survival. Not a particularly good chance, I grant you, but trying to run from it only gives it more time to grow in power and come after you on its own terms rather than yours.

  'I do hope that's not a criticism of the cleaning staff,' a mellifluous voice chimed in. They do their best, you know, but it's such a rambling old place it's hard to keep on top of. The woman who spoke smiled easily as she strolled into the room, as though finding a score[61]of armed men standing over the bodies of her associates was the most natural thing in the world. I began to bring my laspistol up instinctively, my finger tightening on the trigger, then froze, my heart pounding. I'd come within a hair of shooting Amberley! For a moment I was so startled that I was literally paralysed with astonishment, something which up until then I'd always assumed was merely a figurative cli c he in the more undemanding kind of popular fiction.

  Her smile widened as she looked at me and the knot of troopers whose lasguns all hung slack in their hands.

  'I know you must be surprised to see me here,' she purred, the words sounding impossibly sweet and seductive. Something tried to push itself towards the front of my mind, but the vision of her, lovely as the last time we'd parted, the flower I'd plucked impulsively from the hegantha bush on the veranda still tucked behind her ear, filled my senses.

  'Margritta?' one of the troopers asked, as though he couldn't believe his own eyes, and the burgeoning thought became clearer. Something definitely wasn't right…

  'Yes, my love.' Amberley reached out a hand, caressing him gently on the cheek, and a surge of white-hot jealously erupted through me. Before I could react in any way, however, the trooper screamed, his body contorting, seeming to wither like a dried ploin before dropping to the floor.

  'Commissar?' Jurgen tugged at my sleeve, an expression of puzzlement on his face. 'Are you going to let her get away with that?'

  'She's an inquisitor,' I started to say. 'She can do what she likes,' but when I looked up again Amberley had gone. (Well she hadn't, of course, because she was never there in the first place, but you know what I mean.) In her place, standing over the crumbling corpse of the fallen soldier, was a dumpy middle-aged woman in an unwise pink gown which would have looked fine on someone ten years younger and as many kilos lighter. She looked directly at me, an expression of surprise and outrage beginning to suffuse her vaguely porcine features.

  'Madame Sejwek,' I said, savouring the flicker of uncertainty which rose in her eyes, almost losing my aim from the surge of anger which left my hand shaking from its force. Fortunately my augmetic fingers were immune to such an emotional reaction and kept the muzzle of my laspistol centred firmly on her forehead. 'Impersonating an inquisitor is a capital offence.'

  She just had time to look even more startled before I pulled the trigger, and her warp-tainted brain erupted from the back of her skull to ruin a wall hanging which had evidently been chosen for its subject matter rather than its aesthetic qualities.

  'What happened?' Varant asked, looking slightly stunned. The rest of the troopers were snapping out of it too now, muttering in low tones, making the sign of the aquila and generally looking sheepish.

  'She was a witch,' I told him, keeping things as simple as I could. 'She did something to our minds. Made us see…' I made what I assumed at the time to be the obvious deductive leap, but which Maiden later confirmed was a known power of Slaaneshi psykers. 'Someone we care about.'[62]

  'I see,' he said, looking confused. 'Lucky she didn't fool you.'

  'Commissars are trained to spot that kind of thing,' I lied smoothly, not wanting to draw any more attention than necessary to Jurgen. To tell the truth I was more than a little concerned that Sejwek had managed to get inside my head at all while he was so close. (To my relief, I learned later that he'd gone back to the Salamander for his lasgun while I was busy with the vox signals, taking me out of the range of his protective aura. It had belatedly occurred to him that his beloved melta might be a little counterproductive in such a potentially inflammable building; as always his pragmatism couldn't be faulted, although his timing left a lot to be desired.)

  'Well, I suppose at least we know what happened to first and fourth squad,' the sergeant said, looking from the body of the witch to the desiccated husk of his erstwhile subordinate.

  'Possibly,' I said. It didn't add up to me. Fourth squad had died quickly, in combat, not held by delusion to be picked off one by one. 'There's only one way to find out.'

  And find out we did. The mortal remains of our comrades, and there were precious few of them left, were scattered around a ground-floor hallway at the foot of a huge wooden staircase, the banisters of which were carved in the semblance of fornicating couples in a bewildering variety of anatomically improbable positions. Blood and scorch marks spattered the walls, which were decorated with the kind of debauched murals that I'd seen before in the hab dome hidden away on the cold-side, and a nagging sense of familiarity fought its way to the surface of my thoughts.

  'The rest of the house is clear,' Nallion reported, looking slightly green as he took in the carnage, but determined not to throw up in front of the commissar. 'No sign of anyone else on the premises.'

  'False walls, hidden chambers?' I asked, the memory of the hab dome still fresh, that strange scent that had flooded the air there still faintly detectable through the more pervasive one of butchery.

  Nallion shook his head. 'No sign of anything like that,' he said. 'We can bring in some tech-priests with specialised equipment…'

  'Don't worry about it,' I told him, to his evident relief. 'The Guard will take care of that. You and your men have done enough, and done it well.'

  'Thank you, sir.' He took the hint and frakked off, with a perfunctory salute and an air of undisguised relief.

  'Jurgen,' I said, pointing to the staircase. It was large and apparently solid, but we could have parked the Salamander in the space it enclosed. 'If you wouldn't mind?'

  'Of course not, sir,' he assured me, and a moment later the familiar roar of the melta and an actinic flash through my tightly-dosed eyelids told me he'd done as requested. Despite his fears of accidental arson (which he confided to me later, a little too late to have been much help if they were founded, but with Jurgen following orders always came first) the surrounding wood failed to catch light. A large, smoking hole was punched through the treads, looking uncannily like the entrance to a cave. I borrowed a luminator from one of his ever-present equipment pouches and took a cautious look inside.

  'Emperor on Earth!' I reeled back, choking from the smell. If anything, it was worse than the chamber we'd found in the hab dome, although the details were depressingly familiar. The pile of twisted corpses, still grinning in infernal rapture, the sanity-blasting sigils on the walls… I backed away until I was on the other side of the hallway and contacted the lord general directly.

  'It seems we were right about this place,' I told him. 'It was being put to unholy use.' I hesitated. 'And if I'm right,' I added, the knotting of my guts telling me I was, 'we got here too late. Whatever they were doing, they've already done.'

  Editorial Note:

  Given the course of subsequent events, the following communication may prove somewhat revealing.

  To: The Office of the Commissariat, Departmento Munitorum, Coronus Prime

  From: Tomas Beije, Regimental Commissar to the Tallarn 229th

  Date: 285.937.M41

  Astropathic Path: Blocked at this time. Delivery deferred.

  Gentlemen and esteemed colleagues, It is with a heavy heart I feel I must call into question the competence of a fellow commissar, not least because the officer in question was a classmate of mine at the schola progenium, and as we all know such ties remain strong. However, I would be derelict in my duty not to bring this matter to your attention, and must set aside my personal feelings for the sake of the Guard, the Imperium and the Emperor Himself. Truly ou
r duty to Him must outweigh all else, and after much prayer and fasting I can see no alternative.

  The individual in question is none other than Ciaphas Cain, the regimental commissar of the Valhallan 597th. I am aware that he has something of an inflated reputation, which may incline some of you to dismiss my concerns, but nonetheless I feel I have no alternative but to speak out. Indeed, it may be this very reputation which has led to his current sad decline as an effective commissar: how truly has it been said that the glory we gain blinds us first with its lustre.[63] I have observed at first hand that discipline and proper order are practically non-existent in the regiment with which Commissar Cain has been charged, his own aide failing to reach the standards expected of a member of His Divine Majesty's blessed legions, while serious infractions and breaches of discipline are treated as minor matters barely worthy of his attention. Since arriving on Adumbria he has neglected his duties altogether, spending more time in the planetary capital than with the 597th, even going so far as to attach himself to a local PDF company rather than rejoin the Guard unit he should properly have been most concerned with.

  It might be claimed that his discovery of not one but two concealed nests of heretic sorcerers vindicates his actions, but consider: in neither case was he in time to prevent their fell purpose, whatever that was, and his interference in a PDF operation in which he had no official interest may well have led to sufficient delay to have ensured such a failure on at least one occasion. I draw no inference from this, of course, but merely suggest the coincidence was fortuitous for our enemies. May the divine light of His Glorious Majesty illuminate your deliberations.

  Your Humble Servant, Tomas Beije.

  Thought for the day: The traitor's hand lies closer than you think.

  ELEVEN

  'I don't care how bloody sanctioned they are, a psyker's a psyker, and anything to do with the warp is more trouble than it's worth.'