[Caiphas Cain 03] The Traitor's hand

by Sandy Mitchell

  - General Karis

  I WAS BEGINNING to get heartily sick of the sight of that conference room by now. Every time I entered it, it seemed, my life became more complicated. Even the prospect of a hearty dinner and a comfortable bed, which had been sufficient to keep me in Skitterfall that morning, began to look like scant consolation, receding as they both were into an indefinite future. The damn place was getting steadily more crowded, too. Aside from Zyvan and myself, and a couple of his aides whose names hadn't stuck if anyone had actually bothered to introduce us, Kolbe, Hekwyn and Vinzand were present, and all had decided to mark the urgency of the situation by bringing a flunkey or two along themselves. Maiden was there too, with the far end of the table pretty much to himself as usual, chatting to a woman whose sunken eye sockets would have marked her out as an astropath even without the distinctive robes she wore. The unease most of those present clearly felt at the sight of two spooks in the same room was palpable, although had I but known it the feeling was about to get a whole lot worse.

  'Are you all right, Ciaphas?' Zyvan asked, and I nodded, trying to dismiss the image of the chamber we'd found from my mind. It wasn't easy, I can tell you that, and that struck me as slightly odd given the sheer number of horrors I'd faced in my career up to that point. It kept coming back to me, overlaid with the memory of the similar chamber we'd found in the hab dome and that damnable laughter I'd heard as the PDF soldiers died. That had a haunting sense of familiarity about it too, although how or why I couldn't put my finger on.

  'I'm fine,' I said, picking up a mug of tanna from the refreshment table. As usual, I was the only one drinking it. I glanced around the conference room, which was filling up (except for the end where the spooks were), and tried to change the subject before he started asking any more questions. 'If that's everyone, I suppose we ought to get started.'

  'Nearly everyone,' Zyvan said, helping himself to a smoked grox sandwich.

  Before I had a chance to ask what he meant by that, some kind of commotion erupted outside the door. Voices were raised, and I found myself reaching instinctively for my chainsword, but the lord general's relaxed demeanour forestalled the motion. (Not without an amused glance in my direction as he registered the movement, I might add.)

  'Do I look as though I need to show your underlings my credentials?' The question was directed at Zyvan, as though there were no other people in the room, and to all intents and purposes there might as well not have been. A young woman, astonishingly petite but somehow managing to fill the entire doorframe with the force of her personality, strode past the quivering woodwork, the ashen faces of a couple of the lord general's personal bodyguards just visible in the corridor outside. Zyvan dismissed them with a gesture, and they hurried to close the door behind her with remarkable alacrity.

  'Of course not.' Zyvan bowed formally. 'You honour us all with your presence.'

  'Of course I do,' she snapped back irritably 'And don't expect me to make a habit of it.' Her hair was dark and lustrous, the hue of open space, falling to the shoulders which her simply-cut gown left bare. The dress seemed to have been woven from fibres of pure gold, reflecting the light in a fashion I found almost dazzling, clinging to her pleasingly plump figure in a fashion which left very little of it to the imagination, and setting off the preternaturally pale skin of her decolletage to perfection.

  The thing which held my eyes, and every other pair in the room, however, was the bandana around her forehead. It was woven from the same material as her dress, but in the exact centre of it the image of an eye had been embroidered in thread as dark as her hair. Without thinking I made the sign of the aquila, and believe me, I wasn't the only one.

  'May I present the Lady Gianella Dimarco, navigatrix of the Indestructible,' Zyvan said, addressing the room in general, as though anyone present could possibly not have realised who she was (well, maybe the astropath, I suppose). Dimarco sighed. 'Let's just get on with it, shall we?' She dropped into a vacant seat at the spooky end of the table, no doubt feeling she had slightly more in common with Maiden and the blind woman than the rest of us.[64]Everyone else shuffled awkwardly into their chairs, leaving as wide a gap as possible between the psykers and themselves.

  'By all means.' Zyvan inclined his head courteously. 'I'm sure we all appreciate you taking the time to join us in person.'

  Well he might. I would have been just as happy with a written report and less of the superior attitude, assuming she had anything useful to contribute at all.

  (Which of course she had. And if I'd been thinking a little more clearly I would have realised she must have been scared witless to subject herself to the company of scruffy little proles like us in the first place.)

  'Of course you do,' Dimarco said irritably. Her dark eyes swept the room, and despite knowing intellectually that they couldn't do me any harm, it was the one the bandana concealed which could kill in an instant, I shuddered, reluctant to meet them. 'But you're not going to like what I've got to say.'

  That would have been true if we were discussing music or the weather, given what I'd seen of her personality (which, to be fair, was bordering on the amiable for a navigator), but even so I felt the familiar premonitory tingling in the palms of my hands.

  'Nevertheless,' Zyvan said, inclining his head.

  Dimarco sighed. 'I'll keep this as simple as I can, so even a bunch of blinders[65]should be able to grasp it.'

  She leaned forward, her elbows on the polished wooden table, and supported her chin on her steepled fingers, revealing an impressive amount of cleavage in the process. The warp currents around Adumbria are strong, but predictable. Usually.'

  'Usually?' Vinzand asked, a note of alarm evident in his voice.

  Dimarco looked at him with the expression of an ecclesiarch who has just heard one of the congregation fart loudly in the middle of the benediction (something you get used to attending services accompanied by Jurgen[66]).

  'I'm getting to that,' she snapped. 'Do I tell you how to count paperclips?' After a moment of embarrassing silence she continued. 'They normally form a complex but stable vortex, centred on the planet itself. This, in part, accounts for the system's position as a major trading port.'

  The Adumbrians present nodded with more than a trace of smugness. Dimarco shrugged, with interesting effects on her dress and what I could see of its contents.

  'I couldn't tell you why this is, though.' She glanced almost imperceptibly at her fellow psykers.

  'It seems to be something to do with the orbital dynamics,' Maiden said dryly.

  'The fact that the world is rotationally locked sets up a resonance in the warp, which bends the currents.'

  'Something of an oversimplification,' the astropath said, her voice surprisingly young. 'But unless you can feel them directly, it's the closest you're likely to get.'

  'Wait a minute,' Kolbe said. 'You mean these currents are shifting?'

  Dimarco sighed loudly. 'What have we just been saying? Of course they're frakking shifting!' As her voice rose in pitch I began to realise she wasn't just being a snotty pain in the arse, she was genuinely worried; probably more so than she'd been in a long time. (And when you consider she'd been serving on a battleship, which had undoubtedly been shot at a few times, that would be saying something.)

  'Three times since we got here. Big, sudden shifts. Which, in case you haven't been paying attention, is something which definitely shouldn't be happening.'

  'Three times?' I asked, before I could stop myself, and the woman's night-black eyes were on me again, spraying contempt like the barrel of a hellgun. Before she could say something trite and obvious, like asking if I was deaf, I nodded thoughtfully and continued to speak, overriding any sarcastic comment she might be about to make. 'Can you give us a precise time on that?' The effect was quite satisfying, I have to say: a faint moue of puzzlement flickered across her features, and she bit back the words she'd been preparing to fling with a faint choking sound.

  'Not precise, no,' she
said. She turned to the astropath. 'Faciltiatrix Agnetha?'

  The blind woman nodded. 'Since the first one was what cut us off from the rest of the fleet[67], I can tell you to the second. The others I'd need to check if you want more accuracy than within an hour or two.'

  'That would be fine,' I said, a sudden sinking feeling telling me I'd just made an intuitive leap I really didn't want to be right about. Unfortunately I was: the most recent shift in the warp currents had happened earlier that day, shortly before our eventful raid on the Sejwek house. (The other attacks had all gone without a hitch, of course, including the one on the warehouse I'd been so keen to avoid: the heretics had already moved the weapons out, and the place was deserted when the PDF got there. The only consolation was that at least I'd survived the mess I'd got myself into, and had inadvertently boosted my reputation for sagacity and courage into the bargain.)

  'So,' Zyvan said, looking as perturbed as I'd ever seen him, 'the heretics are doing something to affect the warp currents. The big question is why.'

  'With respect, my lord,' Maiden said, 'the big question is what. If they really are responsible for this, we're dealing with a level of power far greater than any mortal psyker could possibly wield.'

  The growing sense of apprehension I felt curdled in my gut. There was an obvious answer to that, and I didn't want to be the one to state it. Nobody else seemed willing to verbalise the thought, though, despite the number of ashen faces around me who had presumably reached the same conclusion.

  'When you examined the room we found in the hab dome,' I said at last, 'you said you thought some of the sigils there were part of a summoning ritual. Did you find any similar ones in the Sejwek house?'

  'We did,' Maiden said. 'Almost identical.' He permitted himself the ghost of a smile. 'It's hard to say if they were exactly the same, as your method of entry erased a few.' Along with the wall they'd been painted on, of course.

  'In your opinion,' Zyvan said, clearly reluctant to hear the answer, 'could they have raised some kind of warp entity with sufficient power to affect the currents?'

  'It's possible.' The young psyker nodded. 'There are daemons strong enough to do that.' An audible gasp of horror rippled around the room as he casually used the word everyone else had been so carefully trying to avoid. Dimarco looked as though she was about to be sick, and I could hear Hekwyn muttering one of the catechisms under his breath. 'I doubt you could hold on to one that powerful, though, at least for long.'

  'Maybe they didn't have to,' Agnetha suggested. 'If it was cooperating with them voluntarily…' Her voice trailed away, leaving us all to contemplate the same uncomfortable thought. What possible bribe could tempt a daemon to work alongside human cultists, and what blasphemous goal could they conceivably have in common?

  'Does that mean the thing's still at large somewhere?' Hekwyn asked, regaining his composure with a visible effort.

  'They can't stay in the material world for very long,' I reminded him. 'It'll be back in the warp where it belongs by now.' I turned to Kolbe. 'Probably thanks to the heroic sacrifice of your troopers,' I added. 'From what I heard they were giving a good account of themselves.'

  Actually it sounded like they were panicking and dying horribly, which was what you'd expect under the circumstances, but if we were really facing a threat that terrible the more I could do to boost morale the better.

  'Until the next time they summon it,' Dimarco said limply, the arrogance well and truly knocked out of her by the realisation of what we were facing. (But not for long, of course - she was a navigator after all.)

  'Assuming they do,' Zyvan said.

  'Of course they will,' Dimarco rejoined, no doubt taking some comfort in being able to contradict someone. 'If they'd already succeeded in whatever they're trying to do we wouldn't be sitting around here discussing it, would we?' Which sounded like a fair point to me.

  'Can any of you take a guess at what that might be?' I asked, trying to project an air of calm reassurance the way they'd taught me at the schola.

  I certainly wasn't feeling either calm or reassured, you can depend on that, but the familiar routine of maintaining morale helped me at least look as though I was coping.

  Agnetha narrowed her sighdess eyes thoughtfully. 'Disrupting our communications, obviously,' she said. 'But they managed that the first time.'

  'Cutting us off physically from the rest of the fleet,' Dimarco said, clearly fighting to keep her voice level. 'When I look at the currents directly, it's as if they're brewing up into a localised warp storm, centred on the planet. They're already getting too turbulent to navigate easily.'

  'That doesn't make sense, though,' Kolbe objected. 'They'd be cutting us off from their own invasion fleet too.'

  'Perhaps that's the idea,' I suggested. 'Let them in, and then close the door before our reinforcements get here.'

  Maiden looked dubious. 'That would require some pretty good timing,' he pointed out. 'And the warp isn't that cooperative.'

  'Well, maybe they know something we don't,' Dimarco snapped, looking more like her old self with every passing minute.

  'No doubt they do,' Zyvan said. 'But we know things that they don't, too.' He turned to Hekwyn and Kolbe. 'We need to track down every lead we can squeeze out of the sites you raided. The rest of the cult must have gone to ground somewhere.'

  'We're already following up on that,' Hekwyn assured him. He exchanged a glance with Kolbe. 'We'll find them, don't worry.'

  'I'm sure you will,' Zyvan said. 'But we're running out of time. If they really are trying to stir up a warp storm to bottle us in, we'll be sitting waterfowl for their invasion fleet.'

  It was probably not the most tactful thing he could have said, under the circumstances. Vinzand and his civilian advisors started muttering among themselves, and Dimarco let out a strangulated squeak.

  'Well let's make sure it doesn't come to that,' I said. Emperor help me, I was beginning to run out of soothing platitudes already, and the meeting looked like it was going to go on for hours yet. In reality, though, it was about to be abruptly terminated.'Excuse me, sir.' One of Zyvan's aides approached him, a comm-bead visible in his ear and a data-slate clutched in his hand. 'I think you should see this.'

  'Thank you.' Zyvan took it and studied the screen, his expression unreadable. My palms started tingling again. Whatever the news was, it had to be bad. After a moment he handed the slate to me.

  'What is it?' I started to say, but the words choked themselves off as I glanced down the page, the breath freezing in my throat as surely as if I'd just stepped into a Valhallan shower.

  'Ladies and gentlemen,' the lord general said gravely, 'I've just been informed that our picket ships are engaging the enemy in the outer system. As of this moment Adumbria is under martial law. All Guard and PDF units are to be placed on full invasion alert.'

  Blast, I thought. After all I'd been through today, I wouldn't even get the dinner I'd been hoping for.

  Editorial note:

  As usual, Cain takes little interest in anything which doesn't affect him directly, so his own narrative jumps rather abruptly at this point. Accordingly, I felt it best to insert some materiaf from other sources in order to present a more balanced picture of the overall situation.

  From Sablist in Skitterfall: a brief history of the Chaos incursion by Dagblat Tincrowser, 957.M41

  If the first blood of the ground campaign had gone to the Valhallan 597th, the credit for the first victory of the conflict in space must surely be given to the crews of the picket ships patrolling the outer reaches of the shipping lanes. To fully appreciate their courage and that of their squadron commander Horatio Bugler, we must bear in mind that they were hopelessly outnumbered by the approaching invaders, and knew it; their job was simply to report as much as they could of the size and disposition of the enemy fleet and escape with their lives if they could. That they did so much more is a shining testament to the fighting spirit of the Imperial Navy and Captain Bugler's outstanding qua
lities as a tactician and leader of men.[68] With only two frigates at his disposal, his own Escapade and the equally lightly-armed Virago, he somehow managed to cripple three of the enemy vessels before withdrawing, having sustained only minor damage to both ships.

  From Flashing Blades! The Falchion-class frigates in action by Leander Kasmides, 126.M42

  An interesting encounter occurred during the attempted invasion of Adumbria, a minor trading world on the fringes of the Damocles Gulf, by traitor forces in 937.M41. Two Falchions had been left on picket duty in the outer system when the main invasion fleet emerged from the warp. The Escapade under the command of Captain Bugler and the Virago under Captain Walenbruk were both all but untried at this time, having been attached to a task force sent to the Kastafore system a few months before directly from the shipyards at Voss. There they saw little action, having been relegated to extended patrol duties in lightly-contested regions; probably because, as a relatively new class of vessel, the fleet commanders had little idea of their capabilities, preferring to rely on the more familiar Sword-class ships at their disposal.

  They were to prove their worth beyond any doubt in this engagement, however, being confronted by an armada of a dozen or so enemy vessels. Fortunately, the vast majority turned out to be armed merchantmen, carrying the ground forces intended to overwhelm the planet, but even so, the sheer weight of numbers would normally have been expected to overwhelm two lone frigates. By adroit manoeuvring, however, they were able to attack the enemy from behind, where none of the freighters could direct return fire, blowing two of them apart with torpedo volleys before concentrating their primary batteries against a third, gutting it completely. At this juncture, the escorting warships began to return fire, and the Escapade and Virago boosted away before they could close the range sufficiently to inflict any significant damage.

  This might be considered unfortunate, as two of the enemy ships were positively identified as Infidel-class raiders; the very design which was stolen by traitors from the shipyards at Monsk, and the attempted reconstruction of which had resulted in the development of the incomparable Falchion class. A duel between these very different siblings would have been the first recorded clash of the two classes anywhere within the sector; as it was that epic confrontation would have to wait a little longer, until the Sabatine incident some seven months and over a hundred parsecs away…