[Caiphas Cain 03] The Traitor's hand

by Sandy Mitchell

  'I think it's just risen to our chins,' he said.

  Editorial Note:

  Since the battle in space played a decisive port in what was to follow, and Cain doesn't bother to mention it at all, another short extract from Tincrowser's account of the campaign seems to be called for at this point. He is somewhat imprecise on the details, as one might expect from a civilian, but he covers the main points well enougft.

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

  As the enemy fleet continued to make its way towards Adumbria it fragmented, splitting into three groups, no doubt in an attempt to evade the gallant defenders. Two of these seemed relatively unthreatening, consisting as they did of lightly armed vessels[75] while the third contained the majority of the transports and their escorting warships.[76]

  Having shown their mettle in the first engagement and being the only vessels in a position to intercept them before they made orbit, the Escapade and Virago were each given the task of harrying one of the smaller flotillas; this they did successfully enough, although neither was able to prevent all of their intended victims from reaching the planet. The Escapade fared the better of the two, managing to destroy all but one of its targets and suffering minimal damage in the process, while the Virago destroyed one completely. Unfortunately, in so doing it was caught in a crossfire by the remaining pair, doing sufficient damage to its engines that it soon fell behind, unable to continue the engagement.

  The main body of the enemy fleet continued to drift inwards towards Adumbria, daring the remainder of the Imperial Navy forces to intercept it, but they refused to rise to the bait. The Indestructible remained in orbit above Skitterfall, where it was joined by the squadron of destroyers[77] which had until then been patrolling the inner shipping lanes.

  So it was that three vessels of the enemy advance guard were able to enter orbit and deploy the troops they carried, the first to pollute the soil of our beloved home world. One at least was to regret its temerity, however, as the hotly-pursuing Escapade caught and overwhelmed it almost immediately, sending it plunging to a fiery doom in the upper atmosphere.

  This would be scant comfort to the gallant defenders, however, as for the first time combat was joined on the surface. And, as before, the Valhallans were to find themselves in the forefront of the battle.

  THIRTEEN

  'If your battle plan's working, it's probably a trap.'

  - Kolton Phae, On Military Matters, 739.M41

  IRKSOME AS IT had been waiting for the enemy to arrive, once they did the monotony and tension which had suffused the last couple of days began to seem positively welcome in retrospect. I was in the command post with most of the senior staff at the time; Kasteen, Broklaw and all the company commanders who weren't deployed elsewhere, watching the contact icons lighting up in the hololith as the enemy troops made planetfall. I'd been expecting a concerted assault on the capital, but within moments it began to look as though the planet was suffering from a case of the underhive pox, red spots appearing all over the place apparently at random.

  'What the hell are they up to?' Detoi muttered at my elbow, clearly chafing at the lack of any obvious troop concentrations to deploy rapidly against.

  'Beats me,' I said, having fought the minions of Chaos too often before to expect much of what they did to make sense. With hindsight, it was explicable, but at the time we were still missing some vital pieces of the puzzle.

  'It looks to me as though they're just getting the troops down as quickly as they can,' Kasteen said. 'They can't expect the transports to last long unsupported.' As if to emphasise her words, one of the three contacts in orbit flared suddenly and began to descend, spewing debris and shuttles as it went.

  'Well, that's something,' I said, indicating it. 'Looks like the Navy's saved us a bit of spadework there.'

  From the patterns of the landings and the occasions when I'd been part of a force moved by a freighter rather than a specialised troopship, I knew that the civilian shuttles they carried would have to make several trips back and forth to disembark all the warriors aboard. Of course, I wouldn't expect Chaos fanatics to worry too much about safety margins and overcrowding, but even so the descending fireball above us would only have had time to disembark about a third of the cannon fodder they carried. Normally a ship that size would be expected to carry a full regiment of Imperial Guard, but again there was no telling if the enemy had packed in more than that.

  'The Tallarns are going to take a battering,' Broklaw remarked, not seeming terribly concerned at the prospect.

  It was true that there seemed to be a concentration of enemy forces building close to their position on the hotside, but that was their problem. Ours was defending the population of Glacier Peak. I glanced at the hololith again, seeing the final wave of shuttles from the doomed freighter screaming down through the atmosphere towards us.

  We were ready for them, our troops deployed around the town in what should have been an impenetrable cordon. Second company remained in our compound, as their vehicles were still stowed aboard the dropship, which I was suddenly aware would make a very tempting target if the enemy had any aerospace units.

  (As it turned out, though, that was a needless worry. The freighters only carried civilian shuttles, which were unarmed, gratifyingly easy targets for the PDF fighter pilots, who made sure that damn few of them were able to make more than a couple of drop runs.)

  I turned to Detoi. 'Better make sure your people are sharp,' I said. 'We might need them to defend this position if they're not called on for support somewhere else.' I was only trying to encourage him at the time, knowing he'd rather be ordering their embarkation for some distant battlefront, but I spoke truer than I knew. In theory, first company had a couple of platoons in reserve to do the job, but Glacier Peak was a big enough place to take care of, and it was perfectly feasible that they'd find themselves otherwise occupied at the time.

  He nodded dutifully. 'Incoming,' one of the auspex operators said, her voice tense. 'Five contacts, airborne, closing fast. They're widely scattered.'

  'All units prepare to engage,' Kasteen said, as calmly as if she were ordering another mug of tanna. She glanced up at me. 'Commissar?'

  I made some encouraging remarks over the open vox link, invoked the protection of the Emperor and turned to Detoi.

  'If you don't mind, captain,' I said, 'I think I'd rather join your company while this is going on.'

  This might seem a little odd, given that I was in a warm, bullet-proof building at the time, but as usual my paranoid streak was thinking about a number of uncomfortable possibilities. For one thing, we knew the heretics had had plenty of time to infiltrate the local PDF, even though nobody senior had been netted by Kolbe's investigators yet, and they certainly had some ears among the Council of Claimants (or at least their households). It wasn't entirely unfeasible that they knew where our regimental headquarters was, and if that was true and any of those incoming shuttles were armed, I was currently sitting in the middle of the most tempting target for a bombing run on the entire coldside. Out in the open, on the other hand, unpleasant as it was, I'd have a much better chance of surviving an aerial attack.

  'Have fun.' Kasteen grinned at me, no doubt believing I was just eager to be in with a better chance of facing the enemy.

  I directed a carefully composed smile in her direction. 'We'll try to save a couple for you,' I promised, as though she was right, and fell into step beside Detoi as we left the bustling room behind us.

  'Commissar.' Jurgen was waiting outside, and had been for some time judging by the aroma of old socks which suffused the corridor. He pulled himself to a semblance of attention, his usual collection of mismatched equipment pouches rattling slightly as he shouldered his precious melta, which clanked against his lasgun. Detoi returned his salute crisply and without a trace of a smile. She was one of the few officers in the regiment who at least pretended to consider him a proper soldier.r />
  'Jurgen.' I nodded a greeting, relieved to see him, and surreptitiously adjusted the straps of the carapace concealed under my greatcoat. Clearly we were both expecting trouble. 'We were about to take a small constitutional around the compound.'

  'I thought you might, sir.' My aide burrowed in one of the pouches. 'So I took the liberty of making a flask of tea. Knowing how you feel the cold a bit.'

  'Very thoughtful,' I said, forestalling the motion. 'But perhaps later.' The faint sound of engines was audible now, and if they were about to attack the building we didn't have much longer to get outside. I turned to Detoi.

  'Shall we go?'

  'By all means.' He led the way outside into the perpetual cold and night. I glanced up, the sky even clearer than usual now that the lumi-nators had been doused in anticipation of an enemy attack, the stars burning down at us colder and harder than ever. A few of them seemed to be moving, the whine of their engines growing louder by the minute.

  I tapped the comm-bead in my ear. 'Visual contact,' I said. 'I can see three of them, approaching from due east. High and fast.'

  'That's odd,' Broklaw said. 'A couple of them are overshooting the town.'

  'Heading for us, maybe,' Kasteen cut in.

  'They're dispersing,' the auspex operator confirmed. 'They're in a landing pattern, but it seems uncontrolled.'

  'Hardly surprising,' I said, taking the amplivisor Jurgen was holding out with a nod of thanks and raising it to my eyes. After a moment of searching, I found one of the shuttles and brought its magnified image into focus. 'With the amount of damage they've taken it's a miracle they're flying at all.' In the faint orange light of the early dawn I could make out jagged rents in the hull and a plume of smoke from its engines. It was juddering wildly and must have been hell to keep under control.

  Well, good. If it crashed that would be one less bunch of lunatics left to deal with.

  I lowered the lenses and handed the amplivisor back to Jurgen, who stowed it away somewhere. He was growing steadily more visible as the sun rose behind me, a faint shadow beginning to stretch from his feet. My own also became gradually visible on the hard-packed snow. Absently I found myself thinking it was the first time I'd seen it since we'd arrived on Adumbria…

  'Emperor on Earth!' I said, the coin finally dropping, whirling round to stare at the fireball scorching its way across the sky above us. For the first and last time in Adumbrian history, the coldside was wanly illuminated by the death throes of the traitors' transport vessel, and the troopers around me raised a spontaneous cheer at the sight. Well, who could blame them? As it faded over the western horizon, setting as abruptly as it had risen, a scream of tortured air followed it, like the howling of daemons clawing free from the warp.

  After that, an eerie silence seemed to settle across us, leeching the sound from the air as the light faded back to the constant faint blue of the endless starlight.

  'That's going to make a dent when it hits,'[78] Detoi prophesied, and trotted away to find his command team. There was little time to waste on idle conversation after that, as the enemy were suddenly upon us.

  'One contact down. No, three,' the auspex operator reported. 'One two kilometres to the south, another in the north-eastern suburbs.'

  'We can see it,' a new voice I recognised as one of the platoon commanders from fourth company chimed in. 'First and third squads moving in to contain them.'

  'Contact three down in the town centre,' the auspex operator continued.

  'Fifth company, encircle and eliminate,' Kasteen ordered, while another platoon from fourth moved up to support their comrades in the suburbs. I was beginning to think about ducking back inside and following the action on the chart table, which would be a great deal preferable to freezing out here now the threat of an air attack was almost past.

  'Contact four heading due west,' the auspex operator droned on. 'Looks like they're overshooting.'

  'Engaging,' a lieutenant from first company cut in, her voice shrill with excitement. 'They're practically overhead.' Her words were almost drowned out by the roar of half a dozen Chimeras unloading both their heavy bolters at once, and I was hardly surprised to hear a faint cheer over the channel a moment later. With all that firepower they must have hit something, even by sheer blind luck. 'Got him! He's trailing smoke… Frak it, he's still airborne.'

  I glanced up, seeing a dark mass scream overhead, vivid orange flames licking around its main engine before it disappeared into the distance in the vague direction of the hab dome we'd found. They wouldn't find any help there, I reflected grimly. Asmar had been right about one thing: a place that tainted couldn't be allowed to exist. The difference had been that we'd made damn sure we'd learned everything we could about it before we'd let Federer out to play. All the descending heretics were going to find (if they got down in one piece, which didn't seem all that likely at this point) was a scorched pile of rubble and third platoon, fourth company, who'd been camping out there for almost a week by this point and were just itching for something to kill to relieve the monotony.

  'Recon one, two and three heading out to contact two,' Captain Shambas reported. 'Let's see what the frakheads are up to.' That made good sense: the three sentinel squadrons were designed for just such a task and would get to the shuttle which had grounded to the south far quicker than any other units we had.

  'Good luck, captain,' Kasteen said, making it official, although the sentinel pilots would be hard to dissuade now the idea that they had a target-rich environment all to themselves had had time to sink in. Any other response would be far more trouble than it was worth. Calling them off would be difficult and time-consuming and probably involve an inordinate number of freak vox failures, so on the whole it was probably best to just let them get on with it. (Which they did, mopping up the entire group quite happily without needing to call for backup.)

  That just left one of the incoming shuttles unaccounted for, and with a thrill of horror I realised that the engine noise which so far had been a loud, consistent sound in the background was rising in pitch alarmingly.

  'Incoming!' I shouted, just as the auspex operator managed to find her arse with both hands and a map.

  'Contact five inbound, closing fast,' she reported. 'Estimated LZ within half a kilometre.'

  'It's a frak sight closer than that!' I shouted as the frozen air around us lit up with las bolts, the troopers spitting defiant small-arms fire at the descending ship. The heavy bolters mounted on the company Chimeras might have made a difference, of course, but they were still aboard the dropship, and I might just as well have wished for a battery of Hydras while I was about it. 'Prepare to engage!'

  'Look out, commissar!' Jurgen grabbed my arm, urging me to duck as the ungainly shuttle swooped overhead, seeming close enough to touch, the wind of its passing grabbing the cap from my head and spinning it off into the darkness. A vice of cold clamped itself around my temples, driving needles of ice into my forebrain and the back of my eyes. I scrabbled instinctively after my tumbling headgear, which probably saved my life, as the snow around me began puffing into vapour under the impetus of multiple las bolt impacts.

  'Frak this!' I drew my trusty laspistol, grabbing my elusive cap with the other hand and jamming it over my head. The migraine receded a little, and what felt like a couple of kilos of melting slush mashed itself into my hair and slithered down my neck. I turned in time to see the wounded shuttle hit the snow, skid and plough itself to a halt in a long groove of friction-melted ice, which began to freeze instantly around it. In the process, it shed the dimly-glimpsed figures which had been hanging out of the rear cargo doors firing wildly, coming so close to hitting me. They cart-wheeled through the air, striking the permafrost with an impact sufficient to shatter bone and liquefy flesh. And serve them right, I thought. None of them stirred again, merely acquiring makeshift shrouds of lightly-drifting snow as the battle raged about them.

  For battle it was. There were plenty of their comrades left aboard, and the
y came boiling out of the steam-shrouded wreck like parasites fleeing a dying grox, firing wildly as they went. The Valhallans returned fire with all the disciplined professionalism I'd come to expect, dropping them by the dozen, but the survivors swept on, frenzied as an orkish war band.

  'Something's not right about this,' I said, firing my pistol at the onrushing mob, then ducking for cover behind a snow-shrouded drum of some foul-smelling lubricant the enginseers had been using on a partially disassembled Chimera. The cultists we'd faced before had been fanatical, of course, but they'd shown a modicum of tactical sense.

  'No kidding.' Corporal Magot jogged past, grinning happily, her fireteam in tow, lobbing frag grenades in the general direction of the enemy. 'It's almost too easy.' One of the troopers with her went down suddenly, a spray of fresh blood freezing almost instantly into a bright, hard scab across his chest.

  'Medic,' I voxed, dragging the man under cover. It was a good excuse to keep my head down and it never hurt to seem concerned about the ordinary troopers. Magot shot me a grateful smile with an edge colder than the flensing wind.

  'Thanks, boss.' Her voice rose. 'Are we going to let 'em get away with that?'

  'Hell, no!' the rest of the team chorused in unison.

  'Then let's frag one for Smith!' With a roar that sounded almost like a mob of orks, they charged off into the snow looking for something to kill. I began to feel almost sorry for the enemy.

  I busied myself looking after the wounded trooper until the medic arrived, then glanced back up over our makeshift barricade. The compound was in uproar by this time, small knots of traitors in flimsy crimson fatigues and black flak armour[79]engaging squads and fireteams almost at random. They fought with the fury of the possessed or the truly insane, heedless of their personal safety or anything resembling tactics, apparently intent on charging into close combat as quickly as they could.