[Caiphas Cain 03] The Traitor's hand

by Sandy Mitchell

  Before my aide could reply, there was a loud explosion from the direction of the main door, which blew in, taking a couple of nearby troopers with it. Kasteen, Broklaw and I drew our side arms so fast that would have been all but impossible to tell who had been first, and turned to face this unexpected threat. A knot of red and black uniformed fanatics stormed into the room, heedless of the hail of las and bolter fire which cut them down as they rushed at us.

  'Blood for the Blood God!' one more fortunate than most screamed, charging forward as las rounds gouged chunks out of his flak armour and the flesh beneath, so carried away he barely seemed to register his wounds. I switched aim, shooting him in the leg, and he crashed to the floor in front of me, reaching out with a red-stained combat blade. 'Blood for the Blood God!'

  'Fine, he can have yours,' I snapped, stamping down hard on his throat and crushing his larynx. It wasn't a particularly elegant kill, but at least it shut him up.

  'They're all over the compound,' Jurgen said. I glanced around the room as Kasteen rallied her motley collection of vox and auspex operators and began to beat back our assailants. It was clear the command centre wouldn't be much of a refuge now; even if we could clear it again it would remain wide open, and I didn't feel at all comfortable with the idea of remaining in an enclosed space under siege from a swarm of homicidal lunatics. I turned to Broklaw, who seemed more or less unharmed apart from a gash in his forehead.

  'I'd better get outside,' I said, 'and try to rally our people.'

  'Good idea,' he said, apparently unaware of the blood seeping down his face. 'If we lose vox contact with four and five now, our trap's pretty much frakked.'

  'We'll keep 'em out,' I assured him, salving my conscience a little with the thought that at least someone would if I had anything to do with it. I turned to my aide. 'Come on, Jurgen. We've got work to do.'

  'Right with you, sir,' he responded as phlegmatically as ever. I drew my chainsword and began hewing my way to the door, blessing whatever it is about Khornate fanatics that makes them run at you with blades yelling their heads off instead of shooting their guns like any sensible opponent would, potting the odd one with the laspistol whenever I got the opportunity. It wasn't often, to be honest. Kasteen was clearly revelling in the chance to get her hands dirty for a change instead of directing operations from a distance through a chain of subordinates, banging away happily with her miniature bolter as though she was racking up the prize tickets at a fairground shooting booth. The explosive projectiles were making short work of both heretic troopers and their armour, leaving the walls decorated in abstract designs I didn't want to look at too closely.

  'Not enough of them in here for you?' she asked as Jurgen and I swept past, my aide having switched to his standard-issue lasgun in deference to the confined space and the number of friendly soldiers in the vicinity. I plastered my best devil-may-care grin on my face.

  'It seems churlish to take yours while you're having so much fun,' I said.

  'Besides, you and Ruput are needed here.' I stepped aside to give Jurgen a clear shot at a red and black trooper running through the door and realised as the man dropped that there were no more behind him.

  Kasteen re-holstered her weapon, looking vaguely disappointed. 'Which leaves me to keep any more from getting in here,' I finished.

  'I guess so.' The colonel turned back to the bank of vox units, already assimilating reports from the other battlefronts. A few of our people were down, but damn few considering, and several of those were walking wounded. Broklaw was rallying the others and returning them to work.

  As I hurried down the corridor with Jurgen trotting at my heels, a party of medicae passed us going in the other direction. I felt a strong sense of relief at the sight. They were carrying lasguns, true, but slung across their shoulders, and if they were able to respond so fast to a call for aid from the command centre they couldn't have been needed to help defend the place. My spirits began to rise.

  'Commissar!' A young corporal greeted us as we broke through into the open air, and I pulled the scarf over my mouth and nose without breaking stride (bumping the side of my face with the butt of my laspistol as I did so, but I wasn't about to relinquish either of my weapons under the circumstances). His face seemed vaguely familiar, and after a moment I remembered having him flogged on Kastafore for starting a brawl with some civilians over the favours of a joygirl. I dredged his name out of the depths of my memory.

  'Albrin,' I said, nodding, and the fellow looked absurdly pleased that I'd recognised him. 'Who's in charge here?'

  'I think I am, sir.' I le waved vaguely out into the darkness beyond the light leaking from the doorway behind us, where the scorched and blackened remains of the thick metal portal which used to protect it gave mute testimony to the fact that at least a few of the heretics hadn't been so far gone with bloodlust that they'd forgotten how to set a demo charge. 'My section saw a bunch of traitors heading this way, so we followed up and took them from behind.'

  'Good work,' I said, picking out a number of mounds in the snow which had probably been enemy troopers a few moments ago. It made sense: Khornate fanatics would be so fixated on breaking into the building and massacring everyone inside, it probably hadn't even occurred to them to watch their own backs, even when Albrin's team opened fire on them.

  The corporal flushed. 'After we cleared them out, we started fortifying the breach. It seemed the most sensible thing to do.'

  I nodded again. For a quartermaster's clerk he had a pretty sound grasp of tactics. 'It was,' I said. They'd begun piling up cargo pods and other odds and ends into a makeshift barricade, which seemed reasonably defensible. I tried to find some more of the defenders on my comm-bead, but none of them had tactical communications kit, so it was a futile gesture; in the end I had to make do with voxing the command centre and letting them know what was going on.

  'Are you staying with them?' Kasteen asked.

  'No,' I replied, conscious that only my end of the conversation would be overheard by the ad hoc defenders. 'They seem competent enough.' As I'd expected, a ripple of pride and renewed resolve went round the little group of men and women. 'I'll head on out and try to find another squad or two to send back to reinforce them.' This was not only good tactical sense; I stood a much better chance of avoiding the enemy than I would if I stayed put at an obvious target point.

  'Good hunting,' Kasteen said, completely misreading my motives, and after a couple of encouraging remarks to the defenders, Jurgen and I moved on into the darkness.

  The truth was that by that time the battle for the compound was all but over, the superior training and skills of the defenders and the bone-chilling cold combining to cut the attackers down like grain before a harvester. But at the time, as you'll readily appreciate, I had no way of knowing that, and was as cautious as I might possibly be in my movements. I did have time to scan the tactical frequencies, discovering inter alia that our trap at the hab dome had worked as well as we could possibly have hoped, fourth and fifth companies having encircled their prey and now well advanced in the process of squeezing the life out of them, while Sulla's new command was still, to my mingled surprise and relief, doing a sterling job of defending the town from the depredations of the invaders. (Though not without some collateral damage, of course.)

  'Commissar.' Jurgen was little more than a silhouette in the endless night, although my eyes had now adjusted enough to make him out without undue difficulty. Which was just as well, as the freezing temperatures and the scarf across my nose was depriving me of my usual method of keeping track of my faithful companion in the darkness. 'Movement.'

  I followed the direction of his gesture, wondering for a moment what the whining sound in my ears was, until I remembered that the dropship engines were still running. Well, good, at least we'd still be able to respond when the lord general's call came. That was probably the main reason our base here had been attacked, I thought. If the first wave had reported the presence of the orbital trans
port to their masters in the invasion fleet, someone, probably one of the Traitor Marines, would have had the sense to realise why it was there.

  There was no time for further thought on the matter though, as the movement Jurgen had spotted began to resolve itself into a mass of moving darkness, occulting the few low-lying stars I could see between the buildings. At first I took it for a squad of troopers, but as it moved out into more open ground I realised it was far too massive for that.

  'Emperor on Earth!' I said, a faint vibration beginning to reach my feet and an all-too-familiar grinding and clanking sound beginning to build through the all-pervasive whine of the dropship engines. 'They've brought a bloody tank!'

  'Say again?' Kasteen said, a tone of surprise in her voice.

  'It's a Leman Russ,' I said. 'Or it used to be at least.' The familiar outline had been blurred with icons and trophies I was heartily glad not to be able to make out in the darkness surrounding us, and what looked like a strip of park railing stuck to it for no readily apparent reason. 'They must have taken a while to get it unloaded from the shuttle.'

  'Confirm that.' Kasteen conferred with the captains of the other companies for a moment. 'They've got a couple of armoured units at the hab dome as well. None in town, thank the Emperor.'

  'We can take it, commissar,' Jurgen said, unshipping his prized melta. We probably could too, it was what the weapon was designed for after all. The flaw in that plan, at least from my point of view, was that attempting to do so would probably attract the attention of its crew, and that in turn would undoubtedly be manifested in a hail of heavy bolter fire from the nearest sponson.

  I was saved from having to find a plausible reason to keep our heads down by a sudden intervention from our left, where a squad of Valhallans broke from cover without warning to unleash a hail of ineffective lasgun fire against the metal hull. The engine growled and its turret turned, bringing its main cannon to bear.

  'Oh, frak this!' I said, as heavy bolter rounds began chewing up the snow all around us, punching holes through flakboard buildings and generally making an unholy mess of everything in sight. 'Take the bloody shot.' In truth it was our best chance of survival, since there was no way we could get out now without being cut to pieces.

  'Very good, sir.' Jurgen squeezed the trigger, aiming for the thinner armour of the flank, and the idiots who'd attacked it in the first place cheered wildly (at least, the ones who weren't thrashing around in the snow bleeding to death did). The blast of superheated plasma punched through the side skirts, shredding the tracks, and the metal leviathan slewed to a halt, its engine screaming.

  'Come on, men! Do you want to live forever?' The noncom in charge of the squad must have been on something, I thought. Nobody spoke like that outside badly-written combat novels. It seemed to work, though: with a banshee howl the whole damn lot of them were up and running, scrambling all over the blasted thing, trying to lever the hatches off and drop frag grenades inside.

  Good luck to them, I thought. The turret swung again, as though it were trying to shake them off, and then I realised it was trying to aim at something. I jerked my head around, my gaze meeting the vast metal slab of the side of the dropship.

  'Frakking warp!' I yelled. 'They're going for the dropship!' I began waving at the troopers still swarming all over the crippled tank. 'Get out of the way!'

  Jurgen couldn't fire again with those idiots blocking his shot, and if the traitors managed to get a shell off at this range they'd hit the orbital transport for sure. I tried to picture the size of the ensuing explosion if they managed to penetrate its hull armour, and failed; all I was sure of was that there'd be precious little of the compound left, and I'd be a small cloud of drifting vapour.

  There was no help for it. Grabbing Jurgen by the collar, I started to run for the dropship, frantically retuning my comm-bead to find the pilot's frequency.[89]

  'Get in the air now!' I shouted.

  'Say again?' The pilot was on line, at least, but sounded bewildered. 'Who is this?'

  'Commissar Cain,' I said, the breath beginning to rasp in my throat from the cold. 'You're in imminent danger. Lift now!'

  It was even worse than I thought. The main cargo ramp was still down, warm yellow light spilling out of it, and if the traitor tank managed to get a shot off there wouldn't even be the hope of the hull armour stopping it. I redoubled my efforts, and after what felt like an eternity of slithering though the treacherous snow, but was in all probability no more than a handful of seconds, was rewarded by the clanging solidity of metal underfoot. Jurgen, of course, had no such difficulty and had outdistanced me easily. As I turned to look back he was already at the controls, stabbing at the closure rune with his fingers.

  With a grinding hum the ramp began to rise, cutting off my view of that deadly battle cannon. My last sight of the tank was as the Valhallans who had assaulted it began scattering away, apparently having found a vulnerable point to chuck a grenade into. Whether it had any effect I don't know, as a sudden lurch underfoot knocked me to my knees.

  For good or ill we were now airborne, and Jurgen and I were on our way to Fmperor knew where. However, had I known our eventual destination and what we'd find there, I'd probably have charged the bloody tank myself and thought I was lucky.

  Editorial Note:

  At which point we find ourselves once again having to turn to other sources for a proper appreciation of the bigger picture. The first of which, at least, is readable.

  The second is as painful as the rest of Sulla's assaults on the Gothic language, but I've included it for its summation of what was happening to the rest of the regiment while Cain was otherwise occupied. As Tincrowser summarises events adequately enough, readers of a refined sensibility may skip it if they wish, although it does provide a first-hand account of an aspect of the conflict which he, along with most Adumbrians, remains unaware of to this day.

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

  AS THE ENEMY battleship continued to bear down on the flotilla of merchant vessels and the defiant Indestructible, which seemed all that stood between them and certain destruction, the surviving transport ships remained in orbit, pouring their cargo of traitors and heretics onto the planet below. Many of the beleaguered defenders still hoped for the mighty Imperial pursuit of a handful of scattered targets would achieve Little beyond exposing itself to the guns of the enemy. Furthermore, there were the merchant ships to consider, a little over a thousand of them at this point, all helpless against the predator closing in on them.

  Though no one wanted to admit it, the protection of the merchant vessels was the battleship's highest priority. These ships would be needed if the worst were to happen and an evacuation became necessary, so they had to be defended, while the now empty transport vessels, having succeeded in their fell design, presented little further threat.

  Nevertheless, we can still appreciate the frustration felt by the crew of the Indestructible and the apprehension of the merchant crews as the Chaos Leviathan continued to coast towards them.

  If the battle in space had become a waiting game, however, the battle for the planet below had reached fever pitch. The invaders had struck almost everywhere at once, concentrating, as one might expect, a considerable proportion of their force against the planetary capital. Skitterfall became a grim battleground, where PDF and Imperial Guard elements fought for control of the streets against apparently inexhaustible numbers of fanatical heretics, whose only imperative appeared to be to cause as much death and destruction as possible. Making no apparent distinction between defenders and civilians, they slaughtered their way into the city centre, while the gallant defenders withdrew to regroup in the northern suburbs. Here the fighting became even fiercer, as the invaders' confederates emerged from hiding to wreak further mischief of their own.

  And this pattern continued all over Adumbria. On the coldside, hidden renegades appeared, intent on hampering the defence of
Glacier Peak, although the Valhallans prevailed over them as easily as the invaders themselves. On the hotside, the Tallarns were hard pressed, as before, despite the lack of any obvious targets of strategic value, their rough riders galloping to the defence of the inhabitants of the scattered desert hamlets. And throughout the shadow zone the battle to cleanse the soil of our home world from the taint of the unclean continued unabated.

  From Like a Phoenix on the Wing: The Early Campaigns and Glorious Victories of the Valhallan 597th by General Jenit Sulla (retired), 101.M42.

  NOTWITHSTANDING THE IMPRESSION of imperturbability I took such pains to present to my subordinates, my readers will, I am sure, readily appreciate the apprehension I felt at the colonel's warning. I had scarcely had time to come to terms with my sudden and unexpected elevation, let alone come to know my new subordinates as anything other than the casual acquaintances of the officers' mess that they had until so recently been. Nevertheless, we were all soldiers of the Guard, the finest and most noble exemplars of humanity, so my confidence in their abilities was as high as it could be, and for my part I was quietly determined to provide them with the leadership such heroic women and men deserved.

  With but a handful of minutes before the enemy onslaught was upon us, I checked the dispositions of the platoons under me in the tactical display of the company command Chimera, finding the routine comfortingly familiar. Indeed, were it not for the extra datafeeds and vox links surrounding me, I could almost have fancied myself back in command of my old platoon.

  To my relief, our units were responding well to the alert, the platoon commanders as efficient as I could have wished, and glancing at the image in the hololith I was left in no doubt that our readiness to meet the heretic threat was as high as it was possible to be. All we could do now was wait for their shuttles to ground and move in as rapidly as we could to contain them.