Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

Despite the optimistic forecast of some of the rank and file that we’d have the xenos on the run within days of our arrival, however, I couldn’t quite shake a sense of foreboding that things had been a little too easy for us, and that the tide of battle might be about to turn. Accordingly, we busied ourselves with strengthening the defences bequeathed to us by the local planetary defence force, which, alas, was barely adequate to the task of protecting the strategically vital mines. Though no doubt doing the best job they could, their reluctance to engage the enemy in the open, where the attackers were most vulnerable, meant that there were very few heavy weapon emplacements on the surface approaches, and no trenches linking them to facilitate the protected movement of our reserves, which might have slowed an assault. Wary of underestimating our opponents, Colonel Kasteen ordered the immediate construction of adequate fortifications, which went on apace, removing the local defence troopers from the surface altogether in favour of deploying them at strategic points in the hab areas and the mine itself, where their local knowledge would be utilised to its best effect, and, as Commissar Cain jokingly put it, ‘they couldn’t get in the way when the fighting starts.’21

A piece of foresight which was to prove its worth ere long, as the eldar made their first attack in force. I had adumbrated such a move on the part of our enemies for several days by this point, since their periodic raids had diminished in frequency to the point of apparently ceasing altogether, and the only reasonable inference was that they were about to change their tactics. A conclusion, it must be said, which was shared by Colonel Kasteen, Major Broklaw and, of course, the inestimable Commissar Cain. Since the majority of the early attacks had been on the storage areas near the landing field, where the bounty of the mines was sent off-world for utilisation and such further processing as was economically unfeasible in the outer system, the stockpiles had been moved under cover where a chain of natural caverns, considerably enlarged by subsequent ore extraction, stood conveniently close to the entrance of the mines.

These, of course, immediately became the pirates’ prime target, and no little effort was made to secure them as far as was feasible. And, as we’d all anticipated, it wasn’t long before the perfidious22 xenos struck, just as we had anticipated.

Our first intimation of trouble came as second platoon of my own company escorted a convoy of trucks to the landing field, to meet the first incoming shuttle from an orbiting ore barge. Such operations had become routine, of course, over the past few weeks, running almost around the clock,23 and we had no reason to suspect that this occasion would be any different.

Until, that is, a squadron of eldar jetbikes screamed down out of the evening sky, spitting fire at our gallant defenders. This was a tactic we’d become used to, of course, and our Chimera crews responded with alacrity, laying down an impenetrable field of fire with their turret-mounted heavy bolters. In this they were greatly aided by a couple of Hydras, requisitioned from the local defence force, whose own enginseers had proved inadequate to the task of resanctifying them after they’d taken some disabling battle damage in the early days of the conflict.24 So far, then, we’d seen nothing out of the ordinary – a minor irritation at best.25 That was to change, however, as the leading Chimera took a hit to its flanking armour which killed its engine, driver and gunner but, by the Emperor’s good grace, left most of the squad riding in it relatively unharmed – who, of course, disembarked with speed, taking the fight to the enemy with all the righteous wrath it behoves us to display in the face of the unhallowed.

That such a grievous blow was far beyond the firepower available to the swooping jetbikes became immediately apparent to me, and I swiftly despatched first and fifth platoon to reinforce the beleaguered convoy, while deploying third and fourth to the flanks, intending to channel the incoming raiders towards the waiting guns of the rest of the regiment – a course of action, I’m gratified to say, which Colonel Kasteen immediately approved, mobilising two further companies to assist us. Further incoming fire, and a break in the mild blizzard26 then prevailing, revealed the full extent of the threat we were facing: eldar Dreadnoughts, towering over the ground troops scuttling round their feet, their weapons dealing out destruction with every stride. Undaunted, the surviving vehicles retargeted their heavy bolters, ignoring for the nonce the jetbikes which continued to harry them like circling carrion birds, and were soon giving as good as they got, chewing away at the curious flexible material of which these hell-spawned monstrosities were composed.27