Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘Rules are for the little people,’ Emeli said dismissively, and Jurgen fired the melta. Like the bolts of the inquisitors, however, the burst of ravening energy had no discernible effect, beyond the momentary appearance of a minute blemish on the smooth, sweet-scented flesh. Which, I suppose, neatly put paid to the faint hope I’d clung to, that my aide’s presence might weaken her enough for a concentrated barrage of heavy weapons fire to despatch her back to the warp like it had the last time. She frowned at Jurgen. ‘I don’t know why I even bothered to tell my little pet to have you killed.’

Strangely, I felt a flash of petulance at that point, as I realised that the assassin in the air car and his confederates had never been after me at all, and that my aide had been the real target all along. Fulcher had even remarked on his absence at the conclusion of the affair, although the significance of that hadn’t struck me at the time.

‘At least you’re consistent in the quality of the help you find,’ I sniped, hoping to goad her into some kind of rash action we could take advantage of. Not the safest or most sensible plan, of course, but it had worked before, and right then I was out of any other ideas. Besides, if I’m honest, it’s somewhat galling to escape an attempt on your life only to discover that you were just meant to be collateral damage in the first place, so I suppose a bit of pettishness on my part was only to be expected.

‘I take what I can get,’ the daemon said, with a decorous shrug. ‘And what I get now is this world, and everyone on it to play with, and the souls of the eldar infesting it to feed to Slaanesh. Not to mention a door to the webway for when I get bored.’

‘Enjoy it while you can,’ I said, reflecting that she probably would, and that there wasn’t a damn thing any of us could do about it, but at least I’d go down fighting. Besides, Amberley seemed to be having a fairly vehement conversation with someone over her vox-link, so the more of Emeli’s attention I could attract, the better her chances of pulling off whatever it was she was trying to achieve. I caught the phrase ‘if so much as a single one fires, you’ll all answer to the Inquisition,’ then my attention was entirely back on the daemon. ‘Jurgen, with me,’ I said, knowing he’d follow without question or hesitation, then leapt at the monstrous form, my chainsword whirling.

Editorial Note:

At which point it seems incumbent upon me to insert a further piece of explanatory text from another source, without which the next part of Cain’s account is likely to seem wildly improbable.

From The Eldar: a History of Their Presence in the Ultima Segmentum, and Some Musings Upon Possible Means of Their Eradication, by Baltazar Thromp, 997 M41

With the hindsight of history, we can only speculate what unfathomable motives drove the eldar to take their last desperate gamble. But take it they did, thereby sealing their fate, and ensuring the ignominious defeat which inevitably awaits all who dare to challenge the might of the Emperor and His stalwart warriors.

Without warning, the entire eldar fleet left their positions, closing in as one on Skyside Seventeen. To the consternation of all who witnessed it, however, the defenders held their fire, despite the multiplicity of targets thus presented.

Unopposed, the xenos interlopers began an assault against the very centre of Imperial power among the orbitals: the residence of the governor himself.

Twenty-eight

‘That’s more like it,’ Emeli said, with a liquid laugh of pure enchantment; had Jurgen not been so close, insulating me against the worst of her daemonic aura, I felt sure I would have succumbed to the allure of her hideous charms by now. Even knowing that to give in would forfeit my very soul, the urge to submit was almost overwhelming, held at bay only by my tenacious instinct for self-preservation. ‘You always did play hard to get.’