Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

Vekkman was still shouting, something in High Gothic full of sibilants and glottal stops, laying about him with the null rod, but with Amberley out of the way – and Jurgen and I apparently no threat at all – he became the natural focus of Emeli’s ire. A shapely hoof lashed out, sending him spinning – unconscious or dead – across the clearing, the crackling staff flying from his hand. As he dropped it, the daemon’s physical form solidified again, all trace of the physical damage it had suffered fading from its face.

I glanced upwards, seeing Emeli smiling down at me with all the warmth of a raptor spotting something small and furry in the grass, and found myself beseeching the Emperor for a miracle; not that I expected one, but under the circumstances it certainly couldn’t hurt to ask.

But a miracle was precisely what I got. As I hefted my chainsword, taking up a guard position between the daemon and Amberley, the entire dome shook from a series of impacts which felt to me rather too much like heavy weapons fire to be entirely comforting.

A quick glance towards the armourcrys overhead was enough to tell me that this was precisely what it was. The vast bulk of an eldar battleship189 was keeping station with the orbital, just outside the dome, and beyond it I thought I could make out several more of the distinctive curving hulls. Before I could discern any more, however, I was dazzled by the discharge from one of the ship’s ventral lance batteries, and, once again, the entire dome shook.

This time, however, the shots had done their work, punching a hole through the thick, transparent material. With a roar like an enraged carnosaur the atmosphere began to vent, becoming visible as a plume of ice crystals, which caught the sunlight in a glittering trail I might have found breathtakingly beautiful if it hadn’t been taking my breath quite literally.

‘We have to get out of here!’ I yelled, running across to Amberley and seizing her arm, tugging at the dead weight of her malfunctioning power armour in a probably futile attempt to help her rise. ‘We’ll suffocate!’ My greatcoat was beginning to flap around me, already caught by the rising gusts of the venting atmosphere.

‘No we won’t,’ Amberley said, grasping the situation with gratifying speed and, to my relief, finally regaining her feet. ‘A space this size will take ages to depressurise through a hole that small.’

It didn’t look all that small to me, I have to say, but she seemed calm enough, and giving way to screaming panic wouldn’t do a lot for my reputation, so I took a deep breath and nodded briskly as though I understood what was going on.

‘Eldar!’ Jurgen said, pointing upwards to where a cluster of dots had appeared, plummeting towards us. He raised the melta, trying to track a target.

‘Stand down,’ Amberley said. ‘They’re with us.’

‘They are?’ I asked, in considerable astonishment.

Emeli, if anything, seemed even more confused, raising her head to look at the swooping jetbikes with an air of manifest puzzlement. They were eldar, right enough – the sorcerers we’d seen in the mines of Drechia, or dressed exactly like them if they weren’t. Las-bolts from their pistols began to detonate against the daemon’s flawless flesh, with the same complete lack of effect as our own weapons were having so far as I could see, and their sorcerous spears whirled and danced about it, slashing at her flesh, opening wounds which faded away almost at once as though they’d never been. The daemon jumped, impossibly high, and snatched at the nearest, who evaded the grasping hand by what, from where I was standing, seemed like millimetres. A moment later she crashed back to earth, shaking the ground beneath us.

‘You asked the eldar for help?’ I expostulated, the conversation I’d overheard between Amberley and the tech-priest finally starting to make sense.

‘Of course,’ Amberley said, with the air of patient exasperation common to women all over the galaxy explaining the obvious to the men in their lives. ‘This thing is feeding off the souls of their people.’ Once again I felt I was on the verge of a crucial realisation, but she went on before I could bring it into focus. ‘Why wouldn’t they?’

‘Fair point,’ I conceded, adding a few laspistol bolts of my own to the ongoing eldar barrage, although I didn’t expect it to have any discernible effect, and in this I was far from disappointed. Despite the risk of attracting Emeli’s attention again, I thought I ought to show willing in front of an inquisitor; as it turned out, however, the irked daemon was too busy trying to swat the swooping eldar to take much notice of me, at least for the time being. ‘But they’re going to need a lot more than that to take her down.’

‘And they’ve got it,’ Amberley said, glancing upwards to the breach in the dome. Another dot was falling, growing larger with every passing second. I expected it to swerve, or break its fall like the others, but it just kept plummeting towards us.