Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

– Or possibly neither, as eldar technosorcery tends not to rely on anything so basic as volatiles to power its engines; nevertheless, their devices do explode as satisfactorily as any other race’s when given sufficient encouragement.

– An odd choice of phrase to anyone but an iceworlder, though the meaning seems clear enough: on a world like Valhalla, ice would indeed often be as unyielding as rockcrete, acquiring the same sort of metaphorical meaning as steel or the like in everyday Gothic.

– Quite literally so, in many cases, this being a favourite ambush tactic of iceworlders, who are the only people hardy – or foolhardy – enough to lie in a snowdrift for an extended period of time.

– A remark which I doubt was actually made in jest.

– An appellation she seems quite fond of when referring disparagingly to most xenos species, although – since the eldar were perfectly clear in their intentions – one which seems quite unmerited here. Perhaps it doesn’t mean what she thinks it means.

– Eldar attacks notwithstanding, the flow of materials to Ironfound had to continue as uninterrupted as possible, which meant that transport shuttles would be arriving and departing in an almost continuous stream. Some disruption and delay was inevitable, of course, given that the cargoes had further to travel, but to the credit of all involved – not least the mine workers who found themselves attempting to do their jobs under rather more trying circumstances than usual – throughput was down by a mere three per cent. Not counting the fairly substantial amount filched by the eldar, of course, which put rather more of a dent in the overall economic picture.

– Being so reliant on aerial assets, the eldar had no doubt made the specialised anti-aircraft vehicles high-priority targets, destroying or disabling almost every one in the defenders’ inventory; had the local militia more of an inclination to take the fight to the enemy, or simply venture out of doors, no doubt they would have been repaired with a great deal more alacrity.

– Unless you were one of the people maimed or killed in the initial attack run, of course.

– A phrase surely only a Valhallan could use with a straight face.