Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘You mean they can jump through the warp?’ Proktor asked, clearly astonished; his voice had acquired a quiver of emotion quite unlike his usual barely inflected delivery, which had become a little more nasal since he’d begun spending so much time in the command centre and acquired a semi-permanent cold. He made the sign of the aquila as he spoke, reflexively warding off any misfortune which might have accrued from the casual mention of the immaterium itself, then looked faintly embarrassed as he realised what he’d done.

‘I thought opening a way into the warp meant some kind of ritual,’ Kasteen said. ‘Like those cultists were trying to do on Adumbria.’

I nodded in reply, trying not to think too much about that particular incident. They’d been trying to let Emeli, a Slaaneshi sorceress I’d already killed once, return to the materium as a daemon, and had come within a heartbeat of succeeding. I generally did my best to put both incidents out of my mind, as Emeli had a disconcerting habit of invading my dreams whenever I was reminded of them, and I was morbidly certain she’d do so again tonight now the sludge of memory had been stirred up; but, on the bright side, a life like mine tended to stock the subconscious with more than enough material for nightmares, so I might end up reliving some other horror entirely.

‘It doesn’t work quite the same way with the eldar,’ I said, trying to recall some of the things Amberley had said about them over the years – although, to be honest, discussing the peculiar habits of xenos was hardly the first thing on my mind when I found myself in her immediate proximity. ‘These tunnels are sort of halfway between the real universe and the warp. Don’t ask me how it works, though.’

‘Tunnels have an opening at the end,’ Kasteen said thoughtfully, ever the practical warrior. ‘Can we blow up the ones on Drechia, and collapse them?’

‘I’m not sure they work like that,’ I said slowly. ‘There might be some physical structure we could damage, I suppose. But that wouldn’t neces­sarily affect the rest of it.’

‘If I may make a suggestion,’ Proktor said, with the inflection of someone who was going to whether anyone minded or not, ‘perhaps we could estimate the location of these tunnel mouths by looking at the sites of the previous eldar attacks, and seeing where they approached from and retreated to.’ Like the rest of us, he had a bowl of tanna in his hands, but he rarely sipped at it,30 apparently regarding it as some kind of hand warmer.

‘Might be worth a try,’ Broklaw said, sounding faintly surprised, and calling up a rash of new icons which made the hololith display look as though it had just come down with a bad case of the mirepox. The image blurred even more than usual, and the enginseer stationed at the controls muttered a benediction, twiddled a knob or two, and kicked the casing in the ceremonial dent. The display steadied, and the major frowned, isolating a few of the runes. ‘These are the actions we’ve been involved in since deployment, and the red ones are the firefights with the locals. Shouldn’t be too hard to glean the information we need from the AARs.’31

‘Ours, anyway,’ Kasteen said, with more than a trace of scepticism. ‘Can’t see the ones from the local lot having much useful detail.’

‘We won’t know until we try,’ Broklaw said, with a fine show of optimism, though I noticed that it didn’t extend quite far enough to actually disagree with her. ‘I’ll get it analysed, and see what we can uncover.’ He turned to Proktor, the first faint traces of doubt beginning to enter his voice. ‘I take it your people have some sort of analyticum we can use?’

‘Of course we do,’ Proktor said, with the closest to anything approaching animation I’d seen on his face so far. ‘The scribes of the governor’s office have access to the finest cogitator array in the outer system. It’s supposed to keep track of the mining outputs, shipping manifests, tithing revenues and that sort of thing. But I’m sure you’ll be able to requisition it, with the authority of the Munitorum behind you.’

‘We can,’ Kasteen said, with the easy confidence of someone able to impose martial law whenever she felt like it.32 ‘But the governor’s probably not going to like it.’

Proktor shook his head. ‘I disagree. The governor’s definitely not going to like it.’ Which seemed, if anything, to be an additional recommendation from his point of view.

‘If it gives us an edge,’ I said, feeling I ought to contribute something, if only to remind everyone I was still there, ‘it doesn’t matter who gets hacked off, or how much. Our duty to the Emperor comes first.’

‘Absolutely,’ Kasteen said, while Broklaw nodded vehemently, and even Proktor seemed quietly impressed. ‘You do have a knack for cutting through the frak, Ciaphas.’