Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

– Or it may not. The Imperium is, after all, quite staggeringly big, the time taken for news, rumour and conjecture to cross it being typically measured in years, if not decades.

– Possibly just as well, given the relatively confined space.

– As, subsequently, on several of those occasions, had the rapid acceleration conferred by his augmetic legs.

– Probably not: if ever a man deserved the appellation of ‘ceramite stomach’ it was him.

– The local defence force generally relying on utility trucks for transport within the hive, reserving their armoured vehicles for operations on the surface.

– Routine matters only, of course, as Cain would have been contacted in person if anything occurred which Kasteen thought required his attention.

– Small apertures in the hull, through which the embarked troops could fire their lasguns if required, to supplement the vehicle’s heavy armament.

– Which had, probably inevitably, resulted in them being nicknamed ‘Beetles’ by the local inhabitants.

– Technically, as commissars are outside the chain of command it’s not strictly necessary for even Imperial Guard troopers to salute them, let alone members of the planetary defence force, but a substantial proportion do so anyway, possibly to be on the safe side. In Cain’s case, however, this seems to have been prompted by genuine regard, however much the fact seems to have escaped him.

– Fragments of debris blasted loose from the inside of an armoured vehicle’s hull by a sufficiently strong external impact, effectively creating a blizzard of shrapnel in a confined space – something rightly feared by tank crews the galaxy over.

– A neat trick peculiar to that type of vehicle, achieved by moving the two tracks in opposite directions at the same speed.

– Two of them; Mott, who would be the least effective with his weapon if we found ourselves in combat – so the extra time it would take him to draw and use it would be less critical – carried one of the luminators, while Jurgen – who, as usual in this sort of situation, had clipped his to the bayonet lugs of his lasgun – took the other.