Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

– Hellguns, like the standard Imperial Guard lasguns they’re patterned after, generally have three firing modes: single shot, a burst of five rounds for each squeeze of the trigger, and fully automatic, where the gun continues to fire for as long as the trigger is depressed or until the power pack is depleted. If, as Cain states here, the selector switch was set to the second option, Evander would have taken five rounds at point-blank range, with entirely predictable results.

– In fact the guest list for these affairs was pretty much rooted in protocol, the same dignitaries and lesser noble families having formed the backbone of it for centuries. Rounding them all up would simply have involved sending out vox messages, and waiting for the stampede to the free food and drink (which, paradoxically, seem to become more attractive the wealthier and further up the social hierarchy people become) to begin.

– No one is ever entirely removed from it, but he was a lot further from the top by this point.

– We all had.

– Or heavy cruiser – like most people unconnected with the Imperial Navy, he was unclear about the distinction between various classes of warship, and cared even less.

– Surprisingly close, for an offhand remark.

– Roughly waist-high to the daemon.

– Though generally vague in his description of the daemon’s physical appearance, probably because it wasn’t something he particularly wanted to recall, Cain is quite correct in this specific detail. It appeared to be prehensile, and was used mainly in fruitless attempts to trip or entangle its opponent.

About the Author

Sandy Mitchell is the author of a long-running series of Warhammer 40,000 novels about the Hero of the Imperium, Commissar Ciaphas Cain, as well as the audio drama Dead In The Water. He has also written a plethora of short stories, including ‘The Last Man’ in the Sabbat Worlds anthology, along with several novels set in the Warhammer World. He lives and works in Cambridge.

An extract from The Horusian Wars: Incarnation.

The harvest pilgrims came to the glass tabernacle as they always had. They trod the half-severed stalks down, and sent their prayer smoke into the blue sky, a slowly gathering tide of people old and young, man and woman, all clad in the sacred blue of rain. Thousands of them had already gathered around the tabernacle. They swirled about it, white smoke puffing from their fume pipes, scenting the air with fruit and spice.

‘Credulous fools,’ muttered Ninkurra, as she guided one of her hawks lower over the scene. The creatures were psyber-bonded – their eyes and will hers.