Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘Will that charming colonel of yours be joining us today?’ the lord marshal asked, and I shook my head with every sign of sincere regret.

‘She sends her apologies, but she and Major Broklaw are discussing improvements to our defences with the company commanders in the field. You would, of course, be welcome to join them.’

‘We wouldn’t like to get in the way,’ the lord marshal said hastily, the memory of the snow in the pict screen no doubt fresh in his mind. Despite living on an iceworld, the Drechians didn’t seem to have embraced their environment the way the Valhallans had, preferring to remain in their habs and tunnel complexes unless absolutely necessary. Part of the reason, I was sure, that the eldar had had such an easy time of it until the 597th had arrived to spoil their fun. ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to brief us just as effectively. What are your immediate plans?’

To hang around as far from harm’s way as possible, of course, although I doubted that saying so would sit well with the erroneous impression of my martial zeal that these idiots seemed to have. Instead, I turned to the hololith and called up a topographical representation of the mine workings, the surface installations of which bobbed like bath toys over the tangled confusion of tunnels below the surface. There must have been hundreds of kilometres of interlinked shafts and galleries down there, as twisted as a tyranid’s intestines. I highlighted the main tunnels, which were large enough to drive a Chimera down with room to spare.38

‘The recent attack seemed to be focused on forcing the tunnel entrances here, here, and here,’ I said, ‘presumably with the intention of looting the stockpiles of processed materials stored in the caverns just below the surface.’ Which made them a lot easier to defend than they would have been in the warehouses near the shuttle pads, where the marauders could get at them easily; the few remaining undamaged were now empty and abandoned, apart from the odd Valhallan sniper, and of no strategic or economic value unless you considered them colossally expensive windbreaks. One of the few sensible decisions the locals had made before our arrival. ‘Fortunately the defences you’d put in place were sufficient to repel them.’ I paused, to let a ripple of self-congratulation propagate around the table, although truth to tell that was largely because the 597th had blunted the attack long before it got as far as the mine entrance and the defence force troopers manning the second line of defence. ‘It was a close run thing, though, which is why we propose fortifying in even more depth.’ Because the pointy-ears would have learned just as much from the skirmish as we had, and would probably roll right over us if we didn’t.

‘We thought you were already doing that,’ the lord marshal said, indicating the network of fresh trenches and firing pits behind their ramparts of ice sprawling out from the mining complex. Probably no one but the Valhallans, with their intimate knowledge of sub-zero conditions, could have constructed them so fast or used them so effectively, even with so much hastily requisitioned digging gear to hand.

‘We’ve made a few improvements,’ I said, blithely skating over the fact that we’d pretty much built most of it from scratch, or at least our sappers had. ‘But there’s always room for more. Complacency is the seedbed of defeat,39 after all.’

‘Quite so,’ the lord marshal said, nodding in agreement as though he recognised the phrase – maybe he even did. ‘So what are you proposing?’

‘Reinforcing our outer lines here and here,’ I said, indicating a couple of potential choke points in the surrounding hills. ‘Nothing fancy, just laying a few mines for the most part,’ although what good they’d be against an enemy which relied on airborne assaults quite so much was beyond me. But at this stage it was as much about maintaining morale by appearing to take charge as it was about actually being able to stop the enemy in their tracks. ‘And we’re establishing forward observation posts in these locations, to improve response times in the event of another attack.’ Meaning when the next attack came. I didn’t have to go into that; they were at least clued up enough to know the eldar weren’t about to pack up and leave.

Everyone nodded, as though their approval were needed, and I returned to the mine workings themselves, highlighting some of the deeper tunnels. ‘The thing which most concerns us,’ I said, ‘are these galleries in the lower levels.’ I glanced towards the door, where our other guest for the day had just appeared. ‘Right on cue. I’m sure you all know Lennart Delvinge, the mine manager here.’ Actually, I was pretty sure none of them did, but since I couldn’t remember most of their names – if I’d even been told them in the first place – that neatly sidestepped the necessity of making any introductions.