Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘And keep me out of your hair for a bit,’ I said, with an easy smile, which she and Broklaw returned, to the evident bafflement of everyone else present. ‘Try to save a couple of pointy-ears for me.’

‘There’s more than enough to go around,’ Broklaw assured me, which I found a far less satisfying thought than he evidently did. He glanced up from his data-slate. ‘Grifen’s platoon’s available.’

‘Excellent choice,’ I agreed. I’d been on a similar tunnel crawl with the squad she’d led, back when she’d been a sergeant,43 although the circumstances had rapidly become far more difficult than I was anticipating here, and she’d acquitted herself well on that occasion. ‘Couldn’t ask for better.’ I paused, as though suddenly struck by an afterthought. ‘It’ll give me a chance to see how she’s getting on after her promotion as well.’

‘Trust you to think of that,’ Kasteen said, taking the remark entirely at face value, and the meeting broke up. The planetary defence force contingent drifted away looking mildly embarrassed, Proktor with sardonic promises to expedite their paperwork to the best of his ability, and Delvinge still expostulating about the dangers awaiting us in the lower levels and absolving himself of any dire consequences to come. Which, to be fair, he was quite right about, although in a manner he couldn’t possibly have predicted.

A familiar odour manifested itself at my shoulder, followed a heartbeat later by my aide. ‘You’ll be wanting a flask, then, sir,’ he said.

‘An excellent suggestion,’ I agreed. ‘And something to eat before we go.’

‘Very good, sir.’ Jurgen nodded, and waved a grubby hand somewhere in the vicinity of his face, which was as close as he generally got to a salute. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He paused on his way out of the door to glance back in my direction. ‘Should I bring the melta along?’

‘Might as well,’ I agreed. Taking the heavy weapon would probably turn out to be a complete waste of time, but if it didn’t we’d be more than grateful for his foresight. Not to mention the fact that Jurgen wouldn’t be the only one reassured by its presence. ‘It certainly couldn’t hurt.’

Jurgen nodded thoughtfully. ‘Not if you’re standing behind it,’ he agreed.

Five

Our journey to the bottom of the mine took far less time than I’d antici­pated. The upper levels turned out to have a tramway network, the trains of which were propelled by tightly coiled springs which turned the wheels as they slowly unwound, and we rattled and jolted our way well past the midpoint of our descent without having to use our legs at all.

After that we walked through a succession of steadily narrowing tunnels, all sloping downwards, as though we were being swallowed by the bedrock itself. At first we threaded our way through an unfeasible number of miners, all busily engaged in digging, sweating, carrying stuff, or operating machinery whose main purpose appeared to be the production of prodigious amounts of noise and gritty dust, which settled itself on and in everything, including our underwear. After a while, though, the number of workers around us diminished, the electrosconces in the walls becoming dimmer and less frequent, until both petered out altogether.

‘Lights,’ Platoon Sergeant Magot ordered, and the point man (or woman) of each squad clipped a luminator to the bayonet lugs of their lasguns, kindling them as they did so. With less fear of tripping over our own feet, and with no more workers to impede our progress, we picked up the pace a little, until the changing texture of the walls and rougher stone beneath our boot soles told us we’d reached the beginning of the natural fissures. Here we paused, just inside a cavern almost large enough to hold the full four dozen of us,44 while Grifen consulted the map in her data-slate and began directing her units down the tunnel mouths opening off it.

‘First and second squads down that way, till you reach the first fork. First takes left, second right.’ She waited while the designated troopers split off from the milling mass and disappeared into the darkness, leaving the rest of us to appreciate the sudden acquisition of elbow room. ‘Fifth, you’re down there, tunnel on the right. Third, go with them, check out the side passage two hundred metres in. If it splits, one fireteam45 goes each way, but stay in contact with one other. Fourth, you’re with me and the commissar,’ at which point a few of them shared self-satisfied grins with one another for some reason, ‘middle passage. Take point, command team will follow up. Any questions?’

There weren’t, of course, and as third and fifth squads disappeared down their designated hole in the ground I took a moment for a quiet word with Grifen.

‘Just what I would have done,’ I said, the options she’d chosen covering the maximum amount of ground in the minimum amount of time.