Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

I listened hopefully, but heard nothing beyond the dispiriting hiss of static. It seemed the twisting tunnels had put too much rock between us and the command squad’s vox-relay for my signal to get through, although the absence of an answer didn’t necessarily mean that no one else had heard it – a faint hope I clung to even in the face of reason assuring me it was absurd. Grifen was good at what she did, though, and was bound to send someone to find out what had happened to us after a while. I just had to hope Jurgen and I would still be in one piece when they turned up.

‘No answer?’ Jurgen asked after a moment, although if there had been he would have heard it in his own earpiece54 at the same time as me.

I shook my head. ‘Nothing. Looks like we’re on our own.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time,’ Jurgen said, truthfully enough, with a phlegmatic shrug. ‘Probably won’t be the last one, either.’ Which, given the way our lives had been so far, was a sucker bet if ever I’d heard one.

Taking heart from his obvious assumption that we’d survive this little setback, as we had done so many others, I drew my chainsword and pressed the activator, the sound of the weapon powering up masked by the chanting. Though every instinct I possessed was urging me to turn and flee, my rational mind was prevailing – at least for the nonce, although I must own in all honesty that it was a close-run thing. There was simply no telling what the heretics were up to, which meant at least getting a good look before making a run for it.

‘You’re not wrong there,’ I agreed, peering cautiously round the edge of the cleft. The cavern was a large one, I could tell as much by the way the voices echoed, but beyond that I couldn’t discern a thing. The pale light distorted everything, sight and sound, shining through an obscenely shaped hole at the end of a short connecting tunnel, the walls of which had been embellished by carvings I was careful not to look at too closely. I beckoned for Jurgen to follow me. ‘Stay close.’ The closer the better, if I was to receive the second-hand benefit of his gift. ‘And keep the melta handy.’

‘Already am, sir,’ he assured me, moving up to take point, the clumsy heavy weapon aimed down the passageway ahead of us. I followed on, the whining of my chainsword echoing back from the walls surrounding us like insects on a summer afternoon.

For a moment everything beyond Jurgen was occulted by his shoulders, then he moved aside as he reached the end of the tunnel, and I was able to see the whole cavern for myself. Even prepared as I thought I was, it came as a shock.

It was indeed a temple to the god of excess, and a long-established one too, if I was any judge. Easily the size of a scrumball pitch, the stalagmites and stalactites had been carved into representations of acts of debauchery which would have turned the stomach of a libertine, the depicted revellers presided over for the most part by a curious androgy­nous figure.55 It was hard to be sure, though, as my eyes glanced from it like a las-bolt from the skull of an ork.56 Several other tunnel mouths were visible around the walls, all of them embellished in the manner of the one we’d just entered by. Towards the middle of the roughly circular space, richly ornamented rugs and carpets had been spread, their colours dulled by the dust and detritus of the mine. On them were scattered pillows and cushions, chaises and beds, all occupied by people in various stages of undress. Those most fully clothed were generally wearing the kind of utility garments I’d seen most often on the mine workers I’d come across, although others were partially clad in the manner of Administratum adepts, household servants, minor members of the local nobility and, inevitably, a few representatives of the local defence force. No wonder they’d been so frakking useless. I rapidly lost count of their numbers, and for all I knew there were at least as many again lurking in the more dimly lit shadows of the cavern.

Strangely, whatever debauched practices they were indulging in, every single one of them was chanting as they did it, producing the sound which had brought Jurgen and I there in the first place – though how they found the breath to spare was beyond me.

The light we’d followed came from a glowing ball of energy, rotating slowly above the magister of the coven, who seemed to be directing the chant; now and then a tendril of it would flicker down, stroking lazily across the bodies of the orgiasts below, apparently drawing fresh sustenance from the contact. I felt an instinctive surge of revulsion at the sight, which reminded me of nothing so much as a jellyfish whose dangling tendrils provided it with food.

‘That’s not right,’ Jurgen said, reacting to the sight in his usual straightforward manner. He braced the melta. ‘Want me to take a crack at it?’