Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘Drechia,’ Mott, her savant, said, in his usual dry, reedy tone, compulsively voicing the torrent of information cascading through his augmented cerebellum in response to the name. ‘Capital of the Avernus subsystem in the halo of Ironfound, given limited autonomy under Subsector Gubernatorial Decree dated 645 087 M41–’59

‘Not now, Caractacus,’ Amberley said, potting another heretic who’d been rude enough to try to interrupt us by attempting to stove her head in with a rock. The fellow’s ribcage exploded as the bolt from her pistol detonated, adding another dilapidated corpse to the pile surrounding us, and she returned her attention to me. ‘What eldar?’

‘Those ones for a start,’ I said, pointing to the spear-slinging psykers, who’d pretty much seen off the daemon by this point. It made a last attempt to rally, ripping one of the eldritch javelins which had it impaled through the chest away with a spasm of its claws, but the glittering shaft simply turned in mid-air and renewed the attack, skewering it through the left eye socket instead. The others returned to their owners, who held them expectantly, but hesitated, instead of throwing them again instantly as I’d expected. ‘What are they waiting for?’

‘To see what we do, probably,’ Amberley said, aiming her bolt pistol at the shrieking abomination and pulling the trigger. The explosive projectile detonated, vaporising half of what was left of its chest, and it wavered for a moment before solidifying again. I followed up with a couple of las-bolts of my own, and that seemed to do the trick. The first gouged another wound, which, Emperor be praised, didn’t seem to be regenerating. As the second struck, a fraction of a second later, the ghastly thing vanished altogether with a crack of imploding air, leaving the shining spear which had pierced it floating freely in the air. The weapon promptly returned to the hand of the eldar leader, who stood watching us impassively. Amberley called out to her little group of acolytes. ‘Flicker, Zemmie, finish up here.’

Truth to tell, however, there was little left to finish up by this time, most of the surviving cultists having fled into the tunnels the moment the daemon was thrown back into the warp, whatever influence it may have had over them now broken. Her entire entourage seemed to be there, or at least everyone I remembered from our last little escapade together; for all I knew there had been others in the intervening time who hadn’t been quite as lucky or skilful. I’d seen several of them come and go over the years, Inquisitorial service not being a particularly safe occupation even by the standards of the life I’d led, but these five had been particularly lucky, tenacious or skilled, and I nodded a greeting to each of them. There wasn’t time for more, and I’d have the chance to converse properly with them later (or most of them anyway, Rakel the sanctioned psyker being away with the fae most of the time) – assuming the eldar didn’t just turn around and kill us all in the next few seconds, of course.

I glanced at Rakel, hoping for some clue as to their intentions, as her precognitive flashes had saved my life on more than one occasion – but she was simply muttering to herself as usual, staring at Jurgen as though he were Horus incarnate, and keeping as far away from him as possible.60 Pelton, the former arbitrator, was potting fleeing heretics with unfailing accuracy and professional detachment, while his protégé Zemelda, a former vendor of street snacks who’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, was matching her mentor shot for shot with undisguised glee. The only member of the party not too preoccupied to return my greeting was Yanbel the tech-priest, who raised a mechadendrite in response before returning his attention to what looked like the screen of an auspex. Mott’s eyes were still glazed as he catalogued information about the world we stood on, or possibly anything that might be useful in evading sudden attacks by eldar psykers.

Which reminded me. I turned to my aide, who was breathing a little heavily but seemed otherwise none the worse for wear. ‘Are you all right, Jurgen?’ I asked.

‘Fine, sir.’ He nodded a greeting of his own to Amberley, as though this bizarre encounter was as commonplace as passing a near neighbour on the stairs. ‘Afternoon, miss.’

‘Jurgen. You’re looking well.’ Which I suppose was true by his standards, although by most people’s it was a statement requiring a considerable stretch of the imagination.

‘Thank you, miss. So are you.’ The social niceties dispensed with, he snapped a fresh powercell into his lasgun, and glanced in my direction. ‘Do you want us to shoot the pointy-ears?’