Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘I’ll do that,’ Broklaw said, an instant before I could make the offer; it wouldn’t have taken me long to establish the need for regular liaison meetings which would have kept me in the warm, away from airborne eldar intent on killing me, and even further away from any taint of warpcraft, pretty much indefinitely. ‘I’ve been keeping channels open with his office ever since we arrived.’

‘Good,’ I said, masking my disappointment with the ease of long practice. ‘That just leaves the eldar to worry about, then.’

‘That it does,’ Kasteen agreed, turning to the hololith projector, which had been wheeled into the conference room by a couple of sweating troopers and a nervously hovering tech-priest69 before our deliberations had got properly started. The tangle of natural fissures at the bottom of the image had been extended a little, I noticed at once, presumably as a result of the exploration teams we’d sent down there, and who were still diligently burrowing away, judging by how much had been mapped since the last time I’d seen the display. Kasteen glared at the glowing image as though personally affronted by it. ‘And the biggest worry by far is how they got down there in the first place.’

Amberley coughed, looking faintly embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid that’s probably my fault,’ she said.

‘Perhaps you’d like to explain that?’ I asked.

‘Without the civilians present,’ Kasteen added, with a meaningful glance at Proktor and the enginseer currently poking at the hololith.70 The cogboy71 took the hint and scooted off at once, with a backward glance at the hololith which might have seemed worried if they’d had enough flesh left to register a facial expression with, no doubt wondering how well the delicate mechanism would stand up to Broklaw taking a crack at the controls if that turned out to be necessary. Proktor, however, remained seated, bristling in the way only an affronted bureaucrat can.

‘I have to report to the governor,’ he said firmly, ‘and I can’t do that properly unless I know precisely what it is that I’m not telling her.’

‘Fair point,’ Amberley conceded. She turned an appraising eye on Proktor. ‘But you can’t unhear what I’m about to tell you, and I can assure you you’d rather not know.’ Which might have sounded like self-aggrandising hyperbole to the Administratum drone, but which sent a shiver of apprehension up my spine. I knew her well enough to know that she didn’t exaggerate when alien threats to the Imperium were concerned, and would do whatever was necessary to neutralise one regardless of the consequences.

‘I’ll take that risk,’ Proktor said, a trifle stiffly, while Kasteen, Broklaw and I shared a glance of mutual apprehension. Clearly, whatever news Amberley had to share wasn’t going to be summarisable in a cheery greetings card.

Amberley shrugged. ‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘But this information is to remain strictly confidential. If anyone outside this room hears about it before I’m ready to tell them, up to and including the governor, I swear by the Throne that I’ll have whoever’s responsible executed. Are we all clear on that?’

Kasteen, Broklaw and I simply nodded, seeing no reason for a more elaborate response; after all, we knew one another well by that point, and if Amberley trusted the other two a little less because she hadn’t had so much contact with them over the years, she’d certainly had plenty with me, and my confidence in them carried its own guarantee so far as she was concerned.72 Proktor, however, evidently felt he had a little more to prove, because he followed up his nod with an audible gulp.

‘Perfectly clear,’ he said, and ran a finger round the inside of his collar as though it had just become far too tight.

‘Good.’ Amberley rose, and approached the hololith, zooming the image to encompass the network of natural passageways where we’d found the eldar and the heretics waiting for us. ‘The eldar got into the mine the same way my team and I did. Through the webway.’

She glanced at Proktor, waiting for him to interject and ask what that was, but he must have remembered our previous conversation on the subject, because he simply nodded thoughtfully.

‘We thought there might be an entrance to it somewhere on the surface,’ he said. ‘But all the sites we searched came up blank.’73

I nodded too. ‘Which begs the question of why they’ve only just started using this one, instead of a year ago when they first started raiding.’

Amberley positively squirmed,74 although only I would have known her well enough to see through the facade of unconcern she continued to project.75 ‘Because I suspect our using it was what first drew it to their attention.’ She paused, marshalling her thoughts. ‘The webway is a peculiar place, with its own rules. The more energy you put into moving the faster you seem to go. It certainly felt like we were walking for a long time while we were in there, although some of the passages are big enough to take a starship through.’