Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

With nothing constructive to contribute I remained quiet, staring at the augurs, and wishing I knew enough about the arcane mysteries of navigation in the void to know if I needed to be worried.

‘Those enemy frigates are getting a bit close,’ Amberley said, appearing at my shoulder. She was unaccompanied as well this time, although whether from the desire not to distract Addie and her subordinates any more than could be helped on the already crowded deck, or because her retinue were otherwise occupied, I didn’t ask.

‘They are,’ I agreed, pretending to a lack of concern I was far from feeling, ‘but there’s not a lot we can do about it. Just trust in the Emperor to see us down safe.’ I looked at the augurs again, seeing the first few contacts of the nimbus of traffic surrounding our destination. They, and the sanctuary they represented, certainly seemed close enough to reach. In fact a few of them seemed to be moving in our direction. ‘What are they?’

‘System defence boats,’ Addie said, ‘moving out to intercept the xenos.’ She thumbed her palm, apparently unaware of making the gesture. ‘They should be passing our position in a couple of days.’

‘Good,’ I said, after a quick mental calculation. It was hard to be certain, but it seemed to me that there was at least a chance of scuttling behind the advancing picket line for protection before the eldar were able to close to within firing range.

Amberley chewed her lip pensively, apparently having come to the same conclusion. ‘It’ll be a damn close-run thing,’ she said.

In the end it was even closer than our most pessimistic forebodings. You can be sure I found an excuse to be on the bridge at the critical moment, reasoning that if I was going to be blown to perdition in the vacuum of space at least I’d be able to see it coming, and prepare some excuses in advance of my arrival at the Golden Throne.

‘I think we’re going to make it,’ I said, as the nearest system defence boat sailed past our position a scant few thousand kilometres away. I squinted quizzically at the blip. ‘What’s he waiting for?’ I was no expert, of course, but I would have expected its captain to have adjusted their heading by now; as it was, the cutter seemed to be making no attempt to intercept the oncoming eldar squadron at all, heading wide of their oncoming position.

‘You’re missing the bigger picture,’ Addie said, in the tone peculiar to an expert explaining what seems perfectly obvious to them. ‘The whole flotilla’s moving to intercept the main fleet. He’s not going to move out of position to engage a target of opportunity that the orbital defences can swat out of the sky anyway.’ She shrugged, barely masking the disappointment of someone who knew better all along, but couldn’t help hoping anyway. ‘It’s all a matter of priorities.’

‘I get that,’ I agreed. ‘But I’d have thought protecting the Imperial Guard unit that’s supposed to keep the planet safe would be pretty near the top of the list.’

‘If they can blunt the attack in the first place they won’t need troops on the ground,’ Amberley said, frowning a little. ‘But it’s taking a hell of a risk.’ Clearly she felt no happier about this than I did. ‘I can see I’m going to have to have a little chat with someone when I get back on the ground.’

‘We can still make it,’ Captain Addie said, indicating a particularly large augur contact in low orbit. ‘We’re on our final approach to Skyside Seventeen.’ I nodded, as if I’d remembered which particular orbital dock we’d been assigned to for transhipment to the surface. ‘But the minute we make the final deceleration burn, they’ll be on us like fleas on a hold rat.’

‘Better hope the defence batteries know what they’re doing, then,’ I said.

Amberley nodded. The crews manning them would have been on alert for weeks, drilling intensively, but hadn’t engaged an actual enemy since time immemorial, and training simulations didn’t shoot back.

The captain took a deep breath. ‘No point putting it off,’ she said, and activated the vox-unit built into the arm of her chair. ‘Enginarium. Prow thrusters, full burn on my mark.’ She waited for what seemed like half a lifetime, but which could scarcely have been a handful of seconds, watching her instrumentation as intently as a feline with a rat hole. ‘Aaaannndd… Mark!’

It could have been nothing more than my active imagination, but I thought I felt a faint vibration through the soles of my boots. I tapped my own vox-bead. ‘This is Commissar Cain,’ I voxed generally. ‘Stand by. Things might get a little bumpy.’

The eldar kept on coming, closing rapidly now the Rustbucket was ­losing way. I braced myself.

‘They’re in weapons range,’ Addie said, the clipped precision of her voice betraying her inner tension.

‘Still closing,’ the augur operator reported, quite unnecessarily, as none of us could have taken our eyes off the display even if we’d wanted to. ‘Closing… Closing…’

‘Prepare to repel boarders,’ I voxed, jumping to the obvious conclusion.