Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘She always is,’ I said. ‘You won’t find a better regimental commander in the Eastern Fringes.’ Which was true, incidentally, even though it was the sort of thing I was supposed to say.

Fulcher nodded. ‘Her executive officer seems very competent as well.’ He glanced in the direction of Major Broklaw, who was currently executing a complicated gavotte in the middle of the throng currently occupying the dance floor, some local noblewoman of ample charms accompanying his every move with surprising grace and a faintly besotted simper. Somehow I found myself doubting that either of the regiment’s most senior officers would be spending the night in their assigned quarters. Which was fine by me, as I was rather hoping for a pleasant tryst with Amberley a little later on, and it hardly seemed fair to be having all the fun.

‘I trust all your people are down and safe,’ the governor said, and I reluctantly relinquished my pleasant mental images in favour of the here and now.

‘They should be by this time,’ I said, with a quick glance at my chronometer. I glanced out of the armourcrys viewport which took up most of the ballroom’s outer wall, a stunning demonstration of our host’s wealth and power. Here, almost at the summit of the spire, the atmosphere beyond was so thin it might as well have been open space for all the chance you had of breathing it, rendering the view of the night sky with almost crystal clarity. The stars shone steadily, there not being enough air to scatter their light and make them shimmer, and the bright smear of the spiral arm stretched across the sky in a great diagonal arc. ‘In fact, that should be our last deployment shuttle now.’

I pointed to a randomly chosen speck of light, one of the uncountable myriad of moving dots in the clear sky above, performing a dance far more intricate than any taking place on the polished wooden floor behind us. There must have been hundreds of them: orbital docks and void stations, starships with cargoes to drop off or collect, intra-system barges like the one which had brought us here, and ten times as many shuttles stitching them to the world below. Of course some of those moving flecks of light could just as easily be eldar raiders, a disturbing thought I had to suppress by an act of pure will, reminding myself that they were probably still too far away to make out with the naked eye in any case.

Though not for long. I glanced down at the planet’s surface, over a dozen kilometres below us, far enough to have imparted a distinct curvature to the layer of murk blanketing the ground, in an effort to distract myself. Here and there in the distance glittering stalks of light thrust up from beneath the blanketing haze of industrial pollution, the spires of other hives, while the lower levels of our own glimmered faintly in the depths, punching through the enveloping haze of smog in a fitful, shifting glow which put me in mind of magma stirring at the bottom of a caldera.

Not a particularly comforting thought, given that a sufficiently concentrated barrage from the eldar battleships’ lance batteries could release the real thing from deep in the bowels of the world,90 sending the spire we were standing on toppling like a rotted tree.

‘Then our defence is surely in safe hands,’ the governor said, without any detectable sarcasm, despite my best efforts to find some. ‘Will you be needed to supervise?’

I shook my head. ‘We have specialists in logistical matters,’ I said, ‘and our deployment will continue on schedule whether I’m there or not.’ Which went just as well for Kasteen and Broklaw, of course. ‘By the time the eldar arrive, we’ll be ready for them.’ At least I hoped we would, although what troopers with lasguns could do against a fleet of starships bristling with enough weapons to split the planet open like an overripe ploin if they felt like it was beyond me. But the first thing they teach you at the schola progenium, apart from where the balnearia are and how to fight dirty when the proctors’ backs are turned, is that the impression of confidence is almost as good as the real thing, especially when you’re trying to keep everyone’s chin up. And so long as the xenos hadn’t arrived yet, I could still cling to the hope that they might change their minds, get distracted by another source of booty, or that the Emperor might turn up in person to banish them. Which, to be fair, was about as likely as either of the other two possibilities.

‘Septimus.’ Amberley appeared at my elbow, with a guileless smile completely at odds with what I knew of her personality. ‘Won’t you introduce me to your dashing companion? I think you’ve monopolised him for quite long enough.’