Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘I’d start with your dock workers,’ Amberley said. ‘See if any of your suspects are particularly close to specific ship crews. Then cross-reference those vessels with regular runs to Drechia. That’s how we track genestealer cults in the Ordo Xenos, although Chaos-worshippers might do things a little differently.’

‘The same thought had occurred to me,’ Vekkman agreed. ‘On balance, the cult on Drechia is most likely to be a recent offshoot of a longer-established one on Ironfound.’

‘So,’ I said, perhaps a little too firmly in an attempt to hide just how much I didn’t like the idea, ‘we’re agreed that we’re facing two potential threats instead of one.’

‘Not necessarily.’ Vekkman looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘There could be some connection between the cultists and the eldar. I gather Slaanesh is of particular significance to their race.’

‘They’re hardly friends,’ I said, ‘judging by what I saw in the temple we stumbled into. Their psykers carved up the daemon like kroot with a corpse.’

‘Kroot?’ Vekkman looked faintly confused for a moment. ‘Never mind. The eldar drove off the daemon, you say?’

‘They have a particular antipathy towards Slaanesh and its worshippers,’ Amberley said. ‘They believe it lies in wait to devour their souls at the point of death. There can be no question of the two factions collaborating under any circumstances.’

‘Maybe we can use that,’ I suggested. ‘Get them pitted against one another, and mop up what’s left. It’s worked before.’

‘Not under circumstances like these,’ Amberley said. ‘The cult’s hidden, gone to ground. The survivors aren’t about to pop up raring to take on the eldar, and they wouldn’t last five minutes if they did.’

‘I agree,’ Vekkman said. ‘It would be more in their interest to stay hidden, and build up their power base during the reconstruction phase after the xenos have been driven off.’ He nodded judiciously in Amberley’s direction. ‘If your notion of the Drechia cult being an offshoot is correct, then that would imply a longer-hidden, deeper-rooted one here on Ironfound. I’ll be moving the focus of my enquiries here to Holdvast, as this would be the most likely centre of it.’

‘Good luck,’ I said, feeling that if he was about to tackle a job like that he was certainly going to need it.

Come to that, with an eldar fleet due in orbit within a matter of hours, so would the rest of us.

Editorial Note:

Once again, Cain provides frustratingly little detail about his surroundings, beyond whatever aspects of his immediate environment affect him personally. This seems as good a place as any, therefore, to redress this deficiency by interpolating a little more background information.

From Interesting Places and Tedious People: A Wanderer’s Waybook by ­Jerval Sekara, 145 M39

The Ironfound System is, in general, unremarkable, with the exception of an unusually large radiating gas giant on its very fringes, the moons of which form a veritable miniature solar system of their own, with the planet in place of its primary.

Since most starfaring vessels enter and leave the warp far closer in to the centre of the system, making either for the world of Ironfound itself or the peculiar subsystem on its outskirts, the two might just as well be orbiting different stars for most purposes; the one real difference being the steady stream of ore barges shuttling between the two centres, conveying raw materials to the forges of Ironfound in one direction, and essential supplies to the mines of the Avernus subsystem in the other.

Of the two potential destinations, Ironfound is by far the more welcoming, although the world itself is given over entirely to the processing of the raw materials so abundant elsewhere in the system (though not on the planet itself for several millennia, due to the thoroughness with which they were extracted) and the manufacture of innumerable items of minimal interest.

The discerning wayfarer will probably seek lodging in Holdvast, since this is the oldest, largest and most populous hive on the planet. Travellers are advised to be aware of the destination of the surface shuttle on which they embark, since there are several landing pads at different levels of the hive, and a moment’s inattention can result in boarding a ship bound for one on the industrial levels, which are insalubrious in the extreme. Far better to opt for a shuttle landing on the upper pads at the very top of the spire, where a spectacular view of the purple skies of the upper atmosphere, speckled with the lights of the orbiting ships and structures which catch the sunlight, can be enjoyed through the armourcrys roof of the passenger terminal.