Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘Yes, there were,’ Amberley agreed cheerfully, settling into the vacant seat I’d assumed to be reserved for Defroy. If he turned up now he’d just have to stand, unless one of the defence force staffers did the decent thing, or was ordered to. ‘But they got out of the way when I showed them this.’ She held up her hand, allowing its electoo of the Inquisitorial sigil to flash into visibility. ‘People tend to do that.’ As usual after revealing her real identity she’d dispensed with the dressing up box, reverting to the plain crimson bodyglove and grey tabard she favoured when expecting trouble. Her bolt pistol was visible too, holstered in plain sight on the belt around her waist, along with a number of pouches, the contents of which I didn’t want to speculate too much about.113

‘You’re the inquisitor?’ Fulcher turned to Osric, who was looking even more taken aback, and who bit off whatever he was about to say with an audible snap of the jaw. ‘Is she really?’

‘I’m an inquisitor,’ Amberley said, coming to the arbitrator’s rescue before he could reveal Vekkman’s real identity as well, either directly or by a poorly executed attempt at evasion, ‘and that should be enough to be going on with. It was me who discovered the existence of the portal in the first place, and called the Militarum in to take care of it.’ She smiled around the table, in the puckishly disarming fashion that got people (all right, me) to do whatever she wanted, regardless of their own best interests.114 ‘Ooh, is that a cyna bun?’

‘Allow me,’ I said, rising to fetch her some refreshment and enjoy the general air of consternation without having to work too hard at keeping my face straight. ‘Would you like some recaff too?’

She would, of course, but Fulcher was no fool, and pouring her one without asking would probably start him wondering how I knew so much about her personal tastes.

‘Please. With a sprinkle of cyna.’ She favoured me with a smile as I placed the delicate china cup on the table in front of her with a faintly audible clink of ceramic against stone, which was echoed a heartbeat later as the plate containing her bun followed. ‘Thank you.’

‘When you say pretty near infinite,’ Porten said, with the air of a man determined to get all the bad news out of the way as quickly as possible, ‘what exactly do you mean?’

‘Precisely what it sounds like,’ Amberley said. ‘The webway entrance in the underhive leads to a craftworld, along with uncountable other destinations. Think of a spacecraft the size of this hive, or larger. Then give it almost instant access to whatever resources they want, anywhere in the galaxy.’ From the expressions around the table, and the visible pallor on several of them, it was pretty obvious that this was not a picture anyone was happy with, least of all me. She took a bite out of her bun, and chewed for a moment with every sign of relish. ‘Of course the same thing applies to the portal in the Avernus subsystem as well. They can pop out there pretty much at will too, although given the travel time, I’d say they’re unlikely to bother once they’ve got a beachhead in the lower hive. Quicker and easier for them to get reinforcements in that way.’

‘Once they’ve dug themselves out,’ I said. ‘The briefing mentioned something about that particular cavern being sealed.’ Which, for all I knew, it did. No point making it obvious that she’d already spoken to Kasteen, Broklaw and myself about the matter in person.

Amberley nodded. ‘It was the last time I saw it,’ she agreed, a trifle indistinctly, until she’d washed the remaining bun residue away with a quick mouthful of recaff, ‘but a bit of a rock fall isn’t going to stop an army of eldar for very long. In fact I’d be amazed if they hadn’t dug a fresh tunnel already.’

‘Then why haven’t they attacked us already?’ Fulcher asked, reasonably enough under the circumstances.

‘Because the general’s right,’ I said. ‘They’re waiting to coordinate their attack with the incoming fleet.’ I nodded judiciously, making it obvious that I was considering all the pertinent factors. ‘And because an underhive isn’t exactly an ideal environment for large-scale troop movements. They’re going to have to travel on foot, and in relatively small groups.’ Which at least meant we wouldn’t be facing any heavy ordnance, or those bloody jetbikes. ‘My guess is they’ll try to rendezvous somewhere within close striking distance of the lower levels of the main hive, and attack in force once they’ve built up sufficient concentrations of troops.’

‘I concur,’ Porten said. He glanced down at his data-slate, then across to the governor. ‘If you wouldn’t mind…?’