Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

The local residents were easy to pick out, the superior quality of their clothing denoting their relatively affluent status. For the most part they appeared indifferent to the influx of refugees from further down, at least so long as they kept moving, regarding them with bovine indifference – which meant that the exodus of the lower levels had been going on for long enough to no longer be regarded as a novelty. The only interaction going on between the two groups that I could see was around the pitches set up by a few of the more enterprising of the local residents, who were offering comestibles for sale at what were no doubt extortionate prices.

Quite how quiet things would have been without the presence of the troopers scattered throughout the crowd, I wouldn’t have cared to speculate, although I suspected a great deal less. If nothing else, the presence of so many strangers from down hive seemed to have thawed the somewhat chilly relationship with the local residents Porten had hinted at.

‘This is as far as we can go,’ our driver voxed, after a few more minutes had passed, although I’d long since divined that for myself. The passageways were growing lower and narrower, the Chimera’s engine roaring more loudly as she dropped down the gears, slowing to allow the obstructing civilians to find what refuge they could before we rolled over them. Fortunately there were still plenty of side tunnels they could divert down, although the drivers of the smaller vehicles we displaced gave way with ill grace, no doubt finding them as difficult to negotiate as we were this one. Those on foot had an easier time of it, of course, squeezing into the myriad crevices lining the walls, many of which seemed to be homes or businesses of one kind or another.

Just as I was on the verge of dropping back inside the Chimera and closing the hatch, Jurgen’s halitosis seeming, on the whole, to be preferable to decapitation, the ceiling rose again, and we emerged into a moderate-sized cavern crowded with planetary defence force uniforms, utility trucks, and hastily erected flakboard additions to whatever chambers had already existed down here.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Much appreciated.’

The driver, still out of sight behind the heavy bulkhead separating the crew compartment from the passenger one, dropped the ramp with perfunctory wishes for our success and continued survival, and Pelton, Zemelda and Mott disembarked with as much haste as they deemed commensurate with their status as agents of the Inquisition. Amberley lingered a moment longer – being more used to Jurgen’s presence and conscious of the dignity of her office – then followed them, leaving my aide and I to bring up the rear.

‘Inquisitor. We were told to expect you.’ A somewhat nervous-looking young man in a defence force uniform, the aquila (with a slightly dyspeptic expression, clutching something vaguely rodentine in its talons) adorning his helmet marking him out as a captain if I remembered the local rank insignia correctly, raised a hand in greeting, thought better of it, lowered it again, then saluted me with an air of palpable relief at being back on familiar protocol terrain. I returned it, and he looked back at Amberley with the faint air of a puppy hoping for a biscuit. ‘Any assistance we can give you, you only have to ask.’

‘Thank you.’ Amberley inclined her head graciously, while Pelton and Zemelda took up position at her shoulders, apparently alert for any unexpected threat despite the relative safety of our position. ‘Perhaps a summation of your people’s disposition down here?’

‘Morale’s quite good, for the most part,’ the young officer said, before belatedly realising that wasn’t quite what she’d meant. ‘I mean, we’re well established here, with reasonable defensive lines.’ He pulled out a data-slate, and called up a crude two-dimensional map. ‘This is our position, with two other forward posts here and here.’ His confidence was clearly increasing as he began to warm to a subject he was comfortable with. ‘We’ve sent recon units deeper into the hive, but none of them have reported contact with the enemy yet.’

‘Have any of them not reported back at all?’ I asked, since that would be fairly definite confirmation of where the enemy was.

The young officer shook his head. ‘None of them have missed a routine check in,’ he said, looking faintly troubled, although the possibility must have occurred to him by now. ‘We’ve had a couple of anxious moments, though.’

‘Anxious how?’ Amberley asked, an instant before I could.