Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘Temporary comms failures,’ the officer said. ‘The vox signals get weaker the deeper our patrols penetrate into the underhive.’ Something I could have told him from personal experience, although I suppose it might have come as an unwelcome novelty to the Ironfound Defence Force, used as they were to operating in the higher levels where there were plenty of vox-relays to boost and channel a signal. Down in the lower depths, the tumbled masses of ’crete, metal and bedrock would attenuate and distort them unpredictably.

Reminded of the fact that we’d soon be out of contact ourselves, I tapped the vox-bead in my ear.

‘Cain to command,’ I said. ‘We’ve arrived at the Ironfound Defence outpost.’ I raised my voice a little, over the growling of our Chimera, which was churning up the ground under its tracks as the driver spun it on the spot133 preparatory to setting off back the way she’d come. ‘We’ll be moving out shortly.’

‘Acknowledged,’ Kasteen said, her voice still reasonably clear after being bounced through the armoured personnel carrier’s far more powerful vox-system. By the time it got back to the gates, though, it would probably be too far away to pick up the relatively weak signal from my comm-bead. We might still be able to get a message back to the command centre for a short while by using the local defence force network, but judging by what we’d just been told I somehow doubted that. ‘Anything we need to know?’ Which, I suppose, was a little more tactful than Any last messages?’ would have been.

‘Still no contact with the eldar,’ I said.

Even over the deteriorating vox-link, Kasteen’s resigned exhalation sounded loud in my ear. ‘I wish I thought that was a good thing.’

‘You and me both,’ I said, returning my attention to Amberley and the officer in front of us.

‘Right,’ Amberley said decisively. ‘We’re moving out. I think we’ve got all the information we’ll need.’ She nodded at the young man, who looked faintly relieved, not realising she meant ‘all the information we’re likely to get out of this one.’ She glanced at Mott. ‘Any recommendations?’

The savant nodded. ‘I’d recommend retracing our previous line of descent, as that would be the fastest route to the webway portal. We’re thirteen point one seven nine kilometres from it at the moment, but we should intersect with it at the trading post where you shot the Redemptionists who tried to burn Rakel as a witch.’

‘Not so,’ Zemelda said, with a contemptuous sniff, ‘they tried singeing everyone.’

‘She was the only one they thought was a witch,’ Pelton said, in reasonable tones. ‘They only wanted to burn the rest of us because we were with her.’

‘Sounds like a fascinating story,’ I interjected, before anyone could start telling it, particularly Mott. ‘Perhaps Jurgen and I could hear it on the way to the trading post.’

‘If it’s still there,’ Amberley said, shrugging the straps of her rucksack into place. ‘It was pretty deep down. Probably overrun by the eldar days ago.’

‘You’re making this sound more and more fun with every second,’ I said, and Throne help me she actually laughed.

Sixteen

After leaving the Ironfound Defence Force post we followed one of the main trade routes for a while, but rapidly became weary of forging against the flow of upward-bound travellers – not to mention periodic firefights with gangers and scavvies protective of their territories, made even more trigger-happy than usual by the influx of downhive refugees. Accordingly, we left the well-travelled paths and the larger settlements they linked at the earliest opportunity, striking off into the smaller tunnels, where we were less likely to encounter anyone.

Which wasn’t the same as not encountering anyone at all, of course, although most of the locals we came across seemed to be giving us a wide berth, betraying their presence only by the scuffling sounds they made as they retreated into the many side passages and long-abandoned chambers surrounding us.

‘Scavvies setting a bushwhack?’ Zemelda asked, the first time this happened, and I shook my head; there was still enough light seeping through from the main tunnels for me to be confident that she’d pick up the gesture, even though we were barely visible to one another as anything more than silhouettes by now.

‘Doubt it,’ I said, though I kept my hands close to my weapons from force of habit. Judging by the pattern of echoes there were only three of them, and they were definitely moving away. ‘There aren’t enough of them to take us all, and they’re in the wrong place to set up a crossfire.’

‘You can really tell that just by listening?’ Pelton shrugged, trying not to sound too impressed. ‘For all I know it could just be rodents out there.’

‘Too loud, and no squeaking,’ I said. The truth was, I couldn’t have told him how I knew even if I could have been bothered; it was just something I’d grown up doing, in a place not too dissimilar to this.