Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

Three green-and-purple jetbikes came howling out of the storm, swooping on the landing field like raptors spotting a scurrying rodent, strafing the area with whirling discs of razor-edged lethality. The Valhallans scattered, seeking what cover they could, but the majority returned fire with their lasguns as soon as they found it. Apparently unpleasantly surprised by this,15 the eldar broke off, and circled round for another approach. Turning my head to follow them, I suddenly found myself uncomfortably exposed: the Chimera I’d been heading for gunned its engine and moved away, followed by the rest of the squadron, manoeuvring to intercept the marauders before they could start shooting into the mass of troopers on foot again. That some of the raiders’ fire had found its mark couldn’t be doubted: here and there patches of ice seemed redder than could be accounted for entirely by the baleful glow of the gargantuan planet hanging low on the horizon, and one or two of the lumps in the drifting snow seemed disconcertingly human sized. To my distinct lack of surprise, the torso protruding from the turret of the command Chimera was topped by a familiar face with a vaguely equine cast of features, the pony tail trailing from the rear of her fur hat confirming her identity if I’d ever been in the slightest doubt: Sulla, ready as always to confront trouble head on without stopping to assess the consequences.

This time, however, after a moment of eavesdropping on her command channel through the comm-bead in my ear, I had to concede that she had a point. The heavy bolters in the armoured personnel carriers’ main turrets would be our best defence against the fast-moving aerial targets, although you’d need the Emperor’s own luck to take them all down. That said, she was using the assets she had to the best possible advantage, placing them on the fringes of the landing field to maximise their overlapping fields of fire.

Which would have been fine by me, except for the minor detail of being left in the middle of a vast open space with airborne hostiles circling it looking for a target. There wasn’t much chance of being singled out personally, with so many other people hunkering down and readying their weapons, but I’d been in action far too often not to be aware that a stray round can be just as dangerous as one aimed by a marksman.

With nothing better to do I drew my laspistol from its holster and crouched down in the snow, waiting for the chance to take a wild pot shot in the general direction of the enemy like everyone else, and minimising my profile to the best of my ability. It would take even more luck to down a jetbike with a las-bolt than with one of Sulla’s heavy bolters, but the sheer volume of incoming fire would be enough to keep them from getting too close; the response to their first attack certainly seemed to have given them pause, and repeating the lesson might even be enough to drive them away entirely. In my previous encounters with the pointy-ears they had shown themselves to be cunning and resourceful, ruthless, even bloodthirsty,16 but with a healthy dose of self-preservation to temper that – a far cry from the unrelenting savagery of orks, or the t’au’s willingness to face certain death in the name of their greater good if sufficiently motivated. I aimed skywards, trying to track the nearest of the fast-moving dots, thankful for the augmetic fingers which steadied my aim a little despite the shivering shaking my body like a case of the ague. Much longer out here and the cold would finish me off before the eldar even got a chance.

Abruptly, without warning, the eldar stopped their circling and began to dive towards us, ignoring the hail of bolter rounds whipping past them on all sides, despite the best efforts of Sulla’s gunners. I listened to her typically clipped instructions and the rather more excited ones of the vehicle commanders for a moment before concluding that there was nothing to be gained by my intervention – and even if there had been there wouldn’t be much I could contribute with my jaw frozen shut – before steadying my aim as best I could, trying to keep one of the jinking flyers in my sights.

Of course, pistols aren’t meant for long-range shooting at the best of times,17 and this was far from one of those. On the other hand, more than a hundred people shooting at a relatively small volume of space at the same time are almost bound to hit something, and I was pretty sure I saw a few impact flares as the howling flyers swooped nearer. Then one slipped sideways, a large and ragged hole ripped in its streamlined fairing by a couple of heavy bolter rounds. It slewed wildly in the air for a moment, its rider evidently fighting for control, then steadied and broke off, pulling away and gaining altitude.