Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘That’s what the people we spoke to said,’ I confirmed, and Vekkman nodded brusquely.

‘Then I suggest you direct your enquiries to General Porten,’ he said. ‘Although what tactical reason he might have for accumulating these things, I can’t imagine.’

‘Ciaphas?’ Amberley asked, and I shook my head.

‘None that I can see,’ I admitted. Then, for courtesy’s sake more than anything, I turned back to Vekkman. ‘I hope your heretic hunt’s having better results.’

‘Making slow progress,’ he replied, with a barely suppressed air of frustration. ‘I’ve narrowed down the orbitals the cult might be active on, but until the xenos are dealt with pursuing my enquiries there would be difficult, to say the least.’

‘Quite,’ I said, as sympathetically as I could. By this point the war in space had become something of a stalemate. The larger orbitals were big enough to soak up an immense amount of damage and well enough armed to make the eldar think twice about coming within weapons range to invest them, as the risk of their ships taking enough of a pounding in the process to degrade their combat effectiveness was still great enough to be worth avoiding, while the system defence force had practically nothing left capable of challenging them. The upshot of which was that the eldar fighters and the Ironfound Defence Force air corps were fighting a grim war of attrition in the upper atmosphere – meanwhile, the risk of being caught in the crossfire, or downed by an eldar pilot with nothing better to shoot at, was keeping civilian traffic grounded.

After which there was little more to say, so, after a few conventional pleasantries, Amberley and I took our leave, even more perplexed than when we’d arrived.

Porten greeted us with a similar air of bemusement, exacerbated by an evident lack of sleep, which recaff and stimms had only been able to redress up to a point.

‘I’ve never seen one of these things before in my life,’ he said, turning the spirit stone Amberley had handed to him over and over in his hand, as though it might make sense if he could just see it from the right angle. ‘Quite pretty, though. Might need to get one for the wife.’ He yawned, in a jaw-cracking manner, which made his luxuriant moustache resemble nothing so much as a sump rat darting for the safety of its hole. ‘If she even remembers what I look like these days.’ He blinked, like something emerging from hibernation, and handed the glowing stone back to Amberley. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a briefing to give. Or listen to. One or the other.’

‘Get some sleep,’ I said. ‘For the good of the Emperor, we must all keep ourselves at peak fighting efficiency.’ Which was the sort of thing I was supposed to say, of course, but that didn’t make it any the less true. Porten had turned out to be pretty good at the job of defending the planet, or this particular corner of it at least, and his loss would undoubtedly put a crimp in the operational efficiency of the Ironfound Defence Force. So far, the invaders from the sump were stalled downhive of the gates, while their counterparts from space had only succeeded in breaching the upper part of the hive a handful of times, being beaten back successfully on each occasion. No doubt he had subordinates with a reasonable amount of tactical acumen, but Porten possessed the rare ability to hold both the detail and the bigger picture in mind which marks out an exceptional leader on the battlefield. Zyvan had it, and Macharius had it, according to my tutors at the schola progenium, but precious few others do.148

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Porten said, meaning he’d ignore the advice until it was almost too late, or was ordered to listen to it by a medicae.

Amberley, however, wasn’t to be deflected. ‘Then why are your troopers collecting them from the battlefield?’ she asked, with some asperity. ‘The ones we spoke to were adamant that they’d been ordered to gather them up.’

‘Not by me,’ Porten said, no doubt too exhausted to reflect that getting stroppy with an inquisitor wasn’t the wisest thing to be doing. He yawned again. ‘I’ll get some of my staff on it, find out where the instruction came from.’

‘That would be very helpful,’ Amberley said, sliding off the desk on which she’d been perching while we spoke. Porten’s office wasn’t large, especially with Jurgen and Pelton looming by the door, and floor space had been at a premium. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Porten said, with rather more evident sarcasm than I suspected he intended. ‘Good luck with your enquiries.’

Amberley smiled, in the manner I’d learned to be wary of. ‘I don’t need luck,’ she said evenly. ‘But the people I investigate do.’

Despite which fine sentiments, we found ourselves in a sober mood as we reconvened in the villa Amberley had rented near the top of the spire soon after her arrival on Ironfound, which was just as opulent as I would have expected given her usual cover identity.