The Greater Good

TWENTY-SEVEN

‘All rather satisfactory,’ I said, sipping my bowl of tanna, and regarding El’hassai through the steam as I contemplated the regicide board between us, a delaying tactic I was certain didn’t fool him for a minute. He was certainly a more challenging opponent than Zyvan, although whether that was because he simply didn’t think like a human, or his profession tended to encourage the use of misdirection and subtlety, I had yet to make up my mind. The Lord General had his hands full negotiating the terms under which the garrison we were leaving behind was supposed to co-operate with Kyper and his skitarii in cleansing Fecundia of the thousands of tyranid stragglers (not surprisingly, he was pressing for full autonomy for the Guard units, while Kyper was equally determined to keep operational matters firmly under his own jurisdiction), leaving him little time for socialising in the relative comfort of the flagship. Though El’hassai would hardly have been my first choice of dinner guest under most circumstances, there were a few outstanding matters nagging at the back of my mind that I felt we should discuss. Partly for my own satisfaction, and partly because I was ever mindful of my covert avocation as Amberley’s eyes and ears. If I was right in my suspicions the Ordo Xenos would probably be quite interested in the conclusions I’d come to in the relatively quiet couple of weeks following the desperate battle in and around Regio Quinquaginta Unus. ‘A bloody nose for the ’nids, and the forge world successfully defended.’

‘Thanks to your ingenuity,’ the tau said, his attention apparently entirely on the move I made. He studied the board for a moment, and turned one of my pieces, with an unmistakable air of satisfaction. ‘And that of Apothecary Sholer. Unfortunately we seem unlikely to be able to use the same stratagem in the defence of other worlds.’

‘Unfortunately so,’ I agreed. The tau certainly couldn’t, anyway, not having any astropaths to project a jamming signal with, and Sholer seemed pretty convinced that we needed a living hive node to produce one anyway, which weren’t exactly thick on the ground. He was urging Kyper and the Death Korps to round up as many live tyranids as possible, to see if he could make the trick work with recorded or synthesised data, but so far would only allow that it was a promising line of enquiry, which could mean decades of research before anything useful emerged from the analyticum. Come to that, I couldn’t see either Guardsmen or skitarii exactly falling over themselves to round up ’nids they could just as easily pot from a safe distance. ‘But at least what’s left of the hive fleet will be a lot easier for your ships to pick off when it hits Dr’th’nyr.’

‘Especially since the astropath attached to the Imperial observers has given them adequate warning of its approach,’ El’hassai said. He inclined his head courteously. ‘For which we thank our allies, of course.’

‘One good turn deserves another,’ I said, turning a piece of his own. ‘If you hadn’t warned us the hive fleet was coming in the first place, Fecundia might easily have fallen.’ I took another sip of tanna. ‘In fact it almost did anyway, taking a substantial chunk of Battlefleet Damocles with it.’ Which would have left half the Imperial systems in the Gulf open to an unopposed land grab by the tau. More than enough to compensate them for the loss of the single world they’d handed back to us on the brink of seizing it, and which they no doubt expected to regain before too long in any case.

‘But it didn’t,’ El’hassai said evenly, studying the board again. ‘And your ships are being refitted even as we speak.’

‘Quite so.’ I savoured another mouthful of the bitter liquid, and held out my tanna bowl, which Jurgen refilled with his usual quiet efficiency. ‘Ready for our return to Quadravidia.’

‘Quadravidia?’ The tau diplomat tilted his head in a perfect imitation of human surprise. ‘Surely it’s adequately defended by the merchantmen delivering infrastructural enhancements?’

‘A burden the unexpected survival of our warships can relieve them of,’ I said. ‘Just as the unexpected survival of Fecundia can relieve the tau empire of the burden of supporting an Imperial world. I’m sure those resources will be far better employed in defending your borders against the tyranids.’

If I’d been looking at a human face, I’m pretty sure the expressions I’d seen flickering across them would have been surprise, chagrin, and possibly amusement, but then he was a diplomat, and a xenos one to boot, so it’s more than likely he was just projecting what he thought I wanted to see.

‘Perhaps they will,’ he said evenly. ‘The tyranids are a greater threat to both of us at the present time, than either of us is to the other. It’s in both our interests to maintain the alliance against them.’

‘Indeed it is.’ I raised my tanna bowl in a good-humoured toast, which, after a moment, El’hassai echoed, with barely a trace of irony. ‘You might almost say the Greater Good demands it.’

[On which somewhat frivolous note, this extract from the Cain archive comes to a typically self-congratulatory conclusion.]





ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SANDY MITCHELL is a pseudonym of Alex Stewart, who has been writing successfully under both names since the mid 1980s. As Sandy, he’s best known for his work for the Black Library, particularly the Ciaphas Cain series. He’s recently completed an MA in Screenwriting at the London College of Communication, which left far less time than usual for having fun in the 41st Millennium, and is looking forward to spending more time in the Emperor’s service now that it has concluded.





An extract from Fire Caste by Peter Fehervari

On sale March 2013


Something darted from the trees behind him, buzzing like an angry insect. Iverson spun round firing, but the sleek white saucer streaking towards him zipped between his snapshots, skimming high above the ground on an anti-gravity field. The disc was only about a metre in diameter, but Iverson knew that a soulless intelligence guided the machine. It was only a drone, its artificial brain no more sophisticated than a jungle predator, but the very existence of such a thing was blasphemous.

Blueskin technology is a heresy upon the face of the galaxy!

Of more immediate concern were the twin pulse carbines mounted on the underside of the drone. As the disc whirled to dodge his fire those guns rotated independently to lock on him. He dived aside as they spat a stuttering enfilade of plasma. The dive slipped into a fall, saving him from a second burst as the machine whizzed by. He rolled over and fired after it, catching it with a couple of rounds as it banked into a turn, but his shots only mottled its carapace. Chattering angrily the drone soared back towards him.

A hail of las-bolts spattered the machine from the side, knocking it off kilter and exposing its vulnerable underbelly. Careening wildly through the air, the drone raked the ground with plasma, shredding two of the unconscious Konquistadores. Someone roared in fury and fresh las-fire ripped into the saucer’s belly. One of its carbines exploded, taking the other with it and spinning the machine out of control. Gushing smoke and burbling in distress it retreated, losing altitude as it limped towards the trees, but Iverson was already on his feet and charging. Leaping, he swung the shock maul down on the drone, smashing it towards the ground. It tried to rise and he struck again and again, elevated by a hatred untainted by doubt.

The machine exploded.

Iverson was thrown from his feet. Falling for what felt like forever he watched a ragged arm spiralling towards the sky, its hand still clenching a shock maul. It was awful and absurd, but suddenly he was laughing and someone else was laughing along with him. He glanced across the clearing and saw Cabeza. The cadaverous Konquistadore was on his knees, cackling through a mask of mud and blood. His lasrifle was levelled at the wrecked drone.

Cabeza didn’t know why he’d thrown in with the commissar at the end. He’d already turned his back on the Imperium to sign up with the enemy in the hope of a better deal. He wouldn’t be the first Guardsman to do it, nor the last, so why make a bad move now? What could Iverson offer him except more pain and maybe a quick death? Even for a commissar the man was crazy! Just look at him lying there with his arm torn off at the elbow and laughing like it was the best joke in the Imperium. Crazy! Except Cabeza was laughing right along with him so maybe he was crazy too. And maybe that was all there was to it.

‘For the bloody God-Emperor!’ Cabeza cackled through the last of his broken teeth. Then a drone soared down behind him and his chest erupted in a superheated geyser of flesh and blood. Looking down at the sizzling cavity in his chest he frowned, thinking a full-grown mirewyrm could swim right through there. It was a miracle his torso was still holding things together.

But then it wasn’t.

As Cabeza’s corpse collapsed inwards like a slaughterhouse of cards the second drone flashed past, homing in on Iverson. Biting down on the sudden agony of his ruined arm, he rolled to his knees. His laspistol was gone, lost somewhere in the fall. It wouldn’t have stopped the machine, but it would have given him a stand. Hadn’t Bierce taught him that a stand was all that mattered in the final accounting?

But hadn’t he stopped believing that long ago?

And if he’d stopped believing it, why was he still fighting? Maybe because Bierce was standing at the edge of the clearing, hands clasped behind his back in that parade ground rigor, watching and judging his pupil until the bitter end.

The drone swept past and began to circle him, chattering and chirping as two more descended to join its dance. The machines seemed to grow more alert and aware in numbers, almost as if they were parts of a collective mind coming together. Maybe it was just a delusion, but Iverson could have sworn there was real anger in that mind. He’d destroyed one of its components and it wanted revenge. And so the drones were playing with him, enjoying his hopeless, one-armed struggle against the coral, mocking his determination to die on his feet. He could almost taste their hatred. Wasn’t that why the Imperium shunned such technology? Didn’t the Ecclesiarchy preach that thinking machines loathed the living and would ultimately turn on their creators? Mankind had learned that hard truth to its cost long ago, but the blueskin race was still reckless with youth. Perhaps that would be its downfall. As the drones circled him Iverson took comfort in the thought.

The machine chatter rose to a higher pitch and he steeled himself for death, but abruptly the drones fell silent and drifted back a few paces. To Iverson’s eyes they looked reluctant and sullen, like angry dogs leashed by their masters. And as the dogs withdrew the masters emerged.

They crept from the trees in a low crouch, their stubby carbines sweeping from side to side as they advanced, hugging the coral with a bone-deep distrust of open ground. There were five, lightly armoured in mottled black breastplates and rubberised fatigues. Their long helmets arched over their shoulders, giving them a vaguely crustacean look, the strangeness heightened by the crystal sensors embedded in their otherwise blank faceplates. Iverson recognised them at once: pathfinders, the scouts of the tau race.

Despite their hunched postures the warriors were swift and graceful, fanning out to surround him with the perfect coordination of bonded hunters. Slipping on the coral yet again, Iverson abandoned dignity and faced them on his knees. He could see Bierce lurking at the periphery of his vision, demanding some final caustic rhetoric from his protégé, but Iverson had nothing to say. Glaring at the pathfinders, he noticed one of them was quite different to its companions – shorter and slighter of build, the set of its shoulders subtly wrong. The only one with hooves… Iverson’s eyes narrowed as the truth hit him: the odd-one-out was the genuine article.

Under that loathsome xenos armour all the others are human!

The lone alien stepped forward and dropped to its haunches, bringing its impassive crystal lenses level with his face. There was a crimson slash running along the spine of its helmet, identifying it as the leader, but Iverson was drawn to another mark – a deep crack running from its crown to the chin of its faceplate. The damage had been patched up, but the rippled scar of a chainsword was unmistakeable to a commissar.

‘Your face,’ he breathed. ‘Show me.’ The warrior tilted its head quizzically at the challenge. ‘Or are you afraid?’

‘Be watchful, shas’ui.’ It was one of the traitors, his voice surprisingly crisp through his sealed helmet. ‘This one is of the commissar caste. Even wounded this one will not yield.’

The studied formality of the traitor’s words disgusted Iverson, particularly the way he’d spoken that unclean xenos rank, ‘shas’ui’, with such reverence. These traitors weren’t just mercenaries or cowards looking for a way out – they were true believers.

The shas’ui considered Iverson for a moment, then it began to unclip its helmet, its four-fingered hands nimble as they uncoupled the power feed and flicked an array of seals. Throughout the ritual its cluster of crystal eyes remained fixed on him, unwavering until the helmet was swept away and he saw the face of his enemy.

Even for an alien it was ugly. It leathery blue-grey skin was tinged with yellow and pockmarked with insect bites. A rash of boils ran from its neck to cluster around a topknot of greasy black hair, but its most startling feature was the ruination left by the chainsword. A deep rift had been carved into the right side of its face, running from scalp to jaw, mirroring the crack in its helmet. It was an old wound, but still hideous. A bionic sensor glittered from the scabrous mess where its eye had been and the whole jaw had been replaced with a carved prosthetic. The remaining eye, black and lustreless, regarded the commissar inscrutably. For all its mutilated strangeness the creature was recognisably female. She was the first tau Iverson had seen up close and whatever he’d expected it wasn’t this filthy, disfigured veteran.

You’re even uglier than me. It was such an absurd, irrelevant thought that he almost laughed out loud.

‘Ko’miz’ar.’ The word sounded unfamiliar on the creature’s lips, but he sensed it had faced his kind before… and had the scar to show for it. ‘Ko’miz’ar…’ It was an accusation ripe with hatred.