The Greater Good

TWO

Whether the warning I gave made any difference I couldn’t say; but mine wasn’t the only finger on a trigger as the first wave of the tau assault burst over the jagged reef of airstrike-shattered buildings surrounding the compound, and which had masked their approach from detection by our auspexes. Ragged small-arms fire sparked and popped against the smooth rounded armour of the troop carriers circling above our heads, and the bright streak of a rocket from a man-portable launcher slashed the sky for a moment before detonating against one of the blocky engine pods attached to the rear of the closest. The Devilfish lurched and pulled up, aborting its descent, but the respite was short-lived; a pair of platter-like drones detached themselves from its hull almost at once and swooped in search of vengeance, plasma rounds from the guns mounted beneath them bursting around the sandbagged emplacement from which the rocket had come.

How the Guardsmen crouched within it fared against this unexpected attack I never saw, though a flurry of las-rounds replied with commendable alacrity, for by that time my attention was entirely taken up with the matter of my own survival. The Salamander lurched, as Jurgen made a hard turn to evade a crater gouged into the rockrete ahead of us by a far bigger plasma burst from the main gun of another circling troop carrier, and I suddenly found a small, fast-moving shadow drifting across my sights.

The storm bolter bucked against its mount as I squeezed the trigger reflexively, stitching a row of impact craters along the belly of a skimmer which screamed overhead, low enough for the backwash of its passing to snatch the cap from my head. I must have found a weak spot, for almost at once smoke began to seep from its starboard engine, and it flipped over, ploughing into the ground. It kept going on pure momentum, raising a bow wave of pulverised rockcrete, and smearing its luckless crew along the hard surface as it did so, before coming to rest embedded in the wall of the officer’s mess.

‘Ouch,’ I said, feelingly.

‘They were asking for it,’ Jurgen opined, triggering the forward flamer, and immolating a couple of swooping gun drones before they had a chance to open fire on us in return. ‘What sort of idiot flies around with an open cockpit in the middle of a firefight?’

‘Good point,’ I said, ducking behind the thick armour plate, as debris from a nearby explosion rattled against it. One of the Hydras spitting streams of tracer rounds at the descending invaders had just taken a direct hit, the intense heat of the tau plasma bolt cooking off its ammunition, and a section of hull plating whirled through the space I’d just vacated. If I hadn’t ducked when I did, it would have taken my head off.

Finding my cap in the bottom of the passenger well I jammed it back on my head as firmly as possible, feeling that I might as well look the part, and peered cautiously over the rim of the armoured compartment. We were the only Imperial vehicle still moving through the blizzard of descending fire, although a Leman Russ with its track blown off was traversing its turret, scanning hopefully for a target, and the crew were bailing out of a second Hydra, which had no turret left at all that I could see. Clearly the tau had prioritised the targets most capable of harming them, although I had no doubt that they’d get round to picking off our lightly-armed Salamander before long.

‘Get us under cover!’ I ordered, despite being pretty sure Jurgen would have worked that out for himself by now.

‘Right you are, sir,’ he acknowledged, and spun the vehicle on a coin, slamming the right-hand track into reverse with a speed which elicited an alarming sound from the gearbox, although that would have been as nothing compared to the fuss any of our enginseers would have made if they’d been around to hear it. Once again I clung to the pintle mount for support, while we took off in a completely different direction, plasma bolts boiling the rockcrete where we would have been if Jurgen hadn’t swung us about.

The first of the attacking troop carriers hit the ground about a hundred metres ahead, its shock absorbers flexing against the rockcrete; even before they’d fully extended again, the boarding ramp dropped. Instantly, another pair of lethal drones soared into the air to provide fire support for the pathfinder squad disembarking from it. The xenos moved with remarkable agility despite the body armour they were encased in, their faces rendered curiously insectile by the glowing red lenses embedded in their faceplates.

Undeterred, I opened fire on warriors and vehicle alike, scything a hail of bolter rounds through the air they occupied. A couple of compact plasma bolts from the ground troopers’ carbines burst against the armour surrounding me in reply, gouging deep craters in the ceramite, but it held. Then a solid armour-piercing projectile slammed right through the passenger compartment, punching holes in both sides I could have pushed my fist through.

‘One of them’s got a rail rifle!’ I shouted to Jurgen, although the noise of the engine and the firefight surrounding us meant that he could only hear me over the vox-link anyway, so there was little point in raising my voice. I tried to depress the storm bolter to engage the ground troops, but a piece of debris from the exploding Hydra was jammed in the pintle, and I couldn’t swing it down far enough. ‘Frak!’

‘I’m on it,’ Jurgen assured me, and triggered the flamer again, adding a burst from the hull-mounted heavy bolter for good measure. The pathfinder squad scattered from the gout of blazing promethium, which hosed up inside the transport through the still open passenger ramp. ‘That’ll give ‘em something to think about.’

It certainly did: a moment later the upper hatches popped and the crew bailed out, becoming easy targets for the vengeful lasgun fire of those Guardsmen still in the fight.

At this point I began to hope that the balance might tilt the other way. The tau had a definite edge when it came to long-range shooting, but they had no stomach for getting up close and personal, while the Guard had no such qualms. In fact the death worlders making up the majority of the garrison here[8] seemed to prefer it, wading in with bayonet and lasrifle butt at every opportunity, their ork hide capes swirling about them with almost as much ferocious energy as if they were still attached to their original owners. Which didn’t mean they fought with all the finesse and tactical sense of Khornate berserkers; quite the contrary. Where they came from, survival meant using their wits as well as their weapons.

‘All units pull back,’ General Braddick voxed, just in time to rein them in. ‘Defend the bunker.’

I couldn’t fault his tactics, our priority was clearly to deny the tau their objective, but from where I was standing (or, more accurately, rattling around like a pea in a can), we’d just handed them the initiative again[9].

‘Hold on, sir,’ Jurgen urged, triggering the forward-mounted heavy bolter again. Another sleek and deadly troop carrier was drifting in from out of the darkness above our heads, cutting across our path as the pilot brought it in to land. The explosive bolts chewed away at the hull armour, doing little damage that I could see, but at the very least we must have startled the crew as the Devilfish grounded hard, buckling its landing gear; although I found myself vindictively hoping we’d done a great deal worse than that. The shock of impact had clearly come as an unwelcome surprise to the passengers too: instead of disembarking in good order, securing the boarding ramp as they went, they boiled out as though abandoning the vehicle, and I was pleased to note that at least a couple of them were limping. The Salamander jerked violently, as Jurgen swung it round to keep the weapons bearing for as long as he could. ‘Oops.’

‘Oops indeed,’ I agreed, hanging on for dear life as my aide kept us lurching from left to right in an attempt to evade as much of the incoming fire from the xenos as he could, or possibly to run a few of the stragglers down. It was hard to be sure which, as I was more than a little preoccupied with trying to remain on my feet.

Mindful that there were probably a few Guardsmen still around too tardy or sensible to have rejoined Braddick in the middle of a closing trap, and that I had a reputation to live up to, I squeezed off a few rounds from the storm bolter too. I failed to hit any of the scattering pathfinders, the explosive projectiles simply hissing over their heads due to the damaged pintle mount, but I was pretty sure I’d put them off their aim at least.

‘Some good cover over there,’ Jurgen said, doggedly sticking to the last order I’d given him, and completely disregarding Braddick’s[10], which was fine by me. Another burst from both heavy and storm bolters was enough to shred the chain fence which, in happier times, was supposed to keep lowly civilians from trespassing on the hallowed rockcrete of the Guard garrison, and with a lurch which almost broke my spine we bounced over the masonry footings and onto the road beyond. Our gallant Salamander’s tracks bit deep into the surface of the carriageway separating the perimeter of the barracks from an abandoned industrial facility, and Jurgen rammed the throttle lever as far forward as it would go. ‘That smelting plant’s still standing. Mostly.’

‘Keep going,’ I said. Now we were clear of the combat zone I saw no reason to linger, and become a footnote in Braddick’s Last Stand.

‘Commissar Cain, respond,’ the general’s voice echoed in my comm-bead, as if in reproach to that fleeting thought. ‘Are you there?’

‘We’re cut off from the bunker,’ I told him, truthfully enough, as it would have been suicide to try fighting our way back to it though the rapidly deploying tau. ‘The xenos have it completely surrounded.’ Which may have been a slight exaggeration, but if it wasn’t true by then it soon would be. Their preferred tactic when faced with a static defensive position was always to surround it, relying on the superior range and firepower of their weapons to wear down the defenders. The bloody business of actually taking an objective they preferred to palm off on their kroot vassals[11], which I could hardly blame them for, especially as the kroot seem to enjoy that kind of thing. ‘I’m going to head for the southern enclave, and try to pull some effectives together before it’s too late.’

Most of the units we had left were concentrated in the southern quarter of the city, which made it the best place to be so far as I was concerned; the more bodies I could put between me and the tau the better. With a bit of luck we’d be able to hold out long enough for Zyvan’s task force to turn up and evacuate the survivors, which I was determined would include me, and if the worst came to the worst it would be easy enough to go to ground on my own more or less indefinitely. I hadn’t forgotten any of the lessons I’d learned dodging orks on Perlia, and the tau would be far less inclined to waste time and resources hunting down stragglers who didn’t do anything stupid to attract their attention, like shooting at them or blowing things up, than the greenskins had been.

‘Good idea,’ Braddick said, clearly believing that the situation meant I’d be bringing a relieving force back with me.

‘Just hold out as long as you can,’ I voxed back, not having the heart to disabuse him, and sure he’d do that anyway whatever I said. ‘The Emperor protects.’ Although, so far as I could see, He was going to have His work cut out keeping Braddick in one piece for much longer.

Come to that, He didn’t seem to be doing that good a job for me either. Shadows were moving at the end of the street, too quick and fluid to identify, but some of them seemed uncomfortably big. All of a sudden the abandoned smeltery looked a good deal more attractive than it had done, but it was far too late to worry about that; whatever was lurking up the boulevard would have registered our approach by now, and be locking its weapons on our auspex trace as like as not.

‘Hit the lights,’ I told Jurgen, wrestling with the damaged pintle mount again, once more to no avail. Nothing was going to free the mechanism short of the benedictions of a tech-priest, and there’s never one around when you actually need one.

‘Right you are, sir,’ my aide responded, and I squinted reflexively as the powerful spotlight kindled, the beam knifing erratically through the darkness in response to every jolt of our abused suspension. Then the breath seemed to solidify in my lungs, as the dancing ray of light picked out a cluster of vaguely humaniform figures, more than twice the height of a man. Dreadnoughts, or the tau equivalent at any rate: just as heavily armed as their Imperial counterparts, and a lot more manoeuvrable.

‘Second wave’s incoming,’ I voxed to Braddick. If I was about to die, I supposed I might as well be remembered for some heroic last words. ‘I’ll delay them as long as I can.’

Which wasn’t likely to be more than a second or two, especially as I hadn’t actually said anything about trying to engage the towering battlesuits in combat. Attracting their attention just long enough for them to be sure I was heading for the horizon and not worth wasting the ammo on would be good enough for me.

‘Can you give us an estimate of their numbers and disposition?’ Braddick asked, determined to get his currency’s worth out of my noble sacrifice, and I gritted my teeth. Clearly ‘Lots, and surly,’ wasn’t going to be an acceptable answer. Throne alone knew who might be monitoring the vox-traffic, and if by some miracle I did get out of this with a whole skin, the last thing I needed was an auditory record of me appearing to panic and run for it popping up in time to prevent me enjoying the benefits of another boost to my fraudulent reputation. (Not that I’ve anything against panicking and running for it; on the contrary, it’s worked for me every time. The trick is to not let anyone else realise that’s what you’re doing, otherwise you’ll have all that tedious business of tribunals and potential firing squads to put up with afterwards[12].)

‘Wait one,’ I said, hoping to buy a little time, and hoping even more fervently that the next sound on the vox-record wasn’t going to be an ominous burst of static followed by silence. I gestured to Jurgen. ‘Get us off the street!’

‘Very good, sir,’ he responded, as phlegmatically as ever, and swung the vehicle hard over. A railgun round howled through the space we’d just vacated, the sonic boom of its passage shaking the air and making the Salamander rock on its suspension. I ducked, as he took us through the side of a warehouse without bothering to look for a door, the wall exploding around us in a shower of shattered brick as he rammed his way through it.

‘Battlesuits,’ I told Braddick, protecting my head from the blizzard of masonry as best I could, while Jurgen carried on demolishing interior walls in our headlong dash towards some semblance of safety. The searchlight beam had swept across the whole Crisis team just before they’d opened fire, and I tried to recall what I’d seen in as much detail as possible. Which wasn’t much, if I’m honest, I’d been too busy ducking. ‘A full squad, but there are probably more behind.’ At least I thought I’d seen three of them, but they were hellish fast and agile, and in the dark it was hard to be sure. ‘They’ve got railguns,’ I added, as an afterthought. At least, the one which had shot at us did, and I wasn’t about to go back for a look at the rest.

‘Then we haven’t got long,’ Braddick concluded, remarkably calmly under the circumstances. We both knew the hypervelocity projectiles would punch through the reinforced ferrocrete of the bunker like Jurgen through a meringue, and with an equal amount of scattered debris.

‘I think we’ve shaken them, sir,’ Jurgen said, giving me some good news at last, ramming a large wooden cargo door as he spoke. We plummeted about a metre from a raised loading dock, not even slowing, our spinning treads slamming into the rockcreted yard in a shrapnel burst of pulverised gravel. The Salamander’s floor shot up to punch me in the face, driving the breath from my lungs, and I tasted blood, where my teeth had lacerated the inside of my cheek.

‘Good,’ I gasped, feeling the relatively minor discomfort a small price to pay for our deliverance; but of course I was speaking too soon. Hardly had I staggered to my feet again, leaning on the much-abused pintle mount for support, than one of the towering battlesuits landed right in front of us, shaking the ground with the impact of its arrival. My elevated perch in the rear of the Salamander brought my head almost level with the pilot’s[13], and I flinched as a targeting beam swept across my face, blinding me for a moment.

‘Hang on, sir!’ Jurgen called, as though I’d been doing anything else for the last ten minutes, and triggered the weapon mounts. A hail of bolter rounds and a gout of promethium roared towards the giant warrior, but the pilot triggered its jump jets at the last possible instant, and it hopped nimbly over the devastating barrage like a child with a skipping rope.

Blinking my dazzled eyes clear, I tried to track the soaring silhouette with the storm bolter, but the mounting had seized up entirely by this time; which I suppose was hardly surprising, given the battering it had taken. Then I took in the battlesuit’s trajectory with incredulous horror. ‘Jurgen!’ I yelled. ‘Jump!’

Suiting the action to the word I scrambled out of the passenger compartment and leapt for my life, praying to the Throne to grant me a soft landing. I didn’t get one, of course, the Emperor having more urgent business as usual, but Jurgen had slammed on the brakes to avoid colliding with our towering assailant, no doubt appreciating that the impact would break our necks however much damage it did to the battlesuit, so at least we were moving a lot slower than we had been. I struck the rockcrete of the yard no harder than required to crack a rib or two, which was uncomfortable enough, but I’d had worse, and felt that if I was well enough to complain about it I’d got off pretty lightly, all told.

An instant after I’d hit, the tau dreadnought landed squarely atop the Salamander, crushing it into the rockcrete with a squeal of rending metal as though it had been no more robust than a cardboard box. Rivulets of promethium gushed from the ruptured fuel and flamer tanks, spreading out around the crippled vehicle like blood from mortal wounds.

‘Jurgen!’ I called. ‘Where are you?’

‘Over here, sir.’ My aide rolled to a sitting position, half hidden in the shadow of a wall a dozen metres away, and tried to haul himself upright, one hand pressed to the side of his head. ‘I’ll be right… right with…’ Then his knees folded, and he slithered back down on his haunches. A dark stain was visible beneath his fingers, which admittedly was nothing new, but this one was spreading slowly; had it not been for his helmet, the impact of landing would probably have crushed his skull.

‘Stay down!’ I called to him, as though either of us had any choice in the matter. ‘Just got to see off this pile of unsanctified scrap, then we’ll get you to the medicae.’ And right after that, I added under my breath, the necrons will take up flower arranging. I tapped where my comm-bead should have been, hoping to summon help, but just got an earful of finger for my pains; somewhere along the way the tiny vox-unit and I had parted company. We were on our own.

The tau battlesuit stepped back off the mashed remains of the expiring Salamander with one foot, leaving the other where it was, looking for all the world like a beast-hunter with a trophy, posing for a pict. Its head turned, scanning the yard, and I looked round frantically for some vestige of cover, only to find there wasn’t one. I was surrounded by nothing but bare rockcrete, a sitting target.

I scrabbled for my sidearms, feeling better for the weight of the chainsword in my hand, even though against the heavily armoured battlesuit it would be worse than useless. Then the acrid odour of spilled promethium scratched my nostrils, and a desperate idea began to blossom, fertilised by panic. The laspistol in my other hand would barely scratch the thing’s paint, but…

The looming figure raised an arm, a vicious-looking rotary cannon swinging towards me; even a single round from it would be enough to vaporise me where I stood. With no more time to think, I pulled the laspistol’s trigger.

My aim was true, the las-bolt sparking off the sundered metal of the Salamander, although by this time there was so much promethium vapour in the air it hardly mattered where the round impacted. It detonated at once, a fireball boiling out from the wreck in all directions, close enough to shrivel my eyebrows. A wall of furnace heat arrived with the shockwave, slamming me back to the ground and sending my chainsword skittering off into the shadows. I hung on to the laspistol though, the augmetic fingers on my right hand slower to relinquish their grip, for which I was suitably grateful.

For a moment I dared to hope that my desperate gamble had paid off and that the battlesuit had been immolated in the explosion or, at the very least, damaged enough to discourage the pilot from pursuing us. But of course I’d reckoned without the jump jets. They kicked in at once, allowing the huge machine to ride the shockwave in a single balletic leap, with no more ill effects than a faint charring around the ankles.

I clambered to my feet once more, only to stagger again as the battlesuit crashed back to earth. This time I remained standing, however, my footing rendered no more unstable than during a typical drive with Jurgen, as the armoured giant plodded relentlessly towards me, shaking the ground with every stride. Raising my laspistol, I sent a desperate couple of ricochets bouncing off its torso plates, but didn’t even manage to slow the thing.

Then, by the light of the burning Salamander, I finally saw a way out of the trap, a second loading door further down the wall of the warehouse, this time at ground level. Without another thought I sprinted for it; but before I could get anywhere close the corrugated metal sheet bulged and tore, ripped aside by another of the towering machines as though it was no more substantial than a curtain. It too began to plod unhurriedly towards me, and I retreated a few paces, firing as I went, but for all the effect I was having I might just as well have been throwing feathers at it. After a dozen or so steps I stumbled against something yielding and almost fell, being brought up short by the stout masonry wall behind it as a familiar odour assaulted my nostrils.

‘Run for it, sir. Don’t mind me,’ Jurgen slurred, already halfway to unconsciousness.

‘Not an option,’ I assured him, certain that by now escape was impossible. I raised my hands, and let the laspistol drop to the rockcrete. Perhaps they wouldn’t just gun us down out of hand, if they thought we were harmless. At least we weren’t dealing with vicious brutes like the orks, or refined sadists like the eldar reavers, in whose hands we’d be far better off dead anyway.

Then the targeting beam swept my face again, and I flinched, cursing, wishing I’d chosen to go down fighting after all. At least that would have left me with the illusion of possible escape right up to the end, instead of the crushing certainty of imminent ignominious butchery. I braced myself, hoping the Emperor would be in a good mood when I arrived at the Golden Throne, or at least willing to listen to excuses.

‘You are commissar hero Ciaphas Cain?’ a voice asked, in halting Gothic, the curious lisping accent of the tau amplified by an external vox-system somewhere on the battlesuit facing me.

‘I am,’ I said, fighting to keep a sudden flare of hope from inflecting my voice. If they wanted to talk, they weren’t going to pull the trigger right away, although I was damned if I could see that we had anything to discuss. ‘And you are?’

‘Ui-Thiching, of the shas’ui ka’sui[14]. In the name of the Greater Good, we ask of you to convey a message to your fellows.’

Better and better. They clearly weren’t about to shoot the messenger; I just had to hope Braddick didn’t either[15].

‘What message would that be?’ I asked, not wanting to seem too eager. For all I knew they were recording this and the last thing I needed was to be accused of collaborating with the enemy to save my own neck.

‘We wish the negotiation of a truce,’ the tau told me, as though that were the most reasonable thing in the galaxy, just as they were about to snatch the entire planet out from under us regardless.

‘A truce?’ I repeated, not entirely willing to trust my own ears. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Completely,’ the amplified voice assured me. ‘Hostilities must cease at once on this world. The Greater Good demands it. For both our empires.’





EDITORIAL NOTE:

One of Cain’s more annoying idiosyncrasies as a chronicler of events is his tendency to gloss over periods of time in which he feels nothing of interest to have happened from his singularly self-centred perspective. Just such an elision now occurs, picking up his narrative after a gap of several weeks.

I have accordingly inserted the following extract, which I hope will go some way towards making up the obvious deficiency.

From The Crusade and After: A Military History of the Damocles Gulf, by Vargo Royz, 058.M42.

The tau’s offer of a truce was regarded with a fair degree of suspicion at first, not least by Commissar Cain, to whom it had been delivered. Nevertheless, with the Imperial forces poised on the brink of annihilation, the defenders had little option but to accept it.

Accordingly, when the relief flotilla arrived, accompanied by a hastily-assembled diplomatic mission and no less a personage than the Lord General himself, they found General Braddick in uncontested control of Peakhaven, to no one’s greater surprise than his own. Before long the Quadravidia garrison had been reinforced by the new arrivals[16], of sufficient strength to deter all but the most determined of assaults. But such a precaution scarcely seemed needed, as the tau remained behind the lines to which they had withdrawn immediately upon the declaration of a ceasefire.

Thus it was, with a fair degree of suspicion, that negotiations began, and the tau’s motives for such an unexpected move became clear.