Duty Calls, page 32
[39] In actual fact, given his popularity among the Imperial Guard contingent, Cain’s assassination would have had a noticably adverse effect on morale, something which, typically, seems not to have occurred to him.
[40] Which is why we have the Ordos Hereticus and Malleus. Although it must be said that some of the more Radical members of both are barely distinguishable from their prey, even in their degree of apparent sanity.
[41] A D’Lorien Raptor, fabricated on Rubica, if anyone cares. Extensively modified by Yanbel, of course; the standard model comes without communications gear, weapons, or armour plate.
[42] Cain’s exaggerating here. There were at least three centimetres to spare all around.
[43] Or, more likely, a hangover of monumental proportions.
[44] Well, if you have to play the spoiled little rich girl, you might as well embrace the role. Nothing convinces people you’ve more money than sense quite as effectively as indulging a ludicrously expensive whim.
[45] That, of course, is entirely a matter of opinion. Some inquisitors believe the Emperor’s work is best done by charging around the place like a grox in a ceramic emporium, leaving a trail of carnage and destruction in their wake, while others prefer not to let the enemies of all that’s good and holy get away clean by making it blindingly obvious that they’re coming for them.
[46] No, I don’t know either.
[47] An Imperial Guard slang term for raw recruits. It’s apparently a phonetic rendering of FNGs, which I’m told stands for Frakking New Guys.
[48] In fact it was from my personal yacht, the Externus Exterminatus, which was waiting in orbit as usual, broadcasting the ident code of an ore barge from Desolatia.
[49] In fact they probably recognised Cain, who was a familiar figure across the entire planet, especially in Hoarfell, where his actions in the fuel tanker incident had made him an even greater hero to the local populace.
[50] Taking off quickly from a dangerous landing zone. Sometimes I think Imperial Guard should be classified as a distinct dialect of Gothic all by itself.
[51] Dark greys, blues, and black, intended to let the wearer blend into the shadows of the underhive.
[52] Which works too, of course, especially when you need something with enough firepower to put a dent in a planet, but it’s nice to have somewhere cosier to call home.
[53] Which, as anyone who’s ever worn one of the things can readily attest, is actually tainted with the lingering bouquet of Emperor knows how many centuries of old sweat and flatulence. That said, it’s still a major improvement over a great many external environments, including Hell’s Edge.
[54] The nearest plateau with a sizeable population, some three hundred kilometres to the south, apparently named for the explorator who first catalogued this patchwork globe.
[55] More likely they’d been switched off by automatic systems, in the absence of any fresh raw material to process.
[56] In all honesty, looking back, none spring to mind.
[57] Estimates vary between about 1,500 and just over 3,000. Records of that time are, understandably, somewhat fragmentary.
[58] The 597th was the only regiment currently on Periremunda with previous experience of fighting tyranids, although the Karthelan 463rd had taken part in the cleansing of the Taragon underhive following the discovery of a recently established genestealer cult there in 929 M4
[59] In fact Zyvan probably chose his words carefully to reflect the fact that it wasn’t just humans the tyranids were taking: the settlements they’d attacked were denuded of all forms of life, including plants and domestic animals.
[60] Despite the eminence to which she would later rise, Cain’s attitude towards Sulla remains, at best, one of mild antipathy throughout his memoirs. She, ironically, appears to have remained in lifelong ignorance of his actual opinion of her, clearly regarding him as something of a mentor.
[61] No doubt it did, frequently, but Zyvan was too conscientious a servant of the Emperor to risk Imperial interests, or the lives of the ordinary soldiers under his command, simply to rid himself of a trifling nuisance. Besides, there would always be plenty more to replace them, so any respite would have been fleeting at best.
[62] In actual fact, later events would point to a quite different interpretation of the Gravalax incident. The ’stealer cult there, as Cain points out in his own account of the affair, was intent on provoking a war of attrition with the tau, which would have seriously weakened the Imperium’s defences throughout the Damocles Gulf and its neighbouring sectors. Given the line of advance of Hive Fleet Kraken, it now seems more than probable that they were intending to prepare the way for this massive invasion force rather than a mere splinter fleet.
[63] Elements of the 597th were deployed in support of the PDF on three separate occasions during this period, managing to repulse the tyranid attack entirely on one of them, and holding it off for long enough to successfully complete the evacuation of the surviving civilians before retreating in good order themselves in both of the other engagements. Their previous experience of fighting this particular xenos breed no doubt stood them in good stead, and the positive effect on morale these victories had went well beyond the regiment itself.
[64] Cain’s account of his exploits during the 13th Black Crusade, though fascinating, need not detain us at this juncture.
[65] Or perhaps because of them: they all seem to have lost around fifteen per cent of their initial complement (the vast majority of the fatalities being the inevitable ‘fungs’), a remarkably low total considering the nature of their foe. Not to mention the heartening effect that seeing the tyranids break and run must have had on the survivors of the massacre on Corania.
[66] Despite Cain’s cynicism, Sulla did indeed enjoy the confidence and respect of the troops she led, almost to the extent that he claims. She undeniably had a tendency to take risks a more cautious commander would think twice about, but as is so often the case her willingness to seize the initiative often proved decisive at a critical juncture, and the concomitant slightly higher casualty rates in her platoon seemed to have been more than offset by its members’ astonishingly high morale.
[67] Binary, as it’s apparently known, remains a complete mystery to anyone outside the Adeptus Mechanicus. Despite decades of intensive study, the sisters of the Ordo Dialogous have yet to establish even the most rudimentary rules of grammar and syntax.
[68] Though barely high enough to receive much in the way of rainfall, the dense mat of foliage covering Aceralbaterra respired moisture constantly, which condensed almost at once in the thick, humid air.
[69] No doubt Sulla’s earlier mention of the verdant deathworld had stuck in Cain’s mind.
[70] Cain is presumably writing with the benefit of hindsight here, since, although the concentric rings of hastily prepared fortifications would be visible from the air, he would have had little detailed knowledge of the course of the battle up to this point.
[71] An impression certainly received by Jenit Sulla, whose prolonged description of Cain’s ‘noble bearing’ in her account of the deployment is gushing in the extreme.
[72] Vox operator, a common abbreviation among Guard personnel.
[73] Every plateau’s militia had its own colour scheme, generally as garish as the civilian fashions Cain noted earlier. The Aceralbaterrans, for instance, favoured orange fatigues under green and purple striped body armour, while the defence forces of Principia Mons appeared to prefer a combination of bright red and iridescent blue. As the tyranids generally rely on scent and vibration as much as sight to detect their prey, this bizarre predilection probably added less to their casualty rates than would have been the case with most other foes.
[74] Although Cain would be able to contact pretty much anyone on the planet by relaying his signal through the vox equipment in Sulla’s command Chimera, the sisters of the White Rose were apparently using their own communication system independent of the Imperial Guard network. Only as the two sets of short-range personal vox systems came into close proximity was he able to talk to them directly.
[75] Given that the commissarial uniform has a cap rather than any more functionally protective headgear, Cain may be speaking from the heart here.
[76] Apparently because most of them believe that their faith in the Emperor is armour enough. A couple of extra centimetres of ceremite probably couldn’t hurt, though.
[77] Given the heat and humidity on Aceralbaterra, most of the iceworlders would have stripped down to little more than their body armour, and trousers, of course.
[78] Cain’s fencing tutor at the schola progenium.
[79] Given Cain’s repeated references to the near-constant cloud cover over Hoarfell, we can quite safely conclude that Sulla is exaggerating here for dramatic effect. Readers wanting a rather more accurate account of the battle in space are referred to chapter 87 of Leander Kasmides’s Swatting the Swarm: The Evolution of Imperial Navy Tactics Against the Hive Fleets.
[80] Anyone caring to wade through the details can find them in Sulla’s memoirs, in which she recounts the action at stupefying length.
[81] As I’ve previously mentioned, the 597th routinely split its squads into two fireteams of five troopers each. Team one would be under the command of the sergeant leading the squad, while team two would be led by the assistant squad leader, normally a corporal, when operating independently.
[82] Whether or not a blank can affect the functioning of the tyranid hive mind is still a matter of some conjecture. Jurgen was certainly able to disrupt the brood telepathy of genestealer groups on more than one occasion, but, as in so many cases where anti-psyker phenomena are concerned, in a somewhat erratic fashion, and I can recall no instance where he unquestionably disrupted the overmind itself.
[83] The home plateau of the three psykers Cain and Jurgen had encountered on Hoarfell.
[84] He would have been, had I seen any reason to bring them to his attention.
[85] Though the Gavarronian PDF would, in theory, be under the jurisdiction of a commissar specifically attached to them, in practice the luckless individual in question had been given the task of overseeing morale and disciplinary matters for the PDF of the entire system, along with those of another thirty-seven equally sparsely settled Imperial worlds within the sector. As a result, Commissar Banning spent almost all his time in his cabin aboard one starship after another, drinking heavily, leaving the vast majority of the troopers nominally under his care in blissful ignorance of his existence.
[86] A common custom on many of the worlds around the Damocles Gulf, in which citizens celebrate holy festivals with amateur theatrical performances drawn from the lives of the saints or the Emperor, in which devotional material is inextricably linked with the most vulgar of knockabout comedy.
[87] At the time of which he’s writing Cain had yet to visit one of the tau’s own worlds, but he was certainly familiar with their architectural style from his time on Gravalax, so the analogy might indeed have struck him then, rather than being the product of several decades’ hindsight as might otherwise be inferred.
[88] The 597th’s senior drill instructor.
[89] More likely they trusted the Emperor to protect them from harm; quite ironically, as things turned out.
[90] A fireteam reduced in number by the loss of casualties, but still able to be deployed effectively. Short squads, known to the troopers as ‘remnants’, are a common feature of many Guard platoons, and are often little more than independent fireteams themselves in all but name.
[91] The full quotation, from The Precepts of Saint Emelia, a work Cain displays a surprising fondness for in several passages of his memoirs, runs “The path of duty is often a stony one, made smoother by thought for others.”
[92] At the time, I just thought having a celebrated hero in the vicinity would draw attention away from my own activities. The effect this had on Killian, luring him into showing his hand openly, was merely a welcome bonus. (Though not to Cain, obviously.)
[93] A talent he displayed on many occasions, and which he attributed to his upbringing on a hive world.
[94] An Inquisitorial mandate tends to impress people; probably something to do with all those seals.
[95] Displacer fields are never completely reliable, so it’s always advisable to present the lowest possible target profile even if you’re carrying an active one.
[96] A form of bayonet, much favoured by the Adepta Sororitas.
[97] Cain may be exaggerating here, but my own recollections of that engagement are too fragmentary to be sure.
[98] Or, rather more plausibly, the hive mind singled him out as the greatest threat among us.
Sandy Mitchell, Duty Calls
