NINE
War has a funny way of bringing people together. It can facilitate camaraderie between the most unlikely groups of people. It is surprising how easily the threat of imminent death can make people forget about differences of opinions, contrasting lifestyles, or their complete and utter contempt for one another. I doubt my friendship with Sister Venk would ever have come to fruition had it not been for the ravenous horde of undead monsters that tried to kill us. If N'hila harboured murderous intent of any kind towards me, those feelings were vague, distant thoughts when we found ourselves on the wrong side of heavy gunfire.
Every so often, I found myself momentarily confused as to who exactly I should be killing. Divine Will must have had it in for me because it could not have been coincidence that I regularly found myself in situations where the lines between friend and foe performed a hoedown just as the gunfire started. Both Eldar and Guardsman alike dove for whatever cover they could find. Some of the guardsmen took cover behind the pillars and fallen debris, while others overturned the heavily-ornate tables, which arguably had enough gold and brass fixings to stop a bolter round. I was fortunate enough to be near an already overturned table and dove over the top the bullets whipped past my helmet. Unfortunately, joining me behind cover was the still pissed-as-hell assassin and the Eldar banshee, Aishtaid.
"Friends of yours?" I remarked to the Eldar after doing a quick scan to determine if I still possessed the same quantity of blood as five minutes ago.
"Sounds more like friends of yours," the Eldar replied, sounding oddly enthusiastic over the prospect of a firefight. The frantic scramble for cover left me little time to think of anything else but now that I had time to assess the situation, I quickly noticed that the gunfire was a combination of lasgun and stubber fire. When Caito had earlier mentioned that we were not the only people seeking Kael, I had assumed he was referring to the Eldar of Biel-tan, who probably weren't pleased with Kael's interference. The absence of shuriken fire, however, meant we were dealing with humans and poorly equipped ones at that. Light stubbers were a tell-tale sign of militia, mercenaries, thugs, or the heretics that Kael had mentioned earlier. Since Erebus had become a coincidence-free zone, it was safe to assume that we were dealing with heretics of the zealous but insane variety. Despite confusion and the element of surprise, Penlan's troopers were able to organize themselves quickly into a defensive formation and it didn't take long for them to recognize that the new arrivals were shooting at everyone indiscriminately.
"Kill them all, let the Emperor sort out the guilty," Penlan instructed as we returned fire.
Like many heretics, our foe's grasp of the basics of stratagem was abysmal. And that was being overly generous in my assessment. Our initial volley of return fire dropped several of the assailants who hadn't bothered to take cover whatsoever. Watching their allies get cut to ribbons, however, quickly drove that lesson home for the survivors who, like us, used tables and pillars for cover. The gunfire died down slightly to the point where individual shots could be made out rather than a constant buzzing of muzzle flashes. It appeared that somebody on the opposing side had some semblance of intelligence with a demonstration of fire discipline. There was no need for them to empty the magazines at us since they had us pinned down in a corner. There was no means of escape save for the narrow passageway we originally had arrived through and the freshly made entrance directly behind the enemy. I tried my comm-bead but with all the rockrete around us, I couldn't get a signal to the chimeras. Despite superior skill and training, we were outnumbered and eventually a guardsman could not poke their head up without five heretics taking a shot at him. Their numbers kept us pinned down, preventing us from gaining momentum for a counter-attack.
"Got any ideas?" N'hila called over to Cain. Being an assassin, this sort of situation was well outside her expertise. Her combat doctrines revolved around deception and subterfuge - striking unseen with silent precision where there are no defences. An open firefight did not factor into her stratagem because to her, it signaled failure. Concentrated gunfire meant that she had messed up big time somewhere along the way. An assassin was akin to a commando - in her preferred conditions and environment, N'hila could be unstoppable. Pinned down behind a table facing a dozen or more armed assailants, however, she was as likely to die as the next person. Which unfortunately was me. I did not doubt that Cain and Penlan were already brewing some sort of plan to break free because I was coming up short in my own attempts. Were we out in the open, the situation would be as simple as throwing some grenades and laying down fire when the enemy broke cover but with the building in its condition, a poorly placed grenade could bury us all. I suspect that the enemy knew this as well, hence why we were not getting pelted with grenades either.
"We just need to take a bit of pressure off," Cain replied.
"If your people can restrain themselves, we can provide that relief," Kael suddenly suggested. By restraint, of course, he meant not shoot his people in the back, which was a valid concern.
"You want me to trust my life to these savages?" Iamanu immediately objected. "They are as precise as a blinded yne'kais!"
"I want you to trust me," Kael replied, turning to his friend briefly before looking back to Cain. "Do we have an agreement? We can go back to hating each other once we are safe."
"You have my word," Cain nodded. And in case any of our soldiers missed the exchange, he explained to them that any soldier who so much as even put a lasbolt near an Eldar would answer to him. It was an order that most commissars did not give out but temporary truces with Eldar were not unheard of…just rarely fulfilled as they usually ended with one side shooting the other in the back.
"I stand ready Kyriese," the banshee called out, taking a step back as though she was about to vault over our cover. In fact, I got the distinct impression that was exactly her intention, which struck me as near suicidal as there was more than twenty meters separating the opposing firing lines with little in terms of cover between them. I had to remind myself that Eldar were naturally deceptive, cowardly warriors and she wouldn't do something as foolish as a frontal assault without an ace up her sleeve.
"Then let fate smile upon you and the Bloody-Handed God guide your blade," Kael affirmed as he outstretched a hand to her. Without a moment's hesitation, Aishtaid vaulted over the table and ran headlong at the opposing line. I thought she would be gunned down in a heartbeat but what happened was clearly the product of Kael's mastery of warpcraft. Aishtaid moved faster than living creature I had seen before, jumping and running in an erratic fashion that I strained just to follow. And not a single shot found her – it was as though she knew where every bullet was going before the shooter even fired. I was completely transfixed on the banshee as she danced through their gunfire and so were all of our enemies, which was entirely the point. I did not realize that Iamanu was no longer among us until he emerged from the warp behind the enemy line. The enemy didn't notice the warp spider's presence until the screams came as heretics were cut to ribbons. By the time the heretics realized they were being flanked and turned to face the threat, the Eldar warrior slipped back into the warp and was gone.
With the enemy lines sufficiently thrown into disarray, the rest of us emerged from cover. To be honest, I was a bit surprised that our soldiers upheld Cain's promise as all our las fire was focused on the heretics caught in the open. Some were fortunate enough to dive back into cover but that only extended their meagre lives by a few more seconds, as Aishtaid had reached their line in the interim. She leapt over a table, firing her pistol into the man cowering behind it, and landed atop a second man and drove her blade through his chest. A heretic hiding behind a pillar took a few shots at the banshee but she dove back over the table to elude his line of sight. Pinned on one side of the pillar due to our lines of fire, the heretic could not see the banshee quickly rushing over to the opposite side of his cover. He didn't even get off a scream when she whipped around to corner. Only a flourish of crimson marked his demise, followed by a muffled thump in the now-silent air.
"Would it count as blasphemy to be slightly impressed by all of that?" I asked rhetorically as I lowered my lasgun.
"A bit," Cain said stoically as he holstered his pistol and dusted off his great coat.
"Good…because I wasn't impressed to any degree by anything that I had just witnessed."
Surprisingly, the Emperor did not punish us for fighting alongside xenos, despite what some hard-line commissars might say, and we emerged from the ambush without a single casualty, save for Penlan's dignity when she somehow managed to slip and twist her ankle diving for cover. The Eldar understandably kept their distance from us while our soldiers began checking for any survivors. A bunch of bodies would do us little good in figuring out where this new threat emerged. I suspected if we were to have any hope of convincing the Inquisitors that the Eldar weren't the true threat we would need to bring back more than just a pile of corpses.
"It's refreshing to see us actually accomplish something rather than waste time chasing each other around a ruined planet," Kael remarked. "Will you believe me now when I say that the Eldar aren't the true threat here?"
"Armed misanthropes do not make for a compelling counter-argument," N'hila said sternly as she started sifting through the belongings of one of the aforementioned misanthropes. From a casual glance, there was nothing that set them apart from any other random assortment of inhabitants other than the fact that they were quite dead. Granted, short of a brand of Chaos, it was usually hard to tell a Chaos worshipper heretic from your garden-variety crazed heretic. And apart from a mutually shared fate, there appeared to be little in common amongst our collection of corpses. A few appeared to be refinery workers and machinists, others were dressed in little more than rags, and a few had garments that suggested a moderate level of personal wealth. We had, in essence, a representation of the various inhabitants of the planet, which at least gave us some information. The garden-variety crazed heretics tend to spawn from one collective or another – unhappy workers group, renegade militia, a heretical cult, etc. Chaos worshippers, however, infiltrated all walks of life in their attempt to undermine the Imperial authority, ensuring that their presence was widespread when a revolt broke out. "No identification of any kind," N'hila muttered as she continued searching the dead man's pockets. "This doesn't make any sense. How could they have tracked us here? I would have noticed people following us."
"Perhaps they were waiting for us Commissar…er, uh…assassin lady," Watz commented, tripping a little bit since N'hila was still disguised as me.
"I doubt it. A prepared ambush would have gone better," N'hila said. Unlike open warfare, ambushes were more along her line of expertise. "They used explosive breaching charges and did a direct assault when it would have been smarter to simply demolish the whole building. This is the work of amateurs in a hurry."
"Honestly, I'm surprised the building didn't come down on top of us," I remarked with a small chuckle. "Guess that will teach me to bad-mouth Imperial architecture from now on."
"No survivors to report Commissars," one of the troopers reported much to our collective disappointment. Normally I wouldn't complain about an exemplary display of lethality but having somebody to question would have at least made this mission not a complete waste of time.
"Looks like we won't have much to report then," I said with a sigh.
"I can think of one thing," N'hila said harshly with a none-too-subtle glare at me. A part of me had hoped that the firefight would have driven that from her memory for a little bit longer but I knew it was only a matter of time. Somehow, despite sweating buckets in my uniform, I felt a sudden chill run through me. I held little hope of another timely intervention from Cain. Standing up for me due to a misunderstanding was one thing but that was not the case here. What I did was obviously a deliberate attempt to sabotage an Inquisitional operation. Strangely enough, the more sobering thought that came from my actions was not the realization that the Inquisition now had legitimate reason to bury me but that I honestly had no regrets over what I did. True, I felt bad that my actions would in turn make N'hila look bad to her superiors. Failure was not part of their option set. "In fact, give me one good reason why I should not just shoot you now." And since N'hila was not the type to go half-way with anything, especially threats, I was soon staring down the barrel of my own laspistol.
"I'll give you one," Watz's voice suddenly interrupted followed by a light tap as the barrel of his lasgun prodded the back of N'hila's head. "Inquisition or not, I'll be damned if I let you lay a finger on my Commissar."
"Kill me and you'll be more than damned," N'hila replied, not taking an eye off me.
"My soul's prepared…how's yours?"
Cain nor any of the other soldiers intervened and rightly so. It was a matter between me and the Inquisition and the others were smart enough to know to keep as far back from the Inquisition as possible. Surprisingly enough, N'hila blinked and gradually lowered her weapon. "This isn't over Abel," she warned me. I knew it couldn't be that simple but probable death later was a far better option that certain death now. Briefly, I contemplated my odds of deserting but outrunning the Inquisition was like arm-wrestling an ogryn – resisting only made it hurt more.
As Watz lowered his lasgun, I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye coming from the direction of the opening through the wall. Quick recognition and quicker reflexes came into play. "Down!" I blurted as I tackled N'hila to the ground. A second slower and we would have been killed but instead the rocket whisked over our heads by such a narrow margin that I felt the heat from the burning propellant upon my neck. Thankfully, the only casualty from the rocket attack was a statue of the Emperor near the far wall, which took the hit square in his dust-covered chest.
"Son of a bitch!" Watz said with appropriate frustration as he and several troops rushed to find the culprit. A few shots were fired into the hallway but whoever fired the rocket left in a hurry. It appeared to have been a last-ditch effort to inflict some casualties but like the ambush its haste ultimately ruined it. Cain and several of the troops decided to give chase since the assailant was now our only hope of taking a prisoner alive, leaving me, Watz, N'hila, and a couple of troops to shuffle back to the transports. Personally, I wanted to just catch my breath since I was reaching my quota for near-death experiences in a day and I wasn't in a hurry to add to that tally. There was not, however, time for rest as the building suddenly let out a very loud and unsettling grinding noise.
"You've got to be kidding me," I muttered as I picked myself off the floor.
"Shall we run in terror Commissar?" Watz remarked sarcastically.
"Run, yes. Terror, no," I hastily replied. As a commissar I obviously had to stomp out anything even resembling fear in the face of the enemy but the truth was I was very much in favour of fleeing in terror, renouncing my previously mentioned respect for Imperial architecture. The loud groan of stressed metal finally calling it quits was the only other advance warning we got before the building decided to give into gravity. I envied Cain's decision to give chase as he would have been well outside the building by the time it started giving way. In all the panic, I lost track of the Eldar but knowing Kael, he had an escape route planned in advance and were well out of harm's way by the time the rockrete settled. By some miracle, we managed to get out of the building with the only casualty being what remained of Penlan's dignity. Whether or not she could run with her twisted ankle wasn't tabled as a potential subject for formal simply hoisted the sergeant onto his shoulder and double-timed her out. Most people would not pull such a brazen act on a superior but Watz had already demonstrated a complete indifference to his personal well-being but of equal impact on his decision was he wasn't going to suffer Heilmit's reaction if he had allowed harm to befall the unlucky sergeant.
"Put me down Corporal! I can walk fine on my own!" Penlan ordered through a mixture of annoyance and embarrassment.
"Of course ma'am,' Watz replied. Now that we were out of danger, he wasn't interested in carrying around the extra weight and unceremoniously dumped Penlan onto the ground.
"Anybody see where the Eldar went?" I asked as I looked around. I wasn't expecting much in terms of an answer since disappearing was one of their specialties. Cain quickly voxed over to see if were all okay before instructing us to return to the chimera and wait for further instructions. Judging by the haste of the message and the heavy breathing, he and the other soldiers were being led on quite the chase. "Still okay to walk gimpy?" I quipped jokingly as I helped Penlan back to her feet. She muttered something of an acknowledgment but little else. We voxed ahead to let the transport know we were on our way, as well as update them as to what transpired during our chat with the Eldar. Spike sounded particularly annoyed at missing out on all the action and, I suspect, because Penlan got injured. We weren't certain of our exact location, however, since we ran out of the building in a hurry and one ruined structure looked identical to all the others. What few road signs were left didn't help us much as most of the roads had been blown to pieces and knowing we were on Seventus Street did us little good without a proper map. The vox operator in the chimera was at least able to tell us which direction to walk in order to reach the transports…although a fallen roadway appeared to be blocking the direct route. Since N'hila had been on the planet longer than the rest of us, allowed her to take point along with Trooper Brule. Only a few minutes into our, however, N'hila suddenly motioned for everybody to stop and get down but she used all the wrong hand signals and eventually had tell us to 'get down and shut up.'
Since I did not see N'hila as one to insist on having a quiet rest, I quietly made my way over to her. She was crouched behind some rubble, peering at something in the distance. "Are you going to share this with the rest of us?" I asked after a short bout of silence.
"It's that Eldar banshee," she answered as she pointed off to something hidden amongst some ruined buildings a few hundred meters away. I could see little more than some red tufts but after watching for a few more moments, the tufts began to move and I could clearly see the peaked outline of an Eldar helmet. At first I wasn't certain why she was hiding there of all locations but when she started moving in earnest I could see why – she was limping. Perhaps the Eldar did not escape the collapsing building as easily as I had originally thought, though why she was still alone was a bit puzzling. "She's injured. If we capture her and interrogate her, we might be able to find out where Kyriese is hiding."
"If?" I asked. Even wounded, I didn't like our chances of being able to take the Eldar alive and, though I did not say it at first, it seemed too obvious an opportunity. Also, Kyriese did not strike me as the type to leave his people behind, especially considering the lengths he went to in order to rescue me from an Ork-infested compound back on Magnus Viridis.
"Do you plan on warning her too?" she said bitterly.
"No, I think the sight of an Imperial Commissar and a half-dozen armed soldiers running full-steam at her will be sufficient warning," I replied with sarcasm in order to mask my growing disdain for her. Even a wounded Eldar could run pretty fast and I wasn't certain I wanted our party made even smaller when we were still technically lost in hostile territory. The possibility of hostile Eldar was already very high and now we had to keep in mind there could be heretics waiting to succeed where their allies had failed moments ago. Unfortunately, I could no more order the assassin to stay put than I could order a mob of orks to ballroom dance. Now if our assassin ran off and got herself killed then it would at least save me from the whole 'intentionally frakked up the operation' threat looming over my head. That threat, however, I estimated to be ten-fold less than the amount of flak I'd catch if I returned to base without the assassin. I certainly wouldn't be able to lie about the issue as there were almost a half-dozen witnesses who had no reason to lie to the Inqusition at my behest. They would also be required to mention Waltz's intervention. There would be two new and eager recruits for the suicide regiment. So alas, once the assassin got it into her head that she could salvage something from this mission by bringing in a captive Eldar, there was little I could other than to try and keep up with her.
Thankfully, N'hila had enough foresight to not make our advance too obvious from afar. She led the squad back several meters so we could use another building to cover our approach. N'hila obviously took the lead, creeping to the corner of the building to peer down the street to the building housing the Eldar. "Good, she's still there," N'hila muttered. "We can approach from the east side of the building and make our way in through the back." She made the whole plan seem so simple when she phrased it like that but I knew there was a reason one rarely hears of stories about humans successfully sneaking up on Eldar. Nonetheless, I remained silent since I had no choice but to ensure that N'hila didn't get herself killed chasing down Eldar and since I couldn't do that alone, the rest of the troopers had to be involved. It was extremely tempting to just knock the foolish girl out and drag her back to base. Her reckless determination did in a way remind me of the insane stunts I had pulled off in order to prove my worth and I was beginning to understand why they gave Cain such a headache. At the very least, it gave me some insight into the decision-making behind my own recklessness and it gave me something to look forward to – parting ways and never having to deal with N'hila ever again. We cut through a few ruined buildings in order to gain an approach without being detected. However, the Eldar was hiding up on the second floor, which meant having to somehow silently ascend a narrow stairwell. Normally, I would've voiced an objection immediately but if I had even so much as whispered I would have definitely alerted the Eldar and would be subsequently blamed for ruining the operation. I had no desire to have blame laid at my feet again so if things were going to go downhill then N'hila could be the one at the receiving end.
As cautious as we were, I doubt that a half-dozen soldiers creeping up a flight of stairs was going to be quiet enough to escape an Eldar's notice. We had to ascend single-file with N'hila in the lead. I was content being a few soldiers back though I felt a bit guilty since I was basically using the troops ahead of me as a buffer. If the Eldar decided to go on the offensive, the narrow corridor virtually guaranteed the first two or three soldiers would be slaughtered before the first "what the frak" was uttered. It might buy me enough time to prepare a proper defence or at least mutter one last prayer before meeting the Emperor. At the top of the stairs, only a simple wooden door separated us from our target. If we were to have any chance of success, speed and precision would be essential.
In retrospect, warning the Eldar would have saved us a lot of pain and grief.
Out for redemption, N'hila steeled herself and lunged at the door, ready to kick it off its hinges. Just before her foot hit the door, however, it suddenly swung open and the assassin fell forward in a frantic attempt to regain her balance. The banshee was on the other side, of course, and N'hila's momentum carried her straight into the banshee's rising knee. Aishtaid then slammed the door into the assassin's head and a second kick sent N'hila back into the hallway and crashing through the stair's already-broken guardrail. I was far enough up the stairs that her flying body missed me but it did fall onto the two soldiers behind me, resulting in a cascade of tumbling bodies down the stairs. The soldier behind N'hila managed to avoid getting hit but when he brought his lasgun to bear, the banshee slammed the door, pinning the lasgun against the doorframe. The Eldar then grabbed the lasgun by the barrel and pulled the soldier through the doorway. Stunning him with a punch to the throat, she grabbed his lasgun and smashed the rifle butt into the side of face, knocking him down and seizing his weapon. Thankfully, this gave Trooper Brule and I a clean line of sight and we fired a few shots with complete disregard for the 'take her alive' objective we had been given. Despite our close range, Aishtaid managed to retreat back into her room and the only thing we hit was the door that shut behind her. We were about to give chase when a lasgun barrel protruded through one of the holes we had just left in the door and began blindly firing shots into the hall, forcing Brule and I to take cover. The gun only stopped firing when the power cell ran dry, at which point Brule rushed for the door and knocked it open with a shoulder check. There was, however, no sign of the Eldar within the room, only a lasgun that had been wedged through a hole in the door.
"Where the frak did she go?" Brule remarked as she ran to the nearby window. "There! She went out the window!" Before I could say something sensible like 'it's too risky to go alone' given that most of our team was only just recovering from being knocked senseless, Brule jumped out the window and gave chase. I couldn't exactly fault a guardsman for showing dedication and loyalty to the mission but it left me in an uncomfortable position. While I didn't want to go chasing an Eldar through a ruined city, I couldn't in good conscience abandon a soldier like that. With few viable options, I had to follow Brule out the window and join the pursuit.
I suspect that one of the reasons that Brule was so eager to give chase was because she happened to be one of the fastest soldiers in her company. That meant she was often picked to be the runner when a vox was broken, fostering a fearless mentality. Normally that would be very commendable for a soldier but at that moment it meant I had to go all-out just to keep pace with the trooper. My tiny frame and short legs were no match for the tall and limber trooper and the heat and extra load from my uniform didn't help either.
Even limping, Aishtaid could really move her arse. Brule was barely keeping pace with the Eldar and I was only managing to keep in the pursuit because Brule had enough foresight to guess where the Eldar was going. Occasionally, she snapped off a few shots at the Eldar but running made for wildly inaccurate fire and the Eldar wasn't dissuaded by it. The empty city streets made keeping the Eldar in sight a bit easier but she did keep ducking into side alleys, after which Brule would relay the new directions to me. Where Aishtaid was running to I had no idea and twice I could have sworn we had gone in a circle and passed the same overturned truck. I figured the Eldar was just trying to lose us before returning to Kael but she wasn't having much luck shaking Brule.
"Alley, left!" Brule's voice shouted through my comm-bead. Fortunately I wasn't too far behind and saw the Valhallan disappearing into an alleyway between two crumbling buildings. The alleyway was wide but branched off into numerous side passages and had it not been for Brule's constant updates I would have taken a wrong turn. I kept following her instructions as best I could until suddenly her next set of directions was abruptly cut-off with an unsettlingly loud clang. Fearing the worst, I hurried along and found the trooper sprawled across the alley floor. With a slightly bent garbage can lid lying on the ground next to a number of garbage bins, it was easy to piece together what had transpired.
"You okay Brule?" I asked as I knelt by her side.
It took a few seconds for the trooper's brain to restart but she gradually groaned and readjusted her gasmask, which had been left skewed by the impact. "Just my pride…" she muttered. Her voice was as pained as one would expect from a person who went from full-sprint to ass-over-tea kettle in half a second. Since the banshee was nowhere to be seen, I concluded there was no point in continuing the pursuit. There were too many routes she could have taken and Brule was too busy sprawled on the ground to know which way the Eldar took. I helped the trooper back to her feet and was about to vox the rest of the squad when I heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching.
"Someone's coming," I said as I pulled Brule behind the lidless garbage bin. It was coming from ahead of us, which was the wrong direction for it to be the rest of our squad. Judging from the noise, several people were coming and approaching fast. There wasn't enough time to run, not with Brule still partially dazed from the previous hit and all the running had caught up to me and my legs felt like lead weights. Brule and I readied our weapons and prayed that the element of surprise would be enough to see us through the next two minutes. One can imagine my surprise and relief when we discovered who it was.
"Damnation! Did you see which way he went?" It was Commissar Cain at the head of a half-squad of troopers. I knew they had run off in pursuit of one of the remaining assailants but I had not expected to run into them so soon.
"Cain?" I called out in surprise as I stepped out into the open.
"Commissar Abel?" he replied, equally surprised. "What are you doing out here?"
"Chasing Eldar," I explained. "I don't suppose you saw one, did you? It had a limp; it would have been hard to miss." Unfortunately, Cain shook his head and asked if Brule or I had seen the man he had been pursuing, who would also have been hard to miss. Even a one-eyed person would notice a man fleeing through an alleyway and since I hadn't seen any sign of such an occurrence, it was clear that Cain had also lost his quarry.
Suffice to say, Cain was understandably confused by it. "This doesn't make any sense. We were right on his tail. He couldn't have just vanished that quickly." I wish I could say the same for our Eldar quarry but they actually were quite capable of disappearing in a heartbeat. If Kael had any more of his holofield projectors lying around, the Eldar could have slipped into hiding that would look and feel like a solid brick wall to us. While we were all catching our breath, the remainder of the squad finally caught up with us.
"What are we all just standing around here?" N'hila asked upon her arrival.
"We lost them," Cain answered.
"Just frakking brilliant!" N'hila exclaimed with a frustrated sigh, still obviously in 'Abel' mode. Cain and I simply ignored her as I tried to figure out what I would say to the Inquisitors, while Cain seemed concerned with something entirely different. He was glancing about as though something about our surroundings was bothering; as though there was something wrong that he couldn't put its finger.
"Are you all right Sergeant Penlan?" Cain asked when he noticed the limping non-com who had been lagging behind the rest of her squad.
"Honestly Commissar, this is really starting to sting a bit," she said with a tone that trying to hide the pain from each step. I had to admit I was impressed she had managed to run so far on an injured leg with hardly a complaint. That level of dedication wasn't too uncommon in the 597th, however, as I once recalled a private returning to base after a prolonged winter-time skirmish with a sucking chest wound and his only remark was that it made it slightly easier to breath. "If it's all the same, I think I'm going to just have a seat for a moment," she said with another groan. Given her condition neither Cain nor I was going to object to a few minutes of reprieve. The sergeant took a seat on a small garbage bin and pulled her injured leg up and rested it on her knee. "Doc's going to make me stay off this for a few days," she grumbled. The garbage bin, unfortunately, was not designed to hold the weight of a Valhallan soldier and when she shifted her weight, one side of the bin suddenly crumpled in. This knocked the sergeant forward and left. Normally a person would fix that by slamming a foot down to regain balance but Penlan's left foot was the one currently propped up on her right knee. Instead, she quickly grabbed onto the nearest, most solid object she could find for support, which happened to be an iron beam supporting a small overhang.
Or at least, the beam looked to be the most solid object nearby. As it turned out, the beam was about as structurally sound as the garbage bin the trooper was sitting on. When Penlan threw her weight into the beam, it snapped faster than a twig in a power claw and both Penlan and iron beam went crashing towards the ground. However, since the beam was taller than the alley was wide, it hit the opposite wall first, punching a hole through the already heavily-damaged wall. That had the minor side-effect of causing an entire section of wall to come crumbling down. Normally such reckless property damage would be frowned upon but if anything Penlan had simply sped up the inevitable demolition process.
However, backlash from irate property owners or Administratum officials was the further thing from our minds as the destroyed section of wall had revealed a chamber wherein stood the man that Cain had been chasing around the city. Unfortunately, the man was not alone as he stood alongside several others, all of whom were armed. For a brief second, which felt like it had been stretched across the planet, the two parties just stared at each other in dumbfounded silence.
"Oh shi-" cursed one of the heretics as they tried to bring their weapons to bear. The Valhallans, however, were much faster on the draw. Volleys of lasgun fire cut across the room, each soldier having picked a target and focused their fire until everyone in the room, save one, was dead. That one, of course, was the man that Cain had been chasing and because he was unarmed he had fortunately or unfortunately (time in our hands would alter that balance) made himself a low priority target. A single shot through the leg was sufficient to incapacitate the man who was now on the floor, groaning and cursing in pain.
"Golden Throne Jinxie, could you give us a bit more warning next time?" one of the troopers asked rhetorically after everyone let out a collective sigh of relief.
"Check the area, make sure there aren't any others," Cain instructed and several troopers headed further into the building. He motioned for the squad's medic to follow as he walked over to the wounded heretic. I was a bit puzzled at first as to the purpose of the medic since the injury wasn't life-threatening but I stood back and simply watched. "Emergency breather," Cain requested of the medic. An emergency breather was basically a small gasmask with an oxygen tank designed to treat soldiers who may have had their gasmasks damaged for one reason or another. I had quickly deduced Cain's plans and I had to suppress a small chuckle. After binding the heretic's hands, the medic and I hoisted the man up and set him down on a nearby table that had managed to survive the gunfire. For a brief moment, Cain simply stood before the heretic. It was unfortunate that his gasmask meant he couldn't use one of his effective threatening glares but I think the faceless, emotionless façade worked just as effectively. "I suspect you already know who I am and I don't give a damn who you are so I won't waste time with introductions," he began, folding his hands behind his back. "Answer my questions and I will ensure that you are given a quick and painless death. If not, I promise you that every moment left in your rapidly shortening life will be agonizing. Now tell me - who sent you?"
Granted, in the choice between death and more death, I would be prone to giving my future executioners a hard time too. That, however, did not change the fact that we were all quite annoyed when the heretic proved uncooperative…at first. "The void with you! I ain't telling you nothing!" he snapped back. I'm sure he would have spat in the commissar's face too if that were possible. "You Emperor-suckling grox can go frak yourself."
"Very well, do not say I didn't warn you," Cain said with remarkable patience. He prompted grabbed the heretic by the gasmask and tore it off, casting it aside as the heretic began to cough on the toxic air. "Trooper, how long can a man survive in this atmosphere without a breather?"
"Five minutes of exposure results in permanent lung scarring, Commissar," the medic answered with medical-grade precision. I expect in preparation for our mission all of the regiment's medics were briefed on the effects of Erebus' atmosphere. "After eight minutes, surgical intervention will be required and after ten he will be drowning in his own blood."
"Well that sounds like a rather unpleasant way to spend the last minutes of your life," Cain commented as calmly as one would remark about a warm summer day. The heretic was now coughing quite badly as each breath drew in more and more toxic fumes, hopefully burning his throat all the way down. "Care to rethink your answer?" Cain asked, holding the emergency breather over the heretic's mouth, providing a few fleeting moments of relief. The heretic, remaining defiant, said no. Actually, what he said was something quite vulgar and blasphemous but 'no' was the basis of his response. "A pity," Cain sighed. "Troopers, this man is looking a bit pale. I think he needs a bit of fresh air."
Inside the room, the outside atmosphere was slightly displaced by the airflow from nearby vents so the medic and I picked up the heretic and hauled him out to the alley where he could have the atmosphere in all its splendour. After about a minute of writhing on the ground, burning from the inside-out, the heretic gasped something that sounded vaguely like 'I'll talk.' Amazing how quickly loyalties, however misguided, dissolved when oxygen was removed from the equation.
Cain promptly placed the emergency breather back over his mouth and patiently waited for the heretic to get a few breaths in so his answer would have something to carry it. "Give me a name," Cain demanded.
"Mer…Merari," the heretic sputtered. Now there was a name that none of us wanted to hear and I doubt the Inquisitors would be any happier with it. Thus far, the Inquisitors' investigation had turned the name up repeatedly but little more could be said of it. As Inquisitor Hakim said, as far as anyone could tell, the man did not exist. He had originally thought it an Eldar alias but I was growing doubtful of that considering the supposed alias tried to kill us and Kael.
"That doesn't tell us much, does it?" Cain asked N'hila.
"It's next to useless," she replied, sounding strangely distracted. It was as though the interrogation mattered little to her, which was odd considering the lengths we went through for it. Perhaps she was just disappointed by the dead-end answer.
"We're going to need more than that," Cain said as he pulled the breather off in order to give the heretic a few moments to get his answers straight. After about a minute the guy started coughing up blood, which Cain took as a sign that he might be more willing to discuss things further. Unfortunately, the fumes did have the unforeseen side-effect of weakening his voice and by that point it was barely above a hoarse whisper. The heretic said something but Cain had to lean in just to hear and the rest of us were left waiting on the Commissar. Whatever the answer was, however, it didn't seem to satisfy Cain as he simply let out a disappointed sigh and tossed the breather back to the medic.
"What'd he say?" N'hila asked though she still sounded uninterested in the entire conversation.
"He said 'may my flesh rot and give life anew,'" Cain repeated with restrained contempt.
"What an odd thing to say," I remarked as the words meant nothing to me. Cain and N'hila, however, clearly knew something that had gone right over my head.
"It's a common saying for followers of Nurgle, one of the Dark Gods," Cain explained. As a young commissar I still didn't know much about the Dark Gods other than telltale signs of their followers. My lessons at the schola said that followers of Nurgle were usually hideously bloated and disfigured, which I thought would have made them easier to spot. Turned out education for commissars wasn't much better in terms of factual accuracy as education for the Guard. "Do you think the Inquisitors will want to interrogate him further?"
"He's a lackey at best," N'hila responded dismissively. "If he had any significance, the toxic atmosphere wouldn't be killing him." And so we left the man on the ground, trying to carry on our conversation while he coughed himself to death in the background. He made a lot of ruckus for a man whose lungs were slowly dissolving.
"What's our next move then?" Cain asked.
"Report back to the Inquisitors. There is…something I need to ask him," N'hila answered. I had the strangest suspicion that N'hila was holding something back but I obviously had no intention of saying anything. I was in no position to demand anything from her (beg, perhaps, but not demand). Fortunately, I did not need to wait too long to find out what it was.
As one would expect, I was not looking forward to the debriefing with the Inquisitors. As I followed Cain and N'hila back to the meeting room, I silently prayed to the Emperor for some sort of intervention and, for a brief moment, I prayed that Cain would come to my rescue again. I figured that if anybody in the immediate vicinity could save me, it'd be Cain. N'hila had returned to her normal, quiet self and I at least had a few moments to slip out of that Valhallan portable sauna and back into my greatcoat.
"There better be a damn good reason why there's not an Eldar being dragged in here in shackles." Unsurprisingly, Inquisitor Hakim was a bit unhappy when he saw the three of us returning without the seer in tow. I had hoped that the subject of my impending execution would have come up a little bit later but that was like showing up to morning parade in your nightie and hoping the drill sergeant wouldn't notice. Not likely to happen and not likely to happen very quickly. Inquisitor Vail was also present but she sat silently at the far end of the conference table. While I imagined she was likewise disappointed at our failure, she did not appear surprised by it. "What happened N'hila? You assured me you would be able to take him down. Was I mistaken to entrust you with that crucial task?"
I remained as straight-faced as I could despite the fact that I was about to thrown headlong under the bus without so much as a 'howdy do or have a nice day.' Hakim's patience with me was probably already shorter than an Ork's temper so I was expecting his fury would be carried out swiftly and, if I was lucky, painlessly. A lesser person might have tried to run or make excuses but I fully intended to own up to my actions. It was the only honourable thing that I could still do.
"I blew my cover," N'hila answered. It took every ounce of will power not to be visibly taken back by her answer but I remained quiet and at attention. I was still staring into a bus' headlights but for a brief moment it appeared to have stopped just inches from my head.
"You blew your cover?" Hakim exclaimed incredulously. "Of all the…that's the one thing you're expected to be able to handle! The one thing you're supposed to be among the best at! Are you telling me that this…impersonating this two-bit simpleton of a commissar was too difficult for you?" Were he not an Inquisitor, I likely would have thumped him over the head with my shock maul for such remarks but not wanting to tempt fate any further, I remained silent. For whatever reason, N'hila was taking the blame for me and I had no intention of stepping into the line of fire that was developing before me. Now despite my previous decision to 'own up to my actions,' my sense of honour was trampled by an overwhelming sense of self-preservation. As Cain wasn't willing to resume responsibility for the regiment's paperwork, he wasn't going to oust me. And Hakim was too proud to ask any of the accompanying soldiers what happened so there was no threat from that either. So long as I didn't give reason for N'hila to recant her story, I was in the clear. I made a mental note to find a quiet,private place and offer N'hila my first, second and third-born child. She did not strike me as the type to just let a grudge go without reason.
"There were…subtleties in her interactions with Kyriese that I could not have predicted," N'hila offered as explanation to the Inquisitor.
Hakim finally seemed to have calmed down from his ranting, gently prodding at his forehead as though all his frustration focused at that point. "That is twice you've disappointed me N'hila," Hakim said grimly. "Tell me that all these years guiding and teaching you have not been for naught. Tell me that I have wasted precious time and resources of the Inquisition training a protégé who cannot even pose as a commissar for ten goddamn minutes!"
For a moment, it seemed like N'hila was going to remain silent and simply take the abuse. That did fit her subdued nature but the Inquisitor seemed to be one of the very few people that could coax more than a few sparse words from her and she soon revealed that she wasn't quite finished with the debriefing. "Valdron," she said abruptly.
"Come again?"
"We were attacked by Choas worshippers andValdron was amongst them. Commissar Cain interrogated him," N'hila calmly and bluntly stated.
"Wait a second," Vail suddenly interrupted, leaning forward in her seat and staring at Hakim inquisitively. "Wasn't Valdron one of your men? He was the chubby one with the flat nose and bad breath."
For a moment, Hakim looked as though the rockrete floor underneath him had suddenly cracked open. As if he was trying to assess the direction of the next assault. "Are…are you certain it was him?" he stammered.
"It was," Cain stepped in as confirmation. "And I suspect he was able to find us by tracking N'hila's comm-bead transponder."
"It seems you have a rather serious security breach among your ranks Inquisitor," Vail said with only a mild hint of veiled amusement. It was as if she enjoyed watching Hakim's carefully controlled world slowly come crumbling down around him. Having a leak on your team was bad enough to cause others to question your competence but a spy working for the Ruinous powers spoke very poorly of the Inquisitor. I highly suspect that the more zealous Inquisitors wouldn't wait long before declaring him tainted as well.
His stammering continued, "This…this is impossible," Hakim blurted. "My men would not…they would never-". Oh how quickly the tables had turn on our poor inquisitor. I was thinking that having a sideline seat to this pig roast was well worth the price of admission. But as suddenly as the fun began, we were tossed from the room.
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention N'hila," Vail interrupted calmly. "If there is nothing else, then you three are dismissed. Hakim and I have a few things we need to discuss…in private." The once proud and stoic Inquisitor Hakim suddenly looked a few shades paler as the three of us headed out of the room. And as much as I would have loved to have been able to watch the impending fireworks I was leaving the room with my life. I viewed that as a definite victory and I was not going to risk my luck further.
"N'hila," I called out as the assassin strode past me.
"We're even," she said plainly without even looking back. It shouldn't have come as a surprise that she knew exactly what I wanted to ask but it actually took me a moment to realize what she had meant. When the realization hit, I felt like a complete idiot; it was the rocket. Despite the fact that I was simply saving my own arse, I had inadvertently saved her life too. Granted, saving her life had never crossed my mind beyond its necessity. Had the rocket hit her, the blast would have killed everyone in close proximity, myself included, so saving her was the only way to ensure my own survival. As callous as it may sound, if I could have saved my life by throwing N'hila into the rocket, I would have done so without hesitation. Nonetheless, some over-excited sense of honour within her was compelled to settle the debt by saving my life, in this case by taking the blame for the failed mission. I wasn't going to argue, and I couldn't think of anything else to say other than a rather clumsy 'thanks,' which I'm certain she ignored.
"So…what do you think is going to happen to Inquisitor Hakim now?" I asked, turning to Commissar Cain.
"Valdron was one of Hakim's hired guns. It wasn't as though he was a top lieutenant or privy to sensitive information," Cain answered. "The security breach looks bad but aside from a good deal of embarrassment and some much-needed humility, Hakim should be fine in the long run. The traitor, however, does raise some troubling concerns."
"Well it couldn't have been a coincidence that a heretic got hired by an Inquisitor who happens to investigating a planet steeped in Chaos worshippers," I replied, having successfully followed Cain's line of thought. His agreeing nod felt strangely vindicating, like a tutor affirming a pupil's correct answer. I tried not to let it go to my head. "The Eldar aren't the only ones capable of seeing into the future, are they?"
"Prophecy is not a common skill among psykers,it is a tool used by even the Inquisition. A sorcerer favoured by the dark gods would have the necessary power to glimpse into the future as well as obscure it from others," Cain continued, sounding for a brief moment as worried about the notion as I was. He paused for a moment, perhaps contemplating the total implications of his words or maybe just trying to be dramatic, before looking to me again. "I suggest you get some rest Commissar. I suspect that the game has just become a great deal more complicated…and the stakes even higher than we could imagine."
"Lovely," I said with a sigh. For a while, I wished I could have gone back to just having to worry about Eldar. And if I had known what was to come, I might have marched right back into that briefing room and got myself executed. It would have spared me a lot of pain, grief, and sorrow.