The trek away from the town was filled with noise- not the gunfire of pursuing Greenskins, no- but the sound of secondary explosions. The fireball had ignited countless other important facilities, and would likely continue to burn for quite some time. Finally, after a few hours, I decided we were far enough away, and it was time to deal with the mess I'd gotten myself into. As I hopped out of the Buggy, I almost took a step back. The suffering was palpable. And oh, how I hated how good it made me feel, like a juicy grox steak with mashed tubers and a nice amasec to go with it. Thoughts of food made me realize that most of the suffering emanated from these poor wretches' stomachs; it figured that the Orks wouldn't care to feed their slaves. And damned as I was, as good as their suffering made me feel, I rejected it. I had a duty to these loyal subjects of the God-Emperor, and if I hoped to cling to the remnants of my humanity I would fulfill it.
"Jurgen? Get the food out."
"At once, sir." The other soldiers began to do so as well, following Jurgen's example, as a few civilians came closer to me. I could feel their ailments, their pain. But it was hope, fragile yet growing, that I saw in their eyes.
"One of the soldiers said…" one of them began. I let out a sigh. I didn't need to be a Warp abomination that fed on emotions to know what they were asking.
"Give me your hand," I replied, a soft smile plastered on my face. I could only hope that there weren't any psykers beyond Illric anywhere nearby. I began using my taint to heal the loyal servants of the God-Emperor, praying to Him on Terra to keep their souls pure(1). The line continued to form. Several were offering prayers to the God-Emperor for my help, which was touching, I will admit. After I wolfed down the pain of a broken arm, I found myself relieved that the line of injured was gone. Jurgen and the others were dishing up the food, which the refugees took to eating with great delight.
"Do you want some?" Jurgen asked, holding a ration pack out to me.
"I'll pass. The God-Emperor sustains me." I couldn't exactly say that their pain fed me, so I prayed that He on Terra wouldn't smite me for that little lie. The aquila was cool to the touch, which either meant it wasn't working or the God-Emperor approved of my actions. Since I wasn't ripping out the souls of everyone nearby, I assumed it was the latter option. I still joined the group to mingle. Tayber was telling the civilians about how I'd helped save him.
"Don't forget Jurgen, please," I requested.
"I didn't, Commissar," Tayber promised me.
"Good."
"I was also telling them that you had healed my men, and how you converted a Xeno to the numbers of the Faithful."
"Thank you… that should help Illric get into their trust more easily," I replied, trying to keep an even face. Through the com-bead, I could hear Illric laughing hysterically.
"Just A Xeno?! Try half the damn species that said Xenos hailed from(2)!" he cackled. Thankfully, Tayber had pulled his combead out, so that wasn't heard, thereby keeping my fraudulent reputation from going even higher. I could still see his shoulders shaking with mirth as he entered the camp. Many of the civilians had never set eyes on an Eldar, so they were very curious.
"Right then," I stated, turning my attention away from the Eldar in the room, "What skills do the civilians have?" I asked Tayber. Aside from that promised tech-priest, I wasn't too hopeful in the use of any of the attached civilians as anything other than a drain on our resources. Still, I've always taken whatever slim chance I could rather than lay down and die, coward that I was.
"I'll ask around," Tayber promised, springing into action. "I'll see if there are any sandsiders(3) among the bunch. Anything else?"
"Any other PDF or military-trained forces… even hunters, if you have to. We can't keep the entire force secure with twelve people who know how to use a lasgun. And also someone who knows how to keep the Ork vehicles in actual running shape- can the tech-priest you promised do that?."
"That would require a miracle from the Omnissiah, but He has provided such miracles before." A woman came up from behind Tayber. She was strikingly fair. From what I could tell, she only had a single mechadendrite attached to her, near the base of her spine(4). "Felicia Tayber, enginseer. You've already met my brother."
I raised an eyebrow at him. His insistence upon liberating the enslaved population made much more sense now, not that I could blame him. Still, it would be best to gently remind him to be professional and not put his sister's welfare above anyone else's… like mine. "You didn't mention a sister."
"You never asked," he said, scratching the back of his flushed neck. Again, I didn't need to be able to taste his emotions to tell he was embarrassed; good, then my message had been received. Recovering his composure, Tayber went on. "But we have a cogboy, right?"
"Cog-girl," his sister corrected. "I'll get to work on the engines of the damn things. No suspension, but I think I can work with that. Got any tools?"
"Ask Jurgen," I replied, pointing her at said man, who just waved. "We need to be ready to move out at dawn. One of the Greenskins ran off, so he may be getting reinforcements."
Her eyes darted side to side rapidly for a moment, which I would later learn was a sign of her using her cerebral augments, in this case to tell time. "Six hours… I'll see what I can do," she promised, heading out. I turned to the sergeant.
"Not the typical tech-priest," I mused idly, though with relief that she hadn't blathered on about sacred oils or incense in spite of such being rather sparse in a desert. Honestly, in my experience most cogboys had no sense.
Tayber sighed, but I could see the fondness he held for his sister in the gesture. "She never was. She was always tinkering, and even when young, she'd visit the shrines, and meditate. She also talked to herself a lot… well, she says she's talking to Maggy(5)".
"Maggy?" I asked, my palms tingling. It would be just my luck if our sole tech-priest was either a Heretek talking to unseen daemons, or a complete and utter nutter.
"Her imaginary friend," Tayber replied, shrugging. "Says his name is Maggy, and he's a friendly black dragon the size of a house feline that only she can see. He helps her get the Machine Spirits in order."
"And this doesn't strike you as odd?" I mused inquiringly.
Now came further embarrassment but also stubborn protectiveness, making me glad I was being so casual in my questioning. "Well, the priests say she just has an overactive imagination, and haven't found any taint on her, so she's not a heretic. She serves the Omnissiah well enough- better than well, from what I've heard. The problem is that she's never really… gotten the religious side down. She's happy where she is…"
"We all serve The Emperor in our own special way," I replied to him, as I moved closer to her. I stretched out into the Warp, and found… nothing. No daemons… but a void. I could see Jurgen… and oh boy, I could see what he was like. He was a black hole. She was just… blackened. Not enough to give off an aura of unsettledness, but enough to be sure this wasn't one of my kind peeking around in her head(6). She looked up at me, and waved with a chipper smile.
"So you're Ciaphas Cain, right?" she asked.
"Yep, that's me," I said automatically, before something occurred to me. "Though I don't know if I gave you my name."
"Your chainsword did," she replied, going over the engine, leaving me to wonder what the machine spirit of my cherished weapon thought about me. Within seconds she let out an expression of mild triumph. "Ah, here's the problem…"
"It looks like it's held together with tape," I mused. Honestly from what I could see of the Orkish 'engine', even that was being generous.
"Ork vehicles usually are, but I think I can get this one's machine-spirit to hold itself together…" she paused. "Okay… that could work." She then pulled out a hammer, and rubbed it on the metal.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"The machine spirit wanted a massage in this area," Felecia replied.
"Uh huh," I answered, not really sure what else to say. Cogboys…. And cog-girls too I supposed; all of them barking mad. "So… Maggy?"
"He's not a Warp being, I can assure you. He's actually very fond of the God-Emperor," she assured me. "If anything, he's a shard of the Omnissiah(7)'s will."
"I see… but I am a Commissar… I can't be too careful." Oh yet another hypocritical statement from the bundled mess of self-interest that was whatever passed as Ciaphas Cain; the literal Daemon Prince worrying over a tech-priestess' imaginary friend.
Felecia nodded. "Don't worry about me," she promised. I should have known at that moment that she'd be trouble in some way or other.
It was a few hours later. The refugees had gotten their sleep, and had awoken with prayers of gratitude to the God-Emperor for their salvation, and, to my barely disguised horror, I heard 'Saint Cain'.
"Saint, huh?" Illric joked, elbowing me. "Do you feel holy yet, Ciaphas?" His grin was all I needed to know how he felt about that. Damned snarky Xeno.
"I'm not sure I could handle the God-Emperor's blessing," I admitted to him.
"Well, you never know until you try," he told me. I found Sergeant Tayber sitting on an opened crate of ration bars, with the civilians chewing away at them with far more enthusiasm than I could imagine anyone eating those damn things.
"So, who do we have besides your sister?" I inquired.
"I found a few more who know how to carry a gun. Three former PDF, five tribunes, and a dozen or so who play with guns 'as a hobby'. At least half of those are gangers," he spat the last word out. He might be disgruntled at accepting gangers, but the Hive-boy in me was delighted at the news.
"Good. They know how to fight dirty. We'll need that."
"There is also one of the quill-pushers(8) here," he said, slightly frustrated. He pointed to a man in Administratum clothes, tattered as they were. The man walked over, and to my joy, there wasn't the usual sign of arrogance that members of that particular branch had in his eyes.
"Scrivner Norbert(9)," he said, extending his hand in a friendly manner.
"Commissar Cain," I replied, taking his hand and shaking it, leading with a joke to break the ice and see if he was as humorless as most of his kind was. "I hope that I don't have to sign a permit for these vehicles."
Norbert snorted. "No, and I've graciously put a pass on filling out the paperwork for distributing the rations among the populace," he added, a humorous smile on his face. God-Emperor be praised, an actual Human being behind the ink-splattered robes! Will wonders never cease?
"Truly, a rarity among the Administratum," I marveled.
"I didn't believe he was part of that group until I got a closer look at his robes, since he was being so helpful," Tayber snarked.
"A pity that my superiors seem to think that my enthusiasm to help means that I will cause them issues. I imagine that it will fill the rest of my life- dealing with bosses that think being anything but obstructive is nearly heresy," he said, in a slightly resigned tone, but one that didn't sound too upset(10). "Have you discussed organizing the squads?" He asked Tayber.
"Not yet- I think that the members of the PDF should spend our time helping get the others who know about guns up to snuff, and then we move on to training the civvies on how to shoot. We should have enough lasguns, and the sun is hot enough to charge them easily(11)."
I nodded. "That's good. We shouldn't just be fighting the orks with their own tech. What about other parts of logistics?"
Norbert had already prepared that, and handed me a list. "Even if the Ork belief thing works, I'd give only two hundred and fifty kilometers, at best, before problems arise. As for food and water? Two to three days, tops. We'll have to ration."
"You're our supply officer now, and to help stretch the food, I'll go without," I decided. Illric caught my eyes, and nodded subtly.
"Are you sure?" Tayber whispered.
"Your faith in the God-Emperor is enough for me," I replied, trying to calm his fears. In retrospect, that was probably the single worst excuse I could give. Tayber gave me a salute, and headed off to inform the men. His sister, meanwhile, came back to us, leaning on her mechadendrite as she sat down.
"The trucks are ready," she replied. "I've done what I can for 'em, and we should be ready to go whenever you give the word. And whenever you're not praying away our injuries, we have someone who can pass for a medicae- Ariott."
"Pass for one?" I asked.
"He's a vet," Felicia admitted. "But he's able to handle human bodies… no word on Xenos bodies, though."
"Then I shall try my best to not get injured," Illric declared, giving a deep bow.
"You do that," Felicia stated. "Though I hope you don't mind me asking questions on how your las-rifle works."
"Isn't that Tech-Heresy?" her brother asked, with a concerned look at me. Even a PDF Trooper knew better than to even hint at a whisper of heresy of any sort within earshot of a Commissar. Fortunately, even before my damnation, I like to think I was a far more understanding sort than that, as soft-touches who didn't take any chance they could to crack down on the troops were far less likely to die heroically far behind friendly lines.
"Maggy says it's fine, and he's always been better at the doctrines than me," she replied, shrugging. Illric had a look of confusion on his face, as if he was trying to remember something(12). "And if it was… well… I'll atone after we get to safety."
"Fair enough," I replied. As a walking personification of heresy, it wasn't my place to complain about doctrine. Besides, I could appreciate the practicality she was showing. "So are there any places that we can resupply within those 250 kilometers?"
"Two, in fact," Tayber replied. "One's well off the beaten path, while the other is on the main road." I thought for a bit.
"Would the Orks have gotten to them?" I asked, curious for his insights. After all, before crashing on this planet I'd never even seen an Ork, while he'd been fighting and surviving against them for Emperor knows how long.
"Maybe the main one," Tayber guessed. "The other one is… really, really off the beaten path. It's almost impossible to reach in large numbers." Meaning a pain in the backside with our train of civilians and other hangers-on, but still a better chance than just hoping that the greenies hadn't found the one off of the main road.
"Then we should probably look there first… but what about water?"
"There are porous rocks near the mountains. If we're lucky, the rain will have pushed up the aquifer. It's three hundred meters under the sand, however, so we can't really drill for it. Not with what we have. But what's the goal here? Just move around?"
"No. This is our goal." I pulled open the map, and zoomed in on the front lines. "We're getting to Imperial territory." I said it with certainty, like I'd said that the sky of Terra was full of smog or that Valhalla was cold. The shock on the others' faces (Save Jurgen) was palpable. "We take the mountain trail. Then, we cross the ocean plain. By then, we'll have likely reached the front lines."
"And the Ork army?" Tayber asked, eyes still wide in disbelief but recovered enough to be snarky. "That's a minor detail you seemed to have left out."
"We'll cross that bridge when we get there, and get resupplied," I told him. "Until then, we need to try to remain out of their reach." With that, we dismissed ourselves. I, for reasons I could not understand, decided to take a quick walk around this ad-hoc evacuation. Most of the civilians that weren't useful in a fight were in the middle trucks, so as to give them the most protection possible. Those that could hold a gun were spread out in small groups, with at least one lasgun per group. Some of the more rough types- probably some gangers- had, instead of taking up stubbers or bolters, slid into the guns on the vehicles. I approved of this- not only would that mean they were less likely to shoot at us, but they also had more firepower to throw at the Orks. The medicae was quite happy with my healing of his potential patients, so he was helping with some heavy lifting at the moment. Illric was pacing above the vehicles, gracefully hopping from engine to engine in a bizarre patrol that no human could accomplish. Satisfied with how we were set, I went back to the lead vehicle (Much to my hidden distaste), and slid into the passenger seat. Jurgen turned the ignition on, and we began the trek. I could hear the other vehicles following suit. A convoy of barely one hundred souls, one black hole in the warp, an Eldar, and a Daemon Prince, hundreds of miles behind Ork lines. A 99% chance of death versus a certain death. It was a decision that was both easy and hard to make… and one I'd keep making over, and over, and over again.
From the Book of Cain, Chapter Three (13)
Thus did the Prophet speak: "Give unto others who need more than thyself. For does not the God-Emperor provide all thou needs? For it is not by food nor water that you are sustained most, but by the faith thou showest in the Most Holy Emperor." Having thus spoken, the Prophet disdained food to eat or water to drink, giving it unto those who were in most need. For his faith alone sustained him, and with his faith thus did that of the Prophet's flock grow also. In this manner the Prophet went with neither food nor water for many days in the desert, and his faith shone brightly.
1: As a precaution, after Cain's identity was discovered, members of the Ordo Malleus were dispatched, along with the Ordos Hereticus. No lasting taint was discovered.
2: It is believed that at least half of the Craftworlds defected to the Imperium within the first year of the Path of Humility, as well as hundreds, if not thousands, of Eldar from other Craftworlds. When counting the Exodites (All of whom have been declared to be under the Imperium's protection), and discounting the Dark Eldar, approximately 70% of the Eldar in the Galaxy followed the Path of Humility within the first year. By the time of writing, the number of Eldar aligned with the Imperium of Man is reaching 95% of the total non-Dark Eldar in the galaxy.
3: A common term for desert nomads, who know how to gather food in such an inhospitable climate.
4: Cain assures me that he only knows this from casual conversation and observation of her using it as a stool. Sure, Ciaphas.
5: LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS!
6: No no no no no no no no stop stop stop this is above my paygrade no no no!
7: Can't argue with that… damn her and damn her meteoric rise through the Mechanicus. ONE visit to the Noctis Labyrinth was more than enough!
8: A slightly derogatory term for the Adeptus Administratum. They are always cheerful and willing to help when I pull out the Inquisitorial rosette, though.
9: As of the time of this writing, Lord Commander Robute Guilliman has recently appointed Norbert as head of the Adeptus Administratum, after learning of his ability to handle logistics, even in impossible situations.
10: As someone who got to watch the execution of many of that type (specifically by being torn apart by a very enraged Primarch), I do think that it was more than likely he wasn't so happily resigned to that fate. No one is.
11: As much as many dismiss the humble lasgun as a 'flashlight', their ability to be recharged by the sun, or even a campfire, has proven invaluable for many who are cut off from any logistical supply, as was the case on Perlia. In fact, it has been proven that Cain's presence without the amulet of The Emperor is capable of charging lasguns. The bursts are usually more powerful, and tend to be purple.
12: Eldar mythology and history mentioned the C'Tan, and had several names for them. The name that Felecia is using is similar to one of them.
13: The Cainite Cult, started upon Perlia, is at this time a rapidly growing and recognized part of the greater Imperial Creed by the Ecclesiarchy. There is at least one such organized cult upon each and every world that Cain has been on, with Perlia and Slawkenberg vying for the position of central world of the Cainite Cult; Slawkenberg reasons that it was upon their soil that Cain performed his first 'miracle' and ascended to a 'Living Saint', while Perlia boasts that it was upon their planet that Cain first become known as a Saint with followers. Almost all Oathsworn Eldar Craftworlds and outposts also contain Cainite shrines, as do many of the worlds whose Guardsmen have served alongside Cain. Again, the fact that a Daemon Prince is so venerated by those loyal to the God-Emperor, even among those fully aware of Ciaphas' true nature, seems like some sort of cosmic joke.