Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘If you insist,’ Vekkman said, and strode through the airlock, while Amberley fell in next to me.

‘Oh, I do,’ she said, before lowering her voice. ‘If he thinks I’m turning my back on him for a second, he’s got another think coming.’

‘We’ll watch it for you,’ I promised, while Rakel scuttled up the ramp, eyeing Jurgen with even more evident distaste than most people did.159 Pelton, Mott and Zemelda followed, the tech-priest having boarded several minutes before in the wake of the laden servitors, leaving Amberley, Jurgen and me to bring up the rear.

‘They’ll be having a few words with their sergeant,’ Jurgen remarked as we turned towards the boarding ramp. The troopers who’d been guarding the personnel entrance were double timing it towards the massive cargo lifter, Defroy urging them on as its engines began to fire up, deafening everyone in the vicinity.

I nodded. ‘Must be rookies,’ I said, or, rather, bellowed in his general direction. Normally a group of soldiers running fall into a natural rhythm, in sync with one another, but these were all over the place, arms and legs windmilling as they lurched across the floor. I’d never seen anything so ill-coordinated outside a boot camp, and seldom then; even the irregulars I’d fought with on occasion had managed to show more martial aptitude.

‘If that’s the best of what’s left defending the upper levels, then the Emperor help us all,’ Amberley said, as the hatch thunked closed behind us, cutting off the noise from outside and sealing us in with Jurgen’s halitosis.

I nodded soberly. ‘Let’s hope he’s not too busy, then,’ I said, as the engines began to vibrate the deck plates and the gig rose incrementally into the air, eliciting a faint – and hastily suppressed – groan from my aide. ‘Because I think we’re going to need all the help we can get.’

Twenty-one

I lost no time in settling myself into one of the excessively padded seats in the gig’s passenger compartment which, as I’d expected, had been fitted out with as much of an eye to comfort and the ostentation expected of an aristocrat as to utility. The floor was carpeted with a deep, springy pile, which I suspected would never be the same after the passage of Jurgen’s boots across it, and the walls panelled in some glossy wood with a distinctive close grain which I immediately failed to identify. Cabinets of the same material, containing refreshments and all the other small necessities of life,160 were scattered about the place, and small tables were strewn between the seats.

From habit I seated myself as close to the door leading to the flight deck as possible, although I was sure Pontius would have no need of my intervention in a crisis, only realising as I fastened the crash harness that this had put me in the chair next to Vekkman.

‘I’d get strapped in if I were you,’ I said. ‘This is liable to get rough.’

‘Ship’s gig Fictus Primus requesting permission to depart,’ Pontius’ voice echoed in my vox-bead, and glancing through the armourcrys viewport I could see the huge struts and buttresses of the hangar bay drifting past as he nudged the utility craft towards the vast portal sealing us off from the outside lack of atmosphere. Faint wisps of vapour indicated that the chamber was already depressurising,161 and the tiny vessel rocked a little as he compensated for the hurricane-force air currents being created by the pumps. Most of the cogboys I’d seen before continued to work on the crippled Aquila, apparently indifferent to either the departure of the other vessels or the removal of most of their oxygen; no doubt their augmetic enhancements put them above such mundane considerations. ‘Taking up formation with the Avis Tonitrus Duo,’ which I presumed was the heavy freighter lumbering towards the portal ahead of us.

‘Permission granted, Fictus Primus,’ the woman on the other end of the vox-link responded, with the faintly detached intonation of someone who repeated the same stock phrase a hundred times a day, before adding ‘Emperor be with you,’ as though she expected us to really need His help.

‘I’ll stick as close to the freighter as I can,’ Pontius told Amberley on an internal channel, and she nodded faintly in approval.

‘Good idea.’

‘What is?’ Vekkman asked, and she shrugged in a manner calculated to get under the skin of an anchorite.

‘Nothing of any significance. Just a status update.’

‘Of course.’ Either willing to take her word for it, or unwilling to give her the satisfaction of pressing unsuccessfully for an answer, Vekkman buckled his crash harness. Everyone else had already taken that particular precaution by now, having flown with Pontius before, and I felt my mouth becoming a little dryer as we passed through the thick bronze doors and the clean, white light of the upper atmosphere punched me in the eyes.