The Last Ditch

by Sandy Mitchell

  ‘We’ll need to requisition everything we can get our hands on,’ I said. ‘Cargo crawlers as well as passenger vehicles.’ The memory of the steady stream of profanity which had accompanied our abortive journey back from the agricaves flashed across my mind. ‘It won’t be comfortable, but it’ll be better than ending up as ’nid rations.’

  ‘We’ll need to protect the convoys too,’ Broklaw pointed out. ‘They’re far too vulnerable on their own, and as soon as the ’nids realise there are large numbers of people moving across the ice they’ll be down on them like eldar reivers.’

  ‘I know.’ Kasteen looked troubled. ‘We can send a few squads along in Chimeras, but they’ll find it heavy going in these conditions. If we’re not careful the crawlers will outpace them.’

  ‘The Sentinels might be better,’ I suggested. ‘They’re fast and agile enough to keep the convoy together, and they’ve got enough firepower to bring down one of the really big ones if the ’nids decide they’re going to play rough.’

  ‘They might,’ Kasteen agreed, ‘if we had enough walkers to do the job. But we’ll need a couple of squadrons at least to protect just one convoy, let alone the number that’ll be leaving.’

  ‘I’ll liaise with the PDF,’ Broklaw promised. ‘They’ve got a lot of Sentinels for hit and run raids against the orks. The Nusquans have a troop too, although how many of them are left by now is anybody’s guess.’

  Before I could formulate an adequate response to that, I became aware of raised voices from the anteroom where Jurgen was now lurking; although, to be more accurate, I was able to distinguish one raised voice in particular, unmistakably feminine, my aide no doubt responding in the same phlegmatic manner in which he dealt with most attempts to get past him. His doggedly polite obstructiveness had reduced generals to apoplexy before now, but this particular interloper was evidently made of sterner stuff. With a ringing declaration of ‘Well, he’ll see me!’ the door to my office shivered on its hinges, revealing the not entirely unexpected silhouette of a young woman in a Commissarial greatcoat.

  ‘Commissar Forres,’ I said, determined to appear unconcerned. ‘An unexpected pleasure. Jurgen, could you find the commissar a tanna?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ my aide said, hovering on the threshold, evidently relieved to find the problem somebody else’s now, despite the glower he directed at Forres’s oblivious back as she strode into the room. He dropped his voice. ‘I’m sorry sir, she just barged right past me. Nothing I could do to stop her, short of opening fire.’ An option he found distinctly appealing, judging by his expression as he glanced in the young woman’s direction again.

  ‘You weren’t to blame,’ I assured him. ‘I doubt the Emperor Himself could have slowed that one down.’

  ‘Probably not, sir,’ he agreed, somewhat mollified, and went off in search of refreshment for our unexpected guest.

  ‘You need to see this,’ Forres said, without any preamble, and dropped a data-slate on my desk. Kasteen picked it up and activated it, while Broklaw and I moved round to get a clearer view. ‘It went out on all the pict channels about ten minutes ago.’

  Clothilde’s face appeared, in mid-speech, and I glanced questioningly at Forres. ‘Shouldn’t we have started at the beginning?’

  The young commissar shook her head. ‘It’s just the usual platitudes,’ she assured me. ‘This is the important bit.’

  ‘I have accordingly,’ Clothilde said, with exaggerated gravitas, ‘and with a heavy heart, decided to transfer responsibility for this great and grave undertaking to those most capable of shouldering it. Commissar Cain’s renown as a staunch defender of the Imperial virtues is too great for his advice to be casually disregarded, however much it may go against my own inclinations. The evacuation effort will therefore be carried out under the jurisdiction of the Planetary Defence Force, and I urge all loyal citizens to cooperate fully with our gallant defenders.’

  ‘And so on, and so forth, ad frakking nauseum,’ Forres said, cutting off the recording, the first time I could recall hearing her swear, or seeing her angry enough to do so.

  ‘She’s outflanked us,’ I said, torn between annoyance and amusement. ‘Regina can’t declare martial law if she’s already done it herself.’

  ‘The difference is, she’s in charge of the PDF99,’ Forres pointed out. ‘She can drag her heels and obstruct the evacuation all she likes now, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

  ‘We may not have to,’ I said. ‘The PDF have been up at the sharp end enough to appreciate just how big a threat the tyranids are. My guess is they’ll do the best job they can, whether the governor likes it or not.’

  ‘Which begs the question of whether their best will be good enough,’ Broklaw said, forthright as always. ‘It’ll be a logistical nightmare, and they’re not exactly Guard calibre, are they?’

  ‘We could offer to assist,’ Kasteen said thoughtfully. ‘Sulla would keep them up to the mark. But if the ’nids attack, we’ll need her snowside more than we do shuffling data-slates.’

  ‘Sounds like a job for a commissar,’ I said, glancing meaningfully at Forres.

  She nodded thoughtfully, beginning to calm down as she considered the implications. ‘That’s true,’ she said, looking a good deal happier than when she’d come in. She even took the tanna bowl Jurgen somewhat sullenly offered her without flinching. ‘And with you looking over their shoulders they shouldn’t screw things up too much.’

  ‘Me?’ I said, surprised. ‘I thought with your experience of working with Nusquans, you’d be the obvious choice.’ And too busy to get in my way for the foreseeable future, more to the point.

  ‘But you’re a Hero of the Imperium,’ Kasteen pointed out, not quite managing to hide her amusement. ‘Hearing you’re in charge will reassure the civvies far more than a commissar they’ve never heard of before, and that means they’ll be a lot more inclined to do as they’re told.’

  ‘Good point,’ I agreed, considering the matter. My inflated reputation had evidently preceded me here, as it tended to do pretty much anywhere I’d visited100, particularly the part I was popularly supposed to have played in the first campaign against the orks; it wouldn’t take much to turn that to my advantage in dealing with the locals. Not to mention the fact that as long as I was herding as many of them as possible on to the crawlers, no one could reasonably expect me to lead a do-or-die charge against the ’nids.

  ‘You’ll do it then?’ Forres asked, not quite concealing her eagerness to leave the job in the hands of a dull old fogey like me, while she scampered off to save the galaxy from the terror of the hive mind. I found myself wondering for a moment if I’d ever been that young and impetuous, before deciding that no, I hadn’t; which was more than a little ironic, given the way trouble had insisted on following me around regardless.

  ‘I suppose I’d better,’ I said, with as much reluctance as I could manage to feign. ‘Someone has to, and, as you say, I seem to have something of a public profile already. We might as well make use of that if we can.’

  ‘We’re agreed, then,’ Kasteen said. ‘Ciaphas herds the proles, while the rest of us get back to the war.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ I said, quietly enjoying the stunned expression which had flickered over Forres’s face at the casual use of my given name. ‘May the Emperor walk with you.’

  ‘And with you,’ Forres said, responding automatically, as though she was still in the schola chapel. At the time I took it as a mere reflexive pleasantry, but in retrospect I was to find I needed all the help the Golden Throne could give me.

  TWENTY-ONE

  At first, I must admit, my new responsibilities were far from onerous. My inflated reputation performed its usual trick of predisposing most of the people I had contact with to listen to me without arguing too much; particularly the civilians, who generally swallowed the modest hero pose wholesale. The PDF were even more susceptible, if that were possible, since, even if they were unimpressed by my widely-credited
triumphs, there were still my sash and greatcoat to consider, not to mention the sidearms that went with them; and, in my experience, being allowed to shoot anyone who disagrees with you tends to persuade them of the validity of your viewpoint with remarkably little difficulty101. Though the average citizen was as reluctant as you might expect to pack up her husband and children and abandon their home, the prospect of being consumed by tyranids was even less appealing, so many more than I’d expected turned up at the crawler park when directed to do so. There were the inevitable exceptions, however, which caused us a few headaches, even after I’d authorised the release of some appropriately grisly picts of tyranid attacks to the public news channels.

  ‘The problem,’ I said candidly, in one of my periodic meetings with the governor, ‘is you. Not in any personal way, of course, but as long as you remain adamant about remaining in Primadelving, there are always going to be civilians who insist on following your example.’

  ‘I’m sure there are,’ Clothilde said, smiling graciously at me. She didn’t seem to be holding a grudge about losing control of the evacuation effort, and the opportunity to disrupt it, if that had really been her agenda102; but I’d spent long enough around politicians not to let my guard down anyway, just in case. ‘But I’m not budging. You’ve been in enough war zones to know what happens if the governor flees. Panic, disorder, looting and anarchy. While I stay, the rule of the Imperium remains solid.’

  We were meeting in one of the outer rooms of her personal quarters, which, though physically connected to the areas of the palace complex given over to the 597th by broad, well-lit tunnels, might just as well have been on another planet. (Where, incidentally, most of the furnishings appeared to have originated.) Like most of the palaces I’d visited over the years, opulence seemed to count for more than good taste in the selection of decor, but at least this example seemed relatively restrained in that regard; provided you were able to ignore the gilded cherubs which leered at you from every conceivable surface.

  ‘Up to a point,’ I said. ‘But the big difference is that you’ve got a personal shuttle standing by to get you out of here if the ’nids break through. The civilians haven’t.’ As I spoke, the beginnings of an idea began to stir, but before I could bring it into focus Clothilde banged her tea bowl down on the table next to her, with scant regard for either marquetry or porcelain.

  ‘Then I suggest you prevent the tyranids from getting in,’ she said peremptorily, as if that was simply a matter of bolting a couple of doors, or telling them firmly to go away. ‘What are you doing about the citizens who refuse to leave?’

  ‘There’s not much we can do,’ I admitted, ‘other than try to persuade them.’ Forres had suggested simply arresting the non-compliers, and marching them aboard a crawler at gunpoint, but appealing as the idea was in the abstract, I’d been forced to veto it on the grounds of practicality. The resulting resentment would, at best, make everyone’s jobs considerably more difficult, and more than likely spark off precisely the kind of civil unrest we most feared, diverting troopers and resources from the urgent business of defending against the swarm.

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’ Clothilde asked, as if the question were merely an academic one.

  I shrugged. ‘In all honesty,’ I admitted, ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘Then you need to find out why they’re not going,’ the governor said. ‘They can’t all be staying put just because I am.’

  ‘Not all,’ I admitted. ‘Some are reluctant to leave their homes because they’re afraid of looters, and some don’t believe the tyranids can be as dangerous as they are. Most of them are just afraid to make the journey, though, and in all honesty I can’t blame them. We’ve only had three convoys attacked so far, and the escorts drove them off easily enough, but that’s how the hive mind works; every failure will have taught it a little more about our weapons and tactics, and it’ll refine its strategy until it comes up with one that succeeds. When it does...’ I shrugged. ‘There won’t be any more convoys. Everyone still in Primadelving will be stuck here, waiting for the main attack.’ Including me, which wasn’t a comfortable prospect.

  ‘I see.’ Clothilde nodded thoughtfully, and reached for some sticky confection in a cut glass dish. ‘Then it seems to me that you need to find a way of persuading people to follow your lead before it’s too late.’

  ‘It’s a simple matter of psychology,’ I said, huddling deeper into my greatcoat as the bone-chilling cold whistled in through the thick outer doors of the main crawler park. The cavern was close enough to the surface to be hewn from solid ice, rather than the bedrock beneath, and although it was a good deal warmer than the snowfields above, it seemed chilly enough to me. The iceworlders milling around the wide open space seemed to consider it almost tropical, though, their coats and jackets unfastened as they clambered aboard the promethium-spewing vehicles crowding the cavern, shepherded by grim-faced PDF troopers. ‘If they see me going along, they’ll think there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I see.’ Sulla nodded, her own greatcoat folded casually over one arm, her vaguely equine features alight with her manifest eagerness to be away from here, and preferably shooting at something. Just my luck that, in an attempt to make use of her logistical expertise without pulling her out of the front line entirely, Kasteen had assigned her company to oversee the security of the convoys; and that, in an excess of enthusiasm by no means unusual, she seemed to have decided to take command of this particular one herself103. ‘You want to convince them it’s safe.’

  ‘Safer than staying here, anyway,’ I agreed. The tyranid swarms were circling the city more tightly than ever, and we could only count on a few more convoys getting through before their cordon became impenetrable. So far we’d been damnably lucky, getting around a hundred thousand people away through the gaps in their envelopment, but those were narrowing all the time; and I had no doubt that if it hadn’t been for the number of recon flights being flown by the pilots of the PDF, far fewer groups of refugees would have been able to avoid them.

  ‘We’ll get you through,’ Sulla said, with complete conviction. ‘And back in one piece.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt you will,’ I replied, although in all honesty the notion of returning to face an army of tyranids once I’d evaded their clutches was far from appealing. I was pretty sure I could find some urgent reason to remain at our destination, however, at least until the worst of the fighting had died down. Admitting as much out loud would hardly fit the image of imperturbable courage I’d had foisted upon me, and which I was forced to work so hard to maintain, however, so I simply let my hands drift down to rest on my weapons for a moment, and adopted a look of quiet resolution, as though I couldn’t wait to start using them again.

  To my complete lack of surprise, Sulla bought it, simply gazing at me in the vaguely vacant fashion I was so familiar with, a faint smile on her face, before snapping a salute of parade-ground crispness and turning away to go and bother somebody else. The reason for her abrupt departure manifested itself a moment later, preceded by the odour of well-matured socks.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, sir,’ Jurgen said, his voice emerging from the narrow strip of psoriasis visible between the pulled-down brim of his bulky fur hat and the turned-up collar of his greatcoat. ‘I was just making a flask for the journey. Thought you might need it.’

  ‘I probably will,’ I agreed, suppressing another shiver as the keen wind found a hitherto unseen chink in my multiple layers of clothing. ‘But not as much as that, if things turn ploin-shaped.’ The reassuring bulk of his melta was slung across his back, next to the more slender silhouette of his lasgun, and my aide patted it almost affectionately.

  ‘Then let’s hope it doesn’t,’ he said, turning to clear a path for me through the small knot of pictcasters and printsheet scribes standing between me and the crawler which, according to plan anyway, was to be our home for the next thirty-two hours104. Remembering the purpose of the exercise, I paused to gi
ve them a platitude or two, and strike some suitably dramatic poses for the imagifiers, before escaping gratefully into the vehicle I’d selected; a venerable, but comfortably appointed, snowliner, which, though crowded far beyond the imagination of its designer, still afforded a measure of luxury – at least compared to banging about in the back of a cargo hauler.

  As well as comfortably padded seats, into which Jurgen and I sank gratefully, the passenger crawler had the inestimable advantage of large windows, affording an uninterrupted view of the surrounding landscape, which would at least enable me to see what was about to try to kill me before it did. Though I had no intention of letting anything get close enough to make the attempt, of course.

  At length, the rumbling of engines rose to a level which drowned out all other ambient noise, and, with a lurch, we were underway, grinding up the ramp of compacted ice leading to the world outside.

  Just as I had when we were escaping the agricave aboard the requisitioned crawler we’d so fortuitously discovered there, I found the sight of the frozen landscape around us a fascinating novelty. This time the sun was low on the horizon, painting the snows around us the colour of blood, and I found myself shuddering, not entirely from the residual chill forcing its way through the thick slab of glazing material. I can’t deny, however, that it also possessed a disturbing beauty, the westering sun striking highlights from the hard edges of the partially buried structures which occasionally broke the surface of the snow105, and scintillating through the larger blocks of ice which bordered the track we were traversing106.

  ‘Escorts forming up,’ Sulla told me, her voice echoing faintly in my comm-bead; turning my head a little, I could see Shambas’s Sentinels bounding among the larger vehicles, uncannily reminiscent of ovinehounds herding a flock, while a couple of our Chimeras kept pace along the flanks, at least for the time being. (Despite Broklaw’s best efforts, there simply hadn’t been enough Sentinels to go round, so we were just having to make the best of what we’d got: if the Chimeras had a problem keeping up with the broader-tracked crawlers, the whole convoy simply slowed down to accommodate them.) I was able to distinguish Sulla’s command vehicle easily by the distinctive vox and auspex arrays sprouting from it; her head and shoulders were protruding from the turret, and she waved cheerfully at me, before moving up past a battered-looking cargo hauler festooned with towing chains and lashed-on barrels of promethium, its silhouette so obscured by the encrustation of stowage that it put me in mind of the orkish contraptions we’d seen after our precipitous arrival. The rickety vehicle looked like an accident in search of someone to happen to, and I breathed thanks to the Throne that I was able to make the trip in comparative comfort.