[Ciaphas Cain 05] - Duty Calls Read online

  Our outrider escort was clearing the way for us with flashing lights and wailing sirens, the constant flow of civilian traffic that would otherwise have impeded our progress scurrying out of the way with gratifying alacrity, so I wasn’t too surprised to notice a larger, heavier monocycle trailing along in our wake, taking advantage of the clear channel we were opening up to make much better speed than its rider could normally hope to manage along the crowded urban roads. I couldn’t see much of his face, his head being protected by a helmet not dissimilar to those of our escorts apart from the vivid flame motif that flickered across it, echoing the red and yellow paintwork of his cycle and the crimson leathers both he and his passenger were wearing. The girl riding pillion with him was bareheaded though, apart from a pair of goggles, her auburn hair whipping back like a banner in the breeze of their passing, and I fought down the impulse to wave as they drew closer.

  “What the hell…” Nyte said, his voice echoing in my comm-bead even as he jammed on the brakes with a suddenness that wrenched me from the embrace of the clinging upholstery and almost spilled my drink. There was a large transporter ahead of us, slewed across the carriageway, its cab section wedged against the supporting piers of an overhanging bridge. Evidently its driver had misjudged the distance in trying to pull over to let us pass, got stuck, and left the cargo trailer hanging out over the roadway, obstructing it. “Get that thing out of the way!”

  “I’m on it,” one of the outriders assured him, evidently on the same frequency, and accelerated away. A moment later he slewed to a halt next to the cab, and began a heated altercation with the driver.

  “Something’s not right,” I said, feeling the familiar warning tingle in the palms of my hands. The driver should have been getting out by now, assessing the damage at least, and deferring to the authority of the justicar haranguing him. Trusting my instincts implicitly after all we’d been through together, Jurgen picked up the lasgun, which he’d left lying across his lap, and flicked the safety off.

  “What do you mean, sir?” Nyte asked, an instant before the monocycle following us roared up alongside, and I found myself looking down the barrel of an automatic shotgun. The girl holding it smiled at me, the wide mouth in her angular face somehow seeming to hold too many teeth, and squeezed the trigger. A loud crack echoed around the luxurious cabin, and for a moment I wondered why I wasn’t dead, before the distinctive smell of ionised air told me that Jurgen had managed to get his shot in first. The girl pitched backwards off the monocycle’s pillion, and a heavy armour-piercing slug, evidently intended to shatter the armourcrys window they’d no doubt expected to be there (and which would have been, I suppose, had I been accompanied by anyone other than Jurgen), tore through the reinforced body shell centimetres from my shoulder instead.

  “What the hell was that?” Nyte demanded, seeming rather slow on the uptake for an agent of Imperial justice, but then I suppose he was keeping his eye on the road.

  “Ambush!” I said tersely, drawing my laspistol, but I never got the chance to use it on the rider beside us. Nyte reacted immediately, swinging the heavy vehicle, and ramming him off the road. Our would-be assassin hit the guardrail, performed an elegant parabola, and bounced off the support pier of the bridge ahead, which was still blocked by the frakking truck, of course.

  “I can’t get around it,” Nyte said, drifting into a skid that bounced us off another couple of groundcars and left us coasting to a halt facing the wrong way and an apparently endless stream of gridlocked traffic, which began filling every square metre of rockrete in sight like water pouring into a bucket. A light cargo hauler belonging according to the garish sign on its side, to a firm of sanitation engineers, slammed into the side of us, becoming inextricably wedged against the doors.

  “This side’s jammed too,” Jurgen offered helpfully, then fired another lasbolt at a civilian in a jacket patterned with a bile green and orange check, whose purple-dyed hair stood out around his head as though he’d just stuck a finger in a power socket. The jacket alone was offensive enough to justify his summary execution, although what had attracted Jurgen’s attention was the rather more pragmatic matter of the shotgun he carried, the same type as the one the trick cyclists had tried to use on us a moment before, and no doubt would have done, if my perfectly understandable desire for fresh air hadn’t allowed us to fire first.

  “We’re trapped!” Nyte said, sounding more angry than frightened, which I suppose would have been reassuring if I hadn’t been panicking enough for the three of us. Vile Jacket dived for cover behind a car full of squawking civilians, who piled out and ran, and I glanced around hoping to catch sight of the confederates I knew must be around here somewhere. Fat chance of that, though, with my vision blocked in almost every direction.

  “No we’re not,” I said, thumbing my chainsword to maximum speed, and thrusting it over my head as I did so. The passenger compartment filled with sparks and the smell of burning, but I was managing to cut through the reinforced metal, and after a moment I’d succeeded in removing a wide enough section of coachwork to worm my way out and up onto the roof.

  I wasn’t out there for long, though, you can be sure, as presenting an obvious target has never been very high on my list of desirable things to do. As I slithered down into whatever cover I could find, I tried hard to recall what I’d seen.

  The shotgunner with the bad taste in jackets was in a good position to make life unpleasant for us the moment we raised our heads, or he was able to get a clear line of sight. I knew shotguns could be loaded with all kinds of surprises, and doubted that our antagonists, whoever they were, would confine themselves to anything as obvious as scattershot and slugs. The sheer number of milling civilians in the immediate vicinity made it almost impossible to guess just how many more of them were closing in on our position, but there was little doubt about where they were coming from. As I’d ducked back behind the reassuring bulk of the armoured limousine I’d seen the driver of the truck, which had blocked the road, leaping from the cab at last, a pistol of some kind in his hand.

  “Seven hostiles closing on Rolling Justice,”[1] the outrider who’d been dispatched to deal with the obstruction in the first place reported. Then a crackle of gunfire erupted from that general direction. “Correction, six moving, one down.” [1. The regular call sign for the arbitrator’s personal vehicle on Periremunda. Somewhat theatrical, but under most circumstances it was a pretty dull little world, so I suppose the justicars couldn’t be blamed for trying to make a routine chauffeuring job sound a little more interesting.]

  “Rolin, Dawze, get back here!” Nyte ordered, his voice taking on the peculiar flat timbre of someone consciously working at staying in control, despite a jolt of adrenaline big enough to have woken a hibernating keth. “All units in the vicinity, converge on these co-ordinates.”

  “I’m still pinned,” the outrider responded, a crackle of small arms fire lending credence to his words. A second voice chimed in on the same channel, presumably the other one, wherever the hell he’d got to.

  “I can see him, Dawze. He’s behind that red speeder, your two o’clock. I can circle and take him.”

  “Negative,” Nyte snapped. “Get back here and guard the commissar.” Encouraging words, I’m sure you’ll agree, but I’d got a good enough idea of the layout of things to realise just how much more easily said than done that was going to be. Rolin would have had a better chance of stopping an avalanche with a teaspoon than making any headway through the mess surrounding us, and that went for the reinforcements Nyte was calling in as well. If I was going to get out of this in one piece, I’d have to take care of matters myself, as usual.

  Well, almost. A familiar odour behind me brought the welcome news that I’d been joined by the only assistance I knew I could rely on.

  “The justicar’s got one,” Jurgen confirmed, slithering into the gap between the rear bumper of our car and a motorised tricycle with a large metal box between its two front wheels. Judging by the aro
ma of soylens viridiens emanating from it, and the attire of its startled rider, who goggled at us as though she’d suddenly been confronted by a pair of orks, the contraption was full of comestibles of some kind intended to be sold in the street. He raised his lasgun again, and spat a burst in the general direction of the shotgunner. “Frak. Missed the gretch-frotter.” He glanced at the quietly bleating street vendor, and flushed. “Sorry miss. Didn’t realise there were ladies present.”

  The sheer incongruity of his attempt at good manners seemed to reassure the girl that she wasn’t hallucinating, at any rate, and she swallowed convulsively. “Don’t mind me,” she said, her voice quivering rather less than I would have expected. Apparently reassured as much as seemed feasible under the circumstances, she coughed nervously. “Who are you people, anyway? And what in the warp’s going on?”

  “Ciaphas Cain, regimental Commissar, 597th Valhallan. My aide Jurgen. Terrorist attack,” I said, covering the basics as quickly as I could, and returning my attention to the important stuff. Dawze had at least disabled one, and was still engaged in a fire-fight with another. That left five hostiles potentially closing on our position. One of them we knew about, and he wasn’t going anywhere, which left four unaccounted for. The palms of my hands began to tingle.

  “Where are the other hostiles?” I voxed, hoping Rolin or Dawze might have a clue. No such luck.

  “Lost them in the crowd,” Rolin said helpfully.

  “Oh for frak’s sake!” I said. “Use your eyes! Everyone else will be running away!” A stubber round suddenly punched its way through the box on the trike, and its owner squealed, diving behind my legs like a startled puppy. I looked up in time to see a young man in the robes of a low-level Administratum functionary standing on the roof of the sanitation truck, adjusting his aim. Before he could complete the motion I swung my chainsword up, taking his left leg off at the knee, and he toppled to the rockrete in front of us, where I was able to detach his head with a simple swipe. The snack-seller squealed again, the green streaks in her hair now augmented by a spatter of less flattering scarlet.

  “One more down,” I reported. “Nyte, where the hell are you?”

  “On my way,” the justicar responded, appearing on the roof of the limousine at last, the heavy stubber in his hands accounting for the length of his absence; no doubt he’d been scrabbling in some carefully concealed weapons locker. He swung it, shredding the nose of the car behind which the shotgunner was sheltering with a hailstorm of high-calibre ordnance. Vile Jacket rolled out of the way, bringing up his own weapon, but before he could fire Jurgen took him in the torso with a short, controlled burst, and he twitched for a moment before lying still. Nyte turned to look at me, and flourished the stubber.

  “Scratch three,” he said, a trace of smugness in his voice. Then before I could even say something helpful, like “get the frak down, you idiot,” another shotgun blast took him full in the chest, and he fell heavily to the ground on the far side of the car. His torso armour seemed to have taken the brunt of it, but there was a lot of blood too. After a moment he hauled himself sufficiently close to vertical to slump against the bodywork, still sitting on the carriageway, but he wasn’t going to be putting up much of a fight from now on if I was any judge.

  “Man down,” Jurgen said, as though it might have escaped my notice, but I suppose he could have meant it for our listening escorts.

  “Engaging,” Rolin said, a moment before a crackle of small arms fire made that obvious. “Two hostiles, female, look like they’re carrying autoguns.” There was a moment’s pause. “One breaking for your position…” then his vox channel abruptly went dead.

  “Rolin’s down,” Dawze confirmed a moment later, “and the hostile I’ve been engaging is pulling back.” A note of puzzlement entered his voice. “Why would he do that? He had me pinned.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, the palms of my hands tingling in earnest now, “but they seem remarkably well co-ordinated.” I looked at the rapidly cooling bodies of the terrorists we’d dispatched. None of them had any kind of comms gear with them that I could see. “Can you spot anyone who seems to be in control?”

  “Negative,” Dawze replied. A note of puzzlement entered his voice. “Come to that, I haven’t seen any of them so much as speak.” A horrible suspicion began to stir in the depths of my mind. I had no time to worry about that just at the moment, though, as a fusillade of incoming fire began rattling off the metal all around us.

  “Emperor preserve us, we’re going to die!” the snack vendor moaned, huddling so close to the rockrete she might have been trying to disguise herself as one of the road markings. Likely as that sounded, it was hardly helpful, so while Jurgen returned the favour with a couple of unaimed bursts in the general direction most of the projectiles seemed to have come from, I looked her in the eye with my most commissarial expression of reassurance.

  “We’re not dead yet,” I said, with all the self-confidence I could muster, “and we’re not going to be. I swore an oath to protect the Imperium from the Emperor’s enemies when I put this uniform on, and today, you’re that part of the Imperium. All right…” I trailed off, suddenly remembering I had no idea what the girl’s name was. She nodded, clearly divining my difficulty.

  “Zemelda Cleat.” She took a deep breath, and straightened, picking up the stubber the young man had dropped when I trisected him. “And I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

  “Good girl,” I said, reflecting that at least she might draw their fire, even if the chances of her hitting anything with the clumsy weapon were minimal. “Tuck that into your shoulder, pull the trigger gently, and Emperor guide your aim.” She followed my instructions somewhat gingerly, wincing at the noise and the recoil, and then a feral grin stretched across her face.

  “Brisk!” she said approvingly, and spat a steady stream of shot at our enemies, who, now I came to think of it, seemed remarkably reluctant to take advantage of their still superior firepower.

  “Why aren’t they advancing?” Jurgen asked, not really expecting an answer. “They’ve got us completely boxed in.”

  “Maybe they’re waiting for us to panic,” I said, trying to sound as though that was a remote possibility rather than the current state of affairs, at least so far as I was concerned. “Break cover and try to run for it.” That would have been suicidal, of course, but it happens more often than you’d credit. The fight or flight reflex is deeply ingrained in the human psyche, and tends to surface at the most inconvenient moments, which is why our Guard troopers are so well trained to override it, and they have people like me looking over their shoulders in case that turns out not to be enough.

  “We’d have to be pretty stupid,” Jurgen pointed out unnecessarily. “We can hold them off all day from here.” It was perfectly true, we were in an easily defensible position, even if that was more by luck than judgement; even more so now that the last of the innocent bystanders (apart from Zemeida) were rapidly-diminishing dots on the horizon, and anyone not wearing a justicar’s uniform was an obvious target. My aide shrugged, developing his theme in rather more detail than I would have appreciated. “Unless they’ve got grenades or a flamer, of course.”

  “Of course,” I echoed, a thrill of horror running through me at the thought. Suddenly their tactics made a lot more sense: keep our heads down while someone edged close enough to lob a couple of fraggers over the barricade of metal protecting us. Unless some of the shotguns they seemed to favour were loaded with inferno rounds, in which case they wouldn’t even need to get that close, just line us up in their sights and start the barbeque. I voxed Dawze. “Any of them carrying grenades that you can see?”

  “No.” His voice changed, taking on a tinge of curiosity. “I can see movement in the truck again. Two, maybe three more of them. I’m circling round for a better look.”

  “Be careful,” I said, the little warning voice in the back of my head positively screaming. I cracked off a couple of shots from my laspi
stol at a flicker of movement behind a blocky blue utility truck some four or five vehicles away, and was rewarded with a sudden scurry of motion as whoever it was ducked back into cover. A desultory stubber round or two, and a hail of scattershot, rattled against our refuge, then everything went quiet again.

  “Definitely three of them, keeping under cover,” Dawze reported after a moment. “Moving fast. Emperor’s teeth, they’re quick. Moving to intercept.”

  “Stay back!” I warned, the suspicion I still didn’t want to acknowledge rising again, leaving a tingle of fear in the pit of my stomach. I shook it off irritably. Things were bad enough already, without jumping at phantoms.

  “It’s OK,” Dawze reassured me. “They don’t know I’m here. I can drop the first one before they even…” His voice rose to a scream. “Emperor on Earth, what the hell is th—”

  His vox went dead.

  “Here they come,” Jurgen said, as calmly as he reported everything from my bath being ready to the sudden appearance of a slavering daemon horde, and opened up with his lasgun. A moment later he ducked back beside me, bringing a powerful blast of his personal fragrance with him, and grimaced. “They seem pretty determined.”

  “No kidding.” Zemelda crouched down on my other side, her face white. A hail of incoming fire blistered the air over our heads, and I could only hope that Nyte had had enough sense to keep his head down as well.

  “They’re not trying to kill us,” I said, taking no comfort from the idea. “This is just to keep us from shooting back.”

  “Well, it’s working.” Her jaw clenched grimly. “Why?”

  “So they can close. They must know help’s on the way, so they need to finish it fast.”

  Jurgen nodded. “Suppressive fire, we call it. When it stops, they’ll make their move.” We looked at one another with grim understanding.