by another of the towering machines as though it was no more substantial than a curtain. It too began to plod unhurriedly towards me, and I retreated a few paces, firing as I went, but for all the effect I was having I might just as well have been throwing feathers at it. After a dozen or so steps I stumbled against something yielding and almost fell, being brought up short by the stout masonry wall behind it as a familiar odour assaulted my nostrils.
‘Run for it, sir. Don’t mind me,’ Jurgen slurred, already halfway to unconsciousness.
‘Not an option,’ I assured him, certain that by now escape was impossible. I raised my hands, and let the laspistol drop to the rockcrete. Perhaps they wouldn’t just gun us down out of hand, if they thought we were harmless. At least we weren’t dealing with vicious brutes like the orks, or refined sadists like the eldar reavers, in whose hands we’d be far better off dead anyway.
Then the targeting beam swept my face again, and I flinched, cursing, wishing I’d chosen to go down fighting after all. At least that would have left me with the illusion of possible escape right up to the end, instead of the crushing certainty of imminent ignominious butchery. I braced myself, hoping the Emperor would be in a good mood when I arrived at the Golden Throne, or at least willing to listen to excuses.
‘You are commissar hero Ciaphas Cain?’ a voice asked, in halting Gothic, the curious lisping accent of the tau amplified by an external vox-system somewhere on the battlesuit facing me.
‘I am,’ I said, fighting to keep a sudden flare of hope from inflecting my voice. If they wanted to talk, they weren’t going to pull the trigger right away, although I was damned if I could see that we had anything to discuss. ‘And you are?’
‘Ui-Thiching, of the shas’ui ka’sui[14]. In the name of the Greater Good, we ask of you to convey a message to your fellows.’
Better and better. They clearly weren’t about to shoot the messenger; I just had to hope Braddick didn’t either[15].
‘What message would that be?’ I asked, not wanting to seem too eager. For all I knew they were recording this and the last thing I needed was to be accused of collaborating with the enemy to save my own neck.
‘We wish the negotiation of a truce,’ the tau told me, as though that were the most reasonable thing in the galaxy, just as they were about to snatch the entire planet out from under us regardless.
‘A truce?’ I repeated, not entirely willing to trust my own ears. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Completely,’ the amplified voice assured me. ‘Hostilities must cease at once on this world. The Greater Good demands it. For both our empires.’
EDITORIAL NOTE:
One of Cain’s more annoying idiosyncrasies as a chronicler of events is his tendency to gloss over periods of time in which he feels nothing of interest to have happened from his singularly self-centred perspective. Just such an elision now occurs, picking up his narrative after a gap of several weeks.
I have accordingly inserted the following extract, which I hope will go some way towards making up the obvious deficiency.
From The Crusade and After: A Military History of the Damocles Gulf, by Vargo Royz, 058.M42.
The tau’s offer of a truce was regarded with a fair degree of suspicion at first, not least by Commissar Cain, to whom it had been delivered. Nevertheless, with the Imperial forces poised on the brink of annihilation, the defenders had little option but to accept it.
Accordingly, when the relief flotilla arrived, accompanied by a hastily-assembled diplomatic mission and no less a personage than the Lord General himself, they found General Braddick in uncontested control of Peakhaven, to no one’s greater surprise than his own. Before long the Quadravidia garrison had been reinforced by the new arrivals[16], of sufficient strength to deter all but the most determined of assaults. But such a precaution scarcely seemed needed, as the tau remained behind the lines to which they had withdrawn immediately upon the declaration of a ceasefire.
Thus it was, with a fair degree of suspicion, that negotiations began, and the tau’s motives for such an unexpected move became clear.
THREE
‘They’re up to something,’ I said, delighted to feel the deckplates of an Imperial vessel underfoot once again. The fact that it was Zyvan’s flagship, and therefore the most heavily armed ship in the flotilla, only added a little zest to my relief at