They stood with their heads bowed in silence, their hats and helmets removed, as a priest laid his hands upon each of them in turn, and bestowed the blessing of the God-Emperor upon them. Steele cursed his enhanced sense of smell; it took all the self-control he had not to choke on the pungent cloud that billowed from the holy man’s incense burner.
The priest’s arrival had been a surprise to them all. Steele had known, of course, that the Ecclesiarchy had a special interest in his mission, but this… For an entire squad to be sanctified like this was almost unheard of. Still, the ritual provided a rare moment of calm, of inner peace, despite the background sounds of gunfire and explosions, and engines and dying from the none-too-distant war. Steele had welcomed that and been re-energised by it.
He noted that Pozhar was not quite so appreciative. The young trooper had been the last of the squad to arrive, bounding up to an indulgent Gavotski full of energy, and bursting with stories about what he had been through to get here. His body was like a coiled spring, his hands twitching with the desire to get the ceremony done with and get on with the business of finding someone to kill.
When Blonsky’s turn came, his chest swelled with pride and a righteous smile pulled at his thin lips. Mikhaelev, in contrast, held himself rigid, contained, and betrayed no reaction to his blessing at all. Beside him, Anakora reacted to the priest’s touch with a little shudder, and a single tear dripped from her down-turned eyes.
Then it was done — and, with a final nod and a munificent smile in Steele’s direction, the priest ambled away. The colonel took a deep breath as his moment of peace ended and he prepared to get back down to business. He nodded at his sergeant, to indicate that it was time — and Gavotski stepped forward, cleared his throat and addressed the squad.
“You may have heard the name Confessor Wollkenden,” he said. “You may have heard that he came here to Cressida a month ago, to minister to its people, to help them resist the corruption of their world. You may also have heard that the confessor is one of the finest men the Imperium has bred. It is thanks in part to his leadership that the war in the Artemis system was won.”
In fact, Steele hadn’t heard Wollkenden’s name before this morning, and he doubted whether Gavotski had either. He had been left in no doubt, however, of the stock placed in him by the Ecclesiarchy, that they considered him a virtual saint.
“Three days ago,” Gavotski continued, “the confessor was en route to an outlying settlement to the north of here, intending to make contact with a group of loyalist resisters. His shuttle came under fire. A vox-message from its pilot confirmed that an emergency landing had been made, and that Confessor Wollkenden was alive. The message was interrupted. There has been no word since then. The area in which the confessor’s ship came down was a forest, until it fell to Chaos forces three and a half years ago. Since then, of course, conditions on the ground have changed considerably. Intelligence is sparse, but we know that there has been a great deal of glacial activity in the area, which has rendered much of it almost impassable… Almost.” At this, Gavotski gave the Termite a proud pat.
“Of course, it is possible that Confessor Wollkenden is dead. Our job, comrades, is to find out for sure, and, if he is alive, to bring him back. The Imperial Guard cannot spare the resources for a full-scale search and rescue at present — and it is felt anyway that a stealthy extraction has more chance of success. That is why Colonel Steele and I are taking only one squad through the glaciers, and it is why each of you has been chosen: because your respective commanders tell us that you are the best the Valhallan 319th has to offer.”
“Pardon me, sergeant,” said Trooper Borscz, “but are we to understand that Colonel Steele is to lead this mission?”
“That is correct, soldier,” said Gavotski. “You have a problem with that?”
“No, sergeant.” In fact, Borscz seemed positively enthused by the idea, and he looked at Steele with admiration blazing in his deep blue eyes.
The colonel cleared his throat, and said, “There is one thing that Sergeant Gavotski has not yet mentioned.” It was the first time the troopers had heard his voice, and each of them became visibly more attentive. “You are aware,” said Steele, “that Cressida is being evacuated. What you have not been told, because this information is strictly need-to-know, is that an Exterminatus order has been signed.”
Palinev gave an audible gasp, but the others absorbed the news silently, grimly.
“Naval warships are on their way,” said. Steele. “Cressida will be virus-bombed from orbit, completely sterilised. As a world still rich in mineral resources, it is hoped that some day it can be recolonised. Until that day—”
Gavotski finished the thought for him. “The Chaos forces may have won this battle,” he said, “but they will not live long to enjoy their spoils.”
“All of which,” said Steele, “means that we have a deadline. I was told this morning, in no uncertain terms, that the virus bombing would take place in forty-eight hours’ time, whether we, or indeed Confessor Wollkenden, were still on Cressida or not. A little over three hours has passed since then.
“Gentlemen and lady, I suggest we get the Termite loaded up. The chrono is already ticking.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Time to Destruction of Cressida: 44.49.09
“You should not have come back.”
The passenger compartment was raucous with the roar of the Termite’s engine and with the chatter of ten Ice Warriors, packed together in the confined space, getting to know one another, assessing each other’s strengths. Still, Blonsky’s voice cut across the noise, and brought the chatter to a halt.
“You should not have come back,” he said again, and his angular face was set into a stony scowl, his dark green eyes piercing his victim.
Pozhar had been telling the tale of how he had found himself behind enemy lines, and of his heroic return — although privately, Gavotski thought he might have exaggerated some of his more remarkable feats. The young trooper was cut off in mid-flow, and he didn’t know what to say, he just gaped at his accuser.
“Your chances of survival were minimal,” said Blonsky, “and if you had been killed it would have been by a shot to the back: a senseless death, and a dishonourable one in the Emperor’s eyes. He had carried you to the enemy’s heart. Instead of thinking of your own survival, you should have used your chance to strike at that heart.”
“But… but I did survive,” said Pozhar. “I survived, and I brought back some civilians, and… and some vital information about troop movements in the underhive.” He stole a sidelong glance at Steele, presumably to see if he agreed with Blonsky’s assessment. The colonel’s expression, however, remained neutral.
“I don’t think it’s helpful to talk about what might have been,” Gavotski said. “As Trooper Pozhar has proved, his situation wasn’t hopeless. He was able to come back to us, to fight another day in the Emperor’s service.”
Emboldened by the sergeant’s support, Pozhar rounded on Blonsky, and said, “Anyway, how long do you think I’d have lasted, surrounded by traitors, if I’d started shooting? How many do you think I’d have taken down? Five? Six? I killed three times that many before morning rations, and I’ll do the same tomorrow, and the next day. That’s how I serve the Emperor! How about you, Trooper Blonsky? How many kills have you claimed today? Do you really want to talk about whose life is the more valuable?”
Blonsky’s stare didn’t waver. “You should not have come back,” he repeated with the unshakeable conviction of a witch hunter.
The Termite gave a judder, and Grayle, seated at the controls, called back over his shoulder, “We’ve just left the hive, sir. No sighting of the enemy as yet.”
“How do we stand on that escort?” asked Gavotski.
“Looks like we can expert two Chimeras to meet us,” said Grayle. “Still waiting for a vox from Ursa Platoon to see if we can make it three.”
“You clap eyes on the enemy, Grayle,” said Barreski, “you
just point me in their direction. I’ll show them we don’t need bodyguards!” He was stationed at one of the six hull-mounted flamers, squinting along its barrel, making minute adjustments to its sights. His enthusiasm was appreciated, but Gavotski knew that the Termite was not built for combat. It didn’t have the firepower. That was why they had left the hive by an eastern gate, from a zone relatively untouched by the battle to the north. For the first leg of their journey, they would be travelling above ground, and they hoped to avoid the battle altogether. Due to pressure of time, however, they couldn’t give it as wide a berth as they would have liked.
“If we do come under attack,” said Borscz, “I would rather get out there and trust to the strength of my own two hands than suffocate or freeze to death in this tin can.” He did look uncomfortable, his massive frame sandwiched between Barreski and Anakora. However, as one of the first troopers into the Termite, Borscz appeared to have chosen his seat purposely to avoid having to man a flamer.
“You would agree with me, I think, my friend,” he continued, leaning forward to give Palinev an overly familiar pat on the shoulder. The force of the blow almost knocked the smaller, slighter man to the floor. “As a scout, you must rely on your own abilities to stay silent and hidden, yes? Not much use to you inside a great clunking machine.”
“You are joking, right?” said Barreski. “Without machines, our ancestors would never have won the Great War. It was machines like this one that turned the tide, and allowed them to drive the filthy orks from our world.”
“The machines would have been little use,” Borscz countered, “without good, strong men inside them. It is not in the machines that our ancestors found the will to defeat the invaders, Trooper Barreski, but rather in their own beating hearts.”
Anakora played little part in the conversation. She had introduced herself to the others, given accurate but short answers to their questions about her war record, but that was all. She was acutely aware that they were all here because of their proven expertise in their fields. She had no right to sit among them.
Few Valhallan women served in the Imperial Guard. With so many men being marched off to war and so few returning, they had the vital and valued task of replenishing their world’s population, of birthing and raising the next generation of Ice Warriors. This, then, was the life Anakora had expected to live, the life that had been shot to pieces by a few cold words from a disinterested medic.
It had taken her a few days to come to terms with the news, to accept that her life had no purpose any longer. Even one-time friends, even family, had looked at her with contempt, seeing her as a burden, a drain on their society. But far worse than that were those few who did understand, and whose looks were laced with pity.
There had been no compulsion on Anakora to join up, not ostensibly. But she had soon seen that she had no choice. The worst sin you could commit as an Imperial citizen was to serve the Emperor to less than your full ability, and there was only one way left in which she could serve.
She had expected to find basic training a struggle. She had just kept her head down and tried to get through it, her only goal not to embarrass herself beside men who had spent their lives in preparation for this. She had worked hard, steeled herself to appear as tough and as stoic as any of them, and no one could have been more surprised than Anakora when she had passed out with honours.
Still, she had felt she was faking it, bluffing her way through a world in which she did not belong, and she had known that her first battlefield would find her out. Fifteen hours, that was the average life expectancy of an Imperial Guardsmen, though for an Ice Warrior it was a little more, maybe seventeen. Anakora didn’t expect to last that long, but if she could claim just one kill, take one heretic down with her, then she would have balanced the scales and justified her fleeting existence.
Four years later, she was still here, and she didn’t know why.
She should have died on that first battlefield. She should have died in the underhive, a couple of hours ago. She should have died so many times, on so many worlds — but most of all, she should have died two and a half years ago, on Astaroth Prime.
Astaroth Prime… A hellhole of a world, with lakes of fire and molten rivers; a world on which no Guardsman accustomed to the sub-zero temperatures of Valhalla should ever have set foot; a world to which a company of Ice Warriors had been sent anyway, to deal with an incursion by their oldest enemies, the orks; a world on which that company of Ice Warriors had been massacred.
In her brightest hours, Anakora tried to imagine that she had been spared for a reason, that the Emperor had had a higher purpose in mind for her. In her darkest, she forever relived that moment when a fellow trooper, a good comrade, had thrown himself in the path of an ork axe to save her.
Her record showed that she was a survivor, and in the Imperial Guard that ability was as highly prized as it was rare. Anakora knew the truth. She knew that she had not survived so long through her own efforts. She had survived because someone had taken pity on her, had thought her in need of protection.
So, now she had been pulled from another suicide mission and given this chance to survive again, precisely because of her record thus far. She couldn’t help but wonder if this might be the time her luck ran out at last, the time that everyone would see through her.
Anakora looked forward to the release of death. Her only fear was that, when she died, she would take the rest of her new squad with her.
Mikhaelev joined in with the general chatter. He concurred with his new comrades that the Chaos forces didn’t know what was about to hit them, that Confessor Wollkenden was as good as rescued. He kept his true feelings to himself.
He was worried. Behind the false bravado, he thought, they all were. Well, perhaps not Pozhar or Borscz — they both seemed like the kind of Guardsmen who lived only to die, the perfect brainwashed soldiers. It would not have occurred to them to question their orders, to wonder if their lives might have been put to better use.
Mikhaelev asked himself those questions. He stewed over the details of his briefing, the logic of staking ten lives on the faint chance of saving just one. If Confessor Wollkenden was so important, why did the Inquisition care so little about him? Why couldn’t the virus bombing they had authorised be delayed a few days for his sake?
He couldn’t speak out, of course. Even if some of the others, these relative strangers, agreed with him, they would not dare to confess to it. No, the floor would be held by the likes of Blonsky, spewing his accusations, insisting that to doubt one’s leaders, even if they were only men, was to doubt the Emperor. Just as those same leaders would want him to think.
Not that Blonsky would hear him, of course. No, as soon as he opened his mouth, he knew that Steele or Gavotski would do their duty and shoot him dead.
So, he kept his own counsel, said what he was expected to say, and did what he was told as if he was the perfect brainwashed soldier too. And the fact that he was here, in this Termite, in this squad, was proof that he had played that part supremely well.
He did all this because he knew there was just one thing, one choice he could make, that would prove more dangerous than serving the Imperium… and that was not serving it.
The Termite was under attack, being buffeted by shock waves. If he tuned out the deafening sound of its engines, Steele could identify the crump of explosive shells from without, of the sort fired by a Basilisk or a Bombard.
“We have a problem, sir,” Grayle yelled from the controls. “We’re in the sights of something… long-range artillery. It’s decided to take a few pot shots. Thing is, it has good cover. The Chimeras can’t see to return fire. The captain of one is requesting your permission to break formation, to go after it.”
“Denied,” said Steele. “Do what you can, Grayle. Find us cover, get out of firing range. Do not, I repeat do not, engage with the enemy.”
“Aye, sir,” Grayle answered. The Termite made a sharp right turn, sharper than Steele would have
thought possible. He was sure that, for an instant, its left-hand track had left the ground.
“We need a smoke launcher on this thing,” opined Barreski. “Do we at least have smoke grenades, something we can lob out through the flamer emplacements?”
“We are sitting ducks in here,” Borscz fretted. “If we were out in the field, ten smaller, faster-moving targets, that machine could never get a bead on us.”
At that moment, a tremendous concussive force slammed through the Termite’s chassis, from its back left corner. A direct hit. It felt as if a tank had rammed them from behind, and only the fact that the Ice Warriors were so tightly wedged into their seats saved Steele from being thrown into Grayle’s back.
Grayle muttered a prayer as the engine coughed, spluttered, whined, and then roared back into full throat. The Termite’s suspension was shot. It felt as if it was shaking itself apart, and the passenger compartment was filled with smoke.
“Palinev, Mikhaelev,” said Gavotski, “go through the equipment lockers, see if you can whip up a smokescreen as Barreski suggested. Barreski, I need you to check the borer, make sure it still functions. Grayle…”
“I know, sergeant,” said Grayle. “Get us the hell out of here!”
No one needed to say what every one of the ten Ice Warriors present was thinking: that they couldn’t take a second hit like that one.
Steele watched as they jumped to their assigned tasks. He had no need to intervene, trusting Gavotski to handle the situation. So, he took the opportunity to observe how each member of his new squad responded to pressure. The more he could learn about them, the more effectively he could lead them, and official records could only tell him so much.
There was something about Mikhaelev’s body language, for example — the slump of his shoulders — that said his heart wasn’t truly in this mission, that perhaps he was just going through the motions. That hadn’t come across at all in his records, and it was a cause for concern. Pozhar, thought Steele, would bear watching too, although, in his case, the reports of his commanders had been perfectly clear.
[Imperial Guard 05] - Ice Guard Page 4