[Imperial Guard 05] - Ice Guard

by Steve Lyons - (ebook by Undead)

  He shouldered open the door beside him, and leapt into another apartment complex, even as a frag grenade rolled into the space he had just vacated. The explosion tore the door from its hinges, followed him down the corridor, and almost lifted him off his feet.

  He paused at a window, fired six more shots from a fresh angle, claimed another kill. Then Palinev was running again before he could be pinned down.

  From the next window, he saw that the melee was thinning out, the odds becoming more even. Some of the traitors were starting to disengage, to realise that they would be better off gaining some distance and using their guns.

  Barreski charged two of them. They set their bayonets to greet him — but the gauntlet he was wearing on his right arm crackled with energy, and with one well-timed swipe he knocked the weapons right out of their hands.

  He drove his gauntlet into a traitor’s stomach, doubling him up with pain, causing him to cough up blood as he crumpled. The other traitor grappled with him, tried to wrest the gauntlet from him, but Barreski gripped him by the front of his flak jacket and tossed him almost casually over his shoulder. The traitor described a graceless arc, his arms and legs flailing, and slammed into the side of a building.

  Pozhar was dragged clear of the others, thrown against a balcony rail, a ten-storey drop behind him. With his injured arm, he couldn’t draw his lasgun in time. Two traitors shoulder-charged him, trying to force him over. Palinev fired at them, and managed to strike one between the shoulder blades, taking him down.

  His heart leapt into his mouth as Pozhar toppled backwards, flipping over the railing, but somehow managing to take his remaining attacker with him. Palinev leapt out of his window, and raced across the street, fearing that he was already too late, only too well aware that he had no cover out here, but knowing that the rest of his squad were tied up with their own problems. He was Pozhar’s only hope.

  His sudden appearance took the traitors by surprise — and like Palinev’s comrades, most of them had their hands full. He reached the railing, and found Pozhar clinging one-handed to the edge of the road beneath it, the traitor hanging from his waist, still trying to drag him down.

  It would be a tough shot. Palinev took the time to steady his aim, tried to forget the imminent danger to himself. His las-beam struck the Traitor Guardsman in the face, and he lost his hold on Pozhar and fell with a bloodcurdling scream.

  And Palinev turned to find a knife-wielding traitor barrelling towards him, just in time to sidestep and to fling the man over his shoulder, to join his comrade below.

  For the longest time, Gavotski hadn’t known where he was, hadn’t seen any comrades beyond Colonel Steele to his immediate left and Blonsky to his right, hadn’t known how many Traitor Guardsmen were still standing, hadn’t been able to see a way out of this for himself or for any of them.

  All he could do was keep fighting, keep swinging his lasgun, keep slashing with his knife, keep dodging the blows that were aimed at him in return. Gavotski prided himself that he was still a strong man, almost as strong as he had been in his youth, and the reactions of his opponents as he struck at them confirmed this in the most satisfying way. With every traitor that fell, landing in a growing pile at the sergeant’s feet, it became harder for the next one to reach him.

  And then, to his surprise, there was nobody left. He regained his bearings, and saw that they had done it, they had broken through the cordon — that, although there would certainly be yet more foes searching for the Ice Warriors, perhaps already coming up behind them, the way ahead was clear for the moment, and Gavotski yelled out for the others to follow him as he took it.

  Once again, they sprinted through the streets, and Gavotski prickled with fresh hope, knowing that each step was taking them closer to their goal.

  It couldn’t last. He knew that. But it ended sooner than he had hoped.

  As before, it was Steele who heard the incoming platoon first, who tried to find a way around it. This time, however, his options were more limited by the Traitor Guardsmen, the remnants of the first platoon, still pursuing them.

  They found themselves outside a censorium, and Gavotski was disheartened when Steele turned and led his squad inside the building. They clambered over upturned filing cabinets, and kicked up the ashes that were all that remained of hundreds of thousands of Imperial documents. A few of the Ice Warriors took up sniping positions in the frames of the shattered ground floor windows, but Gavotski followed Palinev and Blonsky up a flight of stairs in search of a better vantage point above.

  He looked out onto the street again, and saw that two squads of traitors had just turned into it, one from each end. Steele’s senses had saved the Ice Warriors again, warning them that they were surrounded.

  It took the traitors a moment to work out where their prey had disappeared to. By the time they had, almost half of them were dead. Gavotski leaned out of his window, pumping out las-beam after las-beam on full auto as the remaining traitors scattered, feeling a momentary catharsis with each one that fell. It was not enough, though, to quell the searing frustration inside him.

  The last thing the Ice Warriors had wanted was a siege situation. The last thing they could afford was to be trapped.

  A traitor ventured into view with a frag grenade in his hand. Gavotski fired at him before he could hurl it, and his beam was joined by two more from the windows below him. A second later, another traitor tried the same stunt, but Palinev and Blonsky made just as short work of him.

  This was getting them nowhere. The traitors had time on their side. Word of the Ice Warriors’ presence would have spread, and for every traitor they felled there could be no doubt that ten more were on their way to replace him. They needed a way out, and they needed it fast.

  No sooner had Gavotski formed that thought than the whole of the censorium trembled with a powerful explosion, showering him with mortar from the ceiling, almost knocking him off his feet. For a second, he feared that a traitor had somehow, unseen by him, run the gauntlet of the Ice Warriors’ las-fire and managed to lob a frag grenade into the building. But then Steele’s voice drifted up to him:

  “Everybody,” yelled the colonel, “down here!”

  They raced down ten flights of a winding metal staircase, which rang and shook with the impacts of eight pairs of boots.

  It had been Mikhaelev who had offered up the demolition charge. Barreski had helped him set it up in the censorium’s basement, standing the cylindrical shell on its end to focus its explosive power downwards. Grayle’s ears still rang with the force of the blast, but it had achieved the desired results.

  A hole had been blown through the building’s foundations — and, peering into it, Grayle had been pleased to see the remains of a top-floor apartment. The Ice Warriors had dropped into the room one by one, looking for a way down, and now at last they burst out onto the street of the hive level below.

  They were greeted by las-fire. The traitors, having just worked out where their foes had gone, were crowding the balconies above them. Steele kept his squad moving, steering clear of open squares, hugging the walls of buildings, making sharp turns beneath archways and bridges.

  The strategy proved successful. The fire from above dropped off, the traitors finding it hard to track the fugitives below them, impossible to target them when they did. Some of them, frustrated, were swarming down ladders, just trying to get closer, but making themselves easy pickings for the Ice Warriors’ guns.

  They were gaining ground, putting their foes behind them, closing in on the Ice Palace, and for a moment Grayle thought they might actually make it. But then, the deep-throated roar of an engine heralded the onset of a new peril.

  Steele must have heard the bike coming — but it was too fast, there had been no chance of avoiding it. It shot out from a narrow alleyway, squat and black, its twin-linked bolters spitting out death metal.

  Even ridden by a cultist or a traitor, it would have presented a significant threat to the Ice Warriors. But the rider o
f this bike was no mere traitor. His eyes were dead, his face criss-crossed with badly stitched scars, and his features warped so that his lips were forever twisted into a disdainful leer. The rider’s muscular frame was made even bulkier, more imposing, by a suit of jet-black power armour — and that armour had been daubed with red Chaos sigils, and bristled with spikes on which had been impaled a number of cracked, blank-eyed skulls.

  A Chaos Space Marine!

  He was standing in his broad saddle, leaning eagerly over his handlebars, slashing at the air with a chattering chainsword. Grayle found himself running at full pelt, almost before Steele had given the order to do so, with Gavotski, Blonsky and Pozhar beside him.

  He hesitated as he reached the nearest corner, glanced back, and saw that Palinev had actually run at the oncoming monster. The Chaos Space Marine swiped at the scout with his chainsword. Palinev twisted nimbly and avoided the blow by a hair’s breadth. It was one of the bravest things Grayle had seen, albeit somewhat undermined by the terrified expression on Palinev’s face. It seemed he had put a little too much trust in his own speed and agility, hadn’t expected the sword to cut quite as close as it had.

  He slipped around behind the bike and was gone, haring up the alleyway from which it had emerged. The Chaos Space Marine tried to wrestle his vehicle around on its axis, to follow, but only succeeded in unseating himself — as Palinev had no doubt hoped he would. He fell hard on his shoulder, and the bike veered off into a wall, but its rider was back on his feet in a second.

  Grayle didn’t wait to see what he did next, who he would go after. Whichever of the Ice Warriors drew the short straw, he would probably end up dead — and the only chance the rest of them had was to be long gone before that happened. So, Grayle and Pozhar ran one way, Gavotski and Blonsky the other, and Grayle was so worried about what might be closing behind him that he almost didn’t see what was waiting ahead.

  He was rushed by two traitors, one from each side. He sidestepped the first, and greeted the second with his lasgun butt, striking his jaw. As the traitor reeled, Grayle grabbed him by the shoulder, and spun him into his comrade. While both were off-balance, he stepped back, brought up his gun, then thought about the noise it would make, the attention it would draw, and thrust his bayonet instead through the first traitor’s kidney until he choked on his own blood.

  The second traitor made to run, but Pozhar — following Grayle’s lead in not firing his gun — brought him down with a low tackle. The traitor opened his mouth to yell out, but Pozhar filled it with his fist. Then he drove his gun butt repeatedly into the traitor’s head until he was quite certain that he was dead.

  “Quickly, in here!”

  Grayle whirled around, brought up his gun, and saw a slim, fair-haired young man in its sights. The man was wearing a basic blue worker’s smock; he certainly didn’t look like a traitor or a cultist. Still, Grayle wasn’t the only Ice Warrior to be suspicious, and the new arrival blanched as he found himself staring down two lasgun barrels.

  The man threw up his hands to show that he was unarmed.

  “I can help you,” he said, 'but you have to come now. We don’t have long.”

  “How do we know this isn’t some trick?” demanded Pozhar.

  “I don’t know how to convince you,” said the man, 'but I am loyal to the Emperor, praise His name. I am one of the few men left in this city who is. And the Traitor Guardsmen are moving to surround you again. If you stay out here, you’re dead for sure — you may as well take your chances with me.”

  Grayle looked at Pozhar, and could see that they were both thinking the same thing: that the stranger was right. He was their best hope. So, Grayle turned to him with a nod, and said, “Okay, lead the way.”

  “But if you are lying to us,” Pozhar hissed, “it won’t matter how many friends you have waiting back there, what sort of a trap you might be leading us into, I will fight my way to you and I will cut your throat — with my dying breath if I have to.”

  Steele was running with Anakora, Barreski and Mikhaelev when he heard the bike roaring up behind them. It came screaming past the Ice Warriors, skidded to a halt in their path, and its rider was already in mid-leap towards them.

  They greeted him with las-fire, but they may as well have been shining flashlights in his face for all the effect it had. Steele ducked beneath the Chaos Space Marine’s chainsword, while Anakora drove her bayonet at him. She was aiming for an armour joint but missed, and the tip of her blade snapped off. The Chaos Space Marine grabbed her by the greatcoat, lifted her and flung her away like a piece of trash.

  Barreski took the opportunity, while his foe was distracted, to attempt to drive his power fist into his stomach. The Chaos Space Marine caught Barreski’s hand and squeezed, and the gauntlet broke with a shower of sparks. Barreski was barely able to pull out his hand in time to spare it the same fate.

  Steele was aiming his laspistol, looking for an opening, when the chainsword lashed out at him again. He could smell the engine oil on its whirring teeth as he stumbled backwards away from it.

  The Chaos Space Marine was focusing his attacks upon him. He must have seen the rank insignias on Steele’s coat, identified him as the leader. He had chosen his victim; the other three Ice Warriors were just an inconvenience, a minor one at that. Steele offered up a prayer to the Emperor — not for his own life, because he knew this was lost, but that he could occupy this monster long enough for his comrades to get clear.

  He ran, knowing he would not get far, hoping that he could get just far enough. He could hear the jackhammer footsteps of the Chaos Space Marine behind him — it had taken him less than a second to cast Barreski and Mikhaelev aside, to set off in pursuit of his true prey — and then he heard the whine of a jump pack.

  Steele threw himself onto his stomach, and the Chaos Space Marine hurtled over him, having not expected such quick reflexes from a Guardsman. Scrambling to his feet, Steele raced for a litter-strewn alleyway, slipped through a gateway, hauled himself into a burnt-out building through an open window, and ran out through the main door.

  He ducked behind a statue of a great Imperial general, and tried to control his breathing, not to make the slightest sound.

  And the statue exploded, shredded by the explosive payload of a bolt pistol.

  The Chaos Space Marine was upon Steele again, marching through a cloud of dust and debris, and for the third time Steele only just avoided being sliced in two by his chainsword. There was no running now, no one to get between him and his attacker, and no hope of matching him for sheer strength.

  He drew his power sword anyway, and triggered its energy field.

  He was in this fight to the death, and he had no doubt that he would be the one to die. But by the time Colonel Stanislev Steele went down, his killer would be left in no doubt that he had just gone toe to toe with an Ice Warrior.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Time to Destruction of Cressida: 16.24.39

  “The Chaos worshippers don’t come down here,” said the man in the worker’s smock.

  “I can see why not,” muttered Grayle.

  They were picking their way along a dark, dank tunnel, lit only by the yellow glow of their lamp-packs. Their guide, who had introduced himself as Tollenberg, had led Grayle and Pozhar through a concealed manhole in the basement of an office building. The foul smell had been the first thing to hit Grayle. He had been wading ankle-deep in cold, rank water before he realised what this was: a sewer pipe.

  “Oh, they’ve tried a time or two,” Tollenberg went on. “Mangellan knows we’re here, even if he underestimates our numbers and our fortitude. He’s sent cultists to find us. I don’t think he knows how extensive these tunnels are, doesn’t realise it’s a maze down here. It’s all too easy to get lost, easier still to walk into an ambush.”

  They climbed up onto a crumbling ledge, and slipped through an iron door that had been left rusted half-open.

  Then Tollenberg led them down a long ladder, its rungs ma
de slippery by a continual dribble of the foul water. At its base, they found another tunnel, apparently identical to the one above.

  “We’ve had time, you see — those of us still loyal to the Emperor, still free. We’ve had time to find our way around, draw up maps, scope out the best hiding places. We can get from one side of the hive to the other now, from its top to its bottom, without leaving these pipes for more than a few strides. We can—”

  Tollenberg came to an abrupt halt, fell silent, and held up a hand for the Ice Warriors to do likewise. They switched off their lights and stood waiting in the darkness, in the quiet, and they could all hear it: footsteps, sloshing towards them from behind another opening in the brick wall. Footsteps that now fell silent, as if the people making them had also realised that they weren’t alone, were also standing and waiting.

  Cautiously, Tollenberg tapped his lamp-pack against the wall, three times, paused, then tapped twice more, each knock echoing along the tunnel behind and ahead of them. A moment later, answering knocks came, four in quick succession, and Tollenberg relit his pack.

  “It’s OK,” he said. “They’re friends.”

  They met at the tunnel junction, Tollenberg embracing a middle-aged woman with tied-back red hair, who wore a blue smock like his, while Grayle and Pozhar were delighted to find her accompanied by two comrades: Gavotski and Blonsky.

  “We have people searching the whole of this sector,” explained Tollenberg. “With luck, they’ll find a few more of your fellows yet.”

  “But why?” asked Pozhar impatiently. “What do you want with us?”

  “Where are you taking us?” asked Blonsky.

  “Somewhere safe,” said Tollenberg.

  Anakora was alive.

  Her encounter with the Chaos Space Marine had lasted all of about three seconds, and was a blur in her memory. She only knew that she had hit the ground hard, been winded, and now she could hear the growling of a chainsword blade. It filled her ears, seeming to come from right beside her — but as she picked herself up, as she made herself look, she saw that she was alone in the gutter.