[Imperial Guard 05] - Ice Guard

by Steve Lyons - (ebook by Undead)

  No one could argue with that. Still, it seemed as if a dark cloud had settled upon the squad, and Palinev could feel its weight too. It seemed so unfair that they had come so far to fall at this final hurdle. They had achieved so much, pulled off feats that had seemed impossible, and no one would even know.

  “I won’t give you the speech again,” said Gavotski. “You all know what to do, and you know what the odds are against us. Just remember that, last time, we bucked those odds. Nine of us went into the Ice Palace, and nine of us, including Confessor Wollkenden, came out again. If that doesn’t prove that the Emperor is with us, then nothing does. I know you’ll make me proud.”

  The heretics’ voices were getting louder.

  It wasn’t just that Grayle was drawing closer to them. He could hear that the crowd was growing in size, and in confidence too. He feared that, at any moment, someone might come rushing up the steps from the spaceport to find him and Palinev sneaking along the street towards them.

  Either that or, by chance, reinforcements might come up behind them.

  He quickened his pace, reasoning that with all the noise down there, no one would hear the footsteps of two men up here. He was still twenty metres away from his objective, the stricken grav-car, when Palinev took his arm and brought him to a halt.

  “This is as far as we can go,” said the scout, “without being seen from down there.” Grayle nodded and dropped onto his stomach, preparing to pull himself the rest of the way on his elbows.

  That was when the pitch of the crowd changed, confidence becoming fear in an instant. And then Grayle heard a series of staccato explosions. Then gunfire.

  He looked at Palinev in alarm. Palinev looked back at him with a helpless shrug. Then the scout turned, made a dash for the side of the road and swung himself up onto a metal gantry. He returned a few seconds later, his cheeks flushed with excitement.

  “It’s the mutants!” he reported. “The loyalist mutants. There are… I didn’t know there were so many of them. More than we ever saw. More than the heretics killed at the chapel. They’re everywhere, climbing up through the manholes. They’ve taken the heretics by surprise.”

  It seemed that the Emperor was with the Ice Warriors after all.

  “Can they win?” asked Grayle.

  Palinev shook his head. “There aren’t enough of them. But they’re providing a perfect distraction. If we move fast enough…”

  Grayle nodded, stood and raced to the grav-car. He doubted that anyone would notice him now — and even if they did they would probably be too busy to do much about it. As he reached the steps, he caught a glimpse of the melee that his comrade had described, below — but his attention was reserved for the car itself.

  The driver’s door had jammed shut in the crash. Grayle had to brace his foot against the bodywork, had to pull at it with all his might. It came free at last, flying up with such force that it almost caught him on the chin. He leapt into the vehicle, and sent a silent appeal to its machine-spirits as he jabbed at the dashboard runes. Fortunately, as Grayle had already noticed, the twin engines were housed at the back of the vehicle, and were therefore relatively unscathed.

  They caught on the third attempt, and the grav-car gave a protesting screech as its back end was raised, but its front end remained stubbornly embedded in its pillar. Grayle eased the vehicle backwards, and winced as it slowly tore itself free, as parts of it became detached and clattered to the ground. For a moment, he feared that the car might have been supporting the pillar, that it might now come crashing down across his windscreen — but, although the pillar wobbled, it held.

  And the car was free now, and picking up speed, and Grayle could see in his rear-view mirror that the rest of his squad was running to meet it.

  They bundled Wollkenden into the back seat first, told him to keep his head down. Steele and Gavotski squeezed in to each side of him, while Anakora and Palinev joined Grayle in the front. The car couldn’t lift any more weight than that, so Barreski, Blonsky and Mikhaelev would have to advance in its wake, trust that Grayle could clear a path for them and also lay down some covering fire behind him.

  “Everyone ready?” asked Grayle. “Then hold on to something!”

  And he stepped on the accelerator.

  The grav-car’s top speed was not exactly remarkable, but it seemed fast enough as it hurtled towards the steps and shot over the edge. The Ice Warriors were flying for a moment, but they came down with a bone-shaking jolt. The car surfed its antigravity cushion onto the spaceport forecourt, where a jostling crowd tried to part before it but some stumbled across its mangled bonnet or tumbled beneath its skirt.

  A few of the heretics — those not immediately occupied by mutant attackers — saw what was happening, saw that their targets were getting away, and started to fire. Most of them were cut down in a second by the three Ice Warriors following in the car’s wake.

  And then they were through the spaceport gates, speeding along the main concourse, and the sounds of battle were receding behind them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Time to Destruction of Cressida: 00.18.49

  The fighting had spilled into the spaceport. The grav-car smacked into a smock-wearing mutant, tossed it into the air. It landed on the windshield, clung there for a second, and its red eyes seemed to be pleading with the Ice Warriors inside the vehicle: why?

  Steele didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want to have to acknowledge that his life, Wollkenden’s life, all their lives, might have been saved by such aberrations. He blinked, and the mutant was gone, fallen beneath the car to die.

  And Grayle drove on. He took a sharp right turn through a vandalised waiting room, crashed through a glass door, and then they were out on the spaceport’s main ramp: a vast circular floor that would once have been filled with spacecraft of all types. Right now, it was almost empty. Steele had expected that. He and his squad wouldn’t have been the first to try to leave Iota Hive this way. He could only pray that the previous evacuees had left them something they could use.

  “There,” he said, “that frigate. You think you can fly that, Grayle?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I don’t have much experience in the air. I could try.” Grayle had already brought them around so that they were circling the decrepit old vessel. They saw that its engine housings had been torn open, perhaps by an asteroid strike, perhaps by enemy fire. Steele took a cursory glance at the exposed machinery, then shook his head and instructed Grayle to keep going.

  They could see the concave far wall now, lined with hatchways. Some of them gaped open, and they tantalised Steele with a view of the grey sky of Cressida beyond. He had only been in this Chaos-held cesspit for a day, but it had been too long. That way lay freedom, if they could just claim it.

  “This one might be worth a look, sir.” Grayle had pulled up beside a tiny lander, similar to the one in which Wollkenden had made his forced landing — and hardly in better condition. Its surfaces were encrusted with ice, its engine pods fire-blackened, and its landing legs were crippled so that it listed to one side. It was a sorry sight, and it was easy to see why the ship had been overlooked thus far — but there was nothing to indicate that it couldn’t be made to fly.

  The Ice Warriors piled out of the car. Grayle and Anakora worked on the lander’s frozen hatch with their knives until, with a throaty whine and a splintering of ice, it opened part-way, and Grayle was able to duck through. Steele ordered Palinev to follow him, with Wollkenden.

  The Chaos forces had started to pour onto the ramp. Barreski, Blonsky and Mikhaelev came running ahead of them, firing back at them — but, as Steele watched, Blonsky was cut down in a crossfire of las-beams. He wasn’t dead yet, but he had evidently been crippled. The only thing Steele could have done for him, if he could have reached him, was to put him out of his misery.

  It looked like Barreski and Mikhaelev had reached the same conclusion — because, after a brief hesitation, they resumed their fighting withdrawal and left
their fallen comrade behind. They joined Steele, Gavotski and Anakora, breathless and, in Mikhaelev’s case, wounded, a livid burn standing out on his temple.

  Gavotski was already barking out orders: “This ship has armour plating. Use it. Find a defensible position and fire at will!”

  With the Emperor’s favour, thought Steele, it might work. There were less than a score of heretics in the first wave — most of them, he guessed, were still out on the forecourt, dealing with the mutated loyalists — and so far they were wielding nothing more deadly than las-guns. They couldn’t damage the lander itself, so the only threat they posed to Wollkenden was if they were able to board it. He prayed that, with just five Ice Warriors including himself, he could stop them from doing that.

  He crouched behind one of the ship’s wings, as las-beams cracked into it and were comfortably absorbed. When it was safe to do so, he returned fire, and gritted his teeth with malicious satisfaction as he mowed down cultist after cultist.

  The second wave came with barely a moment’s respite. And this one was larger, and consisted primarily of mutants and spawn: a sure sign that the heretics were becoming more organised, enough to send in their cannon fodder ahead of them.

  A particularly large, hairy mutant shrugged off all the las-fire aimed at it, staying on its feet long enough to reach Steele. It came around the wing, growling and clawing at him. When the colonel avoided its first swipes, the mutant shoulder-charged him instead, and slammed him into the hull.

  He jammed his bayonet into its throat, fighting a gag reflex as its stinking blood spewed over him. The mutant fought on, although it could only have been kept alive now by the force of its own fury.

  Steele ducked under its claws and slipped beneath the lopsided lander itself, squeezing himself into the acute angle where its belly almost touched the ground. The mutant tried to follow, but its shoulders were too broad. It strained to reach its prey, and its claws came within a hair’s breadth of Steele’s chest — but, at last, it shuddered and died. At almost the same moment, an enemy las-beam struck one of the few undamaged struts around Steele, and it bowed and almost broke. The ship’s bulk shifted over his head and threatened to drop, to crush him. He scrambled out of there as fast as he could.

  The heretics’ advance had faltered. Steele’s comrades were mounting a stout defence, as was the Valhallan way, giving him a moment to pause and take stock. He saw three Traitor Guardsmen darting behind a gutted lander. They were trying to circle around behind the ship, just as he would have done in their place.

  Steele sent a volley of las-beams after them. He didn’t manage to kill any of them before they took cover — he was starting to miss his bionic eye, still on auto-repair after its latest discharge — but he did send a message.

  The traitors knew he had seen them. They would proceed more slowly, more carefully, from now on — if they dared to proceed at all.

  One of the lander’s engines groaned, and belched smoke from its exhaust port before it fell silent again. The hull of the ship creaked and shuddered, and gave an alarming lurch as the weakened landing leg buckled a little further.

  Steele concentrated on gunning down the oncoming mutants. The most important task was out of his hands. It was all down to Grayle now.

  And then, to his relief, the engines started — both of them.

  “Fall back,” he yelled to the others. “Onto the ship. We’re getting out of here!”

  He was closest to the stubby loading ramp. He raced up it, firing a few parting shots back over his shoulder, and leapt through the hatchway that Grayle had left half-open.

  He was greeted by a sight that made his heart sink into his boots.

  Palinev was sprawled out on the floor of the passenger compartment, unconscious. Of Confessor Wollkenden, there was no sign.

  Steele dropped by his scout’s side, and shook him vigourously until his eyelids fluttered. “The confessor,” he hissed. “Where is the confessor?”

  “He… took me by surprise,” groaned Palinev. “Came up… behind me. He was burbling something about… I think he thought I was Mangellan, he…”

  Steele didn’t need to hear any more. He turned to find Gavotski and Mikhaelev behind him, pushed his way past them and collided with Anakora and Barreski in the hatchway. Gavotski began to ask him what was happening, where he was going.

  “None of you,” Steele ordered, “are to leave this ship under any circumstances. Give me as much time as you can — but as soon as it looks as if the heretics might board, you get up to that cockpit and you tell Grayle to lift off, whether Wollkenden and I have returned or not. Is that understood, sergeant?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer.

  He was out in the open again, cursing himself for not having foreseen this, for not having detailed more men to watch Wollkenden — for not having heard as the confessor had knocked out Palinev and escaped behind his back. It must have happened, he thought, while he was underneath the ship, occupied with the mutant.

  The heretics were just realising that the lander was no longer defended, just starting to close in. They reacted to Steele’s sudden reappearance — too slowly. Steele reasoned that Wollkenden would have made for the nearest cover. He saw a line of man-sized, metal-framed packing crates, and he leapt behind them as the first las-beams stabbed out behind him.

  His acoustic enhancers led him straight to the confessor, who was sitting behind the crates, whimpering into his hands. He seized Wollkenden by the front of his robes, hauled him to his feet. “I’m sorry I don’t have time to show you all due respect, sir, but this is the situation: you are boarding that ship with me — and I would rather you did so willingly, because if I have to carry you it will probably get us both killed, but I will knock you out again if I have to. Which is it to be?”

  Wollkenden squirmed out of his grasp and ran for it. Steele caught him before he could take two steps, and slammed him into a crate hard enough to splinter one of its wooden panels. “Get your hands off me!” Wollkenden gasped, winded. “You’re just like the rest of them, telling me what to do. He was right all along, with his words… Let me go, I want to go to him!”

  “You’re confused,” said Steele. “You don’t know what you’re saying. I need you to trust me, confessor. I need you to do as I say, just for a few—”

  A Traitor Guardsman, bolder than Steele had expected, stepped into view. His lasgun was readied, but he didn’t fire. Perhaps he was out of power, or the gun had simply jammed. Steele didn’t stop to question his good fortune. He bundled Wollkenden into the narrow space between two crates and started firing himself. The traitor leapt back into cover, but Steele could hear footsteps running to join him.

  He cursed under his breath. Wollkenden had delayed him too long. Their way back to the lander was blocked, and the heretics were moving to surround them. They couldn’t stay where they were. But there was nowhere to run, nowhere that didn’t involve breaking cover and making themselves easy targets.

  If Steele had been alone, he could have hauled himself up onto one of the crates, got the drop on his foes from up there — but he doubted Wollkenden could make the climb even if he was willing to try.

  Wollkenden… Suddenly, it occurred to Steele that his presence might be his greatest asset, that that traitor’s gun might not have jammed after all.

  He turned on the confessor, spun him around. He yanked his arm up behind his back, slipped his arm around Wollkenden’s throat and pulled tight to choke his words of protest. “Sorry about this, sir,” he muttered, “but needs must, and this is the only way I can think of to keep you alive.”

  He pushed Wollkenden ahead of him, stepped out from behind the crate, found himself facing a score of armed traitors…

  …and was relieved to find that his hunch had been right. The traitors kept him covered with their guns, but didn’t dare fire, couldn’t risk hitting his hostage. Evidently, they had been ordered to retake Wollkenden, their offering to their gods, alive. It occurred to Steele that th
ose same orders might apply to him too — until Wollkenden’s legs gave way and he sagged in the colonel’s grip, and one of the traitors fired a las-beam, tried to hit Steele over the confessor’s head and only missed him by a whisker.

  “I wouldn’t try that again,” Steele snarled. “Even if you could hit me, I could snap Wollkenden’s neck as I went down. And I swear this by the Emperor’s name, I will do it. I will see him dead, rather than let Mangellan have him.”

  “Don’t speak that name,” spat one of the traitors. “Mangellan is dead. He failed our gods and has paid the price for it. Furst is our high priest now.”

  “Then you’re in more trouble than I thought,” said Steele.

  He was inching his way around them, keeping his back to the crates so that no one could come up behind him — and he could see it now, the lander, his goal. Its engines were still ticking over, ice melting and dripping from its hull.

  And it was under attack.

  The ship had been rushed by mutants and spawn — and Steele could see Barreski and Anakora in the hatchway, fighting to keep it clear, to keep the creatures away from it — a losing battle.

  As he watched, one muscular mutant landed a blow to Barreski’s head, send him reeling back into the ship, out of sight — and then it disappeared inside after him. Anakora had to fall back as two more creatures forced their way on board. And there were more of them, jostling each other, knocking each other off the loading ramp in their haste to follow. In a few seconds’ time, the Ice Warriors would be overwhelmed, the ship taken. Unless…

  The pitch of the engines changed, the sound building to a deafening shriek, and the lander begin to haul itself into the air.

  For a moment, all eyes were off Steele and Wollkenden, but Steele couldn’t take advantage of this distraction — because he was staring too, watching as his last hope of survival, of completing his mission, rose out of his reach.