Eventually the shaking subsided, until I finally realised that the residual tremors I could feel were just in my much abused muscles, and I fought my way free of my improvised seat restraint. The floor was canted at an angle, which unbalanced me for a moment, and I hung on to my chair for support.
‘We’re down,’ I voxed, although I assumed that would be obvious. ‘Many casualties?’
‘Enough,’ Kasteen said brusquely, so I didn’t press her for details, content just to bask in the unexpected glory of my own survival.
‘Medicae to the bridge,’ Kolyn ordered, through some internal vox-system, and Throne knows they needed it; although I’d have laid pretty low odds on any surviving medicae among the crew having the time to respond. His face was pale, and he seemed to be nursing a broken arm; which put him among the healthiest of the civilian survivors that I could see.
‘Lucky you resigned while the going was good,’ I said, with a glance at the devastation surrounding us. Mires was still slumped in his control throne, and I tottered towards him across the sloping deck; to this day I couldn’t tell you whether I was minded to congratulate him or finish him off for getting us into this mess in the first place. But in the event I was spared having to choose; his eyes were wide and sightless. Somewhere in the jarring succession of impacts he’d broken his worthless neck.
The deck shifted abruptly, and I turned my attention to the pict screen, trying to get a sense of wherever we’d ended up. The image which met my eyes was hard to interpret, everything shrouded in mist, but instead of the jagged icefields and drifting snow I remembered from my last visit to this benighted world, we seemed to be surrounded by a low, flat surface, which undulated gently about us in all directions. Now we’d stopped moving, the heat from our hull was leaching out into the ice, melting it.
Despite my initial incredulity, there could be absolutely no doubt – we were in the middle of a lake. And that meant...
‘Emperor’s bones!’ I expostulated. ‘We’re sinking!’
SEVEN
‘Not right away,’ Kolyn assured me. ‘Most of the pressure doors are holding.’
‘But the hull’s got more holes in it than a heretic’s sermon,’ I rejoined. It would be flooding in through the gashes left by our collisions with the orbital station and the peak we’d bounced off, let alone all the innumerable minor ruptures where rivets had sheared and plates bent as we’d skittered across the icefields like a stone on a pond. Not to mention the stress fractures and buckled buttresses inside where the structure had been fatally weakened by the furnace heat of our fiery plunge through the atmosphere. As if to confirm my darkest fears, the battered hulk lurched beneath my feet even as I spoke, a sudden shift in the angle of the deck playing momentary havoc with my inner ear.
‘Make for the ventral docking bay,’ Kasteen voxed on the general command channel, ‘and assemble by platoon.’
‘Good call,’ I told her, already making for the door, leaving the crew to shift for themselves. Those who still could, anyway. ‘The higher we are, the more time we buy.’
‘And it’s big enough to hold everyone without any shuttles docked,’ Broklaw added, which was also true; it would be a bit of a squeeze, with a thousand troopers packed in there, but we’d manage.
‘What about the vehicles?’ Sulla cut in. ‘They’re still welded down.’
‘We’ll recover them later,’ I assured her, hoping we’d get the chance. ‘People come first, then the kit.’ With me as the person I most had in mind.
I found my way up through the maze of twisted corridors easily enough, my instinctive affinity for confined spaces proving as reliable as ever, making good time despite the buckled deckplates and collapsed ceilings which periodically blocked my path. Nevertheless, my sense of unease grew steadily, as the faint oscillation of the deckplates beneath my boots, caused by the shattered starship continuing to wallow in the lake it had created, became ever more pronounced. The periodic lurches became stronger, the intervals between them ever shorter, and I could picture the cause all too easily: the accumulated pressure of the water forcing its way past barriers which had held it temporarily in check, bursting through them in unstoppable torrents, to flood another series of compartments, as it had done in our stricken submersible beneath the waves of Kosnar.
Well, I hadn’t drowned then, and I wasn’t about to now, at least if I could help it. Clearing a path with my chainsword whenever the detritus impeding my progress became too irksome to squeeze through, I forged ahead, the audible trickle of water in the distance spurring me on.
‘How are you doing?’ I voxed, turning away from a dead end of tangled debris too large to break through. Perhaps I should have stuck with the civilians, I thought belatedly – they might have known a faster route.
‘We’ve reached the docking bay,’ Kasteen replied at once, ‘but the loading doors won’t open.’
‘Welded shut by the heat of entry,’ I said, recalling Kolyn’s words on the bridge.
‘Looks like it,’ she said, clearly more concerned with the effect than with its cause. ‘But Federer thinks he can blast our way out.’
Which didn’t surprise me. Captain Federer, the officer commanding our contingent of sappers, had an enthusiasm for all things explosive which bordered on the unhealthy; but he was undeniably an expert where demo charges were concerned. ‘He’d know,’ I agreed, feeling rather more confident that we’d be able to get out of the slowly sinking tomb we were trapped in. If only I could find my way up to join them. I took another passageway, which seemed to be running in the right direction, and found my feet sloshing in a few centimetres of icy-cold water. ‘Better tell him to get a move on. The water’s rising fast down here.’
I spotted a ladder, giving access to a ceiling hatch halfway along the corridor, and jogged towards it, the water already level with my ankles. As I began to clamber up, a hollow booming noise echoed along the passageway, and the whole ship shuddered. I knew at once what that meant; the bulkhead through which the water had been trickling had abruptly given way.
Galvanised by an adrenaline rush of pure terror, I scrambled to the top and heaved at the hatchway above me, yanking at the release handle with all my strength, but the blasted thing refused to budge. A wall of water appeared at the end of the passageway, hurtling towards me like a charging krootox; I reached for my chainsword with some half-formed notion of attempting to hack my way through, already aware that it was too late, and that in a heartbeat I was going to be swept to my death.
Then the hatchway abruptly gave, and burst open. Welcome hands, accompanied by a no less welcome odour, reached down to haul me out.
‘Up you come, sir,’ Jurgen said, as I popped out of the hole, propelled by a piston of melt-water. Between us we wrestled the hatch closed against the pressure of the fountain which had followed me through, and I blinked at my deliverance in astonishment.
‘Why aren’t you with the others?’ I asked him, energetically plying the towel he’d produced from among his collection of pouches. We must have been somewhere near the outer hull by now; the air temperature was more than humid, and my drying clothes left me wreathed in a cloud of steam as I followed him back towards the docking bay.
‘I came to look for you,’ Jurgen said, as though it should have been obvious. ‘Heard you banging on that lid thing.’
‘Thank the Throne you did,’ I said, as we entered the vast echoing chamber, full of Valhallans grouped into their platoons as Kasteen had ordered. The medicae were busy in one corner, treating those who’d come off worst when we hit the ground; clearly not all were expected to make it, as Tope was there too, making the sign of the aquila. There were no body bags to be seen, so either someone had been tactful enough to keep them out of sight, or the fatalities had simply been left behind in the rush.
‘We’ve not got long,’ I told Kasteen, as the ship lurched again. ‘The water’s only a couple of levels below us.’
She nodded, and tapped her comm-bead. ‘Federer. N
ow would be good.’
‘Just setting the last of the charges,’ the sapper told us, a disquieting note of eagerness discernible in his voice, even through the miniature vox-unit.
‘How many have you used?’ I asked, trying to sound as though the enquiry was merely a casual one.
‘Enough,’ Federer said, his attention no doubt entirely absorbed by the strip of det tape he was carefully peeling off the reel.
‘You made it,’ Broklaw said, emerging from the crowd at my elbow, and I nodded, trying to look as relaxed as I could under the circumstances, which was probably not all that much, come to think of it39.
Before I could answer him, Federer bellowed ‘Fire in the hole!’ with what I can only describe as unseemly enthusiasm.
Broklaw and I flinched, along with pretty much every other trooper present, and ducked back, pressing our hands to our ears. Instead of the blast we’d expected, however, there was simply a loud crack!, like a lascannon popping off a single round, and a faint smell of burned fyceline.
‘It hasn’t worked,’ I started to say, and took a couple of steps towards Federer, intending to offer a few words of encouragement. But before I could reach him, there was an agonised squeal of overstressed metal, and most of the outer wall of the docking bay simply fell away, remaining attached along the bottom lip, which bent and tore like an envelope Jurgen had taken it upon himself to open. While I continued to watch in open-mouthed astonishment, the far end of the makeshift ramp plunged into the frigid water surrounding us, raising a fountain of spray, and a wave which sent the whole vessel wallowing under our feet again.
‘That went about as well as could be expected,’ he said, with an unmistakable air of smugness.
‘You were only supposed to blow the frakking doors off!’ I said, astonishment and admiration at his resourcefulness mingling in my voice.
Federer shrugged. ‘That wouldn’t have helped us to get out any faster,’ he pointed out, reasonably enough. ‘At least this saves us a climb.’
‘If you want to swim for it,’ I rejoined, conscious that very few of the people on board could do that at all40, and that none of us would survive more than a handful of minutes if we were incautious enough to enter the freezing water in any case.
‘No need,’ Broklaw said, staring out at the panorama of bone-chilling desolation before us as though it was the most beautiful sight he’d seen in a very long time (which, to be fair, so far as he was concerned, it probably was). The far distant mountains were wreathed in cloud, fresh snow already falling to erase the scars of our passage, while closer at hand flurries of it were being driven by the wind to heap up in hummocks against the cracked and broken surface of the ice fields. ‘It’ll be firm enough to walk on before long.’
Well, he’d know, I supposed, he was an iceworlder after all, so I edged a little closer to the gap, pulling my greatcoat more tightly around myself as I did so. There was still a little residual heat in the hull plating, but the wind was biting and rapidly dissipated the last traces of mist rising from the water surrounding us. I glanced down, noting with some surprise that a scum of ice was already beginning to form across the choppy surface, breaking up and reforming as the wavelets rippled beneath it, the open patches diminishing in size even as I stared in dumbstruck fascination.
It was then that I fancied I saw some flicker of motion in the murky waters, a dark shadow moving with sinuous purpose some distance beneath the surface. ‘Did you see that?’ I asked, and the major frowned.
‘See what?’ he replied, his eyes narrowing. We’d served together too long for him to dismiss anything I said out of hand, however outlandish it may have sounded to him, and of course I’d take anything he or Kasteen said equally seriously.
‘I thought I saw something moving in the water,’ I said, the palms of my hands tingling again, although given the freezing temperatures that could just have been impeded circulation. ‘Like a big fish.’
Probably just a bit of debris breaking off below the waterline,’ Broklaw said, not quite managing to suppress a smile. Obscurely cheered by his manifest scepticism, I found myself returning it, although if I’d had any inkling of what we were later to discover, you can be sure my reaction would have been very different.
‘Probably was,’ I agreed, in blissful ignorance, and turned away, attracted by the familiar odour of my aide, mingled with the rather more appetising scent of tanna.
‘Thought you could do with this, sir,’ he said, proffering a steaming flask. ‘Warm you up a bit after getting so wet.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, warming my flesh and blood fingers around it gratefully. The bitter cold was insinuating itself through the weave of my greatcoat, even though we were still sheltered from the worst of the wind by the enclosing metal walls; remembering the way it would cut through to the bone almost as soon as I set foot on the icefields, I resolved to make the most of the hot beverage while I could. ‘Much appreciated.’ Although if the ship kept settling, we’d all be getting wet again before long, Broklaw’s optimism notwithstanding.
‘You’re welcome, sir,’ my aide replied, staring past my left shoulder to get his first good look at the desolate snowscape beyond the gaping hole in the hull. The major’s casual prediction of a few moments before seemed to be coming true already, a pristine sheet of ice now stretching from our battered hull to the drifts and ice boulders in the distance, a steady crepitation tickling the ear with an audible counterpoint to the visible freeze. My spirits began to rise. If there was enough air still trapped to keep us buoyant a little while longer, the solidifying ice would begin to hold us up, trapping the half-sunken vessel where it was instead of sending us to the bottom. ‘How soon before we can get out there?’
‘Not long,’ I said, appreciating his impatience, which was no doubt shared by everyone aboard except me. As I narrowed my eyes against the chill wind, I thought I caught sight of a flicker of movement in the distance. ‘Have you got an amplivisor with you?’
He did, of course, producing one from his collection of utility pouches after a few seconds of rummaging. I raised it to my eyes, and swept the distant snowfields, registering nothing but the entirely natural flow of the light, powdery surface under the impetus of the wind.
‘Seeing things again?’ Broklaw jested, and I shrugged, lowering the amplivisor a little sheepishly.
‘Can’t be too careful,’ I began, just as my aide pointed into the middle distance, about ninety degrees from where I’d been looking.
‘Orks,’ he said, unslinging his precious melta with every sign of relish.
I spun round, lifting the amplivisor again, and nodded grimly in confirmation. ‘Trucks and warbikes,’ I said. ‘Closing fast.’ It was hard to be certain of their numbers, their progress churning up so great a quantity of snow around them that they seemed to be advancing in a blizzard of their own making, but it was certainly a considerably sized warband. Hardly surprising, given the spectacular nature of our arrival and the instinctive aggression of their kind; we must have accounted for a good many of their number in our cataclysmic progress through the mountains they’d infested, and the survivors would be incensed and vengeful enough to be out for blood even more than usual.
‘Get the ramp barricaded!’ Broklaw ordered, hurrying off to organise our defence, and a fresh chill ran down my spine, completely unconnected with the harsh wind screaming across the ice fields like the vanguard of the greenskin horde. Federer’s stroke of ingenuity had been intended to let us disembark quickly and safely, but now it afforded the onrushing orks all but unimpeded access to the downed starship instead. There could be no question of getting everyone off now, and even if we did, anyone on foot on the smooth plain of hardening ice around us would be easy targets without a vestige of cover. The orks would fall on them like Fellonian raptors41 on a herd of grox.
It seemed that, even on the ground, the Fires of Faith was still a deathtrap from which none of us could reasonably expect to escape alive.
EIGHT
Unfortunately there were considerably more than a few of them. As I continued to observe their approach, refining the focus of the amplivisor as best I could, given the clouds of snow crystals being thrown up all around them, and the even denser clouds of noxious vapours thrown out by their ill-tuned engines, it seemed to me that the greenskins still had us outnumbered. Add to that the position we were occupying, stuck in a vast metal box with an open side, things didn’t look too good; huge as the rent Federer had blasted in the hull was, fewer than a quarter of our people would be able to bring a weapon to bear, the others left milling about behind them, unable to get a clear shot past the press of their comrades.
The Last Ditch Page 6