‘They’re moving too fast,’ he said, and I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. The tide of chitin seemed endless, although as tyranid swarms went I suppose it was still on the small side, and it had already swept round to envelop us. ‘I’ll have to punch through.’
‘Good luck,’ I said grimly, all too aware of how slim our chances were. I wouldn’t have fancied them much even in a well-armoured Chimera, which had forward and turret-mounted heavy weapons to clear the way and a reassuring amount of metal plate to hide behind; but the relatively fragile civilian vehicle had neither. The minute we butted heads with a carnifex we’d be torn apart, even if we hadn’t been slowed to a halt by the sheer mass of lesser creatures facing us, clogging our tracks with their pulverised bodies. I’d seen Baneblades immobilised that way before now, so I didn’t give much for our chances of forcing our way through in the lightly-built crawler.
‘We’ll keep the ticks off your back,’ our pilot’s voice assured us cheerily, and the Valkyrie abruptly appeared from behind us, roaring in over our heads and opening fire on the frenzied mass of tyranids scuttling towards us as it came. The multi-laser scythed through their ranks like a scalpel through flesh, creating a carpet of downed and flailing monstrosities, while those on either side of the line of destruction fell back, milling in confusion for a crucial few seconds as the surviving synapse creatures rearranged themselves to re-establish the neural net and regain control of the others.
‘Hold on,’ I voxed through to the rear compartment, ‘it’s about to get bumpy,’ then the tracks were mashing chitin and flesh into the snow, staining it colours which made the gorge rise to look at too closely.
‘Looks like someone threw up a seafood dinner,’ Jurgen said, displaying an uncharacteristically poetic streak, and I nodded, not wanting to think about that too much under the circumstances. A hail of fleshborer rounds rattled against the bodywork and windows, and a few gobbets of acid hissed their way through the metalwork, but fortunately without appearing to damage anything vital.
‘Anyone hurt back there?’ I asked.
‘A few holes in the side,’ Grifen reported, ‘but no casualties.’
‘Stupid frakkers just gave us some firing points,’ Magot added, no doubt itching to poke her lasgun through and start potting ’nids again.
‘No need,’ I assured her as the Vakyrie banked lazily in the distance, and came back for another strafing run. ‘The flyboys are doing the job for us.’
‘All part of the service,’ the pilot assured us, a tone of amusement entering his voice. Then the nose-mounted weapon opened up again, carving another swathe through the swarm and throwing it into confusion once more. By the time he’d banked round for a third run the first of the Valkyries carrying Lustig’s people to safety had joined in too, and the balance had tilted decisively in favour of the Imperium. With too few of the hulking warriors left to coordinate the swarm effectively, the entire formation began to disintegrate, the termagants scuttling off in search of a place to hide, while the hormagaunts began devouring the carrion which littered the gruesomely-stained ice.
‘We’re clear,’ Jurgen said a moment later, slewing us round a little to bounce a fleeing termagant under the tracks, where it expired messily.
‘I believe we are,’ I said, sighing deeply with relief, and realising rather too late that I was going to be in a confined space with Jurgen for several hours. ‘Let’s hope we get a clear run back to Primadelving.’
My aide nodded, in his usual phlegmatic manner, his attention almost entirely on the snowfield in front of us. ‘Powercells are charged, and the weather looks fair,’ he assured me. ‘We should get there without too many problems.’
A prediction which was to prove a long way wide of the mark.
SEVENTEEN
I was no stranger to iceworlds, and to this one in particular, but I must confess to finding the long journey back to Primadelving a rather enjoyable novelty. (At least until its premature and unfortunate termination.) On most of the previous occasions I’d been driven across the surface it had been aboard a Chimera, from which the view had been somewhat restricted to say the least; but the high, glazed cab of the crawler afforded an unimpeded view of the icefields and undulating snowdrifts, which enabled me to appreciate the rugged panorama in a manner which had previously eluded me. I’d been out there on foot, of course, rather more often than I would have liked, but on those occasions I’d been a bit too preoccupied with the immense discomfort of the cold, and the likelihood of something trying to kill me, to stop and admire the view.
About half an hour after we’d left the agricave behind, the snowclouds which seemed to have blanketed everything since our first arrival on the surface of Nusquam Fundumentibus finally parted, revealing a sky of bright, translucent blue, against which the snow and ice glittered, dazzling the eye.
‘You don’t want to be looking too long at that,’ Jurgen said, manipulating one of the controls to polarise the windscreen. ‘It’ll send you snowblind.’
‘At least I’m not the one driving,’ I said, picking out the bright moving dot of one of the Valkyries in the distance; still searching for tyranids roaming about on the surface, although most of the remnants of the swarm had long since retreated back into the depths of the agricave, safe from aerial bombardment, and all but the most suicidal of attempts to dislodge them from their underground refuge. ‘I’m sure Magot would take a turn if you needed a break.’
By way of reply he just snorted, and opened the throttle a little wider, sending us skimming across an open ice sheet, the plume of powdered snow flung up by our tracks dissipating slowly in the air behind us. ‘Have you seen how she drives?’
‘Good point,’ I conceded, not wanting to wound his pride, and noticing that for once he seemed to be moderating our speed. Not only that, he was adjusting our course seemingly at random, turning to the left or right every few moments for no reason that I could see. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Crevasse field,’ he told me, as though it were only a minor matter, which I suppose for an iceworlder it may well have been. ‘The snow covers most of ’em, but the ice is riddled.’
‘Very deep?’ I asked, trying to sound casual, and Jurgen nodded.
‘Probably no more than twenty or thirty metres for a really big one,’ he said. ‘But there won’t be many of those to worry about. It’s the small ones that’ll break our tracks if we hit ’em wrong.’
‘I see,’ I said, trying not to think about a thirty metre plunge any more than I could help, and glancing around us for some sign of a distraction. A flicker of movement near the crest of a nearby ice ridge caught my attention, and I fumbled the amplivisor into my hand for a closer look.
‘More ’nids?’ Jurgen asked, and I nodded, trying to focus the image despite the bouncing of the fast-moving vehicle.
‘Close combat forms,’ I said, finally getting a clear image. ‘About half a dozen, looks like. And one of the larger warrior forms.’
‘That’s unusual,’ Jurgen remarked, changing our course towards them, just as the last of the group disappeared behind the ridge. ‘They don’t normally bother herding so few.’
‘No, they don’t,’ I agreed, uneasily. ‘Perhaps I just saw the tail end of a larger group.’
‘Do you think we should check it out?’ Jurgen asked, and I nodded.
‘I think we’d better,’ I conceded reluctantly. In my experience, tyranids acting atypically never meant anything good. If they had another little surprise to spring on us, I’d rather they did so where there was plenty of room to see it coming, and from a vehicle which would allow me to outrun them easily. I voxed the Valkyrie. ‘We’ve just sighted a small group of ’nids,’ I said. ‘Moving to intercept.’
‘Acknowledged,’ the pilot said, ‘and on the way. They should be easy enough to spot from the air. Just got a few stragglers to mop up here first.’
‘I’m not sure these are stragglers,’ I confided to Jurgen. We’d seen several packs of ’gaunts wan
dering aimlessly through the desolate landscape, or attempting to take refuge from the shadows of the gunships84, but none so far had been under the direction of a synapse creature; whereas the ones we’d seen were definitely moving with purpose. ‘Can you get close enough for a reasonable view, without coming into range of their weapons?’ The warrior I’d seen only seemed to be carrying the deathspitter common to such creatures, which made sense if it was leading a swarm of close combat organisms, but there could easily be another I’d missed, with something longer ranged, and capable of making a mess of our vehicle.
‘Reckon so,’ Jurgen agreed, starting up the side of the ridge, heedless of the profanity echoing from the cargo compartment behind us as the floor suddenly tilted without warning. ‘If I stop just short of the crest, we can take a look over without them seeing us.’
He was as good as his word, as always, bringing the ungainly crawler to a halt in the lee of a cluster of ice boulders, which the wind had sculpted into semi-transparent mirrors. Ignoring my bizarrely distorted reflection, I trained the amplivisor down to the floor of the defile beyond the line of the ridge.
‘They’re just hitting the ice with their scything claws,’ I said, in some puzzlement. ‘Breaking it up into small pieces.’
‘Are they trying to dig in?’ Kasteen asked, her voice buzzing in my comm-bead, and sounding almost as bewildered as I felt. Tyranids never built fortifications, or anything else come to that; manipulating their inanimate surroundings was as alien to their nature as horticulture to a necron. ‘Or trying to tunnel back to the caves to get away from the aircraft?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. They were spread out too widely to be pooling their efforts, although each one was making quite rapid progress in pulverising the ice in its immediate vicinity. ‘They’re not exactly designed for digging.’ Though I had to concede that the long, curved claws seemed to make pretty effective pickaxes.
‘Only one of the big ones I can see,’ Jurgen put in helpfully, and I nodded, more puzzled than ever. The presence of the warrior implied a specific end in view, but what it might be continued to elude me.
‘Not for long,’ the Valkyrie pilot assured us, and began his attack run. Warned by the noise of the engine and the shadow which swooped across them, the ’gaunts raised their heads and shifted uncertainly, looking for something to charge, but their overseer kept their instinctive aggression in check, and they began moving towards an overhang of ice at a rapid trot.
Before they could make it, the Valkyrie opened fire, strafing the group with its multi-laser. A line of steam and pulverised ice swept across the scattered swarm, tearing several of them apart, and throwing the rest into momentary disarray, but the warrior remained unharmed and rallied them, turning to fire its deathspitter ineffectually at the harrying aircraft as it banked steeply and came round for another go. This time all the creatures had managed to reach the refuge of the overhang, but it did them little good: the whole ice face disappeared for a moment in a cloud of superheated steam, then, with a grinding roar audible even through the bodywork of the crawler’s cab, it collapsed on top of them.
‘Job done,’ the pilot said, with every sign of satisfaction.
‘Let’s hope so,’ I said, having considerably more experience of the resilience of tyranids than he did. Accordingly we remained where we were, the engine idling, while I kept the amplivisor trained on the pile of frozen rubble, alert for any sign of movement; but after some minutes passed without so much as a twitch, I began to breathe easier. (Or as easy as it was possible to do, sharing a small cab with Jurgen.)
‘Shall we go, sir?’ my aide asked, once it became clear that the ’nids weren’t about to pop up again, and I nodded.
‘Might as well,’ I agreed, mindful of the pot of hot tanna waiting for me back in Primadelving, and raised the amplivisor for one last look. An impulse I regretted instantly. ‘Do iceworlds have earthquakes?’
‘Not really,’ Jurgen said, craning his neck to look in the same direction. ‘The ice shifts sometimes, or you might get an avalanche...’ His voice trailed off, taking on an unmistakable tone of puzzlement. ‘That’s not an avalanche.’
The ice was beginning to crack and bulge, right where the ’gaunts had been hammering away at it, rising up and falling away, to reveal something vast and living beneath it. A roar of anger and frustration echoed across the icefield as something huge and animate fought to free itself from the imprisoning ice.
‘Go!’ I shouted, slapping Jurgen on the shoulder in my eagerness to be anywhere but here; a desire he evidently shared, judging by the speed with which he slammed the crawler into gear and took off, our spinning tracks throwing up a glittering arc of pulverised snow in our wake.
‘What’s that noise?’ Forres voxed from the rear compartment, her voice overlapping with Grifen’s somewhat calmer request for information.
‘One of the huge ones,’ I replied, glancing back to see a mountain of chitin rearing up to its full height, its bloated body dwarfing our crawler, as it shook the last of the broken ice from an impossibly spindly-seeming leg.
‘Then we should stop and engage it,’ Forres said, ‘before it can join the main body of the swarm.’
‘If we do that, we’ll die,’ I snapped back, in no mood for any more of her head-on approach to warfare. ‘Our small arms can barely scratch its hide.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Forres said, audibly bristling, ‘our duty demands...’
‘Our duty demands we live to report this, so we can mount an effective defence and save this planet for the Emperor,’ I said, in no mood for argument. I glanced back, seeing, to my horror, the vast bulk scrambling over the ridgeline behind us, blotting out the watery sunshine as it came, clearly in pursuit of our fleeing vehicle. ‘If you want to take a crack at it anyway, just open the rear door.’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Magot chipped in happily, and a second or two later the rapid crack of lasguns became audible through the bulkhead separating the cab from the cargo compartment.
‘Sir,’ Grifen reported a moment later, ‘it’s started spawning. Just dropped a dozen or so of the gunners.’
‘Keep down,’ I advised unnecessarily. ‘If they get close enough to use their fleshborers...’
‘I know,’ Grifen said. ‘Can’t we outrun them?’
‘That’s the idea,’ I said, turning to Jurgen as I spoke. ‘Can we speed up at all?’
‘It’s risky,’ he replied, the thin furrows of grime on his forehead eloquent testament to the effort he was having to expend to keep up our pace on the treacherous terrain. ‘The ground’s very broken here, and there’s no telling what’s under the snow.’
‘I can tell you what’s behind us at the moment,’ I said acidly, then regretted it at once. Jurgen had an almost preternatural ability to push a vehicle to its limits, which he exercised at every opportunity, and if it was at all possible to be travelling faster he undoubtedly would be. ‘Just do your best. Under the circumstances, there’s no one I’d rather have in the driving seat.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, any offence he might have taken at my earlier offhand manner effectively neutralised, and returned his attention to picking his way through the treacherous landscape. Our engine roared as we lurched over innumerable cracks in the surface and metre-high ridges, every obstruction costing us a little more of our precious lead. ‘If I can just get through this, we should be back in the clear at any...’ Then the snow gave way beneath us, and the whole vehicle dropped.
For a heart-stopping instant I thought we were dead, about to plunge thirty metres to an icy grave, but we turned out to have hit nothing more than a shallow trench, little different to the ones which had impeded us before. This time, however, the angle had been bad, leaving us canted awkwardly; Jurgen gunned the engine, but nothing happened, beyond a howl of protest from the abused mechanism and a short burst of profanity from my aide.
‘That’s it,’ he said shortly, ‘the track’s frakked,’ and, sure enough,
as I looked out of the side window, I could see that it had been sprung from its guide wheels by the impact.
‘Can you ease it back on?’ I asked, with an apprehensive glance at the looming bulk of the onrushing leviathan, bearing down on us like an ill-tempered storm front, its progeny skittering around its feet as it came.
‘Not a chance,’ Jurgen said gloomily. ‘We’re wedged in.’ He grabbed the melta and flung open the cab door, replacing his aroma with air so cold I lost the ability to smell anything almost at once. ‘Best get to it, then, I suppose.’
‘I suppose we’d better,’ I said, following him out onto the snowy surface after a quick scramble up a slope of broken ice. The Valhallans and Nusquans bailed out after us, still blazing away, as though it would make any difference to the behemoth.
‘Place your feet carefully,’ Jurgen advised. ‘There are bound to be more crevasses about.
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ I said, looking around for something to take cover behind, and almost bumping into Forres, who was staring at the gargantuan creature bearing down on us as though still struggling to take it in. (Which I suppose, in all fairness, she might well have been.) I smiled at her, but without much amusement. ‘Well, commissar, it looks as though we’ll be trying it your way after all.’
‘Aim for its head,’ she told Lanks, pointedly ignoring me. ‘That’ll be where it’s most vulnerable.’
‘It’s not vulnerable anywhere to lasgun rounds,’ I said. ‘Concentrate on the termagants. Leave the big one to Jurgen and the Valkyrie.’ The melta had been designed to knock out tanks, so it should be able to get through the huge creature’s exoskeleton, although whether it would hit anything vital once it did would be a matter for luck and the Emperor.
‘Sounds good to me,’ Grifen said decisively. Lanks looked at her, then me, then finally back to Forres.
After a moment the young Commissar shrugged. ‘Follow their recommendations,’ she said shortly. ‘They’ve fought tyranids before.’
The Last Ditch Page 18