“OK,” said Gavotski at length, “let’s do this. Barreski, Mikhaelev, take point. Palinev, if you can sneak around to the other side of the camp, or as near as you can manage, you can pin the cultists down if they start to run. Everyone try to avoid hitting the lander; I don’t want it damaged any more than it is already. That means no explosives, Barreski. There’s a small chance that the engines are still—”
He didn’t get any further.
Steele’s eyes snapped open, and he opened his mouth and let out a long, full-throated scream. A scream that the cultists couldn’t have failed to hear.
Pozhar didn’t wait for orders, didn’t even wait for the echoes of the scream to die down. The enemy knew where they were. Any second now they would appear at the top of the rise that separated them, start picking off the Ice Warriors like targets on a range. Unless the Ice Warriors could gain and secure that vantage point first.
Pozhar raced as fast as he could, threw himself onto his stomach at the top of the slope, and started firing before he knew what he was firing at. He was rewarded by the sounds of growls and squeals. The cultists had sent the mutants ahead, and before Pozhar knew what was happening one of them had crested the rise, between his las-beams, and leapt upon him.
It was a huge, shambling creature, covered in grey fur. It hit Pozhar like a brick, and tried to wrest his lasgun from him. He fought it, and they rolled down the slope together. As they reached its foot, Borscz leapt into the melee, and seized the mutant’s head between his hands as if he thought he could crack its skull open — but it was too strong, even for him. With an animal roar, it broke his hold and rounded on him.
The mutant lashed out with a gnarled talon, and Borscz wasn’t fast enough to back out of its way. Three parallel tears opened across his chest, and the burly Ice Warrior went down.
The mutant turned to Pozhar again as he was still scrambling to his feet, still fumbling with his weapon. It leapt at him, and he delivered four rapid-fire bursts to its stomach, but they weren’t enough to stop it. He went down for a second time, with the creature on top of him, bleeding onto him. Its brow was low, pronounced, and its narrow, crazed eyes bored into Pozhar’s skull as he fought to keep its blood-dripping talons at bay with the stock of his lasgun.
It was Borscz who came to his rescue again — Borscz who, incredibly, must have kept himself awake, lifted his massive body from the ground by sheer force of will and the strength of his own two arms. He landed heavily on the mutant from behind, gripped its ribs between his knees, and drove his meaty fists again and again into its head until it was insensate. Pozhar slipped out from beneath its bulk as the mutant rallied, as it tried to throw Borscz from its back but found that, this time, his grip was unbreakable: he was literally holding on for his life.
Pozhar fired again, aiming three more point-blank beams at the gaping wound in the mutant’s stomach. He must have struck something vital, because the mutant fell at last — but it fell backwards, and it landed hard on top of the still-clinging Borscz. It was the final straw for the Ice Warrior: his eyelids fluttered and closed. Pozhar saw that his comrade was still breathing, shallowly, but he was bleeding from his chest. Borscz needed synth-skin, needed someone to close his wounds for him, and he needed it soon. Pozhar could have helped him, but it would have cost him precious seconds, rummaging through his field rucksack for his Guard issue medi-pack.
He surveyed the scene around him. Another four mutants had appeared over the rise, all of them with the same grey fur, and each of them appeared to be as tough as the first one had been. Two of them were on fire, no doubt the work of Barreski and his flamer, but still they fought on. One of them had Gavotski in a bear hug, no doubt hoping he would burn with it. Having seen how resistant the creatures were to las-fire, Anakora and Blonsky were attacking it with bayonets, trying to loosen its grip on their sergeant. Another mutant was attempting to get Palinev in a similar hold, but for now his agility was keeping him out of its clutches.
As Pozhar watched, another creature staggered under a barrage of las-beams from Grayle and Mikhaelev — staggered, but did not fall. The mutants were doing their job well, keeping their foes occupied. The Ice Warriors had given up all hope of securing the rise as the first robed cultist appeared at its top, and levelled a lasgun, able to take his time and choose his target.
It was all the excuse Pozhar needed. He abandoned the fallen, bleeding, dying Borscz and charged back into the fray.
The burning mutant could ignore Blonsky and Anakora no longer.
It let go of Gavotski, who dropped and rolled in the snow to extinguish the flamer chemicals that had stuck to his greatcoat. The mutant lashed out at Anakora, but she parried its talon with her lasgun. For an instant, the creature was wide open to Blonsky, and he took great pleasure in driving his bayonet through one of its narrow eyes. It howled and recoiled, but he stayed with it, driving the spike further into its head like a corkscrew, simultaneously blasting at its simian face with las-fire.
The merest touch of this aberration, the brush of its fur against his elbow, the spatter of its blood on his skin, made him feel unclean. Like the cultists on the other side of the rise, like all of the insane devotees of Chaos, it must have been human once. It must have known, back then, that this was what the future held for it, must have seen what lay at the end of its chosen path.
Blonsky had no sympathy for it. It deserved what its gods had done to it.
The mutant died at last, as did one of its fellows, succumbing to a second flamer burst. That left just two. One was being kept occupied by the nimble Palinev, while the other had just lost a claw to Grayle and Mikhaelev’s beams and had dropped to its knees. Blonsky set his sights on Palinev’s opponent, but was suddenly tackled by Anakora. For a second, as they fell, he wondered if her mind had snapped as well, if she had chosen this moment to turn traitor — but then, a las-beam rent the air above his head, and he realised that she had just saved his life.
A cultist had attained the top of the rise, a perfect sniping position — and, had he fired again, with both Blonsky and Anakora on the ground, he could have killed one of them. Instead, he saw Pozhar charging him, gun blazing, and he turned his fire upon the young trooper — and Pozhar was hit, a glancing blow to the shoulder. The force of the blast knocked him head over heels, and for the second time in as many minutes he came rolling back down the slope.
Emboldened by his success, the cultist became careless. He lifted himself up to get a better angle on his fallen foe, to finish him off — and two las-beams ripped through him. As the sniper fell, his killers, Blonsky and Anakora, started forward, joined again now by Gavotski. The other cultists had mistimed their advance, must have hung back too long behind their mutant cannon fodder, because the opposing factions met at the top of the rise. The Ice Warriors were the first to react, and three of their foes were dead before they could return fire.
The cultists, despite their greater numbers, were outmatched. They were untrained, unarmoured and, in some cases, even unarmed. The outcome, of the battle was already beyond doubt when Pozhar waded back into it. He wielded his lasgun in his left hand, his right hanging uselessly by his side, and most of his shots went wild.
A cultist slipped in beneath the Ice Warriors’ beams, and was suddenly in Blonsky’s face, trying to push a knife through the layers of his greatcoat.
“You’re too late, Guardsman,” the foul heretic hissed. “Mangellan has the power on this world, and if you wish to live you will renounce your decadent Emperor and turn to—”
The threat was never completed. Blonsky seized his attacker’s wrist and twisted it until it broke. The cultist screamed, and the blade dropped from his numbed fingers.
Blonsky raised his bayonet to the wretch’s throat, but remembered that Gavotski had wanted a hostage. So, as much as it went against his instincts to do so, he turned his lasgun around and drove its butt into the cultist’s skull, knocking him cold.
Barreski skirted the final mutant, trying to
find an angle from which he could torch it without setting light to Palinev too. The scout was still keeping clear of the mutant’s raking talons, ducking and weaving, twisting and turning — but the mutant was relentless, starting to wear him down.
Barreski ventured a little closer to it. He thought it was too busy with Palinev to notice him. He was wrong. The mutant swung around, and suddenly he was the focus of all its attention. With a powerful swipe, it knocked the flamer from his hands. Barreski recovered his wits only just in time to avoid a second talon, which would have ripped out his throat. He had no way of fighting back, didn’t have time to draw his lasgun — and he knew that he was far less agile than Palinev, and couldn’t evade many more attacks like that one.
Mikhaelev and Grayle came to his assistance. They had finished with their opponent, and turned their las-fire upon his. The mutant shuddered with the impacts of the beams to its back — but, to Barreski’s horror, its red eyes never flickered from him. Somewhere in its disturbed little mind, the mutant must have known it was finished, and it was determined not to be distracted from its prey, determined to take at least one of its foes down with it.
Palinev saw what was happening and flung himself at the mutant, heedless of the danger of incoming las-beams. He bought Barreski a second, but no more than that, before the mutant flung him aside with an almost casual shrug.
And then it pounced on Barreski, and although he was prepared for its weight he was still driven down onto one knee, struggling to push the rancid creature away from him. It raised its talon and he knew that this would be the killing blow.
And then the air itself exploded. The mutant stiffened and crumpled and Barreski was left gaping at its blackened corpse, wondering what had just happened.
His nostrils were filled with the stink of burnt ozone, and he glanced to the sky and wondered if somehow, through some incredible twist of fate or perhaps even through divine intervention, he had been saved by a thunderbolt from on high.
Then he saw Steele, standing unaided, looking down at the dead mutant with an expression of grim satisfaction — and Barreski saw that the colonel’s right eye was black, smouldering a little.
“A small enhancement I had made on Pyrites a few years back,” explained Steele gruffly, seeing that Barreski, Mikhaelev and Grayle were all staring at him. “A one-shot electrical weapon of last resort. It will take about twenty hours to recharge now, and my right eye will be useless until it does.”
He looked down at the mutant again, and smiled. “Still, some things are worth a little inconvenience.”
CHAPTER NINE
Time to Destruction of Cressida: 33.16.04
Borscz was dead.
It wasn’t easy to tell, at first. He was covered in blood, but much of it was from the mutant that he and Pozhar had slain. The Ice Warriors had to shift its carcass before they could get close to him, close enough to tell that he was no longer breathing.
Anakora wanted to bury him, but Gavotski pointed out that they lacked the tools to dig in the frozen ground. They could do it, but it would take them most of the night.
“And it’s not as if a normal-sized hole would do,” Grayle muttered.
Anyway, they all agreed that it would make little difference at this point. Below ground or above it, Borscz’s body would be liquefied by the imminent virus bombs, reduced to a protoplasmic slime. And after all, the last thing any Guardsman expected when he went to war was a decent burial; his remains, he knew, were far more likely to be trampled into the mud of the battlefield.
So, in the end, they gathered around their fallen comrade and Gavotski said a short prayer for his soul, and that was that — although Anakora still insisted they take Borscz onto the Aquila with them, and seal him into its hold, sparing him at least the attention of passing predators.
“If only he’d been a better shot,” said Barreski with a shake of the head. “If he hadn’t been so keen to go toe to toe with that thing…”
“Then it would have been Pozhar lying there instead of him,” Anakora pointed out crisply. “You saw how resistant the mutants were to our las-fire.”
Apart from the loss of Borscz, casualties were mercifully light. Palinev had a mild concussion from where the last mutant had backhanded him, and Gavotski had a couple of second-degree burns, which he had dressed. And Pozhar’s firing arm was in a sling, which aggrieved the young trooper no end.
Steele was back on his feet, but he seemed deeply tired — and, although no one would have said it to his face, even a little shell-shocked. Gavotski covered for him by taking charge again. He sent Anakora, Barreski and Grayle onto the lander to ensure that no one was hiding inside. Grayle was also to report back on the state of the engines. Two cultists remained alive, and so Blonsky and Mikhaelev were detailed to bind them with tent ropes from their rucksacks.
Steele examined one of the mutants’ corpses.
“It looked like this,” he said to Gavotski. When the sergeant looked puzzled, Steele expounded, “The creature I saw in the forest. It had grey fur, like this one does. Some sort of adaptation to the cold, I expect. But if it was a mutant I saw, then where did it go? The cultists didn’t know we were coming until I… until they heard us.”
“So, who did it report to?” Gavotski concluded the thought. “Who knows we’re here? And how many more mutants like this one are still out there?”
Steele didn’t need to ask what had happened while he had been unconscious, since he had plunged into the lake. His bionic eye had recorded all the details — every visual detail, at least — and stored them for his later inspection.
The whole episode had left him feeling deeply uneasy. The organic parts — the real parts — of his brain had shut down in the water, but the mechanical parts had kept him going. He was grateful to be alive, of course — but the thought that his augmetics could function without him, even in a limited capacity, chilled him to the marrow.
The two prisoners had started to come round. Mikhaelev and Blonsky had carried them to the camp-fire, and were standing guard over them. Despite his weariness, Steele had chosen to conduct the interrogation. He deliberately started with the toughest-looking of the pair, the one least likely to break. He was a heavy-set man with a tattooed face and a broken wrist — this latter courtesy of Blonsky — who returned the colonel’s glare with mute defiance.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Steele. “You think you have nothing to gain by answering my questions because I won’t let you live anyway. You’re right. But you can die quickly, and as easily as possible, or I can make you suffer.”
The cultist spat in his face.
Steele nodded at Blonsky, who took the man s wrist and manipulated it, grinding the shattered bones into each other. The cultist suppressed his screams for almost a full second. By the time the Ice Warrior had finished with him, there were tears in his eyes. Still, he hadn’t said a word.
Nevertheless, the technique was having an effect — not on this cultist, maybe, but on his fellow. The other man was smaller, younger than the first, and abjectly horrified by what he had just seen.
“Very well,” said Steele calmly, “it looks like this one has made his choice. You may as well dispose of him, Blonsky. We’ll talk to his friend instead.”
Blonsky knew what was required of him. He planted his boot in the larger cultist’s back, and propelled him face first onto the fire. He started to scream again, and struggled to stand — but whenever he came close to so doing, Blonsky’s foot was ready to kick him back into the flames.
It took the cultist a long time to die, and by the time he did the air was rank with the smell of his burning flesh. His smaller comrade was so afraid that he was shaking, and he had vomited into his lap. He looked like he might be about to do this again, as Steele turned to him with the smile of a wolf.
“I… I didn’t want to join them,” the cultist bleated, “I swear. It’s just that, once it started, it spread within days, and soon…”
“Mangell
an?” prompted Blonsky.
The cultist nodded, seeming glad that the Ice Warrior knew the name, that he hadn’t had to reveal it himself. “No one knew where he’d come from, he was just… suddenly, his followers were everywhere, in the streets, and no one seemed able to stop them, and my family, my friends, they were saying that Mangellan was right, that we owed the Emperor nothing, that He couldn’t protect us. Then they were banging on our doors, dragging us outside, putting guns to our heads and making us swear allegiance to them, and we had no choice.”
“There is always a choice,” growled Blonsky.
“When this ship landed here,” said Steele, indicating the Aquila behind him, “it was carrying an important member of the Adeptus Ministorum. He could have helped your people, could have guided them back to the path of righteousness.”
The cultist nodded eagerly. “I did hear something, that they’d found someone… a religious man. Is that why you’re here? Are you looking for him?”
“Do you know where he is?” asked Steele.
“He… he’s dead,” said the cultist.
Steele saw the look that passed between Blonsky and Mikhaelev, but he kept his own gaze fixed on the prisoner. Normally, his bionic eye would have enabled him to count the beads of sweat on the cultist’s face and hands, his acoustic enhancers would have tuned in to the skip of the man’s heartbeat and Steele would have been able to tell if he was lying or not. With his eye out of action and only the heartbeat to go on, it was harder to make that judgement. Despite the inconvenience, he felt oddly liberated.
“You saw him die?” Steele asked.
“I just thought,” said the cultist, “I mean, he must be by now. The confessor was brought into the hive, Iota Hive, three days ago. I saw him being marched up the steps of the Ice Palace. Mangellan has him.”
“Where is it,” asked Steele, “this Ice Palace? Can you take us there?”
[Imperial Guard 05] - Ice Guard Page 9
