She could hear the retort of las-fire, too — from a pistol, if she was not mistaken. Colonel Steele!
She didn’t stop to think. She pounded down the street, heedless of the risk to herself, of the possibility that more traitors might be lurking between the buildings. And she wasn’t running away from the sounds of battle, as would have been the sensible thing to do, the right thing, as Barreski and Mikhaelev must have done already. No, Anakora ran towards them — and she realised as she did so that those sounds ought to have ceased by now, that no human opponent of a Chaos Space Marine could have survived this long. It just wasn’t possible.
Rounding the next corner, she saw that the impossible was happening.
Beside the Chaos Space Marine in his black power armour, Steele looked small and helpless. Still, somehow he was managing to go toe to toe with him. He ducked each blow almost before it was thrown, or parried it with his blue-flaring power sword, making his foe look clumsy. He aimed the majority of his thrusts at the Chaos Space Marine’s face, and some of them had got through. Even as Anakora watched, Steele drew blood again, scoring a red line across the bridge of his opponent’s nose, a fresh scar to add to his collection.
The Chaos Space Marine didn’t flinch, hardly seemed to register the shallow cut, his system no doubt flooded with painkilling drugs. Anakora knew that, in contrast, one punch from him would be enough to break Steele’s neck, one hit from his chainsword enough to decapitate him. Steele’s reflexes, or his augmetics, only had to let him down once and he would be dead.
Her first las-beam glanced off the Chaos Space Marine’s armour. She had been trying to find a joint, hoping to blow it open, but with Steele in her line of fire she had to err on the side of caution. The Chaos Space Marine didn’t even look, never took his eyes off Steele. He simply drew his bolt pistol with his left hand and loosed off a short burst in Anakora’s direction. For a blind shot, it was horribly accurate, and she was barely able to leap back around her corner as a chunk of the wall was blown out behind her head.
She tried two more beams, each provoking an answering burst of bolts, before she decided that she needed something bigger.
A big green truck was parked on the street, a few metres away. The door to the cab hung loose, and Anakora yanked it open so hard that she wrenched it from its hinges. She hadn’t driven a vehicle since her training, she was hardly a specialist, but she could remember the basics and she had seen Grayle at work.
She hauled herself up into the driver’s seat, closed her eyes, muttered a fervent prayer to the engine’s machine-spirits and almost brimmed over with gratitude towards them when they came alive for her.
The frame of the truck juddered as she pulled away, and the vehicle proceeded in fits and starts, and almost stalled. But Anakora was getting a feel for its workings, and she picked up speed as she pulled the steering wheel around hard. And now Steele and the Chaos Space Marine were dead ahead of her.
They heard her coming, of course. She had been counting on that, counting on Steele being able to get out of her way somehow. As the chainsword lashed out again, he feinted and, instead of ducking beneath its teeth, he darted inwards, caught the Chaos Space Marine’s elbow, and twisted and pushed for all he was worth.
He couldn’t overbalance his opponent — he was too strong, too heavy — but he did make him shift his footing, and that gave Steele the tiniest of openings. It gave him time enough to disengage from the battle, and to throw himself backwards. Seeing what he was doing, the Chaos Space Marine made a grab for him, tried to make a human shield out of him, but Steele was just a fraction too fast for him — and Anakora had a clear ran at her target. She floored the accelerator pedal.
The Chaos Space Marine whirled to face her, flexing his powerful leg muscles, making to jump. For a moment, Anakora thought he was actually going to make it, thought he was going to leap up onto the bonnet, thrust his hands through the windscreen and find her throat. But then the track smacked into him, and carried him ten metres or more, before, with a rending and a screeching of metal and plasteel, it slammed him hard into, and almost through, a solid stone wall.
Anakora was flung forward, and her head hit the windscreen, shattering the plexiglas. Her helmet protected her, but she was dazed. She thought the sensation she could feel in her stomach, the feeling that the world was tilting, was a symptom of nausea, until firm hands took her shoulders, and she was distantly aware that Steele had reached into the cab, grabbed her, and was dragging her out of there.
Even so, the sword was inching its way towards the colonel’s heart, howling as if in anticipation of the moment when it would sink its teeth into his flimsy armour.
Anakora raised her gun, but Steele yelled, “No! Leave me! Find the others! Complete the mission! I’ll hold this thing off for as long as I can!”
She was rooted to the spot, still unsure, still thinking. If only I could find some way to die instead of him. She couldn’t be the one to report to the others that he’d fallen, that she had done nothing to stop it, nothing but run. She couldn’t do that again.
She moved around behind the Chaos Space Marine, putting his great bulk between her and Steele. She set her gun to full auto and pounded him with las-fire until her power pack was exhausted — by which time she had burned through his armour and dislodged a shoulder plate, but Steele was on his knees, unable to keep his attacker at bay for much longer, and through clenched teeth, in a hoarse voice, he yelled, “Get out of here. That’s an order, Trooper Anakora. Go!”
She had no choice now. Anakora ran — because, if there was one thing the Imperial Guard instilled in its troopers, one mantra by which they lived, it was that an order was always to be obeyed, immediately and without question.
That, and because Steele was right, because she couldn’t achieve anything by staying, because the Emperor would have disapproved of her giving her life in a lost cause, taking the easy way out.
Anakora ran, with the ghosts of Astaroth Prime howling in her ears.
And the teeth of the chainsword gave one final, piercing scream behind her, and then silence fell.
That damned itch had spread to Pozhar’s shoulder.
He almost wished the Chaos Space Marine had come after him instead of choosing another target. He longed to be discovered by more Traitor Guardsmen.
It was no longer just that he wished to serve the Emperor through combat. It had become much more than that. When Pozhar was fighting, he couldn’t feel what was happening to him. He could believe that, when the fighting stopped, everything would be all right — that, through the practice of exercising his muscles in a righteous cause, he could somehow cleanse his system, force a reversal of the… the…
He couldn’t even think the word, couldn’t form it in his mind.
He would have hacked off his own arm to keep the grey fur from spreading, had there been a way to do that without betraying his shame to everyone.
He tried not to think about it, tried to concentrate on the gloomy surroundings of the sewer tunnel and on his comrades. Sergeant Gavotski was walking at the head of the six-strong group with Tollenberg. The rest of the Ice Warriors were behind them, with the red-headed woman bringing up the rear.
“How many of you are there?” asked Gavotski.
“A couple of hundred,” said their guide. “We were civilians before the war: miners, administrators, teachers. When Chaos came to our doorsteps, we gathered in the chapels to pray for His guidance. When the chapels fell, He led us into these tunnels.”
“You should have stayed and fought,” grumbled Blonsky.
“We’re fighting now,” Tollenberg assured him, “fighting to keep our minds pure, learning how to use what weapons we can scavenge, preparing for the day when the Imperial army arrives to retake our home. On that day, we will emerge into our streets again, into the traitors’ midst, and we will die for that glorious cause.”
His words swelled something in Pozhar’s heart. He wished he could tell this eager young man tha
t salvation was on its way, that the Ice Warriors were merely the vanguard for a far larger force, and that the loyalists of Cressida had not been abandoned. He wished he could join them in their fight, a glorious cause indeed.
“We have a mission,” said Gavotski, skirting the issue, “a very specific mission. We have come here to rescue one man.”
“Confessor Wollkenden, yes.” Tollenberg nodded. “We know about him.”
“Then you know we have to get to the Ice Palace.”
“And you’re leading us away from it,” said Grayle, suddenly. He had been inspecting his compass in the yellow lamplight, but he was not as adept with it as Palinev would have been, and it had taken him some time to confirm his suspicions.
They had been walking along a narrow ledge, in single file, but now the brickwork tapered away and they were forced back into the water. Pozhar thought he felt something — a cold, wriggling something — brushing against his foot.
“The direct approach is dangerous,” said Tollenberg. “Mangellan may not have men down here, but there are other things, dreadful things, in the dark — and the closer you get to the Ice Palace, the worse the corruption becomes.”
“We’re not afraid of any stinking mutants!” grumbled Pozhar.
Tollenberg fixed him with a long, narrow-eyed look that the young trooper couldn’t quite read. Then, quietly, he said, “No, I am sure you’re not. Still, we can help you avoid the worst of the dangers — if you trust us.”
There was something wrong.
Blonsky knew it as soon he emerged into the candlelit chapel, as soon as he was able to stand upright, and his hand went to his lasgun.
They had climbed another ladder — a short one, this time — and Tollenberg had rapped on the underside of a manhole cover at its top: the same signal as before, three taps, then a pause, then two more. The cover had been scraped aside, and the silhouette of another smock-clad man had loomed over them, against a circular background of flaring light. The man had reached down a hand towards them.
Blonsky had been the second of the Ice Warriors to be hauled up out of the hole, behind Pozhar — and immediately, he had detected the stench of Chaos. But reeking as he was, as they all were, from the sewer water, he couldn’t pinpoint its source — and, casting around, he could see no immediate threat.
Perhaps, he thought, his senses were reacting to the desecration of this once-holy place. Some effort had been made by the loyalists to reclaim the building, to reconstruct the altar and to scrub the disgusting Chaos sigils from the walls — but still, he couldn’t help but feel that the spirit of the God-Emperor had withdrawn from here and that no amount of restitution could induce its return.
At one end of the chapel, two ornate pillars had been shattered, bringing about a partial collapse of the vaulted ceiling. A little daylight spilled in through a broken window frame, and glinted off fragments of coloured glass amid the rubble. Wall hangings had been torn down and burnt.
There were more figures here, thirty or forty of them, their blue worker’s smocks beginning to look like a kind of uniform. They were scrubbing the floors or trying to piece together the remnants of broken treasures, or just kneeling at the altar in silent prayer. All of them started to react to the arrival of four strangers, to clamber to their feet, to stare in both awe and hope.
They began to close in around the Ice Warriors.
And that was when Blonsky realised what was happening: when he saw the figures’ odd, shambling gaits and glimpsed a tuft of grey fur protruding from a blue sleeve. And he drew his lasgun, and spun around and shot the red-headed woman through the head as she was helping Gavotski up from the ladder. She fell, a look of wounded surprise on her face, and Blonsky turned to deal with Tollenberg.
He had been beaten to it. Their fair-haired young guide was lying at Pozhar’s feet, his hands clutched to his throat, blood welling between his fingers.
“I warned you,” Pozhar snarled. “I told you what I’d do to you.” And as Tollenberg died, his smock slipped from his left shoulder, and Blonsky saw a bright green mole on his skin, proof that he had been right.
By now, Grayle was reaching for his weapon too. Gavotski scrambled to his feet, looking as surprised as the woman had been, and Blonsky spelled it out to him:
“It’s an ambush, sergeant. They’re mutants, all of them. They’re stinking mutants!”
This was getting to be a habit, thought Steele: facing his own death, making peace with it, only to be given a very rude awakening.
This time, even the mechanical parts of his brain had shut down. His memories ended with the battle, with the chainsword that had shredded his armoured greatcoat, and the flesh beneath it. Bleeding from the chest, Steele had fallen onto his face, and blacked out. The Chaos Space Marine could have, should have, finished him off there and then. He didn’t know why he hadn’t.
He couldn’t feel his legs. He was surrounded by Traitor Guardsmen. They were pressed up against him, holding his arms, half-carrying him so that his feet dragged along the street behind him. His greatcoat hung open, no more than a few ragged strips of plasfibre now. His chest and his stomach were stiff with synth-skin.
“He’s awake!” a voice grunted, somewhere near his ear.
“Yeah? Then why are we still carrying him?” He felt the muzzle of a lasgun in his back, and the second voice snarled, “Get walking, Emperor-lover!”
Steele’s response to this was short and succinct, but it effectively conveyed his thoughts on the question of taking orders from a heretic.
The heretic in question made to lash out with his gun butt, but one of his fellows stayed his hand.
“You can’t risk it,” he said. “He’s already damaged goods. You could break his skull, spill his brains out onto the street, and what would he say then?”
Steele smiled tightly to himself. The traitors had confirmed what he had already guessed, that their leader in Iota Hive wanted him alive. Most likely, Mangellan intended to question him about his comrades: their numbers, their plans and their current whereabouts. Not that it would do him any good.
They had taken Steele’s weapons, his field rucksack, even his fur hat. They had turned out his pockets. They thought he was helpless. They were wrong.
Steele’s greatest weapons were inside him. His mechanical shoulder was still in working order, and his bionic eye had almost completed its repair cycle. He could see with it now, albeit through a faint blur. He could call up its HUD, which told him that the eye would be fully functional in just fifty-eight minutes’ time.
In the meantime, the traitors were doing him a favour. A prisoner he may have been, for now — but they were taking him just where he wanted to go.
They were taking him to the Ice Palace… to Confessor Wollkenden.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Time to Destruction of Cressida: 14.33.04
They were sitting ducks.
Gavotski cursed himself for having trusted the redheaded woman when she had called to him and Blonsky out in the street. He had followed his instincts about her, not stopping to interrogate her further despite his comrade’s misgivings. But then the Traitor Guard had been so close on their heels, and his instincts had never steered him wrong before.
His instincts were telling him something now.
The chapel was filled with the retorts of lasguns. They echoed from the vaulted ceiling to return to their wielders’ ears with deafening force. But the only guns being fired belonged to the Ice Warriors. The mutants were not fighting back; few of them were even armed. They were cowering, whimpering behind stone columns and the remains of splintered pews, behind the altar itself.
“Cease fire!” yelled Gavotski over the clamour. “I said cease fire, that’s an order!”
Grayle was the first to obey, although he turned to his sergeant with a puzzled frown. Pozhar looked like he was a second away from mutiny, while Blonsky…
Blonsky didn’t exactly aim his gun at Gavotski — he held it at a downward angle, pointe
d at the floor between them — but the muscles in his arms were tensed, ready, as his black eyes searched and probed.
“With respect, sergeant,” he said, “may I ask the reason for that order?”
“Look at them!” said Gavotski. “Does this look like an ambush to you? No one has attacked us. They’ve done nothing but defend themselves.”
“They are mutants,” spat Blonsky. “Their existence is offence enough!”
Gavotski returned his glare evenly. He wasn’t about to be intimidated. “Ordinarily, yes,” he said, “but these are extraordinary circumstances. I don’t think our guides lied to us. These… these ‘people’ have information we can use. They have ways into the Ice Palace and knowledge of Mangellan’s capabilities.”
“In the circumstances, sergeant,” said Blonsky, “I think it is my duty to ask if you’re protecting these abominations because of some misguided sympathy with them? Can you swear that you are still loyal to the God-Emperor?”
Gavotski hit him with the butt of his lasgun. He hit him so hard and so fast that, even though Blonsky had been watching for such a move, he was taken by surprise and floored.
“When you can prove an accusation like that,” growled Gavotski, standing over him, “then I expect you to shoot me dead. Until then, you will keep your mouth shut and do as I tell you. Is that understood, trooper?”
“They were praying,” said Pozhar in a small voice. “They were praying to the Emperor.” The resentment had drained from him, and he looked confused, even afraid. Gavotski hadn’t expected that. He had expected Pozhar to disapprove of his decision as vociferously as Blonsky had.
And the mutants — the human-looking mutants — were picking themselves up, re-emerging from their hiding places, and closing in around the Ice Warriors, emboldened by their inaction. Gavotski brought up his gun, and focused it on the nearest of them.
[Imperial Guard 05] - Ice Guard Page 14
