The lander rotated clumsily, orienting itself towards the exit hatches. The few mutants that had clung to its landing ramp were shaken free and dashed to the floor. Another was wedged in the open hatchway — but as Steele watched, this too was thrown clear by a volley of las-fire from inside the ship. It gave him some satisfaction to know that his squad was still fighting in there.
And then another hatchway slid open — in the belly of the lander, this time — and something was tossed out: a coiled something that rolled and unfurled as it fell, something that told Steele that his men were still fighting for more than themselves.
He raced around the still-gaping traitors, somehow finding the strength to lift Wollkenden off his feet, to carry him. He leapt for the trailing ladder, and caught it with his left hand.
That was when the firing started, the traitors no doubt reasoning that Furst would prefer Wollkenden dead than escaped. A las-beam glanced off Steele’s shoulder, only part of its force absorbed by the ragged remains of his armoured greatcoat, and he clenched his teeth against the searing pain and forced himself to hold on, although he couldn’t feel his fingers any longer.
The ship lined itself up with an exit hatch, shot forwards, and the sudden acceleration almost yanked Steele’s numbed left arm out of its socket. His right hand was still fastened around Wollkenden’s arm, the confessor reaching but unable to establish a grip on the ladder for himself. Then the lander’s hull scraped the hatchway, showering them both with sparks — a sign of Grayle’s piloting inexperience — and the ground dropped away beneath them, and Wollkenden fell…
Steele caught his hand, felt the augmetics in his right shoulder whirring and straining to arrest the confessor’s plunge.
They were soaring above fields of snow now, above glaciers, high enough to see the burning spires of Alpha Hive towards the horizon, to trace the whole of the Ice Warriors’ journey from there to here. And Wollkenden’s legs were flailing, pedalling at the air, and his face was white, his eyes bulging with fear.
Five minutes. That was all the time they had, according to Steele’s internal chrono. Five minutes before the virus bombs dropped. Five minutes for Grayle to reach escape velocity and leave this doomed world behind. And before he could do so, Steele and Wollkenden had to climb that ladder.
Looking up, Steele could see Gavotski peering through the aperture in the lander’s belly, calling to him, his words whipped away by a howling, freezing wind.
The ladder was buffeted in that wind, and it was all Steele could do to hang on to it. He couldn’t get his feet to it, couldn’t do anything without letting go of Wollkenden.
Maybe, just maybe, he thought, if he could persuade his passenger to hang on to him, to free up his right arm, he could haul them both up. He screamed instructions at the confessor, but they didn’t seem to get through.
And Wollkenden was screaming back at him, and Steele tuned his enhanced ear in to his voice, and he heard, “…me go, damn you. I don’t want to go back to your shackles, be a slave to your Emperor. Mangellan promised me I could be free. He promised me…”
And suddenly, it all made sense: why the Ecclesiarchy had appeared so keen to retrieve their confessor, keen enough to have his would-be rescuers sanctified, and yet the virus bombing couldn’t be delayed for him; why the fate of such a dignitary had been left in the hands of a mere ten men. Not that Steele had ever questioned those orders, of course, but he had wondered…
“A virtual saint.” That was what he had been told about Wollkenden. A man who, through words and faith alone, had inspired great deeds. A man who could turn the tides of war, whose name was fast becoming legend. So, the Ecclesiarchy could hardly have turned their backs on him, could they? Even if they had known…
Mangellan had known. He had delighted in telling Steele, gloating about it, only Steele had refused to listen. He had no choice now.
The legend was a lie. The man for whom he had come so far, risked so much, was just an ordinary man after all: a man touched by Chaos. Wollkenden had been tested, and he had failed that test. His mind had been forever warped.
Steele had never had a chance to succeed in his mission. He had never been meant to succeed in it. Wollkenden could not be saved.
In the end, it was easier than he had expected. He didn’t even have to try. He just had to relax his fingers, just a little.
And then it was done, and Confessor Wollkenden was plunging away from him — and he felt his heart lurch at the sheer speed of it all, at the suddenness with which it had become too late to turn back, to regret.
He had done the right thing. Steele knew this with a certainty that he had seldom before experienced. He knew it not just because his enhanced brain told him it was true, but because he could feel it. He had done what the Emperor would have wanted him to do, what the Ecclesiarchy could never have asked of him.
And Wollkenden was shrinking beneath him now, dwarfed by the white expanse that awaited him below, but Steele did not wish to see that. He turned away, reached up and caught the next rung of the ladder with his right hand. And, wearily, he pulled himself up that-ladder, to the lander, to his comrades, to safety.
Colonel Stanislev Steele stood silently in the lander’s cockpit and looked down on the bleak, white globe of Cressida through the forward screen.
It looked the same as it had when he had first been posted to it. He only knew that it wasn’t because his internal chrono had completed its countdown. Cressida was a dead world now; no man would touch its soil again during his lifetime.
The rest of his squad — Gavotski, Anakora, Barreski, Mikhaelev, Grayle, Palinev — had all made it. They had survived the mutants’ attack on their ship. They had contacted an Imperial Cruiser, and were waiting to be picked up. He was fiercely proud of all of them, although they did not feel that pride in themselves.
They had failed in their mission, fallen at the last hurdle — or so they thought.
He wished he could tell them the truth — tell them that, in the end, one man’s life did not matter after all. What mattered was his legend — and today, the Ice Warriors had safeguarded one such legend, ensured that it would inspire more great deeds yet.
Colonel Steele’s report would state that Confessor Wollkenden had died a hero.
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[Imperial Guard 05] - Ice Guard Page 22
