[Imperial Guard 05] - Ice Guard Read online

  Pozhar was a loose cannon. He was loyal to the Emperor, fervently so, but he appeared to have no concept of his own limitations. Send him up against a tyranid army and, unless given specific instructions to the contrary, he would be the one to seek out the Hive Tyrant and to spit in its eye. On a mission like this one, that sort of overconfidence could be the death of everyone.

  Pozhar was here because Gavotski had vouched for him. He had been the young trooper’s squad commander once, and had averred that he was one of the most skilled close-quarters combatants he had ever seen. Gavotski had also sworn that he could handle Pozhar’s rough edges and get the best out of him, and Steele had learned that his experienced sergeant was seldom wrong.

  If Pozhar was overconfident, then Anakora had the opposite problem. She had come with the highest recommendations of any of them, but Steele had already seen enough to know that she lacked the faith in herself that others seemed to have in her. He felt that he, of all people, could identify with that.

  Then there was Blonsky, a trooper in whom a succession of commanders had been unable to find fault, and yet they had couched their reports in terms that suggested they were more than happy to have seen the back of him.

  Blonsky had summarily executed at least six comrades in combat, accusing them of heresy. He had made three similar accusations against superior officers, one of them a general no less. On the surface of it, his actions had always seemed justified — but reading between the lines, Steele had noted that his commanders considered him a liability, and a dangerous man to be around.

  Blonsky had been one of Steele and Gavotski’s reserve choices for their squad. Gavotski had pointed out, quite reasonably, that the Imperial Guard had suffered more than its fair share of deserters and turncoats on Cressida. With nine pairs of eyes focused on the search for Confessor Wollkenden, it was perhaps advisable to have the tenth pair turned inwards, watching the squad itself.

  The shelling had ceased at last. Grayle, it seemed, had been right: the unseen gunner had just been taking potshots, and he had evidently decided to maintain his position rather than be enticed into pursuing a handful of enemy vehicles.

  For the past few minutes, the only thing protecting the Termite had been the cloud kicked up by a handful of smoke bombs dropped by Palinev and Mikhaelev. By the Emperor’s grace, it had been enough. A few more explosions had vibrated through the passenger compartment, but none had come close enough to cause real damage, and Barreski, who had moved up to the front seat beside Grayle, reported that the all-important borer was intact.

  Grayle ploughed on, across land that had once been fertile fields but was now coated with grey slush and the ever-present purple fungus. He itched to put his foot down, to coax a little extra speed out of the grumbling engine, to make up for the time they had lost to their unplanned diversion. He didn’t want to outpace the Chimeras, however.

  There were four of them, each protecting one face of the Termite, and they were just starting to have trouble, struggling to find traction as the ground beneath them grew more icy and treacherous.

  As the convoy proceeded, the snow became deeper until it was piled almost to the tops of their tracks. The Chimeras were equipped with dozer blades and crewed by experienced Ice Warriors, but still the going was painfully slow. With Gavotski’s permission, Grayle got on the vox to the Chimera drivers and arranged to take point.

  Shortly after this, Grayle got his first sight of the glaciers — and even he, who had been brought up amid the icescapes of Valhalla, let out a low whistle through his teeth. The glaciers formed an unbroken line in the middle-distance, dwarfing the paltry vehicles that approached it. He found himself nursing an unworthy thought, one of which he thought Trooper Borscz would have approved: that very little of what the Imperium of Man had ever built could compare with such natural splendour.

  They were rumbling along the base of a U-shaped valley, and Gavotski cautioned the troopers to go easy with the flamers lest they bring an avalanche down on the Termite. There had been no signs of trouble for almost an hour, and at last Steele gave the order to release the escorts from service.

  The Chimeras fell away, a couple of their drivers voxing Grayle with good luck messages. The Termite was finally alone, and Grayle pointed it at the sheer ice face that was looming before them.

  Tactical maps suggested that the glaciers formed an almost unbroken ring around a great swathe of Chaos-held territory. Grayle had no doubt that the few routes in or out of the area would be under heavy guard. The last thing the Chaos forces would expert was for their enemies to strike through the great ice walls. Like the orks that had once invaded his home world, they were in for a rude surprise.

  “Hey, Trooper Borscz,” Barreski called back over his shoulder, “we’re almost there. Should I start up the borer, or would you rather get out and dig your way through the ice with your bare hands and your teeth?”

  “Impact with the ice face in thirty seconds,” reported Grayle. “You ready there, Barreski?”

  “Always,” Barreski said, his hands moving over the controls with practiced ease, although to the best of his fellow tanker’s knowledge he had never been in a vehicle like this one before. The Termite’s great white borer dropped into the ready position, so that it blocked Grayle’s view through his front shield. He wasn’t missing much, he thought. For the past few minutes, all he had been able to see was the flat, grey surface of the approaching glacier.

  He began to count down, as Barreski started the drill head turning, “Impact in ten… nine… eight…”

  “Anyone want to bet Grayle and me we can punch our way through this berg without even slowing down?”

  Barreski fired off a quick burst from all four of the borer’s flamer attachments, and Grayle could see the telltale orange halo flaring around the drill head. The great grey wall was running with rivulets, steaming a little, but still it looked like nothing more than a solid mass of rock as it rushed up to meet the Termite’s front shield, and even Grayle had to fight the urge to flinch from it.

  “Three… two… one…” he counted, through clenched teeth.

  And he pressed down hard on the accelerator pedal, rising to Barreski’s boastful challenge, as the countdown reached zero.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Time to Destruction of Cressida: 43.15.08

  The Termite bucked, a shudder slamming through its plasteel body as its horn impacted with the great wall of ice.

  But the impact was only momentary, because then the driver’s front shield was pelted with jagged shards, spattered with melted water, and the engine howled in protest as it fought to make headway against a force of nature that should by rights have been immovable… and succeeded.

  Barreski fired the borer-mounted flamers again, regretting only that he had to do so remotely and couldn’t feel their kick to his shoulder. The Termite wheezed and shuddered, and a fresh wave of water broke over its front, but its tracks had gained purchase, and the vehicle surged forwards.

  The hard part was done. They were inside the glacier and the borer had found its groove, its drill head shredding the ice in its path like paper. All they had to do now was keep up their momentum, and stay on a constant bearing.

  In the absence of a clear view ahead, Grayle’s gaze was fixed to the compass — while, for his part, Barreski yearned for a greater challenge than that of just keeping the drill head spinning. He was about to get his wish.

  The ice had closed in around the Termite, and the walls and the roof of its self-made tunnel were pressing in on it, squeezing it. This was to be expected, of course — and at first Barreski thought little of the occasional groan from the plasteel above him, although he could feel the increased pressure as if the air itself had become denser. An especially heartfelt groan from behind him, he put down to one of his comrades back there, almost certainly Trooper Borscz.

  But the groans from the hull were becoming more frequent, and louder.

  And then, Grayle reported that their speed had
dropped.

  Barreski knew what to do. He pressed the flamers into service again, to ease their path through the ice, and the driver seemed satisfied. But no sooner had Barreski removed his hands from the trigger controls than Grayle frowned, shook his head and announced that they were slowing again.

  They repeated the sequence twice more, with the same results, until Barreski was starting to worry about depleting the flamers’ promethium tanks.

  “Looks like we’re going to lose that bet, Grayle,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Then the hull emitted a particularly violent crack. Borscz leapt to his feet in alarm and banged his head on the roof.

  “Are you certain the machine can take much more of this?” he moaned.

  “A couple of minutes ago,” said Grayle, “I’d have guaranteed it. Now—”

  “Now what?” Colonel Steele was on his feet too. With two long strides, he was with Barreski and Grayle, leaning between them, examining the dashboard runes. “What’s happening out there, Grayle?”

  “I don’t know, sir. The Termite is performing at peak efficiency. Better than peak. It’s the ice, it’s… I know this sounds impossible, but I think it might be replenishing itself, reforming as fast as we can bore through it.”

  “He could be right,” said Gavotski. “We know that Cressida’s change of climate has no natural explanation. We know the taint of Chaos is in the soil, lending it abnormal properties. Why not in the water as well?”

  “I knew it,” Borscz groaned, dropping back into his seat. “The tunnel is closing behind us. We are going to be trapped in here, in this tin coffin, forever.”

  “Not if I can help it!” snarled Barreski. He fired the flamers again, and manipulated the borer, making it describe a small circle as it drilled, widening its tunnel.

  “That’s helping,” reported Grayle, “but we still aren’t making the progress we should.”

  “And we can’t keep this up for long,” Barreski added, still mindful of his dwindling fuel supplies.

  “The ice!” cried Anakora. “It is forcing itself in here!” With a glance back over his shoulder, Barreski saw that she was right. Crushed ice was squeezing through the gun emplacements in the Termite’s side, as if being pushed by an external force. Six troopers leapt to the guns, doing their best to discourage the intrusion, but both Palinev and Mikhaelev immediately reported that their flamers had seized up.

  “What’s your assessment, Grayle?” barked Steele. “Can we make it to the other side of this thing?”

  “No, sir,” said Grayle, “I don’t think we can.”

  “Well, we certainly can’t back up,” said Gavotski. “We don’t have the room to swing the borer around.”

  “If we changed our heading to oh-seven-nine,” said Grayle, “we could be through the ice a lot faster. It’d take us a fair way off course, though.”

  Steele pulled up a tactical map on his data-slate, nodded, and said, “It’s our best hope. Make that course correction, trooper.”

  As Grayle moved to obey, another almighty crack drew ten pairs of worried eyes upwards. A hairline fracture had appeared in the hull, stretching half the length of the passenger compartment.

  “You see, Trooper Borscz,” said Mikhaelev nervously, “you didn’t have to worry about our being trapped in here. The ice is going to crack this vehicle open like an eggshell and crush us all to death instead.”

  “You think the ice caused that crack?” Pozhar joked, half-heartedly. “That’s from where Borscz banged his great head up there!”

  “Can you bring the back end of the borer down a little?” Gavotski enquired of Barreski. “Use it to protect the roof. I know it would slow down the drilling, but—”

  “Can’t do it anyway, sergeant,” said Barreski. “I’m trying, but the ice is already packed in too tightly under there. The borer is stuck at this angle.”

  “It’s a race, then,” said Steele, his voice remarkably calm under the circumstances, “between us and the ice. I’m relying on the two of you, Grayle, Barreski. Do whatever you have to do. Just keep us moving, as fast as you can manage.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Grayle. Then he turned to Barreski, raising his voice to be heard. “I can reroute some power to the borer from the engine. The harder that drill works, the less the engine has to do anyway.”

  “Another flamer down,” reported Blonsky from behind them.

  “I could do with one of those things up here,” Barreski shouted back. “Rip one out of an emplacement if you have to.” He was operating the borer-mounted flamers — just three of them now, as the fourth was returning jammed signals — almost constantly, but still the front shield was being battered, not by mere shards of ice now but by great chunks of it, which hit like rocks.

  The Termite’s roof was beginning to bulge inwards with the increasing pressure upon it, and the Ice Warriors in the passenger compartment were up to their ankles in freezing slush. Barreski was so engrossed in his task that he hardly heard Grayle’s voice, announcing that at their current speed they would be through the glacier in one more minute. It seemed like the longest minute of his life, and especially so when his flamers, only two of them working now, used up the last of their reserves and sputtered to a halt.

  He turned, and found Palinev at his shoulder with a hand flamer as requested. Barreski leapt from his seat and snatched the weapon from the smaller man, even as the ice smashed through the front shield at last, coming at them like an avalanche.

  Grayle had no choice. He couldn’t leave his position or they were all done for. He met the oncoming ice, head down, eyes closed, breath held, hands gripping the controls for dear life. Barreski met it with a jet of flame, driving it back. Melted water gushed into the Termite’s controls, angering the machine-spirits, which responded with a salvo of little explosions — but he couldn’t worry about that now.

  Borscz was standing on a seat, bearing the weight of the roof on his shoulders, but the walls of the passenger compartment were starting to bulge. The one to the left burst at last, even as the engine uttered its final gasp.

  Then, the Termite’s front end emerged, with a cough and a splutter, into the open air, and fell still.

  Gavotski gave the order to abandon the vehicle, and its occupants almost fell over each other in their haste to obey. Barreski would have expected the technophobic Borscz to be the first out — but with the back half of the Termite still trapped in the ice, its roof threatening to collapse, the burly Ice Warrior chose instead to continue in his role as human prop.

  Barreski was just as surprised to see the colonel, the nearest man to Grayle, delaying his escape in order to dig the driver out of the ice drift that had buried him. He went to help, and together they freed his fellow tanker’s head. A half-conscious Grayle blew ice from his nose and mouth, and murmured, “Did we make it?”

  Then, something rammed the Termite from behind, and its rear end stove in, compacting the back half of the passenger compartment — fortunately cleared by now — into a tangle of plasteel.

  Hauling Grayle between them, Barreski and Steele scrambled out through the hatch, found a two-metre drop beneath them, and dived into a blanket of grey snow. Steele landed on his feet, but Grayle’s weight threw Barreski’s balance, and he fell and rolled onto his back, just in time to hear a roar of “Incoming!” and to see Borscz’s enormous form blotting out the dull grey sky.

  The impact was tough on the pair of them, but Barreski got the worst of it. He felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach by an equatorial yak. For a moment, all he could see was a haze of red. He was tangled in Grayle’s arms, pinned down by Borscz’s bulk, and he could hear the grinding and rending of plasteel above him. He feared that the mangled remains of the Termite were about to come crashing down on him too. And there was another sound, too. A sound that, if anything, made Barreski even more concerned for his immediate future.

  The sound of las-fire.

  The creatures had been waiting for them.

  A
nakora didn’t know how it was possible, how they could have been warned of the Ice Warriors’ approach — but as soon as she dropped from the Termite, as soon she planted her feet in the snow, they converged on her, three of them.

  They were much like the Chaos hounds she had fought in the underhive, all teeth and claws and spines. The most apparent difference was that their fur was white, with patches of light green and brown: snow camouflage. It would have done them more good if they had been able to contain their eager growls at the prospect of a kill. Even so, it was hard to see where the shape of each of the beasts ended and its surroundings began, almost impossible to get a bead on any of them.

  Anakora loosed off three shots from her lasgun anyway, one in the direction of each of the beasts. Then she ran — not out of cowardice, but in the hope of drawing the creatures away from the wreckage of the Termite, and from the nine other Ice Warriors who were about to emerge from it, dazed and confused. She would not lose another squad today. Not if she had any say in the matter.

  The first of the beasts pounced on her from behind, sinking its claws into her shoulders. Carried by the momentum of her run, Anakora fell face first towards the snow — but she had been prepared for this, and she angled her descent so that she landed side-on, rolled onto her back, and pinned the Chaos beast with her weight.

  It squealed, and scrabbled at the backs of her legs with its back claws. Anakora could feel its hot breath on her neck, and although she frantically recited the Litany of Protection under her breath, she knew that she had only an instant before the beast sunk its teeth into the unprotected flesh between her helmet and her greatcoat’s collar.

  She shifted her grip on her lasgun and thrust it, butt-first, over her shoulder, aiming blindly, gratified to feel a crunch as she struck the beast in its grotesquely enlarged fangs. It howled, and its grip on her shoulders loosened. Anakora tore herself free of it, even as the second beast caught up with the first and leapt at her.