like to. We have to concentrate on reaching the Ice Palace — which means getting out of this area
before that sniper calls in reinforcements.”
They ran across another public square, through an ornate archway, and down another wide
street. Steele was leading the way, but he suddenly came to a halt, listened for a moment, reversed
direction. They rounded the corner of a generatorium relay station — and this time, even Blonsky
could hear the footsteps tramping towards them, forcing them to revise their course again.
They made for a wide flight of steps leading up to the next hive level. But four Traitor
Guardsmen appeared before them, dropped to their knees and fired. The Ice Warriors plunged into a
network of side streets, making so many twists and turns that Blonsky had soon lost all sense of
direction. Then Steele stopped again, listened for a second, and growled, “This way!” He ushered
his squad through the gaping doorway of a residential block as Blonsky too heard the whine of a
vectored thrust engine and saw a thin grey shadow flitting across the ground behind him.
He suppressed a shiver. Someone… something out there was using a jump pack to search for
them. And they all knew that no mere Imperial Guardsman, traitor or otherwise, had the strength to
bear such a device.
They raced along a carpeted corridor. To each side of them, the doors of once-luxurious rooms
had been smashed open. The furniture in those rooms had been trashed, and more than a few dead
bodies had been left behind. Imperial citizens, thought Blonsky, who had tried to hide in their homes
once the fighting had started, who had died in them. Cowards, all of them. They had got what they
deserved.
They emerged into the street again, but the sounds of footsteps were all around them.
“They’re everywhere!” breathed Anakora.
“Not quite,” said Steele. “We’re dealing with a single traitor platoon — perhaps forty men, fifty
at most — but they know this ground and they know where we’re heading. They’re cutting off all
our routes to the Ice Palace — and at the same time, they’re closing in behind us, making sure we
can’t turn back.”
“Then we have to go through them!” Pozhar declared.
Steele looked at him, then sighed and nodded.
“The palace is in that direction,” he said, pointing. “Just remember, all of you, that to reach that
palace, to find Confessor Wollkenden, is our only objective. If that means leaving heretics alive
behind us, then so be it. Let the virus bombs take care of them.”
“Yes sir,” chorused the Ice Warriors.
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“We hit the traitors hard and we hit them fast,” said Gavotski. “We break through their circle,
and we keep on running. We don’t stop for anything.”
“Comrades,” said Steele, “prepare for the fight of your lives.”
Blonsky was just close enough to Pozhar to hear the young trooper’s murmured exclamation of,
“About damn time!”
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CHAPTER TWELVE
Time to Destruction of Cressida: 17.12.41
They took their foes by surprise.
The traitors had probably expected the Ice Warriors to go to ground, to find a defensible position
— a secure building, maybe — from which they could sell their lives dearly. The last thing they had
considered was that they might come out fighting.
Several of them died in that first barrage of las-fire, some marching right into the beams before
they could stop. A few turned and fled — which made sense, thought Anakora, as these one-time
Guardsmen wouldn’t have defected in the first place had they possessed any real moral fibre.
The rest of them rallied and returned fire even as they looked for cover. A frag grenade hurled
into their midst by Steele shredded two more bodies and left the rest reeling, more disoriented than
ever. And then, before the debris from the blast could settle, the Ice Warriors surged forwards,
knowing that to do so was to leave themselves wide open, but also knowing that to stay still was to
invite certain death at the hands of the rest of the traitors, who were still closing in around them.
They kept their heads down, relying on speed and surprise — and the las-beams they were
pumping out to each side of them — to carry them through. Anakora trampled over traitor corpses,
and was alarmed to find one of them still alive, a gloved hand lashing out to seize her by the ankle.
She stumbled, putting out her hands to arrest her fall. She kicked at the traitor’s fingers with her free
foot, and luckily he was injured, his strength drained, because he let out a groan and let go of her.
She saw that Palinev had stopped, half-turning, to come to her aid. She shook her head firmly,
didn’t need his help, didn’t want him to risk his life for her. This was what she had feared, after
Pozhar had revealed her secret to the others: not that they would suspect her motives, but that they
would think her weak.
Palinev seemed to get the message, though, and he ran on, pausing for a second to snatch a
lasgun from a fallen traitor. Anakora realised that he wanted its power pack, and this seemed like a
good idea — so she saw to it that, by the time she caught up with her comrades, she was carrying
two extra guns. She detached the pack from one of them and tossed it to Pozhar, who seemed like
the trooper most likely to need it soon.
And then the second wave of traitors was upon them, moving in from either side, threatening to
trap them in a pincer movement.
Pozhar was the first to react, running left, ploughing into the oncoming ranks, swinging his
lasgun wildly, one-handed — but most of the others were right behind him. Anakora found herself
plunged into the chaos of the melee, and looked for her nearest comrade — Mikhaelev — and she
stood back to back with him, as they fought with knives, bayonets and even fists against odds that
were swelling by the moment, becoming almost overwhelming.
Only Palinev held back. Palinev, who had slipped into a deep doorway before he could be seen by
the newcomers. Palinev, who now raised his long-las.
He took his time, choosing his targets well. His eight comrades were under attack by over
twenty traitors, but they had formed into a tight knot so that only one or two men could attack any of
them at once. Their more numerous enemies were also providing them with cover, and more than
one traitor fired into the skirmish, aiming for an Ice Warrior but striking an ally instead. Palinev
didn’t share that problem.
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A traitor landed a punch to Gavotski’s chin, sending him reeling, so Palinev blew a hole in his
head before he could press his advantage. He picked off another figure on the periphery of the battle
before anyone knew he was there, and another two while they were trying to find him in the
confusion. And then, when the traitors did start to fire back at him, las-beams blasting chunks from
the stonework by his head, at least he knew that four or five of them were no longer focused upon
his comrades.
He shouldered open the door beside him, and leapt into another apartment complex, even as a
frag grenade rolled into the space he had just vacated. The explosion tore the door from its hinges,
followed him down the corridor, and almost lifted him off his feet.
He paused at a window, fired six more shots from a fresh angle, claimed another kill. Then
Palinev was running again before he could be pinned down.
From the next window, he saw that the melee was thinning out, the odds becoming more even.
Some of the traitors were starting to disengage, to realise that they would be better off gaining some
distance and using their guns.
Barreski charged two of them. They set their bayonets to greet him — but the gauntlet he was
wearing on his right arm crackled with energy, and with one well-timed swipe he knocked the
weapons right out of their hands.
He drove his gauntlet into a traitor’s stomach, doubling him up with pain, causing him to cough
up blood as he crumpled. The other traitor grappled with him, tried to wrest the gauntlet from him,
but Barreski gripped him by the front of his flak jacket and tossed him almost casually over his
shoulder. The traitor described a graceless arc, his arms and legs flailing, and slammed into the side
of a building.
Pozhar was dragged clear of the others, thrown against a balcony rail, a ten-storey drop behind
him. With his injured arm, he couldn’t draw his lasgun in time. Two traitors shoulder-charged him,
trying to force him over. Palinev fired at them, and managed to strike one between the shoulder
blades, taking him down.
His heart leapt into his mouth as Pozhar toppled backwards, flipping over the railing, but
somehow managing to take his remaining attacker with him. Palinev leapt out of his window, and
raced across the street, fearing that he was already too late, only too well aware that he had no cover
out here, but knowing that the rest of his squad were tied up with their own problems. He was
Pozhar’s only hope.
His sudden appearance took the traitors by surprise — and like Palinev’s comrades, most of
them had their hands full. He reached the railing, and found Pozhar clinging one-handed to the edge
of the road beneath it, the traitor hanging from his waist, still trying to drag him down.
It would be a tough shot. Palinev took the time to steady his aim, tried to forget the imminent
danger to himself. His las-beam struck the Traitor Guardsman in the face, and he lost his hold on
Pozhar and fell with a bloodcurdling scream.
And Palinev turned to find a knife-wielding traitor barrelling towards him, just in time to
sidestep and to fling the man over his shoulder, to join his comrade below.
For the longest time, Gavotski hadn’t known where he was, hadn’t seen any comrades beyond
Colonel Steele to his immediate left and Blonsky to his right, hadn’t known how many Traitor
Guardsmen were still standing, hadn’t been able to see a way out of this for himself or for any of
them.
All he could do was keep fighting, keep swinging his lasgun, keep slashing with his knife, keep
dodging the blows that were aimed at him in return. Gavotski prided himself that he was still a
strong man, almost as strong as he had been in his youth, and the reactions of his opponents as he
struck at them confirmed this in the most satisfying way. With every traitor that fell, landing in a
growing pile at the sergeant’s feet, it became harder for the next one to reach him.
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And then, to his surprise, there was nobody left. He regained his bearings, and saw that they had
done it, they had broken through the cordon — that, although there would certainly be yet more foes
searching for the Ice Warriors, perhaps already coming up behind them, the way ahead was clear for
the moment, and Gavotski yelled out for the others to follow him as he took it.
Once again, they sprinted through the streets, and Gavotski prickled with fresh hope, knowing
that each step was taking them closer to their goal.
It couldn’t last. He knew that. But it ended sooner than he had hoped.
As before, it was Steele who heard the incoming platoon first, who tried to find a way around it.
This time, however, his options were more limited by the Traitor Guardsmen, the remnants of the
first platoon, still pursuing them.
They found themselves outside a censorium, and Gavotski was disheartened when Steele turned
and led his squad inside the building. They clambered over upturned filing cabinets, and kicked up
the ashes that were all that remained of hundreds of thousands of Imperial documents. A few of the
Ice Warriors took up sniping positions in the frames of the shattered ground floor windows, but
Gavotski followed Palinev and Blonsky up a flight of stairs in search of a better vantage point
above.
He looked out onto the street again, and saw that two squads of traitors had just turned into it,
one from each end. Steele’s senses had saved the Ice Warriors again, warning them that they were
surrounded.
It took the traitors a moment to work out where their prey had disappeared to. By the time they
had, almost half of them were dead. Gavotski leaned out of his window, pumping out las-beam after
las-beam on full auto as the remaining traitors scattered, feeling a momentary catharsis with each
one that fell. It was not enough, though, to quell the searing frustration inside him.
The last thing the Ice Warriors had wanted was a siege situation. The last thing they could afford
was to be trapped.
A traitor ventured into view with a frag grenade in his hand. Gavotski fired at him before he
could hurl it, and his beam was joined by two more from the windows below him. A second later,
another traitor tried the same stunt, but Palinev and Blonsky made just as short work of him.
This was getting them nowhere. The traitors had time on their side. Word of the Ice Warriors’
presence would have spread, and for every traitor they felled there could be no doubt that ten more
were on their way to replace him. They needed a way out, and they needed it fast.
No sooner had Gavotski formed that thought than the whole of the censorium trembled with a
powerful explosion, showering him with mortar from the ceiling, almost knocking him off his feet.
For a second, he feared that a traitor had somehow, unseen by him, run the gauntlet of the Ice
Warriors’ las-fire and managed to lob a frag grenade into the building. But then Steele’s voice
drifted up to him:
“Everybody,” yelled the colonel, “down here!”
They raced down ten flights of a winding metal staircase, which rang and shook with the impacts of
eight pairs of boots.
It had been Mikhaelev who had offered up the demolition charge. Barreski had helped him set it
up in the censorium’s basement, standing the cylindrical shell on its end to focus its explosive power
downwards. Grayle’s ears still rang with the force of the blast, but it had achieved the desired
results.
A hole had been blown through the building’s foundations — and, peering into it, Grayle had
been pleased to see the remains of a top-floor apartment. The Ice Warriors had dropped into the
room one by one, looking for a way down, and now at last they burst out onto the street of the hive
level below.
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They were greeted by las-fire. The traitors, having just worked out where their foes had gone,
were crowding the balconies above them. Steele kept his squad moving, steering clear of open
squares, hugging the walls of buildings, making sharp turns beneath archways and bridges.
