as they could.
They had set off running at first, but slowed down as they had begun to run into heretics from
the courtyard. They had tried to look less like they had an urgent purpose, less like they were trying
to get out. Anakora’s stomach had tightened as a squad of Traitor Guardsmen had rushed out of a
side passageway into their path, but they had drawn their cultists’ robes around themselves, bowed
their heads and kept their cool, and the traitors had hurried right on by.
Not long after that, their path had converged with those of Barreski and Mikhaelev, and Anakora
was glad that two comrades at least had made it this far.
And then they had heard las-fire, and she had feared the worst.
A score of heretics had gathered at a four-way junction, and more were rushing up to join them
from all directions. No one had questioned the arrival of what they took to be four more
reinforcements to their cause. The heretics were laying siege to an opening in the wall a few metres
away, being kept at bay only by a volley of las-fire from said opening. Anakora had guessed who
was wielding the guns, even before she had caught a glimpse of Colonel Steele’s face.
A dark-skinned Traitor Guardsman with narrow eyes and pinched nostrils had taken command.
He was barking out orders: “Hold your fire! Let the Emperor-lovers discharge their power packs,
then they’ll be defenceless.”
Gavotski moved up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder — and the traitor turned to find
himself staring down a gun barrel. A las-beam stabbed into his right eye and fried his brain. The
other three Ice Warriors took this as their cue to act. Anakora took another traitor by surprise and slit
his throat with her knife. Barreski tried to do likewise, but his chosen victim had faster reflexes and
was able to throw off his hold. And Mikhaelev was firing his lasgun on full auto, apparently
indiscriminately, creating the maximum amount of panic.
As in the courtyard, the cultists were confused, terrified by this sudden threat in their midst, by
the loss of their leader. Some of them fled. But others chose to fight back.
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At first, the Ice Warriors had the advantage. The cultists still weren’t quite sure who their
enemies were, which of the robed figures around them they could trust, to whom they could turn
their backs. It made them fight with one eye over their shoulders, which proved to be the downfall
of many of them. Anakora bludgeoned two to the ground with her fists, and gutted a third with her
blade. She smiled to herself as a disoriented cultist plunged a knife into a friend’s ribs. His fellows
interpreted his mistake as an act of treachery and fell upon him.
The Traitor Guardsmen, however — the few that remained — were more perceptive, zeroing in
on their true foes. Anakora found herself in a knife fight with one, straining to get her blade past his
defences, aware that every second he could keep her occupied was a second longer for his allies to
rally.
Sure enough, she felt hands grasping at her from behind, an arm around her throat, and she was
held by two cultists. If they had been armed, she would have been dead already. But the Traitor
Guardsman did have a knife, and Anakora’s arms were pinned so that all she could do to defend
herself was to kick out at him, at the same time pushing backwards, trying to slam her captors into
the wall, to make them release their grips. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Mikhaelev was
in trouble too, forced onto his knees.
And then, once again, the tide of battle turned — as Colonel Steele and Palinev broke cover and
came racing onto the scene with guns blazing.
They were running again.
Somehow they always seemed to be running — and Gavotski’s lungs were burning, his legs
aching, and he began to wonder if he was finally getting too old for this.
They had disengaged from the melee as soon as they were able, knowing that they couldn’t win
that fight, that their enemies’ numbers would just keep on growing. There were Traitor Guardsmen
at their heels, sending las-beams after them. The Ice Warriors were returning fire as best they could.
Barreski and Grayle, both of whom seemed to have lost their guns, were carrying Wollkenden.
And as they hurried past a junction, Gavotski saw a robed figure barrelling down the connecting
corridor towards them. He whirled, brought up his lasgun… and the figure skidded to a halt, threw
up his hands and whipped back his hood, to reveal the flushed face of Trooper Blonsky.
“He… he’s behind me!” the new arrival panted, gesturing over his shoulder.
And there he was now: the Chaos Space Marine, stumbling into view just a couple of hundred
metres behind Blonsky, raising a bolt pistol. Gavotski grabbed his exhausted comrade, bundled him
around the corner, and pushed him off after the others. He hurled a frag grenade at the Chaos Marine
in the hope of at least slowing him down, and then he followed at full pelt.
They returned, at last, to the stone cellar through which they had entered the Ice Palace an hour
ago. Anakora and Mikhaelev took up positions in the doorway, firing out into the corridor, as the
others negotiated the slippery steps and began to squeeze themselves, one by one, through the hole
in the wall.
This rearguard action would buy them time, but not much. Gavotski knew that once the Chaos
Space Marine caught up with them, his two comrades would have no choice but to fall back.
He helped Grayle feed Wollkenden through the hole headfirst, to Barreski and Palinev on the far
side, below. Then he wriggled through himself, and dropped down into the sewer tunnel. Colonel
Steele hadn’t seen this side of Iota Hive before, and he was inspecting his surroundings in the glow
of his comrades’ lamp-packs.
Palinev set off along the narrow brick ledge, Barreski and Grayle hauling Wollkenden along
after him. Steele shouted at them to wait. “We need to head for the spaceport,” he said. “If there’s
still a way off this planet, one we can reach in time, that’s where it’ll be. And it’s in that direction.”
He pointed through the wall, and Gavotski didn’t doubt for a second that he knew what he was
talking about.
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“I don’t know if we can get through that way, sir,” said Palinev. “These tunnels are a maze. We
might end up being cornered, and with that Traitor Space Marine on our tails…”
“Yeah,” Barreski muttered to Blonsky, “thanks for leading that straight to us.”
“And the less time we spend down here,” said Gavotski, “the better.” Catching Steele’s
inquisitive look, he said, “I’ll explain later. With your permission, sir, I’d like to make our way back
to the mutant chapel. I’ll, ah, explain about that too. We can get our bearings there, and strike out for
the port above ground. We might even get some help, someone to run interference for us.”
Steele nodded, accepting that his sergeant knew the situation better than he did at the moment —
and the Ice Warriors set off again. Gavotski lingered behind, to help first Mikhaelev and then
Anakora down from the cellar. As Anakora’s first foot touched down, Gavotski saw the muzzle of a
bolt pistol poking through the entrance hole above her, and he threw himself at the startled trooper,
flattening them both against the side of the tunnel.
A hail of bolts rained down at their backs, and churned up the black water below them. They
waited for a lull in the firing, then they hurried after their comrades. The last of them, Mikhaelev,
was just disappearing through a hole in the wall — and as Gavotski reached the hole, he heard a
heavy thud behind him, and he turned to look, and found his worst fear realised.
The Chaos Space Marine had just dropped into the tunnel, and was turning to follow them. But
there was something else too, something in the water.
And the water erupted, and a monster filled the tunnel, looming over the new arrival, its jaws
darting for his throat: a sewer creature, perhaps attracted by the Chaos Space Marine’s own bolter
fire — a creature like the one the Ice Warriors had fought earlier, only Gavotski thought this one
might have been even larger.
The Chaos Space Marine was trying to bat its thrusting head away from him, swiping at the
creature with his chainsword, carving into its scales, drawing black blood. But Gavotski didn’t wait
to see the outcome of their battle.
He slipped away from there, and he kept on running.
There had been rubble on top of the manhole cover.
Palinev had been unable to shift it. Blonsky had volunteered to climb the ladder instead, to put
his shoulder to the task. By now, of course, they had all been worried about what they might find out
there, in the chapel, on the surface. Steele had listened for a moment, and assured his squad that he
could hear nobody. No foes. But no friends either.
The cover had yielded at last, and Blonsky had been the first to climb through it, to stand
blinking in the unexpected light, though the others had soon joined him.
The Chaos forces had done a more thorough job, this time.
They had left no walls of the chapel standing. They had demolished its columns, brought down
its roof. They had burned what was left of its pews, and smashed its altar beyond all hope of
reclamation. The smell of cordite still hung heavy in the air, as did the altogether more rotten stench
of death.
Blonsky jabbed at the nearest corpse with his toe, turned it over to inspect it properly. He didn’t
want to stoop, didn’t want to get closer to it than he already was. It was a mutant, of course. Its grey
fur was matted with dark blood, beneath its torn blue smock. It might have been one of the loyalists
they had met, one to which they had talked. He couldn’t tell. They all looked the same to him.
“What happened here?” asked Steele. Gavotski told him about the mutants, their chapel and their
apparent desire to help. Steele frowned and said nothing. Blonsky guessed that he was unhappy
about his men allying themselves with the impure, but he didn’t want to question his sergeant’s
judgement, not in front of the troopers.
“Anyway,” sighed Gavotski, “it seems they got what they wanted. They died, fighting. For the
Emperor.”
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“It must have happened just after we left,” said Palinev. “Maybe just a few minutes after. Do
you think any of them escaped?”
Gavotski shrugged. “Without a full search of the rubble…”
“Either way,” said Steele, “it looks like we are on our own after all.” With a sidelong glance at
Gavotski, he added, “And perhaps it’s best that way.”
Blonsky couldn’t have agreed more. “The only good mutant,” he muttered with some
satisfaction, “is a dead mutant.”
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
Time to Destruction of Cressida: 01.29.22
The spaceport lay at the eastern edge of the hive, on one of its mid-levels. Steele knew the way, of
course, thanks to his brief inspection of the city maps the day before.
And so, for the second time, he found himself in the back of a rickety old truck, pressed in
against his comrades. Grayle and Barreski had taken the cab, still in their black robes — although
Steele doubted whether the disguises would do them much good, not with every heretic in the hive
on their trail.
They had been driving for some time when he felt the truck swerve, heard its tyres squeal, felt an
impact with its front bumper. “What’s happening up there?” he yelled.
“We’ve been seen, sir,” Barreski’s voice came back through the partition that separated them.
“A bunch of cultists. Grayle tried to run them down — got a few of them, too — but two more
escaped.”
“And they’ll run to the nearest vox-caster,” sighed Mikhaelev.
Steele feared that he was right. Until now, he had been banking on the hope that their enemies
didn’t know where they were heading, didn’t know they had lost their own transport. The bulk of
the Chaos forces, with luck, would be guarding the hive’s exits, leaving a clear run to the Ice
Warriors’ real objective. Now, that hope was lost. Now, all they could do was try to reach the
spaceport first.
Steele hammered on the partition, and shouted to Grayle to put his foot down.
Confessor Wollkenden had woken half an hour ago, looking nauseous. He had stared at the faces
of each of the Ice Warriors in turn, before drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his forehead
on them, shutting out the world. Steele had collected dry rations and water from his troopers, and the
confessor had consumed them greedily, but he hadn’t moved since nor spoken a word.
He looked up now, though — and in a loud, clear voice, he said, “Is this transport appropriate
for a war hero? I will have somebody’s head for this. This engine should be silent. We don’t want
him to hear, to come down here. Is it almost time to eat? They’re waiting for me to address them.
They need me to give them hope, and the strength to resist.”
The others were looking at each other, at the roof, anywhere but at the confessor. Steele shared
their discomfort. He had been worried about Wollkenden since he had found him in the dungeons,
had feared that whatever Mangellan had done to him had broken his mind. He had pushed that fear
to the back of his thoughts, concentrated on the job at hand. Now he had no choice but to face it.
“You’re free, confessor,” he said. “Mangellan isn’t coming. He can’t hurt you any more. Do you
remember me? I’m Colonel Stanislev Steele. I rescued you. I just need you to be patient, to be
strong, and we’ll get you out of here. We’ll get you to a doctor. They can treat your… fever.”
“I still have some water left,” offered Palinev, “if you think that might… I mean, if the
confessor…”
Wollkenden looked Steele in the eye, and he said, “I’ll say a prayer for us.”
Steele smiled. “I’m sure we would all appreciate that, sir.”
“And you will kill him for me, won’t you?”
“You don’t have to worry about that, confessor. In a few hours’ time, there will be nobody alive
on this planet. Mangellan will be—”
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“I don’t mean him, not the one with the words. I mean the big bruiser in the cloak, the one who
punched me in the face. You will make him suffer, won’t you? You will make him pay for
presuming to lay his hands on a holy man.”
Steele was saved from having to answer that, as, again, something smacked into the truck and
made its frame judder. “What the hell has Grayle hit now?” complained Blonsky, who had been
caught unawares and banged his head. But Steele and a couple of the others had felt that this impact
