was different from the first — and his enhanced hearing confirmed it.
It wasn’t the front of the truck that had hit something this time, rather that something had landed
on its roof… something that was moving about up there. Something with a roaring chainsword…
The tip of the sword came slicing through the roof of the cab, above Grayle’s head. He let out a cry,
and slid down in his seat until he could only just see through the windscreen, barely see where he
was going. He spun the wheel hard right, left, right again, and pumped the pedals furiously. Beside
him, Barreski was tossed back and forth, and Grayle could hear muffled protests from the rear
compartment.
But he could not shake his unwanted passenger.
The Chaos Space Marine clung on, and his sword cut deeper. It was rising and falling, in a
sawing motion, scoring a seam across the roof. Then the sword was withdrawn, and Grayle saw
gauntleted fingers scrabbling at that seam, widening it.
Barreski fired at those fingers — he had replaced his lasgun with one taken from a dead Traitor
Guardsman in the street — and the hand was withdrawn, stung. A moment later, it returned, looking
for and finding fresh purchase. And then, with a terrible, nerve-jangling wrench, the Chaos Space
Marine peeled back the roof, and Grayle gaped up into his leering face, could smell his fetid breath.
“Everybody, brace yourselves!” he yelled, and he stamped on the brake pedal.
This time, the Chaos Space Marine was taken by surprise. He was reaching for Grayle when the
truck jolted to a halt and catapulted him forwards. He hit the windscreen, shattering the plexiglas,
and then slid sideways across the bonnet and disappeared from sight. Feverishly, Grayle slammed
the engine into reverse. He felt his front right wheel bouncing over an obstacle in the road — the
monster’s head, he hoped, although whether this was the case or not it seemed to make little
difference.
The Chaos Space Marine was already back on his feet, his head down, charging towards the
retreating truck like an enraged bull. He looked a mess, his black armour barely clinging to his
battered body. His left arm had been amputated at the elbow, presumably by the teeth of the sewer
creature. One of his eyes was missing. He had dropped his chainsword, but he was wielding his bolt
pistol.
Grayle couldn’t outpace him, not driving backwards. He forced his back wheels around, made to
set off along another street. He was too late. The Chaos Space Marine had caught up to them. He
braced himself against the bumper so that no matter how hard the engine strained, or how fast the
wheels spun, they couldn’t gain headway against him.
And now the Chaos Space Marine stooped, took the truck by its axle, lifted it, one-handed, and
Barreski was banging on the partition, yelling, “Everybody out!” and he and Grayle kicked open
their doors, and leapt as the Chaos Space Marine flexed a powerful shoulder and gave the truck one
final twist…
Blonsky and Mikhaelev had been the nearest troopers to the back doors, and thus the first two out of
them. Steele had made sure that Wollkenden went next, helping him along with a push to the back
when he had hesitated. The confessor had fallen awkwardly, landing face first in the street, and
Steele had leapt down beside him and hoisted him to his feet.
All of which had left Anakora, Gavotski and Palinev in the back of the truck as it was flipped
over.
111
Anakora had been in the doorway, poised to jump, when the world had spun in front of her. The
next thing she knew, she was on her back, tangled up with her comrades, on a plasteel surface that
had been upright a moment ago. She had bumped her head, and black spots were crowding her
vision, threatening to close in, to enshroud her in their darkness. She would not give in to them.
She could hear las-fire, and the answering bark of a bolt pistol. She couldn’t just lie there, letting
the others down.
Palinev was the first to extricate himself and crawl away. Anakora watched as his blurry shape
was swallowed by a fierce white light — streetlights, she realised, shining in from outside. The
truck was on its side, and one of its back doors — the higher one — had fallen shut. The lower door
had been snapped from its hinges. Its frame had crumpled a little, but there was still room to squeeze
through it.
“Are you OK?” asked Gavotski, waving a hand in front of Anakora’s eyes.
She gritted her teeth and gave a determined nod. Gavotski followed Palinev through the bright
white square. Anakora blinked, wishing her eyes would clear, and forced herself up onto her hands
and knees and made to follow him.
Then she heard a strangulated cry, and Gavotski was whipped away from her — and she caught
her breath at the sight of a pair of black armoured boots through the exit hole. Gavotski had crawled
right into the Chaos Space Marine’s clutches.
She could see his boots too, half a metre off the ground, kicking furiously. He was pinned to the
back of the truck, doubtless having the life squeezed out of him, and the desperate las-fire of the
other Ice Warriors was doing little to change that situation. But from down here, up close, Anakora
could make out cracks in the Chaos Space Marine’s black armour. She could see the flesh beneath
them.
She pulled her knife, thrust it into an exposed ankle, twisting it around and burying it deeper,
hoping to sever a tendon. She couldn’t tell if she had been successful in this — but she had certainly
had some effect. The Chaos Marine gave a howl of fury and flung Gavotski aside. Then he gripped
the truck’s remaining door and tore it free, to expose his attacker.
It was only now that Anakora saw how damaged he was. She couldn’t believe he was still
standing, still fighting. But she didn’t doubt that he was still more than capable of killing her in a
second.
She scrambled away from him, until she was backed up against the partition to the driver’s cab
and was cornered there. The Chaos Space Marine dropped to his haunches, down to her level,
blocking out the white light, and he screamed obscenities at her, and brought up his bolt pistol. Her
head was still pounding, and she closed her eyes and yelled to her comrades, “Go! Get out of here
while you can!”
Just as Steele had yelled at her when they had last fought this monster.
But then: she heard a mechanical scream, and her would-be executioner stiffened. His eyes
glazed over, blood spewed from his mouth, and he turned, he made to rise, but the effort was too
much for him and he toppled and fell — and Anakora saw a chainsword embedded in his back,
sputtering and sparking.
Palinev helped her out of the truck, and she stood unsteadily in what now seemed to be a rather
faint light after all. And like the rest of the Ice Warriors, her eyes were drawn to her commander, his
face and his chest still painted with vile symbols from the ceremony — although he had tried to
scrub them off with sewer water — and his right hand held away from his body as if he considered it
unclean.
It was with that hand, Anakora realised, that he must have lifted the Chaos Space Marine’s own
weapon, his augmented muscles giving him the strength to do so.
But there was no satisfaction in Colonel Steele’s eyes at his victory. Just a look of deep-seated
disgust.
112
They remained on foot after that. Steele didn’t want to waste time searching for another working
vehicle — and the spaceport, he said, was only just over a kilometre away. They formed up in two
ranks and advanced at double time. The effort of keeping pace with each other, of maintaining
formation and step, helped to spur on these soldiers, to overcome the fatigue they were all feeling. It
helped them feel more in control, like they had imposed a little order of their own upon this chaotic
world — and even Wollkenden responded well to this. He said nothing as he marched at Steele’s
side, although he stumbled now and again.
Palinev could tell they were approaching their goal, because the buildings grew a little taller, a
little more proud. Eagle crests began to appear over the doorways of customs and shipping offices,
and the streets grew wider and brighter, more like those on the upper levels.
Steele brought his squad to a halt and ordered them to break step, to proceed with caution. He
appeared to be worried — and a minute later, Palinev learned why.
There were people ahead of them. He could hear them — they could all hear them now —
talking and laughing. The Ice Warriors took cover in a narrow alleyway, and Steele sent Palinev
ahead to see what they were facing.
The spaceport was a magnificent, circular building of white stone, studded with dark windows.
Evidently, there had been small-arms fighting here, and the front wall was pock-marked but
unholed. Laid out in front of that wall was a wide forecourt, in which broken fountains brimmed
with frozen black water. Lifter tubes had been shattered, and trees — real organic trees — had
withered and died. Once, this area would have been a welcoming first sight for visitors to Iota Hive,
maybe to Cressida itself. Now, it gave an entirely different impression.
Palinev looked down on all of this from a gantry between two buildings. Below him, a wide
flight of steps swept down from the street where the rest of his squad hid, to the forecourt and the
enticing open gates beyond it.
At some point, a sleek, black grav-car had come speeding this way, its driver presumably hoping
to ferry an important passenger to safety. It had lost control, had maybe come under fire, and had
smacked into a pillar at the top of the steps, crumpling its front end. The car was empty now;
Palinev wondered if its occupants had escaped or been dragged from the wreckage.
There were more grav-cars down on the forecourt, most of them burnt out or turned over, or
both. There was also a dirty old bus — transport for the less privileged — leaning against a fountain,
its windows broken, its tyres slashed.
And there were heretics: cultists, Traitor Guardsmen, mutants, even a few spawn, spread out as
far as Palinev could see, almost certainly surrounding the whole building, and more of them arriving
with each moment that passed. The encounter with the Chaos Space Marine had cost the Ice
Warriors dearly. Their enemies had beaten them here.
Palinev slipped away from his vantage point, dispirited, and returned to the others. Steele
listened to his report in grave silence, and Palinev knew that he was only confirming what the
colonel had expected to hear.
“We have less than an hour before the virus bombs drop,” said Steele. “We don’t have time to
find another escape route, even if we had somewhere to look. Our only hope, however small, lies in
that spaceport, and the sooner we make our move the fewer enemies will be standing between us
and it.”
No one could argue with that. Still, it seemed as if a dark cloud had settled upon the squad, and
Palinev could feel its weight too. It seemed so unfair that they had come so far to fall at this final
hurdle. They had achieved so much, pulled off feats that had seemed impossible, and no one would
even know.
“I won’t give you the speech again,” said Gavotski. “You all know what to do, and you know
what the odds are against us. Just remember that, last time, we bucked those odds. Nine of us went
into the Ice Palace, and nine of us, including Confessor Wollkenden, came out again. If that doesn’t
prove that the Emperor is with us, then nothing does. I know you’ll make me proud.”
113
The heretics’ voices were getting louder.
It wasn’t just that Grayle was drawing closer to them. He could hear that the crowd was growing
in size, and in confidence too. He feared that, at any moment, someone might come rushing up the
steps from the spaceport to find him and Palinev sneaking along the street towards them.
Either that or, by chance, reinforcements might come up behind them.
He quickened his pace, reasoning that with all the noise down there, no one would hear the
footsteps of two men up here. He was still twenty metres away from his objective, the stricken gravcar,
when Palinev took his arm and brought him to a halt.
“This is as far as we can go,” said the scout, “without being seen from down there.” Grayle
nodded and dropped onto his stomach, preparing to pull himself the rest of the way on his elbows.
That was when the pitch of the crowd changed, confidence becoming fear in an instant. And
then Grayle heard a series of staccato explosions. Then gunfire.
He looked at Palinev in alarm. Palinev looked back at him with a helpless shrug. Then the scout
turned, made a dash for the side of the road and swung himself up onto a metal gantry. He returned a
few seconds later, his cheeks flushed with excitement.
“It’s the mutants!” he reported. “The loyalist mutants. There are… I didn’t know there were so
many of them. More than we ever saw. More than the heretics killed at the chapel. They’re
everywhere, climbing up through the manholes. They’ve taken the heretics by surprise.”
It seemed that the Emperor was with the Ice Warriors after all.
“Can they win?” asked Grayle.
Palinev shook his head. “There aren’t enough of them. But they’re providing a perfect
distraction. If we move fast enough…”
Grayle nodded, stood and raced to the grav-car. He doubted that anyone would notice him now
— and even if they did they would probably be too busy to do much about it. As he reached the
steps, he caught a glimpse of the melee that his comrade had described, below — but his attention
was reserved for the car itself.
The driver’s door had jammed shut in the crash. Grayle had to brace his foot against the
bodywork, had to pull at it with all his might. It came free at last, flying up with such force that it
almost caught him on the chin. He leapt into the vehicle, and sent a silent appeal to its machinespirits
as he jabbed at the dashboard runes. Fortunately, as Grayle had already noticed, the twin
engines were housed at the back of the vehicle, and were therefore relatively unscathed.
They caught on the third attempt, and the grav-car gave a protesting screech as its back end was
raised, but its front end remained stubbornly embedded in its pillar. Grayle eased the vehicle
backwards, and winced as it slowly tore itself free, as parts of it became detached and clattered to
