her surviving six comrades and the staccato flashes of their lasguns. The latter created an eerie kind
of stop-motion effect in which Anakora saw the remaining two Chaos hounds dosing with their
chosen prey.
She shouldered her weapon again, looking for a clear shot. When a second comrade fell, his
broken body tossed in the air to be caught in the mantrap jaws of his feral killer, she let out a
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strangulated cry and pulled on the trigger for all she was worth, furious with herself for her wellmeaning
hesitation.
Two more squad members had the same thought, and the hound was struck from three angles at
once, twisting and melting in the sizzling las-beams, slumping dead at last with a Valhallan leg still
clamped in its mouth.
The third hound got past Sergeant Kubrikov’s defences. It bore him down, and its claws pinned
his shoulders before he could stand. Once again, Anakora couldn’t fire without endangering her
comrade, but this time she didn’t waste a second. She leapt onto the creature’s back, and felt its
jagged spines digging into her thighs. She turned her lasgun around and slipped it over the Chaos
hound’s head so that the barrel was resting across its throat. She clenched her teeth and pulled for all
she was worth. She could feel thick, knotted neck muscles resisting her, but she was determined not
to fail, not to show herself to be weak again. At last, she felt bone snap. The monstrous black body
sagged beneath her, and a grateful Kubrikov tore himself free from its dying grip.
In the time this had taken, Anakora’s comrades had dealt with the final hound, although two
more of them had been eviscerated in the process. The danger was not over, however. New shadows
were looming, growing on the tunnel walls: dark, ominous shadows. A scant moment later, the first
of their owners came marching around the bend, and Anakora’s breath caught at the sight of them.
Clad in baroque armour and hailing from the Eye of Terror, the giant warriors exuded a palpable
air of menace and power that turned men’s blood to ice. They raised and fired bolt pistols, and
Anakora flung herself against the wall, using the tunnel’s slight curvature to shield her body. She
returned fire, knowing that it was hopeless. The Ice Warriors were outgunned — outmatched not
just by a little, but ludicrously, almost laughably so.
Sergeant Kubrikov knew it too, and he was screaming at his three remaining troopers to fall
back. There was something else too: another sound, an insistent buzz in Anakora’s earpiece. A
voice, its tone urgent but its words drowned in a sea of static.
She didn’t have time to worry about it. She was pinned down by the bolt pistols, but the glimmer
of an idea formed in her head, and she screamed at Kubrikov, “The mines, sergeant! Blow the
mines!”
Kubrikov was ahead of her, already fumbling with the detonator. The buildings to each side of
the Chaos Space Marines blew out, and a cloud of dust billowed towards Anakora. She was already
running when it caught up to her, engulfed her. She could hear the throaty growls of chainswords
starting up behind her, and she knew that the explosion hadn’t been enough, not nearly enough —
that their pursuers were still standing, still ploughing forwards, and that all the Ice Warriors had
gained was to slow them a fraction and to make themselves a harder target for their ranged weapons.
She almost wished that wasn’t the case.
There were just two of them left, her and Kubrikov. Anakora reached the ladder first, glanced
back, and saw her sergeant’s eyes glazing over. Blood poured from his mouth, and then his body
separated into two pieces along a horizontal line. The dust parted for a second to show the dead face
of a Chaos Space Marine behind him, jerking his sword free of his victim’s remains.
Then she was climbing, hand over hand, foot over foot, expecting at any moment to feel cold
fingers closing around her ankle, dragging her back. Bolts pinged off the ladder, and she dropped a
frag grenade to discourage another burst. Then she could see the open manhole above her, and she
knew that she could make it. She ought to have been relieved — because now at least her comrades
could be forewarned, that the Chaos Space Marines were about to emerge into their midst — but her
stomach sank instead, because she knew that her mission had failed. Her squad was dead.
And the worst of it all, the hardest thing for Anakora to accept, was that she had survived…
again.
Trooper Grayle stumbled over the rubble, hacking and coughing from the smoke in his throat, his
arm gushing blood from a stray piece of shrapnel. His eyes and ears had been deadened, but he fired
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his lasgun blindly over his shoulder as he staggered on, just hoping and waiting — waiting for
Barreski to let go of him, to stop dragging him along, so that he could fall over.
He didn’t know how they had got this far. His recent past was a blur of bangs and flashes, the
only clear impression being of the searing, agonising pain he had felt when the controls of the
Leman Russ had blown up in his face.
Then he was on the ground, staring up at Cressida’s grey sky, the last flakes of the sputtering
snowstorm wetting his cheeks and soothing his burns. His chest was heaving and his arm was
throbbing, and he wondered for a moment if this was it, if Barreski had been gunned down and if he
was to be next.
Then he saw his comrade’s concerned face looming over him, his skin a livid pink too, the
stubble on his chin singed and even more ragged than usual.
“Did… did we get the last of them?” stammered Grayle.
“I reckon so, yeah,” said Barreski. Then something made him tense up, turn, and fire a burst
from his lasgun at something Grayle couldn’t see — though he did hear the scream that followed the
blast, a scream abruptly curtailed. “Yeah,” repeated Barreski, turning back to him, “yeah, we got the
last of them, now.”
Not many cultists had followed them back into the ruins. Those that had survived were mostly
licking their wounds, shell-shocked from the fury that had just erupted around them. The Ice
Warriors were safe from the enemy tanks — assuming that none of their drivers had Grayle’s skill,
which was a pretty safe bet.
“I think the captain made it,” said Grayle, chasing a confused memory. “I think I saw him
with… with someone else, I couldn’t make out who.”
“Kampanov, probably. As soon as he heard the evacuation order, he was out of that hatch like a
snow leopard with a frag grenade up its backside.”
Grayle pulled himself up onto his elbows, catching his second wind, and said, “They took out
the turret guns, I’m assuming?”
“Cold got the first, shrapnel the second. Think I’d be here if I still had a lascannon to fire? They
were works of art, they were. Another minute with them, I could have polished off two more tanks,
no problem.”
“Never mind, eh, Barreski. I’m sure we can find you a new toy to play with soon, maybe an
even bigger one.”
“You think they’ll let us have another vehicle?” asked Barreski. “We didn’t take such good care
of the last one. Of the last three, in fact.”
Grayle smiled at his fellow tanker with the smug air of one who knew an important secret. “Oh
yeah,” he said, “I think we’ll get another vehicle. I expect we’ll be back in action before you know
it.”
Then he told Barreski about the message. The one that had come in through the Leman Russ’
vox system, just before it had exploded. Grayle had never had the chance to acknowledge the
message, nor to relay it to its intended recipient, the battle tank’s captain — but it had now been
heard by both of the Ice Warriors name-checked therein.
“Better get yourself back on your feet then, my friend,” said Barreski, “because if we want to
report to Colonel Stanislev Steele on time, I’d say we’ve got a long, dangerous walk ahead of us.”
Calchas Spaceport was teeming with Guardsmen, many of them lost, unable to hear their orders
over the roar of an incoming lander. The ship was trying to squeeze its bristling form into a tight
spot between a near-identical vessel and an older, scarred Ironclad. The Navy had assigned all the
craft it could spare, all that could reach Cressida in time, to the evacuation effort, whatever their
usual function.
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The lander set down, at last, and its engines cut out, but those of another, departing ship had
already fired up. Sergeants yelled themselves hoarse to be heard over the continuing racket,
marshalling their troopers to the loading ramps. From the window beside Trooper Blonsky’s head,
the Guardsmen looked like coloured ants, streaming across a concrete bowl into the bellies of the
great metal behemoths.
His interrogator delivered a backhanded slap to his face, drawing a little blood and snapping his
attention back to the small, grey room in which he was seated.
“I asked you a question, Blonsky.” The lieutenant was from a Validian regiment. Royal
Validians, they called themselves. His uniform was red with highlights in polished gold, and he
displayed the same superior attitude that Blonsky had seen in so many of his breed. He was probably
also one of the most senior officers on Cressida. Most of the rest had been aboard the first ships to
leave — Blonsky’s Valhallan commanders excepted, of course.
He glanced down at his cuffed wrists, resting in his lap. Then he looked up to meet his
interrogator’s glare, and he said calmly, “With all due respect, sir, I think I have answered it. I have
given you a full account of my actions this morning. I executed Sergeant Arkadin—”
“You killed him,” the Validian spat, “killed him in cold blood!”
“I executed him,” restated Blonsky, “because he was a deserter.”
The lieutenant’s nostrils flared. “Arkadin was a good friend of mine. If you had reason to doubt
his courage, you should have come to me or to one of his other commanders. What evidence do you
have, what evidence could you have, to support this claim?”
“I have the evidence of my own senses, sir. My platoon was fighting a horde of mutants when I
was separated from them by an explosion. I took cover in an old storage depot. That’s where I
encountered Sergeant Arkadin. I believe he had been hiding in there for some time.”
“Did he tell you that?” asked the lieutenant sharply.
“No sir,” said Blonsky, “but it was evident from his body language that—”
“I don’t want to hear about his body language.”
“Very well. The mutants must have seen me entering the building. I had barricaded the door as
best I could, but they were starting to batter it down. I was prepared to meet them with las-fire, but
Sergeant Arkadin threw down his gun and tried to climb through the window.”
“I won’t accept that!” The lieutenant drove a frustrated fist into the table between them. “You
made a mistake, Trooper Blonsky. Sergeant Arkadin is — was — an excellent tactician. No doubt
he thought that, if he could escape from the depot, he could circle behind your attackers and—”
“He had thrown down his gun, sir!”
“What right do you have to judge one of us?” the Validian hissed.
“May I ask again, sir,” said Blonsky, “if my commanders have been informed of my detention.
By rights, one of them ought to be here.” He could tell from the lieutenant’s stony silence that the
answer to his question was no.
He sighed, and restated for what seemed like the hundredth time, “Sergeant Arkadin was a
deserter. I shot him, in accordance with standing orders, before he could—”
“No!” the lieutenant bellowed. Blonsky stopped talking. No one was listening anyway.
A long silence followed, during which his interrogator stared out of another window at the
activity in the spaceport below. Perhaps he was worrying about his own place on one of those ships,
wondering how much longer he could afford to wait behind.
“You were lucky,” said the lieutenant at last, in a somewhat quieter voice, “that my platoon was
in the area, that those mutants died before they could break down the door and reach you. I only
wish they could have been in time to save my sergeant.”
“I wish that too, sir.”
“As far as I am concerned, Trooper Blonsky, you killed Sergeant Arkadin without reason. I
don’t know why. Perhaps you were the would-be deserter, and he was standing in your way. The
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only way to be sure would be to convene a formal tribunal with, as you say, your commanders
present. Under the circumstances, that would take some time. It would also mean blackening a good
man’s name, by airing these scurrilous accusations against him.”
“If you say so, sir.” Blonsky could see from the lieutenant’s bearing, the way he could no longer
quite meet his prisoner’s eye, that he wanted to believe what he was saying, wanted it so much, but
that he couldn’t be entirely sure.
The lieutenant let out a heavy sigh, and said, “Go on. Get out of here. It would be a mercy to
keep you off the front line anyway. You belong to the Valhallan 319th, yes? The regiment that is to
stay behind, that is to be sacrificed. Well, then, Trooper Blonsky, if you are so zealous, so damn
loyal to the Emperor, then this is your chance to prove it, isn’t it? This is your chance to make sure
you die for Him!”
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CHAPTER THREE
Time to Destruction of Cressida: 45.57.14
The sight of the Termite stirred something in Sergeant Ivon Gavotski’s heart.
It was just a small vehicle, its chassis almost outweighed by the great cylindrical borer it
supported — but it had been given a distinctively Valhallan make-over, painted with white and
green snow camouflage patterns. Six flamer emplacements had been added to its sides and four
more flamers mounted on the borer itself.
Gavotski had heard the story many times, of course — about how, after his home world had
been hit by an asteroid, after its lush fields had become frozen wastelands, his distant ancestors had
struggled to survive. An ork invasion must have seemed like one misfortune too many, back then —
but it had given the Valhallans a reason to fight back, a tangible goal to achieve.
The precise schematics of the ice-boring vehicle they had developed had been lost to history.
But this Termite was the nearest thing, in the modern world, to the vehicle that had won the
Valhallans their war — the nearest thing to the vehicle that had given them mastery of their changed
environment, allowing them to tunnel through the hearts of the glaciers and to strike at the ork mobs
