He did all this because he knew there was just one thing, one choice he could make, that would
prove more dangerous than serving the Imperium… and that was not serving it.
The Termite was under attack, being buffeted by shock waves. If he tuned out the deafening sound
of its engines, Steele could identify the crump of explosive shells from without, of the sort fired by a
Basilisk or a Bombard.
“We have a problem, sir,” Grayle yelled from the controls. “We’re in the sights of something…
long-range artillery. It’s decided to take a few pot shots. Thing is, it has good cover. The Chimeras
can’t see to return fire. The captain of one is requesting your permission to break formation, to go
after it.”
“Denied,” said Steele. “Do what you can, Grayle. Find us cover, get out of firing range. Do not,
I repeat do not, engage with the enemy.”
24
“Aye, sir,” Grayle answered. The Termite made a sharp right turn, sharper than Steele would
have thought possible. He was sure that, for an instant, its left-hand track had left the ground.
“We need a smoke launcher on this thing,” opined Barreski. “Do we at least have smoke
grenades, something we can lob out through the flamer emplacements?”
“We are sitting ducks in here,” Borscz fretted. “If we were out in the field, ten smaller, fastermoving
targets, that machine could never get a bead on us.”
At that moment, a tremendous concussive force slammed through the Termite’s chassis, from its
back left corner. A direct hit. It felt as if a tank had rammed them from behind, and only the fact that
the Ice Warriors were so tightly wedged into their seats saved Steele from being thrown into
Grayle’s back.
Grayle muttered a prayer as the engine coughed, spluttered, whined, and then roared back into
full throat. The Termite’s suspension was shot. It felt as if it was shaking itself apart, and the
passenger compartment was filled with smoke.
“Palinev, Mikhaelev,” said Gavotski, “go through the equipment lockers, see if you can whip up
a smokescreen as Barreski suggested. Barreski, I need you to check the borer, make sure it still
functions. Grayle…”
“I know, sergeant,” said Grayle. “Get us the hell out of here!”
No one needed to say what every one of the ten Ice Warriors present was thinking: that they
couldn’t take a second hit like that one.
Steele watched as they jumped to their assigned tasks. He had no need to intervene, trusting
Gavotski to handle the situation. So, he took the opportunity to observe how each member of his
new squad responded to pressure. The more he could learn about them, the more effectively he
could lead them, and official records could only tell him so much.
There was something about Mikhaelev’s body language, for example — the slump of his
shoulders — that said his heart wasn’t truly in this mission, that perhaps he was just going through
the motions. That hadn’t come across at all in his records, and it was a cause for concern. Pozhar,
thought Steele, would bear watching too, although, in his case, the reports of his commanders had
been perfectly clear.
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
25
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?”
26
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.
27
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?”
28
“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
