Hero of the Imperium, page 44
‘Thank you Jurgen,’ I managed to force out through practically immobilised face muscles. His scarf twitched as though concealing a smile.
‘Lucky I usually carry a spare.’ That was the closest he would ever come to uttering a reproof, but he had every right to do so of course. The goggles were standard kit in a Valhallan regiment, and I had a pair of my own packed away somewhere in my quarters, but it had never occurred to me I might need them in the depths of the mine where whiteout conditions weren’t exactly common. So once again I had cause to thank the Emperor for my aide’s streak of thoroughness.
To my complete lack of surprise every trooper in first team had donned a pair as well, but, like Jurgen, these conditions were common to them. Warp it, judging by their body language, most of them were actually enjoying these hellish temperatures.
‘Chill enough for you, sir?’ Magot asked cheerfully, seemingly genuinely unaware of just how intolerable I was finding it.
‘Wouldn’t mind a pot of tanna about now,’ I conceded, deciding the best approach was game but suffering a little more than I was willing to admit (rather than a hell of a lot more.) That way they’d keep a closer eye on me without resenting it.
‘Wouldn’t mind a brew myself,’ she admitted, before trotting away to take her turn on point.
‘This is all a complete waste of time you know,’ Logash grumbled. I swear I would have missed him entirely if he hadn’t spoken: his white robe was almost invisible in the swirling snow, and only his pale face and metallic eyes appeared wholly in focus. He appeared to hang in the air in front of me like an extreme version of Mazarin’s levitation act. ‘If there were any more orks around they’ll be kilometres away by now. Or frozen to death.’
He was a fine one to talk, I thought, barely even seeming to notice the sub-zero temperatures. Once again I found myself wondering precisely what that robe concealed.
‘They’re a lot more resilient than you might think,’ I pointed out, and Lunt nodded in passing.
‘My grandfather found one frozen in a glacier once, back home, left over from the invasions. When they got it back to their camp and thawed it out it came back to life and tried to kill them. It’s true, that’s what he said.’
Him and every other Valhallan’s grandfather, of course, ‘The ork in the ice’ is one of the most popular folktales on the planet, but I doubted that Logash would know that, so I nodded confirmation.41
‘So I’d keep looking over my shoulder if I were you,’ I added. I can’t be sure, but I think Lunt winked at me, enjoying winding up the outsider and treating me as if I was Valhallan myself. Of course I’ve spent so much of my career serving with them I often find that I’ve picked up something of their speech patterns, dietary preferences, and so on. I suppose it’s not all that surprising that they seem to have adopted me as one of their own in many ways42.
‘We’re in a defile, all right,’ Grifen told me, glancing around at the barely visible topography. ‘You can tell by the pattern of the snowflakes.’ They just looked like a swirling wall of white to me, but I nodded as though I understood. I didn’t actually need to know, of course: one of the most important principles of leadership is knowing when to rely on the judgement of your subordinates. But it’s always a good idea to look interested.
‘Can you tell which way the orks would have gone?’ I asked. She nodded.
‘They won’t have left any tracks we can follow in this blizzard, but that way,’ she gestured in what looked to me like a random direction, ‘is closed off by the head of the valley. My best guess would be downslope.’
‘Fair enough,’ I decided. ‘We’ll check as far as the mouth of the defile. If there are any greenskins out here we’ll find them. If not we can pull back and collapse the cave behind us.’
‘That might be difficult,’ she pointed out. ‘We used most of our demo charges to seal the... whatever it was back down the passage.’
‘We’ll think of something,’ I said, with more confidence than I felt. The constant swirling of the snow was making me feel vaguely nauseous, the cold was cramping my stomach muscles painfully, and my head felt as though someone was squeezing it in a vice. The sooner we got this over with the better. ‘Jurgen’s still got the melta, and I’m sure our cogboy friend will be able to point out a few weak spots in the ceiling.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ the sergeant said, and I glanced around, expecting some response from Logash, but the surly young tech-priest had vanished into the storm as thoroughly as though he’d never even existed.
NINE
‘We’re going to have to search for him,’ I said, resenting every extra second that was going to mean staying out in the bitter cold. For good measure I filled my lungs with the burning air, and called the tech-priest’s name as loudly as I could. To no avail, of course, as the screaming wind and the muffling snow combined to stifle all but the loudest noise. Fortunately, I had more than my own lungpower to call on, as the comm-bead in my ear was still tuned to the general squad frequency, and I lost no further time in appraising everyone else of the problem.
‘We’ve lost the tech-priest,’ I broadcast, suppressing the impulse to add a number of qualifying adjectives. ‘Anyone seen him?’
To my complete lack of surprise a chorus of negatives was the only response.
‘At least it’ll be quieter on the way back,’ Magot added, with rather more candour than tact. That was hardly the point, though, however much I might have agreed with her.
‘Complete the sweep,’ Grifen ordered, with just enough emphasis to discourage any more flippancy, and the troopers responded, sounding off in turn with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. She turned back to me. ‘If he’s ahead of us we’ll run into him. And if he’s behind we should pick him up on the way back.’
I have to admit to feeling rather less sanguine on that point than she seemed to be. He was, after all, effectively invisible to us in the swirling snow, and I didn’t think we stood a chance of finding him under these conditions in any way other than stumbling over him by accident. But if anyone could pick up his trail I supposed it would be the Valhallans, so I nodded in return.
‘Better get moving then,’ I said, echoing her words of a couple of hours before.
It wasn’t that simple, of course. As I’ve already mentioned, the wind was sweeping up the defile, which was liberally strewn with grey, jagged rocks. These loomed up suddenly out of the swirling blanket of snow, promising a moment of respite from the razor-edged wind which, time and again, proved to be merely a delusion. The irregular topography simply broke the onrush of air into flurries and eddies which dashed handfuls of snow into these pockets of illusory shelter, adding a sudden unexpected lash of stinging ice crystals to an already miserable experience. The only consolation, if that was the right word, was that what little exposed skin I still had was completely numb by this time.
I slipped and slithered down the slope behind Grifen, grateful for the stolid presence of Jurgen behind me; several times he reached out a supporting hand just in time to prevent me from sprawling face down in the knee-deep snow. The Valhallans remained completely sure-footed, but any amusement they may have felt at my floundering progress was well concealed. Glancing back I could see that the furrows we’d left behind us were already beginning to fill with the ever-shifting drifts, and that without my companions’ sure instinct for these ghastly conditions we would almost certainly never find the cave mouth again. That, at least, was something of a relief, as the chances of any greenskins stumbling across it were beginning to look reassuringly remote.
On the downside though, any tracks Logash had left would be obscured as completely as our own, so once again it seemed we weren’t likely to stumble across him by any means other than sheer blind luck.
At least with all those augmetics I supposed he wasn’t likely to freeze to death, in the short term at any rate, but right now I was beginning to think that was a very mixed blessing.
I had, by this time, lost sight of all my companions save for the reassuring presence of Jurgen, their camouflage greatcoats blending so perfectly into the snowstorm that they were effectively invisible. For that matter so was I; my dark commissar’s uniform being so coated with the wind-driven flakes that I resembled one of those misshapen effigies children throughout the galaxy sculpt with the onset of winter. (On Valhalla, building snowmen is something of a cross between a serious art form and a competitive sport, with some quite astounding creations to marvel at, but that’s beside the point.)
I was just on the verge of deciding that this was futile and ordering everyone to turn back, letting Logash take his chances with the elements as best he could, when Magot’s voice crackled over my comm-bead.
‘Contact, ninety metres down slope.’ I could hardly see an arm’s length in front of my own eyes, but she sounded confident enough. I was still trying to force my numb lips to form a reply when Grifen’s voice cut into the net.
‘Is it the cogboy?’
‘Negative.’ Magot’s voice was tense. ‘I can see a lot of movement down there.’
That could mean only one thing, of course, and I was already scrabbling for my laspistol with numb and nerveless fingers when she spoke again, confirming it.
‘Greenies. Lots of them.’
‘How many?’ I asked, keeping hold of my weapon Emperor knows how, my fingers feeling thick and swollen in the cold. Luckily the augmetic ones were working as well as ever, at least enabling me to maintain my grip on the stock, but whether I’d be able to squeeze the trigger with my very real and probably frostbitten index finger would be problematic at best.43
‘Hard to tell,’ Magot replied. ‘They’re well spread out.’ That was hardly surprising under the circumstances, the terrain being less than conducive to their normal habit of charging forward in a disorganized mob. ‘But a dozen at least.’
‘Contact.’ Simla cut in too, and with a sudden thrill of horror I realised he was over to the left side of the defile, three hundred metres at least from Magot’s position. No way he was seeing the same group. ‘I’ve got seven. No, eight. Maybe more.’
‘Me too,’ Hail added, from our right flank. ‘Looks like a full squad from here.’44
‘Pull back,’ I ordered. That made at least thirty, probably more, too many for us to take out here even with the Valhallans’ ability to make use of the terrain and weather conditions to mount an effective ambush. It also confirmed my worst fear (apart from the thought that the necrons were stirring down in the darkness beneath our feet.) The comrades of the dead ork we’d found had indeed made contact with the bulk of their army, and were on their way back with a full-scale raiding force intent on exploiting the gap they’d discovered in our defences. ‘We have to secure the cave whatever happens.’
‘Confirm that,’ Grifen said, overriding whatever objections her subordinates might be on the verge of expressing. Not that I really expected any, but Valhallan antipathy to the greenskins ran deep, and the temptation to take a pot-shot at them before withdrawing must have been acute. To their credit no one gave way to it though, so I began to breathe a little more easily as we made our way back up the slope towards the welcome refuge of the cave. With any luck we’d be able to slip away before they even knew we were here.
I must confess that the thought of getting out of the bone-numbing wind was so strong, and so all-pervading, that I quite lost track of my surroundings. I stumbled through the snow like an automaton, following in the tracks ploughed by Jurgen, intent only on putting one leg in front of the other. The image of the tunnel mouth and the respite from the cold it represented loomed ever larger in my thoughts, driving out everything but the determination to keep my numbed and frozen limbs moving. So it was with a shock of genuine surprise that I heard the unmistakable report of a bolter round detonating against an outcrop of rock a few metres away.
Spurred by a sense of imminent danger I dropped out of my fugue state at once, bringing the laspistol in my hand around, seeking a target. A hulking shape loomed out of the snow, bounding forward with incredible speed, swinging a crudely-fashioned axe. So eager was it to spill my blood it seemed to have forgotten the primitive bolt pistol clutched in its other hand. I fired by reflex, finding that my panic-spurred finger was able to tighten on the trigger just fine now that the question was a practical one, blowing a hole through its torso. The creature staggered and came on, then dropped to the ground, already cooling, as a second las bolt took it from the side.
‘Sergeant.’ I acknowledged Grifen’s assistance with a nod, and she gestured with her left hand, the right still holding her lasgun ready to fire.
‘This way,’ she said. I stumbled in her direction, sure that Jurgen would be with me as always, and in this I was soon proved correct. The unmistakable hiss of the melta opening up behind me made me turn, just in time to see my aide cut down a small group of the creatures that had evidently been following the first with a single ravening blast of thermal energy. After a moment spent scanning our surroundings he lowered the weapon and began slogging through the knee-high drifts towards us as implacably unconcerned as though he were out for an afternoon stroll. Maybe by the standards of his homeworld he was.
‘Up here, commissar.’ Lunt reached down from atop a tangle of rocks, grasping my outstretched hand, and lifting me bodily to the top without any apparent effort. Grifen scrambled up after us, barely slowing down, and a moment later Jurgen heaved himself over the rim, the bulky weapon now slung to facilitate climbing, and preceded as always by his unmistakable odour.
‘I thought this would be a good spot to regroup,’ Grifen said. I glanced around, feeling almost warm now that we were partially sheltered from the relentless wind, and nodded approvingly. She’d chosen an elevated position surrounded by tumbled boulders, from which we could look down on the tunnel entrance from an elevation of a couple of metres or so. That was good thinking: if the orks had made it there ahead of us after all there was no sense in walking up to the cave mouth wearing a big sign saying ‘shoot me I’m here.’ As I strained my eyes through the whirling snow I wasn’t able to discern much, but as I’ve said before I’d trust her instincts where the greenskins were concerned.
Hail and Simla had made it to our refuge too, I was pleased to see, each raising a hand in greeting as Jurgen and I appeared before going back to scanning the horizon over the sights of their lasguns. I was just about to try contacting Magot and asking her position when a flurry of las-bolt detonations and a bellow of orkish pain somewhere off to our left answered that question quite satisfactorily. The diminutive redhead appeared in person a few moments later, grinning with malevolent amusement.
‘There was this greenie over that way making a latrine stop,’ she reported gleefully, ‘so I shot him right up the...’
‘Is it dead?’ I interrupted. She nodded, still enjoying the approbation of her comrades, who seemed to think this was as hilarious as she did.
‘Deader than Horus,’ she confirmed. Good. Her tracks would have been all but obliterated by now, and with any luck the orks wouldn’t have a clue where we were or how many of us they faced. Unless they found and interrogated Logash, of course, in which case it was credits to carrots they’d learn everything they needed to know in pretty short order. That left me with only one choice.
‘We’re pulling back to the cave as soon as we know it’s clear,’ I said. ‘And prepare to collapse it behind us.’
‘What about the tech-priest?’ Grifen asked, clearly not terribly concerned, but sticking to the letter of her mission brief with admirable tenacity.
‘He’ll just have to fend for himself,’ I said. Catching her look, I added ‘I’ll take the responsibility.’ It went without saying, of course, that went with the scarlet sash.
‘It’s your call, commissar.’ Well, she was right about that, but I could see abandoning a human to the mercy of the orks wasn’t going to go down too well with the rank and file, even if he was an annoying little grox-fondler who’d brought it on himself, so I went all solemn.
‘It goes against the grain I know,’ I said. ‘But our first duty is to the Emperor, the regiment, and our mission. The colonel has to know about the necron presence here. It changes everything, and until then the lives of all our comrades are at risk.’
Everyone nodded solemnly at that, apparently perfectly happy to hang the little tech-priest out to dry now I’d been able to make it seem like a noble sacrifice, and we prepared to move out.
As I glanced back down slope, straining my eyes through the swirling blanket of snow for some sign of another party of orks, I thought I caught a glimpse of something moving smoothly and silently through the frozen landscape. I inhaled, intending to call out, then dismissed the impulse as the blur of apparent motion vanished in the kaleidoscope of white. Chances were it was only wishful thinking on my part, I thought, and even if it was Logash he’d never hear me over the howling of the wind. Later, when I had the leisure to reflect on that moment, I was to shudder at how close I had probably come to dooming us all.
‘It seems clear enough,’ Grifen said, after a few more moments spent observing the cave entrance. So we moved cautiously towards it, putting our trust in the obscuring snow and what little concealment the rocks afforded. The troopers were well disciplined, I found, moving by stages as though we were already in combat, waiting until one of their comrades was in position to provide covering fire before moving to the next place of refuge. I did the same, falling into the rhythm with the instinct born of long practice.
At length we were ranged around the mouth of the cave. I stepped into it gratefully, feeling the barbed wind let go of my flesh, and gasping with the agony of returning circulation. For a moment or two my entire body felt as though I’d been hit by a flamer, then the pain subsided from unbearable to merely excruciating. Even so my survival instinct remained strong, and I was able to override the discomfort for long enough to sweep the tunnel before me with the beam of my luminator, keeping the barrel of my laspistol in line with it. (Under most circumstances, of course, there’s no better way to make a target of yourself than that, but I was backlit by the tunnel mouth in any case so it wouldn’t make any difference to an assailant lurking in the dark. If anything I might dazzle them for long enough to get a shot off.) As it happened there was nothing waiting to shoot me, and after a second or two I relaxed.
