Hero of the Imperium, page 75
We were ready for them, our troops deployed around the town in what should have been an impenetrable cordon. Second company remained in our compound, as their vehicles were still stowed aboard the dropship, which I was suddenly aware would make a very tempting target if the enemy had any aerospace units. (As it turned out, though, that was a needless worry. The freighters only carried civilian shuttles, which were unarmed, gratifyingly easy targets for the PDF fighter pilots, who made sure that damn few of them were able to make more than a couple of drop runs.)
I turned to Detoi. ‘Better make sure your people are sharp,’ I said. ‘We might need them to defend this position if they’re not called on for support somewhere else.’ I was only trying to encourage him at the time, knowing he’d rather be ordering their embarkation for some distant battlefront, but I spoke truer than I knew. In theory, first company had a couple of platoons in reserve to do the job, but Glacier Peak was a big enough place to take care of, and it was perfectly feasible that they’d find themselves otherwise occupied at the time.
He nodded dutifully. ‘Incoming,’ one of the auspex operators said, her voice tense. ‘Five contacts, airborne, closing fast. They’re widely scattered.’
‘All units prepare to engage,’ Kasteen said, as calmly as if she were ordering another mug of tanna. She glanced up at me. ‘Commissar?’
I made some encouraging remarks over the open vox link, invoked the protection of the Emperor and turned to Detoi.
‘If you don’t mind, captain,’ I said, ‘I think I’d rather join your company while this is going on.’
This might seem a little odd, given that I was in a warm, bullet-proof building at the time, but as usual my paranoid streak was thinking about a number of uncomfortable possibilities. For one thing, we knew the heretics had had plenty of time to infiltrate the local PDF, even though nobody senior had been netted by Kolbe’s investigators yet, and they certainly had some ears among the Council of Claimants (or at least their households). It wasn’t entirely unfeasible that they knew where our regimental headquarters was, and if that was true and any of those incoming shuttles were armed, I was currently sitting in the middle of the most tempting target for a bombing run on the entire coldside. Out in the open, on the other hand, unpleasant as it was, I’d have a much better chance of surviving an aerial attack.
‘Have fun.’ Kasteen grinned at me, no doubt believing I was just eager to be in with a better chance of facing the enemy.
I directed a carefully composed smile in her direction. ‘We’ll try to save a couple for you,’ I promised, as though she was right, and fell into step beside Detoi as we left the bustling room behind us.
‘Commissar.’ Jurgen was waiting outside, and had been for some time judging by the aroma of old socks which suffused the corridor. He pulled himself to a semblance of attention, his usual collection of mismatched equipment pouches rattling slightly as he shouldered his precious melta, which clanked against his lasgun. Detoi returned his salute crisply and without a trace of a smile. She was one of the few officers in the regiment who at least pretended to consider him a proper soldier.
‘Jurgen.’ I nodded a greeting, relieved to see him, and surreptitiously adjusted the straps of the carapace concealed under my greatcoat. Clearly we were both expecting trouble. ‘We were about to take a small constitutional around the compound.’
‘I thought you might, sir.’ My aide burrowed in one of the pouches. ‘So I took the liberty of making a flask of tea. Knowing how you feel the cold a bit.’
‘Very thoughtful,’ I said, forestalling the motion. ‘But perhaps later.’ The faint sound of engines was audible now, and if they were about to attack the building we didn’t have much longer to get outside. I turned to Detoi. ‘Shall we go?’
‘By all means.’ He led the way outside into the perpetual cold and night. I glanced up, the sky even clearer than usual now that the luminators had been doused in anticipation of an enemy attack, the stars burning down at us colder and harder than ever. A few of them seemed to be moving, the whine of their engines growing louder by the minute.
I tapped the comm-bead in my ear. ‘Visual contact,’ I said. ‘I can see three of them, approaching from due east. High and fast.’
‘That’s odd,’ Broklaw said. ‘A couple of them are overshooting the town.’
‘Heading for us, maybe,’ Kasteen cut in.
‘They’re dispersing,’ the auspex operator confirmed. ‘They’re in a landing pattern, but it seems uncontrolled.’
‘Hardly surprising,’ I said, taking the amplivisor Jurgen was holding out with a nod of thanks and raising it to my eyes. After a moment of searching, I found one of the shuttles and brought its magnified image into focus. ‘With the amount of damage they’ve taken it’s a miracle they’re flying at all.’ In the faint orange light of the early dawn I could make out jagged rents in the hull and a plume of smoke from its engines. It was juddering wildly and must have been hell to keep under control.
Well, good. If it crashed that would be one less bunch of lunatics left to deal with.
I lowered the lenses and handed the amplivisor back to Jurgen, who stowed it away somewhere. He was growing steadily more visible as the sun rose behind me, a faint shadow beginning to stretch from his feet. My own also became gradually visible on the hard-packed snow. Absently I found myself thinking it was the first time I’d seen it since we’d arrived on Adumbria…
‘Emperor on Earth!’ I said, the coin finally dropping, whirling round to stare at the fireball scorching its way across the sky above us. For the first and last time in Adumbrian history, the coldside was wanly illuminated by the death throes of the traitors’ transport vessel, and the troopers around me raised a spontaneous cheer at the sight. Well, who could blame them? As it faded over the western horizon, setting as abruptly as it had risen, a scream of tortured air followed it, like the howling of daemons clawing free from the warp.
After that, an eerie silence seemed to settle across us, leeching the sound from the air as the light faded back to the constant faint blue of the endless starlight.
‘That’s going to make a dent when it hits,’79 Detoi prophesied, and trotted away to find his command team. There was little time to waste on idle conversation after that, as the enemy were suddenly upon us.
‘One contact down. No, three,’ the auspex operator reported. ‘One two kilometres to the south, another in the north-eastern suburbs.’
‘We can see it,’ a new voice I recognised as one of the platoon commanders from fourth company chimed in. ‘First and third squads moving in to contain them.’
‘Contact three down in the town centre,’ the auspex operator continued.
‘Fifth company, encircle and eliminate,’ Kasteen ordered, while another platoon from fourth moved up to support their comrades in the suburbs. I was beginning to think about ducking back inside and following the action on the chart table, which would be a great deal preferable to freezing out here now the threat of an air attack was almost past.
‘Contact four heading due west,’ the auspex operator droned on. ‘Looks like they’re overshooting.’
‘Engaging,’ a lieutenant from first company cut in, her voice shrill with excitement. ‘They’re practically overhead.’ Her words were almost drowned out by the roar of half a dozen Chimeras unloading both their heavy bolters at once, and I was hardly surprised to hear a faint cheer over the channel a moment later. With all that firepower they must have hit something, even by sheer blind luck. ‘Got him! He’s trailing smoke… Frak it, he’s still airborne.’
I glanced up, seeing a dark mass scream overhead, vivid orange flames licking around its main engine before it disappeared into the distance in the vague direction of the hab dome we’d found. They wouldn’t find any help there, I reflected grimly. Asmar had been right about one thing: a place that tainted couldn’t be allowed to exist. The difference had been that we’d made damn sure we’d learned everything we could about it before we’d let Federer out to play. All the descending heretics were going to find (if they got down in one piece, which didn’t seem all that likely at this point) was a scorched pile of rubble and third platoon, fourth company, who’d been camping out there for almost a week by this point and were just itching for something to kill to relieve the monotony.
‘Recon one, two and three heading out to contact two,’ Captain Shambas reported. ‘Let’s see what the frakheads are up to.’ That made good sense: the three sentinel squadrons were designed for just such a task and would get to the shuttle which had grounded to the south far quicker than any other units we had.
‘Good luck, captain,’ Kasteen said, making it official, although the sentinel pilots would be hard to dissuade now the idea that they had a target-rich environment all to themselves had had time to sink in. Any other response would be far more trouble than it was worth. Calling them off would be difficult and time-consuming and probably involve an inordinate number of freak vox failures, so on the whole it was probably best to just let them get on with it. (Which they did, mopping up the entire group quite happily without needing to call for backup.)
That just left one of the incoming shuttles unaccounted for, and with a thrill of horror I realised that the engine noise which so far had been a loud, consistent sound in the background was rising in pitch alarmingly.
‘Incoming!’ I shouted, just as the auspex operator managed to find her arse with both hands and a map.
‘Contact five inbound, closing fast,’ she reported. ‘Estimated LZ within half a kilometre.’
‘It’s a frak sight closer than that!’ I shouted as the frozen air around us lit up with las bolts, the troopers spitting defiant small-arms fire at the descending ship. The heavy bolters mounted on the company Chimeras might have made a difference, of course, but they were still aboard the dropship, and I might just as well have wished for a battery of Hydras while I was about it. ‘Prepare to engage!’
‘Look out, commissar!’ Jurgen grabbed my arm, urging me to duck as the ungainly shuttle swooped overhead, seeming close enough to touch, the wind of its passing grabbing the cap from my head and spinning it off into the darkness. A vice of cold clamped itself around my temples, driving needles of ice into my forebrain and the back of my eyes. I scrabbled instinctively after my tumbling headgear, which probably saved my life, as the snow around me began puffing into vapour under the impetus of multiple las bolt impacts.
‘Frak this!’ I drew my trusty laspistol, grabbing my elusive cap with the other hand and jamming it over my head. The migraine receded a little, and what felt like a couple of kilos of melting slush mashed itself into my hair and slithered down my neck. I turned in time to see the wounded shuttle hit the snow, skid and plough itself to a halt in a long groove of friction-melted ice, which began to freeze instantly around it. In the process, it shed the dimly-glimpsed figures which had been hanging out of the rear cargo doors firing wildly, coming so close to hitting me. They cart-wheeled through the air, striking the permafrost with an impact sufficient to shatter bone and liquefy flesh. And serve them right, I thought. None of them stirred again, merely acquiring makeshift shrouds of lightly-drifting snow as the battle raged about them.
For battle it was. There were plenty of their comrades left aboard, and they came boiling out of the steam-shrouded wreck like parasites fleeing a dying grox, firing wildly as they went. The Valhallans returned fire with all the disciplined professionalism I’d come to expect, dropping them by the dozen, but the survivors swept on, frenzied as an orkish war band.
‘Something’s not right about this,’ I said, firing my pistol at the onrushing mob, then ducking for cover behind a snow-shrouded drum of some foul-smelling lubricant the enginseers had been using on a partially disassembled Chimera. The cultists we’d faced before had been fanatical, of course, but they’d shown a modicum of tactical sense.
‘No kidding.’ Corporal Magot jogged past, grinning happily, her fireteam in tow, lobbing frag grenades in the general direction of the enemy. ‘It’s almost too easy.’ One of the troopers with her went down suddenly, a spray of fresh blood freezing almost instantly into a bright, hard scab across his chest.
‘Medic,’ I voxed, dragging the man under cover. It was a good excuse to keep my head down and it never hurt to seem concerned about the ordinary troopers. Magot shot me a grateful smile with an edge colder than the flensing wind.
‘Thanks, boss.’ Her voice rose. ‘Are we going to let ’em get away with that?’
‘Hell, no!’ the rest of the team chorused in unison.
‘Then let’s frag one for Smitti!’ With a roar that sounded almost like a mob of orks, they charged off into the snow looking for something to kill. I began to feel almost sorry for the enemy.
I busied myself looking after the wounded trooper until the medic arrived, then glanced back up over our makeshift barricade. The compound was in uproar by this time, small knots of traitors in flimsy crimson fatigues and black flak armour80 engaging squads and fireteams almost at random. They fought with the fury of the possessed or the truly insane, heedless of their personal safety or anything resembling tactics, apparently intent on charging into close combat as quickly as they could.
‘If they made it any easier they’d be on our side,’ Jurgen said, triggering his melta for the third or fourth time and bringing down what seemed like most of a squad. The snow around them was littered with steaming chunks of meat where their predecessors had fared little better.
‘Blood for the Blood God!’ A red-uniformed trooper came screaming out of the endless night at me, his old-fashioned autogun held across his chest like a pole arm, apparently intent on using the wickedly-serrated bayonet clipped to its barrel. I assumed at the time that he was out of ammunition, but for all I know he was just carried away by bloodlust.
‘Harriers for the cup!’81 I riposted, shooting him in the face. His head liquefied under the impact of the las bolt and he fell heavily to the snow at my feet. I looked around, feeling that things were getting a little out of hand here.
‘Captain Detoi, report.’ Kasteen sounded calm enough, so at least none of the fanatics had made it as far as the command bunker yet. ‘What’s going on out there?’
‘The captain’s down,’ Sulla reported. ‘I’ve taken command.’
Wonderful, I thought, as if we weren’t in enough trouble already. But she had the seniority, and interfering now would be seriously counterproductive, so I just cut in with some encouraging platitudes. ‘We’re containing them, but they’re persistent little frakkers.’
‘Well, we won’t have to hold them much longer,’ I pointed out, drawing my chainsword in time to bisect a persistent enemy trooper who was trying to interrupt me with a rusty-looking combat blade. His movements were slow and sluggish, the flesh of his face and hands pinched and blue. ‘The cold’s going to finish them off for us pretty soon.’
After that I shut up and let Sulla get on with it, just keeping an ear on the vox channel to make sure she didn’t do anything too stupid, although to be fair she did a reasonable job of co-ordinating the different platoons and had the sense to put Lustig in charge of her own. By this time trooper Smitti had been carted off to the medicae receiving station, so I couldn’t see any reason not to return to the command centre and let things play themselves out without me.
I tapped Jurgen on the shoulder. ‘We’re heading back inside,’ I told him. ‘It’s all over out here bar the clean-up.’
I should have known better, of course. Sometimes I think that the Emperor’s listening to me just so he can spring a little surprise every time I say something like that.
‘Second squad, say again,’ a voice was shouting in my earpiece, one I recognised as Lieutenant Faril, the officer in charge of fifth platoon. It was one of a dozen routine exchanges I’d barely noticed in the course of the battle, but there was an edge of alarm in his tone which sounded new. ‘Second squad, report.’
‘It’s unstoppable!’ another voice replied. ‘Heading for the perimeter…’ The report choked off with a scream. I flicked my head around, certain I’d heard the sound overlapping in the way that means the source of a vox transmission is close enough for the noise to carry naturally through the air almost simultaneously, and sure enough, the intensity of lasgun fire in the immediate vicinity was growing.
‘Get some backup to them,’ Sulla ordered crisply, and Faril dispatched another couple of squads.
Well, that was enough to persuade me that I needed to be back in the command centre right away, where I could find out just what the hell was going on, and I hurried around the disassembled Chimera intent on nothing more than getting back inside as soon as I could. Abruptly, though, I found myself surrounded by running troopers, as by great bad luck my path intersected with the reinforcements Faril had just ordered in.
‘Commissar!’ One of the sergeants glanced over in my direction, his face a mask of delighted surprise. A ripple of resolve shivered almost visibly along the score of troopers double timing in his wake and I cursed under my breath. I couldn’t duck out now without denting their morale and doing who knew what damage to my reputation. I nodded a genial greeting and dredged the man’s name up from the depths of my memory.
‘Dyzun.’ I shrugged. ‘I hope you don’t mind me sticking my nose in, but it sounds as though something interesting’s going on.’
‘Glad to see you, sir,’ he said, with every sign of sincerity, and Emperor strike me dead if I’m exaggerating, but the whole lot of them started chanting my name like a battlecry.
‘Cain! Cain! Cain! Cain!’
Maybe it was that which took our opponent off-guard for a moment, mistaking it for the chant of the followers of his own blasphemous god, because he turned his head slowly to look at us, drawing his attention reluctantly from the corpses of second squad which lay all around him. Only a few survivors still stirred, trying feebly to raise weapons or crawl to safety.
