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CAAVES Ciaphas CainOF NovelICE by Sandy Mitchell WHEN COMMISSAR CIAPHAS CAIN and his regiment of Valhallan Guardsmen are d e p l oyed to the ice world of Simia Orichalcae, his expectation of an uneventful tour of duty is suddenly interrupted. A spate of mysterious disappearances is caus- ing unrest amongst the mine-workers, and, as senior officer, Cain is nominated to inves- tigate. Unbeknownst to him, the planet is right in the path of a major ork incursion and, as the savage greenskins attack, a malev- olent evil begins to stir deep in the ice caves. Sandy Mitchell is a pseudonym of Alex Stewart, who has been working as a free- lance writer for the last couple of decades. He has written science fiction and fan- tasy in both personae, as well as television scripts, magazine articles, comics, and gaming material. His television credits include the high tech espionage series Bugs, for which, as Sandy, he also wrote one of the novelisations. Caves of Ice can be purchased in all better bookstores, Games Workshop and other hobby stores, or direct from this website and GW mail order. Price £5.99 (UK) / $6.99 (US) Bookshops: Distributed in the UK by Orca. Distributed in the US by Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books. Games & hobby stores: Distributed inthe UK and US by Games Workshop. UKmail order: 0115-91 40 000 USmail order: 1-800-394-GAME Online: Buy direct care of Games Workshop’s web store by going to www.blacklibrary.co.uk/store or www.games-workshop.com PUBLISHED BY THE BLACKLIBRARY Games Workshop, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK © Games Workshop Limited 2003.All rights reserved. TM Reproduction prohibited, in any form, including on the internet. UK ISBN: 1 84416 070 X ® This is an excerpt from CAVES OF ICE by Sandy Mitchell, published by BL Publishing, 2003. © Games Workshop Ltd, 2003. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited, in any form, including on the internet. For more details email [email protected] or go to the Black Library website www.blacklibrary.com from CAVES OF ICE The freezing air outside was worse than even my most pes- simistic anticipation, and I’d been on enough icewo r l d s before to have had a pretty good idea of what to expect. In truth, I suppose, it was no colder than Valhalla or Nusquam F u n d u m e n t i b u s, but it had been some time since I’d trod- den the snows of either, and my memory had obviously skipped over the worst of those experiences. The bone- numbing wind seemed to flay me alive the moment I set foot on the ramp, despite the extra layers of insulation I’d put on before leaving my quarters aboard the P u re of Heart. As I staggered down the metal incline, already treacher- ously slippery from the thin coating of snow which had set- tled on it, needles of ice seemed to penetrate my temples, replacing the residual headache from the crash with one a thousand times wo r s e. I buried my face in the muffler at my throat, being careful to breathe through it in case my lungs f r o z e, but even so the air rasped in my chest like acid fumes. A broad plain of ice spread out before me, hazed with w i n d - d r i ven snowflakes which reduced visibility to a few tens of metres, although the flurries cleared occasionally to r e veal the low, grey ramparts of the encircling mountains. They stood out clearly against the lighter grey of the sky, and a moment later I realised that what I’d at first taken for some unusually regular outcrops were the towers and Caves of Ice 3 storage tanks of the refinery, still too distant to make out a ny detail. ‘ S e venteen injured, fourteen of them wa l k i n g .’ Sulla bounced up to me, the trickle of blood from her nose now frozen to her face, and saluted eagerly. ‘Eight of those are ou r s .’ The others would be from first platoon then. I nodded, not trusting myself to talk yet. It would have been a was t e d effort anyw ay, as behind us an engine roared into life and the first of our Chimeras rumbled down the exit ramp, filling the air with the noise of its passage and the rank smell of burned promethium. Thank the Emperor for that, I thought, at least I wouldn’t have to slog all the way to the refinery on foot. Sulla noticed the direction of my gaze. ‘Lieutenant Voss is assessing the condition of the vehicles now.’ Her opposite number glanced up from a huddle of troop- ers near the ramp, a data-slate in his hand, and waved a cheery acknowledgement. That came as little surprise, as Voss tended to be cheerful about everything. He was clear- ly in his element now, grinning widely as the churning tracks bit into the snow, and, dear Emperor, his greatcoat was still unfastened. I immediately felt another ten degrees colder just looking at him. ‘ We got off lightly,’ he told us, his voice crackling over the c o m m - b e a d s. ‘Minor damage only. Nothing we can’t get f i x e d .’ ‘Should be easy enough,’ Sulla agreed. ‘A place like this must be crawling with tech-priests.’ ‘ M aybe they can do something with this heap of junk t o o ,’ I said sourly, kicking a lump of snow at our dow n e d transportation and deciding to risk talking despite the rush of razor blade air to my lungs. If they couldn’t, the loss of one of our shuttles would be a major blow, severely delay- ing the deployment of our forces, perhaps to the point where we wouldn’t be fully prepared by the time the orks a r r ive d . ‘ We’re in the right place at least.’ Jurgen had materialised at my elbow. I was mildly disconcerted not to have noticed his approach, feeling that something was inexplicably 4 Sandy Mitchell wrong, before I realised the cold had effectively neutralised his body odour. Either that, or my nose had frozen off. He was right about that at any rate. The pilot, who I was beginning to forgive for having soiled my footwear, had been as good as his word, bringing us down on the main landing pad after all. Not being entirely reckless he’d aimed for the outer edge though, leaving us with a kilometre or so of packed snow and ice to trudge across before reaching the shelter of the storage tanks I’d noticed before. The faint scar of melted and refrozen ice that marked where we had bounced and skidded our way to a stop was already begin- ning to disappear under the drifting snow. ‘It looks more like a starport than a landing pad,’ Sulla observed. I nodded, quite impressed by the scale of things myself, but determined not to show it. ‘The shuttles from the tankers are over five hundred metres long,’ I said, dredging up a half-digested fact from the largely ignored briefing slate.1 ‘And they land up to twelve at a time.’ Sulla looked suitably impressed. Certainly the thought of a swarm of shuttles almost half the size of the starship we’d arrived in filling the air above where we stood was an awe-inspiring one – or it would have been if I hadn’t been freezing my gonads off at the time. Any further thoughts I might have had on the subject were quickly driven from my head at that point, however, by the rather more urgent matter of a bolter shell exploding against the ceramite hull less than a metre from where we were standing. ‘Orks!’ Sulla shouted, rather unnecessarily under the cir- cumstances I thought. I whirled around to look in the direc- tion she was pointing. At least she had the common sense to do it with her lasgun, though, and opened fire on a small knot of greenskins that was closing fast, slogging through the snow with implacable ferocity. ‘Are they mad?’ Voss’s voice crackled in my ear. ‘We must have them outnumbered about ten to one!’ That did strike me as pretty stupid behaviour, even for orks, and I was just casting about desperately for the main Caves of Ice 5 force which must surely be flanking us when the explana- tion suddenly hit me. I was the only human they could see; the Valhallans’ camouflage uniforms were blending them into the snowscape, as they were supposed to, and with my commissar’s black and scarlet making me stand out like an ogryn in a beauty pageant, they hadn’t bothered looking for anyone else. I breathed silent thanks to the Emperor for the flakes of drifting snow which obscured the others from their sight. ‘Cease fire!’ I snapped, seeing the opportunity for the per- fect ambush. A quick glance around me made out at least three squads fully disembarked. They were lying flat in the s n ow which they’d scraped out into small hollows. A tactic, I vaguely recalled, which had worked well for their forefa- thers when an ork horde had had the temerity to attack their homeworld. ‘Let’s draw them in.’ Far better to cut them down at short range than engage at a distance, where we would run the risk of a survivor or two escaping to report our arrival back to the wa r b o s s.

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