by David Annandale, Justin D Hill, Toby Frost, Braden Campbell (epub)
Kell held up a finger, which still bore the traces of the distinctive blue cad-ore dust of Besana. ‘We found his ship down below. I tore out the controls. If he’s here, he’s trapped.’
Creed laughed. ‘Good work, my friend! But we must get him. We must know what is going on. With me.’
The temperature was dropping rapidly as they pushed through to the back of the complex. The female voice kept repeating, ‘Environmental breach. Environmental breach.’ Ice was starting to form on the walls and ceiling.
The few remaining Anckorites were quickly overwhelmed by the tide of Lost Hopers, who laughed as they killed their foes. They came to a door, which opened up to the ice.
‘This way.’ Kell called, venturing out into the cold air.
A hundred paces before them, five giants in red power armour stood in a circle and at the centre of that ring, like a sacrifice, stood a man.
He was robed in a cape of white fur, great brass bells hanging from his shoulders.
A hood was drawn low over his face and as Kell approached, he turned his face towards them. Kell stopped dead. It was not the face of a man, but a crude imitation with heavy brows, deep-set eyes, an aquiline nose and a mouth wide open as if in a long cry of grief. His hair was alive, like serpents. His eyes burned in the shadows of the face like two points of red fire. But the light was not angry. It was almost sad, longing, melancholy.
Creed arrived.
‘It’s over, Anckor,’ he said. He shouted back to the men. ‘Kill him, quickly.’
Agemmon put his rifle to his cheek and aimed, but the heretical Space Marines stepped close and shielded Anckor with their bodies. As Kell started forward there was a sudden roar from above. The ground shook and the air was full of flames. There was a bright flash and an explosion.
‘Down!’ Kell pushed Creed back as the air turned hot on their cheeks.
When the fire had passed, Kell saw a metal craft, a pod on insectoid legs, had landed above the circle of figures. Like a spider, the thing lowered its belly over the enemy, and as the legs straightened the Space Marines and Anckor were gone, swallowed up within the vessel.
Kell fired las-rounds as the pod’s rockets reignited and it launched into the air. It rose slowly at first, and then was just a bright spark in the sky, rising out of sight. Kell stopped shooting.
Calm returned to Lost Hope, the night broken by the coughs of the men, and the insistent klaxons within the complex. Creed sighed. ‘He is gone. Again.’
Kell turned, furious and disbelieving, but Creed had taken out his lho-stub, and was tapping the charred unlit end into his palm.
‘Is that all you can say?’ Kell shouted.
Creed lit his stub and puffed. He seemed pleased.
‘It’s not all bad, Jarran. We have our penal legion, and we’ve tested their mettle. We’ve closed off the Anckorites’ troop supply. And we know that we are close on his tail.’
The surviving Lost Hopers marched four abreast up the lander’s wide rear-ramps. In the two days since Anckor’s escape, their clothes had been burned, their heads shaved and they had been dressed in uniforms of penal legion blue.
Creed had just come from inspecting the lander that Kell had found deep in the vaults of the compound. His head had been bandaged and one eye – bruised and discoloured – peered out. Still he puffed slowly on a lho-stick. A fire was started nearby as men poured oil on the bodies of Kasky and her guards, and the Anckorites. Thick black smoke drifted skywards as the oil caught light.
‘What will you tell House Kasky?’ asked Kell.
Creed lit the end of his lho-stub with long slow puffs. ‘I will suggest to them that they ought to provide me with more resources, or I will report their niece’s activities here. It won’t take them long to decide, I’m sure.’
As they stood some of the Lost Hopers broke off and started towards Creed.
There was a brief scuffle. ‘Back!’ their wardens shouted, brandishing their electro-goads.
‘Stop!’ Creed called across. ‘Let them through.’ He walked over to meet them.
‘So, this is it. You’re shipping us all out,’ Darr Vel called out. He was on crutches.
‘I am bringing you aboard my ship,’ Creed said.
‘Do you know how few of us are left?’
‘I do, but there are plenty more men here to join you.’
‘Are you going to free us?’
‘I cannot do that, Major Darr Vel. I promised to free you from fear. I promised to take you from this planet. I promised you all a death worth living for. I keep my word.’
‘That’s it, then?’
‘For now. I will make sure you are all well cared for. As for your sentences, I’m afraid I cannot change them. You will die. But in the Emperor’s service you can choose how you die, and how you are remembered.’
Darr Vel saluted. It was an awkward gesture.
Creed saluted back.
‘What will you tell Warmaster Ryse?’ Kell said as they watched the last of the Lost Hopers file up into the lander.
‘That I have located Luciver Anckor, and have raised three regiments of a penal legion, and expect to conclude the campaign within, say, two Terran months.’
There was a long pause. Kell couldn’t stop himself. He drew in a deep breath, and said, ‘What was that thing, sir?’
‘What thing?’
‘You know. That thing I killed.’ There was a long pause. Creed did not answer. ‘It looked like a Space Marine.’
There was a long pause. ‘It was, after a fashion.’
‘So why…’
Creed’s look stopped him. Creed took a puff of his lho-stub. ‘Jarran,’ he said. ‘You do not want to know. That you have been this long in the Astra Militarum and not encountered such horrors before is a wonder, but please believe me when I say that you do not want to know.’
‘Why?’
Creed stopped and looked at Kell. His face seemed strained. He looked tired again, sleepless. ‘Because my friend, sometimes ignorance is strength. And I need you strong for the storm that is coming.’
The lander started its engines, and they walked a little way back as the ripples of heat began to spill out towards them. It lifted from the ground, and the two of them stood as the roar of it faded, and it dwindled to being just a bright star in the morning sky. Creed offered him a lho-stub. Kell shook his head.
‘You did well, Colour Sergeant Kell. You almost trapped them, just as they trapped us. We will pour vengeance on them, you and I. We will clear up this mess, then I can speak to High Command. Personally.’
‘You really think Cadia is in danger?’
Creed’s eye was deep Cadian indigo. It stared out from a face discoloured: purple, blue, yellow. It gave Kell an odd feeling, as if he were looking into the swirling bilious maelstrom of the Eye of Terror.
‘I am sure of it,’ Creed said. ‘And I have to be there.’
‘Damn it, Creed!’ Major Janka of the Cadian 840th was angry. ‘There’s no point being right if no one listens to you!’
Janka and his companion reached the flight deck of the Excubitoi Castellum. The pride of Cadia, the Capitol Imperialis was a behemoth of steel and brass, and had been the governor of Cadia’s personal transport since – well, for as long as anyone could remember.
Ursarkar E. Creed – Lord General of the Cadian Eighth regiment of the Astra Militarum and newly-appointed Castellan of Kasr Rorzann – stopped as a flight of eight heavy Thunderbolt fighters, in Cadian field grey, roared overhead. They tipped their wings in a salute and the vast bronze horns of the Excubitoi Castellum blasted in response. About them came the answering horns of the seven escorting Leviathans. From their lofty position, the sounds seemed distant and tinny in comparison.
The breeze tugged at Creed’s greatcoat. He stared out across the vast flats of the Tyrok Fields where they
faded into the fens, a misty green line obscuring the southern horizon. On the landing fields were neat squares and columns of men, armour, tented camps: the preparations for warfare on a planetary scale. His mind drifted back to the briefing hours before, and how he had interrupted General Gruber as the governor’s strategy was laid out. It had been neat, precise and too damn predictable, and Creed hadn’t minced his words. General Gruber had peered through his monocle and sneered. ‘What do you know, Castellan Creed?’
Creed slammed the guard rail with an open palm. ‘They’re idiots!’
‘They’re following Governor Porelska’s orders.’
‘Porelska is an idiot! Look at this place. He’s packed the Excubitoi with bean counters. Have you ever seen so many equerries? All horsehair plumes and lines of medals for wars they never fought in. Damn it. They’re sitting in the corridors. You can’t go anywhere without some middle-ranking clerk trailing his calculations in your face. They wouldn’t know a bayonet from a fish knife.’
He slammed the rail twice more in his fury.
‘Well, you didn’t have to tell the governor quite so bluntly,’ Janka said, absent-mindedly polishing the steel part of his skull with his cuff. The major had taken a head wound putting down a rebellion on Enceladus. The steel replacement was supposed to have been temporary, but that was seven years ago. Janka had been in the field ever since. ‘What could the rest of them do but shut you down?’
Creed turned to his friend. ‘Janka,’ he said quietly, ‘this is too serious. This is Cadia.’ The centre of the landing zone was still being cleared for tomorrow. It was a smudge of smoke and activity. ‘We – the men and women of Cadia – we are the only thing that holds the enemy back.’ Creed turned away, slammed the rail again and cursed into the wind.
‘You have to be politic,’ said Janka.
‘Not even Ryse would support me in public. I’ve been telling him for three years now and all he’s been fussing about is his crusade. Now look at it! Deucalia has fallen, we’ve lost Besana. Luciver Anckor has not been caught. The whole thing is,’ he paused, then said, ‘chaos.’
Janka gave him a warning look. It wasn’t a word that should be spoken.
‘Sorry.’ Creed put a hand to his head. ‘But no one gives a damn about Warmaster Ryse’s precious legacy, because the whole Imperium is now creaking. On Cadia we get shipments regularly, but remember Deucalia? We used to get supplies every two months. Then it was three. These little changes add up on the front line. You know that! Porelska is out of his depth. He’s been governor so long he’s gone soft.’
Another warning look. Soft was not something often said of a Cadian.
Creed sighed. ‘Well. Not soft. Just… out of touch.’
Janka inspected his cuff.
‘Did you hear about Belisar?’ Creed asked.
Janka shook his head.
‘It’s bad.’
‘How bad?’
‘Bad,’ Creed said.
An hour later, Creed and Colour Sergeant Jarran Kell were sitting in the back of an Arvus lander. It had recently been ferrying recaff, judging by the smell and the fine black dust on the floor. It was hardly the kind of transport that the governor of Cadia normally bestowed upon his generals. But then these were clearly not normal times.
Kell sniffed. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what did you do to deserve this?’
Creed said nothing.
Kell mimicked Warmaster Ryse’s baritone boom, something he usually only did to entertain the junior officers. ‘Young Creed, you’re an arrogant whippersnapper. As punishment, you’ll deliver a shipment of recaff for me.’
Creed shook his head. ‘I told Governor Porelska that his plans were pathetically incompetent. And I told Lord General Maximus Gruber that his strategy was so needlessly precise that a single broken down battle tank could throw it off course. And I told them that we are facing an onslaught that has been years, decades, perhaps centuries in the planning.’
Kell said nothing.
Creed closed his eyes as he recalled the details. ‘The Malin’s Reach uprising. The Guild cultists. Morten Quay. Aurent. Moab.’
Kell had never heard of any of these places. But it didn’t matter, events had an odd way of proving Creed right. But still… he’d been predicting a major attack on the Cadian Gate for years now. Kell sniffed again. There were a lot of pressures on Creed. In the last years of the Deucalion Crusade, Warmaster Ryse had kept the general close by his side. The warmaster had leant heavily on the younger commander, putting much of the crusade under his direct command. Some of the junior officers had even whispered that Creed should be in charge, not Ryse.
Creed had put a stop to that talk.
The Arvus bucked as it encountered some turbulence, but Creed didn’t seem to notice. The general lay back, rolled up an empty sack and used it as a pillow.
‘Wake me when we get home,’ he said.
Home was Kasr Rorzann, a spear of rockcrete, ceramite, gun-gargoyles and laser defence batteries. Set on granite crags surrounding landing fields, the foundations of its central tower were as deep as those of the mountain itself. The ancient ramparts were buttressed with gun-turrets, vaulted landing zones and sally-ports with armoured blast doors wide enough for three Leman Russ battle tanks to drive out, guns blazing.
It was one of the twelve cathedrals of war that guarded the landing fields of Kasr Tyrok, the seat of one of the twelve castellans of Cadia. Each fortress was the home of one of the founding regiments of Cadian shock troops.
Kasr Rorzann was the citadel of the Cadian Eighth, the Warmongers.
A vast V-shaped redoubt had been thrown about the base of the tower, and it was on top of the central gate that the Arvus came to rest with a clang of landing gear and the rusty scrape and thud of its ramp.
Kell was first out. Clear, he signalled.
They crossed the empty flagstones towards the gates of the tower. A squad of kasrkin in green, white and black camo carapace armour came smartly to attention. Creed was expected. His equerry, Castor, was waiting just inside the foot-thick ceramite gates. Castor was dressed in the same simple camo pattern. Creed was not one to waste men’s time on polishing brass buttons and shining boots. As long as they stood firm and could shoot and reload faster than their comrades he was happy.
Castor’s breath steamed in the vast empty space as he handed Creed the latest reports, sealed inside the official red leather folders. Creed pulled the sheaf of papers out without comment. His lho-stub was unlit in his fingers as he flicked through the top pages.
Kell tried to read the two men’s faces.
‘Anything important?’ Creed asked.
‘More of the same,’ Castor said.
Creed studied the sheaf of reports. They were all stamped Code Vermillion. Everything was Utmost Secrecy these days.
‘I’ll be in my office,’ Creed said.
‘What is it?’ Kell said as he heard a tentative knock on his door.
One of his junior sergeants came in. ‘Sergeant Fesk,’ the young man saluted. ‘Seventh Company.’
Kell stared at him for a moment. ‘Ah yes! Fesk. Come in. Besana, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right, sir,’ Fesk said and saluted again. He’d earnt his promotion from Whiteshield on Besana three years earlier. Fesk had done well. Now he had sergeant’s stripes, an augmetic eye, and the look of a shock trooper: scarred, tough, fearless.
‘You’re in the sentinels now?’ Kell could tell from the crossed lascannon cap badge. ‘Tank hunter?’
Fesk grinned. ‘Yes sir! Achilles Squadron.’ It was a dangerous and deadly job. Fesk clearly excelled to have risen so quickly to the rank of sergeant. ‘I know you’re busy, sir. But the men are talking.’
Kell sighed. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Tell me what they’re saying.’
He let Fesk talk. It was all the same. As Colour Sergeant of t
he Cadian Eighth, the care of the regiment was his responsibility. He spent each evening like this, reassuring sergeants, captains, even some of the more senior officers of the Eighth. The problem was that there had been squads and units all over the sector, adding a bit of steel to the boot of the Imperium, a bit of iron into their fist. And then they had all been recalled, every Cadian unit within three months of warp travel.
Fesk said it before Kell. ‘They say it’s coming… The last great battle for Cadia.’
Kell leaned forward. ‘Listen,’ he said, in a quiet voice. ‘In this system alone there are the three fortress worlds of Sonnen, Holn and Partox, all the hive scum of Macharia, training grounds on Prosan and Vigilatum, and if we need more bodies then there’s the prison world of St Josmane’s Hope. Who could come against us without us knowing? And even if they got through all the orbital defences, battleships and cruisers and they actually land here, on Cadia…’ He sat back. ‘Then they come up against men like you and me. The finest soldiers in the Imperium of Mankind. There are ten thousand of us in this citadel. Eleven more citadels about Tyrok Fields. Hundreds more across the planet. We are the shock troopers of Cadia. We crush the enemies of mankind under boot and tread.’ He smiled. ‘Do not spread the words of the enemy. Do not let the words of the enemy weaken your resolve. Do not doubt yourself, your brothers, your leaders. Understand?’
Fesk’s cheeks were coloured. He stood smartly and saluted. ‘Thank you, sir!’
It was midnight before Kell’s last meeting was done. His head ached and his shoulders were tight as he padded through the windowless rockcrete corridors towards the officer’s habs in the heart of the tower. The walls of Kasr Rorzann were so thick you could be a mile underground and not know. Nothing was signposted – you had to know your way. Each kasr was unique, and each fortress kept its own secrets. It was one of the first things recruits from the Whiteshields were taught.