Cadia Stands

by Justin D Hill

  ‘Dead?’

  Tyson nodded. ‘There’s been an occurrence at Tyrok Fields.’

  ‘A battle?’

  Tyson tried to explain. ‘It was the Volscani, sir. They turned their guns on the governor. At the landing site.’ He took a deep breath, and it all came out in a sentence. ‘Some are saying, well, sir, it seems that the Volscani have turned heretic.’

  Four

  Observation Post 9983

  Without facts all the Cadian 101st had was speculation, and that was not good. Without evidence, a Guardsman’s mind turned to the worst possible eventualities as a child in the dark will imagine monsters.

  Bendikt did not care where the enemy were. What they needed were facts. An enemy’s location and strength. How best to kill them.

  Bendikt ran through all the units he could think of and tried to get a link through to them, but the channels were overloaded with the bellowing of men in battle. The men and women of the Cadian 101st listened in stunned silence to the vox communications from the fields of Tyrok. Panicked shouts of surrounded units. Commanders desperately trying to locate their men. All the confusion and terror of war.

  It sounded like hell.

  Bendikt punched the wall in his fury. ‘Powerless!’ he hissed, pacing up and down, trying to find an explanation for what was happening as the rumble of war shook Tyrok Fields. ‘We’re frekking powerless!’

  Had some hothead gone rogue? A perceived insult, perhaps? The Eye of Terror drove men mad.

  But as they listened, a thread of calm began to establish itself. It was one man’s voice, cutting through the shouting and the screams. He gave commands. Calmed terrified men down. He started to bring the scattered survivors of Tyrok Fields together again into an army: fought chaos with order.

  ‘That’s Creed!’ Bendikt said, and stood with one hand on the vox, as if standing next to the general. ‘That’s Ursarkar E. Creed!’ he shouted. ‘Get Creed on the vox. No, send him a message. Tell him Major Bendikt and the 101st are stranded at Observation Post 9983.’

  Mere tried, but the vox channels were overloaded. After an hour of failing, he raised his hand. ‘There’s going to be an announcement, sir.’

  The whole 101st gathered in a rough horseshoe about the vox.

  ‘Men and women of Cadia.’

  It was Creed. He was speaking intimately. It was as if he were in the room with them. They felt his closeness; it was part of his magic.

  ‘We lost many today. Friends. Sons. Mothers. Daughters. Comrades. We withstood fire, bombardment, treachery and cowardice. And we did not flinch. We did not turn to ask if another would step up and take our place. We stood, we fought, and we strode forward into battle.’

  There was the sound of distant cheers through the vox, and Bendikt’s stomach ached. If only they could have been there, in the battle. He pictured the scene, the vast Tyrok Fields stretching away, fires burning, medicae units looking for the injured. Creed’s bullish silhouette, with a greatcoat slung over his shoulders, cigar-stub in his hand.

  ‘Today the High Command of Cadia have asked me to serve as Lord Castellan of Cadia.’ There were more cheers. The atmosphere in the room was so quiet you could hear a man breathe.

  Bendikt could imagine Creed’s knuckles, white on the podium, waiting for the crowd to go silent. Creed’s voice came again. ‘I have accepted the honour.’

  Bendikt and Daal exchanged looks.

  There was a long pause, as the cheers of Tyrok Fields rang out.

  Creed was waiting. Bendikt imagined him putting up his hands for silence. ‘What happened today was no accident. It was no chance. This was orchestrated by a mind that has planned and plotted for thousands of years. The Despoiler.

  ‘It is the hour that we have long foreseen. The chance to prove ourselves his match.’

  More cheers.

  ‘I offer you nothing but blood and battle. This is our part in a war that has lasted ten thousand years – and today, brothers, today we – you – have won a great victory that will be remembered for another ten thousand years, or as long as the Imperium of Mankind shall last!’

  The sound of cheering was drowned out by a military band playing Flower of Cadia.

  The broadcast was clearly over.

  ‘Turn it off,’ Bendikt told Mere.

  There was stunned silence. Bendikt stood by the vox and looked into the faces of his soldiers. ‘You heard what Creed had to say and I know that you feel the same as me. We should be down there. Instead, we’re here, in this Throne-forsaken observation platform. I’m going to do all I can to sort this mess out. You’ll all have a chance to strike a blow against our foes. I promise you that.’

  The next day dawn did not come.

  The skies of Cadia turned black as the great fleets of Imperial Navy defence monitors and orbital defence platforms – the proud defences that he had seen, just days before, from the decks of the Fidelitas Vector – were swept aside by the vast fleet of the Black Legion. Massed cruisers, landers, crash-pods, the war-hosts of the Despoiler filled the skies.

  Weeks turned to months, and the attitude changed from anger to despair; Creed’s pronouncements over the vox became more impassioned. ‘People of Cadia…’ each speech would begin.

  ‘We have smashed an armoured column at Kasr Relon. The enemy has landed on Cadian soil in great force. We are the generation upon whose shoulders lies the heavy duty of sending them all to their deaths.’

  Creed’s deep voice remained a constant, even when he had bad news to share.

  ‘People of Cadia. The walls of Kasr Batrok have been breached, but I am assured that the men there are fighting with grit and resolve, and it cannot be long before the enemy are trapped and isolated, and their forces entirely destroyed.’

  ‘People of Cadia, hold strong! We are the barb that holds the foe. Reinforcements are on their way. The High Lords of Terra commend you for your sacrifices. Hold the line! Repel the enemy. Do not give ground.’

  Each night, clots of black cruisers dropped flocks of landers that fell planetwards like flocks of carrion birds. They disgorged their full payloads, spewing out a disorganised sprawl of ritually scarred cultists, daemon engines and champions of the Dark Gods who killed their way to power.

  Feral and hive worlds had been emptied of populations and loaded into vast hangars, and now they spilled out in maddened squads numbering thousands in each, charging in wild jubilation, screaming unholy names, losing themselves to prayer and abandon. They spewed out in such numbers that even the massed brigades and armoured columns of the Cadian Shock Troopers, the finest human warriors in the galaxy, were slowly driven back: trench by trench; redoubt by redoubt; and finally kasr by kasr.

  Day after day, hour after hour, tons of ash coiled snake-like into the upper atmosphere, turning the planet dark.

  Each day, Major Bendikt stood on the high parapet of Observation Post 9983 and watched in desperate impotence.

  On the thirtieth day, he took out his scopes to watch the Black Fleet mass its power against his hometown of Kasr Halig. His tri-dome helmet cast a slanted shadow across his face as the broadside of lance batteries strobed the night of Cadia with long bars of incandescent white light. The lightning storm went on for hours, smothering the plain in dust and ash, and stitching an irregular pattern of mushroom clouds up into the high atmosphere. Kasr Halig was taking a fearful punishment.

  Day by day its void shields flickered blue and then yellow. They were straining to the limits.

  ‘Sir?’

  Bendikt turned. Sergeant Tyson was making his way towards him, still pulling his thick, ice-world gloves on. Bendikt had been leaning far over the parapet and he pulled back as Tyson joined him.

  ‘How do you think it’s going down there?’ Tyson asked.

  The lance-lightning strobed their faces. ‘They’re taking a hell of a pounding.’

&
nbsp; Tyson nodded.

  ‘It won’t be long,’ Bendikt said.

  Tyson’s expression said it would not. He puffed out his cheeks. ‘You should get some rest, sir,’ he said.

  Another furious broadside against the city rolled like thunder.

  ‘I was born in that city,’ Bendikt said. ‘I know her switchback streets and armoured intersections like the butt of my lasrifle.’

  They stood, lightning casting stark shadows across their faces as the orbital bombardment continued. The mountain beneath their feet trembled as a titanic explosion on the plains lit the clouds from within, like a distant, red nebula. There was a series of gathering blasts, each one big enough to show yellow through the gloom, and Bendikt felt his guts knot themselves together as the boom! rolled across the plain towards him.

  The debris rose miles high: chunks of rockcrete, bastions, armouries and defenders, like dust, rising into the upper atmosphere.

  Kasr Halig was no more.

  The very fate of the Imperium of Man hung in the balance, and there was nothing he or his Cadian 101st could do. ‘We can stay ready,’ Tyson said by way of consolation. ‘Stay fresh. We can keep ourselves sharp.’

  Bendikt made no comment. He had no more words left. He was stuck on the mountain fastness, and Cadia was dying before his eyes.

  On the one hundred and tenth day of the war, Bendikt was stripped to the waist doing press-ups when the vox-unit crackled. He fumbled for a moment, dusted his hands off. ‘Tyson?’

  The other man’s voice was indistinct with the gale that was blowing outside.

  ‘Say that again.’ Bendikt had to raise his voice to be heard. ‘Again,’ he said. There was a long pause as his words echoed in the vast empty chamber. ‘A Valkyrie? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tyson said. ‘Coming in now.’

  Bendikt cursed as the link was dropped. He pulled his undershirt and flak-jacket on and started to hurry up through the empty hangars.

  The vox link was re-established as he exited the stairwell. Tyson was calling his name. The urgency of his voice sent a chill of fear through Bendikt, the sound of his footsteps gathering speed until he was running.

  ‘Bendikt!’ Tyson said. ‘You have to come. He’s here!’ Tyson was practically shouting into the vox.

  ‘Who?’ Bendikt demanded.

  Tyson could barely contain himself. ‘It’s frekking Creed! He’s here.’

  Part Two

  The War For Cadia

  One

  Kasr Myrak, Cadia Secundus

  Day 107 of The War For Cadia

  On the scuffed blackboard of the ruined schola the lesson for the day was still drawn in chalk. Do not waste your tears; I was not born to watch the world grow dim… For the students of Schola 5, Guild Quarter, Kasr Myrak, teaching had ended when the war for Cadia had begun, right there in mid-sentence, but Minka knew the end of the quote. Every Cadian knew it. She’d spent hours as a child reciting her Quotes Imperium. She paused.

  Minka had been a student here just four years earlier. Her mind’s eye looked back into her own past: the hall full of young cadets, girls with their hair cut military-short, boys leaning by the locker doors, the tall, bearded schola-major standing with one arm braced straight against the wall, talking armoured tactics with a slight, blonde cadet in ponytails.

  Minka allowed herself a second’s indulgence: she smelled the carbolic soap on her freshly pressed clothes, the metallic scent of gun lubricant on her hands, the thrill of an hour about to be spent in the Imperial chapel – but she could feel the impatience of her partner, Yegor – the last survivor of the 93rd Mordian Ironguard.

  Medi-packs, guns, ammo, battery packs, food – there had to be something here of use.

  Minka barely noticed the stink as she picked her way around the room, then into the officers’ mess. Locker doors hung open, books and files and scraps of paper littered the floor. There was a bloodstain on the polished tiles, the puddle smeared where the body had been dragged away.

  Three bodies lay half buried under the fallen roof-girders at the end of the corridor. They’d been there for weeks. The hollows of their eyes had filled with dust, as snow filled a winter footprint. She checked the pockets of the dead men and got half a lho-stick and a hand-worn aquila charm.

  ‘Anything?’ the Mordian asked.

  ‘Just this.’ She held out the aquila. She wasn’t an idiot.

  She kept the lho-stick for herself.

  Fighting broke out on Euphrates Street. There was a flash of a flare, the crump of a mortar, then the dull-rattle bursts of a distant autocannon. Neither paused. You only heard the shells that were meant for someone else.

  Minka led them through a doorway into the enclosed square of the drill yard. The rockcrete slabs were marked with white lines. Someone had set up a water stand, but the metal drum was riddled with auto-rifle rounds, and the bottom was empty.

  Minka pointed. ‘Look!’

  Yegor couldn’t see anything.

  ‘There,’ she said, and took his arm. ‘A gun barrel. Can you see it?’

  Yegor squinted. ‘Cover me,’ he said.

  Minka crouched in the corner of the yard, lascarbine to her shoulder, as Yegor carefully picked his hand- and footholds. He slipped back a little as he made his way to the broken window. The iron shutters hung by a single hinge. Yegor had to work his way round to the exposed side of the building. Minka caught his look and moved across the yard to cover him.

  A pair of corpses hung from the cast-iron streetlights at the front of the school. The dead bodies revolved slowly on their axis. They had not been there yesterday. Minka slid her lascarbine forward. She gave a low warning whistle, and Yegor paused and pointed.

  Heretic, his signal said. Minka nodded and put her carbine to her shoulder.

  It was time to kill.

  The captains of Battlefleet Cadia had kept their ships at the highest state of preparedness.

  They had battered the Black Fleet on its approach to the planet, until the terrible understanding came to them that they had been trying to fend off only a single squadron of Abaddon’s great armada.

  When the full strength of the Despoiler had arrived at Cadia it had smashed its way through the veteran defences, orbital and fleet-based, and it had turned the skies of Cadia black, blotting out the sun and stars.

  Landers, battleships, tankers and drop-ships had clustered over Cadia like flies on a corpse. Orbital bombardments had brought night as debris was thrown into the stratosphere, then the first landings brought millions of cultists onto the planet.

  Where they came from or what these fanatics called themselves Minka didn’t know or care. The cultists were undisciplined, untrained, unable to hold their own against the elite Cadian troops. All they had was madness and ferocity. It was like fighting rabid dogs.

  In Kasr Myrak the loyalists had dubbed them ‘the Unnamed’.

  Minka let the Unnamed come forward. He was gaunt, hive-world pale, his hands shaking. There was blood about his mouth. It didn’t look like his.

  He had not seen her. Minka braced herself. The las-bolt hit him in the gut and he went down like a wounded spider, bent double, legs and arms scrabbling wildly in the air. The second shot hit him high in the chest. This time his body fell back against the rockcrete road slabs, and blood began to puddle about him.

  Magister House lay in Unnamed territory, three blocks south, between Euphrates Street and Statue Square. Ratling sniper Belagg Grakk lay on the seventh floor and waited. He had been behind enemy lines for three days now. The fighting had swilled around and through the building, and passed on again, like a tornado, or a tidal wave. And now he was among them.

  It was how he fought. A small, secret shadow waiting for his moment to strike. A mortar team here, an officer there, just enough to keep the enemy disoriented and wary. Eight floors up, with las-batterie
s for a hundred and fifty shots.

  A hundred and fifty dead heretics.

  Belagg crawled forward. An Unnamed war party was making their way along Chapel Street, hunched like they were running into a storm. Belagg picked out the leader. He wore a commissar’s greatcoat and had a pair of heads hanging at his belt, a sword in his hand. The heads were fresh. One looked like demo-expert Drawling. The other like his bomb-maker, Eddard. Belagg didn’t waste time checking. He flipped the safety off, sucked in a few long breaths, and aimed.

  Nothing scared men more than a sniper shot, but the Unnamed didn’t even pause. They didn’t duck. Even the man he had shot. The las-bolt had hit him low in the back and his legs were gone. But he was pumped full of stimms and he moved like a two-legged lizard, arms dragging him along the street, a smear of blood on the rockcrete behind him.

  Minka heard a shout. More Unnamed were coming. She hissed up at Yegor to be quick and he caught the end of the gun barrel and yanked. A stream of rockcrete dust slid down as he pulled himself higher. ‘It’s jammed,’ he hissed back and lifted an iron girder to yank the ammo feed free. The square metal box set off an avalanche of rubble and dust. It hit the ground with a full thud of stubber rounds.

  The Mordian put his shoulder under the girder. The shouts were coming closer. They must have seen the body.

  ‘Come on!’ Minka called and Yegor put a hand under the girder and gave it a shove. The fizz of a fuse gave her a bare moment’s warning. She caught Yegor’s eye. It was clear he understood.

  The bomb went off.

  Captain Rath Sturm had seen everything the galaxy could throw at him and had the scars, metal skull-plate and augmetic eye to prove it. He’d earned his veteran stripes on Armageddon. A man who’d fought greenskins was hard to scare.

  He was the commander of the survivors within the city. He’d risen to that position, not by rank or promotion, but because he looked after each and every one of his fighters as if they were his own flesh and blood.