Cadia Stands

by Justin D Hill

  The Hammer was a temperamental beast of a tank, and on the second day of the assault her engine started to clang dangerously, then she ground to a halt.

  In the absence of a tech-priest, it fell to Lina. She was the best at coaxing unhappy machine-spirits.

  ‘It’s your soft hands,’ Ibsic said.

  ‘Frekk you,’ Lina told him as she lay under the tank, trying to unscrew the drive-shaft panels.

  Tanks filed past on either side. Commanders had cloths tied over their faces. Some waved. All stared.

  A Titan-hunting squadron of three Shadowswords trundled past, their service tanks skittering about them. It was a magnificent sight, with Scout Sentinels, a brigade of Hydras and a complement of ancillary support vehicles and tanks. In the centre of the great convoy were the three Shadowswords, their fixed volcano cannons still smoking. Lina let out a long, low whistle. It was only when you compared the size of a Shadowsword to a Leman Russ that you got a sense of the scale of these things. The immense tank crested the rise, the fixed gun swinging towards her as it descended.

  ‘Look at those,’ she said, and started laughing as a second and third behemoth crested the ridge. Just behind the sponson-weapon cabins, the side hatches squeaked as they swung open. Her crew spilled out and stood beside their tank to watch.

  ‘Holy Throne!’ one said.

  ‘Frekk,’ said another.

  It took half an hour for the Titan Hunter squadron to make their way across the veldt. The sight of a pair of tech-priest Chimeras frustrated Ibsic. It wouldn’t take one of them long to fix Hammer. But with each minute their unit was racing farther and farther ahead.

  Lina was down there for more than an hour. She finally slid herself out from under the tank, sat up and rubbed lubricants from her hands.

  ‘Got it fixed?’

  ‘I think so.’

  She was climbing up when there was a sudden flash of light, and then a rolling boom.

  Lina ducked. ‘What was that?’

  Ibsic had his scopes out. ‘I think they just nailed a Titan,’ he told her. ‘Seventy degrees west.’

  Lina grabbed the scopes. The landscape before her was flat, marked only with wreckage from the sky battle, which stood up from the ground like tufts of burning grass. ‘I don’t see it,’ she said.

  Two hours later they reached the place where the Titan attack had been stalled. A dead Warhound lay on its back, like a drunken man in a down-hive bar: legs wide, and head tilted back in a posture of utter debasement. Smoke rose from the hole in its chest cavity, a thick, noxious blend of promethium, lubricants and human flesh, all burned to ignition by the heat of the impacts.

  ‘Look at that!’ Ibsic said. Their tank slowed to a crawl. Lina pushed her way up out of the cupola. The size of the dead machine was breathtaking. The paintwork of the Titan was chipped and worn. The barrels of the turbo laser were blackened and heat-stained. The ammo feed of its Vulkan mega-bolter had broken open and spilt bolt shells across the ground. She took in the size of the shells. ‘Frekk.’

  The fight was still going on. The flashes strobed Lina’s face as she looked out.

  ‘Keep the gun loaded,’ Ibsic warned her.

  ‘Done,’ she said.

  There was good hunting that morning. In the ferocious battles, the heretic counter-attacks were held and thrown back. They came across three more dead Renegade Titans in the next five miles. The last was a Jackal class. It had been knocked out perhaps half an hour earlier and had not yet been isolated by the tech-priests. As Lina’s tank approached, a Mechanicus Chimera pulled up alongside the stricken Titan. Lina watched as a tech-priest glided out, octopus-like, on a bed of coiling mechadendrites.

  It reached the head of the Scout Titan. Mechadendrites touched the Titan’s head and a shudder went through the great construct, and then the head lolled limply to the side.

  It was like watching a farmer put a bolt into the brain of a grox. Lina looked away.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said, but kasrkin were holding the lines of armour back as a Shadowsword drove up.

  The super-heavy tank came to a halt, a thin wisp of smoke still rising from the volcano cannon. The battery fans were still blasting cold air through the cooling systems. Behind the cannon, a hatch opened and a slim, hawkish man climbed up, put his hand to the side of the mammoth tank and slid down the side of the fixed-gun mounting.

  The tank commander walked along the Shadowsword’s decking, one hand to the gun barrel to steady himself. He wore the markings of a tank ace. But it was his poise that Lina found instantly intriguing. It was like watching a peacock. He came down one of the metal ladders, jumped the last ten feet and landed squarely.

  When he turned towards her, Lina saw the handsomely scarred mouth and silver gorget.

  She knew straight away who he was and nudged Ibsic. ‘It’s Pask!’ she hissed, but Ibsic had seen at the same time.

  Pask pushed up his peaked cap and strolled over to the dead Titan. He put a hand against one of its vast three-jointed toes. He struck the pose of a big-game hunter on a death world. ‘Seven in two days. Not bad.’

  Lina didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Think we’ve broken them?’ Ibsic called out.

  Pask looked up. ‘Hmm. Yes.’ He pointed up to the sky. They glimpsed the lightning flashes of a Naval battle. ‘Terra has answered our call.’

  Lina didn’t know what he meant.

  ‘The Imperial Fists Chapter have come to our aid. They have brought the Phalanx.’

  Lina nodded, but she didn’t really know what he was talking about.

  ‘We’ve got them beaten.’ Pask gave a short, weary smile. ‘Now we need to punish them. Make sure they never forget it.’ He turned his back and returned to his Shadowsword. ‘We have to make sure they never dare attack us again.’

  For the rest of the day Grüber’s 17th Army plunged through the heretic armies like a stiletto blade. He was fearless when they stormed the enemy strongpoints, his Baneblade lending its weight to the attack whenever it appeared to stall.

  He made an obvious target, and his armour saved him from sniper fire a number of times. He took a shot to his leg, but refused to step down, and insisted that the medicae dress his wound there, on top of the Baneblade.

  Lina was involved in two battles: one against a column of Chimeras, the other against a tank brigade dug into the slopes of a low rise above the river valley.

  That day Creed’s broadcast did not come, but there was so much to do the attacks pushed on regardless. Creed did not broadcast the next day, either.

  It was night when the vox-box spluttered into life, an hour before the dawn. Lina was curled up in the bottom of the tank. Her head was pressed up against the hard metal of the magazine door. Flower of Cadia started to play and she felt a prickle of fear go through her.

  ‘Ibsic!’ she called. He was sleeping in a hammock slung above her. She had to poke him with a finger to wake him. ‘It’s Creed.’

  Ibsic flicked a light on.

  ‘Turn it up,’ she told him.

  He turned the vox-set up but as the tune came to its end Creed’s voice did not come. There was nothing but the crackle of static. Lina felt her heart begin to beat faster. Something was wrong, but then a woman’s voice started to speak.

  ‘The Emperor asks only that you obey. Intolerance is a blessing. The Faithful Dead watch over you. The Martyr’s grave is the foundation of the Imperium. The only crime is cowardice…’

  Lina had to shake Ibsic. ‘What’s wrong with it? Delanty!’

  Delanty, the driver, had the best touch with the vox. He crawled back and fiddled at the controls. The military music came in and out. He gave up. ‘It’s working,’ he said.

  ‘It can’t be.’ Lina slammed a hand onto the top of the machine. ‘She’s just reading from the Tome of Uplifting Thoughts. Something’s wr
ong. I can feel it. Something is terribly wrong.’

  Six

  Guild Quarter, Kasr Myrak

  In Kasr Myrak the buildings along the north side of Statue Square were burning. Rath’s company had lost their vox when they’d fallen back. Volscani kill teams had come up behind them. The jaws had snapped about them, and too many of them had been caught.

  Yelena’s squad had been taken alive. Somehow Minka had slipped out. But not until she’d found the bodies.

  ‘They were all dead,’ Minka told them. She looked at her hands. ‘They were skinned.’

  Rath was still covered in dust. He stood up. He squeezed her shoulder with his hand. She waited for him to say something, but he had no words. No encouragement. Nothing.

  There were only thirty-odd left. They had their backs to the river. They had taken a beating. There was more to come. Minka closed her eyes, but all she could see was Yelena’s squad, each wet corpse hanging like meat from the lampposts along Munitorum Street.

  She shook herself.

  ‘Now there’s just us,’ Taavi said.

  Rath nodded. He had his back to them.

  ‘When will they come for us?’

  Rath turned. His look was fierce. It rekindled Minka’s flagging defiance. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Whenever they come, we’ll be ready.’

  Rath had no answers. ‘In the last supply drop, they sent us these.’ From his pack, he pulled a rattling cloth bag. He lifted up a handful of small glass phials.

  Zask looked grim. ‘Frenzon?’

  Rath took one from his palm and held it up.

  Taavi gave him a hard look. ‘You think we’re done for?’

  ‘No. But if there is nothing left…’

  ‘I won’t take it,’ Taavi said. ‘I’m a Cadian. I’m no penal legionnaire that has to be drugged into battle.’

  Rath looked about. He was looking for takers.

  ‘Maybe we’ll take more of them out,’ Zask started. He was finding it hard to get his thought out. ‘I mean. If we kill more of them. Does it matter, how we go?’

  Minka remembered the hanging bodies. Maybe it would be better to go into the long night mad.

  ‘Give me one,’ she said. Rath put the phial in her palm.

  ‘How do I take it?’

  ‘Bite it,’ he said.

  ‘What happens when it runs out?’

  Rath gave her a hard look. ‘Don’t worry. When it runs out, you’ll be dead.’

  That evening Rath’s company sheltered in a cratered building, half of them awake, staring into the darkness, looking for whatever might come.

  Minka faced south across the ruins. They stood up like broken teeth. She thought she saw shadows, but nothing came, nothing moved, and she heard nothing, except the heavy breathing of Olivet, who was watching the street with her.

  ‘Did you take any?’ she said.

  Olivet shook his pocket; it rattled with phials.

  Minka had her phial, but she couldn’t imagine going mad into the darkness. It was too much like the Unnamed. ‘Think you’ll take it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not until the end.’

  She nodded and felt for the phial through the thick cloth of her jacket. It was small, hard, faceted. ‘I don’t think I’ll take it.’

  ‘So why did you take one?’

  ‘Just in case. I want to go sane and disciplined.’

  ‘Like a Shock Trooper?’ Olivet said.

  ‘Yes. It’s all I ever wanted to be.’

  There was a long pause. ‘Think we’re still Whiteshields?’

  She looked up. ‘Well, you still have the stripe on your helmet.’

  He laughed. In normal times they’d have been promoted from Whiteshield to Shock Trooper after they’d killed their first enemy. But these times were anything but normal.

  ‘I won’t take mine,’ Minka said. ‘I don’t want to end my life like a mad dog.’

  After the first watch was over, Minka woke Taavi.

  He jumped awake, and she had to whisper to him to calm him down.

  ‘Just me,’ she said.

  He nodded, and blinked and pushed himself up.

  Minka took her turn resting, but she found it hard to sleep with the baleful purple-and-green light of the Eye of Terror throbbing in the night above her. It was so bright that it cast a shadow on the ground.

  Even when she closed her eyes she could see it. She tossed and turned, pulled an old greatcloak over her head and dreamt that she was flying above Kasr Myrak and that beneath her the city was as bright as a summer day, before the war. She was safe, she understood, and that was a feeling she could almost not remember. She was light, she was radiant, and she was safe.

  Two hours before dawn Minka was wrenched awake to cold and dark, and the shouts of frightened men. She did not need to be told it was the Volscani.

  ‘Where?’ she hissed.

  Taavi was crouched next to her. His face was smeared with dirt and ash and sweat, and half lit by distant gouts of promethium. He gave her a quick brief: a two-pronged attack through the second floor of the hab-blocks overlooking Munitorum Street. There were shouts, the bright flash of lasrifles, and then the crump of grenades going off and suddenly a flamer firing into the night.

  Rath was already moving, slapping his chief fighters awake. ‘Quick!’ he hissed. ‘Come!’

  Taavi was up. Minka followed.

  They used the sewers and basements to come up at the Volscani from below, firing through the broken floorboards, while other teams came at them from above, pinning the Volscani down, like an animal caught in the upper and lower fangs of its hunter.

  The fight took nearly two hours of desperate hand-to-hand combat. Rath dispatched the last Volscani with his knife and the survivors picked their separate ways back to the riverbank ruins. Minka was beyond exhaustion. Her feet dragged. Her body ached. She was parched. Her mouth was full of dust and ash.

  ‘All right?’ Rath asked.

  Minka shook herself and nodded. She had drifted off. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sure?’

  She nodded, then realised that her shoulder was bleeding. She pulled her jacket back. It was difficult to see clearly.

  Rath took her arm. His face was expressionless. ‘Looks clean,’ he said. ‘Make sure it gets bound up.’

  Minka nodded. She couldn’t find any words.

  ‘Taavi!’ Rath called. ‘Get her patched up.’

  Minka slumped down. She closed her eyes. She fell asleep for a second, and jerked awake when the needle pricked her skin.

  ‘We should be dead,’ she said.

  Taavi nodded.

  ‘Are they teasing us?’

  Taavi didn’t know.

  ‘There’s less of them. See the lights?’ He pointed vaguely northwards with his chin. The flicker of battle was drawing slowly closer. She thought she could hear its distant rumble. It was all she’d yearned for. All she’d dreamt of for months, but now it was here it seemed as distant and unreal as a desert mirage. Taavi sounded cheerful. ‘I think the relief is coming. I think the enemy are taking a pounding out there.’

  Minka paused. ‘So Kasr Myrak will be relieved after all. Does Rath know, you think?’

  ‘He knows. But even if they’re coming, how many of us are left? I don’t think we can hold out.’

  For a moment despair filled Minka. She teetered on the edge of it, and knew it was the exhaustion. Knew it was what her enemies wanted: to break her spirit. To crush her soul.

  She felt the presence of the Archenemy, like a clawed fist crushing at her heart. And then, a memory. Of being lifted into the sky and being told the sacred duty of every Cadian. To fight. To resist. To never give in.

  She swallowed back the dust in her mouth. Said a prayer to the Golden Throne, and there, like a wavering light in the distant darkness,
she felt hope. It ran through her bones like a slug of amasec. She took the phial of frenzon from her pocket and let it drop onto the ground.

  She stamped down, cracked it open with the heel of her boot. It smelled of liquorice and spice. It was good to let it go. To take frenzon was to be like one of them: the enemy.

  She was human. She was a Cadian. She was a fighter. There was faith in her bones. ‘I think we can hold out,’ she said. Exhilaration ran through her like stimms. She gripped his hand. ‘You must believe, Taavi.’ She held him by the shoulders. ‘Believe!’ she told him. ‘We can do it. Do you believe?’

  He stared at her and she could see that he did not. His eyes glistened with tears as he pursed his lips and shook his head. He did not feel it. He was dead tired, exhausted, fearful, but there was a fierce belief within her. She shook him and he swallowed and nodded. At last, he croaked the words out. ‘Stop, Minka. Please. You believe for me. That will be enough.’

  That evening Minka woke with a start, from a dream where she had been buried under rubble and was drowning in dust and gasping for breath until a golden light shone and she floated up from the rubble, like a feather caught in a gust of air.

  The elation woke her suddenly, and she saw her fellows standing about her. She was sleeping on a shelf of rubble. Her greatcoat was thrown over her shoulders, her legs hugged to her chest. Her limbs were sore as she straightened them out. She wanted to see what they were all looking at.

  As she stood she saw to the north the flashes and fires of fighting closer to the city.

  ‘They’re coming for us,’ Rath said.

  In the distance there was a sudden bolt of red light. It shone out and then there was a rumble of an explosion. It seemed much closer than before.

  Taavi stood up. ‘How far is that?’

  Rath shook his head. ‘Twenty miles.’

  ‘Might as well be a hundred,’ Taavi said.

  The lights dimmed, and the fighting seemed to have died down. It was as if a long dark room had been momentarily illuminated, and when the shadows returned they seemed deeper than ever.