Cadia Stands

by Justin D Hill

  No one said anything for a long moment. They were too tired. Too battle-weary. Their hope had flickered for a moment.

  Only Minka stood staring north. Her sleep had been brief and fitful, but her exhausted body no longer needed anything but belief. Her faith became stronger as their strength grew less. It filled her now, almost like a light. It made her pale face radiant in the darkness.

  ‘They will come for us,’ she said.

  She looked down. They were all staring up at her like a prayer-day congregation, and she felt her devotion to the Golden Throne surge through her. ‘They will come,’ she said. ‘It will not be long. Victory shall be ours. All we have to do is hold out. We must never give in. Understand? Never!’

  Their pale moon faces stared up at her, wanting to share her confidence. Her gaze went from face to face, and her smile spread. At the last, she looked across the seated men and women and saw the dull red light of Rath’s augmetic eye.

  The captain said nothing. He did not believe in hope.

  Seven

  Elysion Fields

  There was nothing the Space Wolf, Skarp-Hedin, hated more than these twisted, malformed parodies of the Adeptus Astartes. They were not just abhorrent, they were dangerous. Their ability to grow weapons from their infected flesh repulsed him. Killing them was not a pleasure; it was a primal need. It was a duty. As war swept across the pylon forest of the Elysion Fields, Skarp-Hedin was feeding that need.

  The Chaos Space Marine had two malformed mouths. They both snarled as it tried to form another arm. Skarp-Hedin’s sword crackled blue flame as it cut the budding limb off. The mouths moaned with pain and Skarp-Hedin’s boot crashed down onto the creature’s chest.

  There was a crunch of power armour, bone and flesh.

  Brother.

  A voice spoke in Skarp-Hedin’s ear, but the Space Wolf was too intent on killing to pay it any heed. He’d lopped off the monstrous traitor’s limbs, as children would pick off the legs of beetles. And now he was going in for the kill. As he reached down one mouth mewled in incoherent agony and suffering, but the other spoke to him.

  ‘You can kill me, but victory is within our grasp.’

  ‘You will not see it,’ Skarp-Hedin snarled.

  ‘You are as lost as I.’

  Skarp-Hedin was beyond words. He put his weight behind the sword’s hilt and drove it through the neck of the thing beneath him. It died with a shudder and Skarp-Hedin breathed the stink of blood deep, and looked about for another enemy to kill.

  Brother.

  The voice spoke again. Skarp-Hedin spun on his heel and stared about him, looking for foes. The Eye of Terror filled the sky with purple, and on the plain around him were heaps of bodies.

  Moments came back to him. While human armies met in vast battles, two elite warbands of Space Marines and their Chaotic brothers had met each other in an exultant duel of sword and axe. Skarp-Hedin had followed his master, Ottar the White, as a hound follows the pack leader. The melee had attracted more and more ancient warriors, like carrion to a dying beast. Now, as Skarp-Hedin spun about, it seemed that no one else lived. Nothing moved.

  His nostrils flared. He could tell the blood of his gene-brothers apart from that of their foes. He could smell their gene-seed, despite the distortions that Chaos had wrought.

  He sniffed for warm blood. He smelled for life among the piles of dead. He stood at the top of a hill of bodies in the grey and black power armour of the Space Wolves and the Black Legion. Heads had been severed. Gore puddled about the fallen bodies, each showing the excessive trauma that it took to kill a member of the Adeptus Astartes.

  Brother.

  Skarp-Hedin spun about, crouching low, ready to fight. They had been surrounded. There had been hundreds of the Black Legionnaires, but now they had all gone. He had not killed them all. He was sure. His mind scrolled back through the vid relays in his helmet.

  No. He had not killed them. They had fled before his fury, climbing back into dreadclaws and landing craft and blasting off from the planet.

  Skarp-Hedin laughed, great fangs bared in his supreme confidence. He had been outnumbered, he had fought them, and he had destroyed them. He beat his chest with berserk fury and exultation.

  Traitors and cowards!

  Something moved at Skarp-Hedin’s feet. He put a bolt-round into the thing’s skull. It had once been a member of the Emperor’s Children. Now it was dead, its last lungful of air coming out in a tide of red bubbles. He looked down and saw that he was standing on a pile of the dead, fifty bodies deep.

  His grey armour was flecked with blood, some of it his. He snarled as he spun about looking for another opponent, but the land was empty except for the dead. And all knew the dead did not rise again.

  Brother.

  From the top of the corpse mound, Skarp-Hedin looked out on a hell of battle. In the far distance ruined tanks still burned, like foothills to the vast wrecks of Titans and Leviathans that rose over them all, their empty hulks now dark and flame-stained and silent. Closer to him, where his warband had been brought to ground, hills of the dead rose up, crags of heads and torsos and boots, covered with the grotesque covering of reaching hands and fingers, like the wretched flora of a daemon world. The hills marked where each of his fellow brothers had stood and fought as they tried to cut their way through the enemy and had been brought low. The air stank of death and blood, and from deep down in the bottom layer of bodies, the unholy reek of decay.

  And there, at his feet, beneath the headless stump of the Obliterator, he saw the shrivelled skull of his chieftain: Ottar the White.

  It all came back to him as he stared down at the body before him. His chieftain surrounded by foes, setting about him with his axe and calling on his retainers for help. Skarp-Hedin had ripped through human and trans-human. The air was thick with the stink of super-heated blood. His sword still sizzled as if it wanted more.

  ‘Lord!’ he hissed.

  Brother.

  ‘Lord! I failed you, lord.’

  Brother.

  The ancient Space Wolf chieftain had taken wounds to his arms, legs and torso, but it was the final melta shot that had seared a hole through his grey-and-gold-worked power armour that had done for the ancient warrior. It had taken out one of his hearts and had overwhelmed a body already wounded, already weakened. Already dying.

  ‘I failed you,’ he said through fanged teeth that snarled in fury. ‘We have failed this world.’

  Brother. The planet is lost.

  The words had no meaning for him. Above him, the Eye of Terror filled the sky with lurid patterns of purple. They cast a baleful light.

  Skarp-Hedin had to force Ottar’s dead fingers open to get the blade free. Even in death, the Space Wolf would not let go.

  The planet is lost, brother.

  Skarp-Hedin’s fingers lifted the great double-headed axe. The weapon balanced in his hand, light only for a Space Wolf. Skarp-Hedin’s fangs drew back as far off an artillery duel reached a crescendo.

  Lightbringer was as old as Fenris itself, a beautifully crafted weapon, haft and blade all forged from a single block of meteoric iron. It felt warm in his hand, the blade still crackling with nascent energy. The blade glimmered darkly and Skarp-Hedin grinned. He knew that the deal had been struck.

  Brother. The planet is doomed.

  Skarp-Hedin’s nostrils flared as he sucked in the Cadian air. Far-off strobes of lance fire stabbed down through roiling clouds of smoke and ash. In the flickering darkness, he saw the wild light of packs of daemons, blinking through the Immaterium.

  More enemies to kill.

  With great loping strides, and limbs that did not tire, the Space Wolf began to move south. He was the last now. The last of his warband, the only one to carry the names of the dead and their great tales back to Fenris. This alone was responsibility enough. He could not let t
he feats of his brothers go unrecorded.

  ‘Brother. The planet is doomed. We need to get you off the planet. Confirm position’

  The voice was insistent inside his helmet. But Skarp-Hedin was lost to the joy of hunt and battle. A star appeared in the distant sky and above the thunder of battle he heard the distant howl of Wulfen, and in answer, Skarp-Hedin put his head back and howled.

  Zufur the Hermetic was dead, with all his cursed warriors about him.

  They made a fitting cairn for Ottar the White. No Space Wolf could wish for more.

  Eight

  Point 395, Myrak Front

  Valentin’s Hellhound squadron was still half a day away from the Elysion Fields when the Marauder destroyer swept low over

  the ground. Four more followed and the last one gave them a simple salute as it waggled its wings and swept on southwards, weapon mounts fully loaded with hunter-killer missiles. Valentin couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen air support. ‘Just look at that,’ he said. ‘Where the hell did they come from?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ his driver said. ‘As long as they put those weapons to use.’

  As the roar of the Marauders diminished, they could hear the vox playing Flower of Cadia. ‘Hush!’ Valentin said, and turned the volume up.

  It was Creed’s voice, at last.

  ‘People of Cadia.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Valentin punched his gunner and the Hellhound slammed to a halt.

  ‘You have done all that I have asked, and more. You have driven the enemy back. You have won the battle for Cadia.’

  There was a pause. ‘You have won, but it is my duty, my heavy duty to tell you all that Cadia, our home, is doomed. Not for lack of courage and strength on your part. You have won the battle. Your honour is unblemished.

  ‘You might think that this is a defeat for us. But it is not. I assure you. Preparations are being made now. After this message, there will follow a broadcast announcing the evacuation zones where landers will come to lift you all from the planet. I repeat. This is not defeat. The fight will go on. We shall carry the flame of Cadia back to the Imperium. We shall fight to defend Holy Terra itself.’

  At the end of the broadcast a different voice – strained with emotion – recounted a list of evacuation sites. Valentin’s crew listened in numb silence.

  The list started at the beginning again. It repeated three times before anyone spoke.

  ‘Frekk,’ Valentin said.

  He looked up and the others nodded. Frekk.

  Myrak Front, 17th Army Group

  Lina’s Hammer of Tyrok was spearheading an assault on a Volscani redoubt. She was stripped down to her undershirt. Her back was slick with sweat, her forearms slick with lubricants and soot, her vox-bead hanging about her neck. She fitted the chains around the krak shell, pulled it across the tank and lowered it carefully into place.

  ‘Loaded!’ she shouted, but instead of firing, there was a pause.

  ‘Loaded!’ she shouted again over the salvo of heavy bolter rounds, fired by the front gunner.

  The bolt feed jammed. The gunner pulled at the bolt-rounds, and the loading mechanisms clicked as the bolts fed in.

  They were so busy fighting they didn’t have time to pause as Flower of Cadia began to play. But when Creed began to speak Ibsic turned the volume up and they worked a little harder and faster. But then the evacuation order was issued.

  ‘What did he just say?’ Ibsic said.

  Lina paused, but then a round pinged off the front of the tank and she slammed the breech closed. ‘Loaded,’ she said.

  Ibsic cursed as the turret swivelled round.

  ‘Loaded?’ he called.

  ‘Loaded,’ Lina called back. She caught the driver’s eye and lay back against the magazine panels. ‘What the frekk did they just say?’

  The tank rocked back as the main gun fired. ‘Confirmed kill,’ he said, and dropped down from the firing seat into the tank. ‘Did they just say evacuation?’

  His crew stared at him. None of them moved. They’d all heard it, and now the vox was listing evacuation points.

  Lina’s immediate reaction was that she was not evacuating. She was not evacuating her home. She would fight and die with her home.

  But the list of extraction points kept repeating.

  Lina kicked out.

  ‘I don’t frekking believe it,’ she said.

  Nine

  Renault Tract, Cadia Secundus

  The Drookian Fenguard was what the Munitorum classed as light infantry: tough tribesmen used to privations and working independently with little support or equipment. Movement was something they excelled at, but for the last two months they had been fighting a losing battle as the fens cover they had been relying on had been gradually eroded by fire, or simply swarmed with enemy troops.

  Iasen Kwayn was Widluos of the Kern Clan of Drook VI, who were known to the scribes of the Munitorum as the 53rd Drookian Fenguard. He took his role of counsellor, law-giver and rememberer seriously, especially now, when it seemed that the existence of the Kern Clan was at risk. They were like the Drookian fangfish whose pools had been drained, and who were left flopping back and forth on their sides.

  The Drookians were deep in the frozen marshes of the Renault Tract, where miles of rattling, dry sorghum were draped with trailing mist, fighting an army made up of cultists from a number of hive worlds who still bore their ganger tattoos.

  The sorghum was thick as bamboo. It made the perfect environment for the light Drookian troops, and despite their small numbers they’d been fighting for months half hidden within the trackless miles.

  The Chaos troops had resorted to clearing whole tracts of land with flame. The Fenguard warriors were putting up a stubborn resistance as they retreated deeper into the marsh, but the numbers of dead were gathering pace all the time, and mile by mile the enemy were finally hemming the Drookians in. The end could not be far off.

  As he waded through the stagnant water Iasen knew that there was no more point in running. It was time to call on their father, the Emperor, and to make their last stand.

  A grenade exploded about fifty feet before Iasen. There was an outbreak of firing – a short and vicious cross-stitch of las-rounds in the tight confines of the marsh. Iasen crouched as he saw a squad of Fenguard retreating at an oblique angle to the battle. They were wearing their rebreathers. Their eyes met his and they signed to him to keep moving back. It was all they had been doing for days.

  Iasen slipped back, leaving a brief ripple, the marsh-sorghum barely rustling.

  Look! one of the others signed to him, and he looked up. There had been many stars in the months that they had been fighting. Bright explosions in high orbit, as fleets of vast cruisers pummelled each other with ferocious broadsides. But this one was unlike the others. It seemed distant at first, and not quite like a plasma reactor overloading. It was too small, too yellow. It grew in intensity at a steadily accelerating rate.

  Iasen nodded. A hand touched his shoulder.

  ‘Chief wants you,’ said the Drookian. ‘You must come now.’

  Iasen found the Drookian chief standing with his retainers in a small, dark pool, slick with an oily film of promethium. The chief’s elite attendants were dressed in all kinds of shabby Imperial cast-offs, all now the same drab and faded grey. Their faces were obscured by their crude rebreathers; tubes wound around their necks and shoulders, their skin was blue with tribal tattoos, and all wore their clan knife slung from a plaid sash.

  The chief’s face was pale yellow with the light of the Eye of Terror. ‘We are nearly surrounded, Widluos.’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘I have decided that I will die here, on this mound.’

  Iasen nodded. ‘Then I am glad to stand here with you.’

  The chief’s face was stern. ‘You cannot.’

&nb
sp; ‘But–’ Iasen started.

  His chief spoke over him. ‘You know all the old stories of our clan. One of us must escape Cadia, and bring news of how the Kern Clan died.’

  Iasen looked around the others. They were all staring at him over their rebreather masks. He understood. ‘Not me!’

  ‘It is my order.’

  Iasen looked at the faces of the other retainers. Behind their rebreathers, their eyes were hard and set. They had determined it. This was the moment for them to die. He would not be with them.

  Iasen felt betrayed. ‘I cannot leave you, lord. You are my clan chief. What is out there but a hostile world? Men will look down on me with contempt, and say that I lived when my lord did not. I could not live with the shame.’

  ‘It is my order, Iasen,’ the chief said. ‘One of us must escape to tell the tale of how we fought and died.’

  Another firefight broke out, even closer this time. As Iasen looked at their faces, he saw their eyes grow bright. They shone with a yellow light.

  One of the retainers saw it first. He signed and pointed. There was a star in the sky. It was growing brighter. Iasen turned. They all followed his gaze. The star lit the sky like a second sun. After a few moments, it was too bright to look at. It cast a shadow on the ground. They could hear its roar, like an earthquake rolling towards them.

  Iasen cried out as it passed overhead, filling the sky.

  The sonic shock threw him flat. He found himself on his hands and knees, staring at the silhouette of his head against a burning sky, and he remembered the prophecy about the end of the world. That doomsday would come with a bright star, too bright to look upon.

  As he lay there he saw flames.

  The whole marsh was burning. The story of his clan would never be told. The fens of Drook would never learn how her sons had fought, and won, and died.

  The star that lit the skies of Cadia was a fragment of an ancient object of xenos technology known as a Blackstone fortress.

  The Archenemy had propelled it towards the planet, and despite all the combined firepower of the remaining shreds of Battlefleet Cadia and the Adeptus Astartes strike cruisers, they could do little more than blow chunks off its edges, like chips from a piece of flint. Desperate captains flew their defence monitors into the Blackstone, hoping to deflect its course, but the ancient hulk had been propelled forward at such a speed that there was no way it could be stopped or hindered.