‘Bring them through the food hangars,’ Grüber said. ‘Let them see how low we have sunk. Let them see the cost of our pride.’
The officers were all grateful to be given a task, a purpose. But there were no officers from the Cadian 8th, ‘Lord Castellan’s Own’. Their absence was noticeable.
Their first task was to collect data. To find out which units had been salvaged, what was their number, what equipment they had managed to carry off the planet. The communication array started to overheat with the rate of dispatches and reports that were coming in. The scent of cooking flesh filled the room as the vox servitors’ plug sockets started to steam. If they felt pain, they did not show it.
Hour by hour General Grüber established command structures over the Cadians. It was like taking rags and stitching them back into a recognisable garment.
‘This is General Grüber,’ he broadcast to the other ships of Battlefleet Cadia, ‘of Cadian High Command. I am seeking Lord Castellan Creed.’
Over and over the response came back. ‘Not on this ship.’
‘Have they checked the wounded?’ Grüber asked, and again the response came back.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Anything?’
‘Negative, sir.’
The final sightings agreed. Creed was last seen fighting on the Elysion Fields. The 8th were with him. None of the evacuees knew what had happened to him.
It was a fact that they would have to accept. Creed had been lost with Cadia. The captain had gone down with his ship. They would have to continue the fight without him.
All the time the fleet was being set upon by Black Fleet fighters. Ships and interplanetary landers gathered together. They were like a flock of sheep when the wolves were howling. For two days there were hit-and-run attacks on any vessel that fell too far behind. Cadians who had survived the fall of their planet were lost as their craft were ripped apart by Black Legion broadsides. Throughout the fleet there was an atmosphere of tense fear. And then the attacks ended.
They were still days from the closest viable Mandeville Point, but the Black Fleet had pulled back. No one knew where they had gone, or when, or if, they would return.
Relations between the Navy and Astra Militarum commanders had become tense. Grüber had a vox-link raised to the Admiral d’Armitage of Battlefleet Cadia. ‘Admiral, any trace of the enemy?’ Grüber demanded.
‘None, sir.’
‘I know our foe. They will be back. Have your crews stand at the ready. Is that understood?’
There was a long, icy silence before the admiral spoke. ‘I know my business, General Grüber.’
‘I am sure you do,’ Grüber told him. ‘And I know mine.’
‘Then do not lecture me.’
Grüber paused for a moment to collect himself. ‘Admiral. We both faced the Black Legion. You in space, my men on the ground. I would like you to note that the soldiers of the Cadian Shock Troops are undefeated. After a hundred days of fighting, we were finally winning the battle on Cadia. Your fleet, however, failed to defend the skies.’
‘A hundred days. And who kept your troops alive? Who kept them supplied? Who evacuated your troops from the planet, at much risk to themselves?’
‘Your fleet, admiral. The service of the Imperial Navy has been exemplary. Accept my apologies. But please do make sure that the fleet stands ready.’
‘I shall.’
Grüber did not argue any further; he had made his point. But the admiral clearly had something else to discuss. ‘Any news of the Lord Castellan?’
‘None,’ Grüber said.
‘Does that mean you are the sole surviving member of Cadian High Command?’
‘I am the most senior officer, yes.’
‘Then I would like to invite you to relocate aboard my flagship, the Grand Alliance,’ d’Armitage said.
‘Thank you, admiral. Is there space upon your ship for my soldiers?’
‘How many do you have?’
‘There’s forty thousand upon the Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke.’
‘General, my ship is a beast of war, it is not a transport. I’m afraid that many troops would affect the performance of my crew. I regret to say that I could not take so many on board unless direst need compelled me.’
Grüber nodded. ‘Then I thank you. But I cannot accept. It was on this craft that I found shelter, and I will not leave them. If the Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke is good enough for them, then it is good enough for me.’
Grüber’s presence on the ship meant that it was deemed necessary for the Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke to be shepherded to the middle of the Imperial Fleet. It was a small, ungainly shape amongst the lean silhouettes of battlecruisers and escorts.
Day and night Grüber worked with the passion of a convert. Despite his bluster with the admiral, he knew that he had failed Cadia. All the high command had. Creed had told them that a Black Crusade was in the offing years before, and men like Grüber had wasted that time in pompous and self-congratulatory banquets, where they toasted their own achievements and mocked the upstart worrywart, who saw nothing before them but doom and darkness.
‘You should rest, sir,’ Lalinc told him, but Grüber refused. Lalinc pointed. ‘Sir. Look. Your leg.’
Grüber looked down. Fresh red stains had leaked through the dressing on his leg. He had forgotten, and now he was too busy to stop.
‘Fetch the medicae. He must be quick. There is so much to do.’
The medicae was an old man with soft hands who cleaned the wound. As he pulled a fresh, clean bandage from his sack, Grüber paused and the medicae looked down. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have requisitioned the ship’s medical supplies. Clean dressings.’
It was a wonder that only someone who had been on Cadia all this time would appreciate.
Grüber drew in a deep breath and felt a wave of emotion rise within him. He put his hand to the medicae’s shoulder. ‘We fought hard,’ he said. ‘Didn’t we?’
‘Yes, sir. We fought beyond the last clean bandage.’ The medicae put his hand on top of Grüber’s own. ‘We won,’ the old man said, his soft hands warm on the general’s own. ‘We defended Cadia. We drove the enemy back. We won the battle.’
General Bendikt was among the officers summoned to the Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke. He stood in the lift as it brought him up from the slab-freezers. He was a little apprehensive as he waited to be shown through to Grüber’s command post.
The loss of Cadia meant a strange new reality had come upon his world. He drew in a deep breath, put his shoulders back and stretched out the ache in his neck. There was an odd smell, he thought, like cooking slab.
An aide stepped into the room. He wore winter camo. It was not unusual to see men dressed in all kinds of uniform. The soldiers were wearing whatever they had been evacuated in. ‘General Grüber will see you now,’ he said, and saluted.
Bendikt took the steps down into the communication chamber. There were three servitors, their styluses gently scratching as the message scrolls wound onto the floor.
Grüber had one of the scrolls in his hand. He looked up as Bendikt entered, let the paper fall in folds to the floor. He held out a hand.
‘General Bendikt,’ he said. ‘I am glad you could join me here.’
Bendikt looked about. ‘It is a long way from the Fidelitas Vector.’
Grüber gave him a long look. ‘You are right. It is. I wonder what happened to Warmaster Ryse?’
‘I do not know.’
‘No.’ There was a gentle ping as another message came in. Grüber read the scroll for a moment and then looked up. ‘General Bendikt. I hear you saw Creed in the last days of Cadia. Can you tell me anything of that?’
‘I did,’ Bendikt said. ‘He came in a single Valkyrie to a bunker. It was named Salvation 9983.’
‘Ah. Were you part of the Salvation? Do you kno
w where he went?’
Bendikt shook his head. ‘No idea, I’m afraid. He said he had many places to go. Something like that. We were standing on the edge of a mountain. A parapet, three thousand yards high. It was blowing a gale at the time. It was clear that something was afoot.’ Bendikt paused. ‘I heard that he was last seen fighting on the Elysion Fields. He ordered my troops there. We were within ten miles of his position when the evacuation order came. It got very messy. I assumed he had got off the planet.’
‘Thank you,’ Grüber said. He seemed distracted, and then drew himself up. ‘Your account supports others. It appears that Creed was lost on Elysion Fields.’
There was a long silence as they assessed the weight of that statement. ‘Can I be of help, sir?’
‘Yes. We need new command structures. Decimated units must be brought up to strength. I want army commands, divisions, battalions. I want a functioning army by the time…’ He paused, and the question hung in the air. ‘Well, wherever we end up.’
Bendikt put voice to the question many of them had been thinking. ‘Where do we go?’
Grüber swallowed. There was only one place they could go. The place that would need defending, once the Cadian Gate had fallen. ‘There is only one place. Holy Terra.’
Thirteen
Myrak River
The forces that had held the Immaterium at bay burst like a rotting carcass. Red, weeping wounds ripped across the sky, and through the tear in the fabric of sanity, warp beasts feasted on the millions of cultists the Black Legion had brought to Cadia.
In their crazed minds the heretics lifted their arms to the daemons as if welcoming salvation, and the warp beasts fell on them like rabid hounds, tearing flesh and bone in an orgy of killing and cruelty, and sucking out their screaming souls as a hound sucks out the marrow.
In this hell, Minka and Rath struggled along. They had left the river two miles behind, dragged themselves up from the ruined banks, their route driven by the safest-looking one before them.
Daemon hounds were baying behind them and Rath was flagging, supporting his weight on Minka’s shoulder as he limped along.
She refused to give up yet. ‘Just a little further,’ she said, though it wasn’t clear that there was anywhere for them to head to. ‘Keep moving.’
‘We’re done,’ Rath said. ‘Stop. Let us die here.’
‘No,’ she told him. ‘Just a little further.’
Daemon hounds were baying around them. If the beasts caught their scent then their end would be swift. Minka dragged him forward. She was heading she did not know where. She just knew that she could not stop, but at last Rath said, ‘I cannot.’
His face was pale with pain. He winced as he put a knee to the ground, like a man giving feudal homage to his lord, but Minka grabbed him by his shoulders and tried to haul him up. There was a thunderclap in the sky above them. The red light was bright enough to cast shadows on the earth, and then there were excited howls. The hounds had caught their trail. She could hear their bloodthirsty baying. It was a horrific sound, like the scream of a million insane voices.
Rath was not moving. She shook him by his shoulders. She did not care if she hurt him.
‘Get up, damn you!’
He groaned and she spun around, looking for somewhere to head towards. She could not give up. Her training kicked in. Find a defensible location. Keep fighting.
‘Look!’ she hissed. ‘See that!’
Rath looked up. Through the ash clouds, there was a white shape, about half a mile before them. It was hard trying to see in the ruddy light.
‘It looks like a lander,’ she said.
They staggered forward. The hounds were all about them now, baying and laughing. ‘It’s crashed,’ he said as they drew closer, but as they approached it Minka could see that he was wrong.
It was a planetary lander. The landing gears were down, and there were lights inside the cabin. ‘Come on!’ she hissed, feeling almost giddy. ‘Maybe we’re going to make it off this planet after all.’
It was hard to appreciate the size of the craft until they got close.
It was much bigger than Minka had thought. The ramps were closed, the engines dead, but the cockpit lights shone out. It was so big they could walk underneath the thing without bending over, and there was no way up. Even if she stood on Rath’s shoulders, she did not think she could reach the access ladders.
Minka stared up at the thing, put her hands to her mouth and shouted, ‘Hey!’
The hounds were getting closer.
She tried climbing up the landing gear, but there was no access. She stood under the ladder and jumped, but fell back, not even coming close to catching it. She jumped again but fell even shorter this time. They were so close. But there was no way aboard.
Rath’s voice was low and warning. ‘They’re coming,’ he said.
Minka turned. In the darkness, glowing red hounds were bounding towards them. The howls seemed to ring out all around them. Minka only had the autopistol she had salvaged from Kasr Myrak.
She pulled Rath next to her, their backs to the landing gear.
If this was it, she, like Cadia, was going to go down fighting.
The Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke
When he was told the destination was Holy Terra, Admiral d’Armitage communicated his concerns. ‘Lord General, I do not know if we can make any translation at all. The warp is in tumult.’
‘Well, it is death to stay here.’
‘You’re right.’
‘So. What are the other options?’
D’Armitage paused. ‘We could sail out into deep space. Power down. Wait for the Black Fleet to pass on. Warp storms pass.’
Grüber listened to the admiral’s plan. It was an option if time was not a priority. At the end, Grüber said, ‘That is not a route that is open to us, admiral. You have ten million of the Imperium’s finest fighters stowed away in the hulls of Battlefleet Cadia. They need to be used. To be put into the war. To take revenge.’
D’Armitage was silent. It was Grüber who spoke again. ‘Who is the best Navigator in your fleet?’
D’Armitage paused. ‘Hyppolytus Fremm.’
‘Good. Send him to me. We will find a way, Lord Admiral. I promise you that.’
Hyppolytus Fremm was locked away in his chambers, but his twinned pair of ratling attendants had been fretting about the empty, sterile chamber for hours.
Grüber found it hard to tell whether they were genetic twins or had been through intensive augmentation. The similarity of their movements made him think they were blood kin, but they had a disconcerting habit of moving and speaking in synchronisation. They seemed almost reflections of each other, as they stood in embroidered jackets of black velvet. After an interminable wait, there was a low chime and the two ratlings bent their heads towards each other and began to speak in low, hushed voices.
‘Is anything wrong?’ Grüber demanded.
They turned to face him, their movements synchronised, like man and reflection. They spoke together. ‘The ways of the warp are tumultuous,’ they said.
Grüber nodded.
According to d’Armitage, Hyppolytus Fremm was the finest surviving Navigator in the Battlefleet Cadian system. He had come aboard the Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke that morning, and had been sequestered in the astral chamber for nearly a Terran day.
‘If there is a way to Terra, then he will find it,’ the ratlings said, but it seemed from the delay that their master had not yet found a route.
Grüber nodded. He couldn’t tell if the abhumans were male or female. They had a strangely androgynous look to them. He found his gaze lingering on their fingers, not narrow and thin, as their height might imply, but thick and stumpy. Despite all the strangeness about them, the ratlings were humans. All of them – ogryn, Navigator, ratling – the abhumans would share the same fate
as the rest of the Imperium of Man.
General Grüber paced up and down outside, his staff in attendance. The two ratlings continued to speak to each other in hushed voices. At last, there was another chime, and then a bell rang high up in the chamber, and the two ratlings hurried to the sealed doorway.
Something, it seemed, was about to happen. Grüber turned and drew himself upright, shoulders back, chest puffed. There was a long pause before the sealed doors opened, and Grüber had a brief glimpse of a shadowed staircase, reaching upwards to a dark chamber.
Down the broad steps a figure descended, slowly and unsteadily, his weight resting on his cane. The ratlings waited by the doorway, with an eager and expectant look to them, like a pair of hunting dogs.
When Hyppolytus Fremm stepped out of the observatory on the Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke, a silk scarf was tied about his forehead, covering his third eye. The strain of his search was clear to see. His face was drawn with deep lines. His eyes were red, and purple bags weighed heavily on his cheeks. He was leaning on a walking stick made from the exotic long nose-horn of the Ophelian narwhale, chased with gold and jewels.
The ratling attendants hurried to help Hyppolytus stand. He turned towards Grüber, took in a deep breath and was wracked by coughs. Grüber’s face drew pale and drawn as he waited. As he did one of the Navigator’s legs started to give way, and the ratlings looked to the general, as if for permission.
‘Yes,’ Grüber said. ‘Please sit.’
A carved wooden stool was brought from the corner of the room. One ratling set it down with both hands, while the other helped the Navigator sit. A bottle was brought, and the Navigator took a long sip of thick, dark syrup.
‘So,’ Grüber said. ‘What news? How long until we can make the translation?’
The Navigator’s shoulders sagged for a moment. ‘General Grüber, the fall of Cadia has set off a tsunami through the Immaterium. I have never seen such tumult. To make the translation to Holy Terra would be death. The warp storms there are terrible. I have never seen such…’ He paused, and then said, with a deliberate look, ‘chaos.’
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