Cadia Stands

by Justin D Hill

  But then the Terminus Est returned fire with three great salvos that hit the Pax Imperialis’ void shields as one, popping its protective bubble within bare seconds, ripping into the superstructure and setting off a salvo of explosions along the great battleship’s spine.

  Inside the Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke, Grüber was shouting at the ratling attendants of the Lord Navigator. ‘We’re being destroyed. They’re being ripped apart. There’s only so much time they can give us.’

  The ratlings linked arms. ‘We cannot interrupt the Lord Navigator.’

  ‘Stand aside!’ Grüber ordered them, but they did not move. The ratlings threw themselves before the doorway to the Navigator’s chamber as Grüber stepped towards them. The general had become almost still with fury. ‘Then we will all die.’ He reached for his laspistol. ‘And I cannot allow that to happen.’

  The warp jump alarms rang out across the evacuation fleet. In every ship, crewmen looked at each other in astonishment and alarm. It seemed almost impossible that the warp should have shown them a way out of the system now, when the jaws of the enemy were closing.

  In the Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke Grüber looked about him. ‘What is happening?’

  The ratling attendants didn’t know what to say. They stared up, eyes wide, as warning lights strobed through the ship. Low in the craft, the Geller field generators started up with a dull vibration that quickened to a low hum. Lord Navigator Hyppolytus had found a route through the Immaterium. One by one, each of the Imperial ships raised their Geller field and made the desperate leap into the Immaterium.

  The troops in the Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke were thrown about as the ship entered the warp. The violence of transition did not subside, but went on for hour after hour of terrible vibrations.

  In the cargo holds tanks ripped loose from their moorings, but it was on the human crew that the buffeting passage had the most profound effect.

  Many were pushed beyond the limits of endurance. No one had ever seen so many patients with warp sickness. Medicae ran out of mind suppressants as their decks filled with men and women clutching desperately at the shores of sanity. Commissars dispatched those who were driven mad, but soon entire levels of the ship were dedicated to the sick.

  Where they were available, Sisters of Battle, priests and military mendicants walked up and down, soothing the incipient madness with prayers. On ships where there was no clergyman or woman available, officers read aloud from books of prayer, or even just the Uplifting Primer.

  After the tumults began to ease, Grüber had all the military reports he had not yet read brought to him. They filled an entire room with files, memos, regimental reports of cowardice, or failure in the face of the enemy.

  But again and again were reports of a winged saint. She had been seen on almost every battlefront. Her miracles had saved unit after unit from impossible odds. Grüber found his hand shaking as he worked through them. He found tears rising.

  Grüber had faith in the Emperor.

  Three days into the flight there was a knock on the door. Grüber looked up, expecting to see Zabuzkho, but instead a commissar entered: a tall, lean man with a narrow, hawkish look to him, and a long hooked nose.

  Grüber stood up to shake the man’s hand. ‘My name is General Grüber. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?’

  The commissar held Grüber’s hand for a moment too long, as if assessing his character through his handshake. ‘Colonel-Commissar Grake,’ he said, his voice deep and resonant for a man so thin. He looked down on Grüber, which the general found irritating.

  He sat down. ‘Greetings. Please sit. How can I help you?’

  The commissar sat back, took off his peaked hat and folded one leg over the other. There was stiffness to his movements that suggested an old wound. Grüber waited. He took an instant dislike to the man, though, to be honest, he’d hardly ever met a commissar that he liked – and those he liked, he thought, generally made bad commissars.

  ‘There was a serious breakdown of command in the hours of the evacuation.’

  Grüber sat forward and steepled his fingers together. ‘Yes. Of course, there was. My troops were evacuating in the face of continuous attack.’

  Grake leaned forward. ‘There was cowardice on Cadia. Gross failures on the part of your troops to carry out their basic duties.’

  Grüber stiffened as he leaned forward. ‘There was courage on Cadia. Bravery. Stalwart defiance of the enemy.’

  Grake smiled from the corner of his mouth. It was a cold and unpleasant look that showed metal-capped teeth. ‘In the last hours of Cadia, I shot fifty-nine men.’

  ‘So I have heard.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think that is fifty-nine lives of my brave troops that you wasted. Fifty-nine fewer defenders of the Imperium of Man.’

  ‘In their flight they had discarded their weapons.’

  ‘Yes,’ Grüber said. ‘I have read the reports. Guardsman Marling and Guardsman Marcus had lost their rifles because they were carrying their wounded fellows.’ Grüber fumbled for the relevant paper. ‘Yes. Here!’ he said defiantly. ‘And you also shot the wounded men they had brought to the evacuation point. Guardsman Materel and Sergeant Blenkin. Guardsman Materel had been shot in the arm, which reports say was bound to his chest. Sergeant Blenkin had stepped on a mine and lost her leg from the knee downwards.’

  ‘Sergeants have a responsibility to set a proper example to the others.’

  Grüber was trembling with fury. ‘Sergeant Blenkin was a veteran of nine years. She had already twice won the Eagle Ordinary, and I have three reports, here, here and here,’ he said, waving the papers in the air, ‘recommending Sergeant Blenkin for the Ward of Cadia. And you shot her!’

  Grüber was standing. He had both fists planted on the desk. ‘You shot a woman who had fought with commendation and bravery for nine years, earned some of the highest honours available to a Guardsman, for the crime of dropping her rifle once wounded.’

  Grake seemed almost reptilian in his calm. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I had to make an example in order to stop panic breaking out. This is not about one or two Guardsmen–’

  ‘Fifty-nine,’ Grüber said, sitting back down.

  Grake shrugged. ‘–Or fifty-nine. It is about the ten thousand warriors I got safely off the planet.’

  ‘Other commanders managed to do so without shooting wounded men.’

  Grake’s blue eyes were cold as steel. He made no response.

  Grüber sat forward. ‘And what about the thousands you left behind?’

  ‘I was obeying commands.’

  Grüber slammed his palm down on the table. ‘You are hiding behind other men’s orders. I can list ten, twenty places where the orders were disregarded, and we have two hundred thousand more men off the planet because of that.’

  ‘They put the whole operation at risk.’

  Grüber bit back his retort and Grake sat forward once more. ‘General, the discipline of your warriors is my concern. I want the records, so I can go through them to ascertain who should be executed. I have gone through the files, and found one thousand three hundred and sixteen cases of cowardice that warrant punishment. Give me the list of names and I will deal with them.’

  Grüber stared at him. ‘No,’ he said.

  Grake’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘No.’

  Grake smiled again, a chilling glimmer of metal teeth where his own had been knocked out. ‘General. I am the representative of the Commissariat.’

  ‘I have pardoned them,’ Grüber said. ‘And formed a penal division from their number. They will have the honour of leading our next attack.’

  Grake was silent for a long time. He spoke slowly, like a gambler laying his cards, one by one, onto the table. ‘That is your prerogative.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Grüber said. ‘I hav
e no doubt that they will make up for their sins by fighting with honour and courage. But if you have any doubts about them, then I suggest you lead them.’

  Grake smiled. ‘You’re offering me a penal regiment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Grüber expected the commissar to refuse, but he was impressed when Grake reached one long, thin hand across the table and shook his hand. ‘It will be an honour,’ he said.

  They had been in the warp for a month when, at last, the announcement came over the ship’s loudspeakers.

  ‘Transition imminent.’

  Ships were made ready. The initial wave of relief began to stretch thin as the ship was buffeted by head currents that seemed designed to push them back into the maelstrom.

  The pressure mounted within the sealed troop hangars. Even experienced passengers swallowed back vomit as the temperature dropped and warp-alarms began to ring out above them. For a millisecond there were faces and hands and gaping maws swirling about the Geller fields. Across the craft stoic men screamed for a moment as the pressure rose in their heads. But at last, it seemed that Lord Navigator Hyppolytus Fremm had found a way back.

  Transiting a warp-going spaceship back into real space was like squeezing a splinter of steel from a gangrenous wound. Reality reasserted itself as the warp gave way with a burst of purple-and green-light. The Geller field blinked from existence, and the sudden loss of pressure sucked the warp light back upon itself. The explosion reversed this time, leaving the mile-long Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke to slam back into real space at dangerous speed.

  The armoured nose section re-entered a full three-point-two seconds before the dorsal enginariums. The bone-crunch of gravity travelled down the length of the craft in a ripple of energies. Lights flickered. Heating systems coughed and gravity generators failed across the troop decks for a stomach-churning moment.

  In the bridge, a dozen alarms sounded as the local superstructures failed for an instant. Across the ship, repair teams responded with well-trained speed to popped rivets, leaking bulkheads, boiler overloads. Some decks went entirely dark as reactors strained at the sudden drain of energy. Then the shock of transition passed, the engines began to take the strain, the flicker of amber emergency lighting returned to normal and vast cogitators whirred as they adjusted the gravity generators to the orbital pull of planets and stars.

  Grüber was standing on the bridge as the transition happened. He was eager for his first glimpse of Holy Terra. As he stood at the viewport and looked out, Captain Zabuzkho checked the charts.

  ‘Are we there?’ Grüber said.

  Zabuzkho looked downcast. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  Zabuzkho shook his head. ‘I’m not sure.’

  Sixteen

  Elysion Fields

  Minka fired as the first warp hound appeared. It was a misshapen thing, with a bunched mane of raging fire, human eyes and a snout thick with curved fangs. The autopistol slug hit it in the chest and did nothing to slow it. She fired again, with the same lack of effect, and now she fired a third time and missed.

  A second, third and fourth hound appeared on the heels of the first. Rath cursed, drew his knife and pushed Minka out of the way.

  ‘Cadia stands!’ he roared as the baying of hunters filled the air, and the first hound leaped for his throat.

  Brother.

  His pack brothers had hunted all across Cadia. They had brought their quarry to ground, and torn them apart, and they had gloried in the battle.

  He knew the warp-born would come for the humans. Their souls were daemon-bait, like the light of a deep-sea creature that draws fishes near.

  As the warp hound leaped in, Skarp-Hedin sprang forward.

  It was fast, but he was faster.

  He caught it by the throat. The two of them tumbled to the ground, a rolling ball of fur and fire. He tore its throat out, was on his feet before the second threw itself at him and bowled him backwards, fangs crunching down on his power armour.

  He punched his fingers into its eye, digging deep into the matter inside its skull. It was a blow that would have killed anything mortal, but these were beasts of the Immaterium, and the warp hound howled with pain and pleasure as the Space Wolf set one hand on its jaws and yanked, dislocating the jaws and ripping its head from its shoulders.

  In an instant it was gone, its spirit howling frustration as it was banished for a moment from the physical realm. In a frenzied blur, he tore them apart. All there was, was the killing. It was supreme. It was glorious.

  Brother. It is time. We are leaving.

  In a moment, Skarp-Hedin shook his head, and his berserk fury left him. He found himself staring down at the ground, where he had just thrown a warp hound, and it had blinked out of existence as its hold on the corporeal realm failed.

  There was a shadow on the floor before him.

  He looked up and saw a swirling purple cloud of warp energy.

  Something was manifesting in the air above him. He drooled with anticipation as a red figure started to solidify within the cloud: a vast red monster, whip in one hand, great brass axe in the other.

  Minka was on her hands and knees, retching as the warp energies swirled about her. She felt the ground shudder. She looked up. A vast shape of red fire stood above her. She closed her eyes as it took a single step forward. Cadia trembled beneath its foot.

  Somehow she fired her autopistol but the lead round was lost in the creature’s unholy flesh.

  Minka scrabbled backwards. The monstrous thing lifted its great axe into the air.

  Minka called out to the God-Emperor to witness her defiance. ‘In the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind!’ she shouted.

  There was a flash of white light and the sound of singing. She put her hand up to shield her eyes as a white shape materialised in the air above her.

  The winged saint is sublime, transcendent. She has wings of feathers. A silver halo. The angry face of an angel. She hangs in the air above them all. It is impossible to look at her directly.

  It is not the only thing about her that defies logic.

  In truth, she is not here. She is in ten places at once, fighting the enemies of mankind. She lifts a sword of flaming white, yet it is not the blade that kills, but the power of her truth. Her chin is high. Her face uplifted does not shine with the purple light of the sky, but with the golden light of a radiant sun, a bright Terran day, a throne of incandescent gold. If she speaks words they are like the wind in the mountain forest – a roar of natural power.

  Minka tries to stand, but the light is like a mountain gale, pushing her back.

  She hears a snarling voice, and knows that it is the warp-born.

  Light flashes, or rather darkness flashes in the light, and then she hears a low moan. It is her own voice. It is like the voices of women in childbirth, a groan that is squeezed from inside them. It is a moan of pain, of creation, of exultation.

  Minka stands. For a moment she is the saint.

  It is her voice speaking.

  In the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind.

  The white light had gone. Minka fell onto her hands and knees and coughed.

  There was blood on her face. She did not know if it was hers or not. Her right hand was scorched red as if she had held a brand in it. She pushed herself to her feet.

  ‘Up!’ someone was shouting. Something grabbed her arm.

  She could barely see. Her eyes were dazzled still. She felt giddy, felt as she had in her dreams when she saw herself hanging over the city.

  She had faith.

  Brother, it is time. We are leaving.

  Skarp-Hedin turned. There was the lander. He seemed to remember it, and then it all rushed back to him, the assault by Ottar the White, the mounds of the dead, the lander.

  The lander.

  Its ramps were closed. Its systems
were active. He sprinted for the cabin, ran and caught the ladder and hauled himself up. ‘I am coming back now,’ he voxed as he slammed the cabin release latch. A voice called out to him. It was not his brothers.

  He turned, and saw two humans, a male and a female, looking up with faces drawn with terror and exhaustion. ‘Help us,’ the man said.

  Skarp-Hedin was repelled by the word. It was not a word he was used to. It spoke of weakness. Of defeat. He responded with a growl and threw the cabin door open.

  ‘You cannot leave us,’ the man said. ‘Our fight is not yet done. We have to take revenge.’

  Skarp-Hedin paused. Revenge was a word he understood. There were many reasons not to help them. They were weak. They were human. They would slow him down.

  Despite that, he turned. ‘Can you fly?’ he demanded.

  Rath nodded.

  Skarp-Hedin approved. The Space Wolf reached down and held out a hand. He hauled them up one by one.

  The Space Marine turned to them and spoke. Minka stared up. The voice was deep and gravelly. She could not understand the words.

  He spoke again, and this time she caught his guttural accent. ‘How do you know how to fly?’

  Rath nodded. ‘Cadian 101st, Airborne,’ he said.

  The Space Wolf laughed. ‘Fly then,’ he said. ‘I hunt.’

  The Space Marine stalked inside and left the two Cadians in the cockpit.

  The pilot had been torn apart. The cabin was awash with clots of blood; there was no time to clean the mess. It was a scramble as they got the craft ready to fly.

  Rath winced as he slid into the pilot’s seat. ‘Are you sure you can fly this?’ Minka asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Rath said, though he didn’t sound sure. Minka watched him work one-handed, pressing the activation studs. His face was pale. His breath seemed laboured. Even the light of his augmetic eye seemed dull. He forced a smile. ‘Of course. I was Airborne once.’

  The engines came to life on the third try.

  Rath pulled on a lever and found it was the wrong one.