Aaron Aaron Dembski-Bowden - Cadian Blood

It was an unusual request. Osiron waited patiently for the pilot to check his instruments. “Standard distortion at medium range, sir. Reaching close range in twenty seconds.”

Osiron timed the estimate against the ticking of his own heart-engine. Twenty-three seconds passed.

“Auspex is… clear. Minimal interference.”

Osiron killed the link and switched channels. “Scout-lieutenant.”

“Yes, honoured enginseer?”

“Deploy available resources in defensive spread.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you are the ranking officer here, and we have walked into a trap.”

The double doors were steel-shod Kathurite oak and had stood for three thousand years; consistently blessed, reinforced, redecorated and restored over the centuries. They were built in the same style as most of Kathur’s savagely overdone architecture, but practicality was in their construction, too. In the event of a fire, these doors would seal closed and allow those within the preparation chambers to survive up to nine hours protected from the flames.

The ornate doors exploded inwards under the force of the plasma blast. With twin crashes, they flew off their hinges and clattered to the red carpet blanketing the floor. Eleven men stood in the torn opening, rifles and pistols raised. It was the third set of such doors Zailen had opened with his plasma gun. White steam, hot enough to scald flesh, hissed from the weapon’s focusing ring in an angry gush.

Another preparation chamber opened up before them. Another hall filled with the enraged dead. The corpses turned their attention to the living interlopers, their ruined faces peeling into expressions resembling something like joy, and something like pain. Several began to wail.

Thade’s sword cut the air and his squad opened fire.

After the mayhem, the squad reformed in the centre of the room. Blood marked them as surely as if they’d been painted with it. Their bootsteps echoed throughout the chamber, bouncing off walls that sported stone angels leering down in cold dissatisfaction. The reliefs in this room depicted scenes of the Great Crusade. Winged Astartes warriors standing tall and proud—a testament to the Raven Guard Legion that had forced this world into compliance so many thousands of years ago.

Another set of double doors barred their way into the next chamber. Thade shook his head.

“We’re being herded. Like cattle to the slaughter.”

The Cadians nodded. Zailen said, “Room after room of piss-poor resistance. They’re wearing us down piece by piece.” Several of the soldiers checked their digital ammo readouts and muttered agreement.

“Seth?” Thade fixed him with his violet glare. “We’re running out of preparation chambers. This is the heart of the monastery. Whatever you’ve sensed is nearby.”

The psyker was trembling. Dark blood leaked in a viscous trail from his right eye. Thade considered shooting him on the spot. Seth’s unreliability today was a little much even for the captain’s patience. He knew a commissar would almost certainly have executed the shivering man by now, for dereliction of duty as well as the risk of psychic contamination. But Thade needed every advantage he could grasp.

Everything about this mission was a mess, right back to the fools in the Janus 6th who’d tried to take the shrine in the first place. Could the monastery be held? Maybe. Could it be held without extreme losses? Not a chance. Could some amateur outfit like the Janus 6th—just thrown out into space by their founding world—have any chance to cut it here? Never.

Thade had hoped to secure the key points with his divided teams and seal themselves in, awaiting reinforcement. A good plan, but getting more unrealistic by the second. Everything fairly reeked of deception and an enemy’s pre-planning.

“Seth. I’m going to count to three.” Thade rested his bolt pistol against the sanctioned psyker’s cheek. “One.”

“So old,” Seth whispered. “So old. So diseased. How do they live?”

“Seth, focus. Two.”

“So old…”

Thade backhanded him with the weighty pistol, not hard enough to injure but not a light slap, either. “Seth, focus! Cadian blood, ice in your veins. You have a job to do. We’re counting on you. What. Is. Ahead?”

Seth closed his bleeding eyes. The trembling ceased, and every man present felt the invisible tremor of the psyker reaching out with his powers. Zailen stepped back, as if the unseen forces at work could destabilise his temperamental, humming plasma rifle.

“I’m still hearing the voice. It’s trapped, barely reaching the surface…”

“Seth, focus now or I shoot you where you stand. Ignore the damn voice.” Thade asked again, “What do you see?”

The psyker smiled. A Cadian smile, a morbid twist of the lips, grim and humourless. “Traitors.”

Enginseer Osiron’s warning flashed through the vox network, squad by squad. No one was surprised. Hopes had hardly been high of the mission being a success, and many of the 88th had questioned the initial orders to reinforce the Janus 6th in such a tactically unviable location. The green unit had pushed too far, too fast, and it was down to the Cadians to get in there and do their best to keep the fresh meat alive. In theory.

Of course, there was only so much you could do when the regiment you were supposed to reinforce was already annihilated by the time you arrived.

Taan Darrick crouched behind a row of stone pews, clutching his battered lasrifle. Chunks of his cover broke away in flying pieces or were disintegrated outright by the bite of heavy bolter rounds. His glance kept flicking up to the stained glass dome thirty metres above his hiding place. Kathur Reclamation protocol was adamant about avoiding collateral damage, but any second now, Kathur Reclamation protocol was about to go to hell.

Deft fingers ejected his rifle’s spent power pack. The sickle-shaped magazine fell into his free hand, and he stored it in his webbing.

“Machine-spirit, forgive my actions. Soon you shall be whole again.” The Litany of Unloading. Taan’s voice was cool and unshaking. Cadian blood, ice in the veins. There was no way he’d let himself die here.

He slammed the fresh power cell in and pulled the recharge slide, now speaking the Litany of Loading.

“Machine-spirit, accept my gift. Swallow the light, and spit out death.” Simple words. Even silly, in other circumstances. A grunt’s attempt at something poetic. Yet Darrick had been saying the same words since he’d loaded his first lasgun at age four. They made him grin now. Funny how certain things gain such significance.

The last time he’d raised his head above the row of seats, he’d counted close to seventy of the Remnant scattered in a loose line, their numbers punctuated by hastily erected heavy weapons emplacements. Seventy soldiers. There had been over a hundred a few minutes ago.

Seventy left.

Taan looked left and right, counting his own remaining men as they crouched in the makeshift trench, sheltered from the onslaught by the rapidly-eroding stone pews.

He counted twelve. Wonderful. That’s just wonderful.

“Darrick to His Holy Blade . In the name of the Emperor, where are you?”

“On approach, Alliance. Cruor requests pict detail of deployment.”

“Do I sound like I have time to start a career as a taker of rare and beautiful picts? We’re pinned. You hear that gunfire? That’s not us shooting, you son of—”

Taan was Cadian, born in a barracks and bred under the violet sky. Even as he ranted, he focused the lens of the picter attached to the side of his helmet, and took a peek—no longer than a heartbeat—long enough to take a single pict of the wall of Remnant forces across the circular chorus chamber. All the while, he swore. Darrick ducked again just as a lasbolt burned the stone black an inch from his eye.