Aaron Aaron Dembski-Bowden: Cadian Blood

Too many of the dead had not been destroyed. The still-living population were paying for the failure of the funereal priesthood now.

On the eleventh day, reports became increasingly choppy and erratic. The swelling cults claimed whole districts of the dying cities, each member saved from death by their new allegiance. Chaos emanations wreathed the planet, eroding all reliability in astropathic contact and paining all psychically-gifted souls aboard the blockade fleet vessels. The ships’ Navigators and all present inquisitors had a lifetime of training to resist such invasive psychic agony, but they still suffered. The touch of Chaos infected many of those without psychic talents: incidents of homicide and apostasy broke out aboard the destroyer vessels. These were quickly crushed by inquisitor-led purges, though the Cobra destroyer Terra’s Spite was lost when the unrest within the ship’s bowels led to explosions in the enginarium. Three hundred souls lost, and the wreckage rained on the cathedral cities below—a storm of fire from the heavens.

The inquisitors ordered the blockade into a higher orbit after the shipboard purges were complete. Kathur was now an unholy beacon within the warp, and proximity to the foulness sweeping the planet was deemed a moral threat to the Naval crews. Small clusters of destroyers orbited the planet in shifts, then broke away to allow others their turn. No captain wished to risk his men becoming tainted by the Archenemy’s emanations rising from the doomed world below.

On the seventeenth day, the horde of curse victims besieging the Enforcer precinct headquarters battered down the final barricades, and the handful of still-living black-armoured peacekeepers fell. Inquisitor Caius recorded the Enforcer Marshal’s final words for Ordo Sepulturum records.

“We will stand before the Throne and we will not flinch before His judgement, for we die doing our duty.” The inquisitor could hear the moistness of the man’s lips in each word. The marshal had been dying, coughing up mouthfuls of diseased blood. He finished with a strained “The Emperor protects.”

In truth, there had been more, but Caius deleted the man’s final oaths cried in agony and the wails of the plague victims in the room. Some stories didn’t need to be told.

With the blockade in place, there was talk of Exterminatus, of bombarding the world from space in the name of the Emperor. Such discussion was quickly quenched. Orbital bombardment would not be sanctioned: the damage to the planet’s precious architecture, as well as the loss of so many relics, would be the gravest sin. To use virus bombs would destroy all hope of resettlement for months to come, without guaranteeing the final deaths of the plague victims. To use cyclonic torpedoes would ravage the planet on the tectonic level—blasphemy beyond belief.

So Kathur was allowed to die.

Preparations were made on worlds elsewhere in Scarus Sector. The talk of outbreaks, quarantines and blockades became plans for invasion. Weeks passed before these preparations bore fruit, but for all its slowness, the Imperial war machine was a relentless beast. How did this happen?

The question raged through the orbiting fleet, and through the echelons of Imperial rule that were even allowed to become aware of the situation. Nothing made sense. No response seemed without myriad flaws. The shrineworld was precious beyond reckoning, yet had fallen without cause. Elsewhere, under the shadow of the Warmaster’s new crusade, all worlds falling to the plague had been besieged, assaulted, or otherwise corrupted by the mass presence of Archenemy vessels.

With Kathur, there had been nothing but silence.

At last, it was decided. Regiments of Imperial Guard were withdrawn from the greater war effort around the Eye of Terror, and assigned as the vanguard to a larger force of conquest. This blasphemy would not be tolerated. This desecration would not be allowed to stand.

In the heavens above the shrineworld, a small fleet of hulking ships drew close, falling into a restful orbit. The blockade of destroyers scattered to the warp, leaving their ward in the care of these new arrivals, the troopships of the Imperial Guard.

One other vessel of note broke from warp space and glided into orbit alongside these monumental troop transports: a strike cruiser of the Adeptus Astartes, black as death in the night, bearing the marble corvid sigil of the Raven Guard. The fleet drew close to the planet, casting colossal shadows as the great ships blocked out the sun on the world below.

The Kathur Reclamation was underway. The Imperium of Man had come to take back its holy world.

Among the silent cathedrals and towering monasteries on the surface, the months-dead population sensed the presence of the Emperor’s servants. They looked up, staring, waiting.

As the first troop transports came through the cloud cover, all over the planet a great cry was raised. The voices of fifty million dead men, women and children rose to the sky in a long and tortured chorus.

Words of Truth

The Eagle & Bolter

The Kathur Reclamation has commenced!

The following regiments of His Most Glorious Majesty’s Imperial Guard and supporting forces are committed to retaking the shrineworld from the hated Archenemy:

Vednikan 12th

Rifles 303rd

Uriah 25th

Kiridian Irregulars

Janus 6th

3rd Skarran Rangers

Hadris Rift 40th Armoured

Cadian 88th Mechanised Infantry

Half a company of the Emperor’s beloved Raven Guard Astartes Chapter.

Agents of His Divine Majesty’s Holy Inquisition—the Ordo Sepulturum.

Reports from Lord General Maggrig sent directly to the Eagle & Bolter cite that the initial troop landings are complete with minimal casualties and all resistance to date utterly destroyed. The main force of the Reclamation is due to arrive in several weeks.

The 25th Kiridian Irregulars are to be commended for their valiant defence last week of a vital communications tower in the capital city of Solthane. The Kiridians fought a heroic battle lasting several days, ultimately defeating the diseased dregs of the Kathur Planetary Defence Force (the so-called “Remnant”) assailing their position. Casualties were light.

The Janus 6th has pressed deep into enemy-held territory, securing a monastery dedicated to the Holy God-Emperor.

Even as we go to press, they crush all remnants of the PDF that seek to oust their successful beachhead in Solthane.

The Cadian 88th Mechanised Infantry, proudly boasting a captain bearing the Ward of Cadia medal for his valour in the opening engagements of the Thirteenth Black Crusade, is tasked in the coming days to assist in the Janusians’ defiant infiltration.

Forward, the Janus 6th!

The Emperor protects!

“The Janus 6th is dead.”

Vertain sat in his Sentinel’s creaking cockpit seat, monitoring the walker’s primitive scanner displays and staring out of the vision slits in the vehicle’s armoured front. Several hundred metres in the distance, through the buildings either side of the street, he saw the monastery burning. A pillar of orange rage and black smoke choked the sky, and he couldn’t even report it to those who needed to know.