Aaron Aaron Dembski-Bowden: Cadian Blood

Corrun drove through the mess of dead soldiers, the Chimera’s treads hissing as they splashed through the thin, orange fluid of rainwater and blood. There it was. The banner. Thade’s gaze fixed on the fallen banner atop a small mound of slaughtered soldiers, the fabric itself stained and soaked through.

A burned-out husk of a Chimera, as black as Thade’s own, sizzled in the rainfall. The nuance was not lost on Thade: it was a blunt premonition of things to come.

And the banner was on the ground only twenty metres from it. Ragged, ruined and filthy. It lay like a blanket across the body of the last man to carry it, its rain-darkened surface distorted by the lumps of the corpse it covered.

“Corrun, kill the engine. Venator squad, deploy. The banner is by Colonel Lockwood’s transport, twenty steps north. Go.”

The men spilled out.

“Courage, Adamant, Defiance and Liberation,” Thade named the squads he knew were suffering with low ammo. “Deploy and scavenge for what you need.”

The other squads deployed. Thade watched them taking magazines from the dead. His attention remained mostly on Kel and his Whiteshields. They didn’t balk at the duty. That was something, at least.

“Can you see Lockwood?” voxed Darrick.

“Don’t ask,” Thade replied. He recognised Lockwood’s corpse by the silver trim on the charred corpse’s shoulder armour. It was lying half out of the destroyed Chimera’s turret hatch, a pistol and sword on the transport’s roof out of reach of its blackened, outstretched hands.

Thade moved to the edge of the roof and leaped down to the ground. His boots splashed filthy water in a spray as he landed.

“Sir,” crackled the vox to the percussion of clanking feet in the background.

“Copy, Greer.” Then he swallowed. Greer was dead; he’d seen him die.

“This is Vertain, sir.”

“My apologies. Interference and… Thade here. Go.”

“Enemy sighted. We’ll need to make this fast. Looks like plague-slain coming down the avenue to the west.”

“Numbers?”

“Hundreds. We’ve got a few minutes, they’re just shambling.”

Thade ran over to the wrecked Chimera, near where his command squad were reverently lifting the banner, squeezing the water from the thick fabric and furling it for retrieval. He climbed the side ladder to the tank’s roof, kneeling to pick up Colonel Lockwood’s bolt pistol.

Lockwood watched him perform this indignity, rapt with an eyeless stare, blackened face locked in a wide-jawed and silent scream.

“Need the clips, sir?” Tasoll asked as he finished rolling the banner up. Thade didn’t answer. He looted Lockwood’s burned corpse the way the other squads were looting their slain brethren, adding Lockwood’s unspent bolter magazines to his own dwindling supply. Using a spare holster from his webbing, he strapped the colonel’s pistol to his other thigh.

Thade moved back to his Chimera alongside Venator. Throne, did he ever want to leave. It wasn’t that the carnage-rich site of this last stand unnerved him. It was that he didn’t want to join the rest of the regiment here.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said to his squad. He voxed the same words to everyone still alive in the regiment once he was back on board.

Vertain, maintain the mobile perimeter. “We’re rolling.”

“Copy, sir.”

Darrick voxed again. “Private channel. Horlarn said you took the colonel’s gun.”

Thade glanced down at the second bolt pistol at his hip. It was ornate for Cadian wargear, edged in shining bronze with an ivory grip. The whole regiment knew the story behind how Lockwood had come by it. Like Thade’s silver medal, it was a point of pride for the 88th—one of their symbols.

“I took it, yes.”

“Good,” Darrick said, and left it at that.

Thade gripped the overhead handrail and moved to where Janden and Tasoll were cleaning the banner as best they were able. Zailen was near them both, on his back, looking up at the roof. His breathing came in doglike pants through purpling lips. Thade clicked his fingers to get Tasoll’s attention, and flicked a glance at Zailen. Tasoll shook his head.

“Zailen,” Thade said, crouching by the wounded man.

“Cap,” he said. Blood flecked his lips. Not a good sign.

“I’m sorry, but the formal record of the Reclamation is going to say how you got gutshot just to have some time off.”

Zailen managed a grin, blinking his eyes three times to focus. He was doped-up nicely, Thade knew, but the fact he wasn’t screaming with the pain of the belly wound was the best evidence of that.

“Darrick already used that line on me, sir.”

“Well, forget Darrick. I outrank him. My threats mean more.” He turned to Tasoll and Janden, watching them rinse the banner, fighting an uphill battle to dry it out. The decking floor of the transport was wet with the bloody water they had squeezed from the flag so far. Thade ordered Trooper Laun, who was performing a whispered Rite of Maintenance on his lasrifle, to sweep the water out using spare uniforms from the supply trunks under the seating benches.

Tasoll fingered a hole in the banner. It was a las-burn, scorching the surrounding fabric black.

“No respect, eh?”

“Hold it up,” Thade said. “Let’s see the damage.”

The banner’s background was quartered grey and black, with the edges decked in silver rope. The centre symbol was the traditional emblem representing the Cadian Gate, an angular arch detailed in silver thread, with the fortress-world itself in the centre. A golden corona framed the top of the arch. Beneath it were the words “CADIAN 88th—FOR HOME AND THE THRONE, FOR CADIA AND THE EMPEROR”.

A smaller banner hung attached to the bottom right corner—the banner of the Kasrkin of Kasr Vallock who were traditionally seconded to the regiment. It mirrored the larger crest on the main banner, though the Cadian gate was done in dark grey instead of silver, and it had an additional message: “NEVER FALL, NEVER SURRENDER, NEVER OUTNUMBERED, NEVER OUTGUNNED”.

It was, by the standards of most Imperial Guard banners, rather muted and subtle.

It was also rained, scored by a dozen small holes from las-fire, ripped in several places, discoloured and stinking from both bloodstains and rainwater, and missing most of the silver rope that had decorated the edges. It had seen many better days, and few worse ones.

“Still looks proud, though,” Tasoll said, guessing the captain’s thoughts easily enough.

“For Home and the Throne,” Thade smiled, then turned to Zailen again. “You’re not getting out of work just yet.”

“Fine by me… it means I’m still getting paid.” Zailen smiled. His face was so pale and drawn he looked like a skull. Thade refrained from mentioning that to him.

“We’ll lock you in here,” the captain said, “with Janden’s vox-caster.”

“I understand, sir.”

Thade nodded. Zailen wouldn’t survive an hour, but at least he’d die doing his duty.

“Coming up on the monastery,” Corrun called over his shoulder.

“Copy. Dead Man’s Hand, any problems ahead?”

“Looks clear, sir,” Vertain voxed. “Clear all the way to the monastery’s grounds.”

“Let’s pray it stays that way.”

It didn’t.

The plague-slain were out in force that night. A massive horde of the walking dead milled around the front grounds of the monastery; some quiet and still, others weeping and raving into the night sky.

The 88th hit them with the force of a thunderclap. Seventeen Chimeras tore into the garden grounds, laser turrets wailing and chopping the dead to pieces. Heavy bolters on the front of the transports—cautiously unused for so much of the campaign—opened up with barking chatter, no longer silenced by Reclamation protocol. The explosive bolts scythed the plague-slain down in droves, and filled the cold air with sprays of even colder gore.