Aaron Aaron Dembski-Bowden: Cadian Blood

Thade’s men had been firing from the moment the enemy entered the tunnel, but while rag-clad cultists died in droves, their armoured overseer barely flinched at the hail of laser fire glancing from its carapace. It finished its scan of the room, sighting the mortal shouting orders. That was the one that had to die first.

The Traitor Astartes fired once as it advanced, barely pausing to aim, unleashing the shot that stole Thade’s right arm from the elbow. The Cadian dropped his sword, clutched what remained of his arm, and hit the ground hard. Through the agony of his bolt-destroyed forearm, he could still hear his men crying out, calling his name…

“Captain Thade?”

He awoke with a jolt as the dream broke. His adjutant, Corrun, stood at the side of his cot. The other man’s expression was serious. “News from the Sentinels.”

Thade sat up. His uniform was crumpled from a restless sleep, and his body armour was neatly stacked on the ground by his bedroll. The 88th was camped for the night in an abandoned museum, sleeping fitfully amongst a thousand minor relics. Here, a golden figurine of a Raven Guard Astartes on a small marble pedestal—shaped by a minor acolyte of Kathur many thousands of years before. There, a cabinet of trinkets once worn by the first of Kathur’s faithful.

The relics didn’t impress Thade. A pilgrim trap, nothing more: something to keep the visiting devotees busy while they filled the planetary coffers.

His head still ached from the day-long planning meeting with the lord general earlier, and he let his thoughts clear while he sipped from the standard-issue canteen by his pillow. The museum’s air tasted of dust.

The water didn’t help much. The chemical compounds used to purify fluid rations left a coppery aftertaste on his tongue. Even knowing all the water was purified aboard the ships in orbit didn’t help morale. The Guard were fighting on a tomb world. The last thing they needed was water that tasted like blood. It was as if the death on Kathur touched everything that came to the planet even after the plague had burned itself out.

“How long was I asleep?” Thade asked, looking around the half-full chamber where thirty soldiers still slept on.

“Two hours,” Corrun said, knowing it had been the only two hours Thade had slept in the last fifty.

“Felt like two minutes.”

“Life in the Guard, eh? Sleep when you’re dead.”

“I hear that.” Thade stretched, not altogether thrilled at the clicks in his back as he arched it. Cadian stoicism was one thing, but… “Has anyone shot the Munitorum officer responsible for giving out these bedrolls?”

Corrun chuckled at his captain’s banter. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“That’s a crime. I may do it myself Thade was already lacing his boots. “Brief me now. What has Dead Man’s Hand found?”

“It’s just Trooper Farl. Vertain’s taken the others closer to the monastery. Vox is down.”

“Vox is down. Throne, I’m sick of that refrain.”

“Farl returned with a message.”

“They’ve sighted primary threats,” said Thade, not a doubt in his mind. Few other reasons would be severe enough to split the Sentinel squadron.

“They’ve intercepted vox traffic that suggests primary threats close to their position, yes.”

“Listen to you, dancing around the issue.”

Corrun grinned. It was a grin Thade was very familiar with, and usually preceded something cocky at best, rash at worst. “Didn’t want to get your hopes up, sir.”

“How decent of you. So what have they got? Please tell me it’s more than intercepted vox.”

“Just the vox. But Farl’s got a recording, and it… Well, come listen to it.”

The captain buckled his helmet, pulling the chin strap tight. Embedded on the front was his medal—the medal he was known for. An eagle-winged gateway marked by a central skull, glinting in the dim light of pre-dawn coming through the stained glass window. The Ward of Cadia, flashing silver on the black blast helmet.

“Ready to stare into the Eye itself, sir.” Corrun said.

Thade smiled as he fastened the last buckle on his flak armour jacket, and strapped on his weapon belt. A heavy calibre bolt pistol hung against his left hip. Against his right thigh rested an ornate chainsword, its iron finish polished to chrome brightness, with acid-etched runes in stylised High Gothic along the blade’s sides. To say a blade like that was worth a fortune would be to underestimate by no small degree. Lord generals wielded blades of poorer quality.

“Is Rax ready?” the captain asked, hope evident in his voice.

“No, sir, not yet.”

“Ah, well. Let’s go see what Dead Man’s Hand has found.”

“Count the Seven,” the vox recording crackled. The words were broken by distortion, but clear enough to be sure. Captain Thade’s squads of the Cadian 88th, a full three hundred men and thirty support vehicles, moved out ten minutes later. The potential sighting of primary threats necessitated nothing less than a full response.

Dawn wasn’t far away, though even in the daylight Solthane remained grey. The funeral pyres of weeks before still blackened the sky with dark cloud cover that refused to dissipate, and the habitation spires were discoloured by the smoke that until so recently had choked the skies.

With hulls the colour of iron and charcoal—a drabness that matched their surroundings—Chimera troop transports rumbled four abreast down city avenues, treads grinding precious mosaics into shards beneath the weight of the tanks. When the erratic city layout required divergent routes, the troop carriers navigated narrow streets and alleys in single file.

Occasional sniper fire from PDF remnant forces was answered with squads deployed to sweep and cleanse buildings by the side of the road, and orders to catch up when they could. Vox contact was a joke, but Thade wasn’t worried. He trusted his men to do their jobs and get back in line without a hitch. They were no strangers to urban warfare. No Cadian was.

The convoy rode on towards the burning monastery, towards Dead Man’s Hand, and towards primary-class threats that might or might not actually exist. The atmosphere within each of the tanks was an unsmiling mix of professional readiness and a muted sense of grim anticipation. No one wanted to engage primary threats unless the odds were heavily stacked in the Cadians’ favour, but duty was duty. The Shock knew it was better they handled this than any of the other regiments garrisoned in Solthane.

The Janus 6th was a green unit. If the intercepted vox traffic wasn’t just twisted propaganda or vox-ghosts, then they were already dead. Their ambitious assignment to hold the monastery, the great Shrine of the Emperor’s Unending Majesty, was over almost as soon as it had begun.

Thade focused, rolling his shoulders in his matt-black flak armour and checking his chainsword for the eighth or ninth time. It was almost an hour since he’d woken and the last vestiges of the memory dream were finally fading from his mind. He hated to remember Cadia. Remembering home led his thoughts into how he and his men should be back there even now, and to the Eye with this upstart bastard of a lord general that demanded Cadian units be withdrawn from the front line of the Despoiler’s Crusade to help with his little shrineworld reclamation.

The familiar rattling of the armoured personnel carrier soothed his thoughts. His right hand, gloved in black, whirred with soft mechanical purrs as he closed his fingers into a fist. He felt the rough mechanics of his augmetic wrist and knuckle-joints rotating, hearing the low buzzing clicks between the infrequent metallic judders of the Chimera’s interior.