Aaron Aaron Dembski-Bowden - Cadian Blood

The Cadians never saw the inquisitor’s death. By the time Caius had obeyed the terrible command and plunged his aquila-hilted blade into his own belly, the Guardsmen had opened fire on the daemon.

“Have you come to bring me back into the False Emperor’s light?” Grotesquely, it spoke with Seth’s voice even though it no longer wore his features, masked as they were under its reformed power armour. “To show me my sins in the light of your dead god?”

Something like that, Thade thought as his broken sword fell in a chop, and a hundred rifles fired in anger.

All told, the final battle between the survivors of the Cadian 88th Mechanised Infantry and the daemon responsible for the Kathurite Scourge lasted under one minute, yet it cost the lives of forty-six loyal Cadian-born servants of the Throne.

The volleys of las-fire did almost nothing to the creature, and it rampaged through the bridge, its claws tearing soldiers limb from limb, while it paused only to vomit acid on those too slow or too proud to retreat.

Thade and Horlan, both armed with ruined chainswords that sported stilled teeth, ran in to engage the daemon. They were joined by the wounded Ban Jevrian with his malfunctioning and half-snapped power sabre, and twenty men using their pistols and bayonets. With Thade was Rax, leaping at its master’s side.

This swarm assault also did almost nothing, except cost lives. Horlan was decapitated by a sweep of the daemon’s claw. Thade was saved from the same fate at the last moment by a grinding metal hand blocking the falling claw’s arc.

Osiron, his back-mounted powerpack and additional servo-arm sparking as its joints gave way under the pressure, held the creature at bay long enough for Thade to get to his feet again.

The tech-priest’s last action in the battle was to swing his two-handed axe with all his machine-enhanced strength, ramming it solidly into the daemon’s body. This, at last, did something. The blade bit hard, snagging within the beast’s spine, dropping it to its knees. Its return strike smashed Osiron to the side of the chamber, where he would die several minutes later from blood loss and internal haemorrhaging.

Renewed las-fire slashed into the prone daemon, every beam now carving its burn lines into the fatty flesh of the thing’s face. Thade came at it from the side, both pistols hammering until their clips ran dry. Rax leapt at the horror, its jaws ripping head-sized chunks of spoiled meat from the beast’s bones.

It was weakening, but hardly out of the fight, even without the use of its legs.

“Thade!” Commissar Tionenji cried as he ran at the creature, hacking into its neck with his slender chainblade. His own strike was a distraction, as the sword he’d taken from Inquisitor Caius’ body flashed through the air in Thade’s direction. The captain caught it, reversed it in his hands, and plunged it two-handed into the daemon’s neck. Black blood flowed from a legion of wounds now.

And it still wouldn’t die.

There was no glorious final blow, though the soldiers of the 88th—those that survived—would say over the years that it was Thade’s last strike which assuredly saw the daemon dead. The truth was altogether less glorious, and because Taan Darrick was involved, consisted of much more swearing than the saga would say.

“Run, you idiots!” Darrick cried from his position by the side consoles with the remains of his squad.

Thade and the others in their desperate melee saw a rain of black incoming, clattering all around.

Grenades.

As Thade threw himself aside, his world exploded in light.

“Let this world rot.” The Herald’s voice was a savage whisper. He still stood at the gates of the monastery, listening as the psychic death scream faded from his sixth sense. “I am done with this place.”

The Death Guard formed around their lord and master, unsure of his meaning.

“We are leaving, Great One?” a plague-ridden Astartes asked.

Typhus chuckled. The things living within his windpipe writhed at this rare mistreatment.

“Yes. I have real business to attend to beyond this petty distraction. Tell me, do you remember Brother-Sergeant Arlus?”

“No, lord,” replied the closest Death Guard.

“Do any of you?”

“I do, lord. I was Brother Menander. I served Arlus in life. We were Seventh Company. He was greatly blessed by the Grandfather when we made war upon Terra.”

“He was. But he squandered his gift. And this shall be the last time I allow the whining of distant fools to distract me from my duty. Come. We return to Terminus Est !”

“And then, lord?”

“And then… to Cadia. Take me to the Warmaster.”

“Medic!”

Thade knelt by Osiron, flinching back as sparks flared from the tech-priest’s sundered body armour.

“Sir,” Tasoll looked awkward as he held his narthecium kit, staring down at the torn red robe now revealing an entirely augmetic body. “W-what should I do? He’s not even bleeding blood.”

“It… is a synthesised compound…” Osiron wheezed “…of haemolubricant qualities… and…”

“Shut up, you idiot,” Thade looked at the oily black fluid covering his hands. “Just shut up, and tell us what to do!”

Tech-priest Enginseer Bylam Osiron said nothing more.

Amongst the stinking fallout and moans of the injured, Commissar Tionenji leaned against the door arch leading from the bridge. He caught his breath away from the men, not willing to let them see how exhausted he was. It was his duty to be inspiring at all times. Not for Commissar Tionenji were the aches and woes of mortal tiredness. The men shouldn’t see such things.

A smile crossed his lips. He was alive. Life! After all they had witnessed and all they had endured.

He was a man whose intelligence was both ruthless and restless. Already he planned stratagems for the remains of the regiment to survive on Kathur long enough to greet the main Reclamation forces. The incident with Thade and his command team pulling their weapons on a commissar would have to be addressed, but…

“Hey.” Ban Jevrian of the Kasrkin limped up to the commissar, his right trouser leg soaked with red. “One hell of a fight.”

“Greetings, master sergeant,” Tionenji grinned—all white teeth set in his dark face. “The Emperor smiles on us, I think.”

“Oh, you think?”

The knife came from nowhere. One moment Jevrian had been leaning against the wall with Tionenji, cradling his broken arm and favouring his bad leg. The next moment, Jevrian’s fist was at the commissar’s ear and his hand-length boot knife was sticking clean through Tionenji’s skull.

Blood barely even had time to spurt before the commissar dropped to the decking. Jevrian reclaimed his knife several seconds later, wincing as he needed to bend down. His leg really did ache like an army of bastards.

“The Emperor smiles upon me,” Jevrian raised himself back up, wiping his knife, the blade clearly stamped with the regiment’s insignia, on the sleeve of his fatigues.

“But you? I doubt he’d piss on you if you were on fire.”

Jevrian returned to the main area. Taan Darrick met his eyes from across the bloody bridge, and the Kasrkin officer nodded once.

In the earpiece of every soldier still standing, a single vox-click sounded. Several men nodded. Some smiled. Most pretended not to hear it, but only one never knew what it meant.

“What was that?” asked Thade, tapping his vox-bead.

“Nothing, sir,” Darrick replied. “Just a glitch.”

Twenty-seven days later, the Reclamation fleet arrived in full force.

The Herald’s fleet was gone—had been gone for weeks—leaving only the faintest echoes in the warp to mark their departure. They left a dead world behind them, marking their failure.