“I’ve got them,” a voice crackled over the vox. “Throne, they’re in pieces.”
Horlan’s squad found the fifteen men of Valiant several hundred metres from the Chimeras, within a small enclosed street chapel made of inexpensive white stone that poorly imitated marble. A pilgrim trap, set up by fake relic traders, and now the tomb of almost twenty Guardsmen.
Valiant were indeed in pieces. Their bodies lay limbless and desecrated in a heaped pile, their armour and flesh alike showing evidence of blade wounds and las-fire.
“Sir,” Horlan was backing out of the chapel, voxing the captain. “All dead. The Remnant did this.”
“Damn it,” breathed Thade. “Mount up, we’re leaving. The Raven Guard is engaging the XIV Legion. Astartes or not, there’s no guarantee they can buy us much time.”
The Cadians boarded, and the ramps slammed closed as they made ready to move out. When the tanks rolled away, almost half of them remained behind, uncrewed and unmoving. Once they were underway, Thade joined Corrun in the front of the command Chimera.
“You know the way to link up with Colonel Lockwood?”
Corrun didn’t take his eyes from the vision slit, watching the buildings speed past.
“You know I do.”
“No harm in checking. Vox to the other drivers — when we arrive, we’re going to disembark and be back on board within thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds? What about survivors?”
Thade fixed him with a look that spoke volumes. “Just vox it, Corrun. Thirty seconds. We deploy, we reclaim the banner, and we go.”
Corrun complied, and the tanks trundled on. Through wide avenues and slender, winding streets; through abandoned barricades that had stood untouched since the planet’s Enforcers deserted them weeks before. All the while, the vox chattered with intermittent howls of static and indecipherable whispers.
“We’re getting close, sir,” Corrun said, pulling into an expansive concourse. The transport started to jostle, treads clawing the tank over mounds of the slain. “This was some battle…”
“I want to see for myself,” the captain said.
Thade climbed the short ladder to the cupola and pushed it open. He peered out of the hatch, pistol in hand, and activated his vox. The scene resembled a marketplace of detritus and abandoned traders’ carts. As the tanks slowed, Thade emerged to stand on the Chimera’s rain-slick roof, scanning the scene around. The bodies of slain Guardsmen were strewn across the marble-tiled ground, staining the mosaic patterns across the floor dark and unrecognisable with blood. The bodies of Remnant were spread in far greater numbers, punctuated here and there by the hulking form of a slain Traitor Astartes.
He took it in with a tactician’s eye. There was little order here, hardly any signs of how the battle had ebbed and flowed. It had been fast. The 88th had been encircled from the outset and cut down in the ranks they formed to repel the assault. Thade knew the colonel’s Sentinels would be out of sight, almost certainly destroyed as the enemy first came upon them before engaging the main force.
“Thade to 88th,” he said as his eyes sought every detail of the scene, drinking it all in. Faces he recognised, drawn in death, bodies and uniforms soaked in blood and the rain. “Be ready to deploy, weapons hot, on my order. Venator squad will go for the prize. Everyone else, stand ready.”
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 us
ed 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.
Thade rode his Chimera as he had stood on it before, atop the roof, both bolters drawn. He held the colonel’s weapon in his human hand, clenching his own pistol in his augmetic fist. No sign of the Death Guard — neither the advance elements already on the planet, nor the Herald’s own warriors who had landed hours before. There was still a chance the 88th had made it here first. The Raven Guard had presumably delayed the XIV Legion, but no contact had been established with Valar and his Astartes since they’d first engaged the Herald.
The tanks bumped and jostled as they crashed fallen curse victims. Thade kept his balance, voxing on the general channel.
“88th, deploy as ordered.” As he spoke the words, Thade holstered one of his pistols and crouched, gripping a handrail with one hand, firing with the bolter in the other.
It was as close to perfect as they were ever going to be able to do in the circumstances. With too many tanks and too little room to manoeuvre, the drivers wrenched their vehicles into a near-perfect performance of Opening the Eye. Tracks rumbled, gang-ramps slammed down, and the last surviving platoons of the Cadian 88th disembarked with rifles up and firing.
The horde of plague-slain was rent apart less than a minute after the first Chimera entered the grounds.
The Chimeras were locked and sealed, left parked in their star pattern. The 88th formed up. At the head of the formation, Thade drew both his pistols again.
“Thade to Zailen.”
“Here, sir,” came the vox-reply from the wounded man still aboard the Chimera. “Begin.”
Every vox-bead in the regiment clicked live. Zailen’s voice was strained and distorted, but all the more earnest for those facts as he spoke the Litany of Courage into Janden’s vox-caster.
“…forever in defiance, we stand true to Him on Earth…”
Thade spoke over the continuing litany, using it as a quiet backdrop as he voxed his orders. At the last, as his remaining squads stood to attention, steeling themselves before entering the monastery, Thade spoke again.
“We’ve got one chance to do this right. One chance to make sure every soul that died aboard the lost fleet, every soldier that died in the city today, and every citizen that died in the plague weeks ago… didn’t die in vain.
“One chance.” He let the words hang.
“We’re going into the catacombs. Then deeper, into the foundations. Then, if we can, we’re going deeper still. The XIV Legion killed this world, this holiest of planets, and we failed to make them pay. Something under this monastery has been calling to the Herald. The Herald has answered. He comes now. We have one chance to beat him to the prize he seeks, one chance to kill whatever he’s come to find. You know what we seek: the Heresy-era battleship Aggrieved. You know what we risk: everything and nothing, for all we have left to give is the breath we draw, and the blood in our veins. This is our one last chance to stand together before we die how we knew we always would — in service to Cadia and the God-Emperor.”
“For Home and the Throne!” the soldiers chorused. Zailen’s recital of the Litany of Courage continued, muted but audible, in the background of the general vox channel.
“For Home and the Throne,” Thade echoed. “The Emperor protects. Now move out.”
The monastery was cold and dead, which surprised no one. Yet the silence was still unnerving. Booted footfalls echoed strangely through the cavernous halls, all sound bouncing from the skeletal architecture while stern-faced and disfigured statues of saints, angels and Astartes peered down from their alcoves.
Thade had given the four remaining members of Dead Man’s Hand a choice: remain outside with the tanks or abandon their Sentinels and join the rest of the regiment. To a man, they’d voted to remain in their walkers. Thade had given them a final salute before entering the monastery’s towering double doors. The regiment knew the chances of the Sentinels surviving out there alone were too slim to contemplate. Only the fact every man knew he was marching to almost certain death under the monastery prevented them from seeking to dissuade the walker pilots.
“I’ll let them die how they wish,” Thade had said. “They’ll kill more of the Archenemy’s host if they’re sat in their Sentinels.”
“We need everyone that can still carry a weapon!” Tionenji insisted.
“Four pistols will make no difference,” Thade shook his head. “They stay and die how they wish to die. They stay and fight however they choose. This conversation is over.”
Now the 88th advanced through the ruined cathedral, the occasional gunshot blasting out to silence a stray plague-slain that shambled through the empty halls. Over the vox, Zailen spoke on, now reciting the Litany of Defiance in the Face of the End. His voice grew fainter as time pa
ssed.
“The vox-link is getting weaker. And choppy. I can barely hear Zailen,” Darrick said.
Thade nodded. He didn’t have it in him to play along with the lie. Neither did Master Sergeant Jevrian, but he didn’t stay silent on the matter.
“He’s breathing his last, joker. Don’t shine it up for smiles.” The Kasrkin leader tossed aside an empty glass vial, and tensed his hand into a fist a few times. “That’s better.”
“Did you just gland something?” Darrick asked, his irritation rising. Cadian regulation discouraged all use of combat drugs, and Thade was especially hard on those he found indulging. With the temporary boost to reflexes and strength from most combat narcotics, came unreliability and dangerous side-effects. Stimm abuse might be common in other regiments, but it was rare in the Shock.
“Shut your whine-hole.”
“Go to hell, stimm junkie,” Darrick snapped.
“Ban,” Thade turned to him and stopped walking. “Is that frenzon?”
“Like it matters if it is?”
There was a click and the nearby hum of a charged weapon. Jevrian flicked his glance to the left, where Commissar Tionenji was holding his laspistol to Ban’s temple.
“Be a good little soldier and answer the captain, you shaved ape,” Tionenji warned. Thade shared a look with the commissar. He was pleased; this was almost the first thing Tionenji had said in the hours since their confrontation, and the first signs of the atmosphere thawing between them. Still, this was hardly ideal…
“Naw, it’s not frenzon,” Jevrian growled.
“This isn’t some penal legion, and you’re not a Catachan jungle thug who gets to gland combat drugs that are forbidden in the Primer.” Thade was as close to angry as Darrick and the others had ever seen him.
“Is this a Ten-Ninety, sir?” asked the commissar.
“That depends. Is that frenzon, Jevrian?”
“A Ten-Ninety? For glanding stimms? I already said it wasn’t bloody frenzon.”
“So what is it?” Thade asked. “I won’t have that crap in my regiment, Kasrkin. We’re all better than that.”
[Imperial Guard 07] - Cadian Blood Page 21
