a"Thadea's pulling us back. Wea're running.a"

a"We dona't run.a"

a"Wea're running. Captaina's orders. When you wear the same silver on your helmet that he does, Ia'll start giving a d.a.m.n about what you think, master sergeant.a"

a"We never run,a" Jevrian almost growled. Talking to the Kasrkin sergeant was like talking to a bear in an insecta's black armour. But he was right. The Cadian Shock didna't run. It was a point of pride, and had been for ten thousand years. The Lists of Remembrance were filled with hundreds of regiments that had been destroyed rather than flee before the Archenemy.

a"We never run,a" Jevrian said again. His hulking form promised pain. He bristled with firepower.

a"No? We ran two months ago,a" Taan said softly. a"We ran on Cadia.a"

Jevrian had no response to that. He turned back to his strike team and raised a hand, closing it into a fist a- the signal for forming up.

a"Cruor, weapons hot. Leta's do what the hero says.a"

a"Immediate fallback to the Chimeras.a"

Thadea's words had spread through the squads with the speed and fervour Osirona's warning had only fifteen minutes before. The 88th was breaking orders and running. It stuck uncomfortably in many throats, but none of the officers argued with the captaina's appraisal of the situation.

a"If we stay here, we die. If we die, we fail to meet our objectives anyway. The Ja.n.u.s 6th is finished. Our orders were to reinforce them, or hold this monastery if the Ja.n.u.sians fell. Our numbers make that an impossibility now wea've come face to face with the reality. Immediate fallback to the Chimeras.a"

Every squad but one obeyed this order. Thadea's own didna't. The captain wasna't leaving until he saw the truth of Setha's proclamation. a"Traitorsa" was a word that covered a mult.i.tude of potential sinners. He wanted to know for sure.

a"Open those doors,a" Thade pointed at the set of double doors with his deactivated chainsword, but shook his head when Zailen raised his plasma gun. a"No, Zailen. I want you ready to fire when the doors open. Seth, if you please.a"

The psyker clutched his dark grey leather jacket tighter around his wasted frame. A hand gloved in the same grey leather reached out, fingers splayed, towards the great doors. The temperature dropped a few degrees. The Cadiansa' breath steamed from their lips.

The doors shook once. Twice. Dust rained from the surrounding archway, as if the stone angels were shedding powdered skin. On the third shake, one of the angels a- a winged representation of Saint Kathur himself a- toppled to shatter on the red carpet.

a"Not a good omen,a" remarked Janden. Thadea's scowl silenced him.

a"I have a grip,a" Seth breathed through clenched teeth. His power over the doors was visible: an ice-blue sheen of psychic frost was forming where the psyker gripped the portal with his mind.

Ten guns raised in readiness. a"Do it,a" said Thade.

Seth did it. The double doors roared from their hinges in a howl of psychic wind. The soldiers felt ice crystals tinkling on their armour as the gust blew back to them.

Thadea's men were scattered, some behind pillars, others kneeling, two lying down on their fronts a- but each one was ready to fire. Each one was watching what was through the door.

A hundred and fifty dead. Two hundred. The plague-slain stood in a staggered horde a- a ma.s.s of corpses that had no right to be on their feet. Heads bowed, they stood in silence, facing a towering figure. In that first instant, the scene poured into Thadea's mind, making him think of a blasphemous congregation, a church of the dead and the d.a.m.ned.

The dead turned as the doors fell inward. Hundreds of rotting faces, the faces of the faithless, stared at the eleven soldiers. The imposing figure on the other side of the horde, some hundred metres from the Cadians, raised a scab-encrusted bolter.

Thadea's men were firing in a relentless barrage before the doors even crashed to rest, but the towering figurea's voice was a wet burble rising horribly over the stuttering cracks of las-fire. A single bang from the creaturea's bolter ended Etana's life, as the round detonated within the troopera's chest.

The Cadians fell back, rifles streaming out death, the true death, for the plague-slain that shambled after them. Thade grinned despite everything, because he finally had it confirmed. Firing his bolt pistol with both hands, he yelled into his vox.

a"Captain Thade, Cadian 88th! Contact, contact, contact! Primary threat sighted!a"

The Traitor Astartes stalked through the shambling crowd, parting the dead before its ma.s.sive bulk like a ship cutting the seas. Its bolter barked over and over, but its aim was thrown off by the Cadian lasbolts smacking into its ornate helm. The rounds glanced aside doing no real damage, but they interfered with the archaic targeting systems in the creaturea's helmet displays.

a"Count the Seven a" it burbled. Green ooze sizzled from its speaker grille. It seemed to be laughing and choking up acid, all at once.

The Cadians fell back faster, lasguns flashing angry and hot. Thade listened for his enginseera's acknowledgement, then spoke back.

a"The Death Guard, Osiron. The XIV Legion is here.a"

CHAPTER IV.

Revelations Reclamation Headquarters, outside Solthane It was five hours since the retreat, and Setha's head still pounded as if his skull was shrinking around his brain.

Setha's camp was pitched several dozen metres from the neat and ordered rows of the 88tha's communal tents. His thoughts would not leave the memory of the monastery. Hea'd heard the voice, screaming in silence, even hours before entering the shrine itself a- a distinct, yet distant presence within the cathedral district. Unknown, unseen, almost unheard.

He coughed again, violently enough to bring the coppery tang of blood to his tongue. Trying to focus was an exercise in torment, listening to the sounds of the camp all around, shutting out the after-echo of the voice that still ghosted through his senses. Each time he quested after it with his thoughts, it dispersed into nothingness. Seth was no longer sure if he was hearing the voice now, or merely hearing it echo through his memory. Reaching out for it psychically was as impossible as catching mist in his closed hands.

The thousand-strong Cadian regiment, of which Thade commanded a full third, was camped with the main bulk of Guard forces in the colossal plateau chosen for the initial landings. Making planetfall outside the capital city had been the only option. Most of Kathur was covered in the open ocean, and what little land ma.s.s existed was encrusted with towering stone cathedral-cities. But here the Guard had found gra.s.slands expansive enough to accommodate the Reclamation forces tasked with retaking the northern hemisphere.

Tens of thousands of Guard soldiers had made the initial planetfall. Over half of them were still coming and going around the grounded troop landers that now served as Reclamation headquarters. A hundred thousand tents and hastily-erected communal buildings spread out from the cl.u.s.tered landers like a refugee city.

And this was just the spearhead. The forward force, sent to establish an Imperial presence. The main bulk of the Reclamation forces were still in warp transit.

The aerial view was breathtaking. Seth had seen it from a Valkyrie only a week before. The Ja.n.u.sians had been gone even by then, their animal hide tents dismantled as the regiment went deep into the city. The landers of the Vednikan 12th Rifles had made planetfall first, and they sat now in tidy formation, their ma.s.sive hulls casting shadows on the grey tents below. Ash residue in the air had darkened the Vednikansa' pristine white tents within hours of touching down. The serpent symbol of Vednika, proudly embroidered on each tent in black, was barely visible now.

To the east and west of the Vednikans were the 303rd Uriah and the 25th Kiridian Irregulars, respectively. The base camp of the former was a husk of the sprawl it had been on the days after planetfall, with only a handful of empty tents left while the regiment was engaged in retaking Solthanea's power station district to the far north. The latter, in typical Kiridian militia style, resembled exactly what it was: a rushed camp set up almost at random as squads spilled from their landers and pitched their tents wherever they chose. Seth had smiled slightly upon seeing it. He was a student of other Imperial cultures a- a personal pa.s.sion a- and knew something of the Kiridian military mentality. Their tradition was that every tent had to have a squad banner outside, and that each banner must face the regimental commandera's pavilion.

Other than that one rule, their camp was as chaotic as can be imagined, as comrades sought to pitch tents near one another with no regard for order.

The Hadris Rift 40th Armoured showed no such disorganisation. Ordered rows of tents stood in ranks a little way from the tank garages. Orbital landers had brought down the structures almost whole, leaving enginseers and servitors to reinforce the buildings with armour plating against the ashy wind.

The camp of the 3rd Skarran Rangers was Guard standard. Billets and tents in an ordered spread around the few landers that remained, with regimental leaders stationed in the smaller staff tents away from the troops. Unlike the Kiridians, the Skarrans had left ample room for supply dropships in their formation, while the Irregulars were forced to land their supplies a kilometre from their camp and drive the crates in on cargo loaders and lifter Sentinels.

Setha's violet eyes drank in the scene, his gaze finally sweeping to the Cadian contingent. Tents in the black and grey of urban camouflage stood out stark against the dry gra.s.s of the plateau. A single lander punctuated the ordered ranks of tents a- a behemoth of a craft with its swollen hold capable of holding over a hundred Chimeras. Patches of gra.s.s were quickly slabbed over with rockcrete for efficient supply drop landing sites. Each of the 88tha's three divisions were separated by a short distance, with the soldiersa' tents in rows near central communal mess buildings and officer barracks a- the latter of which were landed from the troop ships in a matter similar to the garages of the Hadris Rift 40th. The Cadians used their great lander, Unyielding Defiance, as a fully-equipped garage for their vehicles.

Seth blinked, bringing his focus back to the present. The great bronze bell in the hangar bay of Unyielding Defiance rang out in the distance, signalling muster for Major Craycea's elements of the 88th. Wiping his lips with a bloodstained handkerchief, the psyker looked back at the tarot cards laid out on the small wooden table. A pa.s.sing Chimera shook the tent and set the table rocking. Setha's powers earned him distance from the rank and file, but a military camp was never a noiseless place. It took all the psykera's meditative powers to focus sometimes. Blocking out the noise of rumbling tanks, clashing tools, marching boots, drilling men, live fire exercises The very air tasted of iron and machine oil His focus had drifted again. Seth retrained his attention on the tarot cards spread before him, seeing each at first with his natural eyes. They were simple, plain white pieces of durable card, devoid of decoration on the back, bare of art on the front. The sensitive nerves behind Setha's eyes pulsed with the genesis of a migraine a- a bad one, he could tell, ita'd likely be one of the ones that left him almost blind for hours. Smiling skullishly, he whispered thanks to the Emperor. The pain was a message to pay heed to his duties, and it helped him focus on matters of the internal, not the chaos of the camp. A timely blessing.

He touched the first naked card with an ungloved fingertip.

A body, browned with age and blackened in death, sits locked within a great throne of gold, steel and bra.s.s. The corpsea's mouth is open, projecting a silent scream that echoes through the unseen layers of the universe. Before the howling cadaver, a legion of angels kneels, crying violet tears.

The G.o.d-Emperor, Inversed.

Seth was gone from his body now, deep within the tarot reading, but maintained a faint connection to his physical form. He sensed its muscles lock tight, a rictus forming across his own lips that he could neither feel nor control. A warm tickle on his chin a- he was drooling already, and that was bad a- threatened to violate his immersion and drag him back to the world of flesh, blood and bone. A seconda's refocusing; a twist of mental strength, like a contortionist escaping his bonds.

The temperature in his skull lowered again. Soothing. Very soothing. A mercy.

Unsurprisingly, the G.o.d-Emperor was an auspicious card in the Cadian Tarot. When drawn from the deck, it bespoke of warp travel, of discovery, of hope in the cold depths of s.p.a.ce. Inversed, when drawn upside down, it foretold of the warpa's malign touch infecting the servants of the Imperium. A hopeless war. Death from the far reaches of s.p.a.ce.

Seth returned enough of his consciousness to touch the second card, unpleasantly racked by the fast-growing headache. He tasted blood. Was he bleeding from his nose? Already?

An eye. The Eye. A wound in reality, an open scar in s.p.a.ce where the bruise-purple and blood-red eye of Chaos leered into the galaxy. The stars die around the Eye: some fading into cold blackness, others bursting in white hot torment. The Eye stares dully, as it always does, a malicious glare with little emotion beyond distant hate. But the nebula flares, tendrils spreading across s.p.a.ce. The Eye has opened.

The Great Eye.

Seth lifted trembling fingers from the card, sparing himself the vision. An uncomfortable constriction in his throat coupled with the flood of bitter saliva in his mouth threatened a violent purge of his stomach soon.

The Great Eye The Archenemya's heart and the bastion of his strength. To draw this card was to foretell of war against Chaos, or an amplification of a current conflict. Specifically, it foretold that the conflict would be familiar to those born on Cadia, for the Great Eye was something they lived with each day of their lives.

Setha's queasiness arose from where the card had been drawn. Directly after the G.o.d-Emperor inversed? The second and fourth cards were drawn as signifiers, bringing clarity to the ones preceding them. Dark, dark portents.

Something will intensify this war. Something black and hateful from the warp.

Seth touched the third card, unaware of the b.l.o.o.d.y drool pinking his teeth.

The galaxy burns. A figure stands in ancient armour, wreathed in a billion screaming souls that encircle him like mist. In its right gauntlet, Holy Terra blackens and crumbles. A demiG.o.da's blood drips from the talons. In the dim reaches of the vision, almost an afterthought, a distant howling light fades into darkness and silence. The figure smiles for the first time in ten thousand years.

The Despoiler, Inversed.

The vision pained him, but Seth quenched the agony with cold logic. The card is inversed. The psychic resonance a- the carda's a"arta" a- is not the vital factor here. He caught his breath, removing the fingertips from its gentle rest against the blank card.

When drawn, the Despoiler card is the bane of life, the truest indicator of coming loss and unavoidable bloodshed for the Imperium of Man. But inversed? The psyker breathed deeply, trying to calm his aching heart as it pounded against his thin ribs. Hea'd never seen the card drawn inversed before. Indeed, hea'd only drawn the Despoiler once in his life before this moment, in the weeks before the invasion of Cadia, three years before.

Inversed A rival for the Despoiler? Someone destined to stand against the Archenemya's machinations? Setha's fingertips hovered above the card. The clarity of the prophecy was clouded, ruined by his own unfamiliarity with the card hea'd drawn. So tempting to touch it again and renew the fierce vision. Just a few moments of pain. He could take it.

No.

He couldna't.

A great portion of his training in the control of his wild, unreliable talent emphasised the limits of the mortal mind and the physical sh.e.l.l that carried it. To read the Emperora's Tarot was to open oneself to the warp, and caution was not a virtue to be discarded on a whim. This reading was already devastatingly potent, which lent credence to its import and accuracy. Setha's sight was blurred from the pulsing migraine and he smelled vomit, the scent thick and tangy, coupled with a lumpy warmth in his lap. Momentary blackouts. Hea'd not even felt the purging of his stomach.

One card remained untouched. The signifier. The card that would put a frame of reference on The Despoiler Inversed. His hand stayed raised above it for a second, a minute, an hour a- Seth had no idea of external time with his thoughts so adamantly turned inward. He could feel his own life ticking away in time to his bodya's natural cycle, and felt the unnatural acceleration, the degeneration of his cells, from exerting his psychic strength day after day.

He sensed his own smile but did not feel it. To expend onea's life in service to the Emperor was all he wished. He was Cadian Shock through and through, no matter if he was banned from marching and training alongside them.

His mothera's eyes had been violet. She had died for the Imperium. He would die for the Imperium, too. The thought made his blood burn with pride. A life spent bringing death to the Emperora's foes is a life lived in full. Those words were etched in the stone above the doors of every building in Kasr Poitane, where Seth was born.

Now. Now was the time. What one soul would be the defiant fulcrum upon which the whole Reclamation spun? Who would be the bane of the Despoilera's plans?

Setha's fingertips landed, trembling but tense with purpose.

And he saw a face he had seen a thousand times before.

Captain Thade made the sign of the aquila over a chestplate still smeared with the blood of the plague-slain. Hea'd been back at the command base for fifteen minutes, and while Seth had retired to his tent, the captain had seen his men billeted and taken his inner circle to the lord generala's tent.

Hea'd been handed a message from an engineering servitor saying that Rax was ready at last, but no matter how keen he was to deal with it, Rax had to wait. Before anything else, Thade had to deal with the lord general. Hea'd said to Darrick only the week before that hea'd rather lose his arm again than report to Lord General Maggrig once more. Darrick hadna't laughed. He knew it wasna't a joke. Maggrig bled pettiness. He exuded a smirking, preening condescension. It ran from his pores the way a fat man sweats.

Lord General Maggrig was the wrong side of seventy, his long face characterised by agea's lines rather than wara's scars. While his rank and wage ent.i.tled him to partake of the youth-renewing juvenat drug process along with the accompanying surgery, Fineas Maggrig had chosen not to indulge. He believed in a man living out his natural span in service to the Emperor, and those who a"stole daysa" were wasting time in life when they could be beside the Emperora's throne in the afterlife. Unshakeable faith made him a preferential candidate to lead this theatre, and the Hadris Rift 40th Armoured soaked up the glory of their commander bearing the t.i.tle Overseer of the Reclamation.

Thade had researched the lord generala's history prior to planetfall. He needna't have bothered. Upon seeing Overseer Maggrig in the flesh he realised why using his clearance to study his new commanding officera's record had been a waste of time. The lord general had arrived a week after the rest of the Hadris Rift 40th, freshly promoted from pacifying some minor heresy near his homeworld and bearing three rows of medals upon his chest. Thade had tried not to smile as hea'd recognised them all one by one. Long service, long service, long service. There, a Corwina's Cross for tactical genius. Another long service medal, then two more for tactical prowess in various theatres, and a Mechanic.u.m Fellowship Skull for honourably defending a Forge World without the loss of any Adeptus Mechanicus hierarchs. Nice. Very nice.

But worrying.

Thade was smart enough not to judge the new lord general too harshly a- hea'd earned those medals for a reason, after all a- but the captain was Cadian enough to secretly chafe at the thought of following the mana's orders. The lord general had spent his entire career leading Guardsmen safely from the back.

It wasna't the Cadian way. With the Great Eye staring eternally down at their world, Cadian doctrine favoured the bold: those men and women who stood on the front lines, seeing the enemy with their own eyes and ordering their allies into battle with their own raised voices.

Thadea's breast was hardly beribboned in honoura's blazing colours, but the Ward of Cadia shone silver on his helmet. That counted. When hea'd been awarded it only a handful of weeks before for his command in the Black Crusade, the captain had wanted to hide it away in his personal belongings. It had been Enginseer Osiron whoa'd advised him to affix it to the front of his combat helm.

a"Others do not see it as you see it, Parmenion. Osiron was one of the few members of the 88th to ever call Thade by his first name. To you ita's something painful you fear youa'll never live up to. To others, ita's a symbol that even in defeat, their first defeat, heroism still thrives. It offers not just hope, but the hope for vengeance.a"

Vengeance. That was an ideal every soldier in the Cadian Shock could cling to, as the Thirteenth Black Crusade raged. Thade nodded.

a"I guess they had to hand one out to someone,a" Thade had said, turning the silver skull-and-gate medal over in his newly-implanted bionic hand. The implant was so fresh it didna't even have synthetic skin grafted over it yet.

a"You earned it,a" Osiron breathed in his hissing way. a"We all saw you earn it.a"

Thade said nothing to that. His gaze spoke volumes.

He lowered his hands at the Overseera's nod, dispersing his memories and returning all attention to the present. Lord General Maggriga's tent was erected in the shadow of the Hadris Rift bulk lander Unity. The tent itself was a cube of leather-reinforced cloth, useful for keeping the wind out and the sound of voices in. Expensive chairs of pale oak ringed a circular table made from the same wood. Maps were spread across the table, as were several data-slates and pict-viewers evidently left over from the last meeting. The lord general was alone. That fact surprised Thade, leaving him on edge. He couldna't think why Overseer Maggrig would need privacy to conduct a debriefing.

a"At ease, warden-captain,a" the lord general said in his usual clipped tones. Maggrig was the only man Thade had met who could make one of Cadiaa's highest military honour t.i.tles sound like he was swallowing something that tasted foul. Warden-captain, he said. To rhyme with b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

a"Just a'captaina' is fine,a" Thade said, and not for the first time. If he had to hear the t.i.tle he hadna't gotten used to, hea'd rather not hear it mangled. a"Ia've come to make my report, sir.a"

a"Then do it, soldier. But first, who are these men and why are they here?a"

Thade gestured left, then right. a"Honoured Enginseer Bylam Osiron. Scout-Lieutenant Adar Vertain. They stand with me to bear witness and make their own reports. I a.s.sumed the lord general would prefer first-hand accounts of what happened the night Reclamation forces sighted primary-cla.s.s threats.a"

a"Of course. Proceed.a" Maggrig offered a magnanimous wave of a thin, vein-marked hand that sported three large rings. Thade caught himself wondering if those hands had held a lasgun once in the last forty years. What kind of soldier wore rings like that, anyway? Thade and Osiron shared a momentary glance, thinking the same thoughts. The rocks on the Overseera's knuckles could bring in enough coin to keep the 88th refuelled for a month.

Jewellery was another ostentation Cadians had little love for. When every sc.r.a.p of metal on your home world went to the forge factories to be made into weaponry and almost all personal wealth was tied into military gear and property, displaying onea's wealth in flamboyant displays seemed wasteful and decadent. It was often said of the Cadians that they as a people had no eye for beauty.

Thade had no idea if that was true or not. He found beauty in many things: alien landscapes, the weather patterns in the heavens of other worlds, slender women with dark hair But self-awareness was one of his strengths. He knew he had no capacity to understand what was supposed to be attractive about wearing onea's wealth in such a pointless display. a"Ia'm waiting, captain.a"

Throne, what a pompous a.s.s. Thade drew breath to reply.

a"My Sentinel squadron first intercepted suspicious vox-chatter as they scouted ahead to plot a course to the monastery held by the Ja.n.u.s 6th.a"

a"You lost our beachhead within the city.a"

Once Thade had finished speaking, the lord generala's appraisal was blunt and a- at least technically a- correct.