Cadia Stands Read online

  Cadian High Command had recalled all Cadian units. No one knew when this had ever happened before, and now, as he stood there and looked out across the miles and miles of Tyrok Fields, he was struck by the buzz of millions of Cadian Shock Troopers.

  The enormity of it hit him, and he stood amazed, like a feral world savage seeing his first orbital craft. The vast flat plain had been turned into a city of tents, parked armour, piles of ordnance and rations, and supplementary supplies. Bendikt could not even begin to guess how many Guardsmen were camped here. They stretched away on all sides, as far as he could see. The hum of their activity was a constant roar. There had to be a million, at least. And on the far horizon, like a beast on the veldt, a Leviathan blared its horns in salute as a maniple of Warlord Titans strode southwards.

  The Titans answered with a trumpet blast and rolled slowly towards him, like a gathering wave. Bendikt grinned.

  He found himself hugging Tyson, slapping him on the back and laughing out loud.

  They were home.

  Looking back, Bendikt regretted how he spent his first day and a half back on Cadia.

  He passed up the chance to visit Kasr Tyrok and went with Colour Sergeant Daal and his support staff to report in to the local Munitorum office to sort out their orders.

  The Munitorum office was a low sandbagged shack in the corner of Camp 889. They took a ticket – D9973 – from a servitor-station and waited their turn. The wait was long, but this was Cadia, so it was orderly and disciplined – and the room was full of other Shock Troopers. They spent the time finding out if they’d ever been in the same warzone.

  When their ticket was finally called, they were brought to a low camp desk, where a Munitorum clerk rested his hands on the table before him, on which there were ration packs, a sheath of neat papers and a heavy metal aquila stamp.

  ‘Cadian 101st,’ he said by way of greeting.

  Bendikt nodded and sat, resting his helmet on his lap.

  The clerk checked his papers. ‘Major Bendikt? Good. My great-uncle was in the 101st.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Oh, you wouldn’t know him,’ the clerk said. ‘He was killed in his first engagement. Crashed Valkyrie.’

  Bendikt had heard a hundred stories like that. He was tired and wanted nothing more than to be sitting in a bar, putting his money to good use. ‘War’s harsh,’ he said.

  The Munitorum clerk was an old man with wide-set round eyes and a manner of cocking his head that reminded Bendikt of an eagle. But he was polite and efficient and supplied them with their ration books and chits for ammunition, winter boots, medical supplies and everything else that an army needed. ‘Rations look thin,’ Bendikt said as Daal looked at the daily food allowance.

  The Munitorum official turned his head and stared down at him, before cocking it the other way. ‘Siege footing,’ he said.

  ‘Already?’ Daal said.

  The clerk nodded.

  Bendikt put his helmet back on. He thought he would check their orders. ‘So we’re supposed to be joining up with our tanks and the 74th Armoured Battalion of Northern Command.’

  The official looked down at the scroll of servitor script that he was using. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Your orders seem to have changed.’

  ‘Again?’

  The man cocked his head again and looked at him. ‘Yes. Your unit has been posted to Observation Post 9983.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The clerk’s cheeks coloured. He clearly did not appreciate surprises like this. Not on his watch. ‘Hmm,’ he said, and frowned for a moment as he looked for the missing data. At last, he looked up with an expression of weary resignation. ‘That is, I fear, classified.’

  ‘So how do we get there?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’

  ‘And our armour and equipment?’

  ‘I’m afraid–’

  ‘You don’t know.’

  The man cocked his head to the side and nodded. ‘Exactly.’

  By the time Bendikt got back to their camp the transports had already set out to Kasr Tyrok.

  ‘I could drive you,’ Tyson offered.

  ‘How long would it take?’

  ‘Six hours.’

  Bendikt seriously considered it for a moment, but it didn’t make sense. If they left now they’d only have time to get there and then turn back round in time for embarkation. ‘Kind of makes the whole idea pointless, don’t you think?’

  ‘I guess, sir.’

  Bendikt cursed. The lights of the camp stretched out in all directions. He looked up at the lurid purple stain in the sky, and the Eye of Terror glaring down at him.

  ‘I forgot how bright it is,’ Bendikt said.

  Tyson nodded. ‘Frekking ugly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bendikt said. He’d missed Cadia, but he had not missed the night sky. The Eye of Terror was brighter than he remembered. Its green-and-purple light cast a shadow on the ground. It made him sick looking into it.

  Never, he thought. An instinctive response.

  Never.

  A staff Centaur arrived at Bendikt’s HQ tent an hour before dawn. ‘Are you Major Bendikt?’ a territorial officer asked as he made the sign of the aquila in a brisk, perfunctory way.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your transport is waiting.’

  ‘Good. To Observation Point 9983?’

  ‘No. Air Base Alpha 443.’

  ‘Tyson, have our orders been changed again?’

  Tyson blushed. ‘No.’

  ‘Air Base Alpha is a transit hub.’

  ‘Where are we going? To Observation Post 9983?’

  The man checked his papers. There was a pause. ‘I don’t see where, I’m afraid.’

  Bendikt’s temper was starting to rise. ‘We were told we are being sent to Observation Post 9983.’

  The other officer’s cheeks coloured. ‘I don’t know, but I have to make space. There’s another lander coming in tomorrow during the parade.’

  ‘What parade?’

  ‘Volscani Cataphracts. There’s an official welcome.’

  Bendikt was pissed off. ‘Never heard of them.’

  Three

  Observation Post 9983

  A Guardsman had few expectations, yet at the least he wanted to know where he was going to war. But no one had heard of Observation Post 9983 and the 101st had a deflated air about it as the men of the regiment gathered their kit and marched the distance to Air Base Alpha 443.

  In the skies above Tyrok Fields fliers were swooping down, constantly emptying and refilling with regiments, as some made their way out to the kasr fortresses along ten-lane arterial highways, while vast planetary landers brought in fresh regiments.

  ‘Any idea where this observation post is?’ Colour Sergeant Daal asked as they saw the lines of Valkyries waiting.

  ‘None,’ Bendikt said. His temper was starting to fray. They hadn’t come home to observe. They were the 101st, for Throne’s sake. A figure ran out from the side door of one of the Valkyries. He had a data-slate in his hand and looked at it before saying, ‘Major Bendikt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re ready for you.’

  ‘Know where we’re going?’

  The man pulled a face. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What about our tanks?’

  The man tilted his head. ‘Sorry. Above my rank.’

  Bendikt cursed under his breath. ‘Daal. Get the men on board.’

  They climbed up onto the aircraft, platoon by platoon.

  ‘That’s the lot,’ Daal said as the last Guardsmen clambered aboard.

  Bendikt looked about him one last time and nodded. ‘Right. Let’s find out where the hell we’re heading.’

  They left their Valkyrie’s side doors open. Bendikt
and Sergeant Daal stood staring out over Cadia.

  It took six hours to cross the checkerboard of Tyrok Fields, and then they were over moors, with armoured regiments crossing the wilds like herds on the savannah. The wind was cold on their faces. It made their eyes water. They had to shout over the roar of the turbines. ‘We’re heading north-east,’ Bendikt said. For what it mattered.

  ‘So much for the drinking district of Kasr Tyrok,’ Daal said.

  Bendikt stood in the lee of the doorway and looked down. Homecoming was overrated, he thought. Whatever this observation post was, there had better be a damn good bar nearby.

  A row of ten Leviathans was making its way across the plains below. Each one was a hundred yards tall, a hunched beetle of ceramite and gun barrels, trundling slowly along on massive tracks, with an honour guard of Baneblade tanks looking diminutive next to them. They went in single file like a herd of giant grox.

  Their Valkyrie tipped to the side as the men crowded in to see, squinting into the wind. The Valkyrie did a little salute and the signals officer of one of the Leviathans gave a short toot over the broadcasters to acknowledge them.

  And then the Valkyries turned south towards the Central Massif, and the land beneath them was white with snow.

  They landed at a bustling base high up in the moors of Cadia’s Northern Massif. It was about as cold and bleak a place as you could imagine, but there was no time to get out. The Valkyries refuelled and then set off again, heading south.

  They flew through the night and got what sleep they could.

  Next morning the engines were wheezing in the thin atmosphere.

  ‘Are we lost?’ Daal asked.

  Bendikt opened the doors a crack. They were halfway up a craggy black mountain with snow-capped peaks, heading towards a vast vertical cliff face under the summit. Clinging to the side of the cliff, two-thirds of the way up, was a tiny landing pad with a rockcrete parapet, a pair of slaved servo-bolters tracking their approach, and the tarpaulin cover of a Hydra platform, below which was a metal door.

  There could not be a more bleak and deserted posting on Cadia, and it was there that they were heading.

  ‘I do not believe this,’ Bendikt said.

  He glanced at the faces of his men. No one looked happy.

  The landing pad was only big enough for one Valkyrie at a time. It was a dangerous approach, with mountain gusts buffeting them as they approached the cliff wall. Each Valkyrie hovered as the troops disembarked, and then the empty craft fell away as the next in the queue moved forward.

  It seemed to take an age for Bendikt’s craft to get its turn. As they waited, the co-pilot came back to brief them.

  ‘We are low on fuel!’ he shouted over the wind. ‘Get your men off quick.’

  Bendikt nodded. He was tense as they made their approach. The black cliff filled his vision as their Valkyrie moved in.

  The co-pilot waved at them through the cockpit window.

  ‘Ready!’ Daal shouted, and stood at the doorway as they touched down. The men jumped out with all their kit, still perfectly presented, and ran over the ice-slick surface to the ramp that led down to the parapet.

  Sergeant Dykene of Second Platoon was there, offering a steadying hand. ‘Careful! Don’t slip. It’s three thousand yards until you hit the bottom.’

  Bendikt didn’t need a hand. He strode along the narrow parapet, and in through the metal blast doors into a vast reinforced chamber, where the air was warm and dry.

  He strode forward. After the roar of wind and engines, the inner space seemed almost silent. He paused and listened. In the stillness, there was the distinctive low hum of maintenance engines.

  He looked about. On the rockcrete wall, in chalk, were the crossed flag murals of all the regiments that had been quartered there. The names stretched away into the distant gloom. The last said Cadian 290th ‘Steel Fists’.

  ‘What the hell is this place?’ Bendikt asked.

  He turned and looked about at the cavernous chamber, and spotted a man in civilian uniform making his way straight towards him.

  He had neatly combed grey hair, bushy black eyebrows and bright violet eyes.

  ‘You are Major Bendikt?’ the newcomer asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  The man’s voice was light. ‘My name is Rivald. I am the caretaker here. Welcome to Observation Post 9983.’

  Observation Post 9983 was little more than an icicle-clad parapet and landing pad, clinging two-thirds of the way up a mile-high granite cliff face, under a looming overhang of thick white ice. The parapet hugged the contours of the mountain, with loop-holes and firing ports staring out into two-thousand-yard drops, and an ancient Hydra platform, draped with tarpaulins, just visible under the snow.

  It was a bleak, cold place, without road or access, apart from the landing pad, which was subject to treacherous updraughts and on which only the most skilled pilots would dare land. Why anyone would want to place a base here was something that troubled them all.

  Bendikt summoned his vox operator, Mere.

  ‘Made contact with Northern Command?’

  ‘Yessir,’ Mere said. ‘There’s an old vox relay system here. Beast of a thing.’ He laughed. ‘Could probably talk to the captain of the Fidelitas Vector.’

  ‘Well, thank him for his hospitality,’ Bendikt snapped. ‘But first get someone in command. Find out what the hell we are doing here, and what the hell we are supposed to be observing.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Tyson. Has Armitage scouted out this place?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tyson sniffed. ‘There’s six floors that we know of. All going down into the mountain.’

  ‘Six?’ Bendikt said. ‘That you know of?’

  ‘Well, Armitage says there are doors on the third floor that he can’t open.’

  Bendikt cursed. ‘Where’s the caretaker… What’s his name?’

  ‘Rivald,’ Tyson said. ‘He appears to live in a series of officer habs, on the second floor.’

  When Bendikt found him, Rivald was praying at a little shrine on the second floor. The doors of the shrine were open against the wall; from the flame of a stubby red candle, light flickered on the image of the Omnissiah, and fresh libations of oil dripped from the shallow sacrarium.

  Rivald put up a hand to say that Bendikt should wait for a moment, and when he finished, he wiped the oil from his hands onto his apron. ‘The machine-spirits here are very old,’ he said as an apology. ‘They need special care.’

  Bendikt’s temper had been rising with each moment he had to wait and Rivald seemed a safe person to vent it on.

  ‘Listen,’ Bendikt said. ‘I don’t give a frekk about the machines. My men had to cross the galaxy to get back to Cadia in her hour of need.’ He felt like Warmaster Ryse, waxing lyrical, and his irritation grew. ‘We’re a tank regiment and we’ve been stuck halfway up a mountain in the middle of the Central Massif. Do you know what the hell this place is and why we’re here?’

  Rivald had a look in his eye that seemed to imply this kind of conversation had happened before. He folded the metal doors back on the shrine and said, ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘I have guesses,’ Rivald said. ‘Come to my chamber.’

  Rivald led him to a disused wing with brass fittings and polished nalwood doors. ‘This was once the officers’ lodgings,’ he said. ‘The main barracks are on the third floor. There’s room for three thousand men here, at least. I’ve counted the beds. It keeps me busy between my duties.’

  Rivald led him through a pair of double doors, marked with the sign of the aquila, and into a long corridor, lit by a single strip lume. The air had a musty, dry feel. The corridors were clean and neat, and in one of the rooms, a light was shining.

  ‘This way, please,’ Rivald said. ‘This is my room.’

  Bendikt followed him
inside. It was a neat, plain cell. There was a camp bed, a three-drawered dresser, a poster of a red aquila and the bold text: The enemy is listening… Keep it to yourself!

  The furniture was clearly much newer than the rockcrete fittings, which had an ancient, baroque feel to them.

  Rivald motioned to him to sit down on a plain wooden chair.

  Bendikt remained standing. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘Observation Post–’

  Bendikt cut him off. ‘Quit the grox-shit. Clearly not. Why do they need three thousand men here? What is there to watch? We’re halfway up a mountain.’

  ‘I can’t tell you, I’m afraid. I came here twenty-five years ago.’

  ‘And what do you do – exactly?’

  ‘I keep the place running. I pray to the Golden Throne. I keep the machine-spirits company. Sometimes units come. Like yours.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘A year ago. They were the Cadian 9034th Airborne. They were not happy to be here.’

  ‘I can bet. How long did they stay?’

  ‘Six months.’

  Bendikt felt sick at the thought. ‘Is there any way off this base?’

  Rivald shook his head.

  ‘There must be.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can we scale the mountain? Or go down? Are there ropes?’

  ‘Others tried,’ Rivald said, and frowned. ‘I have seen it. There is nothing. Only the landing pad.’

  ‘One landing pad. Three thousand men. There must be something here. My scouts said there are doors. On the third level…’

  ‘Yes. They bear the name “Salvation 9983”.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Rivald shook his head. ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Can you open them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  The old man nodded.

  ‘Well, frekk-all use they are then.’

  There were footsteps in the corridor outside. Bendikt put his hand to his laspistol, but it was Tyson. He was breathless. He saluted as Bendikt slid the sidearm back into its holster. ‘Sir! There’s been an incident.’ He took in a deep breath and the words spilled out all in one. ‘The Governor of Cadia is dead.’