The fall of cadia, p.1
The Fall Of Cadia, page 1
More tales of the Astra Militarum from Black Library
• MINKA LESK •
MINKA LESK: THE LAST WHITESHIELD
An omnibus edition of the novels Cadia Stands, Cadian Honour,Traitor Rock and several short stories
by Justin D Hill
SHADOW OF THE EIGHTH
A novel by Justin D Hill
KASRKIN
A novel by Edoardo Albert
OUTGUNNED
A novel by Denny Flowers
CATACHAN DEVIL
A novel by Justin Woolley
STEEL TREAD
A novel by Andy Clark
KRIEG
A novel by Steve Lyons
VOLPONE GLORY
A novel by Nick Kyme
WITCHBRINGER
A novel by Steven B Fischer
VAINGLORIOUS
A novel by Sandy Mitchell
HONOURBOUND
by Rachel Harrison
SHADOWSWORD
A novel by Guy Haley
BANEBLADE
A novel by Guy Haley
IRON RESOLVE
A novella by Steve Lyons
YARRICK
An omnibus edition of the novels Imperial Creed, The Pyres of Armageddon, the novella Chains of Golgotha and several short stories
by David Annandale
GAUNT’S GHOSTS: THE FOUNDING
An omnibus edition of the novels First and Only, Ghostmaker and Necropolis
by Dan Abnett
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Warhammer 40,000
The Fall of Cadia
Dramatis Personae
PHASE ONE
One
PHASE TWO
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
PHASE THREE
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
PHASE FOUR
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
PHASE FIVE
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
PHASE SIX
One
Two
Three
Four
PHASE SEVEN
One
About the Author
An Extract from ‘Steel Tread’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind. By the might of his inexhaustible armies a million worlds stand against the dark.
Yet, he is a rotting carcass, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium held in life by marvels from the Dark Age of Technology and the thousand souls sacrificed each day so his may continue to burn.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods.
This is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. Forget the power of technology and science. Forget the promise of progress and advancement. Forget any notion of common humanity or compassion.
There is no peace amongst the stars, for in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
Dramatis Personae
++FORCES OF THE IMPERIUM+++
CADIAN DEFENCE FORCES
Lord Castellan and High Command War Cabinet
Ursarkar E. Creed – Lord Castellan, Lord General of the Astra Militarum
Jarran Kell – Colour Sergeant, Creed’s personal attaché
Conskavan Raik – Logistar-General
Audaria Zabine – Supreme Commissar
Marus Porelska – Former governor, slain at Tyrok Fields
24th Cadian Interior Guard
Ignitio Barathus – Colonel
Marda Hellsker – Major, engineer qualified
Ravura – Company Sergeant
Lek – Corporal
Dakaj – Chief Medicae
Suvane – Surgeon’s orderly
Kasrkin 27th, Fire-team Gamma
Servantus Glave – Volley gunner
Okkun – Pointman
‘Stitcher’ Kristan – Medicae
Sergeant Veskaj – Hellgunner, sergeant
Luzal – Hellgunner, vox-operator
Kraf Crime Syndicate
Salvar Ghent – Crime lord
Karle Petzen – Underboss
89th Combat-Pict Recon, Kraf Air Command
Hanna Keztral – Captain, pilot of Avenger Deadeye
Lahon Darvus – Lieutenant, armament operator of Deadeye
THE MOST HOLY ADEPTA SORORITAS
Order of Our Martyred Lady
Eleanor – Canoness, guardian of the Shrine of St Morrican
Genevieve – Canoness, custodian of Ecclesiarchy lands
Celestine – The Living Saint
THE HOLY ORDERS OF THE EMPEROR’S INQUISITION
Talia Daverna – Inquisitor, Ordo Hereticus
Katarinya Greyfax – Inquisitor, Ordo Hereticus
ADEPTUS MECHANICUS AND ALLIES
Adeptus Mechanicus, Servants of the Machine God
Magos Klarn – Mechanicus representative to Cadian high command
Belisarius Cawl – Archmagos Dominus
Qvo-87 – Clone-servant of Cawl
House Raven, Oath-Bound Protectors of the Omnissiah
Neeve Vardus – Baroness, pilot of the Knight Paladin Cold Iron
THE MOST REVERED ADEPTUS ASTARTES
Black Templars, Sons of Dorn, Cruxis Crusade
Marius Amalrich – Marshal of the Cruxis Crusade
Mordlied – Castellan, bannerman
Space Wolves, Sons of Russ
Orven Highfell – Wolf Lord, Ironwolves Great Company
Sven Bloodhowl – Wolf Lord, Firehowlers Great Company
Dark Angels, Sons of the Lion
Korahael – Master of the Fourth Company and strike cruiser Sword of Defiance
Raven Guard, Sons of Corax
Odric A’shar – Ceremonial Lieutenant, commander of the Company of Brothers
++LEGIONS OF CHAOS+++
THE BLACK LEGION, SCOURGE OF THE IMPERIUM
Black Legion Command
Ezekyle Abaddon – Warmaster of Chaos, ‘The Despoiler’
Dravura Morkath – the Fortress Child, cup-bearer to Abaddon
Cacadius Siron – Intelligence chief, formerly of the Alpha Legion
Chosen of Abaddon
Urkanthos – Lord Ravager (Khorne), Hounds of Abaddon
Skyrak Slaughterborn – Lord Corruptor (Nurgle), Bringers of Decay
Zaraphiston – Lord Deceiver (Tzeentch), seer of the Black Legion
Devram Korda – Lord Purgator (Slaanesh), Children of Torment
Krom Gat – Lord Unifier (Chaos Undivided), Iron Warriors
Local Cadian Allies
Yann Rovetske – Agent of Chaos
Daemons
Artesia Gore-mouth – Shadow-daemon of Khorne
++PERFIDIOUS XENOS+++
NECRON LEGIONS OF SOLEMNACE, NIHILAKH DYNASTY
Trazyn the Infinite – Overlord, Archaeovist of the Prismatic Galleries
Sannet – Arch-Cryptek of Solemnace, companion of Trazyn
The Huntmaster – Game warden, bodyguard to Trazyn
HARLEQUINS, POOR PLAYERS OF THE LAUGHING GOD
Sylandri Veilwalker – Shadowseer, Masque of the Veiled Path
PHASE ONE
REVERBERATIONS
One
Blood and iron.
Iron and blood.
One lay on the other, and within the other. The slick shine of the iron-rich blood – still warm – on the cold surface of the bell. Two related elements, joined in accidental symbolism.
If records were to be believed, the bell had been forged from blood.
It was said that when Saint Gerstahl – the sacred soldier, favoured patron of the Cadian trooper – fell defending the Gate in the centuries after the Great Heresy, acolytes collected his vitae in a crystal reliquary. There it stayed for centuries, a venerated and lucrative relic on the shrine world christened with his name.
Until, one night, Blessed Gerstahl appeared to the cardinal with a message: he must extract the iron from the tarry, coagulated remnants and forge it into a bell.
A bell that would toll when Cadia was in mortal danger.
The cardinal forged the relic as instructed, then took the bell on a tour of the Cadian Gate, purifying world after world with the vibration of its holy resonance. A fortunate choic
On Solar Mariatus, two million welcomed the bell. Sobbing crowds parted to make a path for the fifty Battle Sisters of the Order of Our Martyred Lady who formed its vanguard. In the Derades Subsector, it was said that its chime healed the deaf and straightened crooked limbs. And on Laurentix, in the Belis Corona System, the populace wailed in ecstasy when it tolled a dozen times without being touched by human hands.
That was when the Black Legion descended upon it, in the opening raids of the Twelfth Black Crusade.
The vanguard had sworn to die rather than surrender their relic. And they fulfilled that oath. Their bodies now lay beneath the cold iron of the bell, some resting in its shadow. Chest cavities blown open, limbs severed from the impact of traitor bolt-shells, their own vitae splashed onto the blood-forged iron. It ran in frozen rivulets down the engraved surface, turning the scrollwork and decorative psalms into channels of gore.
They had saved it, in a sense.
Their stoic defence had given Trazyn time to lock the bell and its entourage in stasis, then spirit it to the archival vaults of Solemnace.
Now it hung, unmoving and fastened in time, among the relics of Cadia past. Gazed upon by the unseeing eyes of general officers snatched from the battlefield, zigzag trench-lines full of Shock Troops and a rank of Chimera variants bisected to show internal detail.
Overhead, a squad of Night Lords Raptors arced through the vaults above a lit display of human eyes.
All of them, artefacts of the Cadian Gate. The ephemera of Abaddon the Despoiler’s twelve Black Crusades.
Darkened exhibits stretched across twenty-five square miles, a private gallery of humans, exquisitely arranged to please the historical and aesthetic tastes of the alien curator who’d imprisoned them.
Nothing in the gallery apart from maintenance scarabs had moved in over a millennium.
Which is why the soft pat-pat-pat of fluid echoed as far as it did.
It fell from the iron surface of the bell like the first drops of icicles melting on the eaves of a hab. Drip. Drip-drip.
Jewelled drops met the upturned forehead of a slain Battle Sister and stained her pale skin with splashes of crimson.
Pat. Pat-pat.
More drops. Coalescing on her brow, trickling into her open eyes.
Blood moved on the bell’s skin, collecting in beads like rain on a window and falling in defiance of the stasis field.
And the bell, without propulsion or force, began to swing.
A hand’s breadth at first. A sway. Its clapper moving in a soft pendulum arc too weak to do more than scrape the sides.
Then, the arc widened, the violent motion of the bell flinging droplets of blood to either side, spattering the faces of stasis-locked Shock Troopers. Sizzling on the protective fields of lasgun displays. Swaying wider until the bell went fully perpendicular and the clapper inside dropped, its hammer striking the iron of the bell.
Clang.
One.
The blackstone floor vibrated. A rank of medals swayed, its stasis field shorting out. An organic clatter filled the chamber, the sound of ten thousand jaws – held shut by hard-light holograms – shaken so hard that the teeth rattled.
Overhead, the flight of Night Lords Raptors tumbled from the vaults and into a trench display, snapping bones and crushing lasgun barrels. Neither Traitor Space Marines nor Guardsmen reacted.
Clang.
Two.
Trazyn, Overlord of Solemnace, Archaeovist of the Prismatic Galleries and He-Who-Is-Called-Infinite, screamed in rage.
‘Sannet! What is happening?’
‘Unclear,’ answered his chief cryptek, his multijointed fingers dancing across phos-glyph panels. ‘Unknown resonance. Macro-seismic. Cracking the vaults, releasing coolant. We’ve lost the Ooliac sand sculptures.’
‘Call the restoration scarabs.’
‘Not responding,’ Sannet answered, data-chains flashing across his ocular. ‘Our nodal program misinterpreted the vibration as a re-interment signal. The legion has entered radical shutdown. I cannot rouse them.’
Trazyn cursed the very wheel of the cosmos. The interval between shocks had been only seconds apart, and while mental speech between he and Sannet was near instant, they were running out of time before the next tectonic shudder would hit.
‘It’s not tectonic, lord,’ said Sannet. ‘It’s coming from the gallery.’
‘Where?’
‘The Black Crusades wing.’
‘That’s only two levels do–’
Clang.
Three.
The shockwave shook Trazyn apart, his joint servos spasming and dislocating with the intensity of it.
He evacuated the dying body and rushed his spirit-algorithm into the network of data-channels in the walls. Found a waiting lychguard he could use as a surrogate. Melted and reshaped the borrowed body into his accustomed form as he ran towards the gates of the Cadian gallery. Waved a hand at the enormous gates in a gesture of opening.
Clang.
Four.
The doors ahead, twice the size of a monolith, blew off their hinges and toppled down at him. He felt them crumple the necrodermis of his cranium like parchment and burst his central reactor before he transferred to another body, sheltered in the lee of a Baneblade.
He sprinted. Waving hands at display plinths, throwing code-signals from his palm emitters. Trying to restart shielding and repulsors, to protect his delicate artefacts.
‘No, no, no, no, no, no–’
Trazyn saw the bell.
Trazyn saw the blood.
He slowed his chronosense to take in the swinging relic and its sheets of ruby spray. It was far more human vitae than had been splashed on its surface.
Almost as if the relic itself were bleeding from the pockmarks and scratches where bolt-shells had marked it.
‘Sannet,’ Trazyn said, casting his visual senses into the data-stream of Solemnace so his cryptek could run analysis. ‘The stasis field has failed. Hard restart.’
‘The field is active,’ Sannet responded. ‘Movement should be impossible.’
‘Not impossible, warpcraft.’
Trazyn watched in fascinated horror as the bell completed its arc, the blood-forged metal swinging high as the hammer inside dropped like the great mace of a warmaster.
Clang.
Five.
Across the galaxy, past burning stars, teeming worlds and cold expanses of nothing, lay the blasted world of Eriad VI. The Ark Mechanicus vessel Iron Revenant hung in its orbit, casting a cruciform shadow on the surface.
Down, down, through the nuclear-blighted atmosphere and crust overrun with ork ravagers. Down in black tunnels of alien scale and curve, stood Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl.
‘Nearly,’ he said, stretching the word. His eyes squeezed tight, optic nerves rerouted through the visual lenses of the skull probe he’d guided into the bore-hole. The on-off strobe of its ultraviolet lamp – used to map the worming tunnels within the blackstone – was the only illumination. He sensed a data-stream connection. ‘Careful, little one. Rise two skull-lengths. Pivot thirty-five degrees right. Ahead four lengths – now, now, now! All ahead steady and open connection! Op–’
The data flooded in, pasting across his vision, unfamiliar glyphs that slid cold into his mind, chill as the nothing of space.
The servo-skull’s vision blasted to static, its auditory ports howling in Cawl’s augmented brain.
‘Damn it!’ he cursed, yanking the skull-jack free from his temple. ‘Qvo, another probe!’
No response. His programmable servant – cloned from a long-dead companion – was either not listening, or perhaps had reset due to the flood of data.
‘Qvo?’ He turned. ‘Qvo, are you lis–’
He stopped.
The aeldari standing behind his right shoulder had not triggered a single alert in his sensorium net.
She crouched on a cogitator bank, toes together, knees spread wide – an inverted-triangle pose inhuman in its gravity-defying grace.
‘The skeins of fate wind tight about the gate,’ Veilwalker said, her egg-like mask nothing but a swirl of smoke. The hues of her motley seemed to blaze in the dark cavern. ‘Again, I plea – does thy mind now see?’
‘Your rhymes are impenetrable nonsense,’ he growled. ‘It is a necron world, bombarded by the Despoiler during the Fourth Black Crusade. But why would he bombard an empty planet? I cannot fathom why you insisted I come here.’
