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Transplants – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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TRANSPLANTS

Rob Young

1

Cocleratum has changed since we lived here. Not that I thought I’d ever come back, and certainly not as part of a primarch’s crusade.

You’d hate it, mother.

We fought our way to the cathedral where father was interred all those years ago. I barely recognised it. All the beauty has been burned away or stolen by these heretics, along with any trace of father. It’s like he was never even here.

Darya looked up from her letter, scribbled with charcoal onto a scrap of damp paper.

The Cathedral of Saint Ophellius was a hollow husk of the majestic monument it had been in her youth. The frescoes and delicate pastel artwork were all gone, scorched to ash or stripped back to bare stone under the stewardship of the heretical forces that had risen up to take Cocleratum. Even the vaulted ceiling, so impossibly high to her as a child, had given way to the heavens. Water poured into the cathedral from the grey-black rain clouds in the skies above, backlit by the red scar of the Cicatrix Maledictum.

A Ministorum priest walked a worn path up the main aisle, his bare feet whispering over the damp stone. His censer swung with every step, the cleansing incense smoke billowing out in defiance of the rain as he intoned restorative prayers.

The rest of her unit were asleep or huddled around burning promethium barrels, their dark shapes indistinct beneath their weatherproof cloaks. Three weeks of fighting across the city of Ticcia had led them to the cathedral, where the heretics had made their last, bloody stand.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of hard boots moving with the telltale urgency of a messenger.

Not new orders, Darya thought. God-Emperor, give them another hour’s rest.

The messenger came to a stop directly in front of her.

‘Corporal Nevic of the Cadian Two Hundred and Seventeenth?’ he asked, his Gothic coloured with the contorted vowels of a Kasr Myrak native. She’d come to recognise each kasr’s distinct accent over her time serving in the 217th, but none were remotely similar to her own.

‘Yes?’ Darya responded, her heart sinking.

‘You’re wanted at the command tent. The first sergeant will meet you there,’ the trooper said, pulling his hood tighter about his helmet.

‘Are we advancing again?’ Darya asked as she pushed herself to her feet.

‘No idea,’ the messenger said with a shrug, making off towards another group of nearby soldiers.

Darya swore under her breath. The fight through Ticcia had been brutal, especially for the sharpshooters like her. She’d been on alert for days on end to cover the advance, running from choke point to choke point, tracking down and eliminating enemy snipers.

She shouldered her long-las and stepped carefully through the rest of her squad, stopping only to tell her sergeant about her new orders.

She screwed up her letter and dropped it into a barrel of burning promethium on the way past, ignoring the looks from the men warming their hands around it.

Once outside, she was at the full mercy of the elements. The rain fell in fat drops, slapping off her cloak and adding to the slurry of mud and broken masonry at her feet. The manicured lawns and gene-enhanced blooms of the cathedral gardens were gone, swallowed up by shell craters and a patchwork of dark green canvas tents. The rain obscured what remained of the Ticcian skyline, which was a small mercy. It was hard to look upon what remained of her home.

She made her way through the maze of tents and mediblocks on the cathedral lawns. She fixed her gaze straight ahead when she passed the casualty tents, where the Cadian fallen lay in rows out in the rain to make room for those soldiers that might survive their wounds.

She finally stopped in front of a tent which had Command stamped above the entrance flap. Below the sodden standard of the Cadian 217th stood a lone soldier, cradling his own long-las in his arms.

‘First sergeant,’ Darya said, snapping off a quick salute.

‘Evening, corporal,’ First Sergeant Ilya said, smiling as he returned the salute. ‘Lovely weather they’ve arranged for us today, eh?’

First Sergeant Ilya had been nicknamed ‘Uncle’ amongst the men and women of the 217th, and Darya understood why. He exuded a warm, paternal feeling that made him popular with the men and officers alike, though Darya didn’t feel she’d earned the right to use the nickname yet, even after several years’ service in the regiment.

‘Warmest welcome we’ve had since planetfall,’ Darya replied, returning the smile.

‘It reminds me of home,’ Ilya laughed. ‘I’ll be happy when Mir gets here so we can head in.’ He scraped his boots against the flagpole, trying to dislodge the mud that clung on in inch-thick lumps.

Darya resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Anders Mir had earned a reputation within the 217th as an excellent sharpshooter, but one who was outspoken about his dislike of non-Cadians in the regiment.

‘Do you know Anders?’ Ilya asked.

‘Only by reputation.’

‘I’m sure you’ll get on just famously,’ Ilya said with a wolfish smile, looking past Darya. ‘Mir, we were just talking about you.’

Anders Mir stepped round Darya and saluted the first sergeant, his features half-hidden in his hood.

‘Saying what?’ he asked coldly.

‘Singing your praises, as always,’ Ilya said with a chuckle.

‘I’m sure you were,’ Mir said seriously, looking Darya up and down.

‘I don’t believe you’ve met,’ Ilya said, looking from Darya to Mir. ‘Corporal Nevic, meet Corporal Mir.’

Darya extended a hand for Mir to shake, but his arms remained still and his expression cold. For a few moments, there was no sound except the hammering of the rain.

‘Wonderful,’ Ilya muttered. ‘Both of you, with me.’

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