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Ciaphas Cain: The Anthology – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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ONE

Given the number of times what was supposed to be a straightforward deployment turned out to be anything but, dropping me and the unit I was accompanying smack into the middle of a desperate struggle to survive, the knowledge that we’d arrived in the Lentonia system long after the war there had been brought to a victorious conclusion was a welcome change of pace. It wouldn’t have done to let my natural inclination to do handsprings and shout ‘Huzzah!’ show visibly, however, as I was popularly supposed to be the kind of idiot who’d relish the chance to put himself in harm’s way in the name of the Golden Throne, so I settled on a vaguely rueful air, as though disappointed at our good fortune. Not that I was exactly relishing the prospect of the next few weeks, which promised little beyond unrelieved tedium and finger food, but compared to the kind of excitement I was used to, I’d take boredom over bowel-clenching terror every time.

Especially as I’d only just made it up the boarding ramp of the last ship out at embarkation, the swarm of tyranids on our tail almost filling the horizon.

‘I’m sure there are still a few pockets of resistance to mop up,’ I said, privately resolving to discover where they were and make sure I avoided them.

‘Of course,’ Colonel Kasteen said, running a finger around the collar of her dress uniform in the manner of someone suppressing the desire to unfasten it. Like most ice-worlders, she preferred shirtsleeves for the most part, reserving the heavy greatcoats generally associated with Valhallan regiments for environments they were fitted to, and had chosen summer kit for the occasion; although the weather in the planetary capital seemed distinctly autumnal if you asked me. Dark grey clouds were scudding across a light grey sky mottled with flecks of blue, and the scent of recent rain had been the first thing to greet my nostrils as the boarding ramp of our shuttle extruded itself to lick the still-damp rockcrete of the pad, as if tentatively quenching its thirst.

In the distance, across the wide expanse of the landing field, columns of steam marked the points where the rest of our heavy shuttles had grounded; the commandeered freighter we’d arrived on didn’t have nearly enough of its own to disembark an entire regiment, of course, but by this time the local traffic controllers had acquired sufficient experience of offloading large bodies of troops and their equipment to divert a veritable swarm of them to pick us up almost as soon as we’d reached orbit, and I’d made sure I was among the first wave to hit the ground. Something I always tried to do when the likelihood of meeting significant resistance was low, as it consolidated my undeserved reputation for leading from the front, and gave me a head start in finding the most comfortable quarters wherever we were due to be billeted. ‘I imagine the regiments already here will be happy to catch their breath while we dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s. Who are they, anyway?’

‘Vostroyans, mostly,’ I said, glancing at the data-slate my aide had just handed to me. Jurgen had tidied himself up too, insofar as that was possible, centring his helmet on his head, and brushing most of the accumulated detritus from the ragged clumps of facial hair which more or less assembled themselves into a scurf-flecked beard. Despite these heroic efforts he seemed to have stopped some way short of actual ablutions, however, and I found myself falling into my usual habit of edging upwind of him as I spoke. ‘Three line regiments and an armour group. Plus the Tallarn 236th, who got here a couple of weeks ahead of the others, after being diverted on their way back to Coronus for reassignment. And a Valhallan unit for fire support.’ I don’t mind admitting my voice took on a tinge of surprise at this point. ‘The 12th Field Artillery.’ The regiment I’d begun my long and inglorious career with, some twenty years before.

‘Haven’t seen them since Gravalax,’ Kasteen said, although whether she was pleased at the prospect of renewing the acquaintance or not was hard to tell, since she was fighting off another attempt at strangulation by her shirt collar at the time.

‘We’ve all come a long way since then,’ I said, and the colonel nodded thoughtfully.

‘Thanks to you,’ she replied. ‘If you hadn’t joined us when you did, we wouldn’t have lasted another week, never mind seven years up at the sharp end.’

‘Any other commissar would have done the same,’ I said, feeling unaccountably embarrassed for a moment, although I suppose many of my colleagues would have gone about the job in a rather more brutally straightforward manner. (And probably ended up on the wrong end of a friendly fire accident too, which is what tends to happen when you incur the displeasure of a large number of people with guns.) Kasteen looked as though she was about to take issue with that, but before she got the chance, Jurgen broke into the conversation with a phlegm-laden attempt at a tactful cough.

‘I think that’s your escort, sir.’ He sounded vaguely affronted at the notion, as if it somehow cast doubt on his own ability to ensure our safety, although, since the wretched planet was supposed to be pacified by this point, the matter was purely one of protocol in any case.

‘I think you’re right,’ I agreed, as the small knot of vehicles drew closer. A ground car, too large, black and shiny to be military issue, was flanked by a couple of outriders on motorcycles, the pennons flying from poles affixed to the riders’ backs echoing the design of the smaller ones fluttering around the limousine. I didn’t recognise the heraldry, but it seemed to involve a great deal of gold thread, entangling an Imperial aquila like vines clambering up a wall. ‘Look more like Arbites than soldiers.’

‘Governor’s household troops, sir,’ Jurgen said, consulting the uniform guide in his data-slate, something I suppose I should have done myself before now; but in all fairness, I was familiar enough with those of the other Guard regiments among our task force, and the Lentonian militia were all either dead or confined to barracks, pending the purge of any who might have supported the wrong side in the recent insurrection. Anyone else in a uniform or carrying a gun would be fair game, or best avoided, depending on our relative numbers and firepower.

‘I thought they’d shot him,’ I said.

‘That was the old one,’ Kasteen said, a note of doubt entering her voice. Usually we had Major Broklaw to fill us in on these niggling little details, which he dutifully filleted from the brain-numbing morass of the Munitorum briefing materials, so the colonel and I didn’t have to wade through them ourselves. But Broklaw was still in orbit, waiting for the last shuttle down, to ensure our deployment went as smoothly as these things ever did. ‘I heard they found a nephew or something to take over.’

‘Good for them,’ I said, hoping he’d make a better fist of it than the last incumbent, who’d managed to rouse a placid and Emperor-fearing population to armed rebellion with almost indecent haste following his appointment. Truth to tell, I was still somewhat vague about the exact nature of their grievances, but if the erstwhile governor ran true to form it probably had something to do with treating the tithing revenues as his personal cash box, and taking an excessive interest in other people’s wives, husbands, or farm animals. All in all, Lentonia was probably better off without him; but letting the plebs get away with taking decisions like that for themselves would only lead to worse trouble later on, so, as usual, the Guard had been called in to restore order, and visit retribution on whoever it seemed most expedient to blame. And, of course, the local Chaos cults had all crawled out of the woodwork to join in the fun, although, if anything, they’d probably helped in the long run, providing a handy foe the Lentonians could feel good about uniting against, whatever their own differences.

While we’d been mulling matters over, the car and its escort had pulled up at the foot of the boarding ramp, and the three of us walked down to meet it. The outriders saluted with simultaneous precision, the polarised visors of their helmets melding almost seamlessly with the glossy black body armour which encased them, and I found myself suppressing a sudden flare of unease as I returned the gesture with my best parade ground snap: it was like acknowledging a couple of chunks of animate shadow. The slighter of the two – whose build led me to suspect the presence of a woman inside the protective carapace, although without sight of the face behind the blank reflective plate it was hard to be sure – dismounted, revealing a holstered hellpistol at her waist, no doubt meant to supplement the carbine stowed just forward of the saddle and whatever lethal surprises had been installed on the bike itself. She (for the sake of argument) took a step towards the car, reaching out a hand, but before she could open the passenger door for us it popped from the inside, shoved hard by a young man with a shock of blond hair and a wide, welcoming grin.

‘It’s all right, Klarys, I’ve got it,’ he said, sliding across the wide seat to make room for us. The anonymous trooper turned away, her body language making her affront at the breach of protocol perfectly plain in spite of her concealed visage; sentiments I was certain Jurgen shared. The young man stuck out a hand to shake. ‘Jonas Worden, Planetary Governor. Call me Jona. I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of “Your excellency” gash in the last few weeks.’

Kasteen and I took in his worn groxhide jacket and utility cloth trousers, and looked at one another dubiously. He didn’t look like any of the Emperor’s anointed I’d ever met.

‘Ciaphas Cain,’ I said, concealing my bewilderment with the ease of a lifetime of practice, and taking the proffered hand, making sure not to exert the full strength of my augmetic fingers. ‘No nickname, I’m afraid. But in my profession you tend not to make friends.’

‘Really?’ The young man looked faintly surprised, then grinned, as if realising I was pulling his leg. ‘There’s a Valhallan officer calls you Cai. Sounds like a nickname to me.’

‘That would be Toren,’ I said, before glancing back at Kasteen, who was being helped onto the overstuffed bench seat by the same proffered hand. ‘You remember Major Divas?’ No one else I could think of ever used the familiar form of my given name, which was just as well, as I detested it; something Divas never quite managed to grasp, in spite of innumerable hints over the years.

‘Of course,’ Kasteen said, while I settled into the seat opposite her and the young man, and wondered which of the polished wooden cabinets mounted on the walls concealed a decanter. ‘A fine officer.’ She grinned at me, clearly enjoying my discomfiture.

‘You don’t look much like a governor,’ I said, deciding to play the bluff man of action card. That usually went down well with civilians who thought they knew what sort of man I was, and I intended to use the technique a lot in the next few weeks; I still wasn’t exactly overjoyed about being dragged into a political junket, and was damned if I was going to be any more gracious about it than I had to be.

‘I don’t feel like one either,’ Jona said, with disarming candour, and I found myself in some danger of liking him. ‘I used to glean news for the Light of Truth, till some dungwit dragged me off to the palace.’

‘It can’t have been that much of a surprise,’ I said. ‘If you were next in line…’

Jona laughed. ‘Nowhere near it. My mother turned her back on the whole festering lot of ’em thirty years ago. Wouldn’t have been here if she hadn’t.’

‘I see,’ I said, although I didn’t, quite. ‘There was still some bad feeling among the rest of the family, I take it.’

‘There surely is now.’ He grinned. ‘Why do you think the Martial Law Council stuck me with the job?’

‘At a guess, because you’re the only member of the family who didn’t want it,’ I said, and he nodded.

‘They were fighting over the throne like rats in a sack. I did some good pieces on it.’ He started to pull out a battered data-slate, then thought better of it, no doubt correctly divining that they wouldn’t mean much to us anyway. ‘Power-broking, character assassination – a couple didn’t stop at character either. Sold a lot of sheets.’ Then he sighed, the animation which had come over him slipping away again, and waved a disgusted-looking hand at our luxurious surroundings. ‘Now this. Your council’s got a poor sense of humour.’

But a strong grasp of the practical, I thought. In my experience, the only people it’s safe to have in a position of power are the ones who don’t want to be there in the first place. Before I could say anything to that effect, however, my aide’s shadow filled the doorway, and his bouquet flowed out ahead of him to fill the car. Jona recoiled.

‘Jurgen,’ I said diplomatically, ‘would you mind following us in the Salamander? I’m sure his ex– our host has enough to do without seeing us to our quarters when the meeting’s over.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ the young man said, in the reflexively polite way of someone who knows you know they don’t mean it, still too stunned at Jurgen’s appearance to take umbrage at my near use of the term he detested. As the door slammed, following Jurgen’s ‘Very good, sir,’ and something resembling a salute, he shook himself as though rousing from a stupor. ‘What was that?’

‘My aide,’ I said, feeling no further explanation to be warranted. ‘Shouldn’t we be going?’

‘I suppose so,’ Jona agreed. ‘Don’t you want to wait for him to unload your transport?’

‘He’ll catch up,’ Kasteen assured him, knowing Jurgen’s robust attitude to anything with an engine, and clearly wondering how best to avoid the journey home.

‘If you’re sure.’ The governor touched a vox control. ‘Back to the gas factory, Fossel.’ He must have caught the questioning look between Kasteen and myself, because he added ‘the Concilium’ for our benefit. The chauffeur, invisible behind a panel of one-way armourglass, rolled us smoothly into motion.

Comfortable as the ride was, especially compared to being driven by Jurgen, and in spite of our host’s attempts to while away the journey with polite conversation about my upcoming itinerary, I found it impossible to relax and enjoy our luxurious surroundings. Aside from the young man’s manifest eccentricity, meeting Imperial Guard officers from the starport in person hardly being the kind of thing planetary governors usually did, I was uncomfortably aware that his previous profession made him a shrewd judge of people, and more likely than most to see through the facade I generally presented to the galaxy. In addition to which, I’d been in enough vehicles like this to be well aware of what a tempting target they made. There were still malcontents on the loose, by Jona’s own admission, and even if they had no idea of who was inside the big shiny car, it was clearly someone of wealth and influence. Protecting it with no more than a pair of outriders was tantamount to towing a sign saying ‘Assassinate Me!’ so far as I could see; in fact I’d been the target of just such an attempt myself on Pererimunda, although, to be fair, on that occasion I’d been the unfortunate victim of a case of mistaken identity.

Accordingly, I paid a fair amount of attention to our surroundings as we left the bleak expanse of the starport and began to make our way into the city proper. Like many predominantly urban worlds, the main conurbation was contiguous with the boundary of the landing field, the outer hab-blocks protected from the consequences of a crash or explosion by a thick, high, blast wall, through which we trundled in a short, squat tunnel. Not unnaturally this made a formidable fortification, which the rebels had attempted to hold against the arriving Imperial forces, resulting in a fair amount of damage, particularly once my old comrades from the 12th Field Artillery unlimbered their Earthshakers and got stuck in.

Deep craters in the inner walls, and a few crumbled ramparts, clearly marked the positions where the main fortifications had been. Shells being shells, the hab-blocks around the perimeter had taken quite a battering too, and on first re-emerging into daylight we found ourselves traversing a bleak hinterland of tumbled walls and scattered rubble, through which the hastily patched roadway slashed like a gutting knife. At first I thought it deserted, but before long occasional glimpses of a stretched tarp or the smoke from a cooking fire betrayed the presence of inhabitants, eking out what existence they could among the ruins.

‘Outliers,’ Jona said, seeing the direction of my gaze. ‘Not much trouble, unless they get caught up in a food riot. Most of ’em just want to be left alone.’

‘Most of them?’ I asked, my paranoia going into overdrive, and the governor shrugged. ‘There’s a few rock lobbers among ’em, and gangers squabbling over territory. But they’ll keep till the local militia are reactivated.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ I said, somewhat relieved, but still keeping my hands near my weapons. I was beginning to see movement between the shattered walls, more and more frequently, and wondered if waiting for the rest of the regiment might not have been a better idea.

‘Why are we slowing?’ Kasteen asked, unfastening the flap of her holster, and I hastened to follow her lead; we’d both spent most of our lives in warzones, and knew from bitter experience that even the most subtle intimations of trouble should never be ignored.

Jona looked bewildered, and about as nervous as most civilians do when their guests unexpectedly draw sidearms in a confined space. My chainsword I left scabbarded for the nonce, as it would be more of a danger to ourselves in our suddenly claustrophobic surroundings than to a putative attacker. ‘No idea,’ he said, and activated the vox. ‘Fossel?’

‘The road’s blocked,’ the chauffeur informed us, sounding irritated rather than concerned. ‘Some kind of crowd up ahead.’

‘Armed?’ I asked.

‘Nothing obvious,’ a feminine voice cut in, Klarys I presumed. ‘They’re just milling around. Trading food, probably. Moving up to clear them.’

‘Can we see from in here?’ Kasteen asked, a moment before I could pose the question myself, and the governor poked a control stud. With a squeal of gears the partition retracted, revealing our driver, dressed in the same body armour as the outriders, but without a helmet. Beyond him, the road was now visible, blocked by twenty or thirty ragged-looking civilians. It was hard to make much out, as the shadows were plentiful and deep, but they were an unhealthy-looking bunch, their skin sallow, their movements slow and uncoordinated. All of a sudden, I found myself grateful for the armoured bodywork surrounding us, for I had no doubt that it would be proof against any weapons this curiously passive mob might bring to bear.

Not a single one reacted as the motorcyclists bore down on their position, beyond slowly turning heads to track their movement: the outriders drew to a halt a few metres away, their engines revving, and ordered them to disperse. Still no reaction, and I found my palms tingling, a warning from my subconscious I’d learned to take seriously over the years.

‘Pull back,’ I cautioned, hoping the vox would relay my words, but if they did it was too late; the whole crowd suddenly began to move, like a single viscid pool of degenerate humanity, surging forwards to engulf the riders before either could react. Both troopers tried to gun their engines and pull away, but hadn’t room to turn the heavy bikes. As we watched, helpless and horrified, they were pulled from their mounts and overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers, disappearing into the depths of the mob as thoroughly as if they’d been absorbed by a tyranid swarm.

‘What he said,’ Jona snapped, knowing trouble when he saw it, which was hardly surprising given his former occupation. Unfortunately the chauffeur had kept us moving slowly forwards, confident in his comrades’ ability to clear the way, and by the time he slammed the gears into reverse, with a grinding sound even Jurgen might have winced at, the tide of bodies was already lapping around our fragile refuge. The car bumped, running over several yielding obstacles, before suddenly fetching up against an immovable one with a groan of stressed metal. Unable to see, our driver had mounted the pavement and rammed one of the larger pieces of rubble.

‘How solid is this thing?’ I asked, flicking the safety off my laspistol, while Kasteen chambered a round into her bolt pistol, and began an urgent conversation about reinforcements over her vox-bead. Reinforcements we both knew were unlikely to arrive in time.

‘Solid enough,’ Jona said, although I doubted that; the colonel’s bolt pistol could definitely punch a hole through the armourglass window, although doing so from this side would undoubtedly deafen us, not to mention fill the passenger compartment with razor-edged shards. Our attackers didn’t seem to be carrying any armour-piercing small arms, however, so getting in would take them a little more time than that.

Or not. Blank-eyed, heedless of the damage they were doing to themselves, they kept battering relentlessly at the bodywork, clawing at the metal and armourglass in their single-minded determination to get in. The window nearest my head crazed where one of the rioters butted it repeatedly, flecks of blood and brain tissue marring the transparent surface.

Most disturbing of all was the silence. Throughout their frenzied onslaught, not one of them spoke, although given their behaviour that was hardly surprising; I’d seen things in Jurgen’s hair that showed more signs of intelligence. Even the sounds of their movement were inaudible, muffled by the thick armour enclosing us.

‘They’re insane!’ Kasteen said, more of a dispassionate tactical assessment than an expression of alarm, despite her vehemence.

‘Or on combat drugs,’ I agreed, although where they might have got them from was beyond me. I turned to the governor, who was looking pale, and hyperventilating: a bad sign, as, offhand, I could hardly think of worse circumstances in which to be stuck in a confined space with a panicking civilian. ‘Any of the local gangers use ’slaught, ’zerk, stuff like that?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

As I’d hoped, answering the simple, direct question brought him back a little, and I pressed my advantage.

‘You’re a gleaner, right? Anything unusual, you’d know.’

He shook his head, though whether in negation or to clear it would be anybody’s guess. ‘The last year or so there’ve been nothing but wild stories,’ he told me. ‘The insurrection, then the heretics – there were even supposed to be psykers among ’em, but nobody actually saw any.’ The whole car lurched, a development I didn’t like the feel of in the least.

‘They’re climbing onto the roof,’ Kasteen said, clearly wondering whether to try putting a bolt through it to discourage them, before deciding against the experiment, much to my relief. The top armour would be the weakest, to save weight, but it might still be strong enough to direct the full force of the explosive charge back towards us. The floor, on the other hand, had been heavily reinforced against mines, lowering the car’s centre of gravity, and thank the Throne for that: they’d probably have had us over by now if it wasn’t.

Sure enough, the battering sound above us grew louder, and the ceiling began to develop some ominous dents. Isolated from us in his armourglass box, the chauffeur produced a combat shotgun from under his seat, and racked it with an ominous clack, clearly anticipating the end in a matter of moments.

I was just on the point of commending my spirit to the Emperor, and hoping He hadn’t been paying too much attention to my activities of late, when the world around us erupted in a flickering orange glare. Searing flames lapped around the immobilised car, our attackers crisping and withering, losing their grips on the bodywork along with their musculature. Naked bones appeared through the sizzling flesh, skulls leering at us for a moment before falling away; then the firestorm ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ Jurgen asked, his familiar and welcome voice suddenly filling my vox-bead, as he brought the hurtling Salamander to a shuddering halt amid a blizzard of shredded roadbed from beneath the locked tracks. He waved a cheerful greeting over the jagged lip of metal where a carnifex had ripped the top of the driver’s compartment clean away in its eagerness to get at him during our desperate flight to safety. Unsurprisingly, it seemed, the regimental enginseers were still concentrating their efforts on getting the Chimeras back into shape, my personal transport having to wait its turn in the name of operational efficiency.

‘Fine.’ I kicked the car door open, and piled out instantly, drawing my chainsword as I went; there were still scattered pools of blazing promethium from the heavy flamer burst in our immediate vicinity, not to mention a fair number of combusting corpses, and if our fuel tank had been ruptured the whole thing could go up at any moment. Nothing attacked me, although if any of our assailants still lived and were making a run for it I couldn’t tell, the thick pall of foul-smelling smoke from their fellows’ immolation concealing most of our surroundings from view.

Now that it seemed I’d escaped sharing their fate I had an image to maintain, so I glanced back at Kasteen, Jona and the open-mouthed chauffeur, with an appropriately heroic flourish of my weapons, and beckoned to them. ‘All clear,’ I said, rather spoiling the gesture with a cough, as I got a lungful of greasy smoke.

‘Lucky the armour held,’ Kasteen said, with a rather tight nod in Jurgen’s direction.

‘Thought it would,’ my aide agreed phlegmatically. ‘But it wouldn’t have if I’d used the heavy bolter to scrape ’em off.’

‘I suppose not,’ I agreed, unable to fault his logic, and, scabbarding the chainsword again, I turned to the governor. ‘It seems it’s my turn to offer you a lift.’

‘I appreciate it,’ the young man assured me, scrambling into the rear passenger compartment of the Salamander, while his chauffeur stood guard with the shotgun, glancing left and right in barely suppressed panic.

‘Best check out the riders,’ Kasteen said, leading the way towards the wreckage of the motorbikes.

Conscious of our audience I began to follow her, despite the almost overwhelming impulse to clamber aboard the scout vehicle and get as far away from this blighted wasteland as possible. As I approached the nearest body, Jurgen joined me, his lasgun held ready for use, and his distinctive odour fighting to be noticed over the stench from the crackling cadavers.

‘Messy,’ he commented, looking down, and I nodded. The larger of the two outriders had been partially protected from the fury of the mob by his body armour, but clearly not thoroughly enough. His head was lolling at an angle only possible with a broken neck, while several plates of his external carapace had been ripped clean away, exposing the flesh beneath; and the condition of that had already been accurately summarised by my aide.

After some of the sights I’ve seen, it takes a lot to turn my stomach, but those raking, bone-exposing wounds did the trick all right, not least because I had no doubt that I’d have suffered a similar fate if my aide hadn’t intervened in so timely a fashion. ‘Are those bite marks?’ I asked, incredulous, although the answer to that was obvious after even the most cursory inspection, the manner in which the flesh was torn all too distinctive.

Jurgen nodded. ‘Looks like,’ he agreed, as incapable as ever of recognising a rhetorical question.

‘This one’s alive!’ Kasteen called, forestalling any further comment I might have made, and we hurried over to join her. Klarys had fared a little better, evidently having had time to draw her hellpistol and get off a shot or two before being borne to the ground, although she was unconscious, and her visible wounds were hardly less severe than those of her deceased colleague.

‘Not for long,’ I said, while Jurgen produced a medi-pack from the collection of pouches and webbing he was habitually festooned with and began patching up the worst of the leaks, ‘unless we get her to a medicae.’

Kasteen nodded, her face set. ‘We will,’ she said grimly. ‘Then I’m sending in a couple of platoons to clear the ruins.’ She shook her head, still unwilling to believe the evidence of her own eyes. ‘Cannibals in the heart of an Imperial capital. It’s intolerable.’

‘Desperation can drive people to almost anything,’ I said, although if the tingling in my palms was anything to go by, there was something a lot deeper and darker at the heart of Lentonia than that. Just how dark, though, I had still to discover.

Click here to buy Ciaphas Cain: The Anthology.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

‘Fight or Flight’ first published in Inferno! in 2002.
‘The Beguiling’ first published in Inferno! in 2003.
‘Echoes of the Tomb’ first published in Inferno! in 2004.
‘Sector Thirteen’ first published in Bringers of Death in 2005.
‘Traitor’s Gambit’ first published in UK Games Day Chapbook in 2009.
‘A Mug of Recaff’ first published in Hammer and Bolter 20 in 2012.
Old Soldiers Never Die first published in 2012.
‘The Smallest Detail’ first published in Black Library Weekender Anthology Volume One in 2012.
‘The Little Things’ first published in the Black Library Weekender Event Programme in 2012.
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‘The Bigger They Are’ first published in 2021.
‘The Only Good Ork’ and ‘Rotten to the Core’ first published in 2022.
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