LAST STEP BACKWARDS

Justin D Hill

The aircraft came out of nowhere, roaring from the skies on super-charged engines, making the world shake. Major Luka ducked. They were so low he thought they might take off his head. Then they wheeled over the causeway, spewing white contrails from their wing-slung rocket pods, the side gunners raking the ground with heavy bolter-rounds. Salvos of missiles exploded in the air, shredding the lead squads of blood-maddened Anckorites, stemming the tide for a brief moment.

‘Valkyries!’ Major Luka shouted as the lead craft swung to the right, while three others pulled to a halt about ninety metres back from the Aegis defence line, their thrumming engines sending up clouds of blue dust. He had a brief glimpse of troops rappelling in pairs from either side, before they were lost in dust.

The lead Valkyries came in again. One sparked a half-track that was pushing up between the burning wrecks of the lead tanks. It gouted black promethium smoke. Then the flyers peeled off. The din of their engines faded. The world seemed quiet for a moment. Major Luka paused. ‘Do you hear that?’

Cadet Slander looked at him.

‘Do you hear it?’

Slander shook his head, but then over the din of men shouting and dying and the rattle of gunfire and las-rounds, came the strains of music. Not the dull chanting of the enemy, but music. And not just any music. ‘It sounds like… Flower of Cadia…’

Major Luka jumped up. ‘Sing, man! Sing!’

The sound came clear and distinctive. It was getting louder. Major Luka walked out into the causeway, ignoring the las-shots that stitched the air about him. The swirling dust began to settle. Four squads of elite Cadian kasrkin appeared, coming in at a half run.

Major Luka remembered being a young boy in the choir at the cathedral in Kasr Ferrox. Yes, he thought, the sight of those kasrkin was more beautiful than even the chapel mural of Saint Beatine. The music grew louder. ‘For Cadia!’ the major shouted, answering shouts coming from all across the ridge. Then he stopped.

In the middle of the kasrkin came a bear of a man: officer’s greatcoat thrown over his shoulders, bull neck, head low, thrust forward, an air of defiant resolution, irresistible willpower, and the strength, courage and determination to resist.

‘Creed,’ shouted Luka. ‘It’s Creed!’

Earlier…

War is the heart that pumps life through the Imperium of Man. Cadet Fesk had learned that in basic training. War is the heart of the Imperium, and the Astra Militarum is the blood. What did that make the men he was watching? he wondered.

The Cadian Cadet – known as a Whiteshield for the broad white stripe on their helmets – was standing by the side of a six-lane rockcrete slabway watching files of weary troopers fleeing back towards the planet’s only major habitation, Starport. The men were from a planet called Ephalia, and they were mysterious to him in their manners, food, speech, customs. Two weeks before, these troops had been speeding the opposite way down into the Long Dry, waving and whistling as they clung onto their lasrifles and velvet shakos. Now there was no cheering. They looked weary, exhausted and wounded. Even worse, Fesk thought, they looked defeated.

Major Luka always told them there was no defeat for a Cadian Shock Trooper, only tactical withdrawal, counterstrike and, ultimately, a hero’s death.

Fesk’s attention was caught by a gunner who sat half in the turret of his Chimera. His right arm was in a sling and he had lost his shako, his mouth rimmed with dried blue dust.

‘They’re coming!’ the man shouted in heavily accented Gothic. He pointed back to the lowlands of the Long Dry. ‘They’ll kill you all!’

He held out a hand to Fesk, as if willing him and the other cadets up, but Fesk turned his back. ‘The Anckorites are coming!’ the man shouted again, but Fesk was already walking away. He was a Cadian.

Major Luka was in the communications bunker. There was a steady crackle of static from the vox. He kicked the unit with his good foot and Slander, the vox-operator, as well, in his frustration. ‘What do you mean you can’t get through?’ he demanded.

Whiteshield Slander shrugged. He’d been a petty thief on Cadia, and he had been lucky to escape the penal legions of St Josmane’s Hope. He was good with the vox-unit. It was just like picking locks, he said. But not even Slander could get through to headquarters. ‘It’s this planet,’ he said. ‘It frags the comms.’

Major Luka gave the vox-unit another kick, this time with his bionic foot. The steady crackle of static was unchanged. He let out a long sigh and took out his order strip, written in the neat penmanship of a Administratum servo-scribe, stared at it for a moment, then sighed and slipped it back into his breast flap pocket.

‘What is that, sir?’

‘Our orders,’ he said after a while. ‘Fortify and hold the Incardine Ridge against Luciver Anckor’s cult forces.’

‘But those orders are three weeks old,’ Slander said. ‘When we were on the offensive–’

‘What are you saying, cadet?’

‘Well, I thought that maybe we’ve been overlooked. We’re only…’

‘Only what, Cadet Slander?’

Slander gulped. ‘Only Whiteshields.’

Major Luka bent down. Slander could smell sweat, stale lho-sticks, and the morning meal of fried grox patties as the major roared at him. ‘There are half a million Anckorites down in the Long Dry who want to get to Starport, and it’s the only geographical feature this Throne-forsaken planet has. This is the only place we have a hope of stopping him. Sometimes it falls on the weak and defenceless. But that is the job of a Guardsman, do you understand? To die so that others might live.

‘If we abandon our position, what then? Once Luciver Anckor gets up the ridge it’s a straight drive to Starport. Understand? He’ll be on your back before you can fight your way through this rabble onto a lander. And it will be a fight. Every one of those men will knife you rather than let you on a lander before him. I’ve seen evacuations. They’re not pretty.’

‘So we stay here?’ Slander said.

‘Yes, damn it! Dig in. We hold the Incardine Ridge! And we shall show those cowards what it means to stand and fight.’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Alex Boyd.

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