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Vagabond Squadron – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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CHAPTER ONE

Four grunts were being flogged as Cass and Orlov passed by on their way to Suchen Palace.

They were Hyrkans, and their comrades were being made to watch. The battalion, roughly four hundred strong, had been drawn up in two ranks on three sides around the parade square. They were in full kit, and were visibly sweltering in the afternoon heat as the punishment played out. Tripod frames had been constructed from the hafts of the ceremonial spontoons carried by Hyrkan sergeants, and the guilty had been stripped of their upper fatigues and strung up to them by their wrists.

The battalion’s drummer boys were administering the sentence with electro-flails. The wicked cracking sound of each strike cut the humid air like a knife. The bared backs of the four were red-raw.

‘Thank the Throne the Navy doesn’t flog pilots,’ Orlov said to Cass.

‘We’re too valuable,’ she responded, morbid fascination holding her attention as she and Orlov crossed around the edge of the parade’s open side, headed for the palace’s main gates beyond.

A Hyrkan sergeant major was calling out the number of each lash. Next to him, the regiment’s senior commissar was watching to ensure the drummers weren’t going easy on their comrades, or that their arms weren’t starting to tire. There were several more junior commissars prowling like black-clad predators along the front ranks of the onlooking battalion, watching the faces of the men. They were making sure none averted their eyes, and hunting for any hint of a venomous glance cast at either themselves or the regiment’s officers.

The guilty four had been given leather bits to chew down on, but one had lost theirs, and they began to cry out with each shivering blow. Cass saw several onlookers wince. She wondered how many lashes they had been sentenced to.

‘I wonder what they did,’ Orlov mused.

‘Probably tied their boot laces the wrong way,’ Cass said.

One of the junior commissars looked at them. Cass held his gaze until they had passed round the rear of the ranks drawn up immediately in front of the gates.

There were two Tempestus Scions guarding the doors, big brutes in the red carapace armour of the Alphic Hydras. They checked the ident-tags of the pair of aviators, before banging twice on the entrance. With a rusty squeal, the heavy doors began to part. Cass and Orlov stepped through, leaving the wicked cracks and agonised crying behind.

Suchen Palace had once been the residence of the High Charag, the local title given to Kanai Tertius’ Imperial commander. It was just one of a number of royal residences dotted along the Eji Valley. In centuries past, the planet’s ruler would have spent time touring between them, overseeing the implementation of the Imperium’s authority. Nowadays, palaces like Suchen were relics of a bygone era, uninhabited for almost a century.

That was, until the Guard had arrived.

The palace complex was walled, an inner courtyard in front of the primary residence with lower secondary and tertiary wings flanking it. The walls had been white once, but were flaking and discoloured with age. The roof in particular looked as though it had once been magnificent, a sweeping five-ridged hip construction made from layers of ruddy ceramic tiles, though many of the layers were missing, and avian nests bristled in the cracks. The remnants of the regal silhouette had been further broken by the installation of a vox-mast and an augur dish.

Still, there was a certain faded grandeur to it all. In a sense it reminded Cass of parts of her home, on board the Emperor-class battleship Mandatum Divinum.

The courtyard’s centre was dominated by an elaborate stone fountain, carved like a nine-headed dragon. Once, Cass assumed, water would have spurted from each of its open maws, but it had long ago dried up, its basin cracked and baking in the sun. The bestial statue still glared across the courtyard with eternal, stony rapprochement. A pair of Guard staff officers were lounging alongside it, sharing a lho-stick. Both barely glanced at the new arrivals.

Cass and Orlov passed them on the way to the central building. Outside the heat was brutal enough to leave Cass’ dark blue flight suit plastered to her body, but inside the courtyard’s confines it was downright oppressive. Intense temperatures tended to bring on migraines, and she could feel one beginning to throb in her temples and behind her eyes. Pilots who had been operating planetside since the beginning of the invasion nearly two years ago said the weather should have shifted to wet and humid with the onset of the rainy season, but there was no sign of that yet. The last precipitation had been over a month ago, Terran standard. Good for flying, bad for existing, at least outside of a cockpit or hab-tunnel benefitting from air recyc.

Another Scion was on guard at the main door, but merely eyed the pair of Navy officers as they went through. There was little in the way of relief inside – a sole stuttering recyc unit that looked as though it had been stripped out of a cabin from one of the ships in orbit had been set up just inside the doorway, battling to make the space feel like anything other than a furnace. Cass resisted the urge to linger in front of it.

Suchen’s entrance hall matched its exterior, flaking walls and a tiled floor littered with broken plaster and vermin droppings. A few old tapestries were still hung up, hunting scenes interspersed with beasts from Kanai’s mythology, all faded almost to illegibility.

There was no one else present, and – besides the air recyc’s wheezing – no sounds save for the clipped footsteps of the two pilots on the bared floor and the buzzing of the gangly insects that seemed to infest everything in this region of Kanai.

With Orlov taking the lead, they mounted the double staircase at the far end of the hall and turned right along the landing. They passed several rooms on their way to the east wing. Doors had been replaced by reinforced flakboard, but most had been laid aside so movement in and out was unobstructed. Whatever fine furniture and royal dignitaries the chambers had once played host to were now gone, replaced with stacks of Munitorum-stamped crates being catalogued by a few robed clerks, silently assessing stocks on dataslates. None looked up from their labours as Cass and Orlov went by.

A man was waiting for them at the door to the east wing, ruddy-faced and perspiring in the olive drab uniform of the general staff. He saluted Orlov and introduced himself.

‘Wing Commander Orlov, my name is Lieutenant Rask. Lieutenant General Havali is expecting you.’

‘Lead on then,’ Orlov said, returning the salute. ‘I wouldn’t want to keep the general waiting.’

Rask took them through into another corridor. Here, the palace left behind its air of regal abandonment and dilapidation. The rooms they now passed were busy with the hustle of the Imperial war machine’s command elements. Signals operators sat working at chattering vox-banks in a communications hub, while Cass caught a snatch of briefing cant from a strategium, along with a glimpse of senior officers gathered around the green glow of a holofield in a shutter-darkened room. They passed more hurrying staffers and aides carrying sheaves of documents or dataslates bearing tactical and strategic readouts, muster rolls, message chits and orders-of-the-day. Eji Valley might only have been the tertiary of Kanai’s three main battlefronts, but the Suchen Palace headquarters was still responsible for the upper-level coordination of well over four hundred thousand men and women of the Astra Militarum.

And Cass was being taken to the heart of it. She had tried interrogating Orlov – her wing commander and immediate superior – on the way from Barduk Airbase West, but he had pled ignorance. All he claimed to know was that the summons from General Havali had something to do with Army Group Centre. That alone sounded bad to Cass.

They reached a reinforced doorway at the end of corridor, guarded by another Scion, who nodded them through. Rask took them inside, and swung the door shut behind them. The noise from the corridor was abruptly cut off.

Cass had met Lieutenant General Havali before, but only tangentially during senior briefing congregations, and never in what she assumed was his personal office. Whatever old furniture it had once possessed had been stripped out in favour of the familiar, utilitarian furnishings of the Imperial Guard. A heavy command desk, replete with its own inbuilt, purity-seal-studded power generator for a miniature holo-display, occupied the far end of the room, in front of a set of windows which Cass assumed looked out over the inner courtyard, but which had been largely covered up with flakboard and sandbags. A huge map dominated the right-hand wall, displaying in detail Eji Valley and the great river that ran through it, along with the two sprawling population centres, Ushen and Torr City, that lay on the plateaux to the river valley’s east and west. The map bristled with different-coloured tacks, and Cass’ gaze was instinctively drawn for a moment to the tight cluster of blue north of their own location, further up the valley and on the other side of the river. Army Group Centre, cut off beyond the Eji.

There were three figures already in the room, waiting for them. One was a staffer like Rask, loitering off to one side. Another was Lieutenant General Havali, standing behind the command desk. He was from Tallarn, and still wore the uniform of a senior Desert Raider, a dusty yellow desert smock with voluminous sleeves and a pale blue-coloured shemagh headscarf. His body was stout but was starting to ripen out into fat. He had an impeccably oiled white moustache, a contrast to his dark face and the livid pink scar that ran down his left cheek.

The third figure in the room was Air Marshal Jakyra, as gaunt and unsmiling as ever. She had been standing facing the map on the wall with her hands clasped behind her back, but she turned as Cass and Orlov entered.

Cass felt her mood plummet at the sight of her. If the commander of the entire Aeronautica Imperialis effort on Kanai Tertius had been called downstairs from her strategium on board the Mandatum Divinum, that meant whatever they were about to become party to was beyond serious.

‘Welcome, welcome,’ Havali said amiably, returning their salutes. ‘Stand easy. It’s good to see you again, wing commander. And this must be Captain Cassandra Elza. I recognise you.’

‘From the last general briefing, sir?’ Cass asked.

‘And because I make it my business to know who I have under my command, especially when it comes to a decorated unit like the Vagabonds.’

Cass offered a smile, but said nothing. She hadn’t left Barduk West to exchange pleasantries, but Havali was known as a man who liked to give his commands a veneer of personability.

The same couldn’t be said of Jakyra. Cass felt her gaze as the general spoke, but refused to meet it. Now was not the time for a confrontation.

‘Air Marshal Jakyra here informs me your squadron is still refitting, after that debacle over Ushen,’ Havali said. ‘Nasty business. You lost a warbird, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Cass said, wanting to talk about anything other than the Ushen insertion. ‘But we are almost recovered. Refits have been proceeding well, and my crews are eager for action. Another forty-eight hours standard and my squadron enginseer informs me the last of his repair-benedictions will be complete.’

‘You might not have that long, captain,’ Jakyra said from in front of the map.

Cass finally met her gaze. She was tall and aquiline, not unlike Cass in fact – they were supposedly very distant cousins, not an unusual fact among the ranks of the Mandatum Divinum’s pilots. She was dressed in her full air marshal’s uniform, a deep blue jacket faced white, with chainmail epaulettes, the golden crest of the Aeronautica Imperialis – a winged, stylised ‘AI’ – pinned to her chest. She must have been infernally hot, though she gave no sign of it besides a slight redness to her pale cheeks.

‘We are at your disposal as ever, air marshal,’ Cass said to her, before looking back at Havali. The general smiled warmly.

‘That is just one of the reasons why Vagabond Squadron possesses the reputation it does,’ he said. ‘And your pilots shall have the assignment they crave!’

The general moved out from behind his desk to stand next to Jakyra, in front of the map, while Cass tried not to think about how almost everything she had just said had been a lie.

‘You are aware of the situation currently facing Battle Group Centre?’ he asked.

‘Broadly, yes,’ Cass replied, using the clipped, succinct tone she had learned across a lifetime of briefing exchanges. ‘The attempt to open a third front up the Eji Valley to split ork efforts at captured Ushen and Torr City has been halted. Army Group Centre is currently cut off and pocketed beyond the Eji River. Besides that, I’m not up to speed on recent tactical developments.’

‘Strategos estimates show that Army Group Centre will be overrun within the next week, at the most,’ Havali said, his tone turning dark. He indicated the desperate huddle of blue tacks that Cass had already noted on the map. They were surrounded by a sea of green, with the Eji River to their back.

‘There are no viable crossings?’ Cass asked. ‘No way to get them over the river?’

‘All destroyed, mostly through aerial strikes. Ork air presence is potent, as you well know. The only positive is that Army Group Centre’s resistance is drawing xenos strength from the cities, but I had hoped to achieve that without the annihilation of nearly two hundred thousand men and war machines. Sadly, that is the reality we now face.’

Cass was tempted to ask if there was really no hope of going on the offensive and breaking the trapped army group out, but she held her tongue. It wasn’t her place, and besides, Havali would surely have already considered such an operation. For whatever reason, it was seemingly impossible.

‘A bad business, sir,’ Cass said instead, knowing it hardly did any of it justice.

‘It is, and I am going to ask you to become a part of it, captain,’ Havali said.

This was the moment Cass had been dreading. She kept her expression composed and her eyes on the general, even as she felt her insides turn to ice and her hands, clasped behind her back, clench.

‘I have spoken with senior aides and the air marshal here, and we have agreed that an airdrop into the pocket would be of strategic value,’ Havali said, slipping even further into briefing-cant as he said something he clearly knew Cass would not like. ‘Vagabond Squadron in particular would be the optimal choice. We would run you in under a decent amount of air cover. A simple drop-and-collect, in and out. If you depart tomorrow morning, you’ll be back at Barduk West before midnight local time.’

‘I see, sir,’ Cass responded, trying and failing to keep the coldness from her voice. ‘We’re only deploying Vagabond Squadron and our air cover?’

‘Yes,’ Havali said, then answered the obvious question before she could ask it. ‘Now, you’re probably thinking that a single supply run by one Valkyrie squadron isn’t going to be sufficient to keep the pocket intact, and you’d be correct. I’m afraid the problems faced by Army Group Centre go beyond logistics. But an elite unit such as the Vagabonds being seen to provide aid to our embattled troopers, all captured with a few good pict snaps – that has a value all of its own, both to the men there and the men here. I’m sure you understand the importance of morale, especially at a time like this. We can’t be seen to abandon the forces beyond the river.’

Even though you are abandoning them, you callous bastard, Cass thought. She recalled the floggings happening outside, and found herself wondering just what those men would say about morale.

‘Do we have landing zone coordinates, a flight plan?’ she asked, trying to vent her anger on operational specifics. ‘Supply manifests? Fuel and munition passes? The latest call signs and data-handshakes for Army Group Centre?’

‘Those will be supplied in the next few hours,’ Jakyra put in.

‘Who’s providing the top cover?’

‘Bix’s Thunderbolts from the Nine-Hundred-Eleventh Wing, the Cloud Knights.’

‘Have you briefed her yet?’

‘She should be on her way as we speak.’

Cass took a moment to master herself before she exploded. Perhaps sensing how close her veneer of discipline was to cracking, Havali began to speak again.

‘You might be relieved to know there is more to this undertaking than an exercise in propaganda, captain. I have a second set of orders, an objective that won’t appear on your noted instructions, but which should be considered as important as the offloading of your supplies.’

Havali waved at his aide, who scurried over and proffered a dataslate. Cass braced herself. What madness were they going to ask of her now?

She took the slate, read it, then reread it.

It was worse than she had feared. She felt an upwelling of pure revulsion.

‘Are those instructions clear, captain?’ Havali asked carefully.

‘I believe so, sir,’ Cass said, just about managing to swallow her disgust.

‘You are to impress on them that these orders come direct from central command,’ Havali said. ‘That they are to be obeyed. These aren’t only my instructions. There are other forces at work here.’

‘Am I to treat these orders as the real reason my squadron is being sent across the Eji, sir?’

‘Yes, captain. They are also to remain an absolute secret, code-crimson. Keep that slate, in case you need to use it as proof that you carry my full authority, but until the time comes you are to share it with no one. That applies to your crews as well. You will not inform them of these instructions until you touch down. As far as they are concerned, your only objective is to offload the supplies, and to be seen doing it.’

‘I understand,’ Cass said, slipping the slate into her flight suit.

She wanted to say more. She wanted to tell the general that he was a fool and Jakyra that she was going to get them all killed. She wanted to damn them for their cowardice. She wanted to ask them how she was supposed to tell her crews what they were really there to do, what they were truly risking their lives for, when the time came.

She wanted to beg them not to go, not to send her out. Not again.

Instead, she saluted.

‘We’ll get it done, sir,’ she said.

‘That’s why I called on Vagabond Squadron,’ Havali said, with a smile that spoke of relief. ‘Jakyra will make sure a full briefing packet is delivered to your section at Barduk by this evening. Any further questions?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then you’re dismissed. May the God-Emperor speed you on your way, Captain Elza.’

‘Jakyra wants to get me killed,’ Cass said venomously as she strode back into the palace’s inner courtyard, Orlov in tow. ‘She probably came up with this whole idiotic plan herself.’

‘I doubt that,’ Orlov said, his tone conciliatory. ‘By all accounts, Havali is distraught about the situation with Army Group Centre and desperate for anything that might take the sting out of his defeat. Apparently the situation in the pocket is a nightmare. Throne, the offensive has cost over a hundred thousand lives, and that was just in the opening few weeks. This smacks of trying to save face in front of high command at Ushen, before they pull the plug on him. As he said, there are other forces at work.’

He didn’t specify what he meant by ‘other forces’, and Cass knew not to press him, at least not here, at headquarters.

‘So my crews and I are going to die so the general can make a play at saving face. Has he considered how his image with senior command will suffer when he gets his best Valkyrie squadron reduced to burning wreckage along the banks of the Eji?’

Orlov said nothing, and Cass knew he was letting her vent. He had been her wing commander since she had been a junior side gunner, and was everything Jakyra was not – when he gave orders they were clear and considered, not delivered as ultimatums as though she and her pilots were a platoon of Guard grunts. As the wing’s most senior captain, Cass was closer to him than anyone else under his command, and she appreciated his style of leadership. She knew other wing leaders on board the Mandatum Divinum thought him too lax, but they weren’t in charge of the capital ship’s Valkyries.

‘Why not send someone else?’ Cass asked him, her tone still heated. She knew she shouldn’t be asking that sort of question, but after her restraint in front of Havali, she couldn’t help but bite back now at the unfairness of it all. ‘Jakyra knows what happened over Ushen. It was barely a week ago. Isn’t she tired of getting my pilots killed?’

‘They asked for you specifically,’ Orlov said. ‘You know how these things work.’

‘I do,’ Cass admitted bitterly.

Out beyond the gate, the Hyrkans were being marched off the square. As they filed past, the victims of the punishment parade were cut down from the spontoons. Two of them were unconscious, and the other two were unable to stand unaided. Their backs had been reduced to red ruin.

It looked as though one of the drummer boys had also passed out, either from the heat and exertion, or the brutality of the punishment he had been forced to inflict. The regimental commissar was pencilling notes into a small, black-bound book, standing to one side as the medicaes worked on getting the fallen up, like carrion waiting for the opportunity to feast beneath the burning sun.

‘Still glad you’re a Navy pilot who’ll never know the lash?’ Orlov asked with the barest hint of humour. Cass grimaced.

‘I’d rather that than dying for a general’s vanity,’ she said. ‘The worst part is going to be telling my crews.’

‘They’re on stand-down just now, aren’t they?’ Orlov asked.

‘They are. When they find out about all this, we might end up having to petition the Navy to introduce pilot flogging just for Vagabond Squadron.’

Orlov let out a humourless chuckle. ‘Lieutenant Vaughn’s going to take this the worst, isn’t he?’

‘Let me worry about Hal Vaughn,’ Cass said darkly.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2025.
This eBook edition published in 2025 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Vladimir Krisetskiy.

Vagabond Squadron © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2025. Vagabond Squadron, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-83609-373-2

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

To Dad, who I can never dedicate enough to.

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