‘Get some rest,’ Minka called out as the tram chugged slowly along the narrow rails. She couldn’t sleep herself, however. This mission had been her idea and now she began to have doubts. She lay rocking back and forth as the tram rattled through the long rockcrete gallery.

Each time the tunnels branched apart, blank-eyed servitors were set into the walls. They controlled underground junctions. Time after time they took narrower tunnels and passed boarded-up platforms, until at last they reached a terminus and the carriages wheezed to a halt.

A whistle blew.

‘Dismount!’ the order was given.

Platoon by platoon, Seventh Company dismounted and moved towards the wall of wide lifts. Each platoon loaded up. The grilled metal gates were shut, and then they started with a mechanical jolt, setting off upwards at a steady pace.

They could smell promethium, smoke and dust on the air. The thunder of artillery was loud enough to mean they needed to raise their voices to be heard.

The lifts halted, and opened. Broad troop tunnels led towards the front, but there were Cadian engineering staff who pointed them away from these, along what looked like service tunnels.

The tunnel walls were plain grey rockcrete. Sheaths of power cables and foil ducting ran in ropes along the ceilings. Along alternating sides of the tunnel, oval bulkhead lumens lit the chamber with a cold blue light. They marched quickly. The ground shook violently whenever the orbital bombardment struck the planet.

The closer to the gates they came, the louder the roar of battle. Larger explosions made the lamps rattle in their cages. Passing backwards, the word was it was nearly dark outside.

‘I should hope so!’ Dreno said.

No one answered. They were thinking of the mission ahead. It was weighing on them all. Not just the danger to themselves, but the responsibility they had to the other companies of the 101st, who were going in on the ground.

They marched on. Orugi started to sing. He had a fine bass voice. It was an old marching tune, the kind they sang in training camp on Cadia. It made a change from Flower of Cadia. The song rippled out, up and back through the line, from one company to the next, until the song was ringing out from ten thousand voices.

‘You know it,’ Minka said to Blanchez afterwards.

‘Of course,’ Blanchez said.

Minka smiled. Maybe there was a link between the old Cadians and the new.