The air was chill, the sky grey. Lyrga passed about a sack of hard-slab. Minka wasn’t hungry. The scale of the military camp reminded her of Cadia in the months before her planet’s final battle. Those memories brought a melancholy air to the scene about her. Then, they had all been doomed. She drew in a deep breath. This time, she told herself, it was the Imperium and not the traitors who were the besiegers. But still, a niggling doubt remained. You never knew what any battle might bring.

Over each gatehouse flew the colours of the resident regiment. They were gaudy emblems from planets with no great reputation, proudly emblazoned with battles that Minka had never heard of. The troopers stood as sentries at the gates of their compounds. They were dressed in a motley assortment of armour, camo and braid. Minka did not recognise many of their regiments, but she had seen their type many times before. Ill-fitting uniforms and scavenged boots gave the troopers a dirty and downtrodden look.

They were the rank and file of the Imperium. Men, women; black, white and every colour inbetween, drawn from feral worlds, hives, industrial forges, deserts, jungles, ice worlds, vast agri planets and orbital colonies circling gas giants. A conscript rabble. Underfed, poorly turned out, lacking discipline, semi-feudal, ill-trained. The cannon-fodder class of the Imperium of Man. They were mediocre forces raised from little-known planets to fulfil Imperial tithes and obligations. These troopers’ bones were the foundations upon which Imperial generals made their reputations.

While she looked upon them with disinterest their expressions showed anything but. The sight of the convoy of Cadians, the famous emblem of the Cadian Gate fluttering from every pennant, electrified them. For most it was their first ever glimpse of these famous warriors. Heads turned. Hands pointed. Some ran closer or just stood dumbstruck, while others pressed up against the wire fencing that lined the sides of the broad metalled service road and made the sign of the aquila.

‘Cadia stands!’ a voice shouted.

There was hope in that phrase. It was a celebration of an indefatigable spirit. A resolute and unwavering courage in the face of utter defeat.

Minka lifted her hand in answer. ‘Cadia stands!’ she called back.

Even now, those words woke fierce within her. She remembered crouching in the rubble of Kasr Myrak, listening to Creed’s speeches cracking over the vox. The lord castellan had given them hope of victory when there was none, but now even he had been taken from them. Everything was taken from them.

She stopped.

Not everything, not yet. She was still here. As long as she still fought, then Cadia still stood.

Thirty hours after planetfall, the Cadian 101st finally entered their assigned camp: ZV-332, in Sector 7 of the Malouri Front. It was three hours before sunset of their second day, a grey, cloudy affair, punctuated by the distant thunder of yet another artillery barrage.