Sparker shook his head. ‘No. Killing him won’t help anything. But at least get rid of that thing.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sparker nodded. ‘And most importantly, don’t get caught.’

Minka saluted. ‘Understood, sir.’

Six

SIX

Major Luka had lost his leg so long ago he could barely remember what it was like to have four functioning limbs. He’d retired from the Cadian Eighth decades past, and he had followed the nat­ural course of a Cadian’s life and returned to his home planet to super­vise the training of Whiteshields.

He’d already been training Whiteshields for twenty years when the war for Cadia began. The loss of his home world had thrown him into a deep depression. Not just for himself and his fellows, but also for the loss of a role that he had felt great pride for: taking young Cadians and sharpening them into deadly weapons of war.

For Major Luka, the loss of Cadia meant many things, not the least of which was that the Whiteshields were no more. For the Cadian High Command, no Whiteshields refreshing the ranks meant that the existence of the Cadian Shock Troopers was at threat.

A solution had to be found before the Imperium of Man was robbed of its finest fighting force, just at the moment when it needed it most.

And it was as part of this proposed solution that Major Luka was one of those summoned to El’Phanor and given the mission, by Lord Militant Warmund no less, of ensuring the continuation of the Cadian Shock Troops as a viable fighting force within his warzone.

A variety of solutions had been proffered by the lord militant’s staff. On some warfronts Cadian commanders had recruited cadets from suitable planets.

‘Find me a new Cadia and I will agree to that,’ Warmund stated. It was clear he thought that no such planet existed.

There was a pause. ‘We could recruit veterans from other regiments…’ another adjutant suggested.

‘No!’ Warmund’s voice enhancer kicked in automatically and made loose objects in the room rattle. He lowered his voice. ‘What is the best of another regiment next to a true child of Cadia?’ He strode up and down the vaulted chamber they were meeting in. ‘It’s impossible! They will bring their own habits and traditions in. And so dilute the Cadian spirit! The steel that runs through us all.’

There was a scrape of metal as Dowding, his senior aide-de-camp, stepped forward. Dowding was a grizzled veteran of a thousand warzones, with the wounds to prove it.

‘The only way we can instil the Cadian spirit is through taking suitable candidates to elite training bases. Moons. Asteroids. Ice planets. Places where we can raise children as we were raised. Cadian fashion.’