Warmund nodded. ‘I agree. Have the Munitorum draw up a list of suitable locations. But such a scheme would take a generation to reach fruition, and meanwhile my Cadian regiments are being obliterated. We are facing a Black Crusade. Whole regiments, with their names and histories, lost in some of the heaviest casualties we’ve ever recorded. In this sector, without reinforcements, the Cadians as a fighting force do not have twenty years to wait.’

He felt his rage building once more. At moments like this the volume of his battlefield-augmented voice threatened to break glass. He stopped himself and drew in a breath. When he started to speak again it was in a more controlled fashion.

‘In the meantime we need to plug the gap. There must be thousands of children within Cadian baggage trains, those born to fighting regiments. Gather those of a suitable age and by the Golden Throne, put them through the wringer. They will not be to the standard that we expect, but they will keep our regiments alive until our other plans reach fruition.’

There were nearly twelve thousand enlisted into the first Whiteshield training course. The hopefuls gathered upon the surface of El’Phanor. Terraforming had been going on long enough that life had just started to return to the long-dead planet. There was a thin atmosphere at least. And above they could see the steady twinkle of the Ramillies-class star fort as it hung like a moon.

Urae Yedrin was one of those recruited. He was the only child of a Cadian captain and a naval rating. He’d lived an odd life following his mother’s regiment, being both Cadian and distinctly not Cadian.

‘It’s your eyes,’ his mother explained sadly. ‘They’re blue.’

During her career Yedrin’s mother had tried many times to have him transferred back to her home world, but the Imperium had better things to do than ferry lone children across the galaxy. Even if they were Cadians. What would later turn out to be named the Thirteenth Black Crusade had already begun, and the frenetic tension of war was starting to take hold.

His mother’s regiment had been on garrison duty in the Centaurus Arm, far in the galactic north, when he found his mother that night, in her barracks, looking fretful. ‘There’s an immediate recall of all Cadians,’ she said.

Her face was filled with dread as she lifted the order and read it to him. It came from Governor Primus Marius Porelska. ­Urgent recall: all Cadian regiments to return to their home world with all speed.

‘Do you think they will let me come too?’ he said.

She looked at him. ‘I do not know,’ she said at last.

At first there were not enough available transports. They managed to get a transport as far as a nondescript world named Formund, where there was already a backlog of Cadian regiments barracked in hastily refitted orbital facilities.