‘I promise,’ he told her. He would either succeed or die in the attempt.

Now, as Yedrin stood to attention in a giant square of twelve thousand others on the solid ground of El’Phanor, he felt more relief than joy or pride or exultation. He had made it this far, which was further than he had ever dared to hope.

He watched the distant Lord Militant Warmund stride up to the podium and make a short speech about how the future of the Cadian Shock Troop depended on them all, before leaving by personal lighter for the Ramillies star fort in orbit about the planet.

Yedrin had soaked it all in like a sponge. It was the closest he would ever get to Cadia. It was like catching the echo of a song that would never be sung again.

There had been other speeches, of course, by other Imperial dignitaries. Cadet Yedrin couldn’t remember everything that had been said. It had been momentous. You are the first, an exciting new programme, a great honour, ten thousand of resistance, a refusal to ever be defeated.

He remembered the pride. The thrill of hearing those words and believing them. The immense honour that he had been given, from the untold billions of young men and women within the Imperium of Man, to enter this programme.

And then they were led off into their training company, twelve thousand hopefuls, chests swelling with pride as the wringer started to squeeze about them.

Day by day, hour by hour, the hopeful recruits were given the full Cadian treatment. It was more demanding than any of them thought they were capable of enduring. They trained until they could not go another step. They rehearsed mock attacks and deployments at all hours of day and night and without regard to food, shelter or hunger. And at the end of their days they fell into bed and slept in their clothes. They were asleep before their heads hit the pillow.

Their Cadian trainers were relentless. Each day they expected more of the troops, and to their own astonishment, the cadets found that they were achieving things they had not thought possible. Everything they did, their trainers did with them. When the recruits were bent double, the Cadians were barely out of breath. When the end of day came and the recruits crawled back to their barracks, the Cadians strolled about, seemingly unaffected.