Minka found a place to sleep. It was a rough and uncomfortable night.

By dawn their convoy of Chimeras had arrived at the designated landing zone. They woke, bleary eyed, stretching in the tight confines.

Breve had not slept. He parked the Chimera and, still sitting in the driver’s chair, pulled his helmet down over his face and put his feet up, folding his arms about himself.

‘Wake me when it’s done,’ he said. Minka nodded. They still didn’t know what ‘it’ was.

There was an hour’s wait by landing pad 74-B9. A grav-pallet of ordnance was being loaded onto one of the low funiculars that supplied the Earthshaker batteries. The two Sentinel lifters stalked back and forth as the Cadians waited.

Nikloaz brought the platoon banner out of Dido’s Chimera. It was a light pennant carrying the symbol of the 101st, embossed upon the Cadian Gate. The pole was set with a steel aquila. The pennant flapped lazily in the breeze.

Nothing else moved, except the winding white contrails that tracked each lighter ferrying supplies from orbiting warp-craft above Starport.

When the lighter appeared there was nothing of the Munitorum about it, nor any of the brute functionality of the Astra Militarum. It was a sleek, personal craft, with sweeping lines and ornate bas relief of gold and bronze.

They kept well back as it was waved onto the rockcrete landing pad. Its engines wound down. Coolants vented. The plating panels were still buckled from the heat of re-entry. Steam rose from it. The Cadians took up their positions. Dido strode forward and waited by the access ramp.

There was a long wait before the hatches were opened with a hiss of equalising pressures. Within seconds a flock appeared, each one chanting Psalms of Unification. But they were metal, not flesh, and they flapped out with wheezing pistons.

As they lifted up into the air, a woman appeared, dressed in silver power armour with a boltgun clamped to her thigh. Her helmet was cradled in the crook of her arm, her face tattooed with a chalice.

She was one of the Adepta Sororitas, the military fist of the Ecclesiarchy.

‘Hear me! In the Name of the Emperor! I am Superior Melissya of the Order of the Argent Shroud. Upon this planet of Malouri, I shall mark the sacrifice of my wards!’

She was not addressing the Cadians. She was addressing the heavens, like a shaman announcing her presence to the spirits of the world.

To Minka she looked much like the Sisters she had seen before. Pinched cheeks, hair cropped close behind the ears and a light in her eye that had all the sparkle and hardness of a carefully faceted diamond.

Minka turned to Dido. ‘It’s not…’ she said, but Dido shook her head.

‘No. Different order.’