Beneath her, the five-inch thick ceramite armour of her Chimera, The Saint, rattled like a tin can. This was what the Imperium of Mankind did. It channelled blunt might from thousands of worlds and focused it into one square mile of utter destruction.

For the rank and file of the Astra Militarum the effect was awe-inspiring. For the Cadians, who had seen war on a thousand planets, this was just the beginning.

It was five years since the whirlwind of the fall of Cadia had snatched Arminka Lesk up in its vortex. In that tumultuous time she had grown from a teenage Whiteshield to trooper to sergeant. She’d learnt many things with the Cadian Shock Troops. To kill in the name of the Emperor. To drink. To sleep anywhere. To own every room she walked into. To always twist the bayonet.

Now she was a young woman of twenty-one years with scars and bad memories and nightmares as twisted as the roiling swirls of the Eye of Terror. But she was still alive, and there was still fight within her yet.

That morning Minka was dressed in seasoned Cadian drab, her flak armour scuffed from action, her bull-pup Accatran-pattern lascarbine slung over her shoulder, a pair of grenades hanging from her webbing. Her tri-dome helmet lay next to her. Her sleeves were pushed up above her elbows.

An ornate tattoo had been worked into the skin of her forearm, with the symbol of her home fortress of Kasr Myrak surrounded by the motto Cadia Stands in High Gothic script.

Jaromir came up behind her. ‘Traitors?’ he said simply.

She nodded. Jaromir was a well-built giant with a mop of sandy hair. He’d been a handsome man once, but he’d taken a bolt shell to the head long before he was assigned to Minka’s squad. His injury had left him unable to express himself with ease. Sometimes his mouth stopped working, and he could not connect his thoughts together well. In the old days he’d have been retired to the reserves.

But despite his injuries, Jaromir could still strip a carbine, could still hit a bullseye at a hundred yards, and when given an order he responded with the sharpness of a new recruit. His training ran deep.

Orugi had been lying on the open rear access ramp, his helmet beside him. He sat up from the shade of the Chimera. ‘Nothing like a bombardment to wake you up,’ he said as he stood and stretched.

A klaxon rang. Minka slapped the Chimera’s front slabs of ­armour. ‘Come on! We’re moving out!’

Breve had been fretting over the machine-spirit ever since they’d landed. He made the sign of the aquila before engaging the engine-stud. ‘Here goes!’ he called out as he coaxed the Chimera’s machine-spirit to life. The first gritty puffs of promethium fumes began to splutter through the armoured slats that screened the twin exhaust pipes.