‘Put in for an early transfer,’ she told him. She had heard the best ways of demanding this. It was a matter of drill-ground gossip. ‘I can send a request as well. You can come to my unit and help improve them. If the battle demands are high then they accelerate processing.’

‘I will,’ Tarli promised.

‘Have faith in the Emperor and your lasgun,’ her mother told her as farewell. When her mother stepped forward with her arms out, Minka stood stiffly and refused to embrace. Instead she snapped smartly to attention and saluted her.

She was not a child any more; she was a soldier.

The last time Minka had seen her brother was on the seventh day of the Black Crusade. The skies had been filled with the hulks of the Despoiler’s warships. They blocked out the sun, but even in the darkness she could see how proud he was as he stood to atten­tion, his lascarbine hanging from his shoulder, as the instructor spat fire and fury into their faces. He had kept his gaze resolutely fixed forward. He did not look at her, even as his troop of a thousand children marched past. His chest was swelled up, shoulders back, chin out. That was the last time she’d seen him. A proud little Cadian, who had disappeared in the confusion of war. Lost, like so many other things, into the clutches of the past.

These were just some of Minka’s experiences of her childhood on Cadia. Her home world had shaped her, its rough hands forming her into a physically tough, mentally ferocious warrior.

How could these baggage-brats match real Cadians?

When Minka woke next morning, Dido had already come from a check-up at the medicae station. ‘I’m fine, apparently,’ she said, but the blood clot had spread and now covered half her left eye. Minka could barely summon the energy to sit up.

‘You all right?’ Dido asked.

Minka was lying on her cot, one arm thrown over her head. She was exhausted by the memories, but also by the shock of Dido’s close escape.

She paused for a moment. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Honest.’

A full dress parade was called at 0800 hours, giving them just half an hour to be ready. The 101st formed up at a run, and were in place when Colonel Baytov took the podium.

He had a ream of regimental business to get through, speaking in his deep baritone. He went on for nearly an hour, and at the end he paused and looked over the ranks. ‘I am aware that some of you have met the troopers of the Seventy-Second Whiteshields.’

The Cadians stiffened at the very name.