Finally, Dido went over the particulars of this engagement. There were ten seconds to get out of a tank if it floundered. Commissars would consider it cowardice if any stopped or retreated during the landings.

Next morning General Bendikt arrived in an unmarked Valkyrie for a personal visit. He had been the 101st’s commander for so long he knew most of the troopers by sight and name and he strode along with a measured gait, shaking hands and trading words with every veteran he knew.

‘Like the new arm, sir!’ some called out and Bendikt lifted his clenched fist in a silent salute. The Cadians mirrored the gesture.

‘For Cadia!’ they shouted.

Each time Bendikt paused he was surrounded. At last he went into a meeting with Colonel Baytov and when he came out two-thirds of the regiment were waiting for a glimpse of him.

He stood before them and lifted his hand in salute again. They did not want to let him go, but at last Baytov came out and issued an order for them to stand aside. The Cadians did so reluctantly. Bendikt passed along the line, still shaking hands. He was loath to leave them, and he stood in the doorway of his Valkyrie for a long moment before his flier lifted up from the ground and turned for the General’s Palace.

After he had left, the Cadians were all shown a short vid-pict. There was no music at first, just an image of a Warlord Titan striding across Tyrok Fields, silhouetted against the lurid glare of the Eye of Terror. Cleansing the sky from the horizon up was the yellow stain of dawn. The dawn grew brighter, and then Flower of Cadia started to play. Soft at first, but growing in volume until it was a rousing chorus.

Throughout this were images of Cadia that they all knew. The high walls of Kasr Tyrok as a Valkyrie flew over it, the zig-zag patterns of the streets beneath. The high mountains that ringed the great landing fields. Bleak highlands in snow, and aurox graz­ing beneath a pylon that, as the pict-imager panned backwards, rose needle-thin into the air.

Frame by frame their home world of Cadia was alive to them again. There was not a dry eye within the whole regiment, and at the end the last notes of Flower of Cadia faded, and the screen went to void-black.

Afternoon was spent running through various planned scenarios. Then long hours of waiting and sleeping or playing cards.

At one point Minka noticed Dido putting her hand to her ear.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

Dido forced a smile. ‘I wish it would just start. I hate the waiting more than anything.’

Two

TWO

Early on the morning of the upcoming attack, Chief Commissar Shand stood in the half-light with three of his commissars, their black leather greatcoats flapping about their legs.