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Warp travel is torment across dimensions.
Even buried in the deepest cargo hold of the conscription ship, the weightlessness and disorientation that seeped through the Geller field and into the marrow were enough to twist a normal person's nerves into knots.
The moment the hatch opened, Kaelen braced against the freezing bulkhead and retched up a mouthful of bile.
The ordeal left his face sallow. Beside him, the two "Ogryns" wrapped in heavy dust cloaks were still breathing steadily.
Superhuman physiology. Unreasonable, sometimes.
The instant his boots hit the metal grating, a gust of wind laced with high-concentration promethium exhaust slammed straight down his throat.
He looked up. No warm star overhead. No pitch-black of deep space.
The entire sky had been torn apart by a twisted, sickly purplish-red.
The Eye of Terror.
The warp storm's aftershocks had become a nauseating aurora, thick, self-aware blood vessels writhing and pulsing above the cloud layer, hungry and slow.
This was Cadia.
Late M41.998. Humanity's foremost fortress at the gate of the Eye of Terror.
As far as the eye could see, the surface was covered in lifeless defensive positions. Massive ceramite bunkers lay like the skeletal remains of ancient giants collapsed across the wasteland, cold and oppressive.
"Sir. Identity verification."
At the end of the ramp, a gaunt Departmento Munitorum dispatch officer rapped on his desk with the air of a man who had somewhere better to be.
He glanced at the sergeant's nameplate on Kaelen's chest, then looked up at the two mountains of flesh in heavy armor.
"Sergeant Kaelen. You and your mutant retainers are assigned to the Phoenix Infantry Regiment, Seventh Company. Second-line defensive order." He pointed in a direction without looking. "Follow Seventh Corridor straight down, don't dawdle. Cadia high command is running a full review at Landing Pad Three today — all newly arrived companies report to the assembly zone immediately to fill the formations. Move it. You block a logistics convoy, you can take a shovel and scrape your own guts off the treads yourself."
Kaelen didn't bother arguing. He took the dispatch order, collected Horus and Kullen, and merged into the crowd, their power armor and weapons buried inside the mining equipment, invisible to anyone who didn't know to look.
The entire surface of Cadia had already become a war machine running past its limits.
On both sides of the passage, hundreds of thousands of Astra Militarum soldiers trudged toward their positions with heavy steps.
Every face wore the same expression. Numb. Tight.
They had a vague sense that something brutal was coming.
Past the long armored isolation wall, the view opened wide.
Landing Pad Three was absurdly large. Big enough to swallow several heavy armor regiments whole.
The core area was hosting a grand welcoming ceremony. Ecclesiarchy loudspeakers blared hymns. The military band played loud enough to rattle teeth.
Massive heavy landing ships lowered their embarkation ramps one after another.
Heavy armored vehicles rolled off in formation, their treads making the metal deck groan. Behind them came elite infantry in gleaming armor, moving with the easy swagger of soldiers who knew they were being watched.
Kaelen was sizing up these so-called aces when Horus, walking behind him, suddenly stopped.
The massive frame went still so abruptly that Kullen, bringing up the rear, froze too. The old veteran's fingers dropped instinctively to the bolt pistol at his waist.
"What is it?" Kaelen asked, voice low.
Horus bent down. His enormous dust mask nearly touched Kaelen's shoulder.
"The air is filthy."
The Warmaster's gaze cut through the thick lenses and locked onto the heavy armored unit receiving inspection in the far distance.
"Not promethium. Not gunsmoke." His voice was quiet. "The cloying sweetness of warp corruption."
Horus's perception was nothing like an ordinary Space Marine's. He had briefly fallen 10,000 years ago, and then the System had forcibly stripped his soul clean. That smell, he knew it the way a man knows the stench of his own wound. Like thick ink splashed across white paper. Glaring. Nauseating.
"There are maggots in that unit. Servants of Chaos."
Kaelen's scalp went cold.
He didn't hesitate. He pulled up the system panel on the back of his retinas.
"Area scan. Target: forward heavy armor regiment landing zone."
The next second, blood-red warning boxes flooded his vision, refreshing so fast they nearly blinded him.
Not one or two moles.
An entire formation. Every last one of them.
Kaelen swallowed. He stared at the Gothic unit designation embroidered on the battle standard.
Voskanni Ironclad Regiment.
He knew that name.
In The Battle of Cadia, the Voskanni were an ace main force with illustrious battle honors, regarded as an iron shield by the entire sector. Cadia's high command had placed immense hope in them.
And then?
At the critical juncture of the Thirteenth Black Crusade, that ace force turned their guns around. Heavy tank cannons blasted loyalist fortresses to rubble at close range. Entire formations of senior officers were slaughtered.
That betrayal broke the spine of Cadia's ground defense in a single stroke. It also, eventually, gave Castellan Creed the opening he needed to rise.
And now, these men who had long since sold their souls to the Chaos Gods were swaggering down the transport ramps, receiving flowers and applause and the open-armed embraces of Cadia's unsuspecting high command.
The cold wind still cut. Kaelen's back was already soaked through.
The louder the military band played, the more this grand occasion felt like the opening act of a farce, and a funeral.
"Found a problem?" Kullen stepped half a pace closer, his voice low and rough beneath the hood. The old knight had caught the change in Kaelen's breathing.
"Big trouble." Kaelen kept his voice to a volume only the three of them could hear. "That ace armored regiment they're welcoming as heroes — they're all heretics."
Behind his faceplate, Kullen's eyes went flat. Killing intent bled out of him without a word.
"They're moving into the core defense zone." Horus took one look at the deployment layout and made his judgment. Clean. Precise. "Once they strike after the defensive network is fully formed, Cadia's entire rear will be torn open. Whoever is commanding this campaign will have no way out."
He looked at Kaelen.
"We need to eliminate this threat. Before they reach their designated permanent fortifications."
Easy to say.
Kaelen's head was splitting. He was a second-line sergeant with no rank, no connections, and no leverage.
Walk straight over and report them? March up to the Governor of Cadia or one of those Inquisitors with their heads in the clouds and shout that the Voskanni Ironclad Regiment were traitors?
A baseless accusation like that wouldn't even need the Voskanni to act. The Commissar handling internal security, or an Ecclesiarchy preacher, would be the first to draw a bolt pistol and blow his head into a smashed melon. His two "Ogryns" of unknown origin would follow him to meet the Emperor of Mankind shortly after.
Stand by and do nothing?
Also unacceptable.
If the Voskanni were allowed to rebel on schedule, more Astra Militarum soldiers would die. The loss of the senior command echelon would collapse the defensive line behind it. The math was ugly and it only got uglier.
All around them, Cadian recruits in crude carapace armor craned their necks, gazing at the ace unit with wide, fervent eyes.
They had no idea. A poison-dipped blade was already pressed against their lower backs, silent and patient.
Kaelen set his jaw.
He knew this universe was rotten to the core. He knew that sticking your nose in other people's business was usually how you died worst. Every transmigrator learned fast that a bleeding heart was a liability.
But he was still, in the end, a human being with a conscience.
He couldn't watch thousands of loyal soldiers get butchered from behind and just let it happen. He couldn't get past that.
"We can't force it." He weighed the options fast and made his call. "We have no physical evidence. If we step forward now, we're just live targets for the military tribunal."
"So we let it happen?" Kullen's tone was hard.
"Of course not."
Kaelen turned. His gaze tracked the assembly zone signs to the fringe of the pad, where rows of dark green campaign tents had been pitched.
The Phoenix Infantry Regiment's encampment. Their unit.
There was only one play.
Find the regiment's Commissar.
His sole direct superior. The one person in the Imperial system who was obligated to hear him out, who had the authority to handle a heresy accusation, and who had the channels to get intelligence safely up the command chain.
Even a 1-in-10,000 chance the Commissar believed him was better than dying on the spot and dragging all of Cadia down with him.
"We need to pay a visit to our regiment's Commissar. Tell him about the potential traitors."
"He won't believe it," Horus said. "A unit that receives a welcome like this holds enormous prestige in the military. Without solid evidence, we'll be branded as slanderers."
"But..."
His tone shifted.
"Even if it means exposing who we are — we have to stop this rebellion before it starts."
He looked at Kaelen.
"Let's go."
➤ Next: The Betrayal of the Voskany Ironclad Regiment
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