…
During the long homeward journey of the Zealous Advance, Klein remained exactly where he had promised to be: close enough to be useful, irritating enough to be remembered, and diligent enough that even the most suspicious Navy officer eventually stopped asking why a Talon merchant was always nearby.
He served as liaison, supplier, courier, negotiator, and when the voyage grew especially dull, professional nuisance. Only when the transport cruiser entered the Warp did he withdraw to his own merchant vessel. Yet no matter where the Zealous Advance translated back into realspace, Klein's ship always found it again. Sometimes it arrived within hours. Sometimes it was already waiting near the next resupply point, running silent beside some half-dead orbital station as if the void itself had passed along the itinerary.
The crew joked that Klein had tied a chain around the Zealous Advance's stern. The Navy officers did not laugh. They had seen enough of Talon's dimensional technology to dislike jokes that sounded too plausible.
Under normal circumstances, a merchant vessel would never have been permitted such close and repeated contact with a ship transporting Astra Militarum personnel. The rules were strict for good reason. Merchant captains were tolerated, taxed, inspected, and watched; they were not invited to drift alongside troop transports carrying Cadian regiments. But Klein had understood Imperial procedure well enough to bypass it by means older than the Imperium itself.
He had bribed the right man with the right miracle.
For Captain Rhys, master of the Zealous Advance, Klein had secured an entire arsenal of Talon-manufactured power armo, enough to outfit a private guard worthy of a minor noble's envy. The price had been absurdly low, low enough that Rhys had spent three days suspecting a trap and bought it anyway. In return, Rhys had granted Klein a chartered merchant license under the ship's authority, a precious document that opened restricted Imperial ports, sanctioned resupply corridors, and military-adjacent trade routes that most merchants could only dream of approaching without being fired upon.
It was corruption, technically. It was also commerce. In the Imperium, the difference depended on which seal appeared at the bottom of the document.
For several consecutive years, Creed had sent no messages back to the Talon system. Instead, he kept collecting reports from Klein about Talon's current state. Each month, Talon's armies and fleet expanded a bit further, and the Talon fleet even dispatched warships to assist the Imperial Navy in combating raiders.
The updates eased the monotony of the voyage more than Creed liked to admit.
Life aboard the Zealous Advance was a slow war against boredom, stale air, and the knowledge that every Warp translation carried them closer to Cadia and whatever emergency had forced the recall. Cadian officers drilled their troops, inspected weapons, drank in moderation, and pretended not to think about home too often.
Klein's stories disrupted that discipline.
At first, only a handful of officers gathered in the ship's cantina to hear him speak. Then a few ratings lingered by the bar. Then off-duty armsmen drifted in. Eventually, entire clusters of crewmen and soldiers began arranging their rest rotations around Klein's appearances. He recounted void engagements with the flair of a man who understood that facts alone were rarely enough to hold an audience. Pirate raiders ambushed Talon convoys. Boarding parties in sealed armor hit enemy decks before the pirates finished screaming into the vox.
Some of it was true. Some of it was probably improved. Creed had no doubt Klein knew exactly which parts were which.
Even Captain Rhys began visiting the bar to drink and listen, though he maintained a careful distance from Klein after the first few attempts at business. The captain enjoyed hearing about Talon warships. He did not enjoy Klein leaning across the table afterward and asking whether the Zealous Advance had ever considered the benefits of a dimensional engine retrofit.
Rhys developed an impressive instinct for departure. The moment Klein's tone shifted from storyteller to salesman, the shipmaster would drain his glass, stand, and remember some urgent duty elsewhere.
Time passed. Stars came and went. Warp routes opened, snarled, and spat them back into the material universe one system closer to home. Resupply stops blurred together: shrine stations, hive-world docks, dry orbital depots, and nameless rocks whose only purpose was to hold fuel, ammunition, and a miserable population of laborers born to load crates until death or accident claimed them.
Eventually, after years of crawl, translation, resupply, and waiting, the journey ended.
The Zealous Advance and Klein's merchant ship arrived one after the other in orbit around Cadia.
The fortress world filled the viewports like a clenched fist. Orbital stations, defense platforms, patrol craft, and traffic-control beacons surrounded it in disciplined layers. Troop transports moved in ordered lanes beneath the watchful guns of the planet's orbital defenses. Vox traffic grew denser by the minute, clipped voices confirming approach vectors, landing permissions, cargo priorities, regiment designations, quarantine codes, and surface assignments.
Cadia was not merely receiving troops. It was mustering.
Regiments began disembarking in waves, shuttles and heavy landers peeling away from their parent vessels and descending toward the surface. Every available berth, transport bay, loading arm, and grav-cradle seemed to be moving men, armor, ammunition, or fuel. The planet below already possessed some of the strongest defenses in the Segmentum, yet more troops were being poured onto it as if the High Command expected the Eye of Terror itself to vomit war across the Cadian Gate.
Creed watched the preparations and said nothing.
Kell, standing beside him, did the same.
Neither man needed to speak to understand the other's thought. When Cadia called its children home, it was never for ceremony.
…
Because Rhys had contracted Klein to assist in moving the troops, Creed traveled down to the surface aboard one of the merchant's shuttles rather than an Astra Militarum lander.
It was cleaner than a Guard transport, though not by much. The seats were padded, the restraint harnesses functioned without requiring a prayer, and the air recyclers produced something closer to breathable atmosphere than recycled boot leather. But the cargo racks were still packed tight with crates, weapon cases, ration pallets, and sealed containers marked with Talon trade glyphs. Klein clearly considered empty space a personal insult.
Creed and the officers of the 8th Regiment sat along the port side of the troop compartment. Their uniforms were travel-worn but immaculate by Cadian standards. Boots polished. Weapons secured. Field caps tucked where regulations required. Even after years away from home, none of them slouched like ordinary passengers. They sat like soldiers awaiting inspection.
Klein and his retinue occupied the starboard seats. His mercenary bodyguards were a stranger collection: hard-faced voidsmen, Talon troopers in compact power armor, a pair of silent men whose augmetics suggested more money than mercy, and several ogryns sealed inside reinforced suits large enough to make the shuttle's deck plating complain.
The ogryns' presence should have made the compartment unbearable. Mercifully, their armor was fully sealed. Whatever personal battlefield atmosphere they produced remained contained behind pressure locks and filtration systems, for which every Cadian aboard was silently grateful.
The shuttle detached from its orbital carrier with a hard metallic clunk. A moment later, acceleration pressed everyone deeper into their seats. The craft slipped past descending military transports, angled through the traffic lanes, and began its long fall toward Cadia.
Creed turned his head toward the viewport.
His birth world waited below.
Cadia was not beautiful in the soft way poets used the word. It did not invite affection with warm oceans, golden plains, or gentle cities. Its beauty was martial, severe, and unforgiving. Snow-streaked mountain ranges cut across the land like old scars. Fortress-cities rose from the harsh terrain in brutal silhouettes of gun towers, shielded walls, landing fields, and armored causeways. Endless grey skies pressed down over the world, stained by industrial haze, weather fronts, and the distant glimmer of void traffic burning through the upper atmosphere.
To outsiders, it might have looked bleak. To a Cadian, it looked like home.
That realization did not comfort Creed as much as he had expected.
Many Cadians who left their homeworld never returned. That was the bargain every soldier made. Cadia raised its children for war, sent them across the galaxy, and accepted that most would die under foreign skies. Had the recall orders not come from Cadia itself, Creed doubted he would ever have set foot on the planet again.
Part of him had wanted to.
Another part had dreaded it for decades.
"Feels good to be going home, doesn't it?" Klein asked suddenly. His tone was lighter than the atmosphere in the cabin deserved, but not mocking. "I haven't been back to Talon in years. I miss it so much it keeps me awake at night."
Creed did not answer at once. His eyes remained on the planet below.
Then he shook his head.
"My time here wasn't exactly pleasant."
Klein blinked, caught off guard by the flatness in Creed's voice. He had expected a soldier's pride, perhaps some gruff sentiment wrapped in Cadian restraint. Instead, he had touched old bone and found it still sharp.
Creed kept looking down.
Memory came without permission.
Kasr Gallan. Proud walls. Gun emplacements along the battlements. Searchlights cutting through cold night air. Drill yards where children learned to hold wooden rifles before they were old enough to properly understand death. Beyond the fortress-city, the Usarkar family ranch had stretched across land that seemed impossibly green in memory, though Creed knew memory had a way of polishing what grief refused to release.
He remembered his parents. Stern when needed, gentle when no one else was watching. He remembered the smell of animal feed, wet soil, oiled weapons, and his mother's cooking. He remembered a neighbor girl whose kindness had seemed almost rebellious among Cadians raised to speak in orders, corrections, and warnings.
Then the raid.
Smoke over the fields. Screams cut short. The sharp stink of blood and burning wood. His father falling. His mother's body twisted where no child should have seen it. The girl—
Creed's jaw tightened.
He remembered every detail of their deaths. Not because he wanted to. Because forgetting would have felt like abandoning them a second time. He remembered being cornered, wounded, too young to fight properly and too stubborn to die quietly. He remembered the stranger who had saved him.
A powerfully built man in black power armor, a white robe worn over it as if he had stepped out of some half-remembered legend. Twin pistols. A sword across his back. Calm amid slaughter.
Creed had never forgotten him.
"What was your homeworld like?" Kell asked, pulling Creed back into the present.
The question was aimed at Klein, not at him. Kell's voice carried the rough scrape of old augmetic work and a lifetime of shouting over guns. He had noticed Creed's silence, Creed knew. The old sergeant had simply chosen not to prod the wound directly.
Klein accepted the change of subject with unusual tact.
"A hive world," he said. "A miserable one, once. Since the last governor sold or moved most of the manufactorums, you can actually breathe the air in some districts without a rebreather."
Kell grunted. "Sounds decent enough."
"Decent my arse." Klein leaned back against his harness. "That was just the first sign it had stopped actively trying to kill us. Compared to what Talon's hives are like now, it's night and day."
"You miss the place that badly?" Kell asked.
Klein's expression shifted. The usual merchant's grin remained, but something more sincere moved beneath it.
"Yes," he said. "More than I expected. Funny thing, missing a world. You spend half your life cursing the stink, the officials, the tolls, the ration queues, the dust in every vent, the way every dockmaster thinks his landing bay is sacred ground. Then you leave, and suddenly the same things start feeling like proof you belonged somewhere."
Kell said nothing for a moment. Then he looked toward the viewport.
"Cadians don't usually talk like that."
"I noticed."
"We usually just say we're from Cadia and assume that explains everything."
Klein snorted. "It often does."
The shuttle pierced the upper atmosphere. A low rumble vibrated through the hull as ion buffers flared against the growing resistance. Heat shimmered across the viewport's outer layer. The deck trembled beneath their boots, not enough to alarm anyone, but enough to remind every passenger that only armor, engines, and pilot competence separated them from a very fast death.
Cloud broke around them.
The Tyrok Fields sprawled below.
From altitude, the plain looked like a vast military diagram drawn in mud, snow, steel, and smoke. Landing zones had been marked by beacon towers and guide lights. Supply depots squatted beside temporary railheads. Armored columns crawled across designated routes while infantry formations waited in ordered blocks for assignment. Camps spread outward in disciplined grids, each one marked by regimental standards, vehicle parks, field shrines, munition stacks, and the endless movement of soldiers preparing for war.
Three Warlord-class Titans strode slowly across the fields in the distance. Even from the shuttle, their scale made the human formations beneath them seem like scattered insects. Their warhorns bellowed across the plain, deep enough to vibrate through the shuttle's frame, a sound less heard than endured. Each step sank into the ground with deliberate majesty, their void shields flickering faintly as they passed through drifting snow and exhaust haze.
Among the mustering forces loomed a Leviathan Command Vehicle, a mobile fortress of steel and command systems. Its cavernous holds swallowed tank after tank from armored regiments that had arrived ahead of the 8th. Loading ramps groaned beneath the weight of Leman Russ battle tanks. Munitorum labor crews shouted over engine noise. Tech-Priests attended machine spirits with incense and tools while officers argued beside fuel bowsers and ammunition conveyors. The Leviathan rivaled smaller Titans in sheer mass, its massive treads grinding over the earth with the authority of a fortress that had decided to move.
Creed studied the scene with narrowing eyes.
"Have the Volscani Cataphracts arrived yet?" he asked.
Kell's gaze sharpened at once. "They weren't on the same transport as us. Last manifest I saw put them a few days out."
Creed nodded silently.
The words Qin Mo had spoken years ago returned with unpleasant clarity.
The Volscani Cataphracts will rebel. They will slaughter Cadia's high command at the landing fields on the Tyrok Fields.
For the entire voyage back to Cadia, Creed had turned that warning over in his mind until it had worn grooves into his thoughts. He had considered a dozen possible actions and rejected most of them. Warn High Command? With what evidence?
A prophecy from the Lord of Talon, delivered years before the fact, based on knowledge Creed could not explain without inviting questions he could not safely answer. Accuse an incoming regiment of treachery before it even landed? That would earn suspicion, not trust. Worse, it might bring scrutiny down on the 8th Regiment before the true danger arrived.
Cadia was vigilant by nature, but vigilance had limits. Men believed in spies, infiltrators, xenos tricks, and Chaos corruption. They did not believe a distant warlord could predict the exact betrayal of a loyal regiment years in advance.
In the end, Creed had settled on the only plan that did not depend on being believed.
Prepare. Watch. Keep the 8th ready. Place loyal officers where they could react quickly. Establish rally points. Secure access to armor and vox channels. The moment the uprising began, he would move before confusion became massacre.
It was not enough.
But it was something.
Having fixed the plan in his mind once more, Creed turned from the viewport and stared at the shuttle's ramp hatch.
The craft touched down with a jolt. Landing claws locked against the pad. The ramp lowered with a hydraulic groan, steam venting from both sides in short, hissing bursts that curled across the cold air of Cadia.
Creed rose first. Kell followed half a step behind, as always. The officers of the 8th Regiment unstrapped themselves and filed out with practiced speed, boots striking the landing field in crisp rhythm.
The air hit Creed like a memory. Cold. Thin. Metallic with frost, engine fumes, and gun oil. Cadia smelled different from every world he had fought on, and the realization unsettled him more than he expected.
He pushed the feeling aside and went to work.
The 8th Regiment's assigned landing zone required immediate organization. Creed and his officers marked encampment boundaries, rest areas, vehicle lanes, ammunition dumps, medicae stations, vox points, and fallback assembly positions. Nothing about the work looked dramatic. That was why it mattered. Regiments survived because someone decided where men slept, where fuel was stored, how tanks moved without blocking infantry, and which vox frequency carried evacuation orders when everything went wrong.
Klein and his merchant guards stood to one side, observing. Their reflective visors gave away nothing. The ogryns remained motionless in sealed armor, looming behind their employer like obedient siege equipment.
Moments later, a smaller transport descended nearby. Its hull bore official markings that made the Cadian officers straighten before the ramp had fully lowered. At first, only a few soldiers noticed. Then whispers moved across the landing zone, quick and controlled. Men adjusted their caps. Officers stopped mid-order. Even Munitorum laborers found reasons to stand a little straighter.
The ramp lowered.
Two figures disembarked with their retinues.
Creed recognized them at once, though he had been away from Cadia for years: Marius and Karwyn, the First and Second Castellans. Their names were known across the regiments, not merely as administrators or parade-ground commanders, but as men whose orders shaped the defense of Cadia itself. Around them moved aides, bodyguards, vox-officers, and junior staff with the alert efficiency of personnel accustomed to proximity to power.
Creed snapped to attention and raised the Aquila salute. Beside him, Klein did the same with surprising precision. Whatever else the merchant was, he knew when irreverence became unprofitable.
"Ursarkar Creed," Marius said, smiling with genuine approval as he looked him over. "I have heard there are three Creeds serving among the Cadian Shock Troops."
"Yes, sir," Creed replied. "I am Ursarkar E. Creed."
Marius turned slightly toward Karwyn, still smiling. "Then this is definitely the finest of the three Ursarkar Creeds."
Karwyn nodded, his expression less warm but no less approving. "We saw activity on the landing field assigned to the 8th and decided to fly over from the Leviathan to inspect the arrival ourselves."
What followed should have been a proud moment.
The Castellans praised Creed's record, his discipline, his tactical ability, and the speed of his rise. They spoke of his youth by Cadian standards, of his accomplishments, of campaigns where the 8th had survived circumstances that would have broken lesser regiments. Becoming a general in only forty years was no trivial achievement, especially among Cadians, who measured promotion in blood, endurance, and the number of officers above a man who had finally died.
They also mentioned the grumbling. Some had questioned how quickly Creed had advanced. Some believed his record had grown too bright too fast. Others muttered that no officer should rise so far without older patrons, older enemies, and older scars.
Creed scarcely heard it.
He looked at Marius. Then at Karwyn.
In his mind, he saw the Tyrok Fields under fire. Loyal formations in confusion. Volscani guns turning on unsuspecting allies. Senior officers cut down before they could understand that betrayal had already entered the camp.
If Qin Mo's prophecy was true, these two men were walking toward death.
If Creed did nothing, they would die.
If he said too much, he might be dismissed, questioned, or quietly removed from the very position he needed in order to act when the betrayal began.
He felt Kell watching him from beside the staff line. The old sergeant's face revealed nothing, but Creed knew the man had noticed his silence.
Marius was still speaking when Creed made his decision.
"With war imminent," Creed said carefully, "surely the inner fortresses are the safest place on Cadia."
The conversation paused.
Marius studied him for a moment, not offended, merely curious. "There is nothing to fear, Creed. Our own will arrive before any foe can."
Karwyn nodded in agreement. "It is good to stay vigilant, but you are not on some distant battlefield now. You are home, surrounded by brothers and sisters."
Creed's mouth tightened.
That was exactly what made the warning dangerous. Cadians expected enemies from without. They were very good at killing enemies from without. But brotherhood could become a blindfold, and loyalty assumed too confidently was a gate left unbarred.
He pressed on.
"But what if there are traitors?"
The words landed harder than he intended. Several aides exchanged quick glances. One of Karwyn's bodyguards shifted his weight by half an inch, subtle enough that only soldiers would notice.
Marius did not rebuke him. Instead, the First Castellan stepped closer and laid a reassuring hand on Creed's shoulder. His grip was firm, paternal, and entirely sincere.
"Do not dwell on such things," Marius said. "Every soldier now on Cadia, and every regiment yet to arrive, has bled for the Emperor. They are loyal. Proven in the fires of His service."
Creed looked into the man's face and saw no arrogance there. That made it worse. Marius was not dismissing danger because he was a fool. He was dismissing this danger because the Imperium required some assumptions in order to function at all. A commander who believed every regiment might turn traitor before it landed could not command a mustering field. He could only paralyze it.
Karwyn's gaze remained fixed on Creed. "Suspicion has its place. So does restraint. If you have evidence, bring it through proper channels. If you have unease, keep your men ready. But do not let shadows make you see enemies where the Emperor has sent reinforcements."
Creed opened his mouth.
For one reckless instant, he nearly said everything. Qin Mo. Talon. The prophecy. The Volscani. The massacre to come.
Then he saw the chain of consequences unfold. Disbelief. Inquiry. Astropaths. Commissars. Questions about years of silence. Questions about Talon's strange machines and stranger ruler. Questions that would consume time, attention, and credibility while the Volscani continued toward Cadia.
So he swallowed the words.
After a moment, he inclined his head.
"I was overthinking it."
Marius patted his shoulder once more. "That is better than underthinking it. Cadia has use for cautious officers."
The First Castellan turned and began walking back toward the transport. His retinue moved with him.
Karwyn remained a heartbeat longer. He gave Creed one last, steady look, perhaps not entirely convinced by the surrender.
Then he followed Marius up the ramp.
.....
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