BACKLIST More tales of the Astra Militarum from Black Library • CIAPHAS CAIN • by Sandy Mitchell Book 1: FOR THE EMPEROR Book 2: CAVES OF ICE Book 3: THE TRAITOR’S HAND Book 4: DEATH OR GLORY Book 5: DUTY CALLS Book 6: CAIN’S LAST STAND Book 7: THE EMPEROR’S FINEST Book 8: THE LAST DITCH Book 9: THE GREATER GOOD • GAUNT’S GHOSTS • by Dan Abnett Colonel-Commissar Gaunt and his regiment, the Tanith First and Only, struggle for survival on the battlefields of the far future. THE FOUNDING (Contains books 1-3 in the series: First and Only, Ghostmaker and Necropolis) THE SAINT (Contains books 4-7 in the series: Honour Guard, The Guns of Tanith, Straight Silver and Sabbat Martyr) THE LOST (Contains books 8-11 in the series: Traitor General, His Last Command, The Armour of Contempt and Only in Death) Book 12 – BLOOD PACT Book 13 – SALVATION’S REACH Book 14 – THE WARMASTER More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library THE BEAST ARISES 1: I AM SLAUGHTER 2: PREDATOR, PREY 3: THE EMPEROR EXPECTS 4: THE LAST WALL 5: THRONEWORLD 6: ECHOES OF THE LONG WAR 7: THE HUNT FOR VULKAN 8: THE BEAST MUST DIE 9: WATCHERS IN DEATH 10: THE LAST SON OF DORN 11: SHADOW OF ULLANOR 12: THE BEHEADING Space Marine Battles WAR OF THE FANG A Space Marine Battles book, containing the novella The Hunt for Magnus and the novel Battle of the Fang THE WORLD ENGINE An Astral Knights novel DAMNOS An Ultramarines collection DAMOCLES Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Ultramarines novellas Blood Oath, Broken Sword, Black Leviathan and Hunter’s Snare OVERFIEND Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Salamanders novellas Stormseer, Shadow Captain and Forge Master ARMAGEDDON Contains the Black Templars novel Helsreach and novella Blood and Fire Legends of the Dark Millennium ASTRA MILITARUM An Astra Militarum collection ULTRAMARINES An Ultramarines collection FARSIGHT A Tau Empire novella SONS OF CORAX A Raven Guard collection SPACE WOLVES A Space Wolves collection Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products CONTENTS Cover Backlist Title Page Warhammer 40,000 One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-one Twenty-two Twenty-three Twenty-four Twenty-five Twenty-six Twenty-seven Twenty-eight Twenty-nine Notes About the Author An Extract from ‘The Horusian Wars: Incarnation’ A Black Library Publication eBook license It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that He may never truly die. Yet even in His deathless state, the Emperor continues His eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods. Editorial Note: As is usual with my periodic attempts to impose order on the autobiographical ramblings of Ciaphas Cain concerning an incident in which I was involved, I have resisted the temptation to interpolate any comments of my own1 regarding the events which he describes. I’ve also resisted the temptation to correct his impressions where they diverge from mine since, as in the previous volumes of his reminiscences, Cain remains a reasonably objective observer – not only of events, but also of his own reactions to them, which, as ever, he persists in casting in the least flattering of lights. One of the supplementary sources I’ve been forced to quote from in an attempt to fill the lacunae left by his habitual disregard of anything which didn’t affect him personally is the published memoirs of the celebrated Lady General Jenit Sulla, who at the time was serving in a far less exalted position in the regiment to which Cain was attached. As ever, I’ve endeavoured to leave Cain’s original wording as close to how I found it as possible, other than correcting a few ambiguities of syntax to clarify his meaning, and breaking up the original somewhat indigestible mass of text into chapters for ease of reading. Any errors thereby introduced are my responsibility alone; the rest are entirely Cain’s. Amberley Vail, Ordo Xenos. ONE The thing I’ve always found most annoying about the eldar, apart from their psychotic sadism2 and their almost visible aura of patronising smugness, is their habit of popping up where you least expect them. Like the ones who came charging out of the depths of the mine workings on Drechia, for instance, laying down a lethal spread of razor-edged discs from their small- arms as they came. Within seconds, half the troopers with me were down, either diced so thoroughly the burial party was going to need buckets to collect them in, or incapacitated beyond the point of any form of retaliation apart from harsh language. Not wishing their sacrifice to have been in vain, I lost no time in diving for cover behind a comfortingly solid-seeming outcrop of rock. Once there, I snapped off a couple of shots from my laspistol in the general direction of the enemy, trying to ignore the little sparks left by ricocheting shuriken which seemed far too close to my nose for comfort while I did so. ‘Where in the warp did they come from?’ Lieutenant Grifen snarled, more rhetorically than because she really expected an answer. ‘Who cares? They’re dying right here,’ Magot, her platoon sergeant and closest friend, returned, lobbing a frag grenade at the first group of Guardians to have broken cover as she spoke. It burst in the middle of them, and the two closest promptly went down, crimson trickles leaking through the newly punched rents in their green-and-purple armour. The surviving members of Grifen’s command squad were already returning fire with their lasguns, picking off the rest of the xenos who’d been incautious enough to attempt to try following up their initial advantage by closing to chainsword distance. A big mistake if you wanted my opinion, which I doubted the pointy-ears did; they’d obviously counted on the element of surprise to overwhelm us completely, before charging home against dazed and disorientated soldiers in no fit state to defend themselves. Which might well have worked against the local militia rabble who’d been trying to contain their raids up until now, but unfortunately for them, what they got instead was battle-hardened Imperial Guard veterans who dived for cover the moment the shooting started, and immediately began giving as good as they got. But that was the 597th for you; I’d been fighting alongside them for the last couple of decades, and seen them take on pretty much anything the galaxy had to throw at us. A handful of overconfident eldar would hardly make them break sweat. Grifen tapped her comm-bead. ‘Second and fifth squads, circle back. We’re under fire,’ she voxed, before turning to me for approval. ‘With any luck they’ll catch them from behind, and we can take out the lot between us.’ ‘Good thinking, lieutenant,’ I said, keeping my voice conversational with the ease of a lifetime’s practice at concealing visible signs of panic. She hadn’t been an officer for long, and I suspected she was still harbouring doubts about her ability to manage a whole platoon instead of a single squad. But the strategy seemed perfectly sound to me, if I remembered the layout of the tunnels around here correctly.3 ‘But right now I’m wondering how they got here in the first place.’ And, more importantly, whether there were any more where these ones had come from. Needless to say I’d never have been anywhere near the place if I’d thought there was a chance of running into serious opposition, which was why I’d decided to accompany Grifen’s platoon that day: if anyone asked, I was there to see how she was getting on with her new command and provide any help she might need in adjusting to her greater responsibilities. In actual fact it was because I’d got heartily tired of the eldar’s fondness for sudden aerial attacks, which had seen me dodging strafing runs by the one-man speeders our troopers referred to as jetbikes, despite the obvious lack of either jets or wheels,4 almost from the moment of our arrival.