Other stories and audio dramas featuring the Adepta Sororitas

THE BLOODIED ROSE

Danie Ware

WRECK AND RUIN

Danie Ware

THE ROSE IN ANGER

Danie Ware

SISTERS OF BATTLE: THE OMNIBUS

James Swallow

THE BOOK OF MARTYRS

Alec Worley, Phil Kelly & Danie Ware

MARK OF FAITH

Rachel Harrison

OUR MARTYRED LADY

Gav Thorpe

CELESTINE: THE LIVING SAINT

Andy Clark

EPHRAEL STERN: THE HERETIC SAINT

David Annandale

REQUIEM INFERNAL

Peter Fehervari

Other stories from the Warhammer 40,000 universe

• DAWN OF FIRE •

Book 1: AVENGING SON

Guy Haley

Book 2: THE GATE OF BONES

Andy Clark

Book 3: THE WOLFTIME

Gav Thorpe

• DARK IMPERIUM •

Book 1: DARK IMPERIUM

Book 2: PLAGUE WAR

Book 3: GODBLIGHT

Guy Haley

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Prologue

Monster

Sisters

The Service of Tales

The Tale of Mina

The Tale of Lucia

The Tale of Silvana

The Tale of Arabella

The Tale of Alicia Dominica

The Tale of Avra

The Triumph of Saint Katherine

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Book of Martyrs’

A Black Library Publication

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 might of His inexhaustible armies a million worlds stand against the dark.

Yet, He is a rotting carcass, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium held in life by marvels from the Dark Age of Technology and the thousand souls sacrificed each day so that His may continue to burn.

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. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods.

This is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. Forget the power of technology and science. Forget the promise of progress and advancement. Forget any notion of common humanity or compassion.

There is no peace amongst the stars, for in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

Prologue

Sororitas

‘They’ve got behind us!’

Dropping to a combat-crouch, shield in hand, Katherine strove to see through the smoke. The broken streets were filled with soot and floating grit, with fragments of fluttering banners that still smouldered at their edges.

The cultists were raving and fearless. They’d come on in a rush, torching everything and slavering as they burned. The very air seemed scorched, rippling with heat and fervency. But Katherine’s sacred armour defended her; the air she breathed was pure. She was still standing; her Sisters were still standing. The relic they bore was safe. She could not see them clearly – only the curves of their pauldrons and helmets that glittered with reflected fire – but she could hear and feel them, their closeness and unity.

Their faith, and the Litanies that carried it, echoing even now in the wake of her Sister’s warning.

‘Walk with us, O Emperor!’

‘They are taint and foulness,’ Katherine replied, her tone lit with rage. ‘And we will show them no quarter.’

Stone dust drifted in hot winds, obscuring her vision further. Beside her, her closest Sister gave a curt, merciless nod, and they kept moving. There was no need for conversation. They were the army’s heart and courage, and they knew what awaited them. Knew the death that they must deal.

‘In His name!’

Around them, they could see little. Rising convection currents confused their preysight, and the shattered streets were both endless and maze-like. Flitting like shadows, the cultists were many, gleeful with unconstrained violence. They flickered past ruined shrines and through splintered windows, round tumbled corners and across heaps of still-steaming rubble. In many places, the ancient spires and statues had crumbled completely, giving the foe cover to both advance and retreat. Unlike so many of their kind, Katherine had realised, these had tactics; they thought, planned.

And that made them dangerous.

‘Be wary,’ she told her Sisters.

‘He is with us,’ a voice answered her, unshakeable.

From somewhere close: howling. The sound was eerie, shockingly inhuman. Her skin prickling, Katherine raised a gauntlet and they stopped, trying to place its source. It circled them in waves as if their enemy had some interlinked witch-mind. As they turned to try and locate it, it grew louder, becoming a battering, an onslaught of pure noise. It assaulted their ears, tried to stick its curious, taloned fingers into their thoughts.

Katherine prayed, her tone a smoulder of determination.

‘Walk with us, O Emperor. Bring us your rage, your strength, your light.’

And there, upon the heels of her prayer, a vox-bark of stern orders – the Jaguar himself, Major Owai Haro of the 16th Gavera. Command HQ were behind the Sisters, but they, too, were responding to the cultist incursion.

‘Platoons one, three, five, defence point delta.’ Haro was one of those steel-haired infantry veterans who knew exactly how to manoeuvre his company. ‘Haija, I want every Sentinel we have!’

‘Sir!’

‘Walk with us, O Emperor. Bring us the righteousness of wrath!’ She prayed for their souls, for their weapons, for the hammer of their strength. She prayed for the spirits of the Sentinels and their pilots. For–

‘Renagi, give me range!’ Haro, again. ‘And fire!’

Heavy weapons bellowed, cutting off her thoughts. There were mortar detonations, the cracks and rumbles of falling stone, thicker billows of smoke, eddied by the resulting currents. The ground shook.

The cultists’ howling climbed to a shriek. In defiance, there came the barks of sergeants’ orders and the crack of the troops’ las-fire. Scarlet flashes, streaking out through the murk. The mortar thumped again, loud through the thickening air. She heard the faint servo-whine of the running Sentinels. The smoke stirred again, the floating fabric whipping to spirals.

With a roar, another building came down.

‘They move left!’ a Sister’s voice came over the vox. ‘We must stay with them!’

Another Sister shouted her battle-rage, the sound of her hymnal an outright challenge. More howling came in its wake. Daring her. Daring all of them. The smoke grew thicker, choked with soot.

Her visor clogging, Katherine repeated, ‘Bear left! We must keep the relic with company command!’

Agreements returned to her like prayers, and the Sisters were moving in a low, swift run, their purity seals fluttering and the relic suspended between them. Armoured boots stamped on cratered roads, the noise their celebration of His presence. The shadows over their heads were their floating cherubim, prayers carried aloft, their wings wafting the darkness to a deeper, stirring gloom.

A chime of ancient hymnal rang from their vox-hailers, loud enough to reach the soldiers around them.

‘From the lightning and the tempest!’

‘Advance by sections, give covering fire!’ A sergeant’s vox-shout was barely audible over the racket. Glimpsed between broken walls, the moving platoons were no more than flak-armoured shades, tiny, red-firing spectres that ran, and dropped, and ran again.

A Sentinel came past them, eerily quiet at full speed. In the vox, a Sister cursed. They kept moving, staying with the main force. But–

‘Hold!’ The order came from another of the Sisters’ unit, her voice suddenly tense.

They had come to the end of their cover. Ahead of them lay an open, flagstoned square. In its centre stood a vast plinth and two stone feet, both broken off at the ankle. Behind this rose the soot-stained front of a mighty cathedral, its towers shattered, its steps cracked and stained. Its front doors had been wrenched from their hinges and cast aside; its mosaic flooring was pitted with explosive damage. Katherine could just see its pews, piled roughly into a central, defensive barrier–

Without warning, the cultists’ yammer fell away, leaving a sudden, hollow silence. At the outer edge of the building’s forecourt, the Sisters stopped. Listening.

Somewhere, lasers cracked and spat. The mortar boomed again. Another building crashed down, all thunder and dust. Screams cut like glass, human and mortal and laden with dread.

Around the Sisters, nothing moved.

Chills went down Katherine’s back – but she ignored them. He was with her and she was not afraid. Behind the huge feet, the front wall of the building was carved into intricate archways, layers of designs that radiated outwards from its empty door. Saints stood in alcoves, every one of them foully defaced. She tried to look, past the feet, past the pews, to see what was waiting for them. Her hands tightened on sword and shield.

Instinctively, the unit pulled closer together, shoulder to shoulder, all facing outwards and defending the relic at their centre. Over them, the cherubim still hovered, sinister with vigilance. Bell-tower hollows watched them, each one an enemy eye. The stone was covered in grime, like the black smudges of some spreading disease.

‘Throne.’ One of the Sisters muttered a curse. ‘I know they’re there…’

‘Hold,’ Katherine told her. ‘He is with us.’

Another Sister voiced the Litany, her words laden with tightly controlled fury. ‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

‘There!’ The youngest of them extended her arm, pointing. The cherubim shifted, their banners flapping in the heat.

Katherine stared, her heart in her throat.

The cultists were not in the pews. The air wavered, and they were suddenly visible, lurking behind the plinth, and amongst the edges of the outer buildings. There were a hundred of them, a thousand. Many wore robes, which danced in the heat-
currents, burned or torn at their edges. Others wore fragments of scrounged gear, a lot of it Militarum, some of it even bearing the Gavera’s distinctive Jaguar insignia. And there were things with them, things looming, things stalking on stick-thin legs, things with eyes and teeth in all the wrong places. Some of the daemon-things had mandibles, or great jaws dripping with slaver. Others had bloated bellies, muscled arms, hands that dragged on the floor or that ended in pincers or claws.

The Sisters were surrounded. The monster throng had stopped, letting them see it, count it, fear it.

‘From plague, temptation and war!’

There was no need to call an order – without hesitation, six bolt pistols opened fire. Weapons barked, rounds howled, detonations of flesh and ooze splashed at the symbol-gouged stone.

Dozens of monsters died, dozens more fell injured and screaming. The noise blended with the cries of the still-moving. The Sisters added noise of their own, the harmonised chime of their hymns drowning out all but the loudest of the incoming horde.

Pressure began to build in Katherine’s mind. Again that sensation that someone – something – was trying to gain entry to her thoughts, trying to prise open her skull like some box of ill-gotten treasure.

‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

She cried her prayer and kept firing. Beside her, a Sister stopped to change her magazine, and the reload flowed around the formation in perfect synchronisation, each Sister in her turn, no words being spoken.

He was with them. He spoke through their movements, their voices. They were the heart of His army; its soul and its mettle, and they would stand at its very core.

Pistols and voices howled His rage.

‘From the scourge of the Kraken!’

But the things cared not for His wrath; they were still coming. As more fell, hundreds seemed to take their place as if the foe knew that if they took down this unit of Sisters, then the entire force would falter and eventually fail.

And they, too, moved with a bizarre and fluid rhythm.

In the vox, a Sister said, ‘We were correct, there is a single focus to this force. Something controlling them.’ Her voice was low, with the odd, guttural catch of one unused to speaking. ‘We will break through the enemy lines. Find it, take it down.’

Katherine looked for a break in their ranks, a flaw, a figure in command, but there was nothing, only the onslaught of mutants that came ever closer, and yet more creatures that piled in from behind. Most had crude hand-weapons, some bore spurs of bone that stuck from their flesh. But there were others with–

‘Defend the relic!’

Katherine did not know who had spoken. The monsters were upon them now and there was a colossal, mutant beast standing over her, its thin legs bowed, its gangling arms muscled and with fists like hammers. It drove a blunt, fingerless hand at her and she moved, raising her bolt pistol and shooting it clean through the eye.

But behind it came another, and a third.

‘We must break out,’ the quiet-voiced Sister said. ‘Find this commander.’

But they could not. They were completely encircled, each fighting for her life, her faith. Voices raised in the hymnal, a blend of song and shout, and laden with vehemence. From somewhere, the barks of the platoon sergeants could still be heard. Soot still clogged Katherine’s visor. She could not spare a hand to wipe it away. Instead, she shot and shot again, brought two more creatures crashing down. Around the Sisters, the wall of death was beginning to grow.

And then, to her side, a Sister staggered to her knees, buried below the creature that had leapt upon her.

‘Stand!’ Katherine bellowed. She shot the beast in the face, kicked it aside, then covered her Sister with her shield.

The Sister was regaining her feet, but the monsters had seen the breach and they were there already, crowding at the gap. The other Sisters tightened their defence, moving sideways, but it was too late. One of the creatures had ducked through and was reaching for the relic.

‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

Howling, Katherine did the only thing she could.

She turned to take the monster down, but in doing so, she exposed her flank to the pack that now filled the concourse. Only for a moment, but it was enough.

A bone blade went clean through the side of her gorget. Into her throat. Gagging, her own blood hot on her skin, in her mouth, she crashed to the floor.

But that could not be. She must stand, get back to her feet. She must…

Thumping feet, close, that familiar servo-whine. The ground shook. A boom of heavy weapons and the front wall of the cathedral crumpled like parchment, its defiled saints lost.

Through the billowing mess, the Sentinel was half-unseen, its head tracking back and forth, its weapons firing. Beside where Katherine struggled for life, the downed Sister was back on her feet, shouting, fighting furiously.

Katherine tried, she tried to get up. She tried to get her boots under her. But the wound was open and fluid coated her gorget and pauldron; she could feel it, thick and sticky down the inside of her armour. Her vision was blurring, her legs would not hold her. Her knees were like water.

‘From the blasphemy of the fallen…’

She must stand.

The Sentinel stalked forwards. The rest of the front wall came down in a thunder of rubble.

And why could she smell incense?

Her Sisters were shouting, but the vox was hollow, a world away. Above her, the sky and the cherubim spiralled in patterns. The smoke made no sense. Where was that smell coming from? She needed to understand it, that warm, soft scent of the Convent Prioris, of the great cathedral, and home…

And then, she saw Him.

Monster

Lance-Corporal Gideon Mase had a lho-stick, a packet of rations, and a mess tin of recaff. Well, not ‘recaff’ exactly. They’d mixed it with something, and it tasted like boiled mud… but that was what the quartermaster issued, and moaning was heresy.

Mase’s little hexi-stove was still burning, a tiny blue flame like some miniature beacon, and he’d sat his weary arse down on the boot-pounded dirt beside it. Broken buildings towered all around him, many of them heaped into makeshift defences, but here, the ground was flat.

He took a long drag on the stick, and blew out a plume of grey. It was late, and finally quiet, thank the Emperor. The sky was dark, and drifting, settling clouds of soot and stone dust were everywhere, getting in his eyes, his mouth, his hair, his kit.

He took another drag on the stick, and coughed up black gunk.

‘Nice.’ His squadmate Kewa nudged him with a battered, camo-covered elbow. She was a small, wiry thing, her eyes tired, her face dirty. Like him, she had the rich, purple-black skin of Uvodia III, and her hair, once shorn and dark, now more resembled the tangled filth of Kiros. And of this endless bloody war.

His recaff was too hot, and he scalded himself on the metal. ‘Shit!’

The 16th Gavera, known to themselves as the ‘Jags’, had been here on Kiros for almost a Solar year, fighting back and forth, and back and forth; a grinding, endless tedium that never seemed to change. The foe attacked, slobbering forwards, screaming and shrieking; the Jags skirmished out and drove them back. They were an infantry company, stationed on the outermost edge of what had been Kiros’ capital city, and way too bloody far from home.

It defied Mase’s understanding: Kiros had no value. It had been an Administratum world, a world of hab-blocks and endless, featureless dormitories of cubicles and tiny offices, their grubby walls inscribed with bureaucratic mottos about the holiness of diligence. Great cathedrals had spiked free from its regulation skyline, along with massive statues and cloud-scraping bell towers that rang the sacred hours of far-distant Holy Terra. Mase’s briefing hadn’t included specifics, but as far as he knew, they were the only things notable about this backwater world. There was nothing here even worth fighting over.

At least, not until…

He stopped, glanced round, and coughed again. A second lungful of muck spattered his chin.

‘D’you think it’s real?’ he muttered, half under his breath. ‘The holy text, I mean?’

‘Watch it,’ Kewa told him, grinning. ‘You know we’re not supposed to speculate.’

‘They were talking in the officers’ mess,’ he said. ‘About some new horror from the warp. It’s here to claim it first – or destroy it.’ Wiping his mouth on the end of his sleeve, he scowled and looked furtive. The platoons had driven back the afternoon’s assault and were now on downtime. Many had already started on bivvies and bedrolls, slinging their ponchos from the remains of the walls, or just wrapping themselves up and going straight to sleep. The metal leg of a patrolling Sentinel caught the faint reflection of the platoon HQ lumen; a distance ahead of him, he could make out the floodlights and field emitters that defended the front line.

Mase leaned in, lowering his voice further. ‘I think that’s why they’re here,’ he said. ‘To face it.’

‘You think they can?’ Kewa asked him. In the tiny light from the hexi-stove, her dark eyes shone. ‘I saw them, earlier today. They were at the centre of the line, right in front of the cathedral where the plinth is. Fighting like nothing I’ve ever seen. And they’re no bigger than we are, not really.’

Mase was still watching round them. He hissed at her to lower her voice, then said, ‘I thought they’d be huge. Like Space Marines.’

‘Nah.’ Kewa grinned, winked. ‘I saw one of them, once, too. Did I tell you that? On Aldana, just standing there, like some…’ She shrugged. ‘Colossus. He didn’t move or anything…’

She tailed off as the sergeant came into view. The man still wore his webbing, flak and helmet, but his rifle was slung.

‘You two all right?’ he asked them. His dark skin was filthy, his stone-coloured camo-paint lost under layers of soot. ‘Mase? Kewa? Injuries? Kit failures?’

‘Can we go home, yet, sarge?’ Kewa asked.

‘Ask the commissar.’ The sergeant gave them both a sarcastic look, and strode off to the next group.

She snickered, then lowered her voice once more. ‘They were amazing, Mase. I saw them, cutting their way through literally swathes of monsters. Dozens, hundreds of them. It was incredible. And they sing. It’s enough to make your hair stand on end. Watching them…’ She shivered. ‘It was like watching some perfectly blessed war machine.’

‘You’re jealous,’ Mase realised, grinning.

‘Yeah, maybe a bit.’ Her expression turned rueful, and she shrugged. ‘What must that be like?’ She was looking out across the site now, past the gleam of a waiting tank. ‘That kind of kit, that kind of skill? Do you think the Emperor really speaks to them? Do they get scared, feel pain, the same way that we do?’ She stopped, staring at the semi-darkness. Ends of lho-sticks gleamed, and the occasional hexi-fire. Conversation and hints of weary laughter floated out across the evening wind.

‘You just said they were human,’ Mase told her. ‘I’d been told they were eight feet tall and bit the heads off heretics.’

She snorted. ‘They aren’t like Space Marines. The Sisters of Battle are like… I don’t know… Like watching faith fighting, like holiness incarnate…’

She tailed off, watching the sergeant as he came back into view. He passed them, going the other way, and she turned back to her dumped webbing, rummaging through it. Mase could see the frown on her face, like there was something she wasn’t saying.

He didn’t press, it wasn’t his business. Instead, he blew steam and soot off his recaff and wondered if it was cool enough to drink.

The Adepta Sororitas, the Sisters of Battle. Here.

Speculation had been forbidden but still, his curiosity burned like the hexi. They had come to end the war, said some. To find this holy text, to deny and slay this great beast – whatever it was. To purge the taint from this world, to rebuild its churches and cathedrals, all the way back to its filth-choked sky…

Despite the officers’ command, stories had flared through the troops like spreading fires. Conjecture had been rife, percussion shocks of expanding whispers… though if the sergeant heard you muttering, you were likely to get the toe of their boot. But – so many tales! Tales of a hundred battles, a thousand legends! Truly, the Jags were blessed, they and Kiros both.

Kewa had found her own hexi and was opening it out, reaching for its block-fuel. His recaff still too hot, Mase took another drag on the lho-stick.

He’d heard the stories, of course he had. The Sisters had their own procession, fearsome and wondrous, an icon at the heart of the battle. There were six of them, their armour black, and they bore the very saint herself, the bones of Holy Katherine. A flock of cherubim circled them like a moving halo, bearing prayer-banners and other things, things Mase did not know. And the darkness… they said that the darkness, the very clouds, fled before them like a thing defeated, like a receding tide.

Where the Sisters strode, they carried His light, the light of Sol and of Terra, and the foe cowered… The thought made his heart race and his breath catch – surely, now, the end of this war must be in sight? The long-beleaguered Jags had a sharp point to their blunt hammer, the strength of blade, bolter and holy benediction–

He caught himself, calmed his thoughts. Kewa’s irreverence was known – it had got her in trouble before – but they both needed to watch themselves. He saw all your thoughts, after all, every last flicker.

Perhaps, Mase thought, the Sisters could see them, too.

The idea made him shiver. His lho-stick burned his fingers and he swore, flicking its end in the hexi. Beside him, Kewa was cooking her ration pack, soot and all. She whistled through her teeth, a tuneless rendition of a Militarum marching song.

They sing…

And it was not just the procession. There were other Sisters here too: squads deployed to protect the Militarum’s flanks. Their armour was likewise black, their cloaks red, and they fought fearlessly, hurling themselves at the foe. He’d seen them earlier, from the corner of his eye, seen them move like…

Again, he caught himself. A distance away, only visible by the light of its electro-sconces, was their Order’s battle sanctum, sacred and off limits, the towering cathedral one of the few buildings still half-intact. It was defended by four faceless, armoured figures, and he worried that they would hear if he thought too loud.

He put a hand to the talisman in his jacket. It was a little thing, a carved effigy of the Emperor that he’d made himself, when he’d been stuck in a mudhole on the Salyon moon. It gave him hope – made him believe that they could win this. In the end.

He was taking another tentative sip when the monster struck.

It came out of nothing, as if born from the darkness. And it fell upon Kewa, ripping her clean in half. Hot gore slicked Mase’s skin.

Casting her shredded pieces scornfully aside, it leered down at him, grinning. By His name, it stank.

For the tiniest moment, Mase gawked.

Then: mayhem. Reflexes swift, he was shouting the alarm, hurling the still-steaming recaff, mess tin and all, into the thing’s face. With instincts drilled into him from years of training, he went straight for his lasrifle, always at his right-hand side. Shouts and movement came through the darkness; the rest of the platoon were on their feet, already running. In the vox, the sergeant was barking orders, questions, but he was too far away.

Everyone was too far away.

But, with His blessing, the recaff had been enough, just enough, to make the thing pause. It had claws and a grotesque face, semi-
human, but teeth in all the wrong places. Its skin was rotted and sloughing off where the liquid had burned it; its compound eyes were red and swelling. It hissed at him, but he had the rifle now and was bringing it up, ready to fire.

He was too close. He smacked the rifle-butt neatly into its claws, and it grabbed and pulled, snarling.

Still on his arse, Mase scrabbled backwards, trying to reclaim the weapon. He shouted into the vox, ‘Mase! To me! To me!’

Alarums blared, and the patrolling Sentinel’s lumens flared in his direction. There was the distinctive click-click of its weapons tracking – though it surely wouldn’t fire at its own campsite.

A second, bigger floodlight snapped his way, dazzling. And–

By the Emperor!

He saw her, he saw her, right there, like a vision: an armoured silhouette, the glare behind her. Her helm shone, her black armour glowed at its edges, her red cloak billowed as if she were framed by blood.

A Sister of Battle.

He had no idea how she’d got there; she was surely a miracle. But He had seen fit, for whatever reason, to spare Mase’s humble life.

‘Get back.’ In the vox, her voice sounded young, but it was impossible to tell. The bolter in her hand shone like His blessing as she raised it and blasted the thing full in the chest.

Fluids splattered, the hexi went out. Mase managed to scrabble to his feet, freeing his rifle at last, but she was already between him and the beast. The rest of the platoon had stopped dead.

‘Hold your fire!’ The sergeant barked the order, but the command was unnecessary. The Sister was too close to the beast.

She ignored them. The thing was still moving, still hissing. Ichor dripped from its body, its mouldering skin. A burst of hymnal came from her, as bright as the bolter’s flare; she shot again, and again. It slashed at her, once, twice, with two heavy, claw-tipped arms. Scrapes screeched across her armour.

What in His name was this creature?

But she did not pause, her song did not falter. She pressed forwards, pace by pace, indomitable, shooting it again, again, again.

It did not retreat. Its teeth closed on her helm, skidded off. The claws flashed at her pauldrons, putting dents in the ceramite. She shot it a fifth time, a sixth, and finally, it began to weaken, its knees giving way.

‘Sarge?’ A shocked voice came through the darkness.

‘Full perimeter defence!’ The sergeant’s bark was edged. ‘Don’t let any more through!’

Mase, gawping, had stopped, his rifle clutched in one nerveless hand. The thing was struggling, still trying to slash at her legs as it went down, but she was a flare of cloak, a wall of armour. As she moved, the floodlight picked out the scraps of parchment fixed to its surfaces, each one inscribed with a prayer. Her bolter glinted like resolution.

At last, the thing tumbled. With a grim resolve, she put one black boot on its shoulder and shot downwards, right in its face. It spluttered, gagged, and went still.

Nothing moved. The sergeant stood silent, staring; Mase could see his filthy, shocked face in the harsh glare of the floodlight. His shadow angled out along the ground, hard as determination.

The Sister, still not paying them any attention, kicked the thing over, put another shot into its skull. Then she turned to where Mase stood, his hands still wrapped round his unused rifle as if it were the only thing that made sense in this insane world.

‘Are you hurt?’ she asked him.

‘I…’ He had no idea what he was supposed to call her – milady, ma’am? Did she have a rank? He could see no recognisable insignia. ‘No, Sister.’ It seemed to be the safest thing to say.

‘Good.’ Her helm moved and she was looking down at Kewa, shredded like so much fabric. In the rush, Mase had not looked at her and suddenly he faltered as her loss, the nearness of his own miss, hit him like a fist in the temple.

He found himself on his knees, throwing up a stream of sooty bile. Kewa’s eyes were glass, empty. Dirt was already settling in them. And her torso…

He looked away, and tried not to throw up again.

‘Do not be concerned,’ the Sister told him gently.

He glanced up, blinking.

‘She died facing the foe,’ the Sister said. ‘She stands before the Throne in honour and in His grace. You should grieve for her, as is proper, but have no fear for her soul. Her time of strife is done, and she may rest.’ There was a burr of pain in her voice, human, and oddly touching.

Numbly, he nodded. ‘Yes, Sister. Thank you, Sister.’

‘All right, lad.’ The sergeant’s hand came down on Mase’s shoulder. ‘Fun’s over. Sister, we owe you our gratitude.’

‘It’s why I’m here, sergeant,’ she said. ‘A service will be held at twenty-one hundred, Terran standard. With what you have just witnessed, I will expect you to attend.’

‘Thank you, Sister,’ the sergeant said, again. He poked a boot at Mase, and Mase belatedly remembered his manners.

‘Yes… thank you, Sister,’ he repeated. ‘I will… ah… attend, of course.’ He was stuttering. Was he supposed to salute her? He made the effort to stand up, though his legs still shook.

The sergeant was already shouting. ‘All right, listen up! Perimeter defences doubled! And I want to know how in the name of the Emper… ah’ – he remembered himself – ‘how that thing got through here!’

‘They crawl,’ the Sister said. ‘Belly down in the darkness, and slithering. They are cunning, and can affect both your mind and your heart. Be vigilant, sergeant, and hold Him in your thoughts, always.’

The sergeant offered an aquila salute. ‘Understood.’

‘Know that He is with you, on Kiros, and all across the galaxy.’ She paused, and Mase almost heard her smile. ‘The battle for this world will not go on forever. We are here to see it ended.’

The sergeant returned, ‘Sister. Ave Imperator.’

But Mase could say nothing more, had nothing more to say. Rather than looking down at the remains of his fallen comrade, he watched the Sister’s armoured figure as it turned, taking in the sight.

The odd burr of pain was back in her voice as she said, ‘His blessing upon you.’

And then she walked away, her black armour still shining as if it carried His very promise.

Careful not to make it audible, Mase let out his breath.

The sergeant raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t let it go to your head, son,’ he said. ‘Find a gunny sack, and we’ll put Kewa with the others. And you heard what she said – you be at that service!’

‘Sarge.’

A couple of his platoon-mates were lingering, questions on all their faces, but they could wait. If Kewa lay with Him, then he owed it to her memory to tend to her properly.

Turning from the battered Militarum soldiers, Sister Avra felt a stab of regret.

She belonged to the Order of Our Martyred Lady, and her death in combat was expected, the highest honour. But not here, not now. Her life had been refused, and instead, her sacred black armour was scratched and dented. The damage pressed inwards, hard lines of failure against the padding she wore. She knew she should return to the sanctum, but there was a coil of hurt in her heart.

Understand your instincts, child, her schola tutors had taught her – had it only been two Solar years before? They come from Him, they are your teachers, and they will show you much.

She walked on, a prayer on her lips, seeking His wisdom. Avra’s Order were the faithful of Saint Katherine, deployed to Kiros to end the war. The mission was not unusual, but when she had learned the full brief, about the presence of the saint herself…

In His name, she could never have dreamed of such a blessing!

The Triumph of Saint Katherine, the saint’s very bones, borne in holy and ceaseless procession, out across the galaxy – it was here. A beacon of courage, guarded by six Sisters, exemplars and representatives. They were chosen by Him to stand with the saint and to carry her strength forth, to proclaim her name and His light!

In the chapel of the Sword of Bridiga, Avra had fallen to her knees, unworthy, blessed, elated, overcome. Her heart had rung with song, a threnody that may have been either celebration or lament. She prayed, humbly but with longing, that she may even see the saint for herself – she and her Sisters were taking turns as honour guard.

And she’d prayed, even harder, for the chance to offer her life.

Stepping past the scattered bivouacs, mess tents, armouries, communications hubs, she used her preysight to watch for more of the crawling beasts. The company enginseer flowed past her, ducking from her way, though his attendant servo-skulls and mechadendrites all turned to follow her. Like everything else, his red cloak was covered with soot. Somewhere, soldiers’ voices were raised in raucous song. It was a hymn, but sung as only the Militarum could manage.

She controlled a twitch of a smile. Avra had been raised on Fura IV, bleak and severe. Her father and brother had been Third Furan Rangers, but her mother had given her life for her family, dying in childbirth as Avra’s brother was born. Avra had been six, her mother’s death a moment of great questioning and even greater, unshakable faith. Even now, Avra ached to be worthy of such sacrifice…

Ached to be worthy of her saint.

Fully identifying her curl of disappointment, she paused, chastising herself for the unworthiness of her thought. Her life was not hers to discard, even in battle. Her death was His, in His hands, at His will. Her martyrdom would happen as He decreed, in the proper time, and in the proper place.

Walk with us, O Emperor.

Her thoughts calmer, she glanced around. Her restless, introspective walking had taken her to the outermost edge of the encampment, within blessed sight of where the Sisters of the Triumph of Saint Katherine had established their own sanctum – taking over a tiny local chapel, its walls and tower all mosaicked with shattered ceramic. It was beautiful, brightly coloured and unique. Its minute windows shone with the light of the saint within.

Avra dropped to her knees, her gauntleted hands tracing a fleur-de-lys on the front of her armour. She had never thought she would be this close, had never dreamed that she would witness this hallowed miracle, let alone be blessed enough to walk behind it.

She intended to bow her head – but the windows flared with His light, and the sight before her was lost.

She stands upon a battlefield, ablaze with wrath and fury. She wields a blade that carves limbs and heads and flesh. She bears a great shield against which the foe shatters, tumbling in dust and fragments. And those fragments fuse together, each one melding with its fellows. They become stones, become rocks, become walls.

Become the crystal glassaic of a great cathedral’s windows.

Fire bathes her; it flares from her armour, from her very heart. She burns, but the pain is good, like the purity of total immolation. In the flame-light, the glassaic windows are brought to life, every one an image. In one: an agri world, rippling with crops. In another: a convent, quiet and secluded. In a third: the kneeling forms of Sisters, robes pooled upon a flagstone floor.

And there are more: a man, radiant with dark power and terrible authority. Trust and truth that char right through, like fluttering pieces of fabric. The sickening lurch of a terrible, soul-devastating betrayal.

And then more: a duel, upon which the galaxy waits.

The windows cannot contain the images. They waver and melt, and their running, puddled colours reflect the clouds. They become steam, and are gone.

And still, she burns.

But now, her agony is glorious. She becomes a hymn, raised to a darkness-filled sky. Buildings burn, pillars of smoke rise as if they hold up the very clouds. Further and further spreads the maze of burning streets, stretching back to impossible distance. It is all about her, but she is its hub and its centre and she stands, she always stands…

The shield is back in her hand, but now, she bears her sword in the other. She slays the rising monster. The young soldier is her brother for whom her mother died, her still-youthful father; he may be but one tiny speck upon the surface of the Emperor’s Hammer, but he matters. They all matter.

Comprehension hits her like a blaze of truth, like a bone spur.

She feels her gorget give, feels that cold spur as it spikes sideways through her throat. As it carves out the side of her neck. Her flame gouts, wild and fervent. Her song hits its crescendo, with power to shatter walls. The monsters cower before her.

The song is her requiem.

She feels her carotid artery as it bursts, feels her lifeblood pouring forth. It is His greatest blessing, His answer, the thing she had come seeking.

‘Thank you,’ says her fiery heart. ‘Thank you.’

She smells the faintest wisp of incense.

Then the flame flares dazzling, and she burns away.

Sisters

Cool air, the gentle drift of stone dust. A hand on her forehead, the harmonies of a long-familiar hymn.

‘Sister.’

Avra’s throat was dry and her chest burning, her head pounding with pain. In the blur of awakening, her mind was still overflowing with a richness of dreams: with immolation, with the crescendo of hymnal and glory, with melting glassaic-
crystals that showed the sunlight of some strange and far-flung world.

With a bone spur, driving hard through the side of her throat.

Uncomprehending, she raised her gauntleted fingers to the hole in her gorget… Metal scraped on metal. There was no hole.

But…

She started to sit up. A strong hand caught her wrist, steadying her. There was a ring on its middle finger, a steel band inscribed with prayers.

‘You are well, Sister. You will find no injury.’

The voice was female, older, both gentle and severe. And it had an odd catch to it, something Avra couldn’t quite define. Was that… curiosity?

A frisson ran through her; she shook off the help and sat up fully. The movement made her belly turn over, made a further slew of images tumble through her thoughts. Sisters, kneeling upon a flagstone floor. A yellow sun, angling slantways through the windows of an ancient convent. Ceramite boots, circling one another in a legendary duel…

Her frisson became a chill, a prayer like pure shock. That had not been a dream. That had been a–

She stumbled on the word vision like it was blasphemy.

From the desire to be extolled, O Emperor, deliver me…

She was only Avra, just a younger member of her Order. She had passed her Trials of Ordination just two Solar years before. She had no rank, no beads of merit, no mighty deeds to her name. She was not worthy.

And yet… had she really seen…?

Her soul shivered at His closeness. Awed, almost fearful, she whispered the prayer in her heart.

‘From the need to be glorified, O Emperor, deliver me…’

‘You do not question His will, Sister.’ The soft, severe voice spoke again, brooking no argument – without realising, she’d spoken the prayer aloud. ‘You are Katherine, ever-martyred and ever-chosen. In our battle today, we lost our beloved Sister of that name, and now you are returned to us once more, to take your place in the sacred march.’

Katherine.

The name went through her like the spur of the monster. Blinking, she ground herself into proper focus. Her helm was already off; her short, brown hair matted with sweat. She turned to see where she was.

Stopped.

Around her, holding her within its bright, mosaicked embrace, was the Sisters’ tiny sanctum. It was hollow, offering no pews, no pulpit, no organ loft, no statues. And it was open to the sky, its roof long gone. Field-emitters kept the soot at bay, though the clouds were lifting now. In places, Kiros’ stars shone down at her, clear as a blessing.

She sat up further, turning, catching her breath. At the head of the altar steps, where the Sol-facing window should have shone in glassaic and glory, was a hanging depicting His sacred presence, His blade in hand, His head haloed in bright thread that caught the pale gleam of something laid below. The hanging was new, had presumably been brought by the Sisters to sanctify their place of rest. But she had seen Him–

That thought was too much. It spiked like a sore tooth, sending sharp sensations thrilling along her nerves. She shied away.

From the hunger for mortal praise, O Emperor, deliver me…

Instead, her gaze found the source of the light. From the top of the altar steps, there fell a cloth. It cascaded down steps of stone like black water, a fiery heart upon it. And there…

From the need to raise myself…

By the Throne!

There, upon the cloth: a casket, shining with its own soft glow. Her awe peaked, breaking over her like the Font of Ordination itself. Her heart hit her chest like a hammer; she found herself staring, tangled in wonder, in the tiniest threads of denial.

O Emperor, deliver me!

The casket was open, its edges hung with banners of the Sisters’ Orders. She could not see what lay within, only that it shone and that the chapel seemed hushed about it, as if the stone had silenced itself in reverence, its walls leaning forwards in veneration. A great, shining banner hung at its head, and red and white petals surrounded it, scattered on the stone.

Reflexively, pulled by strings of pure faith, she stumbled upwards from her pallet, and came to her knees. Her head was already bared. She shuddered as the dream touched her again.

Her heart, burning.

Her chest hurt with remembered pain.

The bone spur. And incense…

There was no incense here. The air smelled of blood and sweat and metal, military smells. But still, she could only gaze. Rapt, captivated.

Saint Katherine.

She bowed her head, her tears overflowing and spilling down her cheeks.

‘Be at ease, Sister.’ Her companion had stepped back, letting her take in her surroundings. Now, she came forwards once more, her boots black on the flagstones. ‘We welcome you, in His name.’

Still not understanding, Avra looked up at the ceramite-clad figure. ‘Why…?’ She wanted to ask, Why am I here?, but she couldn’t finish the question.

The unknown Sister dropped to one knee beside her, also bowing her head. Her armour, too, was fully black, with her red cloak all soot-stained and ragged at the hem. She was older, Avra saw, perhaps in her forties. Her hair was blonde and greying, cut short; her face was soot-stained, lean and lined. And her left eye had been replaced by a sacred augmetic, carved with the same prayers as her steel ring. It whirred gently as it focused.

She saw Avra looking and gave a smile both gentle and edged.

‘You know who we are,’ she said.

‘Of course.’ Avra’s words were a whisper. ‘But I don’t…’

I don’t understand. What has happened to me?

‘He has shown you, child, has He not?’ Answering the unspoken question, the Sister’s words had a faint insistence, like a pointedly raised eyebrow. ‘As He has shown us. The vision of our founding, the duel that shaped the Imperium. It is not your place to doubt His will.’

Avra turned back to the blessed casket. Looking at it, a great well of feeling rushed up in her heart, as if the black flow of the altar cloth was not water, but promethium, fuelling the fire that still burned, burned, in her chest.

You know who we are, Sister.

Of course she did, she knew them like she knew her own name, like she knew the sacred recitations of the schola: Saint Katherine had been martyred by the witch-cult upon Mnestteus, yet she led battles still, borne across the galaxy to wherever the need was greatest. It was her Triumph, her march unending, her sacred coffin carried by six Sisters, each a representative of a different saint…

But this was different – not words upon a slate, not even a statue revered within a cathedral. Avra could feel it, feel the saint’s sacrifice and glory, feel her honour and courage. And layered with those feelings came the monster with the bone spur, cutting sideways through her throat.

Tears stung her eyes, and the images misted, blurred, became one.

‘I am not worthy.’ The words were a sigh.

‘That is not for you to say,’ the Sister told her, with a calm vehemence. ‘Your life as Avra is ending.’ The words were almost intoned; they flowed out through the chapel’s quiet with the delicacy of a choir’s first notes. ‘The Sisters of our march come to us from the Orders Pronatus, but you, child – we are in need, and you have clearly been chosen. From the morning, you will be Sister Katherine, called to replace our Sister of that name who fell to sacred martyrdom at the strike of the ancient foe. She has answered His word and given her life in defence of her Sisters, her saint, and of those who follow where we lead. She stands now in His grace, her duty fulfilled.’ The Sister’s augmetic eye whirred again, a flicker of red in its depths, and her smile deepened. Her other eye was yellow, like Sol’s light, like the precious amber effigy Avra’s father had so loved, passed down from his father and his grandmother before that.

‘My armour…’ Still struggling to assimilate the vision, the dream, the pain, the change, the huge weight of this expectation, Avra looked down at the dents that the beast had left.

‘You bear badges of both combat and distinction,’ the Sister told her. ‘And there will be time for the sacrament of repair. We stand upon the edge of hostile territory, and our Sisters still hold holy vigil. As night deepens, they will come to greet you themselves.’ Her augmetic whirred again. ‘This is an ancient ceremony, and one you will respect.’

Unable to speak, Avra nodded. Prayers flared in her heart, warming her like the Sol-yellow sunlight of that long-lost world. She looked up, daring to raise her gaze to His image.

But He was too much. Shivering, she dropped her chin once more.

‘I am Sister Lucia,’ the Sister went on, ‘of the Valorous Heart. And it is ever my sacred task to greet you, as with shared vision, I honour your pain in mind, and in flesh, and in soul.’ A faint smile. ‘Do not doubt your worthiness, my Sister. Such would be blasphemous, would it not?’ She raised her human eyebrow in an expression that might have been either humour or reprimand. ‘Once again – it is His will that you are here.’

Sister Lucia, she thought, catching up – like Katherine, one of the original Daughters of the Emperor, the companions of Alicia Dominica from the convent of San Loer. They who had faced the heretic Vandire…

His name brought a prayer of shock from her lips, asking forgiveness, even as her mind flashed dream-images.

Sisters kneeling upon a flagstone floor.

Yellow sunlight, slantways through convent windows.

A duel of legend.

I did see..!

She shivered again, soul-deep and awestruck, resisting the urge to scrub the water from her skin. Despite Lucia’s assurance, her own powerful sense of unworthiness remained: no, I cannot possibly! But Lucia’s face bore the same gentle severity as her voice, and it tolerated no uncertainty. There was a long, pale scar down her left cheek, running under the augmetic. And if Avra remembered correctly, her Order would consider the loss of her eye His blessing.

Had not Saint Lucia herself lost both her eyes to torment?

She, too, had been chosen.

From the desire for wealth and glory, O Emperor…

Still praying, Avra steadied herself. She unfolded to her feet, her damaged armour clattering in the chapel’s quiet. For the first time, she became aware of the noise outside – the camp was still out there, the singing thinning now, the Sentinels still patrolling – but this tiny chapel offered blessed sanctuary and they seemed like a world away.

Slowly, her boots thumping like heartbeats, she ascended the steps. Lucia stood back, understanding, leaving her to her moment. Avra stopped before she reached the top; knelt before the bones of the saint, all robed in white and laid upon a bed of scarlet. They shone, their warmth like Sol’s blessing, and He stood above her almost fondly, like a father, defending her repose.

And, though the black sockets of His daughter’s skull stared sightless at the open roof, that same gleam came also from within.

That Avra had been honoured to see this! Her breath caught on more tears.

Cherubim hovered watchful, augmetic eyelids clicking, though they had laid their supporting chains aside. Glinting in the soft light, they carried the faintest edge of menace. Yet she also felt their welcome, and they did not touch her.

You are worthy, they seemed to say. You sought to lay down your life for an infantryman. For the love and memory of your family. For your Sisters. Stand, child, you shall bear sword and shield in strength and faith, the shield that guarded Alicia Dominica herself. And you will not lay it aside.

Avra bowed her head, tears of humility pouring down her cheeks.

‘Remove your armour,’ Lucia told her. ‘It will go to your Order’s sanctum. And you, my new Sister…’ She glanced sideways, smiling. ‘You must attain your clarity.’ Her augmetic whirred, focusing on Avra’s still-pale, tear-smeared face.

Avra nodded, again. She had yet to find words for the sheer scale of what had happened to her.

Lucia smiled, making her scar crinkle. ‘Do you recall the night before your Ordination, Sister? Where you lay upon the floor and you offered your life to Him?’

Avra nodded again. ‘Of course.’

‘Now,’ Lucia said, ‘He calls upon you to do this once more. You will hold your vigil, here and alone. You will reflect upon the vision that has been shown to you, understand it, and contemplate your place as part of our sacred march. As we have said, there will be no room for doubt or unworthiness, come morning and muster.’

Avra nodded a third time, removing her gauntlets so she could reach for the fastenings on the armour.

Still watching her, Lucia continued, ‘At oh three hundred hours, Sister Superior Aliaah of the Order of Our Martyred Lady will step up her squad, and they will take our place as honoured guardians. We will join you for sustenance, and prayer, and to offer you our Sisterhood and support.’ Her smile deepened. ‘And we will embrace the Service of Tales, that you may understand us better, and walk with us across the galaxy.’

‘Tales?’ Dropping her pauldrons, Avra was faintly surprised.

‘What else?’ Lucia told her. ‘You do not face your fears alone, Avra. We have all known what it is to stand in this place.’ She took the pauldrons, the chestplate, each piece of the armour as it was handed over. Two young, black-armoured Sisters, their faces lowered, had appeared at the doorway. They carried a sacred chest between them, marked with the fleur-de-lys and ready to take the items back to the sanctum.

Avra looked at them, realising they were no older than she was, that…

No room for doubt.

With the newly arrived Sisters to help her, she removed her leg-plates, kicked her way out of her boots, then stood there in her padded underarmour, suddenly sweating in the full, thick heat of the Kiros night. Lucia nodded at the young women, and packing the chest, they bowed and vanished, back out of the doorway to the safety of their Order…

Her Order.

Avra paused, feeling exposed and very alone. Her armour had been so much a part of her, she felt acutely vulnerable without it. Yet now, she could feel the presence of the chapel upon her skin, the touch of the saint, and of her glow. They felt like the heat in her heart, like its warmth and light was already reaching out, touching the resting, sleeping, guarding Militarum, all the way across the site.

Bringing them His courage, for the dawn.

With a sudden rush, she found herself anticipating the morning, and full muster. But that rush was not anger – it was new, and strong. It felt more like a great anticipation, flowing up through her body, out through her limbs. As she knelt upon the steps, her face bathed in the casket’s glow, she found herself thinking back to her home. Thinking about her father. Thinking about the medals he’d kept in that tiny steel box, along with their grandmother’s effigy of Saint Celestine. She remembered him crying, though she’d been too young to fully understand why – tears of pride, courage, honour and worship…

And loss. She’d been nine when her father had given his life to the Emperor; her brother had been three. But they’d wanted nothing more than to follow his example, to take up arms in His service… She and her brother both, so young and eager, their eyes shining – they’d been the last, lingering reminders of their mother, and they’d headed out to almost certain death.

As if in response to her thought, she heard the voice of a shouting sergeant, the bellow stentorian and familiar. He could easily have been her father, or her brother Talan, conjured from her youthful memories…

She raised her gaze to the casket, to the great banner that rose behind. Above her, a star constellation glittered past the chapel’s fractures. She thought it was The Warrior, His eye on her.

Maybe she had been chosen? The thought felt daring, but crept through her like the warmth of Sol itself.

‘Begin your vigil, Sister,’ Lucia said softly. ‘And have no fear. We will watch, and we will return.’

Before her Ordination, Avra had spent a last night in her novitiate’s robes, prone before His likeness, her arms outstretched and her face down, praying for the morning. And now, she did the same – without her armour, clad only in her padding, she lay belly down on the black cloth that covered the hard, broken angles of the steps.

She remembered her father’s tears, the confusion of feelings that had gone with them.

And they flowed down her face, also.

The Service of Tales

Outside the Sisters’ tiny sanctum, the noise of the camp was loud – the noise of massed humanity.

Descending the front steps, Sister Lucia was assailed by a wave of sound and motion – voices, orders, feet, shouting. Before her lay the front line of the forward defences: a long, piled wall of broken stonework, a rank of heavy weapons. Tall towers had been built, rebuilt or repurposed; floodlights glared from observation points; juts of vox-antennae spiked at the darkened sky. She could see scatters of infantry, lying in silence upon the wall tops, their lasrifles at their shoulders.

Beyond the defences, the remaining streets had been completely flattened, twisted with wire and layered with charges. It was the no-man’s-land that neither side should cross without being observed… But the foe did not rest, as the attack last night had proven. They were always alert, always pushing, always seeking to destroy. Far out there, somewhere in the thick warmth of Kiros’ night, their fires still burned.

At the base of the chapel steps, an armoured figure stood like some forbidding stone statue, broad curves of ceramite shining black in the floodlights’ glare. She bore a tray of scarlet petals in her hands, a bolt pistol at her hip.

Over the vox, Lucia said softly, ‘Our new Sister begins her vigil. She is worthy, is she not?’

As yet, Avra did not have the clearance for their vox-channel. That, and her name – they would come when she’d completed her journey.

‘She’s very young.’ The severe, almost monosyllabic response came from the chapel’s rear, from Dominica herself, an icon of armour and unyielding strength. She faced the light of far-distant Sol, watched over the sleeping army. ‘Barely blooded.’ Her tone was deep, measured. ‘And while her fears of unworthiness are honest–’

‘We all shared her vision, Sister,’ Arabella replied, her tone gentle but its insistence clear. ‘There can be no doubt.’ She faced south, her hope and light in what had once been the chapel’s cloisters and garden. ‘Only we see the sacred convent, and only we–’

‘I have seen the blessed vision,’ Dominica said, her tone a growl, ‘every time a new exemplar has joined these ranks. And I say – her youth bothers me. And she is not Pronatus.’

Voices shouted across the camp, borne on hot wind. Lucia turned, but Silvana, facing north and the ancient graveyard, said, ‘It is nothing.’

Deceptively mild, Arabella was still speaking. ‘Does my youth worry you also, Sister?’

‘You are proven, are you not?’ Dominica asked her.

‘I would certainly hope so.’

‘Guard your tone, Sister.’ Dominica’s voice was a warning.

‘Avra has been chosen, and will show us her strength.’ Lucia spoke across them both, her words calming. ‘We will all tell our tales, as is proper, and she will offer a tale of her own, that we may know her heart. And you, Sister Arabella, you will show the proper respect.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

The five of them fell silent, looking outwards to both camp and foe. From the front lines, the shouting voices grew louder. A floodlight swung through an arc, making shadows scud swiftly sideways, like fleeing ghosts. From the steps, Lucia watched the guarding infantry, a wary shift that went through their deployment as they leaned eyes into rifle-sights, peering out over wire-tangled gloom. Flicking through the vox-channels, she listened in for a moment, then returned her attention to her Sisters.

‘Major Haro reports movement,’ she said. ‘Tower delta, though not yet within range. Sentinels are deployed, but they have no orders to engage.’ She paused, then went on, ‘The major believes there will be another incursion, such monsters as we have already seen – foetid and foul, warped humanity, twisted beyond mental or physical tolerance.’ She paused, added, ‘Still screaming with their own pain.’

Mina snorted. ‘Combat will be welcome. I dislike this waiting.’

‘Agreed,’ Silvana said, the faint sound of a smile in her tone. ‘The great monster is come, and it will seek to thwart us. Tomorrow, we will slay it, and push for victory.’

Arabella muttered, but said nothing further. Lucia understood that she still smarted from the reprimand.

Dominica commented, ending the discussion, ‘We will complete our vigil, and commence the Service of Tales. I need not remind you that we stand at the heart, even here, and we will not relax our vigilance.’

‘Sister.’ The agreement flowed out around the unit, and they settled to their posts, the preysight in their visors working. They had no auspex, but a tell-tale green flicker came from their guardian squad.

‘Sister Superior Cico,’ Dominica said to them, softly. ‘You will keep us informed of any movement or order.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

Silence. Tension. A whisper of prayer across the vox, flowing from Sister to Sister with a harmony that belied their previous disagreements. Regardless of their differences, they stood united in His grace and in the face of the ancient enemy.

Another Sentinel padded past them, heading out to scout the darkness. Briefly, it crossed the sky, a black shape against the stars. Orders sounded in its wake, and a second wave of alertness flickered through the waiting soldiers.

Her hand closing round her steel ring, Lucia felt its pinprick of pain, a tiny shock of alertness and focus. She and her Sisters worked in a flawless, fluid harmony that required almost no communication. Their shared visions bound them, mind to mind and weapon to weapon – every Sister knew her role and every task neatly overlapped into the next.

Arabella had the gift for teaching such harmony, Mina for their squad commands and Silvana for their larger, tactical decisions. But it was Dominica that was their commander and elder, and all other tasks began or ended at her word. She was the ultimate Sororitas warrior, the perfect Sister. At times, Lucia had wondered if she, too, understood His terrible knowledge, but she had never asked.

Some things, she mused, were best left alone.

‘Sister Avra.’

The words were as sharp and sudden as the stamp of Dominica’s boot. The sounds cut at Avra, severing her thoughts. She found herself almost falling, tumbling from a place of prayer and holy meditation, a place that was already vanishing, even as she tried to move.

She was chilled and stiff, but such hardship did not matter. Had she seen… had she seen the saint herself? Again, that distant world, those Sisters kneeling on stone? She had no recollection of a second vision, but her prayers had taken her out of herself, carried her away from discomfort and into the vastness of His presence and expectation.

‘Stand up, child,’ Dominica said, more gently. ‘We bring nourishment and support.’

Her body aching from the steps’ hard edges, Avra creaked unsteadily to her feet. The Sisters made no move to help her. Lucia watched her with a faint, almost analytic whir to her augmetic. It was deep night, and the heat had faded at last; Avra found herself shivering. She was hungry and her mouth was dry as sand. She felt empty, not only physically, but mentally, emotionally. She felt as if she had cast her soul upon the steps of this tiny chapel, left it for His approval.

For the saint to bless, as she chose.

She staggered and, this time, a gauntlet caught her elbow – Arabella, she thought, helm off in His presence, as was proper.

‘Easy, Sister,’ she said. ‘Your muscles will protest, but you will move more freely, in a moment.’

She was young, Avra realised, barely older than Avra herself. Her complexion was very pale, with a sunburned strip across her nose. Her sweat-soaked blonde hair stood up like a nimbus in the casket’s glow. But her smile – she had an expression like the rise of a star, brilliant and compelling. It was inclusive, warm. And something about it made Avra like her immediately.

Perhaps it was His hope, so radiant in her face.

The other four Sisters had sunk to one knee upon the steps, a perfect row of bowed shoulders. They were all heads bared, their armour limned by the saint’s light. As they stood up and turned around, Avra saw their faces for the first time.

Sister Lucia, she had seen before, with her scar and her augmetic eye.

Sister Mina: square-jawed and dark-skinned, her black curls cropped short. She too bore a facial scar, cutting inwards from one ear and stopping just short of her mouth. And there was a tangible authority to her, a solidity and strength that made her seem like the very stone.

Sister Silvana, pale skin and very black, smoothly glossy hair. Her cheekbones were blade-sharp and her eyes as blue as gemstones. Her black armour gleaming, she seemed to shine like the edge of a knife, a sharp blade of courage. She was, Avra thought, very beautiful.

And Dominica…

The ultimate Sororitas, her responsibility carried like huge, dark wings. Tall, rangy, slender to the point of being wire-thin, her face was lean and hard-edged. Her skin was dusky, her short, dark hair flecked with grey. She was easily the oldest of them, but her expression was as hard as the steps’ corners, cold and judgemental. When she met Avra’s eyes, Avra almost flinched – but she held both her ground and her gaze.

Slowly, Dominica nodded, like the younger Sister had passed some sort of test. ‘Good,’ she said. Then, ‘Are you well?’

The question meant more than just her physical discomfort.

‘Yes, Sister,’ Avra answered her. She stretched her shoulders, winced, let herself smile. ‘I am glad to have taken this time to search my heart.’

‘Pain teaches many things,’ Lucia said gently, casting a raised-eyebrow glance at Arabella. ‘Walk, Sister. It will hurt, but your blood will move more swiftly.’

Muffling an unworthy groan, Avra did as she was bid, her muscles protesting the motion. Gradually, she was able to move more freely.

In the middle of the chapel, Arabella had opened a large chest, this one marked with the banners of all six Orders. From it she produced, with suitable reverence, six mats, which she laid upon the floor. From the same box, Lucia was breaking out rations, opening packets and offering a tiny piece of each to a carved effigy at the mats’ centre. When this was done, she came to kneel, lighting an electro-candle and letting the warmth of its flame spread through the tiny building, making its odd ceramics shine.

‘Come.’ She indicated a mat. ‘There is enough space for all. We are Sisters, are we not?’

Mina eyed the makeshift refectorium with wariness. ‘We should rotate a guard, Sisters–’

‘There is no need,’ Dominica answered her. ‘We are guarded by both His might and by the blessing of the saint–’

‘And by the troops outside,’ Arabella said.

‘Desist.’ Dominica folded her arms and glared down at the younger Sister. ‘This is a ritual both sacred and ancient. I do not wish to enact stern discipline, but I shall, if you do not show the proper respect.’

Privately, Avra wondered what form such action would take – the fact that this perfect unit of Sisters did not work in pure accord was shocking and, oddly, quite reassuring. As reassuring as the peeling skin on Arabella’s upturned nose, as the familiarity of saying Grace.

They were all like you once, her thoughts told her. Even Dominica. They, too, shared your vision.

Sisters, kneeling upon a flagstone floor…

Her vigil had shown her much, but still, that single image was powerful enough to be overwhelming. How was she supposed to live up to such expectations?

She took the rations as they were passed to her, whispered the prayer, and listened as Dominica began to speak.

‘You know who we are, Sister, and the roles that we take in defence of the relic we bear.’

The others had fallen silent, each kneeling on her mat. Outside, the noises had faded again, a world and a galaxy away. Floodlight tumbled through the front doorway, leaving an arched and angled shape across the floor, but it did not stretch as far as the steps. If Avra looked up, she could see that the clouds had cleared. Kiros’ three moons hung visible, now: tiny tumbles of uneven rock, too far above the planet to shed any real light.

She lowered her chin, and listened.

‘It is our task to march across the galaxy entire,’ Dominica said. ‘You know this from your studies. Across time and void and fear and warfare, we bear our most holy saint to the places where she may bring His blessing. I say to you, my Sister, that you must accept this responsibility and forge it to a weapon of faith, to courage and leadership that will surpass all you have known before. You will stand at our forefront, and you will stand to your full height and capability. I will drive you hard, make no mistake. I am a difficult taskmaster and I brook no errors. But I will ensure that you become worthy of bearing Katherine’s shield and sword, and of leading our march across the galaxy.’

Lucia was nodding, though she said nothing. The faces of the others were watching: Mina with intent, Arabella with a serious honesty, and no sign of her previous humour. Silvana was holding a chant, very soft, a faint whisper of unfamiliar music. It was not Grace; it was something that Avra did not know, and it chimed through the stone with a sound that was almost eerie.

Dominica looked around at all of them, met each of their gazes in turn, turned back to Avra.

‘This is the Service of Tales, where you will meet each of your new Sisters, and where we will remind you of Saint Katherine’s Wars of Faith. Each of us, in turn, will offer a story of our saint’s endeavours, at a time when she reflected the courage and soul of each Order. These tales are what bind us as family, as Sisters in – as well as of – Battle. Thus you may understand us, and the sacred nature of our march.’ She held Avra’s gaze. ‘And when this is done, you will offer us a tale of your own, that we may understand you also.’

She paused, still watching Avra’s expression, though Avra said nothing.

‘Do you have any questions, Sister?’

Her thoughts still tumbling with amazement, Avra felt her own unworthiness loom large. Refusing to give it voice, she shook her head.

Dominica said, her deep voice gentle, ‘You will respond when I speak to you.’

‘I…’ Avra gathered her wits. ‘No, Sister, no questions.’

‘Very well, then,’ Dominica said. ‘Sister Mina, as our champion, you will commence.’

And so, the Service of Tales began.

The Tale of Mina

‘Be welcome, Sister Avra,’ Mina said. Her voice was strong, and though the words were intoned like ceremony, they had the familiar, clipped tones of the tight disciplinarian. ‘I am Sister Mina of the Bloody Rose. I am warrior and champion. It is my sacred task to guard you, to defend our faith and courage, to stand forth and slay the foes of His light. Where the enemy walk, I bring them death. I forge my rage by the hammer of my faith, and I slay His foes, wherever they may be found.’ She paused, her dark eyes twinkling, and her voice softened. ‘My Sisters and I defend the sanctum, and our most holy saint.’ A twinge of humour, almost. ‘And so will you, from the breaking of tomorrow’s dawn.’

Her tray of petals lay to her left side, her bolt pistol to her right. The air across the floor stirred tiny flakes of scarlet, fluttered them in miniature tornadoes. It teased the very edges of her blood-red cloak.

‘My Sister Dominica has explained the nature of this ceremony,’ she said, still with that faint twinkle. ‘It has been enacted many thousands of times, down through years and centuries, in worlds and wars across the galaxy entire. Its purpose will become clear, as it unfurls.’

Avra watched her, unspeaking.

‘It falls ever to me to begin,’ she said. ‘And to tell a tale of strength and combat, as befits my Order.’

‘Tell on, my Sister,’ Dominica said. Voices called outside, but they were a world away, muted by the sanctum’s expectant quiet.

Mina took a moment to compose herself, and began.

In among the gravestones, Katherine paused.

Above her towered tombs, the pitted grey faces of a myriad memorials, each one leaning sideways as if too weary to stand alone. The air was thick and pale with fog; it obscured her vision and made her armour shine like a promise. Wary, she barked an order over the vox.

Behind her, her surviving Sisters stopped. They were a mess, only three of them remaining, and Sister Kemra was limping on a suspected broken ankle. But they could not, would not fail in their mission. The Nakemaran war banner lay here, somewhere, abandoned but not forgotten. Its fabric might be long-rotted, but its pole, styled like a great spear, still awaited them – possibly this sarcophagus, or in the next. And as they searched, He would show them the way, whatever pitfalls might lurk in their path.

High over their heads, rows of lumens made soft, blurred hazes of the white mist. Unseen themselves, they shed little light upon the unused walkways of the Sukato cemetery. She did not know how many years – centuries? – it had been since the feet of man walked here…

Or the feet of woman.

Across the vox, Katherine and her Sisters’ voices chanted softly, twining in harmony across the planet’s ever-present night.

‘Domine, libra nos.’

Men under arms… forbidden. Katherine was a Daughter of the Emperor, Adepta Sororitas, a warrior of His grace and of the blessed Ecclesiarchy. And she and her Sisters were here to honour their duties as soldier and as zealot both–

‘Zealot?’ Interrupting, Dominica had one graceful eyebrow arched almost in her hairline. ‘Interesting choice of word, my Sister. We have spoken of this before.’

‘But we are zealous, are we not?’ Her tone short, Mina sounded irritated at the interruption. ‘And such a trait is surely a virtue? It carries us out across the void, to slay the heretic, the xenos, the ancient foe.’

‘Get on with the story,’ Lucia told them, faintly impatient. ‘We have many tales to tell, and neither morning nor muster will wait.’

Mina’s scarlet armour rattled as she settled herself once more. A breath of quiet sighed out through the little chapel, and she continued.

In the wraith-light of the mist, they moved, their visibility minimal, but all their senses alert. The silence of the place felt heavy, eerie; it hung about them like cobwebs, thick and cold, concealing every threat. And soon they heard the sounds start once again, noises too tiny to be dangerous, yet insistent in their pursuit.

A chill rolled out ahead of them, like a harbinger.

‘They’re coming again.’ Sister Kemra’s voice was a whisper. It caught on her weariness, on the faintest tremble of exhaustion. She had not slowed them down, but her limping gait was a constant reminder of her injury. ‘By His light, is there no end to them?’

‘We know not,’ Sister Xara said, her voice flat with anger. ‘But be they legion, we will fight through them nonetheless.’

Katherine said nothing. She gripped her holy shield in one hand, her bolter in the other. Carefully, she scanned the surrounding ground with her preysight, but the planet was bitterly cold and the low body temperature of the creatures made them difficult to see.

Yet the noise still danced behind them. Something small was skittering between the gravestones’ ancient feet, something that came with a scuffle of claws on gravel. Even as Katherine turned to look for it, it vanished again.

‘Why are they even here?’ Sister Kemra asked. ‘On a world of so many tombs, we surely expected an assault of the necrons. Or…’ She stopped, out of words. ‘What do they want?’

‘Us, and dead,’ snapped Sister Livia, at the rear. ‘We keep moving.’

‘These tombs belong to the Imperium, and to Him,’ Katherine said softly. ‘There are no necrons here.’ She gave a second order, and the squad headed forwards once more.

Yet Kemra had a point, she realised. This was Jelena, lone planet of a darkening star. It was a world of almost pure night, far out from its sun, the orbit of its large and singular moon leaving it in semi-permanent eclipse. The moon was close enough that its weight was almost tangible, a vast rock suspended in the sky by His will and might alone… If the mist cleared enough for them to see it, they would see also its ever-present corona, and the world’s only daylight.

Jelena was a world of the dead, all but uninhabitable, a place where the Imperium had brought the bodies of its heroes to lie in state. Tetricus the Great lay here, or so the briefing had told them, and Dama herself, the Liberator of Pius IV. So many names, lying silent, gently rotting into a soil that now grew with nettles and great tangles of creeper. However mighty they may have been, they all now occupied the same six feet of Jelena’s soil. And however tall their monuments, they still tumbled forgotten, pulled down by the ravaging weeds…

Katherine stopped, chastising herself sternly for the unworthy thought. Tetricus and Dama, all of these great heroes, they now stood in His light, in the presence of the Golden Throne. It was only their mortal remains that lay here, gently disintegrating–

That skitter, again. Close, this time, flicking from side to side as if moving faster than thought. Playing with them.

‘Vigilance, my Sisters,’ Katherine said softly, raising her shield.

Over the vox, the Sisters offered assent. They moved forwards carefully, weapons gripped and ready, auspex and preysight alert. That scuttle was oddly visceral, as if it touched some primitive, nightmare terror. Several of the squad had shuddered at their first encounter – they’d been ambushed almost at their landing point by a horde of the things, each one a yard at the shoulder, and breaking loose from a ring of sarcophagi. They’d flowed forwards like iridescent water, their fangs bared, their weapons extensions of their many arms. Three Sisters had been slain, Kemra injured, but the squad had thrown back that initial assault, shooting without mercy, blasting the creatures to fragments. The Sisters had scouted the empty tombs, but no further sign had remained.

Until now.

Softly, Sister Livia raised the Requiem, her voice pure as cut glass. It was a holy celebration of the dead that lay here, a sanctification. And it was a clarion call – not yet the full rage of battle joined, but a warning.

Her arms spiking with gooseflesh, Katherine echoed her Sister’s stanzas, and they kept moving, searching for the place where the banner was held.

Guide me, God-Emperor. Under the crystal sound of the hymn, she prayed silently for His light. My eyes are but mortal. Her prayer was internal, the words in her heart. Pray, bless me with your truth.

‘Hold,’ Sister Xara said, over the vox. ‘We have a change in terrain.’

Katherine stopped, turned. To their right, the maze of gravel pathways dropped sharply, tumbling down a short flight of steps to a series of grave-lined trenches, every flagstone carved with ancient lettering. They were hard to make out, but she thought that the stones bore names, faded and lichen-choked, or were etched with symbols, skulls and weapons and military insignia. Some were adorned with offerings, perhaps placed by long-dead family – badges, skulls, the rotting stalks of flowers.

It was a vast, half-walled labyrinth, stretching outwards into the fog. But He guided them still, and they would follow His wisdom.

Briefly, she wondered how many of the scuttling creatures lurked here, but she did not voice her concern aloud. This was no place for fear, only for battle. For victory. For the success of their mission. And her Sisters’ watchfulness was strong.

The others had joined Livia in the rise of the Requiem, gaining now in passion and intensity, offering rites for this world of the dead.

‘You know, our Emperor, the secrets of our hearts!’

Katherine felt her blood stir, a shudder of rising adrenaline. ‘We will proceed,’ she commented softly, out over the vox. ‘Bear right, and trust in His guidance.’

They shifted deployment, allowing Katherine and her shield to the front, Livia to the rear with her heavy bolter. Their boots scraped down the stairs, skidding on the worn-smooth stone, and they went onwards.

Mist oozed round them, seeming almost to thicken as they pushed their way through it. Above them, the lumen-lights were no more than a blur. Under their feet, the flags bore more names: Valgus, Mallia, the Lord of Catalus Prime. Katherine continued to sing the Requiem, for all those who lay in rest here, and for the courage of her Sisters.

The scuttle came again, somewhere to their left. Instinctively, they paused.

A split second later, another one, to the right. Then again, to the left; again, to the right. The noises were louder, closer, and – thanks to the trench – now on a level with their shoulders.

The Requiem softened to a thrum of pure threat, allowing them to listen. Needing no order, the four of them had moved to a compass formation, four weapons pointed in four directions. Katherine was facing forwards, her bolter aimed along the trench of gravestones. Ahead of her, there waited what looked like a clearer space, though the haze-blur of the lumens made it difficult to see.

Another scuffle. Behind them, this time.

‘Xara,’ she said. ‘Location?’

Xara had her auspex in hand, and was moving it in a slow arc. At ground level, everything was still smothered in loops of the spiking creeper, thrown around the leaning graves as if to tug them all the way down.

‘Where are they, Sister?’ Katherine said, urgency in her tone. ‘How near?’

Over the vox, Sister Kemra spoke a prayer, her voice deep and quiet. Livia still sang the Requiem, the notes chiming through the cold air. The hymn pulled the four of them tight together, and they watched, blessed by His praise.

By blade and bolter, by shield and armour, by heart and courage. Whether these were early invaders, or left over from some previous battle, the Sisters would exterminate all of them. Return this world to His grace.

Beside Katherine, the auspex blipped green, blipped again. From the corner of her eye, not letting go her vigilance, she glanced down at the screen – saw one dot, two, three. Four, five, ten, twenty. They were not coming closer. They seemed to be…

Spreading out.

‘They’re moving all round us,’ Xara said, echoing Katherine’s thought.

Sister Livia continued to sing, the sound ghostlike in the stillness. Slowly, Xara moved the auspex back again. The blips were still there – too many to count. The screen was swamped with green flashes.

‘What are your orders, Sister?’ Xara said. ‘Do we take our stand here?’

‘I still can’t see them,’ Kemra said. ‘There’s too much vegetation in the way. And curse this awful light!’

Carefully, still not moving, Katherine looked all around them. She was seeking a defensible position, something more secure than being out here in the open, the creeper-smothered ground at almost neck level, the things able to get close and then leap for the Sisters’ faces…

‘Let us make for the opening ahead,’ she said. ‘The light there is stronger, and will give us a killing ground. And we may be able to gain the security of a standing tomb, something in which we can take cover–’

‘Take cover?’ Interrupting the flow of Mina’s story, Sister Silvana sounded startled. ‘My Sister, this is surely a fictionalised part of this tale? You imply that Katherine herself fled from her foe?’ The shock in her tone was tangible, a sharp echo in the chapel’s quiet. Outside, a shadow passed the tiny windows, a Sentinel perhaps, moving dark against the lumens.

Mina gave her Sister a stern look. ‘To find a tactically advantageous position is not fleeing, my Sister, but surely practical sense. A Sister can better serve His will if her defences are well placed. There is no sagacity in dying needlessly – certainly not without taking as many of the enemy with you as you can.’

‘You speak of Saint Katherine herself,’ Silvana said, her tone cutting. ‘Our Martyred Lady, and in her very presence.’ She dropped her voice, almost as if she expected the saint to hear her. ‘And you skirt dangerously close to insult, my Sister.’

Mina inhaled sharply, her dark face flushing.

‘Sisters, please.’ The calming voice was Arabella’s, cutting across the other two. She extended a quieting hand to each of them. ‘We do not squabble amongst ourselves, and certainly not in the presence of our most hallowed saint. Nor of our soon-to-be Katherine’ – she smiled, though the expression had a definite edge – ‘who must learn of each of us, and of the Orders we represent, and learn well. Perhaps, Sister Avra’ – she turned, still with the smile – ‘you should speak on this matter yourself, you who will carry her very shield?’

Avra swallowed, her mouth dry and her heart fluttering. The saint was a strong presence, almost a physical touch, as if she could feel the coffin’s glow upon her skin. Above it, the cherubs hung watching, their wings stirring the air, their eyes clicking as if they recorded every word.

Carefully, she said, ‘Surely, my Sisters, we each follow His path as it has been taught to us?’ She was surprised to find authority in her tone – just a touch, but enough. ‘Yet Sisters we remain.’

Dominica was nodding at her, the woman’s lean, dark face sternly approving. ‘Well said, my new Sister. Silvana, you may tell your tale in your proper place. Mina, continue.’

Sister Mina looked around at the five of them, their faces touched by the electro-candle, their hair shining with the light of the saint herself.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But I request no further interruption.’

The circle of her Sisters remained quiet, and after a moment, she went on.

‘We will make the tyranids come to us,’ Katherine said. ‘Sister Livia, on my command, give covering fire.’

‘Understood.’ At the rear, Sister Livia had the heavy bolter aimed backwards down the trench.

‘I’m seeing even more,’ Xara said. In her hand, the auspex had a ghostlike green glow, diffusing through the mist. More and more blips were covering its screen, flickering in silent eagerness. ‘If we’re going,’ she said, ‘we need to go now.’

‘Livia, prepare to fire,’ Katherine said. ‘The rest of you, move on my command. And fire!’

Loosed at last, the heavy bolter thundered into a full suppression. Termagants squealed, creeper shredded, flesh and leaf both splashed out across the semi-dark. Ancient gravestones cracked and tumbled. As if compelled by the noises, Katherine broke into a flat run, her shield in front, lifted to catch the things as they threw themselves at the trench. Behind her, Kemra and Xara both ran with bolters in hand, each one watching to her side. Kemra’s gait was uneven, but she did not slow down. At the rear, Livia ran backwards, spraying rounds as she went.

Greenery tore; stone exploded into dust and rubble, or crashed to the ground as it split clean in two. Bio-forms screamed and scuttled. There were eruptions of ichor, fluids slicked vine and soil.

At the front, one termagant threw itself at Katherine. She caught it on the shield, then slammed the shield, hard, against the wall of the trench. The creature slid to the floor, its long body shattered, its limbs splayed and broken.

She was still running, already catching the next. Behind her, twin bolters barked fury, one to each side. At the back, the heavy weapon continued to thunder, roaring His rage. The ’gaunts hurled themselves at the Sisters’ faces but the squad was moving too fast.

‘From the lightning and the tempest!’ Sister Xara howled a prayer, and took a leaping creature clean out of the air. Gore splashed against the side of Katherine’s faceplate, but she did not slow down. Any moment, that clear space would come into better view. And if there was no tomb in which they could take cover, then at least the creatures would be bereft of their concealment…

But as her view of the crossroads cleared, she saw two things.

The first was the huge side wall of the great cathedral, its glassaic windows shattered, and diamond fragments still dangling from the old lead lighting.

The second was the beast.

It was huge, bigger than the scuttling termagants, hunkered down like some terrible guardian and it stood utterly still, all but indistinguishable from the stone about it. Writhing tentacles hung from its face, tasting the air as if hungry. And it had two great, scythed talons raised above its head.

It hissed at them, a sound like glee made manifest.

‘It was waiting for us,’ Kemra said, her tone bleak. ‘They herded us to it.’

‘It matters not,’ Katherine responded. ‘They will die just the same.’

Behind the thing, the cathedral wall reared like some vast, dark cliff face, its flint cobbles studded with more gravestones, each engraved with names. No light came from within, but the overhead lumens were brighter here, and the Sisters could see the plinths and feet of ancient, broken statues, some of them clearly depicting warriors in armour.

Abandoned it might be, but this place still belonged to Him – and they would purge the xenos from its grounds.

Katherine barked, ‘Move to the centre. Then compass defence!’

The shout was almost unnecessary; the Sisters were still moving, still shooting. The heavy bolter was at the wrong side of the formation – Katherine needed the bigger weapon to face the creature – but they could not afford the shuffle, not now. She raised her shield, aimed her bolter over the top, and fired. Around her, muzzle flashes blazed outwards through the fog.

Her shot struck the thing in the shoulder, cracking the carapace, spilling fluid. The beast lowered its head at her and seemed to taste the air with those grotesque tentacles, as if getting the measure of its opponent.

‘By the light,’ Katherine told it, her voice half threat and half prayer, ‘this is hallowed ground, a place of His faithful. You do not belong here, accursed creature. And you will face His wrath!’

Behind and to each side, Kemra and Xara were still shooting, controlled bursts aimed at a sea of incoming, scuttling chitin. The clearing’s moss-grown flagstones were alive with movement.

And at the rear…

The heavy bolter barked continuously, loud and sharp, a full and merciless suppression. Knowing her Sisters were safely behind her, Livia moved the weapon in an arc, cutting through swathes of the incoming tyranids. They shrieked and rattled, scuttling sideways, running each other over, but they could not escape the relentless batter of incoming rounds.

Or the rage of the Sisters that accompanied them.

‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

In front of Katherine, the great beast cared not for the deaths of its minions. It uncoiled like some huge spring, raising its spines further and rearing high.

But Katherine did not fear it. Crying defiance in His name, with the words of His Litany on her lips, in her heart, she slammed her shield full into its face. One great scythe, then the other, hit the incoming metal and skidded, screeching as they struck. Like a blade, the awful noise sliced through air and mist and hearing.

‘Begone!’ she raged at the beast. ‘This place holds the sacred lives of Terra’s servants, their sacrifice and memory. It is no place for you or your kind. I am Katherine of San Loer, I am His word and His weapon, and I say, by the Emperor, you will not stand here!’

In the chapel, Mina’s cry rang like a bell tone. It brought a shiver to Avra’s skin, a flurry of gooseflesh like ice down her spine. All six of the Sisters had paused at its force, at the passion and rage in Mina’s voice. In the light of the electro-candle, her dark skin had the faintest reddish glow, like her very fury made manifest.

Overcome by her own ferocity, the Sister of the Bloody Rose bowed her head. From outside, there came the faintest noise of engines. In the chapel, there was a moment of profound silence.

Then Dominica said softly, ‘You do well, my Sister.’ Her voice was very deep, a touch like rich cloth. ‘You do our blessed saint great honour. We know the tale of the lictor at Jelena, yet to hear it in your voice is to live it once more, to see and purge the xenos taint from its sacred grave-trenches and from those they hold. Take a moment, if that is what you need.’

Mina stayed where she was, her head still bowed. Arabella had tears in her eyes; Avra could feel her own eyes tickling, though she blinked the water away. Silvana gripped Mina’s armoured shoulder in a gesture of solidarity.

‘Forgive me,’ she said. She added no explanation. The words did not need one.

‘Between us, my Sister,’ Mina answered her, looking up, ‘there is nothing to forgive.’

Dominica was nodding, and her face had the faintest edge of a smile. It was stern, almost a smile of pride, and she looked around at the others, watching each in turn.

Like the rest of the Sisters, Mina had removed her gauntlets to eat, and now she picked up one of the Bloody Rose petals in her fingers, holding it so it shone with the faint red glow of her skin. Turning to Avra, she said, ‘Thus do I ask you a question, my new Sister, one of several that you will answer, during this service. I seek to understand your fury. Do you celebrate its presence, and use it to serve Him?’

Avra thought back to the schola and to what she knew of each saint – as Saint Lucia had been tormented and had lost her eyes, so Saint Mina had been Alicia Dominica’s champion… And it had been Mina’s boots in the vision, fighting that terrible, epic duel.

Again, that shiver. The two years of her service seemed suddenly very short, but Avra said, ‘I fought the drukhari, within the jungles of Udon Gamma. They took my Sister, and endeavoured to manipulate our squad, to force us to stand down. It was our rage that drove us, and we slew them all, proclaiming victory in His name.’

Beside her, Sister Lucia was nodding, though she did not speak.

‘Good,’ Mina said. ‘In its place, Sister Avra, anger is His greatest blessing, given to us to lift the heart and to make it race, to endure pain, to raise such a cry that He may hear our very voices, if it pleases Him to do so. Your rage will make the foe know fear, and drive them forth.’ She too smiled, her square face softening, and held out the petal. ‘Hold to your anger.’ Her dark eyes searched Avra’s face, though if she saw the sparkle of unshed tears, she said nothing, she only went on, ‘But never – never – let it consume you. Embrace it, use it as His fuel.’ Her dark gaze flashed like a warning. ‘Control it.’

‘I understand,’ Avra said. She took the petal and laid it to her right, like a talisman.

Nodding, not releasing the younger woman’s gaze, Mina repeated, ‘I am Katherine of San Loer.’ Her words were gentle, now, more like song. ‘I am His word and His weapon and I say – by the Emperor, you will not stand here.’

Avra nodded, letting the warm flush of Sisterhood spread through her cheeks.

And Mina continued with her story.

The lictor was vicious, and it carried an anger of its own. It was a scout, come seeking knowledge, and to claim the world for its kind. It carried the xenos’ hive mind like some great and terrible galactic awareness. And it had lingered here waiting, learning all of Jelena’s routes and consuming all of its dead. It knew of every Imperial tomb that pocked the planet’s surface, that delved deep, deep into its skull-walled stone bowels. It carried the lore of the grave-world entire, perhaps even the location of the very banner that Katherine sought.

Again, it crashed its spines at Katherine’s sacred shield, and again, Katherine threw it back. To her side, Xara was changing her magazine, the motion pure reflex; a second later, she continued to fire. At the rear, the heavy bolter raged with His voice, unstoppable.

But the smaller creatures were still coming, an endless mass of them, flowing like black waters that threatened to engulf the Sisters. Sister Kemra was struggling; Katherine could feel her slump as if the pain in her ankle had become too great to bear. She cursed, briefly, across the vox, stood on the other foot, and kept shooting.

Xara raised a cry, a shout of the ancient hymnal, and the great monster – almost as if it had heard – reared backwards again, ready for another slash. Echoing her Sister, Katherine shot it again and watched as its face exploded, gore covering the front of her helm.

It staggered, but still it did not go down.

Its cracked chitin still gleaming in the wraith-light, one spur slashed sideways; she blocked it, shot the thing again, this time in its belly.

Flesh and carapace burst. Still it did not fall. It hissed, again, that sound so like laughter.

At the rear, the heavy bolter clattered to a stop. ‘Cover me,’ Livia called, dropping to one knee to change the belt. Both Xara and Kemra followed the order without question, but the things were coming at them faster, now, closing around their feet and knees with pincers and talons and teeth.

‘Make for the wall!’ Katherine barked.

The three of them moved. Livia, cursing, was trying to feed the ammo belt into the heavy bolter, even as the creatures were scuttling to attack. She kicked at them, vicious and lethal, but the trickle of xenos was rapidly becoming a full-on flow. Stingers lashed at their armour.

And the beast was clever; it could see the opportunity. Even as the Sisters moved, it feinted at Katherine’s left, then sprang to her right, intending to go past her.

Seeing it, she raised bolter and shield, aiming a round at its already mangled face, needing to throw it back. She half-caught it, the round hitting its jaw and taking the edge of its face clean off, the shield knocking it sideways. The momentum of its leap interrupted, it fell, squalling and kicking, lashing in fury. Instantly, Kemra turned her bolter on the downed beast, while Livia still covered the rear.

But the thing was smart. And Kemra was on one foot. Even as she aimed the bolter, the great monster slashed her ankle out from under her.

With a startled curse, she fell, half atop the downed lictor. Instantly, the smaller creatures assaulted her, teeth bared as they came. She tried to get her arms under her, her good foot, but the lictor was beneath her still and it drove one talon clean through her armoured back. Her scream was liquid and crystal, and it rang through vox and mist, shattering Katherine’s hearing.

At the rear, Livia was up, heavy bolter reloaded and held in both hands. With a cry of hymn and pure outrage, she loosed the full might of the weapon, shattering the swarming creatures in their droves. Katherine was still shooting, her shield taking monsters from the air, even as they leapt.

Kemra, on the ground, was still fighting. Spitting prayer and blood and savagery, unable to shoot the thing as it was still half under her, she pulled a krak grenade from her belt.

‘Go!’ she said.

Katherine took one look, and understood. She bellowed, ‘Move!’

There was no need for explanations, they were Sisters and they understood. The hymns would come, as would the grief, in their proper place. But now, with the lictor held down by Kemra’s armour and fury, with the seethe of smaller creatures already trying to claw and stab and bite their way through to flesh, the three of them reached the wall.

Livia spun, the heavy bolter in her hands, ready to clear the space entire, but there was no need.

The detonation was enough.

Mina let the last words fall, and the silence of the little chapel enfolded them all. Outside, the noises of the camp had stopped, though the floodlights were still bright and watchful.

Avra let her tears overspill, understanding that they carried no shame. The light from the coffin bathed them all, touching their faces like gentleness.

‘A worthy tale, my Sister,’ Dominica said. ‘And told as befits a warrior. Though we have heard this tale many times, each time we hear it anew we learn more about its teller, about ourselves, and about our most holy saint.’ She looked around at the group, paused at the water that streaked Avra’s face.

‘There is no need for tears, though we comprehend. And this is a proper place for such things. As Adepta Sororitas, we endure much. And we embrace that endurance that we may praise Him with our fortitude, and with what pain and loss can show us.’

The others murmured agreement. Lucia’s face was uplifted, watching the glitter of moonlight, of the tiny, faraway stars. Her augmetic eye glowed with the vehemence of her thoughts, and her scarred expression seemed carved in lines of stone. Avra wondered what she thought, and Dominica, it seemed, had noticed it too.

‘What say you, my Sister?’ she asked.

‘It is time for my tale, I think,’ she said. ‘As rage and pain are Sisters, and walk often hand in hand.’

‘And in both, we praise Him,’ Dominica answered. ‘Go on, my Sister, and tell us the story of your heart.’

The Tale of Lucia

To Mina’s right, Lucia took a moment to inhale, drawing in breath like she could draw in the saint’s very light. The cherubim shifted, watching and recalling every movement.

Turning the engraved steel ring on her finger, she said, ‘I have already bid you welcome, Sister Avra. I am Sister Lucia of the Valorous Heart. I am strength and clarity. I am the anvil upon which the hammer shatters the enemy. I carry the sins of the Daughters of the Emperor. I comprehend anguish, of the flesh, of the heart and of the mind. I seek no easing to my own suffering. But’ – a flare in her augmetic eye – ‘I will not tolerate the torture of the innocent, nor the presence of the foe. Like my Sisters, I defend the sanctum, and our most holy saint.’

To her side, stood against the wall, the icon of the Valorous Heart shone with a light like blood. Its glow touched her skin, her armour; glittered from her augmetic.

‘Before I begin my tale,’ she said, ‘please understand’ – she smiled at Avra, her scar crinkling – ‘that this is perhaps not the tale you expect.’ She lowered her chin, and both eyes focused on Avra with a penetrating intensity. ‘It is a tale of many layers, and it can teach many things.’

A sudden shout came from outside. A shiver of alertness went through all six Sisters, but the shout did not repeat, and after a moment Lucia went on.

‘Pain is both brutal and subtle, my Sisters, and it can be the greatest teacher of all. If we comprehend it fully, it can teach us our strength, our faith… and our limitations.’ A flare in her eye, like a warning. ‘For we do have them, and it is a wise Sister that learns this, and that works always to best them. And pain can tie us, one to another, with bonds unbreakable. Not by fire, not by fear, not by warfare, not by pride or victory…’

The shout came again, but it had lost its faint timbre of alarm, and the Sisters did not move. All five of them were watching Lucia as she continued.

‘And not by loss.’ The iris of Lucia’s augmetic whirred open, a flare of red in its depths. ‘And no one understands pain,’ she finished softly, ‘like the Repentia.’

Repentia.

The word sent the faintest ripple through the chapel’s chill. Avra had seen them once, only at a distance, but even that had left an impression, a burn-scar upon her mind. Those Sisters who had committed some unspeakable dishonour, some unthinkable disgrace – they were stripped of their name, their consecrated armour, their blessed bolter…

Before the Emperor, I have sinned…

Many such Sisters disfigured themselves, some act of shame or contrition; they took out their own eyes, carved prayers into their very flesh. And yet, the Repentia were also symbols of hope. Of redemption.

The shout came a third time, ending on a distant bark of military laughter. It seemed like another place, another life.

‘Tell on, my Sister,’ Dominica said softly, her voice very deep. ‘And let us learn anew.’

Like Mina, Lucia had taken a moment to consider both herself and her narrative. Now, she drew in a breath.

And began.

In the very first days of the Order of the Fiery Heart, Saint Katherine made, with His blessing, two great friends. As she founded her Order, striving through its pangs of new growth, these two Sisters were inspired by her example. They stood at her side like pillars of pure tenacity, not only as companions, but as bodyguards and warriors. They loved her, and they resolved to follow her, even unto the darkness itself. Their names were Sarin and Mila.

Sister Sarin gave her life in the defence of the young Order, an act of selflessness and great honour. Yet Sister Mila was touched by a witch, and her spirit faltered. In her shame, she offered her life to Him in the only way that remained to her.

She Repented.

It was a moment unspeakable, and Katherine’s heart of fire burned – she missed both Sarin and Mila greatly. But her Sisters both had offered their lives in His honour, and she resolved to carry their memories with her always, to fight her wars to remember them, and to anneal the new Order with the shed blood of its first members.

And so, drawn by a vision from the Emperor, Katherine left the Convent Sanctorum. Commanded always by His light, she crossed the galaxy alone, moving from ship to ship, from world to world – all the way to Segmentum Obscurus and to the fourteen tiny satellites of the great, red star called Thelys. Each of these was little more than a rock, an orbiting, tumbling boulder. Yet these had become the places where the conquered ships of the Imperium, and others, spiralled down to finally die.

They were junkyards, colossal beyond words, and none blessed by Him; they were not Mechanicus worlds, they bore no shrines nor temples, no prayers for quieting damaged machine-spirits, nor for offering them new life in the name of the Omnissiah. They were scavenger worlds, metallic, unhallowed and dark. From ork to heretek, from the minions of the Archenemy to the graceful hunters of the drukhari, opportunists dwelt here. Xenos and cultists skulked among them, seeking wealth and fortune. No one had laid claim to these rocks full of wreckage, yet still, they had many eager denizens.

And so Katherine, drawn by her vision, walked among the vastness of the carcasses they bore. There is learning here, He had told her. And you must find it, my daughter. But your trials will be many.

Long she walked, seeking His wisdom, the insight for which He had called her. She walked amongst angles impossible, amongst great decks like mountain slopes that reared up and away from her and far into the darkness, amongst twisted, shattered metals and shredded gantries and the remnants of destroyed machinery. She walked amongst huge holes blasted by great battles, amongst the debris of the ammunition. And she prayed for the spirits of these ruined ships, these mighty skeletons, all rust and corrosion. They towered like the greatest of cathedrals, echoing with their own emptiness. And noises ghosted still through their broken veins – hints of combat, cries of rage and pain.

Through all of it, Katherine walked without fear. She held His vision in her heart, and she walked with shield and bolter, searching for the place that He had shown her, and for the knowledge that lay waiting.

What she found, however, was something else.

Twining through the ghost-sounds, flawless in its crystalline harmony and making the very air shiver with its presence, there came song. Familiar, so achingly familiar – the words made her pause, her heart thrilling.

‘A spiritu dominatus.’

The hairs on her neck stood on end. The voices carried tones of prayer, of hope, of loss, of courage unending. Amid the tangle of the rotting ships, she could not tell the source of the music, but she knew those words, knew them as if they had been engraved upon her skin…

After all, she had been there when they were written.

‘Domine, libra nos.’

She prayed, ‘Show me, my Emperor. Show me to where my Sisters sing.’ And she returned the words of the Litany. ‘From the lightning and the tempest…’

At her voice, the song fell from the air like He had torn it down Himself. And there – there! – at the end of a huge and dark and empty tunnel: a single, shining light. It was her vision made manifest, the light from her dream. It was the light He had shown her and, while it was not yet the wisdom she sought, it was as clear as His touch. This was where that vision had begun.

This was her guide.

Bolter and shield still in hand – there were dangers yet – she moved swiftly past the sagging walkways, past the rusting and terrible wounds, past the hatches of the saviour-pods, now half-buried in a century of rock… and there, she found the source of the voices.

Four of her Sisters.

Alone, abandoned. Unbroken.

Yet these Sisters were not in armour, not of any Order she knew. Their bodies were clad only in tunics, each shredded and filthy; their hands carried no bolters, only the great, toothed chainblades known as eviscerators. Each Sister had a shaven head, though their scalps were stubbled and their hair was growing back, patched and awry. And each had symbols carved harsh in her skin – wounds self-inflicted, that, by His decree, would not heal until their bearer died. One had no eyes. Another had no mouth, her lips stitched shut. And at their head…

Katherine’s friend, one of the founders of her Order.

Mila.

Katherine beheld her shamed Sister and her heart flared with fire, burned with love and pity and horror. She had not thought to see her again. Not like this.

Upon seeing a Sister in armour, however, Mila had dropped to one knee, her head bowed as was proper. She was a mess, her scalp bloodied, her bared shoulders carved with half-healed wounds, her gore-blotched blade held out before her like an offering. Behind her, surrounded by the shipyard’s corroding carcasses, the other three had also dropped to a kneel.

The four of them seemed held together by faith, by sheer determination.

‘My Sister,’ Katherine said, her tone a whisper. ‘Mila.’ There was hurt in her voice, for this was truly her family, her closest of friends. Yet she spoke no word of sympathy, only said, ‘You fight as He has decreed and have no need for such gestures. You do not kneel to me, only to Him.’

Looking up, Mila met her eyes. And there was realisation like pain in her gaze – her understanding of Katherine’s identity. But she said nothing, no word of plea or weakness; she just came to her feet. She shook with fatigue yet she sought no help, and Katherine did not extend her hand. The other three did the same, their eyes downcast.

‘You should speak, my Sister,’ Katherine said. ‘While I understand that such is usually forbidden, there is a thing here that I seek, and I must have your knowledge.’

‘Yes, Sister.’ Still Mila did not raise her gaze. She was small, fierce and dark, and though her wounds pained her, she made no mention. She said, ‘I alone among my Sisters will speak, and I say – we came here to Thelys to offer our lives in His name, and we have seen battle. Our mistress was slain by the enemy, great hounds of flayed flesh that assaulted us from both sides. We are the only survivors.’

‘How?’ Katherine’s comment was pointed, and the dark woman flushed. The other three, their faces carved in scars, still kept their eyes downcast. Shame flushed through them all, tangible as a touch.

‘A gantry fell from beneath us, and took us from the fighting. The fall was far, and there was no way to regain the battle, though we made the attempt several times.’ She frowned, and Katherine could see the rust marks on her hands. ‘We have come in search of death.’

‘Then it is His will you are here, my Sister,’ Katherine said, an ache in her tone. ‘Mila.’

‘My name was taken from me,’ the Sister replied. ‘Now, I am named Rue.’

The name was short and poignant, marking the difference that had come over her Sister. Her dishonour. But Katherine said only, ‘And those with you?’

‘They are named Grief, Sorrow and Regret. If you will accept us, Sister, we will fight by your side until He grants us – or refuses us – redemption.’

‘I will accept you, and gladly,’ Katherine said. ‘Truly this is a place of darkness, and there is battle enough for all. Yet I would first ask you a question.’

‘I will answer.’

‘I seek knowledge, and it lies upon a command deck, high in the carcass of the Blade of Sacrifice. In my mind, there is an image – its deck is broken, its viewport shattered, its panels long perished. I must find this place that matches my vision.’

‘This is the Blade,’ Rue said. ‘Though I know not the layout of the ship.’

‘Then we should go upwards,’ Katherine told her. ‘And seek His blessing.’ Katherine wanted to explore the wreckage, seek the place of her vision, but she knew the hounds of the enemy, knew that they had tasted blood.

And she knew that they were coming.

Lucia paused, and the weight of a long silence fell over the Sisters like a sacred cloth. Avra thought of her own vision, of the sheer might of His will made manifest, of the weight and responsibility of His blessing. She wanted to ask Lucia if the saint had felt the same thing, but it seemed impertinent, and she made herself wait.

Lucia’s augmetic eye whirred as if she frowned, but none of the Sisters spoke. Even the outside seemed hushed, waiting.

A passing searchlight scudded over the floor, and she continued her tale.

The hounds knew the scent of the Sisters’ blood, and of their faith. Such things track with their noses to the metal, never resting. Creatures of the enemy, their teeth are bared and dripping with bloody froth, their gazes like windows to the very warp itself. They ripple with snarl and muscle. And they never stop, never relent.

But Katherine had no fear and the Sisters with her had but one purpose. They hungered for battle, craving to lose their shame in His wrath and glory. His vision and will had brought them together, and they would neither flee, nor falter, in His name.

In His name, they would slay the creatures, here and now.

‘Ready your weapons,’ Katherine said, as if she were the Repentia mistress, exhorting them to deeds of valour. ‘We do not run from these horrors. Instead, we will slay them where they stand. And once they are gone, then I will continue with my search.’

A rasp of eviscerators roared out through the surrounding death. Corpses of metal rang with the noise, a clear and clarion challenge. And again, the Sisters sang, their voices chiming with the grinding of their blades.

And a great snarl came in return.

The hounds had been following them, moving swiftly, pelting down the tilting tunnels, their slavering jaws agape. They heard the challenge and they set up a yammer, a howl of defiance that bit at the ears like red-hot teeth, that filled the mind with a tumble of skulls, with pools of gore still steaming. Fear washed ahead of them like a great, red wave, but the Sisters stood like a fortress of faith, indomitable. And the fear wave broke as it hit them, shattering to a splash and leaving them standing untouched, their blades still screaming.

The hounds closed eager, their eyes afire. The Sisters ran at them, still singing, carried by the word of His redemption.

‘From the begetting of daemons!’

Katherine ran with them, taking shots with her bolter before the battle was joined. And then everything was a fury of tumbling flesh and claws and the slash and roar of the eviscerators, and the song became a shout and there were screams of pain and rage and of sheer, exultant savagery. Using her shield, she threw the hounds back, twice, three times, but each time they leapt forwards once more. One of the Sisters fell, her throat torn out by great white teeth, then another, a hound with its jaws across her eyeless face. But the hounds, too, were falling; they detonated in flashes of red fluid, in hisses of steam, and their remains burned the Sisters’ exposed flesh, making them turn and slash in response…

Lucia stopped to draw breath. The little chapel was utterly silent, filled with the images of the fight, with the glow of the saint herself, the very warrior of whom they spoke. Even the outside seemed to have fallen quiet, as if captivated by the tale.

When the battle was over, three of the Repentia lay slain, their lives offered to Him and their redemption complete. Mila, however, was still standing, yet unaccepted by the Golden Throne. Her wounds were severe – bites to her legs and arms that bled copiously, making her stagger where she stood, her own lifeblood pooling at her feet. But Mila did not fall, and upon her scarred face was an expression of great humiliation.

‘I should have perished,’ she said, her eyes still downcast. ‘But I will not die of injury, of pollution, or of blood loss. I will die fighting, my blade in my hand.’ A flash of her dark eyes, looking up from under her brows. ‘I will attain my redemption, with His blessing.’

‘There are battles aplenty, my Sister,’ Katherine told her, again. ‘We will seek them out even as I seek the wisdom that has brought me here. Let us find the command deck, and we will find your death as we go.’

And so, they walked. Before long, Mila began to falter. Her own red footprints followed her, counting down to her imminent failure. She shook with pain, but would suffer no sanguinator. Nor would she lean upon Katherine for support, and her hand did not release her blade. Soon, her agony became as loud as a cry. Katherine walked beside her friend, her own heart aching with grief, wanting to reach out to her, to offer her strength, to hold her by the elbow and keep her on her feet. To ensure that she made that final fight, and was able to perish in His grace.

The pain of Mila’s wounds was terrible for Katherine to behold. Yet the pain of her failure – that was almost too much. For Mila to die, on her knees and without that final battle… Her Repentance would be denied.

Still they continued, climbing higher and higher through the ruin of the Blade. It creaked at them, stirred by the cold winds of the rock upon which it lay. In places, panels and wires sparked as they passed, as if the great ship’s machine-spirit, also, was in pain and begging for their help. The ghost-noises continued, though no foe came close.

Mila staggered, her legs refusing to hold her. She made no word of complaint, just muttered the words of the Litany like a focus, a steel-cold grip of faith that held her to herself, enabled her to put one foot in front of the other. She held her blade tightly, though its point was no longer held high. And the hurt in Katherine’s heart was like a tear, widening with every step that her Sister took.

Why had they not been attacked? It was His will, and they had only to bear it.

And then, Mila fell. Forwards, onto her hands and knees. She did not release her blade – such would have been a travesty, a sin beyond words – but her free hand left a perfect, bloody print upon the metal.

Katherine stopped, her blood burning. The bloody hand was a sign, an image from her vision. They were almost to the command deck. To the place of her vision, and to the knowledge that she sought, in His name.

‘You must stand,’ she said, her voice an order. ‘You are Adepta Sororitas, a Sister of Battle. You are His daughter, a warrior trained, and you will not perish upon your knees!’ She held out her hand, but Mila forestalled her.

‘Do not,’ Mila said. ‘I am Repentia. I am forsaken. I will do this alone, or I will perish without His forgiveness.’ She glanced up, and Katherine could see the face of her friend, see the battles they had undergone together and the memories that she had carried forth to her wars. The tear in her heart grew wider; she wished only to help, to reach out for those past days, to share them once more, to ensure that Mila attained His grace and met her death upon her feet.

With her free hand, Mila reached out for the edge of a gantry, and began to pull herself up. As she did so, she recited still the words of the Litany, and never had Katherine heard them with such timbre, never had she felt them like blows against her skin. Each one was like a drumbeat, like a shard of hard glassaic, spat through gritted teeth…

‘Domine… Libra… Nos…!’

Each syllable was a fusion, its heat making Mila not resist her pain, but become one with its blessing. Allowing her to accept it, make it a bastion against her weakness, become charged with it, like adrenaline; use it to forge herself anew and to bring steel to her flesh and to her mind. Watching her rise back to her feet, Katherine felt a rush of pure wonder, of awe at His grace made manifest. She prayed, not the Litany, but words that tumbled with respect. She understood how pain gave resolution, but this… this was beyond her. This was something almost more than human.

Truly, this was His blessing.

‘I will stand,’ Mila said, ‘until I cannot.’

And the words went through Katherine like a blade, making the tear in her heart ever wider.

Lucia paused for a second sip of water. Not one of the Sisters had breathed a word, though Avra knew that parts of her own Order had taken those very words and had made of them a symbol, a Litany of Resilience. Understanding their origin felt like a blessing in itself.

She watched Lucia as the woman continued.

Understanding now, Katherine did not offer her friend help. Mila walked like some Mechanicus creation, one foot before the other, relentless, driven, automatic. Fuelled by pain, she used its very presence to push herself forwards. Prayers came from her like sparks from gears, erratic sprays of words, but like her walking, they did not cease.

And Katherine felt her Sister’s agony. It was empathy, and hope. It was their mutual days from the earliest wars of their Order. It was their training, and their cathedral hymns, and their evening games of Tall Card. It was the chiming of their laughter, and their voices raised in His praise.

And so, by His light and guidance, they at last found the metal ladder and the command deck of the Blade.

As she spoke, Lucia smiled at Avra. ‘No words, my Sisters, can describe the sensation of finding His vision made manifest. It is a key in a lock, a touch of pure wonder, the utter perfection of His truth. And the command deck exactly matched Katherine’s memory – as if she walked in a place of her own mind and heart. She had never seen it before, and yet she remembered it – its floor tilted, its control panels broken and hanging, the armaglass of its viewport shattered, and the precise lines and angles of its external view. We have known such moments, ourselves, have we not? Truly, they are the touch of His grace.’

‘Tell on, my Sister,’ Dominica said softly. ‘We understand.’

Through the command deck’s broken oculus, Katherine could see the surface of the tiny, nameless moon, black and pitted with craters. And buried within it, the pieces of all those shattered ships, great carcasses tumbled nose down, their hard angles blotting the faint light of Thelys’ even tinier satellites. The thin layer of atmosphere was breathable, but only just, and long shadows moved across the deck, making its uprights leer like phantoms. But the memory, the knowledge that He had brought her here to find? While the surround matched her vision, she still did not understand.

And her searching was interrupted as Mila stumbled again to her knees. As if the thread of her endurance had finally snapped, she could not stand. She tried, tried again, attempting to lever herself upright with her eviscerator, but her legs simply would not hold her, her blood loss too severe.

Katherine had stimms, but she knew that Mila would refuse their help, just as she had refused everything else.

‘Tell me,’ Mila said, her voice hoarse. ‘Tell me that you have found what you seek?’

Tell me that I have not striven in vain. Tell me that there is hope.

Katherine stood, carefully looking around at the ruined deck, at the command chair, at the walls of panels, the prayers and diagnostics, but nothing looked or felt right. There was something she was missing. Something–

The hound-snarl made them both turn round.

It was only the one, shoulders low and body skulking, but Mila’s blood covered its snout and tongue, telling them that it had followed her very footprints, tracking her by the path of her pain. And one was enough.

Katherine raised her bolter, but Mila said, ‘Do not.’ There was a note of relief in her voice, a faint ring of triumph. ‘This beast is surely the last survivor, and on this occasion, it is welcome.’

Understanding, Katherine let the weapon drop. She prayed aloud, her voice ringing through the ruins. And Mila joined her, their voices twining as once they had, so many years before. With an effort that made Katherine’s heart rend all but in half, Mila finally forced herself to her feet. Held upright by her song alone, by the words of empathy and shared pain, she raised the eviscerator. Starting its furious rasp, she faced the beast.

Katherine stood back, the bolter still in one hand, her shield still held in the other, and watched.

The hound leapt.

Incredible, impossible, Mila slashed at the leaping creature. Her effort made her totter, and she missed it; it landed behind her and spun, its claws tick-tacking on the metal, its eyes afire, its teeth bared.

But Mila did not fear it, and while she ached for the clamp of its jaws, she would not, could not surrender. She bared her teeth in a snarl of her own, shouted the names of her fallen Sisters, of Grief and Sorrow and Regret, of other names that Katherine did not know. The beast watched her, sly and narrow-eyed, as if picking up the scent of her exhaustion. It slunk in low, and Katherine’s hands tightened upon her weapons. But she could do nothing. In His name, her only task was to stand back, and to let her Sister, her friend, die.

Die, at the teeth of the enemy.

The hound leapt again, its jaws agape. Mila’s grinding blade slashed, catching it on its shoulder, but it was not enough, not enough…

And in that moment, watching its jaws close upon her Sister’s throat, so His understanding came to her. The final piece of her vision fell into place as if completing some great puzzle. This – this – was what He had brought her here to find. She was not here to discover some relic or remnant, but to learn a lesson of pain and truth.

As Mila’s body fell, released in honour to the Throne, and as Katherine shot the last surviving hound, singing as it skidded and was gone in a gout of blood and steam, so she lifted her voice in celebration.

In His name.

‘In His name.’

In the chapel, the Sisters echoed the blessing. Dominica was singing, her voice very soft but her rich contralto humming strong through the tiny building. Avra did not know the hymn, but Arabella joined her, a pure and crystalline soprano that made shivers flare down the younger Sister’s forearms.

Lucia smiled at them both, speaking in rhythm with their song, ‘As Sisters,’ she said, ‘we carry many weapons. We carry our bolt pistols and our sacred relics. We carry rage’ – she glanced at Mina – ‘and we carry other things within our hearts, each of which we will reveal, in turn. But pain…’ She stopped, touching her augmetic eye. ‘I was tortured by the aeldari, upon the fallen hive world of Mastark VI. Like Saint Lucia herself, I lost an eye to my tormentors and I did not surrender. And it was that very torment that blessed me with His vision, and that brought me here. I have served Him in this march for almost ten Solar years, and I have told this tale a total of six times, including today. My Sisters…’

Lucia paused, and carefully removed the steel ring that she bore upon her finger, holding it up to the light.

And in that moment, watching its jaws close upon her Sister’s throat, so His understanding came to her. The final piece of her vision fell into place as if completing some great puzzle. This – this – was what He had brought her here to find. She was not here to discover some relic or remnant, but to learn a lesson of pain and truth.

As Mila’s body fell, released in honour to the Throne, and as Katherine shot the last surviving hound, singing as it skidded and was gone in a gout of blood and steam, so she lifted her voice in celebration.

In His name.

‘In His name.’

In the chapel, the Sisters echoed the blessing. Dominica was singing, her voice very soft but her rich contralto humming strong through the tiny building. Avra did not know the hymn, but Arabella joined her, a pure and crystalline soprano that made shivers flare down the younger Sister’s forearms.

Lucia smiled at them both, speaking in rhythm with their song, ‘As Sisters,’ she said, ‘we carry many weapons. We carry our bolt pistols and our sacred relics. We carry rage’ – she glanced at Mina – ‘and we carry other things within our hearts, each of which we will reveal, in turn. But pain…’ She stopped, touching her augmetic eye. ‘I was tortured by the aeldari, upon the fallen hive world of Mastark VI. Like Saint Lucia herself, I lost an eye to my tormentors and I did not surrender. And it was that very torment that blessed me with His vision, and that brought me here. I have served Him in this march for almost ten Solar years, and I have told this tale a total of six times, including today. My Sisters…’

Lucia paused, and carefully removed the steel ring that she bore upon her finger, holding it up to the light.

‘As our blessed saint learned that pain comes in many guises, not just physical, but the pain of empathy, the pain of helplessness, the pain of grief, the pain of watching a loved one die… so we must embrace that pain. Physical pain is both the easiest and the hardest to bear. Like rage, it will anneal you and lift you to His grace. But shared pain, pain of the heart? Ah, now that is much harder.’

She held the ring out to Avra, who took it and turned it over. It bore more prayers, inscribed about its inside, and a tiny needle-sharp point that flicked in and out, depending upon how the thing was turned.

‘Many of my Order bear these,’ she said, ‘as reminders that He will place great demands upon us, but also as reminders that we will stand fast in the face of those demands. Pain is focus, my Sister. It purifies us, and brings us to His grace.’

As she finished, the last notes of the Sisters’ hymn died away, their echoes dancing out through the tiny building. Somewhere outside, engines barked and roared.

Dominica said, ‘You have a query?’

‘I…’

Briefly, Avra wondered how Dominica knew, but the bonds between the Sisters had been shown to be strong, and Dominica’s perception was indeed powerful. Greatly daring, Avra gave the coffin a glance, looking at the glow of its light.

‘Your visions, my Sisters. They have brought you here? All of you?’ She found herself struggling with understanding that the bones in that coffin were not just an artefact; they were the very saint herself, the woman, the Sister that had walked these tales. That had founded her very Order and had carried her wars to the stars.

Dominica said, ‘When one of our march is called to His side, another always takes her place. And yes, His visions bring us, bind us, and unite us.’ There was something in her tone, some faint flex of tension, and Avra remembered the knowledge that Dominica was said to bear. That was one question, however, that she was not going to ask.

Instead, she said, ‘I saw Sisters, kneeling upon a flagstone floor. They were–’

She couldn’t finish. She knew what she had seen, but the enormity of it was almost too much.

‘You must embrace the understanding.’ The voice was Silvana’s, that faint rasp of a woman unused to speaking. ‘You have heard tales of rage, and of pain, and of how they are His blessing.’

Avra saw her catch Dominica’s eye and the oldest Sister give a faint nod – permission.

‘Sometimes,’ Silvana said, ‘new Sisters can be overwhelmed with the sheer size of this task. Not the wars that we spearhead, but the honour that we carry.’ Her blue eyes were sharp. ‘And you must stand to that honour, Sister, bear it without doubt, without faltering.’

Avra nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘So you do, or you would not be here.’ Silvana’s lips twitched.

‘Tell your tale, Sister,’ Dominica said. ‘The light rises, and muster draws ever closer.’

The Tale of Silvana

Kneeling to Lucia’s right, Silvana’s armour gleamed with the reflected light of the Simulacrum of the Argent Shroud, now folded in her lap. Her face seemed serene, yet it carried strong, hard angles, lines like absolute fearlessness.

‘First, Sister, I will speak my welcome.’ Her voice was soft, but it had a constant, odd scratch, almost as if something in her throat were rusting. ‘I am Silvana, of the Argent Shroud. I was the first martyr, offering my life to ensure Dominica’s survival, and it is my sacred task to take action in His name, pushing ever for the heart of the encroaching darkness. Too many lives are lost through chatter, through procrastination, through the inability to make a decision. You will observe that I do not like wastage, of either words or time. While it will be Mina’s task to ensure your basic training, it is mine to make the larger military assessments. It is not our task to fight, but fight we will, if He decrees it necessary.’

‘I understand,’ Avra said.

‘Perhaps you should voice your question, Sister,’ Dominica said.

‘My question.’ Silvana appeared to think for a moment, though Avra would have guessed that the questions, like the ceremony, had been performed many times.

Outside, a sergeant bellowed for quiet; from somewhere, a raucous voice told him what he could do with his quiet, and Avra’s lips twitched. She stopped herself smiling, schooling her expression to a proper reverence.

‘My Sisters,’ Silvana said, ‘have spoken about rage, and pain. So my question to you is this – tell me of your courage, Sister. Tell me of your initiative.’

Once again, Avra cast her mind back to the schola, to her tutor and her data-slate, to the legends that she and her fellow novices had learned. Every Sister – be she Militant, Hospitaller, Dialogus or Famulous – was taught His lore, lessons of honour, discipline and courage. It was only when you were submerged in the font’s holy waters, and then donned the sacred garments of your Order, that the greater legends were revealed.

Avra said, ‘We faced the necrons upon Psamitek. The layers of their tombs stretched down to the heart of the planet’s carven stone. They came upon us from a hundred positions and we could not hold against them. But, with my Sisters, I struck at their very heart, at the deathplace of their overlord. And thus, they faltered.’

‘A good example,’ Silvana answered. Her voice still burred, but there was a kindness to it, something different to Mina’s clipped, practical tones, and yet different again to Lucia’s gentle severity. A sense of kinship rose in Avra’s heart and she closed her eyes, offering a prayer of thanks for the courage of these Sisters that seemed so powerful and yet so human.

‘In my middle to later years,’ Silvana said, ‘I was an abbess at the Schola Progenium, honoured by Him to assist in the education of our younger Sisters Militant.’ In the soft light from the Shroud, the lines on her face were shadowed and she looked almost girlish, but her stance and shoulders bore the weight of both wisdom and age. ‘I used to say to my novices – we are Sisters both of, and in, Battle. We must learn structure, and manoeuvre, and warfare. We must learn restraint, and self-control. With prayer and faith, we must learn to use our anger, and our pain, to further His glory.’

The odd catch in her voice had faded as she spoke, and her tones became almost rhythmic, as if she recited some great poem or saga, some lore of times ancient.

‘Yet there are times when a Sister finds herself bereft of such structure, or when she must rely on the keen edge of her daring. And this is the story that is mine to tell. A story of the Wars of Faith, of course, but a story of our saint’s great and audacious courage.’

‘We all have courage, my Sister.’ There was the faintest catch to Mina’s voice, a sound like an old disagreement, but Silvana only smiled at her. When Mina said nothing further, the older Sister continued.

‘We have all seen battle against orks, have we not?’ She raised a silver-grey eyebrow at Avra, who shook her head, though she remembered her classes well enough. ‘They are everywhere,’ Silvana continued, ‘like some fanged and fecund plague. As fast as we purge them from one place, they invade from another, all noise and commotion. Their engines are loud, their voices coarse, their relentlessness – frankly – exhausting.’ Again, that flicker of a smile. ‘And, my Sisters, discipline is as alien to them as it is doctrine to us.’

Her smile moved back to Mina, less like an apology and more like an act of inclusion – a reminder that their shared Sisterhood was far stronger than any old flaring of discord. Avra was finding that she liked this quiet older Sister, with her voice still flowing like a song.

‘And so,’ Silvana said, ‘my tale takes us to the great invasion of Tirzah Kai, and to orks without number. Stamping and shouting, mocking and murdering, flinging filth and fire. And slaying and eating the men, women and children of the planet’s towns and villages – in truth, no words can do complete justice to the horrors of a greenskin invasion. Kai was a small world, little able to defend itself. It bore only the crudest of weapons and armour. Its people worshipped an icon of His glory so ancient that it no longer even carried His face.’

She turned her own up to His likeness, her expression almost penitent. Her lips moved in a silent prayer, perhaps for forgiveness, and she went on. ‘Yet He had blessed the world of Kai with a dark and buried wealth – with deposits of promethium deep within its core. And so, in His name, came the Adeptus Mechanicus, to build mines and to teach industry, and with them came the ever-proud soldiers of the Imperium, mustered to hold back the xenos tide.

‘And at their core, even as we are today, stood Katherine herself, and her Sisters of the Fiery Heart.’

Silvana’s blue gaze stopped on Avra, and the younger woman found herself blushing, though she was not sure why. Perhaps it was just the weight of the drawn parallel, and the responsibility that she now bore. It seemed that all of her new Sisters were insistent upon this point, each in her own way.

She accepted it, admitted her humility, set her shoulders to carry it.

And Silvana began her story.

Katherine and her Sisters were upon the world of Kai, stationed with company command, and at the very heart of the Imperium’s counter-assault. Over them, warships streaked the skies with fire, their debris tumbling like meteors, amid rains of molten metal. Much of the planet’s surface was a great ash-plain, pocked with craters. Clouds of grey dust billowed constantly skywards, filling the overheated air. Amid this endless, churning powder rose dark, rocky islands upon which dwelt Kai’s people, defending themselves from not only orks, but also from the local predators: the vicious, many-legged carnivores that stalked relentlessly about them.

The xenos invasion was monstrous, a clash of human and greenskin in a vicious and terrible confrontation.

At the heart of the battle, Katherine and her Sisters defended Camp Righteous. Their armour was sealed against the clouds of ash, they bore flamer and bolter and hymnal, and they inspired the Militarum to greater and greater efforts. The rage of the orks came at the fortified camp many times, but the greenskins were erratic and unruly and their attacks fell apart, even as the Sisters fought them back. With Katherine’s shield as their banner, the defenders held the camp against invasion.

But one does not presume to interpret the will of the Emperor, and there are times when He calls upon us in ways we cannot anticipate.

Silvana paused, again looking up at His likeness and sketching the sign of the fleur-de-lys upon the front of her armour. Outside, the ever-watchful Sentinels were moving again, and the faint whine of their servos crept through the chapel, reminding all six Sisters that their time was short.

Picking up the pace of her recitation, Silvana kept speaking.

The onslaught of the greenskins was unceasing, their numbers infinite. They soon surrounded Camp Righteous, spreading out to threaten camps Vengeance and Retribution, forcing their way even to the mineheads. And they were not only on foot. Their metal contraptions rattled and clanked, belching forth smoke and flames. There were bikes and trikes and buggies, all rasping with eager rage. There were larger contraptions that carried gleefully chanting orks into battle. There were other vehicles, larger still, that carried great siege weapons – unreliable yet devastating. And their constant roar ran around and around, the noise as unrelenting as the shouting of the orks themselves.

The soldiers were exhausted, and they began to make mistakes.

Listening, Avra found herself caught by the story. One of her squadmates had told her of orks, though not in planetwide numbers; the Sister had been aboard an old hulk, searching for an injured member of another Order… This was the first of the tales with which she could really identify, and it called to her heart with a thrum like Silvana’s voice.

Told her that she understood this.

Could do this. In His name.

Faced by the soldiers’ exhaustion, Katherine made a choice. A cadre of Sisters with her, she sought the Militarum commander and told him her intention.

‘We must end this,’ she said. ‘I will take a small force and we will locate the warboss. When we have slain the creature, you will coordinate all three camps for a counter-attack, and the rest of this assault will falter.’

The commander was wise – he made no argument. He commanded his men and women to commence a full bombardment, every camp raining death upon its besiegers. With the orks thus distracted, Katherine and her Sisters departed in silence and in stealth. Their armour black against the planet’s ash-filled night, they moved as silently as Sisters can, taking a careful route through the greenskin horde…

‘Do you have something to say, my Sister?’

As Silvana had told her tale, Mina’s expression had become steadily grimmer, darkening to a thundercloud. Dominica watched them both, saying nothing, but Avra was beginning to understand the odd, old flex of tension between these two Sisters. The Adepta Sororitas did not refuse to face the enemy – such was cowardice, unthinkable – and to ‘sneak’ through the greenskins’ camp was tantamount to blasphemy. It refused their honour and calling, their role in His wars. It sent a shock through her blood, though she said nothing.

The others, it seemed, also understood. Lucia commented softly, ‘Be at ease, my Sisters. We have all seen battlefields, and we all drive for victory. Sometimes He calls for extreme measures.’

‘Such have been my schola teachings,’ Silvana continued, her smile back in place. The light from the Shroud bathed her with an odd serenity, her armour glittering like black water. With a questioning glance at Mina, who held her gaze but said nothing, she went on.

The Sisters’ silence was necessary – they moved to target only the warboss. His throne and minions were easy to spy – and to hear – through the morass. Orks lead from the front, the biggest always at their head, and they did not have to go far to discover him.

Blessed by the Emperor, the Sisters moved without detection. The orks were busy cavorting, shouting and fighting. They were loud, boastfully dismissive of the Imperium’s barrage, of the tumbled fragments of the shattered ships, of the occasional too-curious predator. They saw only their own noisome machines, banged together from oddments of metal. They burned great campfires, their fuel carried by grots. They rode their noisy vehicles in wide circles, making clouds from the dust. In places, they had captured defenders and predators both, and the Sisters’ stomachs turned. Yet He had bid that Katherine seek their warboss and she commanded her squad onwards. They dealt neither wrath nor mercy, and they eased carefully through the greenskin horde. By His blessing, they were not assailed.

Soon, they spied their target: the warboss himself, sitting upon a great and soiled throne. He was the loudest of all, and garishly clad. His shoulders and belly were vast, his fangs yellow and rotted. A line of skulls hung about his neck, and chunks of metal glinted in his ears. Even as the Sisters closed upon his location, they could hear him bellow the words of the orks’ familiar chant.

But he was also wily, a sly intelligence in his burning red eyes.

As Katherine came close, so he pointed one muscled arm and roared, ‘Humies!’

The word echoed loud through the little chapel and Silvana paused. The others had a tight feeling of anticipation, caught by the tension of the tale. Outside, the Sentinels had stopped again and the air was sharp and still.

But Silvana said, ‘I, too, have faced orks. In great numbers. I was injured in mind and in body, and hence He led me to take my place at the schola, to teach a new generation of Sisters. Yet the injuries inflicted upon me would not leave me in peace, and while my body healed, my mind did not. And He came to me with the vision we have all seen, of the chapel and of our greatest Sisters kneeling within, and so I came here, back to the battle, to confront my horrors and to heal that mental scar.’ She touched the Shroud like it was a talisman. ‘Sister Avra, our new Katherine, be not shamed by our disagreements. As we fight together, each defending the Sisters to her sides, so do our skills and disciplines overlap and balance each other. Sister Mina is a proud warrior, she faces the foe head-on. It is my task to think in… broader terms. Sister Arabella will tell you more of our harmonies, but I say this – we overlap, each skill in its turn. And there are no odds that we cannot face, in His name. No force that can withstand us, in His grace. No enemy that we cannot defeat, in His blessing. We stand in the light of sacred Terra, and we bear the saint herself, her shield to defend us, her very sarcophagus to lead us – and each and every army with whom we stand – to victory. As you listen to these tales, remember that she who fought the Wars of Faith – she is here. With us. It is her glow that touches our armour. Her very strength that we bear.

‘In His name.’

‘In His name.’ The Sisters repeated the blessing, the whisper shivering round the chapel like a faint breath of wind.

Mina was nodding, her expression now serious, approving. Dominica’s lean, dark face had softened to a smile, and Arabella almost shone, her eyes as bright as electro-candles.

Lucia said, ‘I hear you, my Sister. Injuries of the mind can be the worst of all to bear, but still, we fight on.’

‘We fight on,’ Silvana repeated, agreeing. ‘No matter what the odds, no matter how deep the darkness, we fight on.’

She smiled, and continued.

And so, Katherine confronted her target. There, alone in the centre of that mighty greenskin horde, so our saint and her Sisters raised their weapons. They closed ranks, shoulder to shoulder. While they were vastly outnumbered, He was with them; He had called them to this very duty, and their objective was not to fight the army in its entirety, but to execute its boss. And to perish in so doing, if that be His will.

Seeing them, the boss was on his feet and stamping down from his throne. He waved his minions back, leering in horrific and toothsome glee. He picked up his huge axe in one massive, warted hand. He would slay these interlopers himself. A show of strength.

The Sisters confronted him, weapons raised. As they did so, the greenskins about them gathered into a ring, fangs bared and weapons bristling. Word of the Sisters’ presence was flowing out through the ork camp like some susurrus of scorn, and more and more of the creatures were abandoning their posts and incoming, jostling and shoving to be able to see.

They fought amongst themselves, snarling and barging, but the warboss bellowed and they stopped, their fangs all bared. He came forth, opened his jaws as if to speak.

Katherine did not wish to hear his words. She barked the order, and the Sisters raised their bolters and opened fire.

But the boss was quick, fast indeed for a beast of such size. Dismissive of the Sisters’ weapons, he moved sideways, then lunged forth, slashing the axe at Katherine’s shoulder, and strong enough to slice her through to the hip.

But the axe hit the shield with a great and mighty clang, and the greenskin crowd set to whooping and jeering. The sounds of engines and clattering metal had stopped, and more and more of the creatures were approaching.

With a greenskin’s poor discipline, they had moved away from the camps, coming to see the fight for themselves. The commander’s bombardment had ceased, and that, of course, had been a part of Katherine’s plan. Over the vox, she said, ‘We must buy the Militarum time, allow them to fully muster. Hold your fire, and we will play this warboss’ game.’

The ring of greenskins was slavering and baying, but the boss had ordered them back. And Katherine’s Sisters, too, ceased their assault, forming to a compass defence and watching in every direction.

Katherine herself challenged the warboss. And he grinned, his fangs still covered in shreds of flesh and gore.

He moved like some huge predator, his ears jangling with steel tokens. Around him, campfires glittered like gems, and fragments of burning metal still streaked down through the sky, like meteors of destruction. Katherine faced the huge beast without fear. Fastening her bolter, she drew her sword and, using her shield to defend herself, she cut at his shoulders and face. But the beast moved back, his face a foul and mocking leer.

The Sisters began to sing and the orks became louder, drowning out the hymnal with their rough, ragged chant. But the Sisters did not stop, their vox-casters chiming loud from their armour, and the orks faltered at their words, as if His very voice sang with them, bass and deep beneath their sacred harmonies.

Angered at his troops’ weakness, the warboss slashed and slashed again. Katherine blocked with her blade and her shield. The creature was strong, but her sacred armour and strength were enough to withstand his brutality. She sought gaps in his defence, struck through them at the thing’s muscle and hide. Yet the ork was armoured with heavy plates of rusted steel, and it did not look like he would slow.

Back and forth they fought, sword striking axe, axe striking shield. The beast used the claws upon his free hand to slash at her face and throat; he moved the axe to both hands and spun it like a staff to strike at her with the butt. But every time, her shield was too swift and she blocked the incoming attack, her feet skidding in the ash at the power of the ork’s blows.

The fight continued, and the singing grew louder. The orks began to fidget, to glance at one another and snort with laughter. Blow and counter-blow struck and clashed. Katherine’s armour took strikes from the axe; they were enough to almost knock her from her feet, but she stayed upright and fought on. She struck at her opponent’s face, her blade taking one of the warboss’ flaming red eyes.

At this, the boss stopped, blood seeping down his face and over his fangs. His own forces were starting to mock him, shuffling and grinning and nudging. He was losing status, and he knew it. Stepping back, he turned his head, ogling Katherine from his one good eye. He continued to leer, fangs bared; he ran his tongue over his own blood.

In the vox, Katherine said, ‘We are out of time. Commander, are your troops set?’

The commander’s voice responded, ‘Yes, ma’am. Upon your command.’

Once more, she drew her bolter.

At the motion, the warboss roared, ‘Boyz! We gets ’em!’

Released to combat, the mass of slobbering greenskins threw themselves forwards. Few had firearms, fewer still the space to shoot, but that did not stop them. They loosed their rounds, injuring themselves and each other, stamping and trampling in their eagerness to get at the Sisters. They pulled each other down to the flattened-hard ash.

The boss himself advanced, still bellowing, kicking the smaller orks out of his way. Katherine barked her orders over the vox, one to the commander, one to her Sisters, but the Sisters’ drill was good, their unity strong. They needed no commands to enact His will.

And they opened fire.

The boss roared as the first wave of xenos went down in a hail of rounds and flame, in explosions of flesh and blood and gore. The wave behind them staggered and slipped, falling over their own dead and dying. Uncaring, driven by savagery, they stomped their fellows down into the ash and came onwards, their eyes and weapons glittering. The hard pulse of their chant had grown louder, now.

Snarling, shrugging off the bolter fire, the warboss raised the axe over his head and brought it down, two-handed. It was a mighty blow, and it hit Katherine’s shield with a clang that made her ears ring.

But the Sisters fought on. There were only four of them, Fiery Hearts all, and the whoosh and roar of one Sister’s flamer detonated the ammo of the closest ork. The explosion was blinding, deafening. It bathed the boss in fire and blasted the smaller creatures back.

It was not enough.

The orks broke over the Sisters like an angry green tide, its foam-spray grey as ash. Yet the four of them stood like the very rock of Camp Righteous itself. Firing until their magazines ran down, they fought with fists and feet, and they stayed upright amid the rush. Katherine saw this from the corner of her eye; she was still focused on the boss, fulfilling His command and her own mission. She would behead this xenos army before she perished.

A mob of gretchin, each one no higher than her hip, were coming for her – more afraid of the boss than they were of the Sister. With a shout of prayer, she let off a full suppression with her bolter, blasting them backwards. Battering one out of the way with a slam of her shield, another with a well-aimed foot, she broke through their rank with ease.

Learning their folly, they fled, squeaking, and she faced the warboss once more.

In one part of her warrior’s mind, she was still aware of her Sisters behind her, of the heave and struggle of the impossible odds they faced. She was also aware of the commander, barking vox-orders and deploying his troops. There was the rumble of tank tracks, the boom and thump of artillery. Fire streaked the sky.

At the back of the greenskin horde, some creatures were bawling warnings. Engines were coughing back to life, rasping into motion as the besiegers realised their mistake.

The boss snarled, smart enough to understand that he’d been tricked.

Katherine shot him, her full rate of fire, but he seemed indomitable, the rounds hitting the plates of his chest with myriad detonations. He juddered, but walked through her attack as if propelled by some demented, heretic belief. A round in his shoulder blasted flesh and bone; still, he did not stop. A round hit his upper arm, shredding the muscle; he moved his axe back to a one-handed grip. His blood still slid down his face from the missing eye, but he did not care. The vast ork kept coming.

And then, her bolter clanked empty.

Behind her, her Sisters were singing, tight notes of pure fury. They could not win this, but they would offer their lives in His service.

A cold hand in her heart told her: this boss was too powerful. She may fail this mission. And such was not permitted. In His name.

Over the vox, she said, ‘Sisters, re-form to attack pattern zero-one. We will alpha strike the warboss. Weapons ready, and on my mark–’

‘Which begs the question,’ Mina said, cutting hard across Silvana’s tale, ‘why they did not do this in the first instance. If their target was to slay the boss, why did they not simply open fire? You are not telling me that one duels a xenos with honour?’ The flare of disagreement was back in her tone.

‘I said nothing of honour, my Sister.’ Silvana’s response carried its burr like an edge of annoyance. ‘They bought the commander time to muster, and to hit the ork horde in the back.’

‘Such is not the duty of a Sister of Battle–’

‘Sisters, please.’ Arabella tried to quell the disagreement, but Dominica caught the younger Sister’s gaze and stopped her with a pointed look.

Avra looked from face to face around the group. She could sense that this was an old issue, resurfaced once more to accompany the familiar tale.

‘We know the answer,’ Dominica said. ‘We have had this discussion many times.’ There was authority in her tone, telling the Sisters to behave themselves. ‘With the passage of vast time, so battle-stories are retold, and knowledge is distilled. Fact becomes tale, tale becomes legend, legend becomes myth. Our Sisters Dialogus are guardians of His sacred lore, but we’ – the word was pointed – ‘we are warriors. And it is not our place to question the sagas of our saint, whatever they may be. It is our place to learn from them. You, my Sister,’ she said to Mina, ‘you are a warrior without peer, a soldier foremost, and your thoughts are forthright, honest and true. But you’ – she directed this to Silvana – ‘you are also a tutor. And you bring us a tale of great boldness, of an action beyond a Sister’s usual discipline, and this, also, has its place.’ Her tone was a warning. ‘Be this fact, or legend, or somewhere in between, it exists to illuminate an aspect of ourselves. And, my Sister,’ she said to Mina, ‘we do not only think in straight lines.’

Mina inhaled, stung. The rest of the group had quietened, watching Dominica. The older Sister turned back to Arabella.

‘When Sister Silvana’s tale is done and her gift given, you will offer your story, to remind all why we stand together. And why, together, we are stronger than the total of our single parts.’ Her dark eyes took in Avra. ‘I will tell my tale after Arabella, and then, my new Sister, you will tell us a tale of your own.’ Her lean face had turned watchful, almost assessing. ‘Understanding, like the stories, comes in many layers.’

The others had subsided, demurring to her leadership.

‘Silvana?’ she prompted.

Bathed by the light of her Shroud and by the reflection that came from her armour, Silvana once again picked up the thread of her tale.

‘We will alpha strike the warboss,’ Katherine said. ‘Weapons ready, and on my mark… Mark!’

The Sisters moved with perfect fluidity. Shifting from their compass defence, they re-formed to a single line, and opened fire at the huge bulk of the bloodied boss. Katherine was already moving, sideways and out of range. Taking the moment to reload her bolter, she checked the enemy to both sides.

The orks had been startled by the Sisters’ sudden movement, and more and more of them were moving away, back to the rocky rise of the camp, and to the rumble of the incoming ranks.

But not enough… not enough.

Even as the four Sisters of the Fiery Heart assaulted the boss with faith and fury, even as the boss bellowed in pain as his flesh burned, as his face and skull were battered by the full rate of fire from the heavy bolter, so they were buried completely by the orks’ assault. In their armour, they were strong, they could withstand the individual blows and attacks, but the weight of the entire force was too much. As the boss staggered to his knees, the line of Sisters was gone. But still, they sang. The vox was alive with their voices, refusing to submit.

His armour red-hot, his flesh cooking as it fused to the metal, the front of his face all but destroyed, the warboss could still snarl. And, with impossible might, he came back to his feet. His ruined mouth made one bellow, one stinking roar that cut through the boiling mêlée.

‘WAAAAAAAAGH!’

Katherine did not comprehend, but his forces did. Still commanded by the boss’ power and size, they spared a moment to gawk in rebellious incredulity; then, grumbling, they turned to the incoming Militarum.

Two of the Sisters rose, their armour battered and damaged. Two did not. About her, many orks also did not regain their feet – though several looked like they had been slain by their comrades.

Katherine pointed her bolter at the faceless, eyeless monster. It could not see her, but it bared its remaining fangs.

‘You face His wrath,’ Katherine said, her voice a paean. ‘His shield and His daughters! We do not falter, we do not fall, we do not fail! And we do not fear! Now, in His name, you will perish!’

But she did not pull the trigger – there was no need. One of her Sisters cried out over the vox, her voice like a tocsin. And there, streaking down through the sky, came the searing line of His wrath. It plummeted, swift and burning, like a falling star: a streak of molten metal, hissing as it came.

And it was His word and His law.

It hit the ground behind the boss, throwing him forwards onto what was left of his face. Katherine held her shield to defend herself; she was knocked from her feet, but unhurt. Her Sisters, too, had tumbled from the impact, but they scrambled back up, weapons bristling.

The air was full of flame, and ash, and the sudden hot winds of convection. The meteor was an angled corner, though the heat of its re-entry had blurred its metal edges to a molten softness. And it glowed, its glare like an angry eye.

The warboss, fallen forwards like a broken statue, did not move again.

The orks were scrambling around, now, shouting amongst themselves, the grots and gretchin shrieking. Holding her shield high, her voice loud through her vox-caster, she continued to shout, ‘Such is the fate of those who defy the Emperor! Such is His strength that we carry, His wrath that we will rain upon your heads. You cannot face us, xenos scum!’

Behind the horde, the tanks opened fire.

The crowd of orks was thinning, now, running in every direction. A few at the front, the bigger creatures, were still snarling and surging forward, but their support was fading fast. They eyed the fallen boss, and then the Sisters.

And the Sisters answered with a full suppression from the heavy bolter, with the roar and flash of the flamer, with the smaller bolters barking rounds into the clouds of overheated ash.

The commander’s voice bellowed orders to advance.

Jeering empty threats, the last of the orks fled.

At the end of her tale, Silvana looked around at her Sisters. ‘We have heard a tale of rage, tightly controlled, a tale of pain, and what it teaches. Mine is a tale of daring, Sisters, of a bold plan and a bolder execution, and of His blessing that comes with both. Do you understand?’

‘I’m beginning to understand,’ Avra said, ‘that you…’ She paused, not sure how boldly she could speak, but went on with her chin lifted. ‘That you… test each other.’ It wasn’t quite what she meant and she searched for the right words. ‘That you… that you don’t all sing the same tune, or the same notes, but that the hymn you make together is–’

‘Harmony,’ Arabella told her, smiling.

‘Harmony,’ Dominica repeated, seeming pleased with her realisation. ‘An individual voice can sing His praise. But it takes more than one to raise the full might of a chorus.’

‘I understand,’ Avra said, again. Dominica gestured at Arabella, who smiled, her expression like the sun coming up.

‘I’m glad,’ Arabella told her. The youngest of the Sisters reached out her hands, took Avra’s in her own. ‘I’m glad you are here, my new Sister, and I’m glad to make you welcome. And I’m also quite glad to no longer be the youngest of our march.’ A flicker of mischief, and Dominica raised a warning eyebrow. Arabella stiffened, but Avra had the impression that her light humour danced ever below the surface, her own manifestation of faith.

Her own part of the chorus.

‘And so,’ she said, ‘it falls to me to tell you why we are together, united in our march across the galaxy. And why we are Sisters, both of and in Battle.’ She shot Silvana a smile.

‘It grows late,’ Dominica said. ‘Speak on.’

The Tale of Arabella

Kneeling to Silvana’s right, Arabella cocked her head sideways and gave that wonderful, shining smile.

‘Welcome, Sister,’ she said, her voice light and easy. ‘I am Sister Arabella of the Sacred Rose. I am negotiator and liberator. It is my task to carry His light, to care for the people and to free humanity from the faithless. Where the devotion of worlds fades, I bring them hope.’ Her tone was bright, almost lilting. ‘I also have the task to train you in our empathy, and in how we work in both concord and coherence.’ She paused, and there was a twinkle of mischief to her green eyes. ‘But not tonight. Once we have concluded the Service of Tales, we must pray for the muster.’ A hint of amusement. ‘And, while my Sisters may not have confessed it, even we must rest.’

Shocked by her almost playful tone, Avra glanced at Dominica, at the faintly disproving rigidity in the older Sister’s shoulders.

‘Your question, Sister,’ she said, almost stern.

‘My question,’ Arabella said, ‘is very simple. I seek to understand your soul. Do you carry hope?’

‘I walked upon Sudesh,’ Avra answered. She was more confident this time, understanding, now, what was expected. ‘And the people had surrendered to despair. Disease was rampant amongst them, and they had lost that which they loved the most – wives and husbands, children and parents. My Sisters Hospitaller were there to succour their ailing flesh, but I carried His light to their hospices, to their valetudinariums, and to those that died on the streets. And thus, He blessed me to bring them hope.’

Lucia nodded. ‘A good tale,’ she said softly.

‘I thought so,’ Arabella responded with a sound that might even have been a chuckle. Then she composed herself, and recited more dutifully, ‘Join us. In His grace and wisdom, and be welcome. We guard your sides and your back, and we stand together in His name, bringing His faith to all.’

She leaned across the circle to grip Avra’s padded shoulder briefly in her hand, then said, ‘I’m sure you have studied your histories suitably diligently.’ She smiled. ‘But the Orders of the Bloody and the Sacred Rose were founded by Deacis VI, some two hundred Solar years after the death of Sebastian Thor. And in Deacis’ blessed wisdom, he appointed one to each Convent, the Bloody Rose to the Convent Sanctorum on Ophelia VII, and the Sacred Rose to the Covent Prioris on Holy Terra. My Sister Dominica will tell more of the heartworlds and Segmentum Solar, such is not my task. Instead, I will range widest of all, to bring you a story of both darkness and light.’

Her armour, like that of the others, was black, and scattered about it were the white, pearlescent petals of her Sacred Rose. They suited her, gave her a shine like Silvana’s. But where Silvana’s was age and dignity – gravitas, Avra thought – Arabella’s had a shimmer of youth and idealism that was a wondrous rarity. It pulled like a beacon, like the glow of the sarcophagus itself.

‘At the edges of the galaxy,’ Arabella said, ‘scattered across the Eastern Fringe, there are worlds without number, a million planets forgotten, all untouched by His light. The Great Crusade brought His blessing to many, welcoming them back to the Imperium of Man. But the void is endless, and even He, perhaps, cannot see it all.’

‘Enough embellishment, child,’ Dominica said, a sharp flex of warning in her tone. ‘Tell your tale.’

‘My apologies, Sister.’ Arabella lowered her eyes, though her shimmer did not fade.

Engines rasped again from the outside; again, the floodlights passed over the chapel, making angles of light flee suddenly across the floor.

‘My tale will reach to the void’s very edges,’ Arabella said, ‘to the world of Vassis Morugo, lurking upon the outermost limit of our Sisters’ lore and ken. It is a dark world, a world cut off from its star, a world of chem-hell and steam, of corrosion and pollution. Exploited by cruel masters, its menials were bent beneath the demands of savage leadership, as cut off from Him as they were from their cloud-shrouded sun.

‘And the enemy,’ she said, a vivid thrum to her tone, ‘likes nothing more than a vacuum of faith.’

Arabella, it seemed, had a flair for the dramatic. This time, however, Dominica let it pass. The younger Sister picked up one of her petals, turning it to catch the light. Outside, engines growled softly.

‘Where He is forgotten,’ Arabella continued, ‘so the ancient foe crawls, creeping inwards. Where masters become greedy and cruel, so the enemy stirs to glee and wakefulness. And where there is contamination, so there come the powers that revel in it, and in its sheer inevitability.’

A shiver passed across Avra’s shoulders. She knew the powers to which Arabella referred, though she would not name them, not aloud and not in her thoughts. To do so was to call them close, and such things were both blasphemous and unwise.

The others were praying, the murmur of their voices soft and melodious, weaving one through another, as if to form a backdrop to Arabella’s tale. The younger Sister raised her voice, not to drown them out, but to complement them – the solo at the head of the choral recital.

Avra wondered if Arabella had been a singer. Performance seemed to suit her, and the others had used the word ‘harmony’ more than once.

But the Sister had begun her tale.

Always, in times past and in times present, the presence of the foe calls out across the void. And so, Katherine arrived upon Morugo with a force of the Fiery Heart at her banner and at her back. Here, she beheld the tragedy of the world, of its lost and faithless people. She looked upon their bent spines and their filthy faces, upon the despair in which they lived their lives, and she resolved to wipe clean this contaminated place. To return it to Him, and to purge the enemy in cleansing and ultimate fire.

Yet she did not.

Outside, engines rasped again. They were becoming louder now, underpinned by shouts. Dust and wind whirled petals along the floor.

‘Our Sisters Hospitaller,’ Arabella said, ‘see Him as an Emperor of Mercy – be that the mercy of ending pain and of releasing souls to His presence, or the mercy of healing, of survival to continue His work. And you have heard, my new Sister, the watchwords of the other Orders. For Mina, it is rage and the discipline to control that rage. For Lucia, pain and the wisdom within that pain. For Silvana, the daring to take us to war’s very forefront, and beyond. Yet we are all parts of one whole, petals of one rose. We balance, each to one other.’ She smiled. ‘You are beginning to understand this, I think.’

Avra nodded. Her eyes were stinging and she was not sure if it was too much soot or the intense emotion of the moment.

‘So when I say that our saint was touched by compassion, do not think of it as weakness. It is just another petal, another part of the hymn, another facet of our praise to Him.’ She looked round at the others as if she expected a challenge, but no one gainsaid her, and she continued.

Many of Morugo’s people were warped beyond redemption, touched by the enemy in mind and heart and flesh. For them, there could be no healing, only the last relief. But among them, there walked those still human, still with courage untouched by the foe, their limbs weary but strong, their thoughts despairing, but clear of rot. And these were not in ones and twos, but in tens and twenties, perhaps in hundreds or even thousands – the tale does not say. But they were enough. And our saint gave the order: the Sisters were not to purge the world entire, not unless they were left without choice.

Instead, Katherine would restore to them their hope. She would lead the fight against the enemy commander, and against his corrupt leadership.

And so, she raised her banner, and her voice, and she began to sing.

At the word, Arabella raised her own voice in song, a Litany that Avra had never heard. The Sister’s voice was a clear soprano, as pure as white ice, as holy as a glassaic window. And it carried His praise upwards to the open roof of the little chapel, upwards to the stars that glittered above, turning and turning as the tales wound on. Lifted by its wings, Avra looked up and could see the very first touch of the sunrise, the paling of the sky.

A flicker of vision came to her: the rise of Sol, yellow and perfect, over Holy Terra. Overwhelmed, she found the water in her eyes flowing free, and lifted her hand to wipe it away.

Next to her, Lucia smiled, stretching out to grip her shoulder. ‘There is no dishonour in weeping, my new Sister, not in the proper time and place. And here, you may bare your heart without fear, and without shame.’

Avra nodded, blinking, and Arabella reached the end of her hymn, letting the last note fade away. Outside, the engines had stopped. Everything was utterly silent – almost as if her voice had stilled the entire camp.

Her tone soft, the Sister picked up her tale once more.

At the touch of Katherine’s song, so the people crept forwards. Cautious, fearful, their filthy faces streaked with tears as if the water washed their very sins away. They fell to their knees before her, and they begged her to lead them, to show them to the light of which she sung. She told them to stand, for she was not Him; she told them to take up what weapons they had, and to follow.

And so did her March of Faith begin.

She walked strong, her devotion borne before her like His very blessing, her banner held high. Light shone from her, banishing the darkness, the malice, the seething pollution of this damned world. Where she walked, the rusting metal was made anew, and her boots rang upon clean steel. Where she sang, so the black, swirling clouds were banished, shrinking from her as if in fear of her approach.

And the people heard! They came forth, slowly, warily, more and more of them. Given her courage, they joined her song, lifting their own voices to His praise, and rediscovering Him as they did so. And His blessed presence grew among them like the Sacred Rose itself, its shine growing wider and wider. And the wider it reached, so the more people heard it, and came forth.

Soon, a throng of new faithful followed her, and all of them were singing.

Arabella paused, the petal still in her fingers. All of the Sisters watched it as if mesmerised, though they had doubtless heard this tale before.

She lifted the petal to the saint’s holy light, the very same light that she had carried, so long ago. Letting them all see it, Arabella suddenly closed her fingers with a hard, sharp gesture, crushing it utterly to a glitter of drifting dust. Her voice dropped to a whisper, making them all lean forwards.

But there were others, who also bore witness to that light, and who were not touched by Him. They were aware of His presence – for how could they not be? – but it brought them no joy. Instead, it brought them terror, and anger, and rage. Those among the population who were touched by the foe, already warped and mangled, bursting with heresy and unbelief – they also followed the saint, skulking in the shadows as the light passed them by. And they, too, had a purpose, growing within them like a canker. They had a master, bold and evilly beneficent, generous with his corrupt gifts. And he too issued a call.

A summons.

‘The light is a lie,’ said the enemy. ‘A falsehood. It will strip from you the gifts that I have given, slay you without mercy. It will burn and harm you, sear bright into your eyes, cut harsh into your flesh that I have blessed. I – I! – am the god of this world, the only god you need. You who bear my gifts, come unto me!’

‘Beware, my Sister,’ Dominica said softly, her voice a growl. ‘You tread a dangerous path with your theatre. Call not the foe, lest the foe comes.’

Arabella paused, nodding soberly, then continued.

Katherine’s Sisters, the Order of the Fiery Heart, were deployed to seek the enemy’s followers where they could, ranging out across the planet’s high and creaking walkways, catching and destroying the misshapen and the tainted. But still, these twisted beings mustered in their hundreds, scuttling and whispering, seething and plotting. They crawled along the pipes; they climbed up the manufactorum walls and ran along their roofs. They lurked within the great and silent machines.

And they did not stop.

Conscious of the threat, but focused upon her mission, Katherine continued forwards, her song still raised aloft. About her, the metalwork echoed to her words, singing in the high wind as if it sang along with her, welcomed her and the deliverance she promised, in His name. Guided by her faith, her heart lifted by her faithful, the saint walked on. And His wisdom guided her, with every note she sang.

She knew where the enemy waited.

And, as the knowledge came to her in His touch, so did her song sour to a minor key, eerie and mocking. And her hymn became a dirge.

Arabella sang again, a snatch of weird music, distorted and wrong. A shudder went out through the Sisters.

‘Desist.’ This time, Dominica was really angry. ‘Your drama gets the better of you, my Sister – I have warned you about this already. One does not voice such things.’

‘I do not voice…’ Arabella paused, a flush to her face. ‘It is a minor key, no more. Nothing–’

‘Get on with your tale,’ Dominica barked. ‘As we have observed, we are running out of time.’

‘Yes, my Sister.’ Looking genuinely chastised, Arabella began to speak more swiftly.

And so did Katherine find herself climbing a great spiral of rusting metal steps. They rang at her boot-strikes, notes clashing and loud, but she ascended them without fear, her Sisters at her side, her throng of faithful behind. She bore her shield high and shining, and she crested Morugo’s very highest point, a latticed steel platform bearing a host of vox-antennae.

Here, there was wind, though thick and faint. The clouds had thinned and she could see the smallest sliver of the planet’s reddening sun. The platform seemed unstable – rust ate at the handrails, chewed its way across the floor. It curled round the antennae like some blotched and living serpent. The height was not safe, but the saint was unworried. He had guided her, and she was in His hands.

She was also not alone. At the platform’s centre, surrounded by the antennae as if they were worshippers, the rust had coalesced to a huge symbol, a symbol of terror and blasphemy, a symbol we do not describe. And upon the far side of this symbol, at the edge of the opposite walkway, there stood a being, its arms upraised, the last clouds wreathing about it as if they stroked its very skin.

The Sisters had not surprised it. At their arrival, it lowered its arms and smiled at them, its expression like pure indulgence. Amid the people’s poverty, it wore rich pendants, costly robes now stained with blood and fluids. And from it, there came a wave of savage hunger, of need. It was as unconstrained as pure sensation, an assault upon their minds and souls.

It sang to them, ‘Welcome.’

The word was but a single note, vibrating from wind and steel. Yet it echoed louder, and louder, as if it was reflected by the whole of Morugo’s surface, as if it was sunk into every piece of metal that rusted here upon this world. As if the antennae themselves were some terrible, daemonic instrument. It hummed harsh in the Sisters’ ears and armour, seeking to strike at their souls. To bury them in a lushness of sound.

But Katherine and her Sisters raised the Litany in return, a chiming of vocal perfection, and the creature stopped, its mouth spread in a mocking leer.

‘You will need more than music,’ it told them, ‘daughters of conceit.’ Its voice was rich with appetite. ‘Witness my world,’ it said, ‘and what it has become. I was governor here, once, lord of a dark and gloomy backwater. But behold! Look upon what I have wrought! I have found rewards beyond imagining, and I will spread them among my people like joy. I will take away their pain, their suffering, their hunger, their loss. And instead, I will gift them this…’ He spread his arms wider. ‘This celebration!’

Katherine did not respond with words. She raised her bolter and fired, but the air shimmered visibly and the round struck it as if it were armour. The force field rippled, echoed, but stayed firm. Her Sisters raised their weapons but she held up a hand.

‘Wait,’ she said to them. ‘We must study this barrier.’

They spread out to an extended line. Behind them clustered the planet’s new faithful, those who had responded to Katherine’s clarion call.

The governor looked upon all of them, and sneered. ‘Weaklings,’ he said, amused and scornful. ‘Your petty tunes are of no relevance, not here. Your souls are yet mine to do with as I please. Witness!’

Again, he raised the hum of invasive sound. Defended by their faith and their baffles both, the Sisters did not flinch, but the people of Morugo twisted under the assault, putting their hands over their ears and buckling to their knees. Many bled from their eyes and noses. Incensed, Katherine raised her voice and her vox-caster to bury this attack, but even as she did so, she realised the cunning of the governor’s plan.

Beneath them, the trailing group of warped menials had not ascended to the planet’s heights. They waited below in gangs, their filthy faces turned upwards, watching the rotted metal above. The platform, already corroded, was quivering under the onslaught of the noise. The toxic power of the governor’s hum was pitched to make the metal vibrate.

And then, with a creak, it collapsed.

Outside, a colossal crash accompanied Arabella’s last word. All of the Sisters jumped, every one reaching for her weapon, but the noise was not repeated. Instinctively, Avra sent a query out over the vox, but the voice of the Order came back to her.

‘Be at ease, Sister. There is no need for you to break your vigil.’

Warily, she looked at the others, but they too were standing down. Their shoulders relaxed and they lowered themselves once more to their mats. She noticed, though, that their weapons were even closer than before.

Shouts were sounding outside, and the voice of the Order’s Sister Superior came clearly back through the lightening air.

‘Go on,’ Dominica said. And Arabella continued.

They fell. Saint and Sister, menial and faithful. With a creak and a screech, the platform tore away from its supports, splitting at the very feet of the foe. And it plummeted, crashing through layer after layer of the rusting metal below – through walkways and gantries, past towers and railings and steps. The Sisters tried to stay upon their feet, but the faithful that followed them were pulled from the platform’s edges, ripped from their places by the shattered ends of struts.

And the enemy laughed.

With a final smash, they hit the bottom. The platform shattered, knocking even the Sisters from their feet. Surrounded by the wounded and the broken, they were up again in a moment. Weapons in hands, they looked up. Above them, there were endless gleams of broken metal edges. Bodies hung from many, still struggling. And high above that, the governor still stood, and laughed.

Katherine gave a great cry, a rallying of courage. And those people who were still uninjured, still touched by His new strength – they raised their tools and they threw themselves from the platform’s edges, and out upon the waiting faithless.

The battle was bitter, furious, savage. The Sisters shot where they could, where the corrupted menials broke through the lines of the saved. With her shield, Katherine stormed to the forefront of the counter-attack, wading into the slavering surge of twisted bodies and throwing them down, one after another. Above them, the governor laughed on, his voice like thunder, rolling down through twisted spars. Sound wreathed him like power.

But Katherine did not care. Blazing the words of the Litany, she pressed forwards, fighting ever on, striving to gain a secure footing. Yet for every one she slew, there were ten more, for every ten, there were a hundred. The voice of the foe had called them, and while she was truly blessed, she was but one. Beside her, her Sisters were buried by twisted menials, a dozen of them, more, throwing themselves forwards with no thought for their own lives, knocking a Sister over. Furiously, the Sisters fought back, breaking hundreds of the warped figures. But still, more and more came, heeding the call of the governor.

And our saint made a choice.

Below her, a Sister had fallen. A second Sister stood over her, defending her until she could rise.

‘Hold!’ Katherine called over the vox. ‘We will regroup!’ And she gave her Order new commands.

All around them, the faithless still pressed inwards, throngs of them seemingly without number. Katherine took a moment to scan, to pick the attackers’ weakest point. They would assault that point, and break free.

‘Now!’ she cried.

In His name, they moved as one, pressing their assault against the foe.

‘And fire!’

The Order, five of them now remaining, opened fire. Warped and unwarped alike were shredded by a fusillade of bolter rounds, melted by cleansing flame. Bodies ignited, or tumbled. And the Sisters fought to find a stable stairway, and a route back up to the governor.

Arabella paused, and the voice of the Sister Superior came again from the outside. All six Sisters were tense now, very aware of the motion that surrounded their sanctum.

Arabella went on, her voice soft. ‘I am sure I do not need to explain our saint’s decision. She had been willing to save the uncorrupted, and she had done so. In freeing their minds and their souls, in giving them the light and courage to fight back, to resist the governor’s control, so she had allowed them to die with what honour they could muster. And it was enough.’

‘We understand,’ Dominica said. ‘Tell on.’

In the heights, the governor’s laughter had stopped. Angered at the failure of his plan, he called louder, called more of his people, called a planet’s population ever-thronging to his shout. But the Sisters had slain almost all that had responded swiftly, and the others would not reach him in time. At the height of his world, he stood alone.

Far below him, Katherine looked to left and right, swiftly identifying two surviving stairways and deploying her Sisters to run up this way, and that way, to surround the governor’s location. They obeyed without question, and the music of their boots rang again, chiming out through the steel heights of the planet.

And so, they returned to the topmost levels. They closed upon him like pincers, their bolters aimed across the hole he’d made. Far below them, the battles raged on. The last screams of the dying floated up through the clouded air.

Katherine emerged upon the heights, her shield and bolter in hand. She was facing the governor’s back, but he turned to confront her, and she saw that his face was florid with luxury, his jowls loose and flapping.

‘You cannot face me,’ she said. ‘I am His daughter, and I do not fail.’

Again, she raised the words of the sacred Litany. Again, her vox-caster sounded her hymn to the sky. Her Sisters, all around, sang with her, their hymnal counterpointed by the fading screams from below. The saint bore her bolter, but it was her hymn she used as a weapon, the pure sound of her faith. And the planet sang, the metal sang, the antennae sang soprano. Ripples shifted through the air, rising to the sun, making the rust withdraw from even the foe’s feet. They shivered through the sounds he wove, his unholy defences, and they at last tore them down completely, leaving him helpless.

He curled his lip at them, defiant even in his defeat.

And, with the last words of the hymnal, their power manifest in song, so did his own heights collapse, and drop him down, down, down… to his own shattered symbol, far below.

Arabella stopped. She had picked up another petal and was turning it in her hand; with the other, she reached out and picked up one of Mina’s and then lifted them both.

‘I do not know the literal truth of such a tale,’ she said. ‘For I have never seen a foe defeated by song alone. In my heart, though, I believe that it is allegory, representative of what we must be, what we must strive to be. My new Sister,’ she said to Avra, ‘we must sing together. We must understand one another so well, as family, that no orders need be given. We must work with the harmony of perfect song, with the smooth precision of machine-spirits. We are not only warriors, we are exemplars – we are flags. We are Katherine’s banner, we are her Order, her bearers, her Fiery Heart. And where we walk, so we carry her with us, not only physically, but in our every word, our every prayer, our every deployment and combat manoeuvre.’ Her face had taken on a new seriousness, and Avra could see the passion and belief that underlaid her humour, understand why she, too, had been chosen to join this march. ‘We are the Sisters of San Loer, as close as He has permitted. And where we walk, we don’t only bring faith or leadership.

‘We bring victory. In His name. And in hers.’

She held out the white petal, watched Avra take it.

‘Embrace your new name, my Sister,’ she said. ‘And let your voice rise with ours, out across the battlefields of the galaxy.’

As she finished, Avra could feel the lift in her heart, could understand why people across the Imperium – and beyond – would follow the call of the Sacred Rose, His call, to the ends of their worlds. Dominica was nodding, a stern approval in the gesture. Mina had schooled her expression to calm; Silvana had a glow that reflected Arabella’s, as if the Shroud itself approved.

Chuckling softly, Lucia said, ‘It is well that we are all so different, is it not? For in that way, each of us overlaps the limits of the others, and thus, we may understand the human heart in its entirety. And in that way, we can bring our call to all that bear witness to our march, and to the sacred casket we bear. My Sister,’ she said, addressing Dominica, ‘it falls to you to tell the final tale, a tale of worlds much closer to the heart of the galaxy itself. The battlefield wakens and muster will be upon us before much longer. Will you speak?’

‘I will speak,’ Dominica said, her voice low. She arced one graceful eyebrow at Avra. ‘For it is my task to… bring this tale of hope down to a solid and wary practicality. To eyes and ears, to careful watchfulness, of even the most faithful.’ She stopped, fixing Avra with her dark gaze, the look oddly penetrating. ‘For even His Most Holy Church can be touched by the foe.’

The Tale of Alicia Dominica

To Arabella’s right knelt Alicia Dominica, her armour black as secrets, her cloak as red as shed blood. Her face was lifted to His banner and to the light of the relic saint. In her hands, she bore the Simulacrum of the Ebon Chalice itself, its contents in shadow, and there was a powerful sense of self-assurance to the way she knelt, to the angle of her chin; a certain pride to the set of her pauldrons. She seemed very like Mina, as if she could face down the enemy entire, but her stance felt austere in a way that Mina’s had not.

‘You are welcome, my new Sister,’ she said. Her voice was calm, flat and strong. ‘I am Alicia Dominica, foremost of the Adepta Sororitas, founder of the First Order, Matriarch of the Ebon Chalice.’ The words were measured, but there was a distance to them, a weight like some merciless responsibility. ‘I am the guardian of His word, and of all that it contains. It is my sacred task to scour the foe from the galaxy’s heart, to defend the Segmentum Solar, to seek out corruption and heresy at the very core of the Imperium. To castigate even other Sisters, if such becomes necessary.’ She turned like a threat, her face lean and lined, her eyes dark. ‘And I ask to understand your faith. You must be Sororitas in word and deed, heart and soul, mind and backbone.’ The last word was delivered like a blow. ‘So I ask you – what do you fear?’

The question was unexpected, and Avra almost blinked. She cast her mind back through her two years of missions, but was reluctant to voice what felt like a confession.

Lucia shifted, her armour creaking. Oddly, Avra had the impression that she wanted to say something, but would not.

Collecting her thoughts, Avra answered. ‘As Katherine, Sister, I must have no fears. My heart must be filled with fire and I must quail at nothing. Yet I am still Avra in parts of my soul, and I… I fear to fail. To be unable to bear this…’ She swallowed. ‘This blessing that has been given to me.’

For a moment, Dominica did not move. Her expression stayed cold. Then, slowly, she nodded. ‘You are honest, Sister. And I am glad to hear it.’ Voices came through the darkness, shouts of early orders. ‘But there is no place for faintness of heart. We stand together, and we do not falter. You know this, or you would not be here.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

More shouting. It seemed oddly unreal – another life. Her other life, her past life.

‘You have heard,’ Dominica said, ‘many tales of the darkness of the Imperium. Tales of battles, tales of invasion, tales of worlds polluted. Tales where our saint has fought at the very vanguard of the God-Emperor’s wars.’ The dawn light was getting stronger now, a faint blur across the flags. ‘Mine is not such a tale. Instead, it falls to me to take our service back to the heartworlds. Not to Holy Terra itself’ – shadow flickered, fleeting, across her expression – ‘but to Segmentum Solar, and to the shrine world of Elena, a world of the Ecclesiarchy.’

The others were silent, hands resting on their knees, their heads lowered as if in prayer. There was a seriousness to Dominica, a darkness to her eyes, a shadow to the way she knelt that made the lines down her face look almost like knife cuts – harsh and unforgiving. She was of similar years to Silvana, but where Silvana’s age gave her a shine of grace and wisdom, in Dominica, they looked more like weight, like the burden of her secret, her great responsibility.

Despite her low voice, its softness almost a growl, she commanded the Sisters’ complete and undivided attention, and they did not interrupt her. Conscious of some unspoken expectation, Avra composed herself to listen.

‘Before I begin,’ Dominica said, ‘I need you to comprehend something. The others have all heard this before, yet it is essential that you understand what I am about to tell you.’

Avra looked up, meeting the older Sister’s eyes. There was something in them, something… She wanted to look away, but controlled herself.

‘You are aware that my Order is based upon Holy Terra itself. When my vision came to me, when I beheld our most sacred Sisters, kneeling upon the stone floor of that world so far away, I was… overcome. I was still young, barely from the schola, and the sheer size of the realisation was too much for me. I denied my calling, pleading that others of the Order were more worthy than I.’

Her tone thrummed with notes of both shame and warning, with a huge tumult of other, tangled emotions that Avra could sense but not hear clearly. Dominica kept speaking, her voice carefully flat, as if to keep a lid on the turmoil beneath.

‘The canoness of my Order was wroth with me, with my fear. She took me to the very gates of the Imperial Palace and she bade me–’

‘You have seen…?’ Avra, her heart in her mouth, her skin afire, could not finish the sentence. She had never been to Holy Terra, had never as much as seen the Convent Prioris upon a floating hololith. And the thought of the Palace itself, the very heart of the Imperium…

She stopped herself, making the sign of the fleur-de-lys, praying for forgiveness for her arrogance, for having the temerity to even contemplate such a thing.

‘I did not pass beyond,’ Dominica answered, her voice still tightly controlled. ‘Such would have been… too much. But I have stood without the Palace itself and heard the words of the Eternal Prayer. Despite my youth, and my fear, I was so blessed…’

She stopped, swallowed. The others said nothing, but Avra could sense their support, the harmony of their Sisterhood.

‘Thus, was I shamed from my cowardice.’ She smiled, though the expression was oddly sad. ‘I took up my role, the mantle of Dominica herself, and all of the secrets borne therein.’ Again, that fleeting touch of darkness – yet it was not the darkness of the enemy, nor the darkness of despair. It was the darkness of a flame carried so deep within her soul, a flame that forged the crude ore of a shocked young Sister into the pure, edged might of Dominica’s exemplar.

Truly, she was the ultimate Sororitas, and this march was hers to command.

‘I hear that prayer, my young Sister, always. It is in my heart, its hymn never-ending. I hear its call, and its demand, for it will never leave me. And it has given me the courage to carry the chalice of my Order, its insight, its bravery and its wisdom. And to face the most insidious foes of all…’

Feet raced past outside. The Sisters did not move.

‘Our own corrupted.’

She paused, and still the others said nothing. Avra found that she was holding her breath, that something in her mind and heart was changing under the forging hammer of Dominica’s words. It was a new realisation, some wondrous epiphany solidifying to new fact, new faith and understanding. But it was not quite ready, not yet.

Her hands in her lap like the others, she waited.

‘And so, to the world of Elena,’ Dominica said, and began her tale.

Katherine travelled to Elena. She was there unaccompanied, walking its roadways unescorted by her Sisters, by any presence or voice but His. About her towered cathedrals colossal, their stone clean and carved with prayers, their great glassaic windows rich with colour and with His image, their statues rising vast and heroic to skies of blue and white, to a yellow sun whose touch was a benediction. Paved boulevards were lined with ranks of shining lumens. Wide rivers flowed clear, carrying gifts and offerings, and everywhere there walked His faithful, from the rich robes of the High Deacon himself, all the way to the humble brown of the scribes and students. With them walked scholars, walked our Sisters Dialogus come to study at the librarium, walked pilgrims with their eyes downcast. And all heard His blessing in the words of the never-ceasing sermons, and in the tolling of the great bells of prayer.

But our saint was neither scholar nor pilgrim, and the wisdom she sought was of a different shade. For He had come to her in a vision, showing her a flowering of corrupt flame at the heart of this world’s holiness. The High Deacon had been performing ‘miracles’, conjuring flames and visions, promising to heal the sick and cure the infirm. It was said that he had unseemly cravings of the flesh, and that he practised unholy rites. And he took from his pilgrims wealth – not to offer as alms, nor to raise churches to His grace and glory, but to furnish himself with rich foods and fine wines and glittering gemstones, with lush fabrics and precious metals.

Katherine, her heart afire, was there to decry his corruption.

Yet such things are not as simple as they seem.

Dominica picked up the chalice, lifted it to the saint’s soft light as if she presided over a communion. She prayed softly, her lips moving, and the others watched, compelled. Even Arabella was silent, her expression rapt.

Called by Him, our saint carried both anger and authority. She strode down the boulevards, and the pilgrims tumbled from her path; she found the Great Cathedral of the Heart and the Soul, almost as if it burned with its corruption visible. And she threw open the double doors with a slam like a demand, stood framed within their archway with her armour haloed in light.

In the pulpit, midway through the flow of his sermon of sin, the High Deacon knew no shame. Instead, at the sight of her, he raised his arm and roared, the sound ringing through the building’s huge vault.

‘There!’ The word was like an organ-note, brassy and powerful. ‘There is the one, come to deny His miracles! There is the ancient enemy, the very foe, daring to bear its likeness here, upon Elena! To wear the face of the Sororitas and to carry it into the very heart of His Holy Church!’

At his cry, lies and blasphemy though it was, the congregation came to their feet. And there were not one or two or ten of them, there were hundreds, caught in the web of his words. The cathedral rustled echoes at their movement, whispered hatred as they turned as one, and every one of them had a face etched in loathing.

‘My Sisters.’ Dominica paused, still with that odd tension, that sense of the secrets that enveloped her. ‘We have all seen the same sacred vision. The holy convent, the terrible duel. And we understand that even Katherine herself was once deceived by lies.’ She would not utter the name, but it hung in the air just the same. Avra shuddered.

Vandire.

Petals sighed across the ground: rage and hope. Raising her gaze to the coffin, the reality of its presence struck her anew: this really was Katherine. She was not just a tale, not just a vision, she was verily the saint herself and she was actually here – Daughter of the Emperor, Sister of San Loer, Our Martyred Lady. And Avra would carry her shield, her sword, and would walk at the head of her march…

A shiver went through her, her shoulders almost rounding under the full weight of the responsibility. A prayer passed her lips, but Dominica was still telling her tale.

Katherine bore the faithless congregation no mercy. Like their leader, they had fallen and their lives were of no matter to her. She raised her bolter, and aimed it at the deacon himself.

‘Repent,’ she told him. ‘On your knees, sinner. Or I will shed your blood before His altar as a warning to all who profane His name.’

The deacon did not acquiesce. Laughing with a sound both hollow and terrible, he spread his arms to his flock. ‘Defend me,’ he called to them. ‘And you will ascend in glory.’

Without hesitation, Katherine pulled the trigger. The blast was loud, a harsh bellow of fury, but the deacon was already moving, ducking down behind the pulpit’s stone. The round struck and detonated, the noise a shock that rang from the building’s vaulted ceiling.

‘Hold, in His name!’ Katherine called her orders at the deacon and his followers both, but they paid her no heed. She walked forwards, striding up the aisle towards the nave, but the congregation flowed outwards into her path, clawing at her armour, clinging to her shield and her weapon, trying to stop her movement. Their profane flesh hissed as they touched her, but they did not stop. Angered at their betrayal, she trampled them where they stood, but there were many of them and her progress was slowed.

She was fighting her way forwards when the real assault came.

More voices from outside, the bellowing bark of a duty sergeant, the calm tones of the duty Sister Superior in return. The sky was growing lighter by the moment. Avra paused in her prayers, but Dominica was still speaking.

‘For the deacon was not only a blasphemer,’ she said, ‘preaching falsehood to his congregation. And his attack did not come at her physically.’

She turned the chalice, letting it catch the light.

‘No,’ Dominica said. ‘The attack came at her mind, at her faith, and at the courage of her fiery heart.

‘The deacon was a witch.’

The word stirred across the floor like the whorls of dust, rose like a ghost to tangle in the saint’s light.

Despite herself, Avra shivered, but Dominica had not paused in her tale.

He attacked with temptation. With the lure of great power. Not with pleasures and with false miracles, but with something far more significant. Something personal and martial and soaked in blood and rage and song and glory. Images tumbled within our saint’s thoughts: she stood at the head of a great force of warriors, a huge banner in her hand, its heavy cloth flapping against a storm-clouded sky. She bore a great blade, held aloft in fire; she issued a rallying cry that rang from one end of the Imperium to the other. And the faithful, they loved her. They flocked to her in awe and in worship. They fell at her feet and they gave their lives to her, fed her with their souls. And she blazed with the holy light of Sol itself.

Dominica lowered the chalice, and Avra could see that her hands were shaking, but whether that was with the force of the vision, or with the chest-tightening shock of the suggestion that it carried…

‘I do not need to emphasise,’ she said, ‘the sheer sacrilege of the implanted suggestion. Its implication is enough, and I…’ Her frown deepened. Placing the chalice to her right, she closed her hands before her, interlinking her fingers to hold them steady.

The call was mighty. Katherine’s thoughts were filled with it – she could be the highest child of the Emperor, the greatest vessel of His light and blessing. She could have the weight and power of one of the Adeptus Astartes, as much daughter as His greatest sons. She could stand at His side, her armour towering; she could fly His banner, back and forth, across the entire breadth of the void, and where it passed, so the enemy would quail. They would flee before her, and every xenos would fall to its knees in whimpering terror.

She could wield such might…

In the heart of the deacon’s corrupted cathedral, Katherine stopped. The wave of the faithless continued to assail her, but she stood like a statue, unmoving. She paid them no heed; she was frozen, still as death, in the glare of the tempter’s image.

Stopping, Dominica made the sign of the aquila, a gesture that might have been penitence or purification or both. She lowered her head in reverence and the saint’s light shone from the white threads in her dark hair.

‘I say to you, my Sisters – the foes of our own thoughts are perhaps the greatest foes of all. Who among us,’ she said, as she looked round at each face, ‘has not felt the touch of temptation? Has not celebrated the strength that she bears, her battles and victories? Taken high-hearted joy in her combat and skill?’

Mina was nodding, her dark face intense with recollection. Avra flushed, remembering all too well the blaze of battle-adrenaline, how it surged through her blood, how it shouted from her throat in the words of the sacred hymnal.

‘They say,’ Dominica said, ‘that every Sister must face such enticement. Must vanquish it before she takes her Rites of Ordination. You have heard,’ she said, addressing Avra, ‘how each of our Orders tests itself, and thus finds triumph over that lure. By discipline, by pain, by daring, by hope. But all of these things, my young Sister, they come from the same place – they come from Him. We may embrace them fully, even exult in them, but we must never forget that they are but His blessing. And that they come only from His touch within each of our souls.’ She gave the twitch of a smile. ‘This, the witch did not comprehend.’

Lurking behind his deacon’s guise, behind the safe stone of the pulpit, he thought to turn the saint’s victories inwards, to use her very skills against her. He thought to turn her gaze from Him unto only herself – to her own victories, her own glory.

At first, she defied his temptation. Refusing him, she raised her voice in the Ancient Litany, and her armour blazed with ferocity. Dazzled, the congregation fell back from her, each one seeking cover behind their pew, but where the light touched the sinners’ flesh, so it flared to red flame and was gone. Hollow wails of pain and despair became emptiness, mere dust that drifted in the breeze from open doors. Many tried to flee, but they could not escape that light. Others fell to their knees in penitence, but the light took them also, and they, too, were gone in flashes of flame.

Yet the wooden pews, carved with His image, remained untouched.

And Katherine reached the pulpit.

Again, Dominica paused, and the Sisters waited, still silent, for her to continue. Unlike the tales of the others, this one had not been interrupted, and Avra found herself studying Dominica’s face, that touch of secrecy and darkness that she still carried about her.

There was a stern distance to her, a severity that was almost a haughtiness. It was deep and subtle, something in her bearing… It seemed neither unholy, nor prideful; more an awareness of who she was, and the role that she carried.

The deacon was still there, his expression sneering, uncaring of the deaths of his followers. He was portly, florid, pompous. As Katherine raised her weapon, he opened his arms as if to greet her like a brother.

‘Ah, Sister,’ he said. ‘So you are come to me at last.’

‘You do not address me.’ Katherine pointed her bolter at him. ‘Traitor!’

‘You will not fire,’ the deacon told her, smiling. ‘Not here, not again.’

In her hand, the bolter was red-hot, her gauntlet was red-hot. Her skin shrieked with pain. Her flesh ignited, melted, even as the flesh of the congregation had done. The agony of it nearly took her to her knees.

But it was illusion… The song of the psyker.

And Katherine would not be defeated by lies, never again. She pulled the trigger, the muzzle of her bolter aimed straight between his eyes. The round went straight through him, detonating upon the pulpit steps. Shards of stone flew.

‘That was foolish,’ he said. ‘The Frateris Militia are on their way.’ The image of the man flickered back, standing exactly where he had been. ‘I need a leader,’ he said. ‘A warrior, a demagogue without peer. A voice to raise an army. And now, Sister, you are mine. And you cannot gainsay me.’

He made no gesture, no performance, but the illusions came upon her again, burying her in a landslide of imagery. In the place of His image in the glassaic windows of the Convent, there was a figure in armour, as black as the void itself. Its heart burned upon its chest, a halo of fire that bathed the cathedral in a light blood-red. A great cloak flew behind it. Down the sides of the nave, that image was reflected in the lines of stone statuary, their carven figures standing stern, their grey now flooded with basalt-black, their every heart afire. And in the firelight there massed soldiers – others in night-black ceramite, armed with blade and bolter, the men and women of the Astra Militarum – all on their knees, their heads bowed in terror and worship. With them stood the Mechanicus, their billowing cloaks as red as the flame itself, their augmetics glinting like precious metals.

In the tumble of the witch’s vision, she saw them, and their adoration, and she loved it, needed it. Craved it with a hunger she had never known. Acknowledging their veneration, she pulled herself from the window, and the glassaic shattered and she moved, sparkling in slow motion like some halo of dancing lights. She raised her arms and her voice, both larger than the very building, and she sang that Litany so ancient, the words that she and her Sisters had written…

‘O Empress, deliver us!’

It was a rush of pure supremacy, lightning in her veins and through her skin, giddying with enticement. It called to her, lifted her, promised her – every victory she could ever have dreamed. Even more than His daughter, she could be…

By the Throne!

No. I will not.

The images froze solid at her refusal, shards like pure ice, held fast in their places.

‘This is falsehood! This is beyond atrocity!’

The black cathedral was a lie. And this was not just mere blasphemy. This was a profanity so utterly extreme that it could not be borne, should be ripped out by its very roots. It sickened her to her belly, even in the pincer-grip of the witch’s might: this was not only impossible, this was the worst sin of all, the ultimate in betrayal.

Pride.

And such pride! With her shock came understanding – the Litany she had sung was wrong, an assumption of suffocating arrogance. She could hear the words with her own ears, not through the filters the witch had put upon her, and they rang like empty metal, their music flat. The black cathedral was still about her, its illusion draped like the rich fabrics of the deacon, but its worshippers were silent, and its floating cherubim hung still as death. Their eyelids clicked, cold and steel, the tiny movement echoing on a cold and hollow wind.

She said, again, ‘I will not.’

The witch increased his pressure – the cherubim twitched, the worshippers tried to move. Ice-shards fell to the floor and shattered, scattering shining dust.

Embrace it, he told her. Take up your mantle! Lead the galaxy in war! Soak up the adulation of your forces like the light of Sol itself.

But she did not, could not, would not. The sacrilege was ultimate, and her faith was iron and steel and ceramite.

In His name, I will never again be deceived by lies!

Dragging her mind back, feeling the heat of the flame in her heart, she forced herself to turn and confront the now empty glassaic window. The window where He – and only He – should stand. But it was a hole. A gap. A window onto nothing.

Realising the profoundness of his error, the witch made another attempt. And even as Katherine visualised His image back in the glassaic, the darkness in the window grew. It swelled outwards, swirling; it became a sucking singularity that pulled at her, her thoughts, her faith, her courage. She faced it, her feet planted solid against the wind, and she saw the hanging fragments of the glassaic twitch, then tug free from their lead-lighting. Spinning, shining, they were pulled into the window and were gone. The cherubim turned one about another as the wind took them, then vanished as if they had never been. The organ-pipes, the false statues, the very cathedral itself… they were all lengthening, twisting, spinning into a sickening, turning spiral.

They were sucked down to the darkness, and they were gone. Katherine stood alone in eternity, a silent figure in the very void itself.

‘This is what will happen,’ the deacon said, his voice like the softest of brushes. ‘If you do not take the power I offer. The galaxy will fall, and there will be nothing left. Rise up!’ His voice was warmth, comfort; it was the only other thing that existed in the void. ‘Rise up, O Empress! Bear your weapons, defy your foes. You can prevent this end, if you will take up this banner!’

But Katherine said, ‘No.’

And the word was rock. It was the stone of her faith, the solidity of her shield. It was the fire in her heart, the touch of His presence.

She was a leader of warriors, a winner of wars, but they were not in her own name. That window was empty, not of her image, but of His. Not of her bravery and leadership, but of His authority and presence. She fought only in His name. And He would not leave her, whatever the threat that this witch might conjure.

Her hand still smoked, but her heart burned brighter. Without knowing how she had fallen, she realised she was on her knees. She still could not see, but she came back to her feet, knowing that the witch was close.

She repeated, the tone like some great bell, ‘No. I have been deceived once, and the galaxy hung upon the balance of that falsehood. Never again will I, or any Sister of Battle, believe the honeyed words of the heretic. We follow His call, and no other. And you, witch, will die!’

The word echoed in the emptiness, loud as a shout. Hearing her own voice gave Katherine stability – there was grey stone under her boots; there was the chiming, acoustic echo of a vaulted ceiling, high over her head. And she began to sing once more, to sing to the void in the window, to sing to the holy cathedral that she still could not see for herself.

And her voice reached out across the darkness, and so did the darkness fall.

Dominica stopped, picking up the chalice once again. Early light was blurring on the floor, now, and there were more noises of movement from outside. The reveille, the call to muster, was almost upon them.

The Sisters rustled in their places, armour clattering. Avra’s knees ached from the long service, but she made no complaint, only waited. Pain, as Lucia had already reminded her, told you that you were alive. Fighting.

Very softly, Silvana said, ‘Tell on, my Sister. The dawn will catch us very soon.’

‘There is little more to tell,’ Dominica said. ‘Like so many of our saint’s tales, this may be truth, or it may be allegory. It may be somewhere between the two – for there is ever truth in fable, and fable in truth. What purpose the corrupt deacon had for our saint’s power and command, we know not. Perchance he wished to raise an army, begin some rebellion – the tale does not recall. Nor does it remember his name, or whether the Frateris Militia came to that cathedral, so long ago and so far away, and witnessed the end of our saint’s struggle, the celebration of her hymnal, and her return to the light. It does not even tell whether she slew the witch–’

‘That is not in question.’ Mina’s voice was a growl and Dominica permitted herself a chuckle.

‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘That is not in question. But I do know that this story carries the greatest message of all, the one that the Order of the Valorous Heart carries with it across the galaxy.’

She paused, still holding the chalice.

‘Faith, my Sisters,’ she said. ‘The message is faith. Alicia Dominica saw Him, in all His glory. She carried the secret of that audience like a shard in her heart, the first Sisters of her Order likewise. And I have stood at the gates to the Imperial Palace and that…’ She frowned. ‘That was as much as my own heart could bear.

‘And, as Alicia Dominica poured out the Grail of Ages upon the battlefield, and His voice was heard, so in this, the chalice of my Order, do we come together as Sisters in His light. In this vessel, we bear understanding, we bear wisdom. And these bear the indomitable wall that is our belief in Him. For just as Katherine beheld that empty window, and nonetheless raised her hymnal to His name, so we have no need to see Him – because we have faith. Because our faith is complete and untouchable. Because He is with us, and it is everything that we are, and everything that we strive to be.’

She looked round at the others. ‘We do not see Him, my Sisters, yet He is always there.’

Her gaze stopped on Avra, who offered her a solemn nod.

‘And thus,’ Dominica said, ‘in this chalice do I bear “faith” as the watchword of not only my Order, but of every Sister of Battle. We will never be deceived again. Not by psyker, or by traitor, or by witch. Not by the enemy, or by any xenos force. For He, and our belief in Him, will always be stronger.’

There was a pause, a murmur of prayer. Dominica let it continue, let it whisper to a close. Outside, orders barked louder; engines were beginning to growl.

‘And now, my new Sister,’ Dominica said, ‘you will offer a tale of your own. Not a tale of our saint, but one from your own life, perhaps one where you have felt her presence – and His – most keenly.’ She smiled, her carved face softening briefly. ‘And at its end, you shall be Katherine, both within and without, and you must carry that mantle from the moment you leave this building, and you must never, ever, let it fall. But just for this last moment, we would know Avra, and understand your heart.’

Avra nodded, let the light from the coffin touch her face. She thought about her family, her father, her brother; thought about the young soldier in the camp – she had never even asked his name. Yet she knew the tale she would tell; it seemed to fit, the last key that would unlock the door in her soul.

And allow her to take up her shield.

The Tale of Avra

Dawn light pooled on the floor, bringing a new and brilliant gleam to His sacred hanging, to His head and blade, and to the still-hovering bodies of the cherubim. They were moving now, almost as if impatient, their wings driving a faint and downward draught.

Under them, the little chapel seemed full of expectation. Like the light, it touched the bright and broken ceramic of the building’s walls, making them shine in myriad colours. It shone in the eyes of her Sisters, each one as sharp as a gemstone and Lucia’s augmetic sparkling red. It shone from the presence of the sacred artefacts and from the coffin of the saint herself, its black banner flowing down the steps. To Avra, it seemed to spread even further, outwards past the headless walls to the squad of her Order that stood upon holy watch, and further still, to the still-sleeping Militarum, keeping the enemy from their dreams.

At its focus and centre, she faltered. She rallied her thoughts, offered a prayer. Her heart, which had eased at the tales that had surrounded and buoyed her, began to beat again with nervousness – with the sheer, incredulous enormity of all of this.

I cannot be Katherine, I–

Sternly, she silenced her doubts. He had called her. The saint had offered her her name. And had not Dominica herself told her that she belonged?

To this new family?

She offered the Litany of Cleansing, the words as calm as clarity, and her Sisters echoed her, their voices chiming, encouraging.

‘While I may walk worlds of darkness and terror, there you shall walk with me. I shall know no doubts, no fears, in your name.’

Thankful for their reassurance, she composed herself, and said, ‘You have requested, my Sisters, that I do not tell you a tale of our saint, though I remember them well from my years at the schola. I am yet Avra, and the dawn now rises when I must lay down both my name, and my previous life. And so, I will tell you the tale that brought me to my vision.

‘It is the final story of who I was.’

Dominica, to her left, nodded, indicated that she should go on.

‘So, this is a tale of my family,’ she said. ‘Of my father, of my brother Talan, and of the creatures of the enemy that steal silently through our camp.’

She felt their encouragement, though she did not look up; her eyes were now on her knees, and her hands, resting palm down upon them. Lucia’s ring shone back at her.

‘And of how I came to be wandering the camp alone.’

‘Surely, you were under orders?’ Mina said, her dark voice soft. ‘The Sisters of Our Martyred Lady have been walking the site, bringing His faith and courage to our weary brothers and sisters of the Astra Militarum.’

‘That is true,’ Avra said, glancing swiftly up. ‘However, it is also true that I volunteered for this duty, because…’ She frowned. ‘Because I had known a moment of fear, earlier in the day. A moment where the foe reached out its claws for my heart.’ The words were confession, heavy with significance, yet the release of them immediately lightened her soul. ‘I was shamed. And I sought to offer suitable atonement for my lack of faith.’

Atonement, she thought, and more.

She did not speak the final thought aloud, though she knew the truth of it. She needed to tell the tale in full, not only so her Sisters would understand, but so that she could understand it herself.

And absolve herself of its weight.

Around her, her Sisters said nothing. The flow of their understanding felt strong, though beneath it, she felt their curiosity sharpen. Avra forced herself to look up further – at Him, at His judgement, at the cold, hard eyes of the cherubim. She should be attending dawn prayers, the celebration of the rise of Sol on far-distant Terra. When she lowered her eyes once more, she caught Arabella smiling at her. The strip across the young Sister’s nose was flaking with loose skin, and this touch of her humanity felt like a blessing. A reminder that vulnerability was normal.

It was surrendering to it that was not permitted.

‘You are doubtless aware of my Order’s commands, and of where we were located for yesterday’s operation?’

‘We are aware,’ Dominica said quietly, not wishing to interrupt.

Avra nodded. ‘Under the orders of Major Haro, and of Sister Superior Melina, my squad has been located at the far left flank, and in the vanguard, as is proper. Yesterday, our mission parameters were to accompany a tech-priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and a single squad of Militarum, to a great, stone pedestal – the remains of some long-toppled statue – in advance of our own front lines. It lay a distance from us, out across no-man’s-land, but its vantage could prove crucial – an ideal platform for a sniper or for heavy weapons, for whichever side managed to secure it. We were to ascend that pedestal, and to purge any lingering foe.’

Silvana nodded. ‘We know where you mean.’

The rest of the Sisters said nothing, and she guessed that they would have known about the directive, as they would know about every order given by both the Sisters Superior and by the major.

She took a breath, continued. ‘You know that the day was hot, the air thick with a rising shimmer. We departed the front rank of the advancing army and we moved swiftly, our heads down, out across the plain. The augurs of the Sentinels had mapped the ground ahead of us, allowing us to cross minefields and wires safely. We looked always for the foe, but we were not assailed. Successfully, we reached the location.’

She could see it in her mind’s eye, like some huge and flat-topped molar tooth, growing larger as they had moved close.

‘Without mishap,’ she went on, ‘we achieved our target and encircled it successfully, finding no enemy. As Sisters, we stood guard to ensure the squad’s safety. Yet, despite attempts, they failed to ascend the vantage. The stone was smooth and unfamiliar. It defeated the tools of the soldiers, and they could not gain a foothold.’

She stopped, remembering. The day had been baking, the air wavering with rising heat. Above them, the pedestal had been colossal, a vast memorial to some fallen hero. It had engravings of soldiers, each as big as an armoured Sister, carved into its sides. And despite the relentless beating of Kiros’ soot-smeared sun, its shadow had been eerily cold, a dusty, dirt-laden wind whining as it scoured past.

‘By His blessing, however,’ she said, ‘we found that the pedestal was cleft in two, and that a great fissure ran through its heart, sharpening its winds to an edge, all laden with grit. In here, our adept was able to climb.’ He had moved up the crack in the rock with a dexterity that had been almost uncanny. ‘He drove claws and attachments into the stone, and behind him he left a long steel cable. The ascent would be somewhat ungainly’ – she smiled, though the expression was saddened, laden with memory – ‘but it would enable us to complete our mission.’

‘The Sentinels had declared the location secure?’ Silvana checked back on an earlier part of Avra’s story.

‘Even they make errors,’ Arabella said gently.

‘And the foe moves with both cunning and swiftness,’ Mina agreed. ‘As we have already seen. Speak on, my Sister.’

‘I cannot speak for the Sentinels’ omission,’ Avra said. ‘But I suspect that the foe had withdrawn deliberately, to lure us into the trap. Unaware of this, but cautious, we followed the path that the Mechanicus adept had made for us, intending to climb up the fissure.

‘But the enemy was lying in wait.’

She paused again, recalling the wash of sickness that had taken her as they’d realised their error. It was less the shock of the incoming physical assault, less even the fact that they were caught from all sides, and more the twist of knife-blade knowledge, the sudden, sick understanding that they had been wrong.

Into the trap.

She lowered her eyes back to her knees, and went on.

‘We were ambushed,’ she said. ‘The enemy permitted the tech-priest to attain the top of the plinth, and to complete the unrolling of his cable. I believe that they intended to assail him silently, and then attack us, one at a time, as we reached the top. But the Adeptus Mechanicus are not without combat resources of their own, and he lived long enough to communicate the alarm, a burst of binharic over the vox.’

She remembered it like the strike of a weapon, that familiar, high-pitched whine.

‘Leaving two Sisters to guard, we moved. But the foe had already deployed their contingency – in the centre of the crack, a pile of massive rocks was set tumbling down upon our heads and shoulders. They were the remains of the crumbled statue, each as wide as the fissure would permit, and far too heavy to lift. My Sister Superior…’ She stopped, closing her eyes. ‘Sister Superior Melina, testing the lowered cable, was slain, trapped under a mass of falling stone. Her armour’ – she paused again, remembering the horror – ‘her armour was compromised, though she yet lived. But we could not lift the rocks from her, even powered as we are. They were simply too heavy. Crushed by impossible weight, she died not in combat, but slowly–’

‘She was assailed by the foe,’ Dominica said, brooking no argument. ‘She perished in combat, and in honour, and her soul stands in His glory, at the feet of the Throne.’

Avra was blinking fiercely. The Sister Superior’s defiant, final hymn echoed in her thoughts, a symbol of the courage with which she had faced a horrific death, a death that her squad could do nothing to stop, though they had tried. The Militarum had carried both pitons and entrenching tools and the Sisters had attempted to use these as levers, or shovels. But they were too short, and were snapped clean in two by the colossal weight of the tumbled pieces of statue.

‘Unable to climb,’ Avra said, ‘we fell back and regrouped, attempting to devise a new strategy. There was little shelter from the fissure above and scatters of dust and pebbles fell down upon us. We endeavoured to free our Sister Superior, but despite our efforts, we could do nothing. We could only listen to her sing, defiant to the last.’

She paused, still blinking at the memory. In those first moments, there had been flickers of genuine panic, the entire fissure seemingly filled with noise and menace and shadow. Melina’s dying voice had still sounded, her hymnal echoing in the space, but the squad sergeant had been barking orders, and the Sisters had been forced to abandon her, needing to defend both themselves and the soldiers.

‘No further rocks came,’ she said, ‘only hissing trickles of sand. Nothing moved above us, though we knew the foe was there. We sent a message of warning back to the campsite and we moved back to back, the Militarum between us, taking what shelter we could. There was little space to muster a defence, but we expected to be assailed at any moment.

‘As you say, however, they are both cunning and terrible.’

More grey light was filtering through the windows, now. The air, which had been chill with Kiros’ bitterly cold night, was beginning to warm. It would be hot, and soon.

The expectation surrounding Avra was beginning to swell, a subtle pressure for speed. Telling her story was like pulling a splinter from her heart, a splinter that would let its blood and guilt flow fee. She had yet to confess the full nature of her shame, yet the tale was already cleansing, in its way.

She continued. ‘Shadows of the enemy passed across the top of the fissure, phantoms like shapes of fear – more motion came from the edges, silhouetted against the light. There was laughter, rich and mocking, voices taunting us. More stone fell, not great slabs but a rattling of smaller, sharper rocks, and we remained vigilant, defending the soldiers at our centre.’ Her hand touched her bolter. ‘Several of them were injured, but they made no complaint, facing the enemy fearlessly.’

Her brother’s face; her father’s. The young soldier she had saved.

‘But then…’ She stopped and shuddered, before continuing, ‘The foe changed their tactics. Knowing that we were all but helpless – Adepta Sororitas as we are! – they dropped… corrosion upon us, I know not what else to call it. And we could do nothing to fight them.’ She paused again, frowning. ‘I do not need to tell you the frustration and anger that such a feeling causes. We are Sisters of Battle! We are never helpless! We face the foe, slay it! We do not remain stuck in a fissure.’ Melina had still been singing, though her words had become agonised, breathless, as her chest was slowly crushed. The squad had prayed for her, joining her in her hymn.

With some vehemence, Avra went on, ‘Yet, with our exits blocked and little cover, we were caught. And they loosed some foul, dark ichor, dripping in heavy falls from their vantage. And with it, they laughed, more mockery, boasted words of their “gift” to us. And that laughter was rich, like rot, like the mould that grows upon dead flesh. There was nothing we could do to stop them.

‘It was not aimed at us, our armour is sealed. But the soldiers…’

She stopped, again, remembering. The remaining members of the squad had burned where they stood, each one melting like a waxen seal, right down to their dust-covered boots. Some had tried to sing, joining the Sister Superior in her last notes. But the screaming…

In the fissure, it had echoed like pure horror.

‘We tried to defend them.’ She repeated the words like a mantra, her hand on the shield. ‘We tried. But we failed, just as we failed to preserve the life of Sister Melina. They just–’

‘You have faced the foe.’ Dominica spoke for all the Sisters. ‘Such is no small matter. The ancient enemy comes in four forms, you know this. But, whichever you face, they will use the same trickery – they play the darkest corners of your own mind against you. Your heart, your fears, your needs.’ Her eyes searched Avra’s face. ‘Your memories.’

She spoke as if she knew about Avra’s family, and Avra realised that she probably did. But Avra would have no secrets from her Sisters. Not from her Order, and not here. Secrets, as Dominica already knew, were heavy things to bear.

‘Yes, Sister.’ She rallied herself, and went on. ‘The Militarum did not all perish, though they were terribly injured in both mind and body. There was one of them, younger than I, who had been fully covered by the tangles of the fallen rocks. He was a big man, dark and strong, his shoulders as broad as mine in armour.’ Again that sad smile. ‘Before our commanding Sister could give orders, or retrieve it herself, he wrested the squad’s lascannon from its mounting, and with the weapon in his bare hands, he opened fire at the shadows above.’

Silvana raised an eyebrow. ‘Surely, such a weapon cannot be wielded–’

‘Anger,’ Mina said to her Sister, ‘is His blessing. And there are times when He will gift great strength, huge determination, and a focus that is more than human. One does not have to be a Sister of Battle,’ she said, the faintest quirk of humour in her tone, ‘to feel the blessing of His holy wrath.’

‘Truly,’ Avra said. ‘He was a madman, in the grip of some vision, perhaps. He had the blessed strength of the Adeptus Astartes, gifted surely by His grace. His hands hissed with steam where they touched the corrosion upon the weapon, but he did not care. He had bitten his lip, and blood flowed down his chin. His fire cut into the leering shadows of the foe, blew stone chips from the lip of the fissure. He ascended the pile of rocks, and dust and pebbles fell down upon us, rattling like rain upon our armour. And still, he kept firing until, at last, he could recharge the weapon no more, and he collapsed.

‘The enemy waited for his fire to stop. And, as the lascannon fizzled to a halt, they came howling in upon us.’

From outside, its timing as sharp as a slap, came the loud, hard tocsin of the reveille. It cut across the early morning like a peal of shock, yet seemed almost part of the story. A grumble of rising movement followed it; hardy sergeants already up, bellowing at their troops to get moving. It was not yet fully dawn, but the muster was almost upon them.

Avra said, ‘We shot with our bolters, and our lines of fire were clear. At first, it seemed that they did not have the force to break our formation. Many of those that assaulted us were merely cultists, lightly armoured and with little in the way of weapons – they fell by the score. From above, more of the corrosion dripped down upon our shoulders, and upon the bodies. Friend and foe alike were simply eaten away, dissolving into fluids and steam. Our attackers died, screaming, just as the Militarum had done, and the tactics of the enemy made no sense to me.’

Feet sounded outside; there was the voice of Sister Superior Aliaah, still on duty. Avra spoke on, conscious of the time and of her new, as yet unknown, duties.

‘Soon, their ploy was revealed. Underfoot the stone became treacherous, slick with ichor and with liquefying flesh. Some of the bodies were still moving, even as they sank in their own dissolving gore, their hands half-melted, raised in pleas for help, their bones outstretched like sticks. Defended by our sacred armour, we were immune, but the horror…’ She stopped, swallowed. ‘Mocking rains of rocks and debris came with it, taunting us with our own slow death, as helpless as our Sister Superior, and crushed in the mulch below.’

Outside, the camp was swiftly coming to motion. Barks of orders cut across the dawn; the air seemed to crackle with sharp, hard bursts of digital communication. Somewhere, more Sentinels were already moving, replacing those that had been deployed overnight.

‘“You are trapped,” a voice said to us, warm and rich. “Your very armour will be your ending, Corpse-Daughters. I will grant to you your greatest wish, your wish to die. I will fulfil every sick and twisted need you have ever had – you will know your deaths. But not as you imagine. You will know pain, anger, and darkness. You will know what it is to face your fears, and to fail. You will sink slowly, into the gore that we have made. You will be helpless, unable to move. And before we reach you, you will lose your hope.”’

As Avra spoke, she looked round at the faces of her Sisters, each one in turn, each one an icon.

Dominica, her voice gentle, said, ‘Truly, my Sister, it was His will for you to be in that fissure. To face a foe that mocks us, each in her turn.’ The others were nodding, their expressions unsmiling; even Arabella seemed serious.

Avra had raised her face to Him, and to the saint; let the holy light break over her, let the tales her Sisters had offered hold her strong against the horrors of her own.

‘At the words, there came a great silence. We stood in a quagmire, a quagmire of tumbled rocks and rotting flesh, our boots stained with the remnants of the soldiers’ humanity.’ Tears were sliding down her face again. She paid them no heed. ‘Our Sister commander gave the order – we must still ascend the fissure. In His name, we must achieve the target, and purge the enemy from the pedestal.’

She stopped; the sickness of the memory was too much. Her face still bathed in the light, she broke into a hymn, unaware of the tears that had overflowed and were now trickling down her cheeks. Her Sisters passed no word of judgement, and somewhere, buried in a tiny corner of her heart, she wondered if each of them had faced this, their darkest, deepest fear; that moment of intense, personal crisis that was His greatest test.

‘As I moved for the pile of rocks, I saw that the young man was still alive, still gripping the lascannon. Lying in the thick swamp of his fellows, his camo and flak already rotten, his flesh seeping out from under him. I prayed for him, and he opened his eyes and looked at me. But his gaze was not the sacred rage that had sustained him, nor was it the trained reaction of the soldier. It was not even the fear that one would expect – such would have been understandable. With any of these, he would surely have perished in honour, his soul’s respite assured. No, in his gaze, there was only the pollution of the foe.

‘And I faltered.’

The word was a shudder of admission. In that moment, she had seen the face of her brother Talan, a face that was a million, billion Astra Militarum soldiers, that was all the men and women who had given themselves to slay the enemy… but who had been denied their redemption, and who would never see the Throne.

Her tears poured more thickly, and her voice caught on a sob, her shoulders shaking. The noises of the outside had fallen away, almost as if He Himself had cupped His hands over the story, allowing her to tell its end.

‘In that moment,’ she said, ‘I was bereft. I saw no courage, no honour, no nobility in his death. The enemy spoke to me, personally, and deep in my heart. It told me that there was no sacred martyrdom, no Throne, no redemption. There was only nothingness, the howling void. It told me that the very tenets of my Order, of our saint herself, were a fabrication, woven from both arrogance and folly…’

She stopped again, very conscious of the saint’s light in the chapel, of her soft glow. To speak such words in her presence! Again, she began to sing, her words full of penance and regret. Sparkles of tears dripped upon her underarmour, shining briefly before they vanished into the black softness of the padding.

Outside the front of the chapel, Sister Superior Aliaah suddenly barked a command, making Avra start – she still had her vox-channel tuned to that of her Order.

‘You are Adepta Sororitas,’ Mina said, her voice brooking absolutely no denial. ‘A Sister of Battle, a Daughter of the Emperor. You have been chosen as the exemplar of the saint herself, called by Him to bear her sacred coffin, and to bring her courage wherever you stand. You say you were bereft of your very faith?’ Mina’s voice was dangerous.

‘Not of your faith, perhaps,’ Lucia said softly, ‘but of your focus?’

‘I understand,’ Arabella said. ‘In that moment, you lost your hope.’

Avra’s face contorted, she gulped air as the tears came again. ‘How many souls,’ she said, ‘fighting in His name – how many souls have perished? They lined up in my mind, billions upon billions, their ranks stretched back into centuries beyond counting. My father died with honour. My brother died, but it was not in combat. He was no traitor, but he too was denied his salvation – his death meant nothing, and was in vain. His soul will never reach the Throne. And in that moment, as that young man lost his own life, I remembered Talan, remembered the numberless others like him, all lost to His glory – and I likewise lost myself. I paid my orders no mind, and I threw myself upon the pitons that the enginseer had left for us. I desired only to perish – yet that desire was not to lay down my life for Him, or even for my brothers and sisters. It was for myself. To prove to myself that the man’s death, that all those soldiers’ deaths, the deaths of my brother and of Sister Superior Melina, had been worthy, after all.

‘I moved not with courage, but with the denial of my own fears.’

‘Avra,’ Dominica said. ‘Sister Melina died in combat, facing the enemy. The same is true of your brother Talan. You know this, in your heart. The enemy played only upon your fears.’

But Avra went on, reciting as if she could not stop, still pulling that splinter from her heart. ‘I failed.’ The words came with an admission that was almost ironic; a smile flickered across her face. ‘In His wisdom, He did not grant me my martyrdom. Yet, in my madness, I drove the foe back from the edge of the fissure, allowing my Sisters to ascend and our mission to succeed. We secured the location, as ordered.’

‘You achieved your mission,’ Mina said. It was a statement of approval; of flat, military accomplishment.

Avra nodded. ‘A second squad was sent to relieve us, and we returned to the camp. Yet still, my soul was unquiet, and my failure haunted my thoughts. He had refused me, or so I thought, and it gnawed at my heart–’

‘Your brother,’ Dominica said, stopping her, ‘died at the Battle of Belshar.’

‘Yes, Sister.’ Avra glanced round. ‘He was younger than I, barely nineteen. He joined the Militarum as soon as he was of age, wishing to honour our father’s memory. I had intended to do likewise, in my earliest youth, but He had other plans for me, and I attended the schola. My father would have been very proud of us both.’ She looked up, at Dominica’s lean, shadowed face. ‘Yes, he died upon Belshar, but it was not in combat. His Salamander crashed, he perished in flames. He disgraced…’ She swallowed, hard. ‘Disgraced our father’s record and memory by not facing the enemy.’

‘He died for the God-Emperor,’ Dominica said. ‘As did Sister Superior Melina. As have done a billion others, every fearless soldier of the Astra Militarum. Talan died in faith, fighting His wars. And he kneels now at the foot of the Golden Throne.’

Avra caught her breath on a sob, scrubbed her hands over her face. But her speech was like a confession and still, she could not stop, not until that splinter was fully, finally free.

‘I was relieved of my duty, but I could not rest. Shadows grew upon me, phantoms of my failure. The prayers in my heart twisted in upon themselves, and the enemy’s whisperings clouded the corners of my mind. I could see only my brother’s death, and my despair grew. I volunteered for the camp duty, but was refused. I had been too close to the foe, and I was told to recite my Litanies until my heart settled, and I could see Him clearly once more.’

‘You disobeyed the order?’ Mina said, one eyebrow raised.

‘I disobeyed the order.’ The shame was creeping into her cheeks now, a flush like the colour of Mina’s rose. ‘I know I should not have done so, but I sought… needed…’

Redemption? Forgiveness? Clarity?

‘The enemy never ceases to test us,’ Silvana told her. ‘It knows our darkest secrets, the tiny cracks in our soul like the fissure in that rock. And it prises its curious talons into those cracks and attempts to wrench them wide.’ Her eyes were on Avra’s face, making the point. ‘It knows you, my Sister. As it knows all of us.’

Dominica was nodding, her face carved in seriousness.

‘Yet, in its choice of torment,’ Silvana went, ‘did the enemy also not serve His design? Did your distress not bring you to us?’ There was a smile on her face, crinkling at the corners of her eyes.

Avra shot her a look. ‘You are saying that the enemy does His will?’

‘Ah, my Sister,’ Arabella said. ‘There you touch upon a question most complex. He is all-powerful, hence the foe only exists because He permits it–’

‘The foe is not of His creation,’ Mina said. ‘I do not need to remind you–’

‘Yet when the foe tears through to our reality, does it not–’

‘Enough,’ Dominica growled. ‘This is not a librarium. We will leave the theoretical arguments to a more suitable time.’

Arabella’s lips twitched. Leaning forwards, she said, ‘I would say, my Sister, that you walked the camp seeking your lost hope. That your desire to locate an enemy was less a need to throw yourself into martyrdom, and more a need for an answer. A quest for His light. And did you not save the young man’s life, even as you sought to lose your own? Whatever the motivations of the enemy, and however we may debate’ – with a flash of her earlier humour, she raised an eyebrow at the other Sisters – ‘your actions today were in His name, and they have brought you here. You must comprehend – your brother’s death was but a part of His design. Had it not been for Talan’s sacrifice, for your battle today, He would not have blessed you to defend that soldier. And you would not have come to us. And now, they are all your family, all your brothers and sisters, all across the galaxy. And you will ensure that their deaths have meaning.’ Her smile was radiant. ‘Until the day He calls you to the Throne.’

Dominica nodded, severe but approving. Outside, the camp was alive with the sounds of movement.

Avra’s shoulders shook. She thought about the other soldier, the young woman who had been torn clean in half. At the time, she had felt a moment of odd, buried envy, yet she had reached for her weapons and courage instinctively, as her faith and training had taught her.

‘Their deaths have meaning,’ she repeated. And, raising her face to the light of the saint, to His light, the shine of the embroidered hanging, she felt that splinter of pain work free from her heart at last. Talan’s life had not been given in vain. She would stand by her brother, by all her brothers and sisters, in the future.

And her own death would come, when He willed.

‘We are out of time, my Sisters,’ Dominica said. ‘This morning, we push out across the wastelands and assail the foe. There are many emplacements like the one you assaulted,’ she told Avra, ‘there to defend our advance. And we will stand at the army’s centre, be its heart and its courage.’ The cherubim were shifting as they flew. The breeze from their wings grew stronger. ‘And where we march–’

A scrape of ceramite boots interrupted her. In the chapel’s doorway, there were two young Sisters, their armour black, bearing a sacred chest between them.

‘Ave Imperator, Sisters Exemplar. We bear our Sister’s sacred armour, newly repaired and cleansed.’

Avra’s sisters-in-arms – or they had been. They placed the chest down and respectfully backed away.

‘Wait,’ Avra said. They were the tiniest fragment of her old life, and they were retreating from her. Leaving her with this huge responsibility.

‘Permission to speak,’ one said.

‘You may say your farewells,’ Dominica told them. ‘But make them swift. The foe will not wait. Sisters, we must pray, arm and be ready.’

Four of them rose to their feet and smoothly ascended the steps, each kneeling as she reached the top. Arabella stayed, tidying the remains of their meal. Remembering Lucia’s tale of the Repentia, and of the saint’s oldest friends, Avra moved to thank the Sisters of her Order.

‘You do us a great service,’ Sister Rene said. She was unhelmed and the saint’s light bathed her dark face like a blessing. ‘We are proud of you–’

‘Pride is a sin,’ Juliette commented, her green eyes shining. Both of them seemed to make a conscious effort to not look at the coffin, keeping their gazes averted. ‘We know you’re not Avra, not any more. But to be Katherine, to walk the galaxy…’ Her gaze was lost in wonder, searching Avra’s face. ‘We are honoured to follow you. Always. Wherever you may lead.’

Unable to speak, she embraced them both, the edges of their armour hard against her padding.

The second tocsin sounded, followed by a clatter that was Dominica, coming back to her feet. Politely, Rene and Juliette backed away.

‘Thank you, Sisters. Ave Imperator.’

They returned the salute, and were gone.

Avra opened the chest, began to remove her armour. Dominica gestured, and the others surrounded her, positioning her chestplate and backplate, her pauldrons and vambraces, mag-fastening each in place. A prayer flowed between them and Avra was again reminded of her Ordination, of the very first time she’d donned her armour for real.

‘And so,’ Dominica said, stepping back, ‘the Service of Tales is concluded, and warfare awaits. We have spoken much of ourselves, less of the unit to which we belong – but we do have a military objective. For now, my Sister, your armour is incomplete. Mina, if you would.’

The red-armoured Sister moved to the wall beside the altar, shifted a swathe of dark cloth. From outside, as if the timing had been decreed by His blessing, the voice of Sister Superior Cico broadcast the dawn prayer, her words strong over the vox. Avra could hear the ragged, rougher voices of the Militarum – they must be at full muster.

Awaiting the orders to advance.

Mina turned back, bearing upon her arm the Praesidium Protectiva, a kite-shield almost as tall as she was, its front illustrated with a flare of holy light. In her other hand, she bore the Martyr’s Sword, crackling with might and energy. About the artefacts, the chapel itself seemed to quiet, to hold its very breath in awe.

‘Take up your shield,’ she said, ‘your sword and your name. You are Avra no longer. You are Katherine Elysius, Katherine of the Fiery Heart. You are Our Martyred Lady, your anointed sword spills the blood of the foe, and upon your holy shield does the enemy crest and shatter.’

Avra – Katherine – took both as they were handed to her, marvelled at the weight of the relics, at their history and lore. Bearing them, she felt her soul fill with light, and understood, at last, that she could carry shield, and sword, and the name she newly bore.

The Triumph of Saint Katherine

Outside the chapel, the camp was in motion.

Katherine had half expected a fully polished parade ground muster, a procession or celebration, but this was not a company on display. The awakened platoons were grim, now; their humour dark, their tents and bivvies gone. The next wave of Sentinels had already left, skirmishing out across the badlands. She caught glimpses of the formed-up soldiers, rifles at their shoulders, listening to the morning’s orders. Where the scouts led, the infantry would not be far behind.

A line of guards still stood along the perimeter wall, and with them, the Master of Ordnance stood like an icon, her attitude solid, her augur glinting in the morning sun. The remaining heavy weapons platoons – those not despatched to hold tactical points – awaited her orders. The air felt tight, sharp.

In her heart, prayers rose like adrenaline.

‘Walk forth, Katherine.’ She had the Sisters’ vox-channel, now, and Dominica’s voice was a burr of soft warning. ‘Show no hesitation.’

Lifting her chin, she walked down the steps.

Her head was bared, and instantly she was conscious of the change, of leaving both service and sanctum behind. The wind was already beginning to climb, sweat-warm, tinged with metal and threat. It stirred the dust at her feet, rattled grit against her armour. She felt the eyes that turned upon her; saw the scattering of still-loose soldiers sinking to their knees. The chains of the cherubim creaked; the coffin’s glow seemed to touch her back with both light and expectation. She bore the great shield, her sword in her other hand, her bolt pistol and helm at her hips. To one side, Arabella’s censer burned with the promise of battle, to the other, Dominica’s chalice flared with a new and castigating flame. And she could feel the presence of the other Sisters’ artefacts: Mina’s tray, its bloody petals fluttering free, the shine of the Argent Shroud, the Valorous Heart’s red glow.

Mina’s voice came over the vox. ‘Sister Superior Aliaah, you and your squad will walk with us. Sister Superior Cico and Sister Fiann, take your squads to the right and left flanks.’

‘Sister.’

Black-armoured figures ran, and Dominica said, ‘Katherine, the major.’

And there he was: Owai Haro, the Jaguar himself, named for the dappled burn-scars across his hard, dark cheek. He’d got them as a new recruit, in a fire – and he’d made them his own, building his company and his reputation upon them. For all his rank and his grey hair, pale against his skin, he, too, could have been her brother.

All across the galaxy.

‘Ave Imperator,’ he said, offering them the sign of the aquila. His voice was deep, and it rolled like tank tracks. ‘The honour is ours. I am blessed to stand in the presence of our most holy saint. I regret the lack of ceremony, Sisters, but we do not have time. Our Sentinels confirm – the monster is in motion.’

With him was his banner-bearer, the Jaguar flag at his back, and the enginseer that Katherine had seen the previous night, surrounded by a grinning flotilla of servo-skulls. The tech-priest’s semi-human face was unreadable, but the banner-bearer was little more than a lad, a single pip upon his shoulder. He gazed at Katherine, eyes wide, then remembered himself and looked at his boots.

‘Major,’ Katherine returned, her voice even. She had no formal wording, but the Service of Tales had bolstered her, and her footing was secure. She felt strong, elated, eager to meet the enemy, to hold the heart of the army round her. ‘It is our honour to be here, in His name. And our honour and duty both, to face the enemy.’ She could almost hear Dominica prompting her. ‘Before us, they will falter, and flee.’

Servo-skulls twitched and hovered, tools and jaws clacking. Haro gave a grim, curt nod.

‘Sisters, company HQ will muster at defence tower delta, ready to advance. Platoons one, four and six will move out ahead of us. The Sentinels report…’ He paused, a frown ghosting his face. ‘The enemy numbers are swelling, and they are hungry. They are not yet in range of the outposts, but we suspect them within the hour.’

Echoing his words, orders barked from vox-casters and the first three platoons stamped to dismissal, then ran for their muster locations. Katherine knew the drill: they would move, extended file, out across the badlands, until the enemy was engaged.

Mina said, ‘The great beast is our target. Do you have its location?’

‘It leads the lines of the foe.’ Haro’s jaw jumped, though his stance was upright. ‘The corrupted people of Kiros make up much of its support, and they follow it eagerly.’ Ghosts crossed his expression. ‘They must be freed from its pollution.’

From behind the coffin, her Shroud now hung at her back and shining with a light of its own, Silvana’s soft rasp said, ‘You cannot face this beast, major. You will leave it to us.’

‘In His name,’ Haro returned, ‘and with you at our side – we will reclaim Kiros for the Imperium.’

We will reclaim Kiros…

The previous day, as the squads of the Order of Our Martyred Lady had fought through the broken streets, much of Katherine’s vision had been obscured by soot and dust and flame. Now, moving out from the campsite’s carefully rebuilt defences, she recalled those shattered walls, the snapped-off feet of the nameless statues, the squads running and dropping and running again – that so-familiar skirmish manoeuvre that she’d learned at the schola.

That she would never use again.

Now, she walked like an emblem, her sacred shield before her, both banner and bastion, her sword borne aloft like a firebrand. Out here, the streets had gone, cleared back to a wasteland of tumbled stone, of craters and wires and lingering menace. The wind was gusty and fierce, buffeting at her sides. Smoke and dust were already rising, obscuring her sight of the platoons ahead, and of the gleaming black armour of Sister Aliaah and her squad. Yet through it, Katherine carried the light; it rose at her shoulders, it rose in her heart, in her being. Its brightness was a beacon: mental, spiritual, physical.

It made of her shield a wall, an unbreakable fortress.

The six Sisters did not speak, though their vox-channel was open. Between them, the ancient hymnal flowed like pure thought, harmonies curling from one Sister to another. This was more than the Litany; it was a node, a kernel.

‘A spiritu dominatus.’

The steel-shelled seed of faith from which pure courage grew.

‘Domine, libra nos.’

They moved on, attentive and watchful, the dirt and smoke growing thicker. The heat was climbing swiftly now, the wind like coughs from a furnace. As the unseen sun rose higher, sweat tickled the sides of Katherine’s face. Occasional barks came from the soldiers’ vox-casters; at times, the lights of a Sentinel would flare past them and vanish again.

To her side a hovering servo-skull emerged from the smoke as if checking on them, then sank away once more. The chains of the cherubim creaked.

In the vox, his tone firm beneath the echoing of their hymns, Haro said, ‘Lieutenant Natera. Report.’

‘We have contact, emplacement beta.’ Natera’s tone was cold, brutal.

‘Range?’ That was Renagi, the ordnance master, back on the wall.

‘Four hundred yards, and closing.’

‘Then fire.’ Haro’s snarl was all repressed rage.

Before the Sisters, the smoke changed to storm. There was the crack and boom of heavy weapons, the slash and glare of lascannons. The defiant singing of Sister Aliaah and her squad. Streaks of harsh brilliance came from somewhere ahead, then the colossal billowing booms of impact. Mortars coughed, their shells becoming hollow detonations.

The smoke grew thicker, hot and choking. Katherine blinked grit from her eyes.

‘From the lightning and the tempest!’

‘Report!’ Haro said again.

‘Beta, dead ahead.’ Natera’s voice was harsh; he coughed in the vox. ‘Three hundred yards. Advancing fast!’

Haro’s voice was calm as iron across the company vox. ‘Lieutenant, maintain the bombardment. Captain Mai, hold your position. Take cover, await orders to advance. Sister Aliaah–’

‘We hold our position, major.’

Katherine did not need to see to understand; the infantry would take the closest concealment, dropping and covering the morass ahead of them, a field of lasrifles poking out across the ruinous flat.

‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

In the vox, Natera’s voice: ‘Emplacements gamma, beta, fire!’ Heavy weapons thundered defiance. A moment later, Natera said, ‘Warped humans, minor warp spawn. Nothing we can’t…’ The voice paused. ‘Shit.’

‘Natera.’ Haro’s voice brooked no compromise. ‘Report.’

And there: the first waves of fear.

Still blinking, Katherine felt them come, growing like convection, curling like a swirl and eddy of sickness. The song of their surrounding Sisters grew louder, challenging the murk and the terror.

‘From plague, temptation and war!’

With them, Dominica’s voice rose, the hymnal gaining a sudden, furious edge. Above it, Arabella raised her own voice, her pure, cold soprano sharp enough to cut at the air’s thick heat. Silvana sang a soft, regular rhythm, almost like poetry, twining through the other two, and the hair rose on Katherine’s forearms. There was a real, thunderous power to Dominica’s voice, a depth and timbre like some great, bared blade. The red glare of her chalice was still visible through the smoke.

And then, Mina, Lucia – Mina taking Silvana’s rhythm and making of it a drumbeat like some merciless, mighty march; Lucia’s voice as pure as Arabella’s but carrying an aching, poignant note, like impossible pain and the clarity it brought.

Katherine knew the sacred hymnal, but not like this. She’d never heard these harmonics. The ripple of exultation crept up her shoulders, up the back of her neck. This was the manifestation of the Service of Tales – this was the Sisters’ differences, and it was their unification. It was their ringing celebration of the six Orders Militant, of the Adepta Sororitas entire, of their faith and courage and everything they stood for.

It was the place they overlapped, the centre where they stood together.

‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

The song carried her, too, and she raised her own voice, her softer contralto singing with Dominica. For the faintest moment she saw again the miracle of her vision…

Sisters, kneeling upon a flagstone floor.

But she belonged, now. She had seen that vision for a reason.

Your brother’s death was a part of His design. Take up your shield, your sword and your name.

The light of the saint seemed to grow, banishing the smoke and the filth. She could hear Haro, muttering a prayer across the vox, could feel the heart of the Jaguar as it lifted. She could hear Aliaah, stern and strong. Like a sacrament, light and blessing spread from the coffin; the sheer resonant power of the hymnal rang from the march’s vox-casters. It spread out across the battlefield, a rallying cry that was the saint herself, her fiery heart, her Wars of Faith made manifest.

She was here. In His name, and in hers, they would not fail.

To Katherine’s other side, Arabella drew her bolt pistol. Her sense of mischief had hardened, solidified into a grim, edged courage that promised death to the foes of the light. As if hope, too, could be a weapon.

‘Give me range,’ Haro barked. ‘I need a location.’

The smoke and dust were parting, now, driven forth by light and sound. Through the retreating billow, the red cloaks of the Order, now soot-stained and torn. A running Sentinel came past them – the pilot bringing it back from the front line. Its gait was erratic and smoke poured from the cockpit. It must have said something, because Haro snapped a command a moment later.

‘Emplacements alpha through delta, retire to secondary positions. Captain Mai, listen up. And fire!’

Mina said, like a growl, ‘Incoming.’

The tension in Katherine’s neck grew sharp, cold. Clamping her hands on blade and shield, she sang, still, with Dominica.

‘From the scourge of the Kraken!’

Smoke swirled, obscuring her vision. She heard the thunder of bolters; the relentless cracks of heat that were the moving infantry. Talan! She could–

A wash of sickness and terror broke over her. By the Throne! It was tangible, physical enough to almost knock her to her knees. It came on like a tide, a roar of putrid mockery; it broke over her in a wave of nausea. Despite the hymnal, her belly roiled, cresting like polluted foam. Refusing to acknowledge it, she sang with more volume, more vehemence. More rage.

‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

Voices came across the vox, breaking up now. ‘The… many… em!’

Figures staggered through the smoke to their flanks. Petals, red and white, swirled round them; Silvana’s Shroud flapped like a trapped thing. Voices screamed, horrific and masculine, a terrible sound that cut–

Silence.

Only the Sisters’ hymn, now echoing vast and hollow, out across pure ruin. Katherine had not heard an order to hold fire, but the infantry had stopped shooting. The smoke had retreated further, and she could see Sister Aliaah and the black armour of the Order; they were kneeling in fire positions, but they were still.

The vox crackled and spat. It felt like it was waiting.

She cried a challenge, her voice loud. ‘From the blasphemy of the fallen!’

Then, like a lone, staggering ghost, a solitary figure came into full view, a young man in camo and flak armour, his brassard with a single chevron stripe. Vomit stained his chin and chest. His face was acid-burned, and he was gibbering like an insane thing, his laughter climbing higher, even as he staggered and fell. He had no rifle.

Haro snarled, ‘Ma… ort!’

Nothing. The vox echoed with a rich, thick laughter, with humour that swelled like a distended belly. More figures came now, silhouettes in rising dirt, staggering like the first. Mockery rolled from them like heat, like the thick smell of decay.

Merciless, Aliaah snarled an order and Katherine heard the unmistakeable thump and bellow of the squad’s heavy bolter, the words of her Sisters as they picked up the Litany once more.

‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

Shambling figures were shredded and fell. Haro repeated his order. A second later, Mai’s voice came back.

‘There… oo ma…! …verrun!’ The vox bubbled like acid.

‘Aliaah!’ Mina’s snap was hard, spoken aloud. ‘Cover their retreat.’

The Sister Superior gestured, and the seven of them ran, their hymnal still broadcasting.

Silvana said, ‘We will slay the beast. Break the enemy’s hold on this planet.’

‘Agreed,’ Arabella said. ‘Or our hope is lost.’

‘Agreed,’ Lucia said. ‘We will take the pain upon ourselves.’

‘Agreed,’ Mina said. ‘We will move with Aliaah. Offer cover to the troops.’

‘It is decided,’ Dominica said. ‘We are united.’ The word sounded like a great clang, like hammer striking anvil. ‘Katherine – we march.’

They marched.

Carried by song, the saint borne in faith and light and sound and fury, the smoke parting before them in waves like awe, they marched.

Around them, all was devastation. The heavy weapons had pulled back and the infantry had been overrun with shocking swiftness, unable to react fast enough. Katherine passed a Sentinel, lying on its side, one foot still twitching. Gore and fluid covered its ruined frame. A second line of defence still lay before the campsite, but she understood the Sisters’ objective now – there was a great enemy here, and if they did not face it, then the mission would fail.

And Kiros would be lost to the foe.

Cherubim wings beat like determination, stirring at the air currents; the ground was strewn with bodies. Blasted craters shimmered with lingering heat. Great curls of wire stood across their way, but Aliaah and her Sisters were already there, their armour now dented and covered in dirt. They trampled and cut, and made way for the saint to advance.

Returning to the full cry of the hymnal, the Sisters’ words rolled forth in clarion challenge. And something finally connected in Katherine’s teachings, some touch of His blessing: the words ‘Our Emperor, deliver us’ were not a plea for Him to manifest, to take their battle, their responsibilities, upon Himself – they were a crystallisation, a forging.

A catalyst.

And they allowed the Sisters to wreak His wrath upon the foe.

‘From the begetting of daemons!’

And as they marched, so there came His miracle.

First in ones and twos, and then more, and then more, the battered soldiers rallied to their sides. Most were burned, or injured, or scarred by acids; some were fearful, others furious. But they came, their rifles still at their shoulders, and they took up the cry of the hymn, echoing the Sisters’ call.

Beside Katherine, there were clean streaks down Arabella’s face, though her chin was lifted. To her other shoulder, Dominica’s chalice blazed like pure wrath.

More came, and more. And the more of them there were, the more Katherine understood: just like every one of these men and women were her family, so they were also the lessons that her Sisters had taught her. They were pain, they were hope, rallying amidst the wreckage; they were daring, coming forth to face the foe; they were discipline and anger, they were pure and righteous faith. Every one of them that joined the march brought a spike of emotion to her throat, and she found herself walking the battlefield, her voice caught upon hooks of huge feeling…

This – this! – was the Triumph of Saint Katherine. Not just her life, her Wars of Faith, her martyrdom, but the glory that she sustained in His name, the lives that still rallied to her call. Katherine’s throat closed. Unable to sing, she continued to march, head and shield high.

And then, Aliaah’s voice said, ‘Hold.’

Reacting instinctively, Katherine held up a gauntleted fist and the new force stopped.

And a voice ahead of them said, ‘Welcome, Corpse-Daughters. I’ve been expecting you.’

Wreathed in smoke, the thing was huge.

Still a hundred yards away, it was a mountain of blubberous and infected flesh, riddled with maggots, oozing with creatures nameless and terrible. A great wave of stink rolled before it, decay and disease, old food and rotting bodies. It carried a huge, metal flail, chattering skulls upon rusting chains. Yet its face was lit with a smile of pure beneficence, an expression of warmth and generosity, as if they were some long-lost… Some long-lost family.

It taunted her, and she knew it.

Lumbering forwards, it shook the ground.

‘I see you’ve brought me a gift. How thoughtful.’

Its words were rich and generous, lush with corruption. The stench rose like green smoke, palpable and vile. The soldiers had stopped singing, many of them paling to ghost-white, or leaning over to retch. Some had curled into a ball; others were clawing at their faces as if the smell ate at their skin. Creatures scrambled from the thing’s body, eager to feed. They seethed over the ground.

‘Fire!’

Aliaah, her tone pure steel. The squad of Sisters held its ground. They loosed their bolters at the monster but they may as well have been shooting some vast cadaver – the wounds opened, but the monster did not seem to feel it.

‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

Dominica, furious, was still singing, her voice a paean, less harmony and more pure, focused righteousness. Mina’s carried rage, as scarlet as las-fire; Silvana’s had an edge of audaciousness that glittered like a pure-white knife.

But the thing did not care. It came forwards, shaking the stone, shedding maggots as it moved.

Arabella shouted, loud over the hymn, ‘We do not fail, we do not falter! Hold to your hope, soldiers of the Imperium! He is with you! The saint is with you, and she will bring victory!’

Shakily, the soldiers began to stand, to reach for their weapons. They tottered, but their discipline was good – as the writhe of creatures came on, they opened fire, the first tiny sparks of the conflagration. Somewhere, an officer was shouting orders.

The thing laughed, a great bass boom that seemed to echo the full length of the battlefield, flattening the last standing walls like dry sand. Shrugging off Aliaah’s assault, it came closer, like some huge and mobile groundquake. Her squad kept firing, and the thing laughed louder, rich with humour. Before it, the blasted flat was alive with viciousness, swarming with hunger. Worms and insects writhed and wriggled, squalling, but the las-fire was stronger now. Gore and fluids splashed. Voices cheered, ragged with new courage. Somewhere, someone started a hit total.

‘Three! Four!’

The humanity of it was touching, a mote as tiny as a single soldier, yet as vast as the Emperor’s Hammer. My brothers. My sisters. All across the galaxy.

The monster bellowed; Katherine stood like a statue. She had no fear, only certainty. Light blazed behind her, made of her an icon. Red flame glowed to one side and white petals to the other. Crashing the sword upon the shield, a defiant, metallic ringing, she challenged it.

‘I am Katherine! I stand in His light, in the glow of the saint herself, and I say – you will not take this world! You do not belong here, spawn of the Enemy! Begone!’

The thing eyed her and stamped forwards. It crushed one black-armoured Sister underfoot, and bared its rotted teeth to snarl at her with thick, yellow spittle. Its breath was enough to crumble her armour; to flay the very skin from her face.

She did not move.

It raised the flail, the thongs rattling like live things, twisting and hissing like serpents.

Still, she did not move.

Her Sisters cried, as one, ‘From the curse of the mutant!’

The incoming blow was immense, sending her skidding backwards, but her shield rang with a tone like a great bell, echoing out across the ruin. She heard bolters, her Sisters – both her Sisters Exemplar and the standing Sisters of her Order. She heard las-fire, the snapped orders of the still-upright officer.

The climbing kill-tally of the nameless infantryman.

Dirt billowed back and forth. Across the ground, the slithering masses of creatures were dying in smoke and stench. A flamer barked and they went up like fuel, popping as they burned. Others slumped to molten flesh and pools like acid. The steam that rose was caustic, making the soldiers pull back.

Above the Sisters, cherubim hovered, cold-eyed and lethal. If the monster affected them, they did not show it.

And the light…

Where the saint’s light touched the beast, so its flesh was beginning to burn. Curls of greasy smoke rose from its body; its skin crisped and peeled back, revealing more of the putrid organs beneath. And those organs were swelling, exploding, as if roasted by some great heat.

The flail came down again, a crashing impact that rattled Katherine’s teeth; its feet crushed another Sister even as she tried for a better shot. Katherine’s mind was filling with her vision, with those shifting, dancing boots, with the duel…

With this very shield.

You are Katherine Elysius, Katherine of the Fiery Heart. You are Our Martyred Lady, your anointed sword spills the blood of the foe, and upon your holy shield does the enemy crest and shatter.

With a great shout, she drove her sword at the monster, exactly where the light had struck it.

And the beast screamed.

It was a terrible, tearing noise, a noise that rent the sky, that shattered the ground asunder. It bowled the soldiers from their feet, made the Sisters stagger. For an instant, their hymn faltered.

But Dominica cried, ‘No! We will see this thing slain!’

And the cry was enough. The beast seemed almost to recoil. At its feet, its swathe of maggots and worms was decimated, burning. The smoke was obscuring Katherine’s vision as the monster started to falter. She struck at it again, caught another blow on her shield rim.

She cried, ‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

Aliaah echoed her, a split second later. Her squad were still firing.

Above them, the beast staggered at the barrage. Every rifle, every bolter, every voice, every warrior loosed His wrath at the foe. And the light tore deeper into the wounds, deeper into its terrible body. And where it touched, it burned, cauterising and destroying.

The monster bellowed, its outrage immense. It stamped and roared, lashing about itself with the flail. Bodies broke, flew, but still the assault did not stop.

‘Keep firing!’ The order came from Mina, her pure rage burning in her words.

Then Arabella’s cry: ‘In His name!’

The beast shrieked higher. About it, the air began to froth and twist, the smoke eddying in sucking patterns of colour.

‘Now!’ Dominica roared. ‘A morte perpetua!’

Understanding instantly, Katherine threw her full, armoured weight behind her shield and charged the beast, slamming into its burning belly. She was surely too small to knock it back, but she had the saint’s light and blessing, and His very presence, carried with her, and the thing staggered.

Furious, it brought a closed fist down on the top of her head. She had no helm, the blow should surely have shattered her skull; her head rang with impossible pain, her hymnal fell from the air. She could feel – smell – burning flesh. Her own. Blood matted her hair, flooded her eyes, ran into her mouth. But she struck the thing again, driving it backwards, slammed her shield into it bodily, over and over and over and over, knocking it back.

It squalled, like some angry child, hammered at her again, but she held her ground, her consciousness swimming. It stamped and roared, thumping the ground to both sides with the huge flail. Around it, bodies broke. Katherine’s knees were like water, but she did not fall, she struck it again, again, with shield and sword. Her Sisters opened fire, Sisters of March and Order both; the Militarum soldiers’ lasrifles chewed charred holes in its belly.

She heard Dominica’s voice, ringing as if from far away. ‘That Thou wouldst bring them only death!’

At the final word, the beast flickered. Katherine stopped, blinking, struggling to focus. The thing was fading, twisting, turning in on itself like some horrific, dark whirlpool. She felt its pull, dug the base of the shield into the bloody ground. Her cloak flapped like a live thing, as if trying to escape. Soldiers shouted as they were pulled from their feet.

But Dominica, her Sisters, Aliaah – they were still singing.

‘That Thou shouldst spare none! That Thou shouldst pardon none!’

Under their onslaught, the daemon shrieked, the sound cutting like broken glass. And Katherine joined her voice to the final line.

‘We beseech Thee, destroy them!’

With the detonation of a falling citadel, the thing was gone.

Staggered by the sudden lack of resistance, she almost fell. Dominica caught her elbow.

‘Stand, Sister.’

Katherine could not see, but stayed on her feet.

Arabella said, in the vox, ‘You do not let them see you fall, Sister. No matter the battle, no matter your injury, you remain their icon.’

‘Bear the pain,’ Lucia said.

‘Aliaah!’ That was Mina’s voice. ‘Report!’

‘Three of my squad have attained His grace,’ the Sister Superior said. ‘But the onslaught of creatures is defeated. They cannot be, it seems, without their master.’

‘That is well,’ Silvana answered. ‘We have taken the battle to the beast, and we are victorious, but the force is still lingering, and another commander may yet rise. We should return to the camp, re-form.’

Katherine’s knees shook, her head pounded with a pain like she’d never known. Her ears rang, her skin still burned.

‘Walk,’ Dominica said. ‘As the tales have taught you. We are the Triumph of Saint Katherine, and we return with victory.’

Cheering.

Her hair matted with blood and slime and water, her face filthy, her sword and shield and armour covered in the gore of the monster, Katherine returned to the camp. With her, her Sisters, bearing the saint in glory, and her Sisters of the Order, their weariness tangible. With her also, the walking survivors of three infantry platoons, many of them bearing injured comrades.

The vox had cleared, its hissing mockery gone.

‘Major Haro,’ Dominica had said. ‘We have slain the beast. We cannot claim that the battle is over – there is a long fight yet ahead of us, and the Treatise has yet to be retrieved. But we have achieved our objective – the monster is dead. In His name.’

‘In His name,’ the major had replied.

And the Jaguar was there to meet them, sinking to one knee as they came back to the campsite. Around him were the men and women of his company, still not the parade ground muster that Katherine had half expected, but battered and weary figures, their armour dirty but their camo-streaked faces alight with celebration and new hope. They followed their commander’s lead and their voices were raised in song: the hard, marching hymnal of the fighting Militarum.

Among them, she saw the face of the young man from the previous night – how had it only been yesterday? Despite the pain, Katherine caught his eye and gave him the faintest smile. Overcome, he lowered his head, offered her the sign of the aquila.

The major came back to his feet.

‘Ave Imperator,’ he said.

Her knees like water, the pounding of her skull like some great, hollow drum, Katherine wanted only to rest the weight of the shield on the ground. Her arm pained her where it had taken the blows of the beast, her stomach still churned with its smell.

But she stood upright. Within her gauntlet, the tiny steel pin of Lucia’s ring reminded her – the pain tells you that you yet live, that you fight on.

Beside her, Dominica said, ‘Tend to your wounded, major. But remain vigilant. Though the enemy is headless, it may yet strike back.’

‘Truly, Sisters,’ Haro said. ‘You have brought us great honour.’

‘But not yet victory,’ Silvana told him. ‘Come the darkness, or come the dawn, there will be another battle.’

Katherine was almost tottering. Fluids were still seeping down her face, though her wounds no longer hurt. She could see the beast in her mind’s eye, towering and terrible, but it burned, burned at the touch of the light. And that light was tumbling through convent windows, slants of blessing on a flagstone floor.

‘There is always,’ Haro observed, ‘another battle.’

‘Truly,’ Katherine said. The word came from her, yet it also seemed to sound across years without number. Across centuries, across millennia. Across every tale she’d heard, across Wars of Faith, across a galaxy entire. In the buzz of her concussion, it echoed from convents ancient, from Sisters lost and slain, from memories like soldiers, ranks upon ranks, stretching back into history.

From the figure at their forefront that was Talan, blessed at last.

They do not die in vain.

Their billion voices spoke, flowing through her like a conduit.

‘We are His faithful,’ she said. ‘Wherever the enemy lingers, there we shall be. Wherever xenos rise, we shall put them down. Wherever witch or psyker threatens the Imperium, we shall tear out their corruption by the roots.’ She paused, her eyes closed, swaying. In her mind, the image wavered and then refocused: a flagstone floor, six Sisters kneeling.

The convent at San Loer.

And it was not overwhelming this time. It felt almost like home.

In the image, one of the figures turned, touched her with a smile.

‘And would we,’ Saint Katherine said, ‘praise Him any other way?’

About the Author

Danie Ware is the author of the novel The Triumph of Saint Katherine, the novellas The Bloodied Rose, Wreck and Ruin, The Rose in Anger and several short stories all featuring the Sisters of Battle. She lives in Carshalton, South London, with her son and two cats, and has long-held interests in role-playing, re-enactment, vinyl art toys and personal fitness.

An extract from The Book of Martyrs.

The creature squealed as it died, talons raking the air.

Sister Ishani crushed it with her bare fist, grinding the insect into the wood until it ceased squirming. Another roe-grub. Why did the brothers find it so difficult to keep the Throne-damned things from escaping? The size of a child’s hand, the roe-grub had upset a pot of ink over her transcripts, typing a trail of black dots as it sought to escape. Again, Ishani hammered the lifeless insect. The grub had been ripe for harvesting, possibly mislaid on its way to the processing cells. A burst of protein-rich eggs spotted the ink, tiny moons in a sea of black.

Snatching a rag, she wiped the flattened insect from the butt of her fist, then mopped at the ruined pages, the fruit of two hours’ labour. She cursed and scrunched the whole mess into a ball, then hurled it at the door of her chamber. She grabbed the stool and hurled that too, hearing it shatter.

Ishani gripped the lectern, puffs of breath misting the air. She wrapped her coarse robes more tightly around her, her bare feet freezing upon the flagstones. She ached, her body starved of sleep as yet another ponderous boom rattled the ceiling. Candles quivered, huddled in their alcoves. Her black power armour shivered on its rack, a headless apparition hovering before the altar.

Only one more week and we’ll have cleared the meteor field, Ishani thought. Only one more hour until morning vigil. She cursed again.

Her transcripts had been ruined, but she still had her notes. She gathered them from the shelf overlooking the lectern. The pages were lined with tangled script, scribbled by candlelight upon waking.

The last dream had been over a month ago, though its clarity remained undiminished. This time the skies were charcoal smoke. The horizon seethed with enemies, Heretic Astartes this time, a howling tide of blood and brass. Again, Battle Sisters stood beside her, expressions blazing with rapture, voices soaring in prayer. The foe met them, as it always did, and glorious combat ensued. This time it concluded with the sweep of an axe and Ishani awoke from death yet again, panting, sweating, ecstatic.

Visions were commonplace among the Sisterhood, whether beheld awake or in dreams, but Ishani had never heard her Sisters speak of any as detailed as these. When making her notes she found she could recall unfamiliar names, entire hymns, locations of battles that could only have been fought aeons ago. The station’s libraries were dominated by agricultural grimoires and harvest catalogs. She had no way of confirming whether the names in her transcripts correlated to any in recorded history.

She whispered to herself. ‘With my hand in yours shall I cross the bridgeless gulf.’ She thumbed the string of beads at her waist until she found her rosarius, the metal icon of the Orders Hospitaller. ‘To every sign of your guidance, though mine eyes be plucked from mine head, I shall be not blind.’

Ishani took her almanac from the plinth where she had set it between two candles. She had hoped to spend the half-hour before noctis precatio stitching this morning’s transcription into the spine. Soon the book would be ready for submission to Ophelia VII, to the Librarium Apostolicae of the Convent Sanctorum.

Her almanac was small enough to be carried snug in a pouch on her belt, but one day the Orders Dialogi would decant its testaments into huge tomes, decorate each page with gilded marginalia. Copies would find their way onto worlds throughout the galaxy, to battlefields far from here. Such renown would surely earn the author a new commission, a place where her talents could be utilised to the best possible benefit of the Sisterhood.

Ishani enjoyed the smoothness of the worn leather cover as she turned to the title page.

The Visions of Sister Ishani.

She traced the whirl that formed the base of the ‘I’. It looped and knitted with the tail of the ‘n’, then descended to form a mantel of elaborate swirls upon which her name was presented.

She heard the drone of an approaching grav-motor and slipped the book into the pocket of her robe. She was stashing her notes in a satchel when Borvo fluttered through a dripping access pipe in the wall. The cyber-cherub carried a wooden tray filled with clinking phials retrieved from the formularium. He set the tray before her chirurgeon’s tools with a bow, the little motor in his back whirring beneath dove wings.

‘Borvo, attendos,’ she said.

The cherub turned, lenses gleaming in a plump little face.

‘You have returned early. Did you deliver this week’s formulae to the praedium masters as I ordered?’

His bald patch peeked through honey-blond curls as he nodded, then drifted about the chamber in search of his next task.

‘Borvo, I do not need you every blasted second of every day. I shall have that homing sensor of yours removed. When the tech-priests next sanctify your cogitator, I shall ask them to– Leave that be!’

Ishani shooed him as he made to tidy away the crumpled parchments on the floor.

‘Borvo, desist.’

The cherub obediently retreated to a dark corner of the ceiling. He gripped the crushed remains of the roe-grub in a tiny fist, his motor chugging as he examined it.

‘Borvo, put that down! Somnos, you little bastard! Somnos, now!’

The mashed insect plopped into her water jug as Borvo descended into the alcove above her bed. He folded his little wings, chubby arms crossed in the sign of the aquila as he nestled, becoming a waxen gargoyle. Seeing him there, she reflected that he would almost certainly have been present when the previous Hospitaller had died. Ishani pictured the cherub in his alcove above the bed, attending his former mistress with swirls of incense, hymns crackling from the voxmitter in his belly as he watched the wrinkled lips of Ishani’s predecessor finally breathe their last.

She grabbed her copy of the Compendious Imperialis Dyetry of Health and flung it at the cherub. The book bounced off his skull with an iron clang.

Another meteor resounded miles above, then another. Dust hissed from the ceiling.

Sister Hamanda burst into her room.

‘You are needed, Sister Hospitaller. It’s Father Tollund.’

She found him lying at the edge of the metal platform, facing one of a thousand lanes of gnarlfruit bushes that disappeared into the hissing fog. He looked as though he were napping, his dark robes covering him like a blanket. Ishani knelt beside him, her white tabard soaking red. She glanced up at the command spire beside them. It must have been some forty feet tall, high enough to survey the outlying acreage. Its black needle pricked the glaring lumens that lined the ceiling of the praedium. A window near its apex stood open.

Father Tollund’s face was pale but untouched, preserving the haunted expression Ishani had seen when he met with her two weeks ago, when he had asked for something to help him sleep. His eyes were now even more bruised and imploring; his wheezing breath sucked shadows into his cheeks.

‘Father, can you hear me?’ she said.

Borvo hovered at the monk’s head, tiny fingers forming the wings of the aquila. An ancient voxcording warbled a benediction from his belly-grille, an appeal for life intoned by a voice long dead. Father Tollund groaned and shifted, a sound like broken crockery rasping under his robes. Borvo handed his mistress a small pair of shears.

‘Be upon us, God-Emperor.’ She spoke quickly, slicing open the dark, wet robes. ‘Clothe thy faithful servant in your light.’

Father Tollund stared, hardly blinking as his sunken eyes filled with moisture.

‘Did none of you think to turn off the irrigation?’ Crouched beside Ishani, bolter slung, Sister Hamanda barked at the young monks who had found their Praedium Master during their morning round. They were a skittish group of novice agricolae who had retreated the moment the Sisters had arrived. ‘Would you have your master drown before we can save him?’

They clutched at one another’s robes, eyes wide, babbling prayers, quailing like children. Father Tollund had treated his charges with a kindness far greater than many of the Praedium Masters. One of the boys eventually gathered his skirts and hurried away, his sandals clapping as he stumbled up the metal stairs inside the command spire.

Ishani squinted through the heavy lens that replaced her left eye, a souvenir from the Battle of Grudgehaven. She felt the augmetics whir in her socket, transforming Father Tollund into a molten blue phantom, then pulsing red filigree, then a ghostly wreckage of bones. Augur reticules swarmed like bees, stacking columns of data-screed.

<Primary augur scan detects no sign of malefic corruption.>

<Primary imbalance – sanguine.>

<Calculating horoscopic prognosis…>

She peeled back a section of Father Tollund’s robe. The old man’s chest was a heaving patchwork of purple, black and yellow, his ribs bowed high on one side, tight as knuckles.

<Eight venous ruptures detected, as follows…>

Ishani bowed her head, touching the fleur-de-lys upon her bandeau, sending a thought command to the chirurgeon’s tools mounted upon her backpack.

‘Machine-spirit, ever faithful, be about thy sacred work. Help me deliver him from death.’ She added, ‘From a death most undeserved.’

The chirurgeon’s arm extended over her shoulder, a metal spider-leg, soundless, joints wetted with sacred oils. The hypo-awl at its tip retracted, replaced with a blade and stitching clamp. A gust of scalding steam purified them both before the arm went to work on Father Tollund’s crooked left arm.

The novices were approaching, muddy sandals slapping the steps onto the metal platform. She could hear them whispering, prayers punctuated with gasps of horror. She realised the irrigation had finally been shut off, the mist settling to reveal roaming servitors and distant iron walls.

‘Reverend Mother, will he live?’ The boy had returned from the command spire.

Hamanda snarled. ‘Boy, that is for your God-Emperor to decide.’

‘Have faith, brother,’ Ishani said.

The boy nodded with a shiver, then knelt in prayer.

<Multiple fragmentum detected in fibulus, tibea, patellae, femura, transervic column, pelvic arch–>

She dismissed the diagnosis with a thought. Father Tollund’s legs were bags of matchwood, along with most of the hip and spine. Nothing the tech-priests could not remedy, if she could but stabilise him and get him in stasis.

<Splenetic rupture detected.>

She had already seen it. The bruising below the ribs was almost black.

<Haemorrhage ongoing.>

Her lens whirred. A splintered rib had punctured the spleen, tearing it like a wineskin. Completely unsalvageable.

<Organ unsalvageable.>

Ishani whisked the robes aside, revealing the glistening nest of bones that had once been Father Tollund’s legs. One of the boys wilted, dropping to the floor with a clang.

‘Did he hit his head?’ Ishani called without looking up. She was pressing the sensor-pad of her armoured thumb along the artery inside Father Tollund’s swollen thigh, detecting where the pulse was strongest. An intravenous route to the spleen would reduce the risk of infection.

‘The Sister Hospitaller asked you a question, boy,’ Hamanda roared.

‘No,’ came a voice.

‘Then raise his legs,’ called Ishani. ‘Keep him lying down. He’ll awake in a minute.’

Her chirurgeon’s tools had already sealed several ruptured arteries, stitching them with synth-thread barely visible to the naked eye. The metal arm switched tools, now feeding a line of pseudo-vitae into a mended vein. Father Tollund was shaking his head, murmuring and sobbing.

Ishani squeezed a sensor in her gauntlet, releasing a sickle the size of a tooth from a groove in her armoured finger. Its blade gleamed with blessed counterseptic.

<Splenetic exsanguination must be properly stemmed.>

A thick dark jet sprang from her incision, spattering her ebony breastplate. She heard another boy drop to the ground. Another hiss of steam purified a wire-thin servo-tube released from the vambrace medicae she wore on her forearm. Father Tollund shifted weakly as she fed the tube into his spitting artery, stemming the wound with a wad of anointed cloth. Manipulating the tiny dials near the vambrace’s screen, she guided the tube up through the vein, towards the stricken organ.

<Patient calculated to expire in less than two minutes.>

‘Hamanda, keep him still. He’s trying to crawl away.’

The Sister Superior leered as she pressed down on Father Tollund’s shoulders. Her canines gleamed through the scar that mangled one side of her mouth. ‘Is our company not to his liking?’

Ishani bit her lip, voicing a silent prayer. God-Emperor grant me patience to endure the Sisters of the Valorous Heart and their morbid sense of humour.

‘He probably doesn’t even know he’s injured,’ Ishani said. ‘He has taken some form of anodyne. Most likely before he jumped.’

‘What kind of anodyne?’

<Blood analysis complete – anodyne distilled from ‘bile berry’ liquor, combined with proteins from station-unique fungi. Designation – ‘nephenthine’.>

‘The same anodyne you confiscated from those novices in Praedium Sigma last week,’ Ishani said. ‘The quartermaster told me another six bottles have gone missing from the formularium.’

Hamanda hissed. ‘When will these mewling weaklings listen?’ She considered Father Tollund, then yelled over her shoulder at the novices. ‘Look well, brothers! For here lies the cost of a night of untroubled dreams!’

‘Had he taken a full dose it would have killed him outright.’ Ishani teased the dials, watching the screen on her wrist. ‘It’s slowing his heart, but I must deal with this first.’

Broken fingers seized Ishani’s wrist.

‘Stop!’ Father Tollund gasped, shaking with effort. ‘Please!’ His eyes searched Ishani’s, just as they had done weeks ago, begging her to end his torment.

Hamanda snatched his hand away, but the old man thrashed, straining the wire in his thigh.

‘No more,’ he cried. ‘No more!’ The novices wailed as their master’s voice rose to an anguished shriek. Ishani felt something like a blade twist in her belly.

<Heart approaching seizure-level.>

‘Borvo, coercere!’

Servo-muscles bulged in the cherub’s stout arms as he helped Hamanda pin Father Tollund. Ishani thumbed the tube’s release switch. The screen on her vambrace displayed a wad of membrane expelled into the splenic artery.

<Embolisation deployed.>

<Splenetic haemorrhage plugged.>

<Tube retracting.>

<Praise be to the never-failing light of the Throne.>

Father Tollund convulsed, gagged.

<Heart seizure. Blockage in artery majoris.>

His heartbeat had fallen to a quiver, his brain in spasm as it fought for oxygen. Ishani thumbed another sensor in her gauntlet. A small hypo-awl sprang from her vambrace.

<Unexpected fibrillation caused by presence of anodyne.>

She thrust the needle between broken ribs. The canister hissed, sinking a yellow elixir into the artery beside Father Tollund’s floundering heart. The old man stiffened, teeth grinding like broken slate as his tortured muscles were set ablaze by the tonic, a cordial of vigour anointed with a single tear from a weeping statue of Saint Lucia.

‘God-Emperor,’ cried Ishani. ‘Medicae of man’s salvation, deliver this man – this goodly, faithful soul – so that he may continue to enact thy word!’

<Heart rate stabilised.>

<Cranial scan detects blood-starvation and presence of anodyne in southern lobe.>

<Brain activity now below levels required for Imperial service.>

<Commend body to stasis pending re-assignment by resident Mechanicus.>

<Blessed be the servo-skull.>

<For death shall curb not the cherished duties of the faithful.>

Ishani dismissed the data-screed and clasped Father Tollund’s head, pressing his brow to her own. Her voice was a hoarse whisper.

‘Twice now have I failed you, father.’ She struggled to steady her words. ‘Peace is the very least I owe you.’

There came a gasp from the novice kneeling behind her as she drew her bolt pistol. She choked as she whispered the litany.

‘Faithful adept, I commend thy soul to the eternal light of the Throne.’

The angry bark of a single explosive round rolled across the furrows, echoing about the praedium walls.

‘Cease your whimpering!’ Hamanda grabbed the novice cowering behind Ishani and shoved him towards the others. ‘The departure of your master’s soul demands not childish tears but solemn reflection.’

Ishani replaced Father Tollund’s robes, covering the sprayed head as best she could. Something clinked in his pocket and she retrieved two unbroken phials of black liquid; one of them was half empty, missing a mouthful.

Two weeks ago, she had been on her way to the station’s hospice when Father Tollund caught her arm. He begged her for something to ease his nightmares, to banish the dread that haunted his waking hours. She knew him to be a man of sensitive mien, fond of his many ailments. She had told him she would send him a phial of reeksmilk, a sweet-tasting placebo she had administered once or twice while stationed on the hive world of Grudgehaven. She had told him she was needed at the hospice, urgently. That much was true, but she also needed to clear her duties before cycle’s end if she were to attend to her almanac that night.

The book nestled in its pouch at the small of her back. She could sense its weight through her power armour and felt a sudden, awful impulse to cast the book into the mud.

She should have arranged with Father Tollund an hour’s confession, a guided prayer. She could have recommended any number of litanies to help ease his mind.

‘Louder, brothers!’ Hamanda was prowling before the novices. She had them on their knees, hands clasped in terrified prayer. ‘The God-Emperor has found your faith wanting, your devotions insufficient!’

Ishani sighed and got to her feet. ‘Borvo, take these.’

The cherub took the bottles of nephenthine and secured them in a pouch at his belt.

‘Fetch the servitors from the wagon. See Father Tollund safely on board. Recite for him the Litany of Rest. All of it! Use songwind powder for the incense. Intellego?’

Borvo bobbed and departed.

‘Your appointed guardians are the Adepta Sororitas!’ Hamanda continued her address with all the ferocity of a canoness on training duty. ‘The Sisters of Battle, most devout of the God-Emperor’s servants! Clearly, brothers, you are ignorant of the honour bestowed upon you. Why else would you so consistently ignore our counsel?’

‘Sister Superior?’ Ishani said.

Hamanda continued. ‘You tell us the meteor impacts topside prevent you from sleeping, that in your waking hours you are prey to some nameless dread that not even prayer can dispel. And we explain that nothing shall addle the mind more thoroughly than lack of slumber. We explain that this moon shall clear the meteor field within the next six cycles, after which all who reside within this burrow shall sleep soundly once more. In the meantime, we promise you that prayer shall dispel all distractions, that devotion alone shall ease you into sleep, and instead you seek heretical routes to oblivion.’

A couple of the novices exchanged fearful glances.

‘It is clear that you require greater discipline.’

‘Sister?’

One of the novices squealed as Hamanda seized him by the robe and flung him to the ground. ‘If prayer cannot focus your attention, then perhaps an example of punishment shall suffice!’

The boy clasped his hands, gabbling an entreaty as Hamanda advanced.

‘Brothers of the Sanctus Laurea,’ cried Ishani. ‘The Sister Superior is quite right. And I believe there is nothing in the liturgy of your order more conducive to focus than your Invocation of Rebirth? Verse four hundred and twelve, I believe. “Through ritual toil shall He rise from the Throne restored.”’

The novices fumbled for the verse, stifling sobs. Hamanda stood aside, her breathing tight as Ishani ushered the whimpering boy back to his brothers. Their murmured prayers continued as the Sisters retreated discreetly.

Hamanda growled. ‘Sister, this station is not a nursery.’

‘Nor is it a battlefield,’ Ishani said. ‘Attempts to bully them shall only make matters worse.’

‘You believe cosseting them is the answer? Ishani, fear continues to fester among them. They are too weak to resist!’

‘Exactly,’ Ishani said. ‘They are not Sororitas. They are not warriors. They are agri-cultists who know nothing of life but toil and prayer. They cannot be expected to possess our discipline, Hamanda. What they need is our care.’

Ishani looked away, distracted. ‘And our full attention.’

The servitors were lifting Father Tollund’s dripping remains onto a wooden stretcher. Hamanda leaned close.

‘Things will only get worse now they know our communications are down.’

‘What do you mean? How long have they known that?’

‘I heard a couple of the masters talking, Benedict and Aylmere. They know our astropaths have been silent for weeks. They know we’ve been unable to reach our neighbours on the other moons. I told them I’d see them both executed for heresy if they spoke of it again.’

‘Any word from the Basilica? Any idea when we’ll regain contact with the other stations?’

Hamanda smirked. ‘You’ve seen our astropaths. The two of them are older than Holy Terra. Barely fit for purpose at the best of times. I’m told their every attempt to relay a message still puts them in agony.’

‘Then perhaps Palatine Gundred needs to give them time to rest properly. Pushing them to make another attempt before their delirium has passed will only make matters worse. I’ve told her this several times now. She is stubborn beyond reason.’

Hamanda stifled a grin. ‘Conviction is often mistaken for stubbornness,’ she said. ‘Especially by the impatient, Sister Hospitaller.’ Hamanda’s mirth was infuriating. She continued. ‘It is as the Palatine has said all along. Storms in the warp. Such gaps in communication are only to be expected when we’re this close to the Rift.’

The servitors were loading Father Tollund onto the wagon. Borvo hovered above them, casting little handfuls of sacred dust.

Hamanda spoke again. ‘Yet in the meantime, more blood shall be spilled before this moon clears the meteor field. Yesterday, did you not tend two agricolae who had been at each other’s throats? Those men were on the brink of murder, driven mad by lack of sleep.’

The novices still sang, eyes tight shut, huddled together, rows of grey shrubs framing them like the bars of a prison.

‘Ishani,’ Hamanda said. ‘Without their master to guide them, these boys shall fall prey to their own fears. Unless we make them fear us more. It is a greater kindness, Sister. Rumour shall grow to panic, then heresy shall ensue, unless we bring them to heel. Now!’

Another boom rolled about the hall like thunder. Girders groaned like slumbering gods. Sobs faltered the brothers’ prayers.

‘Ishani? Sister?’

‘Brothers,’ Ishani said, approaching. ‘The God-Emperor understands your fears. He too grieves for your loss.’

She knelt before them. A dozen haunted faces stared back at her, unnerved by her closeness.

‘Yet He would have you know that fear unrestrained is a malady most grievous. How then do we curb this infection?’

She lifted the chin of the only boy who looked away. His eyes were sacks of pain, crystal grey beneath a glaze of tears.

‘Duty,’ she told him. ‘Duty is proof against all horrors.’

The eyes of the others had become intent. She saw sparks of expectancy, desperation, relief, blessed relief, every face brightening with hope. It was a look with which she had grown familiar when tending the sickbeds of Grudgehaven, looks of pain lifting in realisation that deliverance was at hand. Ishani recalled her pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Argent Shroud, where she received the armour of her first assigned Order.

Among your Sisters, you are especially blessed, Hospitaller, the canoness preceptor had told her. For wherever you may go in this galaxy, you bring with you the healing light of the God-Emperor Himself. There is nowhere in His Imperium where you will not be welcomed, not a soul under His creed who will not be glad to see you. It had not been long ago that she had been reassigned, and traded Argent Shroud silver for Valorous Heart black. It was not all she felt she had lost.

‘Each of us shall perform their appointed task,’ Ishani told the brothers. ‘Their Throne-given duty, through death, disease and distraction, brother and Battle Sister shall stand firm.’

The boys were nodding, even smiling.

‘Our duties make martyrs of us all.’ Ishani laughed. ‘Would you not agree, Sister of the Valorous Heart?’

Hamanda’s eyes tightened as she nodded. ‘Aye, Reverend Mother.’

Ishani continued. ‘For in duty we protect not only ourselves, brothers.’ She recalled a cherished line from her almanac, recorded from a dream she had had of a Repentia Superior leading a doomed charge.

‘Our faith is not only in Him, but in each other. Only in duty is the miraculous made possible.’

The boy with grey eyes looked away.

‘You are troubled still, brother?’

‘Reverend Mother, I grieve for our master’s soul. For will he not be damned for making an end of himself, for deserting his duty? Has he not willingly sinned against the Throne?’

Ishani made the sign of the aquila as she spoke. ‘In the name of the Throne, do I absolve him.’ She rose. ‘Your master was not the one at fault.’

Hamanda watched Ishani as she departed for the wagon.

More thunder followed.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Alexander Mokhov.

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ISBN: 978-1-80407-152-6

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.