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Cover

Iron and Bone - James Swallow

Bonus Material #1

Bonus Material #2

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Sisters of Battle: The Omnibus’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Iron & Bone

James Swallow

Light moved around the cabin, lensed through an oval window in the steely hull of the Mournful, passing over Sister Verity as the ship moved from deep orbit. The weak white sunlight wandered over the cluttered interior, over the hospitaller, over the walls, and seemed to dwell a moment as it illuminated her burden - the small, pewter-grey chest on the common area's only table.

Verity peered out from beneath her armoured coif, and squinted to see the surface of the planet Senexis through the portal. Her amber eyes were no longer as sharp as they had been, but the brass-framed optics clipped to her hood served to keep her vision serviceable. The world ahead of the Mournful was hazed in powder-grey fog the colour of the hospitaller's hair, and the only sign from orbit that the planet was occupied was the spear-like tips of hive towers poking through the cloud cover. Lights blinked hazard-orange down there, each one signifying the site of a megaplex arcology city. An observer could have almost believed that Senexis was at peace, but the clouds concealed the truth. Here, out on the fringes of the Ultima Segmentum, there was strife.

It was the universal constant, Verity reflected, that where humankind walked, conflict soon followed. Down there, hidden from her gaze and the sunlight alike, blood was being shed.

She blinked, her optics obediently reacting, retracting into her hood, and took a slow inhalation of greasy shipboard air. The passage of the decades weighed heavily on the Sister, her once winsome features and slight build worn down by the years of service to the Imperial Church. Verity's face was a map of creases and lines, each the signifier of her duty. Her tired eyes had seen so much, across so many different worlds and battlegrounds. Her hands, bony and thinned by time, had preserved life over and over again as she ministered to the wounded of the Adepta Sororitas, the Sisters of Battle. Her brown-trimmed robes, stitched with the sacred text of the Order of Serenity, had shrouded her from heat and cold alike, across the uncountable leagues of the Church's great and ceaseless crusade against the witch, the heretic, the mutant and the alien.

She seemed small and insignificant in the confined spaces of the transport ship's cabin, and indeed, many had made the mistake of considering Verity as thus in years past.

A familiar tension unfolded in her chest, and she scowled. The expression of annoyance would have been very familiar to the novices whom she had taught in her Order's Convent Primaris, as Verity was a stern tutor as much as a fair one. The medicae gauntlet about her left forearm contained dozens of philtres and balms, any one of which she could have edited to use on herself; but she chose not to, as the tension grew, becoming a pain, a sharp ache. The Sister Hospitaller had always resisted the thought of medicating herself, just as she had rejected the lure of the regenerative juvenat treatments favoured by some ranking members of the Ecclesiarchy, relying instead on her own fortitude to keep her ills at bay. But it was becoming harder to do so.

The ache grew and she admitted defeat, reaching for a silk kerchief, pressing it to her mouth. The wracking cough she was expecting arrived on schedule, and for a brief moment it shook her slender body. Then, with blessed relief, it waned. Verity dared to peek at the kerchief and saw spots of blood soaking into the molecular weave.

No better, no worse, she thought. Verity had come to accept that status quo, telling herself that the Emperor would protect, and He would keep her whole for as long as was needed for His works to be done.

Only in death does duty end, so went the oath, and her duty had some distance to go before it was completed.

'Are you unwell, mamzel?'

Verity's head jerked up, making her wince from the pain caused by the sudden motion. She hadn't heard Telfer and his rodent enter the cabin, but now there they were - the pilot in his grubby ship-suit smiling his constant, too-wide smile, with the thick-bodied, augmented dock rat he kept as a companion animal.

'Travel fatigues me, Ser Telfer,' she lied.

'Water, mamzel?' He offered her a squeeze-bulb of fluid, and she reluctantly accepted it, wary of the rat as it eyed her from where it perched on Telfer's shoulder.

Verity didn't like the way the man used honorifics; she couldn't be sure if he was mocking her. Pandora would never have let a layman get away with such behaviour, she thought, recalling the acerbic Battle Sister of her acquaintance. She'd show him her chainblade and remind him of his place!

Then the memory curdled in her mind. No. Not Pandora. She was thinking of Sister Marcia. Or was it Danae? The face of the woman she tried to recall became as hazy as the Senexis sky, and the more Verity tried to hold on to the recollection, the more it crumbled. Within moments, it was gone entirely.

'Sister Hospitaller?' Telfer stepped closer, cocking his head. 'Who are you talking to?'

Verity abruptly realised that she had been mumbling her thoughts out loud, and she covered the moment with a sip of the brackish water. Her mind was prone to wandering these days, and in a scholam classroom that might be permitted, but out here on a mission, it would not.

She gave back the squeeze-bulb. 'When do we arrive at the central hive-plex?'

'Thirty metrics to go,' buzzed the rat, the words coming from the vocoder implanted in the back of its distended skull. The creature had mnemonic rods in its brain that uplifted it to a level of rudimentary intelligence and allowed it to link into the noospheric information matrix. Verity found it distasteful, aware of the cyborg animal's constant attention on her.

Telfer smiled that big smile of his, and his tone was in danger of becoming patronising. 'We'll get you there on time, fret not. But if I am honest. Sister, I have to wonder why a woman of your... advanced years... would willingly wish to come to Senexis. It's well past its prime.'

'Dull like latrine-flow,' offered the rat.

There was some truth in the pilot's words. In the heady days of the 29th millennium, Senexis had gone through a renaissance of sorts, after being designated Mausoleum Valorum by the High Lords of Terra. For a few centuries, this minor shrine world had been a fixture on the salvation routes out of Hexos and the Sable Marches, but those times were long past. Senexis had fallen out of fashion with the pilgrim fleets, its people turning inward, turning poisonous. For the last four hundred and six years, the planet had been dealing with an internal religious schism which the greater minds of the Ecclesiarchy had decided to allow the locals to solve.

Verity had been briefed on the situation before embarking on her mission; it boiled down to a disagreement over a passage in a Senexian devotional text from the Age of Apostasy. The text spoke of a saint - the Holy Lady Mandé, most likely - who had visited the planet and executed several miracles. But the text's author had been unspecific as to exactly where the saint had performed these wonders, and two different factions on Senexis claimed dominion over those events, along with the attendant glory that went with them. Vehement disagreement had boiled over into wars of assassination, proxy battles and low-level skirmishes that continued to this day. That the conflict had been allowed to continue without interference from Holy Terra spoke to the insignificance of Senexis on the galactic Imperial stage.

'Are you here because of this, mamzel?' Telfer approached the table, reaching out to touch the pewter chest. 'Is that the reason for your pilgrimage?'

'All secret-like unseen,' added the rat. 'Something tasty in box.'

Verity could almost smell the avarice coming off the pilot. She moved to stand in his way, stiff and wooden in her motions. 'That is not for you to ask, Ser Telfer. You are being paid to ferry me from the Mandeville point, no more.'

'I merely ask as I am concerned for your wellbeing, Sister...' He paused, as if thinking. 'Sister Verity, isn't it? I do my best to take care of my passengers.'

'You know my name?' Had she mentioned it to Telfer after they disembarked from the warp ship that had brought her to this system? Verity searched her memory, but she couldn't recall.

'You told me,' said the pilot. 'Remember?' He grinned. 'A good name, good name. I once knew someone who took it when they transitioned. It's in the Book of Heroes, so it is.'

'I didn't want them to add it,' Verity replied, without thinking.

Telfer's face fell. 'What say you...?' She realised too late that she had said more than she meant to. The pilot's eyes widened. 'Wait, say not. You're not... You're not her, are you?'

'Sister Hospitaller Verity Catena of the Order of Serenity,' buzzed the rat-voice, drawing information from the archives. 'Honour-Known of Sanctuary 101, Meseda Quintus, the Nomad Moons, Cadia's Shame—'

'Make it stop talking, if you please,' Verity snapped, in her tutor's manner. 'All those things happened a long time ago.'

Telfer's conduct transformed in an instant. His oily, calculating behaviour became deferential and courteous. 'Forgive, forgive, honoured Sister. I was not aware my humble ship was carrying an Anointed Heroine of the Imperium.' He gave a nervous chuckle. 'Someone should have told me! I'd have given you a belter cabin for starters!'

She eyed him. 'Do you have any better accommodation on this craft?'

The Mournful was a ship that even a generous critic would have struggled to call 'functional'.

'Well, no,' he admitted. 'But I would have put some cushions in there, or something... It's the least I could do for a Heroine of the—'

'I am not a heroine,' she broke in, silencing him. Verity picked up the metal case and moved away. 'I... I merely served in the presence of heroines.'

Verity retreated to her tiny quarters as the Mournful altered trajectory and began its descent to the surface. Securing the case on a magno-plate, she strapped into her acceleration couch, and glanced across the cramped space to where her travelling companion was half-concealed by shadows.

'You spoke to the pilot?' Miriya did not meet Verity's gaze, lost in the counting of the beads on her devotional chaplet, the brass aquila icon at the end of the chain swinging as the ship moved.

'He's an unctuous sort,' noted Verity. 'I don't wish to be in his presence any longer than I have to be.'

Miriya nodded. The Battle Sister was a hard-edged shape in the gloom, the lines and curves of her power armour capturing any stray light. A former Celestian Eloheim of the Order of Our Martyred Lady reduced in rank to a line warrior, Miriya was the hospitaller's closest and most trusted friend. Fierce where Verity was calm, quick where she was careful, the two women had kept each other alive and whole - in spirit and in body - over more missions than she could recall.

The warrior's hand went through her sable hair, and Verity caught sight of the blood-crimson fleur-de-lys icon tattooed on her cheek, bright against her smooth, pale skin. 'There's still time,' she said. 'You can turn back, step down from this assignment. You've earned that right.'

'No.' The cough seemed to sense Verity's hesitation, and the damned thing twitched in her throat. She swallowed it before it could form. 'I will see it through. I am not so infirm that I cannot still serve.'

'I would never suggest otherwise.' Miriya paused for a moment. 'Very well, then. Prepare yourself. The landing may take a toll on you, Sister.'

'How old do you think I am?' Verity retorted drily. 'I've weathered daemons, xenos, witchery and worse, I won't collapse under something as commonplace as gravity.'

'It's my duty to watch over you,' Miriya replied. 'In all things.'

Verity had a riposte for that, but then the Mournful entered the zone of atmospheric interface and the ship began to rattle and scream, so loud that any words she might utter would have been unheard.

She locked her eyes on the steel case, watching it shudder in place along with the walls and the deck plates.

The landing became an extended series of atonal metallic noises, screeches and howls, bellowing hoots and more from the vessel's tortured hull. When the thrusters finally fell silent, Verity felt as if she had been forced to endure a Martian binaric opera on maximum volume, and her ears still rang. She pointedly ignored Miriya's offer of a hand up, instead gathering the metal case to her and striding out.

Telfer and his rat tried to engage Verity in conversation once more at the top of the Mournful's debarkation ramp, but the hospitaller cut that short by speaking a blessing to him from the Book of Fanes. That appeared to mollify the pilot, who bowed low to the deck as the hospitaller and the Battle Sister walked on, into the humid air of the day.

Even from the pads of the space port, the monuments of Senexis were visible. Ahead of them, some twenty kilometres distant, the vast central spire of the planet's primus hive city rose up and up into the thick cloud base. Flyers and loaders flitted around in the misty atmosphere, suspended on whistling anti-gravs, moving in lines like airborne highways. Between the port perimeter and the outer bastions of the primus hive, domes and minarets of yellow-grey ranged away towards the horizon in all directions. At first glance, one might have thought that the buildings of Senexis were all carved out of the same shade of sandstone-like material, but moving closer, the truth of the architecture was revealed.

As far as the eye could see, the steeples and cupolas, the donjons and turrets, all were clad in bones.

Senexis, like its sister planets Vetrik Secundus and Mercale, and the Delbrin Moons, was an ossuary world. The habitable zones of the surface were exposed graves in a way, an endless vault opened to the air where millions of the dead had been interred - all to be close to the sacred shrine that had once made it such a popular destination. Skulls and femurs, ribcages and pelvic bones, even the tiny segments from fingers and toes, all of them were formed into every wall, every bridge, every boulevard and avenue. Gelid light from frost-blue gas burners in street lamps threw flickering shadows off the organic shapes, causing the eye to see movement where none existed.

Verity was no stranger to the matters of the dead, but even she found herself off-put by the sheer panoply of skeletal remains rendered into every part of the cityscape. As they advanced towards the monorail station, she found herself walking over broken jaws and eyeless faces.

Miriya stiffened, shaking her head. 'How does this honour the fallen and the lost? By making them into bricks and mortar?'

'It is not our place to judge how some show their faith to the Imperial Church,' warned Verity, sniffing at the air.

The hospitaller detected the heavy scent of sanctified incenses, mixed with the acrid tang of spent promethium fuel, but neither could blot out the dry, papery odour of ground bone. Workers, travellers and other civilians went about their business around them, never looking in their direction, but always giving the Sisters a wide berth. She wondered what they made of the new arrivals, the warrior and the nursemaid dropping in from out of the clouds.

The tiles of denuded scalps beneath their feet were polished with use from the passage of countless visitors. Once, Senexis was where the remains of Imperial heroes from nearby wars were brought, to be interred among all those who had perished as champions of the Emperor's Light. Within the primus hive, cadres of scribes in service to the Adeptus Ministorum vetted applications and reviewed records of miracles, to consider who among the venerated deceased might be classed worthy of joining the ranks of the Imperium's million-fold saints. Perhaps that endeavour still continued, up there in the hive tower.

Miriya gave voice to Verity's thoughts. 'Do you think the people of Senexis know that their world has become forgotten, overlooked?'

Verity considered what she knew of the planet's poisonous internal politics and internecine intrigue. 'I would imagine they think themselves at the centre of things, as most souls mistakenly do.'

The Battle Sister gave a low chuckle. 'Keep that thought to yourself when you speak to Maadoth. I know his kind of old. He may pitch a fit.'

'Don't make trouble,' said Verity. She grunted with effort as she moved the steel case from one hand to another, the ache in her thin wrist from carrying it rising up her arm. She adjusted her shawl and medicae gauntlet, and then carried on apace. Miriya did not offer to carry the case for her; they had already had that discussion. It was not her place.

A cluster of planetary defence troopers in tropical-grade over-suits were waiting for them at the monorail station's security gale. Verity had expected at least some sort of formal welcome to await the Sisters, but these men seemed distant and wary, their gazes occupied by ranging around nearby rooftops and scrutinising the faces of the people who walked past them.

'They are expecting an attack,' Miriya said, in low tones that only Verity heard.

'Sister.' An officer in a dun-coloured carapace armour vest came forward and bowed stiffly. He had a heavy, henna-red beard and a wind-burned face, and his eyes were hidden behind a data-visor. 'We are honoured by the presence of your mission. I am Commander Rolev, of the Senexian Masters Hous'guards. Archdeacon Maadoth dispatched my men and I to personally escort you to the city core.' He kept his attention firmly on the hospitaller. 'May I assist you with your... baggage?'

Verity couldn't stop herself from shooting Miriya a wry look. 'I can manage, commander.'

'As you wish.' He extended his hand. 'Please, this way? We have a private express car waiting.'

Miriya deliberately slowed to walk at the back of the group as they made their way to a giant armoured bullet, hanging suspended from a nearby monorail spur. Verity noted what could only be impact points from stubber shells on the flanks.

'You know of our world's ongoing issues, of course,' said Rolev, noting Verity's attention. 'I regret to say the dissenters become bolder with every passing season. They have spies everywhere. We must take precautions.'

'In all things,' said the hospitaller. She boarded, finding an elegant interior of padded leather and stained wood that was at odds with the monocar's battle-worn exterior. She picked a comfortable-looking chair and sat.

Rolev's troops boarded and took up posts at gun-slits in the hull, while Miriya found herself a station by the boarding hatch. At length, the mono-car began to move, and the commander settled on a cushioned bench across from Verity. He was staring at the case, in a way that suggested to the hospitaller that he was capable of reading the High Gothic inscriptions in the metal. They were only a few minutes into the journey when he asked the question she knew was coming.

'The relics within...' He nodded towards the metal box. 'You have brought them for the archdeacon's blessing and evaluation, I assume?' Verity did not answer in the affirmative, but Rolev went on as if she had. 'It has been some time since a petition from one as honoured as yourself has arrived. I hope the Sisterhood will forgive us if we are a little out of practice.'

'We do not come to judge,' Verity offered, as the mono-car switched tracks and picked up speed. She peered through a gun-slit. They were racing towards an open channel in the side of the gargantuan hive, and within it, she could see smaller, more ornate towers glittering with lights and gold. Beneath them, the outer districts of bone-clad turrets flashed past in a dull, sandy blur.

'May I view the contents?' Rolev placed a hand on the top of the box. 'For reasons of security, of course. There have been several attempts on the archdeacon's life in recent months, and I must be thorough in my scrutiny.' At the back of the mono-car, Miriya made a negative noise and rocked forward, taking a warning step. Her gauntlet touched the hilt of her holstered bolt pistol and she took a breath, silently making her threat.

Verity's approach was different. She gently removed Rolev's hand from the box. 'Please do not touch the relic again, commander.' She kept her voice firm and level, in the same metre she used to chastise novices and generals alike. 'The Order will overlook your discourtesy in this matter. As you say, you are out of practice.'

Rolev hesitated, considering the value of argument, and doubtless wondering how he would look in front of his men, wrestling the box away from a frail old woman. At length, his head bobbed.

'Of course.' He stood up and wandered away, towards the mono-car's enclosed cab.

'I don't like him,' said Miriya, stepping up behind Verity's seat. 'I don't trust him.'

'You don't trust anyone,' Verity replied. She was going to say more, but the cough wanted to be a part of the conversation. She smothered it with her kerchief, her eyes prickling. Some of the troopers looked in her direction at the sound, but they said nothing.

Verity drank water from a coldbottle on her belt and centred herself. Her gaze drifted back to the viewing slit. She could see plumes of smoke rising from below the monorail, but it was unclear if they were from chimneys or burning buildings.

Her thoughts momentarily drifted loose of their moorings and she was suddenly remembering a similar view - from the crew bay of a Thunderhawk, as they came in low over the ruined cities of Meseda Quintus. The memory of then and the reality of now merged and became confused. Verity had the sense that if she turned around, she would find the women of Miriya's old combat squad waiting there behind her. Danae and Pandora, Rubria, Ananke and Aemilia—

Her heart fluttered in her chest in a jolt of panic. Verity felt lost in the past. She frowned, and it took effort to haul herself back to the moment.

Red light blinked at the corner of her eye, and drew her attention back to the gun-slit. A trail of white smoke ending in a burning blue ember was rising towards the monorail track, up from the roof of a tower made of human tibias.

Too late, a klaxon sounded from the mono-car's cab, and Rolev came lurching back into the cabin. 'Incoming fire!' he screamed, but his cry was swallowed by the clattering detonation that came an instant later.

Verity momentarily became weightless as the mono-car's wheels sheared off the overhead track, and the transport plummeted to the streets below. Reaching for the case, she heard her blood singing in her ears. She blacked out.

Gunfire dragged her back to wakefulness.

Verity came to lying on her back, in the remains of the comfortable chair. The seat had collapsed but its padding had protected her from the shock of impact. Sharp pain in her ageing joints robbed the hospitaller of her breath, and she marshalled her effort to move herself to a sitting position.

The case was at her feet, undamaged and safe. Less could be said for the monorail car, its interior a wreck, the fine wood cracked and shattered. She saw a trooper lying a few metres away, and made to move towards him, spinning up her gauntlet's injectors.

'He's dead,' said Miriya. 'Your skills are no use to that one.' The Battle Sister stood where the mono-car's cab used to be, gone now where the attack had sheared it off completely. She had her weapon drawn and at the ready, her shoulder pressed into cover, her hawkish eyes peering out through the torn metal.

'We were shot down...'

'Aye.' Miriya answered without looking back. 'By the dissidents, apparently.'

Verity looked around, gathering herself. 'Where is Rolev?'

'After we came to rest, he disembarked with his surviving men.' Miriya gestured with her weapon. 'He's out there now on the far side of the crash site, fighting with them.' As if to underline the Battle Sister's words, a chatter of stub-guns echoed through the air. 'I'm going out to help him. Stay in here. Don't move.'

'But—' Verity started to protest, but Miriya was already gone, her cloak a swirl of black as she vaulted into the skirmish.

The hospitaller sighed, and ignored the gunfire as she checked herself over. Getting up, she moved across the mono-car's canted deck and went to the dead man. Verity did the only thing she could - she spoke the Rites of Passage over the unfortunate, commending his soul into the Emperor's eternal keeping.

'Ave Imperator,' said a voice from behind her.

Verity turned awkwardly to find a young woman at the torn-open aft of the carriage, where the boarding door had been sheared off. She wore Auxilia-style carapace armour just like Rolev's, but with a thick yellow bandanna over her mouth and nose, and she carried a carbine with a fat snail-drum magazine slung beneath. The woman made the sign of the Imperial aquila over her chest and pulled off her mask.

'Hello,' she said. She was young, and her eyes darted around the cabin, searching for threats. 'Are you injured, mamzel?'

Verity shook her head. 'Who are you?'

'I'm here to rescue you,' said the woman. She beckoned. 'Come to me, if you please? I'll escort you to safety.'

'Where is Commander Rolev?' Verity frowned, edging back towards the case.

'He was shot,' said the woman, a little too quickly. 'He's dead.' She moved closer, letting her carbine drop to hang on its sling. 'Maadoth sent me to help. Please, come quickly now. More troopers are coming.'

'I cannot leave,' insisted Verity.

'Bring the box with you.' The woman was at her side now, and she took Verity's arm. 'Hurry, for the Emperor's sake.' Her manner became irritable.

A chilling certainty moved slowly through the hospitaller's thoughts. The woman's explanations did not ring true. 'You are not with Rolev. You're a dissident.'

'Don't be stupid,' snapped the woman. 'You're confused, old mother, that's all. Come with me!'

'I don't think I will,' said Verity, and she jabbed the woman in the shoulder with her gauntlet's injector needle, putting it through the under-suit material in the gaps between the plates of armour.

'You...' the woman's eyes rolled back in her head as the tranquilliser took effect, and she collapsed in a heap.

Keeping the case nearby, Verity settled next to the unconscious soldier and examined her. She found devotional electoos on her neck and forearms, stanzas from holy texts and Imperial dogma. For a dissident, the woman with the rifle seemed little different to Rolev and his men, at least to Verity's eyes.

Eventually, the gunfire outside ended and Rolev - sporting bloody cuts on his face - came back with his troopers to evacuate Verity to a flyer. She protested when he executed the drugged woman with a kill-shot to the head, but he ignored her. The flyer's screaming engines drowned out Verity's demands to know where Miriya had gone, and she could do little to stop the troopers from manhandling her, and the case, into the aircraft's hold. The chilly cargo bay was a far cry from the luxury mono car, with nothing but hard edges and cold metal to sit upon

They laid down torrents of inferno shells from wing-tip pods as the craft lifted off, turning the crash site into a firestorm. Verity held the case close to her and shut her eyes.

Miriya was waiting for them when the flyer touched down in the spire, arms folded over her chest, her weapon at rest once more.

The warrior threw the hospitaller a weary nod. 'Sister.'

'Sister,' she replied. 'Don't disappear like that. I worry.'

'Of course you do,' said Miriya. 'That's your way.'

'Follow me.' Rolev walked past them, striding from the flyer and into the depths of the spire. Any of the forced politeness he had shown earlier in the day was now absent, as if his annoyance at the dissident attack was directed at Verity.

She let the insulting manner slide off her and fell in step behind the commander. Their path carried them through winding corridors lined with hundreds of thousands of perfectly preserved human remains. The tunnels of bone had been fashioned by Senexian artisans, who toiled for a lifetime to construct them, and on their deaths, they too had been added into the structure of their creations.

Countless saints, hieromartyrs and pietists had been laid to rest here, but the venerations of these great souls seemed shabby and ill-tended, almost like an afterthought.

'For a grave of such scope and majesty,' said Miriya, 'it seems poorly cared for.'

'Aye,' agreed Verity, as they entered a great, high-ceilinged chancel.

Rolev turned back to face her, an odd look on his face. 'If you will wait here, my lord Maadoth will arrive momentarily.'

Verity blinked. The name didn't connect with anything, but she had the unsettling sense that it should have. 'I beg your pardon?'

'Archdeacon Maadoth,' snapped Rolev, his irritation flaring. 'He will be here soon.'

'Oh. Yes. Of course.'

Rolev muttered something under his breath that the hospitaller didn't catch and he stalked away, leaving Verity and Miriya alone in the echoing chamber.

The Battle Sister wandered away, towards the shadowed edges of the chancel, past beams of light that fell down through great oval windows in the roof. She examined a large frieze that depicted the War of the Nine Suns; as with everything else, the giant mosaic was made of bone fragments, these stained in dull earthen tones. She didn't seem to notice Verity's sudden disquiet.

'I... His name.' Verity licked her dry lips. 'Throne, for a moment I could not recall Maadoth's name. How could that happen...?'

'A momentary error,' said Miriya. Her voice seemed to grow more distant as she spoke. 'Nothing more. Pay it no mind.'

The hospitaller looked down at her hands. Thin fingers, wrinkled skin spotted by age. They had a tremor that came when she was under stress, just as she was now. 'I said I could do this. I said that, but I cannot hold to it, Sister. I have doubts, in the dark moments.' She shook her head. 'You were right, I should never have come here.'

The cough simmered in her throat. It wanted to remind her how frail she was, of how much she had weakened.

'You were shaken by the ambush,' said Miriya, from the shadows. 'You are not infallible, my friend.'

'These days, I am more fallible than I wish to be!' She gave a bitter chuckle. 'Perhaps I am too far past my prime to be of service.'

'No.' Miriya's reply came iron-hard and without hesitation. 'I refuse to accept that. You are one of the strongest women I have ever known.' She paused for a moment. 'You are human, Verity, as are we all. That is why we are the Emperor's ideal servants... The imperfect, striving to be perfect. The journey is our devotion, not the destination.'

'Yes.' Verity took succour from her old friend's words, and drew herself up. 'You are right, of course. Thank you, Miriya. Your counsel is welcomed.'

'Who speaks here?' The demand came from across the chancel, from a man in ornate robes and a headdress adorned with regalia that glimmered in the shafts of light from above. He fixed her with an unsympathetic glare. Verity recognised Archdeacon Maadoth from pict-banners she had seen when they landed at the space port. In person, the man was far more well fed and much less muscular than his popular images suggested.

She bowed. 'Well met, lord archdeacon. I am—'

'I know who you are,' he retorted. 'Answer my question, who are you talking to?' Rolev and a retinue of troopers were with Maadoth as he strode across the bone-tile floor to loom over her.

'Sister Miriya,' said Verity. 'My companion and guardian on this mission...'

'You came to Senexis alone,' said Rolev, frowning at her.

'No... That is not correct.' Verity's fingers began to tremble around the handle of the metal case, and she cast around. 'Sister? Sister! Miriya!' She stared into the gloom at the base of the frieze, but there were only shadows there.

One of the troopers sniggered and said something about 'an addled mare'. Rolev shot the man a disapproving look but did not rebuke him further.

The realisation struck Verity silent. Was it possible? Was her mind so worn by age that she had imagined the other woman's presence? The hospitaller gulped back a gasp, and the weight of the case seemed to grow tenfold.

'Is this what the High Lords of Terra consider us worth?' Maadoth raised his voice so it echoed off the chancel walls, speaking to his men as if giving a performance. 'An ageing nursemaid come to give us censure, after centuries of ignoring our plight?' His voice had a nasal register that made every sentence seem like a sneer. He turned on Verity, ignoring her obvious distress, and jabbed a finger at the air. 'I demand to know why Holy Terra have sent you to interfere with my sacred mission! I am duty-bound to purge the splinter faction and end the dissent on Senexis, I need no obstruction from the Church's martinets!'

The man's words were like a cold gale, blowing away the cobwebs fogging Verity's thoughts. The composure that had briefly escaped her now returned, and she held up the sealed box, working the catches.

I remember now, she thought, a moment of sorrow and loss running through her. I remember why I took this mission.

She opened the case and presented the contents. 'Honoured archdeacon, in the name of the imperial Truth, I wish to have the relics you see here before you formally consecrated as the remains of a hero who perished in righteous battle. It is your sworn duty.'

'I know my duty,' the archdeacon said irritably, peering at the case through a digi-monocle. Within the steel box, laid with delicacy and the greatest reverence upon a bed of black silk trimmed with crimson, were three objects, a human skull, the bones of a hand, and a broken chaplet with a tarnished. blood-stained aquila icon made of brass.

'What is this?' Maadoth sniffed.

Verity allowed the tears to flow as she answered him. 'This is Sister Miriya, of the Order of Our Martyred Lady. My dearest friend, my guardian and sworn Sister.'

'You dare bring this to me?' The archdeacon's pale face turned red with anger, and he spat the question at her. 'I have more important things to do than bless the bones of some inconsequential Battle Sister!' He grasped an ornate, heavy rosarius hanging on a chain about his neck, and the jewelled device glowed brightly, as if in concert with his rage. 'I have a war to win! I do not have time for your ludicrous displays of lamentation.'

'What you say is blasphemy,' Verity managed, finding her voice again.

'It is necessary!' Maadoth spat back. 'Old crone, you will waste my time no longer.' He dismissed her with a wave and turned away.

'You will listen to me.' Verity's reply cut through the air like a whip-crack. 'You think yourself master of this world, Maadoth, but you are master of little. A mote of dust. A piece of bone. I will remind you of that.'

'Take her away,' the archdeacon told the commander. 'Get her out of my sight.'

'Touch me and you will know the Emperor's displeasure.' Verity turned her sternest look on Rolev and the man hesitated, unwilling to put his hands on her. She went on before anyone else could speak. 'You have been overlooked for too long, and a rot has set in. That will be corrected.'

'What is this senile fool babbling about?' Maadoth asked the question to his men, perhaps looking for smirks of support. He found none.

'The Imperial Church sees all and knows all,' Verity continued. 'We have learned that far from trying to halt the sectarian conflict that is rife here on Senexis, Archdeacon Maadoth is in fact deliberately stoking the fires of division in order to accumulate power and aggrandise himself.'

'A preposterous claim,' Maadoth said weakly. 'Rolev, tell her!'

The commander did not answer. If any man here knew how guilty the archdeacon was, it was Rolev.

'The Emperor is displeased with his perfidy,' Verity said, now speaking directly to the troopers and ignoring Maadoth. 'I have been sent to rebuke him.' She gestured with the case. 'His naked disrespect to a fallen Daughter of the Emperor only serves to prove what is already known. He is guilty.'

'Listen to me,' snarled the archdeacon, lurching forward to grab Verity by the shoulder. 'You withered old hag!'

His fingers dug into her flesh and tightened, sending a wave of nausea through her chest. The cough awoke once, and began to build.

'I alone have the right to rule Senexis!' Maadoth waved the sacred rosarius in her face, and it was so close that the hospitaller could see the delicate workings of the conversion field generator inside it. 'This gives me that right!'

By the letter of Senexian law and Imperial diktat, the rosarius was the badge of office for the planet's governor. The device dated back to the Dark Age of Technology, and it was capable of deflecting weapons of great power, effectively rendering the wearer invulnerable to all but the most devastating attacks.

'You speak of heroes...' Maadoth glared at the relics in the case and then spat on the ground. 'I am the true hero! These brittle shards of corpses?' He shot a venomous look at the bones all around them, taking in the honoured dead of the ossuary with one mocking snort. 'Who are they? What do they matter? Only I decide who is worthy here!' He knocked the case out of her hand and it clattered to the floor, spilling the contents out over the bone tiles at Verity's feet, tearing a gasp of shock and horror from the hospitaller.

'You are a worthless man,' she told him. 'Even those turned by the Ruinous Powers are more honest than you. They are seduced, but you corrupted yourself willingly.'

'You die for that.' Maadoth's hand went to Verity's throat. 'I'll choke the life from you, bury you in the mud with the waste you brought here.'

Rolev and the other troopers stood silently by, willing to let it happen before them without intervention; but the hospitaller's duty was not to end today.

She stabbed Maadoth through his ornate robes with a long, narrow-gauge needle that went into his chest, between his fourth and fifth ribs. The powerful paralytic agent stored in her medicae gauntlet's reservoir shot into his bloodstream and Maadoth choked off a cry, releasing his grip, falling to the ground, stiffening into an artificial rigor.

With difficulty, Verity stooped to pick up the brass chaplet, and twisted the icon about its length. A narrow blade extended out, a rare techknife gifted to the Adepta Sororitas by the Assassinorum, one of very few weapons capable of penetrating a conversion field at close range. The hospitaller pushed it through the control matrix of Maadoth's precious rosarius, and at once the ornate device began to disintegrate.

Finally spurred to action, Rolev stepped in to pull Verity away from the archdeacon, but the damage was done. The disintegration effect consumed the rosarius, and then Maadoth himself, the man's pleading eyes and open, silently screaming mouth the last of him to dissolve into ash.

Rolev drew his stub-gun and aimed it at the hospitaller. 'You murdered him. By our law, I have the right to execute you where you stand.'

'But you won't,' said Verity, as a distant thunder-rumble reached them from the skies above.

Rolev and the troopers looked up, and saw winged shapes in black and red dropping out of the clouds; the avian forms of the Thunderhawks bore the stark fleur-de-lys of the Adepta Sororitas, and each one carried a cohort tasked to bring Senexis back to the Emperor's Light.

After a long moment, Commander Rolev holstered his weapon and dropped to one knee. His troops mirrored his actions, each of them suddenly afraid to meet the gaze of a lone old woman.

'Ave Imperator,' whispered Rolev. But Verity was already walking away, leaving him behind.

Ahead of her, at the doors to the chancel, light poured in from the day beyond, framing a squad of Battle Sisters in their full and furious intent. Leading the assault was a woman with a familiar face the hospitaller knew and cherished. A woman aged as she was now, her face lined and her once sable hair turned white as ice-fire. A dear friend, a guardian and sworn Sister, who toyed with a brass chaplet in one hand, hoisting her boltgun with the other.

'Well met, Sister Hospitaller,' said the warrior.

'Well met, Eloheim,' said Verity, with a smile.

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

Sisters of Battle Collection Limited Edition: Volume I

I always believed it was inevitable that the Adepta Sororitas would have their stories told.

Back in 1997, when the faction was first unleashed on the world of Warhammer 40,000 after Gav Thorpe penned Codex: Sisters of Battle for the 2nd Edition rules, a new way of fighting in the grim dark future of the 41st millennium arrived. With it came a slew of iconic characters, new and fascinating lore - and most importantly, the inspiration for some incredible stories.

The Sisters grew to become a fan favourite - a cadre of fanatic warrior-nuns powered by their unshakable faith and unswerving devotion; the servants of the Ecclesiarchy, the great church of the Imperium founded upon the worship of the God-Emperor of Mankind, charged to guard the sanctity of the Imperial Creed and protect the celestial truth of the Emperor's divinity. In a universe where the darkness is eternal and always growing, it is they who must bring the fire to beat back the claws of the night.

The imagery of the Sisters of Battle has always been striking; they are the warrior-women archetypes of ancient mythology reborn into a techno gothic age. They are the daughters of ancient war-queens and swift and deadly Valkyries. They stride towards victory with burning zeal in their eyes and hymnals in their hearts. They are a force of nature undaunted and unstoppable.

And they make for great characters.

As I write this introduction for a new collector's edition of my Adepta Sororitas fiction, I look back on a legacy that has been over a decade in the making, and I'm proud to have been able to open the door for the Battle Sisters and for all the writers who came after me to tell their tales - a tip of the bolter to such awesome authors as Danie Ware, Rachel Harrison, Alec Worley and the rest.

But the Adepta Sororitas didn't come to prose quickly - they had to fight their way in. After the success of my first full-length fiction for Black Library (writing the Blood Angels duology Deus Encarmine and Deus Sanguinius) Lindsey Priestley was my editor at the time, and she generously gave me a free hand to choose what I wanted to write next. The iconic Space Marines, the Inquisition and the Imperial Guard were already having their stories told, and so I instinctively gravitated towards the characters who had yet to feature in any novel-length adventures. Top of that list were the Sisters of Battle.

The amazing Daemonifuge comic book by Jim Campbell and Kev Walker, first serialized in Warhammer Monthly and later released in a colourised edition, was their first outing in fiction, but aside from some Sororitas characters appearing in short stories, they were underserved. There were reservations from some quarters about a Sisters novel - back in the early 2000s, Warhammer 40,000's fan base was still considered to be something of a 'boys club' and there was concern that a full-length book featuring a nearly all-female cast of characters might not find a readership. But Lindsey and I disagreed - not just because it was a strong concept, not just because of the brash surface appeal of 'nuns with guns', but because writing about the Adepta Sororitas would let Black Library tell a story of the 41st millennium through a new lens.

Over the last decade, as Black Library's output has grown and matured, we've continued to work on narrowing that gender imbalance as much as possible, and as such it seems right that the Imperium's most fearsome and faithful women have carried the torches to light the way.

In one of those odd circumstances of writing tie-in fiction, my original outline for Faith & Fire would actually end up becoming the plot for the second book in my Sisters of Battle series, and you can read more about that in the introduction for Hammer & Anvil, the companion volume to this book. After some consideration, the editorial team at Black Library decided that they wanted the first Sororitas novel to show them in conflict with their traditional enemies in the Warhammer 40,000 lore: rogue psykers and faithless heretics.

With that in mind, Faith & Fire's narrative took shape as a story pitting the battle-hardened Sister Miriya of the Order of Our Martyred Lady and her reluctant companion, the Sister Hospitaller Verity of the Order of Serenity, against a band of murderous pyrokinetic terrorists. Brought together by a shared tragedy, as the story unfolds Miriya and Verity discover a sinister conspiracy among one Imperial world's ruling elite - a conspiracy that may dare to challenge the divinity of the Emperor Himself.

The novel was first published in 2006 and immediately found a faithful readership, and a few years later I returned to write Red & Black, an audio drama prequel to this story, and a second novel in 2011's Hammer & Anvil.

I've often been asked what it is that makes the Adepta Sororitas so fascinating to write, and I can sum that up in one word: belief.

Belief is the central pillar of what makes them who they are. Like the genhanced transhumans of the Adeptus Astartes, the Sisters of Battle regularly go to war against horrific, terrible foes, be they aliens, mutants or witches. And while the Sororitas carry powerful flamers, plasma weapons and boltguns, and they wear powered armour and utilize heavy combat vehicles, they differ from the Space Marines in one very important way. If you take away their hardware, beneath it all they are just ordinary human beings.

What sets them apart is their spirit, the singular, unswerving power of their faith in the Emperor of Mankind, and that immediately makes them interesting to write about.

Because, as the real world shows us, while faith and belief in a higher ideal can create amazing things and be a true force for good, the dark side of that kind of zealotry can lead even the most principled of souls down a road to damnation. All the great and grand themes of conflict, nobility, sacrifice and humanity are built into the Sisters of Battle from the very start...

James Swallow

London, August 2020

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

Sisters of Battle Collection Limited Edition: Volume II

In the introduction to Faith & Fire, the companion volume to this book, I describe the qualities of the Adepta Sororitas that inspire me as an author, and the great power of the Sisters of Battle as narrative figures.

One of the greatest strengths of the Warhammer universes is that they have such a grand, epic and mythological scope to them, and I've often said that what we Black Library writers do in those universes is tell action-packed sci-fi stories in the manner of classic pulp fiction - but at the same time we are also reaching back to mirror the original heroic myths of ancient history, with timeless warrior-women characters such as Athena, Freya, Morrigan and Artemis serving as the inspiration behind the Sororitas.

But the spur for our Warhammer stories also grows out of the extant lore as well, and that is the point of origin for the narrative of Hammer & Anvil.

I'd originally conceived of the plotline for this novel to form the basis for my first Sisters of Battle book, but ultimately the editorial team decided that Faith & Fire's story should have the Sororitas facing off against rogue psykers and heretics rather than deadly xenos - so my plans for an epic battle pitting the Sisters against undying alien mechanoids was held back to form the spine of the tome you're now holding in your hands.

The genesis of Hammer & Anvil can be found in a single piece of colour text, a small side-bar segment of lore in the 3rd edition version of Codex: Necrons. The text is a fragment of a diary entry by one Canoness Sepherina, in which she recounts the arrival of an Adepta Sororitas mission to a ruined convent on the planet Sanctuary 101, which has been sent there to re-consecrate it after it has been destroyed by the deadly xenos species. When I first read that, I knew I had the opening moments of a Sisters of Battle novel.

As so often happens when writing in the grim future of Warhammer 40,000, it is the dangling threads of the tales left untold that entice us authors into wanting to follow up on them, and this time was no exception. Unbeknown to me, at the same time as I was developing the storyline for Hammer & Anvil, a new edition of the Necrons codex was being written, one that would greatly expand and revise the lore of that alien faction far beyond the scope of the 3rd Edition rules. In the end, we decided to hold back the publication of Hammer & Anvil so that I could get an early look at that new codex and be the first to include the next iteration of Necrons in a Black Library novel - and the book is all the stronger for it, introducing what in 2011 were new concepts and new threats from the realms of the Necrons for the Sisters to fight.

Hammer & Anvil also gave me the opportunity to expand upon and build the characters I had created in Faith & Fire, and so the Sanctuary 101 story became my second outing for the battle-hardened Sister Miriya and her companion in adventure. Sister Hospitaller Verity Catena. Set some time after the catastrophic events on the planet Neva in the first book, Hammer & Anvil finds Verity and Miriya arriving at Sanctuary 101 with Canoness Sepherina's mission, years after a Necron attack that wiped out the convent-outpost. But the sands of the dead world around them are not as empty as they believe, and deadly alien secrets lie buried in the wilderness.

Hammer & Anvil was published in 2011, and it is the third story in my Sororitas chronology, following the audio drama story Red & Black and the novel Faith & Fire. In turn, Hammer & Anvil is followed by the short stories 'Heart and Soul' and 'Iron & Bone', the latter of which is presented for the first lime in this collection.

One of the most rewarding things that has come out of writing for the Adepta Sororitas was that I found my stories brought me a whole new readership. Miriya and Verity swiftly became favourites among fans, and at events and book signings I got - and still get - two distinct types of readers for the Battle Sisters novels: some are men who have bought the books for their wives, girlfriends or daughters to read, often as a means to prove to them that the worlds of Warhammer aren't solely populated by male-gendered heroes, but that they also feature dynamic female characters as well, and some are women who are pleased to see the Sisters appearing in their own full-length novels.

For a writer, nothing is more heartening than to have a reader connect with a character you have created. And with the incredible depth of imagination on display in Warhammer 40,000 fandom, it's amazing to hear a reader say they were so inspired by your work that it made them want to build those characters into an army with which to play the game, to make elaborate costumes for cosplay, or create fan-art based on the stories. To know that my fiction has encouraged others to go out and create something of their own isn't something I take lightly, and I'm pleased - and honoured - to be part of that process.

Now, over two decades since the Adepta Sororitas first blasted their way into the Warhammer 40,000 universe in the pages of 1997's Codex: Sisters of Battle, they have become an enduring part of the mythos of the 41st millennium, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Space Marines, the Astra Militarum and the forces of the Imperium of Man. Back in 2004, when my first Sisters of Battle novel was coming together, I had faith that it would find its audience - but I never expected to find myself on a journey with Miriya and Verily that would lead to so many stories and so many great experiences.

James Swallow

London, August 2020

About the Author

James Swallow is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Fear to Tread and Nemesis, which both reached the New York Times bestseller lists. Also for the Horus Heresy, he has written The Flight of the Eisenstein, The Buried Dagger and a series of audio dramas featuring the character Nathaniel Garro, the prose versions of which have now been collected into the anthology Garro. For Warhammer 40,000, he is best known for his four Blood Angels novels, the audio drama Heart of Rage, and his two Sisters of Battle novels. His short fiction has appeared in Legends of the Space Marines and Tales of Heresy.

An extract from Sisters of Battle: The Omnibus.

From his high vantage point, the Emperor of Mankind looked down upon Miriya where she knelt. His unchanging gaze took in all of her, the woman’s bowed form shrouded in blood-coloured robes. In places, armour dark as obsidian emerged from the folds of the crimson cloth. It framed her against the tan stonework of the chapel floor. She was defined by the light that reflected upon her from the Emperor’s eternal visage; all that she was, she was only by His decree.

Miriya’s lips moved in whispers. The Litany of Divine Guidance spilled from her in a cascading hush. The words were such a part of her that they came as quickly and effortlessly as breathing. As the climax of the declaration came, she felt a warm core of righteousness establish itself in her heart, as it always did, as it always had since the day she had discarded her noviciate cloak and taken the oath.

She allowed herself to look up at Him. Miriya granted herself this small gesture as a reward. Her gaze travelled up the altar, drinking in the majesty of the towering golden idol. The Emperor watched her over folded arms, across the inverted hilt of a great burning sword. At His left shoulder stood Saint Celestine, her hands cupped to hold two stone doves as if she were offering them up. At His right was Saint Katherine, the Daughter of the Emperor who had founded the order that Miriya now served.

She lingered on Katherine’s face for a moment: the statue’s hair fell down over her temple and across the fleur-de-lys carved beneath her left eye. Miriya unconsciously brushed her black tresses back over her ear, revealing her own fleur tattoo in dark red ink.

The armour the stone saint wore differed from Miriya’s in form but not function. Katherine was clad in an ancient type of wargear, and she bore the symbol of a burning heart where Miriya wore a holy cross crested with a skull. When the saint had been mistress of her sect, they had been known as the Order of the Fiery Heart – but that had been decades before Katherine’s brutal ending on Mnestteus. Since that date, for over two millennia they had called themselves the Order of Our Martyred Lady. It was part of a legacy of duty to the Emperor that Sister Miriya of the Adepta Sororitas had been fortunate to continue.

With that thought, she looked upon the effigy of Him. She met the stone eyes and imagined that on far distant Terra, the Lord of Humanity was granting her some infinitely small fraction of His divine attention, willing her to carry out her latest mission with His blessing. Miriya’s hands came to her chest and crossed one another, making the sign of the Imperial aquila.

‘In Your name,’ she said aloud. ‘In service to Your Light, grant me guidance and strength. Let me know the witch and the heretic, show them to me.’ She bowed once again. ‘Let me do Your bidding and rid the galaxy of man’s foe.’

Miriya drew herself up from where she knelt and moved to the font servitor, presenting the slave-thing with her ornate plasma pistol. The hybrid produced a brass cup apparatus in place of a hand and let a brief mist of holy water sprinkle over the weapon. Tapes of sanctified parchment stuttered from its lipless mouth with metallic ticks of sound.

She turned away, and there in the shadows was Sister Iona. Silent, morose Iona, the patterned hood of her red robe forever deepening the hollows of her eyes. Some of the Battle Sisters disliked the woman. Iona rarely showed emotion, never allowed herself to cry out in pain when combat brought her wounds, never raised her voice in joyous elation during the daily hymnals. Many considered her flawed, her mind so cold that it was little more than the demi-machine inside the skull of the servitor at the font. Miriya had once sent two novice girls to chastisement for daring to voice such thoughts aloud. But those who said these things did not know Iona’s true worth. She was as devout a Sororitas as any other, and if her manner made some Sister Superiors reluctant to have her in their units, then so be it. Their loss was Miriya’s gain.

‘Iona,’ she said, approaching. ‘Speak to me.’

‘It is time, Sister,’ said the other woman, her milk-pale face set in a frown. ‘The witch ship comes.’

In spite of herself, Miriya’s hand tensed around the grip of her plasma pistol. She nodded. ‘I am prepared.’

Iona returned the gesture. ‘As are we all.’ The Sister clasped a small fetish in her gloved grip, a silver icon of the Convent Sanctorum’s Hallowed Spire on Ophelia VII. The small tell was enough to let Miriya know the woman was concerned.

‘I am as troubled as you,’ she admitted as they crossed the chancel back towards the steel hatch in the chapel wall.

Iona opened it and they stepped through, emerging into the echoing corridor beyond. Where the stone of the church ended, the iron bones of the starship around it began. Once, the chapel had been earthbound, built into a hill on a world in the Vitus system, now it existed as a strange transplanted organ inside the metal body of the Imperial Naval frigate Mercutio.

‘This vexes me, Sister Superior,’ said Iona, her frown deepening beneath her hood. ‘What is our cause if not to take the psyker to task for his witchery, to show the Emperor’s displeasure?’ She looked as if she wanted to spit. ‘That we are called upon to… to associate with this mutant is enough to make my stomach turn. There is a part of me that wants to contact the captain and order him to take that abomination from the Emperor’s sky.’

Miriya gave her a sharp look. ‘Have a care, Sister. You and I may detest these creatures, but in their wisdom, the servants of the Throne see fit to use these pitiful wretches in His name. As much as that may sicken us, we cannot refuse a command that comes from the highest levels of the Ecclesiarchy.’

The answer was not nearly enough to satisfy Iona’s disquiet. ‘How can such things go on, I ask you? The psyker is our mortal enemy–’

Iona’s commander silenced her with a raised hand. ‘The witch is our enemy, Sister. The psyker is a tool. Only the untrained and the wild are a threat to the Imperium.’ Miriya’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have never served as I have, Iona. For two full years I was a warden aboard one of those blighted vessels. On the darkest nights, the things I saw there still haunt me so…’ She forced the memories away. ‘This is how the God-Emperor tests the faithful, Sister. He shows us our greatest fears and has us overcome them.’

They walked in silence for a few moments before Iona spoke again. ‘We are taught in the earliest days of our indoctrination that those cursed with the psychic mark in their blood are living gateways to Chaos. All of them, Sister Superior, not just the ones who eschew the worship of the Golden Throne. One single slip and even the most devout will fall, and open the way to the warp!’

Miriya raised an eyebrow. It was perhaps the most passion she had ever seen the dour woman display. ‘That is why we are here. Since the Age of Apostasy, we and all our Sister Sororitas have stood at the gates to hell and barred the witchkin. As the mutant falls, so does the traitor, so does the witch.’ She placed a hand on Iona’s shoulder. ‘Ask yourself this, Sister. Who else could be called forth to accomplish what we shall do today?’ Miriya’s face split in a wry smile. ‘The men of the Imperial Navy or the Guard? They would be dead in moments from the shock. The Adeptus Astartes? Those inhuman brutes willingly welcome psykers into their own ranks.’ She shook her head ruefully. ‘No, Iona, only we, the Sisters of Battle, can stand sentinel here.’ The woman patted her pistol holster. ‘And mark me well, if but one of those misbegotten wretches steps out of line, then we will show them the burning purity of our censure.’

The sound of her voice drew the attention of Miriya’s squad as she approached. They did not exchange the curt bows or salutes that were mandatory in other Sororitas units. Sister Miriya kept a relaxed hand on her warriors, preferring to keep them sharp in matters of battle prowess rather than parade ground niceties.

‘Report,’ she demanded.

Her second-in-command Sister Lethe cleared her throat. ‘We are ready, Sister Superior, as per your command.’

‘Good,’ Miriya snapped, forestalling any questions about their orders before they could be uttered. ‘This will be a simple matter of boarding the ship and securing the prisoner.’

Lethe threw a look at the other members of the Celestian squad. Usually deployed for front line combat operations, the Celestians were known as the elite troops of the Adepta Sororitas and such a simple duty as a prisoner escort could easily be considered beneath them. Celestians were used to fighting at the heart of heretic confrontations and mutant uprisings, not acting like mere line officer enforcers.

Miriya saw these thoughts in the eyes of Lethe and the other Sisters. She knew the misgivings well, as they had been her own after the orders had first been delivered by astropathic transfer from Canoness Galatea’s adjutant. ‘Any duty in the Emperor’s name is glorious,’ she told them, a stern edge to her words, ‘and we would do well to remember that.’

‘Of course,’ said Lethe, her expression contrite. ‘We obey.’

‘I share your concern.’ Miriya admitted, her voice lowered. ‘Our squad has never been the most favoured of units–’ and with that the other women shared a moment of grim amusement, ‘–but we will do as we must.’

‘There,’ Sister Cassandra called, observing through one of the crystalline portholes in the corridor wall. ‘I see it!’

Miriya drew closer and peered through the thick lens. For a moment, she thought her Battle Sister had been mistaken, but then she realised that the darkness she saw beyond the hull of the Mercutio was not the void of interstellar space at all, but the flank of another craft. It gave off no light, showed no signals or pennants. Only the faint glow of the frigate’s own portholes and beacons illuminated it – and then, not the whole vessel but only thin slivers of it caught in the radiance.

‘A Black Ship,’ breathed Iona. ‘Emperor protect us.’

In two by two overwatch formation, their bolters at the ready, Miriya’s squad made their way up the corded flex-tube that had extended itself from one of the Mercutio’s outer airlocks. At their head, the Sister Superior walked with her own weapon holstered, but her open hand lay flat atop the knurled wood grip. The memories spiked her thoughts again, taking her back to the first time she had stepped into the dark iron heart of an Adeptus Astra Telepathica vessel.

No one knew how many craft there were in the fleets of the Black Ships. Some spoke of a secret base on Terra, sending out droves of ebon vessels to scour the galaxy for psykers. Others said that the ships worked in isolation from one another, venturing back and forth under psychic directives sent by the Emperor himself. Miriya did not know the truth, and she did not want to.

Whenever a potent psyker was discovered, the Black Ships would come for them. Some, those with pure hearts and wills strong enough to survive the tests the adepts forced upon them, might live to become servants to the Inquisition or the astropathic colleges. Most would be put to death in one manner or another, or granted in sacrifice to the Emperor so that he might keep alight the great psychic beacon of the Astronomicon.

The Battle Sisters entered an elliptical reception chamber carved from iron and whorled with hexagrammic wards. Strips of biolume cast weak yellow light into the centre of the space and hooded figures lingered at the edges, orbiting the room with silent footsteps. Lethe and the others automatically fell into a combat wheel formation, guns covering every possible angle of attack. Miriya watched the shrouded shapes moving around them. The Adeptus Astra Telepathica had their own operatives but by Imperial edict they were not allowed to serve as warders upon their own vessels; it was too easy for a malignant psyker to coerce another telepath. Instead, Sisters of Battle or Inquisitorial Storm Troopers served in the role of custodian aboard the Black Ships, their adamantine faith protecting them from the predations of the mind-witches they guarded.

Footsteps approached from the gloomy perimeter of the chamber. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness now, and she quickly picked out the figures filing from an iris hatch on the far wall. Two of them were Sister Retributors, armed with heavy multi-meltas, and another a Celestian like herself. The other Battle Sisters wore gunmetal silver armour and white robes, with the sigil of a haloed black skull on their shoulder pauldrons. There were more behind them, but they remained in the shadows for now.

The Celestian saluted Miriya and she returned the gesture. ‘Miriya of the Order of Our Martyred Lady. Well met, Sister.’

‘Dione of the Order of the Argent Shroud,’ said the other woman. ‘Well met, Sister.’ Miriya was instantly struck by the look of fatigue on Dione’s face, the tension etched into the lines about her eyes. Her fellow Sororitas met her gaze and a moment of silent communication passed between them. ‘The prisoner is ready. It is my pleasure to have rid of him.’ She beckoned forward hooded men and the two Retributors turned their guns to draw a bead on them.

The adepts brought a rack in the shape of a skeletal cube, within which sat a large drum made of green glass. There was a man inside it, naked and pale in the yellow illumination. His head was concealed beneath a metal mask festooned with spikes and probes. ‘Torris Vaun,’ Miriya said his name, and the masked man twitched a little as if he had heard her. ‘A fine catch, Sister Dione.’

‘He did not go easily, of that you can be sure. He killed six of my kith before we were able to subdue him.’

‘And yet he still draws breath.’ Miriya studied the huge jar, aware that the man inside was scrutinising her just as intently with other, preternatural senses. ‘Had the choice been mine, this witch would have been shot into the heart of a star.’

Dione managed a stiff nod. ‘We are in agreement, Sister. Alas, we must obey the Ministorum’s orders. You are to deliver this criminal to Lord Viktor LaHayn at the Noroc Lunar Cathedral on the planet Neva.’ A hobbling servitor approached clutching a roll of parchment and a waxy stick of data-sealant. Dione took the paper and made her mark upon it. ‘So ordered this day, by the authority of the Ecclesiarchy.’

Miriya followed suit, using the sealant to press her squad commander signet into the document. From behind her, she heard Lethe think aloud.

‘He seems such a frail thing. What crime could a man like this commit that would warrant our stewardship?’

Dione took a sharp breath. Clearly she did not allow her troops to speak without permission as Miriya did. ‘The six he murdered were only the latest victims of his violence. This man has sown terror and mayhem on a dozen worlds across this sector, all in the name of sating his base appetites. Vaun is an animal, Sister, a ruthless opportunist and a pirate. To him, cruelty is its own reward.’ Her face soured. ‘It disgusts me to share a room with such an aberrance.’

Miriya shot Lethe a look. ‘Your candour is appreciated, Sister Dione. We will ensure the criminal reaches Neva without delay.’

More servitors took up the confinement capsule and marched into the tunnel back to the Mercutio. As Vaun was taken away, Dione relaxed a little. ‘Lord LaHayn was most insistent that this witch be brought to his court for execution. It is my understanding the honoured deacon called in several favours with the Adeptus Terra to ensure it was so.’

Miriya nodded, recalling the message from Galatea. The Canoness would be waiting in Noroc City for their arrival with the criminal. ‘Vaun is a Nevan himself, correct? One might consider it just that he be put to the sword on the soil of his birthworld, given that he created so much anarchy there.’ She threw a glance at Lethe, and her second marshalled the rest of the Celestians to flank the prisoner as he vanished into the docking tube. Miriya turned to follow. ‘Ave Imperator, Sister.’

Dione’s armoured gauntlet clasped Miriya’s wrist and held her for a moment. ‘Don’t underestimate him,’ she hissed, her eyes glittering in the murkiness. ‘I did, and six good women paid the price.’

‘Of course.’

Dione released her grip and faded back into the blackness.

From the rendezvous point, the Mercutio came about and made space for the Neva system. The Black Ship vanished from her sensorium screen like a lost dream, so quickly and so completely that it seemed as if the dark vessel had never been there.

The frigate’s entry to the empyrean went poorly, and a momentary spasm in the warship’s Geller Field killed a handful of deckhands on the gunnery platforms. The crew spoke in hushed tones behind guarded expressions, never within earshot of the Battle Sisters. None of them knew what it was that Miriya’s squad had brought back from the Black Ship, but all of them were afraid of it.

Over the days that followed, prayer meetings in the frigate’s sparse chapel had a sudden increase in attendance and there were more hymns being played over the vox-nets on the lower decks. Most of the crew had never seen Battle Sisters in the flesh before. In dozens of ports across the sector they had heard the stories about them, just like every other Navy swab. There were things that men of low character would think of women such as these, thoughts that ran the spectrum from lustful fantasy to violent distrust. Some said they lived off the flesh of the males they killed, like a jungle mantis. Others swore they were as much concubines as they were soldiers, able to bring pleasure and damnation to the unwary in equal measure. The crewmen were as scared by the Sororitas as they were fascinated by them, but there were some who watched the women wherever they went, compelled by something deeper and darker.

Lethe glanced up as Miriya entered the cargo bay, stepping past the two gun servitors at the hatch to where she and Cassandra stood on guard by the glass capsule.

‘Sister Superior,’ she nodded. ‘What word from the captain?’

Miriya’s frown was answer enough. ‘He tells me the Navigator is troubled. The way through the warp is turbulent, but he hopes we will arrive at Neva in a day or so.’

Lethe glanced at the capsule and saw that Cassandra was doing the same.

‘The prisoner cannot be the cause,’ Miriya answered the unspoken question. ‘I was assured the nullifying mask prevents any exercise of witchery.’ She tapped her finger on the thick glass wall.

Sister Lethe fingered the silver rosary chain she habitually wore around her neck. She was not convinced. ‘All the same, the sooner this voyage concludes, the better. This inaction chafes at my spirit.’

Miriya found her head bobbing in agreement. She and Lethe had served together for the longest span among this squad and often the younger woman was of one mind with her unit’s commander. ‘We have endured worse, have we not? The ork raids on Jacob’s Tower? The Starleaf purge?’

‘Aye, but all the same, the waiting gnaws at me.’ Lethe looked away. ‘Sister Dione was correct. Being in the presence of this criminal makes my very soul feel soiled. I shall need to bathe in sanctified waters after this mission is at an end.’

Cassandra tensed suddenly, and the reaction brought the other women to attention. ‘What is it?’ Miriya demanded.

The Battle Sister stalked towards a mess of metal girders heaped in one corner of the cargo bay. ‘Something…’ Cassandra’s hand shot out and she dragged a wriggling shape out of the darkness. ‘Intruder!’

The gun servitors reacted, weapons humming up to firing position. Miriya sneered as Cassandra hauled the protesting form of a deckhand into the centre of the bay. ‘What in the Emperor’s name are you?’ she demanded.

‘M-Midshipman. Uh. Vorgo. Ma’am.’ The man blinked wet, beady eyes. ‘Please don’t devour me.’

Lethe and Cassandra exchanged glances. ‘Devour you?’

Miriya waved them into silence. ‘What are you doing here, Midshipman Vorgo? Who sent you?’

‘No one!’ He became frantic. ‘Myself! I just… just wanted to see…’ Vorgo extended a finger towards the glass capsule and just barely touched its surface.

The Sister Superior slapped his hand away and he hissed in pain. ‘Idiot. I am within my rights to have you thrown into the void for this trespass.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry!’ Vorgo fell to his knees and made the sign of the aquila. ‘Came in through the vent… By the Throne, I was only curious–’

‘That will get you killed,’ said Lethe, her bolter hovering close to his head.

Miriya stepped away and made a terse wave of her hand. ‘Get this fool out of here, then have the engineseers send a helot to seal any vents in this chamber.’

Cassandra hauled the man to his feet and propelled him out of the cargo bay, his protests bubbling up as he went. Lethe followed, hesitating on the cusp of the hatch. ‘Sister Superior, shall I remain?’

‘No. Have Isabel join me here forthwith.’ Vorgo’s protesting form between them, the Battle Sisters closed the hatch behind them.

The cargo bay fell quiet. Miriya listened to the faint, irregular tick of metal flexing under the power of the frigate’s drives, the humming motors of the servitors, the murmur of bubbles in the tank. A nerve in her jaw twitched. She smelled a thick, greasy tang in the air.

‘Alone at last.’

For a moment, she thought she had imagined it. Miriya turned in place, eyeing the two gun slaves. Had one of them spoken? Both of them peered back at her with blank stares and dull, doll-like sensor apertures, lines of drool emerging from their sewn lips. Impossible: whatever intelligence they might have once possessed, the machine-slaves were nothing but automatons now, incapable of such discourse.

‘Who addresses me?’

‘Here.’ The voice was heavy with effort. ‘Come here.’

She spun in place. There before her was the capsule, the ebony metal frame about it and the spidery, hooded man-shape adrift within. The Battle Sister drew her pistol and thumbed the activation rune, taking aim at the glass tank. ‘Vaun. How dare you touch me with your witchery!’

‘Have a care, Sister. It would go badly for you to injure me.’ The words came from the air itself, as if the psyker was forcing the atmosphere in the chamber to vibrate like a vox diaphragm.

Miriya’s face twisted in revulsion. ‘You have made a foolish mistake, criminal. You have tipped your hand.’ She crossed to a pod of arcane dials and switches connected to the flank of the glass container. Rods and levers were set at indents indicating the amounts of sense-deadening liquids and contrapsychic drugs filling Vaun’s cell. The Battle Sister was no tech-priest, but she had seen confinement frames of this design before. She knew how they worked, pumping neuropathic philtres into the lungs and pores of particularly virulent psykers to stifle their mutant powers. She adjusted the rods and fresh splashes of murky fluid entered the tank. ‘This will quiet you.’

‘Wait. Stop.’ Vaun’s body jerked inside the capsule, a pallid hand pressing on the inside of the thick glass. ‘You do not understand. I only wanted… to talk.’

Another dial turned and darts of electricity swam into the liquid. ‘No one here wants to listen, deviant.’

The words became vague, laboured, fading. ‘You… mistaken… will regret…’

Miriya rested the barrel of her plasma weapon on the glass. ‘Heed me. If one breath more of speech comes from that cesspool you call a mind before I deliver you to Neva, I will boil you in there like a piece of rotten meat.’

There was no reply. Torris Vaun hung suspended in the foggy solution, slack and waxy.

With a shudder, Sister Miriya muttered the Prayer of Virtue and fingered the purity seals on her armour.

Mercutio fell from the grip of the warp and pushed into the Neva system at full burn, as if the ship itself were desperate to deposit the cargo it carried. As the capital planet orbiting fourth from its yellow-white star swelled in the frigate’s hololiths, a small and quiet insurrection began on Mercutio’s lower decks.

Men from the labourer gang on the torpedo racks came to the brig where Midshipman Vorgo was confined, and in near silence they murdered the armsmen guarding him. When they freed Vorgo, he didn’t thank them. In fact, he said hardly anything but a few clipped sentences, mostly to explain where the gun servitors were placed in the cargo bay, and how the Battle Sisters had behaved towards him.

Vorgo’s liberators were not his friends. Some of them were men who had actively disliked him in the past, picking on him in dark corridors and shaking him down for scrip. There was a common denominator between them all, but not one of the men could have spoken of it. Instead, they went their separate ways, each moving with the same hushed purpose and blank expression.

In the generarium where the Mercutio’s reactor-spirits coiled inside their cores and bled out their power to the vessel’s systems, some of the quiet men walked up to the service gantries over the vast cogwheels of the coolant arrays. They waited for a count of ten decimals from the turning discs and then leapt in groups of three, directly into the teeth of the mechanism. Of course, they were crushed between the cogs, but the pulpy mess of their corpses made the workings slip and seize. In moments, vital flows of chilling fluid were denied to the reactors and alarms began to wail.

Vorgo and the rest of the men went to the cargo decks, meeting more of their number along the way. The new arrivals had cans of chemical unguent taken from the stores of the tech-priests who ministered to the lascannons. Applied in a vacuum, the sluggish fluid could be used to keep the wide glassy lenses of the guns free from micro-meteor scarring and other damage, but on contact with air, the unguent had a far more violent reaction.

After the incident with the midshipman, Sister Miriya had demanded and been given a third gun servitor from the ship’s complement to guard the prisoner. Miriya made sure that no member of her squad was ever alone again with Vaun, pairs of the Celestians watching him around the clock in shifts.

Lethe and Iona were holding that duty when the hatch exploded inward. The machine-slaves stumbled about, their autosenses confused by the deafening report of the blast. The muzzles of weapons dallied, unable to find substantial targets to lock on to.

The Battle Sisters had no such limitations. The men that pushed their way in through the ragged hole in the wall, heedless of the burns the hot metal gave them, were met with bolter fire. Lethe’s Godwyn-De’az pattern weapon chattered in her gloved grip. The gun’s fine tooling of filigree and etching caught the light, catechisms of castigation aglow upon its barrel and breech. Iona’s hand flamer growled as puffs of orange fire jetted across the bay, licking at the invaders and immolating them, but there were many, clasping crude clubs and metal cans. She spied Vorgo among them, throwing a jar of thick fluid at a servitor. The glass shattered on the helot’s chest and the contents flashed magnesium-white. Plumes of acrid grey smoke spat forth as acids chewed up flesh and implanted machinery alike.

‘Sisters, to arms!’ Lethe shouted into the vox pickup on her armour’s neck ring, but her voice was drowned out by the keening wail of the Mercutio’s general quarters klaxon. She couldn’t know it from here, deep inside the hull, but the frigate was starting to list as the heat build-up in the drives baffled the ship’s cogitator systems.

A scrum of deckhands piled atop another gun servitor, forcing it down, choking the muzzles of its guns with their chests and hands, muffling shotgun discharges with the meat of their bodies. Lethe’s face wrinkled in grim disgust and it was then she noticed that the men did not speak, did not cry out, did not howl in frenzy. Doe-eyed and noiseless, they let themselves die in order to suffocate the prisoner’s guardians.

Another chemical detonation signalled the destruction of the last servitor and then the attackers surged forward over the bodies of their crewmates, ten or twenty men moving in one great mass. Sister Lethe saw Iona reel backwards, choking and strangling on clouds of foul air from the makeshift acid bombs. The bleak woman’s face sported chemical burns and her eyes were swollen. Unlike the superhuman warriors of the Adeptus Astartes, the Sororitas did not possess the altered physiognomies that could shrug off such assaults.

Lethe’s lungs gave up metallic, coppery breaths as the bitter smoke scarred her inside. The silent mob moved to her, letting the Battle Sister waste her ammunition on them. When the magazine in her bolter clicked empty, they pounced and beat her to the ground, the sheer weight of them forcing her to her knees.

Time blurred in stinking lurches of pungent fumes, fogging her brain. The toxic smoke made thinking difficult. Through cracked and seared lips, Lethe mouthed the Litany of Divine Guidance, calling to the Emperor to kindle the faith in her heart.

She forced herself up from the decking. Her gun was missing from her grip and she tried to push the recollection of where it had gone to the front of her mind but the smoke made everything harsh and rough, each breath like razorwool in her throat, each thought as heavy and slow as a glacier.

She focused. Vorgo had loops of cable and odd metal implements in his hands, all of them still wet with greenish liquid where they had been immersed in the tank. He was struggling to breathe, but the midshipman’s eyes were distant and watery. Behind the portly deckhand, a naked man was clothing himself in a dirty coverall, running a scarred hand through a fuzz of greying hair. He seemed to sense Lethe’s scrutiny and turned about to face her.

‘Vaun,’ she choked. His reply was a cold smile and a nod at the broken capsule, thick neurochemical soup lapping out of the crack in its flank. Lethe’s eyes were gritty and inflamed, making it hard to blink. ‘Free…’

‘Yes,’ His voice was cool and metered. Under the right circumstances, it would have been playful, even seductive. He patted Vorgo on the shoulder and gestured towards the torn doorway. ‘Well done.’

‘Traitor,’ Lethe managed.

Vaun gave a slow shake of the head. ‘Be kind, Sister. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’ A brief smile danced on his lips. ‘None of them do.’

‘The others will be here soon. You will die.’

‘I’ll be long gone. These matters were prepared for, Sister.’ The psyker crossed to Iona, where the injured woman lay gasping in shallow breaths. Lethe tried to get to her feet and stop him from whatever it was he was doing, but the deckhands punched and kicked her back to the floor, boots ringing off her armour.

Vaun whispered things in Iona’s ear, brushing his hands over her blonde hair, and the Battle Sister began to weep brokenly. Vaun stood up and rubbed his hands together, amused with himself.

‘You can’t escape,’ Lethe said thickly. ‘It will take more than this to stop us. My Sisters are loyal. They will never let you get away from this vessel!’

He nodded. ‘Yes, they are loyal. I saw that.’ The criminal took a barbed knife from one of his erstwhile rescuers and came closer. Vorgo and the others held Lethe down in anticipation. ‘That kind of loyalty breeds passion. It makes one emotional, prone to recklessness.’ He turned the blade in his hand, letting light glint off it. ‘Something that I intend to use to my advantage.’

Lethe tried to say something else, but Vaun tipped back her head with one hand, and used the other to bury the knife in her throat.

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