The Ironstriders had the range, the vantage, and a clear field of fire.
The assembled Order had no cover.
The canoness barked at Caia to duck, shoving both of them into the belly of the Immolator and slamming the hatch as the echoing boom of autocannons filled the air.
Assailed by the noise, rocks cracked, rumbled and fell. They hit the roadway, splintering into fragments; the metal-flat water geysered with repeated impacts.
On the right flank, Sister Roku’s squad had barely re-embarked before their Repressor was slammed with explosive incoming rounds.
Roku was not intimidated. Her voice rang furious, singing the Dies Irae.
On the left, Augusta and her squad were knocked to the floor of their vehicle, falling on top of one another as the thing lurched into motion through a thundering hail of fire.
In the centre, Caia likewise hit the floor of the Immolator, nearly knocking Rhene to the ground. Kneeling over the injured Sister, Rhene snapped at her to watch herself and went back to her charge.
The injured woman had caught a spray of shrapnel in her belly, and the wound was bleeding heavily. She made no sound, but her chestplate was off, and gore seeped out through her underarmour. It leaked, steaming, across the cold metal floor.
Oblivious of the blood, Sister Superior Eleni knelt at the woman’s other side, gripping her gauntleted hand in both of her own. Her helm was off, and sweat matted her blonde hair. It slid down her skin, glittering, outlining the edges of her tattoo. She was praying for strength, for His light and mercy, and she was echoed by her squad’s only other survivor, who sat against the vehicle’s side, her flamer over her knees.
Caia joined them, the prayer bringing a flare of anger. She felt almost guilty at the woman’s injury, felt that she should have done more, been out there to defend her. By the Throne, she didn’t want to be in here, hiding – she wanted to be fighting, firing, bringing wrath and retribution…
Her nervousness was crystallising, becoming anger about its edges. Not only anger at the enemy, but anger at her situation. Questions plagued her, flickering like prayers.
Was this because of Zale, the witch? Had he touched her, too, with his heresy?
Were her squad really here to redeem themselves in death, like the two doomed soldiers?
And if so, then why had she been separated? If they were to die, then surely, she should be with them!
Or have I not proven myself worthy enough?
Ianthe’s voice cut across her thoughts. ‘They have excellent aim,’ she said. ‘If they wanted to, they could take both of us, clean from the top of the vehicle.’
Raising her voice, she called out across the vox-coder: ‘Stand fast, my Sisters! His light is with us! We do not fear death! We do not fear pain! We will fight with the last round in every weapon, with the last breath in every body! For the Emperor!’
‘The debris field is clearing. Full scan of the factorum in ninety solar seconds,’ Captain Mulier announced aboard the Kyrus.
‘Ninety seconds.’ The canoness muttered the words aloud. She had a grin like a blade, sharp and gleaming and utterly mirthless; one fist was clenched like she could take on the Ironstriders with her gauntlet alone.
She snapped, ‘Exorcists! Fire!’
Caia couldn’t see the missiles as they streaked across the filthy brown sky, but she could hear the detonations as they hit. And she could imagine the machines rocking and falling, the explosive craters blown in the basalt, the debris and rock and metal and flesh as it was flung in every direction, the plumes of superheated smoke…
She continued to pray with Sister Eleni, listening, and watching the auspex in her hand.
The explosions were moving past them, backwards through the company. She heard her Sisters curse as the shells found their new targets, and fell upon the Exorcists.
And then, from almost directly behind them, came the unmistakeable detonation of promethium fuel. A brief scream sounded in the vox, half-shriek, half-prayer.
Livid with fury, the canoness’ voice grew louder, thunderous and proud. Caia, too, prayed like a woman demented.
‘We beseech Thee!’
On her feet, her pistol still in her hand, Ianthe barked, ‘Reload! Again!’
A rumble of rubble seemed to shake the roadway.
Sister Jolantra, in the leading Exorcist, remarked, ‘One down!’ Then paused. ‘Two!’ Another pause, letting the music fill the almost breathless wait. ‘And by His grace – another one crushed by the rocks. Three!’
The canoness’ grin grew.
Caia kept praying, feeling the words surge in her blood; Ianthe was looking up at the hatch as though she would leap out of it, descending on the machines with weapon in hand and the wrath of the Saint herself…
The heavy boom of the remaining autocannons continued, now focused exclusively on the Exorcists as the greatest threat.
A third volley of missiles arced over their heads, and Sister Jolantra snarled, ‘Four!’
Briefly, the last autocannon rattled on alone. There was a rumble of falling rocks, and it fell silent.
‘Five!’ Jolantra’s voice rose in a shout, a savage paean of victory and thanks.
The gunfire had stopped, and the grumble of the Immolator’s engine seemed suddenly loud. Caia stood up, but Ianthe was already moving, opening the hatch above her head and scrambling up to look out at the battle.
Captain Mulier said, ‘Scan in twenty seconds… Nineteen…’
‘The roadway looks clear. Sister Caia?’ the canoness asked.
‘Nothing moving,’ Caia said. She jumped up, and looked round to assess the damage. ‘By His light!’ The words were a breath.
Sister Caia was no neophyte. She and Melia had served together as novitiates, and they had taken their Oath of Ordination at the same time. They had joined Augusta’s squad ten years before, had seen the savage death-green glow of the necrons at Psamitek, and the clicking seethe of massed tyranids, their rip and claw and hunger. They’d seen the graceful fury of the aeldari on Basilissica, the muscle and mockery of the orks on Lautis. They’d faced the slaver of daemons, their whips and teeth and laughter; they’d seen the roil and flare of the very warp itself…
But Caia had never been to war alongside her assembled Order, never seen her Sisters dying in numbers, nor such devastation as Rayos’ machines could inflict…
She steadied herself on the edge of the hatch.
‘We are strong, Sister,’ Ianthe said. ‘He is with us. Can you not feel His anger? Taste it in the smoke on the air? Understand His joy and wrath in the exaltation of pure combat?’ The canoness’ voice was like a plucked string, deep and strong and vibrant, and laden with blood and power.
The vox-coder broadcast, ‘Sisters! We claim victory in the name of the God-Emperor! We will not let these defiled machines stand in our way!’
The ruined banner at her back, Caia answered, along with her Sisters, ‘Ave Imperator!’
The shout carried skywards, its force almost enough to make a whorl of currents in the floating dirt.
The roadway, however, was a jumble of confusion.
Amid the drifting smoke, Caia could see the devastation – the pieces of red armour, the strewn fragments of the downed Ironstriders. The damage to the ferrocrete road was severe, pockmarks and craters marking where multiple rockfalls had tumbled after the Exorcists’ missiles had hit.
Sister Jolantra, it seemed, had been targeting the overhanging stone as much as the attackers themselves.
Mikaela’s Immolator was already rumbling over the top of the mess, crushing all beneath the vehicle’s relentless tracks.
Caia checked her auspex, but there was nothing else in motion.
Captain Mulier barked. ‘Five… Four… Three…’
She breathed a prayer…
‘And clear,’ Mulier said. ‘As far as I can tell, milady, the factorum is empty.’
‘The Ironstriders must have waited, and then run out to meet us,’ Ianthe answered grimly. ‘But, as the Treatise says, He defends those best who defend themselves… We will pause to make sure.’
Augusta’s orders were clear – the vehicles would secure and hold the junction, and she and her squad were to disembark and scout the empty factorum on foot. They were not to engage, they were just to observe and report. If there were any threat remaining, they would ensure its final destruction.
As the Order closed the gap upon its mission target, nothing could be left at its back.
‘Understood.’ In the back of their Repressor, Augusta relayed the new orders to her squad, and to the two waiting soldiers.
Viola pulled a face, thought better of it, and stayed quiet.
‘We move in three solar minutes,’ Augusta said, shooting a warning look at the red-haired Sister.
‘Aye,’ Viola replied.
The Sister Superior was very aware of Sister Alcina, standing with her arms folded and her expression flat. Alcina had not been impressed by Augusta’s attempt to take down the Ironstrider by striking at its foot, though she was disciplined enough to say nothing. Augusta had the uncomfortable sensation, however, that Alcina was still watching her.
Watching all of them.
‘Sister?’ she asked.
The Repressor jerked untidily sideways as it crushed rock and machine beneath its progress. Augusta caught at the roof to keep her feet. From the front, Sister Cindal called, ‘Auspex still clear, advancing on target. Ramp will drop in two minutes.’
Alcina said, ‘I will speak to you privately, Sister. When we have a moment. The enemy is our first priority.’
Augusta gave her a long, steady look, but offered no further response – this was a combat situation, and not the time. When Alcina finally dropped her gaze, the Sister Superior nodded, then said, ‘Viola and Rhea, take point. Melia, take rear. Mors, with me. Rufus, with Sister Akemi. We will enter by the side access and follow the left-hand wall, staying under cover of the balcony and the empty hoppers. If anything moves, we observe and report, and we await further orders.’
The Repressor’s engines slowed, and the vehicle came to a stop. Cindal said, ‘Still nothing, Sisters. Twenty seconds ’til I drop the ramp.’
‘Helmets on,’ Augusta said. ‘May His light follow us into the darkness. May His wisdom watch our pathway.’
Cindal said, ‘Three seconds, Sisters.’
The ramp’s green light flashed, its hydraulics whined. And even before it hit the ground, Viola and Rhea were moving, their cohesion smooth and easy.
But a new problem had developed.
The factorum’s concourse was gritty with black ash and fine, metallic sand. In the aftermath of the battle, it had been stirred to wakefulness by the ripples of rising heat, obscuring the Sisters’ preysight and limiting their field of vision. Viola reached the bottom of the ramp with a curse, and dropped to a kneel, her heavy bolter aimed out across the factorum’s foreground – what she could see of it. Rhea followed the motion, letting Viola run forwards once more. Their deployment was faultless, a movement completed a thousand times.
‘Can’t see a damned thing.’ The curse was Rufus. ‘Could be anything moving in all this!’
Augusta barked, ‘Suit-lights!’
Six beams of light glimmered through the billowing dirt as the squad followed, weapons in hands.
Atop the Repressor, the storm bolter was tracking, covering them, but there was nothing to see.
Augusta said, ‘Sister Rhea?’
Her long form like a bloodied smear, Rhea returned, ‘Nothing, Sister Superior. No motion.’
‘Keep scanning,’ Augusta said.
Six Sisters and two soldiers moved swiftly – five paces, and kneel, five paces, and kneel. Dependent completely upon Rhea and her auspex, they moved towards the left-hand side of the building, their suit-lights picking out the glimmers of mica and obsidian, buried in the rock, the twin gleam of the servohauler rails.
‘Still nothing,’ Rhea said.
The building loomed high, identical in shape to the previous factorum, the one in which they’d caught Scafidis Zale. This time, however, it lacked the attaching metal walkways, and its left-hand side was butted up hard against the rock. The area provided a lee of shelter, and as they came closer, their vision cleared and they could make out the door that Augusta had meant. It bore a line of binary numerals and a cog-and-skull symbol that they’d seen before.
‘Incaladion,’ Akemi said. The word seemed heavy, its syllables like rocks, rolling onwards through the dust.
‘Rayos’ home forge world,’ Augusta commented.
‘She must have known all this was here,’ Melia said. ‘Why else did she come to this planet?’
‘Aye,’ Augusta responded. ‘Many of these machine-parts must be centuries old.’ They moved onwards, and saw that the servohauler tracks ended at a huge and echoing depot, empty and dug backwards into the cold rock wall. ‘She must have worked hard, to rebuild this army.’
‘We estimate that Rayos has been here for maybe two decades,’ Akemi said. ‘I do not clearly understand the ways of machine-spirits, but she must have worked hard indeed to build this many machines in that short a time.’
The air in the depot was still; there were no engines, nothing. The lines of tracks gleamed in mockery and an odd chill went down the Sister Superior’s spine.
This many machines…
It was a glint of suspicion like the tip of a blade, caught in a poorly healed wound…
That short a time.
But the depot offered no answers. At Augusta’s order, Viola and Rhea reached the door to the factorum, and stopped.
Unlike the various heavy double doors that allowed the machines themselves into and out of the building, this one was normal size – for servitors, helots and tech-priests.
‘Still nothing,’ Rhea said. ‘If the Kyrus’ scans are correct, this factorum was emptied more than two weeks ago.’
Sister Alcina muttered in the vox, ‘I dislike this, Sister.’
‘I hear you,’ Augusta agreed. Then, ‘Quietly if you can, Sisters. The Emperor rewards caution.’
Carefully, Rhea reached out. The door didn’t move. She tried again, then stepped back, and, with little effort, struck it with one red boot. It sprang open, slamming backwards, and Viola was already through it, her heavy bolter and suit-light covering the space inside.
But there was nothing there. Nothing moved. Nothing opened fire. No lights glared, no sirens wailed…
‘Of course,’ Augusta commented, straight-faced, ‘He also rewards audacity.’
Muttering the words of the litany, she gave the order to advance.
The factorum was empty.
The space was huge, covered in the dust of centuries. And yet that dust had been tracked with recent movements and shifted into patterns – there had been something here, and not very long ago.
The squad spread out in twos, taking Rufus with them. Augusta kept Mors at her shoulder – the young ex-corporal had more experience of this planet than any of the Sisters, and might offer insight where they could not.
Confronted with the deserted expanse of the factorum floor, however, he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Sister,’ he said. ‘I can only offer what we already know. Rayos has removed her force from this location.’ He paused, then added, ‘Permission to speak freely?’
‘Of course.’
‘Sister, her force is fully assembled. I fear… I feel that we are wasting our time. We should strive to reach our target before Rayos’ force can be moved off-world.’
‘Aye.’ Augusta nodded, thinking. ‘But the Kyrus will warn us if anything else enters orbit above the platform.’
Mors did not argue. ‘Yes, Sister.’
They went back to pacing the vast and empty space, trying to piece together the movements from the marks in the dust – but it was almost impossible. The exploring Sisters answered their roll calls, one pair after another.
They, too, were finding nothing.
At last, Augusta and Mors came to a stop before the one point in the factorum that had really caught their interest.
A shrine.
A Mechanicus shrine, clearly the factorum’s main place of worship – to Augusta it looked more like a miniature workshop, a place of pict-screens and pipes and furnaces and maintenance. Binary prayers were embossed in its metal walls and, under them, there were other marks that were clearly machine dialect, something that she could not read.
She called for Akemi, and continued to look.
The area was clean, clear of the ever-present metallic dust; it had recent oil stains where machines had been assembled or repaired. It also bore a cog-and-skull, one that they were starting to find familiar.
‘Incaladion,’ Augusta said. ‘Again.’ She stood looking at it, and then realised something else. ‘This one is more recent than the mark on the door.’
‘By some considerable time.’ Mors ventured an agreement, his hands gripped round his lasrifle, the weapon tucked hard into his shoulder. He was watching the empty factorum, as if convinced that they’d missed something.
‘Am I correct in recalling, Mors,’ Augusta said, ‘that Rayos had scarred over the mark of her home world?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ he said. ‘I recall the same thing.’
‘She is a heretek. She has abandoned her world, denied it. So why would she make its mark in her workshop?’
He blinked. ‘I do not know.’
Augusta said nothing, and continued to examine the shrine. There was little else to see – a small stacked data-bank, a forgotten cogitator, a hanging line of basic tools and attachments, all of them clean and recently used.
Akemi arrived at a run, Rufus with her. The young medicae had caught a shrapnel-cut across the side of his face, and the field-dressing seeped with red.
‘Sister Superior?’
Augusta pointed a red-armoured finger. ‘The machine dialect, Sister Akemi, what does it say?’
Akemi had almost taken her Oath of Ordination to the Order of the Quill, and her linguistic skills were formidable. Machine dialect, however, was a difficult task for a human, no matter how good their education. She said, ‘I fear I can read very little of it, Sister–’
‘Try.’ Augusta’s word was an order.
Akemi turned her suit-light on the text, and frowned. After a moment, she said, ‘Toll the great bell… Sing praise… the God of all… It’s a prayer for maintenance, for the reconstruction and accession of broken machine-spirits…’ She paused, then said, ‘No – not reconstruction. Creation.’ She started to explain the difference in phraseology, but Augusta stopped her with a raised hand, and she finished, ‘This is a birth-prayer.’
‘A birth-prayer?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ Akemi said. ‘This shrine was not created by this world’s original tech-priests. It’s a place for remaking, for joining parts of a spirit to make a new whole.’ She paused. ‘I do not know if this is heresy.’
‘That surely depends on the parts,’ Augusta said, her tone bleak – though she, too, did not understand enough of the ways of the Omnissiah, nor of the heretek.
Akemi had confirmed her suspicion, however, acknowledged that blade-spike of aggravation that was biting into her thoughts…
‘There is something else here,’ she said. ‘And I am beginning to suspect that it, too, once came from Incaladion.’