[16]

198.738.M41

Velgrad

17:30

Superior Isela found us as we were preparing ourselves for C-rotation. She brought good news that lifted my spirits out of the weeks of ill-feeling. The Enforcers had found their man at last. The traitor who had sent us against the manmongers at the former rail depot. Who had known of their sins and done nothing, until he compounded them with his own treachery to lead us away from Nika's shooter.

"Where?" I asked. I felt a thrill of excitement, but it was short-lived.

"Tarosk. They have already assembled a strike with local forces. They have evidence that members of the sect are in the same compound."

Tarosk was nine hundred kilometers away. I made myself not be troubled. Others had done well; others would continue to serve the Emperor according to their opportunity and means. I had my duty, and they had theirs. I made myself smile and after a moment I found that I didn't need to force it.

"Thank God," I said. "Thank God. I had feared… I don't know. I kept fearing they would be too late to stop whatever the sect was planning. It's been difficult to concentrate. Maybe this is what I needed."

"I pray so. My heart too has been troubled."

We were finished with the basic rites. Isela turned aside and looked out into the evening to give me space to murmur the accompanying prayers for my armor and weapons. Tara, Gwen, and Verity were there. They prayed the spoken rite with me.

Verity turned back to Isela when we finished. "Will you tell us what happens?"

"I will, if I am permitted."

My smile had slipped away, though there wasn't any cause. I just felt suddenly that it was pointless. I knew something would go wrong with the strike. Isela would find some reason why she couldn't say anything. I tried not to show it. I prayed for faith and hope as we crammed into the aircar for the short flight to Saint Margaret's.

A few minutes later we greeted B-team. We shared our good news and the smiles were real again for a few minutes as we exchanged pleasantries and prayers. We helped them square away the end of their shift and the handover to our own. They left, looking forward to vespers and evening meal back at the convent.

We would have our own vespers although the time, length, and liturgy were slightly different. One of the many benefits of staging at a chapel. The congregants were used to us being there, kneeling at the side-door of the nave nearest to the vehicle bay. Though it must have changed the character of the service for them. We were fully armored, our torsos thick with bolter magazines. Helmet by our knees, loaded bolters held by the stock with the muzzle resting on the floor. Symbol and reality together, both of the God-Emperor's protection, and of His terrible swift wrath.

Sometimes Deacon Surs or whichever driver we had that shift would share our evening meal with us. But usually we ate with just the four of us in the work room, a little later than our normal meal. That's how it was that evening.

Around 19:30 there was a warble of fuzz on the vox with the cadence of speech. But when I answered, "Did not receive," nothing else came. We kept eating.

I felt revulsion first. I gagged and spat out a blob of half-chewed bread, pushing myself back and away from the low table. "Stop," I said. "Something's wrong."

"I'm sorry," said Verity. "What is it? What did I do?"

Tara's confusion suddenly turned to shock. Her bowl tumbled. She snatched up her bolter and spun to cover the door. That cued the rest of us, and in a moment we were positioned for combat.

Gwen looked sick and pale. Poison, I thought. No, it couldn't be poison, we had brought the food ourselves. Gas?

"Helmets," I snapped. "Suit air."

(Our helmet records begin here. They are attached, segmented by timestamp, at the ends of the relevant sections.)

We sealed up. Dread pulsed through me. I hit my vox.

"Surs, status?"

Even though he was only a few dozen meters away, the vox signal was faint and fuzzy with static. "Alive. You're not… your status?"

"Alive. Get a rebreather, now."

"Complying."

After a moment his voice returned, muffled. "Done. But it won't help. Don't leave the work room. It's… it…"

"Why?" I demanded. "What is it? What happened?"

"If you deploy, you're dead," he said. "Something will kill you. I think that… odd. I don't know why. I just know it."

Was Surs a traitor? Impossible. It didn't fit. But nothing fit.

I felt like I was choking. I could feel my air supply blowing on my mouth and nose. Someone had tampered with it.

No. That was impossible too.

Slowly, without a word of command or a discussion, we lowered our bolters to ready positions, then to resting carry. I breathed slowly, feeling sure that I was asphyxiating with every breath, a hand resting on my air control in case I needed to switch back to room air and risk toxic gas.

Nothing happened. I moved my hand back to my bolter foregrip.

Food and dishes lay scattered on the floor.

I didn't suffocate.

Nothing happened.

The sensation of terrible certainty waned.

Verity solved it first. Or maybe she just said something that let Tara solve it. I don't know.

"It's happening again," Verity said.

"Oh," said Tara. Her voice was flat with sudden realization. "The Fear. It's happening again." She triggered her vox and repeated herself to Surs.

"Tran—sion un—," he replied, thick with static. "Say ag—n."

"It's the Fear. I say again: it's the Fear. I say again: it's the Fear."

"Copy. M—ing to y–."

We stopped wasting suit air.

It was the Fear, I could recognize it now. But it wasn't like before. Not a sudden screaming certainty of every unholy, awful lie. My thoughts still felt like they belonged to me. I wasn't sure which was worse.

Surs knocked. We went together to the vehicle bay, found the driver sealed into the Rhino, and coaxed him into letting us in. The sensation had gotten bad again. Very bad. I knew what was happening now, but I still knew there was a bomb under the Rhino.

Maybe I should have been stronger, since there was no reason for me to think so, but I checked. No bomb. Of course, I thought, it was inside, with the driver. What did we know about him, anyway? He could be a traitor.

I prayed Mina's rite and told myself not to be a fool. She didn't send me divine guidance. I got into the Rhino. I had to order Gwen twice before she got onboard.

What was next? Get the driver out of the vehicle to eliminate an unknown threat. I started towards the hatch separating the passenger compartment and the control compartment, then stopped myself. The doctrine was to contact command. We were under attack. Our minds were compromised. Both facts called for immediately reaching up the chain of command. For learning the will of others, and submitting to it, in as much as was not grievous sin.

But, I thought, doctrine wasn't meant for situations like this. And it wasn't infallible. I knew that the Church sometimes lied. I knew that nothing was so sacred that it could be really trusted.

Did I know those things?

Did I care whether I knew those things?

"Trust doctrine," I said. "Always doctrine first." I said it as a command, but it was as much to me as anyone else. "Trust nothing you didn't believe a month ago. Trust nothing new. No—no, that's not right. But—if it's new, stop. Ask how you know."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Suddenly, I saw the trap. At least, I thought I saw it. I made my choice and took the chance.

"I forbid you to ask how you know that an old belief is true. Act like it is true, even if it is not."

Assent from Surs and my Sisters.

Doctrine.

I activated the Rhino vox. "Command, Marisa." Nothing after several seconds. I tried again. "Command, Marisa."

"Command copies. Send." Isela's voice was staticky but clear enough.

"We are affected by the Fear phenomenon. Saint Margaret's location. We are in the Rhino."

"Eyes on exterior?"

"Stand by. Working."

Thank the Emperor, Isela seemed unaffected. I detailed the others, Tara, Verity and Gwen, to go check through the vehicle bay's exterior picters. Two could cover the doors while the other worked. A thought came to me.

"Command, what is your location?"

"Airborne. Aquila 1, over the city."

I felt a dozen conflicting fears struggling for belief—sabotage, surface-to-air missiles, an enemy with a vox-synthesizer impersonating my dead commander… I felt a spark of annoyance and tried to ignore them, and the sensation of a gun being aimed at my back, and the certainty that I had just sent my women to their deaths by making them leave the Rhino. Absurd, I know, since I was still sure that the Rhino was rigged to explode. Oddly enough, the annoyance seemed to help. I remembered Verity's response to the Fear. I remembered to hate. It helped.

The Fear was enemy action. Whatever else it was, it was that first. We needed to know who was hit, and what it did. "Did you feel the Fear before you left?" I asked Isela.

"I felt something. I knew something was wrong. I trusted my instincts and ordered the unit to deploy. Is that the Fear?"

"Affirm. Do you feel it now?"

"Negative. But something is wrong. I see fires below, and the vox—"

The transmission fuzzed out. I whirled, snapping up my bolter to aim at the enemy coming up behind me, but nothing was there. It was very bad for about twenty seconds.

"Command to Marisa. Report."

"Copy," I gasped. "Stand by." My heart was pounding. The others came back to the Rhino like they were crossing an enemy kill zone, and we sealed up.

"No sign of hostiles outside," said Tara. I conveyed it to Isela along with a brief report of what had happened.

"Copy. I didn't feel it," said Isela. "It must not reach this high. I think it's all over the city. I see fires. Move to intersection of Saint Drusus Causeway and 51st Street. Something is happening there. The auspex reports explosions, and—stand by."

We got moving, the familiar sounds and jolts of the Rhino speeding out of the vehicle bay. God-Emperor bless the driver for holding his nerve. Then there was a heavy, muffled whump, like a distant explosion. The driver cursed loudly.

"Cancel last order. Proceed to 51st and Dorn, I say again 51st and Dorn."

"Copy 51st and Dorn, moving."

"Someone is attacking the Arsenal. I'm trying to make contact. Their vox traffic is a mess."

That would be the Planetary Defense Arsenal on north side of the city. About ten minutes away if we didn't have to knock too much traffic out of the way.

"Command, status of Sisterhood?" I asked. No response, another pulse of supernatural terror, vile certainties, lost trust. When it began to wane, I repeated myself and got a response, barely audible through static.

"Sisterhood is deploying. Degraded by the Fear. E-rotation team is moving by aircar, ETA 15 minutes. 30 minutes for full deployment."

I tried to obtain tactically useful information on the way, but the situation kept changing and Isela couldn't see much from fifteen hundred meters up. The Fear didn't go away when we moved across the city, but it came and went in waves. Tara had a map out and was muttering numbers and making marks.

"Tara, report."

"I'm timing it. There's a pattern, I'll find it. There's a pattern. There's a pattern."

"Good, but not now. Prepare for contact. Driver, location?"

"Northbound on Dorn. Just passed 49th."

"What do you see?"

"Not much. There's smoke and dust. Wrecks. There's… warp it, Sister, just look out the top hatch and see for yourself."

Fair. And it would be good to have the pintle-mounted stormbolter in the fight if we were attacked en route. I crouch-walked along the aisle to the bulkhead and opened the hatch that separated the compartments. I squeezed and scraped my way around the driver's recessed seat and bulky engine components, levered open the top hatch, and climbed up to where I could brace my feet for turning leverage and rest my backpack against the inside of the cupola. I scanned my surroundings—smoke and dust was right, and getting denser by the second. I checked the weapon and ran the action to chamber the first rounds.

Our Rhino had a full sized vehicle stormbolter, not the smaller infantry model. A giant assembly of redundant parts and auto-stabilizers with a huge double drum magazine holding two hundred rounds, mounted on a motor-assisted skate ring around the cupola.

Up ahead, I could see fire through the smoke. Huge jets and plumes of it, reaching into the sky. We passed a cluster of dark, motionless bundles on the side of the road. I think they were bodies.

"Passing 50th," said the driver.

"Command, Marisa," I voxed.

"Receiving. Send." Faint, but audible.

I hesitated a moment, making certain. The fire was audible as a continuous roar, punctuated with the pops and crackles and booms of charge packs and munitions exploding. It filled the world ahead with red and orange light.

"The arsenal is destroyed. Burning—fully involved structure fire."

A pause. Then: "Copy. We have taken surface-to-air fire. Attempt—"

A dark shadow flashed across the red glow. Then there was a flash. The smoke haze ignited into violet plasma as a heavy energy bolt ripped through it. My helmet's machine-spirit auto-darkened my eye lenses and saved me from blinding. I didn't have time to finish flinching as an arc of molten metal appeared along the front of the Rhino, barely missing the right treads.

"Contact front!" I screamed. I pulled myself back up onto the stormbolter. As my lenses returned to normal I saw a large truck with a heavy weapon in the back swerve away. The distinctive snap-zip-pop of small arms fire passing overhead. Shapes moving in the back of the truck. Adrenaline hit me at the same moment as awful certainty: they were ours. Army or Enforcers. Friendly fire.

Doctrine.

We were taking fire from unidentified vehicle in a hot combat zone under known enemy attack.

I was sure they were ours, but doctrine was obvious. I opened fire, a short burst just as they vanished into the smoke.

"Driver! Pursue!"

Isela's voice on the vox. "Marisa, report."

"In contact with the enemy! Truck. Eastbound! Lascannon or plasma!"

"Part— copy. Purs— and maint— contact. I say ag—. Pursue— and maintain—"

Static.

We weren't pursuing.

I shouted down at the driver. "Go! Move!"

"We can't! There's too many of them! And the tracks will come apart!"

"Do it anyway. In Emperor's name. Pursue!"

He cursed loudly and creatively, but he did it.