[2]

I did not participate in Nika's debriefing. I was to speak to no one but the saints until my own debriefing.

I was in the military hospital at the Army base near our chapel, getting my arm stitched up while a medic pointed a bright light at my eyes and told me that I had a concussion. I had a broken finger.

Verity was fine, just stitches. Somehow Gwen was completely untouched. Not even a bruise.

Tara was in surgery. The nurse said that a full recovery was all but guaranteed, but I prayed anyway. The bullet had spent most of its energy on the armor, but it was still a piece of metal that tore a hole through her body.

You should understand our equipment if you are to understand this account. Perhaps I should have included this earlier.

For my order, power-armor is at once battledress, armor, camouflage, and parade uniform—the surface and cloth can change color and pattern a little. It is light and small for powered armor. In it, we are as strong as a large man, but only a little more bulky than we would be in flak armor and tall boots. It is excellent armor, but we are not invulnerable.

Shrapnel and ricochets from infantry weapons are almost harmless to us. Likewise most pistol and some carbine rounds, as well as weak energy weapons.

What can kill us? Direct hits from rifles can penetrate the weaker parts: hands, the lower abdomen, groin, joints, and eyes. Bolter and heavy machine gun rounds are a threat even on glancing hits, except against the heavy ceramite plates that cover the upper torso and shoulders. These will stop anything short of a direct hit with an anti-vehicle weapon.

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Chemical, biological, and radiological threats are irrelevant against an unpunctured suit. Sororitas power-armor can seal in an instant, recycle air for two hours, and hold its internal temperature against every environment from the furnace heat of a lava flow to the nitrogen ice of worlds frozen in eternal darkness.

We can fight in the vacuum of space. Neither our armor nor our bolters require external air. We can fight submerged to a depth of 150 meters before our armor starts to fail. Bolters are rocket-assisted, and will hold a lethal velocity and true course for over a hundred meters underwater.

Under the armor we are human, as fragile as any. My concussion is proof of that. There are many Battle Sisters who die with their armor intact.

Our minds are human, too. Though there is more to say about that. The human mind is not alone, and the mind of God is invincible.

We die. Most of us die young. Our armor often lives to be old. My armor has lived eighty years and has been fitted nine times, to nine women. The other eight are dead. May the God-Emperor grant that when I die, it lives to serve a tenth.

I have digressed. I should write of the debriefing and what followed.

I have selected the following excerpts from records instead of relying on my own faulty memory or second-hand reports to provide an account of the aftermath of the raid on D-M-48-9. The full record documents are appended.