[29]

216.738.M41

Sanok Township

20:21 to 20:30 Local Time

I have almost no memory of the rest of that night. I remember the bodies. I remember the breathless terror of forcing myself and my team to stay the extra minutes to check for survivors, and the feeling that something was always behind me, about to strike.

The transcript below captures what must have happened—what I must have said. But I do not remember it.

Transcript: Vox transmissions between Enforcer unit 607 and Sector 4 Command607: Mayday mayday mayday. Sororitas Velgrad Ready-C via Enforcer unit… unit 607.

S4C: Sector 4 copies mayday. Send.

607: Sanok township. Manakal building. All Enforcers seen outside building are dead. Believe ten dead Enforcers. Subjects in custody dead. Believe eleven dead subjects. Status of internal unknown.

S4C: What is your status, Ready-C?

607: In unit 607. Moving. Eastbound… unknown road. Away from Manakal. Three effectives with minor injuries. No armor. No… no… shoes.

S4C: Do you require emergency medical?

607: Negative. Sector 4, I believe—

S4C: Stand by. Stand by. Do not transmit.

[20-second pause.]

S4C: No response from other units. Ready-C, confirm ten dead Enforcers?

607: Affirm. But… they were… cut to pieces. May have miscounted. Sector 4, believe Eldar killed your men. I say again, believe Eldar.

S4C: —she says—

S4C: Copy believe Eldar.

S4C: Ready-C, I show you missing in action three days ago. State your identities.

607: Marisa Ven. I have Verity Cade and Tara Mull. Gwen Gless is dead.

S4C: Stand by.

S4C: Working. Stand by.

S4C: Patching St. Margaret's Actual. Stand by.

Transcript: Vox transmissions between unit 607 and St. Margaret's Chapel (SMC)

SMC: Marisa, this is Surs.

607: Surs? Thank God.

SMC: Yes. Marisa, there will be an intersection fifteen kilometers from where you started. Sign for Southbound to Ostport. Have you passed it?

607: Negative.

SMC: When you reach it, turn right. Drive south towards Ostport. If we lose this signal, your rendezvous is the central square of a town called Pelask, 40 kilometers south on that road.

607: Copy Pelask town square. Did Jorg live? The driver?

SMC: He died. Hold questions. Marisa, confidence in Eldar presence?

607: It's them. I have no doubt.

SMC: Estimate strength.

607: They… I… stand by.

607: One elite squad. Possibly two. I don't know if there was a simultaneous attack inside the structure. The lights flickered. They killed everyone outside. Ten Enforcers, ten prisoners. Ten—five—seconds. Fast. Bodies severed into pieces. No burns. No backstop damage. No projectile traces.

SMC: No evidence of capture? No torture?

607: Negative.

SMC: Confirm Gwen is dead?

607: Yes. Affirmative. Yes.

SMC: Stand by.​

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Later, we learned that the responders found two more Enforcer corpses cut to pieces inside the Manakal building. No footprints were left in the blood.

No one in or around the Manakal building was left alive. Not a single body was in one piece.

There were other corpses, older, marked by las and grenades and webshots and a knife. Dead long before they were cut apart. That was a mystery to the responders, for a little while—until our report and their investigation found each other.

There was no documentary evidence of any kind in the building or on any of the enemy corpses. No data-slates, no cogitator data-stacks, no papers, no handwritten notes. Not even ashes. A few of the Enforcer autocars had their picters running, but they showed no shadows and no Eldar. Just a few lost frames in a well-lit environment. Missing moments in which people died. The missing frames must have matched with the flickering of the lights.

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We didn't go straight home. I remember being gathered into gentle embraces, Isela kissing my filthy hair and telling me I had done well. I remember my irrational fury at the Army hospital when a nurse told me she had to ask if I had been raped. I remember clutching someone's hands, I don't remember whose, while someone else dug around in my little puncture wound, plucking out little shreds of cloth and splinters of wood. I remember laughing weakly afterwards, thinking: At last, an interrogation done properly. Finally, needles and blades.

I woke briefly, very early the next morning. I felt a pulse of terror and disorientation, but I saw Verity and Tara sleeping beside me, with IV bags hanging over them and bandages on their feet. I had an IV bag attached to my arm and there were far too many bandages all over me.

I realized where we were from the drab green paint on everything. It was the same Army hospital that had treated us on 110.738, but a different room of course. The last one had been blown up.

The room's light was off, but light came in through and around a curtain that we had instead of a door. I saw the silhouettes of two armored Battle Sisters through the curtain. Like shadow-puppets, except I could see one foot each under the curtain. There was another Battle Sister in the room with us, helmeted but with her visor raised so I could see her face. Sister Hana, one of the newest to join us from the Schola. She was fully equipped, as for a combat deployment. Stun grenades on her grenade belt, her body thick with bolter magazines. She had the forty-centimeter bayonet that can attach to our bolters sheathed at her hip. She couldn't have failed to notice that we all preferred the smaller combat knife. Maybe she was asserting her personality, something to make her look different even when her visor was closed.

She noticed me awake, looking at her. She flashed me a smile, then a little shake of her head. She held a finger to her lips, pointed at the door-curtain, and mouthed, "Isela."

There was some water by the bed. I had to reach awkwardly with my non-IV arm. I drank and went back to sleep.

When I woke again, Verity and Tara were already awake. Not just Superior Isela was in the room, but also Palatine Elin, the leader of the entire convent, also in her power-armor. Their questions were already underway. I was swept in, and we told them everything. But it wasn't like an interrogation. Isela and Elin had already eaten, I think, but they had brought us breakfast in bed.