[30]

Surs was a shock to me. One of his arms was gone at the shoulder. One of his legs was gone below the knee. The stumps were capped with bio-preparatives, and there were already shining skin-ports with cables connecting him to his autochair.

"For practice," he said. "I have to drive the chair with my missing hand and foot. They say it will help when they fit me with the augmentics."

Even his face was different. The roundness and softness were gone. His cheeks were sharp and hollow under the short-clipped remnants of his beard.

He told us the story of the ambush from his perspective. His version was very matter-of-fact. The Rhino had taken the lascannon hit. The first hit hadn't destroyed enough machinery to stop the sturdy vehicle, but Surs had been hit directly, and Jorg, the driver, had been splashed with molten metal and was dying. That's when Surs lost his leg. He didn't know if it had damaged the vox, or if he had just been deaf or too in shock to hear us call in.

Another lascannon shot killed the Rhino's engine. Surs dragged himself up to the stormbolter cupola. He meant to engage the enemy vehicle, but he was shot several times, somehow all in his left arm. He lost his grip and fell down from the cupola. He had tried to get up to the gun again, but he lost consciousness after two or three attempts. Reinforcements arrived and pulled him out, but by then he wasn't aware of anything.

He didn't tell us how he had crawled through a smoke-filled burning oven with his leg burned off at the knee, forced himself through a cramped and burning space, somehow climbed to the cupola, somehow braced himself with one leg. He didn't say whether Jorg had been screaming and thrashing, or already silent and spasming. He didn't mention the pain, or the taste of the thick black smoke that burned the lungs and made it impossible to see.

May the God-Emperor bless and keep all deacons, now and forever.

❖ ❖ ❖

​

Gwen's body was right where Naomi had said. Six hundred meters after marker 282 on the Velgrad-Ostport rail. 400 meters north from the track. Palatine Elin didn't let us go with the party sent to retrieve it. We were on enforced rest in the convent, not permitted to participate in anything but prayer and meals and worship.

We buried her again below the convent garden. It isn't meant for burial, but it is consecrated ground. Burial isn't our way, though it's better than cremation. Given the choice we do not yield the flesh to corruption and decay, to be eaten and returned to dust by what lives in the soil. There is a process given us by the tech-priests which does it more gently, with reverence and love. But the natural way had already begun. We would let it take its course before we restored her bones to their place among all those who had shown her the way.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

❖ ❖ ❖

​

On 219.738.M41, four "Sororitas" in damaged armor and full combat kit were stopped in a civilian vehicle at a random Enforcer roadblock in Ostport. The Enforcer followed procedure. He obtained their unit designation and purpose for travel. He briefly engaged them in conversation because there was no traffic behind them, asked them for a prayer, and waved them on.

Several minutes later, he remembered that the unit designation they had used, Velgrad Ready-C, matched one he had heard from his wife's cousin, who served the vox in Sector 4 Command. He remembered that one of them—one of us—had been killed, leaving three survivors. He called it in.

I have not been able to find out anything about the desperate mess of vox-calls that must have followed. There must have been authorizations and counter-authorizations and verifications in triplicate. But the Enforcers tailed the car, ambushed the impostors, and captured them alive. I know nothing, either, about the contents of the car, or what was learned from the interrogations. The records may have been sealed at an Inquisitorial level higher than the authority I have from you. Or maybe they just got lost, or the enemy found a way to destroy them.

I do know that the Enforcers used stun grenades and webguns to capture them, which has a sense of justice in it.

Two mornings later, at 08:00, Tara, Verity, and I were with our Sisters again, praying the rites of the Third Hour with our wargear before us. We had spent all last evening with our priest, cleaning and purifying as he re-consecrated what had been profaned. It was the fifth day after our escape. A week and a day since Gwen had died.

My face was still puffy and tender with healing bruises, now gone interesting shades of violet and yellow-green. And it hurt to kneel on the leg that had been hit by the webgun, which looked worse. But no one was looking at me, except, I hope, the face of God.

I put the armor on, piece by piece, in cadence with the prayer, in cadence with the hundred and twenty Sisters around me. My fragility disappeared under ceramite and steel. I did not weep as I stood, but my chest felt like I was weeping, or singing, though all I was doing was speaking the prayer. I felt the servos wake and sensed the synthmuscles shifting against my skin as the armor came to life.

A hundred and twenty bolters made their heavy metallic clunks as actions snapped into place on empty chambers, ready for the training of the day.

There must be a word for the feeling that I had, but I know it not.