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Grendel moved his investigation out of the hospital morgue later that day. Verity still depended on machines to stay alive and could not be moved.

I declared war on the morgue that evening. Castor, Mak'ti, and Adem came to see Verity and found themselves conscripted. We prosecuted our offensive with candles, mops, rags, and prayers, devastating the enemy with superior tempo and relentless aggression. A raid against enemy-held assets revealed three mismatched saint statues under dust-sheets in a closet near the hospital chapel, and we set them up in the morgue. There were warmer lightbulbs in a maintenance cabinet, and we got Mak'ti's help identifying which ones could be installed.

People protested. Officials were summoned.

"You can't put that there! You can't be here!"

"I understand, notify Inquisitor Grendel of my transgression."

"This cannot be moved without form 720-B and approval from the district office!"

"I understand, please send the form to the Dread Ordos of the Holy Inquisition."

"This is hard enough already! We have deadlines! We don't have time for things that don't matter! What do you want from us?"

I'm ashamed now, a little, for brushing past them the way I did. They were just exhausted men and women trying to save lives. Trying to be obedient to their masters and serve the Emperor with the resources given them. But we didn't ask anything of them. We just did what we thought should be done, and would not be deterred.

Wessex thought we should threaten to execute someone, if we wanted a real permanent change, but I wasn't ready to take it that far. And there was a change. The rooms changed, and the workers changed with them. There were candles that we hadn't brought. The floor stayed clean. Someone brought flowers, and someone took them away when they started to die.

This tale has been pilfered from NovelPhoenix. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

What is permanent, except for the Emperor? Things collapse, and people build them back again. They collapse again, and people build. They collapse, and people build.

❖ ❖ ❖

​

The Sisterhood chanted Aria's and Eloise's requiem outside the hospital where Verity and the guards over our room could be present. The hymns are not long, but there was a crowd by the end. I think Fr. Phaedo disappointed them by not giving a homily.

The bodies went back to the convent, to be reduced to ash and bone according to our custom. Their armor went with them, to await rising novices ready to carry on their work.

❖ ❖ ❖

​

Grendel had abandoned the Enforcer campaign against the trucks. The entire focus was now on the Ork-afflicted region of the planet.

He did not want to alert the enemy to our new knowledge—nor tax the resources of the Sisters—so his base would remain in Velgrad.

By the third day of data-analysis and laboratory work, Wessex excitedly reported that Grendel's sixty-three possible regions for the Eldar base had been reduced to just ten, in a geographically concentrated region in the far southern hemisphere.

By the fifth day, we had injectable fast counter-agents for the Eldar tox-shards and a range of related nerve-agents. We would each carry two autoinjectors in our personal medical kits, and we were to inject one directly into the tox-shard wound as soon as a tourniquet was applied.

No more progress had been made in finding the enemy. Verity was removed from the machines and began to take careful, painful steps. The power-armor helped. Its machine-spirit remembered how she had walked before the wound.

My five-day war against the hospital morgue came to its end. We boarded our Arvus and followed our Sisters home.