[59]

We had no part in the rest of the battle. It evolved mostly according to the plans laid in advance.

Colonel Zamok commanded the operation. Two companies of grav-chute trained Guardsmen deployed in a wide cordon around the target while their air assets hammered the sub-metro with bombs and strafed targets of opportunity.

The sub-metro station gave the Eldar access to the sub-metro itself. There were six possible exit points for them which were the immediate priority after initial area reduction.

Two were partially collapsed, barricaded and invested by Sororitas infantry. One was collapsed by Sororitas melta charges. The other three were bombed until they collapsed, then monitored by smaller Sororitas forces with gunships loitering overhead for fire support and counterstealth radar.

The sub-metro was flooded with choke-gas to kill anything without access to a rebreather and put the Eldar on a timer. The Eldar made two sorties attempting to break out. Both were repulsed without Imperial losses.

Two Valkyrie gunships took damage from surface-to-air darklight fire. One was forced to make an emergency landing which resulted in irreparable damage to the airframe.

An Eldar shuttle was detected taking off from between two partially collapsed buildings near the sub-metro station. It evaded initial gunship fire, shot down two intercepting missiles, and cleared the defense cordon before a squadron of Lightning strike fighters downed it with massed lascannon fire three kilometers south of the engagement area. It was under full auspex surveillance and heavy counterstealth radar illumination throughout. No enemy crew were detected escaping. The wreck exploded and burned on impact with the ground. Later, auspex crews found no evidence of survivors. Almost nothing was left of the wreckage itself.

The ship was approximately thirty-five meters long. It was described as having wings, spikes, or fins, which had either been retracted or folded before it launched. Its enclosed central section was about 4 meters wide and 2.5 meters tall. I believe it was the ship from day 231. It would have fit in the space between the buildings where the Eldar escape vehicle was hidden that night.

Once the perimeter was established and Colonel Zamok assessed that additional bombardment would not produce additional results, the perimeter was tightened and the Sororitas force began methodical clearance of the sub-metro.

During the exterior perimeter clearance, four Imperial Guardsmen were killed by a Wrack their squad believed was dead. Their names were Titus Graf, Aleksandr Pyet, Holst Bengen, and Basilius Svert. Titus was twenty-seven years old. Aleksandr was twenty. Holst and Basilius were nineteen.

Sister Eulalia lost both of her legs and almost her life to an Eldar trap—an armor-penetrating beam that caused supernaturally swift bone overgrowth. Autotourniquets and rapid evacuation saved enough of her body that her legs could be replaced with augmentics.

Sisters Ethel and Sacra were hit with shard weapons, but were dosed with counteragents and evacuated within minutes. They would recover.

Twenty-one Eldar corpses were recovered after clearance was complete. This was almost certainly a significant under-counting of their dead. It did not include the Wrack we killed in the river, the Warrior or Warriors killed in the darklight explosion after Verity's death, or any Eldar incinerated by bombs, orbital laserfire and secondary fires, or their own crashing ship.

Eighty Ork corpses were recovered which showed signs of Eldar implanted circuitry, as well as six which did not. All were reported burned, although the Inquisition may have taken a few for research.

Approximately six hundred and eighty distinct human victims were found. If any were alive when they were found, I was not informed of it.

Only thirty-four were identified. Most were from nearby regions, but several were not. There was one from Velgrad. A middle-aged woman reported missing two months before.

Again, the true count was likely much higher, and not only because of explosives and fire. Wessex informed us that the Orks were not true servitors. They still ate.

❖ ❖ ❖

​

We were the first casualties of a battalion-sized operation. There was a huge field hospital set up at the Vogel 1-1 airbase—huge air-conditioned tents of starched white canvas filling a damaged runway.

For forty minutes we were the sole object of attention for eight physicians, a full techpriest, and dozens of nurses, medics, and workers. Most were civilians. I recognized one of the nurses from Karsmire. She was the one who had put the gel on Verity's leg. I felt my chest go tight and my face go hot when I saw her. I felt something close to hate. Irrational, but it is what I felt. I made myself pray for her instead. The feeling went away and I felt empty again.

The medics had scrubbed us with purifiers and neutralizers during the flight over. There wasn't time to get us out of our armor, but they had pried off my destroyed backpack and stowed it in the hold.

Tara looked bad. Her skin was ashen. One of her eyes was blood-red. Half of her face kept jerking like she wanted to frown. As soon as they had us out of the armor, she was surrounded by surgeons in masks and gloves and gowns who took her away.

Hana and I got washed again, this time down to the skin. There were enough female nurses, and they chased the men away, but I was too numb to care. They dressed us like dolls in immodest little gowns. They wheeled us through scanners and told us everything that was wrong with us. Fractures, bruises, tears, strains. They said my collarbone was broken. I don't remember feeling in too much pain, but they gave me morphine. Maybe I should have hurt. We both got strong injections for our heads, to prevent brain damage from blast after blast after blast. Those hurt. They made the base of my skull feel like it was on fire for a minute while I bit down on a piece of rubber and clutched hard at some man's hands whose face I never saw.

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I don't know what made me forget. Maybe it was the morphine, or the pain. I know I had started to doze after the pain of the injection went away, and then I jolted awake. I needed to find Verity, and I wouldn't believe them when they said she was dead. I think I broke a nurse's nose when she tried to hold me down. I still feel bad about it. They did fix her nose, though. It was swollen and purple but straight when I found her the next day to beg forgiveness.

A big man in a Guard uniform held me down and someone gave me another injection, and that one made me sleep.

I didn't dream.

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​

When I woke up, it was night, and the battle was over. I had a neat little cut along my collarbone that I hadn't had when I came out of my armor, held closed with three small stitches under a shiny strip of mediskin. Everything hurt. There was a splint on my leg.

Sitting up made something hurt badly in my hip and I gasped. A girl in a nurse's uniform hurried over and ordered me not to get up, but she held her distance and shot a nervous glance over her shoulder. I remembered the nurse I hit before. Hot shame. My eyes stung.

"Can I move if you get me a wheelchair?" I asked. "I want to see Tara."

She left and found out, and they got me a chair.

❖ ❖ ❖

​

Tara's arms were already green. The medicament was the same as for Verity after day 231. Tara was still attached to a great machine, sharing it with Ethel, while it thumped and sucked and sighed. One of Ethel's legs was green, too.

The room smelled of machine-incense and the strange bleach-and-berries odor of the medicament. I said a little prayer to the machine-spirit, and another prayer to the Emperor. I thought about the green limbs, and the Good Ork.

I got them to roll me to where it would be hard for her to break my nose if she woke up scared. I petted her hair and I wept.

I was still there when they brought Hana in. Hana had her own wheelchair, and she had gotten the initial after-action report on a data-slate. Four guardsmen dead. Ethel, Sacra, and Eulalia hurt, but alive. Enemy force believed totally destroyed.

The Guardsmen had recovered Verity's body and her armor. Palatine Elin waited for Tara to be awake. Elin let Hana and me help remove Verity's armor. Tara could watch, but she couldn't help. Whenever she tried to move, she shook, especially in her hands and arms.

Verity's armor had already been scrubbed and purified. The wound that killed her had been packed with white gauze. We said the ancient rites. We removed the armor piece by piece.

Verity's backpack was damaged from the shot that had killed her, but in a different place than mine. The techpriest believed that the undamaged parts of mine might be built into hers to create a single functioning unit for my armor. Her backpack would have to be replaced. By the time a new one could be sourced, the rest of the armor would have been repaired. Replacement cables and ducts for her sundered systems. A new breastplate and backplate, simple, thick, almost impenetrable, except for when it was not. To protect a new-sworn Battle Sister. Until it did not.

We stripped Verity, washed her, and wrapped her in her shroud.

The Order assembled at 05:00 for Lauds outside the hospital tent. It was almost a building in size and furnishing, but it was still a tent. Tara, Ethel, and Sacra could join us when the other Sisters rolled up the side. Hana and I were still stuck in our wheelchairs. It was still dark.

Superior Ilena was the chanter for the morning psalm. After it was completed, she led the chanting of Verity's requiem. I do not know if all Sisters of Battle use the same rites. Ours are ancient, and I have learned that they are common in our region of Segmentum Obscurus. But how common and how ancient, I cannot say.

Of necessity, they are brief.

The prayers we use are only partially for the one who has died. We hymn the Emperor and proclaim his rightful place as the master of mankind. We entreat him for the dead. Those that fell in the battle, then all the dead who have gone before, and then, last, Verity. Then we take the voice of the dying, and pray for ourselves as if we are them. Praying as she would have prayed, if the seconds had been granted to her.

Forget me not on the day of my death

And turn not your face from me.

Chastise me according to your righteousness

Yet grant mercy on my sins and transgressions.

Accept me at my end of days into your eternal will.

From all evil, Lord, deliver us.

From all sin, Lord, deliver us.

From the eternal death, Lord, deliver us.

The sun was rising pale pink when we finished. I thought the sky held a remnant of the strange clouds from the laser strikes, but it might just have been my imagination.

Palatine Elin committed Verity's soul to the Emperor, her bones to the Order, and her body to dust.