Introduction and [1]

Warhammer 40,000

THE RIVEN VEIL

a novel

E. J. Kim

For Inquisition Use Only

Deposition—Sister Marisa Ven—Gaervalt—739.M41

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PURPOSE: To describe the events on Gaervalt, 110.738.M41 to 341.738.M41, compliant with order T-0051-3-A (738.M41). 

AUTHOR: Marisa Ven

Understand, Inquisitor, that I am not a scholar. I am not an expert of any art, except to close with and destroy the enemies of our God-Emperor. My childhood in the Schola Progenium gave me writing, mathematics, and the basics of history, astrography, and philosophy. But they are basics only. Save for these, the Lectio, and the Tactica, I know only what I have experienced from my own few years. 

In the account which follows, I describe my part in the Gaervalt counterinsurgency—from the night my team survived contact with the enemy’s weapon until the day I learned of my candidacy for your service. As commanded, I include as much as I can think to tell, counting nothing too private or too irrelevant to the case. Where supplemental recordings such as helmet-pictoria are available to me, I will append them after the chapters in which I use them. Where they are not, I must admit that many of the small details will be in error, although I have done my best to give a faithful account.

Of the inferences and generalizations you have commanded of me: I beg that you understand them as what they are. They are my guesses, made in ignorance of the wisdom of sages and the revelations of the saints. They are the guesses of a 23-year-old woman whose entire life has been worship through the service of the gun. 

In submission to your will,

Sister Marisa Ven

Adepta Sororitas

Order of the Riven Veil

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Dates are given in the subsector standard format: Terran days since the beginning of the Terran year, Terran years since the turn of the millennium, then the millennium itself. Gaervalt’s local day averages 24.7 standard hours and is subdivided into 24 62-minute Gaervalt hours. To convert this time to shipboard standard, add two minutes for every hour before adjusting for local time. This format counts days without regard to local midnight. 

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[1]

110.738.M41 

Velgrad

02:12 – 02:35 Local Time

Mission: Retrieve Informant “Nika”

We didn’t have much time to prepare. Emergency tones yanked us wide awake at 02:12. We were sprawled around the chapel work room, chatting softly, almost dozing. We were on our 12-hour readiness rotation, so we were already fastened into our full power-armor, minus the helmets. 

Deacon Surs started the briefing by vox while we were still moving to the vehicle bay.

“Deploy by aircar. One of our confessants has signaled for emergency extraction. The informant is called Nika. Woman, 28 years old, brown hair. Image to follow. Nika is a member of the Sanctifying Truth, a tolerated religious sect.”

We reached the vehicle, pulling our helmets on. Surs continued on the vox. 

“Enemy is most likely two to five lightly armed and disorganized sect members actively searching for Nika. Nika is hiding in hab number 310, which is on the top floor of hab-block D-M-48-9. Blueprint to follow, but it’s out of date.”

The engine whined as it spun up. We lifted off. The civilian-model aircar ordinarily fit a family of five plus the pilot. Out of armor, it would have been an easy fit for four young women. In our armor, with the backpacks, our weapons, ammunition, and medical equipment, we were packed in with barely room to breathe. We had our weapons wedged between our knees and our foreheads pressed against the stocks so we wouldn’t hit our heads with every bump. But the aircar was quiet and unobtrusive. Unobtrusive transport means surprise. Surprise means not getting shot. 

Surs would have come with us if we took a larger transport, but this time he stayed behind, connected to us by vox-radio. 

“Strictest rules of engagement. Even armed hostiles may be loyal subjects. Rooftop deployment and extraction. Questions?”

We didn’t have many questions. Deacon Surs had fewer answers, and the pilot knew better than to try to chat while we were trying to memorize the building layout and our plan of action. 

We landed on the rooftop in driving rain. We piled out of the car, spreading out and quickly scanning all angles. Nothing was amiss, so we stacked up outside the stairwell door. It was 02:26. 

We knew from the blueprint that the stairwell was a normal rectangular kind. Not the worst to fight in, but stairwells are always terrible. We would leave it one level down. The stair exit was around the corner from a long corridor with hab doors on either side. 310 was the last one on the left. 

The habs had all been identical when the building was planned a few hundred years ago. Now, probably not. 

I was excited. It was my first combat deployment as an element leader. I was glad that it should be an easy one. I was afraid of failing my Sister Superior, who had entrusted me with the unit command. Worse—I was afraid of failing my team. 

Verity, first in the stack, checked the door. “Unlocked.” 

“Making entry,” I told Surs over the vox. I kept my voice quiet. 

“Copy,” said Surs. “Godspeed.”

I nodded to Verity. I was third in the stack, where I could see as much as possible. “Ready?” 

We made the sign of the Holy Aquila and lifted our bolters. 

I said, “Go.” 

Verity opened the door with Tara covering. 

The stairs were as the blueprint said. We navigated them like we’d practiced a thousand times on similar stairways in training. The smell was terrible and the stairs were sticky. A century of urine and smoke congealed into the grime of spilled drinks and spilled blood. 

I didn’t switch to my helmet’s air. Years ago when I was a novice, my squad leader had raked me for doing that. “The Emperor gave you your senses for a reason,” she said. “You throw away His gift because it is unpleasant, Marisa?”

We didn’t encounter anyone. We made it to the target level, onto the short leg of an elongated L-shaped corridor. The door was missing, the hinges just hanging out of the frame. Above the doorframe, the numeral 3 was visible in the flickering light of a dying bulb.

We worked the doorframe and left the stairwell. Still no contact. We stacked on the corner. Gwen was last in the stack, holding rear security. Verity was still first, then Tara, then me. 

We could hear men shouting down the hall. Doors banging. Emperor be praised: they were still looking for our woman. We weren’t too late. It also sounded like more than five men shouting—but it could have been the neighbors, angry at the disturbance. 

We were supposed to have a hovering servo-skull with an optical arm for peeking around corners. But it had been broken for two weeks, so we had to look around corners the human way. Verity got some standoff and started to work the corner. Tara and I were on top of each other, a step back from her line of fire, ready to high/low the corner if Verity needed more guns. 

Suddenly, Verity shouted. “Drop it! Drop it!” She opened fire. Without Whisper bolts, Sororitas bolters are incredibly loud, even when you’re not in front of the gun. Our helmets protected our ears but it’s the kind of loud you can feel. 

Verity kept moving into the open, so Tara and I took the corner. Tara dropped to one knee while I stayed standing, letting us both aim down the hallway from behind the same cover. Halfway down the corridor, about thirty meters away, there was a spray of blood and body parts that used to be a person, still settling from where Verity’s bolter shots had blasted him apart. A disembodied arm still gripped a rifle. 

This is where things turn strange. The helmet picter footage (attached after this chapter) turns into static. The audio record remains mostly usable, but not vox transmissions. It turned out later that Surs was trying to contact us for the whole fight, but we never heard him. Our memories of the events differ in important details. I give my own for now. 

I saw a dilapidated hab hallway. Flickering electric lights above. All the doors were shut, five on each side. They were staggered a little, so doors weren’t exactly facing each other. The dead body lay in the middle. There were bags of trash piled against the walls. The smell was even worse than the stairwell. Verity reached the far side of the corridor. Something like fuzzy blue mold started growing across the walls and ceiling, impossibly quickly, from the far end of the corridor. It grew at ten or twenty meters per second. It smelled so horrible, so obviously toxic, that I switched to suit air immediately. I felt like something was crawling around inside me. 

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The Lectio tells us to pray without ceasing. Not to pray often, but always. It can be done, even in battle. The rote prayers we repeat orient the soul to the Emperor. A million repetitions, and they become as easy as breathing, a part of your mind the way your heartbeat is a part of your chest. But I wasn’t praying. I was worrying about the mission. Wondering whether I should order a fast and aggressive push, or wait here where we weren’t flanked by uncleared habs, or retreat until we could vox for reinforcements. 

I don’t know if that was the problem. Within a second, the mold just vanished. It was just gone, like it had never existed. But I oriented my mind to the God-Emperor, aimed my bolter, and prayed. 

A door burst open, and then another. A face peeked out from one and I nearly fired. 

“Stay inside!” I shouted.

He started to close his door. From the other door, another man ran out into the corridor. That one had a rifle. 

“Freeze!” I screamed. “Drop it!” He swung the gun up. Bolter fire, indescribably loud. Mine too, kicking against my shoulder. He disintegrated. 

Just ten meters away, across the hall, a door slammed open. Tara and I oriented on it. Armed man, gun up. I fired at the same time as he did. I felt an impact on the side of my head, snapping my head back, making my ears ring and my world spin. When I could see again, he was dead. I touched my helmet, still dazed, trying to make my eyes focus. There was a shallow scratch in the ceramite, but no hole. 

“Gwen, we need you,” I said quietly. She didn’t seem to hear. A moment’s check showed my helmet vox was dead. I swayed, dizzy. I switched to external speakers and repeated myself in a shout. “Gwen, we need you. We’re going to work past that open door and push down the hallway—”

Another enemy peeked out, aiming a gun. He was barely visible behind the door frame. Bolters thundered. Habs are strongly built in this city. A doorframe would stop a handgun or shotgun, even most rifles. But not a bolter. The huge, armor-piercing rounds punched through and into his flesh. The mass-reactive explosive cores did their brutal work. 

I shouted over the gunfire. “—and push down the hallway to the end! We’re not clearing the rooms until we hit 310.”

Here is how it should have worked. The four of us would advance rapidly down the hallway so that there was never an aperture—door, corner, doorframe, even a hole in the wall—that didn’t have a gun between it and any of our bodies for more than a second. 

The first woman would keep her gun on the door as she passed it, blocking the doorway with her body if it was open. She would be responsible for any threats inside. 

The second and third person would quickly push past her and cover her back, especially against the next door down the line. 

The rear security would pass and give the first person a tap on the shoulder. 

Then the first person would join the advance. And whoever was closest would become the first person as the formation advanced across the next door. 310 was the last door, so we would have three to breach it, with one protecting our rear.

It worked at first. We moved fast despite the chaos. We killed six or seven of them. Tara took a hit that penetrated her armor, but she was still in the fight. 

It was obvious that Surs’ report was wrong. Two to five lightly armed possible loyalists? No. There were a lot of them. They were well armed for a militia. 

And we were wearing Sororitas power-armor. Everyone knows what that means, but still they came out shooting. Whatever else they were, these were enemies of the Church. 

Just after we cleared the seventh door, the plan fell apart. 

I felt Fear. It was more than fear, but I don't know what else to call it. It hit like an explosion. Supernatural. I knew that I had made a terrible mistake, that the mission had already failed. I knew that I was about to die, that my team was dying around me. I knew that one of my stray shots had just killed an innocent child. I knew that hope was a lie, that the Emperor was dead, that humanity was doomed, and all I could do was to give up and die. I knew that all this knowledge was fake, that it was enemy action, and I still knew it. 

We all staggered. Verity was screaming. I knew there was something alive and hungry inside my helmet, crawling into my ear. I knew it. I reached for my helmet release like an idiot, not looking at anything. Someone grabbed me by the backpack and threw me to the ground as a group of men poured around the corner where we had entered the hall. I saw Gwen firing her weapon and when I looked back at the men I saw them dying—the brutal ruin of bolter-fire ripping flesh. I decided to let the thing in my helmet do what it would do, if it gave me a few more seconds to fight. I leveled my bolter and covered my sector. 

We fought. 

Why? To do the God-Emperor’s will. But why? I don’t know. Why did we fight for a God we knew was dead, for a humanity we knew was doomed? Why did we carry on when we knew we were only making things worse? Later, commanded to answer, I tried. But I truly don’t know, except that it was to do the will of God, even if there was no God at all. 

We fought. They came as if they didn’t expect us to fight back at all. Pouring out into the hall, no suppressing fire, no grenades, just men with weapons raised to kill. Thunderous noise, bolters booming, the clatter and zip of bullets, screams, death. Men dying. Jarring impacts against my armor, Tara hit, falling, and then lurching up again. Firing, firing. My gun went empty, I reloaded, found a target, sights, trigger, press—and nothing. Failure to feed. I smacked the magazine hard, worked the action, looked for my target, and found him already down, extinguished, reduced to meat and a spray of red.

I ordered us through the eighth door to get out of the hallway. I don’t know whether I did it because of sound tactics, or if it was caused by the Fear, or if I was just blessed. I blasted the latch and shouldered in, gun up. A man moved and I was a split second from blowing him to pieces when I saw he had his hands up. He flicked his eyes towards my right, where an interior door was. I pivoted to it. The next woman through behind me would cover forward. 

I kicked the door in, revealing a small toilet room with a man inside. He had a heavy battle-rifle. It took a fraction of a second for me to get my gun pointed at him. He fired. I felt an impact and pain slammed through my arm, but my grip didn't fail. I fired twice. His torso exploded. 

Looking at the corpse, with blood dripping from my arm out through cracks in my armor, I realized that I no longer felt the Fear. I had no time to wonder about it then, but for days later I would think of little else.

“Hab clear!” said Verity from deeper inside. The place was a wreck. Even the ceiling had been torn out. Before I could finish assessing my team, a deafening bang shook the building. I spun towards the place we had come into the hab, only to see Tara holding security for Gwen, who was priming a second grenade to throw back into the enemy-controlled corridor. A moment later, she tossed it blindly after the first, and another bang made dust sift down from the torn-up ceiling while shrapnel filled the hallway. Good. That might keep their heads down for a while. 

“Marisa,” Tara said, her voice strained. “What was that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they have a witch. Who’s hurt?”

“I’m shot,” said Tara. “In the abdomen.” 

I could see the small hole punched through the flexible plates that covered her belly, leaking a trickle of dark blood. 

“My arm is hit,” said Verity. “But it’s not bad.”

“Mine too,” I added. 

Gwen wasn’t hurt. 

Moving through the small hab as I got my team’s status, I saw the man from earlier. He was in a corner with a woman and three children huddled behind him. He was trying impossibly to shelter them all with his body. The sight of the family made something like grief jolt through me, but there wasn’t time for feelings like that. 

“This wall would connect to 310, yes?”

The man nodded. 

“Does anyone live there but Nika? Children?”

He just stared mutely. 

“Answer me!” 

“Her… her friend. He’s one of them.”

“One of the… the Sanctifying Truth?” 

He nodded. “Yes, one of them.”

“No one else? You’re sure?”

“I think so,” he said. 

That would have to be good enough. 

“Verity, Gwen, on me. We’re going through the wall. Verity, stun through the breach. Tara, rearguard.”

I turned to the family. “All of you. Go get behind the stove and stay low.”

With Verity and Gwen in position, I opened up on the wall with my bolter, emptying the magazine to blast open a vertical rip about four feet high. The recoil sent spikes of pain through my injured arm. Dust filled the air. Water sprayed from a ruptured pipe. Anyone directly behind that spot would be dead. But return fire ripped through the wall from several places on the other side. It missed us completely. I reloaded. Verity pushed a stun grenade through the rip in the wall. There was a bang that I felt in my bones. The return fire stopped. 

“Gwen, go,” I said. She took a running step and crashed shoulder-first through the ruptured wall, staggering and stumbling but making it through. Verity followed more easily. As Verity was going through, Gwen fired four times in a quick, methodical rhythm. Like target practice. There was no return fire. I followed Verity through the hole. By the time I was through, Gwen was reloading and four mangled corpses lay on the floor amidst their weapons and splashes of blood. Dust and debris was everywhere, choking the air, covering the ground. The blood looked pitch black on the dust-covered floor. Tara came through last.

We cleared the hab and set up security on the door and the side entrance we’d just made. The ceiling was ripped out and a whole air duct had fallen down to the floor, the thin metal bent and misshapen. It was ripped open in places, perforated by bullet holes in others. My heart sank. 

“Nika?” I called out. “If you’re alive, we’re your extraction. Come out.”

At first there wasn’t any response. I imagined the slim woman’s corpse huddled in that mangled metal tube, riddled with bullet holes where she’d been hiding, waiting for a rescue that came too late. Or worse, killed by me shooting through the wall. But then a faint voice echoed down, made metallic by the duct’s acoustics. 

“I’m alive. I’m up here. Is that your aircar?”

“Nika? How? Where?”

“Yes. I’m Nika. I’m up here. At the top of the duct where it comes out onto the roof. I can see an aircar that’s usually not here.”

“Emperor be praised. Yes, it’s our aircar. Could we climb up? We’re bigger than you.”

“I think so,” she said. 

Even knowing exactly where to look, it was hard to see. The duct looked like it went flat along the ceiling and terminated at the wall, but instead, it took a vertical turn. It would be cramped and difficult. But if we could do it, it would be the safest and fastest way back to the roof. 

Tara had it worst. Her breaths were all coming as little involuntary sobs of pain. I sent her up first while the rest of us barricaded the hab. It must have been agony for her to contort herself through the opening. But she fit. 

Maybe the grenades had gotten lucky and they were out of men. Maybe they had just lost their nerve and retreated. Maybe they were maneuvering to attack us from some unexpected angle. I don’t know why, but nobody attacked us as we were vulnerable, clambering up into the ceiling and wedging ourselves one by one into the cramped confines of the duct. I was last up. A few meters of pain, claustrophobia, and the dread that at any moment an enemy would burst into the hab below and kill me. Then another awkward, painful contortion to escape, aided by my Sisters grabbing my arms and backpack and pulling me through the duct-opening and out into the rain. 

We piled into the aircar, exhausted beyond words. 

We had been there for less than nine minutes when the aircar lifted off and left hab-block D-M-48-9 behind.