‘Verity,’ said the Battle Sister. ‘Your words make no sense.’
‘Tears,’ repeated the hospitaller. ‘I saw tears on a broken face. She was weeping as she lit the votive.’
Dawn light was creeping over the walls of the convent by the time the canoness had called the gathering in the courtyard, fingers of orange-pink colour changing the shade of the sky. A low cloud of dust disturbed by the warming of the desert drifted down in the valley, and it seemed as if the outpost was some manner of island floating amid a sea of rolling haze.
Sepherina stood atop one of the cracked plinths and glared down with undisguised fury at the Battle Sisters Imogen had assembled. ‘This shall not stand!’ she snarled, searching their faces in turn. Miriya didn’t look away when she met her gaze. At her side, she felt the hospitaller Verity stiffen.
Isabel, Cassandra, Pandora and a dozen other women stood in a precise line in front of the canoness, while the Sister Superior Imogen watched from one side. None of them dared to speak, each fully aware of their failure in allowing the intruder to escape.
‘In Katherine’s name, I am sorely disappointed in each of you.’ Sepherina shook her head. ‘Did the length of our journey here make us slow and lax? Have the edges of our wits dulled through inaction?’ She swept a hand over the group. ‘I expected better, Sisters. First we suffer the indignity of that fool Tegas fleeing in the night like an errant child, and then the very sanctity of this hallowed place is violated!’ She smacked her fist into her palm. ‘And by what? You cannot even concur on the nature of this freakish trespasser!’
Miriya shared a glance with Verity. The young woman had been the best witness to the true nature of the hooded figure, but Sister Imogen seemed disinterested in the opinions of the ‘nursemaid’, preferring to cull a series of half-formed impressions from Pandora and the other women who had been on guard.
‘How did this happen?’ demanded the canoness. ‘Imogen, answer me!’
The Battle Sister gave a contrite nod. ‘The outer perimeter… There are still gaps in our security coverage, and despite our best efforts, we cannot cover every inch of the outer walls. The damage is in the process of repair, but–’
‘I will hear no more excuses!’ thundered Sepherina, her eyes flashing. ‘Rouse Deacon Zeyn and the worker helots, have it done now! From this moment onwards, they will work around the clock until the walls are fully sealed and this convent is no longer open to attack! Work them until they drop, if needs must!’
Imogen nodded again and spoke into the vox-bead at her throat, relaying the new orders.
‘Until further notice, Sanctuary 101 is now on combat alert status,’ continued the canoness. ‘All tactical squad leaders will make ready and weapons will be drawn. No more mistakes. Vigilance, Sisters.’
‘Vigilance,’ chorused the women, bowing their heads as they spoke the word like a benediction.
When Miriya looked up again she found Sepherina’s cold eyes turned on her once more. ‘Sister. You raised the alarm. You were the first to see this… person.’
‘Miriya broke curfew,’ Imogen added, without preamble. ‘An action that will earn her even more demerits.’
The canoness silenced the Sister Superior with a raised hand. ‘Why were you outside?’
The truth seemed a weak explanation, but it was the truth nonetheless. ‘Sleep eluded me, mistress. I decided to take the night air. I have no excuse for my actions.’
‘Tell me what you saw.’
She did so, recounting the moment in the garden, the warning she passed to Pandora – and then her desperate room-to-room search through the halls of the central keep that ended in the chapel. ‘Sister Verity was there,’ Miriya concluded. ‘She saw better than I.’
‘Is this so?’ Sepherina measured Verity with a long look. ‘You were in the chapel.’
‘I was, milady,’ said Verity. In turn, the hospitaller spoke of what she had seen before the altar, the maddened, terrible voice of the intruder and her strange actions.
Imogen offered the canoness the votive candle that had been left behind. Sepherina examined it, turning it in her gloved fingers, frowning. Finally, she looked away. ‘Did the intruder speak to you?’
Miriya saw Verity give an involuntary shudder. ‘She did not.’
‘What kind of invasion sends a scout into a chapel to pray?’ Imogen asked, her low opinion of Verity’s account clear in her tone.
Sepherina shot her second-in-command a sharp look that silenced her once again. ‘If this… person… dares to show themselves again within the bounds of our sight, I want her captured and interrogated, is that clear?’
‘Aye,’ came the reply.
‘I will personally chastise any Sister who fails in her duty to protect the purity of this site!’ she spat, her anger rising once more. ‘I will–’
‘Target-sign!’ The shout went up from the walls, and Miriya recognised Sister Ananke’s cry. The dark-skinned woman was high on the battlements, her bolter at her shoulder. ‘Dust plume, to the east. Approaching at speed!’
‘To arms!’ cried Imogen, and the group surged into motion, gathering up their weapons, racing to find cover and sight-lines.
‘Get inside,’ Miriya told Verity. ‘You’ll be safer there.’
‘Will I?’ asked the hospitaller, and the question was heavy with import.
‘Just go,’ said the Battle Sister, as Pandora came to her side and thrust a loaded bolter into Miriya’s hands.
The dust clouds churned beyond the East Gate, or what was left of it. There had been a portcullis and gantry there when the convent was built, but in the process of the first attack that had left the outpost empty, that entrance had been demolished. Evidence of heavy energy weapon fire and the sheer brute-force power of a ramming apparatus showed that this had been the main point of attack when the necrons had come to cull the Sisters a decade ago.
Miriya fell in with Pandora and Cassandra, taking up positions behind the stub of a collapsed pillar. She checked her ammunition clip and brought her weapon to her shoulder, sighting down the optical scope.
A curtain of billowing sand filled the sight’s vision block and she panned the gun slowly across the zone beyond the fallen gate. Miriya found the plume of trail dust immediately, and for a brief second she thought she caught sight of a slab-sided shape moving inside the ruddy cloud.
‘Do you hear that?’ asked Helena. ‘Beneath the wind, a regular noise. An engine.’
‘A vehicle,’ Pandora agreed, listening to the chatter on the primary vox-channel. ‘Ananke reports a detection from the thermographic scanners. Four hundred metres now and closing.’
Miriya’s finger tensed on the bolter’s trigger. ‘Are we to fire?’ Sepherina had said the words and ordered them to combat alert – and the letter of that standing order included directives to shoot anything that refused to identify itself. The sound of the engine reached her, a steady, rolling thrum.
Helena recognised it immediately. ‘A Venator. It’s one of ours.’
As the Battle Sister named it, the vehicle emerged from the low mist of windborne sand and started up the incline to the ruined gate, but in the next second the rover decelerated sharply and fishtailed in the dust, juddering to an ungraceful halt.
A dozen Sororitas guns were trained on the Venator, across from cover or down from the battlements. Any sudden motion, any threatening action, and the vehicle would be torn apart by bolter fire.
A hatch angled open and a hooded figure emerged. Unlike the intruder, this one wore the distinctive crimson of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and one by one, its fellows dismounted the rover, nervously clustering behind their leader.
‘I calculate that you will demand an explanation,’ called Questor Tegas, his voice rebounding off the broken walls. He appeared supremely unconcerned by countless guns aiming at him.
Miriya put her sights on the questor’s head, observing the motion of his manifold eye implants, trying to measure his intentions.
Seph
erina appeared beneath the broken arch of the East Gate, directly in the path the Venator had been following. She had twinned bolter pistols on her belt, and her hands strayed dangerously close to the weapons. Sister Imogen and two of her Celestians followed on behind her.
The breeze carried their voices so that all the assembled Sororitas could hear their exchange. ‘In respect for your title and your exalted position,’ began the canoness, ‘I will grant you a moment to explain your actions.’
Tegas tilted his head. ‘Milady…’
‘If I do not find your words satisfactory, there will be consequences,’ she concluded.
The questor stiffened at Sepherina’s tone, and when he spoke again the obsequious manner he had shown before was wholly absent. ‘I do not answer to you, Sororitas. You have no right to compel answers from me if I do not wish to give them.’
‘You dare to play games of rank with me?’ the canoness retorted. ‘You vanish in the night by stealth, ignore my commands, steal one of our vehicles? I am within my remit to shoot you where you stand!’
‘Your commands?’ Tegas echoed. ‘I think you overstep your bounds, milady. For all the authority you may think you claim, you have no power over the Adeptus Mechanicus. I do not need to justify my actions to you.’ His augmetic arms folded closed over his chest with a hiss of pistons. ‘You ought to give praise to the God-Emperor for the fact that you and your women are even standing on this planet. Had we wished to do so, the Forge Masters of Mars could have annexed this world and evicted your Sisterhood from it for all time, honoured dead or none!’
Sepherina’s hand blurred and suddenly she had an ornate bolt pistol drawn and levelled at Tegas’s head. His skitarii and adepts jerked and twitched, each bringing up their own weapons in a defensive arc. For their part, the rest of the Battle Sisters maintained their unwavering aim. If the word was given, they would reduce the servants of the Mechanicus to oily smears on the sand, and never hesitate.
‘You vanish,’ the canoness growled. ‘then we are invaded by an unknown interloper, hooded and robed as you are.’
For a fraction of a second, Tegas’s body language changed. He lost the tension of the moment, shifting. Then a heartbeat later he was stiff and rigid. Still, Miriya glimpsed the faint blink of laser light off the tip of one of his mechadendrites as he sent a silent communication to one of his adepts. ‘I know nothing of that,’ he said, at length.
‘You are lying to me. And I believe we have been told many lies along the path of this journey, questor. Yours are only the most recent.’ She advanced a step. ‘You will tell me where you have been and why you defied my orders to remain inside the compound.’
Tegas sighed. It was a feigned motion, as he had no need to breathe in a conventional fashion. ‘Your draconian edicts irritated me,’ he replied. ‘I decided to ignore them. To teach you a lesson.’
‘Arrogant cog–’ muttered Imogen.
Sepherina shook her head and the other woman’s invective ended before it could go further. ‘And so you committed a crime of theft and conspiracy against the Imperial Church?’
‘It is within my remit as a questor to appropriate military vehicles, should I wish to,’ Tegas sniffed. ‘As to your guards failing to observe our departure… I suggest you take that up with them, and review the Sister Superior’s tactical deployment.’ He paused, glancing around. ‘We were eager, canoness. Eager to sift the dirt of this world through our manipulators, to see it at first hand… Not to wait inside the walls of this convent until you deigned to let us off your leash.’
Sepherina slowly lowered the bolt pistol. ‘And what did all your eagerness get you, Tegas? Tell me, out in the wilds, what great sights did you see? Was it worth incurring our anger?’
‘Our expedition found nothing of import,’ he replied. Watching through the targeting scope, Miriya could not shake a sudden, sharp certainty. Once more, he lies.
If the canoness thought the same, she did not show it. ‘Your impatience could have seen you killed. You acted recklessly!’
‘Perhaps I did,’ Tegas allowed. ‘But your recalcitrant manner forced my hand. And if indeed there is another…’ He paused, framing his words. ‘If there is some unknown agent at large on this world, would it not better suit us both to put aside our differences and address that concern instead?’ Tegas asked Sepherina to relay the events in the chapel before the rise of the dawn, and he listened intently as she did so, offering nothing in return. She showed him the votive candle and he took it, scanning it with a fan of photons before passing it back to another of his minions.
Finally, he spoke again. ‘With your permission, then, I will retire to our laboratorium to conduct a deep analysis on this matter.’
Sepherina seemed as if she were about to launch into another tirade, but then she turned and beckoned to Helena and Pandora. ‘Sisters. Come.’ They did as they were ordered, and the canoness gave Tegas a level stare. ‘From this moment on, no member of the Adeptus Mechanicus will be allowed to venture outside of your laboratorium without a Sororitas escort.’
‘For our own safety?’
She ignored his comment. ‘Any who fail to adhere to this order will be classed as intruders and shot. Do I make myself clear?’
The questor bowed slightly. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Then get out of my sight, before I reconsider.’ She turned her back on him.
Tegas blinked another beam-signal at his entourage and they filed in behind him, past the Celestians and into the convent proper. Miriya lowered her boltgun, and watched them go, the questor drifting as if floating over the courtyard flagstones. The last of the adepts passed close to her, carrying a cylinder the colour of iron in its grippers. She caught the damp cave odour of sandstone, and the tang of machine oil.
‘Imogen.’ Miriya turned as she heard Sepherina call the Sister Superior’s name. The canoness waited a moment, until Tegas’s troupe were distant, and spoke again. ‘I will not have the cyborg’s motives remain a mystery to me, is that clear? I want to know what he was doing out there.’
‘I could take a team,’ Imogen offered. ‘Attempt to retrace the course of the Venator. We may be able to find out where he went.’
Sepherina nodded, and Miriya saw an opportunity. She came forwards and bowed. ‘Milady, if I may?’ She pointed at the rover. ‘The vehicle’s machine-spirit – if we could interpret its datum, we might be able to narrow down the area of transit. We know how long Tegas was gone for. If we can reckon the charge remaining in the power core.’
‘None of us are tech-adepts, Miriya,’ Imogen’s reply was brisk. ‘The workings of such things are known to Tegas’s people, and I doubt he would give an honest estimate.’
‘Untrue,’ Miriya corrected. ‘I believe Sister Verity has some experience with technological devices. On Neva, her skills proved very useful.’
‘The nursemaid?’ Imogen made it clear she was unconvinced.
The canoness frowned. ‘Bring her. I want this matter dealt with.’
‘And what of our intruder?’ said the Sister Superior. ‘What if she returns?’
Sepherina looked up at the warriors on the battlements. ‘She will not find so easy a path this time.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
The rover crested the top of the sand dune and skidded, the six knobbled tyres spinning as they failed to find purchase in the red dust. At last the Venator lurched to a halt and the gull-wing hatches rose. In quick order, the squad of Battle Sisters deployed from the vehicle and formed a combat wheel. Exiting from the driver’s compartment, Sister Cassandra bit back a curse about the lineage of the machine and paused to take a sighting from the Kaviran sun, almost obscured from the ground by the dust clouds. She muttered darkly, her words lost behind the breather mask that covered her mouth and nose.
Imogen dropped from the rear crew bay as if she were a queen stepping from a royal chariot and stalked around the vehicle. ‘Another halt?’ Her face was hidden behind the helmet of her power armour. ‘I thought we had t
his zone fully charted.’
‘Not well enough, Sister Superior,’ said Cassandra. ‘The digicompass continues to drift off true. Something in the rocks, a magnetic ore perhaps… It is interfering with the automap.’ She showed the display of the auspex unit in her hand. ‘It will take me only a few moments to sight and recalibrate.’
Sister Miriya stood at the open hatch at the rear and watched the exchange silently, leaning into the desiccating wind, listening to the rush of sand particles across her black wargear. They had been searching for several hours now, working through a grid pattern, and the armour of each of the Sororitas was slowly turning a dull mud-red as the dust coated the ceramite surfaces of vambrace, breastplate and cuissart. She had secured her combat cloak, but still it pulled at her shoulders with each new gust. Close by, the other Battle Sisters crouched and peered out into the haze. Like Imogen, they wore their helmets sealed. Sister Danae carried the steel-grey bulk of a meltagun, while Sisters Kora and Xanthe were armed with standard-pattern bolters.
The Venator rocked on its fat all-terrain wheels. A Masakari-pattern variant of the smaller standard scout car, this vehicle differed from those used by the units of the Imperial Guard or the Adeptus Arbites. It had a longer wheelbase, an enclosed space for a driver, and instead of mounted lascannons, an aft compartment where six women could be carried in supremely uncomfortable proximity. But even a unit specially-adapted for use on desert worlds like Sanctuary 101 was finding this sortie hard going. Still, it was better suited than a heavy armoured vehicle, like a Rhino or an Immolator tank, which would have sunk to its deck in the powdery metallic sands.
Miriya glanced up and caught sight of spires, spindly fingers of rock that rose up from the shallow canyon walls around them, carved by the action of the winds. The breeze moaned through eyes in the stone, rippling over the tips of the dunes. She looked away and bent to duck inside the rear of the Venator.
Verity was in there, whispering a prayer over a keyboard of brass buttons and a flickering pict-screen. She was pale and sweaty, and her face was set in a frown.
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