‘Your weakling reign is at an end, as it should be!’
All too soon, Miriya realised that she had handed the woman exactly what she wanted. ‘Ahven, no! You will not be allowed to–’
But the arbiter ignored her, instead snarling into a vox-bead hidden in her collar. ‘Now! The time is now! Begin the revolt! The Red Sect rises this day!’
‘What are you doing?’ Rho reached out a hand to the other arbiter. ‘Ahven, please…’
‘I told you to be silent!’ Ahven spat the words at the replicae and then struck her across the face with a vicious backhand blow. Beyond the smack of flesh on flesh, there came another sound, the same that had rocked the citadel only hours ago. The distant rumble of explosions and the chatter of gunfire. Ahven tore a weapon from the folds of her robes, and from the corridors leading into the chamber came dozens of humans wearing clothes streaked with blood-red dye.
The Battle Sisters instinctively raised their weapons, drawing into a combat wheel formation, but Miriya stepped away, approaching the council. ‘Stay your hands,’ she demanded. ‘I did not do this for you, Ahven! I gave this decree to stop any further bloodshed!’
‘It’s too late for that!’ Ahven shook her head, aiming her gun in Rho’s direction. ‘Today, we show our true colours. We show our secret sign, hidden for so long…’ The arbiter tore open her tunic, bearing her breast, and her action was mirrored by her followers. ‘We show our unity!’
What the Celestian saw branded into their flesh made her blood chill. Each member of the Red Sect bore a mark – a disc and a line bisecting two arcs. It was a symbol of the Ruinous Powers, of Chaos itself.
Nohlan recoiled from the sight as if he had been physically struck. ‘The mark of the daemon Tzeentch!’ It cost him just to say the name of the horror.
‘Terra protect us, they are a Cult of Change!’
The Sororitas brought their weapons to bear, but Ahven seemed shocked that fellow humans would threaten her. ‘What are you doing? We are the same! We have followed the words of the old books since before the fall of the veil! We have been loyal! Why do you turn against us?’
‘Because you are tainted.’ The words were ashes in Miriya’s mouth. Her
thoughts raced as she took aim with her plasma pistol. What she had feared all along was so. During its great isolation, Hollos had been tainted by the touch of the Dark Gods lurking in the warp, so deeply and so insidiously that those perverted by it were not even aware that they had been kneeling before a corrupting power.
‘Why do you take their side, Miriya?’ Ahven slammed her fist against her chest. ‘We are both human! The clones are the enemy, they are the ones who are unclean and tainted! The Red are the way of new change! We are the secret truth!’
‘No.’ Miriya shook her head gravely. ‘You have been deceived. You are pawns of Chaos and as the God-Emperor wills, we cannot suffer you to live.’
As the last words left her lips, Lethe and the other Battle Sisters cut down the Red Sect members in a brutal hail of bolter rounds. Ahven and her cohorts died screaming, their blood spattering across the chamber floor.
‘The bodies will need to be burned,’ said Lethe.
Miriya nodded. ‘And more besides.’
‘They… They’re all dead…’ Rho’s delicate hands flew to cover her mouth.
‘Not yet,’ said Nohlan. ‘Look, out in the streets.’ He pointed towards the glassaic windows, where flashes of yellow light marked the flares of gun muzzles. The anarchy of the battle in the courtyard was dwarfed by the conflict now erupting in the city. Staring down, Miriya glimpsed dozens of the feral replicae the Battle Sisters had faced before, laying waste beyond the plaza, and killing without pause.
Down in the vast courtyard, the carnage was horrific to behold. The numbers of the Red dwarfed those that had attacked the previous day, with legions of them running riot through the streets, an army of cloned berserkers emerging from the underground sewer system where Ahven’s cult had been containing them in preparation for this day.
Miriya watched them killing their way through the civilian populace, human and replicae alike. It was less a battle, more a cull, and the grim mathematics of war were abundantly clear to her. ‘We cannot fight such numbers.’
At her side, Lethe gave a nod of agreement. ‘Aye, Eloheim. Five squads more, even ten would be hard-pressed to match them.’ She looked up into the sky. ‘So, then. The ship. If we have the Coronus deploy their lance cannons from orbit, the gunners could wipe out the insurgents within moments.
Contain this before it spreads beyond the city limits.’
‘The collateral damage would be immense. Hundreds of thousands of civilians dead. And the capital would be nothing but a smoking crater.’ She shook her head. ‘No, Sister. There’s another way.’ Miriya turned to Rho.
Along with the other council members, she had followed them down into the plaza to witness the bloody destruction of their metropolis. ‘I will ask once again, replicae,’ she began. ‘Help us to fight these creatures. You are gene-engineered with superior strength, superior speed. If you fight back, you can defeat your savage equivalents… If you will not take up arms and defend your world, I will be forced to destroy it!’
Once more, Rho shook her head. ‘ No! We have foresworn conflict. We excised the ability to kill from ourselves, forever. We are passive… Even if we wished to do so, the ability to take life is no longer a part of us.’
Nohlan gave the clone a measured look. ‘Error,’ he said. ‘That statement is incorrect.’ The adept gestured with a cyber-limb. ‘I have computed the nature of the… mutation that separates the Red strain of the replicae from Rho and her kind… Those who consider themselves pacifists. In the past, they changed themselves to expunge their warrior natures. Error. They have only deactivated that part of themselves. It still remains.’
Rho blinked, not comprehending his meaning. ‘That was all so long ago, before I was decanted…’
‘I can undo the alteration,’ Nohlan explained. ‘It is, in fact, a very simple task to accomplish. An aerosolised viral form of the correct neuro-chemical, synthesised by my internal bio-fac module.’ He presented a nozzle at the tip of his cyber-limb, one of a dozen micro-tools built into his augmetic form.
His clicking lens-eyes studied Rho sadly. ‘It will regress all of them to their default warrior-helot nature.’
The naked shock on Rho’s face was an awful sight on so gentle an aspect.
‘God-Emperor, no! You would rob us of our reason, our very freedom?’
‘You don’t have any freedom,’ Lethe said grimly. ‘You are slaves. That’s how you were made.’
With an expression of pure, undiluted horror, Rho turned to Miriya, pleading with her. ‘Sister, please! Tell me you will not do this!’
It took an effort of will to look away from her. ‘How would it work, questor?’
‘Once released, it will reproduce very rapidly, moving from clone to clone.’
Nohlan’s limbs whirred as he drew them back. ‘Infecting them. Reactivating the dormant neural links. Effect would be near-instantaneous. All replicae would revert to type. All humans would be unaffected.’ He paused. ‘But you must understand, Sister Celestian, this is a grave act. It is irreversible. Once implemented, all that the altered replicae are would be lost to them.
Memories, personality, self… Erased.’
‘In the name of Holy Terra,’ Rho cried, her panic rising. ‘I beg of you! Do not consider this!’ She tried to reach out for Miriya, but Isabel and Cassandra moved to block her way.
‘I will not let a world fall to the taint of Chaos.’ Miriya turned back to look Rho in the eye. ‘Not one single world. Never, as long as I draw breath. If I must sacrifice some to save others… I will do whatever is required to retain the sanctity of church and Imperium.’ She shut away the sorrow that threatened to rise in her chest before it could fully form.
‘You… have destroyed us,’ wept Rho.
‘Do it,’ Miriya
told the adept.
Nohlan gave a curt, solemn nod. ‘As you command, Sister Celestian.’
The scream that tore from Rho’s lips was the agony of a soul thrown into the darkest reaches of torment, drowned out for a moment by the shrieking hiss of the neuro-chemical dispersing from the adept’s bio-fabricator. Rho and the other replicae around them moaned and wept, collapsing to the ground. It was a sickening sight. But then an eerie silence descended on them as their cries died off to nothing.
The change flooded over the replicae like a storm cloud blotting out the sun.
Miriya watched Rho’s pale flesh grow darker, becoming a deep, sullen crimson.
‘Throne and Blood,’ whispered Lethe. ‘It’s working. All of them, they’re becoming like the others…’
Miriya approached Rho as she rose shakily to her feet once more. Her eyes were dull and lifeless now, the spark of intelligence that had animated them before sniffed out. ‘Rho. Do you hear me?’
‘I hear you.’ The reply was hollow and distant, like the rote speech of a machine-vox.
Nohlan studied Rho carefully, then nodded once. ‘Confirmed. Balance is restored. The pacifist replicae are as they once were. Ready for your battle orders.’
‘Rho. Heed me.’ Miriya pointed down towards the lower city, where the turmoil was in full force. ‘Gather your kindred and take weapons. Destroy the Red Sect and the clones they control.’
‘As you command.’ They were the last words she would ever say to Miriya.
Without pause or hesitation, Rho and the other replicae stormed across the plaza in the direction of the conflict. They moved as automatons, fast and lethal, striding into battle in silent formation.
‘Now we have a chance to save this planet,’ said Lethe. ‘In an hour, we’ll have an army of them.’
‘And what has it cost?’ Miriya severed the treacherous train of thought that would lead her towards doubt and sadness with a near-physical effort. She drew her plasma pistol and pointed after the replicae. ‘Sisters! Follow them in!’ Miriya broke into a run, blotting out all other concerns for the glory and the fire of battle. It was all that mattered; it was all she was.
She let out a shout that rang across the conflict unfolding before her. ‘Ave Imperator!’
In the aftermath, there finally came a moment for her to reflect.
From the observation gallery of the Coronus, Sister Miriya watched the planet turn beneath her feet. Lines of black strayed across the surface of Hollos, the wind carrying plumes of smoke from the burning capital and out across the plains.
The Celestian saw shuttles passing back and forth through the atmosphere, and sharing the warship’s high orbit, the massive slab-sided forms of other Imperial vessels drifted like great iron monoliths. Summoned by Questor Nohlan, the Adeptus Mechanicus had arrived in force. Even now they were down there, gathering up every last clone that had survived the uprising, plundering all remnants of the lost technology that had created them.
And with every cargo that left the planet, Ministorum preachers and iterators were being deposited in their place. The confessors and the firebrand priests of the Imperial church would take the reins of Hollos and fill the gap left by the planet’s ruling council. With their words and deeds, in a few years the locals would forget their former leaders and embrace the same monumental, unbending worship that lived in the chapels of thousands of worlds.
Sister Miriya’s mission was complete. The lost had been returned to the fold. The price of it no longer mattered. ‘It is done,’ she said to herself,
recalling an ancient catechism in High Gothic. ‘ Omnis Vestri Substructio. Es Servus, Ad Nobis.’
She did not turn as mechanical footsteps approached from behind her. At length, Questor Nohlan spoke. ‘I believe we destroyed something unique on this world, Sister Celestian. It troubles me.’
‘We did it to save them,’ she replied. ‘For church and Imperium.’
‘Fortunate for us, that we have such ironclad justification to absolve all doubts,’ he noted. ‘If we did not… One might go quite mad.’
She turned to the adept, her eyes dark and weary with the weight of what she had done. ‘They were not human, and only the God-Emperor has the divine right to create new life. They allowed Chaos to take root among them during their stewardship. These are all reasons enough.’
‘Are you certain?’ Nohlan asked gently. ‘We have taken vital, intelligent beings, and reduced them to little more than walking weapons. Is that right?’
‘Rho said they wanted to act in the Emperor’s name. To serve His will.’ She turned her back on the adept and once again allowed her gaze to be drawn down to the newly scarred planet below. ‘And now they shall, in the manner they were created for.’ She found a transport ship leaving the atmosphere, a cargo carrier taking whatever was left of Rho’s kind so they might be studied, understood, dissected and replicated, all in the name of the God-Emperor’s eternal wars.
‘In battle,’ said the Sororitas. ‘ Unto death.’
SISTERS OF BATTLE: THE OMNIBUS
by James Swallow
Adepta Sororitas Sister Miriya and her comrades hunt renegade
psykers, battle the ancient might of the necrons and investigate a
world newly discovered by the Imperium in these tales of the Sisters
of Battle by James Swallow.
Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com
THE ZHENG CIPHER
JOSH REYNOLDS
The radium carbine bucked in Alpha 6-Friest’s hands as she pivoted and fired at the hormagaunt springing towards her out of the press of battle. The rad-bathed bullet punctured the alien’s skull, scorching the chitin black as it passed through and out the other side. She spun, carbine juddering as she fired again and again, trusting in her targeting sensors to send the bullets where the Omnissiah willed.
As she moved, her augmented limbs carrying her smoothly from one firing
stance to the next, she took note of the disposition of her skitarii, calculated the efficiency of their current firing pattern, and found it wanting. 6-Friest stepped back, avoiding a scything talon, and smashed the butt of her carbine into the wailing hormagaunt’s fang-studded maw. The front of the alien’s skull crumpled and burst, spattering the front of her armour. Even as it fell, she was already seeking out new prey. The radium carbine slid through her fingers, spinning swiftly back into a firing position with a casual twitch of her wrists.
< Tighten up ranks.> She sent the thought pulsing out along the neural node-line that linked her combat-maniple. They responded with action rather than assent, tightening their formation, drawing together into a tight phalanx.
Radium carbines hissed and barked, punching steaming holes in the heaving tide of alien chitin that sought to drown the cohort of skitarii vanguard attempting to pass through it.
< Watch your left, 10-Dulak, > she thought, sending a warning to one of her skitarii as something with too many limbs and claws rose up out of the press of lesser vermin and lunged for him with blades of bone and whips of stinging flesh. The rad-trooper whirled and fired, again and again, until the tyranid warrior staggered and sank down, its body shrivelling and steaming
as the baleful energies ate away at its flesh. The radium carbines she and her skitarii carried were masterpieces of baroque beauty, each one older than its wielder by several generations. That beauty, however, belied a vile function –
every shot bathed the immediate area in deadly radiation, rendering it as inhospitable as the rad-wastes of Mars itself.
Which was not to say that Kotir-8 was all that hospitable otherwise. The once harmlessly barren mining colony had been reduced to a xenos-infested wasteland, stripped of what little life it had possessed, its rocky gorges and snow-capped crags covered in a seething carpet of organic savagery. There had been two hundred and sixty-three extraction facilities on Kotir-8. Now there was one. Soon enough, there would be none. It was as inevitable as rust and ruin.
&nbs
p; The facility in question rose above the seething horde. It was a hummock of metal and stone, built to withstand the worst environmental hazards the galaxy could throw at it, and to protect the extraction plant and its workers.
Defence emplacements consisting of plasteel weapon blisters swivelled and rolled, spraying the forecourt of the facility with autocannon fire and cleansing flames. While the facility’s firepower was substantial, it barely slowed the frenzied mass of alien bodies that swarmed about its walls like an angry sea of chitin and ichor. Soon, those defences would fall silent, ammunition cylinders and fuel drums emptied, and the armoured doors would buckle and burst, as they had two hundred and sixty-two times before.
Speed was of the essence. The facility held something too precious and important to allow it to be so savagely consumed. That was why 6-Friest and her combat-maniple had been dispatched, to fight their way across the arid plains and jagged crags from their point of arrival at one of the fallen facilities, to this last redoubt.
She recalled the juddering descent, the orbital lander losing pieces of itself as it plummeted through the swirling clouds of alien madness. Flying bioforms – gargoyles, harridans and worse things – had converged on the lander as it pierced the upper reaches of the atmosphere, tearing it apart as it fell. She had lost two skitarii in that hellish descent, torn from their safety harnesses by the claws and tendrils of the monstrous creatures and dragged out into the crawling sky. Others had died on the march, pulled away from the others and into a tangle of talons and teeth, or else consumed by alien bile. But the vanguard had marched on, as relentless as the will of the
Omnissiah itself. And now that they were within sight of their goal, 6-Friest had no intention of slowing down.
6-Friest signalled the closest of her combat-maniple, and they swung their carbines around, aligning them with hers. As one, they fired, punching a hole in the frenzied ranks of the enemy. Just beyond the leaping, skittering forms of the hormagaunts, she could see two more of the multi-limbed warrior forms striding forwards.
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