You truly wish to die for Me? To give your life in service of My Imperium?
Someday, someone will send you to some distant battlefield to die, and it won't be in the name of the Emperor, in truth. It will be because you're a problem to them, an obstacle to be removed. And that will be a shame.
The words echoed in her head, one after the other, as if competing for the forefront. Somewhere, a kernel of doubt had hatched and wormed its way deep into her grey matter – worryingly so. There was no time for doubt. Not now, at least.
Sabina ejected the data wafer from the unblinking recording servitor stationed before her, holding it for a moment before wordlessly passing it off to Dorian, who turned to deliver it to the command deck: a set of instructions for Tantalus to ignore his Captain's direct orders and remain hidden around the dark side of Belleros, to catch the drop pods that had brought them up from the surface, rather than immediately making for Ido. She had faith he would follow it to the letter. After all, eight days in the future, he had already told them as much when he picked up their Storm Eagle. It had already been written.
She stared into the pict-capture lens grafted onto the servitor's head in place of a face.
Who had this person been, once upon a time? How long had it been like this? Did it see her, somewhere, dimly, beyond the programming that had been shoved into it in place of a personality and memories. Did she even see it, beyond her own programming?
She shook her head vigorously, trying desperately to clear the doubts that were unbecoming of a faithful Imperial citizen, let alone a Canoness of the Adepta Sororitas, and now ...
... now she was not entirely sure what she was.
A winged, half-Astartes mutant, shoved full of their holy organ implants, modified with tampered gene-seed lines – in of itself, a borderline heretical action – and stitched together with Warp magic. Brought back to life by the Emperor himself, but for what purpose? The teachings of Imperial Saints told that only the most pious, the most faithful, would be returned to His service in such a way. Even at the best of times she had never been the most pious or faithful: time and time again, her Sister Superior long ago had admonished her for her ceaseless questions and hesitations. Countless rejuvenat treatments had smoothed away the dozens of scars on her back from the lash, but could never scour them from her soul. And so Sabina had thrown herself headlong into hopeless fight after hopeless fight, beyond all thought for survival, to a place where doubt no longer mattered, where notions of faith and penance were naught but ghosts between each killing stroke and near miss.
One day, Sister Superior Myranda had rallied her squad to lead a charge against an Ork entrenchment, only to take a slug to the face with instantly vaporized her head. Without thinking, acting purely on instinct alone, Sabina swept up Myranda's power sword as the Sister Superior's corpse crumpled to the blood-wet ground, and lead the charge herself. She was granted the title of Sister Superior after that day, and since then she had continued to allow herself to be swept into battle after battle on world after world. Each time she thought that this would be the battlefield where she would finally fall, and each time her misfortune or some cosmic jest had kept her alive. Each promotion brought her to a new frontier to fight; no one wanted the hotshot Sister who had questioned her life to the point of near-Repentia status, who had clawed her way up the ranks solely through sheer blood-drunk madness in arms, to be anything more than a blunt instrument to point at the nearest enemy and unleash.
She had forgotten herself in the carnage, until Inquistor Santino of the Ordo Hereticus had looked into her records and summoned her to be one of his personal enforcers in dispensing the Emperor's justice. After seven successful expeditions, it had been the eighth that had killed him, his retinue, all of the Sisters under her direct command, and brought her here, to this moment.
A hand on her shoulder brought her out of her mind, and she turned from the unblinking lens of the servitor to see Malister at her side. Above them, the cherub Santino II who had happily greeted them in the hold of their Storm Eagle on first approach to the Dark Rain, zoomed though the shadows and wafts of incense in figure-eight patterns, gurgling softly.
"You seem troubled," he said – less a question than a statement of fact. His massive, gauntleted hand withdrew from her shoulder.
"No. Curious," she replied. Malister cocked an eyebrow. She turned to him. "Have you ever really considered your duty? What it really means? Truly considered the countless human lives you swore to protect, beyond each new battlefield?"
"That is not my place. We were not made to question." When she did not reply, he spoke instead to fill the silence. "I find this line of thought ... disturbing, Sabina."
She stood, repressing a sigh, and turned to face him through her real eyes. Her third eye looked through his physical shell to the burning soul beyond; from above, she gazed down at him through Santino II's mechanical optics, fed directly to her cerebellum through the mind impulse unit. Yet even through all three layers of sight the picture felt somehow incomplete.
"You were not made so, but perhaps ... perhaps I was. After this is done, there will be a time for questions and for maybe for answers, too. One way or another, there will be a reckoning."
Hesitantly, Malister offered her a nod. But that was enough for the picture to become somehow more whole.
This was the sort of engagement Morais Enfrite lived for. With each iteration he relished the maddening carnage of the battlefield, of the plasma rounds from Kataphron legions impacting against the void shields the Blood Angels had hastily erected around Alpha-Zabel, the hordes of skitarii advancing against the drumbeat of bolter fire, of the archaeopters dogfighting with xyphons interceptors and storm eagles. Plumes of smoke rose from impact craters as the fireballs of exploding attack craft plummeted to the ground. Tracers flew with every third round from the hail of heavy-stubber fire from the kastellan robot battle group moving relentlessly toward the east gate.
The chaos was exquisite.
Not since the siege of Terra had Morias felt such joy in the hunt – not in one hundred and twenty previous iterations of this very loop. This was to be the last, and the Lord of Huntsmen wanted to savour every moment of the hunt.
There was no better cover than the smokescreen of war.
With Leandro following closely in his wake, matching him motion-for-motion, step-for-step, Morias picked his way around each blast and swift atomized column of skitarii, unseen by all, toward the forward entrenchment of Blood Angels under assault from Tritus's kastellan group. Shrouding his approach only took a simple incantation: what had taken Imperial techs centuries of tinkering to poorly replicate with their cameleoline-woven cloaks, Morias had learned eight thousand years ago. And when Ptar'nek activated the Rubricae buried in the sand behind the Blood Angels' lines, and Decellis and Phaltrix took to the field to spearhead the forward advance, there would be little need for even that. For now, it was necessary to not appear on auspex scanners.
Even still, he made great care to not inadvertently step into the path of a stray plasma burst. Though he had memorized each and every detail of the unfolding battlefield, there was always a chance of a stray shot or a ripple effect from one of the new variables Ptar'nek had introduced to their otherwise closed loop. Soon enough, however, Ptar'nek would be of no concern either – provided Leandro did his job correctly. In the century he had known the Noise Marine, Leandro had never failed, even being able to suppress his excess-driven nature to be Morias's silent hunting partner. Not many Slaaneshi marines – less so Noise Marines – had the self-control to pursue the hunt with such dedication. He admired Leandro for that. The greatest rewards, after all, came from the greatest patience.
Two steps forward, pause as a burst of mass-reactives whizzed mere centimetres over his left pauldron, then one half-step to the right to avoid the crater that formed by a wayward melta shot.
He nodded to Leandro, and the Noise Marine nodded once in reply.
They threw themselves into the ash and silicate dust to avoid the krak missile that would have taken one or the other of them in the chest, and rolled four full body lengths to the side, springing up and dashing eight more strides forward, past the phosphex burst from the approaching kastellans. The conflagration swallowed the two Blood Angels they had just bypassed, only for a second and third krak missile from behind the line to blow apart one of the kastellans and the datasmith crouched in its shadow. The other kastellan whirred, advancing heedlessly with no new orders or targeting information, firing blind into the void shields beyond the entrenchment.
A leap over the trench, two steps to the right, and a hop backwards down into the trench.
A fourth krak missile took the kastellan in the shoulder, spinning it around and forcibly discharging a round of phospor blasts into the space they had occupied a half second ago, and straight into two other advancing kastellans. Blind and orderless, the kastellan continued to advance into its own lines, firing burst after burst from its remaining functional gun-arm into its fellow kastellans. Another datasmith caught a phosphor round in the chest and screamed as the white-hot substance burned through his body before the damaged kastellan was put down by its own.
Hop over the trench, three strides forward, drop to a crouch and remain for six seconds precisely.
The chain reaction spread like wildfire. The loss of the second datasmith put the entire forward element into disarray as others scrambled to control the now leaderless kastellans, the skitarii behind them immediately breaking rank and falling back to avoid the utter disaster that had come of the advance. Too much faith placed in thoughtless machines, lost without their guide and unable to tell friend from foe. Morias pitied them.
Up and running, sliding down the lip of a crater and dashing up the opposite side to slip between the gap that formed in the void shield – they had mere moments before the cogitators controlling the generator sensed the gap and readjusted to compensate.
And they were inside.
The next five minutes were everything.
As always, as the moment of the kill drew nearer, time itself seemed to grind to a crawl.
Morias settled in behind the collapsed ruins of a piece of the rockcrete parapet, blasted into the courtyard from a concussive wave just outside the boundary line of the void shields. In the next four minutes and forty-six seconds, Ptar'nek's rubricae would rise from the sands in which they had been buried and open fire on the unprotected backs of the Blood Angels, in time for Phaltrix and Decellis to lead the spearhead and catch them in the crossfire. In precisely three minutes and eight seconds, Morias would loose a single mass-reactive round to take the head off a vanguard veteran, drawing the Sanguinary high-priest, Versato, out into the open for the killing strike. One minute and sixteen seconds after that, the clarion horn would sound and Lord Draedis would come striding over the horizon in his Titan engine to bring down the void shields entirely. By then it would be done, and when he stood next to Ptar'nek in the ruins of Alpha-Zabel, surrounded by the dead, Leandro would bury the dagger in the sorcerer's back and the prize would be his to bask in.
Morias hefted his combi-melta into position, setting his vision along the sight lines. He tracked his target, easily spotting the after burn of jump-pack jets, and moved the barrel to line up where the path would take the Blood Angel. He breathed: steady, inwards, and then slow release. Once more. He became one with the stone and sand, his breath an extension of the wind ruffling his cloak, and the barrel of the bolter an extension of himself. Steady, inwards, and then slow release.
His finger squeezed the trigger.
The vanguard veteran's collided with the mass-reactive, a perfect intersection of angles and trajectories that made Morias shudder with involuntary bliss as the marine's head vanished in a pink mist and ceramite shrapnel, flopping along the ground grotesquely as his jump-pack carried him skidding along for a few more metres before cutting out and leaving him to twitch lifelessly. Two of his squad-mates zoomed in beside him, radioing the hit and searching wildly for the source of the round, but Morias and Leandro had already changed position. Exhaling his exhilaration, Morias nodded to Leandro and lined up his next shot, awaiting Versato to come and collect his fallen brother's gene-seed.
The signal was silent, heard only as an inaudible cry that sent shockwaves cascading through his mind as Remiel Ardos sensed the psychic call. But it was already too late.
Four dozen blue-and-gold suits of dust-filled armour began clawing their way out through the sands behind the 7th Company's rear lines. Implacable, solid as statues they advanced, pouring round after round into the defenders before they had a chance to properly react. A Predator Annihilator went up, killing four marines stationed around it in the conflagration, before a single Rubric went down, dust pouring from the holes blasted in the ornate armour.
"About face! Turn them to slag!" Remiel bellowed, sending an overcharged volley from the Pale Fire into the face of an advancing Rubric, turning the animated armour to molten ceramite and the warp-dust within to glass. He turned, slinging the combi-plasma gun over his shoulder, heedless of the heat searing his back, and drew his relic blade. "1st, 2nd, and 3rd squads, with me!"
In concert with their Captain, two squads of vanguard veterans rose on jump-packs to charge the forward element of advancing skitarii, the 3rd squad tactical marines hot on their heels. The devastators behind them were already turning their fire on the Rubricae within their void shields. But it would not be nearly enough to stem the tide, he knew.
"Tell Van Zan to get out here provide covering fire!" He voxed to Techmarine Vallon. "And tell them to mobilize their throne-damned forces before we're overwhelmed!"
Though Remiel knew Van Zan either could not, or would not. Doubtlessly, the Fabricator General had a backup personality stored safely elsewhere, in any case. It was likely they could not risk the heretic elements deposing them and destroying the backups, if he hoped to remain Fabrictor General when it was done. He had to give it to them: Van Zan had played their hand perfectly. One could not fault them for that.
One vanguard veteran was blown out of the sky beside him in a screeching fireball, then another. But they had reached the line, power swords humming and lightning claws crackling, and their terrible work was afoot as they cleaved through skitarii and alike, ripping and tearing through flesh and metal alike.
They had been caught in a pincer.
Remiel felt his blood boiling, the thirst building in his throat as he cleaved heads from shoulders and arms from torsos. Yet distantly, beyond the haze of bloodlust coursing through him, he could see the sea of mechanicus heretics parting for a massive, serpentine figure, and he knew that this final duel, face to face with the true enemy at last, would be his and his alone.
The snake-like figure in garish purple and gold armour fired off a wave of warp-spawned noise that staggered Remiel, tore through two more of his vanguard veterans, and melted the biological components of the near-most skitarii, before tossing aside the blastmaster and drawing his own, cruelly curved blade. Yet the 7th Company captain steeled himself, sword burning with righteous fire, and met the screaming, twisted chaos marine at the centre of the whirlwind, blades crossing with a furious burst of power-fields.
Four seconds.
Morias breathed again, becoming one with his surroundings – a rock against the hurricane. His aim was solid, awaiting that perfect moment as he caught a glimpse of Versato's white armour and red priestly robes against the dull mechanical greys of the ruined manufactorum.
Three seconds.
He was a statue, invisible to all but his hunting partner at his side as Versato cut his jump jets and landed beside the fallen veteran.
Two seconds.
Versato began to kneel as Morias's finger tightened around the trigger.
One.
"My Lord!"
His finger faltered. Leandro was not supposed to speak over vox – not when they were so far behind the lines, where their signal could so easily be triangulated. He barely had time to process the shock and panic in the noise marine's tone before a dreadful roar rose up all around them.
It was a cry of rage and furious anguish, unlike any he had ever heard before.
All around them the sands shifted as fragments of corroded armour and weapons leapt backwards to reform around the corpses of slain warriors buried before even the Rubricae, reversing to life as they howled and raged in their unnerving, reversed bellows.
Hundreds of black-armoured figures came back in droves, scatted about the battlefield where they had died and reversing course. Mass-reactive rounds reformed from the dispersed particles in the air, zooming straight into the bolters and bolt pistols that had fired them. Some passed through Rubrics on the way, detonating before they had a chance to be caught by the weapons that had fired them. Chainsword teeth moved in reverse with each backward slash, no less deadly for their changed direction.
Stricken, Morias could no longer think to will his body to anything more than watch.
Death Company marines were difficult enough to fight when they were moving with the proper flow of time, such was their fury – shrugging off wounds that would kill other astartes. Now they flowed backward through time, mortal wounds sealing as they charged backward through the lines toward reverse-explosions at the edge of the battlefield from reforming drop-pods.
They cleaved through the lines, heedless of friend and foe alike – though the Blood Angels knew to step aside and let them pass the moment they saw the black power armour decorated with the red X's of the Death Company, unlike their skitarii foes.
Morias rolled aside, narrowly avoiding an adamantium blood talon that shot out from the crater he had been crouched in to reattach to the dreadnought being rebuilt before his very eyes.
!suroH, eid uoy yadoT
The thing bellowed incomprehensibly as it charged backwards through a crumbled section of wall that reverse-exploded around it. Mass-reactives and melta blasts flowed backward from dozens of rebuilding score-marks and holes in Virgil's chassis as he backpedalled, his blood talons windmilling wildly as streams of smoke coalesced into fire caught by his heavy flamer.
Morias motioned to Leandro and the pair charged up the nearest battlement to watch the unfolding (or re-folding?) carnage below:
He saw Phaltrix and Remiel Ardos trading blows, the Captain dancing around Phaltrix's whipping stinger-tail and parrying a slice, the pair locked so deeply in their duel that the Death Company went unheeded by either combatant.
He saw the last Rubric Marine obliterated by a plasma round that seemed to materialize from thin air and melt a hole through its breastplate before being caught by a backwards Death Company marine.
He saw the magi marshalling the skitarii into an organized retreat – if they could rally properly, they could still win through sheer force of numbers, especially once the Titans took to the field.
He saw Fabricator General Van Zan finally wheel out of their hiding spot, weapons systems bristling, and launching cluster missiles into the archaeopter air support.
He saw a small, winged figure in a white robe and golden armour cleaving through the lines, take a full-power blast from Decellis's blastmaster that made it drop it's power sword, only to sweep the noise marine off his feet in a flurry of feathers and tear out his throat with its teeth. It ripped the twisted, mutated progenoid gland in his chest as it spat out his viscera, tossing the corpse to the ground.
And worst of all, he saw as the Death Company reached their drop pods, the figure that reminded him ever so much of Sanguinius (impossible, he was dead, and the figure much too small) raised a palm and turned it as if twisting a dial, and the Death Company returned to the normal flow of time to renew their charge again.
So it was lost.
A snarl began to form at the corners of Morias's mouth. If the plan was lost, then at least he could kill that damnable witch, the priest Versato, and Ptar'nexk for good measure.
But as the clarion call sounded over the horizon, shaking the very dunes and throwing many off their feet by the sheer force of the noise, he knew remembered that it was not lost after all.
House Draedis's Titan engines had taken to the field.