LITANY II

Terra Fuego sat in the middle of the viewport, a violent swirl of red and orange gas cloud. Below the cloud level was the rocky barren surface pockmarked by industrial mining cities and the planet's one great spiral metropolis, Terra Feugo City.

"Originally named," Sister Verona said, bored, turning away from the viewport.

"Tens of millions of people live there," Gloria continued reading from the planetary report, "if there is heresy spreading then it is our duty to uncover and eradicate it."

"Ah, Gloria. You have been in the Inquisitor's office for too long," Rachael sighed. "I just want to go down there and cleanse the heretic's souls with holy fire." The former Dominion squad Sister mimed holding her heavy flamer. "I'll give them feugo."

The other Sisters of Gloria's much reduced platoon laughed. Gloria too had to smile at Rachael's simple take of the mission. Don't worry about why, just do, and do well was the Sister's motto.

"I don't know why Inquisitor Feodervich didn't put you in command," Gloria said.

"I'm sure he wants some prisoners to interrogate," Rachael replied, patting Gloria's shoulder. "I wouldn't leave any of them alive."

"True enough, hot head," quipped Verona, ignoring Rachael's return stare.

"Captain on deck!" came a male shout.

The Sister's, loitering in the warship's common room, fell into two lines six, the active remains of an entire platoon of Sisters Of Battle. They were dressed simply and austerely in corse white gowns and brown habits tied about their waists by a plain black cord from which an Imperial Ikon hung.

The Captain of the Stormtroopers, young Comte Yegenov, entered the room with a straight back. His black jackboots had been polished brightly enough to reflect the violent glow of Terra Feugo. His entourage of subalterns followed a step behind, all looking smart in their crisp black uniforms.

"Is this how the Sister's prepare for battle, gawking out a window?" he Comte said sarcastically.

Luckily Gloria was standing next to Rachael and able to silence her response before it was said by stepping on her toes.

"Well?" the Comte pressed.

"No, Sir." Gloria answered. "We prepare for battle in the Chapel, meditating and praying for guidance and purity from the Emperor."

Whilst Gloria was the commander of her troops and technically was superior of higher rank and status to an Imperial Guard officer, Yegenov's royal title and familiarity with the Inquisitor gave him the higher rank. The two week journey from VK-49z had not established cooperative relations between the different arms of the Imperium, something the Inquisitor had not tried to rectify.

Women not of the Convent would have found the Comte handsome and dashing in his uniform, brave as he stood surrounded by battle unwavering. Gloria knew he was competent and more experienced than herself, but also arrogant and condescending to her squad. The Comte's Stormtroopers behaved the same way when he was not around and it had been hard work controlling Rachael and the others from starting a fight. Hopefully now that they had arrived at the planet everyone would turn their frustrations on the heretics.

Yegenov clearly didn't like the answer Gloria gave, thin moustache twitching. He walked to the viewport, hands clasped behind his stiff back, and looked out for minutes before turning around.

"The drop will be made at 00:45 hours, 15 minutes before the blowing of the main heat sinks. The dropships will take 20 minutes to penetrate the atmosphere and enter the city via the sinks. At 01:30 hours the power facility will be under the control of my company. Your squad, Sister Superior, will secure the subterranean control house and there wait for more orders. Lieutenant," the Comte held out his hand and a Lieutenant handed him a thin vidfolder, "This is the timetable and technical specifications. I suggest you study it immediately and pray later. Inspection will be held by the Inquisitor at 20:00 hours."

As quickly as he came the Captain left, turning on his heel and stepping smartly from the room, entourage behind.

Gloria weighed the vidfolder in her hand. So light, yet the contents inside were a heavy burden. A combat mission, and the responsibilities of the lives of her Sisters.

"Weren't you supposed to be at the planning session?" Sister Verona asked.

Gloria was meant to have been. Another example of how the Comte treated her. Why hadn't the Inquisitor asked for her? Or had the Comte made a lie for that as well?

"It doesn't matter. Here is our mission and I will study it diligently. I suggest all of you return to your quarters and prepare by checking your armour and weapons. We still are the better warriors on board this ship; only Chosen are allowed consecrated power armour in the image of the Emperor's own and to fire the holy bolter. When we are ready I will explain the mission and then we shall pray in the Chapel."

The Chapel was small and at the back of the Inquisitor's warship were the engines made the faux stone walls vibrate with the spirit of the Machine God. The Imperial Ikon, golden skull at the apex of the silver cross stood on a purple velvet covered bench. Before it knelt the Sisters in their red power armour, weapons laid in front of them: heresy ending bolters and promethium cleansing flamers. A long sarissa blade had been added to Gloria's bolter, the replacement of her lost Eviscerator and a power sword hung by her hip.

Gloria led the chant of the Convent's Prayer to the Emperor. The dozen Sisters held their heads respectively bowed, gloved hands together and eyes closed. When finished Gloria rose and turned to face her squad.

"Sisters!" she began, "Friends. Heretics have taken control of the cities power station and are laying siege to the Imperial Governor's mansion. They are lightly armed with planetary defence issue weapons but may have access to more powerful armaments from the Garrison. Our mission is to cleanse the lower power station of the heretics ensuring that Captain Yegenov and his Engineers can restore power to the Governor's mansion and its defences. The second phase of orders will be delivered once this has been accomplished and in response to the enemies actions.

"Schematics of the power station have been uploaded into your armour's systems," she concluded.

As was customary for the Sisters of the Convent they all turned to face the Imperial Alter and fell to their knees and prayed. It did not matter what kind of battle or enemy they would be facing; they always prayed that their will and resolve would be strong enough to overcome the challenge. Where many Imperial commanders would place their trust in plans and contingencies, the Sisters had their Faith and it rarely failed them.

The dozen fully armed and armoured Sisters of Battle were cramped in the assault dropship that had been designed for a normal ten man Stormtrooper squad. Comte Vegenov bade them farewell personally, closing the hatch with a grin that did not make any of the Sister's feel comfortable.

"Can we trust him?" Rachael asked, heavy flamer held tightly against her power armour. Verona and another Sister were almost sitting on top of her, also armed with Stormbolters, grenades, and plastic explosive charges for blowing holes in bulkheads.

"He is a Servant of the Emperor, just like us." Gloria replied.

"That doesn't stop accidents," Rachael said quietly but everyone heard.

The dropship had one visionport that showed the dark drop chamber of the warship. A distorted voice began the countdown. 10, 9, 8 … 3, 2 1.

And the dropship fell free from the mother. It was sudden and fast. Stomachs lurched as within seconds the dropship was in atmosphere, fired from the rapidly vanishing warship like a cannon shot. From the viewport Gloria could see other flaming trails, also dropships, as they began their hyperdescent to the power facility on the surface, unseen, below.

"What a rush!" Rachael cried over the near-deafening rattle of the dropship's hull and their armoured bodies clanging against each other.

A clock raced the time in fall.

The dropship began to turn until it had rotated 180 degrees and the nose faced down. The viewport now showed the power facility, a huge complex of domes, kilometre high exhaust towers. More, much more lay beneath. One of the exhaust towers grew larger, its black hole waiting to swallow the Sisters up.

Retro-thrusters fired throwing the Sister's into their harnesses. Many swore.

"Don't press any trigger!" Gloria tried to say through chattering teeth. Ordonnance going off inside the dropship would be catastrophic.

At least we're not being fired upon, the Sister Superior thought to herself. She looked at the timer; it was barely thirty seconds since launch. The heretics would not have had time to target them. Vegenov was a competent commander she had to concede.

Then the dropship was in the exhaust tunnel, safe. Unless it hit the structure and it disintegrate into hundreds or thousands of pieces.

Faith in the Emperor, Sister!

"IMPACT WARNING, IMPACT WARNING!"

Faith!

"This is it!" someone yelled.

Indeed it was. The dropship's retro-thrusters flared their last brilliant burst, sending the temperature inside the dropship to barely tolerable levels, before falling silent and less than a second after that the cone-shaped object crashed into the bottom of the shaft.

The world turned and twisted and was full of terrible noise. Her power armour kept Gloria from losing consciousness. There would have been no way for ordinary humans to withstand the collision and landing – one and the same – and that was why the Sisters had been given the task. They weren't fully human; not as engineered as a Space Marine, but still dedicated to their role. Those in power armour always were.

Finally the dropship stopped moving. The viewport only showed static, the camera broken. Fumes started to fill the interior.

"Everyone out!" Gloria yelled.

Groggily the Sister's undid their harnesses and two released the hatch. It didn't open all the way. Gloria felt the seconds grow, each one a moment given to the enemy to react to their arrival.

"Blow it- "

Verona took hold of the bulkheads above the door and used the leverage to kick the hatch until it clanged down onto a grill. Sister's armed with rapid fire bolters quickly leapt through the opening past her and took up position.

The squad was quickly out of the dropship and the combat pharmaceuticals being released into their bloodstream made the alert. Gloria checked a panel in her forearm that showed the schematics of the facility and her location. The tracking signal was working fine.

"We go left one hundred meters and there will be an elevator. We take that down ten levels, which will bring us to the main generator cavern. The control room is there."

"Why don't we take the stairs?" Verona asked?

"Time. The Captain's attack will divert most of the enemy's attention. Workers and some armed supervisors will be our only opposition at the outset." Gloria replied.

Verona nodded; Gloria was in command and her orders would be obeyed.

The dozen set out in tight formation. The weapons of the heretics would be lasguns at best, barely capable of penetrating a suit of power armour. Storm bolters were at the fore and behind. Rachael and her heavy flamer was near the front. Everyone else had bolters. Sister Marie, the technical specialist also had a hack-system ready in case the heretics shut down the automatic doors and elevators. She stayed next to Gloria ready for orders, she in the middle.

The hundred meters was quickly covered. A Sister pressed the DOWN button and it lit up; power was still on. The heretics would be frantically wondering if they should turn the power off and try to strand the attackers so they could organise their own defence in response. The longer they took to decide, the worse their leader was, Gloria believed. She would have cut the power as soon as the dropships had been identified as heading for the power station even if that isolated many of her own troops. A home-field advantage would make up for it.

The elevator shaft, simple four endless columns covered in grate, acted as an exhaust shaft itself. Hot air blew up it, ruffling the Sister's peroxide hair. An elevator was coming down.

The Sister's backed up so they would not be seen next to the exit until it was too late. Gloria drew her sword and it hummed softly. She would be the first in having the only dedicated close combat weapons. The sarissa was for tough opponents.

The elevator came down fast, yet not fast enough for the impatient Sisters. They gripped their triggers tightly. Gloria hoped that none would shoot prematurely. The fall and drugs had filled them with adrenaline and a sense of impatience.

The elevator was a box of heat-resistant metal. Blackened doors opened revealing three ordinary looking technicians in grey jumpsuits inside. One looked out, the opening of the door was unexpected and his eyes widened in surprise before a hail of bolter fire turned him and his two companions into bloody rags.

The Sisters rushed inside and continued the descent. Hopefully the 'delay' wasn't long enough for others to notice. Or the sound of gunfire. Everyone pointed their weapon at the door ready to fire when it opened for them.

There was no ambush.

The corridor split in three directions. The Sisters moved without orders into the correct position to watch all of the approaches. Gloria and half a dozen quick-marched along the central way, the rest of the squad folding back into line behind them. One lay a booby-trap for the next users of the elevator.

Quick progress was made to the generator chamber: It spread outwards and upwards into darkness when the corridor ended. The size of the chamber was larger than any convent or cathedral the Sister's had ever seen and for a moment they were lost in awe. It was Rachael who noticed the danger first, a technician like the ones they had just cleansed of heresy staring at them thirty meters away, on the close side of the enormous chamber.

"Get him!" Rachael pointed. Her weapon was out of range otherwise she would have lain the heretic low herself.

Her request shook the awe from the Sisters and the technician was quickly cut down. However the sound of the bolters echoed dramatically in the chamber over the sound of the generators, giant turbines that glowed with a malevolent red light.

"Verona, cover the west, Rachael: east!" Gloria quickly snapped out her command. She, Marie and two others raced as fast as they could across the width of the generator cavern, red armour as large as ants to humans in comparison to the generators. The other Sisters covered their rapid advance to the metal stairs that lead to the control office. They all could see faces pointing down at them.

Green bolts began to flash down at them from the office.

Bolter fire raced back up in reply shattering the office's resistant glass shield. The lasgun fire stopped, suppressed by the overwatch teams.

Sister Ariete lead the way up the steps, four at a time with great strides, knees lifting up to her chest. One gloved hand used the rail to propel her quickly up, the other held onto a frag grenade, ready to hurl it through the office doorway if it opened. The other's bolters aimed over her shoulder meant she didn't need to worry about her own.

The door did open for a moment. Not enough time for Ariete to throw the grenade as the heretics inside saw the close danger and shut themselves back in the office.

"By numbers," Gloria said.

Sister Ariete put away the frag grenade and replaced it with a charge. She rushed up to the landing before the door, placed the charge and then took cover as much as possible.

The explosive went off two seconds later, a deafening roar that was quickly swallowed into nothingness by the cavern. Immediately after Sister Ariete had the barrel of her bolter pointing into the office: the door had been blow to bits along with a large part of the wall. Gloria and the others rushed up and they entered the office.

Two technicians lay bleeding to death by the door; one had a missing arm and both were badly burnt. Gloria saw another technician crouching behind a swivel chair and there was a lasgun by his feet. She shot him without thought. A few more short bursts and it was over; all the hetetics had been slain and the office was under their control.

Sister Marie checked the office control panels. "Damage is negligible, we can control the power feeds from here, Sister Superior," she reported.

"Good. Get me a line to Captain Yegenov. Our mission is successful."

"Yes, Sister Superior."

Sister Marie turned to her task.

Bolter fire erupted down below.

Gloria rushed to the shattered window and peered over the edge. Flashes of light came from the east squad.

"Rachael, report!"

It was too far to see properly. Flashes in one direction and green lights coming from the other gave some indication.

"They came up before we had any idea. Sister Henrietta is wounded but can still fight."

"How many?"

"More than a dozen. Fast too. I think we've got them pinned."

"Verona, any movement your side?" Gloria checked on the other team.

"No, Sister Superior. Should we assist?" Verona replied and asked.

"It's under control!" Rachael said. "Faith! I wish they'd come closer so I could burn them."

"Ariete, Marie, stay here," Gloria ordered the two Sisters. She and the other returned down the stairs, clanking heavily, and went to Rachael's position. The firing had mostly stopped. When a lasgun did fire the Sisters would respond with a deadly rain that quickly silenced the attacker.

In pairs the six Sisters leap-frogged their way forward until they came to the heretics position. What they found was a disgusting surprise.

"Mutants." Rachael spat.

The heretics were not ordinary humans. Their features had been grotesquely altered. One's head was bulbous with large eyes that poked out. Its colour was like infant's flesh. Another had an additional arm that ended in a tripod claw. The arm itself was covered in a hard carapace – no protection against a consecrated bolt shell – and purple. Other's had similar mutations.

"Sister Marie, have you opened the communications channel yet?" Gloria talked to the Sister in the office.

"Not yet Sister Superior, there is a lot of interference. I'm also trying to use the station's dedicated system but I have to locate the Captain first," Sister Marie replied.

Next Gloria checked on Henrietta. A pair of lasgun burns were a fraction apart, the second able to penetrate the power armour and injure the Sister above the hip. She was still able to fight and the drugs from her suit had taken most of the pain away. Prayer would do the rest.

"They came from that tunnel, I think." Rachael said, pointing. The tunnel, a black dot, was hundreds of meters away.

"And they got that close before you saw?" Gloria asked incredulously of Rachael.

"As I said, Gloria, they were fast."

Gloria frowned. Mutant heretics had not been on the Comte's battle plan, but heresy took many forms and mutants were common in the Empire and had to be purified. On a planet like Terra Feugo mutations would not be uncommon either. However, the Sister Superior expected mutations that would make them better suited to the hot environment. The dead heretics looked just as fragile as ordinary humans. Speed, big heads and extra arms gave them nothing here. She checked her schematic; there were two other corridors leading into the cavern before the tunnel the attackers had come from. It would stretch her squad but the tunnel had to be investigated: if there was a coven of heretics then it was her obligation to destroy it.

The Emperor demanded no less.

The squad was reorganised. Verona's team was recalled and took possession of the office, one of the Sister's joining Gloria whilst Sister Marie remained behind. There was still no communication link.

"Or the Captain could just not be responding," Verona offered.

Gloria and the seven other Sisters approached the tunnel cautiously, bolters at the ready. No more mutants came out. Charges were placed on the doors of the other two corridors. The eight entered the tunnel, a line kept open with Verona.

The tunnel was incredibly humid, shining with moisture. In the generator cavern it was dry, all the moisture instantly vaporised by the turbines. Sweat started to bead on the foreheads of the Sisters who advanced cautiously, now bunched together. Rachael, eager to fire her flamer was in the front. Even so, her eagerness was cautioned and she stepped slowly.

The floor crunched beneath them.

"What are we walking on?" a Sister whispered.

Rachael lit the starter light of her flamer and pointed it to the ground.

Gnawed bones lay thick on the tunnel floor.

Torn apart bodies of technicians and civilians hung from the walls.

The stench reached their nostrils.

Gloria gagged, a Sister vomited. Rachael screwed her thin nose and said: "I don't like this."

Gloria covered her face with her hand and nodded. She had seen a lot of death, and inflicted it in the Emperor's Name, but it had been the death of war. What she saw now was something much different. Like the remains of a half devoured meal. The mutants were cannibals, eating the workers of the planet. They deserved more than Holy Retribution. They had to be eradicated from all existence.

A hiss, strong and sinister, silenced them all.

"Something's here."

Another hiss, more.

"Tighten up and head back to the chamber," Gloria ordered, a sudden dread turning her stomach cold.

The Sister's obeyed without hesitation, forming into a tight circle, shoulder to shoulder, bolters pointing outward.

"Verona?" Gloria said.

There was no reply.