Crouched in the dirt behind a wrecked Sororitas Rhino, pinned down by screaming mortar rounds and las-fire, two women in her command squad slain already, Canoness Commander Patricia attempted to direct the mess the assault had become. She examined the tactical readout of the battle on a dataslate with her left hand, held her bolt pistol in her right, and was hunched right by Sister Ami, who had the vox-set.
The construction fields should have been lightly defended, according to all intelligence sources. The bulk of the fighting had taken place farther southeast, near the Ecclesiarchy and Administratum sections of the city, and Patricia had thought the fields would be ripe for the taking. Maybe intel had been wrong. Maybe it was the fact that, five minutes into the assault, two entire companies of PDF had suddenly turned on the Sororitas and loyal PDF. Patricia expected some form of penance and punishment when she returned to the convent, if not worse. If she even made it out alive at all.
The hiss of las-bolts against metal, the whoosh of bolter-rounds and the cough of the guns firing those same rounds, the constant scream and thump of mortar rounds dropping, and the damned warbling music braying from the Traitors' lines formed a suffocating cacophony of noise that could undo a lesser woman's resolve. Even Patricia, veteran Sister and Canoness that she was, had to make an effort to focus on the incoming communications from the other elements of the battle as relayed by Ami. The right flank had just lost a Rhino, immobilized by a hostile lascannon, and the squad debarking it was pinned down. The same situation was repeating itself, or already had happened, across the construction fields, where traitor PDF, unexpected mines, and enemy mortar fire made the safety of hard cover much less certain. The turncoats were finally being mopped up by the rear elements of the Sororitas force, at least. Patricia ordered the pinned squad to stay down, and Sister Ami passed it on.
Patricia glanced left at one of her bodyguards, a Celestian with a scarred face, a head of lightning-white hair, and a meltagun in her hands. She was squatted by the end of the Rhino, occasionally glancing around the corner of the wrecked machine.
"Sakura," Patricia said, "can we move?"
"Negative!" Sakura shouted. "Nearest cover is thirty meters away, enemy fire is too heavy." She pulled back around the corner as a hail of las-bolts chewed at the Rhino and the hard-packed earth. She glanced back at Patricia, and then up, and shouted, "Ma'am, down!"
Patricia dove for the dirt, skidded across the hard earth, and heard the snap of a las-bolt overhead. To her right, up on the service gantry of a treaded crane, several ragged figures were aiming and shooting at the Sororitas command squad. Vox-Sister Ami stepped between Patricia and the traitors, giving the Canoness the moment she needed to unlimber her bolt pistol and pop several shells off at the gantry. Lines of bolter fire converged on the traitors, killing two of them. Then the hot breath and the hungry rasp of Sakura's meltagun washed over Patricia, and a cone of superheated air hit the gantry, softening it to malleable orange metal, and crisping the remaining traitor in a burst of flame and vaporising flesh.
Patricia leaned on the flank of the Rhino, let her hammering heart cool down. "Ami," she said, "order the Avengers to make another run."
"Yes, ma'am."
As the echoes of the firefight died away, Patricia heard something else among the clamour of battle. She edged up to Sakura's corner. There, in the background, bumping up against the wailing dirge broadcast by the Traitors, was another song. It was almost as jarring as the unholy music of the foe, but only because it was inordinately cheerful and upbeat, and completely out of place on the battlefield.
Sakura went still for a few moments. "I recognize that, ma'am," she said.
Patricia's forehead wrinkled as she tried to process a mix of confusion and relief. "Yes, that's Squad Tainaka's music," she said. She remembered something, and called to Ami, "Squad Tainaka was assigned to cover the Fourth Bombardment Company, correct?"
"One moment, ma'am," Ami said. There was a few moments, while the sounds of the battlefield cracked and snarled around them. Then she said, "Correct, ma'am, Squad Tainaka was to protect the Fourth Bombardment…wait, stand by…"
Patricia glanced back and forth. Enemy fire was lessening towards the east, she noticed. The vox-Sister said, "Ma'am, one Exorcist from the Fourth Bombardment, the Glorious Crescendo, has been sighted among the heretics, heading west."
Patricia consciously forced her jaw to stay shut and not drop open. She shoved past Sakura and glanced out around the Rhino.
The Traitors had dug in on the north end of the massive depression that formed the construction fields. The depression rose to meet the city in two tiers, the first which was made up of fabrication and storage structures, the second which was level with the city proper and populated with administrator structures and the monorails for some of the larger cranes. The gray-and-tan striped layers of rockcrete and hard-packed soil that formed the two tiers were partly obscured by surging clouds of smoke. Bumpy lines of revetments and bunkers peered through the smoke, las-shots and bolter-fire blasting from them. However, an increasing amount of the traitors' fire was being redirected to fire along their flank, to the east. Through the smoke, Patricia saw a blue-and-gold blob, about the size of her thumbnail, charging parallel to the Traitors' lines with absolute abandon. Even as Patricia watched, a jet of yellow-orange shot from the Exorcist, arced up and ahead four hundred meters, and came down near a bunker on the top tier.
The volume of enemy fire began to ebb like a wave rolling back out to the ocean. Patricia tore a smoke grenade off her belt, armed it, and threw it out into the open ground. As white smoke surged up, providing concealment for a few brief moments, Patricia shouted, "Squad, on me, advance to cover!" and dashed toward a fallen crane thirty meters away.
They crashed into the twisted metal and churned-up dirt in a clatter of ceramite and weapons. Patricia rolled up to a crouch, and ordered, "Vox, order full advance, full advance! Take advantage of our impromptu flanker!"
Mio couldn't hear herself think.
Ritsu was playing the drums for Fluffy Time, but at double speed and in the style of the ancient "heavy metal" discs she listened to when the more uptight Sister Superiors weren't around. The hard snap of the snares, the crash of the cymbals, the boom of the bass drum, blasted over the laud-hailers (set at one hundred percent, of course) overrode coherent thought and replaced it with a fury that left Mio's spirit on fire, her trigger finger itchy, and her soul hungry to kick some righteous ass.
And kick righteous ass Mio did, standing behind and right of the command throne, backed up against the Crescendo's organ pipes, sweeping her heavy bolter back and forth across the enemy lines. The squad and Exorcist were charging straight west along the main boulevard of the lower tier of the construction fields, running over panicking heretics and demolishing their crude fortifications, made of crates, groundcars whole and wrecked, tyres for giant transport trucks, and pieces of rubble. On their left, short-term storage yards were clustered, made of light buildings, four-metre security fences, and motor pools repurposed into ammo dumps and strongpoints. On their right, Mechanicus fabrications facilities rose from the ground like bizarre trees, or four-story-high internal organs frozen in metal and decorated all over with the (now-defaced) cog-skull.
Ritsu's frantic drumming was eating up ammunition for the bolters at a frightening speed. With every strike of her drumstick against a snare, tom, or cymbal, one of the six bolters would fire a shell. With Ritsu going at the drums with twice her usual zeal, the front of the Crescendo was barely visible beyond the sheets of fire bursting from the bolters' muzzles. Obviously, no one was standing on the front of the Exorcist; Yui and Azusa were on Ritsu's left, and Tsumugi was kneeling just in front of Mio, picking off any enemies that Mio missed.
Eighty metres ahead, from a perch among a clutch of smokestacks, Mio saw the backblast of a missile launch bloom. "Missile, two o' clock!" she shouted.
"Missile, two o' clock, copy!" Nohi said. Mio could barely hear her.
"What?" Ritsu said, over the crashing finale of Fluffy Time.
"Down!" Mio said, dropping to one knee, and ceasing fire to grab an organ pipe.
Nohi sent the Exorcist into an honest-to-God-Emperor drift, slinging its front right fifteen degrees. The missile missed anyway, but only by a little; it screamed past, and Mio heard it detonate against the boulevard behind them.
Tsumugi snapped a burst off at a heretic dashing from a doorway, a grenade in each hand. His head vanished in a spray of red gore and shattered bone, and then Mio's attention was forcibly redirected as Nohi accelerated and sent the Exorcist hurtling down the street, regaining any speed they had lost. Mio stood back up, wavering with the motion of the tank, and stitched a long burst of heavy-calibre shells over the heads of a zigzagging revetment on their right. She hit nothing, but the heretics manning the revetment kept their heads down, and Mugi took the opportunity to throw a grenade at them.
The revetment whizzed past, and Mio saw a series of parking and storage lots approaching, and beyond that an open intersection for one of the main ingress-egress routes for the construction fields. It seemed remarkably clear, too clear. Mio made sure her ammo feed was clean and free of grit, and then realized what was bothering her.
There was little to no enemy fire pummeling the fields to the south. They had to be reorienting their fire. The Exorcist rampaging through their lines could be their only other target.
"Ritsu, the traitors are–" Mio started, and never finished, because a foundry's worth of lasguns suddenly opened up, all at once, a tangled haze of red beams snapping off the Exorcist's armor, searing the organ pipes, and scouring Mio's armor. Las-bolts squealed as they vaporised tiny, precise holes in the cymbals and toms of Ritsu's drum kit. Mio felt the combined heat of the massed fire on her face, felt her lips and eyes drying out. She fired for effect, spraying shells across the right arc of the Exorcist.
"Nohi, smoke!" Ritsu called, segueing without pause into Don't Say Lazy. The smoke launchers bristling along the Crescendo's flanks burped, and off-white smoke engulfed the Exorcist. It was none too soon; Mio heard the air sizzle as full-sized lascannons opened up, their arm-sized beams punching bright red lines through the air far too close to the Exorcist. The tank rocked as one beam hit home, but there was no explosion, no screams of agony over the vox, only a low-key groan of stressed armour.
Through the tinnitus caused by overexposure to gunfire, Mio heard the painful screech of ammo feeds going dry. Ritsu swore casually, "Holy feth, that's it? Azusa, Mugi, reload the guns!" She kicked something in the command throne, and the remaining bolters ceased firing, though Ritsu drummed on. "Green range!" she called. "Come on, ladies, daylight's burning!"
Azusa and Tsumugi began grabbing the belts piled behind the command throne and linking them into the bolters, their armoured boots jangling in the sea of spent brass piled on the tank's roof. Yui saw something through the smoke, and triggered her flamer. A jet of fire leaped ten metres left of the Exorcist and splashed across the rubble; Mio heard shrieks of pain from burning traitors.
The Crescendo had slowed, but had not stopped, not at all. It began to swerve back and forth, each turn delayed by several seconds, and Mio realized Nohi was attempting a serpentine evasion pattern. In a heavy, bulky, clumsy Exorcist. Bless her heart, Mio thought, and fired a burst at a suspicious-looking doorway, destroying it and any potential threats behind it. She glanced up, and saw munitions from the south, from the Sororitas advance, streaking overhead and hammering the upper-tier Traitor fortifications.
Azusa and Tsumugi darted back around the command throne, on the friendly end of the bolters. "Guns loaded and clear!" Azusa yelled.
This close to her, Mio could feel Ritsu's terrifying grin of anticipation. "Red range!" she shouted, with entirely too much delight, and kicked the switch in the command throne again. The bolters blazed again, and Ritsu thrashed on the splash cymbals for extra effect. The groundcars lining the street were flayed in a blistering salvo of small explosions, as were the unfortunate heretics sheltering behind them. The Exorcist ran up on the kerb, flattened the groundcars with a long, drawn-out howl of compressing metal and parts, and maybe one or two even more unfortunate heretics.
Mio realized she was singing Don't Say Lazy under her breath, and heard Tsumugi humming the tune gaily as she blasted a heretic scrambling over a barricade. The Crescendo accelerated again, and they were suddenly out of the smoke cloud, in the middle of the giant intersection. It was about one hundred metres across, and crisscrossed with heavy las-fire, rockets, and autocannon rounds, all frantically seeking the runaway Exorcist. To the left, Mio saw the rubble-strewn construction fields, littering with fallen cranes, destroyed vehicles, and the massive hulks of burning fabrication machines. Hope, real, sensible, levelheaded hope surged through her when she saw the blue Rhinos grinding forward and the tiny blue dots of Battle-Sisters darting from cover to cover alongside them.
The second right-hand bolter exploded in a brief storm of metallic shards. Hot smoke blinded Mio; she crouched low and staggered a few steps forward to the command throne. "Ritsu!" she called, "Are you okay?"
An armoured hand appeared out of the gloom and seized Mio's left ear. "Those mutant-humping heathen bastards!" Ritsu shrilled with righteous vehemence. Mio winced, even though Ritsu's voice was tinny by now. "They blew up the bolter and the tom!"
The end of the intersection loomed as the Exorcist's breakneck speed cleared the smoke. A cordon of groundcars had hastily been drawn across the street, and a heavy bolter was peering out from them, blazing away at the Exorcist. Ritsu grabbed another pair of drumsticks from somewhere in the command throne. "Nohi," she ordered, "clear that roadblock!"
There was the roar of multiple missiles launching from behind Mio, and then just the inner-ear whine of total deafness as they came down barely thirty metres ahead of the Exorcist, blowing the cordon to the Warp and back.
Up on the top tier, farther over by the center of the construction fields, a repurposed Chimera decorated with barbed symbols of Chaos, beguiling sigils of Slaanesh, and equipped with oversized, overdecorated vox-casters trundled along the defenses. An ear-splitting collection of wails, warbles, and sirens blared from its vox-casters, invigorating the Chaos cultists and demoralizing the enemy. That was the idea, at least. Standing on top of the Chimera's turret, the Prophet-Conductor Bairnskein the Lesser could hear a different melody diluting his raucous worship hymns to the Prince of Excess. It was too cheerful, too straightforward. It didn't turn back on itself in a thousand different ways, did not twist and stimulate his body enough, did not wind up his emotions on a rack and then set them screaming free, it was dull dreck that somehow had survived five minutes among his lines.
This displeased Bairnskein greatly, immensely, morbidly, on too many levels to name. Clearly, this problem couldn't be waited out. He reluctantly removed his wire-pierced lips from the mouthpiece his distortion-horn, and shouted into his ornate vox-headset, "Captain Vinz! Is that cursed machine still running riot in the east defenses?"
Vinz did not answer immediately. Bairnskein was fine this this. Even in battle, one had to pause and exult in the myriad pleasures of life. The varied sparks of pain emanating from a thousand different perverse piercings, the percussion thuds of munitions going off all around, the primitive blare of the distortion-horn, Bairnskein welcomed them all. He reached down and overtightened the straps holding the ornate horn to his body, enjoying the stuffy sensation of his diaphragm and lungs being compressed. A moment later, heard Captain Vinz answer his hail.
"My lord," Vinz gasped, "the abominably plain machine of the Sororitas is headed west, towards you, on the lower level. We have been unable to delay or destroy it. It came like lightning from the east…"
Bairnskein indulged himself in a blast on the horn before answering. "You fail to destroy a single vehicle, and call yourself a worshipper of the Dark Prince, Vinz? For shame! Your only achievement is providing a somewhat entertaining light-show. Redirect your fire on the Sororitas advance, end them in an overindulgence of noise and shot."
"Yes, my lord," Vinz said, still breathing heavily.
Bairnskein cocked an ear that was more physio-reactive piercings than flesh. The obnoxiously cheerful music was coming closer.
"Vinz," the Prophet-Conductor said, "that Sororitas vehicle, it is the one playing that awful music, correct?"
"My lord is correct, yes," Vinz said.
Bairnskein smiled. "Thank you, Vinz," he said. He called down the Chimera's turret hatch, "Driver, take us down to the lower level! Prepare for combat!", and then toggled the arming switch of the distortion-horn to ON.