A/N: Chap 28 review responses are in my forums. Anyone who is familiar with the Dan Abnett books set within 40K know what's coming. For the most part.
Thanks for reading and reviewing.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Ignis Dei Cecidit e Caelo
"You're going to be late."
Taylor stared at the rusted support bands that held the thin mattress of her roommate directly above. The whole bunk bed creaked as she swung her legs over the edge of the mattress and rubbed tiredly at her face.
Across the floor of their cramped hab space, Jessi Banda stood at the counter with the hot plate, heating up a pot of grainstarch. She cut up the last of their protein ration for the week into it, followed by a pinch of salt.
"Weren't you supposed to pick up more food?" Taylor asked.
Jessi shrugged. "Figured we could do the basilica tonight. Maybe save some rations for some grox filets this week. Go clean up–you stink."
Taylor couldn't argue. She stood and stretched. She could feel her frizzed hair ghosting against the roof of the unit, and so walked with her head bowed as she moved across their home. She knew she could stand up right and still have an inch or two of clearance, but the instinct to duck remained.
The habspace had its own shower and toilet, though, which was more than many of their fellow loom girls could claim. She stripped down and stepped into the small wet bath. Toilet first, then a quick shower. The water had a faint petrochemical scent that she alone seemed to notice. Wet, stop the water. Lather up with the harsh soap and the only slightly better hair cleanser, then rinse with the remaining five minutes of her bathing water allotment. Even so, it felt good to scrape the previous day's sweat from her limbs and hair.
She came back out and quickly pulled on the day's dull burgundy synthfab jumpsuit before Jessi could comment once again on the tattoo on the small of her back, and pulled her long hair into a bun. Banda handed her a spoon; the two sat on the edge of Taylor's bunk and ate from the pot.
"So, Dorin?" Taylor studied her roommate of six months as she ate.
Jessi flushed. "Maybe. He has nice hands." Jessi was seventeen–a year older than Taylor was after a year in the hive city. She was very honest with Taylor about how much she wanted to start a family. It was the only way she could file for a larger hab and more food.
The idea of losing her roommate and her own habspace left Taylor disquieted, but she kept it inside and did her best to help her friend. She knew if worse came to worse she could find another roommate to keep the flat the Basilica helped her find.
But… Dorin? Really? "He hit Calie," she said. "Two days ago, at Loom 4."
Jessi finished her half of their breakfast. "I know. Calie's real slag, though."
"He still shouldn't have hit her. She mouthed off. He could have reported her, or dismissed her. He shouldn't have hit her."
Jessi shrugged. There wasn't a good answer, and they both knew it. Jessi changed the subject. "So, how much do you have left to go?"
"I need another five hundred units. Should have it in six months, maybe."
"I hope you can find them," Jessi said. "I didn't know astropaths were so expensive."
Taylor shrugged. "There's only two public ones in the whole hive."
They quickly scarfed down their food, since Jessi's warning about them being late was true enough, and they left their hab space and entered the halls of the outer hab spire where they and most of the rest of the outer manufactorum district employees lived, worked, and eventually, would die.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
Outhab Southwest KL/165 rose to a modest 70 levels above the grassy plains that surrounded Vervunhive. As they reached the verticars to head down to the loom manufactoria, Taylor caught a glimpse of the main hive that dwarfed the Outhabs like she might an ant. Even after eight weeks, the sight remained stunning.
That morning, clouds had gathered along the western edge of the Hive, and would undoubtedly rain on the western water collection fields for dissemination throughout the hive and the agroponic sheds that helped feed the city's 65 million residents. It cast a dull shadow over the gleaming bronze-color of the adamantium and ferrocrete spires and the untold crystalflex windows from which the rich and powerful looked down on those like Taylor.
Verghast had open land, still. The hive cities that had grown up on it were still relatively far apart. But there was in the Imperium an underlying fear of isolation that had always sat oddly with Taylor. She understood it–when a single psyker going mad could kill an entire world; when raving green-skinned Xenos casually raided planets just for the joy of killing and eating people-it made the citizens wish to band together for mutual protection.
But even so, the hives were so huge. So many, crowded so closely together. Taylor was the only one who ever seemed bothered by it. She was likely the only one who remembered open fields and living forests. Jessi was born in Vervunhive and had never even left her particular sector of the outhabs except for one shopping trip when she was little into the hive proper.
The main spire disappeared into fast-moving ferrocrete walls as they dropped below and well outside the main shield wall of the hive city. Crowded up beside her so tightly they might as well have been snuggling as they hung on to the support pole, Jessi motioned through the dense crowd at one of their fellow loom girls.
Jada saw them and cast a tired smile, but didn't bother to try speaking to them. There was a team of miners in the car between them, and an array of low-level clerks, assemblers, and processors all around. Taylor guessed there were easily two hundred people in the car, and the car was one in a train of five that ran every few minutes up and down the Outhab West spire.
They reached ground level. Theirs was the second car in the train, which meant a long walk down the endless ramps to the street. The crowd did not ease until they left the verticar terminal. Jada moved in with Taylor and Jessi, and yawned again.
"Second shift last night?" Taylor didn't even have to guess.
Jada shrugged. Like Jessi, she was a slight girl who barely reached Taylor's shoulder. She shaved her dense, curly black hair short for ease of care and safety. "Mom needs a medicant for her lungs. Two more double shifts to go."
Taylor bit back a harsh word. "Take my mid-day break," she said, instead. "Get a nap or you'll fall asleep at the loom."
Jada spared a tired smile. "Thanks, Ann."
A shadow fell across them, breaking the dim sunlight that managed to pierce the clouds still gathering along the atmospheric break of the main spire. The only sign on the cylindrical structure that rose thirty levels above the street was Fayk Mercantile. Most of the buildings and manufactoria were owned by guilds, while the noble and great houses owned the greater, more wealthy production facilities within the hive proper.
Other girls joined them, most near or at Taylor's apparent age. They came in groups of three or four. The city was better than some Taylor had seen, but even in a well-run Hive City, it wasn't safe for unaugmented young women to travel alone.
Just the thought made Taylor angry, but like everything else she forced the feelings back.
The Fayk Guild tended to hire women for the loom work not because of any defined gender roles, nor did the girls like Taylor take the position because of it. No, the women worked at the looms because most of the other laborer jobs were so very much worse. The Hive, and the Imperium of Man itself, thrived off harsh physical labor in demanding and dangerous jobs. This was true even in healthy, relatively good hive cities.
Taylor knew two girls in the past six months who fell into looms and died. But the infocast plates across the outhab reported deaths in the mines or processing plants almost daily. The girls worked in the looms because they had a better chance of survival. They accepted less pay for that relative security.
The entire shift of ten thousand was shunted by halls and ropes into the Sanctorum. They dutifully knelt and sent prayers to the Emperor, His Saints and his Sons for protection and good productivity. Taylor, Jessi and Jada were so far back she couldn't even see the Emperor's portrait over the alter at the far side of the room.
With their prayers done, and the muttered blessing of an overweight, disinterested Ministorum priest were dispensed, they began their shift at the looms. Taylor and Jessi were assigned to loom six that day and Jada to loom 15. Jessi switched with the other girl so Taylor could keep an eye on Jada and make sure she didn't fall asleep and fall into the fibre processing rollers.
The day got started as the raw recycled fibers began to pour into the chutes high overhead for the process that would eventually create the synthfab most workers in the hive wore, and which also constituted part of the hive's tithe to the Ministorium of the Empire.
"Gonna be a long day," Jada predicted around a yawn.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
The loom master appeared at Jada's shoulder. Dorin Nobora stood an inch shorter than Taylor, and had a wiry build and heavy pockmarks on his weasel-like face. His attempt at a mustache just looked like overgrown hair from his proboscis-like nose. He despised Taylor because he couldn't intimidate her.
It wasn't enough for the man to just look threatening. Dorin liked to touch the girls. A shove here, a pat there. Sometimes a squeeze. This time he grabbed Jada on her rear and pushed her toward the fiber shuttle gun.
Jada, at the end of her third consecutive shift, lost her balance and stumbled into Taylor's arms. She glared over the shorter girl at Dorin.
"What are you looking at, hab rat? You've got other things to worry 'bout. Shift Boss wants you. His office, now."
Once Taylor was sure Jada was steady, she left her post. The shift boss's office was set three levels above the production floor–a glass and steel cube that gave him an unrestricted view of the massive looms.
She made her way slowly up the metal grate stairs, going through the various scenarios of why an older, obese man would want to see a teen-aged female employee alone in his office. All those scenarios, however, evaporated when he summoned her in at her knock, and she stepped through to find he was not alone.
The door closed behind her, instantly muting the visceral, heavy thuds of the looms. The relative silence and the internal pressure of the office made her ears pop. Boss Olgath sat in his chair, his round, red face drooping with excess flesh almost as if he were melting. It was the two people beside him who made her stiffen.
"This the girl you wanted?" Olgath said. He had a peculiar, high-pitched voice.
The two newcomers wore light body armor, but not like that of the Astra Militarum. Rather, they wore black body gloves with armor weave and small ceramite plates at strategic points on their bodies. Over it all they wore Ecclesiarchal robes. The man stood a head taller than the woman, but both looked fit. Just seeing how balanced they stood implied intensive training.
"I thought she was a blank," the man said, openly surprised.
Taylor feigned confusion. "A what, sir?"
"Know nothing of the kind," Olgath said. "The girl was referred by Sister Geraldine at Saint Kiodrus. So, I knew she was a worker if nothing else. Shows up on time, takes care of the other girls. By the throne, I was even thinking about promoting her next production cycle."
"May I ask what this is about?"
"We're here to get you home, Ann," the woman said. She smiled kindly, but the expression never made it to her eyes.
"Sorry to see you go, girl," Olgath said. "Now I'm gonna have to deal with that fool Dorin myself. If you ever come back, there's a place for you."
"Thank you, Sir." There was no point arguing. There was no distinction between civil and religious authority. With few exceptions, those in the Ecclesiarchy would do as they willed, and they willed possession of one 'Ann Taylor of Hampshire'.
The two stepped toward her with professional caution. The woman came to her side, while the man lingered a meter away. "We have a transport ready," the woman said, still with that hollow smile.
They did not leave through the production floor, but instead through a door at the back of Olgath's office, stepping into a narrow hall that none of the loomgirls would ever see. The moment they let heavy door closed behind them, all pretense fell away. "We've been looking for you a long time."
"Well, I've been working here for over a year."
"The clones don't always retain memories, I read." The man did not speak in Low Gothic. Instead, he spoke a Francophonic patois from the late fifteenth millennium. Even so, it was an ancient, otherwise extinct language only one group in the entire galaxy would speak.
"Be quiet," the woman hissed at him.
The slip told Taylor everything she needed to know about who was escorting her. Knowing who found her first gave her a good direction on how to perform the part she had to now play. That of a scared, but oddly competent young girl.
"You're not Ecclesiarchy," Taylor said, as if she hadn't realized it the moment she saw them.
"We're Ordos, Ann," the woman lied smoothly. "Throne agents. You carry a very special geneprint that could be targeted by enemies of the Throne. We need to get you off Verghast as soon as possible."
They reached the lift at the end of the hall that would take them down to the ground level of the manufactorum. The door slid open and brought the three of them to a halt.
Sister Geraldine still wore a hood and whimple. But under the headpiece she now wore the black, hyper-feminized power armor of a combat-ready Adepta Sororitas. She had a bolt gun in her hand. By her side stood an obvious Inquisitorial witch-hunter, wearing the stereotypical hat with the inquisitor's rosette set in the center of her breastplate.. And behind the Sororitas stood an Inquisitorial stormtrooper in white carapace armor, a repeater 'hellgun' lasrifle in hand.
It seemed after over a year, everyone figured out who she was all at once.
"Oh, look," Taylor said, not bothering to hide her giddy laugh. "It's Sister Geraldine! Hello, sister! These two said they found my parents!"
"Did they, now?" The witch-hunter sauntered out of the lift first. She wore an extravagant crimson gown lined with white fur and bristling with gems. The front of the skirt itself split at the waist, revealing dark leather pants and knee-high boots. Over it she wore a bristling, heavy weapons belt. "What subsector is Hampshire in? Did they tell you, Ann Taylor?"
There was never any option but violence. The two who reached Taylor first were no more Ordos than Jessi Banda was.
The man behind and to Taylor's right flicked his wrist. The air right in front of the inquisitor shimmered opaque with a conversion field a moment before the small silver ball the man had thrown erupted in a blinding white flare. At the very moment he threw it, the woman grabbed Taylor and pulled her back to shield her with her armored body.
Even so, the blast felt like a blow to her solar plexus, ripping the air from her lungs as they fell. Over the woman's shoulders, Taylor saw that the entire hall had been blasted apart and the inquisitor thrown backward, shaken but otherwise protected by her personal shield.
Hands gripped her and pulled her up even as a shower of lasgun blasts began to fill the air.
Taylor didn't run because she wanted to join her captors. She ran because the Inquisition didn't care if she died, so long as the two beside her did too. Innocence was irrelevant to the Inquisition.
"So, they want my geneprint too?" Taylor snarked.
"Not the time, Ann," the woman muttered as they ran back past the bosses' door. Olgath stuck his head out, saw the las fire, and decided to choose life over valor. He quickly closed the door and hid.
The door to the stairs opened right in front of them, revealing two more Inquisitorial stormtroopers. The man, now at Taylor's left, surged forward and swung his left arm out as if holding a bat or weapon, even though his hand seemed empty.
Until, somehow, it wasn't. The blade appeared as if by magic, and cut deep into the neck seal of the first trooper. Blood spurted in a thick spray against the dull gray paint of the wall. The man rolled under the flailing arm of the first dying trooper and emerged in one fluid motion with the mysterious blade thrust forward into, and through, the carapace armor of the second. A blink of an eye later, the blade was gone.
"Can I have a gun?" Taylor asked.
"Do you know how to use it?" The man looked at her pointedly.
"I think you point it at the people you don't want to kill you, and pull the trigger?"
He snorted. "I like this one," he snarked to his partner. He leaned down and pulled a laspistol from the waist of one of the dead stormtroopers. "Here, take it. As you've seen, we're trying to save your life."
The brief interlude was interrupted by a heavy boom followed by a significant portion of the wall opposite the stairs erupting in a shower of crushed stone. Down the hall, Sister Geraldine did not run. With her augmetics, she didn't appear physically capable of running any more, but she walked at a steady, inevitable pace with her bolt gun held high.
"Child, surrender yourself!" The Sister of Battle shouted out the words as if in sermon. "For the sake of your soul, come to us!"
"Can you promise me I won't be hurt?" Taylor shouted the question back down the hall.
Sister Geraldine smiled beatifically. "Of course, child! We'll make sure you're safe in the Emperor's embrace. You will not be made to suffer!"
Taylor looked at her two 'kidnappers'. "That means she's going to kill me, doesn't it?"
"Afraid so." The woman shrugged.
"'Cause of my geneprint?"
"You're a popular girl. Come on."
They rushed down dusty, narrow stairs not meant for normal use. The man led the way, with the woman a step behind. The sounds of their breaths echoed off the walls around them. They all heard when the door behind and above them banged open.
"Raptor," the woman said.
"Claw," the man said, seemingly in agreement.
Taylor almost stumbled when the woman grabbed her and pulled her through a door on the next landing. The man continued running down the stairs loudly. He said, "Hurry, Ann!" just loud enough to echo, speaking not to Ann, but those who followed.
The woman let the door close quietly and continued to pull Taylor into a service corridor that ran in the walls directly behind the main looms. The sound of the massive machines and the heavy, reverberating thuds of their operation made the floor under their feet shake.
"What's your name?" Taylor asked.
"Betrice," the woman said absently. "Listen, Ann. Something very bad is coming. We have to get out of Vervunhive. We have to get off Verghast."
"Worse than the crazy killer-nun and her very big gun?"
"By an order of magnitude, yes."
That didn't sound good at all. "Where's your ship?"
"The main spaceport at Vannick Hive," Betrice said. "We can take the rail and be there in four hours, and off planet an hour after that. But we need to get out today, if we can. And the first step is to take off that jumpsuit." She reached under her flowing, fake ecclesiarchy robes and removed an initiate's robe, complete with a carefully folded wimple and hood. "Hurry!"
It was smart–the headgear would hide Taylor's hair. She quickly stripped out of her synthfab and pulled on the robe. Meanwhile, Betrice shrugged her robes off, reversed them and pulled up a seal on one side, and suddenly she, too, wore a nun's garb. She fit her head clothes on with expert finesse, then nodded when she saw Taylor do the same.
"So, from this point on we don't run. We don't behave in any way that could draw attention to ourselves. Darcin will lead them toward the eastern outhabs. We go into the hive itself. Don't talk, your accent gives you away."
Taylor decided to have fun with her pretended ignorance. "I have an accent? Really?"
Betrice snorted. "Come on."
They continued quickly down the service corridor to another set of stairs. Before they reached it, however, the heavy thudding of the looms abruptly stopped. The absence of noise and vibration was as stunning as if they were struck.
"That's not right," Taylor noted. "The looms never stop. It takes almost an hour to get them started again."
Into the looming silence, Taylor heard a distant siren.
"Oh no," Betrice muttered. She looked around with genuine dread on her face. "Come on, we're out of time!"
She began sprinting down the stairs three at a time. Taylor followed, but as they continued down, she felt a new vibration in the floor. A deep, sudden thump struck powerfully enough to make Taylor stumble. She barely caught herself on the rails of the stairs. "What was that?" she demanded.
"Artillery."
"What?"
"Come on, Ann!"
Abruptly, the thuds they'd been listening to with growing dread blossomed into heat and fire as an artillery shell struck the Fayk Mercantile Textile South Hab KL/148. Taylor heard a sharp ringing that carried her down into the dark.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
Taylor dreamed of a cabin in the woods. Of a beloved voice, calling: "Come back to me, child."
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
She blinked back powered ferrocrete dust. Her ears rang with the distant sounds of klaxons and sirens; more immediately, she heard screams and moans through a shattered wall. She stared down at her feet, and the crushed body there.
With her ears still ringing and her eyes blurry with strange flashes of rainbow-scintillating light, it was hard for her to focus on the massive, gaping hole in the side of the Fayk Mercantile building. She looked down at her feet and stared with a lingering sense of shock at what she could see.
The only thing that remained recognizable from the dead body of Ann Taylor of Hampshire was the hair. It must have come loose from the wimple during the explosion. A halo of long, curly dark hair was spread through the spray of blood and viscera. A single arm reached out from under the three ton piece of broken masonry, severed by the violence of the impact. The gun Darcin gave her lay at her feet.
She looked down and saw she was now wearing jeans, a teal green blouse and sneakers. The death and revival happened so quickly she didn't even lose her memory. In all her thousands of lives, something like that had never happened before. She had never come instantly back after dying. She didn't have the time to try and figure out why.
She knelt down and picked up the weapon.
She found Betrice partially crushed under the fallen masonry. Her left arm hung limp and bleeding at her side, her legs lost under a large piece of rockcrete. She was a beautiful woman, Taylor thought, with a mocha-cream complexion and pleasing symmetry to her face. Her whimple had also come off in the explosion, revealing beaded, rich black hair. She was hyperventilating from shock and bloodloss.
Even so, she saw Taylor standing before her, two years younger than before, and in different clothes. "Ann," the woman said cautiously. "Are you…?"
"It's never happened that fast before. And…well, I never come back in the exact same place at the exact same time. Same world, sure, but the same exact place and time?"
Betrice stood very still. "But…you're not a clone?"
Taylor shook her head. "I'm sorry. I know you're Cognitae, Betrice. I don't know how high up you are. Those pulling your strings probably know who and what I am." As Betrice gasped desperately for air, Taylor found the code chip for what looked like a void craft. "Vannick Hive."
"How old…are you? Always…wondered."
"Around forty thousand years, give or take," Taylor told the woman sadly. "And it never gets easier to watch a person die. Sleep, Betrice. I'm sorry."
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
With the laspistol in hand, Taylor cautiously made her way to the end of the access hall inside the broken Fayk Mercantile manufactorum. She found stairs and headed down, knowing full well how dangerous it was to be in an elevated building during an artillery attack. She still didn't know for sure who was attacking or why, but Betrice knew it was coming, somehow.
The damage she found at the base of the stairs was not caused by artillery alone. The burn marks along one wall were made by lasbolts. She found another inquisitorial stormtrooper a few feet in, bleeding out profusely across the hall. She knelt down and removed his weapons belt with a second laspistol and spare charges. Even cinched as tight as she could make it, it barely stayed around her slim hips. Over a year of growth and muscle, gone in the blink of an eye.
She moved forward at a crouch, gun drawn.
Darcin went out with a bang. The inquisitor lay sprawled in a pool of her own blood almost directly opposite Darcin. Sister Geraldine and three other stormtroopers, however, were killed by collapsing masonry where the western wing of the manufactorum must have been hit. She could see a part of the Sororitas chest plate and a bloodied pulp that might have been Geraldine's head.
Taylor stepped cautiously forward, but froze when the inquisitor stirred. The witch hunter was looking at her. It was, Taylor thought, a perfect illustration of the Imperium itself. Ignorant people killing each other for goals neither understood.
"I was hoping you had died," the Inquisitor said. Her words came out as breathless gasps. "It would have simplified everything."
Though she spoke, the woman's arms and legs did not move. As Taylor crept closer, she saw the thin puncture wound in the woman's upper chest. Darcin's blink blade did terrible damage, it seemed.
"I did," Taylor assured the woman. "Crushed by debris, killed instantly. It never takes."
Darcin himself was dead, riddled with lasbolts and bolt rounds. The blade itself seemed to be missing, not that she would have been able to use it. She did find a few local credit chits, but given the state of things she doubted their worth. She took them anyway.
"Do you know who he was?" The inquisitor seemed genuinely curious.
"Did you?"
A dry smile. "Sister Geraldine was convinced you were just a poor soul. But you're not, are you? You've seen death. None of this shocks you."
Taylor cautiously moved closer to the downed Inquisitor. They rarely went out without a few last tricks. But the woman seemed to truly be paralyzed from Darcin's killing blow, and likely soon to perish. "Any recording devices? Anything you want me to preserve for your team or fellows?"
The woman managed a weak smile. "You used the name Ann Taylor three hundred years ago," she whispered. "Before you immigrated from Monthax. Inquisitor Ravenor wrote of you. He, too, thought you were a clone. He thought the Cognitae were an entire order built around the worship of clones of a long-dead goddess."
"Huh. Ravenor had some issues. I wouldn't put much stock in him. Are you in pain?"
"Only the pain of failure. You are a threat to the Imperium."
Taylor didn't bother to hide her dismissive snort. "If I were a threat to the Imperium, it would never have formed in the first place. I assure you, Inquisitor, your Emperor never viewed me as a threat. Even when I tried fighting him, I was never a threat. I'm not a sorcerer. Not a psyker. I don't have any special powers or abilities."
"And yet, we have records tracing you back to the founding of the Inquisition. And the Cognitae seek you. The King in Yellow."
"Yes, well. Someone is convinced I know the Emperor's true name, and think I could use that information to control him."
Eyes widened in shock. "Do you?"
Taylor shrugged. "Of course I do. He's babysat for me. But he's not some silly little chaos demon. He's a god. All the use of his name would do is concentrate his attention. That's not something any being mortal could survive. Not now. I don't care what the King in Yellow thinks, not even he could survive the Emperor's undivided attention. Not after ten thousand years of eating psyker's souls. Only another god could."
The shelling never stopped, but the explosions seemed to continue in the distance. Taylor remained kneeling by the inquisitor for the next minute or so, until she succumbed to her injuries. Only then did she pull an incendiary grenade from the inquisitor's own belt and place it on the woman's body. Just in case.
She ran out of the building just as the explosion vaporized all evidence of the battle. She reached the panicked crowds in the debris-strewn street, but turned right back into the relatively intact front of Fayk Mercantile.
With explosions raining down all over the city, Taylor cautiously made her way back to the production floor. She found it devastated by the very shell that killed her. She could hear voices crying for help; others moaning in pain. But always was the constant, dull thud of distant artillery shells, with the threat of another hitting their building.
Near the entrance, as if they had been fleeing,she found a twitching, bleeding Dorin. And looming over him, her face white from ferrocrete dust, stood Jessi Banda. She held a bloodied piece of broken loom in her hand.
"Jessi?"
She looked up at Taylor, swaying a little. Doing so, Taylor saw blood running from her forehead. "What are you wearing?" the other girl asked. "Why do you look…younger?"
Taylor clambered down the wreckage and ignored the question. "What'd he do, Jessi?"
She wiped her nose, wiping more dust into her running nose. "Jada. When the explosion happened, he started to fall. He grabbed her and used her to save himself. He didn't do the same when she fell because of him. The bastard killed her, Ann! He killed Jada!"
"I'm sorry." She was, too. She'd lost so many friends, she couldn't even remember all their names. And yet each one's death hurt. "Let's see who else we can help. Will you help me, Jessi?"
She nodded, and only then noticed something. "Ann, is that a weapon?"
"Yes. It's a long story. Let's see who we can still help."
They started sifting through the damage, and once past their personal shocks, Taylor was heart-broken to see how many of the loom girls were killed in the blast. She reasoned that the artillery shell must not have ignited until after it slammed through the roof and the chute system–the far side of the dome was shattered like an egg shell. She could see people outside, milling around in terror.
They found Calie, and two girls from Loom 12 with her. For every one they found, a thousand died or had already fled. All around them, the sound of cracking ferrocrete sang a chorus of eminent danger.
"Come on, we have to get out of here," Taylor urged.
She wrapped Calie's arm around her waist, and her arm around the smaller girl, and helped her walk toward the shelled opening in the wall. Jessi helped one of the other injured girls, while the rest who could walk followed.
A new sound began to intrude over the klaxons and the constant thuds of the artillery rain around them as they emerged from the manufactorum.
A metal behemoth on tracks rolled just a few feet away from her. The tread of the beast was over twenty feet long, and it stood easily twelve feet tall. The massive primary barrel that protruded from the turret projected out further. Men in the spiked helms and the blue uniforms of the Vervun Primary rode on the massive war machine between its many secondary weapon mounts.
Leman Russ Demolisher variant. Sixty tonnes.
As soon as it passed, another appeared, this one a main battle tank template. All bore the colors of the Vervunhive army and were trundling south. "It must be Zoica," Jessi declared. "The Zoican's must have attacked us."
Calie was too hurt to answer. Her head leaned on Taylor's shoulder and Taylor took most of her weight. Behind them, Jessi added, "Well, those gakking bastards are in for it now!"
Looking at the column of tanks, and the scattered cheers of shell-shocked civilians, Taylor wasn't so sure. "We need to get out of the hive," she told the other girls. "Those people who came for me? They told me there's a ship at Vannick Hive. We might be able to get off world."
Jessi stared, confused. "And go where?"
"Someplace that isn't at war. There's usually at least one or two worlds that don't have a war on. Come on."
She led the refugees out into the shattered streets. They wouldn't make it far.