Revelation Chapter 36: Verba Mea Dolore Sunt Plena, a Warhammer + Worm Crossover fanfic

A/N: No review responses this morning. Had limited time, wanted to make sure I got the chapter out. Still, thank you to those who read and reviewed. I appreciate your support!

Chapter Thirty-Six: Verba Mea Dolore Sunt Plena

For the rest of that night and the entire next day, Taylor drove the chimera at its top speed of just over seventy klicks an hour to take advantage of the flat highway called Tembarong Road. From everything she heard, they were following a three-kilometer long convoy of armored vehicles, and she hoped that she would be able to catch up to them before they reached the Shrinehold that held the remains of Saint Sabbat.

The lowlands west of the city were river-plains. Occasionally they saw villages raised on stilts above the flood plains, or fishermen wading in the slow water of the summer season.

Occasionally Dorden came forward to check on her, or Daur, but she insisted she was fine. The mounting headache and general body-achiness was something she could push through.

As that first day began to wane, Taylor brought the chimera to a stop. It was still half an hour to sunset. Corbec made his way into the front cab, mouth open to question why, only to snap his jaw shut. Through the narrow, heavily reinforced window he could see a still-smoking Salamander armored transport. Half an imperial aquila was still visible on the back hull.

He gripped her shoulder gently–her uniform was thick enough he didn't get 'shocked' by her blankness. "Right. How are you holding up, Sergeant?"

"It only hurts when Captain Daur tries to tell jokes, sir."

Corbec chuckled. "You were wasted in Vervunhive, sergeant. You belong with us Ghosts. Let's take a break, see what happened."

"Yes, sir. If there's any left in those wrecks, wouldn't hurt to stock up our secondary prometheum tanks."

At the press of the command rune, the vehicle's massive engine went into idle. It burned more prometheum to shut it down and restart than let it idle for an hour.

She got up slowly, aching all over after driving for almost eighteen hours straight. By the time she reached the small personnel head, the others were already gone down the back ramp to investigate what had to have been an ambush on the honor guard they were following.

When she finished, she grabbed a field ration and walked back to the cab to eat. The food was munitorum rations at its best–filling, warm upon opening, and utterly devoid of taste. With food and water in her stomach, and an empty bladder, she leaned the seat back and closed her gummy eyes to rest for a moment.

What felt like a split second later, she felt a gentle hand nudge her shoulder. "Jada?"

Taylor forced her eyes open, but had a hard time focusing at first. "Dad?"

Her question was met with silence for a long moment, and during that moment her eyes were finally able to focus on Surgeon Dorden's bald pate. "Sorry. Strange dreams."

"Me too, I understand." The doctor had his dreaded penlight. "We decided to stop for the night to let you sleep a few hours since we all needed a rest. You're not that far removed from a two-week coma. It's morning. Let me check you over, real quick."

Her head throbbed, but she didn't want to take the meds. There was a good reason why steel pushers had to have special training and certification. Tracked machinery could be hellishly difficult to control, and at over thirty tonnes, a mistake with a chimera could kill, or take down buildings. It meant she had to be alert, and it meant she had no real backup.

Through the window, she saw Bragg, Derrin and Jessi grouped around a small fire cooking what looked like a local fowl. Around them, the destroyed salamander and chimera transports of the convoy they were following provided cover from the surrounding trees. It must have been early–everything seemed gray and colorless with the pre-dawn light.

Dorden sat in the chair opposite Taylor and slid the crew cabin door closed from the main transport cabin. Without preamble, the doctor said, "You're only sixteen years old, if even that. Might be as young as fifteen. Colm is a good man, and he believes in giving everyone their fair shot. But you shouldn't have been permitted to enlist. Even Brin Milo is older than you."

"I'm older…"

"Lass, I've been a doctor for forty years. I've delivered more babies than there are Tanith alive today–feth all, I delivered a tenth of the regiment personally back on Tanith. You're fifteen to sixteen. And yet, somehow, Trooper Banda and Sergeant Kolea both assured me that you were the one to teach them how to shoot. You've shown that you can drive a war machine that requires a 30-day intensive training course to learn, and years to master. Sanian believes that you are Saint Sabbat, returned to save Hagia."

It was hard to keep her breathing even. Nothing good ever came of her secret getting out. "I'm not," Taylor said. "I don't have any powers. I'm not any stronger than any other woman. Weaker than many. There's nothing extraordinary about me at all."

"Sergeant, you sprinted twenty meters on a broken leg to kill a tank to try and save your fellow troopers. There's plenty that's extraordinary. For instance, I know you're a blank."

Her brow lifted.

"You were in a coma, Sergeant. Whatever control you kept on it did not remain active. Fortunately, the people were so convinced you were Saint Sabbat they kept away. That's neither here nor there. What I want to know is what happened on the Spike? Back on Verghast. Colonel Gaunt is sure he saw you die."

With her head still muddy from sleep, it felt difficult to marshall her thoughts. "Well, I'm here. I helped carry him off the Spike, so he must have misremembered."

Dorden pulled a slip of parchment from his uniform. "Census data was recovered from Vervunhive. We need the history to ensure no allergies to medications, or any special food sensitivities. The Tanith, for instance, show high resistance to a specific antiviral the Guard likes to use. You are not Jada Washton."

Her hands shook as she gripped the control levers. Her head hurt so damned much!

Dorden looked through the window at the ghosts outside, preparing a pre-dawn breakfast together. "Trooper Banda was drugged out of her fething mind on pain meds due to injuries she sustained while saving your life. She thought you would just die and come back, like last time. She said that. I'll be honest, I dismissed it. People under medication say crazy things. But then I saw those pictures. I saw the geneprint from a dead girl who's name you use. Lass, I have to know. Are you Sabbat?"

The question completely surprised her. That was not what she thought he'd ask, and it took a moment to readjust the thoughts.

"I read about her," Taylor said finally, fighting to find the words that would keep her from being sent to the Inquisition again. "She carried the Emperor's grace. The gospels say golden light shone from her that could drive the corrupted and demons fleeing. She could heal and inspire and…and I don't have any of that. I'm nothing. Just…just…a blank. A nobody."

"According to your friend and the evidence, you're someone who can't die."

The tears running down her cheeks must have been from the concussion, because she hated crying. "I die all the gakking time," she muttered. "It's just as bad, every time. And every time I see the garden behind the cabin where I spent the summers with my family. I can see them. I can see mother there, and dad. I want to be there so bad, but I can't enter. He keeps pulling me back. Just skinny, weak me."

"He?"

When Taylor didn't answer, Dorden leaned toward her, face intense. "Where did you really learn to drive a Chimera?"

Gods, her head throbbed. She shouldn't be having this conversation. She couldn't. Just his knowing her could get the man killed. And yet the words spilled out like verbal diarrhea. "The control interface on these things haven't changed in thirty-five thousand years. The first time? I was a tanker for the Merican Confederation. Our church believed in fighting for a good cause. And boy, we had a good one. A despot was destroying all of the free nations of my world, and so I joined up to fight him. We never had a chance. He used some gakking mix of science and sorcery to make monsters that could rip a tank apart with their bare hands. It was a real kick in the ass when I found out my own dad was working with him."

"Sounds scary," Dorden said cautiously. "Who won?"

"The despot, of course. Merican fell. I was recovered enough when he gave his speech to the confederacy to listen. His words still ring in my head. 'United Terra,' he said. A few generations later he started the Great Crusade. A few hundred years after that…Like I said. I die all the time."

It felt strangely freeing to talk about the thousands of lives she'd lived. Beside her, Dorden sat perfectly still, his lips parted but his face blank. "You're speaking of the Emperor."

"He wasn't always the Emperor," she said softly. "Merican was…it wasn't perfect. They were trying to recreate a little corner of freedom for their people that was lost during the Long Night. The very first hive cities grew out of the Merican Arcologies. I lived in the Adelphia Five tower for at least ten lifetimes. But a free, educated people was as dangerous to the Emperor as the techno barbarians of the Panpac or Nordafric. We fought. We lost. We were conquered, just like everyone and everything else."

She wiped her cheeks. "I'm no threat, doctor. I'm no pysker. I'm no saint–I pretended to be one for thousands of years, but I'm not. If Rawne were to fight me, he'd win, no matter how good I get. He's stronger and just as well trained as I could ever be. I'm just an ordinary person. Sometimes I grow old. I've been married. I've had kids. Thousands, actually. Then I die, and I scream and cry to get into that garden, and he calls me to come back, and I come back. Usually some other place. Some other time."

She fell silent, waiting for the doctor to decide her fate.

"You're a living saint," he finally said. "You're a living miracle."

"It doesn't feel like a miracle, Doc. It feels like punishment. I have to be a teenager over and over again. Hormones. God above, the hormones."

The kind old doctor turned in the weapons seat and stared out in silence for a long time. "I'll have to tell Colonel Gaunt. This whole thing."

She shook her head. "People die for knowing what you know, doc."

He shrugged. "We've all got to die sometime. Us all hearing 'Sabbat Martyr'? Do you know what it means?"

"It means we're being summoned to the Shrinehold of this Saint Sabbat to die for the Saint. Probably for some miracle to save the day." She rubbed her tired, watery eyes. "That's how He works. Miracles never come for free. And it should be me. Because if I come back, no one gets hurt. And if I don't…then at least it'll finally be over."

With that said, she leaned over and hit the activation rune. While she slept, someone had turned the engine off, so it would take a few minutes to warm back up to operational temps. "Unless you plan to report me, we should probably get going, sir."

~~Revelation~~

They were a full day behind the honor guard convoy when they left Doctrinopolis. However, through mechanisms that Taylor was unwilling to think about too hard, Captain Daur had somehow secured a well-maintained Chimera in field-ready condition.

The turbines stayed in the green throughout the second day of their journey despite Taylor pushing the engines at full speed. The path they followed was clear enough–a three kilometer long convoy of armored vehicles left a telling mark on the land. But more importantly, they saw evidence of minor battles that would have slowed the convoy.

On the way to one abandoned village, they passed over an utterly destroyed section of road–looking as if it were bulldozed entirely. That night, an hour before they thought to stop for the night, Taylor started to slow when the horizon lit up in a spectacular display.

"Feth me, what a show," Corbec said from where he'd been riding shotgun up front. Taylor slowed down further, and then opened the side escape hatch despite the rain. The sound of distant explosions echoed as clearly as if coming from a speaker right outside.

"The map says that's Bhavnager," Taylor said. "We're about thirty klicks south of it."

"That's heavy artillery," Daur said as he stuck his head into the front cabin. "Gaunt must have run up against some serious resistance."

"We're getting vox signals," Milo called from the main cabin. "Heavy enemy armor. Oh, feth! Colonel, there's a baneblade in the city."

Corbec turned to look through the Chimera. "What'd you say, Brinny boy?"

"That was Gaunt himself! He was shouting about a baneblade!"

Taylor shuddered. The three hundred plus ton Baneblade was a destroyer of enemy armor. It was a destroyer of cities. For the Chaos cultists to have one was a real blow. "Colonel, the map says we're less than an hour away on a decent road. Do we wait, or go?"

"You heard her, people," the colonel called. "Our Ghosts are in for what sounds like a hell of a fight. Do we wait, or go?"

There was no hesitation. One by one, the injured Ghosts called out to go.

"There's your answer, Sergeant," Corbec said with a firm nod. "Let's go find our people."

They wouldn't make it in time.

~~Revelation~~

Ibram Gaunt dreamed of the Spike on Verghast. Of Heritor Asphodel.

In the heat of battle, it was easy to strive past fear. Passion and rage burned hotter than the existential horror of facing a creature that was no longer entirely human. But the night after the battle of Bhagaver, the shadowy demon-thing that had dedicated itself to the dark gods of the Immaterium rose up before him like a living shadow, and all the fear he'd put aside in that moment crashed into him in his dream.

The monster wore a massive cape of richly embroidered silk, like a planetary governor or prince. He stood easily a meter taller than Gaunt, if not more, with a horned helm and glowing red eye-slits. The shadows of the depowered Spike seemed to coalesce around the demon-thing like a shield.

Gaunt remembered an angry shout as the then-scratch fighter Gol Kolea bravely buried his axe-rake in Heritor's flank. Heritor slapped him aside so hard the man would spend the next six weeks in a body cast. All around, the Chaos-champion destroyed scratchers and Ghosts alike, vaporizing them with his gauntleted fists or the darkness that coalesced around him like a malleable cudgel.

There was a flash of light. The attention of the monster turned from Gaunt, dismissing him like an insignificant insect and Gaunt turned as well. A figure moved through the bridge, but this is where the dream and memory split. In his memory, it was a thin, serious-faced scratcher girl far too young to fight the way she did. But in his dream, she was a negative. A negation. She was an outline of pure white, as if she were not entirely of the world.

And instead of killing the immediate threat with the power sword poised at his chest, Asphodel turned the entirety of his attention on this thin slip of negation. The monster screamed at her. "ANATHEMA!"

Gaunt thrust his power sword through Heritor Asphodel's chest. The chaos lord ignored even that terrible blow, and fired his massive bolter pistol directly into the chest of the slim Jada Washton.

"Sabbat Martyr!" Gaunt could not tell where the voice came from.

~~Revelation~~

The colonel woke with a choked cry, desperately scrambling to his feet with a surging need to defend himself. His enemy proved to be tepid daylight and the patter of rain against the canvas of his tent.

He sank back into the seat of his folding stool. From his position and aching back, he must have fallen asleep in the seat while trying to plan the next leg of their journey. He glanced at the nearby bottle of golden-brown amasec, but decided not to indulge.

"You failed. The Citadel is lost, and furthermore, your failure has led directly to the impending loss of the entire shrineworld. You'll lose your command, naturally. I think you'll be lucky to remain in the Emperor's service."

Lord General Lugo's self-righteous dismissal of his own role in the loss of the Citadel could drive Gaunt to furious distraction and drinking if he let it. But through the flaps of his field tent he could hear the ground-shaking rumble of war machines being serviced by the handful of tech-priests that accompanied the convoy. Bhavnagar held precious fuel that they fought to take, and that fuel would be what got them to the Shrinehold. At the cost of over two hundred men. He had too much to do to let past words of future consequence distract him.

The tent flap opened. Gaunt looked up, expecting the vox-officer to remind him of the time he set. Instead, Colonel Colm Corbec stepped into his tent. The man wore his uniform despite the many bandages that were barely holding him together.

For one split second, Gaunt thought he might still be dreaming. But he could smell the dead through the rain. Corbec stopped just inside the tent flap, standing at attention despite his injuries.

"What are you doing here, Colm?" Gaunt kept his voice even and calm.

The flap opened again, and an even stranger sight appeared. Tolin Dorden walked into the tent with fresh splatters of blood on his uniform from where he obviously leant his services to Surgeon Curth. "I distinctly remember ordering both of you to the evacuation transports," Gaunt said.

"I might remember something about that," Dorden said. He sounded even more exhausted than Gaunt.

"Then why…"

"Sabbat Martyr," Corbec blurted. "In my dreams, Colonel. I'm in my dad's shop, and he tells me 'Sabbat martyr.'"

"For me, it's my son," Dorden said.

Gaunt went very still, the words ringing ominously in his mind.

The two men misinterpreted his silence. "Captain Daur came with us," Corbec said quickly. "Says he felt a call, just like us. And Sergeant Washton heard it too. She told us it was the Saint calling us to go after you."

"She'd know, too," Dorden muttered.

Gaunt's mind raced. "You left your posts without orders?"

Corbec glanced at Dorden, but nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Who else?"

"Me, Daur, Bragg, Derin. Nessa and Banda. Brinny Boy, an Esholi girl as a guide, and Washton."

"Did you come in a car?"

"Chimera, fully kitted and in good shape. Only reason we caught up with you."

"Who drove?"

"Washton," Dorden said. "Handled it as well as any trained steel-pusher I've seen."

"She's…" Gaunt shook his head. "Of course she can push steel. Why wouldn't she?"

Dorden snorted, but said nothing.

Vox Officer Beltayn cautiously stuck his head into the tent. "Sirs," he said with a nervous glance at Corbec and Dorden. "Oh five hundred."

"Thank you," Gaunt said in dismissal. Beltyn wisely fled. Gaunt looked around the tent. "Where is Sergeant Washton now?"

"Sleeping in the Chimera," Dorden said. "She's only three days out of a coma. She drove here wounded, like the rest of us."

"And is Colonel Corbec here fit for active duty, Surgeon?"

"None of them are, Colonel. We came anyway. Some because the Saint called, and some because they would rather die than not be here, with you."

Gaunt did not have time for this. "I'm going to go bury our dead," Gaunt declared. "Two hundred dead. Almost a quarter of our armor. We leave right after. I'm going to be in that chimera with the two of you, and then we'll talk. Right now, we need to get this convoy moving or we're going to be stuck on this fething world when the Chaos fleet arrives. If Commissar Hark asks about you, I'm handling it. For now, keep your heads low. All the injured will be in the injured wagons, including Sergeant Washton."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"Get out of here, both of you."

After they left, Gaunt saw that Gol Kolea led the burial detail. Four of the Pardus Conquerers used their dozer blades to prepare the mass graves despite having spent the night in pitched battle against an embedded, large foe equal to anything they faced in Doctrinopolis. As their latest civilian attachment, Ayatani Zweil, said prayers for the dead, the regiment made small crosses from the nearby grove of ghylum wood and staked them in rows across the newly laid graves.

Zweil explained the cross was a tradition on Hagia, an ancient local cult custom that translated through to the worship of the Saint. It made the fields somehow feel lonely. Less lost.

He didn't have time to dwell on it. The men deserved a weeks-long rest after such a hard-fought victory. They only had a few hours. He ordered the Recon-Spear to move out, with the column to follow in an hour.

The issue was he had so much to do in that hour. "Two hundred twenty-four wounded," Surgeon Ana Curth told Gaunt within the medical tent with Dorden at her side. She, like Washton and so many others, was a Vervunhiver. Behind her, he could see the cots easily enough. "Eighteen will die within a day if you try moving them, nine immediately."

Gaunt looked at Dorden, who shrugged. "She's surgeon on site. I just arrived last night."

"Your recommendations, Ana?"

"Simple," she said. "Don't move them. Dorden can continue with you, I can stay and nurse these troopers back to health."

Corbec was not among the wounded, Gaunt noted. He looked out across the cots and saw Brag and Jessi Banda exchanging jokes while Jessi signed for the deafened Nessa.

"They came out of loyalty to Washton," Dorden said at his look. "Now that we caught up, they need to stay with the wounded."

"Where's Washton?"

"With her platoon," Dorden said. "She heard the call. Like us. If we ordered her to stay, she'd just follow on foot."

"Then the rest stay," Gaunt decided. "I'll leave a small force of men and armor to protect the wounded. Kolea will lead them." He spent much of the next hour doing just that–turning Bhavnager into a fortified hospital to continue the treatment of those wounded Ghosts and Pardus personnel that should not travel.

The battle for the city netted them only one captive–a cultist who didn't speak at all. That captive was a fluke–every other one died fighting or fled north into the rainwoods.

After a brief consultation with the Pardus tank officers on why they had to fight a larger tank battle in Bhavnager than what they faced in Doctrinopolis, with a general approbation on the intelligence of Lord General Lugo and military intelligence in general, Gaunt finally ordered the whole honor guard to start moving again into the rainwoods and out of the lowlands.

He had little trouble finding Corbec's chimera. It was the newest and best kept of all the transport machines the munitorum intendent had provided. He stepped into the compartment to find Dorden and Corbec already there. What he was surprised to see was Ayatani Zweil speaking to the two men.

The advanced recon team found the old priest trying to rebuild a shrine single-handedly. He had a long, pointed white beard that he wore over the blue robes of his order. Weathered to the point of leather, in his few conversations Gaunt found the man possessed a strangely practical wisdom for a priest.

Even so, there was a time and place. "Father, I was hoping to have a private conversation with these men."

"Oh, don't let me stop you," Zweil said brightly. "I saw these men and knew where I was needed. I am needed here, Gaunt."

Biting back frustrated words, Gaunt stepped past them and stuck his head into the cabin. A dusty tan Pardus uniform sat in the driver's seat. "Sir," the woman said, startled.

"Carry on, corporal. I'm sealing the cabin."

"Yes, sir."

He closed them off, saw the rear ramp closing, and felt the vehicle move in time with the rest. He sank down onto the bench and looked from one man to another, until Zweil spoke.

"So, did you know that Saint Sabbat herself is here in your convoy?"

Gaunt blinked. Blinked again, while Zweil looked back unblinking. "What?"

"What?" Corbec echoed.

Dorden, though, shook his head. "That makes so much sense, now."

~~Revelation~~

"What in the gakking hell are you doing here?"

It wasn't quite the reception Taylor was hoping for, but it wasn't a surprise either. Serhi Muril had her copper-red hair pulled back in a bun under her helmet, and her cheeks were smudged with dirt from the previous night's battle that Taylor completely missed, despite her fastest driving.

The chimera they rode in was much older, dirtier and louder than the one Daur seduced them into back at Doctrinopolis. It smelled like old sweat and fungus. But because it was so loud, Taylor doubted the rest of the platoon could hear them.

There were so many missing faces.

"I'm not on active duty," Taylor told her friend and corporal. "Corbec came and they needed a driver."

Nothing she said was a lie.

Muril blinked. "You can push steel? Of course you can. You taught us how to fight. I've seen you use feth-treaders, flamers, autoguns and…but Emperor's throne, you're really, really hurt. Two weeks in a coma, Jessi said. What are you doing here?"

"I wish I knew," Taylor said.

~~Revelation~~

"You must understand, Gaunt. It is not just images of the Beati that the Tempelum have."

Ayetani Zweil looked about the chamber of the chimera APC that he, Gaunt, Corbec and Dorden wrote in with an expansive wave of his hands.

"After her martyrdom, the Chapter Master of the White Scars space marines donated thousands of hours of hololith recordings, picter recordings, command bead recordings of Saint Sabbat. Many are housed safely within the shrinehold of her final resting place, more were in the Citadel. But all ayatani have seen actual recordings of the saint. We have heard her voice captured perfectly and preserved even after these six thousand years."

The man waved vaguely in the direction of the convoy around them. "I watched her this morning, this Sergeant Washton. I listened to her speak to her people. They worship her, you can see it. She was their savior on Verghast, was she not?"

Gaunt felt uncomfortable, but Corbec nodded. "They called her the Angel of the Outhabs," the Tanith colonel said. "Saved thousands of civilians and led scratch fighters. Accounted for thousands of enemy dead."

"Saint Sabbat spoke with an odd accent, even for her time," Zweil said. "Some speculated that it was due to the isolation of her upbringing. The area she lived in was separated from the lowlands by a vast glacier that did not melt until after her death. This Sergeant Washton does not speak like the other Verghastites. She has the same accent as Sabbat. Her voice is the same tenor and pitch. It isn't just that she looks exactly like the Saint. She moves like her. Sounds like her. Esholi Sanian tells me most in Doctrinopolis believe her to be the saint returned in secret, and so do not openly call her for blessings."

As the priest spoke, Gaunt found his eyes drifting to where Dorden sat wringing his large, powerful hands. "You said it makes sense, Tolin. Why?"

"I was planning on speaking to you in private about that, Colonel."

"I think that tank has rolled on, Doc," Corbec said.

"Indeed," Gaunt said. "What?"

The old surgeon took a deep, steadying breath. "Trooper Banda took a stomach wound dragging Washton to a medic. Under heavy medication, Banda told me she was surprised that Washton didn't just die and come back like she did at Vervunhive. I remembered how surprised you were that she survived the Spike, when she enlisted."

Gaunt's back stiffened instinctively as his odd dream returned to him. "She didn't, did she? Asphodel ignored me, Dorden. I had a power sword to the monster's chest, and he ignored me the moment he saw her. Turned his back on me. He called her 'Anathema,' and shot her point-blank with a bolter gun. He recognized her."

"I confronted her about it, as we were driving up. She insisted she wasn't Saint Sabbat, but…"

"At this point there's no use hesitating. Out with it, man."

"Ibram, she was using names and terms I wasn't sure of, but I think she told me that she was on Holy Terra fighting against the Emperor of Man during the ancient Unification Wars. That's where she said she learned to drive a tank. Then she said she was fighting for the Emperor during the great Heresy. I know for a fact that she's a blank, she just seems to be able to control the aura of it. Otherwise, she claims she's just a woman who lives, and dies, and comes back again. If what she said was true, then she may be over ten thousand years old."

"And such a one, gifted eternal life by the Emperor, could easily walk down a hill to lead a Crusade," Zweil noted calmly. "After so many years, she herself may not remember. It is a singular honor, Gaunt, to command Saint Sabbat herself."