Part 4: Wings of Fire (Helena's Perspective)
The air inside my helmet is metallic and stale, heavy with the recycled tang of the armor's internal systems. It's a scent I've known my entire life, an unchanging constant through thousands of battles. Normally, it grounds me. Today, it feels cloying, oppressive—a reminder that I've led countless veterans into the fray but never an entire squad this green. Outside, the battlefield screams. The void shield thrums above us in a bass note of defiance, vibrating in my teeth and bones. It's barely holding, and every shudder feels like an unspoken countdown to disaster.
Beyond it lies the mist, roiling like a living thing, thick and black, swallowing everything that enters it. Shapes writhe within its depths—wrong, twisted things, glimpses of limbs and mouths that don't belong, that shouldn't exist. It's not fog; it's a wound in the world, and it's moving closer.
"Zephyr Squad, assemble, Aurelius formation." My voice is steady, even through the vox. I can't let them hear doubt, not now. A leader's resolve is armor for her troops, and my Constantia need all the armor they can get. They're young, untested, and about to face something that no amount of training can fully prepare them for. They'll be baptized in fire today, whether they survive it or not.
The acknowledgment icons flash green across my HUD—twenty-four warriors, each marked with their own purity seals and litanies etched into the ceramite of their battle plate. They are my sisters, my sword, my shield. Each one has trained for this moment, been molded in the crucible of discipline, but even they falter in the shadow of what we face. I can feel their fear, thinly veiled beneath their acknowledgments.
Emperor, guide my hand. Let me lead them true.
Samara's voice crackles across the vox, sharp and clipped. "Aurelius aye, Canoness. Ready for the drop." She's always efficient, always prepared—and always questioning me. Her tone carries that same edge, one I've grown tired of but can't ignore. Normally, an analytical mind is an asset, a sign of a constantia with the mental prowess to lead. But Samara's challenges have shifted from critical thought to near insubordination. It grates on me, but I can't afford to indulge it now.
"Good," I reply, my tone brisk. "We hit and we run, no prolonged engagements! We seek to disrupt, not regain ground." The command feels hollow in my mouth. These orders are meant for veterans, not untried warriors who still fumble with their bolt pistols under pressure. But there's no time to train them further. They'll learn or they'll die, and I'll carry the weight of every name carved into the annals of the lost.
Through the visor of my helmet, the battlefield resolves into brutal clarity. Bolters bark from the walls, sending bursts of explosive death into the teeming masses below. The enemy surges, wave after wave of heretics and slaves, mindless in their advance. The ground beneath them churns into a slurry of blood and ash, bodies piling high against the adamantine walls.
They're building their own ramp, one corpse at a time.
I feel a grim satisfaction at the simplicity and brutal pragmatism of their plan—it takes the desperate or the damned to think flesh can outlast ceramite.
Then again, desperation and damnation are all a heretic has, and if that ramp reaches our walls, a one-hundred meter high multi kilo-ton gate won't mean a damn thing.
I switch channels. "Arbites, suppress the northern edge of the funnel, enemies breaking your way. Convince them that multiple possible ramps are not worth the effort. Heavy flamer teams, hold the southern quadrant. Maintain pressure. Force them into the kill zone." Tully's gravelly acknowledgment comes through, his tone as flat as his pragmatism. No ceremony, just action. It's a comfort, hearing a veteran who knows the score. He doesn't need my reassurance, and I don't need his.
A flicker of light above catches my eye. I glance upward through the translucent shimmer of the void shield. A spear of incandescent brilliance tears through the mist, cleaving a flesh golem apart in a burst of flame and ichor. The aftershock rattles the walls, sending stone chips skittering across the parapets.
Mossad.
The Arch-Cardinal's psychic onslaught is an act of unrestrained fury, a beacon of defiance in the nightmare unfolding around us. He stands exposed, his mental form towering above the battlefield, wings of light blazing as he hurls spear after spear into the enemy ranks. I hear his voice through the vox, impossibly clear despite the chaos: a prayer, a plea, a challenge. He's burning, both literally and figuratively, and yet he holds.
"Emperor preserve him," I mutter. His defiance inspires, yes, but it also enrages the daemon. The mist churns violently, recoiling and surging like an animal struck. Nullmaw's attention is shifting, and that gives us time.
"Zephyr, on my mark!" I call, turning my focus back to the task at hand. "The Arch-Cardinal will win this battle all by himself if we don't step in!"
They're fresh, stiff, hearts pounding, blood racing. I remember my first drop, my first real combat drop. My Canoness had made a similar joke, something about not making her look bad in front of the enemy. It had helped me focus, calmed me, reminded me that I wasn't alone.
Emperor, preserve them. Today they fly as children and land as holy warriors. Steel my heart against the ones I will lose this day, and may the enemy pay for every name I engrave in my flesh.
The flesh golems are our target. They rise from the piles of dead, grotesque amalgamations of flesh and warp energy, towering ten meters high. Each step they take crushes the bodies beneath them, their purpose clear: to ferry more corpses to the walls, to force the breach. They are obscene, an affront to the Emperor's creation, and I feel the bile rise in my throat just looking at them.
Samara's voice cuts in again, laced with irritation. "Orders, Canoness? The golems are the enemy's hammer, and we're the anvil. We need to hit them now, hard."
Impatient as always, Samara.
She's right, of course, but there's no room for ego here. "Patience, Samara. We strike together, or we die separately. You are just as green as your sisters. We do this first one together—three Phoenix with Naomi on point, four low led by you. I will take center mass. The rest converge in a ring of fire, then we retreat and assess effectiveness. One at a time. Once you all have the hang of it, I'll split us up." Each of them receives a ping as I assign them to teams and roles for this first assault.
The squad shifts into position, jetpacks humming in readiness. My HUD pings with targeting data, fed by Magos Harspes' auspex arrays. The mist disrupts the sensors, but the flesh golems are too large, too unnatural to hide completely.
"Mark!" I order, and the Zephyr takes flight.
The roar of our jetpacks drowns out the battlefield noise for a moment, a chorus of controlled power as we launch into the air. My body slams against the restraints as the world tilts and spins. The mist rushes toward us, its malevolence almost palpable—a wall of darkness eager to swallow us whole.
"Phoenix flight, forward!" I command.
Streams of burning promethium arc ahead of us, igniting the mist in blinding waves of orange and red as three Constantia led by Naomi burst forward in a concentrated cone of fire. The air is thick with the stench of burning flesh, both human and not. The heat washes over me, a searing embrace that seeps through the armor. I catch a glimpse of one of the golems through the flames—a grotesque thing, its body shifting and writhing as if unsure of its own shape.
We are a thunderbolt of flame and a fist of ceramite as we slam into it.
The Phoenix trio is first, flying into it, flame arcs converging in a single blazing white sheet of promethium. They break off at five meters, the firestorm blinding the creature, setting it ablaze, goading it to take ponderous swings at them. Its limbs move slowly, like a puppet on tangled strings, swiping futilely at the agile sisters.
Samara and three others strike less than a second later, their power swords slashing into the creature's legs as its ineffective swings at Naomi's group leave it off balance. The energy fields of their blades sizzle against the corrupted flesh, slicing through sinew and bone that shouldn't exist. The warp energy binding it together sputters, tendrils of dark light snapping like overstressed cables.
Good. They're executing the plan. One step, one kill, momentum, they need the confidence of momentum, the distraction of the next target, no time to think about the big picture. That's my role.
I land hard against its chest, driving my own blade deep into the pulsing core of its torso. The impact jars me to the bones, the feedback servos in my armor groaning under the strain. The creature's flesh is an affront to reality itself—oily, shifting, as if it can't decide what form to take. My blade sinks into it with a sickening squelch, the corrupted matter hissing and bubbling around the power field. The stench hits me even through the rebreather—a nauseating mix of rot and sulfur.
"Feel the Emperor's wrath," I snarl, twisting the blade. I can feel the unnatural resistance, as if the golem's very essence fights against the intrusion. My purity seals flutter wildly in the searing updraft, their sacred texts catching the light of the flames.
The warp taint of the creature impacts my armor like water over lithium, a corrosive burn that sets off alarms across my HUD. Warnings flash: Contamination detected. Structural integrity at 97%...96%...
I grit my teeth. "Burn it!" I shout, my voice cutting through the cacophony.
Seventeen flamers roar to life from the circling Constantia around us. Jets of liquid fire cascade over the golem, bathing us both in purifying flame. The heat is immense, even within my power armor. Temperature gauges spike dangerously, and I feel sweat bead along my spine.
I disengage, ripping my blade free as I kick off the creature's collapsing form. My armor's systems scream in protest, heat warnings flashing as I rocket backward. The explosion of promethium ignites the air, and I ride the shockwave, stabilizing with practiced ease as my zephyr pack fights to cool itself.
The creature convulses, its form unraveling in a cascade of ash and gore. It lets out a sound—a discordant wail that grates against the soul—before collapsing, crushing a dozen of its own soldiers beneath its bulk. The ground trembles with the impact, sending ripples through the sea of enemies.
"First target down," I report, scanning the field. My HUD tracks the remaining golems, highlighting them amidst the chaos. They're fewer than before, but still too many.
"Next target," I bark, already moving, pinging a nearby golem and gaining altitude. "We repeat, repeat, repeat, and if you schoolgirls don't lose your lunch, I might send you out to play in the yard for recess on your own!"
A few of them chuckle over the vox, nervous but resolute. Good. Let them cling to humor if it steadies their hands. Twenty-three acknowledgments flash across my display.
Samara is silent, composed, as if this were just another day in the schola. There's a cold efficiency to her movements that both impresses and concerns me.
She's adapting quickly. Perhaps too quickly. Perhaps not at all. Does she not realize that this is a battlefield not a drill?
Control of one's emotions in combat is a skill that cannot be taught, but suppressing them completely only sets you up for sudden and unexpected mental breaks. It makes you predictable, efficient… right up to the point it kills you.
We split into two groups, banking hard to flank the next targets. I let Samara spread her wings, giving her command of her classmates. She proved herself in the underhive, she deserves the chance to do so again.
The air is thick with smoke and ash, the distant screams of the dying forming a haunting backdrop. I can hear the staccato rhythm of bolter fire from the walls, the heavier thumps of the Arbites' suppression rounds, the whoosh of flamers unleashing torrents of holy fire.
"Watch your spacing," I caution. "Maintain Commet formation. We hit them together, we break off together. When in doubt, climb."
"Copy," Naomi replies, her voice steady but tinged with adrenaline.
We dive, engines screaming as we close the distance. The golem turns its grotesque head toward us, a mass of eyes and mouths that shouldn't be. It raises a limb—more tentacle than arm—swiping at us with surprising speed.
"Break!" I command.
We scatter, narrowly avoiding the flailing appendage. The air vibrates with the force of its swing, and I feel the turbulence rock me. Each one is different, and unlike the first, they're no longer ignoring us.
"Now, constrict!" I signal.
We converge from all sides. Flamers spew arcs of fire, encircling the golem in a ring of searing heat. Power swords flash as we dart in and out, slicing at the creature's limbs, severing tendons that aren't really tendons, cutting through flesh that isn't truly flesh.
"Keep moving!" I urge. "Don't let it target you! Keep your movements dynamic, be warry of your own tendency towards patterns."
The creature howls, a sound that reverberates through my very bones. It lashes out blindly, its form destabilizing under the assault.
I climb and focus my attention on our second group, unlike our golem theirs is squat and dense, and seems to be weathering their repeated attempts to burn it away, its flesh undulating, absorbing sword strikes, but at the cost of mobility.
"Samara, take out its core!" I order.
"On it," she responds, jetting upward to gain altitude before diving straight down, her blade aimed at the pulsing mass at the golem's center.
Time seems to slow as she descends, the flames casting flickering shadows across her armor. She plunges her sword deep, and the golem shudders violently.
Impressive. She shows promise when she follows orders.
The golem detonates in a spray of viscera she narrowly avoids, kicking off and into the air just in the nick of time.
"Pull back!" I command.
We retreat as the creature collapses, its form disintegrating into a foul sludge that bubbles and smokes.
"That's three down," I note. My heart pounds, but there's a fierce pride building in me.
They're holding their own. They're fighting like true Sisters.
"Targets four and five are grouping," Naomi observes. "Nearby golems are reducing their spacing, formations tightening. Likely anticipating us and moving to overlap their field of reach."
She's right, damn.
With a veteran team I would laugh at how they're only making our job easier, but with these recently blooded girls, each engagement is a first-time mistake away from multiple KIA.
"Form up on me," I instruct. "We take the next two fast, before they get any closer."
And in the meantime I'll come up with a new plan…
As we move, I catch glimpses of the battlefield below. The enemy horde is relentless, but there's a disarray to their movements now. The defenders on the walls are pushing back with renewed vigor. Perhaps Mossad's display has shaken them more than I thought. More likely the daemon is having to put additional effort into combatting us, into making the golems more than mere stepping stones, mere caricatures of flesh to feed the growing ramp.
"Stay focused!" I remind the squad. "Faith is our shield, contempt our armor!"
We engage the next targets, repeating the tactics with growing efficiency. The Constantia move with better coordination, their maneuvers tighter, their strikes more precise. Blood and ash coat the landscape, and the stench of burning corruption fills the air.
The horde itself continues to ignore us outright.
At least the damned Orks on Vorsk thought we were important enough to shoot at!
The thought is bitter but fuels my determination.
These heretics barely acknowledge us, their minds consumed by whatever foul purpose drives them.
"Helena, look!" Samara's voice cuts across the vox, sharp and urgent as I climb and survey for another two potential targets even as volleys of rippling light reminiscent of spears fall from the battlements and slay the golems by the dozen.
I turn toward her, tracking her gaze to the Arch-Cardinal. What I see locks my breath in my chest.
Mossad stands like a beacon in the chaos, his psychic form towering above the battlefield in radiant defiance. His body below, however, is failing. Flames—both blindingly holy and sickeningly profane—consume him. His armor glows, melting under the strain, and his flesh twists as the flames gnaw at it. And yet, his mind burns brighter, a blazing sun against the encroaching blackness. His voice thunders in my ear, a hymn of defiance that reverberates through both the materium and the warp.
A final spear manifests above him, impossibly vast, glowing with the fury of a star. He hurls it into the mist, and the impact is apocalyptic.
"Brace!" I shout, but it's too late.
It hits us a moment later.
The shockwave slaps me out of the sky like a bug in a hurricane, slamming my body sideways and spinning me mid-air. My helmet floods with alerts as the turbulence wrenches me out of control. Gyroscopic stabilizers struggle to compensate, but my inner ear reels. For a few horrifying seconds, I'm tumbling blind in the air, the battlefield a chaotic blur of fire and shadow, my perception of space stolen by my own body's sympathetic response to the physical yet psychic wave of energy.
"Hover and hold!" I shout through the vox, forcing my voice steady despite the vertigo threatening to overwhelm me. "Zephyr, stabilize!"
I depress the stabilization key repeatedly, trusting my armor's machine spirit to know which way is up and burning my fuel at a dangerous rate.
Acknowledgments come back, jittering and frantic. I fight against the disorientation, engaging manual overrides to steady myself as up and down return. My boots flare, and I level out, my vision clearing as the HUD reorients.
"Sound off!" I demand.
Voices chime in—some strained, others breathless, but all alive.
"Canoness!" one of the younger Constantia yells, panic lacing her voice. I glance at the HUD, scanning for the source of the alarm.
Naomi.
Her jetpack flares, flames coughing from the exhaust ports as she tilts, spins, and plummets toward the enemy below.
"No!" I scream, gunning my own pack, but she's falling too fast.
Her scream cuts off abruptly as she disappears beneath the writhing mass of the enemy horde, impacting at the speed of a full boost.
The last I see of her is the flicker of her purity seals as they vanish beneath the swarm. I pull out of my dive, rage and helplessness twisting inside me.
Emperor, not her. Not now.
The world sharpens. My HUD marks her as UNKNOWN as the signal cuts out, a cold and clinical designation, but I override it. My gauntlet hovers over the interface, shaking.
I mark her KIA.
"Zephyr, regroup!" I command, my voice tight, each word forced through clenched teeth. "Hover and retreat to the wall to rearm and reassess!"
The acknowledgments come slower this time, reluctant, trembling. I hear the sob of a young voice, choked with emotion then quickly stifled. Not all these girls saw their friends die at the freight elevator and Naomi had a personality like a the sun's own radiance.
Samara's silence is the loudest, until she breaks it.
"An order to abandon a sister?" Her voice rips through the vox, raw and furious. "That's not an order—it's cowardice!"
"Samara, stay in formation!" I bark, the words taste like ash on my tongue but it's an order I've given dozens of times, "There's nothing we can do for her!"
"Like hell there isn't!" she snaps.
She's already diving.
"Samara, that's an order!" My words are drowned in the roar of her pack.
"I don't take orders from cowards!" she snarls, her tone cold and venomous.
Damn it, Samara! Don't add your name to that list along with hers!
I track her descent, cursing under my breath. She reorients boots first and slams into the horde. For a moment, she is gone, swallowed by the mass. Then, impossibly, the mist parts around her. Not retreating—avoiding. The enemy stumbles, their movements erratic.
They give her a wide berth as though pushed by an unseen hand.
"I've got her!" Samara's voice crackles back, strained with effort.
I see her now, standing over Naomi's crumpled form. Naomi's armor is battered beyond recognition, her jetpack a twisted wreck. Mercifully the mass of enemies both living and dead seem to have cushioned her fall to something survivable, if barely. Her vitals ping weakly on my HUD.
She's alive.
"You see this?" Samara's voice shakes with rage. "This is our sister you wanted to leave behind!"
I feel a mix of relief and frustration, feeling the edge of her words dip poison into the wound our squad was just dealt when salve instead is needed.
She locks her arms around Naomi's waist, hoisting her up with a grunt of effort. Her pack flares, pushing against the weight, lifting its burden not into the air but into a low-G bounding charge. "I'm going for the ramp. Cover me or don't, I'm not leaving her!"
"Zephyr, suppressive fire!" I order, snapping the squad into action. Hands switch automatically to bolt pistols and bolter rounds rain down from above, carving a path through the enemy as Samara charges up the ramp of corpses, her pack screaming under the strain as she shoulder charges her way through the enemy like a rocket-propelled battering ram.
The wall looms ahead, but the ramp is steep and treacherous, and the fire from the defenders above is relentless. Samara keeps going, her defiance burning brighter than the flames around her.
"Riley, cease fire on Q-12, friendlies coming up the funnel!" The order is followed, but their lack of experience shows, and twice I see Samara stumble as bolt rounds detonate against her armor from our own troops.
"Almost there!" she growls through gritted teeth.
With a final burst, she leaps from the edge of the ramp, her pack blazing with the light of a full assault burn, finally lifting her. By the thinnest of margins, she clears the lip of the wall.
She collapses in a heap, Naomi's broken form cradled in her arms.
I'm at their side in moments. Samara's helmet is cracked, one lens shattered, blood streaking down her face. She glares up at me, eyes blazing with fury.
"Medic! Get a hospitaller to my location, now!" I call over the vox.
"You are a coward!" she pants, her voice trembling with exhaustion and anger.
"And you are done," I tell her with a cold growl, barely restraining my own anger.
I bite down on any other retort, shoving the argument aside. There's no time. Naomi's breathing is faint, her chest plate crushed, indented against her ribs which are surely shattered. I kneel beside her and tearing at the remains of her armor.
Please, Emperor, let her survive.
Samara drops down beside me, her hands a blur as she helps peel away the ceramite. Naomi gasps as the pressure on her chest eases, her lips moving in a barely audible whisper.
"Emperor… protects…" she wheezes through cracked ribs and pale lips.
The Hospitaller arrives, a blur of white robes and silver instruments. She pushes us aside, beginning her work.
Samara rounds on me, anger etched into every line of her face as she pulls her battered helmet off. "How could you mark her as dead? How could you just abandon her like that? You talk about unity, about standing together, but the moment it's inconvenient, you write us off!"
Her words cut deeper than any blade. I meet her gaze, seeing not just fury but betrayal. "This is not a drill, not a class in the damn schola!" I throw her own fury back at her, "command decisions are not lessons to be questioned, they are my responsibility to make, and yours to follow. All of your blood, your fellow classmates' blood, is on my shoulders, not yours! You broke our unity, you broke orders, you Samara risked yourself and all of us in a fool's gamble."
The rage in Samara's eyes burns brighter than the fires consuming the battlefield. Her lips curl into a snarl, blood streaking down her face. She steps forward, throwing her helmet to the ground between us with deliberate force.
"You saw it!" she spits, her voice trembling with fury. "The horde parted around me! They didn't touch me! The Emperor Himself intervened because I showed faith in the face of trial where you faltered! How dare you stand there and tell me I was wrong!"
I feel the heat rising in my chest, but I clamp it down. Emotion is the enemy here. Control is strength. "The Emperor's protection is a sacred gift," I reply, my voice cold, measured once more. "It is not a license to throw yourself into the void and hope He catches you. He protects those who follow the Rule of the Sororitas, who honor the doctrines laid down by His sacred servants. Not those who test His grace by indulging in reckless defiance."
Don't do this, Samara. This is not stubbornness; this is folly, folly of youth. Don't step down a path I can't bring you back from… Don't make me the enemy here.
Samara takes a step closer, her fists clenched. "So now you're the arbiter of His will? You leave a sister to die and call that faith? You'd abandon her to the horde and call that doctrine? But somehow the twisted words of this cult of Aurora, this false sisterhood, that's the Emperor. Some witch throwing around warp trickery is more rightly miraculous than His hand shielding His servant?"
She's in a battle high, so are you. Don't rise to it. She has every right to be as angry at you and circumstance as you are.
I take a breath, slow and deep, feeling the weight of the battlefield pressing against my shoulders. Around us, the sound of flamers and bolters continues, a grim symphony of death. "The squad," I say quietly, "this squad, can only function if we are united. If we follow the same doctrines, the same battlefield protocols, the same book of faith. We train together, we fight together, we move and make decisions relying on our sisters to be following the same rules of engagement as we are. Your insubordination—your disruption—endangers us all."
Her laughter is sharp, bitter. "Unity? Following the same book? Is that what you call blind obedience to a girl you've declared a saint by nothing more than the authority of your own vanity?" She steps closer, her voice rising. "You'll put your faith in a so-called saint—untested, unproven—while you spit in the face of the Emperor Himself when He shows you a miracle! That is heresy! And you are a coward not to stand against it. If Naomi dies, she dies by your hand, the hand of a heretic!"
Why... Why, oh Emperor, didn't you let her die in her idiocy? Why protect her? I no more want to see a servant of Your grace fall than any, but we do not need this right now! We cannot be set upon one another now! Damn it, Samara, can't you see that? Can't you feel the daemon feeding off our feud, laughing just outside hearing.
I feel the fire snap in me, cold and fierce. "You have fallen prey to the moment, the narrowness of your own mind, your inexperience, and your own pride. I do not have time to redeem you. You are done, Samara," I say, steel in my voice. "You will spend the rest of this engagement defending the hospitallers in the place of the wounded. You can die at their side if the Emperor deems you worthy of redemption. But you are finished here, Novitiate Samara." I demote her with a word, stripping away years of her progress. "Am I clear?"
Snap out of it! Damn it, do make a fool of yourself here, in front of your own classmates! I need their trust; we need each other.
I see the look in her eyes and I curse inwardly, pleading in my mind.
Don't do it... Don't do it, you ignorant brat!
The air between us is electric. Samara's nostrils flare, and her hand goes to her power sword. "You're a blind old woman!" she snarls, drawing the blade in one fluid motion. "You want discipline? You want doctrine? Then I challenge you to the Rite of Blood! Let the Emperor decide whose faith has placed their faith in Him!"
My gauntleted hand goes to the hilt of my own sword, but I don't draw. Not yet. "You have no grounds to call for the Rite," I say, my voice icy. "You are not a full Sister. You haven't earned that right."
She steps into a ready stance, her sword humming with barely-contained energy. "Then I guess you'd better discipline me, Drill Sister," she spits. "If you won't honor the Rite, then I'll settle for beating the cowardice out of you myself."
The air is heavy, tense. The Hospitaller at Naomi's side freezes, her hands hovering over the wounded sister's battered chestplate.
"Very well," I say, unclipping my own sword. I draw it in one smooth motion, its edge catching the flickering light of the battlefield. The weight of it is familiar, a comforting balance in my hand. "You want a lesson? I will give you one. But time is short, and I have none to spare for slow learners."
Samara lunges first, her blade slicing through the air in a wide arc. I step into the blow, meeting it with a ringing clash that reverberates through my armor. The force of it sends a tremor through my arms, but I don't yield. I push back, locking her blade against mine, the crackle of energy between them sparking like a live wire.
She's strong, fueled by anger and conviction, but she lacks discipline. Her moves are aggressive but predictable.
"You lost before we began because you have failed to adhere to the most basic point of doctrine that even a first-year novice would never forget," I snarl, twisting my blade and forcing her to shift her stance.
"And what's that?" she snaps, shoving forward.
I pivot, letting her momentum carry her past me, catching her blow on my paldron and spin to face her again. Her stance is solid, but her emotions betray her. She sees the smoke rising from my shoulder and sees a victory, not a trap. She charges, leading with the tip and angling for the soft mesh where pauldron meets breastplate. I step forward in a blur, pinning her blade between ceramite gauntlet and ceramite breastplate, ignoring the screaming discharge that would have fried my left arm had it not been a masterful augmetic designed for this very endurance. The moment catches her completely off guard.
"Wear your helmet." I whisper into her stunned face even as I drive my helmeted head forward, slamming it into her forehead.
The force of the impact reverberates through my armor, a dull, satisfying thud. Samara staggers, her sword falling from her grip as she collapses to the ground, unconscious before she even hits the stone.
Forgive me, Emperor, but this had to be done. Thank you for allowing me to spare at least her life, if not her dignity. Redeem her, I pray, if You will it.
I stand over her, my breath steady, the weight of the current battle settling heavily on my shoulders once more. Around me, the Constantia are silent, their gazes flicking between me and Samara's crumpled form.
"She's done," I say, my voice like ice. I stoop, retrieving her power sword and pistol, grenades, and her flamer tank, their weight solid in my hands.
I hand them off to a trio of small girls, who stares at me wide-eyed. "Distribute these to those who may need them."
I then turn to the hospitaller. "Send for someone to take her to the wounded. She can die defending them with her bare hands if the Emperor sees fit to give her a chance at redemption."
The Hospitaller nods mutely, quickly moving to lift Naomi's unconscious form.
I turn back to the squad, my gaze sweeping over them, trying to assess just how much damage Samara has inflicted on our morale, our ability to fight as a team, and their trust in me as their commander. I see fear and uncertainty, but no more than was present before. They're all high on battle and emotionally and mentally in shock.
A time will come for all of us to confront this together, I decide, or at least those of us who survive.
"The Emperor's will is clear," I say, my voice cutting through the silence like a blade. "We are His instrument, His sword, His shield. We fight together, we follow doctrine, and we survive together. Those who cannot abide by that will find no place in this squad and may as well throw themselves from the battlements now, than risk being the weak link that breaks the chain of our trust in a crucial moment and brings their sister down with them."
The words are harsh, but that doesn't make them untrue. These girls are girls no longer, women, warriors, and my words will be the least of their worries in these next few hours as exhaustion and the statistical impossibility that we all survive hour by hour take their toll.
I look out over the battlefield, the horde still surging, though slower now, their cohesion fractured. "Zephyr, regroup and rearm. We have a battle to win."
The acknowledgments come quickly, almost desperate. They know better than to falter now. They are eager to take their minds off what just took place. I glance once more at Samara as she's carried away by a second hospitaller, a faint pang of regret gnawing at the edges of my resolve.
What happened to you, Samara? You were my best, the one in whom I saw myself. Where did I go wrong? Where did you throw that all away? What did I miss?
I push the thoughts aside.
There's no room for doubt, no time for second-guessing. The enemy is still at our gates, and my squad needs a leader, not a brooding sentinel.