Chapter 21: The second six hours – Part 2: Walls (Sergeant Tully's Perspective)

The courtyard feels like a graveyard—silent except for the muted shuffle of boots and the occasional clang of scavenged metal. Above, the roar of bolters and the whoosh of flamers crackle from the walls, a grim symphony that echoes through the ancient halls of the basilica. The high-pitched cries of the wounded mingle with the groan of ancient machinery reluctantly dragged back to life. I don't look up. No time. No point. I'm busy turning holy relics into barricades.

"Keep moving!" I bark at the gangers hauling a shattered pew across the square. "That barricade isn't building itself! If it's not nailed down, it's part of the line. If it is nailed down, rip it loose!"

The gangers don't grumble much anymore. They've caught on that I don't tolerate backtalk. They move in a loose, shambling rhythm, dragging furniture, planks, statues—anything I've ordered them to tear from the abandoned side chapels and crumbling reliquaries. One wiry ganger, face streaked with grime, struggles with a gilded lectern twice his size. His patchwork armor clinks with every lurching step.

"Where do you want this?" he wheezes.

"Middle layer, right side," I reply without missing a beat. "And don't dent it too much. Some noble fool might want it back someday."

The barricade rises slowly but surely, five layers deep and growing, a patchwork fortress at the foot of the chapel stairs. One-hundred feet and two-hundred steps higher, the massive bronze gates of Saint Jessamine's glory watch silently as we strip the surrounding area bare, her sacred remnants pressed into service to keep the bastards out.

Desperation's an ugly thing, but it's damn efficient.

Behind me, a Sister of Battle—one of the younger ones, still clinging to her faith like a drowning woman to a plank and still too small for power armor—stares at the scene with wide eyes. "Sergeant Tully," she says hesitantly, "is it… right? Using the Emperor's relics like this?"

I glance at her, my expression as hard as the basilica walls. "Better the Emperor's relics keep you alive than sit pretty while the rest of us rot. Get moving, Sister. We've got a barricade to finish."

She flinches but doesn't argue. Smart kid.

"Sergeant!" Riley's voice booms from above, carried down on the same vox-channel she uses to direct the wall defense. Her tone could strip paint. "I have reports that you are defacing the basilica! Explain yourself!"

I pause mid-stride, hand on a broken lectern leg, and activate my comm-bead. "Not defacing, High Priestess," I say, voice flat and dry. "Just redecorating. Figured someone ought to survive to appreciate all this holy grandeur when the walls come down."

There's a hiss of static, then her clipped reply: "The walls will not fall."

"They won't," I agree, my tone betraying the lie. "But just in case, I'd rather fight to the last breath behind a barricade of gilded pews than let those heretics get past the chapel doors."

The comm clicks off, her silence a dismissal. Good. I've got better things to do than argue theology with someone a hundred meters up and blissfully unaware of the logistics down here.

The Arbites work alongside the gangers, their riot shields propped against the growing barricade like a wall of teeth. They've stripped the nearby chapels bare, dragging benches, shattered reliquaries, and even chunks of crumbling masonry into position. Every hand counts. Injured but still standing, Sisters of Battle limp about, directing the placement of debris with the practiced precision of soldiers who know they're running out of time.

The gangers are slower, clumsier, but they follow orders when barked loud enough. A few have picked up Arbites' riot shields abandoned by the dead. They look ridiculous, scrawny limbs gripping the heavy plates, but ridiculous is better than defenseless.

"Why aren't we on the wall?" one ganger mutters, loud enough for me to hear.

I turn, leveling him with a glare that could crack ceramite. "Because your stubbers and zip guns won't hit a damn thing up there. We fight here, where the bastards have to come to us. You want glory? Find a bolter. You want to live? Build this barricade."

He shrinks back, muttering an apology. Good. I don't need insubordination right now. What I need is a miracle, but failing that, this barricade will have to do.

Briggs comes jogging up, a bandage wrapped around his shoulder. He looks half-ready to pass out. "Sarge," he mutters, voice weak.

"Report," I nod to him, "how is Diaz and our group on the wall doing?"

"Doesn't look…like we can hold. Corpses are piling faster than we can chew through them up there." Briggs huffs.

I grip his shoulder plate, my eyes glancing at the wall where a small team of my troopers familiar with bolters exchange fire alongside the best of them. My gaze returns, meeting his eyes. "We hold, or we die. That's the deal. No better place to run than right here behind these barricades. Our only chance's to stand our ground and kill every bastard that tries to cross."

I pause at his strained expression, the man just found out he's going to be a father and now both him and his S-O, one Trooper Diaz, are probably going to die here, weapons in hand. It's a lot, and I see it eating at him.

"How's Diaz?" I ask, trying to give him a valve to release some pressure.

"Winning, she says," Briggs brightens, then his expression becomes grim, "but I think we've all lost count up there by now, there's just so many of them…"

"The Emperor Protects," I give him a look that's a lot more confident than I feel.

He nods, swallowing. My aquila pendant feels hot against my chest, a reminder of the Emperor's gaze—sometimes stern, sometimes cruel.

A clatter of rubble announces two gangers lugging a chunk of carved marble. Saint Jessamine's face, chipped and scuffed. They slam it into the barricade, forming part of the top layer. The saint's stone eyes stare out blankly over the courtyard, an accidental guardian to those who line up with shotguns and half-charged lasguns.

"You heard me," I bark, stepping around a broken pew. "Stack it, brace it, fortify it. We'll have minutes, maybe less, if the wall goes to the warp. Make the best of 'em."

The gangers share a glance but comply. One mutters about it being heresy to tear up a holy place. I pretend not to hear. Let them call it heresy. Let them hate me for it. They'll thank me if they're still breathing tomorrow.

I glance back toward the gates. The sisters up there, in power armor or not, might manage to hold the top longer than I'd guess. But war has a way of grinding heroes into dust. And I've learned never to trust a plan that expects a miracle.

Better to plan for the worst, so if by some Emperor-blessed stroke we survive, we can stand amid the wreckage and say we did all we could. Even if that means defacing a damned basilica.

Five layers of barricades, all peppered with broken pews, stone statues, shredded banners, random lumps of architecture. Our Chimaeras are spaced out behind them, cannons aimed at chest height, ready to unleash a storm if the horde breaks in. The Leman Russ stands at the far end, the ultimate line of defense. And beyond that, the chapel stairs wind upward to the sealed doors, the final refuge for the pregnant women, the children.

There's no such thing as being overprepared, but there is such a thing as being too tired from hauling gilded pews around to properly aim.

"Alright!" I shout, my voice amplified by my helmet's vox caster, "that's enough, start making the rounds to all the triage sites, tell the blessed sisters or anyone else that tries to stop you that anyone who can walk can fight and anyone who can sit, stand, or lie in a prone firing position can be carried, propped up, and die as honorably as the rest of us. And someone organize these damned kids and get them to start hauling ammunition for anything that doesn't fire over a hundred yards to down here!"

They scurry.

I've got to keep them busy. Idle minds are prone to thinking and thinking gets more good troopers killed than heresy, one also often leads to the other in my experience.

I glance at the five layers of theologically significant carnage we've wrought on the place. It's not perfect, but it's what we've got. And that, I reckon, is all that matters.

I set my jaw and spit on the ground. "Emperor, watch over us, and don't you dare blink."

Briefly a flash of light illuminates the courtyard and the lumens flare.

The vertigo hits first, a gut-deep pull like the moment a grav-lift fails, and for a heartbeat, it feels like the world is collapsing inward. I stagger, grip tightening around my shotgun's worn stock as the courtyard tilts. Around me, Arbites and gangers alike sway, clutching at walls, barricades, and each other. Someone retches behind me; I don't bother to turn.

"What in the Emperor's name was that?" Briggs groans, voice thin with nausea.

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to," I bark, swallowing bile and forcing my legs to steady. The air crackles, charged with the aftermath of something massive, something beyond reckoning. My aquila pendant feels hot against my chest, as if the Emperor himself just glanced this way.

Above, the distant roar of the wall defenses falters, replaced by muffled confusion on the vox. A barked command cuts through the static: Riley. Of course. "Tully! Report to the battlements now!"

Already halfway to the stairs, I grit my teeth and break into a jog. "On my way, Priestess," I mutter into the comm-bead, though she's already shouting orders to someone else. Typical. Never mind that the courtyard's a bloody circus and I'm the only ringmaster. "Arbites, half of you, with me! Briggs, you're in charge of everyone else, get this damned barricade manned, or womaned or whatever you have to!"

The climb's a slog. Five hundred stairs in full kit isn't exactly leisure, but trusting the basilica's ancient lift system with my life wasn't something I was prepared to do before there was a horde outside the gates shooting at us, and by the time I reach the top, my legs are screaming. But then I see it—what they all see—and the ache is forgotten.

The mist withdraws. Not dissipates—withdraws. Like a living thing slinking back into some unseen hole, reluctant and spiteful. It pulls away from the thoroughfare in waves, revealing the battlefield in all its hellish glory.

The horde stretches as far as the eye can see, a seething ocean of bodies bristling with rusted weapons and chaos marks. The torchlight and guttering flames cast their shadows long, grotesque parodies of humanity. The sheer scale of it hits like a hammer blow; they're packed so tight you can't see the ground beneath them, just an unbroken mass of flesh, rage, and madness.

And then the machines emerge.

First one, then two, then six more. Tech Abominations—fifteen meters tall, their warped forms a grotesque union of heretical machine and warp-tainted flesh. They stomp forward with mechanical precision, their limbs adorned with jagged metal and glowing with warp-light. Plasma cannons bristle from their shoulders, glowing with sickly, unnatural hues.

"Emperor preserve us," someone whispers behind me.

I don't have time for prayers. My eyes track the two heretical Leman Russ tanks grinding forward behind the constructs, their treads chewing the cracked stone. Their turrets swivel like predators sniffing blood, and behind them marches a battalion of traitor PDF, their formation loose but purposeful. It's an army. A real one. And we're all that stands in their way.

"Eyes up!" I bark, my voice cutting through the stunned silence. "This isn't the time for gawking!"

Turns out, "eyes up" might have been the worst possible choice of words.

A flicker—a shimmer of light at the edges of the void shields—catches the corner of my eye, followed by a faint hum that cuts out abruptly. My stomach sinks. The wall's flickering halo of protective energy disappears like a dying ember, and the sudden absence is as loud as a scream.

The void shields are gone.

A collective intake of breath ripples through the defenders, the reality sinking in like the weight of a lead coffin. The flicker of confidence the basilica's barriers gave them vanishes, replaced by naked, quivering fear.

"What the frak?" mutters Briggs over the vox. "Sarge, Void shields just… stopped."

"Switched off, overloaded, broken—take your pick," I snap, as if I needed him to tell me something none of us could possibly have failed to notice. "Doesn't matter why. What matters is they're gone."

"Did you plan on giving up once the shields did!" I roar, the words cutting through the rising panic around me. "Shields or no shields, we're not out yet! Keep your heads on straight!"

As if to mock me, the enemy moves with eerie precision, taking full advantage of the absence of the shields. The Tech Abominations shift, their grotesque limbs grinding as they pivot their torsos. The glowing orbs of their warp-tainted plasma cannons pulse once, twice, and then light erupts from their barrels, streaking toward the wall.

The first impact strikes a heavy bolter emplacement twenty meters down and to my left. The explosion rips through ceramite and plasteel, sending chunks of the rampart flying. The defenders nearest the blast are knocked off their feet as the wall beneath them trembles from secondary explosions as unspent ammunition cooks off.

The second shot comes even closer, tearing into a section of the wall just ahead of me, eliminating three automated grenade launchers. Shrapnel sprays outward, punching through armor and flesh alike. I throw myself down, the heat of the blast washing over me as the wall trembles under the impact.

I don't hear Riley over the comms. Blasted priest is practically a civvy. "Status!" I bellow into the vox, even as my ears ring from the explosions.

A harried voice crackles back. "Multiple emplacements down! Defenders—" The voice cuts off abruptly, replaced by static as the far end of the wall erupts in blue fire and stone blocks the size of chimeras rip free and fly into the air as our one and only plasma launcher takes a direct hit.

I haul myself upright, wiping dust from my visor. The traitor tanks begin to open fire, their rounds slamming into the wall with relentless precision. The vibration of each impact courses through the ancient stone beneath my boots, a grim reminder that this fortress, as strong as it is, isn't unbreakable. The only positive side is that we're so high up they can't get a good shot at us, but even a bad shot can kill.

I curse under my breath, "arbites forward and keep your damned heads down!" I break into an uneven trot towards the focal point of the wall, the place where the enemy is building a rapidly growing ramp right up to our doorstep.

"Eyes up," I'd said.Yeah, well, not all of us are lucky enough to die from ignorance.

I'm halfway to the wide section of wall above the gate we've been using as a command center when the wall beneath me bucks like a spooked grox, and the sky—Emperor's throne, the non-existent sky of the underhive—turns white-hot. A sound follows, low and rumbling, rising into a roar that makes my teeth ache and my stomach churn. It's not a weapon. It's a goddamned natural disaster.

I throw myself against the rampart, trying not to think about what kind of ancient hell-machine Harspes just dug out of the basilica's guts. I've never heard of anything like it, but it makes the bastards out there move.

The beam punches through the nearest abomination, carving the thing open like a grox carcass, molten slag and mechanical guts spilling out in an incandescent arc. The blast doesn't stop there. It lances through the horde, leaving a blackened scar of bodies—some disintegrated, others thrown like broken dolls—and tears straight into one of the heretic tanks at the rear.

The Leman Russ doesn't just explode; it erupts, a flower of flame and shrapnel that sends hunks of burning wreckage spiraling into the air. Its turret launches skyward like a cursed flare before slamming down into the crowd below, flattening a cluster of traitor infantry with a satisfying crunch.

For half a heartbeat, the wall erupts in cheers.

"Emperor's mercy!" Briggs' voice reaches me over the vox and I can hear his shotgun trembling in his hands. "What was that!?"

"Mercy, my ass," I grunt, hauling myself to my feet. "That, was what happens when you piss off a basilica."

The defenders are roaring now, a ragged cacophony of hope and bloodlust. Even the gangers, skittish rats that they are, are whooping like they've already won. It's the kind of moment you'd love to bottle, the kind you pray to the Emperor will last.

It doesn't.

The enemy shifts. Not retreats, not breaks—just shifts.

Like a predator sizing up new prey. The surviving abominations grind forward, their grotesque limbs moving with a terrifying, deliberate purpose. Their warp-tainted plasma cannons glow brighter, sickly hues of green and purple swirling at their cores.

They're angry.

"Don't stop firing!" I bellow, breaking into a run along the rampart toward Riley's last position. My comm-bead is buzzing with half-screamed updates: gun emplacements lost, plasma cannon down, enemy ramp climbing higher, defenders holding—but barely.

Another explosion rocks the wall, closer this time. Shrapnel peppers my armor, a shard pinging off my pauldron hard enough to make me stumble. I grit my teeth and keep moving, adrenaline and stubbornness the only things keeping me upright.

Riley is ahead, slumped against the parapet, her power armor gleaming even in the chaos. Two Sisters flank her, their faces pale helmets off as they try to steady her.

"What happened?" I bark as I approach, my gaze flicking between the Sisters and the battlefield.

"We don't know, Sergeant," one of them says, her voice tight. "She just… collapsed. No wounds, no sign of—"

"Of course she did," I mutter under my breath, crouching beside Riley. Her head lolls slightly, her helmetless face slack and ashen. A faint flicker of breath tells me she's alive, but not much else.

Bad omen. Damn bad omen.

"She been calling the shots?" I ask sharply.

The Sister shakes her head. "Not since the shields fell."

Great. That explains the radio silence. No one's steering this ship.

"Get her down to the courtyard," I snap. "She's no use up here like this. And find me someone who can run this wall without needing a bedroll and a priest!"

The Sisters hesitate, glancing at each other before nodding. As they lift Riley, I take one last look at her pale face. Feels like the Emperor himself just blinked.

I shake the thought off, turning my attention back to the battlefield. The abominations are still coming, and the horde hasn't slowed.

"Briggs!" I bark into my vox.

"Here, Sarge!" His voice crackles back, high pitched but steady.

I switch over to a person-to-person channel, "Riley's out of it, I don't know the first thing about why but she's out, I'm sending her down to you. If she revives, put her in charge down there, even if it's just in charge of raising morale."

"Copy that."

I exhale, gripping the aquila pendant around my neck.

"Don't you dare blink again, you bastard," I mutter, my eyes fixed on the advancing tide. "We're still here."

"Diaz!" I roar as I approach a tight group of black clad figures with bolters.

"Sarge!" She acknowledges, not turning to face me until her clip runs dry, and then, only long enough to salute and reload, "saved a few for you."

"A few?" I balk, "do I look fat to you, trooper Diaz? I can't eat all that!" The troopers around us chuckle and for once I'm glad for the simple vox setup we have.

"Damn Sarge! I thought eating shit was your whole schtick." She retorts and cuts loose with her new magazine.

"Only from allies, and only ones who outrank me," I retort, "and I'm sorry to spoil your fun but since you're the only member of my team who's also a saint-worshipping-nut-job-possible-cultist-above-my-paygrade-not-my-problem…" I take a breath, "I'm putting you in charge of the wall."

"Sarge?"

"Riley's out."

That turns her around real fast.

"She—"

"Not dead, just out, and I don't know or care why, but no one is running this Charlie-Foxtrot and none of your damned, loony sisters will take my orders."And you're pregnant and I want you away from the edge of that wall…I don't add out loud.

She smiles and her mouth opens but something seems to steal away her words and our good humor.

The air shifts, and I feel it before I see it—the kind of unnatural wrongness that digs under your skin and burrows straight into your bones. The battlefield goes quiet in an instant, like the world's holding its breath. My aquila pendant feels like it's burning against my chest. That's never a good sign.

And then it steps forward.

A horned shadow rises from the sea of heretics, dragging itself into existence like the universe itself is trying to keep it out. It's massive, bigger than any abomination or tank the enemy's thrown at us so far. Its axe, blacker than the void and twice as malevolent, gleams with a malice I can feel from here. And its eye—a single, blazing red orb—locks onto the wall like it's looking at me personally.

I am terrified, I tell myself. Of course I am. But I'm also beyond terrified, pushed into that little niche in the human brain where things can't get more terrifying and terror itself becomes a cold, heavy hand on your shoulder. You might as well get comfortable and take as many with you as you can because you're not surviving this.

"Firing solutions locked!" an inhuman voice crackles over the vox. The basilica's heavy weapons roar to life. The Volcano Cannon fires, a blinding lance of energy that screams toward the daemon. Plasma cannons unleash their fury, their multicolored streaks of death converging on the monster's chest.

The impacts bloom in the darkness like miniature suns. For a heartbeat, I think we've got it. But as the light fades, Nullmaw still stands, untouched. Not a scratch, not even a scorch mark. It raises its axe, and the shadows around it seem to ripple with laughter.

"Emperor's teeth," I mutter, gripping my maul until my knuckles ache. "It didn't even flinch."

Panic ripples through the defenders. The Arbites nearest me stagger back, their riot shields rattling as they shout over one another.

"We're dead! There's no stopping that thing!" one yells, voice cracking.

A trooper bolts for the stairs, screaming, "Frak this! We're done for!"

I lunge forward, grabbing the idiot by his chitin backplate and yank him back into line. "Where are you going?!" I roar, my voice booming over the chaos as I switch to the open channel. "The shields are down! You planning on running? To where, exactly? Die standing, or die like rats—your choice! But if you run, I'll make sure you die first!"

The Arbites hesitate, their fear clashing with years of training. Some start to rally, forming back into lines. Others glance nervously toward the demon, their hands shaking on their weapons.

"Hold the line!" I bellow, my voice raw. "You don't stop now! That thing doesn't get through us—none of 'em do, unless you let them!"

A plasma bolt explodes against the wall, sending a shower of debris raining down. I duck instinctively, glancing over to where the sisters are stationed. They're panicking too, though it looks different on them. Fire discipline's gone, and half of them are either screaming prayers or shooting wildly into the horde.

Diaz is in the middle of them, standing tall despite the chaos. "Sisters!" she shouts, her voice cutting through the noise like a whip. "Take up the Song of Jessamine's Wrath! Now! Sing! The power of the living saint is with us!"

It's not a request; it's an order. And damned if it doesn't work. The sisters falter for a moment, then start singing—haltingly at first, but the rhythm catches. Their voices rise, and the effect is immediate. Their fire discipline returns, bolters barking in controlled bursts, targeting the ramp where the heretics are climbing.

Diaz raises her bolter, her voice fierce. "The Saint will deal with the demon! Our job is the ramp! Focus!"

The ramp, now a mountain of corpses, writhes with life as the heretics surge upward, fanatics clambering over their dead to reach the lip. The abyssal tide moves like one organism, driven by hate and whatever foul will powers that daemon.

I'm already moving, shouting into the din, dragging my Arbites into position before the storm breaks over us.

"Helena!" I bellow, turning toward the shimmering wings of the Zephyr squad. "We need time! Stall the ramp while I get my people set!"

Canoness Helena doesn't hesitate. Through the haze of smoke and screams, she pivots her squad mid-flight, their jump packs roaring like thunder. I don't have to watch to know what comes next. Flamers roar, trailing gouts of purifying fire across the ramp's crest, incinerating heretics by the dozen. Bolters bark in precise bursts, shredding flesh and bone, sending bodies tumbling back down the mound.

I spin, seeing Diaz conferring with a tight knit group of the senior priestesses, "Diaz! Get your sisters away from the lip, they can't hold it, but we can!"We can't, but we can do a damned sight better than they can.

"Arbites!" I bark over the vox, striding toward the lip of the wall. "Triple shield phalanx, now! You know the drill! Three deep—front crouching, second kneeling, third standing! Lock those shields! Move!"

Hundreds of boots pound forward with renewed purpose, something they've done before, something normal, useful, anything to take their minds off thatthingstriding towards us.

They respond like clockwork. Riot shields snap into place, forming an unbroken wall of plasteel and ceramite. The front rank crouches low, overlapping shields into an impenetrable barrier. Behind them, the second rank kneels, shotguns aimed through narrow gaps. The third rank stands tall forming a third overlap with the lower and middle shields. Behind them a line forms, passing out grenades, laying out bandoliers of shells, preparing to rearm and swap with the rows in front of them. It's textbook Arbites protocol—a wall within a wall.

"Switch stations in rotation!" I shout, pacing behind the formation. "Front rank rotates out if they take a hit! Rear rank handles reloads and keeps grenades flying! I see gaps, I'll fill 'em myself!"

The first heretic makes it over the ramp and onto the scant ten meters of stone between my men and women and the edge of the wall.

He's shirtless, his pallid skin stretched tight over emaciated ribs and slick with blood—not all of it his. Symbols carved deep into his flesh weep fresh crimson, rivulets running down his chest and pooling at his waist where a belt of severed hands clinks grotesquely against his thighs. His eyes are wild, almost luminous in the dim light, filled with a zeal that's more animal than human.

The stench hits before he does. Rot, sweat, and coppery blood mixed with the acrid tang of warp-taint. It's a physical force, worming its way past my helmet's filters to coat the back of my throat like rancid grease.

"First bastard, twelve o'clock!" someone shouts from the second rank, a voice strained but steady.

"You lot can barely sign your own names! Now's not the time to practice counting!" I bark and so does my shotgun.

A few strained chuckles punctuate the moment as the heretic's torso explodes in a spray of viscera. He drops like a sack of meat, his carved flesh twitching spasmodically even in death.

"Next!" I snarl, sliding another shell into place.

But the first is only a trickle before the flood. More clamber over the lip of the ramp, their movements jerky and frantic, driven by whatever dark power fuels them. They wear rags, flayed skin, and scraps of stolen armor smeared with ash and ichor. Some wield scavenged weapons—rusted blades, bent pipes, lasrifles jury-rigged with wires and tape. Others use nothing at all, their clawed hands reaching for anything living.

"Emperor's bones, they're frakkin' everywhere!" someone shouts from the third rank.

"Shut it and shoot!" I snap back, unloading another shell into a charging cultist. The impact sends the man reeling backward, his head a fine mist of red and bone fragments.

Then, everyone is firing.

The shield wall braces as the first wave slams into it. Riot shields groan under the impact, the Arbites behind them locking their boots against the stone. The wall holds. Barely.

"Front rank, set, step, shoulder, shove!"

They perform the maneuver admirably, and dozens of heretics are forced back, stumbling into those behind them, forming a tangled, confused mess of limbs and tortured flesh. "Fire through the gaps!" I yell, my voice cutting through the chaos.

Shotguns bark in deafening unison, the blasts ripping into the tangled heretics at point-blank range. Blood sprays, viscera splattering against shields and armor. The stink of cordite mingles with the stench of death, thick and choking.

"First rank back, make it tight! Shields locked!" I bellow, shoving my way to the line. A heretic lunges, swinging a jagged cleaver toward the gap between two shields as we reset. I slam my shotgun barrel into his open mouth and pull the trigger. His head evaporates in a spray of gore, his body crumpling against the shield.

"Grenades out!" comes the call from the third rank.

Fragmentation grenades arc overhead, their dull thumps followed by bursts of shrapnel that carve swathes through the horde. Screams echo in the aftermath, high and animalistic.

"Reloaders, keep moving! Keep those shotguns fed!" I shout, glancing back to the hundred troopers crouched behind us, their hands working frantically to reload spent magazines and pass them forward.

The second wave hits us harder. The heretics press against the shields, clawing, biting, slamming their bodies into the wall with feral desperation. A shield wrenches free as its bearer is dragged forward, screaming. His replacement steps in immediately, locking the gap before it can widen.

There are too many to push this time.

"Hold the line!" I bark, my voice raw. "We are the Emperor's justice! No one falls out!"

A fanatic throws himself onto a shield, his body aflame from a flamer burst. He laughs as he burns, clawing at the Arbite behind the shield until a shotgun blast blows him apart. The smell of charred flesh is nauseating, but no one flinches.

"Holy Throne, they just keep coming!" Diaz mutters beside me, her bolter spitting rounds with grim efficiency as she and thousands of sisters and militia try to make a dent in the ones racing up the ramp.

"They've got numbers, we've got brains. Keep your head on straight, trooper," I retort, racking another shell.

But the fatal fault here doesn't lie with our wall, or our tactics. No. The problem is, as it always was destined to be, the ramp.

Now at the lip of the wall the ramp widens with every wave, the corpse-pile growing broader as more bodies fall. The heretics keep climbing, a relentless tide.

Ten at a time, then twenty can push abreast, then fifty. My mind churns with calculations: How many shells? How many grenades? How long until the breach is too wide to hold?

But there's no room for doubts now. This is what we do. We stand. We kill. We die. In that order.

A particularly large heretic, clad in scraps of flak armor, crashes into the line with a makeshift battering ram. The impact buckles a section of the shield wall, but it holds—barely. The front rank staggers, the strain evident in their gritted teeth and shaking arms.

"Brace! Replace!" I roar, my shotgun bucking as I blast the heretic's legs out from under him.

The trooper behind me steps into the breach, his shield locking into place as the fallen trooper is dragged back to safety. Another grenade arcs overhead, bursting among the heretics and sending limbs flying.

I curse under my breath and scan the line.

Three hundred shields wide, three deep, the riot shields interlocked like a serrated blade. Shotguns roar through the gaps, punching gory holes in the oncoming tide. Behind them, the second rank keeps up the fire, while the third reloads with frantic hands, passing fresh weapons forward. Grenades arc overhead, landing with deafening bursts that throw bodies skyward, but it's never enough.

The horde is widening the breach with every step, their corpses forming a broader, more stable ramp. It's simple math: every kill we make just gives the bastards a better foothold. And I've made a mistake—a big one.

I should've set up two phalanxes, staggered and facing inward on either side of the breach a hundred meters apart. That way, the dead would've slowed their advance instead of giving them a damned highway straight up the wall! We could have split them in a crossfire and fed their momentum straight over the top and into the courtyard a hundred meters below.

But there's no fixing it now. If we move, we die. The wall is our grave, and we'll make it one worth remembering.

"Diaz, where the hell are you?" I mutter into the vox, sweat trickling down my neck despite the cold, dead air. Maybe if we get a few of the sisters to brace the shields with their power armor we could—

"Here, Sarge," she replies, her voice sharp but strained. I turn as she approaches, leading a column of fifty Sisters clad in ceramite armor. Their helms glint under the fitful light of muzzle flashes, their bolters held with grim purpose. Something red and dripping is smeared in a symbol I don't recognize over their visors.

Beside her is a figure I recognize from the group that Riley had been coordinating with, draped in blood-red robes and carrying a staff carved with ancient symbols in her gauntleted hand.

"Sergeant Tully," Diaz starts, "this is Priestess Skellig—"

"Not the time for introductions," I cut her off, jerking my thumb toward the breach. "Plenty of time to swap life stories when we're all dead."

Skellig steps forward, her eyes piercing through the chaos. "We're not here for pleasantries, Enforcer. My sisters and I are here to charge the demon."

I bark out a humorless laugh, even as I rack another shell into my shotgun. "Charge? Lady, I don't know what corner of the warp you crawled out of, but that's suicide. You might as well throw yourselves down the ramp and save the ammo."

"We'll do it regardless," she says, her voice cold and unyielding. "You'd best tell your men to get out of the way."

My jaw tightens. She's serious.

Throne, they're all insane.

But insane or not, it's a distraction I can use.

I flip to the arbites' channel, my voice sharp enough to cut through the noise. "Alright, listen up! When I give the word, you're all gonna drop to the ground, shields on top of you. Anyone still standing gets trampled, and I don't have time to scrape you off my boots. You drop, you count to ten, nice and slow, you get up and split, half left, half right, one group with me one with Trooper Diaz, we reset facing inwards to catch them in a crossfire, they can die or leap a hundred meters to the stone below!"

There's a moment of static-filled hesitation, then a chorus of acknowledgments—nervous, hurried, but they'll do.

I cut the vox and look back at Skellig. "Fine. You want to die? Be my guest. But you'd better make it loud. I need every second you can give me."

She nods, unflinching. "The Emperor's Will guides us, Enforcer."

"Sure it does," I mutter, my grip tightening on the shotgun. "Let's see if it keeps you breathing."

The Sisters begin to form up behind the line, bolters, flamers, and chainswords snapping to ready. The hum of their power armor is a low, ominous counterpoint to the chaotic noise of battle.

Diaz doesn't respond to my comment, but her silence says plenty.

I look back at the Arbites, at the shield wall that's all but groaning under the weight of the enemy. The heretics are pressing harder, their numbers swelling as the ramp widens.

This is it.

No miracles.

No reinforcements.

Just us, the bastards in front of us, and the brief, bitter moments we'll carve out before the end.

I take a breath, the aquila pendant hot against my chest. "Alright," I bark into the vox, "you all know the drill. Shields down, faces down, and pray to the Throne you don't get a ceramite boot to the spine. On my mark."

The Sisters behind me ready themselves, their chant rising like a dirge, cutting through the clamor of battle.

I grit my teeth. "Mark!"

The wall collapses around me—not the stone, but the living wall of Arbites. Shields crash down, the sound a deafening wave of overlapping clangs as nine hundred riot shields hit the floor with grim precision. My men huddle beneath them, a ragged mosaic of black and steel, their faces pressed to the ground as the Sisters surge forward over the top.

It's like watching a dam burst. Fifty ceramite-clad figures roar as one, the hymn of Jessamine's Wrath pouring from their vox-grilles. Their armor glints in the hellish light, polished ceramite stained with soot and blood as they leap the barricade and throw themselves into the maelstrom. The sound of their charge is a thunderclap, a hammer-blow to the battlefield.

The ramp, slick with gore and piled high with corpses, doesn't slow them. They use the incline to their advantage, their sheer momentum smashing through the front ranks of the horde like a wrecking ball. Chainswords scream, bolters roar, and flamers spit arcs of searing fire. The air fills with the reek of burning flesh and the wet, sickening splatter of bodies rupturing under the weight of ceramite boots.

From my vantage point, I see the charge carve a path through the enemy like a lightning bolt. Heretics are hurled aside, shattered by shoulder-checks or split in half by whirring blades. Limbs and viscera fly, painting the ramp in arterial sprays. The Sisters are a storm, an unstoppable force barreling down the ramp with no hesitation, no mercy.

The horde recoils, momentarily stunned by the fury of the charge. Bodies tumble over one another, the ramp a chaos of writhing flesh as the Sisters plow through them. A burst of promethium from a flamer sends an entire swath of the ramp ablaze, the fire spreading like a purging wave, incinerating everything it touches. But the horde doesn't stop; it never stops. They close in behind the charging Sisters almost as quickly as they're pushed back.

"Get up, move! Fifty meters back!" I bark into the vox, driving my men into action. The Arbites stagger to their feet, shields clattering as they reposition. "Diaz, move your team! Reset the line, double-time!"

I cast a glance her way. She's shouting orders, her half of our approximately nine-hundred desperate enforcers and troopers moving with precision to form a new line across the breach. But my eyes are drawn back to the spectacle on the ramp.

The Sisters have reached the base, their momentum unbroken. They form a spearhead, their movements synchronized, their chant unwavering. Flamers ignite again, carving a fiery wedge through the heretics as the spearhead drives forward. Bolters tear apart anything that moves, their impacts bursting torsos like overripe fruit. The ramp is clear, a temporary miracle of blood and fire.

But the horde ignores them. The heretics stream back up the ramp, their focus on the breach above. It's as if the Sisters don't exist, as if the wall is their sole objective. The unnatural coordination of the enemy sends a chill down my spine, but I push it aside.

Focus.

Get the line set.

We hold, or we die.

Then I see the Leman Russ tank.

It swivels its turret toward the charging formation, its heretical crew clearly recognizing the threat. The main gun fires, and the world seems to shudder with the impact. Five Sisters and a dozen heretics vanish in an instant, their armor crumpling like tin beneath the blast. The crater it leaves in their formation is filled almost immediately as the remaining Sisters press forward, their hymn rising louder, angrier, defiant.

"Frakkin' PDF," I mutter, sparing a glance toward the breach. My men are in position now, their shields locked and shotguns raised. Good. It's not perfect, but it's a line. We can work with that.

I tear my gaze away, bile rising in my throat, and focus on the Arbites scrambling into the new line. Riot shields interlock again, forming a jagged wall of defiance. My troopers crouch, shotguns braced, eyes darting nervously between the horde and the retreating Sisters. I bark orders, keeping them moving, keeping them thinking—anything to drown out the panic clawing at their minds.

Then I see her.

A lone figure in Hospitaller armor, sprinting along the wall with a quad-load missile launcher slung over her shoulder. It's absurd, almost laughable—a battlefield where titans clash and demons rise, and here's this one Sister hauling a weapon meant for a crew. She's moving fast, her path a straight line toward our position.

"What in the Emperor's name…" I mutter, watching as she comes closer. Something about her feels wrong—off, even for this nightmare. But I don't have time to dwell on it.

She's here to end something. Or someone.