213.738.M41
Velgrad
04:30
Our first shift back at Saint Margaret's (day 210-211) had been easy enough. We didn't stay in the work room much. Instead, we cycled through public places. Sometimes praying in view of late-night petitioners who had their own prayers. Sometimes standing guard in the narthex, where there were still cots set up for people whose homes had been destroyed or made too horrible for return.
Once we were called for violence, but not the service of the gun. A woman staying at a nearby church was raving, cutting at herself, threatening others with a small knife. We took the knife away, restrained her and bound her wounds. Forced her to the altar, where a priest who seemed to have not slept for days blessed her again and again until her madness passed.
The next day-and-a-half at the convent was normal, except for specialization block, which was turned to rest or silent prayer. It was good to train again, and to pray the Hours in our own small chapel. It was good to have routine and the presence of the dead. D rotation had their vigil, and A, and B, and then it was our time again. 17:30 of day 212, we prepared ourselves and relieved B rotation at 18:00. The date changed to 213 as the night continued.
The shift was peaceful, at first. Fewer people praying through the night. The cots were empty. It was almost as it had been, before the battle. Battle is wrong, but I have to call it something.
Emergency tones sounded at 04:30. We were up, moving. Putting on helmets, checking bolters on the way to the vehicle bay.
Surs began the briefing.
"Rhino. Attack in progress. Shrine of the Seven Martyrs. Two men approached on foot and forced the door with heavy industrial equipment. Picts coming."
The shrine was half a kilometer away. We could be there in less than two minutes. Surs must be getting his information as he spoke. We threw ourselves into the Rhino. Surs hustled in just after us, holding a vox with one hand and his slate in the other, and flung himself into a seat. I thumped on the bulkhead, where the ready driver—Harald Jorg again—would have woken up to the same tones and briefing.
"We're in. Go!"
We roared out into the night, checking weapons.
Grainy surveillance picts appeared on our slates. Two masculine shapes, large, lumpy and misshapen with supplies or worse under hooded robes, crossing the open square towards the shrine. Then producing heavy, angular shapes as they approached the door. The shrine was a simple thing, a low rectangular structure the size of a small hab, with an open courtyard where the prayerful could gather. There would be a shrine-keeper. I thought I knew who it was, a too-gentle, fearful old man who had helped at Saint Margaret's after the battle. The Seven Martyrs weren't important saints, but they were Velgrad's saints, and precious to us because we lived here, even if we were from all across the world.
The next pict showed the door hanging at a clearly-broken angle and a shape on the ground that could have been an old man lying sprawled in a boneless heap.
He hadn't moved in the next pict.
"It's a center-fed room," I said. "Single entrance. There's one door to a back room."
"They could have explosives," said Tara. "Shapes under the cloaks."
"Yes," I said. "I see it."
"Thirty seconds," said the driver. "Approach?"
"Stop five meters from the door. Gwen, Tara, outward security. Verity, point. I will stun through the door, then we work the room. I'm two. Tara is three if we enter."
Tight nods.
Surs said: "Kill is authorized."
"Aim for the head," I said. "Possible suicide-vests."
The Rhino slewed to a screeching stop. We flooded out through the rear hatch into the square. Buildings on three sides, but we had the Rhino for cover. The old man had moved again after the last pict, dragging himself away from the broken door. I didn't see much blood. Tara and Gwen oriented outward, scanning the street, windows, rooftops. Verity and I were shoulder to shoulder approaching the door, her bolter on the aperture as I prepped my stun grenade. I put it through, letting my wrist hit the doorframe. It went off with a bright flash and body-thumping bang.
I was back on my bolter as Verity knocked the door open. She was on the opposite side of the doorframe, giving us cross-coverage. She fired as I found a target, a bulky, misshapen silhouette in a hooded black cloak, lunging towards the doorway, a bulky mechanized industrial tool swinging. I fired. The thing's head exploded into gray-black mist.
Servitor. Not a living human. No mind of its own.
Bait?
I saw that Verity had killed the other attacker. It was a servitor, too. What was left of it was leaking black fluid, not red. Neither of the bodies exploded.
I didn't want to go in. Better to hold and wait for help. There shouldn't be anything in the back room, not with the old man out here and both attackers down. The interior of the shrine was full of rubble smashed apart by the heavy tools but the reliquaries were untouched, thank the Emperor. Nothing was on fire.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I said, "Stay external. Verity, hold what you have."
I started moving towards the old shrine-keeper. "Deacon," I voxed. "We need medics and bomb technicians. And an investi—"
The night flashed blinding blue-white and a shockwave knocked me down. I landed right next to the old man. There was a glowing hole punched through the side of the Rhino and small shapes were arcing down into the courtyard. Tara and Gwen opened fire instantly. Maybe Verity too, I'm not sure. I grabbed the old man by the collar and started to lunge up to my feet. More explosions smashed into us, slamming me left and right and down, again and again.
Grenades. The old man's body jerked and folded at terrible angles, buffeted by overpressure. But he didn't disintegrate into a bloody mess. No shrapnel. Stun grenades.
I couldn't hear anything. My vision was a whirling blur and I couldn't stand. There were shapes on the rooftop but they vanished as bolter rounds blasted their cover into shrapnel and dust. It felt impossible to breathe or make my body work. Something big moved into the space behind the Rhino, blocking off the square. I tried to shout commands. I wanted the team to force entry into that building, but I couldn't hear my own words. Something hit my leg and I couldn't move it. I left the man where he lay, probably dead already, maybe not. We were taking fire from the other rooftop, too. I returned fire one-handed, staggering and crawling towards the closer building, the one the grenades had come from. I recognized webgun projectiles unfurling down at us. Verity was hit square and went down. I grabbed her and kept moving.
Tara and Gwen knew what to do. I hadn't needed words, just movement. Ambush. Therefore attack. I was moving, so that was the direction of the attack. Gwen made it to a door, dumping a spent magazine. More explosions. Gwen was down. Tara was at the door, blasting the latch apart. Then I reached the door, crawling. Tara dragged me through. I was still pulling Verity.
Outside, Gwen was up again, firing. Then she was through, slamming the door behind us.
Somehow I was alive. Unhurt, except that I still could scarcely see or stand. We were at the bottom of a stairwell. Sheet metal stairs over rebar. I could see a security door opposite the door we'd just tumbled through. I reloaded my weapon.
Verity was spasming in the restraining web. Body heaving, head turning left and right. I hit her helmet latch release and yanked her visor up. Vomit covered her face and spilled out onto the floor. She coughed, retched, and breathed.
I felt a tugging and saw Gwen cutting at the mess of web wrapped around my leg. I looked back to the stairs. I could hear again over the ringing in my ears, the clank of many boots on metal.
I saw the distinctive muzzle of a lasgun come around the corner of the stairwell. Common mistake. I shot through the metal stairs. Blood splashed. The top half of a corpse thumped down into view. I worked fire up through the stairs, methodical, two or three shots a second until I clicked empty again.
"Reloading."
Blood sluiced down through the wreckage of the stairs. It took me three tries to get the magazine into the well. My head ached.
"Up. Status?"
Somehow, we were all mostly unhurt. Gwen was getting Verity cut free. We were concussed, bruised, maybe a few fractured ribs, but that was all. Except for Surs and Jorg. I was transmitting on the squad vox but they hadn't answered.
"Deacon, driver, report!"
Nothing.
Webguns. Nonlethal. Riot control, low-level suspect apprehension. Useful against power-armor if they didn't have good rifles or better. But they had lasguns. Someone wanted us alive.
Surs and Jorg were dead, unconscious, or captured.
Doctrine.
Get out of the target zone. Preserve combat effectiveness. Notify command.
"That door, go." I pointed at the ground-floor interior door. I held my gun on the blood-dripping stairs, trusting the others to pick their own sectors. I saw Gwen covering the door we had come from.
"Locked," said Verity, at the interior door. "Breaching."
In and through. We could barely walk but we pushed down a corridor. It led us around a corner and into a clean hab hallway full of doors. I notified Superior Isela. Reinforcements were en route, she said. Enforcers would be first on scene, as many as could be spared. An Army unit enforcing curfew would join them.
Gwen said, "Contact rear," at the same exact time as Verity said, "Contact front!"
Bolters roared. The hallway filled with strobing lasfire and the blur of webgun shots. I tried to blast open a side door to get us out of the hallway, but something hit me and I fell.
Gwen thumped down next to me. There were charred holes smoking in her armor and she was moving in jerks and spasms. I took another webgun hit. I couldn't move. I was hit again and I couldn't see. I was hit two more times.
I tried to speak into the vox, but no reply came. I prayed.
Someone opened my visor an inch. I smelled and tasted something bitter. I don't remember anything else.