0600 — The Armory
The hat goes on first. Always.
Then the carapace, in pieces. Greaves first — the plate seating into the undersuit with a solidity that travels up through my knee. My Ginunting across my back. I shrug into the breastplate and roll my shoulders once, feeling the weight settle. The fit is right. The purple trim running along every edge the way I drew it, the aquila centred and raised. I hadn't expected that.
The armory smells of cutting oil and new metal and the faint chemical bite of treated ferrocrete. The sound of it is clasps tested and retested, buckles worked back and forth, Aric — from the voice — asking something about his auspex interface and not getting an answer.
Across the room, Drok is at Grace's medicae station.
He picks up a bone saw. Holds it up. "What this do?"
"It cuts." Grace takes it from him. Sets it back in its case.
Drok picks up a sealed vial. Turns it over in his enormous hands, tilting it toward the light. "What this do?"
"It goes in the tray." She takes that too, without looking at him.
His hand moves toward a roll of surgical thread. Grace's hand gets there first.
Drok considers the tray. There is a great deal left in it. He reaches for a pair of forceps.
"No."
He puts them down. Picks up something else — small, sealed, cylindrical. "What this—"
"Also no." She takes it before he finishes asking.
He looks at the tray. He looks at Grace. He looks at the tray again, with the focused attention of someone conducting a serious inventory.
Something moves in Zuzanna's face two benches over. She turns back to her long-las before I catch what it was.
Zeke is beside Orryn. Orryn has his medal rack laid out on the bench — each decoration at its correct position, the spacing exact. Zeke reaches over and moves the Winged Skull by a thumb's width. Orryn, without looking up from the buckle he's adjusting, moves it back. Zeke waits. Moves it again. Back it goes. Orryn still hasn't looked at him. Zeke moves it a third time. This time Orryn sets down the buckle, straightens the medal, and picks the buckle back up. Still hasn't looked at Zeke once.
Zeke's shoulders do the thing they do.
Holt has his new helmet on. Standing very still — stiller than Holt stands, which is already still. Head tilted two degrees. He takes it off. Holds it at arm's length. Studies it. Puts it back on. His head tilts again — listening for something the sensors are filtering out now. Either way, it stays on.
Bjorn is at the capacitor packs — not a glance at his hellgun as he passed it. Crouched over them now, turning each one over in his scarred hands, checking the grade marking on the casing. The longest I've seen him go without touching Marta. Castor is on the bench beside him, entirely relaxed. He says something. Bjorn doesn't look up. Castor watches him for a moment and then looks at the ceiling, satisfied.
Vekk is holding his new machete, turning it over. His power sword is at his hip. His face is doing nothing. He tries the grip. Shifts his hand. Tries it again. By the time I look back, the machete is somewhere on his body. I don't know where. He's looking at something else.
The new belt goes on over the carapace. I run my thumb along the rig until the lie is right — aquila buckle flat, sitting where it should. My bolt pistol comes out of its old holster. I hold it a moment, then seat it into the new rig on my left thigh. Draw. Clean. Reholster. The click is tighter. I do it twice more until the motion is mine.
My crimson sash, diagonal, chest to hip. My coat over everything, settling onto my shoulders. My obsidian beads already on my left wrist, under the vambrace, pressing against the skin above the ten marks that are permanent.
The hot-shot laspistol. I work the grip in my left hand, draw it once dry. Compact, snub, nothing like my bolt pistol. I seat it at the small of my back. Check the draw angle. Adjust the retention one notch. Try it again. Better.
Two sidearms.
I hold that a moment. Let it go.
Gamma is against the far wall with a data-slate, a stylus, and the stillness of a man who has found out his credit ceiling and is making the most of it. The armory officer approved the requisition without reading it. Smart man.
The Excruciator Maul cost me a favour.
Torina. Red hair first, always the hair — and her weight on my chest in the early mornings of the Schola. She's not going to let me forget this.
Worth it.
Drok is still at Grace's table. She has just removed a haemostat from his hand and is returning it to its case with the patience of someone who has dealt with considerably worse and is choosing not to make it a thing. Drok is looking at what's left in the tray with genuine strategic interest.
"Drok."
He turns immediately.
Grace lifts the last item from the tray and holds it against her chest as he turns away. She watches him go. Her face does something very small.
"This is yours."
I open the crate. The Excruciator Maul sits in shaped foam. Arbites make. I lift it out and pass it across.
He takes it with both hands. His grip closes around the haft. The weight travels up through him — shoulders dropping slightly, head tilting as the balance settles.
"Press here."
I tap the stud. He finds it with his thumb.
The charge runs through the head with a crack that's more teeth than ears, and then the hum comes — low, constant — and the contact surface blooms blue-white. The light catches his face. He looks at the glow. At his hands. At the glow again.
His shoulders move first.
His jaw unclenches.
"Drok," he says. "Drok like."
"Good."
"Hit harder than old club?"
"Much harder."
Then he hugs me.
Both arms. The full thing. My face ends up somewhere around his collarbone and the carapace takes the strain and I am glad I put it on first.
"Thank Commissar," Drok says, from up there.
"You're welcome," I say. Slightly strained. Fine.
He sets me down. Turns back toward Grace's table, maul in hand, charge still running, the blue-white glow painting the floor in front of him.
Zuzanna steps into his path. She's smiling — warm, open. She says something. Drok turns toward her, and the glow swings with him, and he's gone.
Grace watches this from behind her medicae case. She sets the last item back in the tray. Picks up her inventory slate.
She doesn't look at Drok again.
First Drill — Day One
The corner gives me a sight line to the approach and cover on three sides. Not a good position. A survivable one.
My lower half is dead weight — drill condition, the scenario reads paralysis from the waist. I've dragged myself to the wall and that's where I stay. My bolt pistol is in my left hand. My back is against ferrocrete. The urban sim block smells of propellant and old stone and the mineral bite of training munitions, and somewhere past the rubble to my left an automaton is moving — I can read it from the foot strike pattern, heavier than a man, no lateral drift.
I fire twice before it clears the corner. One connects. The automaton staggers, resets, keeps coming.
"Two contacts, my left. Right flank suppressed. Moving."
Vekk's voice comes back, clipped. Three words. Positions acknowledged.
They come in pieces through the smoke — glimpses between cover, through gaps in the rubble. The movement first. The upper bodies float. The weapons hold their line regardless of what the feet are doing underneath, muzzles tracking without the bob and sway of ordinary movement. Not mechanical — stranger than mechanical. Eyes and muzzles as one thing, moving through ground that should have slowed it.
What I'm looking for is whether they move like that together.
Not yet. But the components are there.
I fire again. Two rounds left. The first automaton is still coming — drill units don't register suppression, they close regardless, which is the point of them.
Zeke's long-las finds it. The sharp crack of a hotshot connecting, and the automaton drops. He's elevated somewhere. I don't know where and I don't need to.
Caelum is working the wall on my right, moving along it toward the automaton cluster's left flank. I catch him in glimpses between the columns of rubble. Clean read — correct angle, right instinct, the kind of call you make before you think it. He reaches the low wall between his position and the flanking route. Goes for it fast, drops his weight forward to clear it in one motion —
The pack shifts.
Half a second. No more. His centre goes wrong at the apex of the movement, the weight behind him pulling late, and he's a beat behind when he needs to be down. The automaton at the far end of the approach reads the timing.
The training round takes him in the left shoulder and he goes down hard. The pack doesn't help with that either.
"Caelum down. Right flank."
I don't watch after that.
The automaton on my left closes. I put my last two rounds into it — centre mass, both connect — and reach for a reload that isn't there.
Empty.
"Bolt pistol dry. Switching."
I reach behind myself with my left hand. Awkward from the ground, back against a wall, lower half useless — I find the grip, draw it, brace my wrist against my knee. The laspistol is compact and the balance is nothing like my bolt pistol. The las-bolt hits the automaton in the chest. No detonation, no stagger. It keeps coming. I fire again.
"Two additional contacts. East approach. Twenty metres."
My back has things to say about the angle I'm shooting at. I ignore it.
Drok arrives without preamble smashing an automaton aside. He crouches beside me, which still puts him roughly at standing height, and looks at the two approaching automatons and then at me.
"Drok carry Commissar?"
"Drok carry Commissar."
He picks me up. One arm under my back, one under my knees, two seconds. The carapace takes most of the grip. I keep the laspistol up and put two shots over his shoulder into the east approach as we move.
Vekk and Grace have Caelum. I catch it in pieces as Drok carries me out — Caelum upright, one arm over Vekk's shoulder, moving under his own power. The hit took him high, not down the arm. His jaw is set and he's moving.
The squad folds around us and we push through the exit corridor and into the clear zone. The covering fire drops off behind us as the automatons reach the boundary limit.
I'm on my feet the moment the drill condition drops.
I stand. Roll my shoulders. My back has more opinions now and I still decline to engage with them.
I look at them.
Zeke has a smear of sim-round residue on his visor he hasn't noticed. Orryn's kit is immaculate, which should not be possible. Bjorn is already cycling his plasma cell count. Holt is tilted slightly toward the sim block, head cocked — listening for something that's no longer there. Vekk is looking at a fixed point in the middle distance with the expression of a man filing something he hasn't finished processing.
I look at Caelum.
He looks back. The shoulder is already stiffening — he'll feel it properly in an hour. Something in his jaw is different from the armory. Not wounded. Colder. He knows exactly what happened. He's already in the process of not letting it happen again.
Good.
"We run it again."
Nobody argues. Caelum is already turning back toward the entrance.
Day Two
Aric moves — adjusts his position left, covering a new angle, then transmits.
Starts.
The call goes out half a second after he moves, not before. In his last three postings he was the only signals operator. There was nobody who needed to know where he was going before he went.
Zeke is already moving into the space Aric just vacated. The two of them cross paths in the corridor at the same moment from opposite directions.
Nobody takes a round. But there are two people in the same three metres of corridor who shouldn't be there, and I see it.
Aric calls his position immediately after. Correct, clipped, exactly right.
Half a second too late.
Day Three
Drok sees a contact break from cover on the left flank.
The sound he makes fills the sim block completely. Not a shout — this is just his voice, the volume he uses for everything, arriving in the enclosed space the way it arrives everywhere. Every head turns. The two automatons on the east approach reorient toward it before anyone can adjust.
The reorientation reads as a second contact pushing from a new angle. Holt moves to cover it.
Steps into the line.
The training round takes him in the chest.
I knew this from the file.
***
The range is empty at the twenty-third hour. Or should be.
Holt is in there alone, helmet on, running the IR through its settings one by one. Cold. Quiet.
He doesn't hear me at the door.
That's the point.
Day Four
Zeke finds a line on a priority target at the far end of the east approach — clean angle, nobody else has it. He settles. Takes the time to do it properly.
The shot is perfect. The automaton drops at eighty metres.
The left flank has been without suppression for eleven seconds. Aric moves to compensate for the gap and takes a training round in the back before he clears the corner.
Zeke's long-las comes down. He doesn't look away from where Aric went down.
***
Late. The mess is mostly empty.
Zeke is sitting with Aric. Neither of them is talking.
***
Night. The equipment bay is empty.
I borrow a tool from Gamma's kit without asking. He'll know. He won't say anything.
It takes forty minutes. Thanatos, across Drok's chest plate. Large and deep.
I rack the armour back. Turn the lights off.
In the morning I hear Drok from two corridors away.
Day Five
Vekk calls a hold.
Correct call — contact ahead, position uncertain. The call goes out clean, everyone stops.
Everyone except Bjorn.
He's already committed to the angle. Plasma gun up, moving, the kind of forward momentum that doesn't reverse cleanly without losing the shot. He holds as soon as the call reaches him but he's two steps past where he should be, exposed on the right side of the corridor, and the automaton at the far end has his position.
Training round. Shoulder.
Bjorn doesn't look at Vekk. Vekk doesn't look at Bjorn. Correct call for the situation each was reading. Different situations.
***
Zuzanna has reorganised the squad's kit storage.
Everything is where it should be. Everything is faster to reach than it was yesterday.
Nobody mentions it.
Day Six
Sev goes down.
Training round, right flank — he was in the right position, the automaton found a gap. He drops and calls it.
Four people compress toward him without being told to. Not panic — something else. They pull out of position, cluster, and the two automatons on the east approach walk training rounds through the gap.
Three more down.
I call the drill.
***
Zuzanna puts a long-las bolt through an automaton at two hundred and thirty metres while Drok is standing directly between her and the target.
Through the gap between his left arm and his torso. Moving.
Drok doesn't know it happened until after. He looks at the gap. He looks at Zuzanna.
***
Bjorn supercharges.
Nobody told him to. The automaton cluster at the far end is behind cover that a standard charge won't punch through and Bjorn makes the call in under a second. The shot goes in at the base of the barricade — the whine of it, the heat bloom, the concussion arriving in the chest before the sound does — and when the light clears there is no barricade.
Castor is already moving into the gap before the smoke settles. He doesn't look surprised.
Day Seven
The first time they move like a unit lasts four seconds.
Left flank push, mid-drill, nothing I planned for it. Every angle covered without a call, the spacing holding through a turn in the corridor that has broken every previous run. Four seconds of fifteen people being one thing instead of fifteen things.
Then Drok goes through a doorway sideways and the moment is over.
But it was there.
-DN-
-DN-
-DN-
End of the last run. They're in the bay — kit down, backs against walls and benches, the particular quiet of people who have worked very hard. Holt has his helmet off and is turning it over in his hands, but not the way he did on day one. Aric's head is back against the wall, eyes open, not looking at anything. Bjorn is cleaning Marta. Focused. Careful. Drok is sitting on the floor because there is no bench that works for the purpose, and Thanatos across his chest catches the overhead light every time he shifts his weight, and he shifts it often.
Caelum is next to Adlar. Not talking. Just there, the way Caelum positions himself near people without making it a thing. Adlar's jaw is unclenched. Not all the way. But more than it was seven days ago.
Zeke says something to Vekk in a voice too low to carry. Vekk's face does nothing. Then Vekk says one word back.
I don't catch it. I don't try to.
My coat is heavy from a week of it. My wrist aches in the old place where the tendon runs. My back has not forgiven me for day one.
The bay smells of a week of people working in it — sweat and boot leather and the acrid ghost of propellant that never fully clears. Bjorn's plasma cells have their own smell underneath all of it, sharp and metallic. I've stopped noticing it.
I look at them.
I think I like them damn it.
And we will be going into hell soon so best get them ready.
"Same time tomorrow," I say.
Nobody groans. That's the best sign I've had all week.