Art from Sebastien! WIP of the VOl 2 cover! Bats! ... very minor spoiler for what I was planning for later, I suppose?

Oh, and fanart by Brill!

Chapter Thirty-Three - Meeting of Like-Unminded Individuals

Alexis stared, jaw agape, at the woman currently planted on the floor. Somehow, she had fallen with her arms splayed out. Also, somehow, her sword and the large gun she had been holding in one hand, which Alexis suspected was a proper bolter, were floating just out of reach.

Most weapons, in her limited experience, didn’t float, but she also didn’t have much knowledge about the Sisters of Battle and how they operated.

“Are you okay?” she asked, then she squeaked and ducked back as an autopistol round pinged off of 054-648’s armour. Glancing ahead, she winced at the number of enemies coming through. They were mostly shifting around the left side of the room, away from the still-leaking plasma generator and from the constant fire put out by her servitor friends.

“I’m okay!” the little Sister of Battle said. She spun around onto her back, folded her legs up, then kipped onto her feet with a clang. Turning, she grabbed onto her weapons just in time to shift her chainsword up and into the path of a leaping genestealer.

The weapon came to life with a hiss, and Alexis was impressed to see how quickly it chewed right through the mutant trying to grapple her.

“Okay!” Alexis said. She looked behind where reinforcements were rushing over. A couple more Sisters of Battle--though they weren’t in the same sort of ornate armour--and some two dozen Voidmen who looked a bit short of fresh, but they were roaring as they charged.

She slid back behind her servitor friends and picked up her lasrifle again. The situation was getting pretty dicey there. If she was properly outnumbered then her friends were eventually going to go down. As it was, they were picking up wounds left and right.

A four-armed genestealer, moving fast, leapt up onto K84-321 and started to rake him with long, messy claws. The blows were hard enough that they were cutting into the bodysuit, though it was with some difficulty. 

K84-321 managed to grab onto the genestealer, then plunged his saw between the mutant’s ribs, spraying blood all over before he flung the body back at the enemy with a pneumatic hiss. 

He was going to need a lot of help after this! 

A second genestealer made it close, but before he could leap at Alexis, KYS fell onto him from the ceiling and dismembered him. KYS seemed quite pleased by the above-average number of members to dis.

The Sister of Battle girl started to laugh, and Alexis shivered. What was wrong with her? 

Then again, peeking over her cover, she watched as the young woman rushed into a large group of enemy mutants and started to swing her sword around with great enthusiasm and some amount of skill. The bolter went off on occasion as well, punching holes into and through the genestealers’ large enough that Alexis could have fit her entire arm through them.

“CS-3-2/11, sweep-fire through them!” Alexis said. She wasn’t sure if her order made sense, but something must have come across with her MIU because the combat servitor stomped forwards, then opened up with a wash of bluish welding plasma that boiled the air ahead.

054-648 started to fire as well, using the time that the enemy was recoiling as an opportunity to pick out targets. 

Alexis expected things to get worse, but the arrival of reinforcements and the way that one crazy Sister of Battle was charging into the fray instead of away from it, stalled the genestealers’ assault. 

They attacked with more of those four-armed hybrid sorts, but even though they were faster and tougher, there were now more rifles to bear on them, and with some shouting from the Lieutenant and some encouragement, the line stabilized.

Then, much to Alexis’ surprise, the tides turned completely. 

Once the genestealer’s push was over and their front line collapsed, they really didn’t have much keeping their formation together, just a few men with makeshift and stolen weapons in the swelteringly hot plasma generation room. It wasn’t even very hard to pick them out.

“Clear left!” someone shouted.

“Clear right!” someone else called out.

Alexis licked her lips, then stood up. “Is... is it done?” she asked, mostly to her friends. No one replied, but that was fine.

Kills Confirmed: 37x Genestealers

New Point Total: 601

She blinked. That was a lot of points, the biggest amount she’d held so far. More than enough to upgrade one or maybe even two of her friends up to the standard she wanted. Though... more couldn’t hurt.

“Hey, Ad Mech girl!” the tiny Sister of Battle called back. She was pointing with her chainsword into the room. “Can you do anything about that?”

Alexis followed, then nodded rapidly. “I can, yes!” she said. She had her friends move around her, then gestured for the two more injured to stay back. K84-321 was in a bad way, and 054-648 had taken a few hits as well.

She really wanted a solid hour with both of them, just to look over their wounds and repair what she could, but that would have to wait.

Stepping into the subsidiary plasma generator room, she raised a hand up against the blooming heat from the broken coil and then winced. It was literally boiling hot in there. She could feel herself sweating already. 

Still, needs must, and she was the only member of the priesthood around.

So, with that in mind, she moved over to the nearest cogitator, stepping over the corpses of a half-dozen genestealers on her way to the machine while CS-3-2/11 guarded her side and KYS lingered nearby, head on a swivel and forcep-tipped arm occasionally stabbing down into a still-twitching corpse, just to be sure.

Alexis discovered, rather quickly, that she was out of her depth here.

Hacking into a door, or convincing a minor, simple machine spirit that she was friendly was one thing, but Subsidiary Plasma Generation Site Tau-B’s infrastructure was set up so that only higher-ranking and more knowledgeable members of the priesthood could interface or even understand the complex machinery at play here.

What she needed was an electro priest, at a minimum.

Still, there were some systems that were more readily available, in case of emergencies.

She used the end of her remaining sleeve to wipe sweat off of her face before grabbing onto a large lever, one painted in yellows and blacks. She put her weight into pulling it down.

Instantly, the room filled with hissing steam as vents in the ceiling opened up and sprayed flame-retardants across the entire site. 

It was an expensive move. Some poor tech acolyte was going to have to refill those emergency reservoirs, which was always a massive pain. But if ever there was a time for it, this was probably it.

The foamy liquid splattered onto everything, and she was keenly aware that it was quite toxic. Given the choice between that and burning to death, however, it was the better option.

The constant flow of plasma from the broken coil didn’t abate, but the number of smaller fires in the room diminished, then faded. 

She wiped the screen of the cogitator she was working on, then tried to find a shut-off for that one plasma generator in particular, but it was for naught.

KYS signalled, and when she looked up and behind, she was happy to see a small contingent of tech priests filing into the room. They were led by a trio of men whose robes were folded down, exposing their torsos and the pale, blue-tinted skin so common amongst electro-priests.

One of them moved to her and she had to bow and babble through what she had done so far, which really amounted to very little. 

Then she stepped back and let the electro-priests and the half-dozen tech acolytes accompanying them do what she couldn’t.

In the meantime, now that the room was safer and the generator was being powered down, the Voidsmen moved in.

She distinctly recalled that the plan the major had given called for this space to be used as a rallying point for a push deeper in. 

She wondered how much time that would give her, and what her part of that would be. Ordinator Velpexa Thame had ordered her to work with the 14th platoon, but they had suffered some pretty heavy losses.

She had been purposefully ignoring those but... now that she looked back, she could see the corpses being moved off to one side, the injured being loaded onto stretchers and looked over by overworked medics.

A couple of other platoons were making their way over, though at a relatively sedate pace.

Which left... the weird Sister of Battle, and a few of the people following her around. Was she the party that the sister in the previous staging grounds had mentioned?

“Sister! We found a live one!” one of the Voidsmen called out.

Alexis perked up at that. Two Voidsmen moved around, carrying a man out from behind cover. He was injured, badly so. A lasrifle bolt had slammed into his torso not too far from his shoulder and had burned a fist-sized chunk out of him. His breathing was laboured, and he was covered in sweat and looked far too pale to be healthy.

Alexis moved closer at the same time as the Sister of Battle did. Their eyes met, but just for a moment. 

“We should probably just kill him, huh?” the young woman asked.

“That would be wise, Octavia,” another Sister of Battle said. “Enemies of the Emperor shall not be suffered to live.”

The woman--Octavia?--sighed. “Yeah. What’s ten more points, huh?”

“Points?” the other Sister asked.

That had Alexis perking up as well, though... no, it was probably something unrelated. “Um, if you need to kill him, one of my Servitors can do it,” she said. 

KYS shifted, then she raised all four arms to display the panoply of tools she had that could do the job. 

Octavia blinked, then grinned. “Can you keep him alive with those?” she asked. “Your servitor looks like a medicae servitor assembled by an orc.”

Alexis bristled. “KYS is a perfectly functional medicae servitor. Her chassis is... unorthodox, perhaps, but I’ll have you know that it only increases her capabilities as a frontline healer.”

“Uh-huh,” Octavia said. She gestured to the two Voidsmen, and they dropped the man down. He groaned. Then with another gesture they stepped back, levelling rifles at him.

Alexis was immediately a little envious. She had a MIU to help communicate with her servitors, and even then it was a little hard. This diminutive Sister of Battle was telling people what to do with only vague gestures.

“What’s your name, buddy?” Octavia asked the man.

“Octavia,” the Sister said. “Don’t start consorting with the enemy.”

“I’m not going to kiss the man, I’m asking him his name. Besides, he’s not my type,” Octavia replied. “Ain’t that right, pal?” She squatted down, which brought her below the kneeling man’s line of sight. 

Alexis had an idea of what was going on, at least. She used the same tone of voice when asking a servitor what was wrong. This was an interrogation. “KYS, can you stabilize him?” She was maybe stepping past her position here, but she didn’t have anything else to do at the moment. Upgrading her friends here would be far, far too obvious. That would have to wait for later, when she had time and an excuse. 

And, as a member of the Mechanicus, she was technically outside of the jurisdiction of these Sisters of Battle, who were guests aboard The Broken Scale.

It was a bit of a risk, but...

KYS moved in, and neither Sister stopped the medicae servitor when she grabbed hold of the man and checked over his wounds. He grunted again. Then shifted back, looking over them all with glassy, unfocused eyes. “Huh? I’m... Andus, of Forge 44.”

Alexis watched the shorter Sister as she frowned. “Forge 44?” 

“One of the fabricariums, on the lower decks,” Alexis said. She had never been, but she was familiar enough. “They produce parts for maintenance. Forges one-through-ten are on the upper deck, eleven-through-twenty in the upper-middle, and so on.”

“Gotcha,” Octavia said. “So, Andus, what’s led you here, huh?”

“F-fuck you,” Andus said. He winced as KYS applied a bit more pressure on him. “The... the father will get you!” 

“Who?” Octavia asked.

Andus reeled backwards, a foot lashing out with surprising speed, but all he managed to do was kick Octavia in the thigh and produce a clunk. He was too weak to do much else. Then he screamed as KYS pinned him down.

“The patriarch! The father sees all! Knows all! He knows you, worshippers of the false Emperor on his throne of corpses! He knows! Soon, this ship will be ours! All of ours! Our toil, our work! Ours! And we will see the Star Children! We will go to them ourselves!”

“KYS, euthanasia protocols,” Alexis said.

The servitor nodded her head, then plunged a scalpel into the man’s throat.

He continued to gurgle his heresy until the light went out of his eyes.

Octavia sighed, then stood up. “Well, that was a waste of time, huh?”

***