Saints And Martyrs by Andy Clark

Author:Andy Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction: space opera (FLS)
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2024-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

IMPERIUM SANCTUS

V

SEVERITAS

Somewhere ahead, north of their position, past the tangled hulks of the manufactories, the road sloped uphill, and at the top of the hill was the Cathedral of Saint Thecla the Unyielding. The cathedral, with its walls, defences and position, would be a strongpoint. They could make a stand there. They could withstand a siege for some time. ­Perhaps long enough to re-establish communications with the battlegroup and escape the trap.

Dominion Klavia of the Order of Our Martyred Lady resented the fact that she was thinking of defence and escape. Her natural instincts in battle were to charge at the forefront of the advance, to be the blade that first sliced into the enemy. She could not change the impossible, though, and she had the wisdom to know when she saw it.

‘Vox!’ Canoness Commander Macrina called. She was a few steps from Klavia, leading the run with the Dominions, while the ­Rhinos of the commandry rumbled up along the flanks of the Battle ­Sisters, blocking some of the incoming fire from the manufact­ories. ‘Tell me you have something!’ She listened for a few moments, then cursed.

‘Anything?’ Klavia asked. She had to shout to be heard over the clamour of the pounding of bolters, the roar of flamers, and the unending thunder-and-lightning attacks from the cultists’ lasguns and heavy stubbers.

‘Battle Sister Eluned says there was a brief signal. Maybe a ship entering orbit. Then nothing again. She cannot be definite.’

A stream of las cut into the road just ahead of Macrina. She returned fire with her bolt pistol. Her shells exploded against a shadowed catwalk leaning over the road. Bodies fell, and flames spread along the promethium conduits. More blasts built up, running rampant through the huge complex. Klavia heard the screams of heretics in the growing conflagration.

It wasn’t enough. There were thousands of heretics, infesting the complexes like vermin. And more were coming.

‘Curse this world,’ said Dominus Odilla, marching in lockstep with Klavia. ‘Curse it for what it pretended to be.’

‘It pretended well,’ said Klavia. She swept her storm bolter to the right, blowing apart a crowd of heretics that tried to rush the Adepta Sororitas from a loading bay. The road narrowed up ahead and made a sharp turn to the right. The forge complexes were so large and packed in that they formed an arc across the road at that point.

‘What odds there’s an ambush ahead?’ Odilla asked.

Klavia grunted. ‘You mean all of Severitas isn’t already an ambush?’

She was not exaggerating. From the moment the strike cruiser Rectitude of Battlegroup Kallides entered the orbit of Severitas, the Sisters of the Order of Our Martyred Lady had entered the jaws of the trap set for them on the planet. They had not known it right away. They had responded to a cry for help from the surface. Vox traffic indicated a loyal population grappling with a cultist insurrection. The size of the uprising was clearly beyond the strength of local defence forces to deal with. But a

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