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The sun sets slowly on Jevn IV. It casts a blood-red tint over the broken tangle of hive buildings, like lumens through stained glass. Any human inhabitants are all either dead or evacuated, or huddled as good as dead in pockets of rubble. Mirko scans for greater prey now, gaze flickering across his helmet screen’s readouts.
They had targeted Jevn IV for supplies, only to find war waging there between Drukhari raiders and a group of Adepta Sororitas. What was intended as a rote mission had turned into a patient kind of bloodsport. Let the xenos and the Sisters slay each other; the heretic Astartes of the Iron Claw would finish whoever remained standing, then reap the bounties of the agriworld’s fertile fields.
Not that they did nothing. They had not shown themselves in full, not yet. The Iron Claw had watched, patient, as the xenos and the Sisters hemorrhaged fighters. But whenever it seemed as though one side was nearing victory, the Iron Claw would strike with quick and ominous strategy, eliminating a Drukhari unit, a team of Sisters, the anti-aircraft missiles at the now-dead governor’s mansion. Vox lines. Scouts. Each enemy blamed the other for these blows; and with the playing field leveled, continued to bloody each other.
Tonight, though…
“They’re weakened,” Mirko says. His helmet sensors mark distant activity; blink-clicks assign teams to each area. Another, and the information is sent to the rest of the squad. “Sororitas and raiders.”
Peragito nods. One of the newborns give a growl of excitement. Another sends a crackling whoop over the vox.
“Tonight we flay what remains,” Mirko says, “and drink deep of Jevn IV.”
Time passes strangely on the agriworld. Nights last longer than others Mirko has seen. Perhaps the long days are what grow the harvest so well.
Dusk lingers like a bruise now, deepening the shadows and smudging the sunset-red with shades of blue. He prowls alone through the twilight, between huge warehouses filled with what’s soon to be the Night Lord’s, aiming for one of the remaining pockets of Drukhari activity. Neither xenos nor Sisters have more than a handful of soldiers left each. Even if one side did survive, even if the Iron Claw were not creeping ever-closer to bring about their wretched demises, it would only be a Pyrrhic victory.
But the Iron Claw does creep closer. There will be only one victory this night.
A shout draws his attention. The sound is close enough for him to activate his preysight and see the body heat of the source through the cool layers of sheet-metal warehouses. Four figures several blocks away: two standing, two on the ground.
Scratch that. Only two standing. The pair on the ground are cooling, already dead. Curious, Mirko shifts his path, drawing closer until the details emerge. One figure is Sororitas: he knows the pattern of bodyheat through their power armor. Candles flicker on her pauldrons, bright spots of yellow and red. The other is human. Average sized, female shaped. He would call her a civilian, for her clothes are thin enough to not register on his helmet readout, except that she is brandishing weaponry at the Sororitas. What Jevnnite would do such a thing? He finds his curiosity growing.
The warehouses open to a broad shipping yard. Piles of rubble and twisted metal lie scattered, remnants of cargo ships and vehicles. Bodies of workers, servitors, and fighters alike litter the broken ground. The two still-warm corpses prove to be Drukhari raiders. Their strange armor glints in the last light of dusk. Blood pools beneath them, painting his preysight with spills of warm heat.
Mirko remains in the shadows of the warehouse, switching to regular vision. He doesn’t care enough for the Sororitas to learn their ranks and nomenclatures – he generally regards them as more of a nuisance than anything else. Still he can see the Sister is of some special standing. Ornate robes adorn her armor, and her power pack is topped with the bright-burning torches he saw with his preysight.
The other is a Sister as well, he realizes. Short white hair, fleur de lis on her face. Clad, strangely, in blood-soaked feathers or…papers.
Purity seals, he realizes; if he was not wearing his helmet he might spit to show his disrespect for such rubbish. The woman is draped in scrawlings to the Corpse-God like a foul and tattered robe.
“...can ever be enough!” that one is still shouting, face contorted. Her hands are empty now as she gestures, though Mirko’s helmet readout marks the battered chainsword lying near her feet. “Mistress, I ask you, what more does He want from me? What more can I do?”
“You can pick up your sword and repent!” Her Mistress wields two long and deadly whips; they trail along the ground, inert, but Mirko sees her gauntlets shift as she tightens her grip. Whether it is with intent or simply frustration, he does not know. For now, he watches with mild interest. Perhaps she will cow the other Sister to tears…then he will ruin their evenings further by taking both their skulls. Perhaps she will whip her, and he will have some entertainment before he steps in.
“I have repented!” the paper-clad woman shrieks. “I can do no more! He has rejected me!”
“Cease this heresy at once, Domina!” The Mistress hisses through her vox. Her helmet’s glowing eyes are an unyielding glare. “You will pick up your Eviscerator and beg His forgiveness. When Sister Kesil hears of this–”
“Arch-Enemy take Kesil,” Domina snarls, “and you as well!”
The whips move like lightning. One brushes across Domina’s face – but it seems she was awaiting the attack, for she doesn’t flinch or hesitate. With both hands Domina seizes and yanks the other whip instead, jerking it from her Sister’s grasp.
Mirko finds himself enthralled. He did not expect such a bizarre show of rebellion and heresy. He leans against the shadowed wall of the warehouse as the Sister in her purity seals scrambles with her ill-gotten whip, snatching up the proper end to crack it in her Mistress’s direction.
It’s clear that this Sister Domina is unpracticed with such a weapon. Her movements are clumsy, her aim off. But sheer surprise tilts the fight in her favor, and the blow lands against the higher Sister’s chest.
The Mistress must not have wanted to actually harm her Sister earlier, Mirko thinks; and she must be truly talented to command such careful control over the weapon. Domina’s cheek bleeds from the deep welt cut into it, but had the blow landed in full, she may not have a face to bleed at all.
Whatever the whip is made of, it slices now through the Mistress’s armor like a knife through skin. The Sister gives a strangled shout as Domina yanks the whip back, blood flying from the savage wound. She raises her remaining whip as Domina brings her arm forward again.
The Mistress’s counter never comes. Domina’s second attack falls just under the Sister’s helmet, tearing a jagged line across the joint of her neck. Blood gouts. A shout of alarm crackles from the helmet’s vox, fading rapidly into a gurgle. The Mistress takes a single wavering step towards Sister Domina, then falls to the ground.
Domina stands, clutching the whip, staring at her Sister’s body. Purity seals shake with labored breath. Blood drips from her hands and her cheek.
Mirko straightens. Without hurry, he strides out of the darkness between the warehouses and into the open dockyard.
He is taller than the Sister by several feet. With one hand he holds his plasma pistol. The other is encased in a power fist larger than a human torso. Dusk is waning now, tumbling into true night, and the crimson glow of his helmet illuminates Sister Domina’s startled form. He watches, satisfied, as surprise turns to shock turns to pure and primal fear.
Then her face twists again, shifting into a snarl as she lowers herself into a crouch. This half-naked Sister, bleeding and bruised, thinks to take on an Astartes. Mirko would be charmed, if he was the kind of man to be charmed by anything. As it is, he settles for mild amusement.
Readouts flicker over his helmet screen. He registers the pounding of the Sister’s heart, status updates from his brethren. The Drukhari that were his original targets are moving, small bright dots on his long-range sensors.
“Mirsad,” he rumbles. He keeps his voxband cross-com only; to the Sister, he will be silent as a statue, menacing as he considers her. “Cut off the quad at point-oh-seven east. I will rejoin shortly.”
“Acknowledged,” Mirsad grunts.
“Something happen, brother?” Peragito asks.
The Sister stares up at him. She seems rattled by his lack of movement: her eyes flicker past him, searching perhaps for others of his ilk, or a reason he does not attack. She readjusts her grip on the whip, then leaps backwards even as she brings her arm forward. The whip jags like lightning, aiming for his helmeted head.
Mirko catches it with his power fist. A tug, and it’s pulled from her grasp. Blood drips from her palm. She gives a shout of pain or alarm, then lunges for her Eviscerator.
“I have found something of interest,” Mirko replies over the vox. The chainsword clangs against his armor. He does hope she didn’t scratch the paint.
Dropping the whip, he raises his power fist and hits Sister Domina soundly on the head.
Like the whip-Mistress, he wields his weapon with precision control. He knows the force necessary to shatter skulls and crumple armor. Equally does he know how to hold back, to merely incapacitate. It is the latter amount of force, now, that causes Domina to drop like so much dead weight. She crumples to the ground in a heap of bloody parchment, out cold.
Mirko scoops up the fallen Sister. Her chainsword falls from her grip, clattering to the rockcrete.
A moment’s thought, and he turns to the whip-Mistress as well. Lifting her corpse, he slings a Sister over each pauldroned shoulder, then grabs the whips for good measure. His helmet crackles with his brothers’ voices as each reports in: Drukhari slain, Sororitas killed, all prey eliminated. The moon rises over a Jevn IV now utterly controlled by the Iron Claw, all its bounty theirs for the taking. And he has found something strange: a Sororitas who kills other Sororitas. A curiosity indeed, carrying both intrigue and a promise of further entertainment.
Pleased, Mirko begins the long walk back to their planetary base, and the dropship waiting there.