V2 Chapter 80: Are You the Emperor's Angels?
Mara Sinn had some basic medical knowledge, so she had been temporarily assigned as a medic.
She did not understand that this was considered a kind of honour. To her it was just another form of work.
Nev City had been in the grip of heretic warlords three years ago. Those men had treated everyone in the city as slaves, locking them inside factories and warehouses. Apart from a four-hour rest period each standard Terran day, every other hour was spent producing weapons, ammunition, boots, and other materials for their overlords.
The factory work was dangerous.
Metal presses, thermal cutting tables, ammunition loading lines. Every station had a way to kill you. Sometimes an arm went into the machinery. Sometimes the fumes burned the lungs through. Sometimes a person simply stopped standing up and never came back.
The medical knowledge Mara had came from an old white-haired man she had learned from during those years.
He had originally been a factory tool-keeper, but when his eyes failed him, he had been put to work looking after the injured. He had taught Mara how to stop bleeding, how to separate burned skin from fabric without tearing what remained, and how to judge whether a person could still work or not.
In those days, Mara had never considered that there was anything wrong with this life.
Her parents had lived this way. Her parents' parents had lived this way. Going back a hundred years, the people of Nev City had always lived under the weight of pressure and the threat of death. She had understood it only as the suffering they were required to endure.
Then a group of people who called themselves the human Imperium had come through fighting.
They opened the factory gates, cut the chains, and killed the overseers in their blood-red masks. The people of Nev City were told for the first time that they belonged to a larger empire, a human empire protected by the God-Emperor.
Mara did not understand what the God-Emperor was.
But she understood that after the Imperium came, there was one more standard Terran hour of rest each day. That hour was for learning to pray to the great God-Emperor. Once a month there was a prayer day, with half a day to go and kneel in a simple new building that had been put up for the purpose.
She did not understand the prayers, and she could not get the complex titles right when she recited them.
But she understood that she had more rest time. That had been enough for a great many people.
The sound of the wounded around her pulled her back.
Mara lowered her head and moved her hands faster. She was pressing a new dressing against the abdominal wound of a garrison soldier. The bandages had long since run out; she was tearing strips from old cloth, scalding them with what hot water remained and letting them cool before wrapping them back on.
This was her work.
She assisted the real medical staff with casualties, and in exchange she received a measure of recycled water and a block of food each day that could hold back hunger without quite doing more than that.
This underground water processing station had been packed with wounded.
The backup power supply was sustaining only the purification core and a few medical lights. The light was dim, falling across the edges of the water tanks and the pipe junctions and making the space look more crowded than it already was.
The recycled water the station produced could no longer meet the inner city's daily needs, but it could not be allowed to stop. If the purification core went offline, the defenders on the walls, the wounded sections, and the civilian shelters would start dying of thirst within hours.
Dust fell from the walls in a continuous slow sift.
The artillery from the gate direction carried through the pipes, and every impact sent a ripple across the surface of the water tanks. Several people who could still move were carrying purified water bags up to the upper barricades.
Erik Walden stood guard beside the main valve.
He was the oldest water systems worker here and the only person who still knew all the safety valves and purification lines by memory.
His back had bent with age, and his fingers had been twisted by pipe wrenches and old injuries. But as long as he was still standing at that console, Mara felt a fraction steadier inside.
Mara knew the gate could not hold much longer.
Then rapid footsteps came from the stairwell leading to the upper levels.
A voice that still had youth in it burst into the space.
"We're saved! We're saved! They say angels have come down! Angels have come!"
The boy was breathless from running. His face was covered in ash, but his eyes were bright with something Mara had not heard in a long time. It was in his voice too.
Mara pressed a hand over her mouth to keep her face still.
She did not want to be locked back into the lightless factory.
If the Emperor had truly sent angels. If there was genuinely a way out beyond the gate. Then perhaps she could keep the extra hour each day. Perhaps she could learn the prayers properly. Perhaps she could finally understand what the Emperor actually was.
Then a violent explosion came from the direction of the underground drainage conduits.
Erik's head snapped up. The blood left his face.
"That's the maintenance door below!"
The words were barely out when concentrated laser fire swept in through the side passage and across the water station.
The boy who had just brought the news went down. The excitement had not fully left his face when a large wound opened in his forehead.
Screaming broke open inside the water station.
A squad of Blood Pact soldiers came out of the maintenance conduit at a run. They wore dark shell armour and moved fast, communicating through brief hand gestures. The two at the front suppressed the wounded and the guards around them. The rest of the element covered a soldier carrying a demolitions pack and drove him toward the purification core.
Mara picked up the laspistol lying nearby.
The weapon had belonged to a dead PDF soldier. The charge in the magazine was very low. She crouched behind a patient's cot, pressed her hand over her mouth, and gripped the pistol handle with both fingers locked tight.
She watched Erik take a laser hit to his right hand. He went down beside the main valve, clutching the shattered wrist, trying to crawl away from the Blood Pact soldier moving toward him.
A Blood Pact soldier found him and lowered his weapon toward him.
Mara raised the laspistol.
She had no military training. She knew only two things: if Erik died, no one could close the main valve. And if those soldiers got what they were carrying into the purification core, it was over for everyone here.
She pulled the trigger.
The laser hit the Blood Pact soldier's shell armour and left a shallow scorch mark.
The enemy turned and looked at her.
Mara's body locked.
She watched the weapon come up and the barrel point at her. Fear closed her throat. The twenty years in the factory came up all at once. Chains, steam, iron doors, and the sky that was always on the other side of something locked.
She shut her eyes in despair, and prayed with everything she had left.
"God-Emperor, please. Save us."
In the next instant, a thick red laser crossed the water station.
The Blood Pact soldier's helmet split open. The body fell backward.
Mara opened her eyes slowly.
On the other side of the passage, a squad of soldiers in black armour entered the water station in rapid movement. Their equipment was considerably better than the inner city garrison's. Their weapons carried targeting systems Mara had never seen before. The lead officer was bald, wearing heavier outer armour than the others, and the hotshot lasgun in his hands was still radiating residual heat.
"Left side clear."
"Two at the entrance."
"Demolitions confirmed present."
"No visible contamination; awaiting follow-up sweep."
Those voices were short and precise. Nothing like the Blood Pact's low snarls.
The black-clad soldiers spread in multiple directions. Four secured the maintenance conduit entrance. Two went for the demolitions pack and rapidly removed the detonator. The remaining soldiers pressed weapons against the Blood Pact soldiers still fighting and finished them.
Stroud raised the hotshot lasgun and put down the last Blood Pact soldier making a move.
He swept his eyes across the water station.
"Threat eliminated."
"Hold the entrance."
"Set the beacon."
"Check the purification core."
His people moved immediately. Someone placed sensor-mines at the entrance. Someone fixed a black beacon to a pipe bracket. Someone else examined the metal canister carved with Chaos symbols and kicked it into the isolation drain.
Stroud walked to where Mara was.
She was still holding the laspistol, the barrel raised slightly.
Stroud looked at her briefly.
"Put it down."
Mara did not react.
Stroud reached over and pressed the barrel down slowly.
Mara's hands began to shake. She looked at the bodies on the floor, at the burn marks still smoking on the wall, then at these soldiers who had appeared from nowhere.
Her mouth opened. Her voice was very quiet.
"Are you... the Emperor's angels?"
Stroud paused.
He thought of Finn's face, the one that could tie absolutely anything back to the subject of faith, and decided that this kind of question was genuinely one that should go to someone like that.
But Finn was not here.
Stroud said: "The angels are at the gate."
He looked at the civilians and wounded still alive around him.
"We are here to clear the passage."
Mara nodded slowly, without being certain she had fully understood.
Erik was still beside the main valve, his right hand destroyed. He was biting down on the pain, pointing with his left hand toward the control panel.
"Third valve."
Mara registered this, pushed herself upright, and moved to the control panel.
"Which one?"
"Under the red marker." Erik said, breathing hard. "Turn it all the way. Lock it."
Mara did as she was told.
The valve was heavy. She used everything she had and the wheel turned slowly, degree by degree. A deep sound moved through the water pipes. The pressure gauge on the purification core began dropping as the main tank was cut off from the external lines.
Stroud looked at the pressure gauge, then at Erik.
"Main tank?"
Erik leaned against the wall, his face drained of colour.
"Not contaminated."
Stroud nodded and opened the vox channel.
"Water station cleared. Main tank is clean. Requesting follow-up garrison and medical support."
An acknowledgement came back through the channel.
He did not stay. He spoke to every survivor in the room.
"Do not leave this place."
Mara looked up at him.
"Outside... have the angels really come?"
Stroud checked the hotshot lasgun's charge status.
"The relief corridor is being opened."
He turned and walked toward the maintenance conduit.
"Hold on a little longer."
Mara did not answer.
She looked at the boy lying on the floor. She looked at the Blood Pact bodies dragged to one side. She looked at the purification core still running.
It was a long time before she noticed her hand was still on the valve.
The artillery above kept going.
But the water tank had not been contaminated.