4.660.902.M41

Pale, milky-coloured clouds loomed low over the contested factory city of Irnassar. They seemed to press down on the city, to pressurise the violence occurring within it, focusing it into a symphony of urban combat. The arrhythmic thuds, crunches, and cracks of munitions large and small echoed through the streets, off the gray manufactorum walls, around the gargoyle-encrusted spires of cathedrals, down the plain residential boulevards, all littered with rubbish, bodies, waste, all abandoned by anyone except the armed and dangerous.

It was along a gloomy residential boulevard that the Adepta Sororitas Exorcist Glorious Crescendo, clad in the blue-and-gold livery of the Order of the Avenging Choir, and bedecked with fleur-de-lies, sunbursts, aquilas, and other proper devotional decor, clanked along with frantic purpose. Emphasis on frantic; its overly-embellished armour was marred by still-fresh craters from krak grenades and rockets. Blocks behind it, furious wailing rose from a clutch of foiled would-be Traitor ambushers.

Hanging on for dear life on the Exorcist's right side was Sister Retributor Mio Akiyama, her gorgeous jet-black hair flying in the wind, clad in blue power armour edged with gold trim, heavy bolter clutched to her chest, her mind churning. The Crescendo and its attached Battle-Sister squad–Squad Tainaka, Mio's squad–had survived the very recent ambush, but had been split off from the rest of the Fourth Bombardment Company. Sister Superior Nohi, commander of the Exorcist, didn't seem to want to relocate the other Sororitas vehicles; instead, she was driving deeper into the Traitor lines. Mio suspected her own Sister Superior had something to do with this.

The Crescendo hit a particularly churned-up section of pavement and bucked wildly for several moments, during which Mio slammed against the Exorcist's organ pipes, crashed into the Battle-Sister to her left, and rediscovered those parts of her she'd strained in basic training. It brought back many memories, mostly dull, some bad, but a few good ones, mostly about goofing off with her best friends in the Sororitas. And speaking of friends, there was one she needed to talk to right now…

The Exorcist hit another bump and slammed Mio into the Sister beside her. "Sorry!" Mio yelled to her squadmate.

Blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned Tsumugi Kotobuki gave Mio a smile. "Nothing to be sorry about," she said. "Suffering together on a wild ride is one of the necessary experiences of friendship, isn't it?"

"Um, absolutely," Mio said. The Exorcist ceased bucking for a few moments, and Mio stepped across the tank's roof and to the raised command pulpit centered atop it. Two more Sisters stood shoulder-to-shoulder in it, the black-haired one trying to connect sheafs of cables together, the brown-haired one standing straight up, head thrust out, letting her short bangs whip in the wind.

Mio hauled herself up by her friend and unlikely commander Ritsu Tainaka, and yelled in her ear, "Ritsu! With all due respect, we are lost! Lost! L-O-S-T! We need to turn around, find the rest of the company, and regroup, not run around like a headless grox!"

Ritsu glanced at Mio, and Mio saw the expression she always feared on her friend: fearless excitement. "Mio," Ritsu shouted back, over the roar of the engine, "we aren't lost, we have an opportunity! We know the advance is stuck in deeper than Yui at a free banquet! We know we're on the enemy's flank! We're going to wheel into the enemy's flank, blaze a trail of death and glory down their back line, and go from zero to hero in the eyes of the Order!"

Mio gawked. She knew Ritsu, and she had expected as cracked a plan as this, but the fact Ritsu could say it with a smile and without a trace of sarcasm still surprised her.

Ritsu seemed to remember something, and frowned at Mio. "And don't forget," she shouted over the squeal of metal treads grinding on cobblestones as the Exorcist leaned into a hard right turn, "that I'm Sister Superior, not you!"

"I know, and I don't care!" Mio retorted. "This is crazy! We're alone! The vox is hit-and-miss at best!" Mio adjusted her grip as the Exorcist advanced up an incline. "Ritsu! Please, for your friends, for me, turn around!"

Ritsu patted Mio on the head, and it took all of Mio's self-control to not give Ritsu the traditional dope slap. "For the last time, Mio-chan, I've got it all under control. We will be fine."

Ritsu turned away and called over the squad vox, "Driver, this spot's good! Halt!"

The Exorcist braked hard, and Mio was thrown into Ritsu as the tank ground to a stop. There was a yelp from the right side of the Exorcist, followed by a thump. Ritsu glanced right, and called, "Really, Yui? That's the third time! Get back up here!"

Mio peered over the command throne, and saw the Exorcist had stopped on a road running along an elevated ridge in the landscape, one populated by a row of small, desiccated storage units. It was just high enough to overlook the surrounding five- and six-storey buildings around them. Mio looked west, saw Irnassar's cityscape stretch out for a kilometre, and then open up into the sprawling Construction Fields, on the south end of which the Avenging Choir's Sisters and their PDF allies fought an entrenched force of rebels, heretics, and worse, located on the north end of the fields. Intelligence estimated at least a battalion of renegades, cultists, and turncoat PDF and Guard were dug in above the fields. If the Avenging Choir couldn't turn the battle in their favor soon, their losses and any kind of victory would likely become untenable.

Armoured boots rang on the Exorcist's hull, and Battle-Sister Yui Hirasawa scrambled onto the tank, her flamer clanking against her armour, her adorable medium-length brown hair in complete disarray, her eyes wide and full of excitement. She was basically the same Yui from the scholam years ago, except slightly over a decade older, and now able to break a traitor's neck with her bare (power-armoured) hands.

"Mio!" Yui said, "Did I bruise anything?" She pushed her face into Mio's, and Mio had to back away. Yui's pretty, heart-shaped face was dusty and dirty from her fall off the Exorcist, but was none the worse for wear.

"No, you're fine," Mio said. "Emperor alone knows how you do it."

"Okay! Thanks!" Yui began fussing over her hair, and only managed to make it into a bird's nest in her haste. Mio sighed, and stepped up to Yui and took her hands.

"Slow down," she said. She glanced around at the dark, quiet buildings, and pulled Yui down to a crouch. "And get down, there might be enemies about."

"Azsua!" Ritsu said. "The cables are hooked up, right?"

Petite, precise, precious Azusa Nakano disentangled herself from deep inside the command throne, swatted her long dark bangs out of her eyes, and snapped, "No, they're not, ma'am! People keep tripping over me and knocking me down!" She took a deep breath, and added, more calmly, "Just give me some room and thirty seconds, please."

Ritsu said over the squad vox, "Nohi, status." Apparently, the squad vox now extended to the Exorcist's crew as well.

Sister Superior Nohi, commander of the Glorious Crescendo, answered the hail smartly and fervently. "What do you need, ma'am?"

"Just making sure everything's going fine," Ritsu said. She looked west, to the Traitor entrenchments a kilometre distant, and Mio followed her gaze. Red beams of heavy las-fire snapped every few seconds from the foe's trenches, piercing the lines of the stalled Sororitas advance. "That's our target. Get me a solid auspex scan of their positions, so I can plan our next move."

"Yes, ma'am!" Nohi said. Mio sagged with anxiety. Nohi, for whatever reason, seemed to think Ritsu was the God-Emperor's right hand made manifest. She had backed Ritsu in every decision ever, and if the way she shouted orders to her crew was any indication, her attitude wouldn't change anytime soon.

Mio swept her surroundings again, and involuntarily drew in a breath. There was a flicker of motion among a jumble of groundcars several blocks north. Shadows sprinted and crouched in the muted overcast light. Mio swung her heavy bolter up. "Movement, north, in the cars!" she yelled.

Yui grabbed her bolt pistol and aimed up the street. Ritsu ducked into the command throne and unlimbered her own bolter. There was a squawk from Azusa as Ritsu squished her deep into the depths of the command throne. Mio saw a flash of blond hair in the left of her peripheral vision, as Tsumugi crouched beside the command throne and aimed her bolter north.

Ritsu's grin now split her face from ear to ear. She extended an arm and pointed dramatically towards the car jumble. "Sisters," she said, "give 'em–"

A muffled whoosh cut Ritsu off, and a blast of smoke jetted from behind one of the cars. Mio saw the glint of a metal warhead, whirled around, collared Ritsu with her right arm, and pulled them both down. "Missile!" she shouted.

The krak missile slammed square into the flank of the Exorcist. Hot smoke washed over Mio, the shriek of rending metal rendered her hearing tinny and echoey, the biting, almost rotten stench of superheated metal met Mio's nose. The world rocked for a moment, and then stabilized. The underwhelming snap and crack of las-fire dimly made it through Mio's temporarily-impaired hearing. It was met a moment later by the angry chug of bolters firing.

Mio shoved Ritsu behind the command throne, hurriedly raised her heavy bolter, and fired a short burst into the smoke. Red las-beams pinged off the Exorcist's armour; in answer, yellow bolter shells zipped out into the grey smoke. Mio unhooked a frag grenade from her belt one-handed, bit the pin out, and heaved it behind the rubble. A few seconds later, she heard the crump of the grenade's detonation, and there was a several-second lull in enemy fire.

"Hose 'em!" Ritsu yelled, raising her bolt pistol and popping off suppressing shots. "Nohi, angle, angle!"

The Exorcist shuddered, and then reversed several meters, turning to angle its armour at forty-five degrees, forcing the Sisters to grab for handholds. Tsumugi was the first to recover and resume firing. The smoke was slowly clearing; Mio saw Mugi's fire stitch across the groundcars, leaving torn metal and glittering shrapnel in its wake. Mio took aim at the right side of the street, focused on the tiny, shifting shadows she could just barely see against the grey background…

…and lost her focus completely as a volcanic roar from behind her blotted out all thought. Another wave of smoke washed over her, this time scented with the sulfurous chemical tang of explosives and propellants. A missile shot from the Exorcist's organ pipes, and hurtled into the heavens on a streamer of fire. It produced enough smoke that Mio lost sight of it, but several seconds later, she felt the missile's impact shake the Exorcist, and saw the bloom of angry orange through the smoke.

As the sound of the explosion echoed away, incoming fire dropped off completely, to the ambient tune of crumbling stone and groaning metal. The smoke cleared again, and Mio saw the missile had hit a three-storey structure on the street's right side, and collapsed it across the street and groundcars, leaving a massive pile of collapsed stone and twisted metal girders and sheeting, all clouded by a massive pall of dust. New fires flickered here and there. The street was quiet once again, but the tense sort of quiet, of someone holding their breath and hoping the worst did not occur again.

Ritsu poked her head out of the command throne, scanned the area, and shouted, "Sound off, damage and injuries!"

"I'm good," Mio said.

"Present," Azusa coughed, extracting herself from the command throne.

"Present, situation normal, ready to serve," Tsumugi said.

There was a pause; Yui was still messing with her hair. Mio elbowed her, and Yui jumped. "Eeek! Uh, I'm here, Ritsu! Er, ma'am."

Nohi said, "One casualty, light injuries, still combat-capable. Long-range vox is fried for good."

Ritsu glanced north, at the smoldering pile of rubble. "Mio, Yui, keep a watch on the street," she ordered.

"Affirmative," Mio said, hauling herself half-behind the nearest organ pipe and orienting her heavy bolter towards the street. She stilled herself and listened. She heard the crackle of flames from the rubble, the grumble of the Exorcist's engine, the near-silent whirr of her backpack's power generator, and a series of clicks and shuffling noises as Azusa finished plugging in the cables wreathing the command throne.

There was something else, in the distance, besides the rumble of combat. Mio could hear a distant and unnerving tune; not just a sound, a rhythm, some kind of music, and it was not pleasing. It made ominous wheezing and moaning noises. It warbled and skirled in ways that, even at a nearly-inaudible distance, caused Mio's gut to pucker with anxiety.

Mio whispered a prayer for courage to Saint Katherine and focused on her duty. She squinted at the chunks of rockcrete and crushed cars. She saw, just briefly, shadows pop out, and then vanish back into cover.

"Ritsu," Mio said, "I have movement in the rubble."

"Mio, Yui, suppressing fire," Ritsu said. She asked, "Azusa, how are the cables?"

There was a final click and a relieved sigh from behind Mio. "Cables are finished, ma'am," Azusa said.

Mio missed anything Ritsu might have said, for she raised her heavy bolter and swept a long burst across the rubble. Yui fired several bursts of her own. Their combined fire chipped away at the rockcrete chunks and twisted metal, sowing new lines of smoke across the rubble pile.

To Mio's dismay, las-fire shot back at them from the sides of the street, one building down from the pile of rubble. "Ritsu! Enemy fire from the north, both sides of the street!" she called.

"I can see, Mio!" Ritsu shouted, ducking as las-beams skirled and sparked off the command throne. "Squad, hang on! Nohi, get us off this hill!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Nohi said.

Mio grabbed ahold of the organ pipe, and said, "Yui, hold on!"

Yui grabbed her own handhold, and just in time. The Exorcist lurched backwards and reversed back down the slope. Mio and Yui were thrown against the organ pipes; Ritsu and Azusa huddled in the command throne, with Tsumugi leaning so far into the throne to hang on she was basically crammed in it as well. Moments later, the Crescendo's treads screamed against the cobbles as Nohi arrested its momentum, and the tank skidded to a stop at the bottom of the slope.

"Nohi, get us out of LOS of that hill," Ritsu ordered. The Exorcist reversed again, and Nohi positioned them behind the corner of the nearest building.

Ritsu stood up in the command throne and put a hand to her ear. She stayed like that for a few moments, and then asked, "Can anyone else hear some kind of music? Nasty weird music, probably heretic music?"

Mio said, "I could hear it on the hill. It was coming from the battle to the west."

There was a general sort of quiet as the squad listened. Over the rumble of the engine, Mio once again could make out the unsettling song echoing over the city.

Ritsu looked back at Mio and met her gaze. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "Are we going to let these heretic saps pollute the good air of this planet with their profane excuse for music?"

"No!" Yui replied. Ritsu's smile returned, and she extended a beseeching hand towards Mio and Yui.

"Are we going to get up and teach those bags of filth a lesson about real music?" Ritsu said.

"Yes!" Yui and Tsumugi chorused.

"And by teach," Ritsu went on, "I mean teach 'em with the business end of the bolter, melta, and holy flamer! Am I right?"

"Absolutely, yes ma'am!" Yui, Mugi, and this time Nohi shouted, without a trace of irony or caution.

Azusa glanced at Mio; Mio gave her a tiny shrug. Ritsu was on one of her rolls, and nothing short of the Canoness or death would stop her.

Ritsu pointed at Mio. "Mio, Mugi! You two are on overwatch! Azusa, Yui, get the drum kit and extra bolters out!"

Mio put two and two and Ritsu together, realized what the answer was, and opened her mouth to desperately try to dissuade her best friend from the worst plan ever. Ritsu beat Mio to it, putting one armoured finger on Mio's lips.

"Mio-chan," Ritsu said sweetly, giving Mio her best soulful eyes look, "you're my best friend, my rock, my sister in the faith. I can't do this without you. Trust me, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't have total confidence we can pull it off." She stared deep into Mio's eyes, and Mio felt happy memories and friendship fuzzies overriding her terror of death by stupidity. "Please, Mio, can you back me up on this?" Ritsu asked.

Mio felt her lips tighten reflexively. She sucked in a huge breath through her nose, and let it out in a gust of a sigh, and forced herself to be calm. Or at least to appear calm. "Ritsu," she said, taking Ritsu's hand and squeezing it, "I trust you. Please don't get us killed uselessly."

Ritsu's grin stretched so wide the corners of her mouth were nearly hidden by her bangs. "That's the spirit, Mio! I knew I could count on you!"

Tsumugi called, "Ritsu, what am I overwatching for?"

"Traitors, heretics, sinners, dregs, vagrants, music critics, and Sister Sakura," Ritsu said, climbing off the Exorcist. "Yui, one side!"

Mio stood up, positioned herself in front of the command throne, and swept the heavy bolter back and forth across the intersection before them. Tsumugi knelt beside Mio, on her left, bolter raised and ready. Yui, Ritsu, and Azusa made several trips to and from the top of the Exorcist, hauling out equipment wrapped in cloth and tarp. Ritsu unwrapped them and began assembling a sturdy-looking drum kit around the command throne. Yui and Azusa began to unwrap extra boltguns and attach them to the oodles of cables Azusa had spent half an hour hooking up.

Mio, still scanning the intersection, saw a half-squad of figures dash towards an open doorway. "Hostiles in the intersection!" she shouted, firing in unison with Tsumugi. Brass casings clanked onto the hull of the Exorcist, and mass-reactive shells gouged new craters around the doorway, and blasted three of the traitors all over the ground before it in a mess of limbs and viscera.

"Keep them down!" Ritsu ordered, her voice muffled by the bass drum she was holding. "'Scuse me," she added, bumping into Mio's backpack as she squirmed by.

Mio swore as her aim was thrown off. A row of saints sculpted on the second floor of the building under fire were obliterated by the misfired bolts. "Ritsu, watch it!" she snapped.

"That's Sister Superior Ritsu, Mio!"

A heretic edged into view, one arm raised, probably holding a grenade. Tsumugi fired and felled him. Mio scanned the intersection, scanned the buildings, saw no hostiles. She listened again. To her dismay, in the near distance, she could hear unfamiliar vehicle engines within a kilometer. The way sound waves bounced around the architecture of the city, she couldn't pinpoint the exact direction, only that the non-Sororitas engine sounds were approaching from the north and east. And there was another noise over that, over even the mass of weapons-fire to the west, the distant hollow roar noise of incoming aircraft.

"Ritsu!" Mio called, "I have unidentified vehicle sounds to the north and east! There are aircraft incoming, from the…the east as well!"

Ritsu appeared to Mio's right. "Vehicles to the north and east, aircraft to the east, got it," she said. She turned around and got back to the drum kit. "Yui! Turn that tom over! Yes, like that!"

Mio saw movement in the windows of the building across the intersection, and aimed her heavy bolter at them. A moment later, she saw a dot of light grey against the black square of the window as the heretic raised his head, and she fired a burst. The window's bottom rim was torn to pieces, and presumably, so was the heretic. The vehicle sounds were getting closer, and the roar of the aircraft was rising steadily in volume.

The milky sky above was suddenly alive with bright yellow streamers of anti-aircraft fire, originating from the west, probably from the traitors' lines. Mio looked up as the roar of the aircraft reached its zenith, and saw multiple angular shapes slash overhead, heading for the traitor's lines. One was caught by the AA shells, and curved into a sharp downward turn, impacting a kilometer or so away with a bass thud and a plume of smoke. Mio caught the fighters' silhouettes right before they disappeared, and saw they were Avenger Strike Fighters.

"Ritsu, the aircraft were ours! Avengers!" Mio said. Moments later, she heard the distant buzz of their weaponry, and the thumps of heavy munitions. She waited and watched the sky, and saw the aircraft reappear, much smaller, already kilometers away, rising back into the sky.

"Super!" Ritsu said. "Azusa, pass me that cable!"

Mio glanced behind her. The drum kit had been set up around the command throne, and now Ritsu, Yui, and Azusa were hooking up the extra boltguns directly to the command throne, so that six boltguns in all now presented their muzzles towards the Exorcist's front. Ritsu was setting up ammo boxes full of bolter feed belts, and loading those into the boltguns. The cables ran from the boltguns to simple pressure triggers on the drums and cymbals. Someone playing a speedy tune on the drum kit could now put out half a squad's worth of small-arms fire.

"Ritsu," Mio said, "I don't even know where to start."

A blush of pride suffused Ritsu's cheeks. "Then neither will the Canoness," she said. She finished loading the last boltgun, and stood up and surveyed her handiwork. "Azusa, Yui, report!"

"I'm done!" Yui said, standing up, overbalancing, and nearly falling backwards off the Exorcist.

"Done, ma'am," Azusa said, staring at the whole assembly around the command throne. "With all due respect, what's the purpose of this?"

"Don't you have eyes?" Ritsu asked, spreading her hands. "I play the drums. The bolters fire. Heretics die to the music of the Emperor. Simple, right?"

Azusa looked worried. "I'm…er…I think the Canoness and the Mechanicus wouldn't see it that way," she said.

"Me, worry about what the cogboys think? Hah!" Ritsu and stepped into the command throne, patting Azusa's pauldron. "All you do with the Mechanicus, Azu-nyan, is butter them up when they help you, and ignore them when they don't." She called over the squad vox, "Nohi, two things before we go. One, do we have flares? Two, how is your gunner at firing on the move?"

"Yes and great, ma'am!" Nohi replied.

"Super!" Ritsu said. She looked over the drum-and-bolter arrangement, seemed to decide it was good, opened up a weapon case, and pulled a pair of drumsticks out. "Nohi, laud-hailers on, twenty percent vox," she ordered. "Testing, one, two…"