Go resealed her helmet and rocketed upriver. Jakada raced to keep up with her. Not lost in song now, she could clearly hear the closeness of this gunfire. She used the beat of her wings to boost in leaps and bounds while remaining under the treeline. The other dam garrisons saw only a blur of her as she passed by, more akin to a stone skipping across the surface of water than someone sprinting.

  She approached the smoking dam now. Some of the laity were already crumpled in pools of blood, surrounded by the splinters of their shields. Stubbers sprayed wantonly into the bush, enough to suppress if not hit anything. It was enough cover for the conflagrationists to close the distance and hose the woodline with flame from their burners. Again, unlikely to reach the enemy, but enough to block the view and smoke them out.

  Go darted into the forest. While the inexperienced would be uncomfortable utilizing their jumppack under canopy and around briar, controlled bursts saw her seemingly glide around the trees. She did not land on the ground, instead placing footfall on bark for the fraction she needed to adjust her angle before launching off it. Jakada finally did his job of completing a scan for the ratlings; 20 of them on her right, loosely grouped in squads of five, scattered and scrambling to new positions in the same general direction. Go held her arm out to catch on a truck so that she could swing around and launch into the new direction.

  Regardless of their micromelic legs, no running would prevent a zephyrim from gaining on you once you were in her sights. The ratling had not seen her, only heard the muffled roars of thrusters getting louder and louder. Still, he stamped his little legs as hard as he could. He was a backline stashmaster, his pdw meant to ward off cybermastiffs and cavalry, not whatever tank was barreling toward him now. The muffled roaring continued to grow until it burst free to be heard clearly from behind him. He was snatched up by his scalp by the roaring thing, his hands scrambling for what grabbed hold of his hair and hairy feet swinging helplessly for purchase. His panic only grew as he accelerated toward a tree. He shook. He cried. He prayed. His skull splattered against the bark with his corpse slumped in the dirt.

  The next ratling voxed out the incoming threat before he, too, was impaled on the blunt side of a tree. The three members of the squad left began to close together. The spotter of them was hoisted by his leg, and used as a flail to bash against the other two, then discarded as a broken tool next to the mangled corpses of his brethren, that he would join in death soon enough. They were not as diseased as many Sinui, or even compared to the average Hanyangian, but their mutation was a birthsin contemptible all its own.

  The remaining squads that received the vox converged on each other; two of them at least. The second squad went dark just short of the rally point. The third and fourth banded together into a bundle of battle rifles. Their traps had been spray-painted by some hoodlums, but anything that limited movement of this enemy was worthwhile. They had been told to retreat this way should they encounter resistance, but this was more than the ragtag militia and mercenaries that command had reported.

  Then the roar stopped. The battle rifles scanned their perimeter. Sniper rifles were shouldered in favor of pistols and knives. Vox-thieves searched for signs of movement in the last known direction: rustling bushes, crunching leaves, squelching mud, something other than silence.

  From behind, a servoskull emerged. They all turned to face a flash of light that blinded them. Without sight, the roar grabbed hold of their hearts unabated. They turned toward the roar with spots in their eyes to be forward with the towering marble statue that crashed upon their lines. Those at the center were stomped into paste or bashed into pulp. Some who tried to run from the melee found the snapshot of bolts pierce their backs and detonate into bursts of gore. Three did manage to escape and took aim, only to be rammed by the servoskull they forgot was buzzing about. By the time they shooed it off, one of their jaws was liberated from its hinges and replaced the brow of another. The last one committed the only valuable act a heretical mutant could do in its worthless life.

  This was too easy. As appreciated as the heretic taking care of himself was, Sinui agents should be more disciplined than this, more organized. Not that it would change the outcome, but these rejects put up nary a fight. Perhaps that’s why they were sent to take on laity. Anything more would be sending them to die.

  She leaned out of the way of a tankstopping round that went on to cleave a tree behind her, drew her pistol at her hip to return fire, and beat her wings backward to put some forest between her and the shooter. Grapnel hooks came from the sides and rappelled tiny, furry men from all angles. The volume of fire from PDW’s raked across her armor in search of any weakpoint. They released their grapnel launchers to roll out of the way of her swings. One unlucky one that was skating across ground level met his momentum against her greave. Another was caught by the throat, did not hesitate to pull the string connected to the bridle around his vest, and was tossed aside before his explosion could engulf her entire.

  Six of the ratlings tumbled around her when an anti-tank bullet axed another tree. The lesser bullets of battle rifles and sniper rifles followed. Jakada kept track of the scurriers while Go crouched low.

  She picked up the dropped pdw and sprayed it as she lunged toward the ratlings close to her. They scattered, but more grapnel wires speared out around her. They hung there instead of rappelling in. Her gauntlet was enough to chop them free, but that entanglement allowed a battle rifle to score her pauldron and let the scurried get away. She grabbed a wire and wretched toward her, the ratling pulling his string only to be punted to the origin of other wires. After the detonation, more wires went slack. Little consolation, as the tempo of rifles suppressed her from ever distancing scurriers that Jakada was chasing.

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  “FOR THE EMPEROR! SERVE THE SISTER!”

  Jakada shared his pict-feed. The ratlings were set upon by howling laity, who flailed their bludgeoning implements and wantonly fired guns. They had abandoned their post to sally out into battle. Hammers and bullets bled the ratlings nicely, and burners cast a net flame under which no scurrying could save the little bastards from incineration.

  Go had already launched forth when the rifleline cut through the laity. The laity counter-fired, both sides shooting near blind through the flames and smoke. The most zealous faithful sprinted forth, their zeal carrying them heedless toward the bullets chunking their flesh and tripwires unleashing traps of explosives, swinging logs, and spiked pitfalls.

  Their sacrifices would not go to waste, as Go was upon the gunline. Bunched up as they were, they turned from their iron sights and scopes to see the bright maw of a charged plasma pistol raised at them from above. The beast spat a ball of hatred that seared its way across the air and consumed the gunline in a flash pyre. Those not vaporized choked on the burning oxygen in between the screams of pain from charred flesh.

  The plasma pistol was held to the side as it vented heat. Go picked up a spare battle rifle and finished off the stragglers that weren’t dying fast enough. Jakada assisted the laity in pursuing more grapplers that had lain in wait. No sign of any bipod-mounted anti-tank or material rifle. Could it have been vaporized with the rest of them?

  The familiar crack of the tankstopper activated her reflex; the bullet grazed the side of her helm as she counter-fired bolts from the hip. She glided through the forest in an arc towards her target, the speed and angle too winding for a mounted gun.

  Wire mesh netting sprang out, she dug her heels in and leaned back to brake, only to snap a trip wire that swung logs. She ducked in front of a camouflaged mine that burst, the shrapnel fleking the armor but nonetheless tossing her into a tree and rattling her bones. Disoriented as she was, she had the wherewithal to prone and pull around the root collar before the next shot felled the tree. She caught her breath behind the stump, shrouded by crown leaves and shrubbery, but also giving the shooter time to reload as well.

  Her helmet rose from the bush, and the heavy caliber caved it on impact, cracking the lenses and sending the empty can tumbling while the zephyrim launched out. Jakada had recorded the origin, and she was rocketing straight towards it. She held her hand in front of her exposed head, the dorsum plate deflecting stubber pellets after the shooter abandoned their rifle. Another trap net sprang up between the trees, and she vaulted over it with a beat of her wings, the second beat streaking her down like a comet upon the shooter.

  She landed in the mud, having torn off an arm already larger than a ratling. The cloaked man was on his knees, clutching his shoulder stump and biting his lower lip, both futile efforts in stifling his bleeding and crying.

  “So it was you, huntsmarshal.” Go tossed the arm aside while Jakada scanned for more threats, “before you die, would you like to repent for your sins, traitor?”

  Green smoke had risen as the distant din of battle calmed to a murmur. His intelligence had otherwise been sound. The huntsmarshal grunted as he stomached his pain.

  “The Emperor has taken enough from me. But I ‘spose he always wants more, doesn’t he?”

  “The Emperor asks what we can afford to give, a fraction of a fraction of what he has given us.”

  “He stole more than I had to give. You stole more than I had to give.”

  “I?” Certain they were alone, she approached him.

  “My wife was ‘inspired’ by sisters who saw her as less than dirt. To honor her ‘sacrifice’, they took our son too.”

  “To serve and die are the highest honors anyone can have. In the militias, in the choristers, even the lowest can give their lives.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you already know that. Why bother asking me?” She went under his hood and pulled his head back by a fistful of hair, forcing him to meet her eyes as his neck was bared.

  “To know if you can be redeemed.” Her free hand sliced open his throat before she threw him to the ground. “You cannot. Where your family protects life and soul, you sow death and destruction, shaming their legacy. Be thankful that you only die for your crimes.”

  His remaining hand wrapped around his neck, just as futile in closing this wound as it was with his shoulder. She listened to his gurgling gasps and watched him writhe and seize as the blood from both injuries pooled out beneath him. Killing Sinui vermin was duty, no different than a cleaning chore, but the death of traitors, especially by one’s own hand, was something to savor. She crouched close to watch the final moments when the light left his eyes and the last drops of blood dripped dry.

  Yes, the libation of traitor blood was something to celebrate. She sat on both knees and held the aquila above her heart.

  The emperor is our guiding light,

  A beacon of hope for humanity in a galaxy of darkness.

  As we serve Him,

  He is our greatest servant.

  As we pray to Him,

  His thoughts are only for us.

  And in the dark when the shadows threaten,

  The Emperor is with us,

  In spirit and in fact.