Chapter 1

Sister Irene Axilla sat in the chapel of the convent of Thracia Prime and lit the fifteenth candle.  Fifteen days since the entire Order of the Ebony Fist left on campaign to purge rebels from the world of Tacitus Segundus. 

They had drawn lots and she had come up short.  It was her lot to stay at the convent and take care of the place while the Abbess and all others were gone. 

Fifteen days of doing nothing worthwhile.  Fifteen days down and at least a year to go. 

The convent of Thracia Prime had never felt so empty, so devoid of life.  What had been her home for twenty five years was now a collection of gray stone walls. 

Fifteen days and she was ready to kill something.  

She stood up from where she had kneeled in front of the alter of St. Augustina and brushed her robes off. 

This was ridiculous.  She had just been promoted to Sister Superior, in charge of a Retributor squad and should be out there fighting the heretic.  Instead she was praying and meditating and making sure the servitors clean the convent while the Order was away. 

Of course it was holy work and an honor to serve the Emperor, but some had callings to serve in different ways.  Her calling was to stab any heretic, mutant or xeno in the face with her chain sword. 

“Patience,” Abbess Placidia told her before she left.  “It is your calling.  It is no coincidence that you were chosen to stay here.”

Not a coincidence; a mistake.  Certain sisters had the humor to maintain an empty convent.  Irena did not.  This was not why the Emperor brought her into the fold of the Order.  She was made for combat, not…whatever this was. 

She reached down and unholstered her plasma pistol, a gift for her newly earned rank.  The weight was different than the bolter she was used to. She liked the heaviness and power of the bolter.  The bolter was also as reliable as the setting of the sun.  The plasma pistol was temperamental at best.  It did not seem a promotion to her. 

She wanted to shoot something with it; something that needed shooting. 

Still, the convent wasn’t completely empty.  There were a hand full of new Sisters Repentia and a few non-combatants left, but she hardly knew them.  The Repentia were the survivors of a squad and they were being punished for cowardice.  They had full Soriatas training but they hadn’t finished their purification so they hadn’t left on campaign.  Sometimes she would hear their screams late at night. 

She passed by the scriptorium where the Diologus, Sister Honoria was working.  Irena glanced in and saw the woman bent over a pile of scrolls.  A servitor skull was hovering above her taking pictures of whatever she was working on.  The tall woman seldom left her scriptorium and preferred the company of dusty books.  Her way of serving the Emperor was with scholarly pursuits.  That was fine, but it would have been torture for Irena. 

The other sister left was a Hospitilar that worked mostly with the nobles.  They needed one Hospitilar left or the nobles would do nothing but complain.  She was usually off at the palaces of the ruling class.

The only other person left in the convent was a Mechanicum adept.  Only females were allowed within the walls so they had a female adept to work on their equipment.  It was too much work for one inexperienced adept so the piles of broken down things kept accumulating.  She had to go see the adept soon.  Her cybernetic arm needed recalibration. 

The cyber arm was a reminder of the power of artillery during the cleansing of Patimos IV.  The explosion had thrown her into the air and when she had landed she had been missing an arm.  She still had her bolter though so she continued the fight.

Somehow she found herself by the door to the Paleastra of arms.  Some target practice could do her good; providing the plasma pistol didn’t explode in her face. 

She went into the training room and had the servitor move the plasteel target back to fifty meters.  It was a thick chunk of metal that could take a few hits from plasma.  She’d have to turn the setting down to avoid blowing the target up before she managed to improve.

She gripped the pistol tightly in one hand and then brought the other around the other hand, with her thumb pointing forward.  Taking aim down the sights she held her breath and squeezed the trigger in a slow, smooth manner. 

The plasma pistol flared and there was the bang of the sudden heat difference as the plasma super heated the air around the blast.  Her shot hit high and to the right. 

It wasn’t a bad trigger at least. 

She fired until the plasma coils were spent and the temperature warning light was flashing. 

It didn’t have the visceral harshness of a bolter and somehow didn’t feel as satisfying as the heavy projectile weapon.

Shame.

She then made her way to the almost empty armory.  Only a handful of weapons and vehicles remained and most of those were in need of repair. 

The black armory door slid opened revealing the vehicle bay and the weapon lockers on the far side. 

An engineless rhino sat beside an immolator with no tracks. A penitent engine sat in the corner in a heap and various parts and pieces she didn’t recognize covered the rest of the armory floor.  The lights were clear and bright in here, unlike the darkness that pervaded in the rest of the convent. 

She walked over to the lockers and racks and found a spare plasma batter.  She changed it out and put her used battery in the recharger.  At least she wouldn’t run out of ammo during the year.  She had a feeling she’d be at the firing range often.

Irena made her way to her cell where her armor hung on the wall.  Her Sabat pattern helmet with the white visor now had a fleur de lis on top.  She ran her gloved hand down the new ornament.

That’s all it was; an ornament like her.  She decorated this convent but did nothing in useful.      

She opened up the book of Flavius Erobolis and began reading.  At times the scriptures gave her comfort and guidance

But not tonight. 

She had to do something.  Heresy and treachery were out there, not in this empty convent.  Her sisters were purifying the galaxy and she was stuck in a cell. 

Ornamentation.  But she was not meant to be an ornament.

Saying a word that was beneath her, she jumped up off her bed and began putting her armor on.  She holstered her pistol, strapped the chainsword on her back and donned her helmet.  The displays in the helmet’s vision appeared, the targeter icon lay active in the middle of the display.

Sister Irena wasn’t going to sit idly by while the world of Thracia Prime degenerated into heresy.  The main force of sisters were gone, but by the Emperor she was still here. 

She marched out of the main convent doors and into the frigid air of the winter night.  The immense town square lay before her, the fountain depicting one of the High Lords of Terra was shut off so the pipes wouldn’t freeze. 

The glow globes illuminated the square but nobody was here.  That was because criminals and heretics performed their deeds in the darkness.  That was where she had to go. 

Irena began walking towards one of the alleys, with no idea where she was going.  The Emperor would guide her. 

The rubber soles of her armored boots didn’t alert anyone to her presence and her helmet switched to the grey vision to allow her to see in the dark. 

She walked through the narrow side streets of the small, crowded city.  Thracia Prime was small, solitary city whose only purpose was to keep the mine of adamantium going. 

At one time there were plans for this world, but somehow in all the bureaucracy the world had been forgotten. It was just one, miserable city that was freezing at night and filled with soot during the day. 

The local garrison could only do so much and their attentions were usually divided.  With the Sisters gone no one was there to watch for corruption. 

The side streets had closed doors and few windows.  What windows there were, were boarded up and bared.  Evidence of fear.  No Imperial citizen should have to live in fear. 

Now that Sister Irena Axilla was on duty they would have no more reason to fear. 

Then she saw something that made her stop.  She looked at it for a few moments before turning and walked towards it. 

On the corner of a building was a shrine to the Emperor.  Only the icon that was normally there was on the ground and shattered into pieces.  Where the statuette once stood was a crudely painted symbol of some kind.  It looked like a circle with three lines crossing through at different angles.

The color of the symbol looked like dried blood.