Chapter 2

Irena stared at the blasphemous desecration of the Emperor’s image. Someone had smashed the icon on purpose and drew that horrible symbol.

She drew her plasma pistol and began looking around.  There was no evidence as to who did this or when.  So she walked from shrine to shrine looking for signs of desecration. 

Three other shrines had been vandalized.  Each one had that symbol. 

No one was about to question or interrogate and no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find any evidence.  All she could do was take a photo of the symbol using her helmet’s camera.

Irena went back to the convent and hung her power armor up on the wall. Then she put her pistol and sword in the rack.

Investigation was not her strength.  She didn’t even know where to begin.  The Prioress would know what to do.  But she wasn’t here. 

She wasn’t an ornament; she was a weapon.  She needed to be pointed in the right direction so she could destroy the enemy. 

Sleep didn’t come easily that night and she woke up earlier than usual.  Whatever her strengths were, she wasn’t clever enough to figure this out on her own.  She needed some way to catch the heretics in the act or track them down.  Perhaps some servo skulls monitoring the different shrines?

The only clue she had was the symbol. 

She knew nothing of symbols, but Sister Honoria did.  Diologus were trained in symbols and obscure codes. 

Honoria wasn’t in the scriptorium.  She probably wasn’t up yet.  So Irena went to her room and opened the door. It was still dark inside but the light from the hallway illuminated the tiny room. There was a sleeping form in the bed. 

“Wake up, Sister Honoria!” 

She kicked the bed with her booted foot. 

“Huh?”

Honoria sat up and rubbed her face.  She could hear Honoria’s red cyber eyes adjusting to the dark.  Flesh eyes were too weak to cope with the constant reading and studying the Diologus had to do so most opted for machine eyes.  That way they could also capture images in their computer memory. 

“Wake up, Sister Honoria.  I need your help,” Irena said. 

Honoria moved her feet to the edge of the bed and placed them on the cold, stone floor.  Her white hair in a bob was sticking up at odd angles and her face was covered in marks from where she had been sleeping on it.    

“What’s going on?”

“I need you to look at this.”

She held up her crude drawing of the symbol.

Honoria’s brow furrowed as she leaned in closer to inspect it. 

“Is this important?  It’s only 0400, you know, sister.”

“Can you tell me what it means?”

Honoria’s red mechanical eyes peered at the piece of paper for a moment.

“I don’t know,” Honoria said.  “Let me do some research and get back to you.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“But I…I don’t have it in my memory.  I have to see if it’s recorded somewhere else,” she said, wincing a little. 

“Very well, but I expect you to hurry.” 

“I will, Sister Axilla.” 

Irena left to let the Diologus get dressed.  There was no telling how long it would take Honoria to come up with an answer, so she had some time.  She hated having time.  Spare time meant that something wasn’t getting done. 

She went and had breakfast in the empty cafeteria where there’d normally be hundreds of sisters.  Rows of wooden benches and tables sat in lines and the area where the cooks normally were was filled only with an auto dispenser that served instant food.  The place felt like a tomb. 

Afterwards she checked on the maintenance servitors, read some scriptures, prayed, walked the perimeter of the convent and read some more.

It wasn’t even midday yet. 

Irena took off her left glove and looked at her machine hand.  Everything felt normal with it.  She had basic tactile function, no glitches in the motors, but sometimes it felt a bit sluggish.  No point in putting it off.  She had to go see the Mechanicum adept. 

She went to the armory and as soon as she opened the doors she heard the sound of heavy machinery and a horrible drilling sound, like the shriek of a tone of twisting metal. 

Irena stuck her head in and looked around.  In the far corner the Adept was working.  Her backpack had several servo arms, one of them was holding a giant piece of metal while another one equipped with a plasma torch was cutting it into two.  All Irena saw from the rear was the servo pack with six arms that reminded her of some sort of insane insect and the dark red robes of the Mechanicum. 

She couldn’t remember the Adept’s name.  She tried not to get close to heretics, even sanctioned ones.  Why Terra permitted these engineers and mechanics to serve a false religion was beyond her.  But, she’d get into serious trouble if she shot one of them, so she had to tolerate them for now. 

“Adept, I need you to look at my arm!” She shouted over the sound of cutting metal. 

The Tech Priest stopped what she was doing and turned to look at her.  Her glowing green eyes, one large and the other a cluster a three, stared at her for a few moments.  The only flesh she saw on the female Tech Priest was the lower half of her face.  One arm was a normal machine arm similar to what Irena had, the other looked more like a mess of cables, clamps and tools.  Her eyes and everything above was machine.  She didn’t want to guess at what was under the robes. 

“Sister Axilla, what may I do for you?”  The Adept asked in a monotone voice. 

“I need you to look at my arm.  It’s acting odd.”

She held up her cyber arm to show the adept. 

“Define, odd.” 

“Not as responsive as it should be at times.” 

“Necessary calibration is most probable.”

“Well then, let’s do a necessary calibration.”

The female adept motioned towards a work bench that was meticulously neat.  Every tool and shelf was in its proper place.  With the machine way these Mechanicum people operated she didn’t doubt that everything was in its most efficient place. 

The adept motioned for her to place her arm on the workbench.  Irena complis ed.  Then one of the metal tentacles came up and attached itself to Irena’s arm.  The woman looked at the arm without a hint of expression. 

“Good news or bad?”  Irena asked. 

“Neither.  What is, simply is.”  

She was starting to sound like the old prioress before she died.  She mumbled fatalistic ramblings all the time. 

“Something is troubling you,” the adept said. 

“Why’d you say that?”

“Your body’s algorithms are chaotic.”

Irena had no idea what that meant and didn’t care. 

“Can you fix it?”

“Already calibrated.  But this model of cybernetic limb will continue to experience data corruption if the biochemical signals it receives are sporratic and contradictory.  What troubles you?”

“Nothing.”

“I can tell by your increased heartbeat and dilation of pupils that you are lying.”

This heretical machine woman was starting to annoy her.  The last creature that annoyed her received a bolter round in the face. 

“It’s nothing.  I just found some desecrated shrines to the Emperor.”

“Where?”

“In the city.” 

“Desecrated how?”

“Smashed.  There was also graffiti of a symbol I didn’t recognize.” 

“Symbol?  Did it look like this?”

The tech priest lifted her human shaped hand and a holo projection appeared above it showing the circle with the three marks through it. 

“By Terra!  Where have you seen that before?