Chapter Text
Piper Mclean
Piper leaned against the wall of what had once been a residential hab unit with an inner courtyard. The playground had been reduced to a pile of scrap metal and wood, by the two quad-barreled Hydra anti-air tanks. The parking lot that once held family motor vehicles now served as a vehicle pool and was filled with staff limousines, armored Transports, and even a few chimeras.
Piper stared up into the night sky. The light clouds were bathed dark orange by the burning metropolis below. She ignored the Company's worth of soldiers guarding the facility.
Bright flashes from violent explosions lit up the clouds every few seconds.
It was a warm night, only spoiled by the biting scent of smoke that seemed to cling to everything and the thunderclap of heavy artillery and explosions, rolling over the city every few seconds. Every few minutes or so the roar of turbofans filled the air as fighter bombers and interceptors briefly participated in the battle.
It had been seven years now, she realized. Seven years since she had been forcefully conscripted into the guard after being arrested for partaking in an unsanctioned demonstration over the heavy-handed approach of the Arbites and corrupt officials. Seven years since she had been dragged onto that bus with recruits.
Her las carbine rested across her chest and a las pistol rested holstered on her right thigh. She wore a chest rig over her flack vest, filled with power cells, grenades, and other tools of war. A bayonet and her ballistic helmet hung on an arming belt from her left hip. It was a setup that she hadn't changed since her time in the guard.
Listening to the chatter on the operations channel in her earpiece she grimaced she pulled out a glow stick. After lighting it she inhaled the smoke deeply, trying to force down her anxiety and that off feeling in her stomach. It had gotten better over the years. Back when she had just started as a simple guardsman she had even thrown up and wet herself before going over the top of her first trench. Today she knew that was a physiological response to stress, her body preparing itself for combat.
"That stuff will kill you, you know," a familiar voice greeted her and a woman with a dark pixie cut stepped from the open doorway and walked towards her. Servos whined quietly as the woman's power armor moved with her. She had her bolter snapped to her belt.
"Thalia," Piper greeted the battle sister and held out the glimmering cigarette which the Celestinian accepted with a grin.
"Didn't know you smoked," Thalia grunted and inhaled a lung full of smoke.
She didn't normally, only sometimes, in hours like these.
"Still going sh*t?" she asked.
"Not great, let us pull it that way," Thalia admitted and they stood in silence. The worst part in Piper's opinion was that she couldn't participate in the battle like she would have done only a few years ago. "Got the Cadian 45th Armored staging about five clicks west of here, once they are formed up they'll try to cut the northern pincer," she offered.
Piper wasn't too hopeful. The Imperial Guard, her former employer, had spent the past two pounding the enemy positions with heavy artillery, and precious little to show for apart from thousands of dead and wounded, and terribly little ground gained in return. It was just their sector of the front line that went through the shattered city. While their line held she knew that northwest and southeast for them, the enemy was conducting a pincer movement that threatened to encircle them.
On the bright side, Piper thought to herself, if they got encircled Piper might get a few more combat hours under her belt. In the one month they had been here they had conducted only one raid, and hadn't even fired in anger once."
"You heard anything from Jason?" Thalia asked.
Piper stayed silent. She did not wish to talk about her love life on the job. Especially because she was still trying to be accepted by the Captain and his stormtroopers. Spreading her legs for the pilot in her off time would not help her reputation.
"Loosen up Agent McLean," Thalia chided her.
Piper only shrugged and watched as two large trucks rumbled onto the plaza from the access tunnel and stopped in the loading area after being waved through by the guardsmen watching the gate.
Deciding that she had enough, she tossed the glow stick aside and ground it out under her boot before heading back inside and made her way to the strategium on the first floor. The hallways were busy with guard and munitorum personnel hurrying back and forth between offices.
An inquisitorial badge pinned to her belt and Thalia's power armor, bolter, and power sword guaranteed that none of the guards challenged them, even when they entered the command post itself. The walls were lined with fox units, plotting tables, and cogitators, and filled with hushed chatter. The main holographic table in the center was surrounded by staff officers. Lord General Mars, her own former Colonel, Reyna Ramirez Arellano, of the 12th Aventine Infantry. There was the Colonel of the Valhallan 29th Armored and his adjutant, and her own liege.
The tall, and strikingly beautiful blond stared at the holographic representation of the battlefield with hard gray eyes. A broken city, with allied and enemy positions represented by blue and red icons.
"Third company reporting that they have finished mining hab-zone twenty," Reyna reported after one of her aids whispered something into her ear.
"Very good," the general reported. "Have them retrograde to phase line two and fortify in depth from the phase line back to the Saint Livian road, and link the flanks up with the PDFs there and on the other side with the Valhallens. Have them expect an enemy push within the next twenty-four hours. I want those heretics like fish in a barrel for the Earth Shakers"
"Yes, sir," Reyna replied and snapped at a vox operator from her own regiment. "Specialist, stand by to pass on orders via dispatch."
The general had already continued on to the next task. After making sure her mistress was unoccupied Piper hurried around the Strategium and stood at the woman's side.
"Inquisitor," she greeted Annabeth.
"Back already, I see," she observed, her eyes not leaving the Strategium.
"Has anything changed?" she asked quietly.
"Yeah," Annabeth said. "Just got word that we have strong enemy formations engaging our northern flank," Annabeth summarized. "We are talking division strength here. The line is holding for now, but we are taking heavy casualties," she explained, pointing at the units in question.
Piper whistled. "Yeah, that would explain that mild increase in arty," she muttered. "You think they will manage to encircle us?"
Annabeth shrugged. "Hard to say, though admittedly attrition rates do not seem to be in our favor."
"Do you think we should pull out?" she asked and Annabeth offered her a sideways glare. "Oh don't you start too, Percy has been nagging me for the past two days."
It took a heartbeat to realize whom she was talking about. Then, there were only two people she knew about who called him by his given name, both were present.
"Not that I would ever wish to agree with anything my cousin says," Thalia cut in helpfully. "But we have been here a month now with nothing to show for it."
Annabeth sighed. "Fine," she muttered and keyed her earpiece. "Archangel to Spartan, do you read?" she announced. Piper heard the voice twice, both in her earpiece and from the woman herself.
"Reading you loud and clear Archangel. Over." the deep voice replied.
"Stand by to move out, have the staff pack their things. Be ready to move out at short notice," Annabeth continued, breaking the proper vox protocol that had been drilled into Piper in the guard almost instantly, then technically Annabeth was a civilian.
"Understood Archangel. Should I arrange the extraction of the asset? Over?" the deep voice asked.
"Negative, I have decided on a different arrangement," she decided. "We have lost too much time on this little side quest."
"Affirmative, Spartan out," came the reply, and the channel fell silent.
Then the Inquisitor pulled a datapad from her coat, typed a few things into it, and then pressed her signet ring to the receiver and handed it to Piper. "Take Sister Thalia here and execute this death warrant for our guest," she ordered, her attention already returning to the battlefield itself. " I fear this line of inquiry has come to its conclusion."
Piper almost sighed in relief. "By the grace of the Emperor," Piper replied and both Piper and Thalia signed the aquilla, a salute that Annabeth answered in kind.
The two women hurried out of the command center and took a four-by-four with a canvas roof and sped off the compound and into the stream of military vehicles and fleeing civilians, past checkpoints manned by weary men. tank traps, and rows of Constantine wire. It was a three-minute drive to the stockade, where they were stopped by a brutish woman of a Commissar, a handful of Provosts, and heavily armed Arbitrators.
"Who are you, name and business," the Commissar growled, eyeing Piper and the Battlesister suspiciously as if they might be deserters themselves.
Piper pulled out her wallet and opened it. A dark Iron I was superimposed on a highly polished skull. After a heartbeat, the hidden holographic projects kicked in and the same simple appeared mid-air, spinning slowly as a green projection.
"Imperial Inquisition, we are here to execute a death warrant," Piper announced and held out the datapad from Annabeth.
"Very well," the Commissar growled and waved at the men who pulled the barricade aside and let them park behind the gate.
"I am Commissar Clarisse LaRu," she announced grimly and signed the Aquilla.
Being a former guardswoman Piper snapped to attention and crisply signed the aquilla, a gesture the Commissar in her trench coat and pointed cap, returned gravely. Even Thalia signed the Aquilla, probably uncomfortable not partaking in this display of martial respect.
"I have a firing squad scheduled in fifteen minutes, a bunch of prisoners, two deserts, and one rapist. Do you want to add your charge to the number?" she asked.
"It won't be necessary," Piper assured her.
"Provost Collins," she yelled at one trooper.
"Escort these women to prisoner one twenty-three, they are here to bring her the Emperor's mercy," she barked and a young, pale-looking provost hastily joined them.
"Yes, Commissar," he replied hastily and led them into the building, through even more guarded checkpoints, and then passed endless rows of cells, many filled with glum and sulking creatures.
Their charge was interred in a higher security interrogation chamber, stripped of all clothes and dignity, and strapped down to a surgical table with medical restraints that allowed her to move little more than mere inches. Medical apparatuses were assembled around the prisoner, and a dozen tubes and probes disappeared into her skin.
She had been a beautiful woman once, Piper had to admit, before falling into the hands of the Inquisition. Now her body was covered in blood, strips of her skin having been removed, and neural stimulators driven into her nerves. Her body was reduced to a faintly trembling wreck, her consciousness only maintained by the drugs. The only clothing she wore was a clunky pycher's collar, that had four shaped charges set into it. The moment the woman tried to fall back on Psykana, sensors would pick it up and blow her brains out. Powerful wards were drawn onto the floor around the table.
As they entered the three Interrogrators paused their ministrations as they entered.
"This interrogation is concluded," Thalia announced and Piper handed the head interrogator the death warrant once he had pulled off his bloodied gloves.
"I see," he said quietly and without another word the three hooded men left.
"Freaks," Thalia muttered once they had left the room.
The air was filled with the frantic beeping of a heart monitor, as stimulants forced the prisoner to stay conscious.
She had a tube forced down her throat and looked up at them with the wide panicked eyes of a trapped and tormented animal. The tube served to silence whatever she had to say, she would be forced to endure and would be invited to share her secrets on the interrogator's timetable.
"Medea of the Great Sea," Piper began. "By the will of the God-Emperor and the grace of the golden throne, the Emperor's Holy Inquisition hereby declares you Excommunicate Traitoris and a heretic by intent, action, and association."
At this, the woman's eyes widened even further. It impressed Piper, she had to admit, that after days of torture, she still wished to live. Weaker souls would have begged for death a while ago.
"I have been commanded to execute your death warrant and bring you the Emperor's mercy," Piper continued and pulled her las-pistol and pointed at the prisoner's face. "Due to time constraints, your last words cannot be documented in the archives of the Inquisition. May Imperial Justice account in all balances. The Emperor Protects."
Loud, panicked moans filled the cell, abruptly silenced by a loud bang and a flash of crimson light. A moment later the prisoner's brain exploded out of the top of her skull and splattered across the breathing apparatus and the wall behind it.
"Well, I hereby confirm that she is dead," Thalia replied grimly and promptly sent a progress report back to Annabeth.
The two women left the cell without looking back. They had wasted too much time on this matter already and hastily left the stockade. The night began to go wrong just after they turned the first corner.
They stopped at a cross-section, despite the green light, and let a column of a dozen or so Leman Russ tanks and Chimera's thundering by in the general direction of the front line, and then almost were run over by a medical chimera speeding past them in the direction of the field hospital with lights and sirens.
Finally, they passed the cross-section, and just as the command post was almost in view the world lit up around them with thunder and fury as a high explosive shell struck the ground much too close behind them, a heartbeat before dozens of shells flattened the buildings around them in violent explosions, and tore up the road around them.
