Chains of Faith

Still editing this one…standby!

Retreat was not a word Thudboota knew. Then again, Thudboota knew vanishingly few words. Even if the word existed in his limited lexicon, he had no intention of growling it. They were facing humies. And humies were puny and weak. Thudboota was a nob. Big and strong. His grasp of logic was even shakier than his vocabulary, but big and strong was certainly greater than puny and weak.

Palatine Honna Zhen would never tell her Sisters. They already thought her a zealot. Already worried her fervor would get them all killed. Often she wondered if they would believe her, and for that alone wanted to share the truth, but she didn’t. Wouldn’t. Besides, it wasn’t for them. When the Saint speaks to you, that is for you and you alone.

They say the Emperor has a plan for everyone. Lynetta didn’t know if that was true. There were a lot of things Lynetta didn’t know. What she knew was this: The Emperor had a plan for her, and it was a good plan. She hefted the heavy bolter, squeezed the firing stud. A steady stream of thuds. Concussive knocks pushing into her body as she rained gyro-jet retribution upon the enemies of the Mankind.

She felt a traitor for even thinking it. This wasn’t Sister Lynretta Lon’s first squad. Nor her second squad. The first she’d left shortly after joining. A reshuffling of personal as the Adeptus Ministorum was so wont to do. She wasn’t there long enough to form any bonds. Not so with her second squad, The Iron Thorns. They, under the steady hand of Sister Superior Korbilee, had been a family.

To ask if she possessed faith was beyond rhetorical—it verged on heretical. Sister Honna Zhen, Adepta Sororitas, Palatine in the Order of Our Martyred Lady was a creature of faith. Faith was the pith of her being. The chain binding the flesh in her body, the thoughts in her mind, and the fire within her heart. But that faith was with the God Emperor of Mankind, and not with Second Platoon, 33rd Battalion, Yelondion Planetary Defense Force—the very platoon, who were supposed to link up with Honna’s squadron just over the following ridge line.