Nothing makes Meraniel Gallo feel good the way being buried in the pews of an Imperial Chapel does.  

 

Even in her youth, she was a continual attendant of the Imperial Church - she would sit, cross-legged and wide-eyed, under the guise of ministers as they extolled the values of the Imperium; service to the Empress Eternal, salvation through action and virtue, sacrifice above all else. She recalled the first time she’d heard the Creed of the First Hound in full, her lips picking up halfway through and joining the gathered mass in psalm, honoring her Most Holy in her words and her actions, tears filling her eyes. 

 

It was a transformative experience - one she carried with her even now, as she entered Aurea’s chapel, abandoned and cold in anticipation of the raid ahead. She was already dressed for combat - so rarely was she not, anymore, especially with the coming violence so prescient in her mind - but such a thing made the venture all the more special; she’d not come before a statue of Saint Thrace in her combat blacks before, especially this statue. The Pieta before her depicted Sartha’s last breaths; held in the arms of Her Grace, the muzzle that she had so nobly worn to keep Her anger from the world unlatched, a gentle thumb on spinning circles in the softness of Her cheek. It was the kind of art that would drive one to their knees and call forth sobs from their throat - but for her in the here and now, it was a space of reverence, and she remained silent as she knelt before it, pressing her forehead against the marble Hound’s calf, whispering, “I request intercession, my Saint.” 

 

There was no answer; no ray of sun through the chapel’s small window (although, she imagined, this was likely due to the base’s shelling at the hands of the rebellion at Aleppo) nor a bolt of lightning to smite her where she stood. So, she continued. “I am…full of fear at the raid ahead, my Saint. Within an hour, our third detachment will strike into the heart of that which you hated so - we will try our hardest to honor your memory, but I am…so scared.” She breathed, a shaky thing. “Is it…normal, to be so afraid? Did you ever know fear?” 

 

Again, no response. It wasn’t as though she expected the marble to shift and answer her pleas; rather, she imagined she would simply know that she was seen, heard, felt. She spoke, again. “I am sure you didn’t, my Saint - you were so strong, so brave. In those uncertain times, how did you know yourself to be just? To be strong enough to carry forth the Imperial Will? Did you ever doubt? Did you ever waver? Or were you so steadfast, guided by Her Grace? So certain of your mission that no occurrence could strike fear into your heart?” Meraniel already knew the truth, of course - nothing had ever broken Sartha Thrace, from the first day she was adorned with Imperial Black to the last day that Ancyor howled, she was an unending paragon of the virtue of the Imperium, the reason that they stood where they did today. 

 

Without Sartha Thrace, Meraniel Gallo would have been like any other girl; picking fruit in some harvest-town, never to sniff importance in the whole of her short life. Without Sartha Thrace, she wouldn’t have been special. 

 

She exhaled; more assured this time. “My lady, I ask that you protect me. I ask that your grace keeps me safe as I seek to carry forth the mission you began, so many years ago. I ask for your miracles as many have before; that no armament may pierce my hide, that my weaponry will reach the hearts of my enemies, that I will be able to bring another into our fold. I ask that you bring me home, so that I may kneel before this vestige again and honor you with my words and deeds. I promise unto you, glory for the Imperium, and five counts of the Memorare if I am to return safely.” She closed her eyes, pressed her forehead against the cold marble once again, and whispered, “This, I swear.” 

 

After a long moment, she stood; stared down upon the Pieta, and she brought herself close, pressed a kiss to the Saint’s cheek, and turned on her heel, making her way toward the armory hall. 

 

As with most Imperial facilities, the intermarriage of faith and fury was integral to even the physical layout of the base - for this reason, the chapel served as a mere offshoot of the hallowed halls of the armory, allowing near-immediate access to the frames contained therein. Meraniel was still buzzing with the Spirit by the time she arrived, and a cold judgment filled her heart as she watched some of her comrades-in-arms adorning themselves in various vestments of the faith they shared. Some trapped jaws behind muzzles and wrapped throats with collars, others painted wicked iconography of tattered flightsuits and curled leashes about the cabins of their machines, and others still chose more distant Saints to deify. To her left, an Archon aspirant was adorned with a crown of crimson light that they sprinkled with blessed oil, while the Sisters of Artemis to her right chanted hymns of protection to one another, encircling their machines as if of one mind. 

 

These gestures, humble as they were, strayed too far from the scripture for Meraniel’s taste. Her faith emanated from the core of her spirit, the beating of her heart - and the shard of Ancyor that hung around her neck. It had been a gift to her grandfather following the Second Imperial Reformation, passed down through the ranks until her father had granted it to her on her departure for the field. She never left home without it - really, it never left her body; she felt hollow in its absence. 

 

Her machine, Gethsemane, was a vicious tool of divine adjudication; a hulking, quadrupedal machine clad in heavy armor, frontward-facing ionized claws that could cleave through any plating they encountered, and a mass-driver cannon that slung tungsten rods like spears from Heaven itself. It was a vanguard - more measurably important than the rank-and-file Dorus that made up the bulk of Meraniel’s detachment largely because it was an ace-hunter, the answer to the rebellion’s overdesigned tools of war. 

 

If one were to appear at Aleppo, as anticipated, she would break away from the main force and tear it to the Earth, rip it apart, and attempt to save its pilot and show them the error of their ways. Meraniel, herself, had claimed five machines so far in her career - by the time she reached the cabin of each, the operator therein had self-terminated. As she considered the potentiality of another encounter ahead, she said a brief prayer to Saint Thrace that she’d be able to bring this one home. 

 

Gethsemane’s maw opened to swallow her up, and she settled in its cabin. She ran through the routine establishment of protocol - a quick diagnostics check and reaction uplink - and collected the little pill vial that she kept to the right of her control levers. From it, she produced a single pill - a green little thing, catching the light in suspended animation as it flowed through it. She wet her tongue, and then lifted it, placing the pill beneath and crushing its casing with a downward motion. As the grit contained therein hit her bloodstream, time slowed, her brain recalibrated, and she was in a paradise all her own. 

 

Stardust tended to do that to a person. 

 

The smell of incense from the chaplains filled her nose, and the chanting of prayer in dead tongue filled her ears, and she was overcome with the Spirit; tears ran unbidden down her cheeks, and a fire burned in her heart. She heard the scattered cries of Doru operators around her screaming responsorials, but her voice remained within her chest - she needed to save her energy.

 

Instead, she locked eyes with one of the many tapestries of Saint Thrace, hands clasped in prayer, dressed in Imperial black, a halo of stars around her crown. Under the influence of the stimulant that rattled around in her skull, she could’ve sworn that those same stars were dancing, a rhythmic up-and-down. She could’ve sworn that the chanting was growing exponentially in volume as her mouth dried itself out entirely. She could’ve sworn that Sartha winked at her, just as she was about to march onward unto the bleak. 

 

All of these potentialities faded from the world as the armory doors opened, and the terrible howl of crashing artillery filled her ears before she’d even crossed the perimeter The Archon lead them forth with a wicked spear that crackled with terrible lightning, and the Dorus followed it onward to the end - through the gates of Hell, white phosphorus and chemical explosive rippling in the air around them. The Archon’s light would protect them, shrouding them in sacred incandescence; Gethsemane was spared its shield, but it had Meraniel’s faith, and that would be enough.

 

It bobbed and weaved through clouds left by exploded ordnance, eyes scanning the battlefield as the unit of Dorus cleared the ground ahead of them, cutting through rebellion defenses as though they were nothing. Things were progressing at a faster-than-expected pace - and Meraniel had to wonder; if two detachments had fallen trying to take Aleppo, why was this so different? Was it possible that the prior units had lost their way; the Imperial Mandate reaved from them? Had the stars not lit the path forward for them as they clearly did tonight? 

 

What was she missing? 

 

She paused, as she found a place to rest - to lower Gethsemane into prowling posture, to eyeball the battlefield, to breathe and clear some of the delirium from her vision. Amidst a field of light, the situation seemed normal - the howitzers firing slugs skyward from behind Aleppo’s reinforced walls, the rebellion emplacements currently being barraged by an unending deluge of autocannon fire, the soldiers atop the walls who seemed to be fumbling with something. She honed in, and her sensors caught it - an infrared beam from a laser designator, painting the Archon. 

 

Then, behind the base; iridescent blue light, the stars in her vision danced around it as if wreathing it, warning her of its presence - and a moment later, the unmistakable crackle of an electromagnetic generator priming before a tungsten rod flew through the air, hitting the Archon head on, toppling the machine dead. There was no cry of fear from the collective Dorus - the starlight painted their path, and their cause was just; no bullets would scar their hides today - but with a heretical vanguard on the field, Meraniel had to act quickly. 

 

She pounced - Gethsemane broke into a dead sprint, plowing through smaller rebellion emplacements, viscera splattering beneath her machine as bounding footfalls crushed bunkers in their entirety. Her target saw her before she could reach it, and bluelight thrusters fired as it leapt back - a railgun projectile glancing her right shoulder, not penetrating the heavy armor that obscured its internal mechanisms. She did not stop, did not slow - for she was just, and she was proper, and she would win. 

 

Her bounding sprint propelled into a leap - into the shroud obscuring the opposing machine, nanite particles clattering against Gethsemane’s hull like bits of hail as they dispersed around it - and she got eyes fully on her target; a limber, wiry thing with two thrusters and a railgun, painted a garish white and gold, a puritanical false prophet. 

 

Surely, Meraniel would show it the error of its ways - Gethsemane’s back legs kicked forth and she crashed into the machine with both claws forward, tearing gouges in its frontal plating, taking it to ground with a wicked tackle. Its thrusters misfired as it tried to escape, but Gethsemane got a good swing in, cleaving one of them and spraying oil over both her frame and the heretic. The other thruster managed a burst as it kicked off of Gethsemane, attempting another close-range railgun shot that went wide as Meraniel pushed in again. 

 

The pilot’s frantic stuttering at close range told her that she needed to keep it here, that she couldn’t let up; it wasn’t like the machine would come willingly, so she’d need to clip the fallen angel’s wings, limbs, armaments - and expose the operator at the core so that she could show them the true light of Her Grace. The machine tried to balance itself as Gethsemane reached a four-post again, before Meraniel slammed her foot into the accelerator, the glimmering nuclear heart of her machine flooding with power, and she ripped forward like a shotgun slug - a cleaving swing from her right arm barely missing the rebel operator - before it fired another close range railgun slug into Gethsemane’s core, shattering its own railgun completely, blowing a significant breach in its hull. 

 

Inert tungsten rods clattered to the ground around it as Meraniel tried to compensate for the sudden loss of weight, watching as her opposition took the opportunity to reload its weapon - and, desperate, she pushed forward and swung again, barely catching the barrel of the railgun as it was loaded, a spare shell jamming a mechanism before the heretic cleared it. It recalibrated with a quickness that surprised her - emboldened by the wound it had delivered, seemingly - but Meraniel’s faith kept her afloat, and she ripped the pill vial open again and crushed another capsule of Stardust under her tongue. 

 

The effect was instantaneous - a doubled dose of Stardust was a potent thing, even for a pilot as accomplished as Meraniel Gallo. Truly, it was as if Saint Thrace herself had wrapped arms around her, as if Her golden curls were touching her cheek, as if she had taken the controls. 

 

Meraniel was renewed. 

 

Gethsemane moved like a brand new beast; tearing trenches in the ground as it ran, scarring the Earth with each movement. The machine opposing it hadn’t anticipated such a shift; rather, it found itself, once again, on the backfoot. It tried to adapt - a point blank shot glanced Gethsemane’s skull, but it was not strong enough to punch through. Another went wide and crashed into a rock formation, allowing Gethsemane to shove the weapon down and cleave an absence in the frontal glass of the cabin. For the brief moment that Meraniel could see the pilot’s eyes, she could tell they were panicked - as they should’ve been, the path of starlight that wove her way was unbreaking, unending, and she would endure

. 

Meraniel’s claws became a storm of steel and lightning and fury - she swung as she moved, entering into the dance with a machine so wholly unprepared for any form of close range combat that it was almost embarrassing. It was a symbol of desperation, she knew; the Rebellion was growing weak, and they’d thrown as many resources at defending Aleppo as the Imperials had at taking it. It had been an impressive stand, but at the end of it all, the Imperial Will was unbreaking. It was the inevitability of a boot crushing an insect - surely, the creature could run and dart about and hope to prolong its existence, but in the grand scheme, the ontological good of the Imperium would tear any fringe revolution asunder - would pluck from its carcass the good and immolate the bad in blessed flame. 

 

Gethsemane’s dance had put a clear timer on the battle - fluid seeped from every open wound in the machine across from it, so she just had to endure until its reactor breathed its last breath - but its own desperation had set in, and as Meraniel tried for a killing blow - it paired, using its railgun as a buckler. Gethsemane was stunned, stumbling, and the railgun held by its opposition was brought to bear, Meraniel staring through her viewport at the tungsten projectile embedded in the barrel. 

The stars went out. If she was to die, she prayed it was painless.

 

Then, the railgun crackled - the electromagnetic generator clicked to life, and then died - no blue light shining through. A smile so wide that it tore at the corners of her mouth stretched across her face - her intercession had been heard, Saint Thrace had saved her. 

 

The stars lit up in the sky once again, and in one swift, open-claw swipe, Gethsemane shoved the weapon’s barrel down and cleaved the front of the cabin open with all of its force. Legs gave out, and the machine crumpled - and before it could go anywhere further, Gethsemane stomped both of its lower limbs off at the hip. 

 

Meraniel acted quickly; she would not lose her quarry. 

 

She collected her sacramental caliver in one hand, and the vial of Stardust in the other as she punched her cabin’s emergency release, Gethsemane’s maw opening to loose her unto the world below. She landed on her knees and rolled, bringing herself up as her boots crushed shattered glass and polymer beneath. The luminescence of the stars had centered around this point; a guiding beacon, a symbol of hope. She could barely keep the smile from her lips as she reached the cockpit, finding the blasphemer therein still alive - still breathing. Her right wrist, bent at an awful angle, had been reaching for her own service weapon - Meraniel holstered her own and threw the rebel’s away.

 

“How foolish of you. Didn’t anyone ever tell you suicide was a sin?” Meraniel breathed. The operator glared at her.

 

“Fuck you. I-I won’t surrender.” The pilot spat. 

 

“I know.” Fueled by methamphetamine and religious fervor, Meraniel approached the cockpit fully, undoing the latches that held her opposition in place - before she yanked the girl’s neural uplink out without a care in the world for her pain. The girl cried out in agony, and Meraniel scooped her up. “You don’t need to surrender - foolish little things like you don’t know the way. You couldn’t possibly understand what your eyes have never seen, your ears have never heard - but I will show you.” 

 

She opened the vial, and the girl clamped her mouth shut, shaking her head in panicked desperation. The usage of stardust on captured operators had been discussed for some time - and for an uninitiated pilot, the initial dose was psyche-obliterating; it ripped through old neural pathways with the abandon of a fist through drywall, opening new ones and rerouting the brain accordingly. Even the most proficient of the Imperium’s scientists weren’t exactly sure how it worked; rather, it served its purpose, to open unprepared minds to the divine truth of the world, to seed the brain with nodules of perpetual faith, to ensure the success of their sanctified mission. Resultant doses were less intensive; once the mind was saturated with Stardust, each following incursion was much, much easier on it. 

 

Meraniel rolled her eyes, and stuffed the third pill into her mouth, careful not to shatter it as she pressed her lips to the rebel pilot’s, her hand blocking the woman’s nostrils and cutting off her air, forcing her to open her mouth on instinct - allowing Meraniel’s tongue wedged the pill into the rebel’s mouth, crushing it against her teeth. She pulled back before any more of the substance could get into her own bloodstream, and held the girl’s jaw shut so that she couldn’t spit, couldn’t get rid of it; a gentle, green-tinged foam ran up from her mouth as her eyes went wide, then - empty pools of void, wide as the night sky.

 

After another moment, she let the heretic’s mouth open, and a line of drool dripped onto her coveralls. She sat with her, petting the other woman. “Good, right?”

 

If she heard Meraniel, she didn’t acknowledge it; her eyes stared skyward, and Meraniel joined her. Constellations danced under a shroud of smoke and ash, courtesy of a hundred fires burning within Aleppo - the cheers of an Imperial raiding party loud in the air. 

 

Victory had been theirs. 

 

In the chill of the night, Meraniel noted her new companion shivering; she pulled the jacket she wore over her flightsuit off, and wrapped it around the girl’s shoulders before she hugged her close. 

 

“The stars…” The girl whispered, and Meraniel looked to her, as if beckoning to continue. “S-so…pretty.”

 

“I know.” Meraniel said, gently, a smile curling on her lips as she pulled knots out of her hair. “You’ll get to see so many stars, won’t you?”

 

A gentle nod in response was the last gesture they exchanged before preparing to return to base.

 

-

 

While the rest of Aurea was consumed with righteous fervor and celebration, Meraniel Gallo found herself wandering the halls. She’d had a few drinks, accepted a few congratulations - but before long, the ceremony itself felt excessive, and she would not so easily forget that gluttony was a sin just as desperate as rebellion. She considered her options; she could return to her bunks and sleep, or she could head to processing and check in on her prey, or seek companionship in the quieter areas of the base. 

 

Or, she could end where she always did - in the empty chapel, once again. Now, some of the candles had been lit - honorariums to the Archon driver, some of the fallen Doru operators. She said a prayer of passage for those memorialized, and, after confirming that she was the only one present in the space, she knelt before the Pieta once again.

 

“My lady.” Meraniel whispered. “You saved me. Y-your intercession, it worked, and I was able to bring one home - for the first time in my career, I brought someone into the light.”

 

There was silence. Meraniel felt foolish; of course Saint Thrace knew this, it had been by Her hand that such a thing had happened. She leaned in closer - once again, pressed her cheek against the marble thigh of the dying Thrace, inhaling as deeply as she could. 

 

She thought back to the cockpit; moments after her second dose of Stardust, when she’d felt Sartha’s embrace around her. Could it have been more than the truth of Stars pouring into her skull? Could it have been the spirit of her Lady piloting Gethsemane alongside her?

 

“My s-saint…” Meraniel asked, quietly. “...were you there, with me, tonight? Was that why we were able to vanquish this stronghold? Was it you who guided my hand more properly; more than in intercession, but in physicality? D-did you, uhm…” She blushed, her cheeks growing warm; such a conversation bordered on blasphemy, to put words in the mouth of a Saint, but she was so moved by the spirit that she continued. “...did you choose me?” 

 

Again, there was no response, but Meraniel felt something like understanding germinating deep in her bones, a gift from above, a new truth. Saint Thrace had chosen her, had picked her in the same way Her Grace had picked Sartha so long ago. She felt herself swell with meaning, with purpose, and tears spilled forth from her eyes once again; tears of joy rather than overstimulation, tears of love and light and everything good in the world. 

 

“I understand, my Lady. I-I understand.” She smiled; a genuine, unforced thing as she leaned her cheek against Sartha’s calves. “I get it, n-now; you’ve waited for so long, but I am here..I l-love you.” 

 

It went unanswered, but there was no need; she felt Sartha’s very presence in her soul, felt Her being flowing through her. She had been waiting for someone with faith as pure as Meraniel’s; not those degenerates who clasped their jaws with muzzles, not those profligates wretches who sung the name of Leinth Artemis above all others; no, by the shard of Ancyor that hung around her neck and a devotion so pure it could rival sunlight, Sartha Thrace had chosen Meraniel Gallo as Her material emissary.

 

It was a joy so virulent that it filled her bones with static, and she needed release, needed something - so she took it; with eyes lidded, she imagined Sartha’s hand coming down from the Pieta, sliding over her knuckles, clasping fingers, hand-over-hand working together into the waistband of her undone flightsuit. 

 

She blushed, again; was her Lady really going to demand this of her here and now? 

 

But, she realized; her embarrassment and shame didn’t matter, not anymore; she was Sartha Thrace’s, and that was the most important thing in all existence. She worked her fingers against her moistened cunt, and she shuddered, she moaned, she whimpered. 

 

And as she reached climax, she took her Lady’s name in vain for the first time.