It was the Emperor who cast unto Man his light, his angels, and so too it was the Emperor ascendant who cast unto Man his daughters. May it be they who shall bring his light to his domain.

- Mathias [1:1-3] Testament Luminus. 

-//-

"Fix Sarissas!" ordered Mirabel, her voice booming throughout the hall. At once Rosetta and every woman around her drew their bayonets and fixed them under their bolter's barrel.

The repeated clicking of heavy gears turning and ticking is heard from the assault ramps, triggering a flush of adrenaline in Rosetta's veins as air-tight locks unlocked, one after the other. A sudden thud and every assault ramp dropped to the floor. There they saw it and relished their challenge. An open field through a ruined park and an imposing line of buildings set alight by rampant fire on the other side.

In an instant, an ocean of Silver, beige and gold flooded out of the lander. Shadowy figures grovelled in the street as battlecries, carried into the heavens by hundreds of female voices, reverberated out into the battlefield, ringing out amidst the thunderous storm of war. Energy beams of red and blue blazed through the blackened night sky through the air as projectiles flew about engulfed in vicious fireballs of yellow and green. Fires raged and the land crumbled.

The Order of Illumination charged through the open land as one great tidal wave. Rosetta herself ran along her determined Sisters, committing herself fully to every step, maintaining a fast pace over stone and grass. Lorraine held her sword out, driving her squad ever onward with her presence. Sister Gloria opened fire into the distance at some unseen target. Sisters Cornila, Cassandra and Petra too all sped ahead of Rosetta falling into formation.

Heart pumping, legs thumping, every breath taken, paced and carefully controlled. Rosetta spoke not a word as she revelled in every sensation. The spirit, the passion, the crimson rush of war, by the emperor these were the golden moments she lived for. Running shoulder to shoulder through the great crucible of combat with her fellow sisters fighting at her side; the reward of immaculate glory ever awaiting them on the other side.

The world shuddered as shockwaves battered against sororitas armour. Mortar rounds fell from the darkness of the sky, screaming to high heaven before slamming into the earth in ferocious detonations, kicking up dirt, stone and steel, showering the Sisters in a hail of shrapnel. Indomitable, the Sisters waded through the storm.

The deep thud of autocannons roared a thousand promises of death. Sisters throughout the charging mass of the faithful tripped over and dropped dead. Fist-sized holes, blown into their bodies, spraying their innards everywhere. Lasfire surged down at the Sisters in a glorious display of red light, riddling their ranks with countless laser beams. Unflinching, unrelenting they charged ever onwards as one.

Rosetta looked ahead, landing step after step on the uneven ground, iron boot, slamming against the crumbling stone. She flinched as Sister Petra's head exploded next to her, splattering blood and gore all over the Battle Sister's armour. While Cassandra barked some manner of profanity over the vox Rosetta steeled herself for the coming crucible. She held faith that she had not come this far only to die by an autocannon round to the face.

They close in on the buildings, the sight of some of the traitor gunmen growing ever clearer as shadows against a wall of fire. Loretta fired a three round burst into a window, blowing apart a trailer in a gory mess. Rosetta raised her bolter and fired four rounds into another one, three rounds missing but a forth blowing through old concrete to plough into the traitor's head; a headless body toppled over into view and fell out of the building.

A similar story was repeated all the way down the line as bolters spat their munitions into the buildings. Mass reactive bolt rounds ploughed through cheap, battered ferrocrete to blow apart the heretics hiding behind them. Rosetta running as she noticed that out of a crater in the street ahead arose a man in a black greatcoat a beaked hat. He raised his chainsword into the air.

"The Sisters are with us! For the Emperor! Forward men!" he barked.

Without hesitation, the few hundred men leapt out of their shelters roaring and cheering as they joined the charge. It was not long before they were pouring into the buildings spraying lasfire everywhere. The sisters followed them in, Sarissas and swords gleaming in the dark, thirsting for heretic blood.

They filtered through halls coated in blood and carpeted with bodies. Rosetta found herself right behind Lorraine as she crashed through a battered wooden door into the crossfire of three lasguns. Mighty sororitas armour bearing the brunt of the storm with ease she shot one gunner dead while lopping off the head of the second while Rosetta ran her sarissa through the third one's chest, slicing his heart asunder.

Rosetta studied her kill as he hung from her gun. Filthy worthless rags and a ruined patchwork of armour encased a male coated in filth and soot. A distinctive red armband appearing like the only uniform on him. Seemed like almost a waste to spend time on such meagre specimens.

"Keep up the pace, Sisters! In the Emperor's name, we must secure these streets! Cassandra, take point!" the Sister Superior demanded.

Rosetta kicked the corpse off of her blade and fell into line with Cassandra running up ahead of her and spraying billowing jets of flame into rooms filled with heretics. The men howled and bellowed, flailing in agony as holy fire engulfed their bodies, delivering their flesh onto a deserved fate. All the while the squad sprinted past them, firing high explosive bolts in all directions, obliterating the heretical vermin in explosions of bloody gore.

Then Rosetta's eye spotted a glint in the dark. Adrenaline flooded her senses, time seemed to slow down to a crawl as she stopped, reached out and grabbed Cornelia's collar. In a single moment of frantic urgency, she yanked battle sister onto herself as the thunderous boom of an autocannon shook the building as a massive round blew off Cornelia's right pauldron. Her shoulder was blown back, throwing her and Rosetta into a violent twirl as they fell onto the floor.

A gunner in the dark kept firing through a hole in the ceiling, blasting shot after shot into Squad Lorraine. A massive round glanced off of Gloria's helmet, shattering into a storm of glowing, flying fragments. Gloria and Loretta stood their ground and unloaded their bolters into the gunner's position until the ferrocrete gave in to dozens of detonations at a time and collapsed. Gunner yelled as he fell through the ceiling.

Not even a moment passed before Lorraine aimed her bolt pistol at him and blew off his head. Cassandra stepped in next and flooded the room above them with flame. In the yellow glow of fire and flame, the squad moved on, Lorraine and Cassandra moving through a doorway ahead of them. Rosetta stood up and offered Cornelia her hand while Gloria and Loretta reloaded their weapons. Cornelia took it and Rosetta pulled her up onto her feet.

Gloria slipped past them, nodding at Rosetta who returned the gesture. Loretta followed her forward, pushing past Cornelia while the battered sister checked her shoulder. She noticed Rosetta watching Loretta leave.

"Every light has its shadow," Cornelia remarked.

"Does she learn?"

"No"

Cornelia gathered her bolter and flexed her aching shoulder, battered machinery and artificial muscle whining to mimic her movement. Soon she stepped up to the next door, she stopped and looked back to find Rosetta who watched her, the concern seemingly showing through her battle plate.

"Have faith, Sister. I'll endure," she assured her.

Rosetta approached her and paused a moment, then she nodded as she moved on and the pair caught up with the rest. The raging fire rampaged all around them ravaging the walls, reducing them to charred ruin. The squad broke into a jog, letting loose small bursts of bolter fire, dispatching pockets of broken resistance as they went.

Then they turn left to enter a hallway and a man burst through a door ahead crying out in pain as he flailed against the flames consuming his body followed by others like him accompanied by jets of flame. The sisters opened fire, ending their misery and pushed on, charging down the hallway only to halt, finding a man walk out of the doorway bearing the heretic's colours. He stood there, bringing his weapon to bear upon the squad.

Fuel tanks, burdened with promethium shook about on his back as he turned and released a jet of terrible fire upon the women. His barrel lighting up and fire flooding the space between them. All the while Cassandra stepped forth and unleashed the glorious blessing to true holy upon the blasphemer. The overwhelming flood of holy fire consumed the heretical flame and engulfed the man who roared in agony for mere moments before his fuel tanks detonated in a mighty cacophony of explosions and raging fire.

"The Emperor is with us, Sisters! Onwards Daughters!" Lorraine roared as she pointed to the doorway with her sword's blade.

-//-

As the pale yellow Heliosian sun arose in the east victory for the Sisters was all but secured. Bulk landers passing through the night disgorged Sisters a thousandfold. While Lighting Strike Fighters strafed and struck enemy positions, bring the emperor's salvation from above tanks rolled forth from the assault ramps in droves.

Rhinos, Immolators and Exorcists clad in white and gold sang their testimonies of heretics' demise with the purifying glory of their heavy guns. Squad Lorraine stood guard at Bridge 149 resting while the roar of war slowly turned into a distant rumble.

Bridge 149, the squad's objective, was a desolate, industrial bridge that stood over a river of polluted waste that flowed like a thick toxic ooze of yellowish green that dissolved everything that came near. It was both a hideous monstrosity and beautiful symbol at the same time. It bore no aesthetic beauty but instead, it's beauty came in the technological marvel that it was. As Rosetta recalled it had stood for over seven hundred years. Seven hundred years. Any other bridge would have crumbled and faded away in a fraction of that time.

She looked at it now. A stained, dull, flat surface with colossal rails running down the middle. The only interesting part she could find on it was the addition of countless rotting corpses, craters and tank wreckages from where the lightning strike fighters slaughtered hundreds as they fled from the field like rats.

She remembered that the Adeptus Mechanicus Adepts accompanying the liberation fleet that carried her and her order to Helios once called Bridge 149 a splendid shrine to the Emperor just like any other. Rosetta sighed. If anything such a belief is no more than a bastardisation of the Divine Truth and of the faith. Then she wondered. Perhaps that is why they seek the cold soullessness of metal. Perhaps it is only their flesh that is weak.

Rosetta grew tired of contemplation. She looked around and found her squad resting. Lorraine leaned against the side of a wreck of a loyalist leman russ battle tank facing Bridge 149 cleaning her blade with a fine cloth.

Loretta squatted on top of the tank, looking around, sating some childish sense of curiosity. Gloria sat, huddled to the rear of the tank, praying, the loss of Petra weighing down on her. Cassandra stood still as she tended to Cornelia's arm while the wounded Sister sat on sandbags not far from an abandoned heavy bolter.

She decided to approach Cornelia. As she got close to Cornelia the woman noticed her and tried to turn, only to jolt in pain and face forward in defeat.

"Don't worry my saviour, your work is not in vain," Cornelia jested, hiding her pain.

"That may be, but I suspect extensive internal bruising and damage to the joint itself. Thank the Emperor you didn't lose your arm entirely. Still, it would best to have it inspected by proper hospitaller." Cassandra lectured

"You've training in this regard, Cassandra?" Rosetta inquired.

"Well... no, but I knew the Sisters Hospitaller of the Order of The Blessed Spring well. Spent close to six months with them when they replaced my leg some time ago. They were charitable enough to teach me a thing or two to better preserve myself."

"I see. So what will be our next calling?" Rosetta questioned

Cornelia looked at Cassandra, just as curious while Cassandra paused, waiting for her words to form.

"For now we hold. Once the rest of the fleet is deployed we advance." She declared.

-//-