Tanaka asked, astonished, as a barrage of bolter rounds pinged off the armor of his Armiger Warglaive. He didn't even bother to activate the ion shield for Kazan, which cost him dear when a few of the bolts detonated against vital joints and sent his machine limping. Tanaka barely noticed the damage, focusing on the fact that their erstwhile allies had turned on them.
"Bad news," Suzuki reported, his features barely visible on the fizzling holo-pict in Tanaka's Helm Mechanicum. "The Adepta Sororitas have deemed our faith lacking and decided to arbitrarily purge us."
"...say what?"
"Does it matter?" Kanda said grimly, pivoting his Armiger Knight Moirax to fire gravitic pulses at a shrieking squad of Sisters Repentia, squashing them into bloody pulps in a single volley. "If we don't fight back soon, we'll be killed. Let's just get out of this situation first."
"I have dibs on the tank!" Suzuki said eagerly when he spotted the Castigator tank pulling up from behind a hab-block. He sounded a tad too enthusiastic for Tanaka's liking, but before the latter could stop him, Suzuki was already goading Hebi into a loping stride toward the armored vehicle.
However, the Castiagor opened up, its barrels roaring as it unleashed a storm of santificed shells upon Hebi. Suzuki deftly angled his ion shields to deflect the exploding rounds, but even so, his Armiger Warglaive rocked from the impact. Hebi reeled and nearly staggered, only for the surviving Sister Superior that was leading the Repentia from earlier to leap and assault him.
Suzuki skillfully chopped her in half, her body disintegrating in a bloody mist, even as her neural whips left a single scratch across the thigh plating of Hebi. He righted his Armiger Warglaive and fired a volley from its thermal spear, the molten lance melting the front ceramite armor of the reversing vehicle.
Tanaka wanted to help him, but he had troubles of his own. Two Battle Sister squads were converging on Kazan, their bolter shells pinging ineffectively against his machine. This time, he activated his ion shields, minimizing the damage from the small-arms fire, but the Sisters were far from discouraged. Even though he vaporized three Sisters in one squad with a single shot from his thermal spear, the carapace meltagun missing, they were simply galvanized further by the loss of their comrades. Led by a Canoness, who was raising her women to ever-increasing zeal with fiery rhetoric, the completely unscathed squad charged him. The Sister Superior swung her chainsword, matching her rhythm with the Canoness's gleaming power sword.
"Ugh!"
Kazan stumbled from the blows, and though he swept out with a sweeping blow of its Reaper chain-cleaver, the Sisters dodged with what seemed like miraculous agility. A few of them were knocked over by the whirring teeth and power field that enveloped the weapon, and despite the gouges in their power armor, they simply stood back up and shrugged off what would otherwise be grievous wounds.
It appeared to Tanaka that they were compelled by near-supernatural faith, driven to acts of higher zeal. Shouting hymns and utterly convicted in the righteousness of their decision to purge their imperial allies for what they deemed was a lack of faith, they continued to assail the sparking armor of Kazan.
"Hang in there!" Kanda shouted, but his Knight Moirax was currently besieged by a squad of Seraphym who had swooped from the heavens to open up on him with bolt fire. He snapped off a couple of shots from his graviton pulsars, but only killed three of them. The other two continued to boost toward him, the superior brandishing her glowing power sword with vengeance in her eyes.
"Just die already!" Suzuki howled, enraged, even as Hebi was rocked back by another devastating salvo from the Castigator. Fortunately, his ion shield deflected the worst of the blow and he was able to close in on the rapidly retreating tank. Unleashing his wrath upon the stricken vehicle, which was partially immobilized by a second shot from his thermal spear, he finished it off with a penetrating hit from his carapace meltagun without even having to close in and engage it in close combat. Suzuki crowed. "Hah!"
His triumph was short-lived, however. The Sisters' boltguns roared and the barrage of rounds detonated against the already weakened armor of the Armiger Warglaive. For one second, Hebi teetered. Then it fell over, wrecking itself against the ground.
"Oh, for the love of the God-Emperor...!" Suzuki raged impotently, slamming his fists against the console of his Helm Mechanicum. "Not again! I hope I don't get a Battle Scar!"
"Don't you miss the days before the Great Rift, when we were using AV and Hull Points instead of Toughness and Wounds?" Tanaka sighed heavily and shook his head. "Back then, our AV12 Armigers were immune to bolters. Now all it takes is a 5+ to wound our Toughness 7 Armigers."
"What in the nine hells are you talking about now!?"
"Nothing." Tanaka managed to slay the Canoness with a lucky shot, impaling her with the Reaper Chain-cleaver after she survived a point-blank meltagun fire. Her faith had held strong at first, but the eventual weight of attacks had finally worn through her strong defenses. With a slash, he finished off the rest of the Sisters, finally hacking a path through them.
As if on cue, Kanda annihilated the surviving Seraphym, his Knight Moirax falling back to blast them with gravitic pulses. Their armor crumpled in upon themselves, squishing the soft human flesh within like a crushed ration can commonly distributed among the Guardsmen of the Astra Militarum. Kanda sighed in relief.
The last Battle Sister squad retreated swiftly, with only three of them having survived the battle. Tanaka watched them go, but didn't pursue.
"Hey!" Suzuki whined. "What are you doing? Go after them! Wipe them out!"
"No," Tanaka replied, shaking his head firmly. "I'm sure this whole thing is a misunderstanding. Let's get back to HQ and contact High Command. We're already getting our asses kicked by heretics and xenos here. We can't afford to destroy each other with all this frivolous infighting."
Looking up at the skies, which was a ghastly red from the baleful glow of the Great Rift, he felt ill. At this rate, even before the Great Enemy could launch a proper invasion, the Imperium might end up tearing itself apart from within.
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