Emperor’s Deliverance

EMPEROR’S DELIVERANCE

Blood. There was too much blood.

Athena’s hands were slick with it, right up to the elbows. The crimson morass where she buried her fingers was a man’s chest, the ribs splintered and the organs exposed. She was searching for an artery. It was hard to find in all the viscera and vital fluid. Flickering lumen-strips overhead were weak and ineffective. Athena could barely see the novitiate beside her, handing over surgical tools. Betheniel was almost apologetic – the blades and saws were crude, woefully inadequate, but it was all they had at Emperor’s Deliverance. It was all anyone had in the shadow of Devil’s Ridge on the war-torn world of Armageddon.

Athena held out a steady, blood-soaked hand. She’d tried to wipe it on her smock but the nails were red-rimed, the gore so deeply ingrained it was like her skin was swathed in a patina of rust. With her other hand, she pinched the spewing artery.

‘Clamps, sister. Quickly now.’

An explosion overhead shook the roof of the infirmary, making the novitiate fumble. Some of the tools clattered noisily into the gloom, but she found the clamps.

Athena staunched the bleeding, muttering as she tied off the vein. ‘Fortunate that we don’t require the rib spreaders.’ Most of the man’s chest cavity was gone, torn out by a greenskin bomb. Part of his jaw was missing too.

She addressed Betheniel directly. ‘When a life is at stake we must show resolve, even in the face of danger. Those were Marauders overhead, our Imperial Navy bombers, heading for what’s left of Hades Hive.’

The novitiate nodded, contrite. She recoiled a moment later when Athena threw down a ragged piece of cloth she’d been using to clean her instruments.

‘Throne and Eye!’

‘What is it, sister? Have I done something wrong?’

‘Grant me the fortitude of Saint Katherine…’ she whispered, making the sign of the aquila for the blasphemous outburst. ‘No…’ Athena wiped a hand across her brow, smearing an incarnadine line in the sweat. ‘There’s nothing more we could’ve done.’ She deactivated the medi-cogitator next to the man’s bunk. Cardiac response was negative, blood pressure flat-lined. ‘He’s dead.’

A grey-haired orderly, cheeks peppered with stubble, emerged from the shadows and caught Athena’s attention. Sanson used to be a hiver, a low-labourer in the ‘sinks’ who’d made machine parts all the way into his middle years until Hades was sacked. Calm-headed and meticulous, he made a reliable orderly. He’d made his way quietly through the numerous groaning bodies, the blood and sweat-stained beds, the thousands of wounded that were pouring into the camp’s infirmary every single harrowing day.

‘They have arrived, sister.’

‘At the perimeter?’ Athena was removing her smock as she made for a small basin with its sub-standard sanitising spray and dermal-scrubbers. Two acolytes approached her from either side as she stooped to wash her grubby hands, and took off her medical fatigues. For a few moments, she was naked in the half-light – Athena had long since foregone modesty – until her handmaidens dressed her in white robes and gilded iconography.