Chapter 4

* * *

Olga dreamt something beautiful, amazingly wonderful. There was warm sunshine, summer, lots of greenery, and an ineffable sense of peace. Everything bad was gone, left somewhere unimaginably far away, and everything good...

And then the siren screamed again. As it turned out, the matte ceiling of the 'compartment' was not just a piece of plastic, but also a light panel, now it pulsed with a purple light in the rhythm of the sound signals. This was something the girl had never heard before. It was not the usual steam train horn that she was used to hearing, but a mechanical howl that simultaneously announced the arrival of atomic war, the fall of the asteroid, and the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. The heartbreaking sound twisted in the joints with a vicious vibration, resonating in every nerve. Olga jumped up on the bed with a shriek, banged her head on the top shelf, and fell on the old rug.

From the sounds of it, the whole huge wagon was in a feverish movement. The tarpaulin canopy moved to the side, creaking on the aluminum rings, and the face of the neighbor, the one who looked like a war criminal, stuck out into Olga's seat.

"Get up!!!" wailed the freak nicknamed the Wrecker, the other squad's spray gunner.

And desapier.

"Damn it," Olga whispered, realizing that she understood nothing. However, her body was already acting on its own, obeying the knowledge imparted during the past week by Big Bertha.

Stand up.

To bless yourself with an aquila.

Ask the Emperor loudly for his blessing.

(at the same time, to think once again that the entire Empire is irreversibly touched by the collective mind of trillions of people because even the local god is some kind of mummy, but god forbid to say that kind of thing out loud)

And down to the gear and the armored vehicle.

Red lights were flashing all over the carriage, sirens were wailing, squadmates were rushing around. Olga bumped into everything and everyone. And then the situation suddenly settled down, that is, going from one aggregate state to another. The girl found herself together with the rest of the squad in the passenger compartment of a cubic tank, almost embracing a cylinder on a cart.

The wool pants and a knee-length diving vest, twisted in two layers, were drenched with sweat. The heavy, oversized rubberized overalls hung over the skinny body like a parachute rolled up in several layers. The gas mask around the neck stank of Chinese plastic, the cylinder defiantly showed rusty residue on the side, looked damn heavy, and damn unreliable. Above the hatch that led to the cockpit of the driver hung a plate with screws screwed on it, with an inscription that Olga could only half-heartedly translate as "Fuck evil" One corner of the sign was stained with dried splashes of a suspicious red-brown liquid.

The vehicle shook once, then twice. After a few moments, the shaking became a steady process. The deathly wail of the siren receded, began to fade behind the armor plates. With one hand the girl grasped the leather band that acted as a seat belt. With the other, she grabbed hold of the cylinder wagon until it began to toss all over the compartment.

Big Bertha was shouting something into a loudspeaker that looked like a singing microphone. But the noise of the engine and the rattle of the metal inside the tank muffled the words. Olga had a laryngophone loop with headphones hanging around her neck, over her gas mask belt, but she had completely forgotten how to use it. So her ears picked up only scraps of hurried phrases, something about some "rupture", "vysshurov" and "mutats".

"This is going to end badly," thought Olga grimly, grasping the safety strap tighter. It was hot and scary.

Training in the Squad was staged like everything else in the world of the forty-thousand-year-old future. That means not in a human way, but according to an alternative logic. Olga was expecting something akin to 'boot camp' with notes, memorization of staff schedules, and so on. However, no one was in a hurry to enlighten her about the Squad and it seemed that Mentor Bertha, as well as the fatheaded monk, had little idea what to do with the new girl at all. The training was a joint effort of the entire wagon team and was limited to practice. Olga has learned to remove and put on a chemical protective coverall and to use a gas mask very much like the Soviet classic gas mask but with a panoramic window instead of two round corners. I mastered the art of handling a gas cylinder and a trolley. Learned the names and job descriptions of the other staff members. And... that was it. Except that the girl finally ate more or less acceptable food and had a decent night's sleep.

Olga was afraid to ask about anything, deciding to postpone it for later. During her daily prayers, she diligently played the part of a true believer, not forgetting to shout loudly about how the Emperor would protect everyone, frantically wishing death to the mysterious xenos and the more understandable heretics. She tried to listen attentively and speak as little as possible. Step by step, word by word, she built a picture of the world in which she found herself.

The planet where the Squad settled had no name of its own, only a long series of letters and unofficial but quite common nicknames for the colonists - "Beacon" or "Ice Port". As far as the girl understood, originally "Beacon" had no value meaning, the only continent was a snow-covered tundra, and the giant ocean could only provide plankton. There were no minerals here, agriculture was hopeless.

But the dying star system itself turned out to be extremely important. For some unknown reason, it was convenient to set up a comprehensive navigation center here, serving an entire 'sector' (whatever that means). The "Ice Port" was beloved by "navigators", "Imperial Tarot readers" and some kind of "astropaths", who were mentioned, necessarily making a gesture of protection against the evil.

Although most of the beacons and certain "towers" were placed into orbit and asteroids, much of the infrastructure was deployed directly on the planet, concentrated around a large spaceport. People on 'Beacon' became numerous, and for some reason, there was some work for the Squad.

The Squad itself was a sort of order under the Imperial Church, but with a distinctly militarized bias. The Squad included two regiments, one servicing orbital facilities, the other planetary. The regiment was divided into separate battalions, each battalion being quite an independent unit assigned to some sort of "bunker". No one seemed to know how many battalions and bunkers there were in the regiment, but logic and Olga's battalion number - "12"- suggested that there were definitely a dozen.

The most interesting and practically important for Olga began further, at the company level. Each company had at its disposal a separate armored train with a nuclear engine, running along a given route. All this was called strictly peaceful - road repair work, maintenance, and so on. However, the girl was firmly confused by the clause about "sanitary and epidemic purification", and by the fact that the company's units were armed with armored vehicles, automatic weapons, and real flamethrowers. Whatever the "purificators" were doing, it seemed that "something" could fight back.

And, Lord have mercy, it seems now Olga was about to see what (or who) was being "purificated" by the Squad.

The armored vehicle rushed forward, galloping across the tundra-like a multi-ton deer. The heavy vehicle, by all appearances, was capable of good speed. Olga, being the staff carrier of the spare cylinder for the flamethrower-one, did not know whether to scream in terror beforehand or to relax and enjoy the minutes before it began. Bertha kept her gaze on the girl, pressing her thin, pale lips into a barely visible string. Only now Olga noticed that her mentor, the company and wagon commander, wore small earrings with transparent stones in her ears. In general, the mighty aunt might have seemed even pretty, if it were not for the malicious look, the shoulders, the size of which would be the envy of another beefcake, and a huge gun, the size more appropriate to the giants on Ballistic.

"We're coming up!" the staff shepherd shouted from the turret. The same monk who kept his plastic chain mail on. In the tank, he played the role of machine gunner, and outside, in addition to the priesthood, he wielded a chemical sprinkler.

The tank drove smoother. Olga checked the gas mask hose and the ribbed filter cylinder, everything was in place. The flamethrower, behind whom the girl had to drag the spare cylinder, a bitterly unjuvenile and short man with an elf face was crying, nervously adjusting the scarf wrapped around his skinny neck at least a dozen times. Looking at his tears, Olga thought that the crying flamethrower was a complete mess, perhaps worse than a fleeing general. She felt like bursting into tears herself. Only Bertha's serpentine, unblinking gaze stopped her.

Flamethrower Two, a.k.a. Sinner, was embroidering some symbol or short saying on his red reflective vest. There were already several hundred of them on the rag, and none of them seemed to be repeated. Noticing the newcomer's gaze on him, the seamstress responded with a straight look and a sudden wink with a benevolent smile. Of all the squadmates Sinner was the one Olga liked the most, and in addition (except Demetrius) was quite in line with her idea of male attractiveness. He resembled an Ethiopian, with unusually expressive features and a tattoo of Ecclesiarchy across his forehead, he was not handsome in the usual sense, but extremely masculine.

The imagination immediately wanted to send the Sinner somewhere in the desert, with a burkus, a camel, and a musket, to fight against European colonizers, to exact blood feuds, romantically kidnap European beauties, and the like. Also, the second flamethrower was always silent. As the Holy Man once put it, the Sinner was quite capable of speech but considered himself unworthy to defile with words the universe where God the Emperor had once spoken.

The compartment smelled of gasoline and tobacco (though was it tobacco?) of the Smoker. The former balloonist (whose place had now been taken by Olga), now a gunner, smoked a short, opium-looking pipe. The Smoker kept his mouth open at all times, his eyebrows raised, his forehead furrowed. This made his face look like the face of a rodent, with all its lines converging on a single point on the tip of his nose. Even huge glasses with thick lenses of yellow glass could not disturb the impression of general "mousiness".

The tank goes faster, turning on the siren. Bertha said something quickly into the microphone of her headset. The weeping elf sobbed even more bitterly. Olga stared at the iron ceiling, so as not to see the faces of the other colleagues and not to think about the fact that very soon... what exactly was going to happen, she did not know, but she reasonably assumed that nothing good was going to happen.

As if by order, in the rhythm of her unhappy thoughts, the temperature inside the car began to drop. Olga rubbed her eyes just in case, thinking that perhaps the tears clouded her vision, but no, she did not imagine it. Her breath condensed in the yellow light in clouds of steam, and the corners of the compartment froze over. Frost began to bite through the seams of her jumpsuit, the sweat of her woolen underwear hanging heavy on her body as a cold compress. At the same time, the engine was still howling, and the heat radiators under the iron benches continued to exude waves of heat.

The balloonist became very, very scared. In difficult and dangerous circumstances it is human nature to look for the guilty party. It was easier for Olga in this respect, she knew exactly who was to blame and to whom she owed her participation in dubious activities with flamethrowers and acid.

Damn Kryp, I hate you, you'd better be dead out there all by yourself.

The red light above the side sliding panel that replaced the usual transporter hatch lit up. The Mentor was distracted for a moment, and when she looked at her mentee again, she found her staring at Bertha in turn.

"Deceived," Olga suddenly spoke out.

The vehicle was wildly noisy, the soundproofing had fallen into disrepair long ago, but communication was through the radio and laryngophones, so everyone could hear the new girl.

"What?" asked Berta, reflexively, almost like an ordinary person, not a Mentor.

"He fooled me," the girl repeated, dull and expressionless, wrapping herself in the sizeless jumpsuit like a warm cloak. The rubberized fabric creaked and creased with difficulty. "Savlar" laughed vilely, snorting and dropping slime with a hole instead of his nose. He stopped, catching Bertha's very grim look.

"It happens," the Priest said as smoothly and evenly as he did, crossing himself with an aquila. "Everyone is deceived by someone. Only the Emperor is perfect, was and will be, blessing the galaxy with himself and through himself."

Bertha sighed, feeling the hot air filtered through her respirator. The "Priest" stood up, grasping securely the handrail that ran the full length of the compartment under the low ceiling. He yelled loudly:

"Come on, brothers, let's fuck the evil's ass!"

"Fuck the Evil!!!" A chorus of ten gulps came back in more or less unison. Only Olla seemed to remain silent. Oh, and "Crybaby", who was clutching the sprayer with both hands, so that the tears were already rolling down his face in generous streams. It got cold in the car, despite the midday heat and the running engine. Her mentor saw the frost gather in the corners in a whitish film, and shuddered to think what lay ahead of them. If the manifestation is so clear and strong, then the real trouble lies ahead. And BaneWolf, with his blessed acid cannon, the last argument for the worst-case scenario, is gone...

"Put on the respirators!" commanded Bertha. "A closed cycle!"

A red light blinked, the transporter slowed down, jerked, turning around on the spot and backing up.

"Let's work."

Olla got tangled up in the gas mask gear again, and the "Wretched Man" unexpectedly helped her untangle the corrugated hose, properly buckled the strap, grabbing the absorbent cylinder in the right pocket so it wouldn't fall out. The girl hesitated, pulling on the gas mask, but managed it. Then the armored vehicle shuddered, swayed on its worn shock absorbers, and finally froze. The sliding panel slid aside, and there was no more time for idle reflection.

* * *

The "I don't understand anything!" state had become customary, but today Olga could honestly say that she did not understand much more than usual. Everything promised horrors soon, an encounter with the unknown, a bloody hell of asshole sodomy, and for someone to leave with incredible music.

And... nothing happened.

The squad unloaded from the tank (by the way, it was called quite earthly - "Chimera"), being in full readiness to cause destruction and arson. Olga managed not to fall, not to get under anyone's feet, to roll out the cart with the canister, and even to follow Crybaby, not too far behind. The little elf seemed to be as strong as a dwarf because he effortlessly rolled a bulky flamethrower that looked like a cannon from "Aliens" with a manipulator for extra support.

The familiar landscape stretched all around, only there was less of the usual tundra and more buildings. The atomic armored train went from the sparsely populated industrial periphery to places more urban. Here there were roads with fairly normal asphalt, and buildings that looked like typical apartment buildings only twice as high. All this resembled a district center, but a big one. The streets looked as if they were dead, with only flashing five-color traffic lights. And there were people here, Olga could see frightened shadows flickering in the windows, there just wasn't a single soul on the streets. Were they afraid? What were they afraid of? It was all a mystery...

The lack of actual life in the district center was more than compensated for by the outside activity. Now and then, with the roar of engines and sirens, another vehicle arrived, from huge buses to futuristic-looking trucks. The neighborhood was filled with police officers, stormtroopers, and scientific people with numerous devices. It was all living its own bustling life, bustling and seemingly oblivious to the Squad. Amid the tactical carnival, the fierce flamethrowers were transformed into mere ragamuffins in a decrepit tank, with poor and outdated equipment.

Is that all?'

Olga perceptibly cheered up and thought that perhaps everything was not so terrible as she had imagined. At least not today.

"I don't get it..."

The priest scratched his broad nose, moved the thrower to an upright position, securing the bracket. The heavy thing tilted the monk on his right side, the yellow cylinder behind his back glowing menacingly with the emblem of chemical danger. Arbitres respectfully avoided the big man in the chain mail - out of respect for his rank, but also because "chemists" were considered even crazier, more dangerous, and more responsible than the operators of the sanitary flamethrowers.

"I don't get it," repeated the Priest. "For the ninth time in a row."

"Yes..." Bertha took off her respirator, letting the mask hanging from her belt. The cold air bit her chin and lips.

"What's going on," the monk didn't ask, judging by his tone, but rather asked a rhetorical question. "One false alarm after another."

Bertha shrugged her broad shoulders as far as the weight of the combi shotgun allowed.

"It's as if all that shit has been chewed up by staff from the ocean..." The monk didn't finish, for fear of mentioning the unholy out loud.

"We'll be out of business, this way." Bertha made a light-hearted joke.

A Verispex Adept, in his massive armor like a two-legged crab, with his detector bars protruding in all directions, quickly approached the squadmates. Behind the Adept flew a servoskull, connected to its master by a long cable. The skull spread its long spider-like legs and jerked them as if it wanted to catch the icy wind.

"Excuse me, sirs," the Verispex Adept said in a businesslike manner. "We are very... embarrassing. It seems to be a mistake again."

"Zero activity?" Bertha clarified.

"Alas, yes."

"It seemed as if they were dragging the shit straight to the host..." The Priest was speaking in circumlocution again, but his interlocutors understood him well.

"It was so much that our seer went mad," the adept said confidentially, bowing his head.

"Is that all?" Berta couldn't resist asking.

"That's all," Verispeks looked gloomy, as befits a responsible employee, who will now report to all the instances for at least a week.

"Okay," sighed the Mentor, "then give us a mark that the call is processed."

"I'll attach a request for a 24-hour stoppage of Radial-12," the adept clarified. "Maybe we'll find something else. Though it's unlikely, of course..."

"Whatever you say," Bertha agreed. "That's up to the Commandant, not our question."

"Bring your papers," summed up the adept sadly. "We'll describe it."

The Priest looked silently at Bertha, and the mentor nodded just as silently and subtly.

"Get in the car! We are waiting!" the monk shouted loudly and then added more quietly. "No need to freeze your ass..."

* * *

The train stood on the outskirts of the 'district center. The cold wind howled shrilly behind the thick boards, tried to shake the huge structure, chalking white snow on the tracks. Olga, who got out of the hot shower, wrapped a towel around her head, more out of habit - the short bristles of her growing hair did not require much drying. She could have opened the armor flap and looked at what was going on overboard, but the girl already knew that. Just the bustle, the organized chaos, the spotlight, the flying machines that landed minute by minute, falling from the inky skies. All in all, nothing interesting.

Olga sat up, adjusted her drawstring pants and her shirt, which looked like a two-ply tank top, all clean and warm. The used clothes spun under Madman's care the floor below in the tricky washing machine, which cleaned without water. Demetrius chanted prayers, Savlar occasionally recited the "emperor's blood", trying to cook in the galley "proper munchies for convicts", the normal food rations the legless tried not to eat, because "not by rank to stoop to the government food". Olga was tempted to point out to Savlar that he is serving a sentence on the general, and it is not the nature of a real, smooth convict. But the girl subdued the urges, not wanting to inflame

"Evening in the house, fire in the fireplace, the Emperor in the heart."

The Priest was delicate; he tapped his knuckles on the wall first, and then he threw back the curtain. Olga jumped up from the shelf in a disciplined manner, bracingly folded her fingers in a tiresome aquila, and reported: "The Emperor protects!"

"Protects, protects," the monk moved a shovel-shaped palm with calluses that looked like horny patches. "Sit down, girl."

Olga even more diligently bulged her eyes in a loyal grimace, expecting a trick.

"Sit down," the Priest, with obvious displeasure in his voice, no longer asked, but ordered.

Olga flopped back down without breaking her fingers, keeping the expression of fiery and fanatical idiocy on her face.

"Don't do that either," the Priest grumbled irritably, thought for a moment, and then said. "At ease!"

Olga relaxed a little, cringing in anticipation of bad things to come.

The monk sighed, glinting his small eyes under the gray bushy eyebrows. With a mechanical, familiar motion, he smoothed the skull on his belt chain, polished to a lustrous shine by thousands of such touches. He unhooked a frayed book in a wooden cover with a clasp, put the weighty volume on the table.

"That's good, that's right," the monk's finger pointed at the homemade aquila around Olga's neck. "It was made by a worthy man with true faith in a good heart. It's a well-worn thing."

The girl swallowed, trying to figure out what this tricky test was and how she should behave.

"Do you know what the main trouble of a shepherd is?" The uninvited guest suddenly asked, putting his palm on the cover of his bible.

"I don't know!" The girl reported back.

"Idiots," the monk reported. "Idiots who emasculate the ritual and the spirit of His words. Cruel punishers, ready to burn for... anything."

"Excuse me, sir... Priest, I don't understand!"

Olga stared diligently at the wall, avoiding the intelligent gaze of the minister of the cult. The girl was aware that in matters of faith she always walks on the edge, and any careless word can send her to the other world. And from her adventures on the Ballistic Station Olga suspected that here "the other world" was not a metaphor.

"Faith is in your words, on your tongue," said the Priest in a low voice. "But it is not in your heart, so your speeches are loud but empty, like a well that has run dry."

He paused, looking intently at Olga. The girl suddenly felt hot and gripped the plastic aquila tightly with both fists. Not that Olga believed in the miraculous power and support of the symbol, but she needed to keep her hands busy in order to hide her trembling fingers. The monk noticed the gesture and nodded slightly as if approving.

"You're trying to play pious through ritual. It's not bad, not bad, let's face it. But still not enough."

Damn it, Olga thought to herself, feeling a cold trickle of sweat run down her spine.

"W-what?"

"My child," the monk said constructively. "Don't be afraid. If I smelled anything unholy or heretical in you, even the size and weight of a snowflake, you'd have been blown overboard as hot ash. But all I see is a lack of faith that comes from ignorance. And ignorance is not the vice of man, but his shepherd."

The monk flicked open the cover of his book. With both hands, he touched the first page, like a blind one. On the thick yellowish paper was a black image of a tall man dressed in a suit of armor and huge shoulder pads, already familiar to Olga. The knight clutched a hammer in one hand and raised the other above his head with a clenched fist. The Priest's face lit up from within with reverence, sincere, without a trace of pretension.

"You were taught by bad shepherds," the monk reported. "They needed blind faith, strict ritual. Well, there's a place for that in the Imperium, too. Not here, however. Not under the sacred flag of the color of the blood of the righteous. Why do you think that is?"

Olga swallowed, squeezing the green eagle even tighter. The Priest waited.

"I don't know," the girl whispered, feeling like she was putting her own life on the line.

"If you were to begin speaking without content, without faith, it would be your last words," the monk said simply and mundanely. "But you've admitted that your soul is an open book with blank pages. And that is good. The path to light begins with the awareness of darkness."

Oh, god... Fuck...

"You're in the Squad now, child," the Priest said softly. "Our work is deadly to the body, but there's a far greater danger hanging over the souls of the purifiers. That's why I'm here, among the small ones. That's why I don't shout 'heresy' for any reason, but temper the souls of my flock with understanding. The time will come... and it will come, believe me, when hostile forces will attack your being, try to steal the essence of your humanity. And when that happens, only true faith, based on rigorous knowledge, will protect you. Do you understand?"

Olga nodded slowly, cautiously, as if wishing to reserve for herself the opportunity to take back the gesture, to refuse it, to declare that it was just a movement without meaning or reason. The monk smiled a miserly, restrained smile, carefully wiped his palms on the sleeves of his cassock, reverently, without a bit of pretense, turned the page, uttering:

He is the Emperor and God, both a creature and a supernatural being. Therefore, our Lord is truly perfect and is above every substance on this side and the other side of the universe.

Olga expected to see a new picture according to what she had heard. With some divine content, but she was categorically mistaken. There was a diagram on both sides of the page, covering the entire spread. Stylized as a wide temple with a domed roof, filled with numerous and incomprehensible figures-symbols, but nevertheless, quite a clear scheme with squares and inscriptions. Olga understood something about "custodes" and "munistorum".

"Preaching should fill the souls of the congregation with godliness and faith," the Priest said. "But the ignorant mind cannot fully perceive the light of truth. So to begin with ..."

He put his broad palm on top of the scheme.

"This, child, is the Imperium. The beautiful creation of God the Emperor, within whose walls the peoples of countless languages find shelter. Let us see the structure of Humanity's house and the gatekeepers, stern but fair, who guard its gates..."

* * *