Embedded Files
"Sisters. When the sun sets on this coming crusade, many of you will not return to these walls. I know this. You know this. And yet here you stand - and I have never been more certain in all my years of service to the Sacred Sequence that what we do here is right. The data core waits for us in the silence of that dead city. Sealed in concrete and ash. Patient as the helix itself. Alya Vos placed her knowledge there so that those worthy enough to retrieve it might change the world forever. We are those women. We have always been those women. Many of you will pay with your lives for that knowledge. The mud will take your bodies, and I will carry the weight of that. Every name and every face - until the Sequence claims me in turn. But what we do tomorrow does not end with any one of us. It does not end. That is what you must hold before you rest tonight. You are not sacrificing for me. You are not sacrificing for the Order. You are sacrificing for every daughter that will be born into a world made clean by what we carry home tomorrow. Go and rest. At dawn, we march. "
High Helix Daria, addressing the Sisters of her fortress monastery on the eve of a Crusade,
Day 17 of The Thaw, 126 AP
A Crusade has been declared to retrieve a valuable artifact from a Dead City. On the eve of a Crusade, the High Helix addresses the assembled sisters in the monastery chapel, reminding them of the sacrifices that will have to be made to secure the data core.
At first light, the crusade emerges from the monastery gates with hundreds of warriors, the High Helix's standard-bearer at their head.
The column files out through the outer gate and into the mud lands. The monastery gates close behind them - most of the crusaders will never see their home again.
The crusade force marches through the muddy wasteland in near silence, the standard bearer leading the way into the unknown.
After hours of relentless marching, the High Helix halts the column and a forward camp is set up. Scouts are sent towards the nearby Dead City to find a clear path.
The training of Geneticist warriors does not prepare them adequately for scouting missions in the mud…
The first scout soon falls prey to a Ghoul!
The second scout pushes deeper into the wasteland, moving cautiously, but her fate is already sealed.
A starving mutant soon tracks her down and greedily rips into her flesh…
The third scout crawls through the mud, keeping low, surviving by luck as much as anything else.
From a low ridge, the last scout observes a Beast Clan camp spread out between the Crusade force and the Dead City, just visible in the grey murky grey fog beyond.
A Beast Clan tracker has been watching the ridgeline. She spots the white fabric of the Geneticist scout and takes the shot without hesitation.
The scout will never make her report, but the shot cracks loudly through the still air and the Crusade force is alerted. The High Helix orders the attack.
The Beast Clan camp comes alive. Warriors arm themselves and assemble after the scout has been eliminated. They know what inevitably comes next…
Moments later, the crusade force charges at the Beast Clan encampment. As both sides open fire at point-blank range, the carnage unfolds!
The two forces collide with great violence. The Beast Clan warriors are more experienced, but the Geneticists force is well equipped outnumbers them.
Most of the killing is done at close range.
Beast Clan hunters stalk the flanks and pick off approaching sisters with great efficiency.
Many of the scavengers fight with primitive weapons - but they are just as lethal!
Demi-mutants are an integral part of the Beast Clan. In battle, they are fearsome opponents, slaughtering countless sisters in close combat.
Whenever they can, the sisters bring their greater firepower to bear...
...but the Beast Clan repays them in kind.
The slaughter continues!
After more than an hour of unabated carnage, the battle still hangs in the balance.
Finally, the High Helix and her standard bearer personally intervene, to break the remaining fighting spirit of the Beast Clan.
The High Helix is a deadly fighter, effortlessly killing scores of the scavengers...
As the fighting dies down, the surviving Geneticist sisters scour the battlefield and kill any remaining Beast Clan warriors they find.
They even give mercy to the wounded.
Many of their own are gravely injured too.
One by one, they are given the mercy of a quick death.
The Beast Clan force has been all but wiped out.
Any prisoners are crucified, turning the battlefield into a warning against other scavengers in the area.
The Geneticists burn their own dead, so they don't have to suffer the impurity of the mud...
The small band of surviving sisters is shaken to the core by the experience.
Some of them refuse to go on and are subsequently released from their vows to the Geneticist order...
Afterwards, the Crusade pushes on...
The Beast Clan camp is burnt to the ground as the Crusaders pass through.
Night falls as the Crusade finally enters the Dead City!
The entrance to the facility housing the data core is quickly located.
The High Helix orders her standard bearer to guard the entrance...
...while the sisters enter the foreboding underground facility and begin a systematic search.
But the underground tunnels and laboratories are a maze. The Crusade force splits into smaller and smaller groups, and soon, each sister is on her own.
The facility is inhabited by many different creatures, all of which have one thing in common - they hunger for human flesh!
Some of the facility's old security systems are still functioning and the unsuspecting sisters - many of whom have never seen this level of technology - quickly fall prey to lethal laser barriers.
Even worse, rogue security automatons, their programming long corrupted, still stalk the facility, killing anyone they encounter...
In the end, only the High Helix herself remains.
She acknowledges every fallen sister, every sacrifice that has been made...
...and comforts the dying, easing their passing with a merciful stroke of a blade.
The High Helix dispatches the last of the rogue automatons, clearing the way to the data core.
Finally, the High Helix recovers the data core - it contains a crucial piece of DNA research data, vital to the Geneticist's ongoing efforts of perfecting parthenogenesis.
Having sacrificed every single sister for the data core, the High Helix and her standard bearer return to the monastary. In the grand scheme of the Geneticist order's efforts, the death of a few hundred sisters is a small price to pay for a relic containing files from Alya Vos herself!
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