Every instinct in Lisbeth told her to fire. The creatures ahead of her were not human, and therefore were not part of His perfect plan. She had been trained, taught, and psychochemically indoctrinated to hate creatures like the loathsome Gruk, and yet no order to fire came. The Confessor spoke with them, and then with the Sister-Celestian. Even after they had conferred, no order came. All that came was the instruction to move out, following in the path laid by the pathetic creature, and a bilious poison rose up Lisbeth's neck and played on her tongue. There was [i]no[/i] justification for allowing such beings to continue to exist, and yet her squad were following like sheep. 

[i]Or lambs. [/i]

He was a soldier. No, not a soldier. He was not a guardsman. He was a warrior. He followed his commands and he executed them to the best of his ability. His arm strained a little as he walked forwards, boots ringing out clear and defined even as he locked his glaive above it. By the Emperor, he would not falter in his duty, nor would he falter from the path of righteousness. In sacred silence he stepped forward, bolt shells whizzing past his ear. 

[i]Thump-splat[/i] The sound of the enormous Sister Caroline hitting the deck could not be missed or mistaken. Soon after, a second noise came as the squad's commander fell to the floor, bleeding from an ugly wound in her gut. “By the Throne, stay down!” Bolts flew overhead as she hunkered behind a heavy metal crate, popping blind shots back with [i]Permanence[/i] while Crusader Therebus found cover. Stuck here, taking fire and unable to pierce the heavy armour of the heretic, they were just waiting to die. Alexa's booming vox-unit suggested chucking grenades, but the Confessor seemed to disagree, placing himself in the line of fire, singing His praises as he moved onward. Stirred by his example, Lisbeth scrambled over to the Crusader, shouting into the side of his helm. “His armour is too thick! If we charge him, our blades might have better luck – but if we stay here we're already dead!”

He didn't need to find cover. He [i]carried[/i] the cover with him, which in this case, as it had many others, was saving his life. He watched as the conversion field around the hulking chunk of admanatium strapped to his arm deflected shot after shot that should have felled him. "HERETICS," he called out, voice booming over the fire and joining in with that of the confessor. "YOUR LIES AND FALSEHOODS CANNOT STOP THE TRUTH!" He took a few steps forward, the hail of fire increasing in intensity as he walked forward. The observation of the sister next to him was correct of course, which was why he was moving up. "The end of this glaive is encased in the emperor's devastation condensed into the form of a power casing. If it touches his armour, it will cleave through it as water to sand." He turned to the sister next to him. "I will provide cover for us to close the distance, if you wouldn't mind, suppressing fire would be greatly appreciated sister." 

“Understood. Make ready.” Lisbeth fired off the remaining rounds in her clip, before slamming a new one into [i]Permanence[/i], crossing herself with the aquila before coming up to one knee. “On my mark. Three.” She breathed out, emptying her lungs as she cleansed her mind of fear or doubt. “Two.” She breathed in through her nostrils, her eyes closed as she recited a catechism against the fear of death in her mind. “One.” She tensed her thighs, ready to spring out, her nerves trembling with excitement and anticipation. “Mark!”

The words rang through his head and he pushed forward. He kept his head down, focused more on acting as a human shield than as an offensive force. He heard the boltfire rattling around him, every direction a hail of bullets and red-tongued guns, marking out the rockets of depleted uranium. As soon as he heard the sister behind him scream, he burst forward.

“[b]Death to the disbeliever![/b]” screamed Lisbeth, and all at once her inhibitions and self-preservation vanished, firing away from behind the cover of the massive crusader and his enormous shield. A bolt glanced her shoulder and deflected away into the dark as she emptied [i]Permanence[/i]. and let the weapon hang by the strap around her other shoulder as she tore [i]Persephone[/i] from her scabbard, firing the ignition rune and sheathing the air around the blade in dancing bolts of blue energy. As the pair neared, she screamed again, this time wordlessly, all sense swept away by a tsunami of righteous fervour and the urge for revenge. 

 "By bolter shell, flamer burst and melta blast, the mutant, the heretic and the traitor alike are cleansed of their sin of existence. So has it been for five millennia, so shall it be unto the end of time." He declared the words authoriatorially. [b]"LET ME DEMONSTRATE, HERETIC."[/b] His shield burst forward, and he watched the power-armoured opponent with a trained eye. Drawing his arm back, his glaive lanced forward, just as his peripheral became occupied with the howling sororitas. 

Breaking away from Marcus, Lisbeth charged the heretic, both hands wrapped around her weapon as rounds flew towards her. A shot grazed her left thigh, the blasting mechanism firing off early and scorching the white paint off the engravings across her armour and knocking her off her stride. That was poor timing from the sister. Emotion... Useful only when channelled correctly, but only when it was channeled correctly. The sister now was half-lost... He dearly hoped that the taint of one of the dark gods had not befallen her, such was the rage. His spear was neatly dodged, his shield taking the brunt of the return even as the arch-traitor was hammered and sliced at by his companion. 

With the wound in her head re-opened, Lisbeth's system was buzzing with adrenaline and her vision was completely tunnelled, with only the destruction of her target on her mind. Full of rage and spitting curses that would shame a sailor, she threw her shoulder into the massive armoured figure's gut, her tiny frame driving in like a torpedo. While her weight made little impact, the two-handed blow of her blade did much more work, the energy field around the honed plasteel slicing neatly through the armoured power cables that ran over the surface of the hardened shell the arch-traitor wore. The blow knocked the wind from his chest, and forced him to bend, just close enough for Lisbeth to headbutt him. The sick crack of bone from within her skull told her that her nose was now broken, and blood began to flow from both nostrils, but the disoriented warrior was now the only subject of her obsessions. 

“[b]Fuck – daemon – traitor![/b]” Each word, split between guttural noises, was spat with all the hate and bile Lisbeth could muster, punctuated by another blow of her sword, before she eventually cast it aside and balled her armoured fists, crying out in insensate rage as she pounded away on the traitor's face. The leader of the traitors returned blows, delivering punches to Lisbeth's gut that stripped the air from her lungs. As she flinched, the muscles in her torso reflexively contracted, and her last meal spouted from her mouth, splattering along the deck, but her blows continued, even as the strength in her shoulders failed her, and eventually, coated in blood, vomit, grease and dirt, she rolled away, spent. 

If he told the truth, it was rather difficult to actually fight. The woman was a whirl of emotion and trouble around him, hampering his attempts to be able to actually do anything. As he fought, he noticed her and what she did, only pausing in his steady but sure assault as she hurled herself at the traitor with such force that she managed to stun him. He watched as she threw aside all dignity, mild disgust on his face, but used the opportunity to ram his lance deep inside the man's chest, avoiding the sister's mass with ease. When she stepped off the body, he gave the lance a twist- causing a cracking sound to come from the beast's ribs, and then extracted the humming end of his blade.

A few moments passed before she dragged herself up again, stretching to grab her sword as she rose. Half-bent, her shoulders drooping, wheezing away, resembling nothing so much as a brutal proto-ape. “Who – next?”  

"What I believe the sister means to say... Who will receive the Emperor's redemption now?