Annika nodded solemnly, though in practice she was far from certain. The plan, reinforced by the grim shape of it in Orion's surface thoughts made sense, but she was not a commander in any sense of the word. 

"With the Pancreator's aid," she agreed and stepped onto the side of the hovercraft before turning back to Orion.

"May he aid and watch over you this day," she concluded before leaping from the hovercraft onto the side of a tracked vehicle that looked like it had began life as an armored personnel carrier but the top had been opened to allow a trio of pintle mounted machine guns to placed behind olive drab metal gun shields. She caught hold of the netting that secured the soldiers personal possessions to the side and pulled herself up into the fighting compartment. The three soldiers inside, all out of uniform looked at her in surprise. That was to be expected of course as the sudden appearance of a priest would have been unusual at the best of times. Fortunately they didn't waste time questioning her authority. 

Within minutes the small procession of tracked vehicles was trundling north away from the main body of Orion's force. It both surprised and bothered Annika that there was no attempt being made to stop the ad hoc force. The radios that could have countermanded Orion's orders remained silent and no angry officers appeared to demand the troops return to their proper posts. Perhaps the Pancreator merely looked with favor on his servants, that certainly would have been the orthodox reply, but somehow Annika knew that wasn't it.

They drove into a section of open parkland, heavy vehicles churning up shrubs and shattering the small decorative saplings which had been planted there. A large statue depicting Saint Athelea dominated the center, twenty feet tall and holding her healing lancet aloft in praise of the Pancreator. Annika stood on the back of her vehicle, waving both her hands to stop at the following vehicles. One by one the ground to a halt, the clanking of tracks subsiding so that only the grumble of diesel engines remained.

"How long do we wait Sister?" the commander, a brawny man named Haldane, asked, adjusting the fit of his helmet for the hundredth time since she had come aboard. His mind was clear, tinged with nerves certainly, but focused on the task at hand. If he had any objections to being given orders by a clergywoman, she couldn't sense them.

"Once the shooting starts, we will give them a few minutes to get fully engaged and then we will move towards the river as Sir Pentecost desires," she told the man, injecting a confidence into her voice she did not feel. In the distance the crack of weapons was already audible as the Vuldrock's reached the city but she knew that was just acts of random murder of exuberance as opposed to a real battle. The sound of heavy gun fire would come soon enough.

"Will you bless us Sister?" Haldane asked unexpectedly, turning her thoughts away from rampaging hordes of Vuldrocks overrunning Orion's small force.

"Of course," she replied, climbing atop a crate of ammuntion so she could be seen, though probably not heard, by the majority of the vehicles.

"Blessed Pancreator, Lord of Battles, grant your favor to your children this..." Haldane's sharp intake of breath and surge of fear cut her off and she glanced quickly over her shoulder. From the treeline at the edge of the park four figures all cowled and dressed in black had emerged and were striding purposely towards the collection of vehicles. Annika narrowed her eyes, a subtle sense of wrongness prickling at her palms and the nape of her neck. The leader appeared to be a man, but she had the impression the three followers were female.

"A cunning plan Deaconess," the black clad man called, his voice disturbingly audible even over the rumble of a score of engines. He stopped and placed his hands on his hips, looking her up and down appraisingly.

"Unfortunately, I cannot allow this young upstart to disrupt plans which we have laid so carefully," he went on. The foremost gunner had swung his weapon to bear on the cluster of black clad figures, as, she expected, had most of the rest of the column. She opened her mouth to give the order to open fire, however these people were they were certainly no friends of hers but before she could speak the leader calmly addressed his three followers.

"Kill them all," he asked in a bored tone that he might have used to order more wine, "Leave the Priestess to me." Sudden witch light sprang into existence, limning the figures and the vehicles with ghostly greenish fire that seemed to crawl over everything.

"Fire!" Annika shouted but the command was drowned out by Haldane's screaming. Corpecent flame burst from his eyes like great geyers and his skin sizzled and burned, shrinking in on itself like drying leather. The remaining members of the crew, likewise aflicted, dropped to the ground, ankles drumming on the armored deck plates as they died. There was a convulsive burst of gunfire as a gunner on another vehicle clamped his trigger in his death throes and sparkling tracers ricocheted off the statue of the saint.  Annika screamed and then began to chant a litany of protection, too late she feared for anyone but herself but the black clad leader simply stalked forward towards her vehicle. Giving up on the Theury she leaped over the body of the lead gunner and grabbed the machine gun by its heavy grips, dragging it across its slow traverse towards their attackers. She squeezed the trigger as the gun bore on the three women and it roared to life, explosive bullets kicking up bucket fulls of dirt as it clawed the ground. One of the chanting women threw up her hands and collapsed as gyzers of dirt spouted beside her but by now the leader had reached the track. His mouth opened and he spoke a word so blashmemous that Annika's grip on the gun faltered. A great mass of black shadow seemed to explode from his mouth like a crashing wave, fingers of darkness rushing up over the armored prow of the vehicle like questing tentacles. The darkness seized Annika and she was lifted into the air, her flesh crawling and burning with cold agony where the icy impossible darkness gripped her. She opened her mouth to scream and felt blackness pouring down her throat. The last sensation she experienced before darkness swallowed her was the distant roar of heavy guns as the Vuldrocks reached  Orion's position.