Battlefield

He knew his time had passed.  The flesh, despite the strength inherit in his geneseed and the genetic legacy it carried was still far weaker than the spirit, yet the spirit was succumbing to the inevitable.  Only in death did duty end, and soon it would.
His ears could still hear the sounds of battle in the distance.  The explosions and screams of agony still came to him.  They buoyed him some, his brothers did not scream in pain.  It must be the enemy.  But the enemy was too numerous and too strong.  Their intelligence on them too weak and filled with gaps that had been their death.
He checked his weapons.  A single shell left, chambered and ready to fire in his bolt pistol, the magazine empty and his spares long spent and discarded on the battlefield.  His chainsword's reserves were empty, the fuel burned off in the fighting.  It didn't matter, it had no teeth left and the motor that powered it had fizzled into black smoke and sparks as he tried to cut through the sturdy flesh of the demons.  Even it's machine spirit had abandoned it as a futile endeavor.
That had been their downfall.  The Inquisition had claimed there was only a heretic cult spouting blasphemy and denying the divinity of the Emperor.  A few hundred.  Nothing more than a combat drill for two crusader squadrons training neophytes  for battle.  An easy fight for them to wet their blades and see their first taste of real combat.
His own neophyte, Baldanur was the boys name, lay face first in the blood soaked soil.  Ripped from groin to chin by the sharp talons of a Bloodletter, his scout armor providing no more protection than had he been in the nude.  Had he been nude, he might have been saved.  He made a careless mistake.  He trusted the strength of his armor more than his reflexes.
His lack of caution had killed him.
No, Brother Gravick thought to himself.  I killed him.  He was mine to lead and to train.  His death is my fault and mine alone.  He was brave and trusting.  He had faith in me and the artificers.  His faith should not have been misplaced.  Yet it was.
Yet, even his own armor had failed.  The thick ceramite that held the strength of a tank had succumbed to the relentless attacks of the demons and the heretics.  And the corrupted marines.  They had come as well.  Warp fissures opened and they poured out onto the battle field in numbers the brothers could not suppress.  Their armor and weapons a twisted reflection of the loyalist marine's own equipment.  While his armor was black and polished to a mirror shine and his pauldrons pure white, theirs was black from being darkened by warp fire and demon's kisses, their pauldrons scarred with marks of Chaos in a mocking of his own chapter markings.
Perhaps I should rest, Gravick thought.  Close my eyes and sleep.  He shook the thought away.  To sleep now was to end it, to never awaken.  His body maybe crippled, his spirit broken, but he would will himself conscious until the end.  He had one shot left, enough to take a final life from the enemy.  Duty did not end until death.  Until he died he would remain vigilant, awake, and serve his Emperor.

He awoke with a jolt.  I must be more injured than I thought.  I have dozed.  It was the renewed sounds of battle that pulled him from his rest.  Closer.  He could hear the screams of jump packs.  He could feel the ground shake as warmachines came forth.  The familiar and oddly comforting rumble of Rhino treads crushing dirty and rock under the transport's weight.
He heard the sound of feet, armored feet, coming from his blinded side.  A tred lighter than an astartes.  His left hand raised his bolt pistol into a firing position, the memory of his muscles drawing him a sight picture even as his left eye was blind.
He squeezed gently on the trigger, holding the tension so that the movement of his finger, a fraction of a millimeter, would release his last shell into an enemy.
“Hold your fire, Astartes,” came the voice.  Modulated and deep through a helmet speaker in proper high gothic.  The figure started as a shadow then came into the view of his remaining eye.  Black power armor like his own, covered in white robes with scarlet lining.  No, not like his own, lighter, slimmer, female.
A sister.  The nartheceium and markings on her armor made her a hospitaller.  Her coif had come free from her head, leaving her in only the face mask she wore covering her nose and mouth.  Her scalp shorn clean and glistening with sweat.
His arm dropped heavily to the ground, finger releasing from the trigger, strength gone from his fingers.  Only the chain that bound it to his wrist kept it in place.
She straddled his hips and began to work at his helmet.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Tending your wounds as is my duty,” she replied.
“No,” he told her.  “I am dead.  Move on to those you can still save, do not waste efforts on me.”
She shook her head.  Her green eyes pierced deep into him.
“You are the only one still alive in the area that I have found.  My own unit is decimated as well and the fighting here is nothing more than both sides bombarding a destroyed field to keep the other side from advancing.”
With a twist and a hiss of gasses the helmet released and she pulled it free.  He was relieved to see that the blinding on his left side had been in optics of his helmet, with it gone, he could see fully again.
“We are cut off and alone,” she said.  “My duty is to heal warriors and I see no other warriors here.”
His blue eyes met her green.
“My wounds are grave.  I know this.  There will be no help for me.”
“I do not know much of Astartes physiology,” she said.  “And while your wounds look grave indeed, I do not think they are fatal if they are tended to.  Even the missing leg can be replaced.”
“Please sister, do not waste the effort.”
“Please brother, do not tell me how or when to do my duty,” she scolded him.  “Instead answer my questions when asked.  What are the command-codes to release your breastplate?”
He shook his head, bringing fresh pain to his neck.  His blackcarapace told him everything he needed to know in this case.
“The locks are damaged,” he said.  “The armor sealed itself as failsafe.  Only a tech-marine could speak to the spirit now and get it to release.”
The sister-hospitaller nodded.
“Then I will have to cut it away.  Turn your head as this will spark.”
She raised the chainblade of her narthecium, the teeth spun and she laid it against the outer layer of ceramite on his chest.  His armor told him that blade had bit in and was cutting in.  Sparks flew toward his face as the underlayer of metal met the teeth then quickly cut past that to the substructure.  With a chirgeuns precision she ended her cut without touching his skin beneath and peeled away the layers of armor and padding.
Again and again she did this, sectioning of his breast plate until it was removed.  He could feel the skin of his chest exposed to the outside air and the touch of her armor plated hand as she began to probe his wounds.
“Do they hurt?”
“Pain is irrelevant,” he replied.
“That is not the question I asked.”
He nodded.
“Yes,” he said.  “One has even entered one of my hearts after penetrating my third lung.”
“I believe that is this one,” she said, lightly touching a wound on his chest near his sternum.  “I will leave that one as I do not think I have the means to remove it without causing you further harm.  The other three look safe enough to remove.  What are these?” she asked, lightly touching one of the small black nodules attached to his skin.
“Interface ports for my power armor as well as used for monitoring development during my induction and augmentation,” he said.
“Some of them appear clogged with blood,” she said.
He nodded.
“They will need to be cleared.”
“I will do that as well, no lay quiet and still.”
She was quick and sure with her tools, well trained and skilled.  The enemies slugs were removed for his body and field dressings applied to his wounds where his enhanced physiology had been unable to deal with on its own.  Using a thin blade she scraped blood from his ports then inspected her work.
“I need to get at your legs,” she said.  She did not wait for permission and began to dissect the armor encasing his lower half with the same skill she had removed his breast plate.
And explosion of dirt rocked her to the side and off of him, interrupting what she was doing.  His ears rang from the sound of so close and impact.
She pulled her self up close to him, using the same small outcropping for shelter he had taken.  Shells began to drop  around them.  Craters forming where they impacted, spewing dirt into the air that rained upon them.
“Damn the heretics,” she hissed between blasts.
“I am afraid this is a bombardment from our own, unless the battlefield has reversed itself since I was injured.”
She shook her head.
“It hasn't,” she said.  “I was damning them for making it come to this point  For wasting lives with their heresy, wasting resources better spent elsewhere.”
“We did not realize they were so well equipped when we landed, nor so numerous or as involved in chaos as we saw.”
She pulled herself in tighter, her armored breast pushing into his right arm in a way he did not find uncomfortable.
“The entire planet declared itself against the Emperor within hours of the Astartes assault.  Loyalist PDF forces were executed on live Vox broadcast.  My sisters and I were rerouted here aboard the Saint's Vengeance to try to take the head from the heresy before it was too late,” she said.  “But it was.  They were entrenched and out numbered us ten-to-one.  They had as many corrupted Astartes as we had battle sisters and then there were the demons and the cultists.”
The shelling moved on as the wave of destruction passed them in preference of some other sector of the field.  When they felt it was clear, she began her work again and stripped away his armor.
“The leg has clotted, that is good,” she said.  “I will clear these ports and then bind you.”
She reached up and unfastened her face mask and set it aside.
“Sister that is- oh,” he said softly.
Her lips were soft.  Her mouth warm and wet as it engulfed him.  He felt himself stiffening under her ministrations.  It was a wave of pleasure that pulsed with each bob of her head around him, firing from his loins to his skull, he felt himself relax and pain recede.
She came up and looked at him, her green eyes meeting his blue.
“Sister, that is-”
Her cool ceramite encased fingers tickled and slid along the underside of his erect shaft, stopping just under the base of his head as they rose then sliding down again to tickle him as they went.
“It has been,” she interrupted him, “many years since I was with a man.  It is not forbidden, but it is frowned upon and my duties keep me busy.  But if I am to die..” she trailed off, leaving it at that as she stroked and teased with her armored fingers.  It was the first time he had heard her voice without the deep modulation of her mask.  It was husky and urgent.
“You can escape,” Gravick told her.  “Leave me and save yourself.”
She shook her head.
“It is too late.  For the secrets I have seen of traitor Astartes.  The demons.  The last survivor of a lost squadron.  If I am lucky, I will be executed by the Inquisition.  If I am unlucky, my tongue will be cut out to keep me silent and I will die a repentia.  Both will be fitting and just.  But I will enjoy a man's company one last time, and a mighty man you are,” she said with a mischievous smile, “before I meet fate.  Is this forbidden to you?”
“No,” he said.  “Not forbidden.  It is simply not spoken of and not done.  I was taken as a neophyte before the urge was upon me and then-” he stopped and looked for the words.  “Duty replaced want and has filled my days.  There is no desire for what I have never experienced.”
She nodded and smiled, sweetly yet sad.  She returned her mouth to his member, her head bobbing with violent speed as her tongue slid, coaxed, and teased.  He felt pressure build, his breath caught.  He thought to warn her, but he was out of time.
He heard her gag and choke, but she did not move, her lips remained locked around the swollen head of his member as he ejaculated into her mouth, she looked up at him with her green eyes, something about the look made him pump harder, made her blink in surprise at the force of it.
She lifted her head from him, streams of mucusy saliva and sperm forming glistening filiments from her lips to his throbbing member as the last drops of his seed slid from his head to wet the shaft and blend with he spit she had left slickening it.  Her tongue and lips worked as she swallowed then she gave him a devious smile.
“You should have warned me,” she said.
“There was no time.”
She unfastened her gauntlets and worked at the clasps of her armor.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I want to feel your hands upon me,” she told him.  Her breastplate fell away and revealed her silk covered torso.  Freed, her breasts dropped and settled with a pleasing bounce.  She leaned over, placing the mounds on either side of his face as she worked to help remove the remains of his armor from his arms and hands.
He buried his face between them.  Warm, sweaty, with a weight to them that was not unpleasant as his mouth sought out her nipples and his tongue began to tease them through the thin, smooth cloth.
She moaned a little in pleasure.
“I thought you had never been with a woman?” she said.
“I haven't,” he replied, coming up from his work.  “It simply seems natural.”
“It feels that way as well,” she said.  It took two of her small hands to lift he mighty hand and place the palm against her unoccupied breast.  He squeezed it and she gasped.
“It is not a bolter hilt,” she said.  “Be gentle, they are sensitive.”
“I apologize, sister,”
In response she grabbed the back of his head and forced an erect pink nipple into his mouth.
He had thought he would be spent from her performance already.  He had felt that way when he had burst into her mouth.  Yet he found his vigor returning as he sucked and kneaded.  He felt himself hardening and his strength returning as he returned the passion that she had spent upon him.
She undid the silver clasp at her neck that held closed the silk tunic she wore and let it fall to her waist.  With trembling hands, he reached up and cupped the warm, bare flesh.  His hands, laced with the scars of thousands of hours of battle training looked hideous next to the smooth, pale, perfect flesh of her bosom.
He had never questioned his appearance before, it was beneath him as an Astartes.  But as a man?  He was bulky and thick, covered in hard veiny muscle and a million scars and nodules of holy bio-tech embedded in him.
By contrast, she was smooth.  Skin soft, yet the muscles beneath hardened by training.  His hand slid along the indention that ran the center of her stomach from her navel to her breast bone.  Firm, toned muscle beneath his fingers.  He felt her in a way he had never felt anything before, it was magical, the supple hardness of her.  The interplay of the fibers beneath her skin, the tautness of the skin pulled over those woven cords.
He reached up and squeezed.  Despite the size of his hands, the soft flesh of her breast was enough to spill out around the edges and between his fingers.  It was as soft and yielding as her stomach was firm.  An intriguing juxtaposition.  Had had not known what to expect a woman's body to feel like.  The result surprised and enticed him.
“Hold me up,” she commanded.  His hands shifted to her waist, almost encircling it in its entirety.  He supported her weight easily, barely a fifth of his own if she was even that, and freed her arms to work at the locks sealing her into her greaves and boots.
With a final hiss of gasses, she kicked away the plates, leaving her as unarmored as he was.
The shelling returned.  Kinetic bombs kicking up clouds of dirt that were ignored.  The pounding of shells hiddne by the pounding in their chests as they both anticipated what was to come.
“Keep me supported,” she whispered into his ear, her lips close enough that her breath teased the little hairs along the back of his neck.  She pushed against his arms with one hand and his chest with the other, lowering herself gently on to him.  She bit her lip and grimaced in slight pain.
“Is a mighty weapon you have there,” she joked as she gasped as he entered her.
It was like nothing he had felt before.  It was beyond the joy of battle.  Beyond the pleasure of his duty.  It seemed as if this is what he was made for, his reason for being.  He gasped at the sensation, his breath caught in his throat.
She craned her neck, bit harder at her lip and arched her back as she took him in more fully.  She pushed herself to the limits of her tolerance until he was completely inside her.
She exhaled hard and smiled down at him.  His hands rested lightly on her hips, she braced against her chest as she leaned forward, her face only centimeters from his.
“A hard task, but easily worth it,” she whispered.  She kissed his lips lightly, then harder.  He was unsure of how to respond and tried to simply mimic her actions, treating it as a training exercise.  She was the instructor and he the student.  Her tongue touched his and he probed back.  Then she nipped at his lip and pulled her head away before he could return the motion.
“I bite, you get bitten,” she told him.  Slowly she began to grind her hips against his swollen member.  A slow rocking motion that became smooth circles.  Her fingers, with hard short nails, clawed at his chest.  It was unlike the clawing of demon or beast, it hurt in a manner that only heightened the intensity of the pleasure he felt.
She grabbed his hands and pulled them to her rear, squeezing his fingers into her firm ass.  She began to bounce and rock, lifting up off him and back down creating a sensation of suddenly cooling the warming again as his hypersensitive skin was exposed to the air then hidden inside her once more.
He watched her breasts bounce hypnotically as she did this.  A moan escaped from her lips, then a grunt, then a long purr as if she was a great cat.  Her back arched, her eyes closed.  Her hands pushed against his hips.
“Squeeze harder,” she said between short breaths.  He complied, he could feel his fingers sinking into her flesh.  “Harder still,” she demanded.  He was sure he was bruising her and afraid of rupturing her skin as he squeezed.
Still, he did as she commanded as she repeatedly impaled herself upon him.  The force became violent and he feared she would be hurt, but she was determined and refused to stop.
Then her spine stiffened.  He felt the quiver start in her thighs that then over took her body.  She held her position as if a statue, her breath caught in her throat, her fingers shaking where she used her hands to support herself against his body.
“Oh, Emperor,” she finally whispered as the waves of ecstasy came over her.  “Don't move Astartes,” she said quietly.  “Simply do not move and let me have this moment.”
He was as still as he could be.  He held his breath so not to disturb her.  She glowed as she remained perched on him.  A beautiful creature trapped in a moment of rapture.  Her lips trembled, her eyes closed, her shaved head glistening with sweat.
Still the bombs pounded around them as they stay still.  They ignored the sounds.  Ignored the chaos.  There was only each other in this moment.  Then she loosened and started to rock again, started the grinding motion that had been so pleasurable at the start.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I'm providing you with what you gave me,” she said, smiling at him.  “I can tell this is what you like.”
She leaned back, bracing herself with one hand against his knee behind her, the other taking his hand and using it to once again engulf a breast.  She ground some more, at a different angle that brought him more fully in contact with her, increased the friction between them in a manner that warmed him and made him grit his teeth as he felt himself about to once again ejaculate, the moment of peak pleasure before orgasm came.
She undulated, he belly and groin moving in waves, each crest bringing him closer to the edge.  It was inevitable, he could not resist it and had no desire to do so.
“Stop,” he said as the moment reached him.  He was overcome with sensitivity.  It seemed as if each of his nerves lit with pleasure at once.  Sparks flew past his vision and his head felt lightened.  All his pain, his weariness, it all vanished for that instant.
She held her position for as long as his member pulsed and throbbed inside of her.  She ignored the crushing grip he had upon her breast.  She smiled, happy to see him in the moment of orgasm.  The look of pure pleasure on his face, his featured screwed as his mind tried to fathom what his body felt.
His grip on her bosom slacked and she eased her way off of him.  His swollen member began to go soft once she had ceased her teasing.  She curled against him, nestling herself in the crook of his massive arm.  She pulled her tunic up to cover her thighs and torso.
“If I am to die now, I will die satisfied,” she said, kissing his cheek lightly.
“Emperor knows, as will I,” Gravick said.
“I would like to rest now,” she said.  “Let death take me in my sleep and let me die in peace if it must be.”
He nodded in agreement and closed his eyes as well.

“On your feet!”
Gravick was instantly awake.  He had not heard the approach, his senses dulled in his post orgasm rest.  The sister on his arm awakened as well and went to stand, clutching her tunic to her body.
The priest tossed his robe at her.
“Cover your shame woman,” he ordered her.  “Stand as well Astartes.”  The priest stabbed his staff topped with the Inquisitorial sigil into the ground.  Behind him stood two flagellants, the mechanical whips they had in place of arms writhing like the tails of serpents.
“He is injured and missing a leg,” the sister hospitillar said.  “Allow him to stay sitting.”
“He maybe missing a leg, but he isn't so injured that he can't fornicate, if what I see is true.  And with a daughter of the Emperor, no less.  You both should be ashamed for what you have done.”
Gravick used his hands to push himself up, wobbly on a single leg.  The sister came up under his arm and lent him support.
“Away from him,” the priest ordered.
“Why?” she asked.
He pulled his shotgun up and leveled it at her stomach.
“I'm going to execute you for dereliction of duty, heresy, and impropriety,” he said.
“There was no dereliction,” Gravick said.  “She tended my wounds during the shelling.”
“Among other things,” the priest sneered.  “I guess the rumors are unfounded, that the geneseed of the primarchs leaves the marines impotent.  It does not matter.  She is here and alive.  I came to retrieve the rosettes of our dead and I find a coward alive and nude with an Astartes.”
“She is now coward,” Gravick said.
“Stand down, Astartes.  You are crippled and unarmed.  Or I will judge you as well,” the priest said as he heard the menace in Gravick's voice.  “And step away sister and take your proper punishment as a servant of the Emperor.”
She moved to step away from Gravick to keep him from being struck in the blast.
Gravick refused to accept it and launched himself forward at the priest with his one leg, catching the man around the neck with his hand and bearing him easily to the ground by his greater weight.  With a squeeze, the man's throat was crushed, his last breath a faint gasp.
The flagellants moved to strike, only to be cut down by two quick booms from the shotgun now in the sister's hand.
She dropped the weapon and helped Garvick to stand.
“Why did you do that?  Now the ecclesiarchy will be after us both.”
Gravick reached down and took up the robe and wrapped it around his waist as the sister supported him.
“Only Astartes may judge Astartes.  Only in death does duty end,” he said.
“I understand the first.  The second?” she asked.
“Where I am from only husband and wife may lay together as we have and both have a duty to protect the other.  Duty is until death.”
“I-” she stopped.  “We will be apart.  Our duty to the Emperor-”
“Must supersede any duty to each other.  But know that while I am present I will allow no harm to come to you.”
She nodded.
“Nor I to you, if we are to be bound by duty.”
She helped him sit on the ground as she gathered her armor and began the process of putting it back on.
“A woman should know her husband's name,” she said.
“Gravick Clayborn.  A husband should know his wife's.”
“Gloriana.  As an orphan, I have no family name other than that of the Emperor.”