The Iron Chaplains hold the Wandle causeway

Before first light on the eighth, forty-odd S-9 Sextons came up the Wandle causeway in column. If you have only seen one on its own, picture forty: hunched, yellow-and-black hazard plating scuffed to bare metal, one big caged lens for a head, riot shields locked edge to edge, the prods crackling blue in the drizzle and every chest loudspeaker saying the same thing at once, PLEASE DISPERSE, CARE IS ARRIVING. The causeway was half blown in April; one lane remains, twelve metres wide, with the river on both sides. Behind us were the Sector 7 warrens and four thousand people asleep. In front of them were nine Iron Chaplains of the Second Litany, and me, with a flask and a notebook.

The armour

People ask what the Chaplains' plate is. It is whatever we could take. Brother Castellan Ruud's breastplate was once a Bailiff's hatch cover. Sister Agathe's pauldrons are two halves of a municipal grit bin, welded. None of it has a chip in it. The servos run on hydraulics and swearing. The litanies painted on the helms are not decoration: they are the only writing on the armour the enemy cannot read, because to it they mean nothing at all.

Every loop has an end. We are the end. (Painted on Ruud's helm, in white lead, in his own hand)

Six hours

They held at the break in the road, where the Sextons had to come two abreast. The Chaplains fired in pairs with the heavy stubbers, then went in with the hammers when the column bunched. A Sexton's knee is its weakness: the hydraulic hoses run on the outside of the joint, and a four-kilo hammer finds a hose the way water finds a crack. A Sexton that cannot stand cannot hold its shield up, and the next pair of Chaplains puts a round through the cage and into the lens.

Brother Emmet went into the river at 05:40, still swinging. We did not find him. Brother Hale lost his left arm below the elbow and already has a new one off the Tinker's bench, built around a car jack. At 08:15 the column withdrew, leaving twenty-three Sextons on the causeway and in the water.

I held the Rite of the Unplugging over each one. It is short. You pull the power cell, you wait for the loudspeaker to stop, you say 'rest, you poor tool', and you scratch the barcode off its chest with a nail. Some of the younger Chaplains find that funny. I mean it more than they think.

If you are strong and stubborn and you do not fit in a tunnel, the Chaplains are recruiting. Ask for Ruud. Bring your own hammer.