Chapter 68: The Wrong Kind of Disorder
The hydraulic ramp doors of several heavy transport shuttles lowered with a grinding mechanical rumble and came down hard against the landing pad of the 42nd Armoured Distribution Center on Parmenio's surface.
Duvette came down the ramp of one. Behind him, Anderson, Finn, Stroud, and Major Kleist led a hundred veterans out onto the pad.
What they found made no sense.
The landing pad was enormous. Aside from the noise of distant cranes shifting cargo and industrial servitors ferrying ammunition in steady back-and-forth lines, there was not a single assigned personnel member waiting to receive them. No guide. No direction. Not even one person to tell the Colonel-Commissar bearing the Lord Militant's personal writ where to wait or where to collect the Leman Russ tanks that were the entire stated purpose of this landing.
Time moved. Astra Militarum discipline held the hundred veterans in place as if nailed there, but the atmosphere around them grew heavier with every passing minute.
Duvette found himself pacing. His patience had run out.
He turned to Anderson and was preparing to give the order to force their way into the distribution center's interior and find what they needed themselves. In this universe, there were times when a loaded weapon was more useful than a bureaucrat's paperwork.
He had just raised his foot when a logistics officer in a grey uniform came jogging out of a corridor entrance across the pad.
The man was visibly hurrying. Fine beads of sweat covered his forehead. His uniform collar had worked itself sideways. He arrived at Duvette breathless and before he had fully stopped was already apologizing.
"My most sincere apologies, Colonel-Commissar Duvette, sir! I am the logistics auxiliary officer for the 42nd Armoured Distribution Center. The dispatch system suffered a serious delay and I only just received notification of your landing. I am terribly sorry to have kept you waiting."
He wiped at his face and held himself in a posture of genuine contrition, words coming out in the practiced cadence of a man who apologized frequently.
Duvette studied him. He sensed nothing beyond a harried man doing a job badly.
He let the dereliction go without comment and nodded. "Lead the way. Take us to receive our armor."
Outwardly that was the end of it. Inwardly, his alertness had gone up another notch. This kind of elementary dispatch failure had no business occurring here.
Under the logistics officer's guidance, the party moved through the distribution center's enormous and complex internal corridors. What they passed through along the way was genuinely troubling.
Mountains of unsorted materiel stacked against every wall. Logistics personnel squatting on the floor resting with none of the focused energy that preparation for a campaign should have produced. The place had the quality of an institution in the process of quietly falling apart.
At one junction, Duvette watched two officers in different regimental insignia in the middle of a full physical altercation.
"These las-cell packs belong to the 19th Regiment! Open your eyes and check the seal on the transfer order!" One had the other by the collar.
"Rubbish! These are Fourth Armoured Regiment allocation! Do you want to defy the Departmento Munitorum's direct orders?" The second bellowed back without yielding.
Duvette asked himself a quiet question.
Where were the Ultramarines garrisoning this planet?
The Ultramarines operated to a standard of procedural discipline approaching doctrine. They would never tolerate logistics dysfunction at this level, let alone the kind that produced open brawling between officers at an active staging area. Something was preventing them from seeing it clearly.
He already had a partial answer forming. He needed a little more evidence.
A few minutes later, the logistics officer led them to a remote section of the facility.
"Colonel-Commissar, sir. We have arrived. This is the Sacred Machine Spirit Stasis Chamber designated for your regiment." The official indicated what lay ahead.
Duvette raised his head.
His expression went cold.
This was a warehouse. A large, prefabricated, ordinary warehouse. The roof showed water stain lines where the ceiling had been leaking. The air carried a sharp blend of machine oil and mold. Dozens of enormous Leman Russ main battle tanks and Chimera armored personnel carriers sat in rough rows beneath heavy canvas that had accumulated a substantial layer of dust.
It was not a Mechanicus stasis chamber. It was not maintained to any standard the Adeptus Mechanicus would recognize. For the soldiers who would depend on these vehicles to stay alive, this was not administrative negligence. It was a death sentence delivered in paperwork.
"Where are the tech-priests?" Duvette's voice was flat and controlled.
The logistics officer shifted uncomfortably, clearly aware the environment was difficult to defend, but unable to produce an explanation. He wiped at his face again and produced a materiel handover form from his document case, made several rapid marks on it, and presented it with both hands. When Duvette did not take it, he gave an awkward smile and drew it back.
"Colonel-Commissar, all vehicles are present and the numbers match the authorization completely. I, uh, still have other urgent dispatch matters requiring my attention. I will leave you to complete the receiving process."
He spoke quickly, then turned toward the warehouse exit. Duvette caught his shoulder.
"Stay. Right where you are."
"Sir, I really do have urgentâ€""
"I said stay." Duvette's grip tightened and held the man in place.
He turned his head to the armored commander behind him.
"Kleist. Take your people and inspect every vehicle. Every component. Nothing overlooked."
"Understood, Commissar." Major Kleist had been sitting on a building fury at this facility for long enough. He waved his hand immediately and led the armored troopers toward the canvas-covered vehicles at a brisk pace.
The heavy canvas came off hard, kicking up clouds of dust. The troopers went up the hulls, dropped into driver compartments and turrets, and began running power-on diagnostics and ammunition verification.
For a time the warehouse held nothing but the sounds of metal on metal and the faint electrical hum of instruments starting up. Duvette, Stroud, and the others stood to one side and kept watch.
The quiet broke.
"Duvette!"
Major Kleist was half out of a Leman Russ turret hatch, face flushed the color of old brick, voice carrying hard off the warehouse walls. In his fury he had dropped the honorifics entirely.
"These bastards have been playing us for fools!" He ripped the comms headset from his head and slammed it against the tank's armor plating. "A third of the Leman Russ fire control arrays are non-functional! Not only that, the standard ammunition allocated to us is scrap! A full half of the high-explosive shell fuses are moisture-damaged duds! These guns cannot fire!"
Duvette received this without any change in his expression. He turned and looked at the logistics officer.
The officer's legs gave out. He dropped and tried to crawl for the exit.
Anderson stepped into his path like a wall, thick arms coming down to seize the man's collar, hauling him entirely off the ground without visible effort.
"Let me go! What is this! What are you doing to me!" The official shook and kicked at empty air.
Duvette walked up to him, looked into his eyes, and did not raise his voice.
"Explain. Why are the fire control arrays broken? Why are the fuses moisture-damaged?"
"I don't know! I genuinely don't know!" The man's voice cracked. Tears ran freely. He shook his head with the energy of someone who understood precisely how much trouble they were in. "I swear it! I was only following orders! I know nothing about this! I beg you, please!"
Duvette let out a long, slow breath.
He had his confirmation.
The senior Departmento Munitorum personnel managing this facility's materiel had been replaced by Genestealer infiltrators. The Ultramarines garrisoning Parmenio had perhaps never encountered organisms this skilled at manufacturing institutional disorder, or had been deceived into reading it as the ordinary strain of wartime overload.
Either way, they had not seen it for what it was. That would change. The Astartes would discover the problem before long. But that was precisely the Genestealers' calculation. They were not afraid of being found. They only needed time.
Duvette looked down at the man collapsed on the ground. He reached down, grabbed his arm, and pulled him to his feet.
"Lead the way." The voice was low and carried an absolute weight to it. "Take me to your highest-ranking officer in charge."
He had no more patience for paperwork and procedure. There was no time. The sooner this was resolved, the more time remained for Macragge.
At maximum speed, using the most direct methods available to him: he intended to root these damned parasites out of the shadows and deal with them one by one with his own hands.
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