Chapter 112: Prelude to the Crusade: Strategic Resource Recovery
In the days that followed, Duvette allowed himself something that had been in short supply for some considerable time: rest. The city of Klassya offered it without requiring anything from him for the remainder of the week, and he took what was available.
The arrangement with the Carpé dynasty was advancing with an efficiency that mildly surprised him.
The previous evening, at a reception thrown for senior crusade officers and local dignitaries, he had met the man who ran the dynasty from behind the public face of it. The Carpé patriarch in a social setting was a different instrument than the furious man pacing the underground chamber. The precision with which he had buried his volatility under a perfectly maintained surface was the product of decades of operational necessity, and the result was one of the more accomplished facades Duvette had encountered.
The patriarch found him in a quieter corner of the reception hall, produced a glass, and offered what he described as his most sincere gratitude. The language he used was layered carefully enough that no one outside the two of them would have understood what was being acknowledged.
The "regrettable family matter," the patriarch conveyed, had been comprehensively resolved. Neither the Inquisition's investigators nor the Adeptus Arbites had pressed any subsequent inquiry into the Carpé family's core operations.
Duvette received this with a measured smile. His private assessment was that Juno had applied whatever she applied when she wanted things to resolve cleanly, and things had resolved cleanly. He congratulated the patriarch on the outcome.
The patriarch, satisfied that the groundwork was established, offered his opening gesture of goodwill.
He raised his glass and employed a particular register of coded courtesy that wealthy dynasties used to discuss things that had no official existence.
"I understand your regiment, during its efforts to clear the Cold Quarter of heretic elements, managed to recover a considerable quantity of unclaimed logistics consumables from the area. The ability to preserve Imperial materiel during such a chaotic operation speaks well of your regiment's discipline, Colonel-Commissar."
He inclined his head with measured warmth. "Consider those supplies the Carpé family's modest acknowledgment of the 112th's exceptional service at Macragge."
Duvette did not trust the patriarch. He had no intention of trusting the patriarch. A Rogue Trader who had maintained a dynasty through the galaxy's permanent state of predation was not someone whose goodwill could be taken at face value. But he returned the inclined head, touched his glass to the man's, and expressed genuine pleasure at the prospect of deepening the cooperative relationship.
To the uninformed observers around them, it would have read as an affluent trading dynasty making the natural social overture toward an Imperial officer who had recently made a significant name for himself in a neighboring star system. Nothing remarkable about that.
Duvette spent part of the reception observing the assembled senior figures and found, without great surprise, that the actual crusade high command was largely absent. Pyrite was one of several assembly points, and the full scale of what was being organized was simply too large for any single location to represent. The numbers involved were difficult to hold in the mind as a coherent image.
The first phase alone: one billion Astra Militarum soldiers. Imperial Navy fleet groups sufficient to darken orbital space. Skitarii formations of the Mechanicus. Titan Legions. Six Astartes Chapters summoned specifically for the campaign.
Moving a military engine of that size from across the galaxy, assembling it, organizing it into a coherent operational structure, and delivering it to a designated theatre of war: ten years, conservatively.
He ran the timeline in his mind. For the next decade, he and the 112th would almost certainly operate at the crusade's forward edge: advance elements, route-clearance operations, specific covert assignments, pushing ahead of the main body as it assembled. All of it building toward 755.M41, and the moment the full weight of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade came down.
The night deepened. Duvette returned to his suite at the Polar Imperial.
He removed his boots, crossed to the sofa by the floor-length window, and poured a measure of Amasec. He sat in the warmth of the temperature-controlled room, took a small mouthful, and let the heat of the amber liquid settle down his throat.
No mud. No artillery. No alien organisms. Soft carpet underfoot. Background music at a level that existed for the room rather than to be listened to.
There was a moment, brief and disconnected, when the quality of the light and the texture of the silence produced something that felt like a hotel room somewhere else entirely. Earth, in the era he'd come from. An ordinary holiday.
Then his gaze drifted to the coat stand near the wall.
The black commissar's greatcoat, worn to its current state over more engagements than he cared to catalog, hung beside the master-crafted power sword. Both of them present in the lamplight, saying nothing.
He was still in the 41st Millennium. He had never left.
Seven days. Almost finished.
He noted privately that the 112th, despite having energy reserves that Veteran's Frame had pushed well past normal human tolerance, had produced no incidents that required his attention. He attributed this primarily to the threat he had delivered on the regiment's first morning of leave: any soldier who produced a situation serious enough to draw the Adeptus Arbites' formal attention would find themselves reassigned to a penal battalion before the appeal could be filed. The prospect of commissarial enforcement had, as always, achieved what persuasion was not equipped to achieve.
He was sitting with the window and the city below it when the door of the suite produced a measured knock.
He set the glass down and moved to the door with quiet steps. Evan was at the lower billets running final leave checks. This was an unexpected caller.
He opened the door.
Venus Carpé. Not in the elaborate silks of the reception: dark, fitted clothing cut for movement rather than impression, her blond hair pulled back in a clean line.
"This late." His body stayed in the doorway, and his tone did not suggest invitation. "What is it?"
She met the closed posture without reacting to it. "Have you checked your dataslate? There is a new deployment order from the Crusade Munitorum. It should have reached your terminal several hours ago."
He had not checked the Munitorum briefings since midday.
He considered her for a moment, then stepped aside. "Come in. Close the door behind you."
The heavy door sealed. He retrieved the dataslate from the canvas bag by the sofa, unlocked it, and opened the priority communications queue.
A high-priority order from the Crusade Munitorum's logistics command was at the top. He read it through once.
His expression produced something it did not usually produce.
"I've been assigned as a foreman?"
The official language of the order was immaculate.
[Given the acute logistical pressure of the Sabbat Crusade's preparatory phase and the severe shortage of Mechanicus personnel, the Carpé Rogue Trader dynasty has been contracted to conduct strategic-grade metal and materiel recovery on the industrial derelict world Omicron-Nine. Due to the world's extended period of communication blackout and the completely uncertain local situation, the Ash Watchers-Eisenmark 112th Armoured Infantry Regiment is hereby attached to this operation to provide full military oversight and joint reconnaissance.]
He set the dataslate on the table and looked at Venus.
Strategic-grade recovery operations were Mechanicus jurisdiction under Imperial law. They were not outsourced. The Munitorum assigning this to a Rogue Trader family, and deploying a front-line armoured infantry regiment to supervise it, was the kind of arrangement that required someone to have bent several institutional preferences a considerable distance.
"How did you arrange this?"
"Resource exchange." Venus met his eyes without deflection, and the brief, composed smile she produced communicated exactly how routine she considered this kind of transaction. "Commissar, you need to understand that the crusade's logistics are under pressure that the High Lords' staff would prefer not to describe in writing. Strategic materiel in every category is urgently needed. The entire apparatus is under enormous strain."
She moved to the window and looked down at the lights of Klassya below.
"At a moment like this, a well-resourced Rogue Trader dynasty volunteering to personally clear a derelict world's scrap is exactly the kind of initiative the Crusade Munitorum wants to encourage. We committed to selling the recovered materials at well below standard market rate and made certain contributions to the high command's operational fund. In exchange, they were entirely comfortable assigning your regiment to support what they have formally categorized as a legitimate recovery expedition."
Duvette kept his eyes on her face.
"So your reason for coming to my room at this hour was to tell me to read my briefings."
"No." She turned from the window, shaking her head. "This is our first formal cooperation after reaching our agreement. I did not travel across the city at this hour to brief you on a supply operation. That world contains something considerably more valuable than scrap metal."
Venus's expression settled into something serious, and she began the real briefing.
"Omicron-Nine was once a heavily populated hive world with a substantial industrial base. Several centuries ago, it fell to a Chaos rebellion that could not be contained. The Inquisition issued an Exterminatus order."
She looked at him. "Life-Eater virus bombs. The virus dissolved every organic living thing on the surface within hours. The subsequent global firestorm burned what remained."
Duvette's brow moved slightly. He was fully aware of what those weapons produced.
"A world that has been through virus bombs and firestorms has nothing alive left in any conventional sense," he said. "What are you actually looking for down there?"
"That is the point." Venus crossed her arms and settled her weight against the wall beside the window. The posture communicated the ease of someone who has crossed into a negotiation's core. "In the Mechanicus's records, Omicron-Nine is catalogued as a non-viable recovery target, meters of dust over dead metal, no strategic value. They are occupied preparing Titan Legions and arming forge worlds. They have no interest in what they consider a rusted graveyard."
A particular focus came into her eyes.
"But they overlooked one thing. Life-Eater only kills organic material. The firestorm only reached the surface installations. The Carpé dynasty has old records, private trading contacts with that world, going back centuries. My father, reviewing the family's deepest historical logs, found references suggesting that in Omicron-Nine's underhive, there may be a preserved ancient site. Something deep enough to survive both the virus and the fire."
She met his gaze directly and placed the final element on the table.
"Whatever is down there, it has not been touched. We want to know what it is."
Duvette processed this.
His internal response was rapid and specific, pulling from everything his previous life had given him about what ancient underhive ruins on sterilized worlds sometimes contained.
This isn't going to be sleeping Necrons, is it. We specifically rush over there to wake them up, and then nobody gets out.
"You have assessed the safety of the site?" He kept the specific concern out of his voice and kept it neutral. "You are certain there is nothing down there that presents an active lethal hazard?"
"We conduct a full assessment before anyone descends to surface level. At the first indication of anything dangerous, we withdraw immediately. Trust a Rogue Trader's strategic instincts in this regard, Colonel-Commissar." She raised her chin slightly.
He looked at her for a moment.
He turned away, picked up the Amasec glass from the table, and spoke without looking back.
"Have full-grade respirators and carapace armour prepared for every Carpé personnel who sets foot on that world. I will not have my soldiers distracted from their operational duties because your people do not know the basics of going planetside on a site with an unknown environment."
He finished what was left in the glass and set it down with a definitive sound.
"I have what I need on the operation. Go prepare your ships." A pause. "I hope our first cooperation leaves both parties satisfied."
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