V2 Chapter 44: The Archmagos Arrives
When the last wounded soldier from the decapitation force was carried aboard the Valkyrie assault transport, the smoke still had not fully cleared from the upper hive's core.
Duvette stood at the hatch and looked down at the destroyed and burned-out Cognitor Array below, cold and expressionless, then turned and walked into the cabin.
With the vector engines roaring, the 112th's veterans lifted clear of the ruined steel labyrinth and returned to the massive transport ship sitting in high orbit.
After the near-miraculous survival of that operation behind enemy lines, the expedition command's strategic assessment of the 112th changed entirely.
They were no longer a conventional Astra Militarum regiment that needed heavy armour cover and grinding frontal advances to function.
From a high-altitude orbital drop directly into anti-aircraft fire, to close-quarters butchery through the upper hive rubble, to armoured engagements on the plains below, this force of mortal veterans had demonstrated full-spectrum special operations capability across every terrain and every tactical register.
Whatever form extreme combat took, they handled it with a cold efficiency that gave senior commanders pause.
This time, the decapitation strike had been executed completely.
Without the Cognitor Array to unify their command and direct their logic, Asphodel's Bane Engines, the pride of his entire operation, collapsed instantly into disconnected machines fighting without coordination, many detonating where they stood from internal logic conflicts.
On the broad plains of the primary battlefield, the God-Machines of the Imperium, suppressed until now, were finally unleashed without restraint.
The Titan Legion's plasma destroyers and Volcano Cannons, weapons capable of melting the planet's crust, worked in combination with the Knight Houses' furious chainsword charges to tear apart the enemy's remaining heavy armour without any difficulty.
With the Bane Engines gone, the cultists and mutant legions that remained were nothing before those steel giants standing dozens of metres tall. They were ground under without leaving intact remains.
Following the Titan Legion's advance, the Imperial Guard forces on every other front exploited the enemy's total collapse and pushed forward across the line simultaneously.
The entire war for Ashek II was effectively decided in under three weeks. For Astra Militarum grinding wars that routinely measured their timelines in years, this was a speed that bordered on the extraordinary.
The scattered remnants of the broken heretic forces retreated in desperation into the bottomless lower hive levels of every hive city on the planet, hoping the labyrinthine pipework, abandoned industrial facilities, and absolute darkness would let them hold out.
With the Iron Snakes providing support, that hope proved meaningless. The demigods from Ithaka moved through those lower reaches with bolters and power spears, their shield formations cold and relentless, turning the darkness into a graveyard. The enemies hiding in it were nothing but bones waiting to be run through.
One detail, however, stood out in the final accounting. Command tallied the enemy dead and found no trace of the enemy's supreme leader. Heritor Asphodel's body was not among them. His super-heavy mobile command fortress had vanished completely.
Duvette received this intelligence without any particular reaction.
He knew, of course, that the cunning and vicious Chaos warlord had already run. Asphodel's death was not written here. He would flee to another core battlefield in this sector and, in a later campaign, meet his destined end against Ibram Gaunt. That confrontation belonged to the story's original protagonist, and Duvette had no interest in taking it from him.
His immediate priority was simpler: keep the 112th harvesting resources and growing stronger.
Over the following month, the campaign moved into its final phase.
Command redeployed the 112th to a new operational zone in Ashek II's southern hemisphere.
This time there was no need for another uncovered orbital drop with nothing between them and the ground.
The large transport in orbit lowered massive Devourer-class heavy landing craft, delivering to the surface the 112th's heavy vehicles that had been stored in the cargo holds throughout the decapitation operation.
The familiar smell of machine oil and the rumble of engines surrounded these veterans again.
They returned to the rhythm that suited them best. With their Leman Russ main battle tanks and Chimera armoured transports, they moved across the open plains, clearing what remained of the heretic strongpoints with track and fire in operations that held no real uncertainty.
Duvette sat inside a specially reinforced command-variant Chimera. The compartment filled with the dull sound of tracks on ground and the flat, routine battle reports coming through the vox from each company.
He was not looking at the tactical table.
He was sitting with his head down, looking quietly at the small glass vial wrapped in silver wire in his hand.
"Another trophy."
He laughed internally, somewhere between resignation and amusement, turning the small object over in the dim light as it caught faint reflections. An absurd thought was forming without his permission.
Everything he was living through was starting to feel uncomfortably like some kind of immersive game running on a poorly-designed progression system.
Complete a near-impossible decapitation mission, the System decides the objective is met and awards a bonus item. Impress a proud Astartes sufficiently, accumulate enough goodwill, and the Chapter hands over a relic as though it were standard procedure.
"Enough of that."
He shook his head and pushed the commentary out of his mind. He raised the vial to eye level. For everything it had been through, the water inside was still clear, something close to pure.
As he looked at it, the System interface materialized at the edge of his retina, flat and without sentiment, displaying the item's properties.
[Gift of the Ocean]
[Aura: Abyss of Ithaka]
[Effect: Any hostile unit that enters within two metres of the bearer will be subject to forced interference, experiencing pressure equivalent to the crushing depths of a ten-thousand-metre ocean. Physical movement will be forcibly slowed. Neural reflexes will be severely degraded. Combat will to fight will sink as though drawn into a deep abyss.]
[Reverence the deep. Or be consumed by it.]
Duvette read the effect description and something sharpened in his eyes.
The tactical value of this was beyond straightforward calculation.
As a mortal commissar who relied on skill augmentation for close-quarters combat, his single greatest vulnerability had always been opponents with inhuman neural reflex speed.
With an area-suppression field of this kind built into whatever he was carrying, the next time he faced something like Eldar assassins, their terrifying speed advantage would be blunted before the engagement even started, without having to force-activate [Silence] to compensate. Anything that came within two metres of him would move through the field as though caught in something it could not pull free of.
He gave the vial a small shake and listened to the faint sound of water inside, then carefully tucked it into the inner pocket of his black commissar's greatcoat, against his chest.
"Need to find some kind of storage solution for this eventually." He settled back against the hard seat and touched the inner pocket. "At this rate, carrying all these vials and oddly-shaped mission items into close-quarters combat is going to become its own problem."
He was working through how best to approach command about a reward request, specifically a batch of the latest-pattern plasma artillery pieces and additional armour plating for the 112th, when the highest-grade encrypted communications array in the command Chimera erupted with a sharp, piercing tone.
Evan connected the channel immediately. The voice that came through belonged to a senior officer of the expedition's supreme command, and the tone he was using was extremely formal, carrying an edge of something that sounded genuinely baffled.
"Calling Colonel-Commissar Duvette of the 112th Regiment. This is supreme command. Order update: transfer forward clearance command authority to your subordinate commanders immediately. You are to return to the rear main anchorage at once. A military affairs Valkyrie is already waiting at the designated coordinates."
Duvette picked up the vox handset with a slight frown. "This is Duvette. The front line is nearly wrapped up. Pulling me out alone right now. Is something wrong?"
"Nothing wrong with the expedition, Commissar."
The senior officer's voice dropped low, carrying the particular careful quality of someone who has just encountered a level of authority they are not accustomed to handling. "One hour ago, a Martian Mechanicus Ark carrying the highest-tier clearance codes entered Ashek II's high orbit through entirely proper diplomatic channels. No interference with naval defence, no overreach of authority."
A pause. The officer appeared to be choosing his words with some care.
"But the Ark's classification level is extremely high. High enough that Marshal Blackwood himself had to personally send formal greetings to the incoming vessel. The Ark's representative submitted a very formal request for assistance to supreme command."
"A request for assistance?" Something shifted quietly in Duvette's chest.
"Correct. The representative holds the highest Martian rank of Archmagos, and has submitted a formal request for you to come aboard immediately for what is described as a routine tactical and technical information review."
Duvette's breathing paused for a fraction of a second.
"Understood. I am on my way."
He cut the channel and leaned back against the hard seat. He closed his eyes.
The man who held the ten-thousand-year secret of humanity's renewal had just found the most unassailable possible way to make contact in person.
Belisarius Cawl had arrived.
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