V2 Chapter 46: Three-Way Standoff
The clear ring of the Omnissian axe on the metal deck faded slowly through the wide strategic conference room.
Duvette stood where he was, meeting the optical sensors hidden in Cawl's shadow with a composed expression. The instant he heard the words "what is it you want," he had begun running the logic.
Without moving his head, he read the room: Marshal Blackwood to one side, Inquisitor Maysondaire to the other, watching him with dark and unblinking attention.
He understood Cawl's intent precisely.
This ten-thousand-year-old Archmagos had no desire whatsoever for the expedition's supreme command or the Inquisition to learn anything about the gene-sire, or the ultimate secrets sleeping beneath Mars.
The situation Cawl had constructed was this: he was using formally acceptable Imperial language to force Duvette to prove his value, while simultaneously requiring Duvette to avoid speaking a single prohibited word in a room full of Imperial officials.
Duvette brought his attention back. The muscles of his face shifted fractionally. He produced a smile that conveyed exactly the right measure of confidence.
"I stand here to welcome the great renewal that is coming."
His voice was steady and carrying, each word placed with precision in the empty conference room. "And so I have come to ask the Archmagos for a sharper blade, in preparation for the brutal wars that future will require."
The atmosphere in the room shifted at those words.
Marshal Blackwood, standing to one side, felt the tension in his shoulders ease slightly. To this pragmatic military man, Duvette's answer had the entirely practical ring of an Astra Militarum commander seeking materiel. The Marshal found himself thinking, almost without intending to, that Duvette or the 112th had perhaps arranged some prior private equipment agreement with this Archmagos during an earlier campaign, and Cawl had come in person to confirm the technical details and deliver the hardware.
Inquisitor Maysondaire, on the other side, registered something off immediately.
His bloodshot eyes moved back and forth between Duvette and Cawl. The phrase "great renewal" appeared in Imperial ecclesiastical doctrine and various legal codes often enough; but used as a contact signal between a commissar and a senior Mechanicus official, it felt conspicuously deliberate, a phrase constructed to be decoded rather than taken at face value.
He had no evidence yet. He locked onto the discrepancy and waited for them to expose themselves.
Beneath Cawl's hood, the mechanical augmetic eye produced a faint sound of gears engaging. The red light in it contracted sharply.
As the most capable mind in the entire Imperium, he had understood the full meaning behind Duvette's phrasing completely. This mortal Commissar had not merely confirmed he knew about the project. He had turned the meeting into an act of overt political leverage, priced and stated openly.
Cawl's layered synthetic voice came again. "Your answer is interesting, Commissar. There are certain technical matters I need to discuss with you privately. Everyone else may leave the room. Except him."
The balance in the conference room detonated.
"That is not acceptable, Archmagos."
Marshal Blackwood stepped forward immediately, his refusal carrying no give in it.
"Colonel-Commissar Duvette Erdmann is on the active order of battle of the Sabbat Crusade. He is the Imperial hero who has just won the Ashek II campaign. Under the wartime military statutes of the Astra Militarum supreme command, he cannot be interrogated privately by the Martian Mechanicus without a military affairs representative present. That is not negotiable."
"I equally refuse to leave." Maysondaire picked up the thread without pause. He reached inside his coat and produced the rosette of the Inquisition, holding it in front of Cawl's optical sensors.
"Under the supreme authority statutes of the Inquisition, any exchange of information that may involve Warp contamination, heretical constructs, or unknown technological artefacts requires a representative of the Inquisition to be present. It is both our right and our obligation. Archmagos, if you insist on taking him alone, I will immediately transmit a highest-grade heresy suspicion alert to the sector Inquisition."
Faced with two hard refusals from senior representatives of two of the Imperium's most powerful institutions, Duvette chose silence.
He stood where he was and watched the argument without inserting himself. He understood that forcing his way into this exchange would serve no purpose. He needed to wait for Cawl's next move.
Cawl's enormous frame settled into stillness during the argument. He did not counter Blackwood's legal objection. He did not respond to Maysondaire's threat. He simply stood.
Then Cawl raised the Omnissian axe again.
"ENOUGH."
The heavy impact cut across Blackwood and Maysondaire's exchange and forced the room back into silence.
"Since you both insist on remaining," Cawl's amplified voice filled the space without any emotional inflection, "then let us discuss an academic question. During an extremely distant expedition, I once discovered certain ancient mechanical and biological constructs. At the time, I found myself with a question that has never received a fully satisfactory answer."
Cawl's enormous upper body rotated slowly, bringing every sensor to bear on Duvette, and he delivered the test.
"Commissar Duvette. If there were before you the most sacred vessel in the galaxy, one passed down from the Great Crusade itself. What liquid, in your view, would need to fill it before it could be called the remedy that saves this broken Imperium?"
The question landed in the room like something from a completely different conversation.
Marshal Blackwood stared. The veteran commander could find no explanation for why a Mechanicus Archmagos who devoted his existence to gears, logic, and steel would, in this charged and combative setting, produce an abstract philosophical question that carried the heavy flavour of Ministorum sermon. A remedy that saves the Imperium? That kind of abstraction had no place on a grinding Astra Militarum battlefield.
Maysondaire, on the other side, did not engage with the literal content of the question at all. His mind moved immediately. What was this ten-thousand-year-old creature doing? What did the apparent nonsense of "sacred vessel" and "remedy" actually refer to? What prohibited construct, classified under layers of secrecy, was being described in that language?
Duvette heard the question and the corner of his mouth lifted slightly. A thin, knowing smile.
He understood Cawl's intent completely. The Archmagos was using the most extreme form of coded historical language to verify whether the person standing across from him was a thief who had stolen fragments of information, or a genuine variable who knew everything.
Duvette did not hesitate. He gave Cawl the answer he was testing for.
"Neither water nor machine oil."
He looked at Cawl directly and said it without any inflection at all.
"Archmagos. It can only be filled with the gift of the Great Mother."
Silence in the conference room. Blackwood and Maysondaire were equally at a loss; neither of them had any framework to decode what "Great Mother" referred to.
Belisarius Cawl had heard it.
In the instant those words landed, Cawl's mountain-like frame went completely rigid.
In the next second, his head came up with extreme force. The hood fell back with the movement of mechanical components shifting. Cawl's augmetic eye locked onto the Colonel-Commissar in front of him.
Duvette did not move. He stood where he was with complete calm and held the gaze of that half-mechanical face without retreat.
He understood exactly what kind of wave he had just sent through Cawl's interior. The Great Mother was the ancient name of the Sangprimus Portum from ten thousand years ago, the ultimate genetic database that had once belonged to the Selenar gene-cult of Luna. The appearance of that name meant the mortal Commissar standing in front of him knew considerably more than Cawl had initially calculated.
Cawl was just drawing breath to speak when a sharp, furious shout tore through the room's silence.
"ENOUGH."
Inquisitor Maysondaire wrenched the bolt pistol from his hip and levelled it directly at Duvette's chest. His face had gone grey with paranoia and rage.
"I will not stand here and watch you play these nauseating decryption games any longer."
Maysondaire's voice had an edge that was somewhere past composure.
"Duvette Erdmann! Everything you have demonstrated in this room, and the Archmagos's reaction to it, is more than sufficient to establish that you possess forbidden knowledge no frontline commissar should possess. Combined with the unnatural tactical instinct and inexplicable capabilities you demonstrated on Formal Prime and Ashek II, I now have every reason to conclude that your soul has been thoroughly contaminated by the Warp."
His finger went tight against the trigger. "Add your current undisclosed illegal contact with the highest levels of the Mechanicus, and by the authority of the Inquisition, I have full grounds to execute you here, right now, regardless of whatever status surrounds your name."
"You dare."
The roar that came from Marshal Blackwood was not a question. It was a lion finding its voice.
The Marshal's power sword cleared its scabbard in a single motion. The blue disintegration field blazed to life with a shriek of displaced air. Blood came into his face. He stepped directly in front of Duvette and levelled the sword at Maysondaire without any retreat in his stance.
The Astra Militarum Storm Trooper guard outside the conference room doors heard the sound inside and kicked the doors in immediately. Dozens of hellguns came up and locked onto Maysondaire in the same motion.
Blackwood looked at the Inquisitor's grey and frantic expression and the posture of a man ready to die if it meant taking someone with him, and forced his fury down. He did not lower the sword. His grip on it was entirely steady.
"Put your weapon away, Maysondaire."
The Marshal's voice was cold enough to cut.
"Duvette Erdmann is a combat commander personally commended by Warmaster Slaydo and the High Lords of Terra."
"Unless you produce a written authorisation signed by the Warmaster himself, or a direct writ from the High Lords' Council on Terra, the Sabbat Crusade supreme command will not permit you to privately dispose of our hero here, regardless of your Inquisitorial standing. If you fire, I will personally ensure you do not leave this flagship."
"Even if my fate matches yours afterwards," Blackwood added, with the certainty of a man who had already made that calculation.
At the instant the trigger could have broken, something no one in the room had anticipated happened.
Cawl's enormous upper body turned toward Maysondaire with a grinding of hydraulics. The mountain of metal and cabling cast its shadow directly over the Inquisitor, bringing with it a physical and psychological pressure that had no equivalent in normal human experience.
"Put your weapon down, servant of the Inquisition." Cawl's voice had changed from its earlier flatness into something that did not permit argument. "I am equally opposed to the Inquisition removing or executing Commissar Duvette here. His existence involves a classification matter of the highest tier on Mars."
Three institutional powers. One relatively small conference room. A standoff that could have opened into an internal war at any second.
At that exact moment, running footsteps came from the corridor outside.
An Inquisitorial attendant in black robes, face completely white and moving at something near panic, forced his way past the Storm Trooper guard and into the conference room. He did not look at any of the three people in the confrontation. He went directly to Maysondaire's side, leaned in close, and spoke quickly in a low voice, then handed him a data-slate whose surface flickered with the encryption glow of the highest classification.
A moment later, Maysondaire read what was on it.
The manic colour left his face instantly. What replaced it was white, then the grey of extreme humiliation.
He released the safety on the bolt pistol and returned it to the holster with visible reluctance.
Maysondaire fixed Duvette with a stare that promised nothing pleasant, and spoke through clenched teeth.
"Your luck holds once more, Commissar. I have received a superior order. I am immediately relinquishing all investigative authority over your case."
Then his expression shifted. Something cold and precise came into the corner of his mouth.
"Do not celebrate too quickly. Someone will replace me. Prepare yourself for considerably larger trouble in your future, Duvette."
He turned to face Cawl and Blackwood with the formal tone of an official notification.
"A Lord Inquisitor of the Inquisition will be personally assuming full investigative authority and conducting a comprehensive review of this individual. Duvette Erdmann is to remain aboard the expedition flagship to await his arrival. Warmaster Slaydo's corresponding superior orders will be transmitted shortly. You are both expected to comply."
Without another word, Maysondaire turned and left the conference room at a rapid pace, his attendant scrambling along behind him.
With the Inquisitor gone, the extreme pressure in the room eased fractionally. Blackwood gestured to the Storm Troopers, who withdrew and pulled the doors shut again.
Silence held for several minutes.
Finally, the sound of Cawl's internal mechanisms resumed. He turned his head, dismissed Duvette from his attention for the moment, and addressed Marshal Blackwood directly.
"Marshal. Given the current situation, I will immediately submit a formal request to supreme command for the transfer of the Ash Watchers-Eisenmark 112th Regiment to my direct authority."
Blackwood pinched the bridge of his nose and returned his power sword to its scabbard, shaking his head with the expression of a man who has run out of easy options.
"As the Archmagos can see, the problem is no longer whether I am willing to release him. The Inquisition's senior hierarchy has forcibly intervened in his case. A Lord Inquisitor taking personal charge means that even if they find nothing of use in their review, they will not willingly transfer an officer with prohibited knowledge associations to the Mechanicus."
"The Inquisition's people I will deal with myself." Cawl's voice carried absolute confidence and something that bordered on contempt. He looked at the Marshal and placed the weight he had been holding in reserve.
"As for the supreme command's position, I will not have you lose a fine regiment without compensation. In exchange, I will dispatch Skitarii and Tech-Priests to conduct a complete clearance of the Bane Engine wreckage remaining on Ashek II. You understand that even the remains of those blasphemous constructs are not something your Astra Militarum engineers can safely process. If the corrupt code embedded in those ruins is not purged thoroughly, the contamination will spread well beyond the plains. The atmosphere and water sources of the entire planet may eventually be at risk of Warp pollution."
Cawl paused, and added the second weight to the scale.
"Additionally, as direct material compensation for the transfer of the 112th, I will provide Warmaster Slaydo's vanguard forces with a batch of new heavy armour equipment. Free of charge. In the name of Mars."
Marshal Blackwood was silent for a long moment, looking at the offer from every angle. He turned and looked at Duvette, who was standing to one side.
The Colonel-Commissar had maintained the same composure throughout the entire exchange. Calm to the edge of something that should not have been possible given the circumstances. As though the three powers currently deciding his life and future were debating the transfer of an object that had nothing to do with him, and he felt nothing in particular about any of it.
"This offer is extremely substantial, Archmagos." Blackwood finally spoke, his voice carrying a roughness the situation had put there. "But I do not have the authority to sign an exchange agreement at this level. I have to consult Warmaster Slaydo for his final position."
Cawl did not press further. He had achieved what he came for.
"Understood. Logical processes require time." He pulled the red hood back up, concealing the machinery of his face beneath it. The drive systems in his lower frame engaged. The enormous figure began moving toward the conference room doors with a smoothness that its size made difficult to believe.
As the colossus passed Duvette on its way out, the Archmagos left one final line in a low, layered electronic tone.
"I will remain in the Ashek system until this storm settles. I will come again before long, Commissar."
The doors sealed behind him.
The conference room went quiet.
Marshal Blackwood let out a long exhale and walked to Duvette's side. The hand in its heavy officer's glove came down solidly on the Colonel-Commissar's shoulder.
"I am sorry, Duvette." Something in the Marshal's voice was without its usual iron. "I genuinely wanted to protect the hero who has done so much for this crusade. But as you saw, even a Marshal of the fleet is an extremely small and powerless thing in a room containing a Mechanicus Archmagos of that standing and a Lord-grade Inquisitor from the Inquisition."
Duvette felt the weight of the hand on his shoulder. He showed no anger and no resentment. He simply let out a quiet, steady breath.
"There is nothing to apologise for, Marshal."
He gave Blackwood a precise, formal Astra Militarum salute.
"I have my own way of handling them."
Marshal Blackwood looked at this man who did not appear to have a breaking point and gave a slow, deliberate nod.
"The only thing I can do for you now is provide you with a secure, comfortable, and uninterrupted place to rest aboard this flagship. Go and rest, Duvette. Recover your strength. And wait for the Lord Inquisitor's arrival."
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