V2 Chapter 50: Venus's Grievance
The moment his conversation with Belisarius Cawl concluded, Duvette used a high-grade data node outside the laboratory to contact the Carpé dynasty, currently operating alongside the Sabbat Crusade.
He did not include any detail about the Archmagos or the Inquisition in the encrypted astropathic message he sent.
Instead, he used the language of commercial opportunity: he told Venus Carpé that he had in hand a classified project of considerable risk but extraordinary returns. If managed correctly, the strategic resources and wealth it would generate were sufficient to lift the Carpé dynasty from a mid-tier Rogue Trader house picking over the crusade's leavings into an entirely new level of influence.
The message travelled through the Warp without significant interference. Within a few hours of receiving it, Venus Carpé replied with the directness Duvette had come to expect from her.
The Carpé dynasty's main fleet was already in a sector not far from the Ashek system. Their current contracted work involved the post-battle recovery operations the expedition left behind on secondary worlds: clearing residual enemy forces, reclaiming salvage, beginning initial reconstruction. Stable and reliable, but not satisfying for a Rogue Trader house operating under a sacred warrant of trade.
Faced with Duvette's offer, Venus confirmed without delay that she was redirecting the fleet immediately.
They did not make him wait long.
A week later, the identification codes appeared on the Cogitator Array screen. The Carpé fleet had completed its Warp transit and arrived at the edge of the Ashek II system.
Duvette notified Cawl at once.
The Archmagos paused his analysis work in the vast laboratory, his augmetic eye flickered several times, and he stated in his flat electronic voice that since this was a resource for opening an unknown star region, he would permit the mortal fleet to approach and would arrange a designated area aboard the Ark of Omen for an initial meeting.
When Duvette transmitted the coordinates and the access permission to Venus Carpé, the channel on the other end went dead.
Twelve standard hours passed. The Carpé fleet entered high orbit of Ashek II and stopped there completely, producing no outbound shuttle traffic and making no further contact with Duvette.
He stood in front of the communications room's monitoring screen and watched the dozen unmoving points of light on the orbital radar that represented Carpé vessels, let out a resigned exhale, and allowed himself a slight, helpless shake of the head.
He could work out exactly what had just happened on the other side of that silence.
Before entering this system, Venus had no knowledge that Duvette had simultaneously attracted the attention of the two most feared institutions in the Imperium.
When Venus Carpé had brought the family fleet into orbit with a head full of profit projections, whatever her flagship's augury instruments had resolved in that moment had been sufficient to drain the commercial appetite from any rational merchant on the spot.
Sitting in orbit over Ashek II was an Ark Mechanicus of a size that exceeded rational comprehension. And not far from it in the void, entirely without markings, swallowing the light around it like a hole in reality, sat a black cruiser.
The personal transport of an Inquisitorial Lord.
An Archmagos's flagship and a Lord Inquisitor's black cruiser.
Duvette could picture Venus's expression with complete accuracy. That explained the motionless dots on the radar.
He opened the communications array himself. To prevent Inquisitorial interception, he used the private channel Cawl had provided and entered the personal frequency code Venus had given him directly.
He waited.
The channel connected.
Venus Carpé appeared on the holographic projection in front of him. The face that turned heads in any room wore, at this moment, a very specific expression: deeply aggrieved. She was still in her formal aristocratic dress, the dim lighting of her flagship's bridge behind her.
"I genuinely did not expect this, Duvette." She looked at him through the holographic projection, her voice carrying a distinct edge of complaint. "We haven't seen each other in so long, and your idea of a greeting is to arrange a surprise of this particular scale. This is what you called a profitable venture?"
Duvette stood in the communications room Cawl had provided and gave her the only honest response available: a helpless shrug.
"I also told you quite clearly that the project involved considerable risk. It appears that detail did not fully register."
"Considerable risk is not what this is." Venus pressed her lips together and let some real annoyance into her voice. "You are pushing us directly into a furnace."
"A correction." Duvette looked at the holographic projection and allowed himself a rueful smile. "We are already in the furnace. All of us."
Venus exhaled at length. She extended one finger and pressed it firmly against her temple.
A brief murmur, barely audible: we came all this way, I doubt we can simply leave at this point. Several seconds of internal deliberation. Then she lowered her hand.
When she looked at Duvette again, the grievance and the annoyance were gone. What replaced them was pure commercial focus.
"Very well. Since you have already pulled us into this." Her tone shifted to something precise and operational. "Let us discuss, in specific terms, what this profitable venture you keep mentioning actually is."
Duvette gave a single nod and put the information in front of her without any preamble: the ancient stargate at the edge of the Koronus Expanse. Every detail he could provide.
When she heard the phrase "a transit capable of connecting the Koronus Expanse to a lost star region tens of thousands of light-years distant," Venus Carpé went completely still on the holographic projection, a silence of the kind that comes before a decision being made.
As a Rogue Trader with a genuine commercial mind and strategic vision, she understood immediately what this meant.
In a galaxy where Warp storms made reliable navigation a matter of constant, costly struggle, a stable transit route capable of crossing tens of thousands of light-years in a fraction of a standard solar second was worth more than a hundred mining worlds of precious metals combined.
The Carpé dynasty's commercial base had always been centred around the Pyrite sector. That did not mean they lacked ambition beyond it.
A lost star region, for a Rogue Trader, represented an ultimate treasury with no end and no Administratum overseers watching the yield.
Even a single extraction of lost technology, ore deposits, or rare xenos-derived material from the other side would generate returns beyond any conventional calculation.
The principal difficulty was the composition of the group she would be joining: not only a Martian Archmagos of near-incomprehensible authority, but a Lord Inquisitor attached to his coattails.
For a Rogue Trader dynasty that had always operated along the edges of Imperial law and valued freedom of movement above nearly everything else, conducting operations under the simultaneous gaze of the Inquisition and the Mechanicus was the closest thing to a perfect description of misery.
Duvette watched Venus's expression shifting and, when he saw the first clear signs of interest overcoming resistance, pressed the case without giving her time to settle back into hesitation.
"I know what you're weighing, Venus." His voice dropped slightly. "The Lord Inquisitor is a complication. But he is an observer, nothing more. And we are the first advance party to step through that gate."
He watched her eyes and pressed what he had been saving.
"Consider the political architecture here. Once it is confirmed that the gate is stable and poses no catastrophic Warp hazard, Terra will move to assume control immediately and establish extremely restrictive access protocols. This transit is a double-edged instrument, and the Imperium will treat it accordingly."
He looked at the eyes that were beginning to clarify with interest.
"But if you are part of this operation from the beginning, the Carpé dynasty, with the historic claim of being first to explore and first to assist a Martian Archmagos, combined with your sacred warrant of trade, will have the standing to negotiate permanent transit rights in any subsequent allocation of access to this route. Legally. In writing. With Cawl's endorsement behind it."
He delivered the final summary.
"That means the Carpé dynasty holds first exploration rights over the lost star region, including the right to select the most valuable resources it contains. And you hold the political standing to develop that region on a continuing basis, protected by the precedent of having opened it for the Imperium. Even the Inquisition would find it difficult to strip a route that a Martian Archmagos personally confirmed was opened in the Imperium's name."
On the other side of the holographic projection, Venus Carpé drew a long, slow breath.
In those eyes, everything except pure ambition and resolution had cleared away. Rogue Trader blood carries a genetic disposition toward the enormous gamble; faced with an opportunity sufficient to lift an entire dynasty across an entire tier of power, even an Inquisitor's gaze loses some of its chill.
Venus made her decision.
"Agreed." The voice that came back had shed the grievance entirely and recovered the cold, precise quality of someone who commands a fleet. She looked at Duvette, raised her chin fractionally, and showed him the line of a composed and patrician neck. "The Carpé dynasty accepts this arrangement. I will come aboard personally to meet this Archmagos Cawl."
Duvette looked at the holographic projection and allowed the corner of his mouth to move into the particular smile of someone whose gambit has just landed exactly where it was aimed.
"A very sound decision, Venus."
He straightened, adjusted the front of his black commissar's greatcoat, and spoke with complete ease.
"Get your shuttle ready. The Archmagos happens to be free right now."
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