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V2 Chapter 61: The Convert's Zeal
Heinz knelt on the cold black stone, the sharp pain of the dislocated jaw pulling cold sweat through what remained of his sparse blond hair in a continuous stream.
This man who had held power of life and death across several star sectors could not stop shaking. He knelt in the wreckage of the temple and listened to the young Astra Militarum commissar in front of him recite his own accomplishments in a tone of total indifference.
Heinz's mind was a blank. How had it come to this? He had come here to find the vessel of the Emperor's sacred will, to witness the arrival of a miracle. And yet here he was, pressed into the floor by a sceptre like the lowest heretic imaginable.
He breathed in ragged gasps, the air leaking through his throat with an unsteady sound, and made the effort to raise his head and meet the eyes of the man standing over him.
Duvette's expression was entirely calm. He was looking down at Heinz from above with nothing in his gaze but the flat, still quality of something that has already concluded its assessment.
In the instant their eyes met, Heinz felt something move through him.
It was not the arrogance of a military officer facing a subordinate. It was something of a different order: a pressure that treated everything in its field of vision as negligible, the weight of something that held absolute dominion over the physical order of the world around it.
He had felt this before. He knew this.
Heinz's entire body went rigid. His mind pulled back a hundred years without his permission.
He had been a newly promoted Inquisitor then, young and certain, kneeling on one knee in the great central hall of the Inquisition's headquarters on Terra, reciting his solemn oath. He had raised his head in that moment and looked directly into the eyes of the enormous statue of the Emperor at the hall's centre.
The gaze Duvette was directing at him now was identical to the eyes of that statue. No personal emotion anywhere in it. Only a pure and entirely irresistible authority.
Something detonated in Heinz's mind. He thought of the white light that had just repaired his dying body. That light which had forced back Warp corruption and expelled every impurity it touched.
That had to be the God-Emperor's power. There was nothing else in the entire galaxy capable of that. Nothing except the being seated on the Golden Throne on Terra.
And then the words Duvette had just spoken reached him again.
You are the first witness.
I am... the first witness?
Heinz's pupils contracted violently.
Yes. Yes. The logic completed itself in a cascade he could not have stopped if he had tried. That was beyond any doubt the God-Emperor's power, and he, Heinz Werner, had not been destroyed by it. He had been healed by it. The God-Emperor had recognised him. He had been right. He had been right all along.
He was the first person to witness this sacred vessel manifesting a miracle with his own eyes. He was the one whom the God-Emperor's power had touched and restored. He was the anointed.
He had been right. It was all exactly as he had believed.
Duvette, standing over him, noticed something was wrong.
The dead, pain-dimmed eyes of the man kneeling in front of him had just detonated with a light that had nothing sane in it.
The trembling that the pain had been producing in Heinz's body stopped completely.
The expression that crossed his face was the expression of someone who has just injected a maximum dose of a prohibited stimulant somewhere in the underhive — a twisted, total, shuddering ecstasy.
Had the combination of the physical blow, the dislocation, and the depth of the humiliation been sufficient to finally break whatever remained of the man's psychological defences? Had Heinz simply lost his mind?
Duvette was genuinely considering, in the interest of preventing further complications, whether he should simply knock the man unconscious right now, when it happened.
From Heinz's badly dislocated mouth, which he no longer had full control of, erupted a sound: garbled, torn, barely recognisable as language, the sound of a prayer being forced through a jaw that could not form it correctly.
The noise startled Duvette. His hand went toward the holster. He had read this as the beginning of a last-resort counterattack, some concealed implanted weapon coming online.
He had read it entirely wrong.
Heinz did not lunge at him.
The Lord Inquisitor pitched forward onto the floor and began kowtowing against the stone, sobbing and making sounds that were somewhere between weeping and laughter simultaneously, driving his forehead into the black stone with force that was immediately producing blood. He could not feel it. He pressed his face to the floor in front of Duvette's boots and continued, producing a low, fervent, completely incoherent sound from his ruined jaw that had the rhythm and the intent of devoted prayer.
Duvette stood where he was, hand still on the holster, and stared.
What was this.
He looked at the Lord Inquisitor pressing his bleeding forehead to the floor in front of his boots, and felt nothing resembling satisfaction or triumph. He had expected the man to curse him with whatever Inquisitorial authority he had left, or to wait for an opportunity to retaliate.
He had not in any way anticipated a complete physical and psychological submission of this thoroughness.
Duvette arrived at a conclusion, and the conclusion produced in him a physical sensation of revulsion that he had not been prepared for.
He looked at Heinz with the particular expression reserved for something deeply unpleasant that one has stepped in, and turned away.
"Evan." The word came out carrying a deep and unambiguous weariness. "Get some people over here. Strap him to a stretcher and bring him out."
"Yes, Commissar." Evan acknowledged the order immediately and came forward with several soldiers, beginning the process of handling the man on the floor, who was still producing sounds that existed somewhere between crying and laughing, with the rough efficiency the situation called for.
Duvette redirected his attention to the far side of the temple hall.
The thirteen Shadow Wolves were on their feet.
They had been standing quietly in place, and with the sharp perception that Astartes carry as a matter of course, they had watched the entire sequence: the declaration, the sceptre, the dislocation, the submission, and the stretcher order. Every detail of it.
Markus Sevian's weathered face, the face of a soldier who had seen everything a war could produce, showed an expression that was not simple to read.
"Come with me."
Duvette looked at him and spoke without particular weight. "Your Legion — the Shadow Wolves — have no standing in the Imperium's current order of battle. There is nothing for you here. Come with me for now."
The words "no standing in the current order of battle" moved across Markus Sevian's face before he could prevent it. A brief, unguarded loss.
He looked down at his white power armour.
His gene-father was dead. Killed by the Emperor's own hand.
His Legion had been erased from the Imperium's history for the sin of bearing the name it bore, regardless of what its warriors had actually done or believed.
In this present time, ten thousand years away from everything they had been, these soldiers who had once been among the proudest warriors in existence had nothing. No reinforcement. No honour that this age recognised. No homeworld to return to.
"The Emperor still needs you."
The words arrived before Markus had finished falling.
Duvette was looking at his eyes. "Humanity needs every genuine warrior it has. The oaths you swore are still in effect, Markus."
Markus Sevian raised his head. The deep eyes looked at the mortal man in front of him.
Then this veteran of a war ten thousand years past let out a long, slow breath.
"Very well." The steadiness that belonged to an Astartes came back into his voice. "We will come with you for now. But I need to know what has actually happened to the Imperium."
Duvette looked at the ancient warrior who had found his footing again, and gave a single, deliberate nod.
"As you wish." He made the commitment plainly. "I will tell you everything you want to know."
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