V2 Chapter 64: I Regret to Inform You, Archmagos, That I Am Speaking to You as an Equal
Cawl's question echoed through the empty hangar deck. But the Archmagos of Mars did not receive an answer from Heinz Werner.
Because Duvette had already cut Heinz off before the Lord Inquisitor could produce more of his ecstatic proclamations.
"What happened on the surface, Lord Werner would describe in the language of his faith as a miracle." Duvette did not look at the man on the boarding ramp. He looked directly into the red optical glow of Cawl's sensors. "And as an Archmagos of the Mechanicus in pursuit of absolute truth, you would perhaps categorise it as an unclassifiable anti-Warp interference phenomenon. The name is not important."
He paused, and gestured back toward the thirteen tall figures standing behind him.
"What I know is that an unknown force allowed thirteen Loyalists who should have been entirely consumed by the Warp to stand here in a state of complete purity. That is what happened."
Cawl did not respond immediately. His optical sensors remained fixed on the mortal commissar in front of him.
"My logic arrays cannot confirm the truthfulness of your account. Your existence is itself an unresolvable variable."
"You don't need to confirm my account." Duvette showed no concern about this. He spread his hands. "The current state of Lord Inquisitor Heinz, and the fact that a mortal regiment completed its assigned task and withdrew intact while under simultaneous assault from a Tzeentchian daemon host and a Word Bearers warband, is external evidence sufficient for any purpose."
He turned his gaze toward Markus Sevian, standing to one side.
"But the evidence that survives any physical or genetic scrutiny is them."
He looked back at Cawl and put a direct question to him.
"Archmagos. Setting aside all theological argument. From the Mechanicus's position of absolute rationality alone. Do you genuinely believe that anything in this universe could spend ten thousand years lost inside a Warp storm and emerge with its physical structure and soul uncorroded and unwarped?"
"That is categorically impossible." Cawl's answer came without any qualification. "The fundamental nature of the Warp is disorder and entropy increase. Ten thousand years of deep exposure is sufficient to alter the structure of any physical matter. Even a Primarch's body could not resist that assimilation without protection. This is an iron principle derived from billions of observed cases."
Duvette gave a small nod.
"Exactly. Categorically impossible." He pressed forward along Cawl's own logic without giving him room to redirect. "They were consumed by the Warp. They drifted through it for nearly ten thousand years. By your absolute principle, their physical stability right now should be impossible."
He reached out one finger and indicated the servo-skulls that had completed their scans and were now hovering nearby.
"And yet your instruments just told you, with complete clarity: gene-sequences stable, physical structures intact, and most importantly, no active Chaos corruption anywhere in their bodies."
Duvette held Cawl's gaze and sharpened his own.
"So, Archmagos. Having eliminated everything that should have been possible, how does your logic intend to account for what is demonstrably occurring?"
The hangar fell into silence. Only the ventilation systems continued moving through it. Cawl's enormous frame stayed motionless, apparently running something at very high processing load.
After a measured pause, Duvette broke the silence himself.
"Lord Werner will tell you with considerable fervour that it is the Emperor's power, that the God-Emperor sheltered them." His voice carried through the space evenly. "But I know your disposition well enough not to compel a Martian Archmagos to use terminology that belongs to the Ministorum. We look at the result only."
He pointed to the pure white of Markus's armour.
"The Chaos gods' power, in whatever form it manifests, carries irreversible corruption and distortion. That is common knowledge. These warriors' gene-seed shows no trace of either. That already establishes everything. The force that acted here not only does not belong to Chaos — it is antithetical to Chaos by its fundamental nature."
"The logical closure contains a flaw." Cawl's voice carried the flat authority of someone who does not accommodate challenges to their conclusions. "Whatever the source of that force, and however stable their genetic structure may appear at present, these individuals remain anomalous subjects who have spent ten thousand years in the Warp. They require isolation, rigorous observation, and repeated instrument verification. This is a matter of fleet security."
Duvette glanced back at Markus.
The Shadow Wolf sergeant's face had produced a brief and entirely understandable anger at being characterised, this bluntly, as a potential heretic and a test subject by a tech-priest who had not addressed him as a person once. But Markus said nothing. He understood what they were. In this hostile and entirely unfamiliar era, this remnant force had no support and no standing. He did not have the luxury of pride just yet.
Duvette brought his attention back to Cawl and gave a composed nod.
"I agree with your caution, Archmagos. They do need to be observed." He paused. "So I will be the one doing the observing."
"Refused."
Cawl's answer came before Duvette had finished the sentence.
The Archmagos's mechanical appendages moved in the air with a sharp dismissal.
"You do not have the authority to make that determination, Duvette Erdmann. You are an Astra Militarum commissar. Furthermore, as the primary contact individual in this anomalous event, you carry your own Warp contamination suspicion. You have no standing to supervise them. You are all subject to my containment and observation protocols."
Duvette did not select the restraint or deflection he had used in previous confrontations with institutional authority. He stood where he was. He looked at Cawl with an expression that carried something that had not appeared in his dealings with the Archmagos before: a dry, deliberate amusement.
Then he shook his head slowly.
"I regret to inform you, Archmagos, that I do have that authority."
He straightened his spine, adjusted the black greatcoat that still carried the ash of the daemon world's ruins, and spoke in a tone that was entirely calm and entirely without any of its previous accommodations.
"And I would ask you to adjust your approach. I am speaking to you right now as a complete equal."
Cawl's optical sensor contracted.
Duvette did not give him the space to respond. He turned slightly and gestured toward Heinz, who was still in a state of elevated devotional excitement on the boarding ramp behind him.
"Lord Inquisitor Heinz may have experienced some significant psychological stimulation on the surface, having apparently witnessed what he regards as a miracle."
Duvette placed the political weight on the table directly.
"But he is still a Lord-grade Inquisitor representing the highest authority of the Inquisition. His rosette has not been revoked. His authority to deploy fleet assets has not been stripped. You and I both understand what that means, Archmagos."
He looked at Cawl.
"I have now been personally witnessed in this engagement and formally recognised, by a Lord Inquisitor, as to my identity and my innocence. In the legal framework of the Inquisition, I have exited the category of suspect entirely."
"You no longer possess any standing or legal basis to restrict my freedom of movement, or to treat me as a test subject to be dissected at your discretion."
He continued without giving Cawl a gap to use.
"I am choosing to stand here, to disregard Lord Werner's more extravagant declarations, and to speak with you calmly, because I have no desire to make an enemy of the Mechanicus or of you personally. I still want to work with you. We both have objectives we intend to achieve."
The implication in his voice arrived without needing to be made explicit.
"But if your arrogance leads you to attempt to process us by force and strip my freedom, then I think the threats Lord Inquisitor Heinz directed at you on the surface — about reporting to the High Lords' Council on Terra, about excavating every secret you keep below ground, about classifying you as a heretic — those threats may find their way to fulfilment considerably sooner than you might prefer."
"Those outcomes are no longer in my hands, Archmagos. They are in yours."
Duvette put his hands behind his back and looked at the Archmagos who had gone quiet.
"What do you think, Archmagos Cawl?" His voice carried the particular quality of someone who already knows the answer and is giving the other party the courtesy of arriving at it themselves. "We can coexist as complete equals, providing each other with what the other requires. That is the logical path to maximum mutual benefit."
In the end, having weighed the political risk against the physical evidence and against Lord Inquisitor Heinz's near-deranged divine guarantee, Cawl's absolute rationality made its concession to what the situation actually was.
"Logical compromise reached." The synthesised voice moved through the hangar with the resignation of a system accepting an outcome it did not calculate for. "Duvette Erdmann. I accept your position. I will temporarily suspend the forced containment protocol for the thirteen anomalous Astartes."
"However." The authority in Cawl's voice reasserted itself immediately. "As the highest-authority holder aboard this Ark, I am restating the security baseline. I will not permit them to move freely through my vessel. They are to proceed immediately to the designated isolation zone on the lower decks, where they will be subject to the highest level of physical and data monitoring available. Any deviation from assigned boundaries will be treated as a direct provocation against Martian sovereignty, and the defensive arrays will initiate a termination sequence without further warning."
This was a reasonable demand, one that could even be described as having conceded considerable ground. Duvette had no argument with it. He nodded without deliberation.
"Agreed, Archmagos. They stay in the isolation zone under my supervision and the 112th's. They will not touch any of your equipment."
Cawl's concession was not unconditional.
"In exchange." The mechanical appendages interlaced in the air with a sound of metal against metal. "Since you are declining to surrender the thirteen Astartes, Entropy's Song must be transferred to me for deep technical analysis. If its underlying principles can be understood and reproduced by the Imperium, its strategic value exceeds these veterans by any calculation."
Duvette's hand moved to the sceptre at his hip. He blocked the demand without any hesitation and without any negotiating room left in his voice.
"I regret to inform you, Archmagos, that this is equally not something you can have."
He did not soften it.
"I stated my position clearly earlier. The fact that I obtained it, and even used it to destroy the daemon altar, does not make me its owner. What a relic of the Lord of Fire and Drakes means to the Salamanders — you have lived ten thousand years, Archmagos. You understand this better than I do."
He stepped forward and put the operational consequence on the table without decoration.
"The Salamanders regard those nine lost relics as the absolute prerequisite for their Primarch's return. They have been searching for them for thousands of years. If I hand this to you today and allow you to conduct whatever irreversible research you intend on it aboard this Ark, then the moment the Salamanders' Forgemaster receives word of that through prophecy or fragmentary intelligence—"
He allowed himself a brief, cold edge.
"Archmagos. Do you believe you can hold off black-armoured Astartes burning with the conviction that they are reclaiming their Primarch's legacy? Even you, facing the Salamanders and every successor Chapter they can bring to bear in a campaign of absolute commitment, would find yourself in a situation that none of us wants. This political calculation is not difficult."
Cawl went quiet for a long interval.
"Logic assessment: high-risk, low-return political catastrophe." The electronic voice carried the particular quality of a system acknowledging a constraint it cannot override. "Until an absolutely secure methodology can be established, I agree to leave Entropy's Song undisturbed. It remains in your custody. I require passive monitoring fields deployed around it."
"Accepted." Duvette did not press further.
"Then regarding the final disposition of these thirteen Shadow Wolves." Cawl shifted the subject to the point that remained unresolved. "They cannot remain in my isolation zone indefinitely."
"On that matter," Duvette glanced at the silent ancient warriors, "I will take them to the isolation zone and speak with them properly. Once I have established their current state and what they intend, I will come back to you with a specific proposal. For now, we need to deal with a more immediately pressing problem."
He turned his attention to the group of Carpé dynasty members who had just disembarked from the transports nearby, several of whom were visibly shaking from having seen the Shadow Wolves clearly.
"Even assuming Venus Carpé can be trusted to keep this contained, her people saw something they were not supposed to see." He narrowed his eyes slightly. "That is a security risk."
Cawl's mechanical head turned fractionally. From the boarding ramp, Heinz Werner looked up from his prayers. Three gazes converged on the assembled mortal merchants without particular ceremony.
In this universe, certain secrets require memories to be sealed rather than simply kept.
The three-party consultation that followed was brief and efficient.
Duvette, Cawl, and Heinz reached an agreed protocol.
The senior leadership of the Carpé dynasty, along with every high-ranking fleet officer who held core navigation access, was required to sign a maximum-grade blood-oath secrecy agreement under the simultaneous pressure of the Inquisition's authority and the Mechanicus's. If any of them allowed the slightest breach, the Carpé dynasty would face full institutional recrimination from both.
For the lower-level personnel — the ordinary crew, the private soldiers, the transport pilots — the resolution was simpler and required no signatures.
Cawl directed senior Mechanicus adepts and tech-priests from the Ark, operating under the supervision of Inquisitorial Storm Troopers, to perform compulsory memory-excision procedures on each of them.