Chapter 17: Underground
Duvette walked at the front of the column, Evan close on his left shoulder. The girl had not come with them. She was too young, and Duvette had no way of knowing yet whether the Chaos presence below might affect her. The camp was the safer choice.
The passage was narrow, roughly six meters across, the ceiling rough-hewn rock and packed earth. Gas lamps had been fixed to the walls at intervals of several dozen meters, each one providing a small, uncertain circle of amber light.
They were advancing toward the target area, entering from the fork in the main passage. As the primary assault force, they had descended directly through the cellar entrance beneath Heras rather than routing out to the village passages. The other company commanders were moving their groups through the nearest village cellars, which were further away and more complex. The tunnels were too narrow for the full force to move together. Even with only five hundred and some soldiers behind him, the column already stretched more than a hundred meters. A larger concentration, caught in the dark with no room to maneuver, would risk falling apart at the first contact, the head and tail losing each other entirely in the confusion.
Fox had made the right call. The plan was to converge in the interconnected passages just short of the shadow zone, each element arriving in sequence.
As they moved deeper, the air grew warmer. A smell built alongside the heat: sulfur, blood, and the particular rot of flesh that had been decomposing in sealed, humid dark for some time. The kind of smell that on a hot summer day, when meat goes wrong in the heat, settles into the back of the throat and will not leave. Duvette could not stop his face from tightening against it.
They had been moving for close to an hour. The passages ran longer than expected, rising and falling, branching at irregular intervals. He checked the map Fox had given him at each junction, comparing the lines on paper to the stone and earth ahead, keeping them from losing their way in the tangle.
Despite the Ash Watchers' conditioning and the steady effect of Forced March, the heat and the stench were grinding. A number of soldiers had given up on the heavy greatcoats and tied them at the waist, dropping to just the flak vests with their ceramite armour plates. Sweat had left dark streaks on their faces. Cursing ran in a quiet, intermittent current through the ranks.
Duvette wanted to do the same. He kept the commissar's coat on.
Damn it, he thought, how did he end up a commissar. He let the thought pass and turned to run his eyes down the column.
Five hundred and twenty-one soldiers. Four near-full companies and the remnant of the Sixth, arranged into a winding grey line through the dark. Footsteps, the quiet clank of equipment, the heavy rhythm of breathing: all of it amplified by the enclosed space into something that seemed larger than the numbers warranted.
The heavy weapons squad occupied the center of the column. Both autocannons had been broken down into components and were being carried on soldiers' shoulders. Two veterans held the meltaguns. The rocket launchers were distributed through the ranks. The heavy weapons NCO caught Duvette's eye and gave a single nod to confirm readiness.
Eventually his gaze settled on a figure in the Third Company's section who had his head down and was murmuring without pause.
Finn Valentine was still wearing the grey mask, no sign of any intention to remove a single layer of clothing, just reciting something about the God-Emperor in a low continuous voice. No one was interrupting him.
Duvette slowed his pace and opened the Soul of the Legion interface. The semi-transparent panel materialized in his field of vision, the right side displaying: Emperor's Wrath: 300.
The skill tree expanded.
His gaze moved across the available nodes and stopped at the Sacred Rites branch. One skill icon pulsed faintly: [Silence].
He opened the description.
[Upon activation, centered on yourself, a temporary Reality Anchoring Field is established across a medium radius. Within this field, all Warp energy flow is rendered extremely obscure. Enemy psychic attacks are significantly reduced in effectiveness. Duration: 30 seconds. Cooldown: 48 hours.]
[Under His gaze, all Warp blasphemies are reduced to dead silence.]
Activation cost: 300 Emperor's Wrath.
Thirty seconds. Brief. But Duvette's first assessment was that this sat well above anything else he had seen in the tree, particularly against daemons and psykers. Thirty seconds was enough to break their effectiveness at a critical moment.
He did not select it immediately. Committing three hundred points in a single purchase made him pause.
And if he spent everything defending against psykers and the enemy turned out to have a large Astartes presence, he would have burned his only remaining resource on the wrong problem. He kept browsing.
[Burn the Boats] was another active skill: forced lock on morale and stability for the duration. [Martyr's Vengeance]: each friendly death during the activation window increased every surviving soldier's metrics across the board. He noted both.
He even found one that required two thousand points to unlock, carrying the icon label [Living Saint]. An active skill. Its effect description read: obtain ten seconds of [???] partial power. A Custodian taking over your body? All of them were extraordinary. He wanted every single one of them. Unfortunately...
A signal came through on the vox: two long pulses, one short. Enemy.
He raised his hand and the column stopped. A moment later two scouts came back fast around the corner ahead, keeping their voices down.
"Chaos patrol." The lead scout's breathing was controlled but quick. "Mutants and hounds. About six. Moving this way. Less than a kilometer from the corner."
Duvette checked the map at once. Current position: approximately three kilometers from the shadow zone. The other companies were not yet in position. Their village routes were further and more complex. One to two more hours before the converging elements would be fully assembled.
He could not engage here.
A single shot would carry through the entire underground network. The enemy would know immediately where they were and how strong. This would stop being five hundred soldiers against a patrol and become five hundred soldiers against the enemy's full strength, Chaos Astartes included.
Duvette drew a slow breath. The sulfur smell was sharper. He turned and looked at the column: sweating faces in the lamplight, dust and grime on every uniform.
"I need some veterans." He kept his voice clear but low. "No shooting. They need to know how to use a knife."
Hands went up at once.
He selected six. He was already about to lead them forward himself when his gaze passed over the sniper still reciting quietly with his eyes closed.
"Finn," Duvette said. "You're with us."
The man with the grey mask stopped mid-prayer. Deep sky-blue eyes found Duvette's, and he gave a single nod, swinging the long-barreled las-rifle down from his shoulder and drawing the combat knife at his hip.
* * *
Duvette moved the group into the shadow of the corner ahead. He pressed his back against the cold mud wall and raised one hand: silence.
Everyone went still.
Chaos hounds had an excellent sense of smell. Even through sulfur and blood and rot, they could pick out the scent of strangers. Waiting was not an option.
Duvette kept his voice barely above nothing. "On my signal, we go together. Hounds first, then the mutants. Keep the noise down."
The soldiers nodded without a sound, blades tight in their hands.
The smell thickened.
Footsteps came from the far end of the passage. Alongside them, a low, deep rumbling from somewhere in the dark, pushed through a throat, not unlike the sound of something he had heard once in a zoo, a lifetime ago in another world.
Duvette listened, measuring the distance.
Fifty meters. Forty. Thirty.
He raised his left hand and closed it into a fist.
Behind him, the soldiers pulled taut.
The enemy was here.