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Chapter 65: New Skills
Duvette walked back along the metal corridor with a step that was heavier than usual and let himself into his cabin.
The airlock door hissed shut behind him, sealing out the engine drone and the corridor noise. The temperature system ran at its steady, responsible hum, cycling air that carried a faint trace of recirculated engine oil. None of it produced any inclination to relax.
Everything he had just seen on the lower deck had taken what had been an extreme physical exhaustion and converted it into something that felt nothing like tiredness at all.
He sat at the small table and picked up the data-slate resting on it, its indicator light blinking faintly.
This was the latest operational orders from the command chain above him.
He unlocked the screen with his fingerprint. Dense tactical coordinates and route-planning data filled the display.
Per the classified directive, the sector patrol fleet would not jump directly to the Ultramarines' homeworld. The first destination was an agricultural world within close range of Macragge — Parmenio.
All assembled fleets would stage there for a brief consolidation: force reorganization and a full supply resupply. Then they would immediately get underway for Macragge's defensive lines at maximum speed.
That surprised him, if he was being honest. He had assumed command would push their battered and exhausted force straight into Macragge without pausing for anything.
In the eyes of the Imperial bureaucracy, Astra Militarum lives were consumption numbers. That had been true everywhere he had served.
But there was a practical logic to it as well. Throwing their force at the Great Devourer's vanguard in their current state would be pointless self-destruction. And committing several million additional Astra Militarum troops directly to Macragge in an uncoordinated rush risked interfering with the Ultramarines' own defensive dispositions.
Parmenio was an important logistics hub in the Realm of Ultramar. As a staging point, it was the correct choice.
It would cost them time, though. He could only hope the Shadow of the Great Devourer would allow them that time.
He swiped through to the supply manifest attached to the orders. The list was clear: materiel to be received upon arrival. After the attrition and the reorganization, their unit designation had been formally established by the Departmento Munitorum as the Ash Watchers-Eisenmark 112th Regiment.
The numbers on the manifest were generous. Upon reaching Parmenio, the Departmento Munitorum was promising the 112th a batch of new Leman Russ main battle tanks along with a full complement of Chimera infantry carriers to improve their ground mobility. Lascannon batteries, munitions across the board, and Promethium fuel had all been allocated at the highest priority level.
Any ordinary Astra Militarum commander looking at a supply list that lavish would probably be thanking the Emperor out loud in their cabin.
Duvette looked at those numbers and felt nothing.
He understood better than anyone else aboard this ship what they were being supplied to go and face.
He switched off the data-slate. Drew a slow breath. Closed his eyes and, in the deep space behind them, summoned the translucent panel only he could see.
He began working through the Soul of the Legion's unspent skill options with careful attention.
He ran back over his investment approach up to this point. Against Chaos cultists and Ork greenskins, the bulk of his selections had been oriented toward stabilizing morale and sanity, enhancing ranged equipment, and building specific defenses against Warp-based psychic threats. Those skills had done exactly what they needed to do. Time after time, they had pulled the regiment back from the edge of collapse.
But the enemy ahead was nothing like either of those.
The Tyranids were not Chaos-maddened fanatics. They were not greenskins throwing themselves forward on the raw energy of the Waaagh.
They were a purely biological, purely physical species — creatures whose numbers exceeded the total ammunition output of every Astra Militarum foundry world combined, by an order of magnitude no one had tried to calculate.
They had no concept of morale failure. No fear of death. Their entire existence had one purpose: consumption.
Against that kind of tide, the precision of a las-beam was a secondary concern at best.
When thousands upon thousands of the swarm poured into the trenches and went body-to-body with the soldiers, what would be fully exposed was the fragility of mortal human flesh. An ordinary Guardsman against a Tyranid warrior organism was not a fight with a likely outcome. Against the swarm in sufficient numbers, staying alive would be an achievement in its own right.
He had to address that from the ground up.
He looked past the tactical command aura skills on the tree and fixed on several highly specific options under the physical enhancement categories.
His decision: two core physical conditioning skills unlocked before they reached Parmenio.
His gaze came to rest on the Iron Discipline branch.
This one.
First skill. He spent 200 Emperor's Wrath without hesitating and unlocked Veteran's Frame (Beginner).
As the points deducted, the effect description resolved in his vision:
[All members of the Legion receive enhancement to their internal organs and metabolic systems. The physiological requirements of all personnel for sleep, food, and water are forcibly reduced to one-fifth of normal human levels. The body no longer accumulates lactic acid and other metabolic byproducts that cause fatigue. Complete immunity to muscle soreness and standard physical exhaustion. Moderate immunity to conventional toxins.]
[We are the foundation. We do not fall.]
The skill activated and Duvette felt the effect immediately — the System applied it to its commander alongside the Legion.
The deep exhaustion that had accumulated through sustained high-intensity combat and constant psychological strain vanished. Not diminished. Gone, the way a tide goes out — completely and without residue.
His breathing settled into something long and efficient. His heartbeat was steady and powerful in a way it had not been since before the Shrine World operation. Every muscle carried a vitality that had no comparison in his previous experience.
He allowed himself a nod of satisfaction. For the extended, grinding, high-intensity anti-swarm fighting ahead, this passive ability was as close to irreplaceable as anything he could have selected. The Tyranids did not require sleep. Now neither would his regiment.
The one foreseeable complication: soldiers fully freed from fatigue during non-combat periods — Warp transit, staging, garrison — with nowhere productive to direct that excess energy would inevitably start manufacturing problems. He would need to find high-intensity training programs rigorous enough to drain them before they decided to improvise their own entertainment.
He moved his attention to the War Doctrine branch. Unlimited endurance was not sufficient on its own. Against Tyranid organisms with dense armored shells and physical strength that dwarfed anything the mortal human frame was built to resist, the upper limit of that frame needed to be raised.
He spent another 100 Emperor's Wrath and unlocked Limiter Break (Beginner).
[Forcibly releases the self-protective restrictions the human brain imposes on the body. While active, the explosive output of all Legion members' muscle groups and the compressive tolerance of their skeletal structures are substantially increased. Duration: 30 minutes. Cooldown: 12 hours.]
Used in isolation, this skill would cause irreversible damage to a mortal soldier's body — muscle tears, skeletal overload. But paired with the metabolic recovery that Veteran's Frame provided, and with the critical wound survival ability of the earlier Indomitable skill, the three together would produce something considerably beyond what any one of them achieved alone.
Stacked, these three skills would give Astra Militarum soldiers a physical capability well above their baseline. When ammunition ran dry and the bayonets went on, his soldiers would not be the ones dying unilaterally to the swarm. They would be capable of driving a bayonet through chitinous shell with enough explosive force to matter. In a meatgrinder, that difference in survivability was not marginal.
Finally, to keep their ammunition from burning through in the first hour of contact, he upgraded Focused Volley to Level 3.
[For the skill's duration, the ranged accuracy of troops under your command is substantially increased. Ammunition consumption is substantially reduced. Weapon wear is substantially reduced.]
Duration extended from one hour to two. The next upgrade would require more points, and the prior unlocking of another skill.
With the skill selections finished, Duvette closed the System panel. He stood, straightened the black Colonel-Commissar's greatcoat, and settled his peaked cap squarely on his head.
He was going to make one more trip to the lower deck barracks.
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