V3 Chapter 22: I Can Prove I Possess This Power
Duvette paused at that.
He looked up at Guilliman, as though confirming he had not misheard.
"Everything?"
Guilliman gave a nod.
"Everything," he said. "All that you have experienced. I want to understand what the Imperium truly is now, through the account of an officer who has lived it."
Duvette was quiet for a moment and began organising his thoughts.
He understood clearly that the man seated across from him was no ordinary Imperial commander. Concealing parts of the truth from Guilliman might buy a brief measure of safety, but every concealment would become a larger problem later.
So he began with Farrak IV.
He had been a raw commissar then, seeing for the first time the brutality of the Imperial war machine in motion. Guilliman did not interrupt at that point. He only tapped the desk surface lightly with one gauntleted finger.
Then Duvette spoke of the Inquisitor.
He described being coerced into cooperation, being pushed into events far beyond the scope of any ordinary officer's authority. Guilliman's brow came together at that passage. He had already formed some understanding of how the Inquisition operated, but hearing of a newly qualified young officer being maneuvered into the middle of something like that still produced visible displeasure.
"Is this how the Imperium treats its loyal servants now?" Guilliman asked.
Duvette only answered, "Often, loyalty is enough to keep a man alive until the next audit."
Guilliman's brow tightened slightly.
Duvette continued.
His appointment on the shrine world, where he received the rank of Colonel-Commissar and for the first time held genuine command authority over a formation of his own. Then Macragge, where he fought alongside the Ultramarines, holding what could be held between the walls and the guns when it had seemed certain to be lost.
At the mention of Macragge, something in Guilliman's expression eased.
He asked about the defensive positions in some detail, and about the names of several Ultramarine officers. Duvette answered each question in turn, and he could sense that the Primarch was not simply revisiting memories of his home. He was testing every detail against what he knew.
After that came the Sabbat Crusade.
Duvette spoke of the battle on Formal Prime's main world, of Ashek II, of the Bane Engines and the Cognitor Array, and of how he had come to the Warmaster's attention. Guilliman paused briefly at the name Slaydo. He had already been briefed on the Warmaster's standing.
"A mortal Warmaster capable of holding together an expedition of that scale," Guilliman said. "It seems the Imperium still retains some capable men."
"Yes, my lord. The Imperium is vast, and such men have always existed somewhere within it," Duvette said. "But in these ten thousand years, men like that have rarely come to good ends."
Guilliman looked at him and said nothing.
The conversation continued.
Duvette spoke of exploring the stargate with Cawl, of the Dark Age of Technology remnants found aboard derelict voidships, and of how he had recovered a relic forged by Vulkan himself, along with thirteen returned Loyalist Shadow Wolves.
When the names Vulkan and the Shadow Wolves entered the account, Guilliman went quiet for a long time.
He did not immediately ask about the relic's specifics. He did not ask about the current condition of the thirteen Shadow Wolves. For that moment, he only looked toward the bookshelf on the far side of the room, as though something from a long time ago had surfaced, or the thought of a brother once known.
Duvette waited until Guilliman's gaze returned to him before continuing.
The Sveren campaign. The Battle of Balhaut. A Chaos fleet. A boarding action under fire. The Slaaneshi daemons on Tarentus. Shalaxi Helbane's projection driven back into the Warp. Each name added another layer of weight to the conversation.
From deep in the night to the first grey light before dawn, Duvette barely stopped.
For him, it was also a reckoning. Those campaigns, those choices, those deaths and those victories, laid out again in front of Guilliman and in front of himself.
For the most part, Guilliman listened.
When coercion appeared in the account, his brow came together. When treachery appeared, he gave a short sound of contempt. When Duvette described holding a line in impossible conditions, leading his soldiers through it, Guilliman offered brief, measured praise.
His tone was never condescending.
For long stretches he was simply a patient listener, not a Primarch newly returned from ten thousand years of stillness.
But as the campaigns accumulated, Guilliman's gaze grew deeper.
He had begun to notice something was wrong.
Taken purely at face value, the tactical dispositions Duvette described were not complicated for a mortal officer. Bold, calm, quick to exploit opportunity, willing to bear the consequences of his choices. Those were genuine qualities.
But those qualities could not fully account for the outcomes.
Guilliman had run the engagements through his own thinking several times. Same forces, same terrain, same enemy responses. The tactics Duvette described should have produced limited advantage at best. The actual results exceeded those projections again and again, and in certain engagements approached the edge of what was explicable.
Only one thing could account for that gap.
The man in front of him had withheld a critical variable.
Guilliman did not name it immediately.
Then Duvette said those words.
"Men of Iron. Purification."
The air in the room went abruptly still.
Guilliman came to his feet. The chair scraped back half a foot across the floor. The armour of fate gave a low mechanical sound as he moved, and his gaze locked onto the mortal officer seated in front of him.
"Men of Iron?"
Duvette stopped.
Guilliman took one step forward.
"You are telling me that you and Cawl found a complete, uncastrated Men of Iron STC, and that you are still in the process of studying it?"
His voice had dropped to something very controlled.
"Do you understand the scale of the risk in that?"
Duvette did not stand. He did not look away from that gaze.
"Please be calm, my lord," he said. "We have not restored a Men of Iron army operating under its own free will. Or at least, not without the necessary constraints in place."
Guilliman's expression did not ease.
Duvette continued. "What we engaged with was a legacy installation. My choice was to prevent it from falling into the hands of Chaos or those with ambitions of their own."
"Words do not substitute for action," Guilliman said. "How do you guarantee the safety of this? How do you guarantee it has not been corrupted by Chaos?"
Duvette was quiet for a moment.
Then he raised his head.
"My lord, you have likely already concluded that I withheld certain critical information from my earlier account."
Guilliman did not deny it.
His gaze had become more careful. Up to this point, the mortal in front of him had moved from being an unusual officer to something that required rigorous evaluation.
Duvette held that gaze without retreating.
He understood that today everything had to be said plainly. Only with Guilliman's recognition behind him would his position and freedom of action be proof against anyone who might later try to challenge them, up to and including the High Lords of Terra. The Special Operations Legion, the Shadow Wolves, Cawl, the Men of Iron purification, the contact with the Emissary of Death.
All of it needed an endorsement of sufficient weight.
Since that was what was needed, he would say everything directly.
"I possess a power," Duvette said. "One that acts on an entire legion."
Guilliman said nothing.
"Mortals and Astartes alike can be brought, for a period of time, to physical capabilities and Chaos resistance beyond their theoretical limits," Duvette continued. "It is not a permanent enhancement, and it cannot yet replace gene-work, equipment, and training."
Guilliman's expression shifted, just slightly.
"It can also, under specific conditions, suppress and even purify Chaos corruption," Duvette said. "As for the source of this power, your father, the Emperor, has already—"
"You also wish to invoke the Emperor's miracles?"
Guilliman cut him off.
His voice carried weight behind it.
Duvette gave a slight shake of his head.
"What I mean to say is that I have met your father," he said. "The Emperor."
"You are speaking nonsense."
Guilliman's voice dropped to something cold.
The maintenance apparatus in the room seemed to go quieter in that moment.
"Choose your words with care, Duvette Erdmann," Guilliman said. "You may misjudge. You may conceal things. You may take on guilt for the sake of war. But if you dare invoke my father's name to deceive me, I will personally deliver whatever correction is warranted."
Duvette stood up.
He stepped forward once, and looked at Guilliman without expression.
"I am not deceiving you. I am not concealing anything further."
Guilliman stared at him. Since waking, this was the first person who had stood before him like this. His own sons had not shown this kind of nerve. Something in Guilliman's expression shifted slightly at that recognition.
Duvette continued. "I ask you to trust my record. You will have reviewed all the relevant battle reports by now. Everything I have experienced, every choice I have made, all of it speaks to where I stand."
His voice remained steady.
"And everything I have said is true. It can be verified."
Guilliman did not tell him to sit.
Duvette did not sit back down.
"You will need to return to Terra," Duvette said. "To see the Emperor as he is now. He will tell you the full truth of it himself."
Guilliman's gaze became very still.
He did not rebuke again. He did not press immediately on the Men of Iron STC either. Because what had just been said reached something heavier than the Men of Iron.
"Before that," Duvette said, "I can first demonstrate that what I have told you is not without foundation."
Guilliman spoke slowly.
"How?"
Duvette looked at the Primarch in front of him, and for the first time allowed himself a trace of confidence.
"I brought the Legion with me," he said.
"And your sons can verify that for themselves."