V3 Chapter 29: The Plan to Reintegrate Greater Ultramar
Duvette stood on the high ground with his magnoculars trained on the mining plains below.
The surface there had been turned over repeatedly by shellfire. Slag, earth, and fragments of greenskin fortifications were all mixed together and thrown up by the continuing barrage.
The heavy artillery of the Krieg 1173rd Combat Cluster was still thundering from the rear. Each salvo sent a faint vibration through the rock underfoot.
The greenskin positions in the distance had lost whatever shape they had once held.
The defensive line, cobbled together from scrap iron, ore carriers, and armour plating, was coming apart section by section under the bombardment. The surviving orks were pouring out through the gaps and being cut down by the overlapping fields of fire that had been positioned there in advance.
Further along, the Eisenmark Armoured Regiment's vehicles were pushing forward along the edges of the ore roads, turrets turning slowly to sweep up the scattered greenskin groups still trying to consolidate.
Duvette lowered the magnoculars and looked across the changing markers on the battlefield.
The strategic map in his field of vision still showed a wide scatter of red points, but those points had lost their earlier density. They were dispersed across mine shafts, underground transit lines, and several collapsed fortifications, looking like the remnants of a formation that had already been broken apart.
Evan came up the slope from below.
The Chief of Staff of the 112th Combat Cluster was still carrying dust from the fighting, and the officer's sash on his left shoulder had been curled by the heat wash. He walked up beside Duvette, glanced out over the battlefield, then rendered a salute.
"General. The main greenskin force on Castalor has been eliminated," Evan said. "Remaining small greenskin elements are scattering into the underground ore tunnels and the abandoned mining districts in the northern hemisphere. The Ultramar Auxilia has accepted the first batch of handover coordinates."
Duvette gave a nod.
"Spore incineration and tunnel inspection?"
"Already included in the follow-on plan," Evan answered. "They will go in with incineration teams and quarantine personnel. The maps we have left them are sufficient for continued clearing. As long as they do not make any serious errors, this planet will not produce another organised greenskin force."
Duvette did not reply immediately.
He had not needed Evan to tell him. New text had already appeared in his field of vision.
[Greenskin Clearance Campaign on Castalor completed.]
[Emperor's Wrath +1,000]
The line hung quietly at the edge of his vision, then faded slowly.
Duvette looked back at Evan.
"Order all units to prepare for withdrawal," he said. "The Krieg artillery completes its final fire mission and then withdraws its guns. The Eisenmark Armoured Regiment covers the retrograde. The Armageddon mechanised infantry hands over the southern mining district checkpoints to the Ultramar Auxilia. The Catachan Hunting Company pulls out of the underground ore tunnels and does not pursue any deeper."
Evan noted the orders quickly.
"The Elysian Drop Troops?"
"Have them return to the landing zone," Duvette said. "The Storm Troopers retain one platoon to assist the Auxilia with the transfer of the governorship's mining archive. All other units return to orbit."
"Understood."
Evan rendered another salute and turned down the slope. His pace was quick, and his vox unit began relaying Duvette's orders to each command node almost immediately.
Duvette watched him go and was briefly quiet.
A month ago, Guilliman had said something to him in the strategy chamber at the Fortress of Hera.
"I want to see what a fifty-thousand-strong mortal combat cluster can achieve under your command."
The Primarch had been standing before a vast star chart at the time, one hand resting near a cluster of old transit routes along the eastern edge of Ultramar. Several names there had grown obscure in the modern administrative records. Castalor was one of them.
The fifty-thousand-strong combat cluster was not a new formation hastily assembled from Macragge and handed to Duvette.
It was the formation he had brought out of the Sabbat Crusade: the 112th Combined Battle Group, authorised for expansion by Marshal Slaydo himself. It carried the original 112th core, along with Krieg, Armageddon, Elysian, Catachan, Mordian, and Storm Trooper elements.
They had fought in the Sabbat Worlds. Under Duvette's command they had gone through battlefields that no ordinary mortals should have been asked to survive.
Guilliman had not rushed to any conclusions about this formation.
He had only marked Castalor on the chart and told Duvette that the mining world sat on the old eastern edge of greater Ultramar, near the outer transit routes of the Sotharan League. In the era of the Great Crusade, it had supplied ore and fuel to the fleets of the Five Hundred Worlds. Now it had been passed through layers of frontier bureaucracy and its actual defences had long since deteriorated.
Not long ago, a greenskin clan had broken through the local mining defence line.
They had taken the haematite belt, seized several orbital ore-bays, and converted abandoned ore carriers and heavy drilling rigs into large numbers of crude fighting vehicles. The local governor's request for assistance had been passed through several channels before it finally reached Macragge.
Guilliman reviewed the report and did not immediately send Ultramarines.
He gave the task to Duvette.
The Primarch's words had been vague, but Duvette understood the intent. Guilliman meant to reintegrate the greater Ultramar Five Hundred Worlds, but this was considerably more difficult than a single order could accomplish. Nearly ten thousand years had passed since the Primarch had himself divided those worlds, and the old territory was now fragmented across Imperial administrative structures, sector naval commands, defence contracts, and local governors.
Reintegrating those worlds meant first establishing how much value remained in each of them.
The Imperial bureaucracy would resist this. Local power structures would fear it. And the xenos, orks, pirates, and other threats occupying the old transit routes, fringe mining districts, and abandoned colonies would turn the reintegration effort into one campaign after another.
Castalor was only the beginning.
Duvette had not declined.
On one level, this was Guilliman's first formal assessment of the 112th Combined Battle Group. On another, he genuinely needed more Emperor's Wrath: to unlock new skills, or to continue developing his equipment.
Guilliman had given him three months.
If the primary campaign could not be concluded in that time, Macragge would dispatch Ultramarines in support. Guilliman had said this in a level tone, but Duvette understood it was also an evaluation.
The result came faster than most people had expected.
Within the first week after the 112th Combat Cluster arrived on Castalor, Duvette had located the greenskin Warboss.
The creature had established its lair at the deepest point of the largest vertical mine shaft in the haematite belt, surrounded by three layers of scrap-iron walls and dozens of crude vehicles converted from mining drilling rigs. It believed that positioning itself at the bottom would allow it to continuously rally scattered greenskin elements to its banner.
Duvette had the Krieg heavy artillery lay sustained fire on the outer ring of the shaft while simultaneously ordering the Elysian Drop Troops to breach through the ventilation towers.
The Catachan Hunting Company entered through the decommissioned drainage systems and cut the lift cables on the shaft's lower levels. The Storm Troopers broke through the inner platform in the shortest possible time. Anderson and Elias led their respective infantry regiments in a frontal push, and the Warboss was killed near the shaft control tower.
With the Warboss dead, the greenskins began fighting among themselves.
The Eisenmark Armoured Regiment and the Armageddon mechanised infantry did not give them time to reconsolidate. Duvette pushed each element along the ore railways and underground transit lines, dividing the greenskins into isolated pockets in separate mining districts and then compressing each pocket in sequence.
Three weeks later, the primary campaign on Castalor was over.
What remained was clearing the battlefield, processing the surviving orks, burning the spores, and inspecting the underground ore tunnels. That work was methodical and important, but it no longer required the 112th Combined Battle Group to stay.
"Still a little slow."
Duvette clicked his tongue and shook his head.
Three weeks was more than sufficient to meet Guilliman's deadline. But looking toward sector-scale warfare in the future, there was still considerable room to compress that timeline.
He could see enemy dispositions through the strategic map, and he could push his formations to a higher level of performance through the Soul of the Legion. But he was still nowhere near truly understanding the kind of war-wide operational management that Guilliman operated at.
Duvette looked out at the artillery fire dying down in the distance and ran through the errors of the campaign in silence. Several ore tunnel seal operations could have been completed two days earlier. The abandoned mining districts in the northern hemisphere should not have allowed scattered greenskin remnants to disappear inside them. The coordination between orbital strikes and surface artillery had also suffered delays.
It seemed there was still a great deal to learn about both tactics and strategy.
He turned and walked down toward the temporary command vehicle below.
By the time he returned to Macragge, Guilliman should be nearly ready to depart for Terra. He would be going along, whatever capacity that took: as an assistant, as a witness, or as someone the Primarch was continuing to observe.
Cawl had already departed ahead of them.
The Archmagos had offered no particular explanation, only a brief statement that he would certainly be present on Terra when the time came. Duvette was not entirely certain what Cawl was doing, but he knew the man would not be genuinely absent from something like this.
News of Guilliman's return had spread beyond Macragge in the days after the celebration.
The message reached the worlds of Ultramar first, then travelled further through the Choir of Astronomers. It would be distorted, delayed, and questioned or suppressed by some parties, but it would spread in the end.
The true lord of Ultramar had returned.
Under that signal, large numbers of warships had begun converging on Macragge. The Successor Chapters whose bloodlines traced back to Ultramar responded almost without exception wherever they received the news and could spare the strength.
Guilliman had not demanded that anyone immediately abandon worlds they were defending. The situation was not yet at that level of crisis, and what he needed more than immediate forces was an accurate picture of positions, troop strengths, fleets, supply lines, and the pressure currently being borne on each front.
Beyond the Ultramarine Successors, several Chapters with no descent from the Thirteenth Legion had also sent responses.
Among them were the Blood Angels, who had not yet faced the Tyranid swarm. Baal was a long way from Macragge, but the Blood Angels had confirmed the news of the Primarch's return and were preparing to send a representative to Ultramar.
Duvette understood clearly that for the Imperium, the return of a loyal gene-sire Primarch was itself an event capable of shaking the galaxy.
For many people, this was hope.
For certain others, it was difficult to call it good news.
The High Lords of Terra, for instance.
Duvette could almost picture their reaction to the message. The Imperium had been in their hands for too long, long enough that many of them had come to treat their authority as something that simply belonged to them.
And now someone had woken up who held a genuine Primarch's standing, who had built the Imperial systems with his own hands.
That status alone was enough to make everyone reassess.
The temporary command vehicle was parked at the edge of the landing zone.
Before boarding the transport, Duvette looked once more at the sky over Castalor. The grey cloud cover had been cut through by trails of smoke from the orbital defence platforms burning, and several transports were delivering Ultramar Auxilia troops to the surface below.
They would take over from here.
They would clear the ore tunnels, burn the spores, restore the mining infrastructure, and bring Castalor back within Macragge's line of sight.
This was the first step Guilliman had wanted to see.
The landing craft's hatch sealed behind Duvette.
The engine sound quickly drowned out the last of the artillery fire still fading in the distance. As the transport climbed, the mining districts of Castalor shrank in the viewport, the vast shell craters and mine shafts shrinking to dark patches scattered across the surface.
In orbit, the Resolute was holding at the edge of the planet's shadow.
The wreckage of the greenskin fleet drifted around it. The crude warships' hulls retained their tangled shapes even in fragments: shattered armour plating, severed engine exhausts, and blackened gun turrets spread across the orbital plane in a ring of waste iron that had not yet been cleared.
Villent's fleet had already finished the fighting long before this point. The greenskins had lost orbital control before their leader on the surface was killed. Without orbital support, everything that followed on Castalor was only a matter of time.
The landing craft entered the Resolute's hangar bay as the deck indicators lit up in sequence.
Duvette came down the ramp and found Villent waiting for him.
The fleet Admiral was standing at the hangar's edge, his officers behind him giving quiet updates on the orbital clearance progress. When he saw Duvette he allowed a smile and walked forward.
Duvette walked to meet him and shook his hand.
"We can return to Macragge," Duvette said. "The work here is done."
Villent glanced out at Castalor through the viewport and gave a small shake of his head, still smiling.
"Still you, Duvette," he said. "Three weeks to break the main greenskin force on a mining world and leave a complete enough handover plan to be usable. When we get back to Macragge, the Primarch should be satisfied."
"Whether he is satisfied is for him to say."
"Then let me put it a different way," Villent said. "I may just stay with you from here on."
Duvette raised an eyebrow.
He did not answer immediately, only looked at the expression on Villent's face. The words sounded light, but an Admiral does not speak casually on a matter like that.
"That is not a small decision. It would depend on what the chain of command has to say," Duvette said.
"I know," Villent answered. "But I have already fought alongside you in quite a few engagements. The Sabbat Worlds, Tarentus, and now Castalor. To be honest, I have started to feel that staying close to you tends to put you in a position to see things that are significant enough to change the shape of what comes next."
Duvette gave a noncommittal laugh.
Change the shape of what comes next was a large claim.
But he could not deny that more and more people were gathering around him. The mortal Legion, the fleet, the Black Shield Astartes, the Salamanders, the Rogue Trader, the Mechanicus, and now Guilliman, freshly awake.
He looked up at the structural framing of the hangar above him, and another thought surfaced.
He might genuinely need to consider unlocking some skills with bearing on naval operations.
Ground warfare was something he was gradually developing a real feel for, but the road ahead could not be covered by ground forces alone. Guilliman was going to Terra, which meant moving through a long transit corridor and facing traitors, xenos, pirates, Warp storms, and the enemies hidden in the Imperium's own shadow.
A sufficiently reliable fleet was going to matter more and more.
Duvette brought his attention back and gave Villent a nod.
"Then let us return to Macragge first," he said. "The real work is about to begin."
Villent did not ask anything further.
He turned and gave the order toward the bridge, and the officers and crew in the ship's interior began moving at once. Several minutes later the Resolute's main engines relit, and the escort fleet adjusted its heading in sequence.
Behind the fleet, Castalor hung quietly in the void.
This mining world at the old fringe of the Five Hundred Worlds had come back within Ultramar's line of sight at last.
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