V3 Chapter 34: What Do You Mean Duvette Found My Mother?
Guilliman stood quietly in his quarters.
Some time had passed since his revival. He had begun the forced process of adjusting to this age: to a shattered Imperium, to humanity's ignorant fanaticism, and to the arrogance of officials who understood nothing of what they administered.
He was standing before a cabinet.
On top of the cabinet was an old photograph. It showed Konor Guilliman and Tarasha Euten, his foster father and foster mother, among the few people in his memory who could make him stop and simply be still.
Guilliman looked at the photograph, and something appeared in his eyes that had not been there for a very long time.
That expression was unsuitable for a Primarch, and unsuitable for a supreme commander. He understood this clearly.
He could not show weakness. He could not show doubt. He could not let despair or grief appear before those who depended on him.
He was a commander, a Primarch, and the only hope visible to countless people living in darkness. Even when he himself felt the weight of it, he had to remain standing ahead of all of them.
But he still had his own feelings.
When he looked around and realised he was the only one who had truly lived through the age of reason, who understood how close humanity had once come to a different future, he felt a loneliness that resisted easy description. This Imperium made him angry, and it made him grieve.
It had built ignorance in the Emperor's name. It had replaced reason with faith. It had used bureaucratic machinery to conceal rot. And yet it was the only thing humanity had left, the last order countless people were giving their lives to maintain.
Guilliman sometimes thought that when he returned to Terra, he might genuinely have to face his true father at last.
Not as a son seeking comfort, but to ask the questions ten thousand years had buried.
He set the photograph gently back on the cabinet, confirmed it had not shifted, and turned to the desk.
There were many reports on the surface.
One of them had arrived a week prior, passed through astropathic relay and translation before reaching him.
[Marshal-Commissar Duvette reports suspected recovery of a significant relic connected to you, seized and sealed by a xenos entity. Requesting authorisation to proceed and confirm.]
Guilliman looked at that line of text and his brow came together slowly.
Requesting.
The word was well chosen.
But the subsequent fleet tracking reports had already made it clear: Duvette and the Resolute had changed course and departed long before that. They had not waited for any formal response from Macragge.
Guilliman let out a slow breath.
He was beginning to understand why the assessments in briefings about Duvette always produced the same kind of evaluation.
[Does not defer to authority. Capable of independent judgement in a crisis. Consistently resolves difficulties without waiting for complete orders.]
Extremely independent, certainly.
Independent enough that even he, a Primarch, found himself reconsidering how exactly one was supposed to keep this man under any kind of constraint.
People like that were very useful and equally dangerous. When their direction was correct, they resolved problems in the shortest possible time. When their judgement was even slightly off, they could produce a chain of consequences that were difficult to predict.
When he returned, it might be necessary to have another conversation with him.
At that moment, another data-slate on the desk lit up.
A new urgent transmission had arrived.
The priority classification was highest urgent notification.
Guilliman's expression became very still.
He picked up the data-slate, opened the report, and read through it at speed. After only a few lines, his pupils contracted sharply.
His breathing, normally steady, changed for a brief moment.
Guilliman did not continue reading.
He paused for one second, then started again from the first line.
A second time, a third, a fourth.
His gaze moved across the text repeatedly, and finally stopped on one name.
Tarasha Euten.
The room went quiet.
A long time passed.
Guilliman set the data-slate back on the desk. He raised his head, closed his eyes, and used a single slow breath to press down what was moving inside him.
It might not be real.
This could very easily be a xenos trap. It could be a Warp forgery. It could be a psychological attack aimed specifically at him.
But the report had come from Duvette.
Guilliman opened his eyes.
"Come in."
The Ultramarine outside the door entered immediately and rendered a salute.
"Notify Duvette," Guilliman said. "When he arrives at Macragge, I will personally meet him at the star port. No public announcement."
The Ultramarine paused for just a moment.
A Primarch going in person to the star port was not a small thing. But he asked no questions. He lowered his head again.
"By your will, my lord."
The Ultramarine turned and left.
Guilliman stood where he was and looked out through the window at the bright sky.
Ultramar's sun fell across the high walls of the Fortress of Hera. The order was intact. The banners were intact. The city in the distance was still running. But he knew something had just been shifted by that report.
"Duvette..."
Guilliman's voice was very low, and very complicated.
"You have given me quite a surprise."
In a quiet cabin aboard the Resolute, Sergeant Amon and Tarasha Euten sat at a table.
Duvette had removed his peaked cap and set it beside him.
The scene was no longer what it had been when they were first brought out of that black and green-lit space. Amon was still in the Thirtieth Millennium pattern Ultramarine power armour he had been wearing. Tarasha had changed into clean clothes, and the smoke residue on her had been cleared away.
But the way both of them looked at Duvette still held wariness.
That was the natural response.
They had been carried out of the fire and smoke of the Macragge's Honour, and in the next moment found themselves on a completely unfamiliar Imperial warship, facing a mortal officer who called himself an Imperial Marshal-Commissar. Duvette kept his account as clear as he could.
He described Trazyn: a Necron Overlord. He described the nature of the stasis-preserved space, a fragment of the storage compartment cut out of its original moment in time and sealed. He said it was not a conventional prison, and what had passed inside it was not ordinary time. For them, perhaps only a moment had gone by. But the real universe had moved through nearly ten thousand years.
"That is the shape of it," Duvette said.
He finished and stopped.
The cabin was quiet for a long time.
Amon looked down at his gauntlets as though confirming he still existed. He was an Astartes, conditioned to the highest standard, but the number ten thousand years still left him unable to speak for a moment.
"So ten thousand years have passed..." he said quietly.
Tarasha Euten did not press for details about what the Imperium had become, and did not immediately ask about the politics and wars of Macragge.
She only looked at Duvette.
"So my... Roboute is still alive?"
Duvette looked at her and allowed his tone to ease.
"Still alive."
He watched the change in Tarasha's expression and continued. "More precisely: not long after you were taken, the Primarch suffered a severe wound and fell into a long period of stasis. He has only recently been healed and woken."
He paused.
"He is also someone who has just crossed ten thousand years."
Tarasha said nothing.
Duvette looked at the elderly Mistress of the Macragge Household for a moment, then added a final line.
"He needs you."
Something shifted in the steadiness of Tarasha's gaze.
It was a complicated expression: part shock, part something closer to sorrow. She appeared in that moment to truly register that the child she remembered, the one who had always seemed capable of bearing everything, might also be someone the long passage of time had caught up with.
Amon drew a slow breath and forced himself back into the state an Astartes should hold.
"How long until we reach Macragge?"
"Approximately one standard Terran week, if the Navigator's assessment holds," Duvette said.
"Your quarters are arranged on the upper decks. I am in the adjoining section. If you need anything, you can find me, or the Storm Troopers I have assigned."
He looked at Amon.
"Both of you will receive medical checks, contamination screening, and identity verification. This is not a matter of suspicion. It is to confirm there are no xenos contingencies in play and no Warp contamination."
Amon gave a nod.
The procedure was one he could understand.
Duvette looked at Tarasha.
"I may not be able to answer the more complex questions. The Imperium has changed greatly, and some things I cannot explain simply."
"But I can promise you this: once we reach Macragge, you will see the Primarch Roboute Guilliman."
The cabin was quiet again for a moment.
Tarasha Euten rose slowly and gave Duvette a small bow.
"Thank you for this rescue, General Duvette."
Duvette stood as well and returned the bow with the same gravity.
"There is no need to thank me, Lady Euten."
"Please rest first. I will have someone show you back to your cabin. I understand that accepting all of this takes time."
Amon was still processing everything.
Duvette gave him a nod, then replaced his peaked cap, turned, and left the cabin.
The hatch sealed behind him.
In the corridor, Duvette finally let out a long breath.
He took a few steps forward and, unexpectedly, found himself smiling.
He had found Guilliman's mother.
A few months ago, Duvette himself would not have believed it.
He found himself genuinely curious about what Guilliman's expression would look like right now. That Primarch, always composed, always rational, always carrying everything without showing the weight of it: this was one occasion where staying completely unaffected was probably going to be difficult.
Though Duvette also understood that Guilliman would verify everything.
Whether Tarasha Euten was genuinely herself, whether Amon was who he appeared to be, whether all of this was some xenos scheme or Warp working: all of it would need to be confirmed.
The event was too sudden.
And it resembled a trap prepared specifically for Guilliman far too closely.
Duvette set the smile aside and continued walking down the corridor.
Either way, they were already on the way back to Macragge.