V3 Chapter 82: The Salamanders' Hope
While the armour of fate underwent emergency repairs, Duvette began assembling the strike force for the coming boarding action.
The Salamanders Fourth Company under Harath Shen and the Blood Angels Fifth Company under Cassian Villanos, together with the thirteen Shadow Wolves of Luna at Duvette's side, would form the first wave of the assault on the Conqueror.
Their task was not to seize the entire ship.
The first wave needed only to open a path to the core sections, seize the key transit hubs, and establish a secure landing zone for the Mechanicus tech-priests and the forces that would follow. With a hull running over twenty kilometres long, a few hundred Astartes couldn't fill even a single deck of the Conqueror.
Duvette then turned his attention to his own skill interface.
The effects of [Flesh Engine] and [Iron Crusade] had both run their course, and each still had some time left before it could be used again. He invested part of his remaining six hundred Emperor's Wrath to bring both of these critical abilities back online for what was coming.
At Duvette's deliberate activation, both familiar powers washed over the Legion's ranks once more.
[King of War] remained active throughout.
The war on Badab Prime was far from over; more than three thousand Chaos Astartes and a great mass of cultists still resisted at every turn, and the Nurgle plague in the depths of four hive cities had not yet been fully resolved. So long as the intensity of this war never genuinely dropped, [King of War]'s power would keep holding.
As for [Blessing of the Omnissiah],
Duvette glanced over the equipment status reports coming in from both fleet and ground forces, and in the end decided against activating it again.
Better to let the machine spirits get some rest.
He genuinely worried those machine spirits, already worked up past their limits, might simply give out entirely and fall silent en masse the moment the fighting stopped.
Before the boarding force finished assembling, Duvette returned briefly to his own strategic command room.
Red markers still covered Badab Prime across the holographic map, but the overall balance had already begun tipping toward the Imperium. With Angron banished, the Khornate influence blanketing the battlefield weakened fast, and the mass of cultists and traitor forces who'd lost all reason began fighting as scattered, disorganised bands rather than a unified force.
The Imperial fleet had already committed the Titan formations and the Knight houses to the Ash Plains.
Massive transports carried the Victory Titan Legion into its designated sector, and the engines of war began sweeping the Chaos landing zones. Heavy vehicles, daemon engines, and the mass of gathered cultists who'd successfully touched down were swiftly suppressed beneath Titan-scale weaponry.
The Knight houses advanced along the hive city's outer edges, hunting down Chaos forces trying to flee into the urban structure.
As for the depths of the four hive cities, Duvette already had his elite combat groups holding there. The Krieg 1173rd Combat Group, the 112th's own infantry regiments, and the Astral Claws still held the main passages between lower hive and under-hive.
The Nurgle plague and its daemon hosts still remained, but could no longer spread any further upward.
Most of the front had been pinned firmly around the transit nodes, and Imperial forces had begun methodically clearing out the infected and daemons now cut off from any retreat.
Everything was moving in the right direction.
Duvette confirmed a handful of critical reports, then handed temporary ground command back to Huron and Evan once more. Between the two of them, so long as no second Daemon Primarch turned up, mopping up the remaining fronts should pose no real problem.
"Keep the under-hive plague contained for now."
Duvette said over the comm. "Once I'm done with the Conqueror, we'll figure out how to clear that filth out entirely."
"Understood."
Huron's voice came back fast.
His answer was far more clipped than before, and he didn't so much as question Duvette's arrangement this time.
Duvette looked at the ended channel, a small note of puzzlement rising in his mind.
He couldn't be sure if it was just his imagination.
But Huron's attitude did seem to have been improving lately.
Just then, a tall figure appeared outside the strategic command room.
Duvette turned his head, and a dark-skinned face came into view. Harath Shen, Captain of the Salamanders Fourth Company, stood there, his eyes glowing faintly red in the dim light, his expression as grave as ever.
Duvette walked over to him.
It had to be said, the Salamanders looked genuinely terrifying when they held their silence. A mortal unfamiliar with them would find it hard to believe that these fearsome-looking Astartes cared more about the lives of ordinary people than most of their kind.
"What comes next may be our first real fight side by side, in every sense of the word."
Duvette spoke first.
Harath Shen nodded.
"That's something I look forward to as well."
With that, he reached down, unhooked a weapon from his belt, and held it out to Duvette.
Duvette looked down at it.
Entropy's Song.
The Fire Drake relic had been away from him for a long while now. He'd scarcely seen it since he'd last returned it to the Salamanders.
Duvette did not reach out for it right away.
"I thought you'd decided to keep it for good."
After all, once the crusade ended, the Salamanders would return to Nocturne sooner or later, and to them, any one of the Nine Relics of the Fire Drakes carried a meaning nothing else could replace.
Harath Shen looked at Entropy's Song, still in his hand.
"It gave no response at all in our hands."
"Our tech-sergeants and Chaplains examined it more than once, and the result was always the same. As far as we can tell, this relic will only answer to you, for now."
Duvette raised an eyebrow.
"So you've decided to give it back to me?"
"From here on, it will remain in your keeping and use, for the time being."
Harath Shen's answer was precise, measured.
"Once we return to Nocturne, I'll explain the matter personally to the current Forgefather and the Council."
He paused briefly, then went on. "Our gene-father, the great Lord of the Fire Drakes, scattered and hid the Nine Relics across the galaxy."
"He did this both to keep these powerful creations from falling into the hands of Mankind's enemies, and to test his sons."
Harath Shen raised his head and looked at Duvette.
"A man is like metal. He must pass through fire, the hammer, and self-reflection before he can become a tool fit to protect others."
"The worth of strength lies not in proving one's own power, but in the responsibility one bears with it."
His voice remained calm, and yet carried a weight no one could take lightly.
"This, too, is a trial, Marshal-Commissar."
Duvette did not answer at once.
He wasn't sure whether Harath Shen meant the long road the Salamanders had walked in search of the Nine Relics, or the boarding action against the Conqueror about to begin.
Perhaps both.
Duvette reached out and took Entropy's Song.
The instant the weapon settled into his palm, the machine spirit, silent for so long, gave a familiar answer at last. The pulse was faint, but strong enough for Harath Shen, standing across from him, to confirm what he'd already judged to be true. The Salamanders captain, who would one day take up the name of Vulkan and become Forgefather, gave a small nod.
"I have only one hope for you."
"Keep carrying the responsibility you have already chosen to bear."
Harath Shen looked at the relic in Duvette's hand.
"Perhaps one day, the Salamanders will recover all Nine Relics."
"When that day comes, I believe you will be there as well."
After all, Entropy's Song had already made its choice, and it had chosen Duvette.
If the Salamanders truly meant to gather every relic, their paths would inevitably cross with this mortal's again.
Harath Shen gave Duvette a nod.
"I'll go prepare for the boarding action."
"See you shortly."
Duvette watched the tall figure leave the strategic command room.
He looked down at Entropy's Song, back in his hands once more.
"Quite the expectation to live up to."
Duvette said quietly.
He let out a soft sigh and fixed Entropy's Song to his belt. With the Blade of Glory and the Fire Drake relic hanging together at his sides, he finally looked something like a man ready to charge into a daemon-infested ship.
Reckoning the time.
Guilliman should be about ready by now too.
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