V3 Chapter 86: Purifying the Conqueror
After Duvette finished speaking, Lotara Sarrin's near-skeletal face twitched faintly.
The last of her facial muscles managed to force out an expression impossible to read, something between mockery and a resignation that had been coming for a long time. The ancient bloody handprint on her chest rose and fell faintly with her breathing, and her cracked lips parted along with it.
"As you will..."
A hoarse voice forced its way up from deep in her throat.
"I felt Lord Angron's passing."
"I... should follow him now, too."
Duvette watched her, his face without expression.
Even at the very end, she'd shown not the faintest trace of remorse. Since that was how it stood, there was no reason for him to hold back any longer.
His will settled on the System interface.
Nine thousand points of Emperor's Wrath went into [Purification] all at once.
The long countdown on its cooldown dropped to zero in an instant.
The next moment, endless white light poured out from within Duvette.
It swept past Entropy's Song, spread across the raised dais beneath his feet, and then swallowed the command throne and the entire hidden bridge whole. The light carried no warmth, and nothing that could be called emotion. Only an order that could not be defied.
For the first time, Lotara Sarrin felt something close to true fear.
That power made no attempt to torment her, and did not try to speak with her. It simply covered everything, calm and absolute, and began peeling away, layer by layer, the Chaos corruption inside her, the daemonic will, and the ten thousand years of accumulated warping.
She felt no pain.
Nor did she feel any comfort.
Her consciousness was fading.
The memories that belonged to the Lady were breaking apart, and the countless voices carried through the Conqueror were receding fast as well. Her soul felt as though it were being erased, one stroke of white light at a time, until nothing at all would remain.
She could not follow Angron.
Nor could she return to the Warp.
She would simply vanish from this world completely.
Just as the last of her awareness was about to go out, Lotara suddenly sensed a presence that felt familiar.
She turned her gaze with great effort, toward the dim corridor beyond the hidden bridge.
A figure stood there.
Her white captain's uniform was new, without a single stain, a scarlet cloak hanging behind her, a blood-red handprint left on her chest. Her young face carried confusion and hesitation, as though she still didn't understand why she'd appeared here at all.
"Lotara Sarrin..."
The presence on the throne spoke the name aloud.
That was herself.
The part of her that had once wanted to escape the Conqueror.
The weakness she had judged as fear, as doubt, and had cut away from herself with her own hand.
And the lingering spirit that the Conqueror had woken from memory again and again, only to trap it inside the hull's body each time.
The young Lotara looked toward the throne as well.
She didn't come any closer. She only stood in the corridor, watching the self that had already been fused with the Conqueror for ten thousand years.
The white light kept spreading.
The decayed body on the throne grew gradually transparent, and the dominant consciousness fused with the ship's daemonic corruption began to come apart along with it. But the young figure in the corridor did not dissolve with it. Instead, a faint white light gathered and settled around her.
In her last moment of clarity, the Lotara on the throne remembered a poem.
One that had once been written for her, and that she had also come to hate.
Fragmented lines resurfaced from a distant memory.
She is the rose watered by blood.
She is a worthy enemy.
She is silent steel.
A queenly shadow, cast across the mottled stage of eternal fusion, passing through the tides of a silent sea.
Here, enshrined in imperial steel.
They carved her prayer...
The white light finally swallowed the throne completely.
What remained of Lotara Sarrin's decayed body crumbled without a sound, and the dominant personality that had fused with Warp corruption and the daemon machine spirit for ten thousand years vanished along with it. All that was left on the command throne was a torn uniform and ash, drifting slowly down.
Duvette remained expressionless throughout.
He could feel clearly the wail rising from the Conqueror's warped machine spirit.
That sound carried through the entire hull. The heavy bulkheads began to tremble, and the flesh-covered piping convulsed wildly. With Lotara's fused consciousness no longer holding it together, the core machine spirit had taken a severe blow, and the malice that had once moved as one quickly fell into disorder.
Duvette seized the opening at once.
[Purification] followed the hidden bridge's control lines deeper into the Conqueror.
He made no attempt to cover the entire warship in a single stroke.
This Gloriana-class battleship was simply too vast, and ten thousand years of corruption had already worked its way into every plate of armour and every length of piping. Even spending every ounce of strength he had, Duvette could not purify the whole ship in any short span of time.
The white light covered the core machine spirit and the hidden bridge first.
Then it moved into the main data hub, seizing control of the bridge's command systems and the internal defence network. The flesh hatches that had been closing on the boarding force stopped where they were, and the automated turrets attacking the intruders began falling silent one after another.
More white light extended outward along the machine spirit's network.
It wrapped around the control core of the main plasma reactor, and the malicious command driving it toward self-destruction quickly vanished. The primary control nodes for the thrusters and the plasma engines began to stabilise as well, and the Conqueror's struggling hull gradually stopped shaking.
The core control circuits for the Gellar Field generator and the void shield generator were purified in turn.
The compartments too deeply corrupted to hold any real strategic value for now, Duvette deliberately bypassed. The white light travelled along the Conqueror's most vital lines, contesting control of the ship against the Chaos corruption entrenched within it.
With every stretch of distance it covered, Duvette's strength drained away that much faster.
Still, he did not stop.
So long as these core sections could be reclaimed, the Conqueror would lose its ability to keep resisting.
***
Guilliman boarded the Conqueror as a tremor ran through its hull.
The armour of fate had finished its emergency repairs, though the scar Angron had left across its chest plate was still plainly visible. The Ultramarines Honour Guard held close around him, with Mechanicus tech-priests and the second wave of the boarding force following close behind.
Once the comm channel opened, the first landing units reported in one after another.
The Salamanders Fourth Company had already secured a transit hub.
The Blood Angels Fifth Company had taken several main passages leading toward the ship's midsection.
Only Duvette gave no answer.
This mortal, both dangerous and vital in Guilliman's estimation, seemed to have vanished entirely from within the Conqueror.
Guilliman's brow drew tight.
"When did Duvette last make contact?"
Harath Shen's voice came back quickly.
"Twenty minutes ago."
"After Commissar Duvette took the enemy's command bridge, he told us he was going to deal with the ship's true core. He marked the correct route through to the end for every unit, then cut off communication."
Cassian Villanos confirmed the same report.
"We've tried reaching him again. No response."
Guilliman had just opened his mouth to ask further, when an unfamiliar force suddenly rose up from somewhere deep within the ship.
He turned sharply, looking down the warped corridor ahead.
A white light was kindling somewhere in the distance.
It crept slowly along the bulkheads and the deck, and wherever it passed, the flesh covering the metal structure crumbled away into ash. The stretched, warped corridor snapped back to its true dimensions, and the disordered gravity began to settle as well.
Guilliman led the Honour Guard forward at once.
Corrupted combat servitors lay scattered along the way in great numbers.
Once the white light passed over them, the daemon-flesh clinging to their frames sloughed away fast, and their twisted weapons returned to their original shape. Servitors that were still structurally sound dropped back into standby mode; those already physically destroyed simply lay still where they'd fallen.
Guilliman could feel, directly, the power carried within that white light.
Pure.
Whole.
Absolute order.
A thought surfaced in his mind without warning.
Get a little closer.
Just a little closer.
If he simply walked into that white light, all pain would fall away, and every question would find its answer. The broken armour of fate, the old wound in his throat, the Imperium's slow decay, the weight of ten thousand years, all of it would lose its meaning within that absolute order.
Guilliman took another few steps forward.
The white light drew nearer.
Just a little closer, and I could...
The Primarch of the Imperium came awake with a start.
He stopped, and pulled back several steps at once.
The Honour Guard, who had briefly fallen behind, closed in around him again at once, reforming their defensive formation. None of them had noticed anything out of the ordinary; they simply assumed their gene-father had sensed some new danger.
Guilliman offered no explanation.
His expression complicated, he watched the white light continue spreading deeper into the hull.
That power could scour away ten thousand years of Chaos corruption, and force warped space itself back under the rule of reality. But behind its purity and order lay something else, something with the power to draw even a Primarch's own soul toward it.
"So this is your strength..."
Guilliman said quietly.
"Duvette..."