Chapter 37: We Stand in Hell
Duvette led his unit through the troopship's corridors, following Juno.
Fifty soldiers in deep grey carapace armour moved in two columns behind him, their heavy synchronized footsteps ringing off the metal floor. Combat shotguns and las-carbines were in hand, sealed tactical helmets covering every face.
Officers passing through the corridor stopped and looked at them. A fully equipped formation of this quality drew attention.
Then the officers registered the white-haired woman in the black Inquisitor's coat walking at the front, and every gaze dropped immediately. No one met Juno's eye. Several officers stepped aside against the wall and found reasons to study their data-slates.
Duvette walked half a step behind her, watching the back of the coat settle with each step.
She was heading into one of the most dangerous environments imaginable, in what amounted to her ordinary clothes. No armor. Not even the basic flak plate a Guardsman rated. Did she carry a compact void shield? Or was there something else — something considerably less mechanical — accounting for her lack of concern?
Juno turned her head slightly and glanced at him.
"Something on your mind?" Her voice was even. "You should ask it now, before we board the assault boat. Once we're moving, there won't be time."
Duvette narrowed his eyes behind the helmet's visor. Her awareness was unsettling in a way that was becoming familiar. He was quiet for two seconds, then shook his head.
"Nothing."
Juno raised one eyebrow fractionally and turned back to the corridor. "You have my word," she said, walking. "Once this mission concludes successfully, I will honor everything I promised you." A pause. "And there may be additional consideration. A promotion, among other things."
They stepped onto a lift platform. The metal doors closed and it began to descend.
Juno looked at their reflection in the doors: Duvette in his black commissar's coat over the carapace, and behind him the rows of silent soldiers.
"Inside the space hulk," she said, "follow my direction completely. I will lead. Anyone who fails to do so bears the consequences of that choice alone."
Was she worried they would ignore her orders? Duvette allowed himself a private cold amusement. He had his own concern: that once she had whatever she came for, she would simply leave. He closed his hand around the grip of the bolt pistol at his hip, and a thin smile settled onto his face behind the visor.
"Of course, Lord Inquisitor Juno," he said. "We'll be right behind you."
Juno said nothing more.
The platform stopped. The doors opened onto a wide hangar deck.
A Shark assault boat occupied its berth: fifty-five meters of streamlined hull in dark grey matte, a melta-cutting ring mounted at the bow, the aquila stamped on its flanks.
They boarded. The interior was long and narrow, two rows of heavy restraint seats running the length of it with a tight passage between. The soldiers filed in and took their places, weapons laid across their laps, harness buckles clicking as they locked.
Duvette took the front seat. Juno walked through to the cockpit.
Silence settled over the interior.
Everyone waited. The only sounds were the slow hum of the circulation systems and the rhythm of breathing through helmet filters.
Eventually the engines started.
A deep vibration rose from somewhere in the boat's frame, building in intensity. The seat trembled under him. Duvette's left hand found the overhead restraint bar and held it.
Juno's voice came through the communications channel into every helmet.
"Launching."
The Shark assault boat slid from its berth into the launch passage. Heavy pressure doors opened one after another ahead of it, then closed as the boat moved through. The last door opened into pure black, sparse points of starlight at an indeterminate distance.
The boat pushed through.
Immediate weightlessness.
Duvette felt his body go light, the harness pressing him back into the seat. Through the observation port at his side he watched the Siren's Fury's vast hull diminish with distance.
The assault boat accelerated.
Battle-red illumination came on throughout the interior. No one spoke. The communications channel carried amplified breathing and the raw thunder of the plasma engines from the stern.
Duvette closed his eyes.
He ran the numbers quietly. The target, per the mission briefing, was concealed behind a planet: a twisted labyrinth assembled from human warships and alien vessels from across countless eras, pressing against each other in ways that defied any standard of construction.
They were going straight in.
After a time Juno's voice returned through the channel.
"Approaching target area. Estimated thirty seconds."
Duvette opened his eyes.
"Brace for impact. Three. Two. One."
The violence of the impact was beyond any frame of reference he had.
Through the void, the assault boat drove like a stake into the Eternal Lament's outer hull armor — kilometers of layered ancient metal, compacted over tens of thousands of years. The sound that came from the bow was the sound of metal being destroyed at high speed, a grinding shriek that went through his teeth and his hands and his boots and did not stop. The melta-cutting ring at the bow ignited into white brilliance and burned through the ancient armor by brute heat and force, and the liquefied metal flew outward from the entry point and cooled instantly into warped debris that tumbled away in every direction.
The gravity generators reinitiated.
Every person in the boat was slammed back into their seat. Duvette's helmet struck the headrest behind it with a hard impact. He bit down and kept his grip on the restraint bar.
The shaking continued for ten full seconds.
Then it stopped.
A depressurization hiss accompanied the hydraulic system of the forward assault ramp coming to life. Mechanical components engaged with a low resonance and the ramp descended slowly, dropping the last of its travel with a heavy impact on a hard surface below.
The harness releases clicked in unison.
Soldiers came out of their restraints and took their weapons up and stood. Fast, ordered, no disorder.
Duvette stood. He gripped his chainsword in one hand and his bolt pistol in the other, and walked toward the open ramp.
Juno was already there.
The Inquisitor stood at the ramp's edge with her back to them, the black coat moving slightly in a current of air from some unseen source. Ahead of her: darkness. Distant emergency lighting blinking at irregular intervals.
Duvette came alongside her and looked forward.
They were in a vast space. The melta ring had burned a substantial hole through the outer hull, and beyond it opened a corridor — wide, warped out of any proper shape, the metal walls pressed inward under some ancient structural failure. Broken conduit hung from the ceiling overhead in long drops, trailing like loose cable. The floor was covered in a thick layer of accumulated dust, scattered through with the debris of broken instruments and large irregular stains in the floor material that had dried to black some unknowable time ago.
Juno stepped down from the ramp and walked into the corridor without hesitation. Her boots raised fine dust with each step, the sound of it barely audible. She moved to the corridor's center and looked in both directions.
Duvette followed. Fifty soldiers came off the ramp behind him, the sound of their boots overlapping in the empty space of the corridor.
He opened the squad channel and drew a breath.
"Alright, men." His voice came back to him through the helmet, steady and clear. "We are standing in hell."
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