V3 Chapter 102: How Dare They Try to Assassinate You?! (Extended Chapter)
Duvette opened his eyes and pulled the pocket watch from inside his commissar's coat to check the time. He'd only dozed off briefly in the vehicle, yet three hours had already passed; Guilliman would likely still be behind the Eternity Gate for another dozen-odd hours.
By the time they met again, the man would probably already be Imperial Regent.
Not bad. He'd effectively hitched his own ride to the Imperial Regent's coattails; barring anything unexpected, there shouldn't be much left to worry about going forward. Of course, he still needed to keep an eye on whatever last struggles the High Lords had left in them.
Duvette put the watch away, stretched a little in the cramped cabin, then turned to look out the window.
The Ultimate Wall, known as the Unbreakable Bastion, slowly grew larger in view once more, its towering structure blocking out the buildings beyond, gun batteries and sensor arrays running at different heights, all still active.
The convoy proceeded along a dedicated corridor toward the inspection zone, finally coming to a stop before a checkpoint held by the Custodians.
The Custodian escorting them walked up to the vehicle and informed Duvette that the rest of the journey now fell to Terra's Administratum; they would be taken to a designated location to wait for Guilliman's summons.
"Much appreciated." Duvette nodded. The Custodian didn't respond to the pleasantry, simply turning to begin the handover procedures for personnel and weapons.
Two independent record systems cross-checked the convoy's registration at once. The Administratum hadn't arrived yet, so every vehicle could only wait within the zone marked out by the checkpoint. Duvette wasn't in any hurry, and leaned back into his seat again.
Only the two Lord Inquisitors and the thirteen black-cloaked Shadow Wolves of Luna remained with Duvette now.
The Ultramarines Honour Guard who had traveled with them had insisted on staying before the Eternity Gate, waiting for their Primarch to reappear.
The Custodians had negotiated with them at length over watch positions and weapon readiness. In the end, the Honour Guard was permitted to hold formation within sight of the Eternity Gate's garrison; they couldn't approach the steps, and their weapons had to stay at minimum power, but no one could order them to leave.
That group of Ultramarines had clearly braced themselves to stand there a full day. Duvette wasn't surprised in the least; once Guilliman had gone through the Eternity Gate, the only duty left them was waiting, but to the Honour Guard, that remained a duty no one else could be trusted with.
Duvette settled back into his seat and closed his eyes, waiting for the Administratum.
Markus sat beside him, the black cloak covering most of his white power armour, his massive frame alone taking up three seats' worth of space.
Juno sat across from them, chin propped on one hand, looking out the window.
Heinz murmured something under his breath, while the rest of the Shadow Wolves of Luna sat divided among the three transport vehicles behind.
They didn't wait long. A delegation of Administratum officials and civil administrators arrived at the checkpoint before too much time passed; both sides completed the handover of identity, vehicle, and escort authority, and the Custodians watched the convoy drive on into the administrative district beyond the Ultimate Wall.
Duvette opened his eyes, watching the buildings pass by outside.
The Administratum's lead vehicles took them through turn after turn, dropping into underground passages more than once, then rising through lift platforms into another level of traffic. The Imperial Palace was so vast that direction itself gradually lost any meaning.
"I have a question." Duvette suddenly looked at Juno. "Why do you keep following me around? We're on Terra now. Don't you have other duties to see to?"
Juno drew her gaze back from the window, her expression entirely calm. "Watching and observing you is currently my most important duty."
Hearing that, Duvette pulled a wordless face and said nothing further. Heinz, sitting nearby, let out a low chuckle, then quickly pretended he hadn't heard a thing.
Duvette glanced at Heinz. Ever since this fat man had first seen what Duvette's abilities could do, he'd stuck to Duvette's group almost without a single step of distance between them.
The convoy pressed on, the surrounding buildings growing denser.
Administrative offices, archive towers, and transit hubs connected into one another, great numbers of enclosed bridges spanning overhead, roads that never once saw natural light lit instead by strips of light along either side.
Just as the vehicles entered one particular building cluster, Duvette suddenly sat bolt upright.
[Eye of Judgement] flared a warning with no lead-in at all, a lethal marker briefly appearing at the edge of his vision, and a sharp sense of danger locked every muscle in his body tight in an instant.
The strategic map opened at the same moment. Outside the ring of green markers representing the convoy and its escort, a red dot suddenly appeared, several kilometres away and high up.
Juno, sitting across from him, turned to look out the window as well; she seemed to have caught something too, her instincts as sharp as ever. Heinz frowned, looking between the two of them.
"What is it?" Heinz asked. Duvette didn't explain, only patting Markus's arm plate and giving him a single nod.
The two of them had fought together too many times for Markus not to know instantly what that meant. He called out a string of numbers over the Shadow Wolves' private channel.
The white-armoured veterans in the three vehicles behind them readied for combat at once, while Markus turned, wedging an armoured hand into the gap between the door and its frame. A low grinding sound rose from within his power armour.
Markus wrenched hard. The door's locking mechanism and the armoured frame both gave way at once, and he tore the entire side panel, along with part of the surrounding vehicle structure, clean off, the shriek of shearing metal ringing through the cabin.
Duvette had already released his restraints. He hauled Juno up with one arm and Heinz with the other, and before either Lord Inquisitor could react, leapt clear of the vehicle, still moving at speed.
Less than half a second after the three of them cleared the cabin, a turbo-penetrator round crossed several kilometres of distance and punched clean through the vehicle's far side armour. The seat Duvette had just been sitting in exploded outward along with the position itself, the round continuing on, boring a perfectly straight line through the vehicle's interior.
"Assassin!" Duvette shouted the warning sharply, calling every ounce of enhancement in his body into use at once.
He carried the two Lord Inquisitors into the shadow of a nearby building, ducking into a blind spot the distant red dot couldn't get a direct line on before the next shot could arrive. Only once he'd confirmed the firing line was blocked by the buildings around them did he set the two of them down.
Juno, back on her feet, steadied herself against a wall, rubbing at her lower back. Her expression wasn't pleasant, but she didn't voice any complaint. Heinz straightened his rumpled robes and looked toward the transport vehicle, now punched clean through.
"How dare they?" Heinz growled under his breath. Duvette didn't answer, his eyes fixed on the distant red dot on the strategic map.
The attacker had already left their original position, moving fast through the building's internal passages. Duvette worked quickly through the weapon and firing distance the attacker had just used.
Combining the range, the round's penetrating power, and the ability to strike a precise seat inside a high-speed vehicle within such a complex environment, the answer was already more than clear.
A Vindicare assassin. The Officio Assassinorum's dedicated long-range killer, used to eliminate high-value targets. The Assassinorum had come after him?
Duvette's expression darkened by degrees. He'd known the High Lords would be unhappy about Guilliman's return, but he hadn't expected them to move straight from Guilliman entering the Eternity Gate to deploying Imperial assassins against the man standing closest to him.
What exactly were they thinking? Did they expect Guilliman to simply act as though nothing had happened once he emerged? Weren't they afraid he'd settle accounts with every last one of them? By now, fury was already burning through Duvette.
Several heavy impacts sounded from the direction of the road. The rest of the Shadow Wolves of Luna had already broken free of their vehicles, black cloaks flying open to reveal the white power armour beneath, forming a defensive line at top speed as they converged on Duvette's position.
These veterans, who had fought through ten thousand years of war, already carried formidable strength on their own, and with Duvette's skills layered on top of that, they now fought at a level matching the Custodians themselves.
Even with the enemy coming from the Assassinorum, none of them showed the slightest sign of panic; an assassin already exposed no longer counted for much of a threat to them.
The Administratum officials and civil administrators fled their own vehicles as well, most of them with no idea at all what had just happened.
They gathered in front of Duvette, then huddled against the wall in fear. Several who'd been hurt by the Shadow Wolves' violent extraction from the vehicles were held up by colleagues, and the senior official who'd been leading the convoy could barely even stand upright.
Communications in the area had already been cut off. The distress signal the convoy had sent had been intercepted under the Administratum's own highest authority; someone had clearly designated this area, well in advance, as a kill zone sealed off from any outside interference.
Duvette made no effort to hide his fury or his killing intent, his gaze sweeping across the officials' faces one by one, the Shadow Wolves keeping them ringed in at the centre; the instant anyone made a dangerous move, bolt rounds and power weapons would come down at once.
"Let me review them." Juno said coldly, pulling off the patch covering one eye, revealing the golden eye she'd always kept hidden. "Separate everyone. Don't let them make contact with each other."
Duvette was still watching the strategic map when a red dot suddenly flared within the crowd itself. His head snapped up, and he saw that one figure among them behaved exactly like everyone else, not even her trembling or quickened breathing giving her away.
Heh. A worm. Duvette gave a cold, silent laugh, then abruptly raised a hand, pointing at a woman in the crowd who looked to be in her forties.
"Take her alive!"
Markus stepped forward almost the instant the order left Duvette's mouth.
The wide black cloak slid off the surface of his white power armour. He didn't draw his sword, only reaching out with an armoured right hand toward the female official; the fear on her face vanished in an instant.
She tore open her outer clothing, revealing a fitted black combat suit underneath. A device hidden beneath the fabric activated in the same moment, and a phase sword glowing green fell into her hand, the red dot on the strategic map beginning to move fast in that same instant.
The Callidus assassin made no attempt to flee. She dodged the hand Markus reached toward her, dropping her body low, nearly to the ground, then changed direction, driving straight for Duvette, held within the Shadow Wolves' ring.
"You've got a death wish!" Duvette drew the Blade of Glory from his belt, its pale blue disruption field spreading along the length of the blade.
The Callidus assassin's speed was extraordinary; in a single instant, she had already closed the distance between them, the green phase sword driving straight for Duvette's chest.
But the moment she entered a two-metre radius, [Aura: Abyss of Ithaka] activated on Duvette at once.
An invisible weight fell upon the assassin instantly. Her footing suddenly grew heavy, her nerve reflexes forcibly interfered with, and the attack she'd already fully calculated slowed by a fraction of a beat, everything around her transforming, in her perception, into a lethal, bottomless deep-sea abyss.
And standing before her, within that endless depth, Duvette alone reigned as its master. From those still-calm eyes, Duvette could read the assassin's own judgment; she had already realised her speed advantage was slipping away from her.
The Callidus tried to force her blade's angle to change. The phase sword had originally meant to pass straight through the Blade of Glory and drive into Duvette's body, but the interfered reaction couldn't complete that adjustment in time. All she managed was to bring the blade briefly back into a solid state, trying to block the attack coming at her.
The two weapons met head-on. The Blade of Glory's disruption field erupted violently; the [Eternal]-touched blade didn't so much as tremble, while the green phase sword snapped clean in half the instant it turned solid, the broken blade spinning off to one side.
Duvette gave her no chance to recover. The Blade of Glory swept through in quick succession, severing both of the Callidus assassin's arms one after the other, blood spraying from the stumps as the woman lost her balance and dropped to her knees.
Her face still showed no trace of pain. The next instant, a miniature device hidden in her chest snapped open, several needles laced with lethal toxin firing out toward Duvette, standing right beside her.
The rose-shaped pin fixed to Duvette's chest flared with a faint light, the miniature refractor field Marshal Slaydo had once given him deploying on its own, forcibly deflecting the poisoned needles. One grazed his shoulder, burying itself in the wall behind him.
Duvette was just about to press her for more when the Callidus assassin's body suddenly went rigid. The self-destruct implant hidden near her heart had already triggered; some toxin destroyed her life within an instant, and the red dot on the strategic map went dark right after.
Duvette stared at her for two seconds, his fury not settling in the least despite her death. He swung the Blade of Glory, taking her head, then kicked the headless body over onto the ground.
"Preserve the body and all her equipment." Juno said at once. "Seal off her head. Don't let whatever's implanted inside it self-destruct any further. All of this is evidence."
Two Shadow Wolves stepped forward quickly, gathering up the body, the severed head, and the broken phase sword separately. Heinz took out his own Inquisitorial seal and began recording the scene and everyone present, making certain no one could later claim the attack had never happened.
Duvette turned to face the remaining Administratum personnel. His still blood-stained face, and the killing intent that seemed ready to swallow anyone within reach, left several officials collapsed where they stood; the senior official who'd led the convoy opened his mouth, but could only manage a garbled sound.
"I honestly didn't expect the Assassinorum to move against you directly, inside the Imperial Palace itself." Juno walked over to Duvette's side, looking once more at the sealed remains. "Being able to deploy both a Vindicare and a Callidus at once is already far beyond the authority of any ordinary official."
Heinz's own anger hadn't faded either. "Under the Assassinorum's existing constraints, an assassination order requires, in principle, a two-thirds majority vote from the Council of High Lords. Deploying an Imperial assassin without proper authorisation would be treated as the highest category of treason."
"So, at least two-thirds of the High Lords want me dead?" Duvette asked, voice low, eyes narrowed.
"That can't be confirmed yet." Juno looked at him. "There's another possibility. The Grand Master of the Assassinorum, or one of the Temple heads, could have bypassed the Council and activated these assassins illegally."
Heinz nodded. "Proper procedure would mean at least eight High Lords signed off on the order. Bypassing the Council would mean someone's turned the Assassinorum into their own private weapon. Whichever it turns out to be, someone at the very top of Terra's power structure has already committed a grave crime. They had no legitimate grounds to try to assassinate you."
Duvette went quiet for a moment, the fury on his face gradually receding. He turned his attention back to the strategic map; the red dot representing the Vindicare assassin was moving fast, clearly meaning to leave the area.
Under normal circumstances, a properly trained Vindicare would never lead a pursuer back to a real safehouse. But this assassin had no way of seeing the marker on the strategic map, and no way of knowing Duvette could track every one of his movements through even the most complex buildings.
Duvette gave no order right away. He watched the red dot advancing steadily along its escape route, and a cold, menacing smile slowly spread across his face.
"I think," he said, "I might just be able to put together a nice little gift for Guilliman, before he even comes out."
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