Chapter 34: Armory
Duvette led Anderson and Stroud through the Siren's Fury's middle deck toward the armory.
The armory sat deep in the middle deck's interior, its heavy alloy door sealed. Four fully armed ship's crew stood guard in front of it, wearing the dark blue naval uniform with shock mauls hanging at their hips. Beside the door, a lean quartermaster sat with his head down, working through something on a data-slate.
When he noticed the three of them approaching, the quartermaster raised his head and narrowed his eyes.
"Stop right there," he said. "This is the armory. You can't come in."
Anderson's brow came down. Stroud made a short derisive sound.
Duvette stopped. He looked at the quartermaster's face — the particular combination of arrogance and undisguised contempt that lived there — and thought briefly about how this specific kind of friction between ship's crew and ground forces seemed to follow him everywhere, regardless of the theatre. Some things were universal.
"We need equipment," Duvette said.
"Equipment." The quartermaster stood, pulling his mouth into a contemptuous arc. "Your regiment's kit is down in the lower storage bays where it belongs. This is a naval small-arms facility. Turn around."
Stroud took one step forward. "You—"
Duvette raised his hand and stopped him. He turned and looked at both of them with a brief, clear indication.
Both understood immediately. Anderson's large frame advanced and Stroud circled to the flank with the quick, loose movement of someone who has done this before. The four armed crew reacted at once, pulling the shock mauls from their hips.
"Looking for a fight?" The lead crew member's smile had a cold edge to it. "Then don't expect—"
Anderson was already moving.
The collision drove the lead crewman back three full steps into the wall with enough force to produce a sound from the impact. The other three came in simultaneously. Shock mauls crackled and spat.
Stroud rolled his body past the first swing, came up under it, and drove a heel into the crewman's knee. The man went down with a shout. The maul's follow-through caught Stroud square across the left cheek and the bruising came up instantly.
"Hell!" He spat something red onto the floor.
Duvette had not watched any of it. He had walked to the cogitator array beside the armory door and reached into his pocket for the silver ring.
The quartermaster was still shouting. "This is a mutiny! I'm reporting you to the captain—"
Duvette pressed the ring against the cogitator's identification panel.
The indicator lights on the panel blinked several times, moving from red to green. A flat mechanical voice came from the speaker above the door:
[Ordo Hereticus — Supreme Authorization Confirmed.]
[Acting Authority: Duvette Erdmann.]
The fighting stopped.
Anderson had just launched a crewman sideways down the corridor and was in the process of following through when the announcement reached him. He went still. Stroud dragged the back of his hand across the corner of his mouth, spat once, and looked at the frozen crew with flat contempt.
"Hopeless," he said. "Trying to block our man."
The quartermaster's face had gone the color of old paper. He stared at Duvette with his lips moving and nothing coming out.
Duvette turned and walked to him. He had a half-head of height on the man, and he used it, looking down at the expression with eyes that offered nothing.
"Open the door," Duvette said, "or I charge you with heresy and deal with you accordingly."
The quartermaster convulsed once and produced a smile of such distorted eagerness it barely resembled a smile at all.
"Of — of course! Right away! Opening it now!"
His hands stumbled across the data-slate. The alloy door produced a low resonant sound and slid apart.
Duvette did not look at him again. He walked through with Anderson and Stroud behind him.
The armory interior was larger than expected. A row of alloy shelving ran the full length of the space, stacked with standard-issue single-soldier equipment — the same grade of kit the regiment was already carrying. Nothing worth stopping for.
Duvette kept walking toward the back.
The quartermaster jogged to keep up, his voice unsteady. "Sir — further in is the highest-security vault, that area is specifically for naval boarding—"
Duvette produced a short sound.
The quartermaster closed his mouth and stepped aside.
At the armory's furthest point, a second alloy door stood sealed. The cogitator array set into this one was more complex, its indicator lights cycling in a regular pattern.
Duvette pressed the ring to it.
[Authorization confirmed.]
The door opened.
The space inside was smaller, but nothing else about it was the same.
Duvette's attention sharpened immediately.
The left-side shelving held meltaguns in a clean row. The racks beside them: plasma guns. Further right, promethium flamers with hazard markings on the fuel canisters. Along the opposite wall, combat shotguns hung in a line — naval boarding-action configuration, built for the compressed geometry of corridor fighting. And what pulled his eye most directly was the stack in the far corner.
Carapace armour. Deep grey ceramite and plasteel composite plating, the joints running flexible articulated material, the breastplate carrying ammunition attachment points and tactical slots. This was not the crude flak armour that the Astra Militarum issued to its rank and file. This was a genuine simplified variant of power armour.
"Stroud," Duvette said. "Go and bring people."
Stroud's grin split his face, bruising and all.
"Understood!"
He turned and ran.
Anderson crossed to the wall of combat shotguns and lifted one down, testing its weight. "This has some reach to it."
Behind them, the quartermaster stood in the doorway watching both men begin their assessment of the shelving, his expression cycling from horror through to a kind of hollow resignation. He opened his mouth once, seemed to be calculating whether to mention what these items were worth, and decided against it.
Half an hour later, Stroud came back with more than twenty soldiers from the 101st.
Duvette directed them through the inventory in order. Meltaguns: ten. Plasma guns: ten. Promethium flamers: ten. Combat shotguns: twenty. Las-carbines, short-pattern precision-built: twenty. Sixty suits of carapace armour were carried out along with their associated supply kits.
The quartermaster watched the shelving empty at a visible rate and settled himself against the wall with the look of a man who had ceased to engage with the situation.
Duvette completed a final check to confirm nothing had been missed, then led everyone out.
When they reached the Ash Watchers 101st's billets, the soldiers had already stacked the equipment on the training deck floor.
Duvette stood in front of the pile and began calling the roll.
"Stroud Hammer."
"Here!"
"Anderson Walker."
"Here!"
He continued through the names of three company commanders and then forty-four hand-selected veterans: the most experienced, most psychologically stable soldiers the 101st carried. These were men who had come through Farrak IV's underground engagement and come out the other side with their heads intact.
The fifty-man roster carried one deliberate gap.
If Finn was able to regain consciousness before they reached the space hulk, and if the prosthetics could be fitted in time, that slot belonged to him. Duvette understood that Finn's Martyr's Eye ability had a value in the enclosed dark of a space hulk that would be difficult to replace with any number of conventional weapons.
"Get familiar with the new equipment," Duvette ordered.
The soldiers moved immediately. Fitting carapace armour required a second pair of hands at the fastenings; the sound of metal clasps locking throughout the training deck came in an overlapping series for several minutes. Ten minutes later, all fifty were fully kitted.
Deep grey carapace plating covered them from collar to boot, the flexible articulation at every joint keeping full movement intact. The new weapons were in hand. Duvette had put on a set himself.
He worked his arms through their range of motion. The carapace moved more freely than he had expected, and the protection it offered over standard flak armour was not a marginal difference. He picked up one of the combat shotguns and checked it — close-range firepower sufficient to open most targets at the near distances a space hulk's corridors imposed, with the option to change ammunition loads as the situation demanded. The right weapon for CQB work in a confined and unpredictable space.
He looked at the unit in front of him.
Fifty soldiers in full carapace, sealed tactical helmets in place, carrying weapons that most second-line Astra Militarum regiments never touched in their entire service lives.
The unease that had been sitting in him since the briefing loosened its grip, slightly and for the first time.
Perhaps the space hulk ahead was not as bad as what the Blood Angels had faced in the Secaris Tragedy.
Perhaps they would actually come back from this.
"Dismissed," Duvette said. "Rest. Stand by for orders."
The acknowledgment came back from fifty voices and rang off the metal overhead.
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