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Chapter 35: Magos Biologis
Approximately four Terran days remained before the fleet exited the Warp.
Duvette sat back in his cabin chair with his eyes closed. After what the Inquisitor had done, he was finished keeping a diary.
He was aware of the 101st's official orders: dispatched to a star system in the outer reaches to deal with an emerging Greenskin threat. Standard Astra Militarum deployment language that explained nothing and revealed nothing.
He also knew their real destination and their real task.
The space hulk Eternal Lament.
The initial anger and the fear that had followed it had both run their course. Neither solved anything. He had set them aside and started thinking clearly.
He began working through everything he knew about the mission, and about the Inquisitor.
Juno Karol.
As a Lord Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, she held authority that came close to absolute by any practical measure.
Under Imperial law, Duvette's conduct on Farrak IV was deeply compromised on multiple counts: endorsing Colonel Fox's unauthorized operation, personally leading troops into extended underground contact with Chaos rebels and Warp-active environments, taking command without authorization after Fox was killed. Any one of these would be sufficient to convene a military tribunal. All of them together, and he was a man with a very short future ahead of him.
And then there was Lena. An unsanctioned psyker who had never been reported to any authority.
But Juno had not moved against any of it.
She was holding it. Using it as leverage rather than acting on it. That told him something important: she was not a woman who applied Imperial law as an absolute standard. At minimum, when a particular task required it, she was willing to set the rules aside.
Duvette's fingers tapped the desk surface in a slow rhythm.
Add to that the Crimson-level mission, the thing being sought inside the space hulk, the line in the briefing document that had been redacted to black: retrieve [REDACTED — insufficient authorization]. His assessment was that whatever they were going in to retrieve was almost certainly xenos technology. Or some category of forbidden technology that had no cleaner description.
Which led him to a conclusion about Juno Karol.
She was almost certainly a Radical.
He understood that the Inquisition was not a monolithic body. Most newly elevated Inquisitors were Puritans — a binary view of the universe, right and wrong, the faithful and the heretic, allies and enemies. Clean lines. No exceptions.
Radicals operated from different premises entirely.
They argued that to defeat the evils that afflicted the Imperium, you had to be willing to use them. Embrace them. Turn the enemy's weapons into the tools of the enemy's destruction. A community of completely pragmatic individuals who had dispensed with the concept of limits.
He remembered a particular observation that circulated in certain circles: the Imperium has only three kinds of Inquisitors. The first kind are Radicals. The second kind are Inquisitors who will eventually become Radicals. The third kind are Inquisitors who didn't have time to become Radicals.
Juno was clearly the first kind.
But a new question had been forming in the back of his thinking since he read the briefing.
Why him specifically?
He looked at The Fool card lying on the desk. A variable. An unpredictable turn of fate. Juno had called it divine guidance.
He did not believe that was the whole answer.
A Radical Lord Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus had resources she could call on in almost unlimited variety. Astartes Chapters. Tempestus Scions. Other assets that did not bear naming in open conversation. She could have used any of those options instead of coming to find a newly promoted Astra Militarum commissar.
Unless.
Duvette narrowed his eyes.
Unless the space hulk had appeared without warning. Unless Juno did not want anyone else in the Inquisition to know what she was going in to retrieve. Which meant she could not use her established assets — those assets were connected to other factions within the Conclave, and those connections meant eyes on every move she made.
So she needed a clean piece on the board.
A commissar with no political history, no patron, no institutional connections — who happened to command a regiment of soldiers with a demonstrated loyalty that no amount of money or threat had been able to break.
A piece who could be coerced when necessary. And discarded when her purpose for him was finished.
A cold feeling settled in somewhere below his sternum.
One last question remained, and he had not been able to resolve it.
How did Juno know any of this in the first place? The appearance of the space hulk emerging from a Warp storm — that kind of intelligence required time to move through channels. A Warp storm was not a predictable event. The information had to have come from somewhere, through some means he could not currently account for. Unless she had been monitoring them directly, but by what method—
Someone knocked on the door.
Duvette surfaced from his thinking sharply, his heart closing once. He looked at the door. Again?
He checked the pocket watch on the desk. Standard time: afternoon.
"Who's there?"
"Commissar, it's me." Evan's voice from the corridor, carrying a note of urgency.
Duvette exhaled and went to the door, pressing the control panel. The airtight seal disengaged and the young adjutant appeared in the doorway, his face carrying visible excitement.
"What is it?"
"Finn is awake," Evan said. "Doctor Wayne sent me to tell you immediately."
Duvette's attention sharpened.
Good news. That was genuinely good news.
"With me."
He stepped out, locked the door behind him, and followed Evan at a quick pace to the lift. The doors slid open and closed, the lift descended, and they arrived at the lower deck. They moved through the 101st's billets; soldiers saluted as Duvette passed, and he acknowledged them without breaking stride.
The medical bay's airtight door was open. The sound of machinery running reached him from inside.
Duvette walked in and immediately noticed a large figure standing in the center of the room.
A partially mechanized body, robed in the deep crimson of the Mechanicus. The left arm was bare metal framework. The right half of the face was covered in alloy panels. A single red mechanical eye turned with a soft scanning light. Two servo-skulls drifted at shoulder height.
A Tech-Priest.
"Commissar Duvette Erdmann." The voice that came from the speaker set in the Tech-Priest's chest was a cold mechanical synthesis. "I am Kairon Saex, Magos Biologis, assigned to this vessel. Here at the Lord Inquisitor's direction, to fit the casualty with prosthetic limb and ocular replacements."
Duvette's gaze moved across the room.
Finn lay in the central bed. He was conscious. His eyes were still covered with white bandaging, but his chest rose and fell steadily. At the stump of his right arm, the thick transparent gel had been removed, exposing newly formed skin and muscle tissue beneath.
Duvette turned back to the Magos. He had not mentioned Finn to Juno. The battle report would have recorded "Sniper Finn Valentine: seriously wounded" — nothing detailed enough to specify the need for both a prosthetic arm and replacement eyes, and certainly nothing that would trigger this kind of response precisely when Finn regained consciousness. Unless Juno had been monitoring them through means he could not identify.
He filed the question and kept it there.
"Praise be to the Cog and the Bell," Duvette said. He kept his tone respectful. Whatever his private thoughts about the Mechanicus's operational pace, the man standing in front of him was a Tech-Priest and warranted the courtesy. "Thank you for your service, Magos."
Kairon Saex's mechanical eye rotated and swept across him. "The machine-spirit requires proper observance," he said. "The procedure must proceed without interruption. I require all personnel to withdraw."
Duvette nodded.
He crossed to Finn's bed. The sniper registered the approach — his bandaged face turned toward the sound of footsteps.
"Commissar?" Finn's voice was rough but clear.
"It's me," Duvette said. "How are you feeling?"
"Well enough." Finn's mouth moved slightly. "I can't see anything. Can't feel my right hand."
"Both of those are being dealt with," Duvette said. "The Magos is going to fit you with a prosthetic arm and replacement eyes. Cooperate with the procedure."
Finn was quiet for a moment.
"I hear you need people," he said.
"You'll make the deadline," Duvette said. "Rest and recover."
Finn gave a single nod and said nothing more.
Duvette straightened and looked to Doctor Wayne at the side of the room. "Move the other casualties out," he said. "Give the Magos the space he needs."
Doctor Wayne acknowledged this at once and directed the medics into action. Four seriously wounded soldiers were carefully moved out of the medical bay. Duvette looked once more at Kairon Saex before he left.
The Magos's mechadendrites were already in motion, dispersing a ritual unguent through the room from nozzles at each tendril's tip — an unfamiliar compound with a pronounced smell of machine oil laid underneath something that could have been incense. The two servo-skulls that accompanied him had begun a low murmuring recitation of binary litanies, the processing sound of it filling the space just below the level of intelligibility. From the half-height metal case he had brought with him, tools emerged alongside precision mechanical armatures, connecting cables, and two sealed containers that held the prosthetic components.
"We will be outside," Duvette said.
He walked out. The airtight door closed at his back.
In the corridor, a small group had already gathered. Evan. Anderson. Stroud. Several company commanders.
"How long?" Anderson asked.
"Unknown," Duvette said. "Mechanicus procedures are never quick."
He settled his back against the corridor's metal wall and closed his eyes.
The thinking resumed where he had left it.
Juno had sent a Magos Biologis to fit Finn with prosthetics and replacement eyes. On the surface this looked like goodwill. It was not goodwill — it was investment. She wanted Finn operational before they reached the space hulk. Which meant she had a clear understanding of what his capabilities were. And she genuinely needed this team.
Duvette opened his eyes and looked at the sealed door.
Four days.
In four days, the fleet would exit the Warp and arrive at the star system marked in the official orders as a Greenskin threat response. Then the real mission would begin.
He had to have everything ready before that happened.
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