V3 Chapter 114: The Only Thing You'll Ever Get Is a Merciful Death
Inside the enemy Baneblade, the noble commander stared fixedly at the viewing screen, the terror in his eyes no longer something he could hide. Across the road, the Fury of Balhaut, a fellow Baneblade-class superheavy tank, was firing at a rate he couldn't begin to understand.
The first shell struck the frontal armour, and the heavy hull shuddered violently in the blast.
Before the damage-control crew could even report the state of the hull, a second shell had already slammed into nearly the same spot. A wide section of armour buckled inward, and the structural mounts snapped one after another.
The noble commander shouted at his gunner to return fire, but his own main gun had only just finished a single reload.
The Fury of Balhaut's third shell had already arrived, and the fourth and fifth followed close behind... sixteen rounds in a single minute.
That rate of fire went well beyond anything a Baneblade's main gun should have been capable of. All the enemy commander could do was watch his own thick frontal armour, the plating he'd trusted most, get torn open again and again, until at last a shell found the breach and drove straight into the hull's interior.
Even in the instant before the ammunition store went up, he still couldn't understand why any of this was happening.
"Now that was a tense fight."
Kleist leaned back, relaxed, in the Fury of Balhaut's command seat.
His gunner only had to lock onto a target and pull the trigger; a fresh shell appeared in the breech every time, no reloading needed at all.
The whole crew had long since grown used to it by now. All they knew was that the Fury of Balhaut's machine spirit had worked itself into another fit of excitement.
The enemy Baneblade's ammunition store finally detonated, the blast throwing its massive turret clear before it crashed down hard onto a building nearby. Flame poured from every part of the hull, and the last of the armoured forces still resisting nearby lost their will to fight along with it.
That explosion marked the complete end of organised resistance around the War Office's perimeter. With the comm jamming lifted, more and more soldiers began laying down their weapons, and the handful of units still fighting were cut off and isolated fast.
By now the sky over Terra had gone fully dark, the only light coming from the searchlights mounted on the military buildings and the fires scattered across the battlefield. Duvette stood beside a command vehicle, sweeping his gaze over the wreckage-strewn field.
The 112th's casualties had come in far below projections, but the Lucifer Blacks and Palatine Sentinels, first to accept the Regency decree, had suffered heavily.
They'd taken the first wave of the attack from Ashariel's die-hard loyalists, and paid for it in their own casualties to open the way for the forces coming behind them.
Anderson led the Second Assault Infantry Regiment in securing the battlefield. Soldiers who'd already laid down their weapons were disarmed and held together under guard.
For enemy wounded who'd lost the ability to move entirely, and for the wounded traitors still foolish enough to keep resisting, Duvette would grant them a merciful death.
"This is yours now." Duvette said to Anderson. "Round up the prisoners, secure the War Office's Cogitators. Anyone still resisting, deal with them."
The main strength Ashariel could still command had already been wiped out in the fighting just past. All that remained were a handful of die-hards scattered deep within the War Office district. Duvette had no intention of giving any of them a chance to flee Terra.
"Gaunt, take the Tanith First and flank the core district from both sides." Duvette cut into the comm channel. "Seal every underground passage and secret spaceport. Don't let a single senior officer involved in this conspiracy get out."
Once Gaunt confirmed, Duvette turned to Italeo and Markus. "Lord Tribune, bring your men. Markus, you're with me too."
On the strategic map, the red marker representing Mar af Ashariel stayed fixed at the War Office's core tower the entire time. He hadn't made for any underground passage, nor gone anywhere near an aircraft that could carry him away.
Duvette narrowed his eyes, then led the group toward the core tower. Every automated turret along the way had already shut down, and the soldiers guarding the tower had already stacked their weapons in the middle of the hall.
The moment Ashariel saw his Baneblade destroyed, he'd issued a final cease-fire order. He'd demanded his remaining personal guard disarm, then shut down every defensive system inside the core tower.
Duvette's group reached the top level without meeting a single attack along the way. The officers stationed outside the command post stepped aside of their own accord, heads bowed, waiting for judgment.
Duvette walked up to the command post's door and kicked the heavy door open. Ashariel sat behind the tactical table, his aged, resolute face showing little fear.
He'd once been a real soldier himself, though the long career of power that followed had drawn him steadily further from the battlefield. Even now, faced with Duvette, the Custodians, and the Shadow Wolves entering the command post, he still held onto the dignity owed a Lord Commander Militant of the Astra Militarum.
"You've won, Marshal Duvette Erdmann." Ashariel said. "You've cleared the rebels away for the Imperial Regent, and you'll reap honour and power beyond imagining for it, in time."
"No."
Duvette walked up to the tactical table, looking down at Ashariel from above. "I'm not like you. I have no interest at all in your so-called honour and power. However lush a tree grows out of rotten soil, it still stinks of rot."
Ashariel lowered his head and let out a few quiet laughs, apparently understanding exactly what Duvette meant, yet not troubled by it in the slightest.
A moment later, he raised his head again, looking at the young Marshal-Commissar before him.
"You think you have no need of power, and yet right now you already hold the power of life and death over tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people." Ashariel said. "The distance between you and the rest of us may not be as great as you'd like to imagine."
Duvette raised an eyebrow at that, but the words didn't shake him in the least. He glanced down at the battlefield information on the tactical table, no longer updating, then brought his gaze back to Ashariel.
"My personal guard have already laid down their weapons." Ashariel said. "They were only following my orders. Can they be spared?"
Duvette shook his head, his face unreadable.
"No betrayal is small enough to be forgiven. They have to pay for the choice they made." Duvette said. "They won't die here, but they'll never have freedom or dignity again. Anyone who took part in executing the officers who defected will stand trial. The rest will answer, all the same, for the choice they made in that final hour."
Ashariel let out a sigh. He knew his own guard had already been among the conspiracy's core participants; simply having followed old orders wouldn't wash their crimes clean.
"As for you, Ashariel." Duvette looked at him and said, "Death is the last mercy you'll ever get."
Ashariel closed his eyes, then rose from his seat of his own accord. He offered no further argument, simply letting two Custodians take hold of his arms and lead him out of the command chamber.
His own ending could no longer be changed. All that remained for him now was to hold onto what dignity he had left.
Duvette watched Ashariel go, entirely indifferent to whatever the man was thinking, and turned his attention instead to the documents on the tactical table recording the other High Lords' own rebellion.
"Your little rebellion is nothing but a guttering candle." Duvette gave a cold laugh. "Utterly pointless."
He had Markus lead the Shadow Wolves in sealing off the command post, preserving every piece of data and paper record intact. Afterward, the evidence would be handed over for joint verification by the Custodians, the Inquisitorial Tribunal, and Tyrion.
Duvette turned and walked out of the tower that had once represented the War Office's highest authority. Ashariel, meanwhile, was escorted off by the Custodians toward the Tower of Hegemony, to face his final judgment before Guilliman.
"On to the next one."
Duvette glanced up at the dim sky, then turned and walked back the way he'd come, out of the battlefield.
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