This series of three four passages is a lot longer than I have posted in the past and I hope you have the patience to read it. I feel it is quite revealing about our three main character, our Narrator, Mona, and Jagiełło.

 

Constructive criticism always welcome, of course.

 

-----

 

The engineers worked with steady purpose. The charges were placed meticulously, each bundle of explosives hugging the seams and structural weak points where ancient metal met equally ancient stone. The bunker was as much a part of the canyon wall as it was a man-made structure, the centuries having eroded and fused its exterior into a hardened shell. Even so, age had done little to blunt its Imperial craftsmanship.

 

We crouched behind 312, shielding ourselves from the impending blast. At the lead engineer’s nod, the charges detonated. The canyon swallowed the dull roar, sending dust and pebbles cascading from the high ridges above. When the grit cleared, a jagged breach had replaced the sealed entrance.

 

Heat rose from the rocks as we stepped forward. I caught the first breath of air from within. Dry, stale, and heavy with dust—it smelled of time itself. No blood, no rot, no sign of recent death. Just stagnant air, the kind you’d find when unsealing an old storage locker, except magnified a thousandfold.

 

Inside, the air was thick with settled dust. A pale film coated the floor, unbroken even by vermin. No footprints. No scuff marks. Whatever this place was, it had been undisturbed for generations.

Czajka stood at my side, rifle up, eyes sharp. “No movement.”

 

“That’s worse,” Laska muttered, swinging her grenade launcher casually as she scanned the gloom. Her voice carried enough false bravado to mask her nerves, but not enough to fool anyone.

One of the engineers, a lean woman with streaks of grey in her dark hair, Ella, knelt and examined the floor. “Sarge, these old bunkers? They’re usually rigged. Motion sensors. Traps. The standard for places they didn’t want rediscovered.” She stood and dusted off her palms. “We’ll sweep. Slow and proper.”

 

I nodded, trying to project the steadiness I didn’t fully feel. “Do it.”

 

The squad pushed deeper. As we moved down the main corridor, I found myself breathing shallower. The silence pressed in like a physical thing. The passage was lined with immense doors, each marked with corroded plaques and faded sigils. I couldn’t read most of them beneath the dust and rust.

 

The engineer squad set to work, marking detected traps and bypassing them with practised efficiency. A few muttered prayers to the Emperor went unheard by anyone who still cared.

 

“Partial power bleed,” Ella reported. “Most of the grid’s dead, but there’s still juice in some lines. We’ve looped the worst of it, but…”

 

“But there could be more,” I finished for her.

 

She nodded grimly.

 

Further in, we found it — a small, dust-caked dataslate wedged behind a rusted terminal. Its cracked display flickered faintly to life as Czajka gingerly passed it to me. The words were simple. A bay number. Nothing more.

 

Following its direction, we wound through an adjoining passage until we came to a sealed vault door. Unlike the others, this one was marked by the faint outline of a faded symbol, barely visible beneath grime. No name. Just a half-obscured emblem of a stylized iron crown.

 

The engineers crowded around the access terminal. Sparks sputtered as they interfaced with it, bypassing dead code and corrupted subroutines. Then it happened. One of them—Martja, I think—jerked backward with a startled gasp. She collapsed, twitching as a sharp electrical feedback arced from the terminal.

 

“Martja’s down!” someone yelled.

 

I swore and rushed forward, but it was too late. She was gone.

 

The door, however, had accepted the sacrifice. With a groan, ancient hydraulics strained and hissed. Dust cascaded from the seams as it cracked open, revealing the chamber beyond. And there it was. Even draped in layers of tarp and shadow, the Iron Duke dominated the vault. The chamber was cavernous, yet it barely contained the bulk of the vehicle inside. Its massive frame loomed, partially shrouded by dust-cloaked tarpaulins. The shape was unmistakable—armoured flanks, wide track guards, and the towering blast shield at its prow.

 

No turret. No number. No name. Just sheer, brute presence.

 

Laska whispered under her breath, “Big bastard.”

 

We stood there in silence for a long moment. I realised I was holding my breath. The thing radiated a sense of history — not reverence, exactly, but weight. Purpose. I forced myself to exhale. “Back to work.” I pointed to two of my squad. “You and you. Prepare her for transport back to the station.”

 

They hesitated for a heartbeat before nodding and moving to follow orders. Engineers and soldiers alike set to work, still glancing nervously at the Iron Duke between tasks.

 

Martja was dead.

 

But the Duke was awake.

 

And there was no turning back.

 

-----

 

Bright white lumens beat down from the ceiling, casting hard shadows across Kasnyk’s austere office. The room was a cube of sterile grey walls and sharp angles, furnished with only the essentials: a bolted metal desk, two straight-backed chairs, a cogitator recessed into the desktop, and not much else. A potted plant sagged on the corner of the desk, brown at the edges, and beside it a small brass globe of Kasnyk’s homeworld spun lazily from a recent absent-minded flick. The air was filtered and scentless, like the air of all Imperial offices, leaving nothing behind but emptiness.

 

Kasnyk sat behind the desk with the practised stillness of a man well-versed in the routine. His stylus tapped against the parchment pad before him in a slow, deliberate rhythm — no impatience, just a means to keep time as the drone across from him talked. The stylus was always there. Even with the cogitator active and capable of doing all of this automatically, he preferred the scratch of pen on parchment. It gave the appearance of attentiveness, and more importantly, it grounded him.

 

Across from him sat a minor logistics clerk, Sub-Officer L-8427, pale as parchment and clearly unused to the desert sun outside. His charcoal grey uniform, faded and wrinkled, had seen better days, and the badge pinned to his chest was slightly tarnished. A rank insignia and serial code were affixed beneath it, worn smooth from anxious fingers. The clerk perched nervously on the edge of the chair, clutching a dataslate that trembled ever so slightly in his grip.

 

“… and that’s the third time, sir, this cycle. Missing components from Container 41.” The clerk's voice quavered slightly. “If it were just once, I’d let it go, but three times? That’s no clerical error.”  His eyes darted across Kasnyk’s impassive face, searching for some sign of sympathy.

 

Kasnyk gave none. The stylus continued to tap softly. “You suspect theft?” Kasnyk asked without looking up, voice a monotone.

 

“I— yes, sir. Or diversion, maybe. Components don’t walk away on their own.” The clerk shifted in his seat, adjusting his fraying collar. “My supervisor told me to drop it, but I know something’s not right.”

 

Kasnyk almost smiled — almost. The truth was, petty theft, squabbles, and bureaucratic grudge matches made up half his caseload. The other half was divided between fuel shortages and low-ranking scribes who drank too much amasec and reported ghost cults behind every malfunctioning lumen. But duty was duty.

 

“You did the right thing,” he said flatly, making a show of jotting something down. “These things have a way of surfacing.”

 

The clerk’s shoulders sagged with relief.

 

At that exact moment, the cogitator gave a soft chime and a faint amber glow lit the edge of Kasnyk’s vision. His monocle flickered to life of its own accord, quietly feeding information to him as the clerk babbled on.

 

Kasnyk did not flinch. His stylus, however, stopped tapping.

 

Amber Alert — Security Breach: Storage Bunker 9C — Prawa V, Sector 12.

 

Kasnyk blinked once to scroll the monocle's display.

 

Flagged Item: 77-IC/DU.

 

The stylus resumed tapping.

 

The clerk, oblivious, was still venting about warehouse irregularities. Kasnyk returned his full attention to him, masking the sudden jolt of interest rising behind his cool exterior. “Thank you, Sub-Officer. I’ll see this logged appropriately.” He stood, motioning toward the door. “I trust you will remain vigilant.”

 

The clerk stumbled to his feet, almost saluting before thinking better of it. “Yes, sir! Of course, sir.”

 

He scurried out, leaving Kasnyk alone with the amber glow.

 

The moment the door sealed, Kasnyk’s mask cracked. His lips twitched into the faintest smirk. He leaned forward, hands folding together as the cogitator projected a map and data readout.

There it was. The old storage site. The bunker hadn’t triggered an alert in decades. Amber flag — mid-tier, important but not urgent. Inventory marked for Special Oversight, designation “IC/DU”.

 

IC — Internal Compliance. DU… He’d seen that suffix before.

 

His monocle obligingly supplied the associated entry from old files, redacted but familiar.

 

DU = “Iron Duke.”

 

Not a person. Not a smuggler. Not some legendary insurgent whispered about in frontier bars. A vehicle. A tank. Specifically, an ageing but formidable siege engine — codename only. Its existence, long buried beneath layers of bureaucratic dust, explained why the locals spoke of it like a ghost.

 

Kasnyk’s expression hardened, eyes narrowing behind the data scrolling across his monocle. Who had breached a sealed bunker to get at it? Why now? He tapped the screen, pulling up active units in the area. A few registered. Routine patrols. One newly reassigned squad, the 280th Sunward Watch. He’d seen them during his last visit to the sector — odd, but nothing concrete.

Yet. Kasnyk exhaled sharply through his nose and glanced to the side. The plant drooped pitifully. Without hesitation, he crossed the room, retrieved the long-neglected watering can, and gave the dry soil a careful pour.

 

“You and me both,” he muttered.

 

The leaves barely moved. Neither did Kasnyk as he stood motionless, eyes distant. There was something here. Not proof. Not yet. But there was something.

 

-----

 

The heavy air in the hidden vault beneath Nowa Avestia, the place we called home, pressed around us as we stepped deeper into the chamber. Dust lay thick over the floor, deadening every step. The flicker of our shoulder-mounted lamps painted uneven, narrow bands of light across towering shapes swathed in tarps and shrouded in shadow.

 

Jagiełło stood in front of it, a great looming mass mostly hidden beneath faded tarpaulin, but unmistakable in scale and presence. His hand with the claw-like glove rested against its flanks, fingers gently brushing against the dust-caked surface as if reacquainting himself with an old acquaintance. His other arm hung loose at his side, the long boneblade he wielded idle, unthreatening.

 

The orange folds of his cloak caught the uneven lamplight, glowing like smouldering embers amidst the gloom. The worn edges of his armour were dulled by dust, yet still retained the distinct patterns of Resistance craftsmanship – subdued purples, greys, and the occasional streak of rust where the desert’s breath had left its mark.

 

I stood a few paces away, trying to make sense of the shape beneath the tarps. The hull loomed, riveted and scarred by age. What could only be a vast blast shield – not a turret, I noted – jutted from its forward section. Two muzzles, dark as abyssal wells, protruded slightly beneath the folds. Whatever this machine had been built for, it was clear it was no ordinary vehicle.

 

“You did well,” Jagiełło said without turning. His voice was low, calm, but there was weight to the words that made me catch my breath for but a second. “Many would have failed to bring it here intact.”

 

I tried not to swell with pride. The praise was measured, but coming from him, it was more than I’d ever expected. “It wasn’t easy,” I replied carefully. “We lost one of the engineers, Martja. The vault… resisted.”

 

Jagiełło’s fingers traced the blast shield’s edge. “It often does. Those vaults were meant to keep things out—or in.” He finally turned to look at me. His eyes, a jaundiced yellow and sharp beneath the hood, fixed me in place. “Yet you overcame it.”

 

I nodded, unsure what else to say. In truth, I wasn’t sure if we had overcome it or merely gotten lucky.

 

His gaze lingered for a moment before he stepped back from the machine. The faint metallic scrape of his boots against the floor broke the silence. “This will change much,” Jagiełło murmured, mostly to himself. “For all of us.”

 

He didn’t elaborate. He never did.

 

We stood there a while longer, me staring at the machine, him lost in quiet calculation. Then, without further ceremony, he turned and began walking toward the vault’s exit.

 

I followed a step behind, my heart pounding with a mixture of quiet exhilaration and rising apprehension. I couldn’t help but wonder—not just about the machine, but about what this discovery meant for us, for the Resistance, and for my family back in the mines. My fingers absently brushed against the lasrifle slung over my shoulder as if reassuring myself that I was still just a soldier, still grounded, even as the scale of what we’d uncovered threatened to sweep me away.

 

Jagiełło said nothing more, his footfalls steady, echoing against the vault’s walls.

 

Only when we left the chamber did I risk a glance back. The Iron Duke—whatever it truly was—waited silently in the dark, its purpose and power still cloaked in shadow.

 

-----

 

The echoes of bootsteps lingered faintly, diminishing with each step down the winding corridor until only silence remained. Mona stood alone at the threshold, eyes cast over the slumbering colossus cloaked in tarpaulin and shadows.

 

Lamplight pooled in uneven circles across the chamber, casting long, soft-edged silhouettes that barely touched the corners of the vault. Dust hung suspended in the air like old memories. The Iron Duke loomed still, its towering blast shield and flanks swaddled in thick layers of age-stained canvas. Yet, even beneath the coverings, its outline radiated a dormant menace, softened only by time.

 

Mona advanced with slow, deliberate steps, her boots making no sound against the dust-smothered floor. She exhaled slowly, as if speaking a wordless greeting. Her fingers reached out, trailing across the tarpaulin as if it were the hide of some great beast. She did not know the finer purpose of its structures — the guns, the tracks, the layers of steel — but she felt its weight, its presence. And that was enough.

 

She approached the blast shield, placing her palm flat against it. The cold of the metal seeped into her skin, the dust clinging faintly to her touch. With deliberate patience, she traced a  three-quarter circle upon its surface, leaving a crescent-shaped mark in the dust — incomplete, waiting.

 

A subtle breeze stirred within the vault, pulling at the motes of dust in languid spirals. No source could be seen, but Mona’s lips shifted into a soft, knowing smile. To others it would be nothing. To her, it was the Duke whispering back.

 

She closed her eyes for a moment, savouring the moment. The tension she so often masked behind poised words and gentle touches gave way to quiet satisfaction. She could feel the Iron Duke’s potential — not in mechanics, but in meaning. This was no simple relic; it was a totem. A promise. A manifestation of what she and her kin would one day unleash.

 

Mona opened her eyes again, stepping back slowly, leaving the mark untouched.

 

“You’ll wake when you’re ready,” she whispered, voice low and reverent.

 

And with that, she turned, vanishing into the half-light, leaving the Iron Duke to slumber a little longer.