d5y95q4U

1EIGHT
2JURGEN TOOK THE news of our imminent departure in his usual phlegmatic fashion, although
3I'm bound to say that I was less than enthusiastic at the prospect of getting back aboard a starship so
4soon after making planetfall. But then, for Jurgen, orders were sacrosanct. I sometimes suspected
5that he believed the chain of command to extend unbroken all the way to the Golden Throne, so
6even matters as mundane as the appointment of the day's latrine orderly were imbued with the
7unassailable authority of the Emperor Himself. At any event, he simply nodded and busied himself
8about packing my effects with no more than a simple ''Very good, sir. Will you be wanting a bit of
9lunch before we leave?''.
10'I believe so,' I told him, after considering the matter. I'd lost little time in requisitioning a commbead from the newly arrived Guard contingent, to replace the one the necrons had vaporised along
11with the Omnissiah's Bounty, so I was able to follow the Astartes' preparations for departure without
12bothering Gries, which probably came as a relief to both of us. Recovering their active combat
13squads, who were scattered across half the system, was going to take a little time, even for warriors
14of their formidable efficiency, and, true to the code of their Chapter, none of them would be willing
15to break contact with a still-living enemy and leave the task they'd been allocated half-done.
16Lunch would also be a good opportunity to take my leave of Mira (who I'd managed to detach
17myself from in the command bunker as quickly and tactfully as possible), on reasonably good
18terms. Her words had shaken me, which, given some of the perils I've faced in the Emperor's name,
19you might find surprising, but at least you know where you are with a charging ork. When a woman
20tells you she wants to talk ''about us'', the one thing you can be sure of is that no amount of combat
21experience is going to get you out unscathed.
22To my surprise, and, I must confess, relief however, my invitation went unacknowledged, save by
23a sour-faced ladies maid, who informed me with mingled relish and disdain that her mistress was
24'''not available''. Remembering the sulky expression on Mira's face as I'd prised her from my arm
25and found urgent business with the intelligence analyst I'd tried to speak to before, I could well
26believe it. It had been obvious to me from the moment we'd first got involved with one another that
27our liaison would be as fleeting as all the others I'd had over the years, my position and duty to the
28Commissariat making it inevitable that I'd be moving on to another war as soon as the situation on
29Viridia had stabilised, but Mira's little world had always revolved around her, and I was beginning
30to realise, somewhat belatedly, that she wasn't going to take kindly to my departure on anyone's
31terms but her own.
32Oh well, too bad, I thought. Heiress to a planet she may have been
33[42]
34, but I couldn't see that
35having much weight with Gries if she tried to argue him into leaving me behind. For a moment the
36mental picture that conjured up, of the petulant young aristocrat haranguing the Space Marine
37captain, raised a fleeting smile, before I dismissed it and turned my attention to more pressing
38matters. 'See if they've got any of those little lizard things, and some of that smoked fish pate, in the
39kitchen,' I told Jurgen. The rations aboard the Revenant were adequate, of course, but fairly basic,
40the little comforts of life generally coming low on the list of priorities of a Space Marine, and I
41intended to make the most of the skills of the governor's chef while I still had the chance.
42'Otherwise, use your initiative. And get something for yourself, too.'
43'Very good, sir,' he said, and departed as quickly as he could without compromising the air of
44dignity he felt appropriate to someone in the exalted position of a commissar's personal aide, and
45which he endeavoured to maintain at all times, in blissful ignorance of the fact that it was
46completely invisible to everyone but him. He returned a short while later with a large covered tray,
47the contents of which he laid out for me, and a thermal bag leaking steam, which, to my unspoken
48relief, he bore off to his own quarters, there being few things in the galaxy more likely to curtail the
49appetite than watching (or listening to) Jurgen stuffing his face.
50After concluding our meals there was nothing much else to do, since we had little enough kit
51between us, and Jurgen had already stowed it, so I found myself in the unwelcome and novel
52position of time hanging heavily on my hands. I busied myself with make-work, visiting the bunker
53for one final time to pass on what information I could about the state of affairs the Astartes were
54leaving behind (a lot of dead heretics, mainly), and pick up the latest news of the Guard campaign in
55case, in defiance of my expectations, Gries turned out to be interested. (I was right, as it happened;
56he wasn't. As soon as we'd left the Viridia System, his attention was focussed entirely on the pursuit
57of the space hulk, and I can't recall him ever mentioning the campaign there again.)
58To my relief, I didn't run across DuPanya anywhere in the corridors of the palace, as I was by no
59means certain how much he knew of my association with his daughter, or of her recent displeasure.
60As it happened, I never set eyes on him again. I did find Orten hanging around in the command
61centre, marginalised by the Guard officers but gamely determined to do whatever he could to
62prevent them from making too much of a mess of his home world, and made sure I said my
63farewells to him as publicly as possible: I don't know if that made anyone take him a little more
64seriously, but I hope so
65[43]
66.
67Of Mira, I saw nothing before quitting the palace, which I must confess to being ambivalent
68about. On the one hand, I couldn't help feeling a certain sense of relief at having avoided a
69confrontation which would probably have ended in recrimination, but on the other, I've never liked
70leaving unfinished business behind. As Jurgen drove us out of the main courtyard and through the
71wreckage of the gardens along the main causeway, which stood out clearly as a straight strip of mud
72marginally less churned up than its surroundings, I found myself glancing back over the armour
73plate protecting the crew compartment of the Salamander he'd requisitioned from somewhere to
74scan the hundreds of windows in search of a flash of blonde hair; but in vain. At last, as we passed
75through the battered gate in the outer wall through which Trosque had launched his attack on the
76besiegers, the palace disappeared from sight, and I directed my attention to our immediate
77environment.
78I hadn't seen much of Fidelis in the relatively short time which had elapsed since our arrival. On
79the few occasions I'd ventured out to compare notes with Guard commanders or Astartes in the field
80it had been aboard a Rhino which my hosts had thoughtfully dispatched, the arrival of which always
81seemed to excite a certain degree of interest among Guardsmen and PDF loyalists alike. It seemed
82the Reclaimers were still taking the matter of my personal safety as seriously as the Terminator
83sergeant had intimated, which was fine by me. The only downsides that I'd discovered so far were an
84inability to see anything beyond the interior of the APC, which was considerably roomier than the
85Chimeras I was familiar with, and the fact that the bench seats were to the same scale as the fittings
86aboard the Thunderhawk: fine for the superhuman stature of a Space Marine in powered armour, but
87distinctly uncomfortable for us ordinary mortals. The upshot of which was that I'd only seen
88snapshots of the city, as it were, generally a disputed part, where the amount of ambient noise and
89incoming fire made loitering to sightsee decidedly unwise.
90Now, as Jurgen cannonballed us through the streets at his usual breakneck pace, swerving around
91those few obstacles too solid to bounce our tracks across, I found myself pleasantly surprised. The
92tide of war had evidently receded from the capital at last, only a few rockpools of unrest remaining
93to be dealt with, and the first signs of something approaching normality were beginning to appear,
94like shoots of green among the ashes of a forest fire. The road to the starport was clear of debris,
95the worst of the cratering marring its surface patched with raw rockcrete dressings, which I suppose
96was only to be expected given the amount of military traffic rumbling along it in both directions.
97What I hadn't anticipated was the number of civilian vehicles threaded in among them, overloaded
98cargo haulers for the most part, jammed with furnishings, possessions and grim-faced people
99clinging on for dear life among the detritus of their lives. They were, I suppose, returning to their
100homes, or the sites where once they stood, hoping to pick up where they'd left off, in defiance of all
101reason. Most of the ramshackle transports were graced with icons of the Emperor, and a few
102meagre offerings had been left at the shrines beside the road, where, no doubt, they'd be purloined
103as soon as dusk fell, in defiance of the curfew [44]
104.
105The side streets, which Jurgen eventually took to, impatient with the restrictions the density of
106traffic on the main thoroughfare placed on his natural inclination to open the throttle to its
107maximum and leave it there, were more cluttered, of course, but even here there were signs of
108returning life, which I found cheering. People were moving among the rubble of the sundered
109buildings, salvaging what they could, although if the emporium I'd encountered the sentries of the
110brood mind in was anything to go by, I doubted that the looters would have left them much
111[45]
112. In a
113few places the smoke of cooking fires rose from within the ruins, where enough of the original
114structures remained to keep the rain off, occasionally supplemented with tarpaulins or other
115makeshift materials.
116Few of the people we passed spared us a glance, with the inevitable exception of the children,
117who were playing amid the ruins with the total absorption in the concerns of the moment peculiar to
118the very young. They tended to glance up as we hurtled by, stones and chunks of pulverised
119rockcrete scattering from our treads, shouting or waving, before returning to their games.
120As yet, there seemed little in the way of organised rebuilding, although we caught occasional
121glimpses of what might have been the beginning of a coordinated effort at returning Fidelis to
122habitability. A handful of tech-priests seemed to be abroad, roaming the city in ones and twos,
123making earnest notes in their data-slates or poking about in conduits, while a party of sappers from
124one of the Vostroyan regiments was erecting flakboard huts in a park Jurgen couldn't be bothered to
125circumvent, presumably intended to house the hopeful occupants of the lorries we'd seen earlier.
126The only building under active repair that we passed was a local temple, where ragged refugees
127were laying bricks under the supervision of an elderly ecclesiarch, no doubt in exchange for the
128promise of food and a bed for the night
129[46]
130.
131A few moments later our progress began to slow again, and I poked my head over the armour
132plate surrounding the passenger compartment, reaching for my laspistol by reflex as I did so.
133Normally I liked to have the Salamanders I requisitioned fitted with a pintel mount, so I'd have
134something a bit more lethal to hand if things went ploin-shaped, but Jurgen had just had to take what
135he could find in the vehicle pool, leaving me to make do with my sidearm if push came to shove. A
136Caledonian sergeant, in a mottled camo-patterned uniform similar to the one Orten favoured, was
137flagging us down, the squad of troopers with him regarding us with the wary eyes of combat
138veterans. They were keeping their lasguns trained on us, just as they should have done with so much
139PDF kit still in the hands of insurrectionists and troublemakers, and I was pleased to see that they
140kept them on aim even after my uniform had become visible.
141'Commissar.' The sergeant nodded a greeting, no doubt wondering if he or any of his men were
142in trouble, but determined not to show it. Very few Guardsmen are pleased to see a red sash, which
143no doubt accounts for the inordinate number of my colleagues felled by friendly-fire accidents. 'We
144weren't toid to expect you.'
145'Probably because I had no idea any of our people were down here,' I said, noting the faint
146stirring of relief among the soldiers. 'My aide and I are on our way to the aerodrome.' I smiled at
147the troopers, who were still keeping us covered. 'You can stand down. We're not hybrids or 'stealer
148puppets.'
149'Of course not,' the sergeant agreed, stepping forwards, a trifle nervously, with a portable auspex.
150'But if you wouldn't mind indulging me, sir? I'm sure you wouldn't want us to neglect our orders.'
151'By no means,' I agreed, reholstering my laspistol and climbing down to the roadway so he could
152take his genescan a little more easily The unit beeped, and a rune flashed green, after which
153everyone looked a little more comfortable, particularly once Jurgen was confirmed to be a
154reasonable approximation of a human as well. 'You're to be commended for your caution.'
155That went down well, as I'd known it would. There are far better ways of managing troops than
156simply putting the fear of the Emperor into them, as I try to convince the young pups in my care
157these days, in the vague hope that their careers will last a bit longer than their first night patrol.
158The sergeant nodded. 'That's the worst thing about fighting 'stealers,' he agreed. 'You never know
159who might turn out to be a hybrid or an implant. Squadmate of mine turned on us on Keffia, just like
160that, no warning, been with us since basic. Had to shoot him myself.'
161'I was there too,' I said, not wanting to remember too much about it. 'Similar thing happened. Bad
162business all round.'
163The sergeant shrugged. 'I never liked him, mind. And I got his stripe. For showing initiative. So it
164could have been worse.'
165I smiled again. 'You're a born optimist, sergeant. The Guard needs men like you.'
166'Kind of you to say so, sir.' And, Emperor help me, he actually blushed. 'But you'll have to go
167round, I'm afraid. The street's impassable.'
168'We'll get through,' Jurgen said, with quiet confidence, taking the statement as a challenge, as I'd
169known he would.
170The sergeant shook his head. 'I doubt it,' he said. Jurgen might have been about to argue the point,
171but subsided, at a look from me.
172'Impassable how?' I asked, and the sergeant shrugged.
173'It's not there,' he said simply. Well, that sounded distinctly peculiar, so I left the Salamander with
174its engine running, and walked off down the rubble-strewn carriageway. For the first hundred
175metres or so, nothing seemed to have changed, the ravaged cityscape looming over me, and my
176bootsoles scraping against the smaller chunks of debris littering the 'crete.
177Then the road ended, as sharply and abruptly as if excised with a knife. For a few metres the road
178surface became rippled, like a hardened lava flow, then simply dropped away into a broad pit, some
179three or four metres deep. It may seem incredible, reading this now, but my first thought was simply
180how lucky we'd been to have run into the troopers when we did; if they hadn't flagged us down, we
181might well have discovered the hole by falling into it. Then, as I began to take in the way the edges
182of the buildings around me had also melted and flowed like candle wax, realisation belatedly hit.
183This was where Mira and I had fought our desperate battle beneath the ground, and come so close to
184extinction before the Thunderhawk had torn the roof off to allow the Terminators to come to our
185rescue.
186I can't be sure how long I stood there, reliving the horror and marvelling at the precision of our
187saviours, before a familiar odour brought me back to myself.
188'That's a big hole,' Jurgen commented, materialising at my shoulder, his lasgun held ready for
189use as always.
190I nodded. 'It is indeed,' I agreed, picking out the tunnel the pure-strains had emerged from at last.
191Nothing was left of the creatures which had attacked us, save a few greasy stains on the rainstreaked rockcrete below; some of the Terminators had carried flamers, and made sure that every
192last one had been consigned to the pyre before they broke off. I couldn't help wondering how many
193more of the xenos spawn still lurked beneath our feet, though, or how many apparent innocents still
194carried their taint. But that wasn't my problem any longer, thanks to Gries and the libratory techpriest Yaffel.
195'It'll take some filling in,' Jurgen added, after a moment or two of further deliberation.
196'I'm sure it will,' I said, turning away at last, before my imagination could start playing tricks with
197the echoes. 'Can you find your way round it? We've still got a shuttle to catch.'
198Jurgen nodded. 'Leave it to me,' he said.
199THANKS TO MY aide's usual robust driving style, the unexpected detour didn't detain us overmuch:
200we reached the landing pad just as the Thunderhawk I'd arrived aboard, or its identical twin I'd
201noticed in the hangar bay, roared in over our heads and snuggled itself down between the blast walls
202like a raptor returning to its nest. Mine wasn't the only head turning to follow it: the scores of
203Guardsmen and Navy hands scurrying about the place were undoubtedly accustomed to the
204ceaseless arrival and departure of Valkyries, Aquilae and Throne alone knew how many other types
205of shuttle, drop-ship and combat craft, but the distinctive silhouette of the Astartes vessel grabbed
206their attention at once.
207Jurgen, fortunately, remained as phlegmatic as ever, apparently considering it nothing more than
208a ship like any other, and weaved his way through the distracted ground crews with his usual
209aplomb, missing cargo haulers and foot sloggers by a typically narrow margin. Fortunately the
210noise of our engine, and the idling Thunderhawk, drowned out the comments which followed us,
211although the gestures which accompanied them were more than sufficient to convey their gist.
212As he steered us through the slalom of blast walls surrounding the pad
213[47]
214, it became clear that
215Jurgen and I weren't the only guests of the Chapter intending to embark for the Revenant that
216afternoon. Magos Yaffel was there too, oscillating even more than usual in the backwash from the
217idling thrusters, accompanied by a handful of tech-adepts, and a couple of servitors, which were
218busily engaged in transferring an unfeasibly large collection of boxes and bundles aboard. As
219Jurgen coasted the Salamander to a halt, and began collecting our kit together, I hopped down and
220nodded a cordial greeting to the cogboys
221[48]
222.
223'Magos,' I said, raising my voice a little to be heard over the screaming engines, 'I wasn't aware
224that you'd be accompanying us.'
225'The Omnissiah directs our footsteps along the path of knowledge,' Yaffel replied, cranking up
226the volume of his voxcaster to overcome the din. Refraining from pointing out that in his case that
227would be singularly difficult, I merely nodded, as if the evident quotation
228[49] meant something to
229me. 'And the potential store of data to be reaped on this endeavour is incalculable.' At the time I
230thought his words to be no more than a simple figure of speech. If I'd known then what he was
231driving at, I'd have clambered back aboard the Salamander and told Jurgen to head for the horizon
232with all the speed he could squeeze from it (which I've no doubt would have been considerable). As
233it was, however, I merely exchanged a few more reflexive pleasantries, before following my
234overloaded aide to the bottom of the boarding ramp, and dodging out of the way of a servitor on its
235way back for another load of whatever Yaffel and his cronies considered essential on the voyage.
236As I regained my balance, another vehicle drew up smoothly alongside our abandoned
237Salamander, and I felt a strange unease descend upon me. It was a groundcar, long and sleek, its
238armourcrys windows polarised to the same glossy black as the bodywork. For some reason I was
239put in mind of the blank, reflective faces of the metal killers I'd fled from on Interims Prime. Which
240I'd almost rather have faced again, if my sudden intuition about the car's passenger turned out to be
241right.
242It was. A uniformed chauffeur, in a livery I'd come to know well since my arrival here, unfolded
243himself from the driver's compartment and glided round to the rear door. As he opened it Mira
244emerged, the sudden change in her expression a clear indication that the vehicle was soundproofed
245as effectively as it was shielded from the vulgar gaze of the hoi polloi, and waved cheerfully in my
246direction.
247I waved back, masking my relief at her evident good humour with a faint smile meant to convey
248pleased surprise, and she came trotting over, grinning like a puppy who's just discovered how to
249open the meat locker. She'd evidently got tired of playing soldiers, as she'd discarded the dress-up
250uniform in favour of something a little more feminine: an indigo blouse, low-cut, like pretty much
251everything else in her wardrobe, and a crimson knee-length skirt, which, like the blouse, was
252fashioned from some material that shimmered slightly as the light caught it. In the turbulence
253thrown up by the Thunderhawks idling thrusters it rippled constantly, so that Mira seemed to be
254clothed by a nimbus of rainbows. Her footwear was surprisingly practical: calf-high boots made
255from the hide of some local animal, although I doubted that their original owner had been quite so
256fluorescently pink.
257'Mira,' I said, exhaling a little more strongly than I intended as she enveloped me in a hug which
258would have cracked an ork's ribs. 'It was kind of you to come and see me off.'
259'I'm not.' She grinned again, and with a definite sense of foreboding I belatedly registered the fact
260that the chauffeur was removing what looked like almost as much baggage as the tech-priests had
261accumulated from the car. 'I'm coming too. Isn't that a wonderful surprise?'
262'Wonderful doesn't even begin to cover it,' I said truthfully.
263NINE
264PERHAPS FORTUNATELY, THE ear-splitting noise inside the Thunderhawk after it took off made
265further conversation impossible. There were the headsets Veren had drawn my attention to on the
266journey down, of course, but the last thing I needed was Mira vox-casting the details of our
267association across an open comm-net, so I made sure the one I gave her just prior to our departure
268was switched off before handing it over. Though grateful for the aural protection it offered, I
269declined to activate mine, either: I had no interest in anything the tech-priests might have to say, and
270I knew from long experience that Jurgen would simply lapse into sullen silence the second our skids
271left the ground, too preoccupied with holding on to his last meal until we reached the turbulencefree zone beyond the atmosphere to respond to anything short of a life-threatening emergency. Or
272possibly an acute lack of tanna. In any event, he was hardly a sparkling conversationalist at the best
273of times, so I wasn't exactly left feeling deprived.
274All of which left me with far too much time to brood. I'd had a few moments before we lifted to
275ask Mira what the frak she was doing here, although of course I was rather more circumspect about
276the manner in which I phrased the question, and she'd smiled in a manner I found distinctly
277disturbing. Before she could answer, though, the tech-priests had started trooping aboard, and
278Jurgen returned to inform me that our kit was properly stowed, so I'd had little option but to follow
279the herd and hope everything had a rational explanation. Mira certainly wasn't behaving in the usual
280fashion of people bidding farewell to their home world, gazing at it through the viewports as long
281as they could, trying to burn the image of it into their memories in the near certainty of never seeing
282it again, preferring instead to smile at me in a manner uncomfortably reminiscent of a bored eldar
283reaver looking for someone to torture to death to pass the time. Perhaps she simply lacked the
284imagination to grasp what embarking on a voyage through the warp actually meant. Even if she did
285return home, the chances were that decades, or even a century or two, were likely to have passed,
286and that she'd be as much of a stranger to the altered Viridia as an offworlder setting eyes on it for
287the first time.
288[50]
289Predictably, I didn't get another chance to broach the subject until after the Thunderhawk had
290docked with the Revenant, after a journey Jurgen had probably found mercifully brief. The strike
291cruiser was still orbiting Viridia at a relatively low altitude, barely beyond the point where the first
292faint wisps of upper atmosphere would begin to drag at her hull, no doubt to facilitate the use of her
293teleportarium, or allow her weapon batteries to strike at targets on the surface in the unlikely event
294of her Space Marine complement requiring a little additional assistance. It still seemed long enough
295to me, though, and it was with a great sense of relief that I heard our engines throttling back, and the
296series of metallic clangs which preceded our arrival. What Yaffel and his tech-priests found to
297amuse them, I have no idea. Perhaps they conversed among themselves, in the peculiar manner of
298their kind, or just remained absorbed in communing with their data-slates.
299I didn't have much opportunity to talk to Mira after we disembarked, either. To my pleased
300surprise Drumon was standing at the bottom of the ramp, and exchanged a few words of greeting
301with me, before striding on to confer with the tech-priests and begin examining the equipment they'd
302brought with them. By the time I'd completed the pleasantries and looked round for Milady
303DuPanya, she'd already snared a couple of faintly stunned-looking Chapter serfs, who'd evidently
304been incautious enough to wander within hectoring range, and was holding forth to them in great
305detail about the correct disposal of her luggage. I decided to leave her to it, and went to separate
306Jurgen and Gladden, the factotum who'd been assigned to look after me on the voyage here, who
307were already squabbling over the matter of who should be responsible for my kit with belligerent
308tenacity and icy politeness respectively. Apparently no one had expected me to bring my own aide,
309let alone one who looked more like a Nurgle cultist than a member of the Imperial Guard, so his
310arrival had caught them on the hop, rather.
311By the time I'd sorted that one out, Drumon and the tech-priests had disappeared about whatever
312business they had together, and the pile of luggage Mira had brought with her had diminished to
313something approaching portable. I lingered while the last of it was thrown onto a trolley which
314looked as though it was more usually employed to rearm the Thunderhawks, and fell into step
315beside her. 'I give up,' I said lightly, contriving to look as though I was joking. 'What did you say
316you were doing here?'
317'I'm the official representative of the Governor of Viridia,' she said, grinning impishly at me
318from under her fringe. 'My father's sent me to assess whether the space hulk remains any kind of
319threat to our system.'
320'How can it?' I asked, no doubt looking and sounding as baffled as I felt. 'It's been gone for a
321century and a half, and it's hardly likely to come back.'
322'But it could have left other threats behind, as well as the genestealers,' Mira said, in tones which
323made it abundantly clear that she didn't believe that any more than I did. 'We'd be failing in our duty
324to the Viridian populace if we didn't make every effort to ensure their safety, particularly now.'
325'So your father asked you to come along on the hunt for the Spawn?' I enquired, trying to keep
326my scepticism from becoming audible in my voice.
327Mira grinned again. 'I sort of volunteered,' she said cheerfully, taking hold of my arm.
328I nodded, being able to reconstruct that conversation all too easily. This had all been her idea,
329clearly, although I still found it hard to credit that she'd become sufficiently infatuated during our
330brief affair to be willing to wave goodbye to everything she'd known just to follow me through the
331warp.
332[51]
333'How very dutiful of you,' I responded. 'No doubt the populace will be suitably grateful.'
334'No doubt,' Mira agreed, clearly not giving a flying one what the hoi polloi thought, and
335attaching herself to me with a tight grip. 'So it looks as though we'll be liaising together for the
336foreseeable future.'
337DESPITE THE FAINT sense of unease about the situation which continued to oppress me,
338particularly in the quieter moments when I had time to reflect on the potential ramifications, I had to
339admit that Mira's words in the hangar bay had cheered me at least as much as they gave me cause for
340disquiet. As I've said before, she was pleasant enough company, and I'd felt rather starved of
341companionship during the voyage to Viridia once I'd recovered enough to start taking notice of my
342surroundings. This time round, although the circumstances were somewhat bizarre, I had someone I
343felt I could converse with, as well as engaging in a variety of recreational pursuits, all of which
344promised to make my second sojourn aboard the Revenant a great deal more congenial than the
345first had been.
346Then, too, I had Jurgen with me again, which fact alone eased my mind considerably. We'd been
347through a lot together since our first chance meeting on Desolatia (and were to go through even
348more in the years to come, although, perhaps mercifully, I had little inkling of quite how much
349terror and bloodshed awaited me before I could sink into a relatively peaceful retirement
350[52]
351), and
352the prospect of facing whatever horrors awaited us aboard the Spawn of Damnation seemed far less
353daunting than they would have done without the knowledge that he would be watching my back as
354steadfastly as always. Not that I had any intention of getting within a thousand kilometres of the
355cursed piece of warp flotsam, of course, so anything lurking within the tangled mess of conjoined
356starships was of little interest to me; once we'd caught up with it, if we ever did, the shipmaster and
357his gunnery teams could carve it up at their leisure, and in the unlikely event of anything getting off
358before they did, it would have to be foolish in the extreme to try boarding a Space Marine vessel.
359All in all, I suppose, I felt as happy about the fool's errand we were on as it was possible to under
360the circumstances, and resolved to make the best of things - an endeavour which Mira seemed
361determined to help with.
362'I'm still not sure how you managed to persuade Gries to let you aboard in the first place,' I said,
363over a surprisingly palatable meal in my quarters, a few hours after we'd boarded. A fair proportion
364of her mountain of luggage turned out to have been delicacies of one sort or another, no doubt with
365my comments about the Spartan fare I'd subsisted on during our voyage to Viridia fresh in her
366mind. It felt odd to be eating a second breakfast when my body clock insisted it was late evening, but
367I'd hopped between enough worlds by now to be confident that I'd have readjusted to the Revenant's
368idea of chronology before too much longer. Gladden had got used to bringing my meals in to me
369here on the previous voyage, and resumed the arrangement without being asked; no doubt the serfs
370would have been as uncomfortable to see Mira and I in their mess hall as we would have felt about
371being there. What the Reclaimers did about meals, I had no idea, but if they ate together at all I was
372certain they'd find catering to the tastes and needs of ordinary mortals something of a trial. At any
373event, neither Mira nor myself were ever invited to join them, which I'm sure we found as much of a
374relief as our hosts did.
375[53]
376Mira shrugged and bit into the florn cake she'd just spread with ackenberry preserve. 'You know
377how it is,' she began, a trifle indistinctly, before swallowing and continuing more clearly. 'You can
378get people to do pretty much anything, if you put your mind to it. You just need to know how to ask.'
379Which didn't really answer my question, of course, and being an old hand at verbal evasion
380myself, I persisted, even as I admired her technique. After a few more moments of verbal sparring,
381which I have to confess I rather enjoved. I eventually backed her into having to give a straight
382answer.
383'It was easy enough,' she admitted, licking a few stray traces of the sticky preserve from her
384fingers with a coquettish glance in my direction, to see if I'd be distracted by that old trick. (Which,
385I'm bound to say, I might have been if I didn't already know her as well as I did, so I just kept
386looking at her with an expression of polite enquiry until she gave it up as a bad job and carried on.)
387'I simply told him it was my duty as a member of the ruling house to confirm that Viridia was safe,
388just as it was his after having pledged his aid to our people to make sure that the job was complete.'
389'I see,' I said, contriving to look unimpressed, although if I'd still been wearing my cap at the time
390I'd have taken it off to her. Basically, she'd just told a captain of the Astartes that charging off on a
391private quest before making sure that every single 'stealer, hybrid and implant on Viridia had been
392tracked down and eradicated
393[54] would be a gross dereliction of his duty, but he could do what he
394liked without impugning the honour of his Chapter if he took her along too, as that would make it
395an extension of his original assignment. Had it not been for her complete self-absorption, she would
396have been an extraordinary asset to Imperial diplomacy.
397'How long do you think it'll be before we catch up with the Spawn?'
398Mira asked, after her final recon sweep among the empty platters littering the tray had failed to
399turn up any further comestibles.
400I shrugged 'Hard to say,' I said, which sounded a little more authoritative than ''frakked if I
401know'', which was actually the truth of the matter. 'I suppose it depends on how good the Navigator
402is at reading the warp currents, and whether Yaffel has got his calculations right. Even if everything
403goes perfectly which it never does, we'll probably be following the damned thing for months - if we
404ever catch up with it at all.'
405'Sounds like we're in for rather a dull time, then,' Mira concluded.
406'Yes, I'm afraid so,' I agreed, little guessing how far off the mark that was going to turn out to be,
407and just as well too for my peace of mind 'We'll just have to amuse ourselves as best we can.'
408'I'm sure we can think of something,' she said, before yawning spectacularly and stretching in a
409manner which emphasised her natural undulations in a decidedly pleasing fashion.
410'Looks like you're ready for bed,' I said, chiming for Jurgen to come in and clear the debris of
411our meal. It seemed he and Gladden had reached the sort of compromise that only occurs or matters
412to underlings jealous of their status in colliding hierarchies, and that henceforth refreshments and
413their subsequent remains were to be handed from one to the other in the corridor leading to the
414guest quarters - which seemed like a pointless duplication of effort to me, but if it kept my aide
415happy, then good luck to him.
416Mira grinned at me, the familiar mischievous expression on her face.
417'I thought you'd never ask,' she said.
418IN THE END, we weren't left to speculate about our mission for very long. After a few hours' sleep,
419which left me sufficiently refreshed to resume my duties, and left Mira somewhat cranky to say the
420least, Jurgen's distinctive aroma oozed into my quarters again, accompanied by the more fragrant
421one of freshly brewed tanna. 'Captain Gries presents his compliments, sir, and would like to see you
422on the bridge at your earliest convenience,' he informed me, busying himself with the tanna pot and
423a pair of tea bowls.
424'What about me?' Mira asked, following him in from the direction of her own stateroom, still
425looking somewhat the worse for wear despite a change of clothes and a spraybath. It seemed she
426found the beds the Reclaimers provided for their guests a little too firm for comfort, although I
427found mine considerably more conducive to sleep than the overstuffed mattresses of the palace in
428Fidelis had been.
429Jurgen nodded. 'I brought an extra bowl in, miss, in case you fancied one too.'
430'Just get me a recaf,' she snapped. 'And that's not what I meant.'
431The intransigent expression I knew only too well began to settle across my aide's grimy features,
432and I stepped in hastily to head off the inevitable clash. 'If you wouldn't mind, Jurgen,' I added.
433'Of course not, commissar,' he said, his equanimity at least partially restored by the belated
434courtesy, albeit one that had arrived by proxy. The look he gave Mira's oblivious back as he left,
435however, made it abundantly clear that the slight wouldn't be forgotten easily or soon.
436'And I've no messages concerning the young lady.'
437'Thank you,' I said, as he disappeared down the corridor, the door hissing closed behind him. I
438picked up the drink he'd prepared and sipped it gratefully, regarding Mira gravely through the
439steam. 'Please don't treat Jurgen like one of your household servants,' I said, as soon as I was sure he
440was out of earshot. 'He's an Imperial Guardsman, and the aide of a commissar, with an exemplary
441record of courage in the face of the enemy. He deserves a bit of respect.'
442Mira stared at me, her jaw working for a moment like a ruminating bovine, and the sullen
443expression I hadn't seen since the day of our first meeting smeared itself across her face. Then, as
444abruptly as the mist burning off from an early-morning hab spire, it had gone, displaced by another
445jaw-cracking yawn.
446'Of course,' she said. 'Sorry. Not enough sleep.' Then the gamine grin was back. 'It was worth it,
447though.'
448Perhaps fortunately I was spared having to find a reply to that by the return of Jurgen, who
449ushered the tray-bearing form of Gladden through the door, with an airy wave in Mira's direction.
450The odour of recaf began to mingle with the others in the room, which was beginning to seem
451decidedly cramped by now, despite the high ceiling.
452'She's in there,' he said perfunctorily, then returned his attention to me.
453'I found Gladden outside, sir, looking for the young lady, so I took the liberty of directing him in
454here. Seeing as she seemed in so much of a hurry.'
455'Thank you, Jurgen,' Mira said, with a smile which surprised me almost as much as it evidently
456did my aide. 'That was very thoughtful of you. Especially as I'd been so unforgivably rude. I'm
457afraid I'm not at my best when I've just woken up.'
458'That's all right, miss,' Jurgen said, fully mollified by the unexpected apology. 'You should see
459the commissar first thing in the morning.'
460'Quite,' I said, while Mira turned away from him, suppressing a fit of the giggles with manifest
461difficulty. 'Was there anything else, Jurgen?'
462'Not for the moment, sir,' my aide said, retreating from the room with an unmistakably selfsatisfied air, while Mira fell on the recaf like a kroot on fresh meat.
463Gladden coughed delicately. 'The brother-captain extends greetings to the Viridian envoy in the
464name of the Reclaimers, and suggests you may find a visit to the bridge informative, madam.'
465'Then in the name of the Viridian Hegemony, I reciprocate his salutations, and will attend upon
466him with all due dispatch,' Mira responded, with a remarkably straight face.
467'I'll be along too, as soon I've finished my tea,' I said, refilling the tanna bowl.
468Gladden looked mildly disconcerted for a moment, but recovered quickly. 'Then I'll convey the
469news of your imminent arrivals,' he said, and left the room as quickly as he could without appearing
470to hurry.
471Mira turned an accusing eye on me. 'Ciaphas, that was mean,' she said, not quite succeeding in
472hiding her amusement. 'He was only doing his job.' She lifted the lid from a side plate, next to her
473recaf, and studied the lumps of reconstituted protein thus revealed with a faintly suspicious frown,
474before stuffing one into her mouth with a resigned shrug.
475'I suppose you're right,' I said, feeling as though I'd been somehow caught out by her. 'But I've
476never been comfortable with all that flowery protocol stuff.' I'd been getting a lot more used to it
477since being attached to brigade headquarters, of course, which had meant attending more tedious
478diplomatic functions than I'd ever thought possible back in my early days with the 12th Field
479Artillery, but I much preferred people to either say what they meant, or lie to me in plain, simple
480language. Still do, if I'm honest, although I suppose it was good practice for much later on in my
481career, when I found myself attached to the lord general's staff, and having to hack my way through
482thickets of polite obfuscatory verbiage on an almost daily basis. Luckily, by that time, my fraudulent
483reputation was so widespread I was able to sidestep the game entirely, playing up to my image of the
484bluff man of action, so I never had to learn to talk like that. Which was probably just as well, or my
485brain would have had to shut down in sheer self-defence.
486Mira shrugged, failing to offer me any of the nutritionally balanced whatever-it-was she was
487throwing down her neck, and washed the final lump away with a chug of recaf. 'How do you think I
488feel?' she asked rhetorically. 'I grew up thinking that sort of soil improver was plain Gothic.'
489'Then I'm amazed you turned out as well adjusted as you did,' I said, wondering for a moment
490just how sarcastic I was being, but Mira appeared to take the remark at face value.
491'It's not been easy,' she remarked complacently, and brushed a few crumbs from her inevitably
492exposed cleavage. 'Do you think this is a little louche for visiting the bridge?'
493I examined the day gown she'd donned with a critical eye. It was cut from some shimmering gold
494fabric, which seemed to be held up by nothing more than willpower, and moulded itself snugly
495around whatever it touched.
496[55] The effect was certainly striking, particularly if the one you were
497after was that of a highly priced courtesan, but hardly suited to a military environment. I was sure
498the Astartes and the Mechanicus drones wouldn't be distracted at all, if they even noticed it, but the
499ship and its defences were in the hands of flesh-and-blood mortals, who might find their attention
500wandering at a critical moment, so pleasant as the view was in the abstract...
501'Possibly,' I temporised. 'Perhaps something a little more businesslike would be better.'
502'Why, Ciaphas Cain.' Mira grinned at me again, with a coquettish tilt to her head, which made her
503look more like a fifty-credit joy-girl than ever. 'I do believe you're jealous.' Then, before I could
504gather my wits to do anything more than gape in astonishment, she undulated out of the room.
505TEN
506BY THE TIME Mira returned, rather more suitably attired in what she told me was one of her
507hunting outfits, I'd managed to convince myself that she'd been joking. After all, the very idea of me
508being resentful of other men appreciating her physical attributes was ludicrous enough to begin
509with, let alone the fact that most of the potential rivals for her affections aboard the Revenant would
510either have been tech-priests or Space Marines, and therefore out of the running. Which left only the
511serfs, who I doubted she'd even consider in that regard, given her typically aristocratic tendency to
512view the lower orders as little more than a refined type of servitor which didn't dribble lubricants on
513the carpet, and Jurgen, who was hardly the stuff a maiden's dreams were made of, unless she'd eaten
514too much cheese before turning in.
515'Very suitable,' I complimented her, having had no idea until now that her wardrobe contained
516anything even remotely practical. It had definitely risen to the occasion this time, though, providing
517a jacket and trousers in muted colours, and a stout pair of boots, all of which lent her an air of
518businesslike efficiency, without overstating the effect. Fortunately, she appeared to have left the
519fowling piece that went with it at home.
520Mira pulled a face. 'It's all a bit dowdy, if you ask me,' she said, examining the effect critically in
521a nearby mirror. 'Perhaps I should try again.'
522'We're expected on the bridge,' I said, mindful of the length of time she'd already wasted
523rummaging through her luggage, and leaned in to straighten my cap in the looking glass she'd
524appropriated. Jurgen handed me my weapon belt. 'We can't keep our hosts waiting any longer,' I
525went on, checking the power levels in the laspistol and the chainsword's motivator cells, before
526fastening it into place. 'It wouldn't be polite or diplomatic.'
527'Says the man who thinks ''tact'' means ''nailed down'',' Mira said, following me out into the
528corridor. At least she wasn't arguing about it, though, which I suppose was something.
529'I'm a soldier,' I said, taking refuge behind my public persona. Something was getting to her, that
530much was obvious, but I couldn't for the life of me see what it was. 'That means I take my duties
531seriously.' Whenever there was a good chance that someone was watching me, anyway.
532'You can be really pompous sometimes, do you know that?' Mira asked, in the tone of voice
533women use when they neither want nor expect an answer, and strode off ahead of me looking
534sulkier than ever. I remembered enough of the layout of the Revenant to find my way to the bridge
535without difficulty, and fortunately, by the time we got there, either Mira's mood had improved, or
536she was practising her diplomatic skills again. As I'd expected, the warren of corridors had proven
537sufficiently daunting for her to have rejoined me without a word a few moments after her
538inexplicable burst of bad temper, and she seemed to be on her best behaviour as soon as we were in
539the presence of our hosts once more.
540'Commissar. You are prompt, as always,' Gries greeted me, politely and inaccurately as we
541entered the bridge, and Drumon looked up from a huddle of tech-priests he was conferring with
542next to the hololith just long enough to nod a greeting in my direction. Mira gave me a sharp look,
543as though I'd somehow contrived to upstage her on purpose. 'Milady DuPanya. Your presence is
544appreciated.'
545'But not that much, apparently,' she muttered sotto voce, apparently forgetting the preternaturally
546keen senses with which the Emperor had seen fit to endow his chosen warriors. If either of the
547Astartes present overheard her, however, they were too polite, or indifferent, to respond.
548'Are the last of your combat teams aboard yet?' I asked, keen to show that I was taking an interest,
549and Gries nodded.
550'They are,' he assured me. 'Squad Trosque completed the cleansing of the forge complex on
551Asteroid 459 while you were sleeping, and their Thunderhawk docked a few moments ago. Nothing
552remains to be done beyond the mopping up of a few isolated remnants of the infection and the
553restoration of good governance, both tasks for which the Imperial Guard seem admirably suited.'
554'I concur,' I said, although being far more familiar with the way the Guard worked than he was, I
555felt rather less sanguine than the Reclaimers' captain about how easy the job would turn out to be.
556[56]
557'Then it appears my people owe yours a considerable debt of gratitude,' Mira said, with a formal
558tilt of the head to the towering Space Marine, who turned his own to look at her as though one of the
559chairs had just spoken.
560'Our service to the Emperor is reward enough,' he said, 'although your consideration is
561appreciated.'
562'I'm pleased to hear it,' Mira replied dryly.
563'Are we under way, then?' I asked, feeling faintly foolish at having to ask. The barely perceptible
564thrumming of the Revenant's engines had become so familiar to me in the course of our voyage to
565Viridia that I hadn't noticed it since boarding, although it was certainly there, a comforting presence
566in the background. They would have been idling while it was in orbit, of course, ticking over just
567sufficiently to provide power to feed the innumerable machine-spirits on whose health the vessel
568depended, and I listened hard, trying to determine if the note had deepened at all; but if it had, I
569wasn't able to tell the difference.
570'We are,' the shipmaster informed me from his control throne.
571I was a little surprised, but apparently questions regarding the functioning of the ship were
572delegated to him automatically by his masters, which was no bad thing; I'd hate to be aboard a vessel
573in combat whose captain had to refer every tactical decision to a higher authority. 'We'll be entering
574the warp at the designated material coordinates in approximately seven hours.'
575'Six hours, fifty-four minutes and twelve point three one four seconds,' Magos Yaffel put in
576sharply from his position by the hololith.
577'As I've explained, timing is absolutely crucial if we're to enter the warp currents in this
578particular region of space and time in precisely the right configuration to catch the fastest-flowing
579portion of the stream.'
580'We'll catch it, magos,' the shipmaster assured him, 'Omnissiah willing.' Then, to my surprise, he
581made the sign of the cogwheel, which the tech-priests and Astartes present all echoed.
582'Forgive my ignorance,' I said, approaching the hololith, 'but if we're merely going to be
583following the same current as the space hulk, how can we hope to catch up with it? Won't we be
584travelling at the same rate?'
585'A very astute question,' Yaffel said, in the manner of a born didact pouncing on the opportunity
586to expound on his favourite subject. 'But the situation isn't as hopeless as you might suppose. Don't
587forget that the Spawn of Damnation is drifting, while the Revenant is moving under power. That
588means we can correct our attitude and orientation to the current, to optimise the flow around our
589Geller field.'
590'And in simple language for the rest of us?' Mira muttered, then had the grace to blush as
591Drumon answered the comment she'd clearly believed to be inaudible.
592'I gather the sport of waveboarding
593[57]
594is popular in some of the coastal regions of your world?'
595he asked, and Mira nodded, although Emperor alone knows how he discovered this. 'Then think of
596us as riding a waveboard, while the hulk just bobs about as the Emperor sees fit. Does that make
597things clearer?'
598'I suppose so,' Mira said, as politely as she could. 'Thanks.'
599'In addition,' Yaffel said, trying not to sound miffed at the interruption, 'the Spawn of Damnation
600will be returning to the materium at random intervals, for indeterminate periods of time, some of
601which will be in the order of years. We, on the other hand, can enter and leave the warp at will. As
602soon as we determine that it's not at a given exit point, we can re-enter the immaterium and continue
603our pursuit.'
604'I see,' I said, vaguely surprised to find that I did. 'But how can we be sure we've found an exit
605point in the first place?'
606The moment I'd finished speaking, I knew I was going to regret asking that particular question:
607Yaffel's gyrations increased markedly, as if he could barely contain his excitement, and he raised a
608hand to point at the hololith. Apparently divining what I'd just done, Mira kicked me sharply in the
609ankle, although I suspect my Guard-issue footwear made the gesture more uncomfortable for her
610than it did for me.
611Fortunately, Drumon came to our rescue, intervening just before the magos could launch into the
612tirade of technotheological jargon I'd unwittingly come so close to unleashing. 'Essentially,' he said,
613'the passage of so large an object between the two realms leaves a weak spot in the boundary
614between them, which our Librarian and Navigator believe they can detect.'
615'How weak?' Mira asked, no doubt mindful that just such a spot now existed within her home
616system, and probably picturing a host of daemons flooding through it to lay waste to Viridia.
617Yaffel nodded reassuringly at her, no doubt having had to assuage the fears of sufficient numbers
618of lay listeners by now to be aware of what she must be thinking, and grabbing the chance to display
619his expertise after all. 'Not enough to allow any of the warp's denizens access to the materium,' he
620said, his flat monotone sounding oddly sure of itself. 'The weakness is more akin to a deformation
621of the interface than a breach of it.'
622'I see,' Mira said, managing to sound as if she meant it. 'But if you can predict where the
623weaknesses are, can't you just tell which systems are at risk and warn them by astropath before the
624hulk gets there?'
625'Things are less simple than that,' Drumon said, drawing our attention to the hololith again. A
626moment's perusal was enough for me to recognise an astronomical display of the sector and a few
627of the systems surrounding it. 'Here is Viridia.' The system flared green. 'And these are the
628boundaries within which the Spawn of Damnation could have travelled.' A translucent tube began to
629extend itself from the green dot, the mouth of it widening the further it extended, so that by the time
630it reached its fullest extent, well over two dozen systems had been swallowed by the flickering
631funnel.
632'It would take a lifetime to search all those systems,' I said, obscurely relieved at the realisation of
633just how impossible a task we were taking on. After a few months I'd find an excuse to leave them to
634it, and return to my desk, secure in the knowledge that whatever foolhardy undertaking General
635Lokris had been planning to drop me into the middle of would be safely over.
636'Fortunately, we won't have to,' Yaffel told us, looking smugger by the second. 'Each emergence
637point we find will reduce the potential volume of space in which our quarry could be, and refine our
638predictions. After the first few have been plotted, we should be closing in on it nicely.'
639'I'm glad to hear it,' I said.
640'If they can find any weak spots in the first place,' Mira muttered beside me.
641'How can we know until we try?' Drumon said, leaving everyone else looking faintly baffled.
642After that, the briefing was clearly over to all intents and purposes, although I made sure I asked
643a few supplementary questions to show a proper concern for what we might be getting into. By this
644point Mira had given up even pretending to be interested, simply standing as close to me as she
645could in a grim silence I began to find increasingly oppressive.
646As we eventually left, to let the shipmaster and his crew get on with whatever it is that starship
647bridge officers do, I felt it politic to pause for a moment in passing and pay our respects to Gries.
648To my surprise, he acknowledged my salute and nodded to me. 'I trust you have everything you
649require, commissar?'
650Ignoring Mira's smug expression, I nodded. 'Your hospitality is as generous as I remembered,' I
651told him truthfully. 'But I was wondering, if it's no imposition, whether you had a little free space
652somewhere I could run through my combat drills every day. I rather neglected them while I was
653convalescing, and I almost paid the price for that in the 'stealer nest.' Shaken a little by the
654narrowness of our escape, I'd resumed my regular practice sessions with the chainblade forthwith,
655and I had no desire to forego them again if I could avoid it, although my quarters were rather too
656cramped for much in the way of physical exercise which didn't involve Mira.
657'Of course.' Gries looked at me approvingly and nodded. 'I would expect nothing less from a
658warrior of your renown. I'll see to it that you're given access to one of our training chapels.'
659'Thank you,' I said, only too aware of the magnitude of the accolade he'd so unexpectedly
660bestowed on me. All I'd been expecting was a corner of a cargo bay somewhere; this was
661tantamount to a senior ecclesiarch throwing open the door to the sepulchre of a saint and asking
662how many bones I'd like to take home.
663[58]
664'I'll try to prove worthy of the honour.'
665THE RECLAIMERS' CAPTAIN was as good as his word. We'd barely made the transition to the
666warp when Jurgen knocked on my door with the news that the tertiary training chapel had been put
667at my disposal for an hour a day. I've no idea what the other two were like, but this one turned out to
668be an airy chamber about the size of a scrumball pitch, floored with metal mesh, and with
669luminators in the ceiling which could be adjusted to replicate any light level, from the glimmering
670of stars on a moonless world to a dazzling glare. Much of the equipment ranged about the walls was
671either unfamiliar to me, or intended for users a great deal larger and stronger than I was, so I left it
672alone, preferring to run through the complex patterns of attack and defence with the chainsword
673which years of familiarity had made instinctive beyond conscious thought.
674It's probably no exaggeration to say that those hours of solitary sword drills aboard the Revenant
675were among the happiest of my life. Throne alone knows I'm no Emperor-botherer, but centuries of
676use by His finest warriors had imbued the very walls of the place with a sense of dedication and
677reverence for tradition which made me feel as if everything I did there was part of something
678greater than myself. Not a sensation I'm used to, or particularly comfortable with in the normal
679course of events, but I couldn't deny it at the time.
680If I'm honest, I also found the periods of solitude I spent there becoming an increasingly
681welcome respite from Mira's company. Which isn't to say that her companionship had become
682wearisome, exactly, but with very little to do herself, she seemed to want to spend every minute I
683wasn't attending to my duties attached to me like a Catachan faceeater. For a man as used to his own
684society as I was, that was a very mixed blessing indeed: so much so that, from time to time, I found
685myself inventing errands in order to delay my return to my quarters. On one occasion I even went
686so far as to ask Magos Yaffel for some further details of the techniques he was using to track the
687space hulk through the immaterium, which I dutifully transcribed into the report I knew full well
688General Lokris wasn't going to bother to read anyway when I eventually completed it, despite not
689having understood more than one word in twenty.
690We all experienced a brief flurry of excitement about ten days into our voyage, when Gries
691announced that the Reclaimers' Librarian had sensed the deformation of the membrane between the
692warp and the material universe which Yaffel had predicted, but when the Revenant popped back into
693the real galaxy for a quick look round we turned out to be drifting through the silent void between
694the stars, with nothing on the auspex for light years in any direction except for the occasional gas
695cloud. Nevertheless, the Reclaimers and the tech-priests were all greatly heartened by this
696confirmation that the theory was sound, and since no one had seriously expected to bag the infernal
697relic on the first try anyway, we resumed our progress at once with high morale all round, except
698for Mira, who told me in no uncertain terms that she was bored stiff, and that this was all somehow
699my fault for persuading her to come along on this absurd junket in the first place. I can't deny,
700though, that when she finally calmed down enough to apologise, her idea of making things up to me
701was definitely worth it.
702Our second emergence in the wake of the Spawn found us in a stellar system, which meant
703several days of frantic activity as we analysed auspex returns and sent the Thunderhawks scurrying
704around to check out anything which looked promising, but in the end we drew a complete blank.
705Fortunately, by luck or the grace of the Emperor, the star at its centre was a sullen, shrunken dwarf,
706husbanding the post-nova embers of a blaze which would have consumed anything in its habitable
707zone aeons before, and was now orbited by nothing more than barren chunks of scorched rock,
708which meant that the 'stealers would have found nothing or no one here to contaminate. So with a
709quick prayer of thanks to the Golden Throne, we were off again, casting ourselves adrift on the
710currents of the warp once more.
711It must have been a day or so after we resumed our journey that I arrived in the training chapel at
712the appointed time to find it already occupied. I'd barely taken a couple of steps inside when I
713noticed Drumon in the middle of the chamber, surrounded by whirling cyberskulls, which he was
714fending off with the sword I'd noticed him wearing in the bunker under the palace in Fidelis, his
715plasma pistol gripped in his other hand. The blade was surrounded by a nimbus of crackling energy,
716like the claws I'd seen the Terminators use to tear apart the insurrectionist artillery pieces, although
717he must have moderated its strength in some way, as the tiny airborne servitors simply bounced
718away from each strike as though dazed by the impact rather than being sheared asunder. In a similar
719fashion, his plasma pistol had evidently been modified to unleash the merest fraction of its charge,
720as instead of being vaporised, each of the bobbing skulls he shot was only thrown aside for a
721moment, before returning to the attack.
722The speed and precision of his movements were astonishing. I'm a pretty fair duellist myself
723[59]
724,
725but I'd never seen anything to match the flurry of stroke and guard the Techmarine was displaying.
726Not only that, he was somehow able to employ his sidearm with undiminished accuracy too, and
727even divert a little of his attention to swat at any cyberskulls trying to attack him from behind with
728the servo-arm grafted to the back of his armour, which he employed with the same casual expertise
729Felicia had displayed with her similarly sited mechadendrite back on Perlia.
730Much as I'd have liked to linger and enjoy the spectacle, I began to edge away towards the door
731by which I'd entered. It seemed to me that Drumon had a far stronger claim on the training chapel
732than I did, since the demands of his duties must of necessity supersede the convenience of his
733Chapter's guests, and that by my very presence I was intruding on something private and personal.
734(By this point, although I still felt I had little in common with the superhuman Astartes, I'd got to
735know a few slightly better as a result of the honour their captain had seen fit to bestow on me, and
736I'd gathered that there was little a Space Marine regarded as more important than honing his combat
737skills.) I must have betrayed my presence in some way, however, because Drumon broke off his
738exercise to look in my direction, while the darting cyberskulls stopped moving, other than to
739correct their positions slightly in the air currents issuing from the recirculators.
740'Commissar. My apologies.' He inclined his head, and made safe his weapons, before sheathing
741his sword and holstering his pistol. 'I recently made some adjustments to my wargear and wished to
742assess their performance. I regret the trials have taken far longer than I believed they would.'
743'Time flies when you're having fun,' I said, intending to reassure him that no offence had been
744caused, then found myself wondering if I'd sounded too flippant; after all, it was almost tantamount
745to joking about the sacraments with an ecclesiarch. To my relief, though, Drumon smiled.
746'It does indeed,' he agreed, dismissing the cyberskulls with a gesture: they hummed away to one
747corner of the room, like ossiferous grox-flies, and the Techmarine followed them, pausing in front
748of one of the control lecterns whose purpose I'd been unable to guess at before now.
749'Would you like me to leave the sparring drones active?' he asked, one gauntleted hand poised
750above the runes of the display.
751'I think they'd be too much for me,' I told him honestly, remembering the rapidity and precision
752with which the Reclaimer had moved, unencumbered by the bulky armour he wore.
753Drumon looked down at me, his head tilted quizzically to one side.
754'You can vary the speed and number of the attacks from this lectern,' he explained, demonstrating
755the procedure, his fingers moving deftly around the dials despite their thickness and the ceramite
756gauntlets in which they were encased. 'Use these controls to activate and deactivate the system. If you
757wish to avail yourself of it another day, I can teach you the correct incantations of awakening.'
758'Thank you,' I said. It was a tempting offer. Much as I'd enjoyed the last few weeks of what my old
759schola duelling instructor Myamoto de Bergerac always referred to as shadow practice, it wasn't the
760same as working with an opponent, and although it wasn't quite the same thing, the sparring drones
761would make an acceptable substitute. 'Are you sure my laspistol wouldn't damage them, though?'
762'A good point,' Drumon said. 'I will obtain a practice powercell to fit it and reduce the power of
763your shots to within the limits of the drones' structural integrity.' So that was how they'd been able to
764keep bouncing back from hit after hit that should have pulverised them. 'In the meantime...' He
765powered down the system, and the cyberskulls settled onto their storage shelf like roosting birds.
766'I'll look forward to trying them out,' I said. 'Running through the drills is all very well, but
767there's nothing quite like sparring with a partner to maintain your edge.'
768'Indeed not,' Drumon agreed, and looked at me speculatively. 'I have a little time before I need to
769resume my duties. If you consider me a suitable match, I would be honoured to assist a guest of our
770Chapter to hone their skills.'
771'More than suitable,' I said, wondering if I'd live long enough to regret accepting the offer. But I
772could hardly refuse without insulting him, and, by extension, the rest of my hosts. Not for the first
773time I wondered why I'd ever been persuaded to leave the 12th Field Artillery, where life had been
774relatively straightforward, but my snowballing reputation had finally attracted the attention of
775people of influence, and that had been that. If I'm honest, I'd thought a long and tedious career
776behind a desk, and a long way from anything lethal, had awaited me at brigade headquarters. The
777reality of being an independent commissar with a reputation for reckless heroism, and therefore a
778magnet for every hazardous assignment which came along, had been rather an unpleasant surprise.
779'I suggest blades only to begin with,' Drumon said, drawing his and pressing the activation rune.
780The powerfield around it crackled into life, and a flicker of dubiety must have appeared on my face,
781as he added, 'the intensity of the field has been reduced to non-lethal levels.'
782I smiled, with every appearance of being at ease. 'Non-lethal for an Astartes, or for a mere
783mortal like me?' I asked.
784'Both, I assume,' Drumon replied, returning the smile. 'It should feel no more uncomfortable than
785a glancing blow from a shock maul.' Which, on its own, would be enough to return me to Sholer's
786domain if he wasn't careful, so he wasn't being quite as reassuring as he evidently thought he was. It
787was too late to back out now, though, so I drew my own weapon and started the teeth rotating.
788'I'm afraid I can't return the favour with this one,' I said. 'If it hits, it hits.'
789Drumon took up a guard position, which seemed familiar enough, and beckoned me on. 'If you
790can strike through my armour,' he pointed out reasonably, 'I deserve a few nicks.'
791We began cautiously, feeling out each other's style and favoured strategies, but as we began to get
792the measure of one another the rhythm of our strikes and parries began to increase in tempo. I was
793conscious that he was holding back, giving me a chance, and although I continued to work at it, I
794didn't put everything I had into the combat either, content to pace myself instead of burning off all
795my energy in a single burst of do-or-die endeavour. He was blindingly fast, of course, as I'd already
796seen, but I trusted my reflexes rather than trying to think too hard about what I was doing. In my
797experience of close-quarter fighting, which is far greater than I'm comfortable with, it's usually
798better to wait for your opponent to make a mistake than it is to go charging in and suddenly find
799yourself on your hands and knees looking for your head. On the whole, it seemed to be paying off: I
800took a couple of jolts from his sword's power field, but held on to my own, and seeing a sudden
801opening drove in at Drumon's chest. The teeth of my blade had just started to skitter off his torso
802armour when his own reflexes cut in, and he parried my attack with a speed and precision which left
803me breathless.
804'Very good,' the Techmarine said, with more animation than I'd ever seen from him (or any of the
805others for that matter). 'First blood to you, commissar.'
806'I hope I haven't damaged your armour,' I said, knowing how precious it would be to him, but
807Drumon shook his head.
808'I will leave that mark as a reminder,' he said, 'never to underestimate an opponent.'
809'I'm full of nasty, underhanded tricks,' I said, truthfully enough, but inflecting it like a joke.
810Drumon nodded. 'In my experience, survival is honour enough for the battlefield. Would you
811care to continue?'
812Well, I would, and we did, although I never got through his guard again; even though he still held
813back, he was always more than a match for me. By the time we'd finished we found ourselves
814agreeing to meet again the next time his duties permitted, and over the next few weeks we managed
815to train together several times. I've no idea what his fellow Space Marines made of our arrangement
816[60]
817, but many of them seemed to be making more of an effort to be friendly around the time
818Drumon and I started training together.
819All in all, the growing undercurrent of tension between Mira and I notwithstanding, I was
820beginning to slip into a fairly comfortable routine aboard the Revenant; so much so that I began to
821take it for granted that the voyage would continue uneventfully until we either caught up with our
822quarry, or abandoned the search. But, of course, I was about to receive a salutary reminder of just
823how dangerous our quest was, and that the galaxy contained far more perils than the one we pursued
824so diligently.
825ELEVEN
826OUR THIRD ATTEMPT to locate the hulk in the material universe was almost the death of us all;
827not that we had any premonition of the fact as we prepared to make our latest transition back into the
828realm of the real. If anything, I suppose, by now we were growing a little complacent, confident that
829Yaffel's calculations could be relied on, and that the Librarian's abnatural talents would be sufficient
830to drop us into the materium more or less on top of the space hulk we sought - or, more likely,
831where it had been at some time in the past.
832Accordingly, when Gries invited me to the bridge to observe the transition, my immediate
833expectation was of a repeat of our previous attempts: merely a wilderness of the void, the details
834probably a little different from those we'd investigated before, but essentially no more than another
835dead end to be discounted before moving on. Mira had been invited too, of course, as protocol
836demanded. But, no doubt to everyone's relief, she'd declined to drag herself out of bed, the
837summons having arrived in what she and the ship's chronographs insisted was the middle of the
838night.
839I, of course, was enough of a seasoned campaigner to have hauled myself upright, yanked my
840laspistol out from under the pillow (provoking a tirade of most unladylike language in the process)
841and clambered into my uniform within moments of the message being delivered by a bleary-eyed
842Jurgen. Fortified by the mug of tanna he'd waved in my general direction as I made my exit, I
843arrived on the bridge a mere couple of minutes after the surge of nausea which generally
844accompanied the transition from the warp to the realm of reality had swept over me.
845'Any luck?' I asked, and the crewman manning the sensorium display nodded in my direction.
846'The system's teeming with life. If the 'stealers are here, or have been, there's a lot for them to
847infect.'
848'What kind of life?' I asked. It couldn't have been an Imperial system we'd arrived in, or our vox
849receivers would have been flooded with comms traffic, and challenges from the local SDF, by now.
850'Where in the Throne's name are we?'
851'Processing the starfield data now,' Yaffel assured me calmly, gazing into the hololith. 'After
852correcting for parallax errors, our most probable location would be here, give or take
853approximately eight light-seconds.' One of the stellar systems inside the green funnel, which had
854been reduced substantially since the first time I'd seen it, flared more brightly, and the translucent
855cone obligingly shrank a little more.
856'Anything on auspex?' I asked, and the operator raised his head to glance at me.
857'I've got thousands of contacts,' he reported. 'It'll take a while to narrow them down.'
858'Thousands?' I asked, as he returned to work, my palms itching worse than ever.
859'Void shields to maximum. All gunnery stations stand to,' the shipmaster said, pretty much
860confirming what I most feared, before looking across at me as well. 'Many of them appear to be
861under power and closing on our position.'
862'Wonderful,' I said, before realising that sarcasm wasn't quite what was expected of the dauntless
863warrior everyone here fondly imagined me to be, and plastering a smile on my face which I hoped
864would seem sufficiently insouciant. 'Always something to be said for a target-rich environment. Any
865idea whose day we're about to spoil?'
866'Still scanning frequencies,' the vox operator reported, his voice almost as calm as Yaffel's
867mechanical one. 'Getting something...'
868'Put it on the speakers,' Gries ordered, and a moment later an overlapping babble of harsh,
869guttural voices burst into the room.
870My stomach knotted, and I took a deep breath, stilling the instinctive surge of panic which swept
871over me. I recognised that sound all too well, was even able to pick out a word or two I knew. 'Orks,'
872I said.
873'Undoubtedly,' Gries agreed, no doubt familiar with every enemy of the Imperium I'd ever heard
874of, and a double handful of ones that I hadn't. 'And eager to welcome us in the manner of their kind.'
875He looked across at the shipmaster. 'Engage them at your leisure.'
876'By your command,' the shipmaster responded, with a grave inclination of his head. 'All batteries,
877fire at will.'
878I moved across to the hololith, where Yaffel had thoughtfully brought up a tactical display which
879enabled me to see just how frakked we were. Innumerable greenskin vessels were swarming in on
880our position, evoking a curious half-memory of Drumon surrounded by the sparring drones,
881before the full seriousness of our position elbowed the whimsical image aside.
882The Chapter serf gunners were disciplined, I have to give them that, holding their fire until they
883were sure of a target
884[61]
885, before unleashing the full fury of their awesome destructive power in a
886single concentrated salvo which gutted the ramshackle greenskin vessels they'd targeted. For every
887one they brought down, though, ten surged forwards to fill the gap, and had they been able to
888concentrate their fire it would all have been over within moments. Fortunately, however, they were
889as disorganised as ork mobs always are, blazing away in our general direction without seeming to
890aim, and only a few of their shots struck home. I felt the faint tremor of their impacts through the
891fabric of the hull with an answering quiver of apprehension, before forcing away the memory of the
892greenskin attack on the Hand of Vengeance, which had come so close to taking my life.
893'Thunderhawks away,' the auspex man reported a moment later, and a cluster of smaller echoes
894[62]
895took up station around the blip which marked our position, doing a very nice job of keeping the
896greenskin fighters and occasional torpedo volley off our backs. 'Still no sign of our primary target.'
897'Then it's probably not here,' I said, mainly to Gries, but pitching my voice so that my calm,
898reasonable tones would carry across most of the bridge. 'And even if it is, it'll take more than one
899ship to get to it through this much resistance.'
900'I concur,' the Space Marine captain rumbled after a moment, much to my well-concealed relief.
901The overhead luminators flickered, plunging us into momentary darkness, broken only by the
902eldritch glow of pict screens and lectern lights, before flaring up again.
903'Void shields holding,' one of the bridge crew reported. 'Generators two and nine down. Damage
904control responding.'
905Gries turned to Yaffel, ignoring the clear implications which seemed to me like an unwise degree
906of single-mindedness. 'Your assessment, magos?'
907'The probability of finding the Spawn of Damnation still within this system is now approximately
908seventeen per cent, and falling,' Yaffel said, after conferring with a couple of his junior tech-priests.
909'Analysis of the auspex echoes can only go so far, however; the five per cent of anomalies requiring
910further investigation we found last time would appear to be something of an irreducible minimum.'
911'Then we remain until the probability drops to five per cent,' Gries said, 'before proceeding to the
912next emergence point. If none exists, we will have to return in numbers sufficient to secure this
913system while we investigate the remaining anomalies.'
914Well, good luck with that, I thought, resolving that if we got out of here in one piece I'd kiss a
915gretchin before allowing myself to be dragged along on so patently suicidal an endeavour. Which
916reminded me... I tapped the comm-bead in my ear. 'Jurgen,' I said, 'the ship's under attack by
917greenskins. Don't alarm Miss DuPanya unduly, but if you can persuade her to get dressed, and ready
918to move in a hurry, it might be wise.'
919'Very good, sir,' my aide responded, in his habitual phlegmatic manner. 'Don't want to get caught
920on the hop again, like we did off Perlia, do we?'
921'No, we don't,' I agreed, not envying the task I'd inflicted on him. Mira would probably have just
922got back to sleep, and wouldn't take at all kindly to being roused again. Better cranky than dead,
923though, in my view, and if the ork gunners' aim improved in the next few minutes we could all be
924breathing vacuum if we weren't light on our feet. (Not an experience I'd recommend, or wish to
925repeat.)
926The deck shook under my feet again, and we were plunged into darkness, for nearly two seconds
927this time. When the luminators rekindled, they had a red tinge to them, which made the bridge look
928uncomfortably as though someone had sprayed it with blood.
929'Starboard shields down,' the man at the enginseer's station reported dispassionately. 'DCT
930[63]
931reports reconsecration will take at least ten minutes.'
932'That's too long-' I began, just as the auspex man glanced up from his pict screen.
933'Mass torpedo barrage incoming,' he said, a blizzard of contact icons erupting into the space
934between us and the orks.
935'Throne on Earth!' I breathed, horrified. There was no way in the galaxy that the Thunderhawks
936could intercept that many missiles, but they gave it their best shot, managing to whittle them down
937by about ten per cent before they struck. Which only left enough to tear the guts out of the cruiser
938instead of vaporising it.
939I braced myself for the ripple of impacts, but instead of the explosions I'd expected, I felt no
940more than the faintest of tremors through the soles of my boots, as the fast-moving projectiles
941impacted without detonating against the adamantium hull plates. 'They didn't go off!' I said, buoyed
942up by a sudden surge of relief, which dissipated almost at once as the obvious explanation occurred
943to me. 'They must be-'
944'Prepare to repel boarders,' Gries voxed through the ship's internal speakers, confirming my
945conclusion before I could voice it. He turned back to Yaffel. 'Magos?'
946'The probability of a successful detection is down to eight point five per cent,' the tech-priest
947informed him, his voice as uninflected as ever. It might have been my imagination, of course, but I
948was sure he was oscillating more than usual, however.
949'Then recall the Thunderhawks,' Gries said, 'and prepare to withdraw as soon as it falls to five
950per cent.'
951The shipmaster nodded, and opened a vox channel of his own.
952'Bridge to enginarium,' he said crisply. 'Prepare for entry into the warp.'
953For the second time in as many minutes, my sigh of relief was choked off before completion.
954Instead of the acknowledgement we'd all been expecting from Drumon or one of the serf enginseers
955under his supervision, the speaker rang with the sounds of combat and the bellowing war cries of
956orks. The greenskins had breached the enginarium, and until they were evicted, we wouldn't be
957going anywhere.
958I MUST SAY, we all took it remarkably calmly under the circumstances. Or, to be honest, everyone
959else did, responding to the unexpected reversal with a flurry of sharp, succinct orders, while I kept a
960panicky eye on the hololith for any further signs of a greenskin assault. They weren't slow in
961coming either, with several more waves of boarding torpedoes already inbound, although with the
962Thunderhawks out of the way, our gunners were reaping a rich harvest of them, having switched
963their aim from the larger warships. Fortunately, the apparent scramble to claim us as a prize meant
964that any more destructive incoming fire from the surrounding fleet was sporadic at best, and no
965more accurate than you might expect, so all in all we were still getting off far more lightly than I
966would have believed possible. It also probably didn't hurt that several of the greenskin vessels were
967now exchanging fire with one another, the instinctive aggression of their kind finding a more
968immediate form of expression now that the battle for the Revenant had reached something of a
969standstill from their point of view.
970'Squad Trosque is en route to the enginarium,' Gries informed the shipmaster, and a sudden sense
971of foreboding seized me in its talons. I was standing in the middle of the prime target for a boarding
972party, with Emperor alone knew how many orks charging towards it as fast as their malformed legs
973could carry them.
974I tapped my comm-bead again. 'Jurgen,' I said, 'the greenskins have boarded the Revenant.
975Numbers unknown. Any sign of them where you are?'
976'Not yet, commissar,' my aide responded, sounding a trifle disgruntled if I was any judge.
977Clearly, Mira had proven to be as acrimonious as I'd anticipated. At least he'd be able to take it out
978on the orks, though, which I'd no doubt he would, with as much relish as any Valhallan finding a
979greenskin in his sights.
980[64]
981'Would you like me to go hunting?'
982'No, better stay where you are,' I told him, 'and keep an eye on the Viridian envoy.' I'd never hear
983the last of it, I had no doubt, but the idea of Mira on the loose with a shipful of orks to run into
984hardly bore thinking about. The mood she was in, she'd probably challenge one to a head-butting
985contest.
986'Oh,' Jurgen said, in the tone I knew all too well was the precursor to telling me something I
987really didn't want to know. 'I'm afraid the young lady isn't here at the moment, sir. She told me she
988was coming up to the bridge to see you.'
989'Did she?' I said, my stomach plunging to somewhere in the region of my boots. There was no
990point asking him why he hadn't accompanied her. I'd ordered him to wake her up, and that he'd done,
991as punctiliously as he fulfilled every other order he was given. And, if I'm honest, in his place I'd
992have been as pleased to see the back of her as he'd undoubtedly been.
993'Would you like me to go after her, sir?' Jurgen offered.
994'No, stay in the guest quarters,' I told him, after a fractional pause for thought. They were about
995as far removed from anything strategically important as it was possible to get aboard the strike
996cruiser, and although orks weren't exactly renowned for sophisticated tactical analysis, their brutish
997instincts were often a reasonable substitute. It was still possible that a party of them might blunder in
998there anyway, of course, but on balance it was as close to a safe refuge as we were likely to find. 'Do
999whatever you can to make them defensible, and wait for me there. I'll go and retrieve Miss
1000DuPanya.'
1001I could turn this to my advantage, I thought, as I filled Gries in on this development as succinctly
1002as I could. 'I'm about as much use here as a heretic's oath at the moment,' I concluded, almost in the
1003same breath as Yaffel reporting that if the blasted space hulk was anywhere in the system we weren't
1004going to find it now, so we might as well move on as soon as the little ork problem in the
1005enginarium had been dealt with,
1006[65]
1007'and we can hardly leave her wandering around on her own
1008under the circumstances. If you've no objection, I'll go and escort her back to her quarters.' Which
1009ought to leave me well out of the way if the greenskins attacked the bridge, as I still expected them
1010to at any moment.
1011'Of course,' Gries said, apparently taking my evident eagerness to get out there for a thinly
1012disguised desire to bag a few orks.
1013'May the Emperor walk with you.' He made the Mechanicus cogwheel gesture again and turned
1014away to discuss the tactical situation with the shipmaster, no doubt relieved to know that Mira
1015wouldn't be blundering in to distract everyone at some crucial point in the battle if I could get to her
1016first.
1017I left the bridge as quickly as I could and trotted down the main corridor leading away from it,
1018my weapons in my hands. I was pretty sure I knew which route Mira would take from the guest
1019quarters, and was confident of being able to intercept her without too much difficulty. As I reached
1020the first junction of the corridor, I found a contingent of the ship's crew setting up a lascannon on a
1021tripod, while others settled behind a makeshift barricade with lasguns in their hands, and I began to
1022wonder if my decision to leave the bridge had been a trifle hasty, but there was nothing to be done
1023about that now; and at least I had another bolthole to run for if the greenskins turned out to be
1024between me and the relative safety of the guest quarters after all. Feeling mildly reassured by that, I
1025moved on, after exchanging a few words with the petty officer in charge.
1026They were the last people I saw for some time, however. The corridors seemed eerily silent, the
1027Chapter serfs I was used to seeing passing to and fro on errands of their own absent about more
1028urgent business, and my footfalls echoed on the deck plates more loudly than they normally did,
1029unmuffled by the ambient sounds of other activity. It seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of
1030time to find Mira, and I was on the point of giving up and retracing my steps, in the belief that she
1031must have got lost in the labyrinth of interconnecting passageways, when I finally became aware of
1032the sound of footsteps other than my own.
1033I tensed, taking a firmer grip on the hilt of my chainsword, and flattened myself against the
1034metallic wall of the corridor. I was close to one of the maintenance hatches, which riddled them at
1035intervals. Pointless attempting to seek refuge in one of the utility areas in this case, though, as the
1036hatches were all kept securely locked, and I hadn't yet found a plausible pretext to ask for the access
1037codes. After listening intently for a moment I was able to reassure myself that the footsteps were too
1038light to be those of orks, and, in any case, if the voices in my comm-bead could be relied on, the
1039greenskin boarding parties were all being successfully engaged elsewhere around the ship.
1040Thus reassured, I stepped out of concealment in the recess containing the utility hatch, just as
1041Mira strode past, her expression grim. She was not, I surmised, pleased to see me.
1042'I suppose you think this is some kind of joke,' she began, before registering the weapons in my
1043hands and moderating her voice a little.
1044'What are you carrying those for? You can't just open a window and take a shot at the enemy.'
1045'I won't have to,' I told her shortly. 'They've boarded us. Where's your gun?'
1046'Still in my portmanteau, of course.' She scowled pettishly. 'Your rank little imbecile didn't bother
1047to mention that particular detail, just the attacking ships.'
1048'He didn't know anything about the boarders until I told him a couple of minutes ago,' I said
1049shortly. Her description of Jurgen was undeniably accurate, but it irked me nonetheless. 'Come on.'
1050'Where to?' Mira, it seemed, wasn't about to let the trivial matter of a horde of greenskins on the
1051loose divert her from the more pressing concern of her irritation with me and my aide for
1052disturbing her rest.
1053'Shouldn't you be off shooting orks or something?'
1054'Maybe I should,' I said, on the point of turning away and leaving her to it. After all, I could
1055always tell Gries I hadn't found her in time if the orks caught up with her before we eliminated them
1056all. 'I just had this rather strange notion of making sure you were safe first.'
1057'Did you?' Her expression softened, and for a moment I remembered why I'd liked her, until her
1058corrosive personality began to leak out around the edges. 'So what did you have in mind?'
1059'Getting you back to the guest quarters, to start with,' I said, beginning to move off in the
1060direction from which she'd come. It seemed she had enough sense to follow me without urging, for
1061which I was grateful; the last thing I needed under the circumstances was a further round of
1062bickering.
1063We hurried back through the eerily deserted corridors, our footfalls ringing loudly despite all
1064we could do to muffle them, and Mira glanced at me with a trace of the bravado I remembered from
1065the day we'd first met. 'Remind you of anything?' she asked, and I nodded.
1066'We do seem to be making a habit of this,' I agreed, just as the shipmaster's voice suddenly burst
1067into my earpiece, effectively dispelling any inclination I might have had to swap further banter.
1068'Incoming. Brace for impact.'
1069'Hang on to something,' I said, and it seemed Mira trusted my judgement enough to do so without
1070further argument. She took hold of the handle of another of the ubiquitous utility hatches, and
1071looked at me quizzically. 'Another wave just got past the guns.'
1072Before she could formulate a reply, the deck trembled a little beneath our feet, a faint vibration
1073barely perceptible through the soles of our boots. Mira let go of the metallic protuberance and took
1074a step towards me, her testiness evidently intensified by the anticlimax and the sense of having been
1075made to look foolish. 'Well, that was hardly-' she began, just as a deafening clangour of brutally
1076maltreated metal assaulted my ears, drowning out whatever else she might have been about to say.
1077The deck rippled beneath my bootsoles, and a section of the ceiling appeared to decide it would be
1078happier as a wall, swinging down to meet the deck plates in a shower of sparks and trailing conduit.
1079'You were saying?' I asked mildly, as Mira scrambled to her feet and glared at me as though the
1080whole thing was somehow my fault.
1081'A gentleman would have helped me up,' she told me witheringly.
1082'Hands full. Sorry,' I replied insincerely. Only an idiot would relinquish either of the weapons I
1083was currently holding under the circumstances. Now don't get me wrong, I've as much time for
1084chivalry as the next man when there's something to be gained by it, or at least nothing to lose, but an
1085impact that big must have meant that a boarding torpedo had hit no more than a deck or two from
1086us, which put the greenskins far too close for comfort so far as I was concerned. I tapped the vox in
1087my ear. 'Cain to bridge, hull breach in Section K, deck fifteen or thereabouts.'
1088'Acknowledged,' a calm voice replied, conspicuously unaccompanied by any sounds of combat,
1089and I began to regret my impulsive decision to leave there even more strongly. 'Your current
1090position?'
1091'K fifteen,' I said. 'Escorting the Viridian envoy to safety.' Which sounded a lot better than putting
1092as much distance as I could between me and any greenskins who might have been aboard the
1093projectile. It never occurred to me to question whether they'd survived an impact which would have
1094reduced a human to a small, unpleasant stain.
1095[66]
1096I'd seen more than enough of their ability to shrug
1097off almost as much damage as a power-armoured Space Marine on Perlia to be certain that some at
1098least would be pulling themselves out of the wreckage even as I spoke. I glanced at the tangle of
1099collapsed and twisted metal which effectively barred us from our original objective now, and
1100gestured to Mira with the hand holding my laspistol, back the way we'd come.
1101'This way,' I told her. 'We'll have to get round it.'
1102'Right.' She nodded, decisively, the clear and present danger we were in obvious enough to
1103forestall any further frivolous objections, and beginning to display some of the fortitude which had
1104sustained her in the tunnels under Fidelis. 'At least that should be as much of a barrier to the orks as
1105it is to us,' she added, with a final glance at the collapsed ceiling before moving to join me.
1106Hardly had the words left her mouth, though, than the utility hatch she'd been leaning on just a
1107few moments before suddenly bulged perceptibly, the thin sheet metal from which it was formed
1108twisting under the impact of a blow which reverberated between the corridor walls like the tolling
1109of a cathedral bell. 'Run!' I shouted, as the sound was repeated, but before I could take my own
1110advice the flimsy hatch popped from its hinges, framing a sight I'd hoped never to see again (but
1111which I continued to see more often than I can count over the years): the head and shoulders of a
1112snarling, blood-crazed ork, which bellowed in exultation the second it saw us, and charged.
1113TWELVE
1114LUCKILY FOR US, and unluckily for the greenskin, my weapons were already in my hands, and
1115with reflexes sharpened by paranoia I cracked off a couple of las-bolts the second I saw it. Both
1116rounds hit their mark, inflicting wounds which would have crippled or killed a human, but which
1117only seemed to annoy the ork. Not for the first time, I found myself marvelling at their resilience
1118even as I cursed it. The shots did serve to distract the brute, however; as it pushed its way through
1119the narrow gap, the frame of the hatchway deforming to admit the full width of its shoulders, it
1120staggered from the impact, catching its foot against the threshold. Pivoting adroitly out of the way
1121of the toppling slab of bellowing, spittle-spraying malevolence, I decapitated it neatly with a single
1122stroke of my chainsword, and turned to run before either segment of the creature had hit the deck
1123plates.
1124'What are you waiting for?' I shouted, finding my way blocked by Mira, who, to my amazement,
1125was trotting towards the downed ork with an expression of grim determination on her face.
1126'I need a weapon,' she said, stooping towards the outflung hand which still clutched a huge,
1127crudely made pistol.
1128'Not that one!' I shouted, knocking her out of the way just as the cadaver's terminal muscle spasm
1129tightened its finger on the trigger, and the spot she'd been standing on abruptly became a hole in the
1130deck and a blizzard of razor-edged metal shards. Even if she could have prised the ork's hand open,
1131a dubious proposition at the best of times, grabbing the gun wouldn't have helped her much in any
1132case: she'd have had trouble even lifting the thing, and any attempt to fire it would simply have
1133dumped her on her well-padded aristocratic arse, probably breaking her arm in the process.
1134[67]
1135Now was hardly the time to be explaining all this, though, so I simply pointed at the howling,
1136frenzied mob of greenskins fighting one other to get through the gap in the wall, while the brighter
1137ones began to dismember their erstwhile comrade in an attempt to get past the obstructing corpse to
1138reach us. 'Run!'
1139Stubborn and argumentative she may have been, but Mira was no fool. She was hard on my heels
1140as I pelted along the corridor, intent on nothing more than opening up as big a lead as I could before
1141the orks could force their way past the cadaver, and one another. A brief burst of gunfire behind us
1142spurred me on, indicating as it did that the question of precedence had now been settled in the
1143traditional orkish fashion, and that the vanguard was probably already in pursuit.
1144'What's your plan?' she panted.
1145'Don't get eaten,' I said. I'd be the first to admit it wasn't much of one, but it had always worked up
1146until now. I activated my comm-bead. 'Cain to bridge, contact confirmed, hostiles engaged.' (Which
1147I thought sounded a lot better than ''run away from after a lucky hit''.)
1148'Oh, and the Viridian envoy's still with me.'
1149'Acknowledged.' The Astartes captain sounded a little distracted, even given the current
1150emergency. As he paused, the faint sounds of combat drifted through the tiny vox receiver in my ear.
1151It seemed the orks were assaulting the bridge, just as I'd feared, but had yet to break through the
1152defences I'd seen being erected on my way out.
1153[68]
1154'All units are currently engaged.' In other words,
1155good luck, you're on your own.
1156'May the Emperor protect,' I said as I signed off, which he was welcome to interpret as
1157encouragement if he liked. I had someone a little closer in mind for His attention, and couldn't help
1158wishing He'd had a few spare Astartes to make the job easier.
1159'I'm on my way, commissar,' a new voice cut in, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit to feeling a
1160sudden surge of relief at the familiar sound of Jurgen's phlegm-thickened tones. Here, at least, was
1161aid I knew I could rely on, even if it was going to take a while to get here.
1162'We'll save a few greenskins for you,' I assured him. No Valhallan Guardsman would relish
1163sitting on the sidelines while there were orks to be shot, and I was certain he'd been chafing under
1164my orders to remain where he was. 'Any sign of them down there?'
1165'Not even the sniff of one,' Jurgen said, his faintly resentful tone confirming my guess.
1166'Then we'll meet you halfway,' I told him. It appeared I'd been right about the guest quarters being
1167as close to a safe refuge as anyone could find aboard the Revenant under the circumstances, so it
1168seemed a pity not to take advantage of the fact. Jurgen may have lacked my affinity for threedimensional mazes, but his straightforward mental processes would more than make up for that. I'd
1169have bet my pension (which, like every other commissar in the field, I never really expected to be
1170claiming in any case) that he'd simply head for K fifteen by the shortest possible route, and Mork
1171[69] help any greenskin standing in his way.
1172'Meet who, halfway to where?' Mira demanded, only having heard one side of the conversation,
1173and I filled her in as rapidly as I could.
1174'Jurgen, the guest quarters. There's fighting going on all over the ship, so it seems the best place
1175to keep you safe.' There were always the saviour pods, of course, but taking to them would
1176definitely be the last resort: our chances of surviving in a system crawling with orks were
1177negligible. The Revenant, on the other hand, was our home ground, albeit infested with greenskins.
1178If they weren't reinforced again too quickly, we might yet turn the tide.
1179As if to mock my hopes, the voice of the auspex operator rang in my comm-bead almost as soon
1180as I'd completed the thought. 'Incoming torpedo volley. Stand by to repel more boarders.'
1181'Like we're just going to ignore them,' I muttered irritably, receiving a sharp look from Mira,
1182who probably wondered if I was finally cracking under the strain. Before she could distil her
1183disquiet into a typically acidic comment, however, the rather more welcome voice of Drumon
1184crackled in my ear.
1185'Enginarium purged. Transiting now.'
1186Hardly had he finished speaking than the synapse-wrenching sensation which usually
1187accompanied entry to the warp swept over me, more strongly than I could recall ever having felt it
1188before; clearly, whatever the Techmarine had done, he'd done in a hurry, without time to complete
1189all the necessary rituals. As the wave of nausea pounded through my body, I still found it in me to
1190thank the Emperor that he'd managed it. The wave of reinforcements the auspex op had just detected
1191would be passing harmlessly through empty space by now,
1192[70]
1193instead of injecting another dose of
1194poison into our reeling vessel, and the balance of the battle had just tipped decisively in our favour.
1195Now it would just be a matter of tracking down the ones who'd already made it aboard, and
1196eliminating them.
1197'What the hell was that?' Mira asked, her face preternaturally pale after depositing her supper on
1198the deck plates.
1199Checking the impulse to respond 'Looks like it used to be florn cakes,' I shrugged. 'We're back in
1200the warp. Drumon got us out in the nick of time.'
1201'Well he could have been a bit more careful,' Mira shot back. 'I feel awful.'
1202'You'd have felt a lot worse with another wave of greenskins rampaging through the ship,' I
1203pointed out, perhaps not as tactfully as I might have done, but I still wasn't feeling too good myself,
1204don't forget. Hardly had the words left my mouth than a bellow of triumphant rage behind us
1205reminded me that there were still more than enough orks aboard to be going on with. 'Run!'
1206'Run? I can hardly walk!' Mira snapped back, clearly well on the road to recovery. She turned her
1207head, and apparently decided she could run quite well after all, as she caught sight of the mob of
1208orks rounding the last turn we'd taken in the corridor. There were five of them, the two in front
1209filling the passageway from side to side, all brandishing shootas
1210[71]
1211like the one I'd dissuaded Mira
1212from picking up in one hand, and equally crude axes in the other.
1213The one in front had a metal jaw, which I'm bound to say hardly improved his appearance, and
1214more scar tissue than Gries. Clearly the most dangerous, and therefore the new leader. The rest were
1215little better, particularly the one who seemed to have taken a bath in acid some time in the past, who
1216glared at the world through a single, red-rimmed augmetic eye, and whose stance at Metaljaw's
1217shoulder was enough to tell me that the two of them had fought together long enough to watch each
1218other's backs as effectively as a greenskin could.
1219Before I could get a decent look at the rest, bolts and solid slugs began making a mess of the wall
1220near where we stood, but fortunately they appeared to be no better shots than most of their kind. It
1221could only be a matter of time before they got lucky, though, so I ducked down the nearest cross
1222passage, Mira at my heels.
1223'Why didn't you shoot back?' she demanded, with a single glance over her shoulder to see if the
1224greenskins had reached the junction yet. I didn't bother, secure in the knowledge that a renewed
1225fusillade would announce their presence as soon as they could see us again, and turned into the first
1226cross corridor which would take us back towards our original route. The last thing I needed now
1227was Jurgen missing us because of the impromptu diversion.
1228'Because I'd have to be damn lucky to bring one down, and the rest would be on us by the time I
1229did,' I explained, reminding myself that she'd never seen the creatures before, so she wouldn't have
1230anything like the hard-won appreciation I did for their resilience and ferocity.
1231No doubt recalling the exaggerated stories she'd heard about my exploits on Perlia, Mira nodded
1232briskly. 'Can we outrun them, then?' she asked.
1233'I doubt it,' I said. We might stay ahead of them for a while, but their superior strength and
1234endurance would tell against us in the end.
1235'Then we need an edge.' She slowed, and looked speculatively at the nearest of the ubiquitous
1236access panels, to which a prayer slip had been affixed by a wax seal, the freshness of both mute
1237testament to the diligence of the Revenant's enginseers. 'Can you get one of these open?'
1238By way of an answer, I swung my chainsword, chewing through the thin metal in seconds and a
1239shower of sparks. No doubt the tech-priests would be horrified by so casual a desecration of even
1240this minor a shrine to the Omnissiah, but it was nothing compared to the damage the orks would do
1241to the ship if left unchecked. Or to us, come to that, which I must admit was of rather more pressing
1242concern to me. 'What have you got in mind?'
1243Mira smiled, for the first time since I'd run into her. 'An old hunter's trick,' she said, starting to
1244pull wires from the gap between the walls.
1245I have to admit I'd had my doubts about the wisdom of going along with this, every second we
1246delayed eroding our hard-won lead, but I stayed to cover the corner around which I expected the
1247orks to come at any moment while Mira busied herself with the cables she'd extracted. It seemed that
1248despite my earlier scepticism in the bunker below the palace in Fidelis, her hunting trips had indeed
1249endowed her with some knowledge and skills which might be of use to us in the present emergency.
1250Her marksmanship, quite exceptional for a civilian, I already had good reason to be grateful for, so
1251it seemed worth the risk to tarry a moment or two to see what else she had up her sleeve. Besides, I
1252was confident that I could run faster than her if push came to shove, and our pursuers got too close.
1253'Finished,' she said, after a tense few moments, and not before time, as the clatter of iron-shod
1254feet against deck plates was beginning to reverberate through my spine. 'Can I borrow this?'
1255Before I could even ask what ''this'' was, she snatched my cap from my head, and reached up to
1256hook it on a length of wire she'd thrown over a pipe running along the centre of the ceiling. My
1257purloined headgear swung in the middle of the corridor, a little above my head and about face
1258height for an ork. I didn't have the faintest idea what she intended to achieve by it, other than
1259drawing their fire perhaps, but my neck seemed a great deal more important than my hat, so I
1260simply started running again.
1261'Not too far,' Mira said, laying a hand on my arm. 'You'll be round the next corner before they
1262can see us.' Well, that sounded fine to me. She seemed to have some idea of what she was doing
1263though, so I slowed my pace a little and took refuge behind the next junction, levelling my laspistol
1264back the way we'd come. Letting them see us was one thing, but I wasn't stupid enough to stand out in
1265the open where they'd have a clear shot. Even an ork can hit the target occasionally.
1266They burst into view in a clump, jostling for position as they always did, which no doubt had
1267slowed them down considerably and bought us enough time for Mira to do whatever it was she'd
1268been doing. I flexed my finger on the trigger, tightening it to the point where the slightest movement
1269would be sufficient to fire. My hours of practice against the hovering cyberskulls in the training
1270chapel had paid off handsomely, my grip on the weapon as assured and instinctive with my new
1271augmetic fingers as it had ever been with my original ones; even more so, if anything, as I'd found
1272it easier to remain precisely on aim without the faint tremors no amount of training and discipline
1273can quite eliminate.
1274[72]
1275I held back, though, wanting to be sure of a target. I still hadn't the faintest
1276idea what Mira had been up to, and the last thing I wanted to do was throw away whatever advantage
1277she'd brought us by precipitate action.
1278The first thing the greenskins saw was my hat, of course, all of them staring at it with
1279expressions of vague confusion, which is the closest their kind can come to any form of cerebral
1280activity. Their headlong rush slowed, and they began to move down the corridor towards us,
1281grunting and barking in their barbarous tongue, which I was familiar enough with to gather that the
1282one I'd killed had indeed been their leader, and that his successor was still attempting to impose his
1283authority on the others.
1284[73]
1285'If you wouldn't mind shooting them?' Mira asked irritably, so I took careful aim at Metaljaw,
1286since he was the one shouting the most, which is usually a reliable indicator of status among
1287greenskins, and squeezed the trigger. I'd only intended getting their attention, which was presumably
1288what Mira had in mind, but I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations: I fired just as my target
1289opened his mouth to bellow at a recalcitrant subordinate, and by great fortune my las-bolt hit him in
1290the back of the throat, exiting through his skull and taking most of his brain with it.
1291For a fraction of a second the surviving greenskins stood in stupefied astonishment, watching
1292another leader topple to the deck plates, then as one they reacted, charging forwards with a roar of
1293'WAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!' Despite this, I felt a faint surge of optimism. I'd seen many times on
1294Perlia that once a group of orks falls below a critical proportion of their original number they tend
1295to lose heart for the fray, breaking off to seek out another mob to join instead of pressing their
1296attack. If I could just pick off another, that might be enough to shake the resolve of the rest.
1297But before I could squeeze the trigger again, the space beyond my sights was suddenly devoid of
1298ork. The whole group of them had fallen, sprawling across the deck plates like drunkards in a
1299drinking den, thrashing and bellowing with rage as they tried to rise, hampering each other as they
1300flailed around like tantrum-throwing toddlers.
1301Mira looked at them with a faint air of disappointment. 'I was hoping they'd drop their weapons,'
1302she said.
1303'That was your brilliant idea?' I asked, with a touch of asperity, getting ready to flee again. There
1304was about as much chance of an ork dropping his weapons as deciding to take up flower arranging.
1305'A tripwire?' Which explained why she'd needed my hat, of course: the first principle of setting a
1306booby trap is to direct the victim's attention elsewhere.
1307'Mostly,' she admitted.
1308'Then shouldn't we be running again?' I asked, with a hint of impatience. The only point of a
1309tripwire would be to delay our pursuers, and standing around while they stood up and dusted
1310themselves off would throw away that momentary advantage.
1311'Maybe,' Mira said, still looking back down the corridor with an air of vague expectation, and
1312showing no signs of movement. Acidface had scrambled to his feet by now, bellowing imprecations
1313at the others, and swatted at my dangling cap with the axe in his hand, no doubt relieving his feelings
1314in the most direct fashion he could.
1315As the crude weapon smacked into my headgear, a blue-white arc of energy sparked across to the
1316metal blade, and the ork spasmed, roaring and bellowing as he suddenly completed a circuit with the
1317cable Mira had strung across the corridor. His comrades were caught in the discharge too, thrashing
1318on the metal floor like fish on a griddle, their own ululations echoing loudly enough to pain the
1319ears.
1320'That went about as well as could be expected,' Mira said, her expression now smug in the
1321extreme.
1322I looked at her, then back to the twitching pile of smouldering orks.
1323'Why didn't you barbecue yourself while you were setting that up?' I asked, in some perplexity.
1324Mira shrugged. 'Rubber-soled boots,' she said. 'Saves time rigging the shock fence round a camp.
1325It's an-'
1326'Old hunter's trick,' I finished for her. 'Next time you see that old hunter, thank him for me.'
1327Before she could reply, the abused power feed finally shorted out, and the standing greenskin
1328collapsed on top of his comrades, with a faint clatter of falling weaponry. A fresh odour, pungent
1329and familiar, forced its way past the stench of charring ork, and I turned to greet my aide.
1330'Jurgen,' I said. 'Prompt as always.' I indicated the feebly stirring mound of incapacitated
1331greenskins behind me. 'If you wouldn't mind?' I could quite easily have put a las-bolt through each
1332of their heads myself, but I'd promised to save him a few, and he'd only have sulked if I didn't.
1333'Of course, sir,' he said, and trotted off to administer the coup de grace to the fallen with every
1334sign of enthusiasm. A few moments later he returned, bearing my cap, which he handed to me with a
1335faint air of puzzlement. 'I'll have to see what I can do with this,' he said, 'but I'm afraid it's a little
1336singed.
1337THIRTEEN
1338AS I'D SURMISED , now they'd been deprived of the almost infinite number of reinforcements
1339they'd surely been counting on to take the Revenant, the remaining greenskins were easy meat for
1340the Reclaimers. Tracking them down took a little time, of course, given the size of the vessel, but a
1341fully-grown ork isn't exactly hard to miss, and the Astartes were extremely adept at xenos hunting.
1342By the time Gries called a meeting to discuss the situation, the shredded remains of the last one had
1343been hauled away to the taxidermist
1344[74]
1345, and the ship's enginseers were inhaling through their teeth
1346[75] at the damage all those bolter shells had done to their nice clean bulkheads. Mira had, of course,
1347been invited, but to no one's surprise elected to return to bed instead. Before doing so she
1348disinterred her laspistol from the bottom of her luggage and tucked it under her pillow, as I
1349habitually did. Better late than never, I supposed, but just in case there was still a kommando
1350[76]
1351lurking somewhere in the bowels of the ship, I'd asked Jurgen to keep an eye on the corridor.
1352Needless to say, his vigil was a vain one, but he took the disappointment as stoically as he did
1353everything else.
1354Which left Gries, Drumon, Yaffel and me arranged about the hololith, while the ship's crew
1355scurried around us tidying up the bridge. The damage in here appeared remarkably slight, although
1356the number of holes, scorch-marks and disquieting stains in the surrounding corridors bore mute
1357and eloquent testament to the ferocity of the battle to preserve it. Hard to tell if I'd have been better
1358off remaining here after all, or whether, despite my misadventures, I'd been prudent to get out while
1359I could, so I gave up speculating about it in favour of the discussion.
1360'Damage to the enginarium was severe,' Drumon reported, 'but the guardian spirits of the circuit
1361breakers responded promptly, preserving the core systems from harm. Our enginseers are
1362performing the rites of reactivation, and have already honoured the guardians. The warp engines
1363are performing as well as one might expect after a cold start, but will need shutting down for
1364complete resanctification after we next emerge into the materium.'
1365'That sounds like a long job,' I ventured cautiously, not liking the sound of it at all. If our next
1366port of call turned out to be a fire-wasp nest like the one we'd just escaped from, the last thing we
1367needed was to find ourselves stranded there with no line of retreat.
1368'Roughly nine days standard,' Drumon replied promptly. 'Half that if we put in to a void station
1369with a Mechanicus shrine, but we might as well wish for a forge world this deep into the Gulf.'
1370'I'll happily settle for a system free of orks,' I told him, while Gries and Yaffel reflexively
1371meshed their fingers in the cogwheel gesture of the Adeptus Mechanicus, in response to the passing
1372reference to one of the hallowed worlds devoted to the works of the Machine-God.
1373'Under the circumstances, so will I,' Drumon agreed.
1374'Then we must trust to the Omnissiah to provide the respite our systems require,' Gries said, in a
1375voice which made it clear he'd take a dim view of it failing to honour the request, and moved on to
1376the main topic on the agenda. 'Though your resourcefulness saved our vessel, it may have put the
1377success of our mission at some hazard.'
1378'Quite so.' Yaffel nodded, oscillating a little as he always did, and went on. 'The conditions under
1379which we enter the warp are crucial to our ability to follow the right current. Being somewhat
1380distracted at the time
1381[77]
1382, I was unable to complete the relevant calculations before we made the
1383transition, which in turn renders our ability to detect the next emergence point problematic at best.'
1384'What's the worst-case scenario?' I asked, to show I was paying attention, and trying not to seem
1385visibly pleased that this fool's errand sounded likely to be coming to an end before too much longer.
1386There was bound to be a Guard presence on any Imperial worlds in the vicinity, to discourage
1387opportunistic raiding by our recent hosts, so if I made myself known, I should be able to find a ship
1388heading back to Coronus without too much trouble. Mentioning this prior to my departure might get
1389back to Mira, however, so I kept my own counsel, wary of finding her turning up at the bottom of
1390the boarding ramp again.
1391'That we fail to find the emergence point at all, or any clue as to its whereabouts,' Yaffel said,
1392looking at me as though I was a simpleton.
1393'And what are the chances of that?' I asked, refusing to be deflected. If I could get them to realise
1394the mission was hopeless for themselves, it would circumvent any amount of arguing later on.
1395'Somewhere on the order of three per cent,' the wavering magos told me, looking as perturbed as
1396though that was a real possibility.
1397'Why so high?' I asked, before reflecting that perhaps sarcasm wasn't particularly sensible under
1398the circumstances, neither Gries nor Yaffel having shown much of a sense of humour about our
1399quest. If either was offended by my flippancy, or even noticed it, come to that, they gave no sign,
1400however. Yaffel merely gestured to the hololith, where the glowing green funnel was still projected
1401over the starfield.
1402'We've been able to refine our estimates,' he said, 'but only so far. Given the flow of the current
1403we're now in, our destination could be any one of these three systems, with a probability of
1404seventeen, twelve and thirty-two per cent respectively. Other, less likely, destinations are here.' A
1405rash of icons appeared throughout the cone, a few in planetary systems, the vast majority in the deep
1406gulf between them. As I regarded these, I felt a faint shiver of apprehension; if we ended up in the
1407void between the stars, and for some reason the warp engines failed to respond to Drumon's
1408ministrations, we would all surely die in the fathomless dark, centuries from succour even at the
1409best speed our vessel was capable of in the material realm.
1410'What if we return to the orkhold and re-enter the current after your calculations are complete?'
1411Gries asked, as calmly as if committing suicide like that was a perfectly reasonable proposal.
1412To my horror, Yaffel nodded. 'I've considered this,' he said, his tone so even that they might
1413merely have been discussing the weather, rather than condemning us all to certain death. All of a
1414sudden, making a run for it in a saviour pod was beginning to look positively attractive.
1415'My estimate of a ninety-seven per cent probability of success was predicated on us having done
1416so.'
1417'We'll have to lay over and resanctify the system before we try that,' Drumon said firmly. 'A lot of
1418the machine-spirits are still traumatised, and need to be healed before we can take the ship into
1419combat again.'
1420'So it looks as though we'll just have to carry on looking for the Spawn's next emergence point
1421for the time being,' I said, trying not to sound too relieved. If we found it, all well and good; either
1422the hulk would be there, or we'd carry on searching, and either way there'd be no reason to return to
1423an ork-infested hellhole. On the other hand, if we didn't, at least I'd have nine days or thereabouts to
1424find a plausible excuse to leave them to it - and failing that, there was always the pods. 'What are our
1425chances of success under the present circumstances?'
1426'No more than seventy-two per cent,' Yaffel said gloomily, and I resisted the temptation to throw
1427the nearest heavy object at him, with what I still consider a heroic feat of self-control. I'd come out
1428ahead on considerably longer odds than that, on innumerable occasions, and said so. If I'm honest, I
1429was almost giddy with relief, but still in sufficient control of my faculties to refrain from telling the
1430desiccated tech-priest precisely what I thought about his willingness to sacrifice the lot of us just to
1431tidy up his sums.
1432'Let us hope your confidence is justified, commissar,' Gries said dryly, and on that encouraging
1433note the meeting came to an end.
1434WITH SO MUCH at stake, it was hardly surprising that the next few weeks were more than a little
1435tense. I whiled away the time as best I could with one piece of makework after another, relishing my
1436daily exercise with the practice drones, and a couple of sparring sessions with Drumon, who
1437seemed as relieved to get away from his duties as I was. Though he never said so directly, I soon
1438inferred that the orks had left a considerable legacy of damage behind them, and the task of
1439coordinating the repairs was an onerous one. Despite my best efforts to ignore them, Yaffel's words
1440had left me feeling unsettled, and although I knew the chances of being dragged back to the orks'
1441domain on a suicidal attempt to make his calculations come out right were remote (practically nonexistent if I had anything to do with it), I couldn't shake a nagging sense of disquiet, which refused to
1442leave me entirely except when I was engaged in physical exercise.
1443Perhaps as a result of this, or perhaps because electrocuting a mob of orks seemed to have put
1444her in a better mood, I found myself spending more time with Mira again. I can't claim to have
1445enjoyed her society as much as I had done back in Fidelis, but her enthusiasm for mine seemed
1446undiminished, and as I've noted before, my opportunities for social interaction aboard the Revenant
1447were somewhat circumscribed. To be honest, I'd been a little wary of renewing our association at
1448first, a faint voice at the back of my mind still insisting that this was a bad idea, for reasons I
1449couldn't quite articulate, whenever I could be bothered to listen to it. But as the days passed, and she
1450kept the virago side of her personality under better control, I began to feel a little more comfortable
1451around her. Perhaps too much so; otherwise I'd certainly have paid more attention to the itching in
1452my palms, which continued to flare up from time to time in the middle of apparently innocuous
1453conversations.
1454There was one in particular which sticks in my mind, although the full significance of it didn't
1455really occur to me at the time. Spurred on by our recent encounter with the greenskins, I'd been
1456telling her a few colourful lies over a leisurely supper together about my supposedly glorious
1457campaign to liberate Perlia from their kindred, and been duly rewarded by oohs and aahs of wideeyed credulity in most of the right places - then she looked at me over the rim of her goblet as
1458though taking aim.
1459'Haven't you ever thought about doing something else with your life?' she asked, in the studiedly
1460neutral fashion she tended to adopt when trying to pretend she didn't care about the answer. I shook
1461my head, in some perplexity, completely taken aback.
1462'Haven't you?' I asked in return, knowing that my question was equally ridiculous. Mira had been
1463born into the ruling family of an Imperial world, destined since birth to take a hand in the
1464governance of it, and her education and upbringing had no doubt been predicated on that
1465assumption; she was no more in control of her own destiny than I was. From the day I'd been
1466earmarked as a future commissar by a schola progenium functionary with a twisted sense of
1467humour
1468[78]
1469, my destiny had been set in stone, just as surely as Mira's, but without the limitless
1470wealth which had no doubt made her adolescence a great deal more comfortable than mine.
1471'All the time,' she said, to my surprise, an unexpected air of wistfulness entering her tone. Then
1472she smiled, as if to make light of the revelation, and shrugged, setting up interesting oscillations in
1473the clinging gold fabric of her favourite gown - which still made her look like a joygirl if you
1474asked me. (Not that I considered that aspect of her appearance much of a disadvantage.) 'But I've
1475never had the chance.' She glanced slyly at me. 'Not until now.'
1476'Being offworld, you mean,' I said, managing to look as though I was interested without too
1477much difficulty. This was a happy knack I'd acquired early enough in life to make my time at the
1478schola more tolerable than it might otherwise have been, and which had served me well in my
1479subsequent career.
1480Mira nodded. 'Partly,' she agreed. She had a conspiratorial air about her now, as though she were
1481about to impart some intimate confidence and feared being overheard by eavesdropping servants.
1482Although since Jurgen was still the closest thing either of us had to domestic staff, and his presence
1483was pretty noticeable even if he was out of sight, I didn't think she had too much to worry about on
1484that score. 'It opens up a number of opportunities.'
1485'Does it?' I asked, unable for the life of me to see what she was driving at.
1486She nodded again. 'It does,' she confirmed, as though I'd grasped whatever she was blethering
1487about, and tacitly agreed to it. 'With the right consort beside me, my father is bound to confirm me
1488as his heir. Viridia will need strong leadership once the mess there has been cleaned up, and I mean
1489to provide it.'
1490'Well, good for you,' I said, trying not to smile as I finally grasped the real reason she'd
1491manoeuvred her way aboard our ship of fools. She was positioning herself to fend off any rival
1492claimants to the throne, and wanted to prove she'd go to any lengths to protect her home world. And
1493if she could bag herself a Space Marine to marry along the way, so much the better: the idea was
1494quite ludicrous, of course, but somehow quite charming in its naivety
1495[79]
1496.
1497'I can't think of a safer pair of hands.'
1498'I was hoping you'd say that,' Mira replied, smiling at me in a way I hadn't seen for a long time. I
1499returned it in kind, reflecting that this augured well for the subsequent progress of the evening, and
1500I'm bound to say that I was far from disappointed
1501FOURTEEN
1502I DIDN'T HAVE long to enjoy the sudden change in Mira's demeanour, although she certainly
1503became more pleasant company after that. It was almost like reliving the earliest period of our
1504association back on Viridia, and although I couldn't help wondering now and again just what lay
1505behind it, particularly on the occasions I noticed her staring at me like a kroot at some choice piece
1506of carrion, for the most part I was simply grateful for the improvement. So marked was it, in fact,
1507that I was taken by surprise when a momentary flash of her old petulance surfaced one morning, just
1508after Jurgen had knocked on the door of my quarters to inform me that Gries had requested my
1509presence on the bridge at my earliest convenience.
1510'Do you really have to go rushing off like a lackey every time someone sends you a message?'
1511she asked, as I scrambled into my uniform, considered the state of my cap, which, despite Jurgen's
1512best efforts, was still looking the worse for wear, and decided it would just have to do. 'He said at
1513your convenience, not right this minute.'
1514'It's the same thing,' I told her, tilting it to hide the worst of the damage and checking the effect in
1515the mirror. 'You might be able to keep people waiting as long as you like, but I can't. That was just a
1516polite way of phrasing an order.' Deciding I was now as presentable as I was ever going to be, I
1517turned back, to find her expression softening again.
1518'That won't be the case forever,' she said, and I smiled back, touched by her evident faith in the
1519upward trajectory of my future career. (Which has indeed left me in a position to keep people
1520waiting as long as I care to, and has done for some decades now, although the realities of my job
1521mean that it's still generally impolitic to indulge the impulse.)
1522'I'll be back as soon as I can,' I promised, and left as briskly as protocol demanded. It was
1523pointless asking if she wanted to accompany me; even if she could be persuaded to get moving,
1524which with Mira was always problematic at best, the summons had been for me alone. It was entirely
1525possible that a separate message had been dispatched to her own quarters, of course, in the interest
1526of diplomacy, but she was so unlikely to respond that it wouldn't have surprised me to learn that
1527Gries had simply given up even the pretence of attempting to include her in whatever decisions
1528needed to be made.
1529'Commissar.' The Space Marine captain nodded an affable greeting to me as I strode onto the
1530bridge, before returning his attention to the shipmaster, with whom he was in animated conversation
1531about matters which meant nothing to me.
1532If I'd had any lingering doubts about what I was doing here they were dispelled almost at once, as
1533my eye fell on Yaffel and Drumon, who were standing by the hololith, examining the star chart with
1534every sign of satisfaction. I ambled over to join them, and the Techmarine glanced up as I
1535approached.
1536'Commissar,' he said, standing aside to allow me an unimpeded view of the display. 'Just in time.'
1537'So I see,' I replied, taking in the familiar star chart in a single glance. One of the three systems
1538Yaffel had pointed out at our previous meeting was illuminated more brightly than any of the others,
1539and the green funnel had shrunk again, to leave the icon apparently stuck in its narrowing throat. I
1540nodded an acknowledgement to Yaffel. 'Congratulations, magos. It seems your calculations were as
1541reliable as ever.'
1542'By the grace of the Omnissiah,' the tech-priest agreed, contriving to project an impression of
1543smugness despite the monotone in which the words were delivered, and the impassive expression
1544generally considered appropriate to one of his calling. 'We've detected another weakness in the
1545interface between realities, consistent with those we recorded earlier in the voyage.'
1546'Which should put us about here,' Drumon added, prodding at the icon I'd already noticed with his
1547servo-arm. 'The Serendipita System. Within the usual margins of error, of course.'
1548'Of course.' I nodded, to show I was paying attention, and tried not to reflect that predicting an
1549emergence point from within the warp was always little more than an exercise in wishful thinking;
1550although our Navigator had proven remarkably able in that regard, which no doubt accounted for
1551the fact that he or she had been engaged by a Space Marine vessel in the first place
1552[80]
1553. Then
1554something else struck me. 'We've always emerged blind before. How can you be so sure this is the
1555system we're coming out in?'
1556I should have known better, of course, and spent most of the next ten minutes nodding politely
1557while Yaffel sprayed technical terms around, and wondering if his augmetic enhancements really
1558had left him without the need to inhale, or whether it simply sounded like that to my reeling
1559eardrums. Eventually he ground to a halt.
1560'Something of an oversimplification,' Drumon observed sardonically, 'but accurate in its
1561essentials.' Then, apparently to ensure I realised he was joking, he added, 'It seems the most likely
1562candidate, given the flow of the currents our ship has been following.'
1563'I see,' I said, wondering why Yaffel couldn't have been equally succinct. 'Is it an Imperial
1564system?'
1565'Absolutely Imperial,' Drumon assured me, with one of the faint smiles I'd grown more adept at
1566noticing since we'd become sparring partners. 'One primary world, seven others supporting
1567settlements, and thirty-eight void stations. Two of which are starports with dockyard facilities.'
1568Which clearly accounted for his buoyant mood. I began to feel a sense of growing disquiet.
1569'That implies a sizeable population,' I pointed out. 'Which means it's the perfect place for the
1570'stealers to spread their taint.'
1571'Quite so,' Gries agreed, turning to look in our direction, and reminding me once again of the
1572phenomenal hearing with which the Emperor had seen fit to endow him. 'You can rest assured we'll
1573be prepared for any acts of treachery.'
1574'I'm glad to hear it,' I replied, though I felt a lot less easy than I tried to sound. We'd been
1575ambushed almost as soon as we'd arrived in the Viridia System, and although the Revenant had
1576shrugged off the attack easily enough, Drumon had made it abundantly clear that she was in no fit
1577state to go into battle again. And Viridia had probably been infected by no more than a handful of
1578implanted hosts; if the entire brood aboard the Spawn of Damnation had been roused, and able to
1579rampage through the population virtually unchecked, the Serendipita System could already be lost
1580to humanity. If that were the case, as my increasingly pessimistic imaginings were halfway to
1581convincing me, then it would be like our arrival in the orkhold all over again.
1582So, as you'll readily appreciate, as we all turned to the pict screen which relayed an image of the
1583universe outside the hull, the lingering nausea of our transition to the materium was the least of my
1584worries.
1585In the event, I must confess, I found it something of an anticlimax. Instead of the marauding
1586warships I'd steeled myself to expect, there was nothing to be seen in any direction but the
1587reassuring glow of the stars. None of the pinpricks of light appeared to be moving, which came as a
1588further relief; if they had, they could only be vessels of some kind. Of course the auspex operator
1589had far more sophisticated senses to rely on than my eyes, and a moment later he confirmed my
1590immediate impression.
1591'All clear,' he reported, in the same clipped monotone the whole ship's crew appeared to affect
1592while on duty. 'Commencing detailed scan.'
1593'How far out are we?' I asked. My paranoia was as acute as ever, leaving me convinced that the
1594system was going to turn out to be another firewasp nest sooner or later, and I wanted to be sure
1595we'd have plenty of warning if trouble came looking for us. None of the speckled lights seemed any
1596brighter than the others, but I was a seasoned enough traveller not to find that strange: at the kind of
1597distances starships usually entered and left the warp, the local sun would be so far away as to appear
1598no larger than any other star in the firmament.
1599'A little beyond the main bulk of the halo,' Drumon said, a thoughtful expression crossing his
1600face, as he no doubt reached the same conclusion I just had. Innumerable pieces of cosmic flotsam
1601would be clogging our auspex receptors, which meant an attacking flotilla would be all but
1602undetectable at a distance - at least if they had the sense to power down and coast, igniting their
1603engines only for the final attack run.
1604'That seems a bit far,' I said, determined to seem at ease despite the apprehension gnawing away
1605at me. Starships would usually shoulder their way back into the real galaxy as close to a system's
1606primary as they dared, to minimise the amount of time required to coast in to their destination;
1607something I'd come to appreciate on the long, slow journey Jurgen and I had made from the halo to
1608Perlia aboard a saviour pod.
1609Yaffel didn't actually shrug, but he contrived to give a passable impression of having done so as
1610he leaned across the hololith table, oscillating slightly in his usual fashion. 'The hulk is drifting
1611randomly, and we simply followed it through to the materium at the point from which it emerged,'
1612he pointed out, in the manner of one of my old schola tutors wearily explaining the blindingly
1613obvious to an indifferent cadre of progeni for about the thousandth time in his career. (A sensation
1614I'm beginning to sympathise with, now I'm the one trying to get the young pups to pay attention.)
1615'Which might mean it hasn't been in-system long enough for the genestealers to infect anyone,' I
1616said, feeling the first faint stirrings of hope since our arrival. Yaffel looked at me blankly, so I went
1617on to explain. 'All those ork ships were clustered around the last emergence point, weren't they?'
1618The tech-priest nodded. 'I suppose so. What of it?'
1619'It must mean the Spawn was there just before we were,' I pointed out, conscious of the irony of
1620the sudden reversal of our positions. 'A flotilla that size couldn't have been mobilised to intercept us
1621that quickly. Those ships must have been going after the hulk, and arrived too late - just in time to
1622target us as we emerged from the warp in its wake.'
1623'A sound inference,' Gries agreed, and Drumon nodded.
1624'Which means we should be concentrating our search efforts in this area.' He manipulated the
1625controls of the hololith, muttering incantations under his breath, then hit the display three times with
1626the heel of his hand to stabilise the image. The long-familiar starfield disappeared, to be replaced by
1627a simulation of the stellar system we'd arrived in. A scattering of crimson dots picked out the
1628Imperial population centres, confined for the most part to the moons of the largest gas giant, while a
1629single gold rune marked the position of the Revenant. A three-dimensional grid fanned out in front
1630of it, reaching almost halfway to the sun in the middle of the display.
1631Yaffel studied it for a moment, then nodded. 'I concur. If the commissar's deduction is correct,
1632which seems extremely likely, the probability of finding the Spawn of Damnation within the
1633demarcated volume is approximately ninety-nine point two seven per cent.'
1634'I'm pleased to hear it,' I said, moving aside to make room for Gries, who, like all Astartes,
1635required a considerable amount of space to stand in. I liked the sound of that a great deal more than
1636the tech-priest's last set of sums. Even more cheering, from my point of view, was the fact that the
1637gas giant and its attendant cluster of icons was on the far side of the sun, way beyond the area of
1638space Drumon had picked out, and even the closest outpost of civilisation
1639[81] was well outside its
1640boundaries. It was still possible that a scavenger vessel of some kind had stumbled across the hulk,
1641of course, as had appeared to be the case on Viridia, but even that worst-case contingency could be
1642contained if we were quick enough. Despite a lifetime's experience that such feelings were merely
1643the prelude to the discovery of a hitherto unsuspected greater threat, I found myself smiling
1644confidently. 'It seems things are going our way at last.'
1645DESPITE THE PERSISTENT little voice at the back of my head which continued to insist that things
1646could only be going this well to lull us into a false sense of security, I must confess I found myself
1647beginning to relax over the next few days. The search for our quarry was as painstaking and timeconsuming as on every previous occasion, with the obvious exception of the time we were being
1648distracted by orks - the sheer amount of debris in Serendipita's halo was hampering our auspexes
1649just as much as I'd expected it to do. This time, however, I had something productive to get on with,
1650and threw myself into the work with an enthusiasm which surprised me a little.
1651We had, of course, transmitted the news of our arrival to Serendipita
1652[82]
1653, and the presence of a
1654Space Marine vessel within their borders had created about as much excitement as you might expect,
1655especially once the coin dropped, and the upper echelons of the System Defence Fleet realised that
1656our mission meant a clear and present danger to their home world. Accordingly, a delegation of
1657local worthies had been dispatched to meet us; and since diplomacy was hardly Gries's strong point,
1658I'd found myself called upon to liaise with them in his stead.
1659To my faint surprise, however, Mira didn't seem to share my enthusiasm for this development,
1660seeming, if anything, positively put out by it. 'I don't see why you have to do all their work for
1661them,' she said, echoes of the pettishness I remembered all too vividly colouring her voice for the
1662first time in weeks.
1663I shrugged, and sipped my tanna, while she tore a chunk out of a freshly buttered florn cake with
1664her teeth and masticated it savagely. We were enjoying what I sincerely hoped was about to become
1665a rare quiet interlude, before the heavy shuttle bearing the Reclaimers' latest guests arrived, and I
1666felt it best to keep the peace if I could. 'I don't really have a choice,' I pointed out reasonably,
1667transferring one from the salver to my plate while I still had the chance, and topping it with a
1668spoonful of ackenberry preserve. I'd had ample opportunity to observe that Mira's consumption of
1669foodstuffs gained momentum in direct proportion to how affronted she felt, and experience inclined
1670me to safeguard my own provender. 'My orders were to liaise between the Reclaimers and the
1671Imperial Guard, and since there's a Guard garrison on Serendipita, I'd be derelict in my duty if I
1672hadn't contacted them at the earliest opportunity.' And thereby laid the groundwork for my passage
1673back to Coronus, as soon as I could detach myself from this increasingly pointless assignment,
1674although no one needed to know that just yet.
1675'I can see that,' Mira conceded, with a conciliatory tilt of the head and a faint spray of crumbs. 'I
1676just don't see why you have to waste your time with the rest of them.'
1677'I'd rather not,' I told her truthfully. 'But they're all arriving together. Splitting them up isn't really
1678an option.'
1679'No.' She shook her head, and I began to realise she probably understood the situation better than
1680I did: after all, she'd grown up surrounded by competing factions jockeying for position, all
1681needing to be kept working together for the common good. 'It'd create too much division, and if
1682we're going to keep the genestealers from overrunning Serendipita, we all need to be singing from
1683the same psalter.'
1684'You'd make a good commissar,' I said, only half-joking, and she smiled at me across the table.
1685'You'd make a good regent,' she said. Then she turned her head, the smile sliding from her face,
1686as the familiar odour of my aide thickened the room, followed a moment later by its source. 'I told
1687you we weren't to be disturbed.'
1688'Pardon the intrusion, sir,' Jurgen said, addressing me directly, with the exaggeratedly formal
1689tones he tended to employ while sticking rigidly to protocol in the faces of irate officers, then
1690turning his head slightly to add a perfunctory ''miss'', before returning his attention entirely to me.
1691'Captain Gries would like you to join him at the ventral docking port. The diplomatic shuttle from
1692Serendipita's due in about ten minutes.'
1693'Thank you, Jurgen,' I said. 'Please convey my respects to the captain. I'll meet you down there in
1694a moment.'
1695'Very good, sir.' He saluted, no doubt to underline that this was military business which
1696superseded whatever Mira might think about his unexpected arrival, and marched out in a vaguely
1697martial slouch.
1698I turned back to Mira, whose expression now looked about as warm as a Valhallan winter, and
1699whatever quip I'd been about to make to lighten the mood scurried back to the safety of my synapses
1700unvoiced.
1701'Are you serious?' she asked, in incredulous tones. 'What in the name of the Throne do you want
1702that malodorous halfwit with you for?'
1703'Because he's my aide,' I pointed out, with a little more asperity than I'd intended. 'Protocol
1704demands it. And he diverts attention from me.' Which meant I could size up the new arrivals while
1705they were nicely distracted, instead of being gawped at like a sideshow mutant because of my
1706ridiculous reputation.
1707'I can believe that,' Mira conceded, and the frost in her tone began to thaw. She rose and began to
1708make her way towards the door. 'I'd better leave you to your preparations.'
1709'I'm pretty much prepared already,' I admitted, picking up my much abused cap and sticking it on
1710my head without further thought. I'd given up trying to position it to minimise the damage, and if
1711any of the Serendipitans didn't like the look of it, they'd just have to lump it.
1712To my surprise, Mira turned back, reached up and adjusted the position slightly, then regarded
1713the effect with a faint smile. 'That's better,' she said. 'Makes you look dangerous, rather than just
1714knocked about a bit.'
1715I glanced at the mirror to see what she'd done, and found myself staring at the reflection of a hard
1716bitten warrior who'd borrowed my face. 'Thank you,' I said, astonished by the transformation. 'How
1717did you do that?'
1718Mira smiled, all trace of her previous bad mood gone. 'It's not what you wear,' she said, 'it's the
1719way you wear it. Every woman knows that.' Then she turned and resumed her progress towards the
1720door.
1721'Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take my own advice. See you in the docking bay.'
1722'You're going too?' I asked, and her smile spread.
1723'You said it yourself,' she told me. 'Protocol demands it.'
1724THE HANGAR BAYS used by the Thunderhawks were all positioned on the flanks of the ship,
1725where they could best be covered by the broadside batteries when deploying under fire, so this was
1726my first sight of the ventral docks protruding from the Revenant's keel. There were two bays in all,
1727set back to back and separated by heavy blast doors, which Drumon told me could be retracted to
1728combine the two chambers if required. I had no idea when this was likely to be, having seen no sign
1729of anything the size of an Imperial Guard drop-ship in service with the Astartes, but was happy to
1730take his word for it
1731[83]
1732. I suppose if I'd cared I could have asked him for more detail, but he was
1733engaged in conversation with Gries and his bodyguards for most of the wait, and it wouldn't have
1734been polite to interrupt.
1735At any event, both bays were accessed from open space by the usual arrangement of airtight
1736doors, thick enough to be rammed by a Chimera without taking a dent, which closed off the end
1737opposite the bulkhead separating them. From the observation gallery running along one side of
1738both, and protected from decompression by a handswidth of armourcrys, it was pretty obvious
1739which one was soon to receive our guests: the mighty portal had been cranked open, revealing the
1740star-speckled velvet of eternal night beyond, while the other chamber was still sealed and
1741pressurised.
1742'Impressive,' Mira commented quietly in my ear, her perfume beginning to displace the earthier
1743scent of Jurgen, and I started, having remained unaware of her approach.
1744'Very,' I agreed, turning to look at her. 'Every millimetre the diplomat.' To my unexpressed relief
1745she'd dispensed with the joy-girl outfit, replacing it with a formal gown of indigo hue, which was
1746echoed by the soft slippers she'd employed to sneak up on me. But then, I suppose, matching her
1747appearance to the occasion was a skill she'd grown up with, not unlike my own talent for
1748dissembling.
1749'I'm glad you approve,' she said, with every appearance of sincerity. 'Have I missed much?'
1750I shook my head. 'Not yet,' I assured her, with a nod towards the vacant hangar bay. Something
1751was clearly going on down there though, void-suited Chapter serfs scurrying about on the deck
1752plates, so the arrival of the shuttle was undoubtedly imminent. A fresh burst of movement caught my
1753eye, and I nodded. 'Oh, nice touch.'
1754Gries and the other Astartes were entering the chamber through an airlock almost directly below
1755us, and beginning to take up their positions, ready to greet the new arrivals, completely untroubled
1756by the lack of anything to breathe down there. The impression made on the delegates, watching
1757through the viewports of their transport while the chamber pressurised, would undoubtedly be a
1758strong one, reinforcing the air of superhuman invulnerability Space Marines tended to project as a
1759matter of course.
1760'He's more of a diplomat than he thinks,' Mira agreed, as the shuttle finally appeared in the
1761rectangle of star-spattered darkness, and coasted inside as silently as a nocturnal raptor swooping
1762on a rodent. It was larger than I'd expected, closer in size to a bulk cargo lifter than the Aquila I'd
1763anticipated, and I began to realise that perhaps Gries had had the right idea in keeping as far away
1764from its passengers as possible.
1765'Looks like a bit of a crowd,' Jurgen observed, and I nodded, calculating rapidly. You could have
1766fitted a platoon inside it quite comfortably, along with their Chimeras, but if I was any judge a vessel
1767that extensively ornamented would have been designed with its passengers' comfort a far higher
1768priority than the efficient use of space. Even allowing for individual staterooms and a fairly
1769commodious common area, though, there would still be room for a couple of dozen at least.
1770'About thirty, I would think,' Mira said, and it suddenly dawned on me that she was probably a
1771great deal more familiar with this type of vessel than anyone else on board. She pointed to a detailed
1772mosaic of thermal tiles wrapped around the blunt nose of the ship. 'That's the governor's personal
1773heraldry, so we can expect that whoever's on board has a fair bit of pull.'
1774'Wouldn't we have been informed if the governor was coming?' I asked, and Mira shrugged,
1775which I always found agreeably diverting.
1776'Not necessarily,' she said, 'but I doubt it. He's probably running round in little circles back on
1777Serendipita, making sure any obvious signs of corruption or misgovernment are tidied away before
1778the Astartes arrive.' Then she smiled, in a self-deprecating fashion which quite suited her. 'It's what
1779I'd do.'
1780'But he put his personal shuttle at the disposal of the delegation,' I said. 'How very generous of
1781him.'
1782Mira smiled again, either at my apparent naivety, or the thinly veiled sarcasm. 'Generosity has
1783nothing to do with it,' she said. 'It shows he's taking the Reclaimers seriously, and willing to get
1784involved, but keeps him conveniently distanced from any decisions made here which might cause
1785trouble at home.' Her voice held a faintly admiring edge. 'He plays the game well.'
1786'Let's hope you get the chance to tell him that, before the genestealers eat his system out from the
1787inside,' I said. We were certainly off to a good start, but my innate pessimism, forged in the crucible
1788of far too many unpleasant surprises just when we thought we'd got on top of things, was refusing to
1789let go of the conviction that the situation was hardly likely to remain as straightforward as it had
1790been.
1791Jurgen nodded. 'Doesn't do to turn your back on them,' he said, no doubt mindful of our
1792experiences on Keffia.
1793'I don't imagine we'll be doing that,' Mira said.
1794'Certainly not,' I agreed. A chill mist was beginning to drift against the armourcrys by now, as the
1795thickening atmosphere in the docking bay was chilled to the temperature of space, and a barely
1796perceptible thrumming was growing audible, as the air became dense enough to transmit the sound
1797of the pumps feeding it into the cavernous chamber. I began to lead the way towards the staircase
1798leading down to the airlock. 'Our first priority has to be assessing the threat, and the best way to
1799combat it with the assets we have in-system.' I'd timed it nicely, the outer doors of the airlock
1800grinding open to admit the diminishing howl of the shuttle's engines
1801[84]
1802, as the pilot powered them
1803down.
1804'Commissar. Commendably prompt,' Gries rumbled, as the boarding ramp began to descend. If
1805he was surprised to see Mira with me, his helmet hid it, and he acknowledged her presence with a
1806simple 'Envoy.'
1807'Captain,' she responded, with a perfunctory curtsey. 'Whose company are we to expect the
1808pleasure of?'
1809Pleasure wasn't exactly the thing I was anticipating, I must admit. I wanted to talk to the real
1810soldiers among the delegation, which basically meant the Imperial Guard officers, along with the
1811PDF and SDF representatives for their local knowledge. I was already certain that the vast majority
1812would turn out to be Administratum drones and members of the local aristocracy instead, though,
1813keener to boost their position by association with the Astartes than to make any meaningful
1814contribution to the defence of the system.
1815Gries evidently felt much the same way, judging by the curtness of his reply. 'Omnissiah knows,'
1816he said. 'Or how many of them will have something relevant to say.'
1817'Then if I may make a suggestion,' Mira said brightly, 'perhaps Ciaphas should just liaise between
1818you and the military people, like he's supposed to, while I keep the hangers-on out of the way. I've
1819nothing practical to contribute to the strategic planning in any case, but I do know how to talk to
1820politicians without yawning.'
1821'That would be helpful,' Gries agreed, and I nodded, concealing my surprise as best I could.
1822'It would indeed,' I concurred, wondering what would be in it for her, and deciding that right now
1823I didn't really care. The important thing was to stop Serendipita from going the way of her home
1824world, and too many others along the Eastern Arm for comfort.
1825'Good.' Mira smiled at me. 'Then let's try to look as though they're all welcome, shall we?'
1826Editorial Note:
1827As usual, though he mentions a few of the astrographic details in passing, Cain is vague at best
1828about conditions in the Serendipita System. Accordingly, I've inserted the following extract here, in
1829the hope that it may make things a little clearer.
1830From Interesting Places and Tedious People: A Wanderer's Waybook, by Jerval Sekara,
1831145.M39.
1832SERENDIPITA IS WELL named, for it does indeed come as a delightful surprise to the warp-weary
1833traveller; a small constellation of habitable worlds, though, it must be said, with varying degrees of
1834comfort, orbiting a single gas giant of quite prodigious size. So large, indeed, that it radiates light
1835and warmth in the manner of a small star
1836[85]
1837, rendering its half-dozen planet-sized moons tolerable
1838for the hardy folk who make their homes here. The most favoured of these is Serendipita itself,
1839which enjoys a temperate climate, abundant oceans and two small polar caps. Rendered the capital
1840world of the system by virtue of supporting the bulk of its population, and having been the first orb
1841settled by humanity, it's a pleasant enough sphere to tempt even the most jaded wayfarer into
1842lingering for a while.
1843Should its charms pall, however, the other moons of this singular primary are also worth
1844visiting, with the exception of Tarwen, the industrial centre of this curious conglomeration of
1845worlds. Tarwen is as aesthetically unpleasing as its inhabitants, who, like their home, are grimy and
1846dour, and the best that can be said for the place is that its existence allows Serendipita itself to
1847remain charmingly unspoilt, save for those little comforts of civilisation which only seem
1848important when unobtainable. In a similar fashion, much of the agriculture supporting the far-flung
1849population is relegated to other moons, although Serendipita does boast some tolerably picturesque
1850rural hinterlands serving her larger cities.
1851It should be noted in passing that other centres of population exist in the wider stellar system, but
1852contain nothing of interest, being devoted entirely to mining, commerce or other such occupations
1853of the artisan class, while a remarkable number of ne'er-do-wells continually ply the magnificent
1854ring system and innumerable lesser moons around Serendipita in search of exploitable resources
1855and other plunder; not the least of which are the ramshackle vessels generally employed in this
1856pursuit, and which come to grief about as often as one might expect given the inordinate number of
1857hazards to navigation in so thick a belt of debris. From the surface of the habitable worlds, however,
1858the ring is most notable for the breathtaking spectacle it affords those seeking diversion after
1859nightfall