'Of course not, commissar,' he said, his equanimity at least partially restored by the belated courtesy, albeit one that had arrived by proxy. The look he gave Mira's oblivious back as he left, however, made it abundantly clear that the slight wouldn't be forgotten easily or soon.

  'And I've no messages concerning the young lady.'

  'Thank you,' I said, as he disappeared down the corridor, the door hissing closed behind him. I picked up the drink he'd prepared and sipped it gratefully, regarding Mira gravely through the steam. 'Please don't treat Jurgen like one of your household servants,' I said, as soon as I was sure he was out of earshot. 'He's an Imperial Guardsman, and the aide of a commissar, with an exemplary record of courage in the face of the enemy. He deserves a bit of respect.'

  Mira stared at me, her jaw working for a moment like a ruminating bovine, and the sullen expression I hadn't seen since the day of our first meeting smeared itself across her face. Then, as abruptly as the mist burning off from an early-morning hab spire, it had gone, displaced by another jaw-cracking yawn.

  'Of course,' she said. 'Sorry. Not enough sleep.' Then the gamine grin was back. 'It was worth it, though.'

  Perhaps fortunately I was spared having to find a reply to that by the return of Jurgen, who ushered the tray-bearing form of Gladden through the door, with an airy wave in Mira's direction. The odour of recaf began to mingle with the others in the room, which was beginning to seem decidedly cramped by now, despite the high ceiling.

  'She's in there,' he said perfunctorily, then returned his attention to me.

  'I found Gladden outside, sir, looking for the young lady, so I took the liberty of directing him in here. Seeing as she seemed in so much of a hurry.'

  'Thank you, Jurgen,' Mira said, with a smile which surprised me almost as much as it evidently did my aide. 'That was very thoughtful of you. Especially as I'd been so unforgivably rude. I'm afraid I'm not at my best when I've just woken up.'

  'That's all right, miss,' Jurgen said, fully mollified by the unexpected apology. 'You should see the commissar first thing in the morning.'

  'Quite,' I said, while Mira turned away from him, suppressing a fit of the giggles with manifest difficulty. 'Was there anything else, Jurgen?'

  'Not for the moment, sir,' my aide said, retreating from the room with an unmistakably self-satisfied air, while Mira fell on the recaf like a kroot on fresh meat.

  Gladden coughed delicately. 'The brother-captain extends greetings to the Viridian envoy in the name of the Reclaimers, and suggests you may find a visit to the bridge informative, madam.'

  'Then in the name of the Viridian Hegemony, I reciprocate his salutations, and will attend upon him with all due dispatch,' Mira responded, with a remarkably straight face.

  'I'll be along too, as soon I've finished my tea,' I said, refilling the tanna bowl.

  Gladden looked mildly disconcerted for a moment, but recovered quickly. 'Then I'll convey the news of your imminent arrivals,' he said, and left the room as quickly as he could without appearing to hurry.

  Mira turned an accusing eye on me. 'Ciaphas, that was mean,' she said, not quite succeeding in hiding her amusement. 'He was only doing his job.' She lifted the lid from a side plate, next to her recaf, and studied the lumps of reconstituted protein thus revealed with a faintly suspicious frown, before stuffing one into her mouth with a resigned shrug.

  'I suppose you're right,' I said, feeling as though I'd been somehow caught out by her. 'But I've never been comfortable with all that flowery protocol stuff.' I'd been getting a lot more used to it since being attached to brigade headquarters, of course, which had meant attending more tedious diplomatic functions than I'd ever thought possible back in my early days with the 12th Field Artillery, but I much preferred people to either say what they meant, or lie to me in plain, simple language. Still do, if I'm honest, although I suppose it was good practice for much later on in my career, when I found myself attached to the lord general's staff, and having to hack my way through thickets of polite obfuscatory verbiage on an almost daily basis. Luckily, by that time, my fraudulent reputation was so widespread I was able to sidestep the game entirely, playing up to my image of the bluff man of action, so I never had to learn to talk like that. Which was probably just as well, or my brain would have had to shut down in sheer self-defence.

  Mira shrugged, failing to offer me any of the nutritionally balanced whatever-it-was she was throwing down her neck, and washed the final lump away with a chug of recaf. 'How do you think I feel?' she asked rhetorically. 'I grew up thinking that sort of soil improver was plain Gothic.'

  'Then I'm amazed you turned out as well adjusted as you did,' I said, wondering for a moment just how sarcastic I was being, but Mira appeared to take the remark at face value.

  'It's not been easy,' she remarked complacently, and brushed a few crumbs from her inevitably exposed cleavage. 'Do you think this is a little louche for visiting the bridge?'

  I examined the day gown she'd donned with a critical eye. It was cut from some shimmering gold fabric, which seemed to be held up by nothing more than willpower, and moulded itself snugly around whatever it touched. 6 The effect was certainly striking, particularly if the one you were after was that of a highly priced courtesan, but hardly suited to a military environment. I was sure the Astartes and the Mechanicus drones wouldn't be distracted at all, if they even noticed it, but the ship and its defences were in the hands of flesh-and-blood mortals, who might find their attention wandering at a critical moment, so pleasant as the view was in the abstract...

  'Possibly,' I temporised. 'Perhaps something a little more businesslike would be better.'

  'Why, Ciaphas Cain.' Mira grinned at me again, with a coquettish tilt to her head, which made her look more like a fifty-credit joy-girl than ever. 'I do believe you're jealous.' Then, before I could gather my wits to do anything more than gape in astonishment, she undulated out of the room.

  TEN

  BY THE TIME Mira returned, rather more suitably attired in what she told me was one of her hunting outfits, I'd managed to convince myself that she'd been joking. After all, the very idea of me being resentful of other men appreciating her physical attributes was ludicrous enough to begin with, let alone the fact that most of the potential rivals for her affections aboard the Revenant would either have been tech-priests or Space Marines, and therefore out of the running. Which left only the serfs, who I doubted she'd even consider in that regard, given her typically aristocratic tendency to view the lower orders as little more than a refined type of servitor which didn't dribble lubricants on the carpet, and Jurgen, who was hardly the stuff a maiden's dreams were made of, unless she'd eaten too much cheese before turning in.

  'Very suitable,' I complimented her, having had no idea until now that her wardrobe contained anything even remotely practical. It had definitely risen to the occasion this time, though, providing a jacket and trousers in muted colours, and a stout pair of boots, all of which lent her an air of businesslike efficiency, without overstating the effect. Fortunately, she appeared to have left the fowling piece that went with it at home.

  Mira pulled a face. 'It's all a bit dowdy, if you ask me,' she said, examining the effect critically in a nearby mirror. 'Perhaps I should try again.'

  'We're expected on the bridge,' I said, mindful of the length of time she'd already wasted rummaging through her luggage, and leaned in to straighten my cap in the looking glass she'd appropriated. Jurgen handed me my weapon belt. 'We can't keep our hosts waiting any longer,' I went on, checking the power levels in the laspistol and the chainsword's motivator cells, before fastening it into place. 'It wouldn't be polite or diplomatic.'

  'Says the man who thinks ''tact'' means ''nailed down'',' Mira said, following me out into the corridor. At least she wasn't arguing about it, though, which I suppose was something.

  'I'm a soldier,' I said, taking refuge behind my public persona. Something was getting to her, that much was obvious, but I couldn't for the life of me see what it was. 'That means I take my duties seriously.' Whenever there was a good chance that someone was watching me, anyway.

  'You can be really pompous sometimes, do you know that?' Mira asked, in the tone of voice women use when they neither want nor expect an answer, and strode off ahead of me looking sulkier than ever. I remembered enough of the layout of the Revenant to find my way to the bridge without difficulty, and fortunately, by the time we got there, either Mira's mood had improved, or she was practising her diplomatic skills again. As I'd expected, the warren of corridors had proven sufficiently daunting for her to have rejoined me without a word a few moments after her inexplicable burst of bad temper, and she seemed to be on her best behaviour as soon as we were in the presence of our hosts once more.

  'Commissar. You are prompt, as always,' Gries greeted me, politely and inaccurately as we entered the bridge, and Drumon looked up from a huddle of tech-priests he was conferring with next to the hololith just long enough to nod a greeting in my direction. Mira gave me a sharp look, as though I'd somehow contrived to upstage her on purpose. 'Milady DuPanya. Your presence is appreciated.'

  'But not that much, apparently,' she muttered sotto voce, apparently forgetting the preternaturally keen senses with which the Emperor had seen fit to endow his chosen warriors. If either of the Astartes present overheard her, however, they were too polite, or indifferent, to respond.

  'Are the last of your combat teams aboard yet?' I asked, keen to show that I was taking an interest, and Gries nodded.

  'They are,' he assured me. 'Squad Trosque completed the cleansing of the forge complex on Asteroid 459 while you were sleeping, and their Thunderhawk docked a few moments ago. Nothing remains to be done beyond the mopping up of a few isolated remnants of the infection and the restoration of good governance, both tasks for which the Imperial Guard seem admirably suited.'

  'I concur,' I said, although being far more familiar with the way the Guard worked than he was, I felt rather less sanguine than the Reclaimers' captain about how easy the job would turn out to be. 1

  'Then it appears my people owe yours a considerable debt of gratitude,' Mira said, with a formal tilt of the head to the towering Space Marine, who turned his own to look at her as though one of the chairs had just spoken.

  'Our service to the Emperor is reward enough,' he said, 'although your consideration is appreciated.'

  'I'm pleased to hear it,' Mira replied dryly.

  'Are we under way, then?' I asked, feeling faintly foolish at having to ask. The barely perceptible thrumming of the Revenant's engines had become so familiar to me in the course of our voyage to Viridia that I hadn't noticed it since boarding, although it was certainly there, a comforting presence in the background. They would have been idling while it was in orbit, of course, ticking over just sufficiently to provide power to feed the innumerable machine-spirits on whose health the vessel depended, and I listened hard, trying to determine if the note had deepened at all; but if it had, I wasn't able to tell the difference.

  'We are,' the shipmaster informed me from his control throne.

  I was a little surprised, but apparently questions regarding the functioning of the ship were delegated to him automatically by his masters, which was no bad thing; I'd hate to be aboard a vessel in combat whose captain had to refer every tactical decision to a higher authority. 'We'll be entering the warp at the designated material coordinates in approximately seven hours.'

  'Six hours, fifty-four minutes and twelve point three one four seconds,' Magos Yaffel put in sharply from his position by the hololith.

  'As I've explained, timing is absolutely crucial if we're to enter the warp currents in this particular region of space and time in precisely the right configuration to catch the fastest-flowing portion of the stream.'

  'We'll catch it, magos,' the shipmaster assured him, 'Omnissiah willing.' Then, to my surprise, he made the sign of the cogwheel, which the tech-priests and Astartes present all echoed.

  'Forgive my ignorance,' I said, approaching the hololith, 'but if we're merely going to be following the same current as the space hulk, how can we hope to catch up with it? Won't we be travelling at the same rate?'

  'A very astute question,' Yaffel said, in the manner of a born didact pouncing on the opportunity to expound on his favourite subject. 'But the situation isn't as hopeless as you might suppose. Don't forget that the Spawn of Damnation is drifting, while the Revenant is moving under power. That means we can correct our attitude and orientation to the current, to optimise the flow around our Geller field.'

  'And in simple language for the rest of us?' Mira muttered, then had the grace to blush as Drumon answered the comment she'd clearly believed to be inaudible.

  'I gather the sport of waveboarding 2 is popular in some of the coastal regions of your world?' he asked, and Mira nodded, although Emperor alone knows how he discovered this. 'Then think of us as riding a waveboard, while the hulk just bobs about as the Emperor sees fit. Does that make things clearer?'

  'I suppose so,' Mira said, as politely as she could. 'Thanks.'

  'In addition,' Yaffel said, trying not to sound miffed at the interruption, 'the Spawn of Damnation will be returning to the materium at random intervals, for indeterminate periods of time, some of which will be in the order of years. We, on the other hand, can enter and leave the warp at will. As soon as we determine that it's not at a given exit point, we can re-enter the immaterium and continue our pursuit.'

  'I see,' I said, vaguely surprised to find that I did. 'But how can we be sure we've found an exit point in the first place?'

  The moment I'd finished speaking, I knew I was going to regret asking that particular question: Yaffel's gyrations increased markedly, as if he could barely contain his excitement, and he raised a hand to point at the hololith. Apparently divining what I'd just done, Mira kicked me sharply in the ankle, although I suspect my Guard-issue footwear made the gesture more uncomfortable for her than it did for me.

  Fortunately, Drumon came to our rescue, intervening just before the magos could launch into the tirade of technotheological jargon I'd unwittingly come so close to unleashing. 'Essentially,' he said, 'the passage of so large an object between the two realms leaves a weak spot in the boundary between them, which our Librarian and Navigator believe they can detect.'

  'How weak?' Mira asked, no doubt mindful that just such a spot now existed within her home system, and probably picturing a host of daemons flooding through it to lay waste to Viridia.

  Yaffel nodded reassuringly at her, no doubt having had to assuage the fears of sufficient numbers of lay listeners by now to be aware of what she must be thinking, and grabbing the chance to display his expertise after all. 'Not enough to allow any of the warp's denizens access to the materium,' he said, his flat monotone sounding oddly sure of itself. 'The weakness is more akin to a deformation of the interface than a breach of it.'

  'I see,' Mira said, managing to sound as if she meant it. 'But if you can predict where the weaknesses are, can't you just tell which systems are at risk and warn them by astropath before the hulk gets there?'

  'Things are less simple than that,' Drumon said, drawing our attention to the hololith again. A moment's perusal was enough for me to recognise an astronomical display of the sector and a few of the systems surrounding it. 'Here is Viridia.' The system flared green. 'And these are the boundaries within which the Spawn of Damnation could have travelled.' A translucent tube began to extend itself from the green dot, the mouth of it widening the further it extended, so that by the time it reached its fullest extent, well over two dozen systems had been swallowed by the flickering funnel.

  'It would take a lifetime to search all those systems,' I said, obscurely relieved at the realisation of just how impossible a task we were taking on. After a few months I'd find an excuse to leave them to it, and return to my desk, secure in the knowledge that whatever foolhardy undertaking General Lokris had been planning to drop me into the middle of would be safely over.

  'Fortunately, we won't have to,' Yaffel told us, looking smugger by the second. 'Each emergence point we find will reduce the potential volume of space in which our quarry could be, and refine our predictions. After the first few have been plotted, we should be closing in on it nicely.'

  'I'm glad to hear it,' I said.

  'If they can find any weak spots in the first place,' Mira muttered beside me.

  'How can we know until we try?' Drumon said, leaving everyone else looking faintly baffled.

  After that, the briefing was clearly over to all intents and purposes, although I made sure I asked a few supplementary questions to show a proper concern for what we might be getting into. By this point Mira had given up even pretending to be interested, simply standing as close to me as she could in a grim silence I began to find increasingly oppressive.

  As we eventually left, to let the shipmaster and his crew get on with whatever it is that starship bridge officers do, I felt it politic to pause for a moment in passing and pay our respects to Gries. To my surprise, he acknowledged my salute and nodded to me. 'I trust you have everything you require, commissar?'

  Ignoring Mira's smug expression, I nodded. 'Your hospitality is as generous as I remembered,' I told him truthfully. 'But I was wondering, if it's no imposition, whether you had a little free space somewhere I could run through my combat drills every day. I rather neglected them while I was convalescing, and I almost paid the price for that in the 'stealer nest.' Shaken a little by the narrowness of our escape, I'd resumed my regular practice sessions with the chainblade forthwith, and I had no desire to forego them again if I could avoid it, although my quarters were rather too cramped for much in the way of physical exercise which didn't involve Mira.

  'Of course.' Gries looked at me approvingly and nodded. 'I would expect nothing less from a warrior of your renown. I'll see to it that you're given access to one of our training chapels.'

 

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