The Emperor's Finest, page 19
'Considerably more,' Drumon agreed. 'And the presence of an Astartes strike cruiser should dissuade anyone from trying to run it.'
'It would me,' I agreed. 'But I'm not a scav barge skipper who thinks the Emperor just dropped a fortune in his lap. Anyone stupid enough to risk boarding a hulk full of genestealers isn't going to be put off by the near certainty of being blown to bits on the way in.'
For a moment, as my brain caught up with my tongue, I wondered if I'd risked offending my hosts again, but apparently neither Astartes thought my remark about the idiocy of attempting to board the Spawn of Damnation applied to them. But just to make sure, I thought I'd better draw a distinction. 'I'm sure your operation over there will be rather better planned and resourced than a scawy raid 7 , however.'
'Indeed,' Gries said, nodding again. Then, to my surprise, he strode to the hololith, scattering tech-priests as he went, and gestured to me to follow him.
I looked at the tangle of passageways laid out by the faintly flickering three-dimensional image, my underhiver's instinct translating the intersecting streaks of variously coloured light into an almost physical sense of the space they represented. (Something I was to be all too grateful for later, as it turned out, but which at the time seemed no more than a convenient aid to interpreting the briefing.)
'Our first entry point will be here,' Drumon said, indicating a chamber somewhere on the outer skin of the complex weave of ducts and corridors. 'A relatively undamaged docking bay, which seems large enough to accommodate a Thunderhawk, and defensible enough to provide a beachhead. The Terminators will suppress any resistance and secure the perimeter. Once that's been done, Magos Yaffel and myself will lead a working party here...'
He did something with his servo-arm which caused the image to zoom in on the sector he'd first indicated, separating the beachhead and the objective by almost a metre instead of just the millimetre or two they'd occupied of the overall schematic. As the area depicted enlarged, so did the detail, and a further tangle of intersecting capillaries grew around the veins and arteries we were already looking at, leaving the whole hololith just as crowded as it had been before. For the first time I began to appreciate just how vast and complex the leviathan of the warp we were pursuing really was, and wished the boarders every bit of luck the Emperor could spare; I was certain they were going to need it.
'...and attempt to recover the cogitator core of this vessel,' Drumon concluded.
'Why that one?' I asked.
'Because it has the most directly accessible cogitator banks of any of the derelicts making up the hulk,' Gries said, as though that should have been obvious from a cursory glance at the pile of virtual string hovering in front of my face.
'And because it's been tentatively identified as a Redeemer-class vessel, none of which have been in service for over five thousand years,' Yaffel put in, positively salivating at the prospect. 'The maintenance logs alone should yield untold blessings of the Omnissiah which have been lost to posterity.'
'A prize indeed,' I said evenly, which was far more tactful than verbalising my real thoughts would have been. It seemed to me that if the galaxy had been getting along perfectly well without these lost blessings for the last five millennia in any case, losing the 'stealers along with them would have been better all round. But it wasn't my call, so that was that. I'd just have to break it to Duque that he wouldn't be able to knock any lumps off the hulk, at least for the time being, and ride out the ensuing recrimination. Come to that, Torven and Kregeen would be far from thrilled too. At least I had Gries to blame, and I'd been a commissar for long enough to know how to use their common resentment to get them cooperating a bit more effectively than they otherwise would have done, so all in all, things could have been worse. Then something else occurred to me. 'This is probably a stupid question,' I asked, 'but what happens if the Spawn falls back into the warp while your sea... retrieval expedition is still aboard it?'
Yaffel gave me a faintly superior look, like an eldar deigning to notice one of the lesser breeds of the galaxy (which they consider to be everyone except them). 'That can't happen,' he said, with an airy confidence which left me far from convinced.
Drumon nodded. 'The hulk is coasting in towards the sun,' he reminded me. 'And natural warp fissures can only occur outside a gravity well. Even a starship with a properly focussed Geller field can only force its way between the realms on the fringes of a system.'
'So it's stuck here until it drifts out past the halo again,' I said, grateful as always for his pared-down summary of the situation.
Magos and Techmarine nodded in unison, apparently equally delighted at the prospect. They'd have years to poke around in the wreckage for technosorcerous trinkets, with nothing more to worry about than Emperor knew how many ravenous genestealers lurking in the dark.
Which also meant that, far from coming to a close as I'd expected, my assignment here looked like being prolonged indefinitely. Someone would have to liaise between the Reclaimers, the Serendipitans and the Imperial Guard, and, for better or worse, I'd been stuck with the job.
I considered the implications. It wouldn't be too hard to convince everyone that the best place to work from would be Torven's HQ on Serendipita, where I'd have ready access to system-wide intelligence, the PDF and SDF command structures, and, most importantly, all the little comforts available on a civilised world, instead of being stuck aboard a starship where the chances of finding a decent tarot game were about as high as Jurgen becoming the next lord general. And while I was getting on with looking busy, I'd be a long way from brigade headquarters on Coronus, along with anyone intent on roping me in to whatever suicide mission they happened to have to hand. All in all, I thought, I could live with that.
I RETURNED TO my quarters in a distinctly cheerful mood, to find Mira waiting for me while Jurgen laid out a tolerably pleasant supper, and lost no time in sharing the good news with her. She'd have found out anyway, soon enough, and I felt it prudent to be the one to tell her. That way, whatever else she might take exception to, at least I couldn't be accused of deceit.
Despite whatever forebodings I may have harboured, however, she seemed almost as pleased at the prospect as I was, which I suppose shouldn't have come as that much of a surprise. She'd clearly found life aboard the Revenant even more tedious than I had, and would no doubt seize the chance to relocate to more salubrious surroundings with equal alacrity.
'In fact,' she said, a forkful of smoked salma from her hoard of delicacies halfway to her mouth, 'I suppose my little errand here is pretty much over too.'
'I suppose so,' I agreed, taking a mouthful of my own and washing it down with an inoffensive vintage I strongly suspected was the best the Space Marine vessel had to offer. 'The hulk definitely isn't going to present any kind of threat to Viridia from now on.' When it eventually did drift back into the warp, I had no doubt that the Reclaimers and the Adeptus Mechanicus would go right along with it, as reluctant to let it go as a kroot with a bone; and their eagerness to carry on looting the hulk wherever it ended up would prevent it from posing a threat to any Imperial system it happened to arrive in, which was all to the good.
Mira smiled, as though I'd just said something witty. 'Quite,' she agreed. 'But I did have other motives for coming along, you'll recall.'
'Of course,' I said, dredging my memory. Something about strengthening her claim to the throne back home, and finding a consort able to help her grab it. 'I'm glad they seem to be working out for you too.' She seemed to have given up on the ridiculous idea of persuading a Space Marine to elope with her, and for a moment I wondered who else she'd found who looked like a suitable candidate. One of the Serendipitan delegation, presumably - they can't all have been as pointless as they looked.
Her smile spread. 'For both of us, surely.'
'Well, yes,' I agreed. It wouldn't take much to turn my liaison job into a sinecure guaranteed to keep me comfortably out of harm's way for years to come, which was pretty much as good as it ever got for someone in my position. I raised my goblet, in a slightly ironic toast.
'Here's to both of us getting what we want.'
'To both of us,' Mira said, her glass clinking against mine, and I found myself genuinely wishing her well, which for someone as focussed on my own concerns as I usually was, came as a bit of a surprise. Her cheeks coloured slightly, and as she lowered her drink, she looked at me in a manner I found a little odd. 'Are you sure about this?'
'Of course I am,' I said, touched by her concern. The sooner I could feel a world beneath my feet again the better.
'Good.' She became businesslike again. 'Serendipita doesn't do much trade with us, but there's a Charter ship or two linking the systems, with only a couple of intermediate layovers. We should be able to get passage within a few months.' She looked at me speculatively. 'Unless you've got some strings you can pull? We might as well use them while we can.'
'While we can?' I echoed, feeling oddly like a character in a ballroom farce 8 . Her words were undeniably Gothic, but the meaning behind them kept eluding me.
Mira nodded. 'While you still have some influence with the Munitorum,' she elucidated, as though that made perfect sense. 'Could you get us berths on a military ship?'
'I suppose so,' I said, falling back on the card player's instinct which generally helped me out at moments like this. Time and again I've found that if you appear to understand what's going on, and don't panic, sooner or later you'll get a clue. Everything will fall into place, and no one will ever know you were out of your depth. It's an important skill for a commissar, too, come to think of it, as we're supposed to look calm and in control whatever happens. It's remarkably difficult to rally troops under fire when you're dithering about screaming ''Frak, oh frak, we're all going to die!''. So I nodded judiciously, as though she'd just asked a perfectly reasonable question.
'If you wanted to hurry back, of course.'
'Good point,' she rejoined, smiling at me again, in a manner I can only describe as curiously cloying. 'Let's enjoy ourselves for a few weeks while we can. Serendipita's quite a pleasant world, apparently.'
'Something to do with the ring system, I suppose,' I said, having picked up a little bit about conditions there from Torven and the others.
'I hear it's quite spectacular.'
'Then you've talked me into it.' Mira's smile became coquettish. 'We might as well enjoy the honeymoon before we have to get down to work.'
'Exactly,' I heard my mouth say, the pieces finally dropping into place, and our earlier conversation taking on an entirely new meaning which had escaped me at the time. She hadn't been out to bag herself an Astartes at all. The Liberator of Perlia would do perfectly well as a consort, particularly as I seemed to be a hero on Viridia as well.
A chill prickle of panic chased itself down my spine. I can't deny that, in the abstract, the notion of continuing to enjoy Mira's more obvious charms indefinitely, along with the material comforts formalising our relationship would provide, had its appeal, but the idea was utterly preposterous. The Commissariat wasn't like one of the confection-box regiments 9 my would-be fiancee and her aristocratic cronies amused themselves by playing at officers in, which would cheerfully accept a resigned commission whenever more pressing or diverting business presented itself. If I abandoned my assignment to return to Viridia with her I'd be branded a deserter, and the only question left open about my future would be whether the ensuing tribunal had me shot by a firing squad, or packed me off to a penal legion to let the enemies of the Emperor save them the ammo. No doubt Mira believed that being the consort of a planetary governor would be sufficient protection from the wrath of my erstwhile colleagues, but I was under no such illusion: once you put on the scarlet sash, it's there till they bury you in it (assuming they can find enough bits for the ceremony, which in our vocation is never entirely certain). Even if you make it through to retirement intact, you can still be yanked back into the field pretty much on a whim, as I've found out only too well these last few years 10 .
Even so, I hesitated before speaking. Mira was clearly under the impression that I'd not only divined her purpose, but somehow signalled my agreement to her absurd proposal. I knew only too well how she was likely to react to being disabused. I'd seen the lurking virago erupt from behind the refined facade over matters so minor they'd barely registered with me, and now I was about to take a chainsword to her most cherished ambitions. Worse still, of course, would be the blow to her vanity. Most women like to think they're irresistible, and discovering that she wasn't wouldn't sit well at all. Add to that the fact that I'd seen her kill people without turning an immaculately groomed hair, and my wariness becomes even more understandable.
All this being so, it can come as little surprise to hear that I remained paralysed by indecision, nodding and responding with automatic platitudes, while Mira prattled on about her grandiose plans for Viridia once we'd consolidated her grip on it, most of which seemed to consist of score-settling with people I'd never heard of. Whether I would eventually have found the courage to speak out, or just jumped on the first transport ship back to Coronus while her back was turned, I'll never know, however. I was just on the point of pouring myself the largest amasec I thought I could get away with, when Jurgen returned to my quarters, his face composed in the faintly dyspeptic expression he tended to adopt whenever he felt an air of gravitas was required.
'Sorry to interrupt your meal, sir,' he said, 'but your presence is requested on the bridge. They seem to think they've found it.'
SIXTEEN
SEIZING GRATEFULLY ON my aide's timely intervention, I lost no time in hurrying to the bridge, leaving Mira happily planning her coup d'etat 1 with all the enthusiasm most women of her rank reserve for cotillions. Though my mind continued to reel with the shock of the realisation of what I'd blundered into, I must confess that the bustle of activity which met my eyes the moment I entered the nerve centre of the Revenant was almost sufficient to drive it out entirely.
'Contact confirmed,' the auspex operator was saying as I stepped through the doors, which were still showing faint traces of orkish small-arms fire despite the best efforts of the shipboard artisans to restore the devotional images adorning them, and the air of expectation suffusing the chamber became so dense I almost had to resort to hacking through it with my chainsword. 'It's definitely a hard return 2 , refined metals by the signature.' For the first time I heard a tremor of suppressed excitement in the even tones I'd grown used to hearing from the Chapter serfs manning the bridge, and, despite my own concerns, felt an answering flicker of it within myself.
If this truly was the end of our quest, it could hardly have come at a more propitious time. It meant I'd be on my way to Serendipita almost immediately, and once I was there, I'd be able to avoid Mira far more effectively than I possibly could in the cramped confines of the Revenant. A faint flicker of optimism even dared to raise the hope that, once we were back on terra firma, and she was again immersed in her own social environment, she'd begin to see the huge gulf between our respective milieux for what it was, and abandon the absurd project she'd conceived of her own volition. (Not that it seemed particularly likely. When she made her mind up about something, she pursued it as tenaciously as a gaunt scenting blood.) It was possible, however, that I could get off the ship before she noticed I was gone, citing orders and duty, which would at least buy me a breathing space.
'Could it just be a vessel?' Gries asked, leaning forwards a little, as though he could force the pict screen to greater magnification purely by willpower. 'The SDF flotilla should be nearing the rendezvous point by now.'
'Unlikely,' Drumon told him. 'None of the System Defence boats would be that far out of position.' He loomed over the auspex operator and made some minute adjustments to the dials set into the surface of the control lectern, pinching them delicately between the fingers of his gauntlets, like an ogryn trying to pick up a porcelain tea bowl.
'Displacement reads in the gigatonnes.'
'Then it's the Spawn,' Yaffel said, sounding rather more excited than was strictly commensurate with his position. He wasn't exactly hopping up and down, which would have been difficult given his lack of legs, but he was definitely oscillating more violently than usual. 'It's the only reasonable inference.'
'And right where you predicted it would be,' I reminded him, which wasn't exactly true, as he'd only been able to narrow it down to a pretty wide volume of space, but he didn't seem inclined to quibble about it, merely nodding sagely in agreement.
'The Omnissiah leads us down the path of logic to a sure destination 3 ,' he said, with the comfortable certainty of a man for whom the universe not only ran like clockwork, but chimed the first few bars of ''Throne Eternal'' on the hour.
'Boosting the gain on the long-range imagifers,' Drumon said, doing something I couldn't see to the back of a nearby lectern with his servo-arm, and Yaffel trundled over to the hololith, where he began to poke around in turn.
'Then if the interociters hold together,' the tech-priest added, 'we should be able to... Omnissiah be praised.' The three-dimensional display flickered into life, and the image of what looked like a jagged piece of scrap metal began to tumble gently within it, growing larger with every passing minute, until it filled the space almost entirely. It wavered a bit, as such representations generally do, but Yaffel seemed to know what he was about, and with a few muttered benedictions, some fiddling with the controls, and a well-placed thump of his fist, he steadied the image.
'The Spawn of Damnation,' Drumon said, his voice remarkably hushed for a Space Marine. Gries nodded, apparently too overcome to speak at all, and his battered half-face relaxed into an expression I found hard to interpret, but had certainly never seen there before.
