The Emperor's Finest

FOURTEEN

I DIDN'T HAVE long to enjoy the sudden change in Mira's demeanour, although she certainly became more pleasant company after that. It was almost like reliving the earliest period of our association back on Viridia, and although I couldn't help wondering now and again just what lay behind it, particularly on the occasions I noticed her staring at me like a kroot at some choice piece of carrion, for the most part I was simply grateful for the improvement. So marked was it, in fact, that I was taken by surprise when a momentary flash of her old petulance surfaced one morning, just after Jurgen had knocked on the door of my quarters to inform me that Gries had requested my presence on the bridge at my earliest convenience.

'Do you really have to go rushing off like a lackey every time someone sends you a message?' she asked, as I scrambled into my uniform, considered the state of my cap, which, despite Jurgen's best efforts, was still looking the worse for wear, and decided it would just have to do. 'He said at your convenience, not right this minute.'

'It's the same thing,' I told her, tilting it to hide the worst of the damage and checking the effect in the mirror. 'You might be able to keep people waiting as long as you like, but I can't. That was just a polite way of phrasing an order.' Deciding I was now as presentable as I was ever going to be, I turned back, to find her expression softening again.

'That won't be the case forever,' she said, and I smiled back, touched by her evident faith in the upward trajectory of my future career. (Which has indeed left me in a position to keep people waiting as long as I care to, and has done for some decades now, although the realities of my job mean that it's still generally impolitic to indulge the impulse.)

'I'll be back as soon as I can,' I promised, and left as briskly as protocol demanded. It was pointless asking if she wanted to accompany me; even if she could be persuaded to get moving, which with Mira was always problematic at best, the summons had been for me alone. It was entirely possible that a separate message had been dispatched to her own quarters, of course, in the interest of diplomacy, but she was so unlikely to respond that it wouldn't have surprised me to learn that Gries had simply given up even the pretence of attempting to include her in whatever decisions needed to be made.

'Commissar.' The Space Marine captain nodded an affable greeting to me as I strode onto the bridge, before returning his attention to the shipmaster, with whom he was in animated conversation about matters which meant nothing to me.

If I'd had any lingering doubts about what I was doing here they were dispelled almost at once, as my eye fell on Yaffel and Drumon, who were standing by the hololith, examining the star chart with every sign of satisfaction. I ambled over to join them, and the Techmarine glanced up as I approached.

'Commissar,' he said, standing aside to allow me an unimpeded view of the display. 'Just in time.'

'So I see,' I replied, taking in the familiar star chart in a single glance. One of the three systems Yaffel had pointed out at our previous meeting was illuminated more brightly than any of the others, and the green funnel had shrunk again, to leave the icon apparently stuck in its narrowing throat. I nodded an acknowledgement to Yaffel. 'Congratulations, magos. It seems your calculations were as reliable as ever.'

'By the grace of the Omnissiah,' the tech-priest agreed, contriving to project an impression of smugness despite the monotone in which the words were delivered, and the impassive expression generally considered appropriate to one of his calling. 'We've detected another weakness in the interface between realities, consistent with those we recorded earlier in the voyage.'

'Which should put us about here,' Drumon added, prodding at the icon I'd already noticed with his servo-arm. 'The Serendipita System. Within the usual margins of error, of course.'

'Of course.' I nodded, to show I was paying attention, and tried not to reflect that predicting an emergence point from within the warp was always little more than an exercise in wishful thinking; although our Navigator had proven remarkably able in that regard, which no doubt accounted for the fact that he or she had been engaged by a Space Marine vessel in the first place[78]. Then something else struck me. 'We've always emerged blind before. How can you be so sure this is the system we're coming out in?'

I should have known better, of course, and spent most of the next ten minutes nodding politely while Yaffel sprayed technical terms around, and wondering if his augmetic enhancements really had left him without the need to inhale, or whether it simply sounded like that to my reeling eardrums. Eventually he ground to a halt.

'Something of an oversimplification,' Drumon observed sardonically, 'but accurate in its essentials.' Then, apparently to ensure I realised he was joking, he added, 'It seems the most likely candidate, given the flow of the currents our ship has been following.'

'I see,' I said, wondering why Yaffel couldn't have been equally succinct. 'Is it an Imperial system?'

'Absolutely Imperial,' Drumon assured me, with one of the faint smiles I'd grown more adept at noticing since we'd become sparring partners. 'One primary world, seven others supporting settlements, and thirty-eight void stations. Two of which are starports with dockyard facilities.' Which clearly accounted for his buoyant mood. I began to feel a sense of growing disquiet.

'That implies a sizeable population,' I pointed out. 'Which means it's the perfect place for the 'stealers to spread their taint.'

'Quite so,' Gries agreed, turning to look in our direction, and reminding me once again of the phenomenal hearing with which the Emperor had seen fit to endow him. 'You can rest assured we'll be prepared for any acts of treachery.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' I replied, though I felt a lot less easy than I tried to sound. We'd been ambushed almost as soon as we'd arrived in the Viridia System, and although the Revenant had shrugged off the attack easily enough, Drumon had made it abundantly clear that she was in no fit state to go into battle again. And Viridia had probably been infected by no more than a handful of implanted hosts; if the entire brood aboard the Spawn of Damnation had been roused, and able to rampage through the population virtually unchecked, the Serendipita System could already be lost to humanity. If that were the case, as my increasingly pessimistic imaginings were halfway to convincing me, then it would be like our arrival in the orkhold all over again.

So, as you'll readily appreciate, as we all turned to the pict screen which relayed an image of the universe outside the hull, the lingering nausea of our transition to the materium was the least of my worries.

In the event, I must confess, I found it something of an anticlimax. Instead of the marauding warships I'd steeled myself to expect, there was nothing to be seen in any direction but the reassuring glow of the stars. None of the pinpricks of light appeared to be moving, which came as a further relief; if they had, they could only be vessels of some kind. Of course the auspex operator had far more sophisticated senses to rely on than my eyes, and a moment later he confirmed my immediate impression.

'All clear,' he reported, in the same clipped monotone the whole ship's crew appeared to affect while on duty. 'Commencing detailed scan.'

'How far out are we?' I asked. My paranoia was as acute as ever, leaving me convinced that the system was going to turn out to be another firewasp nest sooner or later, and I wanted to be sure we'd have plenty of warning if trouble came looking for us. None of the speckled lights seemed any brighter than the others, but I was a seasoned enough traveller not to find that strange: at the kind of distances starships usually entered and left the warp, the local sun would be so far away as to appear no larger than any other star in the firmament.

'A little beyond the main bulk of the halo,' Drumon said, a thoughtful expression crossing his face, as he no doubt reached the same conclusion I just had. Innumerable pieces of cosmic flotsam would be clogging our auspex receptors, which meant an attacking flotilla would be all but undetectable at a distance - at least if they had the sense to power down and coast, igniting their engines only for the final attack run.

'That seems a bit far,' I said, determined to seem at ease despite the apprehension gnawing away at me. Starships would usually shoulder their way back into the real galaxy as close to a system's primary as they dared, to minimise the amount of time required to coast in to their destination; something I'd come to appreciate on the long, slow journey Jurgen and I had made from the halo to Perlia aboard a saviour pod.

Yaffel didn't actually shrug, but he contrived to give a passable impression of having done so as he leaned across the hololith table, oscillating slightly in his usual fashion. 'The hulk is drifting randomly, and we simply followed it through to the materium at the point from which it emerged,' he pointed out, in the manner of one of my old schola tutors wearily explaining the blindingly obvious to an indifferent cadre of progeni for about the thousandth time in his career. (A sensation I'm beginning to sympathise with, now I'm the one trying to get the young pups to pay attention.)

'Which might mean it hasn't been in-system long enough for the genestealers to infect anyone,' I said, feeling the first faint stirrings of hope since our arrival. Yaffel looked at me blankly, so I went on to explain. 'All those ork ships were clustered around the last emergence point, weren't they?'

The tech-priest nodded. 'I suppose so. What of it?'

'It must mean the Spawn was there just before we were,' I pointed out, conscious of the irony of the sudden reversal of our positions. 'A flotilla that size couldn't have been mobilised to intercept us that quickly. Those ships must have been going after the hulk, and arrived too late - just in time to target us as we emerged from the warp in its wake.'

'A sound inference,' Gries agreed, and Drumon nodded.

'Which means we should be concentrating our search efforts in this area.' He manipulated the controls of the hololith, muttering incantations under his breath, then hit the display three times with the heel of his hand to stabilise the image. The long-familiar starfield disappeared, to be replaced by a simulation of the stellar system we'd arrived in. A scattering of crimson dots picked out the Imperial population centres, confined for the most part to the moons of the largest gas giant, while a single gold rune marked the position of the Revenant. A three-dimensional grid fanned out in front of it, reaching almost halfway to the sun in the middle of the display.

Yaffel studied it for a moment, then nodded. 'I concur. If the commissar's deduction is correct, which seems extremely likely, the probability of finding the Spawn of Damnation within the demarcated volume is approximately ninety-nine point two seven per cent.'

'I'm pleased to hear it,' I said, moving aside to make room for Gries, who, like all Astartes, required a considerable amount of space to stand in. I liked the sound of that a great deal more than the tech-priest's last set of sums. Even more cheering, from my point of view, was the fact that the gas giant and its attendant cluster of icons was on the far side of the sun, way beyond the area of space Drumon had picked out, and even the closest outpost of civilisation[79] was well outside its boundaries. It was still possible that a scavenger vessel of some kind had stumbled across the hulk, of course, as had appeared to be the case on Viridia, but even that worst-case contingency could be contained if we were quick enough. Despite a lifetime's experience that such feelings were merely the prelude to the discovery of a hitherto unsuspected greater threat, I found myself smiling confidently. 'It seems things are going our way at last.'

DESPITE THE PERSISTENT little voice at the back of my head which continued to insist that things could only be going this well to lull us into a false sense of security, I must confess I found myself beginning to relax over the next few days. The search for our quarry was as painstaking and time-consuming as on every previous occasion, with the obvious exception of the time we were being distracted by orks - the sheer amount of debris in Serendipita's halo was hampering our auspexes just as much as I'd expected it to do. This time, however, I had something productive to get on with, and threw myself into the work with an enthusiasm which surprised me a little.

We had, of course, transmitted the news of our arrival to Serendipita[80], and the presence of a Space Marine vessel within their borders had created about as much excitement as you might expect, especially once the coin dropped, and the upper echelons of the System Defence Fleet realised that our mission meant a clear and present danger to their home world. Accordingly, a delegation of local worthies had been dispatched to meet us; and since diplomacy was hardly Gries's strong point, I'd found myself called upon to liaise with them in his stead.

To my faint surprise, however, Mira didn't seem to share my enthusiasm for this development, seeming, if anything, positively put out by it. 'I don't see why you have to do all their work for them,' she said, echoes of the pettishness I remembered all too vividly colouring her voice for the first time in weeks.

I shrugged, and sipped my tanna, while she tore a chunk out of a freshly buttered florn cake with her teeth and masticated it savagely. We were enjoying what I sincerely hoped was about to become a rare quiet interlude, before the heavy shuttle bearing the Reclaimers' latest guests arrived, and I felt it best to keep the peace if I could. 'I don't really have a choice,' I pointed out reasonably, transferring one from the salver to my plate while I still had the chance, and topping it with a spoonful of ackenberry preserve. I'd had ample opportunity to observe that Mira's consumption of foodstuffs gained momentum in direct proportion to how affronted she felt, and experience inclined me to safeguard my own provender. 'My orders were to liaise between the Reclaimers and the Imperial Guard, and since there's a Guard garrison on Serendipita, I'd be derelict in my duty if I hadn't contacted them at the earliest opportunity.' And thereby laid the groundwork for my passage back to Coronus, as soon as I could detach myself from this increasingly pointless assignment, although no one needed to know that just yet.

'I can see that,' Mira conceded, with a conciliatory tilt of the head and a faint spray of crumbs. 'I just don't see why you have to waste your time with the rest of them.'

'I'd rather not,' I told her truthfully. 'But they're all arriving together. Splitting them up isn't really an option.'

'No.' She shook her head, and I began to realise she probably understood the situation better than I did: after all, she'd grown up surrounded by competing factions jockeying for position, all needing to be kept working together for the common good. 'It'd create too much division, and if we're going to keep the genestealers from overrunning Serendipita, we all need to be singing from the same psalter.'

'You'd make a good commissar,' I said, only half-joking, and she smiled at me across the table.

'You'd make a good regent,' she said. Then she turned her head, the smile sliding from her face, as the familiar odour of my aide thickened the room, followed a moment later by its source. 'I told you we weren't to be disturbed.'

'Pardon the intrusion, sir,' Jurgen said, addressing me directly, with the exaggeratedly formal tones he tended to employ while sticking rigidly to protocol in the faces of irate officers, then turning his head slightly to add a perfunctory ''miss'', before returning his attention entirely to me. 'Captain Gries would like you to join him at the ventral docking port. The diplomatic shuttle from Serendipita's due in about ten minutes.'

'Thank you, Jurgen,' I said. 'Please convey my respects to the captain. I'll meet you down there in a moment.'

'Very good, sir.' He saluted, no doubt to underline that this was military business which superseded whatever Mira might think about his unexpected arrival, and marched out in a vaguely martial slouch.

I turned back to Mira, whose expression now looked about as warm as a Valhallan winter, and whatever quip I'd been about to make to lighten the mood scurried back to the safety of my synapses unvoiced.

'Are you serious?' she asked, in incredulous tones. 'What in the name of the Throne do you want that malodorous halfwit with you for?'

'Because he's my aide,' I pointed out, with a little more asperity than I'd intended. 'Protocol demands it. And he diverts attention from me.' Which meant I could size up the new arrivals while they were nicely distracted, instead of being gawped at like a sideshow mutant because of my ridiculous reputation.

'I can believe that,' Mira conceded, and the frost in her tone began to thaw. She rose and began to make her way towards the door. 'I'd better leave you to your preparations.'

'I'm pretty much prepared already,' I admitted, picking up my much abused cap and sticking it on my head without further thought. I'd given up trying to position it to minimise the damage, and if any of the Serendipitans didn't like the look of it, they'd just have to lump it.

To my surprise, Mira turned back, reached up and adjusted the position slightly, then regarded the effect with a faint smile. 'That's better,' she said. 'Makes you look dangerous, rather than just knocked about a bit.'

I glanced at the mirror to see what she'd done, and found myself staring at the reflection of a hard bitten warrior who'd borrowed my face. 'Thank you,' I said, astonished by the transformation. 'How did you do that?'

Mira smiled, all trace of her previous bad mood gone. 'It's not what you wear,' she said, 'it's the way you wear it. Every woman knows that.' Then she turned and resumed her progress towards the door.

'Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take my own advice. See you in the docking bay.'

'You're going too?' I asked, and her smile spread.

'You said it yourself,' she told me. 'Protocol demands it.'

THE HANGAR BAYS used by the Thunderhawks were all positioned on the flanks of the ship, where they could best be covered by the broadside batteries when deploying under fire, so this was my first sight of the ventral docks protruding from the Revenant's keel. There were two bays in all, set back to back and separated by heavy blast doors, which Drumon told me could be retracted to combine the two chambers if required. I had no idea when this was likely to be, having seen no sign of anything the size of an Imperial Guard drop-ship in service with the Astartes, but was happy to take his word for it[81]. I suppose if I'd cared I could have asked him for more detail, but he was engaged in conversation with Gries and his bodyguards for most of the wait, and it wouldn't have been polite to interrupt.

At any event, both bays were accessed from open space by the usual arrangement of airtight doors, thick enough to be rammed by a Chimera without taking a dent, which closed off the end opposite the bulkhead separating them. From the observation gallery running along one side of both, and protected from decompression by a handswidth of armourcrys, it was pretty obvious which one was soon to receive our guests: the mighty portal had been cranked open, revealing the star-speckled velvet of eternal night beyond, while the other chamber was still sealed and pressurised.

'Impressive,' Mira commented quietly in my ear, her perfume beginning to displace the earthier scent of Jurgen, and I started, having remained unaware of her approach.

'Very,' I agreed, turning to look at her. 'Every millimetre the diplomat.' To my unexpressed relief she'd dispensed with the joy-girl outfit, replacing it with a formal gown of indigo hue, which was echoed by the soft slippers she'd employed to sneak up on me. But then, I suppose, matching her appearance to the occasion was a skill she'd grown up with, not unlike my own talent for dissembling.

'I'm glad you approve,' she said, with every appearance of sincerity. 'Have I missed much?'

I shook my head. 'Not yet,' I assured her, with a nod towards the vacant hangar bay. Something was clearly going on down there though, void-suited Chapter serfs scurrying about on the deck plates, so the arrival of the shuttle was undoubtedly imminent. A fresh burst of movement caught my eye, and I nodded. 'Oh, nice touch.'

Gries and the other Astartes were entering the chamber through an airlock almost directly below us, and beginning to take up their positions, ready to greet the new arrivals, completely untroubled by the lack of anything to breathe down there. The impression made on the delegates, watching through the viewports of their transport while the chamber pressurised, would undoubtedly be a strong one, reinforcing the air of superhuman invulnerability Space Marines tended to project as a matter of course.

'He's more of a diplomat than he thinks,' Mira agreed, as the shuttle finally appeared in the rectangle of star-spattered darkness, and coasted inside as silently as a nocturnal raptor swooping on a rodent. It was larger than I'd expected, closer in size to a bulk cargo lifter than the Aquila I'd anticipated, and I began to realise that perhaps Gries had had the right idea in keeping as far away from its passengers as possible.

'Looks like a bit of a crowd,' Jurgen observed, and I nodded, calculating rapidly. You could have fitted a platoon inside it quite comfortably, along with their Chimeras, but if I was any judge a vessel that extensively ornamented would have been designed with its passengers' comfort a far higher priority than the efficient use of space. Even allowing for individual staterooms and a fairly commodious common area, though, there would still be room for a couple of dozen at least.

'About thirty, I would think,' Mira said, and it suddenly dawned on me that she was probably a great deal more familiar with this type of vessel than anyone else on board. She pointed to a detailed mosaic of thermal tiles wrapped around the blunt nose of the ship. 'That's the governor's personal heraldry, so we can expect that whoever's on board has a fair bit of pull.'

'Wouldn't we have been informed if the governor was coming?' I asked, and Mira shrugged, which I always found agreeably diverting.

'Not necessarily,' she said, 'but I doubt it. He's probably running round in little circles back on Serendipita, making sure any obvious signs of corruption or misgovernment are tidied away before the Astartes arrive.' Then she smiled, in a self-deprecating fashion which quite suited her. 'It's what I'd do.'

'But he put his personal shuttle at the disposal of the delegation,' I said. 'How very generous of him.'

Mira smiled again, either at my apparent naivety, or the thinly veiled sarcasm. 'Generosity has nothing to do with it,' she said. 'It shows he's taking the Reclaimers seriously, and willing to get involved, but keeps him conveniently distanced from any decisions made here which might cause trouble at home.' Her voice held a faintly admiring edge. 'He plays the game well.'

'Let's hope you get the chance to tell him that, before the genestealers eat his system out from the inside,' I said. We were certainly off to a good start, but my innate pessimism, forged in the crucible of far too many unpleasant surprises just when we thought we'd got on top of things, was refusing to let go of the conviction that the situation was hardly likely to remain as straightforward as it had been.

Jurgen nodded. 'Doesn't do to turn your back on them,' he said, no doubt mindful of our experiences on Keffia.

'I don't imagine we'll be doing that,' Mira said.

'Certainly not,' I agreed. A chill mist was beginning to drift against the armourcrys by now, as the thickening atmosphere in the docking bay was chilled to the temperature of space, and a barely perceptible thrumming was growing audible, as the air became dense enough to transmit the sound of the pumps feeding it into the cavernous chamber. I began to lead the way towards the staircase leading down to the airlock. 'Our first priority has to be assessing the threat, and the best way to combat it with the assets we have in-system.' I'd timed it nicely, the outer doors of the airlock grinding open to admit the diminishing howl of the shuttle's engines[82], as the pilot powered them down.

'Commissar. Commendably prompt,' Gries rumbled, as the boarding ramp began to descend. If he was surprised to see Mira with me, his helmet hid it, and he acknowledged her presence with a simple 'Envoy.'

'Captain,' she responded, with a perfunctory curtsey. 'Whose company are we to expect the pleasure of?'

Pleasure wasn't exactly the thing I was anticipating, I must admit. I wanted to talk to the real soldiers among the delegation, which basically meant the Imperial Guard officers, along with the PDF and SDF representatives for their local knowledge. I was already certain that the vast majority would turn out to be Administratum drones and members of the local aristocracy instead, though, keener to boost their position by association with the Astartes than to make any meaningful contribution to the defence of the system.

Gries evidently felt much the same way, judging by the curtness of his reply. 'Omnissiah knows,' he said. 'Or how many of them will have something relevant to say.'

'Then if I may make a suggestion,' Mira said brightly, 'perhaps Ciaphas should just liaise between you and the military people, like he's supposed to, while I keep the hangers-on out of the way. I've nothing practical to contribute to the strategic planning in any case, but I do know how to talk to politicians without yawning.'

'That would be helpful,' Gries agreed, and I nodded, concealing my surprise as best I could.

'It would indeed,' I concurred, wondering what would be in it for her, and deciding that right now I didn't really care. The important thing was to stop Serendipita from going the way of her home world, and too many others along the Eastern Arm for comfort.

'Good.' Mira smiled at me. 'Then let's try to look as though they're all welcome, shall we?'

Editorial Note:

As usual, though he mentions a few of the astrographic details in passing, Cain is vague at best about conditions in the Serendipita System. Accordingly, I've inserted the following extract here, in the hope that it may make things a little clearer.

From Interesting Places and Tedious People: A Wanderer's Waybook, by Jerval Sekara, 145.M39.

SERENDIPITA IS WELL named, for it does indeed come as a delightful surprise to the warp-weary traveller; a small constellation of habitable worlds, though, it must be said, with varying degrees of comfort, orbiting a single gas giant of quite prodigious size. So large, indeed, that it radiates light and warmth in the manner of a small star[83], rendering its half-dozen planet-sized moons tolerable for the hardy folk who make their homes here. The most favoured of these is Serendipita itself, which enjoys a temperate climate, abundant oceans and two small polar caps. Rendered the capital world of the system by virtue of supporting the bulk of its population, and having been the first orb settled by humanity, it's a pleasant enough sphere to tempt even the most jaded wayfarer into lingering for a while.

Should its charms pall, however, the other moons of this singular primary are also worth visiting, with the exception of Tarwen, the industrial centre of this curious conglomeration of worlds. Tarwen is as aesthetically unpleasing as its inhabitants, who, like their home, are grimy and dour, and the best that can be said for the place is that its existence allows Serendipita itself to remain charmingly unspoilt, save for those little comforts of civilisation which only seem important when unobtainable. In a similar fashion, much of the agriculture supporting the far-flung population is relegated to other moons, although Serendipita does boast some tolerably picturesque rural hinterlands serving her larger cities.

It should be noted in passing that other centres of population exist in the wider stellar system, but contain nothing of interest, being devoted entirely to mining, commerce or other such occupations of the artisan class, while a remarkable number of ne'er-do-wells continually ply the magnificent ring system and innumerable lesser moons around Serendipita in search of exploitable resources and other plunder; not the least of which are the ramshackle vessels generally employed in this pursuit, and which come to grief about as often as one might expect given the inordinate number of hazards to navigation in so thick a belt of debris. From the surface of the habitable worlds, however, the ring is most notable for the breathtaking spectacle it affords those seeking diversion after nightfall.