'I see,' Jurgen said, nodding judiciously. 'So you need to be here, really. For this liaison thing to work.'
'It's a lot more convenient,' Mira said, stifling giggles. 'For the liaison thing.'
'Yes, it is,' I said, a little more shortly than I'd intended. Jurgen and I had been through a lot together, and he'd already saved my life more times than I could count. I was used to people judging him by his unprepossessing exterior, but Mira's thinly veiled mockery raised my hackles. Perhaps fortunately, they were as thick-skinned as one another in their own fashion, and she remained as oblivious to my disapproval as Jurgen did to her amusement. 'We'll have to find you some quarters.'
'That won't be a problem,' Jurgen said, rummaging in his kitbag. 'I've got a bedroll.' He started looking round the lavishly appointed drawing room for somewhere to spread it out.
'I'm glad to see you're as prepared as ever,' I said, trying not to picture the shambles he'd reduce the elegant chamber to within a day of settling in, not to mention the disruption his presence would cause to my continuing to liaise as happily as I had with a particular honorary colonel of the Household Regiment. 'But I'm sure we can make you a little more comfortable than that.'
'Of course we can,' Mira said, rallying at last and recomposing her features. 'The guest suites in this wing have servants' quarters attached.' She indicated a locked door on an inner wall, which I'd assumed on moving in simply connected to an adjoining suite like my own, for the benefit of guests needing a bit more space to sprawl. 'You can use those.'
'I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble, miss,' Jurgen said, apparently under the impression she was proposing to take care of the matter herself.
Mira shook her head. 'It's no trouble,' she assured him, with a commendably straight face. 'The main door from the corridor should still be unlocked, for the cleaners.' For whom, though I'd never seen them, I felt a sudden pang of sympathy. 'And we can get the majordomo to open that one in the morning.'
She glanced a wordless question at me as she indicated the connecting door, and I nodded. Despite his slovenly appearance, and the miasma of ripe socks which hung about him, Jurgen's discretion was considerable; he wouldn't intrude without good reason. Not to mention that, with a genestealer cult lurking in the woodwork, I'd sleep a great deal more soundly knowing my aide and his lasgun were within earshot. I always kept my own weapons to hand, of course, but it was surprisingly comforting to know that once again I had back-up I could rely on completely. In fact it's hardly an exaggeration to say that I only fully appreciated how much I'd missed it once Jurgen materialised so unexpectedly in my quarters.
'Then, if there's nothing else, sir, I'll turn in,' my aide said, stooping to gather up his kit.
'Probably best,' I told him. 'Now the Guard have arrived, we're in for a busy day tomorrow.'
'Almost certainly,' Mira agreed, as the door clicked closed, leaving only the lingering trace of his presence hanging in the air like an odiferous phantom. She raised a speculative eyebrow at me. 'Perhaps we'd better get on with some liaising while we still can.'
WELL, I HADN'T been wrong about the effect the sudden arrival of a few score thousand Guardsmen was going to have on the planet, and my peace of mind. Now there was an actual Imperial Guard force in the system to coordinate things with, Gries began voxing me rather more frequently than once a day, and at greater length than the terse exchanges we'd grown used to, which had largely consisted of exchanging the tally of 'stealer spawn bagged by his Astartes (high) and Orten's PDF (pitifully low) since the last communique. Given how compromised the PDF were, Gries had decided to set up the Reclaimers' operational headquarters at the Adeptus Mechanicus shrine, where, I gathered, he and his men had been made as welcome as outsiders ever were by the disciples of the Omnissiah. As yet I hadn't ventured across the city to join them, feeling that my duty required me to stay as close as possible to the PDF command bunker, and the rather less spartan accommodation offered by the palace.
Within a couple of days of the Guard's arrival, however, I was beginning to find the prospect of a bit of Mechanicus austerity considerably more appealing. Governor DuPanya had kindly put the bunker under his home at the disposal of the expeditionary force[29], which meant I was dealing with general staff matters pretty much non-stop. Predictably, everyone from regimental commanders and their commissars on up wanted to meet me, get my opinion on matters I'd never heard of and ask if I could perhaps suggest to the Astartes that they move these pressing concerns to the top of their To Do list. If it hadn't been for Jurgen deflecting the majority of these requests with his usual combination of stubbornness and literally minded adherence to protocol, I'd never have been off the vox to Gries at all. Even Mira's presence was starting to seem scant compensation for the never-ending litany of requests, complaints and data-shuffling.
I had no doubt, from what I'd seen of the Astartes during our voyage here, that their patience with this kind of confusion would be limited at best, so you'll no doubt appreciate my surprise when Gries voxed one morning to request a meeting with the governor, and the senior Guard officers, at his earliest convenience. As it happened I was having breakfast with Mira at the time, and she looked at me quizzically over the plate she'd just stuffed with salt grox, coddled eggs and some local species of smoked fish.
'What do you suppose he wants?' she asked, and I shrugged, quietly fascinated as usual by the amount of food she seemed able to pack away without any noticeable ill-effects.
'I suppose we'll find out soon enough,' I said, sipping my cup of tanna[30] gratefully, Jurgen had brought a supply with him, and I hadn't realised quite how much I was missing the stuff until it was back. 'We needed to get him in for a joint strategy meeting anyway. Probably a lot easier if he thinks it was his idea in the first place.'
'Perhaps,' Mira agreed, slightly indistinctly. 'But why wouldn't he come if you asked him anyway? I thought we were all supposed to be cooperating.'
'Astartes like to cooperate on their terms,' I told her, punctuating my words with sips of the fragrant liquid. I had no doubt that they were zealous servants of Him on Earth, but whatever alchemy made them more than human undeniably set them apart. Perhaps if I hadn't been so affected, both physically and mentally, by my experiences on Interims Prime, I might have interacted with them to a greater extent on our journey here, and found more common ground than I had, but somehow I doubted that. The closest thing to a personal connection I'd been able to forge was with Drumon, and he'd been more interested in the necrons and their infernal devices than anything approaching the social niceties.
'Who doesn't?' Mira asked, reasonably enough. I couldn't think of an answer to that which didn't sound trite, or smug, so I took refuge in my breakfast and simply shrugged.
* * *
TO GIVE THE governor his due, he lost no time in setting up the conference Gries had requested. As I entered the command bunker, the taste of tanna still fresh in my mouth, I was pleasantly surprised to see Orten there, apparently at DuPanya's invitation. Having him on hand as a source of local knowledge would be useful, and save us the bother of rebriefing him later in the unlikely event of us needing the forces he commanded for anything. I nodded an affable greeting and exchanged a few words, noting with quiet amusement how my friendliness towards him seemed to change the attitude of a number of the Guard officers present from indifference or barely concealed disdain to a slightly forced cordiality. They would have had little enough time for the PDF even if a fair proportion of it hadn't been shooting at their men, of course, but under the circumstances, I wouldn't have been all that surprised if at least some of them hadn't suspected Orten of being a hybrid himself[31].
Rather more surprising was Mira's presence, wearing another of her wedding-cake uniforms, but at least this time she'd had enough sense to pack the cleavage away where it wouldn't distract anyone. She smiled at me as I came in, although if any of the assembled officers noticed, they had the good grace not to appear to take it for anything other than a perfectly natural infatuation with the dashing hero I was popularly supposed to be. I made my way over to the girl and her father, acknowledging the greetings of the Guard officers I was acquainted with, or who wished to foster the impression that I was.
'Governor,' I said, greeting him first, as protocol demanded, before nodding to Mira. 'Colonel. An unexpected pleasure.' Which it was. She'd said nothing about tagging along when she'd left my chambers an hour or so before, and must have got changed remarkably quickly, at least by her standards. Many of the Imperial officers milling around us seemed confused by her presence, as even if they accepted her military rank as real, which I doubted any
