of them did, it was by far the most junior in the room. She smiled again, but before she could reply, DuPanya cut in, as dextrously as I might have pinked an opponent with my chainsword.
'My daughter is here as my potential successor, commissar[32],' he said. 'In these days of uncertainty, it's important for her to be kept abreast of policy matters, in case she has to take over the reins of government.'
'Of course,' I said, nodding gravely, as if there was any government worth a damn on Viridia at the moment other than jumpy Guardsmen with lasguns, who'd apply whichever fragments of the occupation code[33] they remembered so long as nothing or no one looked like threatening the safety of their squadmates, and use their weapons indiscriminately if their paranoia was sufficiently tweaked. (Which, under the right, or wrong, circumstances, wouldn't take much, as a rule.) 'But I'm sure we all hope it won't come to that.' I certainly would if I was a Viridian, anyway.
'Quite.' DuPanya glanced at his daughter, apparently picking up my implied meaning without effort, and moved the discussion on to safer topics. 'What do you think the Astartes want to discuss?'
'I've no idea,' I admitted, trying not to sound as though it rankled. We were, after all, supposed to be on the same side, but, as I've mentioned before, the Astartes were a law unto themselves, and confided as much or as little in their allies as seemed to suit them. At least, that was true of the Reclaimers, and I've no reason to suspect that it doesn't hold true for the other Chapters as well[34]. 'But I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.'
We didn't have long to wait, either. At the appointed hour, almost to the second, the synchronised clash of armoured feet against rockcrete I'd come to associate with the Astartes echoed through the bunker, shaking a thin film of dust free of the support beams to sprinkle everyone lightly with synthetic dandruff, and all eyes turned to the main doorway. After a moment or two, in which the clattering and the vibration increased to levels just short of uncomfortable, Gries appeared, flanked by a couple of his companions from the squad which had accompanied him before[35]. A moment later, I had a real surprise. Drumon was trailing a pace or two behind them. Even if he'd still been wearing his helmet, which was hanging from a pouch-filled belt at his waist, next to a holstered plasma pistol, I would have recognised him instantly by the metal claw at his back, the jointed arm to which it was attached folded neatly away parallel to his spine. He was carrying a scabbarded sword on the opposite side to his pistol, with an activation rune of some kind in the pommel. He was evidently used to employing them in tandem, in the same fashion I used my chainsword and sidearm, and I smiled involuntarily, amused to have found another small thing which the towering Techmarine and I appeared to have in common.
Catching my eye, Drumon returned the smile and nodded a greeting, which clearly astonished those among the assembled officers who noticed it even more than it did me. In fact, I was so taken aback, I took a moment to register the red-robed tech-priest gliding smoothly in his wake, like a gretchin after an ork[36]. I had no idea what the tech-priest's presence portended, but I was pretty sure it was nothing good.
'Captain.' DuPanya stepped forwards to greet Gries, who glanced down at him, then removed his helmet, hanging it at his hip as Drumon had done. Seeing the two men together, I was put incongruously in mind of an adult, tilting his head to listen patiently to an importunate child. 'To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?'
'We have been conferring with the acolytes of the Omnissiah,' Gries explained, without preamble. 'Magos Yaffel believes he has identified the source of the genestealer taint.'
That got everyone's attention, as I'm sure you can imagine. The room, which had gone quiet enough when the Astartes appeared, stilled completely. I could hear little but the susurration of my own breathing, and I'm pretty sure a few of the others stopped even that for a moment. Fortunately, before anyone could turn blue, Drumon and the tech-priest commandeered the hololith, coaxing it into life with a few dextrous touches of their ceramite gauntlets and mechadendrites respectively, while murmuring the litany of activation. We all crowded round, trying to look as though we weren't using our elbows on purpose to obtain a better view, and I did my best to ignore the proximity of Mira, who was taking advantage of the huddle to get considerably closer to me than decorum would normally permit with others present.
'I'm sure you recognise this,' the tech-priest began, in the reedy tones of a voxcaster in need of repair. Like many of his brethren, he'd apparently replaced his vocal cords, and a great deal else, with augmetic systems. As he spoke, he moved slightly, oscillating back and forth like a drunkard attempting to keep pace with the floor; after a moment or two I caught a glimpse of metal beneath his robe, and the coin dropped. The lower half of his body had been removed completely, leaving his torso resting on a metal plate, which in turn was supported by a thin steel tube, attached to a single, fat-tyred wheel. No doubt there was a gyroscope somewhere to impart stability, but, if so, it seemed barely adequate to the task, necessitating constant minor adjustments of balance to keep him from toppling over.
Everyone nodded as an image of the Viridian stellar system appeared, the planet we were standing on marked with the green rune which, somewhat optimistically, identified it as now being safely back in Imperial hands. Most of the significant offworld habs were similarly tagged. This was not surprising. The Reclaimers left behind on the Revenant had hardly been idle while the war on the ground was going on, and had retaken the largest rebel stronghold with an ease which had disinclined most of the others to make a fight of it, while the strike cruiser swatted any of the System Defence boats which failed to strike their colours as casually as it had taken care of the one which had been foolish enough to attack us when we'd first emerged from the warp. Only a few red icons marked die-hard dissidents, which quite effectively pinpointed the offworld sites where the 'stealers had managed to gain a significant foothold, and I was pleasantly surprised at how meagre they were[37].
'A hundred and forty-seven years ago,' the tech-priest went on, apparently indifferent to our nods and murmurs, 'a flare of warp energy was detected in the halo[38]. Analysis at the time suggested an object of considerable mass had emerged, and a System Defence boat was dispatched to investigate. Perhaps fortunately for them, however, the object disappeared back into the immaterium before they were able to provide more than a few long-range sensor records.' Drumon did something at the control lectern, and the image changed to an indistinct blob which looked like nothing so much as a diseased tuber to me. There seemed to be nothing particularly threatening about it, but DuPanya's face had paled. Mira glanced at her father, looking concerned about someone else for the first time since I'd met her.
'The space hulk,' the governor said heavily, and that got a reaction, you can be sure. Gries's shattered visage twitched into the semblance of a frown, and he gazed at DuPanya like a schola tutor faced with a pupil stumbling over the catechism.
'You were aware of this?' he asked, his voice rumbling through the bunker like a distant earthquake.
DuPanya nodded. 'Of course,' he said, recovering fast. 'But as it was only in-system for a few hours, we felt the risk it posed to our security had been negligible. We kept the SDF on alert for a while, but with nothing to shoot at, there didn't seem much point in prolonging the watch.'
Concealing my surprise that he was apparently into his second century, which I suppose I should have expected, given what I'd already deduced about the nobility's fondness for juvenat treatments, I nodded judiciously. 'That's understandable,' I said, wondering for the first time if Mira was really quite as young as she appeared, and deciding I didn't much care either way. 'If there were greenskins aboard, I'm sure you would have noticed.'
Several of the Imperial officers smiled at the understatement, an ork invasion hardly being noted for its subtlety, but it seemed Gries had as little time for flippancy as he had for anything else which wasn't about slaughtering the enemies of the Emperor. 'Such complacency was negligent in the extreme,' he said.
DuPanya flushed. 'We could hardly remain on alert indefinitely,' he pointed out, a trifle defensively. 'The populace would have been panicked, to no positive effect. And it's not as if our defences were set up to counter this kind of insidious infiltration in any case.'
Gries didn't have to say ''Perhaps they should have been''. His silence was emphatic enough. To dispel the tension hanging in the air, and forestall any recrimination which was likely to be ripened by it, I stepped in to restore our unity, like the good little commissar I was supposed to be.
'All of which rather begs the question of how the 'stealers got planetside at all,' I said, as if I really wanted to know the answer.
'Magos, I'm sure a man of your erudition has been able to work it out?' The wobbling half-man looked as pleased as it was possible to with a face composed largely of metal. The acolytes of the Omnissiah are supposed to
