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 He saluted, no doubt to underline that this was military business which superseded whatever Mira might think about his unexpected arrival, and marched out in a vaguely martial slouch.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