Mira.
I'D TAKEN THE precaution of voxing Jurgen before leaving the conference room, to ensure that my quarters were currently free of my self-appointed helpmeet, so I must admit to feeling a little cheated by fate when she popped out of a cross corridor close to the guest quarters as abruptly as a villain in a mystery play[102].
Seeing her in the flesh again, aesthetically pleasing as it was, disconcerted me considerably, and the dilemma I'd managed to push to the back of my mind under the pressure of more recent events came flooding back, seemingly as intractable as ever.
'Ciaphas.' She smiled, evidently still in a good mood and apparently pleased to see me. 'This is a pleasant surprise.'
'I could say the same,' I returned, donning a smile of my own and wondering if I'd be able to head off the inevitable confrontation for a while longer, or whether I should simply get it over with as quickly as possible. I carried on walking in the direction of my stateroom while I spoke, in the vague hope that she had urgent business elsewhere, or that at least if it all went ploin-shaped she'd be less inclined to try to kill me with Jurgen in earshot. To my distinct lack of surprise she fell in beside me, chattering brightly as she undulated along the corridor.
'I've just had some excellent news,' she informed me, and despite the faint itching in my palms which these words provoked, I nodded, as if I couldn't wait to hear the details.
'Good,' I said, not entirely inaccurately. 'I could do with some.'
Mira smiled, looking for a moment as if I'd just complimented her on her finger painting. 'I've been talking to the seneschal,' she said brightly, as if I knew or cared which of the inbred drones among the delegation she meant, 'and he said not all the military people are going back to Serendipita on the shuttle tomorrow.'
'That's right,' I said, wondering how some gretch-frotting civilian had found out about this, while making a mental note to remind everyone in the SDF party what ''need to know'' meant, and put the fear of the Throne into them until it stuck.
'Duque and his people are joining the blockade[103].'
'Oh, you knew.' She looked faintly disappointed, as if I'd guessed the punchline of a joke she was telling before she'd reached it. Then she brightened again. 'So you know what that means, right?'
'A little more leg room for the others?' I hazarded, although from what I remembered of the shuttle's arrival, that didn't seem much of a consideration.
Mira smiled at me, unsure whether I was joking, or genuinely didn't get it. Correctly divining the latter, she grinned more widely. 'Room for more passengers,' she said. When I still didn't jump around punching the air, she amplified further. 'Us.'
Emperor help me, she was serious. I stopped moving and stared at her in perplexity.
'Mira, I can't just up and leave on a whim.' The first thunderclouds started to gather over her perfectly groomed eyebrows, which were moving together over deepening frown lines, and I carried on as though I'd always meant to, hoping to head them off. Now it was looking like a distinct possibility, I decided I really couldn't deal with a confrontation today. 'However much I'd like to. I have duties and responsibilities to consider. There are just too many people here counting on me to do my job.'
'Do they mean more to you than I do?' she asked, and I could hear the first rumble of the approaching storm, like distant artillery, in her voice.
'What I want doesn't come into it,' I said. That had been true, one way or another, from the first day I tied my sash, and lent verisimilitude to the rest of my words. 'What I'm doing now could be crucial to protecting Serendipita from the genestealers. If I could turn my back on that, would I really be the man you want beside you on Viridia?' To my relief, the first faint flicker of doubt was beginning to show on her face, as she began to think about it. I followed up the advantage. 'If I got on that shuttle with you now, you'd regret it. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life. You'd never know if I was there for you, and the good of Viridia, or for my own selfish reasons.'
'I'd know,' she said confidently, but the flicker of doubt in her eyes told a different story.
'If I could go with you, I would,' I said, truthfully enough; I had precious little idea what a governor's consort was supposed to do, other than supply an heir or two, which I was confident I could manage given the amount of practice we'd had, but I was sure they got shot at rather less frequently than I was used to, and the food and accommodation were certainly far superior to anything the Imperial Guard had to offer. 'But I'm needed here. The boarding party's going across in the next few hours, and the Guard and the Serendipitans need my reports. The security of the entire system might depend on it.' I don't mind admitting I was laying it on with a trowel by now, but the results were undeniably satisfying: Mira was looking at me with a kind of awed respect I hadn't seen before, and which, I must confess, I rather liked.
'You're going over to the space hulk?' she asked, all trace of her incipient tantrum gone, and I nodded, milking the moment.
'I've been asked to, at any rate. I was just on my way to discuss it with Captain Gries when I ran into you.' Too late, I realised the trap my tongue had laid for me. Mira could no more keep a juicy morsel of gossip like that to herself than she could give up breathing, and it was carrots to credits it would be all round the parasites she was herding before the hour was out. Which, in itself, didn't matter that much, except that Torven and Kregeen would be on the shuttle with them, so certain to hear all about it, and my chances of retaining their good opinion once they realised I'd been nowhere near the Spawn would be somewhere between slim and negligible.
'Then I'd better let you get on with things,' Mira said, disengaging from my arm as we arrived at the door to my quarters. As I opened it, Jurgen's distinctive aroma billowed out into the corridor, and she turned away quickly. 'Good luck.'
'Thank you,' I responded, stepping inside and hoping I wasn't going to need it.
'Are you all right, sir?' Jurgen asked, rearranging the grime on his face into an expression of puzzled concern. 'You look a bit peaky, if you don't mind me saying so.'
'I've felt better,' I admitted.
'I'll get some tanna on,' Jurgen said, slouching away in search of a kettle.
'Thank you,' I said. 'Then, if you wouldn't mind, can you arrange a meeting with Captain Gries?'
The situation wasn't entirely lost, I told myself, as the welcome scent of brewing tanna began to permeate the room. After all, he could always say no.
SEVENTEEN
I SHOULD HAVE known better, of course. Gries was all for it; he didn't go quite so far as to pat me on the back and say ''Wish I was going with you, bag a 'stealer or two for me'', but he probably would have done if that sort of thing hadn't been unseemly in an Astartes of his rank and seniority. As it was, he simply nodded, said ''That would be acceptable'', and got one of the Chapter serfs to scurry off and make the arrangements before I could think of a plausible excuse for changing my mind.
The only bright side to the whole sorry mess was that Mira was so impressed with my apparent heroism she insisted on spending the few remaining hours before my departure in a protracted and strenuous farewell, which came close to making my imminent demise seem almost worth it. As I trudged across the hangar floor to our waiting Thunderhawk, though, the prospect of taking a few happy memories to my grave with me did little to offset the leaden weight of dread now freighting my stomach.
'Commissar,' Drumon greeted me as I approached. 'Good news. The vox relays with the CATs are functioning well, in most cases, and there appears to be no genestealer activity in the vicinity of our landing point.'
'Excellent,' I said, trying to appear relaxed, enthusiastic and quietly confident, and probably failing dismally in every respect, before the full import of his words filtered through my trepidation. 'What does ''in most cases'' mean, exactly?'
'Three of them are failing to transmit any data,' Drumon expanded. 'We infer that they materialised too deeply inside the derelict for the vox signal to reach through the hull.'
'Definitely not ripped apart by genestealers, then?' I asked, trying to sound as though I was joking.
