Gaunt got up, and began to pace thoughtfully. ‘I’m afraid I think this is about prestige,’ he said. ‘You associate with the famous war hero of Vervunhive, and earn some glory of your own, you’ll go back as more than just a popular heir to the House. That kind of borrowed gloss will get you a planetary seat, a governorship. I think House Chass has great ambitions to fulfil through you.’
‘You are dismayingly arrogant,’ said Maddalena.
‘Just tell me I’m not also right,’ said Gaunt.
There was a knock at the door. Maddalena instinctively reached towards her sidearm.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Gaunt. ‘Enter!’
Beltayn came in, with Nahum Ludd and Trooper Dalin.
‘You sent for these men, sir?’ he asked.
‘I did. Come in. You might as well stay and hear this too, Beltayn.’
Chass had risen to his feet. Both Ludd and Dalin looked at him, curious.
‘This, I have just discovered, is my son,’ Gaunt said. He ignored their looks of surprise. ‘I didn’t know I had a son, and now I find myself compromised by the knowledge. This is a risky mission, and potentially none of us may come back. Taking the son I’ve just met along on what could be a suicidal venture hardly seems like the greatest exercise in parental responsibility.’
Gaunt looked at Ludd and Dalin.
‘However, I could hardly leave him behind on Menazoid Sigma either. He wants to join us. He wants to serve with us. That’s a reasonably admirable ambition.’
‘I don’t want special treatment,’ said Chass.
‘Good, because you’re not getting any,’ said Gaunt. ‘Ludd, I hate to add to your existing workload, but I want you to prepare and process enlistment papers. If he wants to be a Guardsman, it had better be official.’
‘And I take it you want me to keep an eye on him too, sir?’ asked Ludd.
‘No. Not at all,’ said Gaunt. ‘I want you to keep an eye on her.’ He pointed to Maddalena.
‘The young Lord Chass here,’ said Gaunt, ‘is noble born. He has a bodyguard. A good one. It’s the only special favour I’ll show him, allowing her to remain. She can look after him, but she will not get in the way of operations. The moment she does, you can remove her. My full authority. You can shoot her, if needs be.’
‘He can try,’ said Maddalena.
‘Ludd is an Imperial commissar,’ Gaunt said to her. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t even think bad things about him.’
He turned back to the others.
‘His lordship must not compromise my decision making, especially not on this mission. I cannot, will not, worry about him, or second guess my choices because of him. Dalin, you’re about his age, so I want you to show him the ropes. There’s no time for basic and induction. Let him shadow you, and teach him what he needs. I ask this as a favour, not a command. When the real fighting starts, we’ll be keeping him away from the brunt of it.’
‘I want to–’ Chass began.
‘Enough,’ said Gaunt. ‘Show him the ropes, please, Dalin. But I don’t want him even compromising your duties as adjutant. He eats and sleeps like any common lasman.’
‘He should receive a rank,’ said Maddalena. ‘Some privilege for–’
‘If he wants to learn from me,’ said Gaunt, ‘he can do exactly what I did and start from the bottom. Take it or leave it. You asked for this, so don’t complain now you’ve got it. If he doesn’t like it, he can leave us at the fleet rendezvous and go home to his mother.’
He looked at them.
‘That’s all,’ he said.
Mkoll, chief scout of the Tanith First, prowled silently through the vast and dark cargo decks of the Armaduke. He was hunting.
The engines rumbled distantly. He hadn’t set out to look for anything in particular. He just wanted to get the lay of the land, learn the geography of the ship. Just in case.
He also wanted to get his equilibrium settled as fast as possible. Ship time unsettled him. He got through it by walking, and learning every obscure corner of whatever craft he was aboard. It was a form of meditation.
Half an hour into his first walk around, crossing a vehicle deck where mission equipment was secured under lash lines and the air smelled of disinfectant, he’d first seen the bird. It was moving through the cargo galleries, swooping from one set of hold rafters to the next. It looked as lost and as trapped as he felt.
He set to following it. It was big. A twin-headed eagle. At first, he wondered if it was some kind of vision, but it was real enough. He’d been told the intake had brought a psyber animal aboard with them. A mascot. It had evidently got loose.
It kept apace of him. He followed it through two of the small holds, then around an engineering deck where the few servitors didn’t seem to notice it. It avoided the busy spaces, the troop decks, the vast and heated furnace rooms of the drive chambers where hundreds of crewmen toiled like slaves.
Like him, it sought the lonely parts of the ship.
He wondered how he could catch it without harming it. If it stayed loose, it could get lost or trapped, and die of starvation. The death of an aquila on the eve of a mission would not be the best omen.
Mkoll followed the bird into a vast hold space that had been left empty. Junk and spare plating had been piled up there. He heard a voice call out.
The eagle turned, surprised, and then immediately followed the voice down.
It settled on a metal spar beside two figures. They were sitting right out in the middle of the empty space, perched on scrap metal, a small fire burning in an oil can.
One of the men was Ezra Night. He was permitting his companion to examine the function of his reynbow.
Ezra saw Mkoll, and called out.
‘Histye soule! Come join herein.’
Mkoll walked over to the fire.
The other figure lowered the reynbow and looked Mkoll up and down. He was a Space Marine of the White Scars Chapter. He was in full plate, his helm on the deck by his left foot.
‘You are the master of the scouts?’ he asked. ‘I’ve heard all about you. Sit.’
SIX
Relativity
Aboard the Highness Ser Armaduke, only the ringing of ship bells marked the passage of time. There were no day or night shifts. Some vessels established a day/night cycle with their lighting systems, but this was evidently not Shipmaster Spika’s habit. The Armaduke ploughed onwards in a state of twilight gloom, the decks morose and half lit. There was some talk of power conservation and economies of reserve, but few could avoid the suspicion that the habitat conditions were deliberate. On some decks, power went out completely and inexplicably, for hours at a time. The heating and air circulation of certain compartments and sections ceased and then, after a while, resumed with a bronchial rattle of ducts and flues. The agreed belief was that the Armaduke’s grim conditions had nothing to do with Shipmaster Spika’s conservative approach to power consumption, and everything to do with mechanical decay and infirmity.
In the troop decks, the men and women of the company and its retinue gathered around lamps, or worked by wick-light. Most slept for many hours longer than necessary. Sensing a malaise, Hark initiated a program of fitness and training that involved free marches and squad runs around the outer perimeter of the main hold levels, a circuit of almost five kilometres.
Boredom and inactivity were the real dangers of warp travel. Confinement and idleness allowed minds to stagnate, allowed anxieties to fester. At one end of the scale there would be discontent and despair, and the scale moved up through spats and feuding, criminal activity and mutinous behaviour. Unhappy minds were also more easily preyed upon by the powers of the warp.