I nodded, being able to reconstruct that conversation all too easily. This had all been her idea, clearly, although I still found it hard to credit that she'd become sufficiently infatuated during our brief affair to be willing to wave goodbye to everything she'd known just to follow me through the warp[49]. 'How very dutiful of you,' I responded. 'No doubt the populace will be suitably grateful.'
'No doubt,' Mira agreed, clearly not giving a flying one what the hoi polloi thought, and attaching herself to me with a tight grip. 'So it looks as though we'll be liaising together for the foreseeable future.'
DESPITE THE FAINT sense of unease about the situation which continued to oppress me, particularly in the quieter moments when I had time to reflect on the potential ramifications, I had to admit that Mira's words in the hangar bay had cheered me at least as much as they gave me cause for disquiet. As I've said before, she was pleasant enough company, and I'd felt rather starved of companionship during the voyage to Viridia once I'd recovered enough to start taking notice of my surroundings. This time round, although the circumstances were somewhat bizarre, I had someone I felt I could converse with, as well as engaging in a variety of recreational pursuits, all of which promised to make my second sojourn aboard the Revenant a great deal more congenial than the first had been.
Then, too, I had Jurgen with me again, which fact alone eased my mind considerably. We'd been through a lot together since our first chance meeting on Desolatia (and were to go through even more in the years to come, although, perhaps mercifully, I had little inkling of quite how much terror and bloodshed awaited me before I could sink into a relatively peaceful retirement[50]), and the prospect of facing whatever horrors awaited us aboard the Spawn of Damnation seemed far less daunting than they would have done without the knowledge that he would be watching my back as steadfastly as always. Not that I had any intention of getting within a thousand kilometres of the cursed piece of warp flotsam, of course, so anything lurking within the tangled mess of conjoined starships was of little interest to me; once we'd caught up with it, if we ever did, the shipmaster and his gunnery teams could carve it up at their leisure, and in the unlikely event of anything getting off before they did, it would have to be foolish in the extreme to try boarding a Space Marine vessel.
All in all, I suppose, I felt as happy about the fool's errand we were on as it was possible to under the circumstances, and resolved to make the best of things - an endeavour which Mira seemed determined to help with.
'I'm still not sure how you managed to persuade Gries to let you aboard in the first place,' I said, over a surprisingly palatable meal in my quarters, a few hours after we'd boarded. A fair proportion of her mountain of luggage turned out to have been delicacies of one sort or another, no doubt with my comments about the Spartan fare I'd subsisted on during our voyage to Viridia fresh in her mind. It felt odd to be eating a second breakfast when my body clock insisted it was late evening, but I'd hopped between enough worlds by now to be confident that I'd have readjusted to the Revenant's idea of chronology before too much longer. Gladden had got used to bringing my meals in to me here on the previous voyage, and resumed the arrangement without being asked; no doubt the serfs would have been as uncomfortable to see Mira and I in their mess hall as we would have felt about being there. What the Reclaimers did about meals, I had no idea, but if they ate together at all I was certain they'd find catering to the tastes and needs of ordinary mortals something of a trial. At any event, neither Mira nor myself were ever invited to join them, which I'm sure we found as much of a relief as our hosts did[51].
Mira shrugged and bit into the florn cake she'd just spread with ackenberry preserve. 'You know how it is,' she began, a trifle indistinctly, before swallowing and continuing more clearly. 'You can get people to do pretty much anything, if you put your mind to it. You just need to know how to ask.'
Which didn't really answer my question, of course, and being an old hand at verbal evasion myself, I persisted, even as I admired her technique. After a few more moments of verbal sparring, which I have to confess I rather enjoved. I eventually backed her into having to give a straight answer.
'It was easy enough,' she admitted, licking a few stray traces of the sticky preserve from her fingers with a coquettish glance in my direction, to see if I'd be distracted by that old trick. (Which, I'm bound to say, I might have been if I didn't already know her as well as I did, so I just kept looking at her with an expression of polite enquiry until she gave it up as a bad job and carried on.) 'I simply told him it was my duty as a member of the ruling house to confirm that Viridia was safe, just as it was his after having pledged his aid to our people to make sure that the job was complete.'
'I see,' I said, contriving to look unimpressed, although if I'd still been wearing my cap at the time I'd have taken it off to her. Basically, she'd just told a captain of the Astartes that charging off on a private quest before making sure that every single 'stealer, hybrid and implant on Viridia had been tracked down and eradicated[52] would be a gross dereliction of his duty, but he could do what he liked without impugning the honour of his Chapter if he took her along too, as that would make it an extension of his original assignment. Had it not been for her complete self-absorption, she would have been an extraordinary asset to Imperial diplomacy.
'How long do you think it'll be before we catch up with the Spawn?'
Mira asked, after her final recon sweep among the empty platters littering the tray had failed to turn up any further comestibles.
I shrugged 'Hard to say,' I said, which sounded a little more authoritative than ''frakked if I know'', which was actually the truth of the matter. 'I suppose it depends on how good the Navigator is at reading the warp currents, and whether Yaffel has got his calculations right. Even if everything goes perfectly which it never does, we'll probably be following the damned thing for months - if we ever catch up with it at all.'
'Sounds like we're in for rather a dull time, then,' Mira concluded.
'Yes, I'm afraid so,' I agreed, little guessing how far off the mark that was going to turn out to be, and just as well too for my peace of mind 'We'll just have to amuse ourselves as best we can.'
'I'm sure we can think of something,' she said, before yawning spectacularly and stretching in a manner which emphasised her natural undulations in a decidedly pleasing fashion.
'Looks like you're ready for bed,' I said, chiming for Jurgen to come in and clear the debris of our meal. It seemed he and Gladden had reached the sort of compromise that only occurs or matters to underlings jealous of their status in colliding hierarchies, and that henceforth refreshments and their subsequent remains were to be handed from one to the other in the corridor leading to the guest quarters - which seemed like a pointless duplication of effort to me, but if it kept my aide happy, then good luck to him.
Mira grinned at me, the familiar mischievous expression on her face.
'I thought you'd never ask,' she said.
IN THE END, we weren't left to speculate about our mission for very long. After a few hours' sleep, which left me sufficiently refreshed to resume my duties, and left Mira somewhat cranky to say the least, Jurgen's distinctive aroma oozed into my quarters again, accompanied by the more fragrant one of freshly brewed tanna. 'Captain Gries presents his compliments, sir, and would like to see you on the bridge at your earliest convenience,' he informed me, busying himself with the tanna pot and a pair of tea bowls.
49
I must say I find that all too plausible: Cain possessed considerable personal charm and was perfectly willing to use it to get whatever he wanted from people. A particular kind of woman would be extremely susceptible to that, especially if she wasn't overly bright to begin with.
50
Which probably indicates that this portion of his memoirs was compiled before the tyranid incursions and the Black Crusade were to drag him back to reluctant active service in the closing years of the 41st millennium.
51
Astartes do, of course, eat, although most of them seem to regard doing so merely as providing fuel for their enhanced metabolisms, taking little more pleasure in the act than members of the Adeptus Mechanicus do. The real reason for the Reclaimers' reluctance to invite their guests to join them was probably that such gatherings are generally regarded as providing spiritual as well as physical sustenance, being accompanied by prayers to the Emperor and the Chapter's primarch, and readings from their own martial litanies. Doing so in the presence of outsiders, and thereby revealing some of their Chapter's most sacred mysteries to non-initiates, would, of course, be anathema to them.