'What about me?' Mira asked, following him in from the direction of her own stateroom, still looking somewhat the worse for wear despite a change of clothes and a spraybath. It seemed she found the beds the Reclaimers provided for their guests a little too firm for comfort, although I found mine considerably more conducive to sleep than the overstuffed mattresses of the palace in Fidelis had been.
Jurgen nodded. 'I brought an extra bowl in, miss, in case you fancied one too.'
'Just get me a recaf,' she snapped. 'And that's not what I meant.'
The intransigent expression I knew only too well began to settle across my aide's grimy features, and I stepped in hastily to head off the inevitable clash. 'If you wouldn't mind, Jurgen,' I added.
'Of course not, commissar,' he said, his equanimity at least partially restored by the belated courtesy, albeit one that had arrived by proxy. The look he gave Mira's oblivious back as he left, however, made it abundantly clear that the slight wouldn't be forgotten easily or soon.
'And I've no messages concerning the young lady.'
'Thank you,' I said, as he disappeared down the corridor, the door hissing closed behind him. I picked up the drink he'd prepared and sipped it gratefully, regarding Mira gravely through the steam. 'Please don't treat Jurgen like one of your household servants,' I said, as soon as I was sure he was out of earshot. 'He's an Imperial Guardsman, and the aide of a commissar, with an exemplary record of courage in the face of the enemy. He deserves a bit of respect.'
Mira stared at me, her jaw working for a moment like a ruminating bovine, and the sullen expression I hadn't seen since the day of our first meeting smeared itself across her face. Then, as abruptly as the mist burning off from an early-morning hab spire, it had gone, displaced by another jaw-cracking yawn.
'Of course,' she said. 'Sorry. Not enough sleep.' Then the gamine grin was back. 'It was worth it, though.'
Perhaps fortunately I was spared having to find a reply to that by the return of Jurgen, who ushered the tray-bearing form of Gladden through the door, with an airy wave in Mira's direction. The odour of recaf began to mingle with the others in the room, which was beginning to seem decidedly cramped by now, despite the high ceiling.
'She's in there,' he said perfunctorily, then returned his attention to me.
'I found Gladden outside, sir, looking for the young lady, so I took the liberty of directing him in here. Seeing as she seemed in so much of a hurry.'
'Thank you, Jurgen,' Mira said, with a smile which surprised me almost as much as it evidently did my aide. 'That was very thoughtful of you. Especially as I'd been so unforgivably rude. I'm afraid I'm not at my best when I've just woken up.'
'That's all right, miss,' Jurgen said, fully mollified by the unexpected apology. 'You should see the commissar first thing in the morning.'
'Quite,' I said, while Mira turned away from him, suppressing a fit of the giggles with manifest difficulty. 'Was there anything else, Jurgen?'
'Not for the moment, sir,' my aide said, retreating from the room with an unmistakably self-satisfied air, while Mira fell on the recaf like a kroot on fresh meat.
Gladden coughed delicately. 'The brother-captain extends greetings to the Viridian envoy in the name of the Reclaimers, and suggests you may find a visit to the bridge informative, madam.'
'Then in the name of the Viridian Hegemony, I reciprocate his salutations, and will attend upon him with all due dispatch,' Mira responded, with a remarkably straight face.
'I'll be along too, as soon I've finished my tea,' I said, refilling the tanna bowl.
Gladden looked mildly disconcerted for a moment, but recovered quickly. 'Then I'll convey the news of your imminent arrivals,' he said, and left the room as quickly as he could without appearing to hurry.
Mira turned an accusing eye on me. 'Ciaphas, that was mean,' she said, not quite succeeding in hiding her amusement. 'He was only doing his job.' She lifted the lid from a side plate, next to her recaf, and studied the lumps of reconstituted protein thus revealed with a faintly suspicious frown, before stuffing one into her mouth with a resigned shrug.
'I suppose you're right,' I said, feeling as though I'd been somehow caught out by her. 'But I've never been comfortable with all that flowery protocol stuff.' I'd been getting a lot more used to it since being attached to brigade headquarters, of course, which had meant attending more tedious diplomatic functions than I'd ever thought possible back in my early days with the 12th Field Artillery, but I much preferred people to either say what they meant, or lie to me in plain, simple language. Still do, if I'm honest, although I suppose it was good practice for much later on in my career, when I found myself attached to the lord general's staff, and having to hack my way through thickets of polite obfuscatory verbiage on an almost daily basis. Luckily, by that time, my fraudulent reputation was so widespread I was able to sidestep the game entirely, playing up to my image of the bluff man of action, so I never had to learn to talk like that. Which was probably just as well, or my brain would have had to shut down in sheer self-defence.
Mira shrugged, failing to offer me any of the nutritionally balanced whatever-it-was she was throwing down her neck, and washed the final lump away with a chug of recaf. 'How do you think I feel?' she asked rhetorically. 'I grew up thinking that sort of soil improver was plain Gothic.'
'Then I'm amazed you turned out as well adjusted as you did,' I said, wondering for a moment just how sarcastic I was being, but Mira appeared to take the remark at face value.
'It's not been easy,' she remarked complacently, and brushed a few crumbs from her inevitably exposed cleavage. 'Do you think this is a little louche for visiting the bridge?'
I examined the day gown she'd donned with a critical eye. It was cut from some shimmering gold fabric, which seemed to be held up by nothing more than willpower, and moulded itself snugly around whatever it touched[53]. The effect was certainly striking, particularly if the one you were after was that of a highly priced courtesan, but hardly suited to a military environment. I was sure the Astartes and the Mechanicus drones wouldn't be distracted at all, if they even noticed it, but the ship and its defences were in the hands of flesh-and-blood mortals, who might find their attention wandering at a critical moment, so pleasant as the view was in the abstract...
'Possibly,' I temporised. 'Perhaps something a little more businesslike would be better.'
'Why, Ciaphas Cain.' Mira grinned at me again, with a coquettish tilt to her head, which made her look more like a fifty-credit joy-girl than ever. 'I do believe you're jealous.' Then, before I could gather my wits to do anything more than gape in astonishment, she undulated out of the room.
TEN
BY THE TIME Mira returned, rather more suitably attired in what she told me was one of her hunting outfits, I'd managed to convince myself that she'd been joking. After all, the very idea of me being resentful of other men appreciating her physical attributes was ludicrous enough to begin with, let alone the fact that most of the potential rivals for her affections aboard the Revenant would either have been tech-priests or Space Marines, and therefore out of the running. Which left only the serfs, who I doubted she'd even consider in that regard, given her typically aristocratic tendency to view the lower orders as little more than a refined type of servitor which didn't dribble lubricants on the carpet, and Jurgen, who was hardly the stuff a maiden's dreams were made of, unless she'd eaten too much cheese before turning in.
'Very suitable,' I complimented her, having had no idea until now that her wardrobe contained anything even remotely practical. It had definitely risen to the occasion this time, though, providing a jacket and trousers in muted colours, and a stout pair of boots, all of which lent her an air of businesslike efficiency, without overstating the effect. Fortunately, she appeared to have left the fowling piece that went with it at home.
53
Probably static cling. I used to have a dress like that, but it was never quite the same after a firefight with some hrud; and concealing a weapon while wearing it was always extremely uncomfortable, so I never bothered to find a replacement.