'Won't that create an even greater danger?' Torven asked, looking troubled. 'That amount of debris will pose a significant hazard to navigation throughout the system.'
'Not for long,' Duque assured him. 'The Spawn of Damnation is currently heading almost directly for the centre, and will end up falling into a cometary orbit about the sun within the next two to three years. It won't take much to time the attacks to nudge it a little, so that the bulk of the debris will pass close enough to be vaporised. Some of it will escape, of course, but that won't be passing close to Serendipita, or any of the other habs, on this orbit, and by the time it comes round again it'll be the middle of M43; time enough, I would have thought, to take any reasonable precautions against it hitting something.'
'It sounds a bit chancy,' I said, 'but I'd rather have a cloud of junk to deal with than a space hulk full of 'stealers.' After all, there was no telling how long it might take for the Spawn to drop back into the warp again; according to Yaffel they sometimes stayed in the real galaxy for decades, and the thought of thousands of genestealers drifting around a densely inhabited system, just waiting for some idiot whose greed was stronger than their sense of self-preservation to come dropping in looking for loot, made my blood run cold. After all, that's what appeared to have happened on Viridia, and the blasted hulk had only been in-system for less than a day. Duque's SDF could mount a blockade, of course, but the longer it went on, the higher the chances of a 'stealer or two somehow managing to infect a host and sneaking off to wreak havoc.
I nodded judiciously. 'In the absence of a more effective plan to preserve the security of the Serendipita system, I'll recommend we carry it out.'
'OUT OF THE question,' Gries said flatly. By now I'd got to know him well enough to realise a statement like that was effectively the end of the matter, but I have to admit I was taken aback by the speed and vehemence of his reaction.
Accordingly, I merely nodded in response, masking my dismay with the instinctive ease of a man who'd bet heavily on an inordinate number of promising-looking tarot hands in his time, only to realise shortly afterwards that everyone else's were better. (A reflex which had enabled me to scoop rather more pots than I'd otherwise have been entitled to, nevertheless.) 'Might I ask why?' I enquired, as though the answer were merely of academic interest.
I couldn't deny that Duque's scheme was chancy, to say the least, but it still seemed to me that the balance of risk was marginally in its favour.
'Because the Spawn's value is incalculable,' Drumon put in, glancing across the bridge towards the hololith, where Yaffel and a cadre of his red-robed acolytes were twittering away to one another in Binary, as they studied a three-dimensional image of what looked to me like the circulatory system of a diseased heart. 'A space hulk that venerable is a repository of archeotech almost beyond imagining.'
With a sudden sinking feeling, I realised that the diagram the tech-priests were studying so intently must be a schematic of the hulk's interior, no doubt reconstructed from generations of sensor scans culled from the archives, and therefore so out of date as to be worse than useless[87]. 'Don't tell me you're planning to board it?' I protested, too startled to give a frak for protocol.
'We are,' Gries said, in a voice which brooked no argument. It's probably a measure of how startled I was that I tried arguing anyway.
'The potential rewards may well be worth the risk,' I conceded, secure in the knowledge that someone else would be taking it, and determined to at least be diplomatic about my reservations, 'but surely our highest priority has to be the security of Serendipita?'
Clearly, Gries wasn't used to having his decisions called into question, at least by anyone outside his own Chapter[88], but fortunately he seemed willing to make an exception in my case. If anything he seemed surprised, rather than irked, which was fine by me; my sparring sessions with Drumon had left me well aware of the speed and precision with which an angry Astartes could strike down anyone provoking their wrath, and I had no desire to provide a bit of practice.
'Our highest priority is our duty to the Emperor,' Gries told me, looking down to meet my eyes, and I saw in his the kind of complete and utter conviction that I'm more used to seeing in madmen, inquisitors and members of the Adepta Sororitas[89]. 'And I will determine where that lies.' He didn't have to add, 'and not you,' because I heard it quite clearly in any case.
'Quite so,' I agreed, inclining my head in a respectful nod. I wanted him to continue to think of me as a trustworthy ally, rather than a potential problem. 'Given your wealth of knowledge and experience, I wouldn't have thought otherwise for a moment. But I'm afraid it's my job to keep the Serendipitans on side, and the only thing they seem concerned about is the clear and present danger to their home world.'
'Of course.' Gries nodded, apparently mollified. 'Then you must assure them we remain committed to that objective.'
'I'll make them see sense,' I promised, although to be honest that was something which seemed in very short supply aboard the Revenant at the moment. Gries and Drumon seemed to be buying it anyway, looking down at me in a faintly approving fashion which reminded me of my old schola tutors when I parroted the answer I knew they wanted to hear. 'Blockading the hulk seems a rather more practical option in any case.'
'Considerably more,' Drumon agreed. 'And the presence of an Astartes strike cruiser should dissuade anyone from trying to run it.'
'It would me,' I agreed. 'But I'm not a scav barge skipper who thinks the Emperor just dropped a fortune in his lap. Anyone stupid enough to risk boarding a hulk full of genestealers isn't going to be put off by the near certainty of being blown to bits on the way in.'
For a moment, as my brain caught up with my tongue, I wondered if I'd risked offending my hosts again, but apparently neither Astartes thought my remark about the idiocy of attempting to board the Spawn of Damnation applied to them. But just to make sure, I thought I'd better draw a distinction. 'I'm sure your operation over there will be rather better planned and resourced than a scawy raid[90], however.'
'Indeed,' Gries said, nodding again. Then, to my surprise, he strode to the hololith, scattering tech-priests as he went, and gestured to me to follow him.
I looked at the tangle of passageways laid out by the faintly flickering three-dimensional image, my underhiver's instinct translating the intersecting streaks of variously coloured light into an almost physical sense of the space they represented. (Something I was to be all too grateful for later, as it turned out, but which at the time seemed no more than a convenient aid to interpreting the briefing.)
'Our first entry point will be here,' Drumon said, indicating a chamber somewhere on the outer skin of the complex weave of ducts and corridors. 'A relatively undamaged docking bay, which seems large enough to accommodate a Thunderhawk, and defensible enough to provide a beachhead. The Terminators will suppress any resistance and secure the perimeter. Once that's been done, Magos Yaffel and myself will lead a working party here...'
He did something with his servo-arm which caused the image to zoom in on the sector he'd first indicated, separating the beachhead and the objective by almost a metre instead of just the millimetre or two they'd occupied of the overall schematic. As the area depicted enlarged, so did the detail, and a further tangle of intersecting capillaries grew around the veins and arteries we were already looking at, leaving the whole hololith just as crowded as it had been before. For the first time I began to appreciate just how vast and complex the leviathan of the warp we were pursuing really was, and wished the boarders every bit of luck the Emperor could spare; I was certain they were going to need it.
87
Or perhaps not. The configuration of the internal spaces would be unlikely to change much over the centuries, other than the occasional structural collapse as overstressed materials finally gave way.
88
Or, probably, within it. Space Marine units tend to operate autonomously for years, even decades, at a time, and officers of Gries's rank and status would have little opportunity or inclination to refer matters to a higher level of the command chain.
89
Hardly flattering to see inquisitors among the list, but considering the one Cain had the most to do with apart from myself was Killian, a Radical renegade mass-murderer, and barking mad to boot, I can't say I'm all that surprised.
90
A slang term common to many hive communities, referring to those both literally and figuratively at the bottom of the social heap, who scrabble a precarious existence out of what they can salvage of the detritus falling from the higher levels. Cain alludes repeatedly to an early life spent in an underhive, but as yet his world of origin remains obscure.