'...and attempt to recover the cogitator core of this vessel,' Drumon concluded.
'Why that one?' I asked.
'Because it has the most directly accessible cogitator banks of any of the derelicts making up the hulk,' Gries said, as though that should have been obvious from a cursory glance at the pile of virtual string hovering in front of my face.
'And because it's been tentatively identified as a Redeemer-class vessel, none of which have been in service for over five thousand years,' Yaffel put in, positively salivating at the prospect. 'The maintenance logs alone should yield untold blessings of the Omnissiah which have been lost to posterity.'
'A prize indeed,' I said evenly, which was far more tactful than verbalising my real thoughts would have been. It seemed to me that if the galaxy had been getting along perfectly well without these lost blessings for the last five millennia in any case, losing the 'stealers along with them would have been better all round. But it wasn't my call, so that was that. I'd just have to break it to Duque that he wouldn't be able to knock any lumps off the hulk, at least for the time being, and ride out the ensuing recrimination. Come to that, Torven and Kregeen would be far from thrilled too. At least I had Gries to blame, and I'd been a commissar for long enough to know how to use their common resentment to get them cooperating a bit more effectively than they otherwise would have done, so all in all, things could have been worse. Then something else occurred to me. 'This is probably a stupid question,' I asked, 'but what happens if the Spawn falls back into the warp while your sea... retrieval expedition is still aboard it?'
Yaffel gave me a faintly superior look, like an eldar deigning to notice one of the lesser breeds of the galaxy (which they consider to be everyone except them). 'That can't happen,' he said, with an airy confidence which left me far from convinced.
Drumon nodded. 'The hulk is coasting in towards the sun,' he reminded me. 'And natural warp fissures can only occur outside a gravity well. Even a starship with a properly focussed Geller field can only force its way between the realms on the fringes of a system.'
'So it's stuck here until it drifts out past the halo again,' I said, grateful as always for his pared-down summary of the situation.
Magos and Techmarine nodded in unison, apparently equally delighted at the prospect. They'd have years to poke around in the wreckage for technosorcerous trinkets, with nothing more to worry about than Emperor knew how many ravenous genestealers lurking in the dark.
Which also meant that, far from coming to a close as I'd expected, my assignment here looked like being prolonged indefinitely. Someone would have to liaise between the Reclaimers, the Serendipitans and the Imperial Guard, and, for better or worse, I'd been stuck with the job.
I considered the implications. It wouldn't be too hard to convince everyone that the best place to work from would be Torven's HQ on Serendipita, where I'd have ready access to system-wide intelligence, the PDF and SDF command structures, and, most importantly, all the little comforts available on a civilised world, instead of being stuck aboard a starship where the chances of finding a decent tarot game were about as high as Jurgen becoming the next lord general. And while I was getting on with looking busy, I'd be a long way from brigade headquarters on Coronus, along with anyone intent on roping me in to whatever suicide mission they happened to have to hand. All in all, I thought, I could live with that.
I RETURNED TO my quarters in a distinctly cheerful mood, to find Mira waiting for me while Jurgen laid out a tolerably pleasant supper, and lost no time in sharing the good news with her. She'd have found out anyway, soon enough, and I felt it prudent to be the one to tell her. That way, whatever else she might take exception to, at least I couldn't be accused of deceit.
Despite whatever forebodings I may have harboured, however, she seemed almost as pleased at the prospect as I was, which I suppose shouldn't have come as that much of a surprise. She'd clearly found life aboard the Revenant even more tedious than I had, and would no doubt seize the chance to relocate to more salubrious surroundings with equal alacrity.
'In fact,' she said, a forkful of smoked salma from her hoard of delicacies halfway to her mouth, 'I suppose my little errand here is pretty much over too.'
'I suppose so,' I agreed, taking a mouthful of my own and washing it down with an inoffensive vintage I strongly suspected was the best the Space Marine vessel had to offer. 'The hulk definitely isn't going to present any kind of threat to Viridia from now on.' When it eventually did drift back into the warp, I had no doubt that the Reclaimers and the Adeptus Mechanicus would go right along with it, as reluctant to let it go as a kroot with a bone; and their eagerness to carry on looting the hulk wherever it ended up would prevent it from posing a threat to any Imperial system it happened to arrive in, which was all to the good.
Mira smiled, as though I'd just said something witty. 'Quite,' she agreed. 'But I did have other motives for coming along, you'll recall.'
'Of course,' I said, dredging my memory. Something about strengthening her claim to the throne back home, and finding a consort able to help her grab it. 'I'm glad they seem to be working out for you too.' She seemed to have given up on the ridiculous idea of persuading a Space Marine to elope with her, and for a moment I wondered who else she'd found who looked like a suitable candidate. One of the Serendipitan delegation, presumably - they can't all have been as pointless as they looked.
Her smile spread. 'For both of us, surely.'
'Well, yes,' I agreed. It wouldn't take much to turn my liaison job into a sinecure guaranteed to keep me comfortably out of harm's way for years to come, which was pretty much as good as it ever got for someone in my position. I raised my goblet, in a slightly ironic toast.
'Here's to both of us getting what we want.'
'To both of us,' Mira said, her glass clinking against mine, and I found myself genuinely wishing her well, which for someone as focussed on my own concerns as I usually was, came as a bit of a surprise. Her cheeks coloured slightly, and as she lowered her drink, she looked at me in a manner I found a little odd. 'Are you sure about this?'
'Of course I am,' I said, touched by her concern. The sooner I could feel a world beneath my feet again the better.
'Good.' She became businesslike again. 'Serendipita doesn't do much trade with us, but there's a Charter ship or two linking the systems, with only a couple of intermediate layovers. We should be able to get passage within a few months.' She looked at me speculatively. 'Unless you've got some strings you can pull? We might as well use them while we can.'
'While we can?' I echoed, feeling oddly like a character in a ballroom farce[91]. Her words were undeniably Gothic, but the meaning behind them kept eluding me.
Mira nodded. 'While you still have some influence with the Munitorum,' she elucidated, as though that made perfect sense. 'Could you get us berths on a military ship?'
'I suppose so,' I said, falling back on the card player's instinct which generally helped me out at moments like this. Time and again I've found that if you appear to understand what's going on, and don't panic, sooner or later you'll get a clue. Everything will fall into place, and no one will ever know you were out of your depth. It's an important skill for a commissar, too, come to think of it, as we're supposed to look calm and in control whatever happens. It's remarkably difficult to rally troops under fire when you're dithering about screaming ''Frak, oh frak, we're all going to die!''. So I nodded judiciously, as though she'd just asked a perfectly reasonable question.
91
A popular form of theatre on several worlds in the sector, in which a large cast of characters continually misunderstand one another to comedic effect. They're generally set in an aristocratic milieu, allowing the general populace a bit of harmless amusement at the expense of a stratum of society that's barely aware of their existence in any case, and culminate in some dramatic contrivance to bring everyone together at the same time. For obvious reasons a ball is a frequent choice of the lazier playwrights, hence the name.