'If you wanted to hurry back, of course.'
'Good point,' she rejoined, smiling at me again, in a manner I can only describe as curiously cloying. 'Let's enjoy ourselves for a few weeks while we can. Serendipita's quite a pleasant world, apparently.'
'Something to do with the ring system, I suppose,' I said, having picked up a little bit about conditions there from Torven and the others.
'I hear it's quite spectacular.'
'Then you've talked me into it.' Mira's smile became coquettish. 'We might as well enjoy the honeymoon before we have to get down to work.'
'Exactly,' I heard my mouth say, the pieces finally dropping into place, and our earlier conversation taking on an entirely new meaning which had escaped me at the time. She hadn't been out to bag herself an Astartes at all. The Liberator of Perlia would do perfectly well as a consort, particularly as I seemed to be a hero on Viridia as well.
A chill prickle of panic chased itself down my spine. I can't deny that, in the abstract, the notion of continuing to enjoy Mira's more obvious charms indefinitely, along with the material comforts formalising our relationship would provide, had its appeal, but the idea was utterly preposterous. The Commissariat wasn't like one of the confection-box regiments[92] my would-be fiancee and her aristocratic cronies amused themselves by playing at officers in, which would cheerfully accept a resigned commission whenever more pressing or diverting business presented itself. If I abandoned my assignment to return to Viridia with her I'd be branded a deserter, and the only question left open about my future would be whether the ensuing tribunal had me shot by a firing squad, or packed me off to a penal legion to let the enemies of the Emperor save them the ammo. No doubt Mira believed that being the consort of a planetary governor would be sufficient protection from the wrath of my erstwhile colleagues, but I was under no such illusion: once you put on the scarlet sash, it's there till they bury you in it (assuming they can find enough bits for the ceremony, which in our vocation is never entirely certain). Even if you make it through to retirement intact, you can still be yanked back into the field pretty much on a whim, as I've found out only too well these last few years[93].
Even so, I hesitated before speaking. Mira was clearly under the impression that I'd not only divined her purpose, but somehow signalled my agreement to her absurd proposal. I knew only too well how she was likely to react to being disabused. I'd seen the lurking virago erupt from behind the refined facade over matters so minor they'd barely registered with me, and now I was about to take a chainsword to her most cherished ambitions. Worse still, of course, would be the blow to her vanity. Most women like to think they're irresistible, and discovering that she wasn't wouldn't sit well at all. Add to that the fact that I'd seen her kill people without turning an immaculately groomed hair, and my wariness becomes even more understandable.
All this being so, it can come as little surprise to hear that I remained paralysed by indecision, nodding and responding with automatic platitudes, while Mira prattled on about her grandiose plans for Viridia once we'd consolidated her grip on it, most of which seemed to consist of score-settling with people I'd never heard of. Whether I would eventually have found the courage to speak out, or just jumped on the first transport ship back to Coronus while her back was turned, I'll never know, however. I was just on the point of pouring myself the largest amasec I thought I could get away with, when Jurgen returned to my quarters, his face composed in the faintly dyspeptic expression he tended to adopt whenever he felt an air of gravitas was required.
'Sorry to interrupt your meal, sir,' he said, 'but your presence is requested on the bridge. They seem to think they've found it.'
SIXTEEN
SEIZING GRATEFULLY ON my aide's timely intervention, I lost no time in hurrying to the bridge, leaving Mira happily planning her coup d'etat[94] with all the enthusiasm most women of her rank reserve for cotillions. Though my mind continued to reel with the shock of the realisation of what I'd blundered into, I must confess that the bustle of activity which met my eyes the moment I entered the nerve centre of the Revenant was almost sufficient to drive it out entirely.
'Contact confirmed,' the auspex operator was saying as I stepped through the doors, which were still showing faint traces of orkish small-arms fire despite the best efforts of the shipboard artisans to restore the devotional images adorning them, and the air of expectation suffusing the chamber became so dense I almost had to resort to hacking through it with my chainsword. 'It's definitely a hard return[95], refined metals by the signature.' For the first time I heard a tremor of suppressed excitement in the even tones I'd grown used to hearing from the Chapter serfs manning the bridge, and, despite my own concerns, felt an answering flicker of it within myself.
If this truly was the end of our quest, it could hardly have come at a more propitious time. It meant I'd be on my way to Serendipita almost immediately, and once I was there, I'd be able to avoid Mira far more effectively than I possibly could in the cramped confines of the Revenant. A faint flicker of optimism even dared to raise the hope that, once we were back on terra firma, and she was again immersed in her own social environment, she'd begin to see the huge gulf between our respective milieux for what it was, and abandon the absurd project she'd conceived of her own volition. (Not that it seemed particularly likely. When she made her mind up about something, she pursued it as tenaciously as a gaunt scenting blood.) It was possible, however, that I could get off the ship before she noticed I was gone, citing orders and duty, which would at least buy me a breathing space.
'Could it just be a vessel?' Gries asked, leaning forwards a little, as though he could force the pict screen to greater magnification purely by willpower. 'The SDF flotilla should be nearing the rendezvous point by now.'
'Unlikely,' Drumon told him. 'None of the System Defence boats would be that far out of position.' He loomed over the auspex operator and made some minute adjustments to the dials set into the surface of the control lectern, pinching them delicately between the fingers of his gauntlets, like an ogryn trying to pick up a porcelain tea bowl.
'Displacement reads in the gigatonnes.'
'Then it's the Spawn,' Yaffel said, sounding rather more excited than was strictly commensurate with his position. He wasn't exactly hopping up and down, which would have been difficult given his lack of legs, but he was definitely oscillating more violently than usual. 'It's the only reasonable inference.'
'And right where you predicted it would be,' I reminded him, which wasn't exactly true, as he'd only been able to narrow it down to a pretty wide volume of space, but he didn't seem inclined to quibble about it, merely nodding sagely in agreement.
'The Omnissiah leads us down the path of logic to a sure destination[96],' he said, with the comfortable certainty of a man for whom the universe not only ran like clockwork, but chimed the first few bars of ''Throne Eternal'' on the hour.
'Boosting the gain on the long-range imagifers,' Drumon said, doing something I couldn't see to the back of a nearby lectern with his servo-arm, and Yaffel trundled over to the hololith, where he began to poke around in turn.
'Then if the interociters hold together,' the tech-priest added, 'we should be able to... Omnissiah be praised.' The three-dimensional display flickered into life, and the image of what looked like a jagged piece of scrap metal began to tumble gently within it, growing larger with every passing minute, until it filled the space almost entirely. It wavered a bit, as such representations generally do, but Yaffel seemed to know what he was about, and with a few muttered benedictions, some fiddling with the controls, and a well-placed thump of his fist, he steadied the image.
92
On Viridia, not to mention many other worlds where a period of service in the PDF is considered an acceptable way of keeping young members of the nobility relatively harmlessly occupied, the rather more flamboyant than practical uniforms of the units so favoured are a perennially popular subject for such packaging. Why any confectioner would consider their wares enhanced by such images we can only speculate, but the hope of selling a few boxes to rich idiots would be my guess.
93
A clear reference to his involvement in the defence of the sector against the tyranid hive fleets at the turn of the millennium, the details of which, though fascinating, need not detain us at this juncture.
94
Despite Cain's highly subjective characterisation of her as both ruthless and selfish, there's no evidence at all that Mira intended deposing her father by force of arms. His earlier assertion that she was intent merely on strengthening her position against rival claimants when the governorship eventually fell vacant seems far more likely.
95
By which he meant that the object the auspex was scanning was dense enough to register strongly, and was therefore probably not a natural phenomenon.