‘I want to–’ Chass began.
‘Enough,’ said Gaunt. ‘Show him the ropes, please, Dalin. But I don’t want him even compromising your duties as adjutant. He eats and sleeps like any common lasman.’
‘He should receive a rank,’ said Maddalena. ‘Some privilege for–’
‘If he wants to learn from me,’ said Gaunt, ‘he can do exactly what I did and start from the bottom. Take it or leave it. You asked for this, so don’t complain now you’ve got it. If he doesn’t like it, he can leave us at the fleet rendezvous and go home to his mother.’
He looked at them.
‘That’s all,’ he said.
Mkoll, chief scout of the Tanith First, prowled silently through the vast and dark cargo decks of the Armaduke. He was hunting.
The engines rumbled distantly. He hadn’t set out to look for anything in particular. He just wanted to get the lay of the land, learn the geography of the ship. Just in case.
He also wanted to get his equilibrium settled as fast as possible. Ship time unsettled him. He got through it by walking, and learning every obscure corner of whatever craft he was aboard. It was a form of meditation.
Half an hour into his first walk around, crossing a vehicle deck where mission equipment was secured under lash lines and the air smelled of disinfectant, he’d first seen the bird. It was moving through the cargo galleries, swooping from one set of hold rafters to the next. It looked as lost and as trapped as he felt.
He set to following it. It was big. A twin-headed eagle. At first, he wondered if it was some kind of vision, but it was real enough. He’d been told the intake had brought a psyber animal aboard with them. A mascot. It had evidently got loose.
It kept apace of him. He followed it through two of the small holds, then around an engineering deck where the few servitors didn’t seem to notice it. It avoided the busy spaces, the troop decks, the vast and heated furnace rooms of the drive chambers where hundreds of crewmen toiled like slaves.
Like him, it sought the lonely parts of the ship.
He wondered how he could catch it without harming it. If it stayed loose, it could get lost or trapped, and die of starvation. The death of an aquila on the eve of a mission would not be the best omen.
Mkoll followed the bird into a vast hold space that had been left empty. Junk and spare plating had been piled up there. He heard a voice call out.
The eagle turned, surprised, and then immediately followed the voice down.
It settled on a metal spar beside two figures. They were sitting right out in the middle of the empty space, perched on scrap metal, a small fire burning in an oil can.
One of the men was Ezra Night. He was permitting his companion to examine the function of his reynbow.
Ezra saw Mkoll, and called out.
‘Histye soule! Come join herein.’
Mkoll walked over to the fire.
The other figure lowered the reynbow and looked Mkoll up and down. He was a Space Marine of the White Scars Chapter. He was in full plate, his helm on the deck by his left foot.
‘You are the master of the scouts?’ he asked. ‘I’ve heard all about you. Sit.’
SIX
Relativity
Aboard the Highness Ser Armaduke, only the ringing of ship bells marked the passage of time. There were no day or night shifts. Some vessels established a day/night cycle with their lighting systems, but this was evidently not Shipmaster Spika’s habit. The Armaduke ploughed onwards in a state of twilight gloom, the decks morose and half lit. There was some talk of power conservation and economies of reserve, but few could avoid the suspicion that the habitat conditions were deliberate. On some decks, power went out completely and inexplicably, for hours at a time. The heating and air circulation of certain compartments and sections ceased and then, after a while, resumed with a bronchial rattle of ducts and flues. The agreed belief was that the Armaduke’s grim conditions had nothing to do with Shipmaster Spika’s conservative approach to power consumption, and everything to do with mechanical decay and infirmity.
In the troop decks, the men and women of the company and its retinue gathered around lamps, or worked by wick-light. Most slept for many hours longer than necessary. Sensing a malaise, Hark initiated a program of fitness and training that involved free marches and squad runs around the outer perimeter of the main hold levels, a circuit of almost five kilometres.
Boredom and inactivity were the real dangers of warp travel. Confinement and idleness allowed minds to stagnate, allowed anxieties to fester. At one end of the scale there would be discontent and despair, and the scale moved up through spats and feuding, criminal activity and mutinous behaviour. Unhappy minds were also more easily preyed upon by the powers of the warp.
The confidential transit estimates at the point of departure suggested three to six days to Tavis Sun, for the fleet conjunction, and then another six to Salvation’s Reach. There was no reliable science. Some warp routes remained stable for centuries. Others vanished into hectic maelstroms overnight. All sorts of variables affected the journey time, both appreciated shipboard and external sidereal. One could travel for a month and arrive the day before one’s departure. One could set out for a three-day shift and never be seen again. If the bulk of the Armaduke’s rationed power was being diverted to turn the warp engine cogitators and assist the ship’s Navigator to track the beacon of the Astronomicon and ascertain the best possible route vector, then the passengers and crew of the Highness Ser Armaduke would be grateful enough.
Only the chiming of the ship’s bells marked the passage of time, but that was only the local time of the ship, a measurement of the turning of the clocks and horologs it took along with it into a hostile ocean outside time.
Nahum Ludd hurried through the quarter decks with the dockets and enlistment papers he’d finally managed to prepare for Meritous Chass. He’d hoped to have them done by the end of the first night shift aboard, but it was now well into the second day. There had been inspections to run, the settlement of the quartered troops, and the usual discrepancies between pharmacological supplies and other materiel signed aboard, and those actually physically present. Since before the long sojourn on Balhaut, but especially since, the regiment had a chronic problem with misplaced drugs. Ludd and Hark had worked closely with Dorden and Curth to curtail the losses, to little avail. There was always a grey market of procurement inside the Imperial Guard, and sometimes it was downright black. In the early days, Rawne had been ringleader for unofficial activity, but he had made a visible effort to keep his hands clean. Either he was a good liar, or others had usurped his criminal enterprises. Ludd had his eyes on a few people. Men always looked for power and control, and rank was one way of securing it. There were others. The trouble with the Tanith First was that they were loyal. They were loyal to the Throne and they were loyal to Gaunt, but that loyalty was ingrained, so they were almost perniciously loyal to each other. That meant they closed ranks and kept secrets. The underhand dealings that went on at the heart of every regiment were especially stealthy in the Ghosts.
Ludd was quite unsettled by the appearance of Chass. He’d said as much, privately, to Hark.
‘You’re threatened,’ Hark had said.
‘How do you figure that?’
‘Young man, young commissar, following in the master’s footsteps, Gaunt’s protégé,’ said Hark. ‘Then the actual son turns up.’
‘In this version of reality you describe, I see myself as Gaunt’s son?’ asked Ludd.
Hark nodded. ‘You even cut your hair the same way.’
‘I thought I was your protégé,’ said Ludd.
Hark had sniffed.
‘You wish. I’m one of a kind.’
‘This is just more of your systematic tormenting, to keep me on my toes, isn’t it?’ Ludd had asked.
‘If I told you that, it would have no beneficial effect whatsoever.’
Ludd wasn’t convinced. It was, perhaps, slightly true that he didn’t like the
idea Gaunt might soon have a new favourite. But there was something else. Chass looked so much like Gaunt. Once you knew, it was painfully obvious. He was slender and gracefully slight by comparison, of course; just a boy, and a dainty, frail one at that, but Ludd recognised the likeness in him. If anything, Chass’s youthful features were even more refined. In inheritance from his mother’s side, perhaps. Gaunt was a well-made man. Chass, as an adult, would be more than just handsome.
It was the recognition that was difficult to deal with. Ludd saw Gaunt in Chass. It felt like he already knew him. It made him admire him, without even knowing him or wanting to. He responded to Chass, and he didn’t like it.
Ludd’s route took him down a grand companionway outside the Verghastite quarters, past the amusing spectacle of Mkoll presenting a double-headed eagle to the laughing Major Pasha. She was calling for her standard officer to take charge of the mascot, which flapped and clacked on Mkoll’s raised wrist. Women from the retinue, laden with tubs for the laundry, had stopped to watch and laugh.
An archway to Ludd’s left looked out over an assembly deck, a secondary hangar bay that could be brought into use by means of freight elevators from the primary excursion deck. It was the size of a parade ground. Out in the middle of it, he saw a single figure, training.
The figure was a blur. It was a close combat drill, executed using a bladed spear and a hovering practice remote.
He slowed and stopped. He watched. It was a genuinely terrifying display of speed, skill and aggression.
Though he had somewhere to be, Ludd took a deep breath and walked into the assembly space.
As he approached, the figure twisted and finally caught the drone, killing it with his spear’s blade. It fell to the deck. The warrior bent down, picked up the broken drone, and tossed it into a bucket where other smashed remotes had accumulated. He took up another one from a box beside the bucket, and prepared to arm and launch it.
‘What do you want?’ he asked. He hadn’t even looked at Ludd.
‘I want to know if I’m permitted a question.’
Brother Kater Holofurnace of the Iron Snakes turned to look at him. He had his massive spear in one paw and the drone in the other. Ludd felt fear in his bowels, in his gut, in his throat.
‘Commissar?’
‘Yes. Ludd.’
‘I do not care in any way about your name. You are a discipline officer?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will give you one answer,’ said Holofurnace. ‘Give me your question.’
‘There are three of you. Three lent to us for this mission. Why three different Chapters?’
‘That’s your question?’
‘It is.’
Holofurnace pursed his lips.
‘You are a discipline officer. You should know it is improper and unprofitable to interrupt a man when he is schooling for war,’ he said.
Ludd paused.
‘Is that your answer?’
‘It is.’
‘But–’
‘I never said my answer would match your question.’
Ludd opened his mouth, but didn’t know what else to say.
‘You can go away now,’ said Holofurnace.
Ludd turned. He heard the remote hum as it was launched. He heard the chop of the spear as it started to spin.
‘The truth is, I don’t want to know,’ said Elodie.
‘That’s not the truth at all,’ said Juniper. The amusing distraction of the eagle had finished. The women were moving on towards the laundry.
‘You’re helping us with the wash today, are you Elodie?’ asked Urlinta.
‘No. Why are you doing laundry?’ asked Elodie. ‘We’ve only been in shift a day.’
‘There’s always washing and mending to do,’ said Juniper.
‘You can tell she’s an officer’s woman, can’t you?’ laughed Urlinta.
‘As for this business,’ said Juniper, ‘you want to know about it.’
‘I thought he was a decent man,’ said Elodie.
‘That is generally the opinion held of your nice captain,’ said Juniper.
‘Then again,’ said Nilwen, ‘he’s a man. And he’s a lasman. They’ll stick it anywhere.’
‘Nilwen isn’t really helping,’ Juniper told Elodie. ‘So, he knows this woman, this officer? From Verghast, you say? So what?’
‘She’s very attractive,’ said Elodie.
‘Oh, case closed,’ said Urlinta.
‘Have you seen yourself?’ asked Nilwen.
‘He was going to ask me to marry him,’ said Elodie. ‘He had the papers. Then he didn’t. He didn’t the day she arrived. They’ve got a history, and it’s made him think twice.’
‘Sweetheart,’ said Urlinta, ‘if Daur was the sort who was going to drop you just like that the moment the next pair of tits–’
‘Officer tits,’ put in Nilwen.
‘–officer tits came along,’ Urlinta continued, ‘he would not have let you get bonded to come on a trip like this.’
‘Urlinta is right,’ said Juniper. ‘He wouldn’t have let you come along on an outing like this, not like this one, if he wasn’t serious. That would just be unforgivable.’
‘Unless,’ said Nilwen, ‘unless he’s a man. And a lasman. In which case being a heartless bastard is standard operating procedure.’
‘Nilwen–’ Juniper began.
‘I tell you, they will stick it anywhere.’
‘I’ll stick you anywhere,’ said Urlinta.
‘It’s not helping,’ Juniper said. ‘We all know Daur. He’s a fine man. One of the best. You can just tell.’
Elodie frowned.
‘I was sure of that,’ she said. ‘I’d never have left Balhaut if I’d felt differently. I’d never have chosen this life. No offence.’
‘None taken,’ said Nilwen. ‘None of us chose this life, did we ladies? It chose us.’
She and Urlinta cackled.
‘Stop fretting about it,’ Juniper said to Elodie. ‘You’ll give yourself frown lines, then he really will start looking elsewhere.’
‘I just want to know about this woman,’ said Elodie. ‘How well did he know her?’
‘Do you really want to know that?’ asked Urlinta.
‘Yes,’ said Elodie.
‘I wouldn’t want to,’ said Juniper. ‘She’s just a face from the past. You don’t want to start obsessing, El. Really, you don’t.’
‘Actually, we don’t mind,’ said Nilwen, ‘because we can gossip about it.’
‘I tell you what,’ said Juniper. ‘I’ve been getting to know some of the girls from the new intake’s retinue. The Vervunhivers. One of them might know something. I’ll ask around.’
Blenner stopped just outside Wilder’s quarters, took the pill bottle out of his pocket, and shook it. There weren’t many left. He was going to need more before long. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation with Dorden. The old doctor was bound to comment on the speed with which he had used the first supply. Well, screw him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t followed instructions. ‘One of these, every day, or when you feel agitated’. Well, he’d been agitated quite a lot. A hell of a lot.
Maybe he could deal with one of the orderlies, show them the label, get them to fill out a scrip. He could avoid Dorden’s awkward questions entirely. That ruled out the inker, then. Lesp, his name was. He’d already managed to piss him off. He couldn’t go looking for favours there. Blenner thought about Curth for a moment. The idea of her made him smile, but not in any useful I-can-help-you-get-more-pills way. He just had an unbidden mental image of the good doctor Ana with nothing but a bio-monitor and an encouraging bedside manner.
What about the freak, Kolding? Blenner didn’t like him, but the man was new. Maybe he would respond to persuasion.
‘Looking for me?’ asked Wilder.
Blenner turned, deftly pocketing the bottle.
‘I was about to knock.’
Wilder looked terrible. His eyes were hollow and he nee
ded a shave.
‘Come in,’ he said.
They went into Wilder’s quarters. There was still the faint smell of the counterseptic Perday had used to scrub the floor.
‘How are you?’ asked Blenner.
‘What is this going to be?’ asked Wilder. ‘A formal reprimand? A quiet word?’
‘Let’s start with the latter, shall we?’ asked Blenner. ‘You made an arse of yourself last night. It could have been the end for you. It almost was. But you were covered.’
‘So that’s two I owe you?’ asked Wilder. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
‘I gather Trooper Perday told you?’
Wilder nodded.
‘She told me what the two of you did.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Blenner.
Wilder sat down and rubbed his chin.
‘I know how this goes,’ he said. ‘You want to make sure I know how much I depend upon you. I’m your man. You can call in favours.’
‘Your experience of the Guard hasn’t been particularly positive, has it?’ Blenner said. ‘Does it occur to you that I might just be trying to make sure a decent officer doesn’t flush his career away? His career and his life?’
‘Really? I don’t believe you. Everyone’s got an ulterior motive.’
‘You really are a bitter man, Wilder. You think the worst of everybody.’
‘And I’m never disappointed.’ Wilder shrugged. ‘Look at me, commissar. This was my brother’s command. Now he’s dead, and my face doesn’t fit, and I’m a scum junior whose been a laughing stock since the moment he arrived because he brought a bloody band with him.’
‘I know what it’s like to be in someone’s shadow,’ said Blenner quietly. ‘For you, your late brother. For me, my schoolboy friend. Ibram Gaunt. In a way, Gaunt for both of us, then. Hard acts to follow.’
‘He’s surprisingly unpopular,’ said Wilder.
‘The men love him.’