Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

In most respects, the docking bays and their servicing corridors were pretty much identical to the ones we’d so recently left, other than their far greater size. Even so, the huge transport vessel almost filled the one to which it had been assigned, the engines of the trucks scuttling up and down the loading ramps creating so many echoes it felt like walking into a tympani.

‘There’s Commander Defroy, sir,’ Jurgen said, pointing a grubby finger, and I nodded, setting out across the deck plates towards him, my aide, as always, at my side. ‘Who’s he talking to?’

‘I can’t tell at this distance,’ I said, narrowing my eyes in an attempt to make it out. Whoever it was, they were wearing the blue-and-gold uniform of a household trooper, although something about their posture seemed subtly wrong. Their bearing looked distinctly unmilitary, not nearly deferential enough for someone addressing an officer of Defroy’s exalted rank, and they were holding their hellgun as though they barely knew how to lift it, let alone use it.

‘It’s one of those guards who nearly missed the shuttle,’ Jurgen said, his voice freighted with scorn. ‘Did you ever see such a disgrace to a military uniform?’

‘Not that I can recall,’ I said carefully, reflecting that, as usual, Jurgen and irony wouldn’t recognise one another if they were formally introduced. He was right, though; now he came to mention it the fellow did look vaguely familiar, even though the slightly oversized helmet he was wearing obscured most of his features. ‘But no doubt Defroy’s straightening him out.’

‘Looks more like the other way round to me,’ Jurgen said, with a trace of puzzlement, and once again, I was forced to agree; the sloppy soldier was talking now, with some vehemence, but instead of reacting angrily to such a blatant display of insubordination Defroy was merely nodding. ‘Perhaps you should show him how it ought to be done.’

‘Maybe I should,’ I agreed, although the little tickle of paranoia which has done so much to keep me out of trouble173 over the years was urging me to be cautious. We were here, after all, because I wasn’t sure how much we could trust Defroy. If he was part of a Chaos cult we needed to proceed carefully, without tipping our hand, and appearing to question his fitness for command wouldn’t sit too well with that.

‘Commander.’ I raised my voice above the cacophony with the ease of years of practice, and lifted a hand in greeting. Defroy and the trooper broke off their conversation, both turning to look at me with expressions of bemused surprise. ‘I trust you came through the engagement unscathed?’

‘Yes. Yes, we did,’ Defroy said, adjusting rapidly to my presence. ‘No one hurt, apart from a few bruises.’

‘And your cargo?’ I asked. ‘Any problems with that?’

‘All delivered safe and sound,’ the trooper said, cutting in with a disregard for the military protocols which elicited a sharp intake of breath from Jurgen – for whom they were tantamount to the word of the Emperor Himself – and which, I must confess, took me somewhat by surprise as well. There was something familiar about his voice, however, and I hesitated, trying to place it, rather than jumping in to reprimand him at once. The fellow went on. ‘Food supplies are being offloaded now, and transferred to the warehouses.’

‘Which just leaves a few things to take to the governor’s estate,’ Defroy said, in the sort of voice people use when they’re trying to hint that the person they’re talking to should be quiet and frak off now, without saying so in so many words.

‘Like what?’ I asked, feeling a distinct sense of unease. ‘I thought this was supposed to be a purely humanitarian effort. Apart from the booby traps, of course.’

Defroy nodded. ‘Yes, that was a surprise. No one on the governor’s staff had been told about that.’

‘Not even me.’ The trooper lifted off his helmet, and smiled a greeting. ‘I’m still not sure whether to congratulate them on being able to keep a secret so well, or be miffed with them for keeping me out of the loop.’

‘Perhaps a little of both, your excellency,’ I said, keeping any astonishment I might feel at suddenly finding myself face-to-face with the governor from becoming visible. ‘After all, under the circumstances, they might very well say the same.’

Fulcher nodded. ‘Quite so,’ he agreed, with a faint air of self-satisfaction.

Twenty-four

‘The governor’s here?’ Amberley said, her puzzlement and irritation audible even over the vox-link. ‘What the hell for?’

‘Security, Defroy says,’ I told her, the scepticism I felt seeping into my own voice despite my best efforts to report back as neutrally as I could. ‘Since their investigation’s still stalled, and no one’s managed to work out how the assassin got into the governor’s mansion on Ironfound yet, they decided to move him to his Skyside estate.’