clear feminine voice had taken him by surprise, cutting though the fog of anger with which he’d surrounded himself. ‘Magos Dysen may have chosen his words a little carelessly. Few of us, I’m afraid, are used to discoursing with those from outside our order.’
‘Quite,’ the magos grated, not happy to have his face saved by an underling (or the front of his head, anyway, since he no longer possessed anything which could fairly be described as facial features). ‘Magos Kildhar is correct. No offence was intended. Had we been aware that the xenos would be accompanying you, the servitor’s cortex would have been amended with appropriate updates to its instruction set.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘It was all a bit dramatic, but no harm done in the end.’ A disturbing thought belatedly crossed my mind. ‘There wasn’t anyone under that shuttle when it went over the edge, was there?’
‘No one of any significance,’ Kildhar assured me.
‘Production of mattocks, trivets and flue dampers will be significantly disrupted, however,’ one of the seated tech-priests put in, sounding distinctly affronted. ‘Extensive repairs to the manufactory will be required.’
‘We have, however, gained significant amounts of refined raw materials,’ another cut in, equally determined to look on the bright side. He glanced at Zyvan. ‘Unless you wish the component parts of the shuttle returned to you? I am assured it is beyond repair.’
‘Help yourself,’ Zyvan said gruffly, his anger beginning to dissipate. Like most tech-priests, these idiots were clearly in a world of their own, into which the real galaxy seldom intruded. Unfortunately, one of its least pleasant facets was about to descend on them in uncountable numbers unless we did something about it, and Zyvan’s pique notwithstanding, we had little option other than doing our best to defend them. Though it still seemed as if the tau border worlds were more likely to be targeted, we couldn’t take that for granted. Losing Fecundia, and the munitions produced there, could cost us half the sector, and as little as that only if we were lucky.
‘Then perhaps we’d better get down to business,’ I suggested, giving them something other than their real or imagined grievances to think about. There were, of course, no chairs for visitors anywhere in the chamber, but it didn’t take long to remedy that deficiency once I’d tactfully pointed it out. Dysen tweedled grumpily at one of his servo-skulls, which scooted out of the chamber, returning a few minutes later at the head of a small comet tail of servitors bearing seats fashioned of bright polished steel, the backs filigreed into a representation of the Holy Cogwheel. Hideously uncomfortable, but the chairs our hosts were sitting in were almost identical so it would have been churlish to complain, although I’ll wager the bloody things were a good deal better suited to their tin arses than to our natural ones. As the meeting wore on, I even began to feel a kind of wistful nostalgia for the tau mushrooms.
‘The good news,’ Zyvan said, taking full advantage of his status as the senior military member of the expedition to remain on his feet while he conducted the briefing, ‘is that the main hive fleet is continuing on its course.’ He gestured to the hololith display, fizzing and wobbling in the air above his head, while a covey of adepts prodded hopefully at the projection equipment. Not for the first time, I had the feeling that most of our audience resented the exchange of information proceeding at what must have seemed like a snail’s pace to them.
‘Then it seems we have little to fear,’ Dysen said, gazing up at the image, which finally steadied. The projected line of the tyranids’ advance passed the Fecundia system altogether and a palpable sense of relief swept across the room as the coin dropped for everyone else.
‘With respect, magos,’ I said, pouncing on the chance to stand up that the intervention offered, and pointing dramatically at the display as I did so, ‘such a conclusion would not only be premature, but potentially fatal.’ The last thing I needed right now was to be dragged back to the main battlefront, which would be all too likely if Zyvan made good on his threat to leave Fecundia to its own devices.
‘How so?’ Dysen asked, clearly out of his depth. At least he was honest enough to admit his own ignorance, instead of blustering it out, and I found my opinion of him rising a little in consequence.