"Where are we?"
"I don't know. Nav computers are offline. Temporarily I hope. We have insystem guidance and scan only."
"That was too close, Morgan. We could all have been killed."
He looked grim. "We could have all been much worse off than merely dead, Sara. If you two had been less strong-willed, well, let's just be grateful that you were, and that you're both still you."
Sara looked at him, horror in her eyes. He nodded quietly, not wanting to alarm Janey who was still sleeping.
"It was a Keeper of Secrets, a greater daemon, servant to the Children's patron power. I, we, seem to have finally come to the attention of the warp's greater powers. Fortunately, brother-Librarian Semetis gave me a clip of blessed bolts for my pistol. They disrupted its form, and the Geller fields did the rest. You should thank Sister Agnes, by the way. I think her blade may also be blessed; it certainly cut through our uninvited guests very efficiently."
Sara didn't even crack a smile. "How can you joke about it?"
"Would you rather wallow in fear or self-pity, Sara? The powers of the Warp want us to fear them. But they cannot possess the unwilling; they cannot control a man's soul, or a woman's, unless we let them. You resisted, and the defeat of a Keeper will give them pause, and more than pause."
"I saw Kanret."
He shook his head decisively. "You did not. The Keeper attempted to access your memories. Your husband rests with the Emperor; no warp entity can bring him back to torment you. You knew this, and that is why you were able to fight it. Though the purity seal by your bed may have helped. Sara, I would suggest that you keep the psi-screen I gave you by your bed also; it will provide protection against future attacks."
"What about Janey?"
"Yes. It would be useful if the two of you were to share a sleeping chamber for a short while."
"How long?"
"Until I have checked out the Geller fields. After which I think we must limit our time in warp to no more than a few days. The Mordaunt Sector is, I suspect, a fair distance from our current location, and I am prepared to think that there is purpose in that. We are perhaps not ready for what we must do. Whatever that is."
"And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime, we have sufficient supplies to last several years, and a fine ship. We shall refuel in this system; there is a suitable gas giant, and then decide what to do."
"Can I decide too?" The small voice from the floor caused them both to turn.
"Good morning, Janey. How do you feel?"
"Okay. Was we attacked?"
"We were. They are gone now."
"Can we have breakfast then?"
Sedreth smiled despite himself. "A good idea, Janey. Then you and I can continue our project."
She giggled. "Okay, Mr Morgan."
"Project?" asked Sara curiously.
"It's secret, mummy."
"Oh. I see."
The nameless gas giant was brightly striped in blues and greens. Sara thought she'd rarely seen anything so lovely. Janey bounced on her chair near the observation windows.
"It's really pretty, mummy."
"It is, isn't it. You should take some pictures, for your scrapbook."
"Can I?"
"Of course," answered Sedreth. He approved of Janey's scrapbook, an idea that had come to Sara a couple of weeks after they had left home. Every world they visited, Janey took some pictures and wrote a little bit about it. As Sedreth put it, there was no reason why education should not be interesting as well as informative, and Janey now had more than a dozen worlds in her rapidly expanding scrapbook, and a huge map of the galaxy on one wall of her room which could be focussed on whichever world she'd written about. She also kept a diary, although neither Sara nor Sedreth were allowed to view it "'cos diaries is secret."
She watched fondly as her daughter busied herself with the camera equipment; it did not occur to the girl that it normally took several months of training to manage it properly – Janey wanted to know how to work it and after some basic instruction from Sedreth, she'd spent a lot of time getting it 'just right'.
Sedreth too watched the girl fiddle carefully with the observation camera, amused by her precocity. She soaked up knowledge like a sponge, he thought, wishing for a moment that she was male – what a recruit she would have made, with so much courage and intelligence. He shook his head slightly, amused at his whimsy, and returned his attention to the rarely-used refuelling arm. The gravitic attraction of the giant planet was significant, but easily dealt with, and he kept a careful eye on the engines and shields while they manoeuvred close enough to start skimming the outer atmosphere.
Sara looked over at the space marine. "Is this close enough, Morgan?"
He nodded. "Yes. We should be able to refuel fairly quickly from here. Can you watch the tanks? They should balance automatically, but you may have to switch manually; the arm hasn't been used for a long long time."
"Yes. I have the tanks online now."
Sedreth was all business now. "Extending arm. Locked and ready. Commence refuelling on my mark, Sara."
"Standing by."
"Mark."
There was a far-off crash as the tank filters came online; they only wanted the hydrogen for the fusion drives, and anything else would be diverted to auxiliary tanks containing oxygen, nitrogen, methane, water and other trace gases. They would likewise filter those, and dump the non-usable elements.
"Tanks filling normally, Morgan."
"Good. Any luck with the charts?"
"Not so far. Spectral analysis hasn't recognised this star, so I'm running through nearby ones to get an approximate location. Once we have enough identified we can fine it down. We should know in a day or two. It's not as if we're in any hurry."
"True. We are not a trade ship, although the thought has occurred to me that it would be a useful cover now that your identity as Sara Tarken has a rogue trader license, helpfully confirmed by Lord Calgar."
"Mmm. But what would we trade?"
"A good question, although the holds are probably still full of loot, taken over the centuries. Some of it might be worth selling rather than dumping. There is certainly little reason to carry it as payload."
Janey's head came up in interest. "Ooh. Mr Morgan, can we explore? Will there be old stuff?"
"On Phoenix? I should think so. She hasn't been used as a pirate raider for at least fifteen centuries, that I recall. Anything perishable will have long since dissolved to junk, of course, but other things may be intact."
"What might there be?"
"Janey, I truly do not know. Whatever was the whim of the crew at the time, I imagine. Which could be anything at all."
"Cool. Can we start after lunch?"
"We shall draw up a schedule. There is a large area to search and only three of us, one of whom has to stay here on watch. A systematic exploration will ultimately be more effective even though it will take longer."
"What's sist-ie-matic?"
"Properly organised, Janey, so that we don't miss anywhere, or look at the same place several times."
"Oh. That's a good idea." She turned her attention back to her camera. The two adults looked at each other amid shared smiles of understanding. Sometimes Janey was almost too precocious.
"More rocks, Mr Morgan. Why's the ship storing lots and lots of rocks?" Janey looked disappointed, as she had a couple of times during the morning's search.
Sedreth ran his scanner over the jumbled mass. Hmm. Iridium and platinum, plus some rarer group elements. "These are ores, Janey. Special types of rock from which valuable metals can be extracted."
"Oh. They're not just rocks then?"
"No. To the right buyer, they will be worth a considerable sum. Not every planet or even every system has everything it needs to supply itself. And even when the ores exist they may be difficult or dangerous to get at."
"So are we gonna sell them?"
"Yes, I think we will, if we can find a system that has need of them."
It was quiet on the bridge, once Janey was asleep. The little girl had been tired out by the long hours of searching through Phoenix's long-unused holds. Even though there had been relatively little to get excited about, she had spent much of the previous few days helping her mother and Sedreth as they explored cold and undisturbed bays that had once held fighters and vehicles and ammunition, and now held only the mostly worthless loot of ages, much of it decayed beyond recognition. They'd ended up dumping some of the junk – mostly machinery long past any possible use and suitable only for recycling – into the gravity well of the nearby gas giant.
"What do you think?"
"Well, there's about sixty tonnes of ores, mostly platinum and iridium, about three percent yield. Those are quite valuable – platinum trades at about a thousand credits the kilo if it's properly assayed, and iridium is more expensive still. Those ores would yield about two tons of the stuff."
"That's two million credits, Morgan."
"Less the cost of smelt, transport to a forgeworld, imperial duties for assay, and so on. Still it would be reasonable to expect a quarter of a million for the raw ores, at least. Depending on the world in question, and the supply of heavy metals, we might get up to half a million. Of course, if we were able to sell a suit of power armour we would easily get a hundred times that, but then we might have to answer quite a few very awkward questions."
Sara blinked. Fifty million credits? He had to be joking. "They're that expensive?"
"Like all military equipment, yes. These even more so because they're no longer made, are immaculate, properly maintained and fully functional, and new ones can only be manufactured by astartes chapters. But it is not an option; the only buyers would be very very dodgy indeed, or imperial agents. Neither would be safe to deal with. As it is, we should be thankful that Calgar was good enough to endorse this ship as 'salvage' in your name. It's not every day even the most prestigious citizens are allowed access to a ship like this for personal business; to own one is almost unheard of, except for the very richest and most ancient noble families."
"I thought she was obsolete?"
"She is. But she's still a strike destroyer, and one that is so automated as to be controllable by the three of us, well, let's just say that makes her unique. For the record, the old girl is four point seven six kilometres long, masses fourteen million, seven hundred and forty-three thousand tonnes unladen, can carry up to three companies of astartes marines or four thousand other troops, plus all their equipment, and has sufficient fire-power to destroy a fully shielded hive city in a single broadside, or a planetary surface in ten. This class of ship is well-enough thought of that the Raven Guard still retain one in service after ten thousand years. Her build cost new would be more than an entire decade's production of your homeworld. And she is, officially, your ship. Your personal property." He chuckled. "You had better stay alive, Sara. Janey's children – and their children, and theirs – would still be paying off the death taxes on this ship in five centuries time."
She pulled a face. "Thank you. I think. But she's your ship, regardless of what the Imperium may or may not record. I make no decisions on her without your agreement, Morgan."
He nodded with a certain, she thought, satisfaction; she was getting better at reading him. "There is truth and there is law, and they are rarely the same. So, do we find a close-by world to sell the ores?"
She nodded again. "I think so. Whatever else we may be doing – and I'm no more sure of that than you are – we need to at least appear to be a legitimate trader. Anyway, I'd quite like to take Janey somewhere special for her birthday – there have to be some planets which are peaceful and safe."
Sedreth laughed. "In a galaxy this size, of course there are. How accurately have you fixed our location?"
"Within a couple of systems; I will be certain by tomorrow. But we are quite close to the Devsparts system, I think, which is a mining colony serving the forgeworld Actinus VII. And that in turn is at the hub of a very large, very prosperous, trading sector."
"Then, Sara, we shall see what we can arrange for our favourite girl's birthday." They looked at each other with identical smiles. Sedreth did not mention his other projects, preferring to keep his thoughts to himself for now.