The cheering of the crowds was somehow more disconcerting than gunfire might have been. Sel watched the word through the chimera’s driving slit, which continually occluded with condensation. She reached into her back and withdrew a tube of tooth cream and smeared the white paste on the armorcrys, then began buffing it off with the cuff of her fatigues.

“Preventing cavities Sel?” Elara asked with amusement.

“Old sentinel pilots trick,” Sel responded and she felt just a bit smug when the window ceased to fog up.

The regiment came to a halt in a broad plaza flanked on two sides by impressively porticos carved into the likeness of heroic laborers and miners supporting a two story tall mosaic which depicted priests, nobles, and soldiers all reaching up to shield the populace from some threat beyond the stars. Judging by the relative lack of soot deposition this was relatively new construction. That was common on worlds undergoing internal troubles like this, the local authorities being keen to demonstrate their loyalty and piety in case anyone might ask how discontent was allowed to grow to open rebellion. Of course the same expenditures on the actual war effort might have been a better use of resources but such concerns tended to escape a nervous aristocracy. Something about the mosaics bothered Sel, perhaps a distortion of proportions of the towering figures of the nobility, or perhaps it was a juvenile desire to find some reason to rake the thing with multilaser fire.

Despite the cold, the crowd was raucous. They thronged the streets on both sides shouting and cheering, their breath steaming like so many dragons. The more well to do wore long coats that seemed heated by portable lumen packs while the poor simply wrapped themselves in thick coats and multiple layers. Priests paraded back and forth with portable braisers, literally bringing heat as they called the prayer of benediction on the offworlders. Servo skulls, picters and sensor units floated above the crowd above the clouds of hurdle confetti and sanctified prayer rice. 

Sel pulled the chimera into the position indicated by a local magistratum officer with a pair of light wands and shut down the engine with a grumble. The lack of background noise allowed them to hear the cacophony of the crowd competing with the rumble of following engines and the shouted commands of officers.

“Squad, dis….mount!” A voice yelled from outside and the troopers dutifully filed out. Second platoons carriers formed the points of a square within which the platoon was being formed into four ranks in something resembling drill. Sel ignored them, not officially being part of the platoon, and headed forward. She could see Kayden astride his ridiculous horse. The Lieutenant was heading towards the rest of the officers who had just arrived in open topped command cars or disgorged from their own chimeras. Before he could reach them however, there was a brassy blair of trumpets. Sel realised, with a combination of amusement and horror, that Kayden was exactly in the center of a large set of stairs that ran up towards the city hall, a vast edifice of soaring spires and crumbling gargoyles. Worse yet, Kayden instinctively wheeled his horse to face the hall, seeking the source and cause of the sound. The beast even reared to the roared approval of the crowd. Before anyone could say anything two files of ceremonial guards strode forward and between them a delegation of local nobles. They had mistaken Kayden, the sole mounted man and also the one in the apparent position of honor, for the guard commander and they were coming down to greet him. The eyes of his fellow officers were murderous but hurrying as they were they weren’t going to make it before the locals greeted the second platoon commander as though he were the Lord Solar himself.