There was no skill more essential to an Imperial Guardsman than the ability to stare fixedly at a point six inches above the head of whomever was dressing her down and betray absolutely no expression. Sel was a past master of this most essential of field crafts and demonstrated her skills as she stood in Major Sour's office, her fine dress uniform burned and torn, a great white splash of confectioners sugar across the front of her blue tunic and her feet lacquered to the polished stone floor but what both smell and texture suggested might be toffee. Kayden in marked contrast had come off rather better, with only a parted seam and a slight disheveling of his hair. The office had once belonged to some minor priest or functionary but devotional tapestries had been replaced with acetate maps marked up to show the city and its environs. Fuzzy pict plates showed aerial reconnaissance views of unfamiliar terrain and there were even a few stills from the gunpicters sentinels used. A faint smell of incense and old body powder over lay the more recent scent of lho sticks and recaf, a pot of which burbled on a hexamite stove in the corner. Sour pointedly did not offer his guests a cup.
"Why is it, that when there is trouble I may depend on finding you two caught up in it," Major Sour asked acidly. Sour was a beefy man, not fat exactly but too fond of food and drink to stay lean in a rear echelon posting like regiment XO. He had been a famous duelist in his youth and still bore a dueling scar on the left side of his face but that fame and that youth had been long ago. Sour was also a man who bore a grudge, his service record and seniority might have seen him elevated to colonel but his lack of political saavy had seen him passed over in favor of a politically connected officer. It was a bitter blow, a colonel might hope to one day elevate himself to the general staff but an aging major could look forward only to thankless work, the faults in which would fall to him and the success laid at the feet of his chief. It was too his credit that Sour did not avenge that disappointment on his juniors. Usually he didn't. Sel couldn't imagine that having to deal with an even younger, even better connected officer was doing the jowly old troll's ulcers any good.
"Sir," Kayden said in a reasonable and respectful tone, "I do not believe Corporal Seldon and I can be blamed for defeating an insurgent attack." The word defeated hung in the air and Sour glowered, unable to deny that it had been a win, albeit one so narrow that it made her palms itch. She didn’t know why being jumped in a supposedly friendly city made her so much more edgy than being bushwhacked out the back of beyond but there it was.
“Yes… Corporal Seldon,” Sour acknowledge in a tone so dry that Sel could almost feel the pages of her personnel file being judged and found to be considerably short of the mark. Sour tried to catch her eye but Sel expertly kept her own gaze fixed on her imaginary aiming point, her face so blank an neutral that she might have been a tailors dummy for all the emotion it conveyed. Sour, having played this game with soldiers his entire life, gave it up as a bad bargain and returned his attention to Kayden.
“Yes, well,” Sour continued dismissively, “you weren’t the only one that got shot at you know.” That was true, a handful of snipers had opened fire on the barracks at precisely the moment the ambush in the street was sprung. Snipers might be stretching the point though because not a single trooper had so much as been wounded. That was an odd contrast with the cold professionalism of the hit squad that Sel and Kayden had dispatched, more by luck than skill, and it made Sel even more nervous. Perhaps the enemy only had so many trained people and had used them all to try to eliminate Kayden. Sel supposed that after the spectacle at the palace it would be a public relations victory if nothing else.
“Yes Sir!” Kayden replied with a crisp enthusiasm that, while no doubt genuine, made Sour give him an irritated look. There was no way he could come down on a junior for such an appropriate response. He made a show of leafing through some papers on his desk, though it was a fair bet the sheets of flimsy held no new information.
“Ever consider a career in the holos Caradwalden?” Sour asked, which nonsequitor was so sudden that even Kayden was momentarily at a loss for words.
“Sir?” he asked in genuine perplexity. Sour produced a pict slate and turned it to face the pair. On it Sel could see footage of Kayden catching the prometheum bomb in one hand, then lobbing it back into the window. The view, which appeared to be from the other side of the street, showed a much better view of the resulting fireball, even highlighting three bodies behind the inferno in the moment their bodies were engulfed. If there was audio it was turned off, but a banner along the bottom of the screen read: “Lord Lieutenant Caradwalden single handedly defeats assassins.”
Nobody spoke for a long moment. A Lord Lieutenant was a rank at sector level, something someone in line to become governor might hold. A screw up like this, if it caught on, might well lead Kayden personally and the regiment generally into extremely dangerous waters. Clearly the vid had come from local newscasters, probably paparazzi who had followed Kayden from his dinner party.
“Hey!” Sel interjected without thinking about it, “he wasn’t single handed!”
“Seldon,” Sour said in the tone of a man wearier than words could describe. “Kindly keep your mouth shut for the remainder of this interview.” Sel opened her mouth to say Sir, then hastily closed it and nodded.
“This is already all over the city and by nightfall you will be a Throne damned local celebrity, which I’m sure to a glory hunter like you, does not seem like a problem,” Sour continued.
“Sir..” Kayden protested, but the Major was in no mood and he continued talking over the top of his subordinate.
“Which means, every damn insurgent in the city is going to want to blow whatever you have out of your head, and worse people standing beside you are likely to get it in the neck as well,” Sour grumbled. He softened slightly, as though embarrassed by his own vehemence.
“What we need is to get you out of here for a few days while things get settled down… fortunately a local noblewoman, one Baroness..." he paused to actually consult his papers before continuing. "Baroness Arsenault has asked for an Imperial Guard assessment of her estate and her household troops…”