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There were many guards in the imperial palace, but squad Silver was like no other.
While they were part of the chain of command like any other units, there was little guarding they were truly doing.
Joining the squad had become a way to spend retirement comfortably for those baselines that had become heroes in the guard, but due to injury or age had been taken off duty and failed to adapt to civilian life.
Here, they still had their orders and a squad with the same camaraderie they had found in the guard. Here, they didn't have to worry about the cryptic mysteries of civilian life like which outfit to wear or which food to prepare.
They prided themselves on their uniforms, and somehow, even the rations were much better on holy Terra.
They slept in their assigned quarters and cleaned them to regulation every week, for if they'd fail at it, their commander would make them run the training course until they puked and then still force them to clean their rooms.
The only thing that had really changed was the lack of fights, of actual death surrounding them. They did not overly miss it. They had had enough of that for multiple lifetimes.
The man they were guarding was a mystery to them all.
There were some wild speculations regarding his identity, like "secret son of the High Ecclesiarch", "Planetary Governor in exile", "Retired agent of the Inquisition/ the Primarch / the Temples", "Clone of an important person kept as backup", "Political prisoner" or "Very discreet and valuable sancitioned psyker".
Whatever he was, someone had put a lot of money or influence into keeping him comfortable.
He lived in a penthouse close to one of the few remaining gardens on Terra. There was never a spot to his clothes or his rooms, and new books as well as holodramas appeared weekly in his rooms. Every midday, a group of servants delivered fine foods and wines.
The man never touched the bottles.
Every day, he would dress in a jacket thicker than needed on a climate controlled world like Terra and travel down into the more civilian areas to attend mass.
Squad Silver accompanied him for this trip, of course, and he'd slow down if they found themselves checking the perimeter, but he'd not comment on their presence.
There was a sadness to him, flowing around him like a veil, hiding the details of his face.
Sometimes, he'd visit the garden. He'd find a bench to sit down, and stay there for hours, watching people pass by.
They could have assumed some malicious motivation, but he never moved, never spoke, and turned away from kissing pairs or children.
He read a lot. Historical accounts, works of faith, publicly available records of the heroic deeds of the Adeptus Astartes, especially the Raven Guard.
But the strangest thing about him was the fact that he did not work. Terra was the fulcrum of the universe, whoever made it here did so for alliances, working on them day by day. There was a cost to living on Terra, and one did not pay it if one did not have ambitions. Even the most lowly servants on Terra would have been considered nobility on other worlds. Yet, the man they guarded seemed utterly uninvolved in any political process. On the most blessed planet of the universe, the source of all power and command, there was a human that never seemed involved in either of those things.
He, and his equally uninvolved guards lived in their own bubble, one of silence admits the ever-toiling masses. Squad Silver might as well have been guarding a ghost.