++ The rewards of tolerance are treachery and betrayal ++
Rooms are full of dust. If someone was to dispute that, all they would have to do would sit so that they could see the dust in the sunlight coming into the room. Motes of dust drift slowly through the air, rising and falling as they enter warm or cold air. Dust sits within the carpets, on the furniture and even on the windowsills. There are millions of specks. In fact, if you think about just how small dust can be, there are probably billions of specks, all in one room.
If you were to look at space as if it was a room, then you could also think that planets are like dust. They drift through space on pre-determined paths. Some are stable, orbiting each other and their sun the way they have since their creation. Others wend their way through space according to their fate, irregular orbits drawing them closer and closer to their sun like moths to a candle flame dying in a sudden blaze of light. Yet more are pulled towards black holes, slowly going to their death like a condemned man walking the green mile, dragging out each and every step.
There are even smaller specks of dust in space. Man-made and Xeno-made, they plough through space with a purpose. Ripping holes into and out of the warp they go where they want, when they want. Some are lost to the warp, destroyed or doomed to forever wander, some re-appear years after they should have, and others find themselves light years away from where they thought they would arrive.
The Elsimate system was one such collection of planets, happily following the orbits they had been given from time eternal. Ships and satellites added to the clutter, and space was filled with the chatter of the planets. Newsfeeds, official communications, messages to loved ones, deals to be made and power to be taken. A system that had seen peace for centuries, it was a good place to live for billions of Imperial citizens.
One good example of an Imperial citizen was Finn Singeorge. The Imperium is filled with stories of HEROES; men and women who heard the clarion call of destiny, who had willingly fought and died under the banners of the Imperium, crushing a myriad of foes under their boots. Singeorge, even in his wildest dreams, could not be compared to one of these people. He was one of the uncelebrated workers, a very small cog in a huge machine. Working a set nine-to-five, six-day week pattern he made the daily commute – although in his case it was usually a trudge, sometimes a dawdle – to his designated seat in the House Bastin Voxcaster manufactorum.
Unfortunately for Singeorge, he was good at his job. Too good. Ignavus Vir, his Line Manager, was everything a Line Manager should try not to be. Vir was however, very sly. He recognised good workers and used them to further his career whilst doing as little work as possible. Work slipped off his shoulders like water off a duck’s back, dripping slowly down onto the people below him.
One of his favourite workers was Singeorge, and there was no way he was going to let Singeorge progress, or rival him. And so, every day Singeorge kissed his wife and children goodbye, went to the office, produced work of the highest quality and seethed with resentment as Vir claimed credit for all of his hard work.
If many citizens of the Imperium were honest, this would probably tally with their own lives. It was a way of life in the Imperium. Those that had power held onto it with both hands whilst trying to claw their way up onto the next rung, standing on the fingers of those below as they did so.
Despite the many wars, the numerous threats to its stability and all of the Xenos baying for its blood, on the whole life in the Imperium for the average citizen was pretty uneventful - unless of course - something happened out of the ordinary. The odds of any given planet coming under attack were millions to one, and many systems saw nothing like that experienced by the Cadians.
Month 6, 998.M41 would be a month that Singeorge would never forget and would be known as a month that was anything but ordinary.
He wasn’t aware of any of this as he leant his head against the door of his hab, sighing as the weight came off his aching feet and pressed the bell with a double tap. He couldn’t resist the urge to smile as he heard the squeals of excitement from within. He loved his family with his whole heart and soul, even more than he loved the Emperor. For him life began when he got home from work. He couldn’t for the life of him understand the sort of person who spent more time at work than with their families.
The door was wrenched open and he rocked back onto his heels as his two daughters slammed into him with cries of ‘Daddeeeeeeeee’ and ‘Kira took my Lulu, daddy!’
Behind them, his wife gave him a smile and a look that said far more than ‘hello dear, did you have a nice day?’
Stepping through the children and nudging aside the canid, he leaned over and kissed his wife hello on the lips. Definitely a promise of a good night there! Giving her arse a quick squeeze he moved in for another, longer kiss.
‘Get off you cheeky oaf!’ She slapped his hand and danced away from his grasp, looking over her shoulder, her eyes glinting.
Throne I love that woman. Bloody tease that she is!
‘Daddy! You’re naughty!’ Kira, his youngest daughter gave him a slap on his bottom and then hugged both his legs tight, stopping him from pursuing Karenza.
‘Hope you’ve been a good girl Kira!’
A squeal burst forth as he picked her up and span her around. He set his still giggling daughter on the ground and kissed Ragan, his eldest daughter, wiping away a drip of snot from his lip.
‘Blurgh! Yuck! Please, please, please blow your nose snot face!’ He reached out and milked her nose by squeezing the nostrils together.
Ragan giggled and skipped off to play with her sister, wiping her nose with her sleeve as she did so.
‘Hmmm, that smells good! What’s for tea?’ he asked as he made his way through to the small dining room. His canid’s tongue lolled out of its mouth, and its eyes narrowed as he scratched its back, its scales rising so that he could get right down to the leathery skin.
‘Good boy! Who’s a good boy?’
‘Right! Sit down everyone, protein steaks and freets!’ announced Karenza, his wife as she brought in a tray laden with food. Sitting down the family tucked in.
Work sucks, Ignavus is a knob but by the Emperor my family is bloody amazing! he thought as rolled a mouthful of rich red wine around his mouth and his family told him what they’d been up to that night.
The rest of that night was indeed a good night. At six thirty the next morning the alarm started squawking. He struggled to lift a head that felt five times heavier than normal whilst his thudded in his chest. He shivered and rubbed at his goose bump covered arms. As usual the heating system had decided that early starts were not a good idea.
Karenza reached over and snuggled into him, pulling him towards her and back into the warmth of the bed. Five minutes more can’t hurt, just a quick hug.
He woke with a start. A quick glance at his chronometer told him everything he needed to know.
‘Dammit, I’m going to be late!’
He leapt out of the bed, cursing and stumbling as he hunted around for his work clothes. His youngest daughter, Kira came into the room rubbing her eyes and asking for a hug. A quick lift and squeeze saw her being passed into the welcoming arms of her mother and Singeorge was stumbling through into the corridor, bladder bursting.
Bleary-eyed, he failed to notice the box lying on the floor. His toes were much more on the case and found it with an almost indecent sense of glee. There was a pause as his toes realised what they had done and passed the message on to his brain. An intense pain washed through his body and he spat out a particularly nasty curse.
‘Ummmmm! I’m telling mummy you said that!’ Ragan sprinted into their room and with an innocent tone repeated verbatim what he had just said.
‘Sorry! Sorry love, didn’t mean to say it.’ He dove into the bathroom to avoid a telling off from Karenza. There was nothing she hated more than having the children pick up swear words. You never could tell when one might pop out in the presence of polite company.
Each and every step hurt as he walked along the main boulevard, making his way along through the crowds. He munched on a warm carbo slice slathered in yeast extract whilst sipping from his ‘best daddy in the world’ thermos mug. A particularly clumsy or just plain ‘bloody ignorant’ man bumped into him, spilling kaf down the front of Singeorge’s suit. Singeorge spun to see the man continue to barge his through the crowd and disappearing without even an ‘excuse me’.
Still cursing he entered the foyer of House Bastin. Most people, when they hear the word ‘foyer’ envisage a fairly large room with a reception desk. Over one thousand feet wide and a further two thousand feet deep, the use of foyer seemed to be a gross understatement.
Singeorge paused to take in the sight. White marble, with the House Bastin crossed lightning bolts tastefully carved in dark blue, covered the floor, walls and even the ceiling. Power literally dripped onto the floor.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
House Bastin employees crammed the area with visitors from other Noble houses sprinkled amongst them, vivid dots of colour that stood out from the dark-blue uniforms worn by the employees.
A splash of red caught his eye and he watched as an entourage from House Gard picked its way through the throng to the reception desk. Fully two hundred feet long and made of solid granite, with a golden rail running its full length the desk stood out like a fly in ointment. Cogitators lined the desk and over seventy reception clerks in the livery of House Bastin faced queues of customers, applicants and suppliers.
‘Glory be to the Emperor’ he whispered, his pulse racing as he took in his favourite view.
House Bastin was one of the premier communications Houses in the system. Throne, their vox-casters went into action with some of the most legendary regiments in the Imperium. Their communications cogitators were embedded in the greatest ships of Imperial Navy and made House Bastin’s trade ships the envy all.
Finally- and Singeorge shuddered at the thought - they made some of the finest servitors. No matter how many he saw, how many he had helped make through engineering chips, servitors turned his stomach. Just the sight of one made his mouth dry up, his legs start to shake and sweat bead on his head.
Alive, they were dead. No feelings, no real thoughts, no control over their lives. They were un-dead. Some had been born to be servitors, specially bred by House Bastin, never given the chance to live. Others had once been human beings. Real people with lives, feelings, loved ones. Then they either got themselves killed in industrial accidents or convicted of crimes against the Throne. The latter really set his pulse racing. Just the very sight of one of those made his coddes tighten and his dick shrink at the mere thought of being made into one.
Stupid fugger, get a damn grip! He just could not control the way he felt. It didn’t help that he came across them on a daily basis whenever he got called to any of the sub-levels.
All around him his fellow employees flowed across the floor, heading to the lifts that would either take them up to the administration levels, or down to the Depths, the manufacturing levels.
Time to move, can’t give Ignavus a chance to get one over. He strolled over to the nearest bank of elevators and crammed himself in with fifty others. The lift asked which floors were needed and a chorus of numbers rang out. He sighed and cursed, realising he had at least twenty stops before he got near his level.
He worked on floor two-fifty, a mid-management level. House Bastin was over one thousand glorious levels tall, and over three hundred deep. Over one hundred thousand people worked in its halls. Ten minutes later he slid his chair under his desk. He started up his cogitator and headed towards the nearest kaf dispenser, filling his thermos mug to the brim.
‘Finn!’ a hand slapped down onto his shoulder and for the second time that day hot kaf burned into his flesh. He turned and saw a fat, balding, ginger-bearded short-arse. Ignavus Vir. To say that Vir was the bane of his life was like saying the Emperor spent a lot of time sat down.
‘Morning Ignavus, how are you today?’ he winced, both at the ingratiating tone he could hear in his voice and at the still hot kaf soaking into his work-shirt. He watched as Vir’s mouth opened and shut, drivel spewing out of his mouth like water from a gargoyle. A pain in his hand cup made him uncurl his fist.
‘Throne, what a complete and utter spanker you are. How on earth did the Emperor allow someone like you to be born, let alone be my line manager? Shit, what did he just say?’
Vir had stopped speaking and stared at him, his head tilted inquisitively.
‘Well? Can you fix why the Echoes won’t bloody ship or not?’
The Echoes! Of course.
‘No worries, I can head on down there and speak to the two twenty manager. He owes me a favour. I’m sure I can call it in.’ He turned and walked off before the ginger fool could spout any more meaningless management chatter.
Just because you asked someone how their weekend went and they replied, it did not mean you had a good rapport with them. Just because you passed on all of the work allocated to you, it was not ‘a development opportunity’ for the poor peon you dumped it on. And just because people smiled at you and joined in your inane conversation, it did not mean that they liked you. They just had to work for you.
A head poked its way around the desk divider in front of him and Puer Kraiman smiled a greeting as Singeorge leant on his desk.
‘I just cannot understand how a fug-ugly, ginger-haired, puissant like him got to be in the position he is’, Kraiman said, hammering away at the keys of his cogitator with anger born out of frustration.
Singeorge gave a tired smile and a resigned shrug in response.
A talented designer, Kraiman had come up with one of the best vox systems House Bastin produced. Unfortunately for him however - the fug-ugly, ginger-haired puissant had taken all the management credit for the product; whilst extolling Kraiman’s virtues in front of the whole team. Whilst everyone on this floor knew he was a genius, no-one on the floors above did, never would and didn’t care either way in the first place.
‘Because if anyone on floor two-five-one admitted that they knew he was useless and was stealing everyone’s ideas down here it would open up a can of worms,’ Singeorge leaned over and snagged a biscuit from the open tin on Kraiman’s desk.
‘Oi! Get your own fatso!’ Kraiman vainly tried to snatch it back before Singeorge could cram it into his mouth.
Singeorge sent crumbs flying as he batted Kraiman’s hand away.
‘He’s fugging fireproof and there’s absolutely fug-all we can do about it buddy.’
‘Face it, it’s a case of dead-man’s shoes and Ignavus, Emperor Bless Him’ Kraiman’s jaws clenched, ‘is in fine health.’
He snagged a cookie of his own and laughed.
‘Actually it’s more a case of the Melvyn principle; people get promoted to their highest level of incompetence. He’ll never get any higher than he is now. Unfortunately, because he’s our boss rather than our colleague, we’ll never get any bloody higher, even though we’re more than competent. We, my friend, are bloody amazing!’
The two of them got up and wandered over to the kaf dispenser, Kraiman leading. As they walked Singeorge noticed the heads of the younger women – and even some of the older – turning to get a better view of Kraiman. Six-foot tall he had black short cropped hair and an imperial goatee. Wide at the shoulders he had an athlete’s body and the strength of an ox. Every fourth-day night he and Singeorge would head to the House Bastin gym to free style fight and every time Singeorge had a sneaky suspicion that Kraiman had held back. The man was a powerhouse and definitely not someone to anger.
‘Hoi, hoi boys. Finn, I like the tie-dye look mate.’ Stav Silex wandered over to join them and pushed in front of Kraiman, ‘ladies first Puer!’
The joker of the three, Silex was dedicated to House Bastin and the Emperor. At twenty-eight he was the youngest out of all of them and, unlike Singeorge, was still climbing through the grades. Junior enough to not be a threat to Vir, and young enough to still be hungrily ambitious he looked up to the two of them as mentors within the work place. He didn’t let this stop him from taking the mickey out of them on a constant basis however.
‘I do believe that Ignavus’ pet toad is on the way to make a cup of kaf for our beloved boss.’
Singeorge looked over his shoulder and could see the man making his way over.
‘I think,’ said Silex ‘that Ignavus is missing out on some essential minerals.’
He winked as he brought out a salt cellar and promptly dumped the contents into the kaf pot.
‘See you later boys. I wouldn’t stand there for too long or you’ll get the blame.’
He walked off giggling.
‘That boy is going to get us into a lot of trouble.’ Kraiman muttered as he and Singeorge made a swift exit.
The trip to floor two twenty had been a waste of time and now Singeorge was headed down to one of the floors he dreaded the most, minus one.
The first twenty of the subterranean levels were warehouses. All of the products due to be shipped out within the next moth were stored in their cavernous halls.
There was no marble down here. The walls were a uniform white, with black flooring. An exit strip with arrows on it pointed those who managed to lose their way to the nearest exit.
The place was soul-less and those that inhabited were soul-less too. What he thought was a shadow stepped forward and into his path, forcing him to come to an abrupt stop as he bumped into its chest.
'Please state your name visitor.'
Blank lifeless eyes stared at him as the voice issued forth from a speaker lodged in the servitor's mouth. Tears ran silently down its cheeks as a mist was sprayed onto the unblinking eyes.
The initials ST - Secessionist Traitor - were branded in the servitor's forehead, marking it as one of the deluded people who wanted to break away from Imperial rule. Always in the minority, they usually inhabited the Sinjon mining belt. The miners there were notoriously independently minded and often went on strike when they felt they weren’t being accorded the respect they deserved. Every-so-often the strikes would lead to one particular mine trying to break away from the system and the PDF being sent in to clear matters up.
He forced himself to look closer and saw the calluses on the man’s arms where the rings of his atmospheric suit would have rubbed and there was a band where his helmet would have sat on his forehead. A former real person was stood in front of him.
His bladder suddenly felt much too small. He struggled to get enough breath to speak, peeling his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
'Finn Singeorge. Two two niner five x-ray whiskey zulu'
The servitor stood perfectly still. Not even its chest rose or fell. A roaring filled his ears and his chest got tighter and tighter.
Breathe numpty! He gasped, sucking breath in and realised that he’d been holding his breath in sympathy.
'It hurts'
Singeorge jumped as the servitor spoke.
'I’m sorry? What did you say?'
'Employee Finn Singeorge. Two two niner five x-ray whiskey zulu, cleared for access and any and all assistance.'
He stared at the servitor. Had it really said 'It hurts?'
'Sorry, could you say that again the bit about “it hurts”. What hurts?'
Again that blank unflinching stare speared him to the spot.
'Employee Finn Singeorge. Two two niner five x-ray whiskey zulu, cleared for access and any and all assistance.'
A voice rang out from the space behind.
'Back to your duties Servitor!'
A pudgy little man in the work uniform of a Logistician walked out of the gloom. Silently the servitor shambled off into the gloom, limping slightly.
'Can I help you? What are you looking for please sir?'
Although Singeorge was only low level management, to the man in front of him he had reached unobtainable levels in the House.
'I need to see a shipping manifest for the delivery of one thousand Echo class vox-casters. Delivery point Canterbury. May the Saint forever serve the Holy Emperor.'
Canterbury was a Pilgrim World and therefore arguably the most important planet in the system.
He reeled off the manifest number and the logistician consulted his data slate.
Ten minutes later and they were at the containers. It immediately became clear to him why they had not been sent. The manifest stated Delta class, the barcode stated Echo. They didn't tally and therefore they were not going to be sent. It was a stupid, lazy, school-boy error and could have been cleared up by Vir in less than five minutes, IF he could have been bothered. He told the logistician that he would clear the error and that he needed the shipment to be classified as Of Upmost Importance.
He stalked off to the upper levels, all thoughts of the servitor swept from his mind.
Eight hours, three projects, five pointless meetings and ten cups of kaf later, Singeorge powered down his cogitator. He wracked his brains as he tried to think of a way out of level two-fifty without losing his job.
The image of his fist slamming into Vir’s face as he screamed the words ‘I quit you ginger freak’ flashed across his mind’s-eye. Fists balled he hammered the power switch on his cogitator, snarling the words of the House Bastin’s Lullaby of Shutdown before he stalked off to summon a lift.