Ma Never Lied

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Shortly after the Eboracum Summit...

Emigration Specialist Tirol Sarpedian had, comparatively, a simple job. His was to interview newcomers to Eboracum, should their files flag for review. Newly dedicated and consecrated cogitators installed by the Mechanicum crunched and parsed the growing reams of applications and idents of new arrivals, approving, rejecting and appending review as needed. The New Republic counterpart, 'SELCORE' appeared a terrible mess, distantly insulting Sarpedian with its inefficiency and throw-it-at-the-wall approach. Calth had a finely tuned machine to handle the hundreds of thousands of Ultramarians moving through the system, often daily, toward the heady expansion of the Five Hundred worlds to the galactic east. It was orderly, exhaustively documented and when Sarpedian and his regiment passed through for muster, as easy as flashing badge through a clicking scanner as they disembarked.

The Republican SELCORE was sort of just bundling up as many humans as they could onto transports and chucking them in Eboracum's direction, desperate for a relief valve to buy time for all the rest of the refugee flood. There must have been a back-up, or maybe an early alert, because in less than a week after the official agreement was struck, dozens of local starships slipped into berths that were barely even ready. Pass-through was in the hundreds already, but Sarpedian, in briefings, knew that the Primarch was anticipating a scale into the tens of thousands at minimum. Possibly, per day.

He was Calth-born and he had grown up seeing the passionate growth of the frontier world and watched the 'liths about the bold colonies springing up past Calth, out into the newly chartered expanses. Sometimes systems would be barely certified by an Expeditionary Fleet before there would be new alerts and organizations forming to hurl more farmers, more assayers, more excited adventurists out to keep Mankind's empire crawling outward.

Still, Calth hadn't sprouted in a day, but if the Primarch's most conservative estimates came true, they could be processing enough emigrants to fill entire hives each month. Not for the first time, Sarpedian wondered when the 4711th would push out, claim more worlds. Whatever the hell this galaxy was, the 4711th was still an Expeditionary Fleet, at least it was now, since the Primarch's declaration.

Some were disgruntled at the thought of putting down deeper roots. He heard a lot of rumbles about leaving this galaxy of 'freaks' to get back to the real fight. Sarpedian was Calth-born. He watched his homeworld burn through a thick armorglas window half the size of his hand. There was nothing for him to go back to. What there was, here, were, apparently, a rather unbelievable amount of humans that lacked any direction.

It was strange. In his past life, the one that ended in the violent translation from Veridia a few months ago, Sarpedian hadn't exactly been a 'true believer'. Sure, sure, he did his duty, he was proud to serve and he'd wear the Ultima with pride, but he hadn't really felt the zeal that others did.

Now he had an itch. Perhaps it was lit by the helplessness of the evacuation. Maybe kindled by how alone and beset on all sides the Imperium - the Imperium Exsilius - was. He didn't think it mattered. The Emperor, some said, worked in mysterious ways. Why else would they end up here, instead of anywhere else, after a freak Warp accident? Like a good Imperial, Sarpedian didn't think much about the Warp, but in the Excertus, rumors and tall-tales circulated in smoke circles and in the quiet, boring holds of troopships. The Warp was a nasty dimension, impossible to describe and Warp-related accidents didn't do serendipitous things like spit out a whole fleet right into the backyard of a quiet backwater, in a galaxy packed to the gunwales with provable, baseline humans.

Sarpedian wasn't some book-thumper like some of those Lectitio cranks, but only a dolt wouldn't know the Emperor was something way beyond a mortal man. With Astartes walking about and Primarchs head-and-shoulders above them, the Emperor had to be something no one could really understand. Not a god, obviously, for a whole lot of reasons, but the universe was full of crazy things and knowing one of the craziest was on the side of Mankind definitely helped him sleep at night.

'Got another.'

He started, snapped from his daydreaming and he straightened up behind his desk. There were interrogation rooms, but mostly those were reserved for the really unruly and problematic. The Primarch decreed a light hand in this new galaxy, to appease the squeamishness of the local authorities and the result was Sarpedian received most subjects in his hole-in-the-wall office, set into a block just past Processing. There were Iax Tertius on guard, in full kit, so if anyone wanted to make a scene, they surely wouldn't be making one for long.

Knuckles rapped against the jamb of his open door, paired with the call and Sarpedian nodded to a Patroller he didn't know, who was poking her head inside. He wasn't sure of her name - there were so many Patrollers working the fields now. Began with a W?

Sarpedian slapped his hand down on his deck, pushing back in his chair. It was a reclaimed ejection seat, appropriated from one of many Republican freighters torn apart by the Mechanicum for study. A number of furniture made their way into the hungry hands of the swelling population of the Civitas, who had endless spaces to furnish while the duracrete was still barely dry.

'What now, Patroller?'

She looked chagrined, with a sort of 'don't-take-it-out-on-me' expression and hauled another figure into view.

A headache Sarpedian was unaware of throbbed suddenly in his forehead. The Patroller directed her charge into his office, 'helping' him to sit in the bare-bones, metal-framed chair before his desk before she beat a hasty retreat. He caught muffled words exchanged with one of the Tertius patrolling the hall outside, but he didn't care to parse it. No, Sarpedian was far too agog at his new subject, who looked both pleased and relaxed, lounging as if the bare metal plate was the finest of Iax damasks. The man's spacer jumpsuit - something Sarpedian had grown accustomed to as a du jour uniform of Republican sailors - seemed well kept and clean. No sweat-stains or dried smears of oil and grease. The subject had a fine pair of mirrored shades perched on his nose, covering both eyes. One eyebrock cocked, sardonic, and fingers drummed against the seat of his chair.

The subject was also blue. Royal blue. Nearly Ultramarian blue.

Sarpedian drew a calming breath.

'I have interviewed a Togruuta today,' he began. The subject perked up slightly, conveying the appearance of sincere interest. 'She claimed that the mass of flesh attached to her head was a 'genetic defect' and a 'tumor'. I also interviewed a Zeltron who swore up and down that he simply had a tan. A Muugari, yesterday, claimed albinism.' He leaned forward, interlinking is fingers, staring pointedly at a single rune set aside on his desk, occupying a palm-sized square of metal. 'I am telling you this, because I am seconds from calling the guard to chuck you into the Pit and to dress down the Patroller who thought I needed a laugh today. You have thirty seconds. Speak.'

The subject adjusted himself, raising both hands in supplication, palms up.

'Well then, sirs, what cans I say but that old Baldarek is just lookings for a quiet place to rest his bones? Eh? Ya gets me? I don't knows nothing about no albinos or cancers, I'm just a hardworkings kind of guy. Heard there was honest works here, I'm honest, ya with me?'

It was…a different approach, at least. Credit for creativity.

'You are not human, Mr. Baldarek,' Sarpedian sighed. He had lines for this, which he trotted out daily. It would have been easier to just liquidate the fools that tried to sneak around the publicly and loudly announced requirements for emigration. The Pit should've been a processor, instead of just holding pens until the varied xenos could be bundled up and sent packing back to wherever they came from. It was a waste of resources, resources better spent on the honest men and women coming with hands outstretched.

But this was Legion directive. Gentle touch. Be polite to the liars.

'Sures I am. Mebbe I'm - what's ya calls it - adapted, get me?'

'By Expeditionary Diktat 43.5, endorsed by the High Suzerain and accepted by the New Republic Senate Select Committee for Refugees, the world called 'Eboracum' under the authority of the Imperium Exsilius can and will only accept human refugees, as defined by-'

'No no, sees, I knows all that.'

Sarpedian grit his teeth. By a subsection of that Diktat, he was supposed to finish the statement before he could throw this alien into the Pit with the others. '-as defined by standards laid out by the-'

'Sirs, if you'll listens, my ma was humans, she was as humans as you like, see?'

'I do not know anything about your 'ma', Mr. Baldarek, which means that that-'

Infuriating, the subject continued to interrupt.

'I knows I look odds, heard it all my life, ya know?' Baldarek tipped his sunglasses up - and Sarpedian wondered why the Patroller didn't confiscate them - revealing bright red, glowing eyes. 'Ain't nothing' normal 'bout me, no sir, my ma always said I was her specials boy, that's right Baldy, special boy like ya pops.'

Thumb and forefinger did not relieve the headache pressing behind his forehead, but bought a modicum of relief.

'And looks, I gots the same number'a fingers, all tens, same number'a toes, all ten - well, eight, cause-a that thing with the vibroblades back in oh, where was its…'

'Mr. Baldarek!' He shouted, drawing a glance from a Tertius just passing his open office door. The visored soldier assessed the cramped space a moment, then tapped his slung lasrifle meaningfully, continuing his route out of sight. 'Mr. Baldarek,' Sarpedian tried again, controlling his frustration. 'If you are so certain about what your 'ma' said-'

'Ma never lied,' the blue-skinned subject declared.

'-then I will have to elevate your case.' The idea came to him then, his lips curling with a wretched sort of amusement. 'Human mother, 'special' father, was it, Mr. Baldarek? Why, I believe blood tests, genetic scans, brain-pattern resonance mapping and perhaps neural tracing will prove your story.'

The subject's cheerful demeanour cracked, a little. Sarpedian was already pulling out the appropriate forms, flimsy and bound in triplicate, rapidly filling in information with a stylus.

'Mm, isolated holding for forty-eight hours, invasive Biologis examination thereafter…' he mumbled, just loud enough for the deep blue of the subject's face to lighten to a more snowy ice.

'Ah, sirs, maybe, ah-'

'No, no, Mr. Baldarek. I am an agent of the Imperium, and as such, I must take all claims of human origination most seriously. I am sure my associates in the Mechanicum will be most thorough in accrediting you.'

He pressed the call rune with a particular viciousness, tearing off the top sheet of the examination order, holding it out as a Tertius trooper swept into the office.

'One for the Magi, trooper.'

The Tertius soldier took the subject's upper arm in his grasp, accepting Sarpedian's offered order in the other. The subject allowed himself to be brought to his feet, but flicked off his shaded glasses. The look on his face was far more serious, insouciant cheer banished.

'Lissen here, kid. Ya'dunno desperation. I do. I've seens it, plenty. This, this here? Ya' gots the safest world in the Outer Rim. Everyone's gonna knows it. Everyone's seein' it. They're gonna be knockin' down ya' doors, mark my words.'

Then the Tertius trooper led him out, the subject otherwise docile.

Ignoring the implicit threat in the xenos' parting words, Sarpedian woke the small cogitator perched on his desk, beginning to cycle through a far too long list of common aliens of this galaxy, already knowing the additional paperwork he'd need to file before evening bells.

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Those Mechies, real freaks. He saw a couple walking around on extendo-legs out on the tarmac, like circus performers on stilts, except the stilts were nailed into their legs. Some kinda torture device, that's what it was. Baldarek'd been around the galaxy at least once, served hyper-dancer cocktails to Hutt crime-lords, faced down Jedi in his own bar, scarpered before the law could come a-knocking and kept his head above water even when the waves got choppy. In the shiny places of the galaxy, all bright-like and cosmo, things looked neat and tidy. Pry up a little, don't mind the dirt, don't mind a taproach in your glass and beings got real strange.

He was pretty sure cannibalism was okay back on Nar Kreeta. Thems was the way it went, further from the bright Core you jumped. Mechies were real freaky, but maybe not the freakiest he'd seen, is what he meant.

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The Mechie poking and a prodding and a jabbing him, over and over - well, she was a thin little thing, could blow away in the backdraft of a speeder, easy as. The Mechies loved red and her hunched little body was covered in a stiffy-starched robe of it, but he could see she'd been cute once. Reminded him of his niece. Nice girl, last he saw her, when she was…eight? Nine? Hoped she was still alive out there. His brother was a dolt.

So he didn't mind her taking a couple of quarts of his real precious blood. He sort of needed that, but nothing a couple stiff slugs of some gut-rot couldn't work back. That's how that worked, he was pretty sure. Juices go out, juices go back in, things balance out. He was no doc, just a good, honest man doing good honest work. She worked quick, that was nice. Good kid, just doing her job. Could do with being less clammy. Like dead fish, her hand was, cold too. That Imp's threats, talking about days of waiting, nah, just posing. All about keeping face, that's what it was. The Mechi here took him right in, soon as the tin-boy soldier marched him up.

Baldarek just smiled, even when she stuffed him into a great tube of metal that hummed and banged and made his eyes cross. Take his blood, poke him in all the joints, flash him with strobes that he was still blinking away the smears from, well - joke'd be on them, he was as human as you please. Ma said so, Ma never lied. Her special boy, 'lil Baldy, that's what she said. Not like other boys, no sir, but Ma said that's what made him special like. Blue's a good color and in his job, who needs a bouncer when you can glare like a demon outta some Rimward hell. Red-Eye Baldarek, that's what they called him. He liked it, it fit.

Human as the next, that's what. Never seen another like himself, too, which fit Ma's promise. Special, yeah? Special Baldy, just like his pops.

So the girl here, she had a face like a girl should, not like some of the other Mechies, so that meant over a few hours, he got to watch her slowly lose her mind. When the tin-man soldier left him at the lab - smelled like cleanser, tiled up in white, what else was it? - she looked bored. Didn't even say a word, just took the flimsy from his escort and went right to work. Could respect it, that kinda ethic. Hoped his niece had it too, if she was alive. Hoped she was.

Under her hood, the Mechie was bald, but still had wispy little eyebrows. Them eyebrows started evacuating her face about a half an inch at a time. Was his blood first that started them on their adventure, knocking out that sabacc-face she had going. First she frowned, then them eyebrows started rising and rising.

Baldarek just wore his most winningest grin, the one that doubled his tips.

He hadn't a clue what she was mumbling to herself, both from her actual mouth and from a nasty little block of metal that ate up half her neck. She hissed noises that would make an astromech lose its mind while she hunched over a whirring whirlygig machine she stuck his blood in. She grumbled while she stuck needles into his arms and legs - real uncomfortable that, but some fella paid real top level creds for acy-puncture.

He just kept on smiling, since Ma always said a good smile was worth a thousand credits. Which meant it wasn't worth that much, but since he had about a hundred creds to his name, it sure didn't hurt to work on his assets.

Mechie finally slumped back, eyes narrowed and glaring at him like it was his fault she was doing her job. In his paper-thin gown, Baldarek twiddled his thumbs and waited for her to pronounce his doom. Ma was no liar, neither was he, but these fellas seemed real stubborn. All the poking and prodding, he bet she was hunting for some sorta way to send him packing.

"You claim matrilineal human descent," the Mechie stated.

"I'm doing whats now?"

"You claim your mother was human."

"Human as," Baldarek confirmed. He remembered Ma and she looked just like any other old human. He listened then, as it turned out that Ma had never lied, and a ball of nasty uncertainty that he never realized he carried his whole life slowly relaxed and faded away.

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It was with some degree of chagrin that Sarpedian welcomed his last subject - one Mr. Baldarek - back into his cramped office. Accompanying the apparently not xeno was the Adept responsible for the revelation. She hovered behind Baldarek, who reclaimed the seat he'd vacated half a day ago. The blue-skinned man's expression was much more contemplative than insinuating, looking a little faraway and bemused.

The Adept offered a dataslate to Sarpedian and he skimmed it, each itemized datapoint matching a brief summary. More than once, he couldn't help himself from glancing to the Adept - Sonoi Fomon, whose flesh-name and clade ident undersigned the report - and she appeared as surprised as he.

He scrolled back, rereading, scrolled down, flicking his stylus against the glowing screen before tabbing a rune, shutting off the slate. Confusion warred with growing excitement. The man before him was an unmistakable alien in appearance. His blue skin, his glowing red eyes - despite his entirely humanoid visage, the difference in pigment and the unnatural, dare he say it, demonic glow of his eyes was offputting. Sarpedian thought of the Zeltron, with his lightly orange-tan skin, or the Muugari, hairless, with their lantern jaw and heavy features. Far more intelligent and thoughtful minds than his would soon be turned to these new facts and greater plans spun than anything he could imagine.

In this moment, though, Tirol Sarpedian held a man's fate in his hands. A man's fate. If what Sonoi's findings spoke of were accurate, behind the indigo skin beat a truly human heart.

Gene-pattern indicates matrilineal line human-normal, within deviation. Patrilineal gene-line features mutation expressed phenotypically; overall genetic variance from Terran-norm minimal.

Wonder of wonders, the man hadn't lied about the word of his mother. A human woman, an 'alien' male, and the product sat before him.

Subject is not sterile. Subject may sire viable offspring.

Brain scans matched hominid engrammatic requirements. Neurology was mildly more complicated, but actuated as expected. Internal organs in the right number, in the right places. A higher metabolism, though nothing extreme. Better night vision, but again, nothing extreme.

"Mr. Baldarek," Sarpedian began, a slowly dawning feeling creeping over him, the sort that he would never know was commonly felt among first-wave Iterators and diplomats. "What do you know of Terra?"

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Ma hadn't been kidding him. His Pops was as human as she was, as human as he always knew he was. Them years of drunk spacers ragging on him, calling him Red-eyes, asking what hole he crawled out of, all them years whizzed past him as the Imp talked and talked and talked. The Mechie that worked him over like a Arkanian's pet experiment chipped in her thoughts in her soft voice, but Baldarek only grokked about half of what they said.

They spun stories about the homeworld of all mankind, which was where they came from, but well, not them them, because this guy, this Tilos guy, he wasn't from that homeworld, he had a different homeworld, because that human homeworld, Terra, went out and had a whole empire across an entire other galaxy…

And they told him about how mankind was special. Unique. Standing alone compared to all the other races in all the stars. Not just alone, but above all the others. Now, Ma raised him right, at least for as long as she had him, and putting folks over other folks - he wasn't sure about all that.

He was going to get papers. Baldarek, citizen of Eboracum. No, it wasn't just that. The Mechie was gabbling about testing what most folks called 'near-humans'. All because of him. 'Cause of old Red-Eye Baldarek. Special Baldy. Damn, but his Ma hadn't missed a shot, not once.

The Imp, Sarpydan or Sharpian, shook his hand. Thanked him for being insistent. Stars and blasters, all Baldarek did was tell the truth, sure as Ma did. Tells it like it is, Baldy, that's what they want from a drink-slinger. Simple as.

Special, though. Not a freak, not a curiosity. Human as all the rest. Human and part of something real big, something bigger than he'd ever wandered into in his life. Slinging eyeblasters and nozzle-flushes made the creds, kept a roof and clothes on his back. Wasn't a lot. Didn't tuck him into bed, happy as a Andoan clam. Tossing out vices was all a fella did, working under the Hutts.

Sort of made sense, with what the Imp was shooting off about. Hutts, being aliens and all, spreading the bad and the worst. Keeping honest men like Baldy in the nasty loop.

These Imps. Not the old Imps, mind. The new Imps. Exiles, they called 'em. These Exiles might be onto something. Sure were a lot of humans all around the galaxy. Swing a polecat, hit at least a dozen in his cantina, every night. Biggest heroes, all human, wasn't it? The Starwalker, them Solos. The old Emperor, in the time with the bad Imperials - human too. He said so, out loud. The Exile fella, Sharpydan looked something proud.

"That's exactly right. Mankind has the most potential. It's our birthright. We can be the most glorious of heroes, or the most terrible of despots. It is our blessing and our curse, and why the Emperor, Beloved by All, understands that we need guidance more than anything else."

Made sense. Like a good racer swoop. In the hands of an ace skunker, they danced like wind-wisps and made the crowds roar. But put a void-brain behind the bars and that's a smear of metal and some real chunky mess. Best and the worst, that fit.

"The alien - nonhumans - it's not for us to hate them. At most, maybe pity. They can never reach the heights of Mankind, stifled as they are by their heritage."

Like the Hutts. Ever met a nice Hutt? Even a decent one? Couldn't say he ever had and whole span of his life, there he'd been out in Hutt space. Whole lotta ways to describe 'em, none pleasant. Fellas across the galaxy used them as a byword for corruption and the worst kind of vices. Huttslime, swore a trillion voices. Couldn't say they didn't deserve it. Seen himself too many slaves offed for a minute's laughs or tossed in an alley when they didn't dance or weren't perky enough.

Old Red-Eye came here looking for a quiet place, but as Sharpydan went on and on, getting more animated, he figured he really could stand to hear a little more.

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Nothing was absolute and nothing was truly decided. Sonoi's findings were concrete, but not verified by another. Perhaps Sarpedian was overconfident, but this - this - was the answer to the thoughtless, pointless atrocity of Calth. The Emperor sent them here. He had to have. A whole galaxy of humans, baseline and branch, ignorant and unguided. This was why. This was their purpose. How else could a Primarch come to be here, how else could several companies of the Imperium's finest Astartes be here, how else, so serendipitously, could they arrive at the perfect time, the perfect place?

Sonoi would take her findings to her superior. Baldarek would be set aside in comfortable quarters, confined for the moment, but as a guest, not a prisoner. Already, Sarpedian was drafting requests for genetic testing on 'near-humans' in the Pit.

He felt foolish. Shortsighted, in fact. How many strains of humanity were there at home, in the galaxy that bore Terra and Macragge? Even within the Five Hundred worlds there were at least a dozen, tall and short, hirsute and glabrous. Pushed by circumstance and the forces of evolution to adapt to brutal, icy worlds, worlds that wandered without stars, worlds that baked in seething radiation. Across the rest of the galaxy itself, the number had to be hundreds. Thousands of breeds of Humanity, all united, all brought together by the embrace of the Emperor.

There might be some too far afield. He understood that. He knew of abhumans, those who had fallen quite far from the mother tree. Ogryn, for one. Accepted by the Imperium and Mechanicum both, but distinctly and clearly distant cousins, not close brothers. Others trailed farther afield and could not be saved. That was a sad reality, but it was better for them to be laid to rest with mercy than allowed to further deviate and complete their fall from grace.

Sarpedian wondered how many branches here, in this galaxy, would be embraced. Baldarek - a Chiss, most likely, from his research and questioning of other spacers - believed himself to be human, and human thus he was revealed to be. He thought of the Zeltron, who just might well be revealed to be sibling too. This galaxy was in some ways more peaceful, in some ways more insidious. How many of these 'near-humans', who thought themselves a species apart, had been led astray, deluded, and tricked now into holding onto an identity that was a lie?

Could they be educated? Saved from their ignorance?

Baldarek proved it possible. He had to have trust in the masterful oratory of Iterators, in the teachings of the Civitas' burgeoning college. Sarpedian watched Baldarek go from amused to surprised, to captivated, to awestruck as the grand tale of humanity, worthy of an epic, was revealed to him.

He was eager to see Sonoi's discovery replicated. His direct overseer was already informed and they would meet over a late dinner. From the quick memo returned, greater eyes were already focusing in on what he had done this day. Grander minds were noticing him.

Sarpedian did all he did to serve the future of Humanity. To serve the Emperor, Beloved by All, even beyond the bounds of the known universe, far from the light of the Astronomican and Terra.