A Perilous Refusal

[Welcheren]

If you are sincere about comprehending us, at least well enough to suit your superiors’ ends, you would do well to grasp a few fundamentals about humanity. We have shaped the lives of entire peoples and whole worlds around nothing more substantial than conviction – until it became a reality as uncompromising as age and death. In one era you would have heard us proclaim the inevitability of progress, the inexorable achievement of utopia, if we would only labour a fraction harder and strive little longer. Well… look where that got us. So pardon my cynicism, but your offer sounds strikingly similar. For our part, we eventually substituted all that optimism for something else: Something to help us deal with the suffering of the present age. And that was my mistake.

 

I cannot say whether you will learn what you hope for from this account. But since you asked for it…

 

 

*****

 

 

The corpse was hardly the first one I had encountered in this diocese, not at all. Equally, it was unusual. Something strange had happened, that was clear.To me at least. Experience from a previous portion of my life pushed me forward like a muscle spasm, and when I knelt down amid the reek of the refuse zone, this knowledge enabled me to notice how eerily the wounds on the naked flesh resembled radiation burns. Adding to the mystery, I saw several curves of scar tissue, old and partially healed, lacing the skin in close proximity to vital organs. These had not killed the young man, clearly. No. Death had come from a simple stab to the heart, still raw and red.

 

“This is none of our concern,” cracked the slow, hard voice of my superior missionary, while I bent over the abandoned corpse,in the shadow of a mighty mountain of refuge.Like the reek, I managed to ignore my superior a little longer.

 

“They intended to incinerate the body,” I mumbled - more to myself than to the aged and dispassionate missionary back on the road. Even with my back to him I could guess his expression, mainly because it hardly changed. The ashen lip and brown chin would thrust out like the foundations of an ancient sanctuary, exposed by dry winds. And the lonely tuft of hair on the angular perch of his forehead would stick out like a weed growing, unwanted but defiant,on the ruined edifice.

 

“This is none of our concern.” Finally I looked back at him, and noticed something about his Adeptus Ministorum robe, which mirrored my own.I switched my eyes back to the corpse and surmised that the three men who had loomed over it when we arrived could have mistaken us for PDF enforcers in the pale pre-dawn. So, that’s why they ran. But despite the half-light I had spotted a tube-shaped device among them.One man had aimed it at the body just before they bolted: an unlicensed flamer of crude design. So, eradicating the remains was important enough to risk carrying such a bulky contraband weapon, suggesting that this crime was no accidental manslaughter, or a drug-induced lover’s quarrel. What kind of surgery had this man undergone before death? Months, perhaps even one year, prior to the radiation burns?

 

“Ensign,” my superior’s patience had run dry as his face.

 

Night had fallen when I finally had enough time to pursue this curiosity. An entire day spent dishing out weak soup to the girls at the Charity, dispensing the basic rules of arithmetic and grammar,followed by one my sermons, had only distracted my conscious mind, allowing the more subtle cogitations to wheedle away at the enigma. When the day was finally over, I arranged to meet an officer of the local hive PDF enforcers, with whom I had a long-running arrangement: information in exchange for a few minor comforts.

 

“Five corpses over twelve months,” she dispensed the information slowly, scrutinising my reactions,“then suddenly another five in four months. I say corpses, but all we discovered where ashes; sometimes a few fragments of bone. Useless.”

 

“How did you find them at all?”

 

She waited for an abrupt explosion of insults near the bar of the tavern to die down: “Informers. One of them reported flashes of fire in the refuge zone. As you might imagine, no one else saw anything. Not a single soul in all the packed spires around the heaps.” She paused meaningfully and speared her eyes at mine in what I had come to recognise as a low-grade threat that could easily escalate if met with mendacity.I submitted to her eyes as a way of confirming that I had nothing new to offer her yet. “Officially,” she continued slowly,“we have reported nothing either.”

 

“No case has been opened?” I ventured cautiously.No response was forthcoming. Having worked for her often,I understood this silence as implying that she suspected members of her own PDF might be involved. Clearly she shared my estimation that the incidents warranted investigation.“How did you collect the remains?”

 

“Surreptitiously.” Another wave of noise interrupted her.“Two officers posing as scavengers.”

 

“And you think no one recognised them as PDF in that area?”

 

Her hand made a dismissive wave: “I recruited them from orbit.They have never been seen on the surface before.”

 

“Are the victims connected in some way?”

 

“How should we know? The last body was the only intact one. Judging from his teeth and stomach he might have worked at a reactor plant. Their rations are different from the factoria and the space port.But that doesn’t tell us anything about the ones who got incinerated. And as you know people trade their standard rations.”

 

“The radiation burns were quite severe.There might have been an acc-”

 

“The plant’s Tech Priests are fastidious record keepers with their machines. I have checked, and there have been no mechanical accidents. They have no reason to conceal anything from us.But taking all this trouble to destroy the bodies – this was no work accident.”

 

“I think I might have something,” I mumbled uncertainly at a flash of memory. Something from my day at the Charity struck a tune. Rising to my feet, I made to leave. My friend did not object. She had no reason to. She would probably have me followed, and we both knew that the other party knew. And we both knew that if I could not produce a feasible lead, there would be no remuneration.

 

 

 

 

Helen’s ramshackle hab-unit was perched over a disused drainage channel - within easy walking distanceof a fairly new reactor plant that fed power through one of the major arteries of the distant factoria. I had remembered that Helen, a frail and perennially ill little girl of ten at the Charity, had expressed concern over heat wounds on her father’s skin. She opened the door slowly and timidly once she had confirmed that it was not a stranger knocking on her door at this late hour.

 

“You are not in any trouble Helen, I promise.” I sank to my knees to equal our heightsin a typically adult attempt at placation. “I just wanted to bring your father something. I bet him that the Tech Priests would build another orbit-factory, and it turns out I was wrong.” Suspicion mixed with approbation on her face, suggesting that she was not at all taken in by the lie, and that her father had expressed strong injunctions against gambling, irrespective of how friendly. But an undercurrent of anxiety was clearly readable in the set of her mouth,mingled with a fraction of hope when she looked up from the floor again. My strategy was not as fruitless as I had feared.

 

“Father isn’t here now. He left with three men an hour ago. I don’t know where. I was pretending to sleep.”

 

“Thanks Helen.”

 

“They had green coats.” She added the latter snippet with utter certainty of its significance.Her posture stiffened as if she were a chief PDF investigator. But Helen’s world was a narrow one. Green coats added very little to my meagre store of evidence.

 

“Thanks Helen. Your unit is nice and warm for this time of year.”

 

A cautious flash of pride showed on her cheeks, “Father’s been working longer hours. So we are allowed more heat.”

 

A subtle detail in her face and her demeanour prompted my next question, “Has a doctor been here to see you Helen?”

 

“No,” the lie was defiant, but composed on a foundation of discomfort, built on a child’s sense of the sinfulness of deceit. I guess my sermons might have contributed to that. I considered asking for a closer description of her father’s wounds, but I decided against making her recall them.

 

“Thanks again, Helen.” I passed one of my coupon cards for extra rations into her fingers, something I’d gained from a previous service to my friend in the PDF.Fortunately, I also managed to resist the insipid urge to say something perfunctory like I’ll go find him or I’m sure he’s out friends.

 

 

 

 

Not for the first time, experience from a prior portion of my life offered the correct hypothesis, and I found Helen’s father. Exactly how I located him, is hardly important for this conversation. I can recognise surgical scars when I see them, and if the operation is conducted illegally it cannot take place far from a half-way decent space port.

 

Of course, I am sure your friends have more innovative solutions.

 

But given the available technologies on our world, there are too many necessities that cannot be transported very far illegally without spoiling. You can hardly be surprised that the reactor where Helen’s father worked was very close to a minor surface-to-orbit port.

 

By this hour, the streets criss-crossing under the hive spires where asleep, even while the mag-rails rumbled incessantly with the produce of the night-shift workers in the distant factoria. Consequently, the seven figures were not too difficult to spot, skulking their way down the stairs of a defunct blast bunker right on the edge of the reactor’s grounds.Of course, in addition to the seven nightwalkers and myself, I was certain that my friend in the PDF had sent someone to watch over me. Tonight’s hanger-on was especially gifted. I had detected no evidence of her or him since I left Helen’s hab-unit. It was too dark to see whether Helen’s father was among the seven figures - who now entered the blast bunker and sealed its heavy door behind them -but I was certain.

 

After counting to fifty under my breath, I pulled a cloth over my nose and surreptitiously crept through an abandoned drainage ditch to reach the door. An old gift from the PDF – what we called a spy ear –would help me eavesdrop on the congregation inside the bunker, provided that there were no deeper levels to which they had descended. Luck! A low susurrus bubbled into my earpiece when I pressed the receiver to the door. This was precarious work. If this gathering did have something to do with illegal surgery and with the incinerated corpses, a prudent leader would have posted lookouts. If anything went wrong, I was banking that my PDF follower would help out.

 

I estimated at least forty people inside. Abruptly, the noise died down, and a master of ceremonies spoke out in a drawling voice: “Everyone has submitted their tokens. The draw will commence.” That was all. Nothing more. What was he talking about? A familiar mechanical rattle came to life less than five minutes later. It might have been easy to confuse with the prattle of a malfunctioning vid-machine, but I had encountered this sound quite regularly in my new profession in the hives: an Imperial tarot deck. Its rattle drew on and on in absolute silence, and I realised that the gathering inside was awaiting its announcement with the air of criminals sitting for a magistrate’s pronouncement. Finally, it crawled slovenly to a stop like a heart giving out. “Avenging Son!” the dry voice proclaimed.A wild cacophony of sound erupted, laced with an alchemy of relief and tension, and then silence returned like a heavy pall, with the exception of a single pair of boots drawing closer to the blast door.At this point, I calmly took my leave, and circled casually round the bunker’s rim until I reached the fence running round the reactor’s grounds. By now I am certain you will have reached the same conclusion as I did and that you would be equally unsurprised to hear that a lone figure emerged from the bunker, walked to the fence, slipped over it, and covered the short distance to the reactor. It was not Helen’s father. Not this time.

 

 

 

 

“They are playing a game… a lottery of sorts,” I reported to my PDF contact three weeks later in our dim little tavern.

 

“Yes?” she was more abrupt than usual, less conversational. But what really troubled me was that she seemed less observant, less suspicious, less prone to consulting the comm-bead in her ear. In fact, I suddenly noticed that it was missing. She was distracted and unfocused, as if she had taken a sleeping aid. In hindsight, I suppose I should have guessed that this had something to do with you. An invasion by anyone else would have caused far more panic. But there you go…

 

“Each member is assigned a symbol from the tarot. That tells us how many they are, but I suspect they must have a more elaborate system to allow more… players. Anyway, someone gets their symbol drawn by the tarot, and he or she is the unlucky sod who gets to visit the reactor.”

 

“To do what exactly? Work another shift?”

 

I endeavoured to look confrontational. Her stupor was upsetting me: “I would not insult your penchant for intelligence collection by suggesting that you don’t know about the illegal trade in energy.” She did not reply. Strangely she was hardly looking at me, or anything really. Her habitually diamond-hard eyes were not dissecting my every word and gesture for a molecule of perfidy. I continued without being asked, “There are ways of making life in our little segment of the hives a little less cold. But it’s hardly cheap. Obviously, given the dangers of siphoning energy from its official sources.”

 

“So the radiation burns?”

 

“Part of the risk if your symbol gets picked. Carelessness might give you a high enough dose to die eventually. But even if that never happens you will need other kinds of help. Hence the less than professional surgery.Those who are unlucky several times in a row would need it.”

 

“Someone with your background?”

 

“I’m a far more professional medic than the cat-handed drunk they’re using.”

 

“But these people wouldn’t be able to afford you.” When she did not continue I expected an eruption of the habitual noises from the bar to interrupt her, but the establishment was unusually quiet. Eventually she carried on: “You’ve only been watching them for three weeks. How certain could you possibly be?”

 

“I’ve managed to establish a contact within the group.” My friend left the silence intact. The lie seemed to pass, not because it was a good one, but because normal inspection was absent that night. If Helen’s father had managed to correctly interpret the cryptic message I had left for him, he would substantiate my lie when he was inevitably interrogated. That was better than the alternative. Far better. “Do you need anything else?” I hinted gently. Remuneration could be capricious in these kinds of transactions.

 

“If your summation is correct, I think I understand why the murders have recently increased.”

 

“Some players wanted out of the game?”

 

“Yes, I think so. And I think I know why they believed an opportunity to opt out had arrived. If this contact of yours is real, she or he hasn’t told you everything. But, the point is,I am not going to do anything about this game.”

 

Now it was my turn to avert my eyes in discomfort. This was more than I needed to know. How she applied the intelligence procured through my curiosity and my idiosyncratic skill set was normally left unsaid no matter how well I could guess.Suddenly I heard her pronounce my name with something almost akin to kindness, which hardly soothed my nerves. I guess if I had the luxury of a carrying an auto-pistol I would have reached for it right then. As it was, I made do by performing a quick audit of the available escape routes. Then, for the first time that night, she looked me in the eye and it was not clouded by any narcotic.

 

“Our little world is about to be turned upside down.”

 

“That might not be a bad thing, provided you don’t mind seeing and smelling what falls out,” I hazarded lamely.

 

“We will come under new… management.Soon. Quite soon.”

 

“Someone you don’t like?”

 

“You’re not listening.”

 

“Because I can’t imagine why you’re sharing this, and I’m not at all pleased with the suggestions popping into my head.”

 

Now she actually smiled, or grinned, not in a predatory fashion, but with wry resignation: “Like you said – I know how to secure information. And while I still know very little about your off-world history, I know that you are something of an asset.”

 

“And you imagine that our new management would be interested?” That’s when the lights went out.

 

 

 

 

I guess you can glean the details from the combat reports of your colleagues in the fire caste.

 

They kept us safe from the fighting and eventually took us into orbit. I was allowed back into the hive a few weeks later. That’s about two months before you requested my presence here tonight. Helen is dead. For all your meticulous planning the takeover was messier in her area, given the instability of the reactor. Radiation sickness.

 

That was my mistake. Helen I mean. We swapped all that myopic optimism of our ancestors for something else. I ended up preaching a creed that the material life is irrelevant; because ultimately we are meant to pass into a next life where our souls endure within the benign essence of our Saviour. I can’t say how much of it I really believed, but it certainly helped to overlook certain things, and to excuse all my… little services to the PDF.

 

So unfortunately I am not sure I can join the little team you’re planning to assemble. I’m afraid I don’t quite see the point. 

[Welcheren]

All comments and critique welcome.

[deathspectersgt7]

Like.

[Carrack]

I like the feel for this story, you have done a good job setting a grim and dark tone. Will there be more?

[Welcheren]

Thanks. I appreciate people taking the time to read this.

 

There might be more, although I am not sure how far this character can go. I have ideas, but I need to clarify whether she/he really was only a one-shot character and whether or not there is a viable future.

 

Any criticisms?