"Another sample." Myo smiled at the gruff miner looking back at him. "It looks like it isn't deteriorating at least so maybe this batch of medication is working better than the last."
"Hope so Doc, really I do." The coughing fit that followed was less hopeful, a constant reminder of the blight running through the community.
He passed along a handkerchief, that quickly ended up stained with blood and sighed. It was almost a constant these days, the only thing he'd treated for months and still none of the treatments they'd devised had been any more than temporary.
Ivers grinned back, "You and Chester are good people, a gift from the Emperor that you came."
They had faith in the Imperium.
He nodded awkwardly, as he lead the man out again. In the reception Chester stood playing some kind of game with the man's children. Once Chester had been great: a well-respected researcher who he'd felt honoured to have the chance to work alongside. But age had taken everything from the man including that drive that had changed the world and now he barely seemed to try and solve the miasma gripping this community.
That would make it all the greater when he surpassed him all the same.
These people deserved it, even if it was only one of the many promethium mines littered across Cerax they were still important. He'd heard all the rumours before coming from his course, that the miners were lesser men plagued by sickness as the rot in their souls spread to their flesh.
It was wrong, they worked hard in a vital industry and did their jobs well. They were friendly to all who came and strived just like any other man for a better lot for their children.
They had faith in the Imperium.
He would see it was rewarded,
Ivers had stopped deteriorating. He paused looking at the chart further even as he brought up the others to match alongside it. There was still a slight degradation in his breathing but nothing like what had happened with the other three. Two weeks, he pulled up the data looking back at what had happened at that point… no two months. The change might well lag in when it picked up in his data to the actual cause.
Two weeks taken off with illness about a month ago. Fever, a cough it should have been taxing on his immune system to have both and instead it had cleared up the symptoms.
The data for a hundred other absences came up on his screen over the next hour, each one compared, conditions that should have let the plague run rampant through a weakened body always made it better. What made this one plague different from every other he'd seen in his life that its effects were abated by sickness rather than exasperated.
It took him all night to realise the truth. That he had been asking the wrong question, always the wrong question because what sort of disease only affected adults and never the children.
It wasn't about where they had been, but where they no longer went. Because of course the sickest members hadn't been in the mines.
He cried for those next through hours until sleep had taken him.
As his faith crumbled.
He'd awoken to find a green mug frothing with something warm in front of him, and Chester resting in his seat watching him with pity etched into every line of his face. "You've figured it out too have you."
He paused the next words almost felt like treason. "There is no disease, the air in the mines has a contaminant that settles in the miners lungs as they breathe it in. Over time its building up until they can no longer breathe."
Chester stared back at him. Resigned as he slowly nodded his head. "Close enough then, you really are too good at this job."
"If we can excise some of the rot and get a mechanical replacement." The words died in his throat even as Chester looked away. And he knew what was coming in the next statement before the words reached his ears.
"They won't even pay for respirators for the miners, I've tried and then we wouldn't be having this problem in the first place. It's not even local the condition recurs at a dozen other promethium mines across the planet alone, when I pointed out how obvious it was to anyone with sense… Well, you can't see the rest of the data which I guess is all the answer you need." The old man shrunk almost weaker than ever as he gazed back.
"That's why you lost your position isn't it?"
The old man smiled awkwardly back at him. "Well if I care so much about them why not go and help them myself. But of course, actual help needs funding and resources and now I have nothing."
"What now." That his whole world had crumbled so easily, and everything he'd worked for stood broken forever.
Chester patted him gently on the shoulder. "We're all still alive for the moment, make the most of what you have left. We were all going to die eventually, might as well give them a good time while they're still here."
From the despair he pulled up a smile of his own. "I did say I was here to help I guess, just hadn't thought of it like this."
AN: This is just a couple of philosophical snippets. Originally chaos was going to be more prominent with the character who became Chester being a plaguebearer but they also feel more poignant with a lighter touch.
One of the other options for a Nurgle one would have been a cholera outbreak but coal lung has its own horrors. Mostly because it affects people who do work hard for the Imperium, but when you propagandise disease itself as the enemy people who are afflicted by the system itself are crushed as well.
