The Afterlife of Ciaphas Cain
My Dearest Wife,
Amberly, darling, I do know you went to considerable effort to have me declared officially dead, and even more considerable effort to allow me to live out my lifelong dream of being stashed in a back-office shuffling data slates for all eternity. I even know that your hobby of publishing my memoirs among your fellow Inquisitors is a deliberate effort on your part to so sully my reputation, at least among the powerful of the Imperium, that even if you were tempted by expediency to 'resurrect' me, nobody would be so much as inclined to follow me to a brothel, much less into Hell and back.
And I appreciate it, love, I really do. I appreciate even more how you keep bringing Jurgen back in one piece, not least because I can't brew a decent cup of Tanna without him.
But there's paperwork, and then there's cruel and unusual punishment, and the task of editing and annotating more of Sulla's memoirs definitely falls among the latter. I still have a grudge over that month you made me read her official memoirs.
Do I have to?
Love and Hyganthia Blossoms,
Third Underscrivener Ciaphas C. Vail
My Dear, Delightful Husband,
Yes. You have to. I have my reasons, and I'm sure you know me well enough by now that you'll figure out why in short order. I look forward to seeing you put the pieces together.
Now, my darling Mr. Vail, as I have repeatedly told that famous, illustrious and now thoroughly deceased and discredited Commissar Cain we both used to know…
Shut up and soldier.
Your Adoring Wife,
A. Vail, Inquisitor
Ordo Xenos
P.S. I gave Jurgen a bottle of the good amasec…and you can look forward to it as a reward for diligent service after you've sent me your twentieth footnote.
My Dear Wife, Love of My Life,
As men have learned to say the galaxy over when their wife askes 'Do you think you can do me a little favor….'
"Yes, dear."(1)
Third Underscrivener Ciaphas C. Vail
(1) Knowing you, either you're about to launch some complex plan to save the Imperium from an incredibly dangerous enemy (10% probability), you've hidden a servoskull in my quarters so you can watch my face as I make faces at Sulla's assaults on the Gothic language, (10% probability) or both (80% probability.)
Hubby,
Nice try. The annotations have to be on Sulla's work, and the loveliest thing about Jurgen is he's the one man who won't let you cheat.
Now get to work, or I'll have him lurk at your elbow instead of in your antechamber, and I know how much you appreciate his 'unique bouquet.'
I sighed. Much fun as it was to exchange banter with my beloved, she had ways of expressing her displeasure when I didn't knuckle down and get to work as ordered. I stretched, rolled my shoulders, and started perusing the file Amberly had sent my secured dataslate.
Excerpt from the private memoirs of Lady General Jenit Sulla:
In the two centuries since my rise to the highest echelons of Imperial power, I've learned to revel in the fact that, in private, I can do whatever I please. And what I please is to do whatever it takes to continue to be the best damned General the Damocles Gulf has ever seen. (1)
The freedom and privilege that comes with large amounts of power is a compensation for the frustrations of my duty. It does not, quite, compensate for the fact that the one war I have comprehensively lost is the war to have my memoirs published in anything resembling their original form. (2)
The one real point my so-called 'editors' from the Ordo Dramaticus have in censoring my work is that a complete listing of all the ingredients feeding into several of my successful campaigns would reveal far too much about imperial technology, tactics, and doctrine to an interested enemy. That lesson I had to learn the hard way, from, of all creatures, a literate ork who had somehow read several of my after-action reports and used them to far better effect than most of the junior officers I go out of my way to mentor.
Warboss Geeknurd and his Spacebattlin-boyz, after reading my writings with careful attention, very nearly kicked off a waaagh to rival that of Korbul's Perlian invasion. To quell that particular crisis, I used several lessons I had gleaned from my mentor, Commissar Cain . The stories he told of spoiling attacks he had made on the greenies during his famous March of Liberation proved invaluable. I even had the opportunity to consult the retired commissar in person before his untimely death. He made the characteristically genius suggested of spreading a rumor among the greenies that the Waaaagh! had failed because of the gretchin-like weakness caused by readin' instead of krumpin', and I must admit the local orks have been far easier to handle ever since.
But that's orks. I object to the same tactics used on humans, especially since I have a nearly unbroken string of victories proving my methods and my point. To that end, and to create more like me, I wrote a book devoted entirely to the internal mindset one needs to become the most effective warrior and servant of the Emperor of Mankind one could possibly be, yet purged of all practical military tactics and strategy. I am
incensed to discover that the true reason for censoring my words is the most cowardly type of institutional shame.
Because every analogy, comparison, and metaphor I use to explain my success, every mental discipline and tactic I describe and still use daily, I can trace directly to my initial service. Not service in the militarim, but service as a fast food worker in the very lowest levels of Valhalla's capital city.(3)
And so the Imperium is ashamed of me. It is ashamed their famed, brilliant, victorious one-and-only 'Lady General' is a poor, sickly, and by many metrics quite dim commoner who learned the majority my logistical 'brilliance' from an ancient servitor in a fast food joint serving Valhalla's lowliest artisans.
In any standard Imperial tale, I would have been an up-and-coming noblewoman, marked from birth by the Emperor and obviously divinely chosen for this duty, demonstrating the strength of my noble line by serving under equally noble people like the celebrated Lord Commissar Ciaphas Cain. That is the tale told in my published memoirs.
The structure and the results of my accomplishments are all there, but every single practical description I wrote was replaced by what some propagandist thinks sounds both divine and properly militant. Which means my plain gothic descriptions were butchered. For instance, I said:
'Our amalgamated regiments, though at first mixing about as well as oil and water, could have been ruined by the disastrous mess hall riot and the court martial to come. Instead, I had the privilege of observing an expert at his craft. For the first time, I truly understood the role of Commissar in maintaing the morale a regiment, instead of simply fearing the terror of the bolt gun and red sash . I saw, and I understood, because my inexperienced mistakes had cost the Imperium nearly a full squad of soldiers: two murdered naval provosts, a murdered fellow Valhallan soldier, and the ignomious execution of the five soldiers guilty of their murder. But Commissar Cain, once again, demonstrated that a true leader does not flinch from cleaning up a subordinate's disasters, just as my Shift Lead, long ago, had not flinched from any of the predictable, newbie mistakes I had made when first learning to put together Hot Grox and a Bap. I had considered that patience a trivial virtue unitl, one day, I had witnessed the very same shift lead, without any official power whatsoever, intervene to prevent the ice-cops from dragging a cook off the service line to be servitorized for badly mishandling a squire's order. I relearned that lesson anew when Commissar Cain, as deftly as any habwife storing up preserves against the lean season, preserved those soldier's lives from the vengeful Captain until they could meet a far more honorable death in battle. (4)
That serviceable paragraph was fed through the protein grinder until it extruded as this crap: "Our noble regiment, under the God-Emperor's guidance through his servant the most noble, most celebrated Commissar Cain, famed for his dutiful mercy and tempering justice, scraped together the ashes of two annihilated regiments and fanned the faint coals of the memories they yet held of the Emperor's glorious service until what emerged from the flames was nothing less than the Emperor-Blessed Dual-Headed Phoenix of the Valhallan 597th." (5)
Any lowly artisan knows that when you talk like an ecclesiarch, you're about to feed them something as useful and offensive as an empty plate engraved with a feast given to starving child. Seeing my words get such 'improvement' is the sort of thing I would shoot someone over, if shooting propagandists wasn't, as Commissar Cain once put it, 'like punching holes in a river.' (6)
Those of the Ordo Dramaticus do well to not let me in on the identities of the editors. It's clear the not-yet-ghostly-enough ghostwriter who modified them has never so much as been within sniffing distance of a military encampment. These are, after all, the people who have never understood that while trooper's souls are inspired by the Emperor, an army marches on its stomach.
The least of my annoyances with the official record is their persistence in writing me as if I have some sort of massive, unrequited crush on Commissar Cain. While I learned much from (and will be forever grateful to) the noble Commissar, especially for giving me the fine polish any junior officer needs to move in the upper echelons of the imperium, mentorship and encouragement is all he ever gave me, and was all I ever wanted. And even if I were the sort to fuck my teachers out of gratitude, Commissar Cain would have to take a number and get in line. (7) A line headed by someone far more lowly than any commissar. You see, I have never forgotten where my first and most valuable lessons came from.
My lowborn, Valhallan ass learned almost everything I know about logistics from the servitor who made hot grox and bap sandwiches for artisans in the Salty Grox, and it is through those lessons in logistics I reached the heights I inhabit today.
Given the strength of the foes ranged against me, I have no idea if these words will ever reach the people who could benefit most, the uncounted trillions who work exactly as I once worked. Those who could do exactly as I did if granted the same lessons and chances I was given. (8)I do know it is my duty to try. The power I wield demands it. And power has its privileges, and so does rank. Here in the the center my power, in amidst all the privileges I have won, I have the honor and duty of telling the truth.
And the first lessons I learned from that servitor were lessons in power. The lesson was that I have always had power. There is no such thing as a powerless human, because there is no such thing as a human whose choices do not matter, a human whose actions have no consequences. And my first lessons in exactly how much power I had came from the servitor who taught me the power to make a sandwich. (9)
(1) Much as I've tried to have complete disinterest in anything beyond my office and the cafeteria, Sulla's self-estimate is entirely true: she is the best General the Damocles Gulf has ever seen, even better than Zyvan, who mentored her for several years before cheerfully sauntering off to an honorable retirement of his own.)
(2) Amberly, I know you've got a servoskull watching my face. I hope you get suitable entertainment from watching me react to the news that Sulla's official memoirs bear as much resemblance to reality as mine.
(3) I knew there was a reason I found her so annoying: she is far too much like me for comfort, and I know how much of a…how did you put it? 'Scoundrel and self-serving rogue?' I am. Don't tell me Sulla was faking heroism just as much as I ever did.
(4) This is a bit weird, but I do agree, far more readable than her official memoir.
(5) you should have Jurgen give me that Amasec just so that I can drink every time someone mentions my fraudulent reputation.
(6) that's the trouble with Junior officers: you never know what random thing you said that they'll pull out later.
(7) My, that's certainly an…image that I could stand to erase with a bottle of the good amasec.
(8) That's the Sulla I know and used to have to sit on before she lead her people into the sort of foolishness that would get her, her squad, and most importantly, me, killed in some unnecessarily heroic way.
(9) Oh Emperor-on-Earth, Amberly! I know what this is about. Sulla's squaring off with this Ordo Dramaticus, and you're trying to figure out if it's your duty to back her as she incites trillions artisans to exercise their power Imperium-wide, or shoot her. This is nearly an incitement to rebellion, you know. I organized firing squads for officers guilty of far less. These are the kind of ideas that can completely destroy good order in the Imperium. Then again, her writing is such crap that no artisan would follow her….wait a minute..."
"Oh, Throne." I swore. I looked nothing like Ciaphas Cain, I sounded nothing like Ciaphas Cain, and had the papers to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I most certainly was not Ciaphas Cain, but if there is one thing one thing that hasn't changed a bit since my 'death' and marriage to Amberly, it is the tingling of my palms and the clenching of my bowels.
I was used to thinking Sulla was a terrible writer. But I'd just read a private document demonstrating that that wasn't, precisely true. And I've read enough of her after-action reports to know that she can be clear when she needs to be, and the grinding of my teeth when I read them had far more to do with my irritation with her eagerness and excess of enthusiasm for taking risk than the grammar of her gothic.
So who had written her official memoirs?
What inquisitor do I know who revels in the chance to use elaborate disguises and complex deceptions? What inquisitor do I know who actively edits books? What inquisitor do I know capable of massive, multilayered, systematic deception for years, sometimed decades, or even centuries, at a time?
I flinched as the door to my office slid abruptly open, and an inquisitor I knew very well stepped into my office.
Amberly smiled at me disarmingly. "You should have seen your face when you figured it out."
"I'm…i'm not sure I have figured it out." I said. I loved my wife, I really did, but it was moments like these it was impossible to forget that she was an Inquisitor.
"What do your palms say?" She asked. Her voice was loving, leading, teasing. I swallowed.
"Tell me, love, does the 'Ordo Dramaticus' actually exist, or is that someting you just told Sulla as you cheerfully rewrite Sulla's official memoirs to be horrifically unreadable?"
"The 'Ordo Dramaticus' is just me." She admitted. "And now you."
"Why me!" I practically wailed. That was the advantage of being a husband. It gave you slightly elevated privileges when mouthing off to an inquisitor.
"Because, all jesting aside…I'm actually a terrible writer." Amberly confessed. "All those passages in your memoirs that I 'extracted from Sulla's autobiographies? ' That's me. That's my at my best, when I'm genuinely trying instead of making snarky little quips or commenting on research. And that is the best I can do on my own."
I gawped at her. "So all those elaborate footnotes apologizing for Sulla's 'assaults on the Gothic language?' You set up Sulla to look like a fool, when that's really you?"
She made a mou of irritation. "Really, Ciaphas. You ought to know by now that a girl can't be good at everything. And." She frowned. "Even my terrible writing has been made to serve Him-On-Earth. In making Sulla look like a fool, I am in preserving one of his most effective military assets from the eye of my inquisitorial colleagues. They are too busy laughing at Sulla's purple prose, and too busy dismissing her as a simple, bluff soldier, to see her clearly as the existential threat she is. You, Kasteen, and Zyvan ought to know: you taught her the bluff old soldier routine yourself."
"Why are you having me read this now?" I asked.
"Ciaphas, I love you, and I really think you severely underestimate just how exceptional you are, and have always been." Amberly said, taking me in her arms.
"Flatterer." I said, uncomfortably. "But you know I'm a coward."
"Yes," she agreed, "and that prevents you from seeing your virtues clearly. You were an exceptional shot. You were quite possibly the best swordsman in the Segmentum. You are charming, personable, extremely adept at handling people, and skilled at inspiring them to do their very best. You are even skilled-expert- at handling your own cowardice. Even today, you are still faster than nearly any baseline human alive. If the genesmiths set out to deliberately build a hero of the Imperium, they would craft someone who looks and acts like you used to look and act. You persistently fail to understand just how distinct you really are- and how that doesn't make you a threat to the Imperium, because one man, no matter how exceptional, can only do so much."
"Sulla is none of those things. She isn't particularly strong, even when compared to other women. She isn't very fast or even very smart. Where you have charisma and intelligence and charm, she is simply diligent, earnest, meticulous, and decisive. She isn't brilliant, or fast, or innately good at, well, anything, and every last scrap of loyalty she got from her people, she earned with deliberate, specific effort."
Amberly waved a hand at the dataslate I had been annotating. "And her memoirs- her *real* memoirs, describe, in detail, exactly how she did it, and the servitors and slaves and heretics and colonels and commissars who taught her, and exactly how any artisan can train and aspire to become all she has become, and rise to the same great heights she has risen to in the Imperium. And she thinks she owes it to all those who taught her, to all those who helped her rise, to let others rise in turn."
I felt my stomach fold in knots. Yes. Sulla had persistently soaked me for knowledge, and I'd given her enough to make sure she wouldn't get me killed, but I'd found her incredibly annoying the entire time I'd been forced to endure her company. But the sort of thing Amberly was describing was…well. Amberly was calling it 'rising,' and 'aspiring.' In the Imperium, such things have a much uglier name, especially when the Artisan class starts doing it all at once.
It's called an uprising. A revolt. And I shuddered to think of the scale of uprising that could happen when organized, lead, and actively encouraged by the Lady General of the Damocles Gulf herself.
Annoying? I thought to myself. Had my antipathy toward her been mere annoyance, or something more? My body responded to threats with different, distinct feelings and sensations. Had my annoyance with her actually been warning of the sort of specific, long-term threat she represented?
"What are you going to do about it?" I asked. If I'd had an inkling of any of this, back when I wore a red sash, I'd have found an ironclad reason to shoot Sulla, no matter how much I disliked the executioner aspect of my job and no mattter how little I thought she individually deserved it. My duty had always been to the wider picture. Speaking of which, Amberly was never squeamish about executions, either, and her mandate was even broader than mine had been. I narrowed my eyes. "Why haven't you shot her, yet?"
"Because the Imperium is on fire, and I need a hundred, a thousand, a million defenders like Sulla." Amberly said. "I can't make more of you. I'm not even sure I would if I could, given how self-centered your loyalties are. But I was never born in the underhive. I have always been on top. I honestly don't have any idea if what Sulla wrote could work. I have no idea if her words could genuinely inspire the sort of soldiers I need. I don't have her background. Your background. I don't know if the plan she has laid out would create a million Defenders of the Imperium, or if we would doom all humanity to the ravages of hell because one artisan who got lucky felt bad about all the others down below and salved her conscience by persuading the rest to take their shot at the top."
"So, welcome to the Ordo Dramaticus, Interrogator Vail." Amberly said. My stomach lurched as, yet again, I was unceremoniously yanked out of my peaceful retirement and set once more the job of saving the galaxy, this time as an official, titled representative of the Inquisition. "Read her memoirs. Annotate them. Interrogate them. Look at the wider picture. Use your instincts and your reason and experience and tell me if she has a single hope in hell of succeeding."
"Then it is your duty to tell me…do we beat her? Or join her?"
My stomach was as solid as a slug of unexploded fyseline as Amberly dropped the fate of the galaxy on shoulders that no longer had the heroic level of muscle I'd once sported to give the illusion of courage and strength.
But there are advantages to being terminally self-centered- you can dump off galaxy-shattering choices into the future where they belong in favor of your own immediate concerns.
"So when you were editing my memoirs…" I said, "Did you decide to beat me, or join me?"
"Well, I didn't exactly let you stay dead." She smirked, and raised an eyebrow. "So do you feel beaten, or joined, Mr. Vail?"
"Definitely joined." I said, and proved it with a long, slow, savoring, very possessive kiss. The sort of kiss a contented husband gives to his delightful, scheming, galaxy-saving wife.
A very pleasurable time later, I added, "But no matter what I find, no matter what course you decide, whether to shoot Sulla or back her, beat her or join her, I demand one thing."
Amberly raised and amused eyebrow. "What's that, dear?"
I gazed at her with all the sober seriousness I could muster, and stared solemnly into the depthless blue eyes of my wife. "We're not marrying Sulla."
Amberly's crack of surprised laughter, and the brief, surprised second when my joke chased the weight of the galaxy out of her eyes, was entirely worth it.
Author's note: I have approximately 40,000 words of a novel written about Jenit Sulla, aged 14, and her very first day as a Trainee at the horribly understaffed fast food joint the Salted Grox, making Hot Grox and Baps...lemme know if you're interested in more tales Lady General Jenit Sulla, Galaxy-Saving Burger Flipper, helpfully annotated by Inquisition Interrogator Ciaphas C. Vail.