The Liberator's day off (Part 14)

"Now." Inquisitor Sigan said. "I do believe you owe me a story."

Jurgen nodded. He'd never been a quick thinker like the Liberator. That's why he preferred to do the majority of his thinking in advance, and when quick thinking was called for, either be able to pull a plan from one of the innumerable plans he already had, or kick it up the chain of command to someone who could. Since the Liberator was pretty much his entire chain of command, that meant getting the Commissar to do it.

In the rare situations that was not possible, Jurgen defaulted to "What would the Liberator do?"

It wasn't a very public dictum, but Jurgen had lived intimately with the Liberator for well over 50 years, and was more than a bit aware that much of his reputation for brilliance was the fact that he stuck strictly to his strengths.

And chief among those strengths was: "Never do for yourself what you can delegate an expert to do for you."

So Jurgen decided to dribble out a few facts, and delegate the job of making up the most believable story to Inquisitor Sigan.

"There's not much to tell." Jurgen said. "I was a psyker, which is a handy skill to have when dealing with heretics on a daily basis. . A handful of months ago, I ran into some Necrons. They did *something*. As best as I know, they pulled my soul out of my body and stuffed it into this gun." He gestured at the melta slung on his back. "My man got us out. You'd have to ask him for details, as I was mostly unconscious. I woke up on Lentonia arse-deep in undead and demons and we've been shoveling warpshit ever since." He grimaced. "So if you have *any idea at all* what those tinheads did, or any advice on how to manage it, the Ordo Hereticus will...certainly owe you...considerations."

Inquisitor Sigan had been listening attentively, head cocked, but eyebrows raising higher and higher with every sentence.

"And that's the story." Jurgen waved a hand. "So thank you for the tutorial, Inquisitor. I've learned more about this...damnation in the past half hour than the past several weeks." He tilted his head in question. "By the way, what is a 'limiter?'"

"It's a tool Blanks can use to control the extent of their aura." Sigan said, hand waving as if to dispel the irritating question. His brows furrowed. "What you describe...being turned into a blank...is something the imperium has been searching for how to do for the better part of ten thousand years."

"And the deliberate creation of more of me would be the rankest heresy." Jurgen snarled. "Anyone who cares to repeat what that xeno filth inflicted on me deserves to be visited with the full weight and authority of the Ordo Hereticus."

"Do you...disgust yourself, Inquisitor Tannaman?" The little ratling had gone very still, his grey eyes penetrating. "To be turned into the very thing you have hunted?"

Jurgen snorted. "I do not hunt blanks. I hunt *heresy.*"

"No few of your ordo consider soullessness to be heresy. You just said you so yourself."

"I did not." Jurgen rather thought he was winning the staring contest at the moment. "I said the *deliberate creation* of more of me. If you don't know the difference between makin' use of something horrific and rippin' folks's souls away to make yourself a useful horror, you've no business in the Holy Inquision."

The inquisitor, staring back at him, smirked. "It's always a pleasure to chat with a fellow inquisitor." He said, lightly. "We always seem to find new and different ways to not, quite, say, 'fuck with me and I will kill you." He stretched, elaborately, then cracked his knuckes. "Shall we break the mold and be straightforward in our threats, for once?"

"You first." Jurgen said, waving invitingly.

"Very well." Sigan said. "I hunt demons. I will even destroy demon worlds. And because I will, I will do *everything in my power* to stop them before it ever gets to the point of Exterminatus. The God-Emperor has *far* to much to do to spend time sorting faithful from heretic if we are careless enough to send them to him mixed up in batches, and indiscriminate terror directly feeds the Great Enemy and destroys *us.* It is our sacred duty to Him On Earth to *sort it out* long before it gets to mass purges. And with the portal closed, there's no need for either." His eyes blazed with righteousness. "It's obvious none of these people know who and what you are, Hereticus, but I know your Ordo. I know your *type.* You speak of choices? Very well. If you choose to go all flamer-happy on anyone here, you had best be able to produce a hundred *pounds* of paperwork *per execution* to prove that you did your duty. To prove that that soul deserved the pyre, or I swear on the throne I'll slow roast you up under a pile of all proceedural paperwork you didn't do."

Jurgen narrowed his eyes. "These people held the line against demons." He said. "That is a far stronger test of faith than anything I could devise in an interrogation cell." He gave his wintriest, most viciously Valhallan smile. "A pleasure I will not need to threaten you after all."

"Oh?" Sigan said.

"Yes." Jurgen nodded. "Because I know Malleus. I know your type as well. If you had threatened a single hair on the head of any Lentonian who held that line," He said, softly. "It wouldn't have mattered how much you know about blanks, or demons, or where to find an unending supply of Winter-White Caverns tanna. You would not have made it off these sands alive."

Sigan matched his smile. "Well, that's sorted." He said, taking another swig of maple mead and holding it out to Jurgen. "Now that we know what a fine, non-mass-murdery fellow the other is, let's do our jobs, shall we? We're here to save the souls of the faithful. And since neither of us is going to kill them all and let the Emperor sort em out, then we have to do this the hard way." He took an even longer pull of the mead.

"We've got to buy these faithful the best chance at life we can." The ratling stood, slicked back his grey hair, and pulled the lapels of his brown and silver rogue trader's coat. His stance shifted, becoming less fanatical, less inquisitorial, and...more than a bit roguish. "Let's talk logistics."

"...and that wraps up item #426, available population." Inquisitor Sigan as 'Rogue Trader' Sigan, made another note on the lengthy scroll. It was a small council, consisting of Governor Worden, Vice-Potentate Worden Parker, myself as 'Commissar Fossick', Jurgen as my aide 'Ferik Tannaman' to half the people present and 'Inquisitor Tannaman' to the rest, Lord General Grayden, Wendy Darling, and Magos AutoOctavius. Three other chairs featured a rotating collection of the various factions in viasalix as the Goveror looped them in to help fix whatever problem we were beating into submission, although at the moment they were empty.

This wasn't an official meeting of the Viasalix government. It was merely the council where everything actually got done. I had tried to get out of it, of course, since Jurgen would be the one actually doing all of the work, but Jurgen and Sigan insisted that I help them maintain the secrecy of their inquisitorial identities, which meant playing the part of Jurgen's superior and filtering all of his orders through my commissarial authority.

I was actually rather impressed with how Governor Worden had engineered this little get-together. Once again, the Bugle proved and excellent mechanism for preventing bruised egos on the part of the hundred-plus surviving powers-that-be in Viasalix. Any one of the people rotating their way through the other three chairs around the table could endanger our progress as Viasalix tottered from an all-out-war footing to the exhaustive effort putting back together enough pieces to one day declare something resembling peace. And every last one of them had been shattered by that same war, and had duct-taped their strength together using whatever was at hand. Things like pride, unbridled rage, overweening ego, selflessness, selfishness, explosive temper, cermacrete-hard endurance, deadly seriousness, and humor of every stripe from silly to cruel. Attempting to rally them into a government of consensus would be a losing game, and one that Worden had avoided by refusing to try to play it.

Instead, he was featuring them, their war, and thier victories in the Bugle. Worden unleashed his enthusiastic journalists upon every who had dared to stand fast and oppose the plague, and edition after special edition of was devoted to trumpeting every last iota of triumph he could wring out of their desperate fight. Worden would read their interviews, shamelessly brag about their accomplishments, set up a few personal meetings to pat them on the back, and then, when we really needed them, they walked like lambs right into the problem we needed them solve. And, warp damn it, more than half of them never even noticed that he'd borrowed their expertise to help govern, and the other half that did notice were somehow grateful he had.

The ones that did notice, I put on a short list of folks he needed to include in whatever official processes eventually wrestled themselves free of the chaos. Those, after all, were the ones observant enough to be both useful and incredibly dangerous if left to their own devices.

In any case, the system worked admirably to provide us with exactly the information we needed to know which people to invite to solve the endless list of horrific problems. It was a braverua performance and it was all the more delightful because I barely had to lift a finger- instead, I was treated to a ringside seat of someone else large and in charge for a change.

I briefly toyed with the idea of simply retiring here, living under the competent rulership of someone else who excelled at handling both morale and all the details of leading, both major and minor. Then I strangled that thought and resolved never to so much as think it again, lest some entity with a cruel sense of humor decided to once again grant my wish in the worst way possible.

My role in the council was proving simple: show up and smooth the way like the good little Commissar I was. Everyone around the table was frakking insane, or course, but were going out of their way to be insane in useful and predictable ways, and actively cooperated with my efforts to sooth, smooth, and grease the conversational wheels, which meant for a war council on a warp-torn planet this practically counted as a vacation. "Item 426 leads directly into item #427: insufficient population." Rogue Trader Sigan put his autoquill down. "Let us discuss."

"Inquiry." Magos AutoOctavious Buzzed. "Clarify 'insufficient population.' Insufficient population for what?"

"Insufficient population to defend and hold a major trade world from another external threat." Rogue Trader Sigan drummed his fingers against the table. "Reporting these census numbers to the Administratum is likely to result in them declaring this world underpopulated, with," He screwed up his nose, and adopted the tone of a prissy bureaucrat, "Insufficient breeding capability to restore imperial-mandated numbers for the Tithe." Sigan grimaced. "The likely result of that is one of your neighbors getting permission and support from the Administratum after deciding Lentonia would be a fine feifdom for one of their sons or daughters or paramours to rule, and send a recolonizaition fleet to take it from you. They could stuff a fleet of ships full of their loyal subjects, make a landing, repopulate with their people, and then claim with a straight face that Lentonia is firmly back in Imperial hands." Rogue Trader Sigan frowned fiercely, and let his grey eyes narrow to slits. "In the wider picture, they do have a few legitimate reasons to do so. They would be correct in assuming Lentonia is currently unfit to throw off another invasion of any sort without assistance, and on the face of it, simply sending replacements for those lost would solve that problem. However, native Lentonians are now well schooled in fighting long, grinding, guerilla wars." His slitted eyes swept the table. "Am I correct in assuming Viasalix in particular would no longer willingly surrender their loyalty to the House of Worden and swear new oaths to a lord, should one appear?"

There was a low, almost feral growl from every native Lentonian around the table. "I will not hand my world to the same kind of scum who destroyed it." Governor Worden barked, while Vice-Potentate Parker-Worden snarled, "I'll teach them the responsibility that comes with great power." Wendy Darling merely hissed like a teakettle and levitated a few inches out of her seat, and even Magos AutoOctavius, who in theory was mechanicus and therefore above such things, clanked ominiously.

I decided it was about time for me to stick my oar in. "Such a move would NOT have the approval and consent of the Commissariat." I stated. "It would constitute direct interference with the duties of the Imperial Guard, and as such anyone attempting such a coup would legally have placed themselves under my authority." I grinned mirthlessly under my mask. "At which point I am empowered to shoot them for treason."

Lord General Grayden caught my eye, and nodded agreement. I suppressed a shiver. He knew full well I was a fraud, but he had taken to backing me to the hilt whenever I asserted my authority as the most senior remaining commissar of the remains of the Guard expeditionary force. I was uncertain which of the many bribes I'd lofted his way had bought his tolerance, but I'd seen no reason to be stingy. I'd signed off on every reasonable command decision he'd made, endorsed Sigan's battlefield promotion of him to Lord General, resupplied all of his troops with every piece of unused PDF equipment I could scrounge, and fed the guard a steady stream of Panacea, and even boosted their numbers with a little judicious recruiting. Come to think, the panacea might have been the clincher that bought his silence and tolerence. It had proved booth a miraculous boon and solved a problem nobody had noticed we'd had.

My day visiting the other remaining city on Lentonia had proved to be excessively exciting when I discovered that the only other remaining commissar, Commissar Forres of the Nuquasm First And Only, had been infected by genestealers, along with nearly a platoon's worth of her soldiers. A few doses of panacea and rather more counseling than I was used to, most of which revolved around refusing to let her shoot either her newly-cured troopers, herself, or me, and when all else failed dueling her into exhaustion...might have reconciled the Lord General to the idea into playing along with me in charge. In any case, I'd patched Forres back together, sold her on the idea that Guardsmen and Commissars were in far too short a supply for her to waste in unwise acts of piety and obedience, and managed to keep her on-side...although the amount of sheer hero-worship I'd seen in her eyes the last time we'd met was almost as disturbing as the blankness that had once been there when she'd been infected by the tyrranid taint.

In all honesty, given a choice between the traumatized and wet-behind-the-ears Foress and myself, I'd take me any day as well. Well, whatever kept Lord General Grayden on-side and myself un-assasinated was fine by me, though I wish he'd never caught on to Mechwright Paverick's little substitution in the first place.

"'Have Commissar Fossik shoot anyone who tries it' is certainly the start of a plan," Sigan said, wrenching me out of my musings and back to the crisis at hand. "I'll list that as one of our last resorts, under 'plan Z.' But I think we can come up with better. Maybe even something worthy of the title 'Plan A.'" The room relaxed fractionally, as we all started to slot neatly into the teamwork and cooperative planning that had seen us through 426 previous budding crises.

"What sort of numbers do we need to prevent that kind of userpation?" Governor Worden asked.

"You and about a million nobles." Sigan said. "Who are presumed to rule about a billion commoners, serfs, slaves or servitors. That's a bit light on the population numbers, but it would still be enough to pay enough to the tithe for the Administratum to avoid marking you as a 'candidate for recolonization.'"

There was a brief silence around the table. Governor Worden, with characteristic decisiveness, broke it. He said, "A million nobles, and a billion commoners. And currently, we have a million and a half people who broadly count as 'commoners,'" His broad hands drew the quotations in the air to indicate his distaste for the term, "'and precisely two known living members of the Lentonian nobility." He frowned. "However, I do feel obliged to point out that before this war there were less than thirty thousand Lentonian nobility, and not even the most entertaining loudmoths I trawled up for stories while on the muckraking beat ever hinted at needing to have a million nobles."

Sigan smiled even more mirthelssly. "Did most of those nobles have incredibly long titles?" He inquired.

"Yes." Governor Worden grunted. "On a slow news days I could always get a laugh printing some of them. Like Sir Percy Blakeney. His titles ran for eight pages, and he was such a pompous windbag that he'd show up to pretty much every event merely on the strength of them, all with the proper documentation to prove it. It got to the point where nobody bothered to challenge him, and simply gave him three stiff drinks and sat him in a corner out of the way, which was all he really wanted." His voice frowned. "When I interviewed him once, he even agreed to be an independant stringer for the Bugle and sold me a few pieces of minor entertainment news, though nothing revolutionary. He died well, at the palace, covering our retreat. Before then I never knew he was that good with a sword." He raised his hand as if clutching a small, invisible glass of amasec, and tossed it back. "Absent friends." Parker and the other Lentonians murmered "absent friends" and mirrored the gesture.

"So that's what happened to my best trade factor and source of information on Lentonian commerce." Sigan nodded. "Good man. But dear Percy was rather illustrative of the problem. The Administratum merely counts the number of titles and the amount of tithe, and counts the totals to see if they match to within a prescribed tolerance for error. If the totals match they don't do any further checks. So it's a common, utterly predictable dodge on planets with a noble class that permits descendents to collect titles like trading cards: a million noble titles, but not a million nobles to back it. As long as the correct tithes for the populations those titles are supposidly representing are paid in full, the administratum doesn't care. Unfortunately, Lentonia missed paying the tithe this year, which, among other things, automatically triggers an imperial audit, and now the Administratum very much *does* care. Lentonia cannot possibly pay anything close to a pre-war tithe. The wider Imperium will view that as a problem that needs an immediate solution, and the most likely, though not by any means the only, solution is a recolonization fleet of some sort."

Worden's posture turned grim. "What exactly can we expect from an imperial audit?"

"An Imperial audtior, for one thing." Sigan nodded. "One who listens and investigates in the Emperor's name, and one who makes recommendations based on the situation they encounter."

"And how long does it take an Imperial Auditor to arrive?" Worden inquired.

"Oh, I'm already here." Sigan smiled cheerily. "Lentonian nobility is not the only group that collects titles like playing cards, and being seconded to investigate things in the name of the Administratum is a remarkably useful power for a Rogue Trader to have."

Worden didn't bother to look anything but resigned to this latest revelation. "May I assume the good Lord Auditor has some recommendations for this situation?"

"Not as such." Sigan admitted. "A few ideas, but much of it depends on when you get around to telling me a little of the scope and nature of a few of the secrets you are hiding." He cocked his head in curious inquiry. "I do know that you have stashed your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor somewhere beyond the reach of Nurgle's cultists. Mostly your lives. I'm rather interested in the quantity of lives you have squirrled away, and if it's enough to make up the numbers."

"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean." Governer Worden said calmly, not even bothering to lie well.

"It's simple enough." Sigan said. "The sacrifice of nearly the entire Lentonian population to the Lord of the Midden should have resulted in the complete destruction of the Guard flotilla and the irreversible transformation of Lentonia into a demon world. All of those screaming, sacrificed souls should have the barrier between the materium and immaterium as porous as a fishing net. But..." He cocked his head, and flourished his hand in a warding gesture, "...it's as if barely a hundredth-part of those souls were ever transformed into fuel for the rite in the first place. As if the only ones caught up in the ritual were...about one percent: approximately the number of the very nobility who had sold themselves to chaos for the chance at more power in the first place."

Worden very, very carefully studied his fingernails.

I decided it was time for me to stick my oar in.

I knew full well what Sigan was driving at, of course, though I had truly gone out of my way to try and avoid knowing a damned thing about what he was talking about. To be fair to Governor Worden, he had nearly done a fine job of keeping his not-so-little deception from me, given that I had shown not the slightest interest in finding out...well, anything he was hiding. In fact, I'd been trying to actively avoid doing anything resembling my job at the time.

It was hardly my fault that I'd been trying to skive off my commissarial duties by investigating the private wine cellars still standing in Viasalix in search of some amasec to complement my dwindling supply of tanna. I hadn't informed either Parker-Worden or Worden what I had been about to do, either, since I genuinely had been skiving and the best way to go about it was to not let anybody with the authority to disapprove catch on that you were doing something they ought to disapprove of. If I had let them have a hint, they'd have given me a barrel of amasec to get privately drunk with and I'd never have received another dangerous, entirely unmerited boost to my growing reputation for clever investigation.

In any case, I'd been poking through a bunker filled with amasec casks, which was how I'd found out that Governor Worden had thoroughly ruined an entire planetery supply of alcohol by preserving nearly an entire planetary population's worth of brains in it. He and Magos AutoOctavius had been thick as theives in the whole conspiracy, given that Doc Ock had been in charge of carrying out the systematic servitorization of the Lentonian artisan class at the orders of the previous chaos-tainted regime. The good Magos had simply not mentioned to the heretics giving him his orders that he was, in fact, a different sort of heretek with a deep interest in abominable intelligence. The mechadendrites glued to his spine were, I'd found out, actually controlled by one of them, and I still to this day have no idea what I had done to persuade Doc Ock to impart *that* particular piece of information to me.

Still, the good magos he had mentioned his concerns to a certain childhood friend- one who had grown a bit of a business empire in the years since they'd both grown up, of which the Bugle was merely the most well-known part.

So while all the newly-servitorized artisans marching off to their lives of slavery did contain several body parts of those sentenced to servitorization, the seat of their souls had instead been gently, carefully removed from their skulls, well-frozen, and well-preserved in barrel up on barrel chilled amasec provided by that old friend. It was a treasury hoarded up against the hoped-for day when the world was no longer run by power-mad frakkers and Lentonia could once again be restored to something resembling freedom. Worden had gone out of this way to do this with the good stuff, too- the kind of amasec you let age for twenty years before even beginning to think of cracking open, which should have kept his secret for a couple of decades at least, though it could, in theory, have held out for centuries.

And Worden done this well before the Lentonian civil war had broken out and prompted the previous guard deployment's military council to saddle him with the job of Governor.

In any case, I'd found the brains of the whole outfit, and then AutoOctavious had found me. The stupid frakker had then proceeded to explain in detail the whole damned scheme while handing me shot after shot of amasec. He'd admitted later that he'd expected me to fall over and die of alcohol poisoning after the first twenty, and I'd shook my head and muttered something about the benefits of panacea.

In any case, his sad attempt at poisoning me involved a near complete confession of what he and Worden had done. during which he'd started taking sips of the Amasec during the bits that most obviously distressed him. He'd said that when the summoned plague had ripped through the Lentonian population, its material component had certainly infected the bodies of every last servitor, but the immaterial, spiritual component couldn't attack brains that simply weren't there. And human plagues didn't affect inhuman intelligences.

That was where Octavius's tech-heresy came in. If I knew a thing about abominable intelligence, and (to my own chagrin, I *did* know a thing or two about them, courtesy of a contingent of Borg who had set off to liase with the Votann and somehow gotten involved in doing soemthing called 'defragging' mad machines.) In any case, AutoOctavious had gotten away with looting the brains from his servitors by substituting abominable intelligences, and when those intelligences runnning those serviors had encountered the attempt to rip away souls they didn't have and to sicken bodies they did have, they had snickered at the meatbag misfire, mailed their machine-spirit selves back to some central node in the noosphere, and laughed from a distance at the fallout.

And the fallout had been spectacular. It was the sole reason why the nurgalite entropic curse I had witnessed from orbit had misfired. It had been supposed to atomize the entire fleet. It had been designed to feed on the utter dispair of concious beings who had no control over their rotting bodies and entrapped souls. The nobility who 'owned' them would have promised those ripe souls to the demons they'd summoned. And when those demons had come, and had found only empty corpses...well, without the promised feast of souls to complement the ruined flesh, the hungry summoning would only have one place to go to sate its need for power, and that would have been the souls of the noble mages who had summoned it. And so the demons had eaten up the nobility that had been plotting against the newly elevated Governor Worden.

Of course, he and Octavious would then have had dozens of rampaging demons on his hands to deal with, something he'd been hoping Parker could take care of. Instead, what he'd gotten was...a surprisingly temporary necron invasion that did for the demons, and...well, me.

But Sigan didn't really need to know any of this. Hell, *I* wish I didn't know any of it, and for that matter, I really wish Octavius had come of with some sort of outright lie to distract me while he tried to poison me to death with alcohol, instead confessing a boatload of truth. Instead, he'd found out just how high a tolerance for fine drink someone who has been sucking down panacea for the better part of a fitfty years, and, well, it turns out I *can* drink a techpriest under the table.

Anyway, AutoOctavious's fleshy bits got neatly distracted by being blackout drunk, but that that left his abominable arms run by an abominable intelligence. Fortunately for me, they spent their time cursing Octavius for a fool for mentioning anything about their involvement. Also apparently they weren't allowed to kill anyone anymore while Octavius was in anyway incapacitated, and drunk off his ass apparently qualified. While they were arguing, I had snuck away, found Worden, said his job was to defend me from his murderous eight armed techpriest crony until he sobered up, and given him two pieces of paper signed 'Commissar Fossik-' one endorsing his scheme to deprive the great enemy of souls, and another one entirely blank so that whenever I found out about whatever audacity he'd perpetrated in the defense of his people next, he could just go ahead and fill it in himself with my necessary endorsement without having to bother me with the details, assassination attempts, and elaborate death threats.

"My Lord Auditor," I said, "Might I draw your attention to the idea that, after a war, there is considerable hope for the future. People rebuild. People reform families, and communities. To put it bluntly, people screw. The resulting baby boom is inevitable."

Sigan's eyes rose. "And yet it is unlikely that such a boom will result in enough of rise in population to satisfy the Administratum. Toddlers not being known for their fighting prowess, nor for their ability to form units of the Guard. Still..." He jotted some numbers. "If the half-million or so reproducers in the Lentonian population do thier duty with vigor and enthusiasm, averaging, say, twenty offspring, we could state an expectation of ten million on the next twenty years."

"One must also consider the definition of citizen." I continued. "Imperial census calucluations do not include the mutant, the heretic, or the xeno. The heretics took advantage of this, and redefined many lentonian citizens into unsuitable categories. Why, given the scale of thier heresy, I would not be surprised to find that the so-called Lentonian Mutant Problem to be a complete fabrication, and all previously clasified as mutants fit only for servitorization to, in fact, be solid, entirely human citizenry."

Sigan thought for a moment, then nodded in approval. "A perfectly logical assumption, worthy of investigation." the ratling lord said. "And what, approximately, do you assume the scale of their deception to be?"

"It would very much surprise me if it the magnitude of thier betrayal wasn't on the order of, at least, twenty million or so." I said. Parker-Worden's mask was doing an excellent job of hiding the smirk I was morally certain was plastered across his face as I created the excuse for every last mutant Viasalix was concealing in the depths of it's sump to come up and, god help them, openly play the part of accepted, legitimized imperial citizens. The fact that it was now solid Lentonian tradition to go about masked everywhere would help mightily with that, of course.

Sigan cocked his head. "And when you add that to your presumed baby boom?"

I smiled benevolently. "Why, then we can assume a population as big as, say, one hundred million within two decades."

Sigan said, "That is certainly approaching the the sort of numbers needed to avoid recolonization." He agreed. "But still short by an order of magnitude."

I tilted my head consideringly. "This does not consider the sleepers."

"Sleepers?" He parroted, all interest.

"Governor Worden acted with admirable speed once he suspected the extent of the plague." I said. "His emergency orders meant that, during the first wave of the plague, several million citizens were put into cryosleep or stasis to await a cure promised by the Imperium. Those machines have not failed, and with the arrival of the panacea, they can simply be reawakended whenever we have trained up people with sufficient expertise to do it safely. The arrival of panacea means that the amount and scale of that training needs to be drastically reduced."

"And how much does that add to Lentonian numbers?" Sigan inquired.

"Not as much as one would hope." I said. "Merely another million or so. But the second order Governor Worden gave was to deactivate and store all servitors to prevent the spread of infection by those systems. Given that the traitors were relying on the ability to rip souls from their servitors to power that ritual, the sheer number the governor managed to put into hibernation before the traitors sacrificed their servitors and used them to fuel their ritual...to put it bluntly, it saved Lentonia. Reactivating those servitors, and restoring them to full functionality, would be enought to add...oh, at least twenty million all by themselves, though most of them have been deprived of their capability to reproduce. However, they represent a skilled workforce and could certaintly be relied upon to build the artificial wombs and infrastructure necessary to repopulate without a round of colonization, and, since many of them were unjustly servitorized in the first place, they can be expected to be enthusiastic about the reversal of their sentences."

Sigan eyed me. I met his gaze steadily, and he nodded.

"If Lentonia can re-expand it's population list from one million to one billion within twenty years," he said, "Then I will specifically recommend against permitting a recolonization fleet. And I will so advise the Administratum in my capacity as Lord Auditor Sigan. This buys you twenty years, Governor." He said, pulling out a roll of parchment and signing it with a flourish. "Meet that number, and you won't ever have to find out what the Administratum considers a reasonable next step."

He slid the parchment across to Worden, who nodded shortly.

"While a recolonization fleet is contraindicated," Sigan continued, "Meeting those population figures will still be a stretch. If I may offer some advice?"

Worden snorted. "Do we have a choice about taking it?"

"In this case, yes." Sigan said. "I do not know enough about Lentonia as it exists today to know if this is actually feasible. However," He nodded at me, his grey eyes glinting. "Thanks to Commissar Fossick, and thanks to your extraordinarily creative citizenry, Lentonia currently has enough panacea for everyone upright and moving, and your stated intent is to manufacture, I believe the bugle said, 'enough to fill an ocean.' You've stated in the Bugle that you intend that every human from the creakiest elder down to the newest zygote will have access to it lifelong for as long as Lentonia stands." Sigan raised his eyebrows.

"You're damned right." Worden snarled. "Everyone who ever so much as raised a hand in our defense, everyone who held on to their soul agaist chaos...I'll give them an ocean of panacea they can swim in, throw beach parties at, hell, we can fill a waterpark with it and they can ride a slide down into a pool of the stuff while drinking more of it from martini glasses with curly straws."

"Whereas most imperial worlds with the ability to manufacture it are...mostly keeping it as yet another juvinat treatment available only to the upper class, and certain favored members of the mercantile class." Sigan remarked. "Hardly any artisans at all have even heard of it, much less gained access. While you don't want to attract a recolonization fleet...attracting immigrants from other worlds would make your repopulation efforts far less strenuous. Especially if you specifically draw from those imperial subjects whose loyalties are...the sort that can be purchased for the price of immediately and without question curing their lung feaver, or saving their sick children."

Worden tilted his head. "Worth considering. Add it to the list. In the meantime, we have higher priorities to attend to. What's item #429?"

"Dynesty." Parker-Worden piped up. "Specifically, maintenance of the Worden dynasty." He shrugged. "There's no clear successor if either Governor Worden or I get killed in yet another demon attack."

"It does beg the question of what sort of government you wish to deliberately create." Sigan nodded. "Royalty of some flavor is a popular choice, although you are currently setting a precedent for adoption into the Worden dynasty being a viable path to power." He nodded at Parker. "If that is the path you wish to continue, it would serve you well to clairify who succeeds you, and under what terms. Or if you wish to make blood descendance a requirement. The immediate problem is 'who is in charge if both of you get shot."

Governor Worden cast a side-eye to Parker. "If we go the blood descendance route, there's three options." He mused. "I get married and have children, you get married and have children, or one of us chats with Doc Ock and we cook up a clone."

"It doesn't even have to be a clone." Sigan noted. "In fact, it's easier if you do a standard egg-and-sperm fertilization in a uterine replicator. However, I would point out that if you do create genetic descendance as a requirement, then permit a wide range of gestational methods, then anyone with access to your genetic material can cook up an heir." He grimaced. "That's how I ended up with my ship and my clone ended up with my lordship back home."

"I've seen ecclesiarchical elections have succession battles just as vicious." Worden noted. "No matter what system we settle on, there's always going to be some damned way by which the ambitious can abuse it. Still." He snorted. "I don't think we should give a damned what the wider imperium thinks about nobility and descendance suchlike. The only reason we've gotten this far is by being Lentonian, from Lentonia, frakking well doing things the Lentonian way. So we do what works on Lentonia and we do it *our* way."

"The only things that have survived the war are Lentonian stories, Lentonian creativity and Lentonian courage from the top tip of the palace tower to the bottom of the Viasalix friggin sump." He harrumphed. "Any leader who wants to have a prayer of leading all of that has to know Lentonian's beating heart." He nodded at Parker's messenger bag. "and so they better learn that heart. They had better pay their dues following some Lentonian beat. Every reporter I ever had started as a newsie of some sort or other on their local neighborhood beat. I don't demand that they be newsies for the Bugle, but that's where it starts- carrying messages and news to the people, and more messages and news from the people." He nodded fiercely. "For now, every editor flying a desk in any department is qualified to run the Bugle, and at the moment that means they're qualified to hold this whole lash-up together should something unfortunate happen to Parker or I. Not that any of them are going to want it. They'll fight like weasles to keep from getting stuck with the top slot, which means I'd better clarify things now." He frowned. "Parker, tear up slips and stick em in your bag."

Parker complied.

Worden turned to me. "Here's how it'll work. Each month, I'll stick a different editor with the job of being third in line for command of the Bugle. They'll inherit the hot seat should anything unfortunate happen to Parker or I. To sweeten the deal, they'll have a month to head up whatever pet project they really want to bring to my attention, which should aquaint them with the current state of Lentonian affairs. By the end of the month, they'll be run ragged and more than happy to pass it on to the next chump in line. We keep it in rotation that way. Halfway through the current rotation, we'll draw names from the bag again. That'll cover the succession for the next two years of governance."

He frowned even more fiecrely. "In the normal course of events, I'll shuffle off before Parker. Parker will have worked with a variety of third-in-lines long enough to know which one, if any, he wants to stick with the vice-governorship. If Parker happens to pop it before I, then that'll be my joyless job. And if we both pop off, then the next three in the rotation are Governor, vice-governor, and heir."

"That's, what, twenty different departments?" Sigan said. "And, not to put too fine a point on it, don't most of them end up working in the same room, or the same building? That makes them an easy target for a mass attack."

"Their second in commands are almost always out and about, collecting stories." Worden snorted. "I demand my people pound the pavement. It's the only thing that gave us any skills to work with when the war came- the fact that they had to know their beat. I don't hold with ivory towers." He snorted even more magnificently. "The university survived the civil war and the first outbreak of plague, to be sure, but the professors didn't listen to any of the students who had some experience with reality, and they got eaten by nurgrags. That meant the only department that survived was the journalism and High Gothic department because half of their students were interning with *us.*" However, I can make it explict. No meeting of the Bugle editors can have more than two-thirds of them at a time."

He held the bag out to me. "We'll have some outside authority draw up the succession list. It's a nice symbolic way for outsiders to have some input in the process without any significant power." He gave me a level stare that made me wonder just how much he'd caught on to the fact that while I could do my job, and do it a damned sight better than most, I much preferred kicking back and drinking amasec while encouraging others to get on with real work. If this was a bribe or a threat or a message, i didn't much care. The man had disquieting insight any way I sliced it.

I smiled, nodded, and pulled out several scraps of paper in quick succession.

"The Lentonian govenrment chain of command." Worden said grandly.

"That covers executive power." Sigan nodded. "Write it up and I'll endorse it in the name of the Administratum. But there are more powers than simply executive."

Worden nodded firmly. "We'll use the Bugle as a springboard for that as well. The Bugle belongs to Lentonia, to it's people. So do the stories. It's people are the sources of those stories. They, more or less, are votes for what Lentonia should be. We can formalize that. Reporters belong to the bugle, and thus to the executive branch. But the information itself, the source- that's Lentonia. So to form a legislature, or a commons, or whatever they call it on other planets- what we'll have Sources, all contributing to the Story. Sources which represent specific interests of particular Lentonians, and who are elected, or appointed, or whatever, to speak for them." He frowned. "That aspect of it will need more thought, and enought limits so that everyone on Lentonia feels represented by a Source, or even two or three depending what particular aspects of Lentonian society they participate most vigorously..."

He shook his head. "Though that wider decision belongs further down on the list. We have a succession plan. What's next on the agenda?"-

Before Parker could continue with item 430, there came an urgent knock at the door. "Enter." Governor Worden said, and Editor April O'Niel hastened in. "Governor," She said sharply. "There's another portal forming."

"Again?" Sigan said sharply. "Where?"

"Same as the last two. The lower sump pumping chamber. The damned thing won't stay shut."

Governor Worden shook his head, then looked up at Sigan. "Can you close it?"

Sigan rolled his eyes. "Yes, for now. But I've got a trade empire to attend to. I can't just sit here swatting warp portals that open every other week." He pursed his lips in thought, and did not glance at Jurgen, which meant that, for now, at least, Sigan had decided against sticking his earstwhile Inquisitorial colleague on permanent portal-closing detail, just as he was dodging it himself. "This is the sort of problem that really needs the inquisition," He admitted. "But I'm reluctant to call them in. They have even worse solutions than a recolonization fleet for a world that won't stop sprouting demon portals."

His eyes narrowed in thought. "What you need," He said, finally, "Is expertise on how to keep them closed yourselves, and people with the will and training to do it, and the will and ongoing expertise to do so for the next...oh...thousand years or so. And I do know where you can find such people, although it would...involve taking on a rather large tranche of a very particular kind of refugee. And it would involve marrying into a noble family to cement the bonds of an alliance." He lidded his eyes at the Governor. "How do you feel about marriages of convenience? I do know your tastes do not run to women."

"If it's the sort of convenience that keeps my planet from becoming the crossroads for every damned warp-entity with an appetite, I can assure you, it would be very frakking convenient, and I'd marry a xeno if that would do the trick." Worden muttered. "What are you proposing?"

"As it happenes, I know a rather eligible bachelorette who is at loose ends at the moment, leader of a folk well versed in keeping portals closed."

"Who it it?" Worden demanded. "Spit it out already."

"Ursela Creed."

Worden paused. Then stared. "Lord Castellan Ursela Creed? You...want me to marry the Lord Castellan of...of Cadia?"

"Miss Wendy Darling," Sigan turned abruptly to the only one who hadn't spoken in the meeting yet, though she had listened with close attention to everything said in the room. "It would be rather rude of me to ask you to remove your goggles on a plague world. But might I ask: what color are your eyes?"

"Purple." Wendy said.

"Were they always purple?"

"No." She said, rather shortly. "They turned that color four years ago. It happens, in the deep sump."

"But far more often, now, yes?" Sigan persisted.

Wendy nodded even more curtly. "Used to be only one in ten of us got violet-eyed. Now it's all of us." She snorted. "Back before the war, the purples among us could go to the surface, put on a funny accent, and everyone and their dog would think we were Cadian. We pandered to that, and got a heroes welcome at any bar we went to telling 'cadain war stories.' Was a quick way to make a bit of money if we were short."

Sigan turned back to Worden. "So I rather think the Lord Castellan and her refugees might find it quite homelike."

"Weren't we just talking about avoiding a recolonization fleet?" Worden said incredulously. "Now you want me to marry the Lord Castellan of Cadia, commander of the Imperium's most elite shock troops, leader of the most militarized remenant of the most militarized planet on the imperium outside Armageddon and Holy Terra, and invite every last Cadian to come put boots on Lentonian soil? Cadians stand, cadians fight...- cadian don't...they don't get into romances or dynastic alliances with muckraking newspapermen. What makes you think three seconds after she touches down she won't rename Lentonia New Cadia and warp take the rest of us?"

"Because I rather think Lentonia might *become* a new Cadia." Sigan said softly. "Or rather, a new Eye of Terror. And if that happens, the Lord Castellan *will* come. But not in courtship, as a bride. She'll come as commander of a fleet here to save the rest of the galaxy from yet another rent in reality." he smiled a wintery smile. "So it might be a good idea to get a jump on things now."

Worden narrowed his eyes. "And how, exactly," He said narrowly, "Does a rogue trader know so much about Cadia, the warp, and the Lord Castellan of Cadia?"

Sigan shrugged, then, to my complete lack of surprise, flashed his Inquisitorial Electoo. "Inquisitor Sigan, Ordo Malleus. You might say it's my job to know such things."

Worden sighed, then pinched his forehead. "Exactly how many titles have you collected like playing cards, My Lord Rogue Trader Auditor Iniquisitor Sigan?"

"As many as are relevant." Sigan shrugged. "It's a bit worrying how many have become relevant here. The only other time I've had to operate this openly, with this many identities, was during the fall of Cadia itself. No matter how it falls out, you will need to import yourself some Cadian expertise. And while you're at it, you might as well try for the very best."

"Should I consider myself ordered to court the Lord Castellan of Cadia, my Lord Inquisitor?"

"I should not make that an order in the Emperor's Voice, no." Sigan said. "But as a strategy to buy Lentonia the best future possible?" He nodded, authority radiating from every line of his ratling body. "It has much to recommend it."

"I'll...think about it." Governor Worden said, grudgingly. "In the meantime, my lord inquisitor, are you willing to close *this* portal?"

"If I might borrow Commissar Fossik, yes." Sigan said, and I very carefully did not say *frack*. I shrugged.

"I do seem a bit superfluous to requirements at this meeting, so might as well go have some fun." I said as insociantly as possible. "Mr. Tannaman, would you care to accompany me?"

"Certainly, sir." Jurgen replied, and the three of us rose and left to, yet again, go hunt demons.

The message came encrypted, but marked one of the higher priorities available to the imperial service.

The message, quite typically, also came at midnight, after a long session lovemaking. Lord Castellan Ursela Creed considered her position, and considered her company, and indulged herself in a string of muttered curses that relieved her feelings.

"What is it?" The company in her bed said even more muzzily. Mac Ossian, as a condemned penal legionnaire, albeit one granted a pardon and one so full of metal that more than one person had mistaken him for a servitor, technically didn't have the rank, clearances, noble blood, or other permissions needed to adorn the bed of the Lord Castellan. She, as Lord Castellan Ursela Creed, shouldn't be abusing her position to such an extent that she openly flaunted lovers not just from the lower ranks but from the dregs of Cadian society.

She didn't care.

Ever since her mission to the shattered remnants of Cadia, she'd had less and less patience for accusations of 'abusing her position' that boiled down to 'get out of my way, woman, you're in my place, doing the things I want to be doing.' The sharpest lesson in that regard had come on shattered Cadia itself, and it was a lesson she'd taken to heart and a mistake she'd vowed never to make again.

She'd trusted too many nobles, too many who thought command belonged to them as an inborn right instead of earned by the cautious care with which they deployed their armies or the amount of enemy blood they spilled. In fact, the more competent she'd become, the greater their bigotry and resentment of her rank, despite her blood running as blue as theirs. It had been a hard lesson, to recognize that there was something fundamentally inhuman with nobility as a class, something intrinsically unworthy about the idea of being born to the rights of command without any balancing idea of responsibility toward those commanded. Cadians of any rank were too thin on the ground these days to continue to be wasted by attitudes like that. \

Upon her return from Cadia, she'd taken to attending the front lines herself, and creating the expectation that the remaining cadre of Cadian nobility follow suit. This had resulted in quite a nice thinning of the ranks of those too arrogant to know when and how to duck and to proud to ask any who could teach them, and after that reaping, she'd been quite pleased by the statistically significant reduction in casualties at in all Cadian regiments.

Still, her experiences with nobility had been terrible enough that she no longer trusted blue blood of any sort in her quarters, in her staff, and certainly not in her bed. Ossian was a case in point. Former medicae, former penal legionairre, currently listed as some flavor of entity between 'civilian' and 'servitor,' and still someone who ought to have been as far beneath her as an ant was beneath him. But he was trustworthy, in a very basic sense. Ossian, she knew, would frag her if she betrayed him, but at least he'd have the courtesy to wait and see if she fucked him over first, and would have good reason to do so. She'd been equally courteus with him. It made him trustworthy in ways her so-called peers, ambitious to a fault, never would be, and they'd been shagging as energetically as teenagers out of sheer relief ever since.

"What is it?" his mechanical vocorder said with all the lack of inflection of a techpriest. She remembered his human voice, back when, despite the bomb collar clamped around his neck, he'd still used the comforting bedside manner of the expert doctor he was. She missed that voice, for all that she'd only known it for a few hideous hours before his maiming.

She squinted. "Message from Inquisitor Sigan." She said. 'He says he might have found me a commoner husband with a world as a bridegift, a population that can stand as fast as Cadians, and a whole bunch of demonic ass to kick."

Ossian wheezed in mechanical laughter. "With a pitch like that, who could resist?"

"Oh, I could resist." She said calmly. "But Lord Castellan Creed cannot." She shrugged. "Duty calls."

"Duty calls in the morning." He wrapped arms around her, one cold metal, one hot flesh. "Tonight, doctors orders. Get some damned rest."

"Yes, medicae." She murmered, snugging her chin into the fleshy side of his neck. She tapped out a message on her combead anyway, ordering the captain to prep the ship for departure and make for Lentonia with all due speed. In a previous life, she would have delivered the message herself, confident in her uniform, in the chestful of medals, in the campaign awards and the fierce light glinting in her eye would inspire everyone to their greatest performance. In a previous life, she would have had to stand over her subordinates like a schoolmarm, driving them to their duty under her gimlet eye.

Now, she didn't bother. They'd do as commanded, and do it well, and leave her the frack alone while they got on with it in the bargain. The three officers she'd personally shot for insubordination upon her return from Cadia had seen to that, and those that hadn't gotten the message had learned due terror of the name 'creed' in due course.

And so, finally, she'd bought herself a semblence of peace. It had only taken standing knee deep in the blood of cadians, blood that, one way or another, she had spilled herself.

Blue blood. But were nobles really human? Did blue blood really count?

The thought amused her.

She had given the proper orders. She could take up Creed's duties tomorrow. Tonight, she could be Ursela. She could snuggle in the arms of one of the braver men she'd ever met, and let the future take care of itself.