Caiphas Cain and the Conquest of Terra
I had always expected to be called to account by the Emperor one day, but I never expected to be alive to do it.
Of course, the Custodes aren't precisely the Emperor, but they are the next best thing.
And here I was, all alone in a room in the bowels of the Imperial palace on the holy Throne world of Terra with six of them.
As I looked at the vast expanse of glistening leather, the even vaster expanse of glistening, well-oiled abdomens, and superhuman beauty, I felt an enormous sense of ill-usage at being so wildly overmatched. I ought be used to it by now, but I've come to believe that my unending sense of injustice helps sharpen my reflexes and helps me keep an eye out for the main chance.
As a commissar cadet, I had been well-trained in the various levels of authoritative glaring.
In addition to my time on the scrumball pitch, learning to become good at dodging and running away ( which is one of essential skills in this universe to know to stay alive), those years of tutelage under the fearsome visage of Choirmaster Moner and his demanding dictum that we have absolute control over our faces and thus over the effect we had on the morale of the men we will be leading proved to be one of the more helpful survival skills I had ever learned.
And Choirmaster Moner was but a callow youth before these searing glares of men, utterly secure in their divine authority and fabulously styled hair.
The Schola Progenium had also educated me in the general way an interrogation should go.
It was generally far easier to break a person's nerve than their body.
The Commissariat made far more use of mind games and simple intimidation than it did of any instruments of torture unless you were supremely bad at your job, at which point the Astro Militarum generally took care of the problem by detailing you to a line regiment where in very little time you would find yourself shot in glorious battle with the Emperor's enemies. Usually, the enemy was unusually very far away.
The Adeptus Custodes were of a similar mind. They hadn't even bothered to confiscate my lasgun or chainsword or subject me to any other restraint a Warmaster of Chaos should be subject to.
I am not a brave man.
Whatever you've heard about my entirely overblown reputation is completely wrong.
I am a coward, a scared, quivering bowl of self-interest through and through.
That but one thing I had learned in my long discreditable career is never to let your fear bully you into taking actions inimical to your own chance of survival; however slim that chance might be.
I may be a coward, a liar, and as terrified as the Martian day is long, but that's no excuse to be foolish.
So I did what any sensible man would do when confronted with a terrifying, overwhelming force and absolutely no escape.
I glared right back and shut the frak up.
At least, until they brought in the smiling young medica with her suitcase of gently glowing potions.
She was exactly my type: blond, fresh-faced, with depthless blue eyes. Yet, all of her undeniable beauty left me utterly cold as the Valhallan idea of a shower as two of the Custodes effortlessly pinned me to the ground, and she shot me full of chemicals from her brightly coloured vials.
She explained in detail what every one of those chemicals was going to do since they were truth drugs that worked even more effectively when their victim had an in-depth understanding of exactly how they were supposed to work.
Now, my girlfriend is a Slaaneshi demon princess. As a result, I've had an entirely unwilling level of experience with exactly how the Warp works, and whatever this crap was now poisoning my veins, it had absolutely nothing to do with that.
The Custodes let me up and resumed their glaring.
Finally, the one I took as their leader said, "You will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You will tell us exactly how you came to turn your back on the Emperor's light and sell your soul to Chaos."
I meant to shut up and keep glaring; I really did, but apparently, the pinnacle of imperial pharmaceutical research had done a number on my self-control.
So, instead of any of the innumerable number of lies that rose to my forebrain, what instead blurted from my lips was nothing but the absolute truth.
"You're never going to believe this," I said. "But I've never turned my back on the Emperor. This whole Warmaster of Chaos thing was a complete accident."
Horrified, I listened as truth after truth poured out of my lips. And the most terrifying thing was how much relief it was to simply say what I was thinking.
"But honestly, I don't see how I would have anything to confess. Except for my fundamental, irreducible cowardice, I'd always try to do my duty as best I can see fit, at least in so far as I was likely to survive it."
"It was hardly my fault that everyone else in the galaxy appears to possess none of the common sense that the god emperor chose to bestow upon me, instead preferring to grant humanity truly liberal amounts of brainless courage in lieu of anything resembling a survival instinct."
"When paired with authorities and officers that prefer to spend their men's blood like water, what accounts for ninety percent of my success at 'luring people away from the Emperor's holy light' is, in my reluctant opinion, luring them away from sheer stupidity and into situations where they might have a life expectancy measured longer than an hour!"
I began to panic when one of the Custodes pulled out of the stylus and started taking detailed notes.
Excerpts from Tribune Heracleon's notes upon the interrogation of Ciaphas Cain, Warmaster of Chaos, in the aftermath of the Slawkenberg annexation of Holy Terra.
The subject claims to believe in the Emperor.
After extensive questioning, the subject clarifies that he means the Emperor Emperor, not any of the various false emperors, Tyranids pretending to be 'the True Emperor,' or chaos gods posing as Emperors.
Subject claims it was all an accident.
The subject claims he did in fact have an elaborate and nefarious scheme for going to Slawkenberg. Subject states he heard as a cadet that Slawkenberg was a vacation world, and it sounded like an excellent way to sit out an entire career as a secretly cowardly commissar in a galaxy torn by unending war.
Subject asserts that he would have taken a frontline posting if he had the slightest idea of what he was getting into at Slawkenberg.
The subject describes how all the toilets in the bar he was investigating began to mysteriously overflow and belch sickening smoke into the atmosphere, which is how he uncovered the Nurgle cult on Slawkenberg accidentally and was instrumental in utterly destroying it with one strategically placed ploin soaked in blessed holy water.
Subject describes finding his most loyal aide in a cesspit and credits this discovery and the horror it provoked in him with his budding drinking problem.
Subject describes how wine is good if you're going to need to fight at a moment's notice, but for getting absolutely shitfaced, there's nothing like a Slawkenberg amasec.
Subject describes using his newfound reputation as a hero to score with some ladies on Slawkenberg, only to discover to his horror that every single one of them is a devotee of Slaanesh.
Subject describes his attempts to deal with his girlfriend and secret head of the coven of witches on Slawkenberg as a hell of a lot like dealing with tutors in the Schola Progenium: you smile, nod, tell them precisely what they want to hear, and go ahead and do what you're going to do anyway.
The subject describes that by smiling and nodding, he managed to find himself in the center of five separate conspiracies to take over Slawkenberg, and his frantic attempts to find anybody competent in the imperial authorities to report these to resulted in ever increasing discoveries of imperial incompetence.
Subject waxes passionately eloquent on the complete incompetence of the Arbites he eventually reported the conspiracies to, with specific mention that charging right in like an orc is not going to result in anything but blood on the walls.
Subject describes his utter astonishment that his completely thin excuse that he intended to assassinate Arbitrrd by pointing him at the most heavily armed and unimpressed group of rebels on the planet actually worked, and proposes a theory that it is impossible to comprehend how some very clever people can be so utterly without the sense the Emperor gave a little green apple.
Subject describes his resolve to attempt to sabotage the conspiracy from within.
Subject describes his attempts to assassinate his girlfriend by giving her an obviously cursed necklace.
Subject describes his astonishment at how the necklace contained Eldar soulstones which somehow allowed her to ascend to demonhood with the impression that he'd done it as a romantic gesture of undying love.
The subject details his increasing drinking problem.
Seeing how everything was going to the sump, subject describes his attempts to escape the planet.
Subject complains that it was just his luck that he ran into the Governor, and even more that he ran into the Governor at the precise moment the rebels ran into the Governor, resulting in his subsequent execution of the Governor making him the focal point and natural leader of the Slawkenberg rebel government.
Knowing a doomed cause when he sees one, and knowing how staggeringly large the Imperium is, subject describes his resolve to slowly sabotage the rebel council from within. Subject justifies his course of action as the one most likely to leave him alive and the one most likely to leave all the civilians on the planet as relatively undamaged as possible when the Imperium comes to take it back.
Subject describes his discovery of the Governor wine cellar.
When interrogated as to why he had not given up his soul to various chaos gods, the subject snapped, "Fracking Warp, my soul is my own and I am keeping it."
Subject complains about the fundamental unfairness of a universe where there is not a chaos god of cowardice and common sense.
Subject appears unaware that the increasing shadow he projects upon the Warp is that of a nascent god of cowardice and common sense.
Subject persists in characterizing his swordsmanship as nothing special, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Subject proceeds to describe his duel with the ork war boss as won entirely by luck, his regular practice with his Khorne cultists as them holding back due to his reputation, and his successful defeat of the chapter master of the Lamenters in a formal duel as "what the Warp", his successful defeat of a whole council of Necron Pharons as "I don't know what they were drinking but they were not nearly as hard as I had been led to believe," and his fight with an Archmagos Dominus as "wait, that cogboy was an Archmagos Dominus?"
The subject describes with increasing offense how his ban of the use of servitors in Slawkenberg's factories did not slow the economy to a crawl. Instead, it demonstrated in the most pointed way the blundering ineffectiveness of millennia of imperial policy.
Subject is making a rather large amount of sense.
Subject characterizes his accidental corruption of a whole chapter of Ultramarines as "How was I to know how much they love spreadsheets? I was just trying to keep them busy and out of my hair. Apparently, a reasonable system of taxation is all an ultramarine ever wanted from the universe."
Subject characterizes the supply of wine in the wine cellar of his gubernatorial palace as a supply to last a millennium and describes his worry that he's managed to go through half of it in the last fifty years.
Subject wonders if he is the butt of an Imperial joke and despises the Emperor's sense of humor if so. Emperor responds telepathically that he does, in fact, think the subject is hilarious.
Subject invites the Emperor to come around for tarot card and amasec. The Emperor responds that he is stuck on the throne, but the subject is welcome to come down to his throne room and play. Subject loses the First game of tarot and challenges the Emperor to best three out of five.
...(Several hours of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth later):
I was a personal witness to everything and saw it happen every step of the way with no secrets whatsoever, given that the Warmaster of Chaos was hopped up on the Imperium's best truth drugs at the time. I still have absolutely no idea how he managed to persuade the Emperor to drop by Slawkenberg for a round of amasec and cards, with a mutual defense treaty against the Tyranids and the permanent loan of half a legion of Adeptus Custodes. We'll be leaving as soon as our battle barge gets here, and the Warmaster and the Emperor stop playing cards.