There Have Been Irregularities 

By theidiotmachine

Inquisitor D'Argus Fallowmeer meditated while the man before her squirmed.

The little antechamber that they shared was dimly lit: the glowglobes were old and faint, and threw more shadows than light. The desk was concrete designed to look like stone, adorned with faceless angels. The chair that the man rested in was as imposing, although the discreet cushions rather spoiled the effect. Hers was a simple metal stool, and the furniture was very much supposed to put her at a disadvantage.

That didn't mean he could look her in the eye, though.

'Inquisitor...' he started, the flustered word tumbling from his fat lips like an apology.

'Administrator,' she interrupted. She smiled, because she liked how it unsettled him more. He fell into silence again. He sat there for a second, and then opened his mouth. She cut him off even as he gathered the courage to speak. 'There have been irregularities.'

The fat man heaved a furious breath, his purple robes fluttering in the exhalation of sweet air.

'It's Danon, isn't it? Damn him. I knew that he was trouble. Praise the Emperor that you're here for him.'

Fallowmeer reached over the administrator's desk, and picked up a quill stylus. She held it up, and examined it, ignoring the flustered man. On little more than an impulse, she snapped it. It revealed wires and a single red light, which flashed and then went out.

She smiled again.

'If you say so, Administrator Geldrock. If you say so. I'd like to meet this Danon, I think.'

Geldrock stood as quickly as he was able. 'Certainly. Please follow me.'

#

Fallowmeer hadn't been to the Imperial Palace for years, and as usual she struck at how big it was. Set within and under the largest mountain range on Terra, it housed a hivecity's worth of people in its sprawling tunnels and chambers. Almost no one there had seen the surface of the planet, never mind another world, all cooped up in their tiny dorms and farms and kitchens and offices and whatever else. And yet despite this population density it seemed so empty and quiet, its inhabitants shuffling through endless vaulted corridors in absolute silence.

So she was not surprised when, following Geldrock, she turned a corner and emerged in a hall big enough to house a battleship.

It was classical Gothic, all curved stone columns and pointed arches. There were even a vast stained glass window on one wall, the effect spoilt by the flickering lights behind it. It depicted an angel in golden armour holding the galaxy in one hand, corpses at his feet, stars behind him.

There were hundreds... no, she thought, making a rough mental calculation... thousands of desks, arrayed in a perfect grid, stretching off into the gloom. She guessed that it would take perhaps an hour to cross the room from corner to corner.

At every desk was a scribe, working on a glowing dataslate. The sound of their rustling robes, quill scratches and sighs formed a great white noise like the sea. The scribes were all dressed identically, blue administratum robes over skin which had never seen the sun.

Between the desks shuffled legions of servitors, black wires and red lights stitched into their flesh. They carried storage units between the desks. As Fallowmeer watched, one servitor took a storage unit from a scribe, slotted it into its body and shivered; then it marched away, deeper into the hall, beeping gently.

'Welcome to the Hall, Inquisitor,' Geldrock said, his pride as bloated as his fingers. 'You, boy: get me Danon. The Inquisitor here wants a word.'

The boy bowed, and ran off; another stepped up from behind him, ready for the next errand.

'You run a big operation, Administrator,' Fallowmeer observed.

'It has to be. This is the galaxy. Every scribe here is running the calculations for at least a sector, some as many as a hundred. We calculate everything... crop yields, predicted tithes, morality ratings, compliance...'

'Yes, you do. The Imperium thanks you for your service, Administrator. And yet this room is also so small, isn't it?'

'What... what do you mean?'

Fallowmeer gestured to the vaulted ceiling, dark and distant.

'The galaxy is vast,' she said. 'They say that a planet is conquered or colonised as often as a baby is born, here, on Terra; and that for every death here, another planet falls. Humanity is more populous than the grains of sand on a beach. And you manage to count it with, what, fifty thousands souls? I am amazed, Administrator.'

Geldrock smirked. 'Well, we do what we can...'

'Sire, Danon is here,' the errand boy said, bowing.

Fallowmeer looked towards were the errand boy pointed. Sub-administrator Danon was everything that Geldrock was not: unkempt, thin, genial, bearded. He stopped to smile at a servitor, and handed it a morsel of food. The thing took it, pale fingers shaking; the ghost of a smile flickered across its lips, and it scuttled away.

Geldrock looked like he had found something on the sole of his shoe.

'Sub-administrator Danon,' Fallowmeer said. 'I would like to speak with you.'

Danon started, aware of the inquisitor for the first time. He bowed, the fear only just visible in his eyes. 'Certainly.'

His voice was high, and trembled; whether from age or fear, Fallowmeer couldn't tell.

'Somewhere private, if you will,' she said.

#

Danon took her to a servitor charging station, one of hundreds of little rooms off the main hall. Thirty servitors slumbered in seats, plugged into thick black cables which pumped electricity and fluids into their pale, clammy bodies while their closed eyes flickered. The stink was intense, a soupy fug which permeated everything; but Fallowmeer had fought through underhives against genestealer broods, and had smelt far worse. Danon didn't seem to mind. This was his world.

He pulled up a simple table and two stools.

'How can I help you, Inquisitor?'

Fallowmeer stared at him. He looked down, unable to meet her eye.

She pointed at an icon on his robe: a tiny brass circle, hanging from a cord on his left arm. It glittered in the flickering glowglobe light.

'What does that mean?'

'This? I am a member of a sect. It's an old one, and not many people believe any more.'

Fallowmeer crossed one leg over the other.

'Tell me about it,' she said.

His tongue darted across his lips before he spoke. 'Yes, Inquisitor. We worship the Emperor in three aspects: that of the man, that of the god, and that of the avenging angel who will come to cleanse the galaxy. We're called...'

'The Church of The Fire and Light. Yes. I know of it.'

'You do?'

'Yes. You're right: it's not very popular any more, at least not here in Segmentum Solar.' She took a ring from her left hand: it was brass, like the icon. She ran her finger around it. 'Out there, further from the Imperial light, you'd be surprised. I've seen maybe a dozen versions of churches descended from yours. On some planets, they are the one true bastion between light and darkness. You shouldn't be ashamed of it.'

'I... see.'

She replaced the ring on her finger, and sat in silence, watching him as he fidgeted. The room was filled with the whir and gurgle of the machines, and the servitors' rough breathing. When she felt that his fear was so taut that it could be cut with a knife, she spoke.

'I have been monitoring the output of the Hall of Records for some time, Sub-administrator. Do you know what I have found?'

'I... I don't know, no.'

'Some of your output is much, better than others. Last year I compared the drought predictions of a hundred systems with their outcomes. I looked at a period of a hundred years. The success rate was, on average, around fifty-fifty. If I had blinded you and made you pull skern skulls from a bag, you would have been about as effective as the forecasts.'

Danon's hand leapt to his eyes. 'These are difficult calculations, Inquisitor. They are multi-factorial and we work with limited data...'

'Silence. However, a small number of them started to become consistently better around fifty years ago. As time passed, they became significantly more accurate. Those forecasts are now somewhere between seventy and eighty percent correct.'

'I...'

'On those planets, those numbers made the difference between life and death. One sector governor was able to save a harvest on an agricultural planet, which in turn, prevented a hive world from starving, which in turn meant the tithe in Guard was great enough to stop an invasion of particularly unpleasant xenos. All because the governer trusted your forecasts. And yet, two sectors over, the opposite: skern skulls from a bag. The governor ignored the warnings because they are so often wrong, and billions died.'

Danon blinked. Fallowmeer smiled. Of course: to him it was just a job. He was insulated from the consequences of his actions, and played with numbers in his cosy little hall. Or, so he had thought, up until this exact moment.

'It's not just drought numbers,' she continued. 'So many other instances, all in the same systems. Some of your clerks are operating far more competently than others.'

'What are you here for, Inquisitor?'

'Isn't it obvious? I want to know what has made some of your forecasts so much more reliable... and how we can make all the rest of them as good.'

'I see. May I see your data?'

'By all means.'

She pulled a dataslate from her pocket, scanned the lock, and passed it to him.

'This is confidential data. If you show or tell anyone of this I'll declare you excommunicated and execute you.'

He took the device; his hand shook, and there was a curious mixture of trepidation and eagerness in his eyes.

'I understand. Does that include Administrator Geldrock?'

She pulled a bolt pistol from her thigh holster and placed it on the table. 'You must have not heard, so I'll say it again: if you speak to anyone at all I'll shoot you.'

The servitors stirred, and then quietened. Danon nodded, and flicked through the data. It only took him a moment.

'By the Emperor... these are my systems!'

She nodded. 'Yes. I know. Now, tell me how you did it.'

He shivered, and stared at the bolt pistol. His forehead gleamed.

'I... Administrator Geldrock doesn't like...' he stuttered.

'You worry about the data. I'll worry about the Administrator.'

He glanced around. 'They are human, you know... the servitors. At least a little. Most of them were grown in vats, but some were criminals, lobotomised and implanted. Geldrock treats them like machines, to be used however he feels... But my Church won't permit me. We believe that the Emperor taught that all humans had good somewhere, and he spent his life as a man finding it, and now spends his life as a God helping us find it. And they are humans too. At least a little, anyway.'

She remembered his little morsel to the servitor; how it had almost seemed to smile.

'You do something to the servitors,' she said.

'Not to them: with them. I realised that they like playing with problems. My scribes give them treats when they do well. They analyse far more numbers than a group of scribes and cogitators can, and they have an intuitive understanding of some of the scenarios...' He was babbling now, not sure if he was absolving himself or signing his own death warrant.

'Enough,' she said, cutting through his torrent. 'Why just you?'

'I... Geldrock does not approve. He... thinks it's wasteful to give treats and work to non-humans...'

She picked up her bolt pistol and holstered it. Danon jumped and then relaxed somewhat.

She glanced around at the slumbering, drooling servitors. Red lights blinked on them; this group was due to wake up soon.

'Servitors, huh? Well, well.'

He blinked at her. 'Does that mean...?'

'Thank you for your time and service Sub-administrator Danon. Now, go to the robing clerk. You will report to duty as Administrator in half an hour. Show this to anyone who argues.' She passed him a time-limited inquisitorial seal, a small, heavy metal thing, stamped with her symbol of office. It gleamed silver in the dim light, and a single number counted down in white.

'I... Thank you, Inquisitor. But... what will happen to Administrator Geldrock? He is not a bad man...'

She looked at him. He was able to meet her gaze this time, and she stared into his hazel eyes. She sighed. He still didn't understand.

'I said that your reports had saved billions of lives in a single sector. Administrator Geldrock knew about your methods, and did not adopt them. As a result, he has the blood of quadrillions of souls on his hands. He remembered that he served the ones above him, the Administratum and the Emperor. But he had forgotten that he also served the ones below him, the countless people who depended on him: and in this case, that happened to involve putting aside his opinions for the imperial good.'

Danon snapped his mouth shut.

'You look after your servitors, don't you?' she asked, standing.

'You know I do,' he replied, standing with her.

'Then Geldrock will be fine. Good luck in your new job, Administrator Danon.'