Chapter Text
There are few phrases in the Imperium more capable of inspiring immediate dread than routine administrative review. This is not because such reviews are especially dangerous. Quite the opposite. Danger at least has the virtue of being interesting. A genestealer infestation may consume your family, corrupt your bloodline and condemn your world to orbital cleansing, but it rarely asks you to produce the original requisition docket for the ammunition used while resisting it.
Administrative reviews do.
The summons had reached me three days earlier, bearing the seals of the Departmento Munitorum and an attached request for Inquisitorial liaison. More importantly, it carried a brief addendum from Inquisitor Amberley Vail assigning that liaison to me.
Amberley had not reopened the Steve investigation.
She had delegated the inconvenience.
There were times when I suspected my advancement within the Inquisition consisted largely of being trusted with increasingly elaborate problems that Amberley had no intention of sitting through herself.
I remain confident this assessment was entirely fair.
The chamber assigned for the meeting occupied one of the less distinguished levels of the sector administrative complex, far enough from the upper offices that nobody important was likely to visit voluntarily and sufficiently close to the archives that the air possessed the dry, papery smell common to places where records considerably outlived the people described in them. A failing lum-strip hummed overhead, occasionally dimming just enough to make the room seem to blink, while somewhere behind the wall a cogitator fan laboured with a persistent mechanical whine.
My prospective colleague was already there. He had arranged the documents into six immaculate stacks, each aligned precisely with the edge of the table. Three data-slates sat beside them in descending order of size, while a portable cogitator had been positioned squarely in front of the only chair with an unobstructed view of the room's pict display. A cup of recaf sat near his right hand, untouched and long since gone cold.
The man standing behind it was lean, perhaps somewhere in his forties, with dark hair beginning to silver at the temples and the expression of someone who had recently discovered that reality had been filled out incorrectly. His left cuff was fastened with a tiny brass seal. His thumb flicked across it once as I entered, an unconscious check that everything remained where it ought to be.
“Interrogator Voss.” He gave a shallow inclination of the head, respectful but measured. “Alphonse Dorian Marius Ignatius Noll. Auditor for the Office of Reconciliation and Exceptional Disbursements, Departmento Munitorum. Designated Primus for the present reconciliation.”
“Helena Voss,” I replied, returning the gesture with a slightly shallower inclination. “Interrogator to Inquisitor Amberley Vail, Ordo Xenos. Designated Inquisitorial liaison for the present administrative review. Auditor Noll.”
His gaze lingered on me for half a second too long. Not disrespect. Something considerably more bureaucratic.
“I had understood Inquisitor Vail would attend personally.”
“She chose to delegate the matter.”
The pause that followed was brief, but unmistakable. “To you.”
“To me,” I said evenly. “With full authority to act as liaison for the purposes of this review.”
Noll glanced down at the authorisation slate, although I was reasonably certain he had already read it several times. After a moment, he inclined his head. “Understood.”
He indicated the chair opposite him with an open hand. I sat while he remained standing for another moment, his gaze catching on the nearest stack of files. He adjusted the top sheet by a fraction, then lowered himself into his chair.
“Before we begin, Interrogator,” he said, folding his hands before him, “I should clarify the scope of this review. This is not an investigation.”
My hand, which had been settling beside the nearest slate, stopped. “In what sense?”
“In the sense that I am reconciling records, not reopening a case.”
That was considerably more specific. “Go on.”
“This office has identified a series of unresolved discrepancies affecting personnel returns, supply records, transport manifests, battlefield expenditure reports and post-action reconciliations across twenty-three regimental formations. The verified discrepancies span one hundred and twelve standard years by recorded date. There are earlier references, but I have excluded them for insufficient provenance.”
That caught my attention. “One hundred and twelve years?”
“Yes.”
“And you are confident the records refer to the same matter?”
“Confident enough to justify reconciliation. I would not recommend interpreting the span as a continuous personal chronology. Warp transit, local dating systems and contradictory reporting make that untenable.”
I glanced from him to the six stacks. “How long has your office been trying to reconcile this?”
“That depends upon which attempt you regard as the beginning.” Noll lifted one of the paper files, checked the tab, then set it back in precisely the same place. “The earliest formal reconciliation effort I have located began sixty-eight years ago. It remained active for just over two years before being suspended when several supporting records were transferred outside Munitorum jurisdiction.”
He consulted the next entry. “A second review was opened forty-one years ago. It continued intermittently for nearly three years before conflicting departmental claims rendered further reconciliation impracticable.”
“And the third?”
“Nineteen years ago. By then sufficient new discrepancies had accumulated to justify reopening the administrative review. During that process, the common subject was identified as being under active Inquisitorial investigation, and the Munitorum was instructed to defer.”
I frowned. That explained the wall they had hit, but not whose wall it had been. “And after the investigation was closed?”
“We attempted to resume the reconciliation.”
Something in his tone warned me what was coming. “And?”
“The request was returned on the grounds that the relevant Inquisitorial matter was closed.”
I stared at him. Noll stared back.
“So while the investigation was active, you were told not to interfere because it was active.”
“Correct.”
“And once it was closed, you were told not to interfere because it was closed.”
“Correct.” A small muscle ticced once in his cheek.
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the labouring cogitator fan behind the wall.
“And this review?”
“I was assigned the consolidated file four years and seven months ago.”
That was considerably longer than I had expected. “When did you request Inquisitorial liaison?”
“The first request was submitted three years and two months ago.”
I stared at him. “The first?”
“There have been eleven.”
His thumb had been tracing the edge of the slate in a slow, exact motion. It stopped.
“I received one three days ago.”
“Yes.”
There was no accusation in the word, which somehow made it worse. “And the others?”
“Four were returned on the grounds that the relevant investigation was closed. Three were redirected to offices without jurisdiction. Two received acknowledgements but no substantive response. One was classified as duplicative and appended to the first.”
By the time he reached the eleventh request, I had stopped counting the failures and started wondering about the man who had kept submitting them.
“Which had already been returned because the investigation was closed.”
“Correct.” A small muscle ticced once in his cheek.
“You kept submitting them.”
“The administrative discrepancies remained unresolved.”
Of course they did.
“And what finally required an Inquisitorial liaison rather than another internal review?”
For the first time, Noll looked away from me, not far, only to the slate beneath his fingers. “Several of the discrepancies refer to records currently held under Inquisitorial restriction. Inquisitor Vail’s office is the originating authority for the most recent closure order.”
There it was. Had I been Ciaphas Cain, Hero of the Imperium, no doubt my palms would have started tingling. All I got was the beginning of a migraine. “Which records?”
Noll studied me for perhaps half a second longer than was strictly necessary, then slid the smallest slate across the table.
I picked it up. The first entry concerned an infantry regiment I vaguely remembered from a campaign whose official history had been shortened considerably for reasons of morale. Personnel discrepancy: one additional combatant present during withdrawal. No service number. No regiment. No rank. Description incomplete.
I scrolled to the next entry. It was a transport manifest listing an additional passenger under special attachment. The name field contained a single word.
STEVE.
My thumb stopped against the slate. For several seconds I simply looked at it. Of course. I should have recognised the shape of the problem from the size of the paperwork.
Across the table, Noll waited. He did not ask whether the name meant anything to me, which earned him a small measure of respect.
“There are fifty-three instances of that particular designation,” he said at last.
I looked up. “Fifty-three?”
“One hundred and twelve years is a long time, Interrogator.”
Fair point.
“Directly identified,” he continued. “There are considerably more records in which the individual is unnamed, incompletely described or referred to only by an assumed function.”
I exhaled slowly through my nose and returned to the slate. “Continue.”
“Fourteen of the named entries categorise the subject as personnel. Seven list him as attached auxiliary support. Three identify him as a civilian specialist.”
I blinked and looked up from the slate. “A civilian specialist?”
“Yes.”
His expression suggested he had already suffered through that classification several times.
“That one is new.” I glanced back down, rereading it as if the words might have changed.
His gaze sharpened. “You are familiar with the others?”
“With some of them,” I said, keeping my tone even. “I worked the case before Inquisitor Vail closed it.”
That seemed to satisfy him, or at least left him nothing to pursue. After a fractional pause, he continued. “Five identify him as sanctioned abhuman.”
My eyebrow twitched despite myself. Someone had taken a considerable administrative risk there. “Two list him as agricultural machinery.”
I stared at him.
Noll consulted the slate. “One specifies heavy agricultural machinery.”
“Of course it does.”
“The relevant requisition officer appears to have required a category capable of accommodating his mass without amending the personnel return.”
I rubbed briefly at the bridge of my nose. “Anything else?”
“Yes. One record classifies him as a morale support asset.”
I lowered my hand. “A what?”
“Morale support asset.”
I looked at him for a long moment. He looked back with the weary patience of a man who had already asked the same question and disliked the answer. “Was that ever an authorised classification?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“It remained in force for eighteen days.”
I closed my eyes briefly. When I opened them again, Noll had moved on.
“One further designation occurs in nine separate records. Each lists only RAZOR.”
I stopped. “RAZOR?”
“Yes.” Noll drew another slate towards him. “After some digging, I found the term expanded in an older logistics index as Restricted Auxiliary Zero Org Resource.”
That was worse. “Who authorised it?”
“I have been unable to identify an originating authority.”
“That is not the same thing as no authority.”
“No.”
The low hum of the cogitator seemed suddenly louder. “How was it used?”
“As an interim classification for an armed auxiliary whose organisational affiliation could not be established. In later records, however, personnel refer to the subject simply as a RAZOR asset.”
I felt the humour drain out of the room. “Meaning they thought it was a programme.”
“That appears to have been the assumption.”
The Imperium had a particular talent for producing authority by implication. Give an unfamiliar designation enough capital letters, attach it to a sealed report, and within a few years half the people reading it would assume that asking what it meant was a good way to disappear.
“And Steve?”
“Continued appearing.”
Naturally.
Noll scrolled further. “Two records classify him as materiel.”
I lowered the slate. “Materiel?”
“Yes.”
“What category?”
“That is one of the unresolved discrepancies.”
For a moment we simply looked at one another. “Go on.”
“One transport docket records a mass allocation exceeding expected passenger loading by approximately two hundred and forty kilograms. Rather than amend the personnel manifest, the embarkation officer entered the excess under miscellaneous equipment.”
“And identified the equipment as Steve.”
“Correct.”
I let out a quiet breath that was almost, but not quite, a laugh. “An expedient solution.”
“It was an incorrect one.”
That told me rather more about Alphonse Noll than his credentials had.
I returned to the slate. There were more: battlefield ammunition attributed to no recognised weapon pattern, emergency rations requisitioned for personnel who did not appear on strength returns, medical supplies issued against a casualty who possessed no corresponding service record, and an Adeptus Mechanicus objection concerning an Imperial-pattern melta that had been “modified beyond approved tolerances by an unidentified external party.”
I knew that one too. Jurgen had been delighted with it. The Mechanicus had not. Cain had even declared the result a miracle of the Omnissiah, no doubt to save their collective hides. The absence of their subsequent servitorisation suggested the Mechanicus had elected not to dispute his theological interpretation too vigorously.
There was also a notation from a field hospital requesting clarification on whether the subject’s self-repairing metallic tissue constituted a contamination hazard. My jaw tightened at that one. I remembered the report.
I scrolled further and stopped at a sealed reference code sitting beside the next cluster of entries. Inquisitor Vail’s office. The original investigation. Closed. Restricted. Done.
I set the slate down more carefully than I needed to, and Noll’s gaze followed it to the table. “This matter has already been investigated, and Inquisitor Vail formally closed it.”
“Yes.”
His voice remained perfectly level. Mine did not. “Then I need you to explain precisely what your office is asking of hers.”
Noll drew in a slow breath before answering, his hands coming together in front of him, fingertips touching. “The closure order applies to the investigation of the individual referenced in those files. It does not reconcile the outstanding administrative irregularities created by his continued activities.”
I stared at him. There are moments when one encounters a sentence so perfectly Imperial that argument becomes impossible. “His continued activities.”
“Yes.”
I leaned back slightly. “You mean Steve continuing to generate inconsistencies.”
For the first time, Noll’s composure developed a visible crack. A muscle moved once at the corner of his jaw. “That would be a more accurate formulation.”
That, at least, explained everything. I leaned forward, resting both hands on the table. Noll’s attention sharpened at once. “Auditor Noll, I want to be absolutely clear before this proceeds. Inquisitor Vail closed the Steve investigation. You are not reopening it, you are not approaching witnesses under another departmental authority in order to circumvent that closure, and you will not request restricted material concerning his origin, capabilities, associates or classification.”
Noll did not look away. “Interrogator, with respect, I have spent three years attempting to avoid doing precisely that. I am designated Primus for this reconciliation, and within that remit I do have authority to pursue unresolved Departmento records.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then I would prefer the distinction remain equally clear. I am not seeking jurisdiction over the individual. I require access where permissible, confirmation when an Inquisitorial restriction applies, and assistance determining whether specific discrepancies may be reconciled without violating the closure order.”
That was fair, which made it mildly irritating. “So I am here to open the doors you are entitled to pass through.”
“And to tell me where my authority stops.”
I met his gaze. “Yes.”
A beat passed between us before Noll inclined his head once. “Then we understand one another.”
“Good.”
Noll selected another slate and activated it. The scratch of his stylus against the glass was briefly audible over the hum of the cooling fan. “I require clarification regarding Form Munitorum Seven-Delta-Nine, supplementary casualty attribution.”
I glanced at him. “Proceed.”
The pict display brightened behind him. A battlefield report appeared: unit strength, engagement duration, confirmed losses, estimated enemy losses and ammunition expenditure. Most of it was entirely unremarkable, which in retrospect should have made what followed more suspicious. Noll enlarged one section.
CAUSE OF ENEMY MATERIAL LOSS: AUXILIARY ACTION
AUXILIARY IDENTIFICATION: STEVE
AFFILIATION: YES
I read the entry twice. “What exactly is that field asking for?”
“A recognised organisation, formation or authority with which the auxiliary is formally affiliated.”
“And someone wrote yes.”
“Six times.”
Noll moved to the next report, then the next. Each carried the same answer. AFFILIATION: YES.
I rested one elbow against the chair arm and pressed a finger briefly to my temple. “Perhaps the first officer misunderstood the field and the others copied the original entry.”
“That would explain repetition,” Noll said. “It would not establish what administrative status they believed themselves to be recording.”
“You assume they believed they were recording one.”
His eyes lifted to mine. I had clearly said something offensive, not personally, but conceptually. “The form requires one.”
I suppressed another almost-smile. “Of course. Do you know what they meant by yes?”
“No. That is the discrepancy.”
“Most likely, some exhausted junior officer asked whether Steve was with the regiment, received an affirmative answer and decided that yes was close enough for government work.”
Noll considered that for a moment, then made a notation, his stylus touching the slate with a soft, exact click. “Possible. There is another matter.”
He drew one of the paper files from the nearest stack. Actual paper. That was rarely a good sign.
“This record originates from the 81st Harven Rifles.”
I knew the name, not well, but enough. “And they encountered him?”
“Apparently.”
“What happened?”
Noll’s fingers paused on the file cover. “That is outside the scope of my review.”
I studied him. “You don’t know.”
“I did not ask.”
That surprised me more than I expected. Most people, once Steve entered a story, wanted to know the story. Noll wanted the form.
He opened the file by its corners and rotated a page towards me. “The regiment’s standing operational instructions include this amendment.”
The notation had originally been handwritten, then incorporated into three subsequent revisions of the unit’s field procedures.
IN THE EVENT OF CONTACT WITH UNATTACHED AUXILIARY DESIGNATED ‘STEVE’, LOCAL COMMANDERS ARE ADVISED TO AVOID INTERFERENCE UNTIL CURRENT ACTIVITY IS COMPLETE.
Below it, in smaller script:
DO NOT ASSIGN RECOVERED XENOS WEAPONRY TO AUXILIARY. PRIOR ATTEMPTS HAVE BEEN REFUSED.
I stared at the second instruction for rather longer than the first. “How old is this?”
“Twenty-one years.”
“And still current?”
“Yes.”
“Who authorised it?”
“That is the discrepancy.”
I looked up. “There is no authorisation.”
“There is no surviving authorisation record.”
“But the instruction has been incorporated into three revisions.”
“Yes.”
“And the regiment has continued following it.”
“Yes.”
I glanced again at the page. “Has it caused any operational difficulty?”
Noll’s expression hardened slightly. “That is not an administrative criterion.”
It was not an answer. I raised an eyebrow; he looked down and brushed an invisible speck from the edge of the file. I let it rest.
He closed the folder and pressed his palm flat against it for a moment, as though ensuring the contents had settled properly. I found myself increasingly convinced that his objection to Steve was not that he existed, but that existence had failed to submit the appropriate supporting documentation.
Then he opened the second stack. “Unfortunately, the Harven Rifles are among the simpler cases.”
I looked at the remaining files and felt the first genuine stirrings of dread. “How many are there?”
“Twenty-three formations directly affected. Eleven additional references remain unverified. Four naval transport commands. Two field hospitals. Three Mechanicus recovery detachments and an Administratum depot whose records are sufficiently contradictory that I have provisionally excluded them pending independent reconciliation.”
“And every one leads back to Steve.”
“I did not say that.”
The response came quickly enough that I looked at him. Noll hesitated, not because he doubted the answer but because he objected to my formulation of it. “Every discrepancy contains a common reference to an unidentified individual matching the designation used within the sealed records.”
“Steve.”
His mouth tightened. “I am not investigating him.”
“I understand.”
“I would prefer that distinction be entered into the minutes.”
I glanced towards the cogitator. “There are minutes?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes briefly. When I opened them again, he was already making a notation. “Auditor Noll, what are we actually trying to settle?”
He set the stylus down beside the slate. “Classification, provenance, authority and attribution. In several cases, all four.”
“And once we’ve done that?”
“The audit concludes.”
“That simple?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the six stacks of files, the three slates and the portable cogitator, then back at him. He met my gaze with absolute sincerity. I had spent enough time around liars, zealots, xenos, heretics and senior Imperial officials to recognise genuine conviction when I encountered it.
Alphonse Noll truly believed this was simple. That should have worried me more than it did. My migraine went up a notch as I reached for the next file. “All right.”
Noll picked up his stylus, then stopped before it touched the slate. The hesitation was slight, but I was already learning his habits. “One further clarification, Interrogator.”
I suppressed a sigh. “Yes?”
“May I record that you have formally acknowledged the individual designated Steve as the common subject underlying these discrepancies?”
“No.”
His stylus remained poised above the slate. A faint crease appeared between his brows. “You have just identified him as such.”
“I know.”
“Then I do not understand why that acknowledgement cannot be recorded.”
“Because the Steve investigation is closed.”
Noll stared at me. I stared back.
Then, with extraordinary deliberation, he lowered the stylus and drew a line through the relevant field.
For the first time that morning, I saw unmistakable irritation. Not with me. With the universe.
I turned to the next file before he could see me smile.