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Good coke smells like lemons. Once, I convinced a customs agent that it was powdered lemonade. Just add water. I was needing a bump, so I didn't mind when he made me drink some to prove it.

The problem is, good coke comes on hard. It knocks the breath out of your lungs and leaves your head reeling from the sheer positive energy. Every muscle is locked tighter than steel. Blood is building in your fingertips. Eyes are straining against their sockets. "It's a little bit sour," I said, trying to justify my reaction. My voice sounded choked off. His eyes boring into me, the agent allowed for a lingering tense moment. Then he waved me on.

Next were the cyne-dogs. They were what really worried me. Mangy looking things, their skin chafed where machinery met flesh, and their eyes burning with fevered intensity. I could hear the whine of metal teeth grinding against each other. If I was caught, I had money for a bribe - but that money was all that was left of my life-savings and I didn't like the idea of wasting it on some Arbites goon. Besides, there was always the possibility of being caught by a straightedge wannabe Inquisitor, who wouldn't give a gak about all the money and fine coke I had to offer.

I slipped by the dogs unnoticed.

Strafi would later tell me how it happened. The dogs pick up coke by smelling it. For those who aren't aware, there isn't much of a difference between "just smelling" it and snorting it off of a stripper's asscrack. Over the years, these drugged out dogs develop huge tolerances. They only pick up the strongest, most exotic coke, and even then it takes for a lot for them to react. Eventually their tolerance gets to the point where they're stuck permanently of the verge of withdrawl. That's why they go insane and maul random tourists.

Once, a cyne-dog took the head clean off a toddler. The Arbites couldn't use it anymore, so they sold it to a cheap circus.

Even through the high, I could feel the chill dread coiling at the base of my skull. Creeping malaise had to gone to something much darker. If I were rooted out - officially, the charge would be heresy and it wouldn't be a lie. In truth, I would've committed an even worse crime; skimming the pot. I took a bit from every transaction that found its way to my desk. I charged my grocery shopping to the Administratum as a business expense. In three years, I don't think I brought in my own lunch on a single day. It was easier to just eat someone else's. At first, this parasitic lifestyle began when I hit a slump in my life. Then I wasn't caught. I never stopped.

I might've been the lowest of the Administratum's leeches, but I was just as fat and happy on blood as the rest of them.

At a desk, some clerk told me that my flight was bumped. He was one of the few to have mastered the "world-wearied" look that bureaucrats spend their free time honing. Bleary red eyes, a jawline shaded in with something on the verge of stubble, a single stray hair poking out from an otherwise pristine haircut. There was a lifeless quality to his voice that reduced anything he said to a toneless drawl.

Arbites wear red, grey, and black, a range of hues from scabbed blood to ash. The uniform he wore was blue; he was a company official, not an armed guard. In this world, guns decide who's right and who's wrong. That's why money is power; it buys guns and the loyalty of the men holding them. This company official, whose brain had probably been running on autopilot since he took the job, would be in the wrong. My gun decided as much.

"You're under arrest for violation of the Charlston Act and the 301st Holy Decree," I said, whipping out my laspistol in one smooth motion. I held open my coat, to show him my badge. If he'd been paying attention, he would've noticed that all my official looking badge did was give me authorization to file financial reports on behalf of Office 188. It had also expired a week ago, since my transfer. "Place your hands on the back of your head. Step out from behind the counter."

Two Arbites came over, guns drawn. "What the feth are you doing?" said the larger of the two. I flashed my badge, paying attention to the way the Sigil of the Administratum drew his attention. "This is an Arbites matter. Inkmonkeys don't have jurisdiction here."

"The Administratum has the right to police its own affairs. This man here, Jarek Tybund, was selling counterfeit tickets to Administratum Officials with the intent of destabilizing the Imperium of the God Emperor," I said. "Unless you fine gentlemen are willing to risk your careers - not to mention your lives - standing up for a degenerate thief and a heretic, I suggest you stand down."

Fighting back hysteria, the bureaucrat said, "I don't know what you're talking about. My name's Paul."

"Buddy, what the feth? He's just a dumb kid," the smaller Arbite said.

The larger one took his side. "And this isn't internal Admin affairs either."

"The Wymenn Act of 0.31 disagrees." I hoped that was a real Act.

"feth," the smaller one said. He turned to the bureaucrat. "Kid, just give him his room and bump someone else."

I smiled, giving them a nice view of my teeth. "Ah, but he can't give me his room, because the ticket he sold was counterfeit."

The bureaucrat took the bait hook, line, and sinker. "No, I can unbump you! See?" He gestured exaggerately at the dataslate, all the while frantically putting in numbers and adjusting files. "It's not counterfeit. You have your room!"

"Sorry to waste your time then." I patted the larger of the Arbites on the back. "Keep up the good work boys. Lord knows how we'd manage without you."

I might sound like a bad person. Maybe I am. The only reason I ever ask how someone's day was is because it will give me a chance to talk about my own. I steal, I lie, and I take out my frustration on the people who can't fight back. But you know what? I'm not sorry. The Administratum needs dishonest, disloyal, and unmotivated workers. Without us, things would start running smoothly, and everyone in the Imperium would execute to everyone else. The Imperium needs people like me to bog down the bureaucracy and to forget to file papers. It needs people like me to collectively steal so much money that entire Departments are left unfunded.

As I left, a young couple in sickening love reached the counter. The bureaucrat informed the two that they'd been bumped. While the wife sulked, the man raged and whined about "good-for-nothing scamsters" making him miss his own wedding. I was tempted to loan him my badge and my gun for just a moment or two.

Warp travel starts off. It drags your blood to the back of your head and puts your hairs on edge. Never in the history of space travel has it been a good idea to launch into warp travel while coming down from coke. A knot in my stomach twisted tighter with every passing moment.

Vomit came in thick slapping chunks. It was sour, with a tinge of meat, perhaps old fish. The ship rocked and rolled in the Immaterial tides, and the orange-brown slurry crept its way across the floor. Within a matter of seconds, the room's stench was unbearable. I stumbled outside, leaving the door open behind me. Hopefully it would air out.

The ship was hot. Blood thickened and congealed. Sweat matted my clothes to my body. A burning red flush rose to my cheeks, which made me look like a pomegranate when combined with my round face and thinning hair. Knowing that I'm blushing makes me blush more. Looking back, I could see my vomit creeping out from the doorway, like it was following me.

I'll never understand how soldiers can manage such frequent warp-travel. It combines the blurred fuzziness of getting drunk and the dull hammering ache of a hangover, without the actual pleasure of drinking. A friend in the Guard told me that his regiment calls it bar-hopping.

Things were better in the bathroom. It was a nice confined space, meaning it didn't give me enough room to get bounced around by the ship. I sat on a toilet seat, gripping to an empty paper-roll for dear life. Once I felt a little bit steadier, I stood up to take a long drink from the faucet. The water had a sour taste to it. On old ships, the corroded pipes serve as flavoring for everything you drink. I was still nauseous. My head was hot and dizzy, cocooned in suffocating gauze.

No one knows how long warp travel takes. Sometimes, in the span of a few seconds, a ship can flit from Terra to Macragge. Other times, it can take hundreds of years. That's why soldiers can never go back to civilian life; while they were playing cards aboard a cramped ship, eating greasy food, everyone they ever knew died. The world they return to is simply not their's.

I'm hoping that this will be the first and last warp trip I ever take. The minute I land in Saphydros I, I'm planting my feet. Hopefully I won't have landed so late that my job is already done. Maybe this trip takes a thousand years, and as soon as I get there they send me back. Then the return trip takes another thousand years. By the time I land the Despoiler will have taken Terra, and I'll step out of the ship still wearing a stupid Administratum lapel.

"This? This silly thing? Oh, that's just a trophy from one of the Imperials I've killed, Mr. Despoiler. Haha, killing Imperial dogs and drinking their blood is so fun!"

I shouldn't worry. After all, I was lying when I said that no one knows. They can make fairly good estimates. There's an 86.7% chance of landing in three days, then 10.99% for landing in four days. If we miss the four day slot though, it will mean we're wildly off course, in which case it could take anywhere from a year to a millennium to get back. I did the math; there's a 2.31% chance that we will disappear into the great unknown. Everyday, I make riskier gambles with coke and stealing. Why do I let this one bother me so much?

Maybe I'm nervous because I see the opportunity of a lifetime waiting for me there. Saphydros I is regularly irregular with paying their tithes. I was dispatched, along with Kaydun Marsh and Jared Emuel to "facilitate" Governor Strafi's payments. The Administratum has placed the budget of an entire planet in the hands of three underpaid accountants.

A week ago, I was putting fake parking tickets on rich idiots' grav-cars to pay for coke. Now, I'll be treading water in an ocean of pussy, snorting coke by the mountain, and wearing suits of fine Crag cat fur. If I play my hand right, that is. Kaydun is and always has been an idiot. This will be the first time I meet Jared or Strafi at all. Still, I have no reason to be pessimistic.

There's money nearby. I can smell it. With a few choice words, maybe a warm smile, it'll be all mine for the taking.

I need a bump.

I believe doing everything in moderation, especially moderation in moderation. Which means I do as much as I want. Why not?

Warmness, pleasant humming, excitement. Soft light.

Uhhh I am not sure what I just read, misunderstand me correct when I say it was different from anything else i have read when it comes to 40k, but in a good way.
Anyways glad to see you return to creating fiction!

I actually enjoyed reading these. Got any more?

Very entertaining. The only thing that broke my suspension of disbelief was the use of 'Arbites' in the first part. They seemed like security guards, not the enforcers of the Lex Imperialis who never get seen unless there's a planetary rebellion so, if that had been 'enforcer' instead that would have read better. Other than that I thought it was excellent and it's great to see an Administratum drone have so much character.

I liked these... you have a very unique voice in your prose.

Ty for the comments.

As for the portrayal of the Arbites, that's the narrator's own bias.

No one knows how to design warp vessels because no one knows how long the trip will take. Sometimes it only takes a few seconds. Do you really want to pay for a full suite with gorgeous tanned maids and an in-room bar if you're only going to use it for a minute? Or do you want to settle for a cramped seat? Maybe the man next to you is obese, and his fat is spilling into your seat, then the ship veers off course you have to spend three months next to him. Don't worry, you can pass the time with some friendly conversation. He'll tell you all about the weird dream he had last night or the way his boss won't stop bitching at him for no-good reason. All the while, his fat laps at your side.

The solution that most frigates use is providing each passenger with a private room. In this room is a bed, with a slight angle two thirds of the way down. Like a pool lounge. You can use it to sleep uncomfortably or sit uncomfortably. Spaceports are filled with hunched over passengers; the vertebrae of their spine have fallen into perfect alignment with these lounges. They always swear that next time they'll get a 1st class penthouse. They don't.

My room was mostly aired out from the vomit. I wondered if a servitor will come by or if I should clean it myself. It might be in my best interest, but I don't like the idea of cleaning the ship for the company that's already fleecing me as is. No reason to do them any favors, not after the way they overcharged me for a lounge chair and tried to bump me from it. Just thinking about it pissed me off. I needed a way to pass the time. Maybe I'd read a prayer pamphlet.

God Emperor, though I might be blighted by sin

Flesh a canker sore on my soul

I wear your blessing with a proud wide grin

And pledge myself to the Imperial fold

Day and night, I may pray

Through war and terror-

Who reads these? I don't think the people who write them even read them.

I need a bump. Lately, I've been itching to get my hands on some gunpowder. If you mix it in with coke, it hits harder. There's no time to take in that lemony smell or the rugged burn. All at once, you plunge headfirst into warm white light. There's an old story about a warlord doing it on the same table he used to cut some diamonds. Diamond dust is mixed in with the coke, but he can't feel it because the coke is hitting him so faster. The gunpowder makes it work faster by dilating blood vessels. Well, the same gunpowder that keeps him from feeling the diamond dust also makes the little cuts it causes bleed twenty times as fast.

In a few seconds, he's gushing hot sticky blood all over himself. He knows he should be terrified, but the coke keeps him from feeling outright terror. Instead, he feels the slow, cold kind. Dread creeping at the back of his throat. Then he dies, planting his face in a fingerpainted mess of coke, gunpowder, and blood.

A friend recommended doing crystal and coke to me. Crystal is cheaper and lasts longer. If you take it with coke, you get the pleasure of the initial coke high, and crystal's long lasting effects. That way, you don't need another bump so quickly. You're less likely to do too much and have your heart explode in your chest.

Don't do crystal. It erodes away the body with glacial persistence. Hair, teeth, and skin are the first to go. Leave a little plastic figurine in a fire until all the details melt away, then you get the idea. It leaves something disgustingly humanoid in its place. From there, comes the writhing insanity. Skin crawls, the body shivers and shakes, while the mind is reduced to grey-purple soup. I would gladly choose a painful comedown from coke over crystal.

I need gunpowder. Time to get some.

My gun is laspistol; no gunpowder, just ozone and battery acid. A map of the ship tells me that there's a small Arbites presence, based on Deck 11, Floor D, Room 3099. Probably someone with a bad hip who was given a desk job. What I'm looking for is company security; Deck 1, Floor Y, Room 102, damn near to the bridge. Why not? If I were the Captain of the ship, I'd keep my guards right next door too. Who knows when a coked out maniac is going to come by with a pistol and an expired badge, demanding gunpowder?

There's a map tapped up to the wall. No way I'll be able to remember the directions to get there and back. So I take the map with me. Then I go up stairs. An elevator that's groaning too much for my liking. More stairs. Down a hallway with searing fluorescent lights. A walkway across a sparking, hissing construction site where I'm fairly sure I'm not allowed to be. More stairs. A conference room, where the sweat from a thousand asscheaks marks the chairs like cigarette burns. Through another corridor lined with cramped rooms, containing their own lounge chairs. Up one more flight of stairs.

The company security is small office. There's an empty queue in front of a barred window. Sitting behind it is a man in a blue-grey uniform, who has either achieved perfect serenity in enlightenment or is just half asleep. I tapped on the glass.

"Please state your name and describe the stolen item for me," he said. His eyes were missing the spark of life.

"It's not that something's been stolen from me," I said. I leaned in a bit closer to the window and spoke in a hushed voice. "I, um, would like some gunpowder."

"Uh, okay."

"Would you panic if I pulled out a gun right now?"

Just mentioning that makes him panic. "Is that a threat?"

"Emperor no," I said, putting my hands up. "It's just, I have a laspistol. So I was thinking we could make some sort of trade. You give me a regular autopistol, whatever model you're supplied with, two or three mags, and some gunpowder. In return, I give you a laspistol, something that's easily worth twice as much. It can burn a man's head clean off."

"Come inside," he said, leaving his little window booth.

For a moment he disappeared. Then an office door, hidden off to the side, opened. I went inside.

There was the lazy droning of a cheap fan, and I could somehow tell that it had been droning uninterrupted for years. The guard's desk was cluttered with paperwork and a greasy dataslate. Some novelty pens with jokes like, "Dr. Lance Hughes, Proctology: Turn your head and cough" written on them were lying in a coffee cup. There was stack of magazines, mostly porno, off in the corner of the room. I could tell this was a man who had been left to his own devices for far too long. Given a year or two more, and he probably would've degenerated to painting the walls with his feces.

I could vividly picture him trying to scratch an itch with the barrel of my laspistol and burning a hole through his brain.

"Show me it," he said. So I showed him it. The laspistol was in good condition, fully charged, and legally registered with the Administratum. If someone had offered me a deal that good, I would've taken it. He was suspicious though. "Why are you selling it?"

"The laspistol works, if that's what you're asking."

He looked back and forth, then let out a breath. "Alright, feth it. We have a deal. Just give me your name and room number, so we can talk to each other if we have any problems."

"Sure, I'm Jarek Tybund, Room 4012. You'll be able to tell by the graffiti that says, 'lemony'." If there even was a Room 4012, I hoped whoever stayed there got raided in the middle of the night. It would serve them right for giving money to this awful company.

The gunpowder wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Maybe I was using the wrong type. Are there even multiple types of gunpowder? It didn't matter. The ship was landing soon according to the Captain. No more warp travel. Time to make my fortune.

As an Administrative official, you have to enjoy money. Most people are bored by bank accounts. All they see is 203,421 Imperial Credits. I see 11 pounds of uncut cocaine. Or 20,342 handjobs. Or 10,172 blowjobs. Or 1,017 handguns. You might look at that and just see a number, but I see an amazing weekend.

Keeping track of the money on Saphydros I is exciting for me that way. The way I'm burning through my life right now is unsustainable, but if I could tap into that sweet reserve, I could live however I wanted.

The first thing to note is that money always traveled upwards on Saphydros I. The Planetary Governor, Strafi, taxed the poor and gave to the rich. This is bad economics. People tend to confuse economics and politics, but the truth is that good politics is almost always bad economics. It's not about maintaining your world's GDP; it's about making sure some rebels don't kick in the door and decapitate you. Two entirely different things.

Poor people can't fight back. However, rich people, who buy the loyalty of guards, soldiers, and mercenaries, can. So Strafi stole from the poor and gave to the rich.

He kept about a quarter of this money, and he distributed the rest among five Regents, who each govern one of Saphydros I's continents. These Regents collected their own taxes, but most of their money was from Strafi. They used that money to maintain their own power. It's was a symbiotic relationship. The Regents needed Strafi and Strafi needed them. Because there were five Regents, only needed the loyalty of three or four at any given moment, and that gave him the freedom to replace troublesome ones. Eventually, by the time I reached Saphydros I, the world had achieved a perfect state of equilibrium. It would take an outside event to tear things down.

I hadn't shaved since I was reassigned. When I stepped off that frigate, onto the long rusted stretch of an old spaceport, I didn't look very professional. My beard was flecked with coke and gunpowder, giving it a nice salt-and-pepper look.

I can only see something terrible happening here but it will be great to read along while it happens! Great stuff.

People ask me how I got my job. At first when they meet me, they assume I'm really good at it. After all, I have to be really good at something to make up for my weight, my coke, and my complete absence of professionalism. Then they realize that, underneath it, I'm not an idiot savant. Just a regular idiot. So they ask how I got my job, and they try to phrase it as an innocent question.

I come from a long line of demotions.

My great-great-grandfather was a Prefectus Primus. Depending on who you believe, he either earned it by defeating the Thraxian Rebellion, or by sucking off his supervisor. He appointed his son, my great-grandfather, to be his second-in-command, a Prefectus Primus. Eventually he died. From there, my great-grandfather appointed his son, my grandfather, to be his second-in-command. Eventually he died. Every man in my family has worked for their father and died beneath them, but not before having a son to put beneath themselves. We went from being a rich Prefectus Primus to being me, a nameless Ordinate.

If I had son, he would be a scribe. Anyone can be a scribe; you don't need family connections for that. His son would be a menial. An illiterate laborer who has the tendency of being 'accidentally' omitted from the payroll. The only thing beneath a menial is a subordinate, which is a polite way of saying slave. My great-grandson will be less than nothing.

There's a Golden Age that I missed out on. The only legacy it ever left for me was flaking rust and brown, rotted bones. I keep sighing over memories I never had. If it weren't for my great-great-grandfather's riches, I wouldn't get swept up in the buzzing excitement and then have to come back groveling down. Maybe I could've gotten used to being poor. Maybe not. I have a naturally optimistic, sort-of-grandiose worldview. It's a curse.



Stepping off into the spaceport is a stroke simulator. The whole world smells like sharp metal, like rust and copper. After the thin, filtered air aboard the frigate, the smog makes my breath catch in my chest. My eyes water. The way a hundred different ships are blasting me and all the other passengers with radiation, I'm filled with a nervous tingling. And numbness. Dumb, fumbling numbness. All the things that fat middle-aged men are told to look out for were waiting for me in this spaceport.

I want to give myself a minute to rest, but I know that every second I spend here is shearing days off my lifespan. Imagine my actions are shaping the future, and when I decide to sit down, my fit-and-firm seventy year old self spontaneously loses his hair, gets glaucoma, and develops a humpback.

Dockworkers get filled with abscesses that look like pink cauliflower. It fills up their guts, so they spend an extra hour on the gakker everyday. Or it chokes off their lungs, like the doorway of their throat slowly coming to a close, until that last little crack clicks shut. Maybe the cauliflower ends up in their brain, heightening the pressure until brain tissue is bursting like overripe fruit. All the while, their body is ramping up the aging process, skipping ahead to death as fast as it can. Fast-forwarding the boring parts of the movie. Twenty year olds look like thirty, thirty year olds look fifty, and fifty year olds look like raisins. There are no sixty year olds.

So I leave the spaceport. While I'm hurrying the wrong way through a security checkpoint, my eyes glazed over to the dirty stares and muttered curses, an Arbites tries to stop me. I flash my badge. If he searches me, I'll say I'm part of an undercover investigation, into coke cartels. I mean, lemonade powder cartels. As for the gun, which is registered to a private shipping company, well, that's part of an investigation into gun-running cartels. If he goes as far as to notice that my badge is (A expired and (B doesn't give me the clearance to run any sort of operations, I'll explain that I'm using it to infiltrator a band of badge counterfeiters. Really, my boss sent me here to take down the entire Saphydros I underworld in a single sting. Don't be surprised if you see me picking up hookers, or murdering someone in a gambling den. It's all part of my cover.

He doesn't search me. People with badges, like Arbites, have to pretend to respect my badges. Otherwise they'll have to admit badges mean nothing. Once you enter the, "I have a gun and you don't" mentality, there's no coming back. Its much better to just pretend that your power comes from your badge.

In spaceports, notice that no one is prepared. There are families of tourists wearing sandals in acid-rain. Business men are haggling over briefcases that don't meet security compliances. Someone, somewhere is frantically rushing to the bathroom to flush some things after realizing that there's a metal detector. Spaceports are always horrible enough to defy expectations. No matter how low someone's expectations are, the spaceport always falls miles beneath.

Case-in-point, I don't know where to rent a car. Or how. I'm debating getting some monstrous, diesel guzzling gravcar and buzzing some locals. Maybe with some armaments, like a side plate that pops open to reveal a Martian Pattern M.34 Sanctuary Class Autogun, complete with explosive shells and laser-sighting. Failing that, how about a flamethrower? No, bad idea. I'll probably fly faster than it shoots, and end up cutting through some raging inferno of my own making with the hood down. The best option, assuming they have it, is a Kriegs Engineering Corp. 19 Breaching Torpedo. Actual Guard call it a mole launcher, because those missiles burrow. They can plow through two feet of solid concrete. Then they can detonate in the exact of some concrete support pillar, and end up taking down a two hundred story skyscraper.

I only know these things because I used to have to fill out forms, bulk-purchasing them for Guard regiments a million miles away. Sometimes the Administratum will purchase things from itself, but hire an independent contractor as the go-between, as well as two professional negotiators and maybe a few part-time consultants. It can be difficult to tell incompetence from corruption.

I found a car rental place. The queue was full, so I waited. And waited. Unprepared travelers will haggle the hardest. The less they know about something, the more obscene demands they'll make. "And... I want a Euro-Siberian Tigress with this car. No, not a clone. A natural bred-one. I don't care if they're extinct." Eventually everyone caves in. These clerks are paid by the hour. They don't care if some assweasel from a system they've never heard of gets his car. Hell, they probably purposefully screw up deals, so that they have to fill out less paperwork.

So when I reach the clerk, a young girl with a sort of mannish, lumpy look, I decide to be flexible. I carefully explain what kind of car I want, and I'm willing to make compromises. Despite her initially mistaking me for a terrorist, things go well. I use my badge as ID. If, Emperor-forbid, I damage the car, nothing will happen. The badge is expired, and the Administratum won't comply with their requests for my name, address, or contact information. Before confirming the deal, the girl's boss pours over the badge, checking it for the slightest sign of forgery.

My new car is a gravcar, a Chariot Firebear. As in, a low-grade hovercraft. It has a squat cockpit, with two seats and a cramped trunk. Stretching out in front of it is a very long, ice-blue hood topped with a little metal statuette of a bucking bronco. There is no pattern whatsoever to the engine or the exhaust. Pipes and machinery jut out at contorted angles, covered in sticky blackness. Unlike most gravcars, this one comes with eight propulsion jets, all connected to their own back-up generators. If the fueltank or engine is compromised, the gravcar can still run for another two or three minutes, just long enough to rundown whoever fethed up your beautiful car. The only problem is that the Chariot has too much momentum to turn without a minute or so of planning in advance.

I was hoping for some sort of built-in weaponry, but I lacked the licenses required for those, and I didn't want to push my luck with my badge. Instead, I settled for a complementary fire extinguisher, as well as a sawed-off shotgun that fit neatly in the glovebox.