The Subsector Project

Caomer Subsector – Bemu – 741.M41

  There was never enough time. There were also never enough lasguns, never enough uniforms, never enough ration packs, never enough boots, never enough charge packs for the not enough lasguns, and above all else, never enough soldiers. But even if there had been enough of those other things, there was never enough time to get them all where they needed to go, anyway.

Not that anyone else was paying attention.

Where the depths of the Adeptus Administratum lapped against the shores of the Astra Militarum, there stood the quartermasters. It was a thankless job, made all the less doable by Bemu’s isolated location and seeming eternal lack of import for the workings of the subsector. Tithes were paid, the population growth had never been explosive, why bother correcting the books, or ensuring the planetary defense force was able to defend the planet?

Colonel-Quartermaster Greben knew the math. It was a grim arithmetic, but a calculation which every quartermaster could run for themselves. When the priorities of war are placed against one another, the supposed organization of the system tends to break down in favor of urgency. Not even the massive, ponderous mechanisms of the Adeptus Administratum survived contact with the enemy.

Yet, somehow, he had been placed in charge of making it all line up regardless. As one of the last active remnants of the Hemlock sixty-eighth Scout Corps, he had once been a lowly steward, charged with minding store rooms and issuing whatever odds and ends a guardsman might need to withdraw during a protracted campaign. Their support-centered mission meant that, frequently, specialized bits and bobs needed to be “liberated” from other units as they made their way across the stars as part of the Emperor’s hammer.

That too, he supposed, would contribute to their current supply deficiency- pilfering. A hundred Centaurs vanished into thin air. Thirty scout Sentinels marked as “destroyed” with no supporting documentation. All signs of a planet in disarray, even as demands on the agri-world grew ever larger.

The Colonel-Quartermaster was hunched, bent over a cogitator turned-desk, littered night and day with reams of printouts and hand-penned audit reports. He was deep in what he supposed passed for “area command” amongst the PDF, but which would have barely been a field command post during his days with the regiment. A dozen low buildings surrounded by flakboard walls and a loose array of razor wire.

The data was incomplete, the store rooms poorly-monitored. It was a story repeated, ad nauseum, across Bemu. He knew they had to be somewhere on the wrong side of what could be considered appropriately-provisioned, but each review left him more and more bemused about the actual state of the PDF’s inherited materiel.

Bemu, it seemed, was a machine built to create disorder. For the fighting men of the sixty-eighth, it had demolished them piece by piece, as any eternal garrison mission might for those used to front-line combat. Some were able to integrate with the lax methodology of the PDF, others integrated with wider society. Many sought release from the end of their lasguns, or disappeared into isolation.

Greben’s brow furrowed as his hand instinctively recalled the cold mug of recaf beside him to active duty. He could feel the uniform loose across his shoulders, his hair greyed and depleted by long years of stress. Sometimes, he wondered why he couldn’t just hang up the cause. The regiment was now a few dozen total administrators and trainers, desperately trying to prevent the green PDF from falling asunder.

His superior officer was technically General Medna, a grox-faced PDF commander drawn from the gentry of the Caomerian remnants. He’d been appointed overall “theater command” over both the remaining sixty-eighth, as well as the entirety of the PDF, a technicality which had allowed him to funnel ever more wealth into his personal coffers, and disrupted every effort to keep Bemu safe.

Keep Bemu safe.

The Colonel-Quartermaster rubbed his eyes, leaning back from his cogitator. The room was made for two dozen, but was empty save for him. It was always empty save for him.

He had no special relation to the planet, it was simply where they had landed, and never taken off from again. He could retire to his billet- his home in the city, and simply never return to the grim cluster of buildings. No one would ever know, and fewer would likely care even if he told them himself. The machinery of the planet would continue to crunch along, and the Administratum would find some new whipping boy to disregard and blame for every discrepancy. There had been neither sight nor sound of any enemy of the Imperium on Bemu in living memory, nor indeed, in written memory.

Keep Bemu safe.

It was pointless. Pointless. He knew it was true. They were more vulnerable now than when he’d been promoted to Colonel-Quartermaster. The haze of time obscured the faces of his compatriots from his brain, but he recalled the names stitched into their uniforms: Joqlim, Tyroyl, Elbus, all gone, disappeared into the mists and distances of civilian duties which clawed away their musculature and reflexes as surely as the march of disease and death which would inevitably claim them all.

He checked the chronometer on the wall: an hour beyond his “shift”, whatever meaning that word might have when he was the only one doing the job. If he were a decade younger, or two more spry, he might remind others of their duty. The roster was still covered in names, all of whom theoretically shared the responsibilities he now shouldered, but none of whom he’d seen in at least a standard year.

The garrison order had come from the regent of Caomer, the governor-in-exile. The simple phrase which ended the brief communique that had drained the light from the eyes of his commanding officer- Keep Bemu safe. It rang in his mind from the first moment he’d read it, informing his actions, his struggles against the entropy of the universe and the PDF’s incompetence.

Greben had done his best. He knew he had done his best. Yet he also had no doubt that when he was called before the Golden Throne, he would be held accountable for every instant of disregard, every moment of slacking off in the face of an unknown, creeping foe.

He did not question the need for readiness, for the lasguns and the charging cells, the Hydra anti-aircraft batteries. He did not question the unanswered calls for equipment, the demands he made to empty stores for a full count of their stubber rounds. He did not question the lack of concern of his PDF colleagues, the civilian government, and the Calmegan municipal authority’s seeming disinterest in discussing the spaceport’s security arrangements. It all made perfect sense given the decades of peace the planet had enjoyed.

The Colonel-Quartermaster slowly found his feet. It took a moment for his balance to kick in, and he leaned against the desk for support. He was doubtless one of the older remaining members of the regiment, and he could feel the years in his bones. Far beyond laziness, he needed rest in order to function for his next shift. The days were long, and the hours of rest shorter every time he laid down. As much as it pained him, he began to limp towards the doorway, pushing the roughly-fitted prefab out of his way and breathing in the fresh air of the courtyard.

His Chimera sat, perhaps the last member of its species in active service to the Guard on the entire planet. The others had been taken by the PDF, converted to tractors, or simply allowed to rust in an unmarked warehouse. An ignominious end for such a machine which had carried his regiment to more victories than defeats.

The sky above Colonel-Quartermaster Greben was clear and blue, a shining example of natural beauty which had attracted the first settlers to the planet. The Adeptus Administratum was doing its best to fill the skies with the smoke and scent of industry, but there was vastly more sky to fill than smokestacks to do the filling. He sighed, trundling towards his vehicle, his mind fixed on the printouts he’d left scattered atop his cogitator.

Later, he knew he would lay awake, thinking about the next day’s work. It would consume his mind, taking from him the peace which had thus far eluded his nights, every day for years. Urgency no others shared drove him to the extremes, carrying him towards obsession.

He raised his eyes once more to the skies just as the first flames streaked over the compound, meteors crashing through the upper atmosphere, not mere rocks but chunks of metal and debris made by man and xenos alike. The largest of them were the size of buildings, the size of whole hive blocks. He fumbled with the handle of the driver’s panel on the Chimera, mind racing, heart thudding against his ribs, a thousand plans coming to fruition far before he was prepared.

War had come to Bemu.