Crime in the Colonies

This morning's Bītṭuppi Institute's audit was troubling, Urgigga had to admit. Crime projections for the Lubarra District were nowhere near where they needed to be. No point delaying it; she'd have to get on the vox with the Office of Ceremonial Calculations and tell them there'd be problems this half-quarter. What in hells had gone wrong!?

Later that afternoon, Urgigga called her foremost Mashkim together. The Mashkim (informally called "mashers") were the nearest thing these benighted asteroids had to police, and once the ritual energy shortage began to pinch the whole damn Puratem Belt would be looking to them for an explanation. Oh yes, Urgigga bitterly reflected, High Logistician Prisha (16th order, quintuply qualified) had made it quite clear, in no uncertain terms, that the public would be made fully aware the shortfall was due to Lubarra District crime. The Mashkim needed a coherent line of response.

"Ok," Urgigga opened proceedings, "no point cutting around the artery here - what happened and what are we going to do about it?"

Ludím eagerly cut in:

"Before we talk about responses we need to address the ambull in the corner: the ethnic angle."

Urgigga rolled her eyes while others around the table groaned. Not this again.

"We've been over this in the D.I.E. trainings, Ludím. Khorne hates all his servants equally and that's that."

But Ludím wasn't going to drop it:

"Hey, I'm not saying the Great Butcher hates them any less than the rest of us. I'm just following the statistics; clearly they have certain dispositions that make murder difficult for them. It's not even necessarily a matter of biology, maybe it's a cultural thing."

"Come off it Ludím," Qassya interjected, "nobody's inherently peaceful! You're just a bigot!"

Seeing Ludím glare at Qassya and reach for his hand-axe, Urgigga intervened; an honour duel would not be productive right now.

"Look, even if Ludím is right, the fact is we'd still need to explain why violent crime was down relative to last year. Not like we can say their culture or biology suddenly changed overnight. We need something more specific to this situation."

"Or do we?", Qassya countered. "I'm looking at our numbers in Ehus and they're actually up by more than the Lubarra numbers are down, plus that asteroid is twice the size of Lubarra's anyway. Maybe we bounce this back on the Office, say that if they can't make blood-wine with the hearts we've given them that's really their own incompetence?"

Urgigga slowly shook her head.

"Alas, no. The problem is Ehus overshot. Crime there's so high it actually disrupted mining operations. The boys in the logistical offices would just call it another failure, a net reduction in the Empire's capacity for violent warfare."

In what he no doubt imagined was a stage-whisper, Ludím muttered:

"Wow, an Erēnite's suggestion was kinda stupid, who'd have predicted."

-- At which point Qassya (Erēni born and raised) leapt across the table to throttle him.

Urgigga dejectedly facepalmed; she had the worst fucking mashers.