The Device

The boys back in the Office for Ceremonial Calculations had called it a "high-risk, high-reward endeavour." And now he stood amidst the cratered-out wreckage of an office block, the blood-red sunset barely visible through the choking smog from fires blazing across the city, the intermittent sounds of combat only obscured by the more localised screams of the wounded or crazed; so, yeah, Bēl-Hubulli would at least have to agree with the high-risk part.

His reveries were interrupted by a sound from behind the over-turned desk to his left, a chipper robotic voice saying "Generalised disdain". Brief though it was, this was all the warning he needed, and Bēl-Hubulli managed to raise his guard in time to block the wild strike from the letter-opener wielding administratum clerk who burst from the hiding place. There were tears in her eyes as she swung, sobbing out "You're just like the rest of them!" Fortunately, these Imperium-canids were untrained in the art of bureaucratic combat; his hand-axe easily deflected her blow, and shooting from the hip with his las-pistol he was able to put a shot straight into her gut that took her down immediately. As she fell to the floor a small cuboid Device bounced out of her unfurling hand, coming to rest on the rubble-strewn floor before phasing out of existence with a pop.

Bēl-Hubulli dared to hope that would be it, and so risked radio-contact to check in:

"Command, this is Retrieval Unit Ištēn; Zone Five is clear and I just had visual confirmation on a Device recuperated, request clarification on whether that was primary-objective secured. Over."

There was a moment's silence before command, in a concealed orbit on S.U.N. ship Shattered Jade, got back to him:

"Ištēn this is command, that's a negative on primary-objective; we're showing it still at large. Keep hunting, over."

With a sigh Bēl-Hubulli confirmed receipt, then ordered the rest of his squad to continue their sweep into the next building, his katogaur watching his six.

The theory behind these Devices went way above Bēl-Hubulli's head, but he at least got the gist of what they actually did. Lihzatu, one of the scholars at Taruoduron had somehow harnessed a portion of Khorne's Mighty Strategic Insight into these little boxes, such that if you pointed one of its sides at someone it would read out-loud a completely accurate summary of what they really think of you, plus give you a brief jolt of the emotion underlying that evaluation.

At first the Church had been suspicious of such an innovation; fussing around with revealing hidden truths positively reeked of the third impediment. But Lihzatu had successfully defended its orthodoxy. Think what it would do to a social group, she’d said, to have every secret little grudge revealed, every seething resentment against one's boss spelled out, every minor annoyance magnified by publication. While our society could no doubt handle such a thing, Lihzatu hastened to add, due to our Khorne-given propensity to directness, the universal respect our esteemed leaders are held in, and the Etogaur's genius in implementing the duelling system to resolve interpersonal problems, less utopian social arrangements could scarce handle the strain.

So it was Lihzatu had theorised -- accurately, it turned out, Bēl-Hubulli thought as he heard the huge explosion in the distance that could only be the city's power plant going up -- that suddenly introducing such Devices, and ensuring their rapid widespread availability, amounted to a potent weapon of war. Human nature being what it is people would not be able to resist using the device on those around them; the initial shock would generate lots of resentment that would then itself be made public knowledge, that would in turn generate further mutual-anger and recriminations, and so on. A most holy vicious-circle of rage and dysfunction.

Indeed, Bēl-Hubulli had actually played some part in the first live-test of the Devices’ potential as weapons. He and his team had infiltrated a small Imperial deep-void station to plant Devices in the lockers of all 8 crew-members, along with cameras at strategic locations so they could do some remote monitoring of this little experiment. The results had been enough to get Lihzatu a Levar'Hūūlme Prize, the highest scholarly honour in the Sanguinary Utnapisthim.

As he'd lead the infiltration team, Bēl-Hubulli had been permitted to watch events unfurl from Shattered Jade's command centre as the crew awoke to find the puzzling little cubes in their possession. A couple of the scenes he’d there witnessed stood out in his memory. First was the incident between the two junior members of the crew in the rec-room just before morning shift —

"Hey, Sigríðr, did you get one of these in your locker today? I have no idea what it is, but I thin-"

The young man was cut off when, holding it up for the woman to inspect he unwittingly activated the device, which in its ever-helpful upbeat tone had proceeded to announce:

“Very mildly positive, verging on indifference."

The young man had looked non-plussed, then crestfallen, as he gawped and found himself unable to resume his previous line of thought. Sigríðr herself, on the other-hand, had looked a bit shocked but tried to brave through it:

"Ha ha, what was that? But yeah I got one, Ketill." She held it up for him to inspect and of course the inevitable happened:

“His feelings for you have blossomed from friendship into profound attraction as time has gone by; he’s frequently given over to limerent reflections on your beauty and wit; every night he wonders whether, in another life if he'd have met you first, maybe you'd be happy together."

At this point Ketill's hands had dropped to his sides, the look of horror on his face making it pointless to deny the Device’s accuracy. Worse, he was unfortunately still holding the device with its pertinent side pointed directly at Sigríðr, so it had piped up with now updated information:

“She is suddenly deeply uncomfortable in your presence, confused and even somewhat offended that someone with your manifest inadequacies would consider her feelings regarding you to be anything more than professional."

Wherein Sigríðr's device, itself still pointed at Ketill as she was by now frozen in place by the sheer awkwardness of the rapidly spiralling interaction, piped up with:

"Feelings of resentment towards you rapidly emerging within him, as he mentally attempts to divert the blame for his constant misreading of your intentions onto the various imagined signs of your interest that he obsessively ruminated upon; he shall henceforth claim you were leading him on.”

Slowly Sigríðr lowered her device, but since she did so without changing its orientation it was still registering Ketill’s emotional state enough to make one more interjection:

“He’s ashamed to admit that the look of disdain he now sees in your eyes, and the more general humiliation of this situation, arouses him."

— It had only got worse from there.

The second incident, though a much briefer interaction, had stuck with Bēl-Hubulli all the more. Years later it still made him wince to think of it. —

A junior officer had walked into the station-commander's office, snapped off a salute, and asked for the day's orders. The station commander had been sitting behind his desk with the Device in hand, pondering it too intently to even notice their subordinate's entrance. As he was turning the device around in his hands the senior officer's Device had come to face his junior, at which point it had read out:

"Incredible gratitude; sees you as a mentor figure to whom they owe their career, hopes that one day she can show others the kindness and support you have shown her - despite some residual fears you are the only person she feels even somewhat secure around, the only person who has ever instilled in her any confidence that she can make it in this industry."

The subordinate had blushed a deep crimson, and stammered something inchoate as she fumbled through her pockets to reveal her own device, unknowingly now pointing at the commander in turn. In her hands it had thus opined:

"Secretly disappointed with you, feels they made a mistake by taking you under their wing ever since you made that embarrassing mistake in your report that you hoped they did not notice; they did notice, and have been looking for excuses to transfer you away ever since."

The young woman had burst into tears and left before her commander had had a chance to dismiss her.

— By the end of the first day there'd been three fist fights, and one attempted murder. Bēl-Hubulli had led his team to sweep and clear the station after a truly general brawl had begun the next morning shift. In the end they took only Sigríðr as a prisoner, since there was general agreement that the fashion in which she had impaled Ketill straight through the heart (first metaphorically then later quite literally) suggested a promising future under Khorne.

That little experience had been more than enough to convince the skull-counters on Uruk that the MPM on investing in these devices could be phenomenal. So it was that production was ramped up, and planning begun on an operation for deploying these in a small city that served as a supply hub and refugee centre on the outskirts of what had once been Eriduki. But it was during the months of planning all this that someone noticed a potential problem.

Sigríðr had fairly quickly, after only light torture at the hands of missionary-interrogators, found the hate of Khorne in her heart. She’d passed the Trials, been declared Mighty, and was already making a promising start as an infrastructure disrepair-woman, ensuring there were just enough mechanical faults with public transport to make morning commutes maximally infuriating. She’d even been permitted to keep her Device as a keepsake of what had brought her to the true path of Might. She’d received almost uniformly glowing reports from her supervisors: her ability to work diligently even in challenging deep-void environments, and heartfelt disdain for men in particular, made her a highly effective member of any team she was a part of. The problem was, however, that “almost” glossed over a rather important detail: her only persistent negative feedback from supervisors was that she was too calm, too reasonable, too willing to take on board feedback in a mature fashion while reasonably expecting high professional standards from others in return. Surely she could up her MPM a little bit by creating just a little bit more workplace drama?

This, on reflection, had raised alarm bells. For, something further was realised about these devices. Sure, their initial effect was pleasing-unto-Khorne. But that was in a society unused to the emotional frankness they foisted upon us. It turns out, though, that those who survive the initial shock - and, presumably, any societies they’d construct together - are actually more emotionally stable and less disposed to fly off the handle in rage. A people used to radical honesty, freed of anxieties regarding how others perceived them, accustomed to openness about their flaws and misgivings - well, such a people lacked the wellsprings of rage and resentment through which Khorne enters our hearts. If such societies flourished then it would be a disaster for the Murder-Per-Moment ratio, it could set the galaxy back by centuries!

To try and counter this, technicians had added to each Device a Recuperation Mechanism, wherein after a set period in use the Device would be teleported back to storage on the Shattered Jade. But at any level where the operation would still be cost effective the Recuperation Mechanisms had to be relatively lightweight, and thus were capable of being damaged and rendered inoperative. This meant there was thus some risk of Devices being left in the hands of survivors of the initial operation. So it was that Office logisticians had come to describe the operation to deploy the Devices as high-risk, high-reward. If all went well, they’d wreck a densely populated Imperium depot city and spread rage and violence for a supremely low investment of resources, given how cheap the Devices were to construct. But, if Recuperation failed even once, then they were faced with the nightmarish prospect of an emotionally mature, peaceful society, utterly at ease with itself, right on the Sanguinary Utnapishtim’s borders.

That was where Bēl-Hubulli’s present mission came in. While the initial deployment of the Devices around the city had gone off as planned, and chaos satisfyingly ensued, sure enough they’d soon been pinged that one of the Devices was not being Recuperated. Under cover of the general chaos around the city’s airspace as Imperial controllers struggled to get a handle on the situation, Bēl-Hubulli and his squad had been inserted from orbit as close as they could to the last known location of the missing Device. Their orders were simple: retrieve or destroy the Device.

They’d cleared two hab-blocks and the remains of four office complexes, encountering only token resistance along the way, before they finally found it. Incongruously enough, the Device was placed neatly in the centre of a table in a small habitation’s kitchen area, its Recuperation Module sparking as it repeatedly tried and failed to activate. The Device’s likely former possessor, an adult male of frail build, was lying next to it with bruises on his throat, clearly indicative of recent strangulation. No other clue as to what had happened presented itself. Not particularly caring, Bēl-Hubulli gave whispered thanks to his guardian daemon before walking up to the thing and lining up a point blank shot with his las-pistol, ready to get this over with and return to the extraction point. But Khorne had other plans for him that day.

Immediately outside there was an explosion, jolting the table and causing the device to fly into the air. Bēl-Hubulli’s second in command, his katogaur, was standing immediately behind him. Instinctively, the katogaur reached out and caught the Device before they lost sight of it. Meaning the katogaur was now holding the Device as it pointed directly at Bēl-Hubulli. With mounting horror they heard the device say:

“He admires your skill as a warrior of the Pact, but fears that your rapid rise up the chain of command is indicative that you will soon surpass him, proving he really has peaked as a mid-rank officer.”

For a brief moment Bēl-Hubulli and his inferior stared into each other’s eyes, mortified. But since Bēl-Hubulli already had his weapon drawn he was better placed to win the inevitable contest. The katogaur was dead before they could even unholster their own gun. Once the Device had revealed that he, Bēl-Hubulli, a commander of the Sherden Pact, was a coward, had known fear, this could only end in the death of at least one of them. He followed his kill-shot up by stamping vehemently on the blasted Device until it was utterly destroyed, and radio’d in to command that he and what remained of his squad would be returning to the extraction point immediately.

Later, as the drop-ship returned them to orbit, Bēl-Hubulli gave a silent prayer for his katogaur’s soul; that his eyes may gaze upon the river aeternal, that he may do Khorne great honour in the battle everlasting that was to come. He prayed that his guilt and shame would be taken from him, that it might be transmuted into a rage so pure it’d burn away the sense that it should have been him who died in that decrepit little kitchen, that Khorne alone would know what he deserved.