Reformism

Logistician Sagmah smiled ruefully as she heard the crowd boo her name. Her cage was only just beneath the surface; and it was clear from the volume that the arena above her was packed, that was for sure. She gave the hand-axe she'd been provided with - a final favour from her former comptroller, a chance to at least die with honour - a few swings, testing its weight against her grip. Last time she'd held one of these it'd been during the battle for LZ-257; she'd thrown hers right into the skull of some Khorne-forsaken beast, and never managed to recover it. She'd thought she was going to die then, and even as she'd delighted in the kill she'd immediately regretted having wasted it. What a shame it would be not to die axe in hand! Or so she'd thought -- as it happened, she'd made it through that fight. Now the moment was fast approaching when she actually would die, she was glad to have an axe in hand once more. Still - how had it come to this?

Of course, on some level she knew exactly why. The decap-and-trade programme had been her idea; she'd ridden the wave of prestige when it had seemed to be going well, so there was a kind of karmic fairness that, when it came time for someone to take the blame for it, she was the fall gal. Mind you; if the people really responsible for this debacle were stationed anywhere near her in that battle aeternal which faith assured her was to come, then the bastards had better watch out.

After all, the skull crisis had been those cowards' fault in the first place! Everyone in the Sanguinary Utnapishtim, from the glorious Etogaur himself all the way down to the lowest wardum, was bound by the 8 year Plan. This was an ingeniously complex schema, renewed and revised every 8 years, for ensuring everyone plays their part in maximising the "murder-per-moment" ratio. One could, of course, provide direct contributions to the MPM in the form of skulls taken in His name, as the Mighty warriors do across the Pact's various active warfronts. But even those such as Sagmah, stationed in pacified territories, could play their part. This they could do by either directly producing war materiel, whose expected return in contribution to skulls taken was accounted for in the Plan, or indirectly by providing for the organisation of those who so do -- where, again, returns on administrative efforts were calculated in expected skull taking. And everything had been going according to that Plan until Kāṣiru's ruling class had messed it up.

Sagmah's introspective reveries were interrupted by the sound of an especially ferocious roar from above, only for that bellow to be drowned out a moment later by the crowd's appreciative cheer. Despite steeling herself, she found her heart-rate increasing. She recognised that roar; its unnatural cadence, its braying wrath, the way one could somehow hear - no, taste - the violence it portended. They'd gone and done it; they'd unleashed a Nēšu Kārum, a warp infused monstrosity, into the arena. They really wanted to make an example of her, eh? No, not quite, she corrected herself - more properly, her superiors wished to be seen making an example of her, to convince their superiors in turn that the situation was handled. It was genuine comfort to Sagmah to know that whatever should happen to her, the situation most certainly was not under control. They'd get what was coming to them eventually.

In fact they'd have probably got what was coming to them years ago if it hadn't have been for Sagmah herself, she regretfully reminded herself. Kāṣiru was unusual in that it hadn't been conquered by the Pact; it had defected from the Imperium. Around a century ago when the Pact's forces had been tearing through the surrounding system, they'd been surprised to find as they approached Kāṣiru that the planet's astropathic centres was sending out signals of joyous welcome. High ranking ministers from the planet's previous governing regime were actually being bled-out in live pict-casts broadcast across the planet! It transpired that a faction of the local aristocracy had long worshiped Khorne, and upon receiving word that the Pact were slaughtering the system's defence forces they'd carried out an uprising. Their coup had been successful, and by the time the Pact arrived at Kāṣiru they were welcomed as liberators by representatives of these new power brokers. So it was that Kāṣiru entered the Empire.

Or, so they claimed.

Suspicions abounded.

Of course, the very notion of aristocracy had been abolished with the coming of the Pact. Such faux social-distinctions mean nothing to Khorne, after all, who cares only for Might and Prowess. He wants blood spilled, not preserved in family lines. But, still, an inquisitive observer couldn't help but notice that none of the former aristocracy's line had ever failed the tests of Might. One's status as wardum or Mighty was not meant to be hereditary and parents around the empire spent agonising years fretting about the fate of their children; yet, somehow, these soft-handed aristos never had to worry. And, what's more, it just so happened that when Kāṣiru's role in successive 8 year plans was detailed, the scions of the once-nobility were always assigned vital posts overseeing war production -- far behind the front. Word was that the regional Arnogaur had started looking into the matter before being challenged to an honour duel over an apparently unrelated matter... by a particularly burly gentleman whose family had been employed for generations by house Gal, chief among the Kāṣirii nobility. That Arnogaur's skull was said to be used as a drinking cup by Zinam, the charismatic and handsome head of the Gal household, to this day.

These might have remained nothing more than scurrilous rumours had it not been for the production slowdown 3 years ago. An unusually disruptive social experiment had led to a labour shortage in Kāṣiru's mines and manufactora. Being thus unable to actually supply the war materiel demanded of Kāṣiru's contribution to the 8 year plan, managers had resorted to supplementing their materiel based contributions to the murder-per-moment ratio with "direct contributions" - i.e. raiding other mines, murdering their wardum, and presenting their skulls to government inspectors in lieu of actual product. This only exacerbated the labour shortage, however, which led to more raids, which... etc. It was a doom spiral, and it only got worse when preliminary investigation concluded that these social experiments had only been so disruptive due to mismanagement of workers' habblocks. This was blamed on the fact that habblock-management was being allocated to whatever family had traditionally owned them, and there was no evidence of any meritocratic process of arm-wrestling or knife fighting being used to vouchsafe this, as would have been proper. If problems like this kept up, there was a genuine risk that someone too important to just honour duel away might start asking questions about the apparent persistence of aristocracy on Kāṣiru.

In desperation, Zinam Gal had approached Sagmah. She'd already garnered a reputation for bold and out of the box thinking, based on her theoretical treatise on calculated expected value in terms of theoretically infinitely divisible skull fragments rather than whole skulls. He'd begged -- no, she corrected her memory. She'd like to think that, but he hadn't really -- he'd charmed, flattered her, into thinking of a solution for their production problems - and that's when she'd come up with the decap-and-trade system.

There was a grinding creak from above her, and a shaft of light pierced Sagmah's cell, temporarily dazzling her. Slowly her cage was raised into the arena, giving her eyesight time to adapt to what had been blinding sunlight. She emerged at one end of an oval shaped arena, dusty and barren, with crowds seated all around to ger a clear view of the violence to come. She glanced around and saw Zinam Gal himself sitting in a prize booth directly behind her; the prick was actually smiling, grinning even. And across the arena opposite her was the minotaurian Nēšu Kārum, steam venting from its nostrils, letting out guttural snorts as its hooves pounded the ground, eager to be let loose that it may charge her. Those horns, those terrible horns - they were how she was going to die.

Projecting out from speakers attached to the arena roof, an announcer read out charges against Sagmah.

"... and so by means most INFAMOUS, did the vile traitor Sagmah AID AND ABET PACIFISTS" - the announcer paused to let the crowd's furious invective against her build - "failing most egregiously before the THIRD IMPEDIMENT, and thereby knowingly HOLDING BACK OUR GLORIOUS EMPIRE'S HOLY WAR, falling into the INDULGENCE OF..."

-- On he went. The crowd made it clear they hated her all the more with each word he said. But it hadn't always been like this.

The decap-and-trade system had been popular! The idea was simple; worker shortages were not evenly spread around Kāṣiru, and some places were actually exceeding their quota production. So, why not allow for trade? Those places producing useful materiel in excess of requirements could be given extra ration-scrip by those producing in deficit, according to a formula she herself worked out, and in return hand over a receipt "exchanging" their portion of the skull-quota, essentially letting it count towards the productive quota of whoever gave them the ration-scrip. Office logisticians would monitor these remittance exchanges to ensure that Kāṣiru's MPM ratio ended up back where it needed to be. This still left their production out-of-sync with the wider Sanguinary Utnapishtim's 8 year plan mind you, but that was the neat thing about this scheme. It was incentive compatible! The desire to retain one's allotted ration-scrip, or be in a position to receive excess, encouraged innovation, as people found ways of using the labour and material they had available to meet their allotted quota. This led to a gradual realignment between Kāṣirii production and the central plan. She'd worked out the theory, then tested it in small scale simulations and gradual roll outs. With the success of these preliminary steps and working together with Zinam, they'd rolled out the scheme across the planet. Within two years she was being celebrated across the system for Kāṣiru's economic turnaround; people were calling it the "Kāṣirii miracle", no less.

Alas, however, it was not to last. Some of Zinam Gal's kin acquired a bit of a taste for idleness. For reasons that had never quite been clear, former aristos seemed to always have an excess of ration-scrip available. Rather than even try to meet their production quota, many took to simply buying off their production quota every half-quarter, and spending their time in near idleness. It seems that through her scheme they'd found a way of returning to their old lifestyle guilt-free - and the people noticed. Slowly but surely resentment built up, especially among a sect of particularly pious lay-brethren in the Church of the Burning Slaughter, who'd always suspected Kāṣirii aristocracy of harbouring impious sentiments. Eventually, after Enḫezal Hulmush was caught engaged in flagrant acts of kindness by one such fanatic, it all boiled over. There'd been riots. Worse, there'd been riots wherein both Mighty and wardum participants had worked together; the outrage at Kāṣiru's nobility was deep seated, and crossed caste lines.

Cooperation between slaves and Mighty in anti-state activity was the sort of thing that prompted a full on panic response from Uruk. Retaliatory forces were on their way to the planet now, and in an effort to jump out in front of their arrival Zinam Gal had distanced himself from the decap-and-trade scheme. In fact, beyond just having the programme shut down, he'd concocted evidence of a conspiracy, and claimed that Sagmah had deliberately fooled him into promoting a pacifist scheme. Sagmah was confident there was no way it'd be enough to save his hide when the Pact arrived here in force. He probably knew that himself, even. But he was desperate. That snake had gone so far as to have used the fact that she was one skull under her own quota as evidence she was shirking violence herself. That'd hurt. He'd known, he'd known full well, that every half-quarter she traded a ration-scrip in for her last skull. It was a little symbolic act of affirming her own system, an expression of pride in her own work. One night, over dinner, he'd told her he thought that was sweet. Sagmah sighed as she recalled that night; it felt like a lifetime ago. Now Zinam was here, in this arena, making sure to be seen to enjoy watching her executed.

Finally, the announcer finished his various aspersions and calumnies against Sagmah. As was tradition, he offered her a last question:

"Before you meet your ignoble end, coward, have you anything to say for yourself?"

A hush descended upon the stadium, as the crowd awaited Sagmah's response. After gathering herself, Sagmah held her small hand-axe aloft, and enunciated clearly into the crowd. She simply said:

"I die the Etogaur's faithful servant -- but Khorne's first!"

And on saying the last she spun round and launched her axe through the air. Gracefully it arced, spinning in tightly defined circles. As it flew, the Nēšu Kārum burst its chains asunder and came stampeding towards Sagmah. Only it, with its warp infused reaction times, was quick enough to realise what had occurred. But even it was not fast enough - the axe struck true, splitting Zinam Gal's skull asunder. The crowd now had time to react, roaring as a moment later Sagmah was impaled on the charging beast's horns. As Zinam Gal's body slumped forward into the arena, Sagmah's was thrown forward next to it. She was dead before she even hit the floor - but on her corpse was a smile, happy to know that she had died with her quota met.