'Time, in the Imperium, is a flexible concept. When we pass through empyrian space, the subjective time taken and the objective time passed on arrival is, at best, a rough estimate. It is entirely normal for a vessel to take weeks or months longer than expected to traverse a short distance, and not at all unheard-of for a journey of a single subjective day to transpire to have lasted objective years. Whilst evidence is hard to come by, there are persistent rumours that, on occasion, vessels have arrived in one system before they could conceivably have left their point of origin.

'Things aren't helped by the fact that every world has its own diurnal cycle and a unique solar period. Local time-keeping methods are essential for local administration. When you factor in this along with the fact that knowing a universal time or even date is impossible, is it any wonder that our administration is a mess from the very first step?'

- From 'Notes of the Recent Graduate', by High Magister Hieronymous Zepft

The train screamed and rattled its way along its elevated track. Through the windows of the first-class carriage, reserved for the elite and members of the Imperial bureaucracy, the young man stared out at a world cloaked in atmospheric sepia, the chimneys, towers and stacks of its principle city perpetually filtered in brown light as the clouds of its chemical industry rolled across the rooftops and engulfed its streets.

The lights of the train flickered at random and, between that and the perpetual gloom, the newspaper he was trying to consume eventually became more effort than its contents were worth and he idly discarded it to the empty seat from which he had originally gathered it.

Although the train was well occupied, no one made any move to take the seat next to the young administrator. Despite his obvious youth and the tattoos of his rank, visible through his close-cropped tonsure, not only his Administratum dress but also the putto on his shoulder marked him as a person of significance.

He paid the unnerving creature no attention as it scampered onto the back of his chair, launched itself into space and, after a moment of struggle, whirred its way up onto the luggage racks, where it perched in the darkness with which it was more comfortable.

The elevated monorail along which they were travelling began to curve to the right, and a shriek of under-oiled wheels, a stomach-churning lurch and a distant steam whistle accompanied its final few hundred yards into the central hub of Zoltar IV Grand Station before the eminent parties of the carriage began their dignified progress to the doors.

Dire waited, still staring blankly out of the window, until almost the last passengers had descended. In his first few days on Gratian Angelus IV - colloquially just known as Angelus - he had tried to leave with the others, but his status confused and upset his fellow travellers and led to awkwardnesses as some attempted to move hurriedly out of his way as if he were their superior, whilst others treated him as the junior clerk he appeared to be. The putto was an annoyance he would have to address, he thought as he eyes focused upon his reflection in the filthy glass.

He had finally got around to growing. As Angelus was a world with fractionally higher gravity than Capellus IX, the height he had eventually reached was a little taller than average for this new world, although he had never come close to imposing. He had also filled out in other directions. Whilst still lanky, he no longer looked malnourished. He had a sharp, prominent jaw and a long, thin nose which made him look older than he was. His dark eyes remained sunken beneath a permanent frown. And his posting to Angelus - a world where direct sunlight reached the surface no more than a dozen times in an average person's life - was doing nothing for his pallor.

He had discarded the uniform of the progenius in favour of the grey cassock of the Adeptus Administratum, with the blue-trimmed mozetta of the Imperial Tithe.

It had been the High Magister's final gesture of revenge for his insolence: dispatching him to serve in the lowest role of the most despised department on a world suffering more than most beneath the endless demands of the Imperium.

Angelus was a manufacturing world, toiling beneath the weight of four different boots. Its own plutocratic government was a coalition of city-factories, each entirely owned by a single family to whom every building, machine, street, shop and person belonged. The Bloodlines - as they were known - ran everything. To be born of the Blood was to have access to every comfort and privilege this paltry world could provide subject only to the restrictions placed upon them by their peers. The higher one sat in the pecking order of one's particular Bloodline, the greater one's power and the greater the luxury in which one abided.

But manufactoria on this scale could not operate without the involvement of the Mechanicus. The Cult of Mars was strong on Angelus, its adherents living separately from the rest of the population, cloistered within the high walls of their various temples - at least one in each of the city-factories and three that Dire knew of in this one, Aron's Cliff, currently labouring beneath the mastery of its lord Zoltan IV Aron of the Cliff. The Mechanicus tended to the spirits of the great machines that extracted the raw materials from the immense mining plains that lay between the cities, and to the vast processing plants that turned those raw materials into forms that could be worked, and to the towering refineries that took those processed materials and turned them into things the Imperium desired. Without the Mechanicus, the spirits would grow difficult and reluctant. Their constant ministrations were - often literally - the oil upon the turning wheels of Angelus.

Jealous of their authority, of course, was the Ecclesiarchy whose head, Bishop Martyn Lollard, ruled over Bishop's Gap, a city-factory whose output was entirely dedicated to supporting the work of the Ministorum on Angelus and throughout the Gratian sector. Lollard saw himself as the champion of the lowly, constantly preaching on the obligations of the Bloodlines towards their workers. But even as he preached, his lesser orders were walking the streets of the city-factories, demanding that the serf-labourers turn over whatever pitiful surplus they could scrape together in order to gild their souls against damnation. It was a perpetual source of tension between the Bloodlines and the Bishop that, whatever the rulers handed out to ease the lives of their workers would be immediately snatched away by the Ecclesiarchy. So, naturally, the Bloodlines were less inclined to loosen their purse strings, which only intensified the heat of the Bishop's rhetoric.

The risk of popular uprising was ever-present. Not a day went by without at least one outbreak of violence in Aron's Cliff. And Dire imagined that the situation was identical in the other cities, too. He wondered what would happen if any one city ever actually fell to an uprising. Would the Bloodlines come together at last and join together their power to brutally suppress the upstarts? Or would they simply shrug, induct the rebellions leaders into their pantheon and wait for the inevitable corruption of the human soul to restore the old order?

He suspected it would be the latter, because to do the former would be to publicly have to admit to their capacity for coordinated military action. And that would just expose them to the fourth boot that sought to crush Angelus: the Administratum.

The Imperial bureaucracy was there to control access to space beyond Angelus's immediate gravity well and to extract whatever it could from the wealth, production and manpower of Angelus to feed the much, much larger factory of the Imperium's war machine. Angelus IV was the only inhabited world in the system, but there were a number of Imperial stations on larger moons, in the asteroid belt and in deep space that provided early warning systems, docking and refueling for Imperial vessels and just obscure "research" and archival storage of nebulous purpose. But these, too, had to be maintained and paid for.

The Tithe was split between the Tithe Pecuniary and the Tithe Military, with the latter being responsible for the provision of men to the Planetary Defence Force which would, when called upon, give up its headcount for the Imperial Guard. Service in the Tithe Military was mandatory for every male of every class and family, Bloodline or no, for a period depending on the needs of the defence force at that particular time. If a demand for the Imperial Guard - the Astra Militum - was issued by the Departmento Munitorum then the first source of manpower was the PDF. If they weren't enough, then the Tithe Military would take those who had most recently finished service, working through the records until enough bodies were conscripted. It was, therefore, in the interests of the powerful, who had finished their periods of service, to ensure that the PDF was as plentifully manned with those least desired for as long as possible.

Ultimately, therefore, the PDF was effectively a penal regiment - a punishment for those considered unproductive or unmanageable. The Tithe Military was staffed by the Commissariat and, whilst they were hated, they were also feared and respected for their role of dealing with the worst that Angelus could produce.

The Tithe Pecuniary, meanwhile, was simple taxation.

Cash wasn't a resource the Imperium recognized. The Gratian sector used half a dozen different monetary systems with confusing and overlapping names. Angelus used the pinion as its base form. A single pinion was considered one billionth of the value of the world's total Tithing value. And it was this simple fact - established in Imperial law more than seven centuries before - that gave the Tithe Pecuniary its power.

The more the Taxmaster General of Tithes determined the world was worth, the wealthier its plutocrats would be. With the stroke of a pen, the Taxmaster General could ruin a whole Bloodline. The Bloodlines were therefore motivated to have their world tithed at the highest possible rates in order to maximize their own wealth, but those rates translated to punitive extractions from the city-factories of both men and money. A single serf-labourer might labour an entire lifetime for savings of a handful of pinions that could then be snatched away in a single tithing operation. The Bloodlines, of course, could secure their wealth by investing in sector trade and purchasing assets off-world. But control of the space lanes lay in the hands of the same authorities who controlled the Tithe. And so, a tension existed between the Bloodlines and the Taxmaster, as to how much he would permit them to hide away before he would tighten his grip - and how much they were prepared to pay in return for access to the resources to protect what was left!

Meanwhile, the Ecclesiarchy and Mechanicus both enjoyed privileges in empyrian travel that meant that the Administratum couldn't stop them from going wherever they liked with whatever they wanted. Inevitably, therefore, alliances between those groups and the Bloodlines were formed to the mutual advantage of each.

For a world that was so tectonically stable, Dire found the fluidity of the political landscape a fascinating contrast. His fellow clerks complained frequently about it, but he found the whole thing quite invigorating and used every opportunity his work afforded him to find out more about how the different factions were related and how their interests both aligned and diverged. The cogitator banks of the Adeptus were a goldmine of historical data to someone as interested as he was in picking through the warp and weft of reality for the golden threads of truth.

Of course, he mused as he stepped from the train onto the platform, this job was supposed to be a punishment.

He had declined the High Magister's offer, all those years ago. He had kept his secret allegiance to the unknown quantity of the Inquisition, and he had secured his position amidst the rabble. The appearance of the diminutive putto on his shoulder had just been a red underlining on his status that left everyone - progenius, Drill Abbot, Magister - in no doubt that he was not to be touched or interfered with. He had still been a diligent student, however, and had earned his way to the top of the Administratum contingent in every category that mattered to him.

He had advanced to the sixth floor, building a network of runners and informants beneath him amongst the lower floors. He had even extended his contacts into the other colleges, forming alliances with a handful of likeminded progenii. But, month by month, the Inquisition failed to make an appearance and, as time passed, he began to fear the consequences that the High Magister had promised. And he began to fear what might happen if the putto - the marker of his future greatness - were to leave him.

There was no telling what made them latch onto a particular figure or person. He had no idea what had attracted this wizened monstrosity to his shoulder, nor what might drive it away. He had experimented with both affection and cruelty, tempting fate by risking its antipathy. But although he established that it didn't like to be hit or pinched and that it had alarming sharp teeth embedded in its tiny jaws - with the scar on his left hand to prove it - the creature never left him.

It would occasionally put more or less distance between them, lurking in the rafters for several days at a time, or even hiding beneath his bed. But it always came back to him eventually, and never strayed more than a handful of yards from his side.

And it had followed him into the Terminus without protest.

To his surprise, the Terminus had been actually useful experience. It was less a different school, he had discovered, than it was a place through which practical study was enabled. The students of the Terminus learned how to conduct themselves, how to assert their desires and needs, how to behave towards their superiors, how to navigate the reality of Imperial life, and it had involved months-long periods dispatched to locations about Capellus as apprentices to researchers, archivists, administrators, chirurgeons... And with every new encounter, Dire had wondered Will this be the one? Will this be when the Inquisition finally snatches me up?

Until, at last, with the minimum of ceremony, he had been dispatched to this world.

To travel the empyrian had been an anticlimactic experience. First strapped into a lighter, on which he had been heartily nauseous, along with ten other Terminus students and a Drill Abbot, they had been taken to a vast open space, where he had briefly been overwhelmed, first, by the sight of the longest unbroken horizon he had seen in his life then, second, by the sight of a vast, brick-like shuttle vessel descending through the grey cloud cover in a blaze of metal and lights.

At first, he had thought it was the emyprian trading ship they were to board, but the Drill Abbot had quickly disabused them of that notion. The mechantman was ten times the size, if not larger, and couldn't descend too far into the planet's gravity well. But before they could learn more, the whole group of them was herded into a shipping container, given spartan modification to make it habitable. There, they had been but a few among a whole crowd of travellers: pilgrims, traders, administrators, priests and more. The Drill Abbot had issued them a cursory benediction, an economical splash of blessed water and a satisfied farewell before retreating before the container's doors could close upon him.

And with that, they were left in barely-lit darkness.

*

Conversation within the container was lively, and the former progenii were treated with surprising benevolence by the other passengers, many of whom were graduates of the same system to one extent or another and almost all of those had travelled this way at least once before. Supplies of water and food were shared, and a young priest told some stories of the saints to pass the time.

A portly trader, squashed in next to him, punctuated the tales, sotto voce, with scurrilous additions and Dire was amazed to find himself struggling not to laugh at the fanciful and inappropriate asides and, as he looked around and his eyes adapted to the gloom, he was amazed to see, amongst the expected figures, the most unexpected shapes of women.

Women had barely featured in the lives of the progenii. The Drill Abbots - themselves all subject to chemical gelding that withdrew the desire or compunction for personal gratification, but men of the galaxy nevertheless - had lectured them on the physical side of human relationships in remarkable detail and, when neither exhausted nor observed (which was rarely), the progenii tended to indulge in their own experiments in intimacy. It was sometimes said that there were women among the servants of the Schola, but none were ever seen in the vicinity of the teaching areas or the collegia. The Drill Abbots had also taught the proper order of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor, which was that the Imperium was run and managed by men and that the role of women was to support that endeavour and bear children to ensure that humanity survived and prospered. For women, custodians of the future, to be placed at risk upon the battlefield or permitted to bear the strains and challenges of leadership was heretical. Young women were far too valuable to be so risked and older women - by dint of having once been young women - were too inexperienced. Consequently, their role was strictly limited.

As Dire observed the few women he could see, it occurred to him that, for all the detail the Drill Abbots had gone into regarding the function of intercourse, they had spoken very little about how one ended up in the situation in the first place. Some Imperial cultures favoured a life-bonding ritual, whereas others promoted temporary partnerships - a necessity when a man might be called away to fight at a moment's notice. Some worlds, after a particularly harsh tithe, would adopt polyamorous arrangements to ensure that women were supported and continued to perform their duties of child bearing.

But how did one start that conversation?

His contemplation, though, was interrupted by an enormous crash that made him jump, yanking a cry of alarm from his lips and the nameless putto from inside his robes, where it had been hiding.

With a wordless chatter of irritation, it shot up to hide in the cowling behind one of the weak lamps.

'Rest easy, lads,' said one of the merchants. ''Tis just the shuttle taking us on board.'

'Shall we be here the whole journey?' asked one of Dire's peers.

'Maybe a day or so,' said the merchant. 'There is little comfort to be found in the Emperor's palm.'

'But for the comfort of doing His bidding,' intoned several voices - the priest loudest, but also several of the boys heading into service with the Ecclesiarchy and a handful of others.

*

The merchant had been right enough. By the time the doors of the container were opened and the passengers released to occupy a dormitory barely much larger but which, by then, had seemed positively luxurious, even the well-fed and disciplined graduates were starting to droop. Only one of the older passengers died during the wait, and she was a pilgrim, which was considered by all to be a good omen for the journey that one of them should have the blessing of passing directly to the Emperor's side.

When the transition to the empyrian came, many ship-days later, it was with a claxon announcement in high gothic. Minutes later, as Dire lay on his bed, eyes squeezed shut and hands clasped, there had been a momentary sense of endless, unspeakable depths, as if he had suddenly dropped from a cliff towards jagged rocks in a black sea, before the feeling passed as quickly as it had arrived.

The Gellar field had obviously stabilized and, from that point on, the journey passed in tedium, punctuated by bad food, gambling and occasional fights. But Dire's putto had marked him out already to the travellers, and there had been no chance of his being harassed, even if the deferential behaviour of his peers hadn't sent enough of a signal to leave him be.

Arrival at Angelus, a week or so later, had largely been the same series of events in reverse, with one fewer deaths. Then Dire was standing on blasted astrocrete, breathing the air of a new world.

The Zoltar IV Grand Station was built on top of four towering habitation blocks, its floor mostly constructed from gridded plasteel, one of Angelus's main products, which left the departing passengers stepping out over a visible drop of hundreds of feet into the space between the blocks: a literally dizzying assertion of authority on Zoltan's part, given that this was built to be a hub supporting the district principally occupied by the Imperial institutions. The Administratum, Adeptus Arbites, Departmento Munitorum, Temple Mechanicus and a dozen other, lesser but still esteemed institutions had established themselves nearby, each served by its own branch line. But for the most part, the workers of those institutions rarely used the monorail themselves. Dire was a rarity in a commuter crush made up principally of petitioners. He had elected to take private lodgings rather than occupy an apartment in the Administratum building itself.

As he made his way to the branch line platform, the petitioners walking the same way gave him a lot of space. No one wanted to risk jostling the person who might end up deciding their petition... even though Dire knew that really wasn't how it worked. Petitioners were essentially asking the Imperium for a favour and the Imperium didn't do favours. There was, however, a quota of petitions that the department was expected to grant in every accounting period. Because the vast majority of petitions, by Imperial standards, were unspeakably trivial in nature the petitions were chosen at random to be granted, but because the Imperium - whilst unwieldy, ponderous and stupid by most measures - was also cunning, the petitions selected were subject to quality assurance to make sure that the department didn't accidentally concede to something of actual import. But because of the scale of petitions being received daily by the department, there was hardly a single petition granted for which the petitioner was still alive at the time. The wheels of bureaucracy ground slow and exceeding small.

This, to his very great relief, wasn't Dire's job. The petitioners could have punched him in the gut and it would have had not the slightest effect on the likelihood.

Of course, the grim-faced enforcers may have had an influence on the petitioners ability to submit that petition on account of how they would have been sentenced to a lifetime of hard labour for striking an Imperial official.

Harder, thought Dire with a wry smile. Harder labour.

He boarded the tram and stood near the front, ignoring the people around him as he took in the view of the vehicle's descent towards the Grand Plaza of Administration (Aron's Cliff Division). It was a monolithic slab of a building, with a broad, dark base from which rose a series of interlocking towers of plasteel and rockcrete, inscribed with exhortations of loyalty, hard work and faith. It stood in stark contrast to the building of the Ecclesiarchy, though, in that it was entirely free of statues. The philosophy of the Administratum was that it had no saints, no heroes, no exemplars. It was the faceless and impersonal will of the Emperor.

It was both a place and no place. It was less a destination than it was the physical manifestation of a trillion competing processes, each working furiously to maintain a system for no purpose except to maintain the system.

Dire thought it was magnificent.