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I believe it necessary to open this extract with two cautions for my fellow inquisitors to keep in mind as they peruse it. First, I would like to state that I have not published this particular extract as an informative text, as I have the previous documents in circulation, nor is it intended to provide the light reading which some of my colleagues have determined to treat these extracts as. I have, instead, chosen it in order to shed some light on the intimate relationship between Cain and his aide, Jurgen, upon which there has recently been some scurrilous and, frankly, insulting speculation on the part of some of my readers.
Secondly, I wish to note that this document has not been extracted from the Cain Archives, as have all the previous works. It is instead from my private files, and the material here made up the bulk of a private letter that Cain send to me in his later years, shortly after Jurgen’s death. This was also during the general period during which he composed his public autobiography, To Serve the Emperor: A Commissar’s Life, and during which he also appears to have begun the private, far more frank collection of private writings that have become the Cain Archive. I have taken out the liberty of removing text from both the beginning and the end of the letter, which contained personal content of no interest to my readers, and presenting merely the portion relevant to my purposes.
As a final note, I would like to warn those inquisitors of a more austere bent that, perhaps because of the private nature of the letter, Cain was much more explicit in this anecdote than he typically was while committing the Cain Archive to dataslate. I have chosen not to attempt to censor his narrative, as I feel that such an effort would be counter-productive when my goal is to present the honest realities of what rare intimacies existed between Cain and his aide.
Amberley Vail, Ordo Xenos
This was during that period shortly after Lord General Zyvan’s death, while the Munitorium was still busy finding new assignments to shuffle those of us left from his staff off to. I was holed up in that little office on Numoria where you found me during that unpleasant business with the necron manifestation in the next sector over.[1] As you may have noted, there were few pleasures to occupy my time on Numoria, and certainly no female company, until you arrived. They were Emperor-botherers to rival the Tallarns, and while people of that stripe always have their secret sinful underbellies somewhere around the place, none of them were interested in showing them to me.
Due to the religious exemptions provided to the local staff, it had been over a year since I’d seen a face that wasn’t bearded, excepting some of the non-native Administratum drones who were too deep in their paperwork to feel any of the pressure to blend in that the high command there exerted. And Jurgen, I suppose, as the locals disdained to call the patchy mange on his face a beard, and after all that time among them even I had taken to thinking of it as mere stubble. I myself had given in some time ago on the subject, with the hope of winning enough points with the Numorians to find out where their bootleggers operated, a hope that was disappointed for the duration of my stay.
My job here consisted of nothing more than shuffling dataslates and occasionally being called upon to mediate between the uptight local arbites and merchant crews on shore leave, even my by-then formidable reputation failing me in my quest to relieve my boredom. (Though I suppose I should have been glad of it, given all the danger that reputation has dropped me into in the past.) Jurgen, as always, proved a stolid buffer between myself and the worst of the tedium, handling the bulk of the files that passed over my desk with his usual dogged efficiency, but without other amusements at hand that only left me to play increasingly pointless games of regicide against myself.
Throughout my career, I’ve rarely had to resort to porno slates for gratification, but I’m ashamed to confess that by the end of that year I was cultivating a small collection in that office. It had nothing on Jurgen’s extensive stockpile, of course, which I had refrained from raiding out of a sensible reluctance to learn too much about my aide’s private habits, but I had acquired several and had taken to reviewing them often. I was halfway through one of those when Jurgen knocked on my office door, and I hurriedly switched it off and slid it under a pile of more legitimate paperwork before indicating he could enter.
“Tanna tea, sir?” he asked, motioning with the pot. “I had some on the boil.”
“Certainly,” I said. Despite Jurgen’s careful rationing, and what I presumed, but never confirmed, was a certain amount of black-market scrounging, we were running low on tanna leaves, and I didn’t want to miss out on what might be one of our last pots.
Jurgen ducked back out of the room, then shuffled back in moments later with a tray, containing a bowl of gently steaming tea and a small plate of shuvoot balls, tart local delicacies that I had taken a liking to. (Even though I maintained my daily training with my chainsword and las-pistol, my usual appetite had diminished due to my forced inactivity, and Jurgen seemed to consider this an alarming development that he sought constantly to remedy.) As he rounded the desk with his tray, I had the unpleasant realization that my preoccupation with the porno slate had left me in a rather compromising state.
Loyal and unimaginative as he was, I had no fear that Jurgen would breathe a word of it outside my office, but allowing him to witness me in such a condition would still be discomfiting for us both. I shifted in my seat, cursing myself for throwing my greatcoat over the back of my chair where I was unable to tug it over my lap, and nudged my chair forward until I was flush with the desk, hoping Jurgen would interpret the motion as eagerness for the platter he was now setting in front of me.
“Thank you, Jurgen,” I said, reaching for the bowl of tea. Jurgen forestalled me by clearing his throat and shuffling his feet, in the way he often did when he wanted my attention on a subject too minor to outright interrupt me for. I leaned back just far enough to look up at him without, I hoped, revealing my present state. “What is it?”
As soon as our eyes met, Jurgen looked down at the floor, like a little boy being scolded by his schola tutor. He cleared his throat again, stickily, and I saw that underneath his ever-present collection of skin diseases, his face had gone an unusual shade of pink. “I could take care of that for you, sir,” he muttered, jerking his head to indicate exactly that condition which I had gone to such lengths to hide.
I was stunned briefly into silence by his words. We had been together for decades now, and I trusted that Jurgen wasn’t offering out of some sense of obligation, or viewing it as part of the duties of a commissar’s aide. I had heard rumors before of commissars who did expect that sort of unpleasant service, but almost always in relation to how they’d died, quite heroically no doubt, well back from the enemy lines—the sort of commissar who would abuse their authority in such a way was invariably also high-handed in other ways, and such commissars were never beloved by the troopers they stood in judgment over. For the life of me, though, I couldn’t imagine what else would compel Jurgen to make such an offer.
My silence must have unsettled him, because he raised his head again, clearly anxious, and looked at me with the kind of focused intensity that he usually only gave his own porno slates. The expression was familiar, short the anxiety, which I had never seen phlegmatic Jurgen show in even the hottest battle, and it occurred to me how often he had looked at me like that over the years, as if the only thing that could draw his attention away was the Emperor descending in all His glory. I stared back at him, touched by the devotion that I had never before so fully appreciated. I was still speechless, but Jurgen must have read something in my expression, because he nodded to himself and sank down onto his knees in front of me, unfastening my uniform trousers with business-like confidence.
I know what you’re thinking. According to every rule and regulation on the subject, I should have stopped it there. This was exactly the sort of fraternization that a commissar like me should come down hardest on, should it occur within their unit—at best, it would create an environment of poor discipline and favoritism, and at worst, it represented the worst kind of abuse of authority, that of a powerful commander over their direct subordinate. All I can say is at the time, with Jurgen on his knees and looking at me in that way that I’d never properly interpreted before, it felt like all the power was in his hands regardless of which of us wore the scarlet sash. And as for impairing our commitment to the requirements of the Emperor, well, Jurgen had always treated my welfare as one of those requirements, and I didn’t expect that this interlude would cause me to forget every one of my finely-honed survival instincts and start prioritizing his skin over my own.[2]
Having stripped me of my trousers with his usual brisk efficiency, Jurgen leaned in over my lap, and I spent an unpleasant moment considering his omnipresent halitosis and the likelihood that I was letting myself in for a deeply embarrassing visit to the medicae some time in the near future. However, at this juncture he took a moment to dig into one of the many pouches that populated his belt even in light uniform, and pulled out a protective. It counts as one of a handful of times I’ve seen Jurgen take any action that might suggest he was aware of his own shortfalls in the area of personal hygiene, and even then I’m still not sure that it wasn’t just another display of his extreme preparedness and mindful approach to safety.
I must admit, I had assumed that Jurgen’s approach would have some of the same clumsiness that I recalled from my first few encounters as a juvie in the hives. It seemed unlikely that any would-be partner could have overcome his typical odor long enough to engage in any kind of detailed fondling. (I was proving able to manage, so long accustomed to Jurgen’s characteristic aura that my breathing was only moderately shallow at this point, but my tolerance for such proximity had come after a lifetime of practice.) But, while I can’t imagine where he gained the experience, it turned out that I was doing my aide a disservice. He applied himself admirably, and the effect was so unexpected and, after such a long period of deprivation, so pleasurable that I had to bite my tongue to keep from rousing those in nearby offices with my reaction.
This seemed to enhance Jurgen’s enthusiasm for his work, and he redoubled his efforts, to the point that I had to clutch tightly against the arms of my chair in order to avoid the undoubted contamination that would arise from burying them in his hair. His greasy beard scraped against the inside of my thighs, and I made a mental note to thoroughly medicate the points of contact later, but he had the forbearance to keep his undoubtedly grubby hands on my knees, and even their clutch was arousing at the moment, making me keenly aware of the exposed skin below the reach of the protective that was being deprived of the stimulation they could have provided.
At that moment, though, I counted what he was doing above it as more than satisfactory. The time that passed between Jurgen’s initiation and my completion, shuddering in the chair and gasping in breathless repletion, was embarrassingly brief.
Jurgen seemed to see nothing worthy of judgment in it, though, merely wiping his mouth clean with the back of his hand and then moving to solicitously remove the protective and help me refasten my trousers. He bundled the used protective in a filthy handkerchief and bundled it away into another pouch, I trusted for the sake of discreet disposal, then stepped back from the desk.
Now, as you know, I take a great deal of pride in providing for my partners as thoroughly as they provide for me. Before Jurgen could shuffle away, as he no doubt intended to do, I held out a hand to stop him. “Jurgen,” I said, hesitating over how to best phrase the awkward offer, “I wouldn’t want you to-”
“It’s not needed, sir,” my aide said, the interruption welcome, and perhaps I should have left it at that. My stomach recoiled at the thought of forcing the issue, given the teetering balance of power already at play here, and I can’t say I was exactly eager to experience Jurgen’s redolent miasma as up close and personal as an exact exchange of favors would have required. But he stammered out the dismissal, not meeting my eyes, and I noted that the disconcerting pink hue under his spots and scabs had darkened into a rather unhealthy shade of red.
“Not needed, or not wanted?” I asked, as gently as I could. “The offer is open. But only if you’re comfortable with it.”
Jurgen was startled into looking back up at me, his eyes wide, and the look on his face was enough to keep me from regretting the gesture. “If you wanted, sir,” he mumbled, and shuffled a little closer, anxious as a cogboy looking at a bit of xenotech they’re not sure they’ll be allowed to disassemble.
I turned my face away from the full force of his odor, and managed through the angle provided by the chair to make it look like I was doing it to get a better view of my task as I set to unfastening his trousers. As soon as I’d freed him from the constriction of the too-small uniform, it was clear that ‘not needed’ had been polite dissembling on his part, and furthermore that the tight trousers had been doing him a severe disservice. He caught his belt as he eased more of the fabric away and pulled another protective from a pouch, with I took with immense gratitude.
“You don’t have to, sir,” he muttered, still flushed, all the way down his chest as far as I could tell through the pockmarks. “Wouldn’t want to be improper.”
I bit back the impulse to point out that we’d passed by improper some twenty minutes ago, which would only have made him more uncomfortable, and tugged the protective out of its packaging. “You can call a halt at any time,” I told him instead, feeling compelled by his open vulnerability to make at least that much of a nod to regs.
Jurgen swallowed, met my eyes again, which seemed to be nearly painful for him by how his mouth worked when he did it, and nodded at the protective I held up in silent question. I slid it on, once again grateful for his provision of it when I took in the irregularities of the texture underneath, and then wrapped my hand around it. He made a strangled, swallowed noise and went ramrod straight, his hands tightening into fists at his sides at that simple contact.
My intention had been to treat him with the same generosity he’d offered me, if I could avoid breathing while I did it, but Jurgen put his hand over mine before I could start to lean forward. “Here you go, sir,” he said, tugging just enough to indicate the motion, and then he dropped his hand away again like he was afraid he’d overstepped his bounds.
I was more than willing to take that particular direction, let me tell you. You know quite well that my preferences have always leaned towards women, but I was a boy in a dorm full of boys back in the schola, and for all my adventures outside its walls I had enough appetite left over for the usual juvenile experimentation that always goes on in that sort of environment.[3] My technique doubtless wasn’t perfect, and it didn’t help that Jurgen seemed so focused on suppressing every reaction that I couldn’t get a read on what was and wasn’t working for him, excepting the second choked-down groan I got when I twisted my hand at the top of a stroke, which had me repeating the maneuver until he was shaking. But it seemed to do the job, to judge by the speed of his release, which took no longer than had my own.
He pulled my hand away gently, as if he was handling a rare unchipped regimental plate, and rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand before he let it go. Then he rid himself of the protective, tucking it away like the other, and fastened himself back up without permitting me to help. When he was finished he looked distinctly rumpled, but you’ll recall that’s how Jurgen always looked, and I was sure that no one seeing him would be able to imagine that he’d just taken part in something so mutually pleasurable.
“Your tea’s gone cold, sir,” he said, his voice almost back to its normal casual tone, though I could catch a note of roughness in it still. He scooped up the bowl, leaving the plate of shuvoot balls, and started for the door. “I’ll warm it up for you.”
“Thank you, Jurgen,” I said, and if my voice wasn’t entirely smooth and professional either, he didn’t seem to take it amiss. I watched him leave, feeling an odd knot in my throat that I couldn’t explain, then went back to my files. The porno slate had lost its attractions, but there were dataslates still awaiting my signature that seemed like the perfect way just then to occupy my mind.
And that was that. Less than a week later you showed up, and it never seemed quite right to bring it up myself afterwards, in case Jurgen took an inquiry as an order. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell you at the time, though you never expected me to keep you apprised of what I did when not in your company, and I recall having the odd impression that you already knew regardless.[4] I won’t say it never happened again, but that was long after I’d retired, and the situation differed in a number of ways. That story I’ll save for another letter, if you have any interest in those recollections.
Here ends the relevant portion of the letter. I hope this extract will serve to eliminate the speculation of misconduct, and remind my readers that, when it came to such personal matters, Cain was in all respects a gentleman.
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[1] The records of this incident are still under the seal of Inquisitor Galliard of the Ordo Xenos, and will not be released for at least another century.
[2] I feel that Cain is being unfair to himself here. As readers of the previous extracts will note, despite Cain’s claims to the contrary, there are several anecdotes in the Cain Archives that illustrate the strength of the fondness he felt for his aide. At this time they had been together for multiple decades, and Cain had already gone out of his way to ensure Jurgen’s survival in multiple incidents when strict logic would have suggested that abandoning him would have been the safer course.
[3] A phenomenon common in exclusively same-sex groups regardless of age, as even a cursory analysis of the Imperial Guard’s discipline logs will indicate. But like many officers associated with the Guard, Cain regularly went out of his way to evade acknowledging this fact.
[4] I wasn’t aware of the specifics of this incident, but the strength of Jurgen’s affections for Cain had been obvious to me for some time at this point. As my readers ought to note, he was discreet enough that Cain, and I believe most of those who served with him, remained unaware of them; I had the advantage of Inquisitorial training in my deductions.