Rovi looked down at the Parchment before him.
The automatic quill scraped across the page, making a dull rustling sound.
The noise filled the entire hall.
Hundreds of low-ranking Scribes like him hunched over their desks.
No one spoke. The only sound was the rustle of turning pages.
The distant, muffled roar of the air filtration units rumbled through the hall.
Rovi set down his quill and rubbed his aching wrist.
He glanced at the timer sandglass beside him.
The sand was almost gone.
That meant Morning Prayer was nearly upon them, and he had been working for fourteen hours straight.
He picked up a gray-brown block from the corner of his desk and shoved it into his mouth.
It was Corpse Starch.
It had no flavor and felt like chalk that had gotten damp.
Rovi chewed hard, forcing himself to swallow.
His stomach clenched, then accepted the lump of food that held no shred of dignity.
On this agricultural planet called Fertility II, this was the only thing that could fill a stomach.
He had to eat.
If he didn't, he would die.
Rovi had been in this body for three days.
Three days ago, a Rank 4 Scribe named Rovi had died at his desk from working too much overtime.
No one had noticed.
Not until a soul from Earth took over his body and picked up the quill again.
In this godforsaken universe, even death didn't count as a break.
Rovi swallowed the last mouthful of starch and fixed his gaze on the ledger in front of him.
It was a <Quarterly Output Report for the Eastern Granary, Seventh Agricultural District>.
The numbers were wrong.
Rovi flipped through the ledger.
"Received into storage: three million tons of standard wheat."
"Losses: twelve percent."
"Imperial Tithe paid: 2.6 million tons."
"Balance: 40,000 tons."
Rovi's finger stopped.
He had majored in auditing at university.
To him, this ledger was full of holes.
Twelve percent in losses?
Unless the Granary had a nest of Tyranids in it, there was no way the loss rate could be that high.
Normally, losses should be kept below three percent.
Where had the extra nine percent gone?
That was 270,000 tons of grain.
Rovi didn't raise the alarm.
He kept his facial muscles under control, showing no surprise.
In the shitty world of Warhammer 40,000, knowing too much usually meant being turned into a Servitor:
a living tool with its frontal lobes removed and mechanical limbs bolted on.
He picked up his quill, dipped it in the poor-quality ink, and wrote out a calculation on a scrap of paper.
At Black Market prices, 270,000 tons of grain would be enough to buy a small shuttle.
It could also hire a Hive City gang to slaughter the entire Seventh District.
That money hadn't gone into the treasury or the Governor's Mansion.
Someone was stealing the Imperium's taxes.
A chill ran down Rovi's back.
The previous Rovi hadn't died of overwork.
He had been killed after discovering this loophole—poisoned, with the scene tampered with to make it look like an accident.
Now Rovi had inherited the mess.
If he signed tomorrow's audit report, he would be held responsible when the Imperial Tax Official investigated, and sent to the stake.
If he refused to sign, the grain thieves would make him "drop dead" all over again.
It was a dead end.
"Rovi."
A voice interrupted his thoughts.
Rovi immediately shut the ledger and crumpled the scrap paper in his fist.
He stood up and lowered his head, his movements as precise as a trained Servitor's.
"Supervisor Kase."
Standing before him was a mountain of flesh.
Supervisor Kase wore a silk robe stretched tight over his bulk, his belt cutting deep into the rolls of fat around his waist.
He held an electro-whip, its tip glowing faintly blue.
His face was like risen dough, his small eyes squeezed into the folds of flesh, gleaming with a murky light.
"Are you done?" Kase asked.
His voice was thick and nasal.
"I'm still checking the final figures, sir," Rovi replied.
His voice was steady, without a hint of emotion.
Kase stepped closer.
"Checking?"
Kase smiled, the fat on his face bunching up.
"It's just routine, Rovi."
"Use last year's template, fill in the numbers, stamp it. It's that simple. You've already dragged this out for two hours."
Kase's gaze fell on Rovi's clenched right hand.
"What have you got there?"
Rovi's heart skipped a beat.
He opened his hand and showed the crumpled scrap of paper.
"Just scrap paper, sir. I made a mistake in my calculations, so I'm redoing them."
Kase stared at Rovi.
Rovi didn't look away. His eyes were blank and numb, like those of every low-level Scribe who'd been worked to the bone.
A few seconds later, Kase lost interest.
He tapped the desk with his electro-whip.
"Listen, boy. The taxman's shuttle will be landing tomorrow morning."
"That little girl who just became Governor is in a hurry to get this done."
Kase pressed the switch on his electro-whip.
Crackle.
A blue arc snapped.
"She needs this report. So do I. If you can't get it done before dawn, I'll send you to the Fertilizer plant."
"I hear the grinder there has been running low on lubricant lately."
With that, Kase turned and left.
His boots thudded heavily against the metal floor.
Rovi sat back down.
Cold sweat soaked through the linen shirt on his back.
Kase was the one stealing the grain, or at least one of his accomplices.
What he'd said sounded like a reminder, but it was really a warning.
Kase was telling him: copy the fake ledger and keep your nose out of it.
Rovi's gaze gradually turned cold.
Go along with it?
No.
That would be suicide.
The auditors from the Imperial Tax Department weren't fools.
This shoddy bookkeeping might fool the young Governor who had just taken office.
But to a professional tax official, it would be laughably obvious.
Once they found the problem, Kase would throw Rovi under the bus without a second thought.
"I'm just the Supervisor. I only sign the papers. The Scribe handled the actual calculations."
Rovi could almost hear Kase saying those words in court.
He had to save himself.
Rovi opened the ledger again.
He needed a way out.
A way to make the numbers add up, avoid taking the blame, and keep Kase quiet.
He had no system, no psychic powers, no Boltgun.
All he had was his brain.
And this pile of rotten books.
Rovi picked up his quill and began drawing a flowchart on another clean sheet of paper.
The grain was harvested from the fields, sent to the primary processing plant, hulled, dried, packed, transported, and stored.
Every step had losses.
Rovi closed his eyes and recalled the supply chain management books he'd read in his previous life.
If the grain had really gone missing, it had to have ended up somewhere.
If it wasn't in this ledger, it was in another one.
He stood up and picked up a stack of files half as tall as he was.
They were Waste Disposal Records and Servitor Maintenance Logs.
The Scribes around him glanced at Rovi with dull eyes, then lowered their heads and went back to work.
In this hall, people who stuck their noses into other people's business didn't live long.
Rovi spread the files out.
He began looking through the "biomass fuel" entries.
The machinery on Fertility II needed energy to run.
Besides geothermal and nuclear power, the planet relied heavily on biomass fuel.
That meant throwing straw, rotten leaves, and corpses into the furnace to burn.
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