Editing Ciaphas Cain's Evil Twin (section)

== Chapter 4 ==
Inspection

<br/>It was time for the regular inspection, and Cain followed it eagerously. He didn't want to miss a chance, especially in the beginning, to see how his methods had shaped and helped integrate the two regiments into one cohesive fighting force fit for the Emperor's name. Although it was better said that one regiment was integrated into another, while it was integrating its smaller cousins into its ways. But that would have probably been incest.
<br/>The cabin decks were disorganised, regular orgies, though disparate, happening here and there between male Guardsmen and lowly trained women, now good mostly as cum buckets and maybe at the equal of the cannon fodder of the Chaos Cultists. He saw Sulla in a more private corner, teaching her selected the art of cunt and ass licking, inside and out, and they both shared a grin. Sulla admired Cain for letting her and Kasteen tend to their people, even if the default rulers were, as it should be, the men, Broklaw and Cain. Sulla admired Cain's resourcefulness on the battlefield and his care not to put his regiment into unneeded danger, and had come to see another part of him the rest of the world hadn't, the authoritarian one, the - she considered - only mildly manipulative one, but she knew that to survive in the Imperium of that day, with its Black Crusades, Xenos incursions and enemies from the inside, you had to be ruthless, definitely more ruthless than Cain was with them, and it suited her just fine. She'd make sure there'd be no traitors in her midst, and if she found any, she'd clean up her own messes. She appreciated the leeway she was given with the girls, putting them directly under her, both as answering to and physically. She liked that she could take the rare ones, the useful ones that even the men didn't dare mess with, from the lovely mechanics to the yet to form and blossom women of the Mechanicus. She enjoyed breaking them, and she enjoyed the power, and the knowledge that they were both hers and the rest of the regiment's, that she was the only one capable of breaking a girl's will and still making her continue to serve her Emperor.
<br/>Cain looked for a second towards her, almost into her, and he could see all this, and he smiled even more. He made the right choice. She was in many ways like him, and fortunately, not in the scary ways either. Not in the psychotic ways that'd scare himself with if he looked in the mirror. Not in the Imperium-hating desolant backstabbing way he was. No, instead of that, she had loyalty, for humanity, for the group and for the man, and he hoped, that the one for the man would be, or at least become in time, the strongest of them. He needed as many allies as he could get. He didn't make himself any stupid excuses that he lived an exemplary life, or that he was untouchable. For all his sloth and cowardice, he had worked hard faking the life of a near-saint, had bribed the right people, silenced the wrong ones, and made vast spy networks that would report directly to him. Oh, he'd have time, the Imperium did move at a snail's pace, and for all his contacts, they were but a drop in the vastness of the Imperium. He actually had time to talk to twice as many people as he hired, neutrals and his own too, to throw away the scent that he was up to anything. If the neutrals would be questioned, they'd know nothing and would throw any pursuer off his tracks, if his moles were, then they'd say nothing and they'd throw their pursuers off his tracks. They knew the risk of failing. For all his long hours, it helped that many of his attendants were nubile young women coming to him with a problem, that he'd arrange fixed for a certain payment in nature. Most didn't refuse, he was good like that, and besides his proposals were usually the best deals anyone in the position to help ever gave.
<br/>Yes, he ran a well oiled corruption machine. Oil. Oil dripped from some cables on the walls, which caught his attention. Someone would have to pay for this, but it probably wouldn't be Sulla. She handled her end of the management of the ship well, and the men were slacking, and for all he was giving them, the least they could do was get off their ass and their cocks out of their girls' mouths and fix the ship once in a while. Well, they did, but a little more often, dammit!
<br/>He arrived to the quarters, flanked by Kasteen, Broklaw and Jurgen, as usual. The sour smell of sex, sweat and lack of water was stronger wherever a room was opened, although the cabins were efficiently cleaned and prettied up. It was obvious that both the men and the girls had taken to their designated roles imposed by the emisaries of the ruler of mankind. Each room presented a sigh of woman degraded by a man, man saluting, but not bothering to stop his business, only continuing for the pleasure of the viewing eyes. To her surprise, even Kasteen was starting to enjoy the sights on her ship, especially after what she had seen in the Governer's dungeons. Yes, this was way more civilized to her, and the women weren't really broken... not like the girls from there at least. They had a place to live, air to breathe, food to eat, an Emperor to protect them and manly men to take care of their needs and to protect them from the awful, awful universe on the outside. Yes, there had to be sacrifices, she had sacrificed a big part of her uniform to get on Cain's good side, even if all the eyes were on her when she walked the corridors, where she barely looked like wearing a bra and panties. She wasn't wearing those of course, but that was all that was left of her uniform. She consoled herself that she was to be made available only to upper rank visitors of her ship, Cain and Broklaw of course... and Jurgen. But it could have been a lot worse, right? And so, her girls would have to sacrifice themselves too, being impaled on the Emperor-given rod to teach them humility and that was kind enough to not run them through above the stomach. Yes, life was as good as it was about to get in the Imperium.
<br/>Satisfied that the upper decks were in some sembleance of order, the kind of order that would either save his life through gratitude, or through cannon fodder if anyone were to make a surprise attack through the corridors thinking they'd be all quiet and deserted, Cain continued to the lower decks. Normally, an upper officer wouldn't be caught dead there (or be caught, and then found dead, for obvious reasons), but he was Ciaphas Cain and he had gotten the respect of the lower dredges as well as of the upper ones. He was surprised by the ironically more equalitarian and democratic systems in the lower decks than in the Imperium tight-law taught upper decks, since they all considered themselves prosecuted and so, in a strange sense, equal in their suffering. It wouldn't work to give the women to the men down there, because they had a more normal relationship, a more civilian life, and the women below weren't his to give anyway. And it wouldn't have felt too right, either. He loved putting those Valhallan stuck-up bitches in their place, starting with Kasteen and corrupting the young Sulla into his dominatrix bitch for the rest of their former regiment, but down here, biggotry was more at home, women took indications from the men from their lives, and it felt right to him. There wasn't much left for him to change. Plus, they feared him, a lot more than those on the upper decks. Those had respect and he had to appeal to their pleasures, these wretched creatures had not, and all he had to do was appeal to fear. These wouldn't be the men and women to protect his back if bad came to worse, but he felt safer knowing, in case of some Chaos attack, those below would be grateful enough and afraid enough to refuse to answer even their Gods' calls.
<br/>And what did they have to be grateful for? For one thing, he had saved the lives of many of them, indirectly some would say, directly more would say. He had replaced the working, cumbersome, slave-labor machines from below, with automatic upgrades from the Tau, Eldar and other races willing to trade. He knew it was an affront to the written laws of the Imperium, but he figured if someone in high power would actually discover this, they'd either let it slide, or them or their moles would get a lasgun round to the head if they were stupid enough to come close to the contraption. Another reason to have these dregs on his side, licking from the palm of his hand.
<br/>He didn't do this out of the kindness of his heart or out of pity for them, though. Since he had installed the new systems, there was no more need for slave labor, no more ardeous paperwork, no more stupid meetings with glorified slave traders, and a lot more time was freed for Cain and his affairs and his pleasures. He had to of course fix the paperwork - some of his new friends, or blackmailees, as he affectionately recalled, would get these slaves under his name - for he didn't want to have to explain himself how his ships still run without manpower. They would have suspected xenos, or even demonic, and indeed he was close to purchase a demon-infused ship engine, but one look at it, at its malice, at the thrill of betrayal he had not seen remotely as such in another living being except himself, made him change his mind and hightail it from the meeting point fast. His three companions had become so dependent and subsidiary to him that they saw nothing wrong with him wanting that thing, and even if they saw what he saw, if he gave the go-ahead for the purchase, they wouldn't blink an eye over it. But he'd have to settle for the xenos purchases, maybe they weren't as long-lasting, reliable and... willing as the demon thing, but at least they were pieces of machinery, they weren't alive and trying to eat him the first chance they got, dammit! He had made these purchases to improve the ship, to improve their escape rate, their survival. If asked how they were so fast, he would claim the Emperor blessed them or that it was some arcane lost technology that was gifted to him. Fortunately, even if they got to the enginarium, few were knowledgeble enough to distinct the alien designs from the alien designs of human made things of old.
<br/>And so it was with this blessing that the slave crew had been set free, in a manner. Any other leader would have sold them off, for even more profit, but he didn't need the bother or the questions, and he kept the old human machineries in their former places, to be tended by Mechanicus priests, but to never be used in case of times of emergency. In such times, these wretches wouldn't need to be forced to go, to be whipped to do their job, they'd jump into the void if Cain told them for all he did for them. Besides, if he'd left the lower levels empty, they would have filled with dissenters, mutants and worse, without any knowledge or control on his part. And so they made improvised homes there, and he had told the enforcers up stairs to not bother the nice people down there, and they'd complied. At least, the raids were a lot fewer than on any other ship, and surprisingly, producing very few true criminals and dissenters than any other ship would. They'd live there and die there, and be grateful for their lives to him, for prelonguing their hell to the Imperium, he thought with a smile on his face and with scorn in his heart, for them, for the Imperium, for the whole stupid system.
<br/>He didn't as much felt sorry for them as for himself, feared he would be down there if not for fate or chance or... the voice... "You'll never be there" *gurgle* "Not anymore, not after..." Pause. He almost stopped moving and smiling and almost left himself go, almost wet his pants, his face almost turned white. Almost. He continued as if nothing had happened, but his heart was beating rarely, like a man holding his breath without realising he's doing it, and he felt a chill through his body. He willed his blood to continue pumping so the whiteness of his knuckles wouldn't reach his face and betray him - he didn't care about the thing that talked to him, it obviously knew, but the mortals around shouldn't have to - and his feet to continue moving and his smile to stay as fake and as fakeshily warm and kind as it was. "...you've gone so far." The voice ended, and his organism began functioning in earnest again. He looked behind him, and saw good old faithful (or just scareful?) Jurgen and wondered how come he had not protected him from this voice that was talking to him. It was certainly of the warp, wasn't it? Or at least, all things, loving or hating the warp in whatever measure, all hated being near Jurgen, let alone as... jovial as that thing.
<br/>But he did as he always did when confrunted with a situation like this: he put it out of his mind. It had worked to keep him alive and relatively sane until now, and he knew he was to react not to voices, his own, his comrades', or the ones in his head, but to those weird headaches and... visions of sorts. Those saved his life. He didn't care which were real and which were false, he cared only that each day lived was another one not dying. He did not want to-
<br/>"But you cannot", mocked the voice again. "I have told you before."
<br/>This time, there was no change in his body or mind, this time he just kept going, lower...