The Identity Problem, Part 2 [T'au Fanfiction from Noah Van Nguyen]

Disclaimer: Nothing in the text that follows is official Games Workshop material, and none of the content should be construed as official. Read the previous entry here.

Oh, Mior'la—

Forgive my long silence. As soon as I saw the timestamp of your last communication I wondered if you had worried about me. Imagine my shame when I read your second communication. You pondered the many possibilities that might explain my lack of a response; your primary supposition was correct. As soon as we emerged from stasis, ship crew informed informed us that localised stellar phenomenon delayed our arrival to Ergo by a period of eighty rotaa.

The nature of the delay was strange. I am not versed in the sciences of the void and will not attempt to emulate the verbal precision of the kor'la who explained this to me, but evidently, common cosmic disturbances can affect our ships' ether drives and navigational systems. In this particular instance — and I am loosely paraphrasing what I was told — the vast expanse we were supposed to cross shrunk when it should have expanded, and the tide that carried us ebbed when it should have risen.

To hear the kor'la speak of it, one would have thought he was still an adventuring messenger in the age of ignorance, the age of terror, licking his finger and gauging the wind direction as cannonfire hammered the mountains before leaping from a cliff to let the gust expand his wings and carry him to far horizons. One would think he was speaking of the Warp.

Ah! I find myself doing it again. Pardon my obsession: I know comparisons between gravitic drive technology and gue'la drive technology are no better than comparisons first- and second-type waveforms, but as ever, the Identity Problem is on my mind. This whole matter of our journey's delay reminds me of your initial inquiry, in your first communication, which you made in response to my theoretical discourse. The short answer is no. I do not believe the technology to measure what must be measured exists, per se, and certainly not on Ergo.

But the longer answer is: how hard can it be? The whole universe, when you think about it, comes down to numbers and words. Not everything can be explained from a rational perspective – but everything can be expressed, surely? We need only find the right numbers, the right words. The right dimensions with which to make empirical observations, the right tools to capture those observations.

I suppose that is infuriatingly abstract. My point is that I will find the means to observe this phenomenon. My current plan is to use translation sensors for long-range ship detection, the kind that we use to monitor entry and exit out of stellar systems. My theory is that there are certain operational similarities between gravitic drive technology and gue'la warp drive technology; therefore, the tools used to measure interstellar travel might be adapted to this purpose.

I expect two early obstacles, of course:

• First, I am uncertain whether the signature I seek to detect has any physical association with the sentient beings that emit it. Interstellar travel is one thing, as vessels that use gravitic drives or the arcane gue'la drive must make tears through real-space, creating an emissions source. Seeking the immaterial shadow of conscience in another plane is something else entirely, and I'm unsure there are any indications of the tethers that bind us to our "souls" in the Warp.

• Second, presuming I can match psychic signatures to their corresponding sources, I am uncertain I can measure the uniqueness of the signal. If the best I can manage is a binary-logic indicator, I will either need to refine my measurement methods or incorporate additional information signals. I have no idea where to begin, here.

Let me speak no more of my quest to destroy enigma in this communication, as your second message has brought a far more important matter to my attention. Let me address your glorious tidings, Mior'la: I am thrilled to learn you have found not one, nor even three, but five peers and colleagues to suffer the knife with. The bonding ritual is painful and delicious, and the bonded exist at a level of synergy that approaches the perfect unity of T'au'Va. But just know, Mior'la, as old teachers are wont to say, 'a bonded mate is a heart waiting for pain.'

I never spoke of this during our old seminars or nights spent in research, but I was fortunate to have a single one bonded mate, Faor. He passed long ago. Sometimes I still make tea and imagine that he did it for me, binding the leaves in a simple resin to keep the leaves from sticking in my teeth. I think of the touch of his forehead against mine, and his hands on my shoulders coaxing me to walk away from my work and take meals with him – to enjoy the little things. I remember all this and then I remember that he is gone, and that I make the tea myself.

Sorry. Melancholy paints me green. You and your five hearts will soon have your own idiosyncrasies, to celebrate and not mourn. I simply offer a lesson I learned too late: it is the irrationalities of affection, and not its synergies, that make it priceless. There is a surrender to love that feels deeper than surrender to T'au'Va. (Even if it is not, the Aun be praised!)

This counsel must feel intrusive. Only know I do not mean to offend you. All I wish to say is that our time in this universe is precious and limited, and five times the friendship means five times the heartbreak. One day the bonds will break, so learn what I learned, if late. The knife is about more than just the work together. There is a deep love that exists in the relationships we forge. It is perhaps the most precious unity we can ever offer on the altar of T'au'Va.

You must be nervous. Take heart, for so am I! We are preparing to make planetfall, and an old fio'la is walking between the shuttle aisles, fingers clasped behind his back, too nervous to sit. I bowed with respect to his age; he bowed with respect to my rank. We shared a few words on our irrational fear of flight. I was delighted to learn he was a shuttle mechanic and this was his ninetieth shuttle flight. Even now he is afraid! Ha!

Mior'la – that is all for now. The shuttle rattles under atmospheric friction. Expect another communication within the rotaa. Once I am situated on Ergo, I will send another communication forthwith. If I do not, then I am ash in the wreckage of a shuttle crash. That is a jest I made to calm myself. Please advise if you found it humorous.

Your Teacher and Friend, as Ever, For the Greater Good

[DATA CORRUPTED]

---

Mior'la—

First, I am terribly sorry. If I had known how long processing and decontamination would take, I would not have made such an ill-advised jest. I assume it was not humorous. Know that I am in perfect health and quite well-situated.

Your swift response was appreciated. To answer your concerned question: yes, the habitat is access-controlled, so there is no risk of biological or ideological contamination by unindoctrinated gue'la. I am told most of the aliens on this world do not warrant true re-education, on reasoning of their low station or of the commitment they have already demonstrated to our Empire. More on this later.

Having fully situated myself, let me tell you of my new colleagues, surroundings, and work. Ergo Pael'an Mot – disaffectionately referred to as EPM by our brothers and sisters as EPM – is the most robustly equipped outpost on Ergo. The station boasts four hundred habitation modules for sixteen-hundred personnel. Senior officers are given their own quarters; others are packaged two, four, and eight to a pod, based on rank. Most of us are t'au, but I have learned of one gue'la module that house well-respected alien, Callila Us Rex.

Among existing station staff, I have gathered that Callila is an old gue'la female revered for her commitment to the Empire. She was the only high-ranking inhabitant of the world willing to cooperate with the Empire and was afforded a senior post for that reason, now serving as senior liaison for her inferior species on Ergo. I have been assured she is incisive in her observations but reticent among those who have not earned her trust. That is a quality to be admired in any client species.

The officer who told me of Callila is Shas'vre D'yanoi Pyu'rok Ka're, the commanding officer of all hunters on Ergo. Laughing and stinking of a rather pungent diet, the officer told me to call him Pyu'k, as Callila did — an inside-joke evidently rooted in the phonetics of her language. She explained it to Pyu'k after he earned her trust; I do not care to. What I know of Pyu'k is enough: he is a blooded veteran, not overly stringent nor lax, and very helpful, although flatulent. He told me of his only peer on the world, who oversees drone and patrol operations and is evidently very different from him. I do not expect to meet her.

Together, this alien, veteran, and I technically command EPM, and the Kor'vre who commands The Divine Fortieth Machine is the provisional supervisor of the entire system and its solitary world. Although my responsibilities only include communications maintenance for a single transponder, and I have a technician at my disposal to see to this, Pyu'k explained that senior t'au of backwater worlds often serve as guiding voices for others. These informal arrangements cross caste lines and functions. I do not expect this to frustrate my goal of studying the Identity Problem. On the contrary, I live to serve.

All of this brings me to the base itself. Within EPM, there are two cafeterias and eighty kitchenettes. There are four core pantries with frozen and fresh goods. There is an active cargo space and a reserve space, hacked into the ice beneath the surface. There is a shuttle launch bay used for maintenance. There are two skimmer garages that double as cargo docking ports, since Ergo's surface is frigid. There is an observation tower on each hex corner, six altogether, as if we await some greenskinned be'gel horde. Lights and cameras within the base's perimeter monitor its integrity, which is overseen by the base's networked intelligence. There is an armoury. There is a communications core, wherein the transponder lies.

For all this, there are no research assets, and only one hobby laboratory that is useful for little more than tray planting, flower-stem art, and martial arts training for our handful of hunters. I expected this. Fortunately, I have already made acquaintance with the outpost's assigned shuttle pilot, who has agreed to provision me access to the station's shuttle. A brief examination assured me that EPM's maintenance resources are sufficient to build my own Warp sensor, one capable of detecting interstellar travel within a two-meter radius. I will zero it out using the shuttle's engine, as it is capable of extremely short-range gravitic jumps. This will be enough, I believe, to detect disturbances in the Warp that are emitted by sentient beings.

Phrased more simply, soon I will be able to detect the psychic signatures I seek – provided they are physically tethered to the beings that emanate them, and assuming I can get the design right!

This is my current disposition, Mior'la. Meal time rings for me! Tell me, when will you take the knife? You are still happy, I hope?

---

Mior'la—

The morning is dark on this world, for the sun doesn't rise. Snow piles on the dark drifts beyond finger-thick observation glass. The wind howls, and although it is quite warm in here, I feel the world's chilling breath. My mood, like the star that Ergo orbits, lays buried beneath the horizon.

I did not mean to write this addendum to my earlier communication, and certainly not this late. But before I could transmit or take my meal, I was called away for a brief orientation to my duties and the station's single transponder, as well as a short call with the captain of The Divine Fortieth Machine to discuss the system's deep-orbit transponder, a retransmit buoy. I did not imagine that would occupy me long. But three things have occurred in the interim, and each of them feels like death.

First, I am disappointed to report that there is no spatial correlation between individual sentient beings and the psychic signatures I seek to bind to them. During orientation, I was left in the maintenance storage. I was delighted when I quickly devised a crude sensor and successfully zeroed it against the station's shuttle. My heart fell when I walked it through EPM to test its capabilities. The sensor is rudimentary but built on the same principle we use to detect inbound interstellar vessels; I reason that if organic psychology is rooted in the same immaterial principles as star travel, that it should have been capable of detecting disturbances from organic sources.

It could not. I spent more time than I am willing to admit walking the sensor up and down the halls, looking for signal variations, but Mior'la – the sensor was unable to detect the slightest psychic signature of any living being's presence. I must have made a fool of myself, for others chuckled or gestured as I went up and down the halls, through the cafeterias, into the garage, over storage crates, like a blind rodent sniffing for crumbs. Pyu'k and the shuttle pilot watched quizzically as I clambered over the craft, sniffing out a signal to zero the device again and again. You can imagine I must have looked quite mad. The only signature I could detect appeared came from the shuttle's simple drive. In other words, I could only zero the device.

The pilot seemed to sense my disappointment. She explained it was unlikely I was even detecting the shuttle's simple drive, which can only be used to cross short distances, within one standard astronomical unit. More likely, she thought, I was picking up the Warp scent of The Divine Fortieth Machine. Our Empire's smallships can evidently acquire and the gravitic signature of larger vessels that they have passed, something to do with the gravitic sheath that our merchant vessels cloak themselves in for long-range transit.

As the pilot explained this, speaking of the void's mysteries, I felt as if an old caravaneer or sky messenger was telling me of the deserts' and mountains' names on sacred T'au, as if I was speaking to one of the mighty ethereals themselves (may the Aun be praised). Pyu'k listened to us the whole time and belched.

I returned to orientation angry. Angry at my own arrogance, my own compulsion. It was as I wrote you, I think, in my first communication. All my life I have meant to destroy enigma. Now I am placed on an assignment where I have the time to do that, but not the resources nor knowledge. What would Mior'la think if he could see me now? I wondered, scanning simple documentation describing our transponder protocols. Would he see a fraud? A liar? Or would he see what I see? Simply an ineffectual old teacher, alone at the end of her life. I am tired.

This, then, was my first death. The second occurred after orientation, walking back through polished corridors back to my quarters. I stopped in the cafeteria to hydrate when I glimpsed an armoured warrior in snow-white carapace. Saline rime still encrusted her ceramicized blast-pauldron and her cold brow. A pulse rifle hung at her hip, a sensor helmet clipped to her armour over her charge pouches. She stirred tea and watched as I took a cup and pumped water. 'You're new,' she said. Growled, really. Her damp voice was like the chewing of meat. Scarring on her vocal cords.

The word soul caught my ear, of course. I have seen it associated with the psychic signatures I seek too often in censored literature to think of anything but the Identity Problem when I hear it. Distracted, I placed my full cup in the heater. 'What do you know of souls?' I asked the huntress.

Oh, the shame. I am glad you did not see her look at this question. It was not scorn that made her fingers rigid, her neck tense, for we have all suffered scorn, and I know its worth. No – this was pity. Pity at my ignorance, at my inability to destroy enigma. I felt old, then, Mior'la. Old.

'I know of souls,' she muttered, still stirring. 'I thank the teachers every day of my life that we lack them.'

I winced. The huntress's words smacked of blasphemous individualism, that poison to grand society. 'Don't we?' I asked. 'You are here, I am here. We serve the Greater Good. There is no soul like ours.'

She continued stirring. 'No. I suppose not.'

I curled my fingers then, aggravated at her evasive interaction. 'I do not know your name.'

'Why would you?' she asked. 'I haven't told you.'

Pyu'k and another strode into the empty cafeteria. The security chief must have been making his rounds. He must have noticed my distress, too, for he called to us. 'Kuln!' he barked joyfully, the way one does when they are drunk. 'I told you to shed patrol whites on my base! You're tracking meltwater in the halls! You know how saline trails stain the floors.'

Kuln glanced at her burning brother, then shrugged as she left, her service weapon bouncing on her back. Pyu'k sauntered over, watching her go, stinking of chewed allium bulbs. 'That's her, by the way,' he told me.

'The drone operator?' I asked.

He nodded. 'She and hers think they're all regular Darkstriders. Way I see it, all she does is patrol the barrens with her hunters. They have a pair of piranhas for it, and all the drones on the world, but still they like snow-time. They're all blooded so they do what they want.'

I raised a brow, the heater between us humming as it warmed my water. 'I thought you were in command?'

'I am. And that's why I let Kuln and her blooded hunters do what they want! Ha!' As Pyu'k laughed, he wrapped an arm around me and guided me toward the corridor. 'Come over here. I want you to meet my good friend. She's our counterpart, anyways, so you have to.'

The gue'la awaiting us was old, hunched, a crone among her kind. Her eyes were grey, their vision eaten away by age or something worse. She was blind, then. Even so, I felt her stiffen at my presence, as if she could detect me.

'Meet Callila Us Rex,' Pyu'k said. 'But the ones she likes call her Cal. And she'll like you.'

'That's not true,' Callila said. 'You call me that and I don't like you a whit.'

Pyu'k laughed. I couldn't detect the humour. 'Cal was charged with this world's communications, before its submission to T'au'Va,' Pyu'k explained. 'The aliens whisper that's why she can't see anymore. Too busy reading stupid missives from her stinking overlords, I think. Ha!'

Cal smirked again, but there was a depth in her blind eyes I couldn't fathom. Looking into them felt like looking into a puddle and realising that an entire sea lay beneath its mirrored surface. 'Are you still involved in our communications at all?' I asked.

'Not at all,' Cal said. 'The technologies are incompatible. But it was only that position which made me important among my kind on this world. That is how I became liaison.

I imitated her gentle smile, having encountered human facial expressions on previous assignments. Then I noticed her eyes drop to the scanner in my hands. I swear she could sense it, Mior'la. Like a canid tensing at the inaudible pitch of a charged pulse weapon.

She inhaled and straightened and said, 'I would much appreciate the opportunity to speak, when duty allows,' she said. 'I have learned much from Pyu'k of your grand ways. But I have much still to learn from your caste of earth.'

I shrugged, saying nothing. The signal output on my device had flickered. I could not explain why, since its position had not changed. My heart fell, as I realised it was likely broken.

When our conversation was done, the security chief, Callila, and I wished each other well and parted ways. During the lonely walk back to my quarters, the world's darkness yawned beyond the base's observation glass. A chill tingled through my neck. I felt as if something was watching.

Kuln's pity was my second death, Mior'la, for it made me understand my own incompetence. When I reached my quarters, I saw to my personal hygiene and then remembered I had left my tea in the cafeteria. And this is what brought my third death.

When I returned in the cafeteria, I found my heated cup. I did not recall steeping the tea, and yet I found the cup ready for me, with the leaves bound in a resin that I had not even known was available on this world. It was as if Faor had made it for me. As if she had left it, waiting. I know how baseless that sounds – surely Faor was not the only t'au in the Empire to have discovered her resin trick. But still I stood for sixty breaths, waiting for another t'au to enter and claim the cup. None did. If you only knew how alone I felt in that moment, Mior'la. It was a vast absence, as if I was a tiny fish alone plying the depths of an endless sea.

That melancholy was not the third and final death I suffered, only its prelude. For when I returned to my quarters, I heard my scanner clicking. The rudimentary sensor lay on my desk, four meters away, but its output screen flashed as if it had detected the psychic signature I sought. Nothing was there, Mior'la. Nothing but my own raging emotions. My hurt, and solitude. My shame, my craving for perfection, to destroy this last, greatest mystery before the setting of my light. I yearned for something that could answer this prayer, something like T'au'Va – something that can help me. There is a foulness in us all that hears our desperation, that offers false hope. And as the device clicked, all I could think of was this foulness in me.

My device is ineffective. Worse, the psychic signature I seek to solve the Identity Problem bears no correspondence to the location of the sentient beings that emit it. I have no idea how to proceed from here, Mior'la. Share your thoughts.

Write Your Teacher, For She Longs to Hear from You

[DATA CORRUPTED]