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The official glass-caged jitney trundled slowly down the streets of the Thaurian capital city, flanked on all sides by black police hoverpods and under the polluted orange skies of Trono. Inside the ornate pontifical jitney, Master-Cleric Teo’logo, ruler de jure of the Thaurian Concordat, waved happily to the throngs of adoring adherents to the state religion passing outside. The wizened Thaurian turned his bony skull to the Cleric-Superior sitting next to him, his long robes rustling with age.
“It is good to see the people so happy and safe… through…” Teo’logo’s cataracts darted back and forth in thought. “Through… my providential guidance.” After finishing his sentence, Teo’logo nodded in simple pride, like a child who has just been praised for some task.
The Cleric-Superior decided against rolling his eyes. “It is as you say, Our Exalted.” He did not let the facts that the Thaurian Concordat was stagnating into dust, that the cold war between Houses Imcedi and Garbog could go off at any minute, and that the people on the parade route were starving to death pass his leathery lips. Resting his massive bony chin on one hand, he looked past the rococo golden dragons and demons into the crowd. The Master-Cleric turned back to his side of the crowd and began waving again.
A security overwatch detail standing on the roof of a slowly decaying marble edifice nearby looked eagerly at their political officer. The political officer looked off thoughtlessly into the distance, handset communicator pressed against his eardrum, and concentrated on its tinny buzz over the rasps of the wind. He nodded curtly and deactivated the communicator. “We have a go from the Ministry of Information Management. Wait until Our Exalted moves to a point where there is no one important in the crowd.” The security men nodded as one peered over the side of the building at the parade below. When the jitney reached a portion of the crowd which, albeit thick, had none but Trei’ peasants in it, he snapped his fingers. Someone else pushed a button.
An explosion rocked the entire street. The jitney’s armored hull shattered, propelling shrapnel into the crowd in a massive fireball. As one well-sized bit of armored glass smashed the Master-Cleric’s skull, the smoldering remains of the Cleric-Superior flew in several different directions at once, spinning thin streams of smoke in the air. Screams of panicking, wounded civilians filled the city as the mob stampeded away from the burning remnants of the jitney, trampling the most grievously injured or unlucky under their feet.
“What the…” gasped the street-watcher of the security team. The rest of the team stopped suddenly, looked down, and then looked with grim determination at the political officer, who stepped back a few paces and wiped his hands on his black fatigues.
“I don’t know… it wasn’t supposed to be that powerful…” The political officer searched for words as the team slowly flipped off the safeties on their needle rifles. As they raised the barrels towards him, he spurted: “Don’t you see that the death of Our Exalted does not serve our purposes?”
The moans of the crowd drowned out the metallic buzz of the needle rifles.
Meanwhile, several billion light years away in a moderately sized office in Weirdonia, Supreme Emperor J’hsen leaned back in her utilitarian chair, put her feet up on the desk, and looked at the massive condition board that filled the wall opposite her. She was a middle-aged Human female in her mid-fifties, with a wiry build and short silver hair. Nominally the board showed the whole of the Local Galactic Group, containing the three galaxies of the Weirdo Zone, the Reaver Nebulous Galaxy, and the Home Galaxy of the Thaurian Concordat. Currently it was zoomed-in on the fringes of the Reaver Nebulous Galaxy, with the forces of Task Force Pioneer indicated as a blue arrow that pierced the edge of the red clouds of Reaver Space. J’hsen shook her head. The war had moved to a near standstill, now that the High Mind Empress had come to her senses and was attempting diplomacy, and Pioneer was mostly a forward-deployed defense force at the moment.
On that thought, J’hsen shuffled through the stack of diplomatic mission notes at her desk. As she scanned them half-heartedly, she thought that either the Reavers were really bad at diplomacy due to their lack of experience, or they were just buying time. J’hsen knew that she was buying time, allowing her forces some rest and training in this current lull before the final assault on the Reaver homeworld Sh’kai. As for peace… let’s not strike first and see what happens. Pray for peace, prepare for war.
Assistant Wantanabe, in typical civilian business-casual garb flung open the door and ran into the office. The Supreme Emperor raised an eyebrow and brushed some lint off her slacks.
Wantanabe gasped for breath. “Ma’am… we’ve just received a report from our top Delta agent on Trono.”
J’hsen smiled. “So how did the parade go?”
“The Master-Cleric’s dead. So is the Cleric-Superior. There was an explosion…”
J’hsen’s smile faded instantly as her face turned hard. “What’s True Earth’s status in that area?”
“Can’t be True Earth, ma’am. After our punitive raid on their forward base in the Thaurian DMZ, True Earth hasn’t been able to expand into Thaurian space, according to Internal Security.”
“Put all forces on the Thaurian DMZ frontier to Alert Condition One. Contact the Legislative Unit and the news services and brief them of the situation. Sources are to be undisclosed.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As Wantanabe ran out of the office, Supreme Emperor J’hsen leaned back and muttered aloud to no one in particular: “I can guess what happens next.”
I remember that day. I was a diplomatic
officer on the Surreal-class WZS-LCR
As I already said, the Brisbane was on a survey mission, stopping by every star we came across and gathering data. (We did make several first contacts, and I was always there to make them with my winning jewel-like eyes and Volanti pleasantness.) We were in the WZIGS-2956/035 system when we got the alert from above, and a quick check of the Superluminal News Channel confirmed the reason why. Unfortunately, command hadn’t come up with a plan yet for what we were supposed to do, so we were just mulling around at yellow alert and waiting for orders. I hate suspense.