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Imcedi Odegi, the new Master-Cleric, seemed to fidget on the Pontifical Dais. An ornate couch of rare beast furs and littered with precious stones, this not quite comfortable seat was what Odegi had fought for so many years to sit in... but now, it didn't seem at all like what he was fighting for.
"Our Exalted?"
Odegi's darted his eyes in thought, drumming his fingers on the side of the Dais, and it was a few moments before he realized he was being addressed.
"Er... yes, Marshal... um... I mean, my Son?"
Marshal Sphet did not look up from his head-bent, kneeling position the customary seven paces from the Dais. "Our Exalted, Garbog forces are mobilizing. The basta... the one known as Rajzoló made a hyperspatial announcement to the entire Local Area, the effect of which is denouncing you, oh Our Exalted, as an usurper. We have received reports that Garbog sympathizers are raiding our mercantile connections across thousands of worlds. Several of our aristocratic allies report insurrections and some are threatened with overthrow if we do not act."
Odegi continued tapping his fingers. "Garbog is targeting the Si’ and Hei’ castes only? Not trying to tear out our grass-roots support at the Trei’ level nor our legitimacy in the Phi’ theocracy?"
"Not that we know of sir."
"We have a chance. My Son, with the power vested in me by Deslumbrador Himself," (Odegi was trying hard to remember the incantations he heard in various news reports from the First Basilica over his years) "I declare you Marshal of the Paladins. Your first task is to relieve our supporters, how to do so I leave to your discretion."
"With a glad heart, Our Exalted." Paladin Marshal Sphet began scraping backwards on his knees towards the portal, making sure his head remained bowed and his back away from the Master-Cleric.
"And on your way out, my Son," Odegi added as an afterthought, "could you send in whoever’s in charge of the Inquisition?"
"With a glad heart, Our Exalted." Sphet passed through the portal and its giant gilded doors slid shut, leaving Odegi alone.
"What in Deslumbrador’s name am I doing here?" Odegi mumbled to himself. "Isn’t this what I wanted? Well, no giving up now."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shadowy figure move towards him, moving with a studied grace that made it seem as if it were floating millimeters off of the ground. Odegi leaned over slightly and put his hand into his pocket, trusty hold-out fusion torch ready just in case. The figure abruptly turned at two paces out, came onto the lighted carpet in front of the Dais, and stood, head proudly raised.
"Grand Inquisitor Chreeti at your service, Imcedi Odegi," the shadow said as he removed his coal-grey hood. She was unusual in several aspects-she had unusually pale orange skin, almost yellow in color, that lacked the luster common to Thaurians. Her bone-crest was unusually pronounced, and shone almost as if it had been polished like a mirror, making almost a halo-like effect over her head. Her robes were of a very, very dark charcoal color that almost seemed to suck in the light in the room. Above all things, she was female.
Odegi stumbled over his words a bit. "Y-y-you’re the Grand Inquisitor… my Daughter?"
Chreeti laughed. "Yes, yes I am, Imcedi. I am also not your daughter."
Odegi blinked.
Chreeti smiled with a flash of incisor. "You see, I am only required to follow the orders of true-born Phi’, not a Si’ like yourself. My hands were bound at the ineptitude of Our late Exalted, but now I am more free to act."
Odegi’s face fell. "I guess this means that you aren’t going to follow my orders to declare an Inquisition on Garbog and his allies so I can stay in power."
"Oh, you are so naïve for a House Father," chuckled the Inquisitor, "but I can help you out. You see, I have already put such an Inquisition into effect."
"Um… thanks. Why?"
"Because, my dear out-classed Si’, the Thaurian Concordat’s survival is my job, not keeping your power structure together for you. Luckily for you, I have decided that your continuance as Master-Cleric of the Thaurian Concordat is complimentary to my goals. You sitting right there," she pointed to the Dais, "is almost as good as me sitting there."
Odegi already knew the answer to the question in his head, but forced himself to ask it. The Inquisitor thought he was naïve; maybe if he played along he’d figure out a way out of this mess. "Why?"
The two paces between them vanished as Odegi found a deactivated vibroshiv against his throat. "Because you can be controlled, dear Master-Cleric."
Odegi blinked. "Quite."
* * *
Governor Kophat of Freleit chuckled quietly to himself while looking at the situation board on his desk. Freleit was one of the few worlds divided in control between Houses Imcedi and Garbog, and Kophat’s militia seemed about to win it all for Freleit. His armor was moving up the pass taking most of the enemy fire while his infantry forces managed to encapsulate the Imcedi governor’s stronghold and besiege it. He laughed as he thought of the bounty his lord would give him for "smiting the infidels."
That laugh kept him from noticing a charcoal-cloaked figure opening the window behind him, slipping up behind him, and producing a very long, sharp instrument from its sleeve. By the time Kophat felt the pores on the back of his neck open up, his skull was pierced by the vibropick and his cerebellum liquefied by its monofilament flagellum. An effective way to assassinate someone, especially if you need their vocal cords…
"Holy Mother of--" the communicator went dead in Haubtan Soldier’s helmet. He hit the ground just as what remained of an armored hoverpod tumbled in the air where his head was. Scrambling for his fusion rifle, he tried to ignore the ozone and various bits of carbonized Thaurian that surrounded him.
"Who the hell’s still alive?" Haubtan shouted as he grabbed his rifle and rolled into a ditch. Slamming a new core matrix magazine home, he shouldered the rifle and slowly counted to six. Hearing no response, he threw himself to the top of the ditch and pulled the trigger. A soft pop and a fizzling mist from the barrel was all that ensued.
"Shoddy piece of shit!" Haubtan slammed the weapon on the ground a few times, then threw it at where he thought the enemy was. Maybe I’ll give the bastards a headache. He put his hand to his hip for his fusion pistol, and then saw it about ten meters away through the fog. Hearing the clang of metal on metal and darting his eyes to the top of the ridge, he saw several Imcedi-proxy troopers clearing the ridge, one clutching his shoulder and swearing at the tops of his lungs. Haubtan remained still as death.
His helmet began buzzing. It was the Governor’s voice… "To all my forces: I have made an agreement with the Imcedi. Lay down your arms and surrender. They will treat you well." The Governor himself!
Haubtan started joyfully sobbing, "Praised be Deslumbrador" as he slowly raised his arms off the ground.
Director G’t’zazz clicked his antennae together as he looked at the incoming reports from his agents in the Thaurian Concordat. Less than half a terrestrial day after the announcement from the First Basilica, there were at least five hundred confirmed reports of armed uprising across three hundred worlds and thousands more rumoring Concordat-wide conflict and assassinations. Several agents had been lost through collateral damage, which was in and of itself a good indication that civil war was erupting. The entire Thaurian fleet was mobilized, albeit on two conflicting orders. Omega agents, after seeing Inquisition assassins slip by, checked up on the targets to report on their technique.
G’t’zazz always got a morbid thrill out of reading Omega reports on other nations’ forms of assassination. With the Weirdo Zone, it was always so… utilitarian. Whatever would work the fastest with the least number of civilian casualties was always accepted. But the Thaurians… now they were inventive. Car bombs. Methane explosions in palace sewers. Mass driver asteroid strikes. Their Inquisition had a certain sort of art to it-an Alpha agent in Freleit, hidden motionless in the very same room behind a sofa not visible from the window, sent in holorecordings of a charcoal-robed agent coming in, jabbing the target in the neck with a pick-like object, jabbing in electrodes in certain places and then commandeering the dead Thaurian’s mouth to send a surrender order. No one in the Weirdo Zone would ever think of that. It was too gruesome, too overly contrived, and made too much sense in that situation.
G’t’zazz scribbled some notes in his personal code. If some True Earth punk-ass terrorist needed to be whacked, he could use this and then blame the hit on the Thaurians. Wonderous.
Looking at the reflection in a glass of water on his desk, G’t’zazz saw that Wantanabe was standing behind him making faces. In a single practiced motion, the Human assistant found himself staring down the barrel of a blazer pistol.
Wantanabe shrugged. "It doesn’t have a power pack in it, sir."
G’t’zazz loved Wantanabe. He was almost impossible to shake; whether that fortitude stemmed from a simple faith that none of his coworkers would hurt him (which was true) or from a truly steely mind was one of the director’s favorite things to wonder.
G’t’zazz put away the pistol. "Check this one out, Wantanabe." The pick assassination played itself over in slow motion. "Now, that’s just classy, killing someone and then using them for disinformation."
"You do know that you’re a morbid bug, right?"
G’t’zazz clicked his mandibles. "Damn straight. I assume that you’re not just here to question my tastes in entertainment."
"No, the Emp wants her hourly intelligence report."
"Shouldn’t she be asleep right now?"
"Not last time I checked. She woke me up to tell you."
"Why didn’t she get me herself?"
"You know how she never likes to disturb you from your…" Wantanabe motioned towards the holotank, "‘entertainment.’"
"I do have the sound off this time."
Wantanabe crossed his arms. "She didn’t know that."
"Haven’t I apologized enough for the Alsko affair? After what that bastard did on Horeb, his screams when those rogue S’kopf caught him were music."
"Not only are you a morbid bug, you’re a sick bastard too."
"Only sick bastards like this job."
"So I’ve noticed." Wantanabe checked his watch. "Well…?"
"Lemme watch this one more time, please?"
"It’ll still be on memory after you send the report."
"Aw, you’re no fun."
I laid awake all through that night, remembering all the refugees that came through my homeworld on Sev Hekatai from across the Thaurian demilitarized zone. They were usually Trei’ caste laborers-simple, religious folk, displaced from their homes by the constant bickering of Si’ aristocrats and the usury of the Hei’ merchants-who prayed into the night to their gods that they would not suffer eternal damnation for trying to better their lives, the lives of their children.
Those prayers always kept me up as a little girl. Not because they were loud-they were almost whispers-but they were so sad, not the selfish sadness of a self-imposed religion like mine, but the innocent sadness of realizing that most of what they believed was only created to control them and yet hanging on to that little bit of faith that had kept them alive during the perilous journey across the DMZ…
Such a simple faith… I didn’t understand it when I was a child, and I didn’t understand it on the first night of the Thaurian Civil War. Then again, I laid awake for a different reason that night…
How could anyone be evil enough to manipulate such simple faith to start a war?