Assassin

by Kali Altsoba

  “But that is against our written law! Family retribution has been forbidden for centuries in the Imperium. On what grounds can we do this, as servants of the law? Surely not merely ‘It is Pyotr’s will’?” The morally indignant speaker will not walk freely from the meeting room after his outburst. Knowing this, Takeshi answers anyway, to guide all the others. They’re listening, rigidly silent.

  “All family carry a traitor’s genes. Purity insists on this. It’s law as written by Nature. Do you dispute the iron Law of the Natural Order, put yourself above it? Guards, remove this arrogant man!”

  The Chief Justice raises no objection. The offending judge’s lifelong friends and professional colleagues do nothing as he’s physically lifted off his feet by two guards from Naujock’s merc unit who always accompany Takeshi outside the Waldstätte these days. The blusterer is hustled from the room.

  The Chief Justice wants a clarification. “By ‘family,’ do we mean wives and parents only or do we include minor children in the orders?”

  “An intelligent question, at last!” Takeshi sneers. “Older children, I mean above age ten, go to prison or the camps with the man’s wife and parents.”

  “And the younger ones?”

  “Under ten? Children of the guilty will be told to forget their traitor parents.”

  “Yes, that is sensible. But where do we send them?”

  “To the alms houses, the usual boarding houses and orphanages. Must I do your jobs in detail? Send them wherever they can be prepared to serve the state dutifully once they come of age. Understand?”

  “Yes,” the Chief Judge of the Court of Honor says, “it is as Pyotr wills it.”

  Of the three million civilians arrested as part of the conspiracy purge, most have nothing to do with the coup or 75,000+ accused military plotters. They're seized because Takeshi convinces Pyotr to take advantage of fear and confusion to eliminate lesser enemies, along with the military traitors. He hands over a list of names of men in local government and high civil service. Pyotr doesn’t ask how names make the list. Still in a burning rage, he approves all Takeshi’s lists and military and high court reform orders. There are murmurs of angry dissent by the Old Families but Takeshi hides that from him. Before it’s over, the Honor Courts destroy many tens of thousands of Old Families, including those falsely accused of treason or subversion or a new post coup crime, “wrongful thought.” They’re moved off ancient estates, replaced by coarser nobility nominally more loyal to Pyotr but actually beholding for their good fortune to Takeshi.

  Industrialists and Guild Masters, even the lowest born of men raised up from the undercastes, are titled in place of disgraced Old Families. The new elite grip a changing landscape of power like tuft grass seeded on a steep slope. Survivors know that just a word to Pyotr from the list maker, from the eminence noir who guards the Jade Throne, could render their families destitute, leave them wilting in anonymity in a distant desert camp. When the legal purge ends, Honor Courts that also hide the bodies go quiet but stay in place. The officer corps and Old Families will never be independent again. Pyotr thinks that it’s him they fear. He doesn’t see that they shrink from the hissing viper who lurks right behind.

  Shōji

  The war continues. Every side is still bogged down, only more so. Burdens of endless combat and mass death scourge the worlds. The war weighs heavily, presses down on more and more people. It distorts everything from economics to education, to family futures planned while knowing there might not be any. No one knows what to do differently. No one knows how to escape stalemate, stop the war, prevent the horror of a Kali Age that’s descending everywhere.

  It has been a year since the failed coup, and little has changed in the ritual of the Jade Court or inside brass-and-braid upper ranks of Kaigun and Rikugun; or among the Old Families; or in the flaccid Council of Elders and Master Guilds; or on the battlefields and in the convoy lanes of the Fourth Orion War.

  Except faces and names are different.

  Except Pyotr is even more despised.

  Except Takeshi Watanabe is openly feared.

  Except for kowtowing to Pyotr’s whimsy.

  Yes, actual, real fucking kowtowing.

  Bowing low, walking backwards.

  Knocking your forehead on jade tile.

  In the royal presence, officers below the rank of colonel must do the kau tau: kneel and bow until the forehead knocks the green tile of the Jade Court. Above that rank, all officers must bow low from the waist when greeting him, or when he passes by in review, or just because he’s headed for the water closet. When leaving his august person, everyone’s first three steps must be backward. Pyotr forces every planetary governor in the Imperium to come to the Waldstätte to pledge renewed loyalty, and to do a triple kau tau before the entire Jade Court.

  The only man excepted from ritual obeisance is Takeshi. His eminence noir just nods to Pyotr, a gesture of faux subordination that only affirms to everyone else that he is above the rules, above the law, far above them. The whole kau tau thing was his idea, of course. He knows the humiliation of it must grate on all the factions, filled with proud men forced to prostrate before Pyotr’s vanity. That’s why he convinced the fat fool to make head knocking mandatory, driving yet another wedge between ruler and the ruled. ‘Divide and dissemble. Divide and rule from the throne’s shadows. Poor, playable Pyotr. He’s as easy to reed as a clarinet, as uncomplicated to sound as a trumpet. It’s time for him to go.’

  ***

  Old Families were stunned when Pyotr announced his secret alliance with the Tyrant on Nalchik four years ago. Then came the first wave of victories and they thought that this brash, unloved and aloof Imperator might pull it off after all. They thought that a league of aggression he forged with Jahandar might let them finally defeat the hated Calmari foe. They thought ‘My gods, the fatman may have fooled all of us into gross underestimation. If he can do this..!’ Now, things have changed. At first, the big war went all the way of the Dual Powers. They invaded, conquered, occupied. They held off Alliance counteroffensives. They won every battle in space and on the surface of twice a hundred worlds.

  It was glorious.

  It was thrilling.

  It was exhilarating.

  It was almost orgasmic.

  But that was four years ago. Four long years of all out war ago. Four years that ended in an aborted coup d’état and mass executions. At the start of Year Five things are churning wildly below the surface of the Imperium. Now, the war is going so badly it mostly frightens and appalls the High Castes.

  Now, the war is stalled everywhere.

  Now, the Alliance grows stronger.

  Now, fleets and armies fray like old cloth.

  Now, Daura weighs like a dragged anchor

  Now, reefer ships arrive too often and too full.

  Now, the lower orders are stirring with discontent.

  Now, a foul whiff of revolution hangs in the air.

  And so, despite defeat of the first coup and execution of its plotters, once again the thought worms into minds among the Old Families: ‘If we rid ourselves of Pyotr we can negotiate an end to the war, before it brings an end to us. Who is Pyotr Shaka after all? Just another Oetkert whose ass is plopped on the Jade Throne. We’ve replaced Oetkerts before, and can do it again.’

  These are ancient, noble families that never accepted subservience to any Oetkert, not even the Jade Eye, all the way to the Dowager Regent. And now this vain fatman demands it of them?

  These are ancient, noble families that never accepted subservience to any Oetkert, not even the Jade Eye or the Red Dowager. And now this vain fatman demands it from them? Everything he does abrades their dignity and pride: the kau tau, Honors Courts, rhetorical flirtation with social reform, ongoing affair with fanatic Purity leaders. And not least of all, his elevation of a rank outsider. Pyotr has given a filthy commoner, the strange and dangerous man from Fates, Takeshi Watanabe, unrivaled power and open influence. This cannot be borne!<
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  Who will lead? Even with all his military authority, power and skill, Field Marshal Fidan Onur failed to take out Pyotr and paid the ultimate price. So did his family, and the families of all those who called themselves Resisters. There is no one obvious to replace him as head of the revived Resistance networks. When he killed himself, it was as if a mailed fist reached up to the rafters to tear the roof off any and all organized opposition. No natural leader steps into his place. No one knows how to bring grumblings of fear and growling opposition to focus, to make a second plan with any chance to work. The movement rests on a sideboard like an ancient clock that ticks erratically. It must be rewound everyday or it will stop. But there’s no winder anywhere in sight. What to do?

  In Year Four of the war, they do nothing. There’s no movement, no winding of the clock, no hope of renewed Resistance or a second coup attempt. Early in Year Five, it looks like more of the same. But now the war goes so much more badly for the Imperium that its discontents start to clump and gather in natural balls of opposition almost in spite of themselves. Like dust or planetesimals.

  ***

  They meet to talk it out, to force the issue, to come to grips with it. To find a new leader and coup plan. Or to give up forever and accept that Pyotr can’t be moved and the war will be lost. Fifteen men meet in a secure washitsu style briefing room in Rikugun Main HQ in Novaya Uda. They each represent a key cadre of leading officers from Rikugun or Kaigun. All come from the oldest, noblest families. All received a coded signal to meet at this place, at this time. Three four star generals sit at one end of an incongruous oak table that ruins the washitsu. Beside them are two ancient mariner admirals in full dress, all whites, looking like a pair of highly suspicious seagulls asserting a nesting claim. Sand colored tatami mats underneath polished shoes appear as strips of beach under their black, webbed feet. One admiral is shorter and fatter than the other. His barrel-like chest, clothed in white, completes the brood pair image. ‘Kee-oh.’

  The arguments are the same as before, the same as they always are among top officers. So much so that the meeting threatens to break up into acrimony and bitter recrimination, with veteran plotters who long ago decided to kill Pyotr frustrated to the point of screaming at the new men who still hesitate, who hide behind tarnished, or broken, shields of military duty and honor.

  In a half circle defensive posture, five older men sit at one end of the table silently claiming natural and inevitable authority, yet recognizing that their position is under threat. The real force in the brilliantly lit room is a group of ten younger officers, one star generals and colonels and affiliated battleship and cruiser captains. None of the one stars are GGS. None of the sailors are close to reaching flag rank, except the two seagulls. Yet, all the younger men were recruited into the Resistance by Onur himself. Is this the hour when the lower overthrows the higher?

  Older men preside, the younger ones propose. Four stars and the seagulls advise caution and more delay. One stars and ships’ captains push hard for more decisive action. The younger men are winning all the arguments but not moving the mercury ball over the touch line, against a strong defense. They’re ready to take over the conspiracy but they have no leader. It’s their fatal, missing link.

  “We have to kill him right at the start. Don’t you understand yet? We can’t let Pyotr live. We can’t take any chance that he’ll again rally his Loyalists and the peoples.” It’s Captain Yahya Namid, from the battleship KG Wotan. He’s squat, yet fit. A pit bull of a man, all muscle, teeth and snarl. He’s the closest thing to a new leader the younger group has.

  The taller seagull responds, trying to drop dignity into the room with every word, but in his tone and gestures making a plaintive call instead. “It’s a drastic step. Too radical. It would open the floodgates to change we can’t control. Have you seen the Purity crowds in the streets? Worse, there have been food riots on several worlds. Be careful, captains. I say arrest him. Put him on trial for his crimes, for his unnecessary war and for his blood purge of the officer corps.”

  It’s the fat seagull’s turn. He speaks with head slightly down, resting on a thick neck, then moves it quickly up. It’s a perfect imitation of a herring gull’s ‘choking call,’ declaring claimed territory. It says to gathered Rikugun officers and Kaigun captains: ‘Here I am, I'm not moving. This is my nest area!’

  “Yes, yes. A trial and imprisonment for high treason. That’s the way ahead. Hoist him on his own petard: seize the Honor Courts and try him there. Humble him over the memex! Parade him in a cage on the milnebs and social memexes, to turn the peoples against him. But kill him? No!” As he awaits reply to his bob challenge he strokes a soft, white arm, smoothing a ruffled band of crossed gold braid. Preening and displaying, oiling and admiring his own best feathers.

  “Can’t you senior men see from what happened last time that a successful assassination is required for any coup we try? Why don’t you understand what a trial will mean for us?” It’s a heavy cruiser captain, the youngest man in the room, coming to defense of his battleship superior while trying to move the fatter admiral off his nested position on the beach.

  “I’m pretty sure you’re about to tell us.”

  “Any trial of Pyotr for war crimes will expose all of us to the same charges.”

  “That’s calumny! We followed lawful orders. I committed no crimes!” says a graying general, his indignation turning his face beet red.

  “It’s an old defense, general. It no longer works,” rejoins Captain Namid. “For our men, barely, and only because there are so many guilty in our armies that no regime could try them all. If our enemies stood over us today, they could not find enough judges to condemn us, or locate so many men to fill their firing squads. There are too many war criminals in our ranks, including in this room.”

  “This is infamous! How dare you!?”

  “Calm yourself, and let us speak honestly to one another. All of us here left morality behind on a hundred beachheads on a hundred invaded worlds, and in what we all did above and on them afterward.”

  A second battleship captain joins the line. “I agree: there’s no point debating our past crimes. We are gathered to discuss the future, not the past. Put aside any claims to cleanliness. None of us who meet have clean hands.”

  “Good,” says a third ship’s captain. “Because we military men are far from any familiar shore as this war traverses a fifth year. We must leave moral clarity and simplicity behind. We are now entering the far murkier realm of politics.” The battleship and cruiser skippers are starting to maneuver together, like a well trained naval squadron turning into broadside position, readying to drop volleys from their big guns onto the seagull’s beach. “I tell you, if we eliminate Pyotr we have a real chance to change the history of the Imperium, even of all Orion! And with a swift, single blow! We must act, act decisively, and act soon!”

  “Yes, captain,” says a major general. “But we are men of high birth, of oath and honor. You cannot ask that we turn lethal conspirator against our rightful sovereign! We’ve seen where that leads.”

  “We have already turned conspirator, shōshō, or haven’t you noticed? The only question to discuss is whether this group has what it takes to conspire rightly, to make a coup état that sticks. If not, I shall leave and find another.”

  “I still say it’s wrong to kill our…”

  “Damn it, man! Your objection is too precious, more formal than real. You are just trying to keep the moral high ground under you while allowing reality to take form, and take its course!”

  “Don’t say my conscious is too keen! You, who are proposing murder!”

  “We’re all murderers, are we not?” He waives off a protest. “Stop, stop. We all know it. Leave it aside. What I propose is to kill a tyrant. It’s not the same.”

  “He’s right. Remember the kind of man Pyotr is, what acts of savagery he has shown himself willing to commit. Remember how he wages war, and demands that we must. This is no ordinary ma
n or ordinary murder.”

  “I remember. Do you? Do you recall what happened when Pyotr waded to his knees in the blood of Onur’s exposed group? Think on his skull pile!” It’s another shōshō, a four star. “I spilled blood in the name of Loyalism and my too precious oath. We all arrested friends. We helped him kill tens of thousands of our fellow officers, handed them over to his so called Honor Courts.”

  Captain Namid interjects. “I also left my honor behind, general.”

  A one star: “Too many of my friends were falsely accused of sympathy for the failed coup, some by rivals for their commands. Or rivals for their wives.”

  “Indeed, taishō. Some men died from a quarrel over a woman or a title or a long coveted estate. There are those among the officer corps who hid their own private murders inside Pyotr’s purge, their crimes inside his.”

  “Make a list. The time is coming to purge the purgers.”

  “We all have lists. My point is that he smeared us with that terrible crime.”

  “Pyotr will show no mercy whatever if a second plot fails. He’ll wipe out all who conspire in this room, along with our families. He won’t even stop there. This time, he’ll kill the headmen of all the Old Families. I feel it coming. That horrid man has no boundaries whatever.”

  “Thirty years ago,” the taller seagull squawks, “it was much worse. When Hashâshīn killed his father and moved against his mother, the Red Queen killed hundreds of millions. Pyotr may yet follow her example. He grows more like her every day, though one must never dare say that to him.”

  “It’s one more reason why he has to die.” It’s the second one star. “If he survives our lunge he’ll strike us all down, then wipe our seed from Orion. We will disappear into history’s oubliette.”