Assassin

by Kali Altsoba

  “Whadevah yu say, jin’ral. Umm, how lon’ is dad?” Naujock really is a stupid man. Cunning in a special way. Evil in a smallish sense, of a kind that follows orders without ever questioning them. But above all other things, he’s really fucking stupid.

  Takeshi sighs. “Too long, gunsō. But their knees are worn out from prayer. Following the Red Purge, they asked their god what they did wrong to deserve such punishment. Now they think he answers them. They believe that the god who abandoned the ancestors of their forefathers is returned to become flesh.”

  “Dads jus wehyd! Ah liv’n an’ flesh god? Dads one dad kud be killed.” His thoughts always circle back to murder, almost without context or cause. It’s his most reliable instinct. Sometimes, like now, it’s spot on.

  “I’ve no intention of being killed, by anyone.”

  “Yu, boss? Ah did’n mean yu. Ah mend…”

  “Kahn believes I’m the Mahdi, the Sun God, the Prophesy Incarnate, Messiah of the Black Faith. He read it in the wheeling of far off stars. Adjusting for time and planet-of-origin-view, of course. It is hard to credit so clever a man believing in a dumber idea, but he actually does.”

  “Youse pwenty smawt an’ damn gud at whad yu does, boss, bud yu ain’d no god!”

  ‘Even this coarse lout sees the truth that I am mortal. Sees it in a moment. Kahn and the Brethren can’t see it through a mystic haze thousands of years in the making. Willful blindness or blind devotion? It hardly matters. What does, is that their brittle faith makes them uniquely vulnerable to my manipulations.’

  “Ha! Youse did’n say ah wus wowkin’ fur a god! Ah shud gid moh pay!”

  Takeshi stands, holds his arms straight out and up: “Are you not awestruck by my radiance?”

  Naujock spits a long stream of blue juice. It phissshh, clangs! into the brass spittoon. “Nah, nod ah bid. Damn odd idee’yaw, doh, dad youse ah liv’n god!”

  “Not so odd as you think, gunsō. It’s an ancient idea, the Man God.”

  “Giv ovah!”

  “No, it’s true. Lots of religions that came into and left the Thousand Worlds believed it. They worshipped a Man God from a distant, golden past from which the rightful ruler is descended, or one who’ll arrive in a golden future to which we all may yet ascend. If only we obey the rules of the high priesthood.”

  “Yah, hokay. Bud folks wus weal dumb bak den, yah?”

  “Even today, it’s a common belief. Across Dauran stars, there are billions of desperate fools who believe the Tyrant is at least a prophet of the gods, if not a god himself. His very name is prophesy: Jahandar, Ruler of All the Worlds.”

  “Dad bahd ass? Dems godda be sum meen, fukin’ gods, in Dawa!”

  “Aren’t they always? Yet few beyond the maddest cults believe as Brethren fiercely believe about their ‘Prophesy Made Man.’ Not a god of future or past, but alive in the here and now, walking among the Faithful.”

  “An’ duh mice? Whad a‘boud dem?” Naujock asks, then disrespects Takeshi’s revenge reverie with another Phissshh, clang!

  “It’s in the too hasty nature of those revolutionary ideologues to rush events into the wrong moment, to strike before the critical time is truly ripe. They think they’re powerful and smart enough to step into the shoes of generals who were born and raised to war, and do better at it.”

  “Ahw dey?”

  “We shall see. They have a private army, separate from Rikugun and much smaller, but not insignificant. It’s capable of hard, focused striking power. Their weakness is above the clouds.”

  “Boss?”

  “They have troopships, but SAC relies on Kaigun warships to escort all its commando convoys. Take away the ships and SAC is stranded or exposed.”

  “Who will win, duh monks ‘oh duh mice?” phissshh, clang!

  “Cowls believe that god is on their side, so they can’t lose. SAC and Sakura-kai believe that science is on their side, so they can’t lose. Both delusions have been around for millennia, coexisting in hostility as they do in our own time.”

  “Sonds lak duh middel is duh plaz da wait, an’ da win.”

  ‘Did he just have a solid tactical insight?’ Takeshi looks suspiciously at Naujock. “Yes, the middle is the fulcrum where irresistible Broderbund superstition is balanced by immovable SAC ideology. The place and moment where one man with a lever may raise or lower his finger and move the worlds of the Imperium, perhaps all the Thousand Worlds, all at once. Shall we begin?”

  “Yah, yah, boss! Whad ya wan frum me ‘an duh boys?” Phissshh, clang!

  “I thought you’d have already guessed, a smart man like you. A man who discusses history and war, philosophy and religion. I want you to be my lever.”

  ***

  Takeshi starts in outer worlds, with isolated murders of solitary cowls who come back to old commanderies too soon. Each time, his assassin moves inside a roving mob, escorted to and from the scene of murder by an obliging, yelling, unsuspecting crowd there to denounce regicide or protest some local injustice. Or a mob forms to stop a company of hated Sword Brothers from reclaiming old lands and forts lost to them decades ago, in the mass bloodletting by the Dowager. A blade flashes, a pistol shoots, a monk falls, and a killer disappears into the shouts and chaos. Or an accusation is yelled from the back. The mob turns feral and rends the cowled man limb from limb, hanging body parts in a grandfather tree or from wrought iron street lamps. Later, the stealthy man who shoots or merely shouts meets with Naujock to collect blood money, and the name of his next target. Each time, after each kill, Takeshi’s bought-and-paid local police open a noisy investigation that inevitably and inexorably leads back to, and lays proven blame on, the radical fanatics of Sakura-kai.

  The cowls take revenge.

  The gray men retaliate.

  Agents provocateurs move on.

  Targeted murders are done so swiftly and well that, two months after Pyotr’s death, Takeshi ups the ante, telling Naujock to increase the scale and frequency of violence. Mercs move offworld in company units. SAC men start to die in big batches in carefully laid-in ambushes, attacked by mercs dressed in cowls. Bewildered and beleaguered monks die the very same way, killed by Naujock’s mercs dressed in gray uniforms. The police investigate, and point the finger at the cowls or commandos. Then follow retaliations and spontaneous field fights, as thousands of SAC commandos clash with swarms of warrior monks leading dāsa regiments arriving in flocks from hidden reserves in the Ordensstaadt.

  Takeshi holds back his special police. They record names and locations of the revealed membership of the Broderbund, hidden ever since Pyotr’s mother carried out her blood purge in a sheeting hail of revenge. On other lists, they ID Sakura-kai exposed for the first time. His local police silently prepare cells and execution chambers for whichever side Takeshi will decide to slaughter first. To agitate this budding violence, he adds sudden mob attacks that his thugs and secret police arrange, working the outcaste districts and farfolk ghettos. Angry crowds pounce on small groups of SAC officers who wander arrogantly into shanty towns, looking for drugs or sex or both. His police investigate, and of course blame the cowls. Gray revenge is swift. Or the mobs swarm over some reclaimed commandery, murdering all dāsa and mother-wives they find. Police point the finger back at men in gray, and another town or city falls into violence.

  Takeshi tips off Kahn about Sakura-kai movements, and frothing Brethren on assault craft take out an unescorted troopship just to kill a handful of the secret, gray men onboard. SAC is told where death squads can ambush dāsa regiments arriving as reinforcements from the Ordensstaadt. The violence is no longer small and isolated. It’s turning into a real civil war, with wild and open warfare on a dozen worlds, spreading out from there. Takeshi is killing his enemies by proxy.

  ***

  He plays the ideologues and toughs of the Purity movement with equal ease, pointing not just Brethren but also the military at them. Sakura-kai leaders are too confident of their influence over Watanabe, and too focused on
putting their own men in control of SAC’s General Curia and the mainline officer corps. He delivers hidden evidence to Rikugun generals and Kaigun admirals that, during Pyotr’s purge of the military that followed Onur’s coup, it was SAC’s men that did the killing. Then he sits back. He’ll reap that sown crop when it ripens.

  Meanwhile, he lets too cocky Purists in Sakura-kai soak in unhidden pride, pushes them from shadows they wisely stayed in for decades. Encourages them to come out of hiding and bask in the approval of the madding crowds on world after world. They ask him to step into the public glare in their behalf. They think he converted to Purity in his college days at Pusan on Daegu. They know he was a member of their secret Cherry Blossom Society since achieving his captaincy in SAC. He demurs. He delays. He deceives. He decrees. He declines.

  “Now is not the time for that.”

  “Yet we wish it so, General Watanabe.”

  “Perhaps, but I must serve you for now in other ways.”

  “The Inner Council has voted on this matter. You are the face of Purity that we want to show the worlds.”

  “No, I’m not the man to front our movement.”

  “I say you are. So does the leadership. As we move into the open, we want you in front. You have been a secret member of Sakura-kai since I first recruited you, over twenty years ago.”

  “I remember, but much has happened since I underwent the ritual.”

  “Have you lost your faith?”

  “Far from it. I believe in Purity more intensely than ever.”

  “What then? What stands in your way?”

  ‘You do, you fools.’ He carelessly scratches his third nipple, beneath his tunic. The jacket is new and chafes, just a little. “I’m called many things behind my back. The pejoratives most widely used are ‘Pyotr’s Pet’ and ‘Mouth of Pyotr’.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard both often.”

  “They're damaging, to me and to our cause.”

  “What do such words matter now? He’s dead.”

  “His memory is not. They cheered Pyotr’s demise and death, but hardly realize they hate the men who did it. Their outrage at his betrayal will be exponentially greater if they learn his Pet speared him with his own iklwa. Then it will hurt our great cause if people think I lead it.”

  “Hmmm, maybe so. Maybe so. I’ll have to consult the Inner Council, but what you say…”

  “You know this is truth. Purity is too important, the looming moment of our triumph on Amasia is too near, to chance failure now over so small a thing as me. You have other faces to front the movement.”

  “You’ll support us from your position here on Kestino, inside the Jade Court? You’ll steer Friedrich, and restrain the new Chief of the Great General Staff?”

  “Always. You have my word as an officer of the Sakura-kai. In the meantime, concentrate on fighting the Brethren. Take them out! They’re the true, long term threat to us. Long live Purity!”

  ***

  Takeshi steps aside from any pride of place, avoids publicity, knowing that many Sakura-kai officers are fatally eager to step on and over him, however much the old timers in the leadership think that he’s the man to lead their movement to final victory. No one knows that he has already begun to kill off top rivals in SAC and Sakura-kai, using mad monks to do it in the same way that he provokes gray killers to retribution against the Brethren. He wants cowls all dead by the end. But he needs them to weaken SAC, on their way to a mass grave. He tries to explain this to Naujock, who just doesn’t see how things are playing out.

  “How cum we’se not fukin’ ovah Puwity jus lak duh monks?” Naujock asks two months into the deadly provocateur plan, four months after Pyotr’s death. “Yu hates dem neah as mush as ah does. Shuh, ah kill’d a foo fur yu da geds dis widdle civah wah go’in’, bud how cum duh gway wads ged sudg gud dips fwom yu?”

  Takeshi sighs. It’s the third time he has explained this to his top hitman. “I need SAC to check resurgent Brethren, and to keep Rikugun officers nervous and in step by threatening to replace them with a different army one day, with SAC’s Purity divisions or the new Shaka Army. In the meantime, I fracture the military.”

  “Bud boss…”

  “The little gray men who see all the worlds in a thousand strands of DNA will bend the knee to a new sovereign soon enough, or they’ll bend the neck. As will all Brethren who look backward into obscure texts and not to the Wolf padding hungrily outside their cloister door.”

  “Dads yu, wight? Duh ‘Woof ah Wah.’ Bud wad ‘boud me and duh boys?”

  “There’ll be time for blood and betrayal, for you and your men to also bray as red wolves into redder nights. For now, keep doing what you’re doing. Continue the offworld provocations.” Takeshi recalls a haiku he composed in anticipation of the coming hour of SAC’s demise. It’s one of those that lay out his strategy in private signposts only he can read.

  ‘Evening red spreads

  darkly beneath mouse gray cloth.

  Murder ebbs away.’

  Before SAC grows aware of the threat and readies to come at him, he’ll strike. A shadow hidden in deeper shadow. It’s already too late for Sakura-kai. Its leaders are already dying or disappearing, one-by-one and in explainable circumstances. The secret gray men are stabbed in a brothel fight on a far off world, or spaced by accident, or step in front of a hover, or expire in a dual. Sometimes he sets up a two-for, since dueling is a matter of personal honor and never investigated.

  Few die in an obvious act of murder, and none at all in Novaya Uda or in any city on Kestino. He’s too smart to let even so skilled a murderer as Naujock take his mercs to work where investigators from Sakura-kai inside SAC Main HQ might trace the kill order back to him. When the killing is too obvious or bloody to hide, it’s always blamed on a cowl. Retaliation is swift. Takeshi calls off his hit man and mercs once arithmetic killings take off geometrically on their own, as Brethren and Sakura-kai strike each other down in escalating preemptive murders.

  That’s when he lands the fatal blow, telling the General Curia and Maximilian Kahn on the same night that the moment is ripe. Before a red morning dawns over Novaya Uda, he accuses Sakura-kai of betrayal of its superiors inside SAC, of plotting to steal the government in a second coup. An hour later Takeshi tells Kahn that Sakura-kai will divert the revolution to radical ends and men. He delivers to the enraged Curia on Novaya Uda and to Kahn’s killers offworld separate lists of names compiled in secret over 20 years, from the first day he was inducted into the Cherry Blossom Society. Before Sakura-kai leaders can react or realize their doom, they’re dead. In hours, their secret organization is exposed and drowning in a rising tide of murder and retribution. On world after world, in city upon city, murder is alphabetical as the killers work methodically off Takeshi’s lists. They eliminate startled men in their own homes, inside local headquarters, in bars and cathouses and barrio bedrooms. He doesn’t even get his hands red.

  He understands that there’s no way to reconcile Purity and the Black Faith. Both claim to be the “one true religion,” one revealed in science and the other by prophesy. So each must try to destroy the other, and fill its space. They don’t know that he told the military that he’ll ensure that neither faith survives. At the same time, he nudges Brethren and SAC to work in tandem against despised yet powerful military at the center. They do it, even as they also murder each other in droves across wide peripheries of the empire. He’s going all-in, turning factions against each other at the same time, balancing one form of power against another, one set of mass killings against retributive murders. Meanwhile, he rises up the blood greased pole toward total personal domination of everyone and everything.

  ***

  SAC and the Brethren make their great mistake at the same moment, because it’s the same mistake. Takeshi goads them into “cleansing” the top military, taking out the big hats they think remain loyal to the Old Order and not to the Compact. They’re keen to do it, not because they see the already handicapped Rikugun
and rudderless Kaigun as a threat, but because each faction is frustrated by entwined murder campaigns and burgeoning civil war, and is ready to jump to the endgame and seize power for itself. Vengeance and lustful certainty give him leverage. He assures the two competing faiths that he’ll hold the military in check while they act boldly against its leadership, a change in which they have a shared interest. Pyotr’s mother would despise Takeshi for his origins, and hate him for what he did to her son and family, but she would be impressed by how he plays the game.

  He’s two steps ahead now, before they strike and take out the whole Great General Staff and key governors on fifty core worlds. His coconspirators serve his ends more than their own when they strike down top military men, removing enemies but alienating and angering all the officer corps. In a coordinated week of arrests and summary executions, Brethren and SAC act, not together but in concert, briefly setting aside mutual hate as they divvy up his target lists. They don’t know that the top men they kill are replaced by midlevel officers he made deals with long ago, well before Pyotr died. He gathered support at the secondary level of command, always intending one way or the other to purge the first level after any successful coup. New men rise up from third or fourth chair in an Army HQ or on a ship’s Bridge to fill dead men’s boots, to sit behind command consoles and in governor’s chairs. All are in his debt.

  Everyone is devoted to avenging dead officer comrades, whether they gained from the deaths or not. And so, bloodletting of admirals and generals carried out by monks and mice brings men to command of the troops and fleets that he’ll need very soon, to purge the purgers. He’ll do it, when he does it, posing as a defender of traditional military rights and of the Old Oder against Purity and Black Faith radicalism. It will win support from an alienated officer corps that despises him, but hates even more the traitors and murderers in SAC and the Brethren. Takeshi knows that however much he culls and prunes top commands to raise up his own men and “line up” the officer corps, the empire depends on Rikugun and Kaigun to maintain order and stability in the homeworlds and to hold the front in the war. He also knows that the Old Order thinks it can get on fine if everyone in SAC and the Broderbund dies, as he intends. That makes the endgame obvious.