by Vox Day
“So what happens if we turn around?” a disheveled man with long hair and a skeptical expression asked. He was obviously a spell sourceror. “We turn to stone or something like that?”
“Something like that”, the Salesman agreed solemnly. “Depending on the aspect of the particular demon in question, one's heart might stop, one's brain might shatter, or in the most unlikely scenario, one's soul could, perhaps, be inadvertently devoured.”
The Salesman grinned, attempting to allay the crowd's obvious distress.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please, you need not worry. There is absolutely no need to be afraid! The DoomBeast 666 has been tested and retested under the most strenuous of circumstances, and has passed the Federal Communication Cabal's most stringent tests with flying colors. So if you'll bear with me a moment, I'll just call up the incantation and we'll be off!”
He cleared his throat, wiggled his fingers dramatically, then intoned the incantation in his deepest, most impressive voice. “See kolonbakslash beastbakslash demonsix dotexe!”
The crowd screamed in fear as a thunderclap boomed and a huge six-armed firedemon unexpectedly appeared in their midst, howling like a lost soul and lashing out at them with lightning-tipped claws. Sparks slavered from its lava-like tongue as the New Products editor from Bite Magazine panicked and backed out of her chalk circle. She was devoured in a flash. The terrible sight sent two nearby reporters into hysterics; attempting to flee, they too disappeared into the fiery maw of the hell beast.
“Begone, spirit of evil”, shouted a Xaos technician, leaping out from behind a scarlet curtain to wave a dead chicken over the DoomBeast's keyboard. "By the F10 and the Three-Finger Salute, I banish and bind thee!”
There was a hiss, and an unearthly roar erupted from below as the demon imploded in a flash of sulfuric purple smoke. Hysterical shrieks and moans came from the shocked audience as they stared at the DoomBeast, terrified, but afraid to abandon the safety of their shielded circles.
“Very sorry about that folks”, apologized the Salesman as he crawled out from under a display counter, his glamorous hair now unfashionably unkempt. “Apologies and so forth. Apparently I called up the wrong program! Let's try this again, shall we?”
The Salesman ignored the frightened wails of the crowd and gestured towards his assistant. The young man cleared his throat, and nervously began to call out the arcane words. “See kolonbakslash beastbakslash demonsev dotexe!”
In a matter of seconds, the Salesman's visibly relieved audience was watching, enraptured, as a beautiful female face began to take form within the purple smoke that still lingered in front of them….
Ten minutes later, twelve dancing dervishes dissolved to the ringing of tinkerbells and the thunderous applause of the ensorceled crowd. The Salesman wiped his sweaty brow with the tailored cuff of his silk shirt, and sighed with relief. With only a few minor hitches, the grand kickoff had succeeded! He looked up to see a multitude of hands waving, reporters, techies, sourcerors, magicians, all clamouring for his attention.
“How soon is the model 666 available?” “When can we get an evalation unit?” “What's the retail?” “Who's distributing?” Inquiring minds demanded to know.
“Shipping will begin in less than two months, but we'd encourage you to place your orders immediately. That's all I can tell you for now.” The Salesman of Xaos smiled enigmatically and shrugged his shoulders.
“Wait a minute,” the scruffy sourceror who'd spoken up before called out. “With Compact and Devil locked in a price war, and since Zeus, Gatekeeper, and you guys are all scrambling to undercut them, prices just keep dropping. It seems the longer you wait, the less you pay, and the more you get. What do you say about that?”
“Well, yes, that's true,” the Salesman admitted. “But you can't pursue an ever-receding horizon forever; at some point, you have to make your choice and live with it. Otherwise, you'll never buy anything!”
For just a moment, the slick sales veneer vanished from his face and revealed the world-weary eyes of a philosopher.
“It's just like anything else in this industry. You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't!”
Contempt
“You do understand how important this is, Under-Ambassador? The fate of the New Concord rests upon the success of your mission!”
I bowed deeply before the haughty eyes of the High Ambassador. He wore the black-and-gold of the Yesod, sworn enemies to my own clan of Kether, but such differences mattered little here. We both served the Malkuth above all else.
“Yes, Ambassador. I understand you well. I will not fail you, nor the Malkuth. Long life to the Empire!”
“And to the Mater Dei!” he responded properly, according to the ritual.
Two days later, I stood upon the command deck of the orbiting warship. Rear Admiral Scheer of the Greater German Republic was my escort and was prepared to serve as my translator, though I did not need one. He was a tall Aryan male, yellow-haired and proud, with intense brown eyes. He did well at concealing the contempt I knew he must feel for me as a member of a lesser race.
“The Sixth Reich is most pleased that you have come to meet with us. The Council is intrigued with the possibilities an alliance with the Malkuth may have to offer.”
“You honor me with your hospitality,” I replied politely. Surreptitiously, I surveyed my surroundings. While I was impressed by the vigilance of the black-clad guardsmen, I was also disappointed. I feared they might make things difficult, if worse came to worst. But only difficult, not impossible.
“If it is not impolite, I would like to know when I can expect to meet with the Council?”
The admiral grinned, exposing perfect white teeth. He was an impressive specimen of humanity. If only his eyes had been blue, he might have harbored hopes for a Council seat himself someday. Ah well, there was always the surgery.
“Tomorrow, if all goes well. Ten of the twelve Councilmen are already on board, and Dieter van Dewerk has already sent word that his proxy vote will be in favor of the New Concord.”
“Yes, Herr van Dewerk has been most supportive.”
“It's no secret,” the admiral agreed. “He originally sponsored the motion, as I imagine you are aware. Unfortunately, there has been a minor rebellion in one of the Slovakian provinces which is under his governance and he will not be attending the meeting.”
“Most unfortunate. My tongue is not so eloquent as his, I fear.”
“You are no doubt correct. As for the Council, they are only awaiting the arrival of the Minister of Security, Horst Lessing. He will be here soon.”
Yes, Horst Lessing, I thought. The key. Our intelligence sources had kept us far better informed than the Germans knew. The Council that ruled the Sixth Reich was an oligarchy, not a dictatorship, and the men who sat in the seats of power were individuals who agreed upon only one thing: the superiority of their Aryan heritage. On all other issues were they free to differ.
And differ they often did. I knew that five other members of the Council were in agreement with van Dewerk and firmly supported the alliance. Also, I knew five Councilmen would vote against the New Concord. A split vote counted as a negative, so Horst Lessing's vote was crucial. And, despite our best efforts, unknown.
“Will a decision be reached at the meeting, Herr Admiral?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Oh no, of course not. The Council will discuss it after you've addressed them, and they will put the matter to a vote the next day.”
I breathed a silent sigh of relief. Praise the Blessed Mother! If things went poorly, I'd have at least one evening to rectify the situation.
It was a disaster. I knew the plan was dead from the moment I walked into the formal chamber. The members of the Council were arrayed in a half-circle facing the entrance, and I felt a wave of hatred engulf me like a physical force emanating from their petty, pure-blooded minds.
The hatred flowed even from those who supported the alliance. It was only from a purely pragmatic p
oint-of-view that they had entertained the notion and then come to accept it. But the others were ruled by their hate and by their fear. It did not matter that the Empire had wealth and technology they desired. It did not matter that we needed their weapons technology and were willing to pay dearly to acquire it. It did not matter that they were desperate for an ally in their savage war against the League of Seven. All that mattered was that we were an inferior species in their eyes, a breed far less than human, a class beneath contempt.
I felt despair as I looked into the pale blue eyes of Horst Lessing. I cannot read minds, but I did not need any extra-sensory perception to discern his thoughts. You thing. I could almost hear him thinking as he stared at me without bothering to conceal his disgust. You insect.
I spoke only for a short while, touching just briefly upon the benefits offered by an alliance with the Malkuth. I saved my flowery words for another day, for ears that might deign to listen.
It was not difficult to escape my room. The lock was digital. Our weapons systems might be primitive compared to theirs, but our electronic technologies were far superior and it took mere seconds to defeat the primitive door mechanism. I was worried about the guards, having noted their vigilance earlier, but it seemed they had been mostly for show. My scanners detected no warm bodies in the vicinity. Careless, but perhaps not by their lights, for who would be sneaking around an orbital warship during shipsnight except a crew member? Certainly not an incarcerate locked into its room!
I soon found a terminal providing a link to the ship's computer. It was a simple thing to learn where Herr Lessing was located; he was in VIP quarters not far from where I had been imprisoned. Silently, I made my careful way down the silvery corridor to his room and easily bypassed the electronic safeguards upon his door.
The door whirred shut behind me as I edged slowly forward. In the morning, Horst Lessing would be found dead in his bed, slain by unknown assassins. Perhaps at the behest of a Council rival, or possibly agents of the League of Seven. The respected Imperial Under-Ambassador, of course, would not be suspected. Was I not harmless and jailed in my cell? Tomorrow, the vote would be six to five, in favor of the New Concord, and my duty would be done. Praise the Great Mother!
The doomed human slumbered, unaware, before me. I touched a series of buttons on the little black Digital Mind Assistant welded permanently to my thorax. I knew what I was about, but it is always best to seek confirmation in these delicate matters. [ncd huma / ff anat / heart: locate] The whirring hum of my DMA's drive was inaudible, but I could feel a pleasant warmth against my cold body as it vibrated. [srch pos / heart: locate= quote{the way to a man's heart is through his stomach}]
Clacking my mandibles with satisfaction, I extended the longest of my eight killclaws from its chitinous scabbard.
Medal for a Marine
I guess it might surprise you that even though I'm a Marine myself, I'm not a big fan of women in the military. Really, I'm not. I don't know what those Sisterhood whackos were thinking when they talked the politicians into twisting the Army's arm to clear us for combat ops. I'm not talking about tactical ops like the comtrol I did either, I mean the dirty foxhole business where you're carting a rifle around out there on the front lines.
Almost everybody who was ever in the armed forces knew that stupid policy was just a disaster waiting to happen, of course, and all the Pentagon spin in the world couldn't save it after the 162nd was hit by Syrian regulars on the Golan. I hope a few of those turnip brains in the Defense Department took it in the keester for that one - it's not like anyone in the real world ever thought the Rome Addendum was going to hold up forever.
Oh, you covered that? How interesting. And you seriously thought it was the real deal? My, oh my, you media types never change. You believe anything anyone tells you with a straight face, don't you. That's just sad.
Anyhow, I guess the pencil necks must have thought the flashpoint would be over in East Jerusalem, but they forgot that the Arabs usually have to team up in order to get their nerve together for another whack at the Zionists. Fortunately, the Israelis never put much faith in the, oh, what was that silly name they were calling them again? Right, "American Amazons". Thank you. Well, without the Israelis, it would have been a lot worse. But it was embarrassing seeing our finest ladies in full retreat from a jumped-up gang of third-raters, and when CNN showed those horrible pictures of those poor girls being assaulted and their dead bodies being strung up on display for the cameras, well, that was the end of that particular experiment.
Thank goodness for that! After the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs resigned, all the chickenpoop generals who just a few weeks before had been bragging about how their girls were trained and vicious killers were back to beating their chests about the need to keep women out of harm's way. What a bunch of hypocrites. I feel terrible and sometimes I think part of it was my fault, except I know that it wasn't. Not really.
Why do I say that? Well, once they gave me that medal, you know, a lot of people used it as an excuse to prove we were just as good in combat as men. But most of them who did that just don't understand how things work in the field these days. I wasn't fighting anyone. I was just doing what I had to do to save my guys. Maybe it's a maternal instinct or something, I don't know, like the mama bear thing.
Sure, I'd be happy to tell you about it. It's funny how no one ever bothers to ask what really happened, they just focus on the medal and all the historic nonsense about implications and whatever. But no one ever tries to be a hero, at least I don't think so, it's just that you do what needs to be done, and sometimes, when it's all over, people think you did something special.
Did you cover the war in Switzerland, by the way? No? Okay, well, just so you're clear on things, I was with the Second Marines, with Captain Gorman's Bravo Company. The Swiss voted to pull out of the Union about three weeks before we flew over to Europe, but the Euros managed to sneak in ten divisions just before we landed. The original plan was for us to debark near the French border, but Geneva was captured on the first day, so we were diverted to the Lugano airport, which is about thirty kilometers north of the Italian border.
It was crazy. Half the Swiss were collaborating with the Euros, and the other half were up in arms. And I mean literally up in arms, because those people have more guns per capita than a Chicago drug gang. It was mostly older stuff, but it would make a hole in you all the same. Light machine guns, anti-tank rockets, even some SAMs, and they kept this stuff in their public schools! It was insane, but that was why they were able to tie up so many EU troops for as long as they did.
The local militia kept the pressure off us, which saved our fannies since we were pretty much sitting ducks. The President sent us in under some strict fire-only-if-fired-upon rules, and we were really unhappy about that. You can't shoot back when you're dead. Fortunately, the part of Switzerland we landed in is rabidly anti-EU, and it wasn't long before the Swiss turned one of their mountain compounds over to us to keep us out of harms way. You should try to see one if you get the chance. It was huge inside, like Khazad-Dum or something, only without the orcs. And the balrog, of course. The engineering is impressive, and it's funny to see how growing up in a neighborhood of fascists seems to spark their creativity. I guess a little paranoia goes a long way.
We didn't actually go into action for another two weeks, until after Lausanne got torched. That was the last straw for the President, and we received our orders only a few hours later. Since the Italian Alpini who were supposed to be invading the south were still sitting in Milano, we were sent north to where the action was. People make fun of the Alpini sometimes and maybe they have more good looks than sense, but I met a few of them after the war and I liked them. They're not stupid. It's a lot easier to drink cappucino and pick up girls in your snazzy uniform than it is to climb mountains with Swiss snipers picking off your buddies.
I stayed at the BatOps center we'd set up under Mount San Salvatore with the other comt
rollers. Switzerland's network is very good, with a rock-solid infrastructure almost as good as the one we were used to back home, so Major Cummings figured we could better support the boys from where we were. A lost connection can be rehooked, but it's hard to replace your comtrols once a bomb wipes them out. I was pretty happy about his decision, as you can imagine. When the enemy has air superiority, there's nothing like about a million tons of rock over your head!
The boys had to go about eighty kilometers north to hold the San Gottardo pass against two divisions of French troops that were working their way up the Rhône. I think the Union generals were planning to use them to trap the Swiss regulars who were still holding Zurich against the Germans. Most of the French Swiss were pro-Euro, so we knew the French would move through Vaud and Zermatt without much trouble. The major was just hoping we'd get to the pass before them.
And we got there first, although not without losing twelve men when the convoy was strafed in the Lepontines. None of mine, thank God! It could have been a lot worse, but either the Euros weren't being very smart about using their air or they were worried about those Bearcats our Navy friends had sitting on their carriers in the Adriatic. They were too far away to give us close support, unfortunately, but they were near enough to keep the Euros on their toes.
The boys weren't blind, though. We had our RATs up, and combined with the regular reports we were getting from Swiss intel, we had a good idea of what was going on and where the enemy was. But the RATs were the best; they were small enough that they were hard to see, harder to hit, and their direct satellite links meant we could stay patched into the boys' battlesuits as long as we could keep one of the little guys flying somewhere over their heads.
The boys didn't have much time to get dug in, but they did manage to hook up with a company of Swiss militia guarding the pass. The Captain said they were pretty happy to see us, which you can understand. But you have to hand it to them, they were all set to take on two divisions of regulars with or without us.