by A P Heath
She knew she couldn’t push him, had to let him come to her, thinking all along it was his idea. His choice.
He’d grabbed her by the shoulders, more roughly than she’d expected and pushed her against the corridor wall. For a
moment she thought there might be a little fire in him; something she could coax into a less nauseating distraction.
His kisses had dashed her hopes. Soft and wet where they should be forceful. He was taking her after all. Seizing his moment with a show of his lust for her.
She resigned herself to another mundane task and led him to an empty bed chamber. She knew which one to choose. She’d scouted the fullness of the suite long before this day and even considered bringing him here earlier, when he was still failing to make his move, under the pretense of needing to confide in him.
None of that subterfuge was necessary now though. He had made his confession and was thinking of nothing more than the pleasure she would give him.
Once inside the disappointment continued. He was old, older on the inside still and his stamina was outdone by his excitement.
His hands were frantic, his breath laboured as she let him take her. When he’d finished she had barely undressed. She’d felt him let go inside her, heard his moans and pitied him for the pathetic creature he was.
Once would not seal it though. She had to be sure he’d keep coming back so she applied every trick and technique she’d been taught to keep him going.
At first she worried he would simply collapse and sleep. Later, after she’d brought him to his finish for the third time she worried he might collapse and die.
He was happy and she had to admit the brief practice had improved him. He was passable, not good by any means, but she would work on that.
She brought him back, teasing him, tempting him and working his libido into as much of a frenzy as he was able to muster.
After the fourth she decided it was enough. She was proven right when he tried to initiate more.
“No”, she said gently, giving him a smile and her most smoldering look, “Always leave them wanting more.”
She’d winked slowly, filling the gesture with promises of what
was to come and kissed him, long and deep.
That was enough, he was hers.
After their next encounter she’d spoken to him of Samantha, while they lay naked and sweat covered on the bed of the unused chamber.
She’d told him of the ways Samantha spoke to her, making the woman out to be monstrously unfair, unpleasant and bullying.
She had let him offer her his protection, claiming she should not cause problems, every bit the damsel in distress. He promised she would be gone and Cammie pleaded for him not to be too hasty.
She batted her big innocent eyes and stroked his skin as she spoke. Her voice begging for him not to take action while her body urged completely the opposite.
“But you can’t simply remove her,” She said demurely, “Surely your lady wife will be suspicious if you have no reason.”
That had given him pause. She could not allow him to blunder around and give their affair away.
She needed the Ambassador focused elsewhere and this old fool was just dumb enough to reveal them without even realising it. As it was she’d already had to bribe a member of the house staff to clean and reset the room after they’d used it.
He hadn’t even considered it would be found, or realised that every time they entered it was clean and fresh, rather than soiled and in disarray as they’d left it.
He’d pondered on what to do; how to affect Samantha’s exit without raising the Ambassador’s suspicions of his motives. It was painful to watch. Reginald was not a fast or deep thinker and Cammie had to steer him every step of the way.
She idly planted the seed in his mind that Samantha might harbor feelings for him.
It would be a stretch to imagine, but then he’d recently had a confidence boost from the charms of an amorous young woman who apparently wanted him fiercely.
Compared to that the idea that he would be attractive to Samantha was only a small step.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something my love.” She purred as she
caressed him.
His eyes widened at her words and she was pleased to see he’d at least spotted that. She spoke no more, feeling him ready in her hands.
He had improved, she had to admit. Given more time he might even come close to satisfying her for real, but that would take more time than she was prepared to give.
She’d watched as Arto Dilempian had entered the Ambassadors private office. Seen his timid stride, his depleted look. She’d seen him walk out too. Now he was a man with a purpose weighing heavy on him, but one he was determined to succeed at. That could be a problem. If her guess was right the Ambassador had sent him to Ceres.
A complication, but one that could be dealt with simply enough. The more pressing concern was what the Ambassador herself was planning. She was a powerful woman, bright and astute, unlike her dim husband.
If she was confident enough to send Dilempian to Ceres it meant she didn’t need him here. It meant she had her own path to tread and others to help her stay on it.
Cammie couldn’t allow that. Her work had been subtle, but not without impact. She had manipulated people and events, steered them to suit her own ends. In the grand scheme her part was small, only one piece in a larger picture. Small it might be, but still it was important. She could not let the Ambassador undo her work.
So far she had accomplished what she needed to without bloodshed. Dead bodies attracted a kind of attention that would be detrimental to her cause and her other talents had served her well enough.
If she was right that would have to change. She would know by tonight, when Reginald had spent himself and his mouth would run unchecked.
By tonight he would know her next steps. By tonight she would know if Her Excellency Arleese Semeon had to die.
TWENTY-FIVE
Aitkin Cassini could feel the heat of the room before he opened his eyes. He was awake again, the absence of pain almost as much of a shock to him as the pain itself had been.
The hands of his torturer had not stopped at his eye. The pain had blazed down his face as the slim blade opened his cheek. The wound burned once the touch of the knife was gone. Every cut and slice it made into his flesh felt like he’d been set alight in that specific area.
The questions had been repeated, “What is your name? What is your rank?”
He’d answered as he had every time before and the voice had called him a liar once more before the knife moved to his chest.
“What was your mission? What did you learn of the enemy?”
Aitkin had thrashed against his restraints with all the force left to him. It wasn’t much, it wasn’t enough.
The chair held him fast and unable to move his arms or legs. He couldn’t even turn his head and the feeling of helplessness was a different kind of torture.
“I am pleased to see you are still with me.” Came the voice from the shadows.
Aitkin still hadn’t opened his eyes, but somehow his torturer knew he had woken from sleep. Aitkin tried to think if it had been the same all the other times he’d woken.
How do you know?
“Your breathing gives you away.”
A reply to a question he hadn’t asked. Aitkin kept his eyes closed, his head bowed.
Do I even dare think?
This time there was no answer to his internal question. He almost sighed at the relief. If somehow they had gotten into his head then he was truly lost.
“You are a strong man Aitkin Cassini, Captain of Second Company.”
The voice was moving again, coming closer to him from the
darkness straight ahead.
“I believe we have been forced into an impasse you and I.”
The voice seemed as if it was at the very edge of the circle of light. Just out of sight, but tantalisingly close. If only he could reach out
and grasp the limbs of this man. He would tear them from their joints and laugh as the blood flowed.
“You have told me a lie Aitkin, but it seems it is not in you to tell me the Truth.”
There was a sigh, almost sad sounding, “It is not in me however, to accept anything but the Truth Aitkin Cassini, Captain of the Second Company.”
Was that the outline of a body at the edge of the light? Aitkin tensed his shoulders to test his restraints. There was so little movement, little, but that was more than none at all.
If he could only get the purchase with his feet to brace his back against the chair then maybe, just maybe…
“If you will not tell me the Truth about you, will you tell me the Truth of your mission?”
Aitkin knew it was futile. He could barely move within his restraints and even if he could, the days of torture, starvation and dehydration had sapped the strength from his muscles.
“Will you tell me of your boarding? What did you see of your enemy Aitkin Cassini, Captain of the Second Company?”
The voice was still calm, still level, but Aitkin thought he could hear something new there. A contained chuckle, the difference a smile on the lips makes to the sound of the words spoken. “What did you think of your enemy Aitkin Cassini, Captain of the Second Company?”
The voice was moving all the time, circling the shaft of light that held him. Always just out of sight, just inside the darkness where he couldn’t see.
“Did they frighten you Aitkin Cassini, Captain of the Second Company?”
A hand reached from the darkness and caressed his face, almost tenderly. Aitkin pulled his face from it, feeling sickened.
“Will you tell me, I wonder. What were your orders? What
were you sent to retrieve?”
The voice was a whisper in his ear. He could feel the hot breath, taste its stink on the air.
“No? Then I shall put aside your Truth. For the moment. Instead I will tell you a Truth of my own Aitkin Cassini, Captain of Second Company.”
Aitkin could make out the figure speaking to him now. He was so close that had his arms been released Aitkin could have reached out and touched him. Still, the details of his features were shrouded, but the form was there.
The body was slim and tall, although not as tall as Aitkin himself, he guessed. There was some sort of robe covering neck to ankles, he could see the hem move as his torturer shifted his weight from foot to foot.
It brushed the floor and now he saw it Aitkin could hear the soft sound it made with that gentle contact. Aitkin realised he could hear something else. It was breathing, but the sound was odd, distorted.
Whatever face this man had was hidden behind something, a mask maybe. That would explain the rasp that accompanied each shallow breath.
“I have decided you should know who you are talking to. After all, surely you’re tired of thinking of me as ‘him’ when imagine all the wonderfully terrible things you would do to me, if only our roles were to be reversed.”
There was a difference to the voice now. For so many days it had been level, monotone, patient and unchanged. Now it seemed like there was a smile behind it. Even a hint of glee at the words it was uttering.
Aitkin tensed as the form before him resolved into focus as his tormentor leaned forward into the bright light that had obscured him for so long.
The face was human, but the features were terrible in their strangeness; the eyes were mismatched in both colour and shape. The left was small with bright blue surrounding the quickly contracting pupil where the right was wide and deep and milky white from eyelid to cheek.
Where a nose should be there was only flat, closed flesh with a faint line to the left side showing where the skin had been folded over and sewn. Aitkin had a fleeting thought that the lack of a nose would be a preferable situation for one with a vocation such as this.
He remembered how his bowels had emptied, beyond his control, when the blade had slit his belly and laid his innards bare in his lap. The stench had made him retch and vomit and his heaving had forced the hot wet coils of his intestines to slip further, slithering between his legs and curling on the floor between his feet.
The nose and eyes were disconcerting, under a pale bald brow with skin so translucent Aitkin could see a map of thin blue veins clearly beneath it, but they were not the cause of his revulsion.
The leering face before him ended, at least recognisably, under the flat space where the nose should have been.
Below it was a contraption of entirely of metallic design. The lower jaw was bare metal, constructed in an awful parody of the human form.
It jutted out from above a slim neck, its colour tinged with corrosion and blackened by age and use. The teeth were metal also, arranged in a pointed semicircle around the rim. They too showed signs of corrosion and the stink that drifted from them to Aitkin’s nose only a few inches away reminded him of the smell of death he’d found so many times after a battle had been won.
There were no lips and the upper jaw was made up of a pair of think black tubes that extended from deep in the throat and met in the centre, where a small rectangle obscured their joining.
In its centre was a grill approximately three centimetres across and from this issued forth the strange breathing Aitkin had begun to hear.
At least a third of this man’s face was an abuse of the metal workers craft, a purposeful step away from the humanity that birthed him. A large piece of skin hung loosely below what would have been a chin, on any normal person.
Aitkin guessed it had been covering the grotesque parody of a mouth he now saw before him. It was strangely obvious to his reeling mind that usually this would conceal the unsettling metal work and give his torturer a semi normal appearance.
It had been removed now to demonstrate to him the full inhumanity of the being behind that face, adding strength to the message that there would be no mercy here. It was an act meant to terrify and it was working.
There was only one place Aitkin knew of in the solar system where such foul practices were rumored to be allowed.
The rumors whispered in hushed tones for fear speaking of them too loudly might bring their attentions to the one foolish enough to utter their name.
Aitkin knew with a cold clarity exactly where he was and he realised there would be no escaping his fate.
He was with the Fatherhood.
He knew only a little about them. Mostly they were used in stories to frighten children, but there were versions of those stories more than capable of frightening fully grown men.
They were torturers; madmen who believed nothing they did could ever be wrong and so there was nothing they would not do.
The face examining him with those strange unrelated eyes twisted slowly from side to side as it watched the understanding seep in and do its terrible work upon his fragile psyche.
“I see you know of us Aitkin Cassini, Captain of Second Company.”
The voice had changed completely now. The words were almost hissed at him and the stench surrounding him doubled as he felt the air wash over his face.
The Father, Aitkin realised now that’s what he was, leaned in close, his hands resting on the tops of Aitkin’s thighs. The face was so close the metallic lower jaw almost brushed his cheek as the Father whispered in his ear.
“I am called Mylus Vant, of the Fatherhood. Welcome Aitkin Cassini, Captain of Second Company. I believe you will be my
most favourite patient.”
The Fatherhood.
Two seemingly innocent, innocuous words that held, for those who believed the whispers a truly terrifying association.
‘The Fatherhood are all torturers.’
‘The Fatherhood are all maniacs.’
‘They aren’t really people, they don’t understand pain.’
‘They’re monsters in the shape of men.’
‘The Fathers will torture a man forever.’
‘They’ll keep a man chained up in their deep, dark dungeons f
or years and years.’
‘They are made of metal instead of flesh and think all flesh is just a weakness to be peeled away.’
‘They believe every man has a hidden truth that they must find.’
These were the whispers of The Fatherhood. Little was actually known of them, but all the whispers agreed on two things; that the Fatherhood did indeed exist and that they plumbed the most truly terrible depths of humanity to fill their ranks.
No one knew the origins of the Fatherhood, or how long they had been undertaking their grisly occupation. No one knew why they did it or who, if anyone, they answered to.
As with all rumors there was some truth in the words, although any Father would dispute it.
Natasha In’Tuen knew more than most of their workings, but even her knowledge was strictly limited.
She knew why Aitkin Cassini was in their hands and what Mylus Vant had been tasked with achieving. She knew the details behind some of their techniques and had witnessed their gruesome physical practice on several occasions, but still her actual interactions with members of The Fatherhood had only ever been brief.
Outside of the particular patient they were working on she would be given very little understanding. She didn’t know where they’d come from or in what other circumstances and
for who they might undertake their practices. She knew little of their hierarchy and less of their history.
Natasha reflected on the fact that she didn’t even know where they were. She could watch every detail of the search for Aitkin’s Cassini’s Truth, but only through her viewing pane. The images were less than a metre from her face and yet they could originate from anywhere in the solar system.
Every patient was collected by the Fatherhood in strict secrecy. As to where they were taken she felt with some confidence, was not known even by those at the very top of the command chain.
To be taken by The Fatherhood was a terrifying prospect. To be spirited away to an unknown destination and left in the hands of someone who believed there were no boundaries, nothing was forbidden and everything they did was necessary to achieve their goal. Only the ‘Truth’ mattered and how they defined that was as much a mystery as every other aspect of their shadowy existence.